The following week had been relatively for Danny following finding his long lost brother. While happy to have found him and slightly sad but understanding that he chose to remain in the Ghost Zone to continue the battle he had been forced to fight since he as a little Danny had still felt unhappy about how his parents had blatantly lied to him and Jazz about their brother, pretending he had never existed all this time and never telling them the truth until Jazz finally remembered.

The constant attention from the students at the college weren't helping either.

Danny was leaning on the table with one hand holding his face up while the other was holding a spoon as he tried to each his lunch. Sam had packed her own lunch and seemed mostly fine.

It was the constant flashing of the cell phones from all around the lunch room, wanting to take their picture that was the problem.

"Seriously? Don't these people have their own lunch to eat?" Danny groaned.

"Didn't you and Tucker once wish for this kind of attention?" Sam asked, eating her salad.

"That was in high school. We didn't know any better at the time. Plus there is a difference between high school popularity and this kind." Danny replied.

"Which is?"

"They don't follow you back to your dorm in high school." Danny groaned again.

This was becoming annoying.

He didn't have any sense of normalcy or even privacy aside from going to the bathroom around here and even then he was always looking over his shoulder.

Why couldn't people give him two seconds just to not be the big hero?

Couldn't he have some personal space?

"You think I'm not a celebrity? I'm dating the world's greatest hero." Sam pointed out.

"So you have people stalking you, taking your pictures and asking for autographs?" Danny asked calmly.

"…No."

It wasn't a bad thing but this wouldn't be the first time Sam felt like she and Tucker were Danny's shadow.

And that's not even mentioning the fall of Tucker's political career.

During Danny's 'family reunion' Tucker had lost most of his workers at City Hall, many of them quitting because they claimed Tucker was unreasonable to work with:

Shouting at people to listen to him.

Refusing to listen to possible holes in his ideas and policies.

The loss of jobs because of his plans.

The constant spending on new and improved technological marvels that left Amity Park in deep dept.

Tucker had also effectively torn out the city's infrastructure and had bankrupted the city by making it mandatory to have gadgets that no one wanted, knew how to use or even needed and tried to set down infrastructure for his 'City of the Future' without consulting anyone how to properly assimilate it into the city which was later pointed out by Damon Gray in another campaign promo. He tried to make everything automated and pass a law to throw out anything that was 'low tech' or 'obsolete' like old style parking meters, forcing guards at ticket booths to retire so 'efficient' computers would take over and handle taking the money and dispensing the tickets and allowing cars to pass. Unfortunately because of the lousy building design and refusing to head anyone's advice on how poorly built the new buildings were the so-called city of the future collapsed within hours of the grand re-opening that had been live on national television. What was worse was that Tucker's new city had been built over half of the old city and caused a lot of people to lose their homes, forcing them to move to other cities while others were left to struggle to find some form of work.

At this point the only way Amity Park could survive as a city was to agree to be annexed by the nearest city to save it and erase the debt but the problem was that Tucker refused to even consider the idea, believing he could somehow rebuild the city to be better than ever.

"What was Tucker thinking?" Danny grumbled as he looked over the news article. "And he actually try to make it mandatory for the girls to wear futuristic 'anime' style clothes? Did he really think he could pass a law for that?"

"Seems like it." Sam nodded.

"I remember him saying something about trying this at the last convention we went to but I never thought he would go through with it." Danny groaned. "Damn it, Tucker. You haven't learned a thing at all, have you?"

Pretty much everyone was looking for an excuse to kill Tucker by this point and it didn't make Danny happy since the entire reason Tucker was mayor in the first place was because he used his reputation as Danny Phantom's 'best friend' to get elected in the first place and had used it to strong arm any of his opponents into silence.

Danny was still not happy about that.

"The governor washed his hands of the whole debacle." Danny sighed. "He was too busy dealing with the fall out of the Disasteroid and the fact that ghosts were real with people calling him about possible ghost attacks in places other than Amity Park. He had a rough time trying to sort the real ones from the fake ones and he thought Amity Park would be safe since it was the home of the world's greatest hero."

"Well, he's not wrong. You kept Amity Park safe for years." Sam shrugged.

"From ghosts, politics are different." Danny replied.

"You played a game of politics with Vlad."

"True but I was trying to ruin his image. There's a big difference between officially running in politics and then being the sneak who tries to ruin the politician you hate." Danny mumbled, shaking his head. "I don't think Tucker will last very long after this. Even his parents have tried reasoning with but he just won't listen to them anymore."

