Chapter 1:
A familiar sight. Snowy hair fluttering in the wind, black and white jumpsuit blurred against the sky as a familiar figure flew over Amity Park. The day was quiet. Children in the park, errand runners crossing the street, cars cruising through green lights. The sky was clear and several of the figures below called out to their savior. A soft smile and large wave, then turning toward home. There were no attacks today. Time to relax and spend some quality time with the family. Dani felt the usual bittersweet pang in her chest as she landed in front of the Fenton home. Her home, for the last ten years. The Phantom symbol displayed itself, a flying D with inlaid P.
"Welcome home!" A greeting came as she clicked the front door shut. Strolling into the house, Dani found Jazz sitting in the kitchen, with her charcoal jumpsuit hidden beneath a lab coat. Her back faced the living room, red-orange hair braided tight. Arms busy, an aroma of sauce and garlic was flowing from her. The room was highlighted in stark contrast as the light of transformation sparked on. "Nothing spooky out there today?" Jazz smiled as she turned, a baking tray of pasta in hand. The oven was open, waiting for her to place the dish in and Dani could feel the heat brush her skin. Dani let out a sigh as she closed the door.
"No. The usual. I did catch a gerbil's ghost today, though. That was interesting." Dani undid the storage cell on her gauntlet, placing it on the table. She would take it down stairs soon and release the captured ghosts back into the ghost zone. Most were here by mistake, after all.
"Big or small?" Jazz questioned, placing her oven mitts on the counter top. From the front, more of the black lines of circuitry woven into the suit were plain to see, underneath the white phantom-D logo. Bright, aqua-green eyes stared Dani down. Jazz was already deconstructing every word, digging in with her psychological scalpels to discover a deeper meaning.
"Big, could have lived with some bigger animals." Dani loved the analysis of ghosts, why they were the way they were. What made a gerbil turn into a raging green ghost the size of a Fiat?
"Or, it never lived with any other animals, fed and pampered, had a bigger ego than the body could handle." A thoughtful smirk pulled at Jazz's cheeks as she considered it.
"Or," Maddie Fenton interjected, strolling up from the basement, "It happened to live in a concentrated pocket of ecto energy and fed off that in it's creation. Not every ghost has to have a deep psychic connection with their living mental state. How's the baked ziti?" She strolled over to the stove and peeked through the glass. Her sleeveless, pale blue suit exposed her arms, traced with pale scars, and the loose hood laid against her back beneath under-shaven red hair. Once again, the familiar logo stood out white on her chest as she turned to face the two ladies.
"I put it in, now. Was gonna go downstairs with Dani to check in with you and Dad, send away some ghosts." She picked up the small storage cell and motioned for Dani to follow. They headed down the stairs to the basement laboratory, the landing at the bottom immediately becoming a hazard of metal pieces and discarded scrap wire, mingled with a few globs of solid ectoplasm. It was only a single cluttered corner, remnants of an explosion on a nearby table, marked with a scorched ring, the rest of the lab was clear as the pair progressed, tip toeing over the debris. Clear floor stretched between them and the big bodied Jack Fenton. His large shoulders hunched over another workbench, working on Unintentionally Exploding Tool 2.0. The expanse of orange jumpsuit relaxed as Jack straightened at the two ladies approach, but he did not turn his attention from whatever contraption he clutched in his hands.
"Maddie! Glad you're back, hand me the micro torch, would ya?" Jazz grabbed the small blowtorch and clicked it on before placing the handle in Jack's reaching hand. "Thanks, baby. How are the kids? Was that Dani coming in?" His long, whitened hair waved as he worked, swaying in time with the arms of the black jacket tied about his waist. The tail of the jacket only half covered his ecto-bionic right leg. The metal appendage hummed with green energy, a steady reminder of why Jack was no longer allowed to lead the charge.
"Yes, Dad, it was." Jack wheeled around at Jazz's voice, embarrassment flashing through his eyes before a large grin spread across his cheeks underneath his thick white beard. The skin around his eye and adjacent patch crinkled.
