Raditz: and she is still crazy.
SS: Shut up.
OK, I'm only doing this once so hear me now. Butch owns all writes to a life he never lived, but happened to remember. He gets paid while I don't get any benefits. He is a dirty rotten monkey cheater. I'll just fill in the blanks.
---
"It starts." Vlad knew this was coming for a long time now. For the past 15 years he had waited, and now there was nothing anyone could do about it.
"This, is going to be interesting." Vlad smiled down at the newspaper. The headline was:
Danny Phantom strikes again: 2 million worth of damages
---
"The people of Amity Park were shocked when the Phantom took down two buildings and several cars at three o'clock yesterday afternoon. Luckily, since it was a Sunday no one was in the buildings. Only five people were injured by the falling rubble. Witnesses say…"
Click. "A whole lot of BS." said Sam. She turns to look at Danny. "So what really happened?"
Danny had his face buried in his arms. "I don't wanna talk about it."
"Well it's not like you have anyone else to talk to about it." said Tucker without even looking up from his PDA. "Unless you count Jazz, but I think we all know how that would turn out."
Danny shuddered at the thought. Jazz would definitely not be a good person to talk to about it. Especially after the last time she tried to help. He did not want to spend another six hours in the Fenton thermos.
"Come on Danny, maybe we can help." Sam said as she sat on her bed next to Danny, looking down at Tucker playing snake at the foot of the bed. "Or at least I can help."
"I don't fully understand what happened myself. I was chasing the Box Ghost.."
"Two buildings over the Box Ghost!" Tucker cut in, finally looking up from his precious PDA, which had three payments on it.
Both Sam and Danny gave him a dark look. Tucker cowered and Danny continued, "Anyway, I was chasing the Box Ghost, who had gotten a hold of a bunch of boxes from the garage sale when I fired off a blast to hit him. Um… It didn't."
"So you had bad aim. It happens." Tucker shrugged going back to his PDA.
"No, the Box Ghost dodged." Danny defended himself. This was bad enough telling the two of them, but. But what if they didn't trust him anymore. Or worse…
Sam snapped Danny out of his thoughts. "So what happened to the buildings?"
"Um…"
"You said that already."
Danny looked at Sam and then sighed. "The blast hit the buildings."
"So?"
"And overturned several cars."
She stared at him for a moment. "Wait. You took out both the buildings and the cars with one blast?"
Danny nodded.
"On accident."
Danny once again buried his face in his arms.
"Whoa." Tucker got up. "You took out two buildings DBZ style? Do you know how cool that is!"
"Tucker, that is not cool, it's bad. People got hurt, remember?" Sam turns to Danny, "So what happened to the Box Ghost?"
"Heh. Funny story there, he got away. I was so shocked I kinda forgot about him."
"You just need to learn more control and focus."
That wasn't it, he knew it. But… "Yeah you're right.' He stood up. "Listen, I need to get home and do that homework Mr. Lancer gave us today."
"Need any help?"
"I've got Jazz. See you in the morning." and with that, Danny flew through Sam's wall. Her parents still weren't happy with him, so he as usual, elected to avoid them.
"I think it wasn't just control."
Tucker looked at Sam. "Huh?"
"You saw how he was all day."
"Nervous about Dash?"
"No!"
Tucker shrugged. "I'm sure he will be fine." He walked to the door. "I'm getting jerky, want any?"
"Ew! No!"
Tucker laughed as he ducked the pillow thrown at him, and then went down stairs for his meat.
---
Sam knew something was up, she could feel it. No one had seen hide nor hair, or was it ecto energy nor overalls of the Box Ghost, since Sunday. It was now Thursday. Come to think of it, not many of the other ghosts had shown up either. Sure there were always the shadows and the minor ectoplasms that were always around, but none that could understand two words strung together.
Then there was Danny. He had been quiet, and constantly phasing through things. She knew that he hadn't had problems with that since that time she had accidentally wished that she had never met him.
She was his best friend. Ok, there was Tucker, she mused, but on something like this he should tell her. Maybe he was still upset about Sunday, but with the phasing, it could cause problems. Especially with Valerie, and the teachers, and Valerie, and his parents, and Valerie…
"Danny, if you're going to phase though your locker, just grab your books and get it over with. Don't bother with trying to open the locker. Somebody is gonna see you fidgeting and wonder if you're on drugs."
Sam turned to Tucker in shock.
"What?"
"You actually said something useful. And it sounded eerily like myself. Don't do it again."
"Well YOU should have said it sooner. Besides if we don't move, we're going to be late." Tucker looked down at his PDA. "We have two minutes and fifteen second to get to class and it's on the other side of the school."
