Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or any characters associated, nor am I making any money off of this.

Chapter Eleven

One of the many things I learned on the trip to the house of the . . . What was their surname? Right, the Robertas - anyway, one of the many things I learned on the trip to their house was that Toby does not like cars. Namely, the fact that people are usually scrunched together in cars. Apparently none of the vans were available today, and so we were stuck in a badly air-conditioned, not altogether roomy Buick. One that, notably, had tinted windows. Toby was shoved against the right window, trying to avoid as much hip-to-hip contact as possible, Emma was sitting rather thoughtfully in the middle, and I was trying to cool off on the left side.

My tolerance for high temperatures was very low, it always had been. That dislike had only increased after I became half ghost and my average body temperature became somewhere in the low nineties. So the fact that it was around seventy degrees outside, even if it wouldn't be altogether that hot to someone normal, really bothered me. I was practically gasping for air, but I knew I couldn't roll down the window.

No one had told us how long this trip would be. But if Toby didn't stop squirming, and the air didn't become significantly cooler within the next one to five minutes, I was going to scream.

Emma suddenly turned to me. "I read your case file," she said. "Two weeks after Toby met you. Danny Fenton, fourteen, blood type AB, all that."

". . . Okay," I said, my voice scratchy from dehydration. "So?"

"So, the therapy reports say that you claim to have fully developed powers." Toby, seemingly having abandoned his usual good mood, shot her an exasperated look. Emma ignored him. "But they never made you prove it."

"No," I said. "Should they have?"

"Yes," Emma said simply.

"Well, I guess all the news reports and my fights with the GIW were enough, eh?"

I noticed out of the corner of my the driver glance nervously into the rearview mirror, but he said nothing.

Emma gaped. "You weren't lying?" she asked incredulously. Toby snorted, half-annoyed. Again, she completely ignored him. "And you used your powers publicly? Why weren't you here years sooner?"

"I've only had them a year. Besides, everyone thought I was just some ghost. I tried out the whole 'superhero' thing. Was planning on, you know, going with it for awhile, then they came and dragged me here." At least I remembered that much . . .

Emma still looked at me strangely. "I can hardly use mine. Mom shipped me off to Mt. Ivory the moment she found out." I nodded, having no clue what to say.

"And you know all about my lack of ability," Toby said, finally joining the conversation. "And I'd gladly tell you all about my regaling life story - but I'm not in a good enough mood. And I really don't think Danny is all too keen on telling us all about the superheroing life, especially since he has no idea what it was actually like. And . . ." I get the feeling he would've gestured dramatically if that wouldn't have meant bursting his little bubble of personal space. ". . . I don't really want to here any of it either. In other words, shut up." He became invisible, and muttered several profanities. "Today'd been going good for that, too . . ."

Emma giggled, slightly. "Okay, Toby." She leaned against the back of the car seat, and seemed to be staring at me - more prominently, my skin - for a second. Then she stopped and turned back to face the front, once again looking thoughtful. Toby grumbled invisibly. I stared out the window, not that there was much to see, as it was a two-way tint. Guess they didn't want us to have the slightest idea where we were. For all I knew the driver was just driving around pointlessly in circles to throw us off . . .

Circle. Heat. Circle. Discomfort. Circle. Complacency. Circle. Advertising. Circle. Vlad.

There is no way of knowing how long that drive took. However, in that space of time, be it forty-five minutes or four hours, I managed to think through all the major topics on my agenda (in varying degrees of thoroughness): the heat, my discomfort, this 'complacency compound,' our advertising job, and Vlad. Toby and Emma had advertised to Vlad. It made a heckuva lot of sense, I'll admit. Vlad was a shady billionaire who lived in a creepy castle in the middle of nowhere that no one was ever allowed to visit.

Yeah, it made sense. But it did not bode well. Then of course I realized Vlad would've known about the whole thing anyway thanks my 'the boy who called ghost hybrid' incident.

Which of course brought up the question of how he got out of capture. But I knew Vlad was manipulative, and too cunning for his own good, even if he was a bit of a fruitloop. A lot of a fruitloop. Such a fruitloop that it would probably do him good to be drenched in milk.

Needless to say at this point, Vlad's was the topic I thought over most carefully.

Emma, too, seemed to be thinking about something rather meticulously. She was chewing her blue hair (which could've been so much stranger to me), and simply staring into space. But there was a look in her eyes that said her mind was far from blank.

Toby, meanwhile, had become visible about fifteen to thirty minutes after he faded out, and now simply looked uncomfortable, as opposed to not looking at all.

"How long's this gonna take, anyway?" Toby asked suddenly. "I could swear the temperature's gone up at least ten degrees."

"We're almost there," the driver said, speaking for the first time.

Toby huffed, then sighed, and leaned back even further in his seat, trying desperately not to even come close to touching Emma. Which I found odd, given that he had called her 'beautiful' earlier (which was, in my opinion, a very strange thing to say. She wasn't bad looking, but she was far from even being called 'pretty.' Matter of opinion, I supposed).

But Toby was . . . Odd. There was probably very little point in actually wondering about any of his quirks.

Then, after a few more minutes of nearly unbearable heat, the car pulled to a stop. "I wouldn't talk," Emma whispered to me, as quietly as she could, it seemed, as the driver pulled out the key. "Or look around. Or anything. We'll take care of this. But if she asks you something . . . Answer."

"Keep in mind you're here to berate yourself," Toby added, and I wasn't even quite sure how he'd heard her speak. "Then you should be just fine."

I nodded, and took one last breath in that oven-on-wheels, and stepped out onto the street, Emma right behind me. "Don't look," she reminded me, and I did my best not to notice anything about the town/city/hamlet/whatever surrounding me. I heard a car door slam somewhere close to us, and the driver ushered us inside.

Toby calmly knocked on the door, his discomfort magically evaporating the moment he was out of the car. The driver seemed to scoot back into the car and disappear in the short time it took for someone to answer the door.

A little girl, maybe ten or eleven, answered. She opened her mouth to greet us, then her eyes widened when she saw Emma and I. "Aunt Max! They're here!"

The distinctive sound of . . . penny loafers? . . . was heard thumping towards us. A vaguely ungainly-looking woman appeared. "I know you have homework, Petra," she said softly, and the girl scurried off to parts unknown.

"Hello," Mrs. Roberta said coolly, "my name's Maxine Roberta, Mrs. Roberta to you."

If I wasn't so utterly terrified, I would've burst out laughing at her use of 'Mrs. Roberta to you.' But let it be said that Mrs. Roberta is nothing if not an intimidating person, even if, in all her wealth, the best thing she could find to wear was a pair of jeans, a university sweatshirt, and worn penny loafers. And she was overweight. More than slightly, less than very.

"My name is Toby, ma'am. This," he said, gesturing to Emma, "is Emma, and Danny." Emma nodded her head politely, and I followed suit. "And we would like to thank you for inviting us so graciously into your home, and allowing us to present our case to you."

Mrs. Roberta shrugged. "Come in, will you? I don't want the neighbors seeing you. My husband's reputation would be ruined."

She gestured Toby in, and we followed. She glared at us the entire time. I kept as much distance between us as possible without looking ridiculous and/or terrified.

I couldn't help but wonder if I'd gone soft after all that time at Mt. Ivory. No ordinary person should be able to do this to me, I thought bitterly. Looking at her briefly, I received another jolt of fear - the word 'intimidation' does not usually coincide with 'short and squat.' But there was just something in her glare, something that I couldn't quite place. Whatever it was, it was familiar. Something I'd seen before. It just wasn't coming to me. And whatever that something was, it scared the pants off of me.