Danny Phantom waits in the rafters of the auction house with nervous anticipation, watching the masses of auction goers shifting around on the floor below.
It just had to be on a school night, Danny grouses to himself, adjusting his weight in his invisible perch on a rafter. Couldn't they have auctioned the damned thing during the weekend? But now that I think about it, does Helios even have normal weekend breaks like Casper High?
He's only been going to his temporary school for a few days, and he hasn't had much time for sleep in between reassuring his parents that Helios isn't converting him into a magic supporter and trying to understand what the heck those teachers at Helios are talking about in their classes. When Tucker had told him about the auction tonight, he'd put his face in his hands in defeat. He wasn't going to get any sleep tonight.
Damn magicians, can't they leave a freaky power like that alone?
And now Danny is somewhere without backup again to prevent some horrible person from getting their hands on Freakshow's Shard. He really wishes that Sam and Tucker were here, but two normal teenagers will stick out at an auction like this, and that could get them seriously hurt.
Danny idly wonders if the Black magician is here, listening to the auction with half an ear. If she is, and is here for the Shard, I'm probably gonna lose all my respect and (albeit shaky) trust of her.
Rood looks down on the auction from the balcony he and Ren are occupying with determination. The auctioneer had just sold some bracelets for a huge price, and now the auction is on to some random necklace, and after that, Rood remembers from the pamphlet, is Freakshow's Shard. Rood feels another iron clad surge of determination and thinks, hands tightening on the railing, I don't care if I have to sully the Black Magician's reputation to do it. I'm destroying that thing.
"Well? Shouldn't you get ready?" Ren says from beside him, and Rood looks up at her and gives a silent nod.
After pulling the balconies curtains closed and preparing himself, Rood says, "My name is [Blow]. Awaken!" Black and dark blue magic spreads out from Rood's body and surrounds him, and as the awakening begins, Rood reaches out in his magic and makes a slight tweak in the awakening's changes, hoping it'll work, and the magic complies. Rood's hair turns black, his eyes begin to glow an electric blue, and he grows 16cms taller.
Blow looks down at herself, now clothed all in black, and notes that, as per her urging, the awakening had included the change of her binder changing into a bra.
Now as tall as her, Blow looks at Ren, who had been silently watching. "Surprising every time I see it. I've never seen a magician change so much like you do." She says, shaking her head. "How can such a kid change into such a striking young woman?"
"Sorry for being a kid." Blow says, annoyed, as she draws back the curtains.
"Oh my. It was a joke, a joke." Ren defends herself. She clears her throat. "On a more serious note, do you really have to destroy it? I mean, it was so long ago, and just because of…" she trails off, touching a certain area on her neck in an old habit.
Blow looks at the faint but ragged scar on Ren's neck, following it's path down her neck where it disappears under her red dress and letting the memory of where she got it come back to her. "Yes, we do." Blow says, as she remembers.
Rood, at age 13, watches the performer tightrope walk with wide eyes. Rood, Ren, and Master are all at Circus Gothica for a little fun after that scare with the demon. Rood was only supposed to be going after ghosts at this point, he's only at about rank 3, but that demon had been going after someone, so she had jumped in and killed it in the end, but not before it had clawed and bitten her a few times.
Master swore that Rood's breathing had stopped for over a minute, but Rood isn't sure he believes him, Master always worries too much. But after a 'scare' like that Master had declared that he needed a break from Opion, and Ren had told them about a circus that had come into their area recently.
Watching the long limbed person do a handstand on the tightrope, Ren exclaiming in excitement, Master having gone to get cotton candy from a vendor, Rood suddenly has a twinge of pain in his head, his bite wounds throbbing in unison.
{A younger Freakshow, waving his crystal ball in front of a ghost's face, the ghost closing its eyes and shaking its head. "OBEY ME!" Freakshow screams, and the ghost jerks as if a marionette on a string, eyes opening vacantly. The ghost nods absently, and goes to put on a costume.}
Rood blinks as the vision leaves him, head aching, to see Ren looking at him worriedly.
"Rood, are you alright now? You don't look so good. If you need to leave, we can go."
Rood shakes his head, and whispers, " Ren, I think the performers are ghosts being controlled by Freakshow. I don't think they're doing this willingly."
Ren blinks in surprise at this, then her eyes narrow and she questions, "You sensed something?" At Rood's nod, Ren stands up and looks around. "Okay," she says, "I'll go investigate, you wait here and tell Master where I've gone." And she strides off purposefully towards the 'backstage' sign.
