You guys! I'm again so sorry for the late update. But at least it was only a week in a half *laughing turning into crying*. Again, so sorry but I'll explain why I got held up with this chapter after you read! :)

Thank you so much to all of my reviewers! I love you guys so much! ShadowDragon357, Blue11msu, The Talent, SamXDanny, CaptainDorito, Littleladybug2, Phantom Fire1, Guest Georgia, Capitolblonde, Mayra58

**Answers to reviewers at bottom:

ShadowDragon357, The Talent, Littleladybug2, Phantom Fire1, Guest Georgia, Mayra58

Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or the song 'Impossible Year' by Panic! At the Disco.


There's never air to breathe

There's never in-betweens

These nightmares always hang on past the dream


I Walk the Line: Davis Pallsum

Word count: 4,564

4/6/16


October 6th, 2014

Monday

Casper High

1:10 p.m.

When Monday rolled around the trio were sad yet happy to be back in Amity Park. Sad that they were back to real life and having to deal with everybody, but happy because they were finally home and sleeping in their own beds and being back in their hometown - even if the people weren't quite making them happy.

They had gotten back the night before fairly late, around 11 o'clock because they had eaten one last dinner with Jazz before heading out on the later train. Sam's car had been sitting in the parking lot when they had arrived and she had dropped them both off before going back to her own home. Her and Danny found it odd that they had only slept next to each other for a couple of days and they were already missing each other's physical presence when they went to bed that night. But they stayed in their own beds, sharing 'dream like' images before succumbing to sleep.

The group also decided to wait to go to the Internet café until Monday night to give their parents ease of mind and since they were pretty tired from the day out in the sun and traveling; that it would be best to go out Monday instead of that night.

When they had arrived at Casper High that morning they were surprised that practically everyone was back to ignoring them – even Sam. Sure there was still Paulina and Dash to count on, but everyone else seemed to have gone back to ignoring them all. They were incredibly thankful for that fact and went about their day as normally as they would any other Monday.

However, as they sat in Ghost 101 now, they realized the end of their day wasn't going to be so normal. See, they had forgotten that this week in Ghost 101 they were starting their dissection/ fighting unit.

They had walked up to their normal classroom, but on the door was a sign that redirected them to room 107 – which they knew to be a science room. Upon arrival to their designated room they were confronted with lab tables filled with silver dissection trays, boxes with latex gloves, and tools laid out beside the trays.

The trio made their way around the a lab table in the back and read what Agent Z had written on the white board in front of them in red marker.

Frog Dissection TODAY!

- No more than 3 to a table

- If you do not have closed toed shoes come see me

- Hair up and away from face

- Grab a pair of safety goggles from the back white closet

"I thought we were dissecting ghosts? Not frogs." Sam said as they went and grabbed safety goggles from the white cabinet in the back of the room.

"Me too." Danny said. Though he was slightly happy that he didn't have to worry about dissecting ghosts at the moment. He could handle a frog. He didn't know if he could handle a ghost. Especially ones he's already fought. It was different when he devoured level ones and twos for sustenance after a really hard fight but it was completely different to open one up and dissect them.

"I am not good with this." Tucker protested looking pale as he looked at the scalpel, tweezers, scissors and dissection pan. "There is no way I can do this."

"Did you parents sign the form?" Danny asked.

"Yes!" Tucker cried as more and more students entered the room. "They said that I just have to get over it and that it's not that big of a deal. Hello! We're opening up an animal!" He turned and pointed at the tray in front of them. "It's gross! No way. I'll pass out if I have to."

"What and go to the nurses office?" Sam smirked.

"Shut it, Sam. The nurse's office would be better than dealing with those things."

She rolls her eyes, "Like you haven't had to," her voice lowered to a whisper, "stitch up Danny before."

"That's different! That was putting skin back together, not splitting it open."

"Okay, then let's go see if Agent Z will let you off on that part." Danny interrupted before they could continue.

"Yeah." Tucker held out the word. "Yeah." He nodded his head. "Okay, okay I'll go ask." He got up front he table and made his way up to the front where Agent Z was organizing papers in the desk, and the final bell rang.

"Agent Z?" Tucker called attention once he reached the front.

"Yes, Mr. Foley?"

"I'm not sure I can do this whole dissecting thing. You know with a real frog."

Agent Z stopped looking through the papers on his desk and stared up at Tucker. "You sure?"

"Yes." He nodded quickly.

