Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher
-William Wordsworth
To tell the truth, Sam had never been a big fan of the idea of being home schooled.
While growing up, Pamela and Jeremy had often reminded Sam how with their obvious wealth, their family could easily give her an education with ten times better-quality than Amity Park's public school could even dream to offer, but that had never interested Sam that much. Sure, she liked to read and understood the importance of proper education, but at the same time Sam had always tried to make her parents understand that the money shouldn't define how good an education you were getting, even though Sam's true reason for refusing their offer (demand) had been more selfish in nature. After all, the normality that the normal school offered was the only thing that would keep her sane in the madhouse she called her home.
Or at least that was what she had thought before meeting Danny and Tucker.
When Sam had started at the public school, she had been in the same class with Danny and Tucker from the very start, but had somehow managed to be completely unaware of the two boys' existence over two months. That all had changed when she had found out that her scrawny classmate's parents were real-life ghost hunters. Of course, that had meant that the already not so ordinary 8-year-old Sam just had to start spent all her free time with the said boy, not caring even slightly what the other boy and his best friend thought about it.
She truly had been a spoiled kid back then; her dad had taken a good care of that, not even mentioning how her so called friends back in Seattle had almost never argued against her ideas and done everything she had wanted them to do, just because her family happened to have more money than theirs. Now when she thought about it, her former attitude was probably one of the main reasons why the now inseparable trio's friendship had had such a rocky start.
Hardly anyone remembered it anymore, but when Sam had moved into Amity Park, she had been more like yet another bully to Danny and Tucker than a friend. A weird bully who purposely always hanged around the two boys, but bully nevertheless. Little Sam might have been smart enough to make a decision not to tell anyone about her rich parents so she could find some real friends that the books always talked about, but it had been a surprisingly hard to readjust to how people at her new school weren't as willing to dance on her tune as they had been at her old one. This had caused Sam and Tucker to fight a lot, Danny being too timid and unsure of himself back then to even try to raise his voice against his bullies, and it hadn't been unprecedented to find either or both of them sitting in front of the principal's office with a black eye or huge bump on their foreheads.
Then, after one slightly rougher fight, which had lead Sam to lose her last baby tooth and Tucker to break his nose, the principal of Amity Park's elementary school had had enough. The man had ordered them all – Danny included since he had tried to stop the fight, leading the teachers to mistake him as being part of it – to clean the playground, which some high schoolers had messed up the previous night, on their own. The principal had been that kind of person who had believed that the good old hard work was the best way to make the misbehaving kids learn some team work and lead them to respect each other a bit more, but of course none of them, nor their parents, had been happy about the idea. In the end though, it had been just what the trio had needed. Under the watchful eye of the old janitor, Sam, Tuck and Danny hadn't had any choice but do as they were told and talk to each other nicely if they wanted to spare themselves from suspension.
Naturally there was much more to the story, but in a nutshell, during that long afternoon Sam had learned that sometimes you needed to accept that others kids had their own opinions too, Tucker had realised that the weird new girl wasn't that bad after all and Danny had seen that, for once, he wasn't the only one who thought his parents had the coolest job in the world (a feeling he had lost during the following years but had been able to regain after turning into a halfa).
But back to that whole home schooling thing.
So, as she had already said, the thought of being forced to be home schooled had always made unpleasant shudders travel down Sam's spine while growing up. But even in her the most bizarre nightmares, she had never even feared that one of her own parents would be teaching her. Neither had she been able to predict how her two best friends would be there too, sharing these extra after school lessons with her, following with indestructible interest how Sam's mother stuck colourful pins on the map of North-America while she read her hand-made notes to her three students.
"As I mentioned earlier, Zatanna is one of the few publicly known second generation heroes. She moved to Las Vegas a couple years ago, where she has apparently become a quite popular stage magician, meaning that finding her shouldn't be a problem if you ever find yourself in her city. And let me see… If the rumours are correct, her father, Zatara, become the current Doctor Fate soon after I was released from Arkham, so I recommend to avoid talking about him if possible, since it might be a sensitive topic to her," the redhead browsed through her remaining papers to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything. "And since we already talked about Fate, I think that was all I had for you today… Any questions?"