"Well, you're just in time! Check it out! I call it, The Fen-Ton Anchor!" He held up a trapezoidal box, cool blue steel lined with spectral green. A keypad was inlaid on one side, and on top sat a metal hook. "This baby is gonna revolutionize ghost restraint!"
"That's a cool looking thing," Dani spoke up for the first time, "But, it really doesn't look like much." She gave him a side-eye'd smirk. "What does it do?"
"I'm glad you asked!" Jack declared, pulling the hook from the box, trailing behind it was a neon green cable that disappeared back into the contraption. With a speed defying his age and size, Jack wrapped the cord around Dani a couple times, hooked it back to itself, and stood back with a grin. Dani looked down at herself, coiled up a couple times, then back at Jack with a raised eyebrow. He raised a finger to show she should wait. "This little baby can condense the matter and ectoplasm in the surrounding environment to create a super dense weight of several metric tons! The cable is for that, wrapping around ghosts so they can't get away!" He posed, fists on hips, while Jazz examined the box and Dani tested the cord.
"That sounds neat, but what's stopping me from doing this." Dani said, stretching her arms to the side. The cord sat wrapped around her stomach, and Dani started, confused.
"Ah ha! It works! The cable has a low key electromagnetic field that prevents intangibility! It gets better, though, try and shape change to slip it off." Jack was watching seriously, now, expectantly. Dani shut her eyes and focused, transferring power into her midriff to elongate her legs into the tail she often used for speedy flying. Her legs condensed into the ghostly whip. The cord stayed put, yet, despite Dani's now lack of hips and tapering lower half. "The cable is made of an ecto-polymer that responds to ghost energy by shrinking and sticking. While it's powered, and a ghost is actively using their powers, it can't be removed!" Jack's smile was beaming. He pressed a button on the box and began unraveling Dani.
"That sounds great, for the most part," Jazz refuted, "But it won't stop a ghost from using it's powers, they can still shoot ecto-blasts, or use any of their specialized powers.. Jack frowned.
"True," he admitted, "It's not entirely ready for the field, but it will still be great for interrogation and holding cells!" The grin was back. "Besides, I still need to make sure the condenser works!" Dani straightened her jacket and looked at the weight-shaped box.
"You don't even know if this thing works, yet?"
"Nope! The last one didn't differentiate what type of matter to pull from the atmosphere and imploded!" Jack cheered, thumb jabbed over his shoulder at the scattered remains by the door to the stairs. "Let's see if I fixed it!
Fingers were poised over the keypad when the room flashed red, lights in the ceiling coming to life, alarms blaring from the corners, The Fen-Ton Anchor clattered on the work table as the three ran over to the large monitor displaying their surveillance readings. Video from the town and surrounding area, thermal-imaging, ghostly spectrometers, ectoplasm detectors, and a few motion detectors. Floodlights were on, bathing the Fenton household in harsh white to contrast the oranges and purples of the setting sun. Maddie came rushing down the stairs, only seconds after the alarm started. She joined the other three with eyes glued to the screens.
"Powerful ghost signature coming from the South-East." Dani read from a radar.
"Video feed hasn't picked it up yet, still a ways out... but closing fast." Jazz noticed, moving away from the group towards her chair in the corner. Settling in, pulling her hood up, and connecting to the hardware of the chair, the black circuitry of her suit glowed green and powered up.
"Holy... the readings make it look like an entire cold front is moving in! Must be ice based in nature. Vortex?" Jack guessed, watching a spread of blue from a satellite reading.
"A couple minutes, and I'll tell you what his power is reading at." Maddie declared. Her screen was showing a humanoid shape surrounded in graphs and scales, all whirring and spinning, adjusting. Scanning.
"I'm going ghost!" Dani shouted as the tell-tale ring of white materialized at her center, splitting to glide over her body, leaving behind green tinted skin, white hair flowing like fire, and Dani's suit. Black tights going into white knee high boots, exposed midriff, high collared crop-top jacket with the signature Phantom D. The sleeves and gloves were opposite white and black, right side with white glove and black sleeve, the left in contrast. Jazz already had her hand extended, a small earpiece resting in her palm that Dani snatched up.
