Chapter 2

Being turned intangible is a funny feeling. It's sort of like being electrocuted but without the pain, while also being doused in ice water but without the shortness of breath – very difficult sensations to describe to someone who's never felt them before. But I was used to it by now, and because of the strong association it had with Danny, I actually had grown to like it sometimes.

Something about this time was different. Maybe Danny was shaken up from the shock-field I'd made and so his grasp on his powers was a little fuzzy, or maybe I was just choked up from our conversation…or maybe I really was having some kind of premonition of doom. But there were enough clichés in my life already, I couldn't make room for that possibility. Instead, I started going over tactics and intel.

The data on our FentonBands, the portable battle computers attached to our wrists, said that our enemy was none other than the Box Ghost. I tried to breathe a sigh of relief, but couldn't; premonitions aside, even the Box Ghost was tougher than he used to be. Rumor had it that he and the Lunch Lady were an item now and it seemed to have "beefed" up his repertoire. The last time he came after Danny, he had learned how to fire ecto blasts. That wasn't a problem by itself, but it did make me a bit nervous about what might come next.

Danny and I were a few blocks away from Fentonworks when we could see the low-level Ectopusses and other junk ghosts looping in the air around the compound, Fenton-tech blasting in every direction. Valerie was nowhere to be seen, which was unsurprising; I don't think her pride could handle working next to Danny anymore than she absolutely had to, and without Plasmius to furnish her with gear, she had needed to go find another sponsor. After all their bad blood, it was no surprise she didn't want to team up with Danny's parents; basically, she was long gone.

"This doesn't look so bad," Danny said, tracking the motions of the ghosts. Between our combined years of experience, I had to agree; everything looked pretty standard. "Did he really need to call me for this..?"

An explosion blew out the second floor windows of Fentonworks, and out of it soared that classic foe in blue; red eyes, stained workclothes, and a characteristic look of vengeance and stupidity plastered on his ghostly face.

"BEWAAAARE!"

He flew higher into the sky, and the other ghosts fled. I cast a glance at Danny.

"That seem odd to you?"

"He's got something in his hands," Danny said, translucent gaze still intense as ever while focused on the job. "What…oh no."

"What is it?" I asked, following his stare before shouting in shock. I had just enough to catch my breath before Danny threw me to the top of a nearby building, where my intangibility left in time for me to catch a hard landing on my rear. Then, a flash of light, a pulsing wave of blue and white energy, and Danny was caught up in our most basic weapon, and gone in a blink.

"BEHOLD! I am the BOX GHOST, master of all things which contain for storage, transport, and eventual release to a new recipient and owner! At long last, I have acquired the ultimate container, that item which stores even the mightiest of ghosts – the FENTON THERMOS! Beware!"

For a split second, I almost did beware – but after so many times of Danny accidentally getting caught in his own trap, we had installed a remote fail-safe. I gave the Box Ghost a classic battle smirk before pressing the automatic "release" button on my FentonBand; all that remained was for Danny to emerge, deliver a snappy one-liner, and deck the Box Ghost right back into the Ghost Zone.

But Danny didn't appear.

Now I was bewaring.

"Pitiful human!" the Box Ghost wailed, swooping down in front of me. "It is as I told you – I am the Box Ghost, master of all containers! As long as I hold the Fenton Thermos with my power, your shiny buttons will have no effect!"

For effect, he gave his best attempt at a villainous laugh, giving an eyes-closed cackle and holding the thermos over his head. I tried to stay calm, and with a slow breath, traced a sigil in the air. Danny's ecto-pulse was going off like fireworks inside the thermos, and even the Box Ghost added a strong locus of force in the currents around us; extending my will through the sigil, it was a simple matter to accelerate some of that ectoplasm in just the right way.

"Foolish child, are you not afraid? I have conquered your mightiest hero..!"

