A/N: Things haven't been going too hot for me lately so I decided to take a break from life to work on my story a bit more. I had to revise it a few times as it was not working coherently with itself so I hope you all enjoy it. I've also been forgetting to do this, so I might as well do it now.

I do not own Danny Phantom or anything related to it. I'm just a guy with a lot of time on his hands and a computer in front of him.

Edited: Dec. 21, 2009


Chapter 3

Danny felt as if he was floating on air without having to use any of his ghostly powers. Not having to work at all to feel so comfortable was a nice change of pace, as he usually had to work for even the slightest bit of comfort when it came to using his ghostly powers. Up, down, left and right did not exist in his mind due to how addled he was at the moment. After several moments, he began to groan out softly, pain slowly beginning to seep into his body as his consciousness began to return to reality. He frowned lightly at the realization as he was far too comfortable in the position he was in and did not wish to even move the slightest muscle in order to ease the pain his sore body felt.

Briefly, he wondered why pain was aching his body until he remembered the ghosts that had beaten him thoroughly in what felt as if it were only a few hours ago. He could remember the feeling of his life literally being sucked out of his body before…..nothing. He was drawing a blank as to how he escaped from the clutches of the thin horseman that had literally held Danny's life in his hands and he severely doubted that the horseman had a change of heart at the last moment and decided to let him go. No, the horseman clearly wished to finish Danny off once and for all if the unrestrained hatred within the ghosts' eyes were any indication of how the horseman felt about the young halfa.

"But what happened though?" he wondered silently to himself, hating to not know how he managed to cheat death once more. Thankfully, death was nothing like Lancer was when a student was caught with cheating, but Danny still did not trust his luck in escaping another narrow death and would rather know now than learning at the last moment and narrowly escaping with his life once more.

Sighing, he knew that he would have to open his eyes eventually and resigned himself to the eventuallity. Slowly cracking both of his eyelids apart, he did not recognize the room he was in at the moment, his mind still in a state of chaos as it was trying to reorganize itself from the events prior to his awakening. He lay in, what felt to be, an extremely comfortable bed for some time until he recognized the room while he slowly turned his head.

Familiar dark purple walls enclosed the room, decorated by several posters of gothic bands as well as the occasional Humpty Dumpty poster that he, Tucker and Sam had purchased at one or two of the concerts. The room was not as neat as one would expect, but it was infinitely much more organized than his own room, as the floor could still be seen despite the numerous knick knacks and the occasional articles of clothing that littered the floor. Thankfully, the unmentionables were not among the discarded clothing that were in his view at the moment as that would be another awkward lecture that he would rather like to avoid for his sanity's sake. Danny pressed his lips together until they formed a thin line, unsure how he should feel about being in the room at the moment.

"Sam's room." Danny thought, though the usual warmth when associated to Casper High's resident Goth was noticeably dimmed at the memories of the recent argument that he and his other two friends had shared briefly before he had stormed off in fury.

Shifting ever so slightly due to the discomfort that he felt increasing, Danny's eyes soon widened in surprise as he could now feel that he was not only was he left in nothing but his blue boxers that were decorated with cartoon images of rockets , but his ribs were bandaged properly and his cuts, which had accumulated when the thin horsemen had slammed him into numerous buildings, had been treated. Taking a brief mental check of himself, Danny began to feel the many more scars that adorned his body in addition to the already healed scars that decorated him from the neck down as if they were badges of honor. Then again, some of the scars were surprises that the Box Ghost had left due to a mistake on his part and no one could even remotely consider any wounds left by him to be anywhere near honorable or worth mention.

Deciding that it would not do to be laying down as he began to feel restless, Danny soon began to sit up slowly, propping himself up with his toned but tired arms in order to ease the burden. His task proved quite painful to him, slowing his efforts even further as he struggled to sit up. Finally, he managed to sit up properly, propping up several more pillows underneath his back, as means for support, just as Sam walked in with a tray of food and a first-aid kit in each hand.

Smiling gently at the resident halfa hesitantly, Sam began to approach him, setting down the things on the nearby bedside table. Though many called him clueless for many things, most of which people refused to tell him, he knew this young woman well enough to know that she too was uncertain of their standing after their fight from earlier.

"Danny, you shouldn't be up right now. You'll reopen your cuts." Sam said kindly as she rested her hand on his unhurt shoulder, a gesture of warmth, in order to get him to lay back down.

"I'm fine." Danny replied curtly, shrugging away her hand as he folded his arms while watching her coolly.

The cold rejection of her concern hurt, but Sam would have rather spent the day shopping with Paulina and her satellites rather than admit it in front of Danny. "No, you aren't fine Danny. I've had to treat your injuries and I know how badly you're hurt." Sam pressed on, not wanting him to push himself too hard and hurt himself even more.

Her words were bitter to swallow, but true. However, the anger from day's events were beginning to boil within, especially the memory of the fight he had with her and Tucker only a few hours ago if the clock nearby was any indication of the current time.

