It was Noon the next day when Danny finally caught up with his friends. They had come to the Nasty Burger for lunch and to talk over when they had learned in the Ghost Zone Library.
Danny had just sat down with his tray when his cellphone chirped. He pulled it out of his pocket and frowned at the unfamiliar number displayed. He flipped it open and listened as a gasping voice boomed out:
"Hey, Dan, it's Sid. -- Ahhhh! -- Remember me from camp?" Something crashed in the background. "You said to -- ah -- call if I ever needed anything, Remember?"
"Sid, are you all right?"
"Not really. Seriously, Dan, Danny, I -- help!"
Another voice took over the phone, "I'm sorry the party to which you were speaking is no longer available." It cackled in the familiar shill tones of Technus.
"What the--?" Danny grumbled. "Tucker can you get me Sid's location. I think he lives about twenty miles from here. When you've got it met me in the bathroom."
Danny tried to crammed the rest of his Nasty Burger into his mouth.
"You shouldn't fight on a full stomach," Sam suggested, appalled by how much of the sandwich was disappearing.
"I paid good money for this burger, I'm going to enjoy as much of it as I can." Danny mumbled, dropped what was left on his tray and bolted for the men's room.
Tucker was busy transferring data from his PDA into a GPS device. A moment later he, too, raced into the bathroom. There followed a pause, then a sharp cry of pain and a moment later Tucker emerged by himself.
"I don't know what guys do together in the restroom but that sounded so wrong," Sam said as Tucker slid back into his seat.
"Hey he needed some place to change."
"I know. I'm just saying."
"Man, It hurts when he changes."
"I heard it out here," Sam told him. "Did Danny want us to do anything?"
"Nah. Just took the GPS tracker and bolted."
"We should follow."
"How. Our scooters go 15 miles an hour, top. By the time we got there the fighting would be over. Long over"
Sam reached into a small purse belted around her waist and pulled out her cell phone. "Hey, Jazz, " she said when the call was picked up,."Want to help Danny on a ghost fighting expedition? .... Yes, I know it's on rather short notice. That's how these things go.... It's a little ways out of town. ...Because you're the only one with a car ... Ok, technically I do own a car, but it's more for investment purposes. Anyway I can't drive I don't have a license.... Just get over here! Danny has an emergency and we need to back him up, OK.. ... Fine, thanks. Oh, by the way, pick up a Fenton Thermos on your way out. I don't think Danny was carrying one when he had to leave. Bye." She closed her phone. "Sheesh! I thought she wanted to help Danny."
Tucker was eyeing the fries left on Danny's tray.
"Go ahead," Sam sighed, "he's not coming back for them."
***
Sid and Danny had met the month before at Camp Sleepy Hollow. Danny had roped him in to help one night when the ghost haunting the place had possess Tucker and T'Keisha. Sid was a malcontent, a delinquent who barely avoided the Reformatory. He was big and rangy, a couple years older than Danny but shared a dislike for their camp counselor, Dash Baxter, and a liking for pulling pranks. Fighting the camp ghost had left Sid pretty beat up but had given him the most fun he had had in a long time. Perhaps because it was the first time he had used his strength and restless energy for something worthwhile. They hadn't talked since camp, as is the way with boys, but Danny regarded him as one of his closest friends.
Sid lived in a bedroom community outside Amity Park. It wasn't so much a town as one long endless housing development of neat houses on small lots, mile after mile. Without the GPS device Danny would never have been able to find Sid's house because it looked just like every other house on the block. And for several blocks around. It was a ranch style house with a dogleg pointing to the back and the garage somewhat in front of the rest of the house. It had a black shingle roof, a sickly small tree in the front and a swing set on the backyard bent on killing Sid.
The swing set was scuttling along like a giant red daddy-long-legs. It had two swings, a center pair of legs supporting them and a short slide on the other side of the center legs. All were waving furiously. Sid was hobbling away from it as fast as he could move but was hampered by the five foot high wooden fence that bound him in like a dog. From time to time the swing would lash out like a whip striking Sid across the back.
Danny swooped down, firing ectoplasmic blasts at the swing set. He succeeded to lopping off the chains of one of the swings, causing it to collapse on the ground like the piece of chain and plastic it was.
The swing set swung on its attacker. It reared up on one pair of legs,putting its other legs twetny feet in the air. It's small slide lashing up like a tongue trying to flick Danny out of the sky. He swirled around it, blasting at one of its long legs but the swing set moved too quickly for him to make contact.