He felt his cell phone vibrate and opened it to see a call from Tucker. "Well, speak of the devil."

He answered it and put it on speaker. "Hey, Tuck. How's it going?"

"Danny, I need your help. Angry mobs are gathering outside of city hall and my parent's house! I think I see pitchforks, torches, tar and feathers! I think they want to tar and feather me on live TV!" Tucker hysterically cried over the phone. "You got to get me out of here!"

"Tucker, I'm at school right now-"

"Danny, my life is on the line here! Please!"

Danny sighed, sharing a look with Sam who just shrugged. "Fine, I'm on my way."

Changing into his ghost form, Danny flew up and phased through the roof before flying off to City Hall. As this happened, everyone in the cafeteria tried taking a picture that practically blinded Sam who closed her eyes and grunted in annoyance.

Xxx

Danny landed in front of City Hall, seeing a mass gather of reporters and angry townspeople shouting for Tucker to come out and face their justice.

Mob justice.

It didn't help that there was a burning pile of PDAs and other gadgets that Tucker had made mandatory for people to have, even if they had no use for them.

"Danny Phantom!" A reporter stepped in front of him. "What do you have to say on mayor's corruption? He is your best friend, correct?"

Danny just turned intangible and walked through the crowd, ignoring the shouting and the questions as he made his way through the front doors. He stopped to notice the door had been barricaded by desks and chairs before heading to the mayor's office, opening the door to find Tucker frantically pacing back and forth.

"Tuck?"

The teen mayor spun around and leapt at Danny with a big smile. "Danny!"

The college student barely managed to remain standing after Tucker grabbed him in a big hug. "Uh…" Danny awkwardly patted him on the back. "Good to see you too?"

"It's crazy, man!" Tucker broke away and walked over to his desk. "People left and right are calling for me to resign and the ones that aren't want to tar and feather me."

"Well, can you blame them? You ran hundreds of people out of their homes." Danny said as he approached the desk. "You even got our favorite arcade close down."

"Yeah but I didn't mean to! I was trying to make this place the best city on Earth!" Tucker closed the curtains over the windows. "It was supposed to be magnificent! A city of technological wonder but it all went so wrong! What was so wrong with my ideas?!"

"You tore the city's infrastructure out to make way for this new city and the one you built in wasn't able to properly integrate itself. Not to mention you spent millions of dollars and left the city in debt. Didn't your staff tell you this might not work?" Danny asked, having been keeping up with the news.

"My staff? They never even gave it a chance." Tucker grumbled as he sat in his chair. "Instead of working with me they kept trying to talk me out until I shut them up."

"And did it occur to you that maybe they had some valid points?" Danny asked which resulted in Tucker glaring at him.

"What is this? An interrogation? I'm your best friend here and you're saying it's my fault?" Tucker asked in a shocked and outraged tone.

"Well, you're the mayor. What am I supposed to think?" Danny shrugged. "And that idea to fill the new clothes with those sci-fi/anime clothes for the ladies?"

"Hey, they would have been practical and fashionable." Tucker argued.

"You ordered them from Japan." Danny pointed out, wondering why Tucker was being so unreasonable. "For all they knew, they could have thought you were setting up a huge anime convention. Not trying to make it the new fashion trend of the decade."

"Why are you arguing with me?" Tucker snapped.

"Because I am trying to understand why you want to blame everyone else for this. You just told me your staff tried to warn you that what you were doing was wrong and look what happened." Danny explained, gesturing outside the window.

"Hey, I'm the mayor so they were supposed to listen to me." Tucker banged the table slightly.

"Again with the 'listening to you' part?" Danny rubbed his face. "Why did you want me here?"

"I need you to protect me. They'll back down when they see that Danny Phantom is the mayor's bodyguard and best friend." Tucker said with a smile. "Once they back down we can get to work on fixing this mess and doing it properly. The City of Tomorrow will probably be back up in a year, better than ever."

Danny couldn't believe what he was hearing.

Tucker wanted him to go outside and make the people back down when they had legitimate reasons to be upset with him?

"And then-"

"No." Danny's mouth moved faster than his mind could process.

Tucker froze and looked back at Danny. "What?"

"I am not going out there to intimidate those people into shutting up after what you've done to them." Danny crossed his arms.

"What? You're my best friend and you'll leave me to the wolves. I'm also the mayor so you have to listen to-"

"Will you shut up about having to listen to you already?!" Danny snapped, eyes glowing green.

