Kim, as usual, was on her way running to school. She pulled open those famous front doors like she did every day for the past three weeks, and began to walk coolly inside, not wanting any one to think she was in a rush or something. She went all the way to her locker, which was unfortunately on the other side of the hall. Finally, she made it to her locker with her calm walk being maintained, and was surprised to find an odd flyer taped to the front of it.
Biggest Game of the Basketball Season! Make sure you come out and support your fellow students at 7:15 tonight!
She read over it a twice, and looked at it in confusion. She didn't think about it for very long before something interrupted her from her thoughts.
"You got one, too?"
She turned her head in the direction of the voice, and found the adorable and sweet Danny Fenton walking towards her.
Wait, adorable? Sweet? No way. Keep your head in the game, Kim. This is a mission, and Danny is a friend. Nothing more, nothing less. She had to remind herself, as he approached her.
"Yea, what's this about?" she asked him, since he'd been at this crazy school with weird people for so long.
"Apparently tonight is the biggest district game for basketball. Supposed to be a great game," Danny shrugged. He'd never been a huge fan of basketball. Especially not Casper High basketball where he would just watch the idiot jocks toss a ball around, and the flirtatious girls wanting to talk to every boy there – except for Danny.
"Do you wanna go?" Kim smiled casually. Danny stopped thinking about the horrible basketball games, and smiled back, "Yea that sounds great. Maybe Sam and Tucker can join us, too."
Kim wouldn't let it show on her face, but she felt disappointed that he didn't want it to be the two of them.
Danny on the other hand, couldn't let himself be alone with Kim. He felt a weird bond with her that he had to keep manageable.
Speaking of keeping things manageable, the last thing Danny wanted to do was bring up the awkward moment they'd shared just yesterday afternoon in the infamous locker room, but there was something he felt that as a friend, he had to ask.
"Have you heard back from Coach Laurent, yet? Did you make the team?"
Kim was surprised he'd brought that up. But the last thing on her mind at those words was the locker room debacle. She stopped all thoughts and realized she didn't know if the team would be posted by now or not.
She looked into those baby blue eyes of Danny Fenton, and told him, "I completely forgot."
She yanked his wrist, and ordered, "Come with me to go see," then began pulling him through the long locker room hall, trying to get to the bulletin board where she was told they would be posted.
With Kim still roughly latched onto Danny, they reached their destination, and stopped. Kim trailed her finger down the alphabetical list on the white sheet of paper, and paused when she'd reached the R's.
She traveled back up to the P's, but her name wasn't on there. She thought for sure that she'd wowed the coach. She even made her stay after, but nothing. She wasn't on that sheet of only 12 girls.
"You made it!" Danny piped. Kim looked at him with confusion. She had just passed where her name should be, and it wasn't. So why was Danny teasing her? Did he just want to rub it in her face?
Then something clicked in her mind. At this school, she was known as Kim Wate. In her excitement, she'd completely forgotten, and glued her eyes back on to the paper. There, at number twelve, in the coach's messy handwriting was: 12. Wate, Kimberly.
Her smile spread literally from one ear to the other, and she gave Danny a huge bear hug in her excitement. The moment she felt her cheek against the hardness of his chest, she pulled away. She'd forgotten for just a second how attractive Danny was under that thin white shirt, and now she hadn't only seen it as proof
…but she had felt it, too. She had felt Danny's incredibly hard chest on her soft, plush cheek, and she desperately wanted to do it again, but she couldn't, and she knew that.
Sam and Tucker came up at that point, and saved the two from a red-cheeked conversation.
…
Kimberly Wate had just leaned against Danny Fenton's chest. Her soft cheeks had pressed deeply into him, and her hair was right under his nose. When she was so close, he could smell that beautiful aroma of her perfume or shampoo or whatever that he loved to inhale. Like flowers blossoming on a cold winter day when everything around it had already died in the cold, it was the sole thing that could without a fault bring a smile to his face.
And then it stopped, and he felt the coldness rush back into him.
Her small head was no longer perfectly aligned against his chest, and her full hair no longer protruded into his nostrils, they stood rather far apart now actually, and Danny didn't know what he'd done to make her break the warm hug so abruptly, he'd opened his mouth to ask, but when he looked at Kim, he realized she was staring at the other end of the hall towards two approaching figures: Sam and Tucker.
"Hey what were you two gawking at?" Tucker asked as he approached.
"I made the soccer team," Kim told them, and gestured to the list.
"That's great Kim!" Sam told her, and she actually meant it.
Danny practically blurted out his next question, but he had to get this off his chest, and now, "Are you guys going to the basketball game tonight?"
