Paranoia

Here we go, chapter four. It took much less time to write this than the previous chapters. It's shorter than the last one but longer than the first two. Still no clear idea about what I'm doing to the ending but I keep getting ideas for scenes so I'll keep writing until it ends.

Ideas are welcome, so is letting me know if you see something weird in the chapter.

Warnings for this chapter: Tenticle almost-rape. Yes, I'm serious.

---

After the episode in the hall Lancer had barged through the crowd demanding to know what was going on. When he found out that Danny had thrown up he sighed and put a palm to his face, ordering some poor student standing nearby to go to "Go get Miss Fenton so she can escort her brother home."

When Jazz got to the scene Danny had been forced to sit and lean on the wall by a concerned Tucker and Sam. Honestly he felt much better now that...that was out of his system, but he couldn't convince anyone else that he was fine. She quickly knelt down next to him and put a hand to his forehead, which he immediately tried to brush off, but stopped protesting at the look she gave him.

Lancer and a few other teachers had tried to get the crowd to disperse, which of course they didn't and the noise had caused more kids to come see what was happening. That was how the whole school got to either see or hear about Danny being coddled by his sister after throwing up and practically being carried to her car to be taken home.

Dannys friends promised to come over once school was done, to which Danny nodded and it looked like Jazz wanted to protest but didn't actually say anything. After saying their goodbyes, and a note for Jazz if she came back so she wouldn't technically be late to her class, the Fenton kids left.

It didn't even take five minutes before the rumors began to emerge.

---

"I heard he has the swine flu!"

"Whatever, I bet he just ate something bad for lunch."

"No, I didn't see him at all during lunch. Someone said they saw him going to the back of the school."

"Maybe he was meeting someone."

"No, he probably just had a fight with his friends."

"That still doesn't explain why he was gone yesterday."

"Maybe he got kidnapped!"

Silence. Laughter.

"Yeah right, who would want to kidnap him?"

---

Danny sighed as he sat on his bed after brushing his teeth. He still had three hours until school got out and Sam and Tucker would come over.

He winced, wondering how that was going to work out. Sam had already been really suspicious after he had missed a day and been late, and it seemed he had convinced Tucker that something was wrong when he managed to throw up in front of him for seemingly no reason. Danny kicked off his shoes and lay back on his bed. Since when did someone need an excuse other than 'I didn't feel good' to be sick anyway?

Closing his eyes he tried to relax, hoping that since he had already harassed him once today Dark would leave him alone. After all, he wouldn't want Danny to be so tired he would fall asleep in the middle of sex.

"Wait, what?" Danny asked out loud, bolting up and made a noise that sounded like 'argh!' before putting his face in his hands and shaking his head.

He did not want to be thinking about that. Taking his hands off his face he looked down into his lap and made a face as he realized he was still wearing the clothes Dark had put him in. Swearing to get rid of them once and for all when he woke up he quickly slipped them off and threw them in a corner, grabbing some of his own clothes to put on instead.

As he pulled on his jeans he paused, thinking. He hadn't changed into pajamas for three days. Maybe that was why he wasn't getting enough sleep. Looking around his room he saw a pair of flannel plaid pants. Grabbing them he put them on, along with a plain white t-shirt. Laying back on his bed he noticed that he was slightly more comfortable.

'Now if only I didn't have to worry about a maniac jumping out of nowhere and molesting me.' he thought cheerlessly.

Danny sighed and looked at his clock. Still two hours before Sam and Tucker would probably be there. Closing his eyes he decided to try and get some sleep. Even if he didn't end up it meant that he could at least try to relax for awhile.

He knew that he really should be trying to figure out a way to capture Dark, but he was just so tired...

---

Danny knew he was dreaming. There was no way he could not be dreaming. For starters did a field like this really exist? Large and green, in the middle of a copse of trees. Flowers sprinkled throughout it and the sense that a deer or a fox with her kits would walk across it at any second.

Then of course, if a field like that did exist Danny certainly didn't know where it was so someone would have had to have driven him there,and he could honestly say he couldn't remember getting in a car for the last week other than Jazz driving him home from school today.

Looking up he noticed it was a clear blue sky with a couple little white clouds puttering around.

"You have got to be kidding me. It's like Nocturne all over again." Danny said, shaking his head, "No one has dreams like this. This only happens in really cliched horror movies before the monster jumps out of nowhere to rip someones head off."

As if him speaking had triggered something things began to change into the evil cliche of things and Danny found himself wishing it had stayed the other way.

"Wonderful, a nightmare." Danny muttered, wishing he would wake up. Usually when he was conscious of his dreams he woke up soon after but unfortunately it seemed like it wasn't going to be like that this time.

