"He's a phantom!"

The whisper broke the silence of Danny Fenton's room, startling the boy sleeping peacefully on his back. Blue eyes flickered open to blink confusedly at the ceiling.

An indistinct muttering disturbed the quiet, prompting Danny up and out of bed to look around his room. His ghost sense wasn't going off; this wasn't anything supernatural. Maybe it was one of his family members, talking in their sleep.

But the only person it could be was his dad, and Jack Fenton didn't talk in his sleep. He snored. There was a difference, and Danny could definitely tell it, even half-asleep.

So, no sleep-talking. What was going on?

Still dazed from sleep, Danny looked dumbly around his room again. His door was shut, and nobody else was in there. And there was faint music lingering around. He tuned in all his senses, trying to figure out from where it was issuing. No luck.

Grumbling angrily to himself (it was probably some idiot trying to deafen themselves with their stereo up to max), Danny clambered back into bed and closed his eyes.

Just as he was drifting off though, he heard it again. This whisper sent him bolting out of bed, fully prepared to go ghost at any second.

"Danny Phantom!"

"What?" Danny barely managed to keep his voice to a stage-whisper, as if by matching the volume of the speaker he could get his attention.

Nothing. Again. Maybe all this stress was making him crazy.

"Maybe I should call Sam," he muttered, then glanced at his clock. "Or ... maybe I shouldn't." The image of a ticked-off Sam aroused at 12:30 in the morning stalking up to his room made him shudder. And it wasn't in a good way. Although Sam probably wouldn't mind all that much-she was a self-titled "night person" after all.

Still, he didn't want to risk it. He'd rather keep Sam on his side.

He sat down on the edge of his bed, wondering idly whether the ghost voice would reappear. Several times he caught himself nodding off, and jerked himself forcefully back to awareness. Still waiting.

The next morning, his parents found him sprawled sideways across his bed, looking as if he had simply laid back for a moment while sitting on its edge and then had fallen asleep there. None of the other Fentons knew why.

"I'm really worried about this, Sam," Danny pleaded at lunch the next day. Sam had brought her own sack lunch and was digging about in there, half an ear on Danny's voice.

"Uh huh. Look, Danny, I doubt it's anything serious. You said yourself you were half asleep and your ghost sense didn't go off, right? I doubt there's anything wrong. Maybe you were just dreaming."

"I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"Well ..." Danny paused, unable to say quite why he didn't think so. He was sure it had been real, but it was a surety which sat in his stomach like a lump and refused to be broken down into spoken syllables.

"Phantom, phantom, phantom ..."

"Ah!" Danny nearly jumped out of his seat at the singsong whisper. His left shoulder rammed Tucker's right, causing the techno-geek to drop the forkful of food he'd been holding.

"Danny!" Tucker protested, but Danny was still wholly focused on Sam.

"Because," he said, "because of that! Didn't you hear it?"

Sam gave him a decidedly odd sidelong look. "Hear what, Danny? Are you sure you're okay?"

"It was ... whispering to me," Danny tried to explain. He could tell he was failing. Miserably.

"Yeah. Danny, do you need to go to the"-Tucker, as if sensing Sam's next words, covered his ears-"nurse's office? Maybe you have a fever." A no-nonsense hand pressed to his forehead, then withdrew.

"I'm not sick!" Danny said vehemently, gesturing over his shoulder with one hand. "I swear it was back there. That's what it sounded like!"

"Gonna catch 'em all, 'cause he's Danny Phantom."

"... What? Catch what all?" Danny's attention was distracted by the singsong voice again. He half-turned to look behind him. All he saw was Paulina. Again, his attention was distracted briefly. She looked really, really cute in that skirt ... Maybe he should-

"Danny! What are you looking at?" Sam shook him roughly by the shoulder.

"It's Paul-I mean ..." Danny got himself quickly back on track before Sam could start glaring. "Uh ... that voice again."

Tucker grinned shamelessly at him. "Voices in your head, Danny?" he said. "You're welcome to them-just don't split them like you did before. We don't need two Dannys."

He glared at his friend. "I'm serious!"

"... Glowing ... eyes ..." The voice wasn't singing anymore; it sounded like it was trying to rap.

"What the heck!" Danny half-yelled, pulling out of Sam's grip to stare wildly around the cafeteria. "Don't you guys hear it?"

"No," said Sam.

Danny growled, becoming aware that there was faint music playing from somewhere off to his right-very close. "How can you not hear it? Is the band practicing?"

"During lunch?" Tucker asked incredulously. "Danny. Dude. Pull it together. What band practices during lunch?"

