A/N: Yah, I'm gunna finish this. Turns out I'm a C grade physicistbut an A grade writer. Go figure, neh? Also: I've only seen episodes up to The Ultimate Enemy, but I never saw TUE itself. So the story is a bit dated, but not too much. I also didn't edit this one much, because frankly I'm abit disgruntled. Yes. Fear the disgruntlement. But read this thingy and review it, first. :)

Animal House

By JadeRabbyt

SATURDAY

Into the night and through most of the morning, Danny tousled with the problem of Corduroy.

Usually the good guys and bad guys came presorted and labeled. Maybe the labels got smudged or faded, but never did they cease to exist entirely. The Kalens were a mystery wrapped up in an enigma. Danny definitely wasn't peachy with the way things were, if it meant keeping Cord isolated in this wilderness. Maybe the kid would be dangerous in a city, but Danny had seen kids who'd been kept friendless and homeschooled. If Cord had power, then he needed to learn something about responsibility, which and to do that he needed to be around other people. Danny thought it a sure bet that Cord was tangled up with Jazz's woods monster.

Danny grumbled to himself, wondering again why there weren't any nice, normal, Hawaiian ghost hunters. Seriously. Michigan? Alone in the wilderness? Was he the only one who thought that was just a sincere request for massive amounts of explosive, angry, traumatizing disasters?

"Hey."

He looked up at Jazz, lounging with one of her books in a cushioned recliner across the room. "Hey what?" She had one of those looks on her face. Those 'I love you because you're my brother and I want to help you' looks. Danny hated those. At least nobody else was around to hear this, since they'd all just had lunch and had since scurried off to their respective occupations. The parents had bolted back to the labs, busting with glee about imminent Progress. The Fenton gadgets were still AWOL, but that hadn't slowed anybody down, apparently. Corduroy had gone out to play somewhere, but he and Jazz had remained inside, reading and channel surfing.

His sister closed her book, a thick red one, bristling with post-its wedged between the pages. "I wonder what Corduroy's doing." Danny ignored her exaggerated nonchalance.

He mumbled an excuse, keeping his eyes on the TV. Now that he actually looked at it, the shows kinda sucked, but it was an excuse to sit back and try to think about things without going insane over them. Plus, he'd been avoiding Cord all day. Too many unknowns about that kid.

"Somebody should be out there watching him." Jazz continued to stare with that singularly irritating patience of hers. "If he gets into trouble—" Danny snickered. He couldn't help himself. "Okay," Jazz revised, rolling her eyes. "If he gets anybody else into trouble, then we have four highly irrational adults ready to go commando on a moment's notice. With ghost gadgets."

Danny took a minute to think about that one. "Oh."

Jazz nodded. "Right."

His eyes flickered over to meet hers. "It's not like I'm avoiding him. I'm just watching TV right now." The patient stare rolled over and died. "I don't know what you think I can do about this, anyway."

Jazz's dead stare rotted into a reeking, gangrenous, oozy rotten mass.

Danny threw up his hands. "What?"

"Nothing good is going to happen if you turn your back and whistle, Danny."

"What!" He hated head-meat surgeons. "I don't have any idea what you're talking about!" Hopefully his blush didn't show, or he'd really be in trouble.

His sister folded her hands. "You could at least go out and play with him. I don't know if you've noticed, but Cord hasn't been the world's happiest camper lately."

"And how's that my fault?"

She smiled. "Danny, let's think. Cord is basically a normal five-year-old with a ten-year-old body. What do you think will happen if he gets pouty?"

He shrugged. "I don't know; he'll be sent to his room?"

She sighed. "Okay. He's got a five-year-old moral compass and a working relationship with a horrible monster."

Danny blinked. "So you want me to go play with him?"

"Couldn't hurt." Jazz opened her book. "The happier Cord is, the easier it'll be for all of us. Who knows? We might even get out of here without exploding anything."

"Don't talk crazy." Danny laughed. Jazz smiled as he stood up, stretched, and headed for the door.

XXX

The forest in the afternoon was filled with the scent of damp earth and clean water, laced with the spice of the pines and filtered through cascading sunshine. Danny grinned reflexively as he stepped off the porch and headed for the lake, sobering himself along the way. Maybe this felt like a nature hike, but he'd do well to remember it wasn't. Nevertheless, the sandy path crunched amiably as he walked, and the woods were refreshingly clear of snapped branches, spots of black blood, and other signs of monsters.

The earth floor came to an end, dropping six inches to the gritty sand of the lake. The sun glistened off the wavers, the light splashing of the water on the shore reassuring and inviting. It almost looked as if it wouldn't be cold, but Danny knew better. In a couple hours clouds and mist would banish the sun and freeze the air; in fact, this was the best weather he'd seen yet. Danny's smile faltered. Wasn't this the part where the curious explorer was usually savaged by something horrible? He looked behind him at the forest, which continued to insist that it was the world's best location for a children's movie, totally free of anything malignant whatsoever.

