Sam and Danny went into the kitchen and began preparing dinner. Harry ascended the staircase and knocked on Jaime's door in the hopes of speaking to her and apologizing for his actions earlier that day at the mall.
"Who's there?" She asked.
"It's me, Harry." He heard her muffled sigh through the door.
"I guess you can come in." Harry entered the room and his first thought was that there had been some sort of struggle. All of the furniture was askew and most of the things normally littering her desk were now on the floor. He looked at her and noticed that she appeared as though she had been crying; her eyes were red and puffy, and her cheeks were moist.
"What do you want?" She asked tiredly.
"I want to apologize. I-"
"There's nothing to apologize for," she interrupted. "You were just trying to protect me, and I'm thankful for that."
"Yeah, but I took it too far. Just because I worry about you, doesn't mean I have to smother you. I'm sorry for not thinking about how my actions would affect you." He gave a weak chuckle, and extended his hand to her.
"Friends again?" She took the offered hand and shook it.
"As always. You need to get some friends your own age."
"Hey, it's not my fault Zach is visiting relatives in New York and Taylor is vacationing in Florida with her family right now."
"True. Are you going to tell them?"
"About what?" She slapped her forehead.
"About our powers, genius."
"Oh yeah, those. I'm not sure yet; It'll be tough to hide my powers from them, and I don't want to end up having to lie to my best friends, so I think that I should tell them early on so that they don't get suspicious."
"And you're sure you can trust them?"
"Well, I've known them for eight years now and they've seemed trustworthy, so I think so."
"Kids, dinner," Sam's voice floated up from downstairs.
"C'mon," he said, and the two of them left her room. They sat down at the table and dug into some of the delicious pasta that their parents had prepared.
"So, kids, when do you start school?" Danny asked.
"Both of us are set to start on September 2nd," Harry replied.
"So you still have two weeks of freedom left." It wasn't a question, but a statement of fact. They chucked.
"Did you really hate school that much as a kid, Dad?" he shuddered.
"You have no idea. My English teacher, Mr. Lancer was so evil."
"Lancer? That's the name of the vice principal. Bald, sharp beard, pot belly?"
"The very same. Wow, I can't believe he's still teaching. You'd think we would've convinced him to retire by graduation, right?" he asked, elbowing Sam in the arm.
"Yeah, we sure gave him a lot of grief. But he had it coming; he never respected my initiative to save the frogs."
"But he liked it when you changed the menu to all URV."
"Yeah, so that he could keep all of the meat for himself at the faculty buffet."
"True."
"You'd better not use your powers to prank him, young man," Sam warned.
"Trust me," Danny added, "whatever you try and do to him, I've already done. So don't waste your time trying." Harry and Jaime erupted into peals of laughter.
"Danny, you're supposed to deter them from pranking Lancer." He shrugged.
"You know it's true, though."
"Yeah, but you wailed on Dash a lot more than you did Lancer."
"Wait a minute, Dash Baxter?" Jaime asked.
"Yeah, why?" Sam returned. Harry and Jaime shot glances at each other.
"It's just…we met his kids today."
"I never knew that Dash had married," said Danny thoughtfully. "What happened at the mall with them?"
"Harry was staring at his daughter Katrina and her brother Josh poured his ice cream down his shirt," Jaime explained.
"Katrina? Then that must mean…" Sam began.
"Paulina." Danny finished. There was a short silence, and then suddenly Sam burst into raucous laughter.
"Like father like son," she choked out. Danny began blushing profusely.
"Hey, I married you, didn't I?" He replied as Sam calmed down.
"Yeah, I guess you did."
"Is Paulina Katrina and Josh's mom?" Jaime asked.
"Well, we think so," Danny replied.
"So how am I like you, Dad?" Harry inquired.
"I'll answer that one," Sam interrupted. "When we were freshmen Danny was obsessed with the most popular girl in school, someone named Paulina Sanchez. He would always ask her out, she would reject him, and then Dash and all of the other jocks would shove him into his locker or something."
"Hey, she did go out with me that one time…"
"Yeah, when she was possessed by a ghost." Harry and Jaime snorted.
"Yeah, well, if Katrina's anything like her mother then she'll fall in love with your ghost half, so you'll have to watch out for that," Danny warned his son.
"So she was in love with you, but with the wrong you."
"Basically. But the worst part was that I was too clueless to realize that the love of my life had been right under my nose the whole time," he said as he stole a kiss from Sam.
"Gross, guys, not at the table," Harry and Jaime began protesting at once. Danny and Sam just blushed and averted their gazes.
"So anyway…" Danny began in an attempt to break the awkward silence that had ensued. "I found that overshadowing seems to be the most effective mode of payback."
"Danny!"
"It's true! Yeah, ectoblasts are fun and destructive, but nothing gets to a jock or cheerleader more than embarrassment, and having them sing 'I'm a little teapot' and do the dance in the cafeteria during lunch is a great way to embarrass someone."
"Don't listen to your father, kids, you shouldn't seek revenge unless someone does something really nasty to you or someone you know." Danny sighed.
"I guess your mom's right. Revenge is something that I grew out of by the end of sophomore year, both because it's immature and because I ran out of pranks. Except for that one time right before spring break of senior year…"
"Yeah, but that was totally called for," Sam reasoned.
"I know. That's why I don't regret it."
"What happened?" Jaime asked.
"Dash tried to make a move on your mom, so I got Paulina to accuse him of sexually assaulting her."
"You're right, Josh's dad probably did deserve that," Harry mused.
"Not probably, definitely. Nobody makes a move on my Sam and gets away with it," Danny asserted as he stole another kiss. His kids made retching noises and excused themselves from the table.
Okay, a little intermission there. I think that I'll have them work with their powers a little more next chapter, but since I haven't begun to write it yet who knows for sure?
SAVE DANNY PHANTOM!