AN: I hope you enjoy the new chappie
AN: I'm sorry this update took so long. I had hoped to get this chapter out before this semester even started and here it is, almost at the end of the semester. I knew this semester would be challenging and time consuming. On the bright side, this chapter is pretty big (11 pages). I hope you enjoy the new chappie. Please read and review.
Thanks to all my reviewers Thunderstorm101, A Fool With Hot Chocolate, Twisted Truth, RowenaRaven, Touch of the Wind, angel-phantom-babii, PrincessVictoriaAnnMacbeth, Kandei, Syuveil, Jess-Blade, darkhorse111, Golden feathers Edward, and chalicity. Getting reviews really kicks my but into gear and lets me know that there are people who enjoy the fruits of my labor.
Disclaimer: Neither Danny Phantom nor Sky High belong to me.
Summary: Some things just shouldn't be changed, and some things can't be changed. If they are it must be set to rights. This is a crossover with Sky High. Eventual slash… but not anytime soon.
Redemption: (noun) 1. An act of redeeming or the state of being redeemed. 2. Deliverance; rescue. 3. Recovery by payment, as of something pledged. 4. Paying off, as of a mortgage, bond, or note. 5. Atonement for guilt.
Chapter 9: Definition of Wild
Danny was not naturally given to introspection. Clockwork, however, taught him to stop taking events as they come and to try to anticipate them. It works great for predicting and planning for ghost attacks ahead of time. Unfortunately, he also noticed a tendency to occasionally (with emphasis on the occasionally) over think things.
It was several hours after their arrival in Amity and Danny was getting worried and maybe a little hurt. He was sitting in a corner of the house where he just so happened to be sitting at a window that had a view of the street out front. Sam and Tucker still hadn't been by to see him, and they said they would be. They ought to have been there by now. Heck, they should have been waiting for him to return.
Or, maybe they realized over the summer how much better their lives were without him. Maybe they thought he was a burden and that he had been taking them for granted. Danny wouldn't have been able to blame them. It wasn't like he had a whole lot of time to spend with them since the CAT incident and he had to take up studying with Clockwork.
For a moment his self-doubt was crushing. Then he glanced at his family and new friends and allowed the sight of them to ground him. This was Amity Park , the original place of the weird and supernatural—or at least for modern-day it is. Besides which, he was both a Fenton and a halfa hero. The normal rules didn't really apply to his life. The most obvious (normal) answer was probably not the right one.
"What's on your mind, little brother? They seem to be heavy thoughts," broke in the overly perky voice of his sister. "The next two weeks are supposed to be fun and relaxing." Without waiting for him to reply, she leaned in and continued in a more serious tone, nearly whispering the words, "No really, what's bothering you? I don't see my brother for a couple of months and the next thing I know he seems to have taken on the weight of the world. If that is what that school is doing to you, I'm not sure I approve."
"Well—no, it's stupid. I'm sure it's nothing. Don't worry about it Jazz. It doesn't have anything to do with school."
Seeing that she had to be a little more aggressive with her brother, she decided to play hardball, "I could always go to mom and dad and d—"
"Don't you dare!" hissed Danny furiously in alarm, holding her arm in a death grip. His mind immediately conjured horrific images of his parents confining their precious baby his room and completely suffocating him in affection and worry if they had even a hint of an idea that something was wrong with him. Maddie Fenton really put the mother in smother.
"I'm just worried about Sam and Tuck. They promised they would be here. Of course, that was two months ago. I didn't have much time to do much outside of school, including call them. They may have gotten fed up and changed their minds…" Danny trailed off as doubt crowded into his mind again.
"Ahh," Jazz said in that infuriatingly knowing tone of hers, "You're worried they might have moved on without you. You know, you shouldn't bottle up your emotions like that, it's not healthy. You're right though. They ought to be here or at least sent a message if they changed their minds. We should ask—"
"You two are looking pretty cozy over here. Don't you know it's rude to ignore your guests?" questioned a sardonic Warren as he leaned casually against the corner.
