Disclaimer: I wish I owned Danny Phantom! Desiree: -turns me into Butch Hartman- AHHHHHHHHH! CHANGE ME BACK CHANGE ME BACK! -is changed back-
Her blaster sounding off was only barely audible over the sounds of the citizens of Amity Park screaming. As they should be.
Valerie glanced down at the fleeing crowd that was trying to quickly flee the mall. They were in such a panic. A few kept glancing up at her, and she felt her stomach turn a bit in worry. They relied on her to get this done.
She stared ahead at the ghost causing destruction. A familiar face, but one she never put a name to. What was the point in speaking to an enemy or learning their name? What did it matter if they were dead and unresearchable anyway? She shot at the ghost again. Two hit his back, another missing. She growled, and she took better aim before firing again. It hit him before the ghost was tackled by Phantom.
The huntress shifted her weight on her board, zooming towards the too, continuing to fire. Phantom and the ghost were too entangled for her to get a clear shot. She growled, her finger on the trigger. Why did she even care if she accidentally hit him? He was a ghost too.
A ghost that was...oddly human.
Her attention went to the people on the ground, continuing to yell and run. A few were snapping photos, stupidly enough. Idiots. Run!
Her mind snapped out of her brief trance as Phantom slammed into her. She flew off her board, falling with him down to the ground. The flipped in the air, and she felt the air being punched out of her stomach as she hit Phantom. His back caused a crack from colliding into a bench and trashcan.
"What the fuck!" Valerie wheezed.
"Pay attention!" he scowled, coughing a bit.
"There's so many people here," she said quickly, glancing around as she felt her board smack against her side, having snapped back to her. It was a handy tool. "You gotta get them out of here."
"I gotta deal with the ghost!" Phantom protested. He was giving her a dirty look. She shot one back as she stood up. She looked around and quickly assessed the situation.
There were so many people taking cover in the stores. People were still trying to leave in a frantic mob of confusion and fright. The ghost was causing a lot of collateral damage, practically flinging anything anywhere with no worries or cares in the world.
"You can get them out of here faster, and you can protect them better," she argued. "You can phase them out. Just-just go with it, okay! I can handle the ghost!" Phantom's dirty look turned into an annoyingly bright smile as he stood up too. He sent an ecto-blast at the ghost.
"So you're saying you trust me to evacuate the mall?" he asked. Valerie wanted to deck him.
"Yes! So stop standing around and get your butt in gear!" The huntress grabbed his shoulder, turning him around towards a crowd. She kneed him in the lower back to get going, and he fumbled forward as he threw his hands up in surrender.
"I'm going, I'm going!"
Phantom took off towards a crowd, and Valerie focused her attention on the ghost. She narrowed her eyes at it, and she held up her blaster again. She fired at it as she jumped onto her board once more, flying towards it.
The ghost focused its attention on her, and growled as it blasted at her. She dodged it, firing back. A miss, a counterattack. Valerie shifted to move her board down, maneuvering around the ghost in a circle as she fired rapidly. The ghost howled in pain as he got hit, and it stared at her closely before lunging.
Valerie hurriedly moved her board up, using the bottom of it as a shield. The ghost smashed into it, and she felt her feet slip off. Despite her heart racing, she ignored it and took fire again. Her board always came back.
She felt arms wrap around her waist, and a jerk as her fall halted. She immediately knew it was Phantom, and she ignored it, continuing to shoot again. Her shots missed, and she squirmed a bit in Phantom's grasp.
"You sure you got this?" Phantom questioned.
"Yeah, throw me back up, my board will catch me," she told him.
"I got most of the mall cleared out. The people who didn't take cover in a store, I should say," Phantom told her. One of his hands shot up to blast at the ghost as it zoomed for him. Valerie was a bit stunned. Already? "I'll come back in a bit to throw this guy back into the Ghost Zone."
"I have a thermos, I can handle this," she replied. "Get the people out of the mall completely."
"Sounds good." Phantom lightly shifted to tap her knee with a finger. She bent her leg up, putting her foot in his hand. "I trust you to kick his ass."
"I could do it in my sleep," Valerie bragged with a smirk, and Phantom chuckled. He let go over her, tossing her back up.
As predicted, her board shot back to her, and she landed on it, granted a bit wobbly, but stable enough to immediately zoom after the ghost.
"I've had enough of you," she growled, and she reached into her backpack. She pulled out a sticky bomb, and she chucked it at the ghost.
It hit their chest, and they stared down at it. Valerie immediately pressed a button on her arm. The ghost's eyes widened as a loud boom filled the mall, and the ghost was thrown back. Valerie felt her hoverboard jerk back with force, and she held her arms out to balance herself.
The ghost laid still on the floor, and she reached into her bag. She pulled out a red thermos, and she opened it and began to suck the ghost up inside of it.
"Wow, wasn't that a bit overkill?"
Valerie glanced behind her to see Phantom hovering nearby. He was staring at the spot where the ghost had landed before looking back to her. She shrugged her shoulders, tucking the container back into her bag.
"It was just a ghost," she said dismissively. Almost instantly, she regretted saying that. Another look at her temporary partner made her feel oddly a bit guilty. "Did you get everybody out?"
"Yeah," Phantom embraced the subject change. "They're all out. Media and cops will likely be here soon." Valerie gave a small hum of agreement as she turned fully to face him.
He had his arms crossed over his chest, and he didn't meet her gaze. He had a light frown on his face, biting his lip as he seemed to be figuring out what to say. She stayed where she was, standing on her board. She awkwardly coughed.
