Hello and Welcome, yet again!
So, you've read the summary and have the gist. I came up with this so long ago, I can't remember the inspiration! I actually wrote this when I was in high-school, and that was YEARS ago. As for why I never uploaded this; that even I don't know.
Just to let you know, NO SLASH! See how romance is not is the genre? I'm keeping it that way. Nice try guys.
'Vertu Blessaur' is Icelandic for 'goodbye'.
Sometimes, it's the only thing we can say.
This is going to be much shorter than what I normally write. I'll be uploading a full-length Sonic fanfic in September, so I'll be posting this now just to tide over until then.
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or other relating characters.
Chapter One: Confessions
Danny flew down the street at Mach speed, his parents close on his tail.
"Come on Jack, step on it. We've almost got him!" Maddie hung out of the RV's window, ready to fire the ectoplasmic net at the teenage ghost. Adrenaline was pumping through her veins from the excitement; never had they come this close to capturing the ghostly-menace.
Danny panicked as he saw them getting closer. He couldn't attack his parents, or even retaliate; the only option he had was to run away and try to block anything they fired at him. He flew upwards, seeing as he wasn't losing them by zipping through the city. They couldn't catch him if they couldn't fly.
Just as he was sure he was out of their striking range, he felt an electric jolt go through him as the net encased itself around him.
His parents had caught him.
Danny, knowing that phasing out was impossible, ignited his hands and tried to tear the net apart. No such luck for the boy, as the weave of the trap stayed intact.
His parents practically jumped out of ghost catching RV, all too excited to have finally caught the ghost punk that had been plaguing their city, and them, for the better part of the year.
"It's over ghost boy!" Maddie pointed her ecto-laser at her son's ghost persona. "Any last words before we knock you out and tear you apart molecule by molecule?"
"Wait! You can't kill me!" Danny panicked, holding his hands out in front of himself as if it would stop an oncoming attack. His heart sped up while his breaths came out uneven and panicked; he was going to die at the hands of his parents!
This certainly wasn't how he imagined he would go.
"Why not?" Jack asked, unfazed by the ghost's desperate plea. Ghosts were soulless, emotionless creatures in his eyes. He felt nothing for them.
"Because…because…" There was no way Danny could explain it. Even if he had the words to explain, his parents would never believe him. As scientists, they would demand concrete evidence. It would be better if he just showed them. Danny closed his eyes, calling his human self forward. White rings washed over him as the pale glow that surrounded him disappeared, leaving a tattered and scraped teenager behind. "Because, I'm your son!"
Maddie and Jack lowered their weapons in shock. Their son, Danny Fenton, was in front of them where that nuisance Danny Phantom had once stood. This couldn't be! It was a trap by the ghost-kid to have them let their guard down! Danny was at home, asleep in his bed. They had checked on him before they left!
Not wanting to let the ghost try anything else that might compromise their capture of him, Maddie pulled a taser from her tool belt and shocked the boy unconscious before he could say anything else.
Danny's heart fell as he hit the ground. They hadn't believed him.
He saw his parents approach him.
Everything went black.
Maddie stood at her lab's workstation, her back to their new captive.
The impostor ghost, still disguised as her son, was strapped to the medical table, ready to be cut open.
She had been running some tests to see if the ghost was indeed her actual son, as a hint of doubt had clouded her mind in a moment of weakness. She had gotten home that night with her prey in tow, quickly securing him in the lab. First thing she did was check up on Danny, who, much to her discontent, was no longer in his room.
He must have snuck out; he was a teenager after all. There was no way this ghost could be her son. How would her boy have even acquired ghost powers in the first place? How could a human also be a ghost? It made no sense at all to believe Phantom's words.
That's right, Danny was a teenage boy. He probably snuck out to see that Sam girl he liked so much, or just to hang out with his pals.
A long stream of paper came from the printer. Wasting no time, Maddie grabbed it and looked over the results with butterflies in her stomach.
She didn't like what she saw.
According to the testing, that…thing was her son. At least half of him was. The other half was ghost.
Now she was stumped. They boy had his standard sets of chromosomes, but for each pair, one chromosome was that of a ghost and the other of a human. Further analysis only showed that the ghostly chromosomes contained her and Jack's DNA. There was no denying, that was the real Danny Fenton strapped to the lab table behind her.
She scowled in disgust, tossing the papers into the nearby trashcan. Her son was a ghost.
One of the filthy, disgusting, horrible creatures that had killed her parents, and almost killed her on several occasions too.
Grudgingly, she fetched the papers from the trashcan and took them to her partner and husband.
