Chapter 5

Danny followed Hannah out of Lancer's detention, surprised and a bit confused still at how the blond haired tomboy had even managed to get a detention in the first place.

He stopped just outside the door at seeing Sam, Tucker, and Daniel laughing about the Dead Teacher series.

"I still love the- oh, hi Danny." Sam stood up, straightening her skirt as she threw her spider back on.

"Hey." Danny looked over at the blond teen as he and Tucker stood up. "Ready?"

"I guess." Daniel shrugged, dusting himself off.

"Have they warned you yet?" Danny asked, putting his hands in his pockets as he lead the group out of the school building.

"About your parents? A little." Daniel nodded. "Any way I can just talk to your mom?"

"I think it's both or none." Danny shrugged.

The four made it to Fenton Works quickly passing the time with movie or game references.

Danny opened the door, admitting to only himself that he still never knew what to expect when entering his own house. Seeing no one in the living room, he let the three in behind him. "I guess they're in the lab. Let me go find them." Danny said, hurrying towards the kitchen.

He made his way carefully down the basement stairs and sighed as he saw his parents hunched over a set of blue prints. Always better to get them with an ink pen than a weapon in their hands.

"Mom, Dad." Danny announced, getting the two to turned towards him. "A kid from school wants to ask you stuff about ghosts."

That did it. Danny quickly sidestepped out of their way as they rushed up the stairs.

By the time Danny made it back to the living room, the thermos he brought to school in his hands, Daniel was sitting on the sofa bombarded with questions.

"Can he ask what he wanted to?" Jazz's voice asked, getting everyone to look over at the stairs to see Danny's sister. "I'm sure he doesn't want to hear your life story of ghost hunting."

"Actually, I was wondering about ghost energy." Daniel started. "Ectoplasm, right? Can it collect on a living human?"

Great, one of those scientific conversations. Danny sighed as he made eye contact with Sam and Tucker. He motioned towards the stairs and the two disappeared almost quicker than Danny could in ghost form.

Danny smiled, sitting down the thermos on the kitchen table before quickly grabbing three sodas from the fridge and make it up to his room.

"Did you grab any munchies?" Tucker asked as he grabbed a can from Danny's hand and fell into the computer chair.

"Dude, be happy I grabbed some Boyle." Danny rolled his eyes as he handed Sam's hers. "Any idea why he's into ghosts?"

"Not really." Sam shrugged, sitting down on a beanbag by the TV. She carefully kicked a controller away from her foot space before looking back at Danny. "He didn't say anything about really fearing them."

"He didn't say much about himself." Tucker admitted, rummaging through his bag with his free hand as he sat down his soda on the computer table next to him.

Danny sat down on his bed, taking a sip of the bubbly drink. "I don't get him." Danny admitted.

"Man, he's not out to get you." Tucker rolled. He pulled out a half crumpled bag of chips with success written on his face.

"This is my life we're talking about." Danny tried to point out. "He may not be after Fenton, but Phantom, who knows."

"Just keep your eyes opened." Sam tried, picking up the wire for the controller so she could turn on the console. She threw her foot up, tapping the on button for the TV only to get a grown.

"Sam, the remote's under you." Danny whined, only to hiccup as the familiar blue mist appeared. He slammed his drink down on his nightstand as he stood up. "Can I have at least one afternoon?"

"Bring some good chips." Tucker ordered, looking at the old bag with disgust as a crumb fell from his mouth.

Danny rolled his eyes as he called out the cold that was his ghost half, disappearing as he flew out of the room.

He reappeared once he was a couple of houses away from Fenton Works only to hear a high pitched wail coming from Mr. White's backyard.

Danny held his ears as he flew over to the neighbor's house. The noise had to be above the pitch humans could hear, but a dog was whining a few house down, showing it heard the sound.

Danny stepped down onto Mr. White's roof, holding tightly to his ears as he tried to block out the noise. What it was coming from almost made him drop his hands.

In the old man's backyard stood an almost dog faced humanoid. It was leaning backwards as a light green mist-like substance was being drug out of an ectopus. The sound died as the creature dissolved into nothing but mist only to be sucked into the dog-thing.

"Not the way I'd want to go." Danny mumbled as he slowly let go of his ears. He almost jumped backwards as the black eyes of the dog-thing stared straight at him.

"Come down here, Phantom." It called in a surprisingly velvet voice.

Danny's eyes widened in surprise as he found himself following it's orders.

"That's a good Phantom." It smiled as Danny's feet crushed the dying grass. "Give me your energy."

Danny's eyes widened in fear and panic as the same green mist appeared from his chest, instantly weakening him. He knew he needed to get away but no matter what he told body, nothing worked. All he could do was stair into the beady black eyes and feel his strength leave him.

The dog-ghost thing laughed as it inhaled the energy. "Your ectoplasm is delicious! So much better than normal Earth ghosts'."

"Earth…ghosts?" Danny managed to ask before his legs gave out on him and the white rings appeared around his waist.

A growl emitted from Danny's attacker as he was forced to stop pulling energy from the boy as he turned human, falling onto his face.

"I'll let you live, for now." The dog-thing growled as it took it's foot and kicked the now black haired teen in the chest. "You'll be useful to me."

Danny struggled to turn his head up only to watch as the ghost teleported away in a green and purple mist. He curled in on himself, weak and a bit frazzled in the mind. Somehow he managed to pull out his phone and set a text message before blacking out to the world around hm.