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One's parents being friends, however grudgingly or unknowingly, with one's archenemy came with several downsides. For one, said archenemy sometimes just showed up at one's house, unannounced, prevailing on a long-ago open invitation. Sometimes, having done that, the archenemy was even invited to dinner. And, if that happened, it generally wasn't too difficult for the archenemy to, say, goad one of the parents into making an unwise bet out of sheer spite.
“Alright, Vlad! I bet you a hundred bucks that I can reel in a bigger ghost fish than you! I'll even give you some of our Fenton Fishing Line!”
“Oh, Jack, I couldn't possibly take your money,” said Vlad, smoothly, playing with his plate of spaghetti. He hadn't, as far as Danny could tell, eaten any of it. “Let's do something else. Oh, I know. You remember what we used to do, back in college. Why don't we do that?”
“Jack,” started Maddie, “I don't think–”
“Ha! Wanting to relive your glory days, huh, Vladdie?” interrupted Jack. “I'll do it, but don't complain to me when I win! Ha!”
If Danny didn't feel obliged to watch Vlad like a hawk as long as he was anywhere near Fentonworks, he would have covered his face with his hands.
“Anyway, Vlad,” said Maddie shoving a roll of fishing line in the general vicinity of Vlad's chest. “We're sorry to have kept you for so long when I'm sure you're very busy.”
“Dear Maddie, I'm happy to–”
“You're very. Busy.”
Danny leaned around his mother and flared his eyes green.
Vlad seemed to get the point. “Yes,” he said, folding his napkin daintily. “Yes,” he repeated. “I suppose I am relatively busy. All my businesses, you see. But I will be looking forward to the resolution of our little bet, Jack. How about we compare results this… Sunday?”
“Sure thing, Vladdie my man! Don’t let those corporate sharks bite ya!”
Danny ghosted after Jack and Vlad as the former shepherded the latter to the front door. Jack gave Vlad one last resounding pat on the back, then seemed to notice Danny. “Oh! Danno! You’re here to see Vladdie off?”
“Yeah,” said Danny, still fixing Vlad with a hard gaze. “Bye.”
“How charming,” said Vlad, words dripping with sarcasm. “Goodbye, Daniel. Jack.”
“Bye, Vladdie!”
Danny didn’t turn away from the door until he saw Vlad drive off. Then, he flipped on the ghost shield. Just in case.
.
Later that evening, after Jack and Maddie had retreated to the lab for an evening of fishing and mad science, Danny and Jazz had a war conference.
“Don’t call it that,” said Jazz, as Danny wrote the words ‘WAR CONFERENCE’ on his whiteboard.
“It is what it is,” said Danny.
“No, it isn’t. It’s a bet. A stupid bet, and I don’t like how Mom and Dad didn’t even say what the bet was for, but still, it’s just a bet.”
“What it’s for is to humiliate Dad by making him do some stupid thing they used to do in college.” He frowned at the floor. “What kinds of things do people do in college that would be really bad to do as adults.”
“Most people in college are adults.”
“You know what I mean.” He blew a strand of hair out of his face and shifted his glare to her. “I don’t think you’re taking this war conference very seriously.”
“Danny, the last time you went to ‘war’ with Vlad, he became mayor. I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“So you’re okay with him just doing whatever to Dad? He’s going to cheat so he wins, you know.”
“Yes, but can’t you do something to stop it other than declaring war on him? Like, if he’s going to cheat, can’t you just cheat back?
Danny’s glare turned into a stare. “Are you seriously telling me to cheat? You? Jazz? Telling me to cheat?”
“It’s not like this is a test,” said Jazz. “This is Vlad, who is, as you said, already not playing fair. I’ll bet he’s got a duplicate camping out in front of our portal, or that he’s already gotten a huge fish for himself. Getting a fish for Dad is pretty minor in comparison.”
“Yeah,” said Danny. “Yeah, you’re right. But… what about sabotage?”
“Please don’t sabotage Vlad. I don’t want to wake up some day and turn on the news to find out that Vlad’s president or something. Or that he’s turned the park into some kind of Vladtopia.”
“He tried that already, sort of,” said Danny. “That’s one of the reasons Undergrowth went for him, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. I guess so. I’d forgotten.” She sighed. “You’d think it would be easier to keep track of things like this.”
“No,” said Danny. “Even I can’t keep it all straight. There’s just too much happening all the time.”