I just smirked, and gave a mental push. A purple fist of crackling energy coalesced in the air and slammed into the Box Ghost's exposed belly and sent him flying down to the ground, where I could see Jazz and Danny's mom already getting ready to intercept him; in his place, the Fenton Thermos remained, landing harmlessly on the roof next to me. I pushed the "release" button again, and Danny emerged this time, his fist already poised for a classic right hook.

"Try to contain THIS!" he shouted, before realizing with a blank look that there was no one but me.

"I think I can handle it," I said, crossing my arms and smirking. "You okay?"

He touched down and turned back to being human, scratching behind his head.

"Yeah, but…what happened? Where'd he go?"

"I beat him with magic," I said plainly, my smirk growing even bigger.

Danny wasn't smiling, though. "Why didn't you let me out of the thermos first? I thought we made that auto-release button just in case something exactly like this happened?" He wasn't just concerned; he was angry.

"Danny…" I studied his expression, trying to figure out what the hell he was thinking this time. "I DID try. Didn't you hear him? It wouldn't work as long as he was holding on to the thermos. I had to get it away from him first."

His face softened a bit, but he still seemed…disappointed?

"Sam…just use the Spectre Deflector next time, okay? I don't want you trying out your magic when I'm not there to protect you," he said, taking steps towards me, moving to grab my hands protectively.

I pulled them away. "You mean so that you can babysit me?"

We stared at each other, trying to find the right words.

"You were talking about killing people. I don't completely trust this magic, okay? It's creepy," he said, finally breaking the gaze.

"Says the half-ghost kid," I said quietly. "I'm sorry this creeps you out, but you have to trust me. I'm not going to go on some killing spree, okay? I think you have the right to ask that much of me, and I respect you enough not to just do that behind your back. This is our fight and we have to do it together. Alright?"

I offered my hands again, and he took them, giving me that bashful smile of his, and I can imagine I turned pretty red too. A few years later and we were still just kids, after all.

"Alright," he said. "I'm sorry. Guess I was just embarrassed for getting caught by the freaking BOX GHOST of all people."

"Beeewaaaare," I said, throwing my hands up in mockery of the Box Ghost's "spooky" pose. "It is strange though. Unusually clever for him."

"Nah," Danny said, waving a hand. "I bet he just wanted to try to impress the Lunch Lady or something."

"Now there's an arch enemy. I've always said that meat will be the death of us," I said, dry as sandpaper. Danny still ate the occasional burger, but I had mostly succeeded in whittling him down to being a pescetarian. Somehow, in the middle of this war with the Beyond, these things still mattered, and I'd be damned if I would give an inch on my principles just because Danny was a hero. He bore it with good grace, which made me happy.

We both looked at each other, smiling, before the smell of smoke wafted under our noses and directed our attention back at Fentonworks. Oh, right; the second floor windows had been blown out.

"We have to get down there and make sure everyone's okay!" Danny said, going ghost and holding out his hand in invitation. I grabbed it like always, and we flew down to the street.

Jazz was struggling to keep her own copy of the Fenton Thermos out of Danny's mom's hands. "I'll rip that ghost apart molecule by molecule for trying to capture my poor boy!" she shrieked. "I'll make him paaaay!"

"Mother, this kind of aggression isn't healthy to display around an impressionable teenager! You have to show Danny that violence isn't the answer!" she said, sounding the same as always. "We caught the ghost, and everyone's alright, aren't they?"

With effort, Danny's mom restrained herself. "I suppose you're right…oh, Danny! Sam! Thank goodness you're here. Have you seen your father?"

"MADDIE! HEEEEELLLP!"

It came from the second floor, just before another explosion flamed out of a far window.

"More ghosts?" Jazz asked, still the most easily shaken of the group.

"No…" Danny's mother sighed. "That was your father having trouble with the Fenton Home Repair System. He's still working out the bugs. I better go help him out…JACK!" She started running back into the house. "You have to decouple the ectoflux converters before engaging the primary power coils, how many times do we have to go over this?"

