WoM- So many updates today! The library lady at school probably thinks I'm going insane or something, especially with the way I more or less ran down there to get a computer… Anywho, sorry I didn't get this up yesterday, but if you haven't heard by now, I'm having some problems at home with my dad and the computer is now off limits, which isn't a problem during the week since I have school, but on the weekend? 'makes a face' At any rate, he should calm down before the week's out and if he doesn't mom will make him (Or at least sneak me on behind his back, like she did today…)
Moe- Hey Calvin, guess what we're doing in gym today. We're wrestling! Next period you'll be so covered with mat burns you'll need skin grafts! Ha ha ha! See ya then, Twinky.
Calvin- 'Sighhhhh…' Physical Education is what you learn from having your face in someone's armpit right before lunch.
(Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson)
Butting Heads
'I can't believe how low this jerk is!' Valerie thought sullenly as she fired at the ghost, hitting time before he had time to react. 'I mean, yeah ghosts can be pretty bad, but attacking a girl at school for no reason whatsoever?' Or maybe there was a reason? Maybe he was here to draw her out for a rematch, an attempt to toy with her as ghosts liked to do.
That thought alone made Valerie even angrier with her opponent.
'I'll show him who he's messing with!'
"You're not getting away this time, Ghost boy!" Valerie growled out, drilling a whole through the wall as she chased after her prey, "Get out here and face me you coward!"
"Hey!" Phantom said from directly behind Valerie, making the ghost hunter jump about a foot. Before she had time to react, though, the ghost that grabbed both her wrists and enveloped her in a Bear Hug from behind, unyielding to the girl's struggles to free herself. "I resent that! I'm not the one wearing a mask."
"You think I'm wearing this because I'm scared of you?" Valerie snarled out, twisting around to glare into the boy's intense green eyes, filled with amusement and a little bit of something else.
"You're scared of something if you're hiding," Phantom told her pointedly. "You can't even say it's for protection or something, since that means you're scared of getting hurt." Valerie growled, not able to deny this.
"What about you?" She countered instead, "You're scared of something too, if you're still here instead of wherever people go when they die!"
"How do you know I'm not right where I'm supposed to be?" Phantom asked softly. Valerie was a little startled at the ghost's tone before she glared at him again.
"Because the living and the dead aren't suppose to live side by side!" Valerie snapped, "You had your chance and lost it! And if you refuse to leave this world, I'm just gonna have to make you!"
"And you think I'm just gonna sit and let that happen?" Phantom asked, disgust clear in his voice, "Man, all you ghost hunters really are the same…" Valerie stiffened at what seemed to be a hint into an insult.
"What's that supposed to mean?" She demanded heatedly of the ghost. She was startled when his eyes took on an icy quality.
"I mean," He hissed, obviously very passionate about this particular subject, "That you're all petty, obsessive freaks who don't care about anything except your job! You never actually ask if the ghosts deserve to be destroyed, you never give a ghost a chance to prove themselves at anything but the menace you've already decided they are!"
"That's because ghosts ARE only menaces!" Valerie yelled back. She barely noticed that Phantom's grip on her wrists had slipped. It wasn't about the physical fight anymore, this had become a heated verbal debate instead. "Ghosts are nothing but selfish spirits who were too weak to survive, so they get bitter and take it out on the living!"
"What do you know about ghosts?" Phantom demanded angrily, "When have you ever had a conversation with them, huh? Never, I'm guessing. You're just a lousy hypocrite who's trying to blame the ghosts for everything that's happened to you!"
"That's because ghosts ruined my life!" Valerie screeched back, ripping her arms free to twirl around and glare at the ghost, "It was a ghost that killed my father and left me an orphan! If it wasn't for Mr. Masters, I'd be as dead as him right now! And you? You can't tell me that a ghost hunter ruined you life! You're already dead, you creep!"
"How do you know they didn't?" Phantom snapped back, anger written clearly on his face, "You don't know me! You don't know what my life was like, who my family was, how I got like this! You think you're the only orphan here? At least your dad didn't abandon you when you needed them most like my parents did! And why? Because of their stupid job!"
There was a long, stunned silence after that as both of the confessions, all the information just thrusted into the open by nothing more then wild anger, began to sink into their heads.
"…Well this is awkward," Phantom broke the silence at last, clearly shaken with what he'd both heard and said.
"It doesn't change anything," Valerie said, making her own shock with an icy tone. "It just gives us another reason to fight; to prove who's right and who's wrong."
"Who says we can't both be right?" Phantom asked in a tired sort of voice.
"So what, now you're saying ghosts are bad, too?" Valerie asked, raising an eyebrow and crossing her arms. "Whose side are you on?"
