The next day on the bus, Danny looked terrible. His hair was messed up and he had bags under his eyes.
"Rough night?" Tucker looked even more tired than Danny.
"My dad ranted on for about a half-hour before getting to the point, which took another half-hour. Then I had to study for the test and that took about three hours. I fell asleep at about 2:30 and woke up at 5 from a nightmare. Now I'm probably gonna flunk that test and take that English class all over again!"
"Dude, calm down," Tucker said, "It's not like our entire grade depends on this test."
---
"Our entire grade depends on this test!?" Tucker shouted.
"Surprise, surprise, Mr. Foley," Mr. Lancer set the test down on his desk, "Perhaps it would pay to pay attention when I warn you about tests a week in advance next time."
"But I didn't study!" Tucker shouted as Mr. Lancer walked away, "I can't study when I have energy and I couldn't fall asleep last night! Again!"
"Class, you have the entire hour to complete this test," Mr. Lancer said calmly, "Pay no mind to the noise coming from the workmen finishing the repairs to the roof. Begin."
---
The bell rang, "Class, your time is up," Mr. Lancer collected the papers, "You will all get them back tomorrow except Mr. Fenton," Danny looked up, still tired, "I'd like to see you after class again," Danny sighed. He was sure that his test was going to get an E or worse.
"Come on, Danny," Sam tried to cheer him up, "All you have to do is keep your grades up the rest of the year and work your plans out better! Besides, we don't even know what your grade is yet!"
"Well if it's below a D, I'm really in trouble," they walked into the lunch room, "And with all the anti-ghost problems and these weird new ghosts, working things out probably isn't going to work that well," they got their lunches and headed over to their usual table.
"I wonder why Mr. Lancer wants...to...see...you af-ter..." he yawned and fell face-first into his turkey sandwich, asleep. Danny yawned.
"Please tell me you're not falling asleep and falling face-first into your food," Sam moaned.
"Nah, I can stay awake," Danny started eating.
---
"You wanted to see me, Mr. Lancer?" Danny walked in.
"Mr. Fenton, I just finished grading your test..." Mr. Lancer didn't look up from the paper in his hand.
"And..." Danny feared the worst.
"C-," Mr. Lancer handed it to him, "You've managed to avoid being held back," Danny breathed a sigh of relief.
"So does that mean I can go?" he asked.
"No, not yet. That wasn't what I wanted to talk about. Danny, this hasn't been as much of a problem as your grades, but every now and then you come to school looking completely exhausted, like today," Danny looked over himself; he did look tired, "And I keep finding you slammed in lockers and getting your arm caught in things. In the last school physical, you had no serious injuries but were reported to have at least 15 large bruises and scars on your right side and left shoulder. Would you care to explain this? Wait, no..." he pulled out his book, "I mean, 'what's up with that?'" Danny wanted to comment on his teacher's using that book, but decided it wasn't the best idea.
"I...I have insomnia, and..." he thought for a second, "I have...bullying problems."
"Bullying problems? With whom?"
"Well, see, I can't prove it, and I don't really think that you'd believe me, which is why I haven't..."
"I guarantee you that I will look into the matter no matter who you name."
"Well...Dash Baxter," Mr. Lancer stared at him for a minute.
"I must admit I do find that hard to believe," he pulled out Dash's records, "But I will look into it, rest assured. Thank you for coming by, Mr. Fenton, that will be all," Danny headed out, tired but relieved.
---
Danny, Sam and Tucker were hanging out at the same mall they were at in "Parental Bonding," having a snack in the food court. Tucker and Danny were still tired, but Danny had started to wake up.
"Looks like school problems are over," Sam commented.
"And hopefully Dash problems soon," Danny nodded, "To help with the ghost problems I've started carrying some stuff in my backpack. I've got the Fenton Thermos and the Fenton Fisher with me," none of them noticed that Dash was watching them like a spy from inside a shop at the food court, a walkie-talkie in hand He was too far back to hear anything, but had his eyes on them like a hawk.
