Rashomon Effect
AN: This takes place two and some months after Reality Trip and right before Double Cross my Heart
William Lancer took a sip of his coffee as he took in the last few minutes to himself. He glanced up at the clock on the wall and read it as five minutes till seven thirty. Five minutes till the first day of school started back up.
"William, you'll be late for your class." Robert Falluca said, grabbing his business jacket from his chair in the teacher's lounge.
William sat his coffee down on the table he sat at, a copy of Death in the Clouds lay beside the mug. He looked up at his college and friend and smiled. "I plan on making a grand entrance."
Robert smiled as he put his jacket on. "Have fun. Oh!" He paused with his hand on the door before turning back to William. "Jenny was wondering if you'd like to come out with us tonight?"
"I don't want to go on another one of her blind double dates." William said, knowing Jenifer Falluca well.
"She wanted me to make sure you knew this one was going to be the one." Robert said. "If anything, it'll help after school today."
William sighed, a ghost of a smile on his face. "Sure. Where does Jenny have us going?"
"Mezer's, over in Elmerton." Robert smiled, leaving before William could talk his way out of going.
William took a sip from his coffee as he closed his book, knowing he'd better not get caught up in that for fear of losing time. With the bell about to ring any second now he washed his coffee mug and sat it out to dry. He put his book in his suitcase and walked out of the teacher's lounge just as the bell rang.
A few loner students were rushing towards their class as William walked to room 204. He had looked at the class roster last week and was surprised he had almost the same class for first period that he had had last year. And he knew what to expect. One to three were always late, one gave him ten pages when he asked for only two, and others gave him barely a page but because of their position in sports he felt he had to bump up their grade. Well this year was going to be different, something told him it would be deep in his gut.
William opened the door to the class room, instantly getting the loud talk down to surprised mumbles.
"What's Mr. Lancer doing here?"
"Oh please tell us class is canceled."
"What happened to Mrs. Canaday?"
William sat down his suit case on the barren desk and looked at the class of nineteen sophomores. There sat Fenton, Foley, and Manson in the back, close to the windows. Baxter and his posy took the left front corner closest to the door with Gray and Young on the outskirts. In the random spots King, Macintosh, and Randolph sat, the three not being friends with anyone in the class William had noticed.
"I'm sure you're all wondering where Mrs. Canaday is." William said, quieting down the last of the mumbling. "Last Thursday she went into labor so at the moment she's in the hospital. She hopes to come back and teach you some time before Christmas, but until then you're stuck with me."
Moans and groans filled the classroom as William smiled. "Alright, you know the drill. First day of school, I need you all to write about an event that happened to you this past summer. Three paragraphs is all I'm asking for and Miss King, please no more than eight pages."
Snickers ran through-out the class as William pointed out the one student that managed to write a book in the spans of an hour.
"Whatever you get done before the end of class I want here on my desk." William said as the students pulled out paper for their assignment.
The room got silent as the students did what was asked of them. William sat down at his desk and went back to reading his book. He hoped to finish the book before the end of the week, knowing he wouldn't get too much time once he had to start grading papers.
Time past quickly and before long William found his reading interrupted by Hannah King coming up to his desk, papers in hand. Her disconcerted look showed how she wanted her peers to see her but her writing showed a side of her that William hoped would escape more than just on paper.
Hannah led the way for more papers to appear on William's desk as the seconds ticked by on the analog clock above the chalkboard. A thick pile of notebook paper appeared on the desk in no time as chatter filled the room. William looked over his students to find if anyone was still working, not surprised to see Daniel Fenton gnawing away at the metal that held the long dwindled down eraser of his pencil, his left hand holding his head up as he worked on the paper.
There was always one student who managed to make something this easy be so hard. It was hard to believe April that just two years ago he was a B- student.
The bell rang, signaling they had five minutes to get to their next class and reminding William he should be getting prepared for a new class of freshmen. "Mr. Fenton, Miss Sanchez, have you finished your papers?" William asked as the class started to pack up and leave.
