The past week had been a nightmare.
The trio sat all the way at the back of the classroom during the class which was in actuality called Paranormal Studies but had instead picked up the affectionate nomer of Ghosts 101. While both adult Fentons had been called in to teach it as part of the school's Ghost Defense Initiative, things had started going a lot smoother after Jack was politely asked to never set foot on the grounds again after a particularly enthusiastic demonstration of the Fenton Ectoballista resulted in several missing walls.
That still didn't help Danny, who'd been automatically signed up by his mother and who'd been unable to wriggle out of it thus far.
A note landed on his desk. Tucker's handwriting.
Do u know what they've got planned this time?
He quickly scrawled back. No idea. Mom started keeping the lesson plans a 'surprise' after it turned out Phantom knew more about them than he should.
Careful, dude. Don't want her putting the pieces together.
He sighed. Okay, he could probably have been a bit more subtle but he kind of liked his skin on his body. He watched as his Mom placed a bell shaped thing covered in a cloth on the front desk. This wasn't going to end well. None of the lessons had.
Maddie, for the most part, was delighted to teach. It took her back to the old days, when the Paranormal Studies club had just been three collegiates with a dab hand for electronics and some vague hypotheses. And far too many energy drinks.
"Alright, class! I'm sure you remember yesterday's lesson on alternative methods of ghost hunting."
Danny shuddered. You didn't tend to forget blood blossoms.
"We didn't get to finish it due to an unfortunate fire alarm…" Sam and Tucker exchanged smirks. "So today we're picking up where we left off." She whipped the cloth away to reveal a glass jar containing a single flower resembling a white lily, both surrounded by a soft glow. The class ooohed. He eyed it warily.
"This is Ghost Nip." Danny stiffened and straightened in his seat, and Maddie felt a brief sense of pride; for all that he feigned disinterest in their work, he still paid attention like a Fenton should. "While blood blossoms are a repellent, this plant acts as a ghost attractant, and was historically used to bait traps. Unfortunately it is a critically endangered species and its harvesting is prohibited by law."
Was that a sigh of relief? She continued. "We were very lucky the Supernatural Horticultural Society gave us this cutting to display today."
Danny sent a note towards Sam. Supernatural Horticultural Society? How many ghost affecting plants are there!?
She tapped her pencil. I did some research after the blood blossom thing. There's a few, but I think these two are the only ones wild in North America. They all have really finicky growing conditions though so they're not common.
Really finicky… Sam, you're not thinking about trying to grow some in your greenhouse are you?
You can't deny they'd come in handy, Danny! You're not always around.
He scowled. Fine but I'm never going in there again.
Fine with me.
He probably would have continued to be in a bad mood for the rest of the day if after a brief discourse on why the plants had evolved this way that he'd missed in the middle of notewriting, Maddie had not lifted the bell jar. The bell jar specifically designed to cancel out the properties of the plant.
He had just enough time to pale and momentarily panic before the scent rolled across the room, low and sweet and heavy. It smashed into his ability to think like a runaway freight train, and as his eyes glazed over he wondered what he'd been so worried about, tried to put a mental finger on it, and missed. Ah, well. It probably wasn't important.
He could see Sam and Tucker looking at him with concerned glances. They were good friends, being all worried about him for some reason. He grinned lazily and waved at them to show them he was fine, more than fine, fantastic actually seriously what is that stuff, and faltered when their expressions deepened. For a moment the feeling that maybe something was terribly wrong here crossed his mind and was lightly brushed away by another wave of scent.
He leaned forward. Someone was talking, but that was just background noise compared to the intoxicating aroma. He wanted to get closer to it, wanted to play in it, just rub himself all over it…
He paused. What? No. Nonono. C'mon, Fenton, get a grip!
At the same time a hand closed around his wrist and started to pull. He looked down and realized he was halfway out of his seat. He gritted his teeth and reluctantly forced himself to sit back down. Ignoring the weird looks he was getting he clenched his hands into fists, the pain of fingernails cutting into his palms helping to clear his head against the persistent siren allure.
"Guys… I don't think I can…" he managed, strain visible in his voice, before once again a gear disconnected somewhere and he found himself wondering why he'd just done that when it was clearly the opposite of what he wanted. He looked at one of his hands. Cresent marks were bleeding red and that was strange and fascinating and awesome. He licked them clean. He relaxed, spreading himself across the desk, just letting himself bask in the plant's aura, counting the distance from him to it and wondering how fast he could clear it in this form.
Hands closed on the back of his shirt and pulled him back and he struggled halfheartedly before a voice hissed "Play along." in his ear and he realised they belonged to his two bestest best friends and went limp like a kitten. He made a disappointed noise upon being dragged out through the classroom door, away from the flower, and a hand belatedly clamped over his mouth.
The door closing managed to block a significant amount of the plant's influence, enough to smash a small spike of horror through the haze of happy apathy. He felt himself being sat against a wall.
"Wow, he's out of it. Look at his eyes."
He managed to find his voice, swallowing. "…thanks, guys."
