During FF's sitewide-update-breakdown-thing, I managed to write quite a bit and get some homework done. Before I got locked out of my math stuff. Gr! Had to email the teacher about that. It's all better now, though. :D
So this was supposed to be a shorter chapter but it ended up meeting my 3000 word mark. =.= Ah, well. Y'all are getting your week's worth in.
Anyway, if you like this story, check out my other ones. CAFÉ EVANS and its sequel, FINDING HOME, are pretty big in the Soul Eater section.
And to top everything off, I have a freaking cold. I've been hacking for the past couple of days – right after I have an acid reflex episode. Sounds like fun, no?
But good things have happened, like me being an official unicorn hunter. That's right; I got my license to hunt. What now? We all know I'm pretty cool. Speaking about that, you know how everyone says it's uncool to say you're cool and that anything uncool is cool, doesn't that make you actually cool to say you're cool? …I'm you could understand that at all, congratulations, you speak crazy lady.
Summary: Samantha Manson, or Sam, has many things to deal with; her parent's disappointment, she knows all of the police force by name and face (and not because she wants to), moving to a new city, her grandmother's slowly dying, her Necromancy is getting stronger, she has no instructor to teach her, and she's not exactly the most popular girl in school. As she learns about this new city, she learns of its mysterious secrets and as to why so many haunts happen there. While trying to find out how to help this city, she finding that she slowly crushing on a kind of cute geeky boy whose parents hunt supernatural things. AU. She eyed the yellow tape, daring it to keep her from the school grounds. After a moment, she decided to ignore the forbidding warning of the black DO NOT CROSS letters.
Disclaimer: I do not hold any legal rights to Danny Phantom or to any of the characters you are going to read about. This story, however, is my own original idea, with a nod to Meg Cabbot's Mediator series and Kelly Armstrong's Darkest Powers trilogy for inspiring me somewhat.
Do Not Cross
Chapter 5
Evading
"Can you imagine what I would do if I could do all I can?" Sun Tzu, The Art of War
"I am the Box Ghost – beware!"
Sam groaned inwardly. Really? A ghost? Now, of all times!
She looked at her tablemates, to see if they had noticed. They had, and so had everyone else in the area. Normal humans weren't supposed to see ghosts. At all.
"Cool special effect." she heard someone say to his friends. The ghost seemed to disagree.
"I am no special effect, human. I am the Box Ghost!" he declared.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Sam muttered, "we heard you the first time."
To show his power, the Box Ghost summoned various boxes that no doubt held merchandise that the stores were hoping to sell. With a wave of his hand, one of the boxes tackled the boy who had offended him.
Sam winced when she heard the smack. It was just her job to deal with the ghosts, not play superhero.
"Are you guys seeing this?" Danny asked. Sam looked him as he gaped up at the ectoplasmic being floating above their heads.
"Just standard issue for a Necromancer and an Alchemist." she said. "And whatever you are."
"Yeah but normal humans aren't supposed to see ghosts." Tucker said.
"No duh." Sam bit her lip as she tried to come up with a plan. "Danny, we need you to create a distraction. Tucker and I can figure a way to get this guy to a more reserved area."
"Wait, what are we doing now?" Tucker asked, looking back and forth between the two.
"Ah, a ghost." Sam cried, pointing dramatically up at the Box Ghost. It was a rather pathetic display but it caught people's attention. She looked at Danny and raised her eyebrows.
"Huh? Oh! A ghost – run!" He ran away, crying ghost. Other people seemed to get it and started screaming, following his example. He was the son of infamous ghost hunters. If he was running away, they probably should too, right?
It didn't take long for the food court to be thrown into madness and empty. The ghost spotted the two teens and blinked at them.
"Fear me!" he cried.
"I'm more afraid of my parents ." Sam said to Tucker. She looked at the Box Ghost. "Why are you here?"
"I am here to scare insolent humans."
"That doesn't really answer the question." Tucker muttered. Sam ignored him.
"How did you get here?" she asked.
"Through a portal."
"Portal?"
"The Fenton's portal!" Tucker gaped. "It actually works?"
"Great. I knew that thing would be trouble." Sam said. "We need to draw him to the roof. There're no cameras there, we'll have no evidence to erase."
"You've... done this before."
"More than you can count." Sam said, looking around. "On my count, run."
Tucker nodded and waited. She called out to the ghost and quickly started to sprint towards the emergency exit doors. He bolted after her. The ghost cried out and followed.
He attempted to cut them off several times, but he received a good punch in the stomach from Sam, who was more than willing to dish out any aggravation. She was a little miffed still from the argument she had with her mother over what classes she should take, not to mention having her free time interrupted by a ghost. Was she ever going to get a break from this Necromancer madness? Most likely not.