Even the big lovable Jack could not conceal his disgust for what their son had become. "That kid isn't our son anymore. He's been taken over by that ghost, he's dead! Who knows how long ago that ghost took over him." It had to be the case. Danny Phantom was possessing their son, using his body as some kind of meat-bag so he could amongst the humans unnoticed.
Maddie nodded. "Let's run some more tests. We'll figure out how he got in Danny and try and find a way to prevent other ghosts from taking over people. We won't let Danny's death be in vain!"
There was pain, a lot of it! Something was stabbing him! Something was stabbing him in his chest!
Danny's eyes snapped open, shock overriding his fatigue. His vision swam for a bit, before coming into focus over a bright light and two shadowy figures.
His parents were hovering over him, dissection tools in hand. "Mom, Dad, what are you doing?" He asked, his voice shaking in fear, eyes wide as saucer plates as he saw the scalpel making its way down his exposed chest.
"Don't talk to us as if we're your parents." Maddie slapped the ghost-child across the face. The nerve of that fiend to address her as 'Mom.' "You killed Danny and now you think you can parade around in his body? We're going to find out what you did and get you out. Then we're going to dispose of you, molecule by molecule, as promised."
"You took our son from us!" Jack shouted, tears springing to his eyes. His boy was dead and he couldn't do anything about it now. What kind of a ghost hunter was he? He was supposed to protect everyone, but he couldn't even protect his family. He was going to destroy this ghost and free his son's corpse. Then maybe, they would give him a proper burial.
Maddie continued making the incision down Danny's chest. Ghosts had cores. If her theory was right, in the place of a heart, there should be a ghost core. Phantom would not be able to keep his energy alive with a human heart. Her best shot would be to try and remove the core first, and if that didn't work, to try removing the other vital organs until the ghost would have to leave Danny's body.
"No! Stop!" Danny shouted in pain, tears spilling from his eyes. His parents were cutting him open without any anesthesia. He had fought ghosts and taken beating after beating, but nothing compared to this. Nothing compared to the emotional pain of having your parents, the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally, tear you open because they can't accept you're half ghost. Nothing, not even the cutting motion they were making down his body, was more painful than having them reject him completely. He screamed in complete agony.
White rings passed over Danny as he reverted back to his ghost half. He had to get out of here before his parents did something irreversible. He tried to phase out of the restraints, but received a painful shock.
"Nice try, ghost child. We planned ahead." Jack smiled. It was his invention that was preventing the child from phasing out and escaping. "These restraints are made from the same material as out specter-deflectors. Use any of your powers and you'll be in for a nasty surprise."
Danny's blood-curling shouting continued as he watched his parents take the skin over his stomach and chest and fold it over. They pinned it back to his own body, continuing their procedure as if he were actually unconscious.
All he could do was scream at the top of his lungs. His skin began getting even paler in his ghost-form.
The sight of his own internal organs was too much to bear.
Danny passed out once more.
Skulker flew around the city of Amity Park, searching for the ghost-whelp. The kid hadn't been seen for three days now. Not by anyone, not in the Ghost Zone, and not by him.
Where was he? Had he just disappeared off the face of the planet?
The man was bored, he needed a bit of a challenge.
Maybe the brat's cocky attitude finally brought him to an end. An entertaining thought for the hunter, but also an aggravating one as he wanted to be the one who finished the great Danny Phantom.
The hunter flew towards the large sign reading 'Fenton Works'. The child would probably be home. Where else could he be? Maybe he was sick and that had him out of commission for the past few days.
Phasing through the floors, he stopped at each to see if the child was around. He quickly moved on when he found the rooms quite and empty. Phasing to the only place he had not checked yet, Skulker stopped at the basement to be met by a horrible sight.
The kid was in the lab alright. In fact, he unconscious on the experimentation table. His torso was open with several tubes coming out of his chest, all filling with his ectoplasm.
It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the whelp's parents must have finally found out the truth.
Skulker approached the table cautiously. When he sensed there were no traps, he closed the distance between himself and the halfa.
The boy's parents were trying to drain the child's core out of him.
Humans were truly disgusting creatures.
He patted the boy's head lightly, not wanting to cause any further damage. "Wake up, whelp."
The white-haired ghost boy opened his green eyes slowly. "No more… please." The words came out softly and cracked, as if the boy had been screaming for hours. His eyes were swollen red and still filled with tears.
"I'm not here to tear you open." Skulker said. He could feel the bile rising to his mouth. Keeping his face straight, he asked Danny "How'd you get caught?"
Danny looked at him, confused. "Do I know you?"
This was interesting. The boy couldn't remember him? "What's your name, kid?" He tried again.
