Sam clutched her fists, not even bothering to try to conceal her ever growing disdain for Valerie Gray. "What are you doing here?" she asked through clenched teeth.
"What?" Valerie acted as if she had just finally noticed Sam in the room. "Oh, like I said. I heard Fenton was sick and thought he could use some company. I even brought him some comic books to read to take his mind of being sick." With that Valerie pulled the stack of what Sam had thought were mere magazines out from under her arm and tossed them nonchalantly on Danny's bed.
"Ah!" Sam blurted out, the triumphant look of one who knows her best friend better than anyone else on her face. "It just so happens that Danny doesn't even like ..."
"Wow!" cried Danny and Tucker in unison. "The Phantom Mutilator #34, complete with Ultra 3-D Holographic Fold-Out! Totally rare edition!"
"comics ..." Sam finished lamely, a low growl issuing from her throat. Tucker and Danny were both so wrapped up in looking at the comic that neither was paying any attention to either girl anymore.
"You were saying?" asked Valerie, a broad smirk on her face.
"Listen, I know what you're up to. You think you can just waltz right in here and with your rare little gifts and your mom's lame chicken soup and Danny will start drooling all over the place. Well, it ain't gonna happen missy!" Sam followed Valerie's gaze to the boys. Saliva had started to drip out of their mouths as they opened up the fold-out and gazed lovingly at it's contents.
"Complete with pictures of the Super Galactic Battle Armor and Red Laser Lances ...," they both continued to read aloud as one. Another growl issued from Sam's throat, only slightly louder then the first.
"Besides," said Valerie. "Why do you even care if I hang around with Fenton? You said yourself that you weren't a couple. Maybe it's time Fenton became part of a couple."
"That's it! Come on Tucker!" Sam grabbed the Fenton Thermos from Danny's desk and stuffed it in her back pocket, then grabbing Tucker by the back of the shirt she proceeded to stalk out of the room. She paused only momentarily to point an accusatory finger at Valerie.
"We're still watching you...," she said menacingly.
"And yet, I'm still here," Valerie retorted back after Sam had finished dragging Tucker from the room.
It was a few more moments before Danny looked up and noticed that his two best friends were absent from the room. "Sam? Tuck? Where did they go?" he asked Valerie.
She shrugged her shoulders in answer and then holding up the tupperware in front of her, with a smile on her face, said "Soup?"
Top of a Building, Across the Street from the Fenton House, Amity Park, Saturday, 9:45 a.m.
"Interesting," murmured Skulker to himself as he watched the scene unfold through his binoculars. "So. My pray has become unfit for the chase. I must find a way to remedy this situation. After all, what good is his pelt on my wall if he is too easy to catch? And there, I believe is the answer to my problems..."
Skulker's gaze slipped down to the sidewalk below where a young girl with long black hair, dressed in capri pants and a pink top walked along the sidewalk. Skulker had seen this girl before. She seemed to have some special connection to his prey, always hanging onto his ghost form whenever she got the chance. If he remembered correctly, her name was something like Paulina. Yes, that was it, Paulina. Skulker laughed quietly to himself. He would definitely have use for her ...
"Careful!" Tucker watched as Sam nearly broke the Fenton Thermos while slamming it into position to upload the ghosts into the ghost zone. Sam mumbled something akin to an apology. At least that's what Tucker thought it was, but it was difficult to say for certain as he hadn't really understood a word of it. He hadn't understood most of the words that had been flying out of her mouth since they left Danny's room. "You okay Sam?" he finally asked.
"Since when does Danny like comic books?" she asked accusatorily. "I thought he had given up that mind-numbing drabble."
"Yeah," Tucker laughed. "But only because he got his ghost powers and has been way to busy battling ghosts to read them anymore. Now that he's sick though, not much he can do in that regard. So why shouldn't he read some comic books for old times sake?"
Sam looked at Tucker incredulously, "You're joking right? Did you see who it was that gave him those comics in the first place?"
"Sure," Tucker shrugged. "It was Valerie."
"No, Tuck. It was Valerie the Ghost Hunter … The same girl who has vowed time and again to rid the world of our favorite ghost boy. And she is sitting up in his room at this very moment!"
