Amity Park Zoo:
One of the main exhibition, the domed gorilla habitat was empty as night had fallen and all the visitors had left. Inside, the rare Gorilla, Sampson, stood and scratched his butt while our heroes were watching him.
They had taken over the observation tower, using binoculars to observe the animal and by they, it was only Sam who had a fascinated interest in it.
"There he is, Sampson. So gifted, so...majestic" she said, watching him scratch his back for the 100th time in the hour.
The boys leaned against the desk bored while Lina had her eyes closed, but her ears were focused on her friends.
"Sam, we've been watching the gorilla scratch his butt for, um, how long?" Danny asked, turning to Tucker.
The said boy left out a yawn as he checked his watch. "Six hours."
Danny followed suit. "Time flies when you're majestically scratching your butt."
"It's only a matter of time before you find out something about Sampson, nobody's ever learned!" Sam argued.
Lina opened one eye, turning to look at her friend. "Even I doubt that Sam."
The goth just scoffed and turned to Danny. "You should go and try to communicate with him" however, she was only met with a sleeping Danny, causing her to frown. "Ugh, great. Tucker, you're his manager, can you—"
She cut short once she noticed Tucker sleeping next to Danny all curled up. Then, he turned and ended up cuddling with his friend. That caused Lina to open both eyes and hold back a laugh by covering her mouth.
She glanced at Sam, who grinned and grabbed the camera they brought, only to take a picture of them.
"I need a copy of that," she said, watching the now printed picture in Sam's fingers.
"Boys hugging makes every yearbook funny," she said, tucking the picture in her back pocket.
"Yep"
"Come with me" Sam suddenly said, grabbing Lina's wrist and lifting her before dragging her all the way to the Enclosure of the Gorilla.
In the Tiger habitat, the main apex predator and attraction of the zoo was fast asleep. At the space, Sulker phased and materialized while with his binoculars looked from Lina being dragged by Sam to the sleeping Danny in the tower.
Unaware that the tiger had woken up and was ready to attack him
"Oh, please" the ghost voiced, barely seeing the animal as a threat.
Back at the Gorilla Dome, Sampson heard the growling and fighting noises which made him run towards them, as far as his enclosure would let him. He then noticed the two teens approaching, turned his attention to them and started to make distressed grunting noises to alert them.
"What is it, you wondrous being?" Sam asked as Lina watched around, feeling that something was odd. Sampson came over and continued to grunt at them, pointing towards the tiger habitat. "Is something wrong?" Sampson went to his habitat cage's door and hung off of it, still grunting in distress. "You want out?"
Lina snapped from her gaze to the tiger habitat once she heard the noise of something being unlocked. She followed the source, seeing the cage door opening and then immediately to Sam with the hand on the control panel.
"Sam!" she hissed, but before she could do anything, Sampson had run away towards the tiger habitat.
Back in the tiger's habitat, the said predator was hanging in Skulker's net. Skulker phased out of the tiger habitat and looked through his binoculars. Beneath the binoculars' target screen read, "GORILLA ATTACKING!" in green blinking letters.
"What? Gorilla attacking?" he questioned, and his answer soon came.
Sampson suddenly jumped on him and knocked him down, then started hitting him. Skulker blocked one of the hits, then kicked Sampson off of him. The Gorilla though once again attacked Skulker and spun him in the air with his feet, then kicked him off before biting his wrist armour.
The Ghost Hunter to escape shoot ectoplasm onto Sampson's eyes from a small wrist blaster, causing Sampson to back off and hold his face. Skulker then went to shoot a net at him, but Sampson grabbed it mid-air and twirled Skulker around by it. The net eventually snapped off Skulker's wrist, and he crashed into the observation tower. Danny and Tucker were still sleeping, but Danny's ghost sense goes off, and he shivered.
Lina was in a small argument with Sam about the release of Sampson but was interrupted by the Halfa's ghost senses going off as a Skulker was thrown above them. With wide eyes, she observed him heading for the observatory.
