Orbits of Glass

[sqweakie]

 

Chapter Eleven

After a jaunt through a hellish future, car accidents, suicide attempts, and joining (and being accepted by) the Ghost Patrol, it’s amazing how some things never change.

Lancer stood in the front of the class lecturing about Shakespeare. Normally heavy material, Lancer made it almost unbearable. If it wasn’t for the teacher Danny might have enjoyed Macbeth.

Thursdays always felt longer than any other day of the week. True, he only spent half-days at school. The rest of his schooling he did online, nice when one did not fall asleep until 2 am. He learned better during the online sessions, thus only having to go to school for tests. Unfortunately he still had classes: gym, an automotive class, computer science, and 11th Grade English, all that required his attendance in person.

Danny doodled in the margin of his notebook, a smile quirking his lips. In his freshman year he would have done anything to attend only half-days at Casper High. Now it bothered him, the few hours spent at school forced him to act like a carefree teenager, the same nerdy Danny Fenton during those dreaded four plus hours. People expected him to be the shy, stuttering nerd that he first portrayed in high school. He couldn’t just pretend to be normal anymore and he couldn’t hide the physical changes that his peers couldn't help but focus on.

He wore long-sleeved shirts almost all the time in public. Anywhere where he had to be ordinary Danny Fenton, not Echo and not Phantom, he also wore a black brace on his right arm. The stiff material reached from his knuckles to just below his elbow. At one time it was for support but now is served to cover the roadmap of scars winding around his forearm, little tokens from the car accident just before sophomore year.

He loathed the stares his arm gained from other students. It made him self-conscious and never failed to remind him of everything he lost due to the accident. True, he also gained and there was no chance he would be here at this point, ghost hunter in human and ghost form, Valerie's boyfriend and a ‘B’ student overall in school if his life had gone to plan. If he continued to live his double life without help from anyone outside his small trusted circle of Jazz, Sam and Tuck things would be radically different.

He shook his head, driving off the self-reflection and trying to turn his attention back to the lecture. Tapping his pen idly, he lost interest again minutes later. He let his gaze wander away from Lancer and to the rest of the room. Sam and Valerie attended different classes this period, the former history and the latter gym. If fact, the only people he recognized in the room were Dash and Nathan, the others part of the faceless majority of his class that he had no contact (positive or negative) with due to his status as one of the ‘freaks and geeks’.

He let the pen slip from his grasp as he glanced around again. A shiver ran down his spine and a blue mist curled past his lips. Clasping a hand to his mouth, his eyes darted left and right. Ghosts rarely made it to Casper High since the inception of the Patrol due to a full-time hunter patrolling the area. A hunter that normally intercepted ghosts that frequented the school in the past.

The temperature dropped. At the head of the class Lancer froze mid-sentence and paled at the change. Students also looked around, some more sensitive to the new atmosphere than others. Warily he reached under his seat, snagging a strap and pulled his bag within easy reach. The schools forbade students from carrying ectoguns (any guns actually) into the building. However, tucked between a textbook and his sweatshirt he kept a Thermos that was not on the banned list.

Backpack literally in hand Danny closed his eyes, trying to pinpoint the ghost while ignoring the nausea and worry for the patrolling hunter. To let ghosts (single or plural) slip past the outer defenses of the school meant somehow the human was incapacitated and he had no way to know how injured that hunter may be.

The air shivered and his eyes snapped open.

“Get down!”

With reflexes to be proud of the entire class ducked, many making it under desks as something crashed through the ceiling. Danny tightened a hold on the shoulder strap as he staggered to his feet, bag swinging around hand bumping his hip.

The ghost hovered for a few precious seconds. It looked squid-like with a large, misshapen head and at least a dozen tentacles drifting below. It stiffened when the beady red eyes found Danny, the only human left standing in the rood while everyone else remained on the floor.

He blindly groped in his bag, fingertips brushing books and his glasses. The ghost hissed and plowed into him, bag flying one way, Danny flying the other way. He hit a desk and kept rolling until his feet could find a purchase on the debris strewn floor and he could stand.

It twirled through the air before swooping in close. Danny dove to the side with a deft handspring that caused the ghost mostly miss him. Unluckily a couple trailing tentacles caught his chin and shoulder. He stumbled out of his landing, slamming his back against a wall.

