It was only a few weeks after his 13th birthday. No matter what he did or tried, he kept feeling like he was going to freeze to death. Medical staff had checked him over and found that his internal temperature was way past hypothermic. With what limited equipment they had, they did all the tests they could. None of them helped them to figure out what was going on.

Danny suffered in silence mostly. He couldn't keep warm and would regularly black out for a little. He knew what it felt like when his powers were overloaded. Even with the collars syphoning off quite a lot of it, it wasn't enough. With no way for him to actually release the excess energy, it started eating through his body in an attempt to be used up. This turned into a torturous cycle as his own powers were eating him from the inside, while they were also responsible for attempting to heal the damage it did. No amount of eating helped him keep his weight up as he burned more than he could reasonably be given by the staff.

Cujo had come by from his trip to the outside world. The pup stayed with him quite a lot, but he was and would forever be a free soul that enjoyed wandering around from time to time. Danny could barely respond as he was too cold and weak to do more than a small smile to his friend. Cujo had taken one sniff and had taken off again. Truthfully, it had hurt a bit. He didn't know what was going on and could really use some company.

Miss Waller had come to check on him as he seemed to be getting worse by the day. If her reputation as the stone cold warden wasn't at stake, she would have openly showed her concern for him. There wasn't much she could do except for keep him company. On a daily schedule she would come over and work on some paperwork. Half of the time she was there, Danny would be passed out under a pile of blankets. His already skinny frame was steadily shrinking as it had become harder and harder for him to even eat.

During one of those visits, Cujo had returned. And he had brought company. A giant yeti like creature stood with the pup. It had minimal clothes on, but what stood out were the horns and left arm made out of ice. The yeti, who introduced himself as Frostbite, had requested to take Danny with him. There was a whole bunch of ghost mumbo jumbo that she didn't understand. What she did understand was that it was for Danny's own safety. She had reluctantly agreed and had turned off his collars. Within a fraction of a second, Danny's unconscious body forced itself into his ghost form. Ice had spiked around him and covered the entirety of his cell. Danny's own body had visibly started to freeze over before Frostbite managed to pick him up. With a promise of returning soon, both the yeti and the pup had disappeared again. Leaving Waller even more confused than before, hoping she made the right choice.

It had ended up being very much the right choice. As Danny had only been turned into half a ghost, his core had taken longer to start maturing than it would have for a full ghost. Apparently his timing was all wrong. That damned Stopwatch had meddled yet again and conveniently dropped hints to Frostbite about the possibility of his core being ice. Thus Frostbite had somebody monitor Danny so they would be able to keep up with his powers and have an estimate on how to train him. Of course, it being Danny's luck we are talking about, his powers manifested too early. But also too late in a way? Because of his half ghost status, it wasn't instant, but they had thought it would have come during puberty, around 15 or so, not 13. The whole mess with Dan and having the wail years too early, plus Danny doing his best to seal away his powers set his core into overdrive. This in turn caused it to have something like a sudden growth spurt to put it simply.

A core is akin to a heart in some ways. It both powers the existence of the ghost and their basic powers, but it also can grant them special powers. The lesser ghosts like the ectopusses didn't possess a special core. They simply had neutral cores as their being was too unstable for anything stronger. Amber, however, was a prime example of a fire core. Just like Technus was one for the electric cores.

Though having a special core was already rather rare to begin with, there were subdivisions within those cores that made them even rarer. Danny's being one of them. It was already rare for somebody of Frostbite's tribe to come into existence, as they were all ice cores. Outside of his tribe had only been one other case of an ice core. Though a weaker one, and thus not capable of the same things as Frostbite's tribe, Klemper also possessed an ice core. He notably had no issues in the cold, hell he even preferred it as his own lair had been a winter wonderland of loneliness. He could freeze some things here and there and control the snow within his own lair, but outside of that he couldn't do much.

