Tucker grimaced and checked to make sure that his PDA had survived, which it thankfully had. Despite his excellent directions, Sam had managed to crash the Spectre Speeder into a snow drift. At least they weren't upside down. "Come on," Tucker said, shoving the Fenton Phone that had fallen off his ear into his pocket when he saw Sam doing the same with hers. "We better head in on foot. I don't know if you're going to get out of that." She'd practically ploughed them in; frankly, he figured they were lucky they could still see sky—or whatever passed for sky in the Ghost Zone—above them.
Sam looked doubtful for a moment, but then she squared her shoulders. "Yeah. Sorry. Didn't expect that wind gust."
Wind gust his foot; she just couldn't swerve around the chucks of ice fast enough. But Sam jumped out into the snow and Tucker followed, even though neither of them was dressed for the weather. They hadn't thought that one through. Hopefully, Frostbite or someone else would find them and take them back to camp and lend them some warm coats again and make them some hot chocolate.
Providing they were there long enough to drink it. If things went according to plan, they wouldn't be. They'd take the Infi-Map and it would drag them along to wherever Danny was. They could come back for the Spectre Speeder later.
"I t-think it's t-that way," Tucker said, trying to control his chattering teeth.
Sam shot him a sidelong look. "H-how c-can you t-t-tell?" He simply held up his PDA, and she nodded. Tucker couldn't help but smile. After all these years, Sam shouldn't expect any less of him.
Five minutes later—or maybe it was half an hour or just a minute, but it felt like a really, really long time in the cold, and anyway, the wind had picked up and they'd lost sight of the Spectre Speeder, which made Tucker wonder why they'd left its warmth in the first place—they saw two of Frostbite's people coming towards them on a jet sled of sorts. Tucker wasn't sure how they'd found them. Maybe they patrolled the grounds or something, to fend off other ghosts. Granted, he didn't think a lot of ghosts would be able to withstand this cold, even if freezing to death wasn't exactly a risk for them….
Whatever the reason for the sudden and very welcome appearance of the others, he and Sam certainly didn't complain when they were picked up and taken back to base. A pair of parkas and a couple steaming mugs of hot chocolate later, they were finally able to explain to Frostbite what had happened—as far as they knew it, anyway—and why they'd come.
It didn't take much explaining, thankfully. Frostbite remembered them as the servants of the Great One—Sam of the Very Vegan and Tucker of the Treasured Technology—and he'd guessed something was wrong when they'd turned up without the Saviour of the Ghost Zone. However, judging by his expression, he hadn't expected their request when they had finally warmed up enough to stutter it out.
"I don't know," Frostbite said slowly, "whether the map will help you."
"We have to try," Sam insisted. After a small pause, she added, "Please? For Danny's sake?"
Frostbite smiled at her. "Very well. It would be an honour to assist the Great One's servants in rescuing him, if we are able. But this time, I will be escorting you on your journey." This statement was accompanied with a rather stern look, so Tucker and Sam nodded quickly to show their understanding.
They followed Frostbite through a tunnel and toward a room that housed a chest with a familiar purple glow. Frostbite opened the chest and gently reached for the Infi-Map. It unrolled in his hands and he held it out so that they could each grab hold. "And you are certain that the Great One is being held captive in the Ghost Zone?" Frostbite asked, even though Tucker had already told him what the Box Ghost had said.
"He's not back in Amity Park," Tucker confirmed, "and he's out of range of the Booo-merang, so he's got to be here somewhere."
"The Infi-Map is more accustomed to finding doors, you realize," Frostbite cautioned yet again. "It takes you to places, not to people. I do not want you to be disappointed if—"
"No," Sam said, interrupting. "It'll work. It has to." She looked down at it, then said, quietly, "Take us to Danny."
For a heartbreaking moment, nothing seemed to happen, but then the map lit up and they were whisked away before any of them could see the path it had traced.
Vlad went to his secret lab the minute Valerie left him. The news she had brought wasn't wholly pleasant. As much as he wanted Jack out of the picture, he did not want to lose Maddie. Nor, he supposed, did he wish to see the last of her children. As much as Daniel detested him now, the boy would surely come around sometime. He was insufferable in the meantime, of course, but it would be so much harder for the boy to hate him on principle if he saved the boy's life and that of his family.
