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spectacled-renegade-writes · 1 year ago

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An Early Start - Chapter 11 - Danny Phantom

Ao3: Here | Masterpost: Here

Ao3 Description: The accident that turns Danny half-ghost happens when he is four years old and leaves him trapped in the Ghost Zone. Clockwork finds him and takes him in to raise. But what happens when Clockwork sends Danny back to the human-world ten years later when a permanent portal appears?

Chapter 11:

A week after his return, as the media began to die down and move on to the next hot thing at the moment, his parents sat him down with Jazz at the kitchen table. “Now, Danny,” Maddie began. “Your father and I were talking and well… we were wondering how you would feel about going to school?”

Without a single moment of hesitation Danny agreed, nodding enthusiastically. It surprised all of them. Danny on the other hand couldn’t be happier. He realized during his second night here, after trying and failing to get to sleep, that he did not like being in this house, and it was even worse when Jazz wasn’t home. Two days after his return she went back to school, leaving him behind. Danny could not stand the atmosphere of the house so he tried to spend most of his days flying around the city, mapping it out in his mind. The only problem with that was keeping track of the time, since he had all those appointments, which meant a lot of the time he was just stuck here, sitting in his room, reading books Jazz lent him.

“You want to go to school?” Jazz asked.

Danny nodded again and wrote: I think it will be good. For once it seemed like he said the right thing because this time she smiled, an excited glint in her eyes.

“I was actually thinking the same thing!” She exclaimed. “I think normalcy will do you a lot of good! No better way to rejoin society than to be a normal kid.”

Danny thought the term "rejoining" society was funny. He’d never joined it in the first place. He found himself smiling from amusement at the thought but they took it as him agreeing to Jazz’s statement.

“Alrighty then, Danny-o!” Jack said. “We’ll go down to the school tomorrow and get everything squared away. You can start on Monday!”

Danny nodded.

Come Monday Danny realized his huge error. He didn’t know school was so… cramped. The hallways were narrow and filled with people, worse than the mall, and there seemed to be no place to just take a breath. The atmosphere hit him the moment he walked through the front doors. He stood there, in his new outfit, black jeans and a white t-shirt, with a baggy blue hoodie and maroon sneakers, an outfit as normal as anyone else’s, but still felt like he stood out like a sore thumb. Jazz took him by the arm and gently lead him to the office. When they arrived, Danny watched as every set of eyes fell on him. Everyone in the office was looking at him, he knew they’ve all heard of him. Jazz paid no mind as she held on to him and kept going, making their way to the principal’s office.

Inside, a professional looking woman sat behind a large desk with a nameplate reading, “Principal Ishiyama”. She greeted them warmly. “Jazz, Daniel, I’ve been expecting you. Please, take a seat.”

Danny glanced at Jazz and Jazz corrected her for him. “He goes by Danny.” She said as they both sat down.

“Danny, wonderful,” Principal Ishiyama clapped her hands together. “Well, there’s no point dillydallying, let’s get down to business. I have been informed of your situation and personally passed on that information to all of your teachers. So, all of them know not to call on you in class.” She opened a drawer and rifled through it for a moment before pulling out a small stack of papers, and passed them to Danny. “Those papers include your class schedule, locker number and combination, as well as a list of extracurricular activities we have after school, should you be interested.” Danny rifled through them as she spoke. “Oh, and the page at the bottom has the schedule of our school counselor. I know you’ve been through a lot so if you feel overwhelmed, you can see him within his hours, that is if he’s not with another student, or you can go to the school nurse.”

Danny had the feeling this woman was less of the emotional type and more of the proactive type. She opened another drawer and pulled out two pink slips of paper, and signed them both. “Here are your hall passes,” Principal Ishiyama said, passing one to each of them. “Jazz will give you a tour of the school and afterward, send you to class.” Danny glanced at his sister. She didn’t notice, to busy listening to the principal’s words. “Well,” Ishiyama said, gesturing with both hands toward the door. “Off you go then.”

Danny felt dazed as he left the office with Jazz. Everything here seemed so… structured? Constricting? Both words seemed correct. He wondered if this wouldn’t be better than the house after all. “Danny?” Jazz placed a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

Was he okay? He didn’t feel okay. He looked down the oh-so-narrow hallway then back to his sister. He nodded anyway.

