Trapped

Words: 3896

Finished: 12/02/2018

The school bus pathetically scooted down the highway, having to brake every few moments due to the massive traffic-jam plaguing the next few miles of road. It was late August, and even though fall was just around the corner, the feverish summer temperatures still hadn't subsided. Unfortunately, for the occupants of the bus, the weathered yellow vehicle had a pressing lack of a functional air conditioning system. When the bus was in motion, the air from the windows was enough to distract the passengers from the heat, but now that they were essentially trapped in someone's warped idea of a demonic, mobile oven the students were noticeably growing irritable.

The Casper High students were returning from their first field trip that year, which was thankfully uneventful. Since Danny's secret had been revealed six months previously, no one was oblivious to the fact that ghosts practically followed their class around, whether they were on campus or not. Hell, hadn't their last field trip to Axion Labs result in some kind of possession of the Red Huntress and a satellite? Today they had visited Amity Park Community College to watch the student theater guild's production of The Scarlet Letter, which they had just finished reading in class. Given the potential disaster, they were lucky that nothing had happened. Consequently, nobody was stupid enough to look a gift horse in the mouth, not even the A-Listers who had flipped a one-eighty attitude towards Danny after they found out who he really was. (It had been an awkward change, but people were finally starting to get used to it.)

Though with this unrelenting heat, even the most tolerant teenagers were starting to wear thin. And since they were enclosed in the middle of the highway, there wasn't much anyone could do to relieve the situation. A few people had water-bottles they had brought on the bus with them, but even those had grown hot after a while. Some of the more crafty students had made paper fans out of their homework sheets, but the air was much too hot to effectively cool anyone down. Everyone was drowning in the severe temperatures, everyone except one blessed half-ghost with the benefit of otherworldly internal temperature regulation from his other half.

Danny was sitting three-quarters toward the back of the bus, next to Sam and in front of Tucker and Valerie. To his left was Dash and Kwan, and in front of him were Paulina and Star. Unlike his other classmates, he was wearing clothing more suitable for early winter rather than late summer, which was a stark contrast to his peers who were all dressed in short-sleeved shirts and shorts. He also wasn't exhibiting any signs of discomfort, primarily because his ice core prevented him from ever worrying about getting hot. Sam was leaning against him religiously, and he didn't have to ask why; he knew that his low body temperature was probably the only thing keeping her from complaining like all of his other classmates.

"Is it possible to have a seizure because of heat?" Paulina wondered from the seat in front of him.

And somewhere from in front of her, Lester answered, "Not if you're in normal health. And it'd take more extreme conditions than this for heat-stroke."

"Well, that's not a relief," she sighed dramatically. She pushed her hands beneath her hair, which had adopted a lackluster frizziness. "I want to pass out. That way they can airlift me out of here on one of those hospital helicopters."

"I'm sure if you hold your arms up like a football goal post, Dash might throw something at your face hard enough to knock you out for a while," Sam remarked dryly.

Paulina turned around to glare at her rival, bitterly ignoring how the goth girl's face was snuggled into Danny's shoulder. Paulina clearly had something nasty in mind to say to Sam, but given that Danny was right next to her, she refrained from insulting his girlfriend in front of him. After all, Paulina was still trying to get back on Danny's good side... So without any sort of offensive comment, Paulina whirled back around in her seat and continued complaining to Star about the heat.

"She's getting tamer every day," Valerie muttered from behind Danny.

"So is someone else," Danny whispered back at her, referring to the Red Huntress's recent alliance.

She scoffed. "I'm not tame, ghost boy."

"Says the girl who hasn't shot at me in a month," he replied, jokingly.

She narrowed her eyes, matching his light tone, "I can still beat your ass if I wanted to. Especially right now, without your powers."

In order to attend school and comply with the school board's 'no weapon' policy, Danny was required to wear a power-dampening bracelet during school hours, which was extended to off-campus excursions such as field trips. It was easily removable, that way he could still fight ghosts when they posed a threat during school hours, but he was officially restricted from taking it off without permission otherwise he faced receiving a temporary suspension.

Danny laughed, glancing at the cuff wrapped around his wrist. "Even with this on I think I can dodge a few punches."

"We're stuck in a literal toaster oven right now, I doubt you'd have any space to dodge me with all these people around," she whispered slyly.

"Please, don't underestimate him," Sam rolled her eyes, continuing to lean on Danny. "I've seen him fight his way out of a literal three-foot wide container."

"Yeah. And, as you said, there's another weakness I don't have," he pointed out. "I'm not weakened by the heat. Meaning that if we fought right now I'd probably have a stronger endurance..."

"Uhh," Tucker said, "I know you guys are on good terms and stuff now but isn't this sort of a bad place to be talking about this right now?" He vaguely gestured to the students around them, some of which who were watching them curiously. Tucker lowered his voice, "Since one of you still has a secret identity to keep?"

