Danny lost track of time. That was fairly easy to do, seeing as he was stuck in the Fenton Weasel. Unlike the Fenton Thermos, the Fenton Weasel was big enough—for him, at least, if he was the only ghost in there—to retain his form. That meant, of course, that he could hear everything his parents were saying. Technically, he could talk back, too, but somehow he doubted they'd be willing to listen to anything he said at the moment.

Besides, if he was going to try talking, he'd have to shift his arm from in front of his mouth so they could actually understand what he was saying, and he wasn't sure he had enough wiggle room to do even that.

It would figure they'd capture him the minute anyone who could help him was gone. Granted, if he'd paid more attention, they still wouldn't have got him. Not yet, anyway. He should've left as soon as he heard them in the house. It wasn't like he didn't know about the defence system. He just hadn't thought it could actually catch him. He really should've paid more attention at the dinner table when his parents were blathering on about improvements to their weapons.

At the very least, Jazz should've warned him. She paid better attention to their parents, if only so she'd know what they were up to.

Or had she told him during one of the times he'd been ignoring her, too? Sometimes it was just so hard to keep focused, especially when Jazz got into one of her protective big sister rants.

She meant well. Danny knew that. But sometimes, well, sometimes he would rather not have her hanging over his shoulder, trying to help.

Unfortunately, this was not one of those times, and Danny would've given just about anything to have her back.

"I really wish I knew who was behind this," Danny muttered, though his words, as he'd predicted, were indistinguishable. He didn't know whether the wishing thing that had started this whole mess off still applied, but it hadn't ever affected him, anyway, and for all he knew, it was just restricted to the school. Besides, as much as the wishing thing had really pointed to Desiree, nothing else did. And no matter how many times he went over it, he couldn't come up with another explanation. This didn't even fit in with what Nocturne did.

Granted, the way things were going, he sort of wished it did, if only because he'd fought him before. But if it was Nocturne, Danny didn't think he could get through this without help. And his parents definitely wouldn't be helping, from the sounds of it.

He'd spent the last who knew how long trying to ignore what they were saying, but some of it invariably seeped through. They'd switched the defence system back off, of course, and set up a bunch of things in the meantime that were supposed to contain him when they finally let him out, cages and tables with phase-proof straps being the most prominent. The latter reminded him a bit too strongly of the thing Maddie Masters had caught him in when he'd been in that horrible, horrible alternate timeline that was all the proof he needed that changing the past to fix the present really didn't work. At all.

Granted, he didn't really like whatever this was, either. Not an alternate timeline, but an alternate reality was definitely possible. Except these were his real parents, not his alternate timeline/reality/whatever parents, so things could only be ten times worse than it looked on the surface, since his parents would probably remember this whenever it was all over.

No easy fixes with a Reality Gauntlet this time.

The Fenton Weasel suddenly roared to life and Danny was forcibly ejected. When the spinning finally stopped, he cracked one eye and saw bars. His parents had opted for the cage. That was probably a good thing for him. The table would've meant torture—though his parents wouldn't think of it as torture, since they didn't think ghosts had feelings—and, more likely than not, experiments.

The whole 'cage' thing looked a lot better in that light.

It would've been nice if it were a slightly bigger cage, though. He was floating in its centre, staying away from what was likely the equivalent of electrified bars. He shifted into a hunched over, cross-legged position, carefully avoiding the edges of the cage, and then looked at his parents. His dad was munching on a few of his mom's cookies—he vaguely recalled a comment about it being past suppertime, now that he thought about it—and his mom had just put down the Fenton Weasel. On the upside, she hadn't picked anything up. That had to be good, right?

"Um, hi?" Danny said, giving them a half-smile.

Neither of his parents smiled back. "Phantom," Maddie said quietly, "if you tell us what you've done, we'll consider letting you go."

Danny raised an eyebrow. "Consider? That's not a really good offer." His mother frowned, and he quickly added, "But I couldn't take it anyway. I haven't done anything. Well, not lately. I'm sorry about the town hall. It was kind of unavoidable."

"I'm not talking about the town hall," came the reply.

Danny knew that tone of his mother's voice. He never liked hearing it, unless it wasn't directed at him, but he hadn't heard it directed at Jazz in long, long, long time. "Yeah, I figured, but that's the last thing I've been involved in, honest."

