From the author's desk: Hi there! This is...not quite my first foray into DP fanfiction, but definitely my first official one-shot that is over 1,000 words. I've mostly written drabbles prior to this (they're posted on another site).

Many thanks to my wonderful beta, CaptainOzone. She is amazing, and if you haven't started reading her story Shift, or just any of her other stuff (her Prophesized series in the Merlin fandom is legendary), then you are seriously missing out. GO READ HER STUFF. You will not be disappointed, I promise!

Reader's notes: This takes place very soon after "Kindred Spirits." Beware mild references to torture, unethical scientific practices, and a slightly more realistic take on what Danny may have been feeling about all the insanity in his life in general.

Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom.

Flip Turn
by dreamsweetmydear

Danny had always liked the water, except for a few years when he was a little kid.

When Danny was four, he nearly drowned in a hotel pool during a rare family vacation. After that, even getting him to bathe properly had been a challenge for his parents because the water made him so skittish.

Then one day, at some kid's birthday party—he honestly couldn't remember whose pool it was—he saw another child splashing happily about, held aloft by inflated neon orange floaters on his arms. Taken with the idea, Danny had asked his parents for a pair, which he received just in time for the height of summer and their visits to the neighborhood pool.

It was slow-going becoming comfortable enough to swim even with his floaters, but soon Danny was paddling through the water himself without the air-filled supports. Luckily, he wasn't alone in his slow progression; Tucker always kept him company, and like everything else they did, they learned to move through the water together.

Danny finally asked his mom and dad for swim lessons the summer before middle school. He could paddle and had a basic sense of coordination when attempting to do strokes, and he'd grown to love swimming even more over the years. Watching the Olympics helped, and he wanted to be like the men and women he watched on TV. He wanted to learn the grace of diving instead of his clumsy jumping in. He wanted to know how to move his arms and legs and breathe like the well-oiled machines his athlete heroes were.

His swimming instructor that summer was an older ex-military woman with a salt-and-pepper bob. A retired P.E. teacher and member of swim teams when she was younger, Ms. Clarkson was a patient lady who made the lessons fun for him and the other kids in the class. From her, Danny learned the correct way to cut through the water with his arms while propelling himself through it with the force of his kicking legs and feet. He learned the right way to turn his head to breathe and move his arm at the same time while freestyling, as well as the hip and leg movements for the butterfly stroke. He learned that the breaststroke was meant to be used as a way to calm the body, and that the backstroke could be accomplished if he kept the idea of his body stretching into a straight line in his head. Ms. Clarkson taught Danny how to dive into the water so that he didn't keep hitting the surface with his stomach, and eventually, he managed to figure out how to dive out and not down off of the starting block at the top of the lane.

It was one of the best summers of his life, and he thought about trying out for the swim team in middle school, only to feel cheated when he learned that his middle school didn't have a swim team. This was made more unfortunate when P.E., which had been fun in elementary school, turned into avoiding the bullies and playing sports he was clearly no good at, better known as football, basketball, baseball, and track and field—or the designated sport for every quarter. Here began Danny's history of dismal P.E. grades.

But come summer, during the day Danny could be found at the community pool, swimming laps in a lane—or trying to while avoiding the other pool-goers goofing off in the water all around him.

When Danny finally started his freshman year of high school, it had been three years since he had even thought about trying out for the swim team. High school was a fresh start, and if he kept his grades up, he'd be in good academic standing so that he could actually go out for the swim team, and if he made it, he could get rid of P.E. with Mrs. Tetslaff.

When he broke down his plan to Tucker and Sam, his friends chuckled at him good-naturedly.

"I swear, Danny," Sam said, "the way you gush over swimming makes me think you were a fish in a past life."

"Yeah man," Tucker agreed. "You're the only kid I know who went to the community pool over summer and actually swam laps instead of just trying to cool off like the rest of us. Who does that?"

"You can't deny that this is actually a good idea. No more Mrs. Tetslaff—for that semester anyway. Think about it—I could actually have an A for P.E. if it was just replaced with swimming!" Danny claimed, waving his spork at them for emphasis.

"Ditcher!" Sam and Tucker fake-coughed in amusement.

Danny stuck his tongue out at them in retaliation.

"Anyway," Sam continued with a shrug, "it's not like you can do anything about it today. Tryouts for the men's swim team don't happen until way later in the semester." With that the subject was changed to Lancer's homework for the evening.

