Ghostly Wings

“I don’t get into trouble intentionally,” Danny said.

Sam gave him a Look. Tucker gave him a slightly different look that involved peering over his glasses. He looked like a disappointed grandmother.

“Not all the time,” Danny amended. It was rarely, actually. But that seemed like a hard sell.

This mollified them, and the conversation turned to possible Wisconsin Ghost merchandise.

“We were thinking we could sell mugs and t-shirts at first, since people like gallows humor on their coffee mugs and t-shirts are easy to make small quantities of. And then we got distracted by designs,” said Sam.

Tucker’s computer was open to his dubiously legal copy of Abode Photocrop, smooth black lines traced over assorted pictures of Vlad as Plasmius. Danny squinted.

“Did you make his hair bigger?” he asked.

“Maaaybe,” said Tucker. “Or maybe it was always that ridiculous. Not everyone has the impeccable fashion instincts of Tucker Foley.” He posed.

Sam threw a pen at him.

“Ow!” Tucker threw it back.

Danny leaned over the ensuing scuffle to look more closely at the screen. “Which design goes on the T-shirts?”

Tucker straightened, and then straightened his glasses, which Sam had knocked askew. “Maybe the bottom one? It’s not like we have to do only one design, we’re going to have to print the designs out and iron them on ourselves anyway.”

“We are?“

“If you want to print money, Danny, sometimes you’ve got to print other things first,” Tucker said.

Danny looked at Sam.

Tucker looked at Sam.

She shook her head. “It’s close, but it still doesn’t flow quite right.”

Tucker hung his head. “Dang.”

~~~

Monday was an assembly day. Their class piled into the auditorium along with the rest of the school. The press of bodies was quickly making the place uncomfortably warm, and the air was already rank with body spray and teenage funk. Danny, Sam, and Tucker squeezed in next to each other.

“Attention!” Mr. Lancer called, up on stage. The lights flashed. “Quiet!”

The rumble of hundreds of conversations died off.

“Thank you! Welcome to the yearly assembly on the C. A. T!”

“The CAT?” Danny whispered to Tucker. “Is that like a knock-off SAT?”

“Believe it or not, the C. A. T. will determine your future,” Lancer said, pivoting and holding the microphone with what Danny thought was a bit much drama.

“Fail, and you’ll be doomed to a life of ignominy. Pass, and you’ll have a chance. Break records, like young Jasmine Fenton here, and you’ll have a ticket to the Ivy League.”

At Lancer’s gesture, Jazz walked on stage, smiling like a dork. She held up her hand in an awkward little wave, but Danny wasn’t really paying much attention to that. He was too occupied with the pit that had just opened up in his stomach.

Lancer could be dramatic. Jazz could, too. But she wanted to be taken seriously. If she was participating in this presentation like this…

What if it really was important?

~~~

The pit in Danny’s stomach sat there for the rest of the day, dark and heavy. It turned on itself in the English class discussion, when it turned out that between Skulker and daydreaming, he’d only picked up on about half of what was going on in the first chapters of The Great Gatsby, and grew smaller but not lighter in math, where Falluca introduced a theorem Danny only caught the second half of – the Box Ghost had shown up partway through the day.

By the time he slouched home after school, worry had carved the pit into a leaden knot.

Neither his parents nor Jazz were home. Jazz’s car was missing, and while the GAV hulked in its own spot, the lab downstairs was empty, all his parents’ usual haunts dark.

Danny let his backpack fall to the floor by his desk and flopped onto his bed with a groan.

It didn’t help the knot.

A few minutes later he rolled to his feet and collapsed into the chair at his desk. Maybe he could at least do his homework. English was just some reading and some questions.

A few minutes later, he snapped The Great Gatsby shut. Math. Maybe math would be better.

…He still didn’t know the theorem Mr. Falluca had talked about in class. He rifled through his backpack for his math folder and pulled it out. He grinned. It was only one page!

The grin faded as he scanned through the problems. Given that sides A and B are parallel, prove that the area D is equal to AC cos(b).

Prove it? The knot grew tighter. How was he supposed to prove that? Wasn’t it just how parallelograms worked?

Maybe chemistry?