Danny's hand shot almost immediately on the air making Tucker next to him to snort a bit, amused by the other boy's eagerness. The ghost boy had taken this opportunity to learn more about the other heroes (and villains) almost too seriously and sucked every word he heard during Pamela's lectures like a sponge. Sam and Tucker – both of whom also found these lessons very interesting and useful – had gotten into the habit of teasing their friend for it, reminding the halfa at every opportunity they had, how Danny could easily be their school's primus student if only he showed the same obsession during the school day. Danny didn't seem to mind this though, most often just saying it to be a Fenton thing.
"You recommended that, because of his super hearing, the easiest way to find Superman in Metropolis is to stay in one location and shout his name and say you want to talk to him, but wouldn't it be easier to search for Lois Lane or just go to Daily Planet's office? Knowing his history with Miss Lane, it would only be logical to assume that she knows how to contact him."
Another thing that Sam had learned about her boyfriend during these lectures: Danny was a Superman fanboy. Or at least, the Man of Steel had been the role model whose actions he had tried to mimic during his early days as a hero. As if his 'Super Danny' personality hadn't been a big enough clue.
Pamela looked at the teen while thinking about his question and Sam couldn't stop herself from imagining her fixing some non-existing glasses while doing so.
"While your suggestion does make sense, Daniel, we can't exactly be sure if the theory is a correct one. It's true that Superman has saved Miss Lane numerous times and in the eyes of public it might look a lot like they have some sort deeper relationship, but things are rarely that simple. Miss Lane is a reporter after all, which means as far as we know she could easily purposely put herself in dangerous situations, forcing Superman to save her and this way giving Miss Lane a perfect opportunity to interview him," the woman told to the three teenagers, two of which weren't that interested about listening to her anymore, while Danny's face fell a bit. "It's almost as if I would assume that Miss Sanchez and you have a romantic relationship just because you have saved her a couple times more often than your other classmates."
"Bad example" Tucker hid his comment under a badly faked cough, causing Danny's face turn to a deep shade of red, while Sam kicked the techno geek's leg under the table, giving her friend a glare that surely would have murdered him if that had been possible. And although Sam's action did made Tucker to let out a small yelp and move his chair further away from the girl, he still kept snickering behind his phone to the young couple's great annoyance. Sam also noted how her mother too seemed to find the situation to be quite amusing as the smile on the corner of the older woman's lips broke her otherwise controlled expression.
"I will pretend that I understood what that all was about," Pam hummed as she glanced at the watch on her wrist. The time it showed made her frown and Pamela started immediately to collect her notes back on the folder, while continuing to talk to her "students". "You should hurry and go change your clothes now. It's starting to get late and I'm sure that your parents would approve if we end your training session before your curfew."
That final comment teared the original members of the Team Phantom's attention from their personal problems back to their self-appointed mentor. For a short moment, Sam had completely forgotten her mother's promise to expand their studies from useful information to a basic self-defence against the most well-known metas. Even though Danny had, kind of, managed to create some sort of verbal, unofficial truce with the League by promising to help them with the ghost related problems after refusing to become part of their junior league, there was still a high possibility that the Amity Park's heroes could end up have problems with them or at least come across with some of their enemies somewhere in the future.
On the corner of her eye Sam noticed how Danny passed through the chair he had been sitting on, grabbed his bag from the floor next to him and half ran towards the nearest bathroom, laughing at Tucker's protests about how unfair his trick had been as the other boy hurried after him. The Manson women just shook their heads to this, Sam personally getting this weird warm feeling on her chest she always had nowadays whenever she saw her boyfriend use his powers openly in the presence of her or his family, something that had become more natural to the halfa during the already ended summer.
"You better go too, Sammy," the goth's mother reminded. "Or do you want your friends to come drag you out of your room before you have managed to change out from your school clothes?"
Sam grimaced, but did as her mom had suggested and started to make her way out of the room. She and her friends had spent the last couple days playing with ideas about what and how Pamela was going to teach them. They all were pretty sure that plants would be involved, especially after Sam had found out her mother had bought some old warehouse from the edge of the city, meaning the former villainess probably wanted to make sure no one would hear the noise their training could possibly cause. Tucker had also managed to dig up some old videos from the fights between Poison Ivy and Batman – watching those had been a really weird experience to Sam – so they would be able to know, at least in some degree, what to expect from Pamela and study the differences between Poison Ivy's and Undergrowth ability to manipulate the nature around them.