The Agent sighed. "Alright. You'll be the one to fill out the lab sheet then in your group while Mr. Fenton and Miss Manson do the actual dissection. Can you handle that?"

"I think so."

"Good. And if you feel like you have to throw up, just go ahead and leave; you don't have to ask permission."

Tucker sighed happily, "Thank you." Agent Z nodded in accordance and Tucker made his stay back to the table.

"What did he say?" Danny asked as Tucker sat back down.

"Said, you guys are going to do the dissection yourselves and I just write everything down."

"Not that this should be being done, anyway." Sam said sourly. "They're killing the frogs. The wild frog population gets lower and lower every year and these cases do not help." Danny and Tucker only nodded along. They were on the same page as Sam after doing some research on the topic but they usually just let her talk about it, because it was easier.

"Alright class, today's the day for dissection. Now that we've gotten the few of you who were not ready for this procedure fixed up, it's time to start." Agent Z began the class making everyone fall silent.

"Now, today we are dissecting frogs because this will be the practice run for when we dissect level 3 ghosts on Wednesday. The procedure is somewhat different but our focus is on learning how to use the tools and to identify different parts on the inside. Here is our diagram of how to cut open our frog." He moved back and pointed towards the power point he had pulled up on the projector.

"One person will take down the information while the one or two of you will be the ones to dissect the frog. I will not be dissecting your frog for you. And if you ask me to do the entire dissection you will lose an automatic 40% from this assignment. However, if need help, please feel free to ask. You may begin once I give you your frog."

Agent Z picked up the box on the table top and started handing frogs out. When the frog was placed down on the trio's table Sam's face instantly shifted into a sad horror.

"This really needs to stop."

"We know, Sam." Tucker said.

Danny started pulling on a pair of gloves. "But you already took it to the Board of Directors. If you went up to them again I think they'd give you the same verdict as before."

Sam eyed the poor dead frog in front of her. "Maybe. Maybe, I just need to change my tactic."

"Whatever you think is best. Now, let's see what we have to do with this thing."


October 6th, 2014

Monday

Manson Mansion

3:50 p.m.

"Hey, grandma!" Sam called as she passed Ida's room on the way to her own room, ready to drop her back-pack and start on a new approach to the School Board with her plan to 'Save the Frogs'.

"Hello, bubala. How was your day?"

"Good." Sam stopped and turned around to go back to Ida's room where she was putting away laundry. "Need any help?" She put her bag down next to the door and started hanging up her grandma's things with the hangers on the bed.

"Thank you. So you had a good day?" Ida asked tentatively.

"Yeah, at least until Ghost 101. We had to dissect frogs."

Ida looked up from folding a pair of pants. "Oh dear, was Tucker okay?"

Sam chuckled, "Yeah, he just wrote out the report and didn't look at it the whole time."

"Oh, good." She put a hand to her chest relieved, then started folding again. "Sometimes I worry about that boy."

"Sam smirked, "We all do at times." They stayed quiet for nearly a minute and the only sound being the rustle of clothes and clank of hangers until Ida spoke up.

"Have you and Danny decided what you're going to do? Whether you'll do the interviews or not?"

Sam instantly flashed back to the conversation that she, Danny and Tucker had had on the train ride back to Amity Park. They had discussed every option they could do and nothing was on par with the effectiveness that the interviews could produce. They then started planning from who would do it down to a word for word enactment and statement from each of them.

"Yeah, we all agreed that we would give it a try. But Danny's going to go first and see what happens with that. Then if the News calls and says they want an interview with me, I'll do it. But if not and nothing gets cleared up I'll go on in a couple of days or something."

"We'll need to do this as soon as possible." Ida handed her a few more clothes to hang up before taking a seat on her bed and relaxing against the pillows. "The GIW contacted your parents this morning and informed them that they would be ready to perform the extraction on Thursday. They wanted to do it Wednesday apparently but it was a no-go because they go the paper work finished later than they wanted."

Sam groaned and leaned heavily on the bed. She shut her eyes, forgetting about the clothes. "Thursday. Alright, at least we have a deadline." She let out her breath slowly before standing straight one more and resumed pulling the last few clothes of her grandmothers onto their hangers.

"I guess it's good that we're going to go out tonight and check out that Internet Café downtown and see if we can figure out who the creep was that did all this. Then when it comes down to tomorrow, Danny will conduct his interview with that information – hopefully. And then we'll have to just wait and see." Sam finished with the clothes. She picked them all up and brought them into Ida's closet where she proceeded to hang them up.

