CLUELESS

Disclaimer: It's still all Butch Hartman's fault.

Rating: T for occasional language

Warnings and pairings: Spoilers for Flirting with Disaster like WHOA. DxS, DxV, slight TxV. But mostly DxS.

This is a companion fic to the chapters of His & Hers also entitled "Clueless." Seeing as Tucker is the only one of the three of them who isn't clueless in FWD, his side of the story was just begging to be told.

Acknowledgments: Dragondancer5150 and Lunnaei rock. Thanks, as always, for the beta, ladies!

They were both completely clueless. The class ring—forget for a moment how slide rules and 45s the whole thing was. How could they both miss the significance of what just happened with that ring? It was supposed to be for the girl Danny liked, the one he wanted to be his girlfriend. And who did he give it to? Twice? Sam. Who went home with it when it was all said and done? Sam. But do either one of them get it?

Of course not. They're completely clueless.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

It didn't start with the ring. It started with an instant message with a girl. And not just any girl, either. The girl I once had a crush on and sorta almost dated. Rule Number One of the Dude Code: Don't Date Your Best Friend's Ex. Or at least ask him if he's okay with it. Even if Valerie wasn't technically my ex, he still should have at least asked how I felt, especially since when I was sorta almost dating her, he kicked up such a fuss about how dangerous it was because she was a ghost hunter after Danny Phantom, yadda yadda ya.

But now, not six months later, when he was the one who was interested in her and Sam raised the exact same concerns, he was all, "You should really give her a chance, Sam. I know she wants to waste Danny Phantom, but did you know that she's a ninth-degree black belt? That her favorite fruit is kumquat, because it's a funny word?"

Hypocrite, much?

Sam, naturally, was even less thrilled than I was. "No, Danny. I didn't. Because I never really get past the 'waste Danny Phantom' part!"

Oblivious to our issues behind the issue, he blew off our concerns. "She'll figure out Danny Phantom is one of the good guys, and everything will be fine. You'll see. Just... give her a chance, okay?" And then he breezed past us into the school, not even bothering to stop with us at our lockers.

I waited for Sam while she grabbed the books she needed for her first couple of periods. Her back was stiff, and she was slamming things around, reminding me of the time she'd punched a dent in some kid's locker and broke the flag off someone's mailbox over Danny and Paulina dating, before we knew that it wasn't really Paulina at all, but some ghost chick overshadowing her and hitting on Danny to make her boyfriend jealous.

Sam's mood didn't exactly improve when we caught sight of Danny around the corner, talking to Valerie. "Was there another girl with you?" he was asking her, referring to her friend Starr, who was walking away from them. "I hadn't noticed."

Valerie flashed him a big, beautiful smile. "Pretty cheesy, Neil Armstrong. You got lunch plans?"

I was so gonna have to remember that line.

Bolstered by his success, Danny kept up the smooth talk. "I'll have to check my schedule, but I think I'm open. The real question is, do you have dinner plans?"

Beside me, Sam looked like she was contemplating the demise of another locker. "Is he nuts?"

It wasn't an act, this concern over him getting close to someone who loathed ghosts in general and his own alter-ego in particular. She was a total mother bear when it came to protecting Danny's secret. But I could see through all the bristle and barbed wire to something much more raw underneath. For all my griping about Danny going after a former—and maybe not so former—crush of mine, it was really only just that: a crush. Just another girl that I was sorta kinda interested in, and it would've been nice if she'd have fallen for me instead of my best friend.

But Sam was way past crush territory with Danny and hovering dangerously close to The Big L. She had it bad for him, the real deal, and seeing him and Valerie, so happy and infatuated with each other... For me, it was merely annoying. But it was killing her.

I gave her an encouraging smile. "Aw, don't worry, Sam. This is the puppy love stuff. He'll come to his senses in no time. Just watch."

She gave me an acrid smile. "Oh, I was planning to."

And that's when I noticed the binoculars in her hands.

At that point, I probably should have said something. Made some argument about how spying was wrong, that it was terrible idea, that it was beneath her. Danny was my best friend, after all.

My best friend, who was completely oblivious to the pain he was causing my other best friend. My best friend, who'd gone after someone I once liked, maybe even still liked, just a little bit, without ever bothering to ask me how I felt about it. My best friend, who'd read me the riot act for liking a ghost hunter because it was too dangerous for her to get close to him and his secret, but who was just fine with her getting close when he was the one who liked her.

Yeah. Bring on the binoculars.

