Danny carried Tucker to the backyard of FentonWorks and, with little other option, waited for him to awaken. It took about ten minutes.

"Ugh..." Tucker groaned, sitting up on the grassy dirt ground.

"I'm glad you're up," Danny said carefully, "How do you feel?"

Tucker started to hyperventilate, "What did I do?"

"It wasn't you, man," Danny rushed to assure, "That ghost got to you, you weren't in your right mind. But it's over now, I got rid of them both."

Tucker hugged himself. Danny looked away. This was a moment of weakness for his friend and deserved respect.

"You always do the right thing," Tucker half-mumbled, unable to meet Danny's gaze, "You saved my life."

Danny couldn't exactly say it wasn't a big deal, so he didn't try, "Everything's fine now."

Tucker sat there staring at his knees until he finally raised his eyes to connect with Danny's, "Thanks."

"No problem."

They relished in the peace for a couple minutes before Tucker suddenly snorted. Danny looked at him quizzically.

"What do we tell Sam?"

Danny thought about that, "Nothing, if you don't want to."

"Let's keep this just between us, okay?"

"Sounds good to me, Tuck'."

They moved onto the subject of what to do now. Tucker miraculously had his PDA in his pocket and checked the time. School wasn't over yet. It was midday.

"I can't believe this," Tucker frowned, "I still gotta go to class after all that?"

That was the Tucker Foley whom Danny knew, "I'll phase you through the fence, do you mind walking back there? I have to put these ghosts back in the Portal."

Any other time Tucker would have protested to walking on foot anywhere if he didn't have to (he would have insisted for Danny to fly him there) but upon hearing the last part he closed his mouth and eyed the thermos warily, "Yeah, okay, good luck."

Danny did as he'd said and bid his friend farewell, going back down into the lab and dispensing the thermos.

They never did tell Sam, though she could feel something different in the air between the two boys when she returned healthy and bushy-tailed to Casper the next day. She inquired if she'd missed anything important, Danny glanced away and said 'no.' Tucker didn't respond. She found this weird but didn't press further to both of their relief. She had something else to talk about—her plans to retry the auditorium speech with her vegetarian Goth acquaintances which he had ruined the first time. This was refreshingly normal.

It was the first day of October, Danny realized. He stared down at the report card he'd been handed by Mr. Lancer and felt distinctly unhappy. His grades were slipping. He used to get consistent A's. To his dismay he saw that some of the teachers had written comments along the lines of 'needs to attend class.' His life was spiraling out of his control. But he couldn't just sit by and let the ghosts mess with his town! He dreaded showing his parents this card. He knew he would have to anyway. He'd flown to school with his scooter that morning, not riding the bus with Tucker. How great it was to fly. He hoped he wasn't taking it for granted.

Instead of using their free time after school to patrol (what a professional term...they were just a trio of teenagers...) the streets for any ghosts, they hung out at the Nasty Burger restaurant, unbothered by the A-Listers who for some reason or another weren't there to not-so-discreetly talk smack about them from a few booths away, like they usually did whenever Danny and his friends shared the same space as them these days. Danny wondered how Dash's social status had suffered since he'd possessed the older student and accidentally made him dump his tray of food on Paulina Sanchez. If Danny was fortunate, the guy had fallen down a few considerable pegs.

They had a good time and remained till the sun was setting, Sam and Tuck' went home for their respective dinnertimes and Danny made it seem like he was going to do the same, in truth he wanted to ride his scooter around aimlessly, thinking to himself. That was what he did. He figured he'd be fine. He got so wrapped up in his mind's wanderings it hit him that it had grown entirely too dark much too late. He was going to miss his mother and father's set curfew. He'd already made the decision to miss dinner. This was completely on him.

That was when his breath manifested bluish.

He screeched his scooter to a halt, aghast. No. Not so soon.

He left his scooter leaning against a streetlight, surveying the surroundings, finding there was no one watching (who he could see), he took the risk and transformed, rising up in the nighttime sky and scanning the horizon for anything at all glowing. He found three, acid green...birds, no, vultures, he could tell even from this distance.

They were heading...in the direction...of FentonWorks? Danny's heart sank.

He flew at top speed to catch up with them, they stopped and turned to him, he fired up ectoblasts in his palms—

One spoke to him, in a crackly old man's voice, "Mind your own business, fancy-pants ghost boy!"

He was so thrown by the talking animal (ghost, he corrected himself, it's a ghost, not a...) he just kind of stared.

Another opened its beak, "We've been circling this town for hours, we could'a been halfway to Florida by now! Ask him for directions!" It sounded irritated, if Danny were just a touch more insane he'd have thought it comical.

The original vulture who'd spoken snapped, "I know where I'm going!"

"You so do not," the third buzzard grumbled, pointed a wing at Danny, "Ask him!"

Danny's jaw was slack.

The first vulture seemed to glare at the third one but then sighed, "Well, ghost boy," it shuffled its talon feet in midair to face Danny, "You know the ghost hunters who live around here?"

Danny was just too stricken to answer.

The vulture, uncannily, rolled its eyes despite lacking any pupils or irises, "What, you've never seen talking poultry before? They weren't kidding when they called you young," it coughed, "We're looking for a man named Jack Fenton. We're going to destroy him. Know where he is?"

