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purrgilpawkins · 1 month ago

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Just Fourteen

Summary: Daniel Fenton was only a teenager when the hole in his parents’ basement ate him alive. (Also available on AO3)

Pairings: Danny Fenton & Tucker Foley & Sam Manson

Warnings: graphic depiction of flesh melting off a kid's face, one brief but detailed vomit scene, Danny cutting his fingers on glass (not detailed)

Prompt: From Whumptober Day 24 "equipment failure" (and the title of the day which was "radiation poisoning")

Notable tags: graphic depictions of violence, H/C, angst, character death, radiation poisoning, gore, body horror, hazmat au

The zipper of the hazmat suit caught on Danny’s tank top as he zipped it up, forcing him to yank it back down briefly before pulling it back up, rougher than before. The sight of his Dad’s face plastered to the front of it forced a heavy sigh from his nostrils as he tried to remove it, failing miserably due to his now lacking fingernails. He gestured over to Sam and she quit fiddling with her camera long enough to come over and start peeling the sticker off.

“So,” Danny started, drawing out the word, “why are we doing this again?”

“Because.”

Danny rolled his eyes when Sam didn’t elaborate. “Right, of course. How could I forget?”

“Oh, come on, dude. Where’s your sense of adventure?” Tucker piped up from his spot leaning against a counter, not bothering to look up from his PDA.

“Upstairs and out of my parent’s lab that’s full of unstable and highly explosive equipment?”

Sam managed to get a purple-painted nail wedged under the sticker and ripped it off, rolling it into a ball and dunking it into a trash can on the other side of the lab. Danny’s spandex-muffled clapping was interrupted by Sam then putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Danny,” she started, drawing out the word, “this was your idea, remember?”

He did. He had excitedly told his friends about the busted “ghost portal” down in his basement and they had joined in his excitement to go and check it out. That had been before he got a good look at it.

Now, Danny glanced over his shoulder to the jerry-rigged hole in the wall. A bleak tunnel full of cold metal and jagged wires. A gaping maw ready to close around anyone foolish enough to enter it.

Okay, maybe he was being a little dramatic.

He looked back to his friends, seeing the way Sam was practically bouncing up and down over the whole situation and how Tucker kept repeatedly looking up from his PDA, waiting for Danny to make his move.

“Alright, alright. Fine.” Danny inhaled deeply and ran his hands through his hair to psych himself up. “Let’s do this!”

“Wait!” Sam held up a finger directly in Danny’s face. “Lemme get a picture.”

Danny rolled his eyes once more, only slightly irked that Sam just killed his mojo, but went along with her ushering to create her perfect picture. He ended up positioned between the portal and something labeled the “Ecto-filtrator”, standing uncomfortably in his baggy hazmat suit as Sam eyed her shots through the camera lens.

“Hm…” she began, “something’s missing. Something like—that!” Sam excitedly pointed to something to Danny’s left, already dashing over before he could turn to look at it.

“This!” She heaved, rummaging through the pile of teal and orange hazmat suits that had fallen out of their locker when Danny went to look for a suit his size. “This is perfect!” Sam sprang from her digging with a hazmat mask in hand, showing it to Danny like it was her new puppy.

Danny raised an eyebrow. “Perfect for…?”

“My picture, duh.” Danny blinked. Sam sighed heavily, like the perfection of some mask should’ve been obvious. “It’ll come out so perfectly uncanny. Like you're one of the guys who worked at Chernobyl going to check on the reactor, seconds before disaster!”

Danny blinked again, eyebrow still raised as he took the mask from Sam’s hand, holding it between his own two as he eyed it down. “Disaster? Sam, it's a hole in the wall.”

Sam shrugged. “Yeah, I know. Pretty boring.” An evil smirk crossed her face as her voice rose in excitement. “But just think. An uncanny picture of you, full hazmat gear, totally fine before going in. And then, once inside, you go all the way to the back, where the lighting will be perfect, so I can snap another pic of you looking ghostly!”

A smirk of amusement grew on Danny’s face. “Ghostly?”

“It is a ‘Ghost Portal’,” Tucker piped up, air-quoting Ghost Portal.

“See!” Sam tossed out her hand in Tucker’s direction, “Tucker understands my vision!” She decided to ignore his snort following her statement.

