So, here we are at the start. I hope you enjoy whatever I can wrack out of my brain.
"talking"
'thinking'
The final chord blared out of the stage's speakers, drowning out the crowd's roar until it died away. Cries of 'Ember', 'We love you' and indistinguishable white noise washed of ghostly rocker Ember McLain, setting her flaming hair to great heights. How she loved the flow of power those voices carried, the raw emotional energy of love and admiration crashing over her like a wave. Here she was on top of the world, the best rocker in two worlds, untouchable.
Until he showed up, of course.
The squeal of the dying sound system broke her reverie, and she knew just who was responsible, half ghost hero, Danny Phantom.
"OK, Babypop, I know you're here," she called out, her voice carrying over the crowd even without the sound system, "no need to be shy."
"Awe Ember, you're making blush," came the witty retort of Danny as he turned visible, hovering over the back of the stage, "You know I don't like the attention."
"Yeah, you're a regular shrieking violet," Ember shot back, launching a sonic shock wave from her guitar.
Danny dodged, looping around the stage before shooting an ecto bast at Ember. The rock princess jumped away from the blast, flying up into the rafters of the stage.
"Shrieking instead of shrinking, funny," Danny smirked, charging another blast, "Come up that one on your own?"
"I write all my material, Babypop," Ember quipped back, a smile present on her face as she dipped under the salvo shots lobed at her. The crowd below them still cheered but Ember paid them no mind. While the constant flow of power was nice, her focus of solely on her foe.
She had been waiting for him to show up. Trying to conquer the world had become boring without have him to fight. And while some people would claim she had a crush on him, something she vehemently denied, she couldn't say seeing him wasn't an unpleasant event.
Danny grunted as he took a sonic blast, managing to turn intangible before he hit the stage. Fighting Ember was always hard, and not just because she could get a major boost from a crowd, a crowd served as a distraction for him as much as it did a battery for. She had quite a good number of tricks and attacks up her sleeve and know how to keep him on his toes.
'If only Tucker had gotten his search program working earlier. I wouldn't be getting my butt kicked.' Danny thought as he re-engaged Ember with a shot of icy energy. Tucker's program was a godsend, scouring the internet for ghost attacks. It was the only way he found out about Ember's latest concert, a good one hundred miles away from Amity Park.
"If I didn't know better Ember, I'd say you were trying to avoid me," he said, an ice blast flying from his extended arm, "Holding a concert so far away."
"That was the plan, dipstick," Ember said as she countered the ice blast with an arc of flame. "Ya know, if you keep showing up to my shows, I might start thinking I've got a stalker, Babypop."
"In your dreams," Danny muttered, a heavy weight settling in his chest. Truthfully he'd rather not fight Ember. She seemed like a great person, minus the mind control and take over the world thing. Plus he couldn't denied she looked hot, flame powers not withstanding.
Shaking those thoughts from his head, Danny focused on the task at hand. 'I have to get her away from her 'adoring fans'. They're giving too much of a boost plus I can't go all out with them around. Time to try something new.'
Danny took off, heading straight towards his inferno-haired foe. Just as Ember let loose a wave of sound, Danny took a sharp turn, turning invisible at the same time. Before Ember could react, Danny returned to visibility with an ecto-charged sucker punch.
The punch sent Ember plummeting down to the stage. In her shock, she didn't have the focus to turn intangible; her impact leaving a small hole in the stage.
Danny was about to ready the Thermos when a fist of flame shot out of the stage. He shot to the side to avoid it, only to be met with a guitar to the face.
"Goin' need to be a bit faster Babypop," Ember taunted, looking at the downed hero, before an ecto-blast struck her from behind. She flipped through the air, before righting herself, turning to face her assailant.
Only to see Danny's smirking face.
Ember's eyes flashed to the where she had knocked Danny down to see… another Danny. The fallen Danny, splayed on his back, gave a cheeky wave before fading away.
"Learned a new trick, huh Babypop?" Ember said, her hair dancing wildly, "Well, how bout we take this to 11?"
Turning a knob on her guitar, she began to strum, her fingers moving faster and faster. As she played, a disk of blue ectoplasmic energy formed in front of her, growing from the size of a dollar coin to the size of a trash can lid.
Danny knew an attack like this would be a big one, and trying to interrupt it could cause the people below to get hurt. He flew up, hoping altitude would help. Ember was hot on his heels, strumming away.