A sudden smashing impact sent him crashing to the ground. He had grown incautious and had missed one of the other legs curving up and swinging at him like a baseball bat. The upraised leg was poised over him about to spike him into the ground, when Sid threw himself on Danny, grabbing a shoulder and pulling him out of the way. Unfortunately it was Danny's wounded shoulder. When they stopped rolling Danny's eyes were filled with tears of pain. He barely saw the swing set coming at him through his blurry eyes. Instinctively he raised a barrier field and felt the heavy steel leg bang down hard on it.
The Swing set turned towards Sid who had rolled farther away, outside the coverage of Danny's shield. It raised a pile driver leg....
Danny's blast cut the swing in two. It collapsed in on itself, shuddered for a moment, as if trying to pick itself up one last time, before crumpling into inert ordinary steel.
"Hey, You're that ghost kid!" Sid said from the ground. Gingerly he picked himself up and limped over to shake Danny's hand. "What was your name, again?"
"Inviso-bill will do" Danny said cautiously. While he hated the name 'Inviso-Bill' it didn't sound much like Danny Fenton the way 'Danny Phantom' did. It was a lot easier convincing people he was two different people when he didn't use the same first name.
"You were there at Camp helping us fight that ghost."
"Right. And you're Sid, right?" Of course it was Sid. It was all part of keeping Sid thinking that Danny and Danny were two different persons.
"Yeah. Thanks for coming, man. Who know a swing set could be so dangerous. How did Danny reach you so fast? I mean, when I called him, I thought for sure I was a goner."
"Lucky you're not," Danny avoided answering his question. "How did this happen?"
"It was like, weird, man. I got this E-mail from Altheria, she's this cool girl at Camp with all the piercing. We've kind of hit it off and have been exchanging E-mails. Well this one had an attachment that she said was pretty cool. But when I opened it up there was this blue faced guy with a squeaky voice yelling at me."
"Called himself Technus 0.7."
"Yeah, man. How did you know?"
"Same happened to T'Keisha."
"The chick with the cool cornrows?"
Danny nodded.
"What's going on? Is that ghost from the camp coming back for us?"
"No. He's gone. Take it from a ghost who knows, it's long gone. This is something else, though Danny's not sure just what yet."
"Whoooa."
"So what happened to Technus 0.7? He wasn't in the swing so he must still be around here somewhere."
"He's probably still in the house, bro."
Sid led the way across the tore up back yard into his house. They entered by the kitchen door. A clock over the sink was swirling around, counting off the hours every few seconds. A blender buzzed on frappe. Danny gingerly reached over and pulled out its plug but it continued to spin. A microwave oven popped open its door and slammed it shut repeatedly. Chairs were overturned in a dining nook, Nearby on the floor lay a cellphone. Sid picked it up and looked at it. It appeared undamaged. "Do you think it's OK?" he wondered. Danny shrugged his shoulders.
The living room was the center of the disaster. Seat cushions from the couch were everywhere. End tables were overturned, their few magazines and newspapers scattered everywhere. In one corner was a small, tall, solid front cabinet. It's door was open revealing a computer. The mouse was hovering in the air like a cobra, hissing. Technus 0.7's face filled the screen. It was laughing manically but in sort of a broken loop. "Ha-ha-ha-ha-hic" "Ha-ha-ha-ha-hic" "Ha-ha-ha-ha-hic"
"What!" the ghost suddenly stopped laughing, "you're still alive? We can fix that for I, Technus 0.7, am master of all your technology. I control your horizontal. I control your vertical. I..."
"Shut up!" Danny snapped, and blasted the monitor.
"Whoa, Aunt Becky ain't going to like that!" Sid exclaimed.
The smoke rising from the busted monitor started changing colors, becoming a decided robin blue. Glowing eyes formed in the cloud.
"Uh oh!" Sid whispered. He sidled past Danny and grabbed something from beside the front door. As he swung it behind his back Danny recognized it as a Louisville Slugger.
"The Fenton's have one of those," Danny said, waiting for Technus to fully emerge from the busted monitor. "Only they called it a Fenton Creepstick."
"That Mrs. Fenton, she's hot."
"R-i-g-h-t." This had to be the most awkward moment in Danny's life -- so far.
"You know who else is hot? Jazz Fenton."
"Great. Uh, we've got a homicidal ghost here. let's focus on the task at hand."
"Oh, yeah. She like gave me this test after I woke up in the hospital about my experiences fighting the Camp Ghost, but I'm sure she was hitting on me."
"Sid, focus."
