A/N: It's summer time again! That means this is going to be updated once more. Everyone, thank you for the follows/favorites/ and reviews! It makes my day to know that someone out there enjoys my writing!
This takes place during the Summerween episode.
I figured that Danny wouldn't really be in the trick or treating mood.
Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom, or Gravity Falls.
Everything that he desperately tried to prevent this summer vacation was being ripped apart at the seams. The number one thing that he wasn't supposed to do – he did. He couldn't take back what he said about his dad – or about how he wanted to join Vlad. It all happened, and to him it seemed as if it were two lifetimes ago.
Resting an elbow on the coffee table in the living room, he stared up at the massive flat screen that was placed above the fire place mantel. His eyes gazed into the black reflection of the screen before he felt nothing except his own building despair.
He thought that maybe there would possibly be a way out of their agreement – but there wouldn't.
He was trapped, and Vlad knew it. The man had made sure that the teenager would submit and join him over the duration of the summer. Danny just didn't want to admit that it had happened this early. Without his friends and sister to back him up and give him support – he really was vulnerable to Vlad's corruption.
His finger dug into his scalp in writhing anger at himself.
What kind of hero was he when he was a pawn doing everything that Vlad wanted him to do?
"Danny, how are you holding up?" Jazz asked quietly, sitting beside him on the carpeted ground. He gazed over at her lazily from the corner of his eyes. She had a stern, unwavering frown on her face, but her bottom lip was quivering. His sister blamed herself for what happened – how she should have been watching Vlad better.
Blaming herself for being yet another pawn in Vlad's grand scheme of things.
But how could she?
Vlad was always two steps ahead of everyone – it wasn't a competition. Not if the victor had already won and was just waiting for the other competitors to catch up, just to watch them fall into their defeat. It wasn't her fault that this happened, it wasn't anyone's. It just happened and there's nothing that can be done about it now.
Even if nobody wanted it.
"Jazz," Danny muttered, turning his head to look at his older sister. She bit her lower lip to prevent herself from showing weakness in front of him. He felt a tug at his heart for letting his sister down. She didn't need to stay strong during this time, he was the hero. "It's okay - I'm okay."
"No…" She trailed, looking down at the ground as she placed her hands in her lap. She tightened one hand around the other tightly. It was all she could do to not immediately hug her brother. "You're not," she muttered, and he let out a long sigh. There was a brief silence between the siblings. "This isn't fair!" She whispered in a hushed tone to prevent herself from getting any louder. The urge to scream out in absolute and uncontrollable rage was more prominent than before.
She was angry – Danny was angry, but what was the use getting upset over a situation that you couldn't control?
"It isn't," he added, making her slowly look over to him. Her eyes were filling up with tears, and he put on a small smile on his face to try and cheer her up. "We'll find a way out of this."
Vlad entered the room with a cell phone raised to his ear. "I already told you I am on vacation, Tiffany," he spoke before entering the kitchen. Both Fenton siblings were alerted to his entrance and glared over at him. He opened up a kitchen cabinet and pulled out a coffee mug. "This seemed like a problem for the marketing department – did you really need to call me with this issue?"
The older halfa placed the mug on the counter, turned around, and found the coffee pot that was being warmed up. He walked over to the other side of the counter with his mug in tow before looking over into the living room. The older halfa felt eyes watching him, and usually he was right with his suspicions. He spotted the two teenager's angrily looking at him as if he had just ruined their entire lives. He rolled his eyes at their childish thoughts and focused his attention back on his coffee.
"Then run the numbers again – I'm sorry, but I really must be going," Vlad concluded, pulling the phone away from his ear and tapped a few buttons on the screen. There was a deafening silence for a few seconds. "If you're going to be angry at me, Daniel, then at least let me hear some words of complaint."
Danny narrowed his eyes as the older halfa walked into the room with a steaming hot cup of coffee in his hands. "You want words?" He snapped, as he stood up angrily. "How about 'That was really low what you did to Dipper and Mabel' for starters!"
Vlad took a seat on one of the leather couches before letting out a low chuckle at what the teen was talking about. Danny bit his tongue at his response at remembering that he almost murdered two children just yesterday. "I am not to blame for taking advantage of leverage when I see it."
Letting out a growl, the teen sent Vlad a neon green, poisonous glare. "They aren't leverage!" He argued, but was stopped from his mid-rant when he saw an eyebrow being raised from the older halfa. Danny had seen that body language a thousand times since he had met the man.
And your point?