"It's playing in my ear!" Danny snapped, realizing how awkward that would sound a half-second after it came out of his mouth.

Sam stood up, abandoning her lunch. "Danny," she said, towing him up by the arm. "You're going to the"-Tucker covered his ears again-"nurse's office."

"But-"

She pulled him out, protesting or not. It didn't matter to her either way.

"Mom, stop it," Danny said, cheeks aflame, as he was bundled lovingly into the RV. His mom had coddled him all the way out of school (in front of Dash, no less-he'd never live that one down) and he could really get into the car by himself. He told her so while gently pushing her aiding hands away.

"All right." She left him, with a slightly agrieved air, and got in her own door, instructing her husband to drive ("We have to get Danny home, he may be sick!")

"Sam," he muttered darkly from the back seat, rubbing at his forehead. "Next time I see you ..."

They were home in no time, and his parents bundled him out and into the house. He was prodded upstairs and into bed, feeling a headache coming on. If he wasn't sick now, he probably would be later. He wondered if you could get sick by too much time in bed. Tucker's answer would probably be a definite "no!", but now he wasn't too sure.

Finally alone, Danny glared silently at the ceiling. Then a smirk curved one side of his mouth up.

"I don't have to take Lancer's test today!"

"Gonna catch 'em all, 'cause he's Danny Phantom. Gonna catch 'em all, 'cause he's Danny Phantom. Gonna catch 'em all, 'cause he's-"

"Danny Fenton, get up right now!"

Danny blinked groggily, registering two things at once: he had heard that darned song again, and Jazz was shaking his shoulder. "You'll be late for school!"

"Gotta go to school?" he asked tiredly, trying to roll away from her. "'m sick."

"Not anymore you're not," said Jazz. "Mom's been checking on you all night, you're not sick. Come on, get up, I'll drive you to school."

"Y'will?"

"You want Dad to?"

Danny was up and dressed as fast as he could be, but the sung words reverberated in his head. Someone knew who he was. He was sure of it.

And ... Someone had apparently liked him enough to write a song. On the surface of things, that wasn't so bad. There were a plethora of worse things that could be done by someone who had discovered the residence and, possibly, the double identity of Amity Park's ghost boy.

Still ...

He paused contemplatively in front of his mirror and stared critically at his rumpled reflection: the disheveled black hair, the sleep-gummed blue eyes, the wrinkled clothes he'd thrown haphazardly over a chair last night without bothering to fold them first.

"That," he decided of his earlier thought, "is really, really weird."

"Danny? Danny, I asked you a question."

"-yo-"

"Danny Fenton!"

"-he was just fourteen when his parents built a very strange machine-"

"Danny Fenton, look up here right now, and if you don't answer my question it'll be detention!"

"Wha-?was Danny blinked up at Mr. Lancer. The music was playing near his left ear this time, but the words had faded with Mr. Lancer's sharp voice. "Uh ... Sorry, sir. Could you repeat that?"

"Detention after school, Mr. Fenton. Listen to the question this time. If you miss it, it'll be a week after school."

"Yes, sir."

Danny leaned back in his chair, having gained himself just a day's worth of being in Mr. Lancer's very unenjoyable company after school, and tried to tune into that mysterious music still playing in his ears.

"-'cause he's Danny Phantom!" The last two words were whispered loudly, and the music ended. This was beyond bizarre. Someone knew him, knew who he was, and, judging by the few words he'd caught before Mr. Lancer had interrupted, knew how he had gained his powers.

There was something really wrong with that. And nobody would even believe him. That irked him more than anything: his own friends thought he had finally whacked out. He, Danny, was sure he hadn't ... But it didn't really matter what he thought, did it? If they thought he was whacked out, then, well, his opinion didn't count for much. After all, do crazy people think they're crazy?

He doubted it.

The two minute bell rang, signaling that whoever wasn't in their class should get there right now or risk being tardy. Danny kicked his locker, which succeeded in bruising his toes and doing nothing whatsoever to the locker itself. He glared at it, like that might do any good.

"Need help there?" Sam walked up, leaning against the locker next to Danny's.

"Sure, give it a try. I can't get it open." He gave the offensive thing another kick, then stepped back.

Sam fiddled with the lock for a moment and then pulled, swinging the locker smoothly open. Danny stared.

"You got your combo wrong," she said nonchalantly.

"What? How do you know my-?was

"I have my ways. Lucky I do, isn't it? See you next class. I don't wanna be late." She turned and strolled away, leaving Danny blinking stupidly after her.

"He's here to fight for you and me!"