"Like you care. You and Tucker are too scared of me now and today just proved it. So what if I tore off that idiot Skulker's mechanical head? It's supposed to come on off." Danny growled out, his eyes flashing green briefly before they faded back to the baby blues that Sam was far more used to looking into when he was upset at either her, his family or just the world in general. At this point Sam would have paid nearly all of her family's fortune just to shift his frustration at someone, anyone, else other than her.

His words felt like sharpened blades to her, slowly digging into her skin and causing her own temper to flare in response in defense. "Well excuse me for being concerned if my best friend is becoming someone that had nearly killed Tuck and me freshman year!" Sam shouted back, his eyebrows furrowing as he anger rose further.

The fires of Danny's rage were immediately quenched, as if Sam had thrown swamp water onto him leaving him cold, dirty and ashamed all at the same time. He could no longer look at Sam as the memories of his twenty-four year old self hovering over him like a dark shadow.

"I promised I wouldn't be him." he whispered silently, clenching his fists as he closed his eyes. Pain shoot through him, having nothing to do with his quickly healing ribs as he and Sam stayed in place in uncomfortable silence.

Quickly realizing the hurtful things she had just said and knowing far too well how much they hurt her crush, Sam bit her lower lip in shame as she sat down slowly on the edge of the bed. "Danny, I didn't mean it like that." Sam said apologetically, trying her best to smooth things over with him.

"Yes you did." Danny replied back quietly, refusing to look at his crush that was crushing his heart, though he did not shrug away her hand like last time.

"No, I didn't Danny… I-……I meant I was afraid you were becoming some…one that would do things that you wouldn't do in a million years. You………you're right." Sam said, trying her best not to say something as she knew that would further crush Danny, before she sighed in defeat. "I'm-I mean Tucker and I, are getting…scared of you. Last week, you leveled an entire warehouse by firing a concentrated ecto-blast that was like a grenade magnified by ten just to put Ember 'in her place', as you called it. Freshman year you were lucky enough to knock back Technus with one shot from your hands. We care for you Danny, that will never change, but we can't even imagine having even half the powers like you have and, truthfully…you're becoming….darker as they grow." she told her crush gently, hoping her words were getting through to him with their truth..

"But you both have. Tucker wished for ghost powers like me a few weeks after I could actually use mine well enough, and you were the 'Queen' of Undergrowth's garden and none of us can forget Spectra's ghost bugs." Danny reminded her, looking back up to the Goth as his eyes locked with her own once more.

"Yeah, but that's exactly my point. Look how well that all turned out. Tucker was a raging behemoth consumed with the powers he got and was using them for personal gain, I was just a puppet that could do nothing unless my 'father' gave me permission to, and none of us had even the least bit of control of what little ghost powers we had at the time. If not for Tucker's disgusting cologne then we'd probably be dead from the ecto-contamination. Danny, please understand when I tell you we have a hard time understanding your powers and Tucker and I are right to be scared. The only reason any of us have even the slightest clue about any of your powers is by listening to your parents blather on about ghosts, listening to the ghosts themselves, and by sheer luck." Sam told him before slowly wrapping her arms around his shoulders to pull him into a gentle hug. Though she wished….no, not wished. They had agreed that wishing in Amity was equivalent to playing Russian Roulette with a revolver that was half loaded. Though she wanted to hold Danny tighter than she was currently, she did not want to hurt him physically as he was still healing from his wounds.

Blushing at the fact that Sam was hugging him, her eyes closed as she held him, while he was nearly naked, Danny's first natural reaction was to turn his head invisible without realizing it. Not noticing his lack of a head, Danny tenderly lifted his own arms to return the hug in order to show her that he understood. He didn't have to like it, but he understood.

Truthfully, he was noticing the change in his mood through the years, but he didn't pay any mind to it. He thought he was just tired of it all. The constant fighting both against ghosts and for the approval of his family and peers. He had realized not too long ago that ghosts respected two major things in both the Ghost Zone and in the real world. Power and conviction. It was part of the reason that Vlad had half of the Ghost Zone lined up in his pocket. He was unbeatable to the ghosts that resided in the Ghost Zone currently and they only folded to those who could continually put them in their place. Danny had proven to the ghosts far too many times that they could beat him and the ghosts tried their best to take advantage of that. Maybe….maybe because he was thinking more like a ghost lately he was beginning to lose sight of what it meant to be human.

Holding onto Sam tighter, his resolve strengthened, knowing he would do what it would take not to fall further down the path he was unwittingly walking towards the past few weeks. That path…was unpleasant. It led to him winding up as either Vlad, alone, miserable and bitter at the world, or his evil future self whom was hateful, malicious and uncaring about life in general. A small smile creeping to his face, he could feel Sam relaxing against him as the two teens held one another for much longer than what people deemed friends, even close ones at that, should.

The two continued to hold one another for a brief moment longer before Danny let an invisble smile reach his lips, knowing that they were okay once more before a thought reached him. Smirking now, he looked down to Sam.

"You actually listen to my dad blather on about ghosts?" he asked her, amusement evident on his face as he watched her.

"Well, someone has to cover for you when you go out to fight ghosts, and I don't see Tucker talking to your dad any time soon unless its about the emergency ham." Sam shot back, shuddering at the mention of the meaty product that his dad had often let spoil for one reason or another, possibly a ghost related reason at that.