“Danny, you don’t even keep track of your powers.”
“Because there’s too much happening all the time.” He looked at the board and contemplated its general state of blankness. “Are you sure–”
“No wars, Danny.”
Danny shrugged and wiped the board clean with one. “Okay. So, I’ll go ask around, see where I can find some ghost fish… Ones that aren’t sapient. That might be tricky, but I’m not handing a person over to Dad.”
“Good call. I still can’t believe you let them catch you that time.”
“It was only for, like, half an hour,” said Danny, waving off her concern. “You’ve caught me for longer. My mistake. Let’s see, who can I ask… Frostbite, definitely. He might have some good ice fishing places, too, but he’s a bit far off. Pandora would probably be okay with me asking, as long as I stay away from her box. Dora, but she likes Sam better. Clockwork… maybe. I think he’s still mad about the ecto-acne thing.” He wrote names on the whiteboard as he went. “Johnny and Kitty? I don’t think they’re really the kind of people who fish, but they might know something. Mmm… Youngblood? He’s got the pirate thing going for him, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he knew something.”
“Didn’t he try to kill us?”
“Oh, sure, but everyone does that. Maybe I can ask his parents instead, they did pay us to babysit that one time.”
“I hesitate to ask–”
“They’re not literally his parents,” Danny said. “He’s sort of adopted? I don’t really get their arrangement, but whatever works for them, I guess.”
“Okay. Sure. Why not?” Jazz shook her head. “Just don’t antagonize Vlad for no reason. I know it sounds like victim blaming–”
“I’m not a victim.”
“--but he’s really dangerous, Danny, and I’m worried that, beyond whatever he’s trying to do with Dad, his goal here is to rile you up, so he has an excuse to do something to you.”
Danny hunched his shoulders. He hadn’t thought of that, but… it did sound like Vlad. The jerk. “I said I wouldn’t, already. You don’t have to keep nagging.”
“I’m not– Okay, maybe I am a little. Just. Yeah.”
“Yeah,” said Danny. “Well, I’m going to get started now. I don’t know how long it’ll take to find a fish that can beat whatever Vlad has.”
“Yeah, that’s probably…” She trailed off, a thoughtful look on her face. “Don’t you have a bunch of homework due next week?”
“Okay, great war conference, okay, thanks, bye!” He phased through the floor, dropped through the kitchen, and phased through the ground, into the lab, flicking invisible as he did so.
Maddie sat tinkering at one of the workbenches, an unhappy frown on her face, as Jack used the Fenton Fisher to throw a length of Fenton Fishing Line through the portal over and over again. At least he wasn’t waiting until the last minute, like he did with anniversaries and birthdays. So. That was good.
There weren’t going to be any ghost fish on the other side of the portal, though. That whole area was something like a major highway. It’d scare away anything likely to be taken in by the… Danny’s thoughts trailed off as he realized his dad didn’t even have any bait or even a lure on the end of the line. Just a naked hook.
Yeah. That wasn’t going to work. He loved his dad, but that was just… He didn’t think even normal fish were that stupid.
Danny skirted the edges of the lab and waited for Jack to become occupied with untangling the line before he dove for the portal. He scattered the ghosts waiting on the other side and scooped up a few of the more egregious repeat offenders in his thermos before they could react further. He’d let them out once he was a mile or two from the portal. Make a point.
And also interrogate them.
Danny flew, his tail stretching out, banner-like, behind him, easily outdistancing the few ghosts who were both angry enough and bold enough to chase him. Once he felt like he was far enough, he found a barren little island to settle down on and released his captives.
“Not cool, man!” said Johnny, shaking himself all over. “My bike never works right after you do that!”
Kitty shoved him, although the motion lacked any real anger. “You’re always thinking about that bike! What about me?”
“Huh? You’re fine, aren’t you?”
“God!”
Danny shooed Shadow away. “Hey, can you guys pause your argument for like five minutes?”
“Can you leave us alone for five minutes?” Kitty snapped back.
“Yeah! We weren’t even in your stupid little town!”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Danny. “But you have been there, what, every day this last week? And you were in line in front of the portal. Again.”
“Well, yeah. It’s date night,” said Johnny, shrugging. He tried to start his bike. It spluttered. “Come on, come on, baby, you can do it.”
“Ugh. You see what I have to put up with?”
