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The plan was foolproof.
The school was moving a piano out of the upstairs music room using a crane to take it out through the window, rather than trying to get it up the stairs. That whole area was cordoned off for the safety of the students, but of course there were gonna be gawkers wanting to see everything. And Danny had been out fighting a ghost when the announcement was made to steer clear, so he didn't know about it.
Wes had spent several hours the previous night reading the crane's operation manual, and he had a free period right before lunch, which he used to lure away the workers and remove all the caution tape and warning signs.
Every student knew not to get too close except Danny.
Danny was durable. He didn't get hurt easily, and when he did get hurt, he healed quickly. Wes had observed this phenomenon on multiple occasions, and thoroughly documented it, so he knew exactly how much Danny could handle, and that it was more than enough to kill an ordinary human. So he decided that the best way to expose Danny's secret would be to orchestrate a little "accident" where everyone could see.
They would watch the accident, something that would kill a normal person, and then, they would watch Danny walk away from it completely unharmed.
The bell rang for lunch, and Wes climbed into the cab of the crane, snickering at his own cleverness. As expected, most of the students were giving the crane a wide berth, but Danny didn't seem to notice, and walked right into the danger zone. As soon as he was in range, Wes swung the arm of the crane toward Danny, lined it up, and dropped the piano right on top of him....
Or... it would have landed right on top of him... if it weren't for conservation of momentum. The piano swung on the ropes when the crane's arm moved, and Wes hit the release when it was mid swing, causing it to move a few feet in the air, and land completely clear of Danny.
Danny looked alarmed only for a moment, then looked up to where the piano had fallen from, followed the arm of the crane, and met Wes' eyes through the windshield with a smirk.
Wes could only sit there, turning red with anger, as Danny ran over to him, climbed up into the cab of the crane, and reached for the horn with a shit-eating grin.
Beep beep, sounded the horn.
Danny laughed with abandon as he left Wes to make his escape before school faculty found out what he'd done.
Okay, so the piano plan had been a bust, but Wes wasn't gonna give up that easily. He just had to account for things like physics and gravity this time.
It had been snowing lately, and the pond in the park had frozen over with a thin layer of ice. Signs warning that the ice was too thin to walk on were posted all around the pond, but they were easy enough to remove.
Danny cut through the park on his way home from school, and when the pond was frozen, he never hesitated slide right over it. After school, it was crowded with younger kids playing in the snow, and parents an nannies keeping an eye on them, so there would be ample audience.
This time, Wes hid in the snow-covered bushes so Danny wouldn't see him and be tipped off to the scheme.
Right on schedule, Danny started through the park. As soon as he saw that the pond was frozen over, he got a running start, jumped right onto the ice, and let himself skid across the slick surface to the other side before continuing on his way home.
Wes shot up out of the bushes, looking aghast. There was no way the ice became thick enough to walk on in the five minutes between pulling the signs and Danny's arrival. Wes trudged over it through the snow and cautiously stepped on the ice.
Not even so much as a crack.
He took a few more steps, still cautious, but increasingly frustrated. Danny had jumped onto this ice full force and slid right across without issue. Wes jumped, angrily, and with a sickening crunch, the ice gave way underneath him. He was quick enough to reach out his arms to keep from falling all the way through, but the shock of the sudden cold was intense.
Danny had apparently noticed him and came his way carrying a bright yellow sign. With a smug grin, Danny pushed the sign into the snow next to the pond.
Thin Ice, it read.
Danny laughed as he walked away, and he left no footprints in the snow.
Wes had, of course, known that ghosts could ignore the pull of gravity, and he was definitely paying for his lapse of consideration now.
Thankfully, someone came to help pull him out a little bit later, and he had to go to the hospital to get preventative treatment for frostbite and hypothermia. Ultimately, nothing was hurt besides his ego, but his ego was badly bruised.
Third time was the charm, Wes thought as he set up his latest scheme.
Near the edge of town, there was an elementary school that had been built next door to an old, disused graveyard. When it had first been built, there had been a rotting fence between the two of them, but after a few years, it was gone, leaving nothing between the mossy headstones and the playground in the schoolyard.
The place was, as one might imagine, a hot-spot for minor ghostly activities. Weak ghosts like shades and blob ghosts liked to hang out in death-adjacent places, and they sometimes crossed over to the school to play with the elementary schoolers during recess. It was relatively safe, as long as there didn't get to be too many ghosts gathered there.