Tucker stopped a few times on landings to catch his breath. He had never run so much in his life – not even on meatloaf day at school and meatloaf day was his favorite day, too. He looked at Sam's retreating figure. She was almost to the top! With a heavy sigh, he quickly followed her up.
"It's locked." she said, testing the door to the roof. She moved back a few paces before trying to jar the lock open, wincing when her shoulder started to ache.
"Let me try." Tucker said. He crouched down, inspected the lock and nodded.
"Hurry it up!"
"Hold your horses, Necro."
"Do you want to live, Alchemist?"
Tucker didn't respond he simply held his open palm in front of the knob. It trembled before the door smoothly slid open.
"How did you –" she started.
"I'm an Alchemist. I control metal. Bend it, shape it, twist it, curl it, transfigure it. Whatever you need me to do to metal, I can." Tucker said. "You know, this lock if made of several –"
"No time!"
She pulled him onto the roof, gravel crunching under their feet. She quickly dove them both behind a heating unit. Sam signaled for Tucker to breathe much lighter. He complied; he didn't want to get caught so quickly.
"I don't have any of my usual ghost fighting equipment." she whispered. "I'll only be able to stun him, not send him back to wherever it is he came from."
Tucker was about to retort when the ghost burst through the open door and looked around. Tucker and Sam quickly ducked before he spotted them. The only thing they had right now was the element of surprise.
Sam sat against the silent heating unit, tense and ready to fight.
Tucker crouched beside her and waited for her signal. Alchemists normally didn't fight ghosts; that was up to the Necromancer. Heck, it had always been that way. He found that he could only admire Sam for her courage and bravery for having to do this for so many years all on her own.
Sam leapt from their spot, wielding nothing but her own fists and feet. She flipped over to the ghost, punching him in the jaw and spinning around on her foot to kick him. The speed and grace in which did this was inhuman – it was perfectly Necromancer of her.
Tucker picked up a couple of rocks and flung them at the Box Ghost, who was recovering from the surprise attack. The rocks did nothing but anger him.
"What part of 'beware' do you not understand, human?" the ghost wailed.
Tucker looked about nervously. There was no place to run and hide up here, really, just a couple of heating and cooling systems. The door to the stairs was blocked by the ghost. He took a second to observe the ectoplasmic being floating above the roof.
The Box Ghost was stocky and on the plumper side, with dark hair and red eyes. He didn't seem all too threatening; in fact he appeared rather harmless, even with his scrunched up eyebrows and glare.
Sam took advantage of Tucker's distracting, striking the ghost with an uppercut. The ghost cried out and waved his hand. A box rushed towards her, and she just barely dodged it.
Tucker tried to warn her that the box was returning but it was too late. The box slammed into her back, sending her careening over the edge of the building.
Danny stood amongst the crowd gathered outside the mall. Everyone was talking and recording things on their cellphones about how a ghost attacked them. He was trying to still wrap his mind around everything – Sam being a Necromancer and Tucker being an Alchemist, and him being… whatever he is. It was still too weird. And that ghost? It was the weirdest thing of all – and the worst bit was, his parents were right! Ghosts did exist.
He was shoved to the farthest edge of the crowd, near the end of the parking lot and farther away from Tucker and Sam – who were still inside, as far as he knew. Biting his lip he looked around. He needed to find a way back in. Where was the employee entrance? Jazz had taken him in through that way when she had worked at one of the stores last summer.
Danny jogged through the parked cars to the west side, the side he was sure the entrance was on. Not finding it, he moved to back side of the mall – not there either. Was it always on the east side?
He didn't have to check, though, because a scream alerted him to check upwards. Although, he didn't recognize the form at first, the voice was a familiar one.
"Sam!"
Danny felt a surge through his body and he jumped up towards her, the ground fleeting behind him. In seconds, he caught her and carried her back up to the roof.
Sam gaped at him as he set her down.
"What?" he asked, scratching the back of his neck.
"How did you do that?" she said, looking him over. "You have white hair again, green eyes too – and you're wearing that freaky jumpsuit!"
Danny looked down at himself. He was indeed in the jumpsuit. Had his physical appearance changed? He blinked and there was that surge again. In a flash, he was back to his normal human self.
"Freaky." he mumbled.
"Dude, about time you showed up." Tucker said. "We need your help!"
"If I knew what just happened, I'd be glad to help." Danny said. He turned to Sam. "So, you have no idea how this is possible?"
She shook her head no. Danny nodded.
"I am the Box Ghost – beware!"
"Okay, this guy is really starting to get on my nerves." Sam said. "Anyone have any ideas on how to get rid of him? I'm fresh out."
"But I thought Necromancers could slam ghosts back into the… wherever they're from." Danny said.
"Let's call it the Ghost Zone." Tucker said. "It sounds cool."