"Stay in touch, we'll tell you what we learn!" Maddie called out as Dani kicked off from the ground and flew out of the basement. Dani hovered in the air for a moment, spinning to survey the horizon. The western sky was gorgeous, exploding with soft pastels that made the world feel warm and cozy. The north was darker, but still the warm tones crept in. East was darkening to purple, a couple stars already poking through the evening gloom. Turning towards the south, Dani saw nothing out of place. The blending of colors matched her northern view, only with more city stretching out. Her eyes kept scanning East, to South-East, to the South, alert for any change in the placid scene.
There was nothing. Not Vortex closing in with a record breaking blizzard at his heels, not even a breeze appeared to be pushing across town. It was calm. A sense of unease settled over Dani, the irony of a ghost feeling a chill up their spine not lost on her, but her gaze never wavered as it combed the skyline, and then the city, then back up to the horizon. Several tense seconds of watching felt like hours. Dani reached a hand up to her communicator.
"I don't see anything. What's on the readings?" Dani held her breath through the seconds of following silence, eyes still roaming from left to right. The receiver crackled for a moment, someone shuffling papers, then it was Jazz speaking.
"Tucker and Sam are moving in to intercept with a containment net. I don't think it's gonna work, though." The strain behind Jazz's voice was jarring. She was never this nervous. "You should start heading that way, too. Towards the Nasty Burger. You remember how we told you about Pariah Dark's invasion?" The question came out of the blue as Dani took off.
"Yeah, but you don't think this is Dark, do you? Wouldn't there be an army of green skeletons, or something?" Dani cruised higher, trying to increase her view.
"It's not him, the readings are different, but... Well, when he showed up, mom and dad completely rewrote how our ecto-entity power scale read. Ecto-pusses went from level four, to level one. Danny went from a level nine to a level seven. We considered Dark a ten, the highest we thought possible at the time. Even Vortex and Overgrowth only read at eight and nine on this new scale." Dani shuddered at the thought, wondering where she fell on the list, but returning her focus to the search. The familiar chill of her Ghost Sense was causing her spine to tingle.
"Its close. I can feel its presence." Dani hovered in place and started scanning for Sam and Tucker. They would be setting up on rooftops, prepared to deploy the containment net.
"I finished the calculations, and it looks like this ghost reads at a thirteen. In numbers, only a little higher than Pariah Dark. In quantifiable numbers... that's about two times stronger than Dark at his peak. It reads like the Reality Gauntlet at full power." Dani could tell an unsettled frown had formed on Jazz's mouth. "Be careful, Dani."
"I know." Dani reassured, keeping the quaver out of her voice. The chill had deepened, physical cold eliciting tangible fear in Dani's stomach in the form of a heavy knot that was winding up her nerves. When Sam Manson called out from a nearby rooftop she forced herself to contain a panicked ecto-blast. She descended down to the techno-goth, black silk pajamas complemented by her purple trench coat she wore for ghost fighting. You could tellhow prepared Sam was for an early night when the call went out, clips still in her hair beneath the pair of hand-me-down goggles from Maddie. Even unprepared, the steel behind Sam's eyes reassured Dani. Sam was never one to back down, no matter what stood before her.
"Hey, Dani, you ready for another rousing round of Catch that Ghost!" Sam's foolish optimism made Dani smile despite herself, quelling another shiver as her breath expanded in a misty cloud. Her eyes snapped down the road between the buildings. She caught sight of a red and yellow beanie, eyes drawn to Tucker Foley across the way. He was displaying a confident thumbs-up, and grinned as Dani met his eyes. His other hand gripped a controller, and, as Dani watched, a drone took flight to hover over the street.
"Get ready!" Dani called out, pulling her eyes back down the road. She could see it now. Movement, a green blob of aura, black and white body. Visions of Vlad caused Dani's heart rate to spike, power surging through her on a vehicle of adrenaline. She knew it wasn't Vlad. He would neither be this forward, nor this mundane.
No, Dani thought to herself in an attempt to calm her nerves, when Vlad returns as I know he will, it will be through a maelstrom of fire and destruction.
