Ember and Youngblood were absolutely SCRAMBLING.

Everything had started fairly innocently, honestly, they had just decided to team up again to play with Danny.

That's really all most of them did when they showed up anymore-cause a little chaos to mess with their favourite baby ghost-king. After all, he was gonna need to be strong to hold onto that crown! And baby ghosts tended to need a little roughhousing anyways, goodness knows Youngblood needed a fight every now and then, and he was a lot older than Danny! He'd been around for a good almost hundred years at this point.

But that wasn't the PROBLEM here.

No, the problem was what happened DURING the fight.

They'd been properly 'foiled' in their little plan-which had honestly been pretty innocent this time as far as they were concerned, just trying to use Ember's music and some amplification stuff to regress the adults of Amity back to their teen and child years-they'd been going at it and roughhousing, but Ember had strummed a chord to blow him back the same time as Youngblood had fired a cannonball from his peg leg and-

Well, they'd knocked him clear through his parent's portal to the ghost zone by mistake.

And now they couldn't find him.

"Ember?! What if we hit him through a natural portal?!" Youngblood worried, tugging at her pants, Ember shaking him off as she bit her lip, hair flaming with worry.

"I mean, Babypop would get back in time, right? U-Unless it was closing when he went through…I mean, that would be a million to one shot though, right?" Ember said, looking around for any sign of Danny as they flew the direction they'd hit him, hands clutching the neck of her guitar maybe just a little TOO tight.

"W-What if Clockwork finds out!! Or Frostbite?!" Youngblood fretted with the sincere worry of a child that didn't want their mom and dad to find out they'd broken a vase, "Or worst of all-what if Fright Knight-?!"

Ember's hand slapped over Youngblood's mouth. He kept throwing around big names like that they'd attract way more attention than they needed to this little INCIDENT.

"Nope, no, no way, he's FINE." Ember insisted, crossing her arms, "And even if he's NOT fine, we're gonna find him before anyone knows anything is wrong, so it won't matter. He HAD to come this way, so someone HAD to see him!"

Ember bit her lip as she looked around.

Ancients, she hoped she was right….She REALLY didn't want to hear a lecture…or worse…

——————

Danny groaned as he rubbed his head.

What the hell had happened to him….?

He remembered stopping Ember and Youngblood because they were messing with minds with music again, this time pulling the adults back in age-he hadn't heard so much outdated slang in YEARS, and if he and Jazz weren't so used to taking care of their parents already it might have ACTUALLY been an inconvenience-and getting into a fight.

Weirdly enough, instead of bailing on Youngblood the two actually fought together…? The two seemed to be having a lot of fun causing the damage they did…Then again, he supposed since his ghost powers had only been getting stronger and stronger it was probably better for them to tag team him, but still…

Ah, right, and then they'd hit him with that gut tugging combo shot….the canon ball with a sped up launch thanks to the tempo of Ember's guitar riff….

Then he remembered….green…

The ghost zone!

He groaned as he realized this was most definitely NOT the ghost zone.

"Goddammit…." He sighed, running a hand down his face. He had BETTER not be in another dimension….It would be hard enough for him to get home anyways….

He sat up off the ground, looking up and noting he must have fallen through the tree above him that's branches had been broken on the way down. He looked around, noting it seemed like he was in a park.

But a park…where? It definitely wasn't Amity just by the look of the benches-and knowing his luck THAT didn't surprise him-but for now he decided to go back to his human form, rubbing the back of his neck as he stretched a bit.

You'd think with all the physical activity he'd gotten the past 4 years he'd have more muscle to show for it…well, not like he could get his heart rate up when he was dead.

Other than a little height-thanks to his dear old dad-Danny hadn't managed to change too much from the 14 year old that had almost been fried in the portal incident…he'd been changing so little for a while there he had regular panic attacks about the idea that since he'd technically died at 14 he wouldn't age….

….But Sam had been kind enough to remind him that the Fruit Loop was still indeed aging, so that made it a lot less likely.

