Disclaimer: This is a fan work created at no profit and for entertainment purposes only. The author acknowledges that Danny Phantom and related characters are property of Nickelodeon and many concepts used here are the creation of Butch Hartman.
The Phantom Reboot
Episode 3: All You Desire (Part 2)
In his own mind, Tucker Foley was the ultimate genius. For just thirty dollars (and ten dollars of that were Danny's), he'd successfully earned himself all the wishes he could every dream of. The only caveat was that he was now on a one month time limit, and he still had to test Desiree to make sure she hadn't twisted his first wish and was managing to lie.
Luckily, he was the ultimate planner too, and had it all mapped out; how he could test her with small wishes that couldn't fail catastrophically while giving him the best possible results immediately.
The first order of business was to protect his investment: wishing that his parents and Jazz couldn't see or hear Desiree unless Tucker told her they should. That meant no one who shouldn't know about his and his friends' extracurricular activities wouldn't get wise to the act that he suddenly had a ghost following him everywhere.
Next, he wished that Desiree could take the form of a human girl his age so she could be visible at school. And then came the clever bit: he asked—asked, not wished—her to pose as his girlfriend visiting from out of state. It wasn't that he planned on dating a ghost, though the human form she'd taken was incredibly hot, but the idea ran that other girls would see that yes, Tucker Foley really was such a catch that even a 'girl' like Desiree wanted him and so his stock in school would rise.
The best part was, it wasn't a wish, so she couldn't sabotage it with her powers.
Sure, Danny was upset, and had practically run to FentonWorks rather than sleep under the same roof as a ghost, but he would get over it once he saw the genius of it. Plus, Tucker was sure that Sam would understand; seeing as how she hadn't bought into Danny's 'all ghosts are evil' spiel before, and he figured they could peer pressure him into accepting Desiree together.
DP-DP-DP
Sam looked from Danny to the approaching couple. "You're jealous that Tucker met a girl?" she guessed and immediately gave him a disappointed look. "Danny, I thought you would be happy for him: he's your best friend."
"Not the issue Sam." Danny shook his head. "She," He pointed at Desiree, "Is a ghost. A genie ghost. Tucker bought her at the swap meet. My idiot best friend used my money to by an evil spirit from another dimension so he could make wishes and pretend to be his girlfriend."
There was one point in that he wanted to drive home, but it wasn't the one that stood out to Sam. She turned a baleful glare on the techno-geek.
"Hey guys!" Tucker said with a broad grin and a wave as he and Desiree got within earshot.
"Tucker Foley!" Sam planted her fists on her hips, and gave him a withering look that he recognized from his mother telling him the tenth time to take out the trash. "What is wrong with you?!"
"Yeah!" Danny folded his arms and came to stand behind her, forming what he thought was a united front.
"You bought a person?" Sam continued. "Seriously? That's... that's slavery! You need to set her free right this instant!"
"Ye—wait, what?" Danny faltered, looking at her agog.
Tucker drew back, hand on his chest, wounded expression on his face. "Et tu, Sam? I would have thought you would be the reasonable one here—think of all the good we can do with a month's worth of wishes."
"None of that good even counts if you're doing it with slave labor." Sam growled.
"Pfft. Desiree's not a slave." Tucker turned to the ghost in question, "Are ya, Desi?"
A mischievous grin crossed her face. "Of course not, Master."
Sam glared at Tucker. Tucker blanched and pulled his beret down over his eyes. "She's just joking. She does that. Please tell them you're joking, Desi."
Desiree put a finger to her lips, considering. It wasn't a wish, so she didn't have to comply. Still, it would be a show of good faith. "We have a deal, Samantha: if I grant his wishes without twisting them for one month, and he has a standing wish that will set me free. I see it as a rather good deal."
"Except he should just let you go without any caveats." Sam refused to let Tucker off the hook for this latest atrocity. "And he's making you pretend to be his girlfriend? That's... so many levels of wrong, I might need a spreadsheet to keep track of them."
"It's not as bad as it could be." Desiree said with a gleefully devilish look in her eyes again. "When I was alive, I was a harem girl."
Sam choked.
Danny smirked at the back of her head. Served her right, for suggesting letting such a crazy powerful ghost go free. But he patted her on the back anyway.
"You guys are looking at this all wrong." Tucker cut in. "It's more like a retroactive reward for freeing her: that makes her life better, and so for the next month, she'll make our lives better. You'll change your minds once you see what I mean- Hey, Desi: I wish for breakfast for three: A Nasty Burger Breakfast Combo #3 for me and Danny, and a Southwestern Eggless Omelet Sandwich for Sam."
