Danny Phantom: Youth

Part 2

Sam didn't hear the tiger enter, as it didn't bother opening the door. The tearstains had dried up, and she had been just about to exit the toilet cubicle she was in when the beast's great head suddenly materialised in front of her. It seemed to take an instant dislike to her; its muzzle wrinkled back over its long sharp teeth and it growled menacingly.

"Aah!" shrieked Sam, taking a step back and stumbling into a sitting position on the toilet.

She shrank back fearfully as the tiger stepped further into the cubicle and lowered its body, ready to strike. However its expression of hostility quickly changed to one of sheer surprise as it was sucked backwards out of the cubicle. When Sam pushed the door open she saw, unsurprisingly, Danny floating about five feet in the air with the Fenton Thermos in his hand and a triumphant smile on his face.

"Sam!" said Danny, floating to the ground. He shoved the Fenton Thermos inside his jumpsuit and then took on his regular human form. "Are you ok?"

"I'm fine," replied Sam, though the tremble in her voice betrayed the lingering feelings of shock. "Thanks."

"And what about your, um, cramps?" Danny asked tentatively.

Sam rolled her eyes. "There were no cramps, Danny."

"Oh!" He was genuinely surprised. "So why did you…?"

Sam raised her eyebrows.

"Why did you run off to the bathroom like that?"

"Oh, well, I…"

"You're not still mad at me about Paulina, are you?"

Sam's face fell into a scowl. She was madder than he knew about Paulina – madder than she wanted him to know. "Not everything is about you, Danny," she snapped.

"So is it something else?" He seemed genuinely concerned, and genuinely without a clue as to what was wrong. "Come on – you can tell me."

Sam bit her lip, not knowing what to say. To her relief the door flew open and Danny, not wanting to be caught in the girls' restroom, immediately morphed back into his ghost form.

"Ooh, Inviso-Bill – did you save us from the ghost tiger?" Paulina asked eagerly.

"Um, yeah, I guess so," said Danny, suddenly feeling the need to avoid Sam's eye.

"Oooooh, you're so brave," crooned Paulina, slithering up beside Danny. She then seemed to notice Sam for the first time. "You can leave now, unpopular girl," she ordered, jerking a thumb towards the door.

"Er, Sam," said Danny. "You don't have to…"

"Too late," scowled Sam, her heavy combat boots marching her towards the door. "I'm gone."

"There, that's better," Paulina smiled serenely, pushing her body up against Danny's. "Now we're all alone, just like last night."

"Er, Paulina… you shouldn't treat people like that, you know," Danny ventured timidly.

Paulina looked blank. "Like what?" she asked.

"Well, like… like that!" Danny waved his hands vaguely in the direction Sam had just left. "Kicking Sam out of the restroom like that – it was rude. She had cramps, you know," he added stiffly.

Paulina scoffed. "No she didn't. We all use that line on the male teachers all the time. And besides, she's nobody. What does it matter?"

"What does it matter if you hurt her feelings?" Danny said ironically.

"Exactly," smiled Paulina, apparently placated. "Now stop talking and kiss me, Inviso-Bill!"

"Um, I will," said Danny, placing a restraining finger on her puckered lips. "But first, this Inviso-Bill thing… it has to stop."

"But that's your name," reasoned Paulina.

"No it's not. The press gave me that name."

"Oh. So what is your name?"

"Um…" Danny thought for a moment, wondering what to tell her. Danny Phantom was a perfectly fine name, but just too obvious to leave the circle of Sam, Tucker and himself. "You can just call me Stud Muffin."

Paulina looked dubious. "Seriously?"

"Well… how about Hunky?"

"How about you kiss me!" countered Paulina, flinging her arms around his neck.

Inevitably Danny gave in, and Paulina kissed him. However it didn't last long. Danny kept his lips pressed against hers as she tried to pull back from him, until finally she was forced to push him away.

"I'm sorry, Ghost Boy," she said. "I've got to get back to class."

"Oh yeah," Danny realised. "I guess Mr. Lancer… um, I mean, whatever your teacher is called… will be missing you."

