Maddie was pacing around the auditorium by the time Jack finally made it back to Casper High. When he entered, she stopped and looked at him for a moment. To know that their own children had been stolen by Phantom, whisked away without a trace, and they couldn't….
Jack seemed to read Maddie's mind. "We'll find them, Mads," he said gently, repeating his earlier words. "We'll find them."
"We have to find Phantom first," she replied quietly. "I've packed up a few necessities." She waved a hand in the direction of a large pile of weaponry. "We'll go after Phantom together. The fact that he's evaded us for this long means that he is clever, for a ghost. I don't want to give him any more opportunities to prey on us separately."
"Don't worry, Maddie. By the time we're through with him, he'll wish he'd never been born." Jack blinked and realized what he'd just said. "Er, make that died and become a ghost."
It got a smile from Maddie, though it felt like a rather weak one. "Just remember," she said, "we need to capture him. We can't just blast him to bits. We need information."
"I'll rip him apart molecule by molecule after he tells us where he's taken the kids," Jack promised, "and after we find them and they're back with us." He started double checking the pile of weapons she'd selected to take with them. "Didn't you pack the Ecto-Entrapper?" he asked.
"We haven't worked out all the kinks yet, honey," Maddie reminded him gently. "It's not reliable yet."
"But it'll give us the element of surprise!" Jack countered, sounding for all the world like a little kid determined to get his way.
Maddie wanted to argue. It wasn't tested—not properly, at least; she'd rather they try it against something more than just that Box Ghost, to see if they could replicate its effects, or even just to determine what other effects it might have. And as long as they didn't know all of its effects, whether it was the same for every ghost or different, whether they could expand its range or increase its strength…. With so much they didn't know, the Ecto-Entrapper could be more of a hindrance than a help.
But Jack just looked at her, pleading, and she had to relent. "All right," she agreed, "but we only bring it out if we need to." And if they played their cards right, they wouldn't need to. Besides using the Fenton Thermos, they could capture Phantom in one of the phase-proof nets they'd come up with, or suck him into the Fenton Xtractor or the Fenton Ghost Weasel, or grab him with the Ghost Gloves, or at the very least, hit him with enough goo that he got plastered to a wall until they caught up with him. They had plenty of options.
Of course, they usually did have plenty of options, and Phantom generally managed to evade them—or get free—one way or another.
But not this time. There was too much at stake this time. Neither she nor Jack was going to slip up; they couldn't afford it. They might just have one shot; they might not get lucky enough for two. And if they did just have one shot, it was going to be a good one. They weren't going to waste it. They were going to catch that piece of ectoplasmic scum and find out what had happened to their children.
"Let's go," Maddie said, picking up her part of the equipment. "We don't know how much time we have."
Danny knew he had to keep moving. He didn't really want his parents to find him before he found them. Now wasn't exactly the time to get caught by surprise, as the chance of help coming if they managed to strap him to a table in the lab in the basement of FentonWorks was really, really small. No Sam and Tucker to notice he was missing, no Jazz to come home, hear of their parents' exploits, and sneak down to free him. And, well, no one else, either, but he highly doubted anyone else would help. The only other person in the human world who was around and who knew he was both Fenton and Phantom was Vlad, and Vlad wouldn't help him if he was strapped to a table. He'd just use that to his advantage.
Now was definitely turning out to be one of those times when he was finding it hard to look on the bright side of becoming a half ghost, though sometimes it was hard to find a bright side to being half dead in the first place.
Danny sighed. What he needed to do felt impossible. How the heck was he supposed to convince his parents, who hated Phantom and probably wouldn't let him get two words out before trying to blast him out of the air, that he wasn't responsible for this? That he needed their help? That they might be stuck here unless they actually worked together?
Actually, it may not be as bad as it could be. He'd made a deal with his dad once. He'd let himself get captured, and then Jack Fenton had agreed to release him if he helped to save his family once he found out that Plasmius was after the Fenton Portal. Granted, Jack hadn't known that Danny would've done that anyway, since Vlad was just one seriously crazed-up fruit loop with a million stupid schemes that he pulled for downright creepy reasons, at least in Danny's opinion, but the point was, they'd worked together once. Maybe it wasn't so much of a stretch to think that they could do it again.
