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Chapter Text

The sergeant on squadron staff duty for the night rolled his desk chair over when the main doors chimed. It was past duty hours so it had to be someone signing out on leave. He was already pulling out the leave book as the operations officer walked in, dressed down in civvies and a duffel on his back. He was tall and dark-headed, with striking icy blue eyes.

“Sir, previous shift told us you were signing out. I think Sergeant Murray was a little shocked.”

“I do occasionally take leave, people. Vegas is just that way.”

The sergeant was flipping through the leave book to find the Fs as he answered. “Rumor is you're going home though, sir. You don't do that.”

He didn't answer that, setting down the duffel as the sergeant found the leave form and knew he shouldn't snoop but his eyes flickered anyway to the leave address and phone number on the major's 988. Amity Park, Illinois.

The major grabbed the copies and quickly signed both with the signature he'd practiced to do on memos. “We'll see how this goes. It's been ten years, I'm giving them a chance to be, normal. There's people, friends, I haven't seen in a long time. Sister and her family are coming.”

It was about as much as the major ever talked about where he was from, so the sergeant pushed a little. Gossip was gossip about the squadron ops officer, who was just a little strange, who felt too cold if you stood too close.

But the whisper was when bullets started flying, and he put a hand on your shoulder, to not shake it off if you wanted to live. “Parents?”

“They've been on probation for the past 20 years with me I guess.”

“They might have gotten better, sir?” The major handed one back and the sergeant put the leave form back in the binder.

Reaching for his duffel on the floor, the major muttered under his breath, “And Boxy might take up crochet.”

“Sir?”

“Old, friend, who's about as likely to stop doing his thing as my parents are.” The major hoisted his duffel to his shoulder. Block letters stenciled down the side, worn from 12 years of being dragged around the world, spelled out FENTON, DANIEL J 8249.

The sergeant gave a mix of a wave and a salute. “Hope you get to see the old friends, sir.”

Danny shuddered as he walked out of HQ and back to where his car was in his parking spot.

-DP-

He slept the flight from Vegas to O'Hare and turned his phone back on when he walked out of the gate in Chicago. Texts came in from the past hours on the plane.

'U need a ride from Central? U know my price' had come from Tucker 30 minutes ago.

'We'll be in Amity park day after tomorrow. The kids are really looking forward to seeing you' from Jazz about an hour into the flight.

Danny texted them back in order while hoofing it to the next gate and lunch. 'have rental car booked. no way in hell.'

'thats a whole day alone with jack and maddie, why you do this to me.' He put the phone back as he reached his gate. Conveniently and a moment of home at the same time, the line was short at the Nasty Burger across from the gate and the flight was of course, delayed. What else was new out of O'Hare?

Jazz had already responded while he got in line. 'I've seen you send perfectly professional emails to four-star generals. You can't even use a capital letter?'

The cashier looked so tired as Danny tried to be friendly. “I'd like a double Mighty Meaty meal, make that a large please, and a bacon chocolate mint milkshake.”

The girl rung it all up with a tired smile back at him. “You look about as half-dead as I feel. That'll be $10.97. Long flight?”

“Home on leave from Nellis. It's not the flight, it's some of the people.”

The cashier laughed as Danny handed her his card. “I'll just adjust that price, Nasty Burger is proud to support our troops and offers a 10% discount.” Their hands touched and she startled. “Oh wow, you don't want a coffee? Your hand's freezing.”

“No, thanks. Sorry. The AC in here, you know.” Danny pulled his hand back as she told him with a military discount the price was $9 and swiped the card. Mentioning leave and Nellis AFB probably gave him away. Or the short regulation haircut.

The cashier was still smiling though and made contact again, cold or not, as she gave his card back. “They always keep things just icy in airport terminals, don't they?”

He took the receipt and the order number to wait and texted Jazz back 'am on leave, major fenton has left building heeeere's danny.'

It was a good 7 minutes and Danny's order coming up before Jazz responded, as he took the tray from the cashier and froze, ducking his head down when he felt his breath chill and mist. Ghost. He placed the tray down but the cashier looked alive. It had taken this long to trip which was par for the course for him now.

Danny looked back to what he could see in the kitchen and the short order cook was floating a few inches off the floor and glowing slightly. The cashier saw him notice and what had been flirting turned into her glaring. “Douglas is perfectly friendly and peaceful and used to work here before he came back about two weeks after his funeral. You can hate on Ecto somewhere else please.”

The cook was looking now and Danny deliberately put his hands behind his back (even if ectoblasts, ghost rays and ice had stopped working almost immediately after his parents had stuck him), he knew the culture. “No trouble from me, a good cook's a good cook.”

The cook waved a spatula. “He's a good boy, Nali. You don't have to be the guard dog for me, not with him.”

Nali was mollified as Danny picked up his tray and went to a table. He checked the message Jazz had spent almost ten minutes typing.

'Gawd, there is massive amounts of psychological research that says trauma causes an arrest of emotional development at the age of the traumatic event. Which would be why you get along so well with my small children. You still have the emotional maturity of a 14-year-old little brother when you aren't trying not to.'

Danny started to unwrap his burger, set it back down and responded deliberately. 'I've come leagues in maturity, I just want to cite how people tend to regress when around family and friends and childhood home. And I'm on leave. I use capital letters if texting my CO.'

After a few minutes, a handful of fries and a deep pull of milkshake, Danny texted her again. 'lol'

He was through the food and checked where the flight wasn't boarding for another thirty minutes. At least the delay hadn't gotten longer. The lobby went quiet as the cook floated out, calling back behind him with his voice getting an echo. “Taking my 15, Tobe, you got the grill?”

The answer wasn't clear but must have been affirmative as Douglas kept coming and Danny pushed out a chair across from the booth bench that let him put his back against a wall. They were alone enough and Danny knew a ghost's hearing was more sensitive than a human's so he spoke quietly. “There's a lot of places I might come back to if I bought it completely, work isn't one of them.”

Douglas solidified enough to sit down, his tail turning to legs from under his cook's apron. “What else should I do, bop about the Realms where nobody needs food anyway? Woke up in Realms Chicago, that place is crawlin' with old mobsters' ghosts BTW. Found a natural portal over the lake and found my way home. The old lady was shocked to see me for sure. She cashed that life insurance check so damn fast. You going home?”

Danny nodded. “Giving Jack and Maddie a chance to make up some ground. And Jazz just had a new kid, she's coming home with the baby. I want to meet my new nephew and see old friends, seeing them is a necessary evil part of it.”

The boarding call finally came on the tinny PA. “Hello, ladies and gentlemen, we are ready to begin boarding American Airlines flight 6390 with service to Central Illinois Bloomington. Starting with priority boarding, boarding zone 1, wheelchair and we invite active duty members to board. We've got a full flight, please board in an orderly fashion and stow your items swiftly so we can get in the air as soon as possible. Thank you.”

He stood up and dumped the tray as Douglas floated up off the chair. “You be careful with them, kid.”

The cook drifted back to the kitchen. Danny picked up his carry-on and got out his military ID with his boarding pass to get on the plane. The harried gate agent glanced for seconds at the ID and the pass then scanned the pass and gave it back. “Thank you, sir.”

Girding himself up for where he was going, Danny walked down the gate bridge.

And hoped the flight delay was a late arriving plane and not a technical issue.

-DP-

He tried to sleep the short flight but an hour isn't much. No sooner than the pilot had cruising altitude and the flight attendant had went around once, the flight was descending. “Thank you for flying with American, we are on final approach to Bloomington and will be landing in about ten minutes. Please be careful when opening overhead compartments as items may have shifted in flight.”

He pulled the belt tighter as the pilot was shedding altitude and the plane dropped. There were some commercial pilots that shouldn't be trusted with more than a model airplane. The portly business sort next to him made a good-natured shoulder pat and Danny winced. “Nervous flyer? The pilot knows what he's doing.”

“I'm a pilot and I know what he's doing.”

The lights below got bigger and brighter as the plane came down and finally the final hard bump of the landing gear. The suit was shaking his hand from the chilly contact as the plane slowed down hard to land and taxied to the gate.

Danny turned his phone back on with the announcement and the boarding door being opened as people filed off the plane. The time didn't give him a lot of hope about the car rental counter but he approached the attendant anyway as he got off the plane. “Do you know if the car rentals are still open?”

“Oh, I'm really sorry, sir. They all closed about 30 minutes ago.”

“Great. Thank you, ma'am.” Danny carried the laptop off the plane and headed for baggage claim. As he waited for his duffel to come down, he looked at the phone in his hand before texting.

'just got into central flight was late rental counter closd can we negotiate'

'My price stands. The song, the singing and the walk. Plus glasses. U have them, I know.'

'i have slept worst places than an airport lobby, tuck'

'Just let me txt ur dad that you need a ride from the airport . . .'

'dirty pool tuck fine tell pria sorry this does not please me.'

Danny put his phone away as the worn green duffel dropped onto the carousel. They'd played this game for years, ever since Danny had first come home from flight school. But threatening him with the Fenton Family Ghost Assault Vehicle was low even for Tucker. He carried the duffel off toward the sitting area and set it down, then dug through his computer case and pulled out the Ray-Bans to wait.

Thirty minutes later his phone beeped again. 'in the loading zone, start walking maverick'

Danny stood up and slid on the Ray-Bans and picked up his duffel. He could already hear it from the lobby as the automatic doors opened on Tucker's gray minivan blasting “Danger Zone.”

The windows were down in the Illinois summer and Tucker was howling along, “'Highway to the danger zone, ride into the danger zone!'”

On one hand, a little cool. The other hand, he wanted to throw the duffel bag at Tucker. So the usual as the power cargo hatch on the minivan lifted up. Slow runway walk or not, Danny still reached the van, with Tucker laughing as he pointed to the back. In the middle row seats two pre-teens were groaning as one put her head in her hands. “O M G, Dad! You have to do this every time Uncle Danny comes home, it's embarrassing! You are why it's been five years.”

Danny threw his duffel in the back and headed for the front seat. “Sorry, Tawni, your dad is a geek.”

Tawni Foley gave a mortified wave. “You aren't embarrassing because you aren't a parent. The embarrassment comes with the title.”

Tucker snorted. “Man, you literally became a fighter pilot! You have the coolest job of anybody from our high school. And you fly next gen experimental planes now.”

Even the kids were both sort of nodding. Danny buckled in with a sigh. “I'm spending more time flying a desk at Nellis, squadron operations officer for the 57th Operations Squadron. Got a good bunch, even if I know I'm still the odd one around. But a bunch of the people who think that still have to call me 'sir' anyway. At least 99% of them have never heard of Jack and Maddie Fenton.”

The powered back hatch closed and Tucker pulled off the curb. “Man, still way cooler than me fixing computers, Dash is a teacher now which is just either ironic or hilarious, Paulina married rich and old and is by all counts miserable, Kwan did not turn out to be a hobo. Opened a motorsports store in Elmerton.” Tuck went quiet, not wanting to bring up two sensitive topics.

The dark highway rolled on as the kids were starting to squabble in back before Tawni got her younger sister in a head lock while asking, “You're really at Area 51, Uncle Danny?”

“There are no aliens there. I'm out at Nellis Air Force Base, Tawni. How old are you now?”

“Dad said he was going to come out there and visit, but Mom looked at how close it was to Vegas and said Dad was going out there over, 'Your Uncle Danny's half-dead body,' which made no sense but whatevs and I'm twelve now and Mom said something about dating showgirls?”

Danny winced. “Your mom doesn't always know what she's talking about, Tawni.”

Tucker shrugged. “And my wife has never liked you, man. So you broke up with Sunny?”

“I took the fall for hiring the, do you really want to discuss this is in front of Tawni and Audrey?”

From the back seat, ten-year-old Audrey looked up from TikTok. “We're very sophisticated twelve- and ten-year-olds, Uncle Danny. Who's Sunny?”

“Nobody you need to know about. How's Sam?”

Tucker sighed as they touched sensitive topic number 1. “Sam is still her activist self, she's running a few animal welfare and conservation charities now under an umbrella Foundation named for her grandma, when Ida passed away she left Sam a lot of money, made her parents so mad. She wants to see you, but we both know that's a really complicated, situation. I told her you were coming home. I shouldn't have-”

“Ahh, I do not want to talk about it. I'm home to see all of you, Tuck. We broke the engagement, Sam was single. You gave me one free hit, Sam called us both sexist dumbasses, we're even. What about Valerie?”

Tucker hesitated before continuing as the lights of Amity Park shone up ahead off the highway exit. “Her and her dad went in full time with your, with Jack and Maddie. They usually don't do field duty anymore and nobody has seen a major ghost event in Amity Park in 8 years. Mostly back to research now, if a natural portal opens anywhere that is remotely accessible they show up.”

Danny's tone was dark. “With weapons, right?”

“They're trying, man. A whole flock of ghost parrots fell out of a portal in Joliet, Valerie thermos'd them all up and managed to put them back in the Zone. She hasn't called herself, the H-word, in years.”

Danny gestured around him indicating everything and coming home. “This is me trying too.”

Chapter Text

Amity Park city limits still had the faded billboard just past the green city limits and population sign. “Most Haunted City in America!”

Between a glut of paranormal “investigator” shows and their over-dramatics, the tourist trade had spiked for some years. Other cities had places where maybe you'd record a ghost voice if you enhanced the audio to hell and back. Amity Park had once had ghosts throwing each other through walls in the town mall.

Tucker waved casually at the tourist sign. “That Zak guy and his production crew from 'Ghost Adventures' came into town about a month ago. They wanted to get recordings of you at the high school. I guess they actually got a sighting of Sidney maybe, the recording is blurry and could also be a lens smudge. Dash insisted the gym was the best place to get a Phantom EVP.” Danny snorted remembering gym tortures with Ms. Tetslaff. “Really.”

“Zak Bagans' methods would absolutely make Sidney go full bully hunt. They interview you and Sam?”

From the back seat, Tawni chirped. “Dad told them all about Aunt Jazz getting Phantom in a thermos 3 times!”

Tucker waved a hand in dismissal as Danny shook his head. “The interview needed some broad physical comedy anecdotes, man. Sam refused to speak to them. Nick said he'd make a mock-up insert bit even.”

“And here I thought we were friends.” Arms crossed, Danny tried to look put out and belatedly thought about having maybe said too much in front of the kids.

Passing City Hall, the Nasty Burger. Tucker reached a stop sign and pointed. “My place is six blocks right on the left side of the road.”

“And FentonWorks is three blocks that way and four blocks up. You can take me to their place, Tuck.”

“If you need to bail out, anywhere there's a Too Fine Foley there will be a couch with your name on it.” Tucker turned left.

“No, I got this. But thanks. There's still hotels if we really get into it.”

“Besides, Danny, you're too big for a lab table now.”

“Not helping, Tucker.”

-DP-

The neon was still there and the city building code nightmare that was the Ops Center on the top of the building. Tucker put the minivan in park and the girls were ready to dismount. “It's late, we are just dropping off Uncle Danny, we can visit tomorrow.”

A pair of groans followed seatbelts being re-fastened. Tucker popped the back hatch and both went around to the back of the van. As Danny dragged the duffel over by the side handle, Tucker said, “Seriously, if you need to stay somewhere else anytime while you're home. Jazz told me she was getting in later than she planned on. Kids make everything, take, longer.”

He set the duffel down. “If I could adequately describe the horrified expression on my therapist's face when I described to her how many years and how heavily I relied on you and Sam and Jazz against my parents.”

“Described all the things to your therapist?”

“After a lot of bullshit and 'Danny Fenton is still a crappy liar' and for months she probably believed I was using a complicated metaphor for things. I had to show her by going invisible in her office for a few seconds.”

“No way, man, you still can? I thought-”

The door opened and a happy but hesitant Maddie stepped out, moving like someone trying to not startle a deer to flight. “Danny, honey, Jazz, she told us your flight out of Chicago was late. I know we try to keep your, keep Jack off the road but I would have come got you.”

It was past 2300 hours but Danny slid the sunglasses on anyway. “I spent the past hour telling myself it wasn't a mechanical issue really hard, Maddie. And Tucker likes getting everyone with the embarrassment in one full swoop blasting 'Danger Zone.'”

Tucker pushed the button to close the hatch. “Hey, Maddie.”

The van side window rolled down to where two pre-teens were crammed together to wave. “Hi, Mrs. Fenton!”

“Tawni, Audrey, are you both being good?”

The younger answered first. “No. Tawni's out past curfew.”

“We're in the van with Dad, Audrey. That's not breaking curfew.”

Maddie brushed back graying red hair. “We ate kind of late tonight, there's meatloaf still hot. Going over, some old telemetry with Damon Gray. Valerie's in Peoria for us, a couple of small portals opened for about an hour each yesterday.”

Danny remembered what Beth the therapist had said. 'This push-pull isn't healthy for any of you. You either burn the bridge down or repair it, standing on the slightly scorched bridge breathing in the smoke indefinitely isn't sustainable.'

He pulled off the Aviators and picked up the duffel. “Meatloaf sounds great right now.”

-DP-

The house had changed little inside, though maybe just a little neater. Danny couldn't tell if the defense system was on or not, it'd been 16 years since he'd triggered it but he still looked up to check where he knew the weapons deployed from before following Maddie inside.

He knew she saw him check as their eyes met again. “They're off, Danny. They've been off for a while. After, it's been years since a major appearance in Amity Park and when you said you were coming home this week, we double-checked.”

“I don't trip any but extremely sensitive ecto-energy sensors anymore. You know that.” He really tried to keep accusation out of his tone, re-building the bridge. If it had to burn down for good, it would not be because of his actions.

The kitchen was boisterous with some argument on the minutiae of Infinite Realms physics. “And here I'd given up on that probe ever showing back up, Damon. Thought it was going in circles somewhere or jammed in a ghost canyon.”

Valerie's dad had a forkful of meatloaf and turned when Danny spoke. “They are called the Infinite Realms, the probe could have floated off into the Zone forever. Which one did telemetry come in from?”

“Danny, welcome home! Is it that late?” Jack looked to Danny but hesitated to approach. “That one we launched way back when that ghost dragged the town into the Ghost Zone.”

Damon looked at his watch and whistled. “I'll have to be heading out but tomorrow we'll actually visit decently. Valerie should be back tomorrow too. She'd love to see you. How's the service treating you?”

Danny wasn't sure about that (the last time they'd spoke, Valerie had been well included in his angry HS graduation day rant about never coming back to Amity Park) but he nodded anyway. “It's good, stationed at Nellis AFB with the 57th Operations Squadron. Good CO, good airmen.”

It was at least three lifetimes ago that he'd pulled Valerie's helmet off in front of him to shut her down and had gotten the lecture that was bitingly ironic now as Damon answered Jack and Danny. “It's been twenty years, God, I'm surprised it still functioned well enough for Valerie to get data from it at the Peoria portals.”

Food was on the stove and he saw Maddie going to it and managed to get ahead. “I can make up my own. Is it the actual probe or just the signal?”

“Signal strong enough to download the data, Danno, but it's too risky to try to retrieve it. Tiny portals popping up and closing quickly recently.” The mountain of a man stood up, subdued and subtle were not Jack Fenton's strong points. Under better circumstance he would wrapped him in a bear hug. Their heights and build near matched now, minus ranch dressing, melted cheese and a few plates of fudge.

“Too high a risk of her being stranded in an unknown part of the Zone. Tucker mentioned parrots in Joliet from another portal?” Danny knew they'd re-built the lab portal but had never fully re-activated it, and he chose not to bring up the effort he'd been working toward to make portals before the night that had created the past sixteen years of distance.

“Ghost parrots! Dozens of them, Danny, we have a 57-slide presentation of all of them! She recorded all the indecipherable ghost speak squawking.”

Maddie sat back down with her own plate. “The parrots were saying things in Esperanto, Jack. I transcribed it all with Google Translate but it sounded like they were repeating phrases, not actually speaking.”

“See, indecipherable!” Jack was looking around the kitchen. “Something was said about marble chocolate fudge for Danno coming home?”

Plating meatloaf, mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables, Danny was pretty sure there was no ecto-contamination. The meatloaf wasn't trying to graze on the veggies at least. A peace offering as he came to the table with the plate. “I can listen to those recordings, sometime, while I'm home. I'm rusty but I picked it up to talk to Wulf. Google Translate is probably way off. Wulf and other ghosts that use it speak a really early version of the language.”

Maddie raised her hands. “Now, I promised we'd do a minimal amount of work while you're home, Danny sweetie, and we are sticking to it. Aren't we, Jack?”

Jack already had two handfuls of marbled chocolate fudge. “Right! No work. Just hanging with my favorite guy!”

Damon stood up, clearing his place and dropping the dishes in the sink. “ Valerie and I will pick up from you over the next couple of weeks, Maddie. She'll be happy to see you when she gets back, Danny. Val was making sure everybody you kids went to school with heard about it when you got promoted last year. I didn't completely understand what 'below the zone' or 'field grade' meant though.”

Danny poked at the meatloaf with a fork before starting to eat. “They're trying to move away from the promotion zones but it's the simplest way to put it. First competitive promotion board, passed selection earlier than I expected to for my TIS and TIG.”

By 2345 he was drooping from the long day of travel and after a jaw-cracking yawn Maddie noticed, jumping up and touching his shoulder. Danny flinched, instantly awake and the little burst of intangibility he could accomplish let him escape her. Maddie backed away as Danny got the chair back to the rest of the way to stand up. She didn't come closer but apologized. “I'm sorry, Danny.”

