It Looked Good On Paper
By Mystitat
"Danny? What are you doing here?"
"Just let me in, Sam. I've got the most hilarious story to tell you!"
Danny moaned as he lay against a crumbled wall, having just been struck by a lucky shot of a cardboard box.
"Beware of the box ghost! I am the – "
"Will you give it a rest already!" Danny shouted, suddenly rising into the air and raising his arm to fire off a green beam. It connected with its target, and the box ghost soon lay prone on the floor, defeated for the umpteenth time.
Yet, this was one specter not to be easily silenced. Despite the heavy beating, and seeing stars, he still made out, "Be ... bewaar! Aim de ... box host! I'm – "
"Quick there's the ghost!" came a sudden shout from the door of the warehouse.
Danny turned to look, horrified to see the city's most dedicated orange and blue-clad ghost-hunters.
"You take the blue one, I'll take the ghost kid!" Maddie instructed, raising her blaster and taking aim at our green hero.
"No, wait, stop!" Danny cried in vain, only barely able to go intangible in time to dodge the blast. "Don't shoot!" He flew to the other side of the warehouse, to be out of range of his unwitting mother. Yet, he was shocked to be caught in the Fenton thermos somehow!
"But wait, I thought your dad had terrible aim!"
"He does. He was aiming for the box ghost. He got me instead."
"But how did you get out?"
"Will you let me tell the story?"
A very exhausted Danny Phantom dribbled to the floor as the thermos was opened in the basement of the Fenton household. Blinking, he was barely able to perceive that he was trapped in some kind of a cage on the ground that, try as he might, he was not able to phase through. Great, he thought. They have another invention that actually works.
"Is the table ready, Jack?"
"Yes, darling!"
"Good! He's awake."
Danny blinked and looked up nervously at his parents standing over him.
"I've got you now, ghost kid!" Jack cried triumphantly.
Maddie gave him a look.
"I mean, we've got you now, ghost kid!" he corrected sheepishly, but still triumphantly.
"Yes," Maddie said, joining the somewhat predictable conversation. "And now, we shall finally be able to reveal your human identity to the world!"
Not without some dread, Danny squeaked out pitifully, "How?"
"Ghost-torture!"
"Danny, how scared could you have possibly been? These are your parents we're talking about. Nothing they make ever really works."
"Well, you have to consider that up to this point, two of their inventions had worked. And I'm not crazy about the word 'torture.'"
"But I thought you said this was a funny story!"
"It is! I'm getting to that part!"
The next thing Danny knew was that he was lying prone on an inordinately long stainless steel table, his wrists secured above his head, and his ankles secured as well to tracks running vertically along the table's length. "Oh boy," he squeaked.
"Now, we'll start nicely," Maddie said, turning from the instrument panel to face him. "What is your human identity!"
Danny didn't respond, but simply stared up at the ceiling, thinking Oh boy ... how are my parents going to try to kill me now?
"He's not talking," Maddie said, stating the obvious.
"Then we'll just have to activate the machine!" Jack cried, not without a hint of excitement. He turned to the panel beside him, and pressed a large red button.
The shackles holding Danny's wrists and ankles in place inched apart on their tracks with a soft click. Danny found himself a couple inches taller, but he was in no pain. He smiled, barely able to hold in a giggle.
"Feel the power of the Fenton Ghost Stretcher!" Jack cried.
Danny couldn't decide whether to pretend to be in pain, or to burst out laughing. The end result of his indecision was that he didn't say anything.
"He's not saying anything," Maddie remarked.
"Then we'll just have to crank it farther!" Jack cried again, more excited that he got to use his machine than annoyed that the ghost wasn't talking.
"The Fenton Ghost Stretcher? But ghosts can already stretch. Stretching doesn't hurt you, does it?"
"No, it doesn't!"
"Then what was the point of the machine?"
"It didn't work! They stretched me all the way across the room before they figured out they weren't hurting me. Then they just threw me in the ghost zone, so I just had to wait until the door opened again so I could get out."
"So what was so funny about that?"
"That my parents, the 'world-renowned ghost hunters' tried to build a machine to torture ghosts by stretching them! It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard!"
"Well, I don't know about funny, but yeah, it is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Oh, hold on, the phone's ringing. Hello? Oh, hey Tucker. Nothing, Danny's just telling some story about how his parents built a ghost-stretching machine. Yes, it is the dumbest thing I ever heard. ... No, it's not funny!"
A/N: So how's that for a first DP fic?