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charcoalhawk · 2 years ago

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No Batteries Required

Turns out that with all the other powers of a ghostly core, they also make a great emergency light source.

Second Phic for this Phic Phight!

Prompt from @jewishicequeen : There's a powerfail at school, and during a major test, too. So it's really lucky, if a bit weird, that Fenton glows in the dark? Or, Danny becomes a freaking nightlight.

Today is his home room period’s first test back from winter break, one of the most important for the quarter. Glancing around Edward Lancer counts twenty five bent heads, all focusing on the paper before them. Hopefully today they can get through the next, a quick glance at the old clock hanging in the wall, hour and four minutes without any ghost attacks or rouge bathroom trips.

If they ended up having to push this test back then it would mean the class would have less time to go over and review their next unit when the time came, which in turn he knows will push the entire schedule back at least a week or two, meaning less time to review the needed material, leaving his kids ill prepared for tests the entire quarter.

Even after two years Casper high had not been able to stretch or alter their curriculum to accommodate for their new, erm, ghostly neighbors. Every attempt to reach out to the larger school board had been met with quiet disdain and louder criticism.

At best they could use the few half days the calendar offered and convert them into extra time in the event a ghost prevented tests from being completed multiple days in a row. They were doing all they could to not take the kids' spring break, it wouldn’t be fair after all their kids went through to turn around and deprive them of one of the few chances for a break they could get.

But, nothing Edward can do about that right now. Now he has a duty to see these kids though their test today and hopefully be able to move into their next unit on Monday.

Weak sunlight is streaming through the windows, casting the room in a soft warm glow. One of many reasons Edward had requested an outer room of the school. He had found that, as distracting as the outside could be, having a room with a view to the outside kept his students from feeling too enclosed and anxious.

It also didn’t help that sunlight meant that his room was always nice and bright, better than the cheap overhead lights which could barely keep the room visible when the blinds were closed. In the last month three of them had been damaged to the point that they were nonfunctional, and several others were just too old and were on their last legs.

There’s no outward sign before it happens, no flashing light or rumbling earth, one moment Edward is observing his students from his desk, and the next the room is plunged into darkness.

Well, not complete darkness, but it’s a rather gloomy day, so the light from outside casts the entire room into a muddled gloom.

As his brain is trying to catch up with his eyes his ears finally register the echo of all the lights in the room going pop and out at once.

In the half second before his students register what’s going on Edward curses himself for even thinking things could not go wrong.

No one screams, at least. But there’s the screech of cheap metal chairs on tile as his students try to figure out what’s going on. There’s no burst of light from students' phones, which strikes him as odd, before Edward remembers they’re all sitting in little cubbies at the front of the room.

After an unfortunate encounter with a ghostly duo of the mad Nikolai Tesla rip-off and a metal Mohawk man, Edward had negotiated with his students that all phones were to stay at the front of the room and not on anyone’s person.

One only needed to experience a group electrocution from dozens of phones combined with sitting in metal chairs once before his students readily agreed to the new rule.

(There hadn’t been any lasting injuries, all in all it hadn’t been a super powerful attack, but one student had needed to go to the nurse for fainting after the shock. At least Dash and his friend group hadn’t teased young Daniel too badly for that.)

Now that the darkness had settled in, and there was no maniacal laughter to indicate that a ghost was directly behind this situation, the chatter from his students rose from a murmur to a fever pitch.

Two sharp claps bring everything to a halt, and Edward is greeted with twenty five pairs of eyes staring steadily at him.

“Everyone please remain calm,” his voice was loud in the now defining quiet of the room. “Hopefully this is a temporary issue and will be resolved in the next few minutes. Now, we still have light from the windows so if we could all please get back to our tests-“

A series of clanks and buzzes pierce the air from the side of the classroom, before the metal ghost shield contraption slams down over the windows with a god awful grinding sound. An echo of the screeching sound fills the room as Edward once again tries to comprehend what had just happened.

It must have been a failure in the schools power system, either a fluke or a ghost had been trying to cause problems but the fail safes had caused the entire system to shut down in self defense.

It didn’t immediately explain why the metal ghost shield enforcers had activated, but given that the system was less than two years old, and had been in large part programmed by Jack Fenton meant that there were bound to be a few flaws in the code.

And now the class was sitting in pitch darkness and gearing up to be in full panic mode. Unfortunately with all their undead neighbors the school has had little time to educate the students in what they should do in situations not involving the undead.

Shove a kid in a room with a ghost and they would arrive back in class five minutes later with a triumphant grin and a few scorch marks, close a kid in a room and set off the tornado warning and suddenly everyone was running around with their heads cut off.

