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five-rivers · 3 years

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Snow and Song Chapter 5

About five seconds after Danny registered the huge crowd of people gathered in the park (and why were they there? Had there been some kind of event he forgot about?), it began to snow. Danny looked around himself in alarm. He was often insensitive to temperature changes (and a few other things, according to his sister), but it wasn’t nearly cold enough snow. It was September.

He looked up. There weren’t even any clouds.

A snowflake, perfect and crystalline, stuck to his eyelash.

Alright. When something weird and unnatural started to happen in Amity Park, usually there was a ghost involved. All Danny had to do was find the ghost causing it to… snow…

Oh. Right. He was a ghost that could make snow.

He was an idiot. He hadn’t even noticed his core activating. His cheeks flushed with cold. This was so embarrassing.

Wincing, he looked back down at the crowd. Only about a tenth of the people had phones in their hands, winking camera lenses pointed up at him, but that was more than enough. He felt entirely too visible.

… Which he could fix because he was a ghost, darn it, something that he kept forgetting about tonight. Berating himself, he adjusted his visibility down to zero and flew away.

Almost at once, all the birds took off, the sound of wings obscuring whatever the humans down below were saying.

Danny didn’t stop until he got home, trailing snow all the while. He was not looking forward to tomorrow, but for tonight, maybe, he could forget what had happened.

He went human, phased off his clothes, laid down on his bed, closed his eyes, and started to-

“Maddie!” shouted Jack. “The ghost-kid is on TV again! He’s in the park!”

“Oh, good! Go start up the GAV! This time, we’ll catch him! I’ll be with you in a minute!”

Danny let out the breath he had been holding since his dad startled him from his doze in a long sigh. He resigned himself to being woken up at least once more that night.

The first rays of sunlight filtering through Danny’s window brought with them something that would have chilled Danny to the core if his core weren’t naturally frosty.

Music.

He peeled his eyes open slowly, grudgingly, because it was still September, and sunrise was still quite a bit before the time he had to get up in the morning. Hoping he was hallucinating, he trudged over to the window and pulled back the curtains.

Ah, yes. He hadn’t quite expected to find a bunch of cultists standing outside his house with a boombox, playing back a rather scratchy version of Tale as Old as Time, but, somehow, he was unsurprised to do so. What exactly were they attempting to accomplish here?

One of the younger (about six years old) cultists waved up at him. Resigned, Danny waved back, then let the curtain fall back down.

He rubbed his eyes. Normal teenagers didn’t have to deal with cults that worshiped them as a god. Even that dude from Nazareth was a full adult before he got hit with the heavy stuff.

(Yeah, because it wasn’t at all a sign of megalomania, mental instability, or good old-fashioned insanity to compare himself to that guy.)

(He didn’t want a cult, darn it.)

What did they want, anyway?

He got dressed and started downstairs. To his horror (but again, not surprise) he heard more music emanating from the kitchen.

“What are you guys doing?” Danny asked.

“Oh, morning, Danno!” boomed Jack.

“Shh, shh,” said Maddie. “We need to go over that last part again. There are pancakes on the stove, sweetie.”

“Oh,” said Danny. “Thanks. But, really, what are you doing?”

“Analyzing the sound patterns of Phantom’s voice!” said Jack. “We missed it before, but he must have a low-level mind control power! Just like that Rockstar ghost!”

“Sneaky post-human ectoplasm glob,” muttered Maddie. “That’s how he’s got so many people on his side. He’s brainwashing them. But don’t worry, sweetie. As soon as we figure out how he’s doing it, we’ll be working on a cure!”

“Well,” said Danny, trying not to sound bitter. They had made him pancakes. “That’s news to me.”

Danny stepped out of the house and sighed in the general direction of the cult.

As always, acknowledging them in any way shape or form proved to be a mistake. They rushed at him.

“Daniel Fenton,” intoned today’s leader, a man wearing robes colored in an approximation of Phantom’s suit. His beard was… interesting.

“What?” asked Danny. If only there was a way to skip through awkward conversations like this, like there was in video games. But, no, life was like one, huge, un-skippable cutscene. Tragic.

“Last night, our Lord Phantom gave us a message. A message, and a divine task.”

Danny was pretty sure he’d remember that. “What task?” he asked, resigned.

“To spread his word through song! And you, his prophet, his chosen, his blessed consort, shall reveal his intent upon the stage of the Casper High School Musical!”

“I’m begging you, call it anything but that.”

“We will do anything to make the Casper High School Musical go well! We are at your command!”

“Please stop picketing my house and harassing me on the way to school.”

“We have fine members of our choir here to audition for you! Please take word of their worthiness to our Lord Phantom.”

Several of the cultists began to sing.

“Danny!” called Jazz from the driveway. “Stop feeding the cultists, or we’re going to be late for school!”