To do that, however, he needed to find out precisely where the Fentons had gone, and the simplest way to do that was to track down a certain wishing ghost who had, as he understood it, magicked the family away. He knew Valerie was competent enough not to mistake whether or not she'd managed to capture Desiree, but he had doubted that Desiree would be able to evade the thermos if Valerie had used it. Clearly, he'd been wrong.
The easiest way to find the ghost was probably to enlist help and divide up the work, but he really did not feel like making any promises to Technus or Skulker or the like. He'd heard far too much of their intolerable ranting lately. Master of All Things Technological or the Ghost Zone's Greatest Hunter? Neither of them truly deserved the titles they gave themselves, and they hadn't a whit of true sense or anything more than mediocre skill. They were certainly not to be entrusted with finding the one ghost in the entire Ghost Zone who could lead him to Maddie Fenton.
The only one he trusted to do that job was himself. Transforming into his ghost form, Vlad activated his computer software and couldn't help but smile when Maddie—his hologram program of her, at least—sprang into view and welcomed him with a loving greeting. Vlad responded in kind, listening as she started the obligatory list of compliments, and, just for a moment, tried to forget that it wasn't the real Maddie speaking to him.
But if he didn't find her, he might never hear her again.
"What would you like, darling?" the Maddie hologram asked pleasantly, once she had finished her current list of compliments.
"Scan Amity Park and tell me which ghosts are here. Proper ghosts, not just those bits of ectoplasm that keep floating around until they conglomerate into something."
"Of course, sweetums. Initiating scanning now." Her picture glitched for a moment, but she remained smiling. He should work on fixing the image, really; he'd left it as is for far too long. Yes, he'd have to fix it soon. Sometime…sometime when the real Maddie wasn't in danger. "Scanning complete, darling," Maddie announced. "Two ghosts detected."
"Daniel and myself, I presume?" At least this confirmed that Desiree had given Valerie the slip somehow, and it assured him that she hadn't taken the Fentons far. Not that he'd expected she would have. Desiree's magic was, well, not as powerful as she would like it to be.
"Negative, sweetie. I have located yourself and the Box Ghost. He is currently raiding one of the storage facilities and liberating the boxes from their confinement."
Oh, sugar cookies, he'd forgotten all about the Box Ghost. "Can you trace Daniel's ecto-signature? Pinpoint him?" He certainly had enough samples of the boy's ectoplasm that it ought to be possible to formulate a simple tracker from it, if not from the numerous analyses he'd obtained from the data relayed by Valerie's equipment during her fights with the boy. Jack had invented that godforsaken Booo-merang, and if that could key in on the boy's ecto-signature, surely his computer ought to be able to do the same.
"The ecto-signature you have requested cannot be found, sweetheart," Maddie replied at length. "The subject is not within range."
Not within range…. Then in the Ghost Zone, perhaps? There were more than a few unpleasant places that Desiree could have dropped the Fentons, ones he doubted Daniel had even discovered. Even if they had managed to escape, the boy might not be able to find his way back to the Fenton Portal—or any portal he recognized, for that matter.
Well, whether or not the Fentons were in the Ghost Zone, he was certain that Desiree was. He'd have to find her. He knew the usual haunts of all the ghosts who typically frequented Amity Park, and the wishing ghost was no exception. In theory, it shouldn't take him long to find her, nor should it be very long before he got an answer out of her. Plasmius was a ghost who demanded respect, and he was a sight more powerful than a simple wishing ghost who didn't know how to twist the wishes she heard in the right way.
The minute the Fenton Family Ghost Assault Vehicle detected a ghost, Jack primed every weapon connected to the system. Jazz had tried to surreptitiously turn the weapons system offline when she'd realized that the ghost they'd detected was none other than Danny Phantom, but Jack had stopped her; she had to learn sometime that every ghost was evil through and through. Just because one was evil enough and conniving enough to pretend to be good, that didn't mean it was. Ghosts always tried to trick the living.
"Maybe we should question him first," Jazz suggested as Jack busied himself with centering the crosshairs on the ghost boy.
