-scene break-
Danny was kind of worried, more so than normal. It didn't help his parents ecto sensors were going absolutely nuts, and had been for hours. The fact that the sky was green, and there was a massive thunderstorm ongoing didn't help either.
Of course it wasn't like things had been going good today anyway. The storm had been building up all day, and well even if there wasn't an impending ghost doom coming he'd still gotten into a fight with Dash. Well calling it a fight wasn't exactly accurate, it'd been more likely Dash had shove him up against the locker, and then he'd shoved Dash back. Danny hadn't meant to push him that hard, which was the weird thing.
"So do we know anything other than there is some kind of hypersaturation of energy?" Tucker asked looking around, "Cause this really looks bad man." It wasn't like they had any other option but to sit it out though.
Danny shrugged, he didn't. His parents had attempted an explanation, but most of it he hadn't really understood. What he did understand was going ghost was not going to fix this problem he'd tried that and for whatever reason his ghost form was super attempt at flying had sent him rocketing through the air with barely any effort, and he didn't have any kind of fine control over the movement. It seemed like every move got exagerated. He'd tried to turn and well, suffice to say it hadn't gone well. He hadn't tried an ecto beam yet but he was willing to bet it was also going to be way overpowered compared to normal.
Simply put they didn't know enough, and Maddie and Jack Fenton were too busy trying to make sense of a dozen seperate screens, and readouts each. So in short the parents were any help at all in this situation. The only thing that they'd said that made much in the way of sense was that that they might want to advise the town to prepare for the worst, and the very least stay inside.
The fact that the town was already under a national weather advisory would probably keep most people inside, so that was at least one less thing to worry about. It didn't do anything about the storm though. The odd thing was that there weren't any ghosts showing up, which was kind of what was driving Jack and Maddie up the wall trying to figure out. This much energy had to be coming from somewhere, but they couldn't see the ghost anywhere.
What happened hours later was an even bigger indicator that something was wrong. Ghost attacks tended to be characterized by some kind of motivation, even if it was seemingly trivial. Certainly these attacks could get out of hand, but this was something completely different. Sure monsters from the ghost zone had attacked before, and there were ghost animals, but this wasn't that either which was seriously messed up.
The first monster attack had just been assumed to be more ghosts, after all they tended to be so diverse why not just some new ghost who was attacking. Except the police were shooting the things, with actual bullets. They weren't actually doing much, but they were hitting, which was the definite red flag. Bullets tended to pass straight through ectoplasm, or incinerate on contact with the charged material depending on circumstances.
Jack and Maddie had still immediately run off leaving Danny, Jazz, Tucker, and Sam stuck in Fenton Works in the middle of some freaky ectoplasmic storm. The fact his parents had locked the entirety of Fenton Works down, turned on the alarms, and given them all weapons meant he couldn't really sneak off. So he was stuck here watching the videos of the rampaging monsters, each of which were easily twelve feet tall.
"Well it sure looks like Fenton beamers work," Tucker remarked, it was the latest improved weapon modication on the Fenton Ground Assault vehicle, and just was basically an upsized continous beam ecto gun.
In any case from the video feed it was clear Tucker wasn't kidding. Whatever these things were, these big hideous monstrous things were they did not like getting his with weapons the Fentons were carrying at all. Where bullets were at least hitting them, and doing little but being a nuisance ectoplasmic based weapons were leaving wide area burns or blasting clean through. That was the issue though, these things were clearly flesh and blood creatures.
Danny flinched, fenton ecto guns had been able to hit ghosts but they'd never done this kind of damage. On the other side of the coin there were a lot of those things, and they'd been killing, and in some cases eating people. There being a lot of them was the more pressing issue, it was a good thing they'd taken the Ground Assault Vehicle. "What are we going to do?" Sam and Tucker looked back at him away from the increasingly violent happenings that were going on on the screen. The Fenton assault vehicle was already peeling backwards, reversing, and then made a sharp turn to drive away from the still coming monsters. There was a massive tear in the metal body of the vehicle.
On the screen Jack Fenton's face appeared, he was wiping a line of sweat off his forehead, "Uh hi there kids we're bringing this baby in hot, those beasties got the best of us this time but we're still in this fight." As was evident by the continuing firing from the Fenton Ground Assault Vehicle, no doubt Maddie was handling the weapon operations while Jack drove.
Danny sat back in his swivel chair, here they were monsters running around, and he was stuck behind Fenton Work's massive reinforced Ecto Barrier. Even if his ghost powers were acting wonky this just wasn't right.
