What the heck is going on," Sam Manson demanded as she jerked down the kickstand of her scooter and stalked towards Danny. "I have been driving up and down these streets for the last hour looking for you, looking for the Kraken, trying to do my part in all this and what do I find? I find you kanoodling with some - some - mud-encrusted bimbo!"
"Sam, it's not what it looks like!" he called.
"It's exactly what it looks like!" she declared.
"Who are you calling a bimbo?" Zelda said, finally letting Danny loose as she turned to confront Sam. "I am not some bimbo, you faux Goth wannabe."
"Faux? I'll give you faux, right up your fat-"
"Sam!" Danny interrupted.
"I am not fat!" Zelda yelled.
Danny gave Zelda a glare with his green eyes. She stopped and shivered at the balefulness of their gleam. Danny turned them on Sam. Sam was a lot more used to the creepy aura Danny projected as a ghost, but even she found his stare unnerving.
"Zelda, this is my friend, Sam Manson. She helps me when I'm chasing ghosts. Sam this is Zelda - I'm sorry, I don't know your last name."
"Gaines, Zelda Gaines."
"You were kissing a girl you didn't ever know her name?"
"Sam, will you get over it! I wasn't kissing her, she was kissing me."
"And that makes it different?"
Danny sighed and covered his eyes with his hand, only to realize that they were covered in mud. He tried to clean them off on the leg of his jumpsuit but found that just as muddy.
"Ef You" Zelda said. "Ef the lot of you. I've had the worst day of my life. I was nearly killed, thrown into a briar patch and if it wasn't for Danny, would have sliced to pieces trying to get out. Yes, I kissed him, and I'd do it again. Danny's been the only decent thing to happen to me all day." She spun and would have kissed Danny again, but he caught her shoulders and held her off. "Let's not and say we did," he suggested.
"But-? Never mind. I'm going to get cleaned up. I hope I can see you again Danny. I've got so many questions I want to ask." Zelda started walking across the parking lot in front of the abandoned Aquarium.
"Zelda, where are you going?" Curtis asked.
"Back to the hotel."
"They'll never let you in looking like that."
"They'd darn well better. I've got a room them and I plan to use it!
"But what about the mystery - the treasure."
"Ef the treasure!"
Curtis had followed her into the parking lot. He tried to get her to stop by grabbing her shoulder but couldn't bring himself to touch the layer of festering mud that covered it. "Wait. Look, there's extra clothes in the van and some towels. You can clean yourself up there and then we'll give this place the sort of thorough inspection it deserves. Why I bet we'll find that missing treasure tonight. What do you say?"
"I want to go home, Curtis. I plan to take a hot bath, call a cab and drive back to Charity harbor."
"Do you have any idea how much a cab would cost?" Curtis asked, distracted for the moment from his plan of treasure hunting by the thought of money wasted.
"It would be worth it!" Zelda declared.
"Come on. Tell you what: help us tonight look for the treasure and if we don't find it, we'll all go home tomorrow. How about that? Deal?"
"I'm so tired of being the one all the bad stuff happens to. In just the last month I have been shot at, pushed into three separate wells, knocked down four ravines, locked into I don't know how many rooms and now someone tried to drop a statue on me. It's too much, Curtis."
"We'll stay together this time. No more splitting up. We'll be there to protect you. ... And I'm sure that Danny Phantom fellow will hang around to. What do you say? Just one more night?"
"Alright. Alright, just one more night, then we go home. And after that the only clues I'm dealing with are in the crossword puzzles!" She changed course and headed towards the hippie decorated microbus.
Curtis headed back to the others. "She's going to clean up in the van and joining us looking over the building," he said, sliding over the other promises he'd made her.
Arms crossed, boot tapping nervously, Sam demanded, "Well, Romeo, you going to introduce me to the rest of these people."
"Well, they say they're the Clew Crew and go around solving mysteries."
"And hunting treasure," Groovy interjected,
"Yeah. I noticed it written all over that Microbus out there. Did someone ever tell you you misspelled 'clue?'"
"Oh, No," explained Curtis. "Up through the 1930s clue was frequently spelled c-l-e-w. We decided to use that on the Clewmobile because it matched up with 'crew'. We used the overlapping "w's and everything."
"You know, when you have to explain a joke it's no longer a joke," Sam cracked.
"Anyway, the blond is Curtis, the girl is Phyl-something..." Danny began making introductions.
"Phyllidia Cosgrove, please to meet you." the brunette said, extending a hand to Sam. Sam didn't take it.
"And the beatnik with the dog is Groovy."
"Groovy," Sam mocked, "but where's the dog?"
Danny looked around and could not find the dog anywhere. "I wonder where he wandered off to. It's a large Rottweiler. Seems rather scared of me, for some reason."