Considering all work they had done, Sam and her friends had been a pretty sure that they were ready for their first training session with the retired villainess who had once been one of the world's most dangerous and feared people. But when they finally arrived in front of the warehouse, roughly forty minutes later, Team Phantom was hit in to the face with the fact that, when it came to the Gotham's villains, you could never be ready.
"Holy…" Danny was the only one able to let out any kind of sound when the trio and Pamela stared at the weird mixture of an army's obstacle course and carnival that was waiting for them. And in the middle of it all, on the top of the homemade boxing ring, stood a grinning woman in bright red basketball top and black gym shorts, making her to look like the scariest personal trainer Sam had ever seen.
Pamela blinked her eyes in disbelief "She didn't…"
"Heeeelloooooo everyone!" the blonde shouted to her thunderstruck audience and as if on cue the bright spotlights came to life, their light surrounding the blonde like she was a ringmaster announcing the beginning of the awaited show. "Are ya ready ta have a little fun with, the one and only, Harley Quinn!"
"She did," the redhead sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose for a short moment before glaring towards her pale friend. "Harley dear, didn't I tell you not to bring any of your "training equipment" with you."
"But Reeeeed…" the blonde whined, gracefully hopping out of the ring and dancing to hug her best friend. "I just took a couple little old things from the back of our warehouse."
"Just a couple?!" Pamela scoffed and slapped the back of the younger woman's head "Harley, this is more than a truckload!"
The three teenagers stared at the arguing women with wide eyes. Unlike Danny and Tucker, Sam wasn't that surprised to see her mother lose her cool around Harley, being the only one who had seen the two together before, though finding out that Pamela had invited Harley to help with their training was something she hadn't expected. Neither did she know if her mother had told the harlequin villain the true reasons behind Sam's mother's newfound desire to teach them or in better words, told her Danny's little secret and his meeting with the League's covert team.
"We are so doomed," Tucker managed to blurt out mechanically, just before the clown themed supervillain pulled him on a one-armed hug, still somehow managing to keep his face perfectly blank, though Sam was quite sure it was because he was too afraid to move.
"Is it so wrong if I want ta give only the best ta these poor misguided youths?" Harley gasped as she put her arm around the boy like a protective mother "They are our first protégés, Red, an' as a responsible mentor, I will do my best ta teach them everythin' I know!"
"They are not our protégés, Harley. We are just teaching them to defend themselves in case, I don't know, Joker comes to search his missing stuff from here."
"Isn't that the same thin'?" the blonde asked Tucker who was standing stiffly like a tree in her hug but before the teen had even a chance to open his mouth to answer, Harley had already turned her head back towards Pamela. "The kid is right, it's the same thin'. An' don't ya worry about Mistah' J, Pammy. My Puddin' has this new huge plan in the oven an' ya know how he never notices what's happenin' around him when he is in that state of mind."
The redhead scoffed and glared angrily straight into Harley's puppy dog eyes. "Your better be right about this Harleen," she told her. "Because I surely won't be the one cleaning the messes your boyfriend makes."
"Of course I am right!" the blonde giggled and, to Tucker's great relief, took her arm away from Tucker's shoulder. And it wasn't like Tucker was going to waste his perfect opportunity to escape as he started immediately moving towards Sam and Danny taking one shaking side step after another, his eyes firmly glued to the laughing woman. Little he did know that the overly hyper harlequin had already chosen her next victim.
"Sammyyyy!" Harley's excited shriek was the only warning Sam had before she was pulled in a bone crushing hug and spun around like a ragdoll. "Did ya miss yer Aunt Harley? What am I talkin' about, of course ya did! Oh, we are goin' to have so much fun with trainin' together!"
"Hi Harley," Sam was able to gasp. Who would have thought that her mother's friend was so strong? Wasn't she supposed to be a normal human and not a meta?
"Let my daughter breath, Quinzel," Pamela snapped behind Sam, her tone and the use of the real last name saying clearly she was still angry at the clown.
Harley did what she was told but seemed completely oblivious to the harshness of the redhead's tone, or at least that was how it seemed to be in Sam's point of view.
