400 favorites and 500 follows for this story! 100 favorites and follows for me, as an author! This is far too much power for any one person! Thank you! Thank you so much!

Newredips: Hello there, thank you for the feedback! I hadn't actually noticed I had done that all three times. Oops. As for why he's acting the way he is this time, he did pick up a bit of a head injury earlier, and he does have those wisps hanging out in his leg, messing with his emotions, on top of all the other stuff he's been through. Then, with Mr Lancer, I'm trying to reason out how Danny would react instinctively. He's not actually looking for comfort, that's a side effect, he's just trying to make sure he knows where Mr Lancer is, because he's still trying to help, still trying to protect, and he's not super aware of everyone else around him. Now, latching on to Mr Lancer isn't the most logically sound way to do that, but, he's not at 100%... Does that make sense? I mean, I admit that at least some of this is lazy writing on my part, but I did try to work through it all logically...

.

.

.

Chapter 107:

.

Danny smiled vaguely in the direction of the newcomer (who was actually some distance down the road, so he probably wasn't Vlad's friend). He was aware that his emotions and thoughts were out of whack, again, but there wasn't exactly anything that he could do about it, and the wisps moving around on, and partially inside, his ankle felt so nice and soft and fuzzy. They were good friends. Good little soft fuzzy foot friends. They were so nice, helping him like this.

The new ghost looked nice, too. At least, Danny hoped that he was nice. He could tell that he was powerful, very powerful, so if he wasn't nice, that would be a problem. But he looked nice. Muscular, but in a kind of laid-back way. Not like a body builder. He was wearing an apron. A nice apron. Not that appearances really mattered in the Ghost Zone. Except that they did, sometimes. Hm. Appearances. Appearances could be deceiving.

"Hello," he said. No reason not to be polite. Yet. Even Vlad hadn't done anything too bad yet, and he had kept people from falling off the path. "My name is Danny. What's yours?"

"I am called Smith," said the ghost. "I am also going to the Digressed Tower. Shall we travel together?"

"Sure," said Danny. "The more the merrier, right?" Of course, Smith didn't look very merry. Now what had he been thinking of before? He frowned. "Hey, Ellie? Is going to the Digressed Tower really a good idea?"

"That's exactly what I've been trying to say!" exclaimed Vlad. "Apologies, Lord Smith-"

"Just Smith," said the other ghost.

"-Smith. But you will have to continue your journey on your own," he made a small, supercilious incline of his head. Danny noted that he actually looked rather pale, as if the ectoplasm in his face had drained away. Huh. He wondered what could cause that. Maybe Smith had surprised Vlad more than Danny had first thought.

"That's not what I meant. Ellie, I've seen alternate reality versions of myself before, and they weren't all very nice. Some of them were really mean, and kind of scary. Are you sure this is okay?"

"Um," said Ellie, looking rather pale herself. "It doesn't actually pull different versions of you from other universes. It just... Changes you, temporarily, I guess, to be more like them. It's like being in, um, a dream, and you're one-hundred percent certain that you're a cowboy, but then you wake up, and you've never been in a hundred feet of a horse. Besides, the more important something is to you, the less likely it is to be changed. So, for ghosts, it can't change Obsessions." She paused, and Danny nodded. "Are you really Smith?" she asked. "Like, the Smith?"

"Yes."

"Wow. Cool."

"H-Hey!" said Elliot, grabbing everyone's attention. "What if we don't want to go to this- this creepy Tower place? Huh? If- If you're really Mayor Masters, can't you just, you know, take us home?"

"Elliot!" hissed Valerie. The hairs on Danny's arms and neck went up. Was Valerie going to do something bad to Elliot? Elliot was kind of stupid, but he didn't deserve to be shot. Usually. "You can't trust Vlad. Did you not just hear him threaten us and our families?"

"Yeah, but I'm not going to be running around screaming that our Mayor's a ghost! People would think that I'm crazier than Wes Weston, and he..." Elliot trailed off.

"Wes," said Hannah, "Wes thinks that Danny is Phantom."

.

.

.

A golden-yellow aura swirled around Jazz's hand. She held her breath. This was as strong as she had been able to make it so far. She moved her hand sharply away, but a bright yellow shape remained floating in the air in front of her. She flexed her hand, and the disembodied glowing one copied the motion. Good. Now to try moving it.

Slowly, carefully, she started to move the ghostly hand down, towards the bench in front of her. There was a small rock there that she had selected for her next test.

Unfortunately, the hand dissipated before it got very far. Jazz sighed, and looked up, across the stadium. This was where the Egyptians had brought them to train. The Greeks of Elysium, like their real world counterparts, had an appreciation for athletics. They had allowed Jazz, Sam, Tucker, and the Egyptians access to the structure without argument. There hadn't been any sports scheduled for this morning, and there were other areas for people to play, if they really wanted to after the night they'd all had. There probably would be, actually, considering Obsessions.

Jazz hoped that they weren't disturbing anyone too much. Honestly, looking at what they were all doing now, they probably didn't need the whole stadium. A large room would have more than sufficed.

Tucker, for example, had apparently hijacked his training in order to teach his 'followers' the joys of technology. He was elbows-deep in... something. Something made out of wires and pressed with hieroglyphs. His PDA was hooked up to it. At least he looked like he was enjoying it, so he had successfully distracted himself.

