The black cane leaned against the piano, almost kissing the ebony and ivory with its golden, spherical head. The piano's keys moved swiftly, dancing up and down. To the left, multiple keys pressed down, striking violent, welcoming chords as the right part of the piano had keys seemingly dancing across the notes. What was made from this was beautiful music. The low notes crashed with the high notes but faded into peace. The keys moved alone. There was no visible player to this sweet song. There was no pianist apparent in the cold, candle-lit darkness. There was no man or woman nor gust of wind to flip the pages of the music. There was no one playing in the vast expanse of the large Victorian-Styled house.
The piano was alone.
There was no one playing it, but it played.
The black cane leaned further upon another key and struck a note innocently.
The invisible fingers that played continued.
The cane leaned and hit another key.
The fingers still continued.
The cane slipped and slammed onto the wooden floor with a crash. It killed the music. Then only silence.
An old man in a dark suit sighed and faded into his chair. He looked to the floor and blinked. He could not see the cane; his bad eye was turned to it.
He blinked his two eyes: both the good, white one and the broken, pearly and creamy bad one. I wonder what the chances of that happening are. He picked up the cane and set it at the side of the piano.
He sat down again on the smooth seat and quickly and suddenly shot his hand to his right ear, covering it from a painful sound suddenly coming from the window. It sounded like a knife being dragged along a thin guitar string but was as loud as a hundred jets taking off.
"What is that infernal sound?" he yelled as he felt metal drilling into his ears. He walked outside of the door and saw nothing. There was only a windy and endless dark forest continuing for miles. The sound was coming from miles away. The man became intangible, and only his wispy appearance could be seen phasing through the walls of his home. He, the lonely ghost in the woods, knew that someone, somewhere, was up to something.
"This device has been patched up to work on all levels of the electromagnetic spectrum!" announced the proud scientist to his wife. The orange jumpsuit he wore did not in any way ruin the moment, nor did the green one his wife wore.
"I can't wait to try it out!" announced his wife.
"Trust me, Maddie," the ecstatic Jack exclaimed to his wife, "Once we find out what high frequency waves do to ectoplasm we'll be winning European Science Awards! Physics and Phantom-molecular-bio-whatever-chemistry will have us in the textbooks."
"Danny come down here! We're about to make a breakthrough!" yelled Maddie.
A reluctant blue-eyed boy walked down the basement stairs. Another breakthrough? I hope it's not like the "breakthrough" they had last week when they realized the Ghost Portal actually worked.
"We won't bore you with the science sweetie, just look at that pile of ectoplasm as soon as we bombard it with high energy photons" she clasped her hands together in girlish wonder.
Jack continued, "Maybe it will mutate, maybe it will come alive, maybe it'll just blow up and cover us with green goop but this is in the name of science!" he held his wife in his arm.
I wish Tucker was here; maybe he'd be able to explain this stuff to me. I just hope Mom and Dad know what they're doing. Maybe I'll learn a new thing or two about ghosts.
Danny breathed out an ice breathe as his parents calibrated the Hertz frequency or whatever. His parents had known about him being a halfa for quite a while now, but he was still not going to tell them he just "sensed" a ghost. They could ruin everything. Danny went invisible and phased through the roof of the laboratory. He was outside in the open air, away from the stuffy lab when he saw something.
Danny was flying over the streets near his home when he saw a man in a suit gliding casually through the air as if he owned the entire atmosphere.
"And what are you doing here?" Danny's fists and eyes radiated with a menacing green.
"Hmmph," the ghost man smirked, "I'm here to destroy whoever is playing that horrible D sharp."
"What are you, the ghost of Mozart?"
"Oh no, I'm the ghost composer, Aleksandr, and if you'll excuse me: I've got people to take care of."
"I don't hear any noise. How do you hear a B Sharp?"
"D Sharp. I have a perfect ear and perfect pitch. Ever heard of that girl Ember McClain? I could exemplify her music for hours. Anyways, the frequency is dreadfully high and coming from that home, there" he pointed.
