Sam had arrived early in order to set up the room properly, missing the end of her English lecture in the process. She shifted away the loose cables that had bothered her for a month, removed the extra table on the lecturer's dais that she usually used to hold the scattered contents of her bag, and had made a point to only bring her laptop that day, setting it somewhat precariously on the lecturer's podium, a thick black video cable trailing off it toward the plug on the wall.
She'd been so busy reconfiguring the classroom that she'd completely forgotten to watch the clock in panic, so when the doors loudly unlocked and the class began to file in, all they saw was a girl in black, looking up at them like a deer in the headlights.
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Brianna looked back at her with contempt. She'd still not forgiven the brat for manipulating her father. Instead of getting her out of this stupid class, that pudgy little girl had somehow managed to trick him into believing her lies. He'd even threatened to take away her allowance if she kept skipping class!
That sort of skill's supposed to be reserved for girls like her! Not some flabby brat!
Her newest find, Caleb, completely agreed with her about their so-called professor, and she'd been considering for a while whether to get him to ask her out partly because of it. The two of them sat down next to each other in their usual spots.
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Caleb noted with frustration but no surprise that their esteemed professor hadn't brought anything to class. So much for that proof she promised. Two more semesters and he'd have his degree in business administration. Two lousy semesters, and he'd been kicking himself for almost a third of this one for indulging in his curiosity.
He'd known it was a bad idea. He'd learned the hard way (in his freshman Philosophy class) that curiosity only led to hard work and failure (he thought of the F as an opportunity for Personal Advancement), so he'd set himself up on the road to money most traveled, and thus obviously effective.
But how was he supposed to have known some tiny little punk was going to get his professor booted out and then take his place? That didn't happen.
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Kat, on the other hand, couldn't be happier. Sure, she'd liked Dr.—Professor Mentia, she reminded herself—well enough, but compared to the Samantha Manson, well, it was no contest. Kat had to have watched the news broadcast from the North Pole a thousand times by this point. She and her friends on the Danny Phantom subforum on 16Chan must have gone over it a hundred times each, looking for any scrap of new information.
Because after that point, Danny and Sam had faded back into the world. Now Kat knew it was a question of privacy (she still struggled to fight back the urge to post about this to her friends), and Danny, Sam, and their friend Tucker had come back out after a while, better than ever even.
Still, she really wished she could share this. It was just so cool.
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Alex was still amazed by how unwilling the rest of the class was to look for Professor Manson's image online. Heck, if what Kat said was true, all they'd have to do was search for her name and a dozen forums talking about her would pop up.
He may be a Junior on his way to an engineering degree, but some of them were even older than he was and should remember seeing her on TV.
What more proof did you need at that point?
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Katsuo sat patiently, waiting for class to begin. He, also, did not need proof of his Professor's expertise. His father, normally calm, reserved, talked quite animatedly about Ms. Manson, Mr. Foley, and Mr. Phantom. Such a calm, confident man, his father, yet brought to intense expression by three teenagers from America.
Of course, Katsuo had asked what made these teens so remarkable. After all, they were the same age as him, and he'd felt somewhat jealous at the time.
He had asked, and his father had answered. "Katsuo, son," he'd said, "those teenagers had fire enough to ignite the world, and steel enough to lead it out of the flames. No man I have met could claim such; not even me."
It had taken several years for Katsuo to truly understand his father's words. It began when he lost his childhood invincibility in a bicycle accident; afterwards, he better understood the dangers these teens, individuals his age, had chosen to accept. He had broken an arm and realized he was mortal. They had volunteered to fight ghosts the size of skyscrapers, no doubt suffering worse injuries, and done so over and over.
And once he had begun to accept the responsibilities of adulthood, he started to see the level of devotion to one's community such actions would take. To fight such things with nothing but skill and handheld weapons was to risk death. And yet they did it, over and over. Katsuo saw that as the height of sacrifice; placing oneself in mortal danger for another. And teenagers his age had shouldered it, of their own free will, over and over.
And once he began to investigate ghosts in earnest, discovered the level of power these creatures truly possessed, he realized a small measure of just how dangerous the teenagers themselves must have been, even then, to take on such creatures and win, over and over. To command their respect enough to call on them to save the Earth, and to have earned their fear enough to enforce their obedience.
All by an age when Katsuo's largest concerns were schoolwork and girls. Not insignificant concerns, especially at the time, but much smaller than Professor Manson's had been.
However unassuming his professor was, however emotional or seemingly immature, Katsuo would always remember what his father had said; that this woman had steel in her heart enough to pass through the flames of the world.
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"Hey Kat," Sam said, sticking her head out from under her lectern, one hand holding a wire, "could you come help me with this?"
Kat practically leapt over her desk to help. Stumbling over the strap of her bag, snickering wafting down from the higher tiers, she reached Sam's side and knelt down.
"How can I help?" she asked.
"I don't actually need help with this," Sam said with a smile. Kat looked back in confusion as Sam reconnected the power cable for the lectern's broken light.
"So then—"
"Do you still have that camcorder you carry around?" Sam asked, still smiling.