Two days later, Danny had the accident that changed his life forever. Gone were the carefree days of being a simple fourteen-year-old. Instead, his spare time was filled with ghost hunting and learning to navigate his growing powers and becoming familiar with the supernatural world of the Ghost Zone. Between the fights and the never-ending homework and the steadily increasing dangers of his life, the last thing on Danny's mind was trying out for the swim team.

Still, there was an advantage to going to Casper High in spite of everything that had suddenly turned his life absolutely upside down—there was a pool in the basement of the gymnasium.

On days when he wanted nothing more than to be left alone, when he was sick and tired of dealing with Dash and the other A-listers' bullshit, when the fighting was getting to be too much to handle, when he felt he had spent so much time around ghosts and in his ghost form that he was struggling to feel human, Danny always found himself at the pool.

And it was on one such day that Danny's dream of joining the swim team was realized.

xxx

Danny slipped out of the locker room, his towel draped over his shoulder, blue eyes sweeping around the room to make sure there was no one else around as his fingers tapped randomly on the side of his water bottle.

As usual, the room was empty but lit, and there was no sign that anyone had been there or was coming back, which meant that, as usual, he had the pool to himself. It was still the early part of the school year, so aside from the girls' swim teams, which were away for a meet, the football team, the cross-country team, and the cheerleaders, no one else would be using the sports facilities on the high school campus, and all three teams currently on campus would be spread out between the football field, the track, and the soccer field.

This place would remain empty and undisturbed. Just the way he liked it, and just what he needed.

Danny had a rule for himself: no ghost powers in the pool area. No phasing, no intangibility, no nothing. The only exception was if his ghost sense went off, but it seemed the ghosts had picked up on the fact that this place was also special to him.

It had taken awhile, but Danny had made it clear to his adversaries through sharp-tongued words and brute force that his and his friends' homes were off limits. He would not tolerate the other ghosts' intrusions into the lives of his and his friends' families.

Danny hadn't done that so much with Casper High's pool, especially considering he couldn't keep them out from the rest of the place, but it seemed that the ghosts had gotten the hint anyway.

Thinking about it as he set his towel and water bottle on a nearby bench, Danny supposed it had something to do with the lairs the ghosts had in the Zone. They were safe spaces, comfort zones. Skulker had his island. Pandora had a piece of ancient Greece for her home.

For Danny, here in the human world, it was his home, his friends' homes, and the pool.

When Danny thought about it, the pool was the closest in some ways to the Zone in that it was the Zone's polar opposite. Where one had the unmistakable chill of the supernatural, the other had humid warmth reminiscent of human bodies. Both had an odd lingering smell and feeling: the Zone's thin, chilled air was pungent with the citrus-chemical tang of ectoplasm, and the pool air was saturated with the smell of chlorine, clinging to his lungs and skin.

Danny shook his head to clear it, stepped up to the edge of the pool, aligned himself with the center lane, and stared into the flood-lit depths of the still pool. His faint reflection on the surface of the water stared back at him, the light overhead causing a yellow glow over the tops of his shoulders and the edges of his face, the shine of the light bringing out shadows in his raven hair.

It was an oddly human mirror of when he was Phantom.

Squaring his shoulders, Danny turned his gaze away from his reflection, instead studying the lane ahead, his gaze pinned to the point where the tip of the red triangle flag should align with the water's surface.

No more ghosts. No more. For right now anyway. Because ever since the incident with Vlad and Danielle and the cloning—I'm going to die, he's actually going to kill me, he's going to win, this is wrong, wrong, wrong…

Danny shuddered violently, trying to squash the vile memories of being in Vlad's lab back in Wisconsin. He swallowed past the bile rising in his throat at the mere thought of the place.

No. Not here. He was sick and tired of his mind replaying his latest near-death experience at the hands of his mad scientist of an archnemesis and it was time to regroup.

Danny curled his toes around the lip of the concrete edge for a second before repositioning his body into a starting position, his feet placed diagonally apart, his weight centered on the balls of his feet, and hands placed just slightly more than shoulder-width apart, fingers gripping the pool edge. Danny reveled in the stretch and curve of his spine and locked his gaze to a point down the lane.

A breath. A second. A third.

Danny pulled off, launching forward, and with a final breath disappeared beneath the surface, the cool liquid slipping over his skin with a pleasant tingle not unlike his transformation. A strong flutter kick propelled him forward and up toward the surface. His arms sliced through the water and he held his breath until his lungs began to burn, at which point he finally turned his head to match his breath intake with the rhythm of the rest of his body.

He rapidly approached the end of the lane. Once there, he twisted into a somersault and used it to launch his body back in the direction from which he had swum, using slim but muscular arms and legs to cut through the water.

