Things had mostly settled into a sort of normal in the weeks since they'd been back on O'ahu. You know. For whatever passed as normal for their jobs. A no more phone calls from The Devil. No more space ships level normal. That was all that Danny asked for and that was what he got here.

As long as Jerry wasn't around. Because he just knew Jerry had some opinions about UFOs.

What wasn't normal was getting called to Grace's school for a disciplinary meeting with the Principal over something Grace was being accused of doing. He knew his little girl well enough to know that this was probably some straight up bullshit.

Danny nodded over at the sullen kid slumped down on the bench across from him. "What are you in for?" The kid shrugged in a way he hoped to god Gracie would never pick up. "You don't know?"

"Mr. Williams? Principal Fisk will see you now," the secretary said, finally putting him out of his misery in waiting for the answer to what was going on here.

He held back just enough in following her to give the kid a fistbump. "Hope you beat the rap, buddy. Keep your chin up."

Then hurried on to keep up to step through into the Principal's office where Grace was already waiting, looking anxious and shifty. Which wasn't at all what he wanted to see.

"Please, have a seat." Principal Fisk gestured to the empty chair next to Grace, a strained attempt at a smile on her face. "The school code of conduct requires that students both act in a safe, responsible manner. And respect the rights of their peers. Unfortunately, Grace is here today because she violated both those rules."

"Okay," Danny said, holding up a hand to stop her there. "I, uh, I know what kind of kids get called to the principal's office. I know that because I was one of those kids. But in this case, the apple falls very far away from the tree. Okay? Grace is a very sweet, very respectful young lady. Always."

"No one doubts that, Mr. Williams. But, the fact remains that your daughter physically struck a classmate."

"Well, then I'm gonna have to say that there was something more to it. Maybe this kid deserved it."

Well. It was safe to say that he'd been around Steve too much. Or that the Jersey was just jumping right on out.

"It is never okay to strike another student," Principal Fisk said, making sure to address Grace in case she did something ridiculous like listen to her father here.

"I don't know about that. Maybe this kid was picking on her. Maybe they started it. How can you just assume she was acting with malicious intent?" Danny asked, going straight on into protective dad mode.

Principal Fisk looked very much like she'd bitten into a lemon. "I'm sorry, are you a lawyer?"

"No, no, no. I'm a cop, you see," Danny said, trying not to be offended by the lawyer thing. "As a cop, you always have to think about motive. Like when a girl who's never been in trouble, always gets straight A's, ends up in the principal's office… maybe there's some extenuating circumstances."

"Very well," Principal Fisk said, turning her attention onto his Gracie. "Grace, would you care to explain to us why you punched Lucas Banks so hard that he required four stitches to stop the bleeding?"

Danny didn't know whether or not he should be proud of that sort of punch, but...

Grace looked up from the floor and then over at him like she was expecting some argument over what she'd done. Then looked back at the principal. "I've got no excuse. I'm sorry."

"Thank you," Principal Fisk said, smiling with a much more smug tone as she looked at Danny. "I understand it's not easy to admit when you're wrong." She sort of just let that sit there for a moment before getting right back down to business. "Now, the only thing to discuss is your punishment."

Of course this wouldn't happen during Rachel's time with Grace.

Once they were safely outside of the school and away from the vicious gaze of Principal Fisk, Danny let himself sigh. "Suspended for a week You know that's a big deal, right? You're aware of that?"

"I know, Danno," Grace muttered, not making eye contact with him. "I'm sorry."

"What do you mean you're sorry?" Danny asked, touching her arm to keep her from continuing to walk to the car. "Hold on. Stop. Explain something to me. Because I know you wouldn't just punch some kid in the face with no reason."

"Lucas was picking on my friend Katie," Grace said, tugging on the straps of her backpack. "I told him to stop and he didn't."

"So, you hit him."

She nodded. "You said the only way to deal with bullies is to stand up to them."

Oh god, now he'd gone and corrupted his baby girl somehow.

"Okay. That's--that's fine. But why didn't you say something when she asked you what happened? Why didn't you speak up?"

"Because I'm no rat," Grace said like it was obvious. And it was possibly the most New Jersey thing she'd ever said in her entire life.

"You're no rat," Danny repeated, trying to wrap his head around the solemn nod she gave him in response to that. All while his work phone rang. "Who are you and what have you done with my daughter? Listen to me, we will discuss this more later, but for now you're grounded."

