"Well, he handled it, didn't he?"

"You call that handling it?! He was flying by the seat of his pants - When he had pants!"

"And when he didn't, he handled it like a champ."

"Oh yeah, cause every champion runs around half naked. Danny, do you have any idea where they fell off?"

Danny sighed at the pile of trash he was fishing through. "No," he responded dejectedly. They were behind the school discussing the events of the day while Sam and Danny dug around the dumpsters looking for Danny's missing pants.

Tucker shifted on his perch, a bench the cafeteria workers used for their smoke breaks. "Sam, all I'm saying is that Danny was resourceful and worked with what he had. Man, when that ectoblast shot out of your butt instead of your hand, I thought we were toast for sure! But you kept your cool and used your glutes for the tactical advantage."

"Gee thanks, Tuck, but I'd really like to cover my glutes with more than my boxers," Danny responded dryly. He narrowed his eyes at the technogeek and added, "You could help you know."

Tucker held up his PDA and scoffed. "And get Betty full of school goop? No thanks!"

Sam threw a handful of spaghetti over at Tucker, aiming for his head. Ignoring his indignant squawks when the projectile found its target, she exclaimed, "For crying out loud! Danny can hardly control his powers! It's only been a week and he's already broken enough beakers to ban himself from touching the school lab equipment for the rest of his high school career!" She winced and looked over at Danny. "No offense, Danny," she added.

Danny sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "No, you're right. I have no clue what I'm doing. I thought that after I had wrestled those ectopuses back to the ghost zone I'd have a better handle on things, but I'm still figuring out what powers I have and how to control them." He balled his fists. "Even so, I couldn't stand by and do nothing. People were getting hurt!" This ghost wasn't like the bullies at school. It tried to cause real harm to people. Tried to kill them, just because their food preferences did not comply with theirs.

Sam gave him a quizzical look. "Sounds like a ghost obsession," she commented lightly.

Danny shot her a look. "That's just a theory. My parents don't even know if they're real or not."

"Speaking of parents…" Tucker began looking at Danny cautiously. "I heard what they said."

The only sign that Danny heard his friend was the tensing of his shoulders. "They didn't know it was me," he defended, not making eye contact.

"But you did," Tucker pressed on. "Dude, that can't have been good to hear."

Sam looked at Tucker puzzled. She didn't hear what the Fentons had said, but from Tucker's worried expression, she knew it couldn't have been good. Tucker shook his head and waited for Danny to respond.

Danny stopped sifting through trash and looked at the setting sun. "An odd manifestation of ectoplasmic post-human consciousness. One that has no emotions whatsoever - One that can't feel pain, fear, joy…. love." His expression was unreadable as he took in the vibrant colors painting the clouds. Finally he shook his head and looked down. "But the worst part was when she called me scum."

Sam put a hand over her mouth in horror. "They would have never said those things if they knew it was you."

"Are you sure? Because I'm not." Danny shook his head. "Look guys, I don't want to talk about this right now. I just want to find my pants." He looked at the mounds of rotting food but defeat settled on his shoulders. He turned away. "Forget it, I'm going home."

Danny changed into Phantom and withheld a wince. Turning on the portal had taken its toll and he was still recovering from it. His muscles had spasmed with electricity anytime he moved those first couple of days. However, as the week went on, his severe condition improved to the point where the only lingering effect was a jolt of pain when he transformed. Danny figured that the pain would eventually disappear over time.

Sam and Tucker looked at Danny in concern. Ignoring their looks, he said, "Thanks for the help, guys. I'll see you tomorrow." With that, he jumped up in the air and flew towards Fentonworks.

Danny was really grateful for his friends. After they had refused to leave the night of the accident, they continued to insist on staying with him until he had better control of his powers. They dropped everything for him, and even went so far as to cancel plans to a comic book convention and an animal testing protest so that they could help their friend.

It was daunting at first, especially since Danny kept falling through the ground and turning invisible. Apparently, intangibility and invisibility were instinctive traits that could be triggered by fear. Just like when a lizard lops off its tail to avoid having its important organs eaten, a ghost would turn intangible and invisible to avoid being hit or seen by a predator. It was a ghost's natural response to fear and ever since the portal turned on, Danny was full of fear.

All day, his fears circulated in his mind on an endless loop. He didn't know if the accident with the portal was slowly killing him, or if his struggles to control his powers were in vain. He was afraid of the beings that flew out of the portal and caused destruction with ease. What if he couldn't stop them one day? What if they hurt someone that he wasn't fast enough to save?

What about his parents? If they found out he was the thing they hated, would they try to kill him too? Were they right in saying that all ghosts were evil, and he was slowly turning into a being whose sole purpose was to cause people pain?

While fear could sometimes trigger these responses, Danny was able to learn how to control them so that when he felt a surge of fear, he didn't automatically start falling through the ground. He was at a point where he could stop the powers from happening spontaneously, but he was still trying to call them forth at his own will. It was not perfect, but Danny was giving it his all so that life could return to some sense of normalcy.

