Edited/rewritten December 2007

Pits
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

Page 1

I'd love to say that Tuesday morning started out boringly normal: my annoying alarm clock going off; the annoying radio playing some annoyingly cheery song to try and get me awake; my even more annoying sister trying to beat me to the bathroom.

As I said – I'd love to say that. But I can't.

One of my least favorite ghosts of all time, an overly-obsessed ghost hunter, appeared in my room long before my alarm clock should have gone off. He yanked me out of bed by one foot, completely ignored my sleepy and indignant yelp of protest, and phased me through my wall to dangle me over the street by my ankle. By the time we passed the top of the Ops center, I had managed to shake off my lethargic state and was thoroughly awake. I was also thoroughly irritated. "Skulker…" I seethed, feeling my normally blue eyes flare a supernatural green.

"Whelp," the hunter-ghost gloated, the roar of his jet-pack loud in the silent night.

"Is there a specific reason I'm hanging upside down before the sun rises? Or is it just the usual hang-my-pelt-on-your-wall power trip?" The fact that it was so early made this hunt a bit special… Skulker usually held off his hunting until later in the day. There were times when I figured that he appreciated sleeping in as much as I did.

"I wanted a crack at you before the others arrive." He continued flying upwards, barely giving me a second glance.

"You got up early for nothing, then… huh?" I crossed my arms and cast a look around to make sure nobody else had woken up and was watching the scene. I couldn't see anybody.

"This time, I – Skulker! – have you, ghost-child." He shook my leg in time to his triumphant gloating, making my teeth chatter slightly.

I kicked out with my free foot, catching Skulker's robotic body in one of the few truly weak points I've discovered over the months we've been fighting each other – the elbow. I had to stifle a yelp of pain as the heel of my bare foot connected with the hard metal, but my aim was good. The weak joint shattered. The lower part of his arm separated from the rest of his body and plummeted towards the ground.

On the positive side, I wasn't trapped by the ghost anymore. On the slightly more negative side, I was now falling towards the ground with the severed limb. This didn't trouble me too much, however. I had nearly a hundred feet left to fall before I splattered on the cement like yesterday's meatloaf.

You see, I'm no ordinary human. I'm your normal, average, fifteen-year-old ghost-human hybrid. I have the ability to take two different forms: one is a black-haired, blue-eyed human; the other is a white-haired, green-eyed ghost. This would be why Skulker called me 'ghost-child' earlier – and, perhaps, why he's obsessed with hunting me. There aren't many like me; I'm pretty much unique. Of course, this hybrid thing is a big secret from almost everybody – including my ghost hunting parents.

As I plunged downwards, I closed my eyes and let my mind slip into a meditative state, reaching down inside of me for that feeling that was associated with my spectral form. A chilly, weightless tingling flooded through my nerves, banishing the heavy warmth of my human body. Opening my glowing emerald eyes, I exerted my mind ever-so-slightly and stopped my head-long tumble towards the ground with well over fifty feet to spare.

Hanging upside down in the air, I watched Skulker's arm shatter on the pavement below before flipping over to glare at the now-one-armed ghost. The hunting-obsessed specter was watching me with a lot less cockiness than he had been moments before. You'd think he'd learn. We've been doing this hunter/prey thing for over a year and he's never won.

A cool trickle of ectoplasm swirled into existence in the palm of my right hand. I clenched my fingers, sending sparks of power flickering over my fist and casting a supernatural glow over the area. "Now, what made you think you could catch me this time?" I asked him.

Skulker raised his arm and grinned. "I have more tricks up my sleeve, whelp. I am the Ghost Zone's Greatest Hu…"

I slammed an energy blast into his face at that point, cutting off his self-promoting rant mid-word. Flying through the chill morning air, I phased through Skulker's metal body, quickly twisted around behind him, and wrapped my legs around his chest. One of my hands found purchase on his head.

"Skulker," I laughed softly into one of the microphones that served as the robot's ears, "I've wanted to try this out for some time."

"What?" His remaining arm came up to try and knock me off his back.

