Chapter 283: Friends?

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"Valerie!"

Valerie nearly fell off her hoverboard. Not that she was over anything particularly dangerous. A downside – a massive downside – of having her identity revealed as a minor (in both senses of the word) celebrity was that the so-called responsible adults wouldn't let her do anything.

Where were they when the town was getting overrun by ghosts? Huh? Where was the 'let the adults handle it' gung-ho attitude back then, when the school was getting attacked so often that they had to have a safety assembly specifically about the ghosts? Where were they when the Fentons and the GIW were tearing up the roads and blasting holes in buildings?

Okay, so, the GIW might have been a chilling factor, there, but still. Danny had been an obvious child even as Phantom. He didn't even wear a mask like she did.

Speaking of Danny…

"What're you doing here?" asked Valerie. "I thought you were out looking for Freakshow."

"I was," said Danny, floating up next to her. "We found him." He gestured for them to go higher, farther away from the people picking melons off the vines on top of the tower.

"You aren't fighting those giant monsters, either," said Valerie.

"They aren't really a problem right now," said Danny. "They were under Freakshow's control. Actually, I'm surprised you aren't there."

Valerie crossed her arms. "They wouldn't let me. Made me help out here."

"They?"

"Dad. And Ishiyama."

"And you listened?"

"It's different," said Valerie, feeling like she had to defend herself. "It's different when everyone knows who you are."

Danny tilted his head, green eyes bright. "Yeah," he said. "It is, isn't it?"

"You never answered me, anyway. Why are you here? What do you want?"

"Well," said Danny. "Freakshow had a lot of… stuff. We burned a lot of it, and Grandfather is taking the really dangerous stuff, and uh…" Danny skin flushed a deeper green. "Yeah. We took care of a lot of it, but there are some things that might be useful here at some point, and wouldn't really be… great to have in the Ghost Zone, so…" He scratched the back of his neck. "I was wondering if it would be okay to entrust some of them to you? Not necessarily on a permanent basis, and it would be fine if you just, I don't know, buried it somewhere."

"I guess it depends. What are they?"

"Protective charms that feed on ectoplasm. Problem is, in a place as saturated with the stuff as the Ghost Zone, the things would become a problem fast. And they're kind of like a Specter Deflector when they're powered up. Not great for a ghost or half ghost to hold onto." He made jazz hands.

"There's a lot of ectoplasm here, too."

"Yeah, not enough for these things to become self-sustaining electrical storms or whatever, though. There's not enough, uh, pressure? Let's call it pressure, it isn't really that, but it works. There's not enough ectoplasmic pressure to fill it up to that point, and not nearly enough pressure to continually trigger it, which is the more important pary. I did the calculations, so if Grandfather gave me the right numbers, it should be fine to keep them here. And it might be a good thing for you guys here to have access to something that can hold off ghosts that isn't technological."

"Okay," said Valerie.

Danny beamed. "Great! I can take you to where you can pick them up—"

"Why me, though?"

"Huh?"

"Why me? Why not Ishiyama? Or the Mansons?"

"Sam's got her own stuff," said Danny. "You have experience fighting ghosts. It wasn't exactly a hard decision."

"Shouldn't it have been?" asked Valerie.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," said Valerie, "I shot you. I hunted you. Even if you've forgiven me—"

"I have."

"—shouldn't you be hesitating at least a little?"

"It really isn't that big a deal for me," said Danny. "Unless you're planning on doing it again?"

"No, I'm not planning on doing it again," said Valerie. It was just that she'd been thinking about it, and as much as she didn't like it, what the adults had said about her decision-making skills did have some merit.

That they'd let Sam Manson go off and represent the whole town to the president when she was the same age and had the same propensity towards violence, however, did feel kind of sketchy. A lot sketchy.

But, admittedly, Valerie had shot Danny in the face. It was a complex situation.

"Well, if you aren't going to do it again, I don't really see it as a problem anymore. Think before you shoot and all that."

He bobbed slightly in the air, and it took Valerie a moment to recognize the movement as equivalent to a nervous shuffle.

"Is there something else?" she asked.

