Summary: In which two teenage girls deal with unwanted guests. (Rewrite!)

Rating: T

Pairing: fuck that noise

"This," Danny said, gesturing vaguely with his spoon, "is why we don't plan things."

Sam rolled her eyes. "No, it's not. The reason we don't plan things is because you're the poster child for the 'just wing it' method."

"And a giant child in general," Tucker said around a mouthful of what was probably some sort of meat. Sam couldn't really tell. All of the food on their trays were a disturbing shade of gray.

"Hey!" Danny said hotly. "A child who fights ghosts!"

"Oh, my bad," Tucker interrupted his feeding frenzy to press an earnest, solemn hand to his heart. He bowed his head in apology. "The very mightiest of children. The strongest toddler in the playpen."

Danny shot them a sour look over the table when they started snickering. He turned to Jazz. "Do you think we can leave them behind when we bust out?"

"If we bust out," Jazz said, killing the mood like the mood killer she was. She gave them all a pointed look when they grimaced. "Don't think I didn't notice you guys ignoring the elephant in the room. Distracting yourselves with childish banter is an obvious, and not to mention poor, coping mechanism, you know. You can't keep pretending your problems aren't there until a) they solve themselves or b) become life threatening so that you have to acknowledge them. Avoidance is a dangerous habit. You should just face things head on and-"

"Woah," Tucker said loudly, cutting her off. "Did you guys hear something? I think it was… psycho-babble."

Jazz ignored the 'scary' fingers Tucker was wiggling in her direction. "Like I said," She raised a prim brow. "Childish banter and avoidance."

"There it is again! Seriously, am I the only one-"

"Mom's in solitary confinement-"

"-who's hearing that, because-"

"-and we need to come up with a way to get her out of it-"

"-that's some freaky stuff-"

"-so that we can get the heck out of here, and you can't keep avoiding the issue forever! Tucker!"

Tucker batted his eyelashes in her direction. "Yes?"

Jazz huffed. "You're insufferable. But, seriously. We need a plan."

"We tried that," Danny shoved a grumpy spoonful of gruel into his mouth. "Didn't work."

"You know, when a plan fails, you generally make another one to rectify the situation."

"What, so Mom can mess that one up, too?"

"Mom didn't mess the plan up-" The deadpan look Danny shot her made her pause and reconsider the end of her sentence. "On purpose."

Tucker made a face. "I don't know, Jazz. The way Mrs. F punched Walker seemed pretty purposeful to me."

As did the follow-up punches she used to take down the four guards that flanked Walker. And that extra kick she clipped him in the side with for good measure. Man, Sam didn't get the privilege of watching Danny's mom fight hand-to-hand often, but it was always a spectacle when she did. She couldn't even find it in herself to get mad about the fact that Mrs. F had made things significantly more complicated by landing herself in solitary. She was still too caught up on the fact that she'd taken down all of those ghosts single-handedly in, like, a minute, unarmed-

"Ugh, Sam, stop drooling."

"I'm not drooling," She said, though she totally was. "I'm just thinking."

Danny shot her a look that said he didn't believe her for a second, but let it go. Jazz made a valiant effort to corral all of them back into a productive conversation. "Look, let's take stock. We need a new course of action, no matter what issues you," she directed her gaze meaningfully towards Danny, "seem to have with planning."

"It. Never. Works."

"Because you hardly ever do it, and you always do it badly. You're better at jumping in and dealing with things when everything's already going wrong. That doesn't always work." Jazz weaves her fingers together under her chin. "When you plan, you're supposed to plan for the worst-case scenario. Did you seriously not consider that Mom might do something?"

Danny shrugged. "Well, yeah, I knew she would, but I just thought… I dunno…that it wouldn't be a problem…?"

He trailed off, but Sam kind of got what he was saying. Whenever they did anything ghost-related, they always did it with the knowledge that the Fentons were going to be up to something, whether that 'something' was butting into their hunt or trying to shoot (or shred, or blow up, or vaporize, etc. etc.) Danny. But, early on into this whole Team Phantom thing, they'd figured out that there was no point in trying to figure out what exactly Danny's parents were going to do—the two were as volatile as a Mentos in a Coke can. They were unpredictable. It was easier to just clean up whatever mess they made after they made it, instead of trying to figure out what the mess was going to be beforehand.

In fact, that was really their response to everything, not just the Fentons. But, well. It especially applied to the Fentons. Their antics were such a normal part of Team Phantom's ghost hunting that they sort of just ignored the two of them until they screwed something up.

She – and Danny and Tucker – had known, logically, that Mrs. Fenton was going to do something. But, she hadn't spared a single thought about what she was going to do. Which, huh. Upon reflection, that was a bad move.

Jazz seemed to pick this up, too, because she rolled her eyes. "You have to start taking this kind of stuff into account. Honestly, sometimes I don't know how Amity Park is still standing, with you three as our main line of defense."

Tucker sucked in a wounded gasp. "Hey, we're great superheroes!"

