Chapter Text
Danny woke up on the lab floor to an absence of feeling.
It wasn't that he felt numb, per se. It was as more like he'd evaporated, leaving his immortal soul exposed and cold. He couldn’t tell which way was up or where anything was in relation to each other.
His body tugged behind him like a candle flame as he stood to survey the lab. He could not for the life of him feel pain, even though he knew he should have. He just felt...strange. Off-kilter. A little sick, maybe.
All the lights in the lab were off, but a harsh glow dyed the whole room black and green. Danny realized it was coming from the portal. Instead of a scraggly mess of cables, wires and scrap, like he had seen almost every day since he could remember, the mouth of the metal hexagon was filled with toxic-green plasma.
It was on. It was actually on.
Danny watched the ectoplasm curl around itself, stupefied and a little scared. It had turned on...with him inside it. The last thing he remembered was looking down at his boot, some hidden mechanism shouldering into place underneath. Then his vision went green, and someone screamed...
This was all giving him an impending-doom sort of feeling amid his blurry thoughts– and a new sensation was settling in, a tingly, thrumming one, like the kind he had gotten in his finger once when he’d stuck it into to a power socket. It webbed over his skin and creeped from his chest, making him shudder violently.
He left the portal for the bathroom, unable to feel his feet touching the ground. It took a few tries to grip the doorknob, but he eventually wrenched it open, light flooding the threshold.
He couldn’t see himself in the mirror. Why couldn’t he see himself in the mirror? An outline of a shadow, closer to the reflection than he thought he was, sputtered awake, that alien light intensifying until it threw the bathroom into sharp relief.
The boy, the thing staring at him with the most horrified expression Danny had ever seen, looked like a photo-inversion of himself. Its face was bright, aqua blue where Danny’s was olive, framed by spikes of white hair that drifted upwards instead of black bangs hanging down around his eyes. And oh God, his eyes were white too, full white, surrounded by sclera so brightly green Danny could see them glowing under his eyelids. Instead of the white hazmat he had put on for the first time today, the Danny in the mirror wore black.
He could see through himself clear to the wall of the bathroom. Like–
He whimpered, leaning over into the sink. His legs gave out under him and he curled into a ball, barely visible.
Somewhere deep in the Ghost Zone, a spirit with a purple hood smiled and tuned its watch.
“Danny? Danny…”
“Danny!”
A month later, Tucker Foley snapped his fingers next to Danny’s ear.
No response. Tucker sighed, straightening his glasses. The three were all supposed to leave for school together. This morning counted seven times that Danny had overslept and his friends had had to come up to his room, since his sister left for school early and wouldn’t be around to do it herself.
Sam Manson, the third member of the friend group, gave Danny an appraising once-over. She poked his side with a chipped black fingernail. Danny groaned and rolled over, smacking his lips. This would’ve been unremarkable, except that he was levitating half a foot over his friends’ heads, rocket-patterned blanket somehow still in place.
“Come on, that’s got to be uncomfortable,” Tucker remarked. Sam shushed him quickly, pointing to his bedroom door. He rolled his eyes and checked the time on his phone.
“If he doesn’t get up soon, we’re gonna be late,” he warned.
“To be fair, he’s already up…”
“True.”
Sam fished an ice cube from her water bottle and touched it to the back of Danny’s neck. He instantly let out a squawk and crashed back down into bed, eyes bugging out of his head.
“What was that for?!” he screeched. Sam and Tucker cackled at his expense.
“It’s like eight! We gave you time to sleep!”
“You guys so knew this was gonna happen,” Danny grumbled before flopping off the bed. Tucker and Sam exchanged knowing smiles.
Tucker and Danny had known each other since second grade, sharing everything from milk cartons to colds. It was the type of friendship that chose them instead of being chosen by either of them – Tucker was a tech addict who preferred to call it "networking" instead of socializing, but he was funny, blithe, and had a good head on his shoulders, and Danny liked him quite a lot.
Sam had joined them in seventh grade or so. She was a different species of teenager from them altogether: cutting, moody and perpetually annoyed with the conventional world, wrapped up in a black dress, hair dye and combat boots. If 'teen rebellion' were a dictionary term, her picture would be next to it. Neither of the boys had a clue how they'd managed to befriend her, but befriend her they had, and she had summarily thawed out a little in the interim.
They were each other’s best, longest, and only friends. The only thing they all seemed to have in common was being 14 and short with dark hair and eyes– but they'd made the most of it so far and had plenty of fun along the way. Around them, Danny felt like he had less to worry about.
A paltry seven minutes later the trio trotted down the stairs to Fenton Works’ main floor, Danny negotiating a breath strip he’d been offered.
Jack and Maddie Fenton were already hemming over a spread of parts on the kitchen table. Surprisingly, Jazz sat with them, grumpily shielding the remnants of her oatmeal from a spray of swarf.
“Aren’t you usually at school by now?” Danny asked as he passed his sister to the fridge. He dug around the icebox for his water bottle and a frozen peanut butter sandwich.
“Usually, but everything for the assembly is already set up, “Jazz said. “ There’s nothing for me to do before school, so…”
“Okay, Jazz— this isn’t gonna be another jock parade, right?” Tucker glanced up from his phone– an exciting treat reserved for friends and family– to quirk a brow in her direction. “‘Cause all the freshmen are saying it is.”
“It’s a quarterly pep rally that the football team’ll be at since their season is starting–” Jazz’s face took on a long-suffering look. “–so yeah. It’s another jock parade.”
“Didn’t the rocket club win nationals last year?” Danny remarked around a mouthful of frozen sandwich. “Where’s the fanfare for that?”
“Not in the budget.”
Sam scowled. “Oh, but it’s in the budget to get a new stadium and new uniforms for the football team and new trophy cases for the foyers...”