Maddie started laughing, but it sounded forced, or desperate, or something. It wasn't her normal laughter. "You expect us to believe that, ghost?"

"This isn't my fault," Danny insisted. "I don't know what happened any more than you do." Well, he might know a little more than they did, but definitely not enough to really have a clue as to what was going on.

"What have you done with Danny and Jazz?" Jack asked, having finished the cookies and filling his empty hands with an ectogun, which was now neatly aimed at Danny.

"I didn't do anything," Danny repeated. "Look, Jazz disappearing when I was there was a coincidence, and—"

"Why did you have Danny's phone?" Jack asked, pulling it out. Danny cringed; he'd forgotten about that. It figured that his dad would find it.

Danny tried to work out what he should say. Denying it probably wouldn't work too well, but he'd be in for it if he admitted that Danny Fenton was friends with Danny Phantom. "I found it," he finally said. "I was going to return it. I—"

"Danny knows better than to associate with ghosts," Maddie hissed. "How would you even know that the phone belonged to him, unless you have been plotting this kidnapping for weeks, even months, now?"

Danny sighed. "I didn't kidnap Danny or Jazz, okay? And I wasn't sure the phone was your son's. I was going to, uh, see if anyone had lost—"

"You stole it," Jack interrupted. "And you used it to lure the kids away—"

"What? What gave you that idea?"

"You led Jazz into that alley so she could be caught in your trap," Jack said. "You probably used Danny as bait, to keep her preoccupied while you kidnapped—"

"I didn't kidnap them!" Danny burst out. "Jack, Maddie, I know who you are. You're the Fentons. You're ghost hunters. Why would I want to kidnap your kids?"

"Because you thought it would throw us off our game," Maddie replied quietly, "and that it would give you something to bargain with."

"We've got news, ghost," Jack said, priming the ectogun. "It hasn't."

Crud. His dad might have horrible aim, but with the size of the cage, Danny wouldn't exactly be able to avoid the blast. He wasn't sure how well his ghost powers worked in this thing; for all he knew, he couldn't even go intangible. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

"I've got news, too," Danny said quickly, almost before he realized what he was saying. "Whatever is happening is not because of me. I think we're the only ones left in the entire town; you guys are the only ones I've seen. So, if Danny and Jazz have disappeared, that's probably a good thing. They're probably with everyone else." Hopefully.

"Oh, I don't doubt they are." It was his mother speaking again. "But whether or not they are safe still remains to be seen."

Danny opened his mouth to make a retort to that before closing it. He really didn't know whether Jazz was safe or not. He just assumed she was, since he figured she was back with everyone else. He was assuming the best; his parents were assuming the worst. And anything he said to try to convince them that the worst may not have happened was fruitless. They didn't believe a word that was coming out of his mouth and, chances were, that wasn't going to change anytime soon.

A shrill beeping filled the air, and Maddie started. "Oh, that'll be our dinner, Jack. I'll be back in a minute."

Danny breathed a small sigh of relief as his mother ran up the stairs. One parent at a time was better than two. Besides, his dad wasn't pointing the ectogun at him anymore. He'd jerked around at the sound of the timer, too, and had accidentally fired the ectogun off at some unsuspecting beakers.

Danny took advantage of his dad's distraction. "Look, um, Jack, you know I wouldn't hurt your family, right?" He really, really hoped his dad remembered what had happened last time Danny had been in a situation like this. "I'm trying to help people in this town. I'm trying to stop the other ghosts, like you two and the Red Huntress are. Besides, I helped you save your family before, didn't I? The time you beat up Plasmius and threw him back into the Ghost Zone? Why would I help you then and turn around and kidnap your family now? That doesn't make any sense!"

"It doesn't have to make sense. You're a ghost. You were only trying to lull me into a false sense of security."

Danny resisted the urge to slap his forehead. "Not all ghosts are evil," he said instead, trying to shove away the image of Dan that had sprung into his mind with that remark. "And we're not all exactly master manipulators, either. I mean, sure, some like Plasmius are pretty good, or think they are, but you've met the Box Ghost. What's the worst he can do?"

Jack raised an eyebrow. "I thought you were here when he opened Pandora's Box."