"All-Star to Far North. All-Star to Far North. Do you copy, over?"
"I still don't get why we have to do this!" Qwan's voice said over the walkie- talkie.
"Paulina baled on us and Fischer doesn't date, so we can't get the info that way," Dash whispered, "I'm covering Fenton. Do not let anything distract you," two hot girls walked in, and Dash noticed them, "I'll call you back." As he left his post to talk to the girls, blue ectoplasmic smoke came from Danny's mouth.
"Oh no," he looked around. All the windows in the entire mall shattered, sending glass flying and throwing everyone into chaos. Outside the window, one could see at least ten pirate ghosts flying around the streets of Amity, causing havoc. They then all turned their attention to the mall, flying in through the windows and terrifying the people. Although Danny couldn't see him, Velkan was riding through the streets on his horse, freaking everyone out and heading toward the mall himself. And, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, was the panther-ghost. Velkan stopped just short of entering the parking lot of the mall, watching the panther-ghost phase through the roof. Underneath the shadow from his hat, he smirked.
"Let the mayhem begin."
---
"Uh, Danny," Tucker watched the ghosts fly around the mall, "Anytime you want to go ghost, that'd be fine with me. Danny? Danny?" he was gone. Neither Tucker nor Sam noticed the panther-ghost coming up from behind them. Before it could attack Sam, however, it got kicked across the mall. Danny floated in the air, forming two energy blasts to fire at a large ghost harassing the people in an Abyss store. Dash looked around from his spot.
"The ghost that wrecked my trophy's here, but I don't see Fenton! Can you see Parker?"
"Who cares!? RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" Dash dropped the walkie-talkie and ran out. Danny was surrounded by five of the ten ghosts (excluding the panther-ghost). He knocked all of them off their feet, catching them off-guard. These ghosts were definitely well seasoned in combat, but Danny managed to fight them on even terms. After having been constantly beaten by Volpe and Sam's possessed form, he'd started to actually learn martial arts and real fighting. Soon he had overcome four of the ghosts, the other one flying down to the bottom floor. Danny followed.
"He's on the move!" Dash picked up the walkie-talkie and headed downstairs as fast as he could. Danny had the one other ghost on the run, chasing him out of the building. He wasn't prepared to phase through anything and wasn't far off the ground. Dash tackled him from behind.
"Alright, ghost-kid! Who the heck," Danny phased through his grip and into the floor, "...are you?" he got up on his knees, scratching his head.
"Qwan?" he said into the walkie-talkie, "You still there?"
"Yeah…" Qwan sounded very shaky.
"Call in Valerie."
---
Sam opened Danny's backpack and tossed the Fenton Thermos to Tucker, "Take that to Danny!"
"Right," Tucker grabbed it and ran down the stairs. Sam pulled out the Fenton Fisher. The panther-ghost came up right in front of her, pinning her down by her shoulders. Unfortunately for it, she could still move her arms. She wrapped the fishing line around the ghost's neck and pried it off her, wrapping it up in the line and holding on to the handle as hard as she could. The ghost started leaping around in a fury, trying to get lose. It accidentally hit its head on a wall, forgetting to phase through it. It collapsed off the ground, the fur falling off it and the line loosening around its body. An ordinary ghost stood up.
"Young lady," he said, "If you see a cat around here, please get rid of..." he sneezed, and vanished, leaving Sam utterly confused.
---
Danny caught the Fenton Thermos as Tucker threw it to him, flying outside to meet the ten ghosts. None of them were inside the mall anymore, and the panther-ghost was nowhere to be seen. For the first time in four days, the sun started to come out. Danny looked around; he only saw five ghosts. He got the Fenton Thermos ready, but before he could catch a ghost, it was kicked out of his hand and hit Tucker in the head. Whoever it was that knocked it away kicked Danny hard in the face, knocking him into the parking lot. Danny flipped back on his feet, flying up to take on whoever had hit. He did not notice Velkan, who sat calmly on his horse, watching. Before Danny was a girl in a pink jump suit on a surfboard, with a large ectoplasmic cannon.