"Who is?" The words escaped before he could stop them, reverberating in the hallway which was now thankfully empty.

"Gonna catch 'em all, 'cause he's Danny Phantom."

Danny felt like banging his head on his locker. He sighed exasperatedly, unhappy that the song was still plaguing him. Whatever it might be. Maybe he should write it down when he got home-maybe it was a composition of his own, haunting him until he wrote it on paper.

Then the word "narcissist" popped into his head-he'd had to look up the definition just that morning.

Yeah. Better not. Even losers had reputations, after all.

"When it didn't quite work, his folks, they just quit. Then Danny-"

"Take a look," said Jack proudly, thrusting something in front of his son's face where Danny sat at the kitchen table. Jack had just arrived from the basement, interrupting Danny's mysterious song once again.

Danny barely had time to register his father's presence before Maddie gave him a stern look and said, "Jack, you shouldn't have inventions at the dinner table. You can show us after dinner. Put it away, sit down and eat; the food's all ready."

Danny was a little bit annoyed; he sort of wanted to know all the words to this odd song. He just wished it wouldn't pop up at such incredibly inopportune moments.

And the music was still playing, though the voices had faded away. It wasn't horrible music, anyway-the base line wasn't too bad, at any rate, and right now that was all he could hear.

"Danny? Do you want some?" Jazz was holding a serving plate out to him. Barely looking at it, he spooned some onto his own plate, took a bite, and nearly choked.

Of all the things he could have gotten, he had to get veggies ...

"Danny! You've got a phone call!"

"Who is it?" Danny didn't rise from his chair, concentrating intensely on the soft music in his head.

"Sam!"

"Uh ... Could you tell her to call back a little later?"

"Are you sure?" Maddie's voice wafted up from downstairs.

"Yes! I'm sure!"

He stared down at what he'd written, the lyrics of the song he'd been able to capture so far. He wanted to get the whole thing down, see what it was all about.

He's a phantom

Danny Phantom.

Yo Danny Fenton, he was just fourteen

When his parents built a very strange machine

It was designed to view a world unseen.

(He's gonna catch 'em all, 'cause he's Danny Phantom.)

The words had gone away again, and he thought maybe if he concentrated hard enough, he could get them back. It was unnerving, though: someone knew too much about him, that was for sure. He didn't know who, and that just made it worse.

Concentrate, he thought. Concentrate. Come on ...

The words faded back, slowly, and Danny began to scribble as fast as he could, trying to keep up with the tempo of the song.

"When it didn't quite work, his folks, they just quit. Then Danny took a look inside of it. There was a great big flash, everything just changed; his molecules-"

Fade out again. Danny's father called up, "Danny! I want you to see something!"

"Uh ... I'm doing homework," Danny called back, still trying hard to keep the words in his head. "Sorry!"

He could imagine the disappointed look on his dad's face, but he wanted-

Ah. There they were again.

"-got all rearranged." Well, you can put it like that, thought Danny wryly. The fact that, in fact, you could put it like that bothered him-someone knew about the accident. Someone could expose him, whenever they wanted to.

This was bad.

"A poetry unit," scoffed Tucker as they sat down at the lunch table. "And songs, no less! Who here knows how to write a song?"

Danny shook his head dejectedly. "Not me."

"I can," piped Sam. "But I'm not sure any of them are fit to be turned in."

Tucker gave her a grin. "And why not?"

"None of yours," Sam responded icily. The glare she sent him shut him up.

Danny's sudden scramble under the table for his backpack brought both pairs of eyes onto him, bent double and searching beneath the table.

"Um ... Danny?" Tucker asked finally. "What are you doing?"

"Shh! Gotta get the paper ..." Danny rummaged a little more, then came up with a sheet of paper. He put it on the table, grabbed a pen and, not even bothering to close the backpack, began to scribble.

"What are you doing?" asked Sam, watching the words form and growing more and more incredulous by the second.

"(Phantom, phantom) When he woke up, he realized he had snow white hair and glowing green eyes. He could walk through walls, disappear, and fly; he was much more unique than the other guy!"

Danny couldn't help a small, lopsided grin as he scribbled.

"And it was then Danny knew what he had to do: he had to stop all the ghosts that were coming through-"

"Sam! Careful, I don't want to have to try and write that all out again!"

The Goth girl had snatched the paper out from under Danny's quickly moving pencil. With her sudden movement and his distraction, the words faded again. He sighed exasperatedly. "Sam! I thought maybe I'd finish it!"

She held the paper, trying to decipher Danny's hasty writing. "Danny ... what is this?"

"It's the song," said Danny, sounding fiercer than he'd meant to.