---

"You know, I don't get it. Apparently these days kids pledge allegiance, it's to the Mafia Code of Omerta, right?" Danny said, following Steve from the car--his car--to their latest investigation into an escaped convict who pulled a runner at the courthouse. Which was a new level of bold. "I mean. I have no idea what's gotten into her."

"Really?" Steve asked, shooting him a look.

"Yes, really."

"She reminds me of someone else I know."

"Oh really? Who's that?" Danny asked.

"Well, let's see," Steve said, starting to count off things on his fingers. "She's scrappy, stubborn, hotheaded, and loyal to a fault. She's you, pal."

The smug little look was thoroughly uncalled for if you asked Danny. "Ah. Well. That's disturbingly insightful. Maybe I was a little hard on her, no?"

"I think so," Steve agreed with a little grin. "Come on."

They had a crime scene to examine, a fugitive to capture before the US Marshals got on their ass about it, and Steve's new best friend Captain Lou Grover to liaise with, after all.

"Lou, what have we got?" Steve asked, heading for where SWAT was sort of just loitering around in the opposite of a Troopers-not-removing-their- helmets-free workspace. He and Grover had thawed considerably after a case involving a Jonas Brother psychotic computer hacker.

"Fugitive's name is Roy Parrish," Lou said. And it was still weird, to Danny at least, the 180 done from his and Steve's interactions from what they were before… well. Before the time and place he did not wish to think of as real, pictures of space on Steve's phone be damned. "Missing for 37 minutes now. APB's gone out, we've got birds in the air, we've got a roadblock in a 15 block radius, and HPD is performing car-to-car searches as we speak. Mr. Parrish is a three-striker. If he gets cornered, there's no way he'll surrender peacefully."

That did not bode well for anyone, honestly. Once they got the details the person they were dealing with from Chin and Kono's research (a lifetime criminal who dipped into white collar crimes before getting nailed on a murder charge) they split up to look into his family (Chin and Kono) and the witness he threatened to murder in open court like a complete idiot (Steve and Danny).

"This guy Parrish, he's sharp enough to put together an elaborate real estate scam," Danny said, hurrying his pace to keep up with Steve's stupidly long legs as they went back outside. "It's hard to imagine he'd risk going back to prison just to take a shot at a witness. I'm guessing he's gonna lay low, find a way to get off the island."

"Yeah, maybe," Steve replied as he went around the car to the driver's side. "He's not going to last long without help, right? He'll have to surface sooner or later."

All that speculation ended up being for nothing as they got into Danny's car and a gun was immediately pressed to the back of Steve's head.

"Drive."

Well, at least they'd found their fugitive?

"Okay, here's how it's gonna go, big guy," Roy Parrish said, keeping the gun trained on Steve as he did as instructed and drove the car away from the courthouse. "Keep both your hands on that wheel. Blondie, you go ahead and pass me back those guns."

"I've got a better idea, how about I send back some handcuffs. You put them on, nobody has to die, okay?" Danny suggested instead.

Which only made Parrish laugh. "You're the funny one, I guess." And then he dug the barrel of his gun into the back of Danny's neck to force compliance. "Guns. Pass 'em back, grip first. C'mon. Give 'em to me."

"Clearly you have not thought this through," Steve said, passing his gun back as instructed. "This entire place is locked down. You're not getting out of here. The only way this ends well for you is if you surrender to us right now." Steve wasn't exactly counting on that happening, of course, but it was worth making the effort.

"I'll take that under advisement. Right now, all you gotta do is shut up and drive."

"That's going to be a problem," Danny said, gesturing helplessly at the roadblock/car search just ahead of them.

"Alright. Blondie, give me your phone," Parrish demanded, keeping the gun pressed against Danny's shoulder as a warning as it was handed over to him. He flicked through the camera roll for a moment in silence before asking, "That your daughter?"

Steve's hands tightened on the steering wheel as he shot Danny a sideways glance once that phone was shoved into Danny's face. "I said, is that your daughter?" Parrish repeated.

"Yeah," Danny said, quiet and resigned to the situation that they found themselves in.

"What's her name?"

"Her name is Grace."

The answer was apparently good enough for Parrish as he continued tapping on the phone before making a call. And in the cramped confines of the car, it was easy to hear the tinny, "Hi, daddy," that came through once the call connected.