"Listen Sam, I know your worried about Danny. Heck, so am I, but he's in bed sick. I seriously doubt he is going to do anything or say anything that will put Valerie on his tail. He'll be fine. And if he gets some ultra-rare comics that he can then later share with his best friend, the more power to him!"
"Ugh… Why do I even put up with you two?" Sam rolled her eyes in exasperation.
"Because you love us," Tucker said with a smile.
"I do not love Danny!" Sam screamed instinctively before she realized what she was saying. Blushing slightly she tried to recover as best she could. "I mean… Yeah, of course. I love my best friends as best friends…. Nothing more, ha ha."
Tucker shook his head in amazement. "You know, you really should get help for that."
"Come on Tucker, we have ghosts to catch." Sam grabbed the Fenton Thermos and started to head toward the door when she noticed Tucker was once again, no longer paying her the slightest heed. Instead his attention was drawn to a large devise that sat in the corner of the lab, still smoldering slightly.
"Hm… Guess this is what Danny's dad was working on," he commented.
"What is it?" asked Sam, who could make nothing out of it except that it seemed to be a rather large mass of metal and wires.
"Don't know," replied Tucker. "But it looks like someone just ripped a whole bunch of wiring out."
"Probably Danny's dad."
"I wonder if that's what broke it?"
"Could be. Either that or he fell into it. Now come on, we don't have time to waste. If Youngblood escaped from the Ghost Zone, chances are so did some of the others."
"Alright," Tucker said, sparing one last glance back at the broken piece of Fenton equipment.
The pair walked up and through the kitchen and living room where Jazz sat studying.
"Oh, are you two leaving?" Jazz asked.
"Yup," replied Sam. "Got a lot of studying to do. Mr. Lancer gave us a ton of homework."
"Yeah, I saw. He brought all of Danny's homework over last night. Well have fun!" she called after them as the headed out the door. Neither Tucker nor Sam noticed the small bunch of wiring that was stuffed under the couch cushion Jazz was sitting on as they left. When they were out of the door, Jazz glanced upstairs to make certain that Danny and Valerie were nowhere in sight before she grabbed the wiring and went downstairs to put it back in place, fixing what she had earlier broken.
Paulina's Residence, Amity Park, Saturday, 10:15 a.m.
"Bye, Papa!" Paulina called as she left her house. Skulker watched from the sidelines, waiting for an opportunity to strike. First, however, he needed to make sure that those two annoyances were within ear or eye shot of what was going on. His trap to lure Danny Phantom out of his sick bed just wouldn't work unless there was someone to tell him that a ghost was after one of his girlfriends.
He also knew that it would not be difficult to allow these three pawns, as it were, to get away. Skulker had still not managed to get the programming out of his system that allowed the tech-obsessed youth to hack into his system at a moment's notice. Normally this caused no end of frustration for Skulker, but this time it would actually be beneficial. Skulker smiled down at the stolen PDA still strapped into his wrist system. His memories of the havoc it had wrecked on him before were still fresh in his mind. It had taken him a good three weeks before he stopped having nightmares of that awful purple-backed gorilla. A shiver went down his spine at the just the very thought of it all.
He looked up and saw that Danny Phantom's two friends were just turning the corner and about to walk right into Paulina.
"Good," he said to himself. "now to make my first move." Skulker went invisible and flow directly over to the group.
"Ow!" Paulina cried as she collided with Tucker. "Watch were you're going!"
"Oh, sorry. My bad …" Tucker was brought up short as he noticed Skulker appear behind Paulina, his ghost gun leveled straight at her back. He smiled his cruelest smiled and began to pull the trigger.
"Sam! Ghost!" Tucker wasted no time in throwing himself at Paulina to get her out of the way. Skulker's blast hit the ground right next to Tucker's foot, searing off the tip of his shoe. Tucker squealed in surprise.
"Got it!" Sam yelled as she pulled out the Fenton Thermos. Another quick blast from Skulker though, knocked it out of her hand and sent it rolling into the street and down into the sewer.
Sam dove after it, reaching her arm through the grate but just missed catching it.
"If I cannot have the half-ghost's pelt on my wall, I will have his girlfriend's," Skulker stated.