"Are all people weaker than you leverage, Vlad?" Danny asked in a low tone, directly speaking his argument to the older halfa.
"No," Vlad responded immediately after taking a sip of coffee. "Only the people that matter to you," he clarified, making Danny let out a loud and exhausted exhale. The teen knew that the man was about to go off on a rant about how easy it all was for Vlad to win. He wasn't disappointed when Vlad spoke out the following words. "You leave yourself open for exploitation, little badger, and I'm afraid that resourceful people take advantage of that."
"Stop speaking to me like I don't know what's going on!" Danny yelled, making Vlad lower his mug to the side table next to him. The man focused all his undivided attention on the teenager now that his steaming beverage was out of his hands. They locked gazes for a few seconds. Vlad knew that the teen was upset about the outcome of their long drawn out battle over the summer. Still, it had happened – the teen needed to get over it and owned up to when he had lost.
The younger halfa stared with an unwavering angry gaze, and when Vlad didn't say anything else on the matter, he ran a hand through his sweaty hair in defeat. It was damp from anger and frustration, and the teen was getting mentally exhausted from these conversations of theirs.
Not to mention, he hadn't gotten much sleep last night.
It was Danny's fault for the position that he was in – and it was getting to the point where the teenager knew it was his fault. He wasn't strong enough to protect Dipper and Mabel and instead could only save them using his last resort. Of course, that was giving Vlad exactly what he wanted. A son, or apprentice, whatever it was that he wanted Danny to become – the point was he had given in to his arch enemy.
Vlad couldn't leave well enough alone when he had won. He wanted to make Danny see that the teenager was entirely at fault for what had happened. Despite the fact that the older halfa was the one who held his friend's lives over a deathly, scorching fire.
Silence overcame the room, and Jazz slowly got to her feet. "You got what you wanted, Vlad," she muttered out. The older halfa glanced over at her with a knowing smirk on his face. "Just let us go home."
"Jasmine. That would entail that Daniel will be going to Wisconsin with me," he spoke, and he reveled in the way that the siblings looked at each other with wide eyes before looking back over at him in fear. "Are you sure you want the summer to end this quickly?"
"No!" Danny voiced, taking a few steps back in defiance. Vlad watched him with a stern gaze before waving his hand dismissively towards the teenager. There would be plenty of time for the teenager to treat him with respect when they were living together. He would teach Daniel to not disrespect him or speak against him…but that would come with time.
Not to mention all the countless weeks of training that he would put the boy through.
Jazz narrowed her eyes, "You do know that we'll spend the rest of the summer looking for a way to stop you."
Vlad let out a genuine chuckle at this notion. "Stop me?" He rhetorically asked dramatically, shaking his head and lifting up his coffee mug once again. He held it by the handle carefully before looking at the teenagers with a carefree look. "I've already won, Jasmine," he stated in a matter-of-fact tone.
Danny looked away from Vlad. He couldn't stand the way he was talking – even if it was the cold hard truth. The living room started to spin, and he placed a hand out and gripped the back of the couch. His strength started to fluctuate, but he still managed to keep standing.
Jazz was too busy glaring over at the older halfa to notice that Danny was about to faint from exhaustion. Vlad, however, had, and was keeping a keen eye to make sure that the teen was alright. The man knew that the teen had pulled an all-nighter. Whether the boy was unable to sleep due to what had happened, or he was trying to come up with a way to get out of their deal, Vlad wasn't sure.
Danny started to wobble and he blinked the black dots that were filling his vision away. He shook his head, but that only succeeded in making his condition worse. A pounding headache told him to close his eyes and submit to the darkness trying to take him.
"Not quite yet, you haven't," Jazz countered, and was about to walk away when Danny suddenly fell to the ground. "Danny!" She yelled, but was prevented from getting any closer to her brother when a shadow Plasmius appeared in front of her.
"Daniel is one of my assets, and I closely observe my assets with care," Vlad stated, standing up from the couch with a certain amount of elegance.
Jazz let out a scoff. "He isn't a thing you can own."
Vlad waved his hand, and in seconds his shadow duplicate turned itself and Danny intangible before leaving. "As of yet," he added off-handedly, turning his attention towards the teen girl. "Daniel seemed to have tuckered himself out trying to think of ways to get out of his situation. Must have stayed up all night just pondering on what to do."
"You keep saying you want what's best for him – but aren't you just doing what's best for you?" Jazz asked when the older hybrid went to take a step away. He halted in his trek and instead looked over at the teen girl with a calculative gaze.
