The last installment of "Shifting Tides" is here! I hope the last chapter wasn't too much of a cliffhanger, but as I said before, we will get back to it at another time.

In the meantime, enjoy the final installment of this arc and prepare for the next one!

All seven guests shivered in the dark, wet collapse of Terror Mountain. When it happened, they were buckled into a fake log boat made from wood reinforced with fiberglass. Its construction was strong enough to keep intact, even as the log flume beneath them began to crumble. When everything came down, though, they were fortunate enough that it didn't come down on top of them – rather just around them.

Now more than an hour had passed. The sound of firetrucks and voices outside were reassuring, but so far no one had reached them. Luckily, no one was very much hurt. A mother had broken her wrist from holding onto her eight-year-old son as a makeshift seatbelt and getting it jammed in the boat. An uncle chipped a tooth when his head smacked against a small but sharp piece of falling debris. Other than that, the worst of it was the cold, the damp, the darkness.

The fear.

It was like being stuck in an elevator. Everyone knew where you were and they were coming to save you, but all the while you dangled over that gaping precipice, never quite sure if the cables would hold or snap.

That was what the seven survivors of the Terror Mountain collapse felt now. That fear of everything falling on top of them; of not being saved in time.

Then, something strange happened.

It wasn't as though they'd missed the sound of his coming. It was more like he appeared out of nowhere.

A young man suited up in what appeared to be safety gear, with hair like snow and eyes that shone eerily bright in the darkness, came to save them. Was he a firefighter? A volunteer? An employee? No one knew.

He said very little, but for things like, "don't worry, I'm gonna get you outta here." When a child began to cry with relief, he reassured them that they were never in any danger.

"You just had a tough day at the waterpark, huh?" The child's tears slowed, and he stared up at the rescuer in wonder.

The young man's strength surprised them all.

The lap bars that had held them prisoner for over an hour had never budged. Even the two fathers and the uncle combined hadn't been able to pry them away. The young man yanked up once on the bar, breaking some crucial component, and it released with a slight screech. Then he carefully helped the mother with the broken wrist. He set her gently down onto the floor where she wobbled unsteadily, her legs like jelly. He turned back for the children next.

Each child clung to him as he helped them down, and finally, each father shook his cold hands.

When everyone was released, he detached himself from the three children and led them to where he remembered the entrance being. Just as they reached the end of a long, dark, wet tunnel – a tunnel where water licked at their ankles and thrust cold into their bones – paper mache and polymer pylons were ripped away and sunlight shone brightly on all their blue-lipped faces. Firefighters greeted them, the jaws of life easing debris backward and allowing them their earned escape. Officials helped them out one by one, and when the seven survivors turned to pull the young man who had saved them into the light, he was gone.

It was as if he'd never even been there.

Later, when the news anchors interviewed them, the three children, the mother, the uncle, and two fathers all recalled the mysterious young man. He wasn't a firefighter. He wasn't a volunteer. He wasn't an employee. In fact, no one knew who they were talking about. No description of him rang any bells. The owner of the park said he'd never heard of such a person, and soon speculation dripped from the whispering mouths of bystanders. A viral blog post popped up about a day later asking, "Who is this Invis-O-Bill?" and Twitter ran so fast with it that it was impossible to keep up with what was fact and what was fiction. Only the original family interviews were considered within the canon of Invis-O-Bill, but all the internet agreed on a few very important things: he was a friendly ghost-man, he was a hero, and he had snowy hair and green eyes.

It was also almost unanimously agreed upon that they didn't really believe in him – that he was probably one of those stories that you heard from survivors in times of duress.

Well, they didn't really believe in him... yet.

.

.

.

"Invis-O-Bill? You're joking, right?"

"Nope." Tucker munched on a power bar and scrolled through Twitter at a rapid pace, absorbing as much information in the discourse as he could. "You're officially an urban legend, my dude."

Danny wiped his hands on a hand towel and tried to get as much antiseptic cream off as he could. Sam sat in front of him where they both sat on his bedroom floor, cross-legged, with her shirt off. Her sports bra covered anything important, but Danny was perfectly respectful as he bandaged her up.

Regardless, Sam hid burning cheeks behind her hair.

"They couldn't have come up with a better name?" Sam asked.

Tucker shrugged. "They're just repeating what that blogger wrote. I guess they're from a local news station that got an inside scoop and ran with the story. Lucky them, they're now trending in the top twenty stories online."

"What are you going to tell your parents about this, Sam?" Danny asked her as he finished taping gauze to her claw marks. It looked like she'd been attacked by an animal.

"You can always say rabid dogs got you," Tucker joked.

"That's not funny," Sam said. "My parents will have every stray on the street caught and euthanized by Monday if I told them that."

Tucker looked horrified. "Your parents are intense."