When Master comes back, cotton candy in hand, and asks where Ren is, Rood doesn't get time to answer. They hear Ren scream. They turn as one toward the noise, and the first thing Rood sees is Ren, on the ground, being attacked by dozens of small, green, animal-like ghosts. A ghost in a red cape with a nose ring and spikes for hair stands over her, eyes staring vacantly.
They manage to make it alive out of the circus after that, with no teleportation scroll and two injured people, but not before getting attacked by more ghosts on the way and getting banned from the circus. Rood and Master had unanimously agreed after that that a power like that shouldn't be in anyone's hands.
"And now, ladies and gentlemen, what you've all been waiting for, Freakshow's Shard!" The auctioneer says, revealing the glass case containing a necklace with a red shard of glass attached with a flourish.
But whatever it is he's about to say next is delayed by a group of unsavory looking magicians appearing.
One magician, presumably the leader, puts the auctioneer down with a muttered stun spell. The rest of the group targets the guards, freezing them in place with shouted paralysis spells.
"It's started," Blow remarks to Ren with calmness.
"Shouldn't you get down there? Before they get it before you can?"
"They're small fry," Blow clarifies, "I'm waiting to see who comes to defend it." As much as she might want to stop them, her goal is only slightly morally better than theirs is.
Down below, the leader of the attacking groups of magicians breaks the glass case holding the Shard. Before he can touch it, a brown-haired man with the ears and tail of a wolf grabs his arm, breaking it with a snap that is audible to Blow. A stream of orange-brown power reaches out from the wolf-eared magicians feet, his braid swinging as he kicks the man he was holding back and knocks all of the magicians who were attacking back with a swirl of magic.
Spreading his hands out towards them, the magician intones, "[umina somnus]" and brownish magic shoots out from his fingertips and strikes the attacking magicians in their heads, orbiting around them until they all fall over, unconscious.
The Association's magician (because Blow definitely recognizes him and his uniform now) looks at the crowd of onlookers, and addresses them. "I know everyone is very excited about this magic necklace," He gestures toward the Shard, "but I'm asking everyone to please stay calm until the end of the auction. From now on, if anyone touches this necklace, they really won't have a good time with me."
On cue, a red haired magician picks up the necklace out of the broken case and jumps up onto a nearby statue.
Ren exclaims, beside Blow, "Shit, that's..."
"Yeah." Blow says, a faint sigh of annoyance escaping her lips.
"Oi, Blackie! This is your target, too, isn't it? Come and get it! If you don't, this necklace… I'll destroy it."
Just destroy it, that's why I'm here!
"Blow, since that guy is here, maybe we should go." Ren suggests, looking nervous.
"Leave, just because of a flea like him?" Blow replies, just as the statue Shic is perched on is sliced off at the base by a blue-haired woman, and the necklace goes flying out of Shicmuon's hand.
Blow tries following it with her eyes, but it is soon lost in the crowd, so then Blow starts looking for someone acting a bit too casual, scanning body language and… -there. A man with long brown hair and holding two women at his sides.
"I'm off." Blow tells Ren, pulling her hood over her head and jumping off the balcony, landing unharmed at the bottom.
Feeling uncomfortable in the crowd, Blow finds the man easily, and goes through his pockets with intangibility without him even noticing. Not finding it in his pockets, she turns to his belt.
It turns intangible at her touch and his pants fall around his ankles with a soft whump!
"Oops."
She hears someone giggling and wonders who is actually childish enough to find this funny.
"Wha- HEY!" He attempts to turn around and grab his belt but falls flat on his face instead. She tosses the belt back to him after retrieving the Shard. He doesn't stir, and she wonders if he actually knocked himself out on the floor or if he's just too embarrassed to move.
The crowd is murmuring around her, and people are looking at her. She starts to sweat, and pulls her hood further down over her face. She needs to get out of here before things escalate.
Blow feels a waft of cool air behind her, and when she turns, she finds herself face to face with Phantom, floating at eye level with his arms crossed over his chest and a stormy expression on his face.
"So, you really are just like the other magicians." He says, eyes locked on the necklace in Blow's hand, and it clicks that maybe a ghost would be the one to actually approve of her mission to destroy the Shard. A ghost who is currently getting the wrong impression about Blow's intentions.
"No, wait! I'm actually-" She feels magic start to charge up behind her and turns to see cloak guy- still kneeling on the ground with his pants around his ankles- gathering his mana into purple orbs, his face twisted in rage.
