Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Everything was going to shit.

This was the single worst way the reveal could have happened.

He thought he would simply tell his parents about being Phantom, once they had warmed up to the idea of not all ghosts being evil.

But no.

No, they had to walk in on him mid-transformation into Phantom, in his room.

All because he was too lazy to walk over to Tucker, choosing to rather fly.

There was a moment of silence and mutual staring at each other.

It didn't last long, however, as his parents pulled their weapons.

"Don't shoot, i'm still Danny! I'm still your son!"

"We don't have a son." Jack said darkly, then opened fire.

Danny, on the other hand, was booking it.

He flew down into the lab, right into the portal.

He couldn't stay in Amity now that his secret was out.
The GIW and his parents would hunt him down wherever on earth he went, actually.

So Ghost Zone it was.
Perhaps he could live in the Far Frozen, or with Clockwork, he mused.

His eyes were full of tears and he wasn't thinking clearly, obviously, so it was no wonder that he missed the natural portal right in front of him.

Mariner was bored. Sooo bored. They were on their way to a second contact mission, but it was a long warp.

She was standing at the back window, overlooking the particle dust that always glistened in colorful streaks when at warp, making it seem like the stars were whizzing by.

Well they were, but not that fast.

Tendi and Rutherford were behind her in their barracks, talking. The Orion was going over more of the memories the Cyborg had lost, when suddenly the rainbowy streaks stopped and the outside was illuminated by an eery green light. The ship shook a good bit. The hallway was now blinking red, and the siren was going off. The stars outside looked distinctly different now.

"Ooh, finally, some action." Mariner said. "Wanna take bets on what it is?"

"Eh, probably just another space anomaly, like always." Rutherford suggested.

"Or maybe it's a distress call. Perhaps we get to save someone drifting in space." Tendi guessed.

Then two of their com-badges sounded an order:

"Ensign Tendi, Ensign Rutherford, report to shuttle bay one immediately."

The ship had been moved about a thousand lightyears within seconds according to the navigational systems.

Oh, and there was also that other problem.

"Did you just say humanoid lifesigns?! Unprotected, out here in space?" Captain Freeman asked hysterically, "Beam them to sickbay, stat!"

"We can't, Captain. Some kind of field around the life form is throwing of the transporter targeting."

"Well then get a shuttle out there. We can't just leave them to die!"

"Aye Captain!"

Danny felt a hand on him. Huh? His head was spinning, and when he opened his eyes everything was blurry.

"...is he stab.. ..not breath.. ..think he's waking up.. ..look, his eyes.."

He could see a green blob in front of him, but it was a darker green then usual ghosts.

"Can you hear me?" the blob pauses "Doesn't seem to be responsive..."

He felt his transformation washing over him, and he instinctively took a deep breath.

His vision cleared, and now the blob was a green face, belonging to a girl in a blue suit.

He scrambled out of her grasp, backing up until he hit a wall.

"Where, who, what?" he stuttered in confusion.

Where was he, who was that and what the heck happened?

"Thank god you're ok." the woman responded, then her voice took a softer tone:

"Hi, i'm D'Vana Tendi, and you're on a starfleet shuttle. We found you drifting alone in space and saved you."

"We? Who is 'we'?" He had no idea what else to say, besides: "Wait, space? I'm in space right now?!"

The woman looked over to another person in the room shuttle (?) that he had missed, a broad shouldered guy in a yellow uniform, similar to that of the girl.

The guy also seemed to be a cyborg?! What the heck?

He introduced himself: "Hi, i'm Rutherford! Our ship was caught by a strange dimensional rift and when we got out we detected your life-signs."

His mind was currently short-circuiting.

On the one hand, that remark kicked his memory of accidentally flying into that natural portal back into action. Dimensional rift made sense.

On the other hand: "Shit did you just say ship? Like a spaceship? In actual space?"

"Yup. The one and only." Rutherford quipped. "The space between the stars, the final frontier, that's where we are."

Ok. Calm down Danny. Get your bearings.

"You're a cyborg." he noted unhelpfully.

What the heck was that. Yeah, really helpful question Fenton, he scolded himself.

"Yup. Pretty new one tho, only got it for about 2 years." Rutherford informed him.

"But you're still human, right? Oh and what about her?" Danny turned back to the green girl.

She didn't look like a ghost. While she was green, she was distinctly lacking in the glowing and floating department.

And also his ghost sense hadn't gone off.

"Yes, Rutherford is a human. I'm from Orion." the girl answered.

"Orion like the constellation?"

"Orion like the planet, actually. Do you not know... Oh crap are we breaking the prime directive right now?"

"Look we'll just get you back to the Cerritos, that's our ship, and we can figure out what's going on together, alright?"

Danny simply nods.

Looking around the shuttle, he has more and more questions. That tech is sooo futuristic it's unbelievable.

The cyborg pushes the little badge attached to his uniform, and a little sound is heard.

"We found and rescued him. He's awake but confused, could you assign someone to talk to him?"

Danny only half listened, as is on-brand for a halfa like him. Though mainly he was just too busy with dropping his jaw to listen.

He was looking out of the shuttle's front window, admiring the spaceship.

If he wasn't so confused about the whole situation, he'd be drooling right now.

When the shuttle had landed, a team of yellow uniformed ... people had escorted him through the hallways of the ship.

Those were aliens. He was walking with actual aliens, on a spaceship.

They eventually arrived at their destination. Conference room, apparently.

A human woman in red uniform greeted him upon entering the sliding doors, extending her hand.

"Welcome on the Cerritos. I am Captain Carol Freeman, i command this vessel and crew. Might i ask who you are? You sure did surprise all of us."

"Danny. Danny Fenton. Can i ask a few questions tho, err.. Maam? Captain? What do i call you?"

"Captain Freeman is fine. Sure, as long as you're answering some of mine later too."

"That sounds fair. Ok, first up: Are you from Earth, and if so, what year is it?"

The captain seemed surprised by those questions, but still answered:

"Yes i am. And the year is 2381. Why do you ask the date, is there time travel involved?"

Danny pauses. First off, sure as heck seemed like it. Second of all, what the fuck? She was just chill with time travel?

"Uh.. I think so. Maybe some dimensional travel as well? Don't know for sure.
I come from the early 2000s, also earth. Say, are there records of a town called Amity Park, Illinois?
Just wanna make sure this is the same universe and just plain old time travel."

Captain Freeman raised an eyebrow, but sat down at the table, tapping at the console.

"Err, doesn't seem like it. So you're saying you're from a different timeline? And the past?"

Ok, so different dimension then. That might be for the best considering... no, nope, not going there.

He blinked away a tear.

"Yeah, that's basically it. Any records of an organization called the Ghost Investigation Ward, FentonWorks or VladCo?"

The Captain looked down, tapping the console again.

"Nope, nothing. So can you answer a few questions for me then?"

Danny considered all that he knew about this future.

Aliens walked among humans, perfectly normal.

The people are not freaked out by stuff like time travel, and on top of it they seemed nice.

He made a decision.

"Yeah, but i think it's better to let me explain first, before you ask questions. It's a bit of a long story."

"Alright, shoot."

"Ok, first off, i might look human, and i did say i'm from Earth, but i'm actually from a species called halfa.

We're like, super rare, where i come from there are only 3 in existence, and one of them is a clone of me."

The captain raised an eyebrow, but motioned for him to continue.

"So there's like this dimension filled with a substance called ectoplasm, and there's people there who're made from it.

For lack of a better term we called them ghosts, but they're more accurately described as core beings.

This dimension is highly unstable and shifts around all the time, so there are often natural portals forming at random, leading to different places, times and dimensions."

"So you came here through such a portal then?" Carol guessed. "And that's what caught our ship?"

"Yup. I wasn't in the best headspace, missed one forming in front of me, and like the idiot i am totally flew into it.
Next thing i knew was waking up to the green lady who said she was from Orion."

"Is there any way to get you back? I have to try to let my crew figure out how to open another portal."

"Hah, no. You can't open a portal to the Zone without ectoplasm.

And i don't have anything to go back to anyway. I'm sorry your ship got caught in it too, but there's nothing i can do about it right now."

A slip of paper suddenly plopped into existence, startling Carol much more then Danny.

The half ghost caught it. It read: 'You deserve a happy ending. You can get it here. And you can trust them. ~CW'

He put on a smile. The paper poofed into nothing as soon as he had read it.

"What the hell was that about?" the Captain demanded of him.

"An old friend gave me the go ahead, that's all.

...

So from what i understand this starfleet of yours explores space?
That has always been my dream, and i think my abilities from being a halfa would be real helpful with that.
And with getting your ship home. I think.

In short, i want in."

This kid was giving her a major headache. His explanation was certainly appreciated, as was his offer to help get her ship and crew back home.

But it was also a major problem that she couldn't just get the Cerritos back to where they came from.

At least not quickly.

For now, she ordered to lay in a course toward earth at medium warp, as not to exhaust their antimatter reserves too quickly.

At this rate, it would be a two year journey, but she knew they'd have to refuel eventually.

She had assigned Fenton to be dealt with by her daughter and her team.

Usually not the best choice, but she needed her senior officers right now,

and if anyone could deal with someone as unconventional as the Halfa kid, it was Mariner.

The kid might have motivation, but he was also a little shit.

He had left the conference room through the door. Just, the door wasn't open while he did.

He simply walked right through the metal as if it wasn't even there.

And then he stuck his head back through the wall, saying: "See, Halfa. Useful."

This was going to be a loooong trip.

Chapter Text

Honestly, Mariner wasn't too sure what to expect from Danny based on the descriptions by Tendi and Rutherford.

But like...

"Guys, couldn't you have mentioned that he's a little kid?"

"Hey!" Danny complained. "I take offense to that. I mean i might not be 18, but treat me like a kid and you'll see what happens."

"Alright fine, geez. Touchy." Mariner responded.

"Now is anyone going to show me around or are we just gonna stand here looking pretty?"

"Oh oh, i can give you the tour!" Tendi exclaimed excitedly, attempting to take his hand.

"Can you tho?" Danny asked, as Tendi's hand phased through his. He's grinning.

"No need for all this handholding, or hovering over me. I can do that way better anyway."

With that, his feet left the ground.

"Alright, i had you all wrong Phantom." Mariner admitted, "Finally someone with a sense of humor around here."

"Ok so before we show you around, you said you were from about 400 years ago right?" Rutherford asked the halfa as the group started walking down the corridors.

"Yeah, why?" he responded.

"Well i just hope i can explain the technology in a way you understand. You can ask me to clarify anytime, ok?" the cyborg offered.

"OOh be careful, once he starts talking about the tubes good luck getting him to stop." Mariner warned him teasingly.

"The tubes?" Danny asked, not realizing what he just basically signed up for.

Mariner had left pretty quickly, even Tendi went back to her duties after a while.