Repairing the bridge, Danny reminded himself as he tried to let go the memory of an ambush and double hammerlock in the basement below all their feet. The sass got out anyway. “At least you don't have a syringe this time.”

Maddie gestured for Danny to follow her. “You can stay, behind me, if it helps. I straightened up your old room and changed out the blankets. Your stars, are still on the ceiling.”

Almost everything that was really important to him had gone with him to college and ROTC, with no intention of coming back. “It's been a long day, yeah.”

Jack gave a big thumbs up and offered a square of fudge. “You go get that hero sleep, Danny! Nobody vacations like a Fenton! And tomorrow it's your agenda, unless you don't want to make decisions. I hate making decisions.”

She was at the base of the stairs as Danny got the duffel bag from the living room and walked toward her. “Jazz, Dallas and the kids have a place to sleep, right?”

“Plenty big bed in Jazz's old room and I packed in the Fenton Toddler Soother bassinet for the new baby. Chris and Lori love 'camping' in the living room, but we've got air mattresses and blankets.”

The stairs had the same old creaky spots before the reaching the hallway landing as Danny pushed open his old door. Jack and Maddie had re-organized, what had once been the rooms dedicated to giving a close in age daughter and son private space were now primarily guest rooms, that still bore the little touches that declared who had first claim on the bed under their roof.

Maddie tried to laugh, keeping it light. “And don't you worry about setting an alarm whatsoever, Danny, you can wake up when you want to wake up in the morning.”

He set the duffel on the foot of the bed. “I'll probably get up at 0600 hundred to run regardless. Will try to not disturb you getting up and around. It's really late and I still got to get stuff out of here, if there was any more in here I would have needed the Fenton Crammer.”

Danny unfastened the hook and pulled the three flaps off the metal loop as Maddie hesitated to leave. “Good night, Danny. I know there's, a lot, but we're really happy you're home, sweetie.”

Not wanting to call her 'Mom' but not wanting to keep striking out anymore with 'Maddie' he nodded. “Night.”

She closed the door behind her softly as Danny set to unpacking the duffel.

-DP-

Jack was getting ready for bed himself, pajamas and pajama cap when Maddie walked in and set wearily on the bed. “We did do the right thing back then, right, Jack?”

He tried to sound more confident than he was. “We kept that no-good, manipulative spook from using him, Mads.”

Maddie stood up to get herself ready for bed. “Yes, but, Danny's powers were already fading, Jack, after we didn't re-activate the portal. What did we get ourselves by doing it? A year less time of Danny Phantom and sixteen years of distance and hurt? Danny had already saw through Nimbus' slimy tongue.”

Jack tried to be confident. “He got to fix his grades, go to college, have a good career. It was worth it!”

“If that's all true, why did we send him vials of ectoplasm while he was deployed, Jack?”

-DP-

Danny woke on his own a few minutes before 0600 and scrubbed the sleep from his eyes then stumbled to the dresser and grabbed out a PT shirt and shorts. He needed a good run to settle him after the past 24 hours. He laced up his Converse and headed quietly down the stairs, dodging around the creaky spots the way too many times badly breaking curfew had trained him.

The stairs creaked anyway to the difference in size of a grown man and a scrawny teenager, body lightened by ectoplasm and flight powers. The house was too quiet as he headed out and locked the door behind him.

The street was quiet in the way of a small town as he jogged to warm up for a few blocks before starting to run, wanting to wear himself out before breakfast with, with Jack and Maddie. He was almost breathing hard as he ran past the Nasty Burger where the lights were already on. The chain had started to serve breakfast about five years ago.

Near city hall, despite the balmy 65 degree morning, Danny saw his breath. He had nothing on him to fight and hoped this wasn't one of the old pains in his ass.

Trash cans in an alley were sent flying as something was coming, and Danny took off at a dead sprint back toward home, but he only had human capacity as something slobbery caught up.

Tackled to the ground, Danny found himself looking at the ghost dog, in its giant appearance but seeming happy. “Cujo!”

The giant ghost dog was chest-crushingly heavy and barked in his face, before dropping its chew toy. Ghost slobber and the dog's breath was like death itself.

He could just almost breath under the weight. “I need you to get off me, Cujo. Off!”

The dog stepped back, bouncing up and down waiting for the toy to be thrown. Danny picked himself up off the street and picked up the toy. Where could he throw it that wouldn't led to Cujo demolishing something?

He didn't see the second ghost until the scruffy ghost teen girl appeared. A girl he'd met when she was younger and in time erased.

Danny held up the toy. “Box Lunch?”

She tensed up all over, Danny able to see the city street behind her as as her tangibility flickered. “You know me? I just threw a toy for him, and a portal opened and he ran through after the toy. No weapons?”

He sighed. “It's 0620 in the morning, I'm out here running because I have to keep in shape for work, I want to be toasted before I have to eat Jack Fenton-shaped toast with Jack and Maddie. I'm unarmed and Cujo probably ran this way because he sensed me. I, know your parents, it's been a long time.”

He gave the chew toy back as Cujo rippled back into his puppy form and jumped all around Box Lunch's floating feet. The scruffy girl tilted her head as she looked back to the alley Cujo had pounded out of. “I gotta go, that's going to close. Doggy, doggy!”

Cujo's tail wagged as he looked between Danny and Box Lunch before choosing, running after the girl. He knew when they were both gone and went back to running.

It was almost 0700 when he got back to Fenton Works and saw some changes by daylight that he hadn't saw at midnight. There was a small parking lot now next to the combination of business and home. The GAV was parked in back and the normal cars that were used more these days were closer to the street. A car pulled into the lot as Danny stopped on the steps, mopping sweat out of his eyes with the hem of his shirt.

He recognized the driver when she got out. The only one he'd gone to school with he'd seen as an adult in a world that he'd ruined and time erased. “Valerie.”

Her hair wasn't shorn as close as that future Valerie but she had it not much longer than his regulation cut. “Do I know you? Wait, oh my god, they said you were coming home! Danny!”

He tucked the shirt back in the elastic waist of the uniform shorts. “In the mostly living flesh. Before you try to hug me or something, I'm really sweaty and I have ghost drool on me. Cujo and Box Lunch.”

He knew the dog was still Valerie's least favorite thing 20 years later but she nodded. “How long was a portal open?”

“Maybe five minutes. Kid said she threw Cujo's toy, portal opened, Cujo ran after the toy and I guess he sensed me on a run. I got tackled and slobbered.”

Valerie grinned and hugged him anyway. “There's a lot worse that could have come out of a portal right in Amity when it comes to you.”

Danny shrugged and hugged her back. “I thought the collective opinion in the Realms was condescending pity for me.”

Valerie let go first and walked up the steps as Danny got out his key. He'd put the worn old housekey back on the ring that otherwise had his apartment and car keys before coming here. “Something is going on in the Realms, Danny. Peoria, Joliet, Lake Michigan, this. That's a lotta natural portals in a short amount of time.”

Danny looked down himself at the Air Force logoed PT shirt and shrugged. “I have next to no powers and a job 1700 miles away. I would just love to explain to my CO in excruciating detail how I broke something fighting ghosts, Val. And I'm still a pretty bad liar.”

“Yeah, I guess. We just used to be a pretty good team when I wasn't shooting at you, Fenton.”

He opened the door and gestured her in. “That was three lifetimes ago. I know my folks are about to go all the way overboard with breakfast, but I need a shower horribly.”

My folks. It had come out without Danny really thinking about it. “Fenton toast?”

“Fenton toast.” The kitchen was already busy as Maddie was humming happily while cracking eggs and a skillet was loaded with sausage and a cookie sheet of bacon was in the stove.

Jack was being immensely self amused by popping toast with his face on it onto plates. “Danno! Valerie, wasn't expecting you for hours!”

“I have the rest of the telemetry from the probe before it drifted too far from the portal. Knew I couldn't go in safely without a guaranteed out.”

Maddie scrambled up the eggs before joining in. “How many hours were you able to download? There could be years of data on that probe if we could get it back to the real,” she winced looking at Danny, “the mortal world.”

“Thank you.”

“About six hours, I was surprised the Peoria portal stayed open that long, but nobody came through.” Valerie draped her purse strap over a kitchen chair.

Danny went to the sausage to poke and flip patties. “It's Peoria. All the ghosts avoid Peoria. No, I don't know why. Nobody would ever explain. I just know I didn't even want to drive through once when I was nearby.”

Maddie made a considering noise before speaking. “We might be able to make a research trip there, not before you leave, sweetie. There might be something in the environment that repels ghosts.”

She did have the grace to wince, again, as Danny probably put more force than necessary into flipping the sausage patty. “Yep, of course that's your first thought.”

Valerie got into the fridge, her voice a little louder to try to re-direct and defuse. “You got tube biscuits, Mrs F?”

“They're in the little drawer in the middle, Valerie. Thank you.” Maddie looked at Danny. “I didn't mean it that way.”

He laid the spatula down on the classic bedsheet ghost shaped utensil rest. “The sausage is about done. I need to clean up and get dressed.”

He didn't try to be quiet on the stairs.

Chapter Text

Valerie was flinging disks of raw biscuit dough on the baking sheet. She didn't have the right to be upset. She knew there was a reason she hadn't seen him since they'd graduated high school either, when Danny Fenton had left town with everything he owned, a college and AFROTC acceptance letter, and a yelled intent to never come back.

Their senior year had been hell for everybody else trying to deal with incoming. Sure, the Fentons' portal was gone, but there were natural portals, and a whole Realm of the usual suspects that knew that Phantom had been knocked out permanently by his parents after Nimbus. Before that, before the world had almost ended, when she'd had her whole beliefs on ghosts upended by Dani and the revelation of Plasmius' identity.

She'd chewed on all of it for days until a hard fact had clicked. Danny was Phantom. She'd put pictures of Masters and Plasmius side by side, both of Dani's forms and that fact was impossible to not see then. She'd probably been closer up to Phantom than anybody got, close enough to see the details that any distance from the specter blurred out amid his glow and speed.

Their last real fight she'd confronted him about it and he'd, kept, lying. She'd hit harder than usual and kept up the chase when Danny had fled, focusing on the way the ghost flickered, a strange white light she could see trying to start around his stomach, that she might have once thought as an oncoming attack. Just like the black light as Masters had changed into Plasmius. And she'd caught Danny leaving the exact alley where Phantom had dropped off her scanner.

He'd dared her to finish it as ectoplasm dripped from the wound. She'd yelled at him while helping to patch up the burns from her own weapons as his spectral healing factor kicked in to erase them before her eyes.

After getting past most of her anger, they had started to work together and helped each other pull out of failing grades junior year and covered each other into the summer. It had gone well, she'd come to trust Danny Phantom. The Disasteroid, Jack and Maddie being read in, all of them working together. It had been golden for a while.

Then Nimbus had shown up, smoother and far more successful at Vlad's schtick than Vlad had ever been with Danny. She moved the raw biscuit discs to space them out so they didn't turn into one large biscuit. They'd started to doubt him and things had gone wildly off-course.

Until the fight where she'd engaged Nimbus and the powerful ghost easily swatted her into the pavement hard enough to break a leg and dislocate her shoulder, then taunted Phantom. It had turned into nearly the worst ghost fight Valerie had ever seen. She had had no doubts but they had. And here they all were now, as the stairs seemed to almost screech under angry stomps.

She slid the baking sheet of biscuits into the Fenton Speed Oven and hoped they didn't turn to charcoal in two minutes. They'd just invented it and she was sure there was something incorrect about doubling temperatures and halving cooking time to make food cook faster, but they paid her.

Danny grabbed jeans and a button-up shirt as he got dressed, spent five seconds brushing short, damp hair and headed back downstairs. Sure, Maddie hadn't said it in the most sensitive way, but there were still some hostiles in the Realms.

He checked his phone where Tucker had messaged him. 'U awake? I thoguth soldiers got up crzy early.'

Now Tuck was just trying to prod him. 'i'm an airman yeah awake. They're making breakfast downstairs. i mentioned the peoria repulsion and she jumped on investigating it.'

'Coming for breakfast!'

He was just pocketing the phone when it buzzed again. 'How long will you be in town? I'm organizing the shutdown of a mink fur farm but I'll be in Amity park tonight.'

He texted her back. 'two weeks. maybe shorter if it doesnt go well. jazz is in tomorrow with the kids. least want to see them.'

Before putting his phone away, Danny sent one last message on a different app. 'Can we set up a short-notice appointment? I may need to talk. Family is trying but Maddie is still Maddie. If a ghost popped up right now, she'd still blast it to pieces. And I don't particularly believe I'm the exception.'

That was enough to dump on Beth this morning, as he headed back downstairs.

The oven looked rabid with Fenton Fire Foam as Valerie wearily rescued the baking sheet with mitts, but the biscuits were a lost cause. Maddie patted Valerie sympathetically before speaking to Jack. “I don't think the Speed Oven works, Jack. Halving and doubling doesn't really work with baking.”

“Why not? It's math and science! Tasty, tasty math and science.”

Danny slid on another pair of oven mitts and took the baking sheet from her. “I wouldn't use that until they, put the old stove back.”

Jack held up a buttered slice shaped like his face. “Never mind biscuits, we still have toast.”

Setting the baking sheet down on the stove, Danny shook his head before getting plates down and handing them out.

Food was handed out as a knock on the door was promptly followed by the full Foley clan. Tucker grinned. “I smell Maddie's scrambled eggs. And Fire Foam, so what burned?”

Danny gave a dramatic jazz hands gesture to the oven. “The Fenton Speed Oven, double the cooking temperature and half the time.”

Priyanka Foley pinched the bridge of her nose. “It doesn't, work, that, never mind.”

Pria had learned a long time ago that Fenton insanity was almost contagious. Tawni planted herself with a plate. “Did Valerie roast the biscuits?”

“Hey! I can cook just fine. You don't be sassing me, I am the queen of sass.”

Danny handed Audrey a plate and put food on hers and Tawni's. “Valerie, if those biscuits were anymore roasted by you, I'd mistake them for me.”

She glared and swatted at him with an oven mitt. “Fenton, I will still kick your ass all the way across Amity Park.”

Danny swapped the mitt for a plate with Valerie while calling to Maddie. “How many vials of purified ectoplasm are in the basement? I need about 200 pounds of it. Valerie wants to go.”

Valerie's eyes rolled as she flipped a sausage patty and eggs onto the plate and grabbed toast. “What, the Air Force didn't teach you anything, Fenton?”

“I'm a senior Air Force combatives instructor. So never mind, I can take you just like this.”

The kids were parked at the table while the adults ate around the counter and the living room and whispering. Tucker was laughing and seeing dancing dollar signs. “If you two fight, I'm selling tickets, it'll be bigger than flour daycare.”

They looked at each other as Valerie leaned up on the counter and set her plate down and Danny made his. Then she smiled. “Backyard, this afternoon, no weapons?”

Danny considered what he could still do and shook his head. “To keep it fair, Fenton Rods? That'll get you around me phasing.”

Valerie shook her head and grabbed up her plate to start eating. Analyzing the probe data would be an all day project that needed a good meal. “Nah, Danny, I don't need your mom's staff to get around you. More than half the time you used to forget.”

“Bullets helped fix that now.” He ate from the counter as Tucker spoke up and came to join them, speaking a little quieter now around a double forkful of sausage.

“What can you still do?”

Danny scooped up Maddie's eggs onto his fork while Maddie and Pria were talking over the stovetop and matched Tucker's quieter volume. “It took a while, but I've been able to do invisibility, can't keep it up for more than a few seconds, intangibility same and partially. It's been enough to save me and my guys a few bullets in Afghanistan. Ghost sense still works but it takes a few minutes of somebody's presence to trigger. I've spotted ghosts manually before my ghost sense got them.”

Tucker whistled quietly. “Dude, you're like Captain America. Anybody notice?”

Danny forked eggs into his mouth and talked around bites. “Oh God no, I'm no super soldier, Tucker. I don't think so? I trusted my, trusted Maddie to know that some of my powers were returning while I was downrange and they sent me lab vials of purified ectoplasm. Still not sure if that was touching or hypocritical but my therapist says to give them the benefit of the doubt unless I decide to cut it completely. That's been pretty stable where I'm at for a while. Might be more if I chugged about a gallon of ectoplasm, no thanks.”

Valerie shook her head as she declined to talk with her mouth full. Boys. Once she'd swallowed, she spoke. "You cannot let the military know anything about your powers, Danny. You know what I thought back when you chose to enlist and you didn't have any of them then."

"I'm an officer, not enlisted, Val."

"Not the point!"

Tucker was about to argue about the objective coolness of a ghost fighter pilot as Tawni came over and tugged on his shirt sleeve. “Dad! Mrs. Fenton says we can see the lab if you say it's okay.”

Priyanka's shriek as Audrey seemed to be asking the same rivaled the Wail for loudness. “I don't think your mom is on board, Tawni.”

Cleaning up was a group effort as Danny agreed to see the Foleys for dinner that night. Damon had arrived and taken up analzying the probe data while insisting Jack and Maddie spend time with Danny. Which led to the bufferless gathering in the living room as Damon and Valerie were in the lab.

Maddie reached to touch his arm. “Jazz sent some pictures of the new baby. She swore us to secrecy about the name until she gets here with the kids but you want to see them?”

“Great, she sent me a few but I'd love to.” Danny shifted closer to her on the couch as Maddie opened her phone and offered it to him, letting Danny flick through the pictures of the new baby boy.

“He was 8 pounds, 10 ounces. Came quicker than Chris and Lori, but later babies do that.” The little boy had his mom and grandma's red hair and Fenton blue eyes.

A couple of pictures of Jazz looking tired but happy holding the new baby. “He's beautiful, so the name's a big secret?”

“Your sister made us swear, Danny. Well, I swore. We all know your dad can't keep a secret.”

“Hey, I'm great at secrets!” Jack was big and indignant. “So Tucker mentioned you were seeing someone?”

Maddie held up a hand before sighing. “That was supposed to be, never mind. I've got a cookie here somewhere.”

It was still a recent breakup, and he hadn't really wanted to discuss it with them. Thanks to Tucker. Danny sighed. “Sunny, she works at one of the casinos in Vegas. We're not seeing each other anymore. Disagreement about the future. She wanted to be a housewife and stay at home mom, I wanted her to continue to work and told her kids weren't an option. She objected to not getting to live off my paycheck and benefits so we broke up about a month and a half ago.”

Maddie winced. Every step always seemed wrong in the strained, delicate thing that was their relationship now. “I'm sorry.”

“It was, kind of predictable I guess. I,” it came out anyway, even if he hadn't meant to talk about it, “Tucker, he's told me before I'm looking for a unicorn. Woman who has her own career, but can also pick up and move every few years. Taking a little time to myself for now.”

It had been the problem, halfway through college and junior year, as Danny and Sam had planned the future, and wanted two different futures. She had hated being around and being nice to the wives, and yeah a lot of them were carbon copies of Pamela Manson. She'd rolled her eyes when the other cadets' girlfriends had squealed about possible assignments and wedding plans after their boyfriend got his commission. That had been a long time ago.

Maddie reached for his hand, slowly. “I'm sure you'll find someone, sweetheart. When you say 'works at the casino'? Dealer or-?”

“Showgirl.” It was his own vice to be rather immediately attracted to hot and kind of shallow he supposed. With the clarity of a less than amicable breakup, he could see the similarities between Sunny and Paulina.

Jack comforted with confidence. “You'll do way better than her once you step back into that ring, Danno!”

Maddie patted his hand when Danny didn't pull it away or phase out of her loose grip. “It might be harder to find, but no kids plus career woman is very doable. There's lots of professions that can pack up and move if they want to. It would have been nice to have more grandbabies, I know Jazz has said she is done after having Na-, her new baby. But what's important is what you want for your life, Danny.”

He was not getting into this topic with them, and it wasn't like they might not suspect anyway. After he'd told them privately, with the world coming off the adrenaline of being nearly ended, he'd let them do a battery of tests as a good faith gesture before getting fed up and refusing anymore.

“A lot of things in my life I don't have a choice on but I appreciate the thought. Changing topic now, so how's things been in Amity Park?”

Maddie went along with his plea. “They built a big, new super Wal-Mart in Elmerton a couple of years ago. And there's supposed to be a Dollar General coming to town.”

“I might have to hit that Wal-Mart today for a few things, if I can borrow the car?”

“Anything, Danny, just a few things you could get for the house?” Maddie got up and was going into the pockets of her jumpsuit. “I'll give you some cash and a list.”

-DP-

The Wal-Mart was packed for a late morning as Danny parked the thankfully normal car that he could only guess his parents had been harangued by Jazz into having in the lot. Maddie had a list that could only accumulate by obsessed scientists ignoring necessities and he needed things he hadn't wanted to haul on the plane.

Small kids were darting around as he claimed a cart and headed for the personal care first. If there was one thing about a small town Wal-Mart run, you were going to see people you knew.

A teenage girl was posing for a selfie in front of the lipstick and Danny shook his head. Dark hair, teal eyes. Two younger siblings were grabbing at her short skirt. “Gawd, stop it! Mom! Tricia and Elsa are annoying me!”

Laughing would be rude, Danny told himself that as their mother appeared. She looked older than 34, and he knew that's how old she was. “Paulina.”

She looked up as she grabbed one of the girls, the youngest looking, and dropped her into the seat on the shopping cart. “Mija, I told you if you controlled your sisters while I got the groceries, then you could get a new lipstick. Where are your brothers?”

