Chapter 4: In which Danny makes a new friend and a new enemy, it's been a productive chapter people.
Danny paused.
No. He couldn't know.
Could he?
No, there was no way. Danny had been invisible the whole time.
So he snorted once and got their attention but they definitely dismissed it a second later.
"Okay seriously, I know you're here."
Danny slowly retracted himself from the wall and turned to Dash. No way he knew, right? Right. The jock was staring intently ahead, at the blank TV screen across from his bed. Was he... bluffing?
No. Yes, maybe?
"How'd you know it was me?" Danny asked, carefully dropping the invisibility. If he'd already been found out he might as well get to know how.
Dash's head whipped around to face Danny, however it didn't go unnoticed how contentiously still he kept his torso. "I knew it! You were there!"
"Wait, so you didn't know?" Danny exclaimed.
"No! Well I mean I was pretty sure..."
"But how?"
Dash brought a hand up to itch at his cheek impishly "Oh, well I um," his voice lowered slightly "recognized... your laugh." Dash wouldn't look at him, but Danny found himself studying the other teenager's face. Dash could recognize his laugh? It wasn't even a proper laugh! Dash worried the inside of his lower lip, the very tip of his tongue poking out to wet them, they were slightly chapped. "Was that weird?"
Danny blinked "What? No! Well okay maybe it's a little weird." Danny couldn't look away, that look of abashment so utterly alien.
However the one end Dash's lips lifted all the same, boyishness lighting his face like a candle. "Weirder than apparently having a ghost stalker?"
Danny sputtered, his turn to feel embarrassed "I'm not stalking you!"
"I dunno," Dash continued, and Danny almost decided he preferred when the jock was flustered "that's twice this month I've caught you lurking in my room."
"I wasn't lurking!" Danny all but yelled. His only answer was laugher.
"Then what do you call hanging out invisibly listening to other people's private conversations? Lurking or stalking, pick your poison." That grin was very quickly rising to top of Danny's list of faces he didn't like Dash Baxter making.
Danny groaned. How was it possible for Dash be so disarming? It was making it exceedingly difficult to be genuinely angry with him. "Fine whatever." There was no real heat to Danny's voice, and it managed to draw another laugh from Dash. Danny cast his eyes around, looking for a change of subject. "What happened to you anyway? You look worse than I do after most of my fights."
"What, didn't the stalker hear that part of the conversation he was listening in on?" Good god, would that loathsome smirk ever yield?
"No." Danny said pointedly, deciding he didn't want Dash knowing exactly how much he'd herd. It was bad enough Dash caught him yet again. And with a bluff no less.
The shine in Dash's eyes betrayed his disbelief, but he mercifully humored Danny "It wasn't that bad to be honest. I'd just got my car back from the shop, had it in for a new paint job, so me and a couple of friends took it out for a spin down by the docks. We were just messing around and crashed."
"'It wasn't that bad to be honest'?"
Dash shrugged inwards toward himself and scratched at his cheek again. "Um, no. I mean it looks a lot worse than it is." Two brokered ribs, yeah, that definitely sounded worse than it looked.
Even so, Danny decided to drop it. Let him play tough if that's what he absolutely wanted. "You should rub a banana peal or vinegar on your bruises."
"What?" Dash's face contorted in comic confusion.
Danny laughed lightly. It always had seemed strange to him too. "Yeah. I don't remember where I heard it, but it's supposed to help bruises heal faster. I dunno', it could just be placebo." Danny shrugged.
"A banana peal and vinegar sounds really random."
Danny laughed "Trust me it is. But it stops feeling stupid after the third or fourth bruise. I'd try just about anything to get them to go down faster. I heard from somewhere else that you should also suck on a wedge of orange for an hour- or maybe it was half an hour- but there's a limit to how many old wives remedies I'll try."
"Okay, after that banana and vinegar doesn't sound that weird."
Danny chuckled "You should hear some of the stuff other ghosts think I should do. I swear they make even less sense and are a heck of a lot messier."
"Geez, do I even want to know?"
"Probably not." They laughed again, and once more found themselves in that bizarre amicability that, for all intents and proposes, shouldn't be possible. At least as far as Danny was concerned.
"Can I ask you something?" Dash asked suddenly and Danny, pacified by the good mood, answered yes. "Why did you... I mean, like, the way things were left last time, I didn't think you'd come back. It seamed sorta' final. Why'd you show up today?"
"Ah," Danny stalled, bringing a hand up to the back of his neck. The question was certainly an unexpected one, and required a careful answer that Danny hadn't lent any thought to. He had just gone with his gut and came. "I, I um," he started and glanced off. How could he word this without sounding like he already knew Dash? "Well, I guess I came here 'cause I herd you were hurt, and stayed because... I think everyone deserves a second chance." He thought briefly on his parents, and how he hoped that, if he ever got the courage to tell them, they might be okay with a half-ghost for a son, and that they might still love him anyway. Yes, second chance sounded right.
