Ghost in the Shell
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Madam Chaos Shadow
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Author Notes :

I needed a break, and when I take a break, it often goes on for way too long.

Thankfully, I happened to catch the ending of Secret Weapon (I missed the crux of it, though, and according to Danny actually gets sucked into the Thermos, which I've been wanting to see for a while...) and then I had the fortune to see... Whatever came after it (Valerie gets a new ghost suit... Flirting with Disaster, that's it!). And, of course, I saw Micro-Management, which made me squeal in delight because Danny was almost found out by Dash.

Close calls make me squeal in delight. I need a life.

Anyway, seeing two-and-a-quarter episodes like that got me all fired up to turn around and return to the computer, looking at my schoolwork and cheerfully saying 'screw you' while I open up this file and get to work not only continuing my DP fanfic, but also commenting to an absurd extent on the contents of one of the episodes.

Flirting with Disaster made me incredibly happy about one of those really stupid fan-girl things that just seem to grow on you, you know what I mean: The love triangle theories. I believe that with the inception of Flirting with Disaster, Danny's romantic leanings toward Paulina can finally dissolve completely in favour of him looking after Valerie, and Sam – poor Sam – is finally trying to express her feelings and, thanks to Danny being a complete nimrod when it comes to female emotions, is only going to wind up frustrating herself dropping hints while Tucker stands by, understands everything, and giggles like a nerd.

Valerie - Danny - Sam triangle. God, there are so many triangles in this series: This one, then the old Paulina - Danny - Sam, and for a while it was a quadrangle with Valerie inclusive, and then there's the Valerie - Phantom - Danny love-hate triangle, and... Ah, so many.

Coulda sworn I ranted about this before. And that I had more examples. Must've been the first time I had this written, 'cuz I kinda accidentally deleted it. I'm awesome like that. Go me. Yar.

Am I the only one that thinks that Memory Blank and Flirting with Disaster, while being really cool, were intended for nothing more than a costume change?

And that Danny should really wear that black shirt with his logo on it more often? I'm such a dork, but I think that was neat. Maybe I should make myself one of those and have people stare at me in the non-hallways of my school...

Oh. Em. Gee. I just went back through Chapter One to remind myself of how I was writing this and realized I totally forgot how I painted the day that Danny got his powers. I forgot I could be that funny. Or this overtired. I'm more willing to accept that I'm overtired than I am to bet that I'm funny.

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C H A P T E R : F O U R

: D IS T R E S S :

He knew the location relatively well, or at least had an idea of what it would look like. Not that he visited there often, but he had inadvertently found himself there on several occasions beforehand. It sounded like an awful place to be, when the description was presented to other people, but Danny found that it wasn't so bad, not really. Aside from the fact that it needed a bit of dusting, and that it was rather cramped, and extremely difficult to reach without knowing just the right avenue.

Regardless, Danny had not visited in a long while, and had not been particularly intent on going back. Sure, it was kind of a nice place to be every once in a while – very infrequently, of course – but Danny most certainly had not anticipated his return.

The top of the cabinet in the laboratory, after all, was a very cramped space.

Danny peered out from the top of the cabinet, careful not to knock his head against the ceiling as he breathed, and looked across the laboratory. The Ghost Portal was still shut, thankfully, and the tables and beakers were stable. The Ghost Catcher (Danny rather hated that little device) hung limply at the side of the Portal, and on the far end, the medieval torture devices were unturned.

Absolutely nothing had happened between him being tossed out of the school and him waking up that would warrant him sitting in a very uncomfortable position on top of the laboratory cabinet.

Marginally annoyed, he immediately assumed an intangible form and stood up, now breathing far more easily since his lungs weren't being crushed by the ceiling. He stood up and came to face nothing but darkness, but with a simple spring he leapt through the kitchen and into his room, through the bed and above it, where he hovered for a moment, considered becoming normal again, and then shrugged it off.

No point.

He sent a glance out the window and noted that the sky had taken on a steely gray colour. He sent a glance to his clock and noticed that the time was just rolling over to 6:57. A brief calculation and he realized that it was the morning. Early morning.

Way too early morning.

