"Hey, Fentonia!" a familiar voice called out and Danny sighed as he looked around at the emptying hall. He'd been doing a decent job at avoiding the bully, but it looked like he and Tucker had run out of luck.
Dash had either gotten really lucky, or actually planned this well because they'd just turned down a rather long hall and the jocks were blocking the way behind them. They weren't close enough to another hall to run, but if he could cause a distraction then maybe Tucker could make it...
He glanced around and had to appreciate the good planning once again. No cameras, so this couldn't get caught on tape. Of course, that also meant that he could use his ghost powers a bit more, but...
Then, a thought occurred to him. He had his camera on him. If he could record this, he'd have solid proof of the bullying that was otherwise very much tolerated at the school. And wasn't that why he'd gotten it to begin with? To gather proof of his innocence? Quickly, he rummaged through his backpack as Dash approached, followed by his team of letter jackets. Huh, all that red and white was a little intimidating. More points to them. Now if only they could channel that towards doing good...
Beside him, he heard Tucker gulp. Sam wasn't there, having had some appointment her mother said she couldn't miss right after school. Danny suspected a shopping trip of some sort, judging by how close-mouthed his best friend had been. That left Danny and Tucker alone in the hallway and the other kids had either not seen the potential altercation or had taken one look and made themselves scarce. He couldn't really blame them. Having Dash's attention sucked, even if he had little doubt that he could really take him in a fight, even without his ghost powers.
"You've been avoiding me for a while now," the blond said as Danny chucked his backpack to Tucker, who fumbled, but managed to catch it, even if he looked a little confused. The half-ghost turned just in time to see the bully thrust his face close to Danny's, expression menacing as he pointed at the smaller boy's chest. "You should know, when you avoid us, you just rack up the payment!"
Danny shrugged. "Just a sec." He held up the camera so that he captured both himself and Dash, then hit record. "Hi! This is Danny Fenton and Dash Baxter – my bully. Well, one of them."
"What? Give me that!" Dash growled, lunging for the camera. Danny ducked and twirled out of the way.
"Sorry for the movement," he ducked one of Dash's swings. "It might make you guys sick," another duck, "but there isn't much," a twirl to the side, "I can do about it." He managed to get several steps back, focusing his camera on an increasingly angry jock.
"Hold still, Fenturd!"
Danny scoffed. "Yes, that's the best he can do." Dash shot towards him again, and fortunately, Danny saw it coming. The boy telegraphed his movements so badly it was hard to not see it. It put into perspective just how bad he'd been at reading things himself the first time around.
"I should," duck, "probably explain," a step back and a jump, "what I'm doing." After all, not everyone would simply be able to dodge like this, and he needed to try and keep his cover. He pointed the camera towards Dash's shoulder and neck. "See how his body moves for a wind-up? It's a pretty common movement." He simply knocked the fist to one side, sending Dash stumbling in that direction. "He's going for power, not speed or subtlety, despite the fact that he has the mass to hit pretty powerfully without telling us exactly what he's going to do next."
"SHUT UP, YOU FREAK!" Dash screamed, throwing himself at the other boy. He really made dodging too easy. Danny raised his eyebrow as he stepped aside at the last second, then watched the other boy sail by. He double checked that his camera was still recording it all, just to make sure. Yup, the recording icon blinked back at him.
"See, it's not that difficult to dodge when one keeps a cool head. He's throwing his whole weight behind an attack like that. It's admirable conviction, but lacks forethought. He's not even bothering to try and hit me any other way but directly. Oh, look, it'll be a right punch." Another duck. "I ducked down and under his fist and came up on the outside of his guard. And now he's going for a left cross," he said as he twisted out of the way. "Again, to anyone watching this, you can duck down under the fist or to the side and come out on the back end of his guard. Honestly, it would be really easy to kick in his knees, or punch him in the back or the neck, but I won't, just to prove I'm not giving into violence." He hoped his sarcasm wasn't showing too badly.
The next time Dash went for him, he reached out to grab, and Danny rolled into a back somersault.
"Oh, now that was better. Because he was trying for speed," another duck, "he made it more difficult to predict. Nice job, Dash."
The blond screamed in rage and frustration.
"Hmm. Not quite the answer I was expecting. But even though it was better, he's so used to brawling that even his grabs are predictable."
"Shut up, Fencrap!" Danny raised an eyebrow at the new term. "You're just making this worse for yourself!"
Danny cocked his head to one side and asked, curiously, "Why?"
"Because now I'm gonna destroy you!"