"Dude, if that's what it does to you when you're human, I don't want to see what happens when you go ghost."
As if Tucker had invoked the Irony Fairy, a blue mist decided at that moment to crawl out of Danny's mouth. He shivered, and not just from the cold. "Oh, great," he grumbled.
"If you transform as far away from the classroom as possible, you should be fine," Sam reassured.
Should be. He exhaled. "Alright. Hopefully it's just the Box Ghost again." He took off running, to a shout of "Good luck!" behind him.
Fortunately the halls were relatively deserted at this time. He ran to the opposite side of the school, looked at each end of the hallway and ducked into an unoccupied locker, a flash of light illuminating the seams.
He'd been bracing himself for it, but the lingering effects of the flower intensified in this form. Suddenly incredibly cheerful he shot up through the ceiling, hovering a good distance above the school. He could still think clearly, which was a plus, and he scanned for the offending ghost.
He spotted Skulker before Skulker spotted him, and grinned, flicking invisible. The ghost was camped on a nearby rooftop, examining the school with a pair of binoculars and a net gun at the ready.
"Looking for me?" Danny appeared right behind him and dodged the shot that came his way, cackling madly. He returned fire playfully, the ectoblast bouncing off the metal of Skulker's chest.
"If you must know, whelp, I am contemplating how best to destroy a specimen from a distance. The hunter does not become the hunted."
"And all the times I caught you in the thermos?"
"Flukes. " Rockets shot towards him and he weaved in and out of the building, letting them semiharmlessly impact on the cement. He shot up into the air, forcing Skulker to follow or lose track of him, and the aerial battle begun. Already people were starting to look out of windows.
Danny was having immense fun. It was like a game; annoy Skulker, dodge the attack, counter with one of your own. Several times he was hit, but the pain was only momentary. After a while he noticed Skulker always stayed a certain radius away from the school and decided to use that to his advantage.
He had completely forgotten about the flower.
He was reminded when he crossed into the edge of its zone of effect, and everything was suddenly hilarious. Skulker took potshots from outside, and that was gold too. "Missed me!" He laughed, went to fire an ectoblast and stopped, mesmerized by the flickering green surrounding his hand. The distraction caused him to be slammed into a nearby apartment block with enough force to leave a crater. "Hahaha, ow…" Something dug painfully into his side and he grabbed at it, to find it was the Thermos on his belt. "Oh hey, this thing!"
He pointed it at Skulker and pressed the button, and didn't care that he missed because holy shit wow that light was pretty. A brief flicker of common sense was all that stopped him sticking his hand in it before he was bodily slammed into tarmac and it shut off. "What is your problem?" he whined.
Meanwhile, so many people were crowded around the classroom's window it was a wonder any of them could breathe. Maddie sighed. There was no way anyone would pay attention if she continued the lecture, and there was no way she could pass up the opportunity to catch the ghost kid while he was acting like this.
Which is why everyone was soon standing in the parking lot, staring at the battle. Maddie had pulled down her jumpsuit's hood and, following the movements with the tip of an ectogun, was occasionally firing at one or both.
Tucker turned to Sam, shading his hand over his eyes. "He's getting his butt kicked." This hadn't gone unnoticed by the students that were members of the Phan club. Dash in particular was yelling incomprehensibly sports related advice up to the sky. Sam bit her lip. "We have to get back into the classroom and get that flower." He nodded, and they slipped away. "I'm not eating it this time."
Unbeknownst to them, in the stampede for the door that the teacher's change of plan had produced, Paulina had been in a position to grab it, and taken it she had. The idea of a flower that was irresistible to the ghost boy had in turn been irresistible to her, and she'd hid it on her person, much to the frustration of the two who were turning the classroom upside down in their search for it.
Danny managed a lucky shot with the thermos, and Skulker was captured. He floated on his back, activating and deactivating it in a bright white beacon right into the sky, before a blast of green that came too close for comfort caused him to drop it with a yelp. He dived, caught it, and dodged another shot. He grinned at Maddie.
"I like this game."
He dove straight for her at blinding speed, twisting and jinking and turning intangible when she fired, taking a hit to the face which caused him to reel back, before swooping around and trying again, laughing all the while. This behavior was not unexpected considering what he'd been exposed to, but it was still incredibly unnerving. She stood her ground.
He didn't turn invisible, seeming to know her lenses made that tactic useless. It was worrying how much he seemed to know about their equipment. If she didn't know better she'd say that someone was feeding him the information, but Jazz and Danny were good, sweet kids, and Jack would never consider it in a million years. She made a mental note to update the ghost radar to prevent him invisibly listening in.
He swiped the gun, grabbing the barrel and phasing it out of her hand. She punched him and he pinwheeled off into the air, clutching his nose with a cry. It healed quickly, as wounds not inflicted by ectoplasm tended to do, and he waved the gun at her triumphantly. "I win!"