"Yeah, right," he muttered. Danny made for the water, feeling the grainy sand creeping beneath his shoe laces.

A stick lay a few yards from the water, a branch. Danny kicked it with his foot, glancing peripherally over the waves. Nope, nothing suspicious out there, except of course for the fact that there was nothing suspicious, which was, in a way, extremely suspicious. He checked out the stick again. Around it the sand had been disturbed, and it was hard to make out precisely what had gone on, but the way the sand fell away toward the water, and humped on its other side, the one facing the shore, Danny got the impression the wood had been thrown from the water.

Which meant, he figured slowly, that Cord was probably in the water. Danny groaned and looked over the water, twinkling in the sun, twinkling with suspicious innocence in the sunlight. He rolled his eyes and went to the trees, getting himself decently out of sight—just on principle—to go ghost. He shimmered invisible, diving without a ripple into the lake.

Where it was only slightly easier to see than if he'd still been human. The light helped, but there was so much silt that anything more than a couple feet below the surface was inscrutable. "Cord!" he called. "Corduroy, are you down here?" Probably not, Danny thought. He made himself visible and wandered farther down and out.

From away on his left, deep down in the murk, a silver disk flashed and winked out. Danny sped toward it, but whatever it was had fled before he got there. He wasn't sure he'd seen it until Cord showed up at his side.

The kid floated there in his blue swimming trunks, grinning toothily at Danny. He didn't seem to be breathing; at least there weren't any bubbles. Danny motioned to the surface, and Corduroy nodded and followed him up.

Danny wiped his hair back, forgetting that ghosts didn't get wet. "Cord?"

Corduroy's eyes narrowed. "Yeah? What?"

"Uh, down there, was there anything with you?"

He shook his head, droplets of water flitting back to the lake. "Nope. Only me."

Cord had used that same tone when he lied to Hal, Danny remembered. "Because if there was, I wouldn't mind. I'd actually like to learn about your powers!"

"I'm not supposed to tell you any more. You'll make trouble." Cord's voice melted into shame. "That's what Dad says." He looked up. "Where were you? I wanted to play, but you weren't there."

"I'm sorry, Cord. I was busy." Actually, he'd been seeing how far away the nearest microcosm of civilization was. He must have flown for miles and seen nothing but cabins.

Cord dropped his glance to the water. "Yes." His face wrinkled a pout, the precursor to tears, before dipping below the water, managing to blow a stream of bubbles. Carefully, Danny reached down and eased him above water again.

"Come on. I'm on your side, remember?" Jazz would be much better at this kind of thing. "What's going on?"

"You're not," Cord burbled, half his mouth underwater. "I'm not supposed to play with you. I'm not supposed to do anything fun."

"Wasn't yesterday fun?"

Cord looked up, considering that. "Sort of. I wasn't supposed to."

Danny smirked, hoping he wasn't about to make things exponentially worse. "Cord, when you have powers, what you're supposed to do doesn't really apply as often. For example," Danny said, dividing himself in two. "Are normal people supposed to do this?" he chorused. Cord grinned and shook his head. "Or this?" he added, creating a shimmering arc of plasma between his two selves. Cord laughed. Danny reconstituted himself. "You shouldn't use your power if it hurts somebody or if it's just to show off, but its okay to goof around a little."

"I can't shoot lasers," Cord mumbled, through a smile. "Why don't I get lasers?"

Danny shrugged. "Search me."

He thought about that. "And you get a costume. I don't have a costume."

"You could probably make one…" Danny suggested.

"No. It'd look bad on us."

About a billion red flags went up. There's that 'us' again… "Who is the other us, Cord? I've been wondering about that."

"Oh." Cord stopped. He looked up at Danny. "I didn't mean that. Let's go play tag!" He started for the beach.

"Wait a minute, then what did you mean?" Danny caught up with him, trying not to sound urgent.

Cord's eyes started to water. "You mean… you don't want to play with me?"

Little kids sucked so much sometimes. "No, I want to play." He followed Cord onto the beach and zapped into human form. The innocence of the forest had somehow managed to turn ironic, bordering flat-out insulting.

XXX

Dinner started normally, another delicious concoction by Janice Kalen. Today they had ribs. Ribs! Jack wondered aloud several times how hillbillies like them got hold of such things. Hal merely smiled and tilted his glass in satisfaction. The bulk of the chatter centered on the day's work. As the kids sat at their end of the table, mostly quiet, it occurred to both Jazz and Danny that these people had no conception of things that were interesting outside of work. Jazz had the impression that Janice might, but she was married to a control freak and both her parents were six, emotionally, which meant that she and Danny spent the time wondering what they were talking about, listening for the recurring words 'volatile,' 'unstable,' and 'mysterious.' Every thirty seconds, two of the three were used.