No one has run from their feet towards their phones yet, but Edward knows it’s only a matter of time. And then he’ll have a stampede of terrified juniors all running over each other in the pitch black classroom.

For all this was their classroom, it was a new room to everyone. A particularly nasty attack from the Wisconsin ghost a few days back had almost completely obliterated their homeroom, so they were forced to relocate to a little used lab room in the far wing while Mayor Masters found the resources to allocate to the school.

With silent feet Edward moves to where he knows the door is, it won’t be much, but at least if worst comes to worst he can slowly escort his class outside. But, the door handle won't budge, and his heart sinks to his shoes as the door refuses to open.

He knows part of the new ghost security system was that individual rooms could be completely locked down to catch a wandering ghost, but this seems like a large oversight of the Doctor’s Fenton part.

He makes his way back to his desk, then turns again, making his steps now audible to his class. Let them think he’s pacing, it’s a normal enough habit of his that the kids shouldn’t realize something is wrong.

“Alright everyone, please remain in your seats. If something has happened emergency power should activate soon, and once the faculty has figured out what’s wrong they’ll use the PA system to instruct us on what to do next.” damn, he can feel his own voice wavering slightly.

That’s hoping whatever caused this to happen didn’t affect the PA system, and if they end up doing a door to door notice they won’t be able to get theirs open, if they even remember seeing as this classroom is usually unused.

But, something is wrong. The room should be in complete darkness, but as the seconds tick by the room becomes steadily lighter, as if someone is slowly powering up a flashlight.

As the room slowly becomes visible all eyes are drawn to the source, a spot right next to the windows, but it’s not natural light.

It’s the color of the glow that truly throws Edward off. Most everything he’s encountered in the last few years that glowed were always a sickly green color, reminiscent of radioactive goop shown on Saturday morning cartoons. But this glow now reminded him of a sunrise. Small and bright, but always a welcome sight.

Even before the form becomes fully visible, Edward knows the culprit. Often the center of unnatural things occurring all around him, young Danny Fenton.

As his eyes adjust to the light he sees it is not, in fact, a flashlight, but Danny himself that is brightening the room.

Which, even for a ghost hunter's son, this is rather unusual.

But, one should neve look a gift horse in the mouth. He’s seen his students float before and even become an actual ghostly dragon in one very memorable occurrence. If this means he doesn’t have to reschedule this test, and as the minutes tick by it becomes clear that Danny is producing enough light for the entire class to see by, then Edward should simply go with the flow, as the kids say.

“Daniel,” and oh the poor kid looks just as freaked out as the rest of them feel, “could you please move to the middle of the room? Just ah- yes Cory if you could swap and move to Daniel’s seat that would be spectacular.”

There’s some very awkward shuffling as Danny and Cory swap seats, everyone’s eyes still drawn towards Danny like a moth to a flame.

“Thank you gentlemen, now seeing as Danny has, ah, provided us with an alternative light source for this period, let us all focus back on our tests. If you wouldn't mind staying after class, Danny, I do have some questions.”

“Heh,” snickering from the back of the class where he know Dash and Kwan commanded the football team like kings at a court, “I guess you could call Fenton a fleshlig-“

“Finish that sentence mr. Baxter, and you will find yourself staying after class for the rest of the week.” All movement in the back stops just as suddenly as if they had been frozen to their seats, “and you know Coach Telestaff is strict in her requirements to be at practices lest you not be put on the field.”

“I ahm, uh,” Danny is fidgeting from all the attention thrust upon him. He glances towards his friends who are giving furious little gestures under their desks that Edward pretends he can’t see, “I accidentally ate ectoplasm last night!”

Well, he had been going to discuss this privately, but teens so rarely wanted to stand out from their peers. Maybe he hoped explaining now meant he could leave when class was over.

“Yeah!” Danny sounds more confident as his story builds as he speaks, “my dad was trying out this new recipe from my mom’s sister, and I think he forgot he and my mom were working on one of their weapons earlier that evening and accidentally coated the entire thing in ectoplasm. But! It should go away on its own soon! Shouldn’t last more than a day!”

“Ok, thank you for your explanation, now if everyone could get back to their tests…”

As his students calm down and return to their tests a low hum slowly makes itself known over the shuffling of feet and scratching of pencils.

It is, not dissimilar to the sound of a content cat, in Edward’s experience. Looking out again he can see a small smile grace Daniel’s face as the other students calm around him.

But what does he know, it’s probably just the vents.

#danny phantom #phic phight 2023 #team human #no beta i die like danny #danny fenton #mr. lancer

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