"No," the dark-haired boy clarified, shaking his head. "I mean, why are you doing this? Why me? What did I ever do to you?"
"You showed up and made me stare at your ugly mug for the day!"
Danny frowned. "There's no other reason?"
"Oh, yeah, and you're a freak with creepy parents!"
"And why does that merit you coming after and trying to hurt me?"
"None of your beeswax!"
Danny's frown deepened. "You're trying to beat me up."
"Danny!"
Tucker's warning almost came too late. It would have been the end of it, had he not been half ghost. He threw his senses outward and felt the two boys coming up behind him, probably on Dash's orders, or maybe they acted on their own just to help their leader. Danny threw himself forward, turning his arms intangible as he tucked into a somersault.
"Huh?" One of the boys yelled, looking at their hand. Then, just like Danny thought they would, they grit their teeth at him angrily, likely dismissing his arms phasing through their fingers.
This was getting a little too close for comfort.
He glanced over at Tucker, then very obviously moved his eyes down the hall before focusing back on his friend. The other boy got it and began to sneak away as Danny ducked a couple of other attacks, mainly using the bullies' grasping and charging to take out the others. Most of the boys had gotten into it at this stage, making the grasping and struggling more of a mindless mob than anything. Danny threw himself beneath some of their legs and then made a break for the outside, prying himself away just as they realized he wasn't in their dogpile anymore.
"Run!" Danny yelped to Tucker, and the two booked it down the hall. They turned a corner and Danny reached out to grab his friend.
"Wha—" Tucker started, but Danny put a finger to his lips, then turned them invisible and intangible. A couple of seconds later, the wave of red and white jacketed boys turned the corner, running right through them.
"You can't run forever, Fenton!" Dash yelled from beside them.
Danny raised an eyebrow dryly. "Really?" he asked. No one heard him in the stampeding mass running past (and through) them.
xXx
He left Tucker about half-way to the other boy's house. It was already just after three o'clock, and Danny had to get to his appointment. Tucker, still seeming a little dazed after their encounter with the school bully, said he understood and they parted ways. It was particularly frustrating to really push himself and know he wasn't going nearly fast enough. It took him about seven minutes to get downtown instead of the usual three that it did in the future. It took him an additional five minutes to find the right building, floor and office, at which point he phased right through the wall invisibly. Good thing, too. He was in an office where a man sat, doing some work at the desk off to Danny's right, so he'd avoided scaring someone, it looked like.
So Danny flew through the halls to the waiting room, then rushed over and opened the door as if he'd just gotten there. He glanced at the clock on the wall. Almost 3:20. Well, it was better than nothing. He walked hurriedly over to the desk where a woman in a button-down shirt sat. She looked up at him as he approached. "I have an appointment," he said.
She raised an eyebrow but otherwise didn't react other than to look up something on her computer.
"Name?" she asked.
"Daniel Phantom."
The lady nodded. "Ms. Roberts will see you now." She pointed down the hall Danny had just invisibly flown out of.
"Right," he said. "Thanks." He took one more look around the room, a slightly larger but otherwise fairly similar waiting room to Ms. Tang's, with accents of red and gold instead of blue and green, before he stalked down the hall.
He found Mary Robert's door fairly quickly. It was open, and Danny peeked inside to see an olive-skinned woman sitting behind a desk, dressed in a soft-pink skirt-suit combination.
"Um, hi?" he said, a little hesitantly.
She paused whatever she was doing and looked over at him. Then she blinked.
"You must be Mr. Phantom, right?"
Danny nodded and walked in when she stood up and leaned forward with her hand outstretched. He made a couple of strides to take her hand and shake it firmly. If she noticed how cool he felt to touch, she didn't let on. Instead, she smiled and gestured for him to have a seat across from her.
"I have to say, Mr. Phantom, I've been looking forward to meeting you."
The half-ghost rubbed the back of his head nervously. "Um, thanks." Seriously, he would never act like this in the future. He wanted to sigh, but didn't. Instead he forced himself to put his hand down and sit up a little straighter.
"So, what had Malina Tang so intrigued?"
"Well..." Danny said slowly. Then he turned invisible for a few seconds, then visible again. "I'm a ghost."
Ms. Roberts just blinked at him for several seconds. "Excuse me?" she asked skeptically.
Danny sighed and floated up from his seat. "I'm a ghost." He went up to the ceiling and put his hand through it. Then he floated back down and picked up a stapler she had in front of her. Then he made it intangible along with his arm and thrust it through her desk.
"Grab it, if you don't believe me," the half-ghost said nonchalantly.
