Chapter 12 - Abigail to the Rescue
Somewhere in all this he must have fallen asleep because when his cell phone rang he was in the middle of a weird and twisted dream. He sat up with a start, relieved to be out of it. Then the phone rang again and he began feeling around for it in the dark.
He didn't need to be told it was late at night. He wondered who would be calling him at this time of the night.
He croaked, "hello?"
"I'm in," a familiar, perky voice told him.
"Abigail?"
"What did you say that guy's name was, your father old teacher?"
It was starting to come back, he had asked her to look up the professor on the Guys in White computer system. "Bushrod, ah, Harold V as in Victor Bushrod." he mumbled. "I thought you weren't going to do this?"
"Bushrod. I thought that's who you said. Wow, the GIW have been very naughty people."
"What are you talking about?"
"They've got secret files in hundreds of people. I don't think their charter allows them to do that."
"But they have one on Professor Bushrod?"
"Yup. Lots of stuff here." Abigail whispered. "It's going to take forever to sort through all of it."
"Can you just email me the file?"
"That would leave a record on his computer."
"What can you give me?" Danny asked.
"I can photograph anything interesting off the monitor. What are the dates we're interested in?"
"Anything after February, 2002," Danny told her. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, now. He flipped a light on and dug out some paper and a pen so he could take notes.
"Hey, this may be what you're looking for, January 18, 2002, incorporation papers for something called Mountaintop Enterprises. Bushrod seems to be the only officer. Gives an address in South Carolina."
Danny flipped open his laptop and typed "Mountaintop Enterprises" into his search engine. "I'm getting several hits from Google," he told Abigail. "I wonder if I can find it on Google Earth?"
That program would take a while to load. In the meantime he asked Abigail to photograph all the information on the company and send it to him.
"Here's something interesting," she told him, "a field agent's report. Says the property covers the entirety of a "Shattered Rock Mountain," so it really is a mountaintop enterprise. The land is fenced off, accessible by a dirt road. Two employyes, caretakers apparently. No electricity, or city utilities. Telephone was run on at the owner's expense in 2003...."
"2003!" Danny echoed.
"Yeah. Could be before he died, you know."
"April, 2003?"
"It doesn't say in the report when the line was put in."
"I've got a view from Google Earth," Danny said. "Doesn't look like much. There's a clearing with a smallish house and a couple outhouses..."
"Man must love his toilets," Abigail cracked.
"No, I mean smaller buildings. There's a parking lot down a short decline. Looks paved, maybe room to four cars. No garage."
"Oops, my camera is out of room," Abigail interrupted. "I'm going to get out of his study and then send you the stuff I have. I think I've got everything important." Abigail paused for a moment. "This was fun, we should do it more often," followed by a quick bye, and she hung up.
A few minutes later Danny's phone rang again, this time filling up with photographs of the documents shown on the screen. Danny copied them to his computer and printed them out. Abigail texted to say she was going back to bed leaving Danny was alone with all the print-outs.
He read through them all twice. Taking notes of what seemed like important points. When he was done he had to admit that all of Mr. Lancer's tedious drilling about how to take notes and write up citations had actually been of help. It discouraged him for a moment to think that a teacher might actually have done him something good.
According to the field report the cottage on the top of the mountain was visited about once a week by an old man, Forrester, and his middle-aged son. They rarely stayed for more than a hour, mowed the grass in the summer, raked leaves in the fall. Put up storm windows for winter. The Forresters were never seen bringing supplies to the house indicating occupation. Reading over the numbing list of observations Danny suspected that the life of a spy must be a lot duller than it appeared in the movies.
The important information, Danny thought, was the GPS location for the house. His cell phone had built in GPS. So he programmed it to find the house. The sun was just beginning to come up by now. Danny debated whether to grab a couple hours sleep before talking to the others about this. He realized that he was too keyed up to sleep. He wanted this puzzle solved and solved now.
Danny dressed then wrote out a note for his mom, saying he'd gone over to Tucker's and left if on the kitchen table for her to find. He switched to his ghost self and flew out the window, checked the direction on the GPS display and took off east, into the rising sun.