Danny was halfway through the explanation of stoichiometry when he felt his breath run cold. He whipped his head up just in time for Technus to phase through the floor.

“Ghost child!” he exclaimed, “I, Technus, Master of all things Electronic and Beeping, am going to re-vamp your electric grid and make it boogie!”

And then he made Danny’s desk lamp attack him.

“Finally,” snarled Danny, grabbing the lamp in one fist and letting the transformation sweep over him, “a problem I can solve.”

.

Danny could not solve the Technus problem, as it turned out. Not right away, at least.

Two days and most of the contents of three hobby electronics stores later, Danny replaced the cap on his thermos, surveyed the damage, and winced.

Circuit boards and computer components littered the park. A tree was snapped like a popsicle stick, splinters the size of his hand poking out of both sides where the two halves of the trunk weren’t connected by dangerously bowed wood. The reason the tree had snapped in half was still embedded in the trunk above the crown of leaves now making a nest: a semi truck engine, or what had been one.

Ugh.

He kicked a piece of plastic from Technus’ body, then left for home. It was eight and he still hadn’t started on the questions for the next chapter in English, and they were due tomorrow.

And he hadn’t had any opportunity to study for the CAT. Danny stopped as a twinge of panic squeezed his heart. What was he going to do? What if he failed?

…

He ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. Homework first, crisis about his future later. Maybe never?

Never sounded good.

Great.

~~~

He was so screwed.

The thought dogged every step he took after school on Thursday, weighing his heart down into his stomach and sticking his shoes to the pavement. He’d been scribbling his English homework down until the moment Lancer had picked up his paper, and the look he’d given Danny had made him want to sink through the chair and into the floor.

He knew he was a disappointment compared to Miss Perfect, thanks. Lancer didn’t need to rub it in.

And the worst part was, he couldn’t stop disappointing people. Ghost attacks didn’t let him. What was he supposed to do? Ignore them?

This was it. He’d be stuck repeating Sophomore year, forever branded the Fenton Failure. No college would want him. NASA wouldn’t either. All his dreams were going up in smoke.

Or a breath of mist. Like the one he’d just breathed out. He groaned. Why did they need to bother him so much right when an important test was coming up?

A few moments later, Danny slipped around a corner and into his ghost form, the weightlessness offering some small respite from the looming dread.

He let his tail twist out behind him, then rocketed off in search for the ghost that had decided to ruin his day.

~~~

“You’re late.”

“By two minutes,” said Danny. It wasn’t even enough to be marked tardy in class! Unless you annoyed the teacher. Or they were just annoyed by you. Like Danny. Dash got away with it, at least.

Cassius raised an eyebrow.

Danny slumped. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“What kept you?” asked Cassius.

Skulker. “Stuff,” said Danny.

“I expect punctuality, Mr. Fenton.”

“You really shouldn’t,” said Danny. “None of my teachers do, at this point.”

“I’m not one of your teachers.”

You’re sure sounding like one. “Sorry again.”

Cassius peered down at him for a long and uncomfortable moment. Danny shifted on his feet.

“See that it doesn’t happen again.”

Did Cassius think he could? Ugh. Probably. “Okay.”

“Your apron is in the back room,” said Cassius after another awkward pause.

Danny was sidling to the door before Cassius finished the sentence. “Thanks,” he said.

.

Cassius’ feather duster was actually made with feathers. Sam would not approve. Danny waggled it over a vase, a set of nested pots, and a hodgepodge of serving spoons before going back over the shelf they sat upon. The feathers, soft and floppy, made quick work of the task, and Danny moved on to the next shelf, and the next.

Dusting. He was dusting.

He could be studying. You know, for the test he was going to fail. But noooo, he’d had to be an idiot with no situational awareness, and wreck Cassius’ shop.

He didn’t even like antiques.

Danny jabbed a teapot with the duster, and the feathers fluffed around it. He jabbed the teacup stack beside it, too, and then swiped along the tray they were on.

The teacup tower clacked. Danny froze.

“Stupid, Danny,” he muttered. He didn’t want to have to work off more damages, and who knew how expensive these stupid things were.

“It seemed more like impatience, to me.”

