Chapter 8: Trust Enough
"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough."
~Frank Crane
Danny quickly flew back to the table to see if Sam and Tucker were still there. As he landed and transformed he noted Sam staring at her watch. "I was gonna give you another 20 seconds before heading back inside. So how'd it go with Cujo?" She asked as Danny grabbed his lunch and the three of them hurried inside.
"I convinced my parents to watch him since I couldn't exactly play with or drop him off in the ghost zone right now." Danny said before stuffing a third of his sandwich in his mouth.
Tucker and Sam exchanged looks. "Come again?"
Danny chewed a bit before swallowing. "My parents were there with Cujo when I arrived and I was talking with them for a bit which is why I lost track of time and before I knew it the bell was ringing."
"So you figured asking your ghost hunter parents to watch a ghost for several hours on end was a good idea? I don't even know why they would have agreed knowing you'd want him back in one piece." Tucker frowned. "Unless maybe they thought you didn't care if Cujo came back to you at all."
"Danny this has bad idea written all over it."
"Sam it'll be fine."
"I'm with her on this one Danny. These are your parents we're talking about. Something always happens if it involves ghosts, where do you think you get it from?"
Danny thought about Tuckers point and frowned. "Maybe this was a bad idea." He admitted cramming the rest of his lunch in his mouth before splitting from Sam and Tucker to head to creative writing.
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"Maybe this was a bad idea." Maddie remarked surveying the labs condition. Several desks were knocked on their sides, including one that was in several pieces, and dozens of papers were strewn about the floor as a result along with anything else that had been on the tables including weapons, wires, tools, a few beakers and Jacks lunch. Honestly, what was with her husband and son's inability to get through a meal without incident? She sighed. "At least the mess wasn't in vain." Maddie muttered under her breath.
"I think we have as much as we're gonna get from the mutt Mads. Why don't you take him to the park or somewhere that's not here." Jack suggested. "He seems to be a floating lab hazard."
"I suppose that'd be best. Phantom's not due to pick him for an hour and I don't think this little guy's willing to behave much longer down here." Maddie walked over to her metal shelves and picked up a Fenton thermos. "I think bringing him in one of these would be easier and leave less chance for something going wrong." She pointed the metal canister at Cujo and hit the bottom.
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The park was relatively person free when Maddie and Jack arrived. Being hot and on the humid side Maddie led Jack over to the pond she had been sitting at with Phantom and plopped down on the grass under the shade of a few oaks. She got the thermos out and released Cujo before pulling a tennis ball from her jump suit. Cujo's eyes immediately locked onto the ball and he gave a few happy yips. "You up for some catch buddy?" Maddie asked moving the yellow ball back and forth.
"Bark! Bark!"
"Alright." She drew her arm back and threw it. "Fetch!" Cujo took off from the Fentons towards the prize. "I miss doing that." Maddie said after a minute. "I miss having pets in general. It was nice having Bones or Max sit in my lap while I typed up papers; took some of the stress away."
"I know, honey. I had dogs growing up and a stray kitten we found in the garage that one time but you know why we can't have them. Having to keep two kids safe was and still is hard enough. At least with them you can put up a note or just tell them to be mindful. Animals can't read signs and they aren't going to understand 'don't cross the yellow tape' or 'stay away from the ecto-inhalator'."
"Danny didn't seem to understand that one when he was five."
Jack shrugged. "He thought it looked like one of the plasma guns from Terminator and wanted to show it to Tucker. It was a stupid thing to do but at least I understand why Danny did it. I've seen pets, animals in general really, do some pretty dumb things that I can't understand."
"Like the chihuahua with Mittens?"
"Yep. The mutt had it coming to him. He keep barking and baring his teeth at Mittens trying to scare him and when it came time to back up his bark well, Mitten's bit him."
"I'm a little surprise the dog's owners didn't press for your family to pay the vet bills."
"You kidding? The Fenton's have always been the town crazies. Everybody on the block was scared to really do any kind of serious retaliation. Danny and Jazz think my inventions are dangerous? Well they shoulda seen some of the 'toys' Dad tried throwing together."
Cujo trotted up to Maddie and Jack and set the ball down in front of them then sat looking at the two expectantly.
"You wanna give it a try for old times' sake to Jack?" Maddie asked handing Jack the ball.
"Why not?"
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As soon as the final bell rung Danny bolted out of the room and out of the building shouting a quick 'tell Lancer I can't stay today!' to Tucker. He ran to the nearest alley and transformed into Phantom then sped off towards FentonWorks praying that nothing had gone horribly wrong.
When he got there Danny was out of breath but didn't stop as he phased down to the basement. The lab was a mess and empty. 'Well the mess doesn't seem to have been from a fight involving ecto weapons at least.' He thought. Danny looked around trying to find some clue as to where his parents and Cujo were but he came up empty handed. 'Where would they have gone?' Confused Danny decided to check the rest of the house. Maybe Maddie had left him note?
