Disclaimer: I apologize for the extremely long wait. I had a severe case of writer's block caused by remaining at home for far too long. I lost all that nice inspiration of mine. On the other hand, I didn't have to deal with my muses for a while.

Thanks to xheartkreuzx, bloodmoon13, skitzofrenic, dessyweird51, DPcrazy, CatalystOfTheSoul, Phantom Melody (that was the shortest review I ever got.), Wishes for Wings, hollagirl, inukagome15, Dario Argento Syndrome, werewolf5, Thunderstorm101, Phantom Shade, Ayva J. Damas, egyptianqueen777, acosta perez jose ramiro, Luiz4200, goth.one, Moony's Metamorphmagus (It's different than I expected as well.), Dragon260, MyFruitloop, Amethyst Ocean, Pawz4thought, Hyperpegasi, SH Aerrow's Girl, and hallonhiada for all your reviews! You guys are the reason I'm updating.

I've just realized that I'm now out of order on my updating but this is the story I was inspired for first. So, oh well.

Sorry again for the long update wait!

Phase 9: The Ghost Zone

Dash couldn't believe what he saw. They were floating through a swirling purple and green world he had only ever seen once before, when that ghost king dragged them all into his world.

"Creepy," he said with a shudder. "Not that I'm scared or anything," he added with a glare at his two classmates, "It's just cold."

Sam rolled her eyes and took control of the speeder. "Tucker, where is the nearest portal again?"

Tucker looked at her with a worried frown, "Wisconsin for a permanent one. But, we don't want to use that one right now… we'll just have to wait for one of those random ones or until Jazz contacts us and we can go back through Danny's portal."

"Wonderful," Manson groaned, "We're stuck here."

"Wait, but isn't this place like… full of ghosts!" Dash asked, forcing down the panic in his voice as best he could, "like… the unfriendly ones."

"The ones who would kill us on site," Sam added calmly, a cruel smile playing on her lips, "yea, it is."

"Then shouldn't we get out of here?" Dash nearly screamed.

"Dora!" Tucker exclaimed randomly.

Sam nodded and turned the speeder to the right, "Dora."

"Dora?" Dash asked, "The explorer?"

Tucker coughed down a laugh as he shook his head. "The princess."

"Wouldn't she be a queen now?" Manson asked.

"Maybe," Tucker mused, nodding.

"Who are you guys-"

The speeder jolted like something had hit it from the side, cutting Dash off. All four passengers bounced around. Dash, the only one not wearing a seatbelt, was thrown out of his seat and over Danny's lap, whose nose twitched like it smelled something unpleasant and the boy mumbled something in his tranquilizer-induced sleep. Dash laid there stock still with fear, his arm throbing in pain, as Manson cursed.

"What hit us?" she asked Foley.

The boy turned from the window and winced. "Skulker."

Manson cursed again and looked back at Dash's seat. "Dash hand me-" she started to demand, but she stopped and looked from where Dash had been sitting to where Dash was, still draped over Danny's lap, not daring to breathe, and back.

"What the hell are you doing?" she asked, raising and eyebrow.

Dash threw himself off his classmate, his face heating up. "Fell," he said simply, cradling his arm carefuly. The girl stared at him while Tucker tried to hold back a bout of laughter. The vehicle was hit again, sending all three of them flying.

Sam and Tucker recovered quickly, each scrambling to the closest hidden compartment and grabbing a weapon. Dash looked around, and again saw only one thing he knew how to operate: a baseball bat with the word "Fenton" on it.

Grabbing it and standing up, he heard a shout from outside.

"I know the ghost child is in there! Hand him over and I shall let you go and make his end quick."

Sam hopped back in the driver's seat and hit a button while grabbing a radio transmitter. "Fat chance Skulker!" she yelled into it, hitting another three buttons. There was a surprised yell from outside and Sam laughed. "That should keep him busy for a bit," she muttered, speeding their ride away quickly.

"Which one?" Tucker asked, settling again into his seat.

"Fenton-electro-net," Manson answered with a grin, "hopefully it'll short circuit him too."

"Hopefully," Foley echoed.

There was a sputtering noise and the speeder slowed to an abrupt stop. Manson and Foley looked at each other and then behind them at a note on the wall over Dash's head. Dash looked up as it was dislodged by something hitting the speeder once more and fell in his lap.