The ghost was closing in, now, and Dani took flight. She saw the ghost slow, having seen her take to the air, but he was close enough.
"Now!" Dani shouted, and at her word four rockets launched from the rooftops. As they started their ascent a neon green cord extended from each. In a moment they were all connected and a mesh net was forming between them, sailing upward with the targeted ghost close to the center. Now that he'd stopped moving, Dani could get a better look at him. He, a he by appearances, with a lean and muscular body, was humanoid in shape. His body was black and white, shiny and almost metallic, with highlights of green. He had hair, pure white and flickering in the wind like fire. He looked powerful, but also plain. No tentacles, no special theme, no aggressive shouting. Something was... off. The feeling was prickling Dani's scalp.
There was no time to consider it, though. They were taking no chances with a ghost reading so powerful. The net caught the ghosts feet, the tension causing the rockets at each corner to begin pulling into the center, swinging on their tethers. The drone hovered there, poised and waiting, as the rockets crossed above it the ends of the net transferred to the drone, closing the trap and allowing a manner of control over ghost inside. Now, Dani swooped in, pulling at the ice in her core, she blew a torrent of freezing air around the dangling ball of green netting, forming a shell of ice to contain their spectral captive. The drone started to maneuver towards Sam, and Dani caught Tucker's motion out of the corner of her eye.
Sam had a bazooka mounted on her shoulder, kneeling to take aim. She fired, and a large shell flew out, cracking to reveal a hinged box, open as it flew towards the mass of net, ice, and ghost. As the two objects met, the cube snapped shut, immediately emitting soft, blue-white light from it's cracks. A large, bazooka-launched Fenton Thermos, the cube would keep the ghost in suspended animation.
That went way too smooth, Dani thought, Fenton readings aren't that far off anymore. Something is wrong.
The cube, now tethered to Tucker's drone, hovered in the air. Dani refused to move closer. She could smell a trap. This wasn't right, and every nerve in her body was screaming at her to run. Instead, she charged up, mingling the ice in her core with ghost fire, her hands glowed with icy blue and spectral green, left and right . Drifting closer, fists raised, Dani waited.
"What's going on? I'm lacking one ghost reading and got a new, active reading on a containment cube. Looks like everything went well." Jazz paused, waiting for a response. "Well?"
"Everything worked fine," Sam's voice crackled into the communication line, "A little too much to plan, though, you know? Nothing ever goes this to plan when it comes to ghosts." They all fell into steady silence at that. Dani hovered close to the cube, powers charged and ready to release. Below her, Sam and Tucker were shuffling about, setting up countermeasures, loading weapons, generally preparing for the worst. The cube floated in place, suspended from the drone, completely dormant.
Then, it wasn't, the soft blue glow from within was intensifying and growing, becoming blinding. Dani's vision returned as the cube was falling, open, dormant. The ghost was free, floating where the cube had been. The net was still there, draped from his shoulders, but it was dissolving, as chunks of ice evaporated from the fiery hair. And, he was smirking. Not arrogantly, but pleasantly, like he had heard a joke that wasn't quite laughter inducing. The look was off putting. Then, he spoke.
"Well, it's been a while, but I'm glad to see the defenses are up to snuff." The voice was deep and strong, resonating with power. Dani recognized it, though only a little, but it helped some pieces fall into place.
"Skulker!" She shouted, and the ghost started, surprised. Being recognized right away must have been a shock, with the new look, but it all made sense. The fire-like hair, the metallic body suit, the deep voice, the Phantom D on his chest...
Dani hesitated, powers draining away in surprise. Then, the anger flared, fists glowing with energy again before Dani fired off a pair of blasts, one fueled by fire, the other driving cold. Skulker dodged side to side, avoiding both with little effort.
"I don't know how you got a hold of Fenton tech, but it explains why you've been hiding!" Dani charged in shouting, fists flying, kicks flashing, ecto-blasts sizzling through the air and nothing else. She couldn't land a clean hit, not even a glancing blow. Skulker danced around her, more agility than she thought a mechanical shell could be capable of.
