"Well now, who be in my swamp?"

Danny wiped the slime out of his eyes and wondered how the heck he'd gotten captured by this fruitloop when Skulker hadn't gotten the jump on him in weeks. True, he wouldn't have any trouble escaping—it was ordinary rope and ordinary swamp gunk; nothing he couldn't phase through—but this wasn't Amity Park. And he wasn't sure he wanted to start rumours of ghosts where there weren't any and give his parents an excuse to be extra vigilant while they were here or to stay an extra week searching for swamp ghosts—especially when he was around to set off all their machines.

And he still had this general 'bad feeling' that he couldn't jack up to just him getting captured, so he wasn't so sure he wanted anyone to know exactly what he could do, either, because for all he knew, the trees had eyes.

He'd met Undergrowth and killer Christmas trees. It was definitely possible.

Although, if the weird thing about this place was the presence of ghosts, then his ghost sense should've gone off, and it hadn't, which brought him back to square one.

He'd really rather a ghost at this point, though. Aside from the fact that he could find a way to beat it, it would give his parents one other target when they started showing off all their weapons. Because if they so much as caught wind that Phantom was in town, they'd be on him before he could blink—long before Jazz had any hope of distracting his dad with fudge.

"Catfish got your tongue, boy?" Judging by his tone and the grin on his face, he seemed to take a perverse pleasure in his latest capture—or maybe in what he was saying. Danny wasn't sure. He just…. He didn't like the vibe he got off the guy. He kinda reminded him of Freakshow, and Danny did not want any reminders of Freakshow.

They didn't look similar. They weren't built anything alike; the guy leaning over him was short but stocky, with muscles to rival Dash's, and this guy had a heck of a lot of hair. Maybe it was the crazy look in his eyes, like Danny was something new and something altogether his.

"It don't matter," the man said dismissively. "You crisscrossin' on my popaty, that all I need to know." He frowned at Danny for a few seconds before reaching up to a pouch on his neck and announcing, "You look weasely, an' I don't trust no weasels. Me, I got a little something-something for insurance-like." His sudden grin was maniacal, and Danny recoiled. "This here be my gris-gris, an'—"

Danny hadn't intended to use his ghost powers. Well, not yet. He'd figured, act normal, maybe pretend he hadn't been flying but had just been…jumping from tree to tree or swinging on vines or something. He could get away when this guy wasn't looking, easy, and that would be that. Let the guy think he was practicing to be an escape artist or something.

And then the guy had mentioned gris-gris, and all Danny could think about was some stuff Sam had talked to him about after the first time he'd met Freakshow, and there was no way he was hanging around to see if this creep's voodoo was the sort he wanted to steer clear from.

Before Swamp Guy had pulled open the string on the top of his pouch-amulet-thing, Danny had turned intangible, blinked out of sight, and begun hightailing it back to Jazz and McFist Industries. He wasn't going near that swamp again—something that might be easier said than done, considering how big it was, but if his parents really were just here to talk to Mr. McFist, it shouldn't be a problem.

But there was no way he was going to risk getting hypnotized or otherwise under anyone's control.

Danny's phone rang, but he ignored it. He was nearly back to Jazz anyway, and she should quit worrying so much. Technically, nothing bad had happened. It could have. It just hadn't. And he probably wouldn't tell her quite how close it had gotten to potentially being bad.

Danny didn't bother stopping at the Assault Vehicle; he made a beeline for the building, passed through half a dozen rooms—the guy had a lot of robot apes; it was weird, like they were his staff or something—and finally found a washroom. He changed back, took a moment to catch his breath, and ran out to find the others.

He made it about two steps outside the room before alarms started going off—flashing red lights, sirens, the whole bit—and two robot apes cornered him. The one on his right picked him up with one hand. "This is a restricted area," it said. "You should not be here."

The robot apes really were like his staff. Tucker should've been here; he would've loved this, if he stopped laughing at the fact Danny had gotten caught twice this quickly to even appreciate it all. Danny wasn't sure if the robots could read facial expressions, but he couldn't exactly lift up his hands when he was stuck in a robot fist, so he tried a nervous smile. "Um, sorry," he said. "I kinda got separated and turned around. I'm with the Fentons. Name's Danny. Can you, uh, point me in the right direction?"

