IV: Stuck

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Danny watched as a series of emotions flicked across his mother's face before it settled into a grave determined frown. If he didn't know his mother the severe look would have been almost comical. Clearly, the GIW operative that was moving in to handcuff her hadn't known Maddie for as long as Danny did. He didn't know he was about to get his ass handed to him. If the GIW hadn't just ruined his life, conned his mom, and shot him in the arm, he would have felt almost sorry for the man.

"Do you understand your rights?" The GIW officer asked.

Maddie was pushing herself slowly off of the fridge with the control and stealth of a fourth degree black belt. Her movements were barely noticeable, but Danny noticed. The feline shift in stance, the way she strategically placed her injured hip away from the agent so it couldn't be used against her again.

"Hurry it up, V." K intoned, pulling a little at Danny's arm. Danny couldn't help but groan as his shoulder complained. The pounding in his arm was like a constant scream. Although he was quickly loosing feeling to his fingertips. He knew that was probably the poison.

"I said do you understand your rights?" V grated, "What are you both? Deaf or something? Or just stupid?"

Danny winced. Calling his mother stupid was probably the last thing you ever did. Sure, she had been a little slow on the uptake to figure out Danny's condition, but really, Danny was certain that him telling her he was half-ghost was about same as if he had told her he was a unicorn. If anything his mother was logical and scientific to a fault. In her mind, believing he was possessed was much more realistic than half-ghost. Even now, Danny wasn't so sure he had gotten through to her.

"You shot my son." Maddie told the operative. It was said like a promise, a vow.

It was all the warning she gave before she grabbed V's wrist and twisted, hard. There was a crack as something in his arm dislocated and the handcuffs clattered to the floor. Maddie simultaneously drew out the gun that was embedded in the arm of her jumpsuit while pressing a button underneath the kitchen countertop. Loud alarm bells went off as the Fenton house went into full lockdown. The windows and doors sprung to life, bars shooting down through the sheetrock as an ominous chorus of clicks resounded, doors barring themselves.

"Bitch!" V spat, holding his shoulder. He looked like he was about to say something else, but he was quickly silenced by a ruthless kick to his head. Maddie stepped over the unconscious body and aimed her gun at the two agents that were holding Danny in place.

Both of the agents were stunned. Neither of them had expected Madeline Fenton to be not only a ninja, but be wearing a potentially lethal jumpsuit. Of course they knew she was a scientist, but she was also a woman – a housewife! Really, where did those guns even hide on that skin tight suit?

Danny immediately moved kick one of the agents in the nuts, taking advantage of their momentary shock. The man on his right let go of him with an enraged yell before there was the soft pop of an air powered gun and the agent quieted. Danny's eyes widened, for a brief moment believing his mother had shot to kill, but then he saw the hypodermic dart sticking out of the guy's thigh and realized Maddie had just put the agent to sleep.

Agent K finally seemed to shake himself out of inaction and found himself the last agent - out of fifteen - left standing. He wound his arm around Danny's neck, tightly drawing him close so that Danny's back was to K's chest, essentially eliminating himself as a target as he put Danny in between himself and Maddie. Danny choked, stumbling, as K's took a few steps back and pulled out his own gun - a gun that was meant to put his mother to sleep, for good.

"I thought you were cooperating, Fenton." K spat.

Danny wasn't sure which Fenton he was referring to, but he guessed his mother.

"You shot him." Maddie repeated, voice cool in the face of a loaded gun. Danny felt true terror race through him as he heard K cock the trigger. He knew the agent would shoot to kill. Maddie was stalking forward though. Was she crazy? Danny's blue gaze was wide, catching the mad glint in Maddie's eye as she crossed the wrecked kitchen, stepping on broken glass, downed operatives, and pieces of the dining table.

Agent K backed up still, despite himself. He had never quite had someone react to his gun the way Madeline Fenton was. The whole point of threatening with a gun was to prevent someone from getting any closer.

"Stop right there." He told her, unnerved. His shooting hand shook, blood dripping down it from where it had been mangled by Phantom's previous assault. "Stop or I'll shoot."

He wrenched Phantom closer to himself, knowing Maddie wouldn't shoot her own son, but that still didn't stop him from getting a little afraid of the way the woman was closing in on them, teeth bared. Crazy. The whole lot of these Fentons were absolutely batshit insane. He stumbled back a few more steps, Phantom giving a hiss at his injured shoulder, before K stepped on something that depressed.