Because the only thing more nerdy then Rutherford explaining the ship's systems was Danny asking question after question about them.

It wasn't his fault that all this future tech and science is so interesting!

"Yo i really hope you can teach me the specifics at some point, but just so i'm sure i got the basics:
This ship runs on warp plasma created from a matter-antimatter reactor called the warp core."

"Yes."

"And that gets distributed by the EPS conduits, which stands for electrical plasma systems."

"Correct so far."

"And it channels into the warp drive, where the nacelles produce a ... a field that bends spacetime and carries the ship at relative speeds above lightspeed?"

"The warp field, yes. It's a subspace field that induces real space to form the warp bubble.
The field and the bubble are different things technically, but one creates the other."

"Right right, and this subspace can be used for ftl anyway? Like real time communications and stuff?"

"Exactly."

"... you really should teach me how subspace works, i'm super intrigued now."

"I can get you a copy of 'introductory subspace mechanics' from my starfleet academy course, if you'd like."

"Yes please, that'd be awesome! In return i can teach you some stuff about ecto-tech, if you want. Tho it's probably horribly outdated by now."

"I don't think so. According to sensor logs, the field you had around you was of unknown origin.
We can teach each other stuff at 0800 tomorrow in the shuttle bay if you want, i'm sure Billups will allow me to shift my duties.
There's always some tools and spare parts around there, so i can show you the ropes."

"Oh i'm so in for the 0800 plan!" Danny eagerly agreed. Then he realized:
"Wait a minute. Can everyone read those sensor logs?"

Rutherford suddenly looked a little guilty.

"Actually i'm not even authorized to view them. But i was just too curious not to hack into the sensor array." the cyborg sheepishly admitted.

As little time as Danny had spent with Rutherford, this was absolutely on brand. Danny sighed.

"Look, promise me you won't try to dissect me out of curiosity or something, and we're good."

"I promise, but i can't speak for Tendi. She loves this stuff."

Note to self, give the girl a good scare so she won't, Danny thought.

The barracks were nice. The captain had originally given him a room for himself, as he was a guest on the ship.

But he had insisted on sleeping together with his supervisors/friends-to-be, in the barracks.

He had been given a yellow uniform, as he expressed interest in working with and being taught by Rutherford for the foreseeable future.
Unlike the cyborg's, his uniform had no golden broach on his neck, as he was not technically a starfleet officer.
Apparently, the number and sometimes color of these so called pips signaled rank. Simple and effective, Danny liked it.

The only other thing of note was the combadge which was standard issue for all crew on a federation starship, starfleet officer or not.

Everyone besides him had duty right now, so he was currently stretched out in his barrack,
displaying the subspace mechanics course on the pad he had been given, trying to wrap his head around it.

Contrary to what his grades in school might suggest, Danny was quite intelligent and tech-savy.

So he got the general gist of the course after a few hours.
Especially since he wasn't interrupted by any ghost fights.
And also unlike school, this was actually interesting to learn about.

Chapter Text

When Rutherford had all assignments done for the day, he arrived back at the barracks finding Danny, the pad atop his face with light snoring audible underneath.

"I just wanna take a few samples!" Tendi complained, as Mariner held her by the arms.

"Yo Tendi, are you like trying to creep him out? Because you're doing a good job right now."

Despite this, the Orion managed to take a few scans with her tricorder.

Rutherford, to his credit, informed her of how uncomfortable Danny seemed with people having readings of him.

"Eh it's fine, no need to tell him about it. And i'm not gonna show them around or anything." she absentmindedly mumbled whilst studying the tricorder screen.

Danny was awoken by a beep right in his face.

In surprise he bolted upright, only to hit his head on the roof and chuck the datapad that had been on his face across the hallway.

Then it beeped again.

Right, the alarm at 0730 to remind him of...

The pain in his head was forgotten, when the realization hit.

Tinkering with future tech! He was so hyped!

In excitement, he turned intangible and floated into the hallway, to pick up his pad.

He hadn't quite mastered the ship's layout yet.

Ok, that was an understatement, he had no clue where anything was.

The pad had a map however, so he picked it up and let it display the way to the shuttle bay.

The barrack next to him was stirring.

"What was that noise? Is it 0900 already?" Tendi yawned.

"Sorry Tendi, i hit my head. It's only 0730, you can go back to sleep."

"Alright perf..c..mmmbl..." her voice trailed off and transitioned into light snoring.

Danny looked around.

Rutherford's cove was empty already, and Mariner didn't seem to have heard him bonk his head, as she was still asleep in hers.

After getting lost twice, he had finally found the shuttle bay.

"Hey Danny, there you are!" Rutherford greeted him as the doors slid open.

"I was just about to go get you, but here you are. I almost thought you forgot."

"And miss the opportunity to play around with future tech? No way."

He rubbed his neck when he realized how late he was. It was 0815 already.

"I just got lost. Don't know the ship layout yet." he explained his lateness.

"Alright, so first off, any questions about subspace mechanics?" the engineer segued into the conversation.

"Lots actually. But all of them are about the components of the actual devices, so i think we should start with those."

"Okie dokie!"

Surprisingly, Danny had few problems readjusting to duotronic circuitry.

The way it used plasma flow for power wasn't entirely dissimilar to the way ectoplasm powered many of his par... of the Fenton's machines.

After getting a feel for the tools at his disposal, Danny attempted to create an ecto-powercell.

With mixed results.

The first one just plain didn't work.

The second attempt worked a little too well, as when he had given it a small donation of his own ectoplasm to get it started,
it immediately came alive and started to try eating both him and Rutherford.
Not that it succeeded, as he fired a quick ectoblast causing the animated circuitry to explode.

The third attempt, now with actual regulators keeping the power from building up to the point of exploding or animating the cell, was working.

"So where does the power actually come from here?" Rutherford asked.

After the initial drop of ectoplasm from Danny's hand, the device seemed to produce energy all by itself.

"That's the beauty of using ectoplasm, the only limit is how much the hardware can handle." Danny replied, clearing up absolutely nothing.

"I see that, but how does that work without energy consumption?" Rutherford reiterated.

"Ok see the thing with ectoplasm is that it kinda gets controlled by the wills of ghosts.
Affecting the ectoplasm in their bodies however registers for them too, so there's a feedback to the will or soul i guess.
Ecto-powercells use that feedback to trick some ectoplasm into forming a sort of proto-will.
And they make this will command the ectoplasm to produce more of itself.

Or, technically, to amass more from the Zone."

"So it's basically tricking it into collecting more of itself?" Rutherford asked for clarification.

"Exactly. So as long as you're in a universe with access to the Zone, that works."

"But we don't have a portal, do we?" the cyborg seemed confused.

"No, but there is the possibility to open one, and that's enough.
Gathering ectoplasm from the Zone doesn't actually require a portal to the zone itself,
the plasm kinda just bleeds across dimensions when called upon, from the Zone to wherever you call it to."

"So it's a completely unlimited energy source?" Rutherford seemed amazed. Rightfully so, Danny supposed.

"Yes and no." he elaborated. "See, keeping the proto-will perfectly stable takes a lot of ectoplasm, and powerful hardware.
Otherwise it's always at risk of either exploding or animating itself if you go too high with the power output.
It's best to use in bursts and power back down to an easy to maintain base level afterward.
If you let it run at any reasonable percentage of it's maximum for too long, the risk of error gets exponentially worse.
This cell right here..."

Danny picked up the working prototype.

"... is currently at around 0.5% maximum.
I can go to 100% with it for like 1 or 2 seconds, but after that the risk of failure gets too high.
Once it's powered down you can rein in the proto-will again.
For an infinitely stable proto-will you'd need to use over 99% of the output on upkeeping it.
But it stays stable for a bit without the upkeep too, and that's the window of opportunity to get use out of it.
For continuous output you need to chain a few of these cells and stagger their high power states,
so there's always one of them powered up while the rest restabilizes.
Problem is, those contraptions get pretty bulky compared to conventional machines of similar output.
And that's not the fault of bad design mind you, it's a hard limit in the ectoplasm density."

"So the limit isn't energy, but power density?" Rutherford asked for him to clarify.

"Precisely."

Danny was leaving out that that principle didn't apply to ghosts, and by extension, him.
There was already a will there, no need to create an artificial one.

Cores are infinitely better at commanding ectoplasm compared to loose ectoplasm, which the ecto-powercell uses.
But a core meant a sentient being, and he wasn't about to even bring up the idea to utilize cores directly for power generation.

"But a single cell is still useful for powering weapons, right? You only need short bursts there anyway."

"Yeah. Yeah it is." Danny said with a dark expression on his face.

"Is that a bad thing?" Rutherford asked him as the cyborg noticed Danny's expression.

"I'm a half-ghost who regularly got shot at by ghost hunters while i was trying to save people, you tell me."

Rutherford cringes. "Oh, i'm sorry. Shouldn't have asked."

"Nah it's fine, i mean you're not wrong. It is useful for weapons. What do you guys use for self defense?"

he tried shifting the subject away from being hunted, and the face of Mo.. Maddie, when she.

And.

And when.

He was having a panic attack.

Which, consciously, he knew.

Thanks Jazz. This still isn't fun.

He tried to focus on Rutherford's voice as the engineer explained how phasers worked, and how many uses they actually had besides being deadly.

It helped calm him down, and it was genuinely interesting just how much the device could actually do. It showed starfleet's stance on valuing adaptability over simplicity. Their trademark weapon had so many uses besides being a weapon, that it started to not even sound like a weapon at all. More like a multitool that happened to also have uses as a weapon.

When Rutherford explained the phase emitter however, Danny perked up.

"Wait you said the main energy comes from the phase emitter energizing the beam, not the particles themselves?"

"Yeah, the nadion beam is just the carrier for the energy from the phased pulse. Why?"

"Do you think we could make a phase emitter act like a proto-will?"

Rutherford contemplated Danny's question for a moment, then answered:

"Maybe, but if i understood that right, the emitter would still need to be powered externally, right?"

"Well yes, but unlike in the phaser it wouldn't need to input a lot of power into the beam by phasing it.
We'd only need to phase a weak ectoplasm beam a little, and then it gets stronger all by itself, because we commanded it to via the phasing!"

Rutherford's mouth opened, as if he was searching for a counterargument.

Then it closed again, being replaced by a wide eye. (the other one was machinery, after all)

"That might work. Let's try it!" the cyborg resolved.

They had both been hyper-focused on their project, so much so that they hadn't even realized having spent the entire day working on it.

It was night time now.

But the results were absolutely worth the lack of sleep.

The idea didn't just work, it worked like a charm.

The energy level of the phased ectoplasm beam, which was now continuous as well,
was about 7 times higher then the plasma energy needed to operate the phase emitter.

And this was just a quick cobbled together prototype.