***
South Caroline was a bit farther on then Danny had. He was beginning to get, not so much tired, but bored. By the time he finally crossed the state line. He'd been flying through the mountains for some time, the back end of the Appalachians. He had been flying a direct line towards Shattered Rock Mt. The only reason Danny knew he had reached South Carolina was when the display on his GPS rolled over to SC when showing his current location. The mountains around here all seemed alike, not so much individual peaks but parts of long ridges, following one after the other like waves on the ocean. Occasionally the ridge would rise to a point and that would be a mountain. It was all covered with trees, a region almost too wild for logging. Or maybe this was second-growth forest, still too young to be harvested. Danny didn't know.
He followed the arrow on his cell phone's GPS until he suddenly spotted it, looking surprising like the image from GoogleEarth. There was the cottage, two smaller older buildings and one newish one, looking like a large garden utility shed, maybe sixteen feet by sixteen foot square. On the paved parking lot down the slope was a big pick-up truck. Danny couldn't be sure, maybe it was just the caretakers, but someone was up on the mountain top.
He turned himself invisible and cautiously swooped down into the clearing.
The door to the new utility shed was open so Danny headed there first, The door was six feet wide, sliding on a track mounted on one corner of the building. The shed itself was six feet tall at the corners, slopping up to a peak eight feet high. It was all sheet metal, mounted on some old railroad ties sunk into the ground. There were no other windows or doors to the building.
Cautiously Danny looked around the corner of the shed inside. He could see three eight foot long folding tables set in a "U." The tables were set back from a walls a couple feet leaving little room left in the building for anything. On two of the tables were rows of computers, four to each table. The computers looked brand-new, in fact boxes were piled up in a corner along with plastic bags, molded styroform containers and manuals.
Two men were working at the third table setting up computers there. One was short, thin, bald- headed with a scraggily, dirty-white beard. The other was much taller, pot-bellied both otherwise looked like a younger version of the other. Danny figured these must be the Forresters, the caretakers. But why where they set up so many computers up here. For that matter, he wondered how they knew how to set up computers. In his limited experience, people that age didn't any anything about computers.
The he noticed a gossamer silver thread running from each man out of the building and off somewhere. Danny tracked it with his eyes for a moment. It quickly became too hard to see but it looked like it run up to the house.
Ectoplasm
The two men were being overshadowed. Ghosts had possessed them and were forcing them to do what they were doing. The silver thread, though, was different. Perhaps instead of being over-shadowed they were being controlled by remote-control?
Danny slipped into the shed, still keeping invisible and slip closer to the two men. They seemed to be talking to each other. Danny wondered what they were saying.
The younger man was staring at the cable he held in his hand and peering from time to time at the variety of ports on the back of the computer. "Is this teal or lavender?" he groused.
"Since when did you become color-blind," the old man snapped.
"I'm not color-blind, you old coot! It just too dark in here, all these cables look grey to me.
"It's green, you nitwit. It goes in the green connecter."
"Which one's that?
"Are you stupid as well as color-blind."
"I'm not color-blind!. I told you, it's too dark in here to see any color! Why couldn't we string up a light in here? We've got enough generators to do that."
"Do you have any idea what the price of gasoline is, ya idjit?"
"Who do you think filled those six cans of gas sitting in the back of our truck, ya old coot. Of course, I know the price of gas. And we wouldn't hardly use any to use a light in here. We'd get these working a lot faster."
"We're not wasting gas just because you can't see. If you didn't waste all your time reading books," the older man whined, "your eyes won't be to bad."
"My eyes are perfectly good. I just had them checked last spring. It's too dark in here…"
A wisp of blue smoke drifted from Danny's mouth, his Ghost Sense was warning him that a ghostly threat was approaching. He looked towards the door and saw a ghost drifting in. It looked like an old man wearing a lab coat. Beaucoup Bucks, Danny suspected. Like many ghosts its body did not end in feet but faded away in a tail. Only in this case the tail became a tiny silver thread leading out the door to, Danny suspected, the same place as the other two threads. The thread told Danny that Bucks was not in this world but rather, like the zombie-clones, a projection of a ghost. The thread surely lead back to the Ghost Zone Radio. Destroy that and Beaucoup Bucks would be banished from earth.
