Greetings all, I'm not dead! After a five month wait, I bring you another chapter! Apologies for taking so long, I have! Not been feeling good! :'D Doing slightly better now, but expect chapters to still come super slow. But we're still chugging along!

This chapter is mostly comedic in tone, but still warrants a warning. About two thirds in, there's a paragraph where I describe something painful in a semi-medical context that could be considered mild body horror, namely regarding teeth. If that kind of thing makes you uncomfortable, skip the text wall paragraph that comes after "Yes, those."

"No, please, don't leave me here alone!" Tucker pleaded.

'Why, you won't be alone, son," Maurice told him, clapping a hand on his shoulder. "You've got your friends here to keep you company!"

Behind him, Danny, Sam, and Wes all waved encouragingly.

It was a Saturday afternoon not unlike any other, a cool, sunny day with a sparse smattering of clouds. However, rather than enjoying it by playing video games or going outside, the gang was spending their day at the dentist's office. Tucker had been complaining about jaw pain, so his parents had taken him in to have it looked into.

Tucker himself, of course, had other plans.

"Please, I'll do anything, anything but this!" he begged, throwing himself to the floor to grab his mother by the ankles. "I'll take out the trash for a week! No, I'll do the dishes for a month! I'll eat my vegetables! I'll do anything, anything if you don't abandon me to this cruel, cruel fate!"

"Tucker, we'll only be gone an hour," Angela soothed, making no move to unlatch her son. "The procedure should be over with by then. We just want to make sure to have a nice dinner ready for you when you finish."

"That's right. Your mother is making her award-winning chili con carne recipe! You'll be brave for some chili, won't you?"

Tucker mulled that over for a moment.

"...I might be brave for chili."

"Don't tell him there's beans in it," Sam whispered to Wes, who nodded sagely.

"Don't worry about a thing, Tucker," Danny told his friend. "We'll be your moral support here while your mom and dad do what they do best: make the tastiest dinner you've ever had."

"That's really kind of you to say," Angela gushed, finally stepping daintily out of Tucker's grip. "You kids all behave for the dentist now. We'll be back after Tucker's procedure to bring you all over for chili!"

"Do you have to keep saying procedure?" Tucker groaned.

Rather than answering him directly, his mother planted a doting kiss on his forehead. "We'll see you in an hour, sweetie. Be good, okay?"

And before Tucker had time to protest further, both Angela and Maurice were out the door.

"...Well. I'm sure it won't be so bad," Wes supplied unhelpfully.

"Not so bad?" Tucker asked incredulously. "Not so bad? My own parents are subjecting me to a place that's basically a tooth h... a tooth hosp... Oh, I can't even say it!"

Sam rested a hand on his shoulder. "Don't hurt yourself."

"Right, because I don't want to go into a real hospit— urgh!"

"Don't worry, this isn't gonna be nearly as scary!" Danny reassured him with forced cheer. "Does this look like the kind of place that would have all the creepy spooky torture instruments you're probably imagining right now?"

It kind of didn't. With drab blue walls, sparse paintings of flowers in vases, and no more than a dozen barely-padded chairs, the dentist's office looked nothing like those high-end pseudo-hospital rooms you would always see on TV. This facility was a small, local one close to where Tucker lived, rather than the one in the heart of Amity Park that most went to; this one couldn't have had more than two operating rooms.

It was no pigsty, but it certainly wasn't going to have all the fixings, so to speak.

Still, Tucker wasn't reassured in the least. "Yes! Look, there's nobody here! That can't be a coincidence! Maybe, whoever enters this place... doesn't come back!"

"Quit psyching yourself out," Wes chastised. "The more you think about it, the longer it's gonna feel and the more you're gonna worry."

"Yeah okay, Mister Therapy Expert," Tucker huffed, crossing his arms. "Why don't you try being scared of stuff everyone else thinks is stupid every day of your life?"

Danny didn't say anything, but he didn't have to. Wes's glare threatened for him to stay silent.

They were interrupted by a voice emerging from one of the closed doors. "Tucker? Tucker Foley?"

Instead of responding to the voice, Tucker clammed up. "I can't do this."

