Chapter Four

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"I'm starting to get sick of this tofu burger."

Tucker raised his eyebrows skeptically at her over his thick-rimmed glasses, pausing in his attack on his own dripping burger. God, his looked disgusting. Like someone slaughtered a cow and put it directly between two buns. "You've only taken one bite!" he protested.

"I mean in general," she clarified with a huff. "The vegan options in this city are brutally thin on the ground. And the Nasty Burger is the absolute worst."

"You could share my delicious double-patty melt," he said, wiggling his eyebrows.

She made a horrified gagging face at him, before burying her nose back in the thick book laid next to her tray on the white tabletop.

The open page displayed a newspaper article nearly a century old, a lesser headline reading "Ghost sighted again at the tracks." Underneath was a blurb about the article and the surrounding research.

In January 1912 a laborer at the railroad named Gregory Amos died of a heart attack. There were reported sightings of his ghost in August of that year, with subsequent sightings reported in 1931 and 1950. (See page 198.) This ghost was not seen again until September 2004, at which time sightings became remarkably frequent and well-documented. (See page 199.) This ghost, whose chosen haunt is any variety of cubic container, is widely known today as the Box Ghost. Origin of ghostly obsession debated. (See page 260.)

"Earth to Sam?" Tucker was saying across the table, waving his hand over her book. "Come in, do you copy?" He stopped when Sam glanced up from the passage. "Why are you so suddenly obsessed with this book? You've been reading it all week. And you've never been all that interested in ghosts."

"That's not true," she countered. "I love everything dark and scary!" She flashed him her fingernails, which had little black spiders painted on them, as if to prove to him her point. "Ghosts totally fall under that category. Plus, it's interesting," she admitted. "Don't you want to know what people have to say about the ghosts haunting Amity?"

Tucker shrugged indifferently. "I really think I get enough of ghosts just trying to do my daily business."

"Oh I get it," she said with a wink, "you're still sore about your last PDA."

"You're damn right I am! Well why does there have to be a ghost bent on controlling all my electronics anyway?" he fumed, taking a massively angry bite out of his burger, taking nearly half of it off at once.

She rolled her eyes and flipped to page 260 in the Ghostly Obsessions section. "So you're saying you're not interested at all in why the Box Ghost haunts boxes?" He was still trying to swallow his monstrous bite so she continued. "It says here one of his coworkers reported that he'd lost the engagement ring box he was planning on giving his girl just before he died. Isn't that tragic? Although there's a part here that says other people reported he never had a girlfriend at all.. So I guess it's really a mystery for the ages," she snickered.

Tucker finally managed to swallow, letting out a proper belch. God he was like a wild animal sometimes. "I don't really care," he answered, wiping the red sauce off his face. "As long as he's not haunting my boxes. Come to think of it, I haven't seen the Box Ghost around for awhile. Doesn't he usually show up at the school at least three times a week?"

"Yeah. Haven't seen him lately though," Sam mused, turning back to the News Articles section, scanning for other familiar ghosts.

Not for the first time since taking this text home from work, Sam wondered idly why Danny Fenton had wanted to read this book. Then she paused for a moment, considering the fact that for the first time ever she had just identified her old best friend by his first and last name subconsciously. Like he was a stranger.

But it was really no mystery to her why. 'Danny' had taken on kind of a new meaning.

She told herself she wasn't doing research on him. She was just interested, that was all. When Danny told her about obsessions a few weeks ago, she had realized just how little she really knew about ghosts. Especially considering one of her best friends was one. Best friend? Where did that come from? Well.. yeah. He kind of was her other best friend. Was it... weird that Sam didn't think that was weird?

Sam had always been the kind of girl that loved the stuff other girls hated. When she was in elementary school other girls would play games at recess and she would be with Tucker and Danny luring lizards with dead grasshoppers. When her mom tried to get her to brighten up her wardrobe in middle school, she died her hair black and shaved half of it off. Girly stuff had just never appealed to her. Maybe it was because she was supposed to like it, or maybe because she was psychologically scarred by her fifties pin-up mother. To put it simply, most of her coworkers at Skulk and Lurk had to wear store merchandise, like creepy necklaces, gaudy bodices, stuff like that. Sam didn't have to because her wardrobe already looked like that. Sometimes girls at school sneered and called her a witch. Not like she cared.