The two abilities that gave him the least amount of trouble were flight and his ghostly transformation. After Sam's guidance on the first night, Danny had no problem transitioning between his human half and his ghost half, and flying came as naturally as swimming to a fish. It was like he was meant to defy gravity.

Danny stopped in a nearby alley and transformed back into Fenton. Silently, he crept inside so that no one would question him on his lack of pants. He was making his way upstairs when he heard voices from the kitchen.

"Jack, it was a real ghost! Think about all the knowledge we'd gain if we caught it."

Danny froze on the step.

"We'll need to reconstruct the Fenton Thermos. That ghost scum was able to get it working, which means we can too. It'll regret ever stealing our invention after we're done with it."

Danny flinched. He didn't steal the thermos. They threw it away in frustration and it happened to land in his hand, only after smacking him in the face in the process.

"I'd love to see its inner workings. Cut it open to see if it can imitate humans all the way through. Maybe it can only imitate what it knew before it died. It's so young that maybe it never took an anatomy class and is just full of ectoplasm instead of any real organs."

Danny paled and pressed a hand to his chest.

"Wouldn't that be fascinating! Seeing its behavior under extreme conditions would also help us advance our weapons so that we could collect more of them. Imagine what we can do if ghosts were susceptible to ice, fire, or electricity ."

Finally, Danny snapped out of his trance as fear raced through him. His mind went straight to the night of the accident. Nightmares of the neverending electricity coursing through his veins and the painful muscle spasms still kept him up at night.

Noticing he was slowly sinking through stairs, he yelped and quickly pulled himself out. His gaze shifted toward the kitchen as the voices quieted down. I can't be seen like this. With a burst of speed he raced into his bedroom and slammed the door. He waited with bated breath to hear if anyone followed him, but he distantly heard the conversation continue below. He didn't know whether to be grateful or disheartened. They're too busy planning my death to scold me for coming home late.

A loud screech caused Danny to jump and look around. He found Hedwig on his bedpost waving her wings threateningly. On her foot there was a letter from Harry, but when Danny moved to untie it, she shrieked fearfully. Danny paused in shock and he opened his palms to show he wasn't holding anything. "Woah Hedwig! What's wrong?" He took a step towards the owl, only for her to screech again and spread her talons threateningly.

Danny's heart sank as realization hit. Sam guessed it had something to do with carrying the aura of death, but one of the side effects to receiving ghost powers is that animals were more skittish around him. Ghost powers, Danny scoffed. That's what they all kept calling it - even he did. As if he was denying the fact that half of him actually died in that portal. What did that even make him? He couldn't possibly be human anymore, but he didn't want to be a ghost. All the ghosts he had encountered so far had outright attacked people for no reason. The only ghost who actually bothered to talk to him turned out to be a psychotic lunch lady. Is that what I have to look forward to? Danny didn't feel any more malevolent than normal, but his parents' findings stated that all ghosts were evil. Fear struck his heart. Maybe I'm slowly turning into a monster.

Danny didn't think Hedwig would react this way since she had already known him before the accident. "It's me, Danny," he said softly. When the bird showed no signs of backing down, Danny slumped and dropped himself on Harry's bed which was closest. Utterly spent from the day he turned to the owl and said, "Fine, I'll sleep here tonight. If you want to leave, the window's open." The owl glared at him but remained on her perch. The glare was familiar. He saw it today on the faces of his peers and teachers. It contained fear and anger. Half the people today were running away from me. Like I was a monster. Like I was going to hurt them. He soberly looked at Hedwig. " I would never hurt you; you know that, right?" Her look was as unconvinced as he was. If he was slowly turning into the monster everyone thought he was, then he wouldn't be able to control himself.


When Danny woke up, Hedwig was gone. He couldn't really blame her for leaving. I would leave, too, if someone reeked of death. Padding downstairs, he noticed the unusual sight of an empty kitchen. Usually someone was either tinkering or eating during this time of day. Curious, Danny peered down into the basement to see if his parents were working on a new ghost weapon. After a gadget had exploded giving Danny a faceful of anti-ghost acid, he had been avoiding the lab. He only went down there to deal with ghosts and return them back to their home nowadays.

"Hello?" Danny called down. Hearing no response, Danny closed the basement and looked around the house. He couldn't quite believe that his family just left to run errands, because Jazz usually left a note, but he reasoned that his spontaneous parents could have dragged her out without warning. It had happened before.

Getting dressed, he quickly sent a text to Sam and Tucker to meet him in the park. The walk down the street was eerily silent since there were no cars on the road and no pedestrians walking around. Maybe everyone got some sort of tornado warning and are holed up at home. He glanced up at the bright cloudless sky and shook his head. Jazz and his parents would've all been home if that were true.

Picking up his pace, his nerves began to tense. Where did everyone go? Rounding the corner of the street he stopped and paled at the sight before him.

Heaps of human flesh were stacked high in the sky. Men, women, and children were present. No one was spared. The lifeless stiff bodies watched Danny from their piles, their eyes forever frozen with horror and their mouths agape. Fear made him want to run, but the need to help caused him to step forward. He tried to look away from the bodies, but his heart needed him to make sure that his family wasn't there. His chest ached as he searched, he couldn't stop himself.