Sam and Tucker blinked at him in confusion, so he continued. "Kim and I thought it would be fun to go, and I wanted to ask if you two wanted to come, too. It'll be fun!"
Sam and Tucker looked at each other for confirmation – something they'd been doing a lot lately – and shrugged, "Sure."
Kim had to kick herself before she groaned in annoyance. She was really planning on it just being the two of them.
…
"So what do you guys wanna do in between the game and this?" Tucker asked the group after the long school day had officially ended.
Kim realized suddenly that she still had to fulfill her mission duties even with the basketball game. That meant she'd have to watch out for Phantom before the game, which meant she couldn't hang out with her friends.
"Well if I'm gonna be out late, I should check on my aunt. I have to give her some meds, but I'll meet you guys there at 7." Kim waved and walked back to her little apartment, leaving the trio.
Once she had finally turned a corner, and was out of sight, Sam rounded on Danny, "Why the hell are we going to this dumb basketball game! You hate sporting events, as do, and Tucker."
"Well, er, Kim asked if I wanted to go, and I felt bad saying no, so I…"
"Said yes? That was obvious," Tucker rolled his eyes.
"Why do you two always gang up on me!" Danny shouted as they began to walk back to Fenton Works.
"Woah, I am not ganging up on you. I think tonight's gonna be fun. Maybe Sam and I could just leave half way through, and let you and a certain someone be alone," Tucker joked and nudged Danny.
"Cut it out, Tucker. It's not like that," Danny groaned in annoyance.
"But you want it to be," Tucker grinned, and Danny turned a deep vermillion red.
"N-no, I, don't!" Danny stuttered.
"Dude! Could you make it less obvious. There's no escaping us. You're a pretty bad liar," Tucker told him.
Danny's eyes narrowed, but then his entire expression lightened, and he sighed. He looked hopeless, almost like he'd given up. He kicked a rock by his foot, and glared at it. "Well, so what if I do," he said so quietly he'd hoped they hadn't heard him.
Sam immediately turned her usual frown upside down into a big smile. "That's great, Danny! I'm so happy you're finally admitting it." She was relieved.
But this left Danny confused. "Wait, what does that mean?"
Sam shrugged, "Well Tucker and I were pretty sure you had a thing for her, but I'm happy you're finally admitting it to yourself."
Danny slapped himself in the face. "Great! First my sister, then you two! Am I the only one who didn't know I liked Kim?"
"Well, Kim doesn't know. And that's gonna be the hard part," Tucker reminded him. Now Danny really groaned in annoyance. Everyone knew the step after self-admittance was admitting it to the person that you liked, but that was easier said than done.
"And she's not gonna know," Danny told them aggravated, as they approached Fenton Works, and Danny fumbled with his keys.
"You shouldn't be scared if she doesn't feel the same way! It's obvious she does," Sam told him, encouragingly, but this only made Danny's life harder.
He wasn't scared to tell Kim he liked her because of some dumb rejection or because she may not feel the same way. He wasn't even scared because she'd only been there two weeks, and might not want a serious relationship. He was scared for only one reason.
And that reason was something he could only share with three people in the world, two of which were standing in front of him. He was about to tell them about the sad truth of why they would never work out, but didn't get a chance to. When he opened his mouth to speak, a sudden coldness burned in his throat. It scarred the sensitive tissue it was encased it, and Danny had never been more relieved when an icy breath escaped his lips.
He instantly held his pose, and a white belt of energy began to form at his abdomen. The ring broke into two pieces, one ascending the upper half of his body, and the other descending the lower half. The upper hoop traveled beyond the highest strand of thick black hair, which had just turned a fragile white, while the lower circle encased those beloved red converse, changing them into white ghost boots.
He opened his eyes to reveal a passionate green, and stared at his two friends. "This is why I can't tell her. She'll never understand this part of me. And she wouldn't be able to handle herself if a ghost came to get me while we were together. It would never work." He lowered his head, and wanted to cry, but knew that would help absolutely nothing.
Sam and Tucker hung their heads as well, ashamed they'd forgotten why the relationship wouldn't work. They were both caught up in the fact that Danny expressed romantic interest for a completely ghost-hunter free normal girl that they'd forgotten about the ghost-hunter part of Danny.
"I have to go deal with this," Danny told them, and Sam and Tucker both knew he was talking about whatever ghost had set off his ghost alarm.
He was about to fly through the roof of his house when he paused and turned to Sam and Tucker. "If I'm not back in time for the game, don't wait up. I'll meet you all there. I don't want Kim to think that we ditched her.
