Just a little One-Shot. Hope you enjoy it.
Reviews are really apprciated.
26.2.18 Fixed some small mistakes, so you can enjoy even more.
Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom, why else should I be writing here?
What did you do?
It must have thought they were idiots. Promise, they werent, even when they sometimes chased ghosts around the town like lunarics. The were scientists and inventors, they were absolutely brilliant.
But first and foremost they were parents. So of course they instantly knew something was very wrong with their youngest, with their beloved son. And being the scientists and inventors they were they of course soon found out what it was.
With a shudder Maddie remembered the evening when she tried to get her son to talk to her. To explain his missing homework, bad grades, absenses and curfew missings. He only answered: "You dont understand." When she still tried to pry a little more, he had suddenly snapped: "Just let it go, Mom! You dont know and you will never understand under which pressure I am, so just leave me alone!" It wasnt him snapping which shut Maddie up. It wasnt his pose of pure hopelessnes and despaire. It was the answer to all their questions. No, it wasnt their daughter Jazz who was overshadowed.
It was Danny, sweet little innocent, Danny. His eyes glowed for a moment green.
So of course they instantly jumped into action. Prepairing for the moment when they would save their poor son from the ghost. Jack added the great idea to dissect the ghost that overshadowed Danny (FentonGhostDissectionTable and FentonGhostDissectionTools) and after that make that pudric piece of ectoplasmatic scum dissolve into its molecules (FentonGhostDissolver) and push it out into the Ghost Zone after that. It would take the Ghost at least years to reform, if it ever reformed. The parents really hoped that it wouldnt happen, but they knew it would most likely after at least some decades, for it must have been a very powerful ghost to hide his ecto-signature and the fact he was overshadowing their boy that long and that professional. Sadly they still didnt have a method to get rid of ghosts forever with gurantee.
But still their most important task was now to free their son from the grasp of that pudric piece of ectoplasma.
At first they mixed some sleeping medicin into their sons food. He would feel so bad afterwards that he had been overshadowed for so long that they at least wanted to spare him from the distress while they got the ghost out, their boy would sleep peacefully until the morning and the ghost would never even know what hit it.
After the poor overshadowed boy went to his room, saying he was tired, his parents waited five minutes to make sure he was really asleep before they jumped into action. It was really a great deal of luck that their daughter went that night to a friends house, wasnt it?
They quickly took a modified FentonGhostCatcher up to their sons room. Now it not only seperated everything ghostly from the other things, no, it also directly caught the ectoplasmatic scum it seperated in a giantic glowing green net.
"Ready, Madds?" asked Jack his wife when he brought the glowing green net about his peacefully sleeping son. As if on cue the boy shivered, but he thankfully continued to sleep thanks to the sleeping medicine. Maddie gave a last glance to her sleeping son before she nodded. "Ready."
And they swung the net over their boys body.
Instantly something big got caught in their net. Quickly the adults left the room and scampered down into their lab. And only then they looked at the ghost they had freed their son from. They knew the ghost that still looked a little drowsy with sleep. Screw that whole Amity knew the ghost. It was the infamous Danny Phantom aka Invisobill. Jack and Maddie knew the whole time that this ghost was bad news and no hero as it always had claimed. Now they had finally the evidence once and for all that the ghost was bad, for which good ghost would overshadow a human? It was time for payback, for all the times it destroyed the city, for the time it kidnapped the mayor, for the time it robbed, for all those times it made them look like idiots.
The ghostboy yawned and then finally seemed to get back into reality. "Mum? Dad? What are you doing down here?" it asked, wearing a confused expression while it curiously glanced around, not realizing it was in a net. That made Maddie jump into action: "Dont you even dare to call us that, you ectoplasmatic slime of post human conscioussness!"
