Chapter III:

Randy

Randy consistently reasoned with himself that Saturdays are meant for sleeping. Lots of sleeping. So, naturally, little to nothing happened between Friday night/Saturday morning and Sunday night/Monday morning. He did, however run into a few more ghosts.

Wow. He'd need to get used to that sentence.

He'd taken up the plan of searching for Danny Phantom and winning their little bet by simply searching every inch of the city as many times as physically possible. It wasn't the most practical method, but it was all he had to try and he had to try something. Besides, who knew scrapping the gutters of town could get a person to stumble on so many ghost-robot monsters to beat up?

The new sword was working, at least. It didn't quite fit in his hand like his usual blade, but it sliced through green goop like a hot ninja blade through McFist bot, so that was something. Of course that was about all it did. No matter how many times he sliced them they could just stick themselves back together and run away again. He was actually starting to run into fewer and fewer of them. At first, they would come up behind him and scare him or take no liberties throwing various vending machine snacks at his face, but it seemed they'd wised up and started avoiding him. Sure, it meant they weren't causing as much havoc, but he knew it would only be temporary. Eventually they'd get brave again and make a second run at the town. Unless Randy could get this Danny Phantom to start working together with him so he could make use of the magic soup can that trapped the ghosts, he wasn't going to get anywhere.

It was rather late Sunday night - or was is Monday morning? - when the Ninja cornered a particularly pathetic ghost-thing in an alley. None of the ghosts had been in quite the same state as the one he'd fought with Danny Phantom. They were all in varying states of disrepair, of sorts. A few didn't have arms and used the extra sleeves as whips, a couple only had one eye, and a particularly memorable one had a mullet so long it probably rivaled the Ninja's scarf.

This particular ghost didn't even look humanoid. It was, for all intents and purposes, a blob with shades and a mullet. He'd found it dripping its blob-ness into an office water cooler. After a rather loud proclamation of "Shnasty" he'd chased it out of the office building and into the alley. It seemed to be so messed up, genetically, it didn't even have the brain capacity to remember it was a ghost and it could probably fly right through the alley wall and escape. Instead it had turned to the Ninja and started yelling. Or trying to, anyway. Its mouth didn't really work since it didn't have anything related to vocal cords or a tongue or teeth or anything else mouth-like other than an awkward fold in the gloop. It came out more as a series of strange fart-noises, like the slime you get at toy stores. After a good stint of laughing at the fart noises, its attempts got more earnest and smaller slime balls started flying from its "lips".

Randy wiped a tear from his eye. "What are you even saying?"

Randy hadn't even noticed the footfalls behind him until they stopped at his side. "Allow me to translate," the boot's owner offered. It took Randy a moment, but eventually it clicked where he'd seen her before. She was the girl from the DDR game on Thursday. Thursday felt like an eternity ago; what was her name again?

She waved her hands in a silly manner as she mock-shouted, "I am Techblob! Master off all things mechanical and goopy! Prepare to meet your liquefied doom!"

Techblob responded with what was sure to be a stupendous comeback but came out as one of the messiest raspberries ever witnessed. Randy pulled half a step back to avoid getting splattered with green goop.

Out of curiosity, Randy asked, "Is that really what it said?"

She shrugged carelessly. "I don't know, kid, I just clean 'em up." From her belt she unhooked, to Randy's surprise, a silver and green thermos. She noncommittally uncapped it, pointed it at the blob, and pressed the button on the side. It whirred to life, just the way Danny Phantom's did, and a beam of light shot out of the end, trapping and pulling in Techblob. Techblob let out another litany of fart-noises before it disappeared behind the lip of the can and was safely capped inside.

Randy pointed to the can as the girl re-clipped it by her waist. "Where'd you get that?"

She shrugged casually. "I know a guy," she answered. She gestured to the ghost sword sitting lazily in the Ninja's hand. "Where did you get that?"

The Ninja folded the blade back into the hilt and stashed it in the back of his sash. It didn't disappear like his other weapons did, but at least it stayed put there. "I know a guy."

"Sam!" Footsteps pounded around the corner and into the alley. With them, came a guy about the girl's - Sam, that was it - age. He stopped a few paces away and leaned onto his knees to catch his breath. He carelessly shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose with an arm when he said between breaths, "You okay?"

"I'm more worried about you, Tucker."

"What?" Tucker stood up right, sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a hard stream through his nose. Sweat dripped down his temple as he said, "I'm okay."

While Sam and Tucker greeted each other, Randy took the moment to puzzle over his memory again. He figured out Sam but why was Tucker familiar? It must have been at school at some point, but Randy barely ever made contact with anyone other than Howard-oh! Randy recognized Tucker as the kid Howard had pointed out in the hallway; they guy who'd helped them out the day before in the arcade. Danny Phantom's friend.

Sam was giving Tucker a hard pat on the back when Randy asked, "You guys are from Amity Park, right?"

"Obviously," Sam scoffed. She waved her hands around at the buildings. "Is this place always this freaky at night?"

"Noooo - uh..." Randy pulled at his collar. "Sometimes. Not with ghost things, though. We're more of a monster kinda town."

Sam swayed on her feet and looked the Ninja up and down. "What are you supposed to be, a ninja?"

Randy glanced at himself and back at Sam. "Uhm, yes."

Sam circled around behind him, hands behind her back and gazing at him critically. Randy couldn't help but feel she was making some sort of comparison. "What's with the scarf?"

