Looks like I am alive after all... :D Not sure how well Danny is faring, though... hehe.

Chapter 6:

Moment of Truth

"I know about you and Phantom."

.

If Dash hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he would have said it was impossible for Danny to become any paler than he had been, but he would have just been proven wrong.

Dash was worried for a minute that Danny would pass out. He would be no good to him then. But the skinny kid didn't pass out, so Dash continued on pinning him with his knowledgeable stare, hoping that the results would be just as good as they had started.

"I know that you sneak out of class to go fight ghosts," he added when he thought it was time for the next bombshell.

Danny went white and tried to mask—quite ineffectually— his hyperventilating from the bigger teenager.

"I totally understand why you haven't told your parents," Dash explained in what he felt was an extremely nonchalant voice. "I mean, come on, they're ghost hunters! They would kill you."

Danny gulped and gripped the toilet seat until his knuckles were white. He tried to back up as much as possible, but it wasn't much, so he more ended up squirming in place than moving farther away from the blonde.

"I mean, really, I gotta give you credit for having some guts. I don't think that I would do what you do in your situation. 'Cause, helping out Phantom, public enemy number one? That's gotta be like, the top thing on your parents not to-do list, right?"

Wait…

"What…" Danny barely breathed out, not sure that Dash would ever be able to hear him.

"Oh come on. I'm not stupid, Fenton. I saw you this morning. I know that you help Phantom during his fights. You give him your parent's weapons and carry the soup can back and forth for whenever he needs it."

"It's a thermos," Danny corrected quietly and automatically.

"Whatever." Dash waved him off. "The point is, you help Phantom and you can't let anyone know about it. It's too dangerous for you to be doing at your age so any adult who heard what you were doing would make sure you stopped as soon as they heard. And anyway… you are helping a ghost. Not just any ghost, either. But Phantom. Danny Phantom. The ghost that's taken Amity by storm. The one that's on the news every night. The one that's on all of the ghostly-awareness billboards. The town's public enemy number one and number one property damager."

Danny thought about lifting a finger to protest that last accusation, but decided that it wasn't worth it. So he let Dash continue.

"Your parents would kill you if they find out. So would half of the people in Amity, if they knew."

Up until this point, the jock had been very confident, but now he stopped and asked for confirmation in a voice that shook too much if he really wanted to convince someone he was blackmailing them.

"… Right?"

That was when Danny faced a fork in the road. How would he answer Dash?

He had recovered enough of his brainpower to realize what Dash was saying. His secret was safe. The jock hadn't put the pieces together or tried to say that he was Phantom. Just that he helped Phantom. Which was a totally different thing. And really, the idea that he could be Phantom was ridiculous to the normal bystander anyway, since humans were alive and ghosts were dead. He couldn't be both at the same time. That was kind of how that sort of thing went.

No one would ever be able to guess that it was true. That he was the same person.

So he could tell Dash point blank that he had been wrong. Danny wasn't sneaking out of class to go help Phantom. Not technically. Dash's story was enough of a stretch that he could truthfully tell Dash off without having any qualms whatsoever.

There was absolutely no reason that he had to sit through being blackmailed by a stupid football player who didn't know anything.

But he suddenly realized that saying that wouldn't work.

He couldn't walk out of here without Dash having some hold upon him. Dash was sure that he had something to pin on Danny. Danny had even acted like Dash had been right about his secret this whole time, because, up to a point, he had been.

If he suddenly backed out now and said that Dash could tell whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted, the jock might get too curious. He might—not that he really thought this would happen, but he might—piece together that if he heaved a sigh of relief now, there was some other secret that if Dash could manage to find out, he could hold above his head.

If that happened, he would be in trouble. Dash would be on his tail from first to last bell trying to figure out what it was and he would never have a chance to leave and go ghost when he needed to.

Or he might lash out at him in desperation. Tell everyone the supposed connection to Phantom. People might listen to the story Dash had come up with. After all, it was more plausible than the truth, and just as likely to get him in trouble with the law, the Guys in White, and his parents. Plus, he really couldn't afford to have anyone connecting him to Phantom in any way. You give the ball a nudge and it will eventually roll in the right direction.

If he dared Dash to tell someone, the bully would.

And if someone knew he was supposedly working with Phantom, Dash was right; his parents really would kill him. Not rip him apart molecule by molecule, but kill him, certainly. And after they were done grounding him for life, and training him "properly" in the ways of ghost fighting, they would put some device on him to monitor his every movement. Again, he would be unable to go ghost or fight off the specters that he really needed to fight off.

And that was the bearable stuff. His Dad probably wouldn't, but if his Mom started asking the right questions about him and Phantom… yeah… not good.

In the end, he figured that the safest and best thing to do really would be to say that Dash had been right and just live with that.

He sighed.

What he didn't do to keep his secret safe…

So Danny nodded.

"Oh good." Dash sighed, showing a bit too much relief in the fact that he was supposedly right all along to make a successful blackmailer. "So… I won't tell anyone either…" he let the phrase linger so that Danny knew what was coming.

"As long as you do something for me…"

Danny knew he didn't have a choice. Not really. No one being blackmailed ever really had a choice. Not if they wanted their lives to retain any semblance of normality.

"Okay, Dash. What is it?"

He wondered briefly what he was getting himself into. Endless locker-room clean up duties, doing Dash's math homework, submitting to being shoved in his locker more publicly and more often…?

Nothing seemed appealing, but there was nothing he could do. He might be able to talk to Sam and Tucker and they could think of something, but until then, he would have to do whatever Dash told him to do…

Danny realized then that he had literally sold his soul to the devil. He was now bound to do whatever Dash told him to do and he had to do it unquestioningly or other people would find out about his so-called partnership with Phantom.

One more chapter if all goes according to plan.