"Sure you can," said Sam, slapping him on the back to encourage his first few steps forward. "It's gonna be fine. And if anything happens, we'll all be out here waiting for you."

"Hitting me isn't comforting!" Tucker protested, but he was too close to the door to back out now. Not that he was given a chance to. The door cracked open just enough for an arm to snake through, covered in a white sleeve and a long, black glove. It snagged Tucker by the back of his shirt, pulling him into the room with a yelp.

"...I'm pretty sure that isn't how you're supposed to call people in," Wes commented.

"Think we should be worried?" asked Danny.

His breath fogged, and in the same moment Wes flinched.

"Looks like it," Sam groaned.

Danny and Wes both transformed, and then they waited, listening for signs of a commotion. But, there were none. The office was just as quiet as when they'd all entered.

"...Do you think it was a false alarm?" Wes asked.

Danny shook his head. "We don't do false alarms. Something's definitely here."

"But if not here," Sam pointed out, "then where?"

The three of them thought about that for a moment. And then, in unison, they all shouted:

"Tucker!"

Nobody waited after that. They busted the door down without hesitation, hovering in the doorway, seeing as they couldn't all properly fit in the tiny operating room.

Tucker was sitting upright in the heavily padded chair, head lolling like he was barely conscious. Still, he looked no worse for wear. If anything, he seemed oddly content.

The real concern, however, was the "dentist" looming over him. He was the owner of the black gloves, with the sleeves being revealed as part of a cartoonishly long lab coat, the collar of which was high enough to hide most of the ghost's face. His skin was a bluish-gray behind his enormous round glasses, and his black hair was slicked back into three sharp points, not unlike the roots of a tooth. A head mirror on his forehead completed the look.

Amusingly, he looked a lot like Plasmius, if he'd gone the mad scientist route and was as skinny as a beanpole.

"You!" Danny shouted. "Get away from him!"

The ghost spun around, his expression one of dull irritation. "Look, I can see why you're all eager to get your check-ups out of the way. Really, I can. I know you wanna get the big scary dentist visit over with, but you're gonna have to wait your turn. I'm kinda busy with a patient at the moment."

"We aren't here for check-ups," Sam growled. She had one wrist pointed at the ghost, her other hand hovering over it, ready to activate whatever gadget she'd equipped that day. "We're here to save Tucker."

"Save him?" The false dentist snorted. "Yeesh, kid, I'm not hurting him. He needs a cavity filled, that's all."

"Then bring back the real dentist and let him do it," Wes challenged.

At this, the ghost scoffed. "The real dentist? The real dentist? Whose building do you think you're standing in? I set up shop fair and square."

"...Really. You're Dr. Boris Law," Sam deadpanned.

"Not Boris Law," the ghost spat. "Oris Maw. Can't you read the certificate?"

The group looked over as he gestured to a frame on the wall. They found the B crossed out with black sharpie, and a big M scribbled over the L.

They were unimpressed.

"Nice try, ghost," Danny growled, hands lighting up green.

"Woah woah woah, I'm not a ghost!" Oris shouted. "Since when was 'Amity Parker' synonymous with 'ectoplasmic barbarian,' huh? And speaking of which, you better not destroy my operating room!"

"Uh-huh," Sam drawled. "If you aren't a ghost, then why are you glowing?"

"That would be the cheap lights," Oris sighed. "They make everything glow. It makes it hard to work in here, but I can't afford to replace them yet."

"What about your blue skin?" demanded Wes.

Oris might have rolled his eyes, but it was hard to tell behind his glasses. "I have argyria. That doesn't make me a ghost."

"Then why are you floating?" asked Danny.

At this, Oris looked down, seeming surprised that his gangly legs weren't touching the floor. "Oh. Huh, well, would you look at that. But hey, this is Amity Park. Who hasn't had weird stuff happen once in a while?"

Sam, Danny, and Wes looked amongst themselves. There was no way they believed the guy, but he also hadn't made any moves to attack them. Frankly, they were stumped.

"...Well, how about our ghost sense?" Wes piped up. "You're the only one who could have set it off."

"A ghost sense?" Oris parroted. "That isn't a thing. Is that a thing?"

