Disclaimer: I do not own "Danny Phantom" or anything related.

A/N: An AU. My first foray into the DP fandom. Hope you enjoy.

"On behalf of the school, my students, and myself, thank you for letting us tour your home, Mr. and Mrs. Fenton." Mr. Lancer said to the two scientists as high schoolers swarmed into the laboratory in the basement of Fenton Works.

Jack Fenton grinned and slapped the teacher on the back, not noticing the man doubling over in pain. "Our pleasure, Mr. Lancer!" he said. "I'm just proud to have such a great opportunity to teach these youngsters about the world. And get to blather on about ghosts!"

"We're proud, honey," his blue-jumpsuited wife corrected him as a matter of habit, then turned her attention back to the overweight English instructor. "I just don't see what our ghost hunting has to do with Danny's English class."

"Ah, you know the school board," Mr. Lancer said dryly. "I happened to have a free period, so I got drafted into bringing the class here. Not that it's a nuisance," he hastened to add. "But like you said, Jack, teaching is underpaid and underappreciated."

Jack's expression was pure confusion. "I said that? ...I mean, of course I said that!" he exclaimed. "Teachers are nifty!"

"You mean bad."

"What?" said Maddie Fenton.

"It's the way the kids talk nowadays," Mr. Lancer said proudly. "I've been studying up on it. I must say, it certainly weirds me out, yo."

Mr. and Mrs. Fenton exchanged glances.

"Are you sure about this, Danny?" Tucker asked his best male friend, who was descending the basement stairs along with the rest of the class. "It seems a little... dangerous to be letting every kid in our class loose on your parents' inventions."

"That's the thing, Tucker, I'm not sure," Danny said. He looked at the ominously-swirling green portal in the middle of the room. "I mean, there's so much stuff for someone to get into. But I don't really think I have a choice."

Sam, their third amigo (or amiga, as the case may be), patted his shoulder reassuringly. "You always have a choice, Danny. And I think you're making the right one. You can't try to protect everyone forever."

"That's not what I meant and you know it!" Tucker said. "Do you know how much this is going to destroy Danny's street cred?"

Sam frowned. "What street cred?"

"Exactly! Most of the school already knows that his parents are paranormal scientists, but showing the entire class all their mad-science inventions?! He'll be the laughingstock of the century!"

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Tuck," Danny said witheringly. Tucker merely shrugged in reply. "But I didn't mean just that," the self-proclaimed Hero of Amity Park stated. "Do you know the kind of pandemonium that would happen if someone got a hold on an Ecto-Grenade? Or a Specter Deflector? Or even the Boooo-merang?!" He shuddered, then threw a hand out, as if to imply flight. "There goes the secret identity--woooosh!--right out the window!"

"It'll 'go right out the window' even faster if you keep that shouting up," Sam commented sardonically. "And you know the word 'pandemonium.' I'm impressed."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Seriously, guys, how can you not even be worried?"

"Danny, you've got to let things go sometime," Sam said. "You deal with enough real problems, why make up new ones?"

"This from the resident Goth." Danny looked around a bit nervously, then sighed and slumped his shoulders. "I sure hope you guys are right."

While the adults were talking and Danny was spazzing, though, the other students had been inspecting the alien-seeming lab. One student in particular, actually: Dash Baxter. Dash had broken away from the main group of kids, who were just chatting and gossiping in front of the main workbench, early on, opting to instead inspect the more... bizarre aspects of the lab.

"Geez," he muttered to himself, peering through cloudy vials of greenish goo, "Fentonio's family really are freaks." He paused to examine a blob of green in a jar, looking away as goosebumps ran across his arms. It did nothing for his disposition when the blob seemed to suddenly gain eyes, big neon-green ones that stared up at him unblinkingly. He gasped and stumbled backwards, catching himself before he could completely lose his cool.

It was just plain creepy here. The way the ghost's eyes reminded him of the ghost boy's didn't really help matters, either. What did Paulina see in that ghost? He was dead, for Pete's sake! The whole idea was just gross!

As if anything in the lab was any less gross. Or less like a sci-fi movie. The big whirling vortex that was smack-dab in the center of things certainly accentuated that. Intrigued, Dash approached the thing cautiously. Looking this way and that, he tentatively reached a hand through the portal.

Eeeugh.