“Uh huh,” said Danny, uninterested. “So, I’ve got a question.”
“And then you’ll let us have date night?”
“So long as you have it nowhere near Amity.”
“You’re such a bummer, man. Loosen up!”
“You put that one store out of business, with how many mirrors you broke, you know. That’s a pretty serious thing for people who still have to eat.”
Johnny rolled his eyes with his entire body. “They can get other jobs! They’re still alive, aren’t they?”
Danny decided that if he didn’t get to the point in a hurry, this conversation could go on for another hour or more. “Do you know any good places to go fishing?”
Johnny and Kitty both stared at him.
“Uh, why?” asked Kitty.
“None of your business,” said Danny.
“You’re making it our business. Come on, you can’t ask us a question like that and not say why.”
“Or we won’t answer!”
Danny frowned deeply and tried to assess what kind of damage the two of them could do if they knew. Honestly… not much. He supposed they might try to stop him from getting a fish, if they knew it was important to him, or spread it around that he was trying to do that, but in the grand scheme of things…
“Fine,” he said, crossing his arms. “My dad made a stupid bet with Vlad about who could catch the bigger fish.”
“Oh, and you’re cheating? Right on. Stick it to the man.”
“Isn’t that a little unheroic ?” drawled Kitty, crossing her arms and leaning back into Johnny.
“Shut up,” said Danny. “I’m just giving Dad the same advantages Vlad has. So? Do you know a place or not?”
“We’re not really the fishing type,” said Johnny. “I think there’s some kind of ocean over in that direction, though. You can probably find stuff there.”
Johnny’s wave encompassed a good two-thirds of the Ghost Zone.
“Useful,” said Danny.
“Hey, you’re the one who asked us,” said Johnny. “It’s not our fault that we don’t have the knowledge base to answer your question. That’s, like, projection or something, isn’t it?”
“I’m, like, ninety percent sure you’re using that word wrong,” said Danny.
“Whatever, dude. Now get lost, I’ve gotta fix my bike so we can get out of here.”
Danny rolled his eyes, but complied. Well, he wasn’t expecting a lot from them, anyway. At least now he knew that there was a place he could fish. Somewhere.
Probably.
So, next step. Pandora. Her place was close. Not even a half hour away. Then, he’d go to Dora’s kingdom, and from there, the Far Frozen. The others were… Well. Clockwork and Youngblood didn’t stay put. He’d have to hunt them down, if it came to that.
Hopefully, he’d get better directions than ‘an ocean exists’ before then.
He checked his mental map, adjusted his course, and made his way to Pandora’s labyrinth.
It was just where it had been the last time he’d visited, and it didn’t look much different. The hedges were, perhaps, better trimmed, but that was about it. He touched down near the entrance, letting the laws of the labyrinth take over. Just like last time, to get to Pandora, he’d have to finish it. Luckily, it wasn’t hard to do that.
The Box Ghost had done it, too, after all.
Oh, there were things in the hedges that would grab you, and Medusa was vicious… but for some reason she didn’t have the ability to turn people into stone, and none of the other hazards in the labyrinth measured up.
It was sort of underwhelming, really. Although, given what Pandora did with her time, Danny could understand her not wanting to populate her home with monsters. After all, Danny did much the same thing.
Huh. Maybe he could get something like the labyrinth going around the portal. Would Pandora give him tips? Later. Later. He still had to get the fish and keep Jack from having to do… whatever.
Wow, he’d feel embarrassed about this if it turned out to be something silly that only old people and moms got upset about. But it was Vlad, so it was probably actually horrible.
He stepped out of the other side of the labyrinth and looked up at the stately acropolis that crowned the hill at the center.
Okay, so… How should he approach this? Pandora was sort of a queen? Or a god? Whatever. She was important and powerful, and Danny didn’t want to get on her bad side. And he hadn’t exactly brought anything with him, not even information, like last time, so–
“Little Phantom.”
Danny did not jump out of his skin. Really. He was quite sure of that. His skin didn’t even get loose, never mind opening up enough for his skeleton and organs to slip out.
That was a thing that could happen to ghosts, apparently.
“Um, hi!” said Danny, floating up so he was level with Pandora’s eyes. “Hi, Pandora! How– How have you been?”
“I’ve been well. What brings you to my home? Not the Box Ghost again, hm?” She raised an eyebrow, elegantly, which was a thing you could do, apparently.