He's more of an annoyance than anything, but she puts up her mana weapon to block anyway, and the purple blots fly toward her and abruptly explode, which- she really hadn't been expecting, but she should have, because people are idiots.
She'd been braced, so she only slides back a couple of feet, almost right into the ghost boy behind her, and sends out a paralysis spell to stop that guy wearing Ember Mclain underwear, of all things, from embarrassing himself any further.
His head hits the floor with another smack, the girls he'd probably paid to be his arm candy already long gone.
Blow goes to put the necklace in her pocket- and hears the click of a camera phone just as it registers that her hood is no longer covering her head. More and more pictures are being taken all around her, and the pressure of all those eyes on her is suffocating.
So I guess that explosion is going to do more damage than I thought…
"Is it really her? The Black Magician?"
"Of course it's her! Who else could it be?"
The murmur of the crowd grows to a dull roar, and Danny Phantom takes her brief moment of panic as an opportunity to steal the Shard. She snaps out of her stupor just in time to watch a red blur slam into him as he attempts to zip out of the auction house.
The two figures fall to the floor- one much more graceful than the other- not much farther away than Danny had taken off from.
She meets the blazing red eyes of Shicmuon with a grimace as he holds the necklace in his fist and waves it at her tauntingly.
"Found you."
Then he springs at her, and she blocks the sword swinging towards her with her own saber. Shic lets go of the sword, and Blow takes an involuntary step forward from the strength of her earlier block, and the red haired magician darts down and grabs Blow's foot, (really, he grabbed her foot? that's ridiculous!) throwing her through the air.
The necklace! Blow thinks, as Shicmuon puts it around his neck. Blow's momentum slams her back up against the wall, Shic not far behind, aiming for a punch to the face that Blow dodges. The rest of Shic smashes up against her with a "Hello, Blackie," slipping out of his stupid smirking mouth.
"Hello, my ass!" Blow grunts out, and levers a leg between them, kicking him off and away from her.
Shicmuon goes airborne, and then stops his velocity suddenly and floats in mid-air, looking down at Blow, gesturing at the necklace around his neck with a grin.
He's baiting me, Blow glances coolly at him in return.
But, Blow thinks, as she takes a running step and leaps up skyward toward Shicmuon, giving the jump extra power with magic, Knowing that doesn't mean I can stop myself from reacting.
Shicmuon's trademark triple firing circle appears in front of Blow's path, shooting out red charges at her, knocking her in a different direction. Feeling the sting of magic and the impact of it on her stomach, Blow spots Phantom flying at Shic head-on, trying to grab the Shard, only to have Shicmuon evade him and shoot him down with a blast of bright red from his hand.
Holding out a hand in the direction that she is falling, Blow yells, reaching for her mana, "[Alohilani Coulter Dyaus]!" and rebounds off of the spell she'd cast in the space before her hand, compressing the air into a trampoline-like conformation, bouncing back in the direction of Shicmuon with a speed that would be alarming if she didn't have magic to break her fall.
Blow aligns her body into a kick aimed at Shicmuon's face, he catches her foot again, but that doesn't stop her moving, the momentum swinging her around the back of his head to boot the other side of his face with her free foot, leg twisting painfully in his grip.
Shic lets go and plummets down towards the floor. Blow is nearly to the ground herself when a very pissed off ghost boy crashes into her, sending them both soaring sideways. He punches her in the jaw, and Blow sees white.
He yells, "H yln'v qct ukv phf rtj erhkzflx!" 'I won't let you get the necklace!'
With a burst of black and blue magic Blow propels him away from her, saying, "I don't want it!"
Blow lands on the floor with a slight skid, knocking a few people out of her path with muttered 'sorrys'. She scans the crowd for Shic, and finds him hovering slightly above the crowd. Blow breaks through and finds a gap in the crowd, which she gratefully runs through.
Shicmuon's red magic circles appear above his head, but Blow is ready for that. She turns herself intangible and keeps running as the red X's in the firing circles fire a barrage of projectiles that go right through her intangible form, using magic to propel herself as fast as she can.
A cold body slams into her and makes her trajectory slightly crooked, and she nearly sinks through the floor to her death in surprise. She looks at him sharply, and realizes he must also be intangible.
"Like hell you don't want it!" Phantom yells, as he goes to kick her in the stomach. Blow turns tangible again, so that the still intangible ghost passes right through her, feet leaving long friction marks with the force of her skid across the floor. He turns tangible again to fire green ectoblasts at her from his hands, and Blow recoils to the side, and slashes out at Phantom with a sweep of black magic that sends him colliding with the wall.