"Aren't you two done yet?" Bucks demanded.
"It's too dark in here," the younger man complained.
"You're just lazy," the ghost interrupted. "Get these computers set up and hooked to the generators. I want them booted up and networked by noon!"
The two men agreed begrudgingly.
Bucks turned to leave. "I can't believe how impotent I am over here. I can't ever over-shadow someone without most of the personality still in control of the body. Once I get these computers working and pumping out clones it won't matter. A billion clones each perfectly responsive to my every command…. I will own this world. I will own every dollar, pound, euro, yen and yuah in the world. Ha! Ha! Fire me because of that fat ass. No one will ever disrespect Beaucoup Bucks ever again! -- God, I'm talking to myself again. I've got to stop that." He paused. Blue smokes drifted from its mouth. "Look lively, you two," the ghost ordered, swirling back to look at the two possessed caretakers. "I smell a ghost around here."
"That's just my old man," the younger man cracked, "he had beans and onions for breakfast."
"Not true. It wasn't me." The old man snapped.
"Shut up both of you." Bucks ordered. "There's another ghost around here! But who? Keep an eye out while I look around. If you see anything the least bit suspicious give a shout." The ghost turned to go, "And finish those computers!"
Beaucoup Bucks floated out of the shed and circled around it. Danny remained hiding under one of the tables until he saw Bucks drifting off to one side of the clearing. Danny went intangible and walked through the side of the shed. He flew towards the house, then detoured to look into the garage standing next to the house. Heavy electric cables ran from it towards both the house and to the utility shed full of computers.
The garage was empty of the usual clutters that fill most garages. Four gasoline powered generators were lined down the middle. The one at the far end of the garage was old and dirty; the other three were shiny new. Only the old machine was currently running. A heavy cable was plugged into it, running through a hole in a side door leading towards the house. Danny didn't know much about electric generators but he guessed that three generators to power twelve computers amounted to overkill. At least he knew what Beaucoup Bucks had done with all the money he had stolen from the ATM machines back in East Gratiot. Bucks must have directed it straight into these purchases – the generators, the computers, the new shed to put them in. He must have been keeping the Forresters hopping to get so much done in the brief time since T'Keisha had reported his thefts. With a dozen computers linked directly to his Ghost Zone Radio Beaucoup Bucks could generate more clones then even the real Technus could over-ride. If he hadn't decided on this visit today, Bucks could have taken over the world before anyone had known about it.
Danny followed the cable from the running generator through the garage wall and into the house.
The house was little more than a cabin twenty-four feet by about thirty. A wall divided the building into two. Danny guessed there was a bed room behind one door and a bathroom behind a second. A kitchen filled one corner and a fireplace the other corner of the front half of the building. There were no dishes in the kitchen, no wood in the fireplace and no furniture in the middle of the room. If Harold V. Bushrod had ever lived here there was certainly no evidence of it now.
Dominating the empty room and its only piece of furniture was a desktop model of a Ghost Zone portal. It reminded Danny of the desktop portal his parents and Vlad Masters had constructed twenty years before, the one that had blown up and changed Vlad's life forever. The one he had seen because Clockwork had let him travel back in time.
Except Danny could see many obvious differences between this portal, the original prototype and the working unit in his family's basement. The frame of the portal was a pentagon and an irregular one at that. Danny wasn't sure why his folk's was six sided or Vlad's was eight-sided but he suspected that it had something to do with why theirs worked and this one didn't. The ecto-filtration unit didn't have a recirculator, the reifier wasn't grounded and the portal itself was sealed behind stainless steel.
"Impressive, isn't it?" a voice behind him declared.
"It's a piece of junk."
"It is not. It is the finest development of the human mind. Its like is not to be found anywhere in the world!"
"Then why doesn't it work?" Danny asked.
Beaucoup Bucks stalked around in front if him. "What do you mean 'doesn't work?' I'm here aren't I? I'm living proof that it works."
"You've got the portal interface sealed off. It will never work as long as the portal is - -"
"Who are you?" Bucks demanded, looking at Danny closely. "How do you know so much about my great machine?" After another close look at Danny, Beaucoup Bucks stepped back, clutching his head in sudden pain. "Fenton!" he hissed.
