A/N: I am so, so sorry guys. Last weekend was so hectic that apparently I forgot to update entirely, and believe me I'm kicking myself because I can no longer pretend this is like a weekly tv show. Um… there was a massive snowstorm? Production crew strike? At the very least, here is your slightly unregularly scheduled update.

In other news, due to the now refusal of tumblr to transfer italics, and my copious use of italics, the site and I have had a minor falling out and Possession will now only be updated here for the foreseeable future.

"Not that I'm complaining," Sam said. "Because I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been enjoying this. But," she continued as they watched Dash try to get up from his seat at the cool kid's table on the other side of the cafeteria only to find the soles of his shoes had inexplicably decided to become one with the floor. "…don't you think this is starting to go a little too far?"

Across the room, Dash, predictably, fell on his face a second later. "No," was the reply in triplicate, one unheard and all amused in their own way.

"Besides," said Phantom, who had been having a surprising amount of fun thinking of clever ways to use his limited powers to disproportionate effect, even if he was feeling fatigued from their use. Danny had been a font of ingeniously creative ideas himself, which had caused Phantom's esteem for him to rise. "It's not as if anyone else is doing anything about him."

Sam's eyebrow rose. "This is doing something about him? Seems more in the 'petty revenge' camp to me. And I'm all for petty revenge but the idea is that you do it and then stop."

"Yeah," Phantom said. "It's, uh…"

Negative reinforcement? Danny offered.

"Negative reinforcement," Phantom confirmed. He could hear a hah, and Jazz says I don't pay attention from Danny.

"If you say so," said Sam, returning to her meal, which looked like someone had dug up a square of lawn and called it a day. She pointed her fork at him. "But I'm claiming full 'I told you so' rights."

Phantom propped Danny's head on his hand. "You can use them now, if you like. DashBaxter can't prove it, but he was sure all that was me somehow enough to stuff me in a rusty locker this morning." It hadn't been that much of an inconvenience, since it was a little less cramped than the thermos and he could just phase out, but he'd had to wait until he couldn't hear anyone to do so.

"So that's why you were late for Physics," Tucker said through a mouthful of burger. "Man, you could have told me you two were doing this earlier," he put a hand to his chest, mock wounded. "I would have helped."

Sam rolled her eyes. "Here we go."

Oops. Sorry, Tucker.

Phantom repeated Danny's words and then grinned and added "Consider yourself included from now on."

"I am appeased."

"This is not going to end well," Sam muttered, more to the universe at large than any particular individual sitting at the table. She appeared to mull something over and then said "Wait, did you say a rusty locker?"

"Yeah, why?"

…oh no. Danny said, as if suddenly realizing something, and that was probably a bad sign.

"…isn't the only rusty locker in Casper… uh, oh. Onnn second thoughts, you're on your own." Tucker even shifted a little further away.

Phantom was starting to get a little impatient, and, underneath that, a little concerned. "What's so important about it? It seemed identical to all the others apart from that one thing." And something digging into his back, but he hadn't paid that much note at the time.

You haven't heard the legend of Locker 724? said Sam and Danny almost at the same time in a way seemingly perfectly tailored to start a headache. Phantom replied with a flat "No." and an equally flat stare that combined said better than words ever could 'why the hell would I have?'

Tucker and Sam exchanged glances and it was silently decided Tucker would start.

"Apparently," he said, leaning forward on his elbows, "there was this kid at Casper High in the fifties. Sydney Poindexter. He was bullied by… pretty much everyone, actually. Locker 724 was his locker."

Sam took over, with the air of a spooky campfire tale storyteller. "They say that one day they locked him in it, and then completely forgot all about him. Only, they did it at the start of the summer holidays, after everyone else had packed up, and they never told anyone. He starved to death inside it."

"Must have been a nasty surprise for whoever opened it," Phantom mused. He'd seen dead humans, although thankfully not too many. Their bodies tended to get pretty gross. "Wait, wouldn't he have died of thirst?" After all, he'd drunk far more in the last day and a half than he had his entire afterlife, and according to Danny it was that vital.

"Okay, died of thirst, whatever."

"Yeah," Tucker picked up where she left off. "They say the locker's haunted by his ghost now, and you get cursed to have bad luck if you use it. Or, you know, touch it. And maybe it's a good idea not to look at it either. The teachers say it's all superstition but that doesn't stop them assigning it to people as a punishment. Even the janitor won't go near it." He leaned back in his seat, and nodded, story told.

"Well, I can confirm it isn't haunted," Phantom said, picking up his previously hastily made sandwich at Danny's slightly absentminded injunction to eat something before lunch break ended and idly chewing on a corner of it. "I didn't pick up on anything while I was in there, at least."

