"Danny?"

No response.

Jazz glanced around the alley uncertainly. He'd been here a moment ago, floating up in the air, arguing that he couldn't answer his phone, and then it had stopped ringing, and then—

Then, he'd gone invisible, or something, and she didn't know why. Maybe he'd spotted the Assault Vehicle?

But the Assault Vehicle, Jazz realized, made a different sound than the sorts of sounds she was hearing. It was louder, but a different sort of louder, and not so….

Jazz walked to the entrance of the alley and saw the cars rumbling by on what had been, not five minutes before, a completely deserted street. And people. There were people on the sidewalk, chatting, jogging, rushing past one another with shopping bags…. It was normal again.

Except the Fenton Family Assault Vehicle was nowhere in sight, and she couldn't explain its disappearance away as easily as she had Danny's.

Everyone else hadn't disappeared; they had, and she'd gotten out somehow, or been returned, or…or…something. She wasn't sure what. But wherever she'd been, Danny was still there, trapped in his ghost form, and that meant their parents—

Jazz cringed. "I'll try to figure this out quickly, Danny," she promised quietly. She tried calling him but, as she'd expected, the phone just rang and rang and rang. No answering service cut in, and Danny never picked up. They were isolated in separate worlds.

Jazz tucked her cell phone back into her pocket. Her first instinct was to go to the library, but she doubted she'd find anything there. She needed help, and to do that…. She needed to find Danny's friends. Sam and Tucker had to be here, too, didn't they? She didn't know their numbers. She'd had them in her last phone, but she'd never memorized the numbers, and after that phone had been fried last week by a stray ectoblast, she hadn't quite found the time to update her contact list; she'd only gotten her new phone a couple days ago, and what with all the ghost fighting and homework and patching up Danny without their parents noticing….

Jazz frowned. She was normally more organized than this. She didn't usually slip up on little things like this. But the truth was, she hadn't needed their numbers in the past couple of days. Danny'd had them, after all—he had Sam's and Tucker's numbers memorized—and he'd always been the one to call them if they weren't there anyway. But now, the most she could find in the phone book would be their home numbers. It was worth a shot, but she somehow doubted she'd find either one at home.

The Ghost Getters were never supposed to be separated. They were supposed to fight ghosts together, not need to find each other first.

Jazz reached into her pocket again and pulled out a Fenton Phone. She always carried one with her now, and she'd told Danny, Sam, and Tucker to do the same, so if Sam and Tucker were wearing them, she might be able to get a hold of them that way. She fitted it onto her ear, turned it on, and said, rather tentatively, "This is Ghost Getter Number One, does anyone copy?"

Nothing.

Well, there was always a chance that Sam and Tuck were refusing to answer on the basis that they hated the name the Ghost Getters. It was a pretty slim chance, given the situation, but it was at least a dim sort of hope. "This is Jazz. I repeat, does anyone copy?"

The only response she got was static.

Jazz bit her lip and hoped it just meant that Sam and Tucker weren't wearing their earpieces. She was running out of ideas. She could try their houses, and the school and her house, she supposed, but after that…. She didn't know. She didn't know their whereabouts anymore than she knew Danny's.

Jazz started off towards her house first. If nothing else, she could get her car so she wouldn't have to go everywhere on foot, but she rather hoped she'd run into Sam and Tucker there. There was, she figured, a better chance of them being at her place than at either of theirs. FentonWorks was built for this sort of thing. Well, not for looking for missing people, but it was built in preparation for all ghostly happenings, right down to the secret button hidden by the Emergency Ham in the fridge in the Ops Centre—the one that had gone rancid more than once and had needed to be replaced.

This would work out. She and Sam and Tucker would figure out what was going on, and they'd fix it. Danny didn't always have to be the hero. They could be, instead of just being his sidekicks. She and Sam had learned that lesson quite well when Danny had gone fishing with Jack at Lake Eerie.

But until she found Sam and Tucker, all Jazz could do was try to figure things out on her own.


"Oh, butter nuts," Vlad muttered, stalking back through his portal and into his secret lab. Desiree hadn't been anywhere. Not anywhere she normally would be, at any rate, and no ghost he'd talked to had seen her. Not Skulker, not Technus, not Kitty nor Johnny 13, not Ember, not the Lunch Lady, not Dorathea, not Spectra nor Bertrand, not….