The group nodded.

At this, Oris sighed. "Okay, fine, you caught me. I'm a ghost," he admitted. "But I'm not like those other guys who keep destroying the city. I was born and raised here, and I died here, too. But dentistry was my life's work, and now it's my death's work. I'm here to do what I do best, and that's working with teeth. You wouldn't take that away from little ol' me, would you?"

Once again, the group glanced at each other. It was true that not every ghost was evil, yes. But none of them had ever seen one successfully run a profession in the human world before (emphasis on "successfully"; they didn't count Spectra). They weren't entirely sure what to make of it.

They were just debating shrugging the whole thing off as a particularly strange scenario when Danny remembered the other person in the room, eyes narrowing. "Wait, hold on. What happened to Tucker? You didn't attack him, did you?"

"Attack him? Elsewhere above, of course not!" Oris shrieked. "I could lose my license for that!"

"Then why is he unconscious?"

Oris rolled his wrist around as he spoke. "He isn't, mostly. But he flipped his lid the second he came in here, so I had to give him the good ol' nitrous oxide. He's gonna be a bit loopy for a while, but I can assure you he's fine."

Wes frowned, turning his head to observe the subject of conversation. "Is that true?"

At this, Tucker finally looked up. His head bobbed, like he was struggling to keep it up.

"Oh, yeah, don't worry about me," he slurred with a chuckle, blinking unevenly. "I've never felt better."

The group studied him, certain that they would find some sign of his mind being tampered with, but they found none. His eyes, though lidded, were their usual shade of copper-green, and his voice sounded like his own. It really did look like he'd just been given a hefty dose of laughing gas.

"...Maybe Boris was telling the truth," Danny ventured.

"I already told you, it's Oris," the ghost corrected him. "And of course I was. What kind of dentist do you think I am?"

"We were pretty sure an evil one," Wes replied, saying what his friends had been thinking but pointedly didn't say.

Oris groaned, looking skyward. "For the last time, I'm not evil. I'm just a dentist, and speaking of that, I have a patient that needs my attention, and because of you lot I only have forty minutes out of the hour to do what should have been a simple and easy procedure. So if you don't mind, I'd like to get back to that. I've got deadlines to meet and other patients to attend to."

The group glanced behind themselves at the empty waiting room.

Several tense seconds passed, each party waiting for the other to make a move. But such a move never came.

Danny was the first to back down. His shoulders slumped, the glow disappearing from his fists. His expression, however, remained unchanged.

"...Fine," he said. "I believe you. But if anything happens to Tucker—"

"He will be fine," Oris said, relaxing minutely now that his office wasn't being threatened with a laser barrage. "You have my word."

Danny nodded, relinquishing his ghost form. Following his example, Sam and Wes stood down, the latter turning human again himself. They all began trying to back out of the open doorway in unison.

But Oris was staring now, his brows raised high over the frames of his glasses. It was a few seconds before he spoke, but when he did, the corners of his mouth peeked over his high collar in a barely concealed grin.

"Oh, now that is interesting."

"...What is?" Sam ventured.

"You two, you didn't tell me you were those Halfa kids," Oris replied slowly. "I've honestly been curious, I've never seen anything quite like you before. Could you both show me your smiles, please?"

Danny and Wes gave each other a look, neither sure where this was headed. But, they saw no harm in the request, so they bared their teeth in uneasy grimaces.

"Human. Human, boring," Oris sneered after a moment of scrutiny, hand waving. "But what about as ghosts? I want to see those teeth. Gotta make sure they're healthy after all, right?"

"But what about Tucker's cavity?" Sam reminded him, just as unsettled as her friends.

"Quick procedure, I can do that with my eyes closed," Oris brushed her off. "Now, you two, if you would."

"I think we might have made a mistake," Wes murmured.

"Me too," Danny whispered back, "but maybe the sooner we humor him, the sooner he can get back to his actual job."

Wes didn't like it, but Danny had a point. He transformed, frowning all the while, and Danny followed suit.

"The smiles?" Oris urged them.

