A/N: This is post Phantom Planet, so naturally it will contain spoilers. Um, I noticed another story out there which deals with Danny's post PP problems, but really, I thought this up completely on my own...Have fun!
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom.
86. Seeing Red
Everything started out fine that day, or at least, as fine as it could get nowadays. With everybody now knowing Danny's secret we didn't have a moment of piece, because there was always a crowd hanging outside his house and mine, news paper reporters, camera crews, crazy fan girls (and boys) declaring their love for him. They were all after him, they all wanted a piece of him, they all adored the hero that saved the earth.
They had placed him on a pedestal, literally, with all those statues of him. For a while, we had thought it was funny and I remember complaining about them not being made out of recycled materials. And he had been happy about not having to lie to his parents and his teachers anymore, they all understood when he had to go off and fight some ghost. And they became easier to beat as he got stronger and it usually took him only a couple of minutes to capture even a relatively strong ghost like Skulker.
So for a while we were doing great and I was one happy smiling goth. I know, it was disgusting, but I just couldn't stop smiling and he was the same way, forever rushing to my side whenever he saw me, carrying my books for me despite my protesting, stealing kisses when he thought nobody was looking. But of course there was always somebody looking and one day this huge, but vague as if taken with a camera phone, picture of us appeared in the Amity Park Gazette, front page no less, of us kissing behind the bleachers. OK so maybe we were doing a little bit more than just kissing, but he's my boy friend for God sake and we're sixteen and it was nothing really inappropriate!
When Danny saw that picture he just blew up and incinerated the piece of trash calling itself newspaper with an ecto blast. Then he started yelling at everybody they should leave him the hell alone, they were invading his privacy, how would they like to be exposed like that. When Danny gets angry his eyes turn a brilliant green and he's really intimidating. It didn't help he did that in the school cafeteria, which was packed at that moment with not only students but also a photographer, who took a picture.
The next day the picture of a fuming Danny with blazing green eyes was on the front page of that same piece of trash, with the headline: 'Danny Phantom: Friend or Foe?' From that moment on everything went down hill. In the days that followed, we had more and more trouble just getting to school. The camera crews just lived on our doorsteps, the crowd not only consisted of fans, but now also had protesters there, people who were afraid he would turn into another Vlad. And the GIW were back, forever sitting in their cars, keeping their distance, but always there. When asked, they claimed they were protecting Danny, in fact, they would protect him against the crowd even better if he just cooperated with them and came in for some tests every now and then.
Danny flatly refused and from that day on practically lived invisible. Every day he flew to my house to pick me up and then flew me to school, directly into class, going invisible all the way. He then proceeded to turn us visible in the middle of the class room, shocking the teacher and our class mates, until the novelty of that wore off.
When the people couldn't find him anymore – he'd just go invisible and intangible whenever he saw either his so called fans or a reporter – they turned their attention to me, the girlfriend. I could not go invisible and they were just harassing me constantly. My parents loved it, their daughter being the girlfriend of the boy who saved the world, conveniently forgetting that they had always hated him. They appeared in every talk show that would have them, babbling about Danny as if they knew him well. By that time, I could not leave the house without Danny and we were starting to get on each other's nerves, him constantly brooding over his lack of life, me back to my gothic sarcasm.
At that point, Danny even started to consider accepting the GIW's offer, grumbling that his parents were doing test on him already anyway, what would be the harm in doing some extra tests? I did manage to talk him out of it, saying hopefully that the attention would wear down eventually, we just had to be very careful and act normal so there would be no story. We were sitting under the tree on the hill at the time, overlooking Amity Park, in fact, the same hill we were on when he gave me back the ring with the 'Sam' inscription. He started grinning wickedly at that and leaned over to kiss me, turning us invisible at the same time although nobody was around.
So, everything started out normal that morning. Danny picked me up at my house, not bothering to say hi to my parents, just whisking me out of my room the moment I finished dressing. We were heading for the school, flying at a fairly low altitude, when the Fright Night showed up. Danny always had trouble with this ghost, because he was very hard to defeat without a pumpkin nearby to stick his sword in. So he put me down in a hurry, thrust his backpack at me and yelled "Take cover!"