The chance to see ghosts with minimal danger, as well as the unique aesthetic, made it a popular tourist spot.
Danny went there every other Saturday to capture some of the ghosts that hung out there to manage their numbers and keep things safe for the tourists and the school kids. Since it was such a simple operation, he didn't even bother to transform, just went out there with a Fenton Thermos and sucked up the ones that had been hanging around the longest, and any that seemed too unruly.
It was the perfect place to enact a new scheme to expose Danny with a terrible "accident."
Wes had woken up early and spent his entire Saturday morning setting various traps. He put pressure pads all over the place, covered them in leaves and dirt, and set slings in the nearby trees and bushes to shoot rocks at them when they were set off.
Wes could recognize that it was probably excessively elaborate, but dropping something on Danny hadn't worked, and dropping Danny into something hadn't worked, so Wes was left to throw everything he had at Danny and hope that worked, even if it cost him a good chunk of his savings.
He had just finished setting everything up when he realized he'd inadvertently cornered himself in a graveyard full of traps, and he... didn't remember where he'd put all of them.
Then he heard Danny approaching, and quickly hid. he could cross that bridge when he came to it. This was gonna work.
Danny bent over to soup a ghost right as the firs rock flew at him, and it missed by a mile. The second one was too heavy and didn't have enough momentum to reach him, and the third was poorly aimed, so that one was on Wes. But the fourth one flew true. Danny wasn't moving and it was heading right for him. Unfortunately Danny noticed and turned intangible before it hit him, so to onlookers it would look like the rock had simply passed behind Danny instead of through him.
Wes stepped out of his hiding place to shout in frustration at Danny, but the words froze in his throat as he felt something move under his foot and his eyes widened in realization just in time for a heavy rock to hit him right in the chest, knocking the wind out of him, and he fell back into the bushes.
He could hear the quiet beep beep of the Fenton Thermos indicating it was almost at max capacity taunting him. It meant that Danny would be leaving any minute, and Wes was no closer to exposing him than he had been that morning when he'd first set ll these traps. When he caught his breath and sat up, rubbing his sore chest, he was glad he hadn't gone with poison darts, even though an ordinary human could totally survive being hit with a rock or two.
Granted, he had only decided against the poison darts because of budgetary restraints, and laws that restricted the buying and selling of poisonous substances, but that didn't mean he couldn't be grateful for it. Wes sighed, stood up, and started to disassemble the sling mechanisms. Maybe he could still return some of this stuff and get his money back.
Wes swore to himself that this would be the last time.
This time, Wes would have to activate the trap manually by pulling a cord. It wouldn't accidentally backfire on him the second he stood in its range. The trap had no gravity powered elements, and he'd triple-checked that all the moving parts were perfectly aligned. There was no way this would fail.
Wes had set everything up downtown on a day he knew Danny would be hanging out there with his friends.
Stealthily, he followed the three of them until they got to the place where he'd laid the trap. Just as planned, Danny volunteered to get the three of them snacks from a food cart. It was go time.
Wes pulled the cord and everything was set in motion.
Ten. Nine. Eight.
Danny turned around to look at something.
No! Wes wouldn't let himself fail again.
Five. Four. Three.
Wes ran out and shoved Danny hard, pushing him onto the right spot.
Two. One.
BOOM!
Wes was blown backwards and knocked on his but, but he wasn't hurt this time.
And it had worked! The explosion went off exactly as planned, hit Danny head on, and when the dust settled, Danny was still standing there, a little singed, but no worse for wear. At worst, he looked slightly annoyed, but not the least bit harmed. Any normal human would have been severely injured by an explosion like that.
Excited and triumphant, Wes got to his feet and turned to see all the shocked faces of the people downtown. But no one was looking.
Across the street, Wes could see a stage had been set up, and Ember was putting on an impromptu concert. No one in the square could look away from her mind-controlling music, but he'd been so focused on Danny that he hadn't even noticed her.
He looked back at Danny, his shoulders slumped in defeat. Danny gave him a smug smirk, transformed into his ghost form right in front of Wes' eyes, and still no one else saw!
There were hundreds of people right across the street. Any one of them could have turned around and seen Danny surviving that explosion, or transforming in broad daylight in the middle of down town, but none of them did.
Danny floated up, and gave Wes a sarcastic salute as he flew off to shut down Ember's concert before anyone—besides himself—got hurt.
Wes could have torn his hair out in frustration. He could have screamed! He didn't care about his promises. This wasn't over!