Danny hadn’t really noticed before, but Pandora was actually really pretty. For someone who was blue. And also something like two thousand years old. Kind of like a… a Greek statue. And now it made sense.
“Oh, no,” said Danny. “No, as long as he doesn’t have a power-up, I can take him!” He mimed a few punches. “I just wanted to ask you a question.”
“You’ve come a long way just for that,” said Pandora. “It must be important.”
“Well… it is to me,” said Danny, suddenly a little embarrassed. “You see, my Dad made a bet with Vlad - Plasmius, that is - that he could catch a bigger fish than him. By Sunday. So, I was wondering if you knew of any good places to fish? If that’s okay?”
“Ah, so you can catch a fish for him?”
Danny shrugged. “I know it’s sort of cheating–”
Pandora laughed. “Aid from the supernatural is not considered cheating. The gods themselves have done as much.”
“Uh,” said Danny, remembering what he could of Greek mythology. “I guess so. So… do you know a place?”
“There is one that comes to mind,” said Pandora. “The Mythic Ocean. But let me warn you, little Phantom, there are more than just fish there.”
“I’m not planning on picking fights I can’t win. I just need to get a fish bigger than Plasmius’s.”
“Then let me show you some maps,” she said, holding out her hand. Danny landed on it - had he mentioned Pandora was big? She was huge - and she flew into the palace.
.
It turned out that Danny wasn’t the only one who had problems with making maps in the Ghost Zone. The addition of altitude as a factor, plus the fact that sometimes things just moved complicated things quite a bit. It had been a while, too, since
But Pandora was patient, and the notes had a lot of additional notation describing how and when things moved, so Danny managed to get a vague understanding of where the ocean was at the moment.
Very vague.
At least, the ocean was probably somewhere near the Far Frozen, so Danny would be able to get further directions from them.
“It’s a pity you didn’t come a decade ago,” said Pandora. “We were right on the shores of the Mythic Ocean then.”
“Well, I was like… five. So…”
“Hm,” said Pandora. “You are quite young.”
“Not that young,” muttered Danny.
Pandora ruffled Danny’s hair with her pinky fingers. “Have a good time fishing, will you? I hear young people these days like to fish for fun. I suppose if they don’t need to handle nets…”
Danny ducked away from her fingers. “I’ll try,” he said, “and I’ll catch you later - after the fish.”
.
Danny had barely started his flight to the Far Frozen when something both familiar and unexpected materialized from the ectoplasmic mists: Clockwork’s tower.
Well, Danny had thought about visiting him, but he hadn’t exactly made up his mind about doing it. Was this a sign? An invitation?
Yeah. Definitely an invitation. He was going to take this as an invitation. He swooped down through one of the huge windows and hovered in the middle of the cavernous stone and brass room.
“Hello? Clockwork?”
“Hello, Daniel,” said Clockwork, drifting out of the shadow of an immense gear. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Um,” said Danny.
Clockwork helpfully pointed behind him with his staff, and Danny looked up and back to see a large ornate clock hanging from the ceiling. “Ohhh,” said Danny. “That’s– Later than I thought. I can still make it to the Far Frozen and do some fishing, though.”
“Do you have a fishing pole? Fishing line, perhaps?”
Danny blinked. “I’m an idiot.”
“You’re fourteen. Go home. Rest. Come back tomorrow.”
“Sunday’s so close, though,” whined Danny.
“You have time.” Clockwork waved his staff, calling up a portal. Beyond the blue swirls, Danny could see the walls of his room. “I’ll make it easy for you.”
Danny puffed out his cheeks, then sighed, letting all the air out. “Fine,” he said, grudgingly, flying to the portal. Then, “Thank you. I probably wouldn’t have noticed until I was already there.”
.
“He was right, you know,” said Tucker, slurping his smoothie.
Danny made a face and aggressively swirled his french fry in nasty sauce. “I don’t need you telling me, too. Jazz is bad enough. You said you’d gotten into Vlad’s stuff?”
“Yeah,” said Tucker. “I don’t understand why he hasn’t been hacked a million times before. His security sucks. All I have to do is offer it ‘digital fudge’ and it crumbles.”
Danny covered his face. “I can’t believe I’m in a fishing contest with a guy who’s using easily distracted holographic knockoffs of my parents to run the security of his evil mad science laboratory.”
“As opposed to your parents’ good mad science laboratory?” asked Sam, raising an eyebrow.