The ground suddenly changed, turning into more of a swamp or bog than solid ground and Danny staggered as he sunk a little bit. Looking around he tried to tell himself, remind himself, that it was a dream. Nothing like this was happening in real life. That still couldn't stop his fear though.

Danny slowly started walking toward the edge of the clearing, hoping that that was the edge of the dream and when he got there he would wake up, but he was suddenly and horrifically impeded by vines squelching their way out of the ground. He quickly turned to go the other way, but stopped dead at what he saw.

There were vines behind him too, but they were holding something. The vines were dangling bodies, or in some cases pieces of bodies and Danny put a hand up over his mouth and backed up a step when he began to recognize some of them, and they were all calling out to him, asking why he hadn't been there in time, why he was with him.

He was too busy staring in front of him to realize what was going on behind him until it was too late. The vines had worked their way forward and wrapped themselves around his arms and legs, lifting him into the air despite his struggles to get free. For a minute he thought they were going to tear him apart like it was doing to everyone else, but then something else began to happen.

Danny shuddered as a vine, slick with some sort of secretion, slid up his arm while still holding him in place and went into his shirt. He twitched and struggled again as he felt it slide along his stomach, moving up to take his shirt along with it as it rubbed along his neck and on his face.

"This is so sick, so sick and wrong and I need to wake the fuck up right now!" Danny screamed before the tip of a vine was shoved in his mouth, giving him a flashback about what had happened earlier, and another one went down his pants.

Danny twisted and turned but only ended up making the vines agitated so they wrapped around him tighter. The vine in his pants wrapped itself around his limp penis and seemed to start stroking him and he could feel another one making its way down his back.

'Wonderful, I get raped by myself, now I get raped by a plant.' Danny thought pseudo-calmly while actually mentally screaming.

Danny thought he was done for when he felt the vine stroke along his ass, but suddenly the still muttering voices of his comrades reached a crescendo and screamed, "Him, it's him!

Opening his eyes, he hadn't even realized he had shut them, Danny managed to look down and saw Dark standing there. If he had been able to say anything he would have asked him what he was doing there, but as he couldn't he just stared instead.

His older self seemed slightly angry, which Danny thought was odd. Why would he be upset, it seemed like even in his mind Danny was torturing himself, so it was saving him some trouble.

"Mine." Danny thought he heard him say to the vine and raised a hand. "You have no place in this mind."

'That's right, it's my mind! This is still a dream!' Danny thought frantically when the vine got closer and closer to it's goal. 'I need to wake up. I need to wake up!'

Suddenly it seemed as if something cracked and he fell into the muck, the vines disappearing. As he began to sink he thought he heard Dark say something.

---

"Danny, your friends are here!" Jazz called up the stairs and thought she heard a muffled thump as if he had fallen out of bed.

'Well at least he was sleeping.' she thought and then frowned when he yelled back that he would be right there and heard the shower running.

Jazz sighed and turned back to Dannys friends who were sitting on the couch. Sam had her arms crossed and looked determined about something, and Tucker seemed slightly hesitant but determined as well.

"We want to know what's going on with Danny." Sam said, getting straight to the point.

"I'm not sure." Jazz said, sitting down as well and tapping the arm of the couch in thought, "Something must have happened, but I can't figure out what! It's not like he's physically hurt so much as...paranoid."

Sam and Tucker nodded in agreement with Jazz's assessment.

"Yeah, when I saw him right before he got sick and put my arm on his shoulders he practically jumped through the ceiling. It was like he had been expecting someone else, someone he didn't want to see." Tucker said frowning.

Sam and Jazz thought through the last couple days after Danny had come back from whatever had happened and their frowns deepened. Was Danny avoiding physical contact? It certainly seemed so, but for something to effect him that way it must have been...

"Sorry guys, I had to go take a shower, feeling kind of gross yeah?" Danny said with a half grin. His hair was still damp and everyone stared at him as he sat on the couch.

There was slightly awkward silence for a few moments before Jazz said, "Danny, what happened to you?"

---

'Wonderful, they've been thinking,' Danny mentally growled, trying not to show it on his features or run his hand through his hair. 'Can't they just leave me alone. I shouldn't have given them any time, I should have come straight down here, but that would have been bad.'

When Danny had woken up he was drenched in sweat, his breath coming in short pants and he had been trembling. He knew he needed some time if he was going to pull himself together, and a shower was the fastest way he knew to do it.

The cold water had helped shock him back to the semi-normalness he had been the last few days. He had quickly scrubbed himself and washed his hair before hopping out of the shower to dry off. It hadn't really seemed to take all that long to get dressed and come down here, but apparently it had been long enough for them to start having ideas.

