This human… confused him. From what he had observed of the human Jazz he understood that she was quite outspoken. If she had a thought on something, no matter how minor the something or how minor the thought, she made sure the surrounding humans knew about it. …They were already three hours into the flight…So that should mean that she should be talking his ear off by now. Why was it that a little fear and shock was enough to radically change her mannerisms? How could humans change so easily and at the slightest things? For a ghost to even make a minor change their behavior it would require huge amounts of energy or extraordinary will power… No matter. The less she talked, the less energy he had to spend on keeping his tongue in check.
Calling up his internal records he went over the next phase of the plan. From his past excursions into the human realm he had managed to acquire maps of some of the surrounding cities. Two cities in particular were Shaldor City and Torington City. From what he gathered both were primarily industrial cities. Due to that industrial aspect the humans expanded their cities rapidly by building 'cookie cuter buildings'. Buildings that looked just like the ones around it… and it went on for miles. It was there that Technus would take the human saying 'looking for a needle in a haystack' to a whole new level…
The terror from the nearly going splat was slowly wearing off. Jazz was gradually regaining control of her muscles and was able to slightly slacken her death grip on Technus' neck. Speaking of Technus, he had not spoken a word to her since they had struck a deal. Jazz pulled her face away from Technus' chest and looked up to his face. If he had felt her stir he made no sign of it. His face was impassive and thanks to his shades she couldn't even tell where his gaze was.
Where on Earth was this jerk taking her? Jazz turned her head away from him to look ahead. They were flying at a phenomenal speed. The wind that was whipping by instantly dried her eyes and forced her to narrow them. It was no use, she could not make out anything in her hazy vision… Jazz turned her head back and sighed. What was this techno dork trying to do?
Danny dragged his beaten form into the kitchen and staggered to the table. There he slumped into a chair and cradled his head. Tonight was probably the worst run in with parents up to date. It had started normally enough…
His patrol with Sam and Tucker had ended and they had just parted ways. Danny had been flying home while engrossed with thoughts on how to get back on Jazz's good side. She had discovered that he had been the one 'haunting' Erick. It was too late though, Erick had decided that Jazz was too dangerous a target and told Jazz that he would find another tutor. Jazz then stormed out of the room and had found Danny howling with laughter. Jazz put two and two together and gave Danny one of the harshest tongue lashings he had ever received from her. He had never seen her this mad. What confused him was why couldn't she see that Erick was bad news? He would be a liar if he said he did not have fun 'haunting' Erick, but why didn't Jazz see that he was doing this primarily for her sake? His musing were interrupted by wailing sirens in the distance. Danny changed the course of his flight in order to investigate.
Danny came upon an interesting scene. He saw policemen circled around a toy store trying unsuccessfully to subdue a group of ghost children. They all looked to be between the ages of ten and six. What threw Danny the most was that they weren't acting like normal ghosts. The ghost children were not robbing the store or even terrorizing the surrounding humans… They were playing peacefully with the toys. Two of them floated by the model train display and were pushing and pulling the trains down their toy tracks. Three more were by the plastic dolls of dinosaurs and animals. From Danny could see they were playing 'zoo'. In truth the only thing really disturbing the peace of the neighborhood was the policemen's sirens.
When ever an officer tried to go near one of the ghost children they would simply pick up their toys and float up to the ceiling. There they would continue playing. Thoroughly confused by this unmalevolent behavior Danny floated into the store. Before Danny could say anything one of the girl ghosts by the figurines noticed him and pointed him out to the others.
"Looky! Look! There he is! He came! See Devin? Mister T is always right." All of the ghost children stopped playing and focused their attention on him. Shaking off the shock from the odd sight he shifted into the no nonsense pose he had seen Mr. Lancer do on more than one occasion. Whether they were causing trouble or not, children or not, they were ghosts and they had no place in this world as far as Danny was concerned. Danny mustered his most 'commanding' voice.
