James: Well, I'm back… sorta. Ok, my laptop… which is pretty much my heart is currently mostly out of commission. I have been having a lot of problems with it and while it works and I can still write things on it, it has no internet… or sound. Anyway, this sorta came to me and it came hard. I do not own Danny Phantom, but I do think it had the potential to be an excellent series.
I have a pretty good feeling about this fic. It won't be a one shot but I have enough material and ideas to complete it, I think. I know I'm a bit of a flake when it comes to fanfics and I'm sorry about that. Anyway, here it is, the first chapter of
DANNY PHANTOM: THE REAPER QUEEN
It was just another peaceful day in Amity Park... as long as you ignored the explosions, screaming, and of course the ghosts. But still, as long as your name wasn't Danny Fenton, you were probably fine.
Unfortunately for our hero, he was, and still is, Danny Fenton, though some call him Danny Phantom. And right now he was running for his afterlife with Skulker, a sadistic, power suit wearing ghost, hot on his spectral tail.
Now, this was nothing new to Danny or his friends, Tucker Foley and Sam Manson, but it was an annoyance as always. You see, Skulker had been 'hunting' Danny for going on three years now, and each time he came with a new trick up his sleeve. The trick this time? Why, a new technologically advanced cyber tank, courtesy of Technus the Computer Ghost, of course. It even came standard with its own anti ghost shield. Points for originality, I suppose... this IS after all the first time Danny had to deal with an actual tank. Still, Skulker seemed to be forgetting one fatal flaw in his plan. The ghost shield only worked on ghosts, not humans and certainly not wireless signals.
"Hey Tuck!" cried Danny into his headset. "Any day now would be nice."
Not far away, well within signal range, stood Tucker Foley, typing away on his PDA, his thumbs moving rapidly across the keys. Standing beside him, with a Fenton Specter Deflector strapped across her waist and a spare Fenton Ghost Thermos in hand, Sam Manson, the Goth Queen of Amity Park and Danny's girlfriend was ready to back her boyfriend up at a moment's notice.
"Just a sec, Danny," said Tucker. "I'm uploading the virus now; man you'd think he'd have learned his lesson after that whole gorilla incident... ah, there we go. Virus uploaded."
With a grin, Tucker grabbed Sam by the arm and pulled her into the nearby alley, just as the tank started going haywire. The ghost shield burst and vanished like a popped bubble. The tank began to spin and bounce, to accelerate forward and then switch suddenly into reverse. Sparks began flying from it in all directions and the barrel began firing randomly, mostly at the sky or at the ground around it. One lucky shot very nearly clipped Danny as he began dodging wildly. And two slammed into the building that made up one side of the alley that Sam and Tucker had taken refuge in. Luckily the building took very minimal damage. The shots were designed to incapacitate Danny after all, not to destroy brick and mortar. Finally, after a few more seconds of chaos, the tank exploded and out flew Skulker, burned and battered, the right arm of his tech suit nearly blown off. To say that he looked angry would have been useless since he always looked that way, but this time it was clear that he was especially peeved.
"Curse you and your friends, Ghost Boy!" he cried, the eyes of his face plate flashing a furious red.
Danny hovered nearby a cocky grin spreading across his face, his arms crossed comfortably across his chest.
"Give it up, Skulker," he said. "We've been through this a dozen times and every time my friends and I win. Maybe it's time for a new hobby... ever try needlepoint?"
As unlikely as it seemed to be, Skulker's expression became even more hateful, his left fist was clenched tightly and the fingers of his half destroyed right hand were twitching frantically, trying to form a fist.
"You think you've won already, eh Ghost Brat?" he spat, glaring bullets at the still smirking Danny.
"Face it Skulker, you're a mess and you're all outta tricks," gloated Danny, floating closer to Skulker in his arrogance. "You're done, Skulker. It's back to the Ghost Zone for you."
Suddenly a satisfied grin replaced Skulker's previous hateful grimace.
"You're right about one thing, boy," he said with a chuckle. "I am done. I'm done playing with you! You were a fool, Danny Phantom. You thought I was all out of tricks, but I still have THIS!"