Danny was the first in a long time to have an ice core. Even rarer was that he wasn't a full ghost. This had likely been why he didn't immediately have these powers. It had taken about a year for his core to mature enough for them to present clearly. There had been traces, such as the cold whisps when a ghost was nearby, or his increased tolerance to the cold. Now, however, they had started to manifest. Without Danny knowing what it was, there was no way he knew how to control it. Frostbite and his tribe had taught him how to control it and tried to help him get his weight back up. He had gained quite some back but he still had a long way to go. Of course they had also questioned him as to why he was in a human prison. Danny only gave half answers until they had respected his boundaries and dropped it.

He had spent some time at the Far Frozen to learn to control his new found powers. He had basically repeated the training he had from Clockwork now with Frostbite. He had decent control over it, but nowhere near a master. For him, that was good enough. Most of the basics ran parallel to ecto-energy anyway, so there wasn't much need to continue training.

He had enjoyed his time there and found some of their prophesies rather amusing. Frostbite and some of the elders had taken upon calling him the 'great one' as he resembled one of their paintings. He had to stifle his laugh when they showed him. Yeah, his scrawny ass was supposed to be this long foretold champion that would defeat the reigning ghost king. Sure. Because being half ghost wasn't crazy enough yet.

Danny had said his goodbyes to the Far Frozen, not without promising he would see if he could work something out about yearly training sessions. Truthfully, he would be thankful if Waller didn't suck him into the thermos upon his return.

By some miracle, she had actually smiled when he was brought back to her office. Turns out Cujo had been playing messenger pup the whole time, keeping her updated on the progress. Danny had still fallen to his knees and begged for her forgiveness. He felt awful for breaking their agreement and leaving. To be fair, he didn't really agree to leaving. It was more like medical kidnapping really.

Miss Waller had laughed at his pitiful display of regret. She promised him there wasn't an issue as she had given permission for it herself. She was glad he was well enough to come back. She had come to miss being out of her office once in a while.

Once Danny was sure everything was alright, he updated his file to include the new things he had learned. It hadn't taken him too long to fix his right hand collar to block them out. He would never openly admit it, but he had dragged it out as much as he reasonably could. For as long as it took him to work on it, he stayed with Waller in her office. She wanted to keep an eye on the materials he used. Plus there was no reasonable way to explain why he would be allowed to be tinkering at his collars in his cell for all the guards to see. He too had enjoyed not being alone all the time and liked having somebody to talk to. Not that he didn't talk to Cujo, but the pup couldn't particularly formulate his own sentences.

Much to Danny's delight, however, their hang out moments had not ended after the collar was adjusted. Miss Waller had kept up her previous routine of visiting Danny's cell for paperwork or simply having a talk with the boy. He had requested some books when he first arrived. Every now and again he had asked for new ones. He mainly asked for psychology and astronomy, but also some basic school books to not fall too far behind and some others for entertainment. Though he did not enjoy school, he also didn't want to be stuck with the mentality of a 12 year old.

One time Danny had finished one of his pleasure books. He had complained in great detail how he disliked the ending and how he would have done it. Miss Waller had teased that he should just write his own then. Danny had asked how he was going to publish it, realizing too late he had walked into a proverbial trap. Waller laughed and said she's let him publish as a ghost writer, very proud of her horrible pun. Danny had to laugh a little but decline the offer. He was pretty sure the actual Ghost Writer would find a way to hunt him down if he ever tried.

Waller, of course, also enjoyed their occasional intellectual conversations. She may not know or understand most of what Danny rambled on about, but is was a nice change from the usual prison duties.

It was one of those visits where she looked more frustrated than usual. Danny knew it was one of the telltale signs of new prisoners arriving soon. That and he accidentally saw the forms she was filling in. She had expressed her great displeasure with the new meat as there was something about it that she didn't like. It would be the first time in her career that she had heard about a criminal purposely asking for a retrial that would guarantee a harsher punishment. Something was going on and she did not like it. Seeing how frustrated it made her, Danny couldn't help but feel the same.

Something was about to go down, sooner ratherthan later.