Danny Phantom Post Planet
Chapter 6
The next time Danny saw Vlad was the day before he was scheduled to start his junior year of High School. It was after dark and he was on his way home from Sam's house. They had just finished an all afternoon movie marathon at her house and they reluctantly agreed that it was time for Danny to go home and prepare for school. He was about halfway home when, by sheer luck, he noticed Vlad flying overhead towards his house. He immediately transformed and flew at top speed to intercept him.
"Going somewhere?" He asked.
Vlad didn't answer him. Instead he stopped flying and tried to cut around him. Danny blocked him. He tried going the opposite way. Danny blocked him again. They followed this pattern for a good five minutes before Danny got completely frustrated and fired an ecto blast at almost point blank range. Vlad dodged it by turning invisible.
"Really Daniel," he said, turning visible again, "It's poor sportsmanship to fire at an opponent like that just because you get angry."
Danny began charging another blast. "Yeah, cause you're a REAL authority on what's fair and what isn't."
He fired the blast and Vlad dodged it again. He started flying away from the house and towards the outskirts of town. Danny started chasing him, charging blue energy again as he went. He wasn't gonna let Vlad escape this time. He fired the blast and just like last week, Vlad was stuck in a block of frozen ice. Unlike last week though, the block was falling at high speed towards the ground.
Danny flew to intercept the ice and managed to catch it before it hit the ground. He put the ice down in time for another duplicate to disappear out of the ice.
"Are you kidding me?!" Danny shouted shattering the ice into a million pieces. These duplicates were really starting to annoy him. He transformed and walked home. He went through the front door and found his mother sitting at the couch reading a magazine. He guessed that she was staying up waiting for him to come home from Sam's.
"Hey Mom." He said.
"Hi Danny," she said looking up from her magazine, "How was your time with Sam?"
"Great but I ran into Vlad on the way home, or a duplicate of him."
His mom put her magazine down and walked over to inspect him. "Are you ok?"
"Yeah I'm fine. He never even got a chance to hit me. I just wish there was some way to tell ahead of time if I'm fighting a duplicate."
"Maybe there is."
"What do you mean?"
"Just something your father and I have been working on. I'll need to make some adjustments to it, but I think I can make it work to track Vlad."
There were times where Danny truly forgot how smart his parents were. They were geniuses who could easily adapt their own technology and come up with entirely new technology to help him. Not many parents could do that. He said good night and went upstairs to bed. He wanted to be rested for school tomorrow. On the way, he passed Jazz's now empty room. Danny and Sam had said goodbye to Jazz that morning when she left for college. Going to Casper High without her was going to take some getting used to.
He got to his room and changed into pajamas while texting Sam to let her know about the second Vlad attack and that he was ok. They agreed to walk to school tomorrow and Danny would fill her in on the full details, even though there wasn't much to tell.
Danny's alarm went off at 6 AM the next morning and he quickly grabbed a shower before getting ready. Once dressed he grabbed some granola bars for breakfast and went out the front door to find Sam already waiting for him.
"Isn't the Boyfriend supposed to pick up the girl for a walk to school?" He asked, closing and locking the front door.
Sam folded her arms. "21st century Danny. A girlfriend can meet the boy once in a while."
"Sounds Good." He said, interweaving his fingers with hers and they began walking to school. On the way, he told her about the confrontation with Vlad the night before and that his parents were now working on some way to track him. Sam figured he must have been hiding somewhere and sending out his duplicates to do his dirty work. Danny thought the same thing, but there was still the major question of where the original was. Danny figured it must have been somewhere in town, except by now, the police had buffed up security at all edges of the city, except that wouldn't have helped if Vlad went invisible and just walked right past them. Their thoughts on where Vlad was didn't last long though. They had arrived at Casper High and picked up their new locker assignments and class schedules.
"Where's your locker?" He asked.
"422," She answered looking down at the assignment slip, "What about you?"
"495. At least we'll be in the same hallway. I wonder how many classes we have together."
They compared their schedules and were happy to find out that they had lunch together as well as science, history, gym and math. This was great since the classes they had together were not really their best and they could help each other out. They agreed to get to their lockers and meet up at the first class of the day. Danny reached his locker and put in the combination to open it. He began putting a few of his new notebooks away when he heard the voice that he was really hoping not to hear today, Paulina's.
"Oh hi Danny!" She said so sweetly Danny thought he would get a cavity.