Danny, Jazz and I were alone on the street, broken glass from the windows on the pavement around us, and an angry Box Ghost trapped in the thermos in Jazz's hands.

"Good to see you, Sam," she said. "You are alright, right, Danny?"

"I'm fine, Jazz," Danny said, working at not being irritated by his overbearing sister. He was getting better. "So what happened, anyway? I mean, I know love can make a person stupid, but a frontal assault on Fentonworks is really stupid, even for the Box Ghost."

"I don't think the Box Ghost is really responsible for this, Danny," Jazz said, heading back into the house. We followed her down into the lab. "I mean, he's gotten stronger, but not strong enough to command all of those ghosts that followed him. And if he really was in command, I don't know why they would have just abandoned him in the middle of battle. Nothing about this is characteristic of the Box Ghost at all. It seems more like the kind of plan that Walker or even Plasmius might have come up with. But we haven't detected any trace of them on Earth or in the Ghost Zone. And since when could the Box Ghost control technology? Do you think he's teamed up with Technus?"

She emptied the thermos into the Ghost Portal, and leaned against the sealed door, head bowed in concentration. She was obviously distressed by not knowing the answer. It didn't cause the nervous breakdowns it used to, but it was still a weakness of hers.

"I don't think so," Danny said. "Technus couldn't be that subtle to save his afterlife. He would have made some big announcement about his plans to conquer the world after capturing me."

"Well it wasn't Plasmius," I offered. "I'm pretty sure he's floating off somewhere in space. Probably forever. Alone and miserable."

Apparently I was a bit too satisfied with that fact, as I got some awkward looks from the other two. "Dark," Danny said, trying to laugh it off. "But I guess if anyone deserves it…"

"Let's try to stay focused, you two," Jazz said. "Who would have given the Box Ghost the idea? And who would have the power to make ghosts follow him as a distraction, only to have them run away the second he got the thermos? It's almost like him getting the thermos was just a distraction."

"Or a test," Danny said. "They never planned for the Box Ghost to actually succeed and get away with the thermos, they just wanted to see what would happen if he tried. They probably wanted to find out if he could really control container technology, and what we can do about it."

"They really are stepping up their game, then," I said, mostly to myself, but the other two heard me. They were waiting for more. "It's like I was saying to Danny. The ghosts are getting stronger. I don't think it's a coincidence. How many defeats can they all keep suffering before one of them gets the idea to really get military about this? We're not in some Saturday morning cartoon, you guys. These are ghosts, and they want to kill us. I think one of them is finally taking this seriously."

Danny stared at me hard. He knew where I wanted to take this conversation. He didn't like it. Tough, I thought. Just because I couldn't talk about killing ghosts didn't mean I wouldn't face the reality that they were trying to kill us.

"But who?" Jazz said, trying to break the tension with a gentle voice. "If what Sam is saying is true then we need to up our game, too. Let's think: what ghost wields enough influence to order other ghosts around, and has enough brains to set up scenarios like this just to study his powers and his opponents?"

"It isn't Desiree," Danny said. "She's not even smart enough to censor what wishes she grants."

"Couldn't be Poindexter. He's got the brains but definitely not the clout," I said.

We went on like that for a while, testing out every possibility, but none of them made any sense. Eventually Jazz shouted in frustration and gave up. "I'm going to go help mom and dad clean up upstairs. If you two figure out anything else, report back immediately. In the meantime, just be careful, okay?"

"We will," Danny and I chimed.

Jazz left, and Danny and I sat together in the lab, thinking.

"Why isn't she in college yet?" Danny asked with a sigh.

"Easy, Danny. It's still summer. She'll be in college soon enough. And she's really not that bad."

"As a sidekick? No. But as a sister…ugh. She just gets on my nerves. I mean, I'm Danny Phantom! She doesn't need to worry about me every time I get sucked up in a thermos or hit by an ecto blast."

