It was strange to go back to school after summer. Summer had been spent fighting ghosts almost 24/7, Danny and I had almost been caught more times than we could count with both of hands combined, and suddenly we were expected to go to school like everything was alright? It seemed almost impossible that we could go to school normally, but that Thursday morning my alarm went off at 6 AM and I had to accept that it was really happening.
Over the summer, Danny and I had practiced moves. He'd tried to teach me the ghostly wail, but what happened with me was something a little different. Danny's ghostly wail emitted ecto-waves from his throat. Mine emitted ecto-electricity from my throat. I wasn't able to hold mine for very long without changing back, and I'd discovered that duplicating only made the power from my wail decrease as well. Danny had been working on duplication, something that I did with ease. I tried to tell him how to do it but he wouldn't listen, intent on doing it himself. He eventually got it, but he couldn't hold it for more than a minute.
I roused Danny so that he would get up to get ready for school, but he quickly pulled me down and went back to sleep. Unable to escape his grip, I had to wait until 7 am for him to get up and let me get dressed. I couldn't say that I was unhappy with being snuggled up against him for another hour. Danny and I dressed quickly, ate quickly, and were out of the door in 20 minutes. It had to be a new record for getting-ready time for me.
We went ghost and flew to school, not trying to fight the bus crowds. We'd recently heard that the Red Huntress was back on the hunt for Phantom and now me as well, so we flew to school invisibly. We didn't feel like being late. When we walked in holding hands, plenty of people groaned and Tucker was paid more. Apparently, Tucker made a lot of bets about when Danny and I would get together.
"Were we really that oblivious?" I muttered to Danny, who shrugged.
"I guess so..." Danny frowned. "If people could pick up that we like each other, then how do they not pick up on the ghost thing?"
***line break***
Danny and I ended up in all of each other's classes, which was good. On our own, our ghost abilities showed through, especially in Gym. Together, it looked like we had trained together over the summer. We were faster than Dash now, and Mrs. Tetslaf would definitely try to urge us onto the track team. Ghost fighting kind of got in the way of that, though.
The day went by pretty fast. I found myself stumbling to catch up, as though pieces of reality were falling out of place. Danny seemed to having the same problem, as did Sam and Tucker. We met up at lunch to discuss it.
"Do you think it might be Kit?" I asked suddenly, startling the three.
"Why do you think it might be him?" Sam asked, curious.
"Kit breaks the laws of physics and the laws of logic," I said, waving my hand in the air, still holding an apple. I took another bite of the fruit and swallowed it. "Too much contact with him can cause reality to fall out. Or at least look like it's falling out of place. In all actuality, our brains are trying to catch up with what's going on around us because Kit emits some sort of undetectable scent that messes with how our brains perceive things." I shrugged. "Kit's in the asylum again right now, and to get rid of this all we really have to do clear our heads."
"And how do we do that?" Tucker retorted, looking a little aggravated. Maybe it was because Danny was spending a lot more time with me now than he did with Tuck.
"Meditate," Sam answered for me. For the entire lunch period, we sat at our table and meditated. And it really worked; reality stopped falling and I found myself able to keep up. Of course, Danny and I passed notes whenever we could, using our powers to invisibly pass notes if we had to.
***line break***
After the school day, I discovered that my head hurt. Prolonged exposure to Kit and then clearing your head so quickly sometimes did that, especially after doing exercise. My ghost sense went off and I glanced around, looking for Danny. Not seeing him, I quickly hid and changed into Shadow, spinning in a circle in the air looking for the ghost. Suddenly I was tackled to the ground from above, and I groaned in pain at the weight on top of me.
It happened to be Danny in Phantom form, grinning down at me while perched on my back. He was smiling like a cheeky little kid, and I could tell that Danny and I were causing a scene.
"Phantom!" I groaned. "Did you have to do that?"
"Do what?" he asked, still being cheeky. Blushing green, I twisted and threw Danny off, landing on top of him. He pushed me away quickly, and I spun in the air.
"Hey!" I pouted. I dodged him as he lunged at me, chuckling as he failed to stop and turn and ended up crashing into a bush. He lunged again and I nimbly avoided him at the very last moment, doing a cartwheel. This time, I lunged at him as he lunged at me, and I used my hand to bounce right over his head. I grabbed my discarded backpack and floated into the air. "Come on, Phantom!" I teased. "Come and get me before the Fentons get here!"
I darted away into the air, away from the school and away from Danny. I yelped as he shot at me, spinning away from the blast even though he wouldn't have hit me anyway. "Don't do that! You could have hurt me!" I shouted at him, lunged at him and catching him by surprise. I smacked him on the head and darted away again, hiding invisibly inside a bush.
I heard Danny run after me, and I pulled him into the bush and turned him invisible as the Fenton RV went by. It'd been a while since we'd played around in our ghost forms, and definitely not at school. I was sure that someone had recorded us fooling around, and I was even more sure that someone would have asked us for autographs if we hadn't disappeared when we did. It was hard to be ghost heroes, especially when a lot of people thought we were evil. But it was alright. We were helping the town.
Speaking of helping the town, my ghost sense went off again and I hiccuped. Danny gave me a strange look, but then his ghost sense went off too. I pouted.
"How come only I hiccup?" I muttered.
The ghost turned out to be Skulker. We hadn't seen Skulker for a while. In the midst of fighting him, I noticed that he was only targeting Danny. He aimed one of his guns at Danny, and...
"No!" I shrieked, alerting Danny. I lunged for the white-haired boy, knocking him out of the way as the rocket came at him. The rocket hit me in the face, right in the empty eye socket that I normally tried to keep hidden. I remembered screaming and hitting the ground with a sickening crack! I could barely hear Danny shouting and getting angry, I barely noticed the ectoplasm dripping down my face, I didn't notice the ectoplasm pooling from my scraped cheek.
Suddenly I was thrown into a memory. I was a little kid again, and my mother had been drinking. She stumbled towards me, followed by a ghost whose appearance would soon be burned into my mind. She held me down as he reached forward, burning my eye out. I screamed and thrashed, wailing for help. The blood poured down my face, and I couldn't stop screaming from the pain. Eventually, I was met with a slap to my face, and my mind went blank for a moment...
I snapped back to the real world and groaned, struggling to stand. I couldn't have been out more than a few minutes, the fight above me still going. Ignoring the gasps of horror coming from the people who can congregated to watch the fight, I flew up into the air behind Skulker, unbalanced and dizzy with pain. My ectoplasm dripped down to the ground but evaporated before it hit the asphalt.
"You know," I gasped, blood running from my mouth, "I don't really appreciate being hit in the face. I hope you will, though." I raised my hand and shot a weak ecto-ray into Skulker's face, surprising him enough for Danny to regain his senses and suck him into the thermos. Danny pulled me to the ground, fussing over my face.
"Are you sure you're okay? That's a bad wound," he fretted. I batted his hand away wearily, collapsing against him.
"I'm fine," I mumbled. "Just... can we go home?" He picked up on the weariness of my voice and he nodded wordlessly, going invisible and flying us back to FentonWorks. Once there, he washed my face and I changed back into Rose. The wound from Skulker's rocket was already almost gone; all it had really done was open up the old wound.
"Sleep," Danny told me, settling us down in his bed. He, too, had once again become my black-haired boyfriend, and I leaned against him for comfort. I willingly allowed him to lull me into sleep, wanting to shut out the memories again...