“So,” said Sam. “The Ghost Watch feed blew up last night.”

“I know,” said Danny. “I feel so stupid.”

“Hey, it’s fine,” said Tucker. “But we really do have to put some time aside to test whether or not you really do have a pied piper ability.”

“I made it snow while I was singing,” said Danny.

“Ah. We’ll have to look into that, too,” said Tucker, making a note on his PDA. “Who wants to bet that the ‘Phan Club’ will try to incorporate last nights performance into the play somehow?”

“That’s not funny,” said Danny, closing his locker. “Guys, what if I accidently mind control the audience? Or start a snowstorm inside? The cultists are already on top of this. They were outside my house this morning.”

“Again?” said Sam, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, again.”

“What did they want?”

“They seem to think that there’s going to be some kind of revelation in the play,” said Danny. He caught the look in Sam’s eye. “Sam. No.”

“Sam, yes.”

“Cults are not a toy,” cautioned Danny.

“Not the way you’re using them, they aren’t.”

“Seriously, Sam. No matter how much you want to change the world, do not use a cult to do it. It never goes well.”

“Christianity started off as a cult.”

“And would you say that went well? I’m asking you this as a Christian.”

“Are you a Christian?” asked Tucker. “I’ve never seen you in a church. Can you go in a church? Have we tested that?”

“I—What? I’m not a demon, Tucker. I went to church, uh… Last Easter. I can totally go in a church.”

“You had to think of that for an awfully long time.”

“What about a synagogue?” asked Sam. “Or a mosque?”

“I don’t know. But you’d think that if I could go into a church, that’d mean I could go into the other ones.”

“But what if you couldn’t?” asked Sam. “Would that mean that religion is more right than the others?”

“Or more wrong,” said Tucker, “since Danny is a good guy.”

“I—” started Danny.

“PHANTOM!” screamed Wes from down the hall, interrupting whatever revelation Danny could potentially have had.

“Oh, great,” said Danny. “I’m not Phantom, Weston!”

“Kids,” said Miss Lyn, poking her head into the hallway. “Please don’t shout in the halls. Class is about to start.”

“I have proof, this time!” crowed Wes. “I have video.”

“Oh, no,” said Danny, with perfectly flat affect. “Are you here to harass me with yet another badly photoshopped, grainy, vertically filmed, twenty-second clip of me ‘transforming’ into Phantom like some kind of anime heroine?”

Wes reared back, face coloring and nostrils flaring.

Danny would feel worse about what he had said, if half the videos in Wes’s last ‘Fenton is Phantom’ presentation hadn’t been exactly that. Tucker had made several of them and stealthily dropped them in various chat rooms for Wes to find, as something halfway between a joke and an exercise in misdirection.

As soon as Wes had included one of those in his presentation, it was doomed to be a laughingstock. Again, Danny almost felt bad.

“No!” said Wes. He puffed his chest out. “From Ghost Watch!”

“Uh huh.”

“I kind of feel like we’d be hearing about it from more than just you,” said Sam.

“Yeah,” agreed Tucker. “If the news decided Danny was Phantom’s dead twin or whatever, you’d think some of his groupies would be swarming.” He pointed at a pair of Phan Club members who were having a sedate conversation near the water fountain. “Where are the groupies, Wes?”

“Did you not learn your lesson from the beauty pageant?” asked Sam. “Or Egypt?”

“I don’t know, didn’t you learn yours from Desiree?”

“Who’s learning what from Desiree? Because you should ask her for a better naming sense. I mean, you just copied. Lame.”

“You’re talking to me about copying? You vegans are the copiers! Vegetable burgers, tofurkey, where does it end?”

“With the abolition of the cruelty of MEAT!”

At this point, most people would have started edging away from Sam and Tucker’s patented and infamous meat vs. veggies argument. However, Wes had long since proven himself to be of sterner stuff, and Danny wanted to hear what he was on about.

“Guys,” he said, “guys, it’s not working. He’s still here.”

Sam and Tucker turned back towards Wes. “Bummer,” said Sam.

“Yeah, Wes, why do you have to be such a bummer?” asked Tucker.

“Let him speak,” said Danny, magnanimously, twirling his hand.

Wes glowered. “Well, now I don’t want to,” he said, mulishly.

“Come on, Wes, what’s the video, don’t leave us in suspense!”

Wes attempted to glower harder but failed. Grudgingly, he held up his phone, which did, indeed, play a video from Ghost Watch. Danny watched himself singing for several long seconds before returning his gaze to Wes.

“I’m not sure what this is supposed to prove.”

“The song, you idiot! It’s from Beauty and the Beast! And I know the drama club gave you that music.”

“A movie that thousands of thousands of people have watched and know the music for?”

“That doesn’t matter! You’re the only one who has any reason to sing it.”

