5/12/24-Rewritten for quality and continuity. This is my most ambitious rewrite yet. This used to be a two part chapter, and I'm smashing those two parts together and making a brand new chapter 10. I think it'll work a little better than whatever I thought I had going on originally. Beware, the result is long! (p.s. I am from the west coast and may suck at explaining older eastern US style big city design as NYC was the only one I've seen! I'm looking at street view in Chicago area neighborhoods for inspiration, as most headcanons place Amity Park in Illinois.)
Chapter 9: A Haunted Day in the Life of Heather
"Wow. That was close. But hey, I did it! I got us out! I can fly! Now, if only I can do it again..."
Heather and Alex were standing on the flat roof of the large detached row house. Alex Looked over the edge of the roof. "Well, I can see my house from here. How are we gonna get down?"
Heather went to a hatch in the roof and pulled it, but it didn't budge. "Well, the hatch is locked. Not surprising. I can bring us through, but then we'll have to escape from the attic without my mom catching us. She'll probably be too distracted with the alarm, but we should've already left by now. Heck, we should be halfway to school by now. We're gonna be late, and it's the second day. Incredible."
"Fly us, maybe? I can't imagine it'll be too hard now that you've done it."
"Yeah, easier said than done. But I'll try. Hold the laptop, I'll have to get our backpacks before we go." The sound of the alarm, once quietly piercing through the walls of the house, was silenced. "We're on a timer here. I'll hurry it up."
Breathe. Focus. I have to fly. Heather focused on the feeling of flight she just felt a minute ago. And she made it happen. She felt that feeling of weightlessness and lifted one leg off the ground, then the other. She was floating. And it turned out moving around was much easier than the getting off the ground part. It wasn't too hard to go inside and bring out the backpacks. Intangibility was tricky, but not completely difficult. She flew back up to the roof, putting her bag on and tossing the other to Alex, and carried Alex to school. Her ghost strength made it easy. They landed behind a hedge at the edge of the building so she could go back to human form and ran in to get to class just in the nick of time.
Class 1: Art with Mrs. Lena
The teacher was talking about color theory. Heather was taking notes. She was excited to get to the first project, but of course had to sit and wait through the art lesson first.
Suddenly, her ghost sense went off, something she was starting to get used to, and Cujo's face appeared through the floor. It surprised Heather so much she yelped and phased through the back of her chair. The class laughed when they saw her on the floor.
"Problem?" The art teacher asked.
Trying to cover Cujo with her jacket, Heather replied, "No, sorry." She sat up in her chair, bringing Cujo wrapped in a jacket up to her lap. Luckily, she was in the farthest back corner of the class, her favorite spot as it was easy to be ignored, so nobody noticed when the ghost dog flew out from under the jacket.
"What are you doing here?" she asked in a whisper. "Go home!"
The dog whined and pulled at her long sleeve.
"No, Cujo! I have to stay here!"
Then, Cujo grew to many times his puppy size to a very conspicuous giant bulldog and pulled Heather by the back of her shirt collar up into the air through the ceiling. Everyone noticed that.
In the classroom, the teacher just sighed and picked up the phone to call the office. "We had a ghost sighting. A giant ghost dog. It took the Fenton girl up through the roof."
The other students were silently whispering rumors to each other, wanting both to gossip and eavesdrop on the phone conversation. "Yes, I know there shouldn't be ghosts. But we all know how the Fentons are, they're like ghost magnets." The kids started giggling to themselves. The eldest Fentons may have moved out long ago, but they were still local celebrities with tales passed down from parent to child keeping jokes and rumors alive. They continued listening, entertained that the rumors were proven true in their minds. "No, we don't want to bring more Fentons into this. Why not send someone to look for her now, and not worry yet until we see if she shows up for her next class?" More whispers. Some were concerned. Some were joking. Some made bets on whether she'd show up. "Thanks, Julie. I owe you one." Mrs. Lena hung up, and continued the lesson. "Now, back to complimentary colors..."
