Chapter Nine: Recon!

Maddie breathed in deeply, and then exhaled sharply. Danny collapsed backwards into a sitting position, Sam dropped to her knees, and Tucker leaned against a nearby tree. The trio had been keeping the secret so long it was devastating for anything to leak out.

"Okay, calm down... It had to be someone inside the Fenton house, right?" Sam said, coming to her senses first. "Maybe Jazz hid it until we straightened things out with ...? I mean, we did let her in on the plan..."

"No," Danny said weakly. "I told her it was there and not to mess with it. She promised she wouldn't. She may an annoying pain in the neck, and overbearing, and conceited, and-"

"Danny, get to the point!" Sam interrupted. Maddie just smiled to herself. Yep, Danny and Jazz were definitely siblings...

"She wouldn't do something like that if I asked her not to..." Danny finally finished.

"So that leaves Mr. F..." Tucker said quietly. Usually you couldn't get the boy to stop talking, but tonight... Well, he was running in a quiet streak.

An audible swallow was heard from Danny, and then there was silence. It stayed that way for a few minutes, just awkward silence, until someone fidgeted too loudly, and the group snapped out of their daze.

"We better go somewhere, kids. We can't stay out here all night." Maddie said. She meant it. It was bad enough for the children to even be up past midnight, but out in a park? This was worse than the time she had let Danny and his friends stay overnight at the zoo. No, wait... Not much could top that as fail as parenting skill fails go...

"Where should we go?" Tucker asked. "We're still supposed to be at Sam's, but that might be weird for you to come...?"

"You three go back to Sam's, and I'll go back home. Tomorrow, however, we need to sort things out." Maddie stated.

"Okay Mom... Umm, uh, I'M GOIN GHOST!" He was a little uncomfortable transforming in front of Maddie, she could tell. It still startled her a little to see him turn into Public Enemy Number One...

He kept his feet on the ground instead of hovering, which was odd. He was probably just severely uncomfortable acting as his alter-ego in front of his mother.

"Okay, bye sweetie! You kids have a good time and I'll see you tomorrow!" Maddie said, trying to make things as normal as possible (which, in retrospect, was nearly impossible to do, with Danny standing transformed, and all of them in the park at midnight). She began walking towards the house. Sam and Tucker each took one of Danny's hands, and he kicked off and flew them in the opposite direction.

Once Maddie arrived home, she went straight to bed.

Morning arrived much too early for her liking. She was jarred awake, and she sat up groggily in bed.

"Mom." came a disembodied whisper that sounded a lot like Danny's. She looked around. Jack slept peacefully at her side, clutching his teddy bear tightly. No one else was in the room. "Mom!" She felt an ice-cold hand on her shoulder. Danny.

"There's no need to be invisible or even whisper dear. Your father is out cold and won't even have any chance of waking up until..." she checked the clock. 10:37. Wow. No wonder Danny was in her room and sounding concerned. "at least two hours from now."

Danny materialized in beside her, already dressed and everything. She shivered under his hand. He withdrew it quickly and apologized.

"Sorry, that happens. I don't know why, but you probably do." He said quickly. "Sam and Tuck are downstairs. I don't want to leave them alone too long with Jazz, or she'll start messing with their heads. I think she might need a therapist for her obsession with being a therapist! I'm gonna go back downstairs now..." His gasped suddenly and his breath became visible, just like the night before in the park. He started to shiver.

"Great... I wonder who that could be." Suddenly a head popped up from the floor.

"Beware, for I am the Box Ghost! I shall send you hermetically sealed to your DOOM! For your cylindrical containment device" here, he gestured with his hands in the shape of the thermos, "shall never hold me! BEWARE!"

"Oh, please... didn't I just put you back yesterday?" Danny said in boredom.

"Maybe..." here there was a pause, where the Box Ghost (for once) did not know what to say, and then "I AM THE BOX GHOST!"

"Well, anyway Mom-" Danny went on as if a ghost wasn't even in the room, until he was interrupted.

"BEWARE! FOR I AM THE BOX GHOST!"

"ANyway-" Danny tried to continue, forcing the first part of his word.

"BEWARE! I AM THE BOX GHOST!"

"WOULD YOU STOP DOING THAT?" Danny finally asked/shouted in frustration.

"I AM THE BOX GHOST! I SHALL USE CUBICAL SQUARES OF DOOM TO DEFEAT YOU, MIGHTY HALFA!"

Danny held up one finger at the head poking through the floor. "You have five seconds, 5... 4... 3... 2..." The Box Ghost retreated through the floor with one last final "BEWARE!" There was a green glow around the one finger and Maddie studied it with interest.

"I'll get him later, if he hasn't already retreated." Danny said, turning back to Maddie. He noticed her scrutiny of his now normal finger and scrunched it in her face. "Mom, hello?" He said, slightly annoyed. "I was trying to tell you something besides that I was going downstairs... Now I know how Sam feels when Paulina walks by..." He said the last part to himself.

She shook her head quickly and looked back up at him. "Sorry. You're just so interesting from a scientist's point of view, sweetie."

"Oh, great. Experiments." He said with sarcasm.

"No, of course not honey! You go on downstairs. I'll get dressed and join you." She said. He went on down the stairs and she quickly got dressed, smiling when, in his sleep, Jack began muttering about ghosts.

When she came down the stairs, four heads swiveled up to look at her. Jazz and Danny appeared to have been in a conversation, Tucker and Sam an argument. Jazz was the first to speak.

"Morning Mom! I missed our usual quiet time. Instead I got this pack of elephants." She said, ruffling Danny's hair playfully. He began kind of slapping at her hand, and ran his own hand back through his hair while scowling at her. Maddie had to suppress a chuckle.

"Well, anyway, down to business. You know. We know you know. And now you know we know you know." Jazz said matter-of-factly. Danny just sat there cutely and quite amusingly scratching his head and trying to "do the math" with his fingers, not really following what Jazz had said. Maddie understood however.

"I still don't know all of the aspects, but anyway, that's not important right now. You can tell me some other time. We need to find where Jack put the towel. I'm not sure how he found it, unless he thought I hid the fudge in the utility closet... We have about an hour and a half before we're in the danger zone."

"I love that song! Oh, and that movie, Top Gun!" Tucker piped up.

"Okay, thank you Tucker. Completely unnecessary and entirely random, but whatever." Sam said in her own special way.

"You're welcome, it's what I do." Tucker stated smugly. That boy really did think he was hot stuff. Maddie once more had to suppress her amusement with the four children she held most dear.

"Well, anyway, even if Dad is a little out of it and a somewhat childish sometimes, he's still a scientist." Jazz said matter-of-factly.

"Duh..." Danny muttered. Jazz glared at him before continuing.

"He probably recognized the towel for what it was, and took it down to the lab."

"Jazz, the two of us have already established this..." Danny said. She gave him a hard look.

"We may have, but Sam and Tuck were too busy arguing and Mom wasn't even down here!" Jazz said in frustration. Danny just stuck his tongue out at her. How could he be such a hero, and yet such a child all at the same time? "Anyway, as I was saying, he probably has it hidden in the lab in a safe or something, since it's a big find. It's also probably guarded with a ghost alarm, so Danny can't just nab it and go."

"So we'll have to run a recovery mission..." Sam finished.

"Sweet! It'll be just like a video game!" Tucker said in excitement.