"And who might this be?" the blonde then asked her eyes looking at something behind the girl and when Sam glanced to her side she saw that Danny had appeared next to her, his eyes glaring suspiciously at the pale woman in front of them.
The goth just rolled her eyes at her boyfriend's overprotectiveness. "This is Danny," she told Harley then swung her hand, pointing towards the techno geek of the group who had decided to stay near Pamela after the blonde had launched herself on Sam. "And the other boy you kidnapped is Tucker."
A knowing glimmer lit the clown's eyes as her already wide smile grew. "Aaaa… The boyfriend."
Danny crossed his arms over his chest while narrowing his eyes. "The one and only."
"A feisty one, I see," a chuckle escaped behind Harley's grin as she leaned closer to the halfa who stood maybe slightly taller than her. "Or maybe you are just stupid."
Danny just shrugged his shoulders slightly. "I have been called both," he told her calmly and for a moment Sam had to wonder what was going on inside his head.
The blonde pursed her lips thoughtfully then, after straightening her back, she started to walk towards the self-made obstacle course. "Let's figure it out then," she said, stopping in front of something that looked like a running track lined with ball cannons and some Fenton Works level weird weapons. "I made this thin' to test ya kids speed an' reflexes while making ya familiar with some of our friends' favourite toys," Harley explained proudly and tapped one of the weird looking guns. Danny eyed the makeshift system warily, which was understandable knowing his experiments with his parents' weapons and Sam really hoped he was smart enough to admit that the practise was too challenging to his human form, then he actually started to walk towards it with a self-confident face. The boy's decision made the smirk on the clown criminal's lips turn into something that felt almost threatening as she saw how the halfa took his place at the beginning of the track.
It was then that Pam decide to intervene. "Harley, isn't that thing a bit too dangerous for the first training exercise?"
"Naah, the lover boy will be fine," the blonde laughed and tossed something round and bulky towards Danny, which he managed to catch just before it hit the cement floor. "He is wearing a helmet!"
"As if that's going to help him against Freeze's ice gun and Joker's acid filled water pistols," Sam, who had now moved next to Tucker so she could more easily glare at her idiotic boyfriend, heard her mother mutter under her breath. Suddenly the goth was weirdly happy that Danny was already "half dead" and his ghost half had an ice core. And judging by Tucker's expression, he was thinking exactly the same thing.
"He is so going to get his ass kicked," the dark-skinned boy commented almost casually. "Seriously, what is he even thinking? There is no way he is going to survive that without going ghost."
Sam continued trying to murder Danny, who was currently fitting the red football helmet on his head, with her eyes. "Isn't it obvious? He is an idiot. An idiot with too much pride to admit he has no idea how to fight against anything other than ghosts." Then she turned to talk to her mother almost in pouting voice. "Why did you even ask her to come? I thought you were trying to keep contacts with your "old friends" as minimum a possible."
"I still am," Pamela responded a bit too sharply but quickly softened her still frustrated tone. "I have just never been that good with hand-to-hand combat like Harley so I thought that maybe she would be a better teacher to you. As Poison Ivy I always relied on my powers, avoiding physical contact as much as possible unless I was completely sure I was the one in control," the redhead's eyes moved to study her hands, probably once again thinking about the life she had left behind. "I was like nature, subtle, fraudulent and deadly. Or at least as long as I didn't let my temper get the best of me," she smiled shortly before looking back at the two teenagers. "I also needed someone to fill me in with the latest events of the villain world. I might follow the news daily, but there is always so many underground events you are going to miss if you aren't inside."
"So that's how you knew that the Flash has twins…" Tucker realized. He had spent weeks trying to confirm all the secret information that Sam's mother had given to them, mostly without any results, and boy, the techno geek liked to complain about it. Personally, Sam just hoped her friend wouldn't draw any unwanted attention on himself by poking around the internet forums and the Leagues fan pages.
The former villainess let out a not so flattering sneer. "It's not like Central City's rogues nor speedsters have any skills keeping secrets from the outside world. It's purely a miracle that no one has figured out the Flash's secret identity yet."