"What, the one nobody else can hear? Let's see it!" Tucker grabbed the paper from Sam, read it, and burst out laughing.

"What?" Hot embarrassment roiled within Danny, turning his cheeks red. "I didn't write it, I'm just copying it!"

Tucker was crying, he was laughing so hard. "Y-you ... y-you ... wrote a ... song ... about ..." He dissolved into another fit of laughter.

"I didn't write it!" Danny repeated hotly. "I copied it! I don't know who wrote it, but they know too much."

"Sure, Danny." Sam sounded unconvinced. "Do you want to go to the health room?" Tucker, not hearing the words "nurse" or "office" in the same sentence, was not affected and continued pounding the table with laughter.

"I'm not sick!" exploded Danny, snatching the paper back from Tucker and stuffing it away. "I am not crazy!" He stood up, angry, and stormed away.

Tucker pulled himself together and looked up. "Was it something you said?" he asked idly of Sam.

"Maybe he doesn't like you laughing at him," she countered.

There was a pause.

"I'll go look for him," Sam said resignedly, standing up. "Have fun eating all by yourself."

She walked out in pursuit of Danny, leaving Tucker and his half-eaten tray of food behind.

The library was refreshingly quiet. Danny found a table in the corner and sat down, pulling the rumpled paper out of his backpack and glaring at the thing. He remembered Tucker, laughing at him, and briefly considered ripping the paper up and forgetting about the song altogether.

But he really was curious. What else did these people know about him?

So, concentrating hard, he tried to tune in on the song again. He could only hope he would start hearing from where he'd left off before.

"He's here to fight for me and you! He's gonna catch 'em all, 'cause he's Danny Phantom, gonna catch 'em all 'cause he's Danny Phantom-"

"Danny?"

So preoccupied had he been that he hadn't noticed Sam sit down beside him. He dropped his pencil and, self-conscious, stuffed the paper back away again. Even Sam thought he was crazy.

"Yeah?"

"Tucker's an idiot for laughing at you." Which translated to and I'm sorry too in Sam's strange language.

"Isn't he always?" Thanks.

"Always." Sure.

There was a short pause. "So Danny ... Where did you get that song?"

"I told you," he said dejectedly. "I'm hearing it in my head. I don't know where it's coming from. It isn't me, though, Sam! It's someone else-I can't sing to save my life, and I can't compose to save it either. I couldn't do something like this."

"Look, we don't not believe you," Sam said. "It just doesn't make sense."

"I know. But is that my fault?"

The words faded back into his head, slowly. "Oh, hang on, Sam."

He grabbed the pencil.

"Gonna catch 'em all, 'cause he's (he's Danny Phantom.)"

He waited to see if there was any more. The last chord died away, and he grinned triumphantly. "I got it all!"

"Yeah?" Sam looked doubtfully at the paper. "It's short."

"I didn't make it up," said Danny, half-annoyed. "I didn't choose its length."

She gave him a look. "It's actually normal for me to believe my friend is hearing a mysterious someone playing songs in his ears," sighed Sam, grabbing the paper. "Let's see it."

Michael held a sandwich halfway between the table and his mouth, glaring across at Tristan. "You think I'm weird?"

His coworker nodded.

"Why?"

"Because," Tristan replied, taking a bite out of his own sandwich. "Normal people don't write apology notes to characters in TV shows they master sound for. Since you did that, you fall into the weird category of things."

Michael looked at his coworker and best friend, half-affronted. "So I can't write apology notes to the characters? What if, in some alternate dimension, we've really screwed up their lives?"

"We screwed up their lives from the moment they were thought up," Tristan replied sardonically.

"So we should apologize. What if they happened to hear us putting together the new theme? Don't you think it would make them crazy, not knowing what it was?"

"It would me," conceded Tristan. "But characters are not real! Where do you take those things, anyway?"

"The paper shredder," Michael replied, taking another big bite of his lunch. Their lunch break was nearly over, and they still had to put finishing touches on the new Danny Phantom theme song. The old one hadn't quite worked out, and they'd just barely been able to get the vocals and music as they wanted them to be. "I figure they get shredded here, they end up there."

"Sure." Tristan stood up, tossing the remains of his lunch over Michael's head into the trash can. "I'll get an early start mastering the sound. You take your time."

"Thanks."

"And your pills."

"What?"

"It's not bad, Danny," said Sam encouragingly, handing the paper back to him. "Even though you didn't write it. I like it."

"It's kind of neat," he conceded. "Kind of creepy that they know so much, but neat."

The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch hour. "Let's go," said Sam. "We've got Lancer."