"Uh guys," Tucker called out nervously, "I really don't like the way these energy readings are looking, and you know keep increasing."
The last time the numbers had been anywhere near this high was during Pariah Dark's attack... wait it didn't have to be a ghost, per se at least, it could have been some kind of artificat like the Fright Knight's sword doing this.
-scene break-
The Initial Rift Event had died down after a few days, Danny Phantom had managed to be able to get around to helping attack the monsters but that was another problem. Imprisoning the Monsters wasn't an option. In the end though the Guys in White had tried to show up, but it had finally taken the National Guard being called in before civil order was restored. Naturally Vlad had to show up to make things worse.
It still hadn't changed the fact that these things definitely weren't ghosts, and that there were sill energy surges going on through out Amity Park. They weren't the only ones either whatever this was well it seemed like some kind widespread occurences. According to the news there were dozens of events across each continent, and indeed typically dozens per country.
His parents were still pick through the data and helping with clean up, which was good since it at least gave them something to do he supposed. Of course as far as being experts went the Fentons were hitting a wall on just what these things could be. What they could do was try and prepare people for a future attack. There in lay the rub people in Amity Park had gotten semi used to ghost attacks even people did get hurt, or something it had just gotten written off like regular crime.
This could have gotten the same treatment... except some idiot newscaster had played the footage of some poor guy getting bitten in half by one of the monsters on live tv. It hadn't been pretty, and it had certainly been gruesome than anything Amity Park had seen on Television that was real even when factoring in ghost attacks.
Danny settled for picking over the information he could get his hands on. His ghost powers were starting to bleed through into his human form apparently, well again seeing as after the portal incident he'd started accidentally using them at inopportune times. It had to be something to do with the increased energy empowering his ghost side, but he didn't have anyway of counter acting it so he needed to find another way to keep it under control.
Part of being stuck here was the fact that he couldn't practice controlling his ghost powers because the whole town was wired with ecto sensors, and everyone was on edge. There was also the fact that Dash was actually making him feel worse. The football jock seemed convinced that the storm had only abated, and thus no more monster attacks, because Danny Phantom had done something, and that was wrong. Dash made sure everyone knew that was what he thought to, loudly.
He hadn't been able to do anything, and just because the storm had dissipated before things had gotten any worse did not make him feel any better about it.
So he was stuck here piecing through the energy readings from during the storm. So far most of what he'd gotten was that there were two sets of energy saturation. One appeared to be the normal, for Amity Park at least, energy saturation, which was definitely up from what it had been. The second was the more problematic one, given that the closest thing Danny had found to match on the energy profile was the Ghost Portal... the permanent one in the basement. The problem was that it didn't go to the ghost zone. It also didn't have a lock on it like the Fenton Portal... which meant more of these things could come through, and that could be a serious problem.
More of these monsters that killed people could come through. This attack had been more lethal than even the worst ghost attack that had happened in Amity Park since he'd become Danny Phantom, and he hadn't been able to go out there an fight it. Still the Ecto guns worked, which meant if he did fight them he could use those, or if he could go ghost his powers should work as well... if they came back that was.
Danny was fairly sure as bad as that was it was the most likely outcome though. The portal wasn't locked, that rift in space and time was still open, and it lead somewhere bad. Sometime, some time soon more of those things were going to come through and he was going to have to be ready to fight them. He turned back to the computer assisted design program, Valerie, and his parents might have been on to something fighting ghosts with technology.
Of course Vlad, and the guys in white were also in town, which was going to be tricky. Still he hadn't seen Vlad turn into Plasmius which meant the other 'halfa' was probably having the same problem he was.
Even if Vlad was out of commission he needed a way to keep fighting, even if he couldn't go ghost without too much damage. So his plan was to appropriate some, more, of his parents' technology. It also meant fabricating a new reinforced jumpsuit. It was true his ghost powers bleeding into his human state were increasing his durabability, but more armor at least as good as Valerie's suit was a pretty good idea. Still he couldn't afford to let his parents catch on, so here he was redesigning some of Fenton Work's existing products. They'd still work pretty much the same but they'd look different and well it was pretty much why people didn't equate Valerie with Fenton works... that and the flying surfboard.
Danny hadn't even considered trying to get the Fenton Work's fabricators to try and make a vehicle even a small one. Right now all the vehicle ones were tied up between his parents repairing, up armoring the Ground Assault Vehicle, and modifying the Speeder. The only plus side was that Valerie was out there patrolling, and there hadn't been any major ghost attacks.
