Cheese and crackers, I haven't updated this for an entire MONTH!
Sorry for the long absence, but I had some problems with contacting my beta. But that's all fixed now, so here's more! Hope y'all like it. Let me know whatcha think!
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"What do we do?" Jazz looked at her little bother, her eyes wide with fear. "If they find us here, and no ghost..." She let the sentence hang, knowing they both could imagine the consequences, and neither one of them wanted to.
Upstairs they heard Jack's voice boom through the house. "The trail goes downstairs!"
"We can't get caught!" Danny agreed, his voice almost pleading.
Jazz caught his tone and looked over at him, shocked. "Danny, no!" she protested, but too late. Danny had already grabbed her hand and had turned them invisible, just as their parents almost flew through the door.
They both stopped and stared at the empty cage in horror, their faces simultaneously twisting into masks of anger.
"HOW COULD SHE GET AWAY!" Jack yelled while Maddie silently boiled beside him. The last time Danny had seen his mom in this mood...well, he preferred not to think about that. Fortunately he had never met her like that in his Ghost form...and he hoped for his own sake and safety that he never would.
"There's another ecto-signature in the room," she said quietly, looking down at a smaller version of whatever her husband held. "It's the ghost kid! He set her free!"
"WHAT! When I find that kid I'm gonna--" Whatever he said was lost to Danny, who flew through the ceiling, carrying Jazz with him. She gasped at the sudden sensations of floating and phasing, but managed not to let anything too loud slip out of her mouth until they'd landed on Danny's floor, trying not to trip on an overturned pile of textbooks.
They waited in the darkness for several seconds before relaxing. Danny let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and ran a hand through his hair.
Jazz, on the other hand, wore a blank face that Danny knew covered seething emotions. He instinctively stepped away out of self-preservation.
"What?" he asked cautiously.
"Hmm, let's see," Jazz snarled, jabbing her finger at him like a weapon. "You only just put yourself at risk, along with me AND the rest of the ENTIRE PLANET, by my count THREE TIMES in the last FIVE MINUTES! Not to mention, you did this to help a GHOST who might be part of WHY all of this is HAPPENING!"
Danny continued to shrink back against the dresser, trying not to step on any of his half-finished model rockets, among other things, but not daring to take his eyes off of his sister.
"Jazz, I--"
"Until you can figure out what's going on," she interrupted, "you'd better not use your powers...at all. Because if you do, I will tell Mom and Dad about them."
Danny's world stopped spinning as her words hit him. For several seconds, he could only stare at her, stunned, then several thoughts seemed to rush through his mind.
Hadn't she promised not to tell? Hadn't it been her idea not to blab his secret? How could she threaten to do this? How could she even THINK about threatening to do this? How could she have lied to him? How could she betray him...?
"You wouldn't," he countered, his voice a low, harsh whisper.
"It's happening again!" Jazz pointed to his eyes, neither one now willing to back down. "They're red again! As long as you're a danger to yourself and the town, yes, I WOULD tell them." Danny stood, seething at his sister, getting angrier and angrier until his mouth seemed to open of its own accord.
"I can't believe you! You're just like Sam! It's intriguing to finally realize that Ms. Smarty Pants, also known as the most intelligent girl in school, has to resort to blackmail to ensure her way."
Jazz sighed and put a hand to her forehead. "Danny, I'm not doing this just to get my way! I'm doing this to protect you! Until we can find out what's going on--"
"Fine," Danny interrupted as he turned his back on her and began to stalk rigidly out of the room.
"Where are you going?" she asked, her hands finding their place at her hips again.
"Away from you," Danny responded, not even bothering to look at her. At the door, he stopped and glanced back over his shoulders, red eyes still glinting in the darkness. "Don't follow me."
"Danny--"
"I mean it, Jazz," he warned and slammed the door behind him.
Jazz resumed rubbing her temple with a sigh. "I hope he doesn't call my bluff."
xoxox
Danny tromped down to the front room just in time to see his parents shutting the door behind them, yelling something about getting the ghosts and the ghost boy.
This did very little to improve his mood, which did even less to improve his situation, and he knew it.