Ignoring Skulker's flailing arm, I turned my attention on my free hand. Ectoplasm burst into life on my hand, cool flames tickling my senses. Then I focused. I'd gotten this idea from Tucker's little cousin last summer break – the boy was scorching ants with a magnifying glass. The sun's rays were condensed into a sharp point that could actually start fires. I, of course, didn't have a magnifying glass handy… but I'm a ghost. I don't need a magnifying glass.

The ectoplasm flaring around my hand quickly whirled down into a smaller and smaller stream, glowing brighter and more powerfully with each passing heart beat. Before Skulker could get in more than two or three swipes at my artfully-unstyled white hair, I had a tightly controlled stream of ectoplasm no more than a few millimeters wide. It was glowing like a thread of molten metal.

Skulker didn't know what hit him. I sliced the ectoplasmic thread through his neck and it went through the metal like a proverbial hot knife through butter. After balancing for a second on his robotic shoulders, his head tumbled off. The ghost's body powered down and, for the second time this morning, I found myself falling through the air with a portion of Skulker.

I kicked away from his body and caught his head in my hands like a basketball. I hung there for a moment, the small frog-like ghost (who was really Skulker) lodged in the helmet screaming and cursing at the top of his small lungs, and inspected the damage the remains of Skulker's body had done to the neighbor's roses. I yawned.

"It's too early Skulker. Go back to bed," I groused as I phased back into my parent's house and down into the lab in our basement. As I expected, the portal to the Ghost Zone was standing open and unshielded. Landing softly on the floor in the middle of the lab, I let a sleepy grin cross my face. I lobbed Skulker and his helmet back through the portal and shifted back to my human form. Shutting the portal and heading back up the stairs, I was ready to get another five hours of sleep.

But less than two hours later, that aforementioned annoying sister was pounding on my door. Apparently I needed to get up and go to school. Rolling over and glaring blearily at the alarm clock next to my bed, I noted that I had a whole twenty-five minutes until Tucker showed up at my door. My eyes drifted closed as my mind started to work on the problem. If I skipped breakfast again and didn't take a shower, I knew could get up and be ready to go in four minutes, thirty seconds. If my parents were safely in the basement and I could use my ghost powers, I could shave another minute off that time due to the fact that I wouldn't have to worry about little things like walls. That meant that I could sleep for at least twenty more minutes. Perfect.

I curled up under the warmth of my blankets and sighed, content with my decision to sleep. I only managed to get another ten minutes of bliss before my mother stalked into my room and yanked me out of bed in a fashion too reminiscent of Skulker's earlier hunt for comfort. I staggered through my morning ritual, stumbling downstairs in time to grab a few pieces of toast. At least I hoped it was toast – you can't always tell in my parents' kitchen. Whatever it was, it didn't try to eat me.

I was sleepily eating my breakfast when Tucker wandered into the kitchen. He grinned at me as he dropped his pack on the floor. For some reason, Tucker has always been a morning person. When he wakes up, he's completely awake. It's completely and totally unfair.

"Is that Skulker's remains on your neighbor's front lawn?" Tucker beamed as he dropped into an available kitchen chair and swiped my other piece of toast.

I sent him a sluggish glare, but decided to just answer his question and not bug him about stealing my breakfast. "Yup."

"He attacked you last night?" Tucker chewed noisily, rustling through his pockets for something with his free hand.

"This morning."

"Did you see this?" Tucker held out a folded piece of paper, stuffing another bite of his stolen toast into his mouth.

I glanced over at it. My best friend held it out patiently as I groggily contemplated the folded paper. I swallowed my last bite of toast, took the slightly glowing paper out of his fingers, and unfolded it.

It was a crude sketch of me – well, ghost me. To be more specific, it was a reward poster with a sketch of me on it. "Reward," I murmured as I read, "for the capture of the halfa known as Danny Phantom. Claim reward at the main prison complex. Preferred in one piece. Reward. Signed: Walker, Chief Warden, Ghost Zone." I slowly folded the paper back up and stifled another tired yawn. "Where'd you find it?"

