Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom.
A/N: Woah, this was a really good kick to getting back into writing for the Phandom. I hope you all realize this was written because I was told to update (it's all you need to tell me if you want frequent updates – seriously). Actually meant to get it out way earlier (and indeed, had most of it finished around a day or few after the last update), but I became distracted. Was originally meant to go into Spue (and be longer), but then I decided I'm going to continue it (and split this first chapter up).
Resuscitate
Chapter One
The overcast sky was stained green with the presence of ghosts, the sunlight filtering through shading the town of Amity Park grotesque greens. The streets were empty, the wind – picking up a chill from the autumn season that was nigh upon them – hissing across brick and asphalt, sending plastic bags and paper debris swirling over the roads. Empty cans rolled without anyone to kick them, and miscellaneous items that had been dropped remained undisturbed.
A window display of televisions in an electronics store remained operating, heedless of no audience.
". . . Ghost hunters Jack and Maddie Fenton have confirmed that the ghosts responsible for the town-wide lockdown include amongst their numbers the menace known as Phantom. Only ranked a level four ghost, Phantom is nonetheless very dangerous, responsible for more property damage than any others combined and already a dozen deaths this year alone. With no known obsession he is considered a particular threat due to a lack of recognizable patterns. The Fentons urge all citizens to remain indoors and do nothing to draw attention to themse–" the frazzled looking news reporter speaking out from the screens was interrupted by a green ray which lanced through the window like lightning, glass shattering loudly and flying over the vicinity in small shards, and fried the electronics it held.
Its source drew his outstretched hand back to clap against a similarly white-gloved one, a grin stretching broadly across his face.
"Only a level four? Still more than enough for your precious ghost hunters," the young ghost sneered, his derisive tone only amplified by the echo distorting his words. Ire nevertheless eddied agitatedly despite this in his green-tinted eyes whilst the wan fire he had in lieu of hair licked higher up into the air.
"Over here, I think I heard something!" A shout had Phantom's pointed ears twitching in alert. His gaze paused for a moment on the broken windows and televisions before he turned around in the air. What met him was the sight of Maddie Fenton rounding a corner onto the street Phantom floated over, jumpsuit sporting ectoplasmic stains, which was also spattered on her face and clumped in her ragged auburn hair.
"Phantom!" she snarled at the sight of the ghost, face twisted into a grimace and a fire smoldering in her otherwise steely eyes.
"You called?" Phantom drawled, reclining aloofly in the air, though energy fizzed faintly into existence above the palms of his hands.
"Freeze, spook!" Jack announced as he arrived on the scene, coming to his wife's side with a particularly powerful Fenton Bazooka aimed at the humanoid ghost.
"Alright," Phantom said. A corner of his lips quirking into a crooked smile, he raised his splayed hands to the sides of his heads. In a matter of seconds his ghostly aura flared, tendrils leaching off to form a volatile mass of ectoplasm in each hand. Although the ghost hunting couple had caught the signs and ducked out of the way, the ectoplasmic rays shot in their direction too quickly to be avoided.
Any pained exclamation that may have escaped Maddie when the ectoplasm seared an angry burn across a cheek and blasted off nearly half of her hair – along with her goggles and hood – was made inaudible by the scream Jack howled, agony wrenched out as if hooks were caught fast in his throat. Horrified, Maddie ignored her own injury in favor of seeing to her husband, a hand clapping over her open mouth as she saw the chunk of flesh missing from his shoulder. A large spot of glaring red mottled with darker patches blossomed from the grievous injury, while the edges of the actual wound were blackened and cauterized.
A hair-raising warbling sound involuntarily had Maddie turning around, only to cause the vitriol pooled within her to churn frenziedly at the sight of her enemy, flopped once more onto his back with his hands clutched over his midsection. Shifting her position slightly – bringing her nearer to Jack, who writhed on the ground – she could just make out the gleeful smile cut across Phantom's face. The green lighting cast eerie shadows over the tanned skin and boyish planes of his face, making it appear corpse-like, and glinted off his sharp teeth as if they were stained with what passed as his ilk's blood.
Maddie's vision transitioned to red, a seething mist through which only this creature's form could be seen. She felt her body move, anger frothing in a fury through Maddie's veins and percolating throughout her entire self, taking control of the reins like an amateur puppeteer yanking crudely on the strings at her joints.
The huntress' fingers twitching with the desire to gouge through ductile ectoplasmic flesh and tear those gloating eyes from their sockets, they instead found themselves curling around the grips of the Fenton Bazooka that had dropped, the solid weight settling with a heavy satisfaction into her hands and onto a shoulder.
