Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or Devil May Cry. Characters from either series' are owned by either Nickelodeon or Capcom. Some characters are my own.
Personal Demons
Chapter 2: A New Enemy
Another Sunday afternoon in Amity Park. Fourteen-year-old middle schooler Danny Fenton was walking with his best friend, Tucker Foley, conversing about the latest video game and its most difficult level. "So I can't get into the slaughterhouse until I beat that M-1 Annihilator," Danny said, "and they weren't kidding when they called that thing 'Annihilator.'"
"You do know that you gotta climb up the balcony and cut the electric cables to short circuit it, right?" Tucker suggested. "Just because the knife is the first weapon you get doesn't mean it's the most useless."
"You've known this how long?" Danny asked.
"About a week or so," Tucker answered. "Why would you still be playing the campaign mode, anyway?"
As the two friends were walking through the street, they passed up an old theatre surrounded by various citizens of Amity Park holding picket signs to prevent its destruction. A few days ago, the mayor of the city, Vlad Masters, announced its demolition to make room for a place for people to buy overpriced coffee (as if there weren't enough). Several people spoke against it and decided to take action. The youngest amongst them was Samantha "Sam" Manson, who was also another one of Danny's friends.
"Hey, Sam," Danny casually greeted.
"Hey, Danny," Sam greeted in the same way. With that, they parted ways.
Tucker, not sure of what was happening, had to ask, "So that's it? No trying to talk her out of it or anything?"
"C'mon, Tuck, it's Sam," Danny explained. "Whatever we say to snap her out of it, she'll go off with that whole 'opression from the man' this and 'it's a national landmark' that. Besides, whatever's bad for Vlad's reputation is no skin off my neck."
Danny had never seen eye-to-eye with the mayor. Their rivalry goes back as far as when they first met, when Danny first learned that Vlad, like himself, was half-ghost. Involved in an accident simular to his own, Vlad blames Danny's father, Jack, to this day for activating a Ghost Portal prototype that gave him ecto-acne which ruined his social life and what little chance he had with Jack's future wife, Maddie, whom he is still infatuated with. Since learning how to use his powers, Vlad used them, as the mysterious Vlad Plasmius, to overshadow big businessmen to sell to him to gain even more power. He had even used this overshadowing power, as well as a perfected division ability, to overshadow the voters of Amity Park to elect him mayor of the city. Since then, Vlad had been using his mayoral power to belittle Danny's reputation as the town's ghostly hero, with, so far, minimal results.
As Danny and Tucker continued on, one of the protesters called out, "What's that?!" Danny and Tucker turned around to see one protester pointing up to the roof of an adjacent building. The teens looked that way to see an winged, dark orange creature looking down upon the protesters. It opened it's mouth to show its gnarled fangs and let loose a mighty, shriekish roar.
"You do what you gotta do, bud," Tucker said, handing Danny a Fenton Thermos.
"That, I will," Danny responded, taking the thermos and running off to find a place to change.
Of the protesters shaking in fear at the sight of this strange monster, Sam stepped out and called out, "Stand your ground, team! Nothing shall break our bond with this piece of history!"
"Forget it, man!" One protester said. "I'm outta here!" The protester ran away screaming, as the rest went and did the same.
Sam gave a frustrated sigh and remarked, "Fight all forms of human oppression, but one paranormal being shows up and you all go running."
The strage creature swooped down at at Sam, its knife-like fingers pointed forward to stab anything in its path like a shish kabob. Sam tried defending herself using her picket sign as an impractical shield. Before the monster could plunge its claws into Sam, it got blasted by a ghost ray from Danny's ghostly alter ego, Danny Phantom. Sam lowered her sign to see her knight in shining armor, or in this case, a faintly glowing jumpsuit, take off before she could give a proper thanks.
The creature lay on the road recovering from the blast it took as Danny touched ground and readied the thermos. "You sure are ugly," Danny taunted. "Perhaps you'll meet someone like you in the Ghost Zone!" Danny activated the thermos at the creature to capture it with intent of sending back to the Ghost Zone. The thermos fired a white beam at the creature... and nothing happened. The beam stuck on the creature like a normal beam of light would. Danny just didn't get it. He was so lost in it, he didn't realize the creature getting up to its feet again. By the time he realized, it had already come in for the kill. It smacked at Danny's body with its crude claws with its backhand, sending Danny flying a few yards back and leaving his body badly cut.
As Danny laid on the ground holding his body, the creature flew up to him. It didn't attack again, however. It olny hissed to Danny, "The age of Grusunder is nigh." And with that, it retreated to the sky.
After the creature was surely gone, Sam and Tucker came running up to Danny to check on him. "Are you okay?" Sam first asked.
"It's just a scratch," Danny said, showing the grusome results of the creature's slash, making his friends a little uneasy.
"If that's just a scratch," Tucker said, "I'd hate to see a papercut."
"That thing wasn't a ghost," Danny suddenly said.
"Took you that long to figure out?" Sam intervened.
"You knew?" Danny and Tucker both said in puzzlement.
"Yeah," Sam said, as if the statement was obvious. "That was a demon." Before either boy could get a word out, Sam quickly said, "I'm a goth. I follow these things."
"Do you know anything about someone named 'Grusunder?'" Danny asked Sam.
"Why? Was that him?" Tucker added in.
"Couldn't have been," Sam said. "If it was, it would've killed Danny outright. It had to've been a lesser demon. A minion, so to say." Danny and Tucker continued to gawk at Sam's vast knowledge of demonology. "What? A girl can't learn about demons in a town often overrun by ghosts?"
"Well, Sam, since you're clearly the expert on this," Danny said, "see what you can find out about whoever Grusunder is."
"What about me?" Tucker asked, wanting some sort of involvement.
Danny paused for a moment before saying, "You do what you think you'd be best at doing."
"Post countless request blogs on that demon guy and play 'Doomed' when I should be doing something school related?" Tucker said in one breath.
"Yeah, sure," Danny said, not really paying attention. After playing what Tucker said in his head again, Danny exclaimed, "Oh, shoot! I still gotta finish that math homework!" Danny shot up into the air to make his way for home.
"Wait!" Tucker called out. "What about the other demon that attacked earlier?! What if it comes back at you?!"
"Don't worry about it!" Sam called to Danny. "All he was was a messenger! He won't bother you for a while!"
Tucker stared at Sam again, surprised more at how much she seemed to know. "Okay, dude, you're scaring me," Tucker said.