Back on track though, Danny walked through the park, feeling the hair on the back of his neck stand up in a very non-ghostly way for the first time in a while as he wished he had some form of protection on him….

…or money would be nice for multiple reasons.

"Whelp, still have my phone!" Danny chirped gleefully, going to pull out said phone…

….only for it to crumble in his hand.

"Whelp, shoulda seen that coming." He sighed to himself. Alright, things were starting to get bad…no phone to contact Sam, Tuck, or Jazz…the only other thing he had on him was his wallet, but that was pretty barren….Really at this point all it had was his ID….

….well, that and the credit card he'd taken from Vlad.

Yeah, he was still a Fruit Loop and he wasn't going to be willingly running to Wisconsin anytime soon, but for all the mental damage he'd done?

Danny wasn't above taking the platinum card from Vlad for personal expenses.

Using it would raise another issue though, because if he started making a bunch of big purchases-presuming he was still in the same universe and it worked-Vladdy might take that as 'Hey! I'm all alone in the middle of nowhere! A perfect time to capture, torture, hypnotize, or whatever fucked up thing you wanna try this week!'

And with zero back up that could go south quick.

Of course, Vlad WAS a billionaire, and Danny did use the card for small stuff from time to time when he was running low on cash….so as long as he wasn't making any crazy big purchases he could still reasonably fly beneath the radar.

Anything under 100 per day outta work out fine, especially if he wasn't repeatedly charging a hotel or anything. Though, from the look of the place once he finally got out of the park he was starting to wonder if it might just be worth it to deal with Vlad.

Tall skyscrapers surrounded the park, not all of them in the BEST of shapes….The sky was blanketed in a thick layer of smog and clouds, like it was about to storm….somehow the sky looked red.

Honestly, he was starting to get worried he went into another dimension just by the sky alone, and then looking closer at the buildings did not help.

There was a lot of gothic architecture which-while beautiful-combined with the sheer size of the buildings and the terrifying sky?

Made Danny feel very small.

He gulped, rubbing his arms together.

This was ok, he could do this….His sister and his friends would find him. He just needed to survive til they did.

He walked around the streets, something about the gothic architecture all around him looking oddly familiar….

Where had he seen these before?

——————

Sam, Tucker, and Jazz were panicking a bit, they would admit.

There had been a whole thing with Youngblood and Ember….and they had won-at least they were pretty sure-but now Danny was missing.

Luckily Youngblood and Ember had also vanished, but it was still concerning that they couldn't find Danny, his phone was going straight to voicemail, and the comms weren't working either.

So, since they were pretty sure they'd seen him head towards Fentonworks, they had decided to watch the camera feed and see what had happened there to see if they could get clues on finding Danny.

What they saw was Danny get clocked in the gut with a supercharged cannonball and get launched into the ghost zone.

And said ghosts that launched him?

Looked SUPER panicked about it, after getting over their shock immediately flying into the portal after him, bickering back and forth about something.

The cameras didn't have Audio.

"Okay, so, Danny got blasted into the ghost zone….Danny knows the ghost zone. He's probably fine, right?" Tucker said, trying to remain hopeful.

"Yeah, if he didn't get BLASTED through a natural portal!" Sam said, running a hand through her hair as she thought of Danny stuck with dinosaurs in some unknown time period.

"Well, okay, let's not freak out freak out yet." Jazz tried to calm them all down, "He did get hit pretty hard…He could have gotten knocked out. It's possible Frostbite or Clockwork or someone just have him resting up somewhere in the zone until he wakes up." The other two followed Jazz's lead on taking some deep breaths.

"Okay…so, what do we do?" Tucker wondered, staring at the screen and worrying for his friend.

"Alright, well….If we go running after him now there's no telling if we'll find him quickly enough…" Jazz said, "Let's give it til morning. If he's not back, then we'll go looking." Sam gave a nod, then looked back at the screen.

"Please be okay Danny…" she sighed, the other two looking at each other with a nod, sharing her sentiments exactly.