Sing to Life

By JadeRabbyt

Chapter 14: School House Rocked

Jazz's note, Wednesday: Sorry about this, Danny, but something's come up. McKinley called, and I had to take off. See you later today.

Danny flipped up the magnet and pulled Jazz's note from the fridge. Perfect. "Nice of you to tell me where you're going, Jazz."

He crumpled the note and tossed it away, glancing to get the time from the microwave. Which told him he would be late for school if he didn't get a move on. Danny grabbed his backpack and some breakfast, changed into ghost mode, and took off for school.

A quick change in the bathroom, a short stop at his locker, and Danny arrived in class with about thirty seconds to spare. The last bell rang as he slid behind his desk, and after taking role, Mrs. Lows announced that they would once again be attending another one of Casper High's famously boring assemblies. She didn't use those words, naturally, but she might as well have as far as Danny was concerned. She herded the class up the halls to the assembly room, squeezing them through the tightly packed double-doors and into the auditorium where forty shmillion other grouchy kids were scrabbling for seats near their friends, paying no attention to the impatient shouts of the adults. As his class bustled in, Danny scanned the room for Tucker's tomato-red hat, spotting it near the back right. He couldn't find Sam. The auditorium was too busy, and the dimmed lights hanging over the audience let a person make out sharp colors and hazy shadows, but not much else.

Danny made his way over to Tucker and talked some other kid into moving away so he could sit down. "This isn't another dumb magician thing, is it?" The administration was fond of showing motivational anti-drug anti-sex or anti-alcohol presentations. Some of them were OK, but to have to see one right now would just be piling idiocy on insanity.

Tucker looked around. "Nah. I don't think it's one of those. Too much muscle running around for that."

Danny stood up for a minute, checking the side walls. Hall guards were positioned all over the place. He chewed his lip. "Have you seen Sam anywhere?"

"No. I haven't seen your girlfriend."

"Hey, I'm just wondering where she is, Tuck. Chill out."

"Chill out?" Tucker bobbled his head airily, imitating the stoners. "Oh, don't worry, groovy dude. I'm chillin' right here, ah-ite."

Danny laughed and slouched in his chair. "Ah-ite. Whatever you say."

A light flashed on the stage. The students, all seated now, looked up at the activity and gradually fell quiet, Danny along with the rest of them. Could this be a cool assembly, for once? No such luck. Several kids groaned as Principal Ishiyama took the podium.

"Good morning, Casper High." She smiled like a panther. "Recently, I've been hearing about some disruptions in the classrooms."

Kids around the auditorium laughed. "Ho-o-ooo, yeah." "Anarchy forever, ma'am!" "Jus' playin' around, Ishiyama."

The principal paced to the edge of the stage, the wireless microphone clinging like a roach to her lapel. Her voice boomed over the auditorium. "Everybody knows about Green Bay. I'm sure I don't need to remind you about all the people who died there, and the uncertainty surrounding the cause of the event."

"They still can't explain the spontaneous combustion of an entire city?" Tucker whispered.

Danny shrugged. "Not from what I've seen on the news. I mean, McKinley probably knows, but I don't exactly think he'd go around announcing it."

A hall guard yelled at the two of them to shut it. They did.

"We need to remember that this is an institution for learning. You come here every day in order to educate yourselves. It is the job—" Ishiyama banged the podium. "Of the teachers here at Casper High to prepare you all for life in the outside world, where, quite frankly, your parents won't be around to wipe your butts for you. The staff teaches with your best interests in mind, but certain individuals have been abusing those efforts. A startling number of individuals, these days." She paused, staring thoughtfully over the audience. In spite of the ripe moment for ridicule, nobody said a word.

"Such disturbances will not be tolerated. Know that if fights break out, they will be stopped, forcefully if need be. Unprovoked violence against the faculty will result in criminal prosecution. Detentions will be delivered with greater fidelity, and popular hangouts of known disruptors will be closely monitored or placed off-limits."