The shock of diving into the water had immediately shut off his racing thoughts. Instead, he registered his intermittent gasps for air, and the pounding of his heart in his ears, and the slight ache in his arms as he pushed himself forward. Length after length he swam, focused on nothing but the need to propel himself across the pool as fast as possible.

He paused for a moment at the end of his lap, panting for air and feeling the frantic beating of his heart, before setting off again into the next part of his routine: breaststroke, frog kicks gently stretching his thigh muscles, body relaxing from the continuous motion of freestyling. One and a half laps later, Danny paused, treading water as he mentally prepared himself for his favorite part, took a deep breath, and used the wall behind him to rocket forward underwater. Using his arms to sweep his upper body forward on a wave, he used the undulating movement to move his lower body like a dolphin's flippers and complete the cycle of motion.

Butterfly was Danny's favorite stroke, and one of the hardest for him to master. He'd understood it theoretically when Ms. Clarkson had first shown his class years ago how to do it, and it had looked deceptively simple. The butterfly kick had been easy for him to learn, but coordinating his arms and his breathing at the same time with the kick had proven to be the real challenge for him. He had kept at it, though, and now it was one of his proudest personal accomplishments.

A final splash of his arms brought Danny to the end of his lap. He clung to the edge of the pool for a moment after finishing that last lap, and slowly came back to himself. Danny crossed his arms on the rounded lip of the pool and pressed his forehead against them, letting out a sigh of relief before smiling widely for the first time in days.

He felt empty but light. He felt rejuvenated. He felt—

Loud clapping echoed through the room, startling Danny out of his reverie, causing him to flounder in the water in an ungainly manner for a moment before he found his audience.

Oh, crud.

"Well, Mr. Fenton," Mr. Lancer drawled. "I must admit, I'm impressed by your aquatic prowess. However, unsupervised swimming is prohibited, no matter how skilled one may be in the water. Ergo…"

Danny stared up at his vice-principal-slash-English teacher, chlorinated water still sluicing down his face from his hair. His mind raced, praying he wouldn't actually get suspended this time.

"…detention," came the balding educator's verdict. "After school tomorrow. We can have a nice, long chat about exactly how long and why you've been using the pool when no one else has that privilege."

The supernatural teen watched his teacher turn heel and walk away and sank into the water in relief.

xxx

At 3:15 PM the next day Danny parted ways with Sam and Tucker to head to Mr. Lancer's office, promising to fill them in at the Nasty Burger later. The teenager mentally groaned and rapped his knuckles against the open office door, drawing the attention of his teacher away from the computer screen.

"Come in, Mr. Fenton," the English teacher said. "Have a seat. We'll be leaving in just a few minutes."

"Leaving?" Danny questioned, settling himself into one of the chairs in front of the man's desk. "Where are we going?"

"Principal Ishiyama has given me the task of sorting and doing an inventory of the pool equipment. The school is hoping to do a youth swimming program in the summer, and we need to figure out what needs to be replaced and ordered new," the middle-aged man explained, eyes trained on the computer screen as he continued typing on his keyboard. "Since you are once again serving detention with me, I think it's only fair that you do something that will prove productive rather than give you an excuse to sit and do nothing for the next two hours."

Danny blanched. "Two hours? But detention is supposed to only be an hour long!"

Narrowed teal eyes cut away from the computer screen to give the teen a nonplussed look. "Well, you were technically breaking and entering. You should be thankful that I'm being lenient and that I haven't called your parents about this."

Danny guiltily looked away from the older man and rubbed the back of his neck. "Uh, right. Sorry."

They lapsed into an awkward silence as Mr. Lancer continued to type at his computer and Danny turned his attention to the sunny sky outside the window. A bird was perched on a tree branch, hopping about and flapping its wings. Danny watched it take off and wished he could be doing the same instead of being stuck here.

Squeaking wheels brought Danny's attention back to the little office, and as he saw his teacher get up from behind the desk, Danny grabbed his backpack from near his feet and stood as well.

"Shall we, Mr. Fenton?" the bald gentleman asked, two clipboards tucked under his arm. Without waiting for a response, Mr. Lancer led the way out of his office. Danny followed without a word, hand gripping the strap of his backpack.

It was a short walk to the gymnasium and its basement. Student and teacher entered the pool room, and Danny took a deep, calming breath of the chemical-scented air. Just being here always made him feel a little more relaxed.

