When All is Lost
It was just a normal Thursday morning. Children were heading to school, and adults were driving to work. Actually, it was a bit abnormal for Danny Fenton. He and his friends, Sam and Tucker, were walking to school, after missing the bus, but it looked like they were actually going to be on time. There was still fifteen minutes until the bell rang, and they were only two blocks away.
Sam seemed to be thinking along the same lines.
"Wow, you might actually be on time for school today, Danny." She said.
"Yeah, it'll be the first time in…a few weeks?" Tucker commented.
"Hey, it isn't my fault! It's not like I can just ignore all of the ghosts that just happen to appear right before school." Danny retorted.
"It also might help if you didn't sleep until 7:30." Sam said.
"You'd sleep late too if you had to get up at 1:30 in the morning and fight the stupid Box Ghost!" protested Danny.
Danny groaned as he saw the familiar blue mist come out of his mouth. Sam and Tucker also noticed it. All three of them looked around them, trying to discover where the ghost was.
"There!" Tucker shouted as he pointed at two figures coming towards them.
As the figures got closer, Danny recognized them as Desiree and Technus. He briefly wondered why those two would team up before an ectoplasmic blast came his way and he had to dodge it.
Looking around to make sure no one was in the vicinity, Danny quickly transformed into Danny Phantom.
"Don't think or say any wish!" He barked at his friends before flying up to meet the two ghosts.
"So, are you two dating now?" He asked as he shot an ecto-blast at each of them.
"No. We met at the portal and I, Technus, thought it would be fun if we beat you together" Technus said in his annoying voice as he shot two ecto-blasts at Danny.
"I also thought he would make a good distraction." Desiree said.
"A distraction from what?" Danny asked as he dodged Technus's attack.
"This!" Desiree exclaimed as she gathered a massive ball of pink energy in her hands and threw it at Danny.
Her aim was right on target. The energy hit Danny in the chest and he screamed as he was thrown into the hard pavement below.
"Do something!" Danny yelled at Tucker and Sam. "I'm having a hard time here!"
"Tucker," Sam said, groaning at Danny's rudeness. "You have the thermos, don't you?"
"Oh yeah!" he said, and then pulled it out. He was about to throw it to Danny, but Sam put her hand in front of him.
"I don't think that's such a good idea…" Sam said, motioning towards Danny.
He was currently locked in a battle with Technus while frantically dodging Desiree's blasts. In a short amount of time, he was lying face down on the ground, being pounded on by Technus. Sam quickly snatched the thermos from Tucker's grasp and then opened it, sucking Desiree and Technus inside it. Afterwards, they rushed over to Danny's side.
"Danny! Are you ok?" Sam said.
Danny reverted back to his human form and got up, dusting off his pants. His left arm was bleeding and one of his pant's legs was torn.
"Look what you guys did!" Danny said angrily. "If you had helped sooner, maybe I wouldn't have gotten hurt! Now I see how much you guys care!" With that said, he stomped off.
"Danny, you jerk!" Sam yelled after his retreating form, and he halted in his tracks. "Now we're late for school. You can't hold us accountable for everything that goes wrong. We're only here to help."
"I know guys, I know." He said, coming back towards them. "I'm sorry, guys. I'm just tired, is all. Can you forgive me?"
"Like we do everyday, Danny." Tucker said. "Now hurry up, we have to get to class!"
So, they ran towards the school.
By the time the three teenagers arrived at school, it was 8:45. They had already missed homeroom, so they walked to English class.
'Oh great,' Danny thought bitterly. 'Whyis it I'm always late for Lancer's class?I'm occasionally late for other classes, but primarily, it's Lancer's class.'
The trio paused in front of the door that would surely lead them to their doom. They could hear Mr. Lancer already starting one of his mind-numbing lectures. They sighed and walked in.
Mr. Lancer was standing at the front of the room, holding a thick textbook in his hands, looking extremely irritated. The students, however, looked relieved that they no longer had to pretend to pay attention to what Mr. Lancer had been saying. They took advantage of this situation to whisper quietly behind their hands while Lancer's attention was focused elsewhere.
