The Literary Lord

HIVE Minded

A Danny Phantom/Teen Titans Crossover Fanfiction.

12/03/14

Chapter 4-Would You Believe it's A Kilt?

Or

Reconstituted Beliefs

*A/N: Since I'm transplanting Danny Phantom into the DC Universe, I'm using their phasing rules. People who have the ability to move through different types of matter without affecting or being affected by them (phasing), cannot phase through significantly dense material.

I.E.-The Martian Man Hunter can't phase through Superman because he's simply too dense. His muscle, bone, and tissue layers are so compact that there's simply no room for any other matter to move through it.

Jinx felt she had every right to be upset.

Phantom was, honestly, nothing like she'd expected. Sure, he was gruff and defensive when you met him, but…

There was some…chill around him, both literal and figurative, that seemed to ward off all but the most determined. She routinely had lunch with someone so childish he couldn't even be bothered to use real insults. Phantom's…off-putting nature was barely an annoyance.

He had answered the door in the dress, which had been the first shock of the evening. She'd expected to have to force him into the skirt and blouse using a considerable amount of threat and bluff. Instead, he had been oddly compliant, almost as if he was used to following the most inane of orders under duress.

And her request was certainly inane.

Part of it was petty revenge. Gizmo and Mammoth weren't…her friends, per say, but they were comrades, at least. They were annoying, childish, and violent. Still, they had her back during a mission and there was a lot to be said for that.

Another part of her found Phantom somewhat handsome. In the unobtainable sense, of course. Hell, Phantom was a legend in the making…she'd never had a chance with him.

The final part was something more complex, harder to describe. There was something about seeing Phantom in her clothing, unwillingly, that gave her a sense of power. A sense of…control. Phantom could take her in an all-out fight. He was probably one of the few in the Academy that could, excluding the faculty and staff. To have him, here, now, under her authority…

It was intoxicating.

Well, it should have been.

Instead, it was irritating. Not in the same way as Gizmo and Mammoth, to be sure, but more in the way of having a perfectly good plan go perfectly awry. She was upset because, when he answered the door, he was…

He looked good.

No, more than that, he looked nearly perfect.

It was infuriating to have him look so natural in something that was supposed to mock him. It would have worked on anyone else; she was sure, but not him. His frame was thin, belying its strength to the point of being very nearly feminine. His face was still boyishly soft and his hair was wild enough to be mistaken for a slightly masculine girl. Even his legs, which should have been hairy to the point of embarrassment, were visually clean of all follicles.

She doubted her legs were that smooth!

"You didn't have to shave your legs," Jinx deadpanned, her voice dripping with curt sarcasm.

Danny blinked, looked down, and blushed.

Jinx had to restrain herself from physically throttling the ghost teen while she gaped in open-mouthed astonishment. He was…cute. He was cute in a way that guys couldn't and shouldn't be cute.

"Just…come inside." The urgent whisper and beckoning pulled Jinx out of the deserted hallway and into Phantom's room. She supposed he had every right to be nervous…wearing her clothes and all.

Her first impression of Phantom's room, though, broke every notion she had about his calm, restrained demeanor. The standard bunk room had hooks and hangers stuck into every available inch of the wall, which, in turn, held guns.

Well, they weren't conventional guns, to be sure.

All of them were sleek, over-sized firearms with immense power-packs and stylized green barrels that she could put her arm into. Along with the recognizable weapons, several were…bizarre. In fact, was that a…

"Boo-merang."

"Huh?" Jinx asked intelligently.

"It's called a Boo-merang." Danny reiterated. "It will find any ghost as long as you can give it a name. I'm not really even sure why I brought it."

"That's…just stupid," Jinx replied in a shocked tone of voice. "I mean, what kind of idiot would…"

"Don't ask," Danny sighed. "Are we going to study or not?"

"Right after you explain why you have enough fire power to level a third world nation in your room," Jinx stipulated. "And why you decided to shave your legs."

"I…died," Danny started, seeing this explanation as easier and less complicated than the truth. "When I was fourteen. I'm maturing in most ways normally, but things I didn't have when I died can't develop. Like leg hair for instance."

Jinx cocked her head and stared in confusion at the teen. Most people would feel awkward about the subject matter, but Jinx was intensely interested. After all, how often did you have a living, breath…cold and dead example of the afterlife. "How did you die?"