"Skulker had it. I found it when I was checking his body for traps, bombs… my latest missing PDA…."

I groaned. I had completely forgotten to check Skulker's body last night. He'd taken up the rather annoying habit of booby-trapping his robotic leftovers to cause me headaches even after I kicked him back into the Ghost Zone. If he would have blown up in the neighbor's yard, it wouldn't have been fun. "Did you find your DPA?"

Tucker shook his head sadly, wiping a fake tear out of his eye. "No. May she rest in pieces."

Tapping the reward poster softly on the table, I couldn't help but grin at my best friend's insane melodramatics. "It's creepy: Skulker working for Walker."

"Yeah, it can't be good for us either." Tucker downed the last of my toast, drank my juice, and stood up. "Ready to go?"

"No," I sighed as a pushed away from the table and grabbed my backpack. "But I suppose I don't have a choice. The torture-chamber known as 'school' awaits." I stuck the folded poster into my backpack and followed Tucker out the door.

I somehow made through my first class, still a little dazed from my interrupted sleep. After almost passing the pop quiz, I headed out the door and straight into Dash's waiting arms. Of course, my luck held true and the resident school bully had failed his test as well. I ended up staring at the inside of my locker until the bell rang coming to the decision that I really needed to tape a crossword puzzle or at least a sudoku to the wall so I had something to do.

I should have gone home then. I knew it was going to be a bad day.

One detention, three boring classes, and a missing homework assignment later, I found myself kneeling on the floor beside my broken backpack, picking up the scattered pencils and notebooks. "Stupid…" I knew better than to trust the Fenton version of the duct tape I'd used to fix my backpack after Cujo ripped it to shreds.

"It could be worse," Sam said simply, shooting me a glance as she stooped to grab a book that had managed to make it all the way across the hallway.

"Don't say that," I muttered as I grabbed the book and stuffed it into the remains of my backpack. "It can and will get worse."

"Probably." One of her rare smiles flickered across her face. She grabbed one of the wayward pens and a folded piece of paper. She studied the oddly glowing paper for a second. "What is this?"

"Um…" I glanced over at it as I tried to stand up and think of some wonderful explanation as to why I had my own reward poster in my backpack. Truth be told, I'd forgotten all about it until just now.

Tucker, who finally arrived on the scene, grinned and pulled out his PDA. My stomach jumped up into my throat at the thought of what was coming. Sam was going to think that I was holding this from her…

I was so dead!

"That's his reward poster," Tucker helpfully chimed in before I could open my mouth to speak. His PDA flashed as the camera took a few pictures of Sam's initial reaction. It wasn't pretty.

"What?" she hissed, unfolding the paper as fast as she could without ripping it into pieces. "You have a reward poster?" The paper crumbled in her hands as she closed her eyes for a second. "And why didn't you tell me?"

I shot an annoyed glance over at Tucker and dropped my broken and badly-packed backpack into his arms. Not only did it free my arms, it also kept Tucker's hands too busy to record this argument for later blackmail. I'd really learned to multi-task over the past year.

"I only found out this morning, Sam. And we really haven't had a chance to talk." I rubbed the back of my neck and tried to send her the sweetest smile I could find. "It's not that big of a deal. All the ghosts are after me all the time anyways."

She seemed to soften a little, the hard glint to her amethyst eyes vanishing. "You have a reward poster," an almost-smile flickered on her face as she studied the picture, "goody-two-shoes Danny Fenton."

Tucker nudged me with his elbow, holding out the mess of my stuff in his arms. "Dude," he said, nodding down towards the broken pack. I sent him a grin but kept my eyes on Sam.

She had quietly folded the picture up and had stuck it into one of the pockets of her jeans. "How'd you find out about it?" Turning on her heel, she started down the hallway towards her next class, confident that we'd follow her.

"Skulker had it on him when he attacked this morning," Tucker growled sourly, dropping my backpack to the ground. "Carry your own junk." He glanced towards Sam – she had frozen in the hall, her knuckles white as she clenched her fingers around the strap of her spider-style backpack. Dropping his voice, he added, "and for that trick, you so deserve what's coming."

