Okay, this is just something that kind of popped into my head and I thought "why not?" I don't usually do crossovers, but this had some potential and I wanted to give it a try. So here's some nice "Danny Phantom" and "Beetlejuice" writing.

In regards to "Beetlejuice," I decided to kind of mush the film with a few little pieces (like Lydia's apparent age and parts of certain character's personalities) from the cartoon in order to make something that I thought could work with "Danny Phantom" reasonably. No characters from the cartoons, though.

The best way I can describe it is that the general events of the movie happened, but with some minor differences. Betelgeuse wasn't quite as lecherous, not as likely kill the people he was trying to scare out of the house in the process, and was a little less creepy towards Lydia, which makes it easier for him to later form a more friendly relationship similar to what he has with her in the cartoon. He kind of goes from "I'll go through a marriage ceremony with the random girl and then run off the second I'm free" to "she's actually a nice kid and pretty fun to hang out with when no one is sending sandworms after me." The Maitlands aren't exactly happy about him still lurking around and Lydia's parents never would have wanted him near their daughter, but they managed to make it work.

Also, I shifted the timeline and her age around a little so that Lydia is fourteen at the same time as Danny, which is intended to be about two years after the events of the movie. Basically, she just looks older than she actually is and the film is no longer set during the late 80s.

In regards to "Danny Phantom," this is sometime after "Reality Trip" and "Double Cross My Heart," but before "Phantom Planet." Beyond that, I'm still working out the details on the timing.

As always, I don't own any of the characters or concepts for either "Danny Phantom" or "Beetlejuice." They belong to other people who probably have a lot more money than I do. Stuff that doesn't look familiar is probably from my imagination and you guys are welcome to borrow it as long as I get credit.

Say It Thrice

Recently deceased with established haunting perimeters often manifest originally in the realm of the living or the Netherworld. Those who manifest in the realm of the living appear within those haunting perimeters. Those who manifest in the Netherworld will either be operating from that location or cannot access their proper haunting perimeters immediately. Case workers can be located in the Netherworld; instructions for moving between the two locations are covered more extensively in the earlier chapter.

Between the human and Netherworld is the ectoplasmically-charged zone that serves as a buffer. The zone is an environment with mutative geography, inhabited by ghosts without proper haunting parameters, ghosts who did not manifest originally in the more typical locations, and ghost-like entities that are not truly deceased. Inhabitants of this buffer zone generally demonstrate higher power and variety of abilities than others, normally reaching a minimum of a Class 5, while also displaying higher levels of aggression and obsession. Access between the zone and the realm of the living is easier to accomplish without the necessity of proper channels due to proximity, though the portals often vary in location, stability, and duration.

Outside of the realm of the living and often accessible as a border to individual haunting perimeters is the Saturnian territory. Due to the high-saturation of sandworms and temporal flux, the deceased are advised against accessing Saturn and to remain within their haunting perimeters.

The ability to move between the realm of the living, the Netherworld, or the zone vary depending on an individual's specific circumstances, the presence of portals, and the conditions of the various locations at the time of attempted access.

-Excerpt from "Handbook for the Recently Deceased"

It wasn't quite as bad as an exorcism, but they definitely caused him some real problems. He knew he'd been out for at least a few days. Which wasn't that long in the grand scheme of things, but it also wasn't that great. If he wasn't as powerful of a ghost, he knew he'd still be curled up in a dark corner somewhere and unable to move. Well, he was still curled up in a dark corner, but he could at least start moving again. They really packed some punch with that little stunt.

Mostly, though, he was all right. What didn't kill you made you stronger, right? Or it would if it wasn't for the whole… already-dead thing… But he was doing better. Granted, he felt kind of wrung out and wobbly, but that would pass. He'd been hit with worse. In fact, he'd been eaten by a sandworm a couple of years ago and he got over it. He'd be all right soon enough. That didn't, however, change how upset he was about it happening in the first place.

Actually, "upset" was a bit of an understatement. He was seriously, violently ticked off. Not only did those idiots mess with him, binding him and trying to get him out of the way, but they messed with her. They took her away and tried to trap him. As bad as it was to mess with him, messing with her was unforgivable. Whenever he got a hold of them, he would make them wish they were dead and Juno's responsibility.

They were smart, stealing his name from her. They used the ring, the ring he gave her during that ill-conceived marriage scheme (not his fault that he was horrible at judging ages among the living after a few centuries of being dead and it wasn't like he intended to stick around for long after the ceremony anyway). He should have made her give it back a long time ago.