"Consider it killing two birds with one stone," Vlad mused and shrugged indifferently as he tried to once again walk away. He had things to deal with his company that he couldn't leave alone for two seconds without things falling apart. Of course, there was also making sure that Daniel had a sufficient amount of rest. He didn't want the teen dying before the summer was over – not when he had too many plans for the boy.
Jazz clenched her hands tightly next to her. She hated the way that he said things, or the way he would twist his ideals and words to better accommodate the situation he was in. Instead, she said the only thing that she was thinking of. "You're weak," she spat out, the amount of spite she was sending towards him was immeasurable.
Vlad stopped walking and turned around with a scathing glare directed towards her. He was many things, but he certainly wasn't weak. "I am the farthest thing from weak, girl, you should do well to remember that." He hissed out as his eyes fluctuated from their normal blue to a murderous red, making the girl take a shaky step backward from panic.
"Leverage should know their place," Vlad muttered before turning around and walking away.
Jazz watched him leave and let out a breath she didn't know she was holding in. Vlad really was the farthest thing from weak, and her and Danny needed to be more careful if…
"Danny!" She yelled, as if remembering that her brother had collapsed in the living room only a few minutes previously. Finding her energy, she ran up the wooden stairs and opened up the door to their room.
He wasn't there.
Her heart sank.
"Oh, Danny…" She trailed, looking downstairs from the wooden balcony inside the house.
The first thing that Danny did when he opened his eyes was let out a groan. He noticed that he wasn't in his room where he shared the living space with his sister. Instead, he was in a large room, and was resting on a large bed. Sitting up, he noticed that Vlad was sitting at his desk and was typing on his laptop without taking a break.
"How are you feeling?" Vlad asked, but didn't look back at the teenager. Instead, he kept on typing, making Danny rub his face with his hand to wake himself up.
"What am I doing here?" Danny responded groggily, his voice barely a level above a mumble. Vlad stopped his typing and rested his fingers on the keyboard. He then turned to look at the teen with a leveled glare.
The teen responded with his own glare, "What? Keeping an eye on me?" He asked, answering his own question from before. Vlad remained silent and turned back around and went back to typing on his laptop once again. For a few more seconds, Danny listened to that typing. Soon, the teen was growing more and more annoyed with the only sound of the room coming from the 'tapping' of the keyboard.
"Well-rested?" Danny asked after a few moments of silence, not sure if that would satisfy Vlad's silent rage. He figured that trying to 'one up' Vlad wasn't going to happen anytime soon. He might as well just play the older halfa's stupid game that they were currently playing – the game of 'you didn't answer my question and won't respond until you do'.
"Either you know or you don't, Daniel," Vlad stated, not looking away from his screen.
Danny glared at the back of Vlad's head. He hated being lectured by him – or in this exact situation, he hated being 'fathered' by him. Vlad would never take the place of Jack, Danny wouldn't allow that to happen. He would never stop looking for a way to get out of the grave that he had dug for himself. Speaking of, he was wasting what precious time he had left of being free of Vlad with Vlad.
"I know that I'm going to leave…" Danny muttered, swinging his legs over the bed only to have a pink ecto-shield light up around the large bed space. Alarmed and startled, the teen quickly moved his entire body away from the edge of the bed. He stared at the vibrant pink color for a few seconds until realization suddenly hit him. "You put a ghost shield around the bed."
"Can't have you tire yourself out again," Vlad spoke from his spot on the other side of the room. Danny glanced his eyes over at him, and the teen couldn't prevent the fear from appearing on his face. When Vlad turned around to look at him, the man let out a triumphant smirk. "You understand that your life belongs to me now, don't you?"
The teen's heart was racing, and he didn't know what to say. The only thing that instantly came to his mind was the oldest excuse in the book to get away from someplace. It had worked multiple times in high school and had a relatively small failure rate.
"I have to go to the bathroom."
Vlad let out a chuckle, seeing right through the teen. Danny let out a small flinch at the man responding to his bluff. "I'm sure you can come up with a better excuse than that."
"Let me out now, Vlad!" Danny demanded, and the man stood up from his seat. The teen tensed up at the man's sudden movement. "Can't you give me the rest of the summer?" Danny asked, his tone switching from anger to border-line pleading. "Please, just let me call Sam and Tucker. If I'm moving to Wisconsin after this trip, I just want to see them one last time."
