Chapter Text
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"It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope.
We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song
of that siren till she transforms us into beasts... For my part, whatever anguish
of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it."
-Patrick Henry
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Danny ripped the covers off himself and glanced around his room. Light was flooded through the windows, and only silence greeted him. Sensing something was off, he stumbled out of bed and squinted at his alarm clock. The bold, red numbers that stared back at him indicated that he had overslept… again. School had started a few hours ago, and he would get in big trouble if his parents found out he was using his class time to catch up on sleep. Of course, the chances of that happening were slim considering they were working on a new invention in the lab. They wouldn't be seeing the light of day for a while.
He sprinted to the bathroom and reached out for the counter as the rug by the sink started to slide out from under my feet. After he ensured that he wasn’t going to take a nosedive onto the tile, he splashed water onto his face to wake himself up. The frigid temperature made him feel more awake, but it failed to make his appearance less disheveled. After one last weary glance at the mirror, he careened down the stairs and entered the kitchen. He was about to get some breakfast to satisfy his growling stomach, but one glance at the eerie green glow that illuminated the fridge stopped him. His dad must have been experimenting again. He turned away, realizing that he didn't want my food to glow green, grow teeth, and eat me. It was better to wait until lunch. It’s not like it’s that far off, he reasoned, as he shot one last glance at the clock.
Multiple options ran through his head regarding ways to get to school. He wasn’t sure if it was even possible to get more detentions than he already had, but he didn’t feel like taking a risk. Therefore, only one made any sense if he wanted to get there before he got into more trouble. After all, he inherently had a speedy form of transportation at his fingertips, or more accurately, in his DNA. He smiled slightly as he thought about the rush that turning into his other half gives him, then he went ghost. Bright rings made their way around him, his messy black hair turned a glowing white, and his clothes changed into his trademark jumpsuit. He phased through the walls of Fentonworks and flew to school.
As he sped through the town, no ghosts made any appearances. If only they had been this shy last night. He wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place if he’d just gotten some sleep. By the time he got there, it was lunchtime, so that solved the issue of adding another tardy to the growing pile on Lancer’s desk. He walked into the cafeteria, keeping a lookout for black clothes and a red beret. He spotted Tuck and Sam in their usual corner, along the fringe of rambunctious students that took over the majority of the room.
"Where have you been?" Sam shouted, drawing a few startled glances from the surrounding tables.
Despite her temper, he could hear the concern in her voice. "Fighting ghosts," he lied, not wanting to admit he had overslept. He really had been up fighting ghosts until the early hours of the morning, which was the reason he slept through my alarm in the first place. But he knew she wouldn't approve of any late-night ghost fights, so he decided to embellish the story a little. She looked at him suspiciously but didn’t push the subject further. "So, what’d I miss?”
"Like, four tests," Tuck said," You have a lot to catch up on.”
Great, that was exactly what he needed, more work to add to his sleep-deprived nights.
"It could be worse, a least you are not being attacked by ghosts," Tucker offered.
"TUCKER!" Sam and Danny yelled in unison.
Sam sent him a glare. "Bad Luck Tuck, you just jinxed us!"
A brooding look appeared on Tucker's face before he responded, "Hey, don't call me that, you know I hate it!"
"Exactly," Sam added, with a smirk.
Everything was quiet for a moment, and he wanted to believe that for once, the universe could let one lousy sentence slide. He was wrong. Right on cue, Skulker burst through the wall, sending students screaming and rubble flying through the air.
"Ghost Child, I know you’re in here," Skulker crowed, trying to be intimidating," I have come to hang your pelt on my wall."
"Thanks Tuck, if my pelt ends up on his wall you're taking the blame," Danny warned, before he phased through the wall to lead Skulker to a more sparsely populated area. If he was going to get blamed for something, it was not going to be for demolishing sections of the school. Again.
When he got outside, Skulker wasn’t behind him. Danny looked around, confused as to why Skulker wasn’t spewing death threats and flying after him like he was prey. So much for wanting to hunt me down. He looked around a few more times, scouting the area, before he flew out of the hole Skulker had created in the cafeteria wall. Before he could blink, Skulker flew at him, gaining speed. Danny moved sharply to the left, narrowly missing a tree in the process. When he turned around to face Skulker, he was already speeding away with a sly smile on his face. Or as much of a smile as a robotic face can really pull off.
“Catch me if you can Ghost Child, you don’t want me causing trouble downtown do you.”
By the time the words registered, Skulker was almost off of school grounds. Danny took off after him as fast as he could. Skulker weaved through building after building, occasionally slowing down and looking around every minute or two. He seemed to be looking for something. It got to the point where Danny started to wonder who was the hunter and who was the hunted in this scenario. It was starting to look like halfas weren’t at the top of the food chain.
A few more minutes and many twists and turns later, Skulker stopped abruptly. Danny barely managed to stop himself from crashing into him. Skulker’s arms were crossed and his chin was held high. He was definitely the hunter. Before Danny could ruminate on that thought anymore, he heard a command shouted at him from the ground.
"Stop right there ghost, you're not getting away this time!"
