-I just corrected an error, therefore resulting in this edit on the subject of leather and character consistency, i would like to thank Leppers for pointing this out! if you already read, no need to do so again.
This is significantly longer than the other chapters. I intended on stopping it halfway through, but decided to continue. I'm expecting reviews for all this! If you find the characters OOC, just tell me and I'll do my best to remedy the situation. Enjoy! PS, don't own Danny Phantom, and at least one of the jokes used is rehashed from Control Freaks.
She could hardly believe her own density. Nearly three years since she had so much received a Christmas card from any of them and on one urgent report she was willing to throw everything out the window just because Danny was in trouble? She could not comprehend why it was that she was willing to throw years of work out the window when an old friend was in need. How would she explain this to her editor? She doubted that she would even be able to come up with a viable excuse for her absence, and with a new promotion in her belt it would be nearly impossible.
Despite all of her doubts and second guesses, she never paused as she ripped open her multiple drawers and was rained on by numerous articles of clothing. Her suitcase, made of fine, coarse pleather lay open in the ready, prepared to swallow any and all clothing that she fed it. She kicked off her flats and strapped on her old combat books, feeling somewhat calmed by the weight and strength her feet now offered. She had no time to change out of her 'work scrubs' before she made the flight she had hastily forced her travel agent to make…yes, Sam Manson did have a travel agent via her parents' wishes. One of the few times she complied.
Nearly three years ago both Mr. and Mrs. Manson had decided to move from Amity Park in search of a less 'obnoxious' setting, doing their best to send as many irritating postcards as they could manage.
She tossed three skirts into the suitcase, snatching a carry-on bag to load with the usual books and entertainment. She paused as she glanced down at the bottom of her jewelry box. There was something there she did not recall placing there…a pair of green earrings, ten years old. The same ones that had protected her against Ember's music spell when she was in high school. They clashed with her outfit, horribly out of place, but she clipped them on nonetheless.
"Sam?" A bewildered voice called out behind her. Tim was home, and he was not the type to stand by while his girl packed her bags and fled. By the time Sam had turned to face him he was already putting her clothes away. "What the hell are you doing?" He asked, glancing down at her new footwear in confusion. "Are we going to war, did I miss something?" Sam went to undo the damage he had done, loading her clothing back.
"Sort of," She said aloud without truly meaning to. "This is important, I've got to go." He looked at her bewilderedly. He was a pretty boy, but he was no fool. Tim had majored in political science and had a minor in psychology, something that often led him to outsmart even Sam in some few and far between instances.
"You're leaving." It wasn't a question.
Sam looked back at him despairingly, removing her pearl necklace and tossing it recklessly to the bureau. "For now, I'm not leaving, just leaving." She said, knowing that it made minimal sense but not truly caring all the same. "I'll be back, I'm like the Terminator." She promised, removing her dress-jacket and throwing on Tim's torn jean one.
"What's wrong? I hate being question guy, but it seems like you're the one that stuck me in that position." He stated with more than a bit of hostility, his eyes alight with confusion and anger.
"I was going to leave a note, Tim, but you know Amity Park?" She implored, still packing furiously.
After a beat he answered, "Yeah, that weird place you lived in for a while? I heard something about it on the Today Show, but what does that have to do with anything?"
She glanced over her shoulder fleetingly before returning to the job at hand. "Everything," She was not about to lie to the man she had shared an apartment with for over a year, the same man she was certain loved her. "One of my friends is in big trouble down there, one of my old friends. Jazz Fenton called to tell me." She lied, knowing that his jealousy would spark if she mentioned the fact that Tucker had in fact been the one to enlist her help.
His expression of confusion instantly dissolved to worry, in two strides he was by her side. "Alright." He said brazenly, leaning beside her and scooping up some of her unmentionables and carefully folding them. She blushed with embarrassment, but continued packing nonetheless. "How long are you going to be gone?" She was amazed to find that he was asking no more questions about the issue at hand, and it could not help but send a flare of affection through her.
"I'm not sure, I'd say at least a week, maybe more. Jazz sounded really desperate, and she's one of my oldest friends." He did not seem to take note on the involuntary inflection of her voice and continued to assist her.
"I can cover for you for a few days, and just tell your boss that…you have a lead in Amity Park, that there's some fashion show occurring or something like that, or that there's a Martha Stewart in the making. And you got the promotion, congratulations." He said, shyly yielding the bottle of wine he had briefly discarded. "We'll celebrate when you get back, I can wait." He said, protectively wrapping his arm over her shoulder.
