A cookie for everyone who gets the joke Tucker remembers. Also a retroactive cookie for anyone who can tell me what the title "Fledermaus Future," from the last chapter, parodies.

Disclaimer: Do I need to say that I don't own these guys again?


"Danny? Danny?" A somewhat shaken goth stepped forward and gently took a hold of a softly glowing single white gloved hand. His red eyes followed her, an eerie intelligence creeping in behind them as they focused on her face. "Danny?" She squeezed his hand. A single eyebrow shot up in response and the barest trace of a smile crossed his lips.

"Danny!" Tucker approached his friend and grasped him by the shoulder. "What's going on, man?"

The phantom shook his head quickly and blinked rapidly. The blood color drained from his eyes and was replaced by their usual spectral green. "Huh? Wha...? Why are you guys all freaked out?"

"Danny, you let the bad guy go and then you completely blanked. And then you had this creepy look on your face and... Well, something weird is going on!"

Danny glanced around. People were beginning to drift back to the Nasty Burger parking lot now that it was safe again. "Can we talk about this at my house?"

Tucker shrugged. "That's probably a good idea."

"Great. I'll see you guys there in bit." A flash of white and black soared into the air and out of sight.

Sam pushed the hair out of her face, disheveled by the gust caused by his sudden departure. "Thanks for the ride," she muttered.

"Come on. You know that would have been a bad idea."

The girl sighed. "You're right." She could hear the murmurs of "Danny Phantom" "Inviso-Bill" and "wow," growing around them.

"Besides," said Tucker, "we have to get our bags. And I think Danny left his backpack."

"What would he do without us?"

"Lose all his stuff?" Tucker smiled at his friend, opening the door to the Nasty Burger. Sam smiled back. Tucker was good at that, making her forget when she was annoyed and distracting her when she was upset. It was one more excellent reason she was glad he was her friend.


"Here's your bag." Tucker dropped the backpack on the floor as he and Sam walked into Danny's bedroom.

"Thanks." The raven-haired young man barely looked up from where he was sitting on the bed. He had the air of child who was about to get in trouble.

"Danny?" Sam sat down next to him and placed a hand on his knee. "I'm getting really worried. You've been acting odd the last couple of days."

"I told you I was tired."

"Tired doesn't change the color of your eyes, dude." Tucker collapsed into a bean bag chair across from the couple.

"My eyes changed color? What color?"

"Red."

"Red." Danny echoed the word, as if it held a particular significance.

"That's the same color your eyes were when Freakshow was controlling you, way back when." Sam squeezed his knee even harder. Danny picked her hand up in response and held it in his. Her fingers were, as usual, surprisingly cold compared to his human hands.

"Why are your hands always so cold? I swear you're part ghost."

"Danny." Her voice had a nagging edge. Don't change the subject, it said.

"What? So you think someone's trying to control me?"

"Its possible," Tucker said.

"You guys. I'm not being controlled. Geez, I get a little tired and suddenly the world is falling apart."

Sam slipped her hand out from Danny's. "Well, I'm sorry we're worried about you but something weird is happening and you won't tell me what's going on."

"Nothing is going on!"

"Why do you always have to do this?"

"Um, guys?" Tucker tried to interject.

"Do what?"

"You never tell me anything! Whenever something's going on in that head of yours, oh no we can't tell Sam Manson, she'll just freak out!"

"Well, you are freaking out!"

Tucker thought about trying to say something again but the discussion had pretty quickly devolved into a lover's spat. Instead he stared at the stitching on the bean bag chair and wished his friends would shut up or at least give him a convenient excuse to leave the room.

"I'm sorry but I think I have a good excuse to freak out!" Sam was growling.

"Why? Nothing is happening to you."

"So you admit it, something is happening!"

"Oh, for crying out loud..." Danny got up and paced over to the window. His fingers drumming loudly on the glass.

"Don't walk away from me while we're having a conversation."

"We're not having a conversation, you're fighting with me," Danny snapped.

"I'm fighting with you?" Sam said incredulously. "Oh, please."

"I'm sorry, but you're the one who started yelling."

"I'm not yelling!" Sam shouted. "Come on Tucker, we're going." Sam stood up, fuming. Tucker glanced between his friends. He hated it when they fought and didn't want to be a part of it. On the other hand Sam was sort of scary at the moment and he really didn't want to stay where he was. He raised his eyebrows at Danny and a knowing look passed between the two friends.

