Yah know how a lot of fanfics tend to say that Danny really muscled up, toned down and accumulated his share of battle scars from all the ghost-fighting? Well I was watching ep. 41 "an Eye for an Eye" when Vlad sent the Ghost vultures to turn the Locker room wall invisible while Danny was showering and this is obviously not the case. But what if it was?

Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom

"Hey Tucker. Danny stashed away in the locker room, as usual?" Sam walked up to the table Tucker was sitting at, lunch tray in hand.

"You know Mr. Modesty, after gym class, when he cleans, he cleans alone." Tucker said with a smirk. Tucker was used to the routine; when they had gym, Tucker was generally the last one out, and Danny generally undressed and showered after that. No that Tucker blamed him for not wanting to shower with the other guys; naked and vulnerable + room full of bullying jocks = one hell of a nuisance. That's all the bullying was to Danny anymore, really. Compared to being slammed into the ground by Skulker so hard he made a crater, or punched through a wall by Vlad, or even an impact from one of the box ghost's boxes, Dash's punches where virtually painless. The biggest annoyance, however, was pretending to lose to him over and over when Danny knew he could beat Dash with one punch. And then of course Danny beat himself up over it whenever he was tempted to actually do so. Hell, he could kill Dash with one punch, even in his human form.

"OH MY GOD!" someone yelled. People were suddenly running in from all over and crowding in against the wall, gasping and muttering in hushed voices. Tucker and Sam watched them, puzzled, then pushed their way to the front of the crowd, and gasped themselves, eyes wide. Something had made the wall between the cafeteria and the locker rooms invisible. If someone were to look close enough at the edge of the pulsating hole hard enough they could just barely make out the outline of two large birds. There in the middle of the hole stood Danny, cheerily humming and shampooing his hair. He was naked of course, but that's not (Entirely) why people were staring.

"Who knew that loser Danny was so… muscular!" Paulina said, hiding a small smile behind her hand

"Holy shit! Fenton's more ripped then I am!" Dash said, somewhere between shock and jealousy. It was true. While Danny had nowhere near the jock's bulk, it was obvious to anyone looking that what he did have was 100% muscle. He was skinny as hell, too; his skin was taught over rock hard muscles, not an ounce of fat between them. When he turned just the right way his lower ribs pressed visibly against the skin. By then everyone had started to look closer and the gasping increased. "What's with all those scars? I sure as hell never beat him up that badly." They were nearly invisible, but thin, white scars lined nearly every inch of his skin, like some ghastly spider web. Even Dash looked slightly concerned. Danny also had a few expertly placed white bandages, one on his shoulder and one on his ankle. His eyes closed tight against the shampoo, Danny walked over toward his towel with a limp that he had hidden well prior to then. Having dried his hair he sat down on a bench near the entrance to the showers, back still to the crowd, and started to change the now soggy bandage. As white cloth unwound from his shoulder, strip by strip, a half healed gash was revealed, looking more like a chunk of flesh had been torn away than simply cut. (Skulker had decided to add a spiked mace to his arsenal the previous night) Lancer had pushed his way to the front by then and he swore he saw scraped bone. There was a single loud gasp from the entire 'audience'. This time Danny heard them; he turned to see everyone staring at him, his friends in the front, looking sad and awestruck. Tears swelled in Sam's eyes. I never realized it was that bad… I… I always figured his ghost powers just made him durable enough to just take it!

"Oh no," Danny said, his tone unreadable. He tossed his towel over his damaged shoulder and covered his crotch with his hands. He ran to his locker and threw on his jeans, not even bothering with underwear, and was about to put on his shirt when Lancer appeared behind him, along with Tucker and Sam, having apparently stepped through the intangible wall. Actually, Sam was the first to go; yes this was the boy's locker room but she didn't give a shit, if Danny was hurt. Lancer put a hand on Danny's good shoulder and spoke in a kind but severe voice.

"Mr. Fenton, straight to the nurse's office, then to my office; you have a lot of explaining to do." The three friends exchanged nervous looks. Oh shit.

Danny's POV

"Never in all my 30 years at this hospital have I seen a mere student so severely, and repeatedly, injured! Judging by how it's healed I'd say that nasty gash on his shoulder is less than a week old, and the broken ankle appears to be a bit less than half way healed, I'd say it was broken about 3 weeks ago." The doctor was obviously shocked and worried but stayed professional. After the school nurse decided that the ankle was broken they moved us to the hospital. I couldn't help but feel a little impatient. Wrong and wrong, lady, the ankle was three days ago and the cut was last night! I was tempted to yell but remained silent. The doctor continued "I'm just amazed there's no infection on the shoulder and that the ankle was set properly! Who took care of your wounds?" Of course there's no infection, I washed it properly and ectoplasm kills most bacteria, and as for the ankle I turned the flesh intangible and set the bone myself.

"I did it myself." I answered truthfully.