The list went on, but the response had always been the same. He'd even paid a visit to the Ghostwriter. He hadn't been long out of Walker's prison, but Vlad had heard of the Christmas story in which the ghost had trapped Daniel, and he knew the power of the Ghostwriter's pen—or keyboard, as he'd taken to using that more frequently these days. He'd hoped that the Ghostwriter might do him a favour, write a line or two mentioning that he would find either Desiree or the Fentons—Vlad hadn't been picky—but the Ghostwriter had laughed.

"It's not in the script," he'd said. "Do you really want me to write you into my story? I can't always control how the story turns out."

"You control exactly how the story turns out," Vlad had snapped. "That's the point."

"But a story," the Ghostwriter had countered, "will often develop a mind of its own, and then I do not control it."

"You write it."

"As it should be written," the Ghostwriter had pointed out, "not necessarily as I would have written it."

That had gotten Vlad's temper up—well, more so than it had already been up—and he'd looked to see if the Ghostwriter was already writing a story, perhaps to get revenge on young Daniel for being tricked and thrown into Walker's jail, but the screen in front of the Ghostwriter had been blank.

"I just finished my last book," he'd explained. "I haven't started the next one yet."

Vlad hadn't bothered sticking around longer. The Ghostwriter didn't deserve his time. Like the rest, he wouldn't help. Perhaps the other ghosts might have reconsidered helping him with his search if he'd told them he was also searching for the young halfa, given the number of enemies Daniel had made who didn't want to see him destroyed on someone else's terms—or, in the rare case of those ghosts like Princess Dorathea, given the few ghosts who actually cared for the boy and didn't want to see him harmed. Either way, he hadn't bothered. Most of them were too afraid of the powerful halfa Vlad Plasmius to do much more than be marginally polite when they answered his questions, and he didn't want to cultivate debts that he'd have to repay later.

Vlad transformed back to Vlad Masters, shut his portal, and powered up his computer system—complete with the Maddie hologram. "Have you found what you wanted, master?" she asked gently.

"Not yet. Be a dear and run another scan for Daniel," Vlad said. "Go back through the systems; see if you can tell me where and when his trace disappeared."

"Of course, dear heart. Calculating." Vlad crossed his arms and waited, and in a moment the Maddie hologram continued, "Last known location: Casper High School. Log time: 9:43. Time recorded was that of the last scan. Next time stamp reads 10:25. No trace located on that sweep." She smiled at him again. "Shall we sit down for tea and cookies now, sweetie?"

Vlad sighed. "I can't." He should have made those sweeps regular, on a scheduled time, but he'd worried that the minute he did that, one of the ghosts from the Ghost Zone would realize that he was tracking ectoplasmic activity and find a way around the system, slipping into Amity Park and possibly wrecking havoc completely undetected by his monitors until the next scan.

Then again, most of the ghosts that bothered coming through generally wouldn't be clever enough to figure that out.

No matter. He'd start at Casper High and see if he could find any evidence of portals opening up there. He'd been working on something to detect that so he could tell when Wulf or Cujo or one of those other ghosts that forced their way into the real world turned up. Well, in truth, he wanted to try to replicate that ability; Maddie—hadn't it been Maddie? Surely it hadn't been Jack—had invented something that forced ghosts back into the Ghost Zone, opening up a temporary portal that pulled the ghosts in, and that was one invention of theirs he hadn't yet been able to duplicate.

It would be far faster to simply fly to the school as Plasmius, but he knew Valerie was on the prowl for ghosts and he had no wish to meet her when they both had better things to be doing. More importantly, however, was the fact that she was expecting him to do his own fair share of searching, and he had to keep up appearances. He did not need her getting suspicious.

Not that he ever expected she would. She hadn't made the connection between Danny Fenton and the ghost against which she had a vendetta, after all. With all the disappearing Daniel must be doing during his classes, Miss Gray had far more reason to become suspicious of him than of Amity Park's upstanding mayor.

"I'll be back soon, Maddie, dear," Vlad told the disappointed hologram. "You keep monitoring for anything unusual and give me a full report when I get back."

"Of course, sweetie," Maddie said, giving him a beautiful smile. "Hurry back."

The real Maddie had never looked at him that way, but he hoped that, someday, she might. And, perhaps, if he could save her, she might see what an imbecile Jack Fenton was, and….

It was probably a hopeless dream. He'd probably lost Maddie for good that fateful day in college, in the lab accident that had turned him into a half ghost. Money, or so the saying went, couldn't buy happiness. It couldn't buy everything. It couldn't lure Maddie away from Jack.

