Saving Sam: Chapter 2
By JadeRabbyt
A/N: Thankies to all my kindly reviewers. I appreciate your responses and patience. I'd like to thank Wiggle Lizard for the wonderful vote of confidence, and I think NiNab's question will be answered by this chapter. ;) I feel I should warn autumngold that things will get very... interesting for Danny-boy later on. Here, mi amigos, is the conclusion to the fight and the beginning of the plot.
Danny found himself caught in a studio apartment. They were a little more cautious, blocking his upward and downward escape. He had to change position every minute to keep from being surrounded, making it more difficult to fight, but he thought, all things considered, that he wasn't doing too bad at all at the moment. One or two of the ghosts were starting to look pretty beat-up, having taken some exceptionally damaging hits, but their jaws were still set and their weapons and punches still flew fast and hard. The group wasn't backing down.
"Danny, where are you!"
Danny felt a burst of relief. Sam. "I'm up here! Get that stupid thermos up here!"
"Hang on, Danny, we're coming." Tucker shouted.
Danny knew he could easily hold them off until his friends arrived. "You hear that?" he gasped between blows. "My friends are coming. We're going to... get the.. res' of you an' send you all... back to hell."
Danny took a vicious box to the ears, punishment for his presumption. Through the ringing in his head, he saw the ghosts let up just a bit, three of them cocking their heads to better hear the orders of the fourth. Two of them branched off and flew through the wall into the hallway. With two gone, there was more room for the three remaining combatants to maneuver. One ghost twirled its chain, spinning it through the air and trying to whap Danny in whistling, silvered strikes. Danny used his newfound freedom of movement to dart away from the more serious blows and deliver his own solid, well-aimed punches on the chain's downswing. He still had his hands full when he heard Tucker banging on the door, rattling the handle.
"Stay outside," Danny shouted. He flew out into the hallway several yards away from where Tucker was standing. "Aim!"
Tucker nodded as Danny made a sharp right, heading up through the ceiling. The two ghosts flew into the hallway in pursuit of Danny, and Tucker managed to nab one before the other got wise and headed back into the apartment.
Tucker waited, cautiously sweeping the thermos back and forth across the hall. He relaxed when Danny came swooping from the ceiling and hovered several feet away from him.
"Jeez Danny, are you OK?"
Danny gave Tucker a thumbs-up, reeling a little. "I'm still conscious." A blue mist slid out of his mouth as he talked, but he dismissed it as a sign of the ghosts' retreat.
Tucker looked him over uneasily. "Too bad your sister's a shrink and not a doctor. I have to hand it to you, though, you must be getting better to have lasted against that crowd."
"Where did those two go? Please tell me they split."
"Only one of them. The other one..." He held up the thermos and grinned. "Right here."
"Great. How many total? I was kind of busy..."
"Two of five."
"Not bad." Danny blinked and glanced up and down the hallway. "What about Sam? Is she with you?"
"No, she ran up ahead of me. I lost sight of her," Tucker checked the hallway and looked back towards the stairwell, dismayed. "Where'd she... Danny?"
Danny was staring straight ahead, seeing the fight over again. He had been talking, and then they had been talking, and he had felt brass knuckles strike his ear, kicks and punches that swirled together in his mind in a red shot of pain, but one of them had said something. There were only two of them at the end of it all. But something had happened... the leader had said... he'd called off two. Two had gone, but where had they gone?
"Uh, Tucker? Did you see any other ghosts after you were inside the building?"
Tucker shook his head. "No, just those two who were after you. Are you OK? Did they- you don't think they took Sam." He stated it as a fact.
"I think we'd better search this building. Right now." He jetted off down the hall, and another thread of blue vapor slid out of his mouth. He stopped short and dashed through the insides of the surrounding walls, searching, ready to fight. He found nothing and continued through the building, looking in every room and awakening the remainder of the sleeping occupants in the process. They yelled and ordered him out, but he didn't even stop to look at them. They were not Sam, they could not tell him what had happened to Sam, and therefore they didn't matter. Danny was tired, badly beaten, and he felt miserable. And Sam was missing. In the entire building there was no sign of her at all. They had taken her. He and Tucker shouted until they were both hoarse, but they had taken her.
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Danny and Tucker didn't leave or stop searching until shrieking sirens showed up at the apartment. Danny didn't have the strength to lift himself and Tucker out, so they walked side by side, Tucker holding Danny's weight and Danny extending invisibility to both of them. They trudged past angry, pudgy ghetto-cops and shouting women and angry men in their bath robes. After they had left the whole noisy mess a safe distance behind, Danny phased them both back to reality, although they might have continued on invisible. The few who walked by were familiar with the sight of injured adolescents and only walked a little faster when they passed.
They talked very little on the way back. Danny had a nasty cough and was still bleeding in places, although his phantasmal self had carried off the worst of it. Tucker insisted on seeing him home.
Danny was tired. He left Tucker on the sidewalk outside and trudged up the stairs. He should call someone about Sam. He couldn't believe she was missing. It was impossible. He'd taken that beating, and he could feel the bruises and scrapes and cuts and maybe broken ribs, but there was no way Sam was missing. He stumbled into bed and twisted the blankets around himself. Sam was fine; she had probably gone home during the fight, maybe some brick or dust or some crazy thing had grazed her, and she'd gone to get something for it.
Battered, broken, and exhausted, Danny told himself sweet lies until he dropped off into a dreamless slumber.
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A/N: Thanks for stopping by, folks. Don't forget to tip your waitress and review on the way out.