Meanwhile on the roof, Cujo had been sniffing around in his giant form. He was looking for something, and Heather couldn't figure it out. When he found the trail he was looking for, figuring out what the dog was looking for was easy. And when she saw what the dog found, Heather immediately transformed.
It was two dark red ghost creatures about three feet tall halfway inside an air conditioner unit chewing the wires and tearing parts out. When she got closer, she saw that the creatures had four arms with three spindly fingers and ant-like antennae on their heads. It turned around and revealed pure green eyes and big serrated mandibles with a circular mouth lined with teeth in between. One growled and lunged at Heather, who retaliated with a heavy punch to it's chest. The ghost hit the AC unit hard and made a dent in the casing. The other one went for Cujo, who caught it in his mouth and shook it hard. It faded into a green cloud of mist. The other recovered from hitting the AC unit and jumped at Heather again.
The ghost managed to tackle her, and tried it's best to bite and claw into Heather's face. Luckily, Heather's arms were longer than the ghost's, and she was able to hold it back from tearing into her. She brought her legs up and kicked it in the chest, and it was launched into the sky. It was visibly weak, but still dove in for one more attack at blazing speed. Heather stopped it with another punch directly to it's face, and it immediately dissolved into that same green mist.
Cujo went back to puppy form and jumped up to lick the now-human Heather's face. "Good boy! You found the mean ghosts! Now-blegh-stop licking!" The dog stopped, and she was able to set him down. "Now, I need to get back to class. I'll see ya later bud, go home!"
Luckily, she got a free trip back to her seat. Cujo dragged her back down to her seat.
"Ah, Heather, welcome back. Now please, don't bring any of that Fenton ghost business to my class anymore," the teacher said to her, causing laughs throughout the class.
Heather shrunk back into her seat, wanting to argue but was too shy to do it with all eyes on her. "Yes, Mrs. Lena," she said instead.
Mrs. Lena made another phone call to the office to notify Heather returned. Heather, meanwhile, asked her desk neighbors to share their color theory notes she missed.
Soon enough, class continued as normal, and eventually ended peacefully. Heather knew rumors were already going to spread and was already mad she screwed up her plan to stick in the background. She hoped that the ghost stuff would calm down soon and she could get back to being invisible. Figuratively, of course.
Class 2: Gym/P.E. with Mr. Baxter
The next class was gym. Luckily, Alex was there with Heather. She narrowly avoided a detention after the art teacher was kind enough to understand the ghost appearance wasn't her fault, but she didn't escape the looks and questions from the other kids around. It really annoyed her and even being at the very back of the line to pick up their gym clothes didn't help one bit.
She was dreading the class. Mr. Baxter, a friend of her dad's, was a risk to be near, not only because of possible embarrassment, but because he could be a total snitch about her powers if they malfunctioned again. This was no class to take risk with. Yesterday, she couldn't care less. Today, she had to be careful of everything.
Even with Alex comforting her, Heather couldn't stay calm. It didn't help that during running on the track, her foot went intangible and fell through the ground a bit, causing her to trip and get a deep cut on her chin and hit her knee so hard it made her limp, not to mention how badly it was skinned. Mr. Baxter sent her to the nurse, but instead she went to clean up in the locker room bathrooms after she felt static start sizzling through her cuts. Her knee was starting to glow a spooky green, her chin even more brightly so. She looked around for something to bandage up, and eventually found a first aid kit in the equipment room, which she had to sneak into as the eighth grade P.E. class was doing basketball in the gym. She got back to the locker room and cleaned up and covered the cuts.
This day is not going well, she thought as she walked around to waste a bit of time to make the 'nurse trip' seem convincingly long enough for a limping person before going back out to class, luckily getting the rest of the class off.