Sam frowned, having ewalized a hole in Pamela's explanation. "Why didn't you ask for Selina's help then? I thought she and Harley are pretty much equal when it comes to fighting skill, and surely she knows just as much as Harley does." Sam was about to add a couple more points into her reasoning, but it was then that Harley shot into the air with her flare gun looking weapon, signalling to Danny he had a permission to run. And the boy surely did that, though it didn't mean that he managed to dodge all those flying things that Harley's training exercise was throwing towards him from every possible direction. The remaining teenagers grimaced out of sympathy, feeling their friend's pain and Sam decided to settle just with the words "and safer…"
Pam too shook her head as she watched the young boy struggle, then tried to make her voice heard over her friend's loud cheers and the noises the machinery caused. "After Selina become engaged to Mr. Wayne she started to work full-time with the Bats. And I would really appreciate if he doesn't find out that some untrustworthy ex-villain has taken you three under her wing and is teaching you how to fight against the League. In my opinion, adding Harley to this mess is lesser of two evils."
"Your mom made a good point," Tucker pointed out, before returning to shout various, and not so helpful, advices to his best friend who was still trying to reach the end of the track without any kind of grace. Still, Danny had survived over the half way point without relying on his powers so Sam had to admit that she was at least slightly impressed.
The redhead looked at her daughter's friend blankly for a short moment, with an almost calculating look in her eyes, and most likely trying to figure out if Tucker was being sarcastic or not. Mrs. Manson might have taught the two boys almost a month now and was doing her best to come along with them, but Sam knew that her mother still saw Danny and Tucker as inappropriate company to her daughter. She had just learned to accept that she hadn't any chance to make Sam abandon them and that the trio needed each other just as much as she had once needed the other two Sirens.
Finally, Pamela turned her eyes back to her moody daughter. "I think now would be a good time for us to start your personal lesson," she announced, completely changing the subject, and earning a frustrated groan from the dark-haired girl.
The redhead chuckled at the face Sam was making then turned to call her friend who was now patting the pale, sweaty and slightly bruised Danny's back while the boy was gasping for air on all fours at the end of the track.
When the blonde heard the other woman's plan she just grinned, assuring she would be perfectly fine with the two boys and as a proof, she immediately turned to call Tucker.
"Oi! It's ya turn now, four-eyes!" Harley announced cheerfully to Tucker's great horror.
"No, it's not!" the boy protested quickly, holding his hands in front of himself as he took a couple steps back "I don't need prove you anything!"
The clown looked slightly confused for a short moment before breaking into giggles like a little girl, somehow managing to make the normally innocent sound give ghoosebumps to those around her.
"Oh, this is just a warm up. Red told me how terrible ya two are at sports so I had to find a good motivation for ya." The never-ending smirk on the woman's face seemed to grow even bigger as she eyed the ever-paler boy like a hungry wolf would look at its next meal. "All the lover boy needed was someone challenging his pride in front of his girl, but you… I know exactly how to make boys like you run…"
"Don't leave me alone with that maniac," Tucker whimper his voice full of horror and gripped Sam's arm tightly between his shaking hands.
"I won't. Danny will be here with you," she whispered back. The boy looked towards his best friend who was still trying to catch his breath, then turned to look at the goth with a helpless look in his eyes.
"Can't you see what she already did to Danny? He looks half-dead!"
Even though Sam agreed with him, she honestly did, she forced Tucker to let her arm go and gave him a somewhat encouraging pat on his shoulder.
"Nothing out of the ordinary then. You will be just fine," she assured him over her shoulder while walking after her mother who had already made her way in front of a lonely, box like room that was probably meant to be an office or something like that, convincing herself that her friends would only thank her for not saving them from Harley's torture if (when) they would come across some not so friendly meta-humans.
Since Sam didn't hear any more arguments from her friend's direction and Danny too seemed to be well enough to manage to collect himself up from the floor, she decided to let herself lull into the belief that the two boys would be perfectly fine during an hour or so – the average length of her mother's little experiments – before Sam too would join them and get her own share of that merciless trainer that Sam's "Aunt" Harley seemed to be.
Pamela gave her daughter an understanding smile. "I know Harley might seem a bit… over energic, but try not to worry. She knows that not everyone is as tireless as she is," she assured to Sam as the girl walked towards the door her mother was keeping open. "Usually…" she then added tiredly, looking at something behind Sam. Deciding she didn't even want to know what the clown had just done, especially after hearing a very familiar high pitched scream, Sam hurried past her mother inside the room. The sooner they could finish probably yet another fruitless attempt to search for the needle in a haystack (that was also known as finding out what changes the activated metagene had caused in Sam's body) the sooner Sam could go help her friends… The shrieks echoing inside the hall made her wince and pray she would be able come to their aid fast enough.