He knew it.
His eyes opened wide before he put his hand over his face. Suddenly depression piled on top of everything else. He felt alone and trapped in a situation he couldn't even begin to find a way out of. With a growl of frustration, he slammed his hand against the door frame.
"I have got to figure this out!" he said to himself, trying unsuccessfully to calm down. "And no one will help me! No one CAN help me." He sighed, feeling suddenly deflated, and flopped onto the front room couch.
Then an idea popped into his head.
Clockwork. He could get the Specter Speeder and...
Danny didn't even bother finishing the thought. The Specter Speeder had been taken apart to build the Mini Fenton Ghost Assault Vehicle. He had no way to get to Clockwork without that or his ghost powers...and he didn't trust himself to use those right now, although it pained him like nothing else to admit that Jazz was right. If he had anything to say about it, she would never find out that he agreed with her.
It occurred to him that she'd saved his butt too many times for him to really stay mad at her normally, and the same with everyone else...even Dash. Especially Sam. How long had his...condition been affecting him? Is that why he felt so hurt by everyone around him? Even his friends, whom he'd thought nothing could faze. They'd gone through so much together, everything from battling his future Evil Self down to the Box Ghost.
With another sigh, he forced those thoughts aside and tried to come up with another plan. He found himself rather surprised when another idea came to him fairly quickly. He could take some of the jet-packs that his dad stashed for singular, short-range travel in the Ghost-zone, but it took him almost an hour to reach Clockwork when he could fly normally, and he felt rather confident that the little jets would never reach 112 miles per hour. He didn't even know how much fuel they had. If only the Time Master lived closer...of course he could also be watching right now.
Danny turned his eyes up towards the darkened ceiling. "Little help?" he asked, looking around. "Hello? Clockwork?" He strained his hearing to listen for the slightest movement, and his eyes continued to scan for the blue and white portal that appeared whenever Clockwork decided to visit, but the room remained dark. "Please?" he whispered, his voice coming out as a plea, but still, he got nothing.
"Why can't you be closer!" Danny suddenly rose to his feet, yelling at the Darkness. "Why can't you answer me? I need help! HELLO!"
Again, nothing.
"Why?" Danny asked, his voice quieting down as he shuffled his way into the kitchen. "Why?" Clockwork was really the only ghost friend he knew of...unless...
"Clarice," he suddenly whispered to himself. She didn't live more than 10 minutes flight away from the portal. Albeit straight down, and you had to be able to pick the right door out of about a hundred in her "community," but he'd found the place before. He could do it again, and she'd helped him last time.
With a new determination in his eyes, Danny stood up straight and marched down to the lab. His parents had left the ghost shield on again, but nothing he couldn't handle.
As he stepped back into the lab he'd just left, one might've said his face was carved from stone. He strode up to the small closet near one of the room's corners and opened the door. Inside, hanging neatly and in color order, hung five haz-mat suits. The Fenton family's personal stock. Color-coded emergency use. One for each of his parents, two for Jazz and one for him.
There were supposed to be two in there for each person. Jazz never wore hers and his parents switched theirs out all the time. He'd claimed to have lost his other one, but in all actuality, it remained with him wherever he went.
The suit's colors had been inverted, and now sported a white "DP" symbol on the chest : The suit that Sam had thrown at him the day he stepped into the portal.
The day his life changed forever.
With grim determination, he reached up and pulled the brand-new, if a little dusty, white and black suit off the hanger before shutting the door. He shoved his legs into the resistant material, not bothering to take his pants or shoes off. He didn't feel he really needed to, despite the fact that his Levis crumpled at the bottom.
Zipping up the suit, he walked over to another closet. He pulled several belts and pouches out of this one, selecting a few to strap onto his person, and finally pulled out what looked like a small rocket pack.
He strapped this on like a backpack and turned to face the portal.
"Fine. If Jazz wants me to figure out what's wrong, then I will." He reached up to his chest, pulled off the picture of his father that had been placed on the suit, and shoved it into his pocket, then dove into the portal with one last comment:
"No matter what."
