10

Danny's first thought upon regaining consciousness was 'Am I still in ghost form?' He lifted a hand to his face, a grateful sigh escaping his mouth as he took in the familiar white of his glove and the soft white aura that encompassed his body as Danny Phantom. He tried to sit up, found his breath seemed to have been sucked out of him, grunted softly and collapsed back on the floor. The prone position he was in gave him the opportunity to glance at part of his surroundings. He was lying on what looked like translucent glass, suspended on nothing in a vast realm filled with gaseous red and black clouds as far as he could see.

"Uggh...." he groaned softly and winced as someone placed a hand on his forehead.

"He's waking up." Jazz's voice murmured in a hushed tone, "Sam, go get Caleb."

"I didn't know ghosts could be knocked unconscious." Valerie remarked in barely masked surprise. Danny closed his eyes again, finding the effort of focusing on too many things was making his head hurt.

"Jazz...." he mumbled, "Getting tired... of being knocked out...." He heard his sister's soft laugh, a relieved tone coloring her voice as something was laid over his eyes.

"That's okay. We all got thrown for a loop when we got here. Caleb was already awake. He's been taking care of us as we wake up." she replied quietly.

"That's got an herbal remedy to help relax the muscles around your eyes and soothe away that headache you probably have. Don't move until I tell you to." Caleb's voice ordered and there was the sound of shuffling.

"How are you doing, Tucker?" Valerie asked and Danny turned his head slightly to hear better. "Is the aspirin working? I'm glad we didn't waste any on the ghost."

"Valerie, your discrimination isn't going to be of any help here. I thought you understood what happens when people cling to hurtful beliefs, but I guess I was wrong." the teacher remarked coldly.

"You shut up! What do you know about how life works?! You're just a stupid robot!" Valerie shot back.

"I have a soul. I'm alive. I know exactly how it works because I have to keep living." the android answered tersely, "Now tend to Tucker while I work on Danny. Sam, how's the Soulfire?"

"The fire?" Danny finally murmured, sitting up in shock before remembering he wasn't supposed to move and the sudden wave of nausea that passed over him told him why. He pressed his hand to his mouth, eyes shutting tightly as he forced the human reaction down. Jazz scolded him gently and pushed him back down onto a makeshift bed of blankets, replacing the cloth over his eyes.

"Yes, the fire. The Soul Stone began to burn once we were all here. Caleb showed it to us. It's a violet stone the size of the palm of your hand and it's surrounded by this beautiful white flame." she told him as she worked at getting him comfortable, "He keeps it in a silver box so the fire doesn't leap out and waste itself or blind us. We're learning some things about this place that aren't all that pleasant."

"Like?"

"The Soulfire is delicate and it burns in reverse, which means it starts off at a certain size, and it shrinks over time. The only ways to make it grow are to light small torches in Niflheim with it, battle ghosts and monsters to add their life to our fire, and hope that the section of Niflheim we enter grants us a boost as a reward for getting that far."

Danny sighed in resignation. Of course it wouldn't be a piece of cake to make the fire grow and set it on the altar. Danny Phantom wasn't allowed a break in the whole ghost-fighting business.

"Why can't saving the world be an easy thing to do?" he griped loudly.

"'Cause then everyone else would have done it already. Especially yours truly." Sam remarked with a chuckle, "Soulfire's doing fine. It doesn't seem to be burning down."

"That's because we're camped. The Soulfire can tell when we're moving and when we're resting. It burns away as we move, but rests when we camp out." Caleb told her, "Once Danny's recovered, we'll move to the first teleporter. In the meantime, you should study your textbooks. The knowledge there will help you get through this adventure more easily." There were several groans and the sounds of backpacks opening, pages being flipped through, people moving around and getting comfortable. Danny managed a small grin; the fact that he was in ghost form now gave him an excuse to get out of studying. "I saw that. You rest." the android lectured, "I have a spell that can induce sleep, so don't tempt me into using it."

"Like I can sleep with a ghost hunter nearby?" Danny sighed and tried to let himself relax for rest.

"How much longer do we have to be here?" Valerie grumbled in irritation. Her voice woke Danny with a slight start. For a moment, his senses jumped to high alert, then panic set in when several bits of information hit him all at once. Valerie nearby, angry-sounding, probably fully armed; himself, either in ghost form or not, either one would mean trouble in that situation; he was on his back, the entirety of the front of his body exposed, vulnerable; he couldn't see, possibly blinded, how he got that way didn't matter, and there was the receding dull pain of what might have been a splitting headache. The result of an attack?

