4/23/24-Rewrite for quality and continuity.

Chapter 7: The Room

The rest of the night was quite uneventful. Heather's hands eventually turned visible again and she went to bed with the ghost puppy by her side.

But when she woke up, she was not in her bed. She was in pure darkness.

The dark didn't scare her. In fact, she found darkness quite calming. But this was pure, complete darkness. No light source at all. Even with her love of darkness, Heather had an uncanny feeling in this place. She did her best not to panic. The air was stuffy and musty and dry. The darkness was foreboding and disorienting. But as she woke up a little more, she remembered; she had ghost powers.

She transformed into her ghost self. It took a second for her to figure it out, she wasn't perfect at it. But with a moment of focus, she did it. (She was also admittedly proud of herself for doing it without any coaching.) The flash of light from the transformation was just long enough to get an idea of the room size and the contents. She made out a few boxes in a corner, but no door. And then, back to darkness. She held out her hands to see the slight glow from them. It wasn't enough to be too useful, it was far too dim. But she had an idea. She held out her hands until she reached the wall. Then, she walked around the perimeter, leaning against the wall, looking for a light switch using her ghostly glow. If a light switch even existed in this weird room.

Luckily, she did find a switch and turned it on. A dim light in the center of the room flickered a bit and finally lit up. The switch was on a backing box that was coated in spiderwebs. She tried shaking them off her hand and hoodie sleeve. She definitely didn't want the webs all over her clothes, so she tried scraping them off with the corner of the switch's backing box.

Instead of getting the webs off, she picked up more. Spider included.

And while Heather was not scared of the dark, she was scared of spiders.

She yelped and jumped and shook her hand, finally shaking the spider off. But she realized she didn't fall back to the ground. She instead hit the ceiling. The unfinished ceiling with cobwebs stretching from beam to beam. She screamed. Webs were all in her hair and all over her clothes. She couldn't stop freaking out about it until they were at least not directly touching her skin. Once she took care of that, she was able to focus on her current disobeying of the laws of gravity. She was floating. Floating! All on her own! She couldn't figure out how she got up there or how she got down, as it wasn't something she was able to figure out how to do at Alex's place. She then tried to figure out how to actually move in the air. She leaned forward a bit and thought fly forward. She crashed into the wall and fell to the ground. Involuntarily she turned human again. That was something she'd have to practice. A puff of cold air once again left her mouth, leaving her curious to what it was and why it kept happening.

Heather looked around, finding no door or window, but she could just get out intangibly anyways. The closest thing there was to an exit was a couple of tiny air vents on one wall just below the ceiling. The only contents of the room (besides the cobwebs) were a few incredibly dusty storage boxes in the corner. She opened one of them and found many strange silver devices. She had no idea what they were, so instead she opened another box. There were silver-and-lime-green guns in there, some of them splattered with what seemed to be ectoplasm that glowed as she put her hand near. She pushed that box away and opened the third box, which was long and tall and more like a metal chest. Inside, there were large devices and guns. She closed the "box" and stepped back a bit.

There was one last box to check. It was the smallest one of all. Heather opened it and saw a simple black suit. She pulled it out and unfolded it, feeling the odd fabric texture. White boots and gloves were wrapped up in the suit. She picked up the thick rubber gloves and felt a strange energy clinging to them; they definitely weren't just normal stitched clothing. She set them down and picked the suit up. On the center was a stylized D symbol in white. The suit seemed familiar, and also held that same energy. Curious, she put on a glove. It was too big for her, so she took it off.

"Try going into your ghost form," a voice said, making Heather yelp and jump again. The voice came from a green ghost behind her.

"Who... who are you? What do you want?"

"I'm Yoltrun, and I'm just curious to see what you're doing. I'm not here to haunt you or anything. I saw you get your ghost powers and I think I can help you out. But seriously, try going into your ghost form before putting on the glove."

Heather hesitantly summoned the rings that signified her transformation. Once in her ghost form, she put the glove on again. It was still too big. "Well, I guess the rubber doesn't feel as confining now. Thanks, I guess?"

Yoltrun sighed. "That was step one. Step two, summon a little energy into your hand."

Heather stared at the ghost, and then to her hand, then back to the ghost with a nervous shrug.

Yoltrun sighed even harder. "You Halfas really don't have natural instincts of your power, huh? Let me show you." He held out his hand, and effortlessly made it glow green with the ghost energy. "Feel your core, that energy deep in your chest. You control that power. Make it travel to your hand. Feel it travel."

Heather held out her gloved hand and closed her eyes. She did just as Yoltrun said. She focused oh how she felt, and she could feel it. She could feel her core. She didn't even know it was there until now, and now it was so obvious. Once she could feel her core, moving that energy around wasn't too hard. She summoned the energy to her hand, and it glowed just as Yoltrun's did. Magically, the glove molded itself to fit with her hand.

"Fascinating," Yoltrun whispered. "I mean, good, you got the hang of it!" He picked up the other glove. "Clothes infused with ectoplasm become ghostly, to put it simply. If your inner ectoplasm matches enough, they will adapt to you and become yours when you use that energy to align the ecto-signatures."

"That's cool, but how do I turn it off?" Heather's hand still glowed.

"Oh, yeah. You either have to suppress the energy or release it. Both are good things to learn, but it'll be safer to start with suppressing it. Just let your core absorb the energy again, like it's breathing it in."

