Author's Note:
I've taken some creative liberty with the canon with regards to this story. I've assumed that video coverage of the events of Phantom Planet were incomplete, thus failing to reveal Danny Fenton's identity. I've further assumed that the wider world were too preoccupied with Danny Phantom to pay much attention to Danny Fenton or his friends. Given the proven incompetence of adults in this universe, these seemed reasonable concessions. I've also made a few other smaller concessions, but they all have plot relevance so I'll let you figure out what they are.
Enjoy.
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"Ms. Manson, is there something funny about Ectoplasmic sociology to you?" Professor D. Mentia, PhD in Ghost Studies, magna cum laude (circa 1974) demanded from his podium, an indignant frown on his face.
In the back tier of the largely empty lecture hall, the girl in a black and purple t-shirt hung around wiry arms, tight black jeans stretched around deceptively muscular legs, and heavy black combat boots laced around feet much smaller than they seemed looked back at the man in front of the projector screen with eyes surrounded by thick black eyeliner.
She tried her best to fight down the smile she'd been wearing seconds earlier and said with earnest dishonesty, "No Professor."
"Please, don't stop snickering on our account," Professor Mentia said scathingly, "I'm sure you think I'm crazy like all the others that mocked me over the years, so please, continue. God forbid I spoil your fun."
The rest of the class turned to look at her, almost all of them scowling furiously at her. They ate Professor Mentia's insanity up like it was gospel, and every time she'd tried to correct them after class, they'd ganged up on her, calling her ignorant; Her!
Sam held her tongue and looked back down at her notebook, which was filled with doodles she'd drawn over the last few weeks of taking this stupid class.
"As I was saying," the professor said, pointedly turning away from Sam and drawing the class's attention back to him, "Ghosts have a very clearly defined caste system, built around the strong at the top and filtering down to the weakest of the weak at the bottom…"
Sam rolled her eyes, wishing she had remembered to pack her Fenton Phones. They may not filter out ghost-related nonsense as well as they did actual ghostly nonsense, but at least she'd be able to drown the professor out with some soothing heavy metal.
Over the last few weeks, Professor Mentia had spoken a grand total of two facts: "ghosts exist" and "they can pass through walls."
Every single other thing he'd said over the last few weeks had been wrong. Twice a week, Always-Early Tuesdays and Dreaded Thursdays, Sam had walked into this packed lecture hall and listened to a phony professor drone on about a subject he knew absolutely nothing about.
A caste system? Armies of ghosts preparing for a full-scale invasion? Ghost powers run on the fear of mortals?
It was abundantly clear to Sam that Professor D. Mentia had no idea what he was talking about, but for whatever reason no one else could tell, and Sam was stuck listening to his delusions week after week. There wasn't a Tuesday or Thursday that went by that she didn't regret coming to a school that didn't have a sensible class-dropping system.
Suffering through another half hour of his idiocy, feeling her brain slowly melting into a gelatinous goo, Sam watched as the clock finally ticked its painfully slow way to the end of the class. Before the professor even had the chance to dismiss them, she'd already slung her bag over her shoulder and stood to head for the door, hoping desperately to have a handful of healthy brain cells to show for her haste. If she could just get through the door, she wouldn't have to deal with Mental Daniel Mentia for a whole weekend.
"Ms. Manson!" Professor Mentia said. "I need to have a word with you!"
Sam bowed her head, unfathomable sorrow engulfing her. She dug deep, scrounging for every last scrap of patience she still had, then whispered a desperate prayer to whatever gods there might be (preferably Goth ones) for the strength to endure.
She turned back to face the podium, and saw her classmates' smug smiles. One of the girls, an insufferably girly woman named Brianna, cackled under her breath, roughly pushing past Sam on her way to the door.
Sam didn't even know a person could cackle under their breath. That took practice.
Doing her best to ignore them, she walked down the stairs on the left side of the lecture hall toward the still scowling professor.