"Because you're a ghost, maybe?" Dogs were often leery of Danny in his ghost form. Sam grabbed Danny's hand and pulled him off into the shadows under the trees. "We've got to talk," she explained.
"If it's about kissing Zelda, I swear..."
"I don't care who you kiss. It's not like we're boyfriend-girlfriend."
"That weird because just a moment ago you seemed to be all bent out of shape because someone you don't care about was kissing someone you don't care about."
"Oh shut up and tell me about these people and what you've been doing for the last hour. You could at least have called if you were calling off the hunt for the Kraken!"
"I was chasing the Kraken until I ran into one of their stupid traps. It had Ghost Deflectors tied into it so I was stuck. Then I thought that since I'd been attacked by the Kraken in the Aquarium last night it might still be there, so I went in to take a look, and for whatever reason this Zelda girl stuck to me like glue. Turns out she was attacked by the Kraken in there last night, too. Apparently some time before I got there. And at the same location, too. So I'm pretty sure I have its lair staked out, I just don't know why it wants to live in some muck filled fish tank inside an abandoned Aquarium."
"You could have called."
"I should have. I'm sorry. Where's Tucker?"
"He went home. Got tired of running around looking for you and decided to call it a night. I should have gone with him."
"Sam, I am so sorry about not calling you," Danny apologized again.
"You had me worried half-sick," Sam complained. "Who knew what had happened to you. You could have been killed or injured and ... and... you've not invincible, you know."
"Oh, come on. Nothing is going to happen to me," Danny assured her. "Certainly not tonight with those bozos running around. They said they came down to look into the mystery of the ghost haunting the Aquarium but seem more interest in some story about a treasure hidden in there.
"Treasure?"
Danny was explaining about the bank robbery, the $20,000 in missing gold coins and how the robber had to have left the money in the Aquarium when suddenly there was a cry from the parking lot. The Clew Crew was jumping up and down, waving for him to come. Danny leaped into the air and speed towards them, Sam running after.
"What..." he began then stopped when he saw the so-called "Clewmobile" rocking and shaking and bouncing on its wheels like a tricked out low-rider. "That not normally, is it?" he asked.
"No," Curtis whispered in shocked disbelief.
"My car, my beautiful car," Groovy was crooning.
"Zelda still in there?" Sam asked with remarkable practicality..
Phyllidia nodded.
"Zelda! We're coming!" Groovy called and started running towards the microbus.
"If this van's a rocking, don't come a knocking..." Danny began.
Sam punched him, "shut up and do something," she ordered.
Danny flow towards the bouncing minivan. Groovy was trying to grab hold of one of the door handles and was yanked high into the air by the van's bounces. He dropped free and scrambled out of the way as the van crashed back down with a large "bang" from its shocks flattening out.
Danny could hear Zelda screaming inside as well as seeing a faint glow of ectoplasm stretched across the vehicle. A ghost was clearly trying to possess the van. He tried sliding through the ectoplasm to rescue Zelda but the film proved too strong a barrier.
Danny tried to burn a hole in the ectoplasm with a few well placed fireballs but they, too, bounced off, without damaging the ectoplasmic coating.
He flew around to the windshield, trying at least to see who was inside the van. If it was someone he knew he could, perhaps reason with them. But all he saw was a large ill-defined dark blur sitting in the driver's seat. There was a moment of demonic laughter then the engine ground to a start and the van fell to the ground and lurched forward, running over Danny!
Danny floated out of the ground where he had been pushed when the car struck him. He spotted the microbus racing around the parking lot there, trying to run over a fleeing Groovy. Either the ghost couldn't shift out of first gear or wasn't trying hard since the lanky kid was able to just stay ahead of the van. Coming round near the Aquarium Groovy took off into the grass but the van just bumped over the curb of the sidewalk and chased after the rest of the Clew Crew. Curtis and Phyllidia split up and the car followed after Phyllidia.
Danny zoomed into the air and fashioned a lasso of ectoplasm. He threw it around the rampaging car and pulled up on it. He got it a little bit into the air before the van twisted around to point back to the parking lot. He tried to pull the van entirely off the ground but it wouldn't stay balanced. Abruptly the lasso slipped off the van, dropping the front end with a crash. It rocketed out into the parking lot while Danny was flung high into the sky from the recoil.