Danny jumped, "Tucker! Why didn't you tell me!" The boy took off toward class.
Sam called him back. "Danny you still haven't… never mind I'll get them for him."
"I just said to hurry up." said Tucker.
---
Danny twitched. It was starting to ache again. It started in his stomach and moved up to his heart. Then it traveled though the rest of his body all the way to above his head and below his toes.
He looked down. Sure enough his hands were glowing ever so slightly. Go away, GO AWAY. Crap. It's still there. No one would notice of course, except Sam and Tucker and maybe Valerie too.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sam look at him. She saw the glow, he knew it. Good thing Valerie didn't have math with him.
It was starting to hurt more than it had the other times. It worried him that Sam was right, he was losing control. He stared at his notes scribbled across the page and tried to push back the feeling he was going to explode.
Suddenly a light shines at the end of the tunnel.
"Mr. Fenton, you look as if you don't feel well." The short teacher didn't notice the glow, but did see the glazed, almost possessed look of his eyes.
Danny jumped at the chance. "My stomach hurts." Well not the whole truth, but close enough.
"Would you like to go lay down?"
Tucker shuddered beside him but Danny nodded.
"Take your stuff."
None of the kids thought that Danny could move that fast.
---
Danny didn't go to the nurse's office. He didn't think that she would know anything about half dead ghosts. The light had increased its glowing, making him look the ghost he half was. He checked the halls. Seeing no one, he let the white rings wash over his body, and nearly fell over.
The icy shock was not the numbness he was used to. He took a breath as the feeling passed. It was like jumping into a lake of melted snow. He didn't think that the lockers threatening to rattle off of their hinges would be appreciated by the school staff, so he phased though the ceiling and headed to the outskirts of town.
The past week had not been a good one. Mr. Lancer alone had handed out enough homework to kill a person. To top that off, he hadn't been feeling well since the Box Ghost incident. Maybe it was just stress. He had heard somewhere that your body could react in strange ways under stress, like heart attacks. Though he doubted anyone had ever had trouble controlling ectoplasmic energy before. Well, maybe Vlad.
The lack of ghosts was something he didn't even notice. Between homework and nightmares, worrying about ghosts was at the bottom of his list.
'Wait! What was that?' He neither sensed a ghost nor Valerie. There was no one else that got up into the air. He stopped, hands glowing green as he scanned again.
It was big, very big, he could feel it. 'But where?' He flew toward where he thought he saw it. 'Gone. What the…? Things are getting to weird.' He half expected to wake up in bed, the pass week nothing but a dream.
Resuming his flight to the outside of town, he tried to clear his head. Last night he had woken the house with his screaming, which shook the entire block. His parents had determined it was a ghost, which it kinda of was, and went hunting for it. Jazz had bugged him about what was wrong, but he wouldn't tell her. It wasn't the usual nightmares of himself destroying his family, nor of the ghosts he fought. These were vivid, of creatures he couldn't put names to, yet, he felt as if he knew them; had seen them before. Almost like when he had turned ghost for the first time.
---
Vlad Masters stood on the building and watched Danny fly toward the outskirts of the city.
"That, is a lot of power." Skulker said as he set down beside him.
"Did you take care of the dragon?"
Skulker grinned. He loved his work. Especially since anything he caught and half way tamed, he got to keep. "A little gold did the trick."
"You did not use any of mine." It was a statement and not a question.
"No, no. I know better than to touch your hoard." Skulker rolled his eyes. Vlad was much like the dragons when it came to his stuff. The obsessive compulsiveness wasn't helping either. Ten million years and some things never changed.
"It's getting harder for him to hide."
"From who, the humans or the mystics?"
"Both. He has already been exposed to some of the ghosts."
"You haven't been helping with the ghosts."
Vlad shook his head. "Of course not."
"Speaking of which, who are you going to con into attacking him next?"
"I can't do that, we are playing on thin ice as it is. If he does anything as major as last time and it hits the press.."
"He'll have to come running to you?"
"No… Maddie would… No we need to play this right."
---
Safety. Now he could finally relax a little. No one would notice that crater really. "The ghost zone may have been a better place for this." He mumbled to himself.
If he was going to be out here, he might as well make use of his time. He zigzagged through the air and phased though a few trees. "Man, Mom is going to kill me for skipping, but I think I got enough of an excuse this time. I'll just say I walked home. What is wrong with me though? How do I fix this? I doubt any other kid has these kinds of problems. Better get home, at least I feel better now."
He looked back at the craters he had recently created. "Heh, I hope no one stumbles into one of those."