"Do you know what I was working on, Daniel?" Vlad asked, ignoring everything that the teenager had said. Danny remained silent and instead tried to see the computer screen through the transparent pink color that was currently obscuring his vision. It didn't take the young halfa long to realize what was on the screen, and his heart plummeted into his stomach.
It took him a good few seconds to gather the strength to speak words. "Adoption papers…" Danny spoke, the fear showing in his voice, and on his face. For him, it was as if what had happened hadn't fully sunk in until he was seeing that the older halfa wasn't backing down from his promise. Vlad leaned down to look at the teen through the pink, transparent ghost shield.
"I can have your parents disown you in a number of ways. I can overshadow them and sign you over to me, for example," Vlad started to say. Danny didn't want to hear it, and instead backed away from the foot of the bed to the front of it. He placed his hands up to his ears and shook his head in disbelief. It wasn't real – it couldn't be.
"Or, perhaps I'll get them with a child abuse case. Your scar tissue that you've obtained from your numerous ghost fights will be misunderstood. Social services will be forced to suspect that your parents have been negligent in your upraising. Then, when they are looking for a proper guardian, they will call on me to watch over you."
Danny tried digging his hands deeper into his ears, but with his enhanced hearing, he had begrudgingly heard everything that Vlad was saying. The older halfa knew this, but didn't show any signs that he was bringing the boy any discomfort. Instead, he continued on.
Vlad then stood from his leaning position and let out a dark chuckle. "Or my personal favorite…I could get you to write anything I want you to. Jack is an abusive father. Living conditions are unfavorable. How much you want to live with me."
"Stop!" Danny yelled out in pain. He removed his hands from his ears – it wasn't as if they were doing much help where they were. "I get it, okay?! You've won! Don't tell me how you're going to ruin my life!"
Vlad couldn't help but release a small chuckle at the boy's inept ability to understand. "I'm improving it, little badger, but your childish 'heroic' judgement is clouding your vision to see it."
The teen went silent and instead he turned away from Vlad and stared at one of the other sides of the room. It was a long shot, but the teen was starting to think about escaping the country once the summer was drawing to a close. That way, Vlad wouldn't be able to find him – and he wouldn't be able to control his future.
Vlad couldn't control what he didn't have.
He turned back towards Vlad only to see the man going back to his laptop. "What would you do if I ran?" Danny asked, voicing his thoughts. Vlad stopped walking and turned to look at him with a raised eyebrow. It was a sign that the teen was asking a stupid question – but the young halfa needed to know the consequences of all of his actions.
"Your leverage would be killed instantly," Vlad stated with no emotion or remorse hinted in his voice.
"And if you didn't have any leverage?" Danny retorted instantly.
Vlad crossed his arms, "What are you thinking of doing, Daniel?" He asked, not fond of the idea of his asset becoming unpredictable. This meant that he would need to develop a new battle strategy to counter his enemy. "You care about your friends and family far too much to get them killed. Considering they are a part of your obsession - they wouldn't be easy to let go."
Danny shrugged his shoulders. "Obsessions can be formed as easily as they can be broken – you were the one who taught me that. The point is, if I didn't have leverage you wouldn't be able to control me," Danny spoke honestly.
Vlad narrowed his eyes in thought and then looked down at the ground. Danny noticed that the man seemed to not notice that the teen was still in the room. Instead, the young halfa continued his small rant on how flawed Vlad's plan was. "Nothing would be holding me to you. And I wouldn't let my friends and family be killed – I would take them with me."
Silence fell upon the room.
The ghost shield dropped, and Danny looked over to the door and then back to Vlad. The man seemed to be thinking deeply and waved the teen to leave. "You may go."
Danny quickly jumped down from the bed and walked towards the door. When he went to open it, he turned to look at Vlad one last time. The man had a dark gleam in his eyes, and the teen hoped that he didn't add more fuel to the fire when it came to Vlad.
He should have kept his thoughts to himself.
If there was one thing that Danny wasn't proud of – it was that both him and Vlad liked to gloat when they were winning.
Not being able to do anything about it now, the teen exited out of the room and closed the door behind him.
Jack closed the front door with a large grin on his features. "Madds!" He called up to his wife, who was walking out of the room from upstairs. "You know the kids celebrate Halloween twice in a year?" He asked, holding a bowl of candy that was laying around the cabin.
Plopping a candy piece in his mouth he let out a small chuckle. "We should do this back in Amity! The kids there would love it!"