"Oh here Mr. Lancer." Paulina Sanchez said, absently placing the paper on his desk as she talked to Ashley White. "I can't believe she did that. Are you sure you saw Max doing that?"
William didn't bother to find out what "that" was, knowing he really didn't want to know. He picked up the pile, waiting for everyone to leave as he found himself waiting on Daniel, who was now standing up but still writing.
"I'll go ahead and take what you have, Daniel." William said, knowing he needed to get down stairs.
"Sorry it's not done." Daniel said, his eyes apologetic as he and his two friends walked to the front of the classroom.
"It's ok." William said, taking the handed paper to put on the top of the pile. Maybe April was right, William admitted to himself, remembering some of what Daniel had turned in last year. There was potential in the boy, but it no longer was able to come out. William shook his head, reminding himself he had a class that was going to be waiting on his downstairs if he didn't get going. He quickly put the papers in his suitcase, grabbing his book in his free hand before leaving the empty classroom.
By the time lunch came around William found himself rejoicing in the fact that he had a free bell right after. He knew he never wanted to teach seniors but he was starting to wonder if freshmen were getting worst. He closed himself away in his classroom and pulled out his bagged lunch from his desk drawer. Munching away on his turkey sandwich, he skimmed through the period one papers. A few grabbed his attention right from the start as he looked through them. He pushed them over to the side to read later only for him to notice something strange. Most of the papers were about the same event. He was expecting Star Young and Paulina Sanchez to write about the same thing but to see Hannah King, Mikey Driscoll, Devon Randolph, and Daniel Fenton had as well surprised him enough to pay more attention to those papers he hadn't thought were going to be interesting.
Devon Randolph
1st Block English
9/6/05
The most esciting thing that happened this past summer would have to be Tuesday July 26th. I had agreed to go with my grandmother to the mall when Danny Phantom saved us.
A ghost had apeared, something most people today would not count as too extraordinary until we noticed it had a real gun. Danny Phantom dived out in front of us and took a shot just as it was heading to my grandmother. Without him, I dought I would be here now.
A knock took William away from working away at the short two paragraphs with his red pen to look through the small window in his door. Not seeing a head, he thought it was some student trying to prank him until the person knocked again before trying the door handle.
William got up from his chair and opened the door only to see Robert standing there.
"Here, Yumi needs you to check this kid out when you get a chance to." Robert said, handing his friend a stack of papers. "Some foreign exchange student."
William took the papers without looking at them as he asked, "Did something happen during the summer?"
Robert looked at him, not sure what he was talking about until it hit him. "Oh right! You were helping your mom move in July, weren't you?" Robert remembered. "Ya, some ghost locked down Amity Park Mall close to the end of the month."
"I think most of my students were there during it." William admitted, walking back to his desk to pick up Kwan's paper sitting on the top of the not read pile. "Even Mr. Lee wrote about it, and he doesn't normally comment too much on ghost attacks like this."
"Well it was different." Robert explained, walking into the classroom to let the door close him in. "From what I heard, the ghost was actually aiming on killing humans."
William eyed his short friend in disbelief. "Really?"
"I wasn't there, but that's what I've heard." Robert shrugged. His stomach growled loudly in the empty classroom, getting a smile on the man. "I better get my lunch before my stomach makes a meal of me. You still going to Mezmer's?"
"I'll be there." William smiled at his friend.
Robert saw the smile before leaving William to his papers. William looked at the paper still in his hand as he made his way back to his chair.
Kwan Lee
P1 English
Sept 6, 2005
I've probably replayed the events of this day so many times in my mind so maybe writing them down might help me. Dash and I had headed to Amity Park Mall because it had gotten too hot for Dash to wipe my butt in basketball any longer.
We were heading towards May's when a gun went off. We did what we'd been taught to do so many times in events of a ghost attack and ducked behind a potted plant, hoping to have the ghost ignore us or better yet not have even seen us. People around us were screaming, most running into May's hoping to find some protection.