Randy's frustration instinctually flared. "The scarf is a valuable ninja-tool-"

"You mean like this?" Randy startled as the extra weight on his back was pulled away.

"Hey!" He whipped around to face Sam as she unfolded the blade on the ghost sword.

She ran a finger across the green logo on the hilt. Randy had noticed it, but he didn't recognize it so he left it alone. "Seriously, where'd you get this?" she asked.

Randy tried not to let his eyes shuffle. He couldn't just tell them some ghost kid had given it to him, even if they knew Danny Phantom somehow. Sharing information as the Ninja had never been a thing that happened with anyone other than Howard. Ninja business was Ninja Business. "A friend," he said instead. Cryptic, he congratulated himself,cryptic is good.

Sam's black lips pursed and her eyes narrowed. "Does your friend happen to have snow-white hair and glowing green eyes?"

"What?" Randy tried to think of what someone who didn't know about a ghost exactly like that would say. It wasn't very hard. "Why would I get weapons from some guy with too much hair bleach?"

Sam went unfazed. "Can he walk through walls, disappear and fly?"

"Woah," Randy tried to give some sort of disbelieving chuckle. "This guy sounds pretty unique."

"Much more than most guys, yeah." Sam slapped the flat of the blade against her palm. She looked awfully comfortable holding it.

Randy couldn't bring himself to take his eyes from where the sword repeatedly slapped her hand. "I take it you know him too?"

"Better than you do," she practically sneered. "And trust me, Ninja, you outta be careful around him."

The Ninja mask crinkled around his eyebrows. When he thought of Danny Phantom, he came up with the guy with sweet powers, freaky glowing skin, a bit of penchant for optimism in the face of large robots, and some sort of thing for superhero hide and seek that may stem off his apparent glee at turning invisible on people. He was still a thunder-stealer, too, but Randy was finding himself able to look past that recently. Other than the 'not working together at the moment' part, he seemed like an okay guy. "What for?"

Sam carefully snapped the blade back into the hilt, one segment at a time. "Danny Phantom is a man on a mission," she said, her voice hard with irritation. "If he's got a plan, stay out of his way or he'll kick you out."

Randy resisted taking a half step back. "You make it sound like he's an incredibly unfriendly person."

"He's not," Tucker interjected. There was a hint of desperation in his voice, like this wasn't the first time he'd tried to say this and failed. "He's just been having a rough time."

Randy looked up at Sam scratched his head, shrugging one shoulder. "He seemed like an okay guy to me."

Sam looked like there was something she wanted to say, but she bit her lower lip instead, a seat forming between her eyebrows. She tossed the ghost sword back to the Ninja. "Well I hope the two of you work well together."

"Wait!" he tried as she stepped past him. "Do you think I could have one of those thermos things?"

"What? Your friend doesn't want to share his?" She shouted over her shoulder but didn't stop as she stormed out of the alley.

Tucker followed her over his shoulder before stepping closer to talk to the Ninja. "Hey, sorry about Sam. She's had a lot to be frustrated at lately," he tried to explain. "I'm Tucker. We talked on Danny's phone the other day?"

"Oh yeah, hi," Randy greeted distractedly. He watched Sam disappear around the corner. "I thought you and that Phantom guy were friends?"

"We are," Tucker assured, but breathed an exhausted sigh that had nothing to do with running. "Things have just been...complicated lately." He fiddled with where his hat sat on his head. "Listen, I know you're supposedly hundreds of years old and stuff-"

"'Supposedly?'" Randy was getting rather uncomfortable with all this Ninja-skepticism. Not because it was true that he wasn't an older than fourteen, but because he'd believe in an eight hundred year old ninja his entire life. Not that beingthe Ninja wasn't the best thing to ever happen to him, but it had been a little dream crushing at first.

"-but you've got a phone, right?"

Randy huffed. "Of course I've got a phone, who do you take me for?" He pulled his phone out of his belt and waved it in the air pointedly.

"Sweet." Tucker snatched his phone out of his hand.

"Hey!"

Tucker slapped back the Ninja's hand when he reached for his phone. "I'll only be a second," he insisted as he stated pressing buttons. Sure enough he quickly tossed it back for Randy to catch. "Phantom asked me to give you a number to call when you think you've figured him out. Whatever that means."

Randy stared at the new number in his phone, simply named "Tucker". He puzzled over the need to actually call Phantom - or at least the next closest thing - if the whole point of their bet was to find him without using a ghost fight as bait. "Figure him out?" That was a lot different from finding someone. Was this supposed to be some sort of hint? "Uh, thanks," he managed.

Tucker just gave a friendly smile. "Sure." He turned to jog after Sam but threw over his shoulder a quick, "Good luck with...whatever!"

The Ninja gave a weak little wave after him as he followed his friend out of sight.

He stood in the alley for a while longer, his head puzzling around in a kind of thinking/not thinking state that generally got nothing done, cognitively. He did manage to piece together a review of exactly what was going on in his life since the events of the past few days. 1) A dozen robot-possessing multi-dimensional ghost creatures were loose in Norrisville; 2) a multi-dimensional ghost creature that goes by Danny Phantom was being rather uncooperative and only agreed to become cooperative if Randy could find him without some sort of premise of danger - a task recently complicated by implications that simply tracking him down was not the actual point of the "test", as he had previously though; 3) McFist was clearly up to something as when was McFist not up to something? 4) Punk-goth was in for girls lately; and 5) he had detention tomorrow - he glanced at the time on his phone - today.

This was going to be a long week.

(Edited: 1/5/2015)

-Kinetic