Danny braved a glance to the jock and found him staring contemplatively down at his covers. "Oh." His eye brows creased.
Curse that tone. Curse that face. And curse whatever part of his brain that told Danny to reach right hand out. "How about this, we let bygones be bygones. Friends?"
Dash turned a look at Danny's outstreatched hand as if it had just turned blue. "Friends?" He asked, tearing his eyes away and up to Danny's "You want to be friends with me?"
Danny tried not to smile too wide "C'mon, don't make it awkward." He said, giving his hand a little, expectant wiggle.
Dash grasped it half a second later and shook, still looking humorously awestruck "If I'd known Danny Phantom would ask to be my friend I would have crashed my car ages ago."
Danny mock punched him in the arm, painfully aware of how carful he had to be with Dash's heavily bruised side. It was impossible to tell how far the scratches reached, as the sleeves of the overly large T-shirt fell almost down to his elbows. "It hasn't even been a minute, don't make me regret it already!"
Dash grinned and laughed something bright and impish and oh so happy. It was infectious. Danny unexpectedly found himself relieved for the label to put on his whatever with Dash, 'friends' familiarized the almost uncomfortable feeling bubbling deep in his mind at the sight of Dash's smile. It calmed the turmoil of emotion raised at seeing his tormentor so jovial.
Danny soon left Dash's with plans to return the next day, a smile and wave and a with weight off his shoulders. There was so much going on in his life already, he really didn't need to add teenage drama to the mix. Danny wasn't built to handle rom-com episode plots in his daly life, fighting ghosts was quite enough thank you very much.
Before he arrived at home, Danny made sure to make a quick pitstop by the docks and have a 'conversation' with a certain ghost.
There was something about having a dry piece of toast for a teacher like Mr. Lancer first period on a Monday that really sucked the joy from life. Danny had always liked English to an extent, and even after the responsibilities of being a part time hero-part time student crashed down on him he'd always managed about a B average. Except for that one time freshman year when he almost failed, but to be fair he'd only just got his powers then.
However Mr. Lancer had the uncanny ability to make anything he talked about sound like monotonous quibble. So it was that Danny found himself staring blankly ahead, their teacher's voice grinding away at the back of his mind, thoughts a million miles away.
Well perhaps not a million miles. Just on the other side of town.
It wasn't so unusual for Danny to be thinking of Dash, was it? It was probably normal. They had only just became friends after all. Friends. Danny never thought he'd be considering Dash so close as to call him a friend, albeit close to Phantom, but friend all the same. Again Danny thought to himself, how he was in part grateful for the label. Because now they could just be friends, and it almost didn't matter that Dash was rude and crass otherwise, because now Danny got to see an entirely different side of him. He got to see how Dash was with, say, Kwan. With his friends.
However, the other part of him burned with curiosity. The conversation he'd accidentally, for it was indeed an accident and Danny would defend that to his grave, overheard brought a wave of questions. And at their very forefront sat why. Danny couldn't understand, wondered if he would ever understand, how someone that he discovered to be so nice, could be so horrible. And his surprise! Did he really not register exactly how terrible he was to his peers on a daily basis?
Danny's eyes had drifted around the room as he mused, across the rows of chairs, desks and students. To the front, away, back again. Eventually rounding their way to his right side, where Tucker sat on the desk next to his, and Sam ahead of him.
And yet another part of his mind plagued him. What would they think? What would they say? Would they be alright with it? Probably, right? They had been teasing him for some silly little date, which it most certainly was not, much to Danny's irritation, but that at least meant that they weren't exclusively hostile, didn't it?
As if sensing his eyes on her, Sam turned and met Danny's gaze just as he opened his mouth in a wispy gasp. Her face turned sympathetic.
Danny raised his hand to get Mr. Lancer's attention. The teacher pinned Danny down with one tired look, the look of a man who knew exactly what was about to happen and disliked every bit of it greatly. "Let me guess Mr. Fenton, the bathroom?"
Danny lowered his hand, a light blush creeping up his neck. "Yeah..."
Mr. Lancer reached for a hall pass with great reluctance, and handed it to his student with greater still. "See to it that you actually return to class this time." He said sternly and turned back to his class without giving Danny the chance to reply.
Life would be so much easier if he could just figure it how to split himself in to copies. Properly, none of those two headed mishaps he seemed so good at.
Though the hallway was void of any other students, Danny still ran to the nearest janitor's closet to transform. Paranoia had saved his skin on more than one occasion in the past, and now, almost at the end of his junior year, he wasn't about to slip up. On his way he found a curious green mist creeping across the floor, slowly rounding a corner he passed. Transformed and ready for battle, Danny floated above the mist, carful not to disturb it, and attempted to look for a source.