"Do you wanna go get a burger?" she asked. Phantom finally looked at her, and he gave a small nod.
"Yeah, sure."
"You want the grossest milkshakes," Valerie informed him as she held his order out to him. Phantom grinned as he took the milkshake and bag of food from her.
"You just haven't ever given a triple chocolate fudge with bacon and salsa a shot," he accused her. She wrinkled her nose up in disgust as she took a seat next to him on the roof of the office building across the street from the Nasty Burger.
"I don't need to, none of those things go to together," she argued.
She let her suit's helmet down as she set her bag to the side. She got her milkshake, a vanilla with Oreo cookies, undoing the straw. She put it to her lips and blew it at Phantom, the projectile hitting his temple. Phantom immediately laughed, grabbing the paper and tossing it over the side of the building. He grabbed his own straw, ripping part of the wrapper off and making the motion. Valerie immediately winced but smiled, holding her hand up to catch it.
"You're no fun," he complained, putting the straw down. Valerie let her hand drop so she could put the straw in her drink. A straw wrapper hit her in the nose.
"You're a cheater," she said, lightly pushing him. Phantom snickered as he put his straw into his milkshake. He took a long drink before making an exaggerated, pleased noise.
"It's so good," he loudly exclaimed. "You sure you don't want a taste?"
"Hell no!"
"Come on, I don't have ghost cooties," Phantom insisted. He held the drink up to her lips. Valerie lightly swatted it away and took a drink of her own milkshake. Phantom shrugged and began to dig into his bag for his burger. "So, about earlier."
"Yeah?" Valerie glanced at him as she unwrapped her burger, taking a bite.
Phantom had unwrapped his burger, but he let it sit on his lap as he stared at it for a while. Valerie took a bite while she waited for him to speak. The ghost cleared his throat before continuing.
"When you did the...thing to the ghost. Did you really feel like that?" he asked. Valerie raised an eyebrow at him as she swallowed her bite.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"When you basically destroyed that ghost, like, you just, I dunno, blew it up. And you kind of implied that you didn't care because it was just a ghost."
"...Kind of," she admitted. "I don't know anymore. Lots of ghosts are just ghosts. They're just these undead things coming back to destroy us, cause havoc and destruction and hurting us. But then there's just, so much that I've been finding out and learning. You alone are some weird, oddball entity that I can't figure out."
"Gee, thanks," Phantom replied sarcastically. He took a huge bite of his burger. Valerie rolled her eyes.
"You know what I mean," she grumbled. "But between you and Dani and Vlad, I just. I don't know what to think anymore." Phantom paused, looking at her with wide eyes.
"Vlad?" he asked. She made a face at him for talking with his mouth full. He quickly swallowed. "What about Vlad?"
"Vlad Masters is Vlad Plasmius," she told him. "I found out when I saw him change. I went back to help him, after we freed Dani. He was still in the closet, and I went to help him, and I found out…" She exhaled harshly. "I was so fucking pissed. I can't believe I ever trusted him."
"...I'm sorry," Phantom replied. She shot him a glare.
"You knew, didn't you." It wasn't a question. Phantom winced.
"Yeah. I did."
Valerie nearly threw her burger off the roof. She settled for slamming it back into her bag.
"You KNEW and didn't tell me!?"
"What the hell did you want me to tell you?" Phantom asked. "Vlad Masters is also a dangerous ghost? He's this ghost-human hybrid? You wouldn't even talk to me one on one in any kind of decent conversation, let alone would probably let me sit and give you a slideshow presentation on what a sketchy dude this guy is. Not to mention that he'd destroy me and my family for revealing such things about him. He's already tried to kill my dad, kidnapped my mom and held my sister hostage." Valerie's stomach flipped a bit, and she slumped a bit.
"I know, I know, you're right," she reluctantly admitted. "I just feel like a fool for not knowing, or noticing, or suspecting." She felt a hand squeeze her shoulder.
"Halfas keep their private lives very hidden for specific reasons," he replied softly as he let go of her. "People finding out is such a nightmare scenario. You risk losing family and friends, your own life to a dissection table. You can risk your own family turning against you, turning you in or just outright disowning you. It's a very scary existence. It's also just something you'd never think about. To be both alive and dead...Heh, kind of makes you a freak."
Something about that struck a chord with her. She had no clue why, but an odd feeling came over her. A feeling of knowing.
"Dani and Vlad are both so...different," she told him. "Vlad's obviously a bad guy, and I wish I could say it's because he's got that half ghost in him. But then I look at Dani, and I can't rationalize to myself that she's evil too. She's...she's just a kid. And she did save me when I first met her."
"She did?" Phantom sounded surprised, and she glanced to see him smiling like a dork. "I'm proud of her."
"You should be," Valerie told him with a small smile. "She seems like a good kid. It's probably the human in her." She fished her burger back out to take a bite.
"No, it's because she's Danielle," Phantom corrected her. "And Vlad's...well like that because he's Vlad. Ghosts are like humans, Red. We come in shades of gray, morally and personality. We're unique and different, but we just happen to be dead and have supernatural abilities."
Phantom picked up his milkshake and bag of food. He shifted to stand up on the edge.
"Anyway, I'm gonna bounce. Got some stuff to do," he told her with a light sigh. Valerie raised an curious eyebrow.
"Like what?" she wondered. Phantom shot her a smile.
"English paper," he told her as he took a step off. He fell a bit before she saw his form beginning to fly off into the distance. She narrowed her eyes against the setting sun's glare, trying to pinpoint his direction, but she couldn't shake some of her uneasiness. She too, had an English paper to write.