"Skulker?" Sam twisted around, her purple eyes flashing dangerously as she stalked back to glare up into my eyes. "What's this about Skulker and why didn't you tell me?"

I backed up a step, swallowing heavily when Sam took a few steps of her own forward until she was within a foot of me. Sam was equal parts scary, dangerous, and furious, especially since she obviously felt like she was being left out of what was going on again. I wouldn't do that again… not after the last time I tried to leave her out of the ghost mess and she lashed me for it. "Um… see…"

"I don't see," she ground out, not even blinking when the bell suddenly rang around us. "Explain."

"He dragged me out of bed this morning, that's all. He's back in the Ghost Zone, his robotic body was on Mrs. Perkensin's roses when we left – it's probably be dissected by my parents by now – and I went back to sleep. That's all. It'll take him at least a week to make a new suit."

Sam took a step backwards, her eyes still dangerous. "You need to tell me these things, Danny. We're trying to keep you safe." She let out a long breath, her shoulders relaxing a little. "Even the little problems."

"I can't handle it, Sam," I told her. I had heard the 'tell us everything' argument a million times before and I never particularly agreed with it. It seemed slightly unfair that Sam and Tucker knew every aspect of my life and I didn't know nearly as much about theirs. "It's just Skulker. He hasn't managed to catch me in one of his lame traps in nearly a year."

"Someday, ghost-boy," she said softly, turning away and wandered through the empty hall towards her next class, her hips sashaying as she walked. "Someday you'll appreciate all the information and work that Tucker and I have been doing."

Tucker snorted softly next to me. "I've been doing all the information part. She's the one that can twist you around her little finger and make you tell her anything she darned well pleases." His grin turned a little sadistic. "She's not even your girlfriend and she's got you totally whipped."

"She's not my girlfriend," I mumbled out of practice before I realized that he hadn't said that she was and wrenched my eyes away from her. "And she can't get me to tell her everything."

"So can," he laughed softly. "Give up and get to class. You're going to get another detention for this latest tardy."

I sighed and bent down to collect the school supplies that Tucker had so helpfully dropped all over the floor when a shiver suddenly skidded down my back. My body felt like it had just been dunked in ice water and my defeated groan of annoyance fogged in the air in front of me.

Tucker's laughter grew. "Oh man, are you going to be late now. Just don't forget that Lancer is hanging a suspension over your head if you skip the entire class again."

"Why another ghost already?" I asked as I collected my stuff and tried to debate what to do with it for now. "Two in one day is just evil."

With a happy smile, Tucker took the stuff out of my arms and turned to walk towards the class we had next. "I'm betting it's the reward poster dragging the idiots out of the millwork."

"Great, more people gunning for my head." One last check of the hallway – nobody around but Tucker and I – and I closed my eyes and let the cold weightlessness of ghosts surround me. My whole body tingled for a second as energy wrapped around me as I changed into my ghost form. I was just about the open my eyes and take to the air when I heard a small explosion behind me and a net wrapped around me. "What the…"

"I have you!" a strange voice cheered from behind me. I squirmed in the net for a second, unable to phase through it, then twisted my head around to see who had caught me off guard. As expected, it was a ghost. He looked like something right out of an old safari movie. Baggy-looking pants with lots of pockets, safari-style helmet, funky vest, and gun-case over his shoulder. He even sported the obligatory mustache. The only thing missing was the elephant that he should have been riding.

I rolled my eyes as the nameless ghost launched into the celebratory (and apparently obligatory) monologue about how good a hunter he was. I pushed my hand against the net, then raised an eyebrow as I listened to 'Theodore' ramble on about how he had captured the great halfa and how there was nothing I could do about it.

Closing my eyes for a second, I pulled a bunch of energy out of the air and curled it into a ball right in front of me. I released it suddenly and it slashed outwards at the ghost net like a dozen sharp razor blades. The net disintegrated around me as I drifted up into the air and stretched. Safari Theodore hadn't even noticed my escape from his 'genius and fail-proof trap'.