"No, honey. I'm not your daddy," Parrish said, eyes on the roadblock ahead of them. "I'm a good friend of your daddy's. He asked me to call you because there's a sound that he wants you to hear, okay? Hold on."

He pressed the mute button on the phone and pressed the gun right into the middle of the back of Danny's seat. "Now, listen to me. We don't make it though that checkpoint, she's going to hear you die. You understand?"

"Danno?" came Grace's voice over the phone again, sounding anxious.

"Nod your head if you understand," Parrish demanded. He turned off the mute button and said, "Here it comes, honey. You just listen up."

This was a situation smashing all of the buttons for Steve, who still woke up at night from nightmares of the sound of the gunshot that killed his dad. He reached for his own phone and called Grover. "Listen, our fugitive was just spotted."

"Where?"

"A service station in Wai'anae. We need all available resources up there to start searching the area, okay?"

"Wait a minute, that's halfway across the island! I'm not gonna abandon our perimeter on the hope that this thing is real."

Steve didn't take his eyes from the road. Looking over at the gun pointed at Danny would change nothing other than his blood pressure. "Listen to me, this is solid, you understand? Solid. One of Chin Ho's CI's called it in. And the longer we waste time, the further he gets. We need boots on the ground up there right now! Do you hear me, Lou? Right now."

They waited another tense few seconds before the radio crackled with Grover's orders to immediately break off to get all the way over to Wai'anae. Police cars screeched away from them just a few cars away from where they'd been waiting at the checkpoint.

"Okay, Grace. We're gonna have to try this again later," Parrish said into the phone. "Bye now." And, because he apparently just couldn't help himself, he added, "You see just what you can get accomplished once you put your mind to it?"

"Okay, so I assume you've got everything figured out," Danny ground out. "Want to tell us what happens next?"

"What happens next is you're gonna handcuff your partner's wrist to the steering wheel and give me his phone," Parrish said. "Looks like we're gonna be spending a little bit of time together and those things are trackable. So, they've gotta go."

Steve passed his phone back without question, holding his other hand still for Danny to secure the cuff to the wheel with a double lock since half-assing it wouldn't really fly with someone who knew how the cuffs worked.

"You know what, Parrish," Steve said, "clearly you're a smart guy, but every single cop on the island is looking for you right now. Plus the TSA and the Port Authority have both been alerted, which means you show your face at the airport or any of the docks, they're gonna be all over you. And it's only a matter of time before our team comes looking for us. So, what I'm saying to you is, with or without us, there is no way you're getting off this island."

"But I'm not running," Parrish replied, not sounding or looking at all disturbed by that. "I've got other plans." He smashed both of their phones with the butt of his gun, cracking them beyond use. "We need some new wheels."

---

Once they had successfully carjacked some poor schmuck and been directed toward the supposed construction site where the very witness that Parrish had threatened to kill worked, things of course had to take a different turn. And not just because Danny came back to the car with the news that there was no Archie Akama on the site.

Why Danny had missed this place was currently beyond him. "Okay, do me a favor. Explain something to me," he said as he got back in and they drove away. "How is it that the same guy who testified against you is the one who can clear your name?"

"I'm going to get him to recant his testimony," Parrish said.

And Danny, being Danny, could hardly help himself but to respond with, "Oh. Right. With a gun to his head. I'm sure he's gonna admit to anything you want him to. Maybe he'll say he's Santa Claus or something."

"The only way I'm gonna prove I'm innocent is for Akama to admit he lied under oath."

"Wait a minute, why would he perjure himself just to get you convicted?" Steve asked, frowning.

"Because the whole thing was a massive frame-up from the get-go," Parrish said. "I needed a job, so I answered an ad in the newspaper for a sales job. I didn't know the whole thing was a scam: they were just looking for some mope with a record."

"They? Who's they?" Steve asked, and Danny gave him serious side-eye. Was Steve doing his usual savior of the downtrodden thing here? With a guy who was currently holding them hostage?

"Dale Sullivan," Parrish said. "He's the one that gave me the job and the one I went to when one of the investors made noise about the whole set-up."

"Why didn't you go to the police?" Steve asked.

"Sullivan said it was all a misunderstanding. Next thing I knew, the Feds were kicking down my door. The investor's shot in the head. They've got an eye-witness on the scene."

Danny, despite himself, was also being drawn into this bullshit. "Archie Akama."