Cord was sitting to Danny's right, and Jazz to his left. He didn't bother much about her sister, who was off in her own little world, from the looks of it. Cord, on the other hand, was clearly plotting something. Danny knew this, because he had seen people plotting on numerous occasions. In eighth grade, he'd seen Tucker plotting something, pulling in his lower lip, mouth curling into a smile, eyes narrowing mischievously—and a minute later Valerie Gray had yelped, having been mysteriously stung by a flying rubber band. He's suspected that crazy school shrink was plotting something when she called him in for counseling, and whoops!—she turned out to be a grade A villain-ghost who'd tried to kill his sister and suck the life from his school. Danny had seen more plotting than he'd willingly admit to, so he knew it when he saw it, and Corduroy Kalen was plotting. Danny knew he shouldn't have said that stuff earlier, even if it had only been to cheer Cord up.

Dragging his fork through his mashed potatoes, frowning nastily at his veggies, Cord plotted. He smiled once or twice, and Danny was fine with an evil grimace, but when a person started to smile or cackle maniacally—that was when you had trouble. Fortunately, Danny wasn't the only one with an eye for this. Janice, he'd noticed, had been shooting him dark, worried glances throughout the meal. At last, she put her fork down.

"Corduroy? What's wrong, you haven't eaten much."

"I like it," he insisted. "I'm just not hungry." Danny watched closely. So, he noticed, did Jazz.

The chatter between Hal and Jack ebbed. Cord's father pinned him with a look. "Is anything wrong? Do you have any questions about our discussion this morning?"

Janice discreetly rolled her eyes, her face turned away from her husband. Cord shook his head. "Nope. I got it."

Hal smiled coldly. "Good. I'll make it up later; I promise."

Maddie laughed nervously as normalcy descended, everyone going back to their meal and techie-speak. "Well, what was that all about?"

"Oh," Janice shook her head. "Cord has some problems with his homeworks. Doesn't want to do them, that sort of thing."

"I know exactly what you mean," Maddie sighed. "Jazz is sensational, but we have to nudge Danny along. It's just a teenage boy thing. Cord's not too far from that, is he?"

Janice hesitated. "No… I guess not."

"You wouldn't believe it, but they grow up fast," Maddie continued.

"Mrs. Kalen lies," Jazz muttered to Danny. "Something's wrong here."

Danny smiled. "So? You're the sensational one. You figure it out."

Jazz sneered as Danny laughed. But she was right, obviously. It'd take a moron to think that things were peachy, and he was vaguely considering tying Cord to his bedpost. You had to be edgy when people start hiding stuff, and when 'stuff' consisted of a demonic lake monster… things could get interesting, really fast.

XXX

That night, as Danny and Cord bedded down, Danny resolved to keep his eyes open. The dusk long gone, vibrant darkness circled the room, making room for the quiet breathing of the two boys. Sleep coiled around Danny, but it didn't take much effort for him to stay awake. He slept on his side, the better to see Cord's own bed. The night wore on.

Danny's mind flew back home to Amity, to Tucker and Sam and the movie he'd missed. The city air with its foul dust and smog, so different from the delicate purity of the atmosphere of the bay, the rumbling engines of cars and the roaring ones of the big trucks: people everywhere, hurrying to and fro. Here at Paw Bay was a rich void. No people and no buildings, convenience stores or theatres or police cars, all those replaced with unassuming nature. No neon on the trees, no display cases for the water-smoothed stones. So many things were missing, up here, yet in a wild and nameless way, there was so very much more. Skyscrapers screamed the triumph of man, but the mountains proclaimed eternity.

Late in the night as Danny fought the viper Sleep, it was easy to think of these things. Wilderness was teacher to Cord, the bustle of people the mentor to Danny. How would it be like for him, Danny wondered, if he had grown up out here, without Sam or Tucker? Would he be the same, or a better question, would he even recognize himself? He couldn't keep awake much longer.

Danny faded intangible and, yawning, checked on Cord. His breathing was even, his eyes shut. If there was to be a fight, it'd happen tomorrow, and Danny needed sleep. He floated back to bed and got comfortable.

As Danny turned back to his sleeping bag, Cord's eyes eased open once more. The boy watched the wall, quiet, and waiting.

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A/N: Review for a freelifetime supply of free BELGIAN WAFFLES! With whip cream and strawberries. Oh yes. (...but negative opinions will be disgruntled on)