“They're in the toy aisle, Mom, they're fine! I'll go get them when you're done.”

It took Paulina another moment to look where someone had said her actual name instead of 'Mom.' “Danny?”

The teenager looked at him and Danny rolled his eyes as hers went up and down. “You're way too young for my mom, dude.”

Paulina glared at her daughter. “We went to school together, Tracy!”

“So when you graduated, he was in elementary school, right?” Tracy picked up one of the lipstick tubes and dropped into the cart.

He could almost like this kid. “Wow, Paulina, she really takes after you, don't she?”

The once most popular girl in Casper High grabbed the other small girl's hand to keep control of the pack. “My oldest daughter Tracy and my younger daughters Tricia and Elsa. Their brothers Samuel and Felix are over in toys.”

The sound of pounding feet heralded the crashing arrival of two boys who looked to slot in birth order between oldest and two youngest daughters. “Mom, Mom, Mom! The newest COD is out! Can we get it, can we get it?”

“That is too violent a game for you boys, put it back.”

As one of Paulina's boys was holding up the game case, Danny held out his hand. “I can put it back. Cool, they improved the multi.”

“I'd think that'd be too much like your everyday, Danny. Valerie said you got promoted, you like, fly jets and stuff?”

“Not so much now, I've been on desk duty for the past year with just enough flight time to maintain my hours. Tuck mentioned you'd got married. He didn't mention your kids though.” Even Danny had the tact to not mention Tucker's implication that Paulina had married for money on that one.

Paulina looked at the hefty wedding set on her left hand and sighed. “Yeah, it's great. Lucas is a great dad, he's very successful.” As the kids started to squabble again, a high-pitched shriek came as the youngest girls got into a hair-pulling fight and Tracy pulled them apart. Paulina looked at Danny. “If you're thinking about kids at all, don't. Run very fast. But it was good seeing you again, I think the old student council is planning our twenty-year high school reunion, leave your address with someone back here and you'll get an invitation, Danny.”

She pushed the cart along as Danny gave a last wave good-bye.

He was pushing down the grocery aisles for Maddie's list when he saw the erstwhile bane of his high school existence. Dash was scooping several boxes of meal and snack bars into his cart while a brown-haired teenager as big as Dash had been back then grabbed a box of cereal from the opposite shelves.

“Got the Corn Chex, Dad.”

“Good kid, think this is enough for the semester?”

“That might last until fall break.”

Dash threw a few more boxes in the cart. Cereal was on Maddie's list for Jazz's kids so Danny pushed the cart into the aisle. “Make sure your classmates know I've got snack stuff in my room, Tank.”

“Like every year, they know. Hungry kids hit up Coach Baxter's classroom.”

Danny got close enough to talk and noticed also the gathering of school supplies in the cart too. Tucker had said he was a teacher now, and maybe even a good one? “Hey, Dash.”

Dash stared for a moment and then his jaw dropped. Blond hair had slim strips of gray but otherwise he looked a lot like he had in high school. “Fenton? Dude, I thought you were never coming back to this nowhere place. Oh, my kid, Charles, Charlie, he likes Tank though. Tank, this is Mr. Fenton, we went to school together.”

“Danny's fine, really. Mr. Fenton is the crazy one with the weaponized RV and the orange HAZMAT suit.”

Tank seemed a polite kid, offering a hand. “Major Fenton, right? I remember sending you letters in junior high, that Veteran's Day project my dad organized, we all had to write to deployed troops from the area. I know it was captain then, but Ms. Gray told Dad you got promoted below the zone this year.”

Danny involuntarily winced as he shook the young man's hand. The last letters he'd gotten from the junior high class had had to be delivered to Walter Reed. “Yeah, I remember. Shopping for the school year?”

Dash gestured to his cart. “Supplies for the kids who can't afford them all, snacks for the kids who don't get breakfast in the morning at home. Partly subsidized by the school district, Amity Park and Elmerton have a combined one. Both schools got tired of kids hiking from one to the other.”

Tank was loosely holding the cart. “Where you stationed now? I mean, if you can talk about it, sir.”

“Out of Nellis AFB near Vegas. Mostly desk duty, running operations for the 57th.”

“That's Area 51.”

“Area 51 is a couple hours away and I don't do anything with the aliens.” Danny hesitated, his mom had only written 'cereal.' “What do you kids like now on overly-sugared cereal?”

Tank reached up and grabbed a box of Trix. “This is cool. You're shopping for, umm, I can't remember Bankfield's first name.”

“Chris and his sister Lori.”

“Right, them. Little kids like marshmallow cereals.” Tank grabbed a box of Lucky Charms and threw them in too. “I only see Bankfield when his family comes to visit his grandparents. I try not to eat too much junk like this.”

Dash ruffled his kid's hair. “Tank runs track and plays power forward for the Ravens. Oh, hey, Fenton, how long you in town?”

“Couple of weeks, maybe shorter if I get into it with my folks. Jazz is coming with her kids to visit.”

“Your sister still hot?”

“She's got three kids and the oldest looks just like me, Dash. Tank's mom is,” Danny thought something had gone badly there.

“Yeah, Veronica hasn't been around for a while. Hey, if that college guy hadn't come around, me and you, could've been brothers.”

Tank sighed. “Calling Mom a 'flake' is an insult to honest, hard-working cornflakes, snowflakes and dandruff flakes everywhere.”

It wasn't funny but it kind of was, as Danny chuckled at the kid's wit at least. “No chance in hell, Dash.”

Dash had a pen and paper out. “We're starting to plan the twenty year reunion for the class of 2008, just scribble down your address and I'll make sure it gets in for invitations.”

“I'll probably be in Japan by then, Dash. Next duty station probably gonna be Yokota unless the Air Force staffing changes big.”

“Oh cool dude, the farthest most of us have been is the other side of town. I know we sent you one in 2018.”

“Stationed in Eastern Europe at the time.”

Tank was staring with hero worship now. “How many continents have you been on?”

Danny had to get out his fingers. “That's 3. 4, if you include some other stuff.”

Dash gently pushed his son's shoulder. “Go grab a jug of milk and get some yogurts, store brand, Tank.” As the kid left, Dash leaned on his cart. “I get it, man. Everybody heard the graduation day snap.”

“Mostly aimed at my parents, but yeah. I meant it back then when I said I wasn't coming back. But Jazz has a third kid now, and I'm trying to mend things with them.”

Dash knew a fraction of it all but he plowed through. “You were mad about what your parents did to Phantom, huh?”

Danny knew his old bully didn't know but close enough. “Phantom bailed out and went back to the Realms, everybody knows that.”

Dash's eyebrows climbed higher. “You're still a crappy liar, Fen-toenail. Tell Jazz I said hello when she gets in.”

Maybe Dash had gotten a few braincells since high school, as Danny continued his shopping.

-DP-

Danny had finished putting away the few things he needed for the next two weeks he hadn't wanted to drag back and forth, mostly hygiene supplies and a few snacks that he couldn't get in Nevada. Valerie knocked on the door frame. “So were we joking at breakfast or do you wanna actually spar? I've got a bunch of probe data that isn't going to be done being de-compressed for two hours. Could use a real opponent.” She had a pair of Fenton Rods in her hand and an exercise outfit on.

He plugged his phone in on the nightstand. “I'm probably not as good as I used to be. And I can only phase parts and do invisibility briefly. But I'll still go if you wanna.”

She tossed a rod and Danny caught it in air. “Last I checked, this thing can whack a phasing ghost. Bring it, boy, I need practice.”

“Just let me change into PTs and I'll be down.” She walked off and Danny pushed the door shut, then experimented with the staff. It had been years with specifically his parents' anti-ghost weapons but a bo staff was a bo staff. He had to play with it to find the mechanism to disconnect the two halves into Eskrima sticks then locked them back together.

Down the stairs and out to the backyard, Danny spun the staff as Valerie was clearing out a space of the grandkids' toys.

“You, don't hold back and don't go easy.” Valerie checked once more they had a clear area before falling into a fighting stance.

“You sure about that, Val? I kind of have a physical advantage here.” Danny had his strong side back, resting the larger end of the Fenton Rod against his instep and the other end in hand.

“Since when do I back down from a fight, Fenton?” Valerie had both hands wrapped in opposite grips.

“You never have.” Danny kicked the staff up into his hand as like for years, Valerie went on the offense first. Block, strike, block.

Danny dodged under her swing for his head and took a shot at her legs that Valerie leapt over.

Valerie swore to herself as she landed and rotated on her strong side. Danny was faster than she'd thought he'd be for his height and build, not to the level of his ghost powers when they were kids, but maybe above what just a human could do.

Her next strike pinned down one end of his staff and Danny twisted the two pieces apart, shifted his hold and blocked, and spun to grab his other from the ground.

Valerie backed a couple of steps and spun the staff to maintain distance as Danny shifted his stance to fight with the two sticks, going on the offense, pressing the advantage of height and reach.

She blocked the first hit to her side and swept his legs, Danny nearly jumping clear. The anti-phase circuitry lit up as Danny's right leg flickered out of phase. Valerie whooped as she caught his right ankle and Danny went down, spearing the ground with the two sticks and spinning away from a strike.

Valerie posted up in fighting stance as Danny hooked the sticks back together into one staff to stand. “I think you got more oomph left in you than you think, you're fast for being a big guy.”

“From you, that's a compliment.” Danny wiped the sweat off his forehead and posted up with two overhand grips on the staff. “Again?”

She grinned. “Tucker gonna be so sad he can't sell those tickets.”

“Who all would really buy them though?” Danny circled her, taking offense and striking to test Valerie's blocks, the metal clanging loudly as they fought at combat speed.

Finally passing her guard, Danny swept Valerie's legs out from her and stepped back as she went down. “Ow, damnit. You're definitely loosening up. Best 2 out of 3.”

“You're on.” Danny paced up six feet and let Valerie get herself up.

After a few minutes to breath and stretch, they both dropped back into a braced stance and circled, testing each other's defense. Strikes and blows rang across the yard as the field of battle widened. Danny vaulted clear of a strike, came around.

Valerie blocked the next blow, the impact ringing through her hands as a reminder that Danny was a lot stronger, but she'd been willing to fight him when he had the spectral strength to punch someone through a concrete wall.

Shoving him off, Valerie vaulted the pool ladder and balanced on the edge of the old pool, backflipped off to the ground, staff touching ground first as Danny went for her weak side on landing.

Balancing with the staff, Valerie couldn't block and yelped with the strike to her thigh then spun off and blocked the follow-up. “Oh, screw you.”

“You chose to get fancy, Val.” Danny pushed the advantage in a hurricane of blows met with Valerie's blocks.

Was his stamina still above human? Valerie kept blocking until she managed to create enough distance to get free and strike under his guard with her staff.

Both hands wrapped around the staff, Danny considered if he could do what he was thinking and then turned his hands intangible and tried to push it through the staff. The circuitry buzzed and the staff completely fell through his hands as Danny dove to grab it again while Valerie grabbed her advantage, sweeping his legs while Danny grabbed it back up. Going down, he struck out to get one of her ankles as both of them ended up on the ground.

Valerie landed with curse words on top of him before managing to push herself halfway up with a hand on his chest. “We're calling that a draw, Fenton.”

She could have gotten farther to her feet and didn't, as Danny didn't move. “1.5 and 1.5 out of 3?”

“That works. I should get up right?”

Oh, Danny was getting too many ideas, but he nodded anyway. “Yeah, that's probably, um, best, yeah.”

“I don't necessarily have to though.”

What was it about home that made people revert to old behaviors, Danny wondered. Finally, summoning up the fact that he was a 34-year-old man and not a teenage boy, Danny pushed Valerie away and sat up. “I'd like to think I'm a good enough man to not screw up twenty years of friendship while I'm on the rebound, Val.”

Valerie sighed and got herself on her feet as she picked up the Fenton rod. “Sam's never taking you back, Danny. Not a shit has changed about why you two broke up.”

Chapter Text

Valerie had gone back to working with the probe data that had finished decryption while Danny resisted wanting to ask to see it too. He totally didn't care, he had almost none of his powers, he was not getting re-involved with ghost science.

Danny had finished a quick shower and dressed when his phone buzzed. 'Just got in earlier than I thought, you wanna visit? Lunch?'

Valerie's declined words rang in his ears, but that wasn't the goal. He knew they were each other's past. He knew Sam had her own life and work in Amity Park and the same conflict of futures that had broken them up in college were still true. He responded anyway. 'where?'

'You pick? New Mexican joint opened on the city lines between Amity and Elmer.'

'oldtimessake, nasty burger, my treat'

Danny knew this was going to be awkward. Tucker and his family being practically adopted by Jack and Maddie had been easy, especially with Danny usually half a world away in the service.

It was less easy to continue to have a friendship with the woman who had once been your son's best friend and wife-to-be, even if you'd watched her grow up the same. But even when it hadn't worked out as a couple, they'd both sworn to still be friends.

Finally his phone started to ring with Sam's number up on the screen. Danny took a breath to find calm before answering. He had come home to see his friends and his sister and the kids. And his parents. Sam was still complicated though.

He swiped the green button. “Danny here. Hey, Sam.”

“Hi. I got in, a little earlier than I expected. Job went well, we bought out and closed down the mink farm. Saved them from being killed for stupid coats. It's nice, to hear you. Tucker said you were coming home on leave.”

“Yeah, had some use-or-lose leave accumulated. Trying to mend some fences with Jack and Maddie. I know, they don't deserve it.”

“They don't! We all saw what they did to you, Danny. Jazz's description still gives me nightmares.” It hadn't been fun watching “himself” or least his ghost half destabilize on the basement floor and that had hurt. But the night she'd given the ring back had hurt in a completely different way.

“I'm doing this for me, Sam. Not them. I've spent a long time refusing to see them very often. I talked about it, I'm seeing a therapist through VA. She made me realize that standing on the burned bridge while refusing to burn it down or fix it isn't healthy. And bluntly, I kind of realized if I cut everybody out of my life who's ever hurt me, I kind of won't have anybody left from the first 25 years of my life.”

He could almost hear her counting people on fingers. “I guess, yeah. You're still too nice. Would probably be better for you to cut all of us.”

“No, it really wouldn't. I told her, Beth, my therapist, everything.”

“Everything everything?”

“Everything everything. After hearing the whole three season saga, she pointed out to me, that if I decided to just cut everyone off and wallow in the resentment, I was well on my way to Space Fruit Loop's territory. Well, paraphrasing her words.”

Sam somehow winced over the phone. “Yeah. I know you don't have all of your, anyway, would be a little bit of problem. History repeating itself?”

“Ehh, not really. You and Tucker didn't get married and have two kids. And my, Jack and Maddie finally child-proofed for Tucker's and Jazz's kids. No new ones like me.”

She sighed at the other end. “It's, if you don't want to. That's fine. I know I'm probably the last person you want to see. I texted you first, Danny. Tucker was the one who told me you were coming home.”

“It's, complicated. But I absolutely do want to see you while I'm back.” Danny rubbed at the back of his neck, was his hair almost needing a cut again?

“It won't upset your girlfriend, will it?”

“I, we, we broke up. Surprised Tucker didn't tell you. His big mouth meant I was discussing her with Jack and Maddie. The same old saw mostly.” He could have been mean, pointed out that Sunny would have been thrilled with the life Sam hadn't wanted. But that wasn't why he was home.

“You'll find somebody in betweeen me and her, Danny.” Sam knew something, he could tell.

“How much did Tucker tell you?”

“He said you two were in a dispute about whether or not she'd keep working after 'reeling Danny into the boat.' His words, I refuse to view marriage as an effort to trap a paycheck and the guy that it comes with. There may have been miming of a fishing reel.”

Danny grumbled under his breath before speaking up. “He has the biggest mouth in Amity Park. But yeah. Already went over the whole debacle with my parents. She wanted to be a housewife with kids, I asked her to still continue working, and after us and college I figure, kids aren't an option so I told her that too. It's more complicated than that, she was, kind of recently had broken up with one of the other officers in my unit when we started seeing each other, so him and his friends kind of didn't feel like warning me about her dependa life goals.”

“That tracks, I'm guessing you have a better rank or pay or whatever than him?”

“And people think Tucker is the smart one of us three. But never mind my personal train wreck, how are things at the Foundation?” He'd rather talk about what was going on in her life than the circumstances in his any day.

“Good. I hired a couple of interns to help out with grant proposal submissions. We've got a scholarship program named for Bubbeh that's helped a lot of kids finish college, especially from Elmerton. So did you mean it, about lunch? Fine, Nasty Burger. Only because you're home on leave and it's the patriotic thing to do and I'm going to pretend there wasn't a Nasty Burger at the airport or in Vegas and that you haven't had a good burger since the last time you were home. Next time while you're home we go somewhere actually good, okay.”

Danny wanted to see her, even if it was going to hurt a little. “Come on by, 30 minutes?”

“Just a few things to close out here at the Foundation first, orders to give, 45 minutes and I'll be there?” Sam sounded hesitant.

“Yeah, sounds great, and my treat remember. Jazz and her family get in tomorrow, if you want to see them. I promise I'll talk down Jazz if she gets angry at you. She's bringing the new baby so hopefully she's too focused on Mom-ing to bring up the past with you.”

Clearly she remembered that yelling match. “I'd appreciate that.”

“Umm, Val and her dad are here too, they work with Jack and Maddie on ghost research.”

“At least this will be as awkward for you as for me, and you know what, I'll meet you at the Nasty burger instead. You and Valerie should give things another shot while you're home. She did stop shooting at you, and you're not anymore so.”

“Um, probably a bad idea. I don't want to get involved with anyone while I'm rebounding, especially not my oldest friends. Too likely to go badly. I have to let them know I'm heading out. See you in a few, Sam.” Did his tone give something away as Sam started to laugh. Apparently.

“Valerie made a pass!” Sam's cackling laughter did not help his ego.

“I am hanging up now, I'll see you in a few.” Danny clicked the red button and headed back downstairs to where the family, otherwise known as the staff of FentonWorks, were debating lunch.

Valerie crossed her arms. “Mrs. F, you're supposed to be spending time with Danny. Dad and I got the probe data research in hand.” She turned to see him on the stairs. “Danny, see, there he is, home to visit you and everything. Go do lunch with your son before he leaves again for another sixteen years.”

“It hasn't been that long.” Well, it had been that long since he'd seen his parents and Valerie. “Don't worry about me, headed out to Nasty Burger to grab some lunch. I'll be back in a couple of hours and then I told Tucker I'd come by tonight.” He pocketed the smart phone and started checking he had his keys and wallet.

No, he wasn't avoiding being alone with Jack and Maddie, shut up Beth. Maddie stood up. “We could do an early dinner before you go visit Tucker and Priyanka then?”

“Yeah, sure.” Danny knew it was going to be a very long 45 minutes but the alternative was being here. Confirming he had what he needed, he was about to walk out the door when his phone beeped again. Not Sam though.

'when you tell me you were back in amity? bad play template, bad play.' Dani. There was something comical in that they both texted the same way, independent of each other's time in possession of a smart phone.

Talking to his sister/cousin/daughter was a welcome distraction to the everything at FentonWorks. 'thought you were in asia, xerox.'

'japan, sushi is amazing!! you tell me when you get here with the air force, k. tell jack and maddie hi. I would fly if I knew you were back template'

He'd told her that some of his powers were coming back, maybe first, Danny couldn't remember. And she'd shown up after the frantic family calls had gone out when he'd been in the IED hit. 'I will you take care of yourself which flying were you going to do'

He got a bunch of giggling emojis back then, 'peeps still ask about you when I appear in ghost mode bro. I tell em i'm phantom but not Phantom, you know, i always want to tell the full truth on that everybody always wanna talk about where they were when we saved the world'

'thanks for not dani. I'm trying to mend the bridge with them now, don't start' Danny didn't get another response for several minutes as he walked out the door and headed toward the Nasty Burger. Finally she responded.

'they're your parents I guess template be safe' The rest of the walk was quiet as Danny re-learned the streets and city blocks that had been his childhood.

School wasn't back in session yet so Casper High was very quiet around the old building and the football fields as he walked by, remembering playground arguments, ghost fights and days spent beating it across the football field away from Dash.

It didn't take near 45 minutes to make the walk to Nasty Burger as Danny pushed the door open. Enjoying the last days of summer vacation, teenagers were scattered around. 20 years ago, there would have been jeers and noise and talk among the Casper High kids. The tables of teenagers were quiet with phones and tablets out.

Danny could still pick out the groups though. The jocks at their table in letterman jackets, the tight looking little group of the outcasts. A few eyes flicked over to check that the adult that had just walked in wasn't anybody's parent hunting them down before ignoring him. Danny checked his watch and saw he still had some wait. At the jock table, one of the kids Danny recognized as Tank Baxter.

Tank stood up and waved big before getting the attention of the rest of the table. The cash register had a line so he let the rush go through and waved back as he approached the table. He would have thought this was the coolest bunch twenty years ago, now they looked so young. “Guys, settle down. Major Fenton, the other guys on the basketball team. Basketball team, Major Fenton, he went to school with my dad. He's one of the guys we did that Veteran's Day writing project with.”

Danny ducked his head at the chill that started in his middle and climbed his spine as he breathed out his fogged breath. It didn't take more than a minute to see that one of the kids was a little, transparent. The teen hunkered down and stared at the table top, glancing up quickly to meet his eyes for a second before looking back down. Damn that hurt, he could feel the newness of the baby ghost from here. “Basketball team, hi.”

