Disclaimer Haiku:
Not mine. Boo hoo! I
Wish they were, but legally
They're not. Nutbunnies.
A/N: A birthday present for MyAibou. Happy birthday, K!
Unwelcome Guests
© Scribbler, November 2007.
"Y'know…" Danny scratched the back of his head the way he did when nervous and his hands weren't busy shooting energy blasts. "Maybe this isn't so bad."
"Not so bad?" Sam slammed the book down in front of him. It was a big book, and made a satisfying WHOOMPH that rattled the table. There was a lot of meaning in that WHOOMPH. "Not. So. Bad?"
"I'm with her, dude." Tucker, facedown on his own massive tome, waved a hand above his head. "This qualifies as bad in a big way. Capital B. Heck, capital A and D, too."
"Hey, how was I supposed to know the Fenton Matter Transporter would actually work?" Danny slumped in his seat. "Anyhow, it was Sam who pushed the button -"
"Don't you dare try to lay the blame on me," Sam growled. "Don't you dare." He thought she might actually start foaming at the mouth, which wasn't too far fetched, given their lives. She wasn't quite incandescent with rage, but her eyes sparkled with that special blend of barely concealed fury and militant contempt only a true Goth could perfect. "You were the one who decided it was more fun to shoot hoops than to finish your part of our science project. You were the one who borrowed your dad's invention and tried to pass it off as an 'Automatic Ketchup Splatter'. You were the one who brought that machine to school and told us it was perfectly safe. You were -"
"Okay, okay, I goofed, I'm sorry. I'm an idiot. Happy?"
"No."
"I'm a greasy little stain on the napkin of life. On the chin of humanity, I'm the zit. I don't deserve to shoot hoops ever again." He looked at her from under lowered brows. "For my whole life. Ever."
"Better." Without giving the slightest indication she was any happier, Sam plunked down in her seat and started leafing through the giant leather-bound book that had images of crushed skulls and goblets of blood flashing through Danny's mind. "There has to be something in here to set things right. The lady in the Magick Shoppe said this one was a sure-fire solution."
"You're trusting the world of something who spells 'shop' with an E?" Tucker raised his head.
Sam shot him a Glare.
Tucker gulped, picked up his book and scanned the lines. It took only a few seconds for him to realise he was holding it upside down.
Danny sighed and picked up his own book. As a rule, he hated studying, but this wasn't the sort of thing you could just Google an answer for. At least, not since his mother installed that child safety lock on all the computers in the house after some company sent her rude sales emails. "How about a purification ceremony?" he asked after a few minutes.
Sam cocked her head to one side, as if listening to a voice only she could hear. "Is that pagan?"
Danny checked. "Um, it says here it's Nenest. Nenestic. Nenestii? That's some kind of pagan religion, right?"
"Too risky. It has to be Egyptian."
"You're sure?"
"Can you get the Automatic Ketchup Splatter operational again?" Sam's derision was almost palpable.
"My dad's working on it, honest!" And hadn't that been brilliant, explaining how condiment got into the CPU and gummed up the transdimensional-ectoplasm-locator? Danny owed Jazz a month of laundry duty for coming in with a timely excuse while he escaped to Sam's house.
"Then yeah, it has to be Egyptian. I'll tell you when you find something useful". Sam didn't mean to be so brusque, Danny was sure. It was just … this had to be hard on her.
Sam and Tucker always seemed to suffer when he goofed up, and usually they were okay after some choice apologising, grovelling, and the right amount of Lesson Learned. This time, however … well, they weren't quite at the Lesson Learned part yet. First he had to fix what he'd done wrong, and fix it so well you'd never know how badly he screwed up. Then he could apologise, and then things could get back to normal.
He hoped.
Two and a half hours later his eyeballs felt like half-sucked boiled candies. He put his book down to poke them back into their sockets, only then realising how heavy the volume had been to hold up. Taking the opportunity to rest his arms, he glanced at Tucker and Sam.
Tucker appeared to be asleep with a book open on his lap, another open but facedown on the table. With his head nodding onto his chest and his arms folded, he looked almost laid-back, the way he never could when awake and tapping at his PDA, or screaming and running away from (or, more often, towards, though with no less screaming) ghosts.