He should probably try to find his dad and remind him of that time before his mom got on the scene. Not that Jack didn't shoot first and ask questions later—both his parents shared that policy—but he'd have a better chance with his dad. Providing he could get him to listen in the first place, that is. Jack still thought he'd taken Jazz, but the truth was, he didn't know what had happened to her. He could only hope that she'd ended up with everyone else, providing that everyone else was where they should be.
Danny flew cautiously through the streets of Amity Park. The city was like a ghost town, except that he was the only ghost. It was just…empty. Dead. And far, far more quiet than it should be. Danny shivered. Definitely creepy. It was still daylight, but that almost made it worse. It was supposed to be bustling now, and all he could hear was….
Well, if he stopped flying and really listened, he could just hear himself. No wind, so no rustling trees or anything, and no birds or crickets or anything else, no faint trickle of water, no familiar rumbling of vehicles…. At least that meant his parents hadn't gotten into the Assault Vehicle and were looking for him.
Or they had been in it, had found him, and had killed the engine before he'd noticed and were tracking him on foot.
The thought got Danny moving again. He really, really, really did not want to be caught off his guard. He had to find his parents first, not the other way around. The chances of him being able to reason with them were slim. If they got him first, any sliver of a chance he might have had would probably dissipate. Judging from the conclusions his father had jumped to when Jazz had disappeared, they wouldn't exactly be willing to negotiate anything. They'd be too busy asking questions he didn't know the answers to, and then, when he told them he didn't know anything, they'd just say he was a lying piece of ectoplasmic scum, and the torture would probably begin, because by that point they'd have him somewhere he couldn't get out of.
Frankly, he'd rather be stuck in the Fenton Thermos or the Fenton Weasel, where they couldn't get at him to run any experiments or other little tests, than in a cage or on a table, which were unfortunately the more likely options. Actually, he'd rather not get caught at all, because if he was, then he couldn't do anything to get them out of here, wherever here was. Not that he was really getting the impression that he could get them out of here, but still. He had a better shot if he had freedom. If only he could just find some answers, then maybe—
Danny skidded to a halt. "Oh, man," he groaned, smacking his forehead as the obvious solution finally crossed his mind. "No wonder I'm a C student." He'd kept thinking he was stuck here, on his own, without any help whatsoever. But he wasn't. He was a ghost. He could just go into the Ghost Zone, get some help, and then come back and sort this out. Easy.
He should've thought of that ages ago.
Danny zoomed upward to get a better view of the city, got his bearings, and headed straight for FentonWorks. Even if no one else knew what was happening, Clockwork had to know what was going on. Clockwork knew everything. He saw time all at once, past, present, and future in some sort of continuous mesh layered upon itself, not with everything neatly laid out in a straight line like everyone else. Or if it was all in a straight line, Clockwork viewed it from above, unlike everyone else who just saw it from their place in line. Danny wasn't sure how it worked, really, since he highly doubted Clockwork just sat around watching portals all day, but it was probably some sort of powerful, ghostly time sense which, as far as he knew, was unique to Clockwork.
Whatever the reason, Clockwork could help him now. He could explain what was going on, and he could tell Danny how to fix things, or send him back in time to prevent whatever this was from happening, or something. Well, probably not send him back to prevent this. Danny had learned the hard way that that didn't really work. It was way too easy to screw up the present instead of fix it. But Clockwork could explain things, at least, and then Danny could work things out for himself. He just needed to know who he was up against and what was going on, and then he could figure out how to fight back.
It didn't take him long to get to the lab and activate the portal. Even as a ghost, he had enough Fenton DNA that opening the Fenton Portal wasn't a problem. Or maybe it was because he was a half ghost. Or maybe ghosts actually had DNA, or at least the ones who had once been alive did. He didn't really know. Whatever the reason, he'd never needed to be in his human form to open the portal, and for that, he was grateful. He'd never exactly memorized the override code.