Setting his backpack down out of the way, Danny turned to his teacher, wanting to get this over as soon as possible. "So what are we doing again?"

He watched Mr. Lancer remove a key ring from his pocket and unlock the equipment closet. "We have quite a few swimming supplies stored in here," the educator explained, opening the door and turning on the light inside. "Grab a box, and start looking through it. If the things inside look like they're falling apart, we write the amount that needs to be replaced. Here's your clipboard." Danny took the offered clipboard from Mr. Lancer, and began scanning the list of items on the inventory sheet. "Bear in mind that we keep excess kickboards in some of these cartons, and pool noodles will most likely be found in the large trashbins in the far corner next to our primary stock of kickboards. Mark off whatever you sort through. I have the same exact list, so don't worry about trying to do every item. I will most likely end up taking care of what you don't get to."

Danny nodded and stepped into the closet. Picking the first box he saw, the teen carefully dragged the carton out and over against the adjacent wall. He crouched and opened the cardboard container, and began rifling through foam kickboards, counting how many were in the box and checking to see if any other equipment was mixed in.

"So tell me, Mr. Fenton," Mr. Lancer said after coming out of the closet with his own box. "Where did you learn to swim like that?"

Danny groaned inwardly. He had fair warning that this conversation was probably going to happen, but still... Swimming was his thing, the way school was Jazz's or technology was Tucker's. it was special.

He glanced over his shoulder at his teacher, before turning his attention back to the kickboards in front of him and answering noncommittally, "I had swimming lessons a few years ago."

The scratching of pencils on paper filled the air for a moment. "And how long have you been swimming unsupervised here?"

"I plead the fifth," Danny responded.

Mr. Lancer chuckled from where he was working behind him. "It's a bit late for that, don't you think? You've already been caught red-handed and are serving your sentence, Mr. Fenton."

Danny grimaced, eyes still on his box of kickboards. Marking a tally for the box on his sheet, the teen stood to get another box, remaining silent.

"All right then, we'll come back to that," the older man decided, tone calm and friendly. "How did you get in? The ladies' teams were at a meet yesterday and are at another one today. The doors should have been locked."

The hybrid licked his lips and wracked his brain. He couldn't tell Mr. Lancer how he'd gotten in! What could he say…?

"The door was unlocked when I came by," Danny said, the lie tumbling easily from his tongue. "Someone must have forgotten to lock the doors before they left for the meet." He glanced back for a second to meet Mr. Lancer's gaze before slipping into the closet.

He couldn't meet his teacher's eyes when he came out with another box, but Mr. Lancer refrained from asking anything further, so Danny figured he was done being questioned for now.

Student and teacher settled into a quiet rhythm, tallying boxes of equipment on their respective clipboards, Danny occasionally asking questions about unknown items. At some point, the teen realized his teacher was humming under his breath while working, and was surprised to learn the older man wasn't half bad with a tune. Some fifty minutes later, Danny was going through another box of kickboards and found several items that reminded him of a cross between brass knuckles and webbed fingers mixed in with them (1).

"Hey, Mr. Lancer," Danny broke the silence, turning behind him to address his teacher, holding one of the unknown pieces up. "How do you want me to mark this? There are a bunch of these things in this box of kickboards, too."

The bald man looked up from his clipboard, taking his pen from between his teeth to answer Danny's question. However, before the man could answer, Danny's breath misted in front of his face and a chilled shudder ran down his spine.

Blue eyes caught Mr. Lancer's quizzical gaze before the ground beneath them quaked and the water of the still pool came suddenly to life. Their attention snapped to the bubbling, frothing pool.

From its center a human head rose, followed by the upper body of a young woman dressed in a black and blue halter top. However, as the figure continued to rise, a long black and blue fish tail tipped with deadly-looking fins extended from the humanoid female's hips. Long white hair tumbled around her shoulders, crimson eyes glinting through long bangs.

She sat aloft on a geyser, tail swishing lazily back and forth.

"Want to race?" she asked, voice echoing in the tinny quality that all ghosts' voices had.

"Th-The girls' s-swimming teams are at a m-meet today," Lancer squeaked out. "Sorry!"

The ghost shrieked, and Danny and Mr. Lancer clapped their hands over their ears. Turning his eyes green for just a second, the hybrid could see blue sonic waves spreading out across the room. Windows and furniture rattled but didn't disintegrate.

She wasn't very strong then.

Danny's speculation was confirmed when she suddenly stopped screaming, her face looking tired and shoulders slumping.