I was in the middle of the street, at the busiest time of the day. It took the people there three seconds to recognize me. Then they looked up and saw Danny Phantom battling the fierce black ghost on his horse, hitting him with ecto blasts as the ghost charged on him, swaying his sword, the horses hooves thundering on the imaginary ground.
The crowd started cheering and instead of taking cover, started gathering around me, crowding me until I had nowhere to go. They were poking me and touching me and screaming "Hey it's Samantha Manson!" Did I ever mention I hate that name? I think I must have. So there I was, stuck in the crowd that was cheering Danny on who took hit after hit while trying to blast the Fright Night into oblivion, instead of taking cover, which would have been the wise thing to do. I started yelling at the people around me to get out of the open, what the hell was wrong with them, didn't they know they shouldn't be directly under a ghost fight?
Obviously, they didn't, and Danny was too preoccupied with his battle to notice the rather large crowd underneath him. It was a recipe for disaster, and disaster came to us only seconds later. I was fighting and punching the people around me to get out when Danny blasted the Fright Night into a nearby building, causing large bricks to fall down on us poor people below. Then they got it, but it was already too late. The crowd started screaming and moving and I found myself moving with them against my will. Several people must have been hit by the stones, because I heard screaming and crying and then I tripped over somebody who was on the ground, bleeding from a head injury.
People were stepping on me while trying to get away and I couldn't get up. A boot hit my stomach and another kicked my arm, my leg, my head, sending the world spinning. I rolled myself into a ball, put my arms over my head and waited for them to pass me by and after what seemed like forever the kicking and trampling ceased. Carefully I unrolled myself and looked at the guy next to me, the one I had tripped over in the first place. I was a bit pissed at him for that, but of course it wasn't his fault, other than being there in the first place. He was unconscious, his light brown hair sticky with red blood, his gray business suit crumpled and torn.
I heard sirens in the distance, so somebody had had the sense to call an ambulance, or better yet, ambulances, because when I looked around I saw people laying everywhere, some moaning and moving, others frighteningly still. It looked like a war zone, or like somebody had just detonated a car bomb. I looked up in the sky, but I didn't see Danny, in fact it was awfully quiet. Then I spotted him, about thirty yards away from me, sitting on his knees and still in his ghost form. He was holding his head with his right hand and shaking it, as if dazed, and his ectoplasm covered left hand held a Fenton Thermos. He looked like hell, his suit was torn and scorched and I could see several wounds underneath, slowly oozing ectoplasm, dripping on the ground where there already was a sizable green puddle.
"Danny!" I yelled to him and tried to get up, but my left leg refused to cooperate.
I looked at it in surprise and saw that it was bend in a rather unusual way. Funny thing though, it didn't hurt at all, it must be the adrenaline still searing through my veins.
"D-Danny...?"
My voice was shaking now and missed any kind of strength, but he heard me anyway and came staggering to me, limping slightly and clutching his right side. He changed back and most of his wounds disappeared, but I saw his white t-shirt turn red under his hand.
"Sam!"
He crouched beside me and looked at me, horrified. Then he looked around and for the first time seemed to see the dozens of people lying on the ground, the rubble of the building they had damaged in the fight and the blood that was just everywhere. I think some of them were dead.
"G-God," he said and sat down beside me with a thump.
At that moment my leg began to hurt and I moaned involuntarily. He turned his attention to me instantly and his eyes went wide when he saw my oddly bent leg.
"I thought I told you to take cover!" he said and I'm sure it came out sharper than he intended.
"Geez, yeah, now that you mention it, I think I heard you say something along that line, but I thought I'd just stand here in the middle of that nice crowd you put me in and watch you fight, along with all those other morons that were cheering you on!"
He looked at me, stricken. Then he let his gaze wander over the carnage again and he seemed to understand what had happened, because he closed his eyes and his mouth became a thin line. He opened his eyes again when we heard a car stop close to us and I turned to see who it was.
The door of the white van with the satellite dish on top opened before it had gotten to a complete stop and three people jumped out, one with a huge camera on his shoulder, one carrying a microphone on a long stick and one blond reporter, who started blabbering even before the camera was rolling.
"...and here we are, at the location of yet another ghost fight and my God what a mess they made this time. It seems that a lot of people got injured here and we have to wonder how long we can condone this outrageous display of carelessness..."