Though he was only half-formed, Technus suddenly lunged at Danny, its arms telescoping out to reach half away across the room. Sid swung the bat, cracking the ghost heartily alongside its head. The ghost turned towards Sid so Danny shot it in the back. Suddenly the telephone leaped off the floor where it had fallen during an earlier fight and wrapped itself around Danny's neck.
Danny wrestled with it for a moment. Several loud thuds indicated that Sid was holding his own. Danny finally flung the phone away and reached behind his back for the Fenton Thermos, only to find it not there. With a curse he flung himself on Technus, trying to drag the ghost of technology out of the house and away from so many gadgets. Sid was being menaced by an upright vacuum cleaner. But so far it only bumped at his feet, It hadn't gotten the idea to try to use its extension cord to tie him up or strange him. Danny gloped it with ecto-goo, sticking it in place temporarily.
He crashed through the front door, carrying Technus with him, only to be greeted with the snap of an electric line whipping off the pole straight at him. Danny dodged but had to let Technus go. A second electric line joined the first in snapping at Danny as Technus, hovering near the transformer laughed.
The broken laugh pattern and occasionally twitch in his image reminded Danny that this wasn't really Technus but some kind of buggy computer emulation. In a flash Danny realized that it might be vulnerable to things that Technus wouldn't be.
The next time an electric line flashed at Danny he sidestepped it then grasped the wire a short distant from the end, on a portion that was still insulated. He flew straight at Technus, dragging the writhing powerline with him. Technus didn't see his danger until it was too late.
Danny flung the hot wire straight into the clone ghost. With a snap and sizzle. Technus exploded. The powerlines dropped to the ground. Inside the house racket from the many overstimulated gadgets abruptly ceased.
Sid emerged from the house holding a broken bat. There was a welt on the side of his head but he looked triumphant.
"We did it man. We kicked that ghost's butt from here to Kalamazoo! Wooo hooo!"
Danny flew down and sat on the front stoop. "Yeah, but your place is totally trashed."
"Oh, yeah. Aunt Becky is going to be royally pissed. I might have to go back and live with my dad."
"You don't live with your parents?"
"Are you kidding? They divorced when I was, like, six. I've never seen my mother since. Actually I'm not sure they divorced. One day she was just gone. All I remember of them is dad drinking and them fighting. Man, it was scary fist-through-the-wall kind of fights. After mom left dad never could stay sober. The courts were going to put me in foster care till Aunt Becky spoke up, and I've been living with her since."
"Wow. And I thought my life was crazy because all my parents ever talk about is fighting ghosts."
"You've got parents. All I've got is a deadbeat and an aunt who took me in because she felt she had to."
"Sorry I blew up your computer. I really would like to look at that E-mail and see if it's the same as the one T'Keisha got. Hers was sent, supposedly, from Tucker. And you say yours came from Altheria."
"Yeah, for a chick, she's cool."
Briefly, Danny wondered how long Altheria would think Sid 'cool' with an attitude like that.
"I can kind of understand how Tucker could have gotten a computer infected by a ghost," Danny explained, "but I'm not sure how Altheria's computer could have gotten infected. Do you mind if I take the hard drive with me and have Tucker look it over."
"Sure."
Sid lead the way back into the house. The television, Danny noticed, had been battered into rubble. Sid noticed him looking at the TV and explained, "Can you believe that thing was trying to eat me. Broke my bat having to beat it down. It had. like, half my leg inside it at one point and I don't know where it went because it wasn't sticking out of the back of the set, that's for sure."
Sid found Danny a screwdriver so he could take the computer apart and retrieve the hard drive.
"You going to be alright," Danny asked as he stuck the hard drive inside his jumpsuit (it didn't have any pockets). "Need some help cleaning up?"
"Oh, yeah. I'll be fine. I'm sure you've got other things to do, ghosts to beat up and stuff. Say 'hi' to Danny when you see him and thanks for coming."
"Don't hesitate to call. Especially if anything else weird happens. Just in case this Technus ghost tries to come back."
Danny soared into the sky, oriented himself and started back towards Amity Park. he had hardly gone a mile when he spotted Jazz's car, a rather rusty and ancient Chevette. He turned around and into the back seat before materializing next to Tucker, who let out a little girly scream of surprise. Jazz nearly ran off the road.
"Hey, I'm glad to see you guys, too," he said.
His day hadn't started like this.
***
Despite the load of sugars, creams, syrups, and flavorings both natural and artificial on his body, or perhaps because of it, Danny had slept poorly that night. After endlessly tossing and turning he was still awake when the first rays of dawn began to brighten his bedroom window. He slide out of bed and padded across the room to stared out the window. The streets were still dark below him as was the sky above. Only a few very high clouds glowed with a strange luminance. The birds, though, were already greeting the day with chirps, whistles, whoops and the tata-tat-tat of a woodpecker.
