The Fight of the Afterlife - Round 1: Taken Away

(A/n) NOTE: Please have in mind that this story is not written by only one author! This story is own by AstroPhantom and BlueDragon007

BlueDragon007: Hello people that I never saw before! XD I just hope that you'll enjoy in this story. My partner, AstroPhantom, is a great writer and you should definitely check out her stories! (Seriously, they are awesome)

AstroPhantom: Thank you, Blue, and hi everybody! :) You should also go read her amazing stories. There are some fantastic plotlines to be found in them! As for this, it is both our first collab fics, and it was a lot of fun to write!

BlueDragon007: Thank you Astro and now, onto the story, enjoy ;)

All of Danny's effort was split between two tasks at the moment: half of it was going towards working on his school physics project with Paulina, and the other half was going into not getting caught staring dreamily at her whenever she giggled in that beautiful accent of hers.

Overall, however, this was going surprisingly well. True, Paulina had visibly rolled her eyes when Mr. Wiseman had assigned them to be project partners, and her father, Mr. Sanchez had made it clear that they were to meet at her house only so he could make sure they were working hard. But once they settled into their project, both teens seemed to be having a rather good time for doing schoolwork.

Danny wrote notes down as Paulina fed him her ideas. "So, I say we have sections for each planet's gravity on both sides of the display, four and four. And then the Earth and moon can be in the center as the control cases."

"Yeah, and then we can have equations under each planet so people can figure out their weight under different gravities, and we can put someone else's weights for comparison."

"Maybe we could use Mr. Wiseman for that," she suggested.

"Or his briefcase," Danny snickered. "That thing has to weigh a ton. It's like he brings everything in his house to school in it!"

Danny's watch began to beep, signaling it was 5:30 and time for him to go. Part of him felt disappointed that the afternoon had gone by so quickly, but the two of them continued to laugh as they began to clean up their notes.

"So tomorrow we'll figure out the equations and start writing the sections on the planets?" Paulina asked as she guided him to the front door.

"Sure! I'll come by same time after school," he answered, shifting his backpack higher on his shoulder.

"It's a date. Bye Danny!" With a little wave, she closed the door.

"Bye..." Danny returned, stunned. Did she just say...? He was sure she didn't mean it too literally, but part of him dared to hope. Did this mean she was into him, even a little bit, for some miraculous reason? Or was this something she said to everyone? He had to call Tucker when he got home.

Speaking of home, Danny realized he was a few good miles from it, not that this was a problem for him. He simply walked to the end of the block, ducked into an alley, and came out the other side transformed as Phantom. As he took to flying just above the buildings, he reveled in the wind pushing back his hair and cooling his face, both from the day's warmth and from the still-lingering effects of Paulina's comment. He would never get tired of how calming and peaceful flying was.

That peace was broken in nearly three seconds, however, as Danny felt his body being yanked out of the air. His mind tried to grasp onto what was happening, but his focus turned to pure pain as his head hit concrete. Dizzily, he struggled to regain control of his senses and finally noticed his arms and legs were constricted-he was in a net.

"Ugh, what's happening?" Still a bit dazed, he managed to order the words correctly somehow. He turned his head to the left as much he could and recognized a black van with wide-open back doors.

As Danny began to put the pieces together of what was happening around him, the first thing he noticed was a really strange and mysterious man in his twenties. In comparison, Danny felt like a ten-year-old boy that got grounded...literally. He took a good look at his captor with his radioactive green eyes. The mystery man had slicked-black dark hair and sky blue eyes, and his face expression showed that he was pleased with his catch. Around his neck was an ordinary silver chain, and he wore a black-stained shirt, which had some traces of ectoplasm on it, and ripped jeans. And for some reason, he didn't like the white Nike shoes on the man's feet.

Danny didn't know how or why, but he was more scared than usual and millions of questions were going through his head in a matter of seconds. The main questions were, What does this man want? What is he planning to do with me? And still somewhere in the depths of his teenage mind, Is Paulina really into me, even a little?

The man noticed that Phantom wasn't paying any major attention to the outside world so he decided to act quickly.

While Danny's brain was still racing with questions, he suddenly felt someone raise him up into the air and, after a few seconds, he was locked in a small ghost-proof cage. He felt like some trapped animal and, to make things worse, everything had happened so fast that he couldn't even process the event until it was too late. It practically seemed like the man had some supernatural abilities himself, like super speed or teleportation.

Danny heard the van doors behind him close and lock. He peered around and noticed that most of the van was empty. There were a few ghost weapons like ghost detectors, anti-ghost nets, something that looked like an ecto-gun, and some more cages, but something caught Danny's eye in particular: a Fenton Thermos. He wondered why the man had it; did his parents sell it to him, or did he steal it or something? Danny abruptly realized it was stolen as he took note of the empty space on his belt clip with a frustrated sigh. The man must have taken it from him right after he trapped him in the net.

Now that the doors were closed, there was only one source of light left in the van: Danny's faint white glow that surrounded him. But his hearing immediately heightened in the darkness in response, and he listened for the man's return. Instead, however, he heard a male voice somewhere nearby outside say, "Boss, I got him."

"Jack, honey, have you heard from Danny in the past few hours? I keep trying to call him, but he won't answer," Maddie asked around the corner of the lab stairwell, her hand on the wall.

"No..." Jack mumbled distractedly. His hands and focus were toying with a gadget on the table in front of him.

"Well, he was supposed to be home an hour ago," she stated, her hands now resting on her hips authoritatively.

"Didn't he have a sleepover at Tucker's tonight?"

"No, that's tomorrow."

"But isn't it Thursday?"

"It's Wednesday, Jack."

His eyes lit up excitedly. "Hey! That means my coupon's still good!" He shrank back under his wife's withering glare. "I mean...he'll be fine. They're probably busy doing homework, or up to usual teenage stuff, and he just forgot to call."

Maddie hid her grimace as she turned back towards the stairs, her thumbs twisting over each other. "I guess you're right..."

To be continued...