“Sam, honey, everyone knows the faculty’s biased towards the athletes,” Maddie interjected. Maddie Fenton was a svelte, sharp woman from whom Jazz had inherited her red hair and Danny his splatter of freckles. “It wasn’t any different when I was in high school.”
“If it’s been a problem for that long it’s got to change!” Sam hit a fist against her open palm. “We should organize a protest or–”
“No one’s organizing anything until we get this place cannon-loose and ghost-free, Sage!” Jack boomed as he finished wiring the morning’s project shut.
“It’s Sam.”
“What’d I say?”
The patriarch of the Fenton family was the polar opposite of his wife, stocky and comically tall with graying black hair and a volume issue. He was brilliant in his own right and it showed in his ideas, but he had a habit of either half-listening or half-understanding.
He scooped up the long cylindrical device and brandished it like a magician’s wand. “And we’re gonna do it with this! Kids, say hello to the Fenton Thermos!”
“Patent pending, version 1.0,” Maddie chimed in.
“It’s the latest in ghost-catching technology! Y’see, we used to rely on ghosts’ EM fields to get a lock on ‘em– but now that we’ve got the portal up and running we can use ectoplasm to find their signatures!”
Sam, Tucker and Jazz blinked. Danny wheezed out a nervous laugh– and was cut off by Jack shoving the thermos into his hands.
“And you are gonna take it to school in case any ghosts show up!”
“What?!” Jazz flew in front of her brother. “Over my dead body! It’s bad enough that you two’ve gotten these poor, naïve children believing in ghosts at all—“ Tucker threw out a ‘gee, thanks’, which went ignored, “—but I won’t stand for you destroying Danny’s health with your insane experiments!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Jazz! We would never destroy Danny’s health with our insane experiments.”
Danny cringed to his heart’s content behind Jazz’s shoulder.
“Besides, that school is rife with paranormal activity of all walks of un-life,” Jack lectured. He plucked the thermos from Danny’s hands, only to latch it to his beltloop. “I couldn’t send my kids to school without some sort of defense.”
Jazz wasn’t swayed. “You don’t even know if it works. What if it explodes or sprays ectoplasm everywhere or–”
“It’s not going to explode, Jazz,” Maddie sighed. “Not everything we invent is going to turn out like the Ecto-Pods.”
“Yeah, well, the Ecto-Pods–”
“Oh, geez, look at the time!” Tucker exclaimed. He and Sam snatched their friend and tugged him towards the door. Jazz checked her own watch and gasped. “Let’s go, Danny!”
“Wait!” Jazz called. “I can drive you!”
The trio was already halfway to the door by the time Sam cut her off. “Our bikes are already outside thanks though bye!”
The front door slammed shut behind them. Jazz shook her head, gathered her things and left the same way.
Jack blinked, then turned to Maddie. “Were the Ecto-Pods really so bad?”
“People thought they were edible, sweetie. The damage took weeks to clean up.”
“Hm. Maybe we shouldn’t have named it the Fenton Thermos.”
It was never easy, living at Fenton Works Ghost Shields & Weapons.
Danny’s parents had been obsessed with ghosts since before he was born. They had made their name in inventions and research, all in the name of ghost hunting, and they had reached international renown as the world’s leading ghost experts.
Unfortunately, there was such a thing as being too good at one’s job. The Fentons lived to work, and jumped at any chance to capture ghosts– or, failing that, obliterate them on sight. It had been a point of contention in the house for years, ever since their ghost portal had begun to confine Jack and Maddie to the basement.
And now that it was finished...
“First the stupid portal zaps me half to death, now it’s got to fuel their stuff so they’ll find out about it even faster?”
“Danny, you’re catastrophizing.”
Danny jerked his skateboard along a bit faster, but didn’t reply. Tucker leaned forward on his bike.
“So they still don’t know about the accident.”
“No, 'cause, I’d like to prolong getting dissected.”
“Well...yeah, but you need to talk to somebody . Sam and I don’t exactly know anything about ghosts–”
“You don’t know anything about ghosts,” Sam interrupted. A car honked behind her and she slid over to the far edge of the road, sticking her tongue out when the car passed. Tucker flashed her a long-suffering look.
“We don’t know anything for real about ghosts. You need someone useful in the loop with–” he gestured to Danny vaguely, “this whole situation.”
Danny’s hair fluttered where it stuck out under his helmet. The thermos clanged against his leg dully.
Tucker and Sam were the only people who knew what he'd seen that night he woke up in the lab. All he’d told anyone else was that there was an accident, but that could’ve meant that he bumped a switch or kicked the portal in the right place. If his parents knew that he’d been inside it when it turned on...if they knew what he’d seen in the mirror after he woke up...
He couldn’t risk it.
“What do you guys want me to do, just waltz up to Ms. Spectra’s office during lunch or something? ‘Hey, I kinda-sorta-maybe died in a freak accident last month, but my mom and dad can’t know in case they decide to kill me and study my remains or something’? ‘Oh, why didn’t you say something sooner, have an inspirational quote and a pamphlet about it’?”
“I’m with Danny on this one,” Sam announced. They screeched to a halt at Casper High’s east entrance, Sam and Tucker hastily locking up their bikes before busting through the doors. Sam continued in a whisper.
“Your powers are special. They make you unique. You have something that–” a passerby tried to tip soda on her head and she batted the sniggering offender off. “–you have something that everyone in this school would be envious of.”
Danny and Tucker exchanged a look. Tucker looked apprehensive.
“I guess,” Danny muttered anyway, stuffing his skateboard into his backpack.
“Besides, no adult is gonna get it. They only care about things they already understand. It’s safer with just the three of us right now, at least while you’re still getting used to it.”
