Hey everyone! Sorry about not updating for a while! High School and writer's block wasn't any help. But here I am! And without further ado...

Machine Mayhem

Danny looked at the device his dad had brought to the table with him. Was it one of his father's inventions that he didn't know about? He was getting quite curious and couldn't help but ask, "Dad, what's that?"

Jack grinned and said, "I thought you'd never ask son! This here's the Ghost Gabber! It translates the sounds ghosts make into words we humans can understand. English!"

Danny smiled and tried to hide his boredom. But what was strange was that a small part of him was actually kind of afraid of the device, even if it was only a translator. Why would he be the least bit afraid? Then again he did have a reason to be. The last invention of his parents' had landed him in the hospital then the "hospital" where he had his surgeries.

Jack smiled at his son then turned it on. The two small lights turned on and one flashed while the other was off and switched back and forth. The screen lit up and a line appeared on it going from left to right. Danny looked at it then said, "Nice," and then went back to eating. For some reason it said, "Nice, fear me."

Danny stopped his hand as it was about to put the fork that held food in his mouth and looked up at the machine in his dad's hand, all the while slowly putting his fork down to his plate.

Jack looked from his son to the machine, confusion clear on his face as he inspected the device as to why it "translated" what Danny had said. It was only supposed to work on ghosts, translating what they said, not what humans said. Jack sighed as he finally decided it was either broken or malfunctioning.

"I'll go fix it after dinner," he said as he put the Ghost Gabber down on the table. Suddenly he smiled brightly as he eyed the food and quickly dug in. Danny and Jazz couldn't help but shudder a bit. After all, who eats glowing food?

Maddie was curious as to why the Ghost Gabber had translated what her son had said even though he wasn't a ghost. 'Is he being controlled by a ghost or something? No. He couldn't be. Otherwise our ghost tracker would have tracked him coming inside. And he couldn't be a ghost for the same reasons. Maybe the invention just doesn't work. I'll stay up with Jack and help him out with getting the kinks out of his invention,' Maddie thought as she looked from her husband to the machine.

The family ate in silence besides the infrequent tapping of the fork on the plate. Danny hated silence but he kept his cool, as to not arouse any kind of suspicion. By the way his mom was glancing over to the Ghost Gabber almost every minute, she was just as curious as Jack as to why it malfunctioned when Jack had nothing else to do while Danny was away but to make the Ghost Gabber a pretty problem free invention.

Soon dinner was over and Danny and Jazz had to clean the dishes while Maddie and Jack went down to the lab to figure out why it wasn't working. Jazz was on the left of the sink and Danny was on the right of it, she washing and he drying.

Jazz looked over to her brother and found the same confusion in his eyes as she did in her parents'. To be honest, she was confused too. Not saying she believed ghosts existed and that her parents' inventions worked, she was just more concerned about Danny because of what happened the last time he was caught in the middle of a failed, or thought to be, invention.

Soon they were done with the dishes and Jazz shooed Danny up to bed while she stayed downstairs to put the dishes away.

Danny tried to convince Jazz to let him at least hand her dishes while she put them away but she didn't budge and so he eventually gave up and went up to him room after yelling, "Goodnight!" to everyone.

He sighed as he walked into his room. It was a quarter to nine and he was getting tired so he decided to get dressed and ready for bed. Once he finished brushing his teeth, he went to the desk and saw the machine still there, but since it was darker, he noticed the green flashing light that barely made its way out from underneath the machine.

Danny eyed it carefully, unsure of what it was and wound up yawning. He was too tired to think about it now. 'Maybe in the morning,' he thought as he made contact with his bed.

The small light continued to flash until Danny finally fell asleep, stopping when he fell into a deep sleep.

DPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDP

Danny woke up the next morning and yawned as he sat up. He stretched, though he really didn't need to, but still did it out of habit.

He rubbed the sleep dust out of his eyes and looked around, glad to see it was still his room and not the cold, metallic walls of the "hospital."

Once his eyes were in focus, the flashing light of the small machine caught his eye and he decided he would check it out after he got dressed and ready for the day.

After doing so, he went down to breakfast and found Sam downstairs in the living room on the couch closest to the door.