"We do have to question him," Jack confirmed, "but it's best to do it when we're in control of the situation. Don't be fooled, Jazzy-pants. Unless you are certain you have a ghost contained, you are not the one in control, even if they pretend you are." He narrowed his eyes. "We'll question this ghost once we've got him right where we want him, and then we'll find out what he did."
"But maybe he didn't do anything," Jazz said hurriedly. "He looks as confused as we are."
"That's part of the trick."
"But maybe he—"
"Jazz," Jack interrupted, thrusting the controls in her direction, "be sure you hit him right between the eyes."
"I don't want—"
"It's the only way we'll be able to question him."
"No, it's not," Jazz protested. "Dad, this isn't ethical! Do you know what effect being attacked can have on the teenage psyche?"
"It's a ghost," was all Jack said. "Remember, right between the eyes."
Jazz looked down at the controls, then back at her father. "I can't. I mean, look, he's coming straight for us, and we're not exactly hard to miss. Maybe he wants to ask us questions."
"You're forgetting the first rules of ghost hunting. Ghosts are evil. Ghosts do not have emotions. Ghosts will do anything to convince you of a lie in order to get what they want. He's not coming to ask us questions; he's coming in for the attack."
"If he'd wanted to attack us, he could've done it from fifty feet further away!"
"That's what he wants you to think," Jack said patiently, ignoring the fact that Jazz had just slapped her hand to her forehead in typical teenage frustration. She'd see reason soon enough. "He's trying to lull you into a false sense of security." Jack eased the controls back to him. "Here, I'll take the first shot and show you how it's done."
"No!" Jazz grabbed the controls and yanked them back. "You're right. It's all a trick. I'll get him. Right…between…the eyes." She fired.
The ghost skidded to a halt in mid-air as the shot went high and wide.
"Your aim seemed to be better this morning," Jack commented.
"It's, um, a handheld device. I'm better with those. I've had more practice. I've done a bit more since the time Mom and Danny went off to that symposium in Florida."
"That's my little girl," Jack said, grinning. He passed her an ectogun. "You go on foot, then. I'll back you up from here. You need a little more hands-on experience, and I'll watch your back. If that ghost so much as looks at you the wrong way, I'll blast him to pieces."
Jazz swallowed, then nodded and took the ectogun. "I'll try to lead him off," she suggested, opening the door and sliding out of the Assault Vehicle. "Get him trapped." She'd slammed the door shut and sprinted off towards the ghost before he could correct her: you didn't trap a ghost; it trapped you, unless you could capture it.
Maybe he ought to back her up on foot anyhow. She wasn't likely to run anywhere he couldn't follow—especially with the streets being this empty—but if he stayed in here, he couldn't even hear what she was shouting at the ghost. And she was clearly shouting something, and he was responding and waving his arms, though not yet firing at her. Perhaps all that psychology she read about did pay off in ghost hunting. Had the ghost been a human, Jack might have said that it was confused.
But then Jazz took aim with the ectogun, and there was no mistaking that. Phantom jerked to one side as Jazz's shot missed by less than a foot and, as she'd predicted, he turned tail and started to fly off. Jazz ran after him on foot. She wasn't, Jack noted, keeping the gun trained on the ghost or even at the ready. He'd have to correct her for that. At least she wasn't taking her eyes off her target, and her prediction as to the ghost's actions had been correct this time. It was a good sign, as long as she didn't get complacent. Ghosts did tend to stick to the same routine, but you could never count on it, because the time you did was the time it would change.
Jack edged the Assault Vehicle forward, keeping far enough away from Jazz to give her a chance to handle this on her own but remaining close enough that he could help her if he needed to. It just looked like she needed a bit of practice, a bit more field experience, and then she'd be as good as her mother. It seemed like just yesterday that she'd been sitting on his lap, looking over the blueprints of different weapons he was going to design, and now she was out there using them, all grown up.
Jack sniffed and wiped at his eyes. No matter how often Jazz insisted that she didn't approve of their ghost hunting, that she didn't want to be part of it, she was, and this was one of those special times when she embraced it as a family legacy. She was his clever, clever daughter, who was going to be a ghost hunter and a psychologist.
