Declaim: I do not own Danny Phantom nor do I own Fullmetal Alchemist. However, the plot and events I put the characters through are of my own original ideas from my unique mind and perspective.
Tucker frowned as Danny came into the cafeteria, ignoring his nervous and sweaty complection. Tucker's face, on the other hand, had red lines on it that looked similarly like the lines of a volleyball.
"What took you? You knew we had volleyball today!" Tucker slumped in the bench, ignoring the sneers of the girls around. Sam shot them glances of pure hatrid and shadowed fury. The sneering seemed to stop almost immediately.
Danny just sat down next to Sam, staring at the untidy surface of the table, his blue eyes lost and distant. Sam and Tucker looked at one another in silence, each then turning to Danny.
"Man, it can't be that bad. There's no such thing as a negative 'F'." Tucker attempted to add cheerfully, but Danny's strange actions did not waver. His pale face was set in stone as he mulled over the conversation in his mind he had with Vlad.
"Danny?" Sam asked, concern in her voice. Still, Danny did not make the slightest recognition he had heard her. He knew he should act normal, not burden his friends with the new paranoia that hovered above him now. He needed to clear his head.
"I'm fine. Really." The smile was so fake, if one touched it, the smile would crack and spontaneously combust.
"Are you sure, Danny? You don't look it." Tucker put in. Danny could feel the eyes of his two friends upon him, and he tried to broaden his smile more. Obviously, it did not convince them as they turned away, a slight frown on each of their faces. Instead, he turned to the grime on the foam tray and began to pick at it, holding his head up with his hand. Sleep was a distant memory for him now, wide awake with new thoughts and horrors.
"I do not know what they are, only that they are capable of much. They have an entire foreign country in tradgedy and chaos."
Danny sighed, pushing the foam tray away from him. Vlad's voice, so empty of malice and his confident intellect, replaced with fear, made his words that more haunting for him. He wanted to forget the conversation.
"Danny, will you just tell us what's wrong? We're your best friends." Sam spoke, putting her hand on his shoulder reassuringly. She did not speak in a request; more like a nicer way to word a demand.
"Yeah." Tucker said, putting away his precious palm pilot, finishing his quick game of Pong.
"Well, I never talked to Lancer."
"You walked out on him!" Sam asked, astonished.
"No! Plasmius was overshadowing him. He came to tell me something."
"What is it this time? Give your mother flowers?" Tucker laughed, but Danny's pale expression remained. But then he raised an eyebrow, turning his head to look down at Sam's hand.
"Uh, Sam? What are you doing?" She had never relieved his shoulder of her hand. She quickly retreated, placing it in her lap.
"Oh, uh, right...Anyways, what did Vlad say? And when you mean say...he didn't fight you?" Danny shook his head, gesturing they never fought during their meeting.
"Well...he said..." Danny breathed in, and his momentary break only heightened the tension rising in the pit of Tucker and Sam's stomachs.
"He said that something was coming, it wasn't a ghost, but they were worse than one. Vlad said they had an entire country already fighting and in a complete wreck."
"Why would he warn you of them?"
"To keep Mom safe." Danny laughed, feeling a bit better he had spoken his fears aloud.
"What does she have to do with the...the things?" Tucker inquired.
"Vlad said they were merciless, but as long as I stay out of there way, I'd be fine."
Sam said, "Since when did you listen to him? It's probably just another one of his plans to destroy you and your Dad! Why else would he come and actually warn you of some kind of creature? Besides, did he say what country they were from?"
Danny shook his head, but was not completely convinced. Vlad's voice had sounded so fearful, so urgent. And if he mentioned his Mom...it usually meant he spoke the truth.
"But Sam, he sounded so sca-"
"Hey, Fenton!"
'Crap.' Danny thought, paranoia melting away as his new fear walked up to their table, dressed in his signature sport's jacket and surrounded by his mindless friends. Well, he was mindless too, but they always did his bidding.
"What is it, Dash?" Danny asked, surprised at the irritatated sound in his voice. He knew he had the power to avoid anything Dash threw at him, but Danny had found the guilt was too much. He had to endure this endless beatings.