We watched from a distance when he took her to some diner at the end of town. Sam hogged the binoculars, which was fine by me, since I didn't particularly want to see Valerie and Danny looking all googley-eyed at each other over french fries. Besides, my stupid PDA was acting up—it hadn't been working right for a few days now, and it was beginning to get on my nerves. It had started at the mall, when Sam and I were hanging out without Danny because he was off fighting Technus. Ever since then, the menu kept flickering off at odd intervals, and the whole thing would go to static and make weird noises. I barely heard Sam complain about the power outage that transformed Danny and Val's french fries at a greasy spoon into a romantic candlelit dinner.

My PDA was still giving me fits at the baseball game a few days later. Danny and Val were there courtesy of Axion Labs and Val's dad. Sam and I were there courtesy of Sam's enormous trust fund. Right around the seventh inning stretch, that weird static showed up again, and some blue numbers ghosted across the screen, like something out of The Matrix. It was only when I heard Sam say something about winning seats when I looked up at the scoreboard and saw Danny and Valerie's faces, framed in a huge heart, with the word Winner! flashing in red over them. Apparently, they'd won some sort of contest and gotten free tickets to the carnival that was in town.

Sam and I didn't go to the carnival itself, but watched from a nearby hill. Sam was muttering to herself as she looked through the binoculars, and I was starting to think that maybe the whole spying thing, however much Danny deserved it, was a bad idea. She was starting to skirt the edge of creepy stalker, and I was getting a little worried about her. But then, another burst of static from my PDA had me pulling the thing out and trying to run diagnostics—again—to no avail.

Sam turned from her voyeurism to growl at me. "Can you turn that thing down?"

Completely frustrated, I shook the blasted thing. "No! Ever since that fight with Technus, this thing goes static-y at the weirdest times." I held it up to show her.

But as I did, the white noise clarified into the sound of laughter, which I recognized immediately.

Technus.

Turning it around to look at the screen, I gaped when I saw Technus's face. "Oh, no!" I looked toward the fairgrounds, where the power had gone out, just like at the diner the other night. "And now we know why. It's picking up Technus! Something in his new upgrade is making my PDA all wonky."

Sam blinked. "Like at the mall! And the lab! And the ferris wheel!" She waved toward the fairgrounds. "He's pushing Danny and Valerie together!"

I didn't know whether to be afraid for the girl's sanity or laugh, so I chose laughing.

Sam was not amused. "If you're done, we have to tell Danny."

I wiped my eyes, trying to stop laughing long enough to speak. "You wanna tell Danny that Technus is playing matchmaker? How do you think he's gonna react to that?"

"I'm thinking he'll be a little concerned!"

Yeah, right. "He's gonna laugh his ass off," I told her.

I should have bet her, because when Sam found Danny before school the next day, and told him her theory, I thought he was gonna laugh himself into a coma.

Sam was even less amused than she'd been at me the night before. "Are you done yet?"

"No." He fell back against a tree trunk, still laughing, until he finally managed to breathe. "Okay, now I'm done." He looked at Sam, barely keeping himself from laughing in her face again. "You're telling me that Technus is trying to hook me up? Come on! Technus hates emotions!"

"And, hello! He's using yours against you!"

She did have a point. And the timing between my PDA acting up and each time something happened to make things a little more cozy between Valerie and Danny were too close to be coincidence. Sam may have gotten a little bit into obsession-land with the spying thing, but after sleeping on it last night, I'd woken up this morning convinced she was right. "Dimmed lights? Stalled ferris wheels? Do you think the universe wants you two to be together?"

He considered this a moment. "Well, maybe... but... I don't know... I might."

Sam gasped, and I wanted to shake Danny. We were talking about a ghost attack, and all he could think of was Valerie. "Uh... really? Because Tech—"

"Uh, tech...nically..." Sam interrupted me. "Because... we just want you to be happy!" She was completely rambling, and I looked over at her, trying to figure out why she'd not only changed the subject from Technus back to Valerie, but was actually trying to convince Danny she was okay with the whole thing. "If you like her, we'll just have to make space for her at our table."

I could see her eye twitch, and I was about to ask her what the hell she was doing, but Danny decided the conversation was over. "And speaking of Valerie, I'm supposed to meet her before class."

It was only after he left that I realized what was going on. Valerie appeared from behind a bush, looking at Sam with a kind of wondering disbelief. "Did you mean that?"

Obviously, Sam had realized she was there listening, and that's why she'd abruptly ended the discussion about Technus. "Um..." She stumbled, and it hit me exactly what she'd said and what Valerie was asking her, and I wondered what her response would be. "Uh..." She cleared her throat, and I could see something change in her. Her shoulders sagged slightly, almost like she'd just taken on a heavy burden.

No, that wasn't it. It wasn't something she was taking on. It was something she was letting go.

She smiled at Valerie. It was a forced smile, but it was no longer an act. She was really trying. "Yeah. Sure. If Danny likes you, and you like Danny, then the least we can do is give you a chance."