"So," Lancer said. "Did you three decide that eight o' clock was too early to come to school? Or do you actually have a good explanation for your tardiness?"
Danny tried to think of an acceptable excuse for being late; he couldn't tell Lancer the real reason. He glanced at his friends, but they looked as just as clueless as he did.
"No answer?" Lancer asked, and was met by more silence. "Well, then I guess I'll just have to give all of you a week's worth of detention. Now take your seats."
Danny, Sam, and Tucker obediently sat down at their desks while Mr. Lancer droned on.
"Now today, as I was saying before I was interrupted by these three," he said to the class, indicating Danny, Sam, and Tucker. "Today's assignment is to read chapters 1-3 of To Kill a Mockingbird. Right now we will discuss the themes of the book so you know what you're looking for. You will also take notes on the plot, the summary of each chapter, the important events, and vocabulary. You will tell if each theme shows up in each chapter or not. I hope you are writing this down. Now, the first theme is growing up…"
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The day seemed to get longer as each second passed. They were now in Biology class, and there was only 6 minutes left until lunch.
Danny started counting down the minutes until the bell rang, signaling his freedom, even thought it would be short lived.
Mr. Ditter was at the front of the classroom, talking about DNA and RNA, but Danny wasn't paying much attention. His eyes were fixed on the clock placed above the chalkboard.
Something small hit him on his cheek. He turned his head to the left and saw Sam staring at him from her desk. Her piece of paper that she had been taking notes on was missing part of the top right corner, which she had crumpled and thrown at Danny.
"Hey," She said. "Me and Tuck need to talk to you."
"What about?" Danny asked.
"I'll tell you at lunch."
"Alright."
Danny and Sam's conversation took a whole two minutes. Now there were four minutes left.
Mr. Ditter was now droning about the three main types of RNA. "There are three types of RNA: messenger RNA, ribosomal RNA, and transfer RNA. Messenger RNA contains genes that have instructions for amino acids to assemble proteins…"
Danny attempted to listen and take notes, but his attention span did not last long. His interest drifted back to the clock. Two minutes left.
He wondered what Sam and Tucker needed to talk to him about. It could just be something trivial, but Sam's tone had been serious.
Mr. Ditter was now copying their homework assignment on the board. "Define all key terms for chapter 12 and write a summary for each section."
Danny copied down the assignment, hoping that he would actually remember it and still have time to complete it by the end of the day. That took a minute and a half.
'Thirty more seconds,' Danny thought anxiously. He watched as the second hand moved towards the nine on the clock.
Everyone had now gathered up their things and were now sitting on the edge of their seats, ready to jump out of them the second the bell rang.
The bell's thunderous ring finally came and everyone shot out of the classroom and towards the cafeteria.
Danny walked into the cafeteria and saw that the lunch line was extremely long. He decided that he would sit down until the line went down. There was no use in standing in line that long, right?
He walked towards his regular table, where Tucker and Sam were already waiting.
He got a bit sidetracked, though, when Paulina walked past him. He was so busy staring at her that he tripped over an adjacent chair and fell. He landed on the same arm that had been injured earlier. Laughter rang in his ears as he picked himself up and sat next to his friends.
Tucker looked like he was trying not to laugh, but Sam looked irritated. "Do you still like her? She's just a shallow prep who's never gonna give you a second thought. She only likes your ghost half, so just give it up!"
Danny was now beyond irritated. He was already having a bad day. First, he had to fight Technus and Desiree, then he got detention for a week, he had got a C on his math test after wasting nearly all of his nutrition1 time to negotiate, and now his left arm was starting to bleed again.
"You know what, Sam? You're just jealous because you're not as pretty or popular as Paulina!" Danny had started out talking normally, but he soon found himself yelling.
"Just because you're a klutz and tripped over a chair doesn't mean you have to take it out on Sam!" Tucker shouted at him.
"You're not any better! You and Sam hardly ever do anything right!" Danny shot back.
"Then why are you always ordering us around if we can't do anything right?" Tucker asked heatedly.