"Oh no you don't." She reached for the Bazooka, and had just started to heft it to her shoulder when Paulina did the unthinkable; take the flower out of her shirt and wave it around, the ghost's gaze suddenly transfixed to the movement like a cat following a finger. "Oh ghost boy!~ I have something for youuuu!" Sam and Tucker had raced back on seeing the "game" through the window and had arrived just in time for Sam to gag.
Even Paulina involuntarily stepped back when a black and white blur zoomed towards her at impossible speeds, stopping only an inch from her face. The flower was taken from her limp hand, he flashed her a smile that made her heart flutter and knees weaken and with a shout of "Thanks!" he was flying equally fast upwards at a ninety degree angle. Tucker activated the video function on his PDA, and noticed several other students had had the same idea. Whatever happened next was going to be good.
"He accepted it!" Paulina squeaked, hands clasped together. "He really loves me!" Sam rolled her eyes. "Or, he could be giving new meaning to 'high as a kite' and you're deluded," she muttered. Paulina's eyes narrowed.
About fifteen feet up in the air, Danny's attention had been fully captured by the flower, and nothing else in the world existed for him. Even the tiny little human voice at the back of his head which had been horrifiedly screaming at him for the past ten minutes had forgotten why it was doing that and was just continuing on general principle. He floated in pure bliss, sniffing it, nuzzling it, licking it…
"Mrs. Fenton, is he eating it?"
"It… appears so." The Bazooka's butt rested on the ground. Ghosts didn't eat anything, not even this. It was another behavioural anomaly in a long list of them, and her scientific side urged her to start writing this down, especially to see if ingestion had any alternate effects. Her hunter side cautioned her to keep her hand on the weapon.
Danny finished chewing, swallowed, and looked down in confusion at his empty hands with the most hurtful wounded expression Sam had ever seen on his face, and it was all she could do not to burst out laughing despite everything. Her attempts not to were blown out of the water when he caught sight of his own tail and stiffened, alert, before chasing it at 112 mph.
After an impressive display of reflex, agility and sheer disregard for physics that went on for quite some time, Danny ended up floating upside down panting, arms dangling. "Can… can someone stop the world? It's spinning too fast," he slurred. He still had not caught the appendage, and one hand was swatting at the air as if trying to press an invisible button. He pointed at his tail like it had personally offended him. "You win this time, but I'll get you eventually!"
Just as Danny's human side had ghost traits like being able to use intangibility/invisibility and the famous Scary Eyes, so too did his ghost side have human ones such as a tendency to unnecessarily breathe. One such was the ability to consume food for energy, although it was woefully slow and inefficient compared to the thing it was attempting to copy. Ectoplasm wasn't really suited for such a purpose, and since he usually was human when he ate it wasn't really an issue.
The point is, while Tucker's stomach acid was pretty much enough to immediately neutralize the effects of blood blossoms, Danny's body could only slowly loosen the grip the effects of the ghost nip had on him.
It was at that point the Red Huntress had shown up. She'd had difficulty finding a place to activate her suit in the sudden rush the ghost fight had produced, slipping away only to be ensnared in conversation.
"Val!" the ghost kid cried as a magenta bolt shot past him. He sounded for all the world like he was greeting an old friend, and that only inched up her irritation. He continued, heedless. "Haven't seen you for a while! Are you here to play?"
"I'm here to hurt you, you liferuining lump!" Valerie paused and decided she'd never alliterate again.
An expression of genuine hurt flickered across his features before being replaced by that serene smile. "Me? What did I do? You wound me Val!"
"You know what you did! Stop calling me Val!" She fired, and he dodged.
Down on the ground, Tucker turned to Sam. "Okay, now we need to get him out of here." They watched as Danny jumped on the back of Valerie's board, unbalancing it and causing them both to have to stop to correct their flight. "Agreed. Can you hack into her suit?" He sadly closed the video feed and started typing. "I can give it a shot…"
===
Danny woke up slowly. He felt utterly at peace with the world, and so didn't want to awaken to find it wasn't at peace with him, as had pretty much constantly been the case since the accident. He'd had a pleasant if really strange dream, and he tried to recall it through the numb misty fog.
He sat bolt upright.
Sam and Tucker knew he'd woken up when they heard the thump and moan of a head hitting something hard. Sam paused Doomed and took off her headphones. "Sleeping beauty awakes."
Their only response was a muffled groan from the floor. "Please tell me what I remember isn't what I remember."
"Sorry dude," Tucker said, clearly not sorry at all, pausing his own game. "I've got video if you want to check it out. It's aaaaaall on there." He held out the PDA for Danny to see and pressed play. If blue eyed glares could kill…
Danny snatched the PDA to Tucker's protest and hurriedly deleted it before passing it back. Sam chuckled. "You have to admit, it was pretty funny." Danny just folded his arms.
"Oh hey, it's going viral on YouTube." Tucker flicked through several videos titled things like Amity Park's Saviour Everyone and This Is Your Ghost On Drugs.
"I'm going to strangle you, Tuck."
"Hey, don't look at me, I didn't upload them." Flick, flick. "It's even being set to music."