"You'd be even better ones if you found a way to prevent the thousands of dollars of property damage you cause every week during your fights. Which you could do, if you just bothered to think things through every once in a while." Danny and Tucker managed to look scolded. Sam didn't bother. That sounded like a problem for tax-paying adults, a demographic she didn't belong to.

"Okay, fine. You made your point," Sam said before she could proceed any further. This weird, psychoanalytical guilt-fest was getting boring. And irritating. Not that Jazz was wrong or anything, but the way they did things worked, even if they wrecked couple of things along the way. Sam didn't really like being told to do it differently. She didn't see the point in trying to fix what wasn't broken. "So, what did Mrs. Fenton do? I mean, we got the whole kick-the-crap-out-of-Walker part of her plan, but we don't know why she did it."

"Maybe she just couldn't stand to look at Walker anymore without punching him?" Tucker offered. "I mean, I feel that. I really feel that."

"Please, Mom wouldn't do something so petty like punch someone in the face just for the satisfaction of-" Jazz met all of their looks with a dry stare, but conceded with a sigh. "Okay, she totally would do something like that, but not with a class of people to take care of. It was part of her plan. I tried to talk her out of doing it, but I couldn't come with a good excuse for her not to without mentioning that you guys were planning something yourselves. So, she went for it."

"And what," Danny said, "Exactly was 'it'?"

"You know about the punching Walker thing," Jazz said. "That was really the bulk of it. See, solitary confinement is in another part of the prison. Mom wants to see as much of the prison as possible before designing an escape route. She couldn't exactly just ask Walker for a tour, so she decided that the best way to see more of the prison was-"

Oh.

"To be taken somewhere new in the prison," Sam finished.

Jazz shot her a grateful smile, evidently glad that one of them was up to speed. "Exactly. All she had to do was figure out how to get herself taken to solitary. Beating up the guards was the simplest route, and came with the added bonus of letting her test her strength against them, so she'd know what she was up against when she decided to bust us all out."

That… made a lot of sense. Now that she thought about it, Mrs. Fenton had been suspiciously quick to back off once Walker called for reinforcements. She'd let herself be cuffed and taken away without a fight. Sam remembered finding that weird—not once in the years she'd known the woman had Sam ever seen her surrender. Not even in the most dire of circumstances. Last year, there'd been a situation with the ghost of a pterodactyl that'd been trying to take the Fentons to its nest. Instead of lying down at letting it happen, Mrs. Fenton fought tooth and nail to wiggle out from where it was holding her in its talons. While several hundred feet in the air. Danny'd managed to catch her before she'd hit the ground, but then she'd tased him and went right back to chasing the ghost.

Mrs. Fenton didn't have the word 'surrender' in her vocabulary. The woman was a hurricane.

"So, what's the rest of her plan?" Sam asked. "She can't exactly stage a breakout from solitary confinement. There has to be something else to it."

Jazz's smile slid into a frustrated frown. "Well, you're right," she said. "There's more to it. But, it's more a gamble than an actual plan. Mom sort of just figured that Walker wouldn't keep her in solitary for too long. Or, at least, that he'd let her come for meals. There are ghosts in this cafeteria right now that are way more powerful than a human without weapons. She figured Walker wouldn't see a reason to keep her caged up for long. It makes sense, but…"

"But?"

"But, while I can use the basics of psychology on anyone, even a ghost, it's not a hundred percent reliable. While, based on what I know about Walker, I think he'll let Mom go soon-"

"He might not," Danny said. Jazz nodded.

"Exactly."

"And then there's the whole fact that she punched him in the face," Tucker said with a wince. "He's probably not too happy about that."

'Not too happy' was a generous way of putting it. Sam had seen Walker's face before he'd gotten his guards to drag Mrs. Fenton away, and he'd been livid. An angry Walker could hold a grudge. A thousand year grudge, if Danny's prison sentence was any indication. Mrs. Fenton definitely wasn't getting out any time soon.

This added another problem to their already growing pile of problems. Great. It was getting to the point where she didn't even know what the problems were anymore. Everything was a problem right now.

"Okay, we need to lay this all out," Sam said before she could get a headache from trying to think things through herself. "So, Mrs. Fenton's in solitary confinement. She's probably stuck there indefinitely. We need to go get her before we break out of here. What else?"

Danny spoke up after being prompted by a meaningful (i.e. insistent) look from Jazz. "Well, we need to find out where our stuff is and get it, too. We already kind of have a plan for that, though, Jazz. We were thinking we could grab a guard and ask him."

"And by ask, he means threaten."

"Of course not. I'll be perfectly polite while I'm slamming his face into the wall."

"Before we can even worry about finding a guard, we're going to have to find a way to stage a prison riot without anyone realizing it's our fault," Tucker said. "And thanks to Danny jumping to save Mikey from Dashzilla, we have to figure all of this out quick. We're on borrowed time. People are starting to point fingers, and we all know Danny can't keep a secret for crap when there's too much attention on him."

Danny made an affronted noise. "Hey! I can too keep a secret!"

