The Siege chapter 4

By Kellie Fay

Disclaimer: Danny Phantom belongs to Butch Hartman.

I would like to thank Kidwrangler for volunteering to be my beta reader.

Reviews would make the insecure author very happy

Chapter 4: Sobering up

Cookies eaten and hat taken away, Danny searched for something else to hang on to. Spying Sam's backpack nearby, he snagged it and dragged the purple material closer. After fumbling around a bit and making himself all but cross eyed, he decided it was too difficult to get it up to his face. He settled for plopping his head into Sam's lap and snuggling the backpack into the crook of one arm. Sam was surprised, but took her sudden role as a pillow with equanimity, simply raising the folder of papers high enough to let him cuddle. As she read about Miss Daily's new botanical acquisition, Danny would look up at her every few minutes and give her a goofy smile. After a while he closed his eyes, and grew very still. A puzzled expression crossed his face. After ten minutes of no wiggling and no smiles, Sam looked down and called gently, "Danny?"

Danny didn't move, make a sound, or even change his rate of breathing. Convinced he was simply asleep, Sam went back to her reading.

She'd barely made her way through another half page when she heard a cautious, confused voice murmur softly, "Sam?"

"Danny?" Sam put the notes down beside her on the floor and faced her friend. His eyes were open, alert and wary, but he seemed to be having trouble focusing.

"Did you call me?" Danny asked, puzzled.

Not sure of his state of mind, Sam nodded and said gently, "A few minutes ago. I was just checking up on you. I thought you'd fallen asleep."

"No," Danny said softly, still puzzled. "I...I could hear you, but it's like the rest of me is in slow motion."

Sam smiled and gently combed her hand through his hair. "It's all right Danny. You just relax and recover."

It seemed that Danny was done relaxing, though. He frowned, trying to figure out what she was talking about. "Recover?" he asked. "Recover from what? Where's Tucker, why am I lying on the floor, and...am I in your lap?" His voice squeaked up a bit at the end.

Sam watched a deep flush flood up Danny's face from his neck to his hairline. She repressed a chuckle, realizing he'd just noticed his position and probably wanted to move a more respectful distance away. "You're lying on the floor because that's where you planted yourself," Sam explained. "As for Tucker, what do you remember after getting here?"

Danny frowned in concentration. "Miss Daily wanted Tuck to work in the greenhouse alone. I was fixing a door upstairs. The Box Ghost showed up…then we came back in and started setting up Sarah's new DVD player." Danny now looked even more puzzled. "Sam, did I trip another one of Sarah's Security Spells?"

Sam wondered how much Danny remembered of the last couple of hours. "Why do you ask?"

Danny's expression wrinkled up in intense concentration. "Cuz I really started to feel weird."

"Weird?" Sam echoed.

Danny nodded slowly. "Like that time when we were eleven. We were helping you and your parents clean up after their New Year's party and Tucker thought it would be easier if he just drank all the half filled glasses of champagne and other drinks instead of carrying them one by one into the kitchen to dump in the sink."

Sam remembered that. Tucker had started it, and Danny was soon copying him. Before she or her parents knew what hit them they were forced to deal with a pair of very tipsy boys. That marked the day that Sam's parents started complaining about Danny, even though it had been Tucker's idea.

It also marked the first time Sam noticed that every now and then Danny's father had a stroke of pure brilliance. He suggested a suitable punishment, and Tucker's parents approved. Both boys had had to recover from their hangovers without any remedies except time. To this day neither Danny nor Tucker would touch a drop of alcohol.

"You felt drunk?" Sam asked.

Again it took Danny a minute to answer. "Sort of, but not the same. I couldn't concentrate. I felt like I was floating on pink clouds and sinking underwater at the same time."

"Pink clouds?" Sam asked with a chuckle. Danny shot her a dark look and struggled to get into a seated position, but his arms and legs refused to cooperate.

"Why can't I get up?" Danny asked, worry creeping into his voice.