"Paid off, no doubt," Parrish said bitterly. "If that wasn't enough, they planted the murder weapon in my place. Okay? Soon as I saw that, I knew it was Sullivan from the get-go. They made sure all the contracts had my signature, the bank accounts were in my name. The murder weapon and the witness were just the final nail."

"What'd the Feds say when you told them all that?" Danny asked.

"The same thing the two of you are thinking right now: that I'm lying. They said Sullivan didn't exist. But I'll tell you one thing, that little rat, Akama? He's still out there somewhere and I'm gonna find him."

"Okay, um, well," Danny said, trying very hard to buy into any of this. "Let's say you do find him. Let's say you're telling the truth. You get a confession out of him, it's not going to help you. It'll be under duress and it won't stick."

"There's another problem with this," Steve chimed in. "Akama's address was on those cellphones you smashed."

"And we are now officially driving around in circles," Danny asked. Because O'ahu was an island. Why were criminals always so dumb? "What's next in your brilliant plan there, buddy?" Danny asked, glancing back over his shoulder at Parrish in the backseat. "Because we're going to run out of gas."

"I could still shoot you both and take the car!" Parrish said, using the gun to emphasize his point.

"Yeah, that'd prove everything you just said was a lie. Now, if you wanna clear your name, if that's what you wanna do, there's only one way to do it," Steve said.

"How's that?" Parrish asked.

"Yeah, how's that?" Danny asked, having a bad feeling about this.

"You let us take you in," Steve said. "We track down Akama, we sort out what's going on here. No Feds, no HPD. Just you and us and Akama in a room. I promise if he's lying, we'll get it out of him. You came to us for a fair shake, you gonna let us give you one?"

"Okay. Alright. I'll do it your way," Parrish said, head in his hands for a moment before Steve pulled a u-turn on a busy roadway to get them headed toward the Palace. Because Steve.

"You know, I've got to ask a question," Danny said after a moment. "You are a three time felon. You just got out of the joint. Guys like you do not get jobs selling real estate to rich investors. Not legitimately, anyway. So, you must have known that what you were doing was not on the up and up."

"How old's your daughter?" Parrish just ignored the pissed off the little headshake Danny gave at even mentioning his kid again after the stunt he'd pulled. "Eleven? Twelve? Where were you when she was born? I bet you were right there. That you held her in your arms, heard her first little cry. Wouldn't be surprised if you cut the cord. You probably did, didn't you? You know where I was?"

Danny sighed and shook his head. "No."

"Max sec. Otter Creek. Wheelwright, Kentucky. By the time I was released, my little girl was already six years old. With my record, I was lucky I could see her a couple hours every weekend."

Danny steadfastly ignored to look Steve tossed his way at that.

"I'd take her to the park, push her on a swing, buy shaved ice… Know what that's like? I was there, every Saturday, no matter what. Until I… until I went up again. And the years kept piling up, one after another. By the time I got out, she wasn't my little girl anymore. Already made up her mind about what kind of man I was. I figured this new job was my chance to make a little bit of money, maybe put her through college. Do something right for once in my life." He took a breath, shaking himself out of whatever that monologue had been. "You guys can believe whatever the hell you want."

Which of course meant the moment needed to be broken by the sound of sirens behind them, two HPD squads coming up on their tail fast. "When did you tip them off?" Parish shouted. "After you gave me your word?!"

"Nobody tipped anybody off, Roy. I told you our team would come looking for us. Didn't I tell you that?" Steve asked.

"Lose 'em!" Parrish demanded, shoving the gun into Steve's side. "Now!"

Steve would never give up on a chance to drive like an absolute maniac. He pulled ahead of the squads once they caught up with them, glancing over at Danny once to communicate what was going to happen next, then slammed on the brakes.

Parrish flew forward between the two front seats. Danny pulled Parrish into a headlock, holding him in place and grabbing for his gun. Steve slammed an helpful elbow into Parrish's face, causing him to fall back and the gun to slip from his hand and into Danny's. In a matter of seconds, Danny was twisted around in his seat, gun trained on Parrish. He held it there while he took the cuffs that had been locking Steve to the steering wheel at one point and passing them back.

"Put them on. Nice and tight," he demanded, not wavering as he aimed the gun with his other hand. "Sit back."

But Steve didn't slow down to let HPD catch up with them. And pursuit tended to be terminated after a certain point, so that wasn't great.