"Not really," said Danny. "But. Um. Are we still friends?"

"Danny," said Valerie, a bit disbelieving. She wasn't sure they were friends to begin with. Between the lies and the whole dating thing – Which had been caused by that Technus character. She understood it, sure. She had murder on her mind, and she wasn't about to listen to any explanations back then.

"I want to be your friend," said Danny, somewhat wistfully. "I thought we were doing okay when we were in Libra, and you were learning how to do ectoblasts and stuff." He mimed firing one with one hand.

They had. But being home had given her more time to think about things.

"And we did work together before, as well. With, you know, that time with Ellie, and that time with Skulker…" He trailed off, still looking hopeful.

"We did, huh?"

"I think we did." Danny shrugged. "So… Friends?"

Valerie sighed. "Sure, why not. We can give it a go over the insanely dangerous ghost artifacts."

Danny beamed. "I knew you'd see it my way."

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"We aren't going to be home for very long," said Sam, changing into new clothes. "We have to go back to DC as soon as we get what we need from Freakshow."

"Are you sure?" asked her dad, his voice muffled from behind the door. "You two aren't the only ones we sent, I'm sure they'll be fine without you, and it's been much nicer here, really."

"I'm sure it has, dear," said Pamela. "I love how you're so concerned…" Their voices became more muffled, then stopped.

Sam stuck out her tongue. They were so gross. She was going to climb out her window to go talk to Grandma.

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Danny surveyed the basement of Fentonworks. After the GIW's occupation it had been nearly unrecognizable, only the equipment necessary for the portal, the general shape of the room, and the material of the walls and floor being the same, the overall purpose of the room morphed from lab to staging area for war. Now, it was set up like nothing so much as an airport's security checkpoint.

Which, Danny supposed, it sort of was. Maybe it was more like a border check station, which it definitely was. It was odd, uncomfortable, in many ways, and yet, Danny couldn't deny that it was appropriate.

Fentonworks had been stripped. The places where he had made memories with Jazz, with Sam and Tucker, they were gone, erased. The rooms gutted, blasted, all but demolished, either for the GIW's war machine or by the fight to remove the GIW's war machine. His things, his posters, his model rockets, his keepsakes, had either been destroyed or removed, with the exception of a few things hidden in the intact walls and floors. Jazz's room was the same.

It was depressing.

"So," said Damon Grey, clearly not sure how to address Danny, which was fair. Danny wasn't sure how to address Mr. Grey, either.

"I'm just checking in," said Danny with a small, pained smile. "I've spent a lot of time keeping people from going through this, or sending people back through it, or just… Yeah. I've spent a lot of time here."

"This was- is your home," said Mr. Grey. He looked around the room and stilled, face blank.

Danny hunched his shoulders. "You're right," he said. "I mean… I'm not exactly living here anymore, but… It's still mine, isn't it? It's part of my haunt. All of Amity Park, is, but, still…"

"It's never easy to leave a home," said Mr. Grey, sympathetically. "No matter what the reasoning is."

"Mhm," said Danny. He wondered if he should go ahead and remove the few things he that hadn't been stolen or destroyed, if he should take them back with him, to his lair.

But that felt too final. Like cutting a connection, an anchor to the world, an act that no ghost was good at, and few would do willingly.

"I was just talking to Valerie," Danny said.

"Right," said Mr. Grey, inscrutably. "How did that go?"

"Alright," said Danny. Maybe he shouldn't have said anything.

They stared at each other.

"You didn't give her questionable ghost weaponry, did you?"

Weaponry? No. Not exactly. But Danny had the feeling that Mr. Grey wouldn't see it that way. "What is 'questionable,' anyway?" he asked, in lieu of answering directly.

"Phantom—"

"You can just call me Danny," said Danny. "At least when I'm human."

"Danny, then. Did you give my daughter more weapons?"

"Technically, they aren't weapons."

"Didn't she shoot you?"

"In her defense, she thought I was overshadowed. I'd told her I was overshadowed."

"You're going to have to explain your thought process to me here."

