Hello all - back again with a newly edited chapter.
TUNING IN?: Please know that if chapter four is not edited yet and seems a bit different than the first three chapters, I am going to be changing it as soon as I can. If anything, I request that you do not read ahead because it will probably just confuse you. The two plotlines are similar but this newer version has more to it than the original. If you are reading this chapter but have not seen the brand new chapters (1-3), I highly suggest you go back to read them so that the body of this chapter makes sense!
As always, thanks to my wonderful reviewers!
*Previously in 04092015: A brand new invention in the Fenton lab transports Danny ten years into a new future. And his wife Sam has a dangerous opinion on the switch…
04092015
3
Curioser & Curiouser
April Ninth 2015
"Where are we going?" Danny asked again, realizing five minutes too late that Sam hadn't answered the question the first time. He knew the streets of Amity Park from the streets and the sky by heart but had no clue where they were heading now. Everything was a mass of color and motion, merely blurs as they raced past at forty miles an hour.
Sam hesitated before she answered and pressed her lips together. "Tucker's house. We'll be safe there."
"Safe? Are we in danger?"
"I don't really like that my husband was replaced by his fourteen-year old self out of nowhere, no," she muttered. "No offense. It just seems rather…foreboding."
"What do you mean?" he asked, glancing at her.
Her pale face was lit up by the dashboard lights, giving her a colorful glow. She reached over and played with the radio for a moment and Danny could sense her nervousness. "Don't you think it's odd that your Dad never told you about the time machine? Don't you think he'd say something? I know your Dad. He'd tell anyone who would listen and then talk to hear himself talk if there was no one else around to do so."
Danny considered the idea. Hadn't he said the same thing before he'd stepped into the portal? She was right. There was no way his parents would keep this a secret from him, especially not after finding out their own son had ghost powers.
"It just showed up," he stated, starting to get a creeped out feeling himself.
"Someone could have put it there, trying to get you here. And obviously they know you well enough to know you'd be…curious enough to walk into it."
Danny knew she hadn't really wanted to say curious. She'd probably wanted to say dumb, which is how he felt. He should have waited for his parents to come home before he'd started poking around. Clearly, he hadn't learned his lesson the first time.
"What do you think?" he dared to ask.
She sighed heavily. "I think it may have been sent by an enemy and unfortunately, you have too many for me to narrow the list down past ten. But it makes sense. Sending you here with no knowledge of this present world and no idea what you're capable of makes you an easy target. You're vulnerable."
"Oh…" He hadn't thought about that.
"The question we really have to think about is why you're here. Why did it send you forward to this particular time period? This can't have just been a coincidence. And I don't remember you ever stepping into a portal when you were fourteen."
Silence fell in the car and he just looked at her, amused. She caught herself and laughed. "Besides the Fenton Portal I mean. I don't remember you transporting to the future."
"You convinced me to walk into both portals, for the record," he reminded her.
"Yeah, maybe you shouldn't heed my advice next time," she said, swerving quickly around a semi-truck with a metal harness fixed on top so that it looked more like a parachute was allowing it to fly than wings.
"I have to," Danny said, gripping onto the door handle to steady himself. "You're my girlfriend."
She smiled to herself. "I'm your wife in this world."
"Yeah, I'm still trying to get that through my head. When did we get married?" he wondered, finding himself wanting to watch her more than the world they were flying through.
"I don't really want to tell you that," she finally said after a moment of silence. He raised an eyebrow and the car lurched forward as she stopped at a red light. "It could mess up the past, me telling you too much. When we send you back you might accidentally change things."
"How are you planning on sending me back?" he asked instead. "Through a time machine?"
"Nah," she replied. "They're still kind of flaky. You might end up as a six-year old again. We're probably going to go through the Ghost Zone."
"The Ghost Zone?"
"Remember the portals that used to open up into alternate dimensions and time-periods? The ones we used to find from the Infi-Map?"
"Yeah," he confirmed. "But will those -"
"You'll see," she promised. The light turned green and she leaned on the gas pedal hard. Danny's head smacked against the headrest and he vowed to never get in a car with a sixteen year old Sam the first time she drove in a regular car.
"Is there anything you can tell me?"
She smiled and put her hand on the gear shift. "Well, one thing is that you're not going to like my landings. The second is that I think you will like where we're at."
