Danny Phantom - Gender Bender (Discontinued)

Chapter Nineteen

Media credit goes to Amythyst-Ocean

Sam and Tucker left, and Danny slumped on the couch. She lazily switched on the tv, despite her fatigued muscles. Her family were in the kitchen, though Maddy sped into the room as soon as 'Phantom' was mentioned on the news. Danny left to leave, with a roll of her eyes, but her mother clamped onto her shoulder to make her stay.   "Danny, I want you to see this." Lance Thunder was reporting from the studio (having upgraded from weatherman a few years ago). Jaz and Jack entered and watched too.

"The debate is up again! Is our beloved Danny Phantom the city's number one hero, or menace? Take a look at these images and see for yourself." The tv flicked to a shaking recording of what had just transpired. Danny's eyes were vacant as she looked on. She argued with Vlad. She attacked Freakshow. She captured the ghosts. She saved the civilians. With a furrow of her brows, she noticed there was no footage of Vlad aiming the gun at point-blank range at the ghost. Danny sighed heavily. "Well, folks. I don't know about you, but in the end she still did what she does best. She saved those people."

"Yes, Lance," his male co-host said. "But what about her utter direspect for our mayor? What about her unprecedented violence?"

"We all have our bad days, Mike. But you at home can decide on our online poll. Tell us if you think Phantom is safe or dangerous. In other news..."

Danny switched the tv off and let the remote fall from her hand. She shrugged her mother's hand off her shoulder and got up to leave. Maddy huffed and slanted her hip. With her arms crossed she queried, "How do you explain that, Danny, Jaz? She's dangerous, like I keep telling you."

The teen turned around and faced her family. Her father seemed to agree with Maddy. Jasper looked deeply concerned, even angry. Peering into his eyes, Danny answered, "I don't know. I can't explain it." She broke eye contact then hopped upstairs.

*****

After waking up the next day, making sure her door was closed, Danny drew out the heavy, ancient book of Phantom and Plasmius from under her bed. She had read over the first chapters a dozen times and felt she could get no more out of the fairly cryptic text. Clearly there were a few discrepancies with what she had read, and what Vlad had told her. "They can be both malevolent and benevolent," Danny began to murmur to herself. "But it definitely seems that, at least for my part, Phantom steers towards goodness." She gently flipped through the frail parchment and scanned the fading dark ink. "Nothing about other ghosts..." she mumbled. She speedily read through the next few pages and finally gasped. Her eyes were wide and she called up her friends on the Fenton Phones. Sam was the first to answer, his groggy voice sifting through the earpiece.

"Danny, it's like, seven. Not school day. Wanted sleep."

"Sorry, Sam! But I think I found something."

"Found something?" came Tucker's eager reply.

"Yeah, well, at least I hope I did."

"What is it?"

Danny positioned herself comfortably on her bed and placed her finger on the text. "In the book Frostbite gave me it says that, quote, 'Portals to the negative dimension' - what we call the Ghost Zone - 'are frequently opened all around the human world. They are small and undetectable and are one-way portals. When a being in this world dies, their spirit traverses through these portals into the negative dimension.  However sometimes the spirits chose to stay, as they have unfinished business, or they get trapped here as they cannot reach the portal before it collapses on itself. These are what I call, Hauntlings - the ghosts we see in graveyards at twilight.'"