Jazz uncharacteristically flared up, "Don't you know it's rude to interrupt a private conversation?!"
"Don't worry, Jazz. He's just like that," soothed Danny. Turing to Warren he said, "We were just talking about how my friends weren't here when they said they would be. It's not like them to casually go back on their word like that."
"Hmm," was Warren's understanding rejoinder. Danny had to turn away from the perceptive look in Warren 's eyes, "Did you tell them you were coming? They may have just lost track of time."
"Yeah," replied Danny softly, not noticing Jazz moving discretely out of the room.
"When was the last time you spoke?"
"Two months ago, just before I left for Maxville, and they had to go to some… thing for school. Some kind of community bonding exercise the counselors thought the kids in my class needed to go through—" Danny was suddenly cut off by a screech coming from the other end of the house. Recognizing it a Jazz's he rushed over, preparing himself by being just this side of powering up.
When Danny and Warren arrived at the other room they stopped in relief at the doorway to asses the situation only to find a sheer lack of anything actively life-threatening (as there can be in the Fenton household) in the immediate area. Danny and his guests quickly wandered over, curious to see what had Jazz so upset.
"Why hasn't anyone done anything?" demanded Jazz angrily at her parents.
"Sweetie, we wanted to," soothed Maddie, "But it's out of our hands and jurisdiction. The Guys in White took over the case. We've been stonewalled."
Danny couldn't take it anymore; he had to interrupt before his head exploded. Whatever it was it sounded pretty serious. Quickly sorting his thoughts, he did his best to sound casual, "What's going on, mom? Jazz?"
"Did Sam and Tuck tell you about the trip they were going on for school?" began Maddie carefully. At Danny's hesitant nod she continued, "The trip was supposed to be over last Friday. They never returned. The police were sent to the area to check it out, when they didn't find a lot of evidence about anything except two month old evidence that the kids actually had been there, we were called in." Here Maddie paused and took a deep breath as if to brace herself against something unpleasant. Danny found himself reacting to her tension.
"Well? What did you find?" he asked anxiously, dreading the answer he already knew.
"Sweetie, the place was crawling with spectral energy, and it looked like a lot of ghosts had been in the area around two months ago and then just mysteriously disappeared."
The first thing Danny felt at the explanation was relief followed closely by shame. What did it say about him that he would rather have had his friends kidnapped by ghosts than to have them suddenly come to their senses and decide to drop him like one of Baxter's old gym shorts.
"I guess this is where these Guys in White people come in?" Danny jumped. He had actually forgotten that his new friends from Maxville were there. He collected himself in time to see his mom nodding in response the Will's question. "So, who are they exactly?"
"They are a completely incompetent governmental agency who like to pretend at being ghost hunters," was Maddie's contemptuous reply.
"But with cool toys!" The rest of the group ignored Jack's outburst while taking in the information provided.
"Well," exclaimed Maddie, her cheer coming back, "no use crying over spilled ectoplasm. Since you kids are going to be staying here for a while, we should probably teach you a bit about ghost fighting and maybe introduce you to some of our weapons."
"We'd love to—"
Thinking quickly Danny interrupted Ethan from accepting a mistake, "Don't you think we should get them settled in, mom? We should let them know where they're going to stay and let them unpack before we get to any really heavy stuff."
"Nonsense," said Jack, "besides we won't have time until tomorrow to really introduce you to all of the gadgets if we don't start now."
Blessing his good fortune, Danny responded in relief, "That's okay, I can tell them about the really important stuff, and Jazz can tell them about anything new." Besides, he continued in his head, she can tell me what to look out for.
Thinking about it, his parents agreed, but only on the understanding that they would be very careful.
"So, what are we going to do?" questioned an overeager Zack. "We're ready to go when you are."
"We are doing nothing. I am going to save my friends and classmates, you are going to stay here where it's safe," asserted a distracted Danny as he looked through the remains of what was left in his room for the pamphlet Sam and Tuck has shown him so he could get more information about the area. He couldn't remember too much about it since he was pretty excited about going to a school for heroes. Who would be able to concentrate under those conditions anyway?