I think I heard someone scream out that the doors wouldn't move right before another shot rang out. The next think I knew, Dash was grabbing at his left arm, blood running down his arm. I hate to say that's when it went black for me. The next thing I knew, an EMT was checking me over and Dash had already been bandaged up.
Every day after I've wished I didn't faint so I could've done something. I guess I wasn't cut out to help people like that maybe.
Quickly William went to the next page, hoping to find out more about what happened. He left his red pen to the side, telling himself he'd mark the pages up afterwards. For once he was glad to see Hannah King's paper was next and seemed to be written with dialogue.
Hannah King
09-06-05
English
Disclaimer: my memory is faulty so the dialogue in this might be off from what they originally said.
Sarah and I had just walked out of the Coffee Beanery, our drinks in one hand and a bag each hanging from our other. We'd both come to the mall looking for deals on some new cloths as we headed towards Dis Toppic.
"What if we're living in the universe from Juniper Lee?" I asked, an idea of monsters secretly hiding in plain sight filling my brain.
"We've already got ghosts that can do that." Sarah reminded me. "Do you really wanna add monsters and having a Te Xuan Ze in our town as well?"
"But what if Danny Phantom is the Te Xuan Ze?" I asked, fan girling about the idea.
Sarah took a sip from her iced coffee, hiding the smile on her face.
A shot rang through the air, startling me into throwing my frappuccino out towards the sound in a crazy attempt to protect us. We quickly ducked into the sports place we were passing, hiding behind the column by the doorway as a woman dressed in a polo shirt and jeans was working on getting the gate down.
"Get towards the back!" she ordered, pointing towards the back wall as the other patrons to the shop were rushing that way.
Sarah and I headed towards the back only for a man's voice to call out, "The door won't open!"
We huddled in the small back room as the woman who had closed the gate got behind us. A man with a Yankee hat called out, "Let me try."
After a few bangs of his body verses the door it started to sink in that we were stuck in the mall as another shot rang out.
"It's Phantom and another ghost." The woman behind us said, she being the closest to the door. The woman's face drained of color as the mumble of the ghost's voice wear barely heard. "The ghost is Zaid Jarrah." The woman gasped.
"Who?" I asked, wondering why the name scared her so.
Before she could answer she pushed me farther inside the back room as shots from the ghost's real gun deafened the area. A green light and the even higher pitch of an ecto blast discharging filled the air, stopping the bullet's rapid fire.
The woman and I peeked out from the doorway, glad there didn't seem to be a door to block our view only to see the ghost had been solid when he'd been blown back. The ghost rubbed his head as he pushed himself away from the gate to the sport's store. He floated upwards, dropping an empty magazine before flying out of sight. With the sound of more bullets being fired, we disappeared back in the safety of the back room. A terrifying scream filled our ears, the sound almost other worldly as it blocked out the sound of the door behind me being broken down.
"Come on." Sarah said, putting a hand on my shoulder as I realized I had zoned out, fear overcoming me as the sound of the scream faded away. We left out the back door of the sports shop to find every paramedic in Amity Park had been called to the mall.
Now that I've had a chance to look up our ghostly assailant, I found out what scared the woman at the sports store so badly. Zaid Jarrah was the name of the man who had hijacked one of the four planes on September eleventh, two thousand and one.
William sat down Hannah King's papers, surprised as the information washed over him. He knew to take the girl's writing with a grain of salt, as she was becoming good at adding stuff to make even the simplest of tasks seem interesting. He quickly went to the next paper, slightly disappointed it was Paulina's.
Paulina Sanchez
Block 1 English
9-6-05
The most exciting thing that happened this past summer was when my soon to be husband, Danny Phantom saved my life at the mall.
William went ahead and put a red F on the girl's paper. He put a note below her sentence that read, The assignment was for a proper paper containing at least three paragraphs with four sentences at least in each. William put her paper in the pile for those that had been graded, it not as high as it should be.
Mia Thomas
English
9-6-05
An event that happened this past summer accrued in the mall during the month of July. No one was expecting a ghost to have a real gun, but this one did, giving everyone a new level of fear.
Mom was taking a day off so we could go shopping together, taking advantage of the sales before the shops bumped the prices up for the back to school shopping. We were checking out of Mango when a gunshot scared us. People ran into the shop for protection as we ducked behind the counter. Another shot ran out before scaring us with multiple shots right after another.
What felt like an eternity later, firemen came into Mango to see if anyone needed medical attention. We found out from then that the ghost had welded all the door shut to the building to prevent anyone from escaping.
William found himself hoping for the first time that the Guys in White now held the ghost of Ziad Jarrah. The man was dangerous while still alive, hoping to crash the plane he had hijacked into the White House. To hear he was still around, even as a ghost, drew fear in William's blood. Only four years ago had all that happened, killing his father and sending his aged mother into the state she now lived in.
The man went ahead and picked up the next paper as the bell rang to end lunch.
Dash Baxter
Sept 6, 2005
1st English
Kwan and I had gone to the mall on the most memorable day this past summer. We had been playing basketball and wanted a chance to cool down and since the mall was closest we went there. We hadn't been there long before a shot was fired. We ducked behind a potted plant, hoping to hide only for me to get shot in my left arm. I was lucky that it only grazed my skin, but at the time it had burned. At the sight of blood, Kwan fainted so I found myself protecting the both of us until help arrived.
William knew that the summer break normally left some students forgetting the rudimentary things of school work, but Dash needed to be reminded his school work was what kept him in football and basketball. The boy needed to keep a C average at least and last year he barely had that. The man sighed, grading it with a D even though that was too high of a grade in William's opinion. He placed Dash's paper in the graded pile he had going and picked up the next one.
John Macintosh
1st Block English
9-6-2005
The most exciting day of this past summer actually started out as the most boring. My father works as part of Amity Park Fire Department and, like any day in our crazy little town, they were prepared for anything between an oxygen fueled fire to an ecto-energy fueled one. Though nothing had happened so I spent the morning watching Code Lyoko reruns.
Halfway through Image Problem the alarm went off. Dad had told me to be ready the first call they got so I jumped into my usual seat on the truck and we headed off to Amity Park Mall. Over the headset I heard that a ghost had locked everyone inside and had gotten a firearm. I don't know enough about ghosts, but I don't think they usually want to kill humans, just scare us.
One we got to the mall, we found out every door had been welded shut and the windows were tornado grade, meaning they couldn't easily be broken from the outside. I stayed out with the truck so I could hear everyone's radio when I saw the Fenton's RV show up. Mr. and Mrs. Fenton jumped out wearing every piece of weapons they had created and ran over to Chief Cook. They must have been given a radio, since I was able to hear them as well.
Mrs. Fenton pulled out a weapon off her side and pointed it at one of the glass doors, ordering everyone to get behind cover. She blasted the door away and the two rushed in with almost every fireman and EMT behind them. Dad told me they had captured the ghost behind the attack and saved Danny Phantom.
William re-read that last sentence, surprised. The Fenton parents he knew and dealt with almost spat on Danny Phantom and the notion he did any good to this town. He started to wonder if John understood his dad wrong. He pulled out the next paper and glanced at the header. Seeing it was a particular student's work, he hoped he would find some answers as to why the Fenton parents would save the ghost boy of Amity Park.
Tucker Foley
Block 1
9-6-05
I wouldn't say the day was the most memorable of this past summer, but it sure was the most interesting. It was the day before my mom's birthday and my friends were helping me pick out a present for her. We were heading upstairs towards the card store when the first bullet had been shot.
The three of us found ourselves being forced with the crowd of rushing people all heading to the door only for a man to call out the doors had been welded shut. Behind us Danny Phantom had landed, hoping to help us only to get shot by the real world gun. Thankfully it didn't seem to do too much to him, his ecto-plasm seemed to just reform around the hole the bullet had made. Phantom turned around and flew up, fighting to protect us from the ghost name Zaid Jarrah. We found a safe place to hunker down, hiding behind the jewelry store's cases. I managed to see the firemen and Danny's parents were outside from my spot, all of them trying to find a way to save us.
