Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom
AN: Here's the rest of the chapter.
Springing the Trap
(400 word Dribble)
Danny gasped and spun around. A well dressed man stood just behind him. How had he gotten there? His enhances senses make it extremely difficult for anyone to sneak up on him. Then what the man had said caught up with him.
"Wait…died?"
Danny's ghost sense hadn't gone off and the man seemed human enough. He appeared to be in his mid fifties with graying hair and carrying some extra weight around his belly that his blazer was unable to hide.
"…But you're not a ghost?"
He could hear Sam calling questions through the Fenton phones as he stood gaping while the man stood looking down at him with a condescending smile. Then belatedly his mind put the clues together and it clicked.
"Sam, I think I've found our ghost. He's overshadowing one of the tourists."
Phantom willed an ecto-plasmic charge to build up in his hands and dove at the man. To his surprise the ghost inside made no move to stop him. Not meeting the expected resistance, Phantom flew right though his target and then through the wall behind him to land in an undignified heap in the adjacent room.
He looked up to see the chain-wrapped ghost floating above him.
"Well done, you found me," the ghost applauded, mockingly.
"And you found trouble," Danny growled as he flipped to his feet and his body automatically went into battle stance.
Danny threw up a shield and wrapped it around the ghost but this time was not surprised when it failed to hold it.
"Oh bother, not this again," the ghost had the same sort of tone that Danny used when encountering the Box Ghost.
"I can't let you overshadow people."
"I'm afraid it was necessary," the ghost answered almost apologetically. "Well, I could hardly join the tour as a ghost. Besides ghosts don't have money, generally speaking, and even if they did, I certainly would not give it to those swindlers."
"Not my problem," Danny said as he shot a series of blasts at the ghost. They were low level blasts since he did not want to cause any damage. Their purpose was not to capture the ghost but to herd it toward Sam's trap.
At first the ghost seemed to oblige, moving out into the hallway. Now as Danny tried to force it through the open door of what once was a formal dining room, the ghost stopped its retreat causally asked.
"Where are we going?"
Phantom sighed inwardly; the ghost was too suspicious to just walk into the trap. Well maybe they still could trap it.
"Now!" he signaled Sam.
Sam pressed the trigger and fired a ghost net. It sailed across the room with a whoosh and enveloped the ghost. With a shrug the ghost pulled the net from its body, stepped away, and turned towards Sam.
"I could have told you that wouldn't work, young lady," the ghost said cheerfully.
But the net was merely a distraction. Charging his hands with ectoplasm, Danny charged full tilt at the ghost's back, hoping that the sudden attack would not give the ghost time to do his little trick. The goal was to get the ghost into the recessed cabinet in the back wall that housed the shaft to the dumb waiter.
The impact transferred his momentum to the ghost, propelling it toward the rectangular hole.
With a cry of triumph, Sam cut the rope to close the trap.
At the last second, the ghost whipped around and clamped his hand around Danny's ankle.
Danny struggled but the ghost was stronger than it looked. The two of them collided with the back wall of the recessed cabinet just as the dumb waiter slid into place along with the doubly reinforced ghost shields Sam and borrowed from Fentonworks.
Great, now they were both trapped in the confining space. He squirmed, trying to get in a better position.
The ghost just laughed.
"So you want to play my game?"
Then with a chuckle the ghost passed through the shields boxing them in as if they didn't exist.
"Have fun!" he called, closing the cabinet door.
Danny's muffled voice came from inside the dumb waiter. "If I wanted to do this, I'd have asked Dash to stuff me in my locker."
The ghost stopped in the middle of the elaborate bow he was giving Sam and gaped in genuine surprise as if he had be caught in a trap after all.
"What does my brother have to do with this?"