"Oh, that's ok," giggled Paulina. "I'll tell him I had cramps. Bye-bye, Hunky."

"Great," muttered Danny, as Paulina skipped happily from the room. "What am I gonna tell him?"

"Dear dear, Daniel, another detention," a mocking voice came out of nowhere, making Danny jump out of his skin.

"Plasmius!" exclaimed Danny, as Vlad's ghost form materialised in front of him. "I should have known you'd be lurking around here somewhere! How much did you see?"

"Enough," Vlad smiled sinisterly. "The fight with my dear pet kitty, the rescue of your disturbed little friend, the kiss with the pretty girl…"

"Yeah," Danny said coolly. "She really digs me. Lucky my accident didn't leave me disfigured and cause the love of my life to slip through my fingers, huh? AAAHH!"

He cried out in pain and surprise as he was suddenly overwhelmed by Vlad's red ectoplasmic energy, twenty years more powerful than his own. He struggled vainly, unable to fight back, until he slumped to the floor and became too weak to sustain his ghost form.

"Stop, please!" wailed Danny, the breath choking visibly from his mouth.

Vlad stopped the assault and let out a laugh of pure evil. "Danny Fenton begging for mercy – what a beautiful sound."

"Jesus Christ," breathed Danny, rising shakily into a sitting position.

"Did that hurt?" Vlad said nastily. "You haven't learned, have you – your power is nothing to mine. You would be wise not to hurt my feelings like that, Daniel."

Danny said nothing. He rubbed his smarting limbs, glaring at Vlad from underneath a fringe of raven hair.

"So." Vlad calmed his tone of voice. "She's the love of your life, is she?"

"I don't know," retorted Danny. "I'm fourteen."

"But right now…?"

"Right now? Sure." He didn't like answering personal questions from Vlad, but that last attack was very much fresh in his memory.

"Interesting…"

"You'd better leave Paulina alone, Plasmius!"

"Or what?" demanded Vlad. "You can never stop me, Daniel. Of course, my offer is still open… if you want to renounce your father and learn how to really use those powers…"

"Dude, no way!"

"Very well. I'll be in touch."

Vlad became invisible, and Danny assumed that he had left. At any rate he could no longer see his own breath. He got shakily to his feet and made for the door, hoping that no one was outside to see him leaving the girls' restroom.

x x x

"It's perfectly simple!" bristled Sam. "When Kathy Two's father died his estate went to Kathy's closest male relative, and since her husband had died that only left his father, Heathcliff, so…"

She stopped talking when the door swung open and Danny limped into the room, arms clasped across his stomach.

"Where have you been, Fenton?" demanded Mr. Lancer. "This discussion was resumed twenty minutes ago."

"I was in the bathroom," Danny said feebly. It was perfectly true, of course, and he had told Mr. Lancer he needed to go.

"Well," Lancer went on, "Miss Manson was just explaining to us why Wuthering Heights is a critique of patriarchal society in Victorian England."

"So," ventured Star, the fairly pretty blonde who enjoyed tailing Paulina. "Kathy's father's estate went to her father-in-law, even though Kathy was still alive?"

"Hmm?" Sam had forgotten all of the last twenty minutes, and was gazing anxiously at Danny. He was slumped in his chair, still holding himself, looking troubled and in physical pain. "Oh." She snapped back to reality. "Yeah."

"But that's not fair," objected Star.

Sam scowled. "That's the whole point."

"Hey, Danny!" hissed Tucker, as the discussion laboured on. "You ok, man?"

Danny shook his head.

"You need to go to the nurse's office?"

"No."

Danny sat up, beginning to feel a little more comfortable now, physically at least. However he was still feeling uneasy in his mind, as he had been all day, but now he feared for Paulina as well as for himself. He attempted to cut a glance at her, but Sam intercepted the look.

When recess finally came around, Sam and Tucker were both anxious to hear what had happened to Danny. He and Tucker sat at one of the picnic benches, backs to the table, while Sam paced anxiously in front of them.

"I thought you'd come back after Paulina showed up," she said.