The robots stared at him for a moment. Danny probably would have squirmed under the scrutiny if he'd had the wiggle room, because it felt like they were analyzing him and committing his face to memory or checking it against some kind of database or something. Finally, "They will be in Storage Bay Three." The robot ape put him down and added, "Please follow me."

Danny trailed after it, acutely aware that the second robot was following him—probably to make sure he didn't touch anything or try to sneak off. He wasn't sure what he thought about these things. On one hand, he could appreciate how cool this was. They were robots—talking robots—and Danny knew exactly how awesome that was. But on the other hand….

Why did this guy need so many robots? Sure, not everyone wanted to do grunt work, and robots helped out on assembly lines a lot, but surely McFist Industries would be even more beloved by the people in town if they actually employed a large number of them. Security was what Val's dad did, so it's not like that was something routinely replaced by machines.

But so far, Danny hadn't actually run into anyone else who was flesh and blood.

Vlad employed a lot of ghosts, sure, but even he had real people on his staff. Of his companies, anyway, if not in his mansion.

This just seemed…weird.

They finally got to the right room—Danny knew this because the robot apes stepped aside to herd him through first the minute the sliding door opened—and he could see real people at last. Well, two others besides his family. But everyone was staring at him, and the skinny guy in the lab coat cut off mid-sentence, and the bigger guy narrowed his eyes at him in a way Danny knew was not exactly friendly.

"Sorry," he mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. "I kinda got lost."

Jazz was giving him a critical look, like she could read what had happened on his face, so Danny hastily tried to rearrange his expression into something more sheepish than suspicious or nervous or whatever it looked like now.

Maddie came to his rescue. "Oh, there you are, sweetie," she said, stepping forward to pull him away from his robot guards. "Mr. McFist and Mr. Viceroy were just explaining a bit about McFist Industries." She was giving him a wide smile that was too strained to be genuine.

There were definitely here for some reason besides what they'd been told, though why they hadn't been told was baffling.

Or maybe he was just surprised his dad had managed to keep it a secret for this long.

"And you're just in time to help us start testing the weapons, Danny-boy!" Jack piped in, tossing him a Jack-o'-Nine-Tails.

Danny caught it before it smacked into his forehead, but it was a near thing. "Wonderful," he muttered as Maddie ushered him into position beside Jazz.

The scientist—Mr. Viceroy, if Danny had to guess, seeing as he was in a lab coat and the shorter man was in a suit that more befitted the head of a company—gave him one last scrutinizing look. "As I was saying," he continued, "McFist Industries has manufactured a wide range of products. Despite your obvious specialization, the company is more than equipped to handle…."

Danny tuned out whatever Viceroy was saying and leaned closer to Jazz. "It's clear," he whispered. He thought he'd spoken softly enough that no one besides her would be able to make out what he was saying, but one of the robot apes turned to look in his direction and he wasn't so sure. He wished he had a better idea of what their range for picking up conversation and stuff was. He'd have to give Tucker a call when they got out of here.

Jazz frowned. "Are you sure?" she asked quietly.

The robot ape was definitely listening to them. "Yeah. I'll fill you in later, okay?"

Jazz pressed her lips into a thin line, but her eyes darted to the adults and then to the robots before settling back onto him. "Okay," she agreed. "As soon as we can get away." She straightened up, scooped up a Fenton Thermos from the table of FentonWorks inventions set up on her other side, and stepped forward. "Pardon me, Mr. Viceroy. I don't mean to imply any failings on the part of your work or McFist Industries itself, but have you ever seen a ghost?"

Danny gaped at her before catching himself. "You do know that thermos is empty, right?" he hissed.

She acknowledged him with a slight nod and held up a hand to cut off whatever their mother was about to say. "I never used to believe in ghosts," she admitted. "I thought my parents were crazy. I was mortified that they were committing all their time and energy and practically our entire family savings to building something as ludicrous as a ghost portal, all because of some ridiculous theory they had." Jazz paused. "I was dead wrong," she said, turning slightly to wink at Danny. He winced; her attempts at puns were worse than his. "And this, right here? It's not a soup thermos. It's the first invention my parents ever made that I realized actually worked. I mean, sure, by then we had this freaky ghost portal in our basement, but I'd already started to find ways to explain that away. And then I saw my first real ghost."