Valerie sighed, "I guess you do have a point." Danny and Sam shared the same realization.

One of the more irritating changes after the reveal was that people generally tended to eavesdrop on them. It made it difficult for Danny to keep particular fights under the radar, but it was another story for Valerie. If people found out she was the Red Huntress, she could be facing extreme social ostracism; even though Phantom had allied himself with her, many of his 'phans' were willing to burn her at the stake for her past crimes against him. Not to mention, if the school board found out she could be permanently expelled. Her circumstances were different than Danny's because she was choosing to be a ghost hunter, whereas his ghost half was a part of him.

"Why can't this stupid bus just have air conditioning?" Tucker grumbled, changing the subject. "Modern technology exists for a reason, but whoever designed these old buses didn't get the memo."

"My Mom works for the school board," Nathan commented from behind him. He and Valerie pretended to not be unnerved this interruption, given what they had been talking about moments previously. "I asked her once and I think these buses are at least twenty years old."

Tucker nodded, "Case in point. Man, I mean, sure this bus has a portable ghost shield installed on it, but nobody thought that keeping the air cool would be important? They just want to torture us..."

"Wait," Mikey, who was sitting next to Nathan, tilted his head in confusion. "There's a ghost shield on the bus? Why?"

"Oh yeah..." Tucker realized. "I forgot that wasn't common knowledge. I uh – helped Danny's parents install the shields on the buses last spring."

"But why put ghost shields on the buses?" Nathan wondered.

"Vehicles tend to be common collateral," Danny answered. "I know a few ghosts have targeted buses specifically, but mainly it's to make sure the bus doesn't get knocked over if I or any other ghosts get thrown into it. It's pretty much a smaller version of the shield at school, but different. The one at school is only turned on during emergencies since it requires a lot of energy, but the smaller one uses a device called the ecto-converter which collects ambient ectoplasmic energy and re-purposes it so it can be used instead of electricity. Amity is full of ambient energy so it charges itself by driving around town, allowing it to be turned on all the time."

"Wait, but... if it's on right now, how are you in the shield? I thought you couldn't be inside of those..." Mikey asked.

"Well, I can be inside of them in either form, I just can't pass through them," Danny explained. "And unlike the big shield at the school, this shield isn't strong enough to affect my human form, anyway so I can pass through it fine right now," he paused. "Though, if I changed I wouldn't be able to leave the bus."

"Wait," a new voice interrupted. Dash, who'd been sitting beside Danny and Sam, had clearly been listening silently. "Pha-enton..." he corrected himself. "When you uh – well, change? Don't you make the air like, really cold?"

"Dash," Valerie warned, seeing where he was going with this. The thought had already crossed her mind but she knew better than to ask.

"Yeah," Nathan added. "And don't you have ice powers, too?"

"Uhh," Danny fidgeted with the sleeve of his shirt, ignoring how his fingers also grazed the cuff on his wrist. "I can, but you know I can't."

"That's not fair though," Dash complained. "We're not even in school right now. You don't have to-"

"Yeah, but I'm on a school trip. Rules are rules, Dash, and even I can't violate them because I'm supposed to be responsible. If I can't abide by the one rule allowing me to stay in school then what gives me the right to even be here?"

"You're Phantom though, dude," Kwan chimed in. "Not to mention we're all melting. What if we get that heat-stroke thing?" To prove his point he wiped the sweat off of his forehead.

Star, who had stopped listening to Paulina a while ago joined the conversation. "Yeah, like we could be at a health risk, and you didn't do anything to help us out. Come on, Danny. It's just this once, I'm sure the school would turn a blind eye."

"Or he could get his field trip privileges suspended, and a week of OSS," Sam said darkly. "None of you truly understand what it means when Danny risks getting in trouble."

"But – but we're all burning up!" Mikey reasoned. "It's not like he's doing party tricks or anything-"

"I can't," he repeated. Even if he could transform for them he didn't feel comfortable being some sort of half-ghost air conditioning. After all, just because everyone already knew his secret, it didn't mean that he liked being in Phantom form around his classmates. "I signed a legal contract, so unless I have a reason to believe that there's a ghost attack or direct permission I can't do anything."

"Don't you think that's unfair though? You should be allowed to use your powers, cause they're part of you," Star reasoned.

"Sometimes, yeah, it's a pain," he admitted. "But I know better than anyone why these rules are in place."

Dash scoffed, "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that you should listen to him," Tucker backed him up.

"That's a load of bull," Dash hissed.

"Wait a minute," Mikey devised, turning to Danny, "didn't you say that you just need direct permission to change?"

"Uh, yeah?" he asked, not seeing how that mattered.

