Encounters Part Four
“Seriously, Danny, you have a cell phone for a reason,” Sam griped.
“She’s right, dude. We so shouldn’t have had to hear about you meeting the Avengers and Spider-Man from the news,” Tucker added.
They had met up at the park before break ended to talk and wander around. Danny winced.
“Sorry. I was sort of still processing it, I guess. Scarlett and Clockwork were being all overprotective about it, too. Humans wielding ghost weapons and all that,” he explained, waving a hand.
Sam and Tucker shared a look.
“You okay, dude?” Tucker asked.
Danny shrugged one shoulder. “I mean, yeah, I’m okay.”
“Good. Because this is the one time I’ll give you a free pass for not telling us about superhero meetings,” Sam retorted, bumping him with her shoulder.
“ And you have to tell us every detail,” Tucker added.
“Of course,” Danny agreed.
“Dude! You met a teenage ghost superhero and you’re just now telling me about it?!” Ned hissed in Peter’s ear.
Peter grabbed his arm and started tugging him through the crowded high school hallways until they made it to their first period classroom.
“We were on Spring Break! You didn’t have a phone signal or internet! Do you know how many times I tried to call you?” Peter whispered back, shuffling his papers.
“I got back last night!” Ned protested.
“I was with the Avengers! What did you want me to do, say I had to leave to call my best friend that I was going to see today anyway?” Peter whispered back.
“I guess not,” Ned agreed. “But you have to tell me everything!”
“Ok, well-”
“What are you whispering about, losers?” MJ asked, walking in.
Ned and Peter exchanged a look. MJ sat at the desk next to Peter and dropped her bag next to her feet.
“I was telling Ned about meeting Phantom,” Peter whispered.
“YOU TOLD HER BEFORE ME?!” Ned whisper yelled.
Heads turned.
“Shut up!” Peter hissed.
“Sorry,” Ned whispered.
“I had internet and cell service still, unlike some people,” MJ retorted, setting her sketchbook on her desk.
“Not cool, dude,” Ned complained.
Peter shrugged. “I could reach her, at least. Where did you guys go on vacation, anyway?”
“Some mountain house in North Carolina. Lots of tubing on the lake and hiking and stuff like that. It was fun, though. But I’m not letting you distract me, I want to hear all about Phantom,” Ned insisted.
Peter nodded. “At lunch, though. Class is about to start.”
“Danny, you’re gonna be late if you don’t leave soon!” Winter yelled, knowing he would hear her.
“Everyone’s gonna be talking about it!” Danny protested, drifting down the stairs in ghost form.
“And that’s different than every other day, how?” Winter retorted.
“It just is,” Danny protested.
“It is,” Kendra agreed, walking in.
“How?” Winter asked, tilting her head.
“Because Phantom did something cool that people will be talking about and admiring and telling their friends about and everyone will be treating Danny exactly the same. Hell, they might even try to tell him how Phantom is so much cooler than him, or try to tell him about it like he’s an idiot. And that really sucks,” Kendra explained.
“Oh. Yeah,” Winter agreed.
“But that doesn’t mean you don’t still have to go,” Kendra added, turning to Danny.
Danny groaned. “But it’s gonna suck,” he protested.
“It is. You’ll be alright,” Kendra answered.
“Fine,” Danny grumbled.
Kendra patted him on the shoulder. “Good. Now get outta here.”
“Wait, there was a ghost dragon with a magic amulet?” Ned asked.
“Um, yeah. Aragon,” Peter answered.
“You still haven’t watched the news story, have you?” MJ chimed in, dryly.
“There’s a news story?” Ned demanded.
“There were ghosts. In Manhattan. Of course there was a news story,” MJ retorted, before refocusing on her sketchbook.
“Okay, yeah, I’ll watch it,” Ned relented.
“Good.”
Danny was more than ready to crawl under his covers and never come out as soon as he got home. School had, as predicted, sucked. Sam and Tucker helped, because they always did, but still. His plans changed, though, when he phased through the door to find Alex and Sebastian in the living room.
“Danny, get over here and tell Alex I’m a better violinist than he is!” Winter yelled, as soon as he walked in the door.
Danny rolled his eyes, dropped his backpack, and made his way into the living room.
“Ember thought Alex was better, remember?”
“Traitor,” Winter grumbled.
It took Danny time to get used to having brothers. He had always had Jazz, and then he ended up with Kendra and Winter. And with them came Alex and Sebastian.
Alex was the artist of the family, which became apparent very quickly. He played violin and piano, sculpted, painted, and danced. He was the quietest of the siblings, but considering how loud they all were, that wasn’t saying much.
Sebastian was an engineer. He was the one who had made most of the ghost fighting tech they had, which he had apparently been doing long before Danny came along. He was loud and boisterous, and he got along well with Tucker. They were both tech nerds, after all. Sebastian was the kind of older brother that tried to teach Danny sports and told him stories about his “wild college days” and would probably take him to a concert or a sports game if he ever wanted to go.