"Definitely." She never thought of herself as a sucker for any of that romantic mumbo-jumbo, but he brought out that part of her without even trying. It was getting more and more difficult to say that she didn't love him yet. "I'll call you when I get there, and my boss, just so he can't kill me or make me come back." She could tell by the brazing look in his eyes that he was trying very hard not to force her to stay, even beg. But he resisted and stepped away, observing her cautiously.
"I don't remember those, are they knew?" He said, gesturing to her earrings. She blushed, recalling the 'moment' she and Danny had shared after he had given her them, how he had been forced to fall madly in love with her.
"They're pretty old, actually." She informed him with a forced smile, using her hair as a veil to cover them.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After four hours of a kicking child, an awful movie, microwave-ready burritos and actually decent salted peanuts, the plane landed in the local airport. She was mildly surprised to see that Tucker was waiting for her in the lobby, currently without his trademark hat and smile. He stood glumly in the shadows, arms tucked to his chest and staring after her.
"How'd you know…?" She began before eyeing his new and improved PDA and sighing. "You can hack into airport files now? I underestimated you." He cracked a weak and obviously forced smile before embracing her briefly.
"No one else knows you're coming, not even Jazz. I was afraid that…you know, he can go invisible and listen in. I called you when I was sure he was busy wreaking havoc elsewhere." He said without a trace of jest. Her face revealed everything, her undying hope that this was all some sort of nightmare beginning to fade as she heard Tucker's voice.
"And his parents, how can they not know?" She questioned worriedly, following her host as he headed toward his car anxiously, looking about in paranoia.
"It's been played down so much that you can't believe it. A lot of the town is…influenced. We're in total lockdown mode, it's lucky I was able to get this far without being followed…what's with the clothes?" He asked, giving her the once-over.
She fought the growing blush as she wrestled with her outfit, realizing how un-her the entire ensemble was. "I had a meeting and I barely had time to pack before I…" The weight of his words struck her as she ducked into the '99 Saturn. "Wait…lockdown mode, you mean I can't get out?" It was now evident that he changed the topic just to avert this little statement.
He did not answer, starting the car with a minimal mode of difficulty before it began to sputter through the parking lot and was spit out onto the highway. "Tucker." She said warningly, feeling her infamous temper flare as she clutched the door handle and felt it buckle.
"Okay, okay!" He admitted, giving into her mode of persuasion. "People can come in but they can't go out, at least they can't if they're you." She froze, her face twisted with bewilderment.
"What…do you mean?" She said slowly, fighting the overwhelming urge to hit him and take control of the wheel, though apparently it was too late. "Tucker, please tell me that you're not saying what I think you're saying."
"I'm not saying what you think I'm saying." He said obligingly, though the furtive look in his eyes divulged otherwise. Feeling her violet eyes boring into his forehead like a gun fixed on its mark, he finally responded honestly. "Okay, if you think I'm saying that I've saved a bunch of money on car insurance by switching to Geico you're wrong, but if you think that I'm telling you that you're trapped in Amity Park you are right on the dot. What's your prize?" He said nervously.
She began to panic, recalling her position and assurance to Tim of her return. "What…can't I drive out of here?" She pleaded worriedly; her eyes alight with fright.
He shook his head gravely, the car rolling downhill toward the familiar building before her. "Roadblocks, they'll check the entire car, there are ghosts everywhere, mostly intangible. And we don't have Danny on our side to warn us against them. A lot of the town has run away, the part that he didn't want, anyway." Her palms were sweating and her stomach clenched in disbelief. "The wonders of modern technology, even if I was able to kick the cameras and somehow sneak you on flight with a jazzy pseudonym, it's doubtful that you would not be caught and captured."
"I promised myself I'd never come back here." She said under her breath, staring in horror at the massive place before her.
"Yeah, so did I, remember?" He stated grimly, parked the automobile and in a gentlemanly manner opening the door for her and bowing.
"Can't we go somewhere else, please?" She begged, but knew the answer. The horrifying Casper High School was their final destination.
"This place…oh, the memories, oh the memories that make me crave for a walk down amnesiac lane." She muttered, ignoring Tucker's gesture and glancing up at the structure and all of its grandeur. "What about school, is it over, canceled, rain check?" She asked, toting her bag up the deserted stairwell. It felt like not all that long ago she, Tucker and Danny had loitered in that very same spot, waiting until the last possible moment to flee to class, this often resulting in detentions from none other than the horrid Mr. Lancer.
"Pretty much," He summed up, taking out a heavy brass key and undoing the chains that held the doors. Upon her furtive look of curiosity he explained, "It's just for show. Sometimes Danny…he comes to check up on me personally. We're trying to retain the normal amount of weirdness in an abandoned building." She nodded dazedly, groping the lockers as they moved forward. She passed her own and attempted her old combination, only to find that it no longer worked. "We have to get to 'headquarters.'" She didn't like the sound of that.
