Study Session

Danny Fenton sat in his room on a late Thursday evening. It was a few hours past supper and a half-hour before he would begin his patrol. The perfect time to complete his math homework.

Now if only he could understand it.

The first few problems had been simple, plug-and-chug questions that he could answer by referring to the formulas in his notes. The last one was a word problem. Danny read it aloud, going slowly over the small paragraph. The details involved a car on a test track, a linear expression for acceleration (in miles per hour per second), and a velocity end condition for the test. The answer was to be the distance (in feet) covered in the last two seconds.

Following Danny's reading, the room stayed quiet for some time. He waited patiently, but when no advice was forthcoming, he turned in his chair to face his audience. The others in his bedroom, three teens who looked identical to the first, occupied the room in different manners. One sat on the floor with his legs crossed and a notebook in his lap; another sat on the bed, drumming his fingertips on the comforter; and the last stood leaning his back against the wall. All three looked deep in thought, but no one knew what to say or where to begin.

Danny eventually dropped his head on the desk with a thud. "Whatever happened to x squared equals 9?"

"We got that one wrong too, back then," said a different Danny. "Kept forgetting about the negative 3."

"Okay, I get it. I stink at math. Why did I even agree to take Honors Calculus?"

The three other Dannys looked at each other as if in search for answers, and each responded with a shrug. While the question was far from rhetorical, the answer wasn't entirely a mystery. Even though he and his friends had worked together on their homework since forever, and even though his sister occasionally assisted him in his worst subjects—especially after learning of his ghost fighting—he never expected junior year to go so well. He certainly hadn't expected his math teacher to recommend entering higher-level courses. And when he stupidly told his parents and saw how proud they were, it became impossible to say no. But now he had to work twice as hard just to keep up. The only bright side was that Sam and Tucker were in the same class.

Danny suspected that the reason he had excelled in his classes last year had to do with his change in study habits. The truth was that Danny Fenton was a problem solver at heart. His ingenuity in battle exemplified this. While academics weren't his strong suit—mostly due to a lack of interest and an intrusive side job as superhero—he knew how to think rationally and be creative. When one method didn't work he tried something new. How did the old saying go? Something about repetition and insanity. Regardless, among the many things Danny was, insane was not yet one of them.

"Well," said the Fenton at the wall, "we know we have to use integration, since the chapter is on integral applications."

"Can we just stick the acceleration term into this formula?" asked a different ghost-boy.

"That seems too easy. Besides, I don't think that gives us the correct units." A skim of his notes confirmed the observation, but Danny was no less surprised that he thought to check units. Talking to yourself really was good for something.

They quickly discovered that none of them quite knew how to approach the problem. One suggested using the Internet to research integrals, but the first few results had symbols and notations they had never seen. Needless to say, they soon decided it best to stick to his notes and the textbook.

"So we need to integrate acceleration over time," Danny said as he skimmed the chapter.

"And then integrate again to get distance."

"Wait, hold up," the Danny on the bed interrupted. "Shouldn't we figure out the upper and lower limits first?" They discussed and settled on their procedure, and Danny knew he was making progress. He might not have any written work to show for it yet, but as he'd eventually learned, understanding the material came first.

Working out homework problems on his own had always been challenging. Danny thought back to freshman year, a time when he handed in sloppy, unfinished assignments, sometimes without even having ghost troubles to blame them on. Sophomore year had been a little better, but not by much. By then he had gotten more control over his powers, which left more time for schoolwork when they weren't busy fighting ghosts or playing Doomed. He, Sam, and Tucker worked together when they could, but even then his grades suffered.

Then, at the beginning of junior year, the anxiety of an approaching exam and less than desirable circumstances led to a shift in tactics. Both Sam and Tucker had been unavailable, Sam having been dragged by her parents to some gala, and Tucker holed up at home due to illness. In the end, it was a blessing in disguise. He recalled his frustration and his certainty that he would fail. His notes read like a foreign language, and he couldn't ask his parents for help, lest he feel like an even bigger idiot next to their genius.