It might take a while to convince Danny that he, as a Fenton, would also be a ghost hunter. He'd seemed even more reluctant over the past year to help them out—since they'd confirmed the existence of ghosts and had been fending off regular attacks, really—but he'd told Maddie often enough that it was probably just a stage. Or was it Jazz who had first said that? He couldn't remember, but it had sounded good, so he'd repeated it.
Phantom dodged into an alley and Jazz ran off to follow. Another mistake, Jack noted as she disappeared. She couldn't trap a ghost in a dead end, not when they could phase through the buildings. He quickly brought the Assault Vehicle around to help her, convinced Phantom would take this opportunity to fire at Jazz, probably by coming up behind her.
But Jasmine, Jack realized as he reached the alley, wasn't there.
Phantom, probably hearing the Assault Vehicle, glanced back over his shoulder and halted, hanging perhaps twenty, thirty feet above the ground. He wasn't staring at Jack, though. He, too, was staring at the alley.
The empty alley.
Jack grabbed a Jack-o'-Nine-Tails and an ectogun and sprang out of the Assault Vehicle. "What did you do to my daughter, ghost?" he roared.
"I…I…I didn't—"
Jack didn't wait for the ghost to finish. He let off a round of blasts, forcing Phantom to duck and turn, twisting in mid air. "Where is she?"
"I don't know!"
"What kind of trap did you put her in?" Jack continued, narrowing his eyes and he took aim again. "If you don't tell me where she is, I'll rip you apart molecule by molecule!"
"No! Da—Jack, you don't understand! I don't know where she is. She was right behind me, and then she wasn't."
"You're lying." Jack fired again, and this time, Phantom went intangible and flew off, cutting through the buildings so Jack couldn't follow.
Jack frowned. The ghost kid was running, and he wasn't talking. It might take a bit of convincing to get Jazz's location out of him once they had him captured and secured. At least they knew who was behind this. To think Jazz had thought he was innocent, that he was good. He might've been able to fool Jazz, but that ghost boy certainly didn't fool Jack—especially not after he'd done something to Jazz, leading her right into whatever trap he'd set.
Jack tucked the weapons into his pockets and climbed back into the Assault Vehicle. He had to tell Maddie what he'd learned, and then they'd better go get Danny before something happened to him, too. Providing that conniving ghost kid hadn't gotten to him already….
He was just about to turn on the engine when he heard a phone ringing.
He and Maddie shared a cell phone, something she'd insisted they get after that mother-son science symposium she and Danny had been invited to. Both the kids had one, though. Maybe Jazz had dropped hers when she'd been snatched away?
Jack found the phone in the alley, still ringing, but when he saw it, he knew it wasn't Jazz's.
It was Danny's.
He picked it up and flipped it open, answering the call. Before he could open his mouth, Maddie's voice came through the speaker, loud and clear. "Danny?"
"He's not here, Mads," Jack replied grimly. "That ghost kid must've got him before he got Jazz."
"Ghost kid? You mean Phantom? He's got Danny and Jazz?" There was a pause, then a stifled sob. "Oh, Jack, the kids…."
"We'll find them," Jack said firmly. "I don't know where he took them, but we'll find them, and we'll get them out of there."
"They might not be the ones who need rescuing." Maddie's voice was soft, but Jack could hear her easily enough. "Pick me up at the school. We'll find Phantom, and then we'll find our children."
She already knew that Phantom had gotten away. She knew he would've mentioned it if he'd captured him. He'd only had his hands on that ghost kid once, and that time…. That time, well, it had been a bit easy, like Phantom had wanted to be caught. Of course, he'd had to make a deal with the ghost kid, giving him his freedom in exchange for help saving his family from the Wisconsin Ghost before the Fenton Portal blew, but….
It didn't matter. That was in the past. He'd really shown his true colours now, capturing the very family he'd once helped to save.
"I'll be right there," Jack said. He snapped the phone shut and shoved it into his pocket. No sense in leaving it here; Danny wasn't around to go looking for it, and it might come in handy later. Jack scrambled back into the Assault Vehicle and headed for Casper High at top speed. He and Maddie were going to do what they did best to save their family, and they had a ghost to catch.