"Lab accident," Danny dodged and ignored the pinkette's frown. "I need a tutor in Religious Studies, are you going to help me or not?"

Jinx shrugged, very weirded out by the fact that Phantom was…almost pouting at her. She dropped her backpack on the small counter that took up one side of the room, noting that it didn't have any personal items on it. "Fine. What are you having problems with?"

"Converting Runic and Alchemic formulae," Danny started, masking his irritation at Jinx's not-so-subtle probes into his things. "I just don't get how quickly aether dissipates."

"Oh, that's simple," Jinx nodded and pulled out her old notes on the subject. "Here's a few of my projects from last year. You can see how there's a charge radius for most spells…"

Danny nodded, suddenly entranced by Jinx's explanation.

In retrospect, it was bizarre that it ever happened. They had completely different background, educations, and temperaments. To Phantom, life was something to be taken seriously-even his fun. At least, that was what most of his friends knew him as. Superficially, he was the picturesque congenial teen, if a bit rebellious. He supposed a bit of Jazz had rubbed off on him in that way; he had a little-known tendency to take situations, even small ones, with all the drama of near-death experiences.

To be fair, many recent occurrences qualified under that heading.

Jinx was an orphan, with no known family. She was deathly serious in almost ever respect, but seemed to be secretly laughing at the word-as if there was some big joke that only she got. The pinkette loved mischief and took almost nothing at face value, delighting in digging through other peoples' dirty laundry to get to the bottom of things.

When those skeletons in the closet came to light, though, she was far away from the explosion of public opinion. Before she'd been picked up by Dark Way Preparatory Academy, she'd made a habit of frequenting the file cabinets of politicians, businessmen, and city officials and either using them as blackmail or leaking them to the press.

And that was what she did for fun.

The ledger of crimes that she'd committed, but had never been pinned on her, could fill the room they were now standing in. Kidnapping, bribery, extortion, grand theft auto, breaking and entering, blackmail, and…in one rather unique instance, grave-robbing.

Try as he might, Danny couldn't pry that story out of her.

Still, the weekly meetings turned into bi-weekly study sessions quickly and Danny was shocked to realize that Jinx, one of the most amoral people he'd ever met, was becoming his friend. They got along well, amazingly well, in many cases. He laughed at her rather obscene jokes, and she found many of his stories from home immensely amusing.

Then, two months after they'd had their first study meet, everything changed when he was handed an individual project just prior to Thanksgiving break.

It was strange being so far away from the HIVE's predictable hallways. The yellow hexagons had become familiar in a way that he couldn't account for, but it was also refreshing to be going near Amity Park again. The fall term would be ending soon, and he'd been assigned a final project before he could return home for a two-week break during the Thanksgiving holidays.

So, he was on his way to New York and away from the stress of hiding his identity as a hero among…well, he couldn't rightly call everyone in the HIVE his enemies. Sure, Brother Blood was creepy and Professor Chang just irritated him in a way he couldn't explain, but…

He was hanging out with a few of them now, getting to know them.

Even the extremely odd Kid Wykkid was pretty friendly after you got to know him. Angel, once you got past her blind fan-worship of Phantom was almost tolerable. Gizmo and Mammoth…well, they hadn't managed to kill each other yet.

And he supposed that could be considered positive.

Though, his blood still boiled whenever he saw the Headmistress, which none of his classmates really understood, and he wasn't about to explain it to any of them. He appeared to be in her good…very good graces, which meant he had been given a high-profile theft assignment at a branch of the famous STAR labs.

Danny could already feel his headache building.

The place was any thief's worst nightmare. Invisible laser grids, pressure pads, heat sensors, super-dense alloys that he might not be able to phase through, and some rather…arcane components that proved they'd seen their fair share of supernatural thieves before.

He'd never encountered a multi-phasic disrupter, but he wasn't in any hurry to.

The hardest obstacles was the checkpoints. There were ten checkpoints to clear the inner-sanctum of the labs, where the components he was looking for were held. Evidently, they'd also had difficulties with shape-shifters before, because security mandated a person-to-person identification by blood, retina scan, and verbal questioning.

There was even one hallway that he was fairly sure was a cleverly disguised CAT Scan to read and identify brain wave patterns. Other hallways might be X-rays! To top it off, the Lab was sealed inside of a bunker made of super-dense material twenty feet deep on the top, bottom, and each side. Of course, that was only if you could get past the two-hundred feet of bedrock and clay soil between it and the surface.

