Author: loosedefense
Title: Weak
Pairing: Danny/Dash
Disclaimer: Danny Phantom is the property of Butch Hartman and Nickelodeon. This story implies nothing about the characters nor does the plot of the story have any effect on the show itself. This story is pure fiction and fantasy.
Then what did he do?
Danny's eyes ran through the words before leaning low over his desk and scrawling his answer, passing the note back to Tucker next to him when he was done.
Nothing. He stared as me as though I were psychotic and bolted.
Tucker's lips curled downwards a little and he flicked the note to the table next to him where an eager Sam took it. It was third period math class with Miss Curtin, the first class that all three of them shared together for the day, and they were currently engrossed in another one of their frequent three-way note passing. Fortunately, this was the safest period to indulge in such an activity: the teacher, seemingly having long given up on her students, usually spent the hour writing down formulas on the blackboard and explaining them often without turning to face the class.
The note was passed back to Tucker. He read what Sam had written – What are you going to do now? – and handed it to Danny under the table.
Danny frowned slightly as he wrote his answer and passed it back.
What can I do? Tell him I was fighting a ghost? By the way, get this, dude pulls a gun on me and then tells me he wasn't there to fight me. Course, by then I had kicked his ass.
Tucker smirked when he saw the response, and wrote in his own before giving it to Sam:
Look on the bright side. Maybe Dash will leave you alone now.
Sam wasn't as amused if the look on her face was anything to go by though.
After thinking Danny trashed his room in a bad temper? Not likely. It's not like Skulker to hide his intentions, even though he gets his ass handed to him every time. Maybe he was there for another reason.
Danny paused, contemplating this when he got back the piece of paper. It was true; in his all previous encounters with the hunter, Skulker had never missed a chance to boast about how he was going have Danny in a cage one day. With all the excitement of the previous night, trying to shout out an excuse to Dash as he had rapidly left the house, cleaning up his room, wondering how to explain the little hole in his wall to his parents, and patrolling through the night, Danny had never really stopped to consider this little inconsistency in Skulker's behavior.
I guess you're right, he admitted.
Did you check your room after the fight? Tucker wrote back.
No. I didn't have time. I had to clean up and go on patrol.
You really have to look, Sam wrote down when Tucker passed the note to her. What if Skulker got what he wanted?
I don't think he did. He was looking through my desk when I found him. He only turned around when he heard me open the door.
What would Danny have that Skulker would be interested in anyway? Tucker wrote in.
Danny's the halfa. Maybe Skulker thought there would be something useful in his room.
You just have an answer for everything, don't you?
Danny glanced up and frowned heavily at his two friends when he read their dialogue in the note. He was getting a bit tired of their constant bickering; it had been present all through their relationship, but had escalated as the three of them grew older.
Deciding to ignore them again, Danny mulled over the conversation they had had in the note. Assuming Skulker hadn't been waiting merely to attack him again – Danny still wasn't sure that it was completely out of the question – then the ghost had been searching for something. The puzzling thing was that Skulker had known for years where Danny lived, several encounters with each other having taken place in the Fenton household, including that time when he was fourteen and Dash, Skulker and himself had been accidentally shrunken down. What could Danny have now that would interest Skulker enough to tread into FentonWorks?
It hit him like a ton of bricks, and he quickly scribbled it down.
I know what he wants.
---------------------------------------------------
"Why would Skulker care about Vlad's ghost?" Tucker questioned as they clambered into Danny's car. It was the lunch period, and the three students were exercising the seniors right to leave school grounds during the time to check Danny's room.
"Maybe Vlad asked him to get it for him," Sam suggested as Danny turned the ignition and drove down the street.
"Well that'd be pointless," Tucker argued. "He was the one who gave Danny his ghost half anyway. Why would he want it back all of a sudden? And why would he ask Skulker to give it to him when he could just ask Danny himself?"
"Who knows why Vlad does anything," Danny replied crossly, knuckles turning white due to how hard he was gripping the steering wheel.
"Maybe he figured you wouldn't give it back," Sam offered. "You do have your arch-nemesis's power in your hands after all."
"Yeah, maybe," Danny muttered. "I don't know. Let's just go and make sure that its still there before we focus on anything else."
