Lose Yourself
By JadeRabbyt
A/N: Stop. This story was a songfic, but due to regulations and my own fairly acute paranoia I have had to remove the lyrics. Please go here--free hostdepartment com/p/purpledino/storey/ly1 htm (use periods where the spaces are, no www necessary) to read the original. I guarantee it'll knock your socks off.
Disclaimer: Danny Phantom belongs to Nickelodeon.
Part I
Three streaks of exhaust lingered on the sky, staining the virgin blue with their harsh white fumes. Air raid sirens exploded in the air as dust continued to rise just a few blocks away in putrid plumes of fire and dust, the rubble beginning to settle and the first flames beginning to reach skyward. The drone of the planes above as they retreated was a roaring in the heavens that answered the pleading denial of everyone in Amity Park.
We' so far inland. Why should these foreign flags bring destruction here? How is it even possible that this horror is anything more than an illusion or nightmare? I knew I shouldn't have eaten those leftovers. Next time I won't use hard rock as a lullaby.
But the glinting darts overhead would not evaporate no matter how hard the citizens rubbed their eyes or tried to clear their heads, and the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker and all their patrons, mothers with infants, the idle unemployed, janitors who'd only gone out to put a bag in the dumpster and students who'd just been let out from school, all stood and stared as those darts, showing their dim luster in the midday sun, arched around for another pass with such calm, mechanical precision as would defy human ability. The roaring faded in the distance until the siren dominated it, whose futile wails soaked the atmosphere, its rising, desperate, sobbing scream echoing the emotions of its audience. The city could only watch, a million eyes as one, the shock transcending all prejudices, political leanings, and mortal concerns as those planes began to return, the siren the only voice in the city still speaking.
The roar was quiet. The planes' thundering could be heard only as a murmur through the siren. The common eye of the town watched as the soaring chunks of platinum above began to birth little dark pellets in midair. They emerged from the planes and hung motionless for an instant against the deep blue backdrop of the sky, but then the pellets began to sink, to grow larger in the view of the city and race toward earth with deadly speed. The belated sonic boom of the planes shattered the siren's crying and the city's amazement as they realized that the explosions of five minutes ago were about to happen again. Everything became a rush, a scream, a Mr. Mayor the President's on the line a Come on Jeremy we have to reach cover a What are you doing Danny they're headed right for us-
Sam yanked hard on his arm, trying to make Danny run from the bombs. A tear fled from one eye as she pulled, but she couldn't do more than throw him off-balance.
"Danny!" she screamed.
"Sam..." he whispered.
Tucker slammed both of them to the ground and as a bomb whistled to earth a short block away, throwing clouds of dirt skyward that boiled up and shrouded the Sun from view. Sam jerked her head up and watched as those caught in the blast roasted in its heat or lay immobile in the street, coughing and writhing before a fog of dirt fell over them that put them out of sight. The three coughed in the cloud, not thick enough to blind but more than thick enough to saturate the air around them. Before the rubble could settle the block was rocked by another low blast that pounded bas on the eardrums. Another wave of heat swept over the three as a fireball reached skyward, releasing the acrid stench of propane. Tucker and Sam hauled Danny to his feet as the smoke boiled away.
He turned to Sam. She was crying. "How?"
Sam shook her head.
Tucker listened as the noise faded. "They're coming around again."
Danny looked up through the dirt and smoke to the sky above to see the three darts turning in the sky, turning back to Amity Park. Danny forced words from his dry mouth. "We need to get somewhere safe."
Tucker looked over the blazing ruins of the block. The fire was already licking at the walls of nearby buildings. "Where?"
Danny finally found his legs and the three of them joined a throng of racing classmates. "Dash!" he shouted. "Where are you guys going?"
The quarterback continued to huff along in his small group of jocks, paying no attention to the lesser students. Sam took up the cry and shouted for his attention.
"Shut up, geek! I don't know! There's nowhere to go. They're destroying everything." He slowed and spared a look for them, a glance of despair and ignorance that washed away pretense. "Do you guys know why?"
"No," the three said as one.
"We can't do anything. We can't go anywhere. There's no air base around that could hope to handle this sort of thing," another jock added.
They raced along the sooty ground, occasionally losing balance but always sprinting forward. They stumbled and tripped on the street's rubble, racing against the planes and dreading the moment their drone once again would silence the siren.
They ran down two and three blocks, leaving the fire a tolerable, if not safe, distance behind. They raced up to a brick building, its windows blown out and electricity down, and leaped through the gaping frame of the display window, tumbling into the store.
Tucker scrambled to his feet. "Basement?"
"Hell yeah," Dash cried. They raced through the abandoned shop, pushing over clothing carts and smearing the merchandise with grime. The group raced to the back, Dash in the lead, and split up without instruction, each searching for a saving staircase.
"Here here!" one of them called.