"Note to self," Dash read, "have Danny recharge speeder. Jack." Dash looked up. "Why is the gauge back here?" he asked.

"Who knows," Tucker answered, fiddling with the gun he had in his arms and making it whir to life, "it's Danny's dad."

Manson attached a piece to her gun, making it twice as big. "The point is we're gunna have to fend these guys off until we figure out how to get this thing operational again." She looked up at Dash, then at the bat in his hand. "The Fenton Anti-creep stick?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

Dash ignored her question and answered with his own. "What do you mean 'these guys?' I thought there was only the one!"

The speeder was jolted again and Sam shook her head, running to the back with Tucker and grabbing some backpacks off hooks.

Tucker tossed a pack to Dash, who caught it awkwardly in his already occupied hand. "You gunna help or what?"

Dash looked at his two classmates standing there, calm, guns at the ready, prepared to go diving into the ghost zone to fight whatever was out there like they had done this a million times before.

"I... I..." Dash stammered. Sam groaned in disgust.

"Come on Tucker," she spat, "He's not going to help us." And with that the two kicked open the back door and jumped out with a unified battle cry, pulling identical strings on their backpacks, leaving Dash behind.

The jock clutched the baseball bat close as he heard the sounds of battle from outside the speeder. He couldn't face those ghosts… but he couldn't look like a wimp in front of these losers either. He frowned and walked toward the back of the vehicle, slinging the pack over his left shoulder with a wince.

He remembered the time everyone's parents were taken by that little ghost twerp. How Fenton had rallied them all together to battle their way through those pirates. But they had had numbers then, they had the home field advantage too.

But now… now they were in a place Dash knew nothing of and fighting off, from what Manson had said, who knew how many enemies. He had none of his teammates here so he didn't have anyone to watch his back. He was alone with two people he barely knew facing a threat he had little experience with. Not to mention his elbow was killing him.

He steeled himself as he approached the door of the speeder. He couldn't be weak, that wasn't an option. He had to fight his way through his problems and this was the only way to do it. If he ran in front of these people, he couldn't show his face at Casper High ever again. He would loose his entire reputation for sure.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Here goes everything."

He jumped, pulling the string on the backpack like he saw Sam and Tucker do.

Something now had him floating in the air. Dash craned his head to look back at the pack. All he could tell was there were two silver jet looking things protruding from the bottom of the bag and spewing green fire that kept him up.

The Fentons had freaking jetpacks?

"Dash?" he heard Tucker ask, then the boy's voiced raised, "Dash duck!"

Having seen enough cartoons to know to actually duck instead of look behind him, Dash did so, feeling a wiz of energy fly through the spot his head had been.

Turning around, Dash saw a large ghost in mechanical armor towering over him.

"Hmm," it said in a perplexed voice, "I was expecting the ghost child to come out by now." He held up an arm with some sort of computer on it that sent out a beam of light that traveled up and down the teen's body. The computer beeped and retracted into his armor. "It would appear that you are just some measly human." It rubbed its green flaming goatee thoughtfully. "Who are you? And would you by any chance be willing to hand the ghost child over to me?"

"Uhh… I think Manson would eat me if I did," Dash replied, raising his bat between him and the ghost, "She's a freak like that."

The ghost gave the bat and amused eyebrow raise. "The goth child," he mused, still rubbing his flaming chin hair. "Very well, then I shall destroy you." The ghost pointed his arm at Dash, small rockets now extending from it.

"Dude, isn't that a bit of an overkill?" Dash asked.

"Only a little," the ghost replied pleasantly, "Good bye".

In a last desperate move Dash tightened his grip on his weapon and raised the bat, smashing it down on the ghost's arm. But in the last second, the bat became a glowing green axe and cut through the armor, the arm dropping off. Both the ghost and Dash paused for a second in shock before Dash screamed loudly, adrenaline letting him ignore his injured arm, and attempted to hack away at the stunned ghost.

The jock actualy managed, to his suprise, to chop off the other arm and a leg before he was kicked back.

"You!" the ghost yelled, pointing his small, cut off arm at the boy, "You'll pay for this! I shall hunt you down in vengeance and mount your pelt upon my wall! I shall extract your fleshy innards and use them to feed my captives! I shall-" but he was cut of by a bright green blast from over Dash's shoulder that knocked his head off.

