"Of Violets and Emeralds"
Chapter 1
The Goth Girl and the Ghost Kid….I have to admit, the first time the idea occurred to me, even I thought it was pretty ridiculous. Never mind the fact that Danny was my best friend, but come on…a goth and a ghost? Sounds like something out of a dumb movie. Like some inane vampire fantasy getting dumbed down to a TV-Y7 Fantasy Violence cartoon. Never mind that no one would have believed it – at least not until Danny Phantom became a world-saving hero, anyway – but it was just too cheesy to think about.
The first time I thought about it, anyway.
But, the idea did grow on me. Hard not to when said Goth Girl and Ghost Kid were constantly fighting evil together, and the only other members of the team had the air of "side kick" about them like it had been stamped on their foreheads with a pair of ink-stained corporate brass knuckles. Don't get me wrong, Tucker's a great guy – for a carnivore – but he was always a bit too much of a goof to really be hero material. Jasmine had a similar problem. As for me, well I may not have been the one to "save the day" quite like Danny would, and I wouldn't say that we never needed them, but I always felt more like Danny's partner than his sidekick.
In more ways than one, I guess.
After we saved the world from the Disasteroid (which by the way is a really stupid name, but whatever), and the whole world knew that Danny Phantom was actually Danny Fenton, things did start to change pretty fast. He and I started going out; but requests from all over the world started coming in.
"Save us from the ghosts, Danny Phantom!"
"Contribute to our research, Danny Phantom!"
"Help us catch our criminals, Danny Phantom!"
"Aid in our international negotiations, Danny Phantom!"
"ENDORSE OUR BRAND, DANNY PHANTOM!"
To his credit, Danny managed to stay out of most of it. Maybe between me, his parents and Jaz he didn't have much choice, but really, he was pretty smart. He knew that Amity Park was always in enough trouble that the world would have to manage on its own somehow. He took the occasional offer – I know that "Danny Phantom Lightning Briefs" were really popular for a while – but mostly, he stayed at home, going to school by day and helping his parents with R&D during the evenings.
Tucker was usually busy being "The Youngest Mayor in Amityville Park History." Meanwhile, Danny and I…well, we had the nights. Ah, the nights.
Ghost hunting, mostly. But not entirely. We were young…we were in love. When we had time, we had our ghostly romance. Gothicism and ectoplasm. You've got to admit, there's something attractive about a boy who literally glows, even to a creature of the night like myself. He's…unique. Much more unique than the other guys who ever tried to hit on me, and there were several. Especially once word got out that Danny and I were an item, and my residual popularity skyrocketed.
It was a nightmare. Girls like Paulina – Paulina! – were trying to curry favor with me. Undoubtedly so they could stab me in the back later and try to take Danny away, but that wasn't going to happen. Besides, even with that massive shift in social life, some things were always going to be more important. The biggest of those was, and probably always would be, ghost hunting.
Danny may have saved the Earth and the Ghost Zone, but that only protected him from the majority of his human enemies. There were still legions of ghosts who had it out to get him, and they were getting stronger and deadlier by the day. I started to realize that it really wasn't going to be enough to keep capturing them and hurling them back into the Ghost Zone – given enough time, they would always find a way back into our world, and they would always come hunting Danny.
And with the entire world knowing his alternate identity, the ghosts could go after just about any human on the planet to use against him. If we were going to have any peace in our lives, some of these ghosts were going to need a more permanent solution than ecto-blasters and Fenton thermoses.
"So…what then?" Danny asked, sitting across from me in my basement. My parents weren't too fond of me dating a ghost boy, but since he had saved the world, they were willing to overlook it. "We can't…you know, kill them. They're ghosts. I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way."
"Maybe not," I said, standing in front of my newly-installed "all things goth, ecto and mystical" bookshelf. "But some of them are trying to kill you. Skulker still wants to hang your pelt over his fireplace! And you're only half ghost. So I'm pretty sure it does work that way for you."
"I know that, Sam. That's why we're talking about this. But what else can we do?"
I could feel his eyes on me, all concern. He was a good kid…a little sloppy sometimes, a little selfish, but by and by his only real concern was doing the right thing. He didn't want to kill anyone or anything. But me…well, I was getting older, and let's just say I wasn't getting any less gothic. If there was a way to kill a ghost, and that's what I had to do to protect Danny and the people I cared about, I was prepared to do it.
"We fight for keeps," I said, throwing him a look over my shoulder, a grim smile on my face. He looked less than pleased about it. "I'm serious, Danny. What if there IS a way to stop them, once and for all? Maybe we can't kill them, but what if we can take away their power? All of it. For good."