Danny was still studying this new ghost when his teacher turned toward him. "The Odyssey!" Mr. Lancer exclaimed, eyes wild with panic. "Mr. Fenton, we need to get out of here!"

Mr. Lancer had just grabbed his arm when something dragged the man away from him and into the water. A tendril of glowing liquid had wrapped itself around the teacher's ankles and was dangling the man upside down while the spectral mermaid studied him curiously with her red eyes, her head cocked to the side.

"The Odyssey," she repeated aloud, her voice confused.

"Mr. Lancer!" Danny cried out, worried for his teacher now that he understood that she controlled the ribbon of water holding the now screaming man. She twirled the dangling educator, studying him from all angles.

Blue eyes widening upon seeing the water tendril disintegrating from around Mr. Lancer's ankles, Danny leapt into the air. With a flash of light and a cold shock to his system, Danny Phantom emerged and shot through the air just in time to catch the falling teacher.

"Mr. Fenton?!" Mr. Lancer asked in astonishment as Danny adjusted his grip on the older man.

The young hero flew them through the wall into the hallway outside the pool and set his teacher down.

"I'll explain later. Just..stay here until I come get you," he ordered, and flew back into the room, coming face to face with the ghost.

She blinked at him, gaze confused.

In the last year or so, Danny had met a few other newly-sentient ghosts. The way he had understood it, especially after talking to Clockwork, was that ghost entities could exist for a long time before growing a proper ghost form. They had to gather ectoplasmic matter for a while in order to take shape and gain sentience.

Once they gained that semblance of sentience, it could become increasingly capable of thought and feeling the longer it remained as a ghost. However, newly-sentient ghosts were also closest to who they may have been when they died. If a ghost was going to move on so that it didn't linger in the Ghost Zone for eternity, then it had to be helped to overcome its obsession before it could become too powerful and too sentient in ghost form.

Danny addressed the mermaid in the pool. "Do you have a name? Do you know who you are?"

"My name?" she repeated, as though thinking. "Charybdis (2)."

Danny asked his next question, disliking it because of the generally adverse reaction he got from asking. "Do you know how you died?"

The mermaid continued staring at him, tail swishing back and forth as she thought. The only warning Danny got was her posture growing suddenly rigid, and he covered his ears just in time as she let out another supersonic shriek.

"Okay! Okay! You don't have to answer that!" he tried to placate her, and she grew quiet again.

Danny floated in front of her, thinking. She had manifested in the Casper High pool for a reason… "Do you know why you're here?"

This time the answer was immediate. Every ghost knew its obsession, he supposed. "Justice."

He nodded and considered what to do. He would have to do some research into people who had died near or in the school. Turning his attention back to Charybdis, he unclipped the thermos from his belt and removed its cap. "I want to help you, but I need some time to figure out how. Okay?"

She blinked at him, trying to understand. "My friend?" she asked, and the hybrid was reminded of Klemper. The difference between the two was that Charybdis was new and Klemper's obsession made him even parts violent and annoying.

Danny smiled at Charybdis. "Yeah. I'm your friend. Friends don't let friends stay in the Ghost Zone forever when they have a chance to get out."

Red eyes blinked at him again, but this time the ghost was smiling and calm.

"I'm going to put you in here," Danny explained, holding up the open thermos. "Sorry it's a little small, but it'll keep you safe until I can get you back to the Ghost Zone and figure out how to help you."

The halfa didn't wait for his new ghost friend to respond before powering up the gadget and catching her in its glowing tractor beam. Seconds later, she had disappeared and aside from there being water everywhere around the pool—including some of the pool supplies that Mr. Lancer had been sorting, unfortunately—there was no damage done.

Danny breathed a sigh of relief.

One crisis down. Now to deal with Mr. Lancer.

The young specter phased through the wall back into the hallway, where his teacher was waiting right where he'd left him near the water fountains.

"It's safe to go back into the pool room now," he reported cheerfully to the older man, who startled as though he'd been deep in thought. Teal eyes locked on to him, and Danny blinked back, uncomprehending of his teacher's reaction.

It hit him then, as the adrenaline racing through him faded.

Mr. Lancer saw him change from Fenton to Phantom.

Mr. Lancer knew.

Oh God. What was he going to do?

Mr. Lancer knew.

He shifted back with a flash of light, his feet dropping to the floor with the loss of his spectral anti-gravity, and scuttled back against the wall opposite from his teacher. His heartbeat pounded in his ears as he ran a shaking hand nervously through his hair, blue eyes looking anywhere but at the man across from him.

