Chapter Two
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Danny suddenly grabbed her arm and dove right off the edge of the balcony, letting out a loud childlike whoop. Sam bit back a scream. They swerved into the air just a few feet shy of the ground, twisting and turning like madmen ice skaters, swirling up higher and higher between buildings into the sky. When she saw Danny's eyes were closed she bit back another scream.
Danny had never felt more euphoric in his life. He felt like he was the warm air flying past them. He felt his molecules colliding with the universe itself. Flying hadn't felt this satisfying since he'd first become proficient at it. It was good.
Sam was seeing tracers by now, which meant that as they zoomed past low-lying clouds they seemed to leave a misty sparkling trail behind them, and the colors of the birds flying by bled into the color of the sky like smeared paint. The buildings below seemed to rush by impossibly fast. To both of them the glistening city around them seemed alive with a kind of storybook magical possibility that a person only feels as a little kid.
When they flew downward through Tucker's living room ceiling Sam had to pry her arm out of it's death grip on Danny's. The room was reeling, or was she reeling? She had to steady herself against the wall and shake away the dizzies.
Tucker didn't look up from the screen when they arrived unannounced. He was in the middle of a boss battle in one of his videogames. "Sup guys." By this stage in their friendship Danny couldn't hope to surprise him at all, even if he popped into sight an inch from his face. Tucker was just too desensitized to it.
It took Sam ten minutes to convince Tuck that she wasn't joking. Danny spent that time staring raptly at Tucker's game. He seemed so invested in it you might've thought the fate of the world rested on Tucker getting that final shot in at the dragon boss. Sam might not have known, but at this point Danny was tripping so hard that the colorful action on Tucker's screen pretty much was a reality.
"So let me get this straight," Tucker said, at last pausing his game. (Danny jumped in reaction- he'd forgotten that it wasn't real.) "You guys are tripping balls, and now you want me to babysit you? Do you know how stupid that- uhmm, Danny? You alright bro?"
Sam turned to look at Danny, who was slowly opening the lid on the brown trunk which held all of Tucker's spare consoles and controllers, staring into it apprehensively like there was a murderer inside.
"Tucker, you'd better come look, there's a freaking snake in here!"
"What?" Tucker cried, running over to look in the box. But Danny whipped his hand out of the box, crying out in pain, waving his arm around in Tucker's face, who was now screaming bloody murder. Sam about had a heart attack, until she realized that the blue snake with its jaw clenched around Danny's hand was made completely out of ice.
"Danny, you dickhead!" she swore, slapping him on the back of the head as he collapsed into a fit of laughter.
"NOT cool!" Tucker gasped, ripping the ice snake off of Danny. "Well you know, it's cool, but the wrong kind of cool, dude. Although… Jesus Danny, I didn't know you could make something like this!"
Sam peered at the sculpture in Tucker's hands. It wasn't just a solid block of ice. It was segmented like a real snake, covered in intricately crafted scales. Each segment was connected by a joint, so that the entire snake was able to actually writhe around when you moved it, like one of those toy wooden ones. Danny made that in what, three seconds? Sam and Tucker were both thinking as they stared at each other. They'd never seen him make anything like this before.
They looked up in time to see Danny floating feet first through the ceiling, grinning at them stupidly. "You guys coming, or what?" he said, his green eyes glowing brighter than they ever did normally, his white hair hanging down messily around him.
Tucker wasn't even reluctant anymore. Who knew what kind of hilarious stunts he was about to miss if he didn't come along? Besides, it was painfully clear that Danny needed a sober babysitter. Sam was still gaping at Danny's ice creation like it was about to come to life and bite her head off. So the three of them took off from Tucker's apartment, and Tucker couldn't help but feel like he was about to have the most ridiculous day of his life. Man, Sam and Danny had better thank him big time for this later. Like with lavish gifts and stuff, of the technological variety.
Danny was aware in the back of his mind that he was supposed to be going somewhere specific, but once they started flying all other thoughts seemed to vanish. Up was down was inside was out, nothing felt real. Suddenly that one Beatles song finally clicked for him: I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. It made perfect sense! On top of that, he may as well have been coasting around Saturn on one of her rings instead of around downtown Amity, because that's what it felt like. By the time he touched down on an unfamiliar rooftop Tucker and Sam dropped to their knees, thanking god to finally touch solid ground.
When Tucker finally caught his breath he glared up at Danny to let him have a piece of his mind (probably involving as many swear words as he could string in one sentence), but he stopped short. His friend was sitting cross legged, completely unaware of Sam and Tucker's plight. He was concentrated solely on a ball of glowing ectoplasm that he was balancing between his two upright palms, which in itself wasn't unusual. But when Tucker stared at it he saw that it was a series of insane repeating patterns, like growing fractals of green fire collapsing in on themselves perpetually. His jaw nearly hit the floor.