Dash crammed a large black top hat on his head, and dangled a diaper large enough to fit him before his eyes. Danny remembered the outfit perfectly. Spectra had forced him to wear it during false therapy.
"Time to put it back on, cause Casper High has just found a new shrink to help you with your baby issues!"
"Wonder who's gonna change him?" Chimed in one of the football players, and the group of five all laughed in unison. Tucker, Sam, and Danny merely glared at them.
"There is NO WAY you can make me put on that diaper!" Danny yelled at him, but Dash merely grabbed him by the scruff of his collar. Danny's feet dangled inches above the floor.
"Seems the toddler needs a time out." Dash growled.
"Your the one who chose a black eye over a diaper." Sam spoke, leaning against the locker as Danny stared at his bulging eye in the mirror of his locker.
"I'd rather have a black eye than black mail." Danny spoke as he slammed the door to his locker, shrugging on his backpack. The three began walking down the empty halls, the bell ending school having rung a few minutes before. Danny turned his head to the school councilor's office, and indeed, there was a new counciler. He could see a shadow sitting down on a couch, another silhouette comfortably sitting in a swivel chair.
"So...why are you here, Mr.Lancer?"
"Lancer?" The three spoke in confused tones in unison, and a smile played over each of their mouths. In a matter of seconds, they each had one ear on the frosted glass window of the door.
"Well, Miss Tetra, I had a...a black out today. Well, sort of. I was giving the ninth grade their tests on French Alchemists of the sixteenth century, and found Mr.Fenton sleeping, as usual, during test time. Next I knew, by forehead hurt as I rose my head from the desk. I heard something about food, and then I awoke again to an empty classroom. I...I think I'm loosing my mind!" Lancer sounded paranoid, but the three had to stifle a laugh. It seemed Vlad had done something to amuse them for once.
"Memory lapse. It is common for a man your age." The counciler's voice was firm, but not in a cruel way. The three backed away from the door finally and continued walked, satisfied with what they had heard.
"Did your ghost sense go off?" Tucker asked, pushing open the doors to the front of the school.
"No. Seems Lancer picked a good counciler, for once." Danny said, his light hearted self returned.
"What are you going to tell your folks when they see your eye?" Sam asked, each of them finally escaping school grounds. Clouds hid the early spring sun from spreading its golden rays, and rain seemed hesitant to fall.
"I don't know. Jazz'll think something up."
"How has Jazz...ya know, taken to this whole thing?"
"Fine. She gets annoying sometimes, but for the most part, she comes up with better allibies than Tucker."
"Hey! Pressure is hard when your parents are glaring at me with plasma guns."
"Bowling? At three a.m.?"
"At least your Dad believed me!"
"But he believes everything." Danny retorted to Tucker, as he turned the street to go to his house. He waved one last time to Sam and Danny, then jogging to his house while holding his hat down as a wind started to pick up. Silence fell upon Sam and Danny as they continued walking, not akward, but just a time of quiet as though they need not words to communicate. The wind began to grow stronger, and Sam's black hair flailed in the wind. His raven hair became messed up again, and he remembered his fourty third capture of the box ghost again.
"The Box Ghost got loose again last night. This time, he was messing with the boxes of new silverware in the kitchen."
"Again? I wonder how he keeps getting loose. Does the Ghost Portal open by itself?"
"I don't really know. I think." Danny answered, stopping before Sam's front steps. She began to walk up the stone steps, and turned back.
"Bye, Danny. Good luck with your black eye."
"Thanks. Bye, Sam!" Danny began to jog away, waving behind him. The warmth inside his heart faded the further he tore himself away from her richly furbished home, and soon his placid and stubborn personality returned as he opened his door to Fenton Works. Even before he opened the door, he could hear the pneomatic hiss of ectoplasm guns as Jack and Maddie completed their monthly Ghost Hunter Scrub-n-Buff. What he was not prepared to see when he closed the door behind him was his mother sitting on the couch, gesturing for him to sit beside her.
'Oh, no.'