"Great," Danny sighed, "Just what I need."
"Remember me, ghost-boy?" Valerie said mockingly, her cannon raised.
"Yeah. Did you notice the ten ghosts surrounding us?"
"They're next!" she fired a shot, but it missed Danny's head by about two feet.
"Still working on the weapons?" Danny smiled slightly.
"I've got a new one," she tossed the cannon aside and drew out an ectoplasmic sabre. The pirate ghosts did the same. As the ten ghosts and Valerie charged, he flew upwards, managing to take one of the swords. Caught by surprise and more severely outnumbered than before, Danny was finding it harder to fight back. He also had to worry about people seeing him now that they were out in the streets. He tried to keep the fight as high in the air as he could, but the force of some of the blows he took made that hard. The battles soon moved to the rooftops of buildings, everyone jumping and flying around from one to the other. Dash and his jock friends ran out the mall, all of them holding cameras.
"Just try and take pictures of the rat who wrecked my trophy!" Dash ordered. All of them held up their cameras, taking pictures of the fights as fast as they could without really focusing. Danny was too busy trying to fight off the ten ghosts and Valerie to notice, but Velkan and Sam did. Before Sam could do anything, Velkan charged over on his horse, sending Dash and his jock pals fleeing. He made sure to chase them all away before turning his attention back to the battle. Danny had been knocked back into the mall, crashing down by Sam and Tucker.
"Here!" Sam gave him the thermos.
"Thanks," he phased through the ceiling. Not wanting to lose the thermos again, he strapped it to his back. He stayed in his phasing form until he had reached the rooftop, crouching down behind a generator. As one of the ghosts flew by searching for him, he opened the thermos, trapping the ghost in its blue tractor beam. Soon he had another ghost caught. Then two more. Then one more. Being sure to use surprise and move around as much as possible, he managed to get all ten caught, closing the lid.
"Whew!" he wiped some sweat off his forehead. He still hadn't noticed Velkan, who drew a ghost-pistol from his belt, aiming it at the Fenton Thermos. He shot the strap holding it to Danny's back before taking off on his horse. Danny barely managed to grab it before it hit the ground.
"You're gonna pay for that!" he took off as fast as he could after Velkan, but his horse seemed even faster than last night. He just barely managed to stay close enough to follow them. When they phased through the road again, Danny did likewise.
"C'mon," he was telling himself, "Faster!" Velkan flew up above the surface again, with Danny gaining on him. He turned at a sharp corner, and when Danny got up there, he had vanished.
"Where'd he go?" Danny felt a hard blow make contact with his back, knocking him forward and sending the Fenton Thermos flying. As it hit the ground, the RELEASE button was triggered, sending the ten ghosts flying into the ground. Velkan had disappeared once more. Valerie flew up on her surfboard right in front of Danny.
"How you doing, ghost-boy?" she asked in a mock-concerned voice, "I hope you're uncomfortable."
"Nice," Danny said bitterly, standing up, "Too bad you don't get your remarks from where you get your weapons," he fired an ectoplasmic blast at her, knocking her and the surfboard far down the street.
"Well, that's out of the way," but Danny had more immediate problems now. The ghosts had brought that whole part of the city outside, and they were now all staring at Danny. He quickly grabbed the Fenton Thermos and phased through the ground, reappearing at the mall. He grabbed Tucker and Sam, went invisible, and flew off.
---
They landed in his dad's lab, where Danny collapsed on the floor, out of breath.
"Omigosh!" he heard Sam shout, "I can't believe I forgot about this! Danny, you have to get to Dash's house now!"
"What are you crazy!?" Danny turned around, slowly getting up and leaning against the wall.
"He and his friends were taking pictures of your fight trying to figure out who you were! That ghost on the horse chased them off but they still got plenty of..."
"WHAT!?" Danny flew off again, leaving Sam and Tucker in the lab.