“You okay, Danny? The sisters grimm over here said you probably had a bad day,” Alex asked, nodding to Winter and Kendra.
“Hey!” Kendra protested the nickname, reaching over to thwack Alex with a newspaper.
Danny laughed. “I mean, school sucked, but I’m just glad to be home. And I’m glad to see you guys,” he answered, dropping onto the sofa next to Sebastian.
“We’re glad to see you too, Danny,” Sebastian agreed, reaching over to ruffle his hair.
“What he said,” Alex added.
“What are you guys doing here, anyway? You’re usually too busy for this,” Danny accused, looking from one sibling to the next.
“Moral support,” Alex answered, lazily.
“For what?”
“You didn’t tell him?” Alex demanded, at the same time as Sebastian yelled “KENDRA ROSE PARIS!”
Kendra winced. “I...forgot to mention it?” she tried.
“Uh-huh,” Winter teased.
“I did!” Kendra protested.
“What, exactly, did you forget to mention, Scarlett?” Danny asked, leaning forward and resting his hands on his knees.
Kendra sighed. “Vlad is coming over for dinner tonight.”
Crickets.
“Why?” Danny asked, sinking back into his seat, pulling a pillow onto his lap.
Sebastian shifted closer to Danny on the couch, put an arm around his shoulders. Danny leaned sideways without really thinking about it. He hugged the pillow tighter.
“It started a few years after Kendra told him off the first time,” Winter started, when it was clear Kendra wasn’t going to answer.
“He reached out to her. Apologized for not being honest with her. Wrote her this whole letter about how family was one of his obsessions and he had a hard time balancing that with honest and normal moral standards,” Sebastian continued.
“I didn’t know what to think,” Kendra whispered. “I mean, he had never been intentionally malicious towards me or anything. Manipulative, sure. But he always seemed like what he did was to help me. I ended up telling him off because he was trying to control me, like he had actually raised me or something. I resented it, because I had two parents that loved me, and he was not one of them.”
“So she went to Pandora about it,” Alex picked it up. “Because, well-”
“GHOST MOM!” Winter, Alex, and Sebastian chorused.
Danny laughed.
“Anyway,” Alex continued, “Pandora had only ever heard about Vlad from Kendra and from us, so she didn’t seem to really know how to feel about it. But the rest of us thought she should try, not least of all because, hello , he’s rich.”
“So Kendra and Pandora agreed to meet with him,” Winter said. “But, oh my god, Pandora made the biggest deal out of it. She made him come to Elysium and everything, and Kendra was super embarrassed about it. But they decided he seemed sincere, so they got to know him a little better.”
“I wouldn’t say we’re, like, really close or anything,” Kendra hedged. “But he comes for dinner once or twice a year, and usually I go see him sometimes too, and we talk or whatever. And, I mean, he’s not a horrible person or anything. He’s trying his best, you know?”
“Did I ever tell you about the time he cloned me?” Danny blurted out.
“WHAT?!” Sebastian yelled. It was followed by various other expressions of shock from the rest of her siblings.
“Yeah, I, um, I kinda saved her life? She ended up as a girl somehow, by the way. Um. She was melting because she wasn’t stabilized so Tucker and I modified one of my dad’s inventions to help fix her and she’s like travelling the world now?? Um, yeah, she’s basically my kid sister. Her name is Danielle but she goes by Ellie because, like, two Phantoms named ‘Danny ’would be kind of weird. So. Yeah.”
“How did we never know this?” Winter asked.
“I never thought to tell you?” Danny offered.
“Of course not, that would be too easy,” Sebastian teased.
“Exactly!” Danny agreed, grinning.
“You don’t have to stay for dinner with Vlad, if you don’t want to,” Kendra offered.
“Dinner with the fruitloop? Think I’ll pass, thanks,” Danny answered.
Alex laughed. “Fruitloop, that’s good.”
“I like to think it’s accurate.”
Kendra sighed. “He is a little...nutty, I guess. But I think some of that is ghostly, you know? He’s trying his best.”
“Maybe another time,” Danny consoled.
“Clockwork would love to see you, I’m sure,” Winter offered.
“Hm. I was thinking more like Ellie. I’m not even sure which country she’s ended up in at this point. I bet the shadows in our lair would know, though.”
“YOU SHARE A LAIR TOO?!” Kendra yelled.
“I mean, we are technically the same person. So. Yes.”
“Should have seen that coming,” Alex muttered.
Danny shrugged, set his pillow aside, sat up. “Yup.”
“You two still gonna be here tomorrow?” he asked, gesturing to Alex and Sebastian.
“We’re here for the week, yeah,” Alex answered.
Danny nodded to himself, floating off his seat and changing forms. “Good.”
“Do you have to leave now?” Sebastian whined.
“I really don’t want to run into Vlad. He’ll be here in the next hour or so, am I right?”
“Yes. We can hang out the rest of the week,” Alex answered, shooting Sebastian a look.
Danny chuckled and drifted up farther. “Perfect! See you later!”
Then he was floating out of the house through the ceiling.