The kids' grumbling rose and fell in waves. Some like Danny felt their stomachs sink; those like Dash felt their tempers stirring.

The principal returned to the podium, resting her hands on either side of it. "I have tried to be lenient with you guys. I really have. But this recent outbreak of violence is inexcusable. The school must be a safe place, and certain steps must be taken to make sure it remains that way."

A pained look winked across her face, a moment of weakness that was effaced in the next moment by the iron-clad panther-smile. The stern disapproval returned to her composure, but the damage had already been done. Her audience smelled blood.

Freshman Travis Gehrty had been told to do the dishes yesterday. The parents left; Travis got caught up in homework, and his father roared at him before drawing back his arm and punching him in the chest. Travis went to bed crying, because his father never hit him. Shouting and belittlement, yes. Violence? No. He couldn't make sense of it, and Travis, feeling like a rotten sissy coward, went to bed crying.

Sophomore Rosie Handon had taken a test last week. She remembered the 'D-' on her progress report and all the time she'd spent studying to make that test really count for something—and then the thunderstrike shock of having the test returned with a tidy black 'F' circled in the corner. She'd studied, gotten tutoring, and asked the teacher for help, but she had still failed. Rosie would never be good enough.

Senior Victor Amory worried about his mom getting home late every night from a dangerous job. Junior Ben Campo had customers who weren't paying their protection money, and Leonard Maddox was getting jerked around by friends who mocked him constantly. Terry Verdun's late-night hotline-counseling was paying off in exhaustion, and Brenda Swink loved to dance but hated people making fun of her, which happened incessantly. Keith Walten hated his brother's pranks; Jenna Turney thought herself a socially shunned fat girl; Dash Baxter had to be everybody's idea of cool or else he was worthless, and for that he blamed Danny Fenton.

Everybody hated somebody, and the principal reminded everybody of that self-same somebody. The grumbling escalated. The audience rippled under the shadow of the podium as kids half-stood, wanting to say something—changing their minds—and returning to their grumbling and seething as the principal driveled on. Then Ishiyama showed that weakness, showed that she too was vulnerable to stress, and what little self-restraint remained among the students began at last to fold.

A rubber band flicked over Ishiyama's shoulder. "Who—?" She searched among the kids, but another band hit her in the cheek before she could catch the perpetrator.

"Hey! I said—"

"WHO CARES WHAT YOU SAY." The ice shattered. One student spoke, but the sentiment was universal. The student body reared up and crashed up against the stage, kids leaping onto the elevated platform like hounds, and Ishiyama's heels clattered on the linoleum as she fled.

"Let's get out of here!" Tucker yanked at Danny's arm. "What are you DOING?"

"Trying to see." Danny stood balanced on his chair, shifting his pose every second to keep from getting knocked down. Kids swarmed and kicked at one another, trying to get to either the door or the authority figures. Most aimed for the latter.

"This is... This is Alex all over again, Tucker." Danny felt trapped in a nightmare. He almost expected the chair to disappear from beneath his feet, plunging him into that frozen space between the waking world and the dream world.

Tucker grunted, shoving some kid aside as people poked, prodded, and punched him in their efforts to move. "Fine! I admit that this is definitely Alex's signature. Now let's GO!"

Danny shook himself free of it. Sam, he thought. Where's Sam? It was too dark to see clearly. The kids would probably maim anybody who tried to reach the stage controls, and—

"DANNY!"

Danny whipped around to see Dash surged toward him, bowling kids over right and left in his rage. Danny's mouth dropped open as he jumped down from the chair. "Tucker, we have to go now."

"Oh, ya think?"

Danny grabbed Tucker by the wrist, throwing his shoulder into the mob. He spared a glance behind: Dash was practically on top of them. Tucker jerked away. "I'll be fine! Go!"

Danny hesitated.

"He isn't after me! GO!" Tucker melted into the crowd as Danny turned and pushed ahead.

The doors. He had to get to the doors, or even to the soda machines where he might hide for the half-second it would take to go ghost. Of course he'd need a good lead on Dash for that to work, and somehow Danny doubted that would happen in this crowd.