The mist grew steadily in density, turning in to a thick, light obscuring smog before too long. Danny followed it to the west wing of the school, in the science and math department, upon which he found a jungle of rich plants, blooming in flowers of all shapes and colors, the largest of which seemed to be secreting this gas.
A ghost presented itself to him, some sort of plant thing, Danny guessed it might be something akin to whatever Undergrowth was. "Ah, the halfa I've herd so much about." It said, emerging from a billowing plume of mist. It had an unfortunate screech in it's voice, turning each vowel in to a shrill cry.
Danny crossed his arms. "Great, another new ghost. Let me guess, you want to take over the world or something?"
The ghost sneered, if one could call the vertical slit in its face capable of such an expression. "Insolent child! I see now why you are held in such high contempt."
Danny tried not to roll his eyes too obviously, but honestly he was a teenage boy. Sometimes he couldn't help himself. "Okay so can we maybe fast forward through the whole introduction of you and your obsession so I can get back to class?"
"Very well." It growled "If you are so determined to meet your doom, I shall oblige." It raised it's arms, several flowered vines rising with him. At his command the tentacle like vines shot forward and attacked, chasing Danny and lunging after him as he dodged.
"What, no screaming your name and evil plans at me? I thought you ghosts were in to that!" Danny taunted. It was hard to breath in the thick, humid air but he grinned his signature half-smile regardless. This was the part he liked the most, the banter.
The ghost growled again, fisting its vines for hands. "I am your greatest advisary yet, you know not to whom you speak child!" it screeched, reaching what must have been a new octave. Okay, so maybe it wasn't so big on the banter, but that didn't mean Danny couldn't joke around.
"I dunno', there's a long list of creeps I've had to fight, you might have to get in line for 'the greatest advisary yet'."
One of the vines attacked again, this time succeeding in wrapping around his ankle. Danny cried out, only now realizing that the vines were covered in small, sharp thorns. "I am the poltergeist of perennial!" the ghost yelled in his face, commanding the vine to bring Danny down to the floor. More flowered and oozed their putrid gas. "I am the manes of morass!" Danny broke from the vine's grip, suffering many long and short gashes along his legs, and flew back in to the air, charging a strong iceray. The ghost grunted and commanded again the vines to move towards him yet again, but Danny was ready now. "I am the-"
"The ghost that's gonna' have to cool it down!" Danny yelled and fired, freezing the incoming vines and shattering them quickly with a couple ectoblasts. The ghost cried incoherent fury, this time choosing to fly up and attack Danny directly.
The air was progressively becoming thicker and hotter. Danny tried to resolve the battle as quickly as possible, wanting to get out of the thick vapor as soon as possible. The other ghost was more agile than most, engaging Danny so thoroughly that he didn't even have the chance to unhook the thermos from his belt. Danny didn't know for how long they had fought- couldn't really be more than a few minutes- but his limbs felt weighed down with premature fatigue. He found it steadily harder and harder to fly, fire both ice and ectoblasts, and to phase from oncoming attacks. One of the vines jabbed at his side, sending three long and too deep scratches from the razor sharp thorns across his left line of ribs. Not to mention the bleeding cuts that steadily collected along all four limbs. The other ghost was second by second gaining the upper hand, and they both knew it.
"Succumb ghost child." the ghost insisted when he had Danny's arms pinned securely in front of him, the thrones ripping jaggedly down his torso.
Danny grinned despite the pain and lethargy seeping in to his muscles, making the ghost bristle "Hah. If I can deal with the dandelions in our back yard, I can definitely deal with an ugly pile of weeds like you." Danny delivered a hard kick, landing squarely in the ghost's jaw. He was released and Danny flew the the ground.
As soon as he touched the floor he collapsed on his knees, his legs giving way under his weight. But Danny couldn't lower his guard just yet, he reached to his belt and brought forward the thermos. Sluggish fingers fumbled with the lid, struggling to screw it opened. The ghost was recovering, and Danny desperately clawed at the lid, his hands weren't strong enough, he couldn't grip it properly. Somewhere in the distance Danny thought he herd sirens, but it was hard to tell over the blood pounding in his ears.
The ghost landed without a sound and approached Danny slowly, drawing out each step. Danny's vision swam. It laughed cruelly, and despite it's high pitch, he recognized the crazed notes of almost every evil ghost he'd met in his near three years of heroism. The air felt oppressive, pressing down on his shoulders like a tangible weight. For each stagnant second it grew heavier, and Danny weaker.
The thermos dropped to the ground, Danny following after. The last thing he registered before his human body landed with a heavy thud on the hard linoleum floor was someone calling his name, and the wine of a charging ectoweapon.
I know I'm terrible. Two cliffhangers in row, feel free to hate me. But I do have some good news! The next chapter is halfway-ish done, so it'll probs be up in week as opposed to two. So hey, something to look forward to ^^
As always, reviews are cherished and incouraged! Criticism is appreciated.