"That's my-," Danny stopped himself before revealing that the home the ghost was pointing at was his own, "I won't let you hurt anyone today, not on my watch."
"I can get through you easily."
"You're all talk gramps," Danny said as he shot energy discs at the old man.
Although old, he was quick. With his cane the old man struck the energy discs and shattered them to pieces. The shards flew across the block and exploded across the street. Danny shot energy orbs at the ghost only to have him bat them back towards him as if it were baseball.
He's smiling.
"Hey Alexander! Ever hit a curveball?" Danny said while an orb he launched through the air flew at Aleksandr at a gruesome speed.
"I can hit this straight out of the park. Amity Park, hah." Aleksandr was ready to hit the raging green orb when with a movement of his hand; Danny redirected the orb to hit the ghost right in his side. The ghost was flung into the side of the Fentonworks building and crashed through the wall. Danny flew through the hole in the wall to grab Aleksandr when the ghost phased through the floor and headed for the lab.
"Who is making that awful sound?" he yelled at two unaware scientists.
"Ghost!" Jack announced at the top of his lungs.
In that quick second, Aleksandr examined the entire room before his eyes could even shut. There was a Ghost Portal at the front of the room, equipment surrounded the perimeter, there were two humans standing at the center of the room. There was a photon generator aimed at a pile of ectoplasm shielded by a protective glass. Those idiots, this is worse and far more dangerous than I thought. He also noticed that the large scientist in the orange jumpsuit was bringing out a large weapon from his side while the other brought out a small fire arm.
Aleksandr's ingenuity allowed him to plan out the situation in less than a second. That large one, he's going to shoot for me first. A quick movement to the left will save me but then what will I do to escape the smaller one's shot?
I know.
Right three meters, down five, upwards six, and then a punch to each of them. Aleksandr evaded Jack's shot. He flew downwards and evaded Maddie's. He flew upwards when he was caught off guard and struck backwards in the air by a newly Danny Phantom.
I didn't expect this. The laws of probability are not on my side today. Danny grabbed the ghost by the collar and phased him outside. As soon as they were a few meters away from the building, the ghost brought up his cane and slammed it into Danny's side, sending them both crashing down.
Danny, while flying downwards, loosened his grip enough for the opportunist ghost to escape. Danny hit the concrete below and Aleksandr floated above in the air, contemplating about how to finish him off.
As the ghost raised his cane to do who knows what, the ghost boy shot into the air and struck him in the chest. The Fentons were then running outside, joining in on the fray. They burst shots of energy into the air, endangering the ghost and Danny.
"Mom, Dad, stop it! You're only going to hurt me!" Danny exclaimed.
"Put it down honey, you heard Danny," Maddie told Jack.
"I never get to do anything fun."
Danny flew for the ghost and grabbed him by the collar. He flew him into a large empty field just outside of Amity Park. Ever since his past fights, he knew it'd be smarter to protect the town from senseless property damage. Aleksandr, however, wanted none of this. Aleksandr slipped from Danny's hand again and flew towards the town when Danny froze him with a blue energy burst.
The ghost froze in the air and fell downwards. Danny prepared to pick up what was left when it fell but he could only watch as the cunning, frozen ghost had the ice surrounding him oscillating and shaking until it cracked into pieces.
What? No one's gotten out so quickly. Not even Undergrowth.
"Well, that was almost as chilling as Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. My turn Danny?" the ghost shot beams of energy through the sky from his cane. Danny was hit by one and fell to the ground. Why is he so strong? Why have I never heard of him before? If I can't beat him with my ice powers, there's only one thing that can beat him.
Danny flew into the air, grabbed the ghost, and kicked him far from the city. The ghost boy flew upwards into the sky and as the other ghost was about to crash into the ground, Danny let loose a ghostly wail stronger than he'd ever given before. The force of gravity pulling Aleksandr down and the power of Danny's furious ghostly wail catapulted him into the ground with such a powerful force that even Wisconsin would have probably seen the geyser of energy in the distance. There was now an enormous, smoking crater in the hills outside Amity Park.