"I don't think so, Casper," Warren interrupted Danny from his musings, "You have to at least take me since we've been assigned to work together. If you don't then you'll be heroing illegally."
Danny jerked his head up in surprise, "What! Oh, hey, there it is." He had forgotten that he pinned up the camp pamphlet up to his wall behind this computer so he wouldn't loose it. He reached out to take it off the wall, only to have it snatched out of his hands by an irritated Warren.
"Are you even listening to me?"
"Yes!" hissed an equally angry Danny, his eyes glowing green unknown to him. "I was just trying to not get distracted while I was looking for that."
"I'm guessing this is where they went," surmised Will, looking over Warren's shoulder at the pamphlet filled with normal looking greenery and wildlife. "It doesn't look like a place that would be haunted."
"What does a place have to look like to be haunted, Will?" asked Magenta. "Why does a place have to be creepy to be haunted?"
"I'm just saying…"
Danny's frustration levels rose with every uncaring word he heard. Finally he couldn't take it anymore, "Guys! Can we get back on track?"
"Chill out, dude. They've been missing for months; a few more minutes won't make that much of a difference."
Taking a deep breath, Danny made a concerted effort to calm down. "I know," he sighed, "it's just that, if I'd have been there—"
"You can't play the 'what if' game. It'll only drive you crazy," soothed Layla. "You have to focus on what is, not what might have been. Focus on what is in your ability to change, be productive." Seeing that he was calming down, she continued, "That said, we're still going with you. It'd be a good idea to let us get some experience fighting ghosts. After all, wasn't that one of the reasons our parents let us come on such short notice?"
"Yes, but, you guys… it's dangerous. You don't know how to fight these guys."
"That's the whole point," pointed out Ethan reasonably, "for us to learn, right? So we can learn in a semi-safe way with someone who can keep us from messing up too badly," he added on with a grin.
Danny couldn't help but smile back. Maybe it would be okay. Maybe things weren't as bad as they seemed. A problem shared is a problem halfed, right? Right!?
"Great!" They all turned startled in the direction of Danny's door only to see Jazz walk in. "If you guys are going to go fight ghosts, you'll need weapons. I don't know what kind of abilities you have, but unless it is in any way anti-ghost you'll need some of these, and if you are anything like Danny you'll learn these weapons better if you use them. It'll be the proverbial two birds and a single stone. You can learn about these weapons like we promised our parents, and you get to go get hands-on anti-ghost experience."
"Jazz, how long were you out there?"
"Not long. Just long enough to hear you guys work out your problems and come to a reasonable compromise."
"So pretty much for the whole conversation?"
"Yep, but that's not our primary objective, little brother. We need to get them caught up, and you need to come up with a plan of action. I was thinking you can tell them about as many of the weapons as you can, and I'll tell them anything you couldn't remember, or anything that's new."
And so the induction of the Sky High gang into ghost fighting began.
"This is so lame," complained Zack, "why do we have to go there this way?"
Danny did his best to ignore Zack's whines and just answer the question… for the third time while keeping the Specter Speeder both on the right course and making sure that the invisibility booster was still working. He, Sam, and Tuck installed it late at the end of the school year as a kind of bonding experience. "Because, Zack, we don't know where they might have been taken in the Otherworld. It's a big place."
"Well, then, why don't we just take one of the portals to that area so we can get there faster?"
"There's no guarantee that it would be faster, besides I've never been to this park and even if I did I would need to know a portal to go there first—and if I knew that, we probably would know where they were taken anyway. Don't worry Zack, you'll get a chance to go into the Ghost Zone part of the Otherworld soon enough."
"Sweet."
Glad that Zack calmed down again, Danny went back to concentrating on flying the Speeder. Zack had been okay for a short while after they began their journey until it came time to take the Speeder out of the basement. They went into the Otherworld for a short time before exiting thorough a portal that lead to the outskirts of Amity Park. All that meant was that Zack felt the need to ask him the same question every quarter hour or so.