“I think ‘good’ is a bit of a stretch, considering,” said Tucker.
“I mean, how does it even work, using holograms as part of his firewall? It shouldn’t work, right?”
“It isn’t,” said Tucker. “At least, it isn’t working well.”
“So, what did you find?”
“Here,” said Tucker, holding up his PDA and leaning forward across the table. “See for yourself.”
On the screen was a security camera picture of a large fish tank full of green-tinted water and… “Are those sharks? He’s got a tank of ghost sharks?”
“I think they might be megalodons,” said Tucker.
“I have to find a fish bigger than a megalodon,” said Danny. “Sure. Why not?”
“Just make sure you bring actual fishing gear this time, okay?” said Sam.
“Ugh, don’t remind me.”
.
Danny flew through the Zone towards the Far Frozen, an empty Fenton Thermos on his hip and a fishing rod slung across his back. He kept his eyes out for the giant roiling ocean that Pandora had described.
Hey, he wanted to see Frostbite and the other yetis, but if he could find the ocean on his own, he would. Getting his dad out of his stupid bet was the top priority, and he had a limited amount of time to do it.
But the closest thing to an ocean he could see was a great bank of swirling blue and green-yellow fog off on one pseudo-horizon. Which… it looked interesting, but he wasn’t going that far out of his way only to find out that it was just smog.
He arced up over the circling icebergs, and then down again into the village. It only took minutes for him to be surrounded by friendly yetis.
“Great One! What brings you here today?” said Frostbite.
“I’m looking for the Mythic Ocean,” said Danny.
“Whatever for?”
“Well, I’m trying to help my dad win a bet against Vlad. He bet that he’d be able to catch a bigger ghost fish than Vlad.”
“A noble goal! And the Mythic Ocean is the best place to find fish of prodigious size.”
“So, you know where it is.”
“Of course!” said Frostbite, and he pointed at the blue-and-yellow-green fog bank. “It’s right there.”
Well. Okay, then. “Thanks,” said Danny. “I’d stay to talk, but there’s a time limit…”
“Wait, Great One, before you go, you should know that there are some very large fish there.”
“Um,” said Danny. “Yeah. That’s why I want to go there. I need to catch a big fish.”
“Very large fish, Great One.”
Danny hesitated. “How large?”
“How to put it…” Frostbite looked around, then pointed at one of the larger floating icebergs that hovered around the perimeter of the Far Frozen. “Like that.”
“That’s how big they get?” asked Danny.
“That would not be an unusual size,” said Frostbite. “Some get much larger.”
“Well,” said Danny. “I’m not going to mess with anything that big. I’m not Vlad. I don’t want to be eaten.”
“Yes, that would be very unfortunate, even if you would survive.”
“I– I would?”
“Almost certainly. The digestive systems of ghosts do not always… digest. ”
“Oh,” said Danny. “That’s gross.”
“Certainly.”
“I won’t get eaten.” He paused. “I won’t get eaten. I’m just looking for something bigger than a megalodon, that’s all.”
Frostbite nodded. “Very good, Great One, but… perhaps it will make us all feel better if you checked in with us on your way back?”
Danny’s shoulders slumped. He didn’t know why everyone was so worried about him. All he was doing was going fishing! Maybe he should have tried to get the Lake Eerie monster instead… “I will.”
.
The fog around the Mythic Ocean was comparable to pea soup in everything except flavor. Even the thinnest, most translucent parts of the fog were difficult to see through. Even so, Danny kept heading towards the occasional glimpses of blue he thought were the surface of the sea.
Small fish, no bigger than his fingers, swam through the air like it was water. Well. It probably was mostly water. Water and ectoplasm, anyway. The air content of the air here was low. Flying here felt like flying through a very thin, weak, shower.
The mist thinned as he got lower, however, until he could see the blue ‘waters’ of the sea. They were a much deeper, more vibrant color than any water he’d seen on Earth, and they were… fuzzy. Frothy, arcing up in ways that never would have been possible under normal gravity, merging and shading into the mist overhead or forming huge bubbles above the average level of the water, reaching up to lap at the bottoms of miniature floating islands or cringing away from them.
