Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

 Skulker flew through the Ghost Zone as fast as he could, his damaged jet pack set to its top speed and concentrated on getting back safely to his island. He didn’t want to give anyone the opportunity to lay eyes on him in his current state. While injuries inflicted by Danny Phantom were now a common and expected sight the closer one got to the Fenton ghost portal – and were sometimes even admired as signs of bravery –  the battle scars the hunter brought home with him today felt far too humiliating to show this time around.

 The ghost child had left several dents in his armour: two in his stomach and back, his shoulder gear and jet pack had been all but torn off, and the upper right side of his face had been bashed in, giving him the cyborg equivalent of a black eye with how much his eyelid was twitching. Despite this, they really didn’t seem so bad compared to previous encounters. He hadn’t lost any body parts like his hands or his head, nor was separated from his suit at any point during the fight. It was the context behind these ones that made Skulker fume.

 He had spent days planning this particular trap. He ordinarily would have chalked his loss up as catching the boy on the wrong day before a stressful test at school or something along those lines. He could also cope with a beating every now and then to give him something active to do afterwards while he mused on his mistakes. But this one should have been fool-proof, one that could withstand Danny’s worst bouts of hormonal anger, not to mention all executed without the use of live bait. Apparently not, and Skulker was taking this personally.

 When he got back to his island, Skulker deactivated his now spluttering jet pack once he was confident that he was fully shielded by the tops of the trees. Opting to walk the rest of the way, he scooped up a small stack of papers that had gathered on the ground by his lair entrance during his absence. The last thing he needed on such a rotten day was junk mail. Nevertheless, it made for some colourful kindling for his fireplace.

 Before going to his workshop, Skulker took a detour through his front room to dispose of the mess. The rustic room was decorated by the many, many trophies he had acquired throughout his afterlife, yet his gaze was focussed on the blank space on the wall just above the mantel, which only served to make his failure sting all the more. The spot of the undecorated area would sometimes change to the floor or even another room, but no matter where it was, he was determined to fill it with that boy’s pelt someday.

 One by one, he tossed the useless pieces of paper into the flames. These included a few updated wanted posters with bounties too small in value to care about, a regular self-publication from the Ghost Writer filled with more flowery language than necessary, and a couple of sealed envelopes that produced disturbing, high-pitched screaming noises when they burned.

 The last one nearly suffered the same fate, but a curious glance at it caused the hunter to stop. At the very bottom of the pile was a small pamphlet that one might find at a doctor’s office. It was different at least, and made Skulker raise the eyebrow on the undamaged side of his face. 

 The word “Vessels” was printed at the top in bright yellow letters. While it was unclear what it was advertising at first, it looked to be some sort of a human skin suit that hid a ghost's natural glow and appearance.

 How insulting! What kind of ghost in the right mind would actively want to look that human? Skulker couldn’t care less about mortal bystanders so long as they didn’t interfere with his work, so blending in with the masses in the living world was never something that had crossed his mind.

 Still, he continued to humour the ridiculous publication and skim-read the rest, as it threw around selling points such as “natural skin tones”, “authentic bruising” and “synthesised heartbeat”. But then a couple of phrases caught his eye: “Alternative stealth method! Slip by a keen eye!”

 Stealth. That had been his main problem with Phantom lately. A ghost’s ability to turn invisible was barely effective around other ghosts, plus that tricky ghost sense of his made it all the more difficult to sneak up on him from behind for a satisfying finishing blow. Having access to all the greatest hunting equipment in the world didn’t matter if the prey could see it coming.

 The more the hunter thought about it, the more he could see the appeal of this “vessel” being advertised and potentially using it in a new and better plan to trap the ghost boy, one that he wouldn't expect from Skulker at all.

 Skulker flicked to the back of the pamphlet where a map to the supplier was drawn up. It appeared to be a pop-up establishment set up not too far away from his island. He put it to one side. Perhaps after he’d tuned his body up and ironed out all the dents, he would pay them a visit. He had to make sure the sizeable one in his head wasn’t somehow affecting his common sense after all.

 Besides, if it was all a ruse, he had plenty of built-in ways to express his frustration.

Chapter Text

 Danny was pretty sure he didn’t need glasses (not at this stage in his life anyway), and it may have been overcast that morning, but it definitely wasn’t cold enough to naturally see his own breath nor feel a chill down his spine. So why could he sense a ghost right now but not spot a trace of one?

 He had decided to fly to school today instead of taking the bus, which he usually did to save time. In this case, it was only making him waste more of it.

 His sense always went off when they were in the immediate vicinity. Ghosts could still see each other somewhat when they turned invisible, including himself, so if he couldn’t make out anything in the open, they were probably hiding inside of something.

 After quickly phasing through the surrounding buildings, cars and mailboxes, the half-ghost confirmed that they weren’t in an object, but his sense continued to pester him.

 He then weighed the option of a last-second possession. He’d got better at recognising the signs of your average last-minute overshadowing: strangely coloured eyes, ill-fitting voices to the respective victim, the occasional ghostly aura and just all-around suspicious or abnormal behaviour. Keeping all these traits in mind, Danny scanned the area for any of them currently present in the public.

 Nope. Just regular people walking around, not causing any ruckus.

 Danny took to the sky again, and decided to wait a couple more minutes for whatever it was he was still sensing to make a move, but the peace and quiet continued and puzzled him further. The spirits of Amity Park were usually out and proud with their hauntings, so why couldn’t he find this ghost that kept giving him the chills?

 He looked at the civilians walking below him, then at the road leading to Casper High, and groaned in agitation. If he spent any more time in one place worrying about a single ghost he wasn’t able to spot, he’d be late to class yet again. He struggled enough with balancing his ‘normal’ life with his self-appointed goal of being the city’s best defender against ghosts. If he could prevent an interference from one from affecting the other, he’d consider that a major accomplishment. Thus, Danny continued his flight to school.

 It wasn’t until lunch had ended that he decided to bring the incident up to his friends. He, Tucker and Sam were getting their books from their lockers for next period. Their conversation started off casually enough, discussing that morning’s events.

 “Seriously, Sam. I swear I thought Ms. Tetslaff was gonna pop a blood vessel from the way you turned down her offer to join the track team.”

 “What can I say, Tucker? It’s not my crowd. Besides, I don’t wanna have the same special treatment the jocks get just ‘cause I can run around in a circle without collapsing. What do you think, Danny?”

 “Yeah, um...guys,” Danny mumbled, only half paying attention to what was just said, “I was wondering...do you think a half-ghost’s powers can wear off?”

 His friends both stared at him, baffled by his unexpected question.

 “Well that’s a major change of subject!” Sam remarked.

 “Sorry,” he replied softly, not wanting their talk to get too loud. “It’s just that my ghost sense has started triggering when I can’t find any ghosts nearby.”

 “Nothing’s happening now, so I guess we’re safe here,” Tucker shrugged after taking a quick glance around, hoping not to tempt fate.

 “I can normally see hints of ghosts when they’re close, even when they’ve turned invisible. Now I’m not seeing anything.”

 “I don’t see why that’d mean your powers are going away if only one’s acting weird,” Tucker tapped his chin in thought. “What if they suddenly hid in someone's body when they spotted you?”