"Dude." He managed to breathe. "How are you doing that?"
Danny jumped, glancing around for Tucker like he'd completely forgotten anyone else was there, and like that the ectoplasm evaporated.
"Sam, how much shrooms did you give the guy?" he asked her incredulously.
Sam looked baffled. "Just a little! I gave him the regular amount for a first timer! I'm on the same amount and I'm only tripping like, a little bit." To Sam, the extent of it was a heightened sense of emotion and perception of light and color, and everything was more funny and fascinating and wiggly than normal. But she was finally starting to wonder if maybe Danny was reacting more strongly to the psilocybin that she could have anticipated.
Danny didn't even hear them. His consciousness was shifting. He was seeing the pattern of the universe itself dancing across the surface of everything around him, refracting in every bouncing photon. He had never been less calm or more calm in his life, and that didn't even make sense. He felt like he was being sifted through the cracks in reality and all that was left of him was icy peaceful Zen.
Danny opened his eyes and saw his two friends staring at him in shock. He looked down and realized he was glowing a brilliant blue, the energy of his icy core felt like it was overflowing into the air around him. Kind of like the first day he mastered the power. With some conscious effort he dulled the light, finally realizing that he was freaking his best friends out a little bit. He opened his mouth and filled his lungs with a deep, deep breath. In. Out. Oxygen had never tasted so delicious. Then he gave his friends a broad smile. "Let's go to the park." And he was sweeping them back into the sky before they could protest.
Tucker was terrified some ghost was going to attack them, or some citizen was going to wonder why Phantom was carting around two terrified humans as he loop-de-looped moronically around buildings, at one point following a flock of birds for several blocks. After the whole Disastroid thing like sixty people had found out about Danny's secret, including their own families and lots of strangers from Amity. But as far as Team Phantom knew, nobody had spilled the beans yet. It was obvious the city wanted to protect its hero from the cold government that wanted his head.
Anyway, the general populace of Amity and the world was still in the dark on Phantom's other life. That being said, they typically tried to be careful. They especially tried to not be seen too often with Phantom in public. It was no secret any longer that Sam and Tucker knew how to hunt ghosts and they cooperated with Amity's ghostly hero along with the other ghost hunting residents of their city, but even so. They didn't want to give anyone a reason to look too closely at Sam and Tucker's relationship with Phantom. That was a dangerous, dangerous road. Especially considering the government sector that was still hunting Phantom to this day, even after he saved the whole freaking world. He may be a hero in the eyes of the public, but according to law he was still an illegal spectral entity. So maybe he should try being a LITLE MORE SUBTLE, Tucker screamed internally as Danny looped circles around a section of telephone wires.
These were the thoughts sparking in Tucker's mind as Danny spiraled thoughtlessly through downtown Amity Park, without a care in the world for the citizens that were gaping up at them. At least they were too high to be recognized by face, but Tucker had a bad feeling that he was going to be reliving this escapade later on the 9 o'clock news. Sam, who was thinking the exact same thing, had been covering her face with her hands for the last fifteen minutes. Tucker followed suit.
After what seemed like an hour to Tucker, what seemed like a day to Sam, and what seemed like a blissful eternity to Danny, the three landed on a lofty branch of a tree in the public park. They sat down gingerly, though the branch was the size of all their waists combined. It wasn't in any danger of snapping. Plus, no one in the popular park below could see them through the thick leaves.
"That was amazing," Danny said breathlessly.
"If by amazing, you mean the most terrifying thing of my entire life," Tucker snapped. "I really should have known what I was getting myself into," he sighed.
Sam's windblown hair seemed to be stuck in the permanent flyaway position, and she soon gave up tried to tame it. Tucker couldn't help but laugh at his two best friends, whose eyes suggested they were both a million miles away. Damn, I really gotta try this myself, he thought, laughing out loud at the way they were both focusing so hard on the sound of the rustling leaves.
The light breeze would have been nice, but it was way too warm. Summer solstice, after all, Sam remembered. It just pushed all the hot air around and soon Sam and Tucker were sweating. Danny didn't even notice. Ice was thrumming loudly in his veins to the beat of the universe. What he heard was really the sound of his own heart beating in his ears, but he didn't know that. It sounded like harmony. He did eventually notice Sam waving her hand at her face in an attempt to cool off though, and that was all the push he needed.