Apparently the cafeteria in its entire splendor was the newest beacon, with Jazz manning or should I say womanning the station. She looked her age and made every year look good, her waist length red hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, tickling her back. Her eyes widened in shock as she spotted both Sam and her bags and before Sam could so much as brace herself she was being nearly throttled by the woman.
"Oh, it's you, it's you! Ah, Tucker, you didn't say a thing!" She was her usual bubbly and somewhat bossy self. Sam could not say what it was she expected, a war torn version of her, Rambo-Jazz? Her face suddenly fell as she observed her brother's old friend cautiously, the light dying from her eyes. "He'll know you're here, Tucker Foley, were you careful?" She barked in furious disbelief, stomping her heel down onto the linoleum.
"What'd you mean?" She panicked, looking at herself in confusion. Sam could not decipher what in the world she was talking about.
"I too was careful!" He cried out childishly, trying to find the item of offense but found none, though his eyes lingered on her earrings.
Jazz turned to Sam with tired impatience, "He has everything under observation, including the airport!" She snapped loudly, gesturing to the tag clipped onto her suitcase. "Tucker, move your car." She commanded, and once he had turned she had already changed her mind. "No, it's too late. They've got to have you pinned already, no, maybe not, keep on going." Her indecisiveness was giving Sam a headache.
Once Tucker had vacated the premises she spoke, "What happened to Danny? I still don't understand what's going on…how can he be…evil?" She seemed reluctant to say the word and Jazz glanced at her sympathetically.
"It's a long story and no, we don't have time." Sam shut her mouth, swallowing the rebuttal that had already been discarded before it was voiced. "We've got to get geared up, Tucker's been able to maintain a position of non-action throughout all this, and that's made him pretty neutral, they won't attack him. He's the brains, not the brawn and all these ghosts understand is power." She explained hastily, suiting up hurriedly in a pink jumpsuit that was so similar to her mother's that Sam was briefly taken aback.
"And me? I'm guessing I'm going to be pretty high on the kill list if I get involved." Jazz nodded in agreement; though it was evident she was not really listening.
"I have some gear that might fit you, it's some of Valerie's old stuff. Might be loose around the, er, posterior, but other than that I think it'll be okay." She said oddly, tossing her a chrome outfit from out of nowhere. "We're definitely a minority, there's only a few of us and most of them are in a position of non-action, like Tuck. Spies and stuff, just as dangerous-"
Sam cut her off, "But without the jazzy jumpsuits." She smiled in return; glad their newest ally was doing her best to make light of the situation. "I can't join this 'war', Jazz." And like that the smile dissolved. "I have a life somewhere else, and I can't drop everything. I really want to help, but this is impossible. Tucker didn't…he didn't say anything about all of this. It was really cryptic and I can't just fall into the resistance." If this was what Jazz had expected of Sam she had a very bad way of showing it.
"But…but you're Sam, you and Tucker were with Danny before I even knew about him being a half-a, or whatever the other freaks call him. You're the only one that can do anything about all this. The next step is to bring in the government, something that Danny could definitely dodge easily. How simple would it be for him to possess the president, or a military leader? He's not a kid anymore; he's a force to reckon with. Where he was all awkward and stuff, not he's basically a genius. No matter what we do, he's always going to win, unless we kill him. And now that's becoming a possibility." This caught Sam's unwavering attention, just as Jazz had definitely supposed it would.
"That's out of the question, he's your brother, and you can't just just kill him!" She hissed angrily, as though afraid that the rhetoric ghosts of the past would hear her. Satisfied, Jazz smirked.
"Exactly, and we need someone here who understands that. This is a retrieval mission, not search and destroy. Tucker's smarter than I gave him credit for, he realized that you were the perfect person to assist us." Sam bristled as the realized the evident attempt to get her goat, but said nothing on the matter.
"I can't leave, Tucker told me that I'm stuck here until this is over, unless I can get plastic surgery, but that's way too 'in' right now." She stated, feeling a horrible sinking feeling as she realized that she was, indeed, trapped. Jazz grimaced knowingly as she gestured for Sam to help zip up her suit. "It's so…bright." Sam complained, wincing as the light reflected off the nearly neon pink outfit.
Jazz whirled around sharply and narrowed her eyes, "You got a problem with jumpsuits?"
just needed to correct something that Leppers pointed out to me. it would be VERY unlike Sam to have a leather suitcase, so this is corrected! update by monday afternoon.
Sorry, such a blatant rip-off, but I couldn't help myself! I have a disease, help me! Tell me what you think, seeing as this chapter is nearly three times the length of any others.