The sudden shout caused Tucker to stumble back into his chair, completely stunned from his own friend shouting at him.

"For once in your life listen to me, Tucker and keep your mouth shut. No one cares about your 'City of the Future'! What they do care about is the fact that you cost them their homes, their jobs and maybe the future of their kids because you couldn't take one second to listen to someone else outside of your whiny voice that all your ideas were bad ones! You wanted to make everything automated and make everyone so dependent on your gadgets that it never occurred to you that they would not only have no clue how to work but also because you were just wanting to make everyone fat and lazy!" Danny continued ranting. "And instead of admitting your fault you just want me to clean up your mess and scare everyone in to accepting you're crazed up ideas? Well guess what?" Danny slammed both hands on the table. "It's not going to happen so here's the smart thing to do: resign. Quit, give the job to the next guy if there are any left at all. You've clearly shown you don't care about this city or helping its people, just making it great for you!"

Tucker couldn't believe what his best friend was saying to him.

"I am not helping you out of this because there's nothing I can do and even there was it wouldn't be right. You know, because I'm Danny Phantom? The world's greatest hero? The guy who always does the right thing?" Danny asked rhetorically. "Well, the right thing is to not act like your yes man and 'listen' to you because right now, you are the worst mayor in history of not just this city but the entire world. So get some humility, try to fix this or let someone else take over for mayor and hopefully they can save this city from the mess you've made!"

With that Danny turned into his ghost form and flew out the window, leaving Tucker to just stare in sock at what happened.

Danny wasn't going to help?

He wasn't going to save him.

…What would he do now?

He was still asking that question when the windows behind him were smashed open.

Xxx

Danny couldn't get away from City Hall fast enough.

He couldn't believe what Tucker had wanted him to do.

That kind of corruption was something he'd expect from Vlad of all people and it was something he had been raised to stand against.

Heck, if Vlad expected that from him Tucker would tell him to blow off the fruit loop and leave him to be torn apart.

Well, Danny doubted the people would actually break into City Hall and tear Tucker apart. He still had his bodyguards with him and at best they would just hackle him to change all his policies. Right now he just wanted to get back to college, finish his class and take a nice long nap. He landed in the parking lot, changing back in his human form and simply walked to class.

He made it a point not to use his powers on school grounds unless he needed to.

Just as he made it inside he was grabbed by a pair of hands and dragged off. "Hey?! Watch the-Sam?"

Sam dragged him behind the bleachers and held out her phone. "Look at this."

Danny watched a video…of Tucker being tarred and feathered with people throwing fruits of all kinds at his face. "Tucker?"

"They broke into his office and dragged him out so everyone could see and film him get tarred and feathered." Sam explained with a scowl. "Just after you left City Hall. What the hell did you do?"

"Me?" Danny gestured to himself with a shocked face. "I didn't do anything."

"So why weren't you there to stop them?" Sam asked angrily. "You could have broken up the crowd before it got this bad."

"Are you serious? Tucker asked me to do the same thing." Danny groaned, rubbing his face.

"He asked you to break those idiots up? And you didn't help?" Sam questioned.

"How are they idiots? Tucker ruined their lives, destroyed their homes and probably left them in poverty." Danny retorted.

"And tarring and feathering him is supposed to make it better?" Sam asked rhetorically. "Since when do you sit back and allow mob justice to happen?"

"I didn't know they were going to do that to him but I wasn't going to be Tucker's muscle and scare everyone into backing down just so he could try building his 'City of Tomorrow' again, only for it to probably destroy what's left of the city." Danny argued. "He was wrong to force this on everyone and he was wrong to expect me to make his problems go away."

"So you left him to take the fall?" Sam questioned.

"How was it my fall to take?" Danny asked back.

"He's your friend, you should have helped him."

"How? I'm no politician. I wasn't going to force them to back down because they had legitimate grievances with Tucker. What could I have done?" Danny argued. "And since when do you believe in enforcing law on people? This is the kind of protest you love taking part in."

"Not against my own friend." Sam spread her arms out. "I stand against unfairness, hypocrisy and the government making us obedient slaves."

"And what Tucker was doing wasn't any of those?" Danny asked, unable to believe what he was hearing. "He was being unfair to those people when he didn't listen to them and expected me to make his problems go away."

"He's your friend."

"And I'm supposed to bail him out? If it was Vlad or the previous mayor you'd be joining that crowd." Danny pointed out.

"So would you." Sam retorted.

