Alrighty, Chapter #2!
I'm happy you all are enjoying this as I am.
Also in case you didn't understand [insert gun]-style ecto-gun, it means the shape of the ecto-gun.
Also I edited Chapter #1 a bit, so you might have to reread that in order to understand some things.
I'm pretty sure I'm not Butch Hartman or DreamWorks, so I don't own Danny Phantom or the Shrek franchise.
Enjoy!
Sam had been right.
Tucker had not been a happy camper when he realized that there was no signal no matter how hard he tried to get one.
Sam herself had discovered that Tucker not only wasn't an Ultra-Recyclo Vegetarian, but a full-blown carnivore, the polar opposite of an Ultra-Recyclo Vegetarian. So naturally, when the menu consisted of the fruit and herbs Sam had grown in her garden and foraged from the woods, Tucker had been less than ecstatic, but as beggars don't get to be choosers, he ate what was offered. Sam was very curious as to how a body that's never eaten ruffrage before reacts when a quarter pound of it is introduced. Tucker told her not to get her hopes up, saying something about Foleys being able to handle anything. Course that was up for debate, as no sooner after he said that, his stomach grumbled, no doubt protesting it's non-meat dinner, the carnivorous technogeek excusing himself only moments later.
In between that and now, Tucker had proven to be a decent conversationalist, Sam couldn't remember the last time she had an actual conversation with someone. During the said conversation, Tucker also explained why he was certain he would be busted if he returned to Casper.
"So, this 'Lady Paulina of Casper' I've been hearing so much about is that city-state's new governor?" Sam inquired, perched on a homemade turned loveseat of wattle and wicker as the two of them were situated in the den.
The den was a large, square room, taking up the majority of the shack, which, much like the rest of Sam's place, had it's floor, ceiling, and walls consisting of hand-hewn logs, the upper half of the latter blanketed by healthy-looking vines. Mounted, charcoal-dyed, coffin and crescent-shaped rattan shelves lined with earthenware apothecary jars filled with sundry herbal medicines, and sylvan and gothic curios decking said walls just below the aforementioned vines. A trestle table sat in between Tucker and Sam, cluttered with the jocks' abandoned weapons along with tech paraphernalia and tools from Tucker's bag. A hearth formed from fieldstones resided against the back wall of the shack, a calm flame quietly crackling in it, bathing the room in it's ochre brilliance.
"Yep," Tucker replied from his spot on a lawson constructed from a combination of wattle, wicker, and braided grapevine, the back and seat cushions made of a soft, plush, semi-luminous moss. In one hand, he held Dash's sword, currently beating the gaping hole in it's glimmering, lime-colored blade along the edge without said gap, which neared the hilt, into a curve with a mini-ball-peen hammer, his bag occupying the seat to the right of him and his ghost-possessed PDA resting on the seat to his left. "And a total hottie," he added, sighing dreamily with an equally dreamy, far-off look.
Sam frowned. This 'Paulina' was starting to sound more and more like the girls back where she came from. Pretty faces and that's it, no good or strong personality traits. Dolls that made a nearly evaporated rain puddle look like an ocean.
"And… she decreed that all ghosts aren't allowed in Casper anymore after one in pink and white striped pajamas froze over City Hall?" Sam queried.
Tucker scowled, "Yeah," he examined his handiwork. The sword's blade no longer resembled that of an arming sword, but more rather that of a very curvy scimitar's*. "Even the harmless ones."
"But that's not fair!" Sam argued, finding it rather harsh of someone to punish an entire populace for the actions of one individual.
"No duh!" Tucker retorted. "Anyone with any information regarding the whereabouts of a ghost is supposed to contact those brawny, dim-bulb jocks right away. And anyone caught hiding spirits or being in possession of "Ecto-Contraband" will face at least a month's detention and maybe a fine of up to $5,000 for both charges."
"And what exactly is 'Ecto-Contraband'?" Sam inquired.
The screen of Tucker's PDA turned dark, then the green, red-eyed skull, appeared on the screen.
"Anything that possesses any sort of ghostly attributes," The spirit of the PDA responded a little too snarkily for Sam's liking… and evidently Tucker's as well.
"Technus, don't be rude!" Tucker scolded. "Or I'll lock you inside your app again," he threatened.
The electric crimson eyes of Technus' digital form narrowed, "You wouldn't."
"Wanna find out?" Tucker asked, picking the palm and grabbing the stylus.
"NO!" Technus quailed when the stylus was an inch away from the screen.