Danny decided to play it safe – of course, for him, playing it safe was never an understandable concept. He refused to simply assume his solid form and land – taking the stairs down a story was for normal people – and instead he went completely invisible, leisurely drifting through the hardwood floors and straight down again, lighting easily on the tile floor of the kitchen. He looked around, surprised that his parents weren't present – or at least his father, he was certain to be getting an early start on breakfast.

Somebody, however, was reading a slip of paper and nervously sipping on her tea.

Jazz stared down at the white piece of paper gripped tightly in her hand, her foot tapping nervously on the floor. She was angry, Danny could see that much, and embarrassed – her expression screamed "Kill me now".

He phased in and without even bothering with hellos asked, very plainly, "Mom and Dad fighting the school invasion?"

Jazz kept her cool just enough to respond with a surprised yelp, nearly flinging the cup in her hand into the wall behind her. Thankfully, only a small line of tea escaped and hit the floor, and Danny reached out for a paper towel immediately.

"Sorry," he said sheepishly, reaching down to clean up the spill.

"That's all right," Jazz said, exhaling deeply, still somewhat shaken. "Just not used to you coming out of the woodwork like that..."

Danny had to laugh. True in a literal sense of the phrase.

"Sorry," he repeated. "Just used to Sam and Tucker being... Used to it." What a stupid way to finish the statement, but he had accomplished his purposes.

"So," he said conversationally, rising from where he was and moving to throw the damp napkin away. "Mom and Dad fighting the ghost invasion at school?"

Jazz looked up for a moment, trying to figure out what her brother was talking about, and then it clicked. She nodded. "Mom and Dad fighting the ghost invasion at school."

"And you're assuming it's not going well."

"It's being covered on Channel Seven," she said, laying down the piece of paper. "I was watching for a moment to see how mortified I was going to be when I got back to school, but–"

"Going that badly, huh?" The ghost-child smirked. His father was relatively ineffective when it came to ghost hunting, although it was a bit of surprise that his mother was failing in the assault.

"Not like you would expect it." Jazz stood up and took the final sip of the tea, setting the cup down on the table and realizing that she really had no reason for rising. Regardless, she made herself busy, pushing the chair under the table and placing the cup in the sink. She ran water on it, but didn't bother to actually wash it, instead allowing the little cup and saucer to carry the stagnant water – they would, after all, be washed later. "Just that so many ghosts in there, Mom and Dad are completely outnumbered. I recognized most of them from your files--"

"Can you name names?"

She obliged.

"Ember was standing guard at the door, I think; Skulker was having the time of his life tormenting a mouse" – Danny had to chuckle about that one – "Penelope Spectra and Bertrand were– Never mind, you don't want to know what they were doing. Lunch Lady serving meat, princess crying in a corner, Technus poking around the tech lab, Walker patrolling the halls–"

Danny stared at her blankly. "I thought you were only watching for a few minutes. I didn't think they would have cameras in there."

Jazz shrugged. "I guess it was tapped from the school security cameras."

"And they weren't... Doing anything but hanging out, pretty much."

"Yeah."

Danny was silent again. "Something's wrong," he said slowly. "Something is very, very wrong here. How are they fighting Mom and Dad?"

"They really aren't."

"What?"

Jazz shrugged. "The ghosts, they really aren't fighting. Ember's standing at the door and keeping them off, and when Dad pulled out the Fenton Peeler she got a bit of help to force him out of it, but they're just... Their."

Danny's gaze went glassy as he considered the implications. The ghosts weren't doing anything at all evil, it seemed, except for hanging out at the school. Which, come to think of it, really wasn't all that evil. At all. But the idea was that Danny would play the hero and come in to fight them off, or at least try.

Alone, he was a match for any one of them. Alone, he would get slaughtered by the whole lot. A trap. A painfully obvious trap. A trap that the ghosts knew Danny would see and have the option of avoiding.

Which either meant they were pulling for him to avoid them if he knew it was a trap, or hoping he would figure that something was going on and go after them. Or else they knew he knew it was a trap, but were banking on his instinct to inspect any large paranormal activity and break it up when he saw it. Or else they knew he knew it was a trap and he would therefore go after it, but realize this was what they were hoping for, and so avoid it, which is what they would want, because they were doing something major, or else–

Oh, forget it.

"Are you okay?"

"Hnn?" He looked up and sent his gaze to Jazz. "How d'you mean?"

"Are you okay?" she repeated. "You took quite a beating at the school, and you were out for a while."

