Cleft the Devil's Foot
By: Wilona Riva
Disclaimer: Danny Phantom, by rights, belongs to Nickelodeon and Butch Hartman.
Sam and Tucker looked at each other nervously as Mr. Lancer escorted them to his office and closed the door.
Motioning for them to be seated, the Vice Principal eyed the clock. This should take more than a few minutes.
He sat down behind his desk, facing them and sighed. Rubbing his goatee, he glanced again at the clock. "Okay, where shall we begin?" he asked.
Sam elbowed Tucker, who yelped. "Sorry, Mr. Lancer," Tucker apologized.
Mr. Lancer smiled. "Since Miss Manson began, how about you explain about Mr. Fenton's absence this afternoon, Mr. Foley?"
The teenage boy flicked his eyes to Sam, who shook her head warningly. "I afraid we can't, Mr. Lancer. We're Danny's best friends; we don't reveal his secrets."
Mr. Lancer pulled out a remote. Pressing a button, he directed their attention to a row of monitors that emerged from the wall behind them. "These are the new ghost cameras the school installed along with the alarms due to the increased ghost attacks," he said. "Now, tell me what do you see at precisely, oh, say, lunchtime today?"
Sam's blood ran cold as she watched her best friend duck under the table and transform, before turning invisible. Danny...
Tucker's jaw dropped open, closed, dropped open again. We are so busted.
Mr. Lancer turned off the monitors, which returned to their resting places in the wall's cavity. "Care to try again?" he asked.
Tucker straightened his beret. "Well," he said, clearing his throat, "It began like this, Mr. Lancer..."
"Okay, Jack, let Phantom out," Maddie said, watching the clock approach 4 o'clock.
"Can we rip him apart molecule by molecule?" her husband asked hopefully.
"No, Jack," Maddie said, touching his arm gently. "We're going to give him a chance to explain himself."
"Thank you!" Phantom's voice shouted from the thermos. "It's getting cramped in here. I'm lucky I haven't developed claustrophobia from all the times I've been sucked in this contraption."
Jack nodded. "He is awfully loud. Well, here goes nothing, Mads." He pressed the button releasing the ghost, as Maddie grabbed the Fenton Fisher, ready to bind the ghost the moment he appeared.
The glowing of the thermos' internal light intensified signalling Phantom's arrival in the world of men. He fell onto the floor, gasping for air. Maddie bound his arms to his torso with the glowing strands of nylon and shoved him into a chair. "Okay, ghost, explain. How are you and Danny related?"
Phantom looked up at her in puzzlement. "Huh?"
"I saw you enter our basement lab in his form. What did you do to our son?"
Phantom eyed her silently, then looked at his father. He gulped and took a moment to think over his options. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck nervously-something Danny was prone to do a lot of lately. "Kind of hard to explain this, but I'm what you call a halfa-a ghost/human hybrid."
Jack frowned. "I've heard of this anomaly being possible, but it's only just a theory."
"No, Dad," Phantom said giving in to the idea that his parents had found him out. "It began the day you showed Sam, Tucker, and I the Fenton Portal you and Mom had been working on for years."
"Danny?" Maddie whispered hoarsely. "How?"
Phantom shook his head. "Let me start at the beginning, Mom."