Danny felt a cold chill run down his spine. How could the late Professor Bushrod know his name?
"My god, that fat ninney has spawned!"Bucks continued. "Will my life never be rid of that walking disaster, Jack Fenton?"
"You have me confused with someone else. I'm Danny Phantom. The ghost kid, the Halfa. I'm sure you've heard of me." Danny tried bluffing.
"Oh, do not prevaricate with me, child. You've got your father's eyes, his nose and in another twenty years his bulging gut! I know you. You're Jack Fenton's son. Who would be stupid enough to marry him?"
"That's my mother you're talking about."
"The poor woman."
"Look," Danny yelled, "Professor Dork-rod. We're the ones with the working Portal in our basement. You've got squat. You're not even really in this world. You're just a hologram or something. Don't call my father a jerk and don't you ever call my mother - - whatever it was you were going to call her!"
"Hologram? Can a hologram do this?" without waiting for an answer Beaucoup Bucks split into three, each blasting Danny with a torrent of ectoplasm. Vaguely Danny heard the generator in the garage surge as it compensated for energy being thrown at him. The ferocious attack drove him to his knees.
Danny threw up a shield, deflecting some of the energy from the ecto-plasmic blasts away from himself. He forced himself to his feet and launched himself at the ghost. He hit one hard and it popped out of existence like the zombie-clones. But as Danny turned to concentrate on the remaining two, another ghost began oozing out of the Ghost Zone Radio. The two ghosts moved apart, placing Danny in a withering crossfire. He dived into the floor, shoot outside through the ground before returning through a wall. His first shot popped another of the Beaucoup Bucks ghosts but just as Danny exhalting, he was struck in the back by a blast of ectoplasm. Bucks has exuded another ghost through the Radio. Danny returned fire, but it dodged.
Seeing a clear shot at the Ghost Zone Radio, Danny snapped off a powerful blast at the machine. The green ooze bounced off a protective shield. Danny tried again. This time his blast smashed in closer to the portal but was still deflected before it could cause damage.
A flurry of blasts from the Beaucoup Bucks ghost drove Danny away. Taking shelter in the unused fireplace, Danny tried reaching deep inside him for his Ghostly Wail. That would destroy the Radio, and just about everything else on the mountain top, but to his dismay, Danny couldn't find the energy welling out of him as he usually did. He had also exhausted himself. He was going to have to finish this with just his skill, wit and luck.
Danny bolted through the cabin wall into the clearing outside. Beaucoup Bucks followed.
With the wider spaces Danny was able to twist and swerve around the blasts from the three Bucks ghosts. The occasional strikes stung like everything but lacked the punch of a hit from a Vlad Plasmeus or a Skulker. Apparently by dividing into multiple ghosts Bucks was also dividing his power. From time to time Danny was able to 'pop' one of the ghosts but a replacement would exude from the Radio almost as fast as he destroyed them.
Danny had done this five or six times when he noticed that the new ghost, instead of moving off to one side to attack him, was flying right towards another of Beaucoup Buck's selves - - and merged with it. The third part of Bucks' self flew in and merged as well. The ghost seemed to glow brighter now and when it launched an energy blast at Danny, its impact rocked him harder than any three blasts had before.
With only one ghost to watch Danny didn't have to spend as much time on defense. He threw himself at Beaucoup Bucks, plastering him with a series of blows to the head and shoulders. The ghost was staggered by the unexpected physical assault and fell heavily to the ground. Danny fell on top of him, grabbing hold of his lab coat and shook him furiously.
"Why are you doing this?" he should. "Why are you causing all this damage and destruction? You're a scientist! Isn't this against everything you pledged to protect?"
"My boy, you're confusing me with a doctor. They're pledged to do no harm. Scientists like myself take no pledges. We're interested in how the world works but it's irrelevant whether life survives our examination."
"That's crazy."
"Hardly. I'm not the one who sacrificed his son to create a working Ghost Zone Portal. That's crazy. I just want the money."
"Sacrifice? What are you talking about?"