"It's all right Danny," Sam said, patting his shoulder a little to try and reassure him. "Do you remember Miss Daily telling you and Tucker that you shouldn't go near any of the plants she had shipped here this week?"

Danny thought a moment. "Yeah, but I didn't."

"You examined the box, though," Sam reminded him.

"Only for a few seconds," Danny answered back, concerned. "Wait…the box did something to me? You mean the Box Ghost did this?"

"Not exactly," Miss Daily said coming over, brushing a little dirt off her hands from the greenhouse. She knelt down next to the pair. "The box had pollen in it from the flowers. Tucker got some on his hat, so when you were working together you got exposed. How do you feel now?"

Danny sighed and shut his eyes against the light. "I'm seeing spots in front of my eyes, and every time I try to get up the room starts spinning."

Danny felt Sarah gently touch his forehead. "There's still some pollen in your system, but you don't seem to be having a lot of problems coming out of it. I was worried how your dual physiology would be affected by the Bikona."

Danny sighed again. "If it helps, I feel like I'm getting better, but I still feel dizzy."

"You feel like you still want to just lay there?" Sarah asked.

Danny nodded slowly, "I really don't feel like getting up, but I'd like to at least get on the couch." He glanced up at Sam, but started blushing again. He managed to wriggle a bit, but that was it. Frustrated, he said, "I can't seem to even sit up without the world feeling like a giant Tilt-A-Whirl, and I feel like I've got lead weights on my arms and legs."

"All right. Let's see if we can get you as far as the couch," Sarah said.

Gently sliding Danny's head off her leg and onto the floor, Sam stood up and stretched a little, then took hold of him under his arms. Miss Daily got him at the knees and together they managed to manhandle Danny over to the couch. "For a half ghost you're amazingly heavy," Sam grunted.

"I'll make you something that might help clear your head," Sarah said, patting him on the shoulder.

"Please," Danny said, trying to take deep breaths against the nausea.

As Sarah headed into the kitchen, Danny turned back to Sam. "You still didn't tell me what happened after the Box Ghost," he said.

Sam made sure his head wasn't going to slide off the pillow, and tugged down his t-shirt. "You don't remember after the Box Ghost?" she asked.

Danny frowned. "I remember helping Tucker with the DVD player," he said thoughtfully, "then I started feeling weird, but a happy kind of weird. I know Tucker was looking something up on the computer, but after that everything gets fuzzy."

Sam couldn't help herself. She breathed a deep sigh of relief that Danny couldn't remember what he had said to her when she came in. She wasn't sure which one of them would be more embarrassed if he had. "By the time Miss Daily and I got here you were pretty buzzed," Sam explained. "You were babbling about anything that came into your head. You really weren't making much sense." She sat down at the other end of the sofa, moving Danny's feet to give herself a little more room.

Sarah came out of the kitchen, carefully carrying a mug of tea, and could tell from Danny's face that he wasn't happy. He tried to reach for the mug but his arms and hands still weren't under his control. Sarah didn't say anything, just put an arm behind his shoulders to hold him up a bit, and brought the straw to his lips. Feeling like two year old, Danny scowled and said, "In other words I was pretty much making a fool of myself."

"It was just here," Sarah said soothingly. "Only Sam, and Tucker saw, and you know they won't tell anybody."

"Tell, no. Show pictures, maybe."

"No pictures," Sam said firmly. And if Tucker managed to take any when I wasn't looking, he won't have them for long, she thought fiercely.

Danny sipped at the tea, and scrutinized his math teacher a bit suspiciously. "So why did you get a plant that makes ghosts high?"

"It was sent to me by an old friend," Sarah explained. "Bikona is pretty rare and endangered. Sam's had a lot of success raising her rare Venus fly traps, so she's going to help me make leaf cuttings of this one. Most Bikona plants only have male flowers. There are only a few dozen plants that are female, so it's hard to cross pollinate. Once the leaf cuttings take, we can send them to different universities to be studied."

