Sorry to VampireFrootloopsRule and TurnDreamsIntoReality, I wasn't aware of the fact that I frequently left a chapter ending on a cliffhanger but I am glad that you're still enjoying this story and I appreciate your sarcasm and excitement, it gives me a laugh. Also thanks to Oak Leaf Ninja for the message and the review. Thanks to xOwl for adding my story to their favorite list.
Chapter 11: Fighting and Bonding
"He's with some other girl, but don't worry, it's just you and me now Danny," Kitty purred as she leaned into Danny, who pulled away in disgust. Danny heard a growl from Sam but stayed focused on Kitty as she placed a thin, pale finger under his chin and looked at him with strangely hungry eyes, the type he'd learned to avoid at all costs.
"Knock it off Kitty, we're not doing this again," Danny said as he jerked away from her and glared at her, forcing himself to remain calm and using his anger to do so. "How'd you get so powerful anyway?" Danny demanded feeling rather agitated considering it wasn't normal for a weak ghost to stay the age that they died in.
"A girl can do a lot in a hundred years, especially when she's got no one to stop her, tiger," Kitty stated and Danny glared harder at her as he gripped her finger, stopping it from its journey down his chest. Suppressing the feeling of discomfort at his current situation and the fact that he was also painfully aware of the heat radiating off of Sam's body because of their proximity, Danny replied in an angry, if slightly repulsed tone.
"I've had enough of your games, Kitty. We both know I'm not the ghost you want so why don't you quite wasting my time and go back to your boyfriend," Danny told her as he risked a glance at Sam. Kitty narrowed her eyes at him, reminding him a lot of an angry Paulina, before her gaze shifted to Sam and a horrible smile spread across her face, causing Danny's stomach to flip and his shoulders to tense.
"What's this, does our Danny have a girlfriend?" Kitty teased, causing Danny's anger to flare. What gave her or any of the other ghosts the right to interfere with his personal life?
"She's not my girlfriend, and even if she was you'd just find another way to make my life miserable because of it!" Danny spat.
"Come on, Danny, don't be like that. You know we love you," Kitty said in her sickly sweet voice.
"Well, you have a weird way of showing it," Danny muttered feeling unbelievably irritated. He shot another glance at Sam and made his decision, quickly uncapping his thermos.
The blue light shot out and sucked a surprised Kitty into it, a single wail reaching their ears before he capped the cylinder. "Hey, I'm tired, and she was just asking for it," Danny defended himself when he noticed Sam's blank stare.
"Is that a soup thermos?" Sam asked looking skeptical.
"Actually, it's the Fenton thermos, it captures ghosts so I can safely transfer them back to the Ghost Zone," Danny explained. Sam snorted.
"The Fenton thermos? Isn't that a bit egotistical?" Sam wanted to know, still looking disbelieving.
"Yeah, he is," Danny agreed, smiling fondly at the memory of his dad. "Anyway it really comes in handy when you don't have a Ghost portal close by and it can hold fifty ghosts at a time, which is pretty great," Danny stated absentmindedly, tapping the thermos to his chin in a thoughtful manner.
Danny looked back at Sam when he realized that she had become rather quiet. Sam's expression had gone a little weird; her eyes held relief but her balled up hands indicated that she was ready to strangle somebody. He just hoped it wasn't him.
"Is there something you forgot to tell me Danny?" she hissed, seeming to have found her voice and, oh great, she seemed to be mad. For a moment Danny stared, dumbstruck by her sudden mood swing but he snapped out of it as her words registered in his mind and dread swept over him. Danny felt his heart and stomach sinking into the ground.
Oh great, she figured it out, now she's going to run and tell everyone and I'm going to be put in jail or made a permanent ghost. Maybe Jazz's grandson's going to tear me apart molecule by molecule, Danny thought before his terrified mind went blank. "What?" was his brilliant response to her question.
"How come that ghost called you Danny?' Sam clarified, glaring at Danny in a demanding manner.