"I always thought there might be a missing variable to the creation of a working portal into the Ghost Zone but I was never sure what. But it's obvious now what that missing element was -- human sacrifice. Clearly a portal can only be formed when someone dies. Your death is what formed the Portal."
"I'm not dead!"
"But you are a ghost. Tell me, in the name of science, how did that happen? Oh, and could you not press down quite so hard on my throat?"
Danny shifted some of his weight off the knee he was using to hold Bucks pinned to the ground. "Dad had nothing to do with it. I was exploring the portal when it was accidentally turned on. Something in the build up of the field gave me ghost-like powers, but I never died."
"No one ever thinks that they have -- at first." Bucks sneered. "I must have been in the Ghost Zone for a whole day before realizing that I had died -- and I had been expecting it. Dying, that is."
"You knew you were going to die?"
"When you reach my age, you do. God, you're as dense as your father. Haven't you ever considered that the energies needs to tear a hole in the Space-Time Continuum and bridge to the Ghost Zone would tear any human mortal to shreds?"
"No…"
"Idiot! Fool! You're as stupid as your father."
"Stop talking about my father like that!" Danny shouted into Bucks' face, leaning heavily on the knee pressing into Bucks' throat.
"Sorry," Bucks gurgled. "I forget that you are just a child. Think, boy, before you stuck your nose into that portal, did it work?"
"No."
"Exactly! But when you were in the Portal transition area and the power was turned on, the portal was opened. Your death provided the last ingredient needed to create it. I've suspected it but never had the nerve to actually put someone to death to test my theory."
"You're nuts!"
"You're just denying the obvious. It all makes sense now. It takes ectoplasm on both sides of the Portal to open it up, but the only source of ectoplasm in this world is that given up when someone dies? Ask yourself, does anyone else have a working Ghost Zone Portal?"
Danny was about to say 'Vlad Masters does,' but he was filled with doubt. Vlad had gained ghost powers like Danny's when he had been peering into a proto-type Portal just as Jack Fenton had thrown on the power. He hadn't 'died' any more than Danny had, nor had the Portal worked, so Beaucoup Bucks had to be wrong. "Could a ghost in this world open a Portal into the Ghost Zone?" he asked instead.
"You mean a ghost like you? Of Course. If what I suspect is true, you could make all the Ghost Zone Portals in the world. But without another fool wandering into the interface zone, your bloated oaf of a father never will!"
"No. This is all wrong. People shouldn't have to die to connect to the Ghost Zone."
"Why not, it's unnatural to enter the Ghost Zone while still alive.
"You're wrong! You're wrong!"
"The beauty of science, dear boy, which I hope will not be lost on you, is that when you think something is wrong all you have to do is disprove it. If you think I'm wrong about human sacrifices -- then show me I'm wrong!" Bucks broke into a fit of hysterical laughter.
The boom of a shotgun startled Danny just as a vast fist slammed into his chest. He was thrown off Beaucoup Bucks by the impact and fell to the ground stunned. As he scrambled to his feet, pellets rattled out of his ghostly body and fell on to the ground. In the distance, just at the edge of the decline to the small parking area, the taller of the two caretakers was reloading a shotgun. Danny sprinted across the ground, grabbing the gun from the man just as he was raising it to his shoulder. With a burst of his ghost-powers, Danny threw the gun far out into the valley below.
The man swung at Danny with his fists. Danny dodged, stooped down, found the silver thread from Beaucoup Bucks that controlled the man and seized it in ectoplasm-flaring hands, With an effort he tore the thread in two. The younger Forrester froze for a second, shook his head as if awakening from a dream.
"Run!" Danny screamed, "Get your father and get out of here. It's not safe!" Then remembering that the elder Forrester was still over-shadowed by Bucks, Danny tore off in search of the old man.
The elder Forrester wasn't hard to find. He was down at their truck wrestling an ax out of a jumble of tools behind the passenger seat. Danny seized it from his hands and slammed the blade down on the silvery cord that was controlling him. The thread parted easily on contract with the iron ax head. The old man collapsed to the ground as the control was lost then struggled to his feet. "Junior! Junior" he called.
The younger man was scrambling down the slope. "Here I am!" he called back.