"I know."

"All done," Danny told her. He handed her the black t-shirt that sat above them on the bed. He uncrossed his legs from behind her and stretched.

"Thanks," she said, pulling the t-shirt over her head. The blush in her cheeks, now that Danny was no longer rubbing his hands all over her back, was finally dissipating. "I don't know what I'm going to tell them. I doubt they'll even see it."

"So, you won't say anything?" Tucker looked skeptical. "What if it gets infected and you have to be taken to the hospital?"

"Hey!" Danny was offended. "I cleaned that wound so well she'll heal by tomorrow."

"Well, that's not scientifically possible," Tucker said back. "Well, unless it's you."

Danny did heal pretty quickly these days.

"Look, I'll figure it out. My grandma is great at not asking questions should it come to that and Henson will never tell."

She pulled one of Danny's pillows from his bed and tossed it in front of her on the floor. Then she flopped forward and lay on her stomach to give her back a break.

"You both know what this means, though, right?"

Danny and Sam looked back to Tucker who was finally putting down his phone.

"Amity Park now has a famous ghost. Who do we know who likes to hunt, kill, and then study ghosts?"

Danny's eyes snapped to the side to check and make sure that his bedroom door was tightly closed. It didn't matter, his parents weren't even home. Yet the fear awakened by Tucker's statement wormed its way deep inside of him.

"Oh," Sam whispered, "that's a good point."

"We're careful," Danny said quickly. "We're always careful. Most of those people don't even really believe that I exist, right?'

Tucker nodded. "I mean, yeah, commenters think that the people you rescued were probably delirious or having some kind of hallucination all at once. Most of the supernatural-loving community totally believes it, though, and your parents are part of that crowd if I'm not mistaken."

"No, you're not mistaken."

Sam almost laughed. "What are you going to do about your parents, Danny Fenton?"

The deer-in-headlights look in his eyes suggested that he had no idea whatsoever.

"Well, on a nicer note," Tucker said, standing up from Danny's desk chair, "Danny and I have something to show you!"

"Oh God," Danny groaned.

"Come on, do it!"

"What are you two talking about?"

Danny stalked over to where Tucker stood and they held hands. Nothing else happened at first. Sam's eyes flitted between the two of them.

"Am I supposed to understand?"

"What's wrong?" Tucker asked him.

"I'm tired, I dunno."

"No! Come on, you have to do it!"

Sam frowned.

"Tucker-"

"Just do the thing, Danny!"

Danny sighed, closed his eyes, and, concentrating, turned invisible. Tucker stood there in full focus with his arm stretched out as though he were miming holding someone else's hand.

"Wait for it," he told Sam who was looking even more confused than before.

Suddenly, and all at once, Tucker turned invisible, too.

Sam raised herself up from the floor so quickly she cried out in pain, but then she said, "No WAY!"

"I know!" Tucker's voice was disembodied and full of glee. "This is seriously the coolest thing to ever happen!"

Danny released Tucker's hand and then both of them were visible. Sam, wincing, settled herself back down onto the floor.

"Okay," Danny said. "Show's over. I'm exhausted."

"Worth it," Tucker said with a grin.

"What does this mean? Can you use other powers on people? Can we walk through walls with you?"

Danny stepped over her and flopped back on the bed. "I dunno, Sam."

"This is all going into the Gothica."

Tucker returned to the desk chair and reclined it. He put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes.

"I can't believe you took on the ghost all by yourself," he said. "You really freaked us out, Sam."

She shrugged. "Sorry, I know. I should've called. I was just..."

"Mad at us for not listening to you before?"

"Being petty. That's really what it was," she admitted. "Me being all 'I told you so' is no excuse to leave you out. Plus, I paid for it, didn't I?"

Tucker winced thinking about her wound, eyes still closed, pose a little less relaxed. "Yeah, you paid for it..."

A short silence followed after that, and soon Sam realized that Danny was breathing deeply behind her. He was asleep.

Tucker kept his voice low to prevent waking him. "Did you already flush that thing back to 'the other side?' You know, in the basement?"

Sam shook her head. "No, I haven't yet. Danny insisted that I get fixed up first."

"He was right. Here, give it to me."

Tucker stood up again and knelt down next to her. She stretched her arm out and grabbed her pack. The thermos inside was still glowing to suggest that it was occupied.

"Here."

She handed it to him and he took it gently.

"I know where to go. No one's home so I'll just sneak down there. Be right back."

"Okay. Thanks, Tucker."

Tucker's gaze lingered on her for a minute. His face was full of worry and something else she couldn't quite place.

"I'm alright, Tucker. I promise."

He shook his head and stood back up. "Right. Fine." When he opened Danny's door he paused and then turned around to give her a stern glare. "Just don't do it again."

"I won't."

The door closed behind him.