The other two seemed to relax a bit. "Oh, that's good then," Tucker said. "Congratulations, you're not cursed."

"Takes some of the mystery out of it, though," Sam mused. "I guess it really is just a superstition." She sounded mildly disappointed by this. Phantom raised an eyebrow. Tucker made 'just roll with it' motions that would have been behind her back but because he was sitting next to her earned him a glare instead, to which he adopted a pose of innocence.

Phantom took another bite. "I haven't seen any Poindexter in the Ghost Zone. I don't know everyone in the area, but it's possible he never got an afterlife in the first place. It happens."

"That's a weird thought," Tucker said. "Makes me wonder what we'd be like as ghosts."

"I don't recommend finding out," Phantom said dryly.

The conversation entered a lull as everyone continued eating, Phantom idly scanning the room as he did. Anyone here being a threat was unlikely, but it was automatic habit by now.

"Who's that?" He motioned towards a girl in orange and yellow who was sitting alone. She seemed vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn't for the afterlife of him recall why. The mood at the table seemed to shift, the air becoming a little thicker.

"That's Valerie," Sam said airily, and maybe a little too lightly. Phantom nodded, wondered why the name also felt familiar, and then was slammed by guilt when it hit. Oh. The girl whose life he'd unthinkingly ruined, as pointed out by Tucker. He'd have to think of some way to make it right, after he'd left Danny.

"Why's she sitting alone?" he wondered. Every other table had some sort of group at it, so why the exception? Sam and Tucker both winced as if the question had been as sharp as a needle.

After her dad lost his job she got kicked out from the cool kid's table, Danny finally supplied reluctantly. Phantom nodded, and waited patiently. Because that was clearly only the tip of the iceberg. Tucker asked her to come sit with us, probably thinking he'd finally score. She shut him down, hard.Every sentence sounded like pulling teeth. Then all of a sudden she changed her mind and suddenly wanted to be friends. With me especially.

There was an uncomfortable pause. "You don't have to tell me," Phantom said after a while. "Something bad happened, and now it's like this, I'm guessing."

There was a mental sigh of relief. It's just… I found she only did it just so she could get ghost information and tech from my parents. She said we could still be friends but then she sort of… drifted away. That's it. The sentences were rushed, like someone ripping off a bandaid.

"That's weird," Phantom said, and then shrugged. Honestly he hadn't expected this complicated an answer to the question. Across the table, he could see Sam looking both guilty and mildly defiant, and Tucker looking sidelong at her. Tucker coughed into his hand, and if Danny's ears had been as sensitive as Phantom was used to he probably would have caught the words embedded in it, which frustrated him a little. 'Peppy orange' was probably not right at all.

Across the table, Tucker yelped, presumably because of a combat boot coming down on a sneaker. It didn't take a genius to see all this was only the visible part of the iceberg, but ultimately it wasn't anything to do with Phantom, and he was perfectly okay with letting it drop. He remembered where he'd seen her now.

"I think she shot at me once or twice. Fenton tech. I'd wondered how she got it." He'd also wondered why she was shooting at him, but then a lot of people shot at him often for no reason other than he was what he was so it hadn't really stood out. At least he knew now.

Tucker nodded, shooting Sam a Look and clearly nursing one foot with the other under the table. "Yeah, her Dad confiscated it all when he found out. Turns out, she'd stolen it. That's about when Danny's house got the weapons vault."

"It has a weapons vault?" He was not at all surprised.

Yeah, Danny said, clearly glad to have something different to talk about. I got locked in there once.

The bell chose the moment between 'there' and 'once' to ring, and the sounds and groans of an entire hall getting ready to go to class with the utmost reluctance resounded, their table included. Phantom slung Danny's backpack over his shoulder and joined the crush at the exits with the others.

On the way, he bumped into someone, who responded with a "Watch it!" Someone wearing orange and yellow. He looked at her.

"Something on my face, Fenton?" she said after a while in which Phantom was waiting for Danny to give any kind of input on what to do here and was getting only silence. The tone was frosty, but underneath the surface it was tired and had only a token bite.

"Ah, no." He said. "Sorry." It was a sincere apology, for more than just bumping into her. She paused and seemed to examine his face as if expecting or looking for something, which he hoped she'd find as he didn't want any more humans working out the existence of Danny's possession than knew already. "Fine," she said eventually and brushed past him, this time not even trying to conceal the tiredness in her tone. Phantom watched her leave.

"Should…?"

Just leave it, Phantom. Danny sounded equally as tired. So he did.