"Hi Paulina." He sighed closing his locker shut. He then realized with horror that Paulina was closing the locker door located just to the right of his. Just great, she was his locker neighbor for the year. Sam was gonna love this.
"You never responded to any of my phone calls or texts this summer Danny."
"That's because they were all date requests and I told you multiple times that I'm dating Sam."
"Oh you were serious about that?"
Danny glared at her. "Yeah I was. Now excuse me, I need to get to class."
He got to the science lab a couple minutes before the bell rang. Sam had waved as he walked in and pointed to the seat next to her at the back of the class. The frustration with Paulina must have shown on his face.
"What's wrong?" She asked.
"Guess who my locker neighbor is."
Sam laughed. "It is kind of ironic though."
She was right about that. 2 years ago, heck even times during sophomore year, he would have given anything to have Paulina as his locker neighbor. But once he realized he had feelings for Sam, he was able to take a good long look at Paulina and who she really was. The result was a very shallow, very egotistical girl who only wanted to be attached to him because he was popular now. They didn't have time to discuss Paulina much further because class had started.
Most of the first day of classes at Casper High followed the same pattern. They would meet their teacher, get textbooks, a list of rules they were expected to follow in class and depending on the teacher, they would also be assigned homework. By the time Danny and Sam met up for their lunch period, Danny had homework for Science, Spanish and Math. Hopefully he wouldn't get any more homework and he could get some patrolling done tonight. After lunch, they had Gym together and then history. After that they wouldn't be seeing each other until meeting up at their lockers to go home.
After his last class of the day, English literature, Danny got to his locker and packed away the books he wouldn't need. Thankfully he didn't have any more homework, just another annoying conversation at his locker with Paulina.
"Do you want to walk home with me?" She asked.
"No thanks." He responded shutting his locker shut. "I'm walking home with Sam."
"Ugh. I don't understand why you would even bother spending time with her."
Danny was getting angry. Would he really have to put up with this all year? "I'm spending time with her because she's my girlfriend and she's been my best friend for years. I'm not explaining this again to you Paulina, so please just drop it."
He would have gone invisible to avoid her but thankfully he didn't have to. He walked quickly into the crowd of students and Paulina's voice was drowned out by the various noises and chatter made by other students. He made his way to Sam's locker but she wasn't there yet. She showed up a couple minutes later slinging her bag off her shoulders as she went.
"Sorry about that." She said opening her locker. "My last class ran long because the teacher wouldn't shut up."
"It's cool." He said. "I was wondering if you wanted to come on patrol with me tonight."
Sam slipped her math book into her bag. "Sure, but I want to get some homework done first and eat some dinner. You want to do the science and math work together?"
"Yeah, definitely. You want to go to your place or mine for homework?"
Sam put her last notebook in her bag and zipped it up. "Let's go to your place. I can call my grandmom on the way and let her know where I'll be."
They walked out of school holding hands. About 20 minutes later, they reached Danny's house and he grabbed drinks while Sam grabbed their books and looked at their shared assignments. They spent the next hour and a half, finishing both the homework they had for their shared class as well as the ones they didn't have together. They were finishing up when Danny's mom came walking in to grab something to drink.
"Hey kids." She said opening the fridge. "How was the first day?"
"Not too bad." Sam answered. "Danny and I have half our classes together. And we just finished our homework for tomorrow."
"Well that's good. What do you have planned for tonight?"
"Patrolling." Danny answered. "Sam's coming with me tonight. Hopefully she'll see something that I don't."
"Well be careful and Danny, curfew's in effect again, I want you home by 10."
"No problem."
Danny dropped his bag back in his room and they left for Sam's house. They dropped off her bag and grabbed some leftovers for dinner and went to the park to begin patrol. They stopped at a map for the park and marked where they would start patrolling. When Danny and Sam patrolled together, they would start at separate ends and work their way towards each other. It meant that they could cover ground more quickly and easily contact each other if they found anything.
"And remember," He said handing her a communicator and thermos. "If you see Vlad or anything too dangerous…"
"Let you know right away and find a safe spot." She finished taking the communicator and thermos from him. "I know the drill Danny."
Danny kissed her. "I know you do. I just like hearing you tell me that you know." He put his own communicator in his ear and transformed. "Let's meet back here in a couple hours."
"Sure thing." With that they went their separate directions.