"Vlad, yeah. He would have had it coming but not every politician. You were on my case all through high school to be responsible about my powers, even though you did some things that were pretty irresponsible." Danny snapped.

"Name one." Sam challenged.

"You convinced me to go into the portal." Danny held up one finger.

"You wanted to go in!" Sam argued. "If not for me you wouldn't have your ghost powers-"

"I never wanted my powers in the first place!" Danny cut her off and held up her second finger. "And after that, you forced your vegan menu on everyone."

"It was ultra-recycling-"

"It was vegan!" Danny cut her off. "Just because you give it different names to not sound like mainstream, doesn't mean anyone was stupid enough not to recognize it for it what it was. After that, you angered a ghost and made me clean your mess up without even admitting your part in it."

"Ghost attacks happen all the time!" Sam argued.

"Then you let a gorilla out, endangering it and everyone else in the zoo. If someone was in that gorilla's path they could have been hurt and the gorilla could have been killed." Danny continued, bringing up a second finger.

"I was trying to release it back into the wild!" Sam said, continuing to deny her putting people in danger. "And how is leaving it in a cage any better?"

"One: the laws for treating animals in zoos are a lot better now. Two: this isn't the wild. It's a concrete jungle filled with people who would have screamed and ran for their lives, scaring the gorilla into frantically finding a way out and you of all people should know how dangerous a frightened animal gets." Danny answered, holding up a third finger. "You brought robot frogs instead of real ones into science class and that caused a mess."

"Better than real frogs!"

Danny held up a fourth finger. "You then threatened to show everyone a picture of Tucker and me hugging each other at school to keep us quiet! What kind of friend does that? We were afraid of everyone getting the wrong idea and making our lives more miserable which is something only a bully like Dash or Paulina would do."

Sam scowled. "I was bluf-"

"No you weren't. You would have and don't lie to me." Danny snapped. "You don't bluff, Sam. When you say you're going to do something then you're going to do. Oh, and let's not forget how you almost told my secret to that Greg-oh I mean Elliot after you knew him for only one week."

"You spied on me!" Sam shouted.

"And you were going to tell him my secret without asking me!" Danny argued back. "You don't consider that a violation of trust?"

"He was new and I wanted to give him the benefit of doubt!" Sam said, trying to justify herself.

"It was still not your secret to tell!" Danny shook his head. "You always have to have it your way and when it doesn't you don't stop until you do. You don't even let people make their own choices."

"That's not true!"

"Again, you forced your vegan menu on us without asking, you wanted me to destroy those trucks and recklessly made a wish in hearing distance of a wish granting ghost. Hell, when I wanted to quit you guilt me into taking my powers back!" Danny raised his voice.

"Hey! You were doing good as a hero!" Sam stood her ground. "Like I said, I couldn't just sit back and stay on the sidelines."

"It was still my choice! And you are always on the sidelines!" Danny barked, shocking Sam. "You and Tucker have always been on the sidelines while I did all the fighting, not you. I was the one getting burned, electrocuted, tortures, abused and hunted, not you. Without a Fenton gadget in your hands you are useless on the battlefield….Just like how Tucker was riding my coattails to become mayor…You've been riding on my back this whole time I have been risking my life!"

Sam gasped before glaring at her boyfriend, absolutely infuriated. "Take that back, Fenton! Right now!"

"I'm telling the truth and you know it! I fought Vlad, the Ghost King, my jerky older self and all the other ghosts. You were always there but on the sidelines you claim I was trying to be part of and when I didn't want to be a hero anymore you and Tucker never wanted to hang out with me. All you cared…was the fact that I didn't my powers anymore." Danny shook his head and stepped back. "And now that I'm acting like the hero you want me to be you expected me to intimidate everyone in Amity Park to protect a corrupt mayor. How is that supposed to be different?"

"Because he's your friend!" Sam shouted, filled with absolute anger. "And because without us you'd be a lonely, scrawny freak with a couple of idiot parents, a lame bookworm of a sister and a stupid dream of being an astronaut!"

Danny's eyes flashed green. "Wow. Thanks for that. Thanks for showing me how better off I am. Thanks for showing me what real friends are like."

"And thanks for taking this back." Sam said, taking the ring Danny gave her after the Disasteroid incident and threw it at the ground in front of Danny's feet. "Rings are lame anyways."

With that Sam turned around and walked away, not even glancing back at Danny as he knelt down and slowly picked up the ring.

He stared at it for a long time…

He never got back to class until the next day.