All this had to do with why Sam never thought twice about having a ghost for a friend. It just seemed the natural thing to do. It wasn't strange. Ghosts were just a part of life in Amity, so why not make friends with the nice one?

Recently she found she kept having to remind herself that Danny was dead, which felt strange to say, even in her mind. It was just that he acted so human. So normal, in comparison to any other ghost she'd encountered. It was hard to think of him as not alive, when he was so vibrant. It was hard to look into his gemlike eyes and picture him at a moment of death, trying to picture what he looked like before dying. It was even harder when he refused to talk about his former life at all. She had told Danny almost everything about herself, but she knew hardly anything about his life prior to death. Sam couldn't picture him as anyone but who he was right now, couldn't imagine him without that soft candle glow that always hung about him like a hazy mist.

So yeah, if she was being honest, she was doing research. There was a lot in this book about Danny Phantom, since it was published just recently. This past autumn. Every contributing author had their two cents about Phantom. Much of it was terrible and wrong, to her dismay, but some of it was true and showed Danny in his proper light. She grinned as she thumbed over the passage on page 18 detailing the defeat of Pariah Dark, back in Sam's freshman year of high school. She remembered that.

But the book didn't have anything to say about who Danny was before he died. Nobody, anywhere, had anything but empty hands on that topic.

Once, she had asked him.

"What was your name before you died?" She didn't honestly think his name was always Phantom.

He glanced up at her sadly from the book he was reading on her bed. "Don't ask me that," he said, without malice. "Please. Don't ask me things I can't answer."

She was never sure if he didn't remember, or if he just didn't want to remember.

Without admitting to herself how nosy she was being, she'd poured over the obituaries for the entire year of 2004, the year Danny first showed up in Amity Park. And a few years prior to that. And found nothing, really. No pictures that resembled him, no Dannys who died.

Though to be fair, the book in front of her now had spent a large chapter devoted to the highly noted increase of all ghostly activity come September of the year 2004. There were a multitude of theories regarding the reasons behind the sudden rise in ghost attacks at the turn of the century, when ghosts long forgotten suddenly began showing up again. And that was the same time Danny showed up, so in all honesty he really could be any number of decades old. Like the Box Ghost, who died all the way back in 1912 and now haunted every street corner.

Somehow it seemed she would never know who Danny was, which was what made it all the harder to think of him as dead.

Her book closed with a thump and she let out an involuntary sigh, leaning her head back against the booth.

"Nice necklace," Tucker said, crumpling up his burger's wrapper into a tiny ball. "I thought you said you would never be caught dead wearing DP merch? I thought it was too, quote-unquote, mainstream?"

Sam looked down reactively to her neck, where a tiny "DP" symbol rested on a black chain, above the necklace that had a dozen tiny metal bats dangling loosely.

"Since when are you a Phantom fanatic?" he asked skeptically. "You didn't run off and join Paulina's fan club did you?" He gave her a sick expression.

"Um no, I didn't,"she replied hotly. "But I do support Danny Phantom. I mean.. he's a hero, you know? He gets enough hate from this town. People who support him should say so."

"Whatever you say Sammy," he chuckled, getting up to toss their trash. "But I swear if I find a shrine in your locker…"

"Tucker!" She shoved him playfully as they headed out the glass doors.

As they stepped out into the parking lot the two friends stopped cold, halted by a line of chattering onlookers that were crowding under the overhanging roof of the Nasty Burger. It became immediately evident that they were under there for cover, because there was a spectacular aerial battle taking place overhead.

A monstrous red behemoth with a spiked tail whipping like a mace was circling some dozens of feet above them, and it parted its cavernous beak to let loose an ear-shattering roar. An onslaught of smaller crimson ghosts buzzed out of its beak like mosquitos, flapping insectile wings as they descended down toward the panicking crowd. One look at Tucker told her he was going to be sick.

