"I can not be the only one that is still trying to process all of this," Jaime says. "Anyone else?"
Beast Boy, Impulse, Guardian, Bumblebee, Cyborg, Tempest, and Robin all raised their hands. The rest of the team was shocked but knew that an explanation was coming soon.
"You have... a daughter," Mal acted like he needed a reboot.
"Does being a ghost slow down your aging, or did you get a girlfriend really early in life," Impulse asked.
The second part of that question made Superboy stiffen a bit. But it went largely unnoticed by everyone else. Except for Nightwing, but it wasn't like he didn't already know what was going on between him and their ghostly teammate.
"Technically, ghosts don't age slowly," Danny said. "They don't age at all. You know, being dead and all."
"Eventually, the two of us will stop aging from our mystic heritage," White admitted. "Mystics, in general, are eternally young."
"Either way, Dani is not exactly my daughter in the most traditional sense of the word," Danny says.
"So, who is this Dani," Roy asked.
With a nod to Red Huntress, the African-American girl pulled out a circular device. Where she had been keeping it, none of the team knew but they weren't going to ask. Her armor was basically a techno version of Mary Poppin's bag.
But with how the device looked, both Nightwing and Robin assumed it to be some type of holographic device.
They were proven right when Huntress activated it. Two images of similar-looking girls appeared above it. They were large three-dimensional images instead of like the holographic screens back at the Cave and Watchtower.
Phantom, Siren, Jazz, and Huntress were really the only ones aware of the real reason behind why the two looked so alike.
As Danny's clone, Dani is close to being Phantom's identical twin were it not for her age and gender.
In her human form, like Phantom, she bears a strong resemblance to her genetic mother and genetic sister. She has the same skin color, eye color, eye shape, and hair color as Phantom's human form. She also has the same hairstyle as him but with the back longer and in a ponytail.
Dani's main outfit of choice is a red beanie, red shorts, a blue sweater/hoodie, and shoes of the same style as Phantom's civilian ones but blue.
In ghost form, Dani's skin, hair, and costume are of the same color scheme as Phantom's. She has the same D logo as her 'father' on her chest.
However, instead of a one-piece suit, Dani wears a matching shirt-and-pants set that reveals her midriff, with no belt. The right half of her shirt is white and the left half is black, divided diagonally down the middle, and she wears a white left glove and a black right glove. Her pants are baggy and black with streaks of white on the sides that come down to her boots.
Her eyes in her human and ghost forms were also the same as Phantom's. Blue as a human and green as a ghost.
"She's adorable," M'gann cooed.
"She is also likely to punch anyone that calls her that," Valerie stated.
"She isn't mindless and doesn't mind voicing exactly how she feels," Danny says. "She is a very willful and somewhat tomboyish girl."
"I've always like to say how Dani is a lot like Danny, only more cheerful and childish," White said. "Even if the age difference doesn't make her being childish quite obvious. She seems to have no concern with responsibility and can be quite stubborn at times."
"All the time," Valerie corrected.
"Just like her father," White chuckled.
Phantom hit him on the shoulder, making him laugh harder.
"Is she from the future," of course Impulse was the one to ask. "Did she come back by accident or to warn you about something but wasn't able to get back to her own time?"
"With Clockwork around, we would never have that kind of trouble," Danny says. "But Dani is still more complicated than that."
"How about you stop beating around the bush and tell them already," Jazz tells him. "They already have one like her on the team, so why would they be shocked."
"Just say it already," Valerie agreed with the redhead.
"Dani is a clone," Danny finally spit it out.
To say that the team was shocked would be another meager understatement. It wasn't that her being a clone was a shock, as Superboy was a prime example of such science, but that she was most likely a clone of Phantom.
"A clone," Conner was the first out of shock. "She... she's like me?"
"Sort of," White says. "It's hard to explain."
"But we'll try our best," Jazz said.
Huntress placed the hologram device on a nearby table so that she didn't have to keep holding it for the entire explanation.
"We told you guys about Vlad's obsession with making me his son and evil apprentice," Danny started. "The one time he truly gave up on singular me wanting to be anything to him other than an enemy, he tried something different."
