Tucker Foley was in graduate school at MIT. He was at the top of his class, mostly because he had so much experience integrating circuitry. He was revered in his fraternity for his ability to override electronic devices with his PDA, making the robots that his classmates built go on the fritz and perform random acts. "It's nothing compared to Skulker," he always said. This was received with awe even though nobody had any idea who, or what, Skulker was and Tucker never elaborated. He was in the common room of his frat house boasting to a gaggle of students when his cell phone rang. "Yeah, this is Tucker Foley…hey Danny! How is everything with you and Sam? Uh huh…uh huh…uh huh…WHAT? NO FREAKING WAY! THAT'S AMAZING! I always said that you two would end up together, but I didn't know that you would get so busy so quickly…" at this point he held the phone about a foot away from his head as his two best friends yelled into the phone. "Are you done yelling? I'm not sure, but I think that my hearing is starting to come back now…really? I'm honored. Really. That means a lot to me. I'll drop by to congratulate you in person as soon as I get a free weekend. Right now I'm telling a bunch of kids about the time Technus made a battle suit out of the Fenton RV and some stuff from a hardware store…no, they don't, but they think it's really cool how I kept overriding Skulker's exoskeleton with my PDA…you're right, a 400-pound gorilla is somewhat more effective…anyway, I gotta go. Talk to you later!" He hung up and turned to the rest of the students who were listening in, their eyes the size of dinner plates. "Gorilla?" one of them had the courage to ask weakly. "Don't ask…trust me, you don't want to know," the techno-geek responded with a smirk.
Back at their apartment, Danny hung up the kitchen phone and turned around to face his wife. "So you told him?" Sam asked, gesturing towards her belly.
"Yeah, and his reaction was typical Tuck-freak out and then give himself all the credit. He was in the middle of telling some students about the time that Technus upgraded."
"Did he blab about…you know…your secret?"
"He wouldn't do something like that. Tucker might have a big mouth, but he knows better than to say something about the fact that I'm Danny Phantom."
"How many other of our little 'adventures' has he described to his fan club?"
"Just the first time we ever fought Skulker."
"He probably gets a kick out of telling them how he can override Skulker's armor with his PDA."
"Yeah, apparently the technology that lets him do that also works on other robots as well, so he can manipulate his friends science projects. He's become really popular because of that."
"Did he tell them about Samson?"
"I think the only part of our adventure he related was the part involving the Ghost Zone's Greatest Hunter doing push-ups on his command."
"You know, if he gets too cocky I can always put that picture on the Internet."
"Picture?" Sam held up the picture of him and Tucker sleeping at the zoo.
"Yeah, but it would embarrass me as well!"
"Nah, I can always Photoshop Dash onto it instead of you if we need to."
"Great, we can embarrass both MIT's top student and the Jets first-string quarterback at the same time. You're so evil," he said as he gave her a small kiss. She giggled and slipped out from under his embrace.
"C'mon, or we'll be late for work," she said and grabbed her car keys.
"Work," he mumbled under his breath. "I marry the cellophane-twirling deli-toothpick heiress worth millions and I still have to go to work." He didn't let her hear this, though, and plastered a somewhat convincing, weak smile on his face as he picked up his own keys.
Ironically enough, Danny worked at Axion labs for none other than Damian Grey. During college he had realized that he owed the man so much after ruining his life, and especially since Valerie and her father hadn't run him out of town after she saw him transform in an alley once. They had accepted him and his apologies, but he wanted to do more for them. So, he talked with his parents and arranged for them to build Axion it's own ghost shield that operated independently of the one at FentonWorks. Then, he joined the company's security branch and specialized in issues involving ghosts. True, he didn't have his parents' expertise in inventing ghost hunting technology, but he could still operate most of the equipment. Valerie had kept up ghost hunting, but once her identity of the Red Hunter was exposed, she was immediately promoted by Nasty Burger Inc. to protect their headquarters in Boston. Last Danny heard, she and Tucker were going steady. Danny drove into the employee's parking lot, entered the building, and went into his office. Almost immediately, he got a memo asking him to come to the scanner room in which statistics for the ghost shield were located. The shield went up every night, and scanners monitored its surface and recorded the signature and velocity of every ectoplasmic manifestation that came into direct contact with it. As soon as he walked into the room, he was patted on the back by Damien. "How was your honeymoon, son?"
"It was really…eventful."
"She's pregnant, isn't she?"
"Yes, sir." Damien smiled knowingly and led Danny over to a large monitor.