Desiree shifted Tucker's books to her other arm and waved the other in the air. "Of course, Master."
"And... you can stop calling me Master. Please?"
DP-DP-DP
Every morning, Casper High's A-list all met at Nasty Burger for breakfast, gossiping, and planning a long hard day of superiority and bullying. In their usual booth, Kwan was sitting between Valerie and Star on one side, while Dash and Paulina shared the other.
Dash had his arm stretched across the back of the booth, hovering just over Paulina's shoulders. Dating got a little nebulous in the A-list, especially with Paulina's overt crush on Inviso Bill, but Dash didn't want it to look like it might be okay for Kwan to make a move on her.
Not that Kwan noticed; he was perfectly comfortable whee he was, thank you very much, and anyway, he didn't have it in him to do that sort of thing to his best friend even if he wanted to. "Man, Dash, that was a killer party you threw Saturday." He said, unwrapping his breakfast sandwich.
"You know it!" Grinned Dash, doing the same. "But that's nothing compared to my birthday next month. My parents are letting me hire a Dumpty Humpty cover band and everything!" He raised his sandwich to his lips, only to get a mouthful of green mist that swirled and eddied up from where his food used to be.
He sat back in confusion and shock, finding the same mist dancing over Kwan's tray and Paulina's.
Paulina was the first to regain the ability to speak. "My omelet! What just happened?"
Valerie and Star, whose food was still exactly where it should be, looks at each other, shrugged, then each took a bite before one of their friends decided to try and beg some off them.
"This is like, mondo weird." Kwan complained. "Do you think it was a ghost?"
This suggestion made Paulina's eyes to light up. "A ghost? Do you think this means Inviso Bill will show up to give me a fresh omelet?"
Dash frowned. He couldn't compete with Inviso Bill; that guy was the coolest. But he did know what always made him feel better whenever he felt confused, inadequate, gassy, or just plain bored. "I don't know what's going on here, but I think we all know what we have to do now."
"Go and order more food?" Kwan asked as his stomach growled.
Paulina scoffed and turned to Dash, delighted. "Oh! I know! Pick on people less popular than us to make us feel better!"
DP-DP-DP
"Dude, come on. Just eat." Tucker waved the bag of conjured Nasty Burger food under Danny's nose.
"No, Tucker! I'm not eating ghost food. It'll probably give me food poisoning or something." Danny was keeping his distance from his friend and especially from Desiree. To avoid the offered bag, he shuffled over to Sam's other side, using the goth as a shield.
Tucker made an unhappy noise. "Even Sam ate it and she's just as mad as you are at me over this."
"I only ate so I could split it with Desiree; because someone didn't even consider wishing up some breakfast for her."
"The whole 'being dead' thing sort of makes eating moot." said Desiree, then grinned. "But that was tasty, I have to admit."
Danny sighed and looked at Sam. "Can you please stop sympathizing with her? It's going to make it that much harder on you when we have to thermos her and dump her in the Ghost Zone."
"She's right here, ya know?" Tucker gestured to Desiree. "You don't have to talk like that."
The argument went no farther, because they were interrupted by a bellowed 'FENTON!"
"Oh, this day gets better and better." groaned Danny. He was too upset and distracted to even be afraid at his point. "What do you want, Dash? It's too early for you to have flunked another test."
The alpha bully bore down on Danny with the rest of the A-list not far behind. "Oh, I'm already having a bad day Fen-toenail. And I'm..." He paused as he saw the Nasty burger bag and smelled its contents. "Is that a Breakfast Combo #3? Now I'm really mad—that's the same breakfast the disappeared on me!"
Danny shot an accusatory glance at Desiree, who grinned sheepishly and shrugged.
Dash ignored this exchange. "Paulina, you can mock the goth, Kwan, I guess you're stuck with the techno-geek."
Wasting no time, Paulina sauntered around Dash to eye Sam appraisingly. "Hey, Manson. Black again? I have two words for you: Past-Els."
"That's one word." Sam deadpanned.
Meanwhile, Kwan moseyed up to Tucker, hands in his pockets. "Um, so I guess I'm supposed to give you a pounding now. Is... now a good time for you?"
"No really."
"Oh." Kwan said with a genial nod. "Well okay then. When's a good time then? Do you have study hall fifth period?"
Tucker wasn't used to dealing with Kwan and was slow to answer. "Actually, I don't really have any slots open to get beaten up this week."
Again, Kwan just nodded. "Yeah, I get it. There's a lot of quizzes this week. Oh hey! Maybe I can just make fun of your clothes like Paulina does. Like... okay, your hat is... actually, I like your hat; I'm not really a hat person myself, they never look good on me."
