Danny was
awoken by that same annoying ghost for the fifth time that week and
he had had it.
"Oh that's it, you're going down buddy!"
He growled as he went ghost while sitting up in bed and chased the
figment out of his room intangibly through the floor. It was a fast
little spectre, but Danny was not letting it get away to wake him up
again tomorrow.
It headed through the kitchen and towards the
basement...
"Oh no you don't! You do NOT get to go back to
the ghost zone THAT easily!" He said as it whizzed down the
stairs. Danny hit the button next to the door. It was a new remote
portal closing button in case of emergency. He heard the distant
CLUNK that was the ghost portal doors closing, and then a small
screech.
"Ha! GOT you! Now where are you, you little..."
Danny said triumphantly as he reached the basement. He floated in the
middle of the lab, looking for the spectre, but it must have been
intangible or hiding, because there was no sign of it. But Danny had
a plan to lure it out. He jabbed the button on the control panel to
open the portal again and quickly hovered in front of it.
"You
want to get back home buddy, you have to go through ME!" Danny
said triumphantly, glowing green eyes darting around keenly for any
sign of the ghost.
He was concentrating so hard on spotting it; he
didn't immediately register the thing that flew over his head like
a lasso. By the time he did, it was yanked tightly around his neck
and before he knew it, he was dragged backwards towards the ghost
portal. In shock, he let loose a blast of ectoplasm, wondering if he
wasn't surrounded by an intangible gang of ghosts. He struggled
against the rope and managed to stay on the lab side of the portal
for a few seconds, realising his struggle would soon be futile. He
blasted a precise pattern on the opposite wall before he could barely
breathe from the lasso and was hauled into the ghost portal.
Danny
faced his attackers angrily and the lasso slackened, but as it did,
another was thrown around his leg, and another around his opposite
wrist. Danny was infuriated by the onslaught. He let loose a blast of
ecto energy at one of the strange spectres surrounding him. It was
wearing a white lab coat and had a gaunt and rather scary face. Danny
registered that there were at least 20 ghosts like this surrounding
him, before two more lassos came towards him. He dodged them,
realising that the other ropes had disconnected from him, yet the y
had left tight rings of some sort bound to his neck, right wrist and
left ankle. Danny didn't have time to inspect them.
"Ok
THATS it, you guys do NOT know what you're messing with... he threw
darts of ecto-energy at them from his fingers as he spoke...I have
not slept properly for a WHOLE FREAKIN WEEK! And NOW you are stopping
me from catching the ONE ghost responsible. Believe me, you do NOT
want to get between ME and my BED!!!" He said loudly, zapping
away another Lasso. Suddenly he was grabbed from behind, and another
Lasso wrapped itself around his left wrist. Danny growled angrily and
zapped the stranger who had wrapped their arm around his neck, but in
the meantime, the last lasso found its mark around his right ankle.
Danny freed himself from the attacker, who backed off, smiling
manically. Danny had a bad feeling about that smile, but he prepared
to blast them all out of the way to return to the Lab. Suddenly,
something wrapped itself around him, encasing his entire body like a
giant closing fist. Danny struggled, realising it was a net, much
like the ones Skulker used. He knew they were not too hard to break
free from. He let loose as much ecto-energy as he could, but the
instant he did, searing pain overcame his entire body. He thrashed,
screaming in agony as pain like a wave of electricity seared through
his consciousness. Even as he stopped using his power, the pain
disappeared, but left him stiff and aching, and still trapped in the
net. He realised the bands the lassos had left on him were still
burning dully on his neck, wrists and ankles. "W-what...the..."
he struggled to exclaim, though his voice rasped. He felt the strange
metallic bands with glowing green wires on them. The green light went
red whenever he touched them and they stung a little.
Danny looked
out, still cramped in the net, at the strange gang of scientist
ghosts around him, who were laughing like madmen.
"Who are
you?! What the hell are you doing to me!? Let me GO!" Danny
yelled hoarsely, but they just laughed now, and the one holding the
rope and mechanism attached to his net, who was bald with a flaming
spectral ponytail at the back of his head, merely said "You're
OURS NOW!"
He pressed a button on the firing mechanism
attached to Danny's net. It sent a wave of ecto electric energy
across the net lattice and it coursed through Danny, causing him to
scream in unbearable agony again. It did not stop until he was in so
much pain he was barely conscious.
"Danny,
are you up yet? You'll be late for school!"
Maddy Fenton made
her way up the stairs, slightly annoyed. Danny had been late for
school every day that week and seemed not to have slept all night
every morning that she had to go in and force him out of bed.
He
was probably up most of the night playing computer games, Maddy
decided she would have to do something about that tonight and ban him
from his computer for a while.
But when She opened his bedroom
door, ready to let him have a piece of her motherly mind, she found
to her surprise, he was not there.
"Jaaack? Jaaazz, did
either of you see Danny this morning?" She called from the
landing.
"Sorry honey, I just got up, I haven't seen him.