"Why did you think he'd come back then?" asked Tucker.

"They were making out in the bathroom."

"Oh. Neat!"

"There was someone else in there with us," Danny cut in. "It was Vlad." He went on to tell the rest of the story, though he omitted the detail about naming Paulina as the love of his life. "I think Plasmius is going to try to use Paulina to get to me," he said carefully. "You know… because he saw us together."

Sam stopped pacing. "Did he say that?" she asked.

"Well, more or less."

"You'll have to stop seeing her, then."

Danny blinked. "I… I can't! Er, I mean… it wouldn't do any good. Plasmius knows how I feel about her now, and it's no use pretending I'm not interested anymore because he also knows you can't just switch it on and off."

"It was a stupid thing to do in the first place, getting involved with her," Sam persisted. "I mean, what's so special about Paulina, anyway?"

"She's hot," Danny replied at once.

"Yeah, and that's all she is. Well, besides being rude and selfish and obnoxious and… and… didn't you hear the way she talked to me in the bathroom?"

"Yes," Danny said impatiently. "I'm sorry about that. I told her she shouldn't have done it, and I know she can be pretty insensitive sometimes. But she was… you know… touching me." His voice began to falter. "And when I'm with her…"

"All the blood powering your brain rushes somewhere else," Sam said dryly.

Danny sighed. "Sure, yeah, that's it."

"I expected more from you, Danny. To like a girl just for her body is shallow, not to mention deeply sexist."

"Sam, stop!" begged Danny. "Forget about Paulina, ok? I got a serious problem: Vlad. Ok, so the last few times we met I managed to get him off my back for a little while, but the guy is never going to leave me alone! And however powerful I get, he'll always be twenty years ahead of me. What am I going to do?"

"You need to, like, banish him to another dimension or something," ventured Tucker.

"Thanks, Tuck, that was really helpful," Sam said sarcastically. She sat down on the bench beside Danny and asked gently, "How are you feeling now, Danny? You looked terrible when you walked into class."

"I was still smarting a little then," Danny said dismissively. "I'm fine now."

"I know!" exclaimed Tucker. "You should pretend to cross over to the dark side, and let Vlad teach you how to reach your full potential. And then when you're all powerful you can turn round and go, 'Ha! I was fooling you all along, Plasmius!' and then blast him with a supercharged ecto-grinade."

"Well that's dishonest," remarked Sam.

"And I don't like it," added Danny. "Placing myself in Vlad's hands… doesn't sound like such a good idea."

The bell sounded, signifying that the second half of the morning's teaching was about to begin.

"Are you sure you're ok, Danny?" asked Sam, as she rose to her feet. "You don't want me to take you to the nurse?"

"I'm fine," Danny insisted. "Let's just get to class."

x x x

Danny spent the rest of the day distracted, particularly after Paulina had left the school and he had to stay for his detention. She could be in danger from Vlad without him around to protect her.

"All right, Fenton," said Lancer. "I want five hundred words on why it is inappropriate for male students to cut class to spend time in the bathroom."

Danny raised his eyebrows. "Are you serious?"

"Five hundred words, Fenton."

It was nearing four thirty when Danny was finally allowed to leave. He found Sam and Tucker waiting for him outside, and smiled at the welcome sight.

"What took you so long?" asked Tucker.

"Lancer wanted five hundred words on why it's inappropriate for male students to cut class to spend time in the bathroom. I had some trouble thinking of things to say. So how's Paulina?"

"I tailed her until she went home," said Tucker. Danny had asked him to do this before they parted ways at the end of school. "She was fine, last time I saw her."

Danny looked worried. "But she might not be fine now."

"You could always go ghost and fly into her house to see what she's up to," said Sam. "You might be lucky enough to catch her in the shower."

Her sarcastic tone was completely lost on Danny. "That's a great idea!" he enthused. "I'm going ghost!"

Danny Phantom flew to Paulina's house and in through her open bedroom window. Paulina, who was painting her toenails, looked terrified for a moment – but her expression softened when she saw who the intruder was.

