Chapter 6
"Thanks, Mrs. Fenton." Daniel nodded, putting his new Fenton Thermos and net gun into his book bag before throwing it onto his back.
"Come back if you have any more questions." Maddie smiled.
"Or if you just want to hear me blather on about ghosts." Jack added.
Daniel smiled, wondering how Danny and his sister dealt with having these two as parents.
Maddie's attention was caught by something behind Daniel only for the door to slam shut as she asked, "Sam, Tucker?"
Daniel almost got pushed back into the sofa as the two Fenton's rushed out of the house. Daniel quickly recovered and followed behind them only to stop before stepping through the door.
"He fell out of his window." Sam explained in a panicked voice as she and Tucker forced their way back inside, Danny's limp form hanging between them.
"Lay him on the sofa." Maddie ordered.
The two did as their friend's mother said, positioning the pillows around his head.
"How on Earth did he fall out the window?" Jack asked, eyeing the two friends for answers as Maddie checked as best she could for bruising or broken bones.
"Mom?" Danny's voice asked weakly.
Daniel turned towards the boy on the sofa, curiosity keeping him in the house.
"It was a ghost." Danny admitted, opening his eyes to look up at his parents. "It startled me…. and I must've fallen backwards."
"We'll catch it, Danny-boy!" Jack called, pulling out a device from his jumpsuit's many pockets that turned out to be a collapsible gun. "Come on, Mads, no ghost messes with a Fenton and gets away with it."
Maddie pulled up her hood and threw a look at Sam and Tucker as she ordered, "Tell Jazz what happened."
"Course, Mrs. F." Tucker nodded as the two adults ran out of the house.
"You need me for anything?" Daniel asked, his headache returning but he still wanted to be polite and something was telling him Danny wasn't exactly telling the truth.
"No, we've got it." Sam said, looking over at Danny with worry on her face.
"See you tomorrow." Tucker smiled, his eyes giving himself away.
Daniel smiled back and threw a "get better" towards Danny before walking out of the house and making sure to avoid the two Fenton's scanning the area for the ghost Danny had mentioned.
Footsteps came up behind Daniel just in time to warn him of a hand clasping on his shoulder.
"Hey man, what's all that about?" Willy asked as he took his hand away and motioned back towards the Fenton's.
"Their son got scared by a ghost." Daniel shrugged.
"Oh, so they're the ghost experts?" Dana asked.
"I'll stick to being the expert on food." Joe-Joe commented with a smile only for his stomach to growl. "By the way, any food around? I'm starving."
"There's a fast food place we have to pass to get home we can hit." Daniel remembered.
"I don't know." Emma said, crossing her arms over her chest. "This seems like a close nit town. Us here would only get people asking questions."
"You're only saying that cause Nasty Burger looks like a Burger King." Joe complained, hunching down into his shoulders.
"Aren't you supposed to be trying to blend?" Dana asked, ignoring the meat verses veggie fight starting up.
"Fine, we'll go straight home, but I still need your help." Daniel admitted. The argument behind him quieting down, gaining the blond haired teen a smile. "Alright, I'll cook up something when we get there. Anybody up for crepes?"
"Yes!" Joe exclaimed, punching the air.
The group of five headed towards the neighborhood on the other side of Casper with only one complaint from Joe about the Nasty Burger and a few comments from Emma before they made it to the house.
Being the paranoid one that he is, Daniel shushed his friends quiet before quickly looking around for anything out of the ordinary. It may sound weird for anyone who's life wasn't a constant battle hand-to-hand, or tentacle, or claw, or… you get the picture, but for Daniel's life it was something normal. The last alien he'd hunted down only reminded him of that even more when he came home only to find the place ridge up to explode. If Joe hadn't have noticed a stray wire there might not have been anything left of Earth's Alien Hunter.
"Hey Daniel." Dad said, opening the door of the house. "Inside's clear."
"Thanks Dad." Daniel said before taking one last look around. Seeing nothing strange, he led his friends inside and straight towards the kitchen.
"So, what'd the Fenton's have to say?" Willy asked, staying with the rest on the safe side of the kitchen as Daniel started to work on some seafood crepes, keeping enough aside so the resident vegetarian could have hers without the crab, crawfish, and shrimp.
"Well, ectoplasm can stick itself onto humans but it no longer can form as any type of energy without a ghost matrix to keep it alive, so to say, since the stuff's supposed to be all dead in the first place." Danny explained as he cracked open a few eggs to start working on the crepes themselves. "So how Number 17 was able to drain ectoplasm from Danny in class is still confusing me."
"Is he human?" Dana asked, handing Danny a frying pan.
Danny looked at her, not taking the pan out of her hand as his mind stalled. "What?"
"Is he human?" Dana repeated, pointing the pan into Daniel's hand.
"You don't think he's like those ghost-like creatures that used to live on Zimmia?" Emma asked.
"Na, he's human." Daniel said, taking the pan from Dana's hand only to stare at it. Somehow he had created a pan that was half cast iron and half stainless steel. No good for crepes but it did help him remember something from earlier that day. "Joe, looked up if Zimmions can breed with Earthlings."
"You sound like some cheepo B scyfi movie." Joe commented as he pulled The List out of Daniel's back pack.
"What else would you call it?" Daniel asked, reforming the fry pan so it was usable for crepes.
"Point taken." Joe opened the device that could pass as a laptop and started typing.