 Danny shook his head.

 “Whether I’m Phantom or Fenton, nobody's acted weirdly enough for me to suspect that they’re being overshadowed.”

 “Like Tuck said, that doesn’t mean your powers are the problem. So what if ghosts have gotten better at hiding? You’ll get through it. If you’re that worried, then maybe we could start taking a ghost tracker with us,” Sam suggested.

 Danny simply sighed, shutting his locker and leaned his back against it, looking down at the floor with a frustrated scowl.

 “I dunno. I knew I was improving, but I guess I wasn’t paying attention to all my enemies getting better too.”

 “Of course they are, man,” Tucker said. “You’ve gotta be the biggest challenge these ghosts have ever faced, so that’s bound to make ‘em wanna step up their game.”

 “Yeah, but no matter what they pull, we’re here to help you stay ahead of them,” Sam stated confidently.

 Danny didn’t respond to their pep talk, still staring at the floor and angry with himself. Tucker decided to change the topic again to get his friend’s mind off his worries.

 “Say, how ‘bout we take a trip to the mall tomorrow afternoon? I hear they’ve got a new milkshake bar at the food court that has over eighty flavours to choose from!”

 “I’m in,” Sam agreed, hoping it would prompt Danny to do the same, “but there’d better be soy options.”

 Danny finally looked up and smiled a little at his friends. They always tried their best to cheer him up whenever his heroism got him down.

 The following day, Danny had got to Amity Park Mall first despite his low mood and was waiting for his friends to meet him inside the entrance. After calling both of them to assure him they were on their way, he idly looked around the mall from his current position to pass the time.

 The mall was packed with customers, and he couldn’t help but take notice of some. A bustling crowd had formed around Abyss for their half price sale, a parent was being pestered by their very loud child for a new action figure, and there was a young couple who apparently had a very messy public breakup judging by the sour looks on their faces.

 His daydreaming was abruptly cut short, as a puff of mist from his mouth broke him out of his stupor.

 “Oh no. Not again.”

 Danny was still unsure of whether to trust his sense or not after yesterday’s apparent false alarm, so he had taken Sam’s advice in the end and brought the Fenton Finder with him. He fished the bulky tracker out of his backpack and turned it on.

 “A ghost is near,” the electronic voice said immediately after the device was activated. It unhelpfully stated the obvious, but nevertheless made Danny breathe a sigh of relief that he wasn’t going crazy.

 Before he could take a single step to investigate, however, the voice chimed in again a second later: “Ghost located. Thank you for using the Fenton Finder.”

 He raised an eyebrow and glanced around. Like yesterday morning, there appeared to be humans and nothing but humans, all going about their business with no glowing auras or signs of being possessed. It wouldn’t be the first time one of his parents’ gadgets was busted, but the odds of both his sense and the tracker being wrong at the same time should be low.

 Then he remembered when the Fenton Finder was first created and smacked his palm against his face. Great. It was tracking him! At least it was working as intended and not malfunctioning after all. If only Sam and Tucker were here to help him use it.

 While it was less reliable in the hands of another ghost, it should technically be able to detect more than one of them at the same time, but it would’ve been more useful if it could home in on a specific spirit instead of all of them. He muted the distracting monotone voice and focussed on the radar. Besides the large one in the middle indicating himself, sure enough, there was another red dot on the screen. Unfortunately, it wasn’t projecting any kind of floor plan of the building, nor any indicator of distance; just a small arrow flashing at the top. Again – only useful if you were hell-bent on tracking down every single ghost regardless of morality like his parents were.

 Ducking behind a conveniently-placed trash can near to the wall, he transformed into his ghostly alter ego and began to follow the vague directions on his parents’ invention to find out where this unwanted guest was sneaking around.

 “C’mon, c’mon!” Danny muttered to himself, tapping on the side of the Fenton Finder. His eyes were firmly fixed on the screen. The interference from his own ecto-signature wasn’t making it any easier as the other dot he was following frantically jittered about on the radar, so he began to fly about aimlessly all over the mall, desperately trying to get the readings he was after.

 The ghost boy flew to the clothes store crowd, causing a few startled screams, then to the mother and child, finally making the kid shut up out of fright, and over to the couple, who greeted him with an unpleasant “Get out of here, creepy ghost kid!”

 The red arrows now pointing every which way from the confusing signals combined with the horrible impression he was leaving on the public was driving him mad. Danny couldn’t take the stress any more. Letting his temper finally get to him, he threw the tracker to the ground from the height of the second floor, shattering it to pieces.

 Just as he was distracted in his frustration, he suddenly felt a sharp stabbing pain in the back of his shoulder. Danny swung around, desperately scrabbling at his back until he plucked out the offending object: a small dart with the remains of a strangely coloured liquid inside of it.

 The teen dropped the dart almost immediately before he had time to think. His fingers went numb and found himself slowly losing altitude as he hovered in the air. Whatever was in that dart was fast-acting. His vision was even starting to blur, but he still tried his best to make out his attacker in the retreating crowd. No white suits, no ghostly glows, no teenage girls on hoverboards. Heck, no brightly coloured jumpsuits. Where exactly were they? The question lingered in his mind as he fell to the floor and slipped into unconsciousness.

 Danny woke up with a start. He had no idea how long he’d been out. Probably not long, as he was thankfully still in his ghost form. He was now trapped in a phase-proof net, tightly contorting his limbs into an uncomfortable position. It might have hurt had he been able to feel them.

 The environment wasn’t something he’d expected to see after getting knocked out. A lab or facility of some sort would be his main assumptions, but instead he had been dragged into an empty retail unit still in the mall that was up for rent. It looked like it had been that way for a while now. Dust covered the floor and the only remains of whatever store had occupied this space were some large metal shelves making up a couple of aisles. The light fittings had been removed, leaving the store barely illuminated by the light outside shining through the misaligned window shutters and the subtle blue glow of his net.

 As he heard footsteps approaching him from the front, Danny tried to will a ghost ray into one of hands to frighten them off, but to no avail. Needless to say, the stuff in that dart packed a punch.

 The dinginess made it hard to fully see his captor as he strolled towards him, but he could just about make out the figure of a broad, muscular man clad in the same shade of black as his hair, harbouring a variety of anti-ghost gadgetry that was strapped on his belt, back and wrists.

 Danny had never seen him before in his entire life. Was he a brand new ghost hunter? This guy looked too well equipped to be any kind of rookie in the field. The young hero had no intention of seeing how experienced they actually were, and attempted in vain to wrestle with both the net and his nerves to break free and get out of there.

 “Let me go!” Danny demanded. “Who are you?!”

 The mystery man chuckled.

 “Did you enjoy our little game of hide and seek?” he asked mockingly.

 Danny was all too familiar with that deep voice, and his eyes widened in realisation. After all this fretting, it turned out to merely be an old foe wearing a new face.

 “Hello, ghost child.”

Chapter Text

 “Skulker?!”

 Danny had never seen Skulker overshadow someone before. He had always assumed his base form was too weak to do so. Piloting a robotic suit was one thing, but taking control of a living being while fighting against their willpower at the same time was another.