The energy in Heather's hand was buzzing, like it wanted somewhere to go. She focused on her core again, and let the power come back in. The glow subsided. "Thanks, Yoltrun. Now, what are you here for?"

Yoltrun held out his scanner. "Portal science. Portals are appearing when they shouldn't. But that's not your concern, your dad will help out. Speaking of, how much has he told you?"

"About ghosts? Not much. I think he's been trying to keep it from me. I know more from my ghost-hunting grandparents than him. And I hardly paid any attention to that."

"So, you're really alone in this," he said, looking at her with an inquisitive gaze. "So he hasn't told you about..."

"About what?"

Yoltrun shook his head. "Don't worry about it. You'll find out anything you need to know in time. But I recommend you try on that smallest suit there. You might find it comfortable. Anyways, I'm bored of sitting in your basement. I'm gonna go out for a flight. I'll find you again, and give you some training on your new powers. Go through the wall with the vents at the top to get out." He flew up through the ceiling without another word.

Heather was a bit worried about Yoltrun's vagueness. She pulled three more suits out of the box. Each one had more complex designs than the others, and they all seemed to be her dad's size or at least close. Each suit, when unfolded, had it's own pairs of boots and gloves. At the bottom of the box were four silver-and-green thermoses, and what seemed to be two wrist-mount guns.

She was also kind of curious about the smaller, simplest suit. Being that her hoodie was coated in cobwebs now, she decided to change into it as Yoltrun suggested. When she put it on it was a size or two too big for her, but with that energy trick Yoltrun showed her, she molded it to her form. But she summoned the energy all at once, and couldn't control it all at once. A burst of energy exploded in the room. With a pop and the sound of glass hitting the floor, the room was shrouded in darkness again as the light burst. But this wasn't complete darkness. Green glowed for just a few seconds. It was the grout outlining the bricks on the wall.

Unfortunately, she couldn't investigate further. There was a crash coming from the other wall, echoing through the vents. There goes my exit.

With great haste, Heather tried to fly again. She went intangible and jumped, wishing to fly. That didn't work. She jumped again, wishing even harder, imagining her feet not touching the ground, and summoning energy from her core in desperation. She didn't manage to fly, but she shot energy from her feet blasting her up just as effectively. She hit the ceiling of the kitchen and fell to the floor. That was a real loud thump, thump that was sure to wake the house. Hearing a distant "What in the world?" from upstairs and footsteps from the basement stairs down the hall, she knew she had seconds to think of an idea. And man, was this a dumb one.

Gently, she tipped over two of the dinner table's chairs to the floor and hopped on top of the dinner table and pretended to be asleep.

In the meantime, she remembered where she saw that "DP" symbol on all the suits. It was Danny Phantom's symbol. These were the hero ghost's suits. And they were in what seemed to be a secret room in her house's basement.

It was a warm, sunny day. A soft breeze rustled the leaves on the trees, and birds sung to the sky. There were a few small clouds, but none were big enough to block the sun. Danny was having a picnic with Sam and a young Heather.

However, the breeze grew to a powerful, cold wind. The clouds grew, blocking the sun. Snow started to fall and Danny started to get cold. Ice started crawling down from the trees surrounding the clearing he was in. The ice slithered across the ground, and when it touched Heather and Sam they disappeared. The ice surrounded Danny, and crawled up his legs, soon reaching his head.

He woke up.

Danny opened his eyes to a cold, slightly glowing, blue mist coming from his mouth. He grumbled at the thought of fighting ghosts in the middle of the night again. He intangibly stuck his hand through a particular spot in the wall and brought out a Fenton Thermos he hoped still held a charge in it's ecto-battery. He didn't see any ghost or ghost portal in the main area of the house, so he did a quick flight around the neighborhood. Nothing.

He went back home and checked the basement. Yoltrun was gone. He was supposed to stay there for the night, but of course he left. Danny went human and planned on leaving it be for now, but there was a noise from the secret storage. A flash of green came through the vents, bright enough to make the normal basement flash green. The secret storage was hidden behind a solid brick wall, and the only way to get in was to go intangible or find the keypad and know the code to open it. And now it was compromised. However, when walking over to the wall, he tripped over a stray cord and fell into a box of glass plates, breaking them, and therefore causing a few more boxes of random dishware to fall and break the contents. When he got up, he heard a noise from upstairs, cause apparently, he was being sent on some ghostly wild goose chase.

But instead of a ghost, it was just Heather. Two chairs were knocked over. That's what Danny suspected the noise was. Heather was laying flat on the kitchen table. Sam had just come down as well. The two gave each other a questioning gaze. Danny gestured towards his sleeping daughter, and Sam gave a clueless shrug. In the end, it was Danny who decided to wake her up by gently nudging her shoulder.

Heather, in her secret plan, immediately jumped "awake." She blinked a few times and looked around. "Huh? How'd I get here?"

Danny, confused but still clueless, rubbed her shoulder comfortingly. "I think you were sleepwalking. Come on, you should go back to bed."

"That seems right. I had a really weird dream about a mountain of chairs," said Heather in feigned confusion.

Heather knew she had to check out the hidden room further. Danny had suspicions about Yoltrun's actions, and put down his ghost sense from earlier to the scientist leaving the house. Neither yet considered the other had powers, but Heather knew her dad had some sort of connection to the ghost-fighting hero of years long past. And Sam? Sam just wanted to sleep and get everything back to normal in the morning.