Looooooong overdue chapter. I know, sorry guys! I apologize in advance for any typos, I read through this three time and caught quite a few but they slip through sometimes. Replies below-

FeliPhantom: Danny on a leash? Lol! I'll see if I can somehow make that work down the line.

Crystalbird1769: Yes, quite awkward. Commence evil cackle~ And that's actually a really good question. I'd supposed since anti-ghost equipment blocks out a ghost's special abilities/powers, and Danny's transformation power kind of just defies the laws of logic and does its own thing, I wouldn't supposed the chains would really stop him from transforming back. But I'm actually not sure hah, the answer is probably in an episode somewhere but I'm too lazy to check.

Chopsuzi: Looool! I suppose he did.

Guest: Danny and Sam don't really get together at the end of this (I mean Danny has just been through a traumatic experience, Sam. Now is not the time to confess your love!) but I guess it is in a way DxS.


Jazz absentmindedly rubbed her wrist as she scanned the hallway for Sam and Tucker, her eyes flitting back and forth from person to person. Finally, she spotted the orange beret and made her way over. Tucker shoved something into his backpack and swung it over his shoulder.

"Sam, I'm sure it's a complete-"

Jazz tapped him on the shoulder, interrupting him. Sam turned around and looked up at her curiously. Jazz cleared her throat.

"Have you guys seen Danny anywhere?"

The goth raised an eyebrow. It was true, he had missed her birthday gathering, but she never actually considered he could be in trouble; he was probably just being his usual jerk self.

"No," Sam furrowed her eyebrows, feeling herself going on the defensive. "You mean he's missing?"

Jazz's eyes widened slightly with the affirmation of her worst fear coming true. "Well, I don't know. I mean, he hasn't been home in two days and I put off asking you guys because I thought he was just being-"

"Just being Danny?" Tucker interjected lamely.

"Yeah, just being Danny, but I haven't heard from him or anything and he's usually never gone for this long and the last time we spoke he didn't seem like he was in trouble, and I-"

"Stop rambling already. We need to start looking for him!" Sam stood up straighter and grabbed Jazz by the wrist, hauling her down the hallway with Tucker following behind. Their shoes squeaked loudly on the tile floor, making the emptiness of the hall seem more prominent.

"Where's ground zero?" asked Tucker, pulling out his PDA.

"Ground zero?" asked Jazz. She was startled when she spotted Casper High's entrance looming in the distance. She glanced from the door to Sam and back. "We're not ditching school, are we? I have a calculus exam! I thought we'd wait until after-"

"This can't wait, Jazz. Danny could be seriously hurt!"

Jazz nodded, realizing her calculus exam could wait, and turned her attention back to Tucker.

"What do you mean by 'ground zero'?"

Tucker rolled his eyes. "Where was the last place you saw him?"

"The Mall," answered Jazz immediately. "I dropped him off and everything."

They were outside in the parking lot now. Jazz fished around in her bag furiously for her keys. She found them and opened the door of her convertible, sliding in with ease as Sam and Tucker hopped into the back.

"To the Mall!" Tucker held his hand out dramatically, pointing to somewhere in the distance. Sam smacked him on the back of the head and rolled her eyes.

The ride was spent in an uncomfortable silence, each person lost in their own thoughts and theories. Tucker tapped away at his PDA frantically. Sam turned away from the window to look at him.

"What are you doing?"

He answered without look up. "I'm trying to hack into the Mall's security cameras."

"I take it it isn't going to well?" Sam bit her lip in anticipation.

"Just give me a few more minutes. I need to access the camera's data base but it's just giving me current information. I have to uninstall this codec before I can access a complete history of all the files."

Sam shook her head, not understanding a single word he said. She turned her attention the the window and the parking lot rolled into view. Jazz stopped the car and kept her hands on the wheel, tapping her index finger impatiently.

"So...What now?"

"Look. Look here." Tucker held the PDA to Sam. Jazz scrambled over her seat to be able to catch a glimpse of what they were looking at. There was an alleyway located in the rear of the Mall. A plastic bag blew across the screen. Several seconds passed before a boy in ran into view, his back to the camera.

"Danny," Sam commented. Tucker nodded.

There was a bright flash of light that encompassed the entire screen, and then a ghostly silhouette stood in the boy's place. Jazz ran a hand over her face. "He's so careless. I mean really, how many other security cameras has he transformed in front of?"

Danny flew upwards and out of view of the security camera. A couple of seconds passed before the front bumper of a van rolled into view.

"I think I recognize that van, well, the front of it anyway," said Jazz. She shook her head and furrowed her eyebrows, trying to think of where she remembered the car from. It didn't come to her. The trio continued watching in silence.

"I wish this thing had audio," said Sam. "Who do you think he's fighting? And what's the car there for?"

Tucker huffed. "Beats me."

An arm appeared from the left of the screen near the van. It was small and dainty, holding a glowing net. Sam held her breath when the arms threw the net in the air. A heavy figure came crashing down moments later. Unfortunately, the van rolled up, blocking Danny's attackers from the camera's view. The van rolled away, leaving the area desolate once again.