"Okay, so…"

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"But enough of about me!" said Danny, voice rather high pitched. He thought it was rather unfair of Mr. Grey to give him a talk with that much murder subtext when Danny was 1) already dead, and 2) not dating Valerie. He'd given her protective talismans. "How are you all doing with the Ops Center? I know I wasn't able to stay long enough to show you everything, and I want it to be ready to use in case of invasion."

Damon Grey gave him a long, hard, look. But he closed his eyes and sighed.

"Alright," he said. "Yes, we've run into some operating problems."

"Show me," said Danny. "What kind of operating problems?"

"To begin with," said Mr. Grey, "when we tried to mobilize against the giant lizard and fish monsters coming into town—"

Danny winced.

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Danny and Sam ran into each other (figuratively, not literally, they had enough awareness of their surroundings not to do that) outside Casper High.

"What are you doing here?" asked Danny. "I thought you were going to visit with your family."

"Yeah," said Sam, "but you know how my family is. I wanted to see how things were going over here. You talked to Valerie?"

"Yep," said Danny. He shrugged. "It went okay. She was helping out with some of the higher up plants and maybe doing a bit of look-out stuff." He sketched out a shape above his head. "At least I think that's what she was doing. It was sort of unclear."

"You didn't ask?"

"I… didn't know if that would be rude or not. She felt sort of unhappy about it, and she wasn't really up for small talk." He made a face. "I think it went alright, though. Overall."

"Did she say anything about the, um…" She trailed off and squinted. "We didn't actually name it, in retrospect."

"Name what?"

"The sort of… youth demographic. Thing."

"No, she didn't say anything about that," said Danny. He turned to look at the doors. "Shall we go in?"

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Schools were interesting buildings. As places where young people were supposed to learn many things, they needed within them the facilities to do many things. Albeit not necessarily very well. Casper High, for example, had science labs and kitchens and a woodshop, among other things, as well as a library and instructional materials.

It had become very important to know how to build things, to know how to plant things, to know how to do first aid, to be able to create certain compounds and chemicals, to make appropriate calculations for how many of all these things were needed. Despite Amity Park and Elmerton being fair-sized cities, there weren't enough people who did know how to do these things, so being able to teach these things had become very important.

The school was busy and had a lot of adults in it.

Still, there was a good number of students still in the building, still learning, still helping. The robotics club (absorbed into the Amity Park Combined Radio and Media Technology Club) materials were here, as were the computer club (also absorbed into the Amity Park Combined Radio and Media Technology Club) materials and the Future Farmers of America (not absorbed into the Amity Park Combined Radio and Media Technology Club) materials and…

There were just a lot of materials, and plenty of reason for kids to still be there. Which was why Sam and Danny were here. They wanted to check in on their classmates.

They walked into Mr. Falluca's classroom.

It was, predictably, chaos. Mr. Falluca floated near the ceiling, flat on his back, clearly not paying attention to anything that was going on below him. Mikey, Nathan, Lester, Ricky, and Star gathered around a pile of disassembled electronics. Mia was teaching Sarah, Tiffanie, and Ashley how to knit in the corner. Paulina had a chart pinned to the wall that she was gesturing at with some energy while Kwan, Dash, and Dale stood by with wood scraps and hammers.

Why were they doing all this in a science classroom? It seemed a bit inappropriate.

"Are you trying to build a loom?" asked Sam, walking over to Paulina.

"Ugh, yes!" said Paulina. "I made this," she pointed aggressively at her diagram, "after my abuela's! But they aren't listening to me about the important parts, and the woodshop is full right now." She put her hands on her hips and scowled at the wood and tools they did have, then at the boys. "We need to be able to make textiles just as much as we need to make food!"

This sounded like part of an ongoing argument.

"Let me see if I can help," said Sam.

Danny blinked at the two girls. They were getting along. Weird. Good, but weird.

"Danny!" called Star. "You're good at tech stuff, aren't you? Come help us sort these out!"

Somewhat bemused, Danny went over.

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Eventually, Freakshow woke up.

Danny and Sam returned to the hospital, along with a number of the other leaders of Amity Park. It was time to get some answers.