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Sometimes Danny's breath burned with an impossible cold. It thrashed inside of his chest in its struggle to escape, and it scratched at his throat as it headed towards light. His lips turned blue in an instant with the cold, and the second lasted an infinity. It wanted out out out and it screamed danger danger danger and it pounded inside of him to make him do something, fight, run, don't just sit there!
It escaped, and Danny would breath in a normal breath in a gasp that would almost vanish the previous feeling. In, out, normal, normal normal, why can't he just feel normal.
And he would raise his hands and ask for a bathroom pass.
The bathroom stall he ran into would feel claustrophobic for all of a second. A normal breath, a normal desperate heaving breath, and a silent plea to the universe.
It always worked, and the universe tore.
Danny stuck half of his body through the rift left behind. Ectoplasm oozed over his skin, reconstructing it. Leaving behind the burnt skin he had gained through an
eternity
minute of electrocution. He blinked with eyes that were not eyes, but empty holes filled with ectoplasm. It flowed through his body in the place of blood, and he felt it with every pulse he wasn't supposed to have. This body was not made for a beating heart, and the ectoplasm rejected being told to carry vital nutrients. It wanted to wait under his skin until it was needed for fighting. It wanted to stay in his skull, looking out through the holes left behind after his
death, but it wasn't quite a death, was it? Your heart still beats, even when your core tells it that such an action is pointless
accident in the portal.
The universe was different when you looked at it without eyes.
There were so many colors, and none of them had names. They blended into dimension he could only see in this form, where the universe hides what she does not want humans to find. Geometry became so much more interesting in this space, where infinity met its limits. He felt his body calling to him, asking him to come back soon, you are not dead yet, child, do not stare too long, do not answer the sirens call, you are needed here, there is work for you in this plane, where you still half belong. He shook his head, which agreed to stay connected to his neck on principle alone, and felt the bones shift.
He slipped into invisibility the way you slip on an oversized sized jacket, the veil falling over him easily. Intangibility came similarly, with a tingling feeling like a thousand infinitely small electric shocks hitting his nerves. He walked through the school to the courtyard, passing through solid brick like water, the veil and the electricity rising over him to protect him like a shield.
Soon, he would battle a monster, and there was a chance the monster would win, and there would be nothing he could do but accept that. But he would give it his all, he thought, bringing the ectoplasm that burned, god, it was like fire, to the surface, just under his skin, ready to be used to fight. He had something to protect after all.
Children,
could he call them children? They were the same age as him, but he felt infinitely older. Could he still age, like this? Or would he still look this way in a thousand years, just a not quite dead teenager, who got a little too confident playing with his parents' toys
looked at him through the classroom windows as he dropped the invisibility, watching the impending fight as one does a car wreck, unable to look away. He smiled, and his teeth glinted and they looked so large. This face was not made with smiling in mind, and his jaw had to stretch in a way that should not be possible for the expression to appear. His eyes that were not eyes smiled too, and he brought a hand up in a wave. The children cheered for him, and his jaw stretched a little more.
Danny was hated, and Phantom was revered. Maybe he should stay in this form more often.