Half Our Past

VII). Hovering

"C'mon, Chris. Let's get to my room and we'll sort this out," Danny comforted as he began to guide her towards the stairs. Chris kept trying to cover her new silver eye, finally just holding her hand over it. "Well, I guess we can say you've got a pretty nice 'shiner', am I right?" he quipped, trying to cheer her up. She only glared at him.

"Too soon, buddy," she grumbled, punching him in the arm. He gave a loud yelp as he cupped it and rubbed it gently to try and soothe the pain. Chris stopped suddenly, grabbing Danny's arm and pulling him back from the stairs. He, again, cried out from shock. Chris shushed him when she heard footsteps coming from upstairs. She pulled herself and Danny behind the first wall before the stairway.

"What are you-!" he started off until Chris slammed a hand over his mouth, preventing him from finishing his question. She pressed a finger to her lips with a gentle "Shh..." as she pointed with her finger up to the ceiling of the basement. Danny's eyes swam with confusion as she gingerly pulled her hand away from his mouth.

"What is your problem??" he whisper-shouted. "It's just my parents!"

"You can't put two and two together?" Chris whispered back, becoming more anxious as the footsteps were directly overhead. "You're a ghost now! Don't you think that your parents would find it a little strange to find their son a ghost?" Danny glanced down at himself, noticing that he was still in his now-black jumpsuit.

"I can just change my clothes. It's not a big deal," he shrugged it off, to which Chris cocked an eyebrow. She pulled out her phone and opened the camera. "What are you-?"

"The jumpsuit isn't the only thing that's changed about you, Ghost Boy," she warned, taking a quick photo of him. She opened up her albums and showed Danny the picture she took of him. His mouth dropped to the floor, his eyes wide and afraid.

"W-what? What happened to my hair?? It's snow white! I have glowing green eyes!!" he babbled, his hands shaking so bad that the photo was no more than a blur. "How did this happen?"

"You definitely look more unique than any other guy. I think it has something to do with that Portal your parents built," Chris suggested, pointing a finger at the open door full of swirling greenness. "I think we may have activated it by mistake..."

"But how? My parents built it, and they couldn't get it to start up at all!" Danny continued to panic as he handed Chris her phone. She took it, almost dropping it from how shaky he was.

"Uh... about that," Chris chuckled sheepishly, "I may have... found a line that came unplugged and plugged it back in. But before you go off on me, hear me out first. I don't think that I was the one who set it off. When I plugged it in, the Portal didn't activate until I had walked out. You were still inside the Portal, so maybe when it activated, you were infused with that weird ecto-stuff. Did you do anything as I walked out?"

"Define 'anything'," Danny sighed, leaning on a beaten-up countertop.

"Did you happen to press any buttons? Pull any levers? Anything like that?"

"Well... I remember leaning against the wall to let you get past since you needed to go. I might've pressed something when that happened. That's the last thing I remember before feeling my soul get ripped out of my body. I thought I heard you scream at one point too, but your voice was distorted. I couldn't make out what you were saying," Danny thought, staring at the floor as he twiddled his thumbs. Chris chuckled and leaned against the wall, looking at him with a kind gaze.

"Believe me. I screamed more than once. I don't remember much after some kind of lighting blast struck-" Chris stopped herself, slowly piecing it all together. The Ghost Portal had activated when Danny was still inside it. A reaction to his human DNA and the energy inside the Ghost Portal started, causing the phasing from black-haired Danny to white-haired Danny. As the reaction was taking place, tension began to build as the Ghost Energy struggled to escape from the now-open Portal. This tension grew to become static electricity. Some kind of strong lightning bold struck her right eye, which had "mysteriously" turned silver. The power of the shock launched her backwards, either the shock knocking her out or her hitting her head against a wall knocking her out. It all made sense.