A/N:
Write an interesting drabble about sitting at a table and doing nothing.
I think I succeeded doing at least half of it (the sitting at a table part, heh :). Don't really know if it's interesting enough. If you want interesting, read Cordria's version.
Note to anybody I should have gotten back to in some form or other, I will. Been sick.
64. Multitasking
Mr Lancer sighed, leaning back in his chair in the almost empty classroom. His hands behind his head, he contemplated the ceiling for a moment, noticing absentmindedly the recent and not so recent stains on it from where the roof had leaked in the corner. Dark, round stains originating from pieces of clay that students had brought from their arts class, and had thrown against the ceiling where they had stuck until well into his lecture, and one perfectly circular one, with a distinct green hue, from where a particularly slimy ghost had passed through, chased by the infamous Danny Phantom.
He didn't contemplate long. First of all, because stains on a ceiling aren't really all that interesting, and second, he'd looked at them countless times before, had even pointed them out to the principal with the suggestion it could at least use some paint. At which point she had guided him to the janitor's closet and had directed him to a rack bearing several cans of paint, saying pleasantly he was absolutely right and that she certainly wasn't one to stop him. He had never brought it up again.
His attention shifted to the activity outside, the football field, only just visible through an opening in the bleachers. Practice was going on there, he could hear the coach's screams, the shouts of the boys, some higher pitched voices too, possibly cheerleaders. The overcast sky looked like it might rain, and he wondered if the cheerleaders would stop their practice if it did. His eyes glazed, and for a while he lost himself in pleasant memories of his own high school cheer leading days.
The raven haired boy sitting in the back of the classroom shifted, scraping the legs of his chair on the floor. Mr Lancer snapped out of his daydreams and looked sternly at him. The boy looked back, tired blue eyes expressionless, hands flat on the table in front of him. He hadn't touched his books, hadn't even opened them to at least give the impression of studying, something, Mr Lancer knew, the boy desperately needed. Instead, he just sat there, staring straight ahead, sitting perfectly still, waiting.
Waiting for his detention to end.
Mr Lancer frowned, but couldn't find anything to criticize. He had suggested to him to use the two hours to study, to catch up, but it had been just that. A suggestion. If the boy wanted to sit there, staring at a point on the wall just behind his teacher, he was welcome to it. Mr Lancer wasn't going to stop him.
It crept him out a little though. To watch the volatile, restless, fifteen year old youth just sit there, doing nothing. As if nothing had happened. As if his black eye didn't bother him. As if the whole detention didn't bother him. And that, Mr Lancer realized, was what bothered him the most. At least twice a week, Daniel Fenton served some sort of punishment, varying from cleaning the cafeteria after initiating another food fight – whatever possessed the boy to keep doing that, Mr Lancer would never understand – to sitting in a classroom hours after school, supervised by a teacher. Quite often, Mr Lancer himself.
It should bother him. Mr Lancer shifted in his seat, a more conformable chair than Danny was in, and looked down at his book. Ender's Game. He was about halfway through it. He had read it before of course, there weren't many books he hadn't, but somehow he couldn't get himself to continue reading. He looked up at his student again, to find the boy now staring at his hands.
Mr Lancer shivered. A sudden chill entered the classroom. The silence in the room intensified, somehow accentuated by the noise coming from outside. He started to look around uncomfortably, knowing full well what a sudden chill in a room could mean.
Daniel moved again. His head still down, he suddenly jerked in his seat, and Mr Lancer almost jumped up in alarm, afraid the boy was somehow being attacked by a ghost, but then he went quiet again. He kept watching him for a while, to make sure there really was nothing wrong, but the boy just dropped his head even lower, resting his chin almost on his chest, and seemed to shut out the world altogether. The only thing that seemed slightly out of place were his clenched fists.
The cold in the room intensified. Now very worried, Mr Lancer opened his mouth to say something, to suggest they leave, call the principal, the police, the GIW or even the boy's parents because there seemed to be a ghost in the room, when Daniel suddenly spoke.
"It's fine."
With a click, Mr Lancer closed his mouth and stared at the boy, who still wouldn't look up. The authority in the voice, the utter conviction of that whatever it was that was in the room was being dealt with sufficiently, and the fact that the boy seemed to have known exactly what Mr Lancer had been about to say, silenced him. He allowed himself to stare at the boy, sitting perfectly still now, hair hanging down, obscuring his face, hands still on the table, fists still clenched.
If he didn't know any better, he'd say the boy was under extreme duress.
He took a deep breath, feeling the icy air fill his lungs. He tore his eyes away from the boy and scanned the room, looking for... something. Something out of the ordinary. Some rippling of the air where a ghost neglected invisibility for a moment, movement where no movement should be, a consciousness without form. And in fact, if you really wanted to see, if you really believed, it was there.