"Danny," Jazz said in her most gentle Therapist Voice. "Last week, when you hurt your arm and Mom asked how, you told her you ran into a flagpole."

"So what? That's a great lie!"

"Danny. It was a burn. You can't get a burn from running into a flagpole."

Sam's hand came up to her temple. For once in her life, Sam wished Danny could just be a normal teenager, one with the ability to lie like everyone else. "Okay, we need to get out of here ASAP. Let's rework this plan, and-"

A loud bang! split through the general cafeteria chatter, stopping everyone cold.

The four of them turned, very slowly, to find Ember McLain standing in the middle of the cafeteria. She was standing over the prone form of a guard, who was laying, unconscious, on top of a cracked table.

"Why do we even try?" Sam heard Danny moan.

Things went downhill quickly after that. The ghosts, following Ember's lead, started taking down nearby guards. More guards rushed into the cafeteria and ran towards the "ghost side" of it, evidently finding them to be the bigger threat of the two groups. Mr. Fenton, seeing that the exit was now unguarded, hollered, "Alright, kids, let's go!" and took off charging down the hall, their terrified class scrambling after him.

Their little foursome stuck to the outskirts of the herd, just far enough back to be able to whisper in peace. Not that that was very hard—with everyone's heavy footfalls, it was nearly impossible to hear anything. Still, better safe than sorry.

"Alright," Sam announced when their pace evened out. "You were complaining about planning. Well, congrats, there's no time to plan anymore. We have stuff we need to do and we need to figure out how to do it, stat. Hit us with something, Ghost Boy."

The revelation cracked across Danny's features like a sunrise dawning on the horizon. He looked, of all things, giddy. Sam was beginning to think he was some sort of an adrenaline junkie. "Okay, so our first problem is getting a key to Mom's cell. Which means we need to grab a guard."

"Is that still my job?" Sam asked.

She saw Danny shrug out of the corner of her eyes. "Without Mom here, no one's really watching me. I can fly off and do it quick."

Sam had to admit, no matter how fast she was, flying was faster. Shame. She was looking forward to taking out a little anger on Walker's lackeys. "Go for it, Danny," she said, waving him off. The last thing she saw on his face was a wide grin before he went invisible and took off down the hall.

She looked at Jazz. "Your brother is an adrenaline junkie."

Jazz seemed pensive. "I think it's more that he's indecisive under normal circumstances, so he's more comfortable in situations where decisions have to be made quickly and with little deliberation, so that he doesn't have time to regret those decisions." She paused. "But, you know. That's just my opinion."

"As fascinating as it is that you've made a creepily accurate psycho-profile for Danny," Tucker said, eyes glued to the doors they were passing. His fingers fidgeted like he was antsy for something. His PDA, most likely. He was probably going through withdrawal. "We've got other problems. Your dad," he spared a glance at Jazz. "Has no idea where he's going. How're we going to lead him and the others to your mom?"

"I have an idea on how to handle that, actually," Jazz said. "Have you two ever heard of something called Herd Behavior?"

Tucker snorted. "No, sorry. Must have missed that chapter when I was reading my psychology textbook this morning."

"As I said before, your sarcasm is likely a result of the poor coping mechanisms you have in place to deal with stress. Since I'm nice, I'm choosing to ignore it."

"Can you speak English, please?"

"Anyway," Jazz said shortly. "Animals – humans included – have a habit of 'following the leader,' so to speak, when they're in danger. They subconsciously follow the person who looks like they know what they're doing. Since Dad is an adult and a ghost hunter, they're following him."

"I'm not seeing where you're going with this," Sam said.

"Where I'm going with this is-" Jazz sighed and changed tactics. "Alright. You're a pretty good runner, right?"

The best in the class, actually. No big deal. "Yeah."

"Then, if I were to tell you to run to the front of the group and take the lead, you could do that easily, right?"

"Yea- oh. Oh."

"Looks like you've got it," Jazz said, smiling. "You have a very… uh. Commanding presence-"

"By which she means you're terrifying," Tucker translated. Sam elbowed him in the ribs.

"-So I think that if you get up there and start running, everyone else will follow you, instead. Probably, anyway."

"Probably?"

"Well, I have to leave room for error, you know. But, I'm pretty sure it'll work. All we need to do is wait for Danny to come-"

"Wait for Danny to what?"

Speak of the devil and he arrives, huh. Danny reappeared at Jazz's side, wearing a broad, toothy, sharp smile and twirling a key ring on his index finger. The keys jingled cheerfully with every spin.

"Back already?" Sam said. That was almost impressively speedy, even for him. "That was fast."

Danny looked very smug. "Getting the guard to hand over his keys was almost too easy. All I had to do was go ghost and he basically peed himself. It was awesome." Then, growing more serious, he said, "From what I could hear from the cafeteria, the ghosts are about to break through the barricade the guards set up. These hallways are going to get really busy in a little while. We need to hurry."

"Sam, you know what to do," said Jazz.