He inspected Danny first, and hummed in delight with what he found. "Yes, healthy, very healthy. And your mandibular canines seem to have metamorphosed into tiny little tusks! So there is a difference between the human and ghost form's dentures. Fascinating!"

Danny cringed away the moment Oris was finished, fighting the urge to gag at the dentist's enthusiasm. But now, it was Wes's turn, his lip curling and twitching in displeasure before he mustered the willpower for a proper smile.

The structure of his teeth had changed since Danny's initial discovery. No longer was it just Wes's canines and bicuspids that were sharp. Teeth that had previously remained relatively human had since tapered to dull points. His canines, once quite short, had slightly lengthened, the top ones marginally longer than the ones below. They almost resembled fake vampire teeth, except there wouldn't be a doubt in anyone's mind that they could do very, very real damage.

And Oris was elated.

"Incredible!" he gasped. "These hardly resemble human teeth at all! I would have never known had I not seen the transformation myself! Curious, can you feel them changing with the rest of you, or do they simply appear?"

"Don't know, don't care," Wes hissed, backing away a step. He wasn't sure when Oris had gotten close enough to be practically in his face, but he wanted way more space between them. "Are we done here? Can we go?"

"In a moment, but I have one last question," said Oris. He extended his arm away from the group, and from his operating tray, a pair of pliers flew into his waiting hand. "If I were to take one, would it grow back?"

The entire group bristled at that.

"I knew you had to be evil!" Danny shouted.

"Oh, no, not evil," Oris singsonged. "Just very passionate about my job, you see. Now, if you wouldn't mind, I would like a sample from the both of you."

"Fat chance!" cried Wes.

"Come on guys, he just wants to borrow it," Tucker giggled.

"Not now, Tucker," Sam growled.

"No, I agree with him," Oris chimed in. Though his grin remained, it had grown tight with his brewing impatience. "I don't imagine it's such a large ask."

"As if we'd let you treat us like guinea pigs," Danny growled, fists once again glowing. "We're not even your patients!"

Oris put his hands together, crushing the pliers between them. One would reasonably expect to find mangled metal between his fingers, but when he pulled his hands apart, the steel stretched with them, forming a smooth cylinder. When his arms were at their widest point, in his grip was a giant tool, longer than he was tall, a mirror at one end and a curved pick at the other.

"Not yet."

With no further warning, he swung, pick end forward. Danny reacted quickest, grabbing Sam and turning both of them intangible so that the weapon passed harmlessly through. Wes ducked beneath it instead, launching himself forwards and past the hostile dentist. He grabbed for Tucker, intent on getting him away from the rapidly devolving situation, only to find that his friend didn't readily leave the chair when pulled. On further inspection, Tucker's wrists had been buckled to the armrests with leather straps.

"What kind of dentist ties people up?!" Wes cried in frustration, fumbling with the buckles as quickly as he could.

Suddenly, he felt something hook onto the back of his jersey. He had no time to react before he was harshly tugged back, lifted into the air and away from Tucker. Beneath him, Oris grinned from the other end of his oversized tool.

"That's reserved for only the most unruly patients. Much like yourself."

Oris cried out as he was struck by a bolt from Sam's watch. Wes caught the traveling spark, then took the moment of Oris's distraction to free himself from the pick, using the borrowed energy to amplify a swift kick to the chin. Sent reeling, Oris had to support his weight on the back of Tucker's chair.

"Come here often?" Tucker cracked.

Danny, who had been preparing an ectoblast, lowered his hands, growling in frustration. "We can't fight him in here. We might hit Tucker!"

"We should lead him to the waiting room!" Sam barked. "There's more room to fight there!"

"I can hear you plotting," Oris tutted. "But, you have a point. I wouldn't want my work area destroyed, and after all, I have a patient whose care means my paycheck. We can't let anything happen to him, now can we?"

"Glad to see he has his priorities in order," Danny commented dryly.

"I can replace some chairs," Oris continued, floating peacefully through the open doorway, "but you can't replace a human life. Or, well, I suppose I'm living proof you can! Er, dying proof, that is."

"...There's something wrong with him," Wes stated plainly.

"Outside of wanting to harvest your teeth, you mean?" Sam asked.

Wes grimaced. "I was trying to forget about that part."