Seriously… where do ghosts get egos that big? I've never met a ghost who didn't think they were the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I was just about the blast him to get him to shut up for a moment when a very familiar explosion reached my ears a split-second before another net appeared out of nowhere and dragged me to the ground. "Crap," I hissed as I slammed painfully into the floor of the school. Two nets in less than a minute? Where was my head?

"You let him escape!" a deep voice berated Theodore. A new ghost, dressed as a turn-of-the-century war general, strode past me and stuck his sword into Theodore's face. "Don't you remember the plan, you dimwit? We were going to trap him in the net and then shock him so he couldn't escape! You forgot to shock him."

"I didn't have a shocker, Simon. I lost it," Theodore shot back. "I forgot to ask Louise for a new one."

I rubbed my head, shooting the arguing ghosts a disbelieving look. Both of them were so wrapped up in discussing the minute points of their 'plan' that they were forgetting to follow through with it.

Again.

I ripped the net open and floated in the air for a few seconds, carefully studying the hallway for more net-toting ghosts. Fool me once, shame on them. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times… well… I probably would have deserved to stay captured. "Guys?" I asked when I decided the coast was relatively clear. Both of them turned to look at me, their eyes widening when they finally noticed that I was free of their net. "Let's take this outside, shall we?"

Blasting them through the wall and into the school's parking lot, I let a small grin cross my face. Both of these ghosts were pathetically weak. With any luck, I would have been able to catch the two of them and make it back to class without ending up being suspended the next day.

I chased them across the parking lot, randomly blasting them as they shouted insults over their shoulder at me, trying to get close enough to catch them in my Fenton thermos. I was within seconds of getting them and ending this silly game of cat and mouse when I ran into a large, gray wall.

The wall wrapped a thick, snake-like arm around my waist and squeezed tightly. I coughed, struggling to breathe as I squirmed in the vice-like grip. I couldn't phase through the strange… "Louise!" Theodore's annoyingly happy voice interrupted my thoughts, "You got him!"

"Of course I got him," the gray wall answered, the arm that had me in a death-grip vibrating as it spoke. "You idiots didn't follow the plan, did you?"

"Theodore didn't have his shocker," Simon whined, appearing in front of me. "It's not my fault."

"Yeah?" Theodore shot back as I felt the world start to black out. I was going to pass out from lack of air. "Why didn't you shock him when you had him in your net?"

"Enough!" trumpeted the wall, giving me a harsh shake and rattling my oxygen-starved brain. "Enough of the endless bickering. We catch this stupid halfa and we can go our separate ways, got it?" The gray arm slammed me into the ground and released its hold on me.

I pushed myself to my knees, gasping in one big lungful of air after another, swiveling my head to find the three ghosts that were hovering above me. Safari Theodore was pointing his net-gun in my general direction, war general Simon was holding a very nasty-looking device that was no doubt the 'shocker' the two had been arguing about earlier. And between them… I groaned as soon as I had enough breath to do so.

Louise was an elephant – a large, heavy, intimidating-looking creature that happened to be floating nonchalantly in midair. Theodore really did have the complete ensemble. If my stomach hadn't been hurting so much from the squeezing I'd just endured, I probably would have laughed at the sight of the safari ghost with his elephant.

My hands glowed as I clenched my fists and staggered to my feet, my breathing still ragged. I had barely gotten my balance when Theodore leveled his gun and pulled the trigger. Raising one hand, I shot his net to bits before it got anywhere near me. "You need to sneak up on me for that to work," I informed him, "I've had a lot of practice with nets."

Theodore blinked at me, pushing his pith helmet back on his head a little. "So go shock him," he said to Simon.

"What? Are you nuts?" the war general yelped.

"It was my job to get him into a net and yours to shock him. I can't get him into a net… so you need to shock him first."

"I'm not going near him!"

