Disclaimer: Don't own DP or Pacific Rim. Cover image from HDWallpapersbank, a free download, and modified in Photoshop.
So I had enough people say that they wanted this continued. Here it is! Hope you enjoy. I included a short overview of the Pacific Rim plot in chapter one if you need it, but my hope is that this story feels independent and different enough to stand on its own.
Cancelling the Apocalypse
Chapter 2
Valerie cried out in the sudden overload of an entire mind joining hers to fill the synaptic spaces of the robot. Reality warped. Her heart stalled as she tensed up in the harnesses, hands desperately pulling at wires to get out. Darkness and pain overwhelmed her.
.
Danny stared at the mushroom cloud that stormed over his head, the explosion replaying in his mind. "No," he moaned. "No, no, no." He pulled himself off the hard gravel with shaking hands. Tears burned his eyes. "No!"
Failure failure failure. A scream of agony tore from his lips as he reached out.
.
She fell deep into the memory and lost herself, unable to separate from Danny. Valerie's hand raised in time with her accessed memory, eyes watering. "No!" she cried out in time with Danny, feeling her own body throb in fear and pain at the sight of the explosion. Her friends, her family, all gone—
The holographic interface surrounding her limbs activated. The robot's large, right hand raised with a shudder, then with a smooth, hydraulic movement in time with Valerie's actions. Its palm and razor fingers spread, glowing a neon green. Spectators below stared in awe. "Guardian Omega weapons system online," the robot confirmed within the conn. "Plasma cannon engaged."
People began to back away. "Uh, that's not good," Technus said from the control center, flying over to unplug the basic power lines.
"What's going on?" Vlad's worried voice carried over the murmuring conversations. He pushed the button for the comm. "Valerie, report! Stop this right now!"
Back on the ground, both Vlad and Technus tensed up as the plasma cannon began to glow hotter, the robotic hand aimed for a far-distant town.
"They're accessing each other's memory banks," Technus explained quickly in fear. "I didn't know the Drift technology would go so deep. It was designed to link up only their motor functions and nervous systems!"
"Then fix it!" Vlad seethed. "Before they destroy themselves!"
Back within the robot, only a part of Valerie registered reality. She sobbed in fear and shock, unable breathe under the weight of Phantom's memories. Daniel. He was Danny. And he was so good and tried so hard only to lose it all and Sam and Tucker were dead along with his family and he just wanted it all to end end end—
"Stop!" she squeezed her eyes shut, breathing hard. She tried to push back on the oppressive weight of the sorrow and terror. She lowered her arm, and the robot did as well. "Stop!"
She crawled her way up into a grayness, in which she could feel Dan's mind but not necessarily access it so deep. His power core nearly blinded her mind's eye. Then she realized in fear that the neural link went both ways. The presence that was Dan Phantom had fallen deep into her own mind. She could feel him the same way she could feel her own heartbeat.
"Oh my God," she breathed, opening her eyes.
On the other side of the harness, Dan stared off in the distance in a strange, tense trance. He'd accessed Valerie's memories of her early childhood. He could feel Valerie's emotions, her fear, her pain.
.
"We're going to be alright," Damien Gray told her. He tried to smile, but it was watery. "Your mother would want us to be happy."
"But Daddy, where is she?" she tugged on her father's pant leg. Her own eyes were bright with tears. "Where did she go?"
The father hesitated. "Heaven, baby girl. Mommy's in heaven."
Valerie felt her heart drop. "Oh." Her tears slid from her eyes. "Does that mean she's not coming back? Does she not love us anymore?"
.
He had not felt such a level of emotion in nearly a decade. It left him gasping as he held onto the harnesses with tight hands. He could feel it all, the sense of loneliness that had encased Valerie for years, the awkward jealousy she felt for normal families, the desperate attempt to find identity, the emptiness that could not be filled. Tears brightened his eyes despite how hard he tried to rip himself away. For the first time, the independent part of his mind felt total fear.
They'd only told him that a neural link would connect them to the robot—not to each other's every whim and thought.
He instinctively tried to create a barrier around himself, but something else happened.
"Shield activated," said the robot. The harnesses glowed, and a solid wall quickly stormed down the entire length of the robot, wrapping it in a protective barrier that hummed in a roar.
The surrounding crowds backed away a little further.
"Shut it down!" Vlad cried to Technus, his voice echoing. "Shut it down now!"
Technus huffed as he desperately pulled at cables. "I'm trying! But their connection is strong." His thin arms shook as he tried to pull the cables.
"Damage report. What's the worst that can happen, right now?" Vlad demanded, eyeing the robot suspiciously.
"Valerie just has to finish stabilizing," Technus said, avoiding the question. "She's got more logical synapse patterns. If she can stabilize, then Dan will be able to latch onto that and crawl out too."
