Danny flew to the library, transforming back just outside the door and walking in.
"Oh, hello!" The librarian twittered. "Do you need anything, dear? We're just about to close, but I'm sure-"
"Have you seen my sister?" Danny interrupted, and upon seeing the lady's blank expression, added, "Jazz. Jasmine Fenton."
"You're the lucky brother?" The librarian smiled as she recognised the name. "Such a nice girl. She always turns her books back in time."
"Yeah, yeah." Danny danced in place. "What time did she leave tonight? She said she'd be back soon."
"What are you talking about?" The librarian blinked in confusion. "I haven't seen the dearie all day. I'm sure she'll be home-"
Danny paled. "I gotta go." He hot-footed it out of the door.
"Don't you want to check out a-" The librarian called after him, but Danny was already gone. She straightened her glasses. "Well, I never. I thought a relation of Jasmine would be quite the little gentlemen, but it seems I was mistaken. Such a shame."
She started stamping some new books, hoping to be done with them before the library closed. Keeping things fresh always drew in the new teens, even if they were becoming more and more... strange.
Her least favourite genre was horror, the old lady thought with a shudder as she stamped a particularly grotesque-looking cover. She liked the quiet stamp-stamp-stamping of the books in the empty library on nights like these. The tick-tick-ticking of the clock calmed her, and she most certainly did not want these moods disturbed by the thought of werewolves, vampires and other distasteful creatures of the night.
It was then, as she was preparing to stamp yet another book, that a large ink-like black blot fell from the ceiling and landed on the inside pages. The librarian frowned and fixed her glasses; she most certainly hadn't spilled that. Strange, the lady thought before somewhat reluctantly preparing to stamp just above the spot instead.
Another inky drop fell down, now landing on the wrinkly back of the lady's hand. It only took her a second to determine that this was not ink. No, it was sticky and slimy and congealing, a cross between a frog's back and a spiderweb. Furthermore, the substance was cold, deathly cold, as if the strange black liquid had been put in a freezer prior to contact.
But, the lady thought, if it wasn't ink, what was it? She slowly looked up, and what she saw there before an icy tentacle wrapped itself in a near-stranglehold around her neck and pulled to the heavens, caused her to scream. Loudly.
And all was silent in the library, save for the tick-tick-ticking of the clock.
~Line Break~
Danny rushed out of the library, breathing hard. "Jazz? Jazz, where are you? Jazz!" It was then that he thought about another endangered member of the family. "Mom!"
He pulled out his phone, and dialled the number as he walked down the street, retracing Jazz's footsteps. Suprisingly, it did pick up.
"Mom?" Danny's ears were assaulted by what appeared to be the sound of a steam factory. Pistons hissed and gears turned, followed by the sound of... panting? "Mom? If you're still at the workshop, I suggest you should bring earmuffs next time!"
There was a muffled, breathless answer. Danny couldn't make it out.
"What?" He pressed the phone to his ear.
"Wisconsin!" Maddie shouted louder. "W—stu-In Vlad's-tre-mill-gia-machine-with-tee-"
"You're drinking tea?" Danny arched an eyebrow as he heard Maddie's panting. "That seems to be a lot more strenuous than I thought it'd be."
"No!" Maddie yelled. "We-ar-r-ng-on-tee-Wisconsin!"
"You're in a tea factory?" Danny was still confused, trying and failing miserably to read between the garbled lines. "In Wisconsin?"
"NO!" Maddie repeated. "The-m-chine-big-tee!"
"Chinese tea? A big order of Chinese tea?" Danny guessed once more, but then straightened. "Whatever you're doing, I heard Wisconsin, which stinks of a certain fruitloop. I'm coming right away!"
"It-tee!" Maddie objected. "Noth-do-tee!"
Danny hung up, jumped into a side alley, and transformed into a ghost. At top speed, he hurtled through Amity Park in the cover of darkness. He noted that he was following the same trail that Valerie's suit had taken.
"Interesting," Danny voiced his thoughts. "Maybe Valerie was trying to tell me something."
~Line Break~
It was the small hours of the morning by the time Danny had arrived at Vlad's old mansion. Since the ex-billionaire's self-banishment, the GiW had boarded up the building. From what the teenager had heard, they were still too traumatised from their time in Danny's lab to even go as far as to touch whatever was left festering in Vlad's. That lovely business was now left to Danny.
He phased through the barricaded door, into complete darkness. Danny reached for a light, but upon flicking the switch, found it changed little. They must have cut the electricity, so Danny lit up one of his hands with ecto-energy and continued.