"O...kay?" Tucker said.
Dash was advancing on Danny, pounding his fist into his palm. "I'm gonna hit you so hard, Fentonio so hard, your girlfriend over there is gonna feel it."
"She's not my girlfriend!" Danny said automatically.
Sam, who couldn't really have cared less about what Paulina had to say about her, wheeled around to look at Dash. "I'm not his girlfriend!"
"Pfft." Paulina flipped her hair. "Whatever, Lovebirds."
"We are not Lovebirds" the pair shouted.
"Why do people keep saying that?" Sam asked no one in particular.
"Let's see." Tucker started to enumerate on his fingers. "You went to the Fall Formal together, when Dash accused you of going out the first time, Danny took you in a manly fashion and dragged you onto the dance floor, you sit next to each other in nearly every class, you go over to our house or Fenton Works almost every day after school and sometimes people could swear you each knew what the other one was thinking. Did I miss anything?"
Sam and Danny gawked at him for a long moment. The fact that the entire A-list, plus Desiree were stifling laughter wasn't helping, nor was the fact that they were blushing hotly.
"Shut up Tucker!" They both cried, turned on their heels in perfect synch, and stalked off.
Tucker cackled like a mad man as the first bell rang. "Man, that was comedy gold." He took Desiree by the elbow and guided her toward his first class. "Come on, Desi, we've got a long day ahead."
As those two left, something clicked in Dash's head as she was the techno-geek and the new girl leaving together. Very close together. "Wait a minute—Foley's with her?!"
DP-DP-DP
True to Tucker's master plan, by lunch, the rumor mill was working at full speed, and with maximum distortion.
Sam and Danny sat at a table in the cafeteria, watching the apparent hottest couple in Casper go through the lunch line.
"According to the buzz in the girl's locker room, they've been dating online for months and she fell in love with his words before ever seeing his face." Sam glared dagger's at the back of his head.
Danny savagely speared a meatball with his fork. "Five different people swear they know she used to be home schooled and have seen them making out in the park before today. Then two girls asked me if they were 'actually serious'." He looked to the ceiling for deliverance. "How can his stupid plan be working? What just god would let that happen?"
"He's been making her carry his books." Sam said venomously, ignoring Danny's despair. "He's become a complete pig."
Danny glanced at her. "Guys carry their girlfriends' books like that all the time. I'm not sure how that's worse then her being an undead monster. Oh, and did you notice? His wish totally backfired this morning. She's messing with him and he doesn't even notice!"
By then Tucker and Desiree reached the table and took their seats; Tucker beside Danny, Desiree beside Sam. Whether it was out of deference to Sam's earlier complaints, or Desiree's choice, the ghost girl had a tray of her own.
"Hey guys." Tucker smiled, only to be met with a pair of hateful looks. "fine, be that way. We'll win ya over eventually." Since his friends were giving him the cold shoulder, he directed his attention to Desiree. "Sorry about the food, by the way. They really ought to give us steak or something."
Then a light bulb came on in his head. "Hey, why not? Desi: I wish the cafeteria had steak on the menu."
Desiree looked up, delighted, and raised her hands. "You heart's desires are my command." Sparkling green mist washed over the cafeteria. For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then Sam's salad and the one on Desiree's tray transformed into juicy, perfectly cooked porterhouses. Exclamations from the lunch line and at the tables quickly revealed that the same change was happening elsewhere. The word 'salad' on the big menu board even became 'steak'.
Sam threw her fork down and leapt out of her seat as if her plate was now covered with venomous snakes. "Tucker! What. Did. You. Do?"
"Heh... um, wished for steak?" he asked innocently.
"It wasn't all his fault." Danny said, also standing and pointing at Desiree. "It was her. This is the second wish she's twisted."
Desiree held up her hands as if to show they were empty. "That wasn't twisting, those were honest, unfortunate mishaps. Tucker didn't ask for me to conjure those meals from thin air, so they had to come from somewhere; it was just a coincidence you knew the people they were taken from." She gestured to the salad. "And this, this was just that, well to add steak to the menu, it had to replace something. It's easily fixed: Tucker just has to make another wish..."
"That's right." Tucker said. "In fact, I wish Sam had her salad back."
As soon as the words left his mouth Desiree passed her hands over Sam's salad-turned-steak, removing the 'turned-steak' part. "See? All better now."
Pinching the bridge of her nose, Sam groaned. It was like the poor ghost didn't understand she was being exploited. "You know what? I'm just going to go eat outside. I need some fresh air."
"Me too." Danny said, not even hiding his disdain for what was going on. He picked up his own Tray and Sam's too before both of them left the cafeteria.