But solid ghost hunting skills might, and Vlad was certain that he had to be better at that than Jack.

Even if Jack had beaten Plasmius once. But it was best not to think about that. That had been a rare demonstration for the man, and Vlad rather doubted he could repeat the performance.

Still. Even if he might never win over Maddie, he wouldn't stop trying, and he wasn't going to lose her now. He'd find her. He'd find all of them. Well, perhaps not Jack, but he'd find the rest of them, and if Jack happened to be there, well, it might be good for appearances if he were saved as well. If nothing else, he had been, for better or for worse, Vlad's greatest supporter in the election campaign. The day might come when Jack's misplaced devotion to an old college buddy would come in handy.

Unfortunately.

But unless he found them now, that day might never come. Worse yet, if he didn't find them now, he might not see Maddie again, and that thought pained him more than the repeated dismissal he invariably received when he attempted to purchase the Packers.


Valerie wasn't having a lot of luck. No sign of ghosts, or ghostly activity, or—

Wait a minute.

Valerie slowed, peering into the crowd, then headed for an alleyway and, to be safe, deactivated her ghost hunting gear. Dressed again as herself, she raced out into the crowd, searching for the flash of red hair she'd seen from the sky. For a moment, she didn't see anything, and she worried that she'd imagined it, but then—there.

"Jazz!" Valerie shouted, running again. "Hey! Jazz!"

The redhead glanced over her shoulder, and it was Jazz, it was, but how did—? "Valerie?" she asked, looking surprised as she stopped and waited for her to catch up. "Where did you come from?"

"More importantly," Valerie said, catching her breath, "where did you come from?"

"I don't know," Jazz said quietly. "Do you know what happened?"

Valerie shook her head. "No. Well, sort of. Tucker told me all the Fentons had disappeared and that Danny wasn't answering his phone."

"Danny couldn't get a hold of anyone, either," Jazz said. "I don't know how many times he tried Sam and Tucker, and I know he tried you a few times, too."

"So you guys are okay?"

"Well, I am," Jazz said, looking uneasy. "Look, Valerie, I don't know what happened. We were all still in Amity Park, but it was empty. It looked the same, just as if everyone else had, well, vanished. Except we were the ones who had vanished, I suppose."

"So you weren't being attacked or anything?"

Jazz shook her head. "If we were, we might have an idea of who was behind this. I don't know if whoever it was let me go, or if I just somehow managed to escape, or what. I was talking to Danny, and Dad was just around the corner, and then, suddenly, I…just sort of found myself back here." She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "Back a ways, really, in the same alley I'd been in with Danny when we were looking for clues."

"Well, maybe if they're trying to get out and we're trying to get them out," Valerie reasoned, "we'll actually make it work, even if we don't really know what's going on. Where were you going?"

"Home," Jazz answered honestly. "I thought it might be the best place to start."

"I'll come with you," Valerie said, "and we'll see if Sam and Tucker have found anything."

Jazz smiled. "Sounds good. Then we can do some brainstorming and work this out. Thanks, Valerie. You're a good friend. Danny's lucky to have you and Sam and Tucker to count on."

Valerie smirked. "Yeah, well, I'm a better friend than I used to be, and I'm glad for that. It's nice to have some real friends. Hard times just let you know who your friends really are. C'mon, we better get going. It's nearly lunch."

"Nearly lunch?" Jazz repeated, instinctively looking skyward. "I thought it had past. I thought I'd just missed it with everything that was happening. It wouldn't be the first time."

Valerie shook her head. "Not yet. We can grab something at your house." At Jazz's expression, Valerie added, "If there's anything edible left." She'd heard enough stories from Danny during the time they'd been dating to know that having inventors as parents had a few downsides.

"I'm not sure," Jazz said, "but I suppose if all else fails, there's Dad's emergency stock of fudge, but—"

"That'll do until we have time for a proper meal," Valerie cut in. "It'll give us a bit of energy." Jazz still looked uncertain, so Valerie changed the subject, instead fishing for information. "What exactly were things like, where you were?" she asked. And Jazz, as methodical and detailed as Danny had said during one of the many times he'd complained about his annoying know-it-all of a sister, did precisely what Valerie had expected: she answered the question and was forced to focus on the little things so that she would forget, just for a moment, how bad things might really be.

It wasn't much, but Valerie couldn't do much else. She didn't know Jazz as well as Sam and Tucker, and she knew they'd all need to work together to figure things out. If they could at least get all their information together, someone might see something someone else had missed, and then they might be able to figure this out.