Not many people knew this, but the Casper High cafeteria staff were paid over twice as much as their counterparts in surrounding districts. Whenever it came up, it was usually credited to tax increases or the goodness of the school board’s hearts.
The actual cafeteria workers knew better.
It all started in the mid-70s when a mysterious fire destroyed the kitchen, injuring seven and taking the life of a seasoned lunch lady named Rita. The whole area had been rebuilt and renovated, with electric stovetops and new ventilation put in to avoid mishaps in the future.
Yet, mishaps only increased from that point on. The dials on the stove turned of their own volition, occasionally with those manning the stoves watching. Dishes broke themselves, and when they were replaced with plastic trays, those went missing. The fridge door was faulty, as a couple people who were unexpectedly locked inside it could attest. Staff heard disembodied grumbling from time to time, often about the menu or the noise. Fires were commonplace, green fires that didn't burn the cooks but did make them violently sick or reflect images of terrible things they could never describe.
The turnover rate was alarming. No one wanted to be in there alone, especially at night, and the lunch ladies had to be begged or promoted out of leaving in the middle of the school year. Only two people to date had seen the Casper High cafeteria out until retirement, both having been employed there during the initial fire.
In short, the kitchen was haunted.
The school board attributed it to paranoia and that new (eventually old) ventilation system, but not a single cook left without knowing deep in their bones that Rita’s spirit stayed in her resting place. If something went wrong– if a pot burned in the fridge, or the salt and pepper shakers were switched, or water boiled over an unplugged stove– they would usually attest it to Rita.
But today the staff chatted and toiled normally, not noticing Rita’s red eyes reflecting in the glass window of the fridge. She rose through the floor, adjusting her hairnet with a smile.
Nothing much happened until the pep rally was already in full swing. Danny and company were packed into the middle row of bleachers and tuned out on their phones– except for Sam. She surveyed the rally with her chin in her hand, throwing an occasional pithy comment out at her leisure.
Her expression darkened as Principal Ishiyama announced the cheer squad, lively music and applause filling the room. The squad assembled in the center of the gym and broke into a new routine, golden smiles alight on each of their faces.
“It really is insane how much we worship them."
“I wouldn’t call this worship,” Danny replied. Most of the people around them were paying more attention to their phones or their friends than they were to the assembly. Another round of applause went up, most of it being purely for applause’s sake.
Sam considered this as Danny turned back to the rally. Paulina, the cheer captain, lifted her toe skyward from the top of a six-man pyramid, then twirled effortlessly down into the arms of her classmates.
“At least they’ve got talent,” Danny conceded.
Sam snorted. “No more talent than any other cheerleader on the planet, but still no one cares how nasty they really are.” Her eyes lit up. “You know what? I’m gonna say something.”
“Sam…”
“Someone has to!”
“You’re gonna get us in trouble!”
The conversation was broken sharply by a whistle blowing. Mrs. Ishiyama was smiling her brightest smile yet.
“And now, please give a warm Casper High welcome to your very own varsity football team...the Casper High Ravens!”
Hoots, whistles and clapping drowned out the school anthem as the football team strutted into the gym in full regalia, led by none other than the quarterback, Dash Baxter.
Danny’s brow twisted. Dash had been his top tormenter since grade school. It wasn’t even second quarter yet and already he and his buddies had stolen Danny’s backpack, broken into his locker, tampered with his skateboard...and gotten off scot-free for all of it. Danny couldn't count the noogies, black eyes or wedgies he'd gotten from the kid over the past eight years.
Tucker leaned over to meet his eye. “Maybe she will or maybe she won’t, but she’s got a point, dude. I'd think you of all people would want to see kids like Dash get taken down a peg.”
That was true. Maybe he didn’t feel bloodthirsty about it like Sam did, but he wasn’t the only guy at Casper High that Dash bullied. If nothing else, he deserved more than a slap on the wrist. Could he and his friends really change that?
His gaze traveled to his hands. A green spark flickered through the veins in his wrists.
Dash accepted the microphone from Mrs. Ishiyama and tossed his most nerve-grinding, cancer-curing smile at the bleachers.
“Hellooooo, Casper High! How we doin’ today?”
A collective ear-ringing shriek responded. Dash cupped a hand around his ear, drinking up the attention with a smirk.
“Looks like football season’s starting again,” he continued conversationally, and was met with a chorus of whoops and general approval. “If you fine people of Casper High wouldn’t mind, me and the guys wouldn’t mind a little encouragement? Thank you!”
The crowd had already gone wild. Tucker stuck a finger in one ear with an eyeroll, thought he hadn’t gotten back on his phone. And he was exchanging weird, sly glances with Sam every now and then. Danny wondered why.
Dash switched the mike to his other hand and strutted across the gym like he owned the place.
“Yeap, I’d say the Ravens have had a lucky streak the past few– or ten– seasons,” he drawled, “and as your new quarterback I think I can say for certain we’re gonna take the number up to eleven— starting with putting the Doverville Martens in their place, eh?”
“Not gonna happen,” one guy by Danny’s knee laughed. The Martens were the Raven’s public enemy number one. Dash wasn’t exaggerating about their winning streak, but the Martens never failed to one-up them at the last minute, and it was something every football enthusiast in the district took very seriously.
“I’d like to invite all my fellow Ravens to attend Friday’s first football game of the season," Dash was saying. His grin took a self-congraulatory turn. "But let’s be honest, is there anyone who wasn’t gonna be there already? Yeah, I didn't think--”
Sam and Tucker shot up from the bleachers. “I wasn’t!”
“I wasn’t, either!”
All eyes turned to them, the clamor of the gym quieting to an oppressive silence. Sam swatted Danny’s shoulder and he swatted her leg right back, stomach dropping to his feet.