Sam rolled her eyes. "You two take care of Skulker Two, I'll work on freeing Tucker and sneaking him out of here."

Danny nodded. "Sounds like a plan. Time to do what I do best."

"But we aren't taking a test," Tucker snickered, "so you can't run away and fail it!"

"Wow. Rude."

"Hey Tucker, how about you close your mouth until we get you out of here?" Sam suggested.

A blissful moment of silence passed.

"...Am I doing it?"

"Guys. Evil tooth ghost, remember?" said Wes.

Danny looked behind him at the waiting room. "Right. We'd better get over there before he—"

The hooked pick extended and snagged him by the logo, pulling him through the doorway with a yelp.

"That's my cue!" Wes darted after him, tail wriggling behind him as he sprung into action. He reeled back a fist, aiming to throw an amplified punch. But as soon as he threw it, Oris spun his weapon, flinging Danny around like a ragdoll as he aligned the mirror side with Wes's attack.

His fist didn't strike the glass, but instead passed through it, only to reemerge from beneath him to strike his chin. He backed up, reeling and dizzy from his own attack.

"Average twelve-year-old, my butt," he grumbled, shaking away the stars.

Oris looked him up and down disbelievingly. "...You're not twelve."

"I'm sixteen!"

"But you punch like a twelve-year-old? That's kind of pathetic actually."

Danny finally let loose the ectoblast he'd been saving up, the attack landing square in the small of Oris's back. He cried out, dropping his weapon, and by extension Danny, as he collapsed in pain.

Wes didn't waste a second. He snatched the weapon up before Oris could, stepping out of his reach.

It was then that Wes realized that now he was armed. And with a metal rod, no less. Experimentally, Wes passed a charge through it, and was quite pleased to find that the makeshift staff was conductive, sparks visibly twinkling along it.

He grinned, flashing his fangs. In mere seconds, his reach had increased exponentially. He no longer needed to make direct contact to deliver a painful shock; now he had several feet to work with. All he needed to do was land a solid blow.

Oris didn't agree. He extended a hand, and the tool flew out of Wes's grip, the charge dissipating long before it reached Oris's waiting grasp.

Wes snapped his fingers. "Darn."

Oris shrugged. "You tried." He swung, but Wes was ready, swerving around the barrage of blows. Danny tried to edge his way in for an attack of his own, but Oris's frantic spinning kept him at bay, even while focused on the much less experienced Halfa. The weapon was too long, too quick to find an opening to slip through.

Luckily, Wes was aware of Danny's predicament, and he had a plan to create the opening his friend needed. He backed away at the tail end of one of Oris's attacks, and with only the slightest warning, he flashed.

Oris yelled, frantically and ineffectively trying to snake a hand under his glasses to rub at his eyes. But he wasn't the only one stunned; Wes's light refracted off of Oris's head mirror, turning Wes's own attack against him. He shouted, now also blinded. Even Danny wasn't unscathed. He'd picked up on Wes's warning, but wasn't prepared for the accidental counter, the second flash doing him in.

The result was three ghosts clutching their faces and writhing in a dentist's office.

"Ugh, this fight is so stupid!" Danny cried.

"You're telling me!" agreed Oris. "You kids come into my office while I'm working, try to beat me up, and then you blind me! How are your parents raising you nowadays?!"

"You don't want to know," Danny said, grimacing.

Wes was the first one to recover. Rather than attacking Oris right away, however, he flew up to the light fixtures, phasing his hands through them to begin soaking up their precious charge. They flickered weakly in protest, and Wes grunted, displeased at the veritable drip feed of energy.

"Wow, you really do need these things replaced."

Oris recovered next. He snarled, and wrung his staff. The metal twisted as if it were fluid, the mirror becoming some sort of nozzle, and the pick morphing into a whirring drill. He wielded his weapon now less like a staff, and more like a spear.

"Well, that doesn't look good," Wes muttered.

Oris lunged, thrusting the drill forward. Wes slithered away from it, trailing along the ceiling as the dentist made several attempts to skewer him.