Danny quickly scanned the piles as his mission took him further into the street. He knew most of the people who lied amongst the stacks, and they all stared blankly back at him. The fearful gaze of his adversary, Dash Baxter, caused him to pause. His usual cocky smirk and confident stance were gone. Danny didn't know how, but he knew Dash had died terrified, cowering in a corner.

"Get away from them, ghost scum!" a voice cried behind him.

Danny stiffened and turned to face the speaker. The redheaded girl had an ectogun pointed at her brother.

"Jazz!? What's going on? What happened to everyone?" Danny asked, wiping a tear from his face.

"Don't act like you don't know!" she shouted back. Her eyes were hard and raged with a fiery hatred that Danny had never seen from her. Her normal pleasant demeanor was gone.

"I don't!" Danny cried indignantly, but Jazz wouldn't listen. Tightening her grip, she pulled the trigger. Danny's shoulder exploded with pain as he fell from the blast.

"You did this! You monster!" she yelled, taking aim to shoot again.

"N-No!" Danny exclaimed, standing up and holding his hands out to prevent his sister from shooting again. He looked back at the horrified faces of the townspeople. "I-I wouldn't do this. You're wrong!"

"I saw you! Your hair was white and your eyes were green, but it was still you," Jazz replied coldly.

Danny looked horrified at his sister. "I-I did this? I killed everyone?!"

"Not everyone," a voice stated from behind him.

Danny spun around. "Harry?"

Harry was standing several feet away from Danny with his wand pointing at Danny's heart. "By the time I came home, you were too far gone to save. All ghosts eventually turn evil, Danny, and I was too late to stop you. Face it, you did this." At his last statement, Harry pointed next to Danny to show what he had been dreading to find.

Tears fell as Danny looked at Tucker and Sam. Tucker was crouched over Sam, looking up in horror at what he had seen before his life was taken. Sam, on the other hand, looked at it with sorrow. Dried tear stains lined her face. How could he have done this?!

"You've become a monster," Harry finished.

"But maybe we can fix you, son." Danny turned again to see his father standing next to Jazz with a scalpel in his hand. Danny had never seen his father's innocent smile look so malevolent.

"But not before we see what kind of inner workings the ghost scum has, Hon," his mom sweetly said from her place next to Harry. She was wielding a bone saw.

Danny stuck his hands out on either side of him, facing his family. "W-Wait! You don't have to do this! I'm not evil! I'm still human!"

Maddie laughed. "Don't be silly, you couldn't possibly be human. How do you explain your ghost abilities?"

Danny struggled to find an answer which caused Maddie to laugh harder. "Go on, Harry," she said.

" Petrificus Totalus! " Harry shouted, brandishing his wand.

Danny fell frozen on the ground. All he could see was the azure sky above, until Jack peered over him with his scalpel. "No need to worry, spook. Since you're a ghost you won't be able to feel this." Fear laced Danny's mind as Jack slowly brought the scalpel down to his chest.

As the scalpel plunged into his flesh, pain spiked through him and he woke up in a panic, cold sweat dripped down his face as he scanned his bedroom. It was just a dream, he told himself, trying to calm his racing heart. A really, really vivid dream.

The sharp pain returned, but this time it came from his hand. Sitting up, Danny spotted Hedwig hopping back from her place near his hand. The bird was eyeing him cautiously but the glare was gone. She must've seen he was having a nightmare and tried to wake him up. He gave her a grateful smile and said softly, "Thank you."

Hedwig eyed him warily as if she was waiting for something to happen. Finally, after moments of silence, she lifted her foot where an envelope was tied. Danny moved to untie the letter, working slowly so as not to startle the owl. Hedwig moved back to her perch on Danny's bed, but kept her eyes on him. Danny opened the letter addressed to him and began to read.

My dear sweet death row brother,

You're dead.

Danny stiffened, but forced himself to relax. Harry couldn't possibly know what had happened to him. He continued to read.

Seriously, mate, you're dead. I'm pretty sure McGonagall sent you a howler, which is a letter that will yell at you until your ears fall off. Make sure you're alone when you open it. It was pretty humiliating when Ron got one in front of the whole school. I sent Hedwig right away and I'm guessing that she'll get there before the Hogwarts owl since she's used to the 're welcome, you ungrateful git.

Honestly, I can't wait to see you during the holidays. There's something evil lurking within the school this year, and it's tried to kill a few students. I'm not in danger since they seem to target a specific group of students, but everyone seems to think I am the person. Everyone besides Ron and Hermione are terrified of me. One student even went so far as to place a tracking spell on me so that they knew which corridors to avoid. I've never felt more like a freak than now… It'll be good to get away from this gloomy atmosphere for a while. I'll see you in a week or so.

Love,

Harry

The fact that Harry didn't bother using their nicknames was a testament to how upset Harry really was.

A/N - I hope you liked it! Writing has been a fun new experience and I've enjoyed reading all your comments (*cough* Nightshade)! Thank you so much! Next week, I'm introducing a new villain.

Nightshade - I can't wait for Danny to meet Lupin! A few things need to happen before they meet, but I already have that part written out, and I love it!