As well as parent-teacher conferences usually went, this one was off to a rough start. Danny had barely gotten off easy last year as a Freshman, now as a Sophomore he'd realized how lenient Mr. Lancer had really been. Teacher-wise, Mrs. Thornlope was cut from the worst cloth there was. Sure, Danny was skipping class frequently and it was reasonable that any teacher would call him out on that. But Mrs. Thornlope... she went the extra mile.
Rather than quietly giving him a detention slip, she would stop class to personally lecture him and criticize each and every one of his faults. She'd announce his grades to the entire class and even threw shade at Jazz, who had butted heads with her two years earlier. It was almost reassuring to know that even his better-than-perfect sister had seen the stick poking out of this woman's ass.
It was only the second week of the semester and his parents were definitely pissed off that they'd already been called in for a conference. Last year his problems didn't start until the second month of High School, but at this point Danny didn't think any of them were surprised. Not that his parents knew about his activities outside of class, they'd just come to expect him to fail. It was only his fault for setting the bar so low. Nonetheless, that did little to ease their twin gazes of disappointment.
"Hello, Dr. Fenton, Mrs. Fenton. Please come in to discuss Daniel's... disciplinary issues."
Mom shot her a lackluster smile. "Actually, I'm Dr. Fenton."
"Oh, I see.” She turned her nose upright with a sneer. “Well, right this way... Mrs. Fenton."
Oh shit.
Danny glanced at both his parents to check if he had heard right. Mom's face was flushed pink and even Dad looked like he'd been slapped. After a moment, they shook themselves from their stupor and followed his teacher into her office.
Danny knew then and there that there was no way in hell Mrs. Thornlope was going to walk away from that meeting without facing both his parents' wrath.
“Welcome to the Nasty Burger, what can I get for ya?” Valerie asked in her fakest, cheeriest voice to the three men sitting in a booth.
“The Nastiest Burger ya got.” One of them snickered and promptly yelped when he was presumably kicked under the table by the man across him, who was watching him in silent judgement. “A cheese burger with extra everything.” He firmly said with a pinched smile, finally turning to Val.
She nodded, writing it down as she eyed the man next to him.
This one was odd. From the way he stopped staring at his friend and turned to his menu for a second and then to Valerie and then stopped. And stared at her, tilting his head.
Yup, total space case. But being honest to herself, the messy black hair and curious blue eyes did remind her a little of-
Well, maybe she shouldn’t judge him too harshly just like that.
Then his friend elbowed him, softly enough to not make him flinch and only turn his head again. “Cas, we’ve talked ‘bout staring; don’t, man.” Then he turned an apologetic look to her and said, “Sorry. He, uh, grew up sheltered. Just some fries for him.”
Valerie nodded knowingly, because she didn’t know what else to do besides look for this Cas’s affirmative nod and write his order down before finally turning to the longer-haired one.
“Just a salad, thanks.” He said with a polite smile.
Val ignored the mumbling about rabbit food and wrote that down, too, and then she finally left.
Through all of this, she held her smile firmly in place, not faltering. If she couldn’t deal with direct contact with customers, it was mascot duty again.
Fuck no.
- - -
Valerie didn’t expect to see these men again so soon, nor in such circumstances.
Around town, yeah. For what she had overheard, they wanted to see some ghosts, just like many tourists were doing as of late.
But in the middle of her beating the Box Ghost, in a moment where he had gotten lucky and managed to slip from her for a second, in this abandoned warehouse filled with –you guessed it– boxes, in the middle of the night? Please.
And yet.
“I AM THE BOX GHOST! BEWA-Aaahh!”
That had been a gunshot.
“Is this guy for real, Sammy? Ghosts aren’t usually this lame.” Said burger-guy.
“Focus, Dean.” That was salad-dude.
(There already was one salad-lover-Sam kinda-sorta-in-a-way-somehow in her life.)
Another gunshot.
“Dean, Sam, there is somebody else here.” Said fries-Cas.
But Red Huntress hadn’t really heard him, because at that point she had jumped back into the fight.
“Hey, dumbass!” She yelled, and didn’t wait for the ghost to turn around to start shooting her ecto-beam.
The ghost shrieked, and tried to fly away, but was stopped by the ecto-lasso that had caught him in the middle, and yanked, (with a strength Valerie knew wasn’t all hers), making him crash against a wall when he couldn’t focus in phasing through it.
“I AM THE BOX GHOST AND I WILL NOT BE CONTAINED!!! EVEN IF YOU DO LOCK ME IN ONE OF THOSE CILINDRICAL-!!!”
But he was cut off as Val effectively captured him and sealed her Thermos before you could say ‘beware’.
Then she turned her full attention on the three men. The brothers (they had to be, with how similar their gobsmacked-wary expressions were) had been holding shotguns at the ready, but now they were pointing at the floor (but could come back up any second she showed in-humanity), and fries-Cas gave a few steps in her direction.
“You are the girl from before, in the poorly-named diner. Your name-tag said Valerie.”
And gone was that curious oddness from him, replaced with laser-sharp concentration and intensity. Just like she had seen on Danny when they had gone to rescue their parents from that damned cruiser.
“You kid a Hunter?” Dean asked in a weird tone, looking at her height with new, (sad,) eyes.
Red Huntress grunted. They weren’t really questioning their friend’s claiming. He had said it was her, and they believe it. So she willed her mask off and glared at the three of them. “How the hell did you know that?” She said, rising her chin defiantly. Right now, they weren’t customers, and she wasn’t working that work, so she didn’t have to play nice. “What are ya even doing here?”
“Same as you, it seems.” Injected salad-man, looking at her Thermos. “Although I think our methods may not be the same.”