-scene break-
Vlad Masters, aka Plasmius, was very concerned with the situation. He had been hoping for an excuse to expand his influence into Amity Park, but this was a bit too much. This whole thing dangerously complicated his plans, both short term and long term. His greater experience in control was allowing him an easier, relatively speaking time restraining his heightened ghost abilities, but given the sheer number of ecto sensors deployed by the factions present he'd chosen not to rely on them... for the moment at least.
So far he'd been spending much of his time having to deal with Jack's constant yammering, even if said yammering was actually useful. Vlad understood dimensional wormholes... probably better than Jack or Maddie. Both were extremely intelligent, but being an extradimensional entity did in fact have its perks, and in this case insights into things like said other dimensions. Not that he'd ever come forward with such information, a nobel prize in physics was nice and all, but corporate power building left little interest in pure science. Applie science well that was different.
In short Vlad already knew this had little, to nothing to do with the ghost zone. There in was the problem, another set of extra dimension entities invading Amity Park, and elsewhere really was going to convolute his plans. His computer pinged, oh yes he'd quietly infiltrated the Fenton computer network aa while ago... to the point that nuisance Technus had found out... that had been a problematic incident, but these files...
The new designs weren't Jack or Maddie's flare. That didn't leave too many others, so it was either Jasmine, or young Danny. Of course given the slight modifications to the systems, and a certain look well he was relatively certain the new designs were Daniel's work. They certainly showed promise...
His computer pinged again, actually gettin Jack's attention, but whatever he was going to say got cut off as a bunch of suits came marching in. It was a testament twofold to just how bad the situation was that he didn't have more heads up. Again Technus was partially to blame as well given he'd infiltrated the Guys in White's headquarters... and caused no small amount of havoc resulting in a marked increase in electronic security since then.
It did however make sense why the government was bringing this to the Fentons, and that was who they were bringing this to, they even asked, and checked whether it was okay for him to be here. It was Jack of course who totally waved him through the security beuacracy.
Vlad had contemplated time travel at one point. There was conclusive proof that you could suceed with altering the time stream, but he'd ultimately considered it too unwieldly to consider it before other options were exhausted. So having to face the possibility that someone was meddling in time travel, well he was concerned.
The man that the government brought in was barely stable, they were keeping him seperate from his technology as well which was under equally heavy guard. At first it was the technology that interested Vlad, it was just too good of an opportunity, and of course there was the potential danger of more time travelers. Then Jack managed to get through to the man. Sure Vlad had always expected Daniel to go far, but to have name recognition.
After the End various factions had pulled together. Some of the Corporations did well simply because they had the know how to make technology to help people survive. It allowed some cities to even survive largely intact... give or take an average thirty to fifty percent drop in total population after the event. Naturally certain groups wanted to forget their actual beginnings in favor of a more suitably heroic or legendary founding. Manson Industries had never failed to profess that they had always been the forefront of technology since their inception for example while other organizations had other boiserous claims, some claimed mythological founders.
... Doctor Daniel Fenton had had a falling out with Manson, thats what Vlad got to hear. Doctor Daniel Fenton who'd pioneered the creation of mass produced exoskeleton weapon systems that were used by the Argentum Technical Enclave, more commonly shortened to Ars Technica or ArsTech to this day.
In truth Ars Tech was in a way the West Coast's Atlantis, and because of that the Corporate leadership made sure to have appropriate legend to reflect the founding... and to encourage a rivalry, or distaste for enemies. If that had meant exagerating certain things well it didn't hurt the bottom line any. The grunts didn't need to know any better, and well if you didn't know the truth how were you supposed to contradict the popular Myth.
Jack, and Vlad had no reason to disbelieve it, but for completely different reasons. It even made sense to Vlad, after all young Daniel was already tweaking his parent's designs wasn't he. The question was how far would this go. The question now was how to keep Danny out of trouble, after all a young genius was a tempting target.
The man let them in on other things about the future, and it sounded like a grim and terrible place to live, and if the talk they were getting out of this man... well they were running out of time to prepare. Vlad decided that was that he'd just have to start preparing for any further threats to his plans. That meant upping his secret weapon division's production quotas immediately. That just meant he'd have to get away from the men in suits, and uniforms.
