Chapter 2

Act 1: Containment

Danny had apparently fallen asleep because he awoke with a start. His heart was pounding, his breathing was heavy, and he wiped away a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. With a sigh, he rested his forehead back on his knees and let his breathing and heart rate normalize. He was still alone in the darkened room and he wondered how long it had been since they'd captured him. He knew it had to have been long enough for Dad and Jazz to notice he was missing. It was way past his ten o'clock curfew, after all. He figured Jazz was freaking out, considering how overprotective she was. Was Dad mad or worried along with her? Were Sam and Tucker trying to find him on their own while trying to cover for him? Did they even know yet? Had it been long enough for them to know?

Danny shook his head to clear his mind of the negativity. He couldn't get lost in the what-ifs. He needed to focus on escaping. "All right, Fenton. Time to do something productive," he said to himself. He needed to test his powers to see if he could use any of them to help himself escape. Danny floated up and tried going intangible, then invisible. "Darn it," he grumbled. "I guess that would make it too easy." He tried using his ghost ray next, but just like it had when he was stuck in the net, it dissolved into a wisp. "Figured as much. How about this?" He powered up his fist and tried landing an energy strike punch on one corner of the ecto-containment cube. "Ouch!" Danny sucked air in through his teeth with a hiss and shook the pain out of his hand. "Won't try that one again. Hm." Danny crossed his arms pensively. "How about a little cryokinesis?" Danny took a deep breath, focusing on the chill in his core. He let out his breath, and a frozen fog plumed onto the device, encasing it in a layer of ice. "At least that works. Now if I could only…" Danny raised his arm to hit it with an ice beam, but the thing around his neck delivered a long, nasty series of shocks that caused him to convulse and scream in pain. When the shocks stopped, he fell out of the air. He held his head with one of his hands as he crouched on the floor. He could feel his body trying to force him to change back, but he held onto his ghost half like his life depended on it. His life did depend on it.

"It seems like we have to teach you some manners, ghost." The light flicked on, and Dr. Maniac stalked towards him.

"You know," Danny panted, still out of breath from the electrocution, "if I didn't know any better… I'd say you had… a little crush on me."

Danny felt the sharp pain of the scientist's loafer connecting with his chest and he flew across the room, stopping only when he crashed into the wall. As he tried to catch his breath, Danny coughed and tasted the bitter tang of his own ectoplasm in his mouth. That kick had sure knocked the wind out of him. The scientist followed, then picked Danny up by the hair, causing him to yelp in pain.

"I'm getting so sick of that smart mouth of yours."

"Heh… Touchy subject." Jazz's words came to his mind, and Danny smirked. "Ghost envy… much?"

The man reached his arm back to strike Danny's face, but the sound of scattering papers captured his attention. Danny glanced over and saw his mom standing there with a horrified expression. The tension he'd been holding eased somewhat now that she was there.

"What in the world is going on in here?!" she shouted as she rushed towards them. "Put him down this instant!"

"If you insist," the man said as he let go of Danny, and he fell hard onto the ground like a sack of potatoes. Danny coughed, still struggling to catch his breath.

"You know that's not what I meant. Why are you attacking him?"

"It just needed a little… attitude adjustment." Dr. Maniac twisted back, making Danny flinch in anticipation of another kick. The reaction made the maniac grin.

"I think you need to go. I'll work with him today."

He turned back to Mom and walked until he was toe-to-toe with her, trying to intimidate her. "This is my project."

She didn't back down. In fact, it looked to Danny like she squared up to him. "I'll walk. I'll leave and take my knowledge with me. Like it or not, you need me."

He glared at her in silence before he let out a grunt. "Fine." He backed off and went towards the door. "But I will be watching." He clipped her shoulder as he walked past her. When he'd disappeared past the door, Mom let out a huff.

"What an insufferable man," she said, then knelt down beside Danny, gently placing her hand on his shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"Fine. I've felt worse," Danny said with a shrug, avoiding eye contact with her. Yes, he'd felt worse, but he'd never been somewhere like this where he couldn't use his powers or escape. There was nothing he could do here on his own, and it made him feel too vulnerable. He didn't like it. He wished his friends were here to help.

"Worse?" she asked as she grabbed a cloth and started dabbing the ectoplasm that had escaped at the corner of his mouth. He was a little surprised she was caring for him. She didn't seem to want to care before. What changed?

"Ghost hunting isn't exactly a cakewalk. He's got nothing on Skulker."

"What do you mean 'ghost hunting'?"

Danny gave her a quizzical look. "I mean hunting ghosts. You know, the whole 'catch the trouble-making ghost and release into the ghost zone' thing?"

She gave him a surprised look as she helped him stand.