Danny, having missed Jazz's little human psychology lesson, looked very lost when Sam nodded at Jazz and took off towards the front of the group. Faintly, she heard Jazz say, "Stay here, Danny."

When she reached the front, taking the lead from Mr. Fenton was pretty simple. Mr. Fenton was a distracted kind of guy by nature, so he didn't even really seem to notice Sam next to him, or the way he'd begun slowing down to let her take point. Maybe she reminded him of Mrs. Fenton, and he was just kind of automatically letting her be in charge. Cool.

Now was the real moment of truth, though. A turn was coming up. It was time to see whether all of this 'subconscious' stuff was going to have any actual payoff. If it didn't, they were screwed, because the class would never find Mrs. Fenton without guidance. But, you know. No pressure.

Sam went left.

Everyone else went left with her.

She nearly stumbled in relief. Man, she had never been so glad that Jazz was the personification of an entire advanced psychology course before now. Jazz: one. The human brain: zero.

The next few turns went just as flawlessly, Sam executing each one quickly and decisively, before anyone could think a little too hard on why she was the one leading. They also had the ridiculous luck of not running into a single ghost on their way, which made their trip even faster. Within minutes, they were at the hallway that housed the barred solitary confinement cells.

It was Danny that spotted Mrs. Fenton first. She was sitting in one of the cells, looking more bored than anything else. "Mom!"

Mrs. Fenton's head snapped up. "Kids?" She stared at them, bewildered. "What are you doing here?"

"I'll explain later, Mads!" Mr. Fenton said, stooping down to examine the lock on the cell. "For now, we need to figure out a way to get you out of this cell." He turned to the class. "Do any of you know how to pick a lock?"

Unsurprisingly, no one was willing to volunteer that information to two adults and their teacher. Mr. Lancer actually, legitimately rolled his eyes when the class remained silent. "I'm going to go home and pretend this entire field trip never happened," he announced. "Including whatever happens in the next two minutes. So, anyone who has this skillset might as well present themselves now. No repercussions to be had."

Paulina stepped forward.

Figures.

Out of the corner of her eye, Sam could see Jazz lean over and nudge Danny on the arm. Danny's brow furrowed. Jazz rubbed the bridge of her nose for a moment before gesturing wildly towards the keys in his hand. He started down at them like he'd forgotten for a moment what they were for.

The ever-vigilant hero of Amity Park, everybody.

Danny finally got his act together and cleared his throat, loudly and awkwardly. "Um, we could also, uh- use this instead?" He held up the key ring. "Because it'd be… faster…?"

Everyone turned to stare at him. Their eyes flickered from his face, to the keys, and back to his face.

"Danny-boy," Mr. Fenton said, very, very slowly. "Where did you get that?"

"I… found it? On the floor?"

He burned his hand and blamed it on a pole. Sam honestly shouldn't have expected a better lie.

"What he means is," she said, jumping in as quickly as she could. "while we were running, we noticed it in one of the hallways we passed. We figured one of the guards must have dropped it or something, and that it might be useful, so we grabbed it."

Mr. Fenton's face, previously clouded in confusion, cleared and brightened. "Good thinking, kids!" He took the keys from Danny and went to work figuring out which one worked for he cell. In the meantime, Sam crept backwards over to Danny and the others.

She jabbed him in the side the second she was in range. "You found it? On the floor?"

"It was all I could come up with!"

"Trust me, literally everybody could tell." Danny rubbed his side, but smiled at her all the same.

"Thanks for covering for me."

"It's practically my job, at this point," Sam half-smiled back. "I'll accept payment in the form of coupons from that new smoothie place that just opened across from Nasty Burger."

Tucker made a face. "The one that puts grass in their drinks? Ew, why?"

"Herbs. And it's healthy, that's why. Not all of us can live with being one scare away from a heart attack, Tucker."

Just then, Mr. Fenton cried, "A-ha!" and threw the door to Mrs. Fenton's cell open with a mighty groan. "Got it!"

Mrs. Fenton launched herself into her husband's arms for a quick hug before turning back to everyone, all business. To Sam and Danny, she said, "Thank you, kids. These keys are going to be really useful in getting us out of here." Then, to the rest of the class, she said, "We're going to have to move fast if we want to leave without being detected. I heard some of the guards talking about a storage room where they're keeping our things. It's two halls down. We'll head there and then find an exit.

An explosion from the direction of the cafeteria rattled the prison. Mr. and Mrs. Fenton shared an alarmed look. "Looks like we're doing that now, kiddos." Mr. Fenton took up a jog. "Come on!"

After that, they were all moving again. Mrs. Fenton hung a right and the rest of them followed. There was a guard standing in the hallway they emerged in, though he didn't appear to be lying in wait. He really looked like he was wondering what the heck he was supposed to be doing. Mrs. Fenton made that decision for him by slamming his face into the wall and knocking him right out.

"Ugh, Sam," Danny complained. "If you keep making googly eyes like that, I'm going to start thinking that you have a crush on my mom."

Sam swiped at him.