The next few days were spent trying to see what ship systems could be made to run on ectoplasm instead of warp plasma.

As it turned out, quite a few. The replicators were a bust, but Danny hadn't supposed that ectoplasm + food was ever going to be a good idea.

But the forcefields worked. And the handheld phasers. And the lights and doors. Oh, and impulse engines.

And if they could get the idea past Billups, the shields, phaser banks and tractor beams probably too, if their tests were any indication.

Actually, especially the shields and phaser banks would be amazing if they ran on ectoplasm.

Ectoplasm, while it could be commanded to perform certain actions, seemed to do them in a truly random subatomic pattern.
It was as if the phaser and shield frequencies were rotating all the time, and not in a way anyone could predict.

This could give starfleet a major edge, as not only was the ectoplasmic shielding a lot stronger compared to normal shields, but it would probably even counter Borg adaptation.

And unlike normal phasers, ectoplasmic phasers could be commanded to turn intangible for a specified time.
So they would just pass through enemy shielding or vessels, only turning tangible again right at the intended target.
Unless the enemy also had ectoplasmic shielding, which of course they wouldn't.
This needed the correct phasing calculations from the computer for the timing of the intangibility, but with starfleet processing power that wasn't an issue.

Danny had vetoed the idea to try running such a computer core on ectoplasm, however.
He had no idea what would happen if one with this much processing power suddenly animated, but he wasn't keen on finding out.

Unfortunately, ectoplasmic circuits were also unable to power a warp field generator, no matter how hard they tried.

They were visited by Rutherford's friends from time to time,
and of course they went to the mess hall for the meals and their coves to sleep,
but other than that they were in their own little world.

They really had to bring their results to Billups.

Billups was amazed at their work, but still cautious.

"I say that looks good, but you can only outfit a shuttle with those for now. I want those systems tested up and down, before i implement any of them on the Cerritos."

Rutherford and Danny shared a look.

They would take that. A shuttle for them to upgrade with all their cool new stuff? Oh yeah.

Their motivation knew no bounds, as only a day later they had implemented them into a shuttle.

Rutherford had suggested making the ectoplasmic systems redundant with the standard ones, which Danny complied with.

Now it was time for some field tests.

Chapter Text

Mariner promptly noticed how cold the corridor was getting.

She looked around.

Yup, there he came, the spooky kid with his inbuilt cooling system. Next to him, Rutherford.

"Yo Fenton, Rutherford, you guys finally out of your cave?" she teased the two.

They had really holed themselves up in the shuttle bay over the last week, she didn't even see Rutherford build in any buffertime.

"Out and ready for social interaction." Danny quipped, before adding more seriously: "Oh and by the way, i only go by Phantom now, regardless of form. Personal reasons."

"Guess who got assigned a scouting mission with our new shuttle!" Rutherford prompted, changing the topic.

"Whoa cool, seriously? Can we come? I totally wanna see your baby in action." Mariner begged.

"You can put away your puppy dog eyes." Danny teased, "We already asked and you two got assigned to go with us. Check your pads."

A look onto Mariner's and Tendi's pads confirmed this.

Their actual assignment was pretty benign, flying into an asteroid field and testing anything they could.

Tendi was to study possible adverse health effects, while Phantom and Rutherford were to keep an eye on the power fluctuations within the system.

Mariner, for some reason, had been assigned temporary command of the shuttle.
According to the assignment it was to test how intuitive the new systems were to someone not well versed in their design.

But first, a rundown.

"Ok, so for now we implemented only three systems, and they're all redundant with the standard systems you are familiar with.

We have the option to switch to Phantom Phasers, Spectre Shields or Tail Turbines." Danny explained.

He couldn't suppress his wide grin.
Which showed fangs, but nobody noticed.
Or maybe, nobody minded.

Danny had, as was tradition, taken to naming the systems after ghost puns.
While a little adverse at first, Rutherford had quickly acclimated to the names.

Mariner and Tendi hadn't yet.

While Mariner was laughing, Tendi cooed: "Aww, those are the most adorable names for inventions i have ever heard. I love them already!"

Once they were all finally seated inside, Mariner took the helm.

The shuttle was in normal operating mode for now.

To reach the asteroid, they'd have to jump to warp for a couple seconds, but no biggie.

"Laid in a course, engaging at warp 4. Boop." Mariner informed them, as she pressed the console.

The warp went perfectly, the ectoplasmic systems on standby had not interfered in the slightest.

"Alright, let's test this baby out." Mariner ordered: "Raise Spectre Shields and switch to Tail Turbines then. Let's take it for a spin!"

Danny gladly did so, a green hue around the shuttle appearing, and a trail forming behind the impulse engines.

The trail was acting like a ghostly tail, which allowed for incredible maneuverability.

However...

"Uh, guys, when using the Turbines please use the seatbelts. Trust me, you'll need to." Danny warned, before something would go wrong.

Even Rutherford was looking at him curiously. Danny had kept that one to himself.

"Do the inertial dampeners not work with them on?" Tendi asked.

"They do, but they just don't cut it. You'll see what i mean." Danny answered.

"Boring, let's just go!" Mariner, who hadn't buckled in her belt, said.

Then she pushed the button to adjust their heading, and promptly got thrown out of her chair.

"What the heck was that?!" she complained, slumped upside down against a wall.

"Told you so." Danny taunted. "You might want to buckle up and use the joystick to steer while you're at it, these babies are super responsive."

"I noticed." Mariner grumbled, getting up and sitting back down in her chair.

This time she did buckle her belt, and enabled the joystick which extended from the console.

"Alright, take two."

The next 2 minutes could only be compared to an amusement park ride. Mariner was testing out just how sharp of a turn you could make with the Tail Thrusters. As it turned out, 120° within only a single shuttle length. And that at their optimal turning speed, which was about one third impulse and below. Any faster, and the turning angle suffered a bit. At full impulse speed, you could still make a 50° turn within one shuttle length however, which was frankly insane. It now made sense that the inertial dampeners were overworked by this thing.

Tendi noted: "Ok, these kinds of accelerations are definitely unhealthy, seatbelts or not."

"Yeah i think the Tail Thrusters should be reserved for emergencies where maneuverability is absolutely crucial." Rutherford agreed.

Danny was perfectly used to the turning speeds, but the other two urged Mariner to test something else now.

"Ok, so let's test the shields then." Mariner relented. Seems like she'd been having fun with the thrusters.

"How?" Danny couldn't help but ask. "You gonna run us into an asteroid fragment or something?"

"You know, i wasn't planning to, but now that you say it..."

"Please no, i was joking o..." Danny was cut off when the shuttle impacted a fragment.

Or, rather, when the shields deflected it while the shuttle barely registered the impact at all.

"Spectre Shield integrity at 100%, but it dropped to 99.98% for 2µs after the impact." Rutherford calmly stated.

Danny sighed in relief.

Only to be scared immediately after, as Mariner now steered into an asteroid that was twice as big as the shuttle itself.

"What the fuck Mariner, don't!" Danny shouted at her, while she ignored him profusely.

Thud.

The impact was definitely noticeable this time, but still very minor.

"That managed to get it down to 92.34% for a moment, and took 11 milliseconds to recover back to 100%" Rutherford read out the stats.

"Extrapolating from those two data points, even a maximum yield quantum torpedo should only damage our shields by about 45-50%.

And since it seems like they are regenerative, i estimate it'd only take a couple of seconds for them to recover."

Danny had no reference frame for that, so he asked: "Is that good? I have no idea what, nor how powerful a quantum torpedo is."

Everyone looked at him in disbelief.

"Danny, even the Cerritos couldn't take multiple maximum yield quantum torpedoes before the shields go down.
And without shields, a single medium yield torpedo could blow it up entirely." Mariner explained in a hollow voice.

Damn.

He guessed he outdid himself making those shields.

Although to be fair, Rutherford had done a lot of the work for the configuration.
Danny only modified the ecto-tech, so it would be more compatible with the specifications the Cyborg had given him.

But still, he was proud of it.

Everyone was silent.

"Soo, who wants to test out the Phantom Phasers?" Danny tried to break the awkward tension.

That seemed to reignite the glint in Mariner's eyes.

"Oh heck yeah, if they're anything like the other two systems, then i can't wait!"

"Computer, switch to Phantom Phasers." Danny spoke aloud.

It was still weird to him that all computers here worked on voice recognition. But also kinda cool.

Tactical was lighting up, and requesting input of target coordinates.

Rutherford advised Mariner: "Oh, make sure to try entering coordinates in the middle of an object by the way, not just on the surface."

"Yes sir!" Mariner mockingly saluted, but she did as asked nonetheless.

The target was a large asteroid. She targeted it's center, and pressed fire, expecting to cause a nice crater on it's surface.

There was no impact of the following green phaser burst with the asteroid's surface, but it didn't miss.

Oh no, it hit perfectly.

The asteroid was completely blown apart, directly from the inside, where the beam actually impacted.

That detail, however, slipped both Tendi and Mariner's sights, who were more occupied with the sheer power of the Phantom Phaser.

"What the hell Phantom?! That was about as much power as i would have expected from a freaking photon torpedo, not a shuttle's phaser?!"

"It was actually only on half power, but you did use burst mode.
So it is comparable to firing a torpedo i guess.
Because, look, the console is showing you the cooldown time."

"How was that only half power?!" Mariner couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"Well, since the beam impacts directly at the target coordinates,
it could more efficiently put energy into overcoming the gravitational binding energy,
instead of accelerating the asteroid away from us, which would loose energy." Rutherford elaborated.

"The beam is intangible everywhere except at the target." Danny added.
"So it hits exactly at the target coordinates, and not any surface in the way. The Phantom Phasers can only be intercepted by Spectre Shields, as far as we're aware."

"But that shot definitely made the emitters buckle. We should not fire again, unless we want to fry the emitters" Rutherford noted, as he was reading out the internal sensors.

"We either need to lower the yield or get more robust emitters if we want to use the Phantom Phasers more then once."

"Noted." Mariner confimed enthusiastically, before turning them off at the tactical console.

Chapter Text

They were back on the Cerritos, and had submitted their reports for analysis.

"Is it just me or is it getting colder?" Tendi perked up as the group was about to disperse and go to their next assignments.

Everyone turned to Danny, who seemed to shiver.

"I g-g-guess i sh-sh-should have known this would h-h-happen at some point. I n-n-need to let out some c-c-cold somewhere!"

"Let it out? Is it building up in your body? Tell me everything!" Tendi excitedly inquired, enticed by the medical implications.

"Hey, just an idea, maybe let's focus on helping him right now?" Mariner scolded the overexcited medic.

"If he needs to let out some cold, i can take him to the nearest EPS conduit and let him take over for the plasma coolant for a while."

"S-S-Sounds good, g-g-gotta get the c-c-cold out." Danny agreed, teeth rattling.

