Note: Thanks again to all my reviewers. Your feedback is always much appreciated.
Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom, nor any of its characters. I also do not own any of Musiq's work.
Danny sat impatiently on a park bench, checking his watch repeatedly and wondering what could have become of Sam.
"This is really stupid," he whined to Tucker for about the tenth time in the last five minutes. "She was supposed to be here awhile ago. She seemed so eager to meet up with me and discuss our kiss, and so now what does she do? I'll tell you what she does- she leaves me hanging!"
"Dude, calm down," Tucker responded. "You know how Sam is. She was probably on her way here and got caught up in some protest against testing on animals or something. You seriously need to take a chill pill."
As Tucker tried to calm him down, Danny suddenly felt a drop in temperature, accompanied by a telltale icy-blue gas emerging from his mouth as he exhaled. He craned his neck to see what was responsible for triggering his ghost sense and noticed a ghastly green figure in his peripheral vision, sailing through the blue skies.
"Oh, no, not again!" he muttered under his breath as he recognized the ghost. Looking around to make sure no one but Tucker was around, he stood up fast and took shelter behind a bush. "I'm going ghost!" he cried, and, with that, morphed into Danny Phantom.
He took to the skies and began to trail the ghost. Sensing that she was being followed, Kitty turned to him and smiled seductively. "Ah, yes, so we meet again," she said with feigned sweetness.
"You told me that you would always be with Johnny," Danny reminded her, thinking back to when she had overshadowed his crush, Paulina, making her become his girlfriend temporarily.
"Oh, so I did. Well, you see, you of all people should know how fickle adolescents can be. Johnny couldn't stop his womanizing ways- he even had the nerve to start dating that untalented excuse for a musician, Ember McClain, behind my back. So I left him-and the Ghost Zone-forever. Which means today is your lucky day, for I have come back for you."
"Well, you wasted your time! You would've been much happier with Johnny; one cheater deserves another!"
The two were now standing on the ground. Danny powered up a ball of ectoplasm and hit her, with enough force to knock her backwards against a tree. Shaking off her temporary paralysis, she managed to phase through the tree and materialize back into tangible form.
"You will be mine!" she insisted, flying off into the afternoon sky. Danny searched frantically for the Fenton Thermos, but was unable to locate it and did not have time to get another one from the basement in his family's home. He was forced to let Kitty go, for the time being anyway.
"How could she have been hiding out from me all this time!" he exclaimed, realizing that Kitty was flying in the direction of the school. He watched in anger as she phased through a wall towards the back of the main building, disappearing from his sight as quickly as she had entered it.
Not wanting to draw a crowd, Danny decided it would be safer if he reverted back to his human form before investigating. He and Tucker ran to the school, but could find no trace of Kitty. As they scoured the library, Sam suddenly appeared out of nowhere, taking them completely by surprise.
"Samantha, are you alright?" Danny asked, noticing the goose egg that had formed near her left temple as a result of her confrontation with Kitty.
"I'm... fine..." she mumbled in a shaky voice, walking dizzily towards him and Tucker. When she was just a few steps away, she again lost consciousness, and Danny managed to catch her as she fell forward in a faint.
"Tucker, go get the nurse!" Danny shouted, picking up Sam and laying her gingerly on top of one of the large tables, too scared to carry her to the health office at the other end of the school.
"But Danny, you know how I feel about-"
"JUST GO!" Danny screeched, interrupting Tucker's protest about having to be anywhere near any sort of healthcare facility.
Sam began to stir as Danny stared at her intently, willing her to return to consciousness. Her eyes opened, and she started to sit up, but he commanded her to lie still.
"What happened, Danny?" she asked, blinking several times in an effort to refocus her vision.
"Shhh, we'll talk about it later. Just relax for now; the nurse should be here any moment."
As if on cue, the school nurse came bustling in, followed by a pale Tucker and a concerned Mr. Lancer. The two adults crowded around Sam as Danny led Tucker to a chair in the corner of the library to sit down and regain his composure. They watched as the nurse checked Sam's breathing and felt her pulse, then proceeded to examine the large bump on her head.
"She'll be fine," the nurse proclaimed a moment later. "She just has a big bump on her head, which is nothing that a few days' bed rest can't mend. However, I suggest one of you call her parents and have them take her to the hospital, for precautionary reasons. Perhaps they can better determine how she sustained her injury."
The nurse waited with Sam while Mr. Lancer contacted Mr. and Mrs. Manson, and they elected to have their daughter transported by ambulance to the emergency room, where they would meet up with her. Danny insisted on accompanying Sam, as the adults had to get back to work, and Tucker and hospitals don't mesh well. As they traveled to the hospital, Danny tried to help Sam relax as much as possible, assuring her that he wouldn't leave her side.
Upon their arrival, however, he had to leave, as her parents would hear nothing of him staying with her, feeling he was a bad influence. Regretfully, Danny went home, only to be confronted by his parents for being late. As he listened to another one of his father's pointless lectures, his thoughts went back to Sam, wondering how she had sustained her injury. What really befuddled him is that when she had regained consciousness, she seemed more like her old self, as if the way she had acted earlier in the day was the result of some trip to an alternate universe that turned out to be all in her mind.
After his father finally stopped getting on his case, Danny stole upstairs to his room, waiting by the phone for any sort of news about Sam. As he passed the time, he decided to fire up his computer and play games, in hopes of getting his mind off all his troubles, if only for a few minutes. Tucker was also online, and the two started chatting about all the strange events for the day. In the middle of the conversation, the phone rang, and Danny dove for it.
"Hello? Yes. Yes. I see. I'll be right there," he said, hanging up and quickly saying good-bye to Tucker before turning off his computer. "I'm going to the hospital to visit Sam!" he called out to no one in particular as he hurried down the stairs and out the front door.
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