That dumpted the ghost into reality: "What?!" It quickly reached for the net and tugged at it, shocked: "Why am I in a net, Mum?!" "Drop the act, Phantom. We know exactly what happened and what you did" Jack said. The ghostboy paled and stared at the big man with wide, ectoplasmatic green eyes: "What?! No!" It tried to escape the net again, but nothing worked. Only then its eyes fell on his white gloves. Its eyes went comically wide and Maddie had to admit it made a very good impression of a shocked teenager. Then its eyes found the adults again: "What did you do?" Jack smiled brightly: "Good that you ask: We used this Baby here..." He proudly showed the FentonGhostCatcher to the ghost, who if even possible paled even more. "...to get you out of our son. Thought we wouldnt aknowledge it, did you?" "What?! No! You dont understand...!" Maddie cut the panicking ghost off: "Drop the act, Phantom. We know you overshadowed this whole time our poor boy. And for that well make you pay." "No, no! Please this is a missunderstanding...!" it pleaded some more for them to listen, but the Fentons ignored it. Jack proudly announced what they would do to it: "Be happy, Phantom, that we dont outright dissolve you but first dissect you in the name of science. At least then you actually did something good for once." If the ghost would have been human, its eyeballs would most likely have popped out by now for its eyes were so amazingly wide.
Suddenly it changed its tactic and it slowly closed its eyes and breathed once to calm itself down: "Okay, this is just a dream, just a bad dream. Just a little nightmare Ill just wake up and everything will be alright again..." And when it pinched itself and obviously didnt wake up, it decided to fall into a full blown panic attack. Screaming, yelling, crying...
Maddie rolled her eyes while she got the dissection tools together: "Jack, the act might be nice, but its getting annoying. Could you please make it shut up?" "With pleasure" the man said and stuffed the FentonGag into the beings with a scream wide opened mouth through the nets opening. Then, before it could try to remove the thing again or escape through said opening, Jack quickly grabbed it with his ghost proved FentonGloves and cuffed the ghost to the dissection table by its wrists and ankles. It tried to move, to phase, to anything, but nothing. The Fenton parents finally had managed to capture the infamous Danny Phantom.
Finally the ghost stopped trashing around and setteled for crying silently. Maddie and Jack nodded to eachother and Maddie grabbed a large scissor. That made the ghost squirm again. Fed up with the ghosts antics Jack slapped it, hard: "Would you just stop it, spook!" That made the ghost stop. It stared fear- and tearfully how Maddie cut its black suit away and exposed slightly tanned, glowing skin. "Could you give me the scalpell, please?" she said, earning a muffeled cry and a joyous exclamation. Soon she had the shining metall in her hands and took a deep breath, ready for her first real dissection. It had pressed its eyes together, ready for everything and nothing. And when she made her first cut it cried loudly through the gag, most likely a ghostly wail for not the fact that the cuffs canceled its powers. And it was slapped again. "Would you just quit the act, scum? Im trying to concentrate here. We both know you dont actually feel pain. Ghosts cant feel pain." It shook its head, its tearful eyes telling another story. Then it pressed its eyes together and cried heartbroken.
In his mind Phantom imagined himself together with his human half sleeping peacefully, knowing that his parents would do anything to protect him. If only he could ignore the pain in his dreams, too!
Maddie and Jack worked quietly and efficient. They found out that even through Phantom was made completely out of ectoplasm, its body looked exactly like the one of a human. They ignored the green ectoplasm pooling around their hands and slowly pouring down on the ground, staining their boots. Phantom passed out with pain while they were poking around with his liver. And finally they found the core, a ghosts opponent to a human heart. It buzzed with power and was lightly blue coloured. "Look, Jack" Maddie said fascinated. "We already presumed that ghosts had different types of cores, but here is the evidence we were right! Phantom has an ice-core, so thats why he has this dangerous ice-powers. I wonder what other types of cores there are." "Well know someday, Madds" Jack assured, earning him a wide smile from his wife. Curiously Jack poked the core with his scalpell, and watched fascinated how frost crept up the metal, while the ghost boy snapped wide awake in inhumanly pain. In horror it saw the adults eyeing its opened body, which already started fastly to heal in overdrive. Then it screamed a muffeled scream when Maddie touched his core with her hand and held it, leaving it in an endless absyss of pain, never escaping it for as long as she held his very life force, his very essence in her ectoplasma stained hands.