He was also grateful that no ghosts came through the moment the doors opened. Really, sometimes, he'd swear they were just waiting for the thing to open…. But if they did, they weren't now.
For a split second, the possibility occurred to him that this weird absence of life extended to the realm of the dead. Maybe no ghosts had come through because there weren't any to come through. Maybe they'd been split off, too, like the rest of the population of Amity Park.
Maybe it wasn't just Amity Park. Maybe it was the entire world, and the entire Ghost Zone, and—
Nah, couldn't be. That'd take way too much power. He didn't know any ghosts who could swing that, not by themselves. And, well, he wasn't entirely sure most of them could work together too well. None of the really powerful ones, anyway, since they all seemed to have a superiority complex. Sure, the ghosts had swallowed their pride and worked together when the Guys in White were trying to blast the Ghost Zone to pieces, but that had just been for a short time and probably entirely out of a sense of self-preservation. Anything long term was out of the question.
Well, he couldn't exactly forget Skulktech 9.9 from that alternate timeline, but weird as that had been, it still didn't count. Okay, so Skulker and Technus had merged, but they'd kept their minds separate, and while they'd managed to work together, Danny couldn't help but wonder how many times they'd had to rebuild themselves. Or whether it had turned out to be much of an improvement. Technus 2.0, for instance, hadn't had much up on the original Technus. All right, fine, Skulktech 9.9 had put up a good fight, considering what Danny was used to, but he probably could've beaten them if he'd been slightly less shocked by the whole existence of Skulktech in the first place.
Still, point was, Technus and Skulker might have managed to merge into Skulktech, but they weren't exactly on the high end of the power scale of the ghosts Danny'd fought. He'd fought them time and again when they were separate, and he'd won. Sometimes he had a little help, but he still won.
He'd beaten Pariah Dark, the Ghost King, and, albeit initially separately, his lackey, the Fright Knight. He'd beaten himself, his evil, future, deranged self. He'd beaten Nocturne, and Undergrowth, and Vortex. He'd beaten Vlad. He'd beaten loads of ghosts. He could beat whoever was behind this, too.
Once he found out exactly who it was, at least. Desiree or Nocturne or some other ghost he didn't know about yet….
The sooner he found out, the better. He just hoped Clockwork would actually tell him. The Ghost of Time was rather fond of riddles, and Danny was in no mood for them. He wanted to leave behind this nightmare, or whatever it was, sooner rather than later.
Danny cast one quick glance behind him, making sure he hadn't left anything out of place in case his parents came here for more weapons and realized they'd missed their company, namely him. Any reunion on those terms wouldn't be the greatest for him. But, thankfully, everything was in the same sort of mess as it had been when he'd come down. He hadn't knocked any papers out of place when he'd flown in or anything. So, smiling a bit for the first time since he'd realized exactly how serious this mess was, Danny took to the air and flew through the Fenton Ghost Portal, into the bright emerald light of the Ghost Zone.
Jack and Maddie had finally come in range of Phantom. They'd picked up his ecto-signature and were heading, of all places, back to FentonWorks. It seemed ludicrous that a ghost would go there, of all places, but Jack figured he knew why. That evil ghost had been nicking their inventions for ages. He'd seen Phantom with a Fenton Thermos, and he probably had an idea of how their other weapons worked, too, which is why he seemed to be so good at avoiding them.
If it didn't take so much power, he'd run the Fenton Ghost Shield around their house the whole time. That would teach that ghost for breaking into his home. But continuously running the ghost shield would only drain their power reserves, and if they ever needed to expand the shield to protect the town again, it probably wouldn't hold as long. He still needed to tweak the system, get a few more of the glitches out of it, but with all the other inventions he was working on, he hadn't yet found the time.
"Jack," Maddie asked suddenly, staring intently at the screen that proclaimed Phantom's location, "the Ghost Portal's closed, isn't it?"
Jack nodded. "He won't be able to get through there. The only way he's getting away from us is through a natural portal."
