OH MY GOSH, it's been a while for this fic, hasn't it? Almost a year. I hope I've captured the mood of the previous chapters, because, dang, I was really onto something back then, wasn't I? Me to past me: How and why are you so funny?

Thank you to everyone who reviewed and encouraged me to pick this up again!

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Chapter 4

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Danny refrained from making 'bird brained' comments in deference to his feathered friends, who had proven to be much smarter than Dash and his cohort. Still, Danny was struggling to find a better descriptor for what the jocks were doing.

"They know I can see them, right?" he asked. "I mean, the lockers aren't big enough to hide them."

"Don't be so hard on them Danny," said Sam, tipping an intimidating set of leather-bound books out of her locker. "They haven't grasped the concept of object permanence yet."

"What are they even trying to do?"

"Ambush you, it looks like," said Tucker, utterly unconcerned for his friend, which, well, fair. Danny did have superpowers.

Sam glanced over. "Based on how Dale is juggling that lock, I bet they're going to try and shove you in a locker and force you to skip the club meeting."

"That's so dumb."

"Yeah," agreed Tucker. "When was the last time you were stuck in a locker for more than fifteen minutes? You'd think they'd get the memo."

Danny had to think about that one. "I think it was last September, in the locker rooms. I had to stay in because the locker room lockers are just diamond grating, and they could see me."

"Huh. I thought it was longer ago."

"Yeah, well." Danny shrugged. Internally, he was feeling less philosophical. He'd wanted to drop off his backpack and books before going to the club meeting, and this was just getting annoying.

The jocks had kept up their harassment, even after Hehwiile's attack, although their methods had become increasingly pathetic and ineffectual. Tripping, glaring, threats, stolen worksheets… Now this. Danny sighed.

"Oh, look, here comes Valerie," said Tucker.

Danny turned, and frowned slightly at the sight of his ex-girlfriend. They were on mostly good terms, but Valerie rarely sought him out unless she needed to ask him something about ghosts. Not that she knew just how intimately Danny was familiar with ghosts. She thought he got his knowledge from his ghost-hunting parents.

Danny didn't particularly begrudge her the information. She often needed it to keep herself alive. On the other hand, the reason she needed it to keep herself alive was because she was also a ghost hunter, and her favorite ghost to hunt was Danny.

Yeah. That was just what being Danny was like.

"Hey, Danny," she said.

That was another reason he felt weird about Valerie. Sam and Tucker were right there, but she didn't acknowledge them.

"Hi," said Danny. "What's up?"

"Oh, I just– What are they doing?" Valerie nodded over Danny's shoulders.

"Probably trying to ambush me. No big deal."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah? Why wouldn't I be?" asked Danny.

"This is just about a daily occurrence," said Tucker.

"Come on," said Danny, "weekly, tops. So, what is up?"

A storm passed over Valerie's face and stayed there. "Hold that thought." She marched over to where Dash and his cronies were hiding.

Tucker, of course, started filming with his PDA. "What?" he asked, noticing Sam and Danny's askance looks. "I'm just practicing for when we do the play. Also, man, I'm going to make so much money off this."

"I am begging you. Please tell me you aren't going to sell a video of Valerie telling off Dash."

"I'm not doing that. I'm doing something better."

"I hesitate to ask."

"There's a bet running that Valerie will punch Dash before the end of the school year and a rider that it'll be because of you."

"How many aspects of my life are you betting on, Tucker?"

"More than you want to know," said Sam.

"If you two would just get together, I'd be rich. Rich, I tell you."

"Anyway," said Sam. "Will you help me carry these?" She hefted one of the books.

"Sure," said Danny. "What are they?"

"Research," said Sam. "Do you know how many different versions of Snow White there are?"

"A lot?"

"You'd better believe it."

To their side, Tucker groaned.

"What?"

"She didn't hit him."

"Well, better luck next time."

"Better luck with what?" asked Valerie. She gave Tucker a suspicious glare. "You weren't filming me, were you?"

Danny glanced over at where the jocks had been. They were gone. Hopefully, they hadn't found a better hiding spot.

"Yep," said Tucker, cheerfully.

Briefly, it looked like Valerie wanted to hit Tucker, but she shook herself and turned back to Danny with a smile. "So, you're in drama this year?"

"We all are," said Sam, closing her locker with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. It made Hehwiile wake with a jump and scrabble for purchase on Danny's head.

"Is – Is that a bird? On your head?" asked Valerie, her hand twitching towards her backpack and, presumably, her ectoweapons.

"Yes," said Danny, "and no, it isn't a ghost thing. Just a perfectly normal bird." Normal for Amity Park, anyway, which was to say, not very. "What were you saying about drama?"