Danny shook his head, smiling at his friend’s antics as he pulled back the strap of the mask and fit it over his head. He gripped the large filter hanging out the left side and readjusted it to fit better on his face. After finding the proper placement, the eyepieces rested snuggly around his eyes and the mouthpiece actually felt… comfortable?

“Well, how does it look?” He asked Sam, his voice muffled under the mask as he held out his hands theatrically.

Sam eyed him down, finger tapping at her chin. She glanced around from the black gloves, boots, and white body of his baggy hazmat suit to the gas mask covering most of face. The harness on the back of it had effectively made his messy hair even worse, making Danny look just slightly crazed. She smiled.

“Perfect.”

After more urging from Sam for Danny to look as “weird” as possible standing next to the portal in his getup, she eventually got her oh-so-perfect picture.

“Okay!” She exclaimed, waving her polaroid back and forth, “Now we just need one of you in the Ghost Portal.”

Danny was already way ahead of her, standing on the black and yellow striped threshold to the cold, metallic void. He started breathing comically loud, sounding like a poor imitation of Darth Vader. He put one foot forward, over the caution line. “That’s one small step for man.” And then the other. “And one giant leap for mankind.”

Tucker booed from behind him. Danny couldn’t help his shit-eating grin.

His booted footfalls echoed off of the metal plating in the small chamber. It wasn’t noticeable from the outside looking in, but the walls were covered in electronics that Tucker would probably have a better name for. Geometric patterns lined the walls glowing a bright blue. Danny imagined it’s what the guts of a PC would look like. It was actually… kinda nice to look at. Calming, in a way.

In his admiration of the patterns running through the chamber, Danny missteped and tripped over a pipe lining the bottom of the portal. His hands shot out in front of him as he tried to brace himself for the fall. His left hand caught him easily. His right hand, however, made contact and slipped on the floor, sliding to the left where his elbow then caught him.

“Ow,” he whispered, only slightly embarrassed by his usual clumsiness, “‘Cause two bruised knees just wasn’t enough?”

Danny brought his right hand back up and pushed himself back to sit on his knees. As he raised his left hand, he noticed the feeling of something jabbing into the center of it. He looked at the palm of his gloved hand, expecting to see something stuck to it but found nothing. Looking back down to the floor, in the dim illumination of the geometry lining the walls, he saw two buttons. One labeled “OFF”, the other labeled “ON”. The “ON” button was depressed.

“Uh oh.”

Danny got back on his feet, still eyeing the buttons on the floor. Almost immediately, the patterns on the wall started glowing brighter. A whirring sound began as the lights faded from a neon blue to an acid green.

“Danny?” He heard Sam call from the entrance.

In front of Danny, the back of the portal started sparking, the whirring increasing in volume. The lights grew brighter still.

“Hey, dude,” Tucker called this time, worry evident in his tone, “I think you should get out of there.”

Danny took a few steps back from the sparks in the portal before turning around to look at his friends. He was completely engulfed in bright green light before he could even think to make a move toward them.

Pain enveloped him entirely, ripping a scream from his throat so piercing it felt as if his vocal cords would snap. It felt as if he were falling apart. Every nerve was set on fire, the pain irradiating; it was the only thing his brain could process as his body began to melt.

The white suit “protecting” him began to fade as the portal started to eat away at it, burning holes all across his person. It left him nude and at the complete mercy of the end that was quickly approaching Danny.

Danny jumped harshly as a crack popped up on the face of his gas mask, quickly spreading further and further. He lifted shaking hands to his face, one hand wrapping around the filter while the other gently pressed to the glass cover. He jumped again as the glass broke completely at the contact, the filter in his hand snapping off like a twig. In a panic, he reached up to wrap his hands around the harnesses keeping the mask on his face, only for them to dissolve the second he made contact with them. His mask fell to the floor with a clatter, slowly melting into it almost immediately.

Danny’s breathing became quick as he covered his face with his hands, desperate for some kind of protection. His fingers slid across his skin, taking globs of flesh with them like a knife through butter. His exposed muscle burned as he brought his hands further up to his ears, feeling them droop in between his fingers. One lobe dripped down to the floor, sizzling as it went and burning up completely before it hit the ground. Danny let out a sob as the remaining cartilage followed after it.