"Let's get the heck out of here!" He scrambled around to the driver's side and yanked the door open. His son was pulling open the passenger door when both men were hit with a diffuse green cloud of ectoplasm. They dropped to the ground unconscious. Beaucoup Bucks soared past overhead. "You're not going anywhere!" he shouted. "You're still on the clock!"
"You killed them!" Danny screams launching himself after Beaucoup Bucks.
"Hardly, I need their hands to finish my work. Unlike you, I don't have a physical presence in this world." They exchanged a series of blows. Danny caught Bucks by the lab coat, dragging it down his arms, pinioning Bucks in a makeshift strait-jacket.
"Why are you doing this?" He demanded.
"I need the money." Bucks repled
"For what? You're dead!"
"For my research. All my life I have had to beg, borrow, cajole, wheedle and plead for money to continue my research. It was demeaning. And there was never enough. Now I'm going to have all the money I need – because I'm going to have all the money in the world! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"
"You're mad you know." Danny said when Bucks was done laughing manically.
"Yes, alas, death tends to do that to one. But nonetheless I intend to take over all the computers in the world with my Technus clones, collect all the world's money and use it as I see fit! People will have to beg *me* for money. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"
"What kind of research?" Danny asked intrigued by Professor Bushrod/Beaucoup Bucks' intentions. Most of the villains he had fought were just crazy, but Bucks almost seemed rational.
"The same research I've always done."
"Ghost research? But you are a ghost?"
"There's still so much to learn."
"You're nuts."
"But I'm going to be the richest nut in the world"
As Beaucoup Bucks laughed maniacally Danny dropped him and sped through the air towards the cabin. Reasoning with Professor Bushrod / Beaucoup Bucks was pointless but the only thing keeping Bucks in this world was the Ghost Zone Radio. That was the key. That was what had to go.
Bucks was struggling to get free from his twisted lab coat, then, realized his danger. He set off in pursuit. He burst into the cabin to see Danny poised in front of the Radio pouring a steady stream of ectoplasmic fire at it. The deflector shields were holding but slowing ctumpling under the assault.
"Confound you, boy!" Bucks screamed, and shot Danny in the back. Danny gasped and fell to the floor. He twisted around and threw up a shield with one hand and continued blasting away at the Radio.
Danny drawled along the floor towards Bucks, holding up a shield of ecto-plasm to ward off Bucks' attacks. With a lunge Danny grabbed hold of Buck's tail, swung him around and threw him towards the Ghost Zone Radio.
Bucks hit the deflector barrio. There was a sizzling sounds, a shower of sparks followed like a loud 'pop' and Bucks' projected presence in the mortal world shorted out. The deflector collapsed and the feedback caused an explosion in the nearby garage. Without the sustaining energy from the generator the Ghost Zone Radio began to collapse in on itself. Danny had planned to stay and watch it self-destruct but as the Radio shook and sparked Danny slowly backed away. He was about at the door when the cover to the Portal fell off. Inside was the familiar raging vortex of a working Portal but the energies were bulging out from the containing frame, darkening in hue yet growing more intense every second. Danny turned to flee when the Portal finally and completely let go. Wave after wave of energy boiled out. Danny was picked up by the force and blown far out into the mountain top's clearing. Searing blasts washed over him, threatening to overwhelm the defensive shield he had thrown up. As blackness swallowed up Danny he could hear peal after rolling peal of thunder. Lightning played around the lonely mountaintop like the act of God at the end of a biblical epic.
***
"Wake up! We don't have much time."
Danny squinted through aching eyes into a haze of reddish hair. Hands were tugging at his shoulder.
"Abigail?"
"Come on! The guys in white will be here in five or ten minutes."
Danny moved to sit up. Every joint ached. He felt like a microwaved marshmellow. As an afterthought he glanced down at his body to see whether he was Phantom or Fenton. He was dressed in a black jumpsuit so he was still in ghost form. He asked, "What happened?"
"You tell me, I wasn't here." the girl had slipped Danny's arm over her shoulder, as if she could support his weight. But it got his feet under him. After a moment he stood on his own, stretched sore muscles into a better fit and looked around at what was left of Mountaintop Enterprises. It looked like a lightning bolt had hit the entire mountain. The cabin with all the computers lay scattered in fragments rarely more than a foot in length. The metal roof looked like it was laying in a puddle in a crater.