He got back just as the Van slide around to a stop and headed back towards the abandoned Aquarium. He tried getting in front of it and pushing back against its movement. He could hear the motor racing as it powered past his resistance. After a minute he had to give up and let the van surge past him. He could see it aimed for Phyllidia who had climbed the steps on the side entrance to the old building and was trying to get in the locked door. Danny raced pass the possessed Clewmobile and grabbed Phyllidia from the steps just moments before the van crashed heavily against the side of the stairs. The was a brief clatter as something broken in the engine, then it stopped. The faint glow that only Danny could see disappeared and a featureless blob rushed away into the night. Danny gave chase but the ghost quickly disappeared. After a moment's futile searching he returned to the steps of the Aquarium.
The van was totalled. The front end collapse to half it's original length. Both the passenger and side doors were crumpled and crushed in place. Groovy and Curtis was struggling with the rear door but it, too, was jammed, perhaps by the twisting of the car's frame. Danny grabbed hold of the door handle and applied his greater ghostly strength. He stopped when he felt the handle giving while the door remained jammed.
"You got a crowbar in your scooter's toolbox?" he asked Sam.
She shook her head. "You're a ghost. Since when do you need a door?" She told him.
Danny stopped struggling with the handle, turned intangible and drifted through the door. He found Zelda lying on the floor half way under the back bench. She was moving slowly and groaning so he assumed she was OK and stuck he head through the door and said as much.
He pulled his head back inside the van and hastily looked around but couldn't find any evidence of the other ghost. There were no keys in the ignition so he assumed it had used other means to get the engine started. He went back to Zelda who was beginning to get up. She had gotten as far as taking off her sodden sweater and trying to towel the muck out of her hair. It stood out in various points and wads like embryonic dreadlocks. When he called her name she quickly crossed an arm over her bra and fumbled around on the floor with the other, looking for her glasses.
As she was looking Danny said, "I'm going to have to float you out of the van. It's been totalled and it looks like all the doors are jammed. Curtis said there were some extra clothes in here. You want to get them on."
Zelda found her glasses and put them on but remained seated on the floor and started crying. "He said there would be towels in here. There was one tiny towel. I couldn't get the dirt out of my hair, or off my face, or arms, or... And here's his 'extra clothes'!" She held up a large jumpsuit.
"Is that orange?" Danny asked.
"Sid's Army-Navy Surplus. I'll look like an escapee from "World's Dumbest Criminals'..."
"Look, I got an idea. It's a little trick I learned I could do. It'll help...but you won't like it."
"Why?"
"I'd rather not say. Just trust me it will get all the dirt off you." Danny looked around the van. "Stand over here," he directed, pointing her to an open space in the back of the van. "Kind of crouch down. We're going to levitate a few inches and you can't be touching any part of the van.
He took the jumpsuit from her and ran the zipper all the way down the front. "Let's put this some place convenient..." Danny glided past her and laid the opened on the back of the second row of seats in the van. He moved passed her again to the back of the van. Facing away from her he stretched out his hand. "Take my hand."
"Why are you looking out the window?"
"You don't want to know. OK, I'm going to levitate us a little bit. You ok? You're not touching any part of the van because that will mess things up. And remember the instant you let go of my hand you'll fall to the floor."
"I'm fine, not touching anything. What's this trick of yours?"
And like that Danny disappeared - leaving behind a faint shadow of himself, a microscopically thin layer of dirt and mud that had been ground into his jumpsuit. After a second the dirt shadow of Danny collapsed and fell to the floor.
Zelda also disappeared, leaving behind a larger outline of her body, composed of all mud, rotten leaves and fetid water covering her body. - and all her clothes! They fell with a wet plop to the van's floor.
Danny and Zelda reappeared a moment later. Zelda took one look at her suddenly naked body, screamed and jerked her hand from Danny's grip as she tried to cover her privates. She hit the floor of the van with a thump.
"Where's my clothes?"
"You're probably standing on them."
Zelda looked at her feet and saw that Danny was right. Bra, skirt, panties, socks and shoes were laid out on the floor of the minibus as if she had been raptured right out of them. Which, in a way, she had. "Don't turn around!" She ordered as she grabbed for the coverall Danny had set near her. She struggled into it, finally pulling the zip up to her neck.
"That was a dirty trick to play on me!" the girl snapped.
"I know. I said you wouldn't like it but I did got all the dirt off you," Danny said, finally turned around. He assumed from the sound of the zipper that she was decent now. "Check your hair if you don't believe me."
Zelda ran her hand through her hair. Looked at it, then ran her hand through it again. As Danny had said, the mess of filth that had clotted up in it was gone. She tried to look at her hands and arms but it was too dark in the van to see. She ran her hands over her face, though and marveled at how smooth and soft it felt. Even the make-up she had had on was gone. "How did you do that?" she asked, somewhat mollified
"I'd rather not say. I made a solemn promise to never talk of this again."
"Oh, come on. You just did it to me. I, at least, deserve an explanation. I'm in whatever fraternity this other person you made a promise to - oh, wait, it was that Goth girl, wasn't it. You disappeared her clothes, too, didn't you?"
