1: Tucker
I heard a cry from the lab basement. It had to be Danny – but he sounded like he was in real pain. I hoped it was just his own clumsiness and not a malevolent ghost fresh from the portal. "Sam!" I called to my friend across the room, knowing she'd follow, and started to rush down the stairs. Indeed, she followed close behind, her boots clomping noisily after me.
I stopped so suddenly at the bottom of the staircase Sam bumped into me. There was bluish glass and pieces of bronze material all over the floor, an acrid smell of smoke, and Danny hunched over near a table, moaning softly and tentatively touching his eye. I was too shocked for words, but Sam peeked over my shoulder and said, "Danny?"
"Don't touch the glass..." he muttered. He took a moment to compose himself, then grabbed a Fenton Thermos from the table and activated it. He aimed at the mess on the floor, and somehow, it all was sucked into the thermos with a satisfying whoosh. It usually didn't work on mirrors, whatever it was...
"You okay, man?" I asked. Danny seemed to shudder, then dropped his hands to his sides. "Yeah, I feel fine now, but just a minute ago it hurt like anything." He seemed puzzled.
"What happened?" Sam cried, stepping in front of me.
Danny stared at the thermos in his hand before answering. "I was releasing the box ghost...and this mirror flew in through the portal, broke on the floor, and a piece got in my eye and right here," he said, motioning to his heart. "But it doesn't hurt at all anymore, anywhere," he added, when Sam made to come closer to examine the spots.
I was skeptical. If it came out of the ghost zone, it couldn't be good. What's more, the thermos sucked it in, which meant it had some ghostly connection. Even worse, pieces of it were in Danny now. Maybe it was okay for half-ghosts to have ghostly shrapnel embedded in them, but I was still worried. The smell still lingered in the air. What kind of mirror smokes when it shatters, anyway?
Sam said something about intangibility, and Danny demonstrated by sticking his hand in his chest and it came out clean. No glass shard in there. I hovered by the stairway, just watching and thinking. How could a glass shard like that just disappear into him?
Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe if the thermos hadn't sucked it up, it would have just disintegrated completely, like the stuff in Danny seemed to have done.
But I know from physics mass can neither be created nor destroyed.
Mentally, I threw up my hands. In another dimension, the laws of physics are probably totally different. What did I know of logic in their world? What happens when those two worlds clash? Danny Phantom, of course. But just even the smell of the lingering, pungent smoke convinced me something was not all right with the world at the moment.
Danny passed by me, climbing the staircase back to the living area. "C'mon, let's finish our homework," in a bored tone. I followed Sam up, uneasy and brooding, yet trying to distract myself from those thoughts.
That was a memorable Friday. The weekend that followed was a rare one; we didn't hang out the whole time, so I couldn't keep an eye on Danny. At least I didn't hear anything weird about him from anyone. I tried to relax, but still felt there was trouble ahead.
On Monday morning, we met Danny outside his house as usual to walk to school, but he seemed cold, distant, and distracted. He replied to our greetings with single syllables and didn't look us in the eye. Instead, he stared at the sky and buildings with a hard glint in his eye, as if the invisible glass speck was reflecting the light. I stole a look at Sam to gauge her reaction. She herself was stealing a look at Danny, a worried look on her face – an almost abandoned look. She met my gaze for a second, and I could read her apprehension and even fear of this Danny.
He walked alone, ahead, and we were just little mosquitoes hovering about him. We let him go faster than us, while Sam and I stayed back and continued in silent communion. He didn't even seem to notice or care.
Part of me dismissed Danny's cold-shouldering us as a Monday morning mood, but I knew it wasn't so...
