Act Three: Mission
"I think I finally know what these ghost powers are for." --Danny Fenton, Mystery Meat
Scene One: How
"Mister Fenton, I do believe you know why you are here."
Danny sat awkwardly in the hard-backed school chair positioned directly in front of Mr. Lancer's Vice Principal desk, his shoulders hunched, and wished he wasn't there – a wish he promptly took back in case his ghost powers took him seriously and he went invisible. Mr. Lancer sat behind the desk, a somewhat impressive wooden affair built just tall enough to intimidate the unfortunate sitting in front of it, with his hands folded on it; he wore the bored expression of a teacher tired of dealing with the sea of hormones that made up the school he helped run. "Mr. Feeney wanted me to speak to you. He tells me you have dropped and broken thirty-four glass beakers in class since the end of September, despite repeated warnings to handle them carefully. He can't decide if you're just incredibly clumsy or if you find this somehow funny."
From his tone, Danny was positive Mr. Lancer was more inclined to believe the latter than the former. He cringed a little and looked at the floor, but no defense readily came to mind. I'm sorry, Mr. Lancer, it's just that since the accident I've been having a hard time not going intangible during biology class. Yeah … can't see that going over too well.
In retrospect, Danny supposed he should have come up with a game plan with Sam and Tucker for exactly this kind of thing happening. He knew – had known – he was starting to annoy his teachers and especially Mr. Lancer with his unintended tardiness and clumsiness and everything else, and he should have had a cover story. But Danny hadn't expected Mr. Lancer to jump him during lunch, and all the sympathetic looks in the world from Sam and Tucker wouldn't save him.
"I hope you realize that destruction of school property is punishable by suspension, Mr. Fenton," Mr. Lancer continued, causing Danny to jerk his head up to meet Lancer's eyes. "Do you understand me?"
"Yeah, but—I swear I'm not doing it on purpose," Danny exclaimed, flinging his arms out. "I just – I … um." He trailed off helplessly.
Mr. Lancer half-lidded his eyes. "Mm-hmm. Mr. Fenton, I want you to know that I think you have a lot of potential. If you are even half as smart as your older sister—" Danny couldn't help rolling his eyes at the predictable mention of Jazz, Mr. Lancer's Dream Student—"you'll go far in life. But juvenile pranks and behavior only end in failure, and you would do well to remember that."
Danny slumped into his seat again and crossed his arms, mostly annoyed by the predictable lecture. Every teacher had to say every student would 'go far in life' – if they said their students were going to fail out of high school and be hobos or something, they'd probably get sued.
Mr. Lancer studied a manila folder with the name 'Daniel Fenton' printed on its side. "Since you are generally a good student, although I wonder with you if I am beginning to use the term too loosely …" Danny stifled a groan. Lancer ignored him. "I am not going to punish you. However, from this moment on you are banned – for life – from handling any delicate equipment around the school. Any further incidents and I will reconsider the whole punishment thing."
All considered, Danny was getting off very lightly. If Mr. Lancer was ordering him to not handle the beakers in science class, his lab partner, Mikey, couldn't very well complain that he wasn't doing his share of the work. Danny failed to see the downside of this. "Um, yes, sir, Mr. Lancer," Danny said, blinking.
The bell rang to signal the end of lunch, saving Danny from further lectures on the future path of his life. "You may go, Mr. Fenton."
Danny was gone before the word 'go' was out of Mr. Lancer's mouth.
&
"So I basically got off scot-free," Danny explained as he, Sam, and Tucker trooped up the front steps of FentonWorks.
"That doesn't seem very Lancer-like," Sam observed, hands on her hips.
"He's probably just warming up for something else," Tucker thought aloud.
Danny shrugged, opening the front door of his home. "Well, it's not like I need Mr. Lancer coming down on me on top of everything e—"
"DANNY!"
"—Else," Danny groaned. He stepped inside with Tucker and Sam right behind him to see his father fiddling with what might have once been a vacuum cleaner. Its parts covered the entire floor of the living room. "Hi, Dad."
"And you brought your friends, too!" Jack Fenton sprang to his feet with alacrity belied by his huge size, took two long steps to Danny's side, and slung an arm around Danny's shoulders. "Perfect! Let's all go to the lab!"
"Um, Dad, Tucker and Sam are here to do homework with me," Danny protested. He left out the part where they were going to play video games and maybe possibly go see a movie if they finished their homework early enough.
"Awww … just five minutes, Danny, I promise! You've hardly been down to the lab since we got the Ghost Portal running." Jack pouted.
"Since I got the Ghost Portal running," Danny muttered under his breath, but he felt bad. Jazz sometimes said their father was like a big child (well, she said that he had never left his Third Stage Development or something) and sometimes, she was right. And Dad was right too; Danny still felt as if his muscles were cramping when he looked at the Fenton Ghost Portal the few times he had gone downstairs.
Danny looked back at his friends with an apologetic face. Tucker shook his head frantically; Sam sighed and crossed her arms. "All right, five minutes," Danny sighed.
&
"So, Danny, you and your little friends want to hunt ghosts," Danny's father started, walking up to the three chairs he'd set up in a row in the middle of the lab. Danny exchanged looks with Sam and Tucker; Sam glanced back at the closed doors of the Ghost Portal once, then faced forward and looked unimpressed. Tucker put his PDA away with a sigh of loss.
It wasn't so much that Jack was trying to push Danny to become a ghost hunter as just that he was incredibly enthusiastic about the whole venture and certain everyone else would love it too. But Danny still felt inclined to hesitantly remind his father, "Actually, Dad, I-I want to be an astronaut."
Sam crossed her arms, apparently disinterested. "Sorry, Mr. Fenton, I was into ghosts, but they're so mainstream now." Danny remembered when Sam had brought books about ghosts to school all the time, shortly after they'd met. "They're like cell phones."