They slid to a stop at an intersection. Mrs. Fenton paused to think for a second before making another right, bringing them to an unmarked white door. Door. Not cell. Bit of a weird sight after seeing only barred walls for the past eighteen hours, which meant that it was probably exactly what they were looking for. Mrs. Fenton took the keys from Mr. Fenton and started trying each of them on the lock.

There was shouting from down the hall and another loud explosion. Sam squinted as several figures came into view, faintly making out Ember, Johnny 13, and Technus running down a perpendicular hall, chased by a hoard of guards.

Half of which noticed their group. And stopped. And started flying in their direction.

"Uh, Mrs. Fenton?" One of the nerds from before- Lester? Sam couldn't really keep track, they all smelled like teenage insecurities- said, his voice an impressive three octaves higher than usual. "We've got company."

Danny's mom lifted her head and grit her teeth at the sight of the guards. "These keys aren't-" she shoved them into Mr. Fenton's hands and ran forward, placing herself between the class and the incoming ghosts. "You keep trying those, Jack. I'll handle these clowns."

"They won't work," Tucker said suddenly, causing Sam to drag her eyes away from where Mrs. Fenton was once again kicking some major butt.

"What?" Danny asked.

"The keys. They won't work. They're only meant for cells." Tucker began to gesture excitedly with his hands. "You know how in Doomed, when you're beating the crap out of the small fry monsters, they always have the lamest items on them when you kill them? And the bosses always have the best ones?" Tucker pointed at Mr. Fenton, who was still fumbling with the door. "You got those from a small fry. Why would one of Walker's many goons have a key that opens every lock in this place? It makes sense for a guard to be able to open cells, but other doors? No."

That… actually made sense. Huh. Unfortunately, it also meant that they key they had was completely useless, and the Fentons didn't know.

Just their luck.

Danny took a few moments to put his face into his hands and groan loudly into his palms. When he reemerged, he seemed to be fighting to keep the irritation off of his face. It was a poor attempt, but hey. A for effort. "Okay. Okay. So. Keys don't work. Good catch, Tucker. This is totally good news. The best news. We just need to try lock picking instead. Or something. Sam?"

The three turned to her. She stared back, brain buzzing. She could pick it. Her ability to get them out of chains and cages and other various entrapments had saved their butts multiple times. But, the problem was that doing it in full view of their class would get them a lot of unwanted attention. Attention they might not be able to afford, thanks to Danny-

An ectoblast met a nearby wall, exploding just inches from Paulina's face.

Evidently, while Mrs. Fenton was perfectly capable of creaming all of their enemies, sometimes even numbers could overwhelm skill. A few of the guards had managed to slip past her and were charging towards their group. Fast.

Alright. Options. Did she pick the lock? What other options did she have, really? Who else could-?

Huh.

Sam lunged forward, grabbing a frazzled Paulina Sanchez's hand. Some sort of ungoldly screech crawled out of the girl's throat, but Sam yanked her forward before any further protest could arise. "Shut up and come with me, Sanchez," she said, shoving through the crowd of petrified students. Paulina sputtered behind her, but Sam ignored it in favor of shoving her towards the door and Mr. Fenton out of the way of it. "You said you could pick locks. Do it. Quick."

Paulina shot Sam a dirty look at her demanding tone, but apparently decided that Sam's suggestion greatly improved her odds of surviving those whole mess. She plucked a bobby pin out of her immaculate hair- which remained just as immaculate despite its absence- and bent the tip into a little hook. Then, she stooped down and got to work.

Mrs. Fenton back flipped towards the group and slammed down one of the guards that had been getting too close. "What's the situation, Jack?"

"The keys aren't working!" Mr. Fenton called. "One of the kids- um. Paula, right?"

"Paulina," Paulina replied, voice clipped.

"Right, Paulina here's picking the lock."

Mrs. Fenton grumbled something under her breath that was probably not G-rated, grabbed a guard that had tried to lunge towards the group, and literally threw him away. Another guard fired an ectoblast in their direction again, just missing the head of one of kids from Sam's biology class.

"Any chance you can do that faster, Sanchez?" Sam said, eyeing the smoldering, black spot on the wall.

"I'm going as fast as I can, Manson," Paulina hissed. "So, if you could kindly just shut your-" She cut herself off, retracting the bobby pin and turning the door handle. It opened. The smug look she shot Sam almost made her wish it hadn't. "Got it."

They were immediately caught in a crush of bodies as everyone tried to rush into the sparsely lit room all at once. When Sam finally escaped the crowd, it was because Tucker had grabbed her arm and fished her out.

"Never thought I'd say it," she said. "But thanks for the save, Nerd Boy."

"Can I get that in writing?"

Sam shoved him towards their stuff, which Danny and Jazz had already grabbed and placed in a secluded corner of the room. Probably so that they could safely rifle through it away from prying eyes. "Don't push it."

When they got there, Jazz was going through her first aid kits. She glanced up briefly and gestured towards their bags. "Check your stuff and make sure Walker didn't steal anything. I wouldn't put it past him."