I watched the two of them as their argument escalated, my head tipped to the side, wondering if I could suck them into my Fenton thermos now or if I needed to weaken them a little bit first. My eyes drifted over to the elephant. She was staring down at me, her intelligent eyes boring into mine. I shivered as I realized that the elephant I had so casually been brushing off was the leader of the unlikely trio.

After a few moments of us gazing at each other while Simon and Theodore bickered, she nodded stiffly. Then she grabbed her two companions in her strong trunk and vanished.

"Hey…" I drifted a few feet into the air, all thoughts on following them and catching them before they did any damage, but I suddenly remembered Lancer's all-to-real threat of suspension and I hesitated. With a scowl, I turned around and headed towards class. I figured two idiots and an elephant couldn't get in that much trouble in two hours. I'd catch them after school.

"Sam, it's no big deal! I'll catch them after school."

"Do you even care?" she snapped back, slamming her locker shut. "They're going to come back to hunt you again."

"I know. And I do care!"

She headed up the hallway and I followed her as she grumbled to herself. "It doesn't sound like it, you know."

"It's my life, Sam."

"You're being an idiot," she shot over her shoulder.

"So are you," I mumbled, wincing almost as soon as it was out of my mouth. I never should have said that, but she was being so annoying overprotective.

"What did you just call me?" she seethed.

"Nothing. Just drop it."

She glared at me for a long few seconds then stormed towards my locker. "We don't want to see you get hurt. We're just trying to help."

"I know. I appreciate it," I tried to sound appreciative as I said it even though I still wasn't too happy with the idea of them having their fingers in so much of my life. "And I don't want to get hurt either."

"Then…" Sam leaned against the locker next to mine and waited while I twirled in my combination.

"What did you want me to do, Sam? I couldn't miss any more class. Detentions are bad enough, if I get suspended, my parents will kill me."

"I don't know. But you just let them go!"

"There's nothing I can do about it now." I dug through the mess on the shelf for my English notebook. "Besides, I didn't put a reward on my head. I can't help the fact that they're hunting me right now."

"You should have caught them," she muttered darkly.

"I know," I sighed.

She was quiet until I found my notebook and pushed it into the remains of my backpack. "What are you going to do when they come back?"

"If they come back, I'll hunt them down after school and toss them back into the Ghost Zone." I grinned at her.

"If they come back?" Sam repeated with a raised eyebrow and a skeptical tone in her voice. "There's only one period left. What're the chances?"

"Knock on wood," I breathed, hugging my broken pack to my chest and heading towards Mr. Lancer's English class. "Lancer will personally skin me alive if I miss even three more seconds of his class."

"I still think you're an idiot for not catching them," she mumbled and picked up the pace to walk ahead of me.

"What's her problem?" I asked rhetorically as I wandered behind her.

"I think she's scared," a familiar voice said from right behind me. I twisted around to glance into Tucker's eyes with surprise. "Hello, Mr. Oblivious. I've been following the two of you for since Sam's locker." He grinned. "She doesn't do scared very well, you know that. It comes out all angry and yell-y. She'll get over it."

"You think?" I wondered if she'd still be like this after school.

"Totally," Tucker laughed. "She can't stay away from you – she likes you too much."

Sam sat as far away from me as possible in Lancer's class. She stared down at her notebook, doodling and being very careful not to glance in my direction. I watched her quietly, trying to decide what it was that I had done that had pissed her off quiet this well. Hadn't I made the right decision earlier… letting those idiots go in favor of not getting suspended from school? They were just three ghosts that made the Box Ghost seem clever and powerful in comparison.

Should I apologize? If so, for what? I settled back a little farther in my chair and let a long breath.

"Mr. Fenton," Lancer's voice startled me out of my trance-like contemplations, "would you care to enlighten us about the relative merits of Osco's poetic form?"

I blinked at him, off-balance from the quick transition for trying to figure out life's mysteries to the boring topic of English poetry. To make it even worse, I hadn't even understood the question… much less had a clue as to the answer he was looking for. The feral smile on his face just made it all the worse. Lancer knew very well that I had no idea what he had just asked me. "What?"

