Fall
His attackers weren't ghosts. Danny had no warning to slip away from the gym crowd and switch to his alter ego. He barely had time to hear the assailant's presence before she was upon him.
Had anyone else been attacked, they could not have reacted fast enough. They would have been struck down before being able to draw breath. Even Sam and Tucker, even Jack and Maddie didn't get into the thick of fights as frequently or long as Danny. Nearly three years of ghost-fighting had endowed him with reflexes quick enough to drop into a crouch the second the weapon touched his hair. Shooting to his feet after it passed, Danny put all his momentum behind a strike that slammed into his attacker's stomach.
The GIW agent doubled up and fell limply to the ground.
For a brief moment he paid a scrap of attention to the crowd of innocents (witnesses) surrounding him, none of them having the time to react with anything more than gasps. Then he stepped into a second attacker (government agent), mindful of the press of people while gripping the Fenton Ghost-Collaring Pole and re-directing all the momentum behind it to the floor. The white-clad agent slammed into unforgiving gym mat. Wrenching the weapon out of its wielder's slackened grip, Danny drove the other end into a white-clothed ribcage, leapt over the fallen agent and met a third literally beating his way through the shocked crowd.
The GIW knew how to fight. Years had forced experience and skill into the notoriously bad ghost hunters, or culled them, but the surprise attacks, the stealth, the shock of having an opponent fighting back? These were still hunters.
Or it might have been that Danny Fenton was fighting them.
His third opponent was pushed on the defensive immediately. The half-ghost pressed his attack, forcing agent C away from the crowd bunching toward the bleachers to watch. One second, that was all he needed to transform. One second out of sight. He directed the fight to the nearest door.
Danny ducked under another agent's strike—that would have clocked him over the head—and spiral-blocked his opponent, driving his pole deep into the agent's gut. They halted, hitting the door as other agents closed in but Danny smashed the lock with his weapon. The cheap pig-iron shutting the boy's locker room snapped and both tumbled into the emptiness and cover of darkness.
With barely a glance to ensure he was alone and the agent out cold, Danny activated his transformation rings. Now that agent C was down, it occurred to him that in ten seconds of fighting he had just thoroughly trashed his 'Danny Fenton: invisible loser' reputation.
And assaulted federal agents.
"Plan B then." Duplicating, Danny transformed his duplicate back into Fenton and tossed him the Ghost-Collar before the door burst open and agents poured in. Leaving the half-blind agents to his duplicate, who had reasonable night vision and no glowing eyes to give him away, Phantom phased out of the room and into the battle. An ecto-bubble caught another agent trying to arrest Tucker like a jarred lightning bug. A burst of ice encircled two more agents before Fenton re-joined the battle by hamstringing another agent with his own weapon—it wasn't meant to be used on that end.
If he was damned either way, he might as well do.
Duplicates worked seamlessly well together. A freshly made duplicate was little more than an extension of the original, like an extra limb. Weeks of separation could give a duplicate the independence of a twin brother or clone. For now though their coordination was impeccable: as though it had been honed by thousands of battles.
Sam and Tucker herded the rest of the students away from the attacking GIW, but otherwise kept wisely back. Tucker was already texting frantically as the dozens of invading agents were distracted fighting both Fenton and Phantom, giving them all a horrible sense of foreboding. As incompetent as they were, the GIW had never dared move so boldly as to attack students. Non-team Phantom teens saw Danny Phantom had things well in hand and took out their phones to record not only the latest of the ghost-hero's battles, but the shocking inclusion of Danny Fenton.
Fenton leapt over an unknown ray, curling into a roll before rising again to his feet, staff slashing upward; his movements stunningly graceful for a boy who stumbled through gym. The agent couldn't leap away in time to keep the staff from smashing her right between the legs. This was only slightly less painful for her than if she'd been male. Another agent fired at Danny, who dodged hastily, giving the woman time to recover. Still conscious, she stumbled forward—and was promptly hit by an unknown laser, expertly deflected from one agent to her by Phantom. Already Fenton was closing in on another agent; one of the last agents.
Once the last had been iced in a frozen jail, Phantom left through the ceiling, turned invisible and around to re-merge with his duplicate. Sam beat the rushing crowd of awed students to him.
"Danny?" Though Sam only said one word, an entire question was in the mention of his name: How are we going to play this?
"You're under arrest," a new GIW agent barked. He burst in with half the GIW for backup.
"For what?" Sam demanded.
"A ghost impersonating a human." The GIW agent pointed to Danny, whose shirt was hanging open, sliced by an errant blast in the battle, his unique pattern of scars bared for all to see.
Scars that perfectly matched Phantom's.