Tucker didn't need to be told twice. He threw his bag open immediately, rifling through it with a purpose. It didn't take a genius to guess what that purpose was.

"Lisa!" He cried, pulling his PDA out from the depths and giving it a wet, sloppy kiss. And yep. Yep. If Sam had to choose one thing that was sort of alright about the whole being thrown in prison thing, it'd be that she hadn't had to deal with Tucker's technophilia for a whole night. "Oh, baby, I missed you so much!"

Sam hip-checked him. "Make out with you girlfriend later," she said. "Right now, you need to count the Fenton Phones, quick. We might be leaving soon."

By this time, Mrs. Fenton had joined them in the room and had managed to shut the door on the guards, locking it quickly from the inside. All they heard on the other side was pounding, not the jingling of keys, which confirmed Tucker's theory that none of the guards were able to unlock anything that wasn't a cell. That bought them some time.

"Kids, make sure your lunches and personal items are in your bag," Mrs. Fenton instructed. Then, she turned to Mr. Fenton. "Jack, did you find-?"

Mr. Fenton hoisted his bazooka over his shoulder, grinning big and wide. "Our weapons? Yes, ma'am! He put 'em all in a pile! Look!"

Sam looked, and lo and behold, right in the corner of the room was a pile of every weapon the Fentons had brought. Walker's goons had apparently been too lazy to sort through them, because they seemed to have been tossed there haphazardly.

It was no surprise to anyone when Mrs. Fenton claimed most of the weapons, hiding them in her suit in ways that should probably be impossible. By the time the two were done, the hoard of at least twenty-five ecto-weapons had dwindled down to a mere handgun, brandished by Mrs. Fenton, and the Fenton Bazooka, which sat on Mr. Fenton's shoulder.

Sam eyes flicked away from them and wandered around the room, searching. Disregarding their classmates and their belongings, it was practically empty, save for an old, rickety table that had been pushed to the side.

"Sam," Jazz said, drawing her back to reality. "Do you have the Fenton Thermoses?"

"Oh. Uh. Gimme a second…" She unzipped her bag and fished around the bottom. One, two, three, four. "Yeah."

"Good. Tucker, Fenton Phones?"

"Twenty-five, all here," Tucker said.

"Okay, Danny checked his bag and he has the ten Lipstick Blasters. I have four first-aid kits, the Ghost Peeler, the Booo-merang, and the class set of Specter Deflectors." What Jazz didn't have with her was her 'What to Bring on a Deadly Ghost Zone Field Trip' list, but she'd probably memorized it, anyway. "Anything else I'm forgetting?"

Sam's eyes strayed to the Fentons again, and then back around the room. There was no other giant pile.

"My weapons," she said. "They're not here."

"What?"

"They're not here," Sam repeated, voice taut with anger. That thieving, conniving, Slenderman wannabe- "Walker sees me as a threat, apparently. He locked my stuff up somewhere different. They're not here."

Tucker asked, quite redundantly in Sam's opinion, "Are you sure?"

"Tucker, we're in a rectangular room with no furniture. If you can see somewhere my stuff might be hidden, I'd love it if you told me."

"Okay, okay. No need to get snippy."

"I'm going to have to take a detour to grab them," she said, whirling to Jazz. Jazz looked hesitant.

"We're going to be escaping fast and we don't know what exit Mom will lead us to. You could get lost, Sam."

"Then, I'll find my way and catch up." She made sure that her stare was steady and firm, so Jazz knew she wasn't joking around. "We don't know if and how things are going to go south from here on out, and I'm going to need those weapons just in case. I'm not leaving without them, and I'm going to go get them whether you agree or not. I just figured it'd be more polite to give you a heads up."

Jazz glanced helplessly at Danny, who shrugged. "Sam can handle herself."

Another beat. "Ugh, you know what? Fine." Jazz shook her head and reached into her bag. "But if you're going to do it, take these with you." She pressed something into Sam's hands. Upon further inspection, she found that the something was actually several somethings: a black and white pair of Fenton Phones, a Fenton Thermos, a wrist ray, a Specter Deflector, and a lipstick blaster. "Make sure your Fenton Phones are on at all times. I'll tell you where we are so that you can catch up. We'll come up with an excuse for why you're gone. Just… be fast."

Sam, more comfortable now that she had some sort of weapon in her hands (tiny weapons, but beggars couldn't be choosers) scoffed. "Of course I will be. The only person faster than me is Fly Boy here," she jabbed a finger in Danny's direction. "And he has an unfair advantage."

"Hey!" Danny made a show of puffing out his chest and flexing. "I can totally out run you, fair and square. I'm fit. I'm in shape." He rapped on his calf muscles with his knuckles. "You could bounce a quarter off of these babies. Look at them."

Sam squinted. "Well, they sure are tiny, just like babies."

"Everyone put in your Fenton Phones," Jazz instructed with a roll of her eyes, cutting off Danny, who'd begun to say, "oh, yeah, well, you're a baby." They did as they were told. Static filled Sam's ear when Tucker turned them on. She quickly muted hers so that she wouldn't have to listen to white noise.