Danny looked back at his bed with its scattered blankets. He ought to lay back down and try to get a bit of sleep before the day really started but he felt wired, totally awake. Danny dug his pants out from under some sheets and slipped them on. Opening his door he slipped down the stairs to the kitchen. He poured himself a large glass of orange juice and took a day old bagel out of the bread drawer. Then went back up to his room.
Danny didn't usually get up to watch the sun rise. He was more the type who played video games until sunrise, then went to bed. But there had been times when, wishing for some solitude, a chance to be alone, just with himself, Danny have flown up to the rooftop for a quiet hour. Setting his snack on his dresser Danny reached inside for that trigger than turned him into a ghost. With a gasp and drawn out ghostly moan he fell to the floor as the bands of light swept over his body turning himself inside out.
He lay gasping on the floor for a moment before slowly pulling himself up. He staggered over to the mirror above his dresser. In the mirror he could see that his eyes were green and glowing, his hair was white where before it had been black. So he had turned into a ghost. The pain that had exploded when he had changed had left him confused over what had happened.
Danny unzipped his jumpsuit. The silver blanket was back. Unwrapping it a bit he could see that the singed and blistered flesh was still there as well. He looked at his wounds a little more closely. Were the blisters smaller? The skin less red? Maybe. Danny hoped so.
Zipping up his jumpsuit, Danny picked up his snack and floated up through the ceiling into the open air of the roof beyond. Danny was relieved to find that using his ghost powers did not cause him any pain. It was only the transition from human to ghost that hurt. It looked like for the time being he was going to have to stay one thing or the other. Oh well.
Danny climbed up on the parapet and set down, swinging his leg over the void beneath. He took a sip of OJ before setting the glass down and started nibbling the bagel. The sun was still below the horizon but already it was coloring the clouds off in the distance a delicate rose. As he watched some of clouds were already twisting into new shapes. It was probably going to get miserably hot by afternoon but right now it was pleasantly cool.
A new day.
A new beginning.
Except for the crud left over from yesterday.
What a day that had been, Danny thought. The best part had been when his Dad have been handing out the ice cream sundaes that evening. He had handed Sam hers then paused to look at her purple camo pants and shirt closely before turning to him and asking in his usual booming voice, "Danny, who's your new friend?"
Sam had blushed and nervously answered, "Really, Mr Fenton. I'm Sam, Sam Manson. You know me."
"Oh, yes, of course," his father had agreed then had turned to Danny again and asked in his non-whisper of a whisper, "Seriously, Danny, who's your new friend."
Thank goodness he hadn't had anything in his mouth at the time or there would have been one messy spit-take.
It made him feel better that other people had trouble recognizing Sam in her new outfit too. Not that he had anything against her wearing different clothes -- or did he? Fortunately his mother had come bustling in just then, having changed into her usual jumpsuit, and asked Sam all sorts of questions about her new clothes.
Danny had once asked Jazz, his sister, what it was that Mom saw in their father because there were times when he just couldn't see how anyone could put up with his father. Jazz had talked to him for a bit about how opposite attract and things like that until he bluntly asked her if she believed any of what she was saying. Jazz had to confess she didn't. And that she couldn't understand how their mother could put up with their father, either. "But you know," Jazz had added, "Dad has always been there for Mom, he listens to her in a way he doesn't to us or anyone else. He totally like fawns over her. In my studies of other families I've found that people who have been married as long as our parents have generally don't have a lot of affection left in them. Mom and Dad are still like they just got married. I don't know, that's just how it is. It was driving me crazy until I finally decided that the only thing to do is ride out the insanity."
Of course half an hour later Jazz was screaming at their mother and threatening to run away from home. Yeah, ride out the insanity. What had that woman said in that movie, "hold on tight, it's going to be a bumpy ride"?
***
The sun was starting peek over the horizon, brightening the bottoms of the clouds and sending a sharp glare into Danny's eyes. The warmth was wane as yet but it balanced the morning chill nicely. Danny looked down between his legs to the pavement three stories below. It used to give him a little vertigo looking that far down, but since becoming able to fly heights hadn't bothered him so much. The street below was dark and empty, like a set waiting for the start of a play.
Danny broke off bits of his bagel and threw them at some pigeons that had landed on the roof near him. They would hop close to the fragments, twists their heads almost upside down to get a better look at it, then pounce and fly away. Feeding the pigeons was fun though it made it hard to find a clean place to sit on the roof.
