Chapter Text
Ghostly attacks on the regular were still not enough to stomp out the march of students through the hallowed and haunted halls of Casper High, and one pair of faux-leather boots were stomping out a particularly determined rhythm.
"Did you see this?" Sam Manson didn't wait for an answer as she slapped the school's paper between the lockers of her two friends, both jumping enough to shake off the lingering morning sleepiness that came with robotically shuffling through their books in the morning. Danny dropped his backpack while Tucker glanced uneasily over his phone, both boys waiting for the other shoe to drop regarding what has their companion's dander up. It didn't help that Sam's hand was covering most of the center of the paper.
There’s been an ever-increasing list of things that did said dander-rising in Sam. Truly it could be anything.
Both boys, who have known each other long enough to hold entire conversations within a shared look, briefly considered their options regarding what they were likely to get roped into, and who was the better offering to pull that trigger. Through the slightest of head nods and eyebrow raises, an agreement was made, and Danny stepped forward as tribute.
"Sam, we just got here. Tuck and I haven't really had a chance to sit down and, y'know, pick up the paper."
"Or grab a scone, pour a cup of coffee and really make a morning out of it." Tucker followed up, still glancing warily at the paper while his thumbs resumed flying across his phone.
"The poster competition!" The young goth practically snarled, already bringing way too much vitriol to the table before 8am. "There's censorship in the school!"
Now, this far into his ghostly career, Danny had faced down all manner of horror unleashed by his parents' creation. From grudge-bearing lunch ladies to wannabe Terminators looking to tear his skin off, the kid had seen some serious shit in his young life... yet somehow the image of his seething mortal friend was putting more tension in his spine than his most recent battle with Technus, and that asshole had gotten his hands on the machinery from the local coffee place, the newly renamed for tourists "Ghost Roast".
He was finding foamed milk in his ears a week later.
Sam, somehow, was putting forth more menace than a ghost fully decked out with scalding coffee dispensers, forcing Danny to plant his feet a little more than he was expecting. "Uh...I think you might need to elaborate a little more."
"Yeah Sam, like - start with the fact that there even was a competition."
Tucker's words seemed to breathe new venom into the young goth as Sam grabbed the offending paper and shoved it in front of his face. " This is why it's important to keep informed." She stressed, as Danny joined his friend's side to view the scathing article.
Under the latest gossip, announcements, and this month's birthdays sat a small column in the rather meager "For Your Consideration" section, and as both boys read along, they took in the expose regarding a controversy in the poster competition, while Danny noticed it was penned by the school's own Westley Weston.
The school's high strung redhead who wasn't related to him.
For all of Weston's paranoid antics rubbing Danny the wrong way, with the chief issue being him taking the ghost teen's want for privacy as a personal offense, he could see that the article was doing a succinct job in summing up what had Sam all upset: There being a competition to create posters to put across the school, but an entry made by two older students was not only changed when teachers didn't like it, it was eventually stifled altogether in favor of a lesser poster made by a more "likable" student.
Or so the article says.
While both Tucker and Danny may not have much in the way of creative interests like Sam did, they could both agree that it was a prime example of a dick move.
"Look at this - look at this! " Sam jabbed a thin purple-painted finger at one of Wes's less offensive contributions to journalism. "Jane Lane and Daria Morgendorfer co-created this great poster that brought up the subject of eating disorders in teens and this gutless school wouldn't even let them enter it unless they changed the poem in the image!"
" 'While the subject is a sensitive topic to many a modern American youth -' Who in the hell says 'youth,' Wes, oh my god ." Danny couldn't help but mutter. Even in the face of a half-decent article about something other than him or conspiracies, Wes couldn't help but "Wes" up things with his own overblown self-importance. It's no wonder his brother Kyle was cool; he must have gotten all the chill in the family. " -'the censorship of even the subject of eating disorders without showing an actual depiction stigmatizes something many teens suffer from and risks -' this sounds like Jazz. Did Jazz help him with this?"
"Did Jazz help with what?" Danny's sister slid up next to him and Tucker, leaning between them to peer at just what the three were looking at. Her perfectly straight hair hardly slid out of place as she read, a stark contrast to Danny's unkempt mop, while her teal eyes narrowed the more and more she made her way through the article. "Well... that explains some things."
"What things?" Sam rounded on Jazz, purple eyes practically sparking with aggression.
The psych-hopeful however seemed unperturbed by the other girl's ire, instead straightening up and shifting a lock back into place behind her ear. "It explains why Wes of all people approached me a little while back, asking my opinion on the school trying to censor a poster talking about bulimia. He told me at the time it was for a paper, not the school paper."
"Classic Wes," Danny muttered, not at all surprised the guy didn't have a single original thought outside of fresh ways of being a nuisance. "When he's not digging through trash he's digging for ways to get people to do his job."
"Focus up people!" With a few snaps of her fingers, Sam commanded the topic back to her. "Wes might be an annoying little skeeve, but there's bigger shit to worry about." With more force than necessary, she stuffed the paper into her spider backpack. "The school is trying to silence young artists and I'm not going to stand for it!"
Overhead the bell rang, signaling a rare moment in which Danny wasn't off getting his face punched in while longing to be on time for school, but while he, Tucker, and Jazz were about to make their way down the one end of the hall, Sam started heading down the other.
"Sam, c'mon, we gotta get to -"
"I'm going to find the two." She hefted her bag onto her shoulder with the same finility as a soldier.