I wasn't sure whether or not Valerie realized how hard that was for Sam, but either way, she certainly was grateful. She practically smothered Sam in an enormous bear hug.

Sam, for her part, looked like she was going to hurl all over the girl, but she kept it together until Valerie finally let go and rushed off in a happy daze to go find Danny.

Sam, meanwhile, stood completely still, her eyes squeezed shut like her world had just ended.

In some ways, it had.

I wanted to tell her that it wasn't forever. When I'd said the other day that this was just puppy love, and Danny would come to his senses, I'd meant it. He was going to figure out eventually where his heart really was, and it sure as hell wasn't with Valerie.

But to say that now would have been to diminish the magnitude of what she had just done. What she'd needed to do, not for Valerie, or even for Danny, but for herself. I swallowed over the lump that had formed in my throat and, putting my arm around my best friend's shoulders, I squeezed her tightly to me, hoping to convey with that gesture all the pride and love I felt for her that I could never have put into words.

A loud noise, like the whine of a jet engine on the other side of the school, startled us, and I let go of Sam as she looked up at me, her eyes wide with surprise. "Was that—?"

"It sounded like Valerie's sled!" I finished.

Sure enough, after another roar of jets, we heard some shouting that sounded like Valerie. Figuring there was only one thing that would get her to suit up at school, Sam and I took off toward the other side of the school. Our fears were confirmed when we heard Danny's voice shouting back, then the heart-stopping sound of ecto-weapons firing. Sam rounded the corner of the school just ahead of me, then skidded to a stop so abruptly, I almost crashed into her from behind.

That's when I saw what had stopped her. Valerie was hovering on her jet sled a few feet in the air, pointing her gun on Danny. Only... it wasn't Danny Phantom. It was Danny Fenton.

"What the—? What is she doing?" I tried to make sense of the scene. Not two seconds ago, she'd been all excited that Sam was okay with her and Danny getting together, and now she was aiming at him with a freaking ecto-rifle? Had she completely lost her mind?

I was still trying to wrap my mind around what was happening, when a milk carton came flying out of nowhere and smacked Valerie upside the head. Distracted, she was no longer aiming at Danny, which would give him a precious few seconds to get away, go ghost, something. Wondering who'd rescued him, I turned in the direction the milk carton had come from to see—

Valerie?

"But... she... wait. What?" I shook my head, completely lost. "If that's Valerie, then who...?" I blinked, looking back and forth between the two Valeries, the first one in full battle suit, hovering on her jet sled over Danny, while the second was in street clothes, glaring at suited-Valerie like she was going to bludgeon her to death with the stick she was holding in her hands. Then, with a battle cry like something out of a Bruce Lee movie, normal-Valerie leaped at suited-Valerie, knocking her off the sled with the stick. The ecto-rifle went flying from suited-Valerie's hand, while normal-Valerie landed, cat-like, on her feet without so much as breaking a sweat. Looking up at Danny, her fierce expression turned to alarm. "Danny! Run!"

Danny blinked at her. "But—"

"Just run!" Valerie pleaded.

Danny's face hardened to a look of anger. "Oh, I'm running. Running to get help!" Then, he took off, running past Sam and me around the corner of the school, probably to go ghost.

Meanwhile, the two Valeries were still going at it, running at each other full throttle. Normal-Valerie jammed her stick into the ground, using it like a pole vault to propel herself feet-first toward suited-Valerie. We heard the crack as her sneakers hit suited-Valerie under the chin, sending the latter Valerie flying backwards while the former Valerie flipped herself around the stick for another sweet gymnastics landing.

Even Sam was impressed. "Whoa."

I blinked. I knew she'd gotten good with that suit, but who knew she had mad martial arts skills as well? "She is a ninth degree black belt." I glanced at Sam. "He'd better not forget their anniversary."

She glared at me, and I realized it was probably too soon for jokes about Val and Danny, but dang, that girl could move! I thought Sam was going to chew me out for admiring the enemy, but instead she asked me, "Do you have anything in your backpack we can use to help her? I don't care how good she is, she's not gonna hold out long against that suit and sled."

I shook my head. "I got nothing but a Thermos. Unless that's a ghost—" I stopped short, and Sam and I stared at each other, then cried out in unison, "Technus!"

Unfortunately, if we were right, that was bad news for Valerie. Technus was the ghost Master of Technology and, like Sam pointed out, even with her considerable skills, Valerie wasn't gonna hold out against all that hardware for long. As if to confirm this, Technus climbed to his feet and began shooting at Valerie with her own ecto-rifle. She dodged pretty well, racing across the school yard, then jumping up onto a picnic table and sliding across it. As soon as she hit the far end, it tipped upwards, and she jumped off it for another graceful landing, using the now-upended table as a shield. It didn't last long, however. One blast from the ecto-rifle took out the entire top half of the table, and a second took out a good chunk of what was left. Valerie jumped up and over what remained, then flung something—no, a bunch of small, gold somethings—at Technus.