"I don't know. I don't even know why I hang around you guys. You're always harassing me about something I did wrong!" snapped Danny. All of his frustration and anger was coming out and he was directing it at his two friends.
"Well you won't have to worry about us harassing you any longer, you jerk!" Sam shouted. She and Tucker then dashed out of the cafeteria, leaving Danny alone at the table.
He looked over his shoulder and saw the entire student body staring at either him or the door which Tucker and Sam had just went through.
'Oh', Danny thought. 'I guess the whole school heard that. Great…'
Not wanting to be stared at for the rest of the lunch period, Danny walked past the hundreds of muttering students and into the hallway.
Tucker and Sam didn't talk to him or even look at him that afternoon. Even in history class, when their assigned seats were right next to each other. They still didn't spare him a glance. Danny felt bad about arguing with them and hurting their feelings and wanted to apologize. He decided not to talk to them though, because he still felt irritated and was afraid that he might start yelling again.
In detention, Sam and Tuck sat as far away as possible from Danny. He had calmed down a lot since lunch and he had already planned to apologize to his friends after detention.
Finally, after fifty minutes, Lancer told the 'detentionees' they could leave.
Danny walked to his locker to get his books he would need that night for his homework. He stuffed the books into his backpack, and then turned around to catch up with Tucker and Sam. Instead of seeing his friends, though, he saw Dash Baxter, Kwan, and a couple of other muscular jocks surrounding him.
"Where you goin', Fentino?" Dash said, looking very intimidating.
"Go away, Dash. I'm not in the mood." Danny replied, though he didn't really expect his words to stop Dash.
"Well, I'm in the mood." said Dash.
The huge jocks were closing in around Danny, looking like lions getting ready for the kill. Danny had nowhere to go. There were no empty slots he could fit through in the ring of bullies.
Dash, as ring leader of the group, landed the first punch. It hit Danny right in the stomach. After that, all Danny could see was a volley of fists, and sometimes kicks, hitting him. He tried to defend himself, but he was outnumbered ten to one. He couldn't go intangible because that would blow his cover.
After about forty five minutes of non stop abuse, Dash and his gang got bored and stuffed Danny into his locker.
Danny heard the sound of the bullies' laughter as they left him alone. He couldn't see anything, but he could tell that he had to be bleeding pretty badly in some places. He couldn't tell exactly where, though, because his whole body was one big hurt.
Danny tried to faze out of his locker, but couldn't. He was too weak. For the next ten minutes, he tried to go intangible, or even move, but he found that he couldn't. He eventually gave up and slipped into unconsciousness.
He awoke some time later. It took him a few minutes to realize where he was. He tried going intangible again, and this time it worked.
'I guess I got some of my energy back,' He thought as he fell to the floor.
The hallway was dark. The school had already been locked up and even the janitors had departed.
Danny fazed through the wall of the school. It was dark outside, too. Night had fallen. It was also wet outside. Rain was coming down fairly hard.
He started walking towards his house, intangible so he wouldn't get soaked. His intangibility did not last long, though. He was still weak from his fight with Dash and his cronies.
'Wonderful,' Danny thought dryly. 'Could this day get any worse?'
When he finally reached his house, he turned the doorknob and opened the door to reveal his parents standing side by side with grim expressions on their faces. Gulping, he closed the door behind him. 'It's sure dim in here,' he thought. 'But not as bad as the sky outside. It was pitch black!' He then noticed that his mom was swinging around a white paper. 'Uh oh, it can't be…' he thought and crossed his fingers. 'Anything but that!'
"Danny, we have to talk to you about your study habits." His mom said in a strict tone.
"Ye-yes Mom?"
"How did you fail all of your classes! I can't believe you! What do you have to say for yourself!"
"Mom I-"
"Never mind, don't give me anymore of your excuses!"
"Danny," Jack said. "We are fed up with your study habits. Countless times you have lied to us about studying when you haven't!"
"I did too study for the last test! I just couldn't think of it when I was taking it!"
"Then you didn't study hard enough!" Maddie said furiously. "Now we're going to set regulations, like we should have done a long time ago. At this rate, you'll end up flunking the ninth grade!"