Danny groaned, stood up and packed his things away, heading off to Lancer's room. They met Tucker halfway.

"Hey," he said tensely, awkwardly. "Look, I'm sorry I laughed earlier." Sam gave him an encouraging nod.

"Bygones," said Danny, recalling the sight of Vlad Plasmius's face the last time he had used that line. He grinned and took his seat as they entered Lancer's, fully ready for the grouchy teacher's lesson.

"Danny, something came in the mail for you today!" Maddie called as Danny entered the house. He walked into the kitchen and Maddie handed him the sealed note in a small envelope.

"Hmm. Wonder who that's from," he mused idly as he made himself an after-school snack. "Thanks, Mom."

"No problem, sweetie," Maddie said. A small explosion rocked the house. Danny didn't even wince; Maddie sighed, dropped the rest of the mail and headed downstairs. "Jack, what happened this time?"

Sandwich made, Danny sat down at the table and opened the letter. It was apparently sent from a "Michael Massey" who worked at ...

"Nickelodeon Studios," Danny mused as he tore the envelope open. "Never heard of them."

There was one sheet of paper inside, folded haphazardly to fit into the envelope; it bore several lines of hastily-scrawled words which gave the impression that the writer had penned them while on a moving train. The informality and the handwriting contrasted sharply with the typed address on the envelope.

Danny unfolded the piece of paper, smoothed it carefully and read:

Danny Phantom/Danny Fenton/Whelp/Ghost Boy/Inviso-Bill:

I'm sorry if we disturbed you with our song. The old one didn't quite fit your character, so we had to fit new words to the old tune to make it work right. We think the second one has turned out much better than the first. More importantly, so do the top brass, which means we probably won't have to do it again.

I just wanted to give my apologies in case our recording interfered with your normal day-to-day life. I assure you, the director and the writers interfere with it even more.

We shouldn't bother you anymore now; we're done recording and nearly done mixing. Once that's over with, you'll never hear from us again.

Good luck with your life (you'll need it),

Michael (Nick studios)

Danny blinked at the letter for several seconds, trying to puzzle through it. "Good luck with your life (you'll need it)," he read quietly. That sounded far too ominous for his liking. Who was this guy, anyway? And where was "Nick" studios? And why were they writing songs about him? The letter brought far more questions than it answered.

He re-read the letter again, slowly, still trying to slip the words into a context that made some remote semblance of sense. No such context seemed to be available, no matter how far out of the box he tried to think.

A clatter of feet at and through the front door announced the return of Jazz, who came bursting in with a backpack over her shoulder and thunder in her eyes, and Danny stopped worrying for the moment. Whatever "mixing the sound" was, it meant the song wouldn't be interfering with his life anymore. Hopefully, nor would anything or anyone else associated with it.

"So, Jazz," he said, tossing the letter into the trash with one last look at it. "What happened to you?"

"Up next to perform the song he's written is ... Danny Fenton!" Mr. Lancer tried to be enthusiastic, Danny had to give him that. But even the weak, scattered applause was more enthusiastic than his voice-and that was saying something.

With a confident grin (he'd actually gotten an assignment done on time for once), Danny stood up and walked to the front of the classroom. He looked out at the class and felt a faint blush tinge his cheeks, but he knew what he was doing this time. So maybe he couldn't sing to save his life, but heck-neither could Dash, and he'd gone right before Danny. All things considered, Danny was feeling pretty confident.

He'd memorized the music by now; he didn't even need the lyrics.

So, making sure not to look at Dash and concentrating on Sam and Tucker, he began.

"Yo, Danny Phantom, he was just fourteen when his parents built a very strange machine ..."

There were a few snickers-at the lyrics or Danny's rather less-than-stellar attempt to rap, he wasn't sure-but he continued relentlessly onwards anyway. All right, so maybe it was riskier than anything else he'd ever done-if anyone in the class were smart enough, they might piece things together-but it was worth it to see the looks on Sam's and Tucker's faces.

End notes:

- This story was originally written in 2008 ... and revised just yesterday by me, even though I haven't actually watched any Danny Phantom in years. At least the spelling and grammar errors I caught have been fixed. Hopefully. Although given how much trouble I had with FFN's online editor while trying to fix some formatting issues before posting, I could be wrong. Still, pointing out of any big plot/characterization snafus would be very appreciated, since, not having watched the show forever, I can't easily spot them any more.

- While I and my dad both do a lot of audio editing work, and he records songs and makes CDs for people, my terminology in Michael's note is still probably not so accurate. I'll try to fix that as well when I can.