When she'd reached the last step of the stairs, the Professor spoke, "You have been nothing but disrespectful to me since you arrived in this class," Professor Mentia said without so much as a dramatic pause, "You've laughed at my lectures, made snide comments about my research, and repeatedly interrupted with sarcastic questions.
"I've spoken it over with the Dean of the Humanities department, and she agrees," he continued, a self-satisfied smirk spreading on his face, becoming almost feral, "Such behavior demands punishment. It's in clear violation of the Student Code of Conduct, and what's more, it's completely disrespectful to me," voice rising into a shout, his undeniably feral smile crumbling into a demented scowl. Professor Mentia leaned forward, one arm extended, a furiously shaking finger pointing from it, and bellowed, "I am the world's FOREMOST EXPERT on ghosts, and I will not tolerate this any longer!"
Sam leaned back into a vertical position as the professor tried, mostly in vain, to regain some of his composure.
Breathing heavily, he began again, "You will report to the Dean's office on the top floor of the Humanities building at 7pm tomorrow, where we will discuss your punishment. The Dean seems to think you deserve the chance to explain yourself."
His tone made it perfectly clear what he thought.
Sam looked back at the professor's furious face, "Is that all? Because I have a math test to study for."
She watched as the professor's face reddened spectacularly. "Yes, it is," he said through gritted teeth.
So Sam hitched her bag higher on her shoulder, turned around, and, trying extremely hard to radiate infuriating indifference, walked out of the lecture hall.
Sam sat in the shade of a large oak tree in the middle of the vast park that sat in the center of the school campus. In front of her were several textbooks, a few of them open. On her lap sat a notebook that she scribbled in furiously, occasionally glancing up at one of the textbooks resting on the grass or nervously down at her watch.
The park was an excellent meeting place for her since tall, thick trees and small, sloping mounds provided plenty of places for discreet activities. Sightlines were never more than a hundred feet, and the lush canopies of the many trees prevented people in the tall brick buildings on all sides from looking in.
Most students used these features for romantic purposes, but she'd found an entirely different use for them.
"Hey Sam," Danny Fenton's voice said from her left.
Looking up from her homework, she smiled and said, "Hey Danny. How was English?"
Danny walked slowly over to the oak tree, his white and red shirt growing darker as he stepped into its shade, his black hair losing its sheen.
"Same as last time," he sighed, setting his bulging bag next to Sam and easing down to the thick, soft grass. "And the time before that. Writing essays about my professor's politics is starting to get really annoying."
"I told you not to take her!" Sam repeated. "I told you her online ratings were terrible."
"You were right," Danny sighed. "As usual."
"Of course I was," she replied smugly.
"Well my English professor is great," Sam said. "Last week she assigned an essay where we had to 'describe in detail' something cool that we'd done.
"She even said it was alright if it was fictional, so even if she doesn't believe it, I'm covered."
Danny smiled. "That's almost cheating," he said as he pulled a few books from his bag and set them on the grass.
"No kidding," Sam replied, smiling.
"So which one did you pick?" Danny asked, leaning back against the trunk of the tree.
"I went with the time your mom, Jazz, and I saved Amity Park from Spectra, Ember, and Kitty."
"Ooh, that's a good one," Danny replied. "I'm glad I missed it though. Fishing with Dad and fighting Skulker was probably way more fun that being trapped in a nowhere realm for eleven hours. I heard even Quan had, ahem, problems with the plumbing."
"Ew, why?" Sam shivered. Then she smirked and said, "Still, watching how upset Tucker got about the whole thing did kinda make me wish you'd been there…"
"Ha ha." Danny said. "You're hilarious." Pulling his Chemistry textbook closer, he began to flip through pages. Finding the one he was looking for, he pulled out his notebook and pen.
"So how was your ghost class?" Danny asked, wearing a knowing smile.
Sam's smirk fell away in a blink. She sighed heavily, "I'm having a meeting with the Dean tomorrow to discuss my punishment for disrespecting the unrespectable.
"I can't understand how Professor Mentia got a job here. He knows nothing about ghosts. Nothing. And now I'm going to be punished for saying so! Why does the establishment have to be so stupid?"