Sam nudged me. "What are those? Some kind of darts?"

I squinted, trying to see what she'd thrown as they stuck into Technus's chest. They kinda looked like darts, but... "No, they look like... keys."

Valerie grunted as she landed. "Great. Now I'm doomed and I can't get into my house."

Yep, keys.

And then, Technus nailed her with the ecto-rifle. It hit her in the chest, throwing her back a dozen yards to land face-first in the grass.

I froze, suddenly terrified for Valerie, but Sam grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me toward her. "We've gotta help her! If that is Technus in there, then maybe the Thermos will work even through the suit." Spinning me around, she grabbed my backpack and started rummaging through it, no doubt looking for the Fenton Thermos I'd told her I had.

Before she could find it, however, Danny—in ghost form this time—came roaring back into the fight. He hit Technus hard and fast, grabbing him around the waist, and dragging him up over the rooftops and down the street, then shoving him into a clock tower.

After that, we couldn't really see what was going on, just a few pink and green flares of ectoplasm. A few seconds of that, and then we heard jet engines firing up much closer to us, and I looked over to see Valerie's sled, which I'd forgotten, rising up on its own to go racing off down the street toward the fight. A moment later, the sled came back into view, this time with Valerie—no, Technus; Valerie had just dusted the grass off her skirt and was running up the street toward me and Sam—riding it. But a blast of green ectoplasm hit the sled in the engines, and the whole thing blew up right above us. Sam, Valerie and I dove for cover, the two girls ducking on either side of the school's front steps while I raced across the street and ducked behind a tree.

When chunks of flaming jet sled stopped raining down on us, I poked my head out to see Danny and Technus facing each other in the street between me and the school. Technus was down on his knees, making a grab for Valerie's ecto-rifle, which was lying a few feet from him. He grabbed it, but before he could aim, Danny got him with his ghost ray. The blast was so intense, it not only took the gun out, but half the suit's arm along with it. Next, he blew off the suit's left leg, sending Technus toppling over.

No, wait. Not Technus. The suit was empty. I slapped my forehead. He hadn't been wearing the suit, he'd been controlling it! But from where? I looked around, as if I would be able to spot him hiding behind another tree with a remote control. But that was stupid. Technus didn't work like that. He'd be using his ghost powers to manipulate the suit to keep Danny busy while he... while he what?

Then, it came to me. We'd first seen the suit go on a rampage back at Axion Labs during our field trip a couple of days after Danny had fought Technus in the mall. Danny had said after that field trip that he didn't think it had been Valerie, that she usually shouted out threats when she went after him. And he'd only gone ghost after the suit had started shooting up the place, so why would she have done so in the first place, especially considering that all her dad's money woes had been the direct result of a ghost taking apart Axion Labs? And if Technus had been at Axion, then it stood to reason that he was after the biggest, baddest piece of technology there: the Cybertron Megacomputer.

While I was mulling all this over, Danny was finishing off Technus. Now that Sam's theory about Technus manipulating him and Valerie had been proven correct, he was furious, and he was taking out his anger on the empty suit. "Say good-bye, punk!" he shouted as he sent another green ray from his hands, this time blowing a hole clean through the suit's chest. Danny stood over the suit, grinning in victory, until his expression suddenly turned to alarm, and he took off straight up into the sky. A moment later, the suit exploded, and more chunks of metal rained down on us, forcing us all back into cover.

When I finally was able to look out toward the school again, Valerie was in the middle of the street on her knees, holding the suit's torso with the giant hole in it. Danny landed back in the street not far from her, and they exchanged some looks I couldn't quite see from my position across the street, until the school bell rang and Danny jerked his thumb behind him. "Uh... I gotta go." Then, he flew off.

She watched him leave as she cradled her suit in her arms. "He was trying to do that to me. That could have been me! But... it wasn't." Her eyes widened and she looked up, focusing on something by the door of the school. "And now I can prove it!"

Following her gaze, I saw what she was looking at. The school's security camera.

Oh, crud. If the camera taped the whole thing, then Principal Ishyama was gonna be looking for Danny to ask him what an apparently robotic suit was doing shooting at him in the school yard. He'd need some time to think up a good story, which meant Sam and I needed to find him as soon as possible.

I saw Sam crawling out from her hiding spot behind the stairs and ran across the street to catch up with her. "Come on," I whispered as I grabbed her arm. "We need to go find Danny. Principal Ishyama is gonna be looking for him."