His whole body began to burn as he grasped at his hair, chunks of it and the skin it was attached to coming along with his fingers as they squeezed his head. The scent of singed hair was just strong enough to smell over the blood and cartilage clogged in Danny’s nose.

The burning began to escalate and Danny brought shaking hands down from his head to watch in horror as his skin started to eat itself, turning him a raw red before it started sinking deeper from the top layer. Large bits of flesh were slowly disappearing, leaving behind purplish-black chucks of meat surrounding red-stained bone. His left arm barely remained, the skin eaten and bones turning black.

He could feel his organs liquifying. Blood rushed from his nostrils, trailing down over the exposed muscles of his face to connect to the red river pouring out of his mouth. The warm liquid burned its way down the sides of his head as what he could only assume to be his brain began to ooze out from his ears. He tried to inhale to continue his painful screaming but started choking on the bloodied goop of his melted organs instead.

Danny began to fall forward, blood splattering on the green-glowing floor as the flesh of his skinless knees connected with the ground. His hands reached out to brace his fall, the bones of his left cracking once they reached their target, sending shockwaves up his arm and through the rest of his body. He moaned pitifully.

Moments went by as Danny sat there, experiencing every unbearable second of his own demise.

Suddenly, the bright green glow surrounding him began to get brighter. Brighter, brighter, brighter, tears filling his eyes at the abuse they were forced to take due to his lacking eyelids. It came to an end so sudden, Danny was left stunned in complete darkness. It didn’t take him long to realize his eyelids had closed.

He opened them quickly in shock only to be met with the sight of a solid, glowing green mass wrapped around his boney hand. He fell back on his haunches, hyperventilating at the sight, bringing up his right hand to try and rip the goop from his arm. Digging his fingers into the green matter, he ripped it from his arm. It splattered against the floor before it jumped back up and reattached itself to Danny’s arm. Danny continued his actions desperately before giving up, violently shaking as sobs racked his body.

He slowly brought his slime covered arm down to rest on his skin-covered knee, eyeing it carefully as if it would jump out at him. He turned it over, back and forth, as his eyes wandered up the rest of his arm. Spots where chunks of flesh had been missing were now filled in with more of the green ooze, the rest of his body looking much the same.

He brought his hands up to face, feeling his skin, squeezing his nose, and rubbing at his ears. He rubbed at his neck, confused. Even the pimple sitting at his jugular that’d been bugging him for days had grown back.

Danny brought his hands back down to his knees, looking over them as if the green goop on them would start telling him what was happening.

“What…?” He uttered, voice clear, if a bit echoey sitting in the portal chamber.

His eyebrows raised when the color of the goo started to dull and then change. The remains of his tattered flesh began to change as well, losing its color to match against the now pale white, glowy goop of his once missing skin.

Danny stood quickly, worried something else was going to begin happening to him. Eerily, what appeared to be clothing began to fade in from nowhere to cover his skin. He yelped, trying to flick off the white gloves fading in on his hands. It led further down his arm, turning black as it did. He looked down to see the black clothing spreading to his torso from every limb. He kicked his feet in an attempt to rid himself of glowing white boots, panic once again settling in as the black suit completely overtook him. The black…hazmat suit.

“What…?” Danny uttered again, desperate to know what was going on.

He startled at the sight of glass appearing in his vision, hands shooting up to his face to protect it, only for them to collide with the gas mask he saw melt away. He stood stock still in confusion. Whatever had happened, whatever was happening, he was totally lost. He unconsciously began walking backward toward the portal entrance as he fiddled with the filter on the mask.

The back of his newly white boot collided with the same stretch of pipe that tripped him in the first place and Danny stumbled backward, exiting out of the chamber of bright green light. He was forced into an awkward full body spin, arms outstretched and ready for another fall, but he caught himself this time, standing uncomfortably with his legs twisted as he rapidly blinked his eyes to adjust to the dark room he’d just entered. He brought his hands up to rub at his eyes and when they smacked against the glass of his mask, he instead settled with squeezing his eyes shut as hard as he could.

“Danny?” A voice called from in front of him.