Valerie sighed deeply, as if the world had offended her on some deep personal level. "Well," she said. "It turns out that I'm short an arts credit, and I need to make it up, somehow."

Danny blinked. Sometimes, he forgot that ghost hunting put as much strain on Valerie's schedule as it did on his.

"Why don't you take art instead of that self-defense class?" asked Sam. "You already have all the PE you need."

"A girl's got to stay in shape."

"So, you're joining drama?" asked Danny. He could have leaped for joy. An ally who would be against the involvement of ghosts!

"Maybe," said Valerie. "I just wanted to ask, how is it?"

"Fine, so far, but this will only be our third meeting. Why don't you come with us? I'm sure Mr. Lancer won't mind."

"Also," said Sam, "we really need to go before these books drag our arms off."

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They met outside again, and Mr. Lancer looked entirely unperturbed at Valerie's presence, silently passing her three copies of the sign-up form. Danny smirked a little at that. It was nice to know he wasn't the only one who had trouble returning work intact.

As before, people were split into their various cliques and friend groups, with Valerie awkwardly joining the trio. Unlike before, however, everyone was eyeing Danny.

Well, except for Sam and Tucker. Sam was organizing her books, and Tucker was playing with his PDA. Typical. But that's why he loved them.

"It's because you have a bird on your head," said Valerie.

Danny shrugged. "They already know about her."

In the center of the group, Mr. Lancer clapped his hands together, signaling the start of the club meeting. People glanced at him, but for the most part kept staring at Danny.

"Alright!" he said. "Now, last time, we read some scripts and discovered some unusual talents. Today we are going to try to narrow down what version of Snow White we want to put on, and what, if any modifications we need to make."

Mia's hand shot up.

"Yes, Miss Battaglia?" asked Mr. Lancer.

"Well, since Danny's obviously going to be Snow White," there was a generalized murmur of agreement, "I think the first thing we should do is ask him whether or not he'll be comfortable crossdressing. Then we can decide how much genderswapping we should do."

Danny appreciated the thought, but he rather wished (silently, of course) that someone had asked him if he even wanted to be in the play first.

"Excellent though. Well, Mr. Fenton?"

Danny shifted uncomfortably. "I'd really rather not cross dress," he said, remembering what had happened last time. Sam and Tucker, the traitors, had claimed that he made a cute girl, but compliments alone would never make up for the memory of Dash trying to flirt with him.

Just. No.

And, just like that, the club exploded into all-out war.

One subset wanted to genderswap the whole play. Another wanted to only leave everyone but Danny the way they were, arguing for a love story between two princes. A third wanted to genderswap on a case-by-case basis. A fourth wanted the dwarves to be genderless.

This was complicated by Paulina first insisting that she be Snow White, and then by demanding that she be the queen, because, after all, she was the queen of Casper High.

Danny knew Paulina knew the meaning of the word irony. Somehow, that made this worse.

Driven by Paulina's insistence, and despite Mr. Lancer's best efforts, the conversation veered off into casting.

"Alright," said Ricky Marsh, who had somehow finagled his way into being the spokesman for the theater geeks. "Paulina, you can be the queen." She preened. "Then, Sam can be Prince Charming!"

Paulina's mouth fell open. She had apparently not considered that, with Danny playing Snow White, the prince could become a princess. Now, she had inadvertently locked herself into being the villain of the piece.

Danny had more important things to consider, however. He turned to Sam, who looked shocked.

"What? Me?" said Sam, looking up from her books.

"Hm," said Razor, leader of the goths, stroking his chin piercing. "Yes, you can be our dark prince. We accept."

"Hold on," said Sam.

"Great!" said Mia, beaming and writing Sam's name on the board. Somehow, in all of this, she had commandeered the whiteboard and the marker. The argument moved on.

"Well," said Sam, rolling her eyes. "At least you won't have to fakeout-makeout with anyone new."

"No!" said Tucker. "No, this is a disaster!"

"Um, why?" asked Danny.

"Because there's a kissing scene!"

"Yeah?" said Sam. "That's what we were just talking about."

"No, you don't get it. If you kiss during a play, it'll ruin all my bets! You have to reject it, Sam, please, my wallet is begging you."

"I'm sure you'll find a way to cope," said Sam.

"They're doing this on purpose," said Tucker. "Razor said that you were a dark and loveless soul, and that the next kiss you gave would be false. Help me, Sam. Tap into your inner spite. Better yet, start dating Danny now! Save my life savings!"

"My dude," said Danny. "This is getting kind of creepy. Are you okay? You didn't actually bet your life savings on when Sam and I kiss, did you?"

Tucker pulled himself up from throwing himself at Sam's feet. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Sorry, did I go too far?"

"Just a bit."

"I agree. Tone it down."

"Wait," said Valerie, who had been watching in horror. "That was a joke?"

