Adranaym
Strawberry Seraph
Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom of Teen Titans. They belong to their respective owners.
Chapter 3 : Friends and Family
Danny turned a corner and using his own abilities, phased through a wall as soon as he was out of sight.
Finding himself in a warehouse that didn't seem to see too many visitors, Danny phased out of the robot like he was shucking off a second skin, leaving the shell standing rigidly in place.
Turning around, the ghost surveyed his "catch" with muted approval.
The robot's armor was good, could have been better, but still good, and while it didn't have any projectile capabilities, it more than made up for those shortcomings with its martial arts subroutines and heuristics programming. Curious, he leaned forward and pressed a clawed finger against the odd armor plates that almost formed a semicircle over its chest and pressed down as he drew the tip of his claw across it.
Drawing his hand away, he looked at the scratch that he had made, trying to judge the efficiency of the armor to how well it stood up to his claws. Danny frowned as he saw just how easily he cut it.
"Well that's not good…" the half-ghost muttered under his breath, reflexively looking down at his hands.
Razor sharp claws extended past his fingertips, black, they could almost be mistaken for being painted but if someone looked closely, they might notice that there was no shiny finish that was indicative of nail polish, only having a matte color.
Danny clenched his hands into fists, hiding one of the most obvious of his inhuman traits from view, not even bothering a token caution with their wickedly sharp points, having long since gotten used to his invulnerability to his own claws, and most other things.
He could still remember that day with stark clarity. He wished he didn't but he did.
Danny phased back into the armor, reasserting his control over the machine as he used it like he would his own body.
He could remember Vlad's maniacal laughter, the fire, his friends cries of pain, all because he couldn't reach them, because he wasn't fast enough, strong enough.
Danny floated upwards, careful to get used to the more tangible weight of the heavy metals that made up his new "body".
He could remember his own pain as Vlad's plan for him reached fruition.
Danny phased through the roof of the warehouse carelessly, turning invisible as he did so and flew off into the night sky.
Vlad had turned him into a monster…
And he could do nothing to turn himself back.
Danny could remember what he had seen when he had first looked in the mirror the day after. What he saw in the mirror every day after that.
Danny touched down in his room and stashed the robot in his "closet", which was actually a doorway to the "Ghost Zone" and forced himself back into his more human form.
That accomplished, he padded out of his room and into the bathroom and looked at the mirror.
It's what he sees in the mirror every day.
Spiky black hair grew wildly from his head, shot through with streaks of white mostly concentrated around his bangs. Despite what he told others however, he did not dye his hair at all, it was a sign of his ghostly power slowly manifesting in greater and greater amounts in his physical, human, if it could still be called that, body.
Under snow white eyebrows, were a pair of piercing blue eyes that held all the intensity of a hawk or some other bird of prey. Eyes that would glow with ethrial sheen if he wasn't careful to keep his overflowing power as low as he could stand.
Opening he mouth, he ran his tongue over the sharp edges of his teeth, some of which almost be called fangs from their length.
Less obvious in a way, but still blatantly apparent if you knew to look for it was the tone of his skin, pale almost beyond human norms and while you couldn't tell it from just looking at it tough enough to withstand far greater impacts and cuts than even he knew.
Overall, it gave him an appearance of something so unearthly that it unnerved humans right down to an almost instinctive level.
Danny sighed and leaned over the sink, resting his head against his reflection, letting the coolness of the glass plating leach what body heat he had from him, closing his eyes.
He stayed that way for an undetermined amount of time, images of that day flashing behind his eyes when suddenly, his cell phone started to ring, the catchy tune catching his attention.
Blinking, he pulled his head back and stared blankly at his pocket. Danny rubbed his face, absently pulling out the flip phone, snapping it open with a casual flick, not bothering to look at the caller ID as barely enough people to count on a full hand had his phone number and asked aloud, "Ya?"
"Daniel Fenton?" a cheery voice asked on the other end of the line.
Danny blinked, "Speaking."
"Oh. That's great! This is Sammy, from TickTockTribute? Triple T? I'm calling to affirm your one o'clock meeting with Mr. Jacobs tomorrow?"
"That's right. So it's still a go then?"
"Yep! I'll be seeing you there then!"
"Thanks."
"Your welcome!"
The phone line went dead and Danny shivered at the sheer energy of the person he had just been talking to, Sammy was her name. Sam would have been horrified, both at the girl's attitude, and the fact that they shared the same name, and even worse would have been the fact that someone with her name was had an attitude that was so irrepressibly bouncy and practically screamed airhead.
Danny could even imagine the person wearing a bright pink shirt and blowing bubbles with bubblegum.
Flipping it shut he uttered, "I hope I won't see you there."
He shook himself out of his brooding and decided to go to bed, citing such varying reasons as a toothache from listening to "Sammy's" overly sugary "secretary voice" to exhaustion, not caring about the sun he could see peeking through his windows even though he wondered where all the night time hours had gone.
Danny closed his bedroom door, lowered the blinds on the window with a flick of his fingers and collapsed onto his bed, not bothering to change into something more suitable to sleep.
He closed his eyes and quickly fell into a troubled sleep.
Strawberry Seraph: And here's chapter number three! Wow… I haven't updated anything for a loooooooooooong time.
And this chapter answers the question for those that wanted to know what Danny looks like, at least in his human form—if you didn't notice, I didn't describe his ghost form yet.
If you're still having a hard time visualizing it, here's a simple breakdown of the differences from normal (besides Danny being a little older than in the show):
Human form—
He has claws that are really, really, really sharp and are black.
He has white streaks in his mostly black hair.
He has white eyebrows for some reason.
He is really, really pale.
He has really "thick" skin.
NOTE I: He passes most of the things off as "going Goth".
NOTE II: There is a reason that no one really thinks anything of him doing so—but "they" are WRONG.
NOTE III: Yes, I will tell you why he looks the way he does, what his ghost form looks like, what happened with Vlad, Sam, and Tucker, and why people thing he's turning Gothic, and the real reasons behind it. All of which are actually more complicated than most people (in the story) think.