Chapter Two: The Hunter

Sam quickly slammed down on all the emotions threatening to burst forth from her and whiped her eyes. She walked over to the terminal connected to his cell and typed in the password.

"I'm here to get you out, Danny. Tuck is here too," she tried to make her tone light, but noone would believe it.

"Jack... Said you... left," he seemed to be having some trouble talking.

"Never. I was abducted by my parents," with an electrical zap the sphere receded, "Danny, I have to put you in a thermos. Just until we get out of the Fenton Works, I promise, but if I don't do this the metal here will hurt you."

Danny simply nodded to her, "I... trust you... Sam."

With a hiss the pipes and tubes attached to Danny released causing him to cry out in pain and green blood to pour out of some of the bigger holes. Sam almost cried out with him. Just after the shackles, more like large metal restraint slots, clicked open Sam opened the thermos and sucked Danny in before he could touch the ecto-reactive steel his parents had invented.

Sam took only half a second to gather herself back in before rushing back the way she came. She ran as though she wore the shoes of Hermes, messenger of the gods. Sam ended up escaping the hallway with two minutes to spare instead of thirty seconds like they had previously thought.

Tuck, ready to go after shutting down the power, ran up the stairs behind her, "How was he?"

"Horrible, Tuck," Sam said back without pausing. She broke into the kitchen noisily and looked to see Jazz just hanging up the land line. She gave a shrill whistle without stopping yet and ran for the front door. There they all paused and composed themselves. It would not do for one of the neighbors to think that they were running away from a crime or some such, they were there under the appearance of visting Jazz after all.

Sam handed Jazz the thermos that had Danny which was then shoved down in her back pack. They all ambled out to Jazz's car and the two girls got in the front seats while Tucker climbed into the passanger seat behind Jazz. She calmly drove the three of them to the hotel where they were staying.

Their calm, collected, appearances lasted up until the lock was in place on Sam's door before the feelings overwhelmed them all. Sam fell to the ground leaning on the door for support. Tucker had crashed down into a very comfy looking chair. Jazz, like Sam, could no longer support her own weight with her legs and ended up on the floor though she was grinning brightly.

After a minute or two to wind down the three of them stood together and opened the thermos. A flash of blue light and there stood Danny. He did not stay standing for long, though. He fell forward with a cry of pain.

Before he could fully hit the floor Sam was there with her arms around him just under his own. His weight was too much for her to keep them both standing and so they ended up on their knees, his head on her shoulder.

This was the small crack that broke the dam containing the emotions Sam had been suppressing for the last three years. Tears began to pour out of her eyes and she held Danny tighter to herself. Two more sets of arms wrapped around Danny and Sam, Jazz and Tucker, and together the four of them let out the pain of these last three years.

Two hours later, after a shower and a much needed shave for the Ghostboy-turned-man, the four of them were active. Danny, now dressed in a familiar, if much bigger, white shirt with a red circle, blue jeans, and red converse, was talking happily with Sam. They all knew that his was his release. He was not better yet, not after two measely hours, but Sam , Tucker, and Jazz being there was the start of it.

"... and then he proceeded to shout out some kind of lame, self written poetry that was supposed to make me his woman! As if! The jerk never got the hint! Not until I kneed in the crotch... the ninth time," Sam said, describing some senior student from her highschool.

Tucker snorted, "Yeah, but only because you ruptured one of his testicles and his parents got a restraining order on you."

Danny chuckled softly, the humor reaching into his blue eyes. Jazz was glad to see that. it mean that whatever her parents had done hadn't broken him. Maybe they had used some restraint.

"I had a dream once, about a year ago I think, that you were flying, Sam. You were flipping and twirling. And wearing a leotard," he couldn't keep the grin off his face at that point, "It was beautiful. And very hot."

Sam blushed and socked the much larger nineteen year old on the arm playfully, "Well, let's call me seeing you naked even then."

Danny just grinned at her, though it slowly faded as he regarded her seriously. He been thinking of something for a while now, for eight years to be perfectly honest, and he needed to get it off his chest.

"I love you, Sam," subtlety was never his strong point.

"Wha- I-I"

"I don't know if this is just another dream or not, but I love you. I have for a long time," he gently touched the side of her face, "It's what kept me sane for as long as I've been locked away."

Sam's eyes were wide as she stared into Danny's. This was something she had been hoping for since just after she turned thirteen. It was what made the decision to be by his side no matter what such a simple one. It was something she had been denying for far too long.

And it was something she wasn't going to keep from herself, or Danny for that matter, any longer.

Danny was quite shocked when her answer was to practically tackle him in a kiss.

This author is unpracticed in the explanations of the physical transcending into the ethereal, escaping the mortal realm and ascending into planes greater than human imagination can conceive, but that kiss, shared between long time friends and now lovers, was about as close as anyone could get without crossing over and going to a place beyond even the Ghost Zone.