"You did read Osco's poem last night, correct?"

I nodded after a second. For once, I really had done my English homework.

"What do you think were the best parts of the format Osco used?"

Hesitating, I tried to remember the long one-sided chat Jazz had trapped me into last night when she had caught me reading Osco's poetry. I had made a mental note to lock the door whenever I was reading poetry ever again – apparently Jazz liked poetry a little too much – but it was coming in handy. "I liked… all the rhyming words?" I watched his eyebrows rise a little at my half-question and struggled to remember something else. "Um… and how so many of his words started with 's'… it made the poem seem evil and scary… and those," I paused, searching my mind for the right word, "stanzas were neat too – they were went from six lines to five lines to four, all the way down to one and then back up."

Lancer's eyebrows went the rest of the way up his forehead and he watched me in silence for a long moment. I was just starting to sweat and wonder if I had read the wrong poem or if I had spoken in a strange language or if I had randomly turned invisible when he smiled. It was kind of scary. "Very good, Mr. Fenton. Continue to do your homework and you might pass this year after all."

I relaxed back in my chair, untying the knots that had developed in my stomach. Lancer had the evil ability to wreaked havoc on a student's self-confidence with a simple look, and he had been focused on me for nearly a minute. The class was settling into a discussion on another of Osco's poems when a trumpeting call blasted through the classroom.

Crossing my arms and dropping my forehead onto my arms, I felt the ghost get close enough to trigger my ghost sense. Shivers wracked my body and my cold breath misted in the air as I mouthed curses under my breath. Stupid ghost hunters. Stupid reward.

Around me, the class devolved into whispered conversations as everybody tried to figure out if the strange sound had been a ghost and what was going to happen next. I had a feeling that I knew what was going to happen and tensed, waiting for the screaming to start.

To their credit, the class didn't panic nearly as much as I had figured they would when a ten-foot-tall mass of gray-green elephant charged through the wall and into their midst. There was the expected screaming and cowering and running, but it seemed to be an almost organized panic. Only in Amity Park.

"Get him! There he is!" I heard the elephant trumpet and I picked my head up to look at her.

Safari Theodore and the war general Simon phased through the wall and grabbed onto my arms just as the last few students were slipping through the door and to safety. They yanked me out of my desk and through the ceiling, dropping me onto the roof. Rubbing my shoulder and staggering to my feet, I took in the sight. The idiot trio had grown. A ghost with an axe, a ghost with a bow and arrows and twin ghosts that looked like medieval knights had joined their ranks. Now it was an idiot septuplet.

"Give up, Phantom!" Simon screamed from the relative safety of his gang. "We've got you outnumbered now!"

"Like you didn't have me outnumbered earlier," I muttered as energy flared around me and I switched back to ghost mode. I was going to catch the idiots this time. Pushing off the ground, I laughed a little and held up a hand. "Bring it."

The knights vanished from the group, reappearing on either side of me. I crouched, trying to keep track of all eight of the ghosts at once, calculating which ones needed to be taken care of first. My ghost sense wasn't too reliable at telling me what ghost was attacking or where the ghost was coming from, but it was dead accurate at assessing how powerful the ghost was. The knights were barely powerful enough to stay corporeal, much less be a threat, and Simon and Theodore weren't much more dangerous than Mrs. Perkensis' rose bushes. It was the ghosts with the axe and the bow and arrow and the elephantine leader that were the most dangerous and needed to be dealt with.

My eyes caught sight of the bow being drawn, the arrow pointing in my direction. I flipped myself intangible just as the string snapped and the arrow zapped through the air and went right through my head.

"Alive, idiot," the elephant hissed. "He's not nearly as valuable dead."

I pushed myself off the ground, flying up into the air. The axe ghost suddenly appeared right in front of me and I yelped, ducking under the wild slice of the axe before kicking out with my foot and sending the axe ghost flying backwards. He recovered quickly, glaring at me and switching his axe from one hand to the other, snarling at me.