He was staring at the Ghost Portal, those black and yellow chevrons apparently holding some secret I couldn't see. "It's okay for her to be worried, Danny. I worry too. This time the Box Ghost could control the thermos while he was holding on to it…what's going to come next? I'm worried too."

All I could see was his face in profile, dark thought swirling in those blue eyes. "Whatever comes next," he said, "I can handle it. I promise. I'll have faith in your magic if you have faith in my power. Okay?"

He looked back at me with a pained hope on his face. He never wanted to hear me speak of these battles as life and death. It was too bleak for him. His hope was that if he was strong enough, I wouldn't need to worry; when people worried, he had to worry too. And he couldn't handle that. I have to admit that I kind of felt bad for him in that moment, where it seemed like all of the moral burden of killing a ghost – which for him was extremely significant – was falling square on his shoulders, on his ability to be strong enough that such action wasn't necessary.

But it was naïve. It was downright stupid. I couldn't have faith that his power would be strong enough forever; for now, maybe. But not forever.

I gave an angry sigh.

"I can't do that. I promise I won't try to kill any ghosts unless we agree on it, but I won't stop worrying about you until we figure out something else. What's the next new ghost ability going to be? What if we aren't prepared for it? You aren't invincible, Danny Phantom! But as long as we keep throwing them back into the Ghost Zone, they are invincible. Even your dad would know those aren't good odds. The only reason he and your mom haven't killed the ghosts yet is because they don't know how."

I tried to steady my voice, shaking by now, while Danny stayed silent. I hoped he was thinking about what I'd said and not just ignoring me, but the silence stretched on. I had to try to say something.

"Danny–"

"If someone is trying to make a battle plan against us by testing out the strengths and weaknesses of all the ghosts, then we'll just have to take them out. If we get rid of the one at the top, then we won't have to worry about any of the others."

He was staring at me with green eyes again; emerald light touching my violets. It was easy to get lost in those eyes, but I held fast. This was huge, after all.

"Are you saying you'd consider it if it only had to be one or two?" I asked.

"I'm not saying anything for sure!" he shouted. He took a deep breath and returned to normal, blue eyes downcast, sitting heavily on a lab stool. "But you may have a point. I got pretty scared today when I couldn't get out of the thermos. I don't want us to think about killing anyone, but I guess we should try to figure out…something. Do you have any ideas?"

I pulled up a stool and sat next to him. "There are two ghosts I know of who know the most about ghost history and ghost warfare. Frostbite…"

"…and Clockwork," Danny finished. "You think we should ask them?"

I nodded. "They could at least give us some leads."

He sighed. "Okay. I'll go talk to them tomorrow. You keep researching in your books and practicing your magic. Hopefully Jazz and my parents can figure out who's responsible for this, and somewhere in between all of that we can stop things from getting out of hand."

I hugged him, resting my head on his shoulder. "Thank you."

We stayed put for a while, happy to be near each other, but afraid of what would come next. So for the time being, all we wanted was to sit and breathe with one another. The simple joy of being alive and safe…

Of course, it was shattered in moments as that great sigh of relief issued a ghostly chill, a telltale ghost sense indicator that trouble was near.

"What is it?" I asked, jumping to my feet.

"I don't know." Danny went ghost without waiting to find out, and threw up a basic ecto-shield around us. "But we're about to find out!"

All on its own, the Ghost Portal opened, and a blast of green light shot out from inside. The light dimmed, but my eyes were still hazy from the brightness; but I didn't need to see to recognize the voice that greeted us.

"I finally have you, whelp!"

Thanks for reading! Please review as they are lovely. Hopefully there will be a little less talk, a little more action (please) as the story progresses and the investigations really get in motion. You can expect to see lots of old foes…and probably a few new ones! But I can't tip all my cards yet. ^^ Hope you enjoyed!

-R