They arrived at the Fenton home in record time and pushed their way in through the door and up the stairs, but Danny stopped suddenly at the top of the landing, causing Sam and Tucker behind him to bump into his back.
Maddie Fenton turned around to see the three teenagers, her son staring at her and Jack with shock and fear. "Danny," she exclaimed, "why are you home so early?"
Danny's mouth opened and closed silently, his mind racing to think of an answer, but was stumbling due seeing his parents there. He had assumed that they would have been downstairs in the laboratory, but his eyes went to the hole in his wall that his father had previously been inspecting, and he knew why they were there.
"He forgot a book," Sam jumped in. "And ours too. We – we came over to study a few days ago and we left them."
"I didn't know you guys came over," Maddie frowned. She didn't think that they were lying of course, the family had known Sam and Tucker since Danny had introduced them in the second grade, but she had a sneaking suspicion that that couldn't have been why they were all three of them cluttering up her stairway.
Jack didn't seem to notice them however, saying "Well, go get them then," in a cheerful tone. Danny made to move to his door, but Maddie then called him back.
"Danny," she said, "your father and I noticed this … hole here."
"Oh, yeah!" Jack turned back to the hole in the wall. "Anything you can explain, son?"
"It—" Danny broke off to suck in a breath as he found his lungs suddenly empty. "—it was a ghost attack."
It was the best excuse to give. The fact that his parents were the most famous – well, the only – ghosthunters in this town so famous for attacks meant that they would assume that they were the reason he had been under an attack. It would, however, Danny knew, mean that dinner would include an uncomfortable barrage of questions from his parents about why they thought a ghost would attack him instead of them.
"Guys, I really don't have time to talk now," Danny said, accidentally slapping the palm of his hand hard against his bedroom door. "Our class is right after lunch, so …"
"Oh, of course," Maddie said. "But you really ought to be more organized, Danny. This isn't the first time you've had to come back during lunch to pick up your notes for a class."
"Maybe he needs another locker," Jack grinned. "Heck, I remember back in high school mine was so stuffed with plans for inventions and doodles I barely had room for anything else," his voice took on a lower and raspier tone and he leaned closer to Maddie; "and as I recall, yours barely had room for anything either."
Maddie giggled girlishly, her gloved hand covered her mouth. "Well, that's because you spent almost every day filling it up with love notes."
"Okay, ew," Danny squirmed. Sam was smirking at the two parents and Tucker had on a sympathetic wince for his friend.
"Come on, Maddie," Jack wrapped an arm around his wife's waist, both of them turning around and walking down the stairs. "I think I spotted some fudge in the kitchen."
Danny slammed his hand repeatedly against the door to his room, but it didn't budge. Strange – usually that was all it took for it to open. Sam rolled her eyes and reached underneath his body to grip the doorknob and turned it, swinging the door wide open.
"I guess you mist have closed it all the way for a change," she put her hands to her hips. Danny glowered.
Pushing them both in, he closed the door behind him and shuddered as he rested his body against it, thinking about the parting display his parents had left them with.
"Oh, stop," Sam chided, knowing instantly what his mind was on. "It was cute."
Tucker was already investigating the now-barren desk facing the window. "Where did you put the container?"
"In my closet," Danny nodded to the piece. He walked over and pulled the doors open, his eyes gliding through the objects in there. Clothes hung on the rack, with a shelf above for various things he had put in over the years, and on the floor were a number of boxes filled with items he had long forgotten about and didn't look at anymore; these days they mostly served to hide the supply of Fenton Thermoses he kept for ghost-hunting away from prying eyes , but since Vlad had given him his ghost half, he had also kept a little space at the back to hide it.
Pulling out the boxes from their place and putting them to one side, followed by the flasks, Danny's breath caught in his throat as he looked deeper to find …
… that it was still there.
He breathed a sigh of relief.
"It's still here," he told Sam and Tucker, who were trying to look over his shoulder.
"That's good," Tucker said. He frowned. "Weird though. You'd think Skulker would take the opportunity of you being in school to grab it."
"Maybe … he didn't think it'd be a fair fight?" Danny suggested, running his hand through his hair.
"Or maybe he doesn't dare with your parents constantly in the house," Sam added.