Danny’s eyes flew open in an instant. He immediately squinted at the light emanating from the portal, lighting up the room in a bright green. After a moment of letting his eyes adjust he got a closer look of what was in front of him: his best friends huddled together in distress. He met the red, tear-filled eyes of Sam, then Tucker’s, who was sitting next to her, arms around her in a hug. His tears were still rolling down his cheeks.

“Is that you, Danny?” Sam asked gently.

Danny stood in silence for a moment, still trying to grasp at the details of what just happened. His friends began to look concerned at his continued silence so he answered, “Yeah?”

Sam slowly removed herself from Tucker’s hold, meeting some resistance when he refused to remove the hand he had wrapped around her arm. She placed her own hand on his and patted it calmly. Tucker shook his head at her desperately, shrinking slightly when Sam glared back but not letting her go.

“Tucker,” she hissed.

Tucker gulped. “Sam, what if—”

“What if what? That’s Danny, Tucker. Who else could it be?”

“But—”

Danny watched the exchange in front of him, eyes darting back and forth at his friend’s arguing before he brought his hands up. “Alright. Stop. What’s going on?”

Sam and Tucker went silent immediately as Danny’s voice echoed around the lab. They looked at each other briefly before looking back at Danny. The silence stretched awkwardly as Danny waited for them to say something, staring them down the same way they were doing to him. After seemingly having enough, Sam inhaled deeply and opened her mouth, only to be cut off by Tucker shooting to his feet.

“What’s going on?! What’s going on is you walking into that portal and it kicking on and then you screaming bloody murder like your dying and then you just waltz out of there like nothing happened and like you aren’t—aren’t—”

“Glowing.” Sam finished.

Danny blinked and shook his head in confusion. “Weird timing for a compliment, Sam.”

“No, Danny, you’re,” she sighed, rolling her eyes, “you’re literally glowing. Like glow-in-the-dark type glowing.”

The hands Danny had brought up became his center focus, checking to see that they were, in fact, glowing. He looked down to the rest of his body, turning this way and that to see that an ever-present, soft, white glow covered every inch of him.

“Oh.” Danny said simply. “Huh.”

“Dude.” Tucker whined desperately, “What happened?”

“What happened?” Danny repeated quietly, staring off into space for a moment before the rush of memory completely overwhelmed him.

His skin turning red and raw, oozing and bubbling as it melted. His stomach churning as blood ran down his throat, mixing with the acid burning holes in his stomach lining. His lungs aching with every inhale of the putrid air, forcing him to gasp and wheeze with every breath he wished he didn’t have to take. His ligaments and tendons fraying and snapping as they slowly disintegrated. The mix of hot and cold as that goop enveloped his exposed bits of skin and bone, bringing stars to his eyes and bile to his throat.

The confusing jumble of rapid-fire moments that he just experienced came at him in a new light.

What happened? Something that should’ve killed him.

He should be dead.

Danny fell to his knees and hurriedly reached up to yank off his mask as bile quickly rose up in his throat. It burned its path through his esophagus and over his tongue as he spewed it on the floor of the lab.

Tears fell from his eyes and into the puddle below him, blurring his vision as he heaved and gasped. When it seemed his stomach had given up the upchucks, Danny reached up to wipe the drool from his mouth connecting it to the vomit by his knees. The tears kept falling and with every sniffle came a hard jerk from his whole body.

The more tears that fell, the more clear his vision became and with that clear vision came the sight of his glowing, acid-colored vomit, tinted with a concerning amount of red specks.

A hand gently pressing on his back startled Danny, making his head shoot up to be greeted by the sight of sad, purple eyes.

“Danny,” Sam began, rubbing his back in soothing circles, “are you okay?”

A guilt-filled voice from Danny’s other side sent his neck snapping in that direction. “Yeah, man. I’m sorry if I scared you, or made you feel bad, or something.”

Tucker’s quiet apology brought Danny back to the present, helping to force his memories back down. “No, no. It’s alright, Tuck. I’m fine. Not your fault.”

Tucker stared at him for a few seconds before breaking eye contact and staring over at Sam. Danny knew she was looking back with the same concerned expression on her face. He wanted to roll his eyes at his friend’s overprotectiveness but decided against it on the off chance it made him throw up again.

