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Dani would call her relationship with the Fenton family complicated.
Not complicated in the bad way, where someone needs a few seconds pause before settling on complicated as though it’s somehow a lighter term, but it’s really just that, complicated. Mr. and Mrs. (or, well, technically they’re Dr. and Dr., but she doesn’t think that makes much sense) Fenton don’t even know that she exists, let alone that she has reason for a complex relationship with them. Danny Fenton is her cousin, her brother, her DNA donor, her… a lot. She’s supposed to be a near-exact copy of him, but something had certainly gone wrong at some point in that process considering all of the clear visible differences between the two of them. They’re both alike, and not alike, and it’s easier to completely erase him from the equation sometimes, because Dani finds it easier to define herself when leaving other people out of the equation.
Whoops, that got a bit off-topic, didn’t it?
Anyways– there’s Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, Danny, and then there’s also Jazz. Danielle’s never met Jazz before, though she’s definitely heard of her. After all, Danny certainly cares about her, and tends to give status updates on all of his friends and family, even though Dani doesn’t actually know any of them. So she knows that Jazz is a college student somewhere outside of the state, studying psychology. She knows that Jazz will always be willing to pull someone out of a tight situation, though there may be some intense glaring involved depending on what said situation is. She knows that Jazz is worried about the Halfa thing, because of the consequences it could have on Danny mentally, but she’s not sure if that applies to her, too, because she doesn’t understand all of that mental stuff like Jazz sounds like she does.
So Dani is in Amity Park, because travelling is great and freeing but sometimes she just needs to spend a little time around ectoplasm, or straight up in the zone, and it’s always nice to check in on her friends. She doesn’t mean to get caught up in a fight against another ghost, but Danny is nowhere to be found, and she’s already flying around anyways.
“Hope nobody minds a stand-in!” Dani calls as she flies towards the ghost. She doesn’t recognise them, but there’s a lot of ghosts out there, so that’s not really a surprise. Danny knows all of the frequent haunters of Amity Park, but Dani doesn’t actually live here. Whoever it is, she shoots them with an ectoblast, and hit them straight on, and they spin around while glaring.
“Who the heck are you supposed to be!?” They demand.
Dani rolls her eyes, because it’s fun to pretend she doesn’t know what people are talking about. Or just to piss them off. (Okay, not very heroic of her, but Danny Phantom is the hero, not Dani.) “Dani Phantom, duh!”
“But you’re—”
“Stylish?” Dani interrupts. Really, people always get stuck on her gender at some point through the story of her existence. And for what? Most of the time she’s just got ghost parts, not boy or girl parts. “Yeah, I know, real rare for a Phantom. But, I digress. Say, what are you doing terrorising these random people?”
And so it continues. Dani taunts the ghost every step of the way, flickering in and out of visibility and tangibility as she flies around and throws ectoblasts. She doesn’t have a thermos, but she can contain the ghost to the area until someone who does shows up.
It gets tiring, though. She’s a Halfa, after all, and Halfa’s need human things like food or water to stay energised, since they can’t process weak ectoplasm in the area as well. Or, that’s how Danny had explained it to her. The simpler explanation is: Dani is thirsty as fuck and could really use a break.
Huntress wouldn’t appreciate her swearing. Anyways.
“Are you getting bored?” Dani asks casually. “Like, c’mon, this isn’t a very interesting fight or anything. Why not just go back home to the Zone?”
She doesn’t get a response. Ugh.
Right as Dani is considering stealing a bagel from the store right around the corner, an odd-looking car pulls up. It’s large, sort of like a van, but it’s grey like metal and has a green glow to it that reminds her of ectoplasm.
“Yo!” Dani yells down at the car, before yelping as something is thrown at her. She goes intangible, and continues to yell. “Get outta here, there’s a ghost attack!”
The passenger side door opens, and a redhead steps out. In one hand, she has a Fenton thermos, and in the other she has a gun.
Jazz!
Dani grins, swooping down towards the car.
“Here, Danny, wait– Danny!?”
Dani stops in front of Jazz to find her staring wide-eyed, and wonders if Danny’s actually told Jazz about the whole cloning thing. She supposes that’s not really her problem. “No, Dani actually, with an ‘I’. Thanks for the thermos, though, this has been taking forever!”
She flies back off, and a moment later a blast flies out. She looks down to find that Jazz’s gun is pointed at the ground, meaning the shot would have had to have come from somewhere else within the vehicle. Great.
Dani goes invisible before flying even faster, and gets right behind the ghost who has still yet to have given her a name. She smiles deviously, becomes visible once more, and activates the thermos before they even know what’s happening.
Honestly, it’s funny that the thermos is all it takes to stop a ghost. It makes many horror movies a lot less believable.
When she glances back, Jazz is still gawking at her, but more importantly: there are now weapons unfolding from the side of the vehicle. Dani gulps nervously, going invisible on instinct and watching as more and more weapons appear.
She knows that the Fentons aren’t the biggest fan of ghosts, especially Phantom. But it’s unsettling to know how far they’re willing to take that hatred, considering that Dani clearly isn’t her cousin. She has no idea how Danny handles living with them, but also figures that’s not her problem, considering she never plans on joining him there. Dani doubts that she’ll want to be tied down to only one place for a long, long time.