With the unearthly grace many ghosts possessed, the squid flew up into the ceiling, creating another hole and causing a new wave of debris to fall into the classroom. Then... only silence filled the room. Pieces of plaster and ceiling and dust fell to the floor, creaking ominously above students as they emerged. Gasping, he leaned his full weight against the wall, ears straining to hear the tiniest sounds. Around him papers crumpled and students whispered masking any of the subtle noises a ghost caused.

“Stay down and stay quiet!” he ordered, his voice closer to his Echo persona than Fenton. Some people stayed down, others wary and unsure if they should follow the directions.

“It’s coming back.” Silence covered the students as the crouched back down. He remained standing with his back against the wall, waiting for that subtle noise, a quiet brush of ectoplasm against the object to give away the ghost’s position. He waited an eternity poised to move.

Then he ducked and with a crunch a tentacle drove through the wall right through the space his chest occupied moments before. It retracted and then the ghost plowed through the opening. Danny jumped forward to avoid the falling drywall. Grabbing an abandoned textbook off the floor, he chucked it in the general directors of the thing’s head to distract it as he ran low to the front of the room, specifically to Lancer’s desk.

The man crouched on the other side, fingers fumbling with keys to unlock a drawer. Danny decided to take the more direct approach. Balling his fist, he punched through thin venire on the front of the desk and grabbed the thermos inside. Spinning around, he pressed the button as tentacles grabbed for him, a beak gaping open. The blue light blinded him as tentacles brushed at his face and legs.

The wind died and the room fell silent. Heads poked above overturned desks and Lancer emerged from behind his own desk. Danny slumped and rested his head against the punctured desk, cradling the thermos to his chest. Huffing with anxiety, Lancer leaned down and offered his hand. Danny grabbed his wrist and the older man pulled him to his feet. The teacher asked if Danny was alright even as he clutched the ectopistal that originally rested next to the Thermos in the locked drawer.

“Mister Lancer?” a voice called through the hole in the wall. Moving over they could see Mrs. Podaski, one of the language teachers, standing on the other side of the wall. Her face dripped with nervous sweat while both hands wrapped around her pistol with a white-knuckled grip. “Our door’s blocked.”

Danny motioned for Lancer’s ectogun. Reluctantly, the teacher handed it over. Danny took aim and ordered everyone away from the wall. Four precise shots crumbled drywall and created an opening for the other teacher and her students to slip through.

“Who has thermos training?” Lancer asked the combined classes once everyone was inside the single room. Hesitantly, Dash raised his hand. Danny stepped over to the blond and handed him the red device. As the football player pulled the strap over his shoulder, the halfa continued to the wall, rescuing his backpack from under a chair. Reaching inside he pulled out his personal thermos trimmed in Fenton Green.

He raised an eyebrow at Lancer, daring him to decline his help as he and the other teacher moved towards the door. The bald man winced but held to door open to let him pass. They stepped out into the deserted hallway, Mrs. Podaski leading, Danny next, while Lancer watched their backs. As they moved along they checked on each class, making sure the other teachers and students were unharmed. A couple classes mentioned seeing ghosts but they remained unmolested. Continuing on they made it to a little used hallway near the center of the school. Ahead they heard steps and Danny moved up front next the increasing nervous teacher, her gun shaking.

They stepped around the corner, guns and Thermos whining with energy. Mirroring them was Mr. Jones, Ms. Adavitch, and Ann Smith. Lancer sighed audibly with relief and relaxed his stance and pointing his gun towards the ground.

“Any one hurt at your end?”                             

“No, thank goodness,” Mister Jones declared. “A squid ghost trashed the home-ec room and a couple other classes but that is it. Miss Smith was able to contain the creature.”

Danny nodded towards the girl, a strawberry blond that was an almost perfect blend between her mother and father. She nodded back as the teachers held a short conversation before making their way to their shared destination.

Together they entered a small room next to the boiler. Barely any standing room for a group of six, Lancer pushed through, snagging a radio on his way. Monitors lit up as he flicked switches, turning on ghost sensors filling the school. Immediately Danny picked up his own signature, the almost nonsensical numbers glowing faintly on the screen, proclaiming Echo to anyone who knew the codes. Scanning the screens, he picked out a dozen or so humans with elevated ecto-levels and two unidentified ghost signatures at the north end of the school.

Ann tapped Lancer’s shoulder and then the screen where she also spotted the anomalies. With the ghosts pointed out to him the teacher panicky called into the radio. With the adults occupied, all concentrated on the screens, Danny slunk to the back of the room while Ann followed.