“Okay, then,” she smiled gently. “Let’s start the tour.”

The tour itself took twenty minutes as she showed him each hallway and classroom. They took another ten minutes going through his exact route for the day, so it would be easier for him to memorize. Afterward, she showed him to his locker. “This is where you will store your things when you’re not using them,” Jazz explained. The function of the lockers were quite obvious but after the dressing room incident, and another similar incident with a crosswalk later on, she began explaining simple things that she thought he might not know. Danny appreciated the gesture, even if sometimes he did know what she was talking about. “Now,” Jazz said. ��Putting in your locker combination is weird, so let me show you.” It took a few tries but Danny managed to get it, and he found himself wanting to understand the intricacies of the lock's weird mechanism. He wished he could ask Clockwork.

Eventually, the time came to drop him off at class. Jazz walked him to his room and stopped outside. “Okay,” she said, adjusting his coat on his shoulders. “This is it. Now, remember what I told you. When you go in, hand your hall pass to the teacher. If you have a question or comment while sitting at your desk, make sure to raise your hand first and let the teacher call on you. What else… oh, right, if you need to go to the bathroom then you have to raise your hand to ask that too, you can't just leave.” She seemed to be stalling now. They both knew there was nothing left for her to say. She reached forward and gave him a hug. “Okay, then. Be safe, have fun, and make some friends.”

Danny pretended not to see the tears in her eyes as he turned to the door. He took a deep breath and opened it. Once inside, the teacher, who had been talking, stopped when he saw Danny enter. He looked at Danny. The whole class looked at Danny. Danny could not remember a single moment in his life when he had so many eyes on him. As he walked over to the teacher he heard someone whisper, “Hey, isn’t that the ghost boy?”

“That kid who like, came back from the dead or something, it totally is!”

“I heard he was a victim of human trafficking or something.” A third person whispered.

“Whatever happened to him, he seems weird.” Said a fourth.

Danny tried his very best to ignore them and kept his eyes dead ahead as he made his way to the teacher. He reached the man, who was bald and had a gut, and dutifully handed him the pink slip of paper. “Ah, Mr. Fenton,” the teacher said. “I’ve been expecting you. I’m Mr. Lancer.” He pointed to an empty seat in the middle of the second row from the front and said, “You may take the empty seat next to Miss Manson right there, and I will bring you your paperwork.”

Danny nodded, and felt every eye on him in the dead silent room as he made his way to his seat. He kept his eyes trained directly on the floor in front of him and didn’t dare look up even as he sat. Mr. Lancer resumed his lecture as he went to rifle through his own desk, looking for everything Danny needed. Moments later another small stack of papers appeared before him. Danny busied himself looking through them until he heard a quiet, “Psst.”

Danny glanced to his left. That girl, Manson, was looking at him. She glanced down at her lap and Danny looked too, and saw a note she wanted to pass him. She quickly reached out and he just as quickly grabbed it. He unfolded it and it read, I’m Sam. Danny pulled out a pencil and wrote back, I’m Danny. He waited until the teacher wasn’t looking before passing it back. He wondered why the adults at school were people to be feared. It was another human custom he did not understand. Moments later, Sam passed the note back. Wanna sit with my friend and me at lunch? Danny looked up and saw her gesture with her head to the guy sitting behind her. That hat… Danny realized he’s seen these people before. His first day back, at the thrift store, he saw them in line behind Jazz. Right now the guy wasn’t paying attention, he was looking at something in his lap. Danny turned back to Sam and nodded. Sam smiled and flashed him a thumbs up.

After class Danny made his way back to his locker to get the proper textbook for his next period. As he zipped his backpack two large guys, two of the people whispering about him in class, appeared on either side of him. “Hey, ghost kid!” The blond one said, not so kindly. “So, is it true? Were you like human trafficked or something?”

Danny didn’t know what that meant. Of course he said nothing.

“I don’t know, Dash,” said the other, just as condescending as the first. “He seems too wimpy to have come back from that. He probably just ran away.”

