Broken Transmission

I know what you people are going to say. Why's Saramis doing challenges when she has two stories that she hasn't updated in eternirty? Answers can be found at this forum thingy that I found out today that we could make: http/ I find that cool. This is from a challenge ofBran Muffinat DPO, so if it's been done before forgive me. I've never done one of these before.


Crash

Tucker stretched his arms out over his head and leaned back into his seat. "Man, I can't wait until we get to that resort," he said dreamily.

"Well, we've been waiting for eight hours," growled Sam from the seat behind him, "and we'll be waiting for another four hours still. I guess you're going to have to wait." She leaned forward and placed her chin on the space between Tucker and Danny's seats. "Can someone please tell me why on earth we decided to go to a mountain ski resort for our class trip?"

Danny shrugged, hearing Sam's complaints faintly from beyond his mp3 player's earphones. "I don't know. I wanted to fly to Houston to go to NASA, but that wasn't even one of the choices we were given." He glared bitterly at the screen and punched the touch pad violently. Sam and Tucker stared with wide eyes at Danny's obvious frustration, but decided to ignore it.

"It was either this or Washington D.C.," Tucker said. "I think most people would rather ski than visit a bunch of museums."

"And no one seems to consider that maybe Sam hates the cold and wants to visit the place MLK gave his "I Have A Dream" speech, huh?"

"No," replied the two boys in the seat in front of her.

Sam rolled her eyes and leaned back into her own chair. "Figures." She pulled in her large black coat tighter around her body and leaned her forehead against the cold glass of the bus window. At least their class had rented a charter bus. The only downside to that was that they were playing some romantic comedy on the televisions, and she could hear Paullina's squeals of joy from three rows in front of her.

It was the annual freshman class trip. It was March, but for some sick reason she blamed on human effects to the climate, it was still freezing cold in Canada. Maybe it was just because she was sensitive to temperature change. Either way, she knew she was going to be even bitterer than usual being stuck in the cold air for a week.

Tucker turned back around in his seat and yawned. He didn't know what Sam's problem was. It was a ski resort, what self-respecting teenager didn't want to go there? Skiing, that was a given, but also great dinners, warm fires, Canadian girls with the cutest accents….

Okay, maybe he should change that to any self-respecting teenage boy.

It was then that Tucker noticed Danny's leg bouncing up and down anxiously for the fifth time during the whole bus ride. He sighed and hit Danny's knee lightly to get his attention. The boy looked past his unkempt black hair and took out one of the earphones. "What?"

"You're doing that weird leg bounce thing again."

"I am?" he asked. He looked down and saw his leg's erratic movement. "Oh. I am." After taking a deep breath his leg stopped bouncing. "Sorry. I'm just –"

"Danny, a ghost dictator isn't going to appear in Amity and take over while you're away," he said comfortingly. "Okay?"

"Yeah, how do you know?"

"I don't. It's just that the chances are really, really slim."

"Right," Danny said. "I don't think the town's going to fall to pieces, but something could still happen with me gone. And it's not like there'll be any back-up, either, with Valerie on the trip, too."

Valerie's eyes popped open at the sound of her name. She was sitting opposite of the boys and two rows down, and had been trying to take a nap for the last hour now. The bumpy roads and sounds of Paullina's dreamy sighs were not helping, but hearing her name jolted her up.

"What about Valerie?" she asked loudly so the two could hear her.

Danny leaned over so quickly that he almost fell into the aisle. He caught himself though and pushed himself back up. "Oh, uh, nothing. We were just saying that you were trying to sleep… because I'm sleepy, too and it looked like a good idea."

"Keep trying, Fenton," she said, closing her eyes again. "Not the easiest thing."

"Please keep your conversations to your neighbors, Danny," Mr. Lancer called from the front of the bus. Danny leaned back in his seat and put his earphones back in.

That actually seemed like a good idea, Tucker thought. He was getting kind of tired from sitting down for so long. Soon enough, he was leaning against the icy window just as Sam was behind him, and drifting off into sleep…


At least, until his face crashed into the seat in front of him.

"Ow!" He yelped, pulling back and grabbing his glasses before they fell off. For a moment Tucker was too disoriented to do anything but grip his armrest and hold onto his nose, which felt like it was beginning to bleed. The first thing his brain registered was that is was dark outside, and there was a flashing red light. The bus was shaking violently, and nearly everyone in the bus was screaming bloody murder. So, what better idea than to join them?

"What the hell is going on?" Tucker yelled over the noises of screaming.

Danny was gripping the headrest of the seat in front of him for dear life, eyes shut tightly and jaw tightly closed to keep himself from biting his tongue. He turned to his best friend and looked at him wide-eyed, a strange look of helplessness and the worry that Tucker had seen many times before. It was understood without words what was happening to the bus.

"Stop the bus all-damn-ready!" Sam screeched from behind them. Her voice was loud, but it was drowned out by a large noise from without the bus. The bus jolted to the side again and her arm flew into the space between Danny and Tucker. Both of them grasped her hand tightly. It was then that Tucker finally realized the red lights weren't coming from within the bus.