"So far this is the best plan of action. And don't worry I'll make sure to cover for you in case your father or mother decide to check on you. Which they might, considering you're still grounded." Ida narrowed her eyes at the closer where Sam was.

Sam peeked her head out knowing that her grandma had been giving her a look. She chuckled when she found she was right and disappeared back into the closet. "And who do you think I go this rebellious side from, huh?"

Ida huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. "Certainly not your mother."

That comment only had Sam laughing harder than she was prepared for.


October 7th, 2014

Tuesday

Internet Café: Webbed Coffee

12:20 a.m.

It was late when Danny picked Sam and Tucker up. He had actually been bust most of the afternoon and the night catching the ghosts from the weekend and the day – though he was happy that it hadn't taken very long. He was even more pleased to have one day where he didn't run into Valerie or the GIW. But not running into Valerie was typical on a Monday; the GIW however, was a different story. He wondered if they were waiting to go after him until Thursday when they would try to get Sam and extract his 'essence' from her. Sam had informed him earlier through the link about what Ida had told her and he proceeded to tell Tucker.

She actually had told him while he was telling Maddie and Jack about his weekend with Jazz and it threw a monkey wrench on some of the better parts he was telling them. He could tell that they had taken notice, but he hoped that they just chalked it up to him being annoyed he was back and still grounded then try and find a reason themselves in their own way.

But Danny didn't focus too much on that aspect and focused on the task at hand. Danny flew them inside of the Webbed Coffee; once inside Tucker disabled the security system while he and Sam worked on finding the correct computer that Tucker had traced everything to.

"Alright. Now that that's done, let me check out this security footage and see if we can figure out who was sitting at that computer." Tucker said as he took a seat in the back office where he began pulling up the videos from last week Tuesday.

"God, I hope we find whoever did this." Sam said as she sat on Danny's lap since there were only two chairs in the office and she didn't feel like grabbing one from out in the Café area.

They watched on four screens – four different angles they could get. They fast forwarded and rewound and paused and played second by second for nearly two hours. Two hours of either not recognizing anyone who took the seat or seeing it empty. Two hours and they had only made it 5 hours into one day. And there were another 4 to go.

"If we don't find out who did this after all of this, I'm going to be royally pissed." Danny grumbled, running a hand down his face. He'd gotten a couple breaks throughout the night to take care of a few ghosts so thankfully he hadn't spent the entire time watching the screens, but that had only been twenty minutes total of ghost fighting.

"We're going to find something. There has to be something. Even if it's these people we don't know. We can find their names from the sheet that the owner has to keep track and go from there." Tucker said in reassurance.

"Um, so this is dumb and should have realized this sooner." Sam said bringing them both to her attention. "Why're we not looking at the video from around the time that the email was sent?"

Danny and Tucker looked at her with wide eyes. "You have gotta be kidding me!" Tucker groaned and began fast forwarding to the 6:00 p.m. time slot.

"I can't believe we forgot about that." Danny looked on in disbelief at the video on the computer. "We have got to be more tired than we thought."

"I hope not, cause whoever did this is sitting right there." Sam pointed when Tucker had stopped fast forwarding and played the back and white surveillance normally.

Someone was sitting at the designated computer. From what they could figure, the person was a man wearing jeans and sweatshirt. But they were shocked that they couldn't get a good look at the guys face from the angles they were in, because the guys' hood was up. They tried the other angles of the videos but the four they were watching were the best ones.

"Back up a bit. See if we can see him coming in. I wanna know who's sitting there."

Tucker obliged Sam's request. They went back nearly ten minutes where they were able to watch the man enter the Internet Café and making his way to the designated computer. But as they watched each camera angle for any sign they were unable to get any sort of good look at the guys face. No matter where he walked and what he did, the trio had stayed up on him but they could only just make out a nose.

"This has to be our guy." Sam said, "What do the records say, who was it?"

Danny pulled the log over to him and found the correct time slot. "I don't recognize the name. Davis Pallsum."

"I don't either."

"Never heard of him."

"Maybe we'll know him if we see his face." Danny sighed and leaned back in his chair, eyes locked on the video footage.

"If we could only see his face." Tucker groaned. He made the video move a bit faster; they all watched but the guys' head didn't move. They spent another 30 minutes waiting on the sped up video for him to move again.

"Alright." Tucker slowed it down to normal speed, "This is the last chance."

