Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom or anything related.

A/N: So it took me a long time to research whether or not Valerie was holding an ecto-gun. After lots of painstaking websearching and researching, I finally found out her hand was out of frame. xP So if I'm wrong about that little detail, I apologize. And I think Danny may still be 14, since he was at the time of The Ultimate Enemy--I'm guessing that the characters don't age in-universe, though I am willing to be corrected on that.

It was a shock, to say the least. In more ways than one.

Getting in the portal again was one of those things Danny'd always wanted to do but had been too chicken to attempt. Kind of like the first time he'd gotten shocked, the time he'd turned half-ghost. Except this time, it made him completely human. Funny, how things worked out like that.

There was pain again, so much pain he could do nothing but scream. And when he stumbled out of the portal, it was almost just like before, his friends horrified and concerned. But before, their eyes had never held that look of... disappointment.

But he was too ecstatic to notice this right away. When Danny stepped out of the portal this time, he could feel the pain all the way down to his bones, in every inch of his human body. He never thought he'd be so grateful to feel pain. He could feel his heart beating so quickly compared to what had become normal, could feel every measured breath, every gravity-anchored step, and they all beat a rhythm: alive again, alive again, alive again. Danny was human. No more being hunted like an animal, no more long nights awake mourning the half-life he'd lost, no more fear of himself and his absurdly powerful potential. Normal--a foreign concept, but what a beautiful one! Jazz, Sam, Tucker, none of them understood that his powers weren't just an addition to him or something he could turn on and off at whim; they were a part of him, they changed him. Permanently, as evidenced by the white streak in his hair. He was still Phantom, a little bit. Just not as blatantly.

Yes, Danny had been given a new lease on life. He was euphoric.

His friends were less than pleased. They had gotten so used to him bearing the weight of the world that they forgot he was just a fourteen year old boy, a scared kid pretending to be something he wasn't and trying to find out what he was. So when Sam--the strong, independent Sam, whom he loved and whom he was certain loved him--told Danny point-blank that they would never be anything more than friends unless he somehow reclaimed the ghost half that she had, um, encouraged him to get in the first place, he was broken. In mind and in heart and especially in spirit.

It was a blessing and a curse, he realized, to bear the mantle of a superhero when he wasn't sure he even wanted to anymore. Fate had it written in her books, and thus it must be. This was demonstrated further when he was blasted by Skulker and all the other ghosts. Danny'd half-died. Again. What was this, the third time? Was that even possible?

Apparently it was. So he did what he had to do: he saved the world. He revealed himself to everyone, half-expecting to die completely in the next ten seconds. Heck, Valerie was standing right there, ecto-gun in hand. But no one shot at him. Not even once.

Hah, irony there. For the first time in Phantom's existence, the entire human population accepted him as he was--just as Danny began to resent what he was. He was half-ghost. An animal, a freak. Didn't anyone even care?

No, Sam showered him with kisses, his family gave him a hundred hugs, and his statue graced the capital of every country in the world.

Danny'd never felt so alone.