Class 3: Math with Ms. Kye
It was the first class after break, where Heather sat alone in the courtyard to chill out for a bit. This ghost stuff was stressful. But it didn't help that her whole top half of her body except for her head went invisible against her will, which she couldn't fully stop before break finished. Ray was on the other side of the room. Heather was dying to talk to him for comfort from her fear, especially since her hands were still invisible, thankfully hidden under her long sleeved shirt. She couldn't talk to him about this though, she hadn't told him anything yet.
Ms. Kye was a fun teacher, Heather's favorite so far, but gave no chances on phones as Heather learned yesterday, remembering the threats to have any texts read out in class. And unfortunately, the volume was loud enough for everyone to hear.
Heather, with her hands covered with her sleeves, was fumbling with the mute button when the teacher started walking over. She finally muted the phone, and her hands were luckily visible again. But a genius idea popped into her mind; if she could turn objects intangible, she should be able to make them invisible, too.
The hardest part was turning the phone invisible without making her hand invisible too. She had seconds to figure it out. But with confidence, she managed it, barely. The tip of her pinky finger was invisible, but the way she held her hand it couldn't be seen. It also took intense focus to do, so she had to get this over with and fast.
Ms. Kye held out her hand. Heather raised both of hers, seemingly empty.
"Where did you hide it?" Ms. Kye asked.
Heather shrugged. "I'm not hiding anything. My phone is off and in my bag."
"I saw you fiddling with it. I'll just give you a warning as it's the second day. But I don't want to see or hear any more phones in class."
Heather was lucky this time. She had to be more careful. She dropped the invisibility and quickly checked the text. It was Yoltrun.
Yes, I snooped out your phone number. My scanner apparently is incompatible with... apps in general. Anyways, meet me outside of your school by the sign when you are free. I'm giving you a flight lesson.
Heather shoved her phone into her backpack, very much not ready to deal with that now. She really wasn't ready to deal with anything right now. This was going to be a long week.
Class 4: English with Ms. Shane
It was unknown what trouble might happen in English with the dull Ms. Shane. Her harsh, monotonous voice was making everyone fall asleep. Luckily, Heather had her ghost sense to jerk her awake.
To her disappointment, it was Yoltrun. He morphed into some strange beetle and landed on Heather's desk. Nobody was paying attention.
"What are you doing here?" Heather asked silently.
The beetle-Yoltrun crawled up to her ear to whisper, making Heather shudder. "I'm bored. I keep getting tiny blips of ghost energy on my scanner, but they're too few and far between. It seems like it's all just ghost portals failing to form, but it's weird how many there are. But it's not your problem for now. When can I train you? You never responded to me."
"I have lunch after class. Now tell me, why are you really helping me?"
"That portal that gave you your powers was unstable, but in no way should've zapped anyone. But you had latent ghost energy in you, an inactive core that was hungry for energy. You were born with it, though I'm still not sure why you weren't born with it active. I think it took advantage of the portal's instability and sucked up all of it's energy to jump start your core, which of course is self sustaining once it's alive. I find you a fascinating specimen, and I want to see if your powers work as I expect. I also pity you for having no control over them."
"Wow. Thanks for both calling me your little experiment and calling me weak. Now go away, I'll find you at lunch. Let me focus on this incredibly boring class."
Yoltrun pouted. "Fine. I'll just let you be bored. See you soon."
Heather did her best not to fall asleep from the boredom of this class. She tried her best to take notes. Eventually she got too bored, and practiced making tiny balls of ghost energy. It worked, until one went rampant and zapped the light above her, popping the fluorescent tubes. Nobody noticed the energy ball, but they did notice the big pop of the light. Luckily all the glass was contained by the light's cover, but it was still a bit unsettling to have everyone looking her way. Ms. Shane called the office to ask for the light to be repaired. Class otherwise continued as normal.
Lunch
Heather was stuck with Yoltrun all lunch. They were flying through the city, training Heather's speed, agility, and reaction time.
Yoltrun was coaching. "Your tail's too rigid! Focus on lightening it up! Remember-
"Yes, I know! Ethereal, not corporeal! I'm too hungry for this and I'm getting tired, can't we go back?" Heather complained.