A tense silence filled the air. Danny took deep breaths in an effort to calm his nerves, shuffled his toes and hunched in on himself. His right hand reached up nervously to rub the back of his neck while he jammed his left fist into his jeans' pocket.

"S-So," the teenager croaked out with a slight tremble, "you probably have questions."

Mr. Lancer sighed heavily, shoulders slumping. "Many, in fact. I'm simply wondering where to begin."

Danny bit his lip and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, wondering what to say. He should at least confess to the truth now that Mr. Lancer was aware of his alter ego.

"Um, Mr. Lancer?"

"Yes, Mr. Fenton?"

"The doors were locked yesterday," Danny said, meeting his teacher's gaze for just a second. "The outer doors anyway. I, uh, I phased into the locker room, and got into the pool that way. The inner door isn't locked."

There was a beat of silence.

"And how long have you been swimming here unsupervised, Mr. Fenton?" Mr. Lancer's voice was quiet and calm, revealing nothing.

Tired of standing, Danny slid down and settled against the wall behind him, deciding this place was as good as any for the conversation they were going to have. Mr. Lancer followed suit on the opposite side of the hallway.

Resting his arms on his tented knees, Danny leaned his head against the wall and sighed, eyes closed. Opening them again, he looked back at his teacher.

"Well?" the man said, with a raised eyebrow.

"Since last year," Danny answered quietly. "It, uh, it helps me…clear my head."

They lapsed into silence again, Danny awaiting the next question. Now that the conversation had started, it didn't take long.

"Do your parents know?" the educator asked him.

Danny shook his head, unable to verbalize the answer. He wanted them to know, but at the same time, there were so, so many ways that it could all go wrong. The incident with the Reality Gauntlet had shown him a possible reality, but that was just it. Being around Clockwork had shown him that what was possible wasn't necessarily set in stone, and that could work in both ways. What the Reality Gauntlet had shown him was hard to reconcile against years of hearing his parents' threats against ghosts, against months of being hunted by them.

"Does anyone know?"

Danny smiled slightly. "Sam and Tucker, and Jazz figured it out awhile ago."

He glanced at the older man to see him stroking his goatee, eyes narrowed in thought as he began thinking aloud. "When you started the school year last year, you were actually doing quite well, though you were a little slow to apply yourself in certain subjects. However, you were absent for about a week toward the middle of September if I remember correctly, and when you came back, you somehow became this school's most clumsy troublemaker in a matter of days. It was a drastic change that didn't make any sense, to be honest."

Teal eyes scrutinized Danny, and he could see his teacher trying to fit the pieces together. "I can only assume now that it had something to do with you becoming Phantom. What happened to change you so much?"

Danny curled tighter into himself, hugging his legs and resting his chin on his knees. "Do you remember what the excuse was for why I was out?"

"Illness, if I recall."

"I guess that's half-true," Danny explained. "I was definitely sick."

The teen bit down on his lower lip, his body taut with tension, before he released it with a whooshing sigh. "I…had an accident, in my parents' lab. The portal—the Fenton Ghost Portal is what it's called, so you can probably guess what it's supposed to do—anyway, the portal didn't work when my parents tried to activate it." In his mind's eye, he saw his parents' expressions of defeat, their slumped shoulders. He remembered feeling disappointed along with them, because he had been pretty excited about their project himself. "My friends and I were checking it out and, on a dare, I went inside. I accidentally hit the power switch, and I…I got electrocuted." Danny shuddered, remembering the racing pain of so many volts of electricity running through his system and the sound of his own scream echoing in his ears. He swallowed hard, and continued softly, "It should have killed me, but instead, I got fused with ectoplasm, and ta-da, I got ghost powers and an alter ego."

Danny met Mr. Lancer's eyes, trying to read his thoughts unsuccessfully, and looked down at his knees instead, fingers picking at a loose thread in the blue denim.

"Well," Mr. Lancer began, and Danny looked up at him again, only to see him shake his head in disbelief. "Well," the man began again, "that's…quite a tale, Mr. Fenton."

Danny snorted. "I know. It sounds like it's straight out of a sci-fi comic. It's the truth, though."

"I must admit, I'm amazed that your parents aren't aware of your activities over the last year," Mr. Lancer continued, shaking his head. "After all this time, they must suspect something."

Danny's pulse skyrocketed and he stared at his teacher with wide eyes. "Oh God. Mr. Lancer, you…you're not going to tell them, are you?" he choked out. "Please, you can't! They'll—They'll—!"