Viceroy was frowning. "Miss Fenton—"

Jazz uncapped the thermos and activated it. "This technology," she said over the whine of the thermos, "has been adapted to recharge itself from harnessed ecto-energy. It's groundbreaking. It's not a design you'd be able to copy easily, and certainly not if you have no working knowledge of ghosts." She shut off the thermos, tightly screwing the lid in place. "Have you any experience that would qualify you to even begin dealing with that sort of thing?"

"Of course we have!" McFist snapped. "Haven't we, Viceroy?"

The scientist's lip curled. "You needn't worry that we are inexperienced, Miss Fenton. We do not make decisions to enter into partnerships such as this lightly, and I can assure you that my own personal experience more than qualifies me to pursue this undertaking even if I have not encountered ghosts before. You do realize, do you not, that we are not looking to buy out FentonWorks but rather to make an investment in your parents' company? They would be aware of every step we took."

"It's all right, honey," Maddie said, putting a hand on Jazz's arm. "We know what we're doing."

Jazz pulled a face. "Of course," she said stiffly. "You always know what you're doing, and you always know what's best for us, don't you?"

Maddie clearly recognized Jazz's tone. "Sweetie—"

Jazz very deliberately moved away from their mother and took the Jack-o'-Nine-Tails out of Danny's hands to put it back on the table with the Fenton Thermos. "Danny and I are going to go for a walk," she said, grabbing him by the wrist. "We'll see ourselves out, thanks."

"But, Jazzy-pants, we haven't even—"

"We don't need to be here while you show everything you've invented to people who think you're crackpots, Dad," Jazz interrupted. "Come on, Danny."

Danny might not know exactly what Jazz was doing, but he knew enough not to protest. She didn't stop when they got outside, though. She kept going until they were at least a block and a half away before dragging him down a back alley. "What was that?" Danny asked, rubbing his wrist now that she'd finally released it.

Jazz tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "A way to get us out of there."

Danny raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?"

"Just tell me what you found out."

"I didn't really find anything out," Danny said. "We would've been better off staying there."

"Don't pretend nothing happened. You were white as a sheet when you got back."

At least she hadn't said white as a ghost, though if she had, he would've felt better. "My ghost sense never went off," Danny explained. "Look, don't freak out or anything, but—"

"How am I supposed to not freak out when you premise it like that?"

"Just let me finish, okay? I've scouted pretty much everything in town. I didn't make it out to the mountain or the lake, but honestly, if Mom and Dad were looking for ghosts there, they'd be calling this a camping trip."

"That's true, but that doesn't tell me what happened."

Danny sighed. "There was this crazy guy in the swamp. He caught me—"

"You promised you'd be careful!"

"You promised you wouldn't freak out!"

"I did not! And this isn't freaking out. Believe me, you'll know when I'm freaking out."

She had a point. She hadn't promised, and this was fairly low on the scale of 'overprotective sister mode'. He hadn't promised he'd be careful, exactly, but he had promised to stay invisible and hadn't. "Fine. Anyway. Long story short, he caught me. Flying. Although he didn't find it weird or anything, which was kinda weird itself, so maybe he thought I was just jumping from tree to tree—"

"Danny, people aren't that stupid."

"Plausible deniability or whatever, right? Anyway, he didn't know I was a ghost. Well, he might know now, 'cause I had to phase out of his ropes to get away and turned invisible as soon as I did, but the point is, he didn't recognize me as a ghost. Which is kind of another point for arguing that whatever is up with this town, it's not ghosts."

Jazz's eyes were narrowed, which was never a good sign when she was looking at him. "You're getting better at playing dumb, Danny. Why risk your secret like that?"

"Technically, I was in ghost mode, so I wasn't risking anything."

"You know very well what I mean. If these people aren't familiar with ghosts, why risk it?"

Danny hesitated. "He had this pouch thingy, and he kinda…. He reminded me of Freakshow, okay? He was talking like he wanted to possess me."

Jazz's expression softened. Danny still hadn't told her everything about what had happened with Freakshow—either time—but she'd been able to fill in the blanks. "It'll be all right, Danny."