He drew it away quickly. It felt all tingly and numb and slimy and just plain ick. He shook it, as if that would alleviate the weird sensation. It did seem to help, actually, for he soon regained feeling in his hand. Dash backed away from the portal slowly.

Well, that was odd.

Visible behind the vortex was a metal wall of sorts, reaching from the edges of the portal to the basement wall, like a tunnel or something. Dash touched the metal warily, relieved to feel nothing but cold steel. He felt along the edges. Man, it was dark back there. The portal gave off a green glow, but it was facing the other way, and the dim lights of the lab didn't reach very far. Dash was feeling increasingly uneasy. It was less sci-fi back here, more horror-movie. Dash had never liked horror movies.

With a start, and a near-collision with the wall, he realized he'd reached the end of the tunnel's outside, assuming it didn't reach past the basement and into the ground. He groped the wall for something to hold onto. Most of it was smooth, except--Aha! He felt what seemed to be a wall socket with a cord plugged in. Hmm... Dash'd always been one making trouble... And there was a high likelihood that, if anything happened, he could pin the blame on Fenturd...

Yet Fate made the inevitable decision for him. Being a football player, and substantially bulkier in the chest/shoulder-area than the legs, leaning too low--like he was doing to grasp the plug--was never a good idea in the dark with nothing seeable to brace himself on should he fall. And fall he did, pulling the cord out on his way.

Maddie Fenton turned around and away from the adults' conversation, hearing the startled gasps of the class. Her pride and joy, the sum of her and her husband's work, the Fenton Portal, was powering down with a whiney woop-woop-woop noise. She dropped the Ecto-Blaster that she'd been planning to show off to her son's class. For a moment, she could do nothing but stop and stare as the green portal gradually shrunk, dissipating into harmless ecto-energy and wisping away.

But something worse than the portal's deactivation froze her to the spot momentarily. Then, she started to run.

Jack was already there in front of the now-empty portal and staring inside in astonishment. She pushed him aside, ignoring manners for the time being, needing to see what was inside, hoping against logic that it wasn't, couldn't be what she thought it was. She didn't notice Dash Baxter creeping away from behind the portal, wondering what had suddenly made all conversation cease.

Being the only one not apparently paralyzed by whatever had happened, Dash poked his head around the corner of the deactivated portal that now truly resembled a tunnel. He was also the only one to find his voice.

"Is that... Fenturd?"

Danny felt, well, like someone had walked over his grave. He was rooted to the ground, staring at the body... or what remained of it.

The corpse lay crumpled on the metal floor. It was charred, not beyond recognition but enough to leave it almost completely black. Almost, because of the slight green glow surrounding it that had been caused by residing in pure ectoplasmic energy for over a year. Danny Fenton's lifeless eyes were wide, staring unseeingly at the portal's ceiling, his mouth open in an eternal soundless scream of pain.

Danny would've hurled if he'd still had a stomach. As it was, his face turned a peculiar shade of blue. Every living eye in the room having turned to gawk at him didn't make him better in the least. Sam and Tucker each grabbed his arm, scared beyond measure, still supporting him, somehow knowing that he was feeling like he was dying all over again.

Maddie turned pale as death as she glanced between her son--he was her son, he had to be, no one could fake the way he was gripping his friends as if they were his only connection to life itself, the way his expression was just so Danny even when he was terrified out of his mind--and his corpse.

Her breaths became shorter and faster, she was coming close to hyperventilating, no, no, she couldn't pass out, she had to stay awake, to prove this was just a dream, just a prank, just a joke--

Dash was stiff, disbelieving. This... was... a... body?!

Fentur--Danny Fenton-- was--?!

Looking at his friends for support, Sam squeezing his hand silently, Danny looked up. He allowed his form to shapeshift ever-so-slightly, for the glowing green ectoplasm to replace the false blue in his pupils. He made eye contact with each and every human in the room. It was then, after months upon months of denial, of fighting Death with every molecule in his being, he finally conceded defeat.

And he admitted it aloud.

"Yes.

"I am dead.

"And this city is my haunting ground."

He had admitted it.

There was no reason to continue the charade.

His body had been found.

There was no refuting the truth of his nature, now.

They would be able to give him a proper funeral, a burial.

His period of denial was over.

And so he left--

nothing giving evidence of his ghost but the wisps of smoke that drifted through Sam and Tucker's fingers like sand through an hourglass.

His time was up.