Danny’s skin jumped a fraction of a second before the rest of him, and by the time his feet met the floor he’d turned completely around.

Clack!

It was not, precisely, a clack. Rather, it wasn’t one clack. The sound Danny heard was several dozen clacks, piled precariously on top of one another, and teetering.

Danny froze.

His hip was touching the shelf. His skin had apparently regretted its earlier zest for action, because now it was trying to hide under his muscles.

“Cassius!” said Danny. The feather duster flailed in his hand. He stilled it.

Cassius raised an eyebrow, which was an expression Danny was really starting to hate. “You have very poor proprioception, don’t you.”

“I have what?” And now Cassius was using big words to insult him. Great. Just what Danny needed, another Vlad in his life, and this one he couldn’t escape.

Just like the real Vlad, actually. At least Cassius didn’t have ghost powers.

“You have a poor sense of where your body is,” said Cassius, immediately proving himself the superior Vlad on willingness to explain himself alone.

“I’m a teenager. Aren’t we supposed to be clumsy?”

“Not in my shop,” said Cassius. “I don’t want you breaking more things.”

And then he turned and slid through the mess like he wasn’t even there. Which was blatantly unfair when Danny was the ghost here, thanks.

Gosh, that guy was weird. Danny tuned back to dusting.

“Are you coming?” asked Cassius from beside him, and Danny would be proud to say that he jumped much less the second time.

“I didn’t know you wanted me to come,” he said.

“I can hardly teach you how to avoid tripping over your own feet when we’re not even in the same room,” said Cassius. Something in his tone implied that this was blindingly obvious.

What wasn’t obvious was that he’d wanted to do that in the first place. Danny rolled his eyes and followed Cassius into the back room.

At least it was better than dusting.

~~~

“Didn’t your Mom, like, teach you how to fight? Since you were a little kid?” Tucker waggled his pen. Blurring between his fingers, it looked floppy.

“Yeah,” said Danny. “It’s why I keep punching things instead of, you know.”

“Using literally any of your cool ghost powers?”

“Yeah.”

“So why do you keep running into things?” Tucker cracked a grin. “Brain damage from getting thrown into too many walls?”

Danny chucked his eraser at him.

“Ow!” said Tucker, who had in no way been hurt.

“For your information,” said Danny, “it’s hard to keep track of where my feet are when they don’t always exist. And aren’t always attached.”

“Is that why you kick things? So you know where you stand?”

“Can you give me back that eraser?”

Maddie smiled, the expression turned slightly menacing by the red glare of her goggles. She hadn’t pulled them up yet; she’d only finished the fine solder joints on the invention less than a minute before. “In that it’ll make them suffer if they last even a hand on your head,” she said. “It’s got five different defense mechanisms!”

“Really?” asked Danny, half out of morbid fascination, half out of self preservation.

“YEAH!” Jack pumped a fist. “It automatically detects a spook’s weakness and deploys the most effective one, too! No son of ours is gonna be afraid of green ghouls costing him his grades in school!”

“There’s electricity, of course,” chirped Maddie. “And fire, and a little bit of something we’re patenting that should freeze them, too.”

“Superconductor money here we come, baby!” Jack did a little pirouette before leaning down to kiss Maddie full on the lips. The binder in his hands draped over her shoulder as he supported her weight before they finally broke apart.

“Jack,” she said, not a little giddily, “we need to explain before Danny leaves for school.”

“Oh! Right!” Jack thrust the binder into Danny’s hands. “It’s got nematocysts to sting the little–”

Maddie nudged him with her elbow before he could curse. “–Ectoplasmic abominations. Remember the swear jar, dear!”

“Surely ghosts don’t count,” whined Jack. He slouched and gave Maddie a look with big, sad eyes.

“That’s only four,” said Danny, before his parents could delay his departure to school with a wildly enthusiastic display of affection.

“The last one’s just a sonic deterrent! So we can find you if the others fail.”

The thought of Dash discovering Danny was wearing some kind of actual alarm system for his own safety filled him with mortification strong enough that it should have killed him the rest of the way.

Unfortunately, it did not.

.

Worse, they made him put it on.

.

So yes. There were problems with having enthusiastically supportive parents, Sam.

Then again, maybe this was more of a problem of hiding his secret identity from his ghost hunting parents.

One of the two.

Danny grimaced as a shock rippled across the fabric.

“Is it too tight, Danny?” Maddie frowned, reaching for it. “I thought we had your measurements down exactly.”

“Maybe he’s finally having his growth spurt!” exclaimed Jack, slapping Danny hard enough on the back to jar him a step forward.

“Haha,” he laughed. “Maybe!”

“Can you slip a finger under it?” asked Maddie.

Danny did so.

“That’s odd. The texture isn’t bothering you, is it? It’s the same material we use for the jumpsuit lining, it shouldn’t irritate your skin at all.”

Danny danced away from the hand Maddie reached out to the shoulder band. “It’s fine, Mom! I was just…thinking about a school project. That’s all.”

His parents instantly switched modes.

“A school project? I haven’t heard you mention any project.”

Danny grimaced again, this time at the poor lie he’d chosen.

“Danny,” Maddie frowned, “did you forget about it?”

“Maybe?” Danny shrugged his shirt on and bolted out the door, grabbing his backpack on the way. “Thanks for the binder! I’m late to school! Bye!”

The door slammed behind him, and Danny breathed a sigh of relief.

Questions successfully evaded. Maybe kind of successfully evaded.

Close enough.