They sat quietly together, Sam rubbing Danny’s back and Tucker holding onto his bicep while occasionally offering an attempt at a reassuring back pat. When Danny was sure he wouldn’t throw up again at any sort of movement he sighed shakily and began making a move to get up.

“Could I, uh, get some help?”

His friends were quick to spring into action and began helping him up on wobbly legs. The grip they both had on Danny’s arms made it obvious he wasn’t going anywhere without them. His lips quirked despite himself.

“The sink? Please?” Danny urged, taking a step forward, desperate to get the taste of bile out of his mouth in case it made him nauseous again. Sam and Tucker gave each other another look before Tucker’s stare turned toward the sink and Sam met Danny’s eyes.

“Um, actually, Danny. There’s probably something else we should tell you.” Sam started slowly.

“Is it that I’m, like, super pale? Because trust me,”—memories of skin, charred and bleeding as he melts to the floor come to Danny’s mind, leading into the afterimage of black veins standing stark against bone white skin. He couldn’t help his wince—“I know.”

Sam shrugged, tightening her hold on Danny’s bicep. “Well, yeah, but…” she trailed off. Biting her lip, she looked at Tucker.

Tucker’s eyes widened, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he gulped. “Uh well—what Sam is trying to say is—um—that you… should see for yourself!” Tucker squared his shoulders at the end of sentence, cockily proud of the solution he came up with. Sam groaned.

“I guess that is the easiest option but,” Sam looked at Danny once more, “I’m… not sure it’s the best.”

Danny sighed. “Look, guys, I don’t know what you two are worried about but I do know that I want the throw up out of my mouth. So can we just get there? Please?”

Sam nodded sourly and Tucker uttered a quick “Let’s do it!” before they both started pulling Danny forward once more. He tried to help as he was before, dragging his feet forward in a facsimile of walking. He was quickly losing speed though and his friends were all but dragging him before too long.

“Danny,” Tucker heaved as he slung Danny’s arm over his shoulder, “you sure you’re okay, dude?”

“Ugh, you’re getting sweat on me,” Sam tried to joke, the attempt falling flat as she flailed Danny’s arm around her own shoulder.

“I’m good. Just a little tired,” Danny huffed, heartbeat pounding in his ears as he tried to catch his breath.

Each step between his friends was slow and careful, making the time to the sink that much longer. At least to Danny, as a drop of bile-tasting saliva slid down his crusted throat. He eyed the distant faucet, dying to wash out his mouth. He saw the mirror above it, reflecting the ominous green light from the portal back at them. Yet another glass object to explode at the slightest miscalculation. He wondered why his parents had it down here at all.

It was only a few more agonizingly slow steps before the trio reached their destination. Danny’s eyes were drawn downward toward the basin as he reached out his hands to grip the edge of it. Sam kept her tight grip on his arm while Tucker loosened his but didn’t let go.

Tucker was nice enough to turn the cold faucet handle on and Danny immediately reached his gloved hands under the stream, taking the water cupped in his hands and splashing it in his face. He reached back down and started to gather more water in his hands, bringing it up to his mouth with the intent to drink from it.

“Wait!” Sam yelled, startling Danny bad enough to send the water flying at his face.

“What?” Danny asked, not bothering to hide the whine in his tone.

“You don’t know what kind of… things got on your gloves in there! You can’t just drink from them!”

“Sam,” Tucker piped up from the other side of Danny, “I think whatever… things got on his suit probably already got to him.” He further made his point by nudging his head toward the mirror.

“Yeah, okay, maybe, but let’s not take any more chances. I can go get a cup from upstairs.”

“Look, Sam, if it’ll make you feel better, there’s some paper cups behind the—” Danny’s sentence came to an abrupt halt as he finally saw the person staring back at him in the mirror.

He met the toxic, glowing, green eyes in the reflection, opened as wide as his were. The hair on their head was an unnatural snowy white. Their ears ended in pointed tips. The glow surrounding their body helped to accent the sheer paleness of their skin and made the dead veins on their face stand out even more. Danny opened his mouth in a gasp and caught a glance of fangs lining the reflection’s mouth.

“Is that—” Danny stopped himself short again, discomforted at the sight of the person in the mirror mimicking his mouth movement.