Maddie was already trying to activate the systems on the fragments of the battle suit the man had been pulled from down in the garrage... that was another thing Vlad wanted a chance to get at. The battle suit not Maddie...well for another time.
-scene break-
Danny was pretty glad to be out of the house. His parents, and Vlad were all busy playing 'shut in' in one of the labs with something or another, and school had let out hours earlier. He didn't like it having the Guys in White around either... well except for their obsessive cleaning habits that was actually kind of nice. He looked around.
Valerie, all costumed up of course, was patrolling the city on her hoverboard so it wasn't like he could transform and do that. That would definitely spark a fight, which was the last thing he wanted with everyone on edge. It didn't help she'd clearly tweaked her technology, probably to get more power per shot. It seemed like a good idea considered he'd done the exact same thing to the ecto gun he had carefully hidden away. Even with everybody on edge there was no telling when the monsters, or even just regular ghosts might show up.
Danny adjusted the ecto sensor, he cribbed it from one of the labs this morning so he could double check his suspicions. Right now they were looking pretty dead on. They'd gotten lucky with the first monster attack, but the levels were growing again. If Danny could liken it to anything it would be to a volcano, the first portal had just been 'letting off pressure', a little bit of steam as lava built up, it was going to get worse.
"So?" Tucker asked.
He grimaced, "I'll fabricate you guys some ecto rifles tonight," Danny commented, he had a feeling that regular ecto guns might not cut it. Hell he didn't even know if his modified ecto gun would cut it against those things. He didn't even know if he'd be able to transform... if he couldn't control his powers he might end up being a bigger danger than the rampaging monsters.
"Thats sounds bad," Tucker responded, turning to Sam who had just shut her cell phone, "So whats up on your end?" He asked, it was her parents... it was always her parents.
"Family Dinner," She ground out, "With Vlad Masters, I've got to head home." Danny blinked Sam's parents with Vlad Masters... oh sure they were all fabulously wealthy but this seemed a little too convenient, especially given the situation. The question was though what was it Vlad wanted with the Mansons... assuming it wasn't something as simple as attempting to use Sam as leverage, which wasn't something that Danny would put past Vlad to try and do. Of course with Vlad it was rarely that simple.
At the same time they were lucky that the Mansons hadn't made a big fuss over Sam walking back to their house, especially given the heightened danger. Still dropping Sam off, even if it was just dinner, with Vlad coming over rubbed Danny the wrong way. Then again... Vlad in the Fenton's guest bedroom for his visit was pretty bad too so maybe he shouldn't have been talking. Of course Jack wouldn't even entertain the notion of 'his buddy' staying in some hotel much less in this scenario. So he'd insisted Vlad stay safely behind the Fenton Work's Ghost Shield.
Still it was the principle of the thing Vlad was danerous, but they couldn't spy on Sam's dinner with her family, and he really did need to grab as much lab time as he could... and study for school. If only Lancer would get the hint there was an imminent threat of overwhelming doom and easy up on the schoolwork, but that didn't look to be happening anytime soon. So Danny had another night of picking through the Great Gatsby for English.
It meant he was going to be up just as long as if he were out patrolling instead of Valerie, except instead of flying around the city he'd be stuck at home. At least there wouldn't be any chance of his parents catching him sneaking out, or back in. There was however the chance of them catching him experimenting with the machinery, and that could end up opening a whole other can of worms that he really didn't want to deal with.
So around five Tucker went home leaving Danny at his house. The only one who wasn't accounted for was Jazz, but then there was no telling where she was, but given the ecto sensors, or more specifically their lack of screeching, and how busy the house was it was more likely she'd just gone to get away from the exceptionally busy Fenton works.
On the plus side the multistory Fenton Works, including the underground levels, and the detachable ops center, had enough space that he could avoid the Guys in White, of whom most were busy doing one thing or another, and the reduced number of national guardsmen present. The last couple days had seen most of the Guard moved away from Fenton Works, despite Jack's open invitation that they were plenty welcome, and into a still under construction emergency command post just outside of town. With Vlad off at the Mansons, and Jazz gone he could hole up and not be concerned about being bothered at least for a couple hours, especially since his parents seemed like they were going to forget about dinner tonight. Of course if they did call... well he'd just have to keep an ear out.
-scene break-
In the future things were still grim looking, but no one really expected that to change. The tapping into the energy was supposed to open the way back, with the appropriate machines of course. Of course ley lines were difficult to manipulate, in a controlled manner at least, at the best of times, and it certainly didn't help that there were other people working on other North American Ley Lines in addition to him. Particularly when they were doing vastly different things to them.