"Your father's not a quitter, so why should you be? Actually, scratch that, he is a quitter, sorta."
"Don't bring my dad into this!"
In her distraction, she was flying straight at a building.
"AAAAAAAAH!"
"Intangible! Hurry!"
Her head went straight through the building. Her body crashed into the wall.
And, apparently, a head suddenly popping through the wall was not well accepted in a thirtieth-story office in Amity Park.
At nearly a hundred miles per hour, Heather's head hitting a water cooler and launching it across the room was not pleasant to her. Not just because it hurt, but because it drew a lot of attention to her.
The stares lasted only a few seconds. All she had time to say was a simple "sorry" before she was yanked out by Yoltrun.
An angry Yoltrun peeked into the window, where he could see two people investigating where they saw the ghostly, disembodied head pop through the wall, and other people were investigating the damage made by the 90 mile per hour water cooler launched by that head.
"I think we need a lesson in stopping. And multiple powers at once. Anyways, you should probably back to your school. Class must be starting soon."
Heather rubbed her head. "Hey, that really hurt and you're barely even worried about me!"
Yoltrun grabbed Heather's wrist. "Keep in mind that if you were fully human at that point you would be completely dead. You suck at this, and you're going to be late to class." He dragged Heather at blinding speeds back towards the school.
Class 5: History with Mr. Mayfield
The bell was about to ring. Mr. Mayfield looked at each desk, tapping his foot, waiting for his students to come in.
CRASH!
The door flew open and slammed into the wall. One of his students came flying, quite literally, through the door screaming "Not again!" as she hit the bookcase face first, breaking it and covering her with books.
As the kids laughed, Mr. Mayfield looked at Heather, then out the door, then Heather again.
The teacher was confused. "Are you... ok?"
The girl climbed out from the pile of books and rubble. Sarcastically, she said, "oh yes, I'm okay, everything is fine and dandy." She went to her desk.
The class gave her a couple odd stares after the incident, but she was too tired to care. That training tired her out, and the headache from two high-speed crashes made wakefulness too painful. So she slept all class without a care, glad to feel the ghostly healing start to ease her pain.
Class 6: Science with Mrs. Jacobs
Heather was early to class, and feeling refreshed from her little nap in history. Alex made a bet that she could steal the teacher's pet snake.
So she did.
She donned her light grey hoodie, and invisibly and intangibly pulled the ball python out of its tank and stuck it under the hoodie.
It wrapped itself around her shoulder, and stayed there the rest of class. She put it back after class, and nobody ever noticed.
Class 7: Study hall in Library
Heather sat down in one of the library seats with Ray and Alex.
Ray had some opinions today. "Okay, so now that I finally gathered you two together, we can talk. You two have been acting all weird since yesterday. And some Fenton rumors are spreading too. What are you hiding?"
Alex and Heather gave each other little glances and shrugs. Heather decided to speak up. "Listen, I need you to trust me on this. I can't tell you what's going on yet. Not here. I might be able to after school, though. But you need to keep it secret, okay?"
"Fine. But I want in on whatever you're planning."
"Cool. We'll talk later then. But I have to speak with Alex first." She stood up and grabbed her backpack, signaling Alex to follow.
The two went to a far corner of the library and sat behind rows of bookshelves. Heather pulled out the laptop from that morning.
"So, I didn't mean to get Ray involved in this so early but there's no going back now," Heather said quietly. "Let's take a look at this real quick, and we'll figure things out from there."
Alex nodded. "Your powers, your lead. Whatever you choose, I'll help you out."
Heather opened the laptop. It booted right up. It was a pretty old version of Portals XL, and while it was password-protected, Ray made sure years ago that they knew how to bypass the password. Of course they had to look up which one of the tips worked for this specific version, but it was easy to bring up a command prompt and manage to hack in in minutes.
