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“Are you sure about this?” Tucker asked with a skeptical expression as he leaned back in Sam’s bean bag with his PDA in hand.
Danny laughed from his position sprawled horizontal in the air, white hair billowing around his face. “You're making it sound like I'm going into battle.”
“You're going into a group of rabid fans,” Sam deadpanned as she finished up her nail polish with a casual flick of her wrist. “It's almost the same thing.”
Danny threw his hands in the air with a petulant, “I'll be fine!” They could be such worry-warts sometimes.
She looked him up and down and raised a single eyebrow. “You don't look fine .”
“Wow, thanks Sam! That makes me feel great!” Danny sat up and gestured at himself and all of his jumpsuit-clad glory. “Besides, I always look like this!”
Sam raised her other eyebrow and didn’t answer, which. Rude .
Tucker looked up from his PDA with a bored expression. “Is it worth it? What can you get? 20 dollars at Walmart?”
Danny straightened up in indignation. “I'll have you know it's actually 50 dollars.”
“Wooooow,” Tucker drew the word out way too long and Danny scowled at his friends.
“You guys are supposed to support me!”
“And we're supposed to tell you when you're doing something stupid,” Tucker countered.
“And this definitely counts,” Sam added.
Danny scoffed and crossed his arms. “You're just mad that you would lose if you tried.”
“Oh, you’re on, ghost boy!” Sam stood up with her hands on her hips.
Tucker put his PDA down. “We’ve been with you since day one. You really think we wouldn’t be able to pull off a Phantom costume for a stupid Halloween contest? Judged by the idiots in our high school?” He laughed. “We know exactly what they will be looking for.”
“Alright,” Danny said easily before continuing with a grin, “and if you win, I'll get the gift card.”
“What?!” Sam exclaimed in outrage.
Tucker jumped in with an equally angry, “How is that fair?!”
“ It was my idea! And it is me !”
Sam and Tucker spoke in unison, “No.”
“We’ll split it,” Danny amended, “50/50.”
Sam rolled her eyes, which was essentially an agreement.
“Fine,” Tucker said. “What do you even want it for?”
“Ice cream machine,” Danny answered immediately.
Which made Tucker narrow his eyes. “You have ice powers.”
“So?” Danny asked cluelessly.
Tucker exchanged a look with Sam who let out a heavy sigh and shook her head. He turned back to Danny. “Never mind.”
Danny clapped his hands. “Well then, let’s get to it! The competition is tonight, no time to waste!”
“ Ready ?” Danny asked, feeling silly in a wig mimicking his own hair, but he really didn’t want this competition to be the reason his secret identity was blown. He had decided to skip colored lenses and instead kept his eyes in what Tucker had dubbed “ghost-mode”. The hardest part had been to get a black jumpsuit since his personal one at home was white, but luckily Sam had apparently stashed a replica of his jumpsuit at her place for “emergencies”. When he had asked where she had gotten it from, she has made a face, muttered something about a fan club and then just shook her head with a, “I t ’s better if you don’t know.” For once, Danny decided to leave it.
He raised his voice again, “Guys? You ready?”
“Yeah, let’s get this over with,” Sam said as she stepped out of her bathroom, swiping the high-quality white wig out of her eyes.
Danny took in the sight of her black shirt and black pants, as well as the multitude of holes cut in both coupled with makeup to mimic morbid, green wounds. He was fairly certain that all of the wounds matched up with ones had gotten in the last. He didn't know if he was disturbed or impressed. Nevertheless, he couldn’t let the self-satisfied look on Sam’s face go unchallenged and raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “Really?”
She shrugged, totally unapologetic. “What? This is how you look most of the time.”
“I do not!”
“Maybe try getting beat up less, then.”
And Danny knew that it came from a place of caring about him. He also knew that it came from a place of wanting to fuck with him, so he flipped her off and turned to his other friend—hoping he would at least be on his side—only to find him still missing.
“Tucker!” Danny called. “Come on! We have to go!”
The answering, “Coming!” came muffled through Sam’s walk-in closet’s door and a second later, Tucker burst into the room and Danny had to shield his eyes not to get blinded by the sudden light. He was covered in blinking lights, cables, and several seemingly disconnected scr eens. His dreads were sprayed white with cheap hair-color from the ancients knew where which resulted in a slightly gray tone. Danny couldn’t keep in his laughter as he asked, “What are you supposed to be?”