One of the kids was looking closer. “Sir, glad to see you recovered and got back to active duty.”

They were leaving space and not encroaching on the teen's intangible borders, they knew he was there. Tank realized where Danny was looking. “Oh. I forgot, that happens in Amity. This is Wallace. He used to play center for the Ravens. There was a car accident, last year. He showed back up just before school was about to start, his parents dug their heels with the school board and Dad went to bat to let him re-enroll in school.”

Wallace looked up and Danny slipped his hands behind them, looking like merely an 'at ease' military position to someone who didn't know ghosts. “No trouble from me if none gets started from you.”

The kid nodded his head up and down fast. “No trouble, as ghosts go I'm really weak and don't wanna fight, sir.”

The door bell rang and the place even quiet with Gen Z on phones got quieter as Sam walked in. The cashier waved. “Ms. Manson! I got in in Boston!”

“Katie! You're gonna to cost me so much at Harvard, aren't you?”

“You know it! Your usual tofu melt?” The cashier was ringing up as Danny waved bye to the kids and ran to Sam.

“Do not accept this woman's money, I am paying this one. Whatever she wants and a Double Mighty Meaty Meal please.”

“Double tofu soy melt and a double Mighty Meaty meal. That'll be $22.56 please.” Danny handed over his card and she swiped it while looking at Sam. “He's cute, Ms. Manson. And he picks up the check.”

Danny shook his head as she handed the card back with a receipt. “I just got paid on the 15th, otherwise I'd totally let her pay for this. Table?”

Sam looked the place over and smiled as she headed for an empty one. Their old preferred table. “The old outcasts' table will do?”

“I usually sit in the cool kids' spot but yep, that'll do.”

“Oh, where's the cool kids spot in the military?”

“Wherever the colonel is, mostly. Or around whoever's got the best flight record.” Danny took both their cups and went to the fountain to fill them, then coming back to sit down where Sam had settled herself with some work for the Foundation. He was not talking about still being considered the odd one and he knew it, despite qualification on four air frames.

He set the cups down and played with the straw wrapper after he opened it. “So.”

Sam pushed the papers away deliberately. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't be trying to work, this is supposed to be visiting.”

“I get it, I'm the only one on vacation right now, Sam. How, how have you been?”

“Good really. I've been do gooding all over Amity Park, Elmerton and central Illinois with the money Bubbeh left me, the foundation I set up as a non-profit to do good more effectively, I named it for her. I think she'd really approve. But what about you? There's gotta be more than you said on the phone?”

“Not really? We dated for a while, I thought she'd keep up working after getting married and she let the mask slip before I bought a ring. She didn't take it well when I said we weren't having kids, either.”

Sam looked up when the cashier called their order number. “That's new? I thought we were, at least planned to have them. Mom and Dad are still hoping with me, I think she'd have a heart attack if I straight up said I'm not having them.”

Food was an excuse to not continue talking about this. “I'll just go grab that tray.”

Sam reached for her tofu melt as Danny sat the tray down. “So?”

“Do we really need to hash this out over Nasty Burger?”

“Think it was me or you, Danny?” She reached for fries as he unwrapped the burger

“The break up or kids. I mean, the entirety of my career so far validated everything you thought back then. You'd have been at home getting a call from the Air Force, 'Mrs. Fenton, we regret to inform you your husband got his dumb ass blown up ten klicks out of Kandahar.'”

“I think they would have knocked. Dress blues, door knock, that whole ceremony.”

“I was hit, not killed again.” Sam made an annoyed growl. “Okay, yeah, I flat-lined on the MEDEVAC chopper for three minutes but they wouldn't have done the knock until I was dead dead. They didn't call my parents until I was pretty sure to survive. And by the 'please don't bite me' look on the colonel who operated's face later, pretty sure my body did something freaky to survive while I was straddling the veil again.”

She sighed as she reached for the tofu melt. “I did learn one thing when you got hit. Not being married to you didn't mean I wasn't worried sick when they called your parents, or when you were evacuated to wherever before you got back to the states.”

“Ramstein Air Base.” He twisted the straw in his soda. “For what it's worth, I wasn't exactly trying to get hurt. And they hid that IED really well. My driver even said so once we got to Bagram.”

“I know, but,” Sam took a bite of the sandwich while she thought. “I can't live that way. It was hard enough as your friend when we were kids, but that felt different even, I don't know. You weren't putting yourself in danger much, or not the same way after the Disasteroid.”

“The real world's scarier than ghosts, huh. I get it. Though you seemed more willing to put up with my life of danger back then.”

“Somehow fighting ghosts felt less like you being in danger then you being in uniform I guess. Plus there's a lot more stuff to the whole military wife thing than just being your girlfriend in high school, Danny. How many times have you moved since we graduated college?”

He knew her point as he sighed and bit into the double cheeseburger. “Five times. Seven if you include deployments. I know, Sam. I didn't come home to try to get you back, alright? I just want to see my friends, and Jazz and her family.”

“Yeah, me too.” Sam sat down the sandwich and reached across the table for his hand. “Even if it didn't work out between us, I'm still your friend and I'm really glad you're home and okay. We've all missed you here in Amity Park. So, tell me about it, how's your life been. Vegas has to be cool at least. And you can fly what, four different jets now?”

Danny set down the burger and started to talk about life at Nellis and the latest news and stupidity going around the squadron. As lunch and the crowd wound down, Danny asked her. “Wanna come by tomorrow? Jazz gets in with her family. That boy looks just like me, Sam. And there's the new baby.”

“You should spend time with your family. And your sister might not like seeing me again. Jazz and I haven't gotten along since you and I broke up.”

-DP-

The next day had Tucker, Priyanka and the kids over, after a long night before of gaming with the Foley family. Jazz was on the road to arrive in about an hour as Danny helped his parents kid-proof the house. He tried not to be annoyed that they were far more careful about what Tucker or Jazz's kids could get into than their own kids 20 years ago.

And from the way the sass kept breaking out, he was probably failing, while putting away a few things into the fridge and seeing a surprising lack of lab samples. “Wow, we actually use plug blocks now. And there's no ectoplasm samples or re-animated hot dogs in the fridge!”

Maddie sighed. “I know, and we're sorry for back then, Danny.”

The basement lab door had a electronic lock now with scramble pad. Danny closed the refrigerator door. Just as he was debating more combat, his phone pinged in a timely fashion.

'I can try to get you in for 30 minutes this afternoon, after 1500 but before 1700. How's the visit going?'

Danny leaned against the kitchen counter to text his therapist back. 'Tucker told Jack and Maddie about Sunny, they're trying really hard over all, wonderful awkward conversation I did not want to have. Kid-proofing the house for Jazz's kids. Reminded all over again they can get it together for their grandkids' safety when they failed for us. 1500 or on is fine.'

'1530 then.'

He pocketed the phone and looked at the door. Secured now in a way that 20 years ago would have kept three kids from getting down there. Let it go or cut them off, let it go or cut them off.

-DP-

The minivan pulled into the FentonWorks parking as they were all waiting outside. The slider door opened as soon as the van was stopped and the older kids ran out first.

Lori ran to Danny and reached up. “Pick up!”

The six-year-old had her dad's blonde hair and green eyes, as Jazz's husband got out of the van. “Christopher, let's get the luggage out. Your mom's has to get the baby.”

The boy was fourteen, and pardoning the mental pun, looked the ghost of Danny at that age. Chris pulled his hands out of his pockets as Jazz got out. “On it, Dad. Hey, Uncle Danny!”

Danny picked up Lori and balanced her on his hip. “Chris, you've gotten so big. Dallas, you two need any help?”

“Just keep Lori from bolting, she's been doing that lately. Last time we went to Six Flags, we broke down and leashed her. Chris and I got the bags.”

Jazz smiled at her “little” brother who now towered over her once growth spurts had finally happened for him. “And I've got our newest little team member! It's so good to see you, Danny.”

“You too, Jazz.” Lori was bigger than he'd last saw her, almost too big to pick up anymore.

Jack stepped in to help with luggage as she unbuckled the baby and carried the bundle with a full head of red hair. “Here's the first one that actually looks like me.”

“Lori has your face, around the eyes, your nose and your chin.”

“And everything else from her dad.” Careful hugs went all around as small kids were packed into the house and bags were brought in.

Chris dropped onto the couch and had his phone out as all the kids clumped together, Tawni and Chris arguing over a YouTube video as Audrey had excessive patience for 10 as Lori wanted to show every toy she'd brought.

Jazz sat back and shifted the new boy into her lap. “Chris, be nice.”

“I am, Mom. Tawni wanted to see some old ghost fight videos on YouTube, like twenty year old videos. I say they're all CGI and not even good CGI.”

Danny sat across as Dallas sat next to Jazz. Dallas Bankfield had moved to Amity Park during Jazz's sophomore year of college and the girl who'd had few crushes outside of Johnny 13 had fallen hard. “Not CG, Chris, I was there for that back in the day. You haven't been terrified until a giant two-headed ghost snake is coming at you.”

Chris rolled his eyes. “We know, Dad. 'And then this beautiful redhead shows up following this ghost kid and they beat it up and caught it.' On this episode of 'How I met your mother.'”

Tucker raised a hand for a high five. “Nice pop culture reference!”

“I was four when that showed ended.”

“Don't hurt your adults like that.”

Jazz ducked her head and waggled her fingers in the baby's face to a happy little squeal. “That was closer than I wanted it to be. The snake was running from us.”

Danny laughed. “And your mom can't shoot.”

“I have heard this story. 'And the redhead freaked out when she got the ghost kid and the snake in the thermos at the same time and I helped your mom let just him out.'”

Tawni pulled up another video. “It's not CGI, Chris. They can't even do computer animation like this in 2005. That's like the Stone Age.”

Danny looked around himself. “My cane is around here somewhere.”

Audrey came over as Lori dragged a baby doll. “Yeah, while Dad and Aunt Sam and Aunt Jazz were helping Phantom, where were you, Uncle Danny?”

“Oh, terrified of ghosts back then. Scared as heck, your dad can tell you, I always ran when they showed up.” Danny settled himself in and looked up at Dallas and Jazz. Dallas had been allowed in on Team Phantom around the time that every third word out of Jazz's mouth was 'Dallas' and his tech skills took some labor off of Tucker. It hadn't been that much longer after that it had ended in the lab downstairs.

Jazz smiled and looked at the kids before whispering. “We know something they don't know.”

“They're not old enough.” Danny matched her whisper and sing-song.

“Oh now, your Uncle Danny might not have gotten into the fights back then, but he hooked up all the ghost tech Team Phantom needed. Right behind me, of course.” Tucker gestured to himself.

Jack and Maddie took the two-seater and she laughed. “Jack threw the first Fenton Thermos at Phantom actually. We didn't think it even worked.”

Chris sighed. “Why are all my relatives delusional? I mean, you can see the Photoshop clipping all around the 'ghost' effects.”

Tucker sat up more from the couch. “That is not clipping, clipping would be way more pixelated. We were there, Chris, all of us. It all happened, just hasn't been nearly as much ghost activity in years since the Fenton portal was closed.”

Danny sighed. “Go down to the Nasty Burger. They've got marker plaques for each time they had to rebuild or renovate from ghost fights. It's hard to control collateral damage in combat with someones who don't care. 2007, Disasteroid, world saved years before you were ever thought of?”

Valerie walked in from the kitchen. “I knew I saw your van, Jazz! It's been forever.”

Tawni hopped up. “Ms. Gray, please tell Chris these old videos on YouTube are real. He says they're just CGI and I know those were real fights, Dad's talked about back then.”

Valerie crossed her arms. “I was there, Christopher. We all were. The weather changes wrong and my arm still hurts sometimes from when it got broke against Pariah Dark.”

It was enough to get the teenager to back down as Tawni pulled up more videos. “Whatever happened to Phantom, Dad would never say, just that he left.”

Danny crossed his arms and glanced meaningfully at Jack and Maddie as she pulled out the white lie that had been used for years. “After our portal was shut down and after the Disasteroid, Phantom went back to the Ghost Zone with all of the others.”

“Yep, that's totally what happened.” Danny looked at his watch and saw that he needed to sign to the VA Connect in a minute. “If you'll just excuse me, I need like 30 minutes of privacy in my room here. Remote appointment.”

Jazz sat up straight. “Anything the matter?”

“Nothing physical. Appointment with Beth.”

“Is she hot?” Tucker turned around as Priyanka growled. “For Danny, hypothetically, sweetie.”

Jazz rolled her eyes at Tucker but she smiled as she shifted the baby. “I'm really glad to hear you're still speaking to her, Danny. When you come back down, somebody needs to tell you his name.”

Danny shut and latched the bedroom door before sitting down at the old desk and signed into the app. Once he was in the virtual room, Danny placed the phone so he had good line of sight and waited.

The video wavered for a moment as Beth came on the screen. “Hello! I may have kind of tried to keep some time clear for you the next couple of weeks, Danny. Expected you'd need to talk.”

“Sorry.”

“Don't be. How is the visit going overall?”

“Better, than I probably expected. I did not want to talk about Sunny but Tucker let slip about her so we had that conversation full of well-meaning platitudes. And the kids are getting old enough to do things like look up my old fight videos on YouTube. They're not old enough to reliably keep secrets so they've gotten the same white lie as the rest of the world. Chris, my nephew doesn't believe any of the old videos are real. We all ended up dancing pretty close to the truth.”

He thought Beth was typing. “Your parents, how have they been since you got home?”

“They're trying. Said a lot of reassuring stuff about the break-up, and wished for more grandkids, and I was not even going to open that topic with them so I made vague noises. It's just, Tuck's kids are here, and Jazz's kids and Jack and Maddie can kid-proof and lock down the basement lab space for them but they couldn't do that for me. It's hard to get over, that's all.”

“While yours is way outside typical, and if I had you as a patient as a kid your entire life would be a CPS call.” Danny snorted, Beth was about the same age he was. “The basics are familiar to a lot of people though. Unfortunately a lot of people even if they mean well, fail as parents but get it together as grandparents. It's tempting to think peace means just swallowing it down and forgetting, but that doesn't really help.”

“The lab, the portal, I told you about the accident. They've got a proper security door with a damn scramble pad on it now blocking it. If they'd done that twenty years ago, I might have stayed only geek around Casper High and not graduated to freak.”

“There's no excuse to be made for them, we both know that. Now what are you going to do with that?”

“Sass and sarcasm is not really accomplishing anything, huh?” He thought about it. “I can try to speak to them without the lashing out and the sniping. There's a big secret around the new baby's name, I'm not sure what they're doing there.”

Beth smiled. “Speaking calmly about your feelings seems to be an excellent idea, and if they want this to work with you, I think they'll be amenable to listening. How is your sister and the new baby?”

“He's adorable. She's glowing though I guess she's said she's done at three kids. He's got her hair and Fenton blue eyes. Chris, looks so much like I did at that age it's spooky, pardon the pun. I look at how little all of them are, and it's like, when did kids get so little?”

“Kids've always been little, Danny. And so were you.”

It helped by the time the appointment was over and Danny let Beth sign off first before logging out of VA Connect and swiping the app away.

Back downstairs as he came back, a spirited argument was underway about whether boys or girls were easier to raise. Maddie snorted. “Boys are harder, Jazz. You have to agree with me.”

Jazz sniffed. “My son is an angel. Lori has made teachers cry. And I'm sure Na-. Danny!”

He gave them a genuine if small smile. “Just don't search too thoroughly in a teenage boy's room. So what's the big secret with the little man?”

Jazz gestured her brother to her. “Come sit down next to me, Danny Fenton, and hold this baby.”

He'd never disobey her, as Danny settled himself on the couch and took the red-headed little bundle from her. Between Chris, Lori, Tawni, Audrey, and dozens of babies post-Disasteroid, even if it'd never be his kid, he'd gotten pretty good at holding babies. “So what's his name? M-, she said it was a secret.”

Jack was almost pouting. “They wouldn't tell me either. Apparently I can't keep a secret.”

“You can't, Dad.” Jazz smiled as she folded back some swaddle to clearly show the baby's face. “His name's Nathan Daniel Bankfield.”

Danny smiled at the little guy. “Hello, Nate. I'm your uncle Danny.”

And maybe, it wasn't the most horrible thing that if even Jack and Maddie had failed so badly at lab safety for their own kids, if they could get it together for the sake of these kids, he could live with that. Looking at the older ones, yeah, he could live with Chris, Lori, Tawni and Audrey unable to get anywhere dangerous now.

Chapter Text

Danny paced and bounced Nate in his arms as the combined Fenton and Bankfield clans were planning what to do for dinner. Jack pointed at the oven. “Fenton Turkey, with only a 50% chance of re-animation today!”

Maddie made a face as she set up a game to play with Lori and Jazz. “I don't know, Jack, turkey would take an awful long time. And we're not using the Speed Oven for it.”

Jazz took the top hat for herself as they set up Monopoly. “We're easy, Mom, we can just get some take out. It's been a long drive.”

“No, for the first time in 15 years I have all my babies under my roof again. I'm cooking. I promise no ecto in anything. No samples in the fridge anymore either.”

Danny noticed the eyes looking at him as Jazz grinned. “Danny's the one home from 2000 miles away; what do you want?”

He sighed. “You're going to make me pick? You're underestimating how often dinner is the DFAC, Jazz. Is there anything the kids won't eat?”

“They're pretty agreeable with food.” Jazz looked at where Chris was folded on the couch with his phone.

“Anything but green beans.”

Lori was bouncing the dog token around the half-set Monopoly. “Meatballs and spaghettis!”

“Garlic bread.”

Danny held up a hand and one finger. “I agree with the kids. They're very smart, being yours and all.” He bounced the infant some more as Nathan started to cry. “And what does Nate want for dinner?”

Dallas opened an eye from napping on the couch after the drive. “Motion is seconded and carried. We stopped a couple of hours before we got here I walked the kids out to stretch their legs and let Jazz feed him. He probably is hungry.”

“I will just hand this little guy to his mother and we all give Jazz some privacy.” Danny set the baby with her after Jazz stood up and balanced.

“Do not eat all the noodles before I get back. I'll just be in our room.” Jazz cooed at the baby as she settled him in her arms. “Who's my big little man?”

Chris set down his phone. “Need the diaper bag, Mom?”

“Yes, could you?” Chris went for the bag with no hesitation. “Last time on diaper bags, kiddo, I swear.”

-DP-

With dinner done and cleared, Danny was putting away dishes as Dallas washed them. Danny hadn't even seen it when Dallas' Dad-sense went off. “Chris, stop trying to guess Grandpa and Grandma's door combo.”

Danny turned to where the teenager was badly looking innocent and leaning against the basement lab door. Then back to Dallas. “How did you do that?”

The kid was gone and Dallas rolled his eyes. “You sense ghosts, I sense my kids. Chris knows he can't get anything past me.”

He put away another dried spatula. “Would have been nice if they had the scramble pad 20 years ago.”

Dallas poured more dish soap on the baking sheet. “Oh, I don't know. If it hadn't been for Phantom, I'd have got eaten by a giant ghost snake at twenty, I'd have never met your hot sister.”

Eyes rolled more as Danny waited for the cookie sheet. “We only told you because Jazz would not leave you behind anywhere and you were gonna see something eventually.”

As he rinsed the baking sheet, Dallas continued. “For what it's worth, they didn't think of almost any of the child-proofing on their own, Danny. Jasmine and I put our collective foot down once Chris was old enough to start walking and poking and said we weren't bringing him around if they didn't lock down and secure a lot of things. Chris and Tawni got to that point pretty close together and they see Tucker's kids as their grands too. And once they had four adults making the requirement, they did it. So I know it probably doesn't really help, but it's less 'didn't care to then' and more 'got forced to now.'”

It kind of helped. Danny took the sheet and dried it off to put away. “Yeah, that tracks.”

Valerie walked in then and looked at them both. “Two men willing to wash and put away dishes, and one gotta be married and one gotta be my ex already.”

Dallas shrugged. “Jazz threatened us with a psychology reference text.”

Danny examined his hands as he put the sheet away. “Last I checked, I was still single.”

Val rolled her eyes. “Oh, I would never want to get between you and a stripper in Vegas or anything, Fenton.”

“I'm going to kill Tucker and then when the ecto-contamination means he comes back, I'll kill him again.” Danny thumped his head against a cabinet. “Sunny is not a stripper, she's a showgirl, and we broke up because I told her she couldn't be a housewife. You ready to move to Japan, they're sending me to Yokota next year.”

“Tempting but nah. You want a woman to follow you all around the world, Fenton, you gotta not expect her to quit a job every couple of years.”

“What, there's lots that do it. My boss's wife is a nurse, the XO's husband is a lawyer. I'm not dating for the impossible here, Val.”

-DP-

Once the dishes were finished, Danny looked at his watch. He hadn't managed to get a run in this morning as the family was gathered in the living room doing a combination of reminiscing and catching up. “Jazz, everybody, I'll be back in about an hour, just going to put on some PT clothes and get a run in tonight.”

Maddie looked up from where she was cooing at baby Nate. “Just be careful, Danny.”

The night air was just cool enough as Danny jogged to warm up on the route he'd gotten used to. That morning he'd seen Box Lunch and Cujo had been the only time he'd seen a ghost so far as he'd been home, and he did once a day.

