Summary: Danny wonders how the change he worked so hard for could be bad. One shot.

~oo0oo~

Changes

It's senior year when Danny begins to see it happen.

Just handing in a homework assignment on time turns the room into a flurry of whispers and stares. For just a moment, he's no longer invisible.

It shouldn't bother him, but it does.

One day, he makes the shot in PE. They had been in the middle of heated game of basketball, and the score was tied. For just a moment, he lets himself loose, not bothering to fake a trip or stumble.

The ball goes soaring in, barely grazing the rim.

Instead of shouts and cheers from his team, his fellow students just stare in heavy silence. The game is quickly dismissed - they did win after all - and Danny is left standing in the middle of the empty court.

The coach gives him a pat on the back, barely concealing the look of surprise on his face.

Danny wonders when succeeding became abnormal for him.

When Lancer hands back the end-of-the term test, Danny is barely able to suppress his whoop of joy. He grips the crisp, white paper sporting an A+, and holds it up so Tucker can see.

He is even more surprised when Lancer announces that there was only one A+ in the class, and that it belongs to Danny. All that studying he's done with Sam and Tucker must've paid off.

The only thing that quenches his good mood are the whispers of cheat that spread around the room. He tells himself that it doesn't matter, that he deserves the grade and nothing they say can stop that.

Danny doesn't feel better.

He starts to put on more weight, and his muscles become more proclaimed, turning him from "puny Fenton" into someone new. Danny is secretly proud of his efforts. He makes a pact with some of the ghosts, and all in all, Phantom has become stronger throughout the years, allowing him to spend more time on homework and studying.

He even gets more sleep now, and the bags under his eyes are slowly disappearing.

Phantom's new strength is celebrated throughout Amity. People cheer for him as he wards off ghost attacks, and they constantly boast about their amazing ghost hero.

Danny just gets odd looks in the hallway, and the occasional whisper of "what happened to him?"

He wonders when improvement became a bad thing.

It's when he finally stands up to Dash that people began to really see the change. The jock confronts him in the middle of the busy hallway, as per usual, and Danny prepares himself for the usual locker smashing.

As he looks closer, Danny realizes that Dash has to reach up to grab the neck of his shirt. Danny has, after all, grown and while he's not the towering mass that his father is, he is a respectable 6'1.

Danny realizes that he doesn't have to put up with this if he doesn't want to. He could fight back.

So he does.

Just a simple twist of the arm, and a shove to the back, and Dash sprawls on the ground. The hallway becomes deathly silent as they all stare at Danny. Nobody says a word, and Danny begins to question if this really was a good idea.

Perhaps he should've just let it happen.

He is whisked off to the principal's office and given detention for "fighting at school," and Danny can't help but see the unfairness of it all. He receives detention for doing once what the jock has done to others for the past four years.

Danny feels no guilt in his actions.

But as he trudges home that day, Danny begins to wonder if he should go back to being the same old Fenton that he always was.

He wonders how everyone can like Phantom, but not Fenton, even though they really are just the same thing.

The school and his parents arrange for Danny to see a counselor, based on the fact that "he has been acting odd and not like himself lately."

Danny wonders how the change that he worked so hard to make, and was so proud of, can be bad.