He went down the stairs and was still a bit too sleepy to scare her so he didn't, as much as he would have liked to.

Sam heard him coming down the stairs and smiled and he smiled back. At the same time they said, "Good morning." The two blushed and Jazz, who was just walking in the room, shook her head and said quietly to herself, "Tucker was right. They are Lovebirds."

Suddenly Sam noticed Danny blush lightly and yelled out, "We're not Love...birds." He looked around and realized that Sam hadn't heard Jazz. But how did he? Both Sam and Jazz were confused. Sam hadn't heard anything and Jazz was far away enough from the two and whispered it soft enough for no one but herself to hear and yet Danny responded, in a way that would have been funny, had it not been for the fact that he couldn't have heard it, not from where he was.

Danny looked between Sam and Jazz, who each had confusion clearly etched in their faces and Danny quickly thought up an excuse, but guessed he would have to tell Sam the truth, or at least what he thought of what it could be, for he really didn't know himself.

"Um, since it seems everyone calls us Lovebirds for reasons it seems only Sam and I can't understand, I guessed you would say that and it kind of came as an automatic reaction."

Jazz nodded slowly and said, "Uh-huh," before turning around and whispering to herself, "Okay, that was weird," and walked back into the kitchen. Danny heard Jazz and he too began to think it was weird. How could he hear her whisper that when even Sam, who was just as far away as he, didn't hear it?

Sam shot up and grabbed Danny by his wrist and he yelped as he was dragged into his bedroom. Sam had an eager and curious expression and Danny couldn't help but think it had something to do with how he was able to hear Jazz whisper when she couldn't.

"Danny. That was cool! How'd you do that? I saw her lips move but I heard nothing so I'm guessing she was whispering something to herself or whatever and then you responded like she said it out loud, as clear as day!" Danny sat down on his bed, Sam having taken a seat at his desk, and thought about how he did it.

Sam, without Danny noticing, turned around a little towards the desk and saw the small machine from the store in the mall. Danny was in the middle of thinking about how he had hear Jazz when Sam spoke up, "I still can't believe you bought this thing," referring to the remote-like machine.

Danny turned his head to her and laid eyes on the machine. He automatically refocused his eyes so he could see it better, zooming in to see it as though he were only a foot away.

Sam noticed this and held back the uncomfortable feeling. She was going to have to get used to this if she wanted to help keep his secret. Danny had been looking at the machine but his eyes had gone back to regular focus and his eyes seemed glazed over as he thought about something.

Sam looked back to the machine and began looking at it in boredom and found the blinking light on the bottom front of the machine and wondered what the machine was for. It looked like a remote yet it only had a total of four buttons. What was it and why had it suddenly stopped being worked on? How and why did this, made by Danny's parents courtesy of Vlad Masters, billionaire and successor of the Wisconsin Dairy King, end up in a small yet very good and frequently visited electronic store and sold for only fifteen dollars? Since Vlad had put time and money in it, wouldn't it be worth at least more than a hundred dollars as opposed to a cheap fifteen dollars?

Danny sighed and seemed to be struggling with a thought. Sam looked from the machine back to Danny and began wondering what he was thinking about. Whatever it was, it was bugging him. Sam, this time, successfully held back her curiosity but only because she was a bit more curious about the little machine on his desk.

Sam looked at her watch and found it was almost one pm and she was planning on going to a book store with dark books Goths such as her liked, thinking she would have done something with Danny that morning, not sitting or laying down thinking.

She got up and walked to the door. Danny sat up, having noticed that Sam got up and was heading to the door.

"Where ya going?" Sam smiled and pointed to her watch and said, "It's almost one and I was planning on getting a book from my favorite bookstore down the street. I'm just going to be no more than twenty minutes. I'll be back before you know it."

Danny hesitated but smiled as he waved goodbye. Sam smiled and waved back as she headed to the bookstore. Danny sighed and thought about it more and when his wrist twitched again like it had a few days ago, he decided he would. Plus he would see if he knew how he was able to get the information of making spaghetti by only thinking about it.

He would just have to wait for Sam to come back before he got her opinion.

Danny fell back and laid on the nice...comfy...bed...

I'll try and update soon. Please RxR!