Once he was ready, the jog turned into a decent 9 minute mile pace. The stars were bright, the night was clear and so far the visit was nowhere near as bad as Danny had feared.

So something had to go wrong, as he ran past an alley a few blocks from the Nasty Burger. He barely dodged the attack as someone came out at an alley and tried to clothesline him. Before Danny could fight back, there were two of them and a pistol's hammer clicked.

He would have expected to be mugged running in a bad part of Vegas, not Amity Park near the old Nasty Burger restaurant. He stopped with the gun in his face and reached for pants pockets. “Hey, easy, wallet and phone, guys, you can have them. Nobody has to get hurt here.”

“Not about that.” They both attacked then and Danny tried to fight back but the pistol was right in his face by one of the men as the other had his right arm twisted back in a hammerlock.

The breath went out of him as the one that had complete control of his arm slammed him against the wall of the building a couple of times, his nose and cheekbones scuffed on brickwork. Danny tried to kick backward. The one with the gun cursed as he knew he'd hit something but yelled to the man holding him. “Keep him still, dumbass!”

The blow from the butt of the handgun held by big guy #1 had his bells ringing as big guy #2 twisted his arm to the breaking point. The syringe the first one held and was tapping cleared Danny's head with a burst of adrenaline-fueled panic as the other's grip slammed Danny into the wall again. Screw it, he was revealing too much but with great effort he managed to turn his right shoulder, arm, and hand intangible and slipped free. Confused yells answer that as the guy that had been holding him grabbed uselessly at the transparent limb.

Another blow to his still very tangible head and Danny lost the concentration he needed, the thug grabbing his now solid arm.

The needle stung like an eighteen gauge and he resigned himself to dying again and probably for good and blocks away from the place where he'd done it the first time. “Calm down, this won't hurt.”

“Fuck off.” The depressed plunger made Danny brace for whatever drug or poison they'd given him. The surge of simultaneous power and nausea instead buckled his knees as ectoplasm hit his blood.

The second jab in the same arm poured more fuel on that fire. The gun clattered to the concrete as syringes were thrown aside and both assailants ran as Danny tried to get his legs to work, stumbling to the street. He gripped the brick of the building as a police car was rolling up, red and blue lights flashing but no siren.

The officer got out the passenger side, blonde hair tied up high in a bun. Danny squinted before he recognized her. “Star?”

“Danny!” She held up a hand to him briefly, then spoke into the police radio on her shoulder, calling for ambulance. He gripped the brick harder, feeling like his flesh was trying to crawl off his bones. “What happened? I didn't even know you were back in Amity.”

“On leave, two guys, big guys, attacked me, thought it was a mugging, injected with something. One of them had a gun, he dropped it, with the syringes.”

She relayed all of it on radio while gesturing to her partner in the car. The younger cop who got out the driver's side barely looked old enough to shave. “Sarge?”

“Dispatch, this is Car 17, we're 10-97 on Foster Avenue for a 10-33. Assailants have fled scene on foot, 10-63 on two large male suspects, over.”

“Copy, Car 17. EMS and back up is on the way, South Mercy ER notified of incoming, over.”

“Roger that, Dispatch. Car 17 out.” Star's rookie rested his hand slightly on the butt of his sidearm, watching for the suspects to return as Star went to Danny. “Delgado, get the digital and start photographing the scene. Don't touch anything until we get a detective here. Are you hurt seriously, Danny? You're getting a ride to the hospital no matter what.”

“Scuffed and scratched, none of that's serious. My parents have done worse.” Danny's hands shook though as he fumbled out his phone.

Star knew no typical mugging would leave a new model smart phone with the victim. “Like, any idea what they gave you? The ER can do a blood screen for a lot.”

Delgado had the digital camera in hand and the fake noise of a shutter sounded as he called back to Star. “Sarge, I don't know what's in these needles, but they're big and the stuff's green and glowing?”

A normal human would be dead from that much exposure at once injected, Danny knew that. But he was a Fenton and having some ecto-contamination was common knowledge. “Ectoplasm I think. Somebody with a grudge on my parents?”

“Shit.” Star settled Danny in the passenger seat of the cruiser as they heard the ambulance's siren howling. Danny was calling the house to let them know what had happened. She got on her radio. “Dispatch, this is Car 17. Notify EMS and South Mercy ER of ecto-contamination and ectoplasm exposure. Suspects may have more ectoplasm and use it if confronted, over.”

“Copy, Car 17. EMS is two minutes out from your location, Over.

“Roger that, Dispatch. Car 17 to EMS, are you on channel? Over.”

“Car 17, this is Mercy 2. Approaching your location. Is the patient a Fenton, over.”

In spite of the circumstances, Danny laughed. In spite of the fact that once the initial toxicity had passed, he could feel ice in his veins, power rising from dormancy. Could he beg off being taken to the hospital? Star looked at him with sympathy. “Mercy 2, this is Car 17. Patient is Fenton, Daniel, age 34, male, Caucasian, six foot,” Star raised her eyebrow and Danny sighed.

“6 foot 3.”

“Six feet, 3 inches. Patient is responsive with facial lacerations.” Danny pointed to his sore shoulder. “Possible shoulder injury from joint lock maneuver.”

The scene was soon lit up with more emergency lights as the ambulance stopped next to the curb and the EMTs dismounted. At least they weren't anybody Danny knew as they rolled over a stretcher and helped him onto it. “There we go, just going to buckle in for the ride, sir. Can I get your name and date of birth and what year it is?”

“Danny Fenton, August 8th 1990, it's 2024. I've flown Dustoff choppers enough to know what you need. Coherent, some lacerations and contusions from the brick over there, they wrenched my arm pretty good behind me to hold me still for the injection. Pretty sure it was ectoplasm.”

“Okay, that's great, Mr. Fenton, just relax for the ride.”

“South Mercy, right? Because I've been to No Mercy and it wasn't fun.”

“The new hospital, sir, we promise. Sergeant, I assume you and your rook following us to the hospital?”

Star looked at Delgado. “Rookie, go with Mr. Fenton to the hospital. Once a detective gets here and takes the scene, I'll be there. Probably more questions, Danny, if you feel up to it start writing down everything for us, like, any details even if you think they're not important.”

He nodded and laid back as the stretcher was loaded. The rookie cop climbed in with the EMT as he did vitals. Star gave the back doors of the ambulance two hard thumps as the lights and sirens came on and they pulled away.

Delgado sat in a jump seat that folded down from the wall. “So you know Sergeant Cassidy?”

It took Danny a minute to remember that was Star's last name. “Yeah, we went to high school, here in town, together. She was an A-lister, I was a nobody, that old story.”

Delgado was writing anyway. “You're sure it was ectoplasm? CSI will be bagging and testing the syringes, we'll notify you and the hospital of what they get on field tests anyway.”

Danny made a fist and flexed his fingers. If he tried, he felt sure he could pull up ice or ghost rays. Had the not-muggers known exactly who he was? What he was. “Yeah, pretty sure.”

Danny used the group chat to message everyone at once. 'on way to hospital, do not freak out, got jumped near nasty burger, attempted mugging, the rest is for f2f conversation'

The responses were predictable but Danny was not getting into the implications of the muggers shooting him with ectoplasm on open cell phone comms.

South Mercy's lights filled the windshield as the ambulance rolled into the ER bay. Danny relaxed for the ride, sure once he was triaged that he'd be waiting a bit. Arriving in an ambulance did not immediately get you priority.

Apparently it did, or they thought Danny was that bad off, as they had rushed him in, Delgado hanging nearby. Danny gave a guilty little wave as the doctor came in. Dr. Angela Foley. “Hi, Dr. Foley.”

Angela took a big deep breath. “I'm not even going to mention I expected you to visit us before now, Daniel Fenton. At home.”

“Sorry, it's been a busy few days. I got jumped so I plead mercy and utter patheticness.”

Angela sighed as she waved down a nurse. “Get somebody from the lab for me to take blood samples from Danny so we know what he was drugged with.” She got a specimen cup from the rolling cart of medical supplies and handed it to him. “Are you okay to stand and walk for the bathroom?”

The phlebotomist had taken several vials of blood, Angela took Danny's vitals and sent the cup off to lab with the blood vacutainers. Star had got there with a plainclothes detective about the same time Maddie and Jazz burst into the ER.

South Mercy had politely requested years ago that Jack Fenton only come if he himself was the patient and preferably only if in desperate straits. He was in a curtained cubicle laid up with a heart monitor. Dr. Foley came back with a clipboard. “Okay, Danny, we're still running some tests for what your attackers injected you with, though it looks like you were right when you told the officers it was ectoplasm.” Danny saw the face she made and she looked up with concern. Angela had been told after the Disasteroid near along with his parents, but they couldn't discuss the matter of Phantom here.

“I spent a lot of childhood ecto-contaminated, so I had some idea on exposure.” It wasn't a lie exactly. Angela nodded, even if 'some idea' was such an understatement from him. What would this do to Danny's long gone powers, she didn't know.

“We want to keep you overnight for observation, monitor to see what your body does with the ectoplasm exposure. It should dissipate over the next few hours and hopefully over the next few days, no alcohol for a week while your liver is already trying to break down the ectoplasm. Sergeant Cassidy and Detective Reyes want to speak to you if you're up to it, and your mother and sister are in the waiting room about to tear the door down. I would let your parents examine you too later, Danny, for the other thing.”

“Maddie probably could too. Could you let them come first then the cops?”

“Of course. We'll be right back, try to relax.” Angela showed little reaction to Danny referring to her by name. Tucker's mom surely understood why.

The sheets were crisp hospital bleached white and he ignored how even since they'd put the lead on him an hour ago, his heart rate had slowed a bit. Jazz came in first and hugged him carefully. “We came as soon as you messaged us. Star said you were mugged?”

“Not a mugging, Jazzy. Offered them my wallet and phone, they weren't interested.” Danny had stopped some of those, not many because Amity Park was a little town, but he knew muggers didn't turn down valuables handed to them. And they usually ran screaming away from the glowing kid who could throw energy blasts from his hands. “I think they knew who I was at least, maybe even about him.”

Maddie's hands clasped each other as Jazz sat down next to his head and Maddie gently set herself on the bed. “How are you feeling?”

How honest to be with her. Danny looked at Jazz. “Honestly, good. Too good.” Danny turned his hand palm up and he could feel it. Ghost ice and ectoplasm ready to use, power humming under his skin. “Might be a bad idea to be too honest with you right now, Maddie.”

She nodded. “I understand that. Just after the hospital lets you go, I promise you set the boundaries. Please let Jack and I check you over, Danny.”

Dr. Foley came back before Danny had to decide just how many curse words were in his answer to that. “We got the tox screens and urinalysis back, and the intake desk reminded me that you're military, on discharge we'll give you paperwork to take to your PCP and unit clinic. You'll have to cut back on the hustle and hoorah for a few days while you purge the ectoplasm, Danny. Everything else came back negative, it looks it was only the ectoplasm in the syringes. Pay attention to the injection sites for a few days, we wiped down the punctures with an antiseptic but they didn't exactly use an alcohol wipe before injecting you with a large gauge needle and the injections could still become infected.”

“Thank you. And I'll really try to come visit while I'm home, Dr. Foley.”

“You're welcome, a nurse from the ward will come soon with a wheelchair to get you in a room for the night. Maddie, on behalf of the entire emergency room, thank you for not bringing Jack.”

Jack had only destroyed one wall at South Mercy with the GAV one time. Maybe two times. “There was a ghost in the hospital, you know, Angela.”

Angela tapped her foot and rolled her eyes while glancing sympathetically at Danny. “And while you two were knocking down the walls, Phantom caught it with no damage to anything. I was here and managed to somehow not notice Tucker helping him.”

Danny ducked a little lower on the bed as Jazz crossed her arms. “Anyway, Mom and I have to head back to the house, I'm sure the police still want to speak to you, Danny. And whatever you want to do with this, I'm on your side, little brother.”

Danny hugged them both as the nurse approached with the wheelchair while Maddie and Jazz left. “I have orders to admit you for observation for the night. I apologize in advance for all the times tonight someone from the nurses' station will have to wake you and check your vitals and make sure you're coherent, Mr. Fenton.”

“I know the drill. Is Star still here?”

“Sergeant Cassidy? Yes, and the detective. They're chomping at the bit to speak to you, but you have rights and you don't have to say a thing to them if you don't want to, sugar.”

“I'm the victim, witness, I guess. Let them follow us, I'll talk to them while you get me settled.”

“If that's what you want, just hold onto the bedrails until you're in the chair. Your knees might still be pretty weak and you were given a big dose of poison, you're lucky to be doing as well as you are.”

“I've had a lifetime of tolerance to ectoplasm. Though it's been a long time since I had contamination like this.” Danny managed to get himself into the chair with the nurse's help and the bedrails and they wheeled away from the ER bay.

Star and another man came in behind the doctor, Star had tucked her uniform cap under her arm as the man in dress pants and blazer, about their age but Danny didn't know him, spoke to her and she pointed at him. The plainclothes detective offered a hand as the nurse pushed Danny's chair. “Detective Reyes, Amity PD. I'm the case officer assigned to your assault, Cassidy mentioned you're military?”c

“Air Force, home on leave. What can I tell you, it was pretty quick and it wasn't a random mugging.”

“That helps a lot, Major. I've looped OSI in already about your attack and what you've been able to tell Sergeant Cassidy. You two went to school together then?”

“Born and bred Amity Park. I was just out running, I've been trying to keep up my workout schedule while home but this morning didn't work out so I went tonight. They tried to clothesline me, I dodged and one pulled a gun. They overpowered me, got my arm in a hammerlock and slammed me into the building then injected me. They were both big guys, white, dark hair. Probably had some training on how to fight and they knew who they were attacking.”

Reyes was writing in his notebook. “And they injected you with, ectoplasm? I'm sorry, I'm not a local. Moved here about two years ago. I'm only vaguely familiar with the ghost stuff outside the Disasteroid and the big shit.”

Danny nodded and gestured to where Maddie and Jazz had left the bay. “My, parents, Drs Jack and Madeline Fenton, they study ecto-phenomena and ectoplasmic entities.”

The nurse was trying to be helpful. “Ghosts, detective. The Fentons hunt and study ghosts. If those guys gave him ectoplasm, they knew who they were attacking and being ironic doing it.”

Danny wasn't sure if they fully knew who they were attacking, because if they did giving him ectoplasm was the dumbest thing to do. “Yeah, they're eccentric. Jack is banned from the hospital unless he's the patient and dying for wrecking walls with the Ghost Assault Vehicle. There was a ghost attacking the hospital and they showed up to hunt it and Phantom caught it and they tore down a couple of walls trying to shoot Phantom.”

The detective scratched his head with the end of the pen. “The ghost kid, right? I really hadn't heard about him before the world about ended when we were teenagers.”

The nurse, who Danny figured was his age, giggled. “Our old hero in Amity Park. Ghosts started attacking from when the Fenton's portal was turned on 20 years ago and Danny Phantom appeared too. He used to fight and catch them, but nobody's seen ghost attacks or fights like that in about 15 years. The last real ghost attack was 8 years ago but Valerie and the Fentons handled that. Phantom just kind of vanished in 2008, nobody's seen him since.” The nurse glanced at Danny reluctantly before she said it. “The whole town, kind of figured Jack and Maddie did something to Phantom, they'd tried to hunt him down for years.”

Reyes was writing it all down as Danny winced. People who had lived here in Amity Park the whole time had never caught on. But the detective hadn't spent years here and he looked closer at Danny. “What year did you join the service, Major?”

Too damn perceptive. “2012, after college. Had a big fight with Jack and Maddie my last year of high school and swore I was never coming back to this place. Just home visiting.”

“So a targeted attack on you, using a substance from your parents' research. I'd like to set you up with a police sketch artist when you're up to it. They didn't wear masks?”

“No, I tried to offer them my valuables, a phone and $50 isn't worth my life, but they only had dosing me with the ectoplasm in mind.”

“Now this ectoplasm, could this be expected to kill someone by most people?”

Danny nodded. “That much, you saw the two syringes?” Reyes nodded. “It should, but I grew up around it with ecto-contamination and had a little incident as a kid with the ghost portal. I might be the only person who'd have survived that much exposure, Detective.”

He scribbled down on the pad. “Then when we get them, we'll plug some attempted murder first degree on there, since they couldn't have known you'd be someone who can survive that kind of poisoning of course.”

Danny hunkered down and shrugged. “They didn't seem like anybody who'd have a grudge on Jack and Maddie, they could have been hired but that seems just as crazy. Who has a grudge against scientists?”

The nurse was not helping as she chirped. “What about Plasmius?!”

“He hasn't been seen in years, so I doubt it.” And really Danny knew it wasn't exactly heroic, but he'd re-played the footage of Vlad getting hit by the Disasteroid over and over and over again for catharsis from two years of endless bullshit from Vlad's schemes.

It was only once Danny had gotten into his own thirties that he'd really started to see how messed up Vlad really was.

Reyes rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Plasmius? That ghost guy that tried to blackmail the world in 2007?”

She nodded. “Oh, he used to be obsessed with the Fentons and fought Phantom all the time.”

The detective wrote it down anyway. Reyes wondered if he could bounce this case off his desk and to OSI. Danny shook his head. “Vlad Masters hasn't been seen in years, and if he had come back, the last thing he'd want to do is have me injected with ectoplasm, Detective.”

Danny was dozing to fall asleep when there was a soft knock at the hospital room door. He sat up and called out. “I think it's after visiting hours, but come in anyway.”

Sam pushed the door open, clutching a small bouquet from her greenhouse. “I promise there's nothing in here that's ghost or spirit repellant. You'd be surprised how long that list is though.”

He smiled and gestured to the chair Jazz had left. “As long as it's not blood blossoms, I don't think anything else actually works. Did you see Tucker's mom?”

“She rolled her eyes and let me in. Still trying to figure out how you got all our friends and family in the break-up.”

“It's not like I went around and told everybody to side with me, Sam. I wasn't even here. You got the dog at least. Could we not this though?”

“Right, of course, sorry. You're the one who got beat up. You said you were mugged in group chat? Tucker is already winnowing around Nasty Burger for security footage, because he assumes you did something cool and soldier-like to walk away with your phone still.”

“They didn't want my phone, they didn't want my wallet, Sam.” Danny managed to reach the chart swinging gently from the foot of the bed and handed it to her. She looked at that and then his face.

“I don't see any lacera-, ooh, I see it.” Sam set the chart back and started swallowing the implications in black and white medical talk.

“Yep. Two big syringes of ectoplasm. I don't know if they knew what that was going to do, they injected me of all people.” Danny clenched and unclenched the thin hospital sheets. “Sam, I don't want this shit back, not all the way.” He waited a minute. “No lecture about the sidelines or the crowd or that I shouldn't want to be normal?”

“You're anywhere but the sidelines, Major Danny Fenton. No, the new lecture is you CANNOT tell the Air Force about this. I can only imagine what the military-industrial complex would do with your powers, Danny!”

“Sam,” Danny reached for the small basket on the side table with his personal items and dangled his dog tags, letting them clink gently before he sighed and slipped them over his head. “I am the military industrial complex.”

“Yuk, yuk, yuk, laugh it up, ghost boy. What do you think the DoD will do when they learn they have a super soldier on Nellis AFB.”

Danny didn't have an answer. It had been funny when Tucker had called him that, now he had topped up ectoplasm and could feel power flowing through his blood. So he joked. “I'm an airman, not a soldier.”

“Not the point!”

“You think I'm going to walk into Colonel Balmore's office and be like 'here I am, superpowered ghost freak again, please ship me down the road to Area 51 for experimentation.” Danny glared at the monitor that had ticked up as his heart rate went up with this conversation and took a few deep breaths to slow it down, being very careful not to stop his heart. “Maybe it won't do what we think, I'll have to see what, my parents, say after I get released.”

“That's a conversation you so want to have.” Sam went about setting up the bouquet in water with an empty pitcher.

“Like it or not, and I certainly do not, they are the experts on,” the nurse rapped on the door and walked in as Danny word swapped. “You know, ghosts and ectoplasm stuff.”

“Sorry, sorry, just have to take Major Fenton's vitals. I'm afraid we're gonna do this a lot tonight, sir. I can pretend I didn't see for another 30 minutes, Ms. Manson, but then you'll have to go.”

“Thank you.” Sam set the flowers down at Danny's bedside.

-DP-

After an otherwise uneventful night and seven times being woke up for vitals, Danny was discharged. Jazz bundled him into her van where the two of them were alone. “Anywhere you want to go, if you want a hotel or the airport, I got you, little brother. You don't have to go back to their place like this if you don't want to.”

He remembered how angry Jazz had been, on following the sounds of a scuffle in the lab. To find Danny sprawled on the basement floor, 18 and two weeks from the start of senior year, vomiting up ectoplasm and blood. Jack and Maddie standing over him with guilty looks at what they had done and an emptied syringe of Ecto-Dejecto Formula V, the one they'd finally gotten to work the way they wanted it to.

He'd been too weak to move, but Jazz had described the horror of watching Phantom crawl away from the human part of his body, de-stabilize and dissolve on the lab floor. They'd theorized that as Danny broke in half, had felt himself breaking in half, the ghost part had dragged away to not take out the human part too.

The last two weeks of that summer had been spent near-comatose, too weak to do much more than stand and crawl to the bathroom. And they'd become Jack and Maddie for 16 years now. “How were they last night?”

“Speculating. I know there's some tests they want to do, but you don't have to cooperate with any of it, Danny.”