It was only halted by a grumbling Jazz slapping a wad of bills into Tucker's hand and his following remark of, "Told ya so!" that broke them apart.

Another hour and a half later and they were just leaving the city limits of Amity Park. Danny and Sam were in the backseat of Jazz's car, the halfa sleeping deeply as he leaned against Sam. Sam was gently stroking Danny's hair as she looked at his sleeping face.

They wouldn't be taking a plane, far too easy to track. They planned to go to a state picked out of a hat. Literally, they took the name of every state that did not border their own home state, put it into a hat, shook it up, and chose. They then picked a city that was decidedly not the capitol of that state, their choice being Lebanon of Indiana. They'd stay there a couple of days, three at the most, then move on again, this time heading for the southern border.

That would begin their first crime, illegally crossing the border. From that point forward they'd have to rely on Danny's powers.

But like all plans it was not without a few hitches.

Such as Skulker stopping them not that far out of Amity Park by blowing up the road infront of them.

Jazz swerved and the brakes shrieked and after a couple of moments they were all, except Danny who had remained deep asleep, staring out the front window to look at the mechanical hunter.

"Give me the Ghost Child!" He shouted to them, an array of missiles aimed at their current position.

Sam narrowed her eyes and exited the car. She was quickly followed by Tucker and Jazz. Sam stood fearlessly before the ghost with an armory worth of weapons. A pair of leather bands on her wrists, carved in ancient runes from the era of the Amulet of Aragon, glowed a pale blue.

"Come and take him!"

Skulker simply grinned as he pointed his left fist at her, a large laser weapon popping up out of his wrist, "Think I'm a fool, girl? I can see the runes you're wearing, and I already know their weakness. Now, I won't try to bargain with you for him. You have proven far too loyal for that so..." The weapon began to charge up. Fear flashed across the face of the three standing in the line of fire.

Before a voice they now recognized as their friend, brother, and boyfriend respectively, echoed from above and behind them.

"Hello, misplaced aggression." This was immediately followed by a blast of green light that struck Skulker in the stomach.

Skulker looked at where the blast struck and was quite surprised to find a basketball sized hole. The blast had destroyed everything in it's path from his stomach to his back in a perfect circle. He looked to the origin of the blast, but there was nothing there.

He heard a kind of metallic twang behind him, but before he could even turn his head to look it was seperated from his mechanical shoulders by a white gloved hand, ectoplasmic electricity arching over and trailing behind each individual finger.

The attack didn't stop there.

With a brutality that the humans on the ground had never before seen from the half ghost, he proceeded to rip Skulker's parts into little more than sparking, broken circuitry. Only the head, where Skulker truly resided, was left and Danny held that before him, almost a mockery of the scene from Shakespear's Hamlet, his other hand still arching with that deadly green electricity.

He ripped the front of the face off and pulled out the green blob that was the Ghost Zone's greatest hunter.

"I'm not a child anymore," using his free hand he clawed the air to the side of him ripping a hole into the Ghost Zone and proceeded to throw the blob into it.

Danny rushed down to the ground and spoke before they could mention what happened, "We have to leave now. Jack made a... not quite a barrier, it doesn't keep anything out, but any time a ghost gets anywhere near the city they know."

Sam broke away from the shock of the current situation, "Let's go." She stepped towards the car.

Danny grabbed her arm, "No, that's too slow. We'll never make it." He proceeded to do something odd yet again.

Danny tranformed back into his human form, pulled the three of them into a wide hug and transformed. The odd thing was that he took them with him. As the blue-white ring of pure energy spread out from his waist it went further and covered his companions. It split into two, one traveling up, the other down, and pulled all of them into a spectral form.

Their clothes and hair became photo opposites, their skin lightened several shades, and their eyes changed color. Danny's became that familiar apple green, Sam's turned silver, Tucker's became an impressive red color, and Jazz's teal eyes became pure white.

Danny was now breathing heavily. He was unable to hold himself up and leaned on the others for support.

"Danny," Jazz began, looking at her new self, along with Sam and Tuck, "How did you-"

"A dream," He gasped out, "I saw it in a dream. You should stay like this for a day." His eyes closed slowly, but before he could fall asleep he clawed the air to their right again. A hole opened up into the Ghost Zone yet again.

Taking the hint, Sam grabbed Danny and let the way through the portal. She didn't stop to care about how Danny seemed to weigh much less now, or that she was flying without knowing how to before hand. All she knew was that she had to get Danny out of there before his thrice damned parents showed up.

Tuck and Jazz made a quick trip back to there car to grab their supplies and then followed the other two into the ghost zone.

+---Chapter End.

A/N: One might question, where the hell am I going with this? The answer, a mystery. Well, I know, but, as a general rule of writing, you don't tell people the end before the, you guessed it, end.