"We had contact three times within the same thirty second interval."
"The power level looks the same all three times. The most logical possibility is that a ghost bumped into the shield and got angry. Then, it hit the shield a couple more times to try and break it and, upon realizing that it couldn't penetrate it, flew around it."
"That's what we thought as well, but our night security guard happened to be there at the time, and he said that there were three distinct ghosts."
"What did he say they looked like?"
"He said that they looked like three green vultures, and he could have sworn that he heard one of them muttering something about gefilte fish."
"Plasmius," Danny muttered, his eyes narrowed.
"You know who's responsible?"
"Vlad Plasmius. The three ghosts are his servants and he sends them on grunt work." Damien, who Danny had shown his records on all of the ghosts he had fought, new all about Plasmius and his powers.
"Couldn't he just teleport into the labs instead of trying to get his grunts to try and break the shield?"
"He could, but you've just stumbled on one of Vlad's greatest weaknesses-his dependence on servants. He won't do any of the dirty work himself when he could just send some weaker ghost to do it for him. This means that we can manipulate the servants and take advantage of him. I'll try and locate the birds before they can report back to Vlad. Oh, and if your sensors catch Phantom, try not to shoot him out of the sky again," Danny said, a grin playing on his lips.
"It's not our fault the defense system was on autopilot and hooked up directly to the scanners! Besides, I've already entered your ecto-signature into the mainframe so that the system disregards your presence, even if the scanner picks it up." They were referring to the first time Danny had taken care of a job for Axion. He was examining the exterior of the building as Danny Phantom for traces of Technus, whose signature had been monitored nearby. Unfortunately, the scanners found Danny's signature and the building's defense system had automatically started shooting about ten massive ecto-guns at him. Danny phased into the building and changed back just in the nick of time. Luckily, only Damien was in the room that Danny had entered, so his secret was still safe from the general populace.
Danny, sill smiling, faded out of visibility. Damien pressed the button that activated the security cameras outside of the lab. After a couple of minutes, Danny Phantom entered the field of view. Damien watched as the halfa floated around the exterior of the building, looking for clues. He spotted a large tree a few hundred yards away from the premises. He created a large shield of green energy and caused it to expand outwards. The shield harmlessly passed through any real-world objects (such as the tree) and only touched any ghost matter that it came into contact with (such as the three ghost vultures in the tree). Apparently they were debating whether or not to enter the building by day, since the shield was down. It was a simple matter for Danny to suck the three of them into the Fenton Thermos, and he immediately became invisible as soon as the job was completed.
Danny Fenton re-entered the security room that was now full of spectators watching the tape of Phantom working. They stared in awe at the spherical shield that he had summoned. "Whoa, Phantom's got a new power…" one said. When the clip continued to show Danny suck the ghosts into the thermos, another employee replied, "Yeah, but that trick never gets old." Danny coughed loudly, causing everyone in the room to turn around. He grinned and shook the thermos that contained the three ghost vultures. The original speaker looked incredulously at Danny. "I still don't understand it, Fenton. Why is it that Phantom always brings the ghosts that he catches back to you?" he asked. Danny just shrugged, handed the thermos to Damien, and returned to his cubicle.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. There weren't any ghostly encounters, so after he finished making sure the acto-guns that the security guards wielded were in working order, Danny pretty much had the day to himself. He strolled around the labs, looking at some of the interesting inventions that the scientists were working on. That afternoon, he offered to guide a class tour through the labs. He realized with a shock that the class he was guiding was the freshman class of Casper High, and that they were being chaperoned by none other than Mr. Lancer. Before he could dodge away from the incoming students, he was frozen in place by the cry, "Catch-22! If it isn't my former student, Mr. Fenton!" He put on a jovial face and turned around to greet his ex-teacher.
"Hey, Mr. Lancer, how's it going?"
"Oh, everything is just fine with me, Mr. Fenton. How have you been?"
"I've been doing pretty well since graduation."
"And what exactly do you do here?"
"I work with the security branch. I specialize in anti-ghost technology."
"Ah, so you've followed in your parents footsteps in inventing new devices?"
"Not exactly. I usually monitor the upkeep of the security guards' weapons, and sometimes deal with ghosts that decide to pay us a visit."
"I remember reading in the papers about a ghost dog that destroyed the labs several years back, right before Damien lost his job. Has that spirit come back?"
"Cujo? Nah, he disappeared for good the first time and hasn't been heard from since."
