- Chapter 7 -
I awoke from a sleep so deep it felt like death.
My limbs felt numb and heavy, and my head buzzed with dreams that were so vivid I could taste them. Yet as the relentless hum of the forcefield drilled through and I became aware of the pale light leaking through my eyelids, I couldn't remember a single detail.
Long before I realized I was awake, I was aware of a scent both fragrant and musky, reaching me on icy puffs of air. I hummed with contentment.
Daniel hummed back.
Jolting awake, I scrambled away. Danny made an irritated sound and rolled onto his back. He was giving me a look that was very displeased and very much awake.
I wondered how long we'd been pressed together. Horror knotted in my stomach - hard coils of dread and embarrassment that sent a rush of hot ectoplasm to my face and the tips of my ears. The next question was even more bizarre: how long had he been awake without moving to put any space between us, and for God's sake, why?
"Did you sleep well, Plasmius? I know old men really need their rest, but dang."
Plastering a convincing smirk onto my face, I smoothed the fabric of my ghostly clothes. "I should thank you for that, my dear boy. It would appear that you make a better pillow than a hero."
"Pffft." He leveled an unamused stare at me as he sat up. He proceeded to stretch in a catlike manner, letting out an undignified sound, and I looked around, feeling a bit better at having returned his customary insult.
Everything was maddeningly the same: nothingness for endless miles save for the sluggish swirl of ghostly mist. The device above us seemed to be whirring more loudly, as if low on electricity or fuel. The thrumming was fluctuating now, its momentary buzzes louder and the pauses between them longer by milliseconds. It whooshed through my limbs like a superhuman heartbeat and buffeted my ears to the extent that I felt too disoriented to stand up.
Silence stretched between us so smoothly that I wasn't aware of it until it was broken.
"Hey, Vlad?"
"Hm?"
"I-I'm sorry about what I said before." Daniel hung his head, staring somewhere indeterminate below us. "About kids being as sex-obsessed back then as they are now. I assumed you were a total pervert and I shouldn't have. You're evil. And crazy."
I scowled at him.
"But that was really lame. I'm always assuming things and that makes me ... kind of an idiot. I should know my enemy instead of jumping to conclusions that could get me in serious trouble later on."
"Very perceptive, Daniel. Learning to make no assumptions about your adversaries is crucial if you ever hope to defeat them. How would you like it if I assumed your every action was dictated by your hormones just because of your age?"
Phantom snorted. "You'd be wrongly assuming that I had the time, for one." He pressed his fingertips idly into his neck and shoulders, massaging away the stiffness his human mind fabricated. I wondered if the unspoken statement was that he had been too busy to spend any time with Miss Manson … no, that wasn't a sufficient explanation for their breakup; she had gladly accompanied him on all of his heroic escapades…
"Ah, to be young, awkward, and inexperienced," I drawled fondly. Thinking back, I frowned. I didn't have any fond memories of the time at all.
"Yeah, yeah, I know," Daniel muttered tiredly. "Danny Fenton: can defeat ultra-powerful, centuries-old ghosts without breaking a sweat but can barely work up the nerve to kiss the girl who's been into him for months."
Frowning, I blinked at him. "Are you referring to Valerie or Samantha?"
He pressed his face into his hands. "Both." After a while, self-consciousness overcame him and he shot me a sidelong glance. "What? You're not seriously going to give me grief about it, are you?"
I raised my hands defensively. "Why would you think such a thing?"
The wary expression morphed into a sly one, and he straightened up. "I expected you to give one of your speeches about how it's just another example of us being more alike than I realize."
I huffed. "Very funny, Daniel."
"Stupid, I know." He stretched out, his back resting at the lowest point of the forcefield and his arms flopping out to either side. His hip bumped one of his boots, set neatly beside his gloves that lay on top of my folded-up suit jacket. When had that happened? Had I done it? I couldn't remember. "With your money, you can have just about anybody you want."
"Not exactly," I murmured, surprised by my own honesty.
"Hmmm." He lifted one lean arm, stretching his fingers toward the little disc whirring maddeningly above us. He wiggled the long digits, and it suddenly occurred to me that there were six, then four. Eventually he managed to create another forearm that branched from the original at the elbow before growling in frustration and letting his form return to normal. A smile found its way onto my face as I watched him struggle. As talented as he was, he only required a bit more discipline and he'd be replicating fully in no time…
With the squirming, swimming feeling of molecules doubling themselves, I split myself in two. "Concentration, my dear boy," I said in stereo, and the teenager jumped, looking over at me with enormous eyes. "All you lack is proper concentration."