Tucker struck a wide-stanced and overly-dramatic pose, complete with a hooked thumb and a cocky smile. “I’m Phantom 2.0!”
“You’ve watched too many sci-fi shows,” Danny deadpanned.
“And taken all the wrong fashion choices from them,” Sam added with a theatrical gag.
Tucker gasped, jostling a screen on his shoulder that wasn’t hooked up to anything, and making the multitude of colorful cables hanging from his arm swing. “How dare you?!”
Danny wondered what he’d done to deserve this. “You know this was a look-alike competition, right? You’re supposed to—” And that was when he spotted it. The tail. It was black, furry, and swaying as Tucker moved. Danny covered his face with his hands as he groaned, “….Why do you have a tail ?”
Tucker huffed and raised his nose in the air. “The question is; why don’t you?”
“ Cause I’m a human ?” Danny said and hated the desperation he heard in his own voice.
Tucker tsked, shaking his head. “So small-minded. The world of ghosts is more vast than you can ever imagine.”
“I hate you guys.”
Sam sighed dramatically and did what Danny really hoped wasn’t an impression of him as she grabbed one of her artificial wounds and groaned, “Ouch. The world never stops beating me down.”
“Please, let’s just go and get this over with.”
“Really? You dweebs are participating in the contest?” Danny turned at the familiar voice only to stop dead in his tracks when he saw Dash. The bully was dressed up in a fairly decent Phantom-cosplay with a quality wig, green contacts, and a too detailed costume with props and everything. Danny shuddered when he thought about all the hours Dash must have spent studying what he looked like.
“This is surreal,” Danny muttered.
“I know I’m a perfect replica,” Dash said proudly as he puffed out his too broad chest. “But don’t worry, I’m not actually Phantom. I know you would piss your pants if you thought I was a real ghost.” The last sentence was spoken with a sneer.
Sam scoffed. “If Phantom looked like that he would be significantly less aerodynamic.”
“What did you just call Phantom?! His ears are very dynamic!”
“Thanks…?” Danny muttered with a confused frown.
“I wasn’t talking to—” Dash growled as he turned towards Danny, only to stop and narrow his eyes. Danny took a small step back, but Dash’s hand shot out and grabbed his collar, keeping him in place as he asked, “Where did you get those contacts?!”
“ What?” Danny did not squeak.
“Your eyes. They’re glowing. Tell me where you got them!”
“From my parents…?” Which was true in more ways than one.
Dash let him go with a disgusted look on his face. “Ugh, you and your freak parents better stay away from me.”
“I’m trying!” Danny said with exasperation, gesturing between them to indicate the fact that Dash had been the one to grab him.
Not surprisingly, the hint flew right over Dash’s head and he growled. “Watch yourself Flopton! I will wreck you during the contest!” And then he stormed off.
“You would think if he spent as much time studying as he does coming up with new insults, he wouldn’t be on the verge of failing his classes,” Tucker said dryly as they watched him storm off into the surprisingly big gathering of Phantom cosplayers gathered around them in the school gym.
Their conversation was cut short as someone shouted from the registry desk that sign-ups were closing in ten minutes and all three of them hurried to get in line.
As they finally got to the end of the line and wrote their names down, Danny couldn’t help but notice that Sam called her beat up and bloody costume “The Cycle of Violence Continues After Death” and couldn’t keep in a snort. As they walked away from the harried looking junior manning the registration he leaned towards Tucker and stage-whispered, “She’s become too self-aware.”
Which earned him a punch in the shoulder from Sam. “As if you’re any better. Mr. Babypop.”
“Excuse me! I panicked, alright? I didn’t know you needed to come up with a name.”
“ And the first one that popped into your head was Babypop?”
Danny turned his back to her, ignored the heat creeping up his cheeks, and spoke over her cackling laughter, “What did you put down, Tuck?”
Tucker struck another corny pose and proclaimed, with way too much self-confidence, “The Great One!”
Sam gagged theatrically as Danny groaned. “You didn’t.”
“I did!” Tucker said proudly.
“You know I hate that name!” Danny complained.
“So I took it. You’re welcome,” Tucker said as he condescendingly patted Danny on the head, pushing his wig askew in the process. “Besides, it sounds cool. Maybe it will catch on.”
“Your delusional optimism is reaching dangerous levels,” Sam deadpanned before getting pushed to the side by another Phantom-cosplayer. She shouted after the person, “Hey, watch it!” but they had already disappeared into the throng of people around them.