Isn't that how things were supposed to work?


"This looks…really familiar," Tucker said slowly.

"It should," Sam said, waving a hand around her at all of the moving gears. "We're in Clockwork's tower." She glanced at Frostbite, who had shifted uneasily on his feet. "Has the map ever taken you to the wrong place?"

Frostbite shook his head firmly. "It takes you wherever you want to go."

"But Danny's not here," Tucker said. "He can't be. Clockwork probably would've interfered by now if he was, and we'd know, and we'd either have him back or be with him trying to sort this mess out."

"Danny's not here," Sam said quietly, "but Dan is." They'd long ago agreed on that name for Danny's evil, future self from an alternate timeline.

"Who is Dan?" Frostbite asked, perhaps hearing the note of fear that had crept into Sam's voice.

"It's a long story. He's no one good." Sam glanced around. "Where is Clockwork, anyway?"

"I am right here," a voice behind them said. The three spun around and faced the figure of a young ghost, a mere child. When the voice continued, however, the figure shifted to that of an old ghost, with a beard falling nearly to his feet, but the voice itself never changed. Clockwork, the Master of Time, the ghost with a pendulum clock counting seconds at his very core, looked at the Infi-Map in Frostbite's hand. "And you are here because you needed to be here, I suppose." Sam couldn't tell if it was exasperation or resignation or what colouring the ghost's voice, but she thought she could detect something out of the ordinary.

"We're looking for Danny," Tucker said.

Clockwork raised one eyebrow and looked pointedly at Frostbite. "I am here to assist them in their search for the Great One," he said resolutely.

"You are here because you are the guardian of the map," Clockwork corrected. Frostbite looked like he was going to protest, but Clockwork continued on, his form shifting again to that of an adult ghost, and said, "You do not know the child you idolize. You mean well, but you cannot help him this time. Return to the Far Frozen, and prepare the vehicle these two arrived in for its return. They will find their way back to you in no time at all."

"Um, well, we could really use the help," Sam said. "I mean, Danny doesn't have a lot of friends."

"Danny Phantom," Clockwork said, very precisely, "cannot be helped by his friends."

Tucker frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I will explain what is necessary in time," Clockwork replied. He turned back to Frostbite. "Return to your people," he repeated, and this time, Frostbite consented. A few seconds later—was it just seconds?—the Infi-Map had pulled him away, back to the Far Frozen.

"Okay," Sam said, crossing her arms, "what's going on?" She spied a few of Clockwork's special medallions and, when he didn't answer her immediately, made a dash for them.

"That is not necessary," he said, but she still put one on and tossed another to Tucker.

"Call it insurance," Sam said.

A smile flickered across Clockwork's scarred face. "You do not trust me."

"We wanted to find Danny, and the best the Infi-Map could do was bring us to Dan," Sam pointed out. "That's not exactly comforting, and you aren't answering our questions, and this is usually the point where you freeze time or something."

"Dan Phantom is still contained," Clockwork said. "You were not brought here because of him." The ever-shifting ghost, a child again, floated towards a portal and gestured at it with his staff. In it, they could see a crowd of one-eyed ghosts in some sort of court, but at present, the ghost on trial—if it was a court, anyway—was obscured by a containment cell. Or whatever it was. "The Observants informed me that a law was broken in Amity Park, and I apprehended the offender. I am—"

"Hold on, someone broke a law? Isn't that Walker's jurisdiction?' Tucker asked.

"Must you interrupt?" Clockwork said, casting him a definite stern glance. "You have already learned that the infamous Infi-Map sometimes takes people where they need to go. You are needed here so that you can learn what happened."

"So why don't you just tell us?" Tucker asked.

"I am trying." Clockwork drew their attention back to the portal, saying, "Time is not to be meddled in. It—"

"But don't you do that all the time?" Tucker cut in.

An elderly Clockwork glared at him. "I understand it, and I am charged with certain tasks. I will do what is necessary to make sure what must come to pass does or what must not does not. The law which was broken—"

"Hold on," Sam said suddenly, watching the portal intently, "that's Desiree!" The view had zoomed in on the containment cell, showing the wishing ghost floating within. "So this all was her fault? Danny's disappearance?"

"It was not a disappearance," Clockwork corrected, his form shifting again to one of an adult.

