Disclaimer: Checks watch Noooo . . . nope. I still don't own Danny Phantom since the last time I checked.

A Temporary Cease Fire

Chapter 7

"How did you know my first name? I . . . I don't ever remember telling it to you." Danny Phantom hesitated to ask.

Maddie leaned in closer, voice barely louder than she dared it to be. "I simply found a 'Wanted' poster while wandering around the ghost zone with your picture on it."

"You were wandering around the ghost zone? Why?! That's possibly one of the stupidest things you can do – EVER. Uh, no offense intended, of course. I hold you and Jack in the highest esteem-"

Maddie cut him off before the young ghost in the cell beside her could go any further. "Yeah, yeah, stop brown-nosing. We're still going to hunt you down after we get out of here."

"YOU'RE STILL GOING TO – wait, did you say 'we'?"

Maddie sighed; slightly frustrated at herself for what she was planning on doing, though her conscious was patting her on the back, proud. "Yes, 'we'. Jack and I . . . well, we owe you for the Technus incident. That doesn't mean that we forgive you, though."

Danny was honestly confused, and in a tone that was almost whining, said, "Why? You aren't still thinking of the incident with Johnny 13, are you?"

"Yes I am! I can't believe that we TRUSTED you! And yet you turned around and pulled that on us! Not only did we lose that trust, but also it was a stupid thing to do, pulling that stunt on us right under our noses. Did you seriously think that you could do that while we were in the same room and get away with it? I mean,"

Danny was the one to cut her off this time. "Um . . . not to make you hate me even more, but you're starting to rant. Listen, you never let me explain myself, and I think I deserve a chance."

"I'm not giving you ghosts any more chances. I don't even know why we didn't exterminate you the first time we saw you in that warehouse with what's-his-name."

"Skulker. Please, I know that you two are very understanding people, and if you could just hear me out . . ."

"I already told you, no. Don't talk to me anymore, Jack and I need to find a way out."

Jack woke up with this statement, and jumped up eagerly. "I found a way out? Great! Let's go!" And, without a second thought, he marched straight into the bars of the cell in which he and his wife were being held.

Maddie stood up and walked over to her husband, who was knocked onto his back from the impact of his body against bars. "No, dear, you and I still need to find a way out. Come on, help me check the walls, there must be a weak spot." With that, she started examining every inch of her cell, Jack following suit not long after.

Maddie heard a sort of slumping sound on the other side of the wall, as if Danny had slid down it onto the floor. He started talking, again.

"I don't care if you're listening or not, I believe that I get the chance to explain myself, so that's what I'm gonna do."

Jack froze at the sound of his voice, and then grinned. "Danneh! How'd you get into the ghost zone? And why is your voice all echo-y? Young man, why aren't you at school? You're going to be grounded once we get out of here."

Maddie jumped to her husband's side and put a hand over his mouth before he could say anything else. "Dear, wrong Danny. That's Danny Phantom in the cell beside us – you know, D. Phantom? Danny is his first name. And please, just ignore him. We're still mad at him for the whole Johnny 13 incident, remember?" Once she was sure that Jack wasn't going to make another outburst spasmodically, she lifted her hand off his mouth and raised an eyebrow and nodded, indicating that they should continue putting an effort into finding a way out. He nodded back, and before turning around to inspect the other side of the cell, mouthed, "Not Danny?" with a sad look on his face, and Maddie nodded back.

Danny Phantom continued on, ignoring the orange and black-clad male's previous outburst. "Yeah, Johnny 13 is kinda a bad ghost, but . . . not as bad? I know that doesn't make sense, but it's not like he's bent on doing evil things, like most other ghosts. I mean, think about it, if I thought he was really that bad, would I have brought him into the other world right in front of you? He's not interested in taking over the world or revenge or hunting people down, he simply wants to be with his girlfriend in a place where they can be happy, which unfortunately is most of the time not in the ghost zone, where they both really belong. He and I don't really like each other – he once tried to hurt someone close to me, and I stopped him, but once I got his girlfriend to go back to him after . . . well, after an incident that I'd rather not think about any more, he and I could tolerate each other. Since then, we've been caught in a chain of 'IOU's', where we do favors for each other when we need them most. Most of the time the favor he asks me of is to get him out of the ghost zone, which I hate doing, so most of the time I send him back to the ghost zone after a few days. I dunno how I'm going to do that if I'm stuck in here, though."