Sensing Shicmuon behind her, Blow blocks his attack with her saber and reaches out and grabs for the necklace around his neck. Green ecto rays hitting them both from the direction of Phantom prevents her from grasping it, pain shooting into her side as the two of them are blasted away, flying quite a distance before landing to skate across the floor.
Blow starts to gather her magic to stop her momentum, only to have it all drain away from her reach.
What the-?
Blow looks down at Shicmuon, half on top of him and still sliding with a bored expression on his face, his eyebrow raising and mouth smirking as their eyes meet. Bastard, Blow thinks, going to grab the necklace around his neck, only to have it glow pinkish-purple and vanish before her hand can get close.
Hearing more ectoblasts being fired, Blow rolls to the side, momentum of the skid nearly gone, as the floor where she and Shic had been just a second ago gets blasted to bits.
Phantom, floating above them, looks at Shic and demands, "Where's the Shard?!"
Blow, standing, states, "It disappeared." Hearing a ztt behind her, Blow looks and sees a pinkish purple summoning circle with a zig-zagging design inside on the ground.
What now? A demon emerges from it, form susurrating out of the circle to whing at Blow, she puts up a barrier around herself right before it's insubstantial body slams into her, blocking it from possessing her, it's incorporeal mouth opening as it bares pointy teeth to scream in frustration. Stabbing at it with her magic, Blow sends it back where it came from with a word.
Hearing a shriek, Blow glances over and sees Phantom, somehow physically grappling with the wispy form of a demon while it attempts to possess him, pummeling it with ectoblasts to no effect.
Blow runs over and repels it with a gust of magic, and latching onto it's airy form with tendrils of black, Blow utters, "[Hlinka Kulya]", and watches detachedly as the demon bursts into flames with an inhuman scream, and evaporates into nothing.
Phantom, standing with a grunt, "I didn't need your help!" he retorts.
Blow raises and eyebrow. "Really? It sure looked like you needed somebody's help."
"Well, I don't want help from someone who was trying to obtain Freakshow's power!" He clarifies angrily.
Blow sighs, feeling a headache coming on. "Yes, I was trying to get the Shard. But not to use it. My mission was to destroy it." I finally said it, Blow thinks.
Phantom's eyes widen, and he begins, "Wha-" when the roar of Shicmuon's magic interrupts them again, Blow looks and sees Shic standing 10 feet away, his firing circles priming up for another shot.
Before he can fire, though, the wolf-eared Association member grabs him from behind in a chokehold, saying, "Shic, stop it already! The mission is ruined, we need to get back before those annoying guys from the Tower get here!"
Shic slams the back of his head into the man's face, and Van lets go to hold his nose, the firing circles charging up again.
"I'm sick of this!" Danny Phantom yells, and grabs Blow by the shoulders to turn her intangible and let them both sink through the floor, Blow barely seeing Shicmuon's incensed face before she holds her breath and gets dragged under.
When they reemerge from being inside the floor, Shic and Van nowhere in sight, Blow gets out, "Give me a bit of a - warning next time please! - I'm not a ghost, I still need to conserve oxygen," in between gasping for breath.
"Oh, sorry. I guess you could say I… Took your breath away!" Phantom says, looking way too proud of himself.
He deflates slightly when all he gets from her is a glare.
When Blow gets her breath back, Phantom requests, "Explain, please."
Blow, straightening, says, "I and the person who assigned me this mission had a rather bad experience with Freakshow's crystal ball. When we heard of it's remnants being auctioned here, we agreed it needed to be destroyed." Just enough information to explain her motives without exposing the identities of the people in question.
Phantom blinks, processing the information, looks relieved, and then apologetic. "Oh. We had the same goal all along then… Sorry for attacking you?" At Blow's forgiving nod, he asks, "And the necklace? You said it disappeared… what exactly does that mean?"
Blow thinks for a moment, then says, "My guess? Someone teleported it to them." Maybe the same person who summoned these demons, Blow thinks.
Hearing screams nearby, Blow looks and sees a possessed person, blue eyes glowing and light blonde hair in disarray, lashing out with the demonic power lingering around them.
Blow dashes into the fray, Phantom right behind her. But something is off about this, because the possession is already at stage 2, and that should be impossible.
Knocking the person off his feet with an explosion of black and blue, Blow holds the possessed to the ground with coils of magic, blocking the miasma of power that strikes out at her, and places a hand on the person's chest and says, "[Levia Eagan]" blue and black power surging from her hand and into the person, the demon being purged from his body with a woosh, emerging from his nose and mouth to fly at Blow.