Sam, on the other hand, was staring into space. She looked as far from serene as possible. Those bags under her eyes weren't from make-up or lack of sleep, but from a concentration of stress the likes of which they weren't supposed to experience until in full-time employment. Even her ponytail seemed to droop more than usual.
"Sam," Danny whispered, not wanting to wake Tucker.
"Huh?" she said, startled. He noticed she'd been stroking her necklace only when she stopped – smooth, rapid strokes, the way society girls comforted fretful puppies so they didn't widdle in their handbags. "What? Did you find something?" The hope in her voice made Danny feel instantly guilty.
"No, I just wanted to know if you were, um, okay." Laaaaame. Why would she be okay? Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb -
"I've been better." Rather than angry, now she just sounded tired. "It's kind of distracting." She gestured at her book. "Makes it hard to read. He talks a lot. Though I should be used to it, I suppose. I spent all of sex ed. listening to Paullina re-educate the class according to J17 magazine. I finished reading The Vampire Diaries behind my textbook that semester and nobody suspected a thing."
Danny had flushed beetroot at the word 'sex' and just nodded mutely at the rest of what she said. "So you're, uh, not still so mad you'd like to claw out my eyeballs?"
"No. Just your tongue. I'd sauté it and serve it with a nice Chianti."
"Huh?"
"Never mind." She let out a long breath between her teeth. "I've got nothing. How about you?
"Cliff Notes to Nothing."
"I'm willing to bet Tucker's got Nothing: The Sequel. How soon do you think your dad can get the Transporter up and running?"
"Hard to say. He thinks a week."
Sam groaned. Then, in an instant, she sat bolt upright and glared at Danny with such force he thought his fillings might melt and his organs reroute themselves. "You mean I'm trapped here for an entire week?" She seemed to grow in stature, casting a shadow longer than was possible in the light … and then sagged breathlessly back into her seat. "Stop that! We're doing our best!"
Danny, a heartbeat from going ghost, straightened his spine. He swallowed. Then he swallowed again. "Was that, uh, it?"
"Him, and yes." Sam rested her forehead in her hands. "Danny, I don't know if I can last a whole week this way. He's so loud. It's like tinnitus, only with words and all the freaking time. Not even words I can understand sometimes!"
Danny chewed his lip and reached out to squeeze her shoulder. It was a friendly gesture, one he'd done millions of times, but recently it had begun to feel a little odd. Well, more than a little. Kind of like when he had those dreams of Paullina that he didn't even tell Tucker about and hang on he was so not going there right now. If, y'know, ever – especially while in the same room as anyone else. Ick.
"It'll be okay. I promise, I'll fix this. I will. And I won't let anything bad happen to you."
She raised an eyebrow at him.
"Anything else bad happen to you. Scouts' honour."
"You were never a Boy Scout."
"For this, I'm making myself an honorary member." He tried a salute and thought he got it about right. Close enough to make his meaning clear, at least.
"You doofus." Sam ran one finger along the edge of the necklace and frowned.
The chain had been embedded into her spinal column while they were both insubstantial after the Transporter exploded. It now stuck out either side like a modern take on Frankenstein's monster, dragging her off balance when she stood up, irrevocably bonded to at least three vertebrae. Danny wasn't even sure what dimension they'd made contact with, only that they didn't take kindly to having ketchup exchanged for their jewellery, and he was anxious to throw this thing back ASAP.
"Tucker. Hey, Tucker." Sam shook him awake.
"Hmf?" Tucker blinked and straightened his hat. "Whut?" The book on his lap slid off and landed on his toe. "Yow!"
When he'd finished dancing around, Sam asked, "You learned some Japanese while you were in that SATs headgear, right?"
"Sonofa … Yeah, a little. I was absorbing MFL and economics when you two pulled me out. I can cuss in fourteen different languages now. Why?"
Sam frowned and slid her eyes left, as though looking for someone, but they were the only ones in the room. "Do you know what 'aibou' means?"
Fin.