It was morning when the Fenton parents decided that their scientistic minds had learned enough and tossed the almost lifeless piece of ectoplasmatic scum into the dissolver. After all they had to clean the mess they made before any of the kids came down there. Jack whisteled a happy song while he started the maschine, ignoring Phantoms hopeless and broken pleas not to do it. Maddie prepared a mob to clean the ground.
Suddenly Phantoms dull and broken green eyes went up and he whispered: "...Danny..." The parents turned and really, they saw their fourteen year old son standing on the staircase, the entrance totheir lab, staring at shock at everything. "I think it is a nightmare..." he whispered, slowly dragging himself down the stairs. "What did you do?" he asked, calmly, his shock and disbelieve touchable. His sky blue eyes were glazed over, until they met with Phantoms. Then suddenly his emotions ran free. He skipped to the box holding the ghost, almost slipping on the ectoplasma on the way there. He stared at the ghost and pressed his hand against the phaseproof glass, on the other side Phantom did the same. "What did you do?!" he screamed this time turning around to face his parents, making them flinch and step back, but it was Phantoms knocking against the glass, that caught his attention again. The Ghost weakly mouthed "They didnt know..." inflamming the anger, shock and feeling of backstabbing even more, making the boy spin back to his parents, while using his own body as a shield for the ghost: "WHAT DID YOU DO?!" "Son, we..." Jack started, but Danny cut him off with a hateful glare: "Dont you even dare to apologise! You did that to him...to me!" That made the man flinch back. Sadly he came against the controller for the FentonGhostDissolver instantly starting it. The surring of the mashiene snapped the family back into reality. "NO!" screamed Danny and pounded in vain against the heavy glass. Phantom just pressed his hands against the glass, a ghost of a smile on his lips, a broken spirit inside.
And when finally its glow started to dim and its body started to dissolve, Maddie finally saw what she never saw before. She recognized the features of his face and when she saw her son pressing his own hands –same size and shape- against the glass, just like Phantom, tears in his sky blue eyes, something snapped in her. Horror flooded her senses, motherly instincts going into overdrive when she finally recognised just who exactly Danny Phantom was. Danny Phantom, Danny Fenton, black and white, Phantom and Fenton, two flipsides of the same coin.
"Oh my god, Jack, make it stop!" she screamed. Jack finally seemed to have come to the same conclusion, so he hit some bottons, but too late. Phantom whispered hoarsly: "Its not your fault." And then he was gone, gone into nothingness, dissolved into the tiniest pieces. Danny sobbed, still pressed against the glass, the cold unforgiving glass.
"Were so sorry, Danny, sweetie, we..." Maddie tried to find words , but they were all in vain. What do you say to someone who just lost half of himself and its your fault?
Danny stood wordlessly up, not able to watch the ectoplasmatic pieces being flung into the endless green void of the ghost zone. And then he ran, leaving behind his parents, his other halfs killers.
Just in time the adults heard the front door open and Jazz cheery voice asking: "Hey, little brother, how was your day?" The only answer was the front door slamming behind him and Jazz confused calling of his name.
Finally searching for answers she obviously wouldnt get from her little brother, Jazz came down to the lab, only to stop at the view, that greeted her: Her parents were pale as ghosts and the green ectoplasma –ghost blood- was everyhere. "What did you do?" asked Jazz, shocked.
Maddies legs couldnt hold her any longer and she fell down, luckily to be caught by an alarmed Jack: "Madds, everything okay?" He slowly sat her down on the ground with his strong arms, but Maddie could only shake her head: "Nothing is okay. What did we do, Jack? What did we do?"