"Yes, but this is…" Vlad cut himself off. "If they activate any major weapons around a civilian population…"
"Try and talk them down, then!" Technus waved at him, flustered. "You just can't rush technology calibrations. We knew it would be a rough ride at first."
Vlad grabbed the comm again without question. "Guardian Omega," he called through the comm. "Focus only on physical movement. Just let the thoughts drift, or they'll consume you, do you understand!"
Valerie was the first to answer. Her voice was hoarse. "I copy," she said. "I'm t-trying to…" she bit down a sob. "To stop it. I c-can't."
Vlad narrowed his eyes. Valerie was strong enough to do this. "Try harder," he told her. "Phantom, I'm talking to you too. Can you copy?"
From within the robot, Phantom remained silent. His red eyes were distant, seeing nothing before him but the sight of a funeral plot and the single rose that Valerie had rested on her mother's casket. He was unable to separate himself from Valerie, and suddenly he was reliving the death of his mother. He held onto the harnesses for dear life, maintaining the strong barrier around the robot in some physical attempt to protect himself from the onslaught of emotion.
He tried to pull away, to claw himself out of the stifling sense of loneliness that was Valerie's mind.
The robot trembled strangely.
Vlad turned to Technus and said, "We need to shut this down. It's too much for them." He waved his hands at the surrounding crowd in irritation. "Get back! Get out of here; it's too dangerous!"
The crowd watched their new iron giant fail, and they fled in a panic. The skyscraper-tall robot fell to its hands and knees under the divided mindset of its pilots, engines whirling in useless revolutions. Its hands crashed through a building, its knees cratering deep into the earth.
Bam! The impact jarred Dan and Valerie back to full reality as they jerked in their shock harnesses, feeling the brunt of the impact. The earth rumbled like thunder beneath the robot's weight.
On the ground, Technus and Vlad finally managed to unplug the power system. "Got it!" Technus said, breathing hard, holding the cables with shaking fingers.
Then from within the conn came the robotic voice, "Guardian Omega powering down. Weapons deactivated. Neural bridge disconnecting."
And suddenly Dan and Valerie were back within their own minds, horribly silent, leaning heavily on the harnesses that strapped them in. The whirling engines whined down by decibels. The harnesses dampened their glow, and the holographic interface around them died. They realized that the robot was on its hands and knees, and that they were hanging at a strange, unbalancing angle. From the facial visor of the robot, they saw only the ground and a few scattered buildings.
"What," Dan breathed in, recognizing the tears on his face for the first time, "the hell was that?" He quickly moved to brush his unbidden tears away, in fear or embarrassment, he did not know. His mind felt torn and displaced—more so than usual.
He glanced over at Valerie. She stared back at him with a deep knowledge, tear tracks on her dark face. Then, suddenly, he knew that she knew. He knew that look of horror.
With incredible hesitance, she whispered, "…Danny?"
She stared at his flushed, blue skin and raw red eyes, which were uncharacteristically disturbed by emotion. The contours of his face were more angular and mature than the Danny she knew, the body far more built. But she saw it, for the first time. She saw Fenton within the Phantom.
He swallowed hard.
"You're Danny," she said softly. She did not dare to say his last name, for fear that someone would overhear. "Oh my God."
In an attempt to hide his conflicting emotions, he sneered at the name. It would do him no good to lie. "Several years ago, maybe I was."
"Guardian Omega, can you hear me?" Vlad's voice was distant, uneven. "We're trying to unlock you from the safety system so you can get out. Hold tight."
Valerie was not paying attention. "I saw it," she said to Dan, eyes haunted. "What you did."
.
He realized that he was not himself. No, no—Daniel Fenton was collapsed on the floor nearby, desperately attempting to right himself.
Phantom stared at his human counterpart and cocked his head in confusion. Kill it kill it kill it, a secondary voice pounded in him, sweeping up his arms, overwhelming his sense. It sounded like Vlad. It's so weak. It made you feel pain. It enslaved you.
His fragmented mind panicked. Pain? Enslaved?
Vlad's voice pulled at him. Kill it before it kills us!
But—
Do it!
The command overwhelmed him. He lashed out.
.
"You didn't see anything," Dan said quickly, eyes guarded.
Valerie saw through his exterior, now that she knew the constant pain that lay beneath the mask. "No, I did," she said, eyes widening. "You're like, possessed or something…" Her face twisted. "By Vlad?"
He bared his teeth, "I am in control!" he snarled. "I'm always in control, never him!"
The remnant of power within him that he had subdued pulled at him with a subtle laugh. Of course you are, Daniel. Of course.
"Shut up!" he shouted, grimacing. He looked distracted, as if he were not even speaking to Valerie. Something pained crossed his face. "Shut up!"
Valerie gave him a strange, concerned look.
He looked up at Valerie and tried to hide his horror with a glare. "Don't say anything," he demanded. "Don't tell anyone." For a second, some facet of his split personality cracked through. He looked half-feral, half-terrified. He tried to phase out of the harnesses, only to realize that his power core was still tied to the powering-down robot. Panic set in. "And get me out of this damn thing!"
