A/N: Alright, here's a treat for all of you out there. Because I have finals coming up, it means I'll have less time to write. Now, I may have the next few chapters written out already, but I have to revise some parts of them heavily before I can post it on . So without further ado, here's the next chapter!

Chapter 2

Danny was thankful no one was home at the moment as the last thing he needed was his mom to politely press Danny for answers about what was wrong and for his dad to blather on about his latest invention. His sister was worse than his mom about his well-being to the point where some people would call it an obsession, but thankfully she was off to college, filling out her General Education requirements before going for her major in psychology.

Giving out an exhausted sigh, Danny dropped his things near the couch in the living room and proceeded to lay down upon the couch. Eyeing his backpack with barely contained contempt, he knew he should at least start on his homework since he wouldn't have time to do it later due to his ghost hunting, but the day's events had robbed him of the will to do it. It was too bad that he had already captured Skulker as he felt the need to beat something senseless.

Sitting up in an instant, he remembered that he still had Skulker lodged away in the Fenton Thermos. Cursing mentally, Danny reached into his backpack and pulled out the container before he trudged down to the basement.

He entering the basement/lab, Danny paused in front of the very device that gave him his ghostly powers. The Fenton Ghost Portal had started it all for him. Before he had accidentally turned it on, he was just a normal teen with both Sam and Tucker at his side. Now he was a freaky, but powerful, half ghost/human that struggled to be the good-guy when so many people wanted him to be the bad guy. "Including Sam and Tuck now." Danny thought bitterly to himself, his grip squeezing the container in his hands.

Shaking off the depressing thoughts with a sigh of discontent, Danny opened up the ghost portal and loaded the thermos into a compartment that his parents had installed so that the ghosts would be forced from the Thermos and back into the Ghost Zone. It took a few moments for the Thermos to successfully force Skulker into the Ghost Zone once more, but it eventually did so without fail, unlike so many other of his parents inventions which had a nasty habit of blowing up in the user's face....quite litterally if the user wasn't careful with the device they were using.

"Well that's over with." Danny said aloud to himself as he began to go over to the genetic lock to seal the portal once more, another one of the inventions that had a severe glitch of randomly opening the portal's doors. His parents had tried fixing it many times in the past, but had yet to make it so that the doors would stay shut unless opened by either the genetic lock nearby, or by the door opener that was equiped standard in the Specter Speeder.

Before Danny could activate the lock, however, a massive earthquake began, knocking Danny onto his rear. "What's going on?" Danny wondered with evident apprehension before a familiar blue mist escaped his lips, indicating a ghost was near. Before he could even wonder what ghost could it be this time, a blast of ectoplasmic energy erupted from the portal.

Lunging to the side on honed instinct, something that had saved his hide many times during ghosts battles in both the past and future, Danny managed to dodge the blast before he took cover next to a work desk nearby, hiding himself to gain at least one advantage over the possible foe. Waiting for a few moments, Danny began to think that it was just a fluke caused by the discharge of excess energy. Unfortunately for Danny, no such fluke could happen in his life as the earthquake began to fade as quickly as it had arrived just as four ghosts riding upon their four ghostly, fiery steeds emerged from the portal one-by-one. Soon, the four horsemen began to form a line that was side-by-side as if they had spent an eternity in the formation which they now took.

On the far right, a heavily armored horsemen sat upon his equally frightening steed. The reigns in his hands seemed to be mere shoelaces in comparison to his massive and thick hands that fit his equally muscled body. The only part of his body that was truly visible were the hate-filled red orbs that were his eyes and his mane of fiery red hair that went down to the small of his back. Strapped to his side neatly was a medieval flail in the shaped of a skull with several spikes protruding from it. It could have been the lighting, but Danny could swear that the weapon was breathing like a living person.