He gasped aloud in a panic, moving to get up but finding himself pressed back down. His other senses began bringing in the rest of his surroundings. The sounds of cloth and metal shifting about, fire crackling, his sister's voice murmuring words of calm and comfort to him as she pushed him back onto soft bedding; the smell of something cooking permeating the air. Danny recognized the scent, plenty of vegetables, no meat, probably a soup of some kind. Sam was sure to be smiling at such a dish.

He wished he could see that.

"We're here until I say Danny Phantom is able to see again, and from the looks of things, I believe he's awake now." Caleb returned evenly, "And will you aim that away from him? It may not hurt him anymore, but let's not encourage your trigger finger. He's on my bed." There were sounds of motion and the cloth covering Danny's eyes was finally removed, promptly replaced by a pair of fingertips holding his eyelids shut. "Not yet, Phantom. Just one last test and.... All right. You should be able to focus now. Do it slowly."

Following the teacher's advice, Danny slowly opened his eyes and looked around himself. The first brief glimpses he had of the strange book-world before the effort of taking in the sights overwhelmed him hadn't changed at all. The red and black clouds were still there, the floating platforms still were scattered around and his friends were sitting in a cluster near a cooking fire, books open on the floor before them.

"How are you feeling?" Jazz asked him, concern written on her face, "You startled me when you jumped awake like that." Danny offered a small smile for her benefit as he sat up, but said nothing of his earlier thoughts. He didn't want to worry her any more than she was already.

"I'm okay, just forgot where I was for a moment there." he returned softly. His gaze turned to the rest of the group, all of them holding small wooden bowls full of soup and watching him with mixed expressions. Apparently, they had been eating when he was jolted back to awareness. As they recognized he was okay, they returned to what they were doing beforehand. Sam enjoyed the all-veggie soup while Tucker prodded Caleb in attempts to have meat added. Valerie was eating cautiously, eyes never straying from the halfa. The teacher served out another bowl of soup, then held it out to him. The group paused in surprise, watching him offer the meal to the halfa. Danny looked around at his friends uncertainly, stopped at Valerie's startled expression, then swallowed and accepted the bowl.

He was starving and there was just no way he could pass up a meal without regretting it later.

"Stop staring at me." he finally muttered and fell to eating hungrily, barely tasting the stew as he shoveled spoonful after spoonful into his mouth. Eating in ghost form was possible, but he lost much of his sense of taste in the process. He was sure that, normally, the soup was probably delicious, but for now it seemed almost bland and boring. Eating to live, not to enjoy; one of the less pleasant after-effects of becoming a ghost.

"Ghosts... eat?" Valerie asked hollowly, gaping at the sight of the phantom wolfing down the soup.

"No, dey vant to suck yer blood!" Sam returned sarcastically, "Yes, ghosts eat. Some of them aren't that much different from us. But you'd rather just put holes in all of 'em, huh?" The huntress scowled at her, then set her bowl down, half empty.

"I just lost my appetite." she grumbled. Caleb poured the last of the soup into a container, then packed it and the pot away.

"Then you can help me clean up. We're getting ready to go." he told her and quietly worked together with Valerie to recollect the camping gear. Danny partially tuned out the activity, still not quite comfortable around the ghost hunter but aware that his friends would act swiftly to help him if she tried to make any kind of move against him. Satisfied by the soup, he set the bowl down with a contented sigh and blinked as Caleb picked it up swiftly and dumped a handful of sand into it, scrubbing quickly.

"Wha-?" Danny began in surprise.

"Quick clean. I don't want to waste water on washing dishes." the android remarked and inspected the bowl and spoon after he was done, "That and I don't want to leave anything that could be used to trace you." He tugged on the bedding and Danny flew into the air, watching the redhead roll up the blankets and pack them as well. Finally, Caleb picked up the silver box that held the Soul Stone. "Let's go." he told the group and they joined him in walking across the floating platforms and the crystalline bridges. Valerie didn't activate her hover board, preferring to conserve power. For that same reason, Jazz kept the Fenton Peeler in her purse. Sam and Tucker looked around in awe as Danny coasted over them.

"Where are we going anyway?" he asked the android below him.

"There's a teleporter somewhere on this level. If we can get to it, we can move to the next level of the Book." Caleb replied, "Every level has a teleporter. The trick is finding it and getting past the monsters guarding it." Danny grinned and flew higher. If all it took to move on the Altar of Darkness was a teleporter lost on the platforms, then he might as well fly ahead and pinpoint it first.