"I'm his girlfriend?" Paulina inquired excitedly. It took her a moment to realize what was going on. "Oh no! A ghost! Where is that cute ghost boy when I need him?" Paulina turned to look around, half hoping that it had been the ghost boy that had rescued her. Instead she found herself looking into the puppy dog eyes of Fenton's loser friend, who was way to close for comfort.
"You okay?" Tucker asked Paulina.
"Ew…." Paulina looked disdainfully at Tucker as she pulled away from him. "You scream like a girl."
Tucker sighed. "Gee, Tuck, thanks for saving my life. No problem Paulina, you're welcome," he muttered under his breath.
"Um… Tucker! A little help here!"
Tucker looked over to see Sam lying in the street, her arm stuck in the sewer grate and Skulker taking aim at her head.
"Uh, right!" Tucker pulled out his PDA and hacked into Skulker's system, sending him to the first place he could think of. Skulker screamed as he was swept away by his own gear. He had known it was going to happen, so he tried to make the scream as real as possible. What surprised him was how long it took him to get where he was going, but when he finally landed, he thought that his scream could not possibly have done justice to the torture he was about to endure. As he looked around at that Purple-backed Gorilla's in, what his PDA told him was, the San Diego Zoo, he let out a vicious howl of rage.
"Oh, he is going to pay for this." With that Skulker flew into the air to make his way back to Amity Park.
Tucker helped Sam out of the gutter.
"Where did miss prissy pants go?" Sam asked.
"Who knows. She said something about the fact that next time we should wait and let 'the cute ghost boy' save her and then she took off in a huff."
Sam laughed. "Okay, so we can put that in your PDA for today. 'Do not save Paulina.' Hey I kinda like the sound of that one."
"Sam."
"Just joking. By the way, where did you send Skulker this time?"
"I sent him to the San Diego Zoo. Thought he could use another lesson on the purple-backed gorilla." Tucker smiled.
"Well," Sam looked down at the grate. "We'd better get down there and find the Fenton Thermos. Danny will kill us if we lose it. And with Skulker around, you know we're gonna need it."
"Yeah, I suppose so," said Tucker. "But I call dibs on the HazMat gear."
Underground Sewers, Amity Park, Saturday, 11:20 a.m.
Tucker and Sam squelched through the dark, murky water. They had been in the sewers for awhile now and were no closer to finding the Fenton Thermos then they were when they first started.
"The water is completely stagnant, so it couldn't have gone that far." Sam bent over to dig deeper in the slush.
Tucker stood by, tugging at the bulky, white, protective ghost gear he wore. "Doesn't this thing have something to protect a person from horrible smells?"
"It's ghost gear, Tuck," Sam replied, adjusting her own suit to allow her better movement. "For use in the ghost zone? When was the last time you actually smelled a ghost?"
"Um… Not counting Danny's socks?"
"Not counting Danny's socks."
"Guess you do have a point there. But it would still be much better if Danny's dad installed something to help with the smell. You know, just in case."
"AH-HA!" cried out Sam as she fished something out of the sewage.
"About time. I am so ready to get out of here." Tucker turned to look at Sam and quickly realized that the object in her hand wasn't the Fenton Thermos at all. Instead she was holding what Tucker could only describe as a large wet hairball with a long wormlike tail.
"I knew it!" Sam went on. "With so many people not paying any attention to the environment it was only a matter of time before innocent creatures started to suffer. I mean look at this!" She stuffed the creature under Tucker's nose as if he was solely responsible for it's current state.
"Um, Sam?" Tucker tried to back away a bit and pointed a finger at it. "That's a dead rat."
"It's only dead because people have killed it by poisoning its home!"
"I repeat. It's a dead rat, Sam. Its home is a sewer, and you're still holding it. Don't you know those things carry diseases?" Sam started to answer but before she could, the rat, moving with lightening speed, bit her on the finger and dived back into the murky water below.
"Ow!" Sam yelped.
"Hm. Guess it wasn't so dead after all," Tucker smiled. Looking down at where it had entered the water, he noticed a brief glimmer of something silver and green. Reaching down, he pulled out the lost Fenton Thermos. "But, at least the little fellow helped us find this." Sam merely glared at Tucker maliciously.
"Come on Sam," Tucker said happily. "Skulker isn't going to stay away forever you know."