He had never seen a Ghost Portal collapse before. It gave him a shiver to think about his parent's portal. Beaucoup Bucks' portal had been small, a quarter the size of his parent's. If that little portal had done this, his parent's portal could take out most of Amity Park if it failed.
A hand was tugging on him. Abigail."Where's Danny and the others?"
He shook off her hand. "They're safe back in Amity Park. Where are the caretakers?" he asked. Danny staggered through the rubble until he found them, far down the path to the car park. Both men were singed and covered in Ecto-Acne. But they were breathing and to Danny's senses free of any spectral over-shadowing.
"You don't want to be found here when the Guys in White show up." Abigail was calling from the top of the peak. Danny tried flying but nothing happened. He was still whacked out from the Portal collapsing. Danny stumbling back up the path. Abigail grabbed him and dragged him over to where a Strato-cycle was parked.
The red-haired girl helped him into the seat then got on in front of him. Se reached back and grabbed his hands and pulled them around her waist. "Hang on tight," she called back to Danny. Then added, "But don't think you can cop a feel."
"Wasn't planning to."
"Why not?" Abigail whined. Her answer left Danny confused. But before he could say more she had jerked the Strato-cycle off the ground and around in a dizzying loop before heading off to the nearest other mountain peak. She pulled in between a couple of tall pines, jockeyed around them until the Cycle was hidden from view. Danny followed as she made her way back to the edge of the forested area. A fallen tree provided cover farther out on the mountain, offering them a clear view of Beaucoup Bucks former headquarters.
"What are you doing out here?" Danny asked as they made them comfortable behind the dead tree. "Why did you rescue me? I'd figure you would want the Guys in White to find me."
"I owe Fenton one."
"Really?" Danny studied her face in the dappled shadows. In the short while he'd know Abigail Farley Smythe-Hyde owing favors or paying off favors never seemed high on her priorities.
"Fenton's all right, even if he has wretched taste in girlfriends and since you're a friend of his I thought I ought to come out to help."
"And nothing else?"
"And miss this, no way! What happened? You took out half the power in South Carolina."
"What?"
"Message thatcame calling for the Guys In White mentioned that the electrical grid in South Carolina had been knocked out! How did you do that? Why did you do that?"
Danny explained about the collapsing Portal. "How did you get out here ahead of your father?" he in turn asked.
"They had to stop to fill out a flight plan. I didn't."
"And they let you take a Strato-cycle?"
"It's the one my old man has in the tool shed. They're taking an Osprey troop transport down so he drove to the airport."
"Thanks for the help, in case I hadn't mentioned it before." He looked at his watch. "Oh, man! Look! It melted my watch!" Danny showed Abigail his watch which was bent in two different dimensions. The plastic cover on the dial had disappeared."
"Wow! Aren't you burned?"
Danny pulled up his sleeve, the ectoplasmic 'flesh' of his wrist was unharmed. "Pays to be a ghost, some times. From what you're saying there must have been an E. M. P. when the portal let go."
"A what?"
"Electro Magnetic Pulse. It's a gigantic magnetic field. It'll cause electric currents on conductive surfaces, burning out switches and relays. You're lucky the EMP didn't knock out your Strato-Cyclo."
"I was coming in from the north and the damage looks to run east-west."
"You were lucky."
"Yeah. There's the plane!" Abigail pointed eastward.
The Osprey was a large plane with four propeller engines. It circled the ruined mountain top a couple times then, with a change of engine pitch, the wings started tilting up until the propellers were pointed directly upwards. The plane cruised slowly over the ground like a helicopter before settling to the ground. Moments latter a dozen men, all dressed in immaculate white suits leaped from the plane and spread out over the destruction. A couple minutes later four men came out with a pair of stretchers and hurried down the trail to the car park where the two caretakers lay.
"Good," Danny breathed. "I was afraid they wouldn't notice those men."
"Who are they?"