***
So.
Yesterday.
Danny tried to order his mind. What had they learned from all their adventures. That Technus didn't know anything about it. That Clockwork didn't want to talk about it, but strangely seemed to be helping him in little things. That Ember McLain was one hot, hottie -- when she wasn't trying to kill him.
Danny's thoughts skidded to a stop as he remembered how she had looked in her prison cell all sensuous and seductive, voluptuous and desirable despite her shapeless orange prison garb. He wondered for a moment who was the hotter hottie, Ember or Paulina.
Paulina, of course, had never hypnotized him into thinking he was in love with Sam, all in an effort to kill him, so that was a plus in Paulina's favor. But next to Ember's full figure Paulina was flat, flat, flat. As flat as Sam, though come to think of it, Sam wasn't really flat at all. Nor was Paulina....
Danny shook his head. Even at a distance Ember had the power to wrap boys -- him --around her little finger. She was unmistakable hot because she trafficked in raw sexuality. But she was also greedy, devoring. She didn't just like hearing people say her name, she had to have it. It was the source of her life's blood, her energy. If he had kissed her yesterday, as he had been so tempted to do, he would have become a groveling sycophant endlessly mouthing her name.
Better to stick with the hottie who wasn't trying to suck his life out. Of course Sam hadn't tried to kill him either and she was a lot easier to talk to, and kid around, and do things together.
Something flickers across the corner of his eye. Danny froze in place, turning invisible. A couple blocks away and several hundred feet higher in the air was a metallic surfboard flying on invisible ectoplasmic impellers. On top of it rode a shapely young woman in an all-encompassing orange battlesuit. Danny didn't have to see through the mirrored visor to know who it was, Valerie Gray, one of the few other black classmates from his high school, Casper High, a girl he had dated a couple times, and another woman who wanted to kill him!
Valerie had been part of the moneyed "in" crowd at school until her father lost all their wealth in a failed business venture. Mr Gray had set up a security firm specializing in ghost-protection. Unfortunately his first client was haunted by the specter of one of their former guard dogs. "Cujo" as Danny had nicknamed him, was a playful puppy when happy but a savage demon when not. The not-happy version had destroyed the factory Mr Gray had been hired to protect. The resulting liability claims had bankrupt him. And because Danny had been spotted there (trying to capture the ghost dog) Val blamed him for her and her father's misfortunes. Some how Val had come into possession of some pretty sophisticated ghost fighting equipment, like the hoverboard, a variety of blasters and the armored battlesuit she wore. Nowadays she spent all her free time cruising the city looking for Danny Phantom.
When Val had lost all her money she lost all her friends. The only people who would still talk to her were dweebs, nerds and fellow social outcasts. People like Danny, Sam and Tucker. Val hadn't really become a better person through her poverty but she had become hard-working and motivated. She worked two or more part-time jobs after school, studied hard and accepted that she would never be part of the "in" crowd again. Danny respected that. They had dated for a while, though that had turned out to be a plot by Technus to distract Danny while the ghost of all things technical worked on his own plans. Once he realized what Technus was doing the romance was over, much to Sam and Tucker's relief. Val and Danny were still friends, but if Val ever discovered that Danny was the ghost boy she was obsessed with destroying...well, it wouldn't be pretty.
***
Danny watched Val continue her flight across the dawning skyline until she was out of sight. Confident that she wasn't doubling back he rematerialized, scaring away the flock of pigeons that had been patiently waiting for their next piece of bagel.
Danny thought back to what Clockwork had said. They didn't need his help dealing with Technus 0.7 or Boucou Buxcs. That seemed pretty unlikely since he hadn't learned anything of value from his talk with Technus in Walker's prison. The Technus who called himself 2.0.
Technus didn't remember ever being in a 0.7 mode, never heard of Boucou Buxcs, and hated the idea that someone was using him as some kind of computer virus. ("I should have thought of that!" he had screeched.) The whole trip to the prison seemed a wash though he'd want to talk to Sam and Tucker later. Maybe they'd thought of something he hadn't. Clockwork had been unhelpful on any substantiative issue but had been nice enough to fix the damage to the Speeder. Did that mean he wanted to help and couldn't? If he couldn't, who could prevent the Master of Time from doing what he wanted?
Danny thought about that for a while. He didn't know that much about the Ghost Zone. It was every bit as vast as the mortal universe. It contained all sorts of things and beings. Maybe there were things so vast they made Clockwork seem like a piker. Maybe there were things, forces, powers to which Time was as nothing. He tried to think what that would be like but all he could come up with was an old issue of a Dr. Strange comic book full of psychedelic images and general weirdness. The Ghost Zone was kind of like that but there was no Dormammu from what he could tell.
