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"Clockwork, I'm worried," Danny admitted, swinging his legs idly back and forth off the side of the girder he was perched on. The giant gears around him clattered and clicked peacefully, providing soothing background noise that did nothing to calm the anxious teen. The wise ghost below him half turned to peer up at his young charge, shifting from an adult to an old man in the process. He regarded Danny for a moment with a keen eye that revealed nothing, before he turned back to watching the multitude of screens that displayed alternate timelines.

"All is as it--" Clockwork began, but Danny interrupted.

"Don't pull that 'all is as it should be' crap on me, I know already!" Danny threw his hands up in frustration. "I just..." Danny struggled for words for a moment, before sighing heavily and putting his face in his hands. "I don't know... I'm sorry I snapped. I'm just so tired," he murmured defeatedly. "It just never ends! Day in, day out, every ghost in the Zone seems to show up at the most inconvenient time to beat me up, my grades are slipping, my family wants ghost-me dead, Valerie and Vlad are always on my tail, and what little sleep I was getting to begin with is being wrecked by these crazy nightmares!"

Clockwork chuckled softly and materialized next to Danny. "I've endured worse insults in my time, young one. I understand that you feel lost. You have no one who has experienced exactly what you're going through to relate to." His wise words and soothing aura were deeply appreciated by the somewhat frazzled halfa, and Danny cracked a tiny, melancholy smile. "I cannot offer you a simple solution, but you are always welcome to come here for advice. I cannot influence your future directly, but I would be glad to lead you in the right direction." Clockwork's usually stoic expression was now one of warmth and an almost parental affection, and the young ghost felt comforted and safe, if only for a moment. "I can assure you, things will not continue like this forever. After all, the future is never static."

"Thanks, Clockwork. I mean it." Danny smiled for real this time, green eyes twinkling, and the elder ghost shifted into a young child. He patted him softly on the shoulder and smiled back before materializing in front of his screens. Danny floated down from his perch to stand behind his unofficial mentor, peering over his shoulder to see the timelines Clockwork was watching over. It was mostly a lot of important events going on in the human realm, but there were a few scenes of the Ghost Zone, too. Danny watched curiously as what looked like a slightly older and slightly less acne-ridden Johnny 13 proposed to a less-punky version of Kitty. Johnny's usually scuffed boots were shined, and he was dressed well as he presented the ring to his beaming girlfriend. Kitty cried and wrapped her arms around him, joyfully accepting his proposal. Despite it being his two longtime enemies featured on the screen, Danny felt warm and fuzzy seeing them so happy. He hadn't realized ghosts got married or had weddings--it just hadn't ever occurred to him to find out. He realized he still had a lot to learn about the Ghost Zone's customs and culture.

Clockwork noticed him watching and smiled a knowing smile, becoming an adult once more. Something about the young halfa's enthusiasm and interest in the Ghost Zone had given him a soft spot for the bullheaded teen, and he hoped one day to offer to become his mentor. He knew, however, that Danny wasn't ready yet. Not quite. There was much to do and much to learn before that point arrived. He slid his eyes towards the door to his tower, knowing that in a moment Sam and Tucker would burst in and demand to know where Danny was, and exactly as predicted, the aforementioned teens arrived in a huff.

"Danny!" Sam shouted as the colossal doors opened wildly, hair a mess, clothing disheveled, stomping over to him in her heavy combat boots and completely disregarding Clockwork. He yelped and tried to hide behind Clockwork's bulky chair, but he had already been spotted. "Where have you been? We've been looking all over for you!" She growled, and Tucker trotted up behind her, out of breath, very pissed, with the booomerang in his fist. Clockwork folded his hands stoically in his lap and watched the drama unfold silently with a small smirk. "Your sister has been going nuts and driving us crazy for hours now! She demanded we get our butts in gear and hunt you down. She's acting like you've been gone for weeks!" She grabbed the front of Danny's suit and dragged his tiny frame towards the door.

"Guys! I'm sorry!" Danny yelled, struggling as Tucker pitched in and grabbed his arm.

"Sorry doesn't cut it, dude," Tucker snorted. "Your sister's a force of nature." Danny glanced desperately toward Clockwork for help, but he only gave a small wave before turning back to his screens. Danny groaned as his friends bustled him into the Specter Speeder.

Clockwork chuckled, watching them fly off with hooded eyes. "Take good care of them, Daniel," he murmured. "They are your strongest weapon." His face fell abruptly and he considered a timeline playing on his largest screen. The young halfa would need all the support he could get if the vision he was seeing remained true. He shook his head sadly. He couldn't shelter the boy for much longer.