"Danny. Who're you?"
So he could remember his name, but not the greatest hunter in the Ghost Zone? He was slightly offended. He would have reminded the child whom he was. Before he could say anything else, the boy fell unconscious once more.
"Freeze, ghost scum!"
Skulker whipped around sharply, ready to attack. The whelp's parents had come back down to the lab, to continue their torture of the poor boy, no doubt.
Maddie held her gun pointed at the hunter. "Come to save your friend? Not on my watch!"
Skulker laughed at the woman's feeble attempt to look intimidating. He held out his arm, firing a net of his own at the woman. "You humans are the inferior ones. Had Phantom used his full strength on you, you would not have lived to see tomorrow." Skulker turned away from the woman, ignoring her orders to leave her specimen alone.
Using his own strength, he forced the restraints around the ghost boy's arms and legs open. He gently removed the tubes and needles from the child, trying not to damage any internal organs they might have been connected to. His experience as a hunter gave him a good image of the human anatomy, preventing him from accidentally damaging any vital organs too badly.
He then folded the boy's skin back to its original place. Grabbing a roll of gauze from the nearby table, he wrapped it around the boy's torso and abdomen. The child would need more care than this, definitely stitches, but it would have to do for now.
Once he was sure the bandages were tight enough, and using extreme caution, he lifted the child up. "Well, if you don't want him anymore, I'll take him."
"Put him down!" Maddie shouted, trying to break out of the net. "We caught him first, he's our property now!"
"You call your child property? And I thought my parents were cruel." Skulker blasted the door to the ghost portal open, not wanting to waste any time looking for a naturally occurring one outside.
He opened his jet-packs and flew through the portal.
When Danny awoke, he felt something cool against his forehead. He was lying on something soft, his arms down against his sides for a change.
He opened his eyes, still feeling pain, but a much duller and less severe kind. He chose to ignore it, instead focusing on the feeling of someone running their hands through his hair in a soothing motion.
"You're finally awake?" Ember asked once she felt the boy stir under her hand. She soaked the rag once more in the bowl of water beside her before placing it on his forehead.
"Yeah...who are you?" Danny asked. He didn't know who this woman, but he felt much safer around her than he did in that experimenting room. She was really pretty.
"Skulker wasn't kidding; you really can't remember anything, can you?" She pushed his hair out of his eyes, trying not to remember how he first looked when Skulker brought him to the isle.
"No, I'm afraid not." He tried and tried, but the only thing that came up were a few fuzzy faces and his name. "Did I know you?"
"Don't worry about it. Try not to move around too much. I stitched up your chest, but it'll still take some time for the wound to fully close." Ember stood up once she saw Danny relax. Skulker would want to know the child was awake. "I'll be right back."
Danny didn't want her to go. He contemplated asking her to stay a bit longer, but decided against it. He didn't want to get her angry with him.
"Three days later and he finally wakes up?" Skulker asked. He thought the kid was a goner for sure.
He had rushed the boy back to his isle, setting him down on his carving table. After some explaining to Ember, she was standing over the boy, stitching his chest and stomach shut. After not waking on the first day, Skulker thought the boy would have breathed his last breath shortly after.
Looks like the whelp still had some fight left in him.
"Yeah, but I thought you were messing with me. He really can't remember a thing. You know, I've heard of this kind of thing before in humans. A kid goes through some traumatizing experience and his brain will naturally seal off any memories of it to protect him. I think that's what happened."
"He didn't just forget his parents catching him though, he forgot everything!"
"Maybe he's trying to forget he's human. He hasn't transformed back, even though he's weak. I think his mind's subconsciously forcing him to stay as a ghost."
"That would make sense. So he has to re-learn everything?"
"I guess." Ember didn't exactly have a degree in child psychology, but she did remember some things from when she studied under a teacher. That was before she realized how much easier it would be to sing for a living. "So are you going to skin him and hang his pelt on your wall?"
"I thought about it, but then I realized this might work out better." If the kid couldn't remember anything, he would have nowhere to go. He could keep him and train him as his apprentice. No one had studied under his ways for a long time. He'd get an apprentice and a living trophy all in one. "I think I'll keep him."
"Alive, right?" Ember really didn't want to have to walk past Danny's dead skin every day. It was a creepy concept.
"Of course. How can I teach a dead whelp how to hunt?
Yayz! This thing is going to be a four shot, so I hope you'll stick around for it!
I know this chapter was, but the others won't be as long as my normal chapters are. As I said, this is just to tide you over until I post my Sonic fic. This fic is going to be completed though, so expect and update soon.
Review Please!