He laid back in the seat and touched his face where the brickwork had scratched and scuffed. All of that had been healed by midnight and Danny had just tried to smile disarmingly at the night nurse when he'd checked the chart, looked at Danny's face, and checked the chart again before scribbling and walking away. “We can go back to Fenton Works. I will let them do a few tests but I will stop them if I don't like it.”

“How much is back, can you tell?” Danny held out his hand palm up and cupped his fingers. Ectoplasm bubbled up into a hissing spitting ball as Jazz stared. “Do not get any of that on my upholstery.”

Danny twisted his wrist and dismissed the blast, absorbing it back. “I think everything is, Jazz. This'll be fun to explain back at Nellis. Sam had a small freak-out about DoD learning about my powers. Guess Tuck is right abou the super soldier thing after all.”

He laid his head on the passenger window. On one hand, he'd spent years angry at what they'd done, how quickly they'd classified him as the enemy again after Nimbus.

But then he thought about Dan, as he idly traced the old emblem on the van window. For the rest of the world, it might have been better after all that he'd been de-powered by Jack and Maddie.

“Are you going to try to transform?”

The neon sign of Fenton Works glowed ahead and Danny shook his head. “No, I don't, I don't want to see that.”

The cape, and the flaming hair, Dark Danny had seemed so old. Now Danny was ten years older than that. He'd probably seem ancient to himself at 14 now. Jazz hummed slightly. “You don't know that.”

“I told you about my therapist, right, Beth?”

“If she's gotten this far with you, she must be awesome at her job. She knows all of it?”

Danny nodded. “I told her about Dan, all of it. She suggested, said that some people who've been abused by a parent, they don't like seeing themselves in the mirror.”

“Because they grow up to look like the person who hurt them.” Jazz got it. “You're afraid of seeing Dark Danny in the mirror if you try to transform. Half of that was Vlad though.”

“It's too easy to let myself off the hook by just blaming the Plasmius half, Jazz.” There were still moments when it came through. He'd been more than a little bothered when his voice broke, or the first time he'd heard himself recorded after it had settled deeper into a man's, not a boy's, and sounded just like Dark Danny. He rubbed the back of his arm where the muggers had injected him. “So no, I'm not going to try to go ghost. We'll see what Jack and Maddie say after they do tests.”

-DP-

Maddie's tongue stuck out a little, they'd coded past the basement door and Dallas had quietly taken the kids out to get some ice cream so the Fentons could do what they had to without little pitchers with big ears around.

“Well, the ectoplasm is starting to dissipate, I think given a few weeks, maybe 2-3 months at the outside, you'll power down to what you've been able to do before now, sweetie.”

Danny spun a lab stool, the additional needle stick where Maddie had taken blood patched with a bandage of glowing stars. He'd tripped every ecto scanner in the house the moment he walked in and tensed for the long dormant security system to wake up at him. “Jazz and I were discussing my transformation, I said I wasn't going to try.”

“That's up to you.” Maddie looked back at the test results and the blood analysis and her microscope. “But Danny, right now if you just ride out a temporary boost, it'll dissipate.”

Jack was doing another set of tests on his ectoplasmic blood. “Danno, if you transform, that's it. You'll lock it all in like a Zip-loc baggie!”

The answer was obvious. Danny stood up from the stool. “Then obviously I won't transform, I wasn't going to try anyway. I've got a life and a career out west, I'm on professional track for NASA still. I will not be dragged back into ecto-science or ghost hunting.”

He'd gotten back upstairs when the doorbell rang and he answered the door as Sam and Tucker piled in, the other man throwing a big hug around him. “Dude I saw the security footage, while I was expecting some super commando elite GI Joe moves.”

“Tucker, could we criticize how I handled being mugged later?”

“You did a nice one with your arm, if the guys wasn't pistol whipping you.”

Sam made a small shriek. “You were pistol-whipped? Let me at those guys.”

“I didn't exactly voluntarily hold still for a needle. They stuck a gun in my face, hit me twice with the gun, and twisted my arm bad behind me. Anyway we know more about what it did.” Everybody present was in the know, as Danny gestured to the worn Fenton house couches for them to sit. “Right now it'll all go in weeks to months, unless I transform. I was able to generate an ectoblast while I was in the van with Jazz, so I think it's all back for now.”

Sam held back from asking, she knew that answer was no. Tucker fiddled with a smart phone. “What happens if you tried to transform?”

“I lock it all in again as Phantom. At least that's Jack and Maddie's best guess, and despite an ethics deficiency back then, they're the publically acknowledged ecto-biology experts on Phantom.” Danny went to the kitchen. “You guys want a drink?”

“My mom told you no beer, man.” Crossed arms and a determined expression said he'd enforce Mama Foley's dictates.

“Soda, I swear! Would never want to cross your mom.” Danny tossed cans to both of them. “This is what I get for coming home.”

-DP-

Three days later, Danny was walking back in the door with several bags of Chinese as a last sendoff meal. Jazz and Dallas were headed back north in a couple of days. Chris ambushed his uncle for a bag. “Where's my beef and broccoli?”

“ 'Thank you, Uncle Danny.' You're welcome. This bag has the entrees, that bag has the fried rice. Leave your grandma some orange chicken and Grandpa will want everybody to read their fortune cookies together.

Valerie brushed her hair back as she got her wallet out. “Danny, you did not have to get dinner for everyone. Let me give you some cash.”

Danny waved her off. “You guys have been busy. Anything interesting today?”

“We tried to shoo your parents out of the lab.” Valerie sighed as she took a bag from him that had a couple of two liter bottles of soda. “They're probably gonna ask you for another blood sample. Dad's trying to tell them if they ask any more of you about this, you'll probably stomp out the door to Foley's place. And then I have to hear from Pria, because she has never forgiven for the stri-”

Dallas took one more Panda bag off Danny and then spoke to his son. “Go to the lab intercom and get your grandparents to come up.”

Chris went to the door and pushed the intercom button, put in with the scramble pad lock. “Gramma! Uncle Danny got Panda Express.”

The kid stepped back as the lab door opened and Maddie pulled back her HAZMAT hood and goggles. “Wonderful! Oh, Danny, after dinner could you-”

“No.” He set the last of the plastic bags on the kitchen table. “I'm not giving you blood again, I'm not going down to the lab again. I have enough information for my own needs. Valerie said yesterday her suit already detects less presence from me and the signature is fading off. I got your orange chicken and Jack's chicken teri.”

Maddie sat down with the white container of chicken. “Of course, Danny. We just wanted to check the contamination levels.”

“I am fine.” Danny sat himself happily with his own beef and broccoli as Chris looked from his uncle to his grandparents and back.

He had once asked Mom, why Uncle Danny called their parents by name. She had tried to explain that when his uncle was little, something bad happened that his uncle had hid for years and his grandparents hadn't handled it well when they found it and his uncle had left home for a long time.

Chris absently forked up beef and broccoli as he pulled up the old YouTube videos they'd all argued about, of Danny Phantom beating a robot looking ghost called Skulker.

He looked up as the tension dissipated from whatever the adults were talking about, he knew something weird had happened about his uncle being mugged. He looked back to his phone, opening his U*Face app. The app billed themselves as having NSA level face recognition technology.

Chris swiped around with one finger back to the stopped video and screenshotted a relatively clear shot of Phantom's face in the still. The blurriness was still there, and it was either bad special effects, or ghosts didn't record well? Grandma would know for sure.

He uploaded the screenshot and added in a selfie he'd sent to a girl, then added a picture of his uncle from the past few days of visiting and clicked 'Recognize.'

The app ground as it worked, the busy circle weaving around in U*Face's infinity logo before the app spit out results. Picture A, no face found. Picture B and C, 80% match

Annoyed, Chris pulled up the details of the app's analysis. Re-submit clearer picture. Well, that wasn't happening. The pictures of himself and his uncle, the app noted that the high similarity said related but not the same person.

His grandpa was laughing at a joke as Chris offered his grandma his phone. “Grandma, do ghosts just not record well?”

Maddie looked at the pictures Chris had compared with U*Face and winced. Her oldest grandchild was not dumb. She cleared her throat very loudly, subtly trying to tell Jazz, Danny and Dallas what the boy had been doing. “Isn't that adorable, I knew you looked so much like Danny when he was your age, but why the video still of Phantom?”

Danny froze with a forkful. Chris shrugged. “Dunno. I thought it looked a lot like me, is all. But this is from like last century so guess not.”

Danny kept eating. “Spectral auras are hard to record or photograph. We never really saw much detail on Phantom's face, just eyes and hair. And he was around our school a lot, when your mom and me were kids.”

Valerie looked over enough that Chris showed her the phone. “You fought Phantom back in the day, didn't you, Ms. Gray?”

“That was before he went back to the Realms, Chris. Looks a lot like you.” Valerie ruffled the kid's black hair. “In a scrawny, pipsqueaky, kid kind of way.”

“Hey, I'm not scrawny. Mom says I'll catch up like Uncle Danny.”

All the adults froze when the old ghost alarm went off, the automated version of Jack's voice sounding, “Scale 8 ectoplasmic entity detected attacking downtown. Deploying FentonWorks Ghost Shield.”

Valerie stood up. They hadn't seen anything above a 3 or 4 in years and hostile attack was even longer ago. Dust was scattered by the radar screen that came out of the ceiling and showed direction and location of the ghost and information scrolled about the massive ghost reptile.

Jack and Maddie were both with her. Maddie looked at her family. “Stay inside the shield. We have to see what's going on.”

Jack pointed to the basement lab. “To the weapons vault! We'll catch up to you, Vally!”

Danny focused on his food. He was not going to respond. His parents and Valerie were as good as he'd been, their experience was current, it had been a decade and a half since he'd stepped into that ring.

Valerie called her suit up around her and downloaded the radar's information about the ghost, then set her own Finder. “Don't take long, Dr. F. This is the biggest we've seen in years.”

Valerie ran out the door as the Chris stared in awe while Lori was just almost too young to understand. “Cool . . .”

Jack and Maddie ran back in with heavy weapons, blowing dust off of equipment they'd hung up when the ghost attacks had declined and Danny had told them. But they had the equipment and weapons meant to weaken and capture, not destroy ghosts.

He looked at that ghost radar again. It was the sort of heavy hitter ghost that once upon a time, human ghost hunters like Val or his parents would stand back, let Danny wear himself out on, contain the big threat, and then start shooting at him. Could they take something that big alone?

No, damnit, Danny was not getting involved. Not my fight, not my fight. Struggled with the fighter pilot's instinct of the scramble, being able to go from the ground to a Raptor's cockpit in five minutes. This wasn't Bagram or Kandahar.

Dallas stood up. “I'm sure it's on the news already, if we feel up to watching and seeing that they're okay.”

The adults were all mildly surprised as skeptical, 'it's photoshop' Chris ran to the TV and turned it on to the Amity Action News. “-Thunder here, again wishing he had taken the job in Chicago 20 years ago. Live in downtown Amity Park for our first ghost attack in almost a decade. The giant reptile appeared from a portal near City Hall and has been stomping down Main Street, completely disregarding anything in its way.”

Lance screamed and started running as the ghost's giant foot came down too close to where he was reporting with his cameraman. The cameraman swung his rig to where Valerie had arrived on scene, maneuvering her hoverboard like an expert. Like this, she was very much the Valerie Danny had met in the old 2015 timeline.

They had this. She opened fire on Ghostzilla, staggering the scale 8 a little before the reptile re-grouped, and its mouth opened to spew a massive ghost ray that Valerie just barely dodged. The car that got hit wasn't so lucky, exploding into scrap metal that glowed with ectoplasm. The cameraman turned his rig back to where Lance Thunder was curled into a traumatized ball, his head in his knees as he muttered. “Not again, not again, not again.”

The camera guy spoke, and Danny knew they really weren't supposed to. “Lance?”

“Not again! I quit!”

Jazz looked at where Chris was glued to the screen as the news camera panned to where the Ghost Assault Vehicle was rolling up, weapons bristling. “Honey, now, are you sure it's not too much for you, I don't want you scared, Grandpa and Grandma know what they're doing.”

Chris looked at his mom for a minute and shook his head. “Phantom was doing this when he was my age, right?”

Danny had a strong feeling his nephew had figured out everything. “Phantom was a very powerful ghost but he was also a kid who never should have had to.”

The GAV's shield deployed around where Maddie leapt out with the Fenton Bazooka. She was by far the better shot. Jack had to be inside as the RV's weapons fired, hammering Ghostzilla and the reptile stumbled.

They didn't need him, they wouldn't need him. Valerie followed up the weakness where the GAV had hit it by letting loose almost everything she had. Ghostzilla almost went down, as Valerie whipped out her containment and fired. Ghostzilla was enveloped for a moment before the ghost started to glow and then a massive burst of power could be flinging people and vehicles away as the camera feed cut out.

The news channel flicked to the studio as Tiffany Snow froze for a moment before speaking. “I'm Tiffany Snow with our new rebooted Ghost Watch. For those just tuning in, an unknown ghost reptile has engaged Fenton Works ghost hunters in downtown Amity Park near City Hall. Amity Park's favorite weatherman Lance Thunder is on the scene. Do we have anything from Lance?”

Apparently they did as a smaller screen of downtown came up in the corner over Tiffany's shoulder. Lance looked worse for wear as his camera rolled around the scene. Valerie was on the ground, kneeling while her suit repaired. The GAV's shield was holding as whoever was driving now hit the accelerator, the Ecto-Converter at least seemed to be charged by just Ghostzilla's proximity. The beast chased the RV away from the camera.

The camera focused on Valerie, who Danny knew immediately had a dislocated shoulder, her left hung loose and the right arm cradled it. But she still snapped her feet together again anyway, re-constituting her hoverboard and hefted up a ecto-blaster. She yelled something as she dove back into the fight the camera couldn't catch.

Jazz dropped onto the couch as she pulled her protesting son to her from where he was only an inch away from the screen. “Sweetie, you make a better door than window.”

Dallas went to where Lori was still at the table and Nate was in his high chair. “The ghost shield on the house will hold, right?”

“I've never seen anything get past it, except for-” Jazz stopped as the boy sighed.

“Uncle Danny would turn human, right, to get past Grandpa and Grandma's shields.” Chris looked up at him.

“Yeah, kiddo, your grandparents couldn't figure out for years how Phantom got into their lab, got to their portal, grabbed their tech. You are too smart.”

Chris held up a playing YouTube video. “Some of them are in upgraded resolution and re-posted. The picture gets a lot clearer in 1080p. But I don't think anybody who hadn't heard you guys' stories would figure it out, Mom. Ghost features are really blurry.”

They looked back at the news where despite the terror on his face, Lance Thunder and his news van had followed the fight. Ghostzilla was tanking every hit from the Fentons, the GAV and Valerie. Damaged but not near enough to be caught in the thermos.

The beast roared and lashed out again with an ectoblast from its jaws, torching an unoccupied hot dog stand, sending promptly re-animated ecto-weenies everywhere as they scattered and started to crawl.

Weapons batteries were going dark on the GAV as they run out of ammo. Ghostzilla turned back and roared again, ghost ray streaming and hammering the shield. The news van's brakes could be heard squealing as Lance clutched his microphone like a security blanket.

“For those just tuning in, a powerful ghost is on the rampage in downtown Amity Park. Fenton Works ghost hunters are on the scene. And they have backup coming in, hopefully the help of the Blasters will be enough to tip this desperate fight.”

Danny had almost forgot them. Of course the group had firmly separated themselves from Vlad over the past decade plus and he hadn't thought they were even working anymore as ghost hunters. Download, Thrash and Vid scattered from their van and ran into the fight where Valerie was down again, and the four clearly briefed as Valerie staggered up and body language alone from the distant news camera made Danny know exactly what they were yelling at each other about.

-DP-

Valerie's shoulder hurt like a bitch, she hated dislocations. “I can still fight, Vid!”

The other woman shook her head. “Stay down, Valerie. Your nanotech needs time to repair, EMS should be responding soon and you need medical attention.”

She looked where Ghostzilla was hammering the GAV's ghost shield as the wild driving said that Jack was most definitely steering it. “Later, it's gonna take all of us to wear this thing down and catch it.”

“It's a scale 8, we know. We dusted off our old that bastard's gear as soon as we could, but Download and Thrash are really out of practice, I've been focusing on research like you guys and they went to dental college and law school. This is the biggest portal activity we've seen yet.”

Thrash fired several ecto-blaster rounds at Ghostzilla's knees to try to cause the beast to stumble as he was running and shooting. His once blond ponytail was entirely gray. “Valerie, if you know anything about where he went, this would be a damn good time.”

Valerie looked at the sky. The three of them had never been told. “Phantom went back to the Realms. I don't expect him to show up and we don't deserve his help, Thrash.”

Download pulled his cap off to wipe sweaty hair from his forehead before putting it back on. “Everybody knows Danny Phantom didn't go back to the Realms. You and the Fentons did something to him.”

“Do you really want to debate it now?!” Valerie slammed her feet together again and her board clumsily re-emerged. “We're what we've got and we can bring it down.”

Valerie's arm screamed at being used as Vid fumbled at the jet pack's controls. “I'm going to be so embarrassed if this thing doesn't work, or I don't remember how to use it.”

They charged back into the fight as Ghostzilla wobbled at the next volley.

-DP-

Jazz kept her arm around Chris and she knew the teenager was more afraid than he let on when the arm wasn't shaken off. Danny paced and sweated his nerves back and forth across the living room as the news covered the Blasters' jumping onto the field. “How out of practice are they?”

Dallas had taken Lori out of the room after she'd started crying on seeing Ghostzilla's stomp narrowly miss Grandma. The baby kicked in a carrier. Jazz sighed. “It's been a long time since there's been ghost activity like this, Danny. I'm surprised any of the Blasters' equipment still works.”

He didn't want to. God did he not want to. There were too many coincidences and everything happening now. “Somebody is baiting me, Jazz. Somebody wants me to get back in there.”

“It's not your fault. Danny, you put yourself through hell as a teenager for this place, you managed to claw your grades back up and did what you wanted. They got this.”

Danny looked at the news where Download was flung toward the news camera and the sound of an impact was loud outside the frame. “No, they don't. And it's my responsibility, Jazz. I shouldn't have come home.”

He tried not to consider how to hide his full ridiculous powerset from the Air Force, tried not to think about that evil that had to be in him somewhere. He squinted his eyes shut instead and covered his face with his hands. Her voice was gentle. “Danny . . .”

“Going ghost.” Danny reached for the cold where his ghost sense had always come from that had sat in him for twenty years and let his heart stutter to a stop.

Had it hurt this much as a teenager ever or was his much older body protesting, as the white light sparked to death around his middle and the rings split. Jazz was smart enough to have turned slightly and shielded her eyes, Chris almost swore and minced it at the last minute in front of his mother. “Sh-, shoot, some warning?”

Jazz squeezed her son's shoulder. “Honey, that's half of why he announces that. The other half is he started doing this as a geeky little kid.”

Gravity let go of him, ectoplasm flowing cold down his veins, as the transformation completed. He wanted to catch his breath, except that there was none to catch. “More like a third. Geeky, blinding light, and help hide me?”

He didn't want to ask, didn't want to know. Danny pushed what was suddenly too much glowing white hair out of his eyes, and after a couple times of that, the hair floated on its own accord. So his hair seemed to be the shaggy mop he'd had at 14, and not his regulation cut. Or flaming, so he could live with it.

And there was a definite disconnect, a part of him that wanted to stick out his tongue at an adult calling what had been a cool look in 2004 a mop. “Don't say anything, I don't want to know. I do this, go help them and I won't do it again.” Danny turned his hands in front of him, at least they didn't have Dan's blue tinge. “Wish I had time to do a good functions check on myself.”

Jazz and Chris throwing arms around him took Danny by surprise as a middle-aged mom looked for just a moment like a 16-year-old again. “Go kick its butt, Danny.”

Invisible and intangible, flight was instinct honed by his pilot training as Danny took off and relied on ghost sense to home in on downtown.

Chapter Text

A car sailed past Valerie as Maddie dropped down near her while EMS inside the RV's ghost shield popped her shoulder back into socket. Exhausted, Maddie dropped her drained ecto-batteries and switched them for fresh ones to power her blaster back up. “We've got me, Jack, you and the Blasters and we are not winning this.”

A gray minivan got as close as it safely could as Tucker jumped out the driver's side wearing a Deflector, while wielding the Fenton lipstick and a determined expression.

Sam slammed the passenger door too roughly to Tucker's squawking about the paint job and called out while strapping on a wrist ray and tossing one to Tucker. “Sorry, Tucker! Guys, we're here! Do we have Danny?”

Valerie bit the heel of her palm at the pain and breathed through before speaking. “Tucker and Sam just got here with their old stuff, but they don't have heavy weapons, Maddie. He's at the house with Jazz and the kids. You two do not have enough firepower for this!”

Vid barely dove behind the shield and flipped up the radar on her gauntlet. “We've got a bigger problem, Val! My radar says there's another scale 8 ecto-entity approaching. Fast.”

They were already overpowered by Ghostzilla, and something equally powerful was coming? This day was about to be totally screwed, and maybe the city. But maybe, it couldn't be? Sam wished she had a Finder on her, but with the years her and Tucker had let their few ecto-weapons gather dust. Though they needed Phantom's firepower, she hoped to God it wasn't Danny. His words in the hospital were in her ears. I don't want this shit back.

