Disclaimer: See! I told you I'd update more regularly! Bwahahahahahahaha!

Have you gotten sleep recently?

Nope! Went to bed at 4, got woken up at 8:30 to hold a ladder while my mom cleaned out the gutters! Hehe!

Uh oh… she's loosing it. Well, more than she already has.

Should we help her Lamia?

We'll just thank the reviewers and get this going… I think miss crazy over here needs to get her head shrunk.

That would look horrible… her head is the perfect size!

(Deadpan) You're a genius Laelia.

Thank you!

(Rolls eyes) Alright then! Crazy writer lady would like to thank story teller, Esme Phantom, inukagome15, and Moony's Metamorphmagus. She thinks you all are wonderful and wants to thank you for waiting so long for the next chapter. Unfortunately she's a little… (Looks over)

(Sitting with a silly grin on her face) SquirrelGirl13 can't come to the phone right now, please leave a message after the beep... BEEP!

Riiight… Onto the story then.

I like squirrels!


Chapter 7

Lancer and his double sped through the city, Speedster jabbering to him nonstop. Apparently his mouth was as fast as his feet.

The city was very interesting. The building were straight out of both comic books and cartoons. There were a few random people, but every now and then he'd see a younger version of himself riding by in a cowboy outfit on a horse just his size, or in a police outfit cuffing a stereotypical masked burglar.

The city also couldn't decide if it was night or day. In some areas of the city it was night, in some the sun was just rising, in others it was noon or sunset. It all made the English teacher very confused.

They had gotten no more than four minutes travel in before they heard an alarm blaring off into the distance.

"The First National Bank is being robbed!" exclaimed Speedster, "I'm sorry dude but we must take action!"

"Who talks like that?" Lancer muttered. But before he could say that they had to find Danny, Speedster was off, Lancer still clinging for dear life onto his back. He was starting to like Danny's flying more and more

When they arrived at the bank, Speedster stopped short, Lancer falling off and landing hard on the ground.

"Sorry my friend, but there's evil afoot!"

The teacher watched him run off to stop an equally fast blur of grey escaping the bank. Both stopped facing each other and Lancer realized that the blur was actually another Lancer of the same age and with the exact same suit as Speedster except in a grey color pallet instead of red and gold.

"Give it up Nitro!" Speedster called, "You'll never bet me!"

"Maybe not on my own!" He called, "But see what happens when you meet my teammates!" Nitro gestured dramatically to the bank doors, which blew off their hinges as if on cue, revealing a group of villainous looking Lancer copies.

The teacher didn't know how much more of this he could take.

The youngest was a boy in a black and white cape and matching top hat. He looked like a cheesy stage magician right out of a cartoon. He even had a curling mustache despite being no more than 10 years old. He seemed to be carrying a teddy bear in one arm.

Beside him was a 8-year-old Lancer with a lion pelt draped around himself like a cape and dressed in animal skins and a Lancer no older than 13 in an outfit clearly ripping-off the villainous Two-Face. Half his face was even mutilated.

"Ghost, Huntsman and Fate?" Speedster exclaimed, "You're working with Nitro!"

"For now," Fate replied, flipping his coin and glancing at it.

"Do not fear my speedy friend," came a voice from above them. Mr. Lancer looked up to see the super-Lancer drop from the sky.

"We're here to help!" said another voice, and Lancer switched his gaze to the top of the bank building where a 8- year old version of himself posed in a robin hood outfit, complete with bow and arrows.

"Super-kid and Arrow!" Nitro hissed, "No!"

"Not just them," came a slightly deeper voice from the alley off to Lancer's right. Yet another Lancer copy, the same age as Super-Kid, stepped out in a Batman costume, trying very hard to keep that famous Batman composure.

"So it's four against four now!" Speedster observed with a smile.

"Not quite!" Ghost cackled, throwing his bear up into the air and whispering something Mr. Lancer couldn't hear.

The bear twisted and bulged for a few seconds before growing to an enormous height, taller than the bank next to it.

"Forward!" Huntsman yelled, his voice slightly high pitched.

The two teams clashed, chaos ensuing. Lancer backed as far away from the action as he could.

He had to find Danny and get out of here. This place was going to drive him insane with all the copies of himself running around. But Super-Kid was here. So where was Danny?

Just then he felt a hand on his shoulder and spun quickly around.

"The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby! Where have you been?"