And the fish! Danny could see the fish! Most of them were too small for him, but they were fascinating. There were skeletal fish, who flowed through the water even as the water flowed through them. There translucent fish, visible only as dark outlines against the water and mist. There were were fish that were cut in half, their heads and tails swimming separately. There were fish with three eyes, four eyes, five eyes, six eyes, seven eyes, eight eyes - Danny stopped counting after that. There were fish with toothy smiles. Fish with eyebrows. Fish with human faces. Delicate green fish that looked like they belonged in a cartoon. Color-swapped koi. Fish that were pink blobs with visible brains and no other organs. Long eels that fluttered wing-like fins as they spiraled about. Jellyfish that floated in the air, their whole bodies billowing.
Danny was enchanted. He wondered if this was what the inside of a gas was like, with the gas atmosphere becoming more and more liquid as the pressure inside became higher and higher. He wondered if aliens like these fish could live there.
Well, the human-faced ones probably didn’t. But some of the other ones, maybe.
Danny sat down on the edge of one of the lower islands and took the fishing rod off his back. With all the smaller fish, he’d spend a lot of time playing catch and release, but, well. That’s what he usually did with ghosts, so it wasn’t like it mattered.
And so he did. It was actually surprisingly fun, and he felt a smile forming on his face. Most of the fish didn’t even try to fight him, not with ghost powers and not with their often very sharp teeth. The small green fish especially seemed to enjoy being caught. He was pretty sure one of them, with darker edges on its scales, had gotten caught several times. Maybe it liked being tossed or something.
Well, this time, he was going to chuck it particularly hard.
The fish flew, giggling, into the mists. Danny grinned at the sight and sat back down, casting out his line.
Almost at once, he felt a tug on it, and he reeled it in. This felt heavier - if that meant anything to ghosts who could fly. Maybe– Maybe this would be it! Maybe this would be one that would beat Vlad’s sharks!
After a brief struggle, he pulled the fish out of the water - and it was huge! Longer than he was tall! More than that! He reached for the thermos.
The beautiful, iridescent fish flapped back and forth energetically. “Please, good sir! I beg of you, do not eat me!”
Danny deflated, his hand dropping. He thought he’d finally gotten the one, but he wasn’t going to give his parents a sentient ghost. “Wasn’t going to,” he said. He removed the hook. “Sorry about this. Here you go.” He dumped the fish back into the water.
Okay, now to try again. He sat back down and started reeling in the line.
The large fish’s head popped up, eyes shining over the surface of the water. “Good sir! Thank you for freeing me! I owe you a debt!”
Oh, Danny got the feeling that this was going to be annoying, whatever it was. “No, you don’t.”
“You saved my life!”
“You’re a ghost.”
“Even so! You have spared me–”
“Only from something I did to you in the first place. You don’t have to do anything for me. It’s fine. Really. I should be the one apologizing to you.”
“But, sir! There must be something you’re looking for here, to be fishing so diligently, but throwing us all back!”
“Uh, well,” said Danny, rubbing the back of his neck. It was one thing to explain to people who knew him and Vlad. But to someone unrelated, even a fish, it was embarrassing. “I guess, well… I’m trying to catch a big fish, to win a contest.”
“And I am not big enough for you?!” It writhed and splashed water at him.
“Um,” said Danny. “It’s more about how you’re, you know, a person and not an animal, and, like, you know. But I guess it wouldn’t hurt.”
“But to win the contest, you need a big fish? The biggest fish?”
“Yeah,” said Danny. “Bigger than Vlad’s megalodons, at least.”
“Ah! Ah! I see, sir, I see! Very much, I see! There is such a fish, bigger than all the other fish in these seas!”
“Really?” asked Danny, interested. “You do? Where can I find it?”
“But, sir, I must ask, are you sure? Are you certain? The fish is a terrible one! A very great fish indeed! It will not be easy to catch! It will be dangerous!”
“I’m used to stuff like that,” said Danny. “I’ve fought all sorts of - Well, not fish, but other stuff! I can handle it.”
“Oh! Very good! We will all be deeply in your debt, sir!”
“You–” Danny tilted his head. “Why?”
“Because it is a great and terrible fish! A monster! A great monster fish! Terrible!”
“You don’t need to be in my debt for that,” said Danny. “And, uh, fair warning, it might escape again, so, um.” Or, rather, Jack would accidentally lose it, then Danny would have to recapture it, and then he’d send it back into the Ghost Zone, because there was no way he was going to kill it or destroy it or whatever, and then it’d come back here. So. Net wash for any intelligent fish who lived here. Resided here. Or something.