Sam felt something amazingly refreshing touch her left shoulder. She glanced over as it melted, a soft white snowflake. Three more fell against her cheek, one on her kneecap. Tucker held out his hands appreciatively to catch a handful of falling snow.
"Oh yes," Sam said gratefully. "I have never been more grateful for your ice powers."
Danny responded to the enthusiasm by increasing the output of snow from his hand, sending gust of snowflakes reigning down around them, fluttering down through the branches to the grass below.
"Hey!" a small voice cried below. "Is this… SNOW?" The three friends peered warily through the branches below their feet and saw a little blonde girl gazing directly up at them through a gap in the leaves.
Hiding place compromised! Abandon ship! That's what Sam and Tucker were thinking.
They heard the little girl gasp. "Holy cow, is that Danny Phantom up there? Hey! Hey, Danny!" she started waving her arms frantically, jumping up and down.
Shh! Sam thought at the girl. Curse Danny and his stupid recognizable hair, and his stupid recognizable suit! His stupid recognizable stupid ghost face.
Danny was already phasing down through the branches, without so much as a word to Sam and Tucker who were now stranded at the top of a monumental tree.
Yeah, I'm never trip-sitting again, Tucker thought dryly. I could have beaten that boss level twenty times over by now.
Danny popped into visibility just above the little girl, smiling a bit too widely. "Hi!" he said.
"It is you!" she screeched, grabbing at the front of his shirt. Danny thought it was adorable- the girl couldn't have been older than five. "Jimmy, get over here will you! Danny Phantom is here! Will you sign my face?" she added with dead sincerity as a little boy appeared from the other side of the tree, his eyes popping out of his sockets when he saw Danny floating there.
Danny burst out laughing. "I don't have a marker kid."
Her expression started to fall, but then an idea struck him. "But I do have a better idea," he said brightly, and his hands began to radiate blue light. In a few moments he was holding a kid-sized tiara made of ice. The girl looked like she was about to cry when she took it from him, holding it like it was made of delicate porcelain.
"Don't worry," he assured her. "It won't shatter unless you drop it from like a second-story window. And it won't melt for like two days. That's not just any ice," he added, unable to keep the pride from his voice.
"It's so beautiful," she whispered, placing it carefully on her head. The little boy she called Jimmy poked at it tentatively. "Can you make other beautiful things out of ice?"
"I can make anything," he replied confidently. He didn't have any evidence whatsoever to back that up- he'd never even tried anything like that snake or that crown before today. But he was one hundred percent confident and serious when he told her that.
"Can you make a sword?" the little boy squeaked hopefully.
Danny grinned, sending a surge of energy to his hands again, lighting up the kids' faces with blue light. He didn't even have to think about crafting things out of ice in the blissful state of mind he was in. It was so easy. He could just feel the crystal patterns moving from his mind to his fingers, and voila. Soon there was a thick sword in his hands (with dull edges, he'd had to consciously remind himself) and he handed it the to kid, who gaped at it.
By this point several more of their friends had shown up and were all begging for awesome gifts of ice. Danny wasn't even slightly annoyed. In fact he hadn't had so much fun in a long time. He never heard Tucker and Sam yelling their heads off thirty feet above, trying to get his attention from their place trapped on the branches.
When Danny noticed that two of the kids were making snowballs out of the patches of snow on the ground, he was hit with the best idea he'd had all day.
"You guys hot?" he asked the group of kids nonchalantly. "I think it's really hot out here," he lied. Heat couldn't touch Danny these days. The kids all stopped playing with their newfound toys and looked up at him hopefully. "The weather guy said it was going to be 101 today. But I was thinking… maybe some snow." And with that he inhaled sharply and let his head fall back, shooting a blizzard of snow high into the air. The sound of the kids cheering fueled him and he flew up and soared circles around the tree, spiraling further and further outward, releasing a torrent of snow around the whole middle of the park.
Up in the tree, Tucker facepalmed hard. So much for a low profile. Sam was making a mental note to kick Danny in the head later for ignoring every one of her warnings they'd agreed on before she let him go in public.
Within a couple of minutes Danny had turned the entire park into a veritable winter wonderland. The green grass was buried in a thick layer of white, and the branches of the trees were drooping under the weight of the snow. You never would have guessed it was the height of summer. He just couldn't stop himself there though, he had to keep going. He was a man loosed. The only thing he could think about was pushing his newfound command of ice craft to the limits, and he was wondering if he really could make anything.