Objects of meaning and importance to ghosts could have power, especially if they were a reflection of some type of relationship. Granted, the ring was initially meant for their marriage instead of the odd friendship they ended up with, but friendship was still a relationship. The ring was a mostly-forgotten and ignored symbol of some kind of connection between the ghost and girl. And they used it.

It was clever. They bound the pair, the girl too tangled up with the dead to be completely unaffected. Binding her memory of his name, binding his ability to reach through mirrors from the other side, and doing who knows what else since he'd been a little out of it near the end… They bound it all to the ring.

It was smart. They couldn't remove her memory of him or the Maitlands, but they could take away her ability to summon him. And they ensured he couldn't reach out to her, remind her of his name or even watch her from afar. He would be the first to admit they were very clever with their strategy. He'd even be impressed if it wasn't for the fact they were messing with his best and only friend. Instead, he simply hated them.

With his anger and frustration burning bright, he forced himself upright properly. He knew he was in the Netherworld, which was at least better than the Lost Souls Room. Snagging other ghosts from ending up there was easier than stopping himself from suffering that fate. Yeah, he was at least thankful to avoid an actual exorcism for the moment.

He could spot the huge building where poor idiots sat around in the waiting room for an available case worker, but he was far enough away that none of them would notice him. Not that any of them would care. Some (like Juno, the pain in the neck that never let anything go) might even think he deserved it. But karma wasn't exactly something he put much faith in, so he wrote the whole situation off as just rotten luck.

The architecture of the Netherworld was different than what the living tended to use, but it wasn't particularly hostile or mind-breaking. He'd even snuck her in a couple of times with a little creativity with the whole "summon/banishing by saying the name" thing. If someone figured out he'd done that, he'd be in an insane amount of trouble. But she liked it and he was good at loopholes anyway, so he'd risked it. The point was that, compared to the land of the living, the Netherworld wasn't quite normal. The geometry and geography tended to get a little weird if you over-thought it. But he was used to it enough to figure out sort of where he was.

Basically, he'd landed in what was more-or-less a narrow alleyway in a less frequented corner of the place. In all honesty, he was reasonably close to where he used to stay between bio-exorcism jobs. It was dark, but that was the normal state for the Netherworld. The easiest thing to do would be to just go back to how things were before the Maitlands contacted him. The smart thing to do would be to forget what happened and get on with his afterlife.

And there was no way in the Netherworld he was going to do that. She was his friend and no one was allowed to take his friend away. He couldn't leave her alone with them. He'd find a way back to her. No matter how they tried to bind and trap him, he'd figure out a way. He was an expert at bending rules and finding loopholes, after all. He'd get her back even if he was forced to tear the Netherworld and the land of the living apart in the process.

But with no one around to use his name, getting to the living would be difficult. He was used to not being able to say his own name. He was even used to having issues figuring ways out to get his name out to others so they could summon him. He'd done it for centuries. But after his last stunt where he'd apparently pushed Juno's patience to far, she started having the very first page of the handbook for the newbie ghosts warn against calling on bio-exorcists in general and him specifically. And she did it without even having to print his name, which he considered impressive. The rest of the ghosts, the ones who would already know his name, knew better than to summon him either. And there was a limit to how much he could do to get a human to call his name while he was stuck on the other side.

No one was going to use his name. And no one was going to help him get to her. Especially no one who worked in the nightmarish bureaucracy (like Juno, who seriously needed to lighten up) and would actually have the ability to access the land of the living a little easier than most. It was completely up to him.

That left him with only the longer and more difficult method of brute forcing his way through the zone between the two places. He wasn't even certain those portals would work for him thanks to the way he was bound by the use of his name. But it was the best option at the moment, so he had to at least give it a try.

"Hang on, Babes," he muttered. "I'm coming for you."

With the exception of regular ghost attacks, Fenton Works, and the famous/infamous halfa who was trying to protect his hometown while also maintaining his secret at the same time, Amity Park was a fairly ordinary and boring town. Okay, maybe not that ordinary and boring. But it wasn't that major of a place and certainly didn't attract large numbers of new arrivals. People didn't really move to Amity Park. Away, sure. Regular hauntings encouraged that. But everyone in Danny's school were essentially the same kids he'd seen since elementary school.

So when a black-haired, pale girl in dark clothes that wasn't Sam ended up sitting in his homeroom, it caught his attention. Her hair was pulled up in a messy bun of some type and almost everything she wore was black. Black shoes, black leotard-like pants that somehow managed to give the impression of modern and old-fashion at the same time, and a black short-sleeved shirt that looked like something out of the Victorian era over a skin-tight black long-sleeved shirt that covered the palms of her hands while leaving her fingers exposed. The only hint of color was some red fabric barely visible from where she stuffed it into her backpack. There was no way in the world he'd missed seeing her around the school for years. She stood out way too much for that.