Hesitantly, she reached under the desk and gingerly took hold of the stapler. Danny let it go and backed off while she took the object out and blinked at it. Then she glanced over at a still-floating Danny.
"Alright," she said, "you have my attention."
xXx
So Danny explained his situation. She sat and watched him intently as he explained, going over the fact that he is a sapient being, that other ghosts could be sentient and sapient, that they could be captured, contained, experimented on, dissected, etc. without repercussion, that some ghosts had to live in the human world to fulfill their reason for existing, and that ghosts were now appearing tangibly for some reason, so this would become an issue soon.
When she asked him what drove him to come to the human world, he explained his own obsession, the rules of the Ghost Zone and council when it comes to haunts and a brief history of ghosts, just to give perspective.
Now, it wasn't unusual for ghosts to find the human world intimidating, but ghosts rarely got worried or outright scared by normal humans. This woman was an exception. She hadn't taken her eyes off of him the entire time, and it was seriously creeping him out.
"Alright," she said, "so you want to A," she started counting things off on her fingers, "get to a point where ghosts are acknowledged as existing beings, B. get them counted as sapient and then C. get them the rights sapient beings deserve?"
Danny blinked. "Um, yeah."
"And meanwhile, you have to fulfill your obsession by protecting this town from other ghosts, because you're A. fairly territorial and B. see more or less everyone else as lesser than you."
Wait, what? The half-ghost blinked. "Lesser than me? Where did you get that?"
She raised an eyebrow. "You said you protect people weaker than you."
"Yeah. Weaker. Not lesser. Everybody has a weakness, and everybody starts somewhere. A weak person today who is given the chance to live can get strong tomorrow! And honestly, even strong ghosts and people can need protecting sometimes!" He realized he was breathing heavily and took a moment to calm down. She'd poked his obsession by insulting him and the people under him, but that didn't mean he couldn't control it.
"Ah, but someone who is given the chance to live may also do terrible things. They may become strong, sure, but they could also become weaker – dependent on you and the service you give. Are you willing to be responsible for that too, Mr. Phantom?"
Danny frowned and tried to keep his aura from dropping the temperature of the room. Judging from the goosebumps on her skin, he didn't really succeed. He did manage to look her squarely in the eye without glaring.
"No. I am not responsible for the people I save. Their lives are their own. I'm merely giving them the chance to live it."
"And the people you don't save."
His jaw clenched and he couldn't help but tense up. Even after all these years it wasn't difficult to recall images of his parents and Jazz and Sam and Tucker and the explosion and— NO! He had to calm down. He took another deep breath.
"That's harder, and it's taken me a while, but as long as I did the best I could with what I had at the time, then I shouldn't feel guilty for their deaths."
The woman raised an eyebrow. "Shouldn't?" she asked.
Another deep breath. "Yeah, 'shouldn't'. Just because I shouldn't, doesn't mean I won't. Ghosts have emotions just like humans, and those emotions are not always reasonable."
"Hm," the woman said, almost like a half-aborted chuckle or word of agreement. Danny wasn't sure which, and he couldn't sense her feelings due to having to concentrate on keeping his own under control.
"What if, simply by being here, you put this town at risk? What if, by 'protecting' it, you're only putting it in more danger? You said yourself that the circumstances around here have changed. What if the best way to protect this town is to simply go back to where you came from?"
The question hit home more than she would likely ever know. He felt as if he'd been socked in the stomach. By Skulker. Multiple times. It wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't a question he'd wondered that himself more than once. Still, it wasn't like this was the first time he'd met with this question... only the first time he'd met it without any backup. In the future he had his parents and Jazz and Sam and Tucker and eventually the town...
So he took a deep breath and forced himself to think through it. It all led back to his parents' portal. Honestly, with how it was now, it wouldn't be too difficult for a ghost to find natural portals leading to the world given enough time and dedication, and a lot of them would come out here. The separation between Earth and the Ghost Zone was weak, and the weaker it got, the more natural portals would happen.
And, once again, he couldn't throw his parents under the bus. He knew they would make some amazing innovation into clean energy in only a couple of months. Long-term gain for the whole world.
With that in mind, he pushed down the little voice in the back of his head that said she was right and took a deep breath.
"As I said, it's a local phenomenon, and it's a recent development. Amity Park was already a hot-spot for ghost activity, but now it's... well, me going away isn't going to stop the ghosts from coming. Yeah, I might draw a few ghosts in, but if I go to the Ghost Zone, it will only leave the town defenseless, and I can't do that."
"You're sure of this?"
"Yes."
"Do you have any proof?"
