Danny rang the doorbell and waited, and waited, and waited.

No one responded to it. He rang it again, and nothing happened. Sam and Tucker could almost see his heart drop. "Danny-." Sam started, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder, but Danny shrugged it off and pushed past them down the steps.

"Let's go guys." Danny said, turning back to Tucker and Sam who were just standing there, watching him. "You said we shouldn't hang around in one place for too long."

The duo walked down the steps and re-joined Danny. Tucker took the lead and continued down the street. They decided to let the subject drop for now, Danny obviously didn't want to talk about it.

"That's the Nasty Burger." Tucker said, pointing at the fast-food building as they walked past it. "They have the best burgers ever." Danny looked at it with blank eyes, not really paying attention. "The burgers have so much meat in them, it's amazing!" Tucker threw his hands in the air and shouted "Viva la meaterution!"

Danny seemed to snap out of his stupor for a second as Sam punched Tucker in the arm. "Meat is murder!" She said, clenching her fists at her sides as she watched him rub his now tender arm. "Don't go proclaiming its supposed superiority to the world!"

Danny chuckled as Tucker pouted and said, "But Sam, everyone already knows how superior meat is. That's why everyone but you eats it." He said, again tossing his hands into the air, "I just can't understand you vegans." He said exasperated.

Danny laughed again; Sam turned and glared at him. "Oh so you find this funny, ghost boy?" Sam asked, clenching her fists and raising one of them, threatening to throttle him. Danny held up his hands in submission, a grin still on his face and Sam's features softened. He hadn't smiled or spoken since leaving the Fenton's house a couple blocks back. She was glad he was at least enjoying Tucker's misery.

They walked a little farther before they stopped in front of a large town house. Sam looked up then shrugged. "This is my place." She said, turning to Danny. "Promise me you'll never come over unless I call to tell you my parents will be out for a long time, unless of course you master invisibility. Then we're all good." She smiled. "We'll have to get you a cell phone so you can stay in touch. I'll pay for it for now." She blushed and looked away, "I've got um… inheritance money."

"She's rich, dude." Tucker whispered, leaning close to Danny while typing something on his PDA. "But she doesn't like to admit it. It seems you're special, since she did."

Tucker looked up in time to see the two of them blush and look away from each other. Tucker narrowed his eyes before going back to his lovely PDA. "Lovebirds…" he muttered under his breath to his PDA. "Come on guys." He said louder, turning to walk down the street. "The longer you gawk at Sam's house, the more chance her parents will catch Danny." He said, heading around a corner towards his house.

Sam and Danny looked at each other quickly before running off after Tucker, who was getting well ahead of them.

"So um… Tucker…" Danny started when they had caught up to him, "…Do you really think your parents are going to let me stay?"

"Sure dude, why not?" Tucker asked, looking at him, "As long as you don't freak them out with your ghost powers, I don't see why there would be a problem."

They got to Tucker's house in good time, Danny swallowed, "Tucker, I feel like this is a bad idea." He said quietly, looking up at the building. His stomach was twisting with nerves and he felt sick.

Tucker scoffed and waved a hand. "Nah, my parent's will love you! Besides," he held up his PDA "I need you to stick close to me while I try to crack the code on the collar."

Danny turned and looked at Sam. "Are- you going to come in too?"

Sam smiled at him, crossing his arms. "Yes," Sam said with a confirmation look at Tucker. "I want to be there when Tucker unlocks that contraption. I want to see how bad it's affected your neck."

"I thought you wanted to be an environmentalist, Sam," Tucker shoved his PDA in his pocket and fished out his keys. "Not a doctor."

"I do want to be an environmentalist." Sam confirmed. "But we can't take Danny to a real doctor, now can we?" she asked, "so I have to do it, since I know you'll freak if you even try."

"I… can do it myself if it's a hassle." Danny said, rubbing his arm awkwardly. "I mean, the last time it took everything out of me so…"

"Don't worry about it Danny." Sam said as she followed Tucker through the newly opened door. "I don't mind helping you."

Inside, Tucker ran upstairs to his room. "My parents aren't home yet so we have the place to ourselves." Tucker said, sitting on his chair and spinning around once. He picked up a black USB cord and motioned Danny closer. "Come here, Danny, let me see if I can crack this." He plugged one end into his PDA and the other into a small slot in Danny's collar as the young man kneeled before him.

Tucker took an extra cable and plugged it into his PDA's power input and the other end into his computer. "This might take a little while." He said, typing in some commands into the PDA.

Sam sat on Tucker's bed, crossing one leg over the other as she watched the two boys. "You certainly are a techno-freak." She said, resting her chin in the palm of her hand.

"And proud!" Tucker said with a grin. "Oh, wait, I think I got something."

Danny flinched as the collar let out a weak electric shock, then fell open with a click, and landed with a small clatter on the floor.