She was just sitting there in one of the back seats, a dark expression on her face as she silently scribbled on a sheet of paper. Very few people were ever happy to be at school, but the boy could see that it was more than that. There was way too much anger, frustration, hopelessness, loss, loneliness, and sorrow all mixed together in her expression as she ignored everyone else in the room. He wasn't Jazz, but Danny could tell that the new girl needed to talk to someone before she snapped the pencil in her grip or decided to start screaming towards the ceiling. And judging by her Goth clothes and off-putting expression, he doubted there would be many making the offer.

"Whoa, I love your outfit," said Sam, rushing past him with a rather enthusiastic expression on her face. The last time he saw that exact look on his friend's face was when she was at Gothapalooza (after it returned to normal). "I can't believe someone around here finally has decent taste in clothes. Everyone else around here dresses like Barbie clones."

The girl jerked abruptly, clearly startled by Sam's excited outburst at having another Goth in class. It was as if she didn't expect to even be noticed. Or as if she didn't notice anyone else. There was some hesitation and suspicion before she risked a weak smile.

"I'm familiar with the breed," she said. "Since my last school was all girls, there were a lot of them to deal with. I think they're everywhere. Like roaches."

Sam nodded with approval at that statement as he friends came up behind her. Danny could already tell the new girl was going to be drafted as Sam's new companion for Goth poetry reading. And neither boy was going to complain about escaping that occasionally. There was only so many times they could handle listening to people trying to rhyme "dark" and "empty" without growing bored.

"Well, it would probably best then for us to stick together to avoid the infestation. My name's Sam, the resident Goth of the school. I can show you where the best bookstores and such are. These are my best friends, Danny and Tucker."

"Nice to meet you," remarked Tucker, the grin on his face clearly demonstrating his thoughts about a pretty girl who hadn't rejected him already joining the class.

"Thanks. And don't even think about it. I have a… not-boyfriend who's kind of scary to deal with and who would probably dunk you in a shark tank if he saw you hitting on me," she replied calmly, clearly noticing the same thing that Danny did about Tucker's behavior.

"A 'not-boyfriend'?" asked Sam, taking a seat next to her. "I feel like there's a story there."

"You could say that. He's… complicated. Our first meeting was scary and then he later tried to move way too fast. I agreed even though I didn't want to because I needed his help, but things got… Well, it ended in chaos and he vanished for a while. And then he figured out exactly how young I was… There was some anger, some yelling and accusations, and then some vague and oddly… I wouldn't call it 'sweet,' but at least 'honest' apologies. After that, he was my best friend in a strange way. But he's still possessive and a little overboard in his reactions. So while he'd never hurt me, others need to be careful."

As the girl spoke, she sounded so wistful and sad. It didn't take a genius to figure out that her "not-boyfriend" was back wherever she used to live and that she missed him. But what really set off Danny's mental alarm was something else. Considering how many secrets and lies he needed to juggle on a daily basis, the halfa knew how to recognize when someone was hiding something. And he could tell it was something important.

"He does sound complicated," Danny said slowly. "What's his name?"

A flash of pure frustration and heart-break crossed her face and her voice was positively pained as she whispered, "I can't tell you."

Before anyone could respond or act further, Mr. Lancer announced from the front of the room, "All right, class, it seems we have a new student joining us. Why don't you stand up and introduce yourself?"

Her eyes rolled as she climbed to her feet and she plastered a bored expression on her face. She then looked around the room, studying the wide assortment of geeks, jocks, popular girls, and various other students.

"Ugh… Just what we needed. Another Sam lurking around and being creepy," someone muttered under their breath.

Her previous mixture of emotions abruptly consolidated into a single feeling that he could practically feel radiating off her: anger. If the pale, black-haired girl had been a ghost instead of human, Danny knew her eyes would have glowed in response to the comment. Instead, she adopted the fakest and scariest grin to ever grace the halls of Casper High. Then she started to address her audience with the most cheerfully sarcastic voice possible.

"My name's Lydia Deetz. I'm from Winter River and I lived in New York City before that. While I'm sure this is a nice little town, the only reason I'm here is because any parental figures I have apparently possess a tendency to experience fatal car accidents. My dad and step-mom have moved on to a better place; I had the experts check just in case. And since I'm not an adult, I ended up with Aunt Melinda. She's my mom's sister and I never saw that side of the family even before Mom died and my dad remarried, so she's pretty much a stranger. She's also an evil, controlling witch who dragged me here while guaranteeing that anything remotely good left in my life is now gone. Oh, and I like photography, Gothic design, sewing, and the color black."

