October 3
(twenty seven days remaining)
"Hey Danny wake up." A man beckoned. Danny felt something stick lightly into his side causing the light blue eyes to open and blink confusedly against the blaring sun. He looked up to see a graying and balding man and his companion a younger brown haired gentleman. He recognized the older one as the family physician.
"Is he ok?" The brown haired man asked.
The grayed man looked over at his companion and explained. "He's the Fenton's kid, he's fine." He looked back over to the kid lying on the ground still dressed for sleep.
Danny looked around with his hand covering his eyes from the blaring sun. The grass was a vibrant green, short and up kept well, along the way there were small flags with numbers marking certain areas. He blinked up at the men who stood with their golf clubs in hand and slightly concerned but irritated eyes.
"You sleeping walking again Danny?" He asked the silent teenager. "You've got be careful kid, consider a lock." It must've all been a dream.
Danny nodded thoughtlessly and pulled himself up to his two feet. He quickly brushed past the men and walked along the green course. Tiredly Danny began to walk home but as his arms swayed at his side he noticed a tint of black in the corner of his eye. He stopped and stared down at his arm a series of digits were written in some sort of maker. And it followed as, 28:06:42:12.
He brushed his hand over his forearm but it stayed there, a bleak reminder of his late night visitor and a dark prophecy. Danny shook his head letting his black bangs fall across his face; it was too nice of a day to be near the end of the world. He figured on his walk, that he'd sleep walk and at one point scribbled the numerals down in some lucid state.
Either way the cloaked visitor couldn't have been there and couldn't have possibly led him away, not when he swore he was wide awake during the encounter. He relaxed under the warm sunshine, everything seemed utterly and completely normal, his dreams were just getting to him again.
Slowly Danny rounded the corner that led him to his street in which his house was only a few feet down. But as he walked their street he saw what could've been easily been mistaken as a circus. Well, the media was going to have a field day here.
Several people had gathered and were still gathering, each one finding a place to fit in behind the yellow makeshift fence. Beyond them was his house which was crowded by one fire truck, a few patrol cars, an idle ambulance, and a rather large crane. Danny pushed past the people and looked upward to where the crane was, it was lifting something from out of the now half crushed roof of his home.
Danny walked right by the police line and almost made it before a gruff man dressed in his blue uniform caught him. "You're going to have to stand back kid." He commanded tightening his grip on Danny's shoulders.
"That's my house." Danny cried in frustration he began to wriggle out of the man's grasp. "That's my house." He repeated before breaking free and began to quicken his stride.
The teenager wasn't sure if it was relief or disappointment that overcame him as he saw his family standing safe and unharmed between the ambulance and fire truck. But either way he moved forward toward them.
"Wait, there he is." Jack announced happily as Danny walked up to them slowly, his mother shared a smile but his sister's reaction was quite different.
"Oh..." Maddie sighed.
"Danny you're alright!" She cried and as soon as he was close enough she trapped him a death grip that she liked to call a hug. "It fell in your room." She explained to him in an almost hushed voice.
He felt ridiculous and here he thought they had been crushed in the bizarre accident, but all along they'd believed it was him. He looked up over Jazz's shoulder and saw the crane lifting a pill shaped object of steel from the hole in their roof. He wondered though, why his parents weren't as concerned as Jazz.
But he forgot soon and joined his family in watching the crews in silence. Danny could feel the pressure from his father's hand on his shoulder and he held back any urge he might've had to shrug it off. Soon a hefty man with a gray suit on and a hideous yellow tie came power walking up to them.
"Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, might I have a word with you?" He asked while pushing his thin framed glasses further up his pudgy nose and waving a clip board back and forth as if he thought Jack and Maddie were blind. The parents, although less then enthusiastic, followed the man over to what might've been his car.
Jazz watched with curiosity and immediately got the notion that he was there because of the engine that had crashed through the Op Center and destroyed her brother's room and part of the hallway. Subconsciously she slipped her hand over Danny's shoulder in place of Jack's and muttered a hardly audible apology to him. She couldn't bear the thought of knowing he'd never known how much she loved him.
"It's strange, isn't it? Fell from the sky, no plane, no crash, just an engine." She mused and Danny nodded knitting his eyebrows and staring accusatorily at the engine. It was strange indeed.
------
They'd been placed in a hotel for the night, at least till the house was considered fixed enough to let them live in it. Danny already knew as he pulled out a fresh pair clothes from his suitcase that he wasn't going to have a room in a long time. Even with all his stuff meeting a certain doom as of four am last night, there'd still been some clothes lying in the laundry room.
He settled on the bed next to Jazz's bed. They'd be room mates for a least two days and he was not enjoying the idea. Little Miss know-it-all would probably take to psycho analyzing the hell out of him, as if he hadn't had a whole years' worth of that torture. She was already sitting a top the pale yellow floral print blankets of her bed with a book and the TV on. He never understood why she liked to read and watch TV at the same time.
Shrugging he turned his attention to the glowing box and watched whatever spectacle played across it. It was his house, his very destroyed home. He smiled with a twinge of irony as they talked about the mysterious engine, the one the Fenton family was told not to discuss.