"You're growing more of these plants? To use on ghosts?" Danny asked warily.

"We're trying to preserve the species," Sarah corrected. "Not see how many ghosts we can make loopy. I promise you it's not going to end up at your local florist any time soon. Some of the ancient legends say that Bikona is good for human medicine, too, so I want to do a little research. I had been thinking about asking your mom to analyze it for me, but given how you reacted to the Bikona I think I'll have to pass on that idea. I think it's too risky to give her a sample. You could be accidentally exposed."

"Please don't," Danny said with a slight whine.

Sarah chuckled. "You must be feeling better now. You're complaining." She settled him back down on the sofa pillows and set the tea on a side table.

"Funny," Danny said. He wanted to get up, but found his limbs were still uncooperative.

"Just rest, Danny." Sarah smiled understandingly. "I'm sorry you got exposed before I could warn you. I did want to see how you'd react to it, and how much exposure you can tolerate, but I was going to ask first."

"I know you would," Danny said closing his eyes and leaning his head back. "It's not your fault Tucker brought the pollen out with him. You weren't even here." He thought maybe Miss Daily's tea was starting to help, but he still sounded tired when he asked, "Do you really still want to do your tests?"

Sarah nodded. "For a few reasons." Before she could explain, Danny started reciting them wearily.

"You need to know how it affects me directly, starting from beginning to end. Sam, Tuck and Jazz need to know how I act when I get into that stuff so they'll know what's wrong with me if I start acting crazy. You need to know how long this stuff will stay in my system. You need to know if you can use it for medicines for me, and you need to figure out how to keep me from being accidentally exposed to it again."

"For crying out loud, Danny! I've only given you test potions twice, both times you needed the help, and they were designed around your human physiology. You act like all I do is use you for a guinea pig!"

"Sorry," Danny said, peeking out from under his eyelashes and not sounding all that apologetic. "Most of your potions are fine. I just have problems with stuff that makes me not remember whatever I did."

"Fair enough," Sarah said. "Don't worry. Going into the tests you'll be very aware of why you have memory blanks, and if you want, I'll have Tucker tape it so you can see what you did. But that will be your decision."

"Some decision," Danny muttered. "Know what kind of fool you become when you're under a weird plant's spell, or keep yourself in the dark knowing that others know."

"Well, it's your decision, Danny," Sarah said briskly. "I didn't know it would block your memory, but you know your friends and I won't let anything happen to you."

"I know," Danny said with a sigh. "And that's the reason I'm agreeing to it. If I don't, you know we'll end up in a situation where we'll need the stuff and you won't know everything about how it affects me."

"Now you're thinking like a guardian," Sarah said with a smile. "Rest. Have some more tea. Take a nap. I'll give you a week before I expose you again." She picked up the tea mug and handed it down to Sam. Stretching the kinks out of her legs she headed back to the greenhouse as Sam folded herself gracefully to the floor.

"Gee, a whole week," she heard Danny say sarcastically.

"Shut up and drink," was Sam's fond reply.

Sarah smiled to herself. She needed to take care of the rest of the Bikona plants before they dried out in the greenhouse, and whether Sam knew it or not, the young Goth needed to take care of Danny.

Next Chapter 5 More Ghost nip

Yes I know I've done this once but I needed to do a second one. This one is more in Danny's POV and well he gets a stronger dose this time.

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"I see," Miss Daily said dryly. She looked at Sam and shrugged. "I guess calculating how fast he reacts to the flowers is out of the question?"

Sam nodded. "He was pretty much out of it by the time I got here. He might be able to tell us more with the Bikona out of this system."

"No!" Danny protested, clinging to the flower. One petal tickled his nose. Danny sneezed, then a wicked idea came to him. With his eyes gleaming in mischief, Danny bit the petal off of the ghost nip flower chewed and swallowed.

"Danny!" Sam cried out.

"What?" Tucker asked.

"Danny's eating the flowers!" Sam explained.