These days Danny tried to walk around the house as quietly as possible. He felt it was important to keep tabs on his parents. He could help Phantom that way, maybe.
"... arrogant to assume he'd followed us?" Mom was saying. "Trying to hunt the hunters?"
They were working on the kitchen table. He lingered at the bottom of the staircase.
"Ghosts aren't smart enough for that, Mads."
"But why else would he have been in Wisconsin?" Mom said. "It's too much of a coincidence."
She was half right. But Phantom would never try to hurt them.
"Need help with the tie?" Jazz said. Danny nearly tripped off the last step in surprise. He hadn't noticed her coming down behind him.
"Y-yeah," he said. She scrutinized him, but whatever she found wasn't worth comment.
Or she was holding back.
He followed her into the kitchen and mom squealed at the sight of him.
"You look so cute in your little suit!" she said. "Let me take a picture."
"A boy becomes a man," Dad said, solemnly. He stood and gave Danny a hug, lifting him off the ground.
"It's just a dance," Danny said. Jazz shooed their dad out of the way so she could work on the tie.
He tried to give them a light hearted smile for the photos.
It was harder than it should have been.
oOo
"Tell me about yourself," Paulina said. They'd been dancing for the past four songs, but she'd finally gotten tired enough to let him sit.
"About myself?" Danny said. "Oh, uh, that's a hard one."
"Aw, come on," she said. She put her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands. "I've never had the chance to properly talk to you like this. Pretend you're introducing yourself to me. I want to know the real Danny Fenton."
She winked.
There's no such person, Danny thought. I'm nobody. "Alright, but help me narrow it down? It's… hard."
Paulina giggled. "It doesn't have to be. Just tell me what you like."
He stared at her.
"Your interests," she said. "Hobbies or whatever."
He thought of the glow in the dark stars on his ceiling. The NASA posters, the cosmic bedspread. "I like astronomy," he said. "Uh, NASA and stuff."
"Cool, what do you like about it?" Paulina said.
"I don't know."
Jeez Fenton, now is not the time for an existential crisis.
"You, uh, you like cheerleading?" Danny said.
Smooth transition, loser. He shoved his hands in his pockets, wanting to disappear.
But Paulina let it go.
"... and my Papi is a banker," Paulina was saying. Danny nodded. "Shut up!" she said, playfully shoving his shoulder. "I know, it's so boring, ugh."
Danny blinked. He desperately wanted to say the right thing here, but he was at a loss. "Boring sounds nice," he settled on.
"But I wish my parents were like yours," Paulina said. "All the gadgets and spooky encounters? It sounds amazing. Is it amazing?"
Ah.
"It's disturbing," he murmured. Danny decided to milk this, now that he could see her angle. With newfound confidence, he leaned towards her. "They're everywhere, you know?"
"The ghosts?" Her voice had lowered to match his and she breathed the words out, just a notch above a whisper.
"Most of the time they're invisible," Danny said. "They walk all over us. Swim through us. Watching…"
"What do they want to see?" she whispered. Paulina leaned towards him too, now.
"I don't think they know themselves." Thinking of Phantom, he let his volume go back to normal. Teasing her didn't seem fun anymore. "They're just… sad, I think. Or lost."
She frowned. "Do you think the ghost boy is sad?"
He blinked. "Uh, I don't know?" Tugged at his tie. "I haven't seen him up close."
"I have!" Paulina said. "He saved me once."
"Oh yeah?"
She started brushing her fingers through her hair, eyes wandering over his head.
Story time, he supposed.
"I was talking to this guy," she started. "He seemed normal at first. He was flirting with me and I didn't think much of it."
Danny nodded.
"Then his girlfriend showed up all pissy," Paulina said. "Again, perfectly normal."
Danny laughed.
She smirked.
"But then things got freaky," she said. "She started glowing. And things went flying! Like she was freaking Carrie."
Ghosts were telekinetic? Huh.
"I literally thought the bitch was gonna kill me," Paulina said. "Her boyfriend wasn't even trying to stop her."
Wait a minute.
"Then the ghost boy rescued me," she pouted. "And flew off with them."
The cheating ghost went by the name Johnny 13. He'd died in a motorcycle accident with Kitty, his girlfriend. Phantom had gotten the whole story out of them.
"Maybe he's shy," Danny said. He could picture it clearly. The two of them, when they were friends, just hanging out in his room.
Phantom loved talking about his encounters with other ghosts. He would ask a million questions, if they let him. Then re-tell their stories in dramatic detail.
"But I wanted to talk to him." She was still pouting. "At least to thank him?"
"He probably figures it's best to be cautious with humans," Danny said. "If my parents got close to him the last thing they'd want to do is thank him."
"What? Why not?!"
"He's a ghost."
