Chapter Text
… It was weird that Dani was a girl, right?
The thought hit Danny, as many such thoughts did, at three in the morning, rousing him from a dead sleep. His face pinched in annoyance, brow furrowing at the glow-in-the-dark stars over his bed. They were dim at this hour, since he’d turned off the lights hours ago, but he could still see quite clearly, courtesy of his enhanced vision.
He hated waking up for no reason in the middle of the night. Ghosts disrupted his sleep schedule enough as it was.
But it was weird, wasn’t it?
Danny wasn’t exactly an expert in genetics - his parents’ experiments with genetic locks and his participation aside - but he at least knew that girls and boys generally had different DNA. Different chromosomes. Unless they were transgender or had some kind of genetic problem.
Was Dani transgender? Sam had talked to him and Tucker about it a few times. Apparently some of her activist friends were activists about that, too. Sounded exhausting, being an activist about that many things, but it wasn’t like Danny had any room to talk.
But Danny didn’t think that Dani could be transgender. Like, Vlad wanted a perfect son, right? It would have been a lot easier to just… force Dani to be a boy than what he actually did. He’d been willing to let Dani melt, so he didn’t care about her happiness. Unless the perfect clone thing was more about age? But Dani’s age was pretty close to Danny’s to begin with. Maybe it was just for the kill-and-replace aspect of it? Vlad had mentioned doing that. But, ugh. That still didn’t seem right, either.
A genetic disorder, then? Were there genetic disorders that could make someone with a boy’s chromosomes look like a girl? Or one that could turn a boy’s chromosomes into a girl’s? Vlad couldn’t have done it on purpose, could he? Like, that would have been counterproductive to his goal of getting a perfect clone… Unless he’d made Dani as some kind of practice run. Were girl clones easier than boy clones?
Danny pulled his arms out from under his blankets to rub his eyes. He didn’t know enough. This was stupid. He should be trying to go back to sleep.
He hauled himself out of bed and over to his computer. The internet would give him answers.
.
The internet gave him more questions.
Danny let his head thump down on his desk. In retrospect, he should have known better than to expect otherwise. It was the internet. The internet was full of lies, and also, no one outside of Amity Park knew anything about ghosts, so why would it know anything about ghost genetics? It wouldn’t. It didn’t. Thinking it’d give him insight about half ghost genetics was even dumber.
But… he had found out a lot about genetics in general. Like how girls usually had two X chromosomes and boys had one X and one Y, but there were things like Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome and Kleinfelter Syndrome and chimerism and about a million ‘chromosomal abnormalities’ and ‘hormonal abnormalities.’
Maybe Vlad didn’t put enough androgen into the tank Dani was grown in, which would have been stupid of him, or ectoplasm messed with androgen, somehow. Maybe Dani had gotten an extra X chromosome somewhere. But then, the question would be where? Couldn’t just be a duplicate of Danny’s one X chromosome, could it? Something like that would have to cause problems. Could Danny have an extra X? But then he’d have Kleinfelter Syndrome, and he just didn’t have those symptoms. Did Danny have one of the things that made a person who had two X chromosomes look like a boy? There were apparently a few of those…
He pushed the button to turn off the monitor - he was too lazy to properly wait for the computer to go through its shutdown routine - and pushed away from the computer, floating back to bed.
How would he feel if he was, like, secretly a girl? Genetically, anyway. He didn’t think he’d care, much, honestly. Vlad was the weird one for caring so much. The main difference in Danny’s life would be that Dash wouldn’t beat him up so much, because he had some kind of policy about bullying girls. And he’d have to deal with having a period, like Jazz. His nose scrunched up. That sounded awful.
But he was probably thinking about this whole thing the wrong way. Human clones probably couldn't be grown in… Danny's thought trailed off. How long had Vlad been working on this, anyway? Less than a year, barring time travel. Creepy.
Anyway, the weirdness with Dani's gender had to be because she was a ghost. Probably something to do with self-perception. He'd heard his parents talking about how that affected ghosts’ appearances. Although, wouldn't that mean that Dani was transgender? Or had she started being a girl inside her… tube. Or whatever Vlad had grown her from.
He could ask Dani about it, next time he saw her, but that seemed like it'd be rude. Like, really rude.
But… if it was a ghost thing, didn't that mean Danny should be able to do it, too…? How would he even go about doing that? Imagining himself as a girl really hard? If he figured it out, would he be able to use it for other stuff? Like shapeshifting?
Well, there were worse times to experiment with his powers than when he was lying safe in his bed and no one else was awake. Nice, peaceful, and maybe if focusing on shapeshifting was meditative enough, he'd manage to fall back to sleep. Which was the real goal here, honestly.
So, what would he be like as a girl? No, what would she look like as a girl? Better get into the right mindset. She'd probably look… a lot like Dani? But not quite. Older than Dani, obviously. But he - she - gosh, that was weird. She thought she might look more like her mom than she did now. And she'd have more, uh, well… um…
Danny rolled over and pressed his face into his pillow. If he was shapeshifting into a girl, becoming a girl, he couldn't exactly shy away from the physical parts of it. He'd - she'd have… boobs. And no penis.
Danny moved his hands to press against the back of his head and force himself further into the pillow. That was so embarrassing. Why was he even thinking about this? This was stupid.
But now he was weirdly invested in imagining himself as, well, herself. Was that weird? Probably, but all of this was weird.
She'd… probably have long hair. Or maybe a bob like his mom. Probably not a ponytail like Dani did, or Sam’s half-ponytail. Ponytails… seemed convenient, but maybe not what she liked. Braids seemed like a lot of work, though, especially the complicated ones that went all the way up someone’s head.
Body type… Skinnier than Jazz. Jazz had bigger bones, like Dad. Probably a rounder face than what Danny had currently. Or just softer? Would she be shorter? Danny was already shorter than most of the people in his class.
Her voice would be higher-pitched. Girls’ voices always were. Did girls’ voices crack? Danny didn’t think so.
Would she wear a skirt like Sam? Makeup? Piercings? Sam didn’t have piercings, but that was because her parents didn’t let her. She couldn’t really imagine her overall style being different. She wouldn’t wear the crop tops that were so popular even Sam had one. That was, like, her stomach, and her weird state-shaped birthmarks, not anyone else’s.
Danny was thinking hard enough that her head was starting to itch, and she scrubbed at it with her knuckles…
… His knuckles.
What was going on with his hair?
Danny’s eyelids fluttered against her– his pillow as she experienced a brief moment of disorientation.
What was going on with her hair?
Danny bounced out of bed and flicked the light switch with his - her? - telekinesis. There wasn’t a mirror in Danny’s bedroom, but the reflective surface of her computer monitor was enough… and even if it wasn’t, the way her hair fell around her shoulders would have been.
“Heck,” she said. And her voice was higher. Not by all that much, but by enough to be noticeable. “I didn’t think that’d actually work.”