---
As Danny had feared, most of Dash's friends had digital cameras, so the pics could already be viewed by the time he got there. Dash and all his friends were gathered around Dash's computer, going through all the pics. Most of them were taken in such a rush that they were hard to see (Danny's moving around a lot while fighting helped to blur them as well).
"Man!" Dash banged his desk, "These pics are worthless! How am I supposed to beat up on the guy who wrecked my trophy if we can't figure out who he is!?"
"We've still got my camera to look over," Qwan up his camera.
"Give me that," Dash yanked it out of his hand greedily and set it up. They started going through the pics, Danny watching in invisible form with increased nervousness.
"Worthless...worthless..." Dash was muttering, "worthless...hold it!" he stopped at one pic. It was a bit blurry, but Danny could be seen clearly if they zoomed in.
"Wow! Smooth, Qwan!" Dash grabbed his mouse, "Now we just need to zoom in..." Danny looked around frantically for something to distract Dash with before remembering. He opened Dash's closet, letting all his pink and purple teddy bears fall out. Dash heard the noise, and raced over to the closet.
"What was that?" Qwan asked.
"Nothing," Dash was holding the closet door shut, smiling nervously. All the jocks were distracted now, giving Danny the freedom to fly over to Dash's computer.
"Really, what was it?"
"Nothing! Don't ask about it," Dash was getting defensive.
"Let me see," Qwan tried to push Dash out of the way.
"It's my closet!" Danny closed the program and took Qwan's camera. Someone noticed.
"Whoa!" the jock jumped back, "Your computer is haunted!"
"What!?" Dash ran over, shoving Qwan out of the way.
"Time to go," Danny muttered quietly to himself, flying out the window. All the jocks (including Qwan, who forgot about Dash's closet) tried to grab the levitating camera, but it was no use.
---
Tucker erased the pictures from the camera.
"All you have to do now is slip it back in his locker at school tomorrow," Sam said.
"Right," Danny was still breathing a little more heavy than normal. It had been quite an afternoon, "That was quite a day."
"Look at it this way," Sam said comfortingly, "If a week gets this mad by Wednesday, it can't get any worse!"
---
Danny fell back through the wall of the warehouse, skidding across the dock. It had been two days since the incident at the mall. Now there were no clouds at all in the sky, clear, seasonal weather taking over. Unfortunately for Danny, there was no time to enjoy it. The past two days had been a complete disaster for him. The pirate ghosts were rampaging all over the city, Danny having to fight them off and not send everyone into a panic. That proved impossible to do, as everyone seemed to regard him as another evil ghost, not noticing that he was fighting the other ones off. Valerie had started up her ghost hunting again, and she seemed determined to capture him before she touched another ghost. Dash was still spying on him, in school and out, and Lancer and the other teachers had been piling up the homework. With all this and keeping an eye on the anti-ghost campaign on the news, he hadn't been able to get a good night's sleep since Wednesday. He was up until almost 3:00 almost every night, having to wake up at 7. The nightmares didn't help. It felt like his life was ending up the way his nightmares kept ending up; Fenton and Phantom's worlds colliding and destroying each other. He certainly looked the worse for wear, huge bags under his eyes, his face looking tired and haggard, and his hair even more of a mess than usual. If it weren't for the fact that the fight had been dragged down to the seaport, he wouldn't even have been there, knowing the crowds.
"Did I not say that you would face the corrugated cardboard vengeance of The Box Ghost!?" the little nimrod was smiling stupidly.
"Look, can we do this some other time? If you haven't noticed, there's been more than a little commotion about ghosts recently," he pointed to two people running by, screaming that they had seen a ghosts, causing Danny to sigh, "More good news."
"Delay my..."
"Corrugated cardboard vengeance?"
"Uh, yeah, that thing you have said! Delay it even longer?! I will do no such thing, for I am The Bo..."
"Sam, will you please just throw me the thermos?" Sam walked out of the warehouse that Danny had been in before being thrown out and tossed the thermos to him. He caught The Box Ghost, took him back to the Ghost Portal, and released him into the ghost-zone before collapsing on the floor. Tucker, who had been waiting in the lab, didn't notice.
