For Codiak's 500th review to Turning Pages when she requested a story with someone winning something. This is more... people hoping to win something, but I hope it's close enough. I realize that in my entire stock of fic ideas, there is not one plot bunny that includes anyone winning anything. XP
Spooky-Os
June 26, 2012
Danny stumbled down the stairs, still bleary-eyed and definitely not awake.
Just because Jazz could kick him out of the bathroom and force him to grab a quick breakfast before the bus came did not mean that he had to function before he got to his first classroom… or even then, come to think of it.
He walked past the breakfast table, not even registering that his father was happily munching on his food. Robotically, Danny went to the cupboard to get a bowl and spoon and then went to the pantry to pull out a box of cereal.
Given his encounter with Vlad yesterday, he wanted to stay clear of anything that vaguely reminded him of the man. His still aching ribs were enough, he thought, to make any recollection even remotely pleasant, so the Fruit Loops were out. He didn't want to bother with his mom's weird healthy diet gunk cereal, so the only thing left were the Spooky-O's. Oh well, that would have to do. His hand caught the empty space of the shelf where they should have been, however, and he was momentarily puzzled.
"I could have sworn that there was a box of it in here…" he muttered to himself before calling out to the rest of the house. "Does anyone know what happened to the Spooky-O's?" He began to rummage through the shelves to no avail.
"Can't hear you, Danny boy!" his dad called back.
Walking back out to the table, Danny asked a little louder, "Have you seen the Spooky-O's?"
"Yep, they're right here," Jack said over a heaping bowl of the cereal.
Danny shook the box sitting on the table. It was empty.
Danny blinked a couple times, at a loss for words.
His mother had her cereal and he had his two boxes; Dad and Jazz never bothered with it. But here was his dad finishing off a nearly full box of his cereal.
What on earth?
"Dad?"
"Yeah?"
"Why are you eating my cereal?"
Jack looked down at the bowl in front of him as if seeing it for the first time. Then he looked at his son, then the bowl again. He wrinkled his forehead as he thought of a way to explain it all. "Well, I was looking through the pantry for some Fenton FlapJack mix when I saw the back of the box… and…"
Hold on just a second there…
What was on the back of the box that would make his dad consume an entire box of Spooky-O's for breakfast? It wasn't like there was a commercial on it calling his name. I mean, sure it had ghosts on it because it was Spooky-O's, but so did everything else in the house. The cereal had never grabbed his dad's attention for any length of time before.
He grabbed the box out of his dad's hand and quickly scanned the back to find the reason for the sudden change of heart.
It stared at him from the cardboard in big block letters. Danny's eyebrows shot up as he double checked what was on the box.
"No way… Oh please tell me…" he breathed. "Dad?"
"Yeah?" he replied, his mouth full of the cereal.
Danny pointed limply to the back of the box. "Please tell me you aren't planning on saving box tops for this."
Jack beamed at his son. "As a matter of fact, I am."
Danny turned away and put his head in his hands. "I knew it. I knew it. Please kill me now."
Jazz walked in the door in time to hear her brother's tirade against the world begin.
"What was that you said, Danny?" she asked sharply.
Danny shook his head, not wanting to get into an argument about this so early in the day. But there was no denying Jazz, so he began to explain. "Well, I-"
She interrupted him before he could even start his defence. "You know it isn't healthy to begin the day saying things like that."
"But Jazz…" he tried again before being immediately cut off once again.
"No, Danny, you have to get out of the habit. Constantly running yourself down can cause serious damage to your…"
"Jazz!"
"What?"
Danny lifted up the box of cereal so Jazz could see the back.
She grabbed it to get a better look. "What is this? Some sort of contest?"
After reading it for a minute, she bit her lip, trying to decide if she should laugh or be very worried. She let out a noise somewhere between a snort and giggle, then looked over at Danny, who confirmed her worst fears.
"Yeah, it's a contest. And Dad's saving box tops." He jerked his thumb back at their father who was eating his breakfast oblivious to their entire conversation.
Jazz looked over at her father in shock. "Nooo…"
"Yeah."
"You're serious?" he asked in a sort of a squeak.
Danny sighed and shook his head. "I wish I could tell you otherwise."
"That is so…" she broke off, brow furrowing as she searched for a word adequate to describe it.
"Wrong?" he suggested.
"That is so… Dad."
Danny gave a half-hearted laugh. "Yeah, I guess it is. But, really, Jazz, why did he have to see this?"
Jazz sighed. "Well, he does have a radar for anything ghost related."