Maddie, though trying hard to ignore him, couldn't help but listen, as there was no other sound in the room they were in, and unconsciously replied, "Why are you in here anyway?" Jack looked questioningly over at his companion, wondering why she was talking to their apparent enemy, but from the way she wasn't acting like she had done anything, he guessed that she wasn't aware that she had said anything.

Danny was, in turn, also surprised, but continued on, hopeful that maybe she was softening up. "A while back I was arrested by Walker, sentenced to one thousand years here for possessing an unauthorized object in an unauthorized zone and trespassing after a first warning or something like that."

Jack couldn't help but speak up at the amazing coincidence that Danny just pointed out. "Hey, that's why we were sentenced here for a thousand years, too! And you know, the funny thing is, Walker said that it was the third time he had seen the Specter-" Maddie elbowed him, making him be quiet and indicating that they were still mad at him.

Danny, too into his own story now, ignored all other sounds in the cell. "I wasn't too bent on the idea of spending a thousand years in jail, especially since I hadn't actually done anything wrong – I was retrieving a present that, had it been missing would have caused catastrophe, for heaven's sake! Neither were some of my prison mates, so, even though they hated my guts for sending them to the Ghost Zone in the first place, we planned a jailbreak and got away. He was the most upset at me, I think, because I got out right in front of him. He tried again to get me into jail, even though I wasn't in the ghost zone, and again I got away from him. He got his revenge that time, though, and made me public enemy number one by overshadowing the mayor, as well as giving me the name 'Inviso-Bill'. Ugh, I hate that name. Anyway, I was making sure to be careful after that and never set myself up for another trap, but obviously I wasn't careful enough, and got myself into this mess."

Maddie was still trying very hard to ignore him, but her voice of reason was telling her that everything that he was saying made sense. Jack, on the other hand, remembered the very first conversation they had overheard between Danny and Skulker in the warehouse, and put two and two together. "So you were telling the truth back by the docks when you said you were framed."

Jack could hear Danny jumping up and going to the bars that were holding him in so that he could get a slight view of his large inmate. Jack did the same, and Danny asked in one breath, "So you believe me? You don't think I'm evil and that I betrayed you and you have to hunt me down?"

"Well, I don't know all that for sure, but I sure like you a lot better now!"

The two chatted on happily and animatedly, like . . . well, like father and son. Maddie had stopped looking for a weak point in the cell and had closed her eyes, breathing deeply. She was torn between what she wanted to believe and what her conscious and voice of reason was telling her. She, too, had put two and two together, but . . . she simply didn't want to believe that the teen in the cell next to her couldn't have possibly caused this whole mess. She looked at Jack, desperately trying to find an answer to her feelings, and gave in to her conscious. Jack was a little absent-minded, but when he had a good feeling about someone, they were always trustworthy. She turned around and interrupted their conversation.

"You said that you got out of here once, so you must know all the weak spots in this prison. Let's compile all the facts and figure out how to get out of here."

She couldn't see Danny very well, but if she could, she would have seen a warm smile on his face.


"Argh! We've been trying to plan this thing for hours!" Jack cried out, frustrated at their useless attempts to plan a breakout.

Maddie looked out the window, and tried to take deep, even breaths, just as frustrated as her husband. It was true what he said; they had been at it for hours. Even with the food that they had been fed not too long after their agreement to work together fueling them, it was still hard to concentrate.

This was what the past few hours had been like:

They had compiled all of the facts involving the prison and their resources, but they had soon discovered that not only were the only resources they had were their brains and the clothes off their back, as well as a couple pillows and sheets in Jack and Maddie's cell (Walker had such a grudge on Danny that he hadn't even provided that much in his cell) and the paper plates their meager portions of food came on, but that Danny had only been in the prison for a few hours the last time he was imprisoned, and therefore he hardly even knew his way around the building. That phase of their planning didn't take very long at all.

After that, they had started coming up with theories on the structure of the building, what mistakes Walker could possibly could make (based on the personality profile Danny provided and some of the things Jack and Maddie had learned concerning psychology from their daughter), what the guard's schedules were, etc. Again, that didn't take very long, and again, they were stuck.

For about an hour and a half after that, Jack and Danny tried breaking out using brute force. Jack slammed against all the walls and bars of the cell, shaking the room, and Danny was doing the same, though between slams there was always that same bright blue light Maddie had seen earlier, and with every other slam there was an ectoplasmic blast.