The monsters didn't tend to build anything on the ley lines, which meant they weren't really a problem in this instance, which was really kind of a first. The problem in this instance were humans in particular those who could tap into the ley lines via supernatural methods. Even in the future their remained, or perhaps they thrived because of the end, back to nature, and violent eco groups.
The world had been a dangerous place before technology had gotten scarce, and society had collapsed. Naturally adding supernatural powers and fanaticism to the mix had been a bad combo, it had almost been as bad as having corporations control vast enclaves... almost. Even the friendly corps still managed to be collosal dicks.
The fact that Manson Industries was sticking its nose were it didn't belong just happened to be a testament to this fact. The Phantom looked up, it was a pity, but on the plus side they were still on schedule and the testing was showing promising results. On that note Van Karman was confident that they'd remain on track. The energy surges were more of a conern, but right now the corporate powerhouse to the east had more of his focus.
"We're sure, Manson is at least aware of construction," Where in the past Vlad was assuming that Manson was in fact Sam, the real threat was her parents... after all in this timeline she was dead, and that event had given her parents so much enending motivation. "Our spies within Amity Park agree that he is at least reaching out to Valerie Gray, and she in turn is looking to contact Vlad Masters for his expertise."
That could definitely be a problem, Vlad might have remained in his funk for his while, but he'd managed to eventually work through it. The man had never attempted a direct confrontation before though, but given the right prompting he might attempt to. Vlad's mental blue screen had put out of commission for a while, but the man had had years to rebuild himself, and get reaquainted with technology. The chance of Vlad's expertise being used against him was a very real danger.
The Phantom looked around, there were men, and women scurrying all around the complex. The bulk of the facility of course was underground. Once upon a time this had been a missile silo built before he'd been born. It had laid fallow for decades even before the End, but now it had found a new life. Its first line of defense remained the energy barriers which would deter any unwelcome
attacks, and if those failed well there were physical walls for fighting men to use as cover. Today though there wasn't a threat, and the base was calm, if busy. It was the way he liked it, a dozens real, and lethal wars had come and gone in the last decade, and there would be more to come, even if they did succeed, but it would be worth it.
He had watched, personally, St Louis burn to the ground, and seen an empire rise in Los Angeles, and all the other destruction the end had brought. In the earlier years he thrived on the chaos running around with barely a care, wreaking all the chaos he had wanted. Now though things were different, the rampaging had just further made the world a more barren place, and it hadn't needed any help in that regard. Still what was done, was done all that was left was attempting damage control. Even if they could go back in time, all they could do was hope mankind would be a little better prepared for the end, but it'd still be an improvement.
Texas was just too far away to commit forces to, it'd involve crossing through too much wasteland, and through too many little fiefdoms to be worth the risk. He could have sent the Fright Knight of course, but the truth was he'd better spent intercepting any would be attackers.
"We've checked the systems again, and we're relatively sure of the results,"
A grimace crossed his face, "Yellowstone then?" The supervolcano... if it could still be called that now was a massive font of supernatural energy, it was also surrounded by a massive supernatural forest that covered a sizable portion of what had been the national park. "I see," He'd need to do something about that. He didn't know what the West Cost's mega corporation was doing poking around, but it probably wasn't anything good. The problem with Argentum was that they were vastly more... inclined to publically use supernatural powers than their East Coast competition, which painted a much larger target for a number of aggressive factions. Mega Corp + Magic was a bad combination, but it was just a fact of life.
Still with Amity Park potentially getting nosy he could hardly afford to send anything to investigate the site, between Argentum and the Children of the Forrest it would be a shooting war already. Of course there was another option... his eyes shifted, hair went blacked. There was still the taint of supernatural power his eyes would glow in the dark, and there was still something not quite right about his pupils, and his skin was just too pale. It was a consequence, maybe if things had played out differently Vlad would have developed the same ... symptoms but then maybe not.
"You can't seriously be thinking of going, cross country teleportation would leave an energy trail that any half way decent ecto sensor would pick up," Light up like a christmas tree was more accurate really, "not to mention every monster in between here and there," Would probably be able to sense the expenditure of energy.
-scene break—
Helltanz's notes: So this has at last gotten the expansion it desrved, certainly both chapters could be longer but I feel both are definite improvements over what they were. I cannot say when Chapter 3 will go up as I really have no idea.