In a sudden motion that caught Danny quite off guard, Skulker brought his arms up and pointed them at Danny. His left arm suddenly turned into what appeared to be a strange looking gun and fired a pulsing red beam. Surprised, Danny was too slow to react. He was a sitting duck when the strange red beam hit him, but instead of blasting him into next week like he was expecting, he felt himself freeze up and the red energy enveloped him. He suddenly felt his powers leaving him as all of his ghost energy was forcibly, and very painfully torn from him and pulled into Skulker's arm by the strange red energy. Danny could hear someone screaming in the distance... someone that sounded a lot like him... and they were definitely suffering.
Hearing their best friend's screams of agony, Sam and Tucker rushed out from the cover of the alley they were hiding in and watched, horrified as they saw the green, spectral silhouette of Danny's inner ghost being torn from his now human body and pulled into Skulker's left arm. As suddenly as it came, the red energy of the beam vanished and Danny Fenton slumped to the ground, barely managing to push his sore and smoking body from the ground. With pain filled eyes, he looked up at Skulker, fear flashing behind his blue eyes for the first time in a long time.
"W-what... did you do to me?" he asked weakly.
Skulker grinned and gave a short burst of barking laughter before bringing his heavily damaged right arm up to point at Danny's prone form.
"I stole every ounce of ghost energy in your body... and now I'm going to concentrate it and use it to blast you straight into the Ghost Zone. Then I'll fly back and pick up your helpless and broken body... and then, finally, I will have you as my trophy! Prepare yourself boy... this will hurt."
Danny bowed his head in defeat as Skulker's arm began to glow and spark, a dark magenta colored energy collecting and spiraling in his palm, ghostly green lightning arcing around it.
Tucker cried out a warning to his friend, his legs frozen with fear for Danny. It was almost a full second before he noticed that Sam was already in motion, sprinting to put herself between her man and the crazed ghost that was about to take him away from her. In one swift motion, she skidded to a halt halfway between Danny and Skulker, tore the top off of the Fenton Ghost Thermos, and pointed it at Skulker, her thumb nearly crushing the activation button.
"You leave Danny alone!!" cried Sam, her voice as hard as steel. "I won't let you touch him!"
Suddenly, several things happened all at once. Hearing Sam's voice so close by, Danny looked up, his neck nearly cracking with how fast his head moved. This allowed him an excellent view of Sam's backside, and of the horror that was about to occur.
The next thing to happen was the firing of the trapping beam from the Fenton Thermos in Sam's hands, followed immediately after by the firing of a very thin, very concentrated beam of dark purple and glowing green energy from Skulker's hand. Half way between teenage girl and evil ghost, the two beams met. For a moment it seemed they were evenly matched, repelling each other, but then both Skulker's arm and the Thermos gave off several violent sparks and popping noises. The thermos cracked and the arm exploded. Suddenly the thin, evil looking beam of corrupted ghost energy pierced through the green capture beam of the Thermos, then through the Thermos itself and, easily shorting out the Specter Deflector, the beam pierced through Sam. There was a great flash of light and a pulse of ectoplasmic energy. A shill scream pierced through the sounds of the explosion and fierce winds generated by the swirling nexus of energy surrounding Sam. It was swiftly cut short. In desperation, Danny pulled himself to his feet and ran to try and save his girlfriend, but a sudden and violent pulse of ectoplasmic energy threw him several feet back. When he managed to pull himself back up from the ground Danny realized two things. First, he had his ghost powers back, he could feel them swirling within him. The second thing he realized was that Sam, his beloved girlfriend, was gone. Vanished. The only trace of her that was left behind was the cracked and broken Thermos, the thoroughly trashed Specter Deflector, and the ring that Danny had given her when he had finally realized his feelings for her. There was an ominous, jagged crack dividing the jewel in the center of the ring down the middle.
For a moment all was silent. Tucker was frozen, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open, his hands held limp at his side. His precious PDA fell from his limp fingers and smashed into pieces on the concrete sidewalk, but he didn't care, didn't even flinch. His legs finally giving out, Tucker slumped down, his back sliding heavily against the wall of the building he had just recently used as a shield.