“Speaking of optimisms,” Tucker said, “there’s no chance we’re winning this. The whole school is here!”
And he was right; Danny hadn’t seen this many variants of himself since he’d met all his clones. Only this event included way less gooey gore. So far , Danny thought suspiciously as he eyed the multitude of guns strapped to waists all around them.
But the thought about clones gave him an idea. “Hey, guys. I need to use the bathroom.”
Both Sam and Tucker turned to him with sudden laser-focus. Tucker asked, “Use the toilet? Or use the toilet ?”
Danny rolled his eyes. “ Use it . But I don’t have to run,” he said, trying to communicate that there was no imminent ghost attack.
“Should we come with you?” Sam asked casually and that was when Danny noticed several people around them listening in and looking at them with disgusted faces.
“Nope! No. Absolutely not!” He stepped back a few steps.
Tucker very unhelpfully asked, “Are you sure?”
The registration called out, “Five minutes left!” and Danny turned towards the closest bathroom. He couldn’t miss this chance!
“I have to run!” Danny exclaimed with his cheeks blazing, not waiting for their answer before taking off.
And to his horror, they took off after him.
All three of them burst into the bathroom and Sam and Tucker cast around with their hands on their hidden guns.
“Where is it?”
“Where's the ghost?”
“Nowhere! Like I told you!” Danny said in what he thought was an admirably calm tone of voice.
It didn't keep Sam fem bristling. “But you ran?!”
“Shit, yeah,” Danny said as he remembered why he had been in such a hurry. “I don't have time for this.”
He focused on the cold feeling in his core, pulled it out and shaped it into a replica of himself, letting it mold to the shape it knew so well, and when he opened his eyes he looked right at another Danny.
Tucker looked between Danny and his copy. “What are you doing??”
Danny slung an arm over the clone’s slightly malleable shoulders and said, “I thought that maybe I should enter again. Double my chances.”
“Danny,” Sam groaned. “No.”
Danny grinned. “Danny, yes.”
Tucker pinched the bridge of his nose. “You're asking for trouble at this point.”
“All I'm asking for is 50 dollars at Walmart,” Danny said as he took off his costume, put it on the clone and then inspected his handiwork.
No matter how much he fussed with the wig, it remained slightly lopsided. Or maybe that was just the clone itself, he still hadn't completely gotten the hang of this. He stepped back and took in his handiwork. The clone looked back with empty eyes. Danny grimaced. “He looks a little…” he searched for an appropriate word for the droopy body, the vacant expression, and the definitely incorrect skin-tone and landed on a hesitant, “Lost?”
Sam blinked her eyes innocently and spoke in a too-enthusiastic tone of voice, “What do you mean? He looks just like you!”
“Wow, thanks,” Danny said with as much sarcasm as he could muster.
“You're welcome,” Sam bit back, evidently still a bit miffed from earlier.
“One minute left!” Came the call from outside and Danny took that as his queue to transform and lead his second chance at winning out of the bathroom.
Before Danny could leave Sam and Tucker next to his clone, Tucker stopped him with a raised eyebrow and a question. “You're sure this is a good idea? You going out there like this?”
Danny waved him off. “They won't know it's me, me!”
Tucker pressed his lips into a thin line. “Sure.”
“They never recognize me, they won't this time either,” Danny assured him. “And even if they do, I have this guy,” he said as he gestured at his dumbly staring clone, “to act as my alibi.”
Sam gave the clone a skeptical look, pointedly following a drop of drool with her eyes before looking back at Danny. “If that makes you feel better.”
“ It really does,” he assured her with very fake cheer and an even faker smile.
He left the clone standing dumbly by Sam and Tucker and went back to the registration desk. He tried to tone down his glow and made a continuous, conscious decision to keep his feet on the ground. He could do this, he hyped himself up. Think of all the ice cream he could make!
As he arrived at the registration desk, he leaned casually on top and gave the junior a cocky smile. “Hi. I'd like to register for the competition.”
They didn’t even look up from where they were writing on their list. “Name?”
“Phantom.”
That made them glance up with an annoyed look on their face. “I meant your name.”
“Oh, it—it’s Phantom?” Danny faltered, taken aback by the question.