"By different, he means totally insane," White says. "Before Dani came into the picture, we had been attacked by three very different ghosts. One was like a ghostly Tinkerbell, the second was basically Frankenstein meets WWE superstar, and the third was weirdly enough a ghost wearing a bedsheet."
"A bedsheet, seriously," Garth raised an eyebrow. "A real-life example of the most cliche thing about ghosts in existence?"
"Yeah, we didn't get it either," Jazz shrugged. "But it did turn out that ghost was a skeleton underneath the cloth."
"At least that's an original take on the cliche," Cyborg said.
"We have no idea where they came from," Danny continued. "They'd vanish just as quickly as they would attack. Dani had been the biggest shock. She had shown up in my room, reading a comic book, like she was meant to be there. She told us that she was our cousin."
To the team, things were just getting more and more complicated. They all sat down in seats or couches in order to get comfortable for the story.
"We had no idea who she was, as Jack had been on only child and Maddie's only sister never had kids," White took over. "The biggest shock was when that Frankenstein ghost attacked, she followed us into the fight and told us that she knew who we were. Then just straight-up changed into her ghost form in front of us."
"We had no idea what was going on," Danny said. "Every time we tried to talk to her, ask her anything about herself, another one of the three ghosts would attack. It wasn't until the Tinkerbell ghost attacked that I was knocked out by Dani shooting an ecto-blast into my back."
"Now, I was still a little fifty-fifty with my teleportation powers," White says. "They were more by reflex than me actually wanting to use it. So when Danu tried to shoot me as well, my powers reacted and I got away. But it turns out that Dani was working with her 'daddy' Vlad the entire time."
After that little fact, half the team looked like they had hampsters running on wheels inside of their heads. The other half had to pick their jaws off the ground.
"We still have no idea how, but Vlad had gotten ahold of some of Danny's DNA," Jazz said. "He used it to try and create his own son, an evil version of my brother. All the other ghosts that had been attacking them that week were his failed clones that he sent after Danny and White."
"The Tinkerbell one was probably the closest one to the real deal," White seriously confused them with that statement. "That clone could grow to our size and looked strangely like Danny. But it also looked like it had started to decay a decade earlier. In one word, yikes."
"Dani wasn't like the others though," Danny says. "She may have teamed with Vlad, but she had been created by him so it makes sense for her to give him her loyalty. But there was one thing about Vlad that she didn't know, that he didn't care about her. Once he had me, he didn't have much more use for her."
The team didn't miss the look Phantom gave the hologram. He had a love in his eyes none of them had ever seen before. Even after what his daughter had done when they first met, he didn't even think to hold it against her. It was very clear to them that even after just meeting her, Phantom had grown to care about her more than her creator and "father" ever even tried to fake with her.
"You see, because Vlad only had a small bit of Danny's DNA, all the clones were unstable," White continued. "I managed to get in and hide just in time to see the three other clones melt into ectoplasm like the Wicked Witch of the West."
"Zelena would hex you for making that comparison," Valerie says.
"She can try," White smirked. "But Melinda is a lot scarier than some green-skinned witch from Oz."
"Uh... are guys saying that..." Mal was about to ask.
"Yes, fairytales are real," Danny waved off the question.
"There is an Isle of the Enchanted Forest on the Mystic Isles, but that is a story for another day," White said.
"Dani was not only the most stable of the clones but the only one with her own mind and free will," Danny continued the story. "The others were just mindless drones that followed Vlad's orders. Dani wasn't like them. She had a conscience, a heart, and emotions of her own. But Vlad still saw her as flawed, mostly because he wanted a clone of me and she ended up being a girl."
"Vlad needed Danny in order to create the perfect evil copy of him," White says. "He put Danny in a pod and needed him to transform while in there in order to get the perfect DNA sample."
Superboy narrowed his eyes the most at that little detail. It didn't matter if it was him or someone else, he hated pods and anything that was even remotely similar.
"When it became clear to Dani that she would also melt sometime soon, she tried to go to Vlad," Danny said. "But he pushed her away, showing how he didn't care for her at all. She left in tears, coming back soon to try and help me. But Vlad was too powerful and Dani had not exactly been... around for long."