"I'm gonna kill you, Fenton!"

"I'd really like it if you wouldn't, Dash."

Somebody off to Danny's left stumbled, sending ten or fifteen kids flying backwards, pin-wheeling against each other for balance. They crashed into Danny and shoved him against the wall and into something low, blunt, and cold.

A door handle.

Danny jerked it down and burst into the hall; the door slammed open behind him as Dash followed. Danny's feet smacked against the tile, racing down the halls—one good sprint and Dash might have him. He choked as something caught the back of his t-shirt and jerked him back.

Dash clenched the back of Danny's collar and threw him against the lockers like a doll. Danny's forehead slammed against the metal and he collapsed with a groan, a bolt of white pain flashing behind his eyes. Danny scrambled to get up and Dash kicked him, kicked him again, and brought an elbow down in the middle of his back.

"Dash..." Danny wheezed.

"What?" Dash grabbed the front of Danny's collar, dragged him up and held him against the lockers.

"Why are you doing this?"

Dash drew a meaty fist back. "Because..." One to the ears— "I..." One to the nose— "Hate..." Lower ribs— "Your..." Nose again— "GUTS!" A last blow to the stomach, and Dash let him drop to the floor, wiping Danny's blood on his jeans.

The cold floor sang against Danny's hot bruises. His head spun like a top and he could hardly tell what hurt and where it was hurting. He was pretty sure his nose was bleeding. He should've fought back. Why couldn't he fight back? His thoughts raced away into fuzzy confusion, and he cringed as Dash dragged him up once more, seeing through blurred vision the predatory smirk on his face. "Say goodnight, Fentina."

Danny started to panic. The panic brought his wide-open eyes in focus and froze his thoughts in shock, bringing along the familiar surges of fear and desperation, and those twin dread emotions engaged the tactical analysis he had learned through fighting dozens of ghosts. At the end of a domino chain of emotions, Danny discovered he could finally think straight.

Dash himself wasn't unbeatable, but if Danny went ghost, Dash would know who he was and tell everybody. Better to take a punch from Dash than have the entire town after his human self. Another option, then. Struggling would probably encourage Dash to beat him worse than if he just took it, and if Dash managed to seriously hurt him, Danny would be powerless to solve whatever happened after this. Too bad he wasn't a ninth degree black belt. Mom would know how to handle a grip like this. Although Danny had seen her practicing every now and then, and one of the oft-repeated tenets of karate was that joints were usually weak points.

Dash was holding Danny up by the collar, his thick arm outstretched and the inside of his elbow plainly vulnerable. As Dash threw his other fist forward, Danny brought up a hand and shoved the inside of Dash's elbow as hard as he could, breaking the grip and dropping clear of the punch. He scrambled up as Dash connected with the lockers, cursing as his knuckles hit the sharp gratings. Danny pulled himself up behind Dash, shoved the jock to the floor, and disappeared around a hall corner. By the time Dash had gained his feet, Danny had already turned invisible and was racing back towards the assembly.

XXX

"Danny!"

Sam kept trying to reach the doors, but the kids kept pushing her back. Too many people heading in too many directions, shoving her away and stamping on her feet. The lights over the audience had gone out, leaving the blinding stage lights on full blast. The guards fought against the walls, but people just kept surging toward them. Sam didn't know how any adults were still standing.

She didn't know how SHE was still standing, or how any of this could be happening. "Have you all lost your minds!" A girl brushed by her shoulder, someone Sam recognized. "Hey!" Sam tugged at her sleeve. "Valerie! How are we"

Valerie whirled about and slapped her.

Sam recoiled, shocked more than hurt. "Valerie...?"

"Gothic bitch!" she snarled. "You think you're better than us." She took another swing at Sam. In the brightness of the stage and the pitch darkness of the auditorium Sam couldn't move fast enough to deflect it completely, and Valerie's sharp nails caught her forearm. Sam yelped at the fresh pain as Valerie was swallowed by the shifting mob.