The airspace of the Book was eerily quiet but empty. There weren't any monsters or ghosts flying about, so Danny felt safe scouting ahead. Last thing he needed was to have a Harpy clawing up the back of his haz-mat suit. He looked down at the maze of platforms and blinked. Some of the platforms had large black torches set in the corners, but they were unlit.

"Huh, what could those be for?" Danny wondered to himself and watched his friends run across one of the many bridges towards a platform that had one such unlit torch. Caleb pointed to another path for the others to take, then darted to the torch. After a moment of doing something with the torch, a huge plume of blue fire erupted from the top of the black metal. A second later, Danny let out a yell of surprise, lifting his hand in shock.

A plume of white fire surrounded his hand, wrapping around his palm and licking at his fingers. Oddly enough, it didn't burn him. The flames faded away and Danny stared at his open hand. What had just happened?

"The longer this Book and that robot hang around here, the weirder things get." he muttered and searched the platforms again. A group of monsters seemed to materialize around a disk on one platform. Quickly tracing out a path from his aerial view, Danny headed back to rejoin the group.

"This way! There's a bunch of monsters over in that direction!" he called and shot over the open space to reach the pack of creatures. Valerie leaped up and activated her hover board, launching after him with her rifle in her hands.

"Hey, Ghost Kid! You're not gonna get away with joining your little ghost pals until I can get my gun fixed and destroy you!" she yelled and raced after the receding halfa. Caleb glared up at both figures, then motioned to Sam, Tucker and Jazz.

"Let's hurry and join them before anything goes wrong!" he declared and darted along the paths far faster than any of the humans following him.

The monsters were worse now that they had the home field advantage. Valerie yelled in a fury, firing blasts of light at dark-robed magicians with horned skulls for heads. Danny fought for air superiority with a pair of upgraded Harpies, both of whom were constantly firing off bursts of icy magic. Ectoplasm shields held off a majority of the spells, but Danny's Light-enhanced Ghost Rays weren't dealing damage as quickly as he'd liked. Weaving and dodging feather missiles, Danny waited for an opening to attack again.

"If my Ghost Ray isn't doing the job, then I guess I'll have to resort to a more hands on approach!" the halfa declared with a grin, shooting into the fray and slamming both feet squarely into one Harpy's stomach. The monster flew back with a squawk, colliding with its comrade before both exploded into nothingness. "Or should that be 'feet' on?" Danny amended, then flew backwards in surprise as a tornado of icy wind spun into existence. It lifted some of the robed wizards high into the air.

"Danny! Out of the way!" Jazz yelled from down below and the halfa dove away from a powerful ecto-blast. He glanced aside and brightened as he spotted Sam and Tucker run up to him, Jazz and Caleb standing side by side not far away in a team up, attacking monsters on ground and in the air.

"Ice Tornado!" the redhead called out, surrounded by an icy white light. Another vortex appeared, lifting more monsters for Jazz to fire on.

"C'mon, Danny! We can't let them have all the fun!" Sam exclaimed, holding up her dagger before charging after another robed creature. Tucker offered a weak laugh when Danny gave him a puzzled look.

"Fun. Right." the technophile chuckled and rubbed his head, "Ah, you go ahead, Danny. I'll just stay back out of the way and cover for you from here." He brought out the Lens crossbow and began firing on the remaining monsters, a small battalion of skeletons wielding swords and shields.

"Man, this has got to be the craziest field trip in history!" Danny sighed and flew in to help his friends.

With all of the teens fighting monsters and mana ghosts, the group was quickly cleared. The teleporter shone brightly and Tucker knelt to study it as Danny examined what little remained of the monsters. He picked up a sword, marveling at the ornate runes etched into the metal of the blade and the jeweled hilt. Lightly tracing the edge of the sword, he winced as he pressed too hard and sliced his fingertip. A line of green ectoplasm tinged with a pale red color leeched through the glove from the cut, dripping onto the floor.

"So ghosts can bleed." Valerie murmured, walking up behind him and staring at his hand. The halfa jumped in surprise and spun around to face her, startled. "Green goo. Ectoplasm. That's like ghost blood, right?" she added, then narrowed her eyes at it, a puzzled frown forming on her face, "Why's it got red blood mixed in?" Danny quickly stuck the bleeding finger into his mouth and gave a vague shrug, hoping his faint heart racing wasn't loud enough to be heard. Was Valerie trying to figure out that he was more than just a ghost? What would she do if she knew?