 It was odd how he was able to find someone who shared his suit’s exact build to possess. Not only that, but a few other features like his hairstyle and goatee were similar, with more resemblances appearing the longer Danny examined him. Maybe that was why he’d never seen Skulker overshadow a human. Perhaps he was just extremely picky about looks.

 “Couldn’t face me yourself, so you had to hide behind a meat shield, eh?” Danny remarked as the hunter slyly stared back. Overshadowings were incredibly frustrating. There was always an innocent party between him and an enemy that he couldn’t simply save or scare off. Danny also had a public reputation to uphold now, so he had to be extra careful with which humans he beat up.

 Finding some of his power slowly re-emerging, he charged up a ghost ray in each hand and broke free of the tight net.

 “Get out of that man’s body, you coward!”

 Skulker was undaunted, though. He’d picked enough fights with the child to know how certain events would play out.

 “Since our previous encounter was cut short, I never got to show you my new toy.” He said, and pulled out a large ray gun strapped to his back.

 “Oh great,” Danny thought, “He’s armed this guy with all of his gear too!”

 Danny attempted to stagger to his feet, but couldn’t stay up for long before wobbling and collapsing to his hands and knees. Although he could use his ghost powers now, his limbs were still unreliable from the effects of the dart.

 “Let me give you a demonstration before your sedative fully wears off!”

 Thinking quickly, Danny crawled across the dusty floor and took refuge behind one of the shelves, peeking around the edge with raised fists surging with green energy, ready to create a shield to defend himself with. Once he could stand upright again, then that no-good hunter would pay.

 A concentrated beam blasted straight through the thick metal of the shelving unit, fully melting the side opposite to Danny. Shocked, he immediately created a shield to protect himself from the intense heat.

 “Scared, whelp?” Skulker laughed as the glow produced from the ghost boy’s hands flinched along with him in surprise. “Now come over here and open that snarky mouth of yours so I can hollow you out for mounting!”

 The direct threat of burning out his insides made Danny gulp. It was pretty clear that Skulker was still bitter about the outcome of their last fight.

 The young hero was torn. He didn’t want to harm the body of whomever it was Skulker was controlling, nor did he want to get blasted by that gun, and only being in defense mode wouldn’t get him very far. He had to move fast and expertly time an exorcising hit before the hunter could get a good shot in.

 With his legs at long last cooperating with him, he got to his feet and took to the air, flying erratically all over the old store and trying to disorient Skulker as he continued to fire at his prey. In one fell swoop, Danny’s glowing fist connected directly with the man’s torso, having just enough power behind it to push out the ghost intruding his body. But instead of the exorcism he was expecting to occur, Skulker’s now-disarmed host was thrown back-first against one of the walls hard enough that it cracked the brickwork.

 Danny gazed at his unclenched fist, perplexed at how it didn’t work. What’s more, he could’ve sworn he felt and heard the clanking of metal when he punched him. Either Skulker got super lucky and found someone not only of his build but with a metal plate in his chest as well, or Danny hadn’t considered the obscure alternative.

 “Wait...you’re not overshadowing a person at all, are you?” Danny said aloud as he connected the dots. “You’re wearing some kinda disguise over your ectoskeleton.”

 Skulker stood up and his eyes flashed fluorescent green in anger. His expression alone confirmed to the half-ghost that he was correct.

 “Which means it’s safe for me to go all-out!” Danny shouted confidently, as he swooped back over and delivered an uppercut to Skulker’s jaw.

 A short brawl occurred as Danny tried his best to keep the hunter away from recovering his dropped weapon, but despite his efforts, Skulker successfully got the teen in a headlock.

 “What are you gonna do...now that I know you...like to play dress-up?” Danny taunted between chokes for air, "It won't...work on me again!"

 “You really think this changes anything, ghost child?!” Skulker growled in response. “Your weakness for the safety of human civilians is clearer to me now more than ever.” He held up his left arm and unsheathed his glowing blade.

 "Hmm...perhaps I should start using more ‘alive’ bait in my hunts!”

 Sick of the hostile threats his enemy was giving him, the young hero eyed the ghost’s wrist and got an idea. Skulker controlled most of his suit’s abilities using his wrist computer, so there was a chance his new disguise could be activated through that too.

 Danny grabbed hold of the forearm choking him and tapped on random places on the screen and the surrounding buttons. Even though he couldn’t make out the display, he hoped something would turn on or off to distract him long enough for Danny to finish the fight. He knew he pressed something important when Skulker released him and swatted the ghost boy towards the wall. The hunter grabbed his arm tightly as if to stop the signal from reaching the rest of his body, but it was too late.

 In a bizarre and quite disturbing way, the realistic skin and hair of his disguise snaked away towards his wrist computer and revealed the metallic body underneath. Skulker looked down at himself in shock.

 “There! Now I can see your ugly mug!” Danny smiled, hovering in the air and rubbing his aching throat.

 Skulker snarled and picked his heat ray up from the floor. Once rearmed, he fired a long beam in Danny’s direction, holding down the trigger for a good five seconds. The half-ghost easily dodged the blast with a duck and chuckled at his expense.

 “Wow, your aim's gotten worse! You didn’t even harm a hair on my head!”

 “Who says I was aiming at your head?” The hunter answered with a toothy grin.

 Before Danny could register what he meant by that, he suddenly heard a rumbling noise coming from above him. He looked up in fear, as a huge, thick circle of concrete slid down from what was once the ceiling and fell on top of him, the weight of it crushing another empty shelving unit.

 With the time bought from his dangerous stunt, Skulker put his new weapon away and frantically started to press the commands on his wrist to reactivate his Vessel, his eyes darting between the small screen and the now intangible ghost boy climbing out from the rubble.

 Dishevelled but otherwise unharmed, Danny angrily flew at Skulker and kicked him in in the stomach, sending him crashing through both the window and its shutters and landing onto the tiled floor.

 A thick cloud of dust from the empty retail unit followed the two out of the broken window, yet Danny continued to fight despite his obscured vision. When it finally settled, he found that Skulker had his disguise back, looking just as human as he did before their fight.

 The hunter grabbed the ghost boy by the shoulders to wrestle him off, but he still had him pinned down. This quickly changed when Danny noticed a group of nosy customers slowly beginning to surround them, catching him off-guard. The teen was used to them running away from the action when he fought ghosts, not towards it. As they got closer, he could clearly hear them gossiping about him, and it wasn’t particularly positive:

 “Hey! Is that Danny Phantom?”

 “Why’s he attacking that man?”

 “What’s wrong with him today?”

 “Y’think he’s finally snapped and turned evil like all the other ghosts?”

 “Yeah, that must be it! Did you see how creepy he was acting earlier?”

 Then the booing started.

 The distracting jeers were making Danny lose his grip while Skulker’s only strengthened. This was enough for the hunter to throw the young hero off and get to his feet. Skulker was now clutching his arm, faking a major injury, although the bruises that had somehow formed on his disguise were more than enough to convince the witnesses that he was hurt. He must have got some pointers from his pal Vlad in the hammy acting department, but it nevertheless fooled the small crowd who were asking him how he felt and whether or not he wanted them to call an ambulance or the police. Danny thought he could see a notebook and even a microphone or two.