Danny finally regained enough of his vision to go on the attack, hoping to hit his enemy's exposed back. His hands glowed as he readied a beam, but Oris could hear him charging it, not even sparing a glance over the shoulder as yellow-white filling fluid spewed out of the nozzle end of his staff.

"Woah!" Danny leaned to avoid the spray, and it sailed past. Instead, it struck Tucker, who Sam had finally freed and was ushering out. The result was him now being glued to the wall, bound by much tougher restraints.

"Oh, come on!" Sam cried.

"Hey, this means I can spend more time with you guys!" Tucker cheered. On a dime, his eyes began to water, and he sniffled. "Did... Did I ever say how much I like spending time with you guys?"

"Ugh, now isn't the time for waterworks," groaned Sam, pulling out a small pocket knife and wedging it between Tucker and the rapidly hardening tooth filler. "Now hold still until I get you out of here."

Oris frowned. "Is she allowed to have one of those?"

"No," Danny replied truthfully, punching him in the face.

"Yow!" Snarling, Oris spun, stabbing at him with the drill end. Danny's body wriggled and gaped around it, leaving it to pass harmlessly through his midsection. When Oris pulled back for another attempt, the opening resealed, and Danny fired the blast he'd saved up. The weapon was knocked out of Oris's hands, but much like before, it returned to his grasp with a mere gesture. Only this time, the nozzle side had inexplicably become a tray cart, with which the dentist deftly smacked Danny away.

"That one doesn't even make sense on a staff!" Wes wailed in frustration, swooping in to land an attack of his own. But Oris was ready, swinging the cart into him as well. With a pained "whuff," Wes scrambled back and ultimately fell. Oris was on top of him in the blink of an eye, the spear becoming a massive clamp that kept Wes pinned in place, arms stuck at his sides.

Oris giggled, releasing the clamp and drifting closer. Wes bared his fangs in a clear threat, but that only made the mad doctor even giddier.

"Yes, those. It's about time you parted with them, isn't it? I'd gladly take them off your hands for you. Or, heh, well, out of your mouth, that is."

One gloved hand reached out, and Wes fruitlessly bit at it, unable to crane his neck far enough to reach. But it didn't matter. His mouth began to feel sore, an inexplicable tension in his gums. The pain rapidly became excruciating as the interior of his mouth audibly creaked. Wes, cluing in to what was happening, shut his mouth, hoping to interrupt the attempted extraction. But the pull was too great, slowly forcing his mouth fully open. Wes went violet as the futility began to set in, his gums protruding further and further forward until his mouth resembled more shark than man. He couldn't escape. He couldn't fight. He couldn't even muster the concentration to shock his way out. The agony was becoming too much to think through, blurring his vision and numbing his thoughts. He tasted the tang of ectoplasm on his tongue. His teeth were going to rip their way straight out of his gums.

They would grow back, right?

"Gah!" A chair struck Oris on the back of the head, and he reared away from his target. The tension dissipated almost instantly, and without the overwhelming force acting upon them, the wounds in Wes's mouth rapidly sealed over.

He wheezed, letting out his held breath.

Oris spun around to face his attacker, aghast. "Did you just throw a chair at me?!"

"You hit me with a table!" Danny countered.

"It wasn't even a table!"

Danny threw another chair.

"Ow, stop that!"

With Oris now focused on Danny, Wes took his chance to snake out of the clamp's grip. Rather than attack, he instead opted to gain distance, slithering to Danny's side of the waiting room.

"You okay?" his friend asked.

Wes, still somewhat shaky, nodded. "Yeah. Just, don't let him trap you. It takes time, but he doesn't have to touch you to take your teeth."

Danny groaned. "I was really hoping he was just one of those silly gimmick villains..."

"Hey, I can have my serious moments!" Oris complained, still rubbing his sore noggin. "Speaking of which, how about we really get serious now?"

"How about we don't?" Danny suggested.

Oris ignored him. He removed his hand from his pointed hair, and instead held his head mirror with his thumb and pointer finger, adjusting it. The reflective lens caught the light, and in the fractions of a second it took for the glare to disappear, Oris had disappeared with it.

"...Wait, is that it? Invisibility?" Danny snorted. "If that's your idea of getting serious, then I have bad news for... Wait."