Tucker smirked, "Then don't be rude," he put the stylus away and placed the device back down, "Simple as that," he finished.
Technus grumbled something about screwing up the PDA's layout or deleting Tucker's data before disappearing, the screen returning to it's normal state.
"I'm guessing the reason why you're basically an outlaw now is because of that ghost inside your PDA?" Sam said.
Tucker's expression soured, "Yeah," he answered, "Funny, one day, you find that your go-to gadget has been taken over by a tech-based poltergeist. First thought was to turn it over to the jocks."
Sam querched an eyebrow at him, "And why didn't you?" she asked. "It would've saved you being labeled an outlaw."
Tucker snorted, "No, it would've been the equivalent of turning myself in for supposedly having Ecto-Contraband and harboring spectral entities: Captain Dash and the jocks don't need anymore of an excuse to jail a "loser", especially one of the geeky, snarky ones like me," he explained. "And even if they didn't nail me, they'd probably just smash my baby," the technogeek cradled his palm (PDA) protectively, "There's no other way to remove a possessing ghost aside from tricking it into leaving it's host or simply waiting until the spook is done possessing that person or thing," Tucker added. "As much as I don't like something being inside my baby- and believe me, I don't- the thought of the jocks tearing it apart is unbearable."
"I see," Sam replied. "And I'm guessing one of the jocks caught you talking to your little "friend" in there?" she pointed to the PDA.
"James happens to be one of the jocks who hate me more than the rest due to me not putting up with their insults," Tucker smirked. "That, and me coming with my own creative comebacks."
Sam gave the technogeek a flat look. She glanced out the window. Her eyes widened. The outside world was painted in dark, cool hues. It was night.
"Well would ya look at the time," Sam muttered, prompting Tucker to look out the window as well, his own eyes widening.
He glanced at the screen of his PDA, gaping at the time. "It's 9 p.m. already?!"
Sam yawned, stretching out her arms.
"Guess it's time to crash then," She motioned for Tucker to follow her.
The technogeek complied after stuffing his gadgetry and the jocks' weapons into his bag and picking it up along with his PDA, following after Sam through the hallway to the bedroom.
The "hallway" in question was really just a very small, box-shaped room that Sam had purposed into a walkthrough closet/tool shed. The vines from the upper half of one wall naturally curled into the shape of hooks, a berry-dyed, mulberry-colored knapbasket, and a ratty-looking, old-fashioned canvas rucksack dangling from from two of them on one side of the room, while rather well-made, albeit crude-looking gardening tools leaning against the other wall.
Sam's bedroom itself was a smallish, rectangular room with thatch door leading to the garden. A simplistic shelf of thin but strong plain sawn wood stood near the doorway, it's contents consisting of novels of the Dark Romanticism, herbal and ghost lore genre , a mantle clock, a minaudière case, a football-sized facsimile of a skull made of interwoven oak twigs with orbs of virulent green sap for eyes, and the room's only source of light: a bizarre, bioluminescent plant in a small earthenware pot. Pushed against the wall, near the very back of the room, was a homestyle, pallet-mattressed rope bed with basic, wooden nightstand right beside it and a patch-marked cowboy bedroll and a battered, old-fashioned, faded penny brown train case underneath said bed.
Sam pulled out the bedroll and unwound it, spawning a cloud of a sexennium's worth of dust that made the Goth and the geek hack. When the dust finally settled, Sam placed it on the floor, getting onto her bed, taking off her boots.
Tucker brushed off some of the leftover dust, taking off his own boots, and glasses and placing the latter and his PDA on the nightstand while he placed his boots and bag beside said nightstand.
"Night," he muttered, climbing into the sleeping bag and dropping off.
"Night," Sam echoed, closing her eyes and sacking out.
As she drifted off, however, Sam couldn't help but feel that little bit of info about the ghosts being relocated was going to come back to haunt her.
Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! Ring!
Sam's eyes snapped open. She sat up.
"What was-"
Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack!
"Sam?" a voice whispered from below.
The Goth looked down at the eyeglassless Tucker. Even in the dim, purplish-white lighting of the room, the look on his face was clear. He heard it too.
Clack! Clack! Clack! Ring!
Silently, Tucker and Sam got up from their resting places, but not before the former put on his glasses and grabbed his PDA, and crept towards the doorway.
"I'm telling you we shouldn't be in here!" A young, nasally, high-pitched voice stated indignantly, "We're no better than that governess if we're just pushing ourselves into other people's homes!"
Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! Ring!