The kids in the park were wild with snow-frenzy, already in the middle of making forts and snowballs and snowmen, and their parents seemed to be thoroughly enjoying it too. Some waved at him, beaming. A couple cried out 'Thank you!' Once upon a time citizens had run screaming from Phantom, so seeing everyone enjoying his snowstorm nearly made Danny's heart burst. He would be very relieved when this ridiculous wave of excessive emotions worked its way out of his system.
Sam and Tucker watched from the treetop with curious fascination as strange spires of ice rose up all around the park. Eerie fantastic sculptures. They didn't look like anything in particular, they were just… strange. And beautiful. Otherworldly. Arches of ice circled and connected to strange columns. The two of them looked at each other with shock. Danny Fenton was not an artist. The idea was simply laughable. So then what on earth was going on in their friend's head?
Tucker voiced the thought they were both thinking. "So, I'm thinking maybe mushrooms have some interesting side effects for ghosts."
"Tucker, I don't think ghosts can even eat mushrooms, or anything for that matter."
"Which is maybe why Danny's brain is overloading like a Windows '98 computer trying to run Modern Warfare."
"Well don't give me that look like it's my fault!" she seethed. "How was I supposed to know!"
It was at that moment that a loud, familiar siren cut through the eerie silence that had fallen over the park, followed by the screeching of many tires. The two friends groaned in unison. Perfect.
But Danny wasn't even slightly perturbed when a dozen government agents dressed in white began pouring into the park, locked and loaded. In fact, he was going to enjoy this.
Sam and Tucker frantically began searching for a way down from the tree. They needed to defend Danny! Sam's heart was pounding in her chest, and she knew if Danny got captured because he was too busy giggling or distracted by a passing speck of dust or a bird or something, that she would never ever forgive herself. Going out in public was such a stupid idea! Not that she'd ever admit that to Tucker. It had sounded so much better this morning.
But the branches were just too spread out for them to climb down alone. They would definitely fall and probably die or break half their bones or something. Danny, meanwhile, appeared outwardly to not have noticed the guys in white at all. He was focused on a small castle of ice that he'd been building for that little blonde girl.
Sam's heart leapt into her throat when she saw the guys slowly converging around Danny. They had opted for stealth, because it didn't look like the ghost had seen them yet.
They didn't know that Danny was letting them sneak closer.
"Watch this," he whispered to the blonde girl who was looking at him expectantly through a window in her small castle. He pointed his thumb over his shoulder without looking, as if it was no big deal, aiming for the nearest crunch of footsteps in the snow. He was rewarded with a muffled yell. He sent two more blasts of ice behind him, which were greeted with two more yells. The girl giggled madly with her hands on her mouth.
He turned around to check how off his aim was, and was pleasantly surprised to see he'd been dead on. Three icy snowmen stood some twenty feet behind him, each encasing an enraged agent banging on the inside. Yeah good luck getting out of that, he thought with a smirk. He'd made the ice five feet thick all the way around.
Then all hell broke loose, at least for the agents. For Danny it was just another part of the leisurely afternoon. He couldn't suppress his laughter as he dodged their attacks with more ease than usual, and encased them one after the other in snowmen cages. He even added brooms and top hats for effect, earning more cheers from the onlooking kids.
"This is probably the dumbest thing you've ever done," Tucker stated simply, up in the tree. He was thoroughly enjoying this but couldn't help but worry that giving mushrooms to Danny had been a really stupid idea. It was obviously having a very strong effect on the poor guy.
"You mean smartest," Sam corrected dreamily. She was no longer even slightly worried.
The two of them gazed onward at the scene before them with shared amusement, having already given up all hopes of reigning Danny in.
"I feel like we should help him," Tucker said, as a man in a white suit raised a formidable gun to his shoulder and aimed it at Danny, who hovered some thirty feet above him.
"I think he's handling it."
"In the loosest possible sense of the phrase," Tucker snorted.
They were both right. A snowball the size of a small boulder buried the agent before he could squeeze out a shot at the ghost. The air rang with Danny's laughter when he doubled over in midair, clutching his sides.
"Besides," Sam added, "It'd be his own dumb fault for getting captured since he left us STRANDED UP HERE!" She shouted the last part in Danny's general direction, though she seriously doubted he would hear her at this point.
After only a few short minutes all of the government agents had been locked away, screaming with rage under five feet of ice. It really said something about the residents of Amity Park that not a single parent or adult there attempted to help release the guys in white from their prisons. They all just smiled and looked the other way.
Danny's laughter slowed and he wiped a tear from his eye, before jolting upright like he'd just remembered something important. It was with a sheepish look on his face that he zoomed up in front of Sam and Tucker. "Maybe it's time to go home," he offered, his hand rested on the back of his neck apologetically.
