Danny carefully observed the animals and the crowd from the relative safety and camouflage of the tree. More animals that had grown to enormous sizes appeared. The crowd of terrified students was frozen in fear.
He reached to his back. As his gloved hand came into contact with the smooth, cool, metal of the base of the Fenton Thermos, he smiled confidently, remembering he had left it strapped there after the ghost frog was removed.
Danny dove off the tree and into the ground, pushing forward with a burning momentum. As the blurry dark brown of the soil and rocks flashed by Danny listened for the booming, thudding sounds of movement above. A sound vaguely like a thundering, rumbling crash pushed down, seeming to shake the underground world around Danny. He pushed up, fists-first, into the bright world that was above ground.
He had come up behind a hissing, snarling, cat. Its tail whipped around wildly as it advanced on the students. Danny watched the pattern that the tail swished around in. He gradually pulled the thermos to his chest and uncapped it.
Danny thrust the thermos to the exact tip of the tail and it activated, sucking the large cat into the vacuum sealed interior. Just as the last of the creature's giant nose disappeared into the thermos with a slight pop, he slipped the cap on, flew up a few feet and became invisible.
The students watched as the blue light faded and the cat went with it. Blinking their vision back, they could see that nothing had been behind the cat.
Danny flew over to the rabbit that Tucker had spotted. He flew to its long ears that towered over its head and grabbed them. The rabbit was just about to bring a paw down on an unfortunate boy that had ventured too close.
The boy looked up at the rabbit's head. Something or someone was floating above its ears.
The rabbit shifted both red eyes to the source of the voice. Danny floated above it. The rabbit took its paw away from its former prey and swatted this black-and-white ear tier.
Danny waited as the paw came closer and tugged out the thermos at the precise moment. The paw bathed in blue light was tugged into the thermos, along with the rest of the rabbit, tied up ears and all.
-----
Mr Lancer stepped outside of the school building to see what was going on. The noise was not going to ruin the first-class dining in the Teacher's lounge. He found himself face-to-giant-pink-nose with a white mouse. He took a deep breath and looked up into the scarlet eyes.
"Of mice and Men!"
-----
The shadowy figure watched the screen as the now larger red dots moved in towards the centre of the coordinates. One disappeared. And another.
This wasn't meant to happen! It had earlier when one or two had been out and about but the power setting had been quite high. He had tested the mechanisms at this level in controlled and uncontrolled environments. They had worked fine then. It couldn't just be a power surge. Something else was at play here.
But what could be capable of jamming the signals, possibly making them seem as if they had disappeared right off the face of the Earth?
There was no time to lose thinking about it now. Something wasn't quite right and he couldn't just sit there and think.
He would have to check it out himself.
-----
Danny looked around, panting heavily. He had just finished removing a particularly difficult turtle when a cry reverberated around the school. It was, from what Danny faintly recalled, a book title.
Danny scanned the ground for any sign of him. Sure enough, there was Lancer cowering with arms over his face in front of a giant mouse. He invisibly flew towards the pair. The mouse brought its tail around to whip Lancer out of the way. He saw this and streamlined himself in the air. He rounded the mouse and headed to Lancer.
Lancer peeked out of the arm cocoon that he had bound his eyes in to see the tail just about to hit him. He took another deep breath, shut his eyes and waited for the impact.
It didn't come. Lancer opened his eyes. He was moving, floating, rushing. Something was carrying him. He looked down. He couldn't even see himself, let alone anything that could possibly be carrying him.
Danny swiftly removed Lancer to the safety of a nearby tree branch. He held the thermos up over his shoulder, uncapped it, aimed and threw it at the mouse.
The thermos stuck itself to the mouse and, with blue light lapping at the area where fur joined to metal, the mouse was pulled into the thermos.
-----
The figure watched from the dark depths of the woodland, his red eyes fixed on Danny Phantom. Danny was picking up the thermos which, as he had seen, had just finished off his mouse.
Even though the man had never seen Danny before in his life, something about him seemed familiar. Possibly too familiar.
The man whispered deeply to himself, "There is the problem."
-----
The Fenton Thermos waved around uncontrollably like a deflating balloon, engulfing the oversized mouse. With one final squeak of disapproval at being compressed into such a small space, the mouse was gone. The container then fell hole-down to the ground, abruptly lodging itself into the soft earth.
Danny finally approached the thermos. He firmly gripped the thermos with both hands and gave an almighty tug. Danny slipped, and let go of the now dislodged thermos, sending that through the air and tumbling back on to his back.
Danny got up, brushed the loose earth from his suit and floated over to the thermos. He picked it up and capped it, not noticing the clog of mud inside.
-----
The shadowy figure arrived back at his work station with nothing short of a glower on his face. He had to shut the whole process down quickly before the power seeking ghost could do any more damage to his operation.
He flipped a switch, pressed a few buttons and waited. He watched the screen with a silent impatience. The red dots soon shrunk before his eyes.
He sighed. If that other ghost hadn't interrupted his plot, everything would have run smoothly. Now, if the test run had been successful, he could be planning the real attack on this town. Instead, that ghost had ruined it, and probably would spoil an attempt at the vengeful destruction of the town.
Something wasn't right about that secretive spectre. Usually, one ghost would ignore another's plans. No ghost who knew the extent of his wrath would meddle in a plan he had thought up. That ghost was interfering, and as soon as he could figure out a plan to get rid of the ghost, he would be back on track.
Yet he couldn't shake the feeling he'd met that ghost before. He seemed so familiar; it felt like the shadowy figure actually had met the phantom. Or maybe it was all down to DNA. But he had never collected a ghost's DNA. He hadn't had a sample.
Or maybe it was that strange DNA. Maybe it was some kind of ghost tainted with human. Or human tainted with ghost.
"No, it couldn't be," he denied out loud, trying to stray away from the topic.
His thoughts dragged him back. It could.
He grabbed a box full of clinking glass tubes which had been sealed at both ends. He slowly opened it. Each tube glinted in the dim light. He smoothly pulled out the tube with the strange DNA. The strands of coal black hair shone in the dim light.
He grinned. "This is it. And I know just what to do with it."
Now all he needed was a plan.
-----
Danny surveyed the scene that was Casper High. Several animals still advanced on the students cowering in fear of them. Danny groaned. It would take him forever to clean this up. He watched a ferocious dog. It thrashed a huge white paw at Paulina. Danny sighed frustratedly, became intangible and sank into the ground.
Invisibly, he came up between the dog and Paulina. Red eyes glared at a close-to-tears Paulina. Large amounts of saliva dripped from between sharp teeth exposed in a growling snarl.
Danny grinned as an idea hit him. He silently drew a deep breath, became visible and yelled, "BOO!"
The dog's scarlet eyes widened in surprise. It took a few steps back before turning around and speeding away to hide, leaving Paulina cowering.
Danny didn't notice but all of the other animals that were left also ran into hiding. He only watched the dog for now. He followed it around a corner of the school, into a deserted, unseen place.
With a deep, quiet growl, the dog halted. It closed its eyes and started to shiver uncontrollably. The long claws on its paws dug into the ground as it clenched them. The growling stopped and it whimpered on a high note and pitch.