After a minute or two of flying around while invisible, the weapons all fold back up, and Jazz shakes herself, before getting back into the vehicle. Dani glances around to make sure that there are no other ghosts around, and then flies down. She settles on the roof of the odd vehicle, hoping that they won’t be able to tell that she’s just lying here. Or maybe that they just won’t check. She knows where a lot of ghost portals are, but a free ride back to the one in the Fenton house wouldn’t hurt, especially since she needs to return the thermos once she’s done with it.
The car ride is a lot slower than flying, which Dani has known conceptually, but it’s a lot different to lay still and imagine how much faster she could be going on her own. But she doesn’t feel like using that energy, so she just doesn’t.
Considering that Amity Park is still a small town, it doesn’t take long to make it back to the Fenton house. When the car stops, Dani goes invisible once again, and falls through the roof of the car, flopping against the carseat. Jazz is sitting across from her, stuffing a gun back into her purse. The front seat is already empty, and Dani can see Mr. and Mrs. Fenton through the windshield, already walking back into the house.
She probably needs to make sure that they won’t be in the lab, because she doesn’t want to risk them seeing her. She returns to being visible, but Jazz doesn’t seem to take notice. Most humans don’t, though.
“Can you dump out the ghost for me?” Dani asks.
Jazz screeches, pulling the gun back out and pointing it at Dani as she scrambles against the wall. She then stares, breathing heavily with a hand to her chest, while thankfully not firing.
Dani figures that she’ll get over her panic in a moment or two. “I don’t really feel like waiting around in your house until your parents finally leave the basement. That always takes forever, but I don’t really know how to find other portals on this side.”
“Wha– who are you?”
Seriously, she’s still on this? “Dani Phantom,” she tells her, even though she’d definitely done so earlier. “If you’re not going to dump the ghost for me, can you get me something to eat, or something? I don’t have a lot of stamina to spare right now.”
“You’re not Danny Phantom.”
“Yeah, that’s because I’m Dani Phantom. We’ve been over this.”
“You just said the same thing!”
“No, I’m Dani with an ‘I.’ Y’know, as in Danielle?”
Jazz’s face shifts through several different expressions as she slowly lowers the gun back into her purse. “How do you exist, exactly?”
Dani leans back and shrugs. “I thought you knew already.”
“So Danny knows about you?”
“Yeah, duh, it’d be sort of hard for him not to,” Dani says. She glances out the car window, but it doesn’t seem like the Fenton parents are coming back any time soon. “But, again: can you help me unload the ghost, or what? Or do you know of another portal nearby? I don’t want to wait for your brother to get home.”
Jazz purses her lips, also glancing towards the front window. “Uhm– I guess? But we can wait a little bit, and I have a lot of questions.”
“I’ve got nothing but time and hunger,” Dani allows. “But I don’t want this guy breaking back out, don’t want to give Danny any trouble while he’s busy in school, because then he’s going to complain about it.”
Jazz stands up, adjusts her purse on her shoulder, and gestures towards the door. “Go intangible and meet me in my room? My parents don’t take well to having ghosts in the house. Or unexpected guests in general.”
Dani nods, smiles, then drops out of the visible spectrum, leaving the thermos sitting on the carseat. Her legs twine into a tail, and she flies up to the second floor of Fenton Works. The first room that she peers into is Danny’s, but she finds Jazz’s on the second try. The door is slightly ajar, and so the first thing that Dani does is slowly shut it, before returning to the visible spectrum. She sighs, uncurling her tail back into two legs, and walking over to the bed. She flops down, and wow, this bed totally passes the flop test.
Hotel beds never feel this good. Then again, she’s only broken into a few hotels so far.
Jazz creeps into the room a few minutes later, and Dani doesn’t even bother to look up at the creaking of the door.
“He’s in the zone,” Jazz says as she shuts the door behind her. “Now: can you answer a few questions of mine?”
Dani shrugs. “I guess? I don’t think there’s much to tell.”
“Well, to start,” Jazz says, sitting down on the bed and making it dip slightly. Dani folds her arms over her chest to give Jazz some more space. “Why do you look so much like my little brother?”
“That’s how I was made to look,” Dani says. “But, c’mon, we’re pretty different. Like, for starters, he’s always stuck in that jumpsuit, and I’ve got style. And he’s taller than me, for now.”
“Yeah, but…” Jazz seems to struggle with her words for a moment. “Ghost forms are always so unique, and Danny’s such a unique case by himself. I don’t get it. Were you, like, a fangirl or something while you were alive?”
Dani fake gags, finally weakly pushing herself up. Eye contact is probably important. “Ew, absolutely not. Plus, I’m still alive.”
Jazz’s eyes widen. “You’re a halfa!?”
Dani shrugs, and focuses on the shift. The transformation rings form, gliding across her body and leaving her in her human form. She knows that the resemblance like this is even more uncanny, because according to humans her style is traditionally ‘masculine’ (which is stupid, why does it even matter?) and there’s no images of 13-year-old Danny Phantom, but there are of 13-year-old Danny Fenton. “Yeah, I’m Dani Phantom. I thought we already covered that?”
That joke is really starting to fall through. But Dani hates explaining her backstory. There’s so much more to her than the stupid fruitloop who tried to turn her into something she’s not.
“Are you being obtuse on purpose?”
“Depends. What does obtuse mean?”
If it means dodging around that story, well. Dani knows how to bullshit her way out of plenty of situations.