Oh no. No no no. This was so not good. He'd made a huge mistake. Now Mr. Lancer was going to tell Mom and Dad, and there was no guarantee that it wasn't going to go badly.

I'll tear you apart molecule by molecule!

But Jack, don't you want to at least study the remains?

Danny's eyes snapped up, left, right, frantic to find a way out of this conversation and away from his teacher.

"Daniel!"

The teen flinched, the sound of his proper name breaking through the haze of his panic to draw his attention back to Mr. Lancer. The older man was still sitting where he had been against the opposite wall, but his palms were up in a placating gesture.

"It's all right, Daniel. It's all right," his teacher tried to calm him. Danny flinched again at the sound of his proper name.

"Danny, please," the teen murmured into the ensuing silence. In the back of his mind, he could hear Vlad's sinister cackle and many propositions to become the older spook's protégé. He shivered, remembering Vlad's glaring crimson eyes while Danny screamed through the near-continuous electrical shock meant to goad him into transforming.

"But Daniel—" Mr. Lancer persisted, and Danny glared at the older man. His teacher seemed to take the hint, pursing his lips and narrowing his eyes in displeasure. "But it's your name, Mr. Fenton."

Danny sighed, looking back at his knees and rubbing at his temple to stave off a building headache. "I-I know. I just…I don't like being called by my proper name, okay?"

He hoped his teacher would leave it at that, but knew that was wishful thinking.

"What could have possibly happened that you can't even bear to be called by your proper name?" There was no mistaking the disbelief and curiosity in the older man's voice.

Danny grimaced. "It's complicated," he replied shortly.

A beat of silence passed before the teal-eyed man spoke again. "What have you been through this past year, I wonder?" he asked thoughtfully.

Danny ignored the question, and turned his head to gaze down the hall at the doorway for the emergency exit. He was so ready for this conversation to be over.

He heard his teacher sigh. "Well, at least I know the real reason behind your poor academic performance over the last year."

Danny frowned, picking at the loose thread on his jeans again. Way to make him feel better about all of this.

"However, now we can find a way to turn it around," Mr. Lancer continued, and Danny looked up at the man sharply.

"We?" he asked, unsure what his teacher was thinking.

"Yes, 'we,'" Mr. Lancer confirmed, then climbed to his feet with a slight grunt. "Argh, I'm getting too old for sitting on the floor."

Danny slowly got to his feet as well, gaze locked on his teacher as the man continued his previous train of thought. "Danny, now that I am aware that you have other responsibilities, as your teacher, it is my responsibility to find a proactive way to support you so that you can actually be a successful student. I've said it to your parents before, and I'll say it to you again: I know that you are capable of doing well in school when you are able to focus. In fact, you've proven it to me."

Mr. Lancer smiled encouragingly at him, and Danny smiled back, remembering his hard earned A- on that literature exam.

"So, what do you think we should do?" Danny asked curiously, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall.

"To be honest, I don't know yet," the older man responded, stroking his goatee. "I need some time to think about a solution that will work, but perhaps you can come by my office tomorrow and we can brainstorm something together."

"That…sounds pretty cool, actually," Danny agreed. "Can I bring Sam and Tucker with me? Or Jazz?"

"I'll have to think about that," Mr. Lancer responded, and Danny nodded. "Whatever course of action we decide on, however, I'll have to inform your parents. But don't worry about that for now, all right?"

The teen let out a shaky breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. "Yeah, okay."

"Well then, I believe that's enough excitement for one day," his teacher declared. "You're dismissed, Mr. Fenton."

Danny grinned, and slipped back into the pool room to grab his stuff. Slinging his backpack over his shoulder, Danny dug into his pocket for his phone to check the time and to call Sam and Tucker to figure out if they were still meeting up at the Nasty Burger.

"See you tomorrow, Mr. Lancer," he called over his shoulder to the older man as he exited through the double doors back into the hallway. He was close to the end of it and about to turn the corner when he heard his name being called. Turning back, he saw his teacher down the hallway.

"You know," the older man called to Danny as he made his way toward the teen, "the swim team would be happy to have a member with promise like yours."

Danny tightened his grip on the strap of his backpack, and frowned in thought as he stared into the middle distance. Man, he wanted to say yes. He really, really wanted to say yes. But how could he? He couldn't keep a normal schedule, not to mention his grades were nowhere near good enough to be on a sports team.

More than that, though, it wouldn't be fair to the other team members to have a teammate who was constantly skipping out at random times with half-baked excuses.

Danny couldn't do that to the other athletes. They deserved to have a teammate who could fully support them, and he honestly couldn't do that.