Mr Lancer didn't want to see. But, living in Amity Park, he most certainly believed.
Something snakelike rippled through the air, slithering and hissing softly, stretching itself and then curling up completely. And something else, a second shape, humanoid, with two faintly glowing green eyes, wrestling with the snakelike ghost. He seemed to be holding it by it's tail – if you can speak of that with a snake – and holding on for dear life, while the snake curled and trashed and tried to get free. Then it suddenly turned around and curled itself around the human shaped ghost, which, Mr Lancer was pretty sure of now, was Danny Phantom, fighting an invisible battle for once.
Phantom opened his mouth to cry out, and to Mr Lancer's surprise and dismay, Danny Fenton let out a soft moan. His fists were clenched even tighter now, and Mr Lancer could see the muscle in the boy's arms and shoulders tense. He stared at him in suspicion for a moment, before his eyes were drawn back to the the silent, almost invisible ghost fight going on in his classroom.
If he had ever had any thoughts about fleeing the classroom, they were long gone now. He might have done it earlier, when he hadn't focused on finding the ghost in the classroom. He might have been able to convince Daniel Fenton to leave with him too – although he somehow doubted that, the boy had a strange stubborn streak to him that had him make some strange choices, but no longer. The ghost fight was right between him and the door. If he hadn't known, he probably would have passed right through them and he wouldn't even have known they were there, except maybe for a shiver running up his spine, but now that he saw them, there was no way he was willing to even try. He just had to hope that Danny Phantom would deal with the ghost and then leave them alone.
The air shimmered, condensed, moved. Mr Lancer could no longer make out separate forms. The blurry image had turned even blurrier, a collection of eddies and swirls, random ripples, swift movements. Then, suddenly, the back end of the classroom distorted, turned like some crazy special effect in one of those B movies his students liked so much, and then slammed back into place. All went quiet.
Mr Lancer blinked, glanced at his still unmoving student and then stared at the back of the classroom again, wondering if he had imagined it. The temperature rose slightly. Mr Lancer squinted. For a moment, he thought he locked eyes with a pair of glowing green orbs, floating uncomfortably close. Then they moved backwards and appeared almost out of sight.
To the casual onlooker, there would have been nothing to see. Ghost invisibility is almost perfect. In bright sunlight, outside, it would have been impossible to track him. Here, in the slightly darkened classroom however, and the sparse light from the overcast sky coming through the huge windows, it was entirely possible to see it, if you looked close enough.
And Mr Lancer looked. The humanoid form, the boy shaped air, moved backwards, still facing him. He hovered for a moment near the boy sitting at the desk. And then he disappeared. Mr Lancer kept staring at the place he had seen the ghost boy, and then looked at Daniel Fenton, who seemed to suddenly have relaxed, unclenching his fists and laying his hands flat on the desk once more, head still down. The temperature of the classroom rose even further, rising to an almost normal level.
Mr Lancer cleared his throat. Daniel looked up. And if the slightest of green tinted his eyes for a moment, it would almost certainly go unnoticed. Mr Lancer looked up at the clock on the wall, and then back and Daniel. He nodded. Daniel's eyes slid to the clock also, and the dullness in his eyes lifted. With interest, Mr Lancer watched the boy stuff his belongings into his bag, sling it over his shoulder and make his way over to the door.
"Goodbye, Mr Fenton," Mr Lancer said, just as he was about to step through the door.
The boy paused and looked back.
"See you again, tomorrow, after school," he added, and to his satisfaction saw the brightness in the boy's eyes dull again.
At least he'd got to him this time. The boy turned around again, and Mr Lancer didn't fail to see the tiredness in his pose, the paleness of his face and the way his black eye stood out in it. The boy had refused to tell him how he came by it, and Mr Lancer had let it rest, suspecting that a certain football player had something to do with it. He hadn't pursued the matter, not in the least because aforementioned football player was the school's star football player, but also because of the look of stoic indifference the boy had worn.
Whatever or whoever had caused the black eye, Daniel Fenton didn't care. Being lectured by Mr Lancer or principal Inshiyama about destroying school property made absolutely no impact. Threatening to call his parents had worked in the earlier days, but no longer. The boy just let it slide right off him. Nothing seemed to touch him.
Still, all of it could be considered normal, if somewhat extreme, troubled teenage behavior. But what had Mr Lancer still sitting at his desk, instead of leaving right after his worrisome student, staring out of the window at the small figure walking slowly away from the school, replaying the events of what happened in his classroom earlier in his head, was a single, almost invisible moment, the last ripple of air that had been Danny Phantom, disappearing from the room.
Not just leaving the room. Disappearing right into his student.