Download hadn't gotten up from where he was sprawled near the news crew, but Valerie thought he was still breathing. Thrash dropped down next to them, heaving breaths with exhaustion. “What was Phantom's rating back in the day?”

“7. Main reason I was shocked we were getting the better of him back then for a bit.” Vid looked at the radar, but whatever was coming was a lot stronger than Phantom, and faster.

Valerie checked her suit's radar as the EMT was already telling her to stay down, but staying down was something she had never been good at. “It's here.”

Outside the ghost shield, Ghostzilla was still hammering at it and powering it at the same time. She re-gloved her hand and dropped her helmet visor to go back to fight.

Sam plugged long unused Fenton Phones into her ears and dialed in for their frequency, then looked up. She knew him like this, coming home to their college apartment after the range dirty and sweaty, dropping his body armor on the floor, but having had way too much fun. As she powered on the wrist ray, Sam gave a small sigh. “Oh, Danny.”

The new hostile was glowing white and blue, maybe, camo? Some kind of forest pattern if you inverted it in your head. As Valerie re-extended her board and got outside the shield, she saw the ghost closer.

Combat boots, bloused uniform trousers, an armored vest and helmet that looked heavy, a rifle slung on its back. Very unmilitary snow white hair sticking out from under the helmet all around.

The voice wavered between a boy's and a man's as the ghost yelled, taunted. “Hey, Knock-off! Tokyo's that way!”

No, it couldn't be. The new ghost formed an ecto-blast as Ghostzilla turned its attention to him just in time to take the hit, the blast big enough to finally stagger Ghostzilla into stumbling backward. Valerie was quick on comms before, if it was Danny, before Jack or Maddie could fire. “Second ghost is a friendly! Don't fire on him. Jack, you don't get to shoot.”

“Aww.”

Maddie spoke up on the Fenton Phones. “You know the rule, honey. Best markswomen only when a friendly ghost joins in close with a hostile.”

At least that had been Danny's rule back years ago. Danny! Maddie looked up at the arriving ghost, but it wasn't Phantom, and looking at her Fenton Finder the ecto-signature didn't match. But her son, despite their conflict, had spent two years sending her pictures from deployment. She recognized battle rattle.

Valerie took off with her board, her shoulder still throbbing but she could use it as she approached the new arrival, giving him plenty of space outside of normal speaking distance. The ghost would still hear her fine. “We've been hammering it but we're barely denting it.”

Cracking jokes seemed like Phantom, but this one had fangs and his solid eyes didn't have irises or pupils, but were green and not red at least. She dared to get closer to the powerful entity and saw more of the details of his face beyond the big glowing eyes and the spectral glow of power washing out the details. “Yeah, that's a lotta ghost. I need on you guys' freq. Radio, your radio.”

Valerie managed to fumble a Fenton Phone from holding in her suit to the ghost. He brushed back shaggy white hair and plugged it in before flying off to engage. Valerie spun her board as she heard him on the comms, more stable now maybe? His voice was no longer wavering, settled into a man's. She almost fell off the board when she recognized the in-between and the fully adult voice. How it'd sounded when his voice had started breaking at 17.

They needed the help, so she chose to ignore the hazards of jumping into the fight with an unstable but very powerful ghost as she flew back in. Questions and yelling at Danny could come later.

Download had finally stood up as Vid yelled into the comm. “Situation, Val?”

“He's a friendly. I don't, it might be Phantom, but he is a friendly.” Valerie looked where he had been. She wouldn't confirm unless and until Danny wanted them to.

Danny charged another ecto-blast. The first had been both not enough to let Knock-off be souped, but at the same time way more power than Danny thought he had. Knock-off lunged and he zipped and weaved around, getting the beast to tangle its head on a neck that extended unnaturally around its legs before blasting it again. Not wanting hit as the ghost hunters engaged with what was basically artillery from the GAV at least, Danny touched the Fenton Phone. “Danger close! I'm tangling it up.”

The mouth snapped at him as Knock-off flowed its way to face him while he wound up a punch. “I am not din-din!”

Danny swung an ectoplasm enhanced upper-cut that got Knock-off a bit off the ground as the ghost staggered.

He could hear Vid's confusion over comms, and it was a damn surprise that the Blasters had responded. “Duh, the danger is right there. I mean, Unidentified Ecto-Entity, as the duly appointed Blasters of Amity Park, identify yourself.”

Right, he was speaking Military. An artillery company would know what he meant. “I mean don't shoot me! I'm right up with Knock-off here, Maddie and Val can shoot, Jack, sorry. The Blasters neither, it's not that I don't trust you. It's just that, I don't trust you. Vid, go find a bridge and take a flying leap.”

Oh, he wished he'd have checked his powers before jumping in. Ice was there as Danny's eyes flickered from green to glowing blue and froze Knock-off's legs up to the hip. The angry reptile roared and Danny twisted in a curving arch to let the ghost ray blast pass him by, but for the building behind him. He threw up enough shield to protect the building and the shot ricocheted back to drill Knock-off in the chest.

The beast wrenched backward from its own shot, the ice refusing to crack even a bit. So that had gotten stronger too, he'd seen weaker ghosts break out of his ice before.

Knock-off fell forward with an angry snarl, heading for another building. Danny threw up a shield and an ecto-construct, needing something to bounce Knock-off away from the building.

Why were they ping-pong paddles? Danny swung his hand to swing the paddles, smacking Knock-off back and forth to keep him away from the buildings until the beast finally fell.

Danny winced at the smash into the pavement, knowing any and all damage from this bullshit was always blamed on him. At least his teenage work had taught him a lot about collateral damage and how to try to avoid it. Among many other lessons that had left his men and superiors confused on his first deployment on how a green lieutenant already knew combat.

Knock-off was dazed and Danny had no other equipment beside the Fenton Phone. He hit the comms. “Valerie, thermos!”

“On it!” Valerie came in, the Fenton Thermos contrasting with the otherwise red and black of her suit as she activated it and Danny prepared to charge up more ecto if Knock-off wasn't weak enough to contain. The beast roared as the blue beam sucked it down and Valerie capped the thermos, the gauge on it showing full immediately. As the battlefield of downtown quieted, Danny let himself relax, the ecto-constructs disintegrating as he powered down the green glow around his fists.

EMTs were going from human to human, police running crowd control and controlling the building evacuations begun before Danny had come in. For over two years, Danny knew how this shit went. He hovered in air, maybe 50 feet up as Valerie waved. There was too much distance and wind to hear her and then static buzzed on the Fenton Phones. “We got it. The paramedics are checking people over, are you okay? Sorry, standard question.” Her voice got quieter as Danny watched her walk farther from Download being checked out by a paramedic. “Unless, I know what happened with the muggers. Is that you, Danny? Never mind, I know it's you and I know you can get hurt, Phantom, when full ghosts don't.”

As least he was recognized, Unidentified Ecto-Entity, he hated the term “uee” that had gotten started somewhere along in ecto-science. How bad did he look if she'd doubted it was him at all though?

On the other hand, not a single ghost hunter on the ground right now had recognized him when his transformation was nothing different than glowing eyes and a dye job. He touched to transmit. “Historically, this is the part where you and them start shooting at me, Valerie. The fourteen-year-old part of this ghost wants to run. I'm getting away while I'm not bleeding yet.” His fingers brushed the Fenton phone. “Phantom out.”

Danny took off toward the park, having to bat down the thought of making curfew while he decided if he was willing to go back to Fenton Works at all or just long enough to grab his duffel, pack and get out.

On the ground, Valerie finally held still for the paramedic to properly bind up her arm and get her to put it in a sling. Maddie was speaking to the city's first responders while walking toward her.

Lance Thunder was by now not the only member of the press who had showed up to the fight and she'd have to speak to Shelly Makamoto soon but she needed Valerie first. “Ma'am.”

“You spoke to him, it was,” she had people following her close, “Phantom?”

“I'm not, sure.” Valerie brushed at her short hair with her good side and jerked her head at the press and EMS following Maddie and definitely in earshot. “Obviously though it wasn't Phantom, Dr. F. Phantom is a 14-year-old boy wearing a HAZMAT suit, that was clearly an adult soldier in uniform. Right?”

They had too many ears listening to let it slip the ghost might be Phantom, especially if Danny didn't want identified, and Maddie couldn't say regardless. Almost nothing that could be said about a straight ghost was reliably applicable to half-ghosts like Danny or Dani. Or Vlad. Would his ghost form still be the child he'd been during the Accident? Ghosts didn't change their post-human appearances, but Plasmius had, and there was what she had done to Danny sixteen years ago.

They both got enough away from the press to speak freely as the Blasters were taking questions. “We can truthfully say the ecto-signature doesn't match, Valerie. For now, until we can speak to Danny, we tell the press we can't confirm if the Ghost Soldier is Phantom or not. And if he doesn't want identified, we tell the press it's not Danny Phantom, just an Amity Park veteran that chose to manifest and help us. But he is . .?”

Valerie winced and nodded, checking they were still alone enough. “You lost your comms? Yeah, it's him. Not a lot of other ghosts that, we used to shoot at after they came to help us with a bigger ghost, Maddie. 'Ghost Soldier,' I guess it's better than Inviso-Bill. Danny won't like it though, he's not a soldier.”

Maddie looked up where he'd been and closed her eyes for a long moment, knowing Danny had not wanted to have to do this, then walked off to speak to the press while Valerie retracted her suit to help deal with the aftermath.

Sam was running while carrying first aid supplies to help the wounded as she got to them. “Is Da-, the other ghost okay, I saw him run off when you souped that big reptile ghost.”

All three women's eyes met and they were about to discuss what they all knew as Shelly Makamoto ran up on them. “Dr. Fenton! Ms. Gray! Can I ask you some questions about the two UEEs that attacked Amity Park today? Is this a sign of renewed hostility from ghosts toward the living and the town of Amity?”

Maddie had a camera and a microphone in her face, and her heart wrenched. What she said right now would make or break what she was trying to re-build with her baby. “Just, just a few questions. But first, I want to emphasize one thing. The Ghost Soldier was NOT attacking us or this town, he came to help us, and we, we could not have won that fight without him. The ghost reptile has been contained and will be handled appropriately by Fenton Works, thank you, that's all for now.”

Valerie made a face but didn't speak on camera as Sam nodded in approval.

-DP-

Jazz leaped at her parents to hug them, despite ash, smoke and soot while Chris was babbling as he questioned Valerie about the fight. Once the hunters could get a word in edgewise, Jack asked almost desperately. “Have you seen Danno?”

Jazz hesitated, the habits of the teenage girl protecting her little brother when it came to ghost business. But Danny was a grown adult man now, he had far more ability to do what he'd done at eighteen, stomp out and never come back. “Not since he transformed to go help you guys. He hasn't come back to the house.”

Jack looked at his wife and Maddie wondered if Danny would even come back to the house now that he was fully half-ghost again. Valerie ran a hand through her hair. “Danny flew off immediately after the fight, since that's when we'd usually, turn on him. So stupid, I didn't, should have realized just how much resentment he's still got.”

Tucker and Sam had followed the Fentons and came in without knocking. Sam's clothes had gotten covered in dust as she tried to knock it off the pantsuit. “Oh yeah.”

Tucker pocketed his old wrist ray. “Well, it's mostly aimed at Jack and Maddie, not you.” He glanced at Danny's parents. “Um, sorry?”

Jazz nodded. “Danny's been speaking to a therapist via VA for a couple of years. He told me, she worked him through everything from Afghanistan in two months. The rest has been his childhood.” She got back and grabbed her purse, rifling through and retrieving car keys. “And she knows everything, which we know how much Danny loves sharing that information. Chris, we're going for a ride. Sam, Tucker, you guys coming? Mom, Dad, you stay here.”

Valerie got it first. “When I first boarded up to Danny, I kind of heard two voices? A boy's and a man's. I think his new ghost form is still stabilizing. Somebody needs to tell him he don't look like the Evil Danny, because I don't think he knows.”

“He didn't want to know when he transformed here earlier. He wasn't too distinct yet when he left us.”

Chris held up the already scrolling 24/7 news channel YouTube page. “He's in uniform, I did think I saw the shape of a kevlar, military helmet, when Uncle Danny transformed. Wonder what kind of ghost powers his rifle has? And he should have a sidearm, and oh wow, I wonder if his IOTV will stop ectoblasts like the original would have stopped bullets. Ectoplasmic SAPI plates would be bussin. Grandma told the press it's not Phantom, that might fly, he doesn't look the same.”

Jazz got the other two original Ghost Getters and her son out the door and into the van. Sam slammed the passenger door. “If he's still stabilizing, his ghost form is as much teenage Danny as it is grown-up Danny. So that's why it's only us, kiddo. Have a little more chill, your uncle's going to be nervous about anybody coming after him.”

“I hope he's checking out the media, that old reporter lady who questioned Grandma is getting ratio'd by the Gen Danny's and pro-ghosters for calling both ghosts attackers.”

“He might not react well to Mom, Dad and Valerie either right now if a teenage and immature ghost half is calling the shots, Chris. You should stand back until the adults speak to him. You'll confuse him, honey.”

The teenager hunched up in the passenger seat at the idea that his favorite uncle as a ghost might not even recognize him. “Uncle Danny will know me, he has to.”

They drove until finding a lonely corner of Amity Park city park. A place the gang had once watched a meteor shower, the sky a clear view.

Sam hesitated on approaching as Jazz parked the van. They were still friends and he'd seemed nothing but happy to see her after she'd gotten home from closing the fur farm down. But she wasn't just his best friend anymore. “Maybe you should approach first, Tuck.”

“Chicken, bawk bawk.” Tucker strode up to the tree, the branches weaving in the wind and making a low moan as they whipped. There was a gap in the branches that looked too human-shaped. “Hey, do I need to make it an order? Report or whatever, I don't watch a lot of war movies, unless it's tech themed.”

Danny became visible on the branch, the glow of forest camo turned inside out making him a paler, brighter ghost than he'd been as a teenager. His voice was again swinging around in depth. “Tuck?”

“Yeah, man, you're out way past curfew.” Tucker eyed the trunk but he didn't want to try to climb it, as a smaller head of black hair passed him and dug feet into the trunk.

“Why don't adults ever want to climb trees? Uncle Danny's in the tree.”

The boy's presence helped to kick his awareness of time and place and when Danny answered his voice was completely adult. “I didn't climb, Chris, I can fly. Tucker, curfew?”

“I don't know, man! Valerie said you seemed unstable, we thought maybe we'd be talking to Danny circa 2005.”

The child deftly scaled it, even as Jazz's instinct as a mom wanted to tell him to get down immediately. Danny helped the last little bit when Chris was trying to find a handhold, stretching out a hand and closing it tight on Chris' wrist and turned them both intangible, lifting Chris to a clear spot with him on the limb before returning solidity.

Chris rubbed his wrist where his uncle's grip was cold as death. “Would have been confusing if you thought I was you.”

“A little. I'm fine, I know who I am and how old I am, I know it's 2024. But yeah, Danny Phantom is, pretty immature in here. I can feel a disconnect but it's closing.”

Jazz shrugged. “So nothing's changed then?”

“Oww, that hurt my motionless heart, Jazzy.”

Chris looked over and up at his uncle, the branches throwing strong shadows from his glowing aura. “I don't know everything and I only just found out this visit about you, but you look okay to me? Valerie mentioned an evil you but you look like you, Uncle Danny.”

“I haven't looked.”

Chris opened his phone, smart enough to figure that his uncle's was wherever his normal clothes under his ghost transformation went and held it out. “You want the news footage or the selfie camera?”

“Camera. The news can wait, I already know what they say about me. Everything in the entirety is always my fault.”

The kid handed the phone over, but the screen flickered when Danny's spectral hand got near it. Sensing danger to his most vital possession, Chris pulled it back and opened the camera then flipped it to the front-facing camera and held it up for Danny.

He didn't want to look but he opened one eye anyway. Then both. They were solid glowing green, no iris or pupil. It wasn't Dark Danny exactly, but it was reminiscent of Vlad. But at least they were green and not red. The glow washed out the contours of his face, but there was no obvious 'evil ghost now' vibes.

His hair was a mop that rivaled the boy next to him, as if the surly teenager part of Phantom was not cooperating with a military haircut, he'd known that from the living room. Fangs, sure, Danny opened his mouth wider than a human could to his nephew giggling.

They weren't horrible either really. There wasn't the razor-sharp Dracula-vannabe look of, Vlad's fangs. They were shorter and blunter, like Cujo's.

That's exactly what it was, they were more dog blunt than vampire. Dogs were friendly, people liked dogs. Danny liked dogs.

The rest of him wasn't his old hazmat, the black and white he'd half died in the portal in. Danny could have laughed. “Why do I have the feeling I'm going to be a lot more recognizable now in ghost form?”

He mostly remembered how to summon and release his clothes as a ghost, and Danny concentrated as he managed to dissipate the strangely heavy weight of an IOTV and kevlar re-cast in ectoplasm and put on a patrol cap over hair that refused to change into regulation.

Chris shrugged as he locked and pocketed his phone back. “The hair helps? And your name and rank, I don't think they're on there, kind of hard to see for the glow-ness.” He looked down from the taller than it had seemed tree.

Sam was leaning on the bottom of the tree now. “Are you going back to your parents' house? I've got a couch and like three guest rooms you can have if you don't want to.”

Danny sighed and shifted on the branch, then wrapped his arm around Chris. “Hold tight.”

He jump floated off the branch and down to the ground, not letting go of Chris until gravity was fully accounting for both of them.

The kid was giddy as he ran to Jazz. “Did you see that, Mom?”

“Yes, honey, just be glad your uncle has full control of his powers.” Jazz ruffled his chair before lightly pushing him toward the van. “Go saddle up, Chris.”

Was he willing to go back to the house? Danny sighed and transformed back. “As long as they turn off the security system and put down the ecto-blasters. Full control may be a stretch, I am going to have to re-learn everything. No breakable items handled for the next month.”

“Security's been off for years, Danny, even before they knew why the system kept targeting you. You should see Mom's interview with Shelly. Mom and Dad are nothing but grateful you stepped in to help.” Jazz tapped the keyfob to unlock her van. And didn't miss the doubtful, mulish expression on Danny's face.

“I'll believe it when I walk in the door.”

-DP-

They let Danny have the front seat in the van and for the few minutes of car ride, despite the summer weather outside, the gang put up with it as Danny shivered in the front seat and cranked the heater. “I half entombed that Godzilla knockoff in ghost ice and I'm still freezing. How did I generate this much this fast?”

Sam leaned between the front seats as Chris was grinning dopily out the window. “Make a few ice sculptures at my place. My parents are hosting an environmental benefit, you could make an ice sculpture rhino, an ice sculpture tortoise, ice sculpture owls.”

“I'll get right on that. But I come around your parents and you have to hear them tut-tut you about 'passing up such a good future as an officer's wife, Danny might even be a general someday!'” He was kind of proud of himself with the dead-on impression of Pamela Manson.

Sam made a disgusted face. “Forgot about that part. They liked you a lot better the minute you went from 'the Fentons' kid' to 'our future Air Force officer.'”

The Mansons had been thrilled at how “normal” Danny became senior year and they'd been painting pictures in their heads of their money combined with Danny's military career meaning a bright political future for their son-in-law to be. “They were so disappointed they wouldn't be funding me running for Senate or something after a respectable amount of time in uniform.”

Tucker snorted with laughter in the other window seat. “Danny's not good at problems he can't pummel into submission. That'd be funny on C-SPAN though.”

“Hey, I've gotten more subtle. My airmen think I'm actually big smart. Got them fooled.”

The van rolled back into the new parking lot next to Fenton Works and Danny braced himself and looked at his sister and his two very oldest friends. “You're sure, they're cool? You all know what they did to me, Jazz saw what they did to me.”

They both stretched hands from the back seat, all hands together as Team Phantom. Sam grinned. “Your parents jumped you alone after you'd kind of been behaving off. We're with you now.”

Danny turned the heater off, feeling a little better. With one hand flat, he idly used the other to craft and manipulate ghost ice into a group sculpture of his friends and family. Putting power and fine details into it and relieving the internal chill at the same time.

Crafting the little figure took long enough that he felt almost ready to face Jack and Maddie again, as what he knew they still hated, a ghost. He set the figurine of himself, Sam, Tuck, Jazz, Dallas and all the kids on the dashboard. “That shouldn't melt for a good long while.”

Danny got out of the van and drew a deep breath. The front door opened before they got there, like the night he'd gotten in on leave. Maddie ran out the door and looked like she wanted to hug but stopped midway on the steps. Danny stared her very deliberately in the eyes and slipped his hands behind his back, handily an 'at ease' position matched a ghost's peaceful gesture.

He knew his eyes flashed when he spoke. “You were at the fight, Maddie. All my powers are back. Can I come in, or should I just pack my shit and leave?”

“Please, come in. And thank you, for stepping into the fight, Danny. I just have to get back to the phone. CNN is still reporting on the fight today, they're doing a telephone interview with me in a few minutes, and some other ecto-science experts on what happened and what it means. It's up to you, what you want me to say about the Ghost Soldier. We, couldn't have won that without you, sweetie. I will lie in their faces and say it wasn't you if that's what you want.”

Danny nodded as he walked up the steps the rest of the way to the door. “Just say a dead war veteran showed up to help. It's true enough.”