Danny sighed. "I was. I was the one who tracked down Pandora and told her what was going on. But the Box Ghost didn't exactly think things through then, and it's not like any of the ghosts who have plotted to take over the world have actually succeeded."

"So you think you're learning from their mistakes, do you? Get rid of your biggest threats first? Threaten my family and—"

Danny held up his hands. "Whoa, whoa, slow down. No. I don't want to take over the world. I don't even want to take over Amity Park. Conquest is not on my agenda. All I'm trying to do is protect my town."

Jack looked surprised. "You lived here?"

"Uh, um, yeah, I guess. Now I just, sort of, um…. It's kinda like Sidney Poindexter haunts one of the lockers at Casper High. Or used to. He can't anymore." Danny rubbed the back of his neck. He sort of felt bad for that. Sidney hadn't been that bad, considering some of the other ghosts Danny had run into. He wasn't the sort of ghost Danny would consider an enemy.

If it hadn't been for a little misunderstanding, they wouldn't have gotten off on the wrong foot, and they might've been good friends. Of course, they probably still could be friends, if Danny went to visit him, but he hadn't had time to do that yet. "He'd been using a mirror as his portal to the Real World, and I broke it, so he's stuck in the Ghost Zone. Well, I guess he might be able to get out like any of the other ghosts seem to get out, but he doesn't."

Jack nodded. "So you try to protect 'your town' because you think it's 'your haunt'."

"What?" Danny blinked. "No! I'm trying to protect it because I don't want it to be overrun by ghosts!"

"You are a ghost."

That time, Danny did smack his forehead. "Okay, I walked into that one." Saying he was trying to protect Amity Park from other ghosts would just support his dad's misguided theory. At least they were talking and he wasn't getting shot at. "My point is, I don't want to hurt anyone."

"You just want them gone."

"No," Danny quickly countered, "I just…. I just want people to be safe."

"So what did you do with everyone? Throw them into the Ghost Zone?"

"I already said, I'm not behind this!"

"Then who is?"

"I don't know," Danny admitted quietly. "I wish I did."

"So do I," Jack said, "but wishing doesn't get us anywhere. I wish I was back with Jazz and—"

Danny blinked.

Jack Fenton did not reappear.

Aw, crud. His mom was definitely going to kill him now. And, he was still in a cage. Great. Knowing that that wishing thing was still going on wasn't going to help him much, not when he couldn't use it to his advantage. At least his parents weren't prone to wishing, not since they'd heard of Desiree. Jack had probably only said it because Danny had and….

This was not going to be easy to explain.

And he could hear his mother coming down the stairs again.

Crud. This day just kept getting better and better….

"Dad?"

Jack turned around at the sound of his daughter's voice. Sure enough, there was Jazz, standing at the foot of the stairs down into the lab. Behind her, he could see Danny's friends, Sam and Tucker and that other girl—Valerie?—and, bringing up the rear, none other than good ol' Vladdy. Wasn't he supposed to be out of town? He must've rushed back when he'd heard they were missing. Jack grinned. He couldn't ask for a better friend.

Jack turned back to look at the ghost boy, but he wasn't there, and neither was the cage they'd put him into. Come to that, neither was the mess from his and Maddie's mad scramble to find everything they'd need for a good interrogation of the ghost kid.

Phantom must've seen him as a threat, gotten rid of him, sent him back to his family. But if that were the case, someone was missing. "Where's Danny?" Jack asked as everyone finished making their way down the stairs and joined him and Jazz in the lab.

He watched as Jazz exchanged glances with some of the others. "He's, um, not here."

Jack frowned. "I knew that ghost kid was lying."

Jazz's eyes widened. "You mean Phantom? Did you and Mom catch him?"

Jack smiled a bit at his daughter's enthusiasm. "Course we did, Jazzy-pants. No ghost kidnaps you and gets away with it."

"But he didn't kidnap me," Jazz said. "He didn't do anything."

Jack sighed. It hadn't been enthusiasm in Jazz's voice after all; it had been worry or apprehension or some other big word that meant something like that. She needed to learn that Phantom wasn't a good ghost, despite the façade he put up. He and Maddie should never have let her start keeping that scrapbook about Phantom's so-called achievements. "Your mother's still there," he said, though he found it hard to realize that Maddie and Danny were somewhere where he couldn't protect them. "She'll find Danny, and then she'll get them home. She'll make that ghost kid tell her where he put him."