They let out a long and weary sigh. “Look, we're all Phantom here.” They gestured to their gray wig and black t-shirt and Danny didn’t have time to feel offended by the lack of effort they’d put into the costume before they continued, “I need to know your real name for the registration. And the name Phantom is taken as a costume name. You have to come up with something else.”
Danny straightened up, fruitlessly straightening out his jumpsuit, and tried to wrack his brain for a good name. Then inspiration struck. “Wes. Wes Weston.”
He hadn’t seen him today, which probably meant that he kept his head low and hid in some corner with his camera at the ready, waiting to catch Danny slip up. Ha! He would be
The junior wrote it down and then asked, “And your costume name?”
“The True Phantom.”
They quickly scanned the list and then wrote it down. “It’s not taken. Welcome to the competition, Wes. Line up starts shortly .”
And then Danny was walking back towards his friends, wincing at the way Tucker was desperately propping up the clone to keep him from falling over.
“So?” Sam asked as soon as he rejoined them, “What did you tell them?”
“Shhh,” Danny hushed her, “it’s starting!”
Everyone bustled as they lined up in a long line—there was no way that all of them would fit on the improvised stage at the end of the hall—and then the judges started to make their way down the line with a clipboard in hand.
Of course it was Paulina and Star.
Danny started sweating as they made their way down the line, leaving a trail of downcast faces in their wake.
They stopped in front of Danny’s clone, gave him a short once over, and wrote something on the clipboard with a slashing finality. Paulina shook her head. “Really Fenton? You would disrespect our town hero like this?”
The clone didn’t answer, just leaned over even more. Danny really hoped he would stay upright until the competition was over.
They quickly moved on to Tucker and Star cast a quick glance and then angrily said, “This isn’t a venue for you to come up with your own costumes. This is meant to pay tribute to our savior.”
Tucker deflated, blinking screens angling towards the floor as he slumped almost as much as the clone next to him.
And then it was Danny’s turn.
Paulina looked up from the clipboard and raised a single eyebrow at seeing him. “Wes?”
Danny smiled a confident smile, ignoring the sweat he could feel gathering at his neck. “Yes?”
Star and Paulina narrowed their eyes at him for a second and then just shrugged and accepted it.
“Sure. Why not,” Star said and then looked him up and down. “Your contacts look great, you have to tell me where you got them later, but…”
She trailed off. Paulina nodded as if she knew what she had meant.
Danny felt the smile on his face die and quickly enter rigor mortis. “But…?”
Star haughtily said, “Phantom would never be caught dead in a jumpsuit like that.”
“I mean. He is dead,” Tucker unhelpfully pointed out from beside him and Danny gestured that he would kill him later before turning back to Paulina and Star with a very relaxed and very natural smile on his face—refusing to acknowledge the alarmed looks he received in response—and said without any desperation in his voice, “I know for a fact that this is the right jumpsuit.”
Without hesitation Star shook her head. “No, you’re wrong.”
“I died in this suit.”
“So that’s what that smell is,” Paulina said as she wrinkled her nose in disgust.
Danny saw Tucker grimace and look at clone-Danny, who was now halfway melted and starting to ooze out over the gym floor. Now that they had pointed it out, he did smell like a nasty combination of rotten meat and ectoplasm.
Besides, “Star continued, “ You should be more built. Like Dash!”
The disgust Danny had felt watching himself slowly melt into a puddle of meat and ectoplasm increased by a hundred at being compared to Dash of all people. So h e squared his shoulders, allowed some of his ghostliness to seep through his voice, and hissed out a threatening, “ How dare you?”
“And you’re not tall enough,” Paulina added nonchalantly, both of them completely ignoring his very intimidating show, thank you very much.
Danny didn’t even know how to respond to this. He just gestured at himself, up and down, and said, “ But—but it’s me !”
“Yes, yes,” Paulina assured him condescendingly, “we know, Wes.”
Utterly defeated, Danny watched them scrawl something on the clipboard and move over to Sam.
Star gave her a sneer and stated simply, “ You can’t win. Phantom isn’t a girl.”
Sam’s face turned five shades redder as her fists clenched at her sides and Danny prayed he wouldn’t have to witness a murder today. She stood up tall and growled, “That’s discrimination!”
Which actually made both Star and Paulina take a small step backwards. Which was just. Rude. He had been much scarier.
Paulina jumped in with a hasty, “However, we do appreciate the blood. Or, ectoplasm. Whatever.”
Star nodded and added a slightly hushed, “Very nice. Very sexy.”