~~~

“We have a project?” Danny squawked.

“Did you seriously forget about it?” Sam asked. “Lancer’s been reminding us for the last week.”

“You’ve gotta understand, Sam,” said Tucker. “English is when he gets his beauty sleep. You can’t expect him to pay attention.”

“Hey! I listen!”

“What’s the project on, then?”

Danny hunched his shoulders, then jolted as the ecto-binder proceeded to shock him.

“What was that?” asked Tucker.

“My parents decided to go into fashion,” said Danny.

“Your parents?” asked Paulina. “Ew.”

“No one asked you, Paulina!” Sam rounded on her.

“Of course the goth freak thinks the Fentons dress well. What, are you hoping they’ll make a jumpsuit in disease purple?”

The ensuing fight took Danny’s mind off both the binder and the project until class.

~~~

Danny sat through first period English with the binder sending occasional prickles over his skin in waves. If nothing else, at least it kept him awake.

To Danny’s horror, Sam and Tucker hadn’t been making up the project.

“And I expect all of you to have the first part due tomorrow,” he said, glaring around the room in a way that might have been menacing if Danny hadn’t fought literal ghost dragons.

Scratch that, Lancer was threatening his grade and therefore a possible grounding from his parents. He was much scarier than Dora.

Danny slithered lower in his chair.

~~~

By math class Danny was usually more awake, which meant that even the thin silver lining to the constant irritation from his new binder was wearing out.

He pawed at it discretely, using the classroom wall to hide what he was doing, and only got a stronger jolt for the trouble.

“Oww,” he said under his breath, shaking numbness from his hand.

His breath chilled in his lungs and spilled from his mouth in a cloud–or it would have, if the binder had not immediately jolted him with what felt like at least 200 volts of electricity.

Danny yelped, sucked down his own ghost sense, and started coughing.

“Mr. Fenton, are you alri–are you vaping in my classroom?”

“No!” Danny said, before descending into his coughing fit again. “That was special effects. I got some dry ice as a prank. Did it fool you?”

Falluca narrowed his eyes. “I don’t suppose you still have some on you to prove this.”

“Nope! Sorry! Can I go to the bathroom? I can still feel the cough and I don’t want to disrupt class thank you bye!”

Danny flung himself out the classroom door and down the hall before Falluca could interject, grabbing at his throat as he went. It felt like there was frost lining his airway. He hadn’t even known he could choke on his own ghost sense and now he wanted to never do it again, because jeez.

Danny ducked into a bathroom, reached for his transformation, and wheezed as the binder sparked against his skin.

He cursed and leapt for the handicapped stall so he could take it off because he couldn’t fight like this and–

A wire clotheslined him.

“Hah! My hunt goes well today!”

Skulker. Danny formed a fist from where he was laid out on the floor and let ectoplasm spark along his knuckles.

“Oh,” said Danny, “I’m gonna enjoy this.”