Dash raised an eyebrow at them...and sneered.
“Oh, yeah? And why’s that?”
Sam puffed out her chest. “I don’t think I want to go to one of your football games when people like the chess team or the school paper will be working just as hard as you, but not get near enough credit!”
A murmur and some scattered oohs bloomed. Tucker stood on the seat of the bleacher, gesturing all around him.
“Hey, Casper High! How many clubs are having recruiting issues while the football and track teams are still holding auditions?” The murmur grew louder, kids turning around o look at one another. “How many times have we gone to regionals or nationals or won trophy after trophy, but most of us wouldn’t know because it wasn’t related to the athletes? How many times have the jocks gotten something new while everyone else went without?”
Mikey, the editor for the Casper Hi-Lites, piped up from across the stands. “And most of us have to give our surplus to the athletic department at the end of the year, too!”
The disquiet went up as Tucker pointed to Mikey with a brief “right!”. Jazz and Mrs. Ishiyama looked horrified. Dash’s face had gone bright red. His mean blue eyes zeroed in on Danny as if any of this was his fault, wiping his awed smile clean off.
“We should get some credit!” another voice Danny couldn’t track shouted.
“Let the losers win for once!” cried another.
“Yeah!”s and cheers joined the racket, growing steadily louder and louder.
Worrying her lip, Mrs. Ishiyama snatched the mike from Dash. “Now, everybody calm down–”
Her effort was in vain. Sam had already started a chant.
“Let the losers win,” she shouted, clapping her hands. “Let the losers win.”
The chant spread to the people in their section, then the next two over, and the next, until the whole school was shouting and clapping.
“LET THE LOSERS WIN! LET THE LOSERS WIN! LET THE LOSERS WIN!”
“‘Let the losers win’?”
Mr. Lancer, the head English teacher and advisor to the freshman class, slapped two files onto the counselor’s desk. Tucker and Sam perched before him.
“Hey, I didn’t come up with it,” Sam said, checking her nails.
Mr. Lancer took a seat at the desk. “In case you two didn’t know, that little stunt you pulled was wildly inappropriate.”
“Is it as inappropriate as the ratio of athletic funding versus funding to everything else?” Tucker replied matter-of-factly. “Because I’ve crunched the numbers, Mr. Lancer, and it’s pretty shocking.”
“You think I don't know that?” Mr. Lancer had lived and breathed the school since he had attended himself – he'd even said so the first day of class. “Unfortunately, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Personally I wouldn’t mind if the attention were a little more equal, but I’m required to punish you anyway, so let’s get this over with, shall we?”
Sam opened her mouth to say something, but Tucker grabbed her shoulder. The sneaky look in his eye was back.
“Hmm...Sam Manson,” Mr. Lancer read from one of the files. “Tardiness, disrupting class, being out in the hallway without permission, unapproved hanging of posters and multiple accounts of insubordination. Tucker Foley: tardiness, using phone during class, eating during class…’tampering with library computers?’”
“I just installed an adblocker! What, I don’t want videos popping up while I’m researching the Florida Everglades and suddenly I’m a criminal?”
Mr. Lancer sighed and shook his head before closing both files. “I think a half-hour in detention today will do for both of you.”
A couple minutes later the door to the counselor’s office opened. Danny sat out in the hall, kicking his shoe idly. Mr. Lancer caught his eye as Sam and Tucker sauntered out.
“Try to keep your friends out of trouble next time, Mr. Fenton,” Mr. Lancer advised before closed the door.
Danny went home alone, whistling.
Sam and Tucker had told him to go on without them while they served their detention. He’d tried to stay behind and wait for them again– there was safety in numbers, and after the pep rally they’d all need it. But they’d waved him off anyway, since Dash and the football team would be busy practicing for the big game.
So he hadn’t had to look over his shoulder (too much), and simply let his board fly for the whole ride. He was sure Jazz would ream him out when he got home, but Tucker and Sam had that effect on her. At least he was only guilty by association.
Dash was another story. If Sam or Tucker did anything the lug disapproved of, it was sure to make its way back to Danny. And for showing him up so thoroughly... Danny remembered the bloodthirsty look Dash had shot him an hour before. He shuddered.
A cheerful bark caught Danny’s wandering attention just as a little blur bounded onto the sidewalk.
Danny yelped and curved so fast both he and the skateboard went flying. He crashed to the sidewalk with an “oof!” , gouging a red stripe up his elbow.
He hissed, prodding the wound lightly, before a similar bark turned his attention back to the thing he’d been trying to avoid hitting in the first place.
Two feet from his nose was a grey-and-black pitbull puppy with a spiked black collar. It sneezed in excitement, tail wagging so hard Danny was surprised its entire back half wasn’t wagging with it.
He beamed, his bloody elbow forgotten.
“Hey, boy!” he gushed, and scratched the puppy behind the ears with his good arm. “Hey!”
The puppy closed his eyes and his mouth hung open luxuriously. Danny laughed and stood, plucking the dog up with him.
“You got an owner around here…?” He searched for a nametag, but found none. The puppy’s belly was matted considerably, a few scabs dotting the fuzzy skin. Concern prickled at Danny.
“D’you know where you live?”
The puppy barked and Danny set him down, wincing as his elbow stung. He wasn’t overly concerned about it – ever since the accident, dings, scratches and bruises had developed the habit of disappearing within a couple hours. It would be long gone before dinner tonight.
He fetched his skateboard from the yard where it had landed and pointed north.
“Lead the way, cap’n!” he crowed. The dog sneezed again and bounded off in the direction he was pointing.