He glanced down out the window to see they were coming up on a large roof that looked like the top of a hospital where helicopters landed. The pad was just as big and had a bright blue symbol painted across it that looked like an anchor. She eased the car across the landing zone but then cut the power, sending them crashing to the ground from five-feet up.
He inhaled deeply and stared at her. "What was that?"
"I warned you. Besides, the car's fine. Tires are bouncier now. They take all the impact and stuff," she said, as if it was enough of an explanation. He just continued to stare at her with wide eyes and she smacked him playfully on the shoulder. "What? You land the shuttles, I land the cars."
"Wait – what?"
She got out of the car without answering and he fought with his seatbelt before he could do the same. He slammed the door behind him, running to catch up with her.
"Does that mean what I think it means?"
She kept her facial expression carefully neutral. "What do you think it means?"
"I think you said shuttles. Like space shuttles. Like I landed shuttles. In space. And that would mean that I'm an astronaut." He stumbled in the grass they were walking on as he tried to wait patiently for her reply, but it never came. "Come on Sam… You can't tell me one little thing?"
"I don't want to alter the timeline," she answered. "What if we send you back tomorrow and you know everything that you're going to do already? You'd become desperate to make it happen or not happen. You could change the course of events and permanently destroy this future. This present, I mean."
"But you said I'm vulnerable without the knowledge of how this world works. Don't you think I should know a little so that if we are…attacked, I know how to defend myself?"
She didn't answer and looked like she was struggling to come up with one. He walked beside her in silence as they made their way down a long flight of concrete stairs. Finally, they reached a gate and it creaked as she pushed it open and stepped through.
"We're here," she announced as he went past her.
Here was a four-story building made out of nothing but steel. It looked more like a technology company than an actual house. There were security cameras set up everywhere that had key pad controls beneath them all. Holographic lights lit a pathway up to the porch. A small unmanned machine noiselessly cut the grass. Danny instantly knew: this was definitely Tucker's house.
He quickly followed Sam up the silver stairs that clunked every time Sam lay her boots down. She walked up to the door and towards a key pad, hitting four numbers. An alarm sounded suddenly and Danny started as the loud noise reached an ear-splitting pitch.
Sam merely shrugged. "It'll wake him up faster."
He laughed at the thought, knowing Tucker couldn't be much different from the Tucker he knew. Sam was proving to be a bit tougher and seemed to have a way of seeing things from all perspectives before making a decision.
"Does Tucker have a wife?"
Sam barked out a laugh and shook her head. "He wishes."
"Just checking," he added. "I assume he's still married to his computer."
"You know, I think it was his PDA that he got the marriage license for actually," she joked, making him laugh. There were still a lot of things he wanted to know but he'd go for a laugh right now. It felt good compared to the uneasiness that he couldn't seem to overcome.
"Danny…" she began slowly, taking his hand. "I know this all must be…overwhelming for you right now." He was amazed at how easily she'd read his thoughts. They must have gotten super close in the last ten years. "And I know you're probably thinking I'm hiding things from you or that I don't want to tell you everything. But we've messed with time enough in the past. I want to make sure things – stay the same. There are certain things I like – that I love – about this time."
"I understand," he said after a moment, squeezing her hand.
"This is so…weird."
"What's weird?"
"It's been ten years and yet you don't seem any different than you are now," she answered. "I mean, you're a bit denser than now but that's just normal."
"Thanks, I think," he said, grinning at her.
"What the!" The door opened suddenly and Tucker stood there, looking sleepy eyed and annoyed, his glasses strewn clumsily across his nose due to his rush. Danny noticed he was a great deal taller as well and had gotten a few doses of some facial hair as well. His trademark red beret was slightly sideways on his head. "Why didn't you just ring the doorbell guys?"
"We have a slightly serious situation that would require you to get your lazy butt out here in record time. It worked, didn't it?" Sam replied easily.
He gave her a look and pressed a few buttons on the keypad. The noise cut off immediately but Danny thought he could still hear it in his head. Tucker smirked at her. "Oh yeah? What's your situation?"
"We should probably go inside," Sam suggested with a tone that implied she wasn't going to take no for an answer. She glanced over in Danny's direction and Tucker sighed.
"Valerie trouble again, huh?"