I heard Danny grumble beside me and when I looked at him I saw that his eyes had turned green once more. He started to get up, staring intently at the reporter but I grabbed his arm and held him back. Behind the news van a white car stopped and two GIW's got out, but kept their distance, quietly speaking in their ear phones. I wondered if they were talking to each other. On the other side of the street, the first of the ambulances arrived.
"...but we can ask them ourselves, as the originator of this fiasco is still here at the scene beside his girlfriend who was apparently also injured. Mr Phantom, would you care to..."
Danny violently shoved the microphone away from him and got up, his eyes still flashing green. I tried to kick him to signal to him to keep his calm, but of course I tried to use my broken leg and I moaned in pain. That seemed to enrage Danny even more, because he advanced on the reporter and pushed him backwards.
"What is wrong with you people," he hissed and he gave the reporter another push. "Why can't you people just leave us alone!"
I saw that the moment he had let go of his side it started bleeding again, the blood running down along his leg, turning his jeans crimson. He must be in serious pain, which didn't help to improve his mood.
"Danny!" I said urgently, trying to warn him to back off, but he didn't hear me.
Another ambulance arrived and people in white coats started moving around, checking the people who were on the ground, deciding who should be moved first. The first ambulance was already taking off again, it's sirens blaring. Danny paid no attention to all that.
"Look," the reporter said, stepping away from Danny with a frightened, yet determined look on his face and signaling to his cameraman to keep filming, "We are here to inform the public, they have a right to know what dangers lay in these streets for them and..."
"Dangers!" Danny thundered, "Dangers! Those morons were standing in the middle of the street, watching a ghost fight! How stupid can you get! You don't see people watching an earthquake, or a tsunami, or a hurricane do you!"
"We need protection from these ghosts," the reporter challenged, "Not some fancy ghost fight, but efficiency!"
He turned to me, still on the ground.
"Samantha, what is your opinion of your boyfriends power? Aren't you afraid of him, what does he do when you fight?"
The cameraman stepped closer to me and and stuck the camera into my face. I scowled at them and Danny just lost it.
"Leave. Her. Alone!" he yelled and he blasted the camera from the guy's shoulder.
Then he turned around and heaved up his arms and I knew what he was going to do. I screamed at him to stop when he made his fists glow bright green and then he fired a massive ecto blast. The van exploded, and I hoped there was nobody in there anymore. Danny shifted his gaze to the white car of the GIW. He had started glowing a bit, similar to the glow he had in his ghost form and the air was just crackling with the power he emanated, sparks coming from him and sizzling on the ground. The three news men backed away from him, slowly, as not to attract his attention.
Again he raised his arms and the GIW car exploded in a bright orange ball. The two GIW's had by that time taken cover and were talking frantically in their microphones while taking out their guns. Danny advanced on them slowly and they started shooting him, firing their ecto guns frantically while backing away. Danny simply pulled up a shield and when he reached them, took the guns from their hands, threw them up in the air and hit them with an ecto blast. They too exploded.
People were screaming again, this time not for fear of ghosts, but for fear of Danny. From out of nowhere more GIW appeared, swarming the place and taking aim at Danny, blasting him, hitting him and I saw him stagger for a moment. Then he shifted to his ghost form in a flash and then did something really stupid. He let out his ghostly wail. I pressed myself to the ground and covered my ears as the thundering sound went over me, destroying everything in sight. The already damaged building collapsed, producing an enormous dust cloud that had me coughing and still he went on. I knew he had to stop soon, otherwise he'd be out of energy and revert to his human form again, defenseless.
When the pounding of the sound waves finally stopped and the dust cleared somewhat, I saw him. He was human again and down on his hands and knees, his face ashen and his eyes closed.
"Danny," I whispered.
He looked up at me, his eyes once again blue.
"I'm sorry," he said.
Running footsteps, white gloved hands pushing him roughly down on the ground, glowing green handcuffs, loud voices barking commands and then he was gone. The cloud of dust cleared away, the doctors started treating the wounded again and one of them came over to me, asking me questions, but I didn't hear him. I was staring at the place Danny had been laying. I always knew his temper would get him in trouble. By finally giving in to his anger, his rage about people's prejudices, their fear of him, their obsessive and oppressive admiration, he had condemned himself.