Danny looked down at it, then up at Tucker. "Thanks, Tuck!" he said with a large smile.

"No problem, dude. It was easy!" he unplugged the wires from his PDA and slipped the precious electronic into his backpack.

Sam stood and walked over to them, bending over to look at the split skin on Danny's neck. "It looks red and irritated, but you don't really need a bandage." She said, standing up straight again.

Danny had blushed when Sam was so close to them and Tucker got a sly grin on his face. "You two are such love birds." He said with a laugh.

Sam immediately turned and raised her fist at him, a scowl on her face. "WHAT did you say, you little creep!"

Tucker laughed, "Come on Sam! Look at Danny's face!" he wiped a tear out from under his eye as he calmed down from his laughing fit. "He's as red as a lobster!" When Sam punched him, he raised his hands in submission. "Okay, okay!" he giggled, "I'll stop!"

"Doesn't mean it's not true though." This earned another punch from Sam, this time harder than the last.

"WHAT."

His fists slamming on his desk caused his lamp and picture frame to fall over, making a loud crashing noise. "How did he get past you?" Vlad Masters stood, leaning on his fists which were planted on his desk.

One of the two men standing across from him could hardly be called a man. His face was a pure white skull; he wore a black fedora and a snappy white suite. "Escaping from the prison is against the rules." He said his hands planted behind his back. "This Phantom boy will be tracked down and his sentence will be doubled."

Vlad turned to the human standing next to the ghost. "That covers what will happen when Walker finds the boy. Now, tell me, HOW DID HE GET OUT?"

The human gulped, he was a simple guard and didn't know what to say to his boss' boss. "I- um, I'm not sure, sir." He started, "I remember seeing Miss. Samantha Manson and her friends, but I don't remember the boy being with them."

Vlad pinched the bridge of his nose. "So you didn't question why she and her friends were down there? In the prison?"

"N-no sir." The guard fidgeted nervously.

"…Get out. You're fired." Vlad said, his glare enough to peel wallpaper.

The guard's face sunk and he scrambled to get out of the room before his ex-boss got any ideas.

Walker patiently waited for Vlad to turn his attention back to him. "The child will be found." He said when Vlad finally turned his smoldering attention on him. "I will lock him up in my own personal prison." The ghost said, a small smile playing on his dead face. "In the Ghost Zone, you'll be free to come see him whenever, of course." The small smile turned into a malicious grin. "What a better place to learn his ghostly powers, than in the Ghost Zone."

Vlad smiled, and then tossed him a small device. "This should be locked onto Daniel's collar. You should be able to find him through it." He paused and frowned. "Please don't bring harm to the child. His powers are very unstable, and with that collar on the more he uses them, the closer he comes to dying. We can't have that if our experiment is to work."

"Understood. I'll get right on it. Law breakers will not be tolerated." Walker said before phasing through the floor of Vlad's office.

Vlad watched the spot the ghost had disappeared into, and sighed. He took a glance at the safe in the corner of his office, inside of which held the same serum that had been injected into Danny when the eighteen year old was an infant. His eyes narrowed as he thought about it. "I will acquire those ghost powers." He mumbled to himself. "With or without the conclusive tests done on Danny."

The teen Vlad was talking about and his two friends had just thrown the collar into the dumpster behind the Nasty Burger, after grabbing a quick bite to eat, and were now heading back to Tuckers. "You were right, Tuck." Danny said, stretching while they walked down the side walk. "That burger was really good!"

Sam rolled her eyes, "I can't believe you're one of them, Danny." She said, crossing her arms.

Danny looked at Sam, confusion playing on his face. "One of them?" he asked.

"A meat fanatic." She elaborated, shaking her head.

"I'm not a fanatic…" Danny said, hurt. "I like meat and veggies, both."

She shrugged as they walked up to Tuckers door. "Well, okay, you're less disgusting than Tucker then." She said, earning a hurt look from Tucker. "Oh, come on! You know it's true." Sam laughed, as the three of them made their way up the stairs to his room.

Once the door was firmly shut, Tucker and Sam sat down and looked at Danny. "So, dude, what powers have you mastered?" Tucker asked, leaning forward excitedly.

"Oh, um…" Danny rubbed the back of his neck, avoiding the still healing scabs. "Not… many… or… any." He mumbled, looking at the floor.

"Well!" Tucker said, clasping his hands together as he watched him. "Time to practice!"

Danny looked at him, then at Sam. "But…" he said, looking around. "This place isn't ghost proof… and you don't have the right training materials…"

"What are you talking about, Danny?" Sam asked, leaning against Tucker's wall. "What materials? All you need is you, nothing more."

"But…" Danny protested, waving his hand to indicate the walls of Tucker's room, and it's floor. "I've always trained in a situation…"

"OH!" Sam said, sitting up straight "Like when you battled with that ghost, to try to access any sort of power?"