"Then why can't we find him?" Tucker said. "I mean, the Booo-merang didn't key into him, and it's locked onto his ecto-signature."

"The wishing ghost," Clockwork replied, "drew on the old magic for her spell. It is not meant to be confined. It created room for itself to spread."

Sam glanced at Tucker and saw he wasn't making any more sense of things than she was. "What do you mean, 'old magic'?" she asked. "Desiree's just got some sort of ghostly power to grant wishes, doesn't she?"

"The old magic," Clockwork explained, "is a wild magic, and it is the magic that gave her her powers. It is the reason she is a wishing ghost. Wishing ghosts are not created without it. It becomes a part of them. But Desiree found a trace of it in your world, and she used it. She now faces the consequences."

"Okay," Sam said, figuring she'd better not bother questioning the whole 'magic' thing. Ghosts were real, after all, and Desiree did have a sort of magic. Kind of. "So Desiree's spell went wrong. But that doesn't explain why we can't find Danny. Do you know where he is?"

"He is where you left him," Clockwork answered. "Perhaps not precisely, but he is in the same place. I presume that that is Amity Park."

"But Danny's not—" Tucker cut off abruptly when Sam elbowed him, and he rubbed his stomach, glaring at her.

"You said we couldn't help Danny," Sam said, ignoring Tucker. "You said he couldn't be helped by his friends. Why?"

"The spell must run its course. You cannot change that."

"Okay, so how long is that going to be?"

"It will not be over until the wish is granted," Clockwork said.

"What wish?" Tucker asked immediately.

Clockwork, in a child's form, continued on as if he hadn't heard him. "There are bridges," he said, "between your world, your reality, and the realm created by the spell. It—"

"Danny's stuck in another reality?" Sam cut in, shocked.

"But the Box Ghost said he was in the Ghost Zone," Tucker countered.

Clockwork turned to him. "Did he?"

"Well," Tucker amended, "he said Danny was in the other place."

"So the Box Ghost was there, too," Sam realized.

"So how come he got out and Danny can't? The Box Ghost was stuck in a thermos."

"The Box Ghost," Clockwork said hesitantly, "has a certain knack for getting out of places. He is very good at finding the weak points in the skin between the realms and breaking through. The thermos acted as a bridge, and as such, the Box Ghost was able to cross it. But the bridges," Clockwork added, seeing Sam open her mouth, "are unstable, and may only last for a few seconds. There is no predicting where they will appear; you will not be able to cross one into the other place any more than young Danny Phantom will be able to cross back to his own reality before it is time."

"But, maybe, if we're lucky—"

Clockwork shook his head, effectively cutting Sam off. "You cannot cross over twice. The magic is thin and will not sustain it. You would tear reality open and it would collapse around you. I do not have time to repair that."

"So what are we supposed to do?" Sam asked, shifting on her feet, deciding not to question why the Master of Time wouldn't have time to do something. She probably wouldn't really understand the explanation anyway.

"Yeah," Tucker agreed. "I mean, if we can't help Danny, and we can't end the spell or whatever, what's the point? Are you going to send us back to before the wish was granted so we can stop it?"

Clockwork sighed and closed his eyes. "You cannot always fix the future by changing the past. You often do more damage than you realize."

"But that's what you did with Danny, isn't it? Because you were supposed to prevent the future where he killed everyone?"

Clockwork opened his eyes again. "It was not supposed to happen. We could not allow it to happen. Now it does not. This is not the same." He opened another portal with his staff, and it showed Casper High. "Go, and help your friend."

"So you are letting us go back?" Tucker asked.

"It will take you back to the current time," Clockwork said.

"Then how are we supposed to help?" Sam asked. "You just said we couldn't."

"No. But from what I've seen, the three of you do not always follow the rules." Clockwork reached out and Sam and Tucker found the time medallions lifting themselves off their necks and floating to Clockwork's outstretched hand. "Good luck."

Sam and Tucker looked at Clockwork, then at each other, and after a few seconds of silent communication, they jumped through the portal.


A/N: I'm sure some of you were hoping I'd actually check in on Danny in this chapter, but I'm afraid that just wasn't possible; he didn't have any of the answers. *whistles innocently* Thanks again to everyone who reviews/favourites/etc.

And to whomever left that nice, long, unsigned review with all the guesses (apologies if I should know who you are): I do wish I could have been able to reply to you, but suffice to say in regards to your last point that I will most definitely address that once the thought crosses Danny's mind, which just so happens to be in the next chapter.