A/N: Aloha, everyone! I hope you enjoy this sequel to Must Be because I am milking that story for all it's worth!
Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom.
……Casper High……
"I wonder where Danny is," Sam commented. It wasn't that odd for Danny to be hard to find, but his friends could never be sure what was keeping him: late homework, ghosts, or his mysterious job. Danny ran past, grinning and obviously unaffected by the high speed at which he was running.
"Get back here, Fenturd! I'm gonna tear you limb from limb!" Dash shouted, several feet behind his fellow senior. He was running almost at full speed and it was beginning to show. The group began to laugh…hard.
"Dash-baiting, apparently," Valerie gasped, unable to hide her amusement.
"Ya know, this could end up as a new sport," Tucker chuckled, though he knew that his best friend only did this to help Dash's would-be victims. Tucker had known since summer that Danny was far more than he let on, even to those who knew his Phantom secret.
Danny ran slow enough to keep Dash's attention, but fast enough to keep out of his grip. If the bully lost sight of him, he might go after someone else, and he couldn't allow that. Dash ran faster, hoping to catch the loser, so he could make him pay for challenging him.
The bearded bait screeched to a halt, just barely avoiding barreling straight into the principal, only to knock her down when Dash ran into him.
The quarterback got up panting, punching Danny in the back in the process. The halfa barely felt the blow and forgot to fake the pain. Instead, he got up carefully and held out his hand to help the principal to her feet.
"Are you okay, Ishyama-san? I-" cough "I mean, Principal Ishyama?" Danny flinched, that was getting to be a problem with him. He was still greeting people in the way that matched the origins of their surnames, whether they understood it or not.
The principal looked at her school's most infamous (because of his absences, tardies, and other disciplinary issues) student oddly as she took the offered help. As soon as she'd regained her balance, he went about collecting the papers that had been strewn across the hall because of the collision and handed them back to her in a neat pile. Uncannily neat. If any other student had done this, she would have suspected him of only doing it to get on her good side, Danny Fenton, however…was simply kind.
"I'm fine," she responded, narrowing her eyes at the two teens in front of her. "Now what is the problem this time, boys?"
"Sorry, Principal Ishyama, I-uh-heh baited Dash."
Helen Ishyama literally took a step back, stunned by the blatant truth. Dash rubbed his neck painfully, having turned his head far too quickly, with a mix of anger and bewilderment on his face.
"I was just trying to help," he whispered, looking away as though he'd forgotten everything and everyone else.
Helen felt like a fish out of water as she tried to say what she had to. She was tempted to let the boy off with a warning, but she knew out of fairness that she could not. She also knew that almost every time the boy had been caught leading Dash Baxter on a wild goose chase, it had been away from trouble that teachers had been too slow to stop themselves. There has to be something I can do!
"To the office, boys," she ordered as an idea crossed her mind.
……
"Now I have given you more leeway than I probably should have because I thought you might deal with your problems like young gentlemen, but you've certainly proven me wrong. Starting tomorrow, Mr. Fenton, you will spend the day with Mr. Baxter, and the day after that, Mr. Baxter, you will spend with Mr. Fenton. I want you to learn what each other's lives are like so that maybe you'll learn to respect each other," the principal sentenced.
Dash looked stunned but angry as he clenched and unclenched his fists in his lap. That much, she'd expected. What she hadn't, was the other boy's reaction.
Danny's face had gone from startled to panicked within the space of a second as he pawed frantically at a strange medallion around his neck with shaky hands until he found purchase on the "C" on it.
She heard him whisper, "Time out," before he seemed to calm down faster than Helen thought was possible.
"Mr. Fenton, are you alright? Was it another heart attack?" the principal worried. This was not what she had expected at all. He hadn't seemed afraid of Dash, so what was wrong?
"I'm fine, really, it wasn't a heart attack, but-Principal Ishyama, please, I have work to do," Danny pleaded.
"The same one you grew a beard for?" she asked, he looked surprised, "Yes, Mr. Fenton, I know about that."
"And what about football?" Dash protested.
"You should've thought of that before," she told him, firmly ending the discussion. She gave them the details of the punishment more thoroughly, and then let them leave.
……Two days later……
Dash muttered angrily as he stomped up the steps to Fenton Works; he wanted nothing more than to get the day over and done with. At least Fentoad stayed out of the way yesterday.
Danny had been a silent observer in the star quarterback's life, speaking only when he had to and zoning out so much that Dash began to think that the loser didn't have all his marbles. Dash yawned, it was just too early.
Jazz Fenton opened the door and admitted the shivering teen into the house, clutching her sweater to keep out the cold.
"I thought you were at college," Dash mentioned, confused.
"I am. I just came home this week since my parents are at a convention, and someone needs to make sure Danny doesn't work himself to death," she answered casually. "There's coffee if you want it, or hot cocoa."
"Hot cocoa?" he quirked an eyebrow.
"Danny doesn't like coffee," Jazz smirked, sitting at the kitchen table.
"How does he survive?" the jock gaped incredulously, but the redhead had stopped listening.
Instead, she was looking beyond him with a horrified expression on her face, "It was a gag gift!"
"Ho ho ho!" Dash heard behind him, "Yeah and it's the gift that just keeps on giving…right back to you, Sis!"
The bully turned to see Danny Fenton wearing a long, elaborate red robe trimmed in white fur which looked like it came from the Middle Ages…or the 1970's. Dash really wasn't sure, all he knew was that it was the most embarrassing thing he'd ever seen Fenton wear, including the time they all wore those ugly orange hazmat suits to save their parents. He turned back to Jazz to see how she'd react to that.
"What are you talking about? It doesn't bother me," she denied, but the twitch in her eye and her too-wide grin told a different story.
"Oh yeah?" Danny chuckled, "Tell that to the blush creeping up your cheeks."
Jazz got up slowly, looking at her brother. His smile vanished. His older sister took the dish towel off the back of her chair and started twisting it very tightly with an almost evil grin on her face.
Did he just fly out the door? Dash thought incredulously before an even crazier idea struck him, And was Jazz Fenton acting like…a KID?
He heard a yelp and snickered.
……………
A/N: Hehehe! What do you think so far? How crazy do you think one day in Danny's life is going to get? How will he keep Dash from catching on? Tell me in a review and as alwaysALOHA!