"Not…exactly."
Tucker held the door open for them both while Danny hesitantly walked inside. "Valerie? Valerie Gray? Is she still a ghost hunter?" he asked, looking to Tucker for the answer rather than Sam.
Tucker stared, narrowing his greenish eyes in confusion. "Uh, so yeah, what's going on again?"
Sam sighed heavily for the third time that night. "This is Danny."
His best friend laughed. "Really? Thanks Captain Obvious, I've only known that for about twenty-five years."
"This is Danny from ten years ago."
There was a very long silence and then – "Wait, what?"
"I time-travelled by accident after a finding a portal in my parents' lab," Danny explained.
"Sweet," Tucker whistled.
"No, not sweet. Someone may have planted that portal there for fourteen-year old Danny to find so that our Danny would be sent who-knows-where."
This thought had not occurred to Danny until now. If he'd come here, did that mean his twenty-four year old self had been sent back in his place? Or was he somewhere else? If he wasn't in the past – he could be anywhere.
No wonder Sam was so freaked out.
"How did you figure this out?"
"Well, for one, he didn't know who I was when he first woke up and he had a small conniption fit because of it," she told him.
"Yeah, well, I would too if I woke up next to you while you looked like that," Tucker teased.
Sam's pale cheeks turned red and she pulled her black coat closer around her as if she just remembered she was only wearing a nightgown, giving Tucker a death glare that could have smoldered anyone else. Danny pretended not to notice and scratched his cheek nervously with one hand.
"Okay, start from the beginning," Tucker requested, unfazed by Sam's dark looks.
Danny took a breath. "You, me and Sam were testing out some of my powers in the lab. I found this portal that was covered by a sheet and you guys told me to check it out. I stepped inside and showed up here."
"Shouldn't you have learned by now to stop doing things like that?" Tucker asked.
"That's not the point," Sam started.
"Isn't it?" Tucker interrupted.
"Well, sort of. But the fact is I can't remember ever finding a time-travelling portal that we told Danny to go into when I was fourteen. I'd remember something like that. Someone sent it back for him to find."
"Maybe it was Danny," Tucker proposed. "Maybe this is like a Terminator thing."
Danny snorted and then cut his laughter off at the look Sam gave him. "Sorry," he muttered.
"I was serious actually. Maybe Danny sent the machine back so that he could change something," Tucker continued.
"Change what though? There are lots of things he could change."
"I know of two things that would make him desperate enough to do it," Tucker grumbled.
"What two things?" Danny asked as Sam elbowed Tucker.
"It's nothing you need to worry about. Tucker, we need to get him to the Ghost Zone. We can go to his parents. They'll help us get in but we'll have to guide him through so he knows where to go. But I think I should be the one to warn them first. If you guys can hang here for a while, I'll be back soon."
Danny had the distinct feeling she was going to do more than just tell his parents what was going on. He knew Sam better and she had another plan. She just wasn't going to say it in front of him. He knew that him knowing too much was potentially a bad thing but that didn't stop him from getting slightly frustrated. Why all the secrets?
"Alright," Tucker agreed finally.
"Stay here," Sam demanded, pointing emphatically at Danny like he was a five-year old being scolded. "Under no circumstances do I want you to leave."
"I got it," he said, throwing his hands up in defeat.
"He's not going anywhere," Tucker said, suddenly putting an arm around him. "We're gonna have a chat buddy."
"Tucker, we can't reveal too much -"
"Blah blah blah, go on, I won't say anything that drastic…" He just grinned as she glared at him again and then dragged Danny off towards a doorway that led into a dark room. After a few seconds, Danny heard the front door slam as Sam left.
He turned to his older best friend. "Valerie? What does she have to do with anything? Is she still a ghost hunter?" he demanded immediately.
"Relax," Tucker prompted. "Walk with me, talk with me…"
He snapped his fingers and light illuminated the room. If it was designed to be a living room, it was hard to tell. The three-seater couch looked out of place among the hundreds of gizmos in the room. Four television sets were hung on the wall. A glass display case that ran the entire length of the wall carried all kinds of devices and consoles Danny had never seen before. Boxes and discs were on the second shelf – some filled with movies, others filled with games. There were cameras and controllers, computers and holographic objects that glimmered in the light.