Ten minutes late he had no note, no clue, no Cujo, and no place left to look. Danny was about to start searching the neighborhood when his ears picked up talking and the front door opened, Maddie and Jack stepping inside.
"Cujo!" The dog squirmed his way out of Maddie's arms and ran to greet Danny. "Where were you guys?"
"We ended up taking him for a walk in the park." Maddie replied.
"He wasn't too much trouble I hope."
Jack and Maddie exchanged a look that said, 'he clearly hasn't seen the lab'. "Nothing we couldn't handle." Jack said shrugging.
Phantom nodded picking up Cujo. "Time for you to go back home little guy."
The three walked down to the lab and Phantom absently typed in the portal password as he watched his parents valiantly try to straighten up.
Jack snapped his head up at the sound of the Fenton portal opening and frowned. 'Wait a minute….' He watched as Phantom set the ghost mutt down and gave it a small wave before it voluntarily stepped through and out of sight. Pleased with Cujo safe and now out of trouble Phantom walked back to the control panel and retyped the password setting it back to locked.
Jack was willing to believe the ghost portal had been unlocked and that Phantom had just needed to push the open button. Locking it however definitely required either a Fenton finger print or the override password, neither of which Phantom should have had.
"Phantom, how did you open the portal?"
Phantom looked confused for a moment before his eyes widened comically and he switched to staring at the floor instead of Jack. "I…I might know the pass code." He admitted fidgeting a bit.
Well no duh. As far as Jack was concerned that much was obvious, it's not like the ghost could have used the print scanner. "And just how did you come across this sensitive piece of information?"
'Crap. I can't say he gave it to me and I really don't want 'Fenton' getting chewed out again. I was grounded for two weeks when he found out that I gave it to Sam and Tucker. Handing it over to a ghost, especially Phantom, would be a hundred times worse.'
"Well?"
Stone walling his Dad was probably the best option. "It doesn't matter. I'd never tell it to anyone."
Jack glared and Phantom glared back as the two began their stare down. A few minutes passed before Jack finally let out a low growl and turned his back to Phantom. "Me and Maddie have work to do, why don't you be useful and make sure no other ghosts are causing a problem or something." He said righting a desk that had been knocked over.
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Danny spent a solid two hours anticipating what his Dad was going to say to him. 'How could you trust a ghost with access to the ghost zone!' 'What were you thinking?!' and 'Do you have any idea how much trouble you're in?' were the top three things Danny was betting on. Grudgingly when his patrol was over he headed home, albeit at a much more sedate pace.
Danny opened the door and poked his head inside. 'All clear.' Quietly he slunk over to the stairs So far, so go-
"Danny. Welcome home son. Why don't you put down your back pack and then we can have a nice father/son chat hm?"
Danny dropped his backpack next to the stairs before following Jack to the ops center. He took a seat opposite his Dad and fiddled with his hands trying to keep his nerves under control. "So uh… what did you want to talk about?" Danny asked. After all how would Fenton know what had happened in the lab if he wasn't there?
Jack studied his son for a moment. "Danny, how do you feel about Phantom?"
"How do I feel about him? Well he's one of the good guys so I think he's pretty cool. I mean he goes around helping people and he puts himself out there. None of the other ghosts are doing that. Phantom sometimes damages things and there are people that are afraid of him but that's not his fault. He's a ghost- there are always gonna be those few people that won't look past that no matter what he does. And there'd be a lot more destruction if the other spooks had a free run of the town. I don't think Phantom does it for the glory either. If you ask around there're a lot of things Phantom does that go undocumented. He's personally helped me out more times than I can count."
"I see... So you trust him."
"Yes."
"Enough that you'd hand over the emergency override password for the Fenton portal so that Phantom could have access to the ghost zone any time he wanted?"
"Uh-"
"He's a ghost Danny; he shouldn't be given an all access pass to the ghost zone! That could be disastrous. What were you thinking?! Were you even thinking? I thought I made it very clear that I didn't want to have a repeat of that conversation. I was willing to be lenient before since you'd known Sam and Tucker for years and I could vouch for their character but this… Danny I can't believe you'd do something like this." Jack pinched the bridged of his nose as he let out a deep, calming breath. "Is there anything you'd like to tell me? Or say to me?"
"Dad…I-I..."
"I thought your mother and I raised you better." He sighed.
That comment snapped something in Danny. Jack distrusting Phantom was something he could understand. The two weren't on the best of terms and it didn't help any that all his life Jack had believed all ghosts were evil. Danny didn't expect his Dad to do a 180 in a matter of weeks; that was asking too much. Asking his Dad to trust hisjudgment though, his son's, that wasn't unreasonable.