Nobody looked twice as Sam fell back holding her arm; everybody had a grudge to revenge. Most weren't heading for the doors, but the doors were inaccessible anyway in the dark and seething mob. Sam blinked back tears, feeling paralyzed and hating herself for it. If she could just find Danny, he could use his powers and have them both out and away from here in as little time as it would take him to phase through the floor. She wasn't lost yet. But she really did HAVE to find Danny NOW.

The stage lights went out.

Sam cursed at the pitch darkness, her voice joining with the ear-splitting bellows of the mob. The kids surged around her, cries of anger and pain ringing in her ears, and then, from a distance, came screams. Sam felt the edge of a chair jab her sides and grasped its arms, holding herself steady in the tide. The screams got louder, and closer.

Sam wanted nothing more to crouch down and wait it out. Let happen what would, and then walk away when it was all over. But she didn't. She grasped hold of the chair, hanging on for dear life, and slowly stood up enough that she could see over the crowd. Either her eyes had adjusted or light was coming from somewhere, because she could just manage to make out the heads of the students, and the black panel that was the side wall of the auditorium. Sam wished that it was pitch black again, because she could see that the screaming had come from the crowd.

A global fight, a universal brawl had broken out among the thousand students who attended Casper High. Nobody could reach the doors, and the fight was spreading from the walls to the center, inevitable as an earthquake, as deadly as a fire.

And Sam stood in the middle of the crowd. She could see the fight without straining, now, punches flying and fists cracking and all hell breaking loose under her nose, telling her that one way or the other, people were going to hurt today.

Something stirred, chill and soft at her feet. She leapt up on the seat of the chair, trying to balance herself and track the fight at once. The substance followed her up, caressed the toes of Sam's boots and swallowing the feet of every other student, slithering calmly among all the chaos, spurring it on and feeding on it, formless yet real as blood. It was a creeping, evil, irresistible blackness, and as Sam battled with panic she felt a cold sweat break out on her arms, a cold shudder sweeping along her limbs.

"DANNEEEE!"

"SAM! I'm coming!"

"Hurry, please…" Sam could feel it crawling up her legs; she jumped away and tried to shake it off but she could already feel it in her mind, felt the black, naked madness that had consumed the rest of her classmates. In a detached part of her brain resting thousands of miles from this horrific place, Sam wondered if it remembered her too.

Hands gripped her shoulders and shoved her down, through the floor. Sam shut her eyes and touched the invisible hands, the proof of life that carried her away, then up and up and away. The screaming drained from her mind, the violence and the terror washing away in rivers as the fresh wind flowed over her.

"What took you so long?" she mumbled.

She smiled to hear the chuckle in Danny's voice. "Sorry. I had a little trouble with the athletics department." The wind swept in Sam's hair, the pleasant weightlessness of flight bade her relax, and Sam kept her eyes closed until she touched down with Danny near a large bench in an open, deserted court of Amity Park.

Upon opening her eyes, Sam crushed him in a very sincere hug. "Thank you."

He held her shoulders and tilted her chin, searching her eyes with medical concern. "Are you alright? I mean, are you okay? Because back at school you sounded kind of..."

"Afraid for my life?"

"Yeah."

Sam shook her head. "Nope! I'm fine." She collapsed on the big oak bench. "But I think I could use some sleep. Or massive amounts of televised brainwashing." She liked the bench. The wood was soft and stable after years among the elements, with an old pine tree dipping down to shade it from behind. Good for napping.

"Great." Danny touched her hand. "I've gotta go get Tucker and see what I can do about the school, but I'll be right back."

Sam slouched in the bench, staring up at the clouds through the tree. She really should be paying more attention to all this. "Good luck."

"Thanks." Danny jumped back into the sky. "I'll be right back!"

Sam looked after him, the black tail of his ghost form disappearing over the trees. "Thanks again, Danny."