"Okay, so, other than that," Danny said. "Are we all set? Because I think Dad's going to shoot the door."

True to form, Mr. Fenton was charging up the bazooka. Mrs. Fenton announced that that they were going to blow the thing off its hinges, so if everyone could take a step back and get ready to make a break for it, that'd be great. A quick glance around the room told Sam that her classmates weren't overly fond of this plan, but they all stood up, secured their stuff on their backs, and got ready to go anyway.

It was Tucker that noticed the two abandoned backpacks.

"Oh, crap," he said. "Oh, crap, crap, crap."

Danny turned to Tucker, alarmed. "What?"

"Dash and Kwan are missing."

Silence.

Then, a loud, long groan. Danny dropped his face into his hands. "Of course."

Sam hopped onto her toes and frantically scanned the room. Unfortunately, everyone was now clumped together in a group, and Sam didn't have a good vantage point. "I'm too short to see. Are you sure?"

"Sam," Tucker said testily. "We're in a rectangular room with no furniture. If you can see somewhere two six-foot tall football players might be hiding, I'd love it if you told me."

"Oh. I see what you did there."

"Why do these things always happen to ussssssss," Danny whined into Jazz's shoulder. Jazz, for her part, let him, obliging him with comforting pats on the back. It took a few moments, but Danny eventually got bored of pitching a fit and straightened himself up. "Okay," he said, even though his tone suggested that literally nothing was okay, but he was very much going to pretend the opposite. "I'll find them and bring them back. No problem. This is fine. This is totally fine."

Jazz handed Danny his own little ghost fighting kit, identical to Sam's. He slipped on the wrist ray and put the Fenton Thermos and the lipstick blaster in his backpack. Jazz said, "I'll tell you the same thing I told Sam: hurry. I'll tell you where we are the second I know. You have to catch up with us before Mom notices. I don't want her to find out that four kids are missing, including her own son."

"Don't worry, Jazz." Danny managed a small, strained smile. He looked like he was on the verge of an aneurysm. "I'll use my 'unfair advantage' or whatever and fly through the prison to track them down. I'll be-"

Quick, was what he said, but none of them could hear him over the sound of the explosion. The good thing about Fenton Phones? They also sort of acted like earplugs, which proved to be a really useful feature when Mr. Fenton blew off the door with a boom.

The guards that had been pounding on it were thrown back by the force of the bang, leaving the prisoners a clear – if temporary – path down the hall. They took it, sprinting through before the ghosts could collect themselves. Sam followed the crush initially, but shared a nod with Danny as they approached an intersection. Tucker gave them both a thumbs up. Jazz, another nod.

Sam went left. Danny went right. No one yelled after her, because no one noticed a thing.

Great. Now, down to business. She had to find another guard—possibly several. What Tucker said before had stuck with her; it made no sense for the small fry ghosts to be privy to all of Walker's plans. That meant that she would have to keep grabbing guards until she found one that knew when she wanted to know. Given that Walker was… Walker, he'd probably put her weapons somewhere hard to access. This was going to be harder than just picking a lock.

First things first, though. Location. She could hear footsteps behind her, which meant that a guard was probably already nearby. She could just ambush him and-

Wait. Footsteps?

Walker's guards flew.

Sam whirled around, her stomach dropping straight to her toes. Running behind her was not a ghost, but Paulina Sanchez.

"Why are you-?" Sam sputtered, skidding to a stop. "What are you doing?"

Paulina glared at Sam as if she was the one grievously inconveniencing her. "You told me to come with you!"

"That was- oh, my god, that was just for the lock picking!" Oh no. Oh no no no no no. "Get back to the class!"

Paulina's eyes widened as she realized her mistake. Her voice grew high and thin and panicky. "How am I supposed to know where they are? I followed you, remember?"

Great. Great great great great great great great. "Shut up or one of the guards might hear us! Just… just relax. We'll, uh, retrace our steps, and-"

"Not an option, ladies."

Sam froze. Then, she turned around very, very slowly. And, yep. Yeeeeep. There was Walker himself, staring right at them and flanked by four guards.

Of course.

Things didn't immediately go to crap the second she stepped into the Ghost Zone, which. Was surprising, honestly. In fact, everything was sort of… okay, for a while. She took off towards her target, scared off the small-fry ghosts that were dumb enough to try to challenge her, and enjoyed about an hour of peaceful flying.

Then, it became apparent that her target was some sort of teleporter.

Ninety-two minutes into her mission, and the blip on her tracker just disappeared. Full stop. She had no idea where it went, no indication as to why it vanished, and no clue what to do about it. When she realized she was officially chasing nothing, she cut the engines and ran diagnostics on her suit, figuring it was an error. Nope. Everything was in tip-top shape. Her target was just gone.

On minute ninety-six, it reappeared like nothing had happened. In the complete opposite direction Valerie had been flying in.

This quickly became a trend.