As they cruised the familiar streets, Danny concluded that the dog was sweet and trusting, but dumb as a post. He kept trying to get on top of the skateboard or nip at Danny’s pant leg when he pushed off from the ground, and Danny had to take great care not to accidentally step on him. Danny supposed it couldn’t be helped, though. He was only a puppy.
A short ride (made longer by every time the dog doubled back, then resumed running forward again) later, they stopped. Danny flipped his board up with a smile, pleased with himself for having helped something.
“Looks like it’s time to part ways, little buddy.” He knelt and petted down the puppy’s back. “You better get back to...wait, my house?”
Sure as anything, Fenton Works stood in all its gaudy, precarious glory across the street. Before Danny could react, the puppy barked and took off in the other direction.
A thought dawned on him. He knew from experience that animals had weird reactions to ghosts– they either disliked or were enamored by their presence, and could see them better than people. He’d never heard of any dog leading a ghost where they wanted to go, though.
Maybe the puppy had been attracted by Danny’s ghost half, but been friendly with him because of his human half, or something? Something in his heart tugged at the idea. He would’ve preferred that dogs like him because he was nice.
But it’s not like I can ask Mom and Dad about it, he thought, glancing back up at his home.
He crossed the street, not feeling so cheerful anymore.
The next morning, Danny made a mental note to kill his friends.
Chaos had engulfed the school. The front office was flooded with students and staff alike, many of which Danny recognized as club leaders and supervisors. Posters of every kind littered the lockers and walls (‘CHANGE WE NEED! CASH WE'LL KEEP! Attend public school board meetings!’; ‘Protect budget surplus for extracurriculars’; ‘ALL WORK, NO PLAY? Casper High Ravens taking signups’; ‘Debate and chess are for the birds! Fly with the RAVENS’). The usual din of the hallways between classes had risen to outright yelling, and Danny spotted more red-and-black-and-white regalia on his passing classmates than ever before, advertising everything from the swim team to jazz band.
He marched over to Tucker and Sam at their spot by Tucker’s locker. “What did you two do?” he hissed.
Neither of them had the common courtesy to look troubled. “Change is in the air, Danny,” Sam reveled. “Ahh, I love a bit of youth uprising in the morning.”
“A bit?” Danny waved his arms. “How did you guys even arrange all this?!”
“Didn’t have to.” Tucker clapped his locker shut with a proud smirk. “After the assembly, everyone sort of riled themselves up. We barely even had to do anything.”
“Barely…?”
“Oh…” he wiggled his phone. “I know people.” Then he held up his hand for a high-five from a passing classmate.
Danny dragged his hands down his face, then opened his locker and buried his head in it with a clunk.
“You guys have a plan, right?” he asked, muffled through the thin metal. “Please tell me you guys have a plan.”
“Sure. I’ll work the crowd and take the heat for any hijinks…”
“And I’ll run for student body president next semester so we can actually deal a blow on behalf of our fellow losers,” Tucker finished.
Danny lifted his head from his locker. He... supposed that could work, but in his opinion his friends were a little too eager to pump the plasma before shooting the specter, or whatever euphemism his dad used. He just hoped nothing hit the fan in the meantime.
Everything that could hit the fan did during lunch.
Most of the tables were already half-full, chatter filled the air...and Tucker was inspecting the cookie tray with microscopic scrutiny.
Danny lifted his head from his hands. The quickly-amassing line behind them glowered.
“Oh my god pick one.”
“It might be oatmeal!”
“Then get a chocolate chip one tomorrow!”
“We’re not having cookies tomorrow,” Sam declared, already plucking up her spinach wrap.
“See? These things count!”
“That doesn’t even make–”
“FENTOOOON!”
Danny jumped and turned to spot Dash marching through the doors and straight towards him. His heart sank. He should’ve known Dash would take his revenge – before the 24-hour mark had passed.
Dash seized him by his shirtfront.
“Your dweeb friends made a fool outta me in front of the entire school!” he snapped. “How am I supposed to look back on my glory days with self-righteous twerps like you making it hard for me?”
Danny gulped. “Look, Dash, I don’t want any trouble–”
“Shoulda thought of that when you had the chance, runt!”
Hot, wild indignance washed over Danny. He’d never done a thing to Dash to make him hate him so much. The pep rally wasn’t even his fault. And if Dash waled on him for it,– what would it change? He still wouldn’t get in trouble.
Danny's eyes narrowed to green, glowing slits. A spark snapped at Danny’s fingertips and he shoved at Dash’s broad shoulders, hard.
The bigger boy yelped and let go in surprise. He stumbled back and tripped on the floor, landing hard on his backside and smacking against the bench of a nearby table. He shook his head, blinking.
Danny stood there, legs apart, fists balled and a scowl on his face. The cafeteria had gone deathly still all around them.
Sam and Tucker gaped in mixed awe and horror. What was he doing?
Dash’s brow dropped from dumbfounded to murderous. If there was anyone but Danny in the cafeteria, he wouldn’t have known.
“You freak!”
“I’ve had it with you!” Danny screeched. His chest heaved with adrenaline. “I’ve had it with your attitude and I’ve had it with you making life miserable for me and my friends!”
Dash straightened himself up against the table, never taking his eyes off his prey.
“C’mere,” he hissed, beckoning towards Danny. Danny snarled.
Dash yelled in frustration and seized a milk carton off a tray on the table behind him. The owner of the tray jumped and wisely scurried off to another table as Dash threw the open carton with all his might. It smacked Danny’s shoulder, spilling milk down his arm and the side of his jeans.
Danny’s wide eyes roved for a missile to fire back and set on Tucker’s cookie, sitting forgotten at the serving station. He hurled it like a pastry shuriken and it bounced off Dash’s forehead, crumbling to bits inside its cellophane baggie.