"Hope your ready, Babypop, cus I'm ready to rock!" Ember exclaimed, her fast strumming switching to one drawn out power cord. The blue disk of spectral energy burst out, the shock wave headed straight towards Danny.
Danny knew he couldn't block an attack like that, and dodging it seemed unlikely. So only one option was left.
He inhaled deeply, and let loose his ghostly wail. The green spectral shock wave collided with Ember's blue one a few feet from him. The contact between the two sound attacks produced a horrific, screeching sound, like glass breaking and nails on a chalkboard, only a hundred times louder. The noise resounded through the air, snapping the captive crowd out of their hypnosis and setting of a panicked retreat.
With the crowd fleeing, Ember's power boost began to fade and Danny's wail began to push her power cord back, until the meeting point was directly between the two. The two ghost teens held their attacks, the strain beginning to show.
In an instant, both attacks ceased. For a moment neither ghost moved, simply floating as they began to recover from their respective attacks. And then Danny Phantom dropped like a stone.
Ember saw it in slow motion; his fight just ended and in the first few feet, a white ring formed around his midsection. The ring split, traveling up and down his body, turning him back to his human form. She remained rooted in the air a few seconds longer before shooting off as fast as she could.
But as drained as she was, she would never reach him just by flight. Drawing on the last of her concert boost, she disappeared in a flash of fire, reappearing behind Danny. She grabbed him in a tight embrace, slowing their fall until they reached the stage.
Danny's last thoughts before his powers began to fade could be summed up in one word, 'Fuck.' He had been working on the wail, hoping to remove the weakness with the attack; it's tendency to leave him completely drained. And his training had reached a point where he could fire off a full powered wail without burning out. When he was at full power. Not after flying at high speed for a hundred miles, firing off several ecto and ice blasts and pulling off the clone fake out.
And so he fell, his eyes finding Ember staring shocked at his falling form. Then she moved, flying towards him as fast as she could. But he could tell it wasn't fast enough. He closed his eyes, the weariness catching up.
Then he felt a burst of heat and a very obvious feminine figure at his back, holding him. Their descent brought them to rest upon the damaged stage, where Ember laid Danny upon the wooden structure.
Finding his voice, Danny looked up at Ember, "Why'd you save me?"
The question seemed to snap something back into place for Ember as she looked anywhere but at Danny. "Dealing you you as a halfa's bad enough. Don't need you going full ghost anytime soon."
"Well, thanks I guess," Danny replied, not sure what was going on with Ember and too tried to think further on it.
An awkward silence developed between the two. While Danny took the lack of hostility to try to regain his strength, Ember stood trying to sort her thoughts.
'Why did I say that? I sound like even more of a complete bitch than I really am. Did he really think I'd just let someone die? I'm a ghost, not heartless!'
Ember's thought and Danny's rest was abruptly ended when a piercing screech echoed through the air. A portal of some kind had opened in the air right where the two sound attacks had pushed against themselves. Danny struggled to his feet, nearly collapsing if Ember hadn't grabbed him in an effort to steady him.
Shooting her a look of thanks, and missing what could have been a faith blush from on her cheeks, Danny watched as the portal, a sickly purple in color, stabilized. Out of the portal flew sharks. Transparent, green sharks with feathered wings on their sides, under the dorsal fin.
"You ever see something like that,"Danny asked as the number of sky sharks grew from a handful to a good dozen and a half.
"Nope," came Ember's stunned reply. Even in the Ghost Zone, this was something completely new. "I mean, look at those wings. They look like they've been superimposed."
The unlikely duo watched as the sharks took a moment to orient themselves, before making a beeline straight for them.
"Just perfect," Ember sighed, "My concert ruined, all the extra power I got was wasted fighting you and now fucking Sky Sharks. How could this get any better?"
As if to spite her Danny tried to go ghost, only for the ring to sputter out before it even moved. "You just had to ask."
"You rocking any of your folks tech?" Ember asked, only to see Danny shake his head, "Great. Just stand back Babypop. These party crashers got a real world of hurt coming."
With that Ember took off, launching a sonic blast at the cartilaginous swarm. It slowed some but the rest kept coming.
Gnashing her teeth, Ember switched it up, shooting a blast of flame. That had a greater effect, as the shark it hit flailed wildly, a terrible squealing released from its maw.
With a manic grin, Ember fired several more flame blasts. They all scored a hit, but before sane could take aim at the remaining sharks, one lunged at her, it's teeth ready to tear into her flesh.
Ember dodged, though it was a near miss, her strength drained from the earlier fight. It wasn't long before the whole school began to take bites at her.