Red looked back at their weapons, and a corner of her mouth twitched in amusement. Had they really come after a ghost –no matter which one– with a regular gun?
Or had they found another way of hurting them she should know of?
“Maybe.” She conceded.
Whatever it was, they didn’t seem stupid (dumb, yeah), and they had talked about other ghosts, so they had to know something. But they wouldn’t be talking about it in a dark and lonely warehouse.
“Come to the Nasty Burger tomorrow at half past one. Sodas will be on the house.”
And without waiting for a reply, she summoned her hover-board, and flew away.
The plague doctor’s stick lightly prodded Danny’s chest, making the halfa wobble backwards. Sam glared, rushing to Danny’s side to help him stand. His legs were shaking badly.
“Tucker, I told you to get Frostbite!” Sam growled. She shifted to put Danny’s arm around her neck, fully supporting him. Tucker waved his arms desperately at the giant, looming figure of the doctor.
“I couldn’t find the Far Frozen. I think the Ghost Zone shifted again, and this guy should be good enough! He’s a plague doctor! Doctor’s literally in the name.”
He looked more like an omen of death. Black robes, a short black hat and the iconic snow-white mask that matched white gloves. He stood straight in the middle of Danny’s room, hands clasped over an intricate walking stick.
“I have a medical degree,” the doctor spoke up, his voice hollow and echoy from the mask. Sam’s eyes glanced between him and Danny, skeptically.
“It’s good enough,” Danny wheezed. “Help me lay down, I can’t stand anymore.”
Tucker zoomed to his friends’ aid, helping Sam move the ghost boy onto his bed. They adjusted the pillows to make him comfortable, and the plague doctor hovered around curiously. Sam noticed that he didn’t walk. He lightly hovered over the ground.
“So what seems to be the matter?” the doctor questioned. By now, Danny had gone very pale, and Sam motioned to the deep claw slashes on his chest.
“He’s bleeding out!” she told him. The doctor held up a hand, shaking his head.
“No, no, this is good. I won’t need the leeches, his humors should be rebalanced soon,” he insisted. Sam stared at him.
“Do you actually have a medical degree?” she demanded to know. The doctor glanced at her.
“Of course,” he scoffed. “Class of 1350. I was the best student. Only half of my patients died.”
“...Have you updated much?” Tucker wondered.
“How much can medicine possibly change in 1700 years?” the doctor questioned. Danny let out a pained wheeze, and the doctor turned his attention to the teen. “So you look like you’re clear of the plague, which is good, very good. In a few moments, the humors should be rebalanced, and I’ll stitch you back up.”
Sam crossed her arms, staring as she did the math in her head. Class of 1350, the mentioning of the plague, just everything about this guy.
“Were you alive during the bubonic plague?” Sam blurted out.
“Yeah, I died from it,” the doctor told her. Sam took a deep breath. The doctor lightly poked Danny’s wound with a finger. Despite the mask, she could see that he was grossed out. “Ew, ectoplasm.” He wiped his finger on Danny’s bedsheets.
I want to participate in DannyMay/PhaniMay because I haven’t before but I can’t find the list of prompts. Can someone help me? I’ve looked at everyone else’s posts for years and I’m so excited to try this year!
Day 7 - The Lunch Lady!
It was kinda hard to think what she should be based on. So I’ve decided to go with the ghost posessing sausages and giving them out to Pokemon and people she likes from her tail! She can also used the torn off sausages as nunchucks.
The second pic is a redesign of my “DP” pokemon, first in my list. Since he’s actually going to guide the Player into the G-Zone, he needs to talk. And he need to be the son of Poke-scientists. So, I made him a furry, sorry :^)
The name is stupid, but: a) It’s pronouncible; b) It is self-proclaimed by Danny and his original alias is even dumber, so... (:
The worst part of the transformation was having to switch from his lungs to gills. It'd taken him quite a while to even learn how to trigger the switch between airways, but it took him even longer to fathom the idea of holding his breath to the brink of suffocation. Fully submerged underwater his body would twist and morph and bones would rearrange, all while having to stay level-headed enough to keep his lips tight shut. His lungs burned and it took everything in his power to will his stupid gills to inhale the water. The sensation of water passing through the weird flaps on his neck never failed to send chills down his spine (and through his tail) but the alien feeling vanished after a few minutes of breathing.
Sam and Tucker tried to understand when he told him about how hard it was not to choke on the water, but they seemed to have misplaced confidence in him. By now, they'd seen him battle ten-foot-tall sea creature with nothing but his claws and hydrokinesis. They'd seen him swim to unknown depths with the grace of a born-merperson and with the speed of military-grade torpedoes. They'd seen him dodge rainstorms and pull himself out of his parents' capture nets. After all these incredible feats, it was just a bit unreasonable that he still had issues with his transformation. Surely, he knew his body by now... right?
He wished it was more than just bravado. He hardly knew a thing about his body anymore. Most of the things he'd done in the water, as Danny Cyclone, they'd been spur-of-the-moment. In reality, he knew next to nothing about what it really meant to be a merperson or how to use his powers. He didn't know how to reason with the other merpeople or how to win over his parents so that they didn't dissect him upon learning his dirty little secret. Not to mention, he didn't know if he was more fish than boy anymore. Was that a good thing? A bad thing? What was he?
A kid from Amity Cove?
A merman who protected the Eastern shore?
A filthy hybrid who happened to fall into a series of bizarre circumstances?
Once Jazz found out about it all, which wasn't exactly the most reassuring turn of events, she tried helping him cope with all his existential anxiety. She told him to take long, soothing breaths.
"Inhale, exhale... just breathe, Danny."
She rubbed circles into his back and he forced a haughty and deliberate sigh.
He didn't know how to tell her that breathing was one of the single things he wasn't sure how to do anymore.