The water, power, and air all ran on closed systems and were monitored twenty-four-seven by two different stations. They had backup generators and backups for those. Each section was designed to be able to seal off and work independently in case of emergency. The partitions were capable of resisting small nuclear blasts.

The only way HIVE had even managed to steal this much of their security plans was by ripping it from the minds of ten different architects and piecing together the specifics from a tipster on the inside. That same tipster was being tried for treason currently and they needed to make a move before the specifics of which national secrets he'd leaked were given over to the proper authorities and the security plans changed.

Danny had been in human form, in a flop house apartment, in New York city for three days. He'd slept very little in that time and exhausted resource after resource. The remains of two-hundred and six infiltration plans lay in the trash can, burned to ash by ecto-fire. No incriminating evidence, at least.

Finally, though, he could admit it.

"I'm stumped."

The words brought both tremendous relief and excruciating guilt. "There's just no way it can be done," he went on, dismissing the fact that he was talking to himself. "I've thought about bombs, distractions, overshadowing, phasing, and even duplication.'

Not that he was even sure that strategy would work, given that he still couldn't reliably duplicate himself. Which was an annoyance unto itself…

Hell, he'd thought of trying everything except asking nicely.

With that though, his head hit the desk in front of him…finally exhausted from taxing his mental faculties to the brink of collapse. Then, he blinked. It was as if the coarse grains of the cool wood an inch from his eyes were telling him something. Something…

His attention focused on a knot in the wood…knot…hole…hole in the…

Danny sat up in his seat suddenly, his eyes wide as a plan spontaneously formed inside his mind. He could do this! He could do this easy! Now…all he needed to do was get into Amity Park without anyone noticing.

And…hope that Frostbite would let him borrow the Infi-map again.

Silas Stone was a man not many understood.

One of the few who could boast such was his dear wife, Elinore Stone. Their marriage had been far from ideal, but they'd fought through each trial as they'd come and they were still together. The latest trial, however, was the most difficult…and the least expected.

"Victor, I really don't understand you sometimes. Football, basketball, these sports are dangerous. I would much rather you apply yourself to your school work."

"You got one thing right, old man! You don't understand me! Numbers are your game! Let me have mine!"

Victor Stone, their teenage son, was a genius. His parents had guaranteed his impressive intellect through artificial means, turning him into a perfect specimen of humanity at its prime. He could run faster, hit harder, and jump higher than almost anyone else. It was a surprise, though, that these physical traits were a pale second to his mental abilities.

Save for the fact that he cared little for what his mind could accomplish.

Elinore looked on in dismay as her husband and son fought another battle in an ongoing war fueled by testosterone and stubbornness. "Victor, Silas, can we put this argument aside for dinner, at least?"

Silas grunted his assent, while Victor stood from the table.

"I'm done, thanks mom."

Silence greeted his declaration as the youngest Stone left the kitchen, then the house. Silas scowled as he scooped another spoonful of stew into his mouth.

"Probably going to hang out with that ruffian friend of his," The patriarch stated gruffly. "Makes me wonder why I work so hard to put food on that boy's plate if he isn't even going to eat it."

"Silas, dear," Elinore started. "Victor will come around. You know this is just a phase. In the meantime, I'd like to head to the lab after you're done. If you remember, the portal is almost done."

Silas nodded to his wife as he stirred the bowl in quiet contemplation. "Yes. I'll come as well. Did the higher-ups decide when would be a good test-date? I'm very interested to see what dimension we've tapped into."

"Sometime next week. I'd like Victor to be there as well. It would be a good show of family solidarity."

Silas shrugged non-vaguely. "If you can get the boy to do something useful, it'd be a nice change."

Elinore sighed.

Hanging around the ghost zone, as Danny had learned, was not a fun pastime.

Still, as the portal opened up, he was glad he'd gone through with this plan. He was in human form, as he'd guessed his spectral energies would set off at least one of the numerous alarms more so than his living body.

His first impression of the lab was a sterile white color that he'd come to associate with hospitals, thanks in large part to Tucker's phobia. The smell, though, was one of light mechanical oils and curious chemical combinations. There was a complicated air about the place as he stepped through the open gateway and past the large observation window.