"Jack, Summerween is a Gravity Falls thing…" Maddie justified, walking down the steps to talk to her husband. "We can't just steal one of their traditions."
Jack's shoulder's slumped in disappointment. "Aw…" He whined, setting the bowl of candy that he was holding on one of the side tables. "I thought it was really cool," he moped, and Maddie walked up to him and gave him a small kiss on the cheek.
"And that's what makes you really cool, hun," she stated with a grin. There was a knocking at the door, and Maddie touched his face lovingly for a brief few seconds. "I've got this one," she affirmed, walking over to the table and grabbing a few pieces of candy. Opening the door, it was revealed to be another group of trick or treaters.
Danny and Jazz walked down the stairs, all the while whispering secretly to one another. Jack heard their mumbling, and glanced over to his children with a raised eyebrow in curiosity. The man noticed just how pale and worried both of them were, frowning when Jazz bit her lower lip in concern at something that Danny had said.
"You shouldn't have said that," Jazz whispered, referring to Danny's retelling of what had happened in Vlad's room thirty minutes previously. He let out a small sigh and ran a hand nervously through his hair. "What can he do to make you stay?"
"Unless he has a contract written up somewhere…" Danny muttered out in sarcasm. Jazz shook her head and placed her palm up to rub some of the sweat that had accumulated on her forehead. "Who knows what he's looking for now."
Jack hear that last part and crossed his arms. When his children reached the bottom of the stairs, they seemed to have just noticed their father's presence. "Who's he?" Jack asked, looking down at the two teenager's, looking up at him as if they had just been caught stealing a cookie from the cookie jar.
Danny exchanged a look with Jazz. The young halfa then let out a small chuckle, "Vlad. He's just, uh, been in his room all day. I think he mentioned about how he kept losing track of, um…"
Jazz nodded, catching his distress. "Business papers!" She added, and Danny nodded and let out a small guilty smile. Although, he hoped that his father wouldn't call their bluff. It wasn't as if Jack had done it previously in the past, but for some reason he was incredibly more alert now than he had been before. "His business is falling apart without him."
"If that's the case, then maybe we should cut this summer trip short –
"No!" Jazz and Danny exclaimed, and Jack's eyes widened at the complete and absolute fear that was in their tone. The man blinked quickly, and then looked closely at his children.
Jazz cleared her throat. "We're having so much fun!"
Danny nodded in agreement, "Gravity Falls is just great! Please don't cut the trip short," the young halfa borderline pleaded. Jack rose an eyebrow and then nodded. "We're going to go to the library."
"Library?" Jack questioned, exchanging a confused look at Jazz and then Danny. "The both of you?"
"Yup! Be back before midnight!" Jazz exclaimed, walking over to the door. "Don't wait up!" She added, walking past their mother who had finished giving candy to two groups of children. Danny followed his sister's lead and cautiously went around his mother and rejoined with his sister outside.
Maddie watched her kids leave the cabin and began to walk on the driveway towards the main road. She turned and rose a curious eyebrow at her husband. "What was that all about?" She asked, closing the door when she turned to look at him. "Did you see how exhausted the two of them looked?"
Jack nodded, lowering his head in thought. "This vacation seems to be wearing them out."
"What's going on with them, Jack?" Maddie asked in concern. "I've never seen them look this depressed – I'm thinking of calling off this summer vacation and heading back home."
"They want to stay, Madds," Jack mentioned what the kids had said to him when they had reached the bottom of the stairs. "They were almost scared to leave…" He trailed, and then quickly looked back up at his wife. "You don't think there's ghosts here, do you?"
Maddie shook her head. Jack let out a small sigh at not knowing what was mentally harming his children. He felt awful, not being able to do anything to help them. The Wisconsin ghost had made an appearance a few weeks ago, but hadn't made its presence known since then.
"We need to talk to them," Maddie stated.
Jack nodded in agreement.
"Please tell me you found something," Danny pleaded, sliding down the wooden ladder that was propped against the tall bookshelf. When he hit the carpeted floor of the library, his sister looked up from the book she was reading. The table that she was sitting at had multiple small towers of different books.
Jazz shook her head and flipped a page. "Not yet…but I did find a section on blood pacts."
Danny rose an eyebrow at that, and cautiously walked over to the table where they were temporarily stationed. "What's that about?" He asked, standing behind his sister, looking at the book that she had propped open. There was a picture of a dark silhouette that seemed to depict a vampire. The young halfa let out a cringe at the vampire and how much it closely resembled Plasmius.