"They're going to punish you? For what, exactly?" Danny asked, concerned.
"Snickering, eye rolling, and a handful of snide comments," she replied. "It's not fair. How am I supposed to not react to a professor teaching a subject he knows nothing about?!"
"I don't know, Sam," Danny replied unnecessarily.
As Sam breathing slowed back down, the two of them sat together in silence for several minutes, until a question occurred to Sam and she asked, "By the way, Danny. Did you ever find a good place for Wulf around here?"
"Actually, yeah," Danny replied, looking up. "There's a pretty sweet network of caves at the top of Mt. Grimbore," he said, sticking his thumb over his shoulder in the vague direction of the valley's largest mountain. "No idea how they got there, but it looked like they went all over the inside of the mountain."
"Lucky guy," Sam said jealously. Then another smile spread across her face, "You should totally take me up there one of these days; I'd love to go Ghost Spelunking. Imagine all the cool rock formations we'd find in there! And your green ghost light would look so creepy."
"I have a couple tests on Friday," he replied, "so no new homework from those classes. I should have time over the weekend if you wanna go then." He flashed a hopeful smile, "We could make a date of it."
Sam smiled back. "You know," she said wistfully, "normal couples think dinner and a movie make a pretty sweet date."
"And then there's us," Danny said, grinning.
"And then there's us," Sam agreed, meeting his eye.
Just then, the large bell at the top of the nearby Mains tower rang. Sam sighed, "Dang it. I've got Biology class on the other side of campus."
She quickly gathered up her books and stuffed them into her book bag. She had to rearrange her Portable Fenton Wrist Rays, the Fenton Phones she'd ran back to her dorm to pick up, and her Fenton Thermos to make room for them.
Danny stood with her and the two hugged. "See you later Danny," Sam said, then kissed Danny lightly.
"I can give you a lift, if you want," Danny said, letting go. "That way you don't have to walk all the way there."
"No, I've got time to walk there. No point risking it," she said. "Thanks, though."
Then she turned away and began the long walk to her next class.
Late the next day, Sam knocked smartly on the Dean's door. The Dean's office nameplate said her name was Karen Vandenberg and that she had a PhD in Sociology. Sam took that as a good sign; Dr. Vandenberg might be less likely to take whatever Professor Mentia said as the complete truth.
"Come in," a woman's voice said from behind the door. Sam opened the door and stepped inside.
On the far wall hung several plaques, some of them awards, others degree certificates. On the left wall was a large open window, and on the right a bookshelf filled with the mismatched spines of dozens of novels, with a handful of textbooks tucked into one corner.
In front of her, a single metal chair sat in front of a sturdy, pale wood desk, atop of which rested several stacks of paper and a computer monitor. And behind that black metal chair, that sturdy, pale wood desk and that clunky computer monitor sat both the Dean and Professor Mentia.
"Please sit down," the Dean said grimly. The knot of anxiety that had settled itself in Sam's stomach for the past day tightened. She moved forward and took a seat.
"Between your professor's statements and those of your classmates, I'm going to forgo asking if you were being disrespectful," the Dean began. "Instead, I'm going to ask you why you were being disrespectful, and why you bothered to take the class in the first place if you had such disdain for the subject."
Sam looked back at her, the knot of anxiety easing slightly and moving up to her chest. "I don't have disdain for the subject," she began.
"Bull hockey," Professor Mentia said.
"I have to agree with the Dr.," Dean said after a moment. "Considering what your class and Dr. Mentia have told me, you interrupt even the most serious discussions with sarcastic comments."
"Because they're wrong," Sam said. "His facts are wrong. His research is wrong. He doesn't know anything about ghosts. That's-"
"I studied ghosts for ten years in university!" Professor Mentia shouted. "And ever since, I've been researching them. I've been researching them while the rest of the world LAUGHED at ME! How DARE you tell me that my TWENTY YEARS of research is WRONG."
Sam had leaned away from the professor during this, but, encouragingly, so had the Dean. "Calm down, Daniel!" the Dean said.
They watched as Professor Mentia slowly got himself back under control.