His student cringed and put a finger to his lips but it was too late. Super-Kid looked down at the two.

"Aah! My sidekick! Inviso-Bill!"

Danny muttered curses under his breath before calling up to the kid, "I'm taking this citizen to safety!"

"Good work Bill!" The boy said dramaticly. He turned to the Lancer in the batman suit and grinned and in a childish, much less dramatic voice said, "See! My sidekick is better than yours, Nightflyer."

"My sidekick could kick you sidekick's butt!" Nightflyer shot back, sticking his tongue out at his ally.

"Oh yea?"

"Yea!"

The two started to wrestle with each other as Danny picked his teacher up and flew off with him.

It had taken him less than a minute to phase out of the young Lancer's grip and disappear. But by the time he had and gotten back to where he had set down Lancer, the man was gone. He had flew around the city as fast as he could before he found his teacher, running into a ton of Lancerr copies on the way.

He didn't think he'd ever live down the horror of seeing superpowered miniatures of his English teacher.

"What happened back there?" He asked Mr. Lancer.

The man shook his head. "I don't have a clue," he admitted, "I'm thoroughly confused."

"You and me both."

Danny looked up at the mass of darkness they were quickly approaching.

"Are we really heading into that?" Lancer asked.

"We have to," Danny answered, "It's where I saw the ghost that trapped us here. Wherever here is…"

They flew on in silence the rest of the way, which didn't take them too long. Danny touch downed on the ground not ten minutes later.

"Well this place looks pleasant," Mr. Lancer muttered.

The darkness seemed to swirl at a barrier that wouldn't let it cross. The dark smoky shadows of the place curled out towards the two, as though trying to reach them and suck them in. Both Danny and Mr. Lancer backed away slightly.

In front of them appeared an archway inlayed with a strange phrase.

Lasciate ogni speranza Voi che entrate

"What does that mean?" Danny asked. He had no idea what language that even was. He floated up to the words, tracing the letters. Maybe it was a code of some sort…

He shot back as shadows reached out for him, blasting one with an ecto-ray, causing it to scuttle back into itself.

"It's Italian," Lancer said, walking slowly to the archway. Danny floated down to him, keeping charged a ball of ecto energy. The shadows bent away from the light, almost like they were silently screaming.

"Yea, but what does it mean?"

"Lasciate ogni speranza Voi che entrate," Lancer said. Danny blinked confusedly. Did Lancer actually expect him to know what that meant?

"Abandon every hope, all who enter here," the teacher translated. Danny looked up at the shadows twisting and slithering ominously above them. Lancer did the same, chuckling a bit as though trying to get his nerve back. "It's from Dante's Inferno, above the gates to hell."

"Hell?" Danny asked, disbelieving, "Are you trying to tell me we're at the gate to hell?" He looked at the swirling shadows again. He didn't quite believe this was hell. Though he supposed it was ominous enough.

"Well, if it is, it's definitely not how it was described." Lancer laughed nervously again at his attempt at a joke and approached the archway. Danny powered up a second blast. He wasn't going to be taken by surprise by some hell ghost.

When Lancer stood in the archway he looked over his shoulder at Danny. "Do ghosts always transport people to other dimensions?" he asked, "Because, the past two seem to like doing just that."

"No," Danny answered, "Though most do like obsessing over stuff. It's a ghost thing I guess. This one seems to like scaring things."

Lancer was about to ask what it was Danny obsessed over, but thought better of it. That probably wouldn't sound like the joke he would have meant it to be, not with this place spouting those evil looking misty shadows everywhere.

Lancer turned and walked slowly through the archway, immensely grateful for the glow of Danny's ecto-blast. It was so dark, the kind of dark with not even a hope of a light source. Danny's energy spheres were not doing much to dismiss the utter blackness, but they were light and Lancer knew that light was the only reason he could stand in these shadows and not run terrified. He had conquered his fear of the dark late in life, around his freshman year of college, but he had not dispelled it completely.

Danny looked around as he walked forward.

"This doesn't look like hell to me," Danny said, holding his ball of light up higher. "It's just a bunch of nothing." He walked around in a circle, holding the ecto-ball at all angles. No objects or shadows caught the light. "Absolutely nothing."

Suddenly there was a noise like nails on a chalkboard. Danny saw Lancer jump almost a foot in the air. "What was that?" the teacher asked, panic in his voice.