Danny held back a sigh of relief when he realized that she hadn't figured out his secret. "Um, that was my name when I was alive, didn't you get my full name while you were searching the net? It's Danny Phantom," he informed her with a shrug trying to sound nonchalant. Sam frowned and Danny quickly took advantage of her hesitation. "Look, I'll answer any questions you have, later, right now I still have Kitty's boyfriend to deal with," he told her meeting her gaze with a desperate one of his own. She paused, still glaring, before giving up with a sigh.
"Fine, but you're taking me with you," she told him, pointing an accusing finger at him.
"No way, it's too dangerous!" Danny objected but the next thing he knew, the Fenton thermos had left his grasp and Sam was holding it behind her back.
"You take me or I let Kitty go and she can answer all my questions, she seemed to know quite a lot about you," Sam threatened causing Danny to blanch as his heart started racing at a breakneck speed again.
He regarded her, trying to figure out whether or not she was bluffing. Danny gulped when he realized that she wasn't. He glared, furious that Sam could be so determined to put her own life in danger, didn't she have she have any self-preservation instincts left? No, Danny decided. Clearly she doesn't have any self-preservation left considering she has no problem hanging out with the ghost that that attracted the most vengeful ghosts in the Ghost Zone.
Danny's glaring gaze flickered towards the thermos as he tried to calculate whether or not it'd be possible for him to grab hold of it. His eyes brightened in that terrifying way as an idea crossed his mind and he was about to launch himself into Sam's body when he noticed the desperate, pleading and fearful look in her eyes. He froze in place, taken aback by the emotions her eyes displayed.
"Sam, are you okay?" Danny asked before he could stop himself.
"Phantom, I need this. My life's been boring so far and if I want my life to mean something then I have to grab every opportunity I can get," Sam sounded upset which, in turn, made Danny feel guilty.
"Sam, you don't need to be attacked by ghosts for your life to mean something. You exist for a reason and you don't need me or any other ghost getting in the way of that," Danny told her, his gaze softening as he looked at the girl. Sam didn't budge, instead she just folded her arms and stared at him expectantly. Danny groaned but surrendered before flying closer and scooping a surprised Sam into his arms.
She made a strangled sound and clung to the thermos as if it could somehow help if Danny suddenly decided to drop her. Danny gave her an amused look while suppressing the blush that wanted to creep onto his face. He hated how aware he was of Sam's body touching his, and the heat that seemed to be shining of Sam's body didn't help much either. He silently wondered how she was able to stand being so close to his body. With an internal wince, he held her further away from his body, hoping to lessen her discomfort that his ice cold body probably caused her.
"Are you going to drop me?" Sam sounded frantic as her steel grip shifted from the thermos to his t-shirt. Danny chuckled, earning a glare from the Goth girl.
"No, I'm not going to drop you," he told her, back to being gentle. Sam gasped when she finally noticed the height they were at.
"Amazing right?" Danny found himself whispering as they flew over the town, high enough that some low hanging clouds drifted by underneath them.
"Yeah…" Sam breath, sending a thrill of pleasure down Danny's spine and causing him to grin like an absolute idiot that Sam, luckily, didn't notice. "I've never felt so free," Sam mumbled and Danny nodded.
"This halfway makes up for all the injuries I get when I'm fighting ghosts," he informed her as he tightened his grip on her and did a quick loop, causing Sam to cling onto him again while screaming her head off.
"Don't do that," Sam's voice quivered slightly as she said this but there was a small smile on her lips so he knew she was okay and that she was probably enjoying the adrenaline rush that came with the thrill of flying.
"Sorry, I couldn't resist," he admitted smiling. She grimaced and punched him in the arm, but otherwise, got over her shock rather quickly. Danny mentally rolled his eyes at her behavior, she really was different from any of the girls he'd met before and she seemed to take everything in stride, sort of.
"So, how did you and Kitty meet?" Sam asked after a while of quiet flying.
"Why, are you jealous?" Danny joked.
"No! ...I was just, curious…" Sam said hesitantly
"I'm just kidding. Actually, we met when she tried to take over my si- Jazz Fenton's body because her own had been destroyed when she and her boyfriend tried to go through the Ghost portal but failed," Danny explained, praying that Sam hadn't noticed his small slip up.
"And who is this mysterious boyfriend by the way?" Sam questioned quirking an eyebrow.