*

"I told you I was going to see Clockwork!" Danny repeated for the eighth time as Jazz glared at him from across the living room. Thumps, drilling noises, and the occasional muffled curse could be heard in the lab below as their parents tinkered aggressively with the newest device they were trying to perfect, and the siblings were relieved to be able to talk freely under the cover of the noise. Sam and Tucker sat at the kitchen table angrily eating the fudge Danny had given them as an apology for what Jazz had put them through. Jazz let out a peeved puff of air, swinging her long, coppery hair over her shoulder dramatically to glare at her little brother.

"Didn't you know how worried I was?" She protested. "You were gone all day without your cell phone! I thought you'd been kidnapped!" Danny cast her a withering glance, unimpressed.

"I clearly remember telling you where I was going and for how long! It's not my fault you didn't remember. My phone was dead so there was no point bringing it!" He huffed. "And why are you so worked up about it? Honestly, you're more of a mother hen than Mom!"

Jazz gaped at him in disbelief. "Well someone has to keep an eye on you!" She squawked.

"I can take care of myself!"

"No you can't! You're fourteen and have countless powerful ghost enemies. Do you know how worrying that is?"

"You think I'm not aware of that?! And I was handling things just fine before you butted in, you know. I had things under control for months before you even found out."

Sam's head whipped around to glare at Danny.

"So what?! I'm your big sister! It's my job to protect you!" Jazz threw her hands up in exasperation.

Sam cut in from her place across the room. "Hey! We can protect him just as well as you can, Jazz!" Her violet eyes flashed angrily. "And don't drag us into some crazy goose chase if you knew where he was all along! Our lives are crazy enough as it is without you telling us Danny's been kidnapped or whatever."

Jazz stood angrily. "I told you, I didn't know where he was! I'm sorry I care enough about my brother to try to find out what happened to him."

Danny put his face in his hands. "I'll say it again, I told you last night where I was going. Can we please be done arguing? What more do you want from me?!"

Both Sam and Jazz turned to him with fiery eyes. "No." They growled at the same time, then immediately glared at each other. Danny sent a panicked glance over at Tucker, who was calmly eating his fudge and messing with his PDA with a bored expression. Sam and Jazz started revving up for a big shouting match, and Danny prepared for the onslaught.

Like a miracle sent to save Danny, Jack Fenton marched up the stairs at that exact moment to witness his daughter and his son's best friend both pointing furiously at Danny and shouting unintelligibly. He stood dumbfounded in the kitchen for a moment before scurrying over to break it up.

"Jazzy! Sam! What's going on?" he boomed, his massive voice carrying over top of their arguing. Sam shut her mouth with a final snap and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind her. Jazz stared blankly after her, mouth wide and eyes furious. Danny was a startled scrap huddled on the couch. Tucker was finishing up his fudge casually. Jack was perplexed.

"What happened up here?" Jack blinked, reaching for Sam's unfinished fudge. Tucker squawked sadly as the fudge was taken. Jazz huffed loudly and sat opposite Danny once more, and Danny let out a shaky breath.

"It's nothing, dad," Jazz said icily. "We're fine."

Jazz was absolutely not fine.

Danny glanced anxiously at the window, watching Sam's slowly diminishing form, and felt a pang of guilt. Somehow his plans for a day to get advice and reassurance from Clockwork had backfired immensely, and now things between Sam and Jazz had gotten worse. Just great.

Jack cast Jazz a questioning look, taking in her flushed face and tense posture, and decided it would be safest not to comment. Tucker finished his last bite of fudge before standing quietly and heading to the door. "I'd better check on Sam," he said pointedly, glancing at Danny, and slipped out before anyone could say anything. Tense silence fell over the living room and Danny huddled in the middle of it dejectedly. Jack finally cleared his throat and did what he did best in tense situations: changed the subject as quickly as he could to talk about ghosts.

"Uh... Kids, your mom and I have this great new idea for a ghost-fighting weapon! It's still in its early stages, but when its done we hope it will be able to make ghosts to become docile and non-aggressive towards humans. Ya know, less... Murdery. Once we use the Specter Subjugator on the nasty spooks, they should be easy to catch and study! How does that sound?" Jack boomed enthusiastically, waving his arms about. Danny felt queasy, knowing that the device was likely to do something far nastier on accident. He just hoped they wouldn't try testing it on his alter ego.