"Um, Mr. Fenton," Sam said, "can you tell us what things are like back there? I mean, we" —and here she gestured at the rest of the group— "are trying to figure out how to get you guys home. Well, Mrs. Fenton and Danny, at least."

"I don't think you guys can do anything," he said. He looked at his old college buddy. "You should know that, V-Man. If a ghost pulls something like this, you have to deal with the ghost behind it all. You can't stop it if you don't deal with the root of the problem, and Phantom's back with Maddie and Danny."

Vlad gritted his teeth. "Of course I realize that. Unlike some people, I am not a fool. However, as much as it pains me to say it, I am not convinced that Phantom is the ghost behind this."

"It's Desiree, the wishing ghost," said Valerie. "She went and twisted one of her wishes."

Jack stared at her. Phantom had been telling the truth?

Nah, the kids had to be mistaken. He was a bit more surprised that Vlad was taking their side; like the Fentons, he had never seemed particularly supportive of Danny Phantom, though Jack suspected he played his cards close to his chest because he didn't want to lose the popular vote. Too much of the town had fallen for Phantom's false charm.

"So, Mr. F," Tucker started, pulling out his PDA, "if you can tell us what things were like when you left them, we can see if we can figure out a way to get Mrs. Fenton and Danny back. The more information, the better."

Jack stared at Tucker, then looked back at Vlad. "You aren't the one who organized this?"

Vlad closed his eyes briefly, then opened them and simply replied, "I was alerted of your disappearance after Daniel's friends realized his, and subsequently your, absence. As mayor of Amity Park and as your dear friend, I have been doing everything I can to ascertain the safe return of Maddie and Daniel."

Jack grinned. "I'd do the same for you, V-Man!" he assured him, clapping him on the back. His stomach grumbled, and he spotted a piece of fudge in Valerie's hand. "Hey, is that fudge? Where's mine?"

Jazz sighed. "It's upstairs, Dad. I'll get it. You just tell everyone what happened after I left, all right? We won't be able to get Mom and Danny back if we can't figure out precisely what happened."

"Hurry back, Jazzy-pants," Jack called as she started up the stairs. "I just missed supper."

Jazz froze and turned back to look at her father. "Supper?" She looked at her watch. "It's only three-thirty."

"It's two," Tucker said, brandishing his PDA. Sure enough, the electronic clock on the thing read 2:04.

Sam looked at Tucker. "The time's running differently," was all she said.

"Then we'd better hurry," Tucker replied. "Danny's counting on us."

Maddie Fenton froze when she got to the bottom of the stairs. Her husband was nowhere in sight. Her eyes darted to the cage that held Phantom, and she was relieved to see that he was still there. She was going to get answers.

Her appetite gone, Maddie placed the two plates of food on one of the counters. She could see Phantom watching her carefully. She wasn't sure how he'd done whatever he'd done to Jack, but she certainly wasn't going to give him the opportunity to pull the same trick on her.

She picked up the key to the cage and one of the guns that shot out phase-proof nets. She had a feeling Phantom might need a bit more incentive to answer her questions. He watched her warily as she unlocked the cage. "What are you doing?"

She caught him in the net and carefully extracted him from the cage. "You'll see." She knew she couldn't keep him in the net long—in all the fights she'd seen Phantom take part in over Amity Park, she'd seen him burst out of numerous nets like these, either by freezing them or creating a particularly powerful ectoblast—and she hoped to keep him preoccupied for the minute or two it took to get him into place.

Fortunately, Phantom didn't realize what she was planning. Instead, he peered up at her through the net. "Um, you know this isn't necessary, right?"

She let out a short bark of laughter. Not necessary? It was entirely necessary. "Are you saying you wouldn't try to escape?" In a practiced motion, she whipped the net towards the table. It snapped open and flung Phantom toward said table. He landed squarely on his back, all four limbs splayed out in the perfect positions to be held by the straps, which automatically activated and held him in place.

"Aw, crud," he muttered, twisting and straining to get free.