 Ordinarily, he would have followed after his enemy to stop him from getting away so easily, but he was unable to react as the judgemental faces of the mall-goers froze him to the spot. He felt terrible being seen in such a negative light.

 Help arrived fast, however, as Tucker and Sam, who had at long last arrived at the mall, forced their way to the front of the crowd. They turned to face the mob and waved their hands to stop them from walking any further.

 “Don’t go near him! Back away, everyone!”

 “You don’t know if he’ll attack you next if we don’t leave him alone!”

 After a brief whispering session amongst the public agreeing that the two had a point, they gradually started to retreat from the scene.

 Sam looked back at Danny and gestured at him to get out. Nodding in response, Danny phased through the wall behind him and flew straight home without another word.

 Meanwhile, out the back of the building, Skulker had managed to escape the annoyingly-concerned bystanders. Despite not claiming the exact victory he was aiming for, he was still happily indulging in the public humiliation of the ghost boy he had caused. Skulker would have loved to stay longer, but he had another appointment to keep elsewhere. He engaged his jet pack, turned invisible and soared away.

Chapter Text

 Danny sat resting his chin on his hand at the kitchen table, surrounded by textbooks and disorganised papers. He was trying to get his mind off things by doing homework for a change, but it didn’t stop the endless thoughts rushing through his head about what transpired only a few hours ago.

 Skulker disguising himself as a human? Where the heck did he get that idea? After all these months of hunting him, why did he decide to do it now instead of earlier?

 His cellphone vibrated on the table, but he immediately hung up, not caring to check whether it was Sam, Tucker or someone else’s name on the caller ID. He didn’t want to go outside or talk to anyone; just wanting to be completely alone.

 Even in his usually busy home he may as well have been, as his family were focussed on other matters. His parents were down in the lab, no doubt creating another invention that could potentially blow his head off if he wasn’t careful, and Jazz was busy writing elsewhere. She had been asked to give a short speech the following day to some exchange students as Casper High’s most recent success story. All she really needed to do was say a couple of lines, but of course she had to go above and beyond by adding a full-blown history lesson of the school to it as well.

 Right as he was thinking about her, Jazz strutted into the kitchen with an irritated look on her face. Before Danny could ask her what was wrong, she clutched his upper arm tightly, pulled him out of his seat and dragged him into the living room.

 “Ow! Watch it!” he complained, stumbling behind her. The television was turned on to the news, and from the first complete sentence he heard from the female news anchor, it was easy to figure out why his sister was so angry.

 “Our top story tonight: has local ghost boy Danny Phantom gone mad?”

 “What?!” Danny exclaimed. So much for taking his mind off of things.

 With a headline like that, he hoped his parents were safely oblivious down in the basement and weren’t listening to the same broadcast. They didn’t need another reason to go after Phantom aside from his mere existence.

 “If you’re just joining us, Danny Phantom was seen today at Amity Park Mall,” the newscaster continued. “According to those present at the scene, he was behaving strangely, scaring customers and intentionally destroying objects. He was pacified by an as-of-yet unnamed Amity Park citizen, seen in this recording provided by a witness.”

 Footage that appeared to be shot from a handheld camera began to play on the screen. It started off showing him taking out his aggression on the Fenton Tracker and followed the short chain of events he remembered up until he lost consciousness. Before he fell, Danny saw himself get snagged in the same net he woke up in. The camera quickly panned up to a disguised Skulker hauling him in.

 “Fear not, panicking civilians!” The hunter shouted proudly. “I have apprehended the crazed ghost child!”

 Okay, he had to be getting acting lessons from Vlad. The way the crowd was so easily swayed by his words while being painfully obvious to Danny that he was deceiving them reminded him far too much of his arch-enemy’s performances.

 The recording then cut to the latter part of their fight outside the abandoned store, and it didn’t paint the young hero in any more of a positive light. His furious expression combined with his messy hair and scuffed-up jumpsuit from the ceiling falling on him made him look insane.

 “Minutes later, the ghost boy was spotted violently attacking the same man. We attempted to interview the unnamed victim, but he declined to comment and fled the scene badly injured. Obviously, he must have been traumatised by the ordeal.”

 The footage stopped playing just before the mass booing started. This gave Danny some relief, as he really didn’t want to relive that moment for the second time that day.

 “An extensive amount of property damage was also reported, but as an early adopter of ghost insurance, the owners of Amity Park Mall have assured us that it is a minor issue. Is this event an indication that the ghost boy is reverting to a naturally malevolent state?”

 This tabloid-level speculation made the teen scowl.

 “And now, Lance Thunder with the weather.”

 “How do you explain that?!” Jazz demanded, pointing at the television with her free hand.

 “It was Skulker – Ghost X – whatever it is you’re calling him now! He was wearing a disguise! I swear it’s true!”

 Jazz released him from her vice grip.

 “I’m not doubting you, Danny,” she sighed, walking over to the TV and turning it off. “I mean it’s one thing to take on someone in a position of power like the mayor-”

 “Hey!” Danny interrupted, about to protest, but his sister carried on.

 “-but it’s not like you to attack a random person without a good reason.”

 “So...you do believe me?” he asked.

 “Of course. In my experience, this is hardly a new phenomena. I’ve been face-to-face with ghosts that pass themselves off as humans several times now, not to mention ones I flat-out couldn’t see.”

 Jazz put her hand on her younger brother’s shoulder to comfort him.

 “Ghosts pull new tricks all the time. You’ll find a way to handle this one. You always do,” she smiled and gave him a reassuring pat. Danny smiled back.

 “Anyway, I’ve got a speech to write and you’ve got homework to do,” she said, stood up straight and went up to her bedroom.

 Danny gazed back at the television. His sister’s reassuring words took away some of his stress, but it didn’t ease the worry he had about his reputation. With the short amount of hours left in the day, all he could do at this point was hope that this would blow over soon, leaving the whole afternoon to feel like some crazy dream.

 It was pretty hard to ignore the gossip the A-listers were spreading the next morning at school.

 “Did you see what Danny Phantom did yesterday?” Star asked.

 “Yeah,” Kwan said. “He was seriously wailing on that guy.”

 “I know. It almost made me think twice about how I look when I teach nerds a lesson,” Dash mumbled, scratching the back of his neck. “Well...almost.”

 “I can’t believe it! Why is my ghost boy acting like this?!” Paulina sobbed hysterically, and fled from the group in tears.

 Danny mentally cursed himself for believing the news would leave the minds of the public so quickly. It hardly compared to the negative attention he got yesterday, but it still stung. Outside of his friends and sister, his classmates were always the first to defend Phantom. If he lost their trust, he’d be back to square one.

 The discussion continued around him, his fellow melancholy students sadly mourning their hero’s apparent betrayal with a distinct lack of any optimistic rebutting. It wasn’t until he heard his friends voices amongst them that he started to feel somewhat motivated again.

 “Wish they would’ve kept the camera rolling. I’m incredibly photogenic!”

 “You wouldn’t have been photogenic for long if your parents saw you running into trouble!”

