Chapter Text
“Do you think if I bring some of the cookies, Mrs. Tetslaff will raise my grade to a C?” Tucker asked.
“That would make you a cannibal, wouldn’t it?” Sam replied, shutting her locker door and shouldering her bag.
“You guys know the flour babies weren’t actual babies, right?” Danny said, because with his friends, you never knew.
Tucker and Sam turned on him and shouted, “Of course we do!” in unison.
Danny raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay.” Be passionate about your flour babies, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. What about when you lose the flour baby and fail through no fault of your own?
“What happened to your flour baby anyway?” Sam questioned. The trio began walking home.
“Weeeeeell . . .” Red Huntress had apparently found it lying around somewhere. Then Skulker had happened, and the island, and it’d gotten ripped up, and he’d rather they both have their skin than a good grade, but also he and Valerie both apparently needed that good grade . . . it was a mess.
He’d shown up to Valerie’s that evening and she’d been surprisingly understanding. They’d apologized to each other for not listening, and Danny thinks he might have made a friend? Sort of?
But he couldn’t explain most of that to Sam and Tucker, not without giving away his secret. He wasn’t ready to do that. “Oh, you know. It’s a flour sack. It’s not like, super durable or anything. It got ripped. Probably from one of the inventions laying around. At least Val wasn’t too mad at me.” He laughed nervously. Please don’t see through my lies.
Please don’t hate me for lying if you do find me out.
“Val?” Sam replied.
“Who is she, your new best friend?” Tucker added.
“C’mon guys, it’s just a nickname! Don’t read so much into it,” Danny said. It wasn’t like he was replacing them. Seriously. Then again, they were probably just teasing and he was simply reading too much into it. “I . . . we might be friends now. We exchanged numbers and everything.”
“And here I thought you two couldn’t stand each other,” Sam remarked dryly.
“We couldn’t! But then–”
Then Red Huntress had complained about someone she was partnered with for a school project being insensitive and not caring that she worked two jobs. Danny had asked if she’d talked to her partner about it and she admitted she hadn’t. She hadn’t said who her partner was, but it was what inspired him to actually talk to Valerie about their project instead of just demanding his way.
Except he’d shown up with the remains of their project, so there wasn’t anything to talk about other than asking that she please not be mad, but the conversation had maybe spiraled a little from there into them goofing off and making a fake grave for Mary Monsterslayer as they dubbed their flour child. (Danny had wanted to name it “Flower Pour” with the “Pour” pronounced as “Power” but Valerie was firmly against it. Mary Monsterslayer was something they could both agree on, however.) They’d exchanged numbers and parted on amicable terms. It was a much outcome better than he’d hoped for.
“Then what?” Sam repeated, and Danny realized he’d drifted into his own world.
He shrugged. “We just got to know each other. She’s pretty cool. And she wasn’t mad when I brought our baby home all torn up.” Man, would that be a wild thing to hear out of context.
“Miss Mad-at-Everything wasn’t upset when you brought your deceased child home?” Tucker exclaimed.
Sam and Tucker were really taking this way too seriously. “I mean, she was upset, but we worked it out. We had a funeral and everything.”
Sam punched his arm. “You had a funeral and didn’t invite me?”
“You barely know Valerie, Sam!” And they didn’t much like each other, not with Sam’s aversion to the other rich kids. Not that Valerie was a rich kid anymore, but Sam didn’t exactly care about her.
She punched his arm again. “I’m kidding, Danny.” They reached the street across from Fentonworks.
“Well, it looks like this is where we part ways,” Tucker announced.
“Unless we could come by your house?” Sam asked hopefully.
Danny sighed. He knew she wanted to delay going to her home as long as possible, and he wanted to help her, but . . . “I wish, but I’ve got homework.” This was true. He also didn’t want to have to come up with an excuse if his ghost sense went off. Being home would make sneaking off that much harder.
“We can do homework at your house. We’ve done it before,” Tucker pointed out.
“How much homework actually gets done when we do that?” Danny replied. “And you know the correct answer is ‘less than half of what we intend to do’.” Doing homework together at a coffee shop? They could get quite a bit done. At his house? They’d be lucky to make it a quarter of the way through their work.
“Fair point. See you tomorrow?”
“Always. Bye Tuck, Sam.”
“Bye!”