Suddenly Danny sat up straight and started to chuckle. Of course Clockwork didn't need to give them any clues -- because he knew they would soon learn all the clues they needed, when they visited the Ghost Zone Library! Not that they knew they were going to visit the Ghost Zone Library until they did. But for a ghost who could see all time all at once what they did in the future was as plain as what they had done in the past.
They had been too freaked by the sudden arrival of Walker's goons at the library to discuss everything they had learned there, which was why he wanted to get together with them, but Danny knew one thing they had learned. That someone named Beauregard C. Buchwald had experimented with digitizing ghosts. Beauregard C. Buchwald sounded a lot like Boucou or B. C. Buxcs. He had searched the Fenton Mainframe last night before going to bed and found nothing, but the Fentons weren't the only people with a massive ghost database. How was he going to get access to the Guys in White's Intranet?
He could ask. That would be good for a laugh. The Guys in White despised the Fentons. Tucker could try to hack into their system. He was pretty good about breaking into other systems, like the school's, but the Guys in White were serious people. Tucker's youth wouldn't protect him if he got caught. There was only one thing to do.
He was going to have to call another girl who wanted to kill him!
***
Abigail Farley-Smythe-Hyde was a cute red head he had meet at camp. She was the daughter of a Guy in White and had arranged to come to Camp Sleepy Hollow because she thought a ghost was haunting it. Danny had come, along with Sam and Tucker, to get away from ghosts. Abigail wanted to be a ghost hunter like her father. She just hadn't counted on the ghost being one of the meanest, vilest, most powerful specters Danny had ever run up against. It had nearly destroyed the camp and everyone in it. Afterwards The Guys in White were all over the place, including Abigail's father. Danny was lucky his parents had dropped in to retrieve him before the GIW had discovered that Danny was a ghost. For all their brilliance as paranormal researchers, his parents were strikingly blind when it came to Danny's obvious ghost powers.
For Abigail things did not end so well. Besides getting badly beaten up by the ghost, her father found out all the things she had done without his knowledge -- like breaking into the GIW mainframe, stealing (borrowing) experimental ghost technology from his desk, and not calling her father when it became obvious that she was in over her head. Her father hard been furious. Well, all the parents had been furious, but he was especially mad because his own daughter had stolen from him, abused his trust. And had shown him to be a fool for not catching her before this. That probably griped him most of all. When last Danny saw Abigail she was being threatened with the grounding of a lifetime. Because she was that kind of a girl, Danny was sure she blamed him for all of this. But he was also sure that she could still break into her father's work account and run a search for Beauregard C. Buchwald. How would he get her to do that? He had never been much good at trying to talk people into doing things for him.
Thinking about this wasn't going to get it done. He may as well do this while he was thinking about it. Abigail lived in Falls Church, Virginia, which was in the Eastern Time Zone while he was in the Central Zone. So it was an hour later there. Would that means she would be up by now?
Danny checked the chronometer built into the jumpsuit. He was astonished by how early it was. Nobody was up that early! Which meant he had time to take care of some other business. Danny kicked off from the parapet, dropping into the darkness below the rooftops.
***
Danny was running a towel over his hair as he entered the kitchen, still damp from a shower.
"Hi, Sweetie," his mother called, "How are you today?"
"Fine. What's going on?"
His parents were running around the kitchen packing a pair of oversize gym bags they called their "Action Packs."
"Haung's drugstore was robbed this morning -- by a ghost! They want us to investigate."
"They going to pay?"
"Danny! Crass money doesn't enter into a case like this," his father interjected. "This is a real ghost presence, not two hours old. Think of the information we'll learn from this!"
"Uh huh," Danny murmured than choked as he saw TV on the counter playing a security cam tape in continuous loop. A fuzzy but clearly recognizable Danny Phantom was vooming around the store piling up boxes on the checkout counter. There were tubes of antiseptic, large boxes of bandage wraps, sterile gauze. As Danny watched he saw himself pull a plastic bag from the supply under the counter, bag up everything and drop a twenty on the counter top. Cold sweat was oozing down his back as he watched. His parents stopped to watch the video from time to time but said nothing. How could they not tell that that was their own son, caught on tape, robbing the neighborhood drugstore. Were they just toying with him until he cracked?