“Very good, sir! Very good! Even a day’s respite is very good! Look yonder, to the luminous orb!” The fish leapt out of the water and briefly hovered in the air to point.
Danny looked, shading his eyes against the pervasive glow. There was a large… orb… hanging in the mists. It was hard to see, so Danny wasn’t surprised that he’d missed it earlier. It was kind of a weird thing to be out here, but it wasn’t the first slightly-crappy fake sun he’d seen in the Ghost Zone. “It’s over there?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, oh, yes!”
“I just… go that way, and I’ll find this giant fish?”
“Indeed, sir! And a great and terrible battle! Indeed! Indeed!”
“Okay,” said Danny, wrapping up the rest of the fishing line and drifting up. “Thanks. I’m going to do this.”
“Thank you, sir! Very much!”
“Um, yeah, no problem,” said Danny, awkwardly. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Thank you for your concern, sir, but few could catch one such as myself!”
Since Danny had just caught the fish with little effort, he was… unsure about that. Still, it wasn’t exactly any of his business.
“Okay, well, take care,” said Danny, waving as he started to fly. He kept himself slow as he went. Even though the mist here was thinner it could still be hiding a sizeable amount of stuff.
The orb got bigger and bigger, bigger and bigger… Then, it blinked.
Danny stopped.
Oh, heck.
The fog around Danny billowed as the absolutely enormous fish flapped its fins and reared back, into the air. It was so big that each of its gleaming yellow scales was longer across than Danny. Its teeth were razor sharp. Yellow fog poured from its mouth. And its eye - that glowing eye - rolled in its socket to stare Danny down.
Well. This would be a fight.
The fish dove towards Danny and he spiraled away, slamming a wave of ice into the sea. It froze around the fish, which thrashed, breaking the ice into chunks. The chunks lifted into the air as floating icebergs. Danny grabbed onto them with his cryokinesis and slammed them into the fish, which roared - not a sound Danny would have expected to come from a fish.
A ball of energy formed in its mouth, then lanced out in a ghost ray that boiled the water into a blue mist. Danny raised a shield against the heat and pressed his hands against its inside surface in order to send out a dozen ghost rays of his own.
He heard some of them impact the fish and let out an even greater blast of power. Then, he flicked his hands apart, clearing the mist and the path to the fish.
Big things like this, he had to go for weak spots. Like eyes. He rocketed forward, right into one of them. The fish squealed, twisted back, and then its open mouth came down on Danny. The teeth snapped closed behind him.
Okay. Plan B for beating up one of these big things was to beat it up from inside.
What followed was a lot less dignified than the first half of the fight and involved Danny becoming fish bait then fish barf. It was not fun.
But he had an unconscious fish at the end of it! So that was great. He whipped out the thermos and pointed it at his Erstwhile foe.
The thermos started sticking it in - then stopped with the fish half hanging out of it.
Danny shook the thermos, then slapped it. He tried to push the fish in, then kicked it. It went in, just a little further. The status readout on the thermos blinked on. Red. Full.
It couldn’t have said that before?
Okay. Okay, he could still bring it home. He just had to… Right! He pulled the fishing rod off his back and started unspooling the fishing line. Before too long, he had the fish mummified in Fenton Fishing Line, with a healthy amount of line left over to pull it with.
Now, he just had to… fly all the way back home while carrying it.
It was fine! He bench-pressed busses. Well. For a minute or two at a time. Not for how long it usually took to get back home from here.
Yeah, this was going to suck, but there was no way Vlad was going to get a bigger fish than this. Which was great! Screw Vlad!
Yeah… Yeah. Okay.
He looped the makeshift harness around his shoulders and set off. Slowly. Very slowly.
Yep. This was definitely sucking.
On the upside, apparently the giant monster fish was so intimidating that no one wanted to fight him while he was lugging it across the Zone. It honestly hadn’t been that tough… but then, maybe Danny’s ice powers had given him an additional advantage most ghosts wouldn’t have. He had frozen its uvula. And several other organs he wouldn’t have expected a ghost fish to have, including lungs and a weird… brain thing in its stomach.
That had been… well, it was a weird brain thing. It was weird.
But, eventually, he reached the Fenton Portal.
Danny looked at the portal. Then looked back at the fish. Then up at the portal. Yeah. Yeah, that wasn’t… that wasn’t going to fit. Ever. No matter what.