"Ooh, Inviso-Bill, you're insatiable!"

"Er, hi, sorry," Danny said awkwardly. "I just came to see if you were all right."

"All the better for seeing you," crooned Paulina. "Would you like to paint my nails for me?"

"Um…"

"I was going to go to a movie with Star after I finished painting my nails, but if you'd rather I stayed here with you…"

"I'd rather you didn't go out," Danny admitted.

"Well then come over here and let me fling my arms around your neck."

"Um… sure, great."

x x x

"How long as he been in there?" asked Sam.

Tucker glanced at his watch. "About half an hour."

They had been waiting for Danny across the street from Paulina's house. Danny had said he'd be right out, but for the last half hour he had been very much in. Sam glanced down at the notebook in her hand. She had been inspired to write a few lines of angsty Goth poetry while she waited.

"I mean, he knows we're here, right?" Sam went on. "He wouldn't go home invisible so we didn't notice him, would he?"

"That would be a weird thing to do," remarked Tucker.

They waited a few more minutes before Danny suddenly materialised next to them, having flown from Paulina's house invisible, and changed into his human form.

"What were you doing in there?" demanded Sam.

"I had to stay with her," Danny said defensively. "Otherwise she would have gone out."

"You've got lipstick all over your face – you look like a cheap whore," Sam said scathingly. "You've been kissing her again. I'll bet you only left because her mom called her for dinner."

Danny looked at his feet.

"Speaking of dinner," said Tucker, "I gotta go. I'll catch you guys later, ok?"

He sloped off, not sorry to get away from the atmosphere. Sam and Danny stood in silence for several minutes. It was beginning to get dark, and their breath spiralled visibly on the cold air.

"I wrote a poem," Sam said at last.

"Oh." Danny didn't know what else to say.

"I'd love to know what you think of it."

"Oh, sure, ok. Let's see it."

Sam handed her notebook to Danny, open at a page on which were scrawled the lines:

Malevolent beauty
Drips its poison onto the roots of friendship,
Love's fragile flower
Wilts in darkness.

"That's really great, Sam," Danny enthused. "If you like that sort of thing."

"Don't you like that sort of thing?"

"Well… I'm not a Goth."

"So I guess you can't infer the meaning."

"There's a meaning? I thought all Goth poetry was just like, everything's bad."

Sam snatched back her notebook. "God, Danny, you're so insensitive!"

"Insensitive?" echoed Danny. He sounded positively shocked. "Me?"

"Yes, you! You're so wrapped up in yourself you don't even notice how anyone else is feeling, never mind care!"

"Jeez, Sam, you're beginning to sound just like Jazz."

"I'm going home."

"Hey wait!" called Danny, running to catch up with Sam as she marched off down the street. "Let me walk you home. It's dark – anything could happen."

"I can take care of myself, Danny."

"I can't let you walk home in the dark on your own."

"Why?" demanded Sam. "Because I'm a girl?"

"Well… yeah."

"Just leave me alone, Danny, ok?"

He stopped just underneath a lamppost, intending to let her walk to the end of the street and then give her an invisible escort home. However he became distracted when he saw wisps of blue breath trailing from his mouth. He looked around, preparing to go ghost, but no paranormal being was immediately obvious and soon his ghost sense subsided altogether. Danny morphed into his ghost form anyway, became invisible and followed Sam at a discreet distance.

x x x

"I'm home," announced Sam, as she began to trudge upstairs.

"Your dinner's all ready for you, honey," her mother said brightly.

"I'm not hungry."

"Oh Sam, you have to eat!"

"I said I'm not hungry."

Sam went up to her room and closed the door. She didn't want to cry again. She had done more than enough crying at school, just before that tiger attack. She blinked back the tears and concentrated on the part of her that felt angry – the part that didn't want to weep with frustration.

"Tut-tut, little girl, you shouldn't walk home on your own at this late hour."

Sam jumped on hearing the disembodied voice somewhere in front of her, and looked sharply around the room. She had only to wait a moment before a familiar figure appeared in front of her, a low chuckle escaping from its evil smile.