“You mean, other than everyone else in the drama club?” asked Sam, bored.

“Or anyone who likes Disney?” said Tucker.

Wes opened his mouth to make some kind of riposte.

The warning bell rang.

He closed his mouth. “I’m watching you, Fenton!”

“You and everyone else,” muttered Danny as Wes retreated down the hallway, pointing at him.

Why was everyone around him so ridiculous?

“We’re doing Snow White, not Beauty and the Beast!” howled Razor, baring his teeth at the hapless Phan Club member that had suggested adding ‘Tale as Old as Time’ to the song list.

“If you guys had taken that bet, I’d have so much money right now,” said Tucker.

“Students, please,” said Mr. Lancer. “We can’t have any actual copyrighted music in our play. Not without paying for it. And I’m not negotiating with Disney.” He looked into the distance. “Not again. Never again.”

Danny did not want to know the story behind that, but nevertheless, he had to ask… “Are you okay, Mr. Lancer?”

“I’m fine, Mr. Fenton,” said Mr. Lancer. “Thank you for asking. In any case, my lovely drama students! Today, we are going to do our first round of auditions!”

“But, sir, we haven’t finished the script, yet!” protested Mikey.

“Right you are!” said Mr. Lancer. “But I have found that things go more smoothly when we have people already in the main roles. There’s less… outright sabotage and script jockeying.”

“What does that even mean?” whispered Samhain (aka Kevin) loudly.

“People trying to change the script to fit a certain person so that person gets the role,” said Paulina. “Or exclude a certain person. Which I would never do, Mr. Lancer.”

The covetous glare shot in Danny’s direction indicated that Paulina’s words might have been less than truthful.

Mr. Lancer chuckled. “I didn’t think you would, Miss Sanchez!” He began writing on his whiteboard. “Now, we already have our Prince Snow White, our Princess Charming, and our Evil Queen.” He nodded at Paulina as he wrote the roles on the board. “Now, we need our seven dwarves—”

“Ghosts!”

“Excuse me, yes, ghosts. Thank you, Mr. Baxter. Our Huntsman—”

“Or woman!”

“Yes, thank you, Miss Thunder,” said Mr. Lancer. “Huntsman, or Huntswoman. And… Let’s see… Snow White’s parents, for the prologue, Princess Charming’s retinue, and… I think that’s it. Alright, let’s start with the ghosts.”

“Shouldn’t they have names?” asked Mia.

“Well, sure,” said Mr. Lancer. “But we can’t use the Disney names. You’ll have to come up with your own.”

“Phantom!” screamed Paulina.

“Here we go,” said Danny, burying his head in his hands.

“You want to bet that we’re going to wind up with your whole rogue’s gallery?” asked Tucker.

“If you need money, Tucker,” said Sam, “you just have to ask. Rates on my loans are very reasonable.”

“Isn’t usury against your religion?” asked Tucker.

“Nope,” said Sam. “Not at all.”

“I am incredibly against this development,” said Danny. “The cults are going to have a field day.”

“Ember! Ember! Ember!” Chanted the punk goth crowd, which had split off from the larger goth subgroup.

“I am somehow even more against this development,” muttered Danny. “Mr. Lancer! I don’t think it’s a good idea to include a ghost who gets power from people saying her name!”

“Shut up, Fentonnage, what do you know about ghosts?”

“My parents study them. I know a lot. More than I ever even—”

Danny narrowly dodged the workbook Dash flung at him.

“Mr. Baxter!” scolded Mr. Lancer.

Sadly, when everything shook out, Danny did not get his way. One of the seven ghosts was named Ember and was going to be played by Star. Because why not?

“At least the Box Ghost and the Lunch Lady aren’t on the list,” said Sam.

“But ‘Hamlet, father of Hamlet,’ is,” said Danny. “Why does that bother me more than Ember?”

“Because you hate Shakespeare?”

“No, I don’t,” protested Danny. “Shakespeare is a perfectly nice person. I just don’t like how his writing is taught in schools.”

“You’re going to break Mr. Lancer’s heart saying stuff like that,” said Tucker.

“He wrote love poems to boys. Why do they skim over that?”

“Excellent point, Mr. Fenton!” exclaimed Mr. Lancer, who had somehow materialized behind them. “Shakespeare was definitely bisexual. I wi—” The teacher stopped. “Nope, can’t use that word. It would be nice if the state let me teach it like that. Along with the crossdressing. School board won’t let me.” He shook his head. “Dale Baxter. Someday, someday he’ll lose an election. Eventually.” He took a deep breath. “Next time we meet, we’ll be doing auditions, okay? I want you all to think about what parts you would like! And, Miss Gray, I’d like to have a word with you about your role in our production, alright?”

#Danny Phantom #snow and song #fic #my fic #phanfic

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