A twang of string caught my attention an instant too late. An arrow sliced through the skin on my arm and another quickly fired arrow lodged into my right thigh. I bit back a scream, dropping through the air away from the axe ghost and the out of the sights of the ghost with the bow. Jerking the arrow out of my leg, I steadied myself in the air and glared up at the four ghosts.

I sent a barrage of ectoblasts in their direction, watching the four ghosts scatter before regrouping. "Your aim needs work," the axe ghost laughed, bringing his arm back to throw his axe at me.

Still wincing in pain and trying to ignore the ectoplasmic blood that was dripping down my leg, I pulled a huge ball of energy together in between my hands. It glowed like a small star, throwing supernatural shadows across the roof of the school. I held it between my palms, spikes of energy racing over my body and making my muscles twitch and ache. "Dodge this," I snarled. I released the energy and watched it streak towards the ghosts.

As predicted, they dodged.

This ball of energy was not a normal ectoblast however – it was a relatively new talent that Tucker called an ectobomb. It reached a point right in between the four scattering ghosts and went supernova. The sound of the explosion probably cracked several of the school's windows and the blast wave whipped around the tops of the trees. The force of the explosion sent me wheeling through the air and I landed heavily on the school's roof, my head spinning.

The axe ghost, the ghost with the bow, and the twin knights were a lot closer to the bomb and fared a lot worse than me. All four of them were lodged in the trees, not moving.

"Now," I whispered, getting to my feet and searching the air for the other three. I hadn't seen Theodore, Simon, and the elephant Louise since the fight had started. The three ghosts had vanished. "Where did they run off to?"

"Danny!" I glanced over my shoulder to see Tucker push open the door to the school's roof and pick his way over to where I was standing. There was a sympathetic look in his eye as he took in the wound on my leg. He dropped a hand on my shoulder. "You okay?"

"Yeah, but I need to go find the other three." I felt my heart drop when it became clear that Sam wasn't going to pop out of the door to see if I was okay.

Tucker gave me a small smile and pulled the Fenton Thermos off my back. He trained it on the semi-conscious ghosts in the trees and sucked them in. "Maybe you should take a short break. You can hunt them after school."

Nodding, I shifted back to my human form and rubbed my hand over the spot on my thigh where the arrow had gone in. It had somewhat healed when I had changed forms and it wasn't really bleeding anymore. "It's first thing on my list after school though. Those three are becoming annoying."

"Back to class?" he asked, handing the thermos back to me.

"Why not," I sighed.

I walked home with Tucker after school, still favoring my right leg a little. I couldn't believe that Sam was still ignoring me – what had I done that was so horrible? Tucker's explanation that she was scared just didn't seem to fit. Why was she so scared now? She hadn't been like this last time a ghost attacked that I didn't catch right off the bat. What had changed?

Tucker was jabbering on and on about the new cell phone he was hoping to get for his birthday the next week. As he monologued, I thought about different plans to finally catch the trio of annoyances and get Sam to talk to me again. My mind was a million miles away.

"Dude," Tucker gave me a soft punch to shake me out of my thoughts. "Come on. Think it through: you've hit rock bottom. The pits. What more could go wrong?"

I looked up at him a smiled slightly.

I remember seeing his eyes go wide.

I remember my ghost sense going off.

I remember the vague sound of an elephant trumpeting in triumph.

With those ironically famous last words still ringing in my ears, everything went black and life as I knew it ended.

The human dropped the notebook to the ground and rubbed her eyes. The boy had really fought to stay out of the Pits. She hadn't: she had been taken without a fight. Shivering slightly in the cold, she pulled her legs closer to her. Echoing oddly through the dark cells, she could hear the sounds of cheering and booing coming from somewhere in the distance. A tear trickled out of her eye but she dashed it away quickly and sighed. There was no use in crying. Not anymore.

That bold, black rat snuck back out from under the cot and crept up to the red notebook, sniffing the pages. She shooed it away. Picking up the notebook, she scooted her body around so the flickering ghost lights caught the pages better, and turned the page...