“See you later, boys.” And the trio parted ways.
)( )( )(
Valerie Gray was a smart girl. Yes, her grades were at an all-time low, but that was because of her, shall we say,
extracurricular activities
and not a reflection of her intelligence. So when first Phantom shows up with her and Danny’s flour baby, and secondly Danny shows up with its remains, and thirdly Danny is bruised and scratched in the same places Phantom was–the bruised nose from where he’d fallen face-first, the thin scratch stretching across his
left arm where a stray branch had got him, and the most telling of all, the chafing around his wrist like he’d been handcuffed to something, or someone–he’d tried to hide the injuries with makeup, but he wasn’t very good at it; well, with all of those pieces of evidence, the only conclusion she could come to was that Danny Fenton somehow was Danny Phantom.
It was illogical, but what other explanation was there? That he and Phantom were magically connected and shared injuries? Yeah, right. Did that mean Danny was a ghost pretending to be human? The idea was both horrifying and revolting. If that were the case, anyone could be a ghost hiding among them. Valerie would need to step her ghost hunting up.
She needed more information. Taking inspiration from the scientific method, she’d started with an observation. Danny was Phantom. Next was the question. How could Danny Fenton be Danny Phantom?
She had no hypothesis yet, nor any viable experiments. Literally experimenting on a living . . . undead . . . whatever being was kind of blargh, but it’s not like she was going to kidnap him and take him to a secret bunker where she would like, dissect him or something. Dissection was for dead things that weren’t also somehow alive. Undead. Whatever. Her experiments would be simple things, like subtly probing questions. Eventually she’d reach a conclusion, or so she hoped. But she had to do this without scaring him away. She wouldn’t demand answers. Instead, she would observe, question, theorize, and hope the answer became clear.
That was why she had been fraternizing with the enemy. But Danny hadn’t seemed like an enemy. He’d been apologetic both about not listening to her and about the state of their flour baby. Valerie supposed she hadn’t been the only one who’d had more going on than it seemed, so she’d apologized too. Demanding her way wasn’t going to help her find answers or win friends.
But one thing had led to another, and soon they were goofing off and having a fake funeral for Mary Monsterslayer. Danny had wanted to call their flour baby something stupid like “Flower Power” which actually wasn’t a terrible name (not that she’d tell him that) except he’d wanted to spell “power” like “pour” which made no sense.
Valerie suggested something cool like “Monsterslayer” and Danny said that “she needed a first name” and that’s how they came up with Mary Monsterslayer. They’d both said a few overly dramatic words mourning the loss of a life gone too soon and ended up in hysterics.
They’d exchanged phone numbers. Valerie warned that it was for emergencies only because of the price of texting and calling, but Danny pointed out that instant messaging was a thing and they traded emails as well. At that point Valerie had all but forgotten her initial purpose, which was to figure out how the heck Danny could be a ghost but look and act so human. Then he’d called her Val.
She was pretty sure it was an accident, and it wasn’t like Star and Paulina hadn’t called her Val before, but she liked how it sounded from Danny. She’d told him as much after he started freaking out about it (which was how she figured out that it was an accident). There was something just . . . pleasant about the nickname when he said it. Especially since she knew he wasn’t trying to be her bestie or become her friend for popular cred, which was something he’d attempted with the other popular kids in the past.
A part of her didn’t trust him. Another part didn’t care that he was a ghost, because he cared. Yeah, Valerie wanted to spend more time with him to figure out the mystery of Phantom, but she also wanted to because Danny was kind and funny. Even if he was the enemy . . . Gosh, this was confusing.
“Valerie. Vaaaal-erie. Val. Val. Valerie Gray!”
Valerie sighed. She’d have to sort out her conflicting emotions later. She whispered, “What is it, Star? In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in class!”
“Yeah, and you’re in a completely different universe,” Star replied. “I had to wake you up before Mr. Lancer decides to call on you or something.”
“Thanks, I guess,” Valerie said, picking up her pencil and stabbing it through her worksheet into the desk. He loves me, he loves me not, but it’s actually he’s my enemy, no he’s not. She smirked at the thought.
“No problem! But we’re talking about this later.”
Can’t wait, Valerie thought sarcastically.
)( )( )(
As soon as class was over, Star took her by the arm. “So what’s the deal with you today? Why are you so distracted?”
