Chapter 8

Danny looked up from the steps of city hall as the large clock behind them rang out five o'clock. He pushed himself to his feet, brushing the butt of his jeans of any dirt.

"I doubt he'll get out right at five," Sam said, still sitting on the step she had claimed. Danny turned around to see her digging in her purple purse, pulling out the shirt she was going to give Tucker as she hunted for something else. "He doesn't even know we're here." She found a small candy and unwrapped it, popping it into her mouth.

"Do you have another one?" Danny asked.

Sam put the trash back in her purse and pulled out another, putting it in Danny's outstretched hand.

"Thanks." Danny quickly tossed the candy in his mouth, shoving the wrapper in his pocket as he tasted apple.

Sam started folding the shirt back up in her lap as she asked, "Danny, there's been something else you've been wanting to tell me, isn't there?"

"Am I that obvious?" Danny asked, secretly thinking straight to the Eye of Osten.

"You've never really been good at keeping secrets," Sam pointed out as she clasped her purse shut and looked up at him. "You're worrying about something."

"A few things," Danny admitted, leaning against the staircase's short wall at the end. He crossed his arms over his chest and noticed a person leaving the building. He let the person pass them before simply saying, "Jazz is car shopping."

Sam's features softened into a smile as she said, "It will be weird with her gone. Tell her I love my Prius."

"I don't know if my family will agree to a weird new car," Danny said with a smile.

"I like my hybrid," Sam defended. "Would've gotten an electric if they had long enough of a charge but I needed something that could handle a lot of driving."

"Maybe one day, with the way technology is." Danny watched as more people left city hall, knowing he couldn't tell her about any of the other things on his mind right now.

"Danny, Sam, are you waiting for our illustrious leader?" Lizza's voice asked as the girl stepped down right behind Sam.

Sam turned in her seat and smiled as she said, "Hey Lizza."

"Why else would we be hanging around here?" Danny joked as the girl stepped around Sam to stand beside him with a leather suitcase in her hand. He looked down at it and asked, "What, did Tucker give you homework?"

"Toeing the line of making myself irreplaceable and doing more than I should," Lizza said, raising it a second with a nod of her head. "He wants me to look into a few laws we might need to fix."

"And here we are, trying to steal him away," Danny said with a laugh.

"You may be," Sam retorted.

"Ghosts were people too?" Lizza asked, reading Sam's shirt. "Wait a sec, were you the one behind the Save the Frog's campaign?"

"Yap."

"Right, that was your senior year, wasn't it?" Danny realized.

"Yeah, the last class that had to deal with real dead things," Lizza said with a shutter. "I was just lucky I had biology before lunch." She looked back at Sam and asked, "So is this against the ghost hunters?"

"I just want to change the treatment of ghosts," Sam pointed out. "Not all ghosts are bad, and even the ones that cause problems don't deserve to be disintegrated."

"Oh yeah, all those times your parents talked about experimenting on Danny Phantom," Lizza said, giving a look at Danny.

"They changed their minds, so there's hope," Sam said with a smile.

"Any idea what did it?" Lizza asked. "Both of you were there, at the pole, right?"

"They finally noticed all the good he's done," Danny tried, wishing they could talk about anything else.

"Just took them, what, almost two years?" Lizza said with a laugh.

"I guess it will be two years since he showed up," Sam realized, looking up at Danny.

"At least he's not called Inviso-Bill anymore," Tucker's voice said, getting the three to turn and see him walking down the steps with a new bookbag over one shoulder. He stopped on the step Sam still sat on and asked, "Any idea who started that one?"

"I always assumed one of the news stations did," Lizza said with a shrug. "Well, I'll leave you all to whatever you have planned. I've got homework to do."

"Don't over do it," Tucker tried. "Yes, I need all of that done, but without you, this whole town would burn and die."

Lizza let out a laugh as she turned to leave. Waving over her shoulder she called out, "Sure, Boss!"

Danny gave a look to his best friend as Sam rose to her feet. He noticed Tucker's brown eyes still following the retreating form of the red head in a yellow dress following the sidewalk. "You know, some businesses have rules against dating co-workers," Danny pointed out.

"What? You think-No," Tucker said, stumbling over his words as he quickly turned to Danny and his cheeks turned a shade darker. "Anyway, why would she like me?"