"Mom!" Danny said, purely shocked.
"Danny," Jack began. "From this day forward we forbid you from talking to your friends on the phone, going to parties…"
"Going anywhere with your friends, playing on the computer…" Maddie continued.
"…or watching TV! Now go up to your room young man! F's are not acceptable in this home! Heck, you can't even have friends over! Now scat!" Jack added, and then dismissed him in a huff.
Danny trudged slowly to his room, still aghast at what had taken place. 'I didn't believe I was failing…' he thought, and then his thoughts turned to a sadder note. 'It's not like I have friends to invite over anyways,' he thought despondently.
As he entered his room, he passed by a mirror that hung on his wall and realized how beat up he was. He hadn't been in proper light since Dash and his cronies beat him up, so he hadn't noticed how bad he looked. He had bruises on most of his body, his lip was cut, and there was dried blood around his nose. He was also soaking wet and his clothes were torn and dirty. Danny changed clothes and cleaned himself up some with a cloth, then plopped down on his bed.
After he was in his room for about half an hour, he heard his mom calling, "Danny! Come down here for a moment."
'And I had just gotten comfortable too,' Danny mused, then got off of his bed reluctantly and trotted downstairs. He entered the kitchen to find his mother putting the rest of the dishes away. She turned to him and said:
"Honey, can you help me put away the rest of these dishes so I can set the table for dinner?"
"Why can't you ask Jazz?" Danny asked.
"She has better grades than you. I don't want to interrupt her studying. You are obviously slacking off in your room, rather than doing homework. Now stop arguing and help me, or dinner won't be served on time."
"Ok Mom," Danny said, then grudgingly started putting away some of the silverware.
After the dishes were all put away, Maddie began to get out plates from the cabinet.
"Danny, tell me something," she said curtly.
"What, Mom?"
"Why are your grades so bad?"
"Look, Mom. I swear to you. I'm doing better than that. The next report card will all be passing grades, I assure you."
"Don't lie to me, boy!"
"Mom! I'm not lying, I swear! On all my recent tests I've gotten a C or higher!"
"If that's true, which I doubt is, you haven't been doing your homework."
"I've done all of it!"
"Danny, stop it! I've fed up with your mendacity!"
"Mom I swear! I've just been really stressed out lately, and they'll be better I promise. I've had a really bad day, my friends-"
Maddie interrupted him by angrily swinging the plate at his face, causing it to shatter. Danny was shell-shocked; all he could do was gaze at the blood welling up from the wound on his cheek.
"Now look what you've done! You cost me my most expensive plate! Why can't you ever do anything right and stop spouting those lies! Why can't you be as smart as Jazz for a change! Go to your room, Danny! I can't stand to look at you!" Maddie said, and then cried desperately at what she had done. She had not meant to hit her son. She had just gotten extremely angry and swung the plate out of fury at how bad he was doing in school. Then she took it out on Danny, instead of taking the fault herself. She turned away for a moment, extremely distressed at her own doing, and then couldn't stand it any longer.
"Danny I-", she said, turning back, only to see Danny was running towards his room with his hand on his cheek. 'What have I done?'
Danny lay on his bed, still shaken about what had happened. 'My own mother hit me with a plate. I can't believe it…'
All of a sudden, he was overcome with a pang of dizziness. 'Oh that's right…I'm bleeding…' Dazed, he slowly got up from the bed and opened his dresser drawer, puling out a coil of adhesive gauze, then tore off a piece and stuck it on his wound. Then he went to the door and put his ear to it.
He could hear the sounds of the rest of the family having dinner downstairs. He then abruptly was aware of his own hunger. 'Good thing I always keep a small supply of food in my room.'
Danny took 3 packages of powdered donuts from under his bed. He lay down on his bed after that for at least an hour, thinking about everything that had happened that day. His friends hated him, he was badly bruised, he had horrible grades, his dad was upset with him, and his mom had swung a plate at him.
It was still raining outside when Danny fell asleep after finishing his donuts.
It was a restful slumber, but not for long…