Danny, still on all fours, stared at the spot where Sam had just been standing, his eyes boring disbelieving holes into the small smoking crater that remained. This hadn't happened; it couldn't have happened!
"Sam... no," he choked, tears welling up at the edges of his blue eyes. "No...! SAAAAAAAAAAAM!!!"
Grief gripping his heart with icy claws, Danny broke down in a fit of sobs, his fist pounding into the cracked asphalt of the road. Vaguely, he noticed movement several yards away. With a groan, Skulker pushed several pieces of debris off of him and stood. He was a severe wreck. The great hunter's right arm was gone, his right leg was in pieces, barely attached, and his chest plate was a spider web of cracks.
"Curse that wench," he muttered, glaring about to reorient himself. "She made me waste my shot! Now I'm in no condition to continue the hunt! I'll make that retched female pay for this... err, where'd she go?"
Skulker felt as much as saw the great burst of angry green energy that came from several yards ahead away.
"SKULKER!!!" came the hate filled cry.
Looking up from his mumbling, Skulker saw his prey, but something wasn't wrong, very wrong... and the intensity of it made the seasoned, hardened hunter take a step back in recoiling fear.
Danny seemed to be the center of an angry, swirling storm of ectoplasmic energy. His eyes, which were normally green as a ghost were open very wide and glowing an angry red. His teeth were fanged and set in a crazed scowl and his hair was standing on end, blown about in a maelstrom of energy produced wind. Skulker took yet another step back for good measure, surprise and fear etched deeply in his facial expression.
"Skulker..." said Danny in a deathly calm voice. "Bring... Sam... BACK!"
Suddenly Danny was all over him, fists taking whole chucks out of his armor as Skulker tried with all his skill to dodge and get away from this new monster. Finally, the ghost hunter decided to abandon his suit and flee, his tiny worm-like form speeding away in full retreat, not even looking back while Danny screamed at him, his broken exoskeleton lying, scattered and in tiny pieces, at the enraged teenager's feet.
Finally, grief overtook Danny's rage and he slumped to his knees, threw his head back and cried.
"SAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!!" he screamed, his voice ripping out from his throat as a ghastly, ghostly wail that shattered nearby glass and sent shivers down the spines of everyone who heard it. The sound carried with it his despair and all over town people stopped what they were doing and felt their hearts ache in response to the sorrowful howl.
Danny sobbed for several more minutes, his tears slowly forming a puddle beneath him. His shoulders shuddered with each breath and his chest was little more than a tight, thick knot of heartache. His nose was running, his eyes were red and puffy, there was a lump stuck in his throat, but he didn't care. Danny had just witnessed his first real love vanish, wiped from existence right before his eyes. He knew; he felt it deep in his bones, he'd never be the same again.
Finally, his energy spent, Danny's ghost form faded, leaving a battered, bruised, bleeding, and heartbroken young man, barely more than a child, panting and sobbing in the middle of the street. Then, mercifully, unconsciousness took him and he knew no more.
Tucker watched as Danny slumped to the ground and knew that he had to get his remaining friend home so that his wounds could be treated. Biting back his own grief and storing it away for later like the computer files he loved so dearly, Tucker pulled himself up, standing on shaky legs before stumbling over to the prone and unconscious form of his best friend. It almost broke him to see Danny like this, so obviously thrashed, both physically and, judging by the expression on the young hero's face, emotionally. But Tucker firmed up his resolve, grabbed Danny by the shoulders, draped one of Danny's arms across his shoulder and half carried, half dragged Danny the six blocks to his home.
Daen: Oh dear god… what have you done James?
James: Well, if you leave a really good review, then you'll find out in the next chapter. Well, you'll find out anyway, but I'd still like some reviews. I want to know what people honestly think about this story so far.
Next time on Danny Phantom: Is Sam really gone for good? Will Danny ever recover from this shattering loss? How will this effect Danny and Tucker's friendship? What will they tell Danny's parents and sister? What will they tell Sam's mom and dad?! And what happens when an old enemy comes to give comfort to Danny in his darker hours… and just who is this Reaper Queen? Find out next time on…
DANNY PHANTOM: THE REAPER QUEEN