But Aleksandr was unscathed, still floating in the air, and smiling.
Danny was confused but let loose another torrent of sound with his ghostly wail, and with a swing of his cane: Aleksandr deflected the entire thing leaving him completely unharmed and Danny completely bewildered.
"How did you-? What?"
"I'm a composer," he said, "I play with sound like ghost babies play with ectoplasm."
"Speaking of ectoplasm," the ghost continued, knowing that this was his advantage for the shocked ghost boy to listen, "Not only are your parents destroying the musical world with their out of tune frequency, they're going to fire it at ectoplasm. Do you know what happens when you fire high frequency radiation at a ghostly element?"
"Nope, Phantom-molecular-bio-whatever-chemistry isn't in the curriculum," Danny fired off another ghostly energy beam.
"STOP!" Aleksandr yelled as he easily blocked the beam with his cane.
He continued, "It will cause the ectoplasm to explode in an explosion that will tear a hole to the Ghost Zone the size of Texas!"
"Why do you care?"
"Because I haven't lived in the Ghost Zone all my life and my entire afterlife! I don't want my perfectly good home riddled with pestering ghosts!"
"Then I can easily stop it! I can just tell my parents to call it quits!"
"No, first off: they won't listen to you," Aleksandr pointed at him with his cane, "You haven't gone to college yet. Second off: there will be far more evil plays in this game then we would expect. There are ghosts dying to get into this world, and evils willing to let such a thing happen."
"Vlad? Is he back?"
Aleksandr was about to reply when he turned his head to the hill across them.
Suddenly, Jack and Maddie Fenton appeared over on the next hill. Jack was ready to fire his weapon when Danny exclaimed, "No! Wait! He's on our side! STOP!"
The blast from Jack's weapon rocketed Jack backwards and struck Aleksandr. The ghost fell towards the ground in a smoking flame. The ghost struck the ground with an explosion.
Aleksandr was left destabilized; his legs were melting into ectoplasm. There was a brilliant flash of white light over his body, his eyes glowed red, and he grew more unstable.
Maddie gasped.
"Danny is this true? He's on our side? Why is he here?"
"He's here to help us."
"From what?"
The sky turned a violent purple, dark clouds appeared and a violent swirling green portal opened up in the sky.
Danny pointed, "From that."
The new ghost portal whirred and roared in the air like a giant mechanical turbine about to explode. Green flashes of lightning cracked through the air, searing the life around it in bright blue flames. The Earth shook and lurched as a brilliant flash of light emerged from the portal.
"Who opened this portal?" Technus exclaimed as he rushed, "And with ectoplasm? Why would you rip the wall between the human and ghost world?"
"It hasn't been opened just quite yet," Danny responded to the arriver.
"I'm being followed by thousands of ghosts. You people, move out of the way. I must close this with my new technology."
"Followed?" Danny was incredulous, "Thousands? Really?"
"Yes really!" Technus replied, "Open up a portal to the ghost portal and ghosts will be all over it like free hardware at a nerd convention." After finishing, Technus fired a blast into the air from a gadget he held in his hands. Tucker and Sam were just arriving when green blast impacted with the growing vortex.
The vortex was agitated, it slowed and spurned. It let out several bursts of energy around itself, leaving ectoplasm in its wake. The vortex slowed.
"Yes," finally it's working," Technus announced, "Looks like I've got it right this time."
The vortex, as if in anger, swirled larger once again now sucking trees and rocks into itself. Danny and the spectators there wrapped their arms around trees to avoid being sucked into the monster. Tucker took the tree next to Sam and smirked.
"A whole new meaning for Tree Hugger," Tucker laughed.
"Shut it."
In one final explosion of energy, the vortex collapsed into itself and disappeared. The wind calmed down and the spectators let go of the trees and sighed in relief.
"Now, there's something I should tell you," Technus looked at Danny behind his sunglasses.
"And what would that be? Is this about how I owe you one? I'll pay this back. I'm a fair ghost."