He really couldn't see Oris. Ordinarily, an invisible ghost appeared as an odd sort of sensory shimmer in its surroundings, marking its presence without truly being seen. Effective as an ambush, but not when another ghost was already aware of it. But right then, there was no visual disruption at all. It really was as if Oris had up and vanished.

But Danny knew better.

The only warning he had was a near-silent huff of effort behind him. He ducked, and felt the gust of an unseen strike sail overhead. He blindly threw a fist, hitting nothing. Next to him, Wes doubled over, then stumbled into a row of chairs as a second hit bowled him over.

"Try hitting something you can't see!" Oris gloated, his disembodied voice dancing about the room. "Betcha can't, no one's managed it yet!"

"Cool, so we'll be the first!" Wes attempted to rise, but he was immediately knocked back down with a strike to the head, dizzy.

Danny came to his rescue, crystalline shards forming around himself before being launched outwards one by one. Oris only cackled, not a single ice spike finding its mark. One disappeared through an invisible mirror, then reappeared behind Danny, still flying. He leaned to the side to avoid it, but it still managed to slice his cheek as it passed.

"Great, and he still has that stupid weapon," he growled.

"It isn't stupid if it works," Oris tittered. "Now hold still so we can get your procedure over with!"

Wes flew in, hands outstretched and sparking. He touched nothing, but he let the current arc all along his body, hoping for the opportunity to get close enough for a bolt to jump and hit Oris. But the dentist had the advantage of both reach and rubber gloves, slashing at Wes's nose with an invisible scraper while remaining himself unscathed.

Both Halfas clutched at their faces, stemming the thin flows of ectoplasm from their wounds. Wes growled his frustration. "Ugh, how are we supposed to fight someone we can't see?!"

"But you can see him," said Tucker.

Danny, Sam, and Wes all shot him an incredulous look. Presumably, Oris did too.

"...No, we can't," Danny replied. "That's why we can't hit him."

"What, don't tell me you can see him," said Sam.

"Sure," Tucker sniggered. With one recently freed arm, he pointed at a random part of the room. "He's right there!"

Oris spluttered. "Wh-What? No I'm not!"

But, true to Tucker's word, the voice came from right where he was pointing.

"...I don't believe this," Sam sighed.

The rustle of clothing could be heard throughout the waiting room as Oris flitted about, hoping to catch Tucker in a bluff. But that finger remained trained on him the entire time.

Oris yelled inarticulately. "Gah, how could I forget the one flaw to my special technique?! Those under the effects of nitrous oxide can still see me!"

The quartet glanced at each other.

"...Well, that's kind of a weird and convenient weakness," said Wes.

"Not the weirdest I've seen," Danny replied.

"That doesn't matter right now," Sam cut in. "Tucker, keep your finger on Oris."

At that, Tucker's eyes went wide. He was visibly distraught. "But... But I'm still stuck! How am I supposed to put my finger on him?!"

Sam facepalmed.

"Then don't touch him," Wes said, coiling in preparation for a lunge. "Just keep pointing and let us handle the rest!"

"Oh! I can do that!"

"It isn't going to matter!" Oris snarled. The rapid and repetitive sound of air being displaced indicated he was twirling his staff. "You can't look at me and your friend at the same time! I still have the advantage here!"

Tucker's finger rapidly flicked closer to Danny and Wes, so Sam called out, "Danny, in front of you!"

Danny ducked, narrowly dodging a stab from an unknown utensil. He knocked Oris to the ground with a low sweep, and Wes swooped in for an axe kick that struck nothing.

"At your 4 o' clock!" Sam announced.

Wes spun, rapidly extending an open palm. There was an audible boomph, and Oris cried out, his invisible silhouette briefly outlined by blue sparks. Danny fired off an ectoblast that hit home, but the disruption of the ensuing smoke signaled Oris's retreat from his position.

Still following the path of Tucker's finger, Sam shouted, "He's trying to do an aerial attack!"