"Plasmius!" exclaimed Sam. "What are you doing here? Danny's gone home."

"I'm glad," said Vlad. "I am here for you, my troubled young friend. Now do yourself a favour and don't struggle. I wouldn't want to hurt you too badly. Well… not yet, anyway."

"Are you insane? What the hell are you doing?" screeched Sam, as Vlad stretched out his hands and moved menacingly towards her. "Get the hell away from me, you creep! HEEEELP!"

x x x

Paulina, meanwhile, was experiencing a similar problem in her own bedroom. She was being attacked by three green vultures, each one trying to get a grip on one of her arms or legs.

"Let go of me, you weird ghost birds!" she whined irritably. "You're ruining my manicure!"

"So stay still, toots," advised one of the vultures. "Look, you're coming with us whether you like it or not."

"You'll never get away with this!" threatened Paulina. "Inviso-Bill will save me!"

"You hope," another vulture intoned ominously.

Paulina screamed as she felt herself lifted off the ground. Two vultures held onto her shoulders with their talons; the other had a grip on her ankle. When the birds became incorporeal, so did Paulina, and she was whisked through her bedroom wall into the cold night air.

x x x

"Sam!" A motorised wheelchair containing a squat elderly woman brandishing a baseball bat burst through Sam's bedroom door. "I'll save you! Let me at 'em!"

"It's all right, um… Grandma," Sam said, her voice sounding strangely distorted. "It was only a spider."

"A spider?" Grandma frowned suspiciously. "Since when are you afraid of spiders?"

"Oh, well, I…"

The somewhat poor explanation was cut off as Sam's father appeared behind her grandmother. "Sam, honey? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine… Dad," said Sam, still talking strangely. "Now can you please leave me alone, both of you?"

"Your mother wants you downstairs for dinner, honey," said Sam's father.

"I said I'm not hungry. Now get out."

"But honey…"

"I said GET OUT!"

The sheer force of Sam's voice seemed to propel both her father and grandmother backwards, simultaneously shutting the bedroom door on them. Vlad then smiled knowingly to himself as he walked, in Sam's body, towards the window.

"Unsuspecting fools," he muttered to himself. Then, glancing up, he saw his three hench-vultures carrying a struggling Paulina in the vague direction of the Fentons' home, and ultimately their Ghost Portal. "Ah, excellent. Once I have taken this one to join her, all will be in readiness for young Daniel."

Vlad stepped out of Sam's body, leaving her momentarily drained and disorientated. He took advantage of this moment and whisked her into his arms, clamping a hand over her mouth in case she decided to try calling for help again.

"Mmmm mmm!" Sam exclaimed vehemently.

"Do not worry, my dear," crooned Vlad, as he prepared to take off into the night sky. "You will see your friend Daniel shortly."

x x x

Danny had been eating dinner while all of this was going on. As he chewed his food he worried about whether Paulina was all right, in between wondering what possible reason Sam could have to call him insensitive. He could only assume it was some kind of girl problem involving hormones.

When he went up to his room after dinner, with the intention of catching up on his homework, Danny found an unwelcome visitor waiting for him on the windowsill.

"Jesus, a ghost vulture!" he exclaimed, a trail of blue following the words from his mouth. "I'm going gho- "

"Not so fast, kiddo," the vulture interrupted calmly. "I'm only here to deliver a message."

"Oh, you're one of Vlad's minions," Danny realised. "Of course, duh. What kind of a message?"

The vulture jumped off the windowsill, flew a couple of yards across the room and dropped a lock of black hair at Danny's feet.

"It's hair," Danny remarked distastefully, crouching to take a closer look at the token.

"Not just any hair," the bird said triumphantly. "That belongs to your girlfriend Paulina. It's visible proof that Vlad is holding her hostage, and if you ever want to see her alive again you'll have to follow me into the Ghost Zone."

"What?" exclaimed Danny. "Damn it! I knew something like this was going to happen! But… how can I be sure you're not lying?"

"That's her hair."

"It could be anyone's hair."

"Hmm… I guess you're right," the vulture conceded. "But are you prepared to take that chance?"