"Or maybe," Tucker raised an eyebrow, "that's not what he's looking for."
"Well, I don't have anything else he would want," Danny said. "At least, I don't think so."
"But think about it," Tucker nodded to the container; "your parents are always home. They work from home. If Skulker took such a chance as to search for it in your room, he probably doesn't care that your parents would find him. In fact, it'd still be less dangerous for him to grab that thing while you're not around because then he'd only run the risk of running into two ghosthunters instead of three."
"Tucker's right, Danny," Sam said softly. "It doesn't make sense. Skulker plays dirty to get what he wants and he doesn't care who he has to fight to get it."
Danny sighed, rubbing his eyes tiredly.
"Well, whatever it is, it's going to have to wait for now."
He picked up the black container, gripping it tightly with both hands, but sure to avoid pressing the button. "I'll take this with me so that Skulker won't be able to get it while I'm at school."
"Are you going to start carrying that around with you all the time?" Sam inquired.
"I don't have a choice, do I?"
"Well, I wouldn't recommend putting it in your backpack," Tucker advised. "It'll just tumble around in there and the button will probably be hit by one of your books."
"I know." Danny said. "I'll just put it in my locker—"
"Skulker might get to it," Sam interjected.
"Well, maybe you guys should carry it around then!" Danny flared up, growing irritated with their lack of helpfulness.
"Oh, Danny," Sam said pityingly, putting a hand on her friend's shoulder. "We know it's a burden, but Vlad entrusted you with it."
"Why couldn't Vlad have just kept it?" Danny grumbled. "He's feared by a lot of people in the ghost zone, no one would dare to take it from his castle."
"But you go around beating up any ghost that crosses the line," Tucker said eagerly, putting a hand on his shoulder as well. "There'd be no one better for the job."
Danny moodiness lifted some, and he smiled despite himself. His friends' reassurances and signs of faith were comforting to him.
"Come on," he said to them, crossing the room and opening the door again. "We have to get back to school or Lancer will kill us."
"Man," Tucker complained as he walked out. "I wish we could take long lunches. Don't adults take them all the time when they're working?"
"I personally think it's a steadfast rule because Lancer would never allow himself to miss anything on a schedule. It must be why he became a teacher," Sam joked.
Feeling lighthearted again, Danny chuckled with the two of them closing the door behind him, enjoying the camaraderie that he felt had been missing for longer than he had truly realized.
Their jokes and laughter faded as they walked out of the house, and Danny's bedroom was silent once more, the only sound piercing through was that of them driving back for class.
Out of the shadows stepped a young man who had not been there earlier. Picking up the snow globe he found placed on a table, he tossed it from hand to hand, making a lazy game out of it.
"How long am I meant to do this again?" he asked the figure floating behind him.
"Not long," it said. "Everything is in motion. All you have to do is stick to the plan for a while longer."
"A while longer," the boy repeated. "Isn't there any way to speed this thing up?"
"Don't be hasty. You haven't forgotten, I trust, that your very life is at stake here. Any mistake on your part could be fatal." It drifted over to the window overlooking the street where Danny had parked previously. "I have planned this for months. Your part will be over soon enough. And before the school year is out, it will all be complete."
"His room isn't very threatening," the boy commented, looking around. "I'm a bit disappointed."
"Don't you have a school to go to now?"
A small smile spread over the boy's face and he placed the toy carefully back on the table.
"Yes. Yes, I certainly do."
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Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who has reviewed thus far. I know you all have questions, but I can't answer any of them of course, it would take the mystery out of the story. I just want to say right now that ever since I started writing the first chapter, actually even before that, I have come up with an entire plot that I think will tie everything up nicely. I've been going over the finer details again and again.
I intend for this story to be a trilogy, and have a sequel to it planned out. If I have the will, there will also be a spin-off following the events of Weak. This story, I've decided, is part one of a trilogy named Destiny Lies In A Moment. I've also named the other two stories and have a name thought out for both the sequel and possible spin-off.
Now that you have read it, please review for it gives me more motivation to write. :D
Oh, and one more thing: expect the rating for this story to go up as it develops, so if you don't see it in the following months, it will have been because it doesn't fall under the default K – T rating.