Phantom cursed in a dark tone as he realized that the female Fenton had not reacted as expected, and only just retaliated against the blast she sent in his direction with one of his own. The two forces fought, but Maddie's attack overpowered the ghost's and swamped him in a flood of peridot-colored energy.
A hot wind rushed out from point of impact, picking up dust and small debris. Maddie flinched, eyes snapping shut in response to the ocular-irritant and from the shrapnel and heat that billowed around her.
This though was not enough to distract her from Phanton's ensuing screech, which had an animalistic snarl woven seamlessly in. The sound, magnified and made eldritch with its spectral echo, resounded throughout the entire town. Marauding ghosts and cowering humans alike shuddered, the former ceasing their mayhem to seek refuge in their own realm from whatever could have made one of their own scream like that.
The tumultuous air abated quickly, and Maddie chanced a glimpse. An opaque cloud of dust hovered in the immediate vicinity, still trailing out on the wisps of wind. Soon she could make out a mostly-obscured shape lingering just over the ground in its body. Maddie blinked back tears resulting from the stinging dust, and when she stopped doing so almost all of the dust had cleared.
Phantom's wiry form was huddled into itself, but started to uncurl marginally. His clothing – black leather with white accents – draped from him as rags, the exposed flesh underneath charred and in some places completely missing. Transfixed by some sort of morbid fascination, a desire to see what damage she had wrought upon the creature, Maddie remained frozen as the ghost slowly lifted his head as if even this small action pained him. Jagged teeth were parted in a rictus, lower jaw attached only by some function of his spectral form. Flayed skin and muscle hung in tatters, revealing black bone that should be covered.
Phantom started healing right before the huntress' eyes, the shredded matter of his body rising of its own accord and crawling into place spider-like. It was especially disturbing on his face, where the green tendrils cast themselves like fishing line to latch and mold to skull, living-toned skin washing rapidly over to reform the mockingly human visage that Maddie was familiar with. However, it had not come without its cost; the Fenton matriarch had not failed to notice how the ghost's body deteriorated even as he recovered, mass seeming to wither away until he was little more than hide stretched taut over bone.
"Maddie." While Phantom's voice was hoarse, its echo weak and fractured, his tone and the dark glare fixed on her portended nothing good in the future.
At the sound of her name dropped by the evil being before her, Maddie returned to reality, exhaling a breath she had not realized she had been holding, and returned Phantom's antagonistic stare with one of her own. Maddie made to speak but found she could not, jaw gritted and her knotted throat feeling as if it had been scoured with sandpaper.
Maddie instead shifted the Fenton Bazooka back into firing position from where it had fallen. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of ectoplasmic energy building in Phantom's hands, saw his frustrated grimace as the energy sputtered and fizzled, what little substance left on his bones withering away even more at the cost of the attempted attack. The huntress' attack had gotten him good, and she doubted what energy he had left was enough for more than the basic ghost powers.
In essence, she had him right where she wanted. Maddie smirked as her weapon whined, ectoplasm swirling to life in preparation for an attack. Then a groan from behind had her whirling around, bazooka aimed at the source. She tensed at the sight of her husband sprawled on the ground, face pale and sporting an unnatural sheen.
Glancing back around, Maddie inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring and lips pursed. The ghost had taken opportunity of her distraction to fly off, and even now she could see the long tail he had formed for a more aerodynamic flight becoming smaller. Should she pursue him? She wanted to, but . . .
Looking back at her husband, Maddie sighed and allowed her shoulders to slump. She couldn't abandon her husband for a single ghost, not even Phantom.
But just you wait, ghost scum; one day you won't get away, Maddie promised vehemently to herself. Powering down the bazooka and setting it down – she would have to come back for it later, but at the current time it would just be a hindrance – she stooped beside Jack, grunting as she grabbed his good arm and slung it over his shoulder.
"Jack, if you can hear me, try and help me get you to safety!" she said with urgency to him, straining every muscle to help lug him down the direction of the hospital – the same way that Phantom had went. She was certainly stronger than the average woman, but Jack was huge and most of her fighting prowess came from skill rather than brute strength.
To her relief Jack managed to move his legs clumsily in step with hers, facilitating the process of moving him. Maddie looked over Jack's face, worrying her lower lip. Though he had responded to her request, he didn't seem that conscious.
Line Break
Fuzzy black spots bloomed over his vision. Danny gasped for breath, wincing as it rattled down his burning, constricted throat. A sharp pain bored through his sternum, knives digging into his sides as his chest heaved shakily.
Cold, so cold.