As Sam's hand dipped into her purse instinctively for her only defense (her patented Fenton wrist ray, the mace-spray-for-ghosts) purple flashes of light caught her attention, in that they were coming up from the parking lot and blasted a couple of the looming mosquitoes out of the air. Standing on her toes to look over the citizens bum-rushing the front doors to get inside, Sam saw what was happening. Four nondescript white vans were scattered around the lot, several white motor scooters pulled up and abandoned around the side of the building, with men wearing stark white head to toe bustling out of them, aiming heavy guns into the air.

Even as she watched, two of the mosquitoes were taken down in a net, but a dozen more escaped. She ground her teeth angrily, knowing full well what was about to happen when Danny inevitably arrived on the scene. Sam was never partial to the racist government agency, but in this new light cast on them by her friendship with Danny, they were downright demon spawn to her.

Distantly she felt Tucker yanking on her arm, trying to pull her towards the door, but she had spotted a black blur coming around the far building, a fleeting reflection on the third-story glass. Her eyes were trained on him, venom dripping from her gaze as she watched him dodge nets cast by the GIW below. Never mind that he was helping them of course…

"SAM!" She snapped back to the ground as Tucker shoved her full force into the wall of the Nasty Burger, a blood red mosquito the size of a Labrador whizzing past them with a hiss. It turned around to go at Tucker but Sam had found her head again, and raised her wrist steadily. She'd done this before. A quick aim with the squint of an eye – she bent down her middle finger to sharply squeeze the trigger on her inner wrist, and the ghost fizzled and hit the ground at Tucker's feet.

"Damn, girl!" Tucker breathed, but then another two ghosts were descending on them. Sam leveled her arm again and punched out a series of blasts. They all connected but one ghost shook itself off and screeched, sending a laser bright shock of light at the source of its pain. Sam's wrist exploded into agony as her weapon was literally blasted off her skin – the metal band broke and it whipped up her arm, into her shoulder. Everything went white as Sam fell to her knees, clutching her arm to her chest.

Numbly she saw green lights flying past, watched half a dozen blurry red ghosts fall around them, felt Tucker's arms around her waist, heaving her upright. Flashes of white-blue light, the red corpses disappeared. One glance down told her there was blood on her, bright blisters. She looked away, saw white tuxedos aiming at the blur of black in the air. Danny. Danny was there. More red streaks flying towards her, she and Tucker were alone on the sidewalk. But before they reached her the streak of black turned into a luminous face in front of her, two floating orbs of green light like concerned fireflies.

A tingling cool sensation, weightless suddenly, a blur of colors, and she found herself on the dirty tile floor of the Nasty Burger, surrounded by loud panicking people.

"Danny?" she asked the empty air between her and Tucker – he was already gone.

She pushed Tucker away, who was trying to look at her arm, and lurched straight to the window. She could hear the dragonlike ghost screeching, shaking the glass, watched as a blue haze enveloped its skin and sucked it away, like a supernova eaten by a black hole. Her right arm was screaming like grating knives, but strangely she hated the tuxedoed men right now more than the ghost that injured her.

The pricks were still trying to capture Danny, even though he just saved fucking everyone.

But then, that was always how it went. Wasn't it?

Luckily for the whole town, the agency sucked dick in comparison to Danny when it came to capturing ghosts. Sure they could beat them into submission, sometimes, but nobody had a thermos quite like Danny Phantom's. Nobody knew what Danny did with the ghosts he captured either. Except for Sam, who Danny let in on the secret. ("Bottomless thermos," he had called it with a wry and prideful expression. He took one of the Fentons' weapons, the gun that shot singularity portals to suck ghosts in with one shot, and modified the technology to fit into the bottom of their thermos. Sam called him a genius. He blushed madly and told her it wasn't that difficult.)

Go! Sam screamed at him silently. Now that the threat was gone he should leave, in case the GIW stopped sucking and actually captured him. But instead he was flying straight toward her where she was pressed against the glass. His face was suddenly looming an inch from hers, his jaw partially obscured by the giant backwards "N" in the logo on the window. She shook her head at him in alarm, pointing at the men barreling toward the front of the store behind him. But they wouldn't shoot directly at the window, she realized, not with the civilians inside.