"How is that different, exactly?" he asked, arms crossed, eyebrow raised in that typical quizzical fashion of his. Cute, strong, brave, kind-hearted…but not the brightest boy around. I sighed quietly and pulled a book from the shelf, and flipped open to a bookmarked page with an article called "Ghostly Basics."
"Look here," I said, showing him the article. "It says that ghosts are basically leftover human consciousness that takes form by commandeering the ectoplasm around it. The reason you can't 'kill' a ghost is because ectoplasmic weapons are only attacking the ectoplasm…given enough time, the consciousness will always reform itself, once it gets back to the Ghost Zone. See what I'm getting at?"
He frowned in concentration, but eventually he seemed to get it. "So you're saying that a ghost's power comes from its consciousness. To stop the ghost, we have to get at that consciousness. But…then what?"
There was a hint of fear behind those soft blue eyes. He could already guess what I was going to say, but I don't think he wanted to hear me say it. It hurt to have to tell him the truth, but he needed to hear it. I closed the book, closed my eyes…couldn't look him in the face for this.
"We have to destroy it, Danny. Before it destroys us."
"Woh," he said, standing and moving towards me. "Sam, I thought we agreed that we weren't going to kill anyone here! We're supposed to be the good guys, remember? Protect the innocent?"
"We are the innocent!" I stared at him hard, met his own fierce gaze. Gods, he was such a hard head sometimes…I grated my teeth for a bit, looking for my next works. "They're coming for us, and you know it. How long before Desiree hears a wish for you to be defeated once and for all? How long before Technus develops a virus that causes every car on the highway to crash all at once, including ours? How long before Vortex gets a lucky shot on you…or someone you love…"
I looked away again, fearing that I wasn't going to get through to him on this. I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder, saw his eyes soft and kind again.
"Don't worry, Sam. I'll protect us all. I promise. With the research my parents are doing, every police force and government in the world is learning how to defend against ghost attack. I don't want to sink to their level, and I know you don't want to either. Trust me."
I wanted to trust him. I really, truly did. I wanted to believe that we lived in a world where we wouldn't have to destroy a person's consciousness for a second time, just to protect our own…and two years ago, when this whole situation started, I might have. But these days I just knew better. Attacks had been getting more frequent, and more powerful. We had stronger weapons, but so did they. The stakes kept growing higher. I trusted Danny, but I didn't trust the police, or the government. I didn't want anyone to die because we didn't have the gumption to finally strip ghosts like Skulker of their power, by any means necessary.
"I do trust you, Danny." I took his hand in mine, held it near my heart. I could feel the swirl of ectoplasm just beneath the skin. It was cold, infused with Danny's cryomancy. It was soothing. But… "I trust you to stop the ghosts whenever they show up. But I don't want them to keep showing up, time and time again. I want them to leave us alone. And there's only two ways to do that: seal off the Ghost Zone forever…or take out the ghosts. Forever."
His eyes narrowed in concentration, and he placed his free hand over mine. I looked into his eyes, hoping he would listen to me, believe what I had to say, trying to will it into him. But he finally closed his eyes in frustration, looking away.
"No, Sam. I can't do it. I won't help you kill any of these ghosts."
I threw his hands away.
"Damn it, Danny! You said it yourself, we can't 'kill' them; they're already dead anyway! So what's the problem if we send them to the next plane of existence? If they were regular humans, ghosts like Skulker would be in prison for the things they've done, if not on their way to the executioner! Hunting for human pelts? That's seriously unacceptable! And the only prison in the Ghost Zone is run by Walker. We all know how competent he is. For all the times you've sent Technus and Desiree and Ember and Young Blood back to the Ghost Zone, he's never held on to any of them more than once. Once! How can you just be okay with fighting the same ghosts over and over again when they want nothing less than to rule the world, take your life, or both?"
"Because it's not our right to make that decision!" he shouted, pounding his fist on the armrest of the sofa. "You may have a point that it would make everyone's life easier if ghosts like Ember just went away forever. You may be right that they barely count as people because they are just scraps of consciousness wrapped in ectoplasm. But they seem like people to me, and even if they are bad people, they're still people. We don't have the right to end their existence, whether their existence is like ours or not. I won't do it, alright?"
He looked at me hard, his eyes glowing green; he clearly meant business about this point, and I wasn't going to persuade him. I sighed again, picked up the book and put it back in the shelf. "Alright. But there has to be something we can do to make us safer. Spectre Deflectors and Ghost Shields will only keep working for so long before more ghosts learn how to break them, like you did with your Ghostly Wail. And I want to figure out what that something is."
"What kind of something are you talking about?"