Mikey grinned. "Mr. Lancer!" he called out. The English teacher was sitting in the column across from Paulina and Star and was ignoring the typical teenage commotion behind him, using his book as a distraction from the persistent heat.

"Of Mice and Men," he cursed. He turned behind him to find ten ambitious children staring at him expectantly. He rubbed his temples therapeutically and met Mikey's gaze, "What is it that you require, Mr. Stanworth?"

"We're all frying in here," he stated simply.

"Yes, well, it's late August and we're in traffic. There's not much I can do," he explained, wondering exactly what his students expected him to do about circumstances out of his control.

"Give Danny permission to change into Phantom," Mikey blurted.

Lancer blinked dumbly. "Pardon me?"

"His ghost form makes the air cold," Kwan explained. "But he doesn't want to break the rules."

Danny looked at his teacher, "Mr. Lancer they don't understand that-"

"Wait," Lancer pronounced slowly, "so him just being Phantom will make bus colder? I mean, I've noticed that the temperature usually goes down, but I never imagined how that asset of your, uh..." he looked at Danny, "ghostliness could be used in a situation like this."

Danny gaped at him, flabbergasted. Even Mr. Lancer of all people wanted to use him as an air conditioner. He understood that they were suffering from the heat but he couldn't help but feel like it was a little demeaning on his part.

"So you're giving him permission?" Dash asked greedily.

Lancer nodded, "Daniel I give you permission to transform into Phantom."

He groaned, gaining him some odd glares, but he figured that he had no real reason to decline since he couldn't just admit that he didn't want to do it because it was awkward. Not to mention, if he refused there was a chance that Dash would forget the past sixth months and punch him out of habit.

So, Danny rolled up his sleeve and opened the clasp on his power-dampening bracelet before stuffing it into his pocket. He made sure to take his phone out of his other pocket since everything in his human clothes would vanish after the change. At this action, Sam moved a few inches away, knowing that being too close to Danny's transformation tickled your insides in a weird sort of way.

He called upon his core and allowed the cold energy to chill the blood in his veins, triggering the white halos around his waist. They moved around his body and left behind his monochrome jumpsuit, eccentric white hair, and ghostly aura.

Once the ring had passed over his head and faded to nothing, he saw looks of relief cross across the faces of everyone around him as they reveled in the temperature drop. Some students cheered, which usually happened when he transformed, but that didn't mean that it wasn't uncomfortable.

"You're a lifesaver, dude," Dash said.

"Yeah," Danny laughed nervously, habitually rubbing the back of his neck. "It's not like I hear that a lot or anything..."

It took another thirty minutes before they were finally free of the horrendous traffic-jam, and even then they would have an extra ten-minute drive to get back to the school. In that time, the students had resumed their normal teenage shenanigans and besides being grateful for his deed of cooling the bus, nobody made a big deal that it was Danny Phantom sitting with them instead of Fenton.

By the time they pulled into the school, all of the other classes had let out already, so when they arrived, the parking lot was practically vacated. When the brown brick building came into the students' line of sight, everyone stood up in their seats and clamored to exit the bus. Under normal circumstances, it would have been an overreaction but their hour trapped on the highway had felt like an eternity. Therefore, everyone was understandably antsy to push their way through the aisle to the front of the bus.

"Don't forget your homework!" Lancer was saying. "Two paragraphs about the differences between the book and the play production!" He was ironically unaware that many students had left their homework sheets discarded on the bus's floor, folded up into redundant paper fans.

When the doors to the bus finally opened, Danny trailed behind Sam, following her to the bus's exit without a second thought. She passed through the bus's threshold, but when he moved to do the same, he met a painful grew wall. Literally. A translucent grid of energy materialized in front of him, sending him crashing into Tucker, who was carrying out the gravity of his last step. The sudden stop in the line's movement caused a few people behind him to crash into each other as well, like human dominoes. Danny immediately tried to apologize for falling into Tucker, but his friend was laughing.

"Dude," Tucker chortled. "You – forgot – to change – back."

Oh, right. He'd forgotten that he was still Phantom, which meant that he had just tried to walk through the bus's ghost shield... as a ghost. In retrospect, that was a pretty stupid move.

He floated up for a moment and pulled Tucker to his feet too. Sam was outside the bus now and was grinning stupidly at them both. Since she'd been facing the opposite direction she hadn't seen what had happened but had gotten the gist of it from Tucker's fit of laughter.

Before he could permanently die of embarrassment, Danny forced himself back into human form (ignoring the gasps of some of his unprepared classmates, who never failed to be mystified by him), and went to step through the door again.

Only to be pushed back again by the ghost shield again, which thoroughly refused to let him step through it.

Wait, what?

He was human now, so why couldn't he get through the bus's ghost shield?