Danny sighed. "Only that it's well known by ghosts to be a hot spot and now it's infinitely easier to get here."
She nodded her head, conceding. "I would have to get other ghosts to verify that, but I'm not sure how easy that will be."
"Yeah. And any ghosts I bring would be suspect.
"You can get data from the local ghost hunters of records they have, but those don't tend to hold up in the current climate and they're incredibly biased anyway."
"Oh? What do you mean by 'biased'?"
Danny repressed a snort. "They're convinced that every ghost – no matter who or what they are – is evil."
Ms. Roberts raised an eyebrow. "Do they have proof to support this?"
"No," Danny replied, shaking his head. "Encounters with ghosts tend to be... highly emotionally charged, and honestly there are just as many stories about someone coming from the afterlife to help people as there are stories of poltergeists. The Fentons base their ideas off of the theories of Dr. Brian Hartman. He theorized about the Ghost Zone and where ghosts come from. He also gave ideas on ectoplasm and how to use it to power or influence inventions and their after effects."
A frown had appeared on the lawyer's face. "And how would you know this?"
"I... well, I sort of sneaked into the library and read it one night after I heard about him. From the Fentons, no less. I overheard them when they were looking for me. The book is a very interesting – if technical – book that I don't really understand all of," well, he hadn't at this age, "but the man was brilliant. I'm actually convinced he knew a ghost or was a ghost himself. If he was a ghost, however, he must have really hated himself because he hated ghosts. It's obvious in his writings. He documented two cases where he encountered a ghost, and both of them were very negative experiences. Thus, he concluded that all ghosts are evil, regardless of how they became a ghost.
"All of his theories have support simply because of how true some of them are. He basically wrote the 'Ghost-hunter's Bible'. I'm not gonna lie, some of his ideas are far beyond his time from what I can understand, so I get why people believe him about everything, but no matter how genius someone is, they get things wrong. That's why they're called theories."
Ms. Roberts sat there with her hands folded in front of her face for several seconds before she sighed and put them down. "Mr. Phantom. I get where you're coming from, but I'm not completely convinced that ghosts are necessary here. They sound dangerous and I can't exactly condone putting the populace in such danger."
Danny frowned, troubled. "But isn't that why we need to establish laws regarding them – us – now? The Ghost Zone is what it is, but I don't think you really understand obsessions. If a ghost needs to be on Earth to fulfill their obsession, they'll find a way to get here – and believe me, there are ways. It's just that now it will be easier to interact with them.
"Right now we have two options: let things go as they are, which will only inspire more hate and rage and may very well start a war, or nip that all in the bud, set up rules that are as fair as we can be to both sides and try to stop as much damage as we possibly can."
"Why would the situation as it is start a war?" she asked, genuinely curious from what Danny could tell.
He resisted snorting. "Right now I've heard the Fentons threaten, multiple times, that they'll tear me apart molecule by molecule. I've also overheard them discussing how they don't want to completely obliterate ghosts they've come across because they want to at least study the remains. I'm not paraphrasing here. Now, let's say you have a drive that your very being depends on, and there are people standing in your way – dangerous people who would gladly destroy you or study you as they dissect you alive because they don't believe you can feel anything. Suddenly, you and your kind have a lot more access to their world and you happen to have natural powers that they don't. You do the math."
The dark-haired woman nodded at him. "You make a fair point, Mr. Phantom. Alright, I'll consider it. You understand that I have to do some more research into this before I make a decision, correct?" Danny nodded. "Do you have some way I can reach you?"
"Not currently," he said with a sigh. "But I do have a number you can reach who can get me a message."
He gave her Jazz's phone number, thanked her for her time and left, phasing right out of the room. Once outside he sighed, feeling old and tired. He doubted he'd be hearing from her again. And, somehow, he figured that any other lawyer he went to would have similar reactions.
Ah, well. Maybe he could get in with a reporter instead? Until he got a name for himself in any case.
With that thought in mind, trying to allow it to bolster his hope, he flew towards his home, leaving a very thoughtful lawyer behind him.
xXx
AN: I'm gonna be honest, this chapter did not turn out as I expected. I figure that female minority lawyers in the early 2000's would probably be very professional and competent (they'd have to be), and so I tried to make this one as competent as possible and while she'd consider it, there hasn't been enough precedence to actually have her take Danny on. So... yeah. Sorry if it drags a bit, but this story is a lot of me just meandering along. LOL
The next chapters will get back into more series territory. :D
Thanks again to LittleSnowyRascal9842 for reading through this first! :D She's done a great job at catching mistakes!