Danny Phantom Revisit Season One

Tucker got his answer at lunch that day. He and Danny arrived at their usual table with wheatgrass on toast for their meals. Sam seemed positively happy with her food – she actually had a smile on her face.

"This is your brilliant idea?" Tucker asked, holding up his toast with two fingers.

"Isn't it great?" Sam asked back.

"Isn't this a little extreme?" Danny pointed out.

Sam opened her mouth to speak, but a hand rested on her shoulder. Everyone looked up to see Mr. Lancer – an overweight, balding, middle-aged man in a light blue shirt and black tie – the vice-principal and English teacher.

"Ah, Miss Manson," Mr. Lancer said. "The school board wanted me to personally thank you for ushering in this welcome experiment to our cafeteria."

Tucker's nostrils flared as he sniffed the air. "Meat. Near," he said robotically. He glared at Mr. Lancer who backed away.

"No, no," Mr. Lancer said. "The rumors about the new all-steak buffet in the teacher's lounge are completely untrue." He put a hand on Sam's shoulder again and said, "Thanks again," before walking off.

"Yeah," Tucker said, glaring at Sam, "thanks again for making us eat garbage, Sam."

"It's not garbage," Sam said, holding up her toast. "It's recyclable organic matter."

Together, the boys said, "It's garbage."

Danny sighed and looked at his food. He had to eat something, right? His stomach growled in agreement. He took a bite of his grassy toast just as his ghost sense went off.

"Uh, guys?" he said. "I've got a problem." A slop of pudding planted on his head, and gooey liquid ran down his neck. "Ugh!"

"FENTON!" came a familiar, irritating voice.

"Make that two problems," Danny amended.

A muscular, blond jock grabbed him by his shirt collar and yanked him off his seat. Dash Baxter, the JV quarterback star… and Danny's tormentor. A thrill of rage he'd never felt before coursed through Danny at the thought of being interrupted. It surprised him more than anything else, and he quashed it down.

"I ordered three mud pies," Dash complained loudly, "and do you know what I got? Pudding that tastes like mud!" He shoved Danny back into his seat and slid his lunch tray in front of him. "You're going to eat it. All of it!"

Danny grimaced. He needed a way out of this situation, but all eyes were on him. He still felt the icy cold in his chest which meant a ghost was near. His gaze flicked around the room, searching for an idea. He caught sight of a glowing green woman in the kitchen. That must be the ghost!

"I'm waiting," Dash said.

Then it hit him. "Garbage fight!" Danny shouted and threw the pudding into Dash's face.

The lunchroom erupted into a frenzy. Danny dove under the table. So did Tucker and Sam.

"Nice going," Tucker said smugly. "What's the plan?"

"The plan," Danny said, "is to find the ghost I'm sensing. I think I saw her in the kitchen." To his relief, Dash's feet ran off in a random direction.

"Aren't you afraid someone will see you?" Sam asked.

Danny smirked. "I'll be invisible. I'm going ghost!" The transformation rings passed over him and he felt weightless under the table. Immediately, he went invisible and intangible. "Meet me in the kitchen if you can." Then he flew off, right through the tabletop.

Getting to the kitchen and finding the ghost took him half a second. She was quite large with white hair that flowed menacingly under a hairnet. She wore the same uniform as the lunch lady she was terrorizing.

"The menu hasn't been changed in fifty years," the ghost said sweetly. Then, her demeanor changed to one of rage, and she roared, "Who changed the menu?"

"Leave her alone!" Danny said.

The ghost turned to him, and the lunch lady fled. The ghost had red eyes, jagged teeth, and hideous lipstick. At the sight of Danny, her stance relaxed and she smiled with a closed mouth.

"Ghost child, maybe you can help me," she said in a syrupy voice. "I'm the Lunch Lady, you see, and I'm looking for the one who changed the menu so I can PUNISH THEM!" She yelled the last two words, showing her dangerous side again.

Danny backed away, trying to look non-threatening. "You don't need to punish anybody," he said. "The change to the menu is only temporary. You can go back to the Ghost Zone or whatever–"

"That is unacceptable!" the Lunch Lady growled, lunging at Danny with her fingers, which turned into claws.

"Whoa!" Danny dodged and reluctantly powered up his fist. "I don't want to hurt you."

The ghost swiped at him again and he continued to dodge. He wasn't used to being in a fight where he could retaliate, so he didn't know when to attack. All his training with the ectoray went out the window now that he faced a real opponent.

Eventually, his back was against a wall – literally – so he had to do something. He swung his fist, releasing the stored-up energy at the last second. The Lunch Lady was blasted backward. It actually worked! While she was disoriented, Danny grabbed her collar, turned both of them intangible and flew upward. He didn't let go until they were safely above the school roof.

"Now leave everyone alone," Danny threatened, "or I'll keep hitting you."

The Lunch Lady glanced at their surroundings, turned invisible, and fled.

Danny wiped his hands together and landed on the roof. "Phew," he sighed. "Glad that's over." He looked around and mused, "So this is what the roof is like." He chuckled to himself and dove back into the school. He found a quiet closet to transform in and cautiously opened the door. No one saw him, so he hurried out of the closet. He was about to return to the lunch room when a hand grabbed his collar. Not again, he thought and grimaced.

"You're not going anywhere," Mr. Lancer said.

Dash stood next to him, a smug look on his face. He was covered by food, or what Sam called food. He sneered in Danny's face and said, "Told ya you'd pay, Fenton!"

Danny didn't remember any such threat, but it didn't matter now. Mr. Lancer led Danny to his office, where Tucker and Sam waited. They looked sheepishly at Danny when he walked in. Danny took a seat next to them while Mr. Lancer went over to a set of filing cabinets. Dash closed the door and leaned against the wall grinning.