Blow pierces it with her saber. "[keahi]!" feeling her mana swell as the demon catches fire and burns a bright blue before dissipating into nothing.
Blow looks down at the person she had saved, asking, "Are you alright?"
The blonde looks up from hugging himself to inquire, "W-what was that? It was like I was trapped in a dark space, something eating at me, not being able to sense anything..." He shivered.
"You were possessed." At the blond's alarmed look, she consoles, "Don't worry, you were at stage 2, so there shouldn't be any long lasting effects. Though, just in case, you should probably see a magician who can look at your soul for you."
The blond nods, seeming reassured, then looks up at the sound of a voice, shouting, "Young Master!"
"Rune!" The young noble says, standing and looking relieved. "Thank you so much for saving me, Black Magician-nim!" The blond thanks Blow, bowing.
"No problem." She replies as he turns and rushes over to a mint green-haired girl.
Blow turns to Phantom, who had been hovering nearby, and is about to say something when she hears her own name being called.
She turns to see Ren running toward her. "Ren? I thought you'd gone ahead of me?!"
"I can't just leave you while you're fighting! What if you got hurt?" she responds, grabbing onto Blow's arm. Looking over at Danny hovering next to Blow, Ren says, dark orange eyes narrowing in suspicion, "Hey! Weren't you fighting against Blow earlier?"
"Er-"
"Just a misunderstanding," Blow intervenes, stopping Ren preemptively. "Ren, meet Danny Phantom. Phantom, this is Ren Bastola."
"Nice to meet you," Ren says shortly, and after Phantom's greeting turns back to Blow. "That said, what's with these demons appearing? I came along thinking it wouldn't be dangerous, but. It's a good thing I brought this."
Reaching into her pocket, Ren pulls out a teleportation scroll, and it begins to hover over her hand.
"Wait, Ren," Blow protests, listening to the screams and general chaos of the crowd, "We can't just leave! There are still demons here, I need to help the people still possessed!"
Ren shakes her head, saying, "The Tower magicians can take care of that when they get here. For now, we need to get out of here."
"Okay," Blow accedes, seeing her point about not being around when the Tower gets here, but still not liking it.
"Phantom," Looking at the ghost nearby, who looks back questioningly, "For helping me escape earlier. How about we leave here together?"
The ghost is looking pretty beat from the fight earlier, and Blow doesn't want him to get caught when the Tower gets here.
"Really? I was just going to fly out of here, but if you have some sort of convenient way out of here, that'd be great."
Blow nods. "Yeah, a teleportation scroll." At Phantom's raised eyebrows Blow elaborates, "Just what it sounds like."
"The condition is [who I touch.]"
Blow holds out her free arm and says, "Hold on."
As Phantom touches her arm tentatively, a crash alerts them to Shicmuon flying toward them.
"You're running away? What happened to that arrogance from before? You're-" A brown blur slams into Shic that resolves itself into Van of the Association, holding onto Shicmuon by the neck.
It slows him down enough for Ren to say, "What I want is… [teleportation!]"
"Interesting." Gamode says, watching as the faraway building explodes with a resounding red boom, the shockwave not quite reaching them from their perch in a tree. "Don't you think so? Rubymonter-nim?" Gamode asks, finned ears twitching as the demon on his shoulder reaches out immaterial tentacles to start playing with his hair.
"How dull." Ruby replies, not even looking up from the page she's reading.
"Just because of this thing," holding up the necklace in her hand, "They're so noisy. Lowly things. However," Looking up from her book and putting it down, still open, on her lap, she continues, "Something as disgusting as this… might be the reason [that person] pointed this place out to us. I suppose... I will have to bear it."
There is an unspoken 'for now,' in her voice as she unhooks the necklace, pulls back her black hair, and puts it around her own neck, re- hooking it with a sigh.
"By the way, what is that you're reading?" He asks her, still paying more attention to the cute little demon that is now attempting to braid his pink hair.
"Oh, just a book written by humans about demons." At Gamode's raised earfins, she continues, "These humans seem to think they know everything there is to know about these 'stages' of demon possession, but they never mention the 'stage' we went through. And they don't know a thing about the method for speeding up these 'stages' either." She says with a smirk, and looks down to examine the necklace.
The bright red shard is cold against her chest, and the swirling red magic in the depths of the glass is slightly hypnotic even to her.