"What two?"
"The artists!" The "obviously" in her words practically bounced off the walls. "They need to have their story be heard and not just be part of some self-serving slop Wes spits out in trying to look like he cares about people!"
She wasn't wrong in the sense that, as far as any of them knew, Wes seemed to only give a darn about people when it serves to make him right about whatever crazy he's talking about. What pushed him towards exposing the school about this contest issue was unclear, though between the three remaining teens the assumptions varied between trying to save face after how often he's accused Danny of being a ghost, some kind of extra credit, or getting ready for his future career in some conspiracy rag.
However, whenever Sam worked herself into frenzies like these, she tended to forget that her friends often got caught up in the ensuing shrapnel. The memory of her veggie protest-turned-riot that spawned from her disgust for the school's menu and how it triggered the spirit of a woman from Casper High Lunch's Past still stood out in Danny's mind.
"Sam, you don't even know what they look like!" Tucker called after her. Danny didn't miss how his friend was already sporting that pinched expression he only seemed to have when Sam got on a particular tear, but kept his mouth shut. By this point he's learned that the less he said, the better. Hopefully this time the result won't be warring protests screaming at one another about whether the school should be allowed to serve spongy chicken nuggets.
He has enough on his both metaphorical and literal plate already.
"Tuck, you think that'll stop her?" Danny arched an eyebrow his friend's way, the two of them waving Jazz off as she left to her own classroom. "Remember how much money she blew on those robot frogs?"
"Hnnnn, all that into robots while the actual robotics club has to scrape by with another bake drive to get some half-decent funding for team jerseys."
The cynicism in the self-proclaimed geek's voice was rare, but not unheard of, and Danny wasn't a fan of how often he'd feel his stomach clench whenever he heard it...or how lately every time he did it was in proximity to something Sam did.
Out of a need to banish the shift in vibes, Danny mimed a shot to the chest, one hand grasping at an imaginary wound. " Ooof! Tucker Foley is upset about robots! Do I need to call my parents - let them know a poor innocent student is in the icy grip of a ghost?"
He thankfully got a shove for his cheek, though the young hero didn't notice that the clouds hadn't totally cleared from above his friend.
"Shut up," Tucker smirked back. "You know me, I'm not a team guy. All that coordination will get in the way of my creative juices."
"Well tell the robot guys that, because they've been after your juices since last year. Y'sure you don't want to try the club out and see how it goes?"
Their talk of robots and whether or not Tucker's creative exploits with all things machinery would be stifled in a team of like-minded individuals continued as the two went onto their homeroom class, usual third member of their little party off on her mission through the school.
-
Rounding a corner just as furiously as the last, Sam was a beacon of white-hot energies. An infernal engine in the form of a teenage girl as she made her way past the odd straggler and towards her point of interest.
The Yearbook Club room.
While she may not know what the two students suffering under having their work defaced and then censored looked like, Sam was armed with their names, and a quick search of one of the most recent yearbooks out of Casper High would do the trick in applying those names to faces. Thankfully, the club always kept examples of their work lying around in the room, leaving Sam little work in having to suss out a book.
Throwing the previous year open, Sam furiously thumbed through the pages before landing on Lane.
Jane Lane's image filled her attention, and almost instantly Sam felt a connection with her fellow creative: The sharp hairstyle cut in an asymmetrical shape, the look of cool disinterest in her eyes, the refusal to smile for the school photo - instead sat there with an unamused look and crossed arms, no doubt for reasons Sam felt were similar to her own (not wanting to support the shallow pageantry that is high school and it's desire to depict your teen years as some hallowed glory days to look back on, obviously. )
Oh yes, there's a kinship there for sure. How someone like this had slipped past Sam's RADAR was beyond her, but she knew as soon as she finally met this Jane Lane, she'd have someone who would finally appreciate poetry night at the Skulk and Lurk.
Daria Morgendorfer however proved to be more of an issue, as Sam found herself having to page past the "M" section about three times before realizing she wasn't there.
"Weird..."
Censorship in a poster contest was one thing, but even Sam doubted this Daria had become enough of an un-person to be erased from the yearbook.
No matter. She had Jane, so if she could just track one down then she'd be on her way to the other and soon the three of them could band together and take a stand for justice.
This school has another thing coming if it thinks it can pull one over on its students while Sam Manson is here.
(Meanwhile)
"Hnn"
Daria didn't exactly shiver, because that would imply mustering any energy for what amounted to be a particular frisson in the air that probably only existed in her head.
But she still managed to get the attention of Jane.
"Bee in your bonnet?" The artist barely looked up from the margins of her notes as she worked on her latest sketch for a new painting.
"...I think this town might be getting to me." Daria's monotone did nothing to reveal her feelings, as per usual. Still, Jane tossed a smirk her way, red lips quirked knowingly in that way where only she seemed to be able to understand the guarded teen.
"What's the matter? Feel like someone walked over your grave?"
"No." Brown eyes behind round coke-bottle lenses glanced out the window, as if almost expecting something to fly through it, only to be met with greying clouds. "Just felt for a second like that pesky Sword of Damocles was dangling over me."
"Well damn it Daria, I told you to tie that thing down - it's supposed to storm later."
"Sorry. You know how it is when Hecate shows up and asks me to dog sit. Cerberus kept chewing on everything and it's hell trying to get him to spit something out of every head."
"You're a real Greek Tragedy, Morgendorfer."