The alarm system suddenly paused, but the echo of the screeching horns was still ringing in agent K's ears. Danny jumped as a sudden booming voice resounded in the kitchen. Danny instantly recognized it.

"Fenton Anti-Intruder Scan initiated." The voice intoned. Danny had never heard his father's voice sound so serious. Nor had he ever known his own home had this kind of technology in it. However, they had never had to activate the two-pronged defense system before. Maddie was grinning ear to ear. Clearly she had been counting on K to stumble back onto this specific kitchen tile that was booby trapped.

"Creep Sweep go!" Jack's voice enthusiastically informed the trio. Danny froze, unsure of what was happening, or what was about to happen. Agent K was just as apprehensive. For a long moment the three of them waited with baited breath, but nothing happened.

"Jazz's room, clear." Jack's voice suddenly resounded and, a few seconds later, "Danny's room, clear."

Danny understood immediately. The house was programmatically searching each room for intruders to dispose of. Of course his parents would have the system do Jazz and his rooms first. The kitchen was probably last on the list.

Agent K seemed to realize he had some time left. He wildly waved the gun back over to Maddie and without warning shot at her.

"Main Bedroom, clear."

"Mom!" Danny screamed, bucking and sending his head back to connect with a sharp thud against K's jaw. K gave a yell, but didn't let go of him, instead he tightened his grip around Danny's neck until he saw stars, unable to breath. Danny looked across the kitchen, seeing his mother had not been hit. There was a deadly bullet hole in the fridge. K's shooting arm had been damaged enough to affect his aim. Danny felt relief flood through him.

"Living Room, clear."

"Turn it off." K demanded. His shooting arm was trembling violently. "I may not be able to aim at you, but I don't need to aim hit this shot."

Cold steel rested on Danny's temple near his eyebrow.

"Lab, clear."

"You wouldn't." Maddie hissed. The man was bluffing. He had to be. If the agent killed Danny he killed Phantom. And wasn't that the whole point of this? To take Phantom - alive?

Suddenly the kitchen whirled to life and the space was bathed in red light. Danny watched as a laser descended from the ceiling and did a quick sweep of the room. For a long moment no one breathed. They hardly blinked. A thread of doubt suddenly wound its way through Danny's mind. What if the house was looking for ghostly intruders, not human intruders? If so, Danny was screwed.

The laser retracted. Nothing happened. And then.

"Maddie detected. Danny detected." His father's voice was almost happy to have found them. "Fifteen unidentified intruders found. One threat recognized."

Danny felt K's arm tighten even further around his neck, surprised. If Danny could see the operative's face he would have seen the peppered red dots of at least three different guns trained on his head. There was a sharp snap and then Danny felt K's arm go limp, releasing him from his choke hold.

The kitchen door unlocked as K fell, although the bars on the windows to outside remained under lockdown.

Danny coughed out stale air from his lungs as he stumbled, hitting the back wall and looking down. There was a tiny pinprick of blood on K's forehead like a minuscule needle or bullet had hit him; his eyes permanently wide with shock. As Danny watched the bead of blood lazily dripped around the curve of his forehead.

"Is he?" Danny tried to ask, voice still strangled.

Did they actually kill someone? Danny felt the rest of his strength flood out of him at the thought and his vision pitched. A strong latex covered hand grabbed him before he kissed the ground. His mother lowered him until he was sitting against the wall before she moved around the kitchen. He watched as Maddie fished around Agent K's lifeless body, withdrawing a set of keys. Within seconds his hands were free of the cuffs, but they remained limply at his side.

"We have maybe fifteen minutes." Maddie's voice was cool, unemotional.

Fifteen minutes? Till what? Danny was struggling to keep up with everything that had just happened, his brain was clouded in shock and blood loss. Only one fact seemed to punctuate through. They had just killed a government agent! Well, the house had. Danny was pondering if you could convict a smart house of murder before he dimly realized his mother was dragging him to the threshold of the basement steps.

Danny wrenched his arm away from her, stumbling back. He had enough self-preservation still in him to remember Maddie's previous mission. To remember that the Catcher was down there, poised to rip him in half. He was still unsure if his mother believed him or not. If she still wanted to exorcise him.