That was so tiring that neither of the males could move or think very well after that, leaving Maddie by herself to think the situation out. They all took a nap not too long after, hoping that the rest would help recharge them, but it hadn't done too well, as the trio were left going around in circles and frustrated.

Maddie rubbed her face with both hands, trying to get her brain to get out of the loop it had put itself in. She paused, and then rubbed her face again, this time slowly, as if she were feeling for something. She did it one more time, then jumped up, excited. She then sat back down; not wanting to seem too excited, for a guard came through the room to check up on the prisoners at that moment. She eyed the ghost carefully, waiting patiently for it to leave.

Once it had, Jack looked at her questioningly, even he not being able to misinterpret her action as anything but odd. "Um, Maddie? Please tell me there's a reason why you're acting a little, um, crazy."

She leaned in toward him, then pulled back, and walked over to the side of the cell so that Danny could hear this as well. "My engagement ring! Jack, remember how you wanted to put in a miniature ectoplasmic cannon in the diamond, but how you were short on money?" He nodded, not quite sure where she was going with this. "Remember how, instead, you had a mini laser gun put in?" He nodded, still not sure where she was going with this. She paused, hoping that Danny just might be catching on to where she was getting at. Neither of her companions answered, so she sighed and went on. "Walker said that neither ghost nor human could get out of these cells, which – and I know this is kind of a stretch – implies that what these cells are made of are part man made and part ghost made. Unless ghost technology is more advanced than ours, which I seriously doubt, those two parts cannot fuse together and still be stable. Since lasers are a man made thing . . ." She trailed off, hoping that maybe NOW one of the other two were catching on. Again, both were silent, so Maddie rolled her eyes and started again.

Right before she was going to say the first word, Danny interrupted, and through an amazing miracle said, "Oooh, so since lasers are a man made thing, and part of the bars are man made, you can cut away the man made part and walk through the ghost part. Um, right?"

"Exactly. I don't know where the keys are, though, so I don't know how it's going to help you."

"Don't worry about it. Just cut away what you can and, um, I'll figure out how to get out from there." The ghost teen replied, barely whispering the last part, as if he was giving away a secret.

Of course Maddie was confused why he was acting the way he was, but for the sake of the story, she didn't think too much about it, because she had other things to focus on. Like . . . where they were going to go after they broke out, what would happen if the ghost guards caught them, and how fast, exactly, they'd have to run if they were chased. Ha. It's a joke, get it? No, they didn't think it was too funny, either.

She quickly thought all this through, and started planning their escape with the other two.

Two hours later, the green guard was passing through the high-security prisoner's room again, tired. He had no idea why Walker was making him do this; there was no way the halfa or the humans could get out, and they were weak enough that they wouldn't go far anyway. He paused just for a minute to take a final glance at the prisoners; they were asleep at the moment, though he could have sworn he saw the large one blinking. He shrugged it off, and then went out the opposite side of the room.

As soon as he was gone, the three captives jumped up and got to work. Maddie took off her glove and adjusted her ring to the laser mode.

She took in a deep breath and hoped that her theory was correct. Assuming that the prison was a square, and that the area that the guard patrolled was also square, she calculated that with a guard coming in every forty minutes, she only had four minutes to spare to get the bars in both the cells cut down, then the trio had another eleven minutes to find the Specter Speeder and get out without being noticed. She hoped.

She cut down the top part of the bars . . . then the bottom . . . and nothing happened. Well, something did happen, but it was very, very strange. The bars fell away, making a rather large CLANK on the floor, but it looked as if they hadn't left their place at all, or as if only their shadow had left their place. She stared at the bars on the floor, and the bars keeping them in. They looked exactly the same. The whole thing unnerved her.

Jack looked at her expectantly, quite the opposite of what she was feeling, waiting for her to phase through. When she didn't he went right ahead and left the cell, going right through the bars that were left up. "Maddie, you coming?"

Again, she was rather unnerved by the fact that her husband all of the sudden seemed to go right through the iron bars, and even more so by the fact that ghosts didn't use anything that resembled ectoplasma to contain their felons. She ignored the fact that it didn't really make sense, and left the cell to start on Danny's bars. She quickly cut away enough bars for him to slide through (though how he was going to do so, she had no idea), and she and Jack silently left through the door they had originally been led through.

The plan was going well so far; now all they had to do was find the Specter Speeder, and wait for Danny's signal to shoot off. Apparently he was going to catch up and follow them, invisible, just in case trouble showed up, and leave with them, phasing through the walls of the prison.