They waited expectantly as Davis got up from his chair after logging off the computer. He kept his head down and hood up as he made his way back to the log book by the front door. He sighed out and continued on to the door. The trio felt their hope drop since they still couldn't see his face once he reached the door.

But then the man did the oddest thing. He stopped at the door, one hand on the handle, turned to look straight at the camera in the corner and smirked, before ducking his head and exiting from the Café.

"No, shit." Tucker gasped. The trio stared at the black and white video footage, shock clear on their faces. "No, shit!" Tucker's voice dropped in anger. He rewound the video and paused on the frame where Davis Pallsum had smirked at the camera. Only, they knew that this guy wasn't, Davis Pallsum.

"That's it." Danny growled. "I have sat idle long enough. I'm confronting Vlad." He got up from his chair and started pacing the small office space, eyes glued to the screen. Vlad – as Masters – was smirking up at him and the only thing he wanted to do was punch his lights out, then add a couple more for good measure. He was so angry he couldn't even enjoy how funny Vlad looked in regular clothes.

"Why would Vlad do this? What reason did he have for this? Wouldn't it be at least, to him, another link for people to find out your secret? And if people find out your secret, then you'll tell everyone about him." Sam groaned, "This just doesn't make sense! Why would he do this? This isn't his normal M-O."

"You mean, making Danny look bad isn't his normal M-O?" Tucker asked sarcastically as he made a copy of the video for himself.

"It's not like he does it like this." Danny threw his hands up in frustration. Sam and Tucker watched him carefully unsure if Danny would start spewing ice everywhere or not.

Danny continued to pace, cursing Vlad's name between incomprehensible words. Sam sat in her chair steaming in anger and Tucker finished up deleting evidence that they were ever there from the security cameras. Once Tucker had turned the security system back on and Danny had cooled down slightly they flew up to the roof of the building.

"Hello, Daniel."

"Vlad." Danny growled, spotting Plasmius at the other end of the roof. He set Sam and Tucker down on the roof top not taking his eyes off Vlad. "What the hell do you want? What game are you trying to play?" Danny let go of Sam and Tucker's waists and moved his arms into a fighting ready position with an ecto-ball coming to life in his right hand. "What do you get out of all this?"

"Now Daniel, really." Vlad kept his composure with his arms crossed and moved a couple of steps towards them. "Must you always be so high strung? No need for that. I've come to have a small chat." He took a few more steps towards the group, but Danny fired the ecto-ball at the ground in front of Vlad's feet.

"Like I believe what you say." Danny rolled his eyes. "Now answer my questions."

Vlad rolled his eyes, but stayed where he stood. "If I told you that, then I might as well knock over my King now."

Danny's anger was growing rapidly, "This isn't a chess match!" He shouted lighting up both hands.

Vlad tsked and shook his head, "Life is always a chess match, Daniel. The sooner you understand that, the better you could do in this world. That is one of the many reasons you've yet to beat me." Vlad glanced at Tucker then Sam, taking notice of the necklace still tied around her neck. "Ah, I see that this ordeal has not created a rift between the two of you."

"An ordeal that you started!" Danny threw the two beams at him. Vlad simply dodged them both.

"We really need to work on your temper, Little Badger. But if you insist." He smiled at Danny and threw an ecto-beam his way.

Sam and Tucker dodged to the side while Danny blocked the blast with one of his shields.

"I see you've kept up some of your work in my absence." He flew towards Danny sending another blast his way.

Danny growled and turned intangible, "You are not my mentor." He aimed kick at Vlad who blocked at the same time as throwing a punch at Danny. He barely blocked in time and fired up another ecto-ball.

"If only you'd see that, that isn't as true as you'd like it to be." He smirked at Danny and sent a ray towards his head. Danny used his eye beams to freeze the blast, catching it and threw it back at Vlad who turned intangible to miss being speared.

"How could you do that? What purpose than your own amusement did doing all this serve?" He dodged blast after blast from Plasmius but he got hit on the side of the arm as he wasn't fast enough to dodge one of them. Danny fired back more forcefully using his mix of ice and ectoplasm and was happy to see he got a hit to Vlad's chest.

"You've gotten quicker. But alas," he teleported away. Danny turned around expecting him to turn up behind him but he went there. He turned back around and was met with an upper cut and a kick to the stomach, sending him to the roof they were fighting over. "That information will be revealed in due time. How are the GIW handling the situation."

