Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom or the Avengers

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Monday came all too soon for Danny. He was already regretting the day and he had only just woken up. Lying in bed, The mussy-haired boy contemplated the idea of feigning sick, but quickly threw that thought aside in fear of his mother's reaction of her 'poor baby boy' being ill.

Reluctantly throwing back the covers, Danny dragged himself out of his bed towards the bathroom down the hall. He could hear his parents tinkering in the lab downstairs – hopefully that meant that they hadn't prepared breakfast for him. He shuddered, thinking back to the last month when the Fenton Toaster had decided to go on a cannibalistic rampage, attempting to devour the other appliances in the kitchen. The blender still had bite marks.

Danny stared dully at his reflection in the bathroom mirror through sleepy and unfocused eyes. He had grown a lot since first gaining his ghost powers. Now at the age of sixteen, he had finally gotten his impending growth spurt, looming over his sister and mother at six feet and eight inches and still growing, he would probably be even bigger than his father at the rate he was going. He had grown out too, gaining some of the girth his father was infamous for. His jaw was no longer as weak, becoming more square in shape. His hair was the same, appearing unkempt and shaggy, along with his sharp blue eyes that still held that sense of righteousness and philanthropy he had gained at the age of fourteen.

"Danny?" Said boy peered through the open bathroom door to see his older sister, Jazz, rapping on his closed bedroom door, "You might want to get up. Mum and dad have a new invention they want to show you, and it doesn't exactly look harmless."

Danny rolled his eyes, ignoring his ever persistent and overbearing sister, before smirking and turning intangible, slipping through the tiled floor to breakfast, leaving his sister to continue knocking on his door, unaware of his sudden departure.

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Natasha Romanoff strutted down the halls of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division appearing to be in a very bad mood. Rumours had started to circulate about a growing threat near the North East of America about an influx of power warping in recent years, yet SHIELD was stubbornly ignoring it, deeming it unworthy of their time.

Nick Fury's tactics were lacking in Natasha's opinion, with only approaching situations that were already out of hand, rather than controlling the problem before anything truly terrible happened.

Amity Park, a small city located in Illinois, was supposedly having trouble with the supernatural – ghosts specifically – with fluxes of otherworldly power seeping from alternate realms. Fury had blown this off as a city-wide scam to promote tourism that even went as far as to getting a teenage boy to dress up in a skin-tight suit, bleach his hair white and claim himself as a hero. Natasha thought otherwise. She suspected that, while some of the rumours were untrue – including the city's idol teenager – supernatural occurrences were happening in the state of Illinois and she was going to find out what. With or without Fury's permission.

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"Danny, my boy!" A bulky man in orange cried gleefully, "Come look at my new invention!"

Danny barely glanced up at his dad from his bowl of cereal, his mind still a haze of semi-consciousness. The image in front of him slowly registered in his mind as he whipped his head back up, gagging slightly on his mouthful and harshly swallowed. Jack was leaning against a rather peculiar machine, panting with a wide grin on his face. Standing at seven feet tall and looking extremely heavy, Danny wondered how his father had dragged the contraption up from the lab.

The heavy-looking cylindrical machine was painted a flat white with a simple door. With delight, Jack yanked the machine open, presenting a cramped looking chamber. The interior gave off an eerie green glow as multi-coloured lights blinked disconcertingly at him, the exhaust fans created a low symphony of threatening hums. Jazz was right, his dad's latest toy looked anything but friendly.

"Er, that's great, dad. What is it?" Danny asked.

Jack let out a bellowing laugh, as if the answer was obvious, "I call it the Fenton Ecto-Extractor! When a ghost is locked inside, it sucks out high levels of their ectoplasmic energy and transforms it into a usable power source – it's able to run half the city for almost a year if the ghost is strong enough!"

Danny began to feel his cereal rise back up his throat, "Half the city? What ghost would be strong enough for that?" He laughed uneasily, "I mean, that's impossible! You would have to search the entire ghost zone before you found a one strong enough!"

"What are you talking about, sweetie? Everyone knows that that Phantom ghost is easily the strongest around. Him or the Wisconsin ghost, of course." Danny's mother, Maddie, swept into the room, her arms laden with electric wires and welding equipment.

"Imagine what this baby could do when we get our hands on the ghost-boy! It would be like two birds and one stone! Giving the city energy and get rid of all the pesky ghosts!"

Danny did not like where this conversation was heading. Seeing a disgruntled Jazz – whom he had left banging on his bedroom door for ten minutes– in the kitchen's doorway, he turned to her, pleading desperately with his eyes as Jack attempted to coax Danny to step into the Ecto-Extractor to 'get a closer look'.

Jazz obviously felt pity for him, "Danny, shouldn't you be heading off to school soon? You're going to be late, otherwise."

Danny grinned at the older girl, "Right, school! Should get going! Otherwise I won't be as smart and courageous as two certain ghost hunters I know!" He said, expertly stroking his parent's egos.

Danny watched as his father's chest inflated with pride, "That's right! Hurry up and get good grades so you can be my apprentice, Danny-boy!" Jack said cheerily.

Danny's smile slid on his face, turning into a slight grimace, before he muttered something about getting dressed, quickly heading up the stairs to get ready for school.

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Natasha was frustrated. Trying to convince the Avengers to join her to travel across the country – or in Bruce Banner's case, the world – to check the truthfulness of a handful of rumours was not working out exactly as planned.

Seated in front of multiple monitors transmitting a teleconference between the five mortal heroes, Natasha attempted to keep her voice level, "Haven't you heard the news reports? The sightings that these townspeople and tourists have seen, doesn't that make you curious in the slightest? An entire town can't all be in on such a hoax without there being some truth to it!"

Steve Rogers looked at Natasha sceptically, "While there might be some strange occurrences, do you really believe in such things as ghosts?"

"If there is such thing as aliens, why can't ghosts exist?" She replied snippily.

"Because aliens are living creatures. As in, they have a pulse. Ghosts, on the other hand, are believed to be a manifestation of a dead person's 'soul' or 'spirit'. It's simply not possible." Tony Stark lazily stated, as if speaking to a child.

Clint Barton frowned, "What has gotten you so worked up? Usually you would be the first one to repudiate the idea of something like ghosts."

"I don't particularly believe in them, just that there could be something more to the town. Ghosts could simply be a cover-up for something even bigger."

Clint shook his head slowly, "Look, I don't have time to chase fairy tales. Maybe another time okay?" With a quick goodbye, he turned off his transmission.

The others shortly followed suit – Steve with a bit of trouble – and Natasha collapsed in her seat with a frustrated sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose. Looking back at the monitors to switch them off, she stopped.

Bruce's pixelated face was still staring at hers.

"I'm in."

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Simple clean-up of chapters. Nothing to see here people. :P