Jack Fenton? The name echoed in Danny's ears, immediately followed by the word destroy.

"W-wha..." Danny stammered.

"This is useless!" The vulture scoffed, "Whelps don't know anything these days!"

They seemed like they were about to fly off—to find his dad, to kill him. What Danny had learned was indeed his ghostliness took over, he couldn't let them hurt his father, even as his human side was still reeling with shock and disbelief. The ectoblasts which had fizzled out existence during their talking to him returned full force and he fired.

They shrieked in unison, out of the blast's path, one shouting, "Hey, what gives?!"

Danny fired again and again.

They were quick suckers, he'd give them that.

All at once they were flying around him in a disorientating circle; he grimaced. They stopped in a fraction of second and that was all he needed to zoom upwards, he looked down and saw they had crashed into each other instead of body-slamming him like they'd definitely been intending. Dazed, they regrouped more quickly than he'd anticipated and he dodged their snapping beaks repeatedly. The chase went onwards to the town clock-tower and thinking fast, a vulture gaining on his heels, he whipped around and managed to get a hold of its feathery tail, he used all his strength to swing it around like a baseball bat, knocking into the other two. Indignant squawks filled his ears, to his satisfaction.

He let go of the ghost bird and to his puzzlement they didn't attack him again. Sullenly and silently they glared him down before flying away, in the opposite direction of FentonWorks. It occurred to him that he ought to suck them into the Thermos, but he was so flabbergasted by their choice to depart he didn't do anything. He watched them until they were specks on the dark horizon.

The clock behind him loudly signaled ten p.m. without warning, he actually flinched.

Having retrieved his scooter he flew home, he put the scooter in the garage where it belonged. He went back outside to rap his knuckles on the front door as any average person would do. He knew one of his parents, or even both, would open it, it turned out to be his mother, who at once interrogated, "Where have you been?"

He gulped, "Riding my scooter. I lost track of time."

He was thankful he didn't have a reputation of being a liar, or else she might not have accepted that.

"Get inside," she stepped off to one side to allow him entrance, he walked in without a word, "We have much to discuss, young man."

Oh boy...

What was he supposed to say? I was out fighting ghosts who want to hurt my dad? He paused at the sight of his father standing stiffly in the living room, with his arms crossed. Jasmine was there also, reading a book, pointedly not looking at Danny. Wasn't she supposed to be in bed by now, or was she deliberately being given special privileges?

"Haven't you gotten your report card?" Maddie didn't wait for a response, "Let me see it."

He dug through his backpack for it and handed it to her.

"Danny!" She said as she finished looking it over, "This is the first time you've been late home, and your grades are slipping!"

"You haven't done your chores these last few days," Jack added.

Danny was caught off-guard. He'd totally forgotten about his chores. "I'm—sorry," he got out.

Jack quirked an eyebrow, "Guess who's been doing them all day?"

Danny looked off to the side, "You?"

"Yup."

"What concerns me is how you expect to work for NASA when you're getting C's," Maddie broke in.

That struck a chord within Danny. He just looked at her.

Something in her purple eyes seemed to realize she'd hit a button, but she kept going, "Talk to us, hun. That's what we're here for."

He sat down on the couch a little ways from Jazz, feeling heavy, "I don't even know how to explain it to you guys." Was this it? Was this going to be the night he told them?

"Danny, that's the oldest one in the book," Maddie said firmly, "There's nothing you're going through your dad and I didn't experience at your age."

I beg to differ...

Jazz closed her book with a look in her face like she was going to say something. Nope. Tonight wasn't going to be the night.

"Maybe the reason Danny thinks you can't relate to him is because you don't tell him more stories of when you were younger," she was probably going to go on a whole spiel.

Maddie didn't let her, "Jazz, we tell you two stories all the time."

Jack's eyes lit up, "Wait, Jazzy might be right," all three of them looked to him, "Weren't we talking about going to that reunion, Mads?"

Maddie's brows furrowed, "Yes, but I don't see..." she trailed off.

"A family vacation—a break. We've been going through some stuff lately, maybe this'll get it all off our chests." Jack was the idealistic one of the two, Danny thought. He could see his mom trying to decode the meaning of her partner's words in her analytic brain, cogs turning.

"I can understand how that will work," she said finally, "Danny, we'll be going over what you're having trouble with on the trip there."

"Trip where?"

"To a college reunion your father and I have been invited to in Wisconsin."

Jazz interjected, "Wisconsin?"

"Yes. An old friend of ours from our college days in that State is hosting the reunion."

"For how long?" Jazz continued.

"It's in four days. We can get there by our RV in less than that time." They lived in northern Illinois.

"We're going to miss school?" Of course, Jazz was concerned about that.

"Yes. You'll be fine," Maddie answered directly, "Danny, are you hungry?" It was a non-sequitur, but nothing his mother said was without reason.

"No. Sorry I missed the food."

"What did you eat?"

"Burgers. At the Nasty Burger. My friend Sam paid for it..." She had. She was rich and claimed it was no big deal.

"Alright. Don't be so late from now on. Go to bed." Maddie was giving out orders now.

"'Kay," he agreed and moved to the staircase, "G'night." His parents returned the word.

He tossed and turned in his bed for around a half-hour before finally falling asleep.