"I discovered one day," Danny began,, ignoring her other question, " that I could control how far I could extend my intangibility. When I'm touching someone I can extend intangibility to them and to whoever they're touching. But I could also limit it to how many people I wanted to, otherwise the whole world would become intangible, which doesn't seem like a good idea."
Zelda had edged around the pile of muck and clothes to pull a pair of sandals from an open box in the back. She sat down to pull them on and adjust the buckles so they'd fit. "So how does this help you disappear my clothes?" she asked.
"I didn't 'disappear' them. I made you intangible but not them, and all the dirt that was on you. It's kind of a philosophical question, of what's you and what's not you. Everything that you think of as 'not you' stayed tangible and fell to the floor."
"How do you know what's me and what's not-me?" Zelda asked, looking at Danny with a puzzled expression. "Do you read my mind or something?"
"Mind reading? No. I can't explain it. I don't understand it myself. Maybe a super ghost scientist like Jack Fenton could but I'm just a kid. I realized I could do it, but - it's like walking. You how to do it, but you don't know how you're doing it."
"Couldn't you have just extended this intangibility to my clothes but not the dirt?
"Sorry."
"Then how come your clothes stayed on when mine didn't?" Zelda demanded.
"Sam asked the same que-" Danny stopped before he could say any more and switched to a different answer. "I don't know. Maybe because this jumpsuit fits me pretty tight, maybe because I was wearing this jumpsuit when I became a ghost so I tend to think of it was part of my identity, or maybe I have a better sense of discrimination between what's me and mine then I do over other people.
Zelda stood up and took a tentative couple steps in the sandals, then bent over and pulled her grimy bra out of the pile on the floor. "Well, do you think you could try again with my bra?"
"It won't work. I've tried. It either become intangible dirt and all or stays tangle, dirt and all."
"Just try it."
"What's wrong with your bra? It looks pretty clean to me."
"Are you nuts? I was soaked to the skin by the muck that was in that pool in the rose bushes. This thing is soaked in swamp water. I don't even plan to try to clean up any of these clothes. I'm just going to burn, they're so disgusting. But I need a bra. Please tell me you can clean this up."
Danny was about to ask why she "needed" a bra that badly then decided that perhaps it was something boys - and ghosts - were not meant to know. Gingerly he took the bra, closed his eyes and concentrated. He concentrated for a long time before finally disappearing. The bra remanded where he had been holding, then dropped with a wet plop to the floor.
Danny reappeared. "Sorry." he said. "I tried to feel it in my hand but-" he splayed his hands in frustration. "What's the problem anyway? You're covered by the jumpsuit."
"You wouldn't understand. Us full-figured women kind of need bras, OK?"
Danny shrugged his confusion. Curtis could be heard banging on the back door. Groovy was there, too, though worrying in inarticulate groans. Danny held out his hand. "Ready?"
"You're not going to make my clothes disappear again?" she asked cautiously.
"No, no!" Danny was surprised by her question. "I would never do something like that to embarrass you. Believe me I learned my lesson with Sa - this other person - and she wouldn't talk to me for a week even after I apologized. And I wasn't trying to play a prank on her, either."
Zelda held out her hand, felt herself float up into the air and drift through the steel frame of the wrecked van.
The moment her feet touched the ground Phyllidia flung her arms around her in a hug.
"What were you doing in there that took so long," Curtis asked suspiciously.
"She was pretty banged up, you know. We waited until she felt better before coming out," Danny explained. He looked around for Sam, didn't see her but noticed Groovy dancing around with Alphonse, crying "who's a god boy."
"Looks to me you help her clean up," Sam said from behind Danny's back. Her voice was so unexpected that Danny half-jumped in surprise. "You didn't happen to show her any little tricks you promised never to do again?"
"I thought we promised to never speak of it again."
"And I bet you watched every minute of it, you little pervert."
"No, Sam, I had my eyes shut the whole time. I'm not that kind of guy."
"A likely story."
"It's the truth.
"Whatever."
Sam walked over towards the Clew Crew who were still peppering Zelda with questions about her experience. As Danny watched her go, he noticed that the dog was worming its way into the group and jumped on top if the red-head. Though it was a big enough dog to easily place its paws on her shoulders it looked like it made an effort for its paws to land on Zelda's chest. Her breasts actually, as the girl cried out in pain on the impact of the paws on them. She tried to push him away. She eventually turned around, forcing the dog's feet to slide to the ground. It trotted away with the stump of its tail wagging excitedly. Danny could hear it growl a distinctive "Rubba rubba." Then it caught sight of Danny, sighed a "rut rho" and ran away. Danny watched speculatively as it run away.