"Uh, Danny?" Sam looked at him questioningly. The kids behind him were also looking at him for answers, confused why they couldn't get off of the bus yet. "What's going on?"

"The shield won't let me through," he muttered. "Even though I changed back. This weak shield isn't supposed to do that, only the stronger ones can repel me in human form."

Mr. Lancer was outside of the bus and looked between Danny and the shield worriedly. Danny was trying to force his hand through the barrier, but to no avail. "Mr. Fenton," he said carefully, "perhaps you could step aside for a moment and let your classmates leave the bus, then we can sort this little problem out?"

Danny looked at him with a panic-stricken expression but nodded solemnly and allowed the line of students to exit the vehicle. Once the last student had stepped off of the bus, minus Danny, Mr. Lancer suggested that Mr. Falluca (who had been driving the bus) take them inside to collect their belongings from their lockers for the weekend. There had been a general air of protest since everyone was generally curious about Danny's situation, but Mr. Falluca eventually managed to corral everyone except Sam and Tucker inside the school building.

So Mr. Lancer, Sam, and Tucker set to work to figure out why Danny couldn't pass through the ghost shield in his human form.

"This is just my luck," Danny muttered, sitting on the steps down to the bus's door. "I don't even know why I'm surprised at this point."

"We'll fix this, man," Tucker reassured. "We just have to figure out why the shield let you in and out this morning, and won't let you out now."

"Like I said," Danny explained, "it's a weak shield! It shouldn't even have the power to contain my human form at all! This is all just so frustrating."

"It's not the first time something like this has happened," Sam pointed out. "Remember the time you were trapped in the thermos for a few hours?"

"Don't remind me," he said darkly.

"Mr. Fenton you were trapped in that ghost thermos for hours?" Lancer asked, aghast.

"On multiple occasions," he replied, casually kicking the ghost shield. It sparked against his shoe and left a green smudge.

"Okay," Tucker summed up. "Somehow the ghost shield has gotten strong enough to trap you in your human form. This happened between the time you got on the bus and before you tried to get off. What would cause a shield to increase in power, though?"

"Hold up a second," Sam intervened. "Didn't you say that it's powered by the ecto-converter?"

"Yeah," Danny said, before freezing. "Oh. Ohh. Yeah, that would make sense."

"What makes sense?" Lancer questioned, falling behind his students for a change.

"When Danny transformed on the bus," Tucker caught on. "The ectoplasmic energy from his ghost form basically supercharged the ghost shield, making it stronger. It's calibrated to absorb as much energy as possible, and Phantom's pretty much an infinite buffet of ambient energy."

"And now it's so strong that it won't let him pass through it in his human form," Sam concluded.

"Sooo, how are we gonna get me out of here?" Danny asked. "Are we just going to destroy the ghost shield, because my parents took a long time putting the last batch together."

"Is there a way to turn it off?" Lancer suggested.

"Not really. It can be dismantled from the inside and put back together, though," Danny said. "But destroying it might just be easier, to be honest. It'd take a lot less time."

"How would we destroy it though?" Tucker asked. "We plated it with metal that was impenetrable to outside forces. Almost bulletproof, remember? Your Dad bragged about it for three days."

"Can't I just shoot it with an ectoblast? With enough focused charge, that can be stronger than a bullet," Danny suggested.

"Uh, Danny?" Sam said. She pointed at the bus's roof, in the vague direction of a subtle, protruding panel. "The shield's on the outside of the bus. And you're inside remember?"

He froze for a moment before his expression slid into a scowl, "Right."

"Shall I call Mr. and Mrs. Fenton to dismantle it?" Lancer offered.

"They're probably our best bet," Tucker agreed.

"And how exactly did this happen again?" Maddie asked, trying to figure out how her son had managed to trap himself inside a ghost shield.

"I got peer pressured into going ghost on the bus because we were stuck in hot traffic. Mr. Lancer gave me permission and then when I stayed in ghost form the excess energy supercharged the ghost shield and now it's strong enough to repel my human form," Danny groaned.

Jack laughed, "Kinda ironic, right?"

"S'not funny, Dad," Danny crossed his arms, leaning back in the driver's chair. It was the most comfortable seat on the bus and he wasn't going to settle for a passenger bench.

"Danny's right, dear," Maddie forced herself to agree with her son. "It's not funny."

"You guys can dismantle it, right?" he asked.

"Hmm, give or take two to three hours," Jack estimated.

Danny's eyes were the size of saucers. "Two or three hours? But my phone's almost dead, I can't be trapped on this bus for three more hours!"

"These things take time, sweetie," Maddie said slowly. "Patience is our only option."

Danny took a deep breath and sighed, "A – alright. I'll try to not lose my mind."

After all, three hours trapped on a bus with his parents outside shouldn't be that hard, right? (Who was he kidding, of course it was.)