A/N: Thanks to all my reviewers! I'm excited about finally getting chapter one out to y'all! And remember, it's been ten years since the first introduction so the characters are the age they are in the actual show.
I would've gotten this up yesterday, but FanFiction was being stupid...or maybe it was just my computer. Oh well, I may be out of town, but here y'all go!
Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom.
Chapter One: Normal
Jazz
Today, I will make the most of my life. I will smile and be nice. I will make the most of every opportunity and not be underestimated. Nothing will stop me from making a difference. Nothing will stop me from doing what's right.
"Okay, please explain this, Sam," I demanded as I handed the paper I had just read back to my best friend.
"This, Jazz, is what I'm going to tell Patty I chanted every morning before school. I'm going to use this as an excuse when she finds out about the mice," Sam explained.
"How will this help you?" I asked as I put the car in reverse and started backing out of my school parking space.
"I can tell her that when I saw the poor, defenseless mice were about to be eaten by ferocious snakes that my chant made me want to do the right thing. Hey, I wonder if that would work on Mrs. Poppy..."
I let Sam run off into her own schemes as I thought of poor Mrs. Poppy, the biology teacher at school whose room resembled something closer to a zoo than a classroom. Her favorite exhibit was her snakes. Sometimes she let us watch when she fed them.
Today was one of those days. I wasn't in her class this year, but Sam was. Before Mrs. Poppy got to class (she was delayed because Sam paid another student to get Mrs. Poppy out of the classroom for a few minutes), Sam managed to free the mice before they were subjected to being snake food.
No one rated her out out...at least, not yet.
"Patty won't care, though." I tuned back in to Sam's ramblings just has she seemed to make it full circle. "She cares about the little people, and she'll stick up for me."
"Do you really believe that?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
Sam shot me a glance that answered my question before she opened her mouth. "No, but let me try to."
I sighed and smiled at the same time, not able to help loving Sam. She was a mess, but she was still great.
"You hanging out with Tucker tonight?" I asked.
"Yep, you wanna come with?" Sam asked, even though she already knew my answer.
"No, studying. We have a Spanish test tomorrow, Sam. And I've got a chemistry test."
"You think I'll study for Spanish? It's easy as pie," she retorted.
"Yeah, well studying never killed anyone." What did kill me, though, was the fact that Sam pulled great grades with only a modicum of effort. It was as if she didn't really care about anything. Sure, I probably didn't have to study as much as I did, but busying myself with idle tasks kept my mind off unpleasant things.
"I bet it would if I tried it," Sam told me.
I snorted. "Shut up."
By the time we arrived home, we had stopped fussing. We scooted inside quickly. Sam ran to put her backpack down while I stopped to say hi to Patty.
"Good afternoon, girls...er, Jazz," Patty corrected, laughing a little at Sam's hurried rush to the stairs.
"Hey Patty."
"Have a good day at school?"
"Yeah," I answered methodically. It was like this most of the time after school. We would talk meaningless talk for two or three minutes, and then I would head upstairs to start homework.
The routine didn't let down today.
There's nothing quite like a normal, peaceful day.
Danny
It amused me to watch normal people.
Granted, they weren't really normal. Vlad would never trust ordinary people to unpack his precious ghost equipment. Oh no. The people moving back and forth between the moving truck and our new (and completely over-excessive) mansion were nothing more than overshadowed humans.
Still, they looked completely normal on the outside, and I enjoyed watching people.
My head moved back and forth as the men unloaded more ghost weaponry from the moving truck. I was amazed at the amount of weapons Vlad owned. Had that all really come from our last house? I suppose that was my thought every time we moved though.
"There you are, Daniel...what are you doing?"
At the sound of Vlad's voice, I turned on my heel and hit the ground with one of my knees, as was procedural. I ducked my head as Vlad stopped inches in front of me.
"Watching the movers unpack, Master," I responded.
"And this amuses you?" Vlad asked in a sickeningly curious voice.
"Yes, Master."
"How interesting," he mused for a long second. "Oh well. Come, Daniel, I've something to discuss with you."
His feet turned and began walking back the direction he had come. I scrambled to my feet and marched after him, carefully keeping my eyes down the entire time. He didn't stop until we had gone down two sets of stairs into his lab.
"Look at me, Daniel." I instantly obeyed and was met with a sharp smile. "Do you remember the last town we stayed in and how our neighbors began nosing in our business?" He began to pace around the room—he wasn't good at staying in one spot when giving these speeches to me—but my eyes followed his move.
"Yes, Master."
"Well, even though I lied to them about your being home schooled, their questions planted an idea in my head." He stopped and turned dramatically toward me with his arms outstretched. "Why not put you in school?"
I had learned to pick out the rhetorical questions from those meant to be answered and kept my mouth shut. It was slightly harder to contain my surprise. I hadn't been in a school since Vlad adopted me.
"You see, it makes sense in the long run," Vlad explained, returning to his pacing. "We already have our five Points. Even if we found the Star today, it would take weeks of preparation before we would be ready to move on with the process.
"Daniel, your starting school will put you in the social circles we might need later on to finish our job easily. If you became friends with the Star, or even just a friend of a friend, there would be no need to fight and struggle to get the Star here. It would be as easy as inviting a friend over for dinner.