Kat's pale face reddened to roughly the shade of a tomato. "I don't-, I mean—"
"Do you have it?" Sam said urgently.
"Ye-yeah," Kat replied.
"Good. In about," Sam looked down at her watch, "five minutes, I want you to use it and record everything that happens. Got it?"
"What's—"
"No time," Sam replied. "Get back to your seat, quick, I'm already running late."
Kat practically sprinted back to her bag, while Sam stood and turned toward the class. "Sorry about the delay," she said as she glanced down at Kat rapidly setting up her camcorder, "Unfortunately, the proof is running a little late."
"Of course it is," Brianna said.
"Alright, you know what," Caleb shouted, "I'm fed up with your bullcrap, kid! Twice a week you waste our time," he waved his arm over the angrily nodding class, "saying you know best. But you're just a freaking kid!
"You tell us to come back today and on time for some frigging evidence that you know what the heck you're talking about, and here we are, and your proof isn't!I'm freaking tired of listening to you!" he finished, his voice reverberating around the room.
The rest of the class once again followed Caleb's lead and burst into furious noise. Sam surreptitiously glanced down at her watch every few seconds, and eventually she glanced over at Kat. She saw Kat look away from the clock on the wall and lift her camera; saw Alex staring angrily back at the still-shouting class; and saw Katsuo staring intensely back at her, just before she turned to face the class again.
At the exact moment the clock on the wall hit five minutes past the hour, all but a handful of lights in the room shut off, instantly leaving the room in a dim half-light. A sudden silence (after the expected shouts of alarm) settled briefly over the class.
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Which was shattered immediately by a massive, faintly glowing beast bursting from the wall into the dim half-light beside the Manson kid. It had massive claws (had to be a foot long each!), a mouth full of long, incredibly sharp teeth, jet black fur, and large glowing green eyes.
It roared, Brianna screamed, and tables and chairs briefly experienced flight as the class scrambled toward the doors on either side, the sound of hysterical fear filling the lecture hall. Caleb pushed the tiny nerds in the class out of the way, fighting past several students to get closer to the nearest door, all the while hearing some terrible sound come from where the Manson kid had been.
Almost too afraid to look, Caleb quickly glanced back and had his suspicion confirmed; the beast had almost enveloped the kid and seemed to be leaning in to rip her head from her shoulders, with its wide-open mouth full of terrifyingly large teeth less than a foot from her.
This sight further fueled his panic, and he viciously shoved his way to the door, yanked it open against the accumulated mass of half a class…
And found it blocked by some sort of glowing green barrier.
He didn't even bother to wonder where it had come from. A feeling of complete hopelessness began to spread through him, the sound of his terrified fellow students almost concealing the continued, horrible noise of the Manson kid and probably her three-person fan club being eaten alive.
Gathering his courage, knowing he'd rather see himself about to be eaten, he looked over the sobbing mass that had once been his classmates and down at the lecturer's dais.
His first thought would later embarrass him: How is she not dead yet?
His second thought immediately embarrassed him: Wait, is she…
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…laughing hysterically, one arm wrapped around Wulf's shoulder, the other trying its best to support some of his weight. Sam simply couldn't help it; she laughed harder than she'd ever laughed in her life, her high-pitched voice counterpointing Wulf's deep, barking werewolf laugh-thing. Together, the two laughs morphed into roughly the sound of a dying animal.
Just as she thought she'd finally be able to stop, with the gleeful ache in her stomach growing more and more painful, she looked up and saw Caleb and Brianna and the whole rest of the class's extremely-confused faces, and just couldn't help it.
By the time she managed to fight down her second wave of laughter, both she and Wulf had been reduced to balls of flesh and ghost-flesh lying on the ground, rolling with overpowering amusement and completely unable to stand for several minutes.
Calming down slightly, lying flat on her back, she took several deep, deep breaths, which slowly loosened the pain of her abused stomach. Taking her time, she pulled herself up by the edge of the lectern, wiping tears from her eyes and cheeks.
Wulf was still catching his breath, so she reached down and helped him up. When she turned around, her students had picked themselves up from where they'd fallen and were gathered at either end of the back wall, both doors wide open.
"What…" Caleb's voice shook, probably from adrenaline, Sam thought, "the hell is going on?"
Focusing almost all of her concentration on not laughing again, Sam spared a little of it and, with a smile on her face that she desperately tried to keep from spreading, said, "That, class, was a pop quiz; I was seeing how well you remembered Tuesday's lecture."
Caleb stared back, speechless. Which was convenient for her.
Turning to Wulf she said, "That. Was amazing. High five, buddy!" Massive wolf paw met tiny human hand with a fur-muted clap. "I owe you for this one."
"Nedankinde," he replied, smiling and shaking his head. "Vi estas mia amiko!"
"I know I'm your friend, but I still feel like I owe you," Sam said. "Tell you what; I'll bully Danny into taking me up to visit you. We can go hiking!"
"Hey!" a disembodied voice said from what sounded like a dozen places near the ceiling, just as the disabled lights in the room came back on.
"Deal with it!" Sam shouted, grinning up at the ceiling, eyes squinting slightly in the renewed light.