One of the first things Tucker did when he became mayor was to set up a hotline accessible to all citizens of Amity Park in case a ghost was spotted. The hotline was linked directly to the Fentons who would then contact Danny. This was helpful but Danny wasn't the type of person who wanted to wait around for a call to let him know there was a ghost and besides he liked patrolling the streets. Especially on nights with Sam.
After about an hour, Danny was on the north side of the park when he heard Sam talking on the communicator.
"What's up Sam?"
"Danny, you need to get to the south side playground now."
"Why, what's going on?"
"It's Johnny 13 and Kitty. They're vandalizing the playground and picnic areas."
"On my way." Danny turned around mid air and flew off towards the south end of the park. Sounded like Johnny and Kitty were on one of their occasional date nights to the real world. That usually meant a lot of destruction. That must have been the vandalization Sam was talking about. After a couple minutes Danny found Sam ducked behind a tree near the playground. Johnny and Kitty were sitting on his motorcycle and driving donuts around the picnic area. Half the nearby playground was in ruins.
"Sam you ok?" Danny asked in his communicator. He saw her put her hand to the ear with the communicator in it.
"Yeah I'm good." She said. "I've been trying to get a shot at him but he's moving too fast."
"Ok. I'll find a way to bring the cycle down. Once they're down we can fire on them and get em in the thermos."
"Got it." She said and he turned invisible and flew closer to Johnny's bike. Sam was right, Johnny was moving pointlessly fast and running more donuts grooves into the grass. Danny decided to match his speed with Johnny's and then turned visible right next to them.
"Yeah, I'm gonna need you guys to slow down now." They both shrieked in horror at the sight of him and Johnny lost control causing the bike to go down. Kitty had actually fallen off the bike landed face first in a large pile of dirt. Johnny managed to gain a little control of the bike again but not enough to avoid sliding the bike into a tree. Danny floated over to him, folding his arms as he went to look intimidating. "Yeah that's what happens when you don't do what we ask."
Johnny stood up from the rubble shaking his head, his girlfriend completely forgotten.
"Come on dude." He said. "Can't you just let a guy have a peaceful night out with his bike?"
Kitty had now stood up, dirt covering half her body. She was glaring angrily at both boys. "What about me Johnny!?" She screamed.
Johnny began wringing his hands nervously. Danny had fought both ghosts before and he always knew that Johnny could easily forget about his girlfriend when his bike was involved. "You know I would never forget you Kitty. Just let me beat this guy up and we'll get back to our night out."
Danny landed and took a fighting stance in front of Johnny. "Yeah, when have you ever been able to beat me?"
Johnny charged and threw a punch at Danny which he blocked. Johnny threw a kick and Danny dodged it. Danny threw a couple kicks to hit him the chest. The kicks connected and Johnny backed a few steps back into the tree. With Johnny momentarily distracted, Danny turned his attention to Kitty and fight her if necessary but Sam already beat him to it. She was dodging blasts left and right while firing shots from her wrist gun. Danny couldn't help but smile with pride. Sam had been fighting ghosts just as long as Danny had and she could easily hold her own.
With Sam fighting Kitty, Danny turned his attention back to Johnny who was now trying to reach his bike. He fired an ice blast and created a wall of ice blocking Johnny from his bike.
"Really dude?" Danny said loud enough for Kitty to hear. "Trying to leave your Girlfriend behind while you escape? Not cool man."
Kitty definitely heard him because she had stopped fighting Sam and started yelling at her boyfriend. "Seriously Johnny!? You were gonna leave me behind?"
Johnny immediately went on defensive. "You've got it all wrong Kitty, I was gonna get the bike and then come get to you. Honest."
They continued arguing for about 5 minutes before Sam used the thermos to capture them. Johnny and Kitty didn't seem to notice though, they just kept arguing.
"Good job." Danny said.
"You too." She said.
Danny checked his watch. It was close to 9:30. "It's getting late. You want to call it a night?"
Sam yawned. Danny was pretty tired too. They had both been up since about 6 that morning. "Sure. We should probably let Tucker know about the damage they did too."
Danny surveyed the damage Johnny did to the park. "I'll call him when I get home."
"That's ok, I'll do it." She said, "You need to get some sleep."
Danny yawned. She was right and decided not to argue. With that he flew her home and then flew home himself. Right after transforming back to human, he collapsed and fell asleep.