"Danny, don't play with that! You could hurt yourself!" Jazz scolded suddenly and pulled the sword from his free hand, "Look! You've already cut your finger, didn't you?" Even sucking on his fingertip, Danny managed to glare at her pointedly and not look like some kind of dork at the same time. Jazz blinked, glanced at Valerie and plastered on a fake smile. "Erm, but what do I know? You're just a ghost, right? You can heal it up on your own! It's not like I really care that much!" she quickly amended and hurried away.

"What was that all about?" the huntress demanded and Danny shrugged again, floating off to seek out the techno geek of the group.

"Hey, Tuck. What's the verdict?" he asked. Tucker tapped the disc thoughtfully, then sat back on his heels and looked up at him.

"Weird. This world is magic but this teleporter is magitechnology. It's just like the disc Caleb used to help Lloyd get the Soul Stone to us." he pointed out and looked over at the redhead for an explanation. Caleb only blinked back and shrugged helplessly.

"Don't look at me. There are still things even I don't know about." the android told him and waved his hand at the disc, "Just jump on and let's go!" With that, Caleb stepped onto the teleporter, vanishing in a beam of light. Tucker reached out and waved his hand into the space where the teacher had been.

"He's really gone. Do you think it's safe to use this?" he wondered aloud. The other teens stood around and looked warily at the disc.

"Lloyd used it and he came out of it fine." Jazz remarked, "If he survived using it, then it probably is harmless."

"So then you go first." Danny suggested with a broad grin, "Be a brave volunteer!" His sister scowled a bit.

"How about you go?" she returned and it wasn't long before they ran a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors to see who went. "Ha! I win again!" Jazz declared brightly, "You're so easy to figure out!" The halfa stuck his tongue out in irritation. In his opinion, using psychology to win a stupid game like that should be considered cheating.

"You do this often with him?" Valerie asked in confusion, baffled by the casual way Jazz interacted with Danny, "But, he's dangerous! You should have been blasting him, not goofing off!"

"And you should be getting over the fact that Danny's not just some evil ghost. He's a hero, remember?" Sam grumbled. The teen ghost looked between the two of them, sighed and shook his head as he stepped on the disc. This trip was going to be a stressful one, he just knew it.

"Took you long enough." the android muttered as Danny found himself dropping onto the same shimmering floor he had just left, "I swear, if you get lost in here, I am going to personally make the rest of your Hero career a half-living hell." The halfa glared at him, taking to the air as the rest of the group slowly began appearing behind Caleb.

"Hey, we didn't know if that thing was even safe to use!" Danny snapped back, "So excuse me for trying to make sure my friends will be all right using it!" Caleb huffed.

"It's safe. The Heroes of Union used them and nothing happened to them." he returned as the rest of Danny's friends and family began appearing on the platform with them, "Now, the rules have changed for this level. Take a look around. What is different?" The group took in the sight of the area. The clouds were now shades of blue and the platform they stood on was floating alone, cut off from other islands of glass that hovered in the strange space.

"Hey! We can't go on in this place!" Valerie yelled in frustration, "There aren't any bridges!"

"I bet these things are involved." Tucker remarked, jogging up to a twisted metal device set at the edge of the platform. There were two, one across the way, but this was the first he saw that pointed to another platform. Caleb walked up behind him and nodded.

"That's correct. These devices create bridges for us to cross with, but they demand a price to be activated." the android remarked, "For them to create the bridge, we must give them a small portion of the Soulfire." Valerie threw out her hands in protest.

"What?! No way! We need that fire to stay big or we're all done for!" she yelled and lifted a foot, "Why don't we just skip that and use my hover board to fly from platform to platform?" Jazz flipped through her textbook and tilted her head thoughtfully.

"Nothing in the book says that it isn't illegal to do that. What do you think, Caleb?" she asked. The android scratched at his head, expression momentarily blank as he thought it over.

"It could work. I don't think any of the Heroes of Union tried to fly over the gaps, so I'm not sure what could happen if we attempted that." he replied uncertainly.

"I don't think Valerie's hover board can carry all of us." Sam pointed out and folded her arms over her chest with a scowl, "And I can tell you right now, I am not riding with someone who insists on trying to waste Danny Phantom!" Valerie ground her teeth angrily, shaking her fist at the Goth.

"Fine! 'Cause I am not giving rides to anyone who is stupid enough to think that creep's a hero!" she snapped.