She quickly turned into a ghost and rushed after him, just as he crashed into the tower. The boys were still sleeping, and before Skulker could harm them, Lina phased through the wall.
She became solid and aimed a strong punch at his cheek, only for him to grab it with ease. With a toothy smirk, he flipped her arm and tossed her to the wall before aiming his gun at her. Stunned, the Halfa was ready to avoid when Sam appeared in the doorway.
"Oh my gosh!" Before she could say anything, Skulker covered her mouth with ectoplasm.
"Hey!" Lina shouted, diverting his attention from her friends to her.
"Fine, you first then."
Suddenly, Sampson flew in through the window and knocked Skulker into the desk. Skulker threw him off himself before phasing out through the wall as Sampson starts to charge at him. The Gorilla missed and ended up pounding at the wall, which waked up Danny and Tucker.
They screamed once from the banging; then they noticed they were holding each other, so they screamed again. The third time they screamed once they noticed Sampson free and too close to them.
"Wil, you two stop it!" Lina shouted, her head aching from her collision with the wall.
"Gorilla. Loose!" Tucker pointed out.
"I got him! I'm going ghost!" Danny shouted right after, taking his ghost form before picking up the animal up by the arms. "Damn, you are heavy."
Suddenly, the weight was lifted as Lina joined him and together, they carried him and phased him through the wall outside into the air. Then they did the same, phasing him into the Gorilla habitat.
As Danny went outside to shut the door, Lina looked at the animal and smiled.
"Thank you for your help, Sampson. I own you one."
She then phased out of the habitat, turning human and landing next to Danny, who had just closed the door from the control panel.
Sam approached first; Tucker hot on her track. "Danny, I meant to tell you, there was a gho—"
However, the boy cut her off. "I wonder who let the gorilla go...Sam?"
Tucker joined. "Yeah. Wait 'til we tell everybody at school you let out a four-hundred-pound gorilla."
Lina folded her hands in front of her chest and joined Sam's side. She didn't say anything just exchanged a look with her friend before the Goth pull out the pic of the boys hugging in their sleep.
"Or we just keep it our little secret," Danny said, suddenly embarrassed.
"Yeah, we really have no proof she did it, you know."
The girls high fived and the quartet decided to leave the zoo, for a moment the encounter with the Ghost forgotten. Unaware to them, it wouldn't be the last time they would meet him.
As they arrived home, tired and sleepy, the quarter came to a halt once they noticed the new face in the living room. A reporter was sitting next to Maddy, Jazz close by, and so was Jack. They all looked at them and most specifically at the exhausted Danny and slightly beaten up Lina.
"Danny, Lina, look at you! I'm not sure I like this overnight zoo research" Maddie said, her tone as scolding as it could be.
"Mom, come on. We're just a bunch of kids. In the zoo. At night. Alone"
Everyone kept starring at them, not convinced. Lina came to the rescue.
"We have to build our report…so please excuse us…we will be in…Danny's room" she gave a fake smile and pushed Danny forward, their friends following them.
They came to a halt outside Danny's bedroom door. Lina's was right next to it, but she wanted to ensure Danny wouldn't collapse on the floor from exhaustion. She was not in the best state either, but Danny came first.
"Here we go, Danny. Home in time for some well-deserved rest" Tucker said, and his PDA beeped, and he checked it" But keep it quick because you've got thirteen minutes.
Danny's & Lina's ghost sense suddenly went off. Danny opened his bedroom door, and Skulker turned visible in the doorway.
"Hello, Ghost Children," he said and sent his net.
By instinct, Lina turned intangible while Danny stared. This resulted in only him getting trapped by the net before he was pulled into the room. The door slammed shut behind him.
"Danny!" Sam & Tucker shouted while Lina's eyes flashed red.
Quickly turning into her ghost form, she phased through the wall with the intention to harm the intruder.
Inside Danny's room, Skulker was standing above the trapped hero.
"One of the two human ghost Children in its natural habitat," he said with a grin.