"Damn…" Danny couldn't help but say.
"You like?" Tucker said, beaming with fresh pride. "Computer in every room, holographic control links at every station. I've got GDR hooked up everywhere."
"GDR?"
"Oh, right," he said. "It's what replaced Wi-Fi. But it's cooler and only super cool people like ourselves can work it."
"Oh." Danny couldn't believe all the stuff he was seeing? All of this in ten years? Plus flying cars. He wondered what else was new.
Tucker sat down on the couch and propped his feet up on a small footrest. "So, what do ya think?"
"I think this is actually kind of how I imagined your house to be like," he confessed, sitting down on the couch as well. "So you're pretty much the same then too at least."
"The same old techno geek who owns and runs Axion Labs."
"What?"
"Yep," he replied, wiggling his eyebrows. "Technology, science, and ghosts mixed together is a beautiful thing. And a force to be reckoned with. Check this out." He leaned over towards a table and grabbed a round ball of what looked like solid metal. "This thing right here is the reason I'm filthy rich."
"You are?"
"Of course I am."
"What does it do?"
Tucker grinned and tossed it on the floor. It rolled across the hardwood and then made a popping noise. Grids of green light filtered out from it, covering the entire room in horizontal and vertical lines. It spun around several times and then rolled back towards Tucker.
"One ghost located. No threat found," came an oddly female robotic voice.
"It senses ghosts?"
"And their energies. Ghosts with higher energy have this kind of aura that it can sense and pinpoint. It has a setting for ghosts with dark energy too. If a powerful and evil ghost shows up it absorbs their energy and makes them powerless and therefore, less dangerous."
"That's brilliant!" Danny said sincerely.
"Your mom helped out with the idea," Tucker admitted. "It sensed that you were in the room but it knows you aren't a threat." He tossed the device up in the air and caught it. "I call it Vanessa."
"Vanessa?" he said, grinning.
"My anti-ghost tank is named Sheila," Tucker told him, leaning back against the couch again. "And my favorite PDA is Cheryl."
"Wow…"
"So, how are you feeling anyway? Must be strange for you to come here," Tucker said, glancing over at him with new interest.
"Very confused," Danny confessed. "Why all the hush hush about everything? Even if I know a little about what's to come in my future doesn't mean I'll remember it."
"You're saying you won't remember that you and Sam are married?"
"I…well, probably but…"
"What do you want to know? I'll tell you what I can and if you ask a question I can't answer, I'll work around it best I can, how's that?" he offered.
"Do people still know I'm a ghost?"
"Oh, yeah. That's a big yeah. Right after they found out, you were a celebrity for a while. The lifestyle kind of got old but then again, so did the story on the ghost kid. People just began to accept you and the fame kind of leveled out again. Now you're just a super cool fairy tale parents tell their kids about at night. You still protect this city and you make a really badass superhero."
"Are you not a mayor anymore?"
"No, I quit after two years. They kept giving me grief because I was your best friend. They thought I was biased to make decisions based on ghost-related business. I don't miss it. People complain too much and are too hard to please."
"Oh," Danny said, taking this all in.
"The mayor that replaced me after the election was kind of a jerk. His name was Vic Bransom and he was this old guy who made it a point to 'safety-fy' – as he put it – the city. He called in a lot of big people and they quarantined the city for a year."
"For what?"
"To make sure that no ghosts could escape into the rest of the world," he continued. "He even had the government shut down the Fenton portal because he said it was part of the problem. You were the prime suspect for a lot of serious crimes while he was in office. It was easy to blame you for stupid stuff. But people started defending you after it started going downhill. Problem was, we started running out of resources due to the quarantine and people with families who lived outside the city couldn't visit each other. Then the ghosts that were trapped in the city and couldn't get back to the Ghost Zone started wreaking havoc a lot. So the people voted him off. Now he lives in Tulsa."
Danny suddenly gasped as he thought of a question. "Am I an astronaut?"
"Take it down a notch random," Tucker said, raising an eyebrow at the level of excitement he'd suddenly reached.
"Am I?"
"You…were… For a year and a half."
"Did I visit a planet? Was I up in a space station? Did I land on the moon?"
"Um, no, yes, and no."
"One out of three is good enough for me! Yes!" Danny threw his hands up in victory and slouched back against the couch next to his best friend. "But only for a year and a half?"
