Chapter 11

Shock (n): pain and muscular spasm as the physical reaction to an electric current passing through the body

….

As soon as they phased through the wall, he let go of his friends causing the three of them to tumble to the ground in one of the hallways. He was the first to recover. Jumping up, he glanced at his hands as well as his friends. That was way too close for comfort, but it had actually worked! He actually had momentary control of his powers… err… symptoms! If there wasn't the chance that the ghost was going to follow them, he would probably be jumping for joy.

Sam was much less pleased than he was. "This is the thanks I get for thinking like an individual?" she demanded of no one in particular.

He was debating on whether or not he should actually say something, but was distracted by a loud sound. That sound was then followed by the lights flashing before going out completely. There was a very eerie force in the air which really worried him. The ghost wasn't even near them… well, at least that's what it seemed like, and she was able to affect objects in the hallway.

The lockers suddenly flew open, and a powerful wind rushed through the hall and sent a bunch of school supplies into the air. For some reason, he had a sudden flashback to some of the horror movies he had seen. In those movies, things like this indicated that the ghost was very angry. If those parts of the movies were true, that meant that things were about to get a lot worse.

And it did. The ghost appeared out of nowhere in front of them and seemed to draw the wind towards her. What was odd was that chunks of meat were now in the air as well as the school supplies. But, what made it really creepy was that those pieces of meat were attaching themselves to her.

As he watched, he noticed that Tucker was way more interested in trying to figure out where the meat came from. How could that boy think about eating when his life was in danger?

The ghost roared at them. "Prepare to learn why meat is the most powerful of the five food groups!" Then, in a blink of an eye, her demeanor changed to that of when they first saw her. "Cookie?" They refused, which seemed to infuriate her again. "THEN PERISH!"

He immediately slid in front of Sam. There was no way he was going to let this ghost hurt her or anyone else for that matter. "Forget it!" he warned her. "The only thing that has an expiration date here is you!" He flexed his arm, in an attempt to seem more powerful, but for some reason that caused him to revert to his human form. As he stared at himself for a moment, he briefly thought that he had the worst timing ever. "Woops… I didn't mean to do that…"

He didn't even get a chance to recover from his setback. The ghost seemed to instinctively know he was momentarily powerless. She grabbed him and threw him into the wall. He had just enough time to look up to see her grab Sam and take off down the hall.

Tucker rushed over to him while trying both to help him up and urge him to chase after them. They never got the chance as something grabbed both of them from behind. He looked up to see Mr. Lancer glaring at him. "You two aren't going anywhere!" he warned them threateningly while Dash gloated behind him.

….

In what seemed like only an instant, both he and Tucker were still in Lancer's office. Unfortunately, this was his first time in it, which made him more worried. He had absolutely no idea what to expect from the bald man. He had heard stories from some of the upperclassmen, but as he had learned, stories often are not accurate.

Or, in this case, perhaps they were….

After a moment, Lancer had managed to find and go through their files. After reading them aloud, he was surprised to see that there were no major reports on either of them, which seemed to make him angrier.
"So gentlemen, tell me…" he said as he glared at them. "Why did the two of you conspire to destroy the school cafeteria?"

He knew it was illogical, since he started the entire mess, but he tired to blame it on Dash, who was currently watching them while wearing a smug expression. Lancer quickly dismissed the notion. Though, he was unable to tell if it was because he knew that they were really the ones who started it or just because he couldn't let the reputation of the star quarterback be tarnished.

Lancer then decided that he had to leave the door for a moment and allowed Dash to watch the door from the outside. Apparently, Lancer was overly paranoid that his two detainees would try to escape. If the situation wasn't so bad, he might have laughed about it, since it's unlikely anyone did unless they could go through the walls… or tried to jump out the window. Well, his peers could be desperate at times.

"We've gotta find Sam," Tucker told him as soon as the door closed. "For some reason… I feel like I got her kidnapped…"

Really? He fought the urge to smack his face with his hand, though it wasn't enough to stop him from making an incredibly sarcastic remark, which Tucker ignored. Instead, he told him that the meat was still in the nearby area.

He glanced at his friend before he shook his head to look at the video screens in the office. Tucker's sense of smell was definitely making him question his friend's status as a human (even if he had no right to talk), but he would have to think about that later. There was a trail on one of the screens from what appeared to be meat. After pointing that out to Tucker, he quickly transformed again, grabbed his friend, and went through the floor.