The teen turned his attention back to his teacher and reluctantly shook his head. "You have no idea how much I wanna be on that team. I've wanted to be on a real swim team since before middle school. But I really can't, not with the way my life is right now."

Mr. Lancer nodded. "Of course, I can understand that." The older man paused, seeming to have an idea. "Tell you what, Mr. Fenton. From now on, whenever you think you might want to use the pool, you let me know. I'm happy to be your chaperone."

Danny gaped at his teacher. "Seriously? You'd do that for me?"

The educator nodded, smiling.

Danny couldn't help the grin that spread across his face. "Thanks, Mr. Lancer. Thanks a lot!"

"You're welcome. Now, go home, Mr. Fenton. I can't leave until you're off the campus and I've checked for any other stragglers."

Danny didn't have to be told twice, and he exited the school feeling lighter than he had in a long while.

xxx

With Mr. Lancer's help, as well as his friends and his sister, Danny was able to get his grades up until he was maintaining a solid B-average. He regularly took Mr. Lancer up on his offer to supervise while he swam laps. Life became a little easier for the teen, ghost attacks came and went, and sophomore year passed by very quickly.

However, the new school year brought with it the Disasteroid, the revelation of Vlad Masters as Vlad Plasmius, and the ultimate recognition of Danny Phantom as a hero all over the world.

It had been a really crazy few weeks. Reporters had flooded Amity Park to hopefully have a word with the spectral superhero, so Danny had already been on edge about that. Plus, he had missed more than a week of school, meaning lots of work to catch up on. Talk about a rough start to junior year.

Still, at least his parents knew the truth now…as well as about 70 other people, including Valerie. He needed to talk to her at some point, just to completely clear the air. Danny was thankful, though, that the group of people in Antarctica had agreed to keep his human identity a secret (3).

Best of all though…

"Danny! You ready to go?"

The sixteen-year-old superhero glanced up from rummaging through his backpack to make sure he had the list of assignments he'd missed while he'd been out. He smiled when he saw Sam walking toward him in all her black and purple glory, his gaze straying to her left hand as the gold of the ring he had given her glinted in the hallway lights.

The teen slung his backpack over his shoulder and took his girlfriend's hand in his own, lacing their fingers together. Sam smiled at him and squeezed his hand.

"Where's Tucker?" Danny asked her as they began walking.

She shrugged. "He said something about a Robotics Club meeting, but that he'd meet us later."

The couple was passing Mr. Lancer's office just then. The door was open, and Danny could see the educator seated behind the computer terminal, hands flying over the keyboard.

Danny slowed to a stop, and glanced back at Mr. Lancer's office door.

Feeling an insistent tug on his hand, the teen looked back at his girlfriend. She was looking at him with a raised eyebrow, before she shook her head with a fond smile and let go of his hand. "Go talk to him. I'll meet you and Tucker at the Nasty Burger."

Danny watched her walk away for a minute before he turned back toward Mr. Lancer's office.

This year had gotten off to a rough start, sure, and as much grief as the ghosts liked to give him, he now had more help thanks to his parents and hopefully Valerie, once he spoke with her. His grades were infinitely better than they had been a year ago, though he knew he was going to have to work harder this year to maintain them. It was junior year, after all.

Still, it was starting to look like maybe, just maybe, he had a shot at finally doing that one thing he'd always wanted to do since he had started at Casper High two years ago.

Finally reaching Mr. Lancer's office, Danny stepped into the open doorway and knocked lightly to get the man's attention.

"Hello, Danny," his teacher greeted him, turning away from the computer to face him. "What can I do for you?"

Danny took a deep breath, anxious, excited, and hopeful.

"That offer to join the swim team...is it still open?"

The End

(1) I'm referring to hand paddles here, though I don't think Danny would know what they're called.

(2) Charybdis is the name of one of the sea creatures that Odysseus encounters in The Odyssey. The creature in the book is more monstrous, but the name of this ghost is a reference to the character's back story, which I may turn into a one-shot later on.

(3) This is something that MyAibou established in her story "Infinite Potential." Headcanon accepted. And since I'm on the subject, the timeline that she established for the series is also an accepted headcanon of mine. This particular story takes place very soon after "Kindred Spirits," which in my head equates to the beginning of Danny's sophomore year of high school, as Vlad runs for mayor in "An Eye for an Eye," and elections don't happen until November. If you haven't read her stories, I strongly suggest that you do. They are phenomenal.

So… What did you think? Like it? Hate it? Let me know!

Thank you for reading!