The group flocked to the speaker and ran down the steps, kicking down a wooden door and flooding into the underground storage area. They paused a moment to catch their breath.
Danny and Sam shoved around some boxes until they could sit together. They held each other, numb and desperate, while Tucker pulled up a nearby carton of clothes and sat a foot away from Danny. He looked between Danny and Sam and pulled out his palm pilot, mindlessly loading a space invaders game with shaking fingers. The jocks huddled in a group, each trying to think of something to say, some explanation or excuse or even a dirty joke that would lighten the mood, but the entire room was struck dumb, letting the siren and the crackling and crashing of fire and the roar of engines cry distress while the group of teenagers cringed underground, struck dumb.
But their silence didn't last long.
"It doesn't... but why... How can they DO this?" Dash jumped from his box and started to pace.
One of his friends stood and rested a hand on his shoulder. "Look, Dash, we're all-"
Dash slapped away the hand. His eyes roamed the room and settled on Danny. "You, Fenton, this is all your fault!" He snatched Danny, who was still having difficulty grasping the absurd accusation, and pinned him against the wall. Sam shouted and Tucker and the jocks leaped to their feet as Dash's hands left Danny's collar and went for the soft flesh at his neck.
Danny gasped, trying to extradite himself from the tightening grip, trying to say something, anything that would quiet his own nascent rage at the disaster as well as Dash's. Surely there was something they could all remember and hold on to-
There was nothing he could say, and Danny started to see stars as the hands at his neck tightened.
The friends of both Danny and Dash tore the thrashing Dash off him, prying his hands loose while he shouted insults and obscenities at Danny. Dash's fellows bore him off to a corner and held him back. They did not say that Danny wasn't worth his time, that the attacks were no fault of Danny's, that there was nothing to be done about it. They pinned him to the wall, silent but for occasional grunts, as Dash punched and thrashed, but gradually his punches lost their force and his voice rose in an unanswerable question. Dash started to sob as the siren wailed and the roar of the planes began to ascend once again. Amity Park continued to burn to the ground, and another volley of explosives was coming to speed it up.
Sam and Danny didn't hear anything. He sank to the floor, arms draped about his knees and Sam crouched next to him, while Tucker stood awkwardly by.
"There was nothing anyone could do," she whispered.
Danny's eyes snapped open. "There is."
"Don't be a dork, Fenton!" Dash shouted. The three turned as he rose from his enclave of supporters and stalked toward them. "Amity Park is gone."
Danny stood. "Not yet."
Tucker cleared his throat. "Danny, I have to agree with Dash. This is way out of our league."
Dash laughed bitterly. "Duh."
In an instant Danny's eyes flashed a bottomless emerald that cast a lime glow over all the basement. Dash stumbled back and Tucker and even Sam stood in astonishment as Danny thrust his fisted hands into the air and the double rings blasted up and down him, leaving him in his pitch-black jumpsuit. He tensed his muscles and lit up his firsts, bringing great orbs of the same brilliant emerald to life.
The green blaze raced up his arms and flowed across his torso, down his legs and up to the crown of his head. As Danny's lips curved in a snarl, his white aura became a jade gem that shone like a beacon in the darkness of the basement.
"I take it back," Tucker murmured.
Danny felt a touch on his chest. Sam was there next to him, the amethyst stones in her own eyes shining their own human plea.
"Danny... don't burn."
He looked into her eyes and his fire flickered less intensely, licking upward less fanatically. He dropped his fists and hissed a sigh.
"Don't burn. Danny, this isn't for you. This is something else. Please don't-"
"Sam." Danny put his hands on her shoulders. "They're trying to kill everyone." They want us all dead, Sam."
Tears ran in streams from her eyes as she collapsed in his arms. Danny kissed her cheek and rested his head in the crook of her neck, his own eyes dry and sad. Sam felt his heart throbbing in great heavy beats as she pressed against him, wanting nothing more than to be alone with him without the shrieks of sirens, just to be near him and not let him do what they both knew he was going to do, what he felt he had to do, and what would probably kill him to do. But she had him for just this instant in time when all the world froze and every slight muscle he tensed or relaxed told her exactly what he was thinking, a crystal moment when there were no words to express her sorrow and regret, just as there were no words to express his fury and determination.
The second passed, the crystal instant shattering with the reverberating explosion of another round of bombs.
He pulled away. "I'm sorry. I have to go."
"Danny wait-"Sam cried as he pulled away from her and blazed off through the ceiling.
"Wait! Come back, Sam!" Tucker shouted. She was already up the steps and out of the shop by the time his echo died off in the basement.
A/N: Not sure how well this style worked out. I was originally planning to do this as a one shot, but that's obviously not happening. This doesn't mean I've given up on "Sing to Life." I've just encountered some technical difficulties with Ch. 4. In the meantime, enjoy this odd little songfic and let me know whatcha think of it!