She frowned at me, confused. "Why would she be looking for Danny?"

I jerked my head toward Valerie, who was still looking up at the security camera.

Sam looked, too, then realized what I was talking about. "The security camera! It must have taped the whole battle!"

I nodded. "And it started with that suit attacking Danny. He's gonna need to think up a pretty good explanation for a robotic suit going after him like that."

It was easy enough for Danny to play innocent, and we managed to get through the day without anything else weird happening. As soon as school let out, the three of us headed back to Danny's to strategize. When we got to his room, I told them my theory. "So, Technus must've been behind the attack during the tour. Which means he's probably trying to crack the code and get into the main computer in space!"

Sam picked up where I left off. "Which he can use to control every computer in the world."

"You only know that because I told you that." Then, I noticed Danny wasn't really contributing to the discussion. He was just sitting on his bed, resting his chin in his hands. I frowned. "You okay?"

Danny sighed. "You should've seen Valerie's face. I'm sure she thinks I was trying to waste her."

Sam rallied beside him. "But you weren't."

Her support did nothing to hearten him. "It doesn't matter. If I wanna ask Valerie out, I'm gonna have to never tell her I'm Danny Phantom."

I felt bad for him, I did. But I wanted to smack him, too. Did he really think he could have an actual relationship with Valerie while hiding half his life from her? I was gonna ask him that, but he didn't give me the chance. His hangdog expression morphing into something more determined, he jumped up from the bed. "But first... We're gonna get rid of that virus called Technus once and for all."

Before he could get out the door, however, his dad appeared, blocking his way. "Danny! Word on the street is, you got yourself a girlfriend!"

Now I really felt bad for him. His dad grabbed him, giving him a knowing nudge-nudge-wink-wink kinda squeeze before turning his attention on me and Sam. "Uh... can you two leave so I can have a totally awkward father/son chat?"

Danny was so on his own. "Gone and gone," Sam and I said together as we scrambled for the door.

Once outside, Sam and I decided to go to my house, knowing that Danny would call us as soon as he got free of his dad. As we walked, Sam immediately launched into strategizing. "If Technus is in the Megacomputer hub at Axion, we're not gonna be able to get in there with Danny to help him. But we can keep watch. Remember what happened the last time he had to sneak into Axion Labs."

I stopped, watching her as she walked ahead of me, not even realizing I was no longer beside her. She was focusing on the ghost problem and helping Danny, like we always did, but there was still that stiffness in her shoulders and in her voice as well. Not the angry, jealous stiffness from the other day when she was slamming books around her locker and using binoculars to spy on Danny. It was that raw kind of stiffness she had when she'd told Valerie we'd have to give her a chance. And as much as she needed to let go, I couldn't stand seeing her in pain anymore.

She finally realized I wasn't walking alongside her and stopped to look back at me, a questioning look on her face.

"It won't last, you know," I told her.

"Not if Danny can get him out of there quickly—"

I raised my eyebrow. "I'm not talking about Technus, and you know it." I moved towards her, putting my hand on her shoulder. "How do you think it's gonna work if he has to completely shut her out of half his life? It can't. Eventually, one of them will get sick of it and it'll be over."

There was a flash of a smile as she was bolstered by this, but then the resignation was back. "We should try and help convince her Danny Phantom knew she wasn't in the suit. That he'd never hurt her."

I could feel my eyes going wide. Acceptance was all well and good, but I was so not on board with helping Danny and Val stay together in a relationship that was ultimately doomed anyway. "Why?"

She just looked determined. "Because it's true. And because if she keeps up this vendetta against him while dating him at the same time, something's gonna have to give."

"Exactly my point!"

She shook her head. "That something will be Danny. She's a smart girl, Tuck. She'll figure it out eventually, and... as much as I believe she really likes him, I'm not so sure she likes him more than she hates Danny Phantom. I don't trust what she might do if she found out."

She did have a point, but it still sounded like a fool's errand to me. "Honestly? I think we'd have better luck convincing Danny to give up on dating her than we would of convincing her to give up her grudge. She's not exactly... flexible."

It was no longer hurt I saw in Sam's eyes, but fear. Not of losing him to her, but of losing him period. "That's why this whole thing worries me."

About an hour later, Danny showed up at my house in ghost form, and the three of us headed over to Axion Labs to go after Technus. On our way, he told us about the talk he'd had with his dad.

And that's where the ring came in.

"He said I could give Valerie his old college class ring. How cool is that?"