"But a contest held by the Guys in White?" Danny lowered his voice to practically hiss the last few words.
Jazz nodded sagely, but proceeded to validate her father's actions. "Well… he's also a scientist. What did you expect when the grand prize is a tour of their Headquarters? And really, if he won and we all got to go, it would be good for you to be able to see the inner workings of their organization. It would be like infiltrating their camp, learning how they operate, all their darkest secrets…"
Danny held out a hand to stop her. She was getting into her overly-enthusiastic secret-agent ghost-huntery mode and it really wasn't what he wanted to hear. For someone so smart, she could really be oblivious to the obvious sometimes.
"You're forgetting one thing, Jazz," he held up a finger before pointing at himself. "I'm what they're after! I step inside their building and every single alarm in the place goes off. They start investigating with lots of painful tests and within a couple of minutes they figure out everything. I'm dead if Dad wins. And if he wins, there's no way he's not taking all of us along."
Jazz saw his point and tried to back-peddle. "Well, he probably won't win. The odds must be like one in a million."
"Yeah, but you remember Murphy?"
Jazz thought back with pursed lips. "That Irish ghost?"
"Well, you should have heard of him even if he didn't come back as a ghost… he sort of has this law… Not like Walker, more like Newton, I guess…" Jazz was giving him a blank stare. "Never mind."
"Sooo," Jazz picked up again. "Like I said, Dad probably won't win. He probably won't even get a consolation prize… one of the…" she checked the box for the specifics. "… spectral entity detection kits, or the… oh…" Jazz shuddered. "the white suits. Oh joy, the twenty-five runners up get to dress up like the GIW. Oh, I can just see it now: Dad wearing one of their lapelled lab coats over his hulking orange Hazmat." She put her face in her hands and shook her head to erase the mental image. "You're right, Danny, there's no way anyone winning anything here is good for anyone!"
"Except for the Spooky-O's company."
Jazz grinned and chuckled softly. "Well, right, except for them. I guess you are learning something in school. I didn't know you were taking econ this year…"
Danny smiled. "Yeah, well, when Skulker doesn't decide to interrupt, I actually do try to pay attention… at least in some of my classes. I still can't hold me head up through an entire Lancer lecture, though." Danny gave his sister a goofy grin.
Just then, the door to the garage opened and their mother walked in, arms full of groceries.
She greeted the both with a cheery "Hello kids!"
"Hi, Mom!" They both chorused.
"It's nice to see you both down here before you leave for school. Normally, you're both so rushed…"
"Yeah, well, I came down for some cereal to find that Dad had finished mine off."
"Oh!" Maddie began to laugh as she set down her bags, "So that's why he called…"
"Who called?"
"Your father."
"About what?"
"He wanted me to get some more cereal for him."
"And you didn't think that this was strange at all?" Jazz asked.
"Not when he told me the brand name. Sweetie, I thought you would have learned by now that if something has to do with…" she whispered the next word, "ghosts… your father wants in on it."
"So… that means that I can have breakfast?" Danny asked cautiously.
His mother grinned. "You can have breakfast for quite a long time."
Danny paused and looked at her warily. "Just how many boxes of Spooky-O's did you get?"
A sly smile was her only answer. "Why don't you go unload them for me?"
Danny obediently went to the garage and opened the hatch of the GAV, only to have a mountain of cereal boxes cascade down upon him. He was soon covered, but after some flailing of his arms, was able to free himself as much as he needed in order to shout back into the house, "What did you do, Mom, buy out the whole store?"
"Yes, Danny. How else could we guarantee that we would win the grand prize tour of the Guys In White headquarters?"
Danny groaned and hung his head, still surrounded by Spooky-O's since he didn't have the impetus to try to get out.
He hadn't even left for school and he was already wondering how things could get any worse.
Murphy must have been around, though, and grinning madly, because a blue mist soon alerted Danny to a ghost's presence and he sighed.
Craning his neck and turning as much as his position would allow without going intangible, since his Mom could pop her head out the door at any moment, Danny caught sight of a ghost that definitely wasn't Murphy. Oh no, not Murphy at all…
He put his head in his hands and groaned when he saw his new problem. Oh, he was going to have a field day with this…
"BEWARE!"
Haha. So, sorry if it wasn't what you expected, but I had a lot of fun with this story and I am insanely proud of my Fenton FlapJack mix. XD
I wanted Murphy to debut in a St Patty's Day one-shot, but that obviously never materialized. Maybe I'll write something for him later.
Comments are, as always, much appreciated.