"Okay, first off, this is the Fenton Portal. It acts as a gateway between our world and the Ghost Zone, which is where ghosts live. Whenever ghosts come out of the portal, its our job as ghost hunters to catch them and force them back into the Ghost Zone using devices that were invented by me, Jack Fenton!" The genin were bored to the point where they were almost nodding off. Or at least, two of them were.
"That's so cool!" Naruto exclaimed. "What kinds of inventions have you made?"
"I'm glad you asked that, Naruto. One of the things I've developed is the Specter Deflector, which shocks any ghost that comes into direct contact with the person wearing it." He strapped an anti-ghost belt onto each of them. "Another thing I've invented is the Fenton Thermos." He held up a thermos for them to see. "It sucks ghosts inside and negates their powers so that they can't escape. And there's the Fenton Fisher, which is like a fishing rod but it's made of a material that ghosts can't break, and the Fenton Weasel, and the Fenton Ghost Peeler…" Naruto was listening with rapt attention as the other two started zoning out.
Finally, the three genin ambled up the staircase, Naruto's arms laden with anti-ghost weaponry. They passed Danny, who was doing homework at the kitchen table, and went upstairs to the bedrooms. Naruto and Sasuke each went to sleep immediately, since their contest dictated that whoever got the most sleep would have the most energy the next day. Sakura, on the other hand, went back down to the kitchen.
"Danny?" She asked softly as she placed a hand on his shoulder. The Specter Deflector she was wearing zapped him and he was temporarily surrounded by an aura of green electricity.
"OW! Okay, I heard you, don't touch me!" Sakura jerked her hand away.
"Sorry, I forgot I was wearing this thing…" she gestured towards the belt.
"It's alright. Just…can you turn in off for now and activate it only when there's a ghost around?"
"Besides you, you mean?" He smirked.
"Besides me." She pressed the button in the center of the belt and it deactivated with a mechanical whine. "So, what do you need?" he asked.
"I was just wondering…since your sister, you, and I didn't get a whole lot to eat at dinner," Danny snorted at this. "Is there anyplace we can get some food?"
"Sure, there's the Nasty Burger…but I kinda have to finish this math homework before my parents will let me leave."
"Here, let me have a look at it." Sakura sat down next to Danny and shot a cursory glance at the homework. "Oh, it's simple, all you have to do is…" Danny zoned out as Sakura explained the solutions to the work and finished it in about two minutes. After she finished the homework, she looked over at him and saw him drooling on the textbook.
She smirked.
"YEEEOOOOW!" Danny yelled as the Specter Deflector shocked him yet again. He glared at Sakura. "What was that for?"
"Just a wake-up call. C'mon, let's go to this 'Nasty Burger' place." Danny nodded and led her out the door. The two of them left FentonWorks side by side. They were walking along the sidewalk when Danny suddenly clapped a hand to his forehead.
"Duh! Why didn't I think of this before? I could just fly us there, it'd be much faster!" He looked over at Sakura and noted that she had a nervous facial expression.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"I've never flown before…I mean as a ninja I can jump from tree to tree and things like that, but I've always been governed by the laws of physics. I've always been in relative control. I'm kind of nervous about being totally unable to control where I go."
"What, you think I'd drop you? C'mon, you'll be fine." He transformed and wrapped a hand around her waist. "Watch." Before she could protest they were already twenty feet in the air and moving forward at about fifty miles per hour.
"Wow, this is…fun," Sakura told him. Danny grinned. They landed in an alley next to the restaurant and Danny transformed. Then, the two of them entered the restaurant and walked up to the counter.
"See anything you like?" Danny asked her.
"Everything is so unfamiliar…I don't know what to order!"
"In that case," he turned to the employee behind the counter. "We'll take two cheeseburgers with fries and a Coke." The man rang up the order and Danny paid. A couple of minutes later, he and Sakura were seated across from each other in a booth, cheeseburgers in hand.