He waited for Sam and Tucker's nod, then phased through the roof of his own house, and followed his ghost instinct for the ghost that sent off his sense.
…
Kim was masked in the branches of a thick tree while she crouched, clad in her flexible white suit. She looked through the blue Plexiglas, and waited for Phantom to arrive. When she finally saw him coming into the distance, she waited for him to get closer and closer…
He stopped flying, and floated off the ground as he looked around. She was sure that it would work, and was so happy when it had.
Wade had told her about the ghost sense that Phantom had, and she'd seen it herself before. She hadn't tried the special trick Wade had installed on the suit that gave off a ghostly aroma until tonight because she really needed to see him before the basketball game. And, as always, Wade's inventions worked flawlessly.
He was now directly under the tree she was perched in, and in one deep breath, she pounced out of it, silently heading towards the ghost boy.
She aimed her right leg at the back of the boy's head, and had intended to go straight through it. With this force, he'd be knocked out, and then she could carry him off so he could cause no trouble. It would be so easy!
She was about to finish him – at least for the night – but then he suddenly whipped around, and caught her leg with his right hand.
The moment his thick fingers latched around her small appendage, she knew things had taken a turn for the worse. He swung her leg around in two complete circles, and released her roughly, so she was flying headfirst towards a tree.
Kim clenched her fists tightly, and squeezed all her thoughts into the one word: intangible.
Immediately, she felt the rush that came with going invisible, and she sailed straight through the tree. Once on the other side, she flipped around vertically in a backflip, so that she was on her feet. She crouched in a pose that was ready to pounce at any moment, and then Phantom came back around the tree, and looked at her.
"And to think I thought I'd gotten you," his ghostly face laughed.
Kim felt angry with that comment. It was not that easy to defeat Kim Possible. She immediately swung an ecto-laser at the ghost boy, and pulled the trigger without hesitation. She watched his smug green eyes grow wide with realization and worry, and smirked to herself as the searing white goo contacted his revealed skin. He wiped it from his exposed face, and tried to concentrate and focus without using his eyes, which still burned. Of course Kim didn't know for sure how bad it hurt, but she believed that getting ectoplasm in your eye had to be worse than plain, natural soap. He squeezed them shut, and Kim decided to seize another chance.
She whipped her left leg around in a low crescent kick, knocking the ghost to the ground. He clearly hadn't been expecting this, for when he fell, it didn't quite register until he'd hit the ground with a thump.
He hardly even had time to blink before Kim was pointing another weapon at him. This time, the center of her palm turned white hot, and another blast of ectoplasm escaped from the circle.
This blast sent Phantom's hands up into to protect his face to at least try to block the blow, but it did absolutely nothing. Instead, the blast pushed him along the grass, trudging a rather large hole in the ground following him, and he rolled across the ground.
By the law of velocity, Phantom finally halted, and lay weakened on the ground, under the stump of a tree. He blinked for a moment, and when he saw the white suited girl coming towards his face with a punch-ready fist out front, he quickly went in tangible, and phased through and behind the tree.
Once he was safely behind the tree, he remained intangible, and peered on the side. He'd been too quick as she hadn't yet noticed he was no longer there, and two moments before her hand would have struck his face, he made the tree intangible, and waited for the girl's fist to penetrate it. When it did, he let go of the tree and turned visible again, leaving her hand trapped in the inside.
Danny had performed this trick once before with a ghost, and he was sure that if her suit had the same capabilities as a ghost, that it should also work on her.
Before she was able to yank her wrist out by turning it tangible, Danny blasted the area of the girl's arm that stuck out from the bark of the tree with a huge dose of icy-ectoplasm. It solidified easily, and trapped the girl's encased arm inside the tree. He backed away from his trick, and smiled.
She struggled and pulled, but it was no use. She couldn't free herself from the natural-prison. "Don't lose hope," the Phantom smirked at Kim. "You'll be able to get out once the ice melts."
Her jaw dropped once she realized that she had been outsmarted by a ghost of all creatures. Ghosts were hardly there, only attached to the world through obsession. And yet, Kim had been in four fights with the demon and she could tell he was different. He was quicker, smarter, and had better techniques that Kim had ever expected of a ghost.
Yet here they were: the ghost had outsmarted Kim severely, and now she had to pay the price and wait for the ice to thaw enough for her to break through it.
"Do me a favor," the sound of Phantom's voice broke Kim's thought. "When you get out of there… DON'T COME BACK." He told her sternly, and turned away from her, getting ready to fly back to his house. "Or next time this arrangement will be a little more permanent," were his last words before blasting off into the evening air, leaving Kim stuck leaning against the tree.
A/N: WOW!
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