Danny cocked an eyebrow at her. "What did you think I was doing?"

She shrugged. "I assumed your scuffles were territorial sparring."

Danny tried not to be offended. He really tried, but he totally was. He crossed his arms. "Territorial sparring? What am I, a dog?" Danny rolled his eyes. "Wait, I forgot. I'm just a… what was it? Oh yeah. 'Ectoplasmic malefactor'." He air-quoted the phrase and over enunciated the words with an extra dose of sarcasm.

She gave him another scrutinizing look, like she was searching him for answers to a question she couldn't place.

"Why do you keep looking at me like that?" Danny snapped, a little harsher than he was intending.

"You're just such a…" she paused, searching for the right word.

"An odd manifestation of ectoplasmic energy? Anomalous amalgam of post-human consciousness? Or perhaps a putrid ball of self-aware protoplasm?" Danny finished for her.

She tilted her head as she put her finger on her chin. "Those are oddly specific. But no, I was going to say 'teenager.' You remind me of someone."

Danny supposed he couldn't really fault her for that one. He'd be worried if he didn't remind her of 'someone.' In fact, that sparked an idea in him. If he made her see enough of Danny Fenton in him, would she help him escape? It was worth a shot.

His mom left the cube and sat at the desk, turning on the high-tech computer.

Danny relaxed in the air with his legs crossed and hands behind his head. "So, what tests are you doing on me today?"

"No tests for the moment. I just need to go over some data," she said, then got lost in her task.

Danny grimaced. He recognized that look. There was no getting her out of the data when she looked that absorbed. All she ever said when she was sifting through data that intensely was some noncommittal stock response. There was one time Danny had told her he was half ghost, and all she said was 'that's great, sweetie.' He started floating in lazy circles as he stared at the holes in the ceiling tile, debating whether it was worth it to count them. He yawned loudly from the boredom, then checked to see if she was still hypnotized by the data. When she looked up at him, he knew she was open to some limited conversation.

"Can I get one of those over here? Preferably one with Doomed installed?" Danny asked as he flopped his head backwards and looked at her upside down, a position he would do often when laying backwards on his bed and his mom walked in.

"Video games? Really?" She glanced up at him as a look of surprise crossed her features. Whether it was because of what he said or the familiarity in his movements, he wasn't sure, but he was glad to see his plan might already be working.

He floated upright and gestured to himself, reminded her once again that he was, in fact, a kid. "Hello? Teenager?"

She arched her eyebrow and looked back at the screen, seeming to see something new in the data, and became even more engrossed.

Danny crossed his arms. "You're not going to hear a word I say now, are you?"

"Sure, sweetie," she said without realizing it.

"Great," he said with a frown when he realized it meant more boredom. He put his hands behind his head and leaned back, receding into his mind. Back to a long time ago, before his ghost powers, before his friends, before everything. When he was just a little kid.

Danny and his mom were on the roof of Fenton Works. The sun was just finishing its descent below the horizon and she had just finished tightening the last bolt on the thing she was setting up.

"What is that?" Danny asked as he toddled over to her with a curious interest.

She smiled and picked him up. "It's called a telescope."

"A tellie-scope? What's it do?" Danny asked her as he tilted his head.

She laughed at his pronunciation. "You see all those dots up in the sky?" she asked as she pointed upward.

Danny looked in the direction she had pointed and nodded.

"Those are stars, planets, and galaxies billions and billions of lightyears away. This telescope lets us see them up close. Do you want to see?"

Danny grinned and nodded with eagerness. "Yeah!"

She giggled, then poked his little nose. "Okay, then, sweetie." She put Danny down to find the right angle on the telescope. "Yes, I think this is a suitable spot. Have a look, Danny."

He put his eye to the telescope and a whole new world opened up to him. He gasped in awe as he took in all the new and amazing sights the telescope had to show him. Then he saw the moon, and he was mesmerized.

"Whoa! Mom, look! Look!" Danny pulled away from the telescope to give her a huge, excited grin as he waved her over.

She knelt down next to him and looked at what he was seeing, then gave him a big grin. "Isn't outer space amazing?" She leaned away from the telescope to look at him, her smile brimming with pride in the interest he was taking.

"Yes!" Danny agreed enthusiastically, and looked back into the telescope the second she moved away. "It's so cool, Mom! It's the coolest thing I've ever seen!"

"Really? The coolest? Cooler than the Grand Canyon?" she asked.

He looked at her, eyes sparkling. "So much cooler!" He looked back into the telescope, continuing his visual exploration.

"Well, if you think it's that cool, you might have the makings of an astronaut in you."

"An astro-what?"

"An astronaut. They explore space and get to see all those stars up close. They've even been on the moon."

"I could walk on the moon?!" Danny asked excitedly.