"Besides, I think you have proved your responsible enough for this type of endeavor. I will expect you to continue to devote one hundred percent to finding the Star and preparing the Machine for the Star and Points. Schoolwork will not come before this, you must understand. Even if nothing good comes out of it for the project's sake, putting you into the real world will come in handy one day."
I let all the information process. I was going to school? I was actually going to get to set a foot out of this house in this town, and it wasn't going to be solely for the purpose of retrieving a hostage? I could hardly believe Vlad's change of heart. It felt wonderful just thinking about the fact that Vlad thought of me as responsible enough to let me attend school.
It would take at least a week for Vlad to make a new tracker. (He had to build a new tracker for each of the Points and the Star; even then, he couldn't build a tracker that pinpointed their exact location. He built a tracker to find the Star's town and would now build a tracker to find his location because we were in close enough proximity.) And then, who knew how long it would take to build the Machine that would end the Star's life? I could get to go to school for an entire month or two!
Vlad had stopped pacing around the room and was now watching me with an expectant expression on his face. I knew that look. He wanted a response.
"Thank you, Master."
"Dismissed, Daniel." He waved me away with one hand and turned toward his inventions.
I waited two heartbeats to make sure that he was finished. After that, it was difficult not to bolt to the door of the lab and up the stairs. I was beyond excited.
It wasn't until I had stepped a foot into my bedroom that I realized something vital. I was going to appear stupid and idiotic. Sure, I had picked up lots of information here and there by listening to Vlad for the past ten years, but what was that compared to how much kids must learn in school each year?
I went to sleep that night terrified of the next day.
Jazz
"I hate that you have to be here early," Sam mumbled from the passenger seat. Her eyes were closed, and she was leaning her head against the window.
I sighed. "Yeah, I know, but you almost never have to come, so be quiet." Every other Tuesday I had to be at school at 6:45 to help our scatterbrained secretary reorganize everything. I had signed up because it would look good on a college application. Sam didn't usually have to suffer from my need to look good for college, but today Patty had to leave early for a doctor's appointment, and Sam would rather fall asleep in the car than scrunch onto the overcrowded bus.
I pulled into the vacant student parking lot and glanced at Sam. She was asleep. I sighed, found her phone and set the alarm for 7:20. School didn't start until 7:30. That would give her plenty of time.
I barely glanced around as I walked around to the front door of the school. Nothing was ever different in this place. It was the same thing every day. I could have closed my eyes and made very good progress toward the front door.
Then again, if I had closed my eyes I would've missed seeing the stretch limo idling in the street in front of the school.
I'm pretty sure I stopped and stared. I seemed to black out for a moment. But as soon as I realized my feet had stopped moving, I quickly paced toward the front door. I tried to keep my eyes off the limo but failed. It was something unusual to see a limo in Amity Park. It wasn't a small town, but it was by no means a big town, either. I had seen three limos in my life—each time, it was the mayor getting ready to be driven to some high profile event out of town.
What would a limo be doing at school of all places?
I tried to disregard it as I opened the front door of the school. I walked around to the back door of the office, opened it, and greeted the secretary. "Hi, Mrs. Scott, how are—"
"Oh there you are, thank goodness! Remember that new student I told you about yesterday? Oh, where did I put those papers?"
I sighed and glanced toward the front desk, surprised to see a very well-dressed man standing beside a kid probably at least a grade younger than I.
"Are you talking about his admission papers?" I asked, already knowing the answer. I set my backpack and purse down in the back corner of the office and paced toward the front desk, eying the top left-hand drawer.
The frantic woman looked at me from underneath her frizzy blond hair. "Yes! I set them right here on my desk yesterday and now there gone and I need to give them to—"
I let her drone on as I pulled the papers she was searching for out of the drawer. I glanced at the name on the paper before I handed them to the kid.
Daniel Masters.
I forced myself not to shudder. I hated people named Daniel or Danny or Dan or anything close to that. It didn't matter what age a boy was; if he were named Danny, I couldn't stand it. I had once refused to baby-sit a two year old because his name was Danny, and I still couldn't talk to our janitor.
It was childish, stupid, and irrational. I knew that my brother no longer lived in town, and even if he ever did move back, I knew better to think that he would be two, like the kid I was supposed to babysit, or forty-five, like our janitor. It was just a natural defense my body exhibited. It refused to allow me to even hope. I couldn't associate myself with the name Danny. My body wouldn't allow it.
So I smiled a hard smile, set the papers on his side of the desk, and said, "Here you are." I tried to meet his eyes, but they were focused on the ground. "Good luck with your first day."
I turned away quickly.
"Thanks," he mumbled. I began to walk away briskly. "I mean, thank-you." My eyebrows scrunched together and I turned to glance at the boy. He was just returning his eyes to the ground after looking toward his father.
I decided to not think about the weirdness and hurried to stalk out of the room.
"Oh, yes. Thank-you, Dear. Now, if you'll pay attention..."
I couldn't hear Mrs. Scott from the filing room in the very back of the office. I busied myself with the scattered papers on top of the filing drawers and settled into my work.
My defense system didn't allow me to think of the kid out front.
A/N: To clarify, no Jazz didn't just say, "Oh my goodness, that's my brother!" I tried to make that as clear as possible. I say this to discourage reviews that say "I can't believe Jazz already knows and it's just the first chapter! Do you not know how to write?" So...no, Jazz doesn't know it's her brother.
Thank-you for reading and please review!