I rolled my eyes at him. "And then you can take her to the soda shop, or ask her to the sock hop!" I looked at Sam, expecting her to join me in the mocking, but she was looking at Danny like he'd just slapped her in the face and, once again, I was reminded how hard this was for her, to watch him go on and on and on about Valerie. How could he be so oblivious about how badly he was hurting her? He did seem to notice her look, though, because he frowned at her like he was trying to figure it out, until she turned away.

But as he headed off toward Axion to go after Technus, he did something that just about broke my brain. After handing Sam a pair of Fenton Phones so we could let him know if we saw Technus outside the building, he dug into the pocket of his jumpsuit. "Oh! And, uh... hold this." He pulled out something small and round and placed that in Sam's hand as well. She blinked, and I looked over to see what he'd given her.

The ring. The class ring he was planning on giving to another girl.

I gaped after Danny as he left. "He really is clueless, isn't he?"

Sam didn't answer, instead inspecting the ring. "Who the heck is Wes?"

I had no idea what she was talking about, and I didn't care. That ring was for his girlfriend, and Danny had given it to Sam. Did he really not comprehend what he'd just done? I shook my head. "Seriously, he's like the King of Clueless. If we were gonna give him one of those radio code names, it'd be 'Clueless One.'" I grinned as a thought came to me. "Hey, I like that. He'll be 'Clueless One,' you can be 'Goth One,' and I'll be 'Stud One.'"

Sam snorted at me. "'Stud One?' Try 'Geek One.' But I'll give you 'Goth One.' And 'Clueless One' is right on the money."

I watched her a moment as she looked at the ring. "You know, you really should tell him."

As she usually did whenever I brought up how she felt about Danny, she ignored me. But I wasn't gonna let it go, not this time. "I'm serious, Sam. He really is that clueless. No matter how obvious it is to pretty much everyone else on the planet, he's never ever gonna figure it out for himself. You're gonna have to tell him."

She scowled at me, and I knew what she was thinking. What's the point? He doesn't like me that way. But I knew better. I knew Danny better than anyone. Better than he knew himself. And Danny was totally into Sam. I knew from almost the first moment we met her, or at least the first time she came over to his house, back when the Fenton Portal was just a blueprint and a bunch of chalk markings on his basement wall, that there was something between them. Something big. They didn't even like each other that way back then, but I knew.

Not that he didn't like Valerie. He did. But not like he liked Sam, only... something about liking Sam scared the snot out of him. Not only wouldn't he admit how he felt about her to me, he wasn't even about it admit it to himself.

There were moments, though—brief flashes, when I could see that he got it. Like when they were dancing together at that school dance at the beginning of the year. Or after that whole wishverse thing, when he'd told her he never realized how different his life would have been if he hadn't met her. Or when he was going off to face the Ghost King in a battle suit that might be fatal to use, and he asked her if there was anything she wanted to say to him, just in case. Times like that, he was practically begging her to tell him how she felt, to knock off the blinders and force him to see.

I would have loved to have been the one to smack some sense into him, but I knew from experience that it wouldn't work coming from me. I still remembered his first crush, back in the fourth grade. Lisa Kowalski. Pretty, blonde, a cute laugh. But that was back when girls still had cooties and actually liking one was akin to high treason. Danny would have sooner chewed off his own head than admit he liked Lisa, but I knew he did. So, being a fourth grade boy and being, well, me, I teased him without mercy. Danny and Lisa, sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G... He denied it, of course, and was so bent on proving me wrong—to himself as much as anyone—that when Lisa decided she liked him, too, and asked if he wanted to sit next to her at lunch, he laughed in her face. Then, he told her girls were dumb and ran away.

He was fourteen now, not nine. Girls no longer had cooties, and he had enough sense of self-preservation to never tell Sam she was dumb—not that he would ever even think it. But if I pushed him on it, he'd run away just as fast as he had in the fourth grade. He was that scared of liking her. So it couldn't be me. The push had to come from Sam.

And that was exactly why he'd given her that ring. Just like before he went to fight the Ghost King, he was begging her to call his bluff and make him face his own feelings.

But she wouldn't, because she was scared, too. Not as bad as he was. She wasn't in total denial. She'd deny it to the world, but she didn't deny it to herself, and she didn't even deny it to me. But she wouldn't address the subject, either. Not to me, and certainly not to Danny. "Give it a rest, Tucker," was all she said. Then, to make sure I couldn't press the matter further, she was squawking Danny on the Fenton Phones. "Clueless One, this is Goth One. Over."

Danny's voice came over our earpieces a moment later. "Goth One, this is Clueless One." He paused. "Why am I Clueless One?"

"Tell him!" I shouted at Sam, making sure my mic was on so that Danny would hear and ask what we were talking about.

"Shut it!" she growled back, then smacked me in the head for good measure.