Silence permeated the room except for the sound of papers rustling in Mr. Lancer's filing cabinet. Danny twitched in his seat, wondering what was about to happen. Finally, Mr. Lancer turned around, three files in his hands.

"Tucker Foley," Mr. Lancer said, reading from the first file. "Chronic tardiness, talking in class, repeated loitering by the girls' locker room. Danny Fenton. Thirty-four dropped beakers in the last month, banned for life from handling all fragile school property, but no severe mischief before today. Sam Manson. Organizing unauthorized protests on school property, also talking in class…" He slammed the files on his desk, making the trio jump. "Why did the three of you conspire to destroy the school's cafeteria?"

Danny hastily said, "Dash started it! He threw–"

"Four touchdown passes in the last game and is thereby exempt from scorn," Mr. Lancer said cooly. "You three, however, are not. I'll map out your punishment when I return." He opened the door and added, "Mr. Baxter, watch the door."

Still smiling, Dash followed Mr. Lancer out into the hallway shutting the door again and leaving the trio alone. Danny stood up and paced the room. Another pang of rage entered his mind. Where was this anger coming from? He noticed three computer monitors showing various angles of the school.

"Danny, there's no use fretting over this," Sam said. "There's no way out of this room. What's going to happen will happen."

Something caught Danny's eye and he looked closer at the monitors.

"I'm with Danny!" Tucker said. "We've never been in this much trouble before."

"Our trouble's not over, yet," Danny said. He pointed to a view on the screen. "Look, it's the Lunch Lady! I thought I stopped her!"

"What's wrong with the lunch lady?" Sam asked, but she and Tucker went over to look.

"Not the lunch lady," Danny said. "The Lunch Lady! The ghost I fought."

"Is that a room full of… meat?" Tucker wondered, salivating.

Danny grabbed his friends' shoulders and phased them through the floor, transforming in the process. They entered the cold storage, where boxes upon boxes of "meat" were stacked from floor to ceiling.

"Sweet mother of mutton!" Tucker said, running over to hug a tower of boxes. "I'd dreamed of it, but… I never thought I'd live to see it!"

"How is it that I have the ghost powers and you're the weird kid?" Danny muttered.

The Lunch Lady came around the corner, looking innocent. "Hello, children. Can you help me? Today's lunch is meatloaf, but I don't see the meatloaf. Did someone change the menu?"

Tucker pointed his thumb at Sam. "Yeah, she did."

The Lunch Lady's eyes flared red and she roared, "You changed the menu? The menu has been the same for fifty years!" Green flames appeared around her.

"Get behind me!" Danny said to his friends, who jumped behind him.

Sarcastically, Sam said, "Wow. I feel safe."

Danny ignored her and floated up to the Lunch Lady. Trying to sound authoritative, he said, "I command you to… go away!"

"I control lunch! Lunch is sacred! Lunch has rules!" The Lunch Lady stopped her tirade to ask, "Anybody want cake?"

Shocked, Tucker and Sam nodded.

The evil aura flared around the ghost again. "Too bad! Children who change my menu do not get dessert!" She raised her hands and meat came out of the boxes to surround her. She directed the meat to encircle Sam and snatch her away. They flew deeper into the meat locker.

"This is the thanks I get for thinking like an individual?" Sam cried out as she disappeared around the corner.

"C'mon," Tucker said. "For some reason, I feel like I got Sam kidnapped."

"Maybe because you told the ghost she changed the menu?" Danny snapped. "How about that?"

The two hurried to follow the Lunch Lady and Sam. The towers of boxes wound around like a maze. They followed the Lunch Lady's voice.

"Prepare to learn why meat is the most powerful of the five food groups!" Then, politely, "Cookie?" A pause… and the angry voice returned. "Then perish!"

Danny and Tucker arrived just in time. Sam was stuck in a pile of meat. Danny stood in front of Sam and pointed at the ghost. "Forget it! The only thing that has an expiration date here is you!" He somersaulted in the air, expecting to land a kick. Instead, the ghost grabbed his leg and he dangled upside down.

"Don't you see?" the Lunch Lady said. "This is why you need meat! You're skin and bones!" With the last word, she threw Danny to the side. He turned intangible and landed halfway through a wall. Climbing to his feet and out of the wall, he looked up just in time to see shish-kebabs hurtling toward him. He yelped, and half of him jumped out of the way. His legs stayed on the ground while his torso floated in the air. His two halves were connected by dark wispy smoke, which the shish-kebabs harmlessly flew through. Danny smiled at his new power.

His smile dropped as he saw what the Lunch Lady was up to next. All of the meat swirled around the ghost, giving her a new, monstrous form. With a huge meaty hand, she grabbed Danny and threw him again. This time he went fully through the wall.

Tucker and the newly freed Sam looked at each other.

"Run?" Tucker asked.

"Run," Sam replied.

They screamed as they headed for the door, but a pile of meat blocked their way and knocked them back.

Danny came out of the wall, holding his head in pain. He had to find a way to stop this ghost! He was running out of energy.

Tucker and Sam ran past him and he looked for the Lunch Lady. She made a fist with her meat-hand and prepared to slam it into his friends. Danny quickly flew to his friends, turned them intangible, and carried them all the way outside.

Tucker and Sam gave him a concerned look. Sam said, "Gee, Danny. Fighting meat monsters, flying through walls… You must be exhausted."

Danny scoffed, not wanting his friends to know how tired he was. "What? Of course not! What would give you that… idea…?" He couldn't stop the yawn that overcame him, nor the transformation to his human self. Luckily, no one was around to see it. "Okay, I guess I am a little tired. Too bad it's only lunch."

"Correction," Sam said warily, "after lunch. We're late for class!"