As Sam gave serious thought to the possibility of a quick nap, Danny was having some trouble deciding whether there was anything left of the school to save. The brawl saturated the air around the school, and by all rights there should have been at least one fire truck already parked against the curb, but there wasn't, and that black goop—Danny knew he'd seen it before this week, had to figure out where later—was swooshing over the windows near the hall leading to the assembly room. Which was blacked out. He couldn't fight if he couldn't see, so the power had to come back on. Assuming the wires hadn't been cut, Danny didn't think it was beyond his abilities to flick a switch. This couldn't be as bad as it looked.

"And if I believe that," Danny said, phasing through the first floor. "I've got a bridge to sell me."

The lockers whizzed by in gray blurs. Danny hit the area below the auditorium and pulled up through the floors, aiming for the stage area and the power box. A whiff of sweat and a plunge into darkness brought him into the shrieking hell of the assembly hall. The darkness lived, and as Danny burst through the floor, it wasted no time in making itself known. It was that old darkness that made you want to die... except no, this was a new darkness, Danny realized. This darkness made you want to kill. Burn the world and kill them all—

Stop. Danny pressed his hands to his temples. He hated this part. He'd forgotten how Alex's powers worked. The punches didn't get you, it was the psychology, and last time Jazz had told him... what had she told him about this crap? That it wasn't real? Why wasn't it real? He couldn't remember what she'd said, not that it had made any sense anyway... Danny pressed his back against the wall. He didn't know what else to try. Before he had held onto things, sights, feels; but now everything was dark and he didn't know what to do and it was all so damn FRUSTRATING… But he couldn't get sucked into this. He had to make it back to Sam. Sam...

Midnight clouds and secret embraces, the delicate touch of her hands and the beautiful way she laughed, her determined individualism, everything about herhe had to make it back.

He had to get the lights back on. Danny clenched his teeth and jogged along the wall, feeling for the rough protrusion of the power box and finding it. Some plasma in his hands, and a fumbling for the coded switches. The tiny labels peered out at him, and Danny didn't know what they meant, but he did know that a flipped up switch was an activated switch. He pushed them all up, first row, second row, and the third row brought a blaze of white, red, blue, and green lights blazing down over the stage and over the audience. The noise jumped higher as kids took their hands off each other and instead shaded their eyes. Puddles of black slid between their feet, retreating in satisfaction rather than fear. Just about everybody was bleeding somewhere.

Paying no attention to the stares he was getting, Danny gathered an enormous charge between his hands, feeding it with anger that he was having to deal with this crap ALL OVER AGAIN. The charge surged and flared between his fingers, and Danny growled in effort as he sunk his fingers through the floorboards and let the power loose, burning the floorboards green and chasing the last of the shadowed darkness back into hiding.

Danny watched to make sure it was all gone, smiling to see that the stuff was indeed responsive to good ole' fashioned plasma. He stood up and noticed the increasing amount of attention he was getting from the Casper High's entire student body. Danny gave it about three seconds before he was either thanked, attacked, or blamed.

Danny sighed and stared back at them. "You're welcome."

"Hey! You're that—"

"See you guys later." Danny faded intangible as the curious murmurs began to roll across the auditorium. After a couple seconds he spotted a familiar hat, and with a discreet flip of that selfsame hat along with a quiet instruction, Danny and Tucker met in the halls a good distance away from the assembly.

"I just about got KILLED!" Tucker jabbed an accusing finger at Danny. "Where were you?" Tucker didn't look too good. He'd definitely have some shiners in the morning, but Danny wasn't exactly in top condition either.

"I was discussing boxing with Dash."

Tucker rolled his eyes. "Sure, I can see that, but that can't have taken eons. What else did you do?"

"Well..." Danny faltered as Tucker stared flatly at him, arms crossed.

"You got Sam out first, didn't you." He threw up his hands. "Sam first. Of course."

Danny swept a hand through his hair. "Tucker... she almost DIED last time this thing hit. I thought—"

"Yeah, you thought with something, but it sure wasn't your brain." Tucker crossed his arms, and Danny, God help him, was starting to lose his patience.