But Danny didn't ask what we were talking about, because he found the lab with the hub to the Megacomputer. "I'm in. And from the looks of the computer, Technus is still in there."

And so the dance would continue, with neither one of them daring to take a single step closer.

Resigned to their cluelessness, I returned my focus to the task at hand, but that's when everything went completely to hell. Sam and I heard a door slam through Danny's Fenton Phone, and someone crying out. "You!"

Valerie.

"Oh, darn it," Danny responded.

There was more shouting—Valerie's dad, probably—yelling at Danny to get away. Sam looked at me and flipped off her microphone so as not to distract Danny. "Tuck, can you do anything to help him? Access the security system or something?"

I was already on it, but there was no point. I threw up my hands in frustration. "No! Technus is controlling the security system and everything else in the lab. I can't hack into anything!"

More noise over the Fenton Phones as Danny tried to explain he was after an evil ghost, while the Grays kept shouting accusations at him. "See why I need to hunt these ghosts?" That was Valerie again. "They think they can do whatever they want. But somebody has to stop them!" Then there was more noise, like weapons firing. So not good.

Sam was in a panic. "Tucker, do something!"

But there was nothing I could do. Technus had completely locked me out. There were more sounds—shouting, weapons, and something like a zap of electricity. But we were helpless. All we could do was wait and watch the building from outside, hoping to get some clue as to what was going on in there and what we could do to help.

After a minute or two—though it felt like a lot longer—the roof to the Axion building opened up, and an enormous satellite dish pointed up into the sky, glowed white for a couple of seconds, then shot a huge green blast of something that looked like ectoplasm out into space. As soon as it did, a hiss of static sounded on my PDA, and I looked at the screen. "Uh-oh. Baby's got a headache."

Abruptly, the static cleared, and we heard Technus laugh. "It's over, child! You can't stop me now!"

"We'll see about that!" That was Danny. Sam and I both heaved sighs of relief at hearing his voice, strong and alert, after all that shooting.

Then, we heard a new noise through the Fenton Phones, something that sounded like a rocket firing up. A few seconds later, we saw a streak of light shooting out through the roof. Realizing what it was, I pointed into the sky. "That's him! He's using the X-23 Booster Rocket! He's gonna—"

Danny cut me off, screaming in terror over his Fenton Phone, but eventually the screams became whoops of joy. "Hey! I'm an astronaut!"

Dude. Danny's biggest dream in life was to be an astronaut, and there he was, going into space. At age fourteen.

But something else shot out of the roof, and Sam was on her Fenton Phone. "Uh, Danny?"

I squinted up into the night sky, trying to see what it was, when it hit me. Valerie. My eyes wide, I looked at Sam. "She's not going to follow him, is she? That sled can't possibly have enough power to launch her into space! And that suit would never hold up in a vacuum!"

"I don't know about that suit, but her sled seems to be doing just fine." Sam turned on her microphone again. "Danny, come in. Stay alert. You have company."

"Company? What kind of company—?" By the yelp of surprise that followed, I figured he didn't need us to answer.

Sam did anyway, her voice filled with resignation. "It's your girlfriend."

"She's not my girlfriend until I give her the ring."

I seriously was going to strangle him if he didn't shut up about the stupid ring, especially around Sam. "What is this, 1955?"

Sam, however, was too busy peering up into the sky, trying to figure out what was going on. Unfortunately, there was nothing we could see from the ground, not without a telescope, anyway. To make matters worse, we didn't hear anything more from Danny's Fenton Phone. Sam jerked her head toward my PDA. "How's Baby doing? Can you get any indication of what's going on up there?"

I shook my head. "I'm still just getting Technus." I showed her the screen, and all that was there was static and the sound of Technus laughing.

Sam looked from the PDA to me. "Well, as soon as Danny gets away from Valerie, he'll take care of Technus, right? And then your PDA will be fine. That's how we'll know."

The next few minutes were the longest of my life. After what seemed like weeks, Technus's laugh cut off, then the static cleared and my main menu reappeared. Hissing a triumphant breath through my teeth, I poked at the screen with the stylus. Everything was normal. I smiled at Sam. "Looks like Danny got him."

She nodded, but worry still darkened her eyes as she turned to look up once more. "Let's just hope Valerie doesn't get Danny."

It was another minutes-into-hours wait before anything else happened. A streak of red, almost like a comet, shot through the sky and descended on Axion Labs. When it finally got low enough, we could see that it was Valerie, although her suit looked really different.

But no Danny.