His sister came down the stair just as his parents were charging through the front door. She was wearing a long Tee shirt for a nightgown. She took one look at the TV which still played the surveillance tape. "What are you doing on TV," she asked then looked at the tape again.
"What have you done?" she demaned in an appalled voice. "Daniel Fenton, stealing, I can't believe you did that!"
"I can explain."
"How can you explain this?"
"I paid for everything. I was more like shopping before the store opened."
Jazz looked at him sternly. "I thought you promised you would never turn into Dark Danny?"
"This isn't Dark Danny."
"Then how can you explain this."
"I got shot yesterday, while in the Ghost Zone with Sam and Tucker. I've got a big burn on my chest, at least I do when I'm a ghost." He beat back her hands which were trying to pull up his shirt. "When I turn back normal it's gone. I needed to clean it up this morning and put a new dressing on it. But if I took stuff out of the burn kit Mom would know. And since I couldn't sleep this morning I decided to go out and get stuff before the store opened. I'm OK, Jazz. Really. But what about this tape. We can't just leave it lying around here. I mean eventually they're going to realize that's me in the video."
"That's simply," Jazz, walking over the TV. She pressed a button on the panel. "Oops, I hit 'record' instead of 'off' My bad for recording over their video..."
His sister turned to him and asked "What would you do without me?"
***
Danny had a bowl of cereal for breakfast before going back up to his room. Time to gird his loins, whatever a gird was, and make the call. He found her number on a business card she's handed him back at camp. Who else would have business cards at 14, he wondered. The card was top class he decided. Quality slick paper, raised lettering and well printed color pictures of unicorns on the corners holding up a banner reading:
Abigail Farley-Smythe-Hyde
Falls Church, VA
in a looping script font with her telephone number and email account under it. It was pretty frilly looking for the business card of someone who intended to be a ghost fighter.
The phone rang, and rang and rang. Danny was about to hang up when there was a faint click and a sullen: "What?"
"Abigail? Hi! it's Danny, Danny Fenton. How are you."
"Like you care."
"What do you mean? You asked me to call you sometime, and I am."
"I'm not an idiot, Fenton. The only reason you're calling is because you want something from me."
Danny was stumped for what to say. This call was not going like he had thought.
After a long pause, he heard: "What's the matter Fenton, cat got your tongue? Did I hit a raw nerve, hurt your feelings? Good!"
The phone clicked off.
Danny slumped to the edge of his bed. Now what? he wondered.
He flipped his phone open again and hit redial. It rang six times before she picked up. "Wow, you are desperate" she said by way of hello,
"Abigail, please don't hang up. I need your help."
"You mean you need something from my father's computer."
"Am I that transparent?" Danny wondered. "Please, it's really important." he said.
"Oh, come on. You never liked me at camp and now, out of the blue, you're calling?"
"I liked you," Danny interrupted.
"Then why you did you always try to avoid me or glare at me every time we talked about fighting that ghost?"
"It's complicated."
"I have plenty of time for you to explain, since, thanks to you, I'm grounded for the rest of the summer."
"Ouch."
"And you, I bet, got off with nothing."
"Because I didn't do anything."
"Yeah, you always did duck on the battles with the ghost."
"I was there! You just didn't see me because you had already been knocked unconscious." Danny argued. He had been there, of course, but as Danny Phantom, not Danny Fenton, something he had worked hard to keeping Abigail from finding out.
"The rangers did say they found you holding that Goth girl and crying like she had died or something." Abigail seemed to be relenting.
Danny hated anyone saying that he cried, ever. Guys don't cry. But the truth was that he had thought that Sam had died when she had broken the skull that had anchored the camp ghost to the mortal plane. And he had never felt so devastated in his life.
"Sam...." he said, and hesitated. "Her name is Sam, not 'that Goth girl.' She saved you life. She saved everyone's life."
"Yeah, whatever. So what's so important that you had to call me?"
"You remember Tucker's friend, T'Keisha?"
"Tall, skinny girl; had cornrows, didn't she?"
"Right. Well, she was attacked by a ghost two nights ago.. A ghost attached to an E-mail, like it were a virus."
"That's different." Abigail agreed. "How do you know it was attached to an E-Mail and didn't just co-incidentally appear?"
Danny recounted what had happened two nights before. Abigail interrupted a couple times to clarify an issue. There was an eagerness to her voice previously missing.
"So you want me to break into my father's computer and look up this Boucou Buxcs?"
"If you would."
"What do I get out of this?"
"I'd really appreciate it."