"Alright kids! Play time is over. And since you seem to know who I am, you know that I have to take you back to the Ghost Zone. So just be good little ghosts and go into this thermos without a fuss." He held aloft the thermos and looked at them expectantly. A few of the children giggled, while others had the 'is this clown for real?' look plastered onto their faces. A ghost boy with scruffy grey hair and grey eyes floated forward.
"…You want us to go into that? No way!… Tell you what. Lets play a game of tag. You be it and you have to tag us. When You tag us we will go back to the portal and into the Ghost Zone. But no powers except for flying. Kay?" At the kid's proposal the other children giggled and seemed to 'bounce' in place from anticipation of a possible game. Danny tilted his head back and groaned. It was Friday for peat's sake! Couldn't he get just one weekend off? Just once?… At least they were offering him a method that at least wasn't a full blown fight… and if he caught them fast enough he might be able to play some Zombie Massacre 3 before going to bed... and they looked like nice kids… and they weren't attacking anybody. Looking back to the scruffy haired kid Danny sighed.
"Fine. But if I tag you and you don't go back to the Ghost Zone I am going to hunt you down!" The children all had a grin stretched across their faces and they all shot off towards the south side of town. Danny blinked for a moment and then smiled a small smile.
"Quick little guys… guess I got my work cut out for me." With that he shot off after the children.
It had been one heck of a night but at last he was down to the scruffy ghost boy. Unfortunately for him this kid was the fastest of the bunch. Danny knew that there was no way that he could catch the kid normally. He would have to distract the boy… if he ever managed to catch up to the kid. This kid was different from the others. The other ghost kids had acted… well like kids. The other little guys had been fast but they had stayed just out of his reach sending him the juvenile taunts of 'Over here slowpoke!' or 'Sometime this century Halfa!' usually followed by a few giggles. This one seemed a bit older then the others, like a leader of sorts. And if he didn't know better it almost seemed like the scruffy ghost boy wanted to lead him somewhere. They were both currently soaring down Main Street. Then the scruffy kid suddenly swerved left and soared towards the Amity Museum of Natural Sciences. Danny smirked, if that kid thought he could lose him in the museum he had another thing coming. He had lost count of all the times that he had taken field trips there. This museum was considered one of the most 'progressive' museums on the entire east coast. Since it had opened it had made a deal school board; so that for a fraction of the cost the school would have each grade make a field trip to the museum every year. This was in hopes of children gaining interests in the natural sciences. The plan had backfired quite badly though. Because after the school did make all these field trips to the museum, the children of the city had grown quite bored with it and had no interest of returning with their parents and paying the full admittance fee. So besides the mandatory school trips the museum received little to no other visitors. Danny had asked Mr. Lancer why the museum didn't put up new exhibits, he smiled and explained that this was an example of the saying 'The road to Hell is paved with good intentions'. He explained that while all the mandatory field trips was enough to keep the museum open but not improve it; the museum would have actually faired better as a normal museum without the mandatory field trips. He also said that despite his best efforts in making the school board see that the deal of fixed field trip prices would not help the growing cost of keeping the museum open, they refused to release the museum from the deal. At this rate the museum was doomed to fail. He then asked Danny, with a very odd smile painted on his face, if he knew if Phantom could do anything to help. Danny replied that he didn't, and from then on he treaded very carefully around Mr. Lancer. Anyway he knew the layout of the museum like the back of his hand.