At the teacher's words, there was a purple glow and chalkboards illuminated all around them, every one of them with complex math equations that Danny only ever saw in the calculations for his parents inventions. Lancer stood deathly still in the center, his eyes on the closest chalkboard.

"This now looks much more like hell," he told Danny, his wide eyes never leaving the chalkboard. Danny looked around.

"It's just math; it's not like we have to do the problems. Let's-"

At his words however, the chalkboard Lancer was staring at floated closer to rest in front to the two. Lancer took a few steps back and chalk lines sprung off the other chalkboards to wall the teacher, student, and math problem in

Lancer looked at Danny. "I don't suppose there's any chance of getting out of this is there?"

Danny looked up at the glowing purple chalk that trapped them. He shot off a blast and the cocoon glowed brighter, absorbing the ecto-energy into itself. "Probably not," Danny answered, "I don't want to see what that thing'll do if I touch it. It looks like we have to do the problem to get out. But don't look at me; I have no idea what half of that even means."

Danny saw Lancer swallow hard as the man walked cautiously up to the chalkboard. His hand hovered over the chalk as he stared blankly up at the problem.

"I won't be able to do this," he mumbled. Danny assumed he was talking more to himself than to Danny, but responded anyway.

"Well, we're never going to get anywhere if no one does it. I guess let me try, I've seen something like this-" But wherever he had seen it was cut off as the cocoon launched darting chalk tentacles straight at Danny.

The boy ducked and, in a move Lancer had seen before during the Eclipse incident, caught the things in his hands.

But more came shooting after him. Lancer rushed forward, batting away and pulling at those he could. But they eventually overwhelmed the two and Danny was lifted off the ground, still struggling fiercely, and mummified so that only his blazing green eyes shone angrily out of the chalk wrappings.

Danny said something but it was too muffled for Lancer to hear. The teacher tried in vain to jump high enough to get at his student. His fingers almost brushed Danny's trapped toes, but the boy was held just out of his reach.

He turned to the chalkboard before glancing back at Danny.

"Ok, I guess I vaguely remember where to start this… but I can't for the life of me figure out what to do." He picked up the chalk and stared at the problem for a full minute before continuing. "I guess I could add these things here… and divide that by this here… that would be… four…" Lancer scribbled a small 4 on the chalkboard. "And… if I knew what that symbol meant… why do they have to have random symbols? It makes no-"

But before he could finish, the cocoon lost its glow and tumbled down around them, the chalkboards disappearing with a pop. Danny was dropped and fell a few feet before catching himself.

"What the… why did it go and do that?" Danny asked. "You didn't finish the problem."

"I'm not completely sure," Lancer said. He looked around him. The room had fallen into utter darkness again.

Lancer shook his head. He had been scared of even trying the problem, knowing he could never figure it out. He had been terrified that he would be stuck there forever with no way out. He had to admit he would have rather left screaming than face this place. If he had been alone, he never would have gone for it.

But Danny. Danny had been in trouble, and he wasn't about to let one of his students get trapped forever in some freaky fear realm. He couldn't fail one of his student's again. It was that, and that alone, then made him even attempt the problem.

Was that what he had to do?

"I think that maybe all I had to do was try the problem," Lancer mused, sticking the chalk in his pocket.

"Well that was stupid," Danny remarked, "What was the point in that?"

But Lancer smiled to himself. He hadn't tried a math problem that was any more complicated than his taxes since his freshman year of college, when he stopped having to take math lessons.

Abruptly, the room started to dissolve around them, and the two were left standing in the halls of Casper High. "Are we back then?" Lancer wondered aloud. He looked at Danny and the boy shrugged.

"I have no idea. It looks like it but… something just feels… off. And something tells me it wouldn't be that easy to get out of-"

Before Danny could finish his sentence, Lancer heard that nails-on-chalkboard sound again and spun around, wondering what sort of problems he would have to do now.

The sight he beheld made his stomach sink. He backed away, his eyes wide.

It couldn't be!

He was dead!


Hahaha! I feel so evil

So, like always, review! Or flame and be at peace.

What does that even mean?

I have no idea! (laughs maniacally)

(makes cooko cooko clock noises)

(grumbles) You're next.

Oh! And I have a new challenge! Draw any of the super or villian Lancers! I'd love to see what you guys thought they looked like!

So, fare thee well and I shall update INUS soon!