"Both of you, knock it off!" Caleb barked and tapped his foot impatiently, "Good Goddess, can't either one of you let go of your discriminations long enough to save the freaking world?!" He sighed and rubbed at his head. "All right. Let's see here. Valerie and Sam refuse to ride together, but we all need to fly to escape using Soulfire on the bridge devices." he muttered and looked over the group. After a moment, he nodded. "Okay, I have it. Tucker, you will ride with Valerie; Sam, you will fly with Danny; Jazz, you'll fly with me." he decided.

"I get to ride with Val?" Tucker asked in confusion.

"I'm carrying Sam?" Danny echoed, a blush growing across his cheeks that matched the bright red that crept over the Goth's face.

"Wait, how am I flying with you? Your flying machine thing broke." Jazz pointed out incredulously. Caleb sighed in exasperation, shaking his head.

"So all this time I get called 'angel' by everyone and everything, and it never occurs to you as to wonder why?" he asked and turned around. There was a faint sound of metal sliding against metal and the group watched in astonishment as several small extensions seemed to unfold from the android's back, clicking into place before firing bursts of brilliant red light that formed songbird's wings of energy. The panels moved in sync, and the wings flapped as Caleb turned back around and pushed off, floating above the glass platform with a grin on his face.

"Artificial wings! Cool!" Tucker exclaimed.

"What is that light?" Sam asked, gazing up at the shining red wings in wonder.

"Mana. I can force mana to feed into my wing system and generate these 'feathers' that support my frame. I can't use magic while flying, but the Wonder Fork can cover for me in that situation." Caleb replied brightly, "I designed, built and integrated these into my body about sixty thousand years ago, give or take a century. I'm rather proud of them."

"So cool! You really must be alive if you can improve upon your own design without the aid of your original creator!" Tucker declared, "Not only are you an android, but you're a flying android! Technology; still better than magic!" Jazz rolled her eyes and peered up at the wings.

"So they can support you, but can they handle carrying two people?" she asked, "And if you could use these the whole time, why were you flying on that machine?"

"Because these wings are my trump card. I don't pull them out unless they're necessary and I don't have any other options." Caleb replied, "And they can handle extra people just fine. I was careful in their design." He reached out to her and picked her up as Danny did the same with Sam and Valerie activated her suit and hover board, waiting as Tucker jumped onto it with her.

"Why aren't you using your upgraded suit, Val?" the halfa asked her in curiosity, "Those would probably work just as well in here, and maybe better."

"Not that it's any of your business, Ghost, but any time I use that armor, I get this freaky voice in my communicator that keeps telling me to join him and junk." Valerie retorted, "So I'm using a new suit that Mr. Masters sent me to keep it from infiltrating my frequency." She put a fingertip up to her mask, right about where her lips would be. "Speaking of Mr. Masters, I haven't heard from him in a while. He said he had a big meeting out of state and took off, but he didn't leave a contact number for me or anything." she mused aloud, "Well, at least he's not here. Wouldn't want him to be kidnapped by any of these freaky monsters."

"Yeah, that'd be a crying shame." Sam drawled out sarcastically as she held onto Danny's shoulder from her bridal position. She turned to whisper into the halfa's ear. "I bet Nebilim was trying to talk to her through the alternate suit because it was given to her by Technus. He probably thought she was a ghost, too, because of it. And Vlad took off to avoid getting sucked in by Nebilim's commands." Danny nodded imperceptibly and looked to the teacher for a signal.

"Well, let's get going." Caleb told the group, "We should make stops on each platform that has a black torch so we can light it and help the Soulfire grow." With that, the group took to the air, coasting over platforms in their search for torches and the level teleporter.

The flight started off peacefully, but before even a half-hour had passed several Harpies showed up, screeching in a fury. Caleb dove for one of the island platforms, the others following to drop off their passengers and prepare for battle. Beams of light and streams of magic lanced into the air, setting the bird-women to exploding in bursts of mana while their bodies collapsed to the glass like morbid rain. Valerie and Danny both took to the air, ramming into the monsters when they flew too close to their friends for them to safely use their weapons or powers.

The battle was chaotic and frenzied, and in the end Danny and his friends came out victorious. As the teens set to examining themselves for injury and treating small wounds, Caleb calmly walked over to one of the black torches, Sam following soon after once she spotted him leaving the cluster.

"These must be the torches Lloyd's group lit to help burn the Book." she remarked suddenly, reaching out to run her hand along the dark metal, "So, we should be lighting these too, right?" The Goth frowned slightly and pulled open her textbook again, searching the dog-eared pages for information, "But... we need a Sorcerer's Ring for that."