Sam and Tucker’s own reflections stood behind the ghastly figure, their brows both furrowed with worry as Tucker nodded.

“That’s you, dude.”

Danny brought a hand up and pinched one of his cheeks, making the eye of that side twitch briefly. The reflection made all of the same motions he’d just done. A shaky sigh left Danny as he slowly came to terms with the drastic change to his appearance. He kept staring in the mirror, familiarity bubbling up as he continued to look at himself. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, hoping the sight before him would change upon opening them. It was only when he reopened his eyes and caught sight of the radioactive green glow that the memories nagging at his brain came forth.

Memories of him listening with rapt attention as his parents talk about ghosts over breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Theories for how they’re naturally luminous and why that was. Talks of ectoplasm taking shape to resemble something vaguely human. Discussions of how the ectoplasm took advantage of human emotion to replicate the personality of the once living being it was replicating. The assurance when his parents stated that the ectoplasm making up the ghosts in question would be a radioactive, unnaturally bright green.

Danny reached out his violently shaking hands and grabbed hold of the edges of the mirror in front of him as he looked deep into his own eyes, his eyes that glowed a green not natural to any human being on Earth. His thumbs dug further into the glass, first causing a crack before the mirror completely shattered before him. Tucker gasped and Sam uttered his name in concern as one of her hands left his bicep and attached itself to his shoulder. The glass fell into the sink, along with bright, green drops of liquid falling from his thumb. Danny brought his hands from the mirror, peering down at his spread palms and saw a cut in his suit. Underneath the safe material was the origin of the liquid; a cut against his skin, oozing the putrid, green goop. The same shade and texture as the slime that coated his skin in the portal.

Ectoplasm.

Ringing filled Danny’s ears as he slumped forward, bracing himself up on the sink. Tucker’s grip tightened on his arm and Sam was shaking his shoulder but he was progressively losing the ability to focus as a loud, pulsing beat began to grow louder, nearly overwhelming the ringing. His breathing became rapid, each inhale feeling more and more pointless as his lungs didn’t fill.

Danny’s legs collapsed out from under him, forcing Sam to release her grip and bringing Tucker down to the floor with him. Their voices were still muffled by the ringing, pulsing, beating that completely overwhelmed his senses. He could feel the hot tears streaming down his face as he brought his hands palm up once more and inspected the glowing green dripping down one of his white gloves. His shaking was only helping the ectoplasm flowing through his veins to ooze more as drops from his palm began to stain the floor of his parents lab.

In an instant, everything stopped. No more ringing or pulsing, no more talking from his friends. Reality started setting in and Danny was getting a full view of the high beams driving straight toward him.

“I’m dead,” he stated simply.

The silence accompanied him for a few moments more before Tucker started yelling.

“What?! Dude, don’t say that! You’re just… irradiated or something!” The grip Tucker had on Danny’s tightened to the point of being painful. Danny could barely feel it.

“Whoa, hey, Tucker, calm down. I think Danny’s just having a panic attack. Or something,” Sam piped up, yelling as well to try and overpower Tucker’s vocals.

The two kept arguing with each other, voices increasing in volume as panic made itself obvious from their outbursts. Danny sat between them silent, hearing neither of them as he continued to contemplate everything that had happened so quickly.

As the two kept arguing, it went unnoticed as their hands slipped through the arms they were holding, right up until their foreheads smacked against one another. Tucker flung himself back and rubbed at his head while Sam calmly sat back on her heels.

“Ow, jeez. Hardheaded much, Sam?”

Sam raised an unimpressed brow. “Says the guy with the thickest skull I’ve ever—wait.”

Sam was aware that they’d just been talking across Danny, too distracted by their own shock to really be concerned about his. But now… they were talking through him. A blurry half-image of their now glowing friend sat between them, still as out of it as he was before. Sam reached out to him, only for her hand to go right through him. Tucker saw this and reached out as well, waving an arm back and forth in his friend’s transparent form.

Sam started to breathe deeply to try to keep herself calm. On Danny’s other side she saw Tucker’s heckles raise and she knew his gasp was about to lead into a scream.

“Tucker!” she shouted, clearly not maintaining her composure over the situation. Tucker’s mouth snapped shut. “How about we all take a moment to breathe and just… relax.”