In the span of a second, a hundred emotions flickered over his face. He forced his features into a neutral expression, then said, "That's two Vlads too many."
"Nonsense," I insisted from one mouth, then from the other: "It's a hundred too few!"
"How can you make your double say different things?"
"It's a bit like ventriloquism," I responded, focusing my speech to come from my left self. "With practice, you'll be doing the same soon."
Danny looked away, gaze not even registering the flickering wall of electricity between us and freedom. "I still don't know how I'm supposed to take your compliments."
"Don't think of them as compliments, then. I'm merely making observations about your potential."
He snorted. "Me? Potential? That's how I know you're nuts."
Frowning, I looked up at the machine above us. It hummed innocently down at me, its lens winking as it emitted energy. My skin crawled and the hushed voice of claustrophobic panic rose in the back of my mind, babbling frantically. I swallowed, commanding myself to focus.
The boy continued to fume silently, limbs spread out as if mid-snow angel, and I observed the rise and fall of his chest as I turned the facts I'd gathered over and over in my head. I tried to decide whether his newfound pessimism had caused his little breakup or if the reverse was true, and how best to keep him calm and opening up to me. The world shifted and crept around us and the inhuman wind howled somewhere far away.
After a long, long while, I pulled my gloves off and folded them neatly beside me, then put a hand before my face, concentrating ectoplasm into my fingertips.
The globe winked into existence, its surface soft where it made contact with my fingertips. I willed it upward, then flicked it away with my wrist.
The pinkish bubble meandered through the air before drifting downwards toward the sulking teenager. For a moment, I wondered if he would even notice it.
Daniel grunted, turning his gaze upward when the reddish glow came into his line of sight. "Uh - aaaugh!" He attempted to squirm away absurdly before the ectobubble came to a rest on his chest. He stared at it, wide-eyed, and with a clench of my hand, it popped. He yelped in surprise.
"Vlad-" He gazed up at me, a charming look of confusion on his features. "What are you-"
He trailed off upon seeing the myriad of bubbles hovering above us. I focused a bit more energy and created another, willing it into suspension. It drifted lazily through the air, mingling with the others.
"How are you doing that - stop it!" He flinched away when one of the tiny spheres popped on his cheek.
"Concentrate power into your fingertips as you would when preparing to fire a blast, then refine it to a low level," I explained. "Envision a bubble."
Danny frowned comically at me, then turned his concentration toward the ectobubbles hovering on the air currents within our prison.
I lost myself watching the boy struggle to duplicate my creations. He spent a while shooting sparks from his hand and grumbling at his lack of control. The bubbles jostled around as he released bursts of green light before finding the slow circle they had been drifting in once more. After what felt like half an hour, Daniel was creating popping electricity that flashed in a wide sphere, swearing and jerking back upon creating exceptionally large sparks.
In an equal amount of time, half a dozen green bubbles of varying sizes had joined my own.
Phantom stuck his index finger in the air, making the sound of gunfire and launching a tiny, glowing sphere from his finger. He laughed triumphantly when it collided with one of my own, causing both to pop. I realized that a smile of amazement had spread across my face. In an hour, he'd surpassed me at something I'd begun doing years ago.
"Daniel."
"Huh? Jesus!"
I blew a cloud of pinkish bubbles at the boy, chuckling as he batted them away. He retaliated by sending a flock of his own glowing spheres at my head, laughing at me when I was unable to bat them all away successfully. The few that popped on my skin were like puffs of winter air.
"Can all of our fights just be like this from now on?"
He flinched as one of the remaining bubbles floated down near his head, fizzling out of existence upon contact with the forcefield beneath.
"But what about all of my ingenious plans?" I crossed my arms. "There are so many you've yet to see."
"But … bubbles!" He grinned, only the slightest hint of embarrassment slipping through.
"I suppose, little badger," I uttered, and he blinked at me in near-disbelief. "But only if there's nobody around to witness it. It would be … compromising for the Wisconsin Ghost to be seen participating in such an absurd form of combat."
"It would be compromising for me, too," he retorted.
"If anyone took you seriously, yes."
I wasn't expecting the bright green bubble that rocketed into my face, and I let out an undignified shout when it popped in my eye.
His delighted laughter was almost worth it.