Valerie couldn’t very well tell Star about Phantom. That would mean revealing all of her Red Huntressing. Plus, she’d hate for someone to expose her own secret identity, so she wouldn’t expose Phantom’s unless there was a very good reason. “Ugh, I don’t know.”
“Come on, there’s gotta be something.” Star dragged her to a table in the corner of the cafeteria. “School trouble? Paulina giving you trouble? Boys?”
“No, no, and kind of.” This was something that was safe to tell Star. Or maybe not. Star was on the fringe of popularity, while Danny was at the very bottom. Class hierarchy was all very stupid, but . . .
“Elaborate on ‘kind of’.”
“Remember that flour sack baby?”
“It was literally yesterday. Wait, is this about Fenton? He giving you trouble? I can–” Star was ready to go to war for her.
“No! I appreciate your enthusiasm, but he’s a really nice guy. I think. But there’s, like . . . more him than it seems, and I was thinking I’d get to know him better because . . . yeah . . .”
“Val, listen to me. You deserve better than–”
“Oh my gosh, Star, we’re not about to ask each other out!”
“You said there was more to him than it seems, and that’s every girl’s dream. A man with hidden depths–”
“That’s it. I’m leaving.” She didn’t have to listen to this.
“Valerie!”
“Yes?”
“ . . .”
Well, if Star wasn’t going to say anything– “ ‘Kay, bye.”
“Really, Val?”
“I’ll see you in class.”
“Come on.”
“Go hang out with Paulina and Dash and Kwan. I know you want to.”
“Whatever.”
)( )( )(
Valerie decided to take a risk and plunked her tray down at the end of Danny’s table. “It okay if I sit with you guys?” She asked.
“Sure,” Danny said, eyes lighting up.
Sam and Tucker shrugged. It wasn’t super encouraging, but she slid in next to Danny anyway. They started making small talk but quickly found a rhythm when it turned out they both had a passing interest in engineering. Sam and Tucker added occasional comments. Their technical knowledge varied a lot, but they knew a couple of practical things.
The mood swiftly changed when Sam asked, “So what do you think about the ghosts? I’ve heard you blame ghosts for your dad’s job before, Valerie, but what about everyone else?”
“Inviso-Bill did save a few people during the invasion, but the mayor also said that he caused it, so . . .” Tucker said.
“I think I heard the ghost say his name was Phantom,” Valerie pointed out. Despite her uncertainty about everything, she figured she might as well spread the word that his name was not, in fact, Inviso-Bill. That name was just terrible.
“Inviso-Bill is what stuck, though,” Sam replied.
“But Phantom is way catchier,” Danny countered.
“Can’t argue there. But it’s weird, right? Nobody believes in ghosts and suddenly the mayor’s all ‘it’s the ghosts fault! This one specific ghost who nobody’s heard of!’ It’s kind of, I don’t know, suspicious?”
“You’re being paranoid,” Tucker said, jabbing her shoulder with the butt end of a fork. Sam glared at him.
“The kidnapping-the-mayor thing was kinda weird too. Like, Inviso-Bill grabs him and then lets him go? What’s the point of that?” Sam wondered.
“I’d heard of him,” Valerie objected. “It was him and that ghost dog who ruined my life.” Danny winced.
“That’s a good point,” Sam agreed. “But if it was a dog, maybe it was just . . . being a dog?”
“Yeah, maybe it was an accident!” Danny seconded. He glanced at Valerie.
Valerie didn’t want to push him away. Not yet. Not before she had answers. “Maybe. But my dad still lost his job and we lost our house. Even if they reinstate his position, we’re not getting the house back.”
Another family had already moved into it, feeding Valerie’s bitterness. That was the house where she’d grown up with her mother. Her mother had read to Valerie in that bedroom and practiced martial arts with her in the living room and cooked meals for her in that kitchen. None of the Grays had ever wanted to leave that place.
“Yeah,” Danny said heavily. “Sorry about that.”
Huh. He seemed . . . sincere. Sam and Tucker would assume it was a normal “sorry something bad happened to you” but Valerie knew better. Danny was genuinely apologetic. Unless it was all a lie, which was a definite possibility considering he was a ghost. But he was also Danny. Then again, she didn’t know him that well. But Danny was such a sweet guy . . .
This would require a
lot
more observation.