"That's quite impressive Mr. Fenton, but frankly I find it disturbing that you, a fifteen year old child, have the experience to perform first aid that is on par with that of a trained battlefield medic, and on yourself no less!" She said. I winced at her words and shifted uncomfortably. Everyone just stared at me, my parents, Mr. Lancer, and the doctors, expecting answers. All I could think was that I would rather be back in the showers, naked in front of the whole school than face that angry, sad, disappointed, and hurt look on Mom's face. The only consolation was they had let Tucker and Sam come too. I decided I had to go with some level of honesty. I sighed in resignation and took a deep breath.

"Alright already I guess there's no point in hiding it anymore. I've been hunting ghosts like my parents, and doing a pretty damn good job of it if I do say so myself." I've been doing a better job than my parents at any rate. I was tempted to add but didn't want to piss of Mom or Dad. Sam and Tucker looked worried. They knew that was a little too close to the truth and if they looked into it too much the truth would be blatantly obvious.

"I find that hard to believe. Judging by the x-rays some of your bones appear to have been broken as far back as seven years, are you telling me you've been fighting ghosts since you were eight and your parents didn't even know about it?" she paused and started to look suspiciously at my parents. Damn doctors are too smart for their own good. At least that confirms my theory on how fast I heal. They're only a year old at the most, so if they look seven years old then I heal 7 times faster than normal… that makes sense for the broken ankle too, three weeks vs. three days, and the cut. I remained silent, but saw the way everyone was looking at my parents. Great they think my parents made me do this, or worse, did it to me…though that wouldn't be entirely inaccurate, a few of the burns were from when they shot Phantom, but they don't know that. I'm gonna have to scratch a little closer to the truth.

"No, only a year or so, I just heal really fast, I'm not sure why. The ankle is less than a week old and this scrape is less than a day old." I couldn't tell which surprised them more, that the injuries were so new or that I brushed the shoulder injury aside as a "scrape". "And you have no idea how hard it has been to hide this from my parents, but I've managed to keep them clueless." I tensed, waiting to see if they'd believe that my super fast healing just 'happened', and to see if my parents would feel insulted or see that I was trying to defend them from blame. My parents look softened but the doctor was relentless.

"People don't 'just heal really fast' there's got to be a reason. If you really believe you heal quickly and aren't simply covering for something" she glanced at my parents "Or someone, what makes you heal so fast?" Damn it I'm gonna hafta go closer. I let out another exasperated sigh and continued

"There was an accident in the lab when the portal was first made and ever since I've been stronger and faster and I've healed more quickly." I suddenly got an idea that would either answer a lot of questions or raise even more "That's why I've been setting off some of your ghost equipment; I have bit of an ecto signature now." Sam and Tucker winced, knowing as I did that I was getting far too close to the edge, and one wrong breath would make me fall. "That's also part of why I didn't tell you, I didn't want you to think I was a freak or try to experiment on me." With any luck they'll say something along the lines of "We would never do such a thing" and I can use that if my secret gets out any further. Luckily they seemed to buy it.

"We would never do such a thing!" Mom said. (I suppressed a laugh) She sounded hurt and a little ashamed, hurt that I would think that and ashamed that she had done anything that would make me think that. Dad just nodded vigorously. He was bad at this emotional stuff and had a tough time talking to anyone for an extended period of time about anything but ghosts. I smiled… "But no more of this Ghost hunting, young man, at least not until you heal and we give you some proper training." And my smile faded.

"But Mom! I've been doing this for ages what kind of training could I possibly get that I haven't already gotten on the job?" this time Dad answered

"The kind that keeps your bones in one piece, that's what kind!" Ok I walked right into that one. At least they're not asking any more questions.

"What kind of accident? What Portal?" Well Mom and Dad aren't at any rate. Damn doctor is too smart for her own good.

"Mom and Dad made a ghost portal a little over a year back, and when it didn't work I went inside it and I got shocked." I turned to Dad "You kinda forgot to press the 'on' button before you plugged it in." Dad looked to the ground and shuffled his feet sheepishly, face red. So far, so good…

"You were obviously changed by a machine that no one completely understands and you're asking your parents not to run any kinds of tests? This could pose a threat to your health!" oh crap, how do I get out of this one! Thinkthinkthink…

"Oh come on, we might be young but we're not stupid, of course we knew this could be bad for Danny so we ran our own tests, then double and triple checked the results against on all of Mr. and Mrs. Fenton's research. Danny's 'condition', whatever it may be, is completely benign to his health." Sam said, undoubtedly spouting the first load of bullshit that came to mind. Ah good old Sam. I wasn't gonna drag you into this but I've learned the hard way not to turn down your help. I chuckled inwardly. Not that I could if I wanted to.

"Wait you knew about this?" Maddie said

"It was my Idea for him to go into the portal in the first place" Sam said somberly

"I assume you kept records of these tests, then?" The doctor asked. Sam faltered, stuttering some random half baked excuse.