Danny let out a small laugh which brought Sam to pull away from the hug, only to let out a small shout of surprise at the lack of Danny's head. Smacking his shoulder playfully, Sam had him turn his head towards the mirror nearby.

"Ghah! Suffering spooks! Where the heck is my head?!" Danny demanded as he lifted his hand and began to feel around for the missing appendage frantically.

His head soon turned visible once more, much to his relief, causing him to lean back into the pillows that propped him up. "For a minute there I thought the ghosts from earlier took my head after smacking me around town." he chuckled lightly.

Sam frowned at his remark. The ghosts as of late were supposed to be getting easier, if his fight with Skulker was any indication. There were few ghosts left in the Ghost Zone that actually posed a challenge to the young halfa and news of entities actually beating him was concerning to say the least.

"Who did it to you though?" she asked.

"Dunno. Never seen any of them before, but they weren't friendly though, I can tell you that much." Danny replied, his face growing more serious as he thought about how easily he was beaten. Granted, he was a little over-confident but to be subdued by merely being held was enough to sober him as quickly as it did.

"Did they at least introduce themselves? All the ghosts we've had to face in the past at least mentioned their names in passing, or just went on and on about how they were going to dominate the world or something." Sam asked. To her, at least knowing a ghost's name was key into knowing what they were after, if they were malicious at all. 'Knowing is half the battle', or so they said. While Tucker and Danny were firmly convinced that as long as they could smack aside any of the ghosts that popped up around Amity Park without knowing who the ghosts were, Sam would never waver in her beliefs that it would someday take more than just brute force to take down a ghost.

Rubbing the back of his head with his hand, Danny did his best to remember the events that had led up to this point. He had been tossed around the city enough to have people consider he should be suffering from brain damage, but his healing was able to keep that much as nothing more than pointless worrying.

"Um…there was Famine, that was the guy that was making me his personal squeeze toy." Danny said, frowning as he knew that the names were at least somewhat important while he scratched his head in frustration. "Oh, yeah! They called themselves the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!" Danny declared as he snapped his fingers, his memory rushing back to him with full force.

Sam seemed to freeze in place as Danny spoke and her beautiful, porcelain skin seemed to grow paler in surprise as she sat there next to him. "Danny, please tell me that you're just joking. Plllleeeeaaaase." Sam begged softly, her hands curling in worry. Her eyes soon went wide as she saw the halfa shake his head causing her to groan out in frustration before she stood.

"Great, just what I always wanted, to go up against the embodiments of the end of the world." Sam grumbled as she went over to her bookshelf and pulled out a particularly hefty book, the very book she had discovered many of the more ancient ghosts that Danny had fought including the Fright Knight, if memory served him correctly.

"End of the world? Sam, what are you talking about?" Danny asked as he leaned over carefully to see the pages Sam flipped through.

"You don't even pay attention to the History Channel, do you?" Sam asked, a small smile creeping across her face at his ability to be so clueless while it border-lined on stupidity at the lack of knowledge on his part on something that sank into the most well-known legends and stories of the past.

"The Four Horsemen are the first signs of the end of the world, it's a big part of a few well-known religions. The names of the horsemen are Pestilence, War, Famine and Death. Hmm...frankly, I'm surprised that a run-in with them didn't lead to you dying horribly, not that I'm complaining that you're alive that is." Sam told him with a fond smirk as she briefly looked up from her book before looking back down to it.

"They could have been lying. Humans tend to pretend to be someone they're not all the time." Danny offered hopefully, his mind going to a specific older halfa that was at odds with Danny many times in the past.

Shaking her head, Sam sighed lightly. "If only that were true. Ghosts are emotions, energy, or lingering desires that bond with ectoplasm and takes a physical form for the most part. In short, ghosts can't actually lie because it would interfere with who they are. They may be evasive, they may not talk at all or they tell half-truths, but the only ghosts that can lie are you and Vlad and that's only because you're both still part human." Sam explained as she thumbed through the pages of the text.

Danny paused for a moment, unsure if it was assuring or worrying at the fact that ghosts could not lie. Groaning out in frustration, Danny sunk lower into the bed. "Geez, of all the times for the end of the freaking world! What am I going to do?" he asked no one in particular as the weight of the world seemed to be crushing Danny underfoot, his face seeming to deflate in depression.

"Danny, calm down." Sam urged him gently, closing the book as she reached over to gently smack him over the head in order to get him out of his funk.

"Haven't you listened to me or do you suffer a permanent mental disorder where you can't learn anything for more than ten seconds? The horsemen don't cause the Apocalypse. They show that its going to happen soon." she told him, looking him right into his eyes as she told him.


A/N: Consider this all of your early Christmas present, or just a present in general if you don't celebrate Christmas. This originally started out as seven pages, but now it's roughly ten! I've finally gotten a Beta reader to look this over, so to all of you that have had to work through my terrible grammar and the occasional spelling mistake, this is another gift to you! Happy Holiday!-Forsaken Beast