Maddie frowned. "Then one opened up in our lab. Jack, he's g—"
"Gone?" Jack supplied when Maddie cut off.
Maddie leaned in to peer at the screen. "No, we just lost him for a second. The screen must have glitched. He's still there. We'd better hurry."
"I'm on it, baby," Jack assured her, pressing the gas pedal to the floor. The Assault Vehicle careened around the corner, tipping wildly to one side for a few terrifying seconds before settling back on all its wheels.
They arrived at FentonWorks within two minutes, and in that time, Maddie had informed Jack that the screen had flickered no fewer than five times. "We'll have to check the receiver," she told him quietly as he screeched to a halt in front of their house. Jack nodded, distracted, already gathering weapons to use on that no-good piece of ectoplasmic filth that was in their house and, in all likelihood, in their lab.
They'd make sure he never went there willingly again.
Jack primed a few ectoguns, and Maddie had the Jack-o'-Nine-Tails at the ready, along with a Wraith Wrangler and the improved (now phase-proof) Fenton Grappler. Both had Fenton Thermoses, of course, and they had a Fenton Weasel in the lab, along with a number of other weapons, so Phantom's chances of escape were considerably slimmer than they might have been if he'd chosen to hole up anywhere else.
But why pick FentonWorks if he couldn't activate the Ghost Portal? That's what really didn't make sense.
Then again, ghosts didn't make a lot of sense. They didn't act on logic. They acted on some sort of twisted sense of instinct. An evil instinct.
Maddie had the door open already and, after thoroughly reminding Jack how much they needed to the element of surprise, they entered. Jack suppressed the urge to yell at the ghost as they started down to the lab. Maddie was right. They had to surprise it. It was the only way they'd get the kids back.
And Jack Fenton was never going to let a ghost steal his kids—Fentons, future ghost hunters!—and get away with it. Never.
Danny hovered in the lab, trying to figure out what had happened. He'd flown through the Ghost Portal, but instead of ending up in the Ghost Zone, he'd come out into the lab in FentonWorks.
Five times.
It wasn't instantaneous, exactly. He couldn't stick an arm into the greenish haze of the Ghost Zone and have it come out back in lab. That would've been really weird, and frankly he was sort of glad it didn't work like that, but it really limited the options regarding what it meant. And he wasn't really sure what it meant beyond the fact that he couldn't get into the Ghost Zone. It was looped or something. The minute he got fully into it, but before he could even pick out any of the familiar purple doors that should be floating on the other side, just visible from the Fenton Ghost Portal, he found himself flying back into the lab.
He'd tried a few things before coming to that conclusion, of course. The second time, he'd just flown in like the first, weakly hoping that he'd just somehow gotten turned around or something. The third time, he'd closed the portal and opened it again, hoping that would fix whatever weird thing had gone wrong, before he flew through it. The fourth time, he'd just tried walking through rather than flying through. The fifth time, he'd closed his eyes, begged for this to be some sort of weird dream, and took off running.
He'd opened his eyes again when he'd crashed into a table, broken a few beakers, and spilled a bit of glowing gloop. Luckily, whatever that stuff had been didn't have any effect on him, so it was a failed experiment. Probably a precursor to whatever his dad had put into the Ecto-Entrapper. That stuff might have a small effect, but he doubted it would do much to slow down a ghost more powerful than the Box Ghost.
If he was going to get some good luck, though, Jack Fenton might just admit that it didn't work and go back to the drawing board. He was pretty sure his mom did that. Well, that, or there was some other reason that they'd gotten some really oddly shaped dishes turning up in the cupboards, but he couldn't think of one.
Danny, who had been picking up the pieces of broken glass to try to cover his tracks, froze when he heard a floorboard above him creak.
"Crud," he whispered, hearing footsteps start down the stairs. There wasn't time to finish cleaning up, but it didn't matter. His parents already knew he was here. Turning intangible, Danny shot straight up, phasing through the ceiling as his parents reached the bottom of the stairs. He didn't want to go too far, since he thought figuring out why he couldn't get into the Ghost Zone would help explain what had actually happened, and while he didn't have Jazz's intelligence, it couldn't take him that long, could it?