He blinked curiously at the ring of steel and wires sitting in the experimental bay. His breath caught in his throat as three people, all African-American, stepped into the larger room on the other side of the glass and moved towards it.

Their eyes swung his way…

Danny prepared to jump back into the ghost zone when they sounded the alarm-

And, giving no indication that they saw him, swept past.

The youngest Fenton blinked as they set to work. It was almost as if they hadn't…he slapped his forehead quietly. Of course, it was one-way glass! The room he was in must be an observation room!

He shrugged and went to work opening cabinets. It had to be around…Ah!

Honestly, he had no idea what it was, but the device in one of the larger storage bins matched the rough sketch he'd been given of what to look for. Checking the watch he'd…'barrowed' from a local store, he nodded. The ghost zone portal would still be open for another…

Danny blinked and tuned at the sound of electrical circuits humming with power.

He could have sworn he'd heard that noise somewhere…before…

The giant ring in the other room was lighting up…forming strange, almost ethereal designs inside it. It looked like…like…

It looked like the Fenton Ghost Portal!

But the light inside wasn't green…

Danny watched in horror as something of immense size attempted to squeeze through the relatively tiny opening. It was a horror surpassing anything he'd glimpsed with the possible exception of his own distorted future. Whatever it was had multiple tentacles, mouths, and…ugh!

It was only by sheer force of will that he suppressed his gag reflex and his immense experience with emergency situations that allowed him to go ghost despite the shock to his system. All he knew was that those three people were at the mercy of something horrible and he was, at heart, still a hero.

Those scant few seconds were all that saved Elinore Stone's life.

A pair of eviscerating tentacles with protruding spines of bone, metal, and impossibly sharp hair had shot towards her just as they emerged from the black vortex. Her life passed before her eyes in that moment as the bizarre limbs drew closer, closer, and…

Nothing.

She barely noticed the cold shiver that passed through her as she was pulled away from the tentacles. Then, they passed through her, striking the tiled lab floor and digging deeply into it.

Her jaw dropped open as she looked through her own hand, which was vaguely translucent, and then up to the force which was pulling her away from certain doom. She could barely see him, but he was obviously young, younger than her own son and moving with a fluid grace that defied gravity.

Then they were back on the ground and back in the same physical spectrum she lived most of her life and she could see him in every startling detail. There was a corona of dim light surrounding his form, which was bound in some kind of one-piece suit and overlaid with a white trench coat. Then, there was his face…

His eyes glowed a phosphorescent green and white hair wreathed his face, looking somehow longer than it should have and making him seem wilder than anyone she could have met on the street. Then, that intense gaze turned on her.

"Stay behind me," He…It?…said in a hollow, deep tone that echoed when she knew it shouldn't.

Then her world shook as someone screamed in pain.

Both of their gazes locked onto the victim…Danny saw a teen, probably a bit older than him, Elinore saw her son. There was blood on the otherwise sterile floor now, and there was far too much…

"Victor!" Elinore cried out, sobbing pain wrenching her heart.

"Stay behind me," Danny reiterated and, in a moment of desperation, did what six months of training hadn't. Suddenly, there were three of him where there had been one. It was disorienting in the extreme, but he was guided by something deeper than conscious thought. There were people in trouble, and he had to help them.

One held back the woman as the other two flew towards the thing.

Silas Stone would someday recount the ensuing fight as the most amazing thing he'd seen to that point in his life. The meta-human with white hair who had just saved his wife's life…spawned two copies of himself, sending one towards his injured son while the other shot beams of blazing green light at the mass of scaled, furred, and rippling flesh.

He leaped forward to help his son as soon as his brain caught up with the reality of the situation. He looked at their enigmatic savior as he knelt to examine Victor and saw, to his surprise, that their hero was even younger than his own boy! His eyes saddened as they looked over the numerous injuries…he was thankful Victor was unconscious…the pain would have been unimaginable.

"I need to get him to the medical ward." He stated in no uncertain terms as his brain considered the vast tears of flesh that were missing from muscle, bone, and organ tissues. The head wound would be the worst, necessitating extensive reconstruction around his mangled left eye.

"One of us will go with you," Phantom stated in no uncertain terms and pressed his hand against the ground beneath his son. Spontaneously, a layer of green energy coalesced and lifted the battered form into the air. That copy turned his head to the one defending Elinore and jerked it once.