The next horseman to the left was actually a woman. Nowhere near as armored as her fiery companion, her armor consisted of a breast plate, a pair of grieves and a pair of gauntlets that went well with the leather battle dress that she wore. If not for the fact that she was a ghost, Danny would have found her quite beautiful and voluptuous…..until she stepped into the flourescent lighting that was left after the earthquake had shaken most of the light fixtures out of place. Trying not to gasp in disgust, the woman's very ghostly 'skin' seemed as if it were rotting off of her. Some parts of her organs seemed to be almost visible and one of her eyeballs were barely in its socket. Her sleek green locks of hair were now left in dry clumps, barely there at all upon her head. A pair of long daggers rested on her sides, each of them dripping a greenish liquid from the tips that, when making contact with any object in the real world, caused a quick acid-like reaction that ate away at the area it had made contact with instantly.

The horseman on the far left was far different from his companions. The ghost looked as if the slightest breeze would knock him over as he was as thin as a rail and many of his ribs were showing from underneath his ghostly 'skin'. His clothing consisted that of a pair of gauntlets, loose silk pants and leather boots. It was his eyes that gave away the image of a frail man though. While the horseman on the far right's eyes were hate-filled, this horseman's eyes bore an unending rage for all but his comrades, though there was still some kind of an emotion there every time his eyes swept over his female companion. Whether it was a good or bad emotion was a mystery to Dannny. Even the smallest lab rat that crossed his gaze was glared at without restraint. On the horseman's hip lay a flexible whip with thorns that decorated the majority of the weapon save for the handle, though the handle did not look all too pleasant to touch as the leather bindings were frayed and would quite possibly rip up the user's hands. Curiously, the thin ghost's hands were unblemished if not for the bones that showed through his 'skin'.

The final horseman was the one that filled Danny with apprehension. Unlike his companions, he was neither grotesque nor did he have an extreme body-build. In fact, his body was similar to that of a skeletal ghost he had seen a few times in the past, though the horseman's billowing cloak with a clasp adorned with the emblem of a crown of fire seperated this skeletal ghosts from the many others that Danny had seen in the past. Upon his back was a massive scythe that was easily seven feet in length and had the crescent blades on opposite sides of the same end of the weapon. All in all, the ghost seemed like a stereo-typical personification of Death. Normally, something so cheesy would make Danny scoff at the absurdity and possibly crack a joke about how much he was 'dying' to meet the skeletal ghost, but the ghost had an air about him that made Danny almost want to freeze in place or flee in terror. Thankfully Danny was stronger than to simply give into such urges and firmly stayed in place, surveying the potential foes. The other horsemen seemed to follow the lead of the final ghost without being urged to, giving Danny the impression that the skeletal-ghost was their leader.

Snapping out of his examination of his potential foes, Danny could hear them begin to speak. "Come, my comrades. Let us lay waste to the fools of this pitiful world!" the one of the far right boomed out.

"Nay. The master gave us direct orders to retrieve his belongings, and we shall not fail him for your petty grievances with these pathetic mortals." the skinny horseman wheezed hatefully, though the malice was not directed to the armored ghost, but instead at everything other than his heavily armored companion.

Hearing their words, Danny knew that it was now or never. Changing into Phantom once more, though this time silently, Danny leapt out of his hiding place and fired out his ecto-blasts at the horsemen only to have the thin horseman step forward and hold out his hands much to Danny's surprise. What surprised the halfa further was the fact that the horseman literally absorbed the blasts with apparent ease.

"Insolent whelp! How dare you stand in the way of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse! Stand aside or be struck down by thy might!" the heavily armored demanded as he began to pull out his flail with practiced ease. The ghosts words seemed to not rattle the halfa as he intended. Instead, the ghost boy seemed to be on the verge of saying something, but was cut off by the female horseman.

"Nay, War. We have other matters to attend to at the moment. Pay this child no mind until we procure our Lord's artifacts." the rotting woman told her fierce companion in a silky voice that hardly matched her current look at all while she also gave a flirtatious, rotting smile that made Danny want to gag at the sight of the gnarled teeth the woman displayed.

Calming down only slightly, War nodded before all four horsemen went intangible and began to fly out of Fenton Works. Knowing that the four ghosts were not in the human world for benevolent purposes, Danny became intangible as well and began to pursue the ghosts as fast as he could.