"Yeah," Danny said automatically, "but just to be safe, I'm not going back there."

"Well, you won't need to go ghost again, either," Jazz pointed out. "Not if there's nothing here."

"Well, that'd be nice, except for the fact that there has to be or we wouldn't be here."

Jazz gave him a small smile. "Well, clearly Mom and Dad were wrong when they were thinking it was ghosts." They might not be sure that that was the real drawing point, but when it came to their parents, it was a safe bet.

"I know, but something must've made them think there was something here. And, I mean, c'mon, you cannot tell me McFist Industries strikes you as a normal company. They have robot apes."

"You can't—"

Whatever Jazz was about to say was lost as the screaming started. "I'll be back," Danny said hastily, eyes instinctively darting around the alleyway just to be sure he was safe to transform. He crouched behind a dumpster anyway. "This is probably our lead."

"Danny, it might be a perfectly normal—"

Danny, who had transformed by this point, stopped just long enough to give her a look. "Jazz. If this place was normal, we wouldn't be here." But, because she was already yelling at him to be careful, he winked out of sight before following the sounds of the screams to find their source.

Randy was not enjoying this day.

It had started with robots. Usually, those were fine, but he'd gotten more than enough of them after the third one. Then, there was the fact that the history classroom hadn't suffered enough damage that they hadn't needed to hand in their (still incomplete) homework. And now, near as he could tell, someone had broken up with someone else and now she was having a fit. Well, she'd gotten stanked and was now rearranging locker doors, and they might have to take out a wall to take this outside. And, man, he really needed to learn the names of all the kids in this school, because this was somehow easier when he could talk to them even if they never listened.

Or maybe it was just easier to figure out what the cheese they held dear when he actually knew more about them than the fact that they attended school here.

Randy ducked as a locker door sailed over his head and hit the lockers behind him with a scrunch. He didn't mind beating up stanked kids, per se, but he did try to pull his punches a bit. Not a lot—as monsters, they were all surprisingly strong and resilient—but enough so that no one would have anything broken after the fight was over.

Of course, he'd already cut up this girl's notebook, crunched her phone, and destroyed her backpack, so he wasn't sure what else she had on her that he could destroy—what remained of her clothes aside, but those were pretty much beyond repair from the transformation anyway, since in her case they'd become tatters—so he doubted it was them.

Most kids had scrambled for cover by now, nipping into classrooms with the teachers—and a few nerds into lockers, though that wasn't always by choice—but Howard was in the hallway with his phone out, very pointedly and unconcernedly loudly enjoying what was left of his drink from lunch while filming the fight.

He was positioned so he could duck into a classroom without any problems, and this behaviour wouldn't be questioned because he could always claim he was trying to get something for Heidi's show for a further fifteen seconds of fame, so Randy didn't worry about him.

He'd have Howard's phone off him and the video deleted before Howard had a chance to upload it if he had any luck anyway. It didn't usually take him this long to destank people, and he'd much rather if all his publicity was good publicity.

He needed to wrap this up sooner rather than later. "Ninja Cold Ball!" He was getting better at recognizing the different Ninja Balls, but he was still a bit relieved that the light blue one he'd thrown froze the hallway like he'd expected it to. Before the girl had a chance to move, he threw another one at her feet, freezing her in place. She threw another locker door at him—he kinda felt sorry for the janitors who had to clean up this mess and all the other ones he'd caused, not to mention the people who had to fix everything—and he finally caught sight of a photo in her hand.

If it could still really be called her hand when she looked more like a fish than a person at the moment.

"Ninja Scarf Snatch!" Randy shouted, whipping his scarf around to get the picture away from her before he lost sight of it again. Before the thing had a chance to flutter to the floor—and certainly before she had a chance to grab it again—he'd pulled out his sword and sliced it apart with what he would later insist was a completely necessary flourish. Because it totally was.

Besides, he got it right, and the girl became more girl than monster again, a little bit disoriented like people always were after being stanked and rather embarrassed, and her friends appeared out of the woodwork to lead her off and presumably to produce a new set of clothes. (The transformations didn't always end with ripped clothes—that was becoming less and less common—but it was practically school policy to keep a spare set or two in your locker. Even Randy had one, though that was more in case of extreme emergencies and appearances than because he ever thought he'd get stanked. But no one wanted to be caught out like Bucky had that one time. Being stanked in the first place was embarrassing enough.)