He hopped up off the ground and leapt into the air as his transformation rings rolled over his form–

–and promptly collapsed back into the ground, shaking, as the binder reacted violently to the energy.

Skulker loomed over him. “You know, there’s a difference between the hunt going well and just being sad, and I think this is the latter.”

Danny pulled himself together enough to screw one eye open. “Does this mean you’re going to let me go?”

“No. I’m getting paid.”

Skulker aimed one of his guns at Danny’s head. The last thing Danny saw before losing consciousness was the glow of the barrel.

~~~

Danny regained consciousness in Vlad’s evil lab. It looked like the Amity Park one, at least, which meant he didn’t have too far to get home once he escaped.

What was his life that he had to specify? Actually, what was Vlad’s life that Danny had to specify? Why did he have to have multiple evil labs? Danny’s parents were fine with just the one.

Well. Danny’s parents had only one lab of dubious morality. No matter what Sam said. Unless you counted the Fenton Stockades, which was really more of a torture basement if you thought about it.

Anyway.

Danny woke up in Vlad’s evil lab (the Amity Park one) strapped to a table. Vlad was hunched over a keyboard at an adjoining desk, tapping away.

“Vlad?” Danny asked.

Vlad turned with a dramatic swish of his cape, the dork. “Hello, Daniel. I hope this isn’t a bad time.”

Somehow, Danny doubted that. “You had Skulker kidnap me from school,” he pointed out, then stopped. “Wait. Why did you have Skulker kidnap me from school?”

“Well it’s not like you were learning anything. It’s public school. And you sleep through half your classes, anyway.”

“How do you know that? Creep.”

Vlad raised an eyebrow. “I talk to your parents, dear boy. It’s really not that complicated.”

“Yeah, I doubt that.”

“I suppose I do also engage in a little light surveillance from time to time.”

“Try all the time.”

Vlad ignored him. “Regardless. I have a matter of some import to attend to, and it involves you.”

“Oh, good,” said Danny.

Vlad made an annoyed sound and turned back to the screen. Score one point for Danny.

“Yes, well,” he said, clearly trying to pretend Danny hadn’t scored a point. “It’s ghost-flu season in the ghost zone, and I don’t want to catch it.”

“Ghost-flu? That’s a thing?”

“Yes! It is!” Vlad whipped around, agitation plain on his face. “Which you would know, dear boy, if you accepted literally any of my offers to teach you.”

“Yeah, no. Still not interested.”

“Regardless,” Vlad said, “I don’t want to catch it. It’s a miserable illness, and it makes us sweat ectoplasm even in human form, and I have an important merger to negotiate so I cannot get sick this month, much less in such an obviously inhuman way.”

“Uh,” said Danny.

“So I’m immunizing you, child. Since you insist on snooping about my property whenever you get it into your head that I have some kind of scheme to rid myself of your idiot father, you could pass it to me if you get sick. Now hold still.”

Vlad pulled an alarmingly enormous syringe (an evil syringe, Danny’s brain amended, unhelpfully) from a box and moved threateningly towards Danny, wielding it like a weapon.

Danny immediately began wrestling his restraints. “I already have a doctor, Vlad! You do not need to do this!”

“Oh hush,” said Vlad, and injected Danny with the mystery syringe. “See? That wasn’t so bad. Honestly, you’re all drama.”

“What was that?”

Vlad rolled his eyes. “It was the vaccine. Obviously.”

“Vlad–” Danny tried to continue, but his tongue suddenly felt large and awkward in his mouth.

“Oh, and a sedative. That too.”

Danny’s last thought before he passed out again was God he’s such a fruitloop.

~~~

Danny’s head was muzzy the next time he woke up. He was somewhere soft, dim light filtering through his eyelids.

“Wh–” He forced his eyes open.

He was back in his room at home. The blinds were drawn, leaving his room mostly dark.

Danny patted himself down to check for any weird creepy devices Vlad might have left and found none. Checking the window revealed a street outside that looked very much like his own.

If Danny was in some kind of fake house, Vlad had replicated the street. It wasn’t beyond his means, but he only really constructed elaborate sets for football reasons. Therefore, it probably was real, and Danny was probably home.