Sam slapped her forehead. To Danny, she said:
"Necromancers can put ghosts back into the 'Ghost Zone,' or whatever the hell it's called, but we're not capable of doing it without any equipment."
"Normal Necros." Tucker pressed. "Sam, you aren't a normal Necro, you know that, I know that, your grandma knows that, Danny… I think he knows that –"
"Hey!" Danny said, obviously offended.
"— but you can't keep doubting yourself. Necros of the Magnusson lineage are the most powerful."
"How many times do I have to tell you, I'm not a direct descendent of Katherine!" Sam snapped.
Danny looked from one friend to another, not quite sure whose side to take. Sam's seemed like the safest, seeing as how she was stronger than both boys put together and she could do some serious physical damage to them; but Tucker was his best friend since… forever. Either way, he'd lose.
"Just trust me, okay? You can do it. I know you can, and as your new Alchemist I believe that you can do anything."
"Who says you're my new Alchemist?"
"I'm the only one in Amity."
"…Deal."
"Now, try to do whatever it is the hell Necros do when they send ghosts back to where they came from."
Just as Sam was about to prepare herself to attempt to rip open the hole to the 'Ghost Zone,' Jack and Maddie Fenton burst from the door that lead down to the mall. They had their guns at the ready and were poised for battle.
"Freeze, you ectoplasmic terror." Maddie cried. When she spotted the trio, she waved. "Hi, kids. Did the big, mean ghost chase you up here?"
"Um, hi, mom, dad." Danny said, very unsure of what to do. "What are you doing here?"
"Someone called us about a ghost." Jack said, readying his gun. It beeped, signaling that it was ready, and he fired. He missed the Box Ghost by several feet. "Gosh, darn it!"
Maddie quickly recovered for her husband's mistake and trapped the ghost in a net. She pulled him in and looked at the kids, nodding.
"The coast is clear. Are you three alright? Do I need to call anyone's parents?"
"I'm good." Tucker said.
"Just peachy." Sam replied.
"Alrighty then, we'll see you when you get home, Danny." Maddie said, pecking her son on the cheek. "Don't miss your curfew, Danny. Bye, Sam. Bye, Tucker."
The teens waited until the adult were gone before speaking.
"Well," Tucker said, "that was very anti-climactic."
"Completely." Sam agreed.
"Who wants to go finish our lunches?" Danny said, gesturing to the door.
"Good idea. How are you handling this world so far, Danny?"
"I feel like I've entered Wonderland and have met the Wizard."
"Dude, I think you mean the Caterpillar." Tucker said.
The rest of the day was, thankfully, uneventful. The three teens found themselves sitting in the grass at the park. Things seemed to carry on quite normally, except for the fact that the town was abuzz with the news of ghosts.
"I heard that the Fenton's actually got their ghost portal working." one woman said.
"Do you think that it's the cause of today's attack?" another asked.
"Who knows, it could all be a big hoax in order to get people to stop thinking that they're crazy."
The trio rolled their eyes at the comment, going back to focusing on pouring themselves over Sam's book. She had deemed it necessary to stop by the mansion and mention the attack to her grandmother; however, the elderly woman wasn't letting anyone into her study. She had locked herself in and would only let the family's employees with food in very briefly. Sam had been absolutely forbidden from entering for any reason.
As greatly upset as she was by her grandmother's dismissal, she was comforted by the fact that she had two friends who were a part of her zany world. Although there had been no official ceremony, Tucker would end up being her Alchemist – someone to whom a Necromancer could rely on. Their relationship was never romantic, as it had been mutual throughout history; it was not that dissimilar to siblings.
And then there was Danny, a bonus friend who happened to come along with an Alchemist. He had connections to people with an unlimited supply of actual ghost fighting equipment, not just pig's blood bought from the local butcher. (That was one of the reasons she became a vegetarian. Dealing with pig's blood was not a fun task.) Although they still didn't have any answers as to what he exactly was, she had no doubt in her mind he was something unusual.
"Do you think the portal is actually the reason the ghosts are so clear?" Sam asked them.
"What do you mean?" Danny replied.
"Every time I ever saw a ghost, it would be a shadow or light or something. I could never really place specific details about who it had been. That ghost today, the Box Ghost, he looked so… human and alive. I've never seen anything like it before."
"It's entirely possible." Tucker said, nodding to what she had thought aloud. "Ghosts have never been clear to me before, but seeing as I'm an Alchemist and they don't really go to me, I've never really had the chance to study them before."
"So, you think that by having a permanent hole to the Ghost Zone open is what is what made the Box Ghost look so real today?" Danny asked.
"Affirmative." Sam said, fiddling with the binding of her book.
"It could just be that he's a very powerful ghost." Tucker added with a shrug.