Danny sighed. "I guess not. All right, let's go to the basement. Be invisible, ok?"

"Sure thing, ghost kid."

x x x

Sam awoke with the feeling of having been under a strong general anaesthetic. She didn't remember it, but she assumed Vlad must somehow have managed to sedate her before brining her here… wherever "here" was. She blinked a few times as her eyes adjusted to the light. The first thing she noticed was that she was surrounded by bars, and when she looked up she saw that these came together some distance above her head to form a circular structure.

Great, I'm in a giant birdcage, thought Sam, as she began to test the bars. They were thin enough for her to wrap her hands around them comfortably, but she couldn't shift the metal even slightly, and she hadn't expected to. Then she noticed a similar – probably identical – cage a little to her left. She walked towards it and peered through the two sets of bars at its occupant. Someone was sitting on the floor of the cage, leaning against the bars and examining her fingernails with interest.

"Paulina?" Sam asked incredulously.

Paulina looked up. "Oh," she said disinterestedly. "It's you."

"What the hell is going on here?"

"How should I know?"

"Are you just going to sit there?" demanded Sam. She tugged experimentally on the bars immediately in front of her, and then set to work testing other parts of the structure for weaknesses. "We have to get out of here!"

"Calm down, don't be such a panic merchant," Paulina said breezily. "Inviso-Bill will be here to save me any minute, and he might take you along too."

"Of course he'd rescue me if he was here!" bristled Sam. "But he isn't here! We're not helpless, Paulina. We have to get ourselves out of this. You can't get through life expecting some guy to come and save you."

Paulina laughed. "Is that so? Come on, Sam, admit it: you love it when Inviso-Bill saves you."

"I do not!"

"Oh yes you do. It gets you all hot under the collar, doesn't it?"

"It certainly does not!" snapped Sam. "No self-respecting woman enjoys being rescued these days."

"Oh, uh-huh, whatever."

"Look, are you gonna help me bust out of here or what?"

"We can't get out of here by ourselves," Paulina insisted. "Look at this place. It's like a ghost's lair or something. Only the ghost boy can get us out of here."

It occurred to Sam that she hadn't taken a close look at where she was, as Paulina had suggested, quite likely because she knew she wouldn't like whatever she saw. She realised, however, that she would have to face it sometime. She tugged her gaze away from Paulina, in the direction of a slight warmth she realised she was feeling on her left-hand side.

Sam saw that both her cage and Paulina's were situated dangerously close to the edge of a yawning ravine, on the opposite side of which was just visible another, narrower looking cliff. The warmth Sam was feeling was explained by what was inside the ravine: a writhing, bubbling sea of molten lava. Sam gulped.

"Paulina," she hissed.

Paulina yawned. "What?"

"Haven't you noticed the lava?"

"Sure," shrugged Paulina. "But Inviso-Bill wouldn't let anything happen to me."

Sam sucked in her breath, and then looked around for further clues as to her possible fate. Suspended some distance above the cages were two hooks, one tied to each end of a perfectly balanced horizontal metal pole. Sam saw that this was held by a precarious looking rope, which seemed to disappear into the darkness above them. Everything visible in this place went on and on until it was consumed by darkness, except for the lava, which glowed menacingly.

"Paulina!" Sam squeaked nervously. "This looks pretty serious! Inviso-Bill isn't that powerful yet – he might not be able to save us on his own!"

Paulina scowled. "And what do you know about Inviso-Bill? He's my boyfriend."

Sam scowled back, momentarily forgetting her terror.

"And," added Paulina, "I happen to know he's the most powerful superhero in the whole world. So there."

If Sam had a retort she never had a chance to say it, for at that moment she was distracted by the sound of air on outspread wings as a green ghost vulture swooped onto the scene. She noticed then that the vulture was being followed by a familiar jumpsuited figure, and her spirits rose considerably. Danny Phantom was on the other side of the ravine, so far away Sam that couldn't see him clearly. As far she could tell, he didn't seem to have spotted either her or Paulina at all.

To be continued…