Maybe it was the absurdity of the situation. Maybe it was the unease that had plagued the entire day. Maybe the fear of an angry Dash had made the whole cafeteria lose their wits. But the reaction was instantaneous.
“FOOD FIGHT!”
A hysterical grin split Danny’s face right as a piece of pizza slapped him in the cheek. He was at Tucker and Sam’s side in seconds, and they maneuvered further into the cafeteria and away from Dash, who had turned his attention to whoever had thrown a pudding cup in his hair.
“Where did that come from?” Sam shouted to Danny over the squalling of their classmates.
A punch-drunk smile exposed Danny’s braces. “I have no idea!”
“Well, if you get a burger you might as well make it a combo,” Tucker quipped, grabbing a couple trays to use as shields. Appropriately, a burger exploded against it, followed by a Styrofoam bowl of peas. “You know we’re probably gonna have to take the long route home now, right? For the rest of the year?”
“I haven’t thought that far!”
As the impromptu warfare continued out in the cafeteria, a very different storm brewed in the kitchen.
All the lunch ladies had already run pell-mell for the principal’s office, unaccustomed to unruly children– all but one, the very same one who had not left the cafeteria in 50 years. This one simmered and seethed, the temperature around her incorporeal presence rippling with heat.
Casper High School had not experienced a single food fight since she had signed on as a young lady. She managed her cafeteria with pride, dignity and passion in life, and by gum, she would do the same now.
There was no scent of gas or other evidence of foul play– but the temperature in the cafeteria dropped so sharply that several students glanced up from the battlefield. Danny, previously giggling between his friends, gasped at a tingling sensation in his chest, and breathed out a stream of vapor.
He knew that sensation.
“Guys,” he said, not loud enough. “There’s a–”
The kitchen exploded.
Screams went off like bombs through the cafeteria and everyone ran, dropping trays, burgers and whatever else they had had their hands on.
“NO FOOD FIGHTING!” a strange voice bellowed, cutting through the air and leaving Danny’s eardrums ringing.
The fire alarm shrieked awake, coloring the cafeteria red everywhere the glow of the fire couldn’t touch. Sam stayed glued to the floor, transfixed.
Danny snatched her hand and tugged. “Come on! We gotta go!”
“That’s ghostly fire,” she murmured.
“So what!” Tucker screeched. “It’s fire! Let’s get outta here before–”
“Farenheit 451, you three, what are you still doing in here?!”
An iron hand clamped down on the scruffs of Tucker and Sam’s necks. Tucker craned his neck up to see Mr. Lancer.
Danny goggled up at him, eyes wide.
“Mr. Lancer, I didn’t–”
“Of course you didn’t!” Mr. Lancer snapped, already dragging Sam and Tucker to the set of double-doors. “Now get outside with the rest of the period!”
Everyone who vacated the cafeteria now piled onto the courtyard outside the front entrance. Most kids were covered in food, crying, or both.
“We gotta go back in there,” Sam said as soon as Mr. Lancer found a spot for them.
“What?” Danny and Tucker shrilled in unison.
“Are you outta your mind?” Danny continued. “If you’re that worried about your stuff, just have your mom and dad–”
“I’m not worried about my stuff,” Sam interrupted crossly, then dropped her voice to a whisper. “I’m worried about the ghost.”
Tucker put his head in his hands. “Sam…”
“Danny, you felt it! Just before the kitchen went up in flames! You know there’s a ghost in there that caused that fire.”
“Who cares what I felt? There’s nothing I can do.”
Danny sat down on the sidewalk and whipped out his phone.
“I’m calling Mom and Dad. Hopefully they’ve got the ecto-foamer fixed so they can come down here and sort out this–”
Sam snatched the phone out of his hand.
“Hey!”
Kneeling down next to him, Sam looked Danny straight in the eyes. “Danny, there are so many people in this world who say that, but there is something they can do. And you? You can do so much more than anyone else here can. Even more than your parents.”
Danny looked back at the cafeteria, the wide glass wall of windows light up chartreuse.
“I don’t even know what I’d do,” he said, voice small.
“I have a plan. You still got the thermos?”
Danny checked around himself and held the Fenton Thermos up from where it was hooked to his beltloop. Tucker dropped down beside them.
“Dude, no. It’s not your responsibility to go in there and get killed again.”
“So what, he’s just never gonna use his powers for the rest of his life, when he could be helping people with them?”
“He’s not helping anyone by going into an empty cafeteria and getting his butt kicked by a ghost!” Tucker whisper-shouted.
“But if he gets rid of the ghost, it won’t be there to cause any more fires!”
“Yeah, and how many times is that gonna–”
“Guys.”
Tucker and Sam stopped, glancing to Danny in between them. He lifted his head and stood up, a determined– albeit wavering– look on his face.
“Tucker, call my parents and tell them to come put out the fire. Sam, you’re gonna have to give me directions as I go.”
Sam grinned. Tucker looked crestfallen. He brought his knees up to his chest.
“Just...be careful, okay?”
“Yeah. And knock ‘em dead,” Sam added, “or, well. Deader.”
“I will.” The air around Danny shimmered, and he disappeared into thin air. “And...God, I hope.”
A couple minutes later, Mr. Lancer came around to take roll and spied Sam and Tucker with their phones to their ears.
“Yeah, Mr. Fenton?” Tucker was saying. “There’s been an incident and, uh…”
“Okay, I’m by the cafeteria...what now?”
“Now you gotta do the thing.”
Danny stood tucked against the side of the building, out of sight of any ghosts or teachers. He scrunched up his nose.
“What thing?”
“The thing!” Sam insisted. “The thing that happened that time we were playing Cards Against Humanity at Tucker’s, remember?”