Moments later, Rutherford removed a wall panel, revealing the hot conduit.

"Here, i'll turn down the plasma coolant so you can let your cold out, tell me when i should turn it back up." Rutherford instructed Danny, before taking a step back, then continuing: "Computer, activate security force fields to contain Danny."

As soon as the cyborg heard the characteristic buzz of the forcefields activating, he tapped on the controls to weaken the flow of coolant.

Danny seemed to realize it was go time, as he turned into his ghost form. And then he unleashed his cold. The forcefields somehow got overgrown with ice crystals, as if they were made from glass instead of energy.

It turned out Rutherford had to actually cut the coolant flow off alltogether, with the amount of cold Danny was putting out.

After a few seconds, Danny could be heard: "That's enough. Can you turn it off now please?" There was a slight hint of worry in his voice.

The ensign did as asked, reengaging the plasma coolant and dropping the containment field.

When the scene cleared, Danny looked into three worried faces.

The halfa rubbed his neck nervously, then cleared his throat:

"I suppose i owe you guys an explanation, don't i?"

"I know you don't like it, but nobody's gonna hurt you there. After what you just pulled, you gotta come!"
Mariner scolded the ghostly boy, whilst dragging him toward sickbay, his tail trailing behind him.

"Alright alright, fine, i'm coming, but let go of me. I can hover there myself."

Mariner stopped, but didn't let go.

Danny sighed.

"Look, i'll agree to be examined as long as i get informed about the method beforehand, and am allowed to veto any procedure i disapprove of. Also, Mariner, you do realize i could easily phase out of your grip if i wanted to, right?"

Mariner sighed as well, but then let go of his hand.

"Finally, i thought you'd never come here." a grumpy voice greeted Danny from behind the sliding doors.

It belonged to a catlike person in the same blue uniform as Tendi's,
except judging by the pips, the feline person was significantly higher ranked.

"This is our chief medical officer, Dr. T'ana. She's gonna be taking your vitals and medical history so we have a baseline to treat you if anything happens to you." Tendi explained.

"I don't have time for this..." the cat-doctor muttered, "Tendi! I'm giving you an opportunity to show me what you've got. You take his history and vitals, i'll look over your results later. Oh, and restrain your excitement, alright? Bedside manner and a patient's comfort are important."

With that dismissal, the doctor walked past the group and out of medbay.

Danny meanwhile, was becoming a little nervous.
He hadn't forgotten the warning Rutherford had given him about the chances of being dissected out of curiosity.

But to his relief, that had been way overdramatized.
It also helped that Tendi was trying her best to proove herself to Dr. T'ana.
Not that Danny would know just how much restraint that fact actually amounted to, of course.

"Alright Danny, please turn human for me so we can start." Tendi requested with a friendly smile.

He obliged.

"So, how much can you tell me about your differences to a regular human? Because we have those in our database."

Danny thought for a moment, collecting his thoughts.

"First off, even in human form i have my core, and ectoplasm is running through my body. It gives me access to some of my basic powers, but they're way weaker compared to in ghost form. As for other differences of my human form specifically, i have a much slower heartrate than normal, and a lower body temperature."

"Yes i noticed that, continue please." Tendi said.

"The only other things in human form are my fangs, and... well, in both forms, there's my ob... No, you know what, that's sensitive."

Other than a raised eyebrow, Tendi didn't seem to have issues with being withheld information. He was not ready to reveal his obsession to anyone yet.

"Alright, you mentioned a core, but i suppose we'll see about that when you're in ghost form. Would you please...?"

Danny nodded, then transformed, while Tendi was holding a medical tricorder at him.

"Fascinating, the energy form seems to dissolve and store your cells.." Tendi cleared her throat and shook her head. "Sorry, moving on. What can you tell me about this form, then? The tricorder doesn't seem able to tell me anything, your body must be interfering with it."

"I suppose that makes sense, ghosts can often corrupt or disturb technology. If you knew how often the damn lights flickered in my room..." Danny trailed off "But whatever. My ghost form is made from ectoplasm, and is held together by my core, like with every ghost. It's the sphere of cold energy inside my chest, maybe the tricorder can pick up that at least?"

Tendi looked to the screen, then nodded.

So Danny went on:

"The core is just that for a ghost: The core of their being.

Imagine it like heart and lungs and brain all at once. Only, ghosts don't need air or food, but to fulfill their obsessions ...do that private thing i don't wanna talk about right now, as well as use their powers regularly. What happens when we don't do the latter is the reason i'm even here.

Cores are elemental in nature, mine is an ice core, thus the buildup of cold energy. Cores infuse the ectoplasm in our bodies with their elemental power. But a ghost's body needs to be mainly pure ectoplasm. Which isn't usually a problem, since they also gather pure ectoplasm from the Zone automatically, to refill any losses. However, if we don't use some of the infused ectoplasm up, our body slowly becomes more and more infused, until it doesn't function as a proper body anymore. Hence why i had to produce cold or risk turning into an unliving popsicle. I had to shed the infused ectoplasm, so there was room for my core to refill with uninfused ectoplasm."

That explanation of cores seemed to puzzle Tendi, who asked:

"So your body gets used up whenever you use your powers, but then refilled by your core?"

"No, it only gets used up by my core abilities or when projecting ectoplasm outwards.

Stuff like turning intangible, invisible or flying doesn't do that, but ectoconstructs, ectoblasts and all my ice powers, as well as the wail do use up my body for ectoplasm.
When i wail, it's actually often so much that i get forced to turn back human. My core can't even keep up with gathering enough ectoplasm to form or sustain my ghost body. And before you ask, no, i'm not gonna show you the wail. Definitely not inside this ship. It's way too powerful and destructive for being used inside."

Tendi did accept that, but the next few minutes were spent on demonstrating Danny's other powers regardless.

The only things he didn't show were the wail, overshadowing, and high-powered ectoblasts.

Even so, the medbay still managed to acquire a few singed spots over the course of the demonstration.

Chapter Text

"It's been well over two weeks, we gotta tell her."

"But Jazz, we can't be sure! Maybe he's just involved in a time travel thing again?" Sam protested.

"Uh, Sam, not to be the pessimist, but Danny did give us clear instructions on what to do if he's missing for longer than two weeks." Tucker reminded her.

"But really? Telling Val about it?" Sam asked in disbelief.

"What is she gonna do upon finding out, shoot Danny who isn't even near us?" Jazz argued. "I don't like it either, but if anyone can help us find him it's her. Especially after the way he left."

Jazz had told Sam and Tucker about what had happened with their parents and Danny, up until the point where the portal had registered Danny flying into the Ghost Zone. Because no matter how hard she had secretly scanned the zone behind her parent's back, she just couldn't detect Danny's ectosignature anywhere within the scanning range. She was running out of options. They were running out of options. And she had made plans with Danny for cases of emergency, such as this one.

It was his idea to tell Valerie about his secret if he should be gone for over two weeks. Jazz didn't like the idea, but then again, Valerie had toned down her aggression toward Phantom considerably, and the huntress still liked Danny Fenton.

"WHAT THE FUCK!?" was Valerie's immediate reaction.

"You can't be serious! You're telling me i have been shooting Danny this whole time?" Valerie could not believe it.

Yet, it explained a whole lot of things. That ghost girl that could turn into a human (and Vlad, ugh) were proof that you could be a ghost and a human at the same time. And Danny did always run out of class before ghost attacks. As if he knew they were going to happen beforehand.

She, as well as the rest of Caspar High, always assumed that he ran to hide. That was the main reason why she had broken up with him, to protect him from her life as a ghost huntress. And he was fighting ghosts himself, the whole time?!

All the while she had been hunting him? No wonder Sam and Tucker always seemed so cold toward her, she'd been hunting their best friend.

"I didn't protect him at all by breaking up, i put him in more danger." she muttered under her breath, still in disbelief.

"Why did he even date me? Phantom already knew i was the Red Huntress." she then asked aloud.

She wasn't mad at Phantom anymore anyway, she had been starting to believe him about how Cujo had been an accident. Now that she knew Danny Phantom was just Danny Fenton, there were no doubts at all anymore.

"Wait. Is his ghost name a freaking pun?" she suddenly realized.

Sam and Tucker were grinning. They had just been watching Valerie have her breakdown, after telling her that they knew she was the Red Huntress (which was already a shock to her) and then that Danny Fenton was actually also Danny Phantom.

"You know he likes his puns." Tucker confirmed Valerie's most recent question.

"Wow. Looking back i can't believe i never figured it out. It's so obvious in hindsight."

"Almost nobody knows that halfas even can and do exist. Why would anyone assume a ghost has a secret identity?" Sam argued.

"I guess that makes sense. Anyway, why tell me all this now?
Does it have to do with the reason why Danny hasn't been in school for a while?"

Sam, Jazz and Tucker looked at each other.

Then Jazz sighed, explaining the rest of the situation to the already baffled ghost huntress.

Valerie let her suit deploy around her, hopping onto her hoverboard.

With fierce determination, she announces: "We will find him. Let's go!"

It was almost sad how easily the group managed to sneak past the Fentons and through their portal into the Ghost Zone. And also how easy it was to steal the specter speeder. Along with tons of other equipment. But they were stealing from the Fentons, so they didn't feel bad about that, not after what they had done to Danny.

Whirls of green were now spiraling around them, ever shifting and flowing, as was typical for the ghost zone.

"So where are we headed?" Valerie asked.

"The Far Frozen. Frostbite will definitely help us, and it's a good place to start. Especially with the infi-map."

"Who with the what?" Valerie inquired.

The group took their time to explain, with Valerie (and to an extent Jazz) listening intently.

"They didn't tell me about all their adventures, you know." Jazz responded to Valerie's unspoken question.

"We're here." Tucker announces.

Out the window is a frozen landscape, and... is that a yeti? A ghost yeti? Valerie was really hoping to get caught up to all of Danny's adventures at some point.

"That is indeed worrying, friends of the great one!" Frostbite concluded, after hearing about what had happened.

"I will allow you to use the infi-map to find him, but you have to promise me to do no harm to the great one!" the yeti was looking at Valerie for that last part.

"I promise. Me hunting him in the past was based on a big misunderstanding. I don't want him in danger any more then you do." Valerie assured the ice-armed ghost. And she meant it.

"Well then, here you go." the yeti hands them a roll of parchment. "Be safe, and don't let the map fall into the wrong hands."

The group were heading back inside the speeder, with Tucker rolling out the map.

"Alright, let's do this baby." the boy said, pulling out his PDA and connecting wires to it and to the map.

"What exactly are you doing?" Jazz asked.

"Oh good." Valerie chuckled "I'm not the only one out of the loop here."

"Connecting the navigation to the map, so we can take the whole speeder into a portal, which will lead us right to Danny. Or close, at least." Tucker explains.