As soon as the two of them had cleared the museum's threshold to the lobby ecto blasts began to rain down on the two of them. Danny's reflexes kicked in quick enough to turn him intangible but a high pitched yelp told him the kid had not been so lucky. Danny dove for cover behind the receptions counter and peeked over to see who was shooting at him. When he saw his parents at the other end of those ectoguns he muttered in a growl/whine,
"Just my luck! First I spend all Friday night chasing ghost kids all over town. Now my parents are attacking me! Oh but it gets better… Now I gotta save a ghost kid from my parents and somehow stay in one piece… Maybe Sam was on to something when she asked me if I needed someone to rant to… wonder how shocked she would be if I took her up on her offer. Ah well… time to get to work", with that he launched himself over the counter towards the crumpled figure of the ghost kid. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Dad firing a bunch of wild shots at him. Danny smirked, he could always count on Dad to get all excited and opt for quantity over quality. But still, if he wasn't careful one of Dad's shots would hit him. As he descended upon the kid and scooped him up ectoblasts stopped raining down around him and was replaced by the clicking sound that energy depleted ectoguns made. With the kid safely in his arms he started to soar back to behind the counters. He had nearly made it when he heard the sound of a lone ectoblast being fired closely followed by a sharp and searing pain in his side. His pain caused him to lose his concentration and he dropped to the ground in front of the counter. His eyes began to water and the muscles of his chest began to spasm from pain, forcing his arms to curl around his side. His mother's gleeful shout cut through his pained daze.
"Ha! Take that ghost boy! See Jack? I told you that my new photon energized ecto sniper rifle would do the trick! You should ditch that old tech and try this one honey!" Jack groaned and made his rebuttal.
"But Maddie! Your rifle can only hold five shots. While the Ectoblaster 65 can fire up to thirty… and it has an air tight and perfectly insulated compartment for holding fudge!"
"But Jack dear you have to admit…". Good they were well on their way to what he had dubbed the 'Bicker Mode'. If he played his cards right this might not take all night. Painfully he crouched up and shook the kid's shoulder and whispered.
"Hey kid. Wake up. Look I'll distract them while you… Come on kid you have got to pull it together!" The kid looked up at him with a malicious gleam in his eye and laughed quietly.
"Wow! You're a big dummy butt! Have fun with the two crazy humans!" The kid promptly pulled down one lower eye lid and stuck out his tongue at Danny. Before Danny make his retort the kid phased through the floor and was gone. Danny's snarl didn't quite make it past his clenched teeth. At least he now remembered why he did not like kids. Carefully looking up from his position on the floor he saw his parent's 'Bicker Mode' winding down. If he could only get behind a counter… Crap! Something about his mom's new gun had the unexpected effect of scrambling his powers. The best he could manage right now was a hover and phasing was completely out of the question. So Danny dragged/hovered himself behind a counter. Once behind the counter he clenched his teeth and tried to focus his ghostly energies on the gunshot wound so it would heal. A groan made it past his teeth, healing the wound hurt almost as much as getting it! Note to self, Danny thought grimly, destroy mom's gun when she's out shopping tomorrow. His side now only had a splotch of ectoplasm where a few moments ago there was a gunshot wound and he could feel his powers slowly trickling back… Alright new plan! Avoid Mom and Dad's attempts to maim/dissect/kill him and try to buy himself time. Then run like mad! Yup tonight was shaping itself out to be like every other weeknight…
Slumped at the kitchen table Danny tried to ignore his aching mess of a human body. It had taken hours before he managed to loose his parents. Good news was that he was able to dodge his mother's four remaining sniper shots, but the bad news was that in order to doge the last shot he blundered into a volley of his Dad's blasts. Nowhere even close to agony of the sniper rifle but it still smarted quite nicely. Danny looked and tried to look at the digital clock beside the fridge… He couldn't make it out. Sighing with frustration Danny got up and shuffled towards the clock. Upon closer inspection the clock revealed it to be the ungodly hour of 3:47. Well tomorrow was Saturday… If he was lucky his parents would pity him and let him sleep in. A piece of paper on the fridge caught his attention. Removing it from the fridge he tried to read it. Danny read the paper. Squinting his eyes and adjusting the distance of the paper did not help him. Eh… He was tired and it was dark, he'll read it tomorrow. With that he put the paper back on the fridge and painfully dragged himself to bed. He was asleep before he even hit the covers.