Tucker's stomach turned over at the thought of another flight with Danny, but it was either that or walk home, and man that did not sound appealing.
When Sam and Danny flew away through his apartment wall they left Tucker heaving over the kitchen garbage can. He was wishing he had sucked it up and walked home.
Sam was all ready to let him have it when they got back to their own apartment. She had a whole speech prepared about how Danny did every single thing she'd told him explicitly not to do. There were bullet points! There were definitely some colorful words on that list, some very not-nice colorful words! But when they phased into the living room the music was still on shuffle from earlier.
Sam didn't have to check the iPod for this one. Infected Mushroom- "Forgive Me." The title was kind of depressing but the song was actually ridiculously uplifting.
And she was still tripping after all. It wasn't her fault that her lecture deflated the instant that beautiful melody wafted into her ears. And it definitely didn't help that Danny turned to her and gave her the sloppiest, most puppy-dog smile she had ever seen. Her stomach flipped over. Woah, she thought, caught off guard. They'd been together so long now that it'd been a long time since Danny had given her butterflies that badly. So she was even more caught off guard when he swept her off her feet with a big fat kiss.
When they broke apart a new song was on. One of Danny's this time. Coldplay- "'Til Kingdom Come." Danny didn't know how many songs had gone by while they were kissing. They were on the couch now. Weird, when did that happen? he wondered idly.
There was a fair amount of snow coating the edges of the couch and the floor around them. That tended to happen when things got hot and heavy between them. You could say Sam was quite used to it. The coldness didn't bother her. It never did these days. Subconsciously her fingers brushed the heavy pendant hanging on the silver chain around her; it was freezing to the touch. But it was the only thing in the world that felt cold to her anymore. Because of her necklace, the snow was as pleasant against her skin as a gentle afternoon breeze.
Sam sighed, enjoying the relaxing end of the song. She folded her arms on Danny's chest and rested her chin on them, staring unabashedly up at his beautiful blue eyes. She didn't remember when he had changed back to human. "I have been waiting all day to do that," Danny said, grinning. "It's been torture!"
"Not as torturous as being left to rot inside a tree with Tucker," she said, only half-joking. The up-down motion of his chest beneath her was very soothing, and it was downright impossible to be angry at Danny when they were cuddling. It was like trying to be angry at a fluffy cat that's curled up asleep on your lap.
"Any way I can make it up to you?" he said, with a sly grin.
"Make up for leaving me all alone with Tucker? While I was on mushrooms? I don't think that's possible, ghost boy."
"You still feeling it?" he asked, referring to the mushrooms.
She was. She definitely was. The room was three times brighter than it should've been and the snowflakes on the couch seemed to be wiggling around in circles. Plus her heart kept flipping over madly every time he looked at her like she still had some schoolgirl crush on Danny, like how long since that had happened?- but she wasn't about to tell him that. "Yes," she replied. "What about you?" she asked apprehensively. He seemed to be a lot calmer than he was a little while ago.
"Oh yeah. I'm still feeling it." Colors were basically sounds, and vice versa, and he felt like at any moment he was about to become one with the couch cushions. Plus he felt like his heart was about to explode because of the way her hair was falling just so across her face, and he kept eyeing the silver necklace she wore around her neck- which, he couldn't lie to himself, really turned him on- because after all she only wore it for his sake. Just looking at it was enough to send his hormones into overdrive. And overdrive, while already on mushrooms, was like atomic warp-speed hyper-drive. But he wasn't about to tell her that.
So instead he just rolled over on top of her, pinning her down against the couch cushions. "I bet I could think of something to make it up to you, if I tried hard enough."
Before she could make another sassy comeback he shut her up by kissing her again. The light pouring in from the balcony glistened like golden rays as the room filled slowly with snow.
The song playing was Grateful Dead- "Sunshine Daydream."
And it really was a sunshine daydream.
Woohoo! Done! You have no idea how hard it was to write this. Conveying the feeling of being on mushrooms is freakin' hard. And ahem.. I'm almost sickened with how proud I am of how FITTING all of those song titles were! I didn't even actually try to do that, I just chose songs I like listening to on mushrooms.. but it's kind of scary how well the titles fit with the story. XD
Also, if you're wondering about that necklace Sam's wearing I'm currently writing another fic about that. (A Touch of Snow.) ;D Maybe you should read it. (The basic idea is that when things get hot and heavy Danny's control over his ice powers gets a little wacky, so Sam needs something to protect her from freezing to death.)
Also also, enjoy the bonus epilogue to this story.
Also also also, review me pleaseandthanksokaybye.