"He was here, Maddie!" came Jack's voice. "GHOST!" he hollered. "Get back here so I can—"
"Jack!" Maddie's voice cut across her husband's. "Remember what we discussed?"
Oh, great. They were discussing things. Planning things. Probably how to dissect him once they caught him. He was doomed.
Before he moved away, however, he heard his parents putting down a few of their weapons, but he guessed that that was simply to examine the damage he'd done to the lab. Then, he heard the sound of breaking glass. That didn't really worry him, either. His first thought was simply that one of his parents—okay, that his dad—had knocked something over. It wasn't exactly a rare occurrence.
But then the alarms started blaring.
"FentonWorks Anti-Creep Mode activated," Jack Fenton's recorded voice exclaimed. "Our special today is fudge! I mean, pain!"
Instantly, weapons sprang out of the walls and pointed at Danny.
"Aw, crud."
Jack dug the last ectogun out of his pocket and dropped it, knowing any ecto-powered weapons he carried would be targeted. Maddie had done the same when she'd seen him jerk his head toward the wall where the button to activate the security system was hidden. She'd been carrying fewer than him, given that things like the Wraith Wrangler didn't rely on ecto-energy and hence wouldn't be targeted.
With none of the ecto-weapons in the lab primed and active, none of the weapons in the walls sprang out to target them. Upstairs, however, seemed to be a different matter, judging by the sounds they heard. Phantom, as Jack had suspected, hadn't left the premises yet.
He had a Fenton Fisher with him now, and a Fenton Weasel. He'd caught that evil ghost in one of them before, and if he hadn't had to let it out, this wouldn't've happened. He regretted that move now. Never trust a ghost. He knew that, but he had. The ghost had helped him…that time. But now, well, now it just proved that he should've seen that action for what it was: an attempt to lure him into a false sense of security.
No one harmed his family when Jack Fenton was around. Especially not a ghost.
The kitchen, when they reached it, showed clear evidence that Phantom had been here. The ghost must've phased through some of the claws meant to trap the intruders; hadn't they coated that equipment, either? He'd thought they'd gone over everything once they'd found a substance that ghosts couldn't simply pass through.
Clearly, that hadn't been the case.
A yelp from the living room caught their attention. Maddie reached it first, but Jack wasn't far behind. There was Phantom, desperately trying to dodge the blasts aimed at him, and struggling to get his leg out of one of the claws that had managed to grasp him. Apparently, they had remembered to coat some of those things with the right stuff, so no ghost could phase through it, much like they couldn't phase through the walls of the Fenton Thermos or the string of the Fenton Fisher.
Phantom's eyes widened when he spotted them. "No, wait," he said quickly as Jack powered up the Fenton Weasel. "You don't understand!"
"Oh, we understand all right, ghost," he replied. "We understand that you're up to something."
"But I'm not," Phantom insisted, ducking so a blast sailed over his head and scorched the wall behind him. "Um, contrary to all appearances, that is."
Maddie laughed. "You can't fool us, ghost. You're no different from the rest of them. You're just finally showing your true colours again."
Phantom looked panicked, but he still didn't try to fight back. He didn't fight them, anyway. It looked like he'd done a number on the claw holding his leg and, judging by the state of his suit, he hadn't spent all of his time trying to go intangible or put up shields, either. It was just as well. It could be a sign of him weakening. Even if he had tried fighting them, they would be well protected by their security system. They'd gone to a lot of trouble designing it, and it was good to know it paid off.
And so, while Phantom was distracted by Maddie's words, Jack activated the Fenton Weasel, and the ghost was contained before he'd even realized what had happened. The house's weapons retracted in the absence of a threat, and the world was, once again, quiet. Jack looked at Maddie, who had been gazing at the state of their house.
"We'll clean up after," she said. "Let's get this ghost down to the lab."
A/N: Aren't I sweet? Thanks to everyone who has been taking the time to review!