Thanking whoever was in charge of his life that their destination was in sight, Danny took a look around, "Woah." The camp had a vague similarity to the brochure he remembered looking at, but in a more broken down and creepy kind of way.
"Now that looks haunted," stated Will. The whole group gathered around the front viewer in silence. Danny sat in silence as he began fiddling with some of the controls on the dashboard, mainly to not stare at the skin-tight suits most people were wearing, especially since he was sitting down and everyone else was standing…
"Your school thought this would be a good place to send their kids?" asked Layla weakly.
"It doesn't surprise me," replied Danny distractedly as he used the Speeder's scanning equipment to lock onto the highest point of spectral energy. "They were always kind of cheap with anything that didn't have anything to do with sports or cheerleading."
"No kidding," deadpanned Warren, "It's no wonder the people of your town have such a high ghost-contact rate if they pull stunts like this."
"I'm going to head in to that area by the waterfall. It seems that the largest concentration of spectral energy is there, though it's hard to be sure. The whole place is saturated. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole place is riddled with small portals. If that's the case, then they might have just fallen into the Otherworld and not been able to find their way back out."
The others listened to Danny's voice worriedly. This might end up being a complicated search-and-rescue instead of a regular old hero style rescue mission. "Well, there's only one way to find out," stated Danny as he directed the speeder to the bank by the waterfall.
The group left the speeder to search the area in pairs. Everyone was given a pair of Fenton Phones to keep in touch and since they had an odd number of people, they used rock paper scissors to decide who would have to stay behind in the Speeder to keep track of things. Magenta lost.
The people who left to search were all equipped with portable spectral scanners which while being less powerful than the one in the Speeder, they were also more accurate since they would only be able to pick up on the most powerful places where the energy was strongest and they were all linked by satellite so they could triangulate where and how far the energies were. By combining the portable scanners with the one in the Speeder, they got a pretty comprehensive view of the immediate surroundings. Danny sometimes thought he had the best parents ever.
While they were out searching, one of the Guys in White men found them. "Hey!" came and outraged voice, "What do you kids think you're doing? This place is dangerous. You're in violation of code 6-3A, sub section 64B, sub-sub section—"
Will came up to him with his all-American grin on while pulling out a card from only the gods knew where, "We're sorry to disturb you, sir, but my companions and I are legally licensed by the government to be here. We're here to investigate some non-mundane disappearances."
The government employee snatched the card out of Will's hand and scrutinized it carefully for several long minutes before discontentedly handing it back as if unhappy that he could not legitimately kick them out of the park. Will thanked any higher power that might have been listening that hero-in-training licenses were the same in appearance as full hero licenses—it added to the hero mystique. "Looks like it's all in order, if you find anything—stop right there ghost kid!" The man suddenly changed his stance and pulled out a large white gun and pointed it at Danny. "Come back to the scene of the crime?" he growled, "you won't get away with this."
Danny and Warren had chosen right at that moment to step out of the underbrush into the clearing where Will and the GIW agent were. Upon hearing the agent's voice, Danny threw himself backwards and immediately became intangible and invisible to avoid any shots that may have come his way. He circled around the clearing until he came across a patch of mud and got a great idea on how to lose the agent with a minimum of fuss if his friends wouldn't be able to do it. Releasing his intangibility, but holding on to his invisibility he scooped up a handful of mud and continued on his way back to the clearing but from a different direction.
When he got close enough, he heard those of his friends that were in the clearing arguing in his defense. Will was trying to explain to the paranoid government agent that Danny was also a licensed hero by the government, while Layla was reading him the riot act for jumping to conclusions ("What about innocent until proven guilty?"). Warren, on the other hand, took the route of confiscating the blaster the agent had aimed at Danny and glowering at him.
Seeing that they had everything in hand, Danny dropped the mud on the ground while going intangible for a second to make sure all traces of it were gone.
Dropping the invisibility and intangibility he stepped out and said, "It's all right guys. I pretty much get that reception wherever I go."