"Not that I am trying to nitpick details here, but where are you during all of this, White," Karen asked.
"Sabotaging the machines with my vibration powers," White stated. "If there is one thing I know how to do with my powers, its create some chaos within the technological world. A few well-placed vibrations will knock a few key things loose."
"He's a little scary sometimes, is he not," Garth says to Aqualad.
"I think even we can forget that earthquakes are basically vibrations inside the earth," Kaldur stated.
That sent a shiver down their spine. The last thing they needed was for Gold Siren to be the cause of a category five earthquake. No telling how angry he would have to get for that to happen.
"I may not be the siren of luck, but even I know how the domino effect works," White had a very scary and devious look in his eyes. "One thing falls, and everything else follows."
"I officially now want to meet the real siren of luck," Roy says,
"Good luck finding her," White said. "Fortuna hasn't been seen in over two hundred years. She's one of the most secretive and seclusive of all the sirens. Even more so than the siren of secrets, Silar, which I find very ironic."
With each type of siren that Gold Siren reveals is out there, the more interesting the mystical species gets.
"Anyway, all it really took was Sam and Tucker making an unexpected crash into the chamber in the Spector Speeder," Jazz definitely remembered being told that part of the story. "That set off White's sabotage and got Danny out of the pod."
"Hang on, those two former friends of yours crashed into the lair of a half-ghost nutjob," Cyborg immediately asked.
"They weren't half-bad friends when we were able to work together," Danny sighed. "Just took for me getting ghost-napped to get them to get over their little temper tantrums."
The looks they got from the team were telling them to elaborate on that. Huntress also gave them that look, not knowing about this part.
"When the other three ghosts attacked us, they had all been in public places," White explained. "A golf course and our old high school to be exact. Manson and Foley had to take the fall for the destruction each time. Why they did was anyone's guess."
"Huh," Gar. 'duh'ed.
"Ghost attacks had become relatively common by that time," Valerie explained. "Even before I first put on my suit I knew about all the ghosts in town. Everyone did."
"Manson and Foley didn't need to take the fall," Jazz says. "All they had to do was explain that a ghost attack had gone through the area and they would have gotten away with all the destruction around them. But instead, they took the blame and decided to get bitter about it with Danny and White. They blamed the two for leaving them to take the blame."
"That was when we first started to realize just how loose and flimsy their loyalties were," White hugged himself, his wings drooping.
"After the two crashed into the lair, I was able to get free," Danny changed the subject back to the story. "Vlad may have always been the halfa with more powers and experience than me, but not even he was a match for my ghostly wail."
Most of the team cringed at hearing that Phantom used his most powerful ability against the other halfa.
"It took a while for Dani to get close to us," White took over. "After we defeated Vlad, she decided to travel around the world, see everything she did not think she'd be able to otherwise."
"It was not long after that when I crossed paths with Dani, Vlad manipulating me into thinking she was a ghost out to get him," Valerie still felt guilty about it. "When Dani got close to Amity Park, Vlad had decided to use her as a different way to create an evil clone of Danny. He thought there was something about her that would help him as she had been the only one of his clones to stay stabilized this long as well as have a mind of her own."
"But Dani had come back because she was losing her stable form," Danny explained. "It was getting harder for her to stay together and not melt into a puddle of goo. Valerie had managed to track her down while Dani was in her human form, which she did not know about. So when Dani ran away from her, Valerie went after her thinking that she was a homeless little girl that was scared of her."
"I followed her into an abandoned building which was ready to fall to the ground as it was," Valerie says. "I accidentally stepped on a loose board that caused the only real support beam left to fall, causing the entire building to start coming down on us. Dani was forced to change into her ghost form to save me. I repaid that kindness by capturing her."
Jazz put a hand on Huntress's shoulder.
"Vlad is an expert manipulator, Val," the redhead said. "It wasn't your fault that he played you and used your hatred of ghosts against you."
"I could have, at least, been grateful to Dani for saving my life," Valerie crossed her arms.