"No, no," Technus gestured his hand, "Wait? What? Okay, you definitely owe me one. But what I was trying to say is that that portal isn't really close. It's just so tiny it won't do any damage. Whatever started it is going to aggravate it again. Where is the bombarded ectoplasm?"
"The what?" Danny said, "Come on. I thought half the Ghost Zone would know I'm not exactly a 50- Newton Bulb"
"Watt, honey. 50 Watt bulb," Danny's mother chimed in.
"Thanks Mom," Danny sighed out sarcastically.
"No problem honey!" Maddie stuck her thumb up and smiled.
"Look. Whoever started this was firing energy at ectoplasm. Where did this happen and who did it?"
"My parents were going to. But they never started."
"If it wasn't your parents, then who's been messing with the equipment?"
"Aleksandr was right. There are more evil plays in this game then we'd expect."
Danny's mother walked up next to him and held his shoulder. She stared at the ghost bewildered. She could not believe that there was a technological ghost in front of her. She even considered trapping it in the Fenton Net just to interrogate it about Ghost Technology, but she reconsidered and spoke to Danny.
"Danny, where did the creepy composer ghost go?
"Oh no! He must have melted into ectoplasm!"
Then they heard a loud screeching sound coming from the distance. Something was happening at Fentonworks.
"What are you doing here, Alex?" Danny asked the composer who was now tinkering away at the photon generator.
"Just opening up a hole to the Ghost Zone, you know, it's just nothing. Zero importance to you."
"Well, looks like I'll have to give you a little crash course in mathematical values! Emphasis on the crash," Danny's fist lit up a bright green and he slammed his fist into the ghost's stomach.
"Why are you doing this? I thought you wanted to be left alone in the woods?"
"Oh Danny, don't you realize how much is different? I did. The Ghost Zone has riches untold of, relics unfathomable. I think it's about time I make a name for myself, don't you think?"
"No," Danny held to the neck cuff of the composer's suit, "Something's wrong about you. Something's changed."
"Oh no. Only my perspective on the Ghost Zone and the insignificance of your world has sprung into view, nothing has really changed."
"No," Danny punched the side of the ghost's face, forcing a spray of saliva from his mouth, "You're eyes have become red for starters. Something tells me this isn't a common case of ghost pink eye."
"You're not as dull as I thought. It's been a while though."
"A while? What do you mean?"
The composer ghost sprung from the boy's group. "Man, I've got to fix that," Danny thought. The ghost lurched to the photon generator, slipped it out of the glass shield, and shot it at Danny. A terrible shriek came from the machine until its pitch rose and rose into an inaudible, but painful sound ringing in the ghost boy's ears.
"Here's where the fun begins!" the possessed ghost shrieked out in crooked laughter.
A thick beam exploded from the machine. Danny sprung up a green shield but to no avail. The beam smashed through his shield and sent him hurling into the wall behind.
"If you'll excuse me" the ghost composer smiled with newfound fangs and aimed the machine towards the ectoplasm.
"No! Alex, you're definitely possessed. You've been overshadowed. I don't know by who, but you've got to fight it," Danny sent a beam of energy towards Aleksandr from the broken wall where the ghost boy laid.
"Like that will work," and with another brilliant explosion, the ectoplasm extended and burst in a bright green explosion. The beakers on the side of the room flew into it as other equipment flew into the pile as well. The glass protecting the ectoplasm was smashed by incoming objects until the pile of green mass distended and morphed. It let loose brief, periodic explosions of greenish radiation. The radiation consumed both Danny and the ghost.
"You know," ectoplasm does react violently towards high frequencies, "You just have to know which one is the right one."
"If that thing is going to blow, how come you aren't running?" Danny yelled out.
"Because there is no point in doing so. You're parents found a rich piece of ectoplasm and I'm using it for even better purposes."
The ectoplasm exploded in one furious bang.
The ghost was gone.
So was the entire laboratory.
Danny jumped and fled from the collapsing basement.
And as the debris and rubble came crashing down on the once unimaginable laboratory filled with ghostly secrets, destroying every trace of long gone decades, Danny thought. He must be in the Ghost Zone, or dead. But who-who possessed him?