The Cerritos was currently at sub-light speed, situated in a nebula, where the magnetic collection system was filtering antimatter to refill their supply.

Danny, currently in human form, was sitting in his alcove, studying basic starfleet academy courses on his datapad. Since their displacement due to his arrival hadn't been too far, they had just reentered com-range with starfleet two days ago. As they did, the captain had officially enrolled him, even if it was remote learning for now.

He was once again trying to understand the computer science course, which was giving him a lot of trouble. Subspace mechanics was a breeze in comparison, and so was combat and tactical training. Ok, to be fair to computer science, history was even rougher.

He was however startled out of his learning, when the ship went on yellow alert, and his combadge requested:
"Crewmen Phantom, report to the bridge immediately."

A few phased through walls and decks later, he stuck his head inside the bridge doors.

"You requested my presence, captain Freeman?" Danny reported, as properly as he could. Military discipline was a bit of a learning experience, but he was getting the hang of it. Mostly. He thinks. The captain's eyeroll indicated otherwise. He was trying, ok?

"Just look at this. Magnify." the captain requested, as Danny took a look at the screen and the image enhances.

He can't hold in a gasp.

Freeman raises an eyebrow at his reaction.
"I'm guessing you know who that is then? Sensors picked up an ectoplasmic signature, so i figured i'd ask if you know anything about this vessel."

Danny, looking at the specter speeder and through it's window to see Sam, Tucker, Jazz and Valerie inside, replies:

"Yeah, i know who that is. Those are my friends."

Chapter Text

The first thing Jazz noticed after spotting what appeared to be an actual spaceship was the black blur that came from it, heading directly toward them.

The second thing was how the inside of the speeder suddenly got a bit chilly.

And, third, the firm hug her brother was enveloping her in.

"I'm so glad you're ok!" Danny and Jazz exclaimed at the same time.

After just a moment of hesitation, Sam and Tucker were joining in on the hug. Only Valerie was left, standing around awkwardly a couple steps off to the side.

"Dude, you're super cold." Tucker broke the moment, exiting the hug.

"Hey, it's not my fault i have an ice core, you know?"
Danny retorted, clearly not actually upset.

The rest of them also let go of one another.

"Danny?"

The halfa turned toward the uncharacteristically timid voice of Valerie.

"Yeah?" he prompted her.

"It really is you, isn't it. They told me. I.., I believe them. But it still didn't feel real until now. It still doesn't, really."

At that, Danny transforms back to a human, smiling softly. "It is real Val, it's me."

He walked over toward the huntress, finally enveloping her into a hug as well.

"It's just me." he reassured her. She's shaking from the realization, now that she isn't running on adrenaline anymore. In their scramble to find a way to get to Danny, she never had time to process the revelation properly, it seems. But now it's hitting her, Jazz noted.

Valerie feels all kinds of wrong. Why is Danny comforting her, she's the one who hunted him and broke up with him for ultimately no reason and now she's even freaking out and he has to comfort her. Why is he the one who has to comfort her, when she's done so much bad stuff to him?

Yet she can't bring herself to do anything but listen to his calming voice, and to feel his arms around her, and his hands rubbing her back.

The tone of a stranger's voice however, rips her out of her headspace.

"Crewman Phantom, report!" Sounds from Danny's chest. She gets out of the hug and takes her first real look at him.

He's wearing some sort of yellow uniform, with a badge attached to his chest. That's where the voice came from.

Danny taps it, then says: "Oh sorry, uh... everything's fine, there's no danger, captain. May i request a while with my friends?"

The badge, apparently a communicator, stays silent for a bit, before the same voice as before sighs, then says: "Permission granted, Phantom. But i expect a thorough report when you're back! Stand down yellow alert."

The explanation took him hours, literal hours. They are now all on the Cerritos, in a spare conference room. Due to the ectoplasmic coating on the specter speeder they didn't beam onto the ship, instead they had been given permission to dock it in the shuttle bay.

He winces at the faces of everyone after telling them his decision.

"What do you mean you don't want to come back?!" Tucker asks, incredulously.

"Danny, i get that your parents are the worst, but staying in a different dimension? What about us?" Sam adds.

"What, so i'm just supposed to pick up your slack in terms of ghost hunting while you're not there?" Valerie practically demands.

Only Jazz is suspiciously quiet.

"Can you?" she asks.

"Can i what?" Danny asks his sister, confused as to what she means. By the looks of it, the others have no clue either.

"Can you stay here without your obsession driving you crazy?" Jazz clarifies.

"From what you told us, you intend to study at the academy, and it's not like you can easily... protect people on a regular basis. Not on the scale that you'd need to."

Danny pauses. She's right, he shouldn't be able to. Yet...

"You know Jazz, now that you mention it, it hasn't acted up even once. Which is really weird, because you're right. There hasn't been any major danger in the time i'm here, but nothing. I actually feel like my obsession is being fed better then ever before, somehow? And it's not like my other powers are out of whack, i did actually have to shed some cold lately and everything else works fine too."

Jazz looks surprised. He can't blame her, now that she made him aware of it, it was really weird to him as well.

They both sit, contemplating this.

Then Jazz pipes up: "You know, i might have a theory."

"I'm listening Jazz." Danny said, as he motioned for her to go on.

"Maybe you have two obsessions, one from being a human and one from being a ghost."

"What, why would you even think..." Danny started, then paused to ponder this. His obsession was to protect those around him. But he only ever had that since he became a ghost. Did he have a human obsession? The only thing he was super into before the accident was spa... oh. Oh, that would actually make perfect sense.

"Jazz, you might be onto something."

Everyone else is just staring blankly at the siblings, increasingly confused looks on their faces.

"Guys, think, what is the one thing i was obsessed with before the accident?" Danny asks into the round.

He can see the pennies dropping one by one on each of his friends' faces, as they consider his question.

Tucker is the first one to respond, now grinning widely: "You and your space stuff. I guess this is pretty close to being an astronaut."

"It's even better then being an astronaut, Tuck. I can actually explore space, not just a little bit of our solar system that i could easily reach faster with my own powers. I actually get to be in space, full time. Exploring. No wonder my obsession feels fed like never before!"

"That decides it." Jazz announces, "If you're staying, then so am i. I'm not going back to Mom and Da... no, to the Fentons either. Screw them!"

"Wait really? What about college and..." "I can study here too." Jazz cuts him off. "There's no way i'm leaving you behind, little brother. Who else is going to make sure you don't do anything stupid?"

He laughs at the tease.

"Alright alright you made your point."

He then turns to his friends, to which he includes Valerie.

"I know it's not what you want to hear, but i'm not going back. But i promise i'll call. Well, i'll find a way to call. I'm sure once i'm solid on subspace tech, and with the help of all the stuff from the specter speeder, i can make a communicator, and a new portal too, eventually."

"And you guys, i know this is harsh, but... We shouldn't have to fight ghosts anyway. Look at us, we're still kids for goodness sake. When you get back, just destroy the portal, and go back to a semi normal childhood. Without the Fenton portal, i'm sure the few ghosts that manage to show up will be manageable." Jazz adds.

It takes another half an hour to convince his friends, but eventually they relent.

And another half an hour later, the situation is explained to captain Freeman, who just shakes her head as she allows Jazz to stay as well. And also that the specter speeder will be allowed to stay on board, for Danny to reconstruct his parents' technology from. Eventually.

"You better not forget us!" Valerie threatens the ghost boy.

"Yeah, or we'll break through the ghost zone and come to get your ectoplasmic ass, by sheer force of will if we have to!"
Sam adds, Tucker nodding in agreement, but without a comment.

Somehow, Danny doesn't look like he even doubts that.

Still, Valerie's heart feels a little empty as she holds on to the infi-map, now removed from the speeder.

When the other two have their hands on it as well, she requests: "Map, take the three of us to my room!"

When they arrive, the first thing she does is running into the corner where her trash can stands, and emptying her stomach.

Sam and Tucker look pretty green in the faces, but they seem to be able to hold it in.

"That was certainly a trip." she notes flatly, after her stomach has stopped protesting.

"It was not that bad last time." Sam states.

"But we didn't get pulled through alternate dimensions beside the ghost zone then." Tucker argues.

"I guess not. So, shouldn't we send the map back now?" Sam relents.

"You do remember we have to take one more trip, as much as i hate to say it, right?" Valerie reminds her.

"Yeah. The portal."

Once again, it's sad how easy it is to get into the Fenton's lab. Disabling the portal isn't as simple, but they have time. Luckily, the Fentons immediately rushed off once Tucker told them he'd seen a ghost at the other end of town. And after an hour of unscrewing screws and taking the thing apart, it's done.

One final trip with the infi-map back to Valerie's room, with the parts of the portal in tow, they are ready.

"Guess i'll do the honors." Valerie says, but looks at the other two, questioningly.

"Go ahead Val."

Tying the sack of parts to one part of the map, doubling the knot just to be sure, she requests: "Map, bring these parts to Danny."

As the map speeds off, Sam asks: "Hey, why did you do that? I thought we were just going to send the map back to Frostbite?"

"This way the Fentons will never get their hands on it again." Valerie responds.

"I put a copy of the blueprints in there too, by the way. Before wiping their databank clean. They're never gonna build another one either." Tucker adds.

So that was what he was doing while the girls were busy loosening the last few screws and packing up all the parts.

As the two friends of Danny leave, Valerie can only hold on to one thought.

"I really hope he does remember us. For his sake!" she murmurs under her breath.

Chapter Text

Jazz can barely recognize Danny at first.

He's studying? Willingly?!

It doesn't help that he has already acclimated to life in this advanced society a bit, while she is new here. Enrolling in starfleet isn't something Jazz is going to do lightly, but she is eager to learn new things too. The crew are way better than any teacher she had before, probably because they actually enjoy what they do, for the most part.

Her and Danny are now sitting together in a spare conference room, both busy with their datapads.

Danny is studying something called subspace mechanics, while she herself is reading up on the advances in psychology. Specifically, she's currently reading the original scripts of a man called Surak.

Jazz had seen and interacted with a few vulcans on board already, and was immediately fascinated by their incredible self control. So now, she's studying their teachings. She resolved to ask one of the vulcan crew for help in trying out meditation later.

Danny meanwhile, was procrastinating. He knew he should study his other courses, but subspace mechanics and warp field engineering were just too damn interesting to him. He's already in second semester materials for that course, despite only having been on the Cerritos for about a month and a half.

Even as a cadet, however, Danny had a duty roster to fulfill.

As her little brother made his way to engineering to realign the matter and antimatter injectors, or at least learn how to, she put her datapad aside and tried to meditate.

She sat on her knees, commanded: "Computer, dim the lights." and closed her eyes. As instructed by her research, she tried to imagine a stormy ocean that represented her mind.