Eventually catching up to the ghosts, Danny gave a devil-may-care smile while he flew beside the thin horsemen on the far right. "You know, I'm pretty sure that none of you are licensed to ride those things." Danny informed them, pointing to their fiery horses that they rode. "Or cause fear in the public below." he then added, giving the panicing members of Amity Park a brief glance.

Bellow all five ghosts, the citizens were in an almost frenzied state of panic at the appearance of them all, especially the more religious member of Amity Park. They seemed so small from so high up to Danny and forgot for a moment of the ghosts beside him. His train of thought was soon interrupted as the thin horseman grasped him by his throat and began to squeeze surprisingly with a strong grip that Danny would have thought impossible for such a frail-looking being.

Though Danny did not need to breathe as he was in his ghostly form and, by proxy, lacked the organs necessary to do such a task, it was not the fact that his windpipe was currently being crushed that cause so much discomfort. The pain he felt seemed to come from inside of his ghostly body as he could practically feel his ghostly energy being forcibly pulled from within into the ghost before him. With Danny's strength fading fast, he desperately fired out the twin rays of his ice powers from his eyes at his opponent.

Undaunted by his captive's abilities, the thin horseman began to squeeze harder upon his victim's throat as the ice formed over his body only to quickly evaporate off of his skin. Smashing the young halfa into the side of the nearest building as he and his fellow horseman rode, his eyes seemed to light aflame with unbridled hatred as the thing ghost continued to strangle the halfa without restraint. The thin horseman grew increasingly more violent as he began to slam the young halfa into buildings, billboards and even a plane at one point causing the majority of the items to dent or break off partially as Danny was slammed into them at high or equal speeds.

The young ghost child could feel his consciousness slipping away quickly, but knew that he could not pass out now. Passing out was equivalent to death for him and Danny did not want to test the theory if he could actually die since he was technically half dead in the first place. "I need to escape. I need to get out of here. I just wish….I just wanted to go to the Nasty Burger with Sam and Tuck. I never wanted to fight with them." he thought, remembering his ban on wishing after meeting Desiree for the first time in a few months, as his powers were dangerously close to giving way completely. His thoughts continued to linger upon the fast food establishment as the horseman seemed to be almost content he was about to end the young ghost-child's afterlife.

With little to no warning, one second Danny was firmly in the horseman's grasp, his life fading quickly, the next he simply vanished. Completely surprised the horseman that had held Danny's life in his hands halted his steed as he looked around for the insolent child that had dared to not die in the manner which the thin ghost had chosen for him.

"Famine." the skeletal horseman called out to him, his voice deep and seemed to hold a slight trace of annoyance at his comrade. "The child is unimportant. Our master awaits our success."

Snapping back to the matter at hand, Famine merely nodded as he urged his steed on once more, focusing on riding once more to where the artifacts lay.

Far from the horsemen, beside the back alley of Amity's famous Nasty Burger, an unconscious Danny Phantom lay before he reverted back into Danny Fenton. For several moments, Danny lay unconscious upon the ground, motionless, but breathing raggedly with increasing stength. The Nasty Burger had long since cleared out when the four horsemen had arrived and none seemed brave enough to even go near the establishment.

The uneasy peace that had crept over the establishment was soon broken as someone finally noticed the unconscious Fenton and immediately rushed to him. "Oh god! Danny!" Sam declared as she began to check over the young Fenton.

He was obviously injured from one of his many battles, that much was certain. Quickly lifting up his shirt, Sam worriedly checked him over and determined that he had several broken ribs, but thankfully with him being part-ghost, the breaks were relatively clean and he would heal up by the morning. Still, it would be difficult to transport him anywhere safe. They had long established that hospitals were too risky for obvious reasons.

"Danny, I'm so sorry." Sam whispered to her unconscious friend as she began to drag his body carefully to her house through the empty streets of Amity Park. Wednesdays sucked.

A/N: New ghosts have just handed Danny's rear to him on a platter without batting an eye. Are these ghosts who they claim they are and what are they searching for? Wait, why am I asking you this? Thankfully Sam found our favorite halfa, but will Danny forgive her? Find out next time on Dark Rebirth!

Teaser for next chapter: "End of the world? Sam, what are you talking about?"