Danny looked between the two and wondered if he was supposed to feel intimidated.

“Well, Kwan, if he’s a wimp,” said the blond one now known as Dash, and he hit his fist into his palm. “Then he needs to know what we do to wimps at this school.”

“Leave him alone!”

Danny looked over and saw Sam stalking toward them.

“Oh yeah, geek?” Dash challenged. “What are you going to do about it?”

Danny could tell from her facial expression that she already knew she had the upper hand. “Oh, I don’t know,” she mocked. “Just show everyone that picture I took of you at the movie theater last week, crying at that dumb chick flick.”

It definitely did the trick because Dash’s face went completely red, both in anger and embarrassment. He rounded on Danny, stuck a finger in his chest, and growled, “This isn’t over, ghost boy.” Danny watched him and his friend stomp off down the hall. He turned back to Sam and gave her a single nod in thanks.

“Those guys are jerks. Are you okay?” She asked. But Sam didn’t get to receive a response because the bell rang. They both looked up then back at each other. “I’ll see you at lunch.”

Danny watched as Sam walked off. He wondered why she was even talking to him in the first place, she didn’t know him and no one else was talking to him. She was… odd. But it wasn’t a bad thing.

Come lunchtime, Danny entered the cafeteria with the bagged lunch Jazz packed him that morning. The cafeteria was both the loudest room of all and the most crowded. But, he still liked it better than class, because at least here he had a bit more freedom. Danny knew that particular quirk would take the longest to get used to.

Of course he had rules to follow when he was with Clockwork but they were nothing as strict as this.

“Danny!” Danny looked over and saw Sam waving to him from a table in the corner, her friend sitting across from her. He was glancing between the two of them. Danny made his way over. “Glad you could make it.” She said as he sat next to her. “This is Tucker.”

Danny nodded at him.

“Strong silent type, huh? You don’t see a lot of those around these parts.” Tucker said.

Strong silent? Danny shook his head. They watched him pull out that small notebook from his pocket and begin to write, before flipping it around so they could see. I guess so… I can’t speak.

They seemed caught off guard for only a moment before Tucker spoke up again. “No worries, man. You know sign language? Sam and I do.”

Excitement immediately bubbled to the surface and Danny smiled for the first time since entering the school. He pushed aside his notebook and lifted his hands. “You guys are the first people I met who do!”

“Not surprising,” Sam said. “There’s not much diversity in this town.”

Danny tilted his head. “Then how do you guys know it?”

“Caught a nasty ear infection a few years ago.” Tucker explained. “It was pretty bad and I lost my hearing for a couple of days. It was only temporary but I remembered how frustrating it was the whole time. Once I got better, I decided to learn it so the world could be a little less frustrating for others, and Sam decided to learn with me.”

“It’s come in handy a few times,” Sam added. “Not just for communication but also when we want to talk trash about someone in front of them.”

Danny snorted.

“So,” Tucker said. “Is it like a medical thing or do you just not like to talk?”

“Tucker!” Sam chastised. “You can’t just ask someone that.”

Danny merely waved it off because he didn’t mind. It felt so nice to be able to talk to someone again so freely, it felt like he gained back a little bit of his freedom. His expression grew thoughtful as he answered, “Medical, I guess? It’s a long story but I haven’t been able to talk since I was four.”

Danny saw the way they exchanged glances at that. In that moment he realized they knew his story, too. He was four when he disappeared. All at once he grew uncomfortable again and began to fidget with the zipper on his jacket, but the tension didn’t last long because Tucker broke the silence with a chipper attitude. “Well, it’s a good thing you have us now. We can be your dutiful translators!”

Danny thought back to a Christmas three years ago. “Like, friends?”

“Not like friends,” Sam said. “Friends. Tucker and I decided you’re cool so you’re part of the squad now. Deal with it.”

Danny smiled and looked to Tucker. “Hey, whatever the lady says, goes. You’ll learn soon enough that arguing with her is a futile venture,” he winked.

Okay, then. Friends.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ao3 Notes: Sam and Tucker have finally entered the story! I wanted at least someone that Danny could freely communicate with and who better than his friends? Thank you so much for reading and I hope you have a lovely day/night!

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