Well, this is what I've been working on. Even though it's a bit darker than my other stories, I still like it.

Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom.

Please review. ;)

Danny hates a lot of things.

Unlike some people, he doesn't want to hate. He'd like to love them and care for people, because, surely, it would be better than feeling this intense feeling of bitterness and red-hot rage whenever he sets his eyes on almost anything. But lately, there's a sort of "voice" in his head, a bloodthirsty thought that stayed there no matter how hard he tried to shoo it away. And every now and then, it whispered a stray thought or so into his ear, popping up at the most inopportune times to mutter something that caused a violent flare of hatred and loathing.

So he tries to fight it. He laughs sheepishly whenever his clumsiness gets the best of him, grins whenever Tucker cracks a joke, and thanks Jazz with a smile whenever she bandages his wounds or simply just helps him with his math homework. He tries harder than ever to beat the ghosts that have escaped into the human world, fights them with a fiery passion that others mistake for devotion.

Because if he gives in to that dark side of him, what would set him aside from the ghosts that he himself hunts? He repeats this to himself over and over again, trying to make the sentence and the fake routine set in…but it never fits.

Perhaps, this could be blamed on his ghost half. But if that was true, then what separated the two? If that was true, he was all ghost, merely put inside a human shell. And if those dark thoughts were true, then he was evil.

But he had promised his family, his friends (Sam), that he'd never choose that path.

And so, when he hears someone calling his name, Danny grins. Behind his façade, he dreams of fire and death.

"He who fights monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster in the process. And when you stare persistently into an abyss, the abyss also stares back into you." –Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher