Caveat

Of heroes and horrors a tale I shall tell

This show I've watched you know quite well

I've not been long a fan, I admit,

But amused was I by the song that starts it.

My mind, thus sparked, would not be sated

Unless, by pen, my madness abated.

Should fail this tale to make you grin,

"BACK" fixes much, like it had never been.

This show I own not, just so you're aware,

And venture onwards, reader, if you dare!

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Whoso List To Hunt

By Lady Bisclavret

It was a typical day in Amityville. The sun was shining, a warm wind was rustling the new buds on trees, and the students of Casper High were staring longingly out of classroom windows, each one lost in his or her thoughts that had nothing to do with their lessons.1

Well, most of the students anyway.

"Hurry up, Tucker! Eighth period is almost over and everyone's going to be out here in just five minutes!"

"I'm trying, Sam." Tucker growled through clenched teeth. "I'd like to see you try to calibrate someone else's PDA when the main frame of your own is covered in slimy ectoplasm. Ah, there we go!" he exclaimed as Danny's corporeal form cannoned past him backwards, crashing loudly into a row of metal bleachers lined up against the wall of the empty gym. Unseen, Sam's clenched hands jerked, as though she fought the urge to bury her face in them.

"Bingley bingley bingley boop!" Skulker looked down at the PDA hard wired onto his arm. "Research koi fish in Japan. Not again." He muttered under his breath as the jet wings sprouted out of his back once more, blasting him skyward.

From his painful position, Danny watched in relief as the relentless ghost hunter remembered to phase invisible before passing through the gym roof. It was getting harder and harder to explain to Lancer and his parents why he was routinely absent from class around the time a great wreck that had once been school property had mysteriously appeared. While Sam and Tucker weren't looking, he took the opportunity to gently touch the spot where he had hit his back to assess the damage the bleachers had done and blinked away stars. It was getting harder to hide the physical pain from his friends, too. "Come on guys, let's get out of here." he said, turning towards the doors.

"Hey, what's that?" Sam pointed a slightly trembling hand towards a small spherical object lying almost forgotten on the floor. It appeared to be a ball, half red, half white with a thin black band separating the two colors. A single, harmless-looking button was situated directly in the middle of the black band. If not for the unusual colour scheme, it could probably have passed for a baseball or even a bocce ball, if common gym equipment had the tendency to pulsate with a greenish light. Despite the eerie glow, however, the thing looked oddly familiar.

It was difficult to tell at a distance if the button was depressed or not, but that didn't matter to Danny. You didn't have much of a future in the business of super-heroics if you didn't have a healthy sense of paranoia. Instantly forgetting his pain, Danny grabbed the collars of his two friends without warning, turned them intangible with a thought, and thrust all of them to the ground.

"Oy! What're you-?"

"Shut up!" He hissed.

As if sensing their gaze, the ball did what comes naturally to inanimate objects in such circumstances: it stared back. This intense, mute exchange lasted for about sixty seconds before the voice of reason cleared his throat.

"Danny," Tucker said finally, "I don't think it's going to blow us up. You can let go now." His voice was slightly muffled.

Danny looked down and realized with a pang of guilt that he had accidentally thrust Tucker's face halfway through the floor. Sam's head was pushed all the way through. He lifted them both out and released his grip. "Sorry, guys, I just-"

"Don't worry about it." Sam said ruefully, rubbing the back of her head. "They really need to clean the boiler room down there."

Danny got up and strode over to the ball, phasing intangible again. It occurred to him that Skulker had little incentive to blow him up since he was too concerned with capturing him for his ghostly zoo. However, Skulker could still have dropped the ball on purpose so Danny approached it cautiously, fully expecting a glowing net or cage to pop out of it at any moment. He stopped a foot away from the thing and inspected it nervously. Except for fact that it was glowing, the ball didn't seem particularly paranormal; Yet Danny couldn't shake the feeling that he'd seen the ball or something like it somewhere once before. He picked it up and pressed the button with his thumb. The ball split open with a futuristic sound that was somewhere between a swish and a click, revealing a dark grayish interior that was totally devoid of nets, cages, or any other paraphernalia whatsoever.

Demonstrating an uncanny sense of dramatic timing, the bell chose that exact moment to ring quite loudly throughout the school. Danny, Tucker, and Sam all jumped at the sound and looked around wildly in case anyone suddenly barged in and saw something that would prompt some awkward explanations later on. Danny turned invisible and dived behind the bleachers, reemerging un-transformed a few moments later with an air of utter nonchalance achieved only by those with too much practice at that sort of thing. Tucker wordlessly tossed him his backpack and he shoved the ball inside. "What do you think it is?" He asked them as they hurried out of the gym.

Tucker shrugged. "Skulker wanted to play catch with some ghost dog he caught?" he suggested.

"It could open though. Maybe it was supposed to hold something." Sam said.

"What could be small enough to be contained in a ball that size though?" Danny wondered. "A ring, maybe, or a stone?"

"A ring?"

"A ring, Danny? Getting married so soon? Such poor taste!" called out Paulina from his left. As usual, Danny's head snapped automatically in her direction. As usual, the most popular girl in the school was posed against a wall of lockers, surrounded by her gaggle of her equally popular sycophants. As usual, they all laughed on cue while Paulina examined her flawless nails. Sam, however, seemed to receive her words with a strange air this afternoon, and retaliated by curving her arm around Danny's neck and smiling haughtily in Paulina's direction. Danny briefly caught a glimpse of her scowling at them as Sam steered him firmly out the front doors.

"Er, thanks." he said, dazedly. Tucker gave him a Look.

"Don't mention it." She replied with a small smile.

They lapsed into a thoughtful silence as they began the long trek homeward. After spending a day under the continuous hum of drab florescent lighting, the sounds and sights of the bright afternoon washed over them like a warm bath. The sun cast a rich, golden light over everything, from brown and green treetops, to black, red, and slate gray rooftops, to the furry tops of dogs and their walkers. Danny sighed, not for the first time wishing for one day, just one measly day when he could take a break from schoolwork and ghost fighting. He tried shifting the backpack to stop it from chafing against his back, and winced.

"What is it?" Tucker asked, raising an eyebrow suspiciously.

"Nothing! I just yawned, that's all." Danny replied, faking another yawn and purposely covering his mouth.

"I was thinking," Sam said, "about that ball-shaped thing. What are you going to do with it when you get home?"

Danny opened his mouth to answer, and closed it again. If he was honest with himself, he was looking forward to a quiet night at home, preferably in the company of a hot water bottle. Spending half the night in his parent's lab testing a ghostly ball that probably didn't do anything anyway was not high on his list of priorities. He even had half a mind to hand the thing over to his parents and let them sweat over it, though he knew that doing so would almost certainly lead to uncomfortable questions about its origin. He looked at his surroundings, willing inspiration to strike. His eyes rested briefly on a reflection of the sinking sun. The sun beaming down from the heavens made him think of outer space, and his wish to become an astronaut. Space was a bit like the Ghost Zone. Both were immeasurable, seemingly infinite. The sun, too, was like an inter-dimensional portal, content to stay right where it was in its own heavenly sphere.

"Danny! Earth to Danny!" said Tucker, "Did you hear what I just said?"

"Er, no. I sort of spaced out there." said Danny, making a mental note to watch some television later to numb his brain long enough to exorcise the verbosity and puns out of his system. A good round of Spongebob Squarepants would do the trick; Even on mute, no one could watch it for very long without going into intellectual shock.

"I said we still don't know that the ball thing does, but chances are that Skulker'll come back for it eventually it it's really that important to him. Once he comes back from Japan, that is. In the meantime, we have to get that paper done for Lancer before Friday. I don't think he's feeling in a particularly generous extension giving mood after what happened last Thursday." Lancer had opened his textbook to discover some wit had carefully removed the section on poetry and replaced it with advertisements for psychiatric help. "And when I find the person who did this," Lancer had said with terrifying tranquility to the stone faced congregation sitting before him after assigning them six pages worth of hell, "that person will come to school dressed in their best rendition of J. Alfred Prufrock for the duration of an entire day if they have any hope of passing my class. And believe me, I will find that person." While saying this, his eyes had lingered on Danny a fraction of a second too long for comfort, as though he knew Danny possessed the power to easily pass through locked office doors. Danny, however, stared solidly back at him, confident that no matter what Lancer may or may suspect, he had absolutely no proof that Danny was more than what he appeared to be.

"I'll see if I can find something about the ball on the internet and call you if I find anything. In the meantime, you should take it easy tonight." Tucker said as they stopped in front of his house. "Get to bed early for once, you look pale as a—well, you know." He caught Sam's eye for a brief moment before turning to go inside

"Yeah, you too." Danny said, with a sarcastic smile. "Take care!" When Tucker had closed the door behind him, Danny turned to Sam.

"Are you just going to hide the ball until Skulker comes back?" She asked as they continued walking.

"I have no idea what I'm going to do with it when I get home. All I know is that I've got to finish Lancer's thing and I haven't even looked at it. Ghost stuff can take a break for one night."

"They certainly can," Sam replied, grinning. They continued on in silence for a while. Danny concentrated on ignoring the throbbing sensation in his back that was getting worse and worse with each passing second. Sam didn't seem to notice, although she glanced at him sharply from time to time whenever a tree root set his teeth on edge. When Sam's house came into sight however, she said suddenly, "Danny, what do you like most about Paulina?"

Danny stumbled over the fender of someone's parked car, and nearly tripped. Sam immediately caught his arm before he fell, and kept hold of it for a few moments after he'd caught his balance again. They both stared at it for a moment before she jerked it away again, blushing. He swallowed uneasily, trying not to squeak out his reply. "Er, well, I guess…her flawless skin?"