But no matter how she tried, all she could seem to imagine when thinking about a conscious ocean were the green swirls of the ghost zone, ever shifting and moving.

"Whatever, that might work," she mumbled to herself.

Swirls kept on popping up, as Jazz tried to imagine a uniform solid flow, but they were becoming fewer and far between. She kept going for a while, imagining swirl after swirl fading out into simple laminar flow, and her breathing steadied.

She must have lost track of time, because as she reopened her eyes and commanded the lights to be turned up once again, she took a look at her datapad. Two hours had passed. Still, Jazz had never felt more centered. Those two hours were worth it.

If there was a mirror and if the lights were still out, she might have seen the slight green glint in her eyes.

Fascinating. Dilithium was a fascinating substance, that was immune to annihilation by antimatter. It was used to regulate warp reactors similar to how back in the day control rods were used to regulate nuclear reactors.

The way the warp reaction then energized the warp plasma which ran through the ship reminded Danny of his biology class.

"Isn't this a little like a circulation system? Instead of lungs providing oxygen to blood, the antimatter injectors supply energy to the warp plasma. The warp core pumps the plasma and the energy within throughout the ship and supplies all sorts of systems. Just like organs getting oxygenated by blood."

"Yeah, i guess that comparison is pretty apt." Billups admitted.

What Danny didn't say, was how it reminded him of ghost cores distributing energized ectoplasm throughout a ghost's form as well. Heh. They were even both called cores.

As Danny adjusted the injectors and checked the antimatter stream compression, Billups was impressed:

"Why, you will make a fine engineer in time, Phantom. You're already getting the hang of the engine this early in your training, impressive."

"It helps to have Rutherford constantly infodumping next to me, but thanks i guess." Danny replied, not sure how to take the compliment.

"No seriously, good work." Billups reassured Danny, then tapped on his com-badge: "Billups to the bridge, maintenance is done, we are ready for warp speeds at your discretion."

"Acknowledged. Engage manually, at warp 4."

Billups turned to Danny: "You want to do the honors?" he asked, gesturing to the injector controls.

"Really?"

"Sure."

Remembering protocol, Danny tapped his com-badge, and said: "Engaging at warp 4." and then tapped the control slider, dragging it up to warp 4.

With a sirring, the engine noises increased to an audible hum, and the gauges all read nominal. They were at warp. And Danny had been allowed to press the button.

He spent a little more time in engineering, asking questions about the engine and the plasma conduits wherever he could. Billups had to oversee a lot of people, so Danny had to contend with learning from another engineer.

Still though, learning from the starfleet academy courses and seeing a warp engine working live and in person were so different. When he eventually decided to leave, his head was swirling with new knowledge and ideas on how to maybe implement some of these principles for his ectoplasmic pet project.

Instead of running the high powered ectoplasm directly through a phase coil, maybe he could instead inject a stream of phased ectoplasm into a system that was already filled with normal ectoplasm. And then the stream would energize the rest of the ectoplasm. That way, just like the warp reactor, the input energy could be turned off, and the phase emitters only had to energize the small stream of injected ectoplasm, instead of the whole circulation of it. No wonder their previous tests had fried an emitter on the shuttle.

Unfortunately, when they had gotten back from that shuttle test a few weeks ago, it turned out that a lot of the systems that carried ectoplasm, but especially the phase coils that energized it, had deteriorated from even that short usage. Microfractures, misalignment of the coils, slight ectoplasmic contamination, you name it.

The only solution was to keep studying and design a better ecto-engine, from the ground up this time.

2 years later

The progress Danny had made, looking back on the last two years, was immense. But compared to Jazz, it almost paled.

After the first few sessions of meditation, Jazz was found to have psychic abilities. After medical examination, it turned out that there was permanent ectoplasm in her system, that gave her access to telepathic abilities. Some of her cells were mutated and naturally produced ectoplasm, but nothing was a health hazard, so she kept it this way.

As her mental control had sharply increased through meditation, and due to her prior expertise in that field, she had quickly replaced Migleemo as the ship's counselor, much to the avian's chagrin.

While Danny had passed all his courses for starfleet academy, he especially excelled in engineering. Which was why today, at the official ceremony back on earth, he was wearing a yellow uniform.

Jazz was wearing a blue uniform, as she too had decided to join starfleet.

But in the last two years, Jazz had had much more of an impact on the people around her than Danny ever thought possible.

Mariner, Tendi and Rutherford all had issues, which she had detected swiftly. While apprehensive at first, all three of them had eventually agreed to be counseled by her.

With great success.

Tendi was now much more self assured, her former insecurities not entirely gone, but she was no longer obsessed with people not liking her, and she confidently stated her opinion when it was appropriate.

Rutherford had suffered from a split personality syndrome, but with a little psychic help and overshadowing, the old Rutherford had been uploaded into a ship computer simulation, where he could design and test engines and vessels to his heart's content.

And Mariner... Mariner finally got over her fear of responsibility. She had been a challenge, but eventually, and with healthy coping mechanisms, Jazz had coached her into a position where she no longer denied herself to take responsibility. She was still on the more reckless side, but as the three pips on her uniform signaled, she didn't hide from responsibility any longer.

Tendi and Rutherford had also been promoted, to lieutennant-commander and lieutennant, respectively. And today was the day that her and Danny would officially be starfleet officers as well.

"Top of her class, with honors in psychology, we welcome Jazz into our ranks. She has already proven herself quite the capable ship's counselor, which is why we are assigning her the rank of lieutenant." the Admiral proudly proclaimed, as he opened the wooden crate and took out two pips, fastening them on Jazz's uniform.

The crowd applauded.

"Take your seat, lieutenant Jazz." She did.

"We also welcome our first halfa officer, Phantom. He has graduated with honors in subspace mechanics, and has already pioneered research into ectoplasmic technology, resulting in a new class of starship to be designed and built."

Taking out a single pip, he attached it to Danny's yellow uniform.

"You may also take your seat, Ensign Phantom."

Danny nodded, then took his seat next to his sister.

"Why did you get to be a lieutenant right away and i'm just an ensign? I designed a whole new drive and engine that never even runs out of fuel for ancients sake!" Danny asked her.

She rolled her eyes. "Maybe it has something to do with the constant pranks you pulled?"

"It's not my fault people here are so easy to prank!"

The raised eyebrow from Jazz told him otherwise.

"Ok, ok, i see your point." He pauses. "Ah whatever, it was worth it."

Jazz could only shake her head. She was pretty sure starfleet would have kicked him out had he not been the one to design this new engine.

Surprisingly, the Admiral was not done yet.

"As said before, the research into ectoplasmic technology, pioneered by Ensign Phantom, has actually produced a new ship class. And due to exemplary conduct as well as other factors, we have decided to assign command of it to Beckett Mariner."

Said commander's jaw dropped at this revelation.

"Wait what, i get to command a ship?!" Mariner exclaimed.

"Please step up to the podium." the Admiral calmly requested.

Gathering herself, Mariner stood and walked toward the plattform.

The Admiral continued: "As we all know, any new ship needs a captain."

He pulled out a pip, and attached it to Mariner's uniform.

"Therefore, should you accept, starfleet command has decided to assign you to the prototype and raise you into the rank of captain."

Mariner had to take a breath first, but then collected herself:

"I accept this assignment. I won't let you down."

"Good. Then you may choose your senior staff over the next month.

The ship will leave dry dock in 6 months. Familiarize yourself and your future crew with it, once you have chosen them.

Dismissed."

The group of friends were walking back toward the compound which they had been calling home for a month now, since returning the Cerritos to earth.

"Congratulations on the promotion by the way, captain!" Tendi cheered, saluting Mariner.

"Oh shut up Tendi."

"Is that an order?" the orion bit back, standing at attention.

"At ease Tendi, or i might rethink my decision of offering you the spot of chief medical officer."

"On that note, Mariner, may i suggest a few... additions to the crew?" Danny requested.

"Who're you thinking of? I mean i think you all know that Rutherford and Jazz and you are coming, right? Oh, and i already have someone in mind for first officer."

"Come to mine and Jazz's lab, you'll see."

In the short time Danny was back on earth, starfleet had assigned him a laboratory to work on various ectoplasmic projects in.

They were making their way over to it, and could now see what Danny had been on about. In the back corner, there was a metallic contraption with a swirl of green in the middle.

In the corner next to it, there floated the specter speeder, with it's upgrades that were done during the flight back to earth.

"Is that the portal you told me about?"

"Yup."

"So are you going to get to your fr..?"

"Yes, obviously, who else did you think i was talking about? I did promise them i'd come back to visit, after all."

Only a couple minutes later, they were all in the specter speeder and looking outside, to see the green swirls of the ghost zone.

"I have no idea where we are." Danny said. "Or at least i wouldn't if we hadn't found a way to navigate the zone. Ah, the wonders of advanced starfleet computers."

"So, where exactly are we going and how are you gonna get to your friends without a portal on their side?"

"We're going to a part of the zone that i'm familiar with. Specifically, the far frozen. I'm sure Frostbite will help us." Danny paused and contemplated something. "You know, if i had access to the ecto engine i designed, i could rig up a portal projector through the main deflector easy peasy. I don't, though, so Frostbite it is, for now."

They had been traveling for a while now, the computer telling them that they had crossed one third of the required distance. The ghost zone wasn't exactly linear with it's distance, so it wasn't like they had to travel light years or anything, but it was still quite a journey.

Suddenly, Jazz piped up: "Hey, do you think Vlad still has his portal running?"

This gave Danny pause. "I don't know, but he very well might. Don't care though, i'm not taking his portal that's for sure. Fruitloop is one of the last people i care to see right now."

As they arrived, however, it turned out that the existence of Vlad's portal came up. Just not in the way either sibling would have thought.

The console, which had been updated to LCARS standards, was beeping.

"We are being hailed? I think." Tendi informed them. "It's on an ectoplasmic frequency though, not a subspace one."

Danny and Jazz shared a look. "Should we respond?" Mariner asked them. She might be the ranking officer here, but this wasn't her turf. "Uh, yeah go ahead. Pretty sure Vlad never developed Fenton Phones or anything similar."

"It's audio only. Patching it through."

"TF calling the ghost zone vessel. Identify yourself." a distorted voice sounded from the speakers.

Everyone was looking at Danny, who grinned, pushing the console to respond:

"You're still going by that alias? Damn dude, cringe."

Tucker turned to Sam and Valerie, sighing, but happy. He lifted one headphone from his ear, then stated: "Yup, it's him. He hasn't seen me in two years, and the first thing he does is call me cringe!"

Sam also couldn't help but smile. Valerie's face was more of a smirk, as she taunted: "He's not wrong though. You introduced yourself as TF, that's on you."

"I had to use something that would only make sense to him, ok?" Tucker tried to defend himself.

"Yeah yeah, still cringe though, now patch him through already, Tuck!" Sam urged him. So he did.