"Well, seeing as you named him from a Stephen King novel, I suppose that my lessons made some sort of impression on you. That is, when you were able to stay awake through them." The students listening in on the conversation laughed at this. One blonde student that was wearing the traditional Ravens red-and-white leather jacket even had the audacity to point openly. Danny smiled mischievously; the boy's resemblance to Dash was too striking for him to pass up an opportunity such as this one.
"Hey, you, come stand over here." Danny said to the student, pointing to a circular tile on the ground. "I want to show you guys one of our newest security features. When the system is activated and a ghost flies over the circle, it traps the ghost and holds it until the guards or Phantom can arrive and put it into a Fenton Thermos." Danny went into the adjacent (and thankfully deserted) room in order to activate the alarm system. After he did so, he morphed into Danny Phantom, turned invisible, and flew back out into the hallway. He thought, It's lucky that only the exterior scanners have been calibrated to disregard my ecto-signature. The interior models, on the other hand…
"Hey, wait a minute, how would the alarm work on me if I'm not a ghost?" The boy whined to Danny's retreating form. Suddenly, the students heard a humming noise as the security system activated. As they all looked around nervously, nobody noticed the boy's eyes flash green for a minute. Immediately, two small ghost shields formed that blocked the hallway on either side. An ectogun popped out of the wall and shot a blob of ectoplasmic goo at the unsuspecting jock, pinning him to the opposite wall in a massive clump of green goo. His eyes flashed green for another second, and then Danny Phantom became visible, standing in the middle of the hallway.
"Is there a ghost in the area?" he asked in his most heroic voice.
"N-no, Mr. Phantom, sir, we think the scanners just overreacted and fired on Billy here by accident." One of the terrified students said. The ghostly superhero shrugged.
"In that case, my work here is done." He said, and became invisible again. Three seconds later, Danny Fenton came out of the adjacent room.
"Did everything work out alright?" He asked.
"Mr. Fenton, I think that you need to recalibrate your scanners, they just fired on a human by accident."
"Well, they were designed by my dad; you know how jumpy he can be when it comes to ghosts." Mr. Lancer shuddered at the thought.
"Why, what happened, Mr. Fenton?" asked one of the students.
"Have you ever heard of the Fenton Ghost Peeler?" They all nodded.
"Well, my parents are Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, the inventors of that and any other piece of ghost hunting equipment that you see has the name 'Fenton' on it. My dad can be a bit trigger-happy (to say the least). A few weeks after the massive ghost invasion of 2003, which you all should have learned about in current events, Casper High tried having ghost drills. Mr. Lancer paraded through the halls dressed up as a ghost to scare the kids into doing the drill. Unfortunately, my parents were still patrolling the school, and when my dad saw Mr. Lancer, he overreacted and hit him with the ghost peeler. The costume came off, sure, but so did most of his clothes. Mr. Lancer ended up standing in the hallway in his underwear when all of the students were right there." The students fell down on the ground; they were laughing so hard. Mr. Lancer turned a bright shade of red and searched around for a topic that would embarrass Danny almost as severely as he had been embarrassed. His eyes alighted on the ring adorning Danny's left hand.
"So, did you and Miss Manson finally tie the knot?" It was Danny's turn to blush, although his face took on a slightly darker hue that the educators.
"We got back from our honeymoon yesterday," he muttered. Lancer turned around to enlighten the students as to what the two men were talking about.
"Mr. Fenton and another student, Miss Manson, were good friends back in high school. They were obviously in love with each other, but both were too thickheaded to admit it. Their potential relationship and whether or not it would advance was the cause of more ongoing bets than any other event in the school's history. When they finally announced their feelings for each other in their senior year, I won five hundred smackers off Ms. Tetzlaff." The students all turned to face Danny, waiting for an appropriate comeback.
"Well, it did advance, and we got married after we graduated from college and our first child is due in August."
"You're pregnant?" Mr. Lancer asked incredulously. "Already? YES! I just won another five hundred dollars! Take that, Tetzlaff!" He cartwheeled out of the building and left Danny and the rest of the students staring at his retreating form.
"Okaaay," he said. "Anyway, we've been working on some great new inventions here at Axion Labs. In fact, I had nothing to do this afternoon so I really just walked around the place a few times and looked at some of the things that the scientists are working on. Com on, I'll show you some of our newest products." With that, he led the students around the lab complex. His day was finished after the tour ended, so he got in his car, left the premises, and came home to the love of his life.
SAVE DANNY PHANTOM!