 Sam and Tucker stopped walking and talking when they locked eyes with him.

 “Ready to talk?” Sam asked, breaking a moment of awkward silence between them.

 Danny sighed and took a step forward.

 “Sorry I was ignoring you both. I should’ve thanked you for helping me escape.”

 “Don’t worry about that,” Tucker replied, “Just tell us what happened back there; everything we didn’t see.”

 Danny recounted his side of the whole experience to his friends up until they showed up, and the both of them listened intently.

 “They’re hiding all their ghostly features down to a T, but I can still sense them,” he finished.

“‘Them’? So you think there’s more than one ghost out there with a disguise?” Sam questioned.

 “Definitely. I’d never seen Skulker’s human body before then, so there have to be others walking the streets in broad daylight like last morning.”

 Danny unloaded all his textbooks from his backpack into his locker.

 “Listen, I’ve got a free period now, so I’m gonna do some more thinking about it,” he told them. It was better to get his fretting over with now than let it distract him during class. He couldn’t let his grades suffer along with his confidence.

 “Good call,” Tucker agreed, "Tell us if you come up with anything."

 The bell rang for class and the trio went their separate ways.

 Danny wandered Casper High’s now quiet halls, pondering about how the human disguise worked. Judging by the way it retracted when he messed with Skulker’s wrist computer, it had to be a physical change and not some sort of hologram or illusion. Could it be the work of one of the many bizarre and often cursed artefacts located in the Ghost Zone? He’d have to ask Sam later if her favourite goth book shop had any literature that could give him some clues. He also needed proof for his theory that Skulker wasn’t the only ghost walking around in a human skin suit.

 Suddenly, a puff of mist from his ghost sense appeared as if on cue, telling him that he wouldn’t have to wait long to get it.

Chapter Text

 Following the slowly increasing chill brought on by his ghost sense, it lead Danny to the outside of the music room. The door was slightly ajar, tempting him to investigate. Thankfully, there was no lesson in progress nor any band geeks practising, so there wasn’t a need for any evacuations. But unfortunately, this also made it the perfect location to set a trap.

 Sure enough, when he made it to the centre of the room, the door abruptly slammed. He whipped around to look, but was then suddenly kicked to the floor from behind. Rolling himself onto his back, Danny saw his attacker looking down on him with a fiendish grin

 Her age was hard to determine, but she looked as though she could be in either her junior or senior year. Despite how well her school-appropriate outfit and surprisingly modest amount of makeup helped her be indistinguishable from the other girls at Casper High, her brown hair fashioned into a long high ponytail clued Danny into her true identity almost immediately. Unlike Skulker, he didn’t need to hear her voice to know who was under that human disguise.

 “Ugh...Ember.”

 She shook her head and waved a finger at him condescendingly

 “Actually, today it’s ‘Amber’: the perfectly ordinary exchange student,” she replied, snickering at her own remark. “That’s how it works for you, right?”

 Danny scowled. Whether it was a different country or a different dimension, the staff at Casper High really needed to figure out what background checks were.

 “What are you up to?” he asked bluntly, unsteadily getting to his feet and backing away from her.

 “I thought I’d test out my new getup with a little payback for all my plans you’ve ruined,” she answered, and summoned her guitar into her hand in a burst of blue flame.

 “And because of your spat with Skulker, the whole town thinks you’re a madman, so this’ll just look like self-defence.”

 It appeared that word had travelled just as fast in the Ghost Zone as the mortal plane.

 “What if I don’t go ghost, huh?” Danny countered. He quickly raised a hand and began to fire ghost rays from his palm in her direction. Hand-to-hand combat with a ghost was pretty much out of the question when he didn’t transform due to the ever-present nuisance of intangibility, but he could always count on his ectoplasmic energy blasts to do some damage.

 Holding the neck of her guitar, she started deflecting the rays with the back of its body, swatting them away like ping pong balls. Danny continued to attack her from a distance with both hands, moving around the room swiftly to try and disorient her. One of his rays got dangerously close to hitting her, singeing a lock of her hair. It hardly counted as a direct blow, yet the teen’s morale increased after managing to harm her as a human without an anti-ghost weapon.

 “I can still take you out, no problem!”

 Ember’s look of surprise when she examined her scorched hair then turned into a sly smirk.

 “Then you make your stupid school look bad for assaulting a welcome visitor,” Ember responded, twirling the darkened strand in her finger. “How’s that? All it takes it a cry for help, and you’re bound to be under constant watch by your dumb teachers long enough for me to enslave the entire student body!”

 Danny’s confidence suddenly faded. He always had one identity to fall back on should he land himself in hot water, so there was no way he could afford both Fenton and Phantom to be in trouble at the same time. He’d never be able to set foot outside his home again!

 Ember strapped her guitar to her front, adjusted the settings and strummed a fist-shaped wave at Danny. The restrictive walls of the classroom made it far more difficult for him to dodge than in the usual wide open spaces they fought in. Thus, it flung him backwards, smacking into the plastic chairs lined up for band practice before slamming into the back wall.

 The singer strolled up to the young hero, partially contorted from the many broken chairs now surrounding him and obstructing his need to rub his aching head.

 “Say goodbye, dipstick!” She said with glee, raising her hand up high and preparing to dish out another power chord.

 “Um, excuse me?”

 Ember whipped around in shock at the now-open door. Danny craned his neck to see his sister standing there with an irate look on her face, right hand on her hip and clutching the Fenton Peeler in her left.

 “I think you missed my welcome speech.”

 Jazz raised the device, let the armour form around her and shot a blast right at the teen idol. Ember shrieked and held her arms up to reflexively shield her face, but it was futile. The synthetic skin and hair peeled away to expose her true form. Danny winced at the display. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to seeing a ghost get torn up by the Peeler. Nevertheless, he looked at his sister with pride.

 “Nice one, Jazz! How did you figure it out?”

 “Easy. I did a head count before giving my speech and remembered what you said yesterday.”

 She ran over to her brother and helped him up. Danny changed into his ghostly alter ego, no longer sheepish about transforming now that ‘Amber’ was out of the way.

 Brought to her hands and knees from the Peeler shot, Ember started picking up the shredded remains of her disguise that had cluster around her, mumbling something to herself about paying someone.

 Danny scooped his sister up in his arms, turned them both invisible and phased them out of the room.

 “Get back here! I’m not finished with you!” Ember yelled at the wall the siblings had escaped through. Just when she was about to follow after them, however, the school bell rang and the halls were in use once more. Some students passing by the open door to the music room door spotted the singer out in the open.

 “Woah, is that Ember McLain?!” One said particularly loudly, causing other teens to swarm and check if what they said was true.

 Students then started to crowd into the classroom and surround her. Her frustrated expression turned to worry as her chance at making a sneaky exit was compromised. As much as she loved popularity, this wasn’t the time nor place for people to start recognising her.

 “Looks like we gave her the slip,” Jazz commented as she and her brother continued to fly outside of the building.

 “Not for long,” Danny replied nervously, overhearing the faint sounds of the students chanting the singer’s name. All that attention was bound to restore Ember to full strength with an added power boost to boot, so they had to stay on their toes.