"Hey Danny! It's good to hear your voice again."
"Agreed."
"Yeah dude, we missed you!"
Sam, Tucker and Valerie said, respectively.

"And so did i!" a fourth voice exclaimed.

"Danielle?!" Danny asked, surprised to hear his cousin's voice.

"Actually, i go by Ellie now! It got kinda confusing with your name and my name after a while."

Danny and Jazz broke out in laughter. "Yeah, i guess it would." Jazz noted after catching her breath.

"So, how are you guys even calling us right now?" Danny asked.

"Long story." Valerie deflected. "Meet us at the ghost portal, so we can catch up."

"What ghost portal, i thought you dismantled it?" Danny asked, worriedly. Had the Fentons built another one? And if so, why were his friends operating it? Were they in danger?

"No, not that one, we're using Vlad's old one. A lot has changed since you left, it's easier to explain when you get here."

Strangely, that made Danny worry less. Huh. Still a little worried though, since...

"Before we do, what's up with Fruitloop? Are you guys safe?"

Silence.

"Guys?"

"Yeah yeah, we're safe. Just... Vlad is a bit of a sore topic."

The starfleet crew could hear faint sobbing from the other end of the line, and Valerie making shushing noises.

"Is that Ellie crying?" Jazz asks under her breath.

Wide eyed, Danny confirms: "I think so. Ok guys, we're coming."

"Altering heading to the signal source." Rutherford noted.

The rest of the speeder falls into silence.

As the purple swirl of ectoplasm comes into view, the mood in the specter speeder is somber. Nobody is saying a word, but everyone looks a little worried, most of all Jazz.

They get out of the speeder, Danny assuring them that the Ghost Zone is safe for humans. Then, one by one, they step or float through the portal.

Arriving on the other side, they are greeted with the sight of Vlad's secret lab. But there are a few key changes.

First of all, there is no dissection table, nor do there appear to be any of the cloning tubes. Replacing them, there is what looks like a radio station.

And standing in the midst of the room, there are Valerie, Sam, Tucker and Ellie.

A heartfelt couple of hugs and a few introductions later, they all sit down on the workbenches and chairs strewn around the lab. Valerie begins the story, while Ellie is snuggling up to her cousin:

"After you left, none of us really knew what to do besides find you. So when we did, but then you decided to stay, we were a bit restless. A few days later, Vlad found out that you were gone, and he went looking around for you. When he finally asked the Fentons where their son was, they both told him they didn't have a son. When he clarified he meant you, Danny, they flipped out and cursed about the 'putrid sack of ectoplasm that had fooled them for so long'. Their words, not mine. Anyway, the realization that you were gone and that he couldn't get you or Maddie back, it broke him. Sam and Tuck explained obsessions to me, so i assume that was his. And then it was ripped away from him. He got so desperate that he even came to us for help. And... promise you won't get mad?"

"I won't." Danny assured.

"Well," Valerie continued, "he was in such a horrid state that we took pity on him and told him that you were away in another dimension, and that you weren't coming back anytime soon. He was covered in ecto-acne at the time, and he was in immense pain. He was talking in a fever, you see? It got so bad that he even revealed his half ghost status to us eventually. I don't think he even registered it anymore, when we told him that we knew already. He didn't last much longer after that. Just hours before he died, he was lucid one more time, just enough to write his will and apologize for everything he had done. He..." Valerie had to pause and wipe a tear from her eye, "He died in tears over what he had done, and decided Ellie should inherit everything, as she was the last thing he had left of you, Danny.

His last words were: 'I am sorry, Daniel. Forgive me.'"

Both Danny and Jazz were in tears by now.

"He died from an unfulfilled obsession. I can't imagine how painful that must have been." Danny whispered, sobbing.

Jazz didn't speak, she only wrapped her arms around her brother, and hugged him tightly.

After a few minutes, when the tears had mostly dried, Valerie cleared her throat, and continued:

"Ellie didn't take it well, surprisingly. As horrible as he had been to her, he was her father figure, and you weren't there to comfort her either. It was hard for her to adapt to being the heir to such a vast fortune alone, so she did what Vlad tried: Asking us three for help. Of course, we did help. Once we were out of highschool, we decided that, as involved in ghost stuff we were, normal careers were out of the question. And since Ellie needed help, and had a lot of dough now, it was only natural we formed a living arrangement. The four of us live here now, in the mansion. Despite the lack of a ghost portal, well, besides Vlad's, there were still a couple of ghosts coming through natural portals and causing trouble. So we've been taking care of it. We actually became a little famous, at least enough so that the GIW has stayed off our backs so far. Tucker and Sam managed to sway public opinions on you and ghosts in general quite a bit in the last two years. The wonders of having money, tech support and an experienced activist on your side i suppose," Valerie concluded.

"Anyway, we're always monitoring the ghost zone through the portal, for any suspicious activity. When about an hour ago we picked up the signal of the specter speeder, we had to make sure it was you steering it. And lo and behold it was, and here you are."

"But enough about us, what have you been up to these past two years man?" Tucker asked.

Hoo boy, Danny thought.

A lot.

A lot happened in the last two years.

Well, might as well get started.

"Get comfy, my story isn't exactly short either. So, ...."

Chapter Text

The ecto engine was a marvel of technology. Combining concepts of warp engines, ectoplasmic power cells, the ghost portal, and even quantum slipstream drive, among other things.

There were many parallels to a regular starship engine and power configuration, but also some key differences. First of all, like a warp core, there was a centralized engine that would pump the energy carrying substance throughout the ship. Where a warp core used warp plasm for this, the ecto engine pumped energized ectoplasm. There were injectors, and separate engines, just like a warp core too.

However, both were very different from a warp reactor. Where a warp reaction relied on matter and antimatter being injected into the warp core in order to energize the plasm, the ecto engine injected two phased ectoplasm beams into the engine, which on contact energized the ectoplasm around them, prompting it into drawing more from the ghost zone. Danny had dubbed those two beams the ecto ignition streams, and the rest of the circulation was named the drive ectoplasm. The ignition beams had been derived from the ecto-dejecto, which Danny already knew had that boosting effect on ectoplasm. Despite the fact that this made the engine both more adjustable and able to output more power, there was still something missing: the reaction regulator.

An equivalent to dilithium, something that would suppress and control the ecto reaction, needed to be found. Eventually, upon scanning an asteroid field specifically for ectoplasmic signatures, the Cerritos had found something that deflected their scanning beams.

Upon investigation, the crew discovered a new material which was immune to most ghost powers, and that dampened the ecto-replenishment reaction.

It was dubbed ectoranium, and after a lot of trials it was configured like a dilithium matrix, to regulate the ecto engine. If the injectors ever jammed and accidentally pumped the drive ectoplasm produced for the other systems directly back into the engine, the ectoranium matrix would instantly stop the reaction.

The matrix also took a lot of material strain away from the hardware components, and allowed for higher energization levels without impacting the power conduits. Speaking of which, these had to be constructed from an ectophobic material, as not to be worn out or leak ectoplasm. But seeing as even the Fentons had managed to produce ectophobic material easily, it didn't take long to figure out that it was simply an alloy of ectoplasmic goo with whatever material was needed to be ecto-proofed, a few parts of goo per million of the material were sufficient to make it ectophobic.

There was an advanced version of an ecto-filtrator, also made from ectoranium, which drew a little of the supplied drive ectoplasm, filtered it clean, then reconfigured and stored it up to later be used for the ignition streams. It could also be reconfigured to produce a variety of different ectoplasmic compounds as well, not just ecto-dejecto.

The computer systems and other electronics ran on ecto converters, which used up the drive ectoplasm to power themselves. This was another difference to warp engines, the fact that the drive plasm actually got used up.

However, since the engine was able to also produce more drive ectoplasm, as opposed to only energizing it, this was a non-issue.

All of these engineering hurdles however, while difficult to overcome, were paling in comparison to the method of propulsion though.

It was genius. Truly genius.

The idea had started when Danny had asked if there were other forms of faster-than-light travel besides warp. To his surprise, Rutherford's answer had been a resounding yes.

The next days afterwards, Danny had learned about borg transwarp, coaxial warp, xindi subspace corridors and, finally, the quantum slipstream drive.

The way the latter worked, and the fact it had already been realized with starfleet tech in limited capacity, was intriguing. It projected a beam that would open a breach into the quantum slipstream realm, a dimension where travel at superluminal speeds relative to regular space was possible.

The fact that it worked was simply due to the quantum slipstream realm being quite a bit more malleable compared to regular spacetime. A dimension of more malleable, kind of flowy characteristics? Sounded an awful lot like the ghost zone to Danny. He told Rutherford as much, and together they slaved over understanding the equations of both the slipstream as well as the ghost portal of Danny's.

In the end, they concluded that the general concept should absolutely work with ectoplasm, they even confirmed with a few senior science officers, that their math checked out.

So engine tests were conducted with the already a little beat up shuttlepod. It's main deflector wasn't the most powerful, so the projected ectoplasm beam that was supposed to make the vessel jump to a slipstream was pretty weak too. Many trials and fails later, they finally had the idea to direct the ectoplasm that was supposed to make them go to slipstream around the shuttle with the help of emitters all over the hull. The emitters sent out more ectoplasm in a ring around the vessel's midsection, which acted as a guiding system for the slipstream ectoplasm. This combination of opening the slipstream in front, then guiding it around themself should do the trick.

Now having designed an engine with guiding and slipping ectoplasm, as Danny dubbed them, it was go time.

And go they did, their first successful ecto-slipstream jump accelerated the shuttlepod to an equivalent speed of warp 2.4, all without any usage of antimatter.

Further improvements to the stream profile and the guidance emitters, which doubled as tractorbeam- and/or shield emitters when outside of slipstream velocities, got the cruising speed up to warp 4.2, with warp 6.9 being the maximum.

However, it was getting pretty clear that this shuttle was about to fall apart, and also that it's profile, lack of a powerful main deflector to open a slipstream, as well as it's rugged and asymmetrically placed emitters weren't helping the efficiency in the slightest.

Concluding that the idea itself was solid, Danny spent a lot of time together with Rutherford, designing a new class of ship that would optimize and utilize this ecto-slipstream drive.

He was shocked when after sending the final draft, starfleet almost instantly approved his design and went straight to construction. They hadn't even arrived back on earth yet, or shown anyone there their progress!

Apparently though, the prospect of a fully renewable fuel source that could achieve such speeds with an experimental drive was very appealing to starfleet command.