The Dean looked back at Sam. "Beneath Dr. Mentia's… vociferous response is a very valid point. Whether or not you believe you know the subject matter better than him is irrelevant; Dr. Mentia is the premier expert on ghost phenomena in all of academia."
Sam began to realize that she wasn't going to get out of this. Still, she had to try, "Dr. Vandenberg, I am a very close personal friend of Danny Phantom. Yes," she said, as Professor Mentia snorted loudly, "that Danny Phantom. He, our friend Tucker, and I have been fighting ghosts since our freshman year of high school. The three of us mapped out the entire Observable Ghost Zone before our Junior year. We beat back the Ghost King and hundreds of other ghosts. Together, we saved the planet.
"There are only three people in the whole world that should be able to call themselves 'premier experts,'" Sam said. "And you're looking at one of them."
A bark of laughter escaped Professor Mentia. "You expect us to believe that?" He laughed again, sounding almost hysterical.
"Ms. Manson," the Dean began, disbelief heavy in her words, "I also find that… story hard to believe.
"What's more, the fact that you would be willing to tell it seems to display a severe lack of intellectual honesty, which only underscores Dr. Mentia's claims," she said.
"If that is your only excuse for your behavior, then between that incredibly tall tale and your classmates' categorical testimony, I am afraid I'm going to have to move forward with the most severe punishment your actions have earned you," she said, leafing through some papers on her desk.
Sam's stomach felt like it was in an ever-tightening vice as the Dean spoke, "I can't say I've ever dealt with a case where this level of punishment has been necessary so early in a school year. Samantha Manson, for repeated, blatant disrespect toward a valued member of the faculty both in and out of class, a two semester suspension seems entirely appro-"
At that moment, a figured burst through the wall of the office, striking the Dean mute. White haired and black clad, a stark-white 'D' on his chest, and eyes that glowed bright green, the figure bobbed next to Sam, a tapering tail of dark, wispy ghost vapor trailing from his waist.
"Excuse me, sorry," Danny Phantom said urgently, putting his hands on Sam's shoulders. Sam didn't think she'd ever been so glad to see him.
"I don't mean to interrupt," Danny paused, looking around theatrically, "whatever this is," he continued, "but I just got word of a very large ghost terrorizing a town about thirty miles from here, and I'm probably going to need some actually skilled backup.
"The local ghost-fighting squads the government set up still can't tell which end of the ghost gun to shoot with," he said, "so I'm going to need to borrow my girlfriend for a few hours."
The Dean and Professor Mentia looked back at Danny, their jaws hanging open wide enough that Sam began to half-heartedly worry for the ligaments keeping them from hitting the surface of the desk.
"Sorry again!" Danny said as he grabbed Sam tightly by the shoulders, turned them intangible, and flew the two of them through the ceiling at 112 miles per hour.
ooooo
Flying invisibly above the campus, Sam asked, grinning widely, "Were you eavesdropping on that?"
"I may have stuck my head in," Danny replied dryly.
"You mean that literally, don't you?" Sam laughed. All the anxiety that had built up over the last day evaporated as they flew higher.
"Of course," Danny replied, laughing himself.
"So is there even really a ghost nearby?"
"Nope," Danny replied smugly. "Doing anything right now?"
"You know, just hangin' out," Sam replied, her shoulders still firmly held by Danny.
"Wanna get some ice cream down at Al's Creamery? They should still be open…"
"Sure," Sam said, smiling broadly. They began to quickly descend toward the darkening, squat buildings of their little college town, the sun setting softly behind the forest-covered mountains.
And all the while Sam couldn't help but think that she may just be the luckiest girl in the world.
ooooo
Back in the Dean's office, The Dean and Professor Mentia stared, shocked, at the spot where Danny and Sam had phased through the ceiling. The silence stretched longer and longer.
The Dean recovered first. Sitting up straighter in her chair, she looked down at the profoundly empty black metal chair, then turned to look at Professor D. Mentia, PhD in Ghost Studies, magna cum laude (1974), and said, "You're fired."