"He...was kidnapped?"

Tucker turned off his PDA and put it in his pocket. "Looks like. We just have to figure out where that van was from."

"We didn't get to see a license plate," grumbled Sam. "And there are about 100 other plain white vans in Amity. Should we just investigate every single one and hope for the best?"

"No, I know that van. Trust me. I just can't remember from where," said Jazz, mumbling the last part. She was sure if she thought hard and long enough, she'd be able to figure out who it belonged to. It was stored somewhere in her brain, ready for use. Jazz turned around in her seat and turned the car on.


Dash passed something from under his seat to Paulina, who then zipped the object in her purse. She turned around in her seat to face the jock.

"Thanks, Dash," she whispered, the chatter of the classroom drowning her voice out slightly.

"No problem. But this is the last time I steal anything from the Fentons for you. And don't hurt Phantom!"

"I won't!" she retaliated, looking around the classroom for a moment and then seeming satisfied when she confirmed that no one was paying any attention to them. "I just need to intimidate him a bit and get him to do what I want. He's real stubborn," she pouted. "And mean."

"Has anyone seen Danny Fenton? This is the third day he's had an unexcused absence."

The students continued chatting, ignoring the teacher all together. She shrugged and continued with her roll call.


Danny had had a fairly relaxing morning, consisting of staring at the ceiling and laying completely still. He looked up at the window, squinting when the sun light suddenly invaded his sensitive eyes. It was late afternoon. Paulina would be coming home soon. He sighed and continued to stare out the window, trying to gauge his location. He figured it'd come in handy to know which street he was on when he finally escaped—and he would escape. His eyebrows furrowed. He didn't recognize the scene outside.

Of course, this shouldn't have been odd to him. But constant patrolling and ghost hunting had engraved a map of Amity into his mind—every street, park, alleyway, and crack that provided a safe haven for transforming. He would even go as far to say that he knew Amity better than anyone else in the town. The fact that he didn't recognize where he was greatly distressing. He was just worrying himself, he figured.

Danny turned to the door and counted down the seconds before she'd come barging into the room, probably to inflict some new form of torture on him. The door handle rattled right on cue and Danny smiled to himself.

"Hey, I'm actually getting pretty good at this."

Paulina entered the room carrying an assortment of shopping bags. She kicked the door shut and set the bags down by the wall.

"I'm home!" she said in a sing-song voice. "And guess what? I went shopping!"

She dumped the bag content onto the floor. Wigs, scarfs, accessories, and even some very high-end clothing came tumbling out.

"I also bought this," she held out a bulky Polaroid camera. Except, she was holding it upside down. "For the scrapbook!"

Danny scrunched up his face and smiled, giving her an overly cheerful and obviously sarcastic expression. "Oh, how delightful!"

"Right?" she flipped her hair over her shoulder. "So glad you're finally seeing it my way."

Paulina walked up to the foot of the bed. She looked Danny up-and-down, grimacing at the sweat that caked his hair to his head and the splotches of dried up food and ectoplasm on him. He squirmed uncomfortably under her gaze.

"But first, you must clean yourself up."

She walked over to the side of the bed and pulled pliers out of the nightstand. Danny's heartbeat picked up speed at the sight of Paulina holding a sharp object.

"Wh-What exactly are you doing?"

He cringed away sharply when the pliers came towards him. Danny cracked an eye open, feeling slightly deluded when he saw the pliers poised on the chains around his wrists.

"Your letting me go?"

"No, silly!"

He knew he shouldn't have held his breath. She paused and put the pliers down on the nightstand and walked over to another corner of the room, pulling something out of her purse. It was a regular gun, he figured, until she got closer. It was decorated in green accents and had a neon green "F" on the handle part. F for Fenton. It was a ghost weapon. Paulina turned it around in her hand, watching it with amazement.

"Phantom, I want to make it very clear to you that if I even think you're trying anything, I will shoot you."

No you won't, Danny mused in his mind, remembering the time when she disrupted Lancer's class because she had spotted a spider under her desk. The entire football team and gotten out of their seats just to kill it for her, comforting her when she began tearing up from "fear". She wouldn't shoot him. She couldn't.

"...and the reason I'm trusting you is because all great relationships are built on trust. If I can't trust you, why should I expect you to trust me? I mean I'd just love to give you a shower on my own, but I don't want to force you into anything you're not ready for. And I want to wait until we're married," she paused and blushed, squealing and jumping on the balls of her feet. "Oh, I can just imagine it! We'd be so cute!"

Danny resisted the urge to gag. She picked up the pliers, the gun in her other hand, inching towards the chains. She paused once again.

"And I wasn't planning on telling you this, but don't try and phase through the walls. It's infused with Ecto-ranium."

"What?"

Paulina smirked, delighting in the fact that Phantom always underestimated her. "We're at my grandparent's lake house just outside of Amity. It's where we come to relax, so my family was smart enough to hire people to make it ghost-proof! Isn't it wonderful? During the spring, I think I spend more time here than I do at our main house." Paulina giggled.

Just peachy.