"We're going inside the Aquarium," Sam interrupted his thought. "You coming?"
"Sure." Danny considered that the Kraken may still be wandering somewhere outside the old brick building but after their earlier fight in the evening he doubted that it was still hanging around. But if the Kraken had targeted Zelda for some reason, as seemed the case, then he ought to stay close to her so he could protect her the next time it attacked.
At the back of the building Curtis suggested they split up into groups, violating he promise to Zelda to stay together in one group. Curtis, Phyllidia and Groovy would take one side of the building with Zelda, Danny and Sam the other.
"Wow, my own harem!" Danny thought as they entered through the service door on the loading dock. "Of course, looking from Sam to Zelda and back he decided not to mention it to them.
They filed through the open door into the dusty loading dock, flicking on their flashlights as they left the bright rays of the full moon for the obscurity of the enclosed room.
Sam was carrying a five cell Maglight. She liked to tell people she bought it at a police auction and point to a dent on the rim of the heavy metal case as where a cop had killed a man once by hitting him too hard with the light. Danny suspect Sam had just dropped the light once and made up the story afterwards.
Walking next to Zelda Danny had noticed that something about her was different. He realized it was her hair which had turned into a frizzy helmet, almost like a afro.
"What happened to your hair?" he asked as they poked among the collapsing pallets along their side of the building.
Zelda touched her hair in disgust. "This is how it normally looks. I spent hours tonight night trying to straighten it and one bath in mucky water later it's like this."
"It doesn't look that bad."
"You don't have to live with it like I do. - Oh, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that, what with you being dead and all."
Danny ran his fingers through his white hair. It pretty much always laid where he wanted it. He could never understand the hours his sister, Jazz, would spend on her hair. He shrugged it off as some kind of girl thing.
"I may be a ghost but that doesn't mean I'm dead." he told her, thinking it was pretty funny. Then worried that perhaps he was telling her too much about his unique nature. Or worse, might be interpreted as flirting. Danny wasn't clear on the subject of flirting, so he tried to avoid it least he say something crude instead of funny.
Zelda smiled at him in a friendly manner. Sam, who was a short distance away, overheard them and flashed Danny a scowl.
"Where does this door lead to?" Sam called out a moment later. She directed her flashlight at a old wooden door set in a wall near the outside wall of the building.
Danny peered at an old metal sign screwed to the door. It was brass with raised lettering that spelled out "Employees Only"
"Maybe its a bathroom?" Zelda suggested.
"Only one way to find out." Sam said and grabbed the doorknob.
"It's probably locked," Danny suggested.
"Nope." Sam pushed the door open. They gathered around the open and shone their flashlights inside. "Alice," Sam quipped, "we are through the looking glass."
They were looking at the backside of the Aquarium operations. This was a long, narrow room where the various displays on the the other wise of the wall were obviously fish tanks, metal walled away from the public, mounted on stout cast iron legs resting on the concrete floor. There was a catwalk built along the tanks to give access for the workers. The catwalk was a bit over waist high to Danny. Workers were probably about waist high to the tanks as well.
On the other side of the room, along the outside wall were a series of tables, some filled with smaller aquarium tanks, others work spaces or desk tops. Occasional cabinets sat between the tables, filled, from what Danny could see, with old, arm-length gloves and tall boots. For working inside the displays Danny supposed.
Pipes came up out of the floor under the fish tanks. Danny bent over to look at them more closely. He knew in his parent's lab all the different pipes for water, air, gas, etc had to be color-coded so First Responders could instantly identify what each pipe carried. But these pipes either were put in so long that people hadn't started color-coding them, or the paint had corroded off. One pipe looked like copper, which Danny assumed was a water line. A smaller steel pipe confused him until he guessed that it was compressed air for the fish tank aerators. One pipe was mounted to the center of the tank. Danny supposed that was a drain. There were a couple more pipe whose use Danny couldn't guess.
"You know, there must be a basement under here," he said straightening up. He was careful to avoid whacking his head on the cast iron catwalk surrounding the tank. But as he straightened up he found himself looking at some tightly stretched fabric. Zelda was on the catwalk, bent over, looking into one of the tanks. The worn, orange one-piece, obviously designed for a boy, was struggling to contain the girl's wider hips.
With a blush Danny spun around . "Sorry." He apologized.
Zelda, head deep in the mostly empty aquarium, barely heard him. "Huh?" she said.
Danny looked over to where Sam was poking through some papers left on one of the desks. The whole placed looked like it had been evacuated in the middle of the day, locked up and simply abandoned as is. She was looking at him and quietly laughing.