"Come." Maddie commanded, almost like she was speaking to a disobedient dog, "Now."

Danny would have been offended by her tone, but short commands were about the only thing he could decipher at the moment. Already the hallway was spinning, warping. The poison made it hard to think, much less understand what was being said to him. Danny shook his head - half to refuse his mom, half to try and clear it, finding hardly any strength to speak. His legs felt numb, his entire arm felt like it was no longer there. His body was slowly disappearing; all feeling lost.

Maddie kicked the door to the stairs open, holding onto her injured hip, face pale, hands shaking.

"You have to come with me." She told him, "That bullet needs to be removed."

Danny panted sickly. The orange and blue blur of his mom drew closer, almost to touch him. He couldn't help it, he flinched back from her drunkenly.

"Stay back." He warned, but his voice sounded thin and weak even to him. There wasn't much he could do anymore but concentrate on breathing and standing.

"Danny, please." Maddie's voice. Danny realized dimly she was calling him by his name, not Phantom.

"You can't." He tried to tell her, letting her grab him around the waist and pull him awkwardly down the stairs. He felt his hold on consciousness slipping out of his numb fingertips. His body felt heavy and not his own, impossible to move with each passing second.

His eyes drifted, scanning her face as he felt his back hit the cold examination table. This was it, he thought to himself. Finally, it was happening. The glint of a scalpel and the snap of rubber gloves. Fuck it, he thought. He prepared himself for dissection, feeling strangely okay about the whole idea. At least the poison had already numbed him. What luck.

At least, so he thought.

Until his mother dug into his wounded shoulder and pain - like a snapping tendon - screamed through his arm. He felt a screech get pulled from taut lips and his mother slam him forcibly back onto the table. He hadn't even realized when he had attempted to bolt off of it.

"I know, baby, I know." Maddie was whispering, "But you have to stay still. I need to get it all out." A gloved hand was pressed against his forehead to pin it to the table and restrict his movement, but the hand stroked his hair comfortingly.

Danny writhed and twisted desperately as Maddie dug, only staying on the table by the sheer power in Maddie's chorded muscle and a few straps. With a growl Danny felt as his mother's fingers wiggled their way into his shoulder muscle, searching around. The feeling made his stomach turn and he gagged, coughing up what he thought would be bile only to find blood.

"Almost there, Danny. Be brave." Maddie told him encouragingly, voice clinically calm despite the fact that she was watching her own son spit up blood onto the basement floor. Danny felt the fingers finally rip out of him and heard the soft ping of metal hitting metal.

"It's out."

Danny slumped against the steel table, holding his injured arm to his side. Dazed, he tried to regain his bearings. For the past few minutes he had been in a sea of meaninglessness and pain.

Maddie was turning to him, needle in hand. Her silhouette was tall and menacing as she tapped the end of it, features obscured by shadow.

"You need to change." She told him, preparing the vial. Danny squinted to try and see what she was going to inject him with.

"Why?" He asked, apprehensively.

"The poison is still in your system." She looked down at him, red goggles shining in the dim light. If she wasn't so dangerous Danny would think she looked like an absurd bug. A bug with a gigantic needle. Like a mosquito. His mother was a demented mosquito. He really had lost it. She was still speaking to him, however, unaware of his psychedelic train of thought, "It will continue to spread if we don't counteract it. But I can't inject you with this if you're human. It will kill you."

The vial glowed softly, innocently, pure concentrated ectoplasm happily bubbling like champagne. Danny recognized it as the same type of highly energized ectoplasm that he had given Dani when she had been melting.

"You're not going to... you know...?" Danny stumbled on his words, dizzy still, despite the fact that his bullet wound was no longer bleeding. In fact, his mother had bandaged it up messily, but effectively.

"Kill you?" Maddie supplied, clipped, "Examine you? Rip Phantom out of you?"

Danny fell silent.

"No, honey. I may not understand how..." Maddie trailed off, obviously at a loss for words for a moment as she tried to wrap her head around her son having ghost powers, "But I believe you. I'm so sorry. I thought- and they almost-" Her voice was broken and scared. Danny realized Maddie was terrified. And that made him terrified. He had never seen her this afraid before. She was usually an iron pillar.

"Why...?"