Why, isn't he still asleep like he usually is when he should be
getting ready to go to school?" Asked Jack Fenton, as he emerged
from the kitchen in his pyjamas and nightcap, munching a bowl of
cereal.
"Danny isn't in his room? Oh.. Well...maybe he went
to school early!" Jazz said a little overenthusiastically,
knowing what he was probably up to and covering for him
automatically.
Maddy put her hands on her hips in an 'I hardly
think so' expression. "I somehow doubt that Jazz, i'm afraid
your brother isn't quite as keen on school as you are. Apart from
that, his bag and all his school things are still in his room".
Maddy explained, now a little bewildered.
"Oh! Well i'm
sure he isn't far, maybe he had to visit one of his friends early,
I'll go call them and see if he's there!" Jazz said instantly,
knowing that if Danny was anywhere, Sam or Tucker would probably know
where. But for some reason, a bad feeling was niggling the back of
Jazz's brain, and though she tried to ignore it, she was praying
inside that Danny was OK. Though what trouble he could possibly be in
this early in the morning was beyond
her...
Danny was suddenly aware that
he was being dragged along down a corridor. His body ached and head
throbbed so much he couldn't lift it to see where he was or what was
happening to him. Suddenly, they stopped, and Danny was thrown
sideways into a very small room. He let out an "OOF!" of
pain as he hit the hard ground, and heard, it seemed distantly, the
sound of his cell door slam... for some part of him at least had
realised where he was...
It was like a jail corridor... many doors
with little barred windows in them through which dim ghostly fluro
light filtered from the white corridor.
Danny tried to sit up, his
swimming head regaining real consciousness. He supported himself on
his elbows and rubbed his temples with his bound hands. He had little
mobility, as the bonds they had lassoed on his wrists where now
locked together by green beams, as were those on his ankles.
"Oh
this is just great... first Walker's jail, now mad scientist jail,
what have I done to tick THEM off huh? I don't suppose it matters
who you have and haven't met in the ghost zone, if your public
enemy number one, you're free game..." Danny's head gave a nasty
throb and he winced. He glared down at the metallic ghostly
technology that held him captive. He realised, from his first escape
attempt, that using his ghost powers set them off. They were like the
spectre deflector... except they seemed to be run on ecto-electricity
like everything else technological Danny had encountered in the ghost
zone.
Danny suddenly smacked himself on the forehead with his
palm and immediately wished he hadn't, but it was so obvious he was
surprised he hadn't done it straight away...
Danny would just
change back to a human and he would be able to phase through his
bonds and out of the cell and be home free!
Danny sat up and as
naturally as ever willed himself to change...
but the usual halo
of light that would spread from his torso across his body, sparked
and fizzled out as the bonds began emitting red jolts of lightning
like electricity that stung Danny like biting snakes. He cried out in
pain and immediately stopped trying to change back. He growled
angrily in pain as his heart sank. It seemed he'd have to find a new
means of escape...
He tried intangibility, and was thrilled to
find the bonds only lightly shocked him, but not unbearably, as he
used the power. Unfortunately, when he tried to stick his hands
through the door, he found the bonds had not gone intangible... they
would not go through the door, and nor would they fit through the
narrow gapped bars in the small window of the door. Danny went
tangible again and punched the door angrily, then he sat back and
massaged his sore knuckles, deciding not to keep hurting himself
further as it wasn't helping.
"Well... my only real hope now
is Jazz, Sam and Tucker. I hope they still have the 'boooo'merang or
something..."
"No, He's
not here, but I have some idea what he might be doing... there's
this ghost that keeps waking him up in the middle of the night, and
he said yesterday if it came again he wouldn't rest until he caught
it..." Sam said over her cell phone as she walked to school with
Tucker. It hadn't surprised her to get Jazz's call asking if they
knew where Danny was. Unfortunately, all either of them had was a
vague idea. They hadn't seen or heard from him since the previous
afternoon.
"He better turn up though, because I told him
yesterday I overheard Lancer talking about holding him back a year if
he continues with lateness and absences... and I don't think Danny
would blow that off just for a stupid little annoying spectre..."
Sam continued in a slightly anxious tone.
"I dunno..."
cut in Tucker, "Danny doesn't always have his priorities
straight, and I know if a ghost kept waking me up for an entire week,
my first priority would be to catch it and blast it into last
Halloween".
"Well, if you guys see him, can you call
me, cause I'll be blasting HIM into next Halloween, because now I
have to make up an excuse so Mom and Dad don't get suspicious...
thanks anyway..." Jazz hung up on the other end and Sam stowed
her mobile away.
"I hope he hasn't chased it into the ghost
zone and gotten himself into trouble or something..." She said
anxiously.
"At one o'clock in the morning? What ghost is mad
enough to be up and chasing Danny at that time of night, i'm pretty
sure ghosts don't function well without at least some kind of sleep
or hibernation or... whatever ghosts do..." Tucker said, but he
too felt a pang of anxiety over Danny's absence, as he always did
when he didn't know where his half ghost best friend was.