A sudden smirk crossed his face. Lancer was definitely going to be angry when he found out that the two of them literally disappeared from underneath his nose.

….

Yep… Tucker definitely made him wonder sometimes. He had brought them to a room that was filled from floor to ceiling with boxes of meat, and Tucker seemed to be in absolute heaven. He was actually hugging some of the boxes. It was definitely starting to fall along the lines of disturbing.

There wasn't much time to dwell upon it though as a laugh startled them. Quickly and as silently as possible, they sneaked to the edge of a section of boxes. On the other side, they saw the Lunch Lady, back in her normal form, trying to coax Sam, who was trapped inside a pile of meat, to try some. She wasn't having much luck, though it wasn't deterring her that much, to put it lightly.

"I'll take care of the ghost," he told Tucker. "You just find a way to get Sam out of that pile of meat!"

While wearing what was perhaps the most serious expression that had ever been seen of his face, Tucker held up a knife and fork. "Way ahead of you."

Although he was not entirely sure if Tucker's idea would work or where he had gotten the eating utensils, he flew up and punched the ghost from behind. He was quite pleased to see that it sent her into a wall. Hoping that it had her stunned, he aimed a flying kick at her. Unfortunately for him, she had recovered and caught him by the leg.

For a moment, she held him up and somewhat regarded him. "Don't you see? This is why you need meat!" she roared at him as she hurled him at a wall. "You're skin and bones!"

Scared, he concentrated for a moment and managed to turn intangible just before he hit. Unfortunately, he hadn't been thrown quite hard enough, so he ended up only going half way through it. It definitely took him a moment to fix that problem, and when he did, he found himself face to face with a new one. The Lunch Lady had used her powers to open a box of shish-kebobs, skewers, and anything else that was related.

When he would think back on the fight, he would still have no idea how he did what happened next. As the shish-kebobs were thrown at him, he was somehow able to split himself at the waist (yet, still be attached) and dodge all of them. He was definitely very relieved about that, but as he put his body back to normal, the Lunch Lady yelled.

All of the boxes opened at one time and expelled their contents. The meat from them as well as what had been trapping Sam flew into the air for a moment before attaching themselves to the ghost again. Unconsciously, he had floated up into the air while that happened, which had been a huge mistake. The ghost reached out and grabbed him, and once again, she threw him at a wall. This time, he went all the way through it.

He had managed to turn tangible right after passing through the wall, allowing him to crash into a pile of boxes. Thankfully, these ones didn't have any meat in them. He sighed as he pushed himself up. Not only was he starting to get a headache from all of this, if this continued too much longer, he might just swear off meat for the rest of his life. Wouldn't Sam be happy?

He flew back through the wall just in time to watch the Lunch Lady begin to chase Sam and Tucker. Without much thought, he quickly managed to catch up to them. There definitely wasn't much time before the ghost caught them, so he grabbed his friends and, once again, went through a wall.

In a matter of moments, he had taken them outside. For some reason, he had the desire to take them to some place safe before he put them down. But, he was definitely tired, even if their weight didn't bother him too much.

"Gee, Danny," Sam said as she looked up at him, "Fighting meat monsters? Flying though walls? You must be exhausted." He was definitely surprised that she wasn't angry at him for something or that she hadn't asked about why the three of them were definitely not on the ground. Maybe she was waiting for later to ask that.

He had to stifle a yawn. "What? Of course not!" he tried to say defensively. "What would… give you that idea…?" The last thing he remembered before everything went black was that he was falling.

…..

Something startled him awake. After panicking a moment, he looked around to find that he was in his bed and both of his friends were looking at him with worried expressions. "Wha-what's going on?"

"You passed out," Tucker told him, in a somewhat comforting way. "We took you home. You've been asleep for four days!"

He could feel his eyes bug out as he sat up. There was no way that he could have been out that long, could there? Fortunately, Tucker was just joking with him, which caused Sam to yell at him for being careless. Then that got the two of them arguing about whose fault the entire mess was and the school menu. He just stared as the two of them stormed out of his room. A sigh escaped his lips as he fell back down on his pillow. Hopefully, this whole thing would blow over by tomorrow.

And… I'm still amazed that it's not done! The last chapter (and there is only one more) will definitely be up before I start back to school. Why am I sure of this? Well, it's mostly written already.

Once again, I was using quotes from "Mystery Meat".

That's about it for chapter 11. See you next time!