"You did! I may not be the best student but I am one of the best judges of character in this town and I don't go around handing out family secrets! Not without a damn good reason. I don't expect you to trust Phantom. I don't expect you to go giving Cujo or Dora a warm welcome or inviting Frostbite over for milk and fudge but you've known me my whole life. I expectyou to have some shred of faith in me and the decisions I make especially those regarding ghosts. I don't think there are any other families in town with the same kind of experience this house does when it comes to dealing with ghosts. There are no other kids who grow up like me or Jazz. I don't have the science degrees you or Mom do but I understand ghosts just as well if not better and I know who to trust and who not to! Phantom is one of the few ghosts I trust. And even if you don't like him or believe in him you should have trust in me and that should be trust enough!"
Danny stood up and stormed down the steps fury swirling inside. The last time this had happened he had felt guilty. Sam had always had an interest in the ghost portal. It would have been no stretch of the imagination to see her opening it up from time to time out of sheer curiosity and Tucker had the occasional tendency to mouth off secrets just to impress people, namely girls. While Danny may not have been thrilled with the Jack's reaction, the grounding and earful he had received were justifiable in his mind.
This time however Danny just felt mad. He hadn't given out the password. It hadn't fallen into to the hands of some deranged ghost hell bend on world domination. If he ever told a ghost, and that was very unlikely, it would be someone Amity could count on or would have no fear of. Danny took protecting his home town very seriously and he wasn't about to go putting it endanger with some stupid little kid mistake. Why couldn't his Dad see that? What had he screwed up so badly on that his own father couldn't afford to trust him?
"What is with everyone thinking I'm the town screw up?" He muttered gathering his backpack before stomping up the steps.
…..
Maddie heard hard footsteps on the stairs, no doubt Danny in a bad mood, and quickly stuffed her flash drive into the small hip box of her jumpsuit.
She exited out of the ghost folder and brought her email back up. Not a second later Danny came storming in muttering something about going dark side for a day. He cut his rant short when he noticed her. "Mom what are you doing?" He asked raising an eyebrow.
"Nothing really. I'm just checking my emails." She replied easily enough, after all that had been the original intention for coming up here. "There was a small… incident in the lab today and I can't use my computer down there right now. I would have used the ops center one but your father mentioned that he wanted to have a word with you up there and it sounded like it was gonna be a lengthy discussion. I asked Jazz to borrow her laptop but she was taking a test for her online class so I figured you wouldn't mind me stealing your computer for a few minutes."
Danny shrugged. "No I don't mind. If you still need it that's fine, I don't have anything I need to look up for tomorrow."
"Thanks Sweetie, I'll only be another minute or two. I know teenagers don't like parents crowding their room."
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When 2AM rolled around the Fenton household was fast asleep except for one member.
"Alright. Let's see what Danny's got in these ghost files." Maddie whispered quietly plugging in her flash drive and opening up the folder. She went through a few randomly to gauge what kind of information the files contained and paused when she saw 'Plasmius' in the list of ghost. 'I wonder what Danny has on the Wisconsin Ghost. There's something not quite right about him.' She doubled clicked the file and frowned when a dialogue box popped up. '"A password is required to decrypt file"? Why would this one be locked? None of the others have passwords, what's so special about this ghost?'
A/N: Merry Christmas! I am SO sorry about the long wait everyone (and what's worse is that this is a short chapter). College is more hectic than I originally thought but that is no excuse for it taking about 5 and ½ months to update. Hopefully this will never happened again. You wouldn't believe how badly two baby kitties can bend artificial branches but our tree is finally back up. Despite the Christmas tree it doesn't feel like Christmas and I don't know why. Maybe it's the complete lack of cold (and all the depressing rain) inspite of the fact that it's the end of December?
Moving on to the chapter- I wanted Danny and Jack to talk more but Danny got angry and trashed my plans for a more heart to heart talk. Maybe he'll have cooled off by the next chapter and the two of them can try again. Maddie honestly didn't mean to go snooping. She stumbled upon the folder of ghost files Danny keeps on his computer and said 'oh that looks interesting. I think I'll make myself a copy to look at later.' As for the whole Jack being pissed at Danny for handing out the ghost portal password I think he's got a valid reason. It's shown that Sam and Tucker know the password and I don't think Jack would have been thrilled when he found that out. The portal is his life's work he doesn't want just anybody having access. Though Sam doesn't cause any trouble Tucker does run his mouth in front of the GIW on almost get's both realities blown to bits. The 'Mittens' story was inspired by a real story involving my Dad's half bobcat pet, Mr. Mittens, and a mouthy neighborhood dog that liked picking on every single neighborhood pet.
Reviews are much loved and greatly welcomed. Any constructive criticism, ideas, or general comments are always encouraged. If you have any questions or concerns feel free to PM me. Enjoy gifts and crazy time with family!
~May Rene