"Nope, you're getting colder!" Skulker shouted, eyes glowing blue before frosty rays shot from them. The beam caught one of Dani's legs as she tried to spin away, frozen up to her thigh. Ice is definitely new, Dani realized as she focused her fire to melt it away, and I'm sure he's developed a litany of new tricks.
"If you're getting cold feet, I can help with that!" Dani heard Tucker call out. She looked down to see a plasma rifle trained on Skulker. A burst of shots forced the ghost to maneuver away, but as he settled, he was laughing.
"Oh, good to see somethings never change, Tuck." The familiarity of the whole thing was shaking Dani, but she brushed it off as she heard Sam chiming in.
"Laugh it up, the only joke here is your hunting record!" Another barrage of plasma shots followed Sam's jab. Skulker rolled and twisted, diving and circling, not getting even touched by the balls of energy. He was still laughing, rolling, really.
"Man, not just your ghost hunting, but your banter is better, too! Hey, Sam," Skulker chuckled, floating carelessly over the goth, "You remember this one? Dora! Is! A Ghost!" As he spoke, Skulker was all exaggerated movement, then buckled into another fit of laughter. It made Dani's blood boil.
"Stop mocking us!" Dani slammed the heels of her palms together, fingers splayed wide. Ice coiled with plasma fire and launched out in a spiraling beam. Skulker appeared to be off guard for a moment, but hands crossed before swinging out so the ghost was floating prostrated within a green shield he had created. Dani was ready for that, and with a twist of her wrists the beam of coiled energy wrapped around the shield, forming an orbiting ring. Dani fired twice more, turning Skulker into an atomic model.
"Hey, look at that, I'm a nucleus." He grinned in a goofy sort of way, looking up at Dani. "I guess this is what it feels like to be proud of someone for their accomplishments." The look he was giving Dani was infused with warmth and pride. It made Dani's stomach turn, but not in a sickly way, in an embarrassed, cheek flushing sort of way. Before she could think much more about it, the scream of a rocket tore her attention down to the rooftop. Sam held the smoking tube.
"Stuff it, Skulker, you're about to go nuclear!"
"Not today!" Skulker cried back, and his body began to glow within his barrier, underneath Dani's cage. His aura expanded out, spreading beyond his confines, then collapsed, immediately replaced with spreading electricity. The rocket entered the field and sputtered, losing propulsion before careening back to the ground, dead. The shield and bands of ice and fire also vanished, dissipating into the electrical storm. The bolts continued expanding out.
"Oh no, Dani, move!" Dani heard Skulker cry out, and felt compelled to listen, but too slow. A bolt of electricity licked across her torso, and pain radiated out from the contact, as the pain spread her ghostly power receded. The flash of white appeared as the electricity forced Dani's transformation, human flesh taking the place of ghost. She began to fall, stunned, losing consciousness.
Then, he caught her, the feeling of being limp in someone's arms, an old sensation that was difficult to recall after so long was suddenly so clear. She looked up, catching concerned green eyes, so familiar...
Dani woke up shouting. Immediately there were hands on her shoulders, holding her, easing her back to the soft cushions of the they had laid her on. Her eyes swam in points of color, not able to focus from the bright lights in the ceiling, but the shaggy mop top of hair made her certain who was hovering over her.
"Maddie! It's Danny! It was Danny, it wasn't Skulker, he's back, and..." Her eyes focused on the soft grin, blue eyes, and shaggy top of black hair.
"Mom, she's awake, and also thinks our hairstyles are too similar." Danny chuckled, finally letting Dani sit up, and look around the room at smiling faces. Jazz was beaming, Jack was grinning, Maddie was smiling but her cheeks were stained from tears, Tucker was stretching his cheeks almost as far as Jack, and Sam looked like she was holding in an awful lot of emotion.
Then, sitting beside her, was Danny, older, bigger, stronger, but with a smile as soft as the last time they'd seen each other. He was home. Dani lunged at him, arms wrapped around his muscular neck, and her own tears started to flow.
"Hey, now, you're gonna stain my new suit."