"But he's a good ghost." Paulina huffed. Like it was simple.
He wished it could be. "They don't believe in good ghosts."
He thought she might have been scandalized by that. That she'd argue against it, as if he agreed with them. Instead she just said "Well, boo." And then announced that she needed the ladies room.
Not knowing what else to do, Danny followed her and stood outside.
He saw Tucker there.
"Sam's in the bathroom?"
"Yep," Tucker said. He held up his plastic cup of punch in mock cheers. It would have been fun to clink their cups together, but Danny left his at the table.
He was going to make a joke or something, but that was when the ghost dragon showed up.
oOo
It was a ghost all right. A real dragon would have destroyed the building just by standing in it, but this one had stuck its head inside the gym through the wall. It was pale and semi-transparent.
Everyone was screaming and Danny realized with regret that he'd left the Fenton Thermos at home. He wore it to school every day on that belt full of gadgets, but didn't think to wear it with his suit.
What an idiot.
He had his phone instead and was about to call his parents when the dragon scooped him up like a blonde in a King Kong movie.
Like even more of an idiot, he dropped the phone as he was carried off.
The dragon didn't go far. Just jumped out of the building and onto the football field. It was growling and releasing random bursts of fire into the air, but otherwise...
Well, it seemed confused. Agitated and defensive, for sure. When a flock of birds flew over head it flinched so hard it nearly dropped him.
Danny dangled by a clawed finger and used his momentum to swing his legs up, so he could wrap them around the digit. Maybe being in the paws of a dragon wasn't ideal, but falling twenty feet through the air would be worse.
The dragon looked more solid now. In the school it had been walking through everything, but out here it bumped into stuff. It's tail knocked over a set of bleachers and then crushed them like tin foil. Danny heard someone screaming in response and wondered if someone had been under there.
Had they been crushed? Pinned down? Would they bleed out, alone and scared, while he closed his eyes like a scared little boy, like a waste of space that was better off dead?
Danny had never felt this cold before. He suppressed the urge to let go. Because who would he help if he plummeted to the ground? Nobody. Instead he inched forward, slowly crawling up the dragon's arm. It was easy because, with the way the dragon was positioned, he was actually sliding downwards.
It's a fireman's pole, Danny told himself. A really thick, super scaley fireman's pole.
He was halfway to its shoulder when the dragon noticed and picked him up with its other hand. It held him close to its face and he thought it would incinerate him, but instead it just sniffed at him. Like a dog trying to recognize a visitor.
"Hey, dragon breath!"
The dragon blinked in surprise and Danny flinched. It's eyes were massive and they'd been solidly open this whole time. Cause ghost's didn't need to blink, did they? It was something he hadn't noticed before.
"Hey, over here! Eyes off the human, I'd make a much better toy!" It was Phantom, of course. He was flying around the dragon's head, but it kept its gaze on Danny.
"This is just rude," Phantom said. He tugged at its ears and the dragon growled, finally lifting its head towards him. "C'mon, I thought we had an understanding. We even bonded, sort of. Remember that one time at the mall? It's a precious memory!"
Danny had no idea what Phantom was talking about, but he needed to take advantage of the distraction. Once again he wriggled out of the dragon's palm and tried climbing down its arms. He went slow at first, worried it would feel the movement, but when he accidentally dislodged a scale and got no reaction he figured the ghost was pretty numb.
He made it to its shoulder without a problem.
The dragon had forgotten Danny's existence, it seemed. It was breathing fire, directing it at Phantom. He stared in horror, wondering if a ghostly fire could inflict the kind of damage a real fire couldn't, but when the fire died out he saw that Phantom was in some kind of green bubble.
"Didn't know I could do that!" Phantom shouted with a grin and a thumbs up. He was looking at Danny. "Hey! Get the necklace off!"
Necklace?
The ghost did have something on its neck, now that he looked. But when he tried to crawl towards it the dragon bucked and he slid down its back. Phantom tried to approach himself, but he had the beast's full attention. It jumped after him like a cat trying to pin down a laser pointer's red dot. All he could do was dance out of its reach as it chased him.
All Danny could do was hold on for dear life and try to crawl forward. Gravity was no longer on his side and he wasn't exactly known for his upper body strength, but something like an adrenaline rush pushed him forward until he finally reached the nape of the dragon's neck.
The cloth was glowing, but otherwise it felt normal. It wasn't cold or hot and it easily tore when Danny bit into the material. Then the necklace shrank and he put it in his pocket, instinctively wanting to preserve it.
He didn't know the dragon would shrink too.
Then he was falling. He screamed and he heard Phantom call out his name. The ghost boy caught him and safely brought him to the ground, depositing him at the entrance to the school and disappearing before Danny could stutter out more than a thank you.