"I need answers, Phantom," Maddie said softly, picking up an electrified prod. Ghosts might not have emotions, but they could feel pain, or at least think they were feeling pain. She would never consider doing this to another human, but she wasn't dealing with a human. She was dealing with a ghost, one that had robbed her of her family and blatantly denied it.

Phantom eyed the prod and did a remarkable job of looking scared, but Maddie wasn't fooled in the slightest. "Okay," he said quickly, "the net wasn't necessary, but that's really not necessary."

"I need answers."

"And I'll be happy to oblige," Phantom said immediately as she brought the prod closer to him. "Just…don't do that."

"Where is my family?"

"Back where they should be. I think."

Maddie gripped the prod tighter. "Where is my family, ghost? What have you done with them? What have you done with me? Where am I? This isn't home."

"Uh, um, Mo-uh, Maddie, I don't—" Phantom's sentence cut off with an abrupt scream and she brought the prod down onto his chest. He jerked and strained against his bonds for a moment before she drew the prod back.

"No lies," she said quietly, watching as the ghost lay back against the table, panting.

Hold on. Panting? Ghosts didn't breathe.

But, sure enough, she could see Phantom's chest quickly rising and falling as he gulped in air.

Another trick. It had to be. It always was, with ghosts.

"Not my fault," Phantom finally whispered. He was still breathing—well, pretending to breathe—heavily. "I swear." More breaths. "Don't want anyone hurt."

Perhaps the imitation of breathing was psychological. Phantom might be a young ghost, still attached to his human life. He certainly pretended to be more human than the other ghosts, though Maddie knew full well he was not. After all, a ghost was a ghost. A human form with vaguely human colouring didn't make a ghost any more human than the next ghost. It simply wasn't possible.

"Just answer my questions," Maddie said reasonably.

"I'm not doing this," Phantom repeated. "I think your family's safe, with the rest of Amity Park." He paused, and if he were human, she would have said that it was to catch his breath. "I think we're trapped somewhere else. Not the Ghost Zone. Not the human realm. Somewhere…in between. Don't know. Don't know who did it. Not me."

Clearly, he wasn't going to change his answer any time soon. Perhaps the prod wasn't enough incentive. Maddie switched it off and put it aside, then turned to look for another tool to use. She and Jack had been hunting Phantom for ages, but now that she finally had him, she couldn't bear to do everything she and Jack had discussed without him being here. They could catch him again, another time, and run their experiments together. Right now, she wasn't sure she could take the time to indulge in a bit of research, even when she did have the subject at her disposal. She didn't want to risk it.

"It might be Desiree."

Maddie turned around to look at Phantom, surprised he'd volunteered any information. But perhaps he'd simply told her the first lie that had come into his head. She wasn't yet sure. "Desiree?"

"The wishing ghost," Phantom explained, even though Maddie knew perfectly well who Desiree was. "People's wishes come true here, wherever this is. That's what Desiree does. That's how she becomes more powerful. She grants wishes."

"You're the only ghost in the vicinity, Phantom," Maddie told him shortly. "Your excuses aren't helping you."

"It's not an excuse."

Maddie snorted. "Well, if wishes come true here, Phantom, why don't you wish to be free?"

"I can't. I'm not affected by the wishes." At her look, he quickly added, "I don't know why! I'm just…not."

"So if I wished for you to tell the truth, you would still be lying to me."

"I'm not lying to you. I am telling you the truth. You don't have to wish it for it to be so."

Maddie chuckled. "You'll have to come up with something better than that, I'm afraid."

Phantom sighed. "It's the truth. I don't know why Jazz disappeared. She never said anything before she vanished. But Jack wished to be back with Jazz, and that's what happened. That's why he's not trapped here anymore."

"Jack wished to be with Jazz and not with Jazz and Danny?" Maddie asked, raising her eyebrows.

"He never got the chance," Phantom said. "The wish took hold too soon. And there's no guarantee that Danny and Jazz are in the same place, anyway."

Maddie crossed her arms. "All right, then. If Jack is with Jazz, then I wish to be with Danny."

Nothing happened.

But then again, she hadn't expected it to.

A/N: And then there were two. Or six, if you look at the flipside. *pauses* So, worth the wait? Thanks to everyone who takes the time to review!