“Not how I was planning to spend my day. How about you?” she drawled, her southern accent thicker since the loss of her mother. Danny nodded in agreement, knowing the rest of the day’s classes were shot.

Half listening to the police scanner as the on-duty hunters converged on the school, he couldn’t help but wish that something would go to plan. At least now he had time for a visit before he had to go back to Valerie’s apartment to baby-sit Robin.

oOo

"So then the squid drives a tentacle through the wall, right where my chest should have been if I hadn't ducked."

His thumb rubbed the back of her limp hand. The skin felt like parchment under the calluses on his fingers. He could trace every freckle and wrinkle. Her hair lay limply on the pillow, a splash of red on hospital white. A bruise shone a deep purple on the side of her jaw. Her face relaxed in timeless sleep, a modern sleeping beauty whose fairy tale ending had yet to come.

Janet Smith, hunter, wife, mother of two and temporary surrogate mother to a half ghost lay as still as death in a hospital bed in the hospice ward of Amity General. Her roommates were the two other victims of the Witch Doctor. Hunters Anderson and Townsend filled two other beds in the room, all equally unaware of the time that passed.

Danny spent a number of the sleepless nights here. He would come and sit at her bedside when he needed company but didn‘t want to disturb any of his friends. The hospital staff grew used to the ghost keeping the comatose woman company. He would sit at her side and tell her about his day and other things. All those times when he couldn't talk to her and now after he lost her he finally found his voice. He lost count of the times he wished he had opened up to her just once before that terrible January day.

It was mid-afternoon just after the ghost attack at the school. He sat at the huntress' bedside as Danny Phantom. He wore his 'casual' look: jeans, t-shirt while black socked feet were tucked underneath him. He paused his narrative of the day's ghost attack to just observe her. She looked exactly like someone froze her at that one moment over a year ago.

"Well, the kid we found still won't talk," he finally said, skipping to one of the other topics bothering him. "Val and I both think he's a super and he's keeping tight-lipped about everything. We haven't caught him using his powers but it's just a matter of time. Emotionally he's just as closed off as before. I had Sgt. Winker run a search on his name. All he came up with was a fake address in Gotham so we're at a dead end there.

"I don't know what to do with him, Janet. Things keep feeling worse and worse, that overdeveloped sixth sense you warned me about is working overtime. It feels like the storm's coming. You know, like that one time I staying at your house and the power went out. Ann kept hitting Jason with accent pillows and Brian was going through tech withdrawal. Remember how Brian and I sat on the porch and the air got really thick and the sky turned yellow. The storm that blew over the oak in your backyard. I'm getting that same heavy feeling," he babbled on even though the memorable storm happed last August while she lay in a coma.

"Gosh, I wish you were here. But if wishes were horses..." He had to stop, tears choking him. Emotions seemed closer to the surface when he was in ghost mode and those traitorous tears burned his eyes on more than one occasion. He forced his voice past the lump in his throat and kept talking.

"I miss talking to you. Hell, I miss even talking to Jazz. It's sad how my family keeps slipping away. First I lose my birth family. Then you and Brian took me in. That was a great couple of months. It's just not the same without you. The twins and Brian miss you so much."

He picked up her limp hand, rubbing circles across the dry skin.

A soft knock come from the doorway. The nurses and aides never knocked, nor did the regular visitors. He looked up surprised to see Thor and Gus standing there. He gently laid down Janet's hand as they approached.

"Phantom, we have a problem."

oOo

Robin paced the living room, alone. Went from feeling trapped to fearing the outside and back again, paranoia at its finest. Beyond that, he felt closer to himself, able to tell how off his behavior of the past weeks exactly was.

He forced himself down the hall planning to take a shower to distract himself when he noticed Valerie's bedroom door was open.

Earlier on he learned that this one particular door remained locked at all times. He had stepped into the room only twice before and neither time did he have the leisure to look around and examine everything to his heart's content. Deciding to repress his curiosity he left the room alone, not breaking down the door nor pick the locks. Now that curiosity burned away the anxiety and artificial fear as he paused in the doorway.

He glanced around but he remained alone. This was the time of the day both Danny and Valerie attended school and Damian had been called to work due to some undisclosed emergency leaving the hero alone for the first time in weeks. Robin remained unsure of their exact schedule due to the fact that he spent a greater majority of the time sleeping the past couple of weeks. That alone should have triggered warning bells. Even though this was the most rested he felt ever, he couldn't make himself get up and move.