"No, he wasn't that strong. He just caught me off guard. I was hoping Amity Park would be different from New York." Sam sighed.
"That's where you are from, New York?"
"Lived there and Chicago before that. This is my first time in this kind of town. It looks like one of those places you'd see in movies."
"Part of Nine Down was filmed here. The opening scene. My mom had a small role in it. That's how I know. She lived here her whole life before going to Wisconsin for college." Danny said. "They tried to build the ghost portal two times before. Once when they were in college, with a friend of theirs', Vlad something-or-other; I've never met him, but he was my dad's best friend. The second time was two years ago. It failed, too, and it would have been ready last summer but there were some problems with the wiring. I think they may have had the same problems as they did this time. I wasn't there when they showed it to Jazz. Tucker and I were at camp."
Sam nodded, looking down at the book in her lap.
"So, what is that anyway?" Danny asked.
"It's a guidebook for Necromancers. It was apparently written by Katherine Magnusson. She doesn't put a lot of detail about her life in here. It's weird. You would think that she would have, but apparently she didn't find herself that interesting." Sam explained. "It has lots of other things in here, too. There's a whole chunk dedicated to the races."
"Races?"
"Necromancer, Alchemist, Witch. You know, the one who were the most prosecuted throughout history. Well, next to the redheads and the Jews. I haven't gotten through a whole lot yet, but maybe I should start reading more."
"You really ought to read that, Sam." Tucker said. "There's a lot of very useful information in there – like your family tree."
"Shut it, Tucker."
"I'm serious. You need to look it over."
She rolled her eyes.
"Whatever you are," Sam said to Danny, "is in this book. Bubeleh saw it and she knows, I know she does. Why she's keeping it a secret, I have no idea."
She began flipping through the book, making note of the family tree before moving on to more in depth information about the various races. There were Necromancers, Alchemists, Reapers (disgusting, vile beings who hunted Necromancers), Soothsayers (an extinct race), Witches (rare, but not unheard of), Dwarves (greedy and conniving bastards), Faeries (not as nice as they seemed), Elves (egotistical maniacs), Ghosts (very real, and seemingly more apparent after the ghost portal started working), Vampires (of the non-sparkly breed, thankfully, and were actually a mix of the standard Vampire and the Werewolf), and a few others things she had never heard of before today.
The boys seemed less interested at the moment as she flipped through the pages. She skimmed the text, hoping to find the answer to many of their questions there. Nothing seemed to pop out at her. It was probably best to read through the entire thing, which could take quite a while with school starting up soon. She didn't know how much homework she would have and, seeing as how the Fenton's ghost portal actually worked, she had more than her fill of ghosts coming her way. She was practically a living beacon, not dissimilar to bugs during the summer and the zappers.
Sighing she stopped on the page about Soothsayers. It was a pity they were extinct. Imagine, the ability to see clearly into the future. It was interesting to know that at some point in time, people could do that. She began to read over the text.
"Soothsayer were often Necromancers who somehow became charged with ghost-energy." it read. "Many, through this, are no longer Necromancers and do not possess the same prowess as they once did. The vast majority gain the ability to predict the future, however frightening it could be. There is a small percentage who can tap into—"
"I'm bulletproof, nothing to lose,
Fire away, fire way.
Ricochet, you take your aim,
Fire away, fire away.
You shoot me down, but I won't fall,
I am titanium—"
Sam jumped at the sound of her ringtone. She quickly checked the screen and blinked when she saw her mother's name flash across it. Her mother almost never called, unless it was to remind her to be home before curfew or if some sort of emergency had happened. Perhaps he mother just wanted to know what kind of food she wanted tonight.
"Hello?" she answered.
"Sammy, oh good." her mother said. There was something troubling by her tone of voice and the way it wavered. "There's… I'm not sure how to tell you this."
"What's wrong?"
"It's your grandmother. She… she's been admitted to a hospital."
And I'll end there for you all to wonder what will happen next. I've really got to stop ending my chapters in cliffhangers. I mean, I know it's good for the suspense and everything but it's really not needed right now. In a few chapters… maybe.
A few notes: The film Maddie was in doesn't exist. (I think.) If there is an actual film out there called Nine Down, I didn't know before I typed this up. The little slip in about redheads and Jews is very true, by the way. They were very much prosecuted. Sam (in my universe) naturally has red hair; she's also Jewish like she was in canon. So, there's three reasons right they she would have been killed. Sam relationship with the Magnusson's is complicated and a part of her history I can't talk about right now. Yes, I did make a jab at the Twilight series. It's not the best thing I've ever read, nor is it the worst. It has an interesting plot but the story as a whole was poorly executed. It could have been written much better. That's my opinion on it, at least.
Thank you to everyone for the love so far, y'all are wonderful for putting up with me. You all deserve cyber-brownies. ;-*