'What are you doing?' she mouthed through the glass.

"I'm going to have to pretend I don't know you in public," he had told her countless times before. "Don't ever forget that I have enemies."

But here he was now, staring at her openly - his eyes were wide as saucers, and kept flitting to her arm, where she could feel blood dripping, she could feel her skin alive like fire from the burn.

'I'M FINE!' she mouthed, and if she could mouth the sensation of screaming she would.

With one last glance at her arm he dropped straight into the ground, just as the agents swarmed the sidewalk, cursing and casting their heads around wildly. Several took off their heat sensing goggles and threw them to the ground out of frustration – what good were they when your target was flying underground?

Tucker and Sam left the restaurant last, after the anxious crowd had dispersed. The aftermath of ghost attacks in Amity were always short-lived. The novelty of them wore off fast when they happened daily. People got over it quickly, even the most terrified of citizens.

Tucker kept his arm gingerly around Sam's waist, watching her warily as they paused on the sidewalk.

"Ah shit," Sam muttered, stooping to pick up her battered wrist ray. The band was mangled, and while the actual device looked uninjured the trigger was demolished. "My wrist ray!" she keened, picking up the other half of the trigger from the ground.

"That's what you're worried about?" Tucker demanded. "We're getting you to the hospital right now. Have you looked at your arm?" he asked incredulously.

"It isn't so bad," Sam whispered, shoving the broken bits of metal into her little black purse.

She thought of Danny rousing her from a sound sleep apologetically at four am just the week before, asking her to bandage a gash on his back. "I can't reach back there," he'd told her contritely. The way the wet green of it glistened in the candlelight from her window, the way he tensed and didn't make a sound as she washed and wrapped it. How even when he was hurt he seemed so much more human than ghost. "You usually do this by yourself?" she had asked him. He had offered her a toothy grin. At the time she'd been thinking of the bike accident she'd had freshman year, when a skateboarder had sent her careening into the pavement. A nasty cut on her thigh had cast her into wracking sobs. So small, so insignificant. The scar from it was a faint crescent the size of her finger. While bandaging Danny she had seen a network of white lines, traced a frightening ragged scar that stretched around the left side of his ribcage, seen splayed across his chest what looked frighteningly like a Lichtenburg scar, and felt an intensely foreign emotion surge through her violently.

"It really doesn't hurt that bad," she assured Tucker more vehemently, though her arm's skin was shrieking the opposite.

"Repeat, target 1-A escaped."

Sam's eyes were drawn to a couple of agents standing off to the side, huddled together, one talking into a headset.

"Yes, I repeat. Attempt at capture failed. Contact was lost. Ordering a full regroup."

She winced in pain as her fists clenched involuntarily. The nerve of them. The stupid GIW agency had suddenly appeared in Amity Park just over a year ago, and now they were so imposing it was almost like a full-time military occupation. Some people didn't mind them, but you'd have to be an idiot not to see that all they did was impede the real ghost hunters in their work.

Tucker led her away, repeating the word "hospital" with increasing urgency, ignoring her protests that she was fine. She dimly felt grateful for her best friend, and remembered with a surge that he was deathly terrified of anything related to hospitals. She smiled up at him to let him know that she knew what he was sacrificing as they stumbled towards his car.

And as they walked past an empty white motor scooter with the logo "GIW" printed on the front, Sam gave it a massive shove with the flat end of her boot and sent it crashing to its side.

She heard someone screech "My scooter!" as Tucker closed the car door on her, and she rolled down the window to stick out her middle finger as Tucker peeled out of the parking lot.

I almost forgot to mention! My ideas about the Box Ghost are inspired directly from Cordria's fic titled "Dreams of Light." Basically, it's awesome and you need to read it. Also, the "bottomless thermos" idea is again directly inspired from one of Cordria's one-shots (one of my all-time favorites) called (surprise, surprise) "Bottomless Thermos." It's number 48 in her 'Nova Shots' collection and you should absolutely positively go read it. I just loved the idea so much that it's pretty much canon in my head now.