"Ah, Friday!" he was eating potato chips, "The first day in a while that I haven't been drop-dead tired and the end of the school week. Plus, tonight's the night the three of us stay here for the all-night pirate movie marathon sleepover!"
"We didn't plan on a marathon!" Sam protested, "Especially not one involving pirates!"
"I saw it on TV Guide, and I'm watchin' it!" Danny didn't pay attention to Tucker. He was too worn out. Sam noticed.
"Y'know Danny, if you wanted to just get a good night's sleep, we can do this some other..."
"No, I'm fine," he got up slowly, "I'll be in my room for a sec. Tuck, start setting up for the sleep over."
"Yes sir!" Tucker raced to the living room while Danny slowly headed towards his room.
----
"Mr. Bruce, you've been with Paranormalics since the organisation was formed. What are your opinions on how it's effectiveness has changed since General Conrad took over?" it was a live television hearing. News about what had happened in the mall in Amity Park had spread like wildfire. Conrad and the President refused to comment or attending the hearing, but Bruce and some extremist politicians were more than willing to discuss the problems.
"General Conrad," Bruce began, "Is a very good man. But he cannot handle paranormal activities in the same effective manner that he once handled the United States Army. He, the President, and many from their party fail to realise the dangers posed by ghosts. They think of them as still human, albeit dead ones. They are no longer human. They are forever changed by the forces of the paranormal, and they exist to haunt, terrify, and cause mayhem. This was made obvious to the nation by the assassination attempt on Conrad's life, and even in light of that he refuses to see the truth. These incidents from Amity clearly show that the paranormal are not to be taken lightly. Their "Public Ghost Enemy # 1" as the mayor put it was among the ghosts spotted Wednesday. I applaud the young lady who was seen trying to fight off these menaces. Ladies and gentlemen, an argument put forth in this debate is whether or not to treat this ghost problem as superstition or science. Both are the answer. Yes, it must be treated as a science, but the superstitious fear, what we think that ghosts will do, they will do. I do not feel that Conrad's remaining in charge of Paranormalics is best for our country."
"Are you suggesting that someone such as Sarah Frost should take over?" someone shouted out.
"Sarah Frost was a corrupt extremist, and took this matter over the edge," Bruce resumed after a pause, "But she had a plan for action. That's what we need now, and Conrad is not delivering..." the President turned off the T.V., moving to face Conrad.
"He's good," he dropped the remote.
"And unless you use the 'guilty-by-association' principle, he's clean. Or at least that's what evidence says."
"His speech stirred up everyone so much they've already got a vote going in Congress," Hartman tossed Conrad a file, "It's on whether or not to have the Supreme Court rule whether or not you stay in office. I've convinced everyone I can to vote against it, but..."
"I know," Conrad dropped the file, finishing off his glass of water, "I got Colonels Fountain and Alcala gathering up as much stuff for me as they can," the President didn't get that, "I don't trust him any more than you do," he nodded to the TV, "And I'm sure he'll do what Frost was planning. I'm not letting that happen, in office or not."
---
"Danny? Danny?" Danny woke up to see Sam standing over him, gently tapping his cheek.
"Ah!" Danny screamed, jumping up and breathing heavily, "Oh…Sam. It's...just you. Whew! Did I doze off there?"
"Pretty much. You OK?" Danny wanted to say yes, but that would be an obvious lie.
"No. All this anti-ghost stuff, the cat-ghost, that guy on horseback, the pirate ghosts, the ones we normally have to catch...it's too much. We've got Dash spying on us, Valerie's on the hunt again, school has a lot of homework, and I've been having this weird nightmare over and over again...Sam, I dunno if I can do all that. If things keep up the way they are, if I keep leading double lives like this I'm going to drive myself insane or work myself to death!" Sam wanted to say that he was being too hard on himself, but she was having worries about all of the things he'd mentioned herself. She didn't say anything. She just put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.