The original nodded and flew into battle, abandoning the woman to tend to her son as the two identical white-haired teens forced the alien monstrosity back.

The remaining copy held Victor steady as he and the two parents moved through the hallway to the medical bay. As the door closed with a pneumatic hiss, the Stone's paled when they heard an enormous explosion from the portal room combined with the most agonizingly loud noise they'd ever conceived of. It lasted for only a moment, but shook the lab complex like a savage wind.

Then it was calm and the two other Phantoms emerged from the wall, having phased through it, and recombined with the other. He sighed deeply and set down the injured older teen on an operating table. "Sorry, but I had to destroy the portal."

Elinore nodded. "Thank you, so much. I'm sorry, but we have to see to our son now…"

"Can I help?" Danny asked, before he even knew what he was saying.

"Only if you have extensive experience in advanced cybernetics and know a way to freeze blood vessels without destroying them," Silas Stone spat angrily, the stress of the situation setting in now that the danger was gone. "Otherwise, my son is going to die."

Phantom nodded. "I think I know the theory of cryogenics well enough. The temperature applied needs to be within thirty degrees of absolute zero, right?" Ever since Jinx had taught him that ice was very effective against most demons he'd taken it upon himself to see exactly how cold he could go.

The answer: Very.

It required concentration that made it completely useless on the practice range or battlefield, but it was a handy parlor trick to be able to freeze something to near-absolute-zero with just a touch. Cryogenics had been an interesting side-study that had filled the too-many sleepless hours between the end of classes and the start of the next day.

And now it looked like it might save someone's life. Taking a deep breath and ignoring the Stones' incredulous looks, Danny concentrated all of his significant talent with ice manipulation into his right hand pointer-finger.

Over the near-arctic chill that permeated the air, Danny looked at Silas, "Tell me where."

Silas Stone swallowed and nodded. "Start at the major arteries in the right arm…here, here, and here, that should keep him from bleeding out. Next, the organs. Most of his digestive system is intact, but we'll need to excise his spleen…or what's left of it."

Thus began a three-hour long operation which Phantom was ill-prepared for and gave him reason enough to swear to take the remedial medical lectures that were offered immediately after break. Once they'd stabilized the patient, Elinore turned to the door to see to the security force which had been impatiently waiting with many, many, awkward questions.

Danny, meanwhile, helped Silas.

He had to admit, the man was a genius and, from what little he was able to glean during the intermittent conversations they held, he had three doctorates: medical, advanced physics, and cybernetics. Phantom withheld any information about himself save his name, which put Stone on guard and resulted in a somewhat bizarre working silence between the two.

They spent the next two hours installing supplementary life-support systems and making sure Victor wouldn't wake up and accidentally injure himself worse. Danny sighed as he turned intangible and allowed the blood to slough off him. It still left him feeling…icky, and he would never let anyone know he even thought so girly a word, but it was better than walking around looking like a fugitive from a horror movie.

Finally, Silas turned to him.

"Thank you, Mr. Phantom. Words can never express how much I owe you for being there in my family's time of need. If you ever need anything, just ask."

Danny smiled proudly. "Well, getting out of here without leaving my identity would be a great start."

Silas' eyes were cautious, but his face resigned. He couldn't rightly refuse the boy any favor. No matter the fact that his son was rebellious, short-tempered, or almost a stranger these days…

He was still his son. Even now, the thought of loosing him caused his heart to heart in ways that had no medical reasoning. If Phantom hadn't been there…

"You'll come home with us, then. We have much to discuss about me repaying my debt," Silas said pointedly.

Danny blinked, taken aback by the finality in the man's voice. "But…"

"Silas is right young man," Elinore said, finally returning with a man in an army uniform. "Until further notice, you are our guest."

"Yes," The other man stated, clearing his throat for attention. "It appears that not only the Stones' but also the American government owes you a great deal. If that monster had come completely through the portal, we would have had a real crisis on our hands, Mr.…Phantom, was it?"

Danny blinked, looking between the three adults and considering his options.

He could run, of course, but while the individual walls probably weren't dense enough to prevent him from phasing through him…he would run into every problem that getting into the facility had presented while trying to get out of it. Plus, he'd left the Infi-map with Frostbite back on the other side of the Ghost Zone portal…which had long-since closed.

Damn it.

Happy Birthday to me!