"We're well aware of that, Sidney!" A female, sassy voice snapped. "But what choice do we have? All the other places are crawling with the spawn of Undergrowth, and I am not getting harassed by plant monsters on the same day I got harassed by a bunch of all brawn no brains plug-uglies. But if you have a problem with that, Sidney, you can go back outside with the others, or, you can to go one of the other places and risk redying a horrible redeath at the hands of 'The Growgantuan's' children. It's your choice, Poindexter. Besides, how do you know that anyone lives here? This place is completely overrun by plants!"
"Well, the fire was going when we got here, Kitty," a fourth, male voice pointed out, "and there's a garden outside."
"Whose side are you on, Johnny!?" The second voice, Kitty, demanded.
Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! Ring!
Sam and Tucker were in the "hallway" by now, their eyes widening. They exchanged glances. Someone, or in this someones, was in the house.
One of the intruders let out an audible sigh of frustration.
"Ghost Writer, back me up here," the first voice, Sidney, pleaded.
Clack! Clack!
"Leave me out of this," a fifth voice, Ghost Writer, stated.
Clack! Clack! Clack! Ring!
Tucker accidentally bumped into one of the gardening tools, knocking it down and sending it clattering to the ground.
A deathly silence filled the atmosphere. Then, the fourth voice, Johnny, muttered something neither Sam or Tucker quite caught. The floor beneath their feet seemed semisolid and moving for a split second, then something appeared behind them and grabbed the two teens by the scruff of their necks, gleaning a cry of surprise from each of them as it dragged them into the den, which was cast in a spooky blue glow from the dark azure fire that rested in the hearth.
In the lighting, Tucker and Sam were able to make out five different individuals, starting with their captor, glancing behind them in order to do so.
The thing which held them was a vaguely humanoid, silhouette black creature with claw-handed arms and a flickering, flowy tail. The only things making it clear that it wasn't just the darkness of the room being the shadow-like entity's glowing eyes of ghastly swamp green, it's contrasting fangs of bleached white, and the shining white light outlining it's form.
Standing beside the loveseat,was a seventeen year old with gray skin,freckles,shamrock green eyes and sandy blond hair that touched his shoulders. His attire consisted of a long, tombstone gray motorcycle jacket with the sleeves pushed up and left open to reveal the white tank top he was also wearing, fingerless, grease black biker gloves, boot-cut tire black jeans, which was held up by two belts, a smog gray one with shamrock green accents and a studded, silvery gray one that hanged down his hip, and exhaust gray motorcycle boots. A green skull pendant dangled from a matinee-length necklace around his neck, and a tarnished gold and emerald set gypsy ring adorned his left ring finger. Sam and Tucker figured he was "Johnny".
"Shadow!" Johnny commanded, "Drop!"
The murky being obeyed, releasing it's grip on Sam and Tucker and returning to Johnny's feet, turning into his shadow, which the Goth girl and the technogeek now realized had been missing.
Sitting on the loveseat, was a seventeen year-old female with green-hued deathly white skin, deep verdant dreadlocks, plum-colored lips, and thick-eyelinered, lavender eyeshadowed, bright scarlet eyes. She was dressed in a dark cropped tank top that showed off her midriff, a lipstick red motorcycle jacket, a lavender scarf, bright green tights with fishnet stockings, and cat black, high-heeled, knee-high boots. An emerald stone dangled from a princess-length necklace around her neck, and a ring matching Johnny's adorned her right ring finger. Seeing as she was the only female of the group, Tucker and Sam assumed she was "Kitty''.
Perched on the lawson, with a well-worn, parchment purple, vintage underwood champion portable typewriter in his lap, was a paper white-skinned male in his late twenties, with inky dark hair and goatee, and viridian eyes behind rimless glasses. His getup included a long, royal purple coat, a hoary white shirt, tweed gray scarf, tabby dark grey pants, and black winklepickers. Sam and Tucker identified him as both as the source of the noise and "Ghost Writer".
And lastly, standing in front of the hearth and at the end of the trestle table, was a 50's dressed, black-and-white, four-eyed, nerdy-looking school boy of fourteen years, a misty white brightness overlaying his lanky frame. A ghost.
"Poindexter?!" Tucker blurted. "What are you doing here?!"