Masters hadn't been lying when he'd said that the target was "highly mobile." The blip went out for minutes at a time before reappearing in a completely different part of the Ghost Zone. She had no idea how the ghost was teleporting, but it was. Because that was just Valerie's luck, apparently.

After flying back and forth chasing the blip for at least an hour, she'd managed to catch the attention of a couple more ghosts. Well, okay, a lot more ghosts. Of the not-so-small-fry variety. Who seemed to want to play Pin the Ectoplasmic Blast on the Ghost Huntress.

And that's when things went to crap.

Get this: apparently, her suit had a shot limit. As in, an upper limit on the amount of shots she could fire over a certain period of time. And she hadn't known.

Being fair, she'd never been caught in a situation where she had to fire off more than, like, twenty shots. Valerie was good at what she did—she could usually finish the job with one. But, that didn't really matter when dozens of ghosts had declared open season on her. Two hours later and here she was, in the middle of a fight and staring at the gun in her hand, which refused to fire.

One of the two ghosts she was currently entertaining lunged at her, and she tossed it over her shoulder. She kicked the other one when it approached and went back to freaking out over her suit. While she ran diagnostics, she spared a glance at her wrist tracker. Her target was gone again, but there were three red blips approaching from the right. Fast.

She glanced up and caught sight of them. Big, ugly, and with huge claws. Nice.

"Now would be a good time to work, you piece of junk," she hissed to her gauntlet. Then, she dodged another swipe from the lunger, which was luckily too dumb to come up with any attacks more creative than, well, lunging. Her suit finally beeped, but what she saw didn't help her any. "My guns ran out of juice? Are you kidding me? I'm in the Ghost Zone!"

Valerie's guns took ectoplasm from the air and used it to replenish their supply. She had been under the impression that that would mean that she would have infinite ammo in the Ghost Zone – which was, you know, made of ectoplasm – but apparently the process of collecting and processing ectoplasm wasn't instantaneous. Which mean that she'd have to wait for her gun to recharge. Which meant that she was a sitting duck in what was essentially a dimension-wide hunting ground.

Thanks for the heads up on that feature, Vlad. Really appreciate it.

She didn't like it, but she'd have to retreat for now. She was in no position to take on five ghosts with no ammo. Well, actually, she could, but it would take a while, she needed to chase her target, and other ghosts might show up in the meantime and join the party. So. Retreat.

Valerie waved at the two green ghosts that she had been entertaining for the past few minutes – whom she'd affectionately dubbed Dumb and Dumber – and took off in the other direction. Luckily for her, her hoverboard would never run out of energy. Probably. Hopefully. She'd be completely screwed if it did.

Another blip appeared on her screen, several hundred yards to the right. She hung a left. It tailed her, bringing her following of ghosts up to six.

She amped up her speed, leaving them all in the dust. They were still on her screen when she looked at her gauntlet, but that was mostly because her map was designed to show a ten-mile radius. She couldn't see them with her own eyes, so she figured she was far enough away to be safe for now.

She glanced down again.

Two more red blips blinked onto her screen, completely out of nowhere. No, wait, just one. And it was right in front of her.

She had hardly a second to dodge to the side before a green blur sot past where she'd been flying just moments before. Great, this one was a teleporter and a lunger. She didn't have time for this— the other six ghosts would just draw nearer the longer she spent idle. No matter how much it hurt her pride, she'd run away if she had to. Anything was better than getting caught in a melee fight with no weapons.

She dodged the ghost again by jumping over it when it flew at her legs. She landed, charged up her hoverboard, and-

And then she saw it.

She processed the ghost's appearance in three individual thoughts as it turned to look at her. They were "flying," "green," and "dog." A ghost dog.

A very familiar ghost dog.

Something in Valerie shriveled at the sight, growing dark and ugly.

"You."

.

.

.

.

Hello! I hope you don't all hate me!

Seriously, I'm super sorry for not posting in a while (haha three months? psh no way that's crazy talk), but college took a lot of adjusting and between school and extra curriculars, I just had no time for OFTAP. On the bright side, I got myself a 4.0! Which hopefully means I can afford to chill during spring semester lmao

I'll be honest: I'm not good w keeping up w schedules, and I think none of you want any more bogus promises, so I'm not going to say shit like "new chapter next week!" or anything because I'm awful and probably won't be able to do it. But! I can promise that I'm working on it! I did NaNoWriMo in Nov and managed to get about half the word count, and that translated to three chapters. I'm gonna see what I can salvage from those (they were kinda written in between essays at like 3am whoops) and get to working out a semi-regular schedule. Again, I'm not gonna pretend I know what that schedule's gonna be, but it'll happen. Hopefully. Eventually.

Really, guys, thanks for all the patience. And sorry that my first post in three months is a chapter rewrite, BUT, please do read this chapter. There are things I added in the edits that'll be important later. Plus it's like... way better than the first chapter 11.

Hit me up on my tumblr, ironinkpen, if you wanna chat (or bully me into writing, that's fine too). See you next update!