Sam, meanwhile, was sitting about a quarter of the way around the stadium, surrounded by a small crowd of Elysians. They looked like nymphs and dryads. At least, they looked like what Jazz expected nymphs and dryads to look like, green and floral nature spirits with long hair and white dresses. All of them had potted plants. Sam seemed to be taking turns glaring at each one.

Yeah, Jazz didn't know what was going on there, much less how Sam had attracted such a crowd. They hadn't told very many people that they were coming here, and those ghosts hadn't been around when they came in. She sighed. She wished that she had some help with this. The book was good, but there were bits that she didn't understand.

There was only one thing to do, though, and that was practice. Practice, practice, practice, even though she wanted to be out there with her little brother who was hurt and sick and probably all alone with his classmates who would neither know nor understand his needs.

She built up the aura around her hand- in her hand, too, now that she thought about it- and tried moving it again. But this, too, flickered and failed.

She tried again.

.

.

.

Tucker was deep in his work. So deep, he barely noticed what he was doing. He had put himself there on purpose. His best friend, favorite teacher, crush, former club-mates, and classmates were missing and here he was, explaining transistors to a bunch of dead Egyptians. Well, that wasn't quite what he was doing, he had segued from mundane electronics to ecto-electronics and ecto

-entropic processes a while ago, but the point stood.

He hated feeling useless. He hated feeling helpless. If he had even the materials in the Fenton's lab... If he had the materials in Danny's lair... If technology wasn't so schizoid here in the Zone...

There were a lot of 'ifs.' But Tucker refused to be the useless friend in this situation just because he didn't have access to the internet, hardware stores, fast food, and all the other trappings of modernity. There were at least some trappings of modernity here in Elysium, Greeks and hellenophiles were still dying, after all, and that was, like, a thousand percent more than in Maddingly when it was under Aragon's rule, so there was that. He hadn't been useless in Maddingly, when they went to rescue Sam. Not that Sam had needed to be rescued. He had actually turned out to be weirdly good at archery. Weirdly good. Like he had done it before.

… Had he been twisting the wires into hieroglyphics?

… And was the... thing he had been making working better now? Was it glowing? Was it powered up? Where was the power coming from? He hadn't plugged it in while he was still working on it, had he? If nothing else, Danny's Accident had shown him that was a bad idea. He pulled his hands away.

"Did anyone plug this in? Or turn it on?" he asked.

"No, great king," said one of the Egyptians.

"Weird..." said Tucker. "

.

.

.

"Like this," said Delphinium, holding the plant's stem between her fingers, turning the tightly furled bud so that Sam could see it. The plant was called hot house sermon, and it was a Ghost Zone native. As she watched, the bud flushed with florescent colors, and expanded, revealing a spray of brilliant stamens and a single, tall pistil. "You see?"

Sam frowned. No, she didn't see. She shook her head.

"Are you sure this is your thing?" asked another nymph, Chrysopeleia.

"Pretty sure," said Sam. "I mean, I've always liked plants, and when Undergrowth was doing his mind control thing on me I was able to do this. I just.. I don't know. What am I supposed to be seeing?"

"Not see. Feel," said Chrysopeleia. "The energy, the life. The buzz beneath your skin. The way it twists, the way it curls. The spark of animation!"

Another one of the girls who had gathered around Sam like a friendly plague, laughed. "That's what you feel? Well, maybe you can feel that, but it isn't what really matters, is it?"

"I don't feel that," confirmed Delphinium, sounding confused. "I thought, excuse me here-" she then lapsed into Greek, the other nymphs and dryads either nodding in agreement and smiling, or shaking their heads and frowning. "-so it may not work in English? No, I don't think that will work. I know you don't have much Greek, but you don't happen to know any Latin, do you?" she asked Sam, hopefully.

"Not enough to follow a technical conversation," said Sam. She rubbed her hands on her knees, trying to get sap off of them. "Maybe you could just tell me how I'm supposed to feel when I'm doing this?"

"I don't think that we can," said Delphinium, slowly. "You aren't a ghost, after all. You don't have a core... Perhaps we're going about this the wrong way."

"Yeah?" said Sam, raising an eyebrow. She was trying to keep the sarcasm from her voice.

"Try focusing on the plants instead."

Sam sighed. That's what she had been doing. She propped her head up on her fist, and glared tiredly at the plant. She was getting a lot of glaring practice in, if nothing else. Danny had better be ready when he came back, because he was going to get the glare of a lifetime unless he had a really good reason for being gone, in which case Sam was going to beat the heck out of that reason.

He probably had a good reason for being gone. Sam wished he didn't. A 'good reason' usually included him getting beaten up and- Oh, who was she kidding? No matter how ridiculous Danny's existence could be, he wouldn't just run off, especially not when he was so hurt. He had clearly been kidnapped and she was worried out of her mind.

Staring at plants might have been the only thing that she could do right now, but that didn't keep her from feeling like she should be doing more. She should be out looking for Danny, or at least looking for someone who could find Danny.

Her eyes went wide.

"I am so stupid," she whispered.

"Excuse me?" said Delphinium, delicately.

Sam stood up. "I am so stupid!" she repeated. She wove through the dryads and stepped over the plants before jogging down the stone bleachers to the bottom of the arena.

"Sam?" said Jazz. "What are you doing?"

"Writing a letter!"

.

.

.

Sorry, I think I might have written another cliffhanger... This one was not intentional.