"No it's not alright, Phantom. What about your basic human rights?"
"Layla, according to the law, as it currently stands ghosts have no rights. Besides, legally I am classified as an ectoplasmic mass of post-human consciousness—or something like that." There was a small pause as the three pre-heroes took that in.
"It doesn't matter," asserted Will, backing up Layla, "you are here legally whatever your technical legal status is. He had no right to accuse you without proof, or attempt to take you in for 'lots and lots of really painful experiments." That last bit he aimed toward the agent who was still cowering in fear at Warren. "You can be sure I'll report this to the ethics committee. For now, we are taking control of this investigation per governmental edict…"
Danny let Will handle the legal aspect of things while speaking in an aside to Warren and Layla, "Thanks guys. They never were very reasonable people to deal with, especially when you're seen as a non-person."
"It was our pleasure. He really had no right to just start shooting at you like that."
"How can you stand it!" hissed Warren.
Danny looked at him in surprise, "I don't care about them and what they think. I just want to keep my friends and family safe. Everything else is just extra. If I had to wait for some kind of positive recognition before doing anything, the whole of Amity would have already been taken over by ghosts many times over by now."
At this point Will finished taking care of the GIW agent and wandered over, "I guess you guys didn't find anything in your part of the woods?"
"No," replied Warren, "we found some small portals, but nothing big enough for a human to pass through, just small animals. This place is crawling with animal ghosts the size of squirrels."
"Hey guys," called out Ethan's voice from the Fenton Phones, "we're behind the waterfall, look what Zack and I found."
"Let's go get Maj, and see what they found."
It turns out that Ethan and Zack found a large portal big enough for several adult humans to pass through at the same time.
"Well, I guess we can rule out the possibility that they accidentally fell through into the Otherworld," commented Warren sardonically, "unless people from your town are in the habit of taking strolls behind creepy waterfalls."
Ignoring Warren, Danny studied the portal and said, "You guys wait here, I'll go check it out and come back so we can make up a plan of attack." When protests started up, Danny continued, "It'll be easier to get in and out unnoticed if we limit the number of people going in, and I should go in for reconnaissance since I am most familiar with the pitfalls of the Otherworld." Not giving them a chance to come up with excuses to stop him, Danny dove right in.
Immediately on the other side, Danny noticed that the area looked very familiar. He had a sinking feeling in his gut as he identified the area as Walker the Ghost Warden's prison. Fighting the urge to leave immediately, he scouted the area so he could have something good to report to the others.
"It's definitely a ghost shield surrounding the container that is holding the people from my school. It looks like everyone is trapped in some kind of oatmeal looking goo that you would get at school. Kind of appropriate if you think about it."
"Are you sure we can get through this shield?"
"You won't even notice it as a human."
"Took you long enough to show up, brat." Danny was distracting Walker while the others worked to get the captive prisoners. Danny silently urged him to start monologing so he wouldn't get suspicious about Danny's presence, and maybe start to wonder whether he brought any helpers. Sure enough Walker started gloating about how he and his men went to find Wulf who had inconsiderately escaped after his people went to all of the trouble of tracking him down and re-capturing him. It was just a bonus that he came across the ghost kid's friends. Unfortunately Walker had the capacity to gloat and shoot at Danny at the same time, so Danny had to dodge Walker's blasts, return his own, look out for where he was going and try and listen for hints as to whether this was just a random kidnapping or if there might have been some kind of conspiracy against him. Luckily it looked like it was the former rather than the later.
To add to the chaos, Danny began freeing the captive ghosts in the prison. It couldn't hurt his cause anyway. In the process, he freed Wulf as well who helped him by taking down Walker when he was distracted. The other prisoners threw a revolt against Walker's Ghost Cops, proving that his plan worked.
Danny stuffed Walker in one of his own cells and left with Wulf following to see if the others needed any help with their part.
Only thirty minutes after making the call, Mr. Medulla arrived. It took another three hours before he was able to tell them anything.