Jazz was gone. Danny still couldn't believe it. She'd been right behind him. She'd been telling him what she'd found out—which wasn't much, admittedly—and fired at him a few times to keep up appearances. Then his phone had started to ring, and he'd wanted to make sure it wasn't Tucker or Sam who had somehow gotten a hold of him, so he'd headed for the alley, as Jazz had suggested when she'd heard it, but it had turned out to be his mother, so he hadn't answered it, and….
Jazz had tried to tell him he should answer it. "Mom will worry if you don't," she'd advised.
"She'll worry more if I do and she realizes that she's talking to Danny Phantom and not Danny Fenton," Danny had pointed out. "Besides, I'm supposed to be asleep."
Jazz had scoffed at that. "You're a lighter sleeper than you used to be. Mom's noticed."
That news hadn't been particularly comforting, and he hoped that it was just another thing his parents had chalked up to the lab accident. But he still hadn't bothered to answer the phone, and then it had finally stopped ringing. Danny had gone to pocket it, but then he'd heard the unmistakable sound of the Assault Vehicle, and he'd dropped the phone, and then….
Then, he'd realized that Jazz, whom he'd been talking to not thirty seconds before, was gone.
And about two seconds after that, he'd realized that his dad thought he was responsible for her disappearing act.
First Sam and Tucker, then Jazz. Was he going to lose every ally he had before this nightmare was over?
Danny finally stopped his frantic flying and settled down in the park, resting against a tree. He remembered this place; he'd come here a couple times since the accident. He liked thinking here. It was peaceful. Quiet.
Too quiet, now.
Maybe this was a dream after all. Maybe it wasn't just Desiree twisting some wish she'd granted. Or, if not a dream, it certainly had to be some form of constructed reality. There were alternate realities; surely there could be constructed ones, too, even with the Reality Gauntlet destroyed.
Heck, if he hadn't destroyed that thing himself, he'd wonder if this was because of it.
Except there was no one here. There was no one gloating over what had been accomplished, laughing at the position into which Danny had been forced, plotting how to take over the city or the world or the universe or whatever now that Danny Phantom was out of the way.
When he'd been stuck in Nocturne's induced dream, it hadn't seemed like a nightmare. Actually, it had seemed too good to be true. He and Sam…. But he'd woken up when he'd had a shock, and then he'd realized how things worked, and he'd been able to wake up Tucker and Sam and Jazz, too, and then they'd been able to defeat Nocturne. But Nocturne was a powerful ghost, and Danny doubted he'd put him down for very long. Maybe this was his way of getting revenge.
Danny groaned and buried his head in his hands. He had way too many enemies for a normal, fifteen-year-old kid to have.
Of course, he'd gotten most of those enemies precisely because he was the furthest thing from a normal, fifteen-year-old kid as he could possibly be, but still. If he hadn't fought the ghosts that kept invading Amity Park, they'd have been overrun long ago. His parents wouldn't have been able to fight all of them off—even with Nocturne, they'd been put to sleep like everyone else—and Valerie wouldn't have even started hunting ghosts if it hadn't been for that little misunderstanding involving him a while back. And no other ghost hunters he'd encountered had exactly been competent, let alone taken up residence in what must be the most haunted town in America.
Amity Park: a good place to live. So long as you didn't mind frequent encounters with the dead.
Danny glanced up. The sun was past its peak now. It was after lunch. Well, assuming time ran the same here as at home. Because whatever this was, it wasn't home, even if it looked like home. It was something else. He just didn't know what.
He wondered whether he'd have any luck convincing his parents that he wasn't the one behind this. He was definitely thinking Jazz was correct now, which shouldn't surprise him, given that his sister was nearly always right. Whatever this was, he probably wouldn't be able to get out of this by himself. He needed help.
It would just be a lot easier to get if the only people left to give it to him weren't convinced he was evil and had gotten them stuck here in the first place.
A/N: All righty, then, down to the final three. That was fun, and perhaps why I finished this chapter earlier than I'd expected. Incidentally, if anyone wants to hazard any guesses about anything (what happened to Desiree, where the Infi-Map took Sam and Tucker, that sort of thing), now would be a good time. The answers begin trickling in soon. Thanks to everyone who reads and reviews.