"Ah, yeah, that one's my fault, we wanted the files to be secure so I made like a hundred firewalls, but I made it so the files would be deleted if someone tried to hack them, and then we forgot the password… what can I say when the Tucker hides a file it stays hidden." Tucker looked proud of himself. Ooh nice one Tuck. But I think we're gonna have to give them something to cover for the "loss".

"But that's the only thing we lost, all the other files are complete." I said.

"'Other files'?" Jack repeated questioningly.

"We have files on all of the ghosts Danny's fought." Sam answered for me.

"And we update them regularly. In fact we just 'updated' them yesterday— Right Tucker?" I said meaningfully.

"Right, of course" Tucker discreetly reached into his pocket and Emailed Jazz from his PDA without even looking. He asked her to erase all mention of Phantom from the files involving me and all mention of me from the files involving Phantom, or anything that would help people put the two together. Definitely helps to have a techno-geek on standby when you need a message delivered quickly.

"These guys don't know it but I have a file on every injury I've gotten since this all started, too. I'll give it to you if you think it's relevant to this and you promise to keep it confidential. Those are quite heavily encrypted though since I didn't want Tucker to get at them, so I can't get them to you for a while." That oughta shut that doctor up about medical stuff. 'Course I could never hide something from Tuck if he really wanted to get it but the "heavily encrypted" BS should buy me time to alter those files too…the doctor seemed satisfied, or maybe she just ran out of questions, but either way, they gave me one last one over, re-bandaged my shoulder, and replaced my unnoticeable makeshift splint with a not so unnoticeable real cast I would have to wear for the next few weeks (I never did manage to convince her that it would be healed by the end of the week.) and they released me, no further questions asked. As we left Tucker and Sam crowded in close in the guise of helping me down the steps of the hospital and we spoke in hushed voices.

"Are we actually getting away with this?" Sam said incredulously

"Dude, you told them, but you didn't tell them… well played." Tucker said

"Yeah well we'll just have to see about that. I dodged a bullet by not exposing myself…"

"You seemed pretty exposed to me. A ghost with tan lines, who knew" Tucker cut in with that sly arrogant smirk I could never bring myself to be (too) mad at.

"AS PHANTOM, but I'm gonna hafta be even more careful if I'm gonna keep fighting as Phantom with my parents watching me, and I'm not looking forward to this training they have lined up for me." I finished, glaring at him, which didn't make for quite the effect I had intended when combined with the small smile playing across my face despite my best efforts. Mom and Dad got to close for comfort and we separated. Everyone got to the Fenton family Ghost Assault Vehicle and piled in without a word, and it was about ten minutes into the drive before anyone make a peep, and that anyone was Dad, assailing me with excited questions about the ghosts I had fought, going for about three minutes without even giving me time to answer between questions until he caught Mom's glare and shut his mouth.

"Danny, you know we love you," Mom started. This can't end well "and it's because we love you that we worry about you. We're proud that you want follow in our footsteps and hunt ghosts, but you have to think about your safety as well. So until you're better and we know we can trust you not to put yourself in any excessively dangerous situations, we want you to wear this." She held up a large, silver, bracelet-like device, the metal about a quarter inch thick, and bit shorter than the length of my forearm, and gave it to me. I guess I have no choice. I put it on. It fit perfectly against my skin, not too tight and not too loose, and gave the impression of a short metal sleeve. I gulped as I heard something click into place; the bracelet was locked on.

"And this is… what exactly, other than a hell of a weird fashion statement?" I asked.

"It does a lot of things, but first and foremost it's a tracking device." Mom said.

"That detects GHOSTS!" Dad burst out

"And it will read you're vitals to watch for abnormalities" Mom said as she glared at Dad

"And gage the level of Ecto energy in nearby GHOSTS!" Dad exclaimed, toning it down only slightly.

"And tells us about any threats near you, and emergency visual communication," Mom

"And last but not least it has an emergency laser you can use against GHOSTS!" Dad

"So you'll have no freedom whatsoever as it monitors your every move and allows us to keep you safe." Mom finished, and Sam, Tucker and I exchanged a very worried look

…Oh shit.

AN This Idea Just kinda popped into my head and I had to make it. I initially intended to make this a one shot but I kinda like the idea, and I wanna continue, cause now Danny'll hafta get used to fighting without his powers, or at least find a way to hide his powers. 'Sides, this is a really bad "ending" for a one shot. I guess I'll leave it up to the readers, if enough want it continued I will continue it. I was tempted to make this a "House" crossover briefly when I started the part in the hospital but that would've been to complex. R&R!

Update: BIG thanks to JackieDanielStark for bringing to my attention that the latter part switched from 1st to 3rd person repeatedly. Guess that's what happens when you're writing that late at night anyway I think I fixed it this time so enjoy the story (a bit closer to) error free