I will write longer chapters. I will write longer chapters. I will write longer chapters.

Oh look! A longer chapter! :P

Chapter 23: Surprise

Well, I started to walk out the door before a cough caught my attention long enough to stop. Mrs. Stuth was holding back laughter, and I could only wonder why until Lancer spoke up.

"Perhaps you should consider getting dressed before gracing the world with your presence?"

My cheeks burned red once more; they would never lose their red tint again at this rate. "Shit!" I grabbed Danny's wrist and dragged him with me back to our room since he needed to get his ass dressed too.

"You okay, Sam?" Danny was worried and while I could easily think of a million possible reasons why, I still didn't know the exact reason. I just gave him a quizzical look and took it as his cue to continue. "That's the second Plasmius attack in less than twenty four hours and now you're practically running out the door half naked. What's wrong?" He normally would have cracked some joke at the end of that, but he didn't even attempt to make a bad joke. His eyes were full of concern and his serious tone made it impossible for this to be a laughing matter to him.

"I'm fine, just a little stressed." Was I really fine? Even I can't answer that question.

One of his signature quirky smiles appeared on his face. "I thought I fixed that last night. Guess I'll just have to work harder." I let out a laugh before he lost his joking demeanor. "Seriously though, are you sure you're okay?"

He was being a little to persistent with this. While he probably really was worried about me, I could tell there was something else bothering him. "I'm fine, you're just being a worrywart," I teased. "The real question is, are you okay?" I had a feeling he wouldn't answer me, but I had to try.

He didn't say anything for a minute, just silently hunted down something clean to wear. When he finally spoke, it was softly and I nearly missed it.

"No, I'm not okay." That was all he said and I knew better than to question him.

We left the room silently a few minutes after that conversation. What little talk there was came from the adults as we finally headed out.

I looked to the sky and yearned to be in it once more. The gift of flight was one of those things that once you had it, it became damn near impossible to imagine a world without it much less live stranded on the ground. It'd been so long since I'd flown on my own. Sure, Danny had taken me out a few times, but it just wasn't the same as feeling your own power lift you up so high.

That was one of the smaller reasons why I hated Plasmius He took that simple, powerful gift from me. There weren't a lot of things about my powers that were hard to live without, but that was definitely one of them. I swear to god, if he takes this child from me too, all hell will break loose.

Wait, child? Where the hell did that even come from? I had absolutely no reason yet to even think that that one time with Danny had left me pregnant. It was possible, sure, but there was no reason for that to come to mind so easily.

And yet it did, it rolled right off the tongue of my mind. It just felt right to think it even though I had no evidence to prove it yet, we'd only been together last night for god's sake! The idea that such an insight might be a mother's intuition scared the shit out of me. If it was true, then what the hell was I going to do?

Danny must have sensed my unease as his hand grabbed mine tightly, reassuringly. A tacit "it'll be okay" passed between us. I prayed to God he'd still think that when he found out what was on my mind.

Bad Sam! You don't even have any evidence to prove it! There are more important things to think about then an unborn child that probably doesn't even exist! These thoughts just had to be punishment for not bothering to give any sort of thought to the possible consequences of this.

They just had to be.

Right?

What's on your mind? Danny was looking at me with concern again, I hated making him worry about me so much. He had things to deal with other than me.

It's nothing. That was a lie, and I could tell he knew it too.

Wanna try telling me the truth? I didn't answer. Sam, something's up. What is it?

It probably doesn't matter anyway. Don't worry about it.

You see, it's every time you tell me not to worry about something that I only worry about it more. I smirked, mentally debating whether or not I could get away with just being a pain in the ass until he gave up. Probably not. He was a little too stressed out for that tactic to work.

I'm just wondering what we are going to do if I get pregnant. The look on his face when I said that was priceless and I would have laughed if it weren't for the serious expression that quickly replaced it.

"You don't think you are, do you?" I don't know if he even realized he'd spoken aloud, but as he did, something changed in his voice. I couldn't tell what it meant, but it was almost as if the possibility of us having a child caused him to come to a definite decision on something.

"No, it was just a passing thought." I gave him a small smile, trying to reassure him.

"It doesn't matter to me if you are, we can take care of it." He returned my smile and gave my hand a slight squeeze.

"And if the shit hits the fan?" Why was I still talking about this? There was no reason to until after I knew for sure in a month or whenever you found out these things.