Honestly, Sam was a bit surprised how it took as long as half an hour before Harley rushed in the small office, crying about how she had managed to lose Danny and Tucker during some game the clown themed criminal called "heroes and villains". While her mother turned her attention from Sam to the blonde woman, Sam continued starring at a small violet Pamela had given to her and ordered the girl make its petals move without using her hands. Despite Sam's many attempts to get her mother to realise she hadn't any plant related powers, this kind of practices were still Pamela's favourite ones and at this point, Sam could even swear that she was able to hear the flower mocking her, even without the ability to talk with plants.
While Pamela tried to make the younger woman believe that the boys had probably just found a good hiding place and not been vaporized by one of the weapons Harley had brought with her – why someone had even thought that designing something like that was a good idea was way over Sam's understanding -, Sam pointed her finger up towards the rooms low ceiling, her eyes never leaving the plant in front of her, not really paying any attention to what she was doing.
"They are up there," she muttered absently, barely loud enough for both adults to hear her words.
"Really?" Harley asked hopefully while brushing tears out of her cheeks, almost immediately running out of the door and (judging by the sounds the Mansons were able to hear) jumped up to the room's roof with ease.
After listening for a couple seconds to the unsure sounding steps above their heads the happy "Found them!" shout broke silence, soon followed by two loud yelps and crash when Danny accidentally turned himself and Tucker intangible, causing them to drop through the ceiling straight on the top of the table and would have crushed the flower pot on it if Pamela hadn't managed to save it on time. Sam blinked her eyes slowly, staring at the groaning mass that was now laying in front of her eyes, more surprised by the fact that the shaky looking table had managed to stay in one piece than her friends' sudden appearance. After all, when you worked semi-professionally with creatures who were able to turn invisible, things like this had been the first things to lose their effects when Sam had learned to lean more on her other senses and gut feelings than her eyes.
"Thanks a lot for busting our hiding place Sam," Danny groaned and rubbed his forehead he had hit against the hard, plastic surface.
"Yeah, seriously," Tucker added while pushing himself off from on top of Danny where he had landed. The techno geek then bent his back backwards, causing it to let out a painful sounding pop, coloured by yet another groan, before the boy's eyes moved to glare at Sam. "I don't care how you did it, but friends are supposed to cover each other's backs, not feed them to the wolves."
Sam just rolled her eyes, her arms crossing over her chest. "As if I was the only one who was able to notice you two get up there. Stealth isn't exactly either of your strongest traits."
"Actually, Samantha" Pamela's calm voice interrupted the bickering teens, "I didn't hear anything that could have pointed at Daniel and Tucker's arrival up there. And assuming I was the one who was paying more attention to my surrounding, shouldn't this be the other way around?"
Three teens stared at the redhead holding the flowerpot on her hands, trying to catch what the adult was suggesting. "Mom please don't say you think that this is-"
"Has something like this happened before?" Pamela asked quickly from Sam's friends, completely ignoring the girl's protest. The said boys looked each other, Danny mouthing the word "no", his face and hands clearly turning it in into a question, Tucker looking equally as unsure as his best friend.
"She does seem always to notice you when you are trying to scare her."
"Yeah, but so does Jazz."
"Dude, she has lived with you her whole life. And what about last week and that accident with those ectoplasm samples?"
"Okay, maybe not always, but it's not like I haven't managed to scare Sam too before."
"Name at least one time,"
The halfa raised his finger, already opening his mouth to answer, then stopped, frowned and slowly opened his mouth a second time before closing it again, clearly not finding the answer he was looking for.
Sam couldn't help but groan, when she saw how the exchange of words caused the fire in her mother's eyes to burn even brighter. Sam would be lying if she said that (possibly) finding out what her superpower was wasn't exciting. It was just that the whole subject had partly lost its shine when Pamela's inner scientist had become slightly obsessed with figuring out the mystery in Sam's DNA, leading to multiple tests, each of which was stranger than the next.