"Yeah. You couldn't tell?"

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"I have a proposal," said Sam, after a fifteen-minute argument over who would be Dopey almost came to blows.

Mr. Lancer's head whipped around so fast that Danny was surprised he didn't break his neck. "Yes, Miss Manson?" he asked, full of hope (and a healthy amount of fear. Sam's Doomed avatar wasn't named Chaos for nothing).

"Well, you're all arguing over the Disney dwarf names. Traditionally, the dwarves didn't have names, and, in a lot of versions, they weren't dwarves at all, and there weren't necessarily seven of them. I think one version has the princess living with forty dragons. Another has her living with knights. I say, we pick what suits our school best."

There was a beat of silence, then, almost as one, the drama club nodded and uttered, "Ghosts."

"Well," said Mr. Lancer, brightly. "At least there's something we can all agree on."

"You've got to be kidding me!" exclaimed Valerie.

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"Want to bet we don't see Valerie in club again?" asked Tucker as they stopped by their lockers after the meeting ended.

"Nope," said Sam and Danny together.

"What? Really? After all that about ghosts? She looked like she was about to have an aneurysm."

"Yeah," said Danny, "but Nathan and Lester are in the band clubs, and you know how they are."

Tucker nodded in understanding. "So, do you think Valerie will be the huntsman, if she stays?"

"No way. It'll go to one of the drama kids," said Danny. "Mr. Lancer was pretty firm on us waiting to assign any more roles until we've done proper auditions." He shoved a sheaf of sheet music into his already overfull backpack. "Snow White and the Seven Ghosts, huh?"

"I'm angling for getting it called the Tale of the Dead Prince and the Seven Ghosts, but, yeah," said Sam. "But you're lucky it didn't wind up being Snow White and the Seven Ghost Hunters, like Valerie wanted."

"I guess," said Danny. "But if they all wind up dressed like Phantom, I'm blaming you."

"They won't," reassured Sam.

"How do you know?" asked Danny.

"Have you seen how many goths there are?" asked Tucker. "Between them and the serious drama kids, it'd never be allowed."

"I think Dash is the only one who's that big of a fanboy, anyway," said Sam.

"Not counting the cult," added Tucker.

"Yep," agreed Sam. "Can't forget the cult."

"Please. Let me forget the cult."

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Danny yanked a fistful of sheet music out of his backpack and groaned, glaring at the crumpled pages. Why him? He didn't have time to learn this, let alone the willpower. His head was still pounding from his math homework.

Or should he blame it on the ghost football team that had rolled through town and over Danny an hour ago? He shook his head. Football players had no respect, dead or alive.

What he really wanted to do was throw the music to the side and go to sleep.

But he didn't. If he was going to have to do this thing, he wanted to do it as well as he could. His reputation as a lazy student wasn't entirely undeserved, sometimes he did skip assignments when everything got to be too much, but he always hated doing anything less than his best.

Of course, the crash course the choir kids had given him in reading music hadn't exactly been effective. He had no idea what he was looking at.

Wait.

He pulled one sheet of paper from the stack. He knew this song, from Beauty and the Beast. Maybe he could just start with this one?

After a moment's consideration, he went ghost and flew outside. He probably shouldn't tempt fate, as far as getting caught by his parents went, but his animal and ghost friends were feeling neglected, and, hey, they had gotten him into this mess. They should help him practice.

Besides, the night was clear and warm. Who knew how much longer that would last, once they got into the fall?

He settled down on top of the clocktower in the park, and was immediately swarmed by owls, ghost birds, and softly luminous will-o-the-wisps.

"Want to hear a song?" he asked them. He took the various bob, whistles, caws, and screeches as assent, and he sang, head tilted up, towards the stars.

The first run through was not, in Danny's opinion, particularly good. He adjusted himself, first trying to make his notes line up with his memory of the song, then making his own additions, replacing English words with ones in ghostspeak and then straight-up gibberish, warping the melody, exaggerating it, twisting it, mixing it with other songs until it was something entirely new and haunting.

He still didn't think it was any good. At this point, he wasn't practicing, just messing around. This wasn't even giving him a good feel for what he should sing like when he did finally get some real instruction on how to sing.

After all, his human voice didn't have a supernatural buzz or echo behind it that he could harmonize with, and he was pretty sure his Ghostly Wail was contributing to his lung capacity.

The animals and ghosts seemed to enjoy it, though.

… Hold up. There were more of them than when he started. His voice died in his throat, and he looked around himself for the first time since he had started. A lot more. He expected a few more to show up as time went on, but this was sort of ridiculous.

He looked down and almost swallowed his tongue in surprise.

There were people down there. Many, many people.

"Oh," he said, quietly. "This is going to be a problem."