Before he could place the voice, he was slammed into the pavement by an unseen force and coated with green slime. When he looked up, Skulker had disappeared, leaving him to face some very familiar ghost hunters. Danny’s parents stood about ten feet away, watching him vigilantly. His dad was the one who had shouted at him a few moments before. They stared at him for a moment as slime ran in rivulets down his ghost form, creating a puddle on the asphalt he was hovering over. He heard a slight whine and saw a green bar flash across a screen on the side of a bulky gun his mom was wielding. That must have been what brought him down and covering him with the oily goo that was seeping into his jumpsuit. He didn’t stick around to see if they would hit him again. H turned intangible and sunk into the ground. Once he had gotten far enough away, he rose above the pavement and flew back to school, trying and failing to shake off some of the slime that coated him from head to toe. Or head to tail, in this case.
Lunch had already ended by the time he returned, and the only people left in the cafeteria were the frustrated custodians sent to clean up the damage left by Skulker. He transformed in the deserted hallway outside the cafeteria, and the lockers on either side of him reflected the pure white light of the rings as they traveled down his body. He looked down and saw that there was no evidence of the slick slime that had covered him moments before. The transformation took care of it.
He reluctantly shuffled through the halls until he reached the doorway to his classroom. Surely his absence would be noticed by now. Well, “noticed” is a strong word. The only ones that gave him a second glance were Sam, Tucker, and his irritated teacher. Danny received a tardy slip, and was warned that if it happened again he would get a detention. How he had managed to avoid getting one was beyond him, especially since he had stopped counting tardies months ago. Maybe the teachers had finally given up, too.
The rest of the day went by lazily, which made the urge to fall asleep nearly impossible to resist. Every time he stole a glance at the clock, the minute hand didn’t seem to have changed positions. Finally, the last bell rang and he walked from school to the Nasty Burger with Sam and Tucker in tow. They attempted to study, but, as usual, they got sidetracked. They ended up making countless jokes about the quality of the burger Tucker had bought, despite Sam’s warnings. Once the sun began to sink low in the sky, Danny had to drag myself away from the greasy restaurant and actually attempt to study. He couldn’t afford to fail any of the tests he missed today; he was barely hanging on as it was.
On his walk home, darkness slowly engulfed his surroundings, and only retreated slightly once the streetlamps came on. As he turned onto my street, he could see light spilling out of one of his downstairs windows, illuminating a small square of pavement next to the front door. When he reached the square of light, he looked inside curiously, wondering who had turned it on. Jazz always went straight to her room after school, and seldom left it until dinnertime. Since his parents had been practically living in the lab, Jazz probably went out for dinner with a study group. To Danny’s surprise, he spied his parents in the kitchen talking excitedly, having emerged from the basement at last. As soon as he opened the front door, his dad sprinted into the foyer with mom at his heels.
"We made a scientific breakthrough!" she exclaimed.
Danny zoned out after that, used to his parents carrying on about ghosts and their “miraculous” inventions. Once they were too engrossed in their conversation to see him slip away, he headed to his room, exhausted from the unrelenting rise in ghost fighting that had been taking over his life lately. He sunk into his bed and let out a contented sigh as his heavy eyelids finally got the chance to close.
DPDPDPDP
Danny woke up suddenly. Immediately, he sensed something was wrong. He opened his eyes and came face to face with a gleaming metal wall. He pushed himself to his feet and turned around, taking in his surroundings. The room he was in seemed to extend about five feet in either direction and was enclosed by transparent glass walls on two sides. He glanced back at the first wall he had seen and realized that the wall beside it was made of the same gray metal. He must be in the corner of a bigger room, one that extended beyond the glass walls. The metal walls seemed eerily familiar. Where else had he seen walls like these before? He couldn’t seem to form the connection. He turned around to search for more answers, but what greeted me made his stomach drop. As he peered past the glass, he was greeting with a clear view of the Spector Speeder, as well as numerous other devices just as recognizable. Danny had seen all the items hundreds of times before, but never from this angle. He was on the wrong side of the glass.
Before he could evaluate the situation further, he heard footsteps coming down the stairs. To his utter dismay, the person that came into view was just as familiar as my surroundings. This was his parent’s lab, and the person who stared at him through the glass was none other than his mom.
"Hello Phantom, surprised?" She asked, sounding very pleased with herself.
Danny looked down and saw that he was, in fact, in his ghost form. He returned his gaze to his mother’s face, and a feeling of apprehension raced through him as he automatically shifted into a fighting stance.
"I’m going to do a few tests. Do you like your containment unit?" she taunted, enjoying every word.
"It is completely phase-proof, and none of your ghost powers can penetrate it. Now let us stop wasting time, and move on to the first test. Let's see how much heat you can withstand," she said, as she pulled a lever down that Danny could barely see from his vantage point inside the cell.
Vents opened in the floor and he could feel heat escaping from them. It was bearable for a while, but the temperature was rising fast. In a matter of minutes, he was in agony. He looked through the glass and tried to see past the heat waves rising from the floor. The glass had fogged up too much to see his mom’s expression but considering the joy she would be feeling about his capture, he doubted that he would have liked what he saw. Sweat dripped down his body, slick beneath the rubber of his jumpsuit, as sweltering heat surrounded him. Suddenly, he was on his knees, trying to breathe the hot, stifling air. His head felt dangerously light and his vision flickered in and out like a light about to burn out. Using a last burst of energy, he attempted to stand upright but only managed to fall against the glass and slide to the ground. He saw a blurry flash of blue through the slick, foggy glass before his vision faded to black, his burning body sinking into the depths of unconsciousness.