"Is that all?" Sam asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I…guess so?"

"Danny, a piece of wet cardboard has more personality than Paulina does. Do you really care only about her appearance?"

"No! It's just…a girl like her, well, girls have never…never actually paid attention to me before. Excepting you, of course." He added hastily when he saw the deadpan expression on her face. "But, you're my friend. Paulina isn't, but she knows I exist and she's…well, pretty." he finished, lamely.

Sam opened her mouth, but seemed to think better of it and shook her head instead. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow then," she said, a little sadly, when they stopped in front of her door.

"Yeah. See ya," He said, as he watched her go. When she had closed the door behind her, he stared at it for a moment. "Right. Well, that's that then." He muttered to himself. The sky was darker now, and he glanced in both directions. No one was there. He ducked in between Sam's house and the neighbor's and transformed. Phasing invisible, he flew out into the evening sky and headed towards home.

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At about half past eight that night, Danny was holding his head in his hands, his elbows propped up on a pile of books. Very soon, the ghost of T.S. Elliot would suddenly find himself being throttled and barricaded in an isolated dimension with the Box Ghost and the Dragon Ghost for a good hundred years.

He pushed his chair back and staggered to his feet, wincing again. He unbuckled the belt around his chest and checked the temperature of the hot water bottle he had strapped to his back. Its contents were barely lukewarm now, so Danny quietly retreated into the bathroom, refilled it, and slipped back into his room before Jazz accidentally caught him in the hallway half naked and covered in bruises.

In the middle of re-strapping the bottle to his back, however, his eyes landed on the ball from the afternoon. Out of sight and mind, it had rolled out of sight when he had upended the contents of his backpack onto his bed. It was no longer glowing. Danny leaned down and opened it again absentmindedly, even though he knew that there was nothing inside. A dozen weapons he could carry and Skulker felt the need to tote around a ball that did nothing. Danny tossed it over his shoulder, and looked back at the half finished paper on his computer. He decided that it was probably best to take a nap for an hour, then get up, bleed out half a page or so, give up, write a conclusion, and fiddle with the font size and the margins until the paper was the right length. It was a good plan. He eased himself gently onto his bed, set the alarm, and closed his eyes. A very good plan indeed.

A familiar chill ran through him. Danny shuddered and pulled his coat closer. There was a sound, somewhere not far off, like someone talking. This should not have been unusual in a supermarket, which was where he was. The spectral form of the Lunch Lady was at the register, serenely ringing up his single carton of milk. Danny gazed absentmindedly out of the supermarket window, where the lights of the high school football stadium shone brightly against the greenish-violet atmosphere of the Ghost Zone. There was a game was going on; Valerie, Jazz, Sam's grandmother, Desiree, and Kwan were matched against Dash, Technus, Walker, Paulina, and Ember. They were all fencing with cerulean colored spoons. The voice was coming somewhere from his left, where Sam was waltzing with the Box Ghost. There was something odd about the voice. It was muttering to itself, repeating the same word over and over again. "You got a problem with your voice?" Danny grumbled. "I can still hear you." The voice continued to mutter, however, so Danny picked up the sack of flour that he had shared with Valerie for Health class and aimed it in the direction of the voice. "I'm warning you! Keep muttering and the simulation gets it!" The muttering grew louder. "I said-"

Danny tried to move forward but tripped. He opened his eyes and blinked a several times, wondering if he was still dreaming. Few sights would have been greeted with more bewilderment than Danny finding himself tangled in the sheets and brandishing his pillow in the air like a sword, while a ghost that he'd never seen before hovered in the space above the foot of his bed. It was completely purple, and resembled a giant head with wing-like wavy extensions on its face. For a minute, they simply stared at each other. Then the ghost cocked its head quizzically, and muttered the same word that had woken Danny from his dream.

"Haunter?"

Apparently, reality could be stranger than fantasy.

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1 This is not to say, however, that the students weren't actually learning. One student idly observed during a particularly dull Mathematics lesson that, had Casper High actually been Jedi High, the concentration of several hundred Force-enhanced minds onto the wall clocks would, quite possibly, alter the very fabric of time and cause it to accelerate at an unknown speed. He proceeded to work out the exact equation that would prove this theory, and by the time class was over, determined that the weekend would arrive by the time homeroom was ended, give or take a few minutes for students who wasted time, saved time, were late, or just simply had no patience to put up with that kind of nonsense.

On the other side of the school, a football player had engaged in no less than four staring contests with two purple finches, a squirrel, and a squid that had been chucked out the window of a Home Ec class on the second floor by a student who had finally snapped. Having died with its eyes open, the squid soundly dashed a long running winning streak of 142 wins and no losses. The local pizza place lost one calamari enthusiast that day.