"Come on, Tucker!" Sam was standing by the bedroom door. Her raging, black lined, violet eyes fixed on the boy on the other side of the room, who fixed her with an equally powerful blue-eyed glare. "We'll come back when you feel like talkinglike a rational human being." The eyes staring back at her flashed a brilliant green. "Or whatever the hell you are," shespat coldly,storming out of the room.

And with a final apologetic look from Tucker, Danny was left alone.


Tucker Foley sat in his room, with a 2001 Dell laptop in front of him. Half of its parts were removed and scattered around in a somewhat organized mess. The laptop had been Sam's but she'd gotten rid of it when she'd gotten a new one for her birthday last summer. Tucker had some interesting ideas about overclocking the thing and it had been his project for the last couple of weeks.

The boy stared intently at the electronics in front of him, deftly maneuvering wires and computer chips. He liked technology for a reason, that reason simply being he understood it. Things worked in a specific way and for a specific reason. If something unexpected happened there was always a cause. The cause could be discovered and corrected. The unknown never remained unknown for long. Technology was the laws of math made flesh, cold capable numbers brought to life in the real world.

There are 10 types of people in the world, he thought to himself, those who understand binary notation and those who don't. Tucker chuckled remembering the joke.

His cell phone rang, real life intruding on his mechanical world.

"Hey, Tuck." It was Danny.

"Hey, Danny, what's up?"

"Sorry about the whole argument thing earlier."

"That's okay. You guys fought before you were dating, it's not like I'm not used to it."

There was an intake of breath on the other end of the phone and it sounded like Danny was about to say something. "Yeah." He finally said, although Tucker knew what hung in the dead air. What happened, Danny was thinking. Why was she getting so worked up? Why did Sam have to act like such a girl.

That was the awesome thing about best friends. Their silence could speak for them.

"Anyway," Danny said. "What pages were we supposed to read for History? I forgot to write them down."

"Lemme see." Tucker dug into his back pack and pulled out his notes. "One ten to one forty-seven."

"Cool, thanks."

"No prob."

"All right, I'll see you tomorrow, then."

"Hey, Danny?"

"Yeah?"

"Not to be obnoxious or anything but are you sure you okay?"

"I'm fine, dude." Danny reassured him.

"Cool."

"See you."

"Bye."

No sooner was Tucker seated in front of his computer when his cell phone went off again. He checked the caller ID.

"Hey, Sam."

"Hey, Tuck."

"What's up?" There was a pause. A pregnant pause, in fact, and Tucker knew what was coming next. Sam's closest friends has always been boys but occasionally she did need to act like a girl, so to speak. Tucker didn't mind filling that role but it wasn't one he relished. Being an emotional sounding board in her relationship with his other best friend was definitely something he did out of affection for his friend, not out of any sense of fun on his part.

"Nothing," the girl's response finally ended the pause.

"Liar."

"Fine, I'm lying."

"So honestly, why did you call?"

"I dunno, I just feel weird about what happened earlier."

"The fight?"

"Yeah and everything else, too."

Tucker gave one last forlorn look at the abandoned computer and turned his attention to his friend.

"So?" He asked inquisitively.

"It's just... Well, every time I get worried about him, he pushes me away. And it's not like it's the first it's happened. You know it's not. I mean, I'm his girlfriend, don't I get to be worried about him? Or is this some dumb thing with his hero complex?"

"His hero complex?"

"Yeah. Danny always saves the day. Danny always gets the bad guy. No matter how many times I help him or I save him he's always the hero."

"Well he kinda is, isn't he?"

"That's not the point! The point is... I don't know." Sam's voice trailed off. "I do worry about him. And sometimes I want to take care of him. I know I can't fix everything but I care about him so much... Why is he always pushing me away? Why does he have to be such a boy?"

Tucker was about to respond when his call waiting started beeping in his ear. It was Danny. "Hang on a sec, Sam. I'm listening. I'll be right back." Tucker clicked over to the other line. "Hey."

"Hey, about that History assignment."

"Yeah?"

"Are we supposed to..." Danny cut himself off mid-sentence.

"Danny?"

"Oh my god..."

"Danny? Danny?" Tucker called into the phone. But it was useless. He was gone.


Man, Danny and Sam both kind of have jerky moments in this chapter. But, hey, it happens. All people have jerky moments at one time or another and oddly they tend to have their worst with the people they care about most.

Despite the fantastic setting of Danny Phantom, I like to try and write people who behave as realistically as possible. As for the whole, "she's being such a girl" "he's being such a boy," those are probably the most rediculous and common complaints in the world. (Hey, I've made them too.)

For those that still have issues with our beloved cannon pair tearing into one another for seemingly no good reason- well, just trust me. It's all in the service of a bigger story.