"Babe, just so you know," Danny began, glancing over at him. "The brake is the square pedal on the left."

"I'm aware of that." Steve said, eyes trained on the road in front of him.

"Okay, so what are you doing? Whatever you're doing, don't do it. Please."

"Listen to me, Danny. Guilty guys--they run. They don't kidnap a couple of cops to prove they were framed."

"Okay, good. So we drop him off with HPD and we look into the story ourselves."

"We don't."

"We don't?"

"We don't. We gave him our word that we would track down Akama before we turn him over to the cops. Alright? That's what we're gonna do."

The amount that Steve owed him for going along with this was going to be vast and unending. "39 Olive Avenue, Wahiawa," Danny said, pursing his lips in annoyance.

"What is that?"

"That is Akama's address," Danny snapped. "Okay? Back at the construction site. The foreman did not say that he didn't work there, he said that he wasn't working today. Okay?"

The look of betrayal that Steve gave him for that was uncalled for. "Oh, don't give me a look, okay? I did the hard part. All you gotta do now is outrun the cops."

---

Following Steve's plan once again got them into a firefight with heavily armed, masked thugs, which Danny was just beginning to expect at this point. If they'd still been in their own car, there would have been tac vests for them to have worn, but no. They had to go and swap cars because Parrish was a moron.

Lucky for them, Chin and SWAT had shown up at the right moment to keep them from getting massacred, but Akama was dead and Parrish had pulled a runner on them in the middle of the firefight. Danny wished he was more surprised.

"Nice entrance." Steve said, smiling easily.

"Why is it everywhere you go, people are shooting at you?" Grover demanded in the most put-upon tone a man could just have after walking onto a crime scene.

"Today they weren't gunning for me. Okay?" As opposed to every other time people fired guns at Steve.

"Where's Parrish?"

"We got separated during the gunfight."

"He ain't here," Danny said, coming back out from checking the other rooms of the house. "He's gone." And that was annoying enough to keep him moving right on past Steve and Grover to go find literally anything that wasn't going to tick him off.

"Oh, thank god," Catherine said, rushing right on past Danny to hug Steve. "You okay?"

"I'm fine." Steve assured her, hugging her back.

"I'm fine too," Danny said, making a little bit of a face. Just a little one as he kept on walking toward Chin.

"Glad to see you guys are both in one piece," Chin, the bedrock and voice of reason on this goddamn team said. "Any word on Parrish?"

"No, HPD is canvassing the neighborhood right now," Steve said.

"Okay, so what happened?" Catherine asked, still hovering very close to Steve.

"We split up at the courthouse to go find Parrish. Turns out he was in our car. My car," Danny corrected. Because ugh, his life. "Uh. Oh, and he's innocent. The feds convicted the wrong guy. This man, Dale Sullivan, framed him for the murder and paid off Akama to lie under oath."

"That much we knew too," Chin replied. "We've got Kono running down a lead. Hopefully she can tell us who this Dale Sullivan really is."

"Well, whoever he is," Danny said. "I'm thinking he found out Parrish escaped and came here to kill Akama to make sure he didn't recant his testimony."

"Right, and then they sat on the house, hoping that Parrish would come back here," Catherine added.

"No sign of Parrish, but the lady next door's car is missing and we found these in the driveway," Grover said, holding up a sliced open zip-tie that wasn't even necessary to tell them what had happened there. They could have guessed that one all on their own.

"Let's get HPD to sit on Parrish's daughter. He's alone now, he might turn to her," Steve said.

---

As things tended to happen on this dumb show on O'ahu, the ending to this little ordeal was both hectic and over before you knew it.

By the time the team caught up with Parrish's daughter and her HPD tail, the officer was down and Dale Sullivan was about to kill Parrish's daughter, too. Between Five-0 and SWAT that stand-off was over in less than a minute.

Chin grabbed Parrish's daughter and gently tugged her away from where her father lay on the ground, bleeding out from the bullets Sullivan had put into him before they were able to get there. "Okay, why don't you come with us…"

"This is Captain Grover, badge 3901, to Dispatch. I've got a subject with multiple GSWs to the chest. Critical condition--" Lou radioed in.

"Roy, stay with us," Steve said, trying to keep pressure on the wounds, but… "His pulse is fading."

[NFB, NFI, co-written with grenadesandohana OOC comments always lovely even though it is just a terrible block of text!]