Danny Phantom Fan Fiction ❯ Danny Phantom Revisit Season One ❯ Mystery Meat 4 ( Chapter 5 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

“There you three are!”

 

The trio groaned. Mr. Lancer caught them before they made it to their classrooms. Dash wasn’t with him.

 

“Think you can skip out on class, do you?” Mr. Lancer accused as he stalked toward them. “After all you have done? My office. Now!”

 

Indignation flared like a tight grip on Danny’s chest. He just wanted to keep his head down and get to class. Why did Mr. Lancer have to get in his way all the time? But the feeling only lasted briefly, and he resigned himself to receive punishment.

 

They had to stay after school and write lines. The most boring punishment ever. Tomorrow, they would have to help serve lunch to “better understand the hardship lunch workers face.” Danny tried his hardest not to fall asleep during detention but failed. Mr. Lancer threatened to keep him longer if he slept again. Danny didn’t sleep again.

 

Luckily, Jazz waited for Danny to give him a ride home. She questioned him about the lunchroom incident, and he gave as vague of answers as he could while staring blankly out the window. All he wanted was to get home and crash for an hour or two before dinner.

 

Of course, he couldn’t have it that simple. As Danny and Jazz walked into the house, a smoke bomb went off and obscured their vision. He started coughing, and slender hands pulled him aside. The outline of his mom stood in front of him. A whirring noise, Jazz screamed, and Danny’s chest tightened. If only he could see! Maddie held him back as though she was shielding him from something. Why wasn’t she helping Jazz?

 

“Jazz, what’s wrong?” Danny shouted, straining to see through the haze.

 

“That’s not Jazz, Dann-o,” came his dad’s booming voice. “That’s a ghost!”

 

“I’m not a ghost!” Jazz protested. “Now get this thing off me!”

 

The smoke cleared enough for Danny to see what was going on. Jack had his arms wrapped around Jazz, and a small vacuum cleaner sucked on her hair. She crossed her arms in anger and glared at her parents.

 

“This is all going in the memoir,” Jazz puffed.

 

Danny pushed past his mom to turn off the vacuum. The sucking tugged at him when he got too close. Did this invention actually work against ghosts? He hurried to find the off switch, hoping no one noticed his panic.

 

“Thank you, Danny,” Jazz said cooly. She stomped off to try and extract her hair from the vacuum. Their parents watched curiously.

 

“I’m… gonna go to my room,” Danny said and slipped up the stairs.

 

Once he was out of earshot, Jack hummed.

 

“Jack,” Maddie said, “Danny is not a ghost.”

 

“You’re right,” Jack said. He narrowed his eyes at Jazz. “Jazz is.”

 

 

 

 

The Next Day

 

After a good night’s rest, Danny was ready to tackle the Lunch Lady Ghost problem. He found a secluded place to go ghost and then flew into the meat locker in the school’s basement. As he predicted, the Lunch Lady was there. She seemed to be taking inventory with a clipboard in her hand.

 

“Hi there,” Danny said. Her gaze locked on to him. “Um, are you ready to return to the Ghost Zone?”

 

The Lunch Lady blinked at him, frowning. Then she roared and lunged, summoning the meat to surround her. Danny backed away.

 

“I’ll take that as a no,” he quipped, jumping into the air.

 

Power radiated in his fists and he shot ectorays at her. Meat dropped off in chunks, but the body remained whole. The meat that fell off quickly returned.

 

“Well that’s not working,” Danny mumbled.

 

He wondered how he could stop her when she phased up and out of the meat locker. He followed her outside where teens milled about waiting for class to start. They all screamed and ran at the sight of the meat monster the size of a garbage truck.

 

On the other side of the school, Danny saw his parents sneak up on Jazz and spring a net onto her. He growled in anger, but meat slammed into his back. Oh yeah, he had a fight on his hands. He spun around and fired more ectorays at the Lunch Lady. Maybe if he disintegrated enough meat, she would shrink to her normal size. He didn’t know what he would do after that. He’d figure it out when he got there. If he got there.

 

Jack yelled loud enough for Danny to hear, “Eat hot Fenton Thermos, ghost gal!”

