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His skin itched. Danny scratched absently at it until his sister slapped his hand away.
“Quit it, Danny. You’re going to end up hurting yourself.” she said before returning to eating her meal.
It was just the two of them eating tonight, as it had been for the last several days since the portal opened.
Since Danny opened it.
He still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened.
He had died.
He had come out different. He had accidentally transformed a few times now, and twice on purpose. He had to keep practicing. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if his parents saw.
But his skin wouldn’t stop itching even in his ghost form.
He didn’t know what was wrong.
Unconsciously, he started to itch his arm again.
—--
It had been nearly two months, and Danny had started getting the hang of this. He had to if he wanted to stop the ghosts.
But the itch hadn’t gone away. And he had started having strange dreams. In them he felt massive with too many limbs and too many teeth and too many eyes.
It should have been terrifying.
But it felt right.
And that scared him even more.
—--
He tried to avoid going into the Ghost Zone where his body felt too small, too tight.
The last time he’d gone in, he’d felt his skin ripple, his fingers had sharpened into claws and he had felt something poking out of his head.
He had fled, terrified with the feeling of rightness that had overtaken him in that moment.
—--
After Undergrowth, the feeling got worse.
His whole body ached.
He remembered Frostbit looking at him thoughtfully and telling him in a solemn voice that he needed to let his core expand, needed to let his ectoplasm shift naturally.
But Danny had been afraid of what that meant. What if he started to lose his humanity?
No. He would just avoid the Zone as much as possible and try to ignore the itching.
—--
He’d been fighting Skulker when it happened.
He had been feeling worse and worse and it had distracted him.
One of Skulker’s shots connected, and Danny crashed to the ground.
HIs vision went white, the itch and the ache expanded, nearly making him scream. Then his senses exploded outwards, his skin rippled, expanding. He could feel his form changing, mutilating.
When he finally managed to open his eyes, Skulker was nowhere to be seen. He tried to stand only to find it difficult. And when he looked down at himself he realized why.
His legs were gone, replaced by a writhing mass of what looked like snakes.
And that wasn’t the only thing that was different.
He had too many arms and his skin was the shifting colors of a nebula. He could feel something sprouting from his back and when shifted to look he saw too many pairs of wings, each feather shifting color individually and each one with an eye.
His breathing picked up, but it wasn’t accompanied by lightheadedness. He didn’t need to breathe, he reminded himself, but his body didn’t care. He swept one of his arms upwards and felt what he thought were antlers sprouting from his head, multiple pairs of them. He felt his face and panicked again when he couldn’t feel a nose or a mouth.
Then how had he been breathing earlier?!
He couldn’t— He didn’t—
What was happening to him?!
He let invisibility wash over himself, at least that still worked, and fled toward the portal.
He’d go see Frostbite. He’d help him fix this. He had to.
Danny may be a ghost, but he couldn’t be— he wasn’t—
He wasn’t a monster.
He wasn’t.