"Yeah…something came up."
Tucker's voice had reached the same tone Sam's had when she didn't want to say something. Danny glanced at him quizzically. "What kind of something?"
"Let's just say a lot of good things happened and a couple bad things happened and leave it at that. It's the way it's been for a year now. And me telling you now won't change anything I hope, so I'm not saying anymore."
"Then why did you say something to begin with? What do you mean a couple bad things happened? Does it have to do with what you're not telling me about Valerie?" He sat up again and waited for his friend to answer. "Or is something else?"
But before he could say anything else, Tucker stood up. "I'm getting a drink. Want something?"
"Tucker…"
However, Tuck ignored him and kept walking towards what had to be a kitchen. Danny leapt after him but as soon as he stood, his molecules seemed to expand and retract in one painful motion. He felt his body catapult through the air and then suddenly his body was reforming together again and he was in a different room. Tucker walked through the door and gave a very womanish scream at the sight of him suddenly standing there.
"Are you trying to give me a heart attack? I told you not to teleport because it gives me the willies!" Tucker cried, holding a hand over his heart.
"I think I'm gonna hurl," Danny groaned, motion catching up with him. He stood still and put a hand to his head, feeling slightly dizzy and nauseous.
"Sit down…" Tucker gently helped him into a chair at the dining table and Danny breathed in and out, trying to calm his stomach.
"I can teleport?" he asked after a moment.
"Yeah. And you spent the first two years scaring me for shits and giggles for the record. Of course, it's one you can't really control still. Your mind seems to do it whether your body wants to or not." He glanced at Danny's pale face and winced. "Feel better?"
"That was a rush," he said, nodding.
"Yeah, you're not a big fan of it. But it gets you out of situations fast and you can teleport people with you sometimes."
"What other powers should I know about?"
Tucker laughed. "Dude, you have too many."
"People still say dude?"
"Shut up."
They laughed together for a moment and silence fell again except for the hum of a couple gadgets that were sitting untouched on the counter. "I can't believe how much things have changed."
"You're catching up after ten years. When it's ten years you've already lived through, it doesn't seem like much at all."
"Can you really send me back?"
"Should be able to. Might run into a few snags along the way, but nothing we don't deal with on a daily basis anyway," he replied.
"What kind -"
Before he could finish, the front door banged against the wall in the other room and Danny could hear Sam's boots clack against the floor. "Tucker!?" she shouted, sounding alarmed.
"In here!" he called.
She rushed into the room and instantly walked over towards a tv hanging from cupboards above the sink. "Video six, on." The screen flashed on and Danny stood shakily, trying to see past her.
"Sam, what's wrong?"
She turned up the volume and Danny could hear a news anchor announcing: "Investigators are still searching for any evidence on the breakout and potential suspects have been taken in for questioning. The escaped convict has been a resident of the city of Amity Park prison for the last two years…"
But the woman's voice from the news cast disappeared as Danny finally caught sight of the escaped prisoner's picture. Messy silver hair and a matching ragged beard adorned a shrunken, skeletal face. Dark blue eyes looked haunted and yet still luminescent with a raging anger. He'd know that face anywhere, despite the changes.
"Plasmius," Danny muttered, causing both Sam and Tucker glance back at him.
Sam nodded solemnly and put her hand on her hip. "Still think that you being sent here wasn't a trap?"
Guess you'll find out in upcoming chapters. I've got one last chapter to edit after this one so stay tuned and hopefully I'll have that done soon. Until then, here's your sneak peek!
Chapter Four: Locked & Loaded
"We have to get you back to your time now," Sam urged.
"It's not just about me changing the future anymore, is it?" Danny asked, walking forward to stand right in front of her. Her eyes fell elsewhere as she tried not to look at him. He knew she didn't want to answer but she didn't want to lie either. He turned his head to look at his best friend. "What aren't you guys telling me?"
"You're the one who put Vlad back in prison," Tucker stated.
"Okay, why is that such a bad thing? He put the whole world in danger at one point and I don't know what he did after that because I haven't gotten there yet. But I think that's enough of a reason for him to be locked up."
"There are certain people who didn't think so," Sam suddenly said.
"Like who?"
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Raina Wolfe – Lateraina