Danny raised his eyebrows. Cell phones? He mouthed to Sam. Sam shrugged as Tucker took up his protest: "Waste these good looks and all this charisma on hunting ghosts? Criminal."
It took Danny a moment to realize exactly what was going on with his friends; he was so used to these periodic 'hunting ghosts is the greatest career ever!' talks that it hadn't even really occurred to him to think about it. Sam and Tucker haven't ever seen a ghost … except me. They're thinking about this as if Dad were talking about hunting me! Would his parents actually hunt him if they found out he was a ghost? That was a definite 'no', but it put the whole conversation into a whole different context.
"Well, if you do want to hunt ghosts, there's a few things you need to learn," his father continued, oblivious to any objections. He turned away and started messing with a row of beakers filled with samples of ectoplasm from the Ghost Zone.
Suddenly Danny felt as if he'd been plunged into a bath of ice water. His breath came out in a rush of steam. Remembering immediately how this had happened when the Box Ghost had passed through his room, he shuddered slightly and looked back towards the Ghost Portal, not noticing if Sam or Tucker or his father were reacting the same way. "Oh no … this isn't good …"
The doors of the Ghost Portal opened all on their own before Danny's eyes, and out came two large green floating octopuses. They roared.
Danny jumped in his seat. Sam and Tucker both froze, their mouths dropping open and their eyes going wide just before the octopi flung out their tentacles, wrapping Sam and Tucker in them and yanking them bodily out of their seats.
Danny leaped to his feet and ran two steps towards his dad, who somehow had not heard the octopi roar. "True, I've never seen a ghost, but when I do I'll be prepared," his father continued, not turning around. "And so will you, whether you wanna be or not!"
Danny stared at his father, panic rising in his throat and choking him, and glanced back at his friends struggling with the ghostly tentacles of the monsters. Prepared … I guess I am prepared …
After all, he was kind of like a ghost. He could fly high enough to punch those two ghosts in the face, at least, which nobody else in the room could do. And with his ability to go intangible they couldn't hit him or grab him back. And his dad wasn't paying attention and Danny didn't even have time to think about this any more, he just wanted to save his friends--!
A ring of light jetted out from his waist and passed over him, and when they were gone he was a ghost. Thank goodness I practiced flying, Danny thought, leaping towards the two octopuses.
Both of them immediately attacked with their tentacles. Danny instinctively phased right through them, avoiding being hit, and kept flying right at the face of the closer octopus, the one holding Sam and Tucker. He body-checked it right between its glowing red eyes with his shoulder and the ghost fell back, flying across the room. It lost its grip on Tucker and Sam, and they both practically fell back into their chairs. Danny had just enough time to confirm they were okay before a tentacle from the other monster wrapped around his waist and hurled him against the wall. Danny was stunned by the blow, but maybe because he was woozy he phased right through the tentacle holding him. When he recovered, he shoved off the wall with his boot out and kicked the octopus, throwing it against the opposite wall.
The other octopus had recovered, though, and Danny turned around just in time to punch it away. He turned back to the stunned monster and kicked it into the wall again, then grabbed it by a gooey green tentacle and flung it back towards the Fenton Ghost Portal. The first ghost slapped him across the face with a tentacle; Danny grabbed the offending appendage and used it to swing the ghost first into the wall, then to follow its fellow.
The two monsters floated woozily in front of the Portal for a moment before squealing and making good their escape. The Fenton Ghost Portal door closed behind them. Danny glared after them, almost not noticing when he transformed back into a human. And stay out! He thought viciously, breathing hard.
Danny had no idea how it was possible, but when he came back to himself he realized his father was still blathering on about ghosts, having never noticed that two ghosts had just done battle with his ghostly son right behind his back. In a scramble to not give anything away, Danny leapt back towards the chairs and leaned against Tucker's, trying to catch his breath.
"And that?" his dad continued. "That is the Fenton Ghost Portal. It releases ghosts into our world whether I want it to or not! And someday, I'll figure out how that works too." He tapped the steel caution-painted door lovingly. "So! Who wants to hunt some ghosts?"
Sam and Tucker were still trembling with reaction in their seats. Danny was still winded from the battle. Jack Fenton took all this in and then completely misinterpreted it. "Look at you! You're so excited you can't speak! So I'll just go right on speaking." And so he did, launching into a completely unrelated tale about his childhood, the kind that went 'I had to walk uphill to school in the snow! Both ways!'
Danny slowly caught his breath and his friends slowly stopped shaking as Jack provided inadvertent familiarity therapy through his long, rambling, pointless story about living in a log cabin. But even as Danny completely tuned out his father and returned to his seat, he found himself wondering. Why did I do that? Why didn't I shout to my dad for help? Why did I fight those ghosts all by myself? And with a small smile: and I won!
"Danny," Tuck muttered after a few minutes. "Ghosts are scary." He was still clutching his seat with a pale-knuckled grip.
Sam was holding a large white and green thermos, something Danny remembered his father tinkering with at the kitchen table. "But Danny, you were – you were pretty cool." Sam offered a tremulous smile.
"It's not like I could have let those things take you," Danny pointed out.
But all the same, he kind of thought what he'd done was pretty cool, too.
To be continuedThank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, especially My Aibou. You have no idea how much I look up to you and your writing skills; I hope everyone is living up to your expectations.
Canon Chronicles:
--Danny is banned for life from handling anything fragile at school. (Mystery Meat)
--'34 dropped beakers in the last month' is also lifted directly from Mystery Meat.
--The third scene of this chapter is lifted pretty much word for word from the teaser of Mystery Meat.
Next chapter: the first steps towards being not a boy with ghost powers, but a superhero.