A few minutes passed by quietly for all except for the sound of the crepes solidifying and keys typing away. Why didn't Daniel just create the seafood dinner like he did with his friends, family, and just about everything else? Simple, he had a fondness to cook. Came in handy too when he lived alone.
"Ok, technically it is possible but not really recommended since Zimmions have three genders and it takes one of each to create any type of offspring." Joe explained.
"But it's possible?" Daniel asked, flipping a delicate crepe to finished cooking.
"Ya, and the offspring that have been created look relatively human." Joe mentioned, turning the laptop around.
Daniel put the newly formed crepe onto the collecting pile before studying the picture of a humanoid girl of about seven in human years. A side note was next to the picture reading Even though the hybrid appears human, they still cannot digest any Earth foods, limiting their diet to that of what comes from the Ghost Zone.
"The Ghost Zone." Daniel stated, trying to recall something he read on the bus trip to Amity Park. "Isn't that where the Zimmions first lived?"
"Until the Otopians destroyed their planet." Emma informed. "They fled here or to other parts of the Ghost Zone."
"Ok, why is that?" Willy asked. "With as big as the Ghost Zone is and the only portals connect it to Earth?"
"There's a portal on Sinva 2." Dad reminded, "That's how the Otopians took over Zimm."
"But that doesn't make any sense!" Daniel exclaimed, creating a chopping board and a stack of green onions to take out his frustration with a knife. "Danny ate cafeteria food so that crosses out being a hybrid. At least with the Zimmions."
"What if one of his parents were a hybrid?" Dana asked.
Daniel stopped chopping to look up at Joe, who in turned shrugged. "There's been no reports of a hybrid having kids. Sorry."
"Great, so back to square one." Daniel growled, slamming down his knife, embedding it into the wooden board only to jump at the sound of the doorbell. Quickly he dematerialized his friend, creating his mother to take over the cooking as he headed towards the door.
"Hello?" Daniel asked as he opened the door only to be confronted by two men in white suits.
"There has been reports of high ecto-readings emitting from the vicinity." The black skinned man informed, pulling out a cell phone sized device from his inside pocket. It flicked open and started pulsating a beep very fast as if it was a metal detector right on top of a treasure. "Have you or are you in close quarters with a ghost?"
"Danny Phantom saved me twice today, could that be it?" Daniel asked, not sure what else they could be picking up. If they did this to every person who came in contact with ghosts, they'd never get a break.
"Beware! For I am-"
"Get out of my house, creep!" Mom cried, getting the three at the door to turn towards the living room only to witness his mother swinging a broom stick at the Box Ghost from earlier that day.
"Foolish Humans!" The Box Ghost proclaimed, flying quickly out of the way of the swinging broom. "You cannot so easily- oomph!"
The blue short man was too caught up in his triumph, he forgot he could go intangible and felt the bristled end of the broom come down on his head. The ghost fell onto the sofa, dazed.
"Freeze, ghost." The white man in white ordered as he pulled out a gun from somewhere in his tight suit, his partner following suit. They jumped forwards as if to protect Daniel.
"Men, I don't think guns are needed." Daniel said, placing a hand on each man's necks. The two froze as their thoughts were shifted, erasing any memories if there being any ghost in the house as Dad rushed in from the kitchen with the Fenton Thermos, sucking in the Box Ghost.
Daniel dropped his hands as the two men looked around the living room. They turned towards Mom, broom still in her hands, as the white man said, "I'm sorry for the inconvenience. Our information must have been wrong."
"No problem." Mom smiled back.
The two took that as their cue to leave, Daniel closing the door behind them.
"Where the heck did The Box Ghost come from?" Daniel asked, eyeing down his projected parents.
"This." Dad said, rattling the Fenton Thermos. "I didn't know they came with their own ghost."
"I'm sure they weren't supposed to." Daniel commented.
"Well, I'm going to get back to dinner." Mom said, leaving the living room with a "humph" muttering something about how stupid the ghost was.
"Let me get the net gun." Daniel followed his mother back into the kitchen. He came back to the living room and, with the help of Dad, they cleared the center of the living room. "Ready?" Daniel asked, taking a step back with the net gun pointed where the coffee table had been a moment before.
Dad pointed the thermos in the same area, hitting the release button just as Daniel shot a net, capturing The Box Ghost before he could realize he was free.
"How Dare you keep me trapped in your Cylindrical container!" The Box Ghost announced, gripping the netting to try to find a weak point.
"Don't bother, Box Ghost." Daniel said, trying to make himself sound as threatening as needed. "You won't be escaping until I'm done with you." He smiled as he created his friends around the Box Ghost, getting an expression of awe and surprise on the ghost's face.
"What are you?" the Box Ghost asked, eyeing Daniel.
"Let's just say Alien Hunter turned Ghost Hunter." Daniel admitted. "How'd you end up in the Fenton's inventory?"
"Phantom must've forgotten to dump me back into the Ghost Zone before putting the Thermos back." The ghost shrugged, giving up on fighting the net. "How would I know? I was crammed in that stupid thing."
"What is Danny Phantom?" Daniel asked, risking asking in hope for answers.
"What's in it for me?" the Box Ghost asked, smiling.
Daniel quickly created a box about the size of a microwave in his hands, showing the ghost some of his powers. "Any size you want, I can create."
The Box Ghost's eyes widened at that, his obsession clearly being satisfied.