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Danny woke up more groggy than he’d felt since the last time he stayed up so late ghost hunting he’d only gotten about an hour of rest before his alarm went off - to the sound of dishes clinking downstairs in the kitchen, rather than his alarm. He blinked tiredly, sitting up in bed and stretching, looking over at the clock to see how long he had until he needed to start getting ready for school.
10:30 AM stared back at him in bright red digital numbers.
“What?!” He scrambled for his phone, hoping that his alarm clock was wrong - but his phone, the traitor, read 10:31.
He’d never slept through his alarm before! How could this be happening? What even happened last night? Questions running through his head as he got dressed in a rush, trying to piece together his fuzzy memories of the previous night in his sleep-addled brain.
Sleepwalking.
Something about sleepwalking.
He could remember waking up briefly, and his dad carrying him to bed, he’d said he was sleepwalking. That couldn’t be good. Last time he’d been ‘sleepwalking’, Jazz said he was floating around the house in ghost form! But hadn’t Dad said he didn’t do anything weird?
No, that’s not right. He’d said he didn’t do anything wrong. But Danny definitely asked if he’d done anything weird.
He’d barely had time to process that thought when he opened the door to his bedroom, and almost crashed straight into his mom.
“Ah! uh-”
“Good morning, sweetie!” Mom smiled, unperturbed.
“Uh, yeah, good morning, I think I slept through my alarm, I’m like, super late for school-”
“Oh, no, Danny, I turned your alarm off this morning, I wanted you to get some more sleep after last night. Your father and I already called the school and let them know you aren’t coming in today. Come downstairs and get some breakfast, I made pancakes!”
Danny could only stare open-mouthed up at his mother. Something was definitely up here, and now he was absolutely certain it had to do with him doing something ghostly last night. His parents probably kept him home from school to interrogate him and experiment on him, or ground him for life - well, half life, anyway.
But Mom didn’t seem mad, and if Dad said he hadn’t done anything wrong… well, no harm in figuring out what’s going on.
“Uh, yeah, okay,” Danny said, following his mom down to the kitchen, and joining Dad at the dining room table for breakfast.
It was calm, as they ate, and his parents made idle small talk about the school, and what Vlad had been up to.
Nothing about their latest ghost hunting weaponry, or the ‘special project’ they’d been talking so much about lately.
That, more than anything, set off Danny’s anxiety like nothing else.
“So… what, exactly, happened last night, that made you let me stay home from school to sleep in?” Danny anxiously pushed a few bites of food around his plate, his nerves too on edge for him to eat much.
“Well, that’s what your father and I want to talk to you about, sweetheart, you see…”
“You see, Dann-o,” Dad cut in, “last night your mother and I were working on that special project of ours, and we were trying to summon a ghost. Specifically, the ghost king, but we must’ve gotten our calculations wrong somewhere, because the ghost that actually ended up popping into the lab was Phantom.”
Oh no.
“But, uh, Phantom was asleep, which was pretty weird, ‘cause I didn’t think ghosts could sleep! But then he turned into you!”
Oh no.
“So your father and I spent the rest of the night researching the possibility of ghost-human hybrids after he tucked you back into bed, but there’s absolutely no existing research on a concept like this at all, and nothing we tested in the lab gave us anything, either. We wanted to ask you before jumping to any rash conclusions, especially considering our truce with Phantom. So, Danny, sweetie… are you half ghost?”
Danny’s throat felt dry. His mind was reeling, but he couldn’t put together a coherent thought to answer. He felt himself beginning to panic, grounding himself by gripping the leg of his pajama pants in a tight fist.
His parents were watching him intently, but not unkindly. There was no malice, no ghost hunting intent, just open, parental love - and the scientific curiosity always there in his mother’s eyes.
He nodded.
Mom grinned ear to ear, and Dad looked proud.
“I always knew you’d get into ghost hunting somehow! That’s my boy! No wonder Phantom knew how to work all our ghost hunting tech!”
“You’ve got to tell us everything! How does a ghost-human hybrid even happen? Did something happen to you to turn you into a hybrid, or was Phantom his own ghost, that fused with you somehow? How does changing forms work? How-”
“uh- well-” Danny cleared his throat, and tried again. “Something, happened, to turn me into a halfa - that’s what the other ghosts call me - Phantom’s just, me, as a ghost, not some other thing that attached itself to me, that’d be weird. It… started with the ghost portal.”
A long session of explaining, and a bit of washing dishes later, the Fentons were again seated around the dining room table.
“Well, then, I suppose now all that’s left to do is to figure out where we messed up in the math, to summon you, instead of the ghost king.”
“Uh, yeah, about that…“