 Danny dropped his sister off at the football field. Jazz took refuge behind the bleachers so as not to get in the way of the inevitable fight that was about to ensue while Danny flew back, using himself as bait to lure her to his battle ground of choice.

 Ember finally phased out of the school, fists glowing, hair ablaze and fire raging in her eyes. Once she found out where they were hiding, those two were going to regret wrecking her Vessel. Examining the area from above, the teen idol spotted a student nearby which gave her an idea. A little civilian endangerment ought to get Phantom to show his face.

 Just outside the back entrance to the locker rooms, Paulina was sitting on the grass in her cheerleading uniform, mourning over a picture of Phantom taken from her small personal shrine. Star came out and walked up to her, visibly annoyed and tapping her foot.

 “Come on, Paulina!” she complained, “We need to practice our routine before the game next week!”

 Paulina didn’t respond, and instead burst into tears. What was the point in cheerleading if she had no pep to spare? Her friend gave up with a loud groan and went back inside to the gym.

 As soon as she was left on her own, Paulina heard the deafening noise of an amplified guitar. Looking up in shock to find out the source of the noise, she screamed when she saw a huge blast of energy heading directly at her.

 Already flying over to get Ember, Danny sped up when he saw who she was attacking. Just before the blast was about to hit her, he dived in front of Paulina in the nick of time and put up a ghost shield, successfully deflecting it. She gazed up at the ghost boy, wiping her eyes and smiling at him in relief.

 “I knew it! I knew you didn’t turn evil!” She cheered, overjoyed that her hero hadn’t disappointed her after all.

 “Get outta here!” Danny shouted, still maintaining the shield and staring daggers at his opponent hovering in the air. “I’ll handle this. Oh, and how’s about putting in a good word for me, huh?”

 Paulina beamed at him and ran back indoors, ready to share her experience with her fellow A-listers. Once he knew she was safe inside, the half-ghost flew back over to the open field now that he had Ember’s full attention again.

 “Jazz, get ready to cover your ears,” Danny instructed when he reached the bleachers. She did as he said, right as Ember finally approached the centre of the football field, no less agitated at him for ruining her ‘fun’.

 “Hey, one-hit loser! How ‘bout a duet?!” He taunted at his livid foe, now exactly where he wanted her to be. Taking a deep but unneeded breath, he unleashed a ghostly wail at the teen idol.

 Ember acted fast and gave her guitar a harsh strum. The visible sound waves of the deathly scream and the hypnotising chord forcibly pushed against one another, but Danny’s wail ultimately overpowered Ember’s music blast and sent her flying across the field.

 Abandoning the shelter of the bleachers, Jazz followed after her while Danny was trying to recuperate from his stunt. She caught up to the dazed ghost lying on the grass, pulled out a Fenton Thermos and pointed it straight at her. With a high-pitched wail, Ember was sucked into the trap, finally putting an end to the fight.

 Jazz went back to tend to her brother who was gasping for air. His head had reverted to its human appearance from exhaustion.

 “Got her?” he wheezed. His sister nodded and presented him with the thermos.

 “I’ll tell the principal she had to go home early,” she answered. Normally, she would have a few hang ups about lying to the faculty (unless by omission, of course), but this one technically wasn’t a lie.

 Danny transformed fully back to normal and dusted himself off. All he had left to do now was to completely avoid the music room for the rest of the day.

Chapter Text

 After the school day ended, the trio and Jazz congregated on a bench at the park and discussed what the siblings saw.

 “Ember had a disguise too? Aww man,” Tucker complained after the two shared their account, “how do we keep missing these things?”

 Sam was a little more inquisitive with her reply.

 “We still don’t know exactly why they have them. Why go through the effort of disguising themselves that much when they’ve never done this before? It can’t just be to mess with you.”

 “Perhaps it’s a mass attempt to integrate into our society?” Jazz proposed optimistically. She had recently been applying her pre-existing psychology knowledge on ghosts as well as people. Danny wasn’t buying it in the slightest.

 “Nah. Ember and Skulker were acting the same as ever. There was no way they’d decided to come in peace.”

 “Then let’s keep using the Fenton Peeler,” Jazz suggested, pulling the device out from her bag. It was an effective solution after all.

 “What, on everyone we meet?!” Sam exclaimed, “All it does on regular people is strip their clothes.”

 “Yeah, and there’s a limit to how many adults I wanna see in their underwear!” Tucker added.

 “They’re right, Jazz,” Danny said, leaning back into the bench. “Best to leave it for when we know who’s under which disguise before we blast anybody else.”

 “Why not come out about ghosts wearing human costumes and clear your name for good?” Tucker suggested after a long pause.

 “Think about it, Tuck,” Sam started, “If we tell people the truth, who’s to say they won’t start suspecting that the town hero has a human form they see every day?”

 Danny’s breath caught in his throat. He hadn’t fully considered the magnitude of the threat it would pose to keeping his secret identity: the one thing that gave him the slightest bit of normality in his life. Even if they didn’t outright tell anyone, the truth would still get out just by witnessing all the ordinary-looking new residents engaging in ghostly behaviour, which would then inevitably make its way to the media and eventually the government.

 If a revelation like that about ghosts became part of the public consciousness, the first people to latch onto it would surely be his parents. They had already been suspicious of random people secretly being ghosts in the past, so being proven right would make them even jumpier. Forget the town – he wouldn’t be able to show his face in his own house without being dragged down to the lab for constant testing and surveillance.

 He never wanted to be outed as Danny Phantom against his will. Not again.

 While he struggled with his troubling thoughts, the other three continued the discussion.

 “Hmm...I’d say that would rule out Vlad as a suspect. He wants to keep our Mom and Dad in the dark about that just as much, especially Mom,” Jazz said, cringing at her own implication.

 “Is it somebody new that we’ve never faced before?” Sam proposed further.

 Before he could give his input, Tucker glanced over at Danny. He was completely silent and staring into space, clenching and unclenching his fists resting on his knees.

 “Are you okay, dude?” he asked. Tucker knew the answer, but said it out of habit regardless. His friend suddenly stood up with such force that the bench shook.

 “That’s it!” Danny yelled, losing any composure he had left. “I don’t care about figuring out the ‘why’ or ‘who’ any more. Right now, I wanna focus on the ‘where’ - where they all got them from and stop this mess at the source!”

 “You have a plan?” Jazz asked.

 He certainly did.

 With Jazz holding fort in the lab, the other three headed into the Ghost Zone through the family’s portal in the Specter Speeder.

 “Do you know where we’re going?” Sam asked, holding up the home-made map they were making of the dimension for all of them to see.

 “Well...no, not exactly,” Danny answered uneasily as he piloted the vehicle, “but we’re sure to find something eventually, right?”

 Sam and Tucker both sighed in irritation.

 “I thought you said you had a plan!” Tucker shouted.

 “And my plan is to look around the Ghost Zone for clues! Simple as that,” Danny insisted, but Sam folded the map back up in retaliation.

 “This place goes on forever! It could take hours before we find-”

 She cut herself off when they noticed a small group of ghosts coming from their left, all appearing to have something in their hands or ghostly tendrils.