Danny sighed, deciding to tell the truth. Or at least a very censored version of the truth. "I heard about a ghost attack, I went to check it out, I got my butt kicked and passed out, woke up in a room, passed out again and woke up here."

"Wait, you don't mean...you got kidnapped?!" Jazz exclaimed and Sam and Tucker looked shocked as well.

"Uh, yeah if you want to get technical," Danny said looking at them oddly, "You mean you didn't suspect that?" When Jazz looked down Danny's eyes narrowed.

'How oblivious are they? Or how...how can they suspect something happened to me and then not think that I got kidnapped when I didn't come home? What else did they think happened? I stayed over at somebody's house? Slept on the street? God, I only wish that was what had happened.' Danny thought.

There was silence for a few moments before Sam asked, "So is that why you've been so weird the last couple days?"

"I guess." Danny muttered darkly, his mind having wandered over to more dangerous territory after they had talked about kidnapping.

"Well it's perfectly normal," Jazz started, her psychologist/therapist persona firmly in place, "Kidnapping is a terrifying experience and it can have dramatic effects on the people involved. If you need anything don't hesitate to come to any of us. I mean-"

"I don't need your help," Danny said sharply, cutting her off. "I'm fine, it was the past and I'm fine."

He stood up to start walking out of the room and Jazz and Sam stood up too, leaving Tucker to sit awkwardly on the couch.

"Danny!" the girls called at the same time, then glanced at each other before Sam continued on her own, "You're not fine. Are you sure that what you told us is all that happened? I mean, you didn't even say that you saw the ghost who did it. Besides, why would someone do that in the first place if they don't even try to get a ransom or since I guess it was a ghost, revenge or something?"

By the time Sam had finished talking Danny had stopped in the doorway. Slowly he turned around and glared at them. The three were silent while Danny stood there for a second and took a breath.

"Why does it seem like you want me to be hurt? You want me to be mentally scarred? If something did happen are you sure you would want me to tell you?" Danny's voice had started out softly, but it was slowly raising in volume. "You would want me to tell you what happened when I was kidnapped, every sick detail of what had happened? If I was...If they had...if...there is nothing you can do about it!" Danny screamed and stormed out of the room and there was the sound of a slamming door and then silence.

The people in the livingroom were left stunned until Tucker broke the silence.

"Guys, honestly I thought you were being a little over-dramatic with the 'something's wrong with Danny' thing, but you're right. Something is up, something bad happened to him and we need to find out what it was."

Jazz and Sam nodded and the three teens started to try to piece together what Danny wasn't telling them.

---

"We should have a party." Dash said, leaning back on a bench he had kicked some kids off of at the park.

"Why?" Kwan asked and Dash rolled his eyes.

"Who needs a reason, but if we did it would be because we haven't had one in awhile."

"Who's house would it be at?" Paulina asked and everyone shrugged.

"Mine, since I brought it up," Dash said, "My parents are going to be gone for a couple days soon anyway. I'll find out when and then we can start sending out the word."

Everyone nodded and then started talking about random things. Suddenly a shadow came over them and the group of teenagers looked up to see a young man standing in front of them. He was tall and had short, kind of spiky black hair and a goatee. You couldn't see his eyes because he was wearing sunglasses, but he had on a pair of navy blue jeans with a white shirt and black sweatshirt.

"I couldn't help but notice that you were talking about a party," he said with a slight smile. His voice was deep, but still almost silky.

The teens exchanged glances before Dash said, "Yeah, so?"

"This may be a little forward of me, but I was wondering if I could be invited as well. It's not like you won't be getting anything out of it," he added at the dubious looks he got, "I'm betting your party would like a little entertainment that you're too young to buy right now."

Dash raised an eyebrow. Was this guy seriously offering to buy them booze if they let him come to the party? Dash's parents had a stash, of course, but that wasn't nearly enough for everyone who he was thinking of inviting. He still thought it was kind of odd that someone was offering to do this for them when he didn't even know who they were.

"You're trying to buy your way in?" Dash finally asked and raised an eyebrow making the man kind of chuckle a bit.

"I promise not to touch any of you if that's what you're worrying about," he said and some of the teens chuckled nervously, "It's just that I haven't been to a party in so long and it would be kind of nice to have a bit of excitement."

There was more silence before Dash told the man to wait a minute and the teens huddled up to talk about it. After a couple minutes they broke up and Dash said, "All right, we decided you can go."

"Excellent," the man smiled, "I heard that you don't know when it's going to be exactly. If you can find out tonight I'll be here at the same time tomorrow."

Dash and a couple others nodded and the man started to walk away before Paulina suddenly called, "Wait, we don't even know your name!" causing the man to stop and turn back around.

"My friends call me 'Dark.'"

---

End Chapter Four