Royalty

Chapter 5: Friend or foe

Danny woke up with different thoughts on his mind. First of them - 'When will they stop?'. This question was directed to no one, but the answer was obvious. Not soon, he supposed, even before the whole ordeal his parents exploded things daily. Now it was blowing up even more and more. There was an upside to this, however, it was a good wake up call. An hour earlier than needed.

His second thought was 'Hope Walker hadn't went too far'. Danny knew how the warden could become too trigger happy. After some contemplation he jumped off his bed. He will find out about this from morning reports. Ah, here they are, lying on his desk, completely unsuspicious, nevermind its glowing. After taking on his clothes, young king hid the papers inside one of the desk's shelves. He wouldn't take chances.

Danny went downstairs and into the kitchen. He opened the fridge, only for leftovers to attack him. He took it way too calm, you would think that carnivore sausages with sharp teeth should faze everyone, but nope, Phantom just shooed the predators away. They, being formally ghosts because of all ectoplasm in them, felt his power level and retreated in the far corner of the fridge.

Phantom picked up carton of milk and sniffed it. He almost hurled, it was out of date. After throwing the carton in the trash can Danny turned the coffee machine on. Coffaine may not affect him, but he still was slowly getting addicted to it. He put some bread in the toaster, before remembering that he hates toasts. Danny made jam sandwiches and put them on the plate just in time when coffee was made.

"Danny?" He turned around to see Maddie, who came out of the basement. Phantom picked up his breakfast.

"Morning, Mom," he said, going out of the room.

"Since when do you drink coffee?" Maddie asked with raised eyebrow.

"Since the milk became solid mass," Danny answered, "Apparently a week ago."

He returned back to his room, closing the door behind. Putting his breakfast on the desk, Phantom took out morning reports. It was a thick green folder with current date written with purple ink. That were only most important documents, there is much more awaiting in his palace.  Danny carefully broke the stamp and opened the folder.

The first page was filled with numbers. A lot of them, so the king's eyes were running from side to side at first. There was the information about newcomers, not personal, it will take too long to write and read, only how much had died during last day, about ten thousand, not a small amount, but understandable. Phantom made a mental note to create a special organisation for greeting new ghosts and explaining local customs to them. Most of his subjects don't have anything better to do, anyway. And that's yet another matter to think about.

Then there was a message from Frostbite. It said that they had started the creation of the map. Frostbite also mentioned that he met Pandora on his way home and that she decided to join the project and not only allow to make map, but also offered help from her talented greek cartographers. All they needed is king's agreement. Phantom signed the paper with his signature in the right corner and the list instantly dissapeared.

What's next? Next one was way too boring even to mention it, then there were repairing and reconstruction reports, also boring but important information. He recalled ordering to count the population, but Ghostwriter was doing that for who knows how long, so it wasn't much of a problem.

Ah, finally. Walker's report, exactly what he wanted to see. Phantom read the straight writings, throwing one leg over another with the mug in his right hand.

'Report for 19th November, 2008.

Our first night patrol can be called an overall success. And there was hell a lot of caught during it. About fifteen, but that's more than enough for this stinking town. And before you ask, punk, no, I did not introduce the curfew or anything like that. All caught were imprisoned because of stealing, harm, we even interrupted one drug deal. Speaking of, in my opinion all this scum should be thrown in my jail, not that pathetic human one. I would even build a humanproofed block if needed.