 One that seemed to be the ghost of a former soldier held their item up in front of them in plain view of the trio. They could only see part of it, but it looked like a complete outfit covering a zentai bodysuit. The ghost dematerialised into a green mist and slid into the back, slowly filling it up until it had taken the fully-convincing form of a living human. From the way the limp husk contorted to an upright stance and the wrinkled skin plumped out and stretched into shape, it was like they were possessing a corpse.

 Danny felt the need to gloat to his friends for doubting him, but held back after seeing their shocked reactions. Sam stared silently with her mouth agape and Tucker was over-dramatically clutching his stomach. Now wasn’t the time for any kind of witty quips. It was time to get serious.

 “Hang back for now but keep track of me,” he instructed the two, “I’ll go on ahead.” Danny passed the main controls over to Sam before exiting the Speeder in his ghost form.

 “Good luck, Danny,” Tucker said.

 “-and be careful!” Sam added as their friend flew away.

 Danny kept his distance while following the trail of incoming ghosts, moving as swiftly as possible and hiding behind any stray rock or object so as to not be spotted.

 Spectres of all shapes and sizes, from the humanoid to the formless blob, were all flying from the same direction. There were a handful he recognised but more that he didn’t. All of them were carrying the folded-up husks or paper shopping bags all baring the same design. This was just today. Who knows how many other ghosts already had them?

 The farther he flew, the frequency of spirits travelling the same way steadily died down, which he took as a sign that this shop was no longer open. This didn’t stop him from noticing another familiar face among the dwindling crowd.

 It was Kitty, who he was briefly afraid of finding him as she happily floated in his direction, but then realised was only going over to Johnny 13 who was parked on his motorcycle close by. Danny couldn’t help but eavesdrop on their conversation.

 “All done?” Johnny asked, perking up out of an apparent boredom from waiting when he saw his girlfriend.

 “Yep,” she replied, looking positively giddy as she hugged the paper bag against her chest. “You sure you don’t want one?”

 “Don’t need one, kitten,” he grinned, showing off by dimming his ghostly aura completely. Kitty simply raised an eyebrow before taking a seat on back of his bike.

 “Maybe not, but they’re teasing a new model that could keep us off ghost sensors for good.”

 “Wait, seriously?” Johnny and Danny asked and thought in unison. She nodded and patted the bag.

 “For now, this should stop turning so many heads in Amity, especially yours,” Kitty punctuated her statement by jabbing her elbow into the biker’s side. The gesture appeared playful, but Johnny’s reaction suggested that it genuinely hurt.

 Kitty’s revelation lingered in Danny’s head as he watched the couple drive away. Over the past year or so, he had learned not to doubt the limitless potential of paranormal science and technology, but the mass-production of something that could hide a ghost’s ecto-signature sounded totally implausible in his mind. One or two items, perhaps, but not enough to satisfy every single Ghost Zone escapee.

 He didn’t need to travel much further before he spotted where everybody was coming from. It was a lone door floating in the air, sporting a sign with a logo matching the bags hanging above it. As familiar as he thought he was with the general area, Danny had never seen that door before.

 Just as he was about to leave his latest hiding spot to investigate, he spotted a disgruntled Ember heading towards it, so decided to stay back and observe instead.

 The singer floated up to the modest entrance, grabbed the door handle and attempted to push it open, but judging by her strained efforts it was clearly well-locked from the inside. Instead of politely knocking, she hammered on the door with her fist and continued to wrestle with the handle.

 “Hey, open up, shrimp!” Ember shouted, “I need a new one, now!”

 A faux-friendly voice chimed in from the opposite side.

 “Sorry, we’re closed! Come back tomorrow!”

 Ember was insistent, now using both hands and even giving the door a good kick with her boot.

 “Look, you leeches, I got into the high school easily today! Doesn’t that give me any special treatment?!”

 Her complaints were met with silence however, and with a frustrated groan she finally gave up.

 “You’re lucky my fans think this is stage make-up,” the singer huffed as she soared off. Despite her not using any names, Danny was beginning to have a hunch as to who could be behind it all.

 Once she was far enough away, he flew up to the entrance. Clutching onto the frame, the young hero turned human and phased easily through the door into the pocket realm.

 Danny immediately reverted back to his ghost half once he got in. Due to the unpredictability of the many forms a ghost’s lair could take, he didn’t want to take the chance of taking a single step and falling into a giant abyss or a bottomless sea, so he backed himself up with his ability to fly. This degree of caution was unneeded however, as a hard tiled floor was laid out before him.

 The door may have been closed, but the inside of the store still looked as though it was still ready for business. The shop front was small; barely rivalling the size of his bedroom, and resembled a mix between a pharmacy and a salon. There was a checkout counter splitting the room in half and four chairs in the corner in what could be considered the “waiting area”. It would have looked more empty had it not been for the walls adorned with floor-length mirrors and a variety of vintage style advertising posters.

 They boasted with tacky phrases like “A New You!”, “Seamlessly Blend In!”, “Haunt In Style!” and sure enough “New Ghost Detection Blocker Coming Soon!”

 Danny snuck behind the counter and into the back room to snoop some more. With a vast array of tools, a big working desk and multiple drawers and cabinets lined up containing who knows what, it was clear that this was where the real magic happened. It was far larger than the customer-only area, but this was mainly because there was no back wall. It opened up to a seemingly endless white void as if the realm was unfinished. Whoever owned it must not have been here that long for the realm to fully form. Either that, or they didn’t want it to go any further.

 When the culprits of the whole scheme moved into his field of view, everything around him seemed to disappear into that white void as the half-ghost focussed on them with frustration.

Chapter Text

 Dressed in her new gaudy black and green outfit, Danny glared at Penelope Spectra who was busy conversing with her shapeshifting assistant Bertrand, currently taking his more recognisable humanoid form over his true, more globular appearance.

 Looking back, Danny felt he should have suspected the ghosts who had experience with “body-building” from the beginning.

 Bertrand was holding a mop and bucket with a disgusted expression on his face, obviously about to undertake the task of cleaning the whole place.

 “I swear, some of our customers don’t know how to keep their ectoplasm to themselves,” he started to vent. “They’re gonna contaminate our merchandise!”

 “Now, now,” Spectra retorted, “We don’t want to be too picky on who we serve. The more ghosts who have them, the better.”

 As if to demonstrate, she turned to open a sliding door spanning the full length of the wall and beyond into the strange void. A row of lifeless humanoid forms were hanging inside, their mouths agape, empty eye sockets and all virtually indistinguishable from one another.

 “Besides, you know how valuable the payment is.”

 She placed both of her hands on one of the husks, and Danny watched as her ectoplasmic energy visibly ran down her arms and onto the empty body, surrounding it with a bright glow.

 So that was what this was really about. They were spreading their energy into those things so they could absorb the misery of young people by proxy through other ghosts.

 The trend certainly matched up. Skulker was at the mall during the afternoon when teens were able to hang out there, and Ember straight-up went into his school. Not only were they out to torment him, but they were simultaneously upholding their end of the deal.

 Danny narrowed his eyes as she took a step back to admire her long row of works in progress.