As it was, he was ecstatic at what he found, "It's amazing, it's like no kind of suspended animation I've ever seen. The substance has the taste, color, consistency, and odor of thin oatmeal—and yet it is capable of holding people in a state of combined suspended animation and deep sleep if you can believe it. If we can recreate it and modify it for our specific purposes, we have the potential of revolutionizing the medical field!"
"How does he know what it tastes like?" questioned Ethan disgustedly.
Trying to get back on track, Danny asked, "So it won't harm them to take them out of the sludge? No lasting side-effects?"
"Haven't you been listening to what I was saying? They'll be perfectly fine. They might have a bit of a headache, but that's it."
"I always knew oatmeal was bad for me," muttered Zack to the others.
"Thank you, Mr. Medulla. You can take the whole thing for samples if you'll give us a moment to get everybody out."
"Dude, Danny, I think you've become Mr. Medulla's favorite person."
After removing everybody from the oatmeal-suspended-animation-sleep goo, Danny and the others laid them out in rows on the ground while waiting. It took several hours for everybody to wake up. The only good part of the whole thing was the fact that Danny could get everybody out intangibly so no one had to get oatmealed while getting the former captives out and they could all be goo-free while they were being handled.
Unfortunately one of the first people to wake up was Paulina. Another unfortunate incident was the fact that Danny didn't notice she had awakened as he was talking with Will about what he did with the GIW agent at the time.
"Phantom, I always knew you'd come to save me!" Danny barely had time to tense in alarm before he was assaulted by an overly happy cheerleader. She seemed to have forgotten any lingering physical pain left over from the goo at the sight of her hero.
"Uh, hi, Pau—uh I mean miss. Uh, well—" Danny could have sworn that she grew about six other arms since he was finding it impossible to escape her grasp. When he saw the others' smirking faces he embarrassedly remembered he could turn intangible. He did so, keeping his hand tangible on her shoulder so she wouldn't fall over, "Actually miss, it was a group effort. This group of people here helped."
She received a gentle nudge in their direction. When she turned back around to thank him, Phantom was nowhere to be seen (since he made himself invisible). Shaking off her disappointment she went off to the side, completely ignoring the others who helped save her, plotting the best way to tell everybody that she got a hug from Danny Phantom. Star was going to be so jealous. And of course, it would make her even more popular.
When Will saw this, he spoke up through is laughter after Danny became visible next to them, "Maybe we should go wait in the Speeder." Danny just glared at them since he knew the only reason Will even suggested that was because he did not want to come off as a complete lunatic to the citizens they just saved by laughing his head off in front of them. He would need to build up a reputation of being solid and dependable before he could pull something like that off. Without waiting for a reply, he left and the others followed.
The only reason any of the others stayed was because Danny grabbed Warren's arm and hissed quietly, "Warren, you can't have it both ways. Either you are my partner and I have to include you in my missions, or you are not and you get to leave."
Warren unhappily watched the others walk away. He really didn't want to have to deal with fan-girls if that other girl was an example of what they were like in Amity.
It was several hours later before everyone had woken up. Danny lured Sam and Tuck away while everyone else was packing up and getting ready to go. Since Sam and Tuck were among the first to get taken, it was really easy for them to pack up as they had hardly unpacked.
"Hey guys, I want you to meet my two best friends since forever, Sam Manson and Tucker Foley. Sam, Tuck, these are my friends I made this summer," introduced Danny since he wasn't quite sure whether he was supposed to give their real names, and they didn't have code-names yet.
They half-heartedly exchanged pleasantries but were either too tired (the Sky High group) or had massive migraines from their oatmeal induced sleep and so agreed to meet at the Nasty Burger the next day for lunch.
Hint: Reviews are inspiring.
AN: Okay, so Sam and Tuck didn't show up in this chapter really. They ought to show up in the next one unless they decide to be difficult. Hopefully my next update won't take four months (and three days). Don't forget to drop a line if you have any suggestions on how to improve.
By the way, I am planning on using things from season three, but not in the order they were aired, nor am I going to use everything. Some things I just don't like, and others just don't fit with the story.