"Sam, honestly, when isn't our life a series of things hitting the fan? A kid would probably be the most normal thing for us. Stop worrying about it, you'll just stress yourself out more." The sad thing about it was that he was right. Normalcy wasn't something we had available to us very often.

Nothing more was said about it for the remainder of the trip and, to my surprise, neither of the adults said anything about it even though I know they heard the tail end of our conversation.

It was amazing to see that the portal was still functioning as if it were brand new even after the explosion that tore apart the house around it and years of neglect. Either this thing was originally built to last and then some or Maddie and our borderline insane teacher had gotten some serious work done on it last night. Either way, it would have been damn near impossible to tell it hadn't been used in two years if you didn't already know it'd been neglected.

"How are we going find Tuck? The Ghost Zone is huge and if we find him at all, much less anytime soon, it'll be pure chance without a way to track him."

Ms. Stuth smirked before answering my question. "Simple, we track his PDA. Find that damn thing and we'll get pretty close." Oh. Duh. The day Tucker goes anywhere, willing or not, without his PDA, pigs will fly and hell will freeze over. If we can find his beloved technology, the rest should be easy.

One of the computers that hadn't been decimated by the explosion two years prior was quickly powered up, and I found that it too was in damn near flawless condition if you ignored the dust.

While Maddie and Ms. Stuth worked in tracking down Tucker, I felt my sense of balance begin to waver and I was getting more and more dizzy with each passing moment.

I dropped to the ground, expecting Plasmius to fight his way out, but it didn't happen. My vision flickered out for a second before returning, however when I opened my eyes, I was not met with the fuzzy interpretation of the world I had been expecting. What I saw wasn't the world I'd expected at all.

Everything seemed to have a shimmer to it. The world I found myself in looked slightly brighter than my mind told me it should have been. The few sounds I heard had an odd quality to them, as if they were both crystal clear and muffled at the same time. I didn't have a clue what this place was, but I felt safe. There was no threat here.

There was a little girl off in the distance, raven black hair flying behind her as she chased after a ball of energy before flawlessly catching it and throwing It back from where it came, back to me. My hand rose up to meet it, though I found that even in this world, I didn't have control over my own movements. I felt myself smile before I heard my own voice, though aged a few years, speak.

"You've gotten good at that, Lily." I praised. Lily, I'd always liked that name.

"Daddy helped me." The girl had my eyes, she was my daughter. It wasn't hard to figure out who her daddy was.

The girl in front of me was about five years old and her raven hair seemed to have a few streaks of white on the underside, a clear indication of her ghostly heritage to anyone who knew to look for it. "You caught on quickly." I gave another warm smile as I reached for her hand. "Come on, we told daddy we'd be home in time for dinner."

"Okay, mommy." She had the cutest little smile on her face as she looked up at me. "Can we fly home?"

"Sure." Rings flashed around her waist before her ghost form appeared beside mine.

The feeling of flight. God, it was so good to feel it again. Even though it wasn't strictly real, it still felt like it.

It ended much to soon for my tastes and I felt myself returning to the real world. Right before the dream world flickered out of existence, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, hardly any older than I am now.

Danny was holding me as I came around, his strong arms keeping me from hitting the ground. My eyes flickered open to a perfectly clear view of this world, the real one.

I groaned before finding my voice. I knew in my gut what that vision was; it was only fair to warn him. That couldn't have been more than five years in the future. "Hey, Danny."

"What, Sam?" The worried look in his eyes returned, I had seen it way too many times today and I hated it.

"Guess what I just saw." I smirked, just to bug him enough to forget about being overly worried.

It worked as his eyes found a more playful expression to fill them. "What?"

"Let me put it to you this way; I just saw a girl calling me mommy in a little over five years from now." He looked confused for a moment before I saw it click in his mind.

"She's ours, isn't she?" I saw an expression of happiness mixed with a dash of pure, uncensored, terror rush across his features.

"Yeah. Looks like we get some normal problems to deal with for once." I smirked up at him before he pulled me close to him and held me tightly.

As we finally separated, he whispered in my ear, "I don't know how we're going to deal with this, but it's the best news I've gotten all day." His smile was genuine, the worry and concern gone from his eyes, for now at least.

A little late? Yeah...but it IS technically on time, I've just gotten used to updating the night before. :P

Comments and feed back are as welcome as always! :D

Invisible One