The ship they designed was similar in shape to a vulcan vessel, with the trademark ring around the middle, which here served the purpose of emitting the guiding ectoplasm, as well as tractor beams or shields when out of slipstream. Spectre shields, to be precise. Unlike a vulcan vessel however, the rest of the hull was ripped straight from a nova class starship. Just, where the nacelles would usually be, there was the slipstream ring. And aft of the ring, there was a shuttle bay as well as a hefty tail turbine manifold for sub-light speeds. The main deflector was repurposed into purely opening the slipstream, while the secondary deflector, a feature previously unique to the nova class, could be used for various other purposes. It didn't need to deflect particles at high speeds, as the ectoplasm wake from the slipstream already did so.

The theoretical specs were a sight to behold:

The primary hull 200m in length, 70m in height, 120 in width, and with 9 decks. It was to be equipped with 10 ectoplasm emitter banks for the phantom phasers, and it had 2 port and 2 aft torpedo launch bays, which were to be outfitted with standard photon torpedoes.

The secondary hull, which consisted of only the slipstream ring, the ecto engine and a couple other stations, was detachable and had a secondary bridge, just as the galaxy class had. The ring had a diameter of 150m and 36 customizable ectoplasmic emitter banks.

The estimated speeds it could achieve were:

1/3rd the speed of light with the tail turbines, as opposed to 1/4 c, which would be full impulse;

a slipstream cruising speed equivalent to warp 9.9;

and a maximum speed equivalent to warp 9.99, sustainable for only a few hours at a time, before the ectoranium matrix would fall behind on the production of enough ecto-dejecto to keep the engine at that power level.

Since these numbers with their decimal points were starting to get a little ridiculous to Danny, he decided to introduce a new naming convention for high warp factors. He would designate warp 9.9 as transwarp 1, and each 9 after the decimal point for the warp factor, would be one higher factor on the transwarp scale.

Therefore, his ship design had a cruising speed of transwarp 1, with a maximum speed of transwarp 2. Of course, this meant that warp 9 was technically called transwarp 0, and lower warp speeds went into the negatives, but if they were ever needed, he would just call them by their warp factors instead, even though his ship design technically didn't even have a warp drive.

Though, one set of features which Danny had proposed, were denied by starfleet command. And that were the invisibility and intangibility modes, which could have been realized by laying a network of power conduits near the hull, that would distribute specially phased ectoplasm to turn the surrounding materials invisible and/or intangible.

He was informed that, while very intriguing technology, it's application would violate the treaty of Algeron, which the federation had with the Romulan Star Empire, as it banned any use of military grade cloaking technology on the side of the federation. Since intangible vessels would not show up on scans, and invisible ones could not be seen visually, the implementation of these proposed systems would break their agreement and could potentially cause a war.

Later that day, though, another starfleet transmission came in on a securely encrypted channel, and asked to send the blueprints for this technology over, so it could be archived for re-examination should the treaty ever be annulled in the future.

For all the advancements and technological marvels of this new design, it did have a couple flaws. Firstly, it could neither put up shields nor fire any weapons at slipstream, as the ring emitters were occupied with providing the guiding ectoplasm, and weapons fire would disrupt the slipstream as well.

Secondly, the pure reliance on ectoplasmic power meant that there was no transporter of any kind on board, however the ship had a shuttle complement of 24 to alleviate this flaw.

A couple of food replicators were barely able to run on ecto converter supplied power, but they were by no means industrial grade, so spare parts could not be fabricated on board. This also meant that a hydroponics bay was added to alleviate the food requirements.

Handheld phasers weren't yet ectoplasmic either, as the ecto powercell was deemed too unstable, and the ecto engine could not be miniaturized to that degree, so they were still using nadion particles for now. However, the prospect of switching to pre-produced and purified ectoplasm instead of nadions as the carrier particles was up for debate. Sure, that way the phasers would still need to be reloaded on occasion, just like the nadion based ones, but purified ectoplasm could be configured to many more applicable uses than nadions could. And starfleet had always been about multipurpose applications, so an upgrade in the future was fairly likely to happen.

Actually, this was Danny's current project, figuring out how to configure ectoplasm beams in different ways to produce different effects. Even the Fenton's weapons had been able to produce electrifying, freezing, purely energized and gooified ectoplasm weaponry quite easily, so with starfleet emitters and phase coils, Danny was sure he could find many, many more modes into which to configure the phasers. Even nadion phasers could already be set to stun, kill, vaporize, heat objects, or be released in a wide angle beam. Imagine phasers that could, on top of all that, also cool things, supply electric power, glue things together temporarily and who knew what else.

He had been talking about this and other things for literal hours now, before Danny even realized how much he was infodumping on his friends.

"Ok, so let me get this straight..." Tucker began, "You have been spending all this time developing ecto tech, Jazz has become a psychic and works as a counselor now, and these guys are your colleagues and soon to be flying the spaceship you designed?"

"Yeah, pretty much." Mariner answered in place of Danny.

"That's cool and all, but if you were gonna do that, why exactly did you come? Not that we're not happy to see you, but why not earlier? Why now?" Sam questioned.

"First of all, i promised i'd come visit you guys, didn't i?" Danny began, only to be interrupted by Rutherford: "Well, captain Mariner has to choose her crew complement, specifically the senior officers. And Danny said he had a suggestion."

"You're here to recruit us?" Valerie realized.

"To offer you a spot, if it's ok with the captain." Jazz clarified.

"It is if they're qualified, why did you think i went along with this?" Mariner stopped their worries, "so who did you have in mind for what? I do trust your judgement, Danny, even if you can be a pain in the butt sometimes."

"Well, we have a chief medical officer, Tendi, also a chief engineer, Rutherford, i'm guessing you were gonna choose that Boimler guy you talked about sometimes as your first officer, and obviously Jazz is gonna be ship counselor. If i recall correctly, that leaves the senior science, tactical and/or security officers, as well as the helmsman.

I admit they don't have the expertise yet, but i can assure you that Val is a demon in battle and Tuck is a computer whiz who definitely wouldn't have struggled as much with that course at the academy as i did. So they would make great additions to security and science, i believe. Sam and Ellie are more well rounded, though Ellie is an explorer at heart. I would request you offer them a spot too, but i can understand if you don't."

"Oh please, anything to get out of this mansion!" Ellie begged.

"It would for sure piss off my parents. Intriguing prospect." Sam mused. "But i'm not gonna leave Ellie alone, we're a package deal. Either offer us both a spot or neither."

"You're right by the way, i was going to get Boims as my second in command, last time i checked the starfleet records he actually resigned his commission on the Titan. Something about a transporter accident and stress?

Anyway, as cool as i'm sure your friends are, i'm gonna have to nope that, sorry." Mariner decided.

"But..." Danny began, only to be interrupted by Mariner once more.

"Ahbabab, i don't want to hear it. Look, you said yourself they don't have experience, i'm not gonna make them senior officers, no matter how promising i'm sure they are. Also, don't you guys have to take care of your ghost problems in this place, or did i get that wrong?"

The faces of the addressed fell.

"Yeah, i guess we do." Valerie finally admitted, after a long pause.

Sighs of acceptance were had, as the quartet of friends realized they weren't going to be able to come.

"But can we at least set up some kind of long-term communication?" Sam requested. "I don't want to wait another two years until i can speak to you again!"

That made Danny smile. "This is actually the second reason i'm here. I have some communicators i built myself on the other side. I could bring them over. They were inspired by Fenton Phones, but they're subspace based. Normally, subspace communications wouldn't make it through the ghost zone interference into a parallel dimension, but thanks to the Fenton Phones i managed to filter out the spectral noise and compensate for it.

That would be starfleet's first ever interdimensional communications array. Though, i have to swear all of you to secrecy, you can't tell anyone about this. Prime directive, you guys are only exempt because you're already involved in interdimensional travel, but we're not allowed to make contact with a species that hasn't developed a method of faster-than-light travel. Or with the past, though technically that falls under the temporal prime directive. But seeing as this seems to be an alternate universe that's just very similar, i don't think that one applies here."

"It doesn't." Mariner confirmed.

"But since i'm not gonna take you with, i have an alternate proposal of cooperation we could establish." the freshly promoted Captain continued.

"You do?" Danny asked.

"We're listening." Sam prompted her to go on.

"Starfleet studies pre-warp societies as part of it's exploratory mission. So if you guys could use the com-array to transmit all kinds of data you have on this world and it's inhabitants, that would probably make some anthropologists over at the historical division real happy. And it'd be a good explanation as to why the hell we have a permanent com-setup with an alternate dimension. Because i can already see the Admirals getting on my back for this, unless we find a damn good reason."

Mariner's glance aside made Danny feel small already.

He hadn't really thought this through to the end. He just wanted to be able to call his friends.

"I guess we could do that. Right guys?" Tucker said, looking for support.

"If that's the price to pay for us to call Danny, so be it." Sam halfheartedly agreed.

"Sure, why not. I'm guessing you want some data on the Ghost zone and it's inhabitants too?" Valerie said.

"I can help with that! I have a couple of friends in the zone, i'm sure they'd help." Ellie joined in excitedly.

"Good, then it is decided. Permission granted, Ensign Phantom." Mariner authorized, while at the same time Danny asked his (not actually) cousin:

"Like who?"

"Frostbite, Ghostwriter, Pandora, CW, though getting anything out of him is unlikely, oh and Ember and Youngblood, of course." Ellie casually stated.

"Excuse me, Ember and Youngblood?!" Danny did a double take.

"Long story." Sam cut him off. "But Ellie's right, they're friendly now. Gosh, so much has happened. But i guess we can talk about that on the phone now."

"Communicator, but yeah. We're gonna come back in a couple days with the rest of the equipment you'll need. If we get clearance from starfleet command, that is. Wish us luck."

"Seriously? You're telling me this now? After you've gone there?"

"Sorry dad." Mariner apologized.

It wasn't like she knew about it before going herself. Her idea had been a spur of the moment kind of thing. 'Half baked and dangerous, breaking starfleet code and totally pissing her off,' as her mom would have put it.

The admiral pinched the bridge of his nose, then relented: "You're probably right though, the anthropology department would jump at this opportunity. Permission granted, but please check in with me beforehand next time you pull something like this?"

"Yes sir! Thank you sir. I will." Mariner saluted.

Chapter Text

Top down view:

Side on view: (please ignore the terrible frontal view in the top right)

Chapter Text

First i want to say, that this was not an easy decision on my part.

However, now that Lower Decks season 3 has aired and added so much characterization to the characters, i can no longer write these same characters the way i have been in good conscience.

The concept of the USS Ghost NX 3000 is still haunting my head (heh) and i am still invested in the Danny Phantom and general Star Trek side of this fic.

But i just can't see myself continuing the narrative with the Lower Decks cast, nor do i want to.

Therefore i am shuttering this fic.

I may come back with headcanon dumps for the ship, it's systems and/or adventures a no-name crew would go on it with.

However, it won't be the Lower Decks Crew, and it won't happen in this fic. This fic, though cut short at an admittedly awkward time, is over.

Sorry to everyone who was invested in it.

But this is how it'll be.