Randy pulled out a smoke bomb (those he kept separate; he was not about to accidentally unleash a Ninja Bee Ball on himself when he was supposed to be making his getaway) and was about to make his usual departing announcement when a bolt of green energy shot past his head—close enough that it would've hit him if he hadn't just moved.

Seriously.

Another robot?

How many did McFist have?

"All right, let's get this over with," Randy muttered, shoving the smoke bomb back into his pocket and pulling out his sword again. The trouble was, the robot wasn't immediately visible, which was weird, because McFist's robots were always immediately visible. Well, except for the Robo-Lizard, but considering they hadn't reused that technology before now….

Randy snapped his head toward the laughter when it began. It was coming from a kid—it had to be a kid, right?—who was leaning casually against the lockers at the end of the hall. How had Randy not seen him standing there before? He'd looked. He knew he'd looked.

"What?" Randy asked, a bit annoyed that the boy was now doubled over with laughter.

"You're really going to try to fight me with a sword?" the boy burst out, looking up at Randy. "What else does it do, shoot lasers? Teleport me to a dimension to live out my worst fear?"

"Huh?" Randy wasn't entirely following this. He had no idea where the guy was getting the whole 'teleporting' thing from, but that aside, why the heck did he expect Randy to fight him? Sure, he didn't recognize the kid, but that wasn't saying much. And he was in some really weird getup, but that also wasn't—

One of the green rays hit his sword, the force of the blast nearly pulling the weapon from Randy's grip and heating it up enough that it sent off waves of warmth.

And the ray had come from the kid's hand.

Or, perhaps more accurately, from his glove.

He worked for McFist, and Viceroy had developed laser-shooting gloves.

Just great. How the heck had McFist managed to brainwash a kid into thinking he was the bad guy?

And how was Randy supposed to fight a kid when he didn't really want to, well, hurt him? It wasn't like he was stanked and Randy just needed to slice something up. What he probably needed to destroy, if anything, was the kid's suit—something easier said than done when he was wearing it.

The kid raised an eyebrow. All signs of his previous amusement had died when he'd started shooting, but this looked more like scepticism than seriousness, as if he couldn't believe how things were going. "Not that I'm going to argue with an easy target or anything, but even if I haven't fought you before, I've fought a ninja before. Although, if you want to make this easy for me…." The kid reached down to his belt, fumbled for a moment, and frowned. "Oh, crud," he muttered, so softly Randy barely heard him. "I forgot my thermos."

Randy didn't particularly want to stick around to find out what the heck the thermos did, since he was pretty sure from the kid's tone that it wasn't just for holding soup.

And he wasn't exactly thrilled to find out that Viceroy had put the kid through various Ninja fight simulations.

He hadn't run away from a fight in a long time, but he really needed to shloomp on this. The kid was brainwashed or something, and Randy didn't want to accidentally kill him. Kids were amazingly resilient when stanked, but Randy really didn't want to count on Viceroy's inventive genius when it came to making the kid's suit. His robots inevitably came apart easily enough.

With one hand, Randy pulled out a smoke bomb and, with a much softer cry than normal, threw it down to hide his escape. Just before the red clouds swirled in front of his vision, he could have sworn he saw the boy fly towards him.

If this kid was playing at being another hero to save everyone from robots and monsters, only to turn on them like McFist once had as Lucius O'ThunderPunch…. Well, Randy wasn't going to let him. Not this time.

But he'd still consult the Nomicon first, just to be on the safe side.

Laser-shooting gloves and jetpack boots or whatever the flying thing was—he knew he'd seen Viceroy use some levitating thing himself, and McFist had definitely had blasters—didn't mean the kid couldn't be hurt. And just because he was working for McFist didn't mean Randy wouldn't be able to make him see sense; he couldn't be getting much out of this. Besides, Randy would rather not attack the kid in front of the entire school if he was playing at being the good guy. It would be bad for his rep.

And he wouldn't mind knowing what else Viceroy had put up the kid's sleeves before he got too deep into this.