A few moments later, Danny padded downstairs. Maddie was soldering something at the kitchen table. She set the soldering iron down as Danny walked in.

Point another for this being real.

“Hello, Danny. Feeling better?”

“I guess?” Danny said.

“Vlad said you collapsed while he was at your school to discuss a charitable donation. Since he’s your godfather they let him take you home.” The only sign of Maddie’s disapproval at not being informed was a slight downward quirk of her lips.

Danny couldn’t really say ‘Actually, Vlad had me kidnapped to his secret lab so he could theoretically immunize me against a virus I can only get because I’m part ghost.’

He said “Huh,” instead.

“Do you remember that?” asked Maddie, reaching out to feel his forehead. She frowned. “You’re still running a little cold.”

Danny shrugged the hand off. “I remember tripping in the bathroom?”

He flushed. He hoped Skulker didn’t tell anyone, but who was he kidding? That was probably halfway across the whole ghost zone already. Johnny and Kitty would be making cracks about it within the week.

“Oh, Danny,” said Maddie. “Jack’s teenage years were clumsy, too. You’ll grow out of it.”

“Gosh, I hope so.”

She smiled. “Go back to bed. You’re out sick for the rest of the day, and I want you resting, young man.”

“Yes, Mom,” Danny smiled, and turned back up the stairs.

“Oh, before I forget. Vlad left you some clothes, too.”

“Great,” Danny said with all the enthusiasm that deserved, which was none.

“I know, I know. But here,” Maddie handed him a box.

“Thanks, I guess.”

“At least try them on. He said he thought you’d find them more comfortable.”

“Than what?”

“He didn’t say.”

And Maddie had probably wanted him out of the house as fast as possible.

If they were some kind of mini-me costume, Danny was going to set them on fire and then Vlad’s house for good measure.

“I guess,” Danny said, and returned to his room, where he set the box on his desk with care more commonly associated with adders and bombs.

He eyed it. Rubbed his eyes. Sighed heavily.

Now that he’d confirmed he hadn’t been kidnapped, he mostly wanted to go back to sleep. Whatever sedative Vlad had used on him hadn’t yet cleared out of his system fully, and his head felt cotton-like.

But maybe that was what Vlad wanted him to do while whatever creep device he stuck in the box did its work spying on Danny. It was also possible that he wanted Danny to open the box while he was still muddled from the sedative, because it would trap him or whatever, but that plan seemed needlessly circuitous even for Vlad.

Also, thinking that way was making Danny’s head hurt.

He formed an ectoblast, cursed as the binder jolted him again, wrestled the stupid thing off at last, and stood, frazzled and staring at the box again.

He took a deep breath, several additional auxiliary deep breaths, and then pulled on his ice core a bit for good measure.

Then he formed an ectoblast and opened the box.

In it sat a binder.

Danny stared at it, flummoxed.

He picked it up between two fingers, like if he used more than that it would poison him or possibly explode (again, adders and bombs) and gave it a good shake while holding it as far from his face as he could manage. (probably not a good idea in either case)

It neither poisoned him nor exploded.

After several minutes conducting additional checks for weapons (none) listening devices (none) cameras (the creep, also none) and anything else Danny could think of, he was forced to conclude that Vlad had simply…given him a binder. A nice one.

It seemed like the right size, as well. (The creep)

It was at this point that Danny remembered to check the box, where he discovered a note.

Little Badger,

My secretary noted the trouble your wardrobe seemed to be giving you earlier today. I thought it best to offer you a suitable replacement, since it seems my dear friend Jack has neglected to properly ensure your comfort.

I can personally attest that this brand won’t interfere with your day to day…activities. I am long past the need for such things, of course. In time, I could show you how to rise beyond them, too.

As always, the offer of my aid is open any time you wish to accept it.

Yours,

Uncle Vlad

By the time Danny had deciphered all of Vlad’s excessively loopy cursive, the note was smoldering under his fingers. He let the ecto-energy sparking under his skin consume the rest of the note, and he watched it curl and blacken as it drifted to the floor, finally reaching it as a pile of soot.

Vlad was such a fruitloop.

Still. Danny turned to the binder. It did seen pretty nice.