I looked back at him, saw his eyes go back to normal. He even sat back down on the couch; I guess he was relieved to have me not talking about "killing" any more. Truth be told, it made me feel better too. I didn't like the idea of killing any more than he did, I was just more willing to consider it. He was cut out for saving people, not killing anything. And being an ultra recyclovegetarian myself, I wasn't really cut out for killing either. I supposed I could be satisfied with a new sort of defense, at least for the time being.
I sat next to him on the couch. "I'm talking about a magical something. Sort of like Freakshow – with the Reality Gauntlet? Only less world-ending and more friend-protecting."
Danny's eyebrows raised. "You know magic?" he asked, his voice still squeaking just-so.
"Well, I'm learning…I still don't know very much. But you might be surprised how fast you can pick this stuff up when you've been exposed to as much ghostly energy as I have. Here, let me show you."
I traced a sigil in the air with my finger, then closed my eyes and concentrated on the energy flowing through the air around us. Danny's ecto-pulse acted like a conductor, making the energies easier to detect; along with my experience as his partner, I was able to pick up on the flow, and extend a portion of my own consciousness through the sigil I'd traced and into the current. I shaped it into a dome around us. I opened my eyes and looked over at Danny, who was looking about, confused.
"Did something happen?" he asked.
"Try walking to the other side of the room," I said.
He stood, and managed about two steps before a purple storm of energy flared up in the dome shape I'd created, sending a mildly painful bolt of force through him and pushing him right back to sitting next to me on the couch.
"Surprised?" I asked, folding my arms smugly across my chest.
He ran a hand through his jolted-out hair, and looked at me dryly. "Shocked."
"Come on…you have to admit that was pretty impressive."
"Actually it was," he said, looking around. "I still can't see anything. What did you do, anyway?"
"The same thing that ghosts do, really. I extended my consciousness into the ecto-currents and molded it to my will. It's harder for humans to do because we have physical bodies that slow us down, and there isn't as much ectoplasm on Earth as there is in the Ghost Zone, but it is possible. And the only thing that limits us, besides the difficulty, is our imagination. With enough practice, I could do just about anything with this stuff!"
I was really excited at this point, and hoping to see the same from Danny, but all I saw was concern.
"Anything? Like…kill a ghost?"
His look felt like an ecto-blast from the eyes. Chagrined, I looked down at the floor.
"Not necessarily…more like, protect people with an energy field that ghosts can't see…or create a projection that can fight a ghost without us having to get anywhere near it."
"Or kill a ghost."
I paused, but had to say it. "Eventually. Maybe."
Danny gave a heavy sigh. "Sam, if you want to research magic so you can have another weapon against the ghosts, that's fine. Really, it is…I want us to have as many ways to defend ourselves as possible. But you shouldn't be letting this stuff go to your head and making you think it's okay to end existences! That's just too much."
"You're probably right. I'm just scared…I don't want to lose you. I want to protect you. By any means necessary."
We stared into each other's eyes again, looking for answers. Gradually his gaze began to soften, as did mine. "You know," he said, "I think this is normally where you would say something like, 'He who fights monsters should take care not to become a monster himself.'"
"Yes, 'for when you stare long into the abyss, the abyss stares long into you.' From Nietzsche. You're getting better read, Danny Fenton." I smiled.
"What can I say? You're rubbing off on me, Sam Manson." He smiled too.
"Okay, okay…no lethal research. But I am going to keep learning magic."
"That's fine by me. I'm sure it'll come in handy sooner or later. But in the meantime…do you mind letting down that invisible purple shock field so we can go on ghost patrol?"
I closed my eyes and concentrated on the arcing energy around us, and the ecto-echo of the sigil I'd traced, and with a quick gesture, disbanded it. A gentle sigh echoed through the room, whisper-like, in much the same way as a ghost becoming intangible. I opened my eyes to see Danny staring at me, as if trying to see with his eyes what I was doing mostly with my mind. He was concentrating so hard, it was actually kind of endearing.
As I started concentrating back, hoping to see what was going on in his mind, an alarm on Danny's wrist started to buzz, and a voice crackled in through static.
"DANNY! It's your father. There's GHOSTS swarming the compound! We need backup!"
"Right on cue," Danny and I both said. He transformed – he no longer shouted "I'm going ghost," even though I kind of missed it sometimes – then grabbed my wrist, turned us intangible, and flew us off to Fentonworks.
No matter how many times we'd done this routine, intangibility sent a chill down my spine, which was something I normally enjoyed. But this time...this time, I couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible was about to happen.
Thanks for reading. I promise the next chapter will be longer, especially if you leave reviews. Also, the story idea is still flexible, so if you make suggestions, you may find them reflected in later updates. Cheers!
-R