So in a moment of haphazard improvisation, he created a duplicate. He didn't really think it would help. The idea was just an excuse to distract him, something to help him relax with the added benefit of practicing one of his ghost powers. It wasn't until they received their exams a week later that he realized that he might be onto something.

He scored a 93.

"All right," said the Fenton with the notebook. "Read this, and see if it makes sense." He placed his work on the desk, and the three others crowded around. It wasn't a full calculation, but rather a diagram illustrating the approach he thought best to take. After a minute of reading, mumbling, and tweaking, the three boys nodded their approval and assumed their earlier positions in the room, each with a sheet of paper to write out the solution.

It really was the strangest thing, Danny thought. It wasn't that he was somehow smarter when using his ghost powers. (Of all the abilities ghosts had, heightened intelligence certainly wasn't one of them. And thank goodness, or his enemies would be even more dangerous.) But for some reason, he felt—he knew he could concentrate better when he made duplicates. He was more focused, as if his garbled thoughts became organized and streamlined. Due to some quirk he still didn't understand, his duplicates would even occasionally remember or observe different things, which would lead to different thoughts and conclusions. If two duplicates wound up with different answers, they could compare their work and spot the error. And the best part was that, being essentially the same person, communicating was a cinch.

Sam and Tucker had also been skeptical when they started studying this way together, but even they couldn't argue with the results. After two years of dismal academic performance, largely thanks to his ghostly responsibilities, the idea that being half-ghost could actually help his grades didn't seem real to any of them. Not even a year later.

Fifteen minutes had passed since Danny began the problem, and now he was on the home stretch, fully engrossed in finishing the calculation.

Then someone knocked on the door. "Danny?"

All four Dannys responded in unison. "Come in." The handle turned, and the door opened. Danny looked up, only then realizing his mistake. His mother stared into his bedroom, and four pairs of blue eyes stared back.

Nobody spoke. Nobody moved.

Of all the things his mother could have witnessed, ranging from innocuous to incriminating, this particular demonstration of his ghost powers was somewhere in the middle. If he or his duplicates had been in Phantom form, then the damage would have been irreparable. That was the very reason he remained human in his study sessions—on the off chance that his mother or father would walk in unannounced. Or carelessly invited, as the case were.

Danny held his composure. He had wormed his way out of worse than this. He just had to wait for the right moment. His mother blinked a few times, then backed out of the room and closed the door, and at that precise moment, the three duplicates turned invisible, flickering out of the visible spectrum in the span of a millisecond. When she opened the door again a few moments later, there was only one Danny.

"Something wrong, Mom?"

His mother laid her hand on her forehead. "I'm fine, Danny. It's just been a long day. Did you finish the laundry?" Her son nodded, and she continued through her mental checklist. "Don't forget you need to clean the lab tomorrow. And how is the homework coming?"

"Almost finished."

Mrs. Fenton smiled with pride. "I'll let you get back to work, then. Let me know if you need any help. Goodnight, Danny."

After Danny bid her goodnight, his mother left the room, closing the door behind her. Danny waited for the sound of receding footsteps followed by the creaking of the stairs. Those reassuring signals came as expected, and Danny relaxed, the accumulated tension draining from his muscles. The breath he didn't even realize he was holding broke free. Three other Dannys materialized, all grinning triumphantly and exchanging soft high fives.

It had been a close call, but he was in the clear. Four ghost-boys returned to their work, secret intact. When they finished, Danny compared his answer to the one provided in the back of the textbook and found the same number. He had solved the problem in his first attempt. His confidence soared, and as he closed his book, dispelled his duplicates, and prepared for his patrol, he had a feeling that senior year was going to be his best year yet. Whether it was doing homework or reviewing for an exam, a little ghostly assistance went a long way. And he had no plans of quitting any time soon.

Except from now on, he would probably be a bit more careful when studying at home.

A/N: Thank you for reading! I know it's not a very creative premise, but it's something I wanted to write nonetheless. Feedback of any kind is always welcome. Thanks again, and hope to see you next time.