More bullets being shot took my attention back to the ghosts fighting as Phantom created a blast so powerful it knocked the two away from each other. After dropping a few more bullets from his ecto-plasm, Phantom flew back up and tried to get the real world gun from the ghost's hands only to end up taking in a whole magazine. Something was wrong at that point. The only thing I could guess is that Phantom's ecto-plasm couldn't replicate itself fast enough as his screams worried us. We rushed over to Phantom, worried for his after life as Mr. and Mrs. Fenton took care of Zaid. They ordered us away from Phantom before agreeing to help him, finding his ecto-plasm had absorbed 32 bullets, the whole last magazine in the ghost's gun. Who knows how many lives he saved.
William found Samantha's paper held a similar account. He wasn't surprised and assumed Daniel's would be the same as well once he got down to the unfinished paper.
Lester Williams
9-6-05
Block 1
Mikey and I had headed to the mall on this event of the past summer. I remember hearing someone call out they saw Danny Phantom and looked up only to see the ghost disappear. In hind sight, I should've realized he doesn't normally just fly around and he was looking for a ghost but I would never have been prepared to see the ghost holding a real gun.
We ducked into the closest store after a shot had been fired. The store keepers herded us to the back as more gunfire sounded. A scream kept us from looking out to see what had happened until a fireman came to our hiding place to let us know Phantom and the Fentons had taken care of the ghost.
I wish I could thank Danny Phantom. He saved so many lives, more then he will ever know.
William took in the last sentence, wondering if there might be a way for the ghost boy to read all of these. The ghost looked to have died when he was only fourteen or fifteen so the thanks would be welcomed, William was sure. He reached for the next one in the pile to see it was Daniel's incomplete one, eraser marks could be seen as if the boy couldn't figure out how best to word it.
Daniel Fenton
September 6, 2005
English
An event that happened this past summer would have to be the day Zaid Jarrah appeared as a ghost in the mall. I was there with Sam and Tucker, trying to help him find a birthday gift for his mom.
As we headed to Amity Greating, Danny Phantom flew over before disappearing. A shot sounded in the air, freezing Phantom as he showed back up. We ran for cover as a ghost appeared, holding an uzi. Phantom took the first shot, finding it didn't hurt only for the bullets to hurt worst and worst the more he got shot. He'
And that's where it ended. William tried to read some of the erased words only to be disappointed at what little he could read. Most people's accounts held more I's and we's but Daniel seemed more focused on what Danny Phantom was doing. It was almost as if…
William couldn't finish the thought. Quickly he called up Google and asked it to bring up pictures of Danny Phantom. AS the webpage loaded, William got up and went over to his filing cabinet. Going to the bottom one, he pulled open the draw and pulled out last year's yearbook. He opened it to the freshmen pictures and quickly found Daniel Fenton amongst the pictures. He rushed back to his computer and put a thumb over Danny Phantom's white hair and compared the two pictures. William slowly dropped his thumb in surprise at how similar the two looked.
"Danny Fenton, Danny Phantom?" William said aloud to himself, wanting to hear the two names together. They were the same, William realized. All of the absences in the past year, the way he seemed to disappear when William was sure he had the boy in trouble. It all made sense now! Somehow Daniel Fenton had been saving this town for the past year as Danny Phantom.
William finally glanced over towards the papers Yumi had sent him, his mind still processing that he had been teaching the town's hero when he noticed something strange about the foreign exchange papers. An idea slowly formed in William's head, thinking if Daniel was really Danny Phantom this that he was about to do would either reveal nothing or maybe everything. He determined to himself that he wouldn't tell Daniel he knew. The boy had enough to worry about as it was. Though he would help him out a bit. Anyway, town hero was above jock now, wasn't it?
The End