Danny could only watch as Ember was surrounded by the school, only narrowly avoiding their bites. He clenched his fists, reaching as deep as he could to find any scrap of power. And then he felt something; a shift in his very core. A spark of vibrant blue covered his body as he went ghost. For a moment he looked at himself. Everything was as it should have been but a lingering blueish glow covered him.
A shriek above him drew his gaze up to the swarm, as Ember narrowly dodged an ecto beam from one of the sharks eyes. And another was about to fire right behind her.
Like a shot, Danny took off, flying as fats as he could. He charged up an ecto blast, not caring that it was now blue in place of the normal green, and shot it straight at the shark about to hit Ember. He shot found its mark, sending the shark flying away.
As Danny took a position back to back with Ember she shot a look at him. "Babypop, what's with the glow?"
"I have no idea, but I'm not about to complain about it." Danny returned her gaze, "Ready for some fly fishing?"
With a short laugh, Ember tightened her grip on her guitar, "You know it, Babypop!"
The sharks descended upon them, teeth and eyes ready to draw blood. With a flurry of blue fire and ecto blasts, Danny and Ember fended them off. While their blasts did seem to hurt the flying menace, they kept coming.
As Danny and Ember fought the swarm, their dwindling energy caused them to slowly decent until their feet were once more upon the ground. Without needed to fly, they poured their all into there attacks, driving the sky sharks further up into the sky, where they began to circle.
Both teens were breathing heavily, all but spent. Danny caught sight of Ember's ponytail, smaller than he'd remembered ever seeing it. An idea began to form. If it worked, they might be able to pull of a win. If it didn't, well at least he would have one last good memory before the end.
"Ember, you get stronger when people chant your name and like your music right?" Danny asked as the swarm began to regain cohesion.
"Yeah, they love me, I get that energy," Ember replied, but unless you can whip a crowd out of your ass then I don't see your poin.."
She was cut off by Danny turning her to face him and his lips crashing into hers. For a second she was too stunned to think. Danny Phantom, her enemy, was kissing her. And then she felt it.
A rush of emotions flowed out of Danny and into her. A lot of them went right through her, her powers unable to grasp them. Then Danny's feelings towards her hit. His enjoyment of her music (minus the mind control bits), the fun of their traded barbs, his appreciation of her looks, all of that plus bits she couldn't catch flooder her mind.
'So much, how can one guy give me so much power.'
Her hair lit up like a bonfire, reaching twenty feet high before coiling around the two like a cocoon. Inside there was only them, Ember drowning in an overload of emotional energy and Danny doing everything he could to give her that power.
He screech of the sky sharks drew Ember's attention outside the cocoon. With an angry thought she willed her hair to flare out. As the sharks descended, the flaming cocoon burst outwards, catching every shark in its azure path.
With harsh cries, the sky sharks flailed around, their forms burning up, until they were no more.
With the threat gone, and a terrible need to breathe, the pair broke off the kiss. Danny expected to get slapped, if it hit with a full on ecto blast. He only thing he did get was a still somewhat dazed Ember, her hair still burning bright and tall.
"Ember," Danny said cautiously, only then realizing he still held her, "you OK?"
"Better than OK, Babypop." came her reply, her voice far away.
Before Danny could respond, his second wild failed him. He went back to his human form and his legs nearly gave out from exhaustion.
Ember's arms snaked around him, keeping upright and giving his front the same pleasure his back had enjoyed earlier. "I've got you Danny," Ember said softly, before a whirlwind of flames carried them away.
The pair materialized inside Danny's room, back in Amity. Once he knew where they were he began to panic. "Ember, you can't be here. My parents.."
"Shush," Ember whispered, "I'll be gone in a sec." With that she helped Danny onto his bed. "See you around Babypop." And she was gone.
Danny just stared at where she had been a moment before. 'What the hell did I do to her? Was my kiss that bad? That can't be it, her hair was more alive than I've ever seen it. Or was it too good? Did I just break Ember?'
With his body way to tried to keep thinking about the mystery of Ember McLain, Danny shot a text to Tucker and Sam so they knew he was home and safe, before his head hit his pillow. He could think about ghost girls and weird, random power-ups tomorrow.
A figure in a white long coat and hat stepped onto the ruined stage where a scant few minutes ago, a set of teenage ghosts fended of a school of sky sharks. Glancing down at the devices mounted to his left glove a sigh could be heard from under his solid white face mask.
'So it begins.'
Hope you enjoyed. See you next time.