Kat's jaw dropped. Her camera was still rolling, however, so she pointed it at every point she could so quickly that Sam guessed the only thing she'd see later was thirty solid seconds of blur.
"Prive," Wulf replied, nodding and smiling.
"Okay Wulf, we'll see you soon, then. Maybe this weekend," Sam said, continuing to ignore her students, "Thanks again."
Wulf nodded enthusiastically, then leapt through the nearby wall.
Sam turned back to the class. First, she checked the Inquisitive Trio; they all looked to be more or less OK. Alex looked the most shaken, but he smiled shakily back at her regardless. Kat was obviously fine since she'd been partly in on it.
Katsuo was looking at her funny. It took her a moment to think of a word for it: shrewdly. He looked back at her like he was analyzing her. Sam wasn't sure what to think about that, so she looked at the other tiers…
…And snorted a laugh down. None of them had moved. "Come on guys, get back to your seats. We've still got forty five minutes left."
They all took their seats as if they couldn't think of anything better to do. Sam noted with satisfaction that Brianna and Caleb had moved from their toppled desks in the back row to the still-standing ones on the lower tier.
"Uh, Professor?" one of Caleb's coterie said. Sam tried not to look smug. "What, uh, what was that?"
Sam raised her eyebrow and looked out at the rest of the class. "Has anyone seen that thing before?"
Fifteen or so hands rose, some more firmly than others. She looked back at the almost forty students with their hands down.
"Alright," Sam said, feigning impatience. After all, she wouldn't have done this if she thought they'd remembered. "Everyone raise their hands." She waited a surprising short amount of time before they had. Looking theatrically around the room, she said, "This is how many of you have seen Wulf before. He was number 5 on the Friend or Foe portion of the pre-section quiz on Tuesday."
"So, since that's the last place we stopped, we might as well pick up there," she began, opening her laptop as the whole class pulled out their notebooks.
Forty-four minutes later, her first truly attended lecture over, the class rose to leave, and Sam began to pack up her things. Not unexpectedly, the Inquisitive Trio walked up to her when their bags were packed.
Kat was the first to speak; she sounded almost hurt. "Why didn't you tell me Danny was here!" she demanded.
"Kat, you didn't see him before or after you found out," Sam said. "He's part ghost—if he doesn't want to be seen, he can go completely invisible. The only thing it could have done is make you so excited you'd give the game away, or spend the whole time looking for him instead of filming."
Kat tried to look back defiantly and failed.
"Fine," Kat finally sighed sadly. "You're right.I would have. But I still would have loved to know.
"Anyway, what did you want the video for?"
"I'm probably going to get in trouble for that," she waved vaguely in the direction Wulf had come from, "so I thought I might need a video record of it," she replied. She reached out her hand for the camcorder, pulled the memory card from it, and started transferring its contents to her laptop.
"I would have liked some warning," Alex said in the meantime.
"You paid attention to the lecture on Tuesday," Sam said. "Warning enough." She smiled, looking up at him, "Besides, it's not often a girl like me gets to scare the crap out of someone like you."
He smiled back, shaking his head.
File transferred, Sam handed Kat her camcorder back. She and Alex turned to head up the stairs, leaving Katsuo behind.
Sam looked at him apprehensively, sure something significant was coming. Remembering his shrewd look from earlier, she braced herself for anything.
Katsuo looked back for a moment. His eyes dropped. Then he bowed low, arms at his side, and said simply, "Steel."
Then he turned to follow Kat and Alex, leaving behind a very confused Sam.
"You know," Danny said from his spot next to Sam on the roof, "You're sort of part of the Establishment now."
Taking her eyes away from the stars above them, she said, "What?! No I'm not! I'm filling in; that's all. As soon as this semester's over, I'm walking straight into the Dean's office and quitting."
"Won't make any difference," he teased.
Sam huffed, pointedly looking back at the sky, "Yeah it will."
"Nope," Danny said. "You've gone too far; you can't go back now. Using power to make students do what you tell them to. Using grades on assignments and tests to influence their futures. Punishing them for disobeying you by scaring the living daylights out of them.
"Admit it Sam," he fake-mocked, "you're one of them now."
Sam turned to look at Danny, her face horrorstruck, "You're right," she said, "Oh god no, you're right." She buried her face behind her arms.
"My life is over."
"C'mon," Danny said, kindly. "It was going to happen eventually. At least this way you can still say you never completely gave it up."
She looked back at him, actual hope on her face, "What do you mean?"
"Sam, you teach about ghosts," he said, "When it comes to them, we are the Establishment. So all you have to do is not be like my English professor, then slip out after college and study ghosts or something."
"I wanted to go into horticulture!" Sam cried.
"Study ghost plants," Danny said reasonably.
"What if I don't want to deal with ghosts anymore?" Sam asked.
"Then you wouldn't remember to pack the thermos and wrist rays every day," he replied.
She narrowed her eyes. She paused like that, glaring at Danny, then said, "Fine. You're right, I couldn't give up ghosts."
Danny smiled, "Good news for me, then."
She smiled back. Danny leaned over for a kiss, then lay back to continue watching the stars with her on the sloping roof of the Mains building.