"I'm not on anyone's side," Phantom said, sounding faintly annoyed, "I'm just trying to stay alive,"
"Well here's a news flash for you, ghost boy," Valerie snapped, raising her ecto-gun again, "You're already dead."
She fired off an ecto-net, grounding the ghost so she could take aim at him again. She met his angry scowl with a glare of her own.
"I don't want to do this," Phantom called out to her abruptly, almost startling the right.
"Do what?" Valerie sneered, "You're caught, ghost boy!" Phantom sighed.
"Don't say I didn't warn you…" He muttered dryly to himself. And then, before Valerie could make any move to stop him, Phantom made the most intense sound Valerie had ever heard. A low, reverberating wailing noise what seemed to reach to the core of the ghost hunter's being and shake up everything inside of her.
Valerie honestly wasn't sure if she should cover her ears or cling to her jet sled for dear life as the horrible sound started confusing her mentally as well as upsetting her usually superb balance.
In the end, though, she hugged her jet sled, adding her scream to Phantoms as the advanced piece of weaponry shorted out and plummeted to the classroom floor, throwing the girl as it crashed.
After the wailing finally stopped, Valerie groaned and sat up, gasping at what she saw around her.
The classroom was in shambles now, thanks to Phantom's attack. Desks, tables, chairs were all in ruins, and a large, gaping whole spilled into the outside world, where Valerie could also see an upturned tree and a few cars in the parking lot that had been rolled over in the force of the wailing attack.
Glancing around again, Valerie scowled when she realized that Phantom had taken off on her. Grumbling to herself, Valerie deactivated her hunting gear and headed for the door.
'Well this is just perfect,' She thought sullenly, 'Uh! First I'm paired up with a creep for my class and then Phantom gets away again! Can this day get any worse?'
Just then, the door opened and Mr. Lancer stopped abruptly, gaping at the mess in front of him before his eyes narrowed on Valerie, who found herself rooted to the spot.
"Miss Grey," Mr. Lancer said, obviously trying to contain his temper, "What on earth is the meaning for this mess?"
'…I never should've asked.'
"Well, that's enough ghost-based fun for a while…" Danny sighed and ran a hand through his hair as he left the boy's bathroom. He raised an eyebrow when he saw the entire 'popular' entourage gathered outside the doors to the nurses office, looking pretty anxious.
"What's up with them?" He asked a passing student, knowing the kid wouldn't pass up the chance to gossip.
"Didn't you hear?" The boy asked, "Paulina got hurt when some mutant frog attacked Poluka's room. She's alright, but she keeps going on about how some floating kid with white hair saved her. The way she's talking, you'd think the kid was some kind of superhero or something…"
Then, after shaking his head and laughing at his own joke, the boy walked off to go to his next class, never seeing the look on Danny's face.
'Now that's just bittersweet.' He thought dryly to himself. 'I mean, she won't give me the time of day, but she's fallen head over heels for Phantom? After only seeing him one time?'
"Alright, kids, get to class," the nurse said loudly as she left the room to shoo the popular kids away. "Miss Sanchez will be back in class in about twenty minutes." A little reluctant, Danny started away for his gym class, bumping into someone as he went.
"Sorry," Danny apologized automatically before he jerked back in surprise when he saw Trish standing there. A little annoyed, he found himself asking; "Do you always pop out of nowhere?"
Trish blushed a little at the question, and Danny sighed as a stab of guilt ran through him. Bending down, her picked up the girl's fallen books, handing them back to her.
"Thank you," Trish muttered as she took them, Danny shrugged and started away, mentally groaning when he noticed Trish following him.
"Alright…" He started with a defeated sighed, "What do you want?" Trish hesitated.
"I… what are you?" Danny blinked at the girl.
"What do you mean?" He asked carefully, not wanting to give himself away.
"I want to know what you are," Trish repeated, her blush darkening, "I mean… you can't be human, can you? Not with the way you know things about… about them…" Danny closed his eyes, taking a deep breath to control his anger.
"You think I'm not human because I know about demons?" Danny asked coldly, glaring at the girls. She winced in guilt, but before she could stop him, the blue-eyed boy continued, "Any human could know about demons if they just took the time to take their heads out of the clouds and look around them for a second! I mean I knew a pair of demonologists who made a living off of knowing this junk!"
"Demonologists?" Trish repeated, her eyes wide.
"Yeah," Danny sighed. "They were friends with my…" Parents. "…Never mind. I've gotta go."
"Danny, wait!" Trish said, startling them both when she grabbed the boy's arm to stop him. She let go at once, as if the skin-to-skin contact burned her, blushing profusely. "S-Sorry…" taking a deep breath, Trish looked down at the floor, a slight blush still staining her cheeks. "Do you think… maybe… that we can talk together again at lunch today? You don't have to, but I… w-well," A little confused at her very, very obvious discomfort, Danny raised an eyebrow at her, making her blush darken yet again.