She and Jack quietly and quickly snaked their ways through the halls, hoping that they were going the right way. Though they were tempted to just phase through the walls until they found the room their vehicle was in, the risk of being seen was greater that way. Better stick with the old-fashioned way.

Here were the facts they needed to focus on at the moment: they knew how to get from Walker's office to their cell and from Walker's office to the room the Speeder was being held in, but not from their cell to the room. And they had to figure out their way around and escape within eleven minutes.

No pressure, right?

Heh. Another joke.

They sneaked around (they refused to think the words "wandering aimlessly") for a good seven minutes, and just when Maddie thought she had a good clue where they were, several things happened at once, all within a mere three seconds.

Jack tripped on himself, making a huge crashing sound and yelling a rather loud "Woah!" An alarm went off, lights flashing and a siren going off, alerting all guards to their presence outside their cell. An exasperated voice shouted something like "Dad!" and a breeze zoomed by Jack and Maddie.

The moments after that were chaos. To sum it all up, about thirty guards came and surrounded Jack and Maddie, looking ready to shoot them in case they were violent. Jack and Maddie were ready to fight, but all of the sudden yet another alarm went off, confusing the guards as to where they should be.

The ghost hunting couple took this momentary distraction to their advantage, and shoved their way through the crowd of confused guards, sending several flying through the air. After that, they ran, not caring if they went through the walls or not. They didn't run far, though, when they had to freeze and study the scene around them. They were in a large common room, and . . . well, like most of the prison, it was chaos. Ghost prisoners were streaming in through all doors, some just escaped through their cells, and were joining in a fight against what seemed like the entire prison staff. Everyone was shouting something or another, but the one that actually came through above everyone else's and that struck Jack and Maddie as odd was, "Déjà vu!"

Danny Phantom flew up to them, and shouted above the noise, "If all goes as it does last time, we'd better get out of here, quick!" With that, he shoved them through the doors closest to them, and led them through the twisting hallways. In a panic, he shouted, "The Speeder is down this hallway, to the left, then the second door on our right! We have to hurry in case-"

He was cut off when they made the left, because a group of not-too-nice-looking ghosts met them. At the head of the group was Walker. Behind him were about five other ghosts, including Skulker, Technus, and a lady who looked like she should have been haunting a bingo hall.

Hey you guys! I am so incredibly sorry it's been near-forever since I've updated. The weekend after I went to San Francisco I went out of state AGAIN, and the weekend after that I had to study for finals. But, now school's out and I should be getting back to updating weekly. As my apology, I tried making this chapter a couple pages longer.

I suppose that there's also a couple of things I should explain that went on in this chapter. Jack and Maddie's cell is right next to Danny's, not across from it or diagonal or whatever, so unless they're right up against the bars, it's very hard for them to see each other. That said, when Danny and Jack were trying to get out, the blue flashes in Danny's cell were him changing from ghost to human (he was trying to find a place where he could get out in either his ghost or his human form). Finally, I know I'm driving you all insane with my constant hints of Danny Phantom being Danny Fenton and Jack and Maddie not figuring it out, and I know that this chapter was probably the worst. Well, BWA HA HA! You'll just have to see what happens. The reason why I even had Jack 'figure' it out when he heard Danny's voice is because I think he has a slightly more child-like mind than Maddie, whose logic makes her rule out all possibilities that don't seem logical. Jack, on the other hand, has a mind that allows for many, many possibilities to be . . . well, possible. And, for those who just don't think it's logical or that I'm not making any sense, think about this; if you were imprisoned in the ghost zone, would you concern yourself with the similarities one of the ghosts you come across only every so often and your son have? I wouldn't.

Now to thank my reviewers!

LaBOBuren – Whew. Don't worry, I'm not mad, I was just worried that YOU had actually written that song, which seemed . . . odd. The clanging sound was Danny running into the bars, and yes, I prefer "don't cry because it happened, smile because it's over!" better.

Kraven the Hunter – thank you for reviewing and putting my story on your fav list!

Also thanks to: hikarisailorcat, Anne Camp, bluish black dolphin, venusgal100, Sukira-chan, RoseGirl from planet Pluto, cakreut12, Master of Procrastination, KaliAnn, Neko-Salosa, Blue Autumn Sky, and to anyone else who reviewed and I may have missed (for which I am profoundly sorry).