"It reads here that vampires have used blood pacts to make their fledglings loyal to them. It's an entire ceremony and it's incredibly painful to the fledgling. Each and every second that the pact occurs, the fledgling experiences their blood boiling and searing agony in their body…" Jazz finished reading and then looked up at her brother.
He had started to turn paler in the face, but resisted the urge to look away. He swallowed away his fear and then looked over at Jazz. "Yeah, but ghosts can't do that, right?" He asked, the concern in his tone was more present than before.
Jazz shrugged and turned the page, "I wouldn't think so," she stated. "Vampires and ghosts seem to be vastly different. But…Vlad does resemble a vampire in his ghost form, doesn't he?"
"I don't want to think about it," Danny argued, taking a shaky step away. "I don't want to even think that he could do that to me. My ghost half isn't a vampire, so there's no way I could be a fledgling."
"Right," Jazz said with a nod. "What I'm concerned with is that he may try to implement a blood pact and twist it so that it would work for him somehow."
Danny's eyes grew wide. "How? How could he do that?" He pressed, looking away from the book and his sister. The only thing that was in his sight was the large and tall bookshelf. "It's Vlad, why am I even bothering asking how?" He muttered, suddenly sitting down on the ground.
Jazz let out a loud exhale. "It's alright – we'll find a way out of this. We always do."
"What I need is to somehow turn back…time…." Danny said, and he quickly looked over at his sister with an idea that popped into his head. "You think Clockwork would help?"
"You and what Ghost Portal?" Jazz asked, and the young halfa let out a sigh of defeat. "You can't access the Ghost Zone, or any ecto-weapons…The only thing that we can do is outsmart him."
Danny let out a small hysterical chuckle. "Do you hear yourself, Jazz? Outsmart Vlad?" He asked, shaking his head while laying down on the ground. "That's about as likely to happen as me getting accepted into Harvard."
Jazz stood up from her seat and offered a hand to her brother to take. He looked at it and then up at her face. She let out a small, hopeful smile. "We have to have hope and confidence that we can take him on. Even if he does the blood pact, we'll find a way to fight it."
The young halfa took her hand and stood to his feet. "Thanks for the pep talk. I think I needed that."
"No problem, little brother," Jazz said with a grin. "Oh, have you checked up on Dipper and Mabel since the whole…" She trailed, not wanting to mention how they had almost been burned alive at Vlad's hands.
"They're better off without me around. This way Vlad won't be targeting them. I won't let their lives be endangered again, Jazz," Danny stated, walking off towards the front entrance of the library. "This way it will be one last thing that he can use as leverage against me."
There was silence, and Danny turned around to look at his sister. She hadn't said anything in a while, and he was a little worried. Not to mention, it was a tense situation that they were in, and he was expecting anything to happen at any minute. Especially with Vlad in the middle of his schemes – the older halfa could practically be anywhere right now.
Jazz was frozen with her mouth open. She was about to say something, but was prevented when time came to a freeze. Danny quickly looked over at the clock and found that it was frozen at a standstill at eleven thirty-one. The young halfa took a step towards his sister and then looked around the entire library for any trace of a certain time ghost.
"Clockwork!" He yelled, and there was a rustling coming from deeper into the library. It sounded as if a book was trying to come off from the shelf. Danny wasted no time in morphing into Phantom and flying over quickly to where the sound was coming from. When he landed on the ground, the book was sent flying into his hands.
When the teen read the title of it, it simply read "Power of Mind" and didn't have an author. Danny turned it around in his hand before opening up the hard cover of the book and scanning through the pages. At first he didn't understand what language it was – it wasn't English, but he soon recognized the language, since he had heard it many times by a friend.
"Esperanto…" Danny realized, closing the book. He didn't know what good it would do him, considering it wasn't at all what he was currently looking for. Still, if time started to slow down and stop, then Clockwork was definitely involved and sending him help in any way he could.
"Danny!" Jazz called out frantically. Danny felt time moving again, and he held the book tightly in his hands before quickly flying over to where his sister was. When he landed a few steps in front of her, she looked at the title of the book. "What did you find?"
The young halfa let out a grin. "I knew Clockwork wouldn't let me down!"
Jazz walked over and examined the book a little closer. "Danny, that has nothing to do with what we're looking for. Are you sure that will help?"
"It has to be for later. I trust Clockwork. If he's telling me to read this, then I will," Danny adamantly said. His sister let out a nod, and they both headed towards the door of the public library.
To be continued…