4/18/24-Rewrite for quality and continuity. If this is the last I finish today, don't fret! Future chapter rewrites coming soon! Story might be a bit wonky while we're in the middle of rewrites. If I'm lucky, you're reading this when the rewrites are done. Cause so many of these chapters will be an absolute mess until all of them are fixed; I probably won't rewrite anything past Chapter 11, after that it'll be more minor edits just to make them a little more readable.

Disclaimer: Danny Phantom isn't on TV anymore. Wanna know why? I don't own it, that's why!

Chapter 3: Activated

"What happened to me?" Heather could hardly look at her reflection in the mirror. It was her. She saw herself. But it wasn't what she was used to. "I can't go home like this! My parents will freak!" She ran her fingers through her now white hair. Her eyes glowed the same bright green as the portal. She even seemed to see a light glow outlining her. She put her hands on the mirror, but in a second they phased right through. She just barely caught herself before she slammed her face on the sink she stood over. "I don't know what to do! I can't even go to the rest of my classes like this!" She staggered back and caught herself on the wall, breathing heavily. But even the breaths she took felt wrong.

Alex sighed. "Take a deep breath, I'll help you, and we'll find Raymond and have him help you too," He said. He hugged her tightly to help calm her down. "Whatever happened to you is not good. We'll figure something out, okay? Whatever all this is, We can take care of it."

"I won't," Heather weakly replied. She suddenly felt dizzy. She closed her eyes, then lost consciousness and collapsed. Alex caught her, and a white ring appeared around her and split in two, spanning her body. Her white hair turned black again, and her clothes were back to normal.

"Heather?" Alex said. "Heather, wake up!" When Heather didn't wake up, Alex set her down and splashed some water from the sink on her face. She didn't move, but at least she was breathing. He sat there for a couple minutes, running his hands through his short ginger hair, trying not to freak out or think of the possibility of Heather going into a coma or something. Luckily, she came to on her own.

Alex helped her get back up. "Are you sure you're gonna be okay after that?" He asked her.

She was still clearly scared, but was a bit calmer now. "Yeah. I think so." She stood up slowly and weakly, feeling like she'd been hit by a truck. But she saw her normal face when she looked back in the mirror, hair black and eyes blue, and felt a sense of relief. "We'll have to figure this out somehow. And also keep this a secret. I'm not exactly sure what to do.

"Well, my dad loves old movies and shows. If they need to figure out a mystery, they'll sometimes go to libraries. There's nothing more secret than having no browser history than not using the internet. Books aren't traceable, and they give better info than all the search engines that don't actually help you much."

Heather considered it. "You're right. The less my parents can find out, the better. They'll never even think of looking for us there."

Alex nodded in agreement. "Good plan. I'll meet you out front after school."

The final three classes in the day finished. Besides the few pencils phasing through Heather's hand and some strange looks from other students when she somehow fell out of her chair that one time, it was a basically normal school day. She shared science class with Alex and study hall in the library as the last class with both him and Raymond (that one being a calculated choice as the teacher overseeing it was so lenient that they could basically do anything as long as they were quiet) so she wasn't alone that whole time. Besides stressing out about the entire situation, it really wasn't that bad a day, and easy because the first day of school was always easy even without having experience of this many classes in one day.

Heather hadn't said a thing towards Ray yet. She was worried he was too much a blabbermouth; he was clever and very tech-smart, his father could be thanked for that. But he loved to talk. His father could also be to blame for that as well. She worried that since he wasn't there to see what happened, he wouldn't get how big a deal it was.

The trio sat together and chatted about normal things like what games to play that weekend, discussing their teachers, talking about classes. But Heather could see Ray knew something was up. She wasn't that good about hiding her worry. Neither was Alex. School soon ended, and they walked out of class together to hang out with Ray while he waited for his dad to come give him a ride.

Eventually, Ray had enough of it. "I don't know if I'm reading you wrong, but something is wrong, isn't it? You guys have been weird all afternoon. Spill!"

Heather spoke up before Alex could say a word. "I'm just stressed out about my classes. And you know how Alex is, he doesn't know how to react when people worry about things. He's his normal amount of weirdness." She went to jokingly nudge Alex's arm with a fist. It phased through him of course, but as she was going for a passing graze, she just hoped Ray didn't see that.

A car pulled up, it was Ray's dad. "Hey, the whole trio's here! You two need rides?" he asked as his son hopped in the car. It was a normal thing; he would pick them up occasionally from the further-out elementary school when Heather's dad was busy. With Alex being just down the block from Heather, they went home together since they met in third grade.

"No thanks, Mr. Foley," Alex answered. "The walk home is real short!"

Heather added, "Thanks for the offer, though!"

The car drove off, and the duo left towards the city library, placed right between the middle and high school on the map, only a few streets away and hardly any further from home. They texted their parents to say they were hanging out at the park right next to the library. That part of town had plenty of fast food places and other stores that they wouldn't seem out of place hanging out near, making it a perfect cover. Soon enough,

First, they checked the internet on the library computers. Searching "Strange Green Lightning Wall" only brought up Halloween decorations, but "Strange Green Portal Thing" brought up a few sites after a few pages of scrolling.

"Ghost portals?" Heather whispered. "There's no way..." she trailed off at the info. Everyone knew ghosts once roamed Amity Park. They were recorded fact, and while many other kids didn't even believe in them, her grandparents made sure she knew how real they were, to the disdain of her parents. It was a weird sensitive topic in her family, though, for a reason she knew had to exist but didn't know what that reason was. That didn't stop her from getting teased in elementary school for her goofy grandparents' and consequently her dad's past actions, which her dad made sure she knew they just heard the insults from their parents and didn't even know what they meant.

Alex looked through one website. "Well, that looks about right. We'll look for books about ghosts. We're bound to find something."

Eventually, they figured out how the Dewey decimal system worked and noted down a few books to look for. One of them was a fairly new book about the history of the Amity Park supernatural occurrences. It was thick, heavy, and just the book they needed.

Alex took the book to a table and called over to Heather, who was browsing shorter, more specific books. "This might just hold the answer," he whispered. "There's all sorts of stuff in here. Let's look through the timeline and see what we've got."

The book was worthy of it's size. It was basically an entire encyclopedia documenting every known ghost attack, and documented the info of every ghost known to the public. This info was hard to get by, her grandparents kept the info as family secrets. In a bid to not overwhelm herself with all that information at once, she turned to the introduction and read that first.

Heather read the page. It was a summary of Amity Park's ghost attacks. "Wow, this is crazy," she whispered, "in 2004 ghosts were proven to be real, and there was a young ghost that protected the city. Look at the picture. His hair is like mine was after I touched that portal. I think... I'm a ghost. Not just weirdly effected by that portal. I think it actually did something to me."

"There's no way. You're still alive for one. And your hair and eyes were all ghostly just once. But you're also phasing through things like crazy. And, well, look at your hands. Or lack of hands."

Heather stifled a yelp and crossed her arms to hide her hands that somehow turned invisible. "Alex, how can I be dead and alive at the same time?"

Alex shrugged. "We can head back to the computer, look for a book to check out. There's bound to be something there."

"Can't hurt to try." Heather was trying not to panic yet, but she couldn't stop her voice from wavering there. She was not at all ready for the consequences of being dead, or partly dead, or temporarily dead, or any sort of dead. She just crossed her fingers hoping they could find something, anything, to ease her fears.

Interesting things are happening... What will happen next? Find out next chapter!