Sidney Pointdexter, or simply Poindexter, was the well-known spirit of Casper who was well known by all to be the defender of all the oppressed. All the "geeks" knew who was responsible if a jock found himself tripping over his own feet for no reason after he picked on a helpless "loser", or if one of the new governess' snobby "yes girls" got her "oh so perfect" hair and her "prized" gaudy clothing sprayed by a rouge fire extinguisher merely seconds after giving a "lower-class" admirer the Bob Barker treatment. All of the "nerds", including Tucker, viewed Poindexter as invincible, that no matter what, he would never be driven out by any ghost hunter. And yet, here he was, in Sam's house, in the middle of the woods, far, far away from Casper.
The grayscale school boy gazed at the floor dejectedly.
"Sorry, my fellow nerd," he whispered dolefully, "I have failed you."
"What?" Tucker breathed.
"I'm here because, like all the other spirits, I was forced to come here." The monochrome spook explained sorrowfully.
"Other spirits?" Sam repeated before her eyes widened even further. She looked at Johnny, Kitty, and Ghost Writer. Sure enough, all three of them had the iconic, ethereal white haze veiling their forms. They were ghosts.
Sam rushed towards the window, and barely managed to keep her jaw from dropping onto the floor at the sight before her.
Ghosts. Ghosts everywhere. Above her house. In her garden. Practically blocking the door…
Sam felt her anger spike in annoyance at that last one, her eyes narrowing and flashing chlorophyll green as she gritted her teeth. She liked ghosts as much as the next Goth, but this was just a total and utter invasion of privacy!
Thankfully, Sam managed to reign in her temper before she did something she'd regret, like awakening DeMilo to get rid of these ghouls.
She wasn't going to be like the one she knew was responsible for this.
Sam sighed, allowing her eyes to return to their usual violet color.
Suffice to say, she knew what she had to do now.
The Goth girl stepped away from the window and went back to the bedroom, snatching the knapbasket on the way there. She filled the basket-backpack with the essentials she was going to need for the long trip that was no doubt ahead. She grabbed Tucker's randoseru and returned to the den, the knapbasket in one hand and Tucker's randoseru in the other. Sam handed the tech-obsessed teen his bag, fishing a small cylindrical, tendrilled, sap green object out of her own.
"C'mon" she said.
"What?" Tucker asked.
"We're going." The Goth stated
"Where?" Tucker asked.
"Casper."
"What?!" Tucker exclaimed.
"Yep."
"Why?!" Tucker asked.
Sam stopped in front of the door. She turned to the technogeek.
"Help me get this door open." The girl said.
It took some doing, but with their combined strength, the two managed to force the door open, stepping outside, Tucker's eyes widening as he eyed the swarming multitude of ghosts everywhere, their indistinct chatter buzzing through the night sky and in their ears.
Sam whistled loudly, acquiring the attention of all the spirits.
"Why are you here?" The girl asked them.
"We were forced to come here." A gas mask-wearing spook** answered.
"By who?" Sam inquired.
"By that snooty lil' governess Paulina!" Growled a hulking, dull bluish-green-skinned, white-haired, pepperoni red-eyed she-ghoul dressed in a pink and white cafeteria lady's apron dress, pink snood hairnet, yellow gloves, and white ankle-length socks with black slippers. Slung across her shoulder was a slightly fraying, cardboard brown mail satchel with the words "Hot Lunch Mama!" clumsily embroidered in rich orange-brown.
Sam turned to Tucker.
"There you go, Tucker," she bent the cylindrical plant in her hands, reaping a satisfying crack. But rather than snapping in half like Tucker had expected, it bent back into it's straight, cylindrical shape, now with a glowing inner light of greenish-yellow that was slowly spreading to the rest of the cylindrical plant thing, like a glowstick. "C'mon," she said, walking past all the spirits, who frowned in confusion at her.
Tucker reluctantly followed after her, disappearing into the pitch-blackness of the darkened forest shade.
"So tell me again, why exactly are we going to Casper?" Tucker said finally after ten minutes of maneuvering through the shaded greenwood.
"Paulina dumped a bunch of ghosts in my woods, and she's going to put them back."
"And why exactly am I coming along again?" Tucker asked.
In the dim, bioluminescent greenish-yellow light of the glow stick plant, he saw the Goth smile wryly.
"You're going to tell me everything you know about this Paulina and where you're from." She stated matter-of-factly.
The amount of times I've had to rewrite this chapter because I didn't like it isn't even funny.
Next chapter we meet our Lord *cough* sorry, Lady Farqaaud! Can you guess who the Magic Mirror, Gingy, and Dragon is?
Notes
* Remember that sword. It'll be important later on.
** Not an OC (See Unnamed Gas Mask Ghost).
Next Time on The Goth Girl and The Ghost Prince:
Lady Paulina of Casper