Oh. That thing. Danny swallowed. He’d had to do it enough times to get control over it, if only so he wouldn’t do it in front of his parents, but after that he hadn’t done it since. Every time he looked down at himself after doing it...it felt like waking up in the lab all over again.
He set down his phone and closed his eyes, mentally reaching inside himself to that tingly feeling that hadn’t subsided since it first woke up in the cafeteria. It grew and grew until it felt like it was exploding from his chest, and so it did, lightning fizzing in a halo around him.
He held up his hand as it faded until he could see the concrete beyond it, and shivered. His feet lifted from the ground as he plucked his phone back up.
“Alright, I did the thing,” he confirmed awkwardly. “Now what?”
Back in the cafeteria, Rita the lunch lady observed the simmering, smokeless expanse of cafeteria. The place was void of students…
...or any food-fighting. Rita nodded sternly at her work and turned back to the kitchen, when—
“Eat Fenton Thermos, ghost!”
Danny fell down through the roof of the building with a war cry, the thermos clutched in his ghostly hands. He zoomed down towards his quarry— and fell straight through her to bounce off the glossy tile.
The lunch lady faced him, cross.
“So it’s you who was responsible for the food fight in my cafeteria!” she accused.
Danny, still wiped out on the ground, smiled awkwardly. “Uh. Well, Dash threw the first punch— uh, carton, actually— but depending on your school of thought—“
“NO EXCUSES!” A ring of greenish-blue flame erupted around them. Danny hopped to his feet. “I don’t care who started it! I’m going to end it!”
Danny frowned. “Actually, lady, I’m the one ending this.” He jabbed a finger in her face. “You’re goin’ back to the Ghost Zone, where there’s no people around for you to hurt.”
The lunch lady glared.
“Zimmerman, here, Zeitgeist, here...Fenton?! What are they doing here?!”
Mr. Lancer nearly dropped his pencil and clipboard as the Fenton’s family RV-turned-assault vehicle tumbled into the parking lot. It screeched to a halt a few feet from him and Jack Fenton bounded out, bazooka already in hand.
“We got the word, Lancer!” he announced. “Where’s the spook?”
“Word? Spook? I never called– Foley!” Mr. Lancer whipped around to glare at Tucker, who whistled and pretended not to notice.
This was bad. It was bad enough there was a fire in an area heavily populated with students, but with the Fentons here? There was sure to be a catastrophe.
“Mr. Fenton, I can assure you, the fire is not paranormal in nature and the fire department is already on their way,” Mr. Lancer pressed. A few feet away, Maddie had lowered her goggles, aiming them in the cafeteria’s direction. “Now if you would please vacate the premises so as not to–”
“There’s a massive amount of ecto-energy in there,” Maddie announced. “That fire’s got to be spectral in nature. Normal firefighters aren’t going to be able to put that out, not by a long shot.”
Mr. Lancer smacked a hand to his face. Even better. “Then what,” he enunciated, “do you propose we do?”
Jack grinned and turned the bazooka around. The side read ‘FENTON ECTO-FOAMER 3.5”.
“Every inch of this baby’s made with ecto-combustion in mind,” he declared, pride obvious in his voice. “Maddie and I’ll hit the blaze with this, and then take out the– GHOST!”
At that moment a column of fire shot up from the roof of the cafeteria with a flaring BOOM and a heatwave that shot right through Mr. Lancer, leaving him boneless. The students screamed.
The Fentons began shouting to each other, something about widening the perimeter to have a better chance of catching “them”. High up in the sky and getting higher still, Mr. Lancer spied two translucent beings, facing each other in what looked like a struggle.
Danny gritted his teeth, in a handlock with the lunch lady. He prayed that what he was about to do would work and flipped in midair, throwing her off and leaving her in a spin. She recovered quickly, fists and teeth clenched aggressively.
“Now what?” Danny yelled into his phone.
“I read somewhere that the farther a ghost gets from their resting place, the weaker they get,” Sam answered. “You gotta wear her out before you hit her with the thermos!”
Danny avoided a firy swat from the lunch lady’s ubber glove, then another. “And what if you’re wrong and she doesn’t wear out?!”
“I don’t know! Take her by–”
The lunch lady slapped the phone out of Danny’s hand and it went careening to the ground. He cringed.
“Good thing that’s a Sealskin,” he muttered to himself. A millisecond later the lunch lady grabbed him by the hazmat and he was flung back to the cafeteria, screaming the whole way down.
His mind raced and he willed himself to go the other way, to fly, to not feel the impact he was sure to come– and then he realized he’d stopped. Intangibility! He realized. He flapped his arms happily. Nothing for gravity to hold down, so it must’ve curbed my– “ACK!”
The lunch lady slammed into him from behind and they passed through the roof of the cafeteria in freefall.
Maddie Fenton was having a good-news, bad-news sort of day.
The good news was that she had all manner of interesting spectral behaviors to study later. In all her days, she’d never gotten to see more than one intelligent ghost at a time, much less interacting with one another– and she’d never dreamed of seeing them actually fight each other. It posed all sorts of new possibilities, and half-formed theories were already swimming around her mind, waiting to take shape.
The bad news was that she couldn’t get a bead on either one of the ghosts.
She followed them through the targeting scope of her shotgun, straight down into the ceiling. Drat. No more dawdling. They had to get in there and put out that fire.
Danny rubbed his head, sitting up from where he’d landed on the kitchen floor. Just because you’re intangible doesn’t mean ghosts can’t touch you. Got it.
The pots, pans and cutlery all around him began to quake and clatter together. A knife zinged through his head, embedding itself in the cabinet with a rattle.
He leapt up as the kitchenware began to circle him and spotted the lunch lady hovering at the corner of the kitchen. She pointed at him and the circle closed in— but he phased through the ceiling in the nick of time and came back down behind her.
