The Worst Parents?

It has been a few days since the world was saved and Danny's secret was exposed to the world and to his parents. The ghost hero known as Danny Phantom was actually the son of the local ghost hunters, Danny Fenton.

Danny walked down the stairs to the living room and noticed his parents were sitting on the couch. The TV was off and the room was quiet. Strangely quiet, considering who his parents were.

"Is everything okay?" Danny asked, knowing he was going to regret this in a moment.

"Hey there Dan-o!" Jack said.

"Come join us Danny," Maddie said, "we need to have a little talk."

Danny just blinked and stared at his parents. "Uh...I already had that talk with Dad. Then again, with Jazz. Then another time with Dad the other day."

"Not that one," Maddie sighed. She tapped the open space on the couch next to her.

"No getting out of this one, is there?" Danny asked. He hoped for his ghost sense or something to go off. He needed a way out. Now!

"Now son," Jack started the moment Danny sat down, "why didn't you tell us you were Phantom?"

"Maybe it has something to do with the constant threat of being torn apart molecule by molecule." Danny shrugged and crossed his arms.

His parents looked away, a little embarrassed by that. They couldn't count how many times they said that to him, to both of them, professionally and casually. When it comes to busting ghosts they can be a little, what was Jazz's word? Enthusiastic.

"Oh, Danny." Maddy placed her hand over her heart. "We would never intentionally hurt you. You know that, right?"

"Yeah, I do." Danny relaxed a little. "You and dad don't exactly make it easy to talk about ghost stuff or anything for that matter. Plus, with the anti-ghost tech everywhere in the house, and I do mean everywhere, it was easier to keep the secret."

"We understand," Maddie said. She placed her hands on one of Danny's. "One thing we wanted to tell you is that we are proud of you."

"Really proud!" Jack exclaimed. "The way Phantom gave all those other ghosts a good bashing proves the Fenton blood runs through your veins. You get it from me, you know!"

Everyone laughed.

"What your father is trying to say is that you got these powers, and you selflessly used them to protect. Most teens your age would probably have used them for their own selfish gains. You showed maturity and good judgement." Maddie smiled.

"You grew up into such a fine young man right before our very eyes," Jack added.

"Thanks. I love you guys." Danny smiled. He tried to get up from the couch, but was pulled back down. There it was. There was the reason he was gonna regret the talk.

"Danny," Maddie started. Her voice was sweet and a little firm. "We were wondering how exactly you became a ghost human hybrid."

"The term is halfa," Danny said, "coined by Vlad himself."

"Did Vlad do this to you?" Jack raged. "He better be glad he's lost in space, otherwise I'd rip him apart molecule by molecule!"

"No no no," Danny said. "He had nothing to do with it."

"How did it happen?" Maddie asked.

"I take it you guys didn't pay attention to the words of the theme song?" Danny said. It sounded flat, but there was a hint of a smirk.

His parents just stared at him.

"Theme song?" They asked.

"You know." Danny stood up and cleared his voice. "Yo! Danny Fenton he was just 14, when his parents built a very strange machine."

"Hey that's us!" Jack cheered as he elbowed his wife.

"Designed to view a world unseen."

"Jack, that's the ghost zone. We were building the ghost portal!" She rapidly tapped his arm.

"When it didn't quite work, his folks, they just quit…"

"But our portal does work." Jack said quietly. "It was just on a delay, wasn't it?"

"Then Danny took a look inside of it."

"You're the one who turned it on?" Maddie gasped. The gears were turning in her head. "But how? When we plugged it in, nothing happened. What aren't you telling us?"

"There was a great big flash. Everything just changed. His molecules got all rearranged."

His parents sat there in silence.

"The rest of the song doesn't matter," Danny finished, as he turned to face his parents.

"Danny," Jack said. He paused, trying to figure out how to ask this question. "What exactly happened?"

"To keep a long story short, I put on one of the hazmat suit and went into the machine to check it out. You know, that patented Fenton curiosity."

Jack raised an eyebrow at that.

"Then I noticed that the "on switch" was built on the inside of the machine."

Maddie side eyed Jack. That blunder would be completely on him.

"Except I didn't notice it was the on switch until I unintentionally pressed it. There was a great big flash. The electricity super charged the ectoplasm as it merged with my DNA. When I woke up, I was a ghost."

"Oh God," Jack gasped, with Maddie gasping just as loud. "We killed our son. I killed our son." Tears started to form in his eyes. It was like a floodgate opened. All the memories of hunting Phantom, hunting his son, came pouring out. He wanted to exterminate Phantom, he wanted to kill his son. It wouldn't have been the first time he killed his son, apparently. "Are we the worst parents in the world?"

"Well, our tech is dangerous," Maddie said, patting Jack's hand. She didn't know where this was going. She still had to process all this information as well. "But we taught the kids safety procedures and warned them not to touch anything without supervision. However, the ghost portal connects to the ghost zone, so we're the worst parents in two worlds." Maddie couldn't help her tears, either. She was responsible for the death of her son.

"Well, the ghost zone connects to infinite realms and times," Danny thought, but decided to keep it to himself. As funny as that comment would have been, now wasn't the time. As crazy and eccentric his parents were, he still loved them, and didn't want them to hurt anymore than they're already are.

This was the first step forward towards a healthier relationship, both for him and his parents, and for his parents and ghost.