Dash turned. Sam stood there, her gun slung over her shoulder and smoking from it's latest shot. "That should shut him up," she said, looking over at Tucker. "Wanna hand me the thermos?"

"Just a second," the tech geek grunted, shooting an octopus ghost and having the thermos suck it inside. "There we go." He tossed the container to his friend.

Sam caught it and flew down to the severed head on some sort of floating purple ground below. There was a flash of blue light as she sucked something inside before flying back up to the two boys.

"Now we need to find a way to move," she said, avoiding looking at Dash, "something is bound to have seen or heard that fight."

"More ghosts?" Dash asked with a groan. He didn't think he could work his arm through another fight.

"Welcome to after school for us every day since freshman year Dash, get over it," Sam spat. Dash sneered at her, which she replied to by cocking her gun. Dash raised his axe. Sam's eyes narowed.

"Guys!" Tucker yelled, stepping in between them, "let's get out of this place first ok? Then you can tear each other to bits all you like," He looked at Sam, who lowered her gun, then at Dash.

Dash didn't lower his axe. "You guys are both nuts! We're stuck! And both of you are acting like it's no big deal! We're never going to get out of here!" he screamed, panic he had been trying to suppress rising in his voice.

"Dash!" Tucker asked, "Put down the axe, please!"

Dash ignored him, "We're stuck in a freaky ghost world with evil ghost and a psycho Fentoad who's probably going to wake up and eat us at any moment!"

"Dash!" Tucker yelled.

"No! If these freaky ghosts are around I'm going to do whatever I like with this axe and you aren't going to stop me shrimp!" Dash screamed in the boy's face, grabbing him by the collar with one hand, "Do you hear me?"

WHAM!

Dash let go of the boy's shirt, stumbling back and holding his freed hand to his face. Blood gushed from his nose and he stared at Foley, who was shaking off the hand he had rammed into the jock's face and wincing slightly.

Dash couldn't speak. He was stunned. Not only had someone stood up to him and hit him, but it had been Foley! Shrimpy little geek Foley.

"Dash," the boy said calmly, "Drop the axe."

Dash dropped it a Manson stared. Even she was surprised. "Tucker… you…"

"I know how to get the speeder moving," Tucker stated, retrieving the now bat and landing back in the speeder. "We can attach these backpacks to it. They run off ghost zone energy instead of battery so at least we can go somewhere."

Dash just floated there with Sam, staring at him for a minute before Sam flew over and joined him.

Tucker looked up at Dash. "You coming or what?" He paused and grinned slightly, "I can patch up your nose for you."

Dash managed a glare at the boy as he landed. "You had better, geek," he choked out past the blood. Tucker fetched some tissues and handed them to Dash. "Just sit tight, we have to get this thing working again."

Dash sat there, tissues stuffed up his nose, his chest and arm throbbing, as Foley and Manson got to work. Danny stirred in his sleep once or twice, but it was mostly uneventful up until they got the speeder moving and headed somewhere. And by that time Dash had convinced himself that Foley only got that shot in out of a freak accident and that maybe this was all just a dream and any moment he would wake up in his bead ready to pound a human Fenton into the ground.

...

Wait... Fentong wasn't human!

This hit Dash like a sack of bricks. Danny Fenton wasn't human! He was a ghost!

Dash looked over at his classmate. Danny growled and stirred a bit, turning intangable and slipping onto the floor as if to prove Dash's point.

He was a ghost!

He was dead!

Holy crap! Fenton... the kid he'd been beating up since forever had been dead for over a year!

Holy crap!

Freaking DEAD!

"Where are we?" Foley asked as he and Manson sat back in their seats, interupting Dash's thoughts.

Did they realise he was dead?

The goth bit her lip. "We must have drifted off course while fixing the speeder," she answered as she looked around. "We're nowhere near Dora's castle."

Dash piped up, "Wait… so... we're lost?"

DUN DUN DUN!

Yes! I finished! And I gave Tucker a badass moment! WOOT!

Ahh yes… my "modification" of the Fenton anti-creep stick. Been waiting to use that for a while.

"Dora, Dora, Dora the explorer!" (Bursts into a fit of laughter)

Dash is still hard to write but I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. I will be updating Mysteries next as soon as I find my muses… they've wandered off somewhere.