Danny explained about them being simple caretakers for the place whom Beaucoup Bucks had over-shadowed when Danny had come to shut down the relay. "I doubt that they will remember anything of what they did when they were over-shadowed, people rarely do. But I'm pretty sure once they start talking to those guys they'll be led to Professor Bushrod and all those computers he was having shipped in."
"Computers?"
"He was using the money he's stole from those ATMs in East Gratiot to build his own bank of computer to create an army of Technus clones."
"So you really did get here in the nick to time."
"I -- we couldn't have done it without your help. If you hadn't been able to find Bushrod's deeds to this land we would never have been able to stop him."
Abigail smiled at that, a little too eager for even small praise.
They watched the Guys in White for while. The men were sweeping various instruments over the grounds. A couple were far down the slope stringing yellow plastic crime scene ribbon around the destroyed compound. One man came back with the two stretchers and placed them back in the Osprey. A rising cloud of dust farther down the mountain suggested the two injured men were being driven to the nearest hospital.
"Do you -- ah -- did--" Abigail asked, unable to finish her question.
"Did I kill Beaucoup Bucks? No. But since the radio is destroyed he's marooned in the Ghost Zone."
Abigail seemed relieved by that. Danny scooted around and leaned against the fallen tree and closed his eyes. All sorts of little shimmers danced across his eyelids. He was surprised how long the after-effects of the explosion was lasting.
Danny turned around to watch the Guys in White some more. They seemed to be picking up everything in sight and placing them in evidence bags. "I'd like to see them come around to some parks I know," Danny chuckled. "They could use a real good cleaning like that."
"I'd better get going. Danny Fenton will be wondering what happened here."
"Yeah I'd better get back, too." Abigail looked at him for a moment, fussed with her hair then added, "this is your one time, next time I see you, it's down to headquarters for dissection."
"Ya gotta catch me to do that," Danny called, levitating into the air. He turned west then thought of something else. Abigail was just swinging her leg over the saddle of the Strato-cycle.
With a wicked grin on his face, Danny turned invisible and swooped down behind her. Silently her reached around her and grabbed her breasts and gave them a gently squeeze. "Is that better," he breathed into her ear.
Abigail's scream was piercing. "You son of a –" she shouted, diving into her tote bag for a weapon. The first thing she pulled out was a Fenton Lipstick blaster. She laid a barrage of fire all about her, never coming close to Danny who had moved far away.
Abigail fumbled around in the tote again, bringing out the Fenton Finder. She popped open the access hatch where the mysterious daughterboard was located and ripped it out. Danny instantly showed up on her screen, something Danny only because aware of when her next shot nearly sliced his cowlick off his scalp.
Danny turned and headed deep into the Appalachian mountains.
"You'd better run, Ghost Boy!" she shouted. "You're paying for that!"
Danny lead her on a twisting path through the tall pines. With the Finder focused on him Danny wasn't able to shake her pursuit. His ability to pass through trees that she had to dodge around balanced out the greater speed of the Strato-cycle.
"No one touches my boobs and gets away with it!" She shouted. "Rat! Snake in the Grass! I thought you said 'No means no'?"
Her blaster fire was getting dangerously close. It was time to end this, Danny decided.
He popped out high in the air and dived straight for the wreckage of Beaucoup Bucks' schemes. He turned intangible and passed through a dozen GIW, the Osprey and part of the mountain top. Alarms, Danny was sure, were going off all around him. A Level One Ghost event if there ever was one.
Abigail was in close pursuit behind him. She was within a hundred yards of the wreckage when she realized Danny's trap. She threw the Strato-cycle into a flat turn that barely avoid the scattering agents. She hunched her head down, hoping that her father hadn't recognized her. (She had seen him.) More importantly, she knew she had to get home before her father did anything reasonable like call her mother to have her check up on her. In case the Guys in White had brought a Strato-cycle along on the Osprey she kept down among the trees where she would be hard to find.
"Damn it!" she cursed. "How could she have walked so blindly into such a obvious trap?"
Abigail Farley Smythe-Hyde stood up in the stirrups of the Strato-cycle and shook her fist in the air. "You'll pay for this Danny Phantom! If it's the last thing I do! You'll pay!"
With a sigh she sat down. "Why do all the bad boys have to be so cute?"