She turned around to see him pointing his thermos.
“You kids bringing in your lunches! Is my own cooking not good enough?!” she howled, and a wave of sharps flew at him. He swirled through the air, machetes, butter knives and fish knives dotting his trail in the walls.
A distant aerosol sound caught his attention, and he looked up past the slim window out to the cafeteria. His parents were making their way through with the ecto-foamer. Yes! He cheered. They’re here to save me from the ghost!
His mother caught him staring, gasped, at pointed the foamer at his chest.
No! I forgot! I’m a ghost too!
He dodged, unaware that the lunch lady had snuck up on him, and the foam splattered all over her front. She spluttered and screeched, wiping pale green goo from her eyes.
As Danny soared upward, Jack caught the sight of metal glinting in his hand. He gasped in indignant recognition.
“Why, you little–! You got some nerve stealing my property, spook!” he cried, shaking a fist. He whipped out an ecto-pistol.
Danny barely bothered to dodge as a green ray struck the wall behind him with a miniscule pew! He dodged a few more in quick succession, racking his brain. I gotta get them to focus on each other so I can thermos the lunch lady, but how?!
Green eyes landed on a crumpled pudding cup on the floor– the same pudding cup Dash had been hit with. His face lit up.
It was crazy...but it just might work.
He took off for the cup, invisible. Jack lowered his pistol in irritated confusion.
“Where’d he go? Mads?”
A roar caught the Fenton’s attention as the lunch lady smeared the tough, sticky foam off herself, her arms lighting with green fire. Perturbed, they aimed for her, arms whining as they prepared to fire–
Danny popped up through the floor in front of Jack and slid the pudding cup onto the muzzle, a split second before Jack fired. The pudding cup pinged harmlessly off the lunch lady’s apron and she looked up at Jack, puzzled.
Still invisible, Danny cupped his hands over his mouth.
“FOOD FIGHT!”
The lunch lady’s eyes went completely red and flames of white hair exploded from her hairnet. She screamed a mighty, unholy scream, the remaining patches of fire towering higher than ever.
“NO ONE STARTS FOOD FIGHTS IN MY CAFETERIA!” she bayed.
Danny’s parents yelped and opened fire, knocking her back so hard she phased through the serving station and hit the far kitchen wall with a clang!
Danny materialized, hitting the ‘CATCH’ button on the side of the thermos.
“Please work please work please work,” he chanted under his breath as he jabbed it in the lunch lady’s direction.
The thermos gave a sharp, backfiring kick in his hand as it locked onto the ectosignature in front of it. The lunch lady’s head rose, but it was too late.
Her body distorted like a puddle as it was pulled in, glowing brighter than before. She gave one final echoing screech before being sucked fully into the thermos, and Danny hastily turned it off.
But he wasn’t out of the woods yet. He yipped in surprise as a thin green ray shot past his arm, and found his parents directly behind him, weapons at the ready.
“Freeze, spook!”
Danny ducked down through the floor as a flurry of shots belted through the air.
“Well, your advice was a bust.”
The next day, Danny and his friends congregated at one of the tables outside the cafeteria. An inordinate number of their classmates were eating their lunch outside too– the cafeteria hadn’t been damaged, save for some ecto-foam scum on the floor and knife marks in the kitchen, but no one wanted to chance having a quote-unquote ‘lunch incident’ two days in a row. Many kids, however, were still wearing their Casper High regalia religiously.
“Maybe not,” Sam defended, fork crunching into her bowl of salad. “I mean, she was only out of the cafeteria for like, thirty seconds.”
“Please tell me you’re not going to make a habit of this,” Tucker said through a mouthful of burger. “You guys almost gave me a frickin’ stroke when the roof exploded.”
“You wouldn’t have run the risk of a stroke in the first place if you didn’t eat so much meat.”
“I’ll have you know…”
“Anyway,” Danny subverted, before he had reason to place another tally on the ‘Times Sam and Tucker have Argued About Food’ list. “I mean...I don’t plan on it, but you guys know my parents. They couldn’t catch ghosts with a ouija board.”
“And with your ghost sense, you can catch the ghosts so they don’t have to,” Sam confirmed with a grin.
Danny shrugged, nipping at a chicken tender. “Something like that. But...you guys know I’m gonna need your help, right? I don’t know anything about ghosts, or if I qualify as one, or how to catch them…”
A student at a nearby table glanced over at the word ‘ghost’ and Tucker shooed him off. When he turned back, he looked wary.
“So I guess that means you’re still not going to tell your parents.”
“Nope.”
“Even after they shot at you, because they thought you were the enemy.”
“Yup.” He omitted the fact that he’d stood at the basement door for a good five minutes, trying to work up the nerve, only for the memory of his dad’s irate expression and his mother’s cold accuracy as they fired on him to send him flying back upstairs and locking the door.
Tucker glanced around the table, realizing he was outnumbered two to one. “Alright, man,” he sighed. “But for the record, I think this is a really, really bad idea.”
“And I think it’s a great one.” Sam’s voice was laced with victory. “You know, you could really help change some lives around here, Danny. Make a difference.”
Danny smiled and rolled his eyes to himself. That seemed more up Sam’s alley than his. “Hey, speaking of making a difference, what d’you think’s gonna happen with Dash?”
Tucker smirked. “That, my friend, is your cross to bear. But I am serious about running for president.” His smirk dropped. “And, uh. You guys might need to back me up with that, you know.”
Danny snorted. “Hey, if you’re gonna be helping me battle the undead and stuff, it’s the least I can do, right?”
“True! True.”
The trio laughed, conversation turned to something lighter. Danny’s smile slid away as he glanced to the side, chewing at his lunch.