"I see," the excited smile slowly lighting the woman's face as she lowered the violet and its pot back on the table. Her hand quickly found the notebook from the floor where she had dropped it while rushing to save the flower from becoming crushed and started to write down notes, muttering to herself something about hearing, ghosts and the like.
"Mmmm sooooo…." A weak chuckle came from the doorway and when the teens turned their heads towards the sound they saw Harley's head hanging upside down under the door's top. "Am I the only one who is surprised from seein' two boys fallin' through the ceilin' without breakin' it? Because last time I checked, only Martians could do that trick."
Sam found herself face palming, now realizing they had completely forgotten the harlequin, while Tucker let out an awkward laugh, probably trying to figure out how to make up some believable excuse, and Danny cursed under his breath in the most vulgar way he knew.
"…Butter biscuits…"
"This is stupid," Sam complained as she stood in the middle of Harley's boxing ring, her eyes tied with her mother's jacket and ears covered by using ear plugs and industrial earmuff, both of which origins were a complete mystery to the goth.
Her mother said something back to her, but all Sam was able to hear was something muffled so she decided not to comment. Pamela had probably just told her not to be silly or something similar without bothering to even get her eyes of the notes she had been making continually ever since they had gotten their new lead, documenting every single step of their little experiment to chart down how Sam's metagene worked.
According to what they had managed to gather this far, it seemed that neither Sam's hearing nor her sense of smell were better than average persons (both of which had been among the first things the Mansons had tested after hearing about Sam's metagene) and she indeed had some kind of sixth sense to sense people around her. It was actually kind of funny how she hadn't ever even noticed anything until today. Her mother had already made a hypothesis that Sam's power was active all the time, almost like she was able to sense some kind of vibration or aura that humans had, allowing Sam to sense their location in the same way as humans were aware of their noses: they knew it was there and saw it all the time, but still somehow managed to forget its existence whenever they weren't paying any attention on it.
Of course, it was way more complicated than this. Firstly, Sam didn't actually have any specific sense that told her where to look. She just knew where someone was, making it more like muted gut feeling than anything else. Secondly, it seemed that she was more aware of some people than others. Danny and Tucker were easiest to find, while her mother was a bit harder and Harley -to the blonde's great delight- was able to get in contact distance before Sam was able to notice anything. Sam's mother thought it might have something to do with Sam's emotional tie with person, since Danny was the far easiest to Sam to locate (it could also be a ghost thing. They needed to test that out later), or how much time she spent around said person. And thirdly, Sam's ability didn't seem to have any kind of perception of distance, it just gave her a direction where someone was, which might be the most annoying feature.
Speaking of which.
"Stop," Sam sighed and pointed to her thumb towards her two o'clock. "Danny."
Speaking of the Ghost Boy. His secret was still mostly safe, since the trio and Pamela had managed to get Harley to believe that Danny was just another metahuman who had an ability to change his and the objects he was touching molecular structure, giving him an ability to both walk through solid objects and turn invisible (because they had to explain somehow how he and Tucker had been able to sneak away so easily) a short amount of time. Harley seemed to be okay with it and understood surprisingly well why Pamela hadn't told her anything about it. The only problem they now had though was that Harley was now trying to convince Danny to help her get some of her "pals" out of Arkham or at least steal something with her while she was in Amity Park.
"Stop… Tucker," this time Sam's thumb pointed over her shoulder, towards the door behind her.
Tucker… Well, nothing special had happened to him since falling on the table. He was just happy neither his glasses nor PDA hadn't broken and complained every ten minutes how his back was still hurting.
"Stop and Harley," Sam pointed her finger to her left, only to hear an exited "I won" shout from the same direction. Since there was no more people in the building with them, Sam decided to remove the jacket blinding her vision to see how she had done this time. As usual, Harley had stopped less than two meters from Sam and was still doing her small victory dance. Tucker was a bit closer than last time they had made the same experiment, leaving him somewhere between 4 and 4,5 meters away from her, while Danny was stopped once again exactly the same distance as before, leaving him standing 5 meters from the goth. When the later of the boys noticed Sam's gaze, he offered her a small smile and waved a bit.
The mumbling on her right caused Sam to turn her head and lift the earmuff off her head allowing her to hear better what her mother was saying.