"Exactly!" Danny said, running a hand through his hair, "I can't just… do it."

"Psh. Of course you can." Sam said, waving a hand to dismiss the issue. "They were trying to kill you by pushing you farther than you should go." She said, looking at him seriously. "We'll be taking it slow. One step at a time."

"Yeah, dude." Tucker said, "We'll start with transforming."

Danny's eyes lit up. "I've been able to do that twice already!" He said excitedly.

"Good!" Sam and Tucker said in unison. "So, try it out, man!" Tucker instructed, leaning back in his chair.

Danny looked from one to the other, and then took a deep breath. He remembered the feeling of cold that always washed over his body as he transformed, and tried to concentrate it into his middle. Soon, the imaginary cold turned into real cold, and the rings appeared, flowing over him.

Danny let out his breath and looked down at himself, appreciating the cooler body temperature, and his costume change. Sam and Tucker gasped and looked him over. Sam had already seen him, but this was Tucker's first time. Danny pulled down his bangs and looked at his white hair.

"Dude you look awesome." Tucker said, standing up and looking at him. "Digging the green eyes!" Danny smiled at him, for once feeling safe in his ghost form.

"Okay, now change back." Sam instructed, and Danny concentrated on the warmth of his human form. The warmth spread over him much like his cool rings did.

They continued with this practice for about an hour, when Danny tuckered out and fell on Tucker's bed with a sigh. "Good job, Danny!" Sam said, "we'll try more tomorrow, but I really have get home."

Tucker nodded, "Yeah, my parents should be home any minute now and I gotta convince them to let Danny stay. I think I've thought up a good idea."

Sam said her goodbyes and left, leaving the two boys alone until Tucker's parents came home.

"…So, dude, you like her, hun?" Tucker asked innocently, grinning at Danny.

"W-what! N-no! Well, um, maybe a little but… Come on! She was my first friend." Danny defended himself, unsure of what to say in that situation.

Tucker smiled at him and was about to say something more when his parents walked into the house, shouting up to Tucker's room to let him know that they were home. Tucker looked at Danny, and then smiled again, "Come on, dude, time to go see if my plan will work."

He and Danny went downstairs, where Tucker quickly dished out a story about Danny being an exchange student from Canada, whose care-family dropped the project at the last second, and that he and Tucker had bonded over their first day of school. Tucker used every child-to-parent trick in the book to get them to say yes, from puppy eyes, to promising to be good and do all the work around the house.

His parents looked at Danny, then at Tucker, and said that Danny could stay, but that his first few weeks were experimental, and that if Tucker's grades went down, or Danny proved that he wasn't beneficial to the home, they'd have to call the school and get him a new family, or sent back to Canada.

Tucker assured them that nothing would happen and that he'd already taken care of the paper work. The two boys ran back to Tucker's room.

"About school…" Danny started when Tucker's door was closed. "What am I going to do during the day while you're there? I can't stay here; your parents will find me."

Tucker thought about it for a moment, wondering what to do, before suggesting, "I guess you could like, hang around the park or something." He put a finger under his chin as he thought. "I mean, there'll be mothers with their kids there or something, but if you stay in the little forested area you should be okay. And besides," Tucker continued, taking out his homework for the next day, "when you master invisibility, you won't have to worry. You could stay here at my place, and as long as you don't touch or speak to my parents, you'll be fine."

Danny nodded, but it still troubled him. "What is regular school like, Tuck?" he asked, bringing his legs up and resting his chin on his knees. "I've had tutors at the institute my entire life; I've never been in a proper school."

Tucker laughed, "Be thankful dude. High school's a very bad place." Tucker shook his head as he said this, working on his homework. "I'm so glad Sam and I are graduating this year. Finally get out of that place, see the world…" Tucker paused, thinking of everything he wanted to do when he graduated. "I'm going into an IT school." He said after his lull. "But I'm also thinking of politics." He held his pencil to his mouth, tapping it against it in thought.

"Politics?" Danny asked with a smirk. "I haven't known you long, but you don't seem like the kind of person to enjoy that kind of thing."

Tucker waved his pencil to disarm that notion. "I'm really into it. Mark my words, I'll be mayor of this place one day!" he paused, his eyes getting that distant look again, "I'll make new laws, like 'Meat-Week' and 'Mini-Skirt Fridays.'"

Danny laughed, watching Tucker fantasize about his new laws. "I'm sure those will score you large points with Sam."

Tucker scoffed, going back down to his homework. "Sam-shmam." He said, "She'll have to live with them just like everyone else."

Danny let Tucker finish his homework in silence as he thought about what it would be like to have Tucker as mayor. The silence went on for a few minutes before Tucker quietly and unexpectedly said, "And I'll make sure to dismantle that horrible place you come from…"

Danny looked at him, forcing a small smile. "Thanks Tuck."