 

Danny looked down. The thermos Jack was holding spluttered with sparks and did nothing to Jazz. Of course, it would do nothing to Jazz. She wasn’t a ghost. But maybe, just maybe, it would work on the Lunch Lady.

 

…Who slammed Danny so hard he went soaring into the atmosphere. It took him a minute to get back to his senses. When he did, he was hurtling toward a private jet. He turned intangible just in time. Inside the jet, a waitress handed a cup of water to a passenger. Danny zoomed right through, stopped himself above the plane, and zoomed back. On his way, he grabbed the water cup, saying “Thanks!” to the confused people. Back under the jet, he splashed the water on his face to help clear his head.

 

With the help of gravity, Danny gained momentum as he flew back to the Lunch Lady. He slammed into the meat monster, blasting her apart, and created a crater when he landed. Once again, all sense was knocked out of him. He lay there, dazed. The Lunch Lady came up to him, no longer covered in meat. Danny groaned and pulled himself up.

 

“Oh dear!” she said sweetly. “What a mess! Are you okay?”

 

Danny got out of the crater and rubbed his left arm. “Yeah, I think so,” he said.

 

The Lunch Lady smiled slightly, but then turned into her angry side and seethed, “Tough! Because you being okay is not part of my balanced diet of doom!”

 

Meat sprang up around him and formed five mini-meat monsters the size of linebackers. Danny jumped away and one of them followed. He sliced his leg down on its head, and it split in two. That didn’t last long, though. The meat monster reformed.

 

“Wasn’t expecting that,” Danny said. He felt a shift in his body and looked down to see the rings of transformation making him human. “Or that.”

 

The meat monsters converged on him. He struggled, but they gripped him too tightly. They flew into the air with him, and two monsters broke off while the others dangled him upside down. He cried out, staring at the ground.

 

Then the Fenton Thermos hit him in the head and he caught it. Where did that come from? He looked around to find Maddie comforting a disappointed Jack. Jazz stood nearby with her hands on her hips.

 

Danny said, “The Fenton Thermos! But how am I going to get it to work?”

 

The three meat monsters threw Danny down. He yelled again, the ground coming closer.

 

“Change back!” he said to his powers. “Change back!” His ghostliness kicked in. He phased through the ground between Jazz and their parents, saying, “Thanks for the Thermos!”

 

Danny traveled through the ground to where he thought the Lunch Lady was. Then he phased back above ground. His estimation was right!

 

“No!” The Lunch Lady roared. “Soup’s not on today’s menu!”

 

Danny replied, “I’m changing the menu, permanently!” He grabbed the cap of the thermos and said quietly, “Please work.” He pulled the cap off and aimed the thermos at the Lunch Lady. “I hope I’m right!” He channeled his power into the thermos. A beam of white-blue energy shot out from it, encapsulating the Lunch Lady.

 

“No!” she screamed as the thermos pulled her in.

 

Exhausted, Danny transformed again. When the Lunch Lady fully entered the thermos, he put the cap back on and grinned. He noticed Tucker and Sam watching from under a lunch table and went over to them.

 

“What happened?” Sam asked as Danny helped her to her feet. Tucker got up on his own. “Where’s the ghost?”

 

Danny smiled at the thermos. “My parents have their moments.”

 

He heard a faint beeping noise and hid the thermos behind his back. The Fenton Finder’s feminine voice said, “Ghost directly ahead.”

 

Jack and Maddie walked up to the trio, covered in meat remains. Jack, of course, held the Fenton Finder.

 

“You would have to be some sort of moron to not notice the ghost directly ahead,” the Fenton Finder said.

 

Danny smiled weakly as his parents looked up at him. He pointed behind himself with his thumb. “Oh, sorry, Dad. You just missed him.”

 

“We got a runner!” Jack enthused. He and Maddie ran off, leaving Jazz behind. Her arms were crossed.

 

“Great,” Jazz harrumphed, walking after them. “Back to square one.”

 

Once she was out of earshot, Tucker asked, “So, you’re not gonna tell ‘em?”

 

“Not after the way they treated Jazz,” Danny said, frowning.

 

“Yeah, what was that about?” Sam asked.

 

“They thought she was the ghost,” Danny said.

The dreaded hand of Mr. Lancer landed on Danny’s shoulder. “Why am I not surprised to see you three at the center of this mess?”