Danny wondered what had changed. What had convinced his mother that he wasn't possessed. He was about to ask her, when she grabbed his arm and tightly wound a tourniquet at the crook of his elbow.

There was a booming noise from above and the house's foundations shook. The constant thumping of the government helicopter was more menacing. There were shouts from aboveground. Danny wondered if they had broken through the houses's defenses yet.

"There's no time." Maddie regained her composure, "Change, now."

So he did.

He reached into himself to find the icy core, but it was barely there. Changing back was playing tug-of-war with a linebacker. It took too much effort from him and all of his concentration. His mother gave a soft gasp, presumably at witnessing the transformation, but when Danny opened his eyes and looked down he realized it was probably because his arm was disintegrating into green goop, splattering sadly onto the floor.

"Shit." He muttered.

The tourniquet had slipped off his liquified elbow. He coughed, green ectoplasm splattering across Maddie's hands as she quickly searched for another vein to stick him in.

"Language." Maddie scolded immediately on impulse. Danny laughed. He would probably still get reprimanded by his mother even as he drew his last breath.

"My chest." He wheezed, ripping the suit down at the neck to reveal the soft glow of his ghostly core. It was pulsing a weak soft green light through his skin. Maddie's goggles were illuminated as she peered, fingertips brushing along his skin in awe. "Ghost core." He didn't need to explain further.

Maddie pressed two fingers to the faintly glowing place where her son's heart should be, searched for a way through his ribs, and without hesitation drilled the needle straight into his core. Danny froze, teeth gritted, refusing to look down. Maddie unloaded the syringe and carefully withdrew it, letting the empty needle clatter onto the table as she took three quick steps back in concern when Danny gave a sharp wail. The force of it pummeled her in the chest and rattled the glassware.

Danny's chest was on fire. He curled in on himself on the table as the supercharged ectoplasm raced through his system, overloading his senses, power crackling off his fingertips. Fingertips. He had fingertips again.

"Danny?" His mother's voice was soft and uncertain. Once again, afraid of him.

He shuddered in on himself as he felt his core struggle to balance the energy she had just injected into him. He felt waves of power emanating off of him. The lightbulbs popped out plunging them both into darkness. Danny lurched and vomited off the edge of the table. For a long horrible minute he retched up the rest of the poison, expelling it along with any damaged ectoplasm. It all came out in a charred lumpy black mess. He had never felt this sick in his entire life. His body was shivering so violently it was difficult to keep his head steady and during that one long minute he was convinced that whatever his mother had given him had killed him.

However, the feeling passed. He spat for several moments, grimacing at the vile acidic taste of the anti-ectoplasm poison before he opened and closed his newly reformed hand.

His mother was quiet, staring at him from where she had hidden behind one of the lab tables. There were scorch marks from the raw arcs of ectoplasm that had spun off of him while his core had attempted to calibrate the surge of energy. Glass was shattered around the lab. The table was creaking and Danny unclenched his good hand, struggling to rip it off the table, seeing where it had melted the metal.

"Mom." He croaked, "Its over. You can come out."

He felt residual bursts of energy, like electricity, running down his spine, but the major danger was over.

Maddie was suddenly a few feet from him, looking unsure if she should approach him or not. She was staring at him as if she barely knew him. She was, after all, speaking to a ghost – Phantom – for the first time up close. And, for the first time with the knowledge that Phantom was her son.

"Did it work?" She asked him.

"I think so." Danny wasn't entirely sure, but he felt better. Clear-headed. Even energized to a certain extent. His arm was still injured and he was still weak with blood loss, but he wasn't in a poisoned haze. At least he had two arms again.

"Is that really you?" Maddie asked him, drawing closer as she took off her goggles and her hood to see him more clearly. But of course it was him. As soon as she had seen his core she had known, without any possible doubt, that her son was not possessed. That her son was a ghost. For no human being that was possessed could have a ghostly core. No human being, even while possessed, carried glowing green ectoplasmic blood. And certainly no human being could have ever survived the pure energy she had injected into Danny's chest.

Phantom was staring at her oddly as she approached him, curious. For a long moment she almost didn't dare to touch him. He didn't look real. He looked slightly transparent and his hair moved slowly as if underwater. Her fingertips ran along his cheeks and into his hair, pulling at the glowing white strands in wonder. Despite how cold it was, it was Danny's face. His cheeks, his nose, even his freckles. The shape of his eyes, although they were a glowing green, was Danny's. Her baby. Her only son. Her youngest child.