The rest of the kids had finally managed to get bored with short clips of the fight broken apart by talking heads trying to fill 24/7 air time. Maddie checked the clock and scampered into the kitchen. “I'll be down in the lab on the phone! They're calling in like two minutes. Oh, Harriet's the anchor! This might be good. I heard she was with CNN now. She's very sympathetic to you, Danny. Phantom you.”

Chris dropped onto the floor and sprawled out belly down as Danny took an armchair where Harriet Chin was talking. “-with us to analyze today's fight after almost a decade without a ghost incursion of this magnitude, the West Coast's leading ecto-scientist Dr. Trevor West of UCLA's Samueli School of Engineering, Director Julia Bassett of GERDD and calling in now Dr. Madeline Fenton of Fenton Works who for transparency was a college classmate of mine. Thank you for being with us today as we cover the largest ghost event in a decade.”

Danny fisted and flexed his fingers, still relieving the little, quickly healed pains and burns that came from using any of his energy powers as a human. Plus he knew this was going to piss him off. Sam made herself known before walking up behind him. “Want somebody to join you in throwing tomatoes?”

“Please, have at it. At least it's Harry, she's known about Phantom and ghosts longer than about anybody in journalism.”

Dr. West looked like someone Danny thought he'd dislike on sight, but less so as he spoke. “ Thank you, Ms. Chin. Our best information from portal monitors and researchers is that there some degree of disturbance happening in the Infinite Realms, natural portals have become more frequent over the past five years. The appearance of Ghostz-, the ghost reptile is the biggest event so far, however there have been hundreds of smaller documented ghost appearances, either animals manifesting in this realm, ghosts having passed from natural portals and been returned, or several instances reported of dead loved ones returning from the Realms and wanting to go back peacefully to their lives before physical death.”

Harriet nodded in an attempt to look engaged and understanding. “Director Bassett, what is GERDD's current position on the increased ghost activity?”

Danny stood up to get a drink but he figured Valerie or Jack would know. “I don't think I've heard of them?”

Valerie winced. “They're the successors, to the Guys in White. They inherited their facilities, their Congress critter money and their equipment. The Ghost Evaluation, Research and Diplomacy Division. They offered me a job once, I told them I don't work with the outfit that blasted Phantom like they did in that last encounter and I hung up when the recruiter called me a hypocrite.”

The GIW had been publically eviscerated for a years long campaign of harassing the ghost boy who saved the world, and Danny's last fight with them had not helped. The footage Sam made sure got on the internet, after Danny had been blasted down again by them and Agents K and O had approached to grab him. Two very much adults standing over a bleeding, scared kid who had statues of him around the world, blood glowing ectoplasm green or not, had not been good for the GIW's support on Capital Hill. “They're on the Must Avoid list.”

The director looked a well-kept attractive fifty or so as she spoke. “GERDD is monitoring all functional ecto-scanner activity across the country while we work on the grants and funding to refurbish devices that have been un-maintained since the original repeal of the Anti-Ecto Control Acts in 2008. While our agency has only been re-organized within the past two years, and for full disclaimer purposes, Dr. West is of course my colleague or will be after his last term with the university.”

Dr. West's eyes rolled. “GERDD is barely operational, Director. Not to mention extremely militarized and loaded up with your deputy director's 'shoot first and ask questions later' attitude. And loaded down with the sins of the GIW due to how many of us worked for them, J. We are at least 2-5 years away from operational, the original inventory is locked up in government property red tape.”

Danny froze up, ice creeping along his hand before he reined it in. “Operative J, oh god I remember her. She used to be blonde.”

“My deputy director Colonel Maybeth is fully on board with our mission. Peaceful engagement with the Infinite Realms and those who dwell there is our desire and our mission, but the capacity to respond to hostile activitiy if necessary is a planned part of GERDD's future operations. The past violations of the GIW are the past. There will be no such lack of ethics in our research under my leadership. As my future Head of Research, I'm sure you'll be ensuring that with me, Trevor.”

Dr. West was sputtering, seeming to have forgot they were on television news. “Head of Research, I do not remember applying for that job!”

Director Bassett interrupted him smoothly. “Dr. Fenton, you're on call with us?”

She couldn't be heard from the lab space below and away, so only the news channel had Maddie. “Yes, thank you, Director Bassett. I've relayed much of the data my field researcher Ms. Gray gathered over the past several years to GERDD and our colleagues at several major universities while we've been analyzing today's attack.”

Harriet jumped on that as way more ratings driving than bickering. “Yes, today's attack, please. Can you answer the one question the entire world is asking? The Ghost Soldier, as some social media posts are referring to the scale 8 ecto-entity that arrived to help you today, is speculated by many people to be Danny Phantom, the long-missing hero who vanished shortly after preventing the impact of the Disasteroid in 2007. Was that Danny Phantom today?”

Danny was surprised by the sheer acid in Director Bassett's tone. “Yes, Maddie, why don't you tell us all about Danny Phantom vanishing after that?”

She met acid with steel and Danny thought know you could hear, his mom's, teeth grinding through the floor from the lab below. “Phantom chose to return to the Realms before we de-activated our portal rather than risk being stranded in the mortal realm. The ecto-signatures as recorded by our equipment as well as the ghost-derived technology used by my researcher Ms. Gray do not match. While we are immensely grateful for the Ghost Soldier's help today, that wasn't Phantom, Julia.”

Dr. West scoffed with finger quotes. “If you compensate for the GIW-documented maturation process of ecto-entities, an increase in power, age, amplitude and the effect of all of that on ectoplasmic signature, the ecto-signatures do match. The 'Ghost Soldier' handily displayed every power documented of Danny Phantom's and ended the fight in less than ten minutes. I firmly believe he's back to fight for me and you, but make no mistake, Danny Phantom is no ghost boy anymore. Phantom is an adult ecto-entity with the power to match.”

Danny headed for the kitchen as Sam sighed. “Do we have anything stronger than soda in the fridge? I need a drink. Mom and Dad never keep alcohol on hand.”

Valerie was right behind him. “We'll make that two and doubles, Fenton.”

Sam walked ahead. “And I will bartend. The Guys In White in a camo paint job needs the good stuff, and I brought some. Including your favorite whiskey.”

Maddie thrashed with the classic Fenton lack of poise and tact. “That is completely ridiculous. If you do enough twisting and bending, you can say a person is a cow by the DNA. Ghosts do not change their post-human appearances. The Ghost Soldier was in uniform, not a HAZMAT suit. And an adult, not my, not an adorable little boy.”

Danny slid his hand very slowly down his face. “Oh she is bombing. I wasn't a 'little boy,' I was a teenager. Harry's letting them gang up on her.”

Jazz yelled. “Same thing!”

Bassett spoke to that. “We're not talking about person to cow, the signature similarities are more accurately compared to a child's scrawl of their name versus an adult's practiced autograph. The signature is tighter, more powerful with a significant amplitude increase.”

Danny and Valerie held out glasses as Sam helpfully poured all of them a double shot of top-shelf whiskey before they went back to the living room. Director Bassett was facing her camera now instead of “looking” at where the anchor and Dr. West were on the TV screen with her screen-in-screen. “I would just like to take this opportunity to speak directly to Phantom if you're there and in the Mortal Realm currently. Yes, we are the successor agency to the GIW. But we are not them, and under my leadership we never will be. We do have access to all the previous research and documentation on you done by Agents K and O before they were fired from this agency. We know why your appearance is different and why you're physically older. Please work with us. Our prime facility is located on Nellis Air Force Base with satellite facilities across the country starting to stand up as first response for ghost conflicts.”

Harriet checked some papers on her desk before speaking. “Can you confirm that GERDD is constructing your own Realms or 'Ghost Zone' portal at present?”

“We are building a portal based on the original blueprints commissioned from Fenton Works with several classified adjustments to our construction to increase security of the GERDD portal.”

Danny threw back the entire double shot of whiskey before asking the whole room, but mostly Jack. “Did you guys, sell the portal blueprints, to the government?”

“Well, there was this thing, Danno, and I ran over the thing, and it was a pretty expensive thing and you know how that goes.”

Great. Danny got up to head back to the kitchen. “I need another shot.”

Danny had almost made it when he re-played what Operative J had said.

“They're on Nellis?! Forget getting a shot, I'm getting a drunk.”

Dallas turned around on the couch. “Danny, have you ever even tried to get drunk with your powers?”

He turned slowly, a little bit of horror dawning. Valerie starting to wheeze with laughter would be summarily ignored of course.

“I mean, your parents nuked you at 18 right? Jazz and I were 20, and I know my wife is too much of a good girl to have bought her little brother beer even when she was old enough.”

There was indignant mumbles from Jazz objecting to her good girl reputation as Dallas continued.

“I just was figuring, you heal fast with your powers. Alcohol is basically just drinking poison because it's fun. I mean, Phantom might neutralize it faster than you can drink?”

Danny looked slowly at Jack. “What do you think? Sam?”

Jack bit his lip and winced. “We tried some experiments with ectoplasm reacting to ethanol in college. The ethanol got broken down pretty quickly.”

“Super alcohol tolerance as another ghost power! That, could be sweet.” Sam popped a can of Coke and poured it on top of her shots in a highball glass.

The news had moved on to the next topic as Maddie came in from the lab. “Mads, baby! Do we think Danny can get drunk?”

Maddie reached for the bottle Danny and Valerie had left on the counter. “I don't know, but I know I need one too. Anyone else? Julia Bassett is still a hack. Those 'experiments' were your father spilling his Molson into vials of ectoplasm. I can't stand that woman!”

Danny raised a hand. “Dallas proposed the horrifying thought I can't get drunk and between the new GIW apparently really wanting me to come volunteer as their pet ghost and their new HQ are where I am stationed, I need to get hammered. What do you know about her?”

“We were always in conflict back then. For what it's worth,” Maddie poured rather more expertly tham Sam as Danny and Valerie both set down their glasses. “Jazz, Dallas? Anyway, Julia's somewhat younger than us, she was always, well, I guess she was more right than I acknowledged back then.”

Jack nodded slightly. “She argued with us, about how we used to think about ghosts, Danno. Said we were being wrong-headed and biased. There's a lot of worse people to have running a government ghost hunting agency. Trevvie now, good guy. Used to work as a HAZMAT agent when he was doing his dissertation on preventing discorporation during-”

Maddie hissed. “Not, helping, Jack.”

The older man snapped his mouth shut as Danny grabbed the drink in front of him and downed it. “Stick a fork in me, I'm dead meat!”

It was, 50 percent good news as Danny took the next shot Sam poured with gentle sympathy and a heavy hand. He still wouldn't be offering himself up on a stainless steel exam table for GERDD any time soon. His nightmares still merrily cross-wired the real experiences of being bound by Spectra, Valerie, Vlad, Maddie with what the GIW would have done if they had ever caught him.

-DP-

Danny woke with his mouth feeling like something had died in it and blinked blearily before noting the floor. Concrete, yep. He rolled over and was still wearing yesterday's clothes. He pressed a hand to his forehead, at least one category of mistake hadn't been made with either Sam or Valerie.

That was the stainless steel leg of a lab table two feet from his head. Somebody had at least thrown a blanket over him and worked a couch cushion under his head.

But Danny figured picking him up had been beyond the capability of most of the women present. Jack and Dallas could probably do it. Though, huh, Danny wondered if with his ghost half restored, did he weigh less now with the ectoplasm? Would be helpful on height-weight and fitness tests.

God, his head hurt. So could definitely still get drunk. How'd he end up in the lab? He tensed, more than a little afraid. But no, he wasn't clamped or fastened to a table. This area was under the living room floor, he was sure.

Danny thumped his head against the concrete. He'd phased through the floor while drunk, that had to be it. Needed to be real careful next time there was a unit function involving a few drinks with the rest of the squadron's officers.

He heard the security door at the top of the steps open and Maddie leaned in. “Oh, Danny's awake now.”

He held up one hand and gave a weary thumbs-up. “How?”

“After about six doubles or so, you phased through the floor. Valerie stumbled down the steps here and threw some anti-phase coating on the floor and you stopped and fell asleep when you floated down and bumped into it. Our best guess is your alcohol tolerance is vastly boosted by your ghost half, but you definitely were drunk.”

“Yippee.” The fluorescent lights of the lab were too bright. But Jazz, Dallas and the kids were leaving this afternoon and Danny forced himself up to go shower and get the taste of stale whiskey, and god, had somebody given him a vial of ectoplasm or had he bit his tongue at some point, out of his mouth. “Don't drink that much again around my CO, got it. Sam? Tucker, left last night to get home early, right?”

“Priyanka came and got him. Sam freshened up and is working on breakfast with Jazz. Your nephew thinks this is hilarious-” Footsteps pounded the stairs behind her as Maddie turned.

The teenager pushed past his grandmother and yelled too loud for speaking to a hungover military man. “Uncle Danny! Mom told me to be really loud because she said it would help you get moving!”

“I'm going to get moving to chase you up back up those stairs, Chris Bankfield.” Chris darted away and Danny got to the bottom of the steps and turned toward, it.

Against the wall in its old place, the tunnel drilled into the bedrock of Amity Park. Controls silent, power turned off. The inactive portal framework beckoned.

If he could damn well help it at all, Major Daniel Fenton was not letting himself being dragged back into this bullshit. And he'd die again before he ever let any of those kids near the damn portal.

Danny turned his back on it and then belatedly yelled up to Maddie. “Tell me you guys have at least re-engineered the damn thing so the 'On' button isn't inside it? Or changed the blueprints you sold GERDD.”

“Of course we did. We re-engineered all the safeguards and interlocks. There were a few back and forths of design and blueprint elements, and I think GERDD is doing something completely different material wise with the portal's blast doors and the antechamber walls, but I don't know what. The portal can't be activated now the way it was during your accident. We built in a failsafe in the portal 3.3 blueprint that requires two activation points outside the antechamber and a light curtain and proximity sensors for inside interlocked to the power. It will not turn on with a living person in the antechamber, Danny.”

Danny closed his eyes and yeah, that helped too. He climbed the stairs to the kitchen.

Sam waved around a spatula. “Oh, you're awake. I thought that amout of alcohol would knock you out until noon. It used to.”

Danny sighed. “We think I have a boosted tolerance now. It's not a ghost power though. I don't need another one. At what point did I fall through the floor?”

Jazz rolled her eyes and then Danny heard a small moan. “Oh, the kitchen just spun. You sort of rolled in slow motion off the couch and started to sink into the floor. Chris tried to pull on you, obviously he couldn't get a grip because you'd gone intangible and Dallas got him to stop before his hands got too chilled passing through your arm. Val thought of heading you off at the pass in the lab. Then Dallas packed down the cushion and the blankets. Him and Dad almost tried to pick you up and bring you back upstairs, but you kept flickering in and out when they tried to touch you.”

Chris was getting glasses from the fridge and the jug of juice. “You knew Grandpa was there, even if you were pretty lit I guess, and wouldn't let him touch you.”

Maddie was mixing batter and Danny knew it was true. Dallas walked into the kitchen. “Everybody say 'Thank you, Dallas' for being the sober adult. Danny and Valerie looked like they needed last night. That was a pretty handy defense mechanism though. I tried to teach my son the fine art of doodling on the person who passes out and your forehead kept disappearing or phasing out.”

Danny laughed as that at least broke the tension that even unconscious, Danny's distrust of Jack and Maddie had been hardwired by too many years of animosity. But for the first in a long time, he wanted to break that instinct. “Thank you, Dallas, for being the sober adult. What time are you guys headed out?”

“Gonna start driving around noon, we'll get home by six that way, stopping for rest breaks a couple times. Chris has school registration next week, he's going to be a freshman this year, and Lori is starting kindergarten. Her birthday falls a little rough and we didn't want her so behind her classmates so we didn't start her in school last year. Speaking of, Christopher Ronald Bankfield, are you packed?”

“Yep, I already put my suitcase in the van, Dad.”

“That's good, to keep Lori back. It sucks being small for your age or class.” Danny picked up one of the glasses that Chris had poured as the teenager left the kitchen for the living room.

The kid called back over his shoulder. “Yeah, Mom keeps promising it's just the Fenton gene pool at work, that eventually I'll get tall.”

By the afternoon the Bankfields were on the road and Valerie was working in the Ops Center when Danny followed her up there. “Since their portal's inactive, how do we get Knock-off back in the Realms?”

The full thermos was secured in the basement lab area and Danny didn't like to leave anyone in there longer than needed, unless they'd really gotten on his nerves. The reptile was just a reptile and Danny was sure someone else was behind the big dumb beast being thrown into the Mortal Realm.

“Your parents' portal isn't transit active, but enough of the mechanism is powered that we can empty the thermos back to the Zone.” Valerie turned away from the computer she was on to face him.

“Then let's go do that.”

He did not like the way she bit her lip and looked down and away. “We were going to release it into sufficient ecto-containment and study it.”

His tone was one that taught many years of airmen to choose their next word carefully and a few ghosts long ago that Phantom was not playing anymore. “We're going to the lab, we're emptying the Thermos into the Realms. Knock-off isn't smart enough to find its way back, somebody put it out here to make this happen. And there is no sufficient long-term containment for anything that large and powerful, Valerie. It'll break the Thermos eventually and any other cell you guys have in mind. Unless 'sufficient ecto-containment' is the patented Fenton method of kill it now and study later.”

She shook her head. “They've developed pretty effective means to study ghosts from inside the Thermos or the other versions of portable containment, without doing any harm. They have changed, Danny. I've changed. You've been gone and out of the field a long time.”

“Fine then. I'm going down to the lab, I'm setting Toho's Copyright Infringement free into the Realms. If you guys have really changed, you won't stop me. If you haven't, well, you can't stop me.”

Danny walked back to the elevator. At least his leave was going fast. He had four more days before he'd go back to his regular life that he hoped to every god-like being in the Realms had no more ghosts in it.

The scramble pad in the kitchen. He'd never asked in the past week and a half what the code was, so Danny started trying numbers. His birthday. Jazz's birthday. Their wedding anniversary. The accident. Jack's birthday. Maddie's birthday. His aunt's divorce-aversary. The numbers that did it were the date of the Disasteroid.

The full Thermos stuck out for the maxed out green meter as Danny plugged it into the receptacle near the inactive portal and once it clicked in, he hit the release button. The gauge on the ecto-filtrator wobbled a little, once the job was done. He pulled the Thermos off and put it back on an equipment shelf.

The steps creaked and Danny looked up where Jack had been coming down, none too lightly. “Oh, Danno! This phone Jazzy insisted I needed was pinging like crazy with access attempts and I knew the kids are gone. Didn't think it was you, you could just,” Jack gestured vaguely.

Danny snorted. “Seemed a little hostile to phase around here while sober. I remember you guys really not liking me using my powers in the house.”

Jack glanced at the Thermos Danny had replaced. “Val said you let the ghost go.”

“Val said you guys were going to contain and study it. I objected. It's not smart enough to get back on its own,” hesitating and then pacing off toward the stairs. Jack let him by with enough space to not need to phase.

-DP-

Alone in his lab, Jack Fenton scrubbed at his solidly gray-white hair. He wanted to fix this but didn't know how.

He had spent years believing certain things about ghosts. They were evil, hostile to the living, mindless. Then he finally saw one after almost 40 years of believing in ghosts. And it was apparently a child. He had spent three years ignoring all the evidence, focusing hard on a few incidents and ignoring everything else. Some scientist he'd been.

Danny Phantom was a manipulative, evil spook who had people snowed. It was a fact.

Then in a fairly short window of time, Valerie had become one of the snowed. Interfering with their shots, working with Phantom. She'd written tactics rooted in humans with ecto-weapons, both with flight capabilities and not, working with friendly ghosts to take down hostile ghosts. She'd drilled her aim to be able to pick off a target when two ghosts were right up on each other in a fight.

He'd ignored how both Danny and Valerie's grades had boosted right along with Phantom and her working together, covering down on each other. She had even been taking on more of it when the ghosts were lower level, with only vague explanations of, “I know he doesn't want to do this forever. I do.”

Then in rapid fire, everything Jack believed had been upended and shredded. His old buddy Vladdie was the evilest of ghosts, hated him, had hated him for 20 years, wanted his family for Vlad's own. They had a plan, Vlad sabotaged it for his own insane scheme.

The ghosts he'd considered evil, even if it had been out of self-preservation, had saved the world. And Danny had told them the truth. He'd made sure his friends and his sister were there, as the world caught its breath on still being here and feted the ghost boy. They'd been too happy he was alive still, to freak out much at the time.

Old habits die hard though. Jack climbed the stairs to the kitchen. Valerie had given them her tactical book and they'd built on it, interlocking ground based hunters with weapons with hunters on jet pack or hoverboard, with friendly ghosts on the air.

But then he and Maddie had screwed it up, Jack knew it. Not meaning to, but they had. Scolded Danny for using his powers casually around the house. Had slipped into a horrible habit of not taking his injuries seriously because they healed so quick now. Every time he had stomped to his room angry when Jack hit him again in a fight, because Jack just couldn't shoot that well and that fast when combatants were moving at ghostly speed until he was banned from taking the shot when Danny fought.

And Nimbus, and that night with a syringe of the final Ecto-Dejecto formula, that did what they'd wanted. Five versions to get what he'd meant for something to do had been a record.

Jack walked back up to the house, securing the security door behind him. His hand hesitated on the security pad before Jack keyed the code in twice and set a new code.

There wasn't any point to coding a door against Danny now, and yet. It bothered him the next moment, setting a code attempt against Danny like he was one of the grandkids.

Or the enemy.