"Zelda," Danny began, "have you - uh - ever given consideration to the - uh - advantages of - uh - wearing blue jeans?" Danny began. "With your history of falling into rosebushes, rolling down ravines, tripping on curbs and such - uh - uh - jeans would do a lot to protect you from all these scraps and abrasions you've got. And stuff..."
Zelda walked over to the railing beside Danny. She looked down at him. He was studiously looking elsewhere. "What are you getting at? What's wrong with wearing a skirt. I look too much like a boy to go around dressed like one as well."
"I was just thinking that - bent over that tank - that if you were still wearing that skirt you had on earlier tonight there would be - uh -" Danny opened his mouth but could not think of what to say, how to phrase it delicately. "There might be more than one full moon out tonight."
"You're saying my skirt's too sort?" Zelda began, defensively.
"No, no. Just when you're bending over, or, I don't know, climbing a ladder."
"What's it to you what clothes I wear. I don't need a fashion lesson from some dead guy!"
This pissed off Danny, who had only been trying to be helpful. "I was just saying, OK. You've probably given those guys more panty shots than Japanese anime." Danny blushed in embarrassment. He hadn't meant to be that crude about the thing.
"They never said anything about it to me." Zelda protested.
"Maybe they were enjoying the scene."
"Perverts!"
"Probably." Danny wasn't happy at the direction the conversation was taking. It always seemed that no matter what he did, he always got it wrong. Try not to act like a perv and he gets accused of being one anyway.
"Sorry. I didn't mean anything. It's probably just my over-active imagination." he apologized and hurried on to the next fish tank. But Zelda followed him on the catwalk.
"I've worn skirts all my life. It's what I feel most comfortable in. Do you ever wear anything besides that dumb jumpsuit?"
"It's not the same," Danny began then stopped since he could hardly explain that the jumpsuit appeared when he went ghost and turned into his regular school clothes when he turned back to normal. "It's kind of like my skin. I can't take it off even if I wanted to."
After an awkwardly long silence Danny added, "I was just saying that long pants and long sleeve shirts would do a lot to protect you from getting all scratched up. It's like when a guy has a problem with tripping over his own two feet, maybe he shouldn't go running with knives."
"What are you guys whispering about?" Sam asked, unexpectedly behind Danny's back. "How you're going to divide up this alleged treasure? Or has Danny been flirting with you, again?"
"I don't flirt!" Danny protested.
"Maybe you should."
"I'm going to look at stuff over here," he announced, putting some distance between him and what appeared to be two girl conspiring against him.
"His heart's in the right place. Assuming ghosts have hearts," Sam explained.
"You've known him long?"
"It seems like ages, yeah. So, what were you talking about that was leaving him so red in the face?"Sam asked.
"He blushes more than any boy I know if?" Zelda conceded.
"He's young and innocent. I want to keep him that way. Makes people nicer. I heard the word pants. what's that all about?"
Zelda squatted down on the catwalk so she'd be closer to Sam's height. "He was saying I shouldn't wear skirts."
"O-k-a-y?" Sam hesitated. "Mind, the first time I saw you, you seemed to be wearing mostly muck. I thought Danny had maybe captured Swamp-Thing."
"Ugh. Don't remind me. But , yes, I was wearing a skirt and sweater under all that - that -filth."
"So why don't you wear pants? You seem to have a rather rough and tumble lifestyle going here."
"Promise you won't tell anyone this, OK?"
"My lips are sealed."
"It's a cheerleader's outfit."
"You're a cheerleader."
"No. I just wanted to be one so bad. all my life that I started wearing the skirts and sweaters, thinking if I felt more like a cheerleader I'd compete better during auditions. It didn't work, but I got in the habit of wearing pleated skirts and big knit sweaters.
Zelda sat down on her haunches and folded her knees across each other. She looked to be on the verge of crying. "They always said I wasn't coordinated enough. Of course they had to say some like that because if they said I was too fat or ugly, could be seem as discrimination and they could be sue for it. Since coordination is sort of a job requirement they can get away with saying that. Every year since sixth grade I've try out and every year they turned me down. I don't know why I continue..."
"Don't let other people define who you are," Sam said after a moment. "Look at me. I'm a Goth. You know why?"
"Because inwardly you're depressed and morbid?"
"No, because it pisses off my parents. They kept telling me what I had to be, what I had to do. So I became a Goth, I dress like I want, I do what I want as much to spite them as to please me. So if you want to be a cheerleader, then be the best darn cheerleader you can!" Sam was ranting. After a moment she calmed down and added, "the depression and feelings of self-loathing go without saying." After a moment Sam added, "Let's see what Danny's found,"
She lead the way down the long narrow room to where Danny was rooting around in a locker. "Oh, by the way, cheerleaders wear shorts under their skirts. So they won't give the pervs any jollies when they do their backflips."