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said distantly. "Getting knocked around by ghosts is painful, though."

Not to mention the Ghostly Wail, he thought bitterly. How did that work? I wasn't supposed to learn that technique until ten years down the road, no wonder it kills me to use it. A pause. Wow, what a terrible joke.

Of course, ten years down the road under that assumption would have meant he would have been torn asunder, his soul would have been shredded from the pressures and the astounding snowball affect of cheating on the CAT (which, incidentally, he had scored 1050 on, sans the answer key). He would have ceased to exist, actually; Danny Fenton would have been killed by Danny Phantom after the ghost fused his essence with that of Vlad Plasmius and went absolutely bonkers.

Did I just use 'bonkers' during an internal monologue?

"If you're sure," Jazz said slowly. "I'm just looking out for you, Danny..."

"I know you are," he responded quietly. "And I thank you for that. Although if you'd been there earlier to tell me how stupid I was none of this would be happening."

"No. But life would be rather dull, wouldn't it?"

"Point."

A moment of silence.

"You gonna go down there to help?"

"Eventually." He turned around at that and made his way for the door to the kitchen.

"Where you heading now?"

"Back to bed," he said bluntly. "Six is not a good time for me."

Jazz nodded and watched as he set off, this time taking the more conventional rout up the stairs. She turned back to the sink and brought the cup back out, dumping the water out of it and going off to pour a bit more tea. She was more of a morning person than her brother, but even she needed a pick-me-up.

And he was going to want a full briefing on the situation when he came out.

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1. I was trying to make it sound like a somewhat questionable resort area, then it went down to sounding like a closet, then it went to sounding like the attic. After revealingthe top of a bookshelf,the attic sounds like a glamorous place to visit.

2. Penelope Spectra's new outfit (I refuse to simply call her 'Spectra'; I have a very cool gryphon character who goes by the same name, and Penelope is a disgrace) is a bit... Erm. I'm not the only one who things 'S&M' when I see it, am I?

No, that's not what they were engaged in. I imagine they were actually in a bathroom giving Klemper a swirly. But that just seems so out of character that I figured I'd let it hang. Good mental image though. Giving Klemper a swirly, I mean, not... Yeah.

3. Between writing down all of the names for the ghosts, I was referencing to to remind myself of all of them (I'm proud to say that I didn't have to actually go into any of the episode explanations, just scan the titles. Which, now that I think of it, was kind of sad). On a third Danny Phantom TV movie was rumoured to be in production, called 'The Demon Within'.

It didn't take me much thinking to immediately think of a potential link between the twin existence of Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom – the boy and the ghost – and how easily this could be exploited. Which is exactly how my theory goes.

I swear that if The Demon Within winds up not only existing, but supporting this theory wholeheartedly, I am not only going to squeal with joy, watch the episode, and then faint; I'm going to demand royalty rights. I mean it.

4. I was randomly selected by Duke University to take the SAT when I was in seventh grade – I think most of my school was ('cuz we don't have hallways... And 'cuz were considered gifted). Back in seventh grade, I managed to swing a 1050 (and beat the hell out of 85 of all college-bound seniors in Reading and Algebra, and 35 in Geometry, which was a class I wouldn't have for another three years, so hah!). I just took the 'true' SAT (now with essay and strange cursive test!) a few weekends ago, and I'm patiently awaiting my results. If they suck, I'm falling back on my ACT (got a 28 composite score, which is part of the 'highly selective' spectrum. Damn straight! I'm special!)

5. Holy cheesecake, I just found a temporal loophole!

In Memory Blank, Desiree makes it so Sam wishes she and Danny had never met. In doing so, she prevents Sam from encouraging Danny to go into the Fenton Portal. Thing is, if Danny had never gone into the portal and gotten zapped and died (which he did. According to me. And I'm very reliable) then the portal would have never been activated. Which means that Desiree would never have escaped. And even if she had been sealed in a piece of pottery beforehand, the pottery wouldn't have broken, because the series of events that made it so Tucker and Danny were at the carnival on that very day would not have taken place, and even if the pottery had broken Desiree would have no reason to do what she did, as Danny would not have done anything to her, she wouldn't know who Tucker or Sam are, or any of that.

Don't mess with temporal loopholes, yo.

6. Don't get up at six if you can avoid it. . No matter how much sleep I get, I can't do it.