"True. I have a Ring that my first master crafted for me. I lit a torch earlier, but Danny moves us erratically so I haven't gotten to any more until now." the android replied and brought out the silver box to show her the fire. It surged outward in a bright glory, substantially larger than when it first started. "Not even close to the amount we need though." Caleb sighed, "Let's hope this torch has a large plume. That will give us a good boost." He held out his fist to the torch and Sam watched a tiny ball of white fire, same as the Soulfire in the box, burst out from a small ring he wore. It touched off on hidden kindling and a green flame erupted from the top of the torch. The Soulfire in the box swelled further, flaring wildly with the feeding of mana.

"Hey!" Danny yelled suddenly, waving his hands as white flame enveloped them again, "Whatever you guys are doing over there that's setting me on fire, knock it off!" Sam looked towards him in alarm as Caleb knocked on the torch and collected a small object from a hidden drawer before joining her, staring at the halfa with a puzzled look.

"Eeks! Danny! Stop, drop and roll!" Jazz yelled in a panic, waving her arms as Tucker raced up with a blanket to smother the flames, "Remember the fire drill at school!"

"That doesn't work on ghosts! Stop treating that ghost kid like he's alive!" Valerie shouted in frustration, "Are you all stupid or something?!" Tucker threw the blanket over Danny and immediately began slapping at the cloth, weighing down the half ghost until he was flattened against the platform and Valerie could see his legs kicking frantically from under the heavy blanket. Jazz continued to yell and wave her arms frantically, blurting out random first aid advice.

"We are so not Hero material." Sam groaned, smacking the heel of her hand against her forehead before pulling it over her face to hide her embarrassment. Caleb chuckled as he rubbed the back of his head.

"You'd be surprised who become Heroes." he assured her with a smile, "You're all doing fine. Don't worry. I'll spice up this adventure in the Archive so it won't seem so bad for history's sake."

Danny finally phased through the blanket, shooting into the air for escape. He panted, glaring down at Tucker as the boy sat up in confusion, blanket in his grip.

"Tucker! What is wrong with you?! I could have suffocated in there!" he yelled and waved his hands down at him, "Look, the fire's gone already!" He planted them on his hips and looked around with a faint scowl. "Man, what the heck happened? Is flying over the gaps against the rules or not?" he grumbled and flew past another gap to test it. There was another unlit torch there and he blinked at it first in surprise, then suspicion. He tapped his knuckles lightly against it, then held a hand out to study it. Nothing happened. Whatever the teacher did with the torches, it was making them light up. And each time one of them came on, white fire surrounded his hands. Like the first time it happened, the flames didn't burn, but Danny would feel a lot better if they didn't come at all.

What if it was a reaction to the armlets he was wearing? Could he be allergic to magic?

"Danny! Get back here!" Caleb yelled out towards him, "Don't wander off like that! I'm still responsible for you!" The group turned to stare at him in surprise as the halfa shot him a scowl.

"Excuse me? How is a robot responsible for a ghost?" Valerie growled, folding her arms over her chest.

"I knew him when he was alive." Caleb replied believably, glaring back at the halfa in the meantime, "Headstrong, reckless, and impatient... qualities that garnered him a reputation for seeking danger. See where it got him?" He gestured animatedly at the half-ghost, "Either you come back here or I'm gonna have to fly there and you won't like it if I have to make an unnecessary trip just to discipline you!" Danny made a face at him but flew back anyway, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

"I want to take another aerial look around here and see where that teleporter is. That way, we can just fly to it and not waste time or attract more of the bird queens." he remarked. Valerie huffed and activated her board again, floating up to hover over the group.

"I can do the same thing and be a lot more trustworthy with my information than you, Ghost." she declared and the two set to glaring at each other. Sam sighed harshly and walked over to them, grabbing Danny by the ankle and walking off with him as if he were an animate balloon.

"Come on, Mr. Hero, let's just do this the way the textbook says. Caleb! Light the bridge points!" she griped as Danny yelped and waved his arms to keep his balance as he was pulled away. Tucker snickered, taking a few shots as Jazz sighed in exasperation and followed them, flipping through the book for extra information.

"Is any of this going to be in the final exam?" she asked aloud, "And do we get extra credit for destroying the Book of the Underworld, or is it counted as a separate school project?"

"Oh my God, we're completely losing it here." Valerie groaned softly and landed instead, hurrying after the group as they began lighting the devices to create the bridges over the platforms.