"-managed to define the close averages to each person we have here," Pamela said while writing down the last set of numbers. "Next we could try if it is possible to flex the maximum radius. Daniel, please try to move very little away from Sam so she can feel you only weakly, then let her adjust a while before moving again. Okay?"
"Actually, Mrs. Manson," Danny started awkwardly. "Shouldn't we quit already? I mean it's getting a bit late."
Sam heard Tuck yawn loudly, "Yeah, Danny is right. Mum asked me to be home at nine and it's already over eight o'clock."
Pamela raised her head from her notes and glanced at the clock on her wrist. The woman let out an unhappy sigh but still closed the notebook with a sharp slap. "Yes, maybe it's better if we continue this tomorrow," she agreed and turned to look towards Harley. "Do you need a lift at your motel, Harley, or did you plan to sleep here during your stay?"
The blonde smiled sweetly, "Well, I was thinkin' that maybe-"
"No," Sam's mother said coldly and started to walk towards the door. "You are not sleeping in my house. I have promised Jeremy not to house any criminals under our roof."
"Does dad even know that you asked Harley to come to Amity Park?" Sam asked, and the sheepish look in her mother's face was the only answer she needed.
"Oh, come on Red!" Harley whined "Why didn't you tell him? Jerry loves me."
"And we both know how twisted your idea of love is…" Sam heard Pamela mutter quietly, making the girl assume that her father wasn't as fond of the blonde as the other thought. The redhead pulled her phone out of her pocket, offering the device to Harley, ghost of almost challenging smirk tucking the corner of her mouth. "How about you call Jeremy and ask him yourself what he thinks about your plans."
"Ask me what?" the familiar voice made all people in the room turn their heads towards the hall's doorway, where Jeremy was now standing, carrying a picnic basket with him. Sam was a little touched from seeing her father. She knew that he wasn't exactly comfortable with Sam's current training or her metagene, often purposely staying away from Pam's lessons and experiments with their daughter's abilities, and yet he had drove almost to the other side of the city to see how Sam was doing even though he could have just called and asked why their training was taking longer than he had been told. And he had even brought something to drink with him.
But, as Sam watched her father freeze and slowly lose all colour from his face when he recognized the second blonde in the room, she was sure he was now deeply regretting his decision.
"Hi Jeremy!" Harley waved to him in a wide arc, her voice full of her trademark happiness, "Long time no see!"
The man didn't even blink, just made a stiff U-turn and, without saying a word, Jeremy walked out the still open door as fast as he could without running.
"See," Harley smiled to Pamela as if saying I-told-you-so and as she finished her sentence, it took all the willpower that Sam and the boys had to stop themselves from laughing at Harley Quinn's childish naivety. "I told you that he loves me."
"If you say so Harley. If you say so."
Yeah... I'm sorry for being gone for so long. As some of you have probably read from my profile, past months haven't been the easiest ones to me and because of that I simply lost my motivation to write. The main problem in my pesonal life is still there though, so if I disappear again, it's most likely because of that.
And don't worry, I'm not sick nor anyone is dying, things had just been... complicated.
But about happier things!
About Sam's power:
As I have told some of you who asked, I wanted to give Sam a power that was inspirated from the skill/power she almost had in the show. Well, originally she was supposed to have a 'psychic connection' with Danny that would let one know where the other one was, but this was removed just before the premiere. Personally I found this fact during the times when I was trying to decide if giving Sam a superpower was good idea or not and the skill just felt right. At first I thought giving her power similar to Scrying spell in Charmed (or My sister is a witch as the show is called in Finland) but the whole map and crystal thing felt a bit too random Sam to ever figure out so I ended up a weird sixth sense.
I hope that none of you are that badly dissapointed. I know that plant powers were the ones you wanted to see the most (and honestly back when Dark Seacret was still going to be just a two shot that was my plan) but then it started to feel too obvious and I changed my mind.
And another note... Next chapter will the most likely be the last one. I was planing to write one more chapter where Pamela meets Bruce again in his and Selina's wedding so they could make a peace of some sort, but now I just want leave them hating each other and Team Phantom in dark gray area when it comes to their alliances with the character of DC universe.
And as always big thank you to my beta jaguarspot
Hopefully next chapter will appear sooner than this one.
Happy Valentine's Day!
-Kilppari