The once-grand palace Vlad had lived in was beginning to fall into disrepair. Spiders wove webs in every nook and cranny, insects big and small marched across the floor in hordes. The paint was beginning to chip and peel in many places, exposing old wooden frame that termites and woodlice had started to chew. Dark, dark holes could be seen between the wood, the depths of which Danny did not ever want to explore.
With a shudder, Danny floated downstairs. It was in the upper part of the lab that a faint version of the factory-noise he heard from Maddie's phone was audible. With a frown, he descended once more, and gasped at the sight.
Right in the middle of the lab, obstructing the Ghost Portal, was a sort of gigantic metal igloo, studded with multiple holes. The dome reached fully up to the ceiling, and a small cylindrical shape protruded outwards from the main frame, with a window on the flat end.
"Vlad, what have you done now?" Danny's eyes widened, but before he could investigate further, a low growl rumbled the walls of the igloo-structure, and from one of the holes around the top of the igloo, a black, tentacle-like thing snaked its way out to the side. A small green portal appeared in its path and it reached in... and drew out a very familiar English teacher, yelling book titles like no tomorrow. The tentacle moved to drop Lancer into the cylinder part of the machine.
Danny recovered from the shock. "Oh, no you don't!" He shot a ghost ray at the black tentacle, slicing off a good part and freeing Lancer. The machine let out a terrible screech as Danny raced to catch the teacher in his hands.
"Lancer!" Danny set his teacher on the ground. "Are you okay? And-" It was then that he noticed the teacher was in his underpants. "Uh..."
"I'd prefer you didn't ask, Daniel." Lancer's eyes widened. "The Woman in Black, look behind you!"
"Huh?" Danny felt himself being grabbed and lifted into the air. He struggled, but whatever the creature was, it had him in a tight grip. He was deposited into the cylindrical part of the machine.
Danny blinked, his ears adjusting to the noise. All around him was dimly lit orange, like a dully burning flame. It was loud, very loud in there; the cacophony threatened to split his eardrums. The ground below him also felt like it was... moving. Danny felt a rush of hot air behind him, and whipped his head around. He gasped.
There was a yawning, many-toothed mouth at the end, gaping wider than ten of him. He paled, frozen in place, and watched it come closer... closer... or was it really moving at all?
Danny suddenly realised something. The creature was not moving at all, but the ground was. It was as if they were on a great treadmill to death. Everybody around him, a seemingly vast amount of desperate, randomly selected people were being forced to jog away from whatever the creature at the end was. He scampered to his feet and started to float.
"This must be where they bought Mom to." Danny realised. He looked sharply around a crowd of people also struggling to escape a painful fate, and spotted a blue jumpsuit straggling dangerously close to the teeth.
"Mom!" Danny called out, causing an exhausted Maddie to jump and slip up. The fast pace of the floor carried her quickly towards the jaws of death.
Danny swooped down and grabbed his mother, not a second too soon before she was lost to the world. He dashed to the front of the giant treadmill contraption.
"Thanks... Danny..." Maddie panted. "Running... for fifteen-something... hours... really takes it out of a Fenton."
"What is this place?" Danny frowned. "I've never seen Vlad build anything like it."
"Danny!" Jazz's voice interrupted the two, making her way up towards her brother. "We're saved!"
"What do I do, Jazz?" Danny asked, still holding Maddie. "There doesn't appear to be a way of shutting it off."
Jazz jogged, tiredly but still at a reasonable pace, alongside her floating brother. "Not for a human." She observed. "None of this looks very ghost-proof."
"Hmmm..." Danny shot an ecto-ray at the front, and created a sizable hole. "You're right!"
Expanding the hole so a larger amount of people could get through, Danny floated to the front. "Hey, everyone!" He called. "You're all free! Quick, get out of here before anything else happens!"
A loud cheer went up around the joggers. Everyone sprinted to the end of the treadmill, crowded around the stairs and began the long ascent up the stairs to safety.
Danny grabbed his sister's and his mother's hand, and floated the two of them up to the barricaded doors of the mansion. He quickly blasted them open, and the three flew back home.
However, when all had grown silent for the creature inside the igloo-like machine, it began to get hungry. There was a great screech and rumble; the screws and bolts popped out, the metal bent, and the entire igloo-like structure was ripped off of the floor and decimated into scrap.
Whatever it was, it was free. And it was angry.