Tucker shook his head rapidly but at the glare Sam was giving decided she was more scary than their half-present friend and nodded instead.

“Okay! Okay.” Sam slowly inhaled through her nose and exhaled through her mouth. Tucker tried to repeat her actions but made it obvious he was still very much freaking out. She would take what she could get.

“Alright. Danny?” Silence. “Danny.” No response. Sam huffed, crossing her arms. “Daniel James.”

That caught his attention. “What, yes?”

“We’re calming down here. Care to join us?” Danny lapsed back into silence, seemingly in thought. “I’m not taking no for an answer, Danny.”

“Alright, alright,” Danny reluctantly responded. Sam inhaled deeply through her nose again, waiting for Danny to follow. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. He reopened his eyes. “Yeah, okay, I—what.”

Danny finally caught sight of his blurry hands, easily seeing the lab floor through them. He bent all around looking at the rest of his body, his breath quickening once more. “Guys?”

Sam reached out a hand to try and comfort Danny but her hand phased right through him, causing Danny to jump to his feet and back away from his friends.

“See?! This is what I mean! I’m dead! I’m a ghost!”

Sam and Tucker both stood up after their friend, Sam raising up her hands as if she were trying to calm a startled animal and Tucker keeping his cradled hands close to chest.

“No, Danny. That’s—that’s not possible. You’re—you’re not a—”

“Yeah, man. I mean, ghosts aren’t real or—or your parents—”

“Oh, god, my parents!” Danny grabbed at his hair. “My parents are gonna kill me! I can’t be a ghost! I can’t—oh god!”

In an instant, Danny stood half-visible in front of his friends before he disappeared completely.

“Danny!” Sam and Tucker shouted simultaneously.

“What?!” Danny shouted back, panicked.

“Dude, you’re gone!” Tucker yelled to an empty corner of the lab. Sam stood next to him looking around the lab in confusion.

Danny looked down to his arms once more, no longer seeing a transparent image of himself but a much blurrier and colorless form of his body. Bringing his hand up left an image of it slowly trailing behind before it eventually reached where his hand actually was. And all at once, he popped back into reality, full color and no transparency.

His hands fell back down to his sides as he looked toward his friends. They were both staring at him in shock. Danny’s eyes began to fill with tears.

“See?” He said to them, “Ghost.” He choked on the word and sniffled as the tears started to flow.

Sam and Tucker continued to stare at their sobbing friend. Sam took a step forward and Tucker turned to look at her movement. She swallowed once, twice, blinking rapidly, before darting forward toward Danny, slamming into and nearly knocking him over as she wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug. She began to sob as well.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have forced you. I shouldn’t have made you go in there, Danny. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Sam's apologies didn’t end even as they turned into hiccuped gibberish. Her arms kept tightening around Danny to the point it was getting harder to breathe. Tucker’s approach was much slower than Sam’s, almost nervous. He inched up to them and came to a stop just off to the side, looking over Danny like something else might start happening. His inspection came to a stop at Danny’s eyes, maintaining eye contact for a few seconds before his face completely shifted to despair and Tucker began sobbing as well.

“Dude,” he began, sniffling to keep more snot from running down his nose, “I’m sorry.”

Once again, Danny was nearly knocked over as Tucker came at him and wrapped him in a hug, one arm around his back, the other around Sam.

Danny cautiously brought his arms up and wrapped them both around his friends, leaning his head forward and resting his chin on Sam’s shoulder while pressing his cheek against Tucker’s. The trio stood together for a while, all trying to take comfort in one another as they continued grieving.

Suddenly, the group's sorrow was interrupted by a bright, white light that began to surround Danny. They all pulled back as the light grew brighter. Danny took a few steps back from his friends. They both began to follow after him.

“Wait, guys, don’t—”

The light grew even brighter, forcing Sam and Tucker to cover their eyes as it completely engulfed Danny. When it had seemingly dimmed, the two opened their eyes, only to be met with their friend, shoulders scrunched up to his ears and eyes squeezed shut, looking exactly as he had before he had entered that stupid portal.

The lab was completely silent as Danny cautiously opened one blue eye before opening the other at the sight of his friends staring at him in shock once again. Danny’s shoulders dropped.