Phantom and Siren were sure that Huntress would never be able to forgive herself for her past against Dani. Even though they knew that Dani herself had already forgiven Huntress.
"Anyway," White changed the subject back to the story before Huntress lost it. "Jack had actually been working on a serum called Ecto-dejecto that was supposed to temporarily strip a ghost of their powers. Instead, the formula caused ghosts to get more powerful. All the tiny ghosts he tested it on grew to twice the size as a normal human."
"So after Dani had been captured and sent to Vlad, we realized that we might need it," Danny took the story over again. "I had been captured by Valerie, but revealing Dani's half-human status got us a temporary truce to save her. White only managed to find us about ten seconds after we made that deal."
"I would like to point out that I was hardly ever kidnapped or captured during our time as heroes in this realm," White lightened the mood a little. "I was the one rescuing his ghostly behind ninety percent of the time."
That got a few good laughs from the team.
"Walker still managed to get us both, brother," Danny reminded.
"And I remind you that I screamed his hearing away for a month when he did," White did the mature thing and stuck his tongue out.
"You can control how long someone goes deaf," Dick raised an eyebrow.
"Mostly," White shrugged. "Unless I'm angry, then who knows what my sonic scream might do."
"Set off a volcano if you're close by," Impulse guessed as a joke.
"Okay, Pompeii was caused by a dragon that had been sleeping in that mountain, just to make that clear," White said almost like it was a reflex.
Jaws dropped once again. Siren facepalmed, realizing what he just said. He had said that a lot during the times when he was introducing new sirens to the isle. They all had similar jokes or questions about mystics causing disasters like that. Yes, a lot of natural disasters are actually natural, some of the worst are caused by angry mystics or a demon with a god complex.
"Mystics are weird," Impulse decided.
"We know," White, Danny, Jazz, and Valerie said.
"We should be glad that none of them have ever questioned either of us about our world," Garth whispered to Aqualad.
"Atlantis and the rest of the ocean does have its fair share of strange magical creatures," Kaldur agreed.
"Though if I hear one question about a Kraken, I'm going to blast that person with water," Garth grumbled.
"Weren't you the one that asked White if all sirens were supposed to be girls," Kaldur playfully raised an eyebrow.
"We will never speak of that conversation again," Garth glared at his friend, making Aqualad hide a snicker.
"Vlad had tried to extract whatever made Dani stable for so long, even though he knew that she would eventually melt like all his other clones," Danny continued. "He didn't manage to get anything from her before White, Valerie, and I showed up."
"At the time, Valerie had still not been convinced of Vlad Masters and Vlad Plasmius being one and the same," White says. "But we had to put that aside so help Dani. The experiments finished off the last of her strength and she started to melt."
"I used the ecto-dejecto to try and stabilize her," Danny said. "It took a minute, but we managed to save her. And let me tell you that it nearly gave my fifteen-year-old self a heart attack."
"I managed to see Vlad turning into Plasmius after that, finally seeing the light of his manipulations," Valerie admitted. "Still took me time to get over my irrational hatred of Phantom and Siren."
"We didn't let Dani be on her own anymore," Danny continued. "We couldn't risk Vlad trying to do anything to her again, or the Fentons learning about her. So we took her to the Ghost Zone and had her placed with Frostbite and Pandora, constantly switching her from the Far Frozen and Ghost Greece to make sure Vlad doesn't find her."
"Danny and Dani, that is a lot less confusing when you're us by the way, grew very close," White explained. "They grew as a father and daughter rather than the 'cousins' that they were introduced as. We love her."
"So, you think that after she was ambushed that she ran away into the Ghost Zone," Dick remembered them saying earlier.
"That is the most likely conclusion," Danny says. "Frostbite, Pandora, and Clockwork are the most likely ghosts she went to."
"We will split into teams," Dick instructed. "Two teams will stay here and monitor for any danger while you two lead the third team to rescue... your daughter. That is going to take some time to get used to."
"So, who wants to meet her," Danny asked, almost the entire team raising their hands. "Oh, brother."
"What I do," White raised an eyebrow.
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