"And the blue jeans?"
"Danny made some good points about pants, but don't let that keep you from being who you are. But I definitely would add the shorts."
"I can't believe Curtis or Groovy never mentioned that my skirts were riding up. What a bunch of perverts. - But you know who the biggest perv in the group has to be - Alphonse!"
"Who's a prev?" Danny asked, having only heard the last part of Zelda's conversation.
"Alphonse."
"The Rottweiler?" Danny looked at Zelda dubiously.
"I can't go to the bathroom without him butting his way into the room. And he's always watching me dress or undress."
"He's just a dog. He's just showing you his affection."
"Then why is it every time I look at him I feel like I'm looking into the eyes of some 90 year old pervert?"
"You think the dog's haunted."
"Of course not. There's no such thing as gho-" Zelda paused, embarrassed.
"That's OK, I often don't believe I exist either." Danny joked.
"So what did you find?" Sam asked, changing the subject.
"The basement!" Danny pointed to an hole in the floor. A railing around three sides indicated that it was a purposeful opening. Steep cement steps lead down into the murky depths.
"Let's see what's there," Sam suggested. "Since the Kraken could be down there I suggest Danny goes first."
Danny gathered some ectoplasm in his hand and made it glow brightly since neither Sam nor Zelda were going to let go of their flashlights. The glow was enough for his ghost-enhanced eyes. His breath never turned to fog so Danny was petty confident that the Kraken was not down here.
The basement was more of a service tunnel than a floor in its own right. It was only about half as wide as the upper floor, pipes run in rows along the length of the room, splitting off to service each fish tank upstairs. The drains dropped straight down, ending a foot or so above a grated trough running towards a larger drain running running down the middle of the floor.
The ceiling wasn't that high but with the maze of pipes running across it made it seem even lower than it was. Danny, who wasn't that tall, felt the need to duck as he walked under the pipes.
There was a pile of machinery at the end of the basement, under what would be the loading dock. Danny wandered off to look at them. One looked like a diesel hooked to a generator. A large doomed steel tank sat next to it. It took Danny a moment to realize that instead of some kind of auxiliary generator this was an air compressor. Looking overhead Danny could faintly see steel plates set in the ceiling. Trap doors so the heavy machinery could be lowered down.
Next to it was a series of large, open tanks. A pipe lead from the wall of the basement towards the tanks, with a gap where a meter might have been. Pipes lead off the bottom of the tanks but Danny couldn't follow them through the maze of pipes. He wondered if this was where the workers at the Aquarium had treated the city water before adding it to the fish tanks above. He vaguely recalled that tap water couldn't be directly added to fish tanks because of the chlorine.
The girls had wandered ahead, having no interest in old machines. "Just like a girl," Danny mused. "They're probably talking about knitting or something." He took to the air and floated after them.
Actually Sam, after watching Danny wander off to look at the machinery had thought "Boys and their machines!" in the same contemptuous tone Danny had used about them. Turning back to the red-haired girl she asked, "So what's the story on this treasure you guys are looking for?"
"After we heard about the attacks of the monster here we decided to look up the history of the Aquarium and see what kind of story it had. That's when we discovered the story about the bank robber."
"And thought the monster was the ghost of this bank robber come back for his treasure?"
"We figured it was someone playing on the superstitions about the ghost of Phineas George to cover up their searching for the missing treasure."
"Here in Amity Park the ghosts are more likely to be real." Sam looked across Zelda to where Danny was silently floating along, and smiled. "So how much did he steal and how did he end up here?"
"$20,000 in twenty dollar gold coin."
"Gold? When did this happen?"
"1923"
"Ah. They withdrew gold from circulation in 1933. There hasn't been a gold coin since."
"I didn't know that. How did you know so much about it?"
"My parents haven't forgiven FDR for 'ruining' the country. They weren't even alive at the time but still hold him personally responsible for everything they dislike."
"Sounds like Phyllidia's family. Old Money. Real snooty. My parents are doing well enough but I'm kind of the pauper in the group."
"Even that stoner dude has money?"
"Groovy is not a stoner. He's just - ah - different, special.
"And that has nothing to do with what chemicals he puts in his body?"
"He doesn't smoke. His parents were surfers. That's all."
"Sorry I asked. So he's the one you have your eyes on."
"I thought we had an understanding but that dog...!"
"You really don't like that dog. Is it all dogs or just him. Do you like cats?"
"Cats are OK. So are dogs. It's just Alphonse. He - it's like he doesn't like me."
"Afraid of you taking Groovy away from him?"
"Now you're being silly. He's just a dog."