Obviously satisfied by the stunned silence, Lydia retook her chair and went back to scribbling in her notebook. Even with the return of her previous dark expression to her face, it was clear that she was looking for a horrified and uncomfortable reaction from her audience. The look on Mr. Lancer's face was particularly shocked.

"Uh… Well… I hope you'll be happy here at… our school," he said awkwardly.

It was almost a relief when screams of terror and shouts about haunted meatloaf erupted from the hall at the same moment that Danny felt his Ghost Sense activated. A brief attack from the Lunch Lady was the perfect interruption. Already the students were fleeing in a panicked, yet orderly fashion towards a safer location, forgetting all about the new girl.

As Danny and his friends looked for somewhere he could change out of sight, he caught a quick glimpse of Lydia's face. She was surprised and intrigued by the green-skinned ghost terrorizing the school, but she wasn't afraid. She wasn't running in panic; she was staring. He carefully tucked that odd reaction to the back of his mind. For now, he had a job to do.

Compared to how much trouble he had the first time, Sam was mildly impressed at how quickly Danny could deal with the Lunch Lady now. It was a real and tangible sign of progress. A couple of minutes of semi-amusing banter and blasts of ecto-energy, then Tucker managed to snag her with the thermos. By the time Mr. Lancer started counting the students huddled around the front of the school, the ghost and thermos were tucked out of sight and the trio rejoined the crowd. No one noticed.

Actually, on second thought, maybe they weren't completely unnoticed. Standing among the crowd of gossiping students like a silent shadow, a thoughtful expression across her face, was Lydia. And even if she was listening rather intently to the discussions, her attention instantly focused on their arrival. Whether Lydia was merely searching for a familiar and friendly face or if she was curious about the trio's location during the attack and noticed they vanished, she was clearly more observant than most of the students.

"So… ghost lunch lady? And that 'Danny Phantom' guy? This town is just full of surprises," remarked Lydia. "My dad would have already been considering where to invest in a paranormal museum for the place."

The other Goth girl smiled briefly in appreciation of the idea. Then she remembered what she said before. That caused Sam's expression to crumble.

"So you were serious before? About your parents?" Tucker asked.

Lydia nodded before looking away, "I don't like loss, but I'm starting to get far too familiar with it. My mom died when I was seven. My dad remarried when I was eleven. And then not long ago, he and Delia headed back to New York City for an art show while I stayed home with… They never made it back. They were just gone."

"Sorry," murmured Sam.

"That's what everyone said. Even the neighborhood real estate woman, Jane Butterfield, right before offering to sell my home almost before the funeral was over," she said numbly. Lydia then briefly glanced at the trio. "But I think you might actually mean it. Thanks."

"Okay, everyone," remarked Mr. Lancer, "I think it's safe to head back to class now."

There were a few mutters of complaint, but the students began to shuffle their way back through the front door and down the hall. They moved in uneven clumps rather than organized lines like they would have when they were younger. It was completely routine and ordinary by now. Everyone was used to the school day being interrupted by ghost-related chaos. And the new girl was handling it just as naturally.

Falling back slightly, Danny said in a hushed tone, "She's hiding something. Lydia is keeping a huge secret."

"Well, so are we," pointed out Tucker.

"I think we should keep an eye on her. Just in case," he continued.

"You thought the same thing about Gregor," said Sam.

"And I was right."

"Technically, you thought he was involved with the Guys In White," Tucker corrected. "He turned out to just be a huge jerk named 'Elliot' instead."

Sam rolled her eyes, "Fine, I was planning to spend some time with her anyway. I'll watch out for anything weird."

Danny gave her a relieved smile, "Thanks. I could be wrong, but there's just something about her… She doesn't set off my Ghost Sense, but she's also too calm for a regular person facing ghosts. It's like she's either a ghost hunter of some kind or… I don't know what."

What can I say? I'm having fun working out ways to make the rules of the two universes mesh together in an understandable whole. The ghosts of "Danny Phantom" seem to be a little more science-based (ectoplasm and blasters) while the ghosts of "Beetlejuice" seem a little more paranormal (séances and exorcisms). So I'm trying to find a way to explain both in a comprehensible manner. And I'm doing it while writing up excerpts from "various sources." Which is actually pretty fun since I love world-building and developing background information.

Updates will be insanely sporadic. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. Still, feedback can help prompt updates sometimes. And it is always appreciated. Thanks.