"Johnny 13," Danny grimaced. "He's about nineteen with blonde hair and a trench coat and he also has this bike he usually rides, I think that's how he died actually. He himself isn't much of a threat but he has this bad luck shadow that creates havoc wherever he goes, hence the nickname he." and so Danny soon found himself telling Sam all about the adventures he'd had and the stupid and sometimes amusing ghosts he'd come across, his search for Johnny quickly forgotten. Though he had to edit a lot and had opted to calling Tucker "Peter" so as not to make Sam suspicious, it was nice to take about it.
He'd been in the middle of telling her about how Walker had put him in ghost jail when he'd tried to retrieve a gift, when it happened again. A splitting headache almost overpowered Danny along with that blistering heat on his skin and in his organs. He vaguely noticed his ghostly aura flickering from white to green and back again as he started plummeting towards the building roofs, his eyelids fluttering in exhaustion.
Danny shook himself as Sam started screaming. He managed a safe landing before he fell to his hands and knees, dropping Sam in the process. Sweat slid down his face and dripped onto the ground as he moaned in pain. Danny's brow furrowed in concentration as he once again forced the headache and heat away with his ice powers, sighing in relief when he succeeded.
"Phantom!" Danny heard Sam exclaim and, a few seconds later, he felt her hands on his back.
"It's fine," Danny mumbled as he turned himself over and got back onto his feet.
"Okay, what just happened?" Sam demanded, eyeing Danny suspiciously.
"It's nothing, just a fever," Danny said taking in a few deep breaths to steady himself.
"Ghosts can get fevers?" Sam questioned, surprise erasing her anger.
"Apparently so," Danny grumbled, surveying the surrounding area before he turned back to Sam.
"Sam, why do you insist on calling me Phantom, even though you know my real name?" Danny blurted out the question that had been bothering him ever since he'd come to his senses a few seconds ago. It was strange and he couldn't say he felt comfortable with someone so close to him, calling him by something that was practically his surname. Sam seemed startled and took a while before she answered.
"Because, I have this friend whose name's Danny and it'd be weird if I called you Danny as well," Sam explained and Danny brightened when she called him a friend. Whether it had been intentional or not, it made him unreasonably happy to hear it.
"Okay, let's go," he said, making a move to pick her up again but she backed away, holding her hands up in front of her in a defensive manner.
"Oh, no way, you're not flying in your condition, it'd be like allow a drunk man to drive. We'll take the stairs and elevator down and hail a cab" Sam told him and before he could protest, she had grabbed his wrist and was pulling him towards the latch. "I don't care how many ghosts attacks you survived, if I fall out of the sky, I die," she informed him as the started down a flight of stairs.
"And where do you plan on going with me when we're in the cab?" Danny asked, apparently stomping Sam so much that she stopped walking for a moment before continuing on, deep in thought. Danny almost laughed when Sam's serious marching expedition was interrupted by her stomach rumbling.
"We could go to a restaurant, do um, do ghosts eat?" Sam wanted to know making Danny smile.
"Yeah," he laughed as they waited for the elevator to open.
"Hey, I think that's a fair question!" Sam protested.
"I suppose," Danny admitted still grinning. "As long as I get back at seven, we shouldn't have a problem," Danny said with a thoughtful nod while Sam raised an eyebrow at this remark.
"You have a curfew?" Sam asked in amused disbelief.
"Um, yeah, something like that," Danny was quick to pounce on the excuse for his slip up. Sam snorted, as if this was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard, which, Danny supposed, it kind of was.
"Alright Cinderella, but you better have a good reason," Sam stated causing Danny to frown in an effort to try and hide his worries as to how he could explain himself, and because what Sam had said had stunned him.
"You know about Cinderella?" he asked stupidly.
"Yeah, it's a story my mom used to tell me when I was little, all about the prince and the happily ever after and that crap but I have to admit that I like the original Cinderella better," Sam stated and with that she began to tell him how, the story had actually been about the prince murdering Cinderella. Yup, the topic was pretty weird, but Danny couldn't shake the feeling that it was somehow important.
Well, that's the end of the second chapter but I have to ask; does this count as a cliffhanger? Cause if it does, then, I'm sorry but it was one hundred percent necessary.