GHOST PROTOCOL {JLU/DP}

• FIERCE •

[A/N: Happy Easter, everyone!]

DANI HAD LONG SINCE TAKEN Phantom as her last name. She couldn't exactly go by 'Fenton' and 'Masters' sent icy spiders crawling down her spine, so it seemed like the only plausible choice, on top of the fact that she typically stayed in her ghost form all the time (unless asleep), so people tended to be much more familiar with ghost Dani than human Dani. Besides, she was much more proud of her ghost form than her human form.

She had made something of herself as a ghost.

The other reason was Danny, the person she had been cloned after, something she later found out was mostly false, as Vlad combined his and Maddie's DNA to make Dani, but had to use Danny's Ectoplasm to make her ghost half (more of the reason she was more proud of her ghost half), technically making Danny her father.

Dani couldn't deny that made her beam with pride, especially when she was compared to her father (yes, she calls him that in her head).

And so, after two-and-a-half years time away, she was returning to Amity Park (partially because Danny hadn't been replying to her letters for six months). Just as she saw the WELCOME sign, eyes lighting up, a towering, neon green mushroom cloud billowed up into the sky from the direction she recognized as Vlad's lab, another one coming from the direction of Fenton Works barely a minute later. At the first, Dani slid to a halt in her flight, gobsmacked. The second elected a gasp. "Danny!" She shot off like a bullet from a gun, weaving past birds and the occasional debris until she had landed in front of the quickly burning Fenton Works, fires raging through every window, licking up the sides. Another gasp as she snaps out of it, "The civilians!" Dani shot into the house, intangible, looking for Danny, Jazz, Maddie and Jack. "Danny?! Jazz?!! Mr. and Mrs. Fenton?! Are you in here?!"

"Over here!" A man cried out in between coughs. "Please! My wife! She's upstairs!" He descended into a coughing fit.

Dani, torn, voice caught in her throat, lingers for a second before making her decision. "Can you make it out?!"

"I-I don't know-- b-but my wife hasn't moved in months! E-Even if she wanted to, her muscles have likely atrophied!" He coughed.

Dani looked in concern in the direction of the basement and back at the stairs. "Where are your children?!"

There was a pause before a choked reply came. "Jazz is out!"

Panic rose in Dani's chest. "And Danny?!"

No answer.

Dani's heart, the one that was supposed to have stopped in this form, began to pound. "Mr. Fenton, where is your son?!"

The man sobbed. "Dead!"

The world seemed to disappear around her as she slowly sunk to the burning ground, nonexistent breath caught in her lungs. She sat there, tears slowly beginning to fall, one by one, in a matching set of lines down her features as the words sunk in.

Danny was dead.

Her father was dead.

Her father was dead and he didn't know what he was to her.

Dani had failed him.

The thought hit her like a bullet train through paper.

"Please! My wife!"

But she hadn't failed her.

"I'll get her!" Dani cried out determinedly as she flew up the stairs and into every room she found. She had already wasted too much time as it was with her pity party.

She could mourn later.

This was now.

And now had someone who needed her help.