 “Kicking back and making others do your dirty work won’t help your looks, lady.”

 He recoiled and clapped his hand over his mouth when he realised he mistakenly said what he intended to be a thought out loud. Once he looked back, the two ghosts had disappeared. He’d already given himself away.

 “You know,” a voice coming from behind started, making him flinch, “they say humour is often used as a coping mechanism to hide one’s insecurities.”

 Danny turned around to see Spectra now inches away from him, floating on her front with her hands on her chin and Bertrand hovering behind her. She raised an eyebrow and smirked.

 “Want to talk about it?”

 He shuffled to his feet to face them, trying to appear confident by puffing out his chest.

 “I’ve come to stop your little scam operation!”

 “Scam?” Spectra repeated with a look of mild offence on her face. “I’m running an honest service and providing everyone with what they want. I’m practically giving them away! All they have to do is mingle with the masses and give us a little pre-existing teenage despair in return.”

 “I’m not talking about that!” Danny snapped, clearly losing his patience. “I’m talking about this ‘updated model’ thing. That’s a total bluff. You can’t mass produce fake bodies that can get past ghost detectors! Even I can’t do that!”

 “We are working on it, though,” Bertrand insisted. “It might take a while: months, years, maybe decades. But in the meantime, it gives everyone the incentive to keep coming back, replenishing their Vessels and giving us the payment we agreed on. If anything, it stops them from scamming us.”

 Replenishing? So the extra energy wasn’t permanent?

 “Why are you so desperate to stop me?” Spectra asked softly, tilting her head to the side, “Isn’t this what you always wanted – to finally fit in with a group that’s just like you?”

 Danny was fuming. His wish to feel normal while simultaneously teetering on the brink of life and death was a constant, but trying to fulfil it with costumes and illusions like this was sheer mockery, not a solution.

 “That’s it! I’m going to end this once and for all!” He yelled.

 “I don’t think so!”

 Bertrand transformed himself into the form of a giant medieval executioner and materialised a heavy axe in one hand. His large build made him able to wield it as if it was a wiffle bat.

 He took a swing aimed directly at Danny’s neck, but to his surprise, it was completely in vain. The boy had changed into his human form in the nick of time, and his ghostly axe passed straight through him. As the laws of nature were essentially reversed in the strange dimension, anything created in the Ghost Zone could be phased through by those in the living world with enough concentration.

 Again and again, the shapeshifter lobbed his weapon around to no effect as Danny simply stood still with his arms folded. Dropping the axe to the floor with a loud thud, Bertrand looked worriedly towards Spectra as if to ask for help.

 “Ugh! Must I do everything?” She said, rolling her eyes at her assistant and turned her attention to Danny. “You’ve only made yourself more vulnerable to me.”

 Proving her point, she used her powers to draw out and absorb the negative energy from the teen’s now human body, making him collapse to the floor.

 “Ooh, I’m tasting a lot of anxiety,” she observed with glee, “Even when the situation isn’t all about you, you always find a way to make it taxing on yourself, huh? Well...I suppose you should feel a little responsible.”

 “W-what are you t-talking about?!” Danny stammered as he tried to resist the draining process. Spectra continued to taunt him.

 “If you’d only given me your DNA at the hospital to keep my body young and beautiful forever, I wouldn’t have to do this. You could have prevented any future suffering of your fellow teenagers if you hadn’t been such a selfish brat!”

 He knew this was all part of her mind games, that there was no way she’d simply give up on her nature just because her body was flawless, but she was still expertly managing to push his buttons. He couldn’t let Spectra make the town’s current impression of him as a hostile freak reflect back on him and become his own. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

 All the pain and mental turmoil he’d gone through thanks to her suddenly bubbled to the surface and channelled itself directly into his hands. To Spectra’s shock, Danny – still in human form – managed to push himself up and raise one, firing a ghost ray straight at her head. Her effort to successfully dodge it made her lose focus on rendering Danny incapacitated, letting him regain enough strength to unsteadily rise to his feet.

 Her eyes glowed with anger and gritted her pointed teeth into a vicious snarl. The attempt to damage her perfect visage sent her off the deep end. She sped towards him with the intent to tackle the teen and claw his face off.

 “I’ve been passing myself as a human since before you were born!” Spectra hissed.

 “That’s not making you sound any younger, you hag!”

 Danny shot out another ghost ray from his fist, this time aimed directly at her stomach, knocking her backwards and slamming her against the counter.

 “Looking like you’re a living person with ghost powers is one thing, but being one is another!” the young hero said with regained confidence, shaking the warmth from the ray away from his hand.

 Bertrand shrank back to his regular stature and ran over to help his now dazed work partner. While the two were distracted, Danny changed back into a ghost, unlocked the door and flew outside, grinning as he did so.

 It wasn’t long before Spectra and Bertrand followed suit and made their way out of the door as well and began searching around frantically for the not-long-escaped ghost boy.

 “Alright, let’s-” Spectra paused when she finally spotted Danny, who was now hovering beside the Speeder piloted by his friends.

 “Now!” Danny commanded. Sam and Tucker activated a cannon mounted to the top of the ship and fired a blast of lightning straight at the two ghosts.

 They immediately flew out of the way, but the unprotected entrance to the store directly behind them blew up in a glorious explosion, vaporising all the contents inside. Spectra and Bertrand stared horrified at the spot where their base of operations once floated.

 “Hey! Do you have any idea how long it took to put that together?!” Bertrand shouted. “Abandoned lairs aren’t easy to come by, y’know!”

 “No need to worry about that,” the young hero said as Sam tossed him a Fenton Thermos out of her door, “‘cause you’re not gonna be setting up shop again anytime soon!”

 Danny activated the trap and sucked the two spirits in, finally ridding himself of the source of all of his problems that week.

 The team regrouped in Danny’s bedroom, mostly so Danny had an excuse to lie down. Changing back and forth so much had worn him out.

 “Well, this should stop any more disguises being made. How long are you gonna keep them in there?” Sam asked, gesturing to the filled-up thermos he was still holding.

 “I’d say about a week, two weeks tops,” Danny replied, tapping the lid. “Should be enough time for their energy to wear out on those vessel-things.”

 “Who knows? They might end up begging to stay in there if all those ghosts figure out that they were lying,” Jazz said.

 Danny responded with an introspective nod. “All those ghosts”. There was that one worry that wouldn’t quite go away. Even if they couldn’t get replacements any more, there were still a ton of them out there who had disguises. Without that false promise of a ghost detection invulnerability upgrade being destroyed along with the store, he really hoped they’d all lose interest in them, making them a passing fad. In case they did however, he would need to deal with the threats as they came, just as he’d told his sister before.

 “What are you going to do about the bad rep?” Tucker questioned. “Paulina’s got the school covered, but what about the rest of the town?”

 “I’m not gonna stop kicking ghost butt,” Danny smiled, crossing his arms behind his head. “Next time I do, that’ll remind everybody what side Danny Phantom’s on.”

 Despite learning not to trust his eyes so much in the worst possible way, the young hero found that he could finally relax after the harrowing ordeal. Like his friends said; no matter what new tricks his enemies pull, he’ll always find a way to fight back in the end.