"Look, let's just go home and I'll meet you online for some... I don't know, checkers or something."

"Fat chance. I got a better idea. How about you and Sam just go smooch and you and I never speak again."

Danny was growing suspicious that the universe actually hated him. "Tucker, you don't mean that. You were just in the assembly hall too long."

"You keep thinking that. See ya around, Danny." Tucker turned on his heel and stalked away. Danny turned and calmly kicked the crap out of a nearby locker. It was just the black stuff affecting Tucker, just like it had obviously been affecting everybody else the last couple days. The stuff had probably set up shop in the walls.

Danny went ghost and floated through the floor. He didn't like to prove Tucker right in any way, however vague, but he had told Sam that he'd be back. He figured she'd be worried about him, and it was both funny and disappointing to see her stretched out asleep on the park bench. Danny shook her shoulder gently.

"Sam?"

"Mmmm?" She opened her eyes and, smiling, took his hand in her own.

The gesture made Danny uncomfortable. "Do you want me to take you home? I think I'm just going to crash at my house after this."

"We could hang out together, you know." She squinted up at him, her smile fading. "Did you get in a fight?"

"Yeah, Dash caught up with me. I'm alright." Danny toed the grass, avoiding her eyes. "I'd rather just go home, I guess."

"Is something wrong, or are you just tired of saving my butt?" Sam let go of his hand, sitting up on the bench.

"Well, Tucker's not exactly part of the team, at the moment..."

"He got mad, didn't he? I was afraid of that." She shook her head. "Geez, he's being difficult these days."

"He and I have been closer. He's just not used to the whole 'girlfriend' thing yet."

Sam raised her eyebrows. "'Girlfriend' thing?"

Danny shrugged. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah." Sam glanced over at a jogger coming up the path, the cord of his walkman jangling regularly with his steps. "Hey, do you think it has something to do with how much he knows about it? I mean, you and I have at least had some practice with the black stuff."

"Unfortunately."

"No kidding. But we know what to expect. Didn't Tucker just kind of get smacked with it? If he's just now figuring it out, it would make it harder for him to adjust."

"That's true." And very reassuring. "So he should be back soon, probably."

"Definitely." Sam rubbed her arms, glancing at the cloudy sky. "I'm cold. And thinking about all this crazy stuff has made me tired again."

Danny took his cue and offered her a lift home, which Sam accepted gratefully. Holding her hand on the flight was still a little weird, but it was good to have a second opinion on the Tucker Dilemma. Maybe Tuck did just need to go and be angry by himself for a little while, at least until he wised up.

After making sure Sam didn't fall over from sleep on her way in the door, Danny returned to his own house. The weird gadgets on its roof welcomed him back to the predictable domestic eccentricity, for now absent of its two adult contributors.

"Couch..." Phasing through the walls, Danny collapsed on the pillowed sanctuary of the living room, grasping on the coffee table for the remote. He looked for cartoons, but of course it was daytime TV, meaning stupid kiddie stuff, which he usually hated. Usually. Today, the stupid little characters looked oddly appealing, with their stupid little problems and fantastically simple lives.

"Mitsy! You don't have the key to the treasure chest! What will we do now?"

"Stick some nitroglycerine in the lock," Danny mumbled, cracking himself up.

"I know. We'll get Mr. Herbert, Mitsy! He'll know what to do."

"Yeah, he'll know to light up some nitro."

A/N: According to the reviews, only two people are reading this. If anybody out there is not reviewing because they think I suck, or because they think the plot of the story itself sucks, don't hesitate to constructively criticize. (Anybody who thinks the plot sucks has my partial agreement. I try to compensate with good style.) Either way, those of you who've stuck with me by either reviewing constantly (Sakura Scout, Cheerin4danny) or just hangin' out and not saying a peep, I appreciate your readership and hope this incredibly weird story makes your day a little better, or, failing that, at leastmore interesting. (grin) Stay tuned!