Sam looked like she was about to lose it, and I was afraid she'd do something stupid, like go running off after Valerie to ask her what had happened to Danny, but then her cell phone rang, and I recognized the ring tone as the one she'd assigned to Danny's cell. She flipped it open and held it to her ear. "Danny? Are you—?" She paused, and I prompted her to tell me what was going on, but she held up her finger to me. "What happened?" she asked into the phone. "How did she—?" And a moment later, she hung up.

"Well?"

"He says he's tired, and he'll fill us in before school tomorrow." Her brow furrowed. "He sounded... I don't know. Defeated. Like he'd lost."

I tried to reassure her. "Well, he obviously didn't lose. Technus is gone, and he's still here. I guess we'll have to wait until tomorrow to hear what happened."

We got the full story about what had happened with Technus—and with Valerie—before school. Apparently, he'd overheard a conversation between her and her dad where she'd said she liked Danny enough to give up ghost hunting. He also told us about how she'd fried him with some electrical charge from her sled, causing him to involuntarily blast her with his ghost ray. Yet another black mark in her Danny Phantom book. I sort of hoped that that would wake him up to the fact that dating Valerie was a bad idea, but no such luck. At the end of school, he asked Sam if she had his ring. "I kinda was hoping to give it to Valerie today."

Sam took it in stride, and even sounded almost cheery as she dropped the ring into his hand. "Here you go."

I wasn't quite as ready to let it slide. "You sure about this?"

"Well, she said she'd give up ghost hunting. For me."

Sam and I looked at each other, unconvinced, but he wasn't about to be dissuaded. "Besides, I like her, and she likes me back. Isn't it supposed to be that simple?"

I glanced at Sam again, and we rolled our eyes and said together, "Clueless."

Before Danny could reply, Valerie showed up. "Danny?"

He looked up at her and gave her a dopey smile. "Wow." He laughed, sounding nervous, then stood up. "I-I'm glad you're here. I...wanted to ask you something."

"Actually, me first."

On that note, I beat a hasty retreat. Sam was a little more reluctant, and I thought I was gonna have to go back and drag her away from the table, but she finally rose on her own and joined me behind some bushes that were just far enough away to be out of Danny's way, but close enough where we could still hear everything as Valerie started talking.

"Danny... I've had a lot of fun these last few days, but... my life's way too complicated right now for us to be anything other than..." She looked down, embarrassed. "Friends."

Sam and I exchanged surprised glances. Totally didn't see that one coming. I wasn't crazy about them getting together, but she obviously liked him, so what was she doing?

Danny looked like he'd been struck by a train. "Just friends? But... but... I thought..."

"I thought, too. But there's something important I have to do, and I don't want you to get hurt because of it."

Oh no she didn't. She did not just pull the old my-life-is-too-dangerous-for-love bit on Amity Park's resident superhero. And all because of a grudge against... Amity Park's resident superhero? I gaped at them, wagging my head slowly back and forth.

Sam looked just as dumbstruck as I was. It was good news for her, really, but she cared about Danny's happiness too much to rejoice in seeing him get dumped by way of a truckload of irony.

Valerie, for her part, was trying to be cheerful about it, but her smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "Besides, it's not like you were gonna give me some lame class ring, right?"

Oh, snap. Insult to injury. Danny laughed it off as if he would never do something so lame, then she kissed him on the cheek, as if that could somehow make it better.

I could see Sam clenching her fists and grinding her teeth and figured Valerie was toast, even if she did have the whole martial arts things and a wicked new suit on her side.

But when Sam got a look at Danny, standing alone in the school yard where Valerie had left him, looking down at that stupid ring in the palm of his hand, her anger at Valerie evaporated. Leaving me in the bushes, she went over to his side as he sat back down at the picnic table we'd just vacated. She hesitated a moment, like she wanted to say something, but then put her hand on his shoulder.

Even from where I was standing, I could see a little of the tension run out of him at her touch. It didn't take away the hurt he was feeling, not even close. But he still had her, and that small part of him that knew that's what he needed responded.

And then he did the unthinkable. He held out his dad's class ring to her. "Can you hang onto this?"

She gaped at him a moment, and I wondered if she was going to slug him for being so freaking oblivious. But then she smiled—a real, genuine smile—and offered her hand so he could give the ring back to her. Closing her hand over the ring, she sighed, then tossed it into the air. As she caught it again, she smiled. "Clueless."

Two girls from school came up behind me. Evidently, Danny's and Val's short-lived romance was quite the gossip item at Casper High. "Dumped him, huh?" one of them asked.

"Apparently."

"Goth girl making her move?" the other wanted to know.

"Doubt it." Because she was as bad as he was. For the second time in as many days, Sam had ended up with the ring that was supposed to be for the girl Danny liked, the one he wanted to be his girlfriend, and yet, they still had both managed to completely miss the significance of that.

How was it possible for two people to be so completely clueless?