Sam mused that when it came to ghosts 'just' didn't necessary mean what it meant. "Getting back to this bank robbery, Twenty thousand dollars in gold coin is a lot of money. What were they doing with so much in their bank?"
"Some guy named Townsend Scott had just sold off a sawmill and the leases for a stand of trees. He was kind of a crackpot, apparently, only took payment in gold or silver. So the buyer had to come up with $20,000 dollars in gold coins. The bank was in the process of shipping it off to the treasury in exchange for certificates of deposits when ol' Phineas struck. Took the guards by surprise, grabbed the bag with all the money in it and started running. They chased him into this park and saw him entering the Aquarium.
"They hesitated to go in because the Aquarium was still open and had people inside. They didn't want to risk a shot-out with Phineas where someone could be hurt. So they staked out the building. Around dusk he tried to sneak out but the police caught him. They found the bank's money sack on him, empty, but they never found any of the money. The searched the place numerous times since and never found any of the gold coins."
"That had to be a lot of coins," Sam said.
"Twenty dollar gold pieces."
"So a thousand gold coins. Probably bigger and heavier than a quarter." Sam calculated for a moment. "At least 25 coin rolls, probably sixty to eighty pounds... How did he ever expect to run away with that much weight over his shoulder?"
"And where could he have put that much coinage in this place, and not have it found by now?" Zelda added.
The three were wandering slowly towards the center of the building, following the trough in the floor. Suddenly up ahead they could see flickering lights, that after a moment resolved into the flashlights of Curtis and the others. They had explored the back side of the aquarium, too, on the other side of the hall and down into the basement. The nattily dressed blond of the Crew Clew was shaking his head. "I'm beginning to think maybe Phineas George never brought any of that bank money here. There's just no place to hide it that hasn't been searched already!"
"Well, there is that central drain we passed," Phyllidia reminded him. "We haven't looked there yet."
"Like, it would take a scuba diver to look down there," Groovy complained.
"Reigh! Rubba! The dog barked.
No one else seemed to notice that dog apparently saying, "right, scuba." Danny looked at the big black and brown animal, thinking about Zelda's comment about it always watching her. The dog caught Danny looking at it and ran to cower behind Groovy.
Curtis lead the way to the central drain. The troughs in the center of the floor in each of the wings ran into a circular pit about six feet wide and twenty deep. Groovy was about to walk on the grate covering the pit but Curtis warned him off, saying that the grates were so old and rusted there was no telling how strong they were anymore.
"This doesn't seem like the sort of place to hide a bag full of coins," Zelda said, nervously pushing her glasses up her nose. She always worried when bending over something like this, a sewer, that her glasses would slip off and fall into the murky waters, leaving her effectively blind.
"Seems like a good place to me." Curtis said.
"But to get them out would require a scuba suit like Groovey said, only they didn't have scuba in 1923 so it would have been one of those copper-helmeted deep sea diving suits," Zelda explained. "So the crook would have needed someone along with him to operate the air pump, and a crane to lower him into the pit."
They stood around the pit for a moment. "Danny, you could go do there and look around," Zelda suggested.
"Are you kidding. It smells bad enough up here. I'm not going down where it's really stinky. Besides I need some light to see and that water looks as black as coal!"
"But you could go intangible and look under the water and sediment."
"When I'm intangible; stuff is intangible to me! I couldn't feel a bag of coins down there if I wanted to!"
"He's right," Sam said. "Besides this is too obvious. I'm sure they've had people down there with rakes and shovels looking for the gold." She started walking down the corridor towards the front of the building. "I don't think we're going to find anything down in this basement," she opined. "There's just not enough hiding places." She found another set of stairs and ascended.
Danny was close behind her with Zelda sticking close to him. The room they entered while different from the back room they have left to enter the basement, was much the same. Tanks, catwalks, tables and cabinets a clutters of cans and buckets on the floor, papers abandoned on the tables. For some reason the pipe railing surrounding the stairwell had been removed. Plates still screwed into the floor showed were the railing used to be.
Phyl and Curtis came up the stairs together looking, as always, like The Cute Couple. Zelda went over to ask Phyllidia a question just as Groovy's head poked it's shaggy way above the concrete floor. Suddenly with a clatter of claws, Alphonse ran up the steps. The dog ran between Zelda and Phyllidia, muscling his way between the two girls. Zelda tottered back until her foot suddenly hit open air. and just like that she flipped over and plunged down the shaft.
"Zel!" Groovy shouted, trying to turn around on the steep cement steps to catch her but she was too far away and the steep, narrow steps hard to maneuver on. Phyllidia tried to grab Zelda's hand but it whipped past her too fast to seize. The Clew Crew stood to horror as Zelda dropped out of sight down a deep and unforgiving hole.