Danny Phantom - The Next Chapter

Reunion, Part 2

Reunion, Part 2
 
Danny stared down at the football field absently as his friends talked quietly amongst themselves. The conversation he had overheard that morning was replaying in his head as the full seriousness of the situation settled over him like a crushing weight. This wasn’t just a few rogue agents experimenting with things they shouldn’t. This was turning into a full-blown coup. How was he supposed to deal with that? It was one thing to fight the most powerful ghosts in existence, but entirely another to stop a ghost-powered takeover of the US government.

‘Danny?’ Tucker asked and he jumped back to the conversation.

‘Sorry, what?’ he replied.

‘I said, I know it sounds crazy, but has anyone from the government reached out to you? I mean, if this is such a big threat, wouldn’t someone up there want to get in touch?’

He shook his head. He figured that he was technically still underage so it would make sense the government would be going through his parents. But at the same time, he figured after everything he’d done, all the ghosts he’d fought and all the catastrophes he’d averted, someone might have considered asking him for help.

‘What did you expect?’ Sam muttered, ‘It’s the government. They probably hate the fact that they can’t conscript you or use you as some kind of weapon.’

Danny smirked at her cynicism but his amusement was short-lived.

‘What are we gonna do?’ he sighed, ‘This isn’t as straight-forward as show up, fight a ghost, then throw it bac into the Ghost Zone.’

‘Why not?’ Valerie asked, ‘We’ve fought all kinds of crazy ghosts. Why would this be any different?’

‘Yeah,’ Tucker agreed, ‘Sure the stakes are high, but when are they not? Your evil self from the future, Pariah Dark, the asteroid, all of them could have ended the world and all that happened was that we all worked together and ended up getting stronger.’

Sam nudged Danny’s arm and he glanced at her.

‘We’ve got this!’ she said, ‘We’ll figure it out, one way or another.’

 
—————
 

‘Power charging,’ Maddie announced, ‘Eighty-seven percent and rising.’

‘Looks like everything is holding together,’ Jack replied, making some final adjustments to the transmitter at the top of their new device.

‘DNA sample ready?’

Jack turned to the small dish set on the table which held a small lock of Danny’s hair. He was more than happy to oblige when it came to helping with his parents’ experiments these days which meant they had no shortage of test subjects they could safely experiment on.

‘All ready, honey!’ he called and quickly moved out of the device’s immediate area.

‘Status at one hundred percent,’ Maddie declared, ‘Beginning pulse!’

She hit the large, blinking button on the lab table and the transmitter exploded in brilliant green light. They both averted their eyes at the flash of light and slowly blinked their vision back into focus. The device was powering down again and they hurried to the dish. Inside, it appeared Danny’s hair was the same as it had been, except it seemed to be oozing green ectoplasm. As they watched, the ectoplasm seemed to vaporise in the air, fading from view entirely.

‘All traces of ectoplasm are gone,’ Maddie said quietly as she read the computer screen.

Jack, usually exuberant at a successful experiment, looked as sombre as Maddie.