Once he entered Valerie's room couldn't help but notice that Danny must spend a majority of his time in this room. One dresser held girl paraphernalia while the other had a stack of comic books and a laptop. Pictures plastered the wall and frames displayed important people or moments. Certain people appeared again and again. He could pick out Danny's friend, Sam, easily enough. A black teen also appeared often, either wearing a red beret or a red skullcap, his smile ranging from huge to hesitant.

One picture tucked in back caught his attention. He lifted it up and wiped dust off the glass. Details unmarred by the dust came into focus, a guy and a girl both wearing tinted glasses. They wore Kevlar vests, the girl sporting a white shirt under hers while the boy word a dark gray t-shirt. He stood behind the girl, arms wrapping around the girl with a million-dollar smile.

Robin winced when a different image superimposed on the glass over the photo. Rain fell around a boy, eyes intense behind green glasses. "Just hold still..."

Lightning flared around and a shadow laughed in his face.

"...hold still. We're going to take you to a hospital..."

Rain falling around and even as the woman laughed he could hear weapons firing around him.

"Are you alright..." People flew through the air and someone crouched over him as he lay on the soaked ground.

"She trapped it to hurt you..." his voice echoed from his dreams.

He dropped the picture frame and spun around.

"I'm leaving," he told the empty apartment. Weeks of perceived isolation, strangers his only company making him long for something, familiar or new he couldn't decide. He marched into the living room and pulled on one of Danny's abandoned sweatshirts. He grabbed his boots out of the coat closet, the heavy metal familiar and welcomed after spending so much time in socks and soft carpeting. Without giving himself time to think about it he threw to door open and left the apartment for the first time in over a weak and alone for the first time in weeks.

He didn't let himself succumb to the fear, the agoraphobia at having open sky above him. It still lingered beneath the surface, like it could escape from its box at any moment but he pushed that unwanted feeling away and for the first time it retreated to the box where he kept most of his fears locked up. His lips twitched in into a smile and he felt a little better, a little more like himself.

The city of Amity Park reminded him of a quieter, rougher version of Jump City. The buildings felt worn, paint peeling and glass dirty in the afternoon sun. Despite the rough appearance he could hear the normal sounds of people living. Actually, the buildings reminded him of the area near the Narrows, buildings crouched together while people tried to make the best of the lives they were given.

The sounds started about four or five blocks from the apartment building. As he passed an alley he could hear a panic-laden voice interspersed with other voices. Pressing against a brick wall he could see three people about a third of the way down.

The words cleared as he crept closer.

"I really think you should be on your way," a woman said nervously as she tried to back down the alley. The three men shifted, blocking her exit. Adrenaline rushed through his veins, a feeling he didn't realize he missed until it almost overwhelmed him. Not noticing the grin that spread itself subconsciously across his face he approached the group.

The woman continued to move back and forth, searching for an opening, keeping the three goon's attention on her. Without warning he struck, knocking the first man down and sending a second stumbling before they realized a new person had entered the equation. In seconds he knocked the third man into the wall and threw the second against a rusted dumpster. With inhuman shrieks, something oozed out of the men and rose into the air, a miasma of green that hung like fog until a breeze rippled down the alley and pushed it away and towards the sky.

Robin watched the miasma disappear for a moment longer before he turned his attention to the woman he just saved. Up close he could see she was older with silver hair and very dark skin. He made his way over as she pulled herself up and gathered a paper grocery bag into her arms.

"What the hell..." one of the men groaned and sat up. Robin dropped into a defensive pose but the woman made her way to her fallen attacker.

"It's okay," the woman murmured as she crouched next to the man. "A ghost possessed you but it has fled." The woman's heavy accent sounded soothing after the harsh shrieks of the green fog. All three men staggered to their feet and looked around. After apologizing they exited the alley, leaving Robin alone with the woman.

"Are you alright?" he asked. She nodded as she carefully stood. Close up he could see the wrinkles lining her face and accenting dark eyes, an almost violet-black as she stood in the alley's shadows. Possession could be the only explanation for the radical change in the three men. He decided to leave the men be and keep an eye on the woman.

"Can I walk you home Ms...?"

"Mrs. Nuodov," she answered his question. She smiled showing perfectly formed white teeth and causing her eyes to crinkle. "I would appreciate it, but, please call me Patricia."

Chapter Twelve