Then she shrugged and moved in towards the chains. Time seemed to pass in slow-motion, the distance between the mouth of the pliers and the chains feeling infinite. Finally, they were severed with a snap. The green chains crumbled around him like hair. Danny didn't move for countless seconds, feeling the blood rush back into his hands. His arms felt stiff. When he moved, the pain came to him quite suddenly. His brain had registered the act of his arms being jolted, the shoulder grating against its socket. He sucked air in sharply through a half-open mouth. Paulina lowered the gun.

"Phantom? Phantom are you okay?"

Danny let out the breath and cradled one arm with the other to keep it still. Paulina had unknowingly kept him from acting. Under normal circumstances, he would have been able to restrain her and fly out of there within milliseconds of her cutting the chains. He'd already lost the element of surprise, and he was in too much pain to do anything now. He crawled over to the edge of the bed and stood up, swaying slightly.

"The bathroom is over there." Paulina pointed to another corner of the room with the weapon.

Danny walked over, feeling Paulina's gun on his back the entire way. What if she accidentally applied too much pressure and shot it? Would his friends ever find him? Or would Paulina bury his human body in her backyard and never think about him again? Danny shook his head, he couldn't afford to think like that.

The bathroom door creaked open. The white fluorescent light causing him to squint. He stepped inside and glared at the perfect porcelain walls. It was a bigger bathroom than he was used to. Everything was blindly white—even the marble sink and the counter with its gold accents. If this was what her "lake house" bathroom looked like, he wondered what her actual bathroom looked like. He turned around when he heard the door squeaking shut.

"I'm trusting you," reminded Paulina before shutting the door completely.

Danny's shoulders slumped and his muscles relaxed. He was finally alone. He made his way over to the huge mirror that encompassed one side of the room. On the counter in front of it was a sink and Paulina's makeup. Nothing that seemed of use to him. His eyes trailed upwards and for the first time in three days he looked at himself in a mirror. He smirked slightly at how disheveled his hair looked, caked with ectoplasm and sweat and some unknown substance. Maybe he could use that shower after all.

He'd have to pop his shoulder back into place first. He gripped the underside of the counter. It hurt bad enough when Sam did it, he wasn't sure if he could do it himself. Hey, what was a little more pain? Danny figured. He distanced the arm from his body so that it was in a ninety degree angle, and then shutting his eyes, he pulled down on the arm with his other hand.

His legs gave way and he crumbled onto his knees, taking shallow breaths as he rotated his arm. Paulina knocked on the door when she heard him grunt.

"Is everything okay, Phantom? I don't hear the shower running!"

Danny bit his lip, unable to find any words. He was having difficulty simply taking in enough air. "Guh!"

"What? Okay, I'm coming in!"

"N-No! Everything's fine. Just give me a second!"

"'Kay! Hurry up!"

When the searing pain finally subsided, Danny stood up and turned on the sink. He splashed the cool water over his face and ran it through the tips of his hair. He cupped it in his hands and drank it, relishing in the feeling of his tongue soaking up the liquid like a dried sponge. Satisfied, he turned around and leaned on the counter. Danny looked around the room for something potentially useful. There was nothing. He didn't think Paulina would actually chance giving him the opportunity to gain the upper hand, the bathroom was obviously emptied. At the same time, she was unpredictable. He didn't know her like he knew his enemies. He sighed and walked over to the shower, turning it on just to give the illusion that he was using it.

He lied down on one of the rugs that decorated the larger-than-normal bathroom. After awkwardly adjusting his boxers, Danny placed his hands behind his head and enjoyed the leisure of not being tied to a bed. That's when he noticed it, a small air vent in the ceiling. He floated up to it cautiously. It wasn't big enough to crawl through—besides, he doubted that ever went as smoothly as it did in the movies—but Danny was notorious for his resourcefulness. He bit his lip in thought. He poked the ceiling, not surprised when it sent a shock through him. From his proximity, he could see the small green specks of Ecto-ranium in the ceiling.

As an after-though, he formed an ectoball in his hand, just to confirm that his powers were still intact. If he were able somehow cool the ventilation system, it could cause Paulina to leave the doorway long enough for him to exit through the window in her bedroom. He bit his lip nervously. Danny raised his hand and grabbed the lid of the vent, tugging on it slightly to remove it. When it didn't budge, he unintentionally tugged too hard and it slipped from his hands, sending the lid crashing downwards.

The door shoved open violently. There stood Paulina, her blue eyes looking reminiscent of an ocean in the midst of a storm—angry, hectic, unforgiving. The lighting erased even the slightest wrinkle of her's, making her look like a deranged China doll. Danny couldn't really say he'd been afraid of Paulina up until that moment. The shower continued to run despite the tangible silence in the room.

Something tore into his leg before he was able to even register what had happened—Paulina had shot the gun. He hadn't seen it nor heard it, too frozen with fear as he gazed into Paulina's rage filled glare. Then another ripped its way through his shoulder. Out of reflex alone, he went intangible, and it flickered away as soon as it came. Whatever properties the gun had made it feel as if fire was pooling in his limbs. The pain seemed inexhaustible. The floor rose up to meet him and the world went black.