Man, I've missed this. Fic, and Phantom. Re-watched D-Stabilized recently, one of the few episodes in Season 3 I actually liked.
Pre-D-Stabilized, and slightly off from the actual episode, since I wrote this before re-watching. The percentages, for one, aren't as fluctuating as the ones quoted by hologram-Maddie, and the mood is different, to say the least. But well, it is Angst Day after all.
Uh. Ignore the whole Vlad-is-after-me mindset. Dani's despairing, and suffering from clone-identity issues on top of that. Survival seems more important than Vlad-issues for her...
(LOL I KNOW NOTHING OF SOCIAL SERVICES OTL)
Disclaimer: When Sonic Generations comes out for the Wii, maybe.
Fifty-four percent, at the most. If I'm lucky, it'll only go down to fifty.
You scowl inwardly, and some of it must have touched your face, for you are prodded out of your ponderings by the woman seated in the room you have just been directed into.
"Is anything wrong, dear?" She leans her weight forward onto the chaffed wooden desk, concerned eyes- too concerned- trying to make contact with your own currently blue ones over her laptop.
Anything? Try everything.
You paste a smile onto your face, moving forward to take a seat across the table from her, which also conveniently breaks any eye contact. "Nothing, miss."
She accepts it, and shuffles through the papers on the desk. For a moment, the room is silent but for the scraping of paper against wood, and the slow tick-tick of the creaky overhead fan.
A common mistake that many people make, his voice sneers in your subconscious. Your eyes wander to a scratch on the desk, refusing to listen. People only see what fits into their world-view, and anything else is shuffled under the carpet-
"Your name, dear?"
Thrown off-balance, you scramble to pull a name from your mind. A dark-haired girl flashes in your memory, and you blurt out, "Samantha. Samantha Fenton."
Her pen moves across the paper she has pulled from the piles scattered across the table, and you breathe a silent sigh of relief, hoping Danny's friend doesn't mind you borrowing her name, cursing the oh-so-kind policeman who had pulled you, the poor-homeless-kid, off the streets.
Fingers flash across the keyboard, and pause.
"Samantha, the records show you have been brought in by the police previously." A frown tugs on lipstick-lined lips. "Didn't they refer you to the Social Welfare Department?"
Ah, crud. I've used this name before?
You blink in a confused manner, and your silence makes the woman sigh. She rises from her seat- you barely hide the tensing of your muscles at the action- and leaves the room, telling you to remain seated. The door clicks shut behind her, and the sound of clacking heels recedes.
Your eyes once again flicker around the room- windows grilled shut, air vent within reach, but the security camera watching the room rules that route out. You hesitate, weighing your options, but the clacking of heels approaching the door makes your decision for you.
The door opens, and she cries out in surprise to find you nowhere in sight. You ignore her, and phase through the police building, walking briskly away towards an alley two streets away that you know has not been claimed by any street gang yet.
The voice again, triumphiant. And because they shuffle it under the carpet, why, with our powers, we can get away with anything under the sun!
He costs you the last of your concentration, and like water, your grasp on invisibility and intangibility slips, leaving you shaking in the middle of the street, fighting the urge to displace what little food is in your stomach onto the dirty gravel under your palms and knees.
"...I hate you, Vlad." The rasp is lost to the empty street.
You sense the portal opening, can feel the spectral waves brushing against you like a soothing balm. It beckons you, calling you to enter.
Picking yourself up off the ground, you test your levels. Fifty-one percent.
Random portals to the Ghost Zone are exactly that, random, and you know you do not have the time to think the matter through before the portal closes. You force the transformation, and worry at how much effort it takes to push the rings fully over your body. Then, without looking back, you step into the portal.
It's not as if I have anything in the Human world to miss, anyway.
"Hey, you're Phantom's clone, aren't you?"
You groan at the call, possibly the sixth you have received since you entered the Ghost Zone. The previous five ghosts, all low ranking in power levels, did not attack you after you glared at them and raised a fist burning with ectoplasm as a warning, but the taunts still ring in your ears.
Almost at your breaking point, you bare your teeth at Johnny 13, who cruises easily on his bike at your flying speed. You try to go faster, but you can feel your feet start to melt again, and in your panic you drop your speed even further, willing as hard as you can for your ectoplasm-formed body to remain a body and not dissolve into unidentifiable green gloop.
Forty-seven percent. Heck, even the Box Ghost can catch up to my flying speed now.
"What's the matter, can't keep up?" 13 yells derisively at you, and you clench your teeth. "Phantom would have given me more of a challenge!"
"Why, because you still haven't gotten sick of him grinding your face into the dust yet?" You spit at him, bitter, and his face darkens.
"Shadow, get her!"
Your green eyes widen in shock, and you barely call an ectoblast to hand before his Shadow is onto you, tackling you into one of the many doors in the Ghost Zone. You push power into the ectoblast and throw it at the Shadow, who shrieks in pain at the light, and try to follow up with a punch- only your fist is no longer quite a fist, but a melting mass of white and black that you can no longer even feel-
"Desist at once!"
A ghost positions herself between you and the biker, but you barely notice, looking in mounting horror at your hand. Forty-two percent-!
A huff of annoyance. "Aw, c'mon, princess! Why d'you interrupt my fun?" You tear your eyes away, and they fall upon the two medieval knights with spears held to both 13 and his Shadow.
You have to search your brain a little, but you eventually recognise the ghost between you and them as Princess Dora. She glares at the pair of attackers with slitted eyes, and her amulet begins to glow. "Leave."
Apparently, 13 has heard the rumors of the dragon princess too, for he grits his teeth and calls to his Shadow, and the two flee the scene.
The princess finally turns to face you, and you quail under the blatant worry in her eyes. "Are you alright, Danielle?"
"Yeah. Never been better." You breathe, and your hand forms reluctantly back into its proper shape. Thirty-nine percent.
It does not escape Dora's sight, and the worry doubles. "Does Sir Phantom know of this degeneration?"
You almost feel like screaming.
"Sir Phantom does not need to know every detail in my life. I may be his clone, but that doesn't mean I need to go running to him for every scaped knee."
"Sir Phantom worries for you." She prompts gently.
"Well, he shouldn't- he's not my father!"
The words ring between the two of you, and fade into silence.
Dora makes a move to embrace you, but you shy backwards, and she stops. Quietly now, the princess says, "That he may not be, but regardless, Sir Phantom's worry for you is his worry for his kin and friends. It is not a concern born out of obligation- his is a concern born from love."
Not human, not ghost, but somewhere in-between. Halfa.
Not original, but a mere copy. Clone.
Replacement. Fake. Not as good as the original.
And Vlad's, your almost-father's, his hated voice, always at the back of your mind like some parasitic smog. One of Daniel's weaknesses is his stubborn insistence on caring for others before himself.
Thirty percent. You are hungry, tired, and drained.
Yet another of the boy's weaknesses is his stubborn pride when he needs help. Even his friends know this- Daniel would sooner bleed to death than admit that he cannot handle things by himself.
The snacks you sneak from road-side vendors do not sate your hunger, only whet it to a keen edge, and every time you use your powers, be it intangibility to steal an apple or invisibility to avoid angry shop-keepers, the stability of your ectoplasm-built body degenerates.
Twenty-eight percent.
...You do not think you can even transform now, not when even waking up from slumber in a hard, grimy alley seems like an impossibly hard up-hill climb.
Twenty-seven percent.
The voice, again. Daniel's stubborn pride...
Twenty-six percent.
...Well, you are not Danny, Fenton or Phantom.
Your steps turn towards Amity Park.