Desiree folded her arms and gave their backs a cross look. "These are your friends? They're not very pleasant."
"They're just not used to you." Tucker assured. "Plus, the wish backfires didn't help."
"I didn't do that on purpose!" said Desiree, "Wishes aren't as simple as everyone thinks, you know. It involved rewriting reality as we know it every time. Of course there are going to be mistakes." She turned up her nose. "And if I was twisting the wishes, that Kwan boy really would have beaten you up and the food would have made you sick. So there."
Tucker gave his steak a suspect look, then shrugged and started cutting into it anyway. "Hey, I believe you. They're just harder to convince is all."
She nodded absently still deep in thought. "Hey, why don't you make some more wishes? Like you said your friend is a ghost fighting superhero—why not ask for his powers and show him up?"
Tucker laughed. "We share a room and his powers come in belt form. If I want to be the Phantom, I can do it anytime."
"Oh." She said, disappointed, and picked at her food.
"What was that all about anyway?" Tucker asked. "Trying to tempt me into making bad wishes?"
She shrugged. "No. Granting wishes is just fun, and you've been stingy with them for someone who's only got a month."
"What, so you actually like granting wishes?"
"It's the only perk of the job." She half smiled at him, then frowned. "I didn't start twisting wishes until that stupid bottle. People can become so heartless when they have infinite wishes."
Tucker nodded and sat back, thinking. Finally he grinned. "If you want to grant some wishes, why not grant yourself some?"
She rolled her eyes. "Doesn't work that way."
"Two words: Genre Savvy." Tucker winked. "Let's give this try: what was your favorite food before... you know..."
Desiree smirked. Humans always had a problem with the death thing. They couldn't get past it. "Sugared dates." She replied, "If I could have, I would have eaten nothing else."
Tucker grinned. "Okay then. I wish for a big bowl of sugar dates."
"Seriously?" Even as she granted the wish, Desiree looked completely shocked.
Tucker shrugged. "I don't see why you can't get some enjoyment out of this whole month of wishes deal too. Don't tell her I said this, but she's right—it's pretty wrong that I paid thirty bucks to make you do whatever I want, even if it is just a month."
Her eyes flitted between the smiling boy and the clay bowl she has conjured between them, overflowing with sugared dates. With extreme caution, she reached out and picked one up, examining it briefly before putting it into her mouth. ""You know, I might actually get to like this arrangement."
DP-DP-DP
Since the 50's, anyone working in the cafeteria of Casper High all knew of a spot in the kitchen that just didn't feel right to stand in. They would get a chill up their spine, a gurgle in the stomach, and the irresistible urge to cook with lard.
Few knew that it was the exact sight of a fatal slip and fall accident back in 1957, and none at all would have drawn a connection between the two.
That spot flared green now, preceding a green skinned woman in a pink muumuu and a pink hair net, carrying an oversized spatula, to rise from it and look around curiously.
"Oh dear." She said in a sweet, timid voice. "It looks like someone has made a change to the menu."
In the blink of an eye, her demeanor changed and her white hair broke free of the hair net, whipping the air like Medusa's serpents. "THIS WILL NOT STAND!" She bellowed.
DP-DP-DP
AN: I've been waiting for a while to write this specific chapter for some many reasons.
I've always had a soft spot for Desiree; her back story is pretty sad, and her 'No Man May Touch Me Unless I Wish It!' tirade speaks to an even sadder past, possibly sadder than Ember's implied past. She also strikes me as more of a trickster than a villain (though her joy at Tucker's fate in What You Want hurts this theory. But either way, Reboot!Desiree is lighter and softer than original flavor.
Yes, I know Danny and Sam are kind of jerks here. After all, they are basically the villains of this episode, but I hope people can see where they're coming from. Sam thinks Tucker is doing something very, very wrong here, and Danny is convinced that all ghosts are inherently evil. It's hard to portray the protagonists as wrong and still keep them sympathetic.
Also, after re-watching Season 1, I really, really like Kwan. If he didn't have terrible friends, he would be just this very cool dude. But the fact that he does and has to act how he acts makes him a more interesting character. I'm thinking of expanding his role in coming episodes.
And finally, some tentative episode names to whet your appetite: S104: 'The Heart of Rock n' Roll', S105 'The Substitute Phantoms'
Next Chapter: Episode 3: All You Desire Part 3 – Sam has a wonderful experience with salad, and then a ghost attacks! Danny Phantom is on to defend, but which ghost is he supposed to fight? Can Danny overcome his personal grudge before something terrible happens? Find out in our next thrilling chapter!