After stopping to think about it, though, Danny realized that it probably would be a good idea to meet with the girl in private and tell her what he knew about what she was up against, what had killed her family…
"Sure," Danny said, smiling a little at the girl's shocked look, "Meet me at the picnic table under the tree outside, okay?"
"O-okay!" Trish responded, grinning shyly before darting away. Danny blinked after her, a little startled by that reaction.
'What the heck was that about…?'
"Fenton!" Mrs. Testlaff barked, glowering at her student as he stumbled into the gym. "You're late!"
"Sorry, Mrs. Testlaff," Danny panted, running a hand through his hair nervously to check and make just he'd gotten out all the ecto-goo from his hair, once again cursing the timing of the ecto-puss he'd encountered on his way to class.
'Five seconds earlier and I could've made it, too!' Danny thought darkly, making a mental note to make sure this ghost didn't have the most comfortable trip back to his own dimension.
"Well, we're running laps today," Testlaff grunted out as she scowled at her young student, "So you're gonna have to pair up wit the new girl!" Danny's stomach dropped as he noticed Valerie scowling at him from where she stood next to the large woman.
'Of course…' Danny said dryly to himself.
"Get moving!" Mrs. Testlaff ordered shoving them onto the path where they started off in a simple jog around the tracks.
"What's her problem?" Valerie asked irritably as she jogged.
"No one knows for sure, but we think it's all the steroids she took back in her body-building days." Danny answered absently, making Valerie bite her lip to refrain from laughing.
She certainly needed a laugh. While she hadn't gotten in trouble for the mess in the classroom, she was now pretty sure she'd earned Mr. Lancer's suspicions, and worse yet, the ghost boy seemed to have disappeared entirely again.
'I don't get it…' She thought, frowning, 'Why can't I track him like any other ghost…?'
"And what was your deal, huh?" Valerie asked. Danny looked faintly offended at that.
"You think I have a problem?" He asked, sounding upset.
"I meant why were you late for class," Valerie clarified, glaring back into those blue eyes. "No reason to get so uppity, pal!" Instead of continuing the fight, as Valerie expected the boy to do, he sighed softly, looking a little downcast.
"Sorry," He apologized, "It's just that I've had a lot on my mind lately…" Valerie's glare softened at that, and she studied the boy curiously as they continued to jog in silence.
He was actually kind of cute, with his long, messy black hair and the bright blue eyes that contradicted his pale completion. He was just slightly taller then Valerie's five foot four, two or three inches more, if the ghost hunter had to wager a guess. There was something familiar about him, though Valerie couldn't put her finger on it. Almost like she'd met him before…
'Why do the cute ones have to be jerks, anyways?' Valerie wondered to herself, 'Either that or they have girlfriends…'
"Are you dating someone?" Valerie blurted out before she realized what she was doing, freezing once the question left her lips. Danny stumbled slightly as he jerked around to gape at Valerie, making her blush. "Look, I'm not interested, okay?" She snapped, glaring him as if daring the boy to question that, "I was just wondering is all…"
"Why would you care then?" Danny asked, sounding a little amused. When Valerie's glare darkened, the boy sighed in defeat. "No. I'm not exactly up to par with most people popularity-wise around here. What about you? You gotta boyfriend or something?"
"I've got a job," Valerie answered, "That's all I have time for right now,"
"Workaholic, huh?" Danny laughed, "Better be careful with that. It kills more people then you'd ever know."
'You'd be surprised.' Valerie thought dryly.
"And you?" Valerie asked, "If you don't have a girlfriend, what do you do with all your free time?" A strange look passed Danny's face at that as his smile fell away.
"…I'm looking for something," he answered at last.
"And that would be…?" Valerie asked, raising an eyebrow. Danny was quiet for a long time, and Valerie figured he wasn't going to answer when she finally hear his reply…
"Freedom," Danny told her softly, "I just wanna be free…" Valerie blinked at the vague answer.
"Free of what?" She asked, confused. Danny's grin returned, but it seemed to be missing something.
"Figure it out for yourself," He replied before speeding up his pace…
WoM- 'dizzy,' I think I've finally caught up with everything… Erk! Now I just hope I can get more time to get everything finished before I collapse… 'flops over in a dead sleep.'
Thanks to;
Light Dragon SunsSong, Ghost Writer's Assistant, SummersSixEcho, snowbell101, Moss Royal, epobbp, The Great Susinko, conan98002, Rakahn, Lumias, Petitio Principii, Lunaqua, Worker72, plastic curtains
Next update; March 12th
See you then!