Jazz, still fuming, turned her glare towards Jack. "Can't you give ghosts a rest for one minute? I don't want to hear how you and mom are planning to torment innocent creatures!" She snapped, standing in a huff and storming off to her room. The slam of her door as she stomped into her room echoed throughout the whole house.

Jack reached out after her weakly. "Jazzie," he murmured, looking shocked. Jack had noticed their eldest child hadn't been overly enthusiastic about ghosts over the years, but lately she had been very vocal in voicing her views against the family business. Jack hardly knew what to think. It was like she thought ghosts were something more than just scraps of post-mortem consciousness. At least Danny had always had a bit of patience with their business, but Jack realised that his son, too, had been weird about the subject lately. It was like he got queasy whenever he or Maddie mentioned their latest weapons. Determined to continue the family business, Jack considered offering to show Danny his newest invention in an attempt to spark his interest in ghosts. When he turned to ask Danny, however, he had disappeared.

Jack was always surprised by how quiet the smallest Fenton could be.

*

Danny whisked through the pleasant spring air at top speed, trying to shake off his gloom after all the shouting. The sun rode low in the Western sky, and he wondered what phase the moon was in. It had been so long since he'd had time to stargaze.

Icy breath wormed its way out from between his lips, and he slowed, sighing, as he readied for yet another ghost attack. Couldn't he have just a few minutes of peace? Shrill shrieks and a rushing green form told him that no, he couldn't. Danny whirled and threw up a shield just as a low level entity crashed full force into him, screaming bloody murder. Danny fumbled at his belt for the thermos while it was stunned, and realized with a sinking feeling that he must have left it somewhere at home during the argument. A brief memory of setting it next to the fudge crossed his mind, and he cursed himself for being so stupid.

The blob screamed again, making Danny wince, and it darted around the edge of the shield as Danny prepared to do things the old fashioned way. Dodging nimbly out of the way, he prepared an ectoblast in one hand, letting it charge up into a volatile sphere the size of a beach ball before slinging it into the ghost with a lackluster cry of "catch!" Not his best quip, for sure; it had been a long day, and Danny was in no mood to be clever.

The ghost didn't have time to be disappointed in the young hero's wit, thankfully. It received the blast head on and was dispersed into millions of tiny droplets of glowing green goo. Danny was relieved when the thing slunk into the shadows of the town below to reform itself and lick its wounds. He shook off the feeling of twitchy energy that always came with ghost battles and decided it would be best if he went and got the thermos after all.

Drifting towards home yet again, Danny closed his eyes and let the wind wash over him, wishing it would take his troubles with it. Things had been just so messed up lately. He was growing distant from his parents, he was failing three classes, he had hardly slept in months, Tucker and Sam had been mad at him for all sorts of things, and Jazz had been really weird lately about his ghost fighting. It was all too much at times, and he wished he could just forget about one side or the other, but he couldn't imagine his life without his role as Phantom and knew he had to keep on going somehow. He just wished things could be easy for once. He furrowed his eyebrows and flipped onto his back, eyes still closed as he drifted lazily through the air with his hands behind his head. He was close to home now, and he knew he should land soon so he could change back and sneak in to grab the thermos, but he was enjoying the quiet rush of air in his hair and ears too much to land just yet. Besides, he didn't want to deal with his parents or Jazz at the moment.

A clattering sound, followed by a familiar curse, caught his attention from the relatively quiet neighborhood below. Danny flipped onto his stomach curiously, eyes cracking open to see what the hubbub was about, only to be blasted directly in the face by an ectoblast originating from a familiar orange-clad figure. Jack yelled triumphantly at his successful shot, but the sound was drowned out by the sudden roaring in Danny's ears. The shock of the experience coupled with the searing pain of the blast itself stunned Danny and he found himself falling from the sky, nostrils and eyes filled with searing pain, painful white light filling his vision entirely. Another second passed before he realised he was screaming, and he clutched at his face as he tumbled from the heavens. Which way was up? He couldn't tell, and in a desperate attempt to avoid hitting the ground, he tried turning intangible. No luck--his powers were shorting out. His skin hissed with steam from the strange blast and suddenly felt like it was crawling. His limbs trembled with sudden adrenaline as all his instincts told him to flee.

A sudden lurch in his gut and a familiar stretching, squashing feeling alerted Danny to the fact that he was being captured in the very thermos he had been going home to pick up. The confusion and pain he felt mixed with a sudden, intense feeling of dread when he realised he had been caught in his moment of unawareness by none other than his parents.

Just great.