"Of course you can, sweetie! My little astronaut." His mom tousled his hair, then wrapped her arm around his shoulders, looking up at the sky with him.

Danny wanted to stay in that moment of peace and happiness forever, but his mind slowly faded into sleep.

"Amazing!"

Danny jumped out of his unintentional floating nap at his mom's outburst, wiping drool from the corner of his mouth. "Huh? What?"

Without answering, she rushed out of the room.

"I'll just assume it's a good thing!" He shouted with heavy sarcasm towards the closing door. An uncomfortable feeling grew in the pit of his stomach. "I'll just be here. If you need me."

It was only a couple of minutes before he heard his mom and the other scientist talking in the hall, coming towards his cell.

"Here, just look for yourself," she said as she led him to the computer. "The first thing I noticed was that, unlike every other ghost I've studied, he truly sleeps. His brain waves look markedly identical to a human's brain waves. You can see here," she pointed to something on the screen, "this spike right here is a dream."

"While that would be an interesting development, are you positive? Isn't it more logical that it's just going into a state of stasis at the most? After all, ectoplasmic entities don't require sleep to function."

"I can't explain the why, all I can say is that it is definitively a sleep-process. His biology requires it for reasons we've yet to uncover."

The maniac pursed his lips, unsatisfied with her answer. "And what were you saying about its power?"

"It's an accepted fact that ghosts have a set amount of ectoplasmic power. It's a limited resource based on the ghost's individual constitution and that's where their threat level comes from, but look at this. When he's using his abilities, he starts off relying on the structure of his ectoplasm for it, like every other ghost, but as he started using his other abilities, he was manipulating electromagnetic frequencies to change them. Not only that, his ectoplasm concentrates in his core before expelling to become an attack. That concentrated ectoplasm then amplifies twice as much as should be possible, making him a lot more powerful than the level seven his ecto-markers would place him. Then, right here, there's a moment where his power increases exponentially, well beyond his current threat level and even higher than when he was attempting to use his other powers. It seems like his power, or at least this specific one, comes from a source other than just his ectoplasm. If looked at altogether, this ghost's data shows near limitless potential to grow stronger."

Well, that was nice for Danny to know, and seeing how impressed she was by his ghost half made him feel even better. Although the dark look he saw on the maniac's face made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

"Hmm. Fascinating. I wonder…" the maniac said as he picked up a remote, typing into it, and Danny almost immediately started feeling sick.

"What's happening?" Danny asked, sinking to the floor as he put his hand on his head. His limbs felt so heavy, and it there was a whirlpool of energy in his chest. He began shivering and his breath was coming out in puffs of cold air. It was like his ghost sense, but it didn't feel right. Ice began forming around his hands until large chunks were falling off and the floor around Danny began growing a slick layer of ice. He felt so cold. So, so cold… "S-s-stop," Danny said through chattering teeth.

"Interesting. Its eyes change color to glowing blue when its ice powers activate," the man said, then pressed more buttons on the remote.

The chill went away, but Danny felt his hands beginning to tingle and beams of energy erupted from his palms. Danny's powers felt uncontrollable, just like it was right after the accident when he was first learning how to use them, but now it felt unsettling, like he was a puppet. Danny looked up at the scientist and he was staring back at him with a crazed grin.

"What are you doing to him?" his mom asked the maniac, a note of alarm creeping into her voice.

"We can do more than null its powers. We can control them." He adjusted the remote again, and Danny could feel the beginning of his transformation. "NO!" He held onto his ghost as hard as he could and his insides burned, like every atom was being split apart by thousands of microscopic razor blades. Danny was so overwhelmed with trying to fight changing back and the pain that was coming with it, he didn't realize that he was screaming.

Suddenly, the pain stopped and Danny collapsed onto the ground, all the energy in his body sapped from keeping himself in ghost form. He felt his body twitching as if he had just been electrocuted, but it didn't feel quite the same. It was more like it was his own power struggling to figure out where to go. He wasn't even sure he was still in his ghost form since he felt unnaturally warm for being a ghost, but he could see his snow-white hair blocking the view from one of his eyes. Through the slit of his other eye, he saw his mom kneeling in front of him, the remote clutched tightly in her hand. It sounded like she was speaking to him, but he couldn't focus enough to hear the words. His eyelids were heavy. He was tired. So tired. He felt himself being carried and then placed on something cool, and his mind began slipping in and out of awareness until he couldn't hang on anymore. As he slipped deeper into unconsciousness, he hoped he would be able to stay ghost.

Author's Comments:

And that's a wrap on chapter 2! I hope you enjoyed. This one was a fun one to write. I have some interesting things in store for chapter 3 so keep an eye out for that next week. See ya!