Ughhhhh, he’d gone through this whole thing only to have it wind up like– Like this? This was stupid.
No. No, he could still use this. Somehow. He just had to think…
How big was Vlad’s portal? It wasn’t this big either, was it? Which meant that Vlad wouldn’t be able to get it in through his portal even if he defeated it. Which meant– Which meant–
Which meant that he was going to ignore Jazz’s advice about the prank war.
If he remembered right, Vlad’s portal was… this way.
Somehow, carrying the fish to Vlad’s portal from the Fenton Portal was even more annoying than bringing it home from the ocean, even if it was a shorter journey. Maybe because he was tired. Maybe because he’d thought he was done and then he wasn’t. Maybe because the fish was starting to wake up and try to escape.
But he persevered until he saw the big stupid football.
Now, the thing about Vlad’s portal was that it had a proximity alert. Sort of like the Ecto-Exodus Alarm only, like. More useful. And it had Danny’s ectosignature in its database.
The fish wriggled. Danny shrugged the sting harness off his shoulders and raised a finger to ping a tiny ghost ray off the portal housing.
He counted to ten.
“Daniel!” exclaimed Vlad, heartily. “Have you come to concede the bet on behalf of you idiot– What the snickerdoodles is that?”
“A fish!” said Danny.
“Hmph! Well it hardly counts if your father–”
Danny aimed the thermos at Vlad and hit the release button. The fish shot out of the end of the thermos like a cork from a wine bottle, snapping parts of the fishing line as it hurtled forward.
“What the butterscotch!” shrieked Vlad as it hit him. Parts of the broken fishing line wrapped around him, binding him to the fish, which then, mostly freed, made a sharp turn and zoomed away, dragging Vlad with it. Vlad’s wide, furiously glowing red eyes left afterimages, streaks of light, behind him as he was towed deeper and deeper into the Zone.
Well. That had worked better than expected. So much better, in fact, that Danny stared after them for a solid minute before he remembered what he was doing.
He flew through Vlad’s portal, head swiveling left and right. He spotted the tank full of megalodons and flew around them, one way, then the other. Which was biggest?
Actually, that was a stupid question when he could just take all of them. He unholstered the thermos and suctioned up the entire tank. Score! Now, he just had to figure out how to get them to Dad.
.
Danny knocked on his parents bedroom door. Then knocked again. Then pounded.
“Huh? What?”
Danny took that as an invitation and opened the door. “Dad! You won’t believe what just happened! You have to see it!”
“Wha?”
“Sweetie, what time is it?” asked Maddie.
Honestly, Danny had no idea. “It doesn’t matter, there’s ghosts!”
This had the desired effect. “Ghosts!” exclaimed Jack, practically levitating out of bed. “Where?”
“In the lab!”
Danny barely kept ahead of Jack, which meant that he also only narrowly avoided getting hit in the face by Jazz’s door as she came out.
“Whassappening?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.
“Ghost!” roared Jack as he thundered ahead.
Danny gave Jazz two thumbs up. She scowled at him, then said, “Oh, okay. Yeah. Ghost.”
They all went down into the lab, where Danny had set up the containment unit to put the sharks in. They swam in confused circles and cast the lab in a more bluish light that usual.
“What?” said Maddie. “Where did these all come from?”
“They, uh, they just jumped right in!” said Danny. “I guess they heard that Dad was coming from and just gave up!”
“Yeah! That’s right!” said Jack. “I knew what was going to happen! That’s why I set up the containment unit before I went to bed! Ha! Take that, ghosts!”
“Oh, Jack! This is great!” Maddie threw her arms around Jack’s neck. “This means that you won’t have to go on the infinity haunted bar crawl!”
“Huh? Bar crawl? Our bet back in high school was for streaking!”
“It was for what?”
Danny sighed happily. Everything had worked out. Come Sunday, Dad would definitely win. If Vlad was even able to show up. Heh. It’d be funny if the fish had dragged him all the way back to the ocean. Served him right. Hehe.
Jazz sidled up to him. “This was the dumbest way you could’ve given those to Dad, you know that, right?”
“But it worked, didn’t it?”
“Uhuh,” said Jazz. “How mad is Vlad going to be once he recovers from whatever you did to him?”
“Apocalyptic,” said Danny, cheerfully. “But it was definitely worth it.”