"Who are you?" Danny asked.
"I am Skulker *Holds up his cage of ghosts* A collector of things rare and unique. And you, Ghost Child, are that and more" he laughed and stomped on a model rocket.
"Hey, my rocket! I built that!"
"Pity, though. I'd hoped you would put up more of a fight."
"You forgot me!" a female voice and a black-gloved fist hit Skulker on his right cheek.
The force and impact were big enough that the much bigger ghost was sent to the nearest wall. Getting control of himself, he rubbed his pained cheek and looked at an angry Lina. Her eyes glowed red in a threatening manner.
"Took your time" Danny commented as he turned into a ghost and phased out of the net.
Now, the two of them flew side by side and cracked their knuckles while glaring at the ghost hunter.
Outside the room.
Sam and Tucker were struggling to open the door.
"That's the ghost from the zoo!" Sam said.
"Danny or Lina?" Tucker asked.
"No, the other guy."
A loud crash comes from Danny's room, and seconds later, a voice came from downstairs.
"Hello? What's going on up there?" Jazz asked, annoyance hearable in her tone.
Sam and Tucker shared a worried look, then rushed towards the stairs, knowing they had to cover the duo while they handled the new ghost.
In the living room, Jazz glared upstairs before turning to the reporter with a smile, having a full 180-degree turn of facial expression.
"You know, ghost hunting isn't the only thing my parents do, Connie. It's really a side interest. What they're really into is—" her words were interrupted by a loud crash upstairs.
Jack immediately stood up. "Ghost! Ghost! Ghost!"
Sam and Tucker started to walk down the stairs when they were spotted by the adults and the teen in the living room.
"Kids, get down! There's a ghost in the house" Maddie told them, getting ready to stand and fight.
Tucker gulped. "Actually there's three- *Sam elbows him* -I mean two…much homework to be done for there to be a ghost here" he then headed for the kitchen. "I'll get some snacks."
Sam was left alone at the base of the stairs. "Yeah, Danny's upstairs *they hear a loud crash* Uh, lifting weights?"
"What about Lina?" Maddie asked.
"She is…Uhm…helping him, to ensure he does it properly."
"He doesn't have exercise equipment up there."
Another loud crash can be heard from upstairs, everyone turning their attention towards its source.
"My computer!" Danny shouted in horror.
"No, that's Jazz's" Lina corrected him.
"That's why he's using his computer," Sam said, quickly trying to play along.
In the kitchen, Tucker was running towards the fridge, but a few steps inside and Danny crashed through the ceiling and into the kitchen table, breaking it into pieces. Skulker jumped down through the ceiling in front of him; his one hand wrapped tightly around Lina's neck.
"Let. Me. Go. Fishface." The female halfa said, her hands trying to loosen the grip of his big fingers around her neck.
"Come, Ghost Kids. Time to see your new home" with those words, he grabbed Danny and phased through the floor.
He headed for the lab, earning yells from Danny along the way while Lina was staring with wide eyes, fear overwhelming her body.
As they disappeared, everyone came into the kitchen to investigate the crashing sound. They only saw Tucker, next to the mess that was created by the fight.
The boy sees all eyes on him and acting on instinct; he pulled a karate pose. "Uh...hi-ya!"
"What's going on?" Connie, the report, asked.
Another crash was heard, coming from the lab.
"Sounds like rats in the lab," Tucker said, trying to explain it.
"Ghost rats. I knew it" Jack quickly concludes, forcing the pre-teen to facepalm.
Sam, motioned for Tucker towards the door and the duo quickly headed out of the kitchen. "Don't worry; we'll get rid of them."
Connie lifted an eyebrow. "I'd like to learn a little more about this Danny and this adopted girl, Lina" she began to walk towards the stairs.
"Uh, that's probably not such a great idea!" Jazz said, trying to change the topic.
"I'd like to see what they are doing up there, anyway," Maddi said and followed Connie towards the stairs.
"Wait!"