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Danny dreaded the flu season with a passion. He had enough to deal with on a regular basis to get sidelined by a bug or a virus for a week at a time.
The ghosts certainly didn't get sick and they didn't care if he did either. Or, maybe they did, because there always seemed to be more of them trying to get out of the Ghost Zone whenever he was under the weather.
Those were the days when he had to ask Sam and Tucker to take over the bulk of his patrols, and hope that Valerie would notice the upswing in ghostly activity and put in some extra hours of her own. Of course, that meant longer hours, less sleep, and less time to do homework for all of them. He really hated asking them to sacrifice that for him just because some kid at school had coughed all over him.
Thankfully, Danny didn't get sick often.
But when he did, it lingered, maliciously, and refused to leave without the parting gift of a cough or a runny nose.
This time, it was an itch that made him want to tear his nose off his face days ago. With it came the sniffles which were loud and annoyed his classmates almost as much as they annoyed him.
The worst part, though, was that they culminated pretty spectacularly with a resounding sneeze every couple hours.
If it was any more frequent than that, he'd have to find some excuse to stay home longer, because, for some reason, whenever he sneezed this violently, he seemed to lose all control of his ghost half, and his powers had about two seconds to go haywire without his being able to stop it.
So far, he'd gotten temporarily glowing eyes even in human form, dropped halfway through the floor, frozen his carton of milk and grilled cheese sandwich, flown several feet back in the gym (which would have been suspicious if they hadn't been playing dodge ball at the time), and sneezed his pants off.
It was getting harder and harder to keep people from noticing when it happened in the middle of class, and he didn't always have much advanced warning.
He figured he was running out of luck by the end of the day as soon as he remembered that he was supposed to have a meeting in Lancer's office after class was over. To discuss making up the week of assignments he'd already missed, hopefully, and not how bad his grades were in general.
With a sigh, Danny packed up all his books, said goodbye to Sam and Tucker when he dumped his bag into his locker, and made his way to the Vice Principal's office.
The door was open but Lancer wasn't around. Danny had just sat down in his accustomed seat to wait for him to get back when his nose began to tingle.
He didn't have time to get up and make it back out the door before he sneezed, the "ACHOO" ringing so loudly it began to tap into his ghostly wail.
Too late did he realize that his most destructive power had activated this time and actual green waves were coming out of his mouth. Throwing up his hands did nothing and when he dared to open his eyes again, all of the papers had flown off of Lancer's desk and the flowerpot on the windowsill (as well as the window behind it) was cracked, the dirt spilling out onto the floor.
Danny stared in horror, then turned quickly, hoping he could back out of the room before Lancer knew he had ever been there.
He was too late, though, because Lancer was already standing in the doorway behind him, shouting, "Crime and Punishment!" as he stared between Danny and the mess in his office.