"Can you do something?" Sam asked impatiently, her hair flying in all sorts of directions. She had several bruises already forming on her arms.

Danny looked around frantically, trying to figure something out. It would probably be a better idea to do so sooner than later. But what exactly was he going to do? Could he go ghost inside the bus without anyone noticing, since it was mass chaos within?

Suddenly, the bus grew quiet for a split second, and then everyone screamed at the same moment. Danny let go of his friends' hands and looked at the front of the bus. A few students from the front seats were starting to scramble into the back, so it was hard to make out what was happening. When he could make it out, Danny gasped.

The bus had driven off the side of the road, and they were about to hit a rock on the right side of the bus. Their side of the bus, no less.

Too late to leave the bus, Danny had to work from within. He gripped even tighter to the seat in front of him and concentrated. Quickly he turned into Danny Phantom and began working to make the whole bus intangible.

At the very last moment, it worked. Not the entire bus, but the half of it that mattered, phased through the rock. As soon as it passed, though, the lights on the inside of the bus flickered out and the engine stopped. Danny released his hands from the seat and quickly changed back into his human form before anyone could see. The bus slid some more across the ground before coming to a stop. It rocked to the left on its wheels, and the whole bus cried out collectively, before it rested back on both wheels.

Exhausted, mentally and physically, Danny leaned against the seat in front of him and panted heavily. Tucker wheezed next to him, holding his hat in front of his face to stem the blood flow. He could hear Sam moaning from behind, and several other people seemed to be nursing their own mild wounds. Danny closed his eyes, groaned, and fell to his knees in the small space between seats.

At last, someone spoke. "Is… is everyone okay?" Mr. Lancer called from the front of the bus.

"No!" Paullina said weakly. "I think I cut my leg. My ski outfit's stained with it."

Sam snorted in laughter. "Well, at least we know the universe hasn't completely flipped upside down," she muttered.

"Mr. Lancer," Valerie said, standing up from her seat boldly. She didn't seem very damaged, just a few scrapes. "We need to get everyone out of the bus."

"She's right," Danny agreed, standing up as well. Just not as strongly as Valerie had.

Mr. Lancer nodded in agreement and stood up as well. He turned to the bus driver, who exchanged a concerned look with their teacher, but then nodded as well. He pressed the button that opened the doors electrically, but nothing happened. After three more presses, the doors still didn't open. He tried turning on the lights and televisions, and even accessing the radio, but nothing at all seemed to work.

During this time, a few of the students, including Sam and Valerie, had gotten up to check for damages. So far no one needed anything more than a few bandages from the First Aid kit and some aspirin.

"Dash, Kwan, somebody," Mr. Lancer said, "start opening the emergency exists."

In a few minutes, everyone was outside in the cold night air, lying down or sitting in a large group. Sam was curled up in a ball, shivering, and Danny looked surly. Mr. Lancer was watching all of them, every last one, so Danny couldn't so a thing to figure out what had happened.

"You're pretty sure it was a ghost?" Tucker asked.

"Pretty sure," Danny said. "But I wonder who."

"Doesn't matter, just get me the heck back in a warm building," Sam complained.

Danny sighed at Sam's reaction and turned back to Tucker. "Nothing's working?"

Tucker frowned and tossed the cell phone in his hand to the ground. "No freaking service. And unless I find a plug soon, I'm not going to have any battery either. Man, this sucks!"

"The bus should have a radio, right?" asked a girl sitting next to them. "We can contact somebody on it."

"We'd better," Sam said darkly. She curled into a tighter ball. Danny shook his head at Sam and tossed her his jacket. He was half-ghost, so he was obviously used to feeling cold. She smiled softly in thanks, but wasn't sure if she could smile any more than that under the circumstances.

The bus driver walked out from the bus, shaking his head. He approached Mr. Lancer and said something quietly to him. Their teacher sighed and rubbed his balding head before turning to the students. "Class, I know most of us are still shaken up from the crazy ride –"

"We're who knows how far from the highway, or bus just went through hell, and half of us are freezing to death," Dash said loudly to his teacher. "My cell phone doesn't work and we're two hours from the resort."

"Dash Baxter, we may be stranded out here with a broken radio, but that doesn't mean I'm not still your superior," Lancer growled.

Sam sat up instantly and stared at their teacher. "Did you just say we're stranded out here and that the radio is broken?"

Lancer stared at her for a moment before realizing he'd slipped. "Yes, Miss Manson, we are." The group of teens started talking in a panic, but the teacher and a few other students quieted them down. "No one seems to have any service out here, the electricity is out in the bus and something's wrong with the engine. We don't know how long it'll take to fix the radio, but it is fixable. Now, first things first, we need to get everyone's stuff out of the bus. Dash, Kwan, Nick, and Danny, I want you to go back and pull out everyone's things."

Danny looked up in surprise that he'd been chosen to take out the suitcases with the star athletes of the freshman team. He nodded, exchanged a look with his friends, and got up to follow them to the bus.

It wasn't NASA, and they were stuck with what might be a ghost around them in the middle of the night, but at least this trip was becoming slightly more interesting.


See you in the afterlife,

Saramis Kismet