In the room beside them two very confused parents sat on the bed together. Jack had taken to pulling off his socks as his wife sat quietly with her hands folded neatly in her lap and a distant look on her face. "You know what could've happened?" He said quietly.
"Yes Jack, please. I don't want to talk about this." Maddie responded covering her face with her hands. "I don't even want to think about the way things would be if he hadn't left last night."
Jack nodded and wrapped an arm around his wife. "It's ok Mads, we've still got our boy. It's going to be alright."
Maddie put her hand over Jack's and smiled at his comfort. But she wondered how much of her son they actually still had. She brushed her thoughts away and lay down with her husband to try and get some sleep. Perhaps tomorrow would be different.
------
October 4
(twenty six days remaining)
Of course when were the days ever the same? Danny had gotten up early, taken a quick shower in the questionable hotel bathroom, gotten into his school uniform and waited until Jazz took him to school. Of which she did early, leaving him plenty of time to sit around and do nothing.
Danny sat outside on the rim of the small decorative garden. His head was turned upward and his eyes were shut as if he were sunbathing outside the school. A dark skinned boy roughly his age plopped beside him and smirked. "Dude you're here early. I heard you cheated death."
"Whatever..." Danny sighed. "It was nothing, I just wasn't there is all."
The boy proceeded to type on his small hand held device. "Did ya hear there's a new kid coming in today?" The boy known as Tucker asked in the mind set of making idle conversation.
"What does it matter?" Danny responded mindlessly placing his hands behind his head for neck support. "Not like they're going to make a change around here."
Tucker only shrugged and kept to himself until the bell rung and the two departed their separate ways. On his way the blue eyed teen got a nasty glare and threatening look from the resident jerk, Dash Baxter. It was quickly ignored and any sort of physical contact had been quickly evaded.
Danny walked aimlessly to his English class and took his same old seat and placed his books on the desk. So far he hadn't even caught a hint of the new kid, or of their gender for that matter.
It was a slight interest, one that he wasn't about to pursue for long. Whether or not he saw him or her wasn't going to bother him. Danny slouched in his seat and almost tuned out as the teacher began. A man in his late twenties and a large bald spot on the center of his head, for some Mr. Lancer was a bother, to Danny he was a different sort of teacher, one that didn't follow the code and often urged free thinking.
"Alright class we're going to get down to the basics now. Let's discuss the book I trust you all read. How about you Star? Why do the children break into Old Misery's house?" Mr. Lancer said looking at the blonde seated beside Danny.
She resembled that of a young deer caught in the headlights of a Mac Truck. "Well, umm they wanted to rob him." Star stuttered out fingering the edges of her book the whole time.
Lancer only sighed. "Had you managed to take a few minutes out of your busy day to read the thirteen page short story, I think you could contribute effectively to the conversation. Danny, in light of your recent brush with destruction perhaps you can give us a thought worthy opinion."
Danny nodded. "Well... they say it right when they are ripping the place to shreds, when they flood the house. Something like... destruction is a form of creation. So the fact that they burn the money is... ironic. They just want to see what happens when they tear the world apart." He paused to collect his final thoughts. "I guess they want to change things."
Lancer gave a nod but the class' attention was lost as the door in the back of the room opened. A girl, roughly sixteen was standing holding a few lose papers and books, a purple bag was slung over her shoulder carelessly. "Can I help you?" The teacher asked.
"Yeah, well I just registered. They put me in the wrong English class though." She answered jerking her thumb toward the door, Danny was immediately intrigued by her voice.
"You look like you belong here." Mr. Lancer noted looking at her appearance, which was that of a white blouse, a knee length black pleated skirt, and black vest, as was school issued.
"Ok, where do I sit?" She asked quietly looking around at all those who had their eyes on her.
Lancer smiled and found that a good social experiment was at hand. "Sit next to the boy you think is the cutest." That statement caused a lot of whispers to fly through the room and many guys to raise their eye brows at her.
"Quiet. Let her choose." He said, trying to hush the class.
She bit her lip and saw Danny sitting like everyone else, with his neck craned toward her. But unlike the other boys he had refrained from making any sort of gesture or cat call that left her uneasy. To her, he was the least threatening and she locked eyes with him for a few beats until Lancer interrupted.
"Star, get up." He said and the blonde girl quickly snatched her things up and left for an empty seat and the new girl took her place.
Danny looked beside him at the girl and took in her appearance. She was a scrawny thing with short jet black hair half pulled up in a small pony tail. Her lips were painted a violet color and her eyes were a deep lilac color. She locked eyes with Danny for a few moments again, this time she looked less nervous and more curious.
Danny was sure he blushed.
AN: Well lately I've been having writers block, like nobody's buisness. It sucks is all I can say about it. But luckily I can still somehow do this story but Familiar Stranger is suffering for it. But yeah I like all the reviews you've given me and it's fine whether or not you've seen the movie. I changed things around anyway. and yes I squeezed Tucker in, tis a shame he wont have a bigger role. Ah well, so thanks again and I hope to see you cool cats in later chapters.