"You're mayor while still in high school," Sam started, "you're brilliant with technology, and you're weirdly good with a needle."

"Now I know you want something from me," Tucker said, eyeing her oversized T-shirt.

"It's better than your Boo-Yeah tours," Danny threw off as Sam pulled out the shirt from her bag.

"Amity Park is the first stop of Ghosts Were People Too," Sam started, handing Tucker the shirt. "I've already got approval from the board, I just wanted you to be on stage and wearing the shirt. I'm not even asking you to say anything."

"And the shirt's free?" Tucker asked, raising an eyebrow at the girl.

Sam nodded her head as Danny defended, "You didn't tell me the first place was here."

"You didn't ask," Sam retorted. "You were looking at the shirt, I thought you were reading it."

With you dressed like that? Danny wanted to ask. Instead, as his cheeks heated up, he said, "I could do the first weekend."

"It'd be weird if you weren't at the first one," Tucker said, shoving the shirt into his bag. He pulled the backpack around to put his other arm through the free strap and said to Sam, "Sure, I'll be there."

"Do you have anything you have to do tonight?" Danny asked, putting his hands in his pockets. His right hand felt past his house keys and the candy wrapper to grab hold of three thick cards in anticipation.

"It's just all research," Tucker said with a shrug.

"Does that mean we can kidnap you?" Sam asked, in on the secret.

Tucker let out a laugh. "Sure. What are we doing?"

Danny quickly pulled out his hand, holding out three Laser Tag cards, when a scream ripped the smile from his face. He turned as his ghost sense alerted them a moment before his eyes did of an army of elementals running rampant down the street. Holding his tongue of the explicative he wanted to exclaim, he quickly pocketed their way of fun and dived into the bushes outside of city hall. Thankful for being able to go intangible, he changed into Phantom and flew under the ground for a bit to come up just in the street. He saw the wave of new elementals and pulled out his Fenton Thermos from his pocket only to find Sam and Tucker flanking him at the ready.

"It's like a stampede," Tucker said, pulling out a lipstick laser from his pocket.

Sam armed herself with a wrist ray, tightening the strap, as she added, "I don't think I've seen so many in one place. Even in the Ghost Zone."

Danny squinted at the wall of green, hoping partially they might be in a panic so he could just vacuum them all up in the thermos, only to notice something on their heads. "Sam, you've got the best eyesight. What's the gray things?"

"I just noticed that," Sam admitted slowly. "Helmets?"

"Why would elementals be wearing helmets?" Tucker asked.

Danny tried to make out what animal they were only for one behind the front lines to catch his attention. The neck was clearly giraffe but the face and trunk was elephant. Just behind the large ears was a human rider, covered in what Danny could best describe as home-made armor over a lab coat. A metal helmet was strapped onto his head as he pointed an arm forward. "There's a human in there!" Danny announced, jumping into the air. He flew towards the human, the initial panic disappearing into confusion as he noticed the man smiling up at him.

"Flying: attack the ghost boy!" the man ordered with a laugh.

Wings of both feather and skin rose out of the masses but the bodies attached ranged anywhere from an expected horse and lions to crabs and sheep.

Danny slowed down, swinging his feet forward, as he held out his free hand to shoot down a flying manatee. He quickly popped off the top of the thermos, it falling to the ground, and sucked in the smaller ones as he dodged a dog's biting teeth. He looked up at the man, seeing white hair pulled back into a ponytail at the base of the man's neck. "Did you do all of this?" Danny asked, shooting down a flying tiger as he sucked up the manatee.

"Do you like them?" the man asked with a gravelly voice. He held his arms out, motioning to all the animals around them as he said, "I bring life to those who have lost theirs! First these elementals, next the humanoids!"

"Dude, most of these animals didn't want to come back," Danny said, sucking up a strange butterfly-parrot combination as he brought his legs higher to avoid the jaws of a hippo's head. "If you didn't even give them a choice-"

"The Disasteriod didn't give them a choice," the man called out. "I gave them a better second life!"

"And the helmets?" Danny dropped a few feet as a chicken with bat wings flew at him. Throwing a shot down at the hippo head, noticing the body was of a bison, he quickly sucked the fat bird assaulting his head into the thermos only to also catch the tail of a tiger that was part sloth. The creature turned its head to bare tiger's teeth at him before disappearing into the blue net of the Fenton device.