The fight continued like this, with Oris attempting to reposition, Sam calling out directions, and the Halfas attacking or dodging accordingly. Such a system wasn't flawless, but it was enough to chip away at the dentist's patience, his attacks getting slower and slower as he became less and less confident they would land. He had the delay of information on his side, but the teenagers' coordination, and the finger always trained on him, made direct attacks meaningless and ambushes almost impossible.

Finally, he got fed up. He parked himself in front of Sam and Tucker, visible for the first time in ages, fingers hooked like he wanted to strangle the two of them. "Will you stop that?!"

This was his biggest mistake.

While his back was turned, Danny had taken the opportunity to uncap his thermos, which began to slowly drag Oris inside. He tried to fight the beam, clawing at empty air, but to no avail. His final words were "At least put up the closed sign!" before the cap closed over him with a pop!

The entire party sagged with relief. Tucker kept his arm up.

"I don't think I've ever been so happy to have a fight be over," Wes sighed. "Is my mouth okay? Are my teeth crooked?"

"Your teeth are fine," Danny reassured him. He looked at his thermos. "Still, that was a close one. We definitely can't let him loose if he's gonna be a tooth thief."

"But you can't release him in the Ghost Zone," Sam pointed out. "He went batty because he wanted weird teeth, right? The Zone has much, much weirder mouths than you two."

"You're right," Wes agreed, frowning. "He was just doing his job with Tucker because he had boring human teeth, right? Maybe it's fine to let him stay, but I don't know... Shouldn't people know if their dentist steals teeth?"

"Already on it," Sam said, tapping away at her phone. She showed Danny and Wes her Kelp review: "One star. Friend went to check a cavity, dentist tried to steal several teeth instead. Tried to beat up my other friends when we stopped him. Terrible bedside manner."

"I might have made a few embellishments," she said, "but at least people will know what they're getting into if they decide to visit anyway."

"If he doesn't lose his license, you mean," said Wes.

"In Amity Park? If we can have Vlad as a mayor, and the Fentons as ghost hunters, I don't think this guy has to worry about getting shut down any time soon."

"I love this. I love being surrounded by responsible, reasonable adults," Danny chirped.

"Speaking of which," said Sam, trailing off.

"We're back!" Maurice and Angela said in unison. Danny and Wes quickly transformed as the door jingled upon the Foleys' entry.

"I hope our favorite son behaved himself?" Angela asked.

"...I have siblings?" Tucker quietly asked, apparently delighted. "And I'm the favorite?"

"Oh, him? He was fine," Sam replied. "He was given some laughing gas earlier, so he's kinda..." She twirled her finger by her temple and whistled.

"I'll put Oris back after Tucker's parents find a new dentist," Danny whispered to Wes, who nodded.

It didn't seem like that would take long. Maurice finally looked around, in awe of the trashed state of the waiting room. "What on earth happened here? It looks like there was a ghost attack!"

Danny grimaced. "Well..."

"TUCKER!" Angela had noticed her son behind the group, still largely plastered to the wall. She cupped his cheeks in her hands, frantically looking him over. "Honey, are you okay?! What happened to you?!"

Tucker chuckled. "My dentist tried to beat us up."

"He what?!"

"Also he's dead now."

"He's WHAT?!"

Sam groaned. "Oh, this'll be fun to explain."

Hey hey, been a while since I introduced an OC! Boris, aka Oris, is a ghost who, true to his word, was once a human who practiced dentistry. He was even honest about the argyria! (Which, for those who don't know, is a condition caused by silver toxicity that turns your skin blue or gray, though other symptoms can crop up with enough silver in the body.) Though good at what he does, he's always had a knack for the bizarre, exacerbated in death. Do you have an extra tooth? An oddly shaped or colored one? Did you file them? He'd put you under, take the tooth, then come up with an excuse for why extraction was necessary. He's like a tooth fairy who also takes your money! Honestly, I just wanted Wes to have his own Skulker, though idk how often Oris is gonna appear.

Artwork will be posted to Tumblr in a week or so, give or take a couple days. If you're in the Wes Discord server, you may have already seen it! (Or maybe you saw it a few minutes ago if you're reading this on ao3, idk this is a copy-pasted author's note.)

No ETA on the next chapter yet, but as for subject matter, I'm thinking... new powers, perhaps? ;)