In a dirty room in a forgotten road side motel Danny floated listlessly in the air above the sole bed. The suite had seen better days, pale old paint flaked off the walls and the carpet was a sad dirty grey and housed a number of insects between its clumped folds. This was a far cry from the daisy yellow walls and pale blue carpet that the motel had advertised. The sad glow that came from the rooms only source of light was over taken and mocked by the bright LCD screen of the laptop that was so out of place in the drab old room. The small room was filled with the music of fast paced clicking that only paused with the regularly timed sound of a thin watery coffee being sipped.
Danny rolled on his side to watch the teenager vigorously typing away and spoke, "Tucker, did you find anything new?"
"Just the usual," Tucker said turning the laptop around to face Danny, "thousands of articles talking about how dangerous the three teen convicts from Amity Park are."
Danny floated down and suppressed a sigh as he observed the two large pictures above the article. The first picture was one that he, Tucker, and Sam had taken back when they had first started high school. They all smiled widely at the camera in the goofy pose they had managed to twist themselves in. It was a nice picture that in any other circumstance Danny would have been happy to be associated with. However, under the picture that was brimming with a child-like innocence was a much different picture.
Danny was in his ghost form shooting multiple toxic green ghost rays at pure white planes that had surrounded them, destroying them in a burst of reddish orange hellfire. Tucker was typing away on his P.D.A, turning the Drones that got pass Danny against their masters while the agents could do nothing but watch in horror as their creations attacked them. Sam ran between the agents on the ground shooting at them with an eco-gun she stolen taking many unfortunate agents out of the fight in a blast of noxious pink. All of them were fighting with a desperation to live, too bad their determined looks had turned horribly dark in glow of hellfire, green eco-blasts and pink rays firing off around them.
"It looks really bad, doesn't it?" Danny's question bordered on being purely rhetorical.
"Way bad, but it could be worse." Tucker said returning to his searching, "At least we weren't divided in the confusion."
Danny nodded to that even if he knew Tucker couldn't see it. He had never felt more alone in that battle when he had lost track of them. Then he would see a drone fly off with a struggling agent, or see an agent get blasted across the battlefield and the tightness in his chest would lessen. It didn't matter how many times the Guys in White surprised them and they ended up in another life or death situation. The minute he got a sighting of Sam or Tucker he knew that they would be fine, and so far they have been.
He floated over Tucker's shoulder and watched as he went through site after site trying to find some information that would be useful to them. Getting bored Danny got Tucker's attention, "Did you find anything new about our parents and Jazz?"
"Other than the usual 'Families of the Amity Convicts still refusing to see reason?' no." Tucker said bitterly.
Danny hesitated before speaking softly, "Anything about Valerie?"
Tucker's hands stopped over the keyboard taking away the one constant sound in the room for a tense moment before resuming their early motions, "Nothing." Tucker's voice came out as a rough mutter, "I think she's lying low waiting for the heat to leave Amity Park before doing anything too noticeable."
"Look, Tucker I'm sorry. I should have done something…"
"Don't." Tucker interjected cutting him off and looking up from his work, "Danny none of us saw it coming. Who knew that the Guys in White would find out your secret and try to arrest all of us for conspiracy and for just being a ghost? You and Sam barely had enough time to get to me before all hell broke loose. Valerie's only connection to us is that she dated you for like a week. She'll contact us later she knows how." Tucker said turning back to his laptop, "What's important now is for us to wait for Sam to come back with something for us to eat before we have to leave again."
Danny crossed his arms in agitation as he remembered that Sam had went by herself to the closest outlet mall which was incidentally miles away, "I don't like it. Why is she out there by herself again?"
"Um, because she's the only one who brought money not to mention a whole lot of it?" Tucker said not looking up. "Also she's really good at sneaking around and doesn't have traceable ghost signature?"
"I still don't like it."
"You don't have to like it, just live with it until she comes back." A grin spread across Tucker's face, "Or in your case un-live with it."
Danny glare and lifted his hand to shoot a small eco-ray at the distracted geek when the door opened.
"I'm back and I bring tidings of good fortune!" Sam exclaimed as she lifted the heavy bags high into the air.
Tucker sniffed the air twice before quickly taking a bag from Sam and tearing through it. With a short 'aha!' he held up a greasy cheeseburger and began messily gorging himself much to Sam's disgust.
"Must you be such a pig?" Sam snorted feeling sorry for the poor cow that Tucker was currently re-killing.
"A carnivore must be properly fed to function." Tucker replied as he continued to go through the bags. "Sam you got jerky?" He asked surprized at the Goth's choice of food.
"We can't afford to stop everyday for food. At least this way you and Danny will be fed in a way that will last us for a while. I bought enough to last like a month." Sam said taking a small bag of carrots out and began munching on them. "I also got some cloaks to better hide ourselves. We should go shopping later and get a new change in clothes." Sam made a show of wrinkling her nose, "No offence but you guys are starting to smell really bad."
"Ah Sam? All of us are starting to smell bad." Danny pointed out, "Do any of you guys remember the last time any of us had a shower. Like an actual shower with soap?"
Silence.
"Yah I thought so." Danny said dryly.
Of course they had been keeping clean anyway that they could but a cold dip in a river and standing awkwardly in heavy rain could only do so much. Frankly he was surprized that none of them had gotten sick yet.
"Okay then, first order of business." Sam said as she absentmindedly began sorting through the bags, "We have to find a place to get clean, somewhere people don't ask questions. Like a church or something."
"On it!" Tucker said sorting through places that were close to them, and barely a minute later he looked up, "Okay I found a place. There's a homeless shelter not too far from here. We can go there and get cleaned up."
"That sounds good, as long we don't take any of the food there." Sam as she got to work dividing what she bought between the three large backpacks that they had somehow remembered to take with them as they escaped Amity.
"Sam you do know that we are technically homeless too?" Danny asked dryly as he went to help her.
"We have money, they don't. I rather not take something we can get ourselves." Sam said storing the empty plastic bags in the knapsacks side pockets for later use.
"Makes sense," Tucker said closing his laptop for the night with a yawn, "it's getting late we should probably turn in for the night, so we can leave bright and early tomorrow. The shelter is a pretty far walk from here."
Danny nodded and took out a thin bed sheet then began covering the small bed with it. None of them were willing to risk sleeping on the stained bed without some sort of barrier. When he was done they climbed onto the too small bed, getting close enough to feed off each other's warmth in the cold room.
Silence filled the stale air of the filthy room as they settled down for the night.
Eight months ago their best kept secret came out to the public. Eight months ago the world went to hell. Eight months ago they had to flee the only home they knew to escape an fraudulent sentencing and an untimely death. Now they rested before they went on their next leg of their journey to go south to survive the winter and hopefully escape their pursuers.
At ten o'clock at night Danny Fenton, Sam Mansion, and Tucker Foley fell asleep in each other's embrace as the world outside their dirty motel room continued to scream for their capture, and blood.