"My invention!" the man proclaimed. "Dr. Shrank's mind control helmets."

"And you're Dr. Shrank?" Danny asked, keeping the man looking up as he noticed Sam and Tucker were making a dent in his disfigured animal army.

"Well deduced," the man said with a shrewd smile. His eyes flashed downward as he ordered, "Now, my beauties!"

Danny let out a startled cry as strong arms grabbed at his legs. He let his legs turn to mist as he looked down to see even more combinations coming up from below the street, a gorilla arm had reached up at him that was controlled by a wolf's head. A second gorilla arm reached up, grabbing him around the waist, as he shot down an ecto-blast at the wolf's head. A scream filtered into his brain from a bystander, getting him to realize he needed his parents help.

He still wasn't good at teleporting a clone, something Jazz got him practicing shortly after his first successful clone, but he hopped he could manage it this once. Felling the gorilla hand trying to crush him, he risked a moment of concentration, imaging himself in his living room.

Opening his eyes, his mind registered two consciousness: one struggling to breath getting him to create another ecto-blast in his hand to try and free himself, and the other seeing the living room bathed in a red light as his mother jumped from the banister to the ground floor as she called out for Jack. Her eyes stopped on Danny's clone as Danny realized he couldn't hear the alarm or the woman's voice. He tried to call out for help but could only hear the struggles from outside city hall.

Danny lost the grip he had on the clone, hoping they got the message, as he threw the thermos in the air, levitating it above his head, and combined his hands to create a powerful blast. He gripped his teeth tight, afraid it would disintegrate the hybrid but he couldn't think of a better option as the gorilla hand was starting to restrict his breathing. Black dots started covering his vision before he released the blast. It struck the helmet and broke it before reaching the wolf's head. It's eyes widened in a moment of panic before it burst in a mess of green ectoplasm.

Danny fell to the ground, gasping for air, as the Fenton Thermos landed on the ground beside him. He pushed himself up to his hands and knees to look up and see an elephant foot about to step on him.

"Danny!" Sam cried out as a blast came over his shoulder and struck the large foot.

Danny let gravity pull him below the ground, flying upwards to break through the street once more. He flew backwards to stand with his friends, shooting off an ecto-blast as they continued to fight. "This is crazy!" Danny exclaimed.

"He said it was a mind controlling helmet, right?" Tucker asked, not missing a moose-bear as it charged at them.

"Yeah."

"The one he's wearing's gotta be the controller," Tucker explained quickly.

"Destroy that one and you'll sever the link," Sam said in realization.

"Got it," Danny said, laying eye on the discarded thermos. He ordered it to his left hand as he shot down a strangely normal looking platypus before admitting, "My parents are on their way."

"Thanks for the warning," Tucker said.

"Go stop Dr. Frankenstein," Sam ordered, sucking up the wounded platypus with her own Fenton Thermos.

Danny flew upwards, aiming for the doctor, shooting down a flying snake with legs. He dodged a paw slicing down through the air and sucked in a crab that could only have been combined with a spider. He caught sight of Dr. Shrank still on his elephant/giraffe as the man barked out an order. Danny couldn't hear over the cacophony of animal calls. Making sure the doctor didn't lay eyes on him, Danny dropped to fly just above the ground. Avoiding hooves and paws, he flew around the herd. A small sound almost indistinguishable from those around him, turned him to his left only to spit his legs from himself as an alligator standing on skinny hooved feet snapped its jaws at him. Danny floated up a bit and sucked himself back together, giving one last look at the row of teeth before turning to find himself behind the elephant feet that led up to a giraffe's body. He floated up, the tip of something sharp catching his hip. He focused on getting to the doctor, ignoring the pain as he tried to figure out how to destroy the helmet. As he stopped right behind the man, he realized the helmet was strapped under his chin and looked a mix between a colander and the mind reading device Doc Brown had in Back to the Future. A thick wire ran down the back to a backpack that caught Danny's attention. Creating a small amount of energy on his pointer finger, Danny flung it at the wire only to cringe as it slightly nicked the rubber coating and burn Dr. Shrank's neck.

The doctor's reflexes sent his hand to his neck as he turned with outrage on his face.

"Oh no," Danny mumbled, feeling the elemental's eyes all turn to him in response to Dr. Shrank's mind. In an instant he found himself buried under green fur and scales as teeth and claws assaulted his body.