"Not good enough. I'm grounded for the rest of summer. I can't leave the house, can't have friends over, can't use the computer except for one hour each night to read E-mail. I'm not even supposed to leave me room except to eat meals. He's treating me like a prisoner. What do you think he's going to do if he catches me doing it again?"
"Then you can unlock his computer. 'Cause I wasn't sure you could. Maybe he had changed the password or something."
"He did change the password. But jeeze, he's dumb. I guessed the new password on my third try. "
"I guess that's not much else to do when you're housebound all day."
"And it's all your fault."
"Mine!"
"If you had called in your father when I had asked..."
"I was the one telling you to call in your father. My father is a paranormal researcher. Your father is an officer of the court deputized to deal with ghostly manifestations. If I had called my dad he would have called your dad because that's what the law requires."
"Poppycock! Your father would have been down here in a flash with a ton of heavy weapons, just as he was when you finally did call him."
"I never called him. That was the Head Ranger's doing."
"Whatever. The point is law or no law your father would have come down, helped us out and never bothered the Guys in White."
"Abby, I'm not the one who broke into Guys in White Computer system, or stole proprietary, experimental equipment from the Guys in White, or lie to her father about why you wanted to go to a camp 600 miles away from your home. I went to Camp Sleepy Hollow to get away from ghosts. You went there to find a ghost. Everything that happened there afterwards, happened because of what you did."
"You're saying it's my fault I nearly got killed by that ghost?"
"I'm sorry you got hurt. I'm sorry I couldn't do more to have prevented that." All of his friends at camp had been badly injured while fighting the ghost. Danny had used every means and tactic at his disposal to fight the ghost. Had taken a pounding from it, but as a ghost his wounds had healed quickly. The others... Sam still had nightmares. Something he wished he could take away from her, but how do you fight sick thought?
"That's not good enough, Fenton," Abigail snarled back into the phone and clicked it shut.
***
Danny slowly closed his phone and lay back on his bed. Now what? he wondered. He'd blown his best chance to get information from the Guys in White databank by arguing with Abigail. She's never listen to him if he called back.
He was about to toss his phone on his desk and take a short nap before looking up Sam and Tucker when the phone rang. He was astonished to see calling ID saying "Virginia Call."
"Hello?" He answered tentatively.
"Look if you want that information you've got to do something for me."
"Sure, whatever I can."
"Good. First, I want you to keep me posted on your investigation. I want to hear everything. I wish I could be with you fighting this Technus 0.7 thing but at least hearing about what you're doing is better than nothing. This is the most interesting thing I've heard about all month."
"Sure."
"Secondly,"
"There's more?"
"A lot more. I want you to come visit me."
"What? I can't just drop everything and drive six hundred miles just to visit you. I am too young to drive."
"You've got that other thing, the ghostmobile. The one your father keeps crashing."
"You mean the Specter Speeder, but what makes you think I can fly that?"
"Like you haven't tried to fly it. I know if I were in your position I'd be flying it all over the place." Danny gulped, because it was true. "Besides, since your father wrangled an exemptions from the FAA regarding flight certification there's no requirement that you have to have a license to fly it."
"You have been busy on your father's computer." Danny shuddered. "What else do you know about us?"
"Plenty. I figure you can 'borrow' the ghostmobile and get here in about three hours time. We can run around the city some and you can get back before anyone notices that you or it are missing."
"I can't do that."
"You want me to go behind my father back to get you information, I think you can go behind your father's back, too."
"But..."
"Those are my terms, Danny."
"Abby, be reasonable."
"It's Abigail. I hate 'Abby' that's what my father calls me. Say that name again and you can kiss you precious datamining good bye. Well, what's it going to be."
"Tomorrow."
"Not tomorrow, I want an answer now."
"I said I'd be there tomorrow. I've got to think up a cover story and it's too long a trip to start today."
"Great. See you at Nine. Don't come early, my father doesn't leave for work until Eight-Thirty. Bye,"
She hung up.
What have I done?" Danny wondered. I am so screwed. How do I explain this to Sam? I can't believe I just made a date with a crazy girl on the other side of the country.
Just then the phone rang.
"God, you cave easily," Abigail continued as if she hadn't just hung-up on him. "I was sure I was going to have to argue harder to get you to come." then she gave him directions for finding her house and a couple suggestions for where to hide the Specter Speeder.
Danny fell back onto his bed, shaking his head. He couldn't believe he had just made a date with a crazy ghost-hunter. "I have got to start dating a better class of women," he thought. He closed his eyes, for what he thought was just a moment, and woke at 11:30. With a shout of alarm, he jumped up and rushed off to meet Sam and Tucker at the Nasty Burger.