"What do you think?" He asked. She took a bite.
"This is amazing!" She exclaimed and eagerly took another bite. "I could eat one of these at every meal for the rest of my life!"
"I wouldn't recommend it," Danny warned. "These things are a heart attack on a bun. It's okay once in a while, but they're so unhealthy that more than one a day is too much." Sakura's face fell slightly.
"Well, we'll just have to come back tomorrow, then!" Danny grinned at that, and bit into his own burger.
As the two of them made their way out of the restaurant, Danny's ghost sense went off and they were accosted by a glowing green figure.
"Zabuza," they both spat.
"Ah, I see you've brought help from my past. Well, it won't do anything. Count on it!" Zabuza threw an anti-ghost kunie at Danny, who immediately transformed and split himself at the waist so that the device just went through the hole in the middle. Before he could do anything else, Sakura had shot in front of him. The genin began making odd hand symbols as Zabuza cast five kunie at her.
"Sakura, look out!" Danny shouted, but he was too late-the kunie all made contact and Sakura slowly sank to the ground, the five handles sticking out of her midsection.
"Sakura!" The halfa yelled, but his cry was in vain. He watched in awe as Sakura's body disappeared in a puff of gray smoke. A tree stump appeared in its place, all five kunie imbedded in the wood.
"What? How did-" Before Danny could finish his sentence, Sakura had appeared behind Zabuza and thrust a kunie of her own into his back. Unfortunately, the kunie went right through him, but although it didn't hurt him, the move served as a distraction. Sakura jumped out of the way as Danny shot an ecto-blast at Zabuza while his attention was elsewhere, and he collapsed.
"Awesome! We did it! We beat him!" Danny cheered, but his joy was short-lived. As soon as Zabuza collapsed, he melted into ectoplasm.
"It must be a ghostly form of the water-clone jutsu, Sakura mused.
"The what?" Danny asked her as they began walking back to FentonWorks.
"When he was alive, Zabuza had the ability to make a clone out of himself made of water. He was able to hold out sensei hostage while his clone fought us. It was really annoying."
"It seems that all of my dangerous enemies have the ability to clone themselves…but what were you saying about a jutsu? What does that mean?" Sakura let out a long sigh.
"It's kind of complicated, do you really want me to go into it?"
"I'll have to know eventually so that I have a fighting chance of beating Zabuza." Sakura smiled weakly.
"Okay. Every ninja has something called a chakra, which is sort of like a life force. Chakra has two different types-physical and mental. Physical chakra is based on a person's physical fitness and ninja must always be in tip-top physical shape in order to keep this aspect of chakra working. The second part, mental chakra, is more complicated. You could say it's based off of a person's inner strength, rather than outer. Using this aspect of chakra is emotionally draining, rather than physically. A ninja is able to combine their physical and mental chakra and use it to perform superhuman feats. These special abilities are called jutsu. The trick that I did before, where the stump got hit by the kunie instead of me, is called a substitution jutsu."
"So that's what Zabuza was talking about the first time I fought him, about assimilating his chakra with his ghost powers?"
"I wasn't there so I can't tell you exactly, but I'd imagine so. I'll bet he was talking about using his ghost powers to enhance his ninja abilities, like the way he used ectoplasm in order to power his water-clone jutsu." By this time they had reached FentonWorks. They went inside, climbed the stairs, and split up once they reached Jazz's room.
"I guess I'll see you tomorrow, Danny."
"You too, Sakura." Sakura went into Jazz's room while Danny headed to his own room.
Unbeknownst to either of them, a ghostly green figure had been watching them the whole time. He had remained invisible while Danny and Sakura fought his ecto-clone, and had invisibly leapt from streetlight to streetlight as the two teens walked back to the large brick building.
"So, the halfa is beginning to learn the ways of the shinobi. It won't help him in the end, and soon enough this town will belong to me." A smirk formed beneath the bandages that hid his mouth, and he took off into the night.