Danny groaned and got up from the ground as Sam and Tucker started open firing with their weapons on Vlad. He watched as Vlad sent a solid wall of ectoplasm at them, sending them crashing to the ground.

"Leave them alone!" He growled shooting back up and hurling a few ecto-beams at Vlad hitting him at least once.

"So it's not going well then." Vlad caught one of his ecto-beams and redirected it back to him but he dodged out of the way quick enough and aimed his icy eye beams at Vlad.

"How do you think it's going." He flew towards Vlad aiming a punch at his stomach. "And you!" His attack was blocked like he knew it would be and followed up with a kick to the hip that shocked Vlad. "You called the GIW on me! Not only that but," he hit him again, "you were the one that knocked me out in the first place!"

Vlad blocked Danny's kick by grabbing his foot. He pulled Danny towards him and delivered a punch to his face and stomach, knocking him back a few yards. "It was the best way to know what was really going on. What the GIW were actually doing behind closed doors." He dodged Danny's attack but Danny blocked all of his own and Danny could tell that Vlad was pleased that he was keeping up. This knowledge made him feel disgusting, like he needed to shower 10 times. "As mayor I've seen the facility but I knew that they wouldn't show me much else." He grunted the last word as Danny got in a good hit.

"It was worse than what you could imagine."

Vlad wiped the blood from his lips as they went back at it. "I know, Daniel. I bugged the place using you as the carrier. It was a necessary risk, dear boy."

"What!" The trio shouted angrily. Danny couldn't actually believe… actually never mind, he could believe it. Danny decided to put his anger into trying to beat Vlad to a pulp.

"But I knew that you would be fine. That your little family would get you out." Vlad was able to get out between the hits Danny was giving him. "But I think it's best to be heading out. I've only scheduled a few minutes to deal with this. No worries," Vlad dodged an ice spear that Danny sent his way. "I'll check in later. Maybe send someone else to deal with your idiot father."

Danny aimed another kick but he was pushed back by the spinning vortex that Vlad was creating and soon vanished into, leaving them with an empty roof top.

"No! Come back and fight! You coward!" Danny practically screamed.

He could hear Sam shouting angrily below him about what Vlad had said but he only focused on trying to see if Vlad had actually teleported away closer than what he thought. But he didn't see him. Didn't see anyone for that matter. Then he remembered that it was 3 o'clock in the morning, of course no one would be out and about.

"I can't believe that it was Vlad that did this." Tucker exclaimed throwing his hands up in the air.

"I can't believe he actually admitted that he did all this." Sam paced the roof top as Danny landed back on it.

"All I care about is getting him to tell us why he did this." Danny grumbled.

"And that's most definitely not going to happen." Tucker sighed, running a hand over his face.

Danny growled and shot an ecto-ray at the slightly raised wall along the roof, "I'll take you guys home." Then afterwards he was going to their clearing to let out his frustrations because he really didn't want to hurt some innocent ghost.

October 7th, 2014

Tuesday

Roof-Top of the Webbed Coffee

3:00 a.m.


Alright! So as you can see Vlad has finally (FINALLY) shown up in this story even if it was just for a little bit. So I did my best trying to write Vlad. I know I'm not very good with his character yet, and I hope it'll come out better once I start infiltrating him into this story more. That's one of the reasons why this took so long. The last part of this chapter I kept having to rewrite over and over and over again because Vlad just didn't sound right or the fighting wasn't all there or Danny was just being an idiot and then one time I realized I completely left out Sam and Tucker so I had to go back and put them in. And this was the end result. I'm pretty okay with how their fight went and what not but I know some of you might not be, but if you would like to help me write Vlad and/or fight scenes better then let me know!

Expect the next chapter in one week after I posted this one! HINT: the next chapter is going to be super-duper long and have pretty much from their Tuesday (so tomorrow) till like the following Tuesday. We're going to have this next chapter chalk full of things.

**Answers to reviews:

ShadowDragon357: Sam would totally scare Tucker with a reptile! LOL

The Talent: Sam's my fav too! I find that I write her a lot better than everybody else and I can write better in her voice too. Yeah, I liked having them have a time out but it is quite strange having them in a different environment where they don't have to worry.

Littleladybug2: I'm so happy to have you here and I hope you enjoyed this chapter like the rest of the story :) you came in at a good pint because the craziness is really going to pick up again :)

Phantom Fire1: You'll have to wait and see. But if I do put it in it won't be in this first book.