"Yes." Danny felt strange admitting it after spending so much of his life hiding this from Maddie. He was tense under her ministrations at first, but then an almost amused smile flitted across his face. He felt very much like he was being examined. But not in a bad way. Not in a wholly scientific way. More in a motherly way.

"You're not possessed?" She whispered, already knowing the answer. This was all her fault. She had been wrong this entire time.

"No."

"Are you dead?" The thought of it made tears well into the corners of her eyes.

"That's complicated." He felt infinitely tired. It took all his self-control to not curl up into his mother's protective embrace and take a nap in that very moment, but the sharp bang of the front door giving in upstairs had them both suddenly remembering why they were even down here in the first place. Of the danger that still awaited them.

"Go." Maddie let go from where she had been holding his cheeks in her palms. She spun and began to grab up medical supplies and shove them into a bag.

"You're coming with me." Danny told her.

Maddie shook her head.

"The ghost shield. It's still on. You can't leave as a ghost until I turn it off. And neither of us can leave until the house isn't under lockdown."

Danny stared at her, disbelieving that she intended to climb all the way from the basement to the Ops Center to turn off the shield for him. With an injured hip. And then expect him to just leave her for the GIW to arrest - or worse.

He shook his head.

"No way."

Maddie was glaring a very determined glare.

"I'll distract them long enough for you to get away." She told him, flipping her goggles back on as if that ended the discussion.

"I can't leave you. I won't." Danny argued petulantly.

"Daniel James Fenton. I am your mother and you will do whatever I say."

Danny paused, stunned for a moment at Maddie's admission. It was only a short while ago she had told him - in a very similar no-nonsense tone- that she was not his mother.

"Stop- Mom wait-"

But Maddie was already halfway up the basement steps, limping horribly, face pale as she all but ignored the fact that she was walking on a broken hipbone.

Danny hauled himself up off of the table, only realizing how weak he actually was when trying to stand on his own. The two of them together made a great pair of cripples. He had taken two steps to grab Maddie before she could go any further when the basement door slammed open and what looked like a squat team burst into the lab.

Maddie gave a sharp scream. Not of terror, but of anger.

She lashed out with a punch but was quickly hit upside the head. Her willowy body instantly sagged and an agent grappled her. Even as she sank she fought, writhing and elbowing, muttering half-formed obscenities at them. Danny knew where he got his swearing from.

"Grab him." One of the agents commanded.

"NO! Danny!" Her lilac eyes trained onto his as she was ripped back from him, "Run!"

Run? Run where? Danny could barely stand much less run - or fly - anywhere. Not to mention the ghost shield was still in effect making it impossible to try and go through the walls. The portal was a tempting option. It was under lockdown right now, iron gates tightly clenched, just like the rest of the house. Danny calculated internally if he had the strength to run across the room to unlock it and go through it before the GIW were on him. There was no way he would be quick enough. He felt as if just standing his legs would give out on him.

Besides, Danny knew that jumping through it would only be trading one set of deadly enemies for another. He could barely walk, much less defend himself against ghosts. As it stood right now the only exit out of the basement was being blocked by dozens of operatives with high powered machine guns. If he was human he knew his heart would be pounding right now. Run.. Run.. Danny stared helplessly, rooted to the spot even after the agents started to descend down the staircase to get him.

Danny knew he was beaten. There was no way he could run, much less fight, all of these agents. His mother was lost. She would be taken. He couldn't stop it. He couldn't save her. He couldn't even save himself. It was over.

He felt his head drop, tears welling in his eyes in frustration.

As he looked down at his feet, at the pool of his own blood and ectoplasm on the floor, he was hit with suddenly hit with an idea - a crazy desperate idea- like a bird hitting a glass pane at a hundred miles per hour.

He couldn't go through the walls, and he couldn't go through the ceiling. That only left one direction to flee.

Without a word he grabbed the bag half-filled with medical supplies and he focused every single last drop of his energy into turning intangible from the legs up. As he sunk harmlessly through the un-ghost shielded basement floor he could barely hear the GIW's yells of outrage, but above all else - just as his ears disappeared into the cement - he heard his mother's hysterical sobs of relief.

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Wheee! There's gunna be one more chapter to this.