He was . . . he was going to die? Here, lying alone in this alley, amidst abandoned garbage?
It was so very, very cold.
He forced his eyes open, wanting one last look at life before he passed, even if it was stained concrete and grey walls.
Instead, what met Danny's eyes was something bright and white. No, it was softly shining. An . . . an angel? Was it here to take him away?
And then it opened its mouth in a silent cackle, stretching far wider than possible to reveal ranks of serrated, snaggletoothed fangs.
Though he could not scream externally, as the thing reached into him – cold, death creeping over his cells –, inside, Danny was begging for help. Even as he took his last breath while the ghost was still in the process of taking over his body, his soul ebbed away with a final desire for protection.
Line Break
Phantom had taken the split moment that Maddie had been distracted to fly off. He felt weak and sluggish, and didn't have to pay attention to know that he was not moving nearly as quickly as normal. A slow car could probably catch up to him.
Gnashing his teeth at the thought – and dammit, the Box Ghost was supposed to be making reports on the new anti-ghost weaponry the Fentons came up with – he placed a bony hand more out of reflex than anything over his chest, frowning at the unnatural feel of the bones there that his ectoplasmic muscles usually covered. Though there was no heartbeat, the steady though faint thrum of his core reverberated through him, reassuring him that he was still better off than he could have been.
Damn, that really was close. He'd gotten too cocky, and the Fentons were not the same bumbling fools that he'd first come to know.
Once feeling that he had put enough distance between him and the riled up huntress, Phantom alighted to the ground, a tremble wracking his stick-like legs upon contact with the ground.
Note to self: avoid any ridiculously overpowered weapon until it's out of charge. Lifting a hand in front of his face, he stripped the white glove off of it and observed the way the tendons and bones moved as he curled and straightened the fingers, this only reminding him of the prudence of avoiding another similar situation. He hadn't been so devastated by an attack since . . . ugh, who knew when. Maddie was the biggest danger to a ghost in this town, and she stuck to the lighter weaponry, whereas Jack was the heavy-hitter but such a bumbler that one only had to watch out if they weren't the one he was aiming for.
He replaced the glove onto his bare hand and, gathering his bearings, Phantom took a deep breath, drawing in the ambient ectoplasm from the atmosphere to facilitate his healing. He frowned. Amity Park may be rich compared to other places in ectoplasmic energy, but it was nothing compared to the Ghost Zone. He would have to find a way back.
Even if the only way was the artificial portal, which was in a veritable ghost-hunting fortress, where the ghost hunters lived at that. As much as he itched to return to his proper plane of existence, Phantom grudgingly acknowledged that it would be suicide to make an attempt in his current state.
He would need a place to hide, for it would be equally fatal to be out and about as he was.
The teen ghost groaned loudly at the thought, slamming a fist into the building wall beside him, which formed cracks forking out from the point of contact. Not noticing this, Phantom wringed his hands and attempted to think of a place to seek refuge.
And then a sound reached his ears.
At first the specter dismissed it as a trick of the mind, but when he heard it again he strained his ears. Sure enough, there was something like a gasp coming from a nearby alley. Phantom warily crept to the alley's opening and poked his head in, his eyebrows rising as he saw a boy lying there. Humans were supposed to take care of their young, weren't they?
Then again, that didn't mean they did, flitted across Phantom's thoughts, which was accompanied with a curl of his lips.
A few more moments of watching assured him that this was not a trap, the way the chest rose and fell made it obvious that just breathing was a struggle. Emboldened by this, Phantom approached the kid and crouched down next to him. A closer second look revealed that he was probably older than the ghost had first thought, likely in his earlier teens. It was difficult to tell though, with the sickness in his features and the too-large clothes.
But, wait a moment, this was perfect! There was no way that a human so weak could possibly have the willpower to resist a ghost's overshadowing! All he had to do was take control of the boy, and while he was recovering he could still move around.
Phantom lowered himself even further to get closer. The kid weakly opened his blue eyes, but that didn't matter to Phantom – conscious or not, he would have what he wanted. Beaming with devilish delight, the fire-haired ghost reached forward, intangibly sinking his arm into the human's chest.
And then something was tugging him, clamping down on his spectral form and, with countless hands, manipulated his body, twisting it this way and that and making it fit into too-small of a space. Phantom didn't even get to scream.
Line Break
Clockwork watched the encounter between ghost and boy on the screen before him, a smile tweaking onto his face.
"All is as it should be," he commented to himself, and then stared down at the brass object he held.
"Now, where to place you . . ."
A/N: All thoughts, advice, constructive criticism, and whatnot are welcome.