They browsed through the files. Most of them were odd file types that wouldn't open, or collections of photos of ghosts. But then they found the key: a custom application.
They looked at each other with a smile. Heather opened the program, and after a slow loading screen and some questionable noises from the hard drive, a custom GUI opened up.
Options: Search - Ghosts - Ghost Zone - Incident Reports - Power Database - Human Files - Misc. Files
"This is a lot," Alex said. "I think we should start with Ghosts."
"Good plan. It is the first in the list after all." Heather clicked on the button labeled Ghosts. Slowly but surely, the loading bar inched along. A tab along the side had search filters. By default, it was sorted in alphabetical order. They scrolled through page after page, clicking on every cool looking ghost while ignoring others.
"Hmm. Danny Phantom isn't in here," Heather said. "That's weird."
"Really weird." Alex grabbed the laptop and scrolled through the list again. "I wonder if there's some connection to him not being here and his suits being in your dad's secret basement."
"Go back to the home page. There was the search button there, it probably searches the whole database."
"Smart. If Danny Phantom is anywhere here, it'll find him." He clicked Home, then Search. He input Danny Phantom into the search bar and pressed the search button.
The computer's fans started whirring like crazy. The hard drive was making noises a hard drive shouldn't. A 25% Battery warning popped up. This ancient laptop was working, but not very well. It took absolutely forever, but the computer survived to pop up a result.
Heather snatched the laptop from Alex, being too curious to solve the mystery of her dad's connection to him.
And according to the entry, the connection was far stronger than she could ever expect.
The laptop was already very obviously not supposed to be shared with anyone. This entry, even more so. It was written less of an encyclopedic case file, and more like a journal in first person. This was someone studying themself. There were logs and data, notes and reports. But those details were nothing in the face of the big picture.
Danny Phantom was a half ghost, just like her. There were no photos in the entry, no human names. But it was too clear. Heather really wanted to believe her dad was just an accomplice to Danny Phantom. He made his suits, and studied him, or something. But then, where would her ghost energy come from? Both the book and Yoltrun said she had to have been born with ghost DNA. Heck, they were both named Danny! She really, really wanted it to be a coincidence. Too many facts lined up.
Heather shut the laptop. "It's not- it can't be-"
"What? Hold on, what are you thinking?" Alex put his hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay?"
"My dad. Danny Phantom. He's..."
"No way. That's incredible!" He saw Heather's face and hid his interest. "Sorry. What does this mean? How bad is it?"
"My parents kept this a secret. How could they? Why didn't they tell me? They could've told me, so I could be ready for this ghost stuff. Now I'm on my own."
Alex gave her a comforting hug. "Look, how much does it matter? Nobody expected ghosts to return. I'm sure they just didn't want to get you wrapped up in all of it if they expected it to not matter."
Heather glared at him. "It just would've been nice to know. Like, 'hey, I'm a ghost and you might be too one day, here's some tips in case you are!' If my dad didn't want me to know anything, what if he still doesn't? What if he gets mad at me for getting involved? What if he gets even more mad that I haven't said anything? What if he wants to study me like he did with all of the other ghosts and himself? What if-"
Alex cut her off. "You're rambling. Ignore all that, okay? Listen, if you want to keep it secret from him, go ahead. We'll take the laptop to Ray, he'll get all the info off of it, and we can make the best of it and have some fun instead. You can fly, you can go through walls, you can do all sorts of cool stuff. You have cool powers, you should focus on that!"
"I guess they are pretty cool. Annoying, but cool."
"See? Focus on the good parts. We'll figure this out together."
They hugged in friendly comfort, then Heather stuffed the laptop back in her backpack. "Lets have a bit of fun, then," she said. "We have around fifteen minutes left. I need to practice my skills. Want to explore some rooms we're not supposed to be in?"
Alex smiled deviously. "Heck yeah. I've always wanted to see what the teacher's lounge actually looks like."
5/12/24-Thanks for reading! I hope you're liking the story so far!