#tecnomancy

For simplicity’s sake, the beginning of this situation came in the form of Danny going into the Ghost Zone; he ended up visiting Princess Dora’s haunt. While visiting, Danny noticed that surrounding her castle were several strange plants that stood in the trenches of once might have been a moat.

“Hey Dora, what are those plants doing there?”

Dora looked at the direction he was pointing at and hummed, “Those are special plants meant to guard the castle. Moats aren’t as useful when everyone can fly, you see.” Danny continued to look curiously at the plants.

Some of the plants looked like earthly flowers, with some of the colors harsher and brighter to match with the rest of the Ghost Zone. Something about them gave off an odd feeling in Danny’s chest. Nothing as instinctually frightening as blood blossoms, but they kept him guarded. Princess Dora hadn’t noticed Danny’s silent observations and continued to explain some of their properties.

“You see, for some of the weaker pest-like creatures, these plants are good at disorienting and repelling; similar to how lavender repels mosquitos. Some of the larger ones – like the trees next to the drawbridge – are much more potent and have specific forms of protection. If I whisper a special incantation into the hollow of the tree, the branches can extend and create a barricade of sorts preventing anything to pass through the bridge.”

“That’s a pretty cool way of protecting yourself.” Danny couldn’t help but wonder aloud, “How did you even discover what these plants do?”

Princess Dora perked up at the question, “Oh, I have a book in the palace library that has all sorts of helpful information about these plants! Would you like to see it for yourself?”

What Princess Dora doesn’t realize is that Danny would much rather let her set him on fire in her dragon form than sit in a stuffy library all afternoon. Danny, however, was taught some semblance of manners, and held his tongue on that thought.

“Oh, no thank you. This seems more of Sam’s wheelhouse than mine to be honest.”

“Oh…Lady Samantha?” Princess Dora said coyly, her gentle smile taking on a more mischievous smirk.

“Just Sam, she doesn’t like to be called that,” Danny crossed his arms and tried to look at her sternly for a moment before looking down embarrassed, “and don’t look at me like that,” he muttered.

Dora couldn’t help herself and let out one last giggle before composing herself and suggested lending her book to Danny’s dear friend for a short period of time.

It was a kind gesture for Danny to think of his friend in that moment. After all, Sam had been consumed with upkeeping her greenhouse and trying to expand into growing her own vegetables. She’s spent the last two weeks ranting about fertilizers and visiting libraries and bookstores to see if there were any solutions to her struggling hobby.

At first, her friends would nod supportively whenever she went on her tirades; however, teenage boys are not known for their patience, and Tucker and Danny are no exception.

To be fair, their relaxing weekend was replaced with an early morning visit to the farmer’s market and digging through compost bins collecting soil samples for Sam to take home.

“Sam, I think we’ve managed to bother every single gardener in a ten-mile radius about your gardening issues,” Danny whined. The two of them were sitting in Tucker’s room, waiting for him to get back with the pizza they ordered earlier.

Sam was busy flipping through another gardening magazine and distractedly replied, “And I’m going to keep bothering anyone who might know something about plants until we figure out how to keep my plants from dying.”

Tucker came in at that moment, pizza in hand, and asked Sam, “So if we find a way to keep your plants alive, we won’t need to go dumpster diving for daffodils and daisies?”

“Yeah, basically,” Sam replied.

And so, Danny and Tucker had a new goal in mind. 

--

The day after Danny met up with Dora, Sam received the book.

Tucker and Sam were sitting in the cafeteria for lunch. Tucker was rambling about nanobots detecting fertile soil of some sort. His glasses failing at hiding the dark rings surrounding them.

“I don’t know Tuck…” she mumbled to herself. Tucker was scrolling through his PDA, showing Sam something on his screen, not realizing that Danny had arrived at the table.

“Hey, I might have something for you to help with your gardening. Princess Dora gave me a book all about ghost plants. Maybe there’s some tips for you in there.”

Sam smiled at Danny and thanked him. She then turned to Tucker and sternly said, “Tucker, put away your PDA and eat something!”

--

Sam was skeptical, but decided to give it a shot regardless once she got home. However, she wasn’t risking her greenhouse on this test. She took a potted fern in her room and began speaking to it, in what she belatedly realized was ghost speak. (Her pronunciation “gives her a strange accent” according to Danny, but it works well enough.)

The leaves began to turn a bright purple and started making her feel drowsy. “That’s not good,” she thought to herself.

Once she started walking away from the plant and her foggy mind cleared, she suddenly notices that Tucker is calling her. She answers and before she can speak, Sam hears unintelligible screams through the phone.

“Sam! Get over to the gardening club, now!”

“Tucker, what is it?! Is it a ghost?” Sam opens her closet and grabs a hidden box, containing her ghost catching equipment.

“Worse! I think I revived James Amity!”

Sam pauses for a moment, “…the founder of this town?”

“Yes!”

“How?”

“It’s nanobots, Sam! They regenerated his cells!”

“…Hold on I’ll be right there, send me your location.”

“Hurry!” Tucker yells and hangs up, presumably to figure out what to do with a reanimated corpse.