Valerie realized in that moment what Dan really was—helpless to his own split personality. The original Danny Phantom could not circumvent the impulses of Vlad's ghost, which had been born from hatred, want, and jealousy.
"He killed you," she whispered. "It was Vlad! His ghost side—!"
Phantom's wide eyes glowed a deep red. "—Don't. Don't you dare finish that sentence. It was all me. Only me. And that's all you need to know."
Valerie gave him a hard stare. "Is it?" His threatening words were strangely empty in compared to his face, upon which tear tracks still shined. "You can't fool me, Phantom. Or Danny. Whoever you are."
He closed his eyes and forced himself to relax in the harness, trying to center himself before Vlad and Technus arrived. It would not do to be on the verge of a breakdown in front of them. World domination was going to be a lot harder than he ever imagined if he had to put up with this.
He tried to evade her. "You can't fool me either." He took inventory of his newly-expanded mind, complete with accessed visions of Valerie's own past. "I saw everything. How much you fear me. How you intend to stop me." He smirked through his quickly-drying tears. He was beginning to feel more like himself again. "How many times you've stared at my ass."
Valerie's mouth dropped open, and her eyes darkened. "…What?"
"Not gonna lie," he said, "it does look pretty good. Especially when you're looking up at it all the time."
Her complexion paled in some kind of horror. "I was just tracking you with weapons! How could you possibly think—?!"
"—Oh, I felt the hesitation, Val. I felt it."
Then the support harnesses around them suddenly unlocked, and Valerie and Dan went sprawling, slamming into the hard visor front of the robot's face and crashing into each other in a flail of limbs and armor.
It was too fast for the disoriented Dan to phase out. He landed hard on top of Valerie, which knocked the breath out of her lungs in a surprised wheeze.
For a second, they could only freeze in shock, their faces inches away from each other.
Then Valerie moved. "Holy—" she coughed, eyes wide with lack of oxygen. She weakly tried to push at him. "Get off of me!"
Dan blinked, then grimaced. "I'm trying," he said with a huff as he lifted himself off of her. The armored plates of their battle suits were magnetized to lock into the harnesses, and his arm had accidentally magnetized to Valerie's waist. One of his legs had magnetized to hers. "I'm stuck."
Valerie's lips curled in disgust as she felt his hand move beneath her thigh. "Get off!" she pushed him again, this time harder. "Phase out, do something!"
He glared at her in irritation at first, then reconsidered. "I suppose I could," he said, tilting his head, lips raising lopsidedly. "But now that I know how much you hate this, I kinda want to stay right here."
She snarled at him, teal eyes on fire, "You better get off!" And she began to struggle beneath him, moving her leg to unlock his. She managed to only drag him along, to which he laughed.
"What, you mean you don't like play time with Danny?" he mocked.
"Danny's dead," she snapped, face twisting in a flux of emotion.
His features began to fade out into thin air as he turned intangible. "But does this mean we'll play nicer now that you know what I am?"
Suddenly, Technus materialized into the conn, along with Vlad.
Their eyes scanned the vast conn and saw the open, metal harnesses hanging from above. Then the two of them saw the still-collapsed Valerie down on the robot's clear black visor. She was staring in shock and disgust at the empty air around her.
Vlad called out in concern, "Valerie, are you alright? Where's Phantom?"
Valerie did not answer for a time. Then she said slowly as she sat up, "I think he phased out." Her voice was strangled. She struggled to her feet, wiping dust off of her battle suit. "He's such a…" Words failed her. With everything she now knew, she found herself staring in distrust at Vlad too. She looked at him in fear and worry.
Vlad simply rubbed his temples, unaware. "Of course he'd run off. We could only have hours before the next attack, and he runs off." His hands slipped from his face. "We need to track him down now so we can get this thing calibrated correctly." He glanced her over in concern. "Are you capable of finding him?"
The woman raised a brow. "I'm always capable of hunting Phantom," she said indignantly. She'd save her questions for him later. "Just give me five minutes."
And from atop the ledge of the kneeling robot's streamlined shoulder blade plates, Phantom sat, pulling off his helmet and shaking his fire hair loose from its constricting ponytail. He could see miles in the distance from such a height, far beyond the meager borders of Amity Park and the wastelands surrounding it.
"Oh, Valerie," he mused to the air with a smirk that did not quite reach his eyes. "You and I are going to have fun together, aren't we?"
A/N: Pacific Rim occasionally derails from its apocalyptic focus onto somewhat-amusing relationships between pilots, which is what happened here. I can't decide if I actually want to ship serious DarkGray in this story or not. Let me know your thoughts on this! :)
Thanks for reading,
Lightning Streak
Please Review! I love constructive criticism and ideas.