Danny didn’t like the implications of that at all. Sadly, he didn’t seem to be the only one who overheard that as a whisper traveled down the line and then everyone started pulling out their ecto-weapons.
Luckily, before absolute mayhem could begin, the person manning the megaphone called out, “No changing your costume after sign-up! Anyone making themselves more bloodied at this point is disqualified!”
There was an audible noise of disappointment as everyone holstered their guns and Danny let out a breath of relief. To be the only ghost caught in the middle of a gym with a bunch of trigger-happy idiots without aim would have been a bad way of ending the day. It’s hard to eat ice cream if you’re full of holes. Danny had tried it and he would not recommend.
The rest of the judging was fast and soon Paulina and Star were conferring over their clipboard in hushed voices as the rest of them stood around and waited. Or, in Tucker and Danny’s case; slowly shuffled back to avoid the growing green puddle between them.
Danny was amazed no one had noticed it yet and called them out on it, but he was in no hurry to raise the alarm. Which was, of course, the second a familiar voice called out, “Fenton is melting!”
Ah. There Wes was.
He sprang out from behind the bleachers with his camera in hand, pointing right at the melting clone-Danny with an accusing finger. “Look! He’s made of ectoplasm! He’s not the real Fenton!”
Paulina looked up and called over, voice full of disinterest, “Fenton! If you’re sick you should be at home!”
“Sick?! He’s melting!” Wes insisted, gesturing at the puddle of what used to be clone-Danny’s legs.
“Yeah, it’s gross,” Star agreed. “Go home, Fenton.”
Wes grabbed his own hair and screamed before pointing at Danny, “Don’t you see?! He’s Fenton!”
After many years of this Danny had learned that his best course of action was to stay still and quiet and let Wes do all the work.
Paulina frowned. “Wait. I thought that was Wes?”
“No! I’m Wes!” Wes said as he gestured to himself, then back at Danny, “That’s Phantom!”
Star raised two unimpressed eyebrows. “I thought you said it’s Fenton?”
“It is! Fenton is Phantom!”
“We’re all Phantom here!” called the junior from the registry table.
“No!” Wes screamed. “I mean the true Phantom!”
“I mean, yeah,” Paulina agreed, “that’s his costume’s name.”
Wes screamed in frustration and Dash walked over with angry steps and grabbed his shoulders.
“Wes, shut the fuck up! You’re distracting the judges!”
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Wes screamed as Dash hauled him out of the room and slammed the doors in his face.
Danny exchanged a look with Sam and Tucker and all three of them shrugged in unison. They had long since decided not to question whatever curse Wes was under and just thank their lucky star that it existed.
“And now!” Paulina called out with a dramatic tone of voice, clearly lapping up all the attention on stage, “What you’ve all been waiting for! The winner of this year’s competition!”
Danny stared emptily out over the gym, not taking in the myriad of mingling Phantoms. Sam patted him on one shoulder and Tucker on the other.
Danny slowly raised his hands to cover his face, groaning into them loud enough that several people stopped and stared. “Did we just lose to Mikey?”
Tucker shook his head with a serious expression. “It’s always the quiet ones.”
“I guess it was the platform shoes,” Sam mused. “And the fake muscles. And the pony-tailed wig. The blood. And the—”
“Okay, okay,” Danny straightened up and waved for her to stop, “That’s enough, let’s just go and buy some ice-cream.”
“With what money?” Tucker asked sadly, slumping down.
Danny slumped with him. “We have no money, we’re broke. Completely broke. No ice cream for us I guess. Life is so unfair.”
“So unfair,” Tucker agreed.
Both Tucker and Danny looked up from under their fringes at Sam, blinking wide eyes in their best Cujo-imitation.
Sam let out a long sigh. “I’ll buy.”
Danny and Tucker immediately perked up again. “You’re the best, Sam!”
And then, just as they were about to go, they all fell silent as they once again became aware of the puddle of ectoplasm next to them. Tucker hesitantly asked, “Should we just leave him here?”
Danny shrugged. “Eh. Maybe I’ll use it as an excuse for why I haven’t done my math homework. They can’t really expect me to do it if the whole school saw me melted on the gym floor, right?”
Sam shook her head, “Oh, you sweet summer child. Not even death could keep you from having to do your homework.”
Danny let out a long breath. “Ain’t that the truth. I’ll go get the thermos.”