AN: Alright! Finally! The stupid thing wouldn't upload yesterday and ticked me off! I hear that's been happening a lot lately. Anyway... This is going well! Thanks for all the reviews! (pause) Jeez! My AN's keep getting shorter. I guess I just don't have a lot to say. Lol! Anyway, Chapter Five!!!!

Chapter Five

"Tucker, over here!" Sam yelled to her friend as she saw him walk through the door to the bookshop. She had already picked a table for her, Tucker and Danny and was waiting for them to arrive.

Tucker caught sight of his friend and made a beeline to her. She was wearing a black top with netted sleeves and silver sequins on the front in a sideways, rounded z-shape. He was pretty sure it was a band symbol or something. (AN: I wasn't very good at describing it, but I'll give a virtual cookie to whoever can guess what band it is!) "Hey," he said, once he reached the table. "Sorry I'm a little late."

"You're late?" Sam asked, pulling up a chair for him.

"Not by long," Tucker said, sitting down. "Ten, fifteen minutes or so."

"Oh," Sam said. "Well, they haven't started yet. Besides, I'm not on for a while yet."

Tucker nodded. He looked around the bleak shop. The room was dimly lit, with nothing but a couple of candles. Most of the interior was black. Tucker was getting depressed just looking around the place.

"Have you heard from Danny at all?" Tucker asked. Still keeping a wandering eye on the scene around him.

Sam's face fell. "I was hoping you had, actually," she explained.

Tucker looked back at his friend. "Really?" he asked. Danny would usually call ahead if he were going to be late. "Well, he might be caught up doing you-know-what."

"Making out with Valerie?" Sam said.

"Sam…"

"I'm just kidding!" she exclaimed.

Tucker only shook his head but Sam was beginning to doubt her distracted half-ghost friend. Lately, she didn't know whether to believe in him or not. And right now, it was not. Where could he have been?

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Danny sprinted out the front door in ghost mode. In his human form, Danny had thick black hair and bright, blue eyes. In ghost form, however, his black hair turned snow white and his blue eyes glowed an eerie green. His pale skin gave off an aura, just like any other ghost. Whatever he was wearing was automatically switched to a black jumpsuit with silver boots and gloves. On the chest of the suit, a small P inside of a D served as an emblem of sorts. With a flicker of light, Danny Fenton changed into Danny Phantom. Now outside, Danny's green eyes scanned his surroundings. The little bat had disappeared. Where did you go? Danny thought, looking for the annoying little specter.

The blue mist escaped from his mouth again and before Danny could think another thought, he was slammed into the ground, back first. Looking up at the sky, he saw a green blur come straight at him and he rolled off to the side quickly, hearing the sound of ghostly flesh hitting concrete. Danny saw indeed that the figure that came at him was Lydia, the assistant of one of Danny's old foes, Freakshow. Freakshow was not a ghost himself, but longed to be one. Since he wasn't a ghost, he settled on making ghosts his slaves. Lydia was the only ghost that stayed by his side voluntarily after Danny had shattered Freakshow's mind controlling crystal ball. So Danny knew that whatever Lydia wanted, it wasn't good.

Lydia stood back up quickly. Ghosts didn't get hurt as easily as humans did. So where a normal person or even Danny would have had to take a minute or two to recover, Lydia jumped up almost instantaneously. Lydia had pale green skin that glowed as Danny's did, glaring red eyes, and several long spikes protruding from her bald scalp. She wore a black leather leotard and a long red cape with a hood on the back. Running up and down her arms and legs were several tattoos of animals. Like the bat tattoo, those tattoos could come to life and wreak as much havoc as any other ghost, causing even more problems for Danny.

"What do you want, Lydia?" Danny asked, getting right down to the issue at hand.

Danny only realized after he said that that he was being stupid. Lydia never spoke, and so when she came at him as a response, it didn't surprise him. He bolted upward and flew into the sky, dodging her attack.

Sam's going to murder me, he thought.

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"I'm going to murder him."

Sam was getting disgruntled and fast. It had been forty-five minutes since he was supposed to be there, and Danny was still MIA. Tucker kept dishing out the reassurances ("It's alright. He'll be here." "He probably got caught up with something. He'll be here soon." "Valerie wouldn't even let him do that! That's gross!"). But nothing was cooling her fury. The first five poets had come and gone and Sam's turn was approaching. "Where the heck is he?" she snarled to herself.

"Maybe we should call him," Tucker suggested, more worried than angry.

Sam nodded and the pair stood up as one of the poets continued speaking about a gloomy night of death or something. They slipped to the front entrance, out of earshot of the audience and Tucker took out his phone to call Danny.

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Lydia threw a punch and hit Danny square in the nose. Danny was just glad his nose didn't start bleeding. Human blood was gross, but ghost blood was just down-right disgusting. It was ectoplasm, a thick green liquid that looked more like discolored jelly than anything. It ran through Danny's veins just like any other ghost, yet he still hated the sight of it.

A cluster of tattoos leapt from Lydia's arms and lunged at Danny. A couple grabbed a hold of his wrists and another few latched onto his ankles and began dragging him down to the ground. He tried breaking free of their grasp, but they were stronger than they looked. Danny was too focused on breaking free of them to notice a bat tattoo looping itself into a noose, hanging off a flag pole on a nearby building. The tattoo brought Danny closer and closer to the noose and when Danny finally noticed what was going on, the tattoos let go of him and let him fall, instantly choking him. Danny clawed at the noose around his neck, gasping for air. He should have been paying attention. But he only spent a moment scolding himself for being an idiot before he took a handful of ecto-energy and sliced the rope that was holding onto the flag pole.

He clattered to the ground, yanking the noose over his head clumsily. Once free of the rope, he gasped loudly, coughing and sputtering, trying to regain his normal breathing pattern. Just as he did so, however, his phone on his belt rang. Oh, wonderful timing, he thought, sarcastically. Still on his hands and knees, he took the phone off his belt and checked the caller I.D. It was Tucker, probably wondering where he was. Danny balanced on his elbow and flipped the phone open. "Tuck, this a really bad time," he rasped, his throat terribly sore and barely able to manage a whisper.

"Danny, where the heck are you?" he heard Sam's voice say on the other end.

"Sam?" he wondered.

Something hard knocked against the back of Danny's head and he collapsed to the concrete, dropping the phone. He was too sore to move, but he saw Lydia's tattooed hand reach down and pickup the phone. Danny heard her speak for the first time. "Sam, he'll have to call you back. We're in the middle of something." Danny raised his head off the ground.

She sounded just like Valerie.

This can't be good, Danny thought as Lydia closed the phone, threw it to the ground and drove one of her high heels through the sleek cell. Danny hardly cared about his phone, though. "What's going on?" he asked, staggering to his feet.

The ghost only smiled as her tattoos flew off her limbs and circled around her. In a flash of light, Lydia was gone, leaving the half-ghost to contemplate what had just happened. I can only imagine what Sam's going to say when I show up, he thought.

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Sam slammed Tucker's phone shut. She looked at him, smugly yet with anger. "What did I tell you?" she said.