“Now what?”

If he didn’t know any better, Danny would’ve thought his friends were part of the football team, what with the way they tackled him in yet another group hug. Danny’s legs got pushed a little too far back by the surprise and was actually forced back onto the floor this time, his friends coming with him as he landed squarely on his butt. His utterance of an “ow” was drowned out by Sam and Tucker excitedly shouting his name at him.

“You’re back! Danny, you’re back!”

“You’re alive, Danny!”

They continued to smother him with Sam pressing her tear stained cheek against his and Tucker choking on happy sobs. Danny could only sit in confusion at the complete one-eighty of the mood.

“Wait, what happened?”

Sam released her death grip from around his neck and sat back on her heels, wiping at her eyes before lifting up Danny’s hand and pointing at his palm. “Look, Danny.” Danny looked at the black gloves leading into the white hazmat suit covering his whole body. “No glow,” she finished with a smile.

“Yeah!” Tucker cheered, reaching up to Danny’s hair and pulling a few strands down toward his eyes. Danny winced as he eyed his black hair.

His two friends sat back, smiles wide on their faces as they looked at him expectantly. Danny stared off into the space between them.

“I’m alive?” He whispered. “I’m alive!” He then shouted, jumping to his feet in excitement. Sam and Tucker joined him in his elation, the trio all clinging to one another as they shout and cheer at the newest revelation in their weird journey.

“Oh, man. Maybe—maybe it was some kind of after effect and—and now! Now, I’m fine! I’m alive again!”

Sam and Tucker listened to Danny’s rambling theories at his predicament, first with smiles on their faces that slowly morphed into frowns as they watched Danny get…shorter? Danny, lost in his solo conversation, didn’t initially notice until he looked over toward his friends, only to look up at them in confusion. He looked down toward his legs, half expecting them to be collapsing from all the stress in such a short time, or at least something similar, but he was not expecting to not see his legs at all. He screamed.

Sam rushed forward, grabbing hold of Danny’s arm and trying to pull him up, Tucker eventually coming over to help as well. Together, they pulled him up abruptly fast, clearly expecting more weight to accompany their friend… and legs too. Sam gasped and Tucker yelled at the sight of their legless friend, only an upper torso being held between them. Danny, despite being able to see some semblance of his legs, was just as freaked. Just before the group could completely lose their composure, Danny’s legs reappeared, along with his extra weight as Sam and Tucker dropped him to his feet. The trio stared at one another in silence before Tucker piped up.

“But—I thought—”

“Maybe, some kind of after effect like you were saying, Danny,” Sam suggested, unsure of her statement.

“Huh,” Danny uttered in response before his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell back, landing on the basement floor in a heap. Sam and Tucker quickly rushed down to his body.

“Danny? Danny?!” Sam yelled, grabbing his shoulders and shaking them in an attempt to wake him. On Danny’s other side, Tucker placed his fingers against Danny’s neck.

“He—oh! Sam! He has a pulse! He is alive! He’s—he’s—” Sam went around to Danny’s head and began lifting him up from his armpits, “—what are you doing?”

“Picking him up, what’s it look like?” She huffed as she managed to bring up his top end, making his head loll forward.

“Okay… why?”

Sam heaved, “I don’t know about you, Tucker, but I think it’d be better for everyone if we got out of this stupid basement.” She turned her head toward the active portal, Tucker following her gaze at the unnerving, swirling mass floating in it. “At least for now.”

Tucker swallowed. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re probably right.” He then went to Danny’s bottom half, picking up his legs and waiting for Sam’s cue to start moving. She nodded her head toward the stairs out of the lab and the two began to make their way out, their unconscious friend between them.

“We dropping him in his room?” Tucker asked, eyeing the stairs behind him.

“Where else? I don’t think he’d be super comfortable waking up on the living room couch for everyone to see.”

“Well, yeah, but… should we tell his parents?”

Sam considered Tucker’s question, momentarily stopping in her tracks to look down at the unconscious boy in her arms. “I think,” she began, “we should leave that to him.” Tucker nodded in agreement and the two continued up the stairs.

Out of sight of the portal, the trio didn’t get to see as it shut itself off behind them.

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