I don't own anything.
Bubbles POV
I yawned and slowly got out of bed. There had been a monster attack in the middle of the night and I was exhausted. I slowly floated past my two still sleeping sisters and out the door. The smell of bacon and eggs cooking on the stove made me perk up a little. I loved the professor. He was the best. Slumping into the seat nearest to the door my father just smiled at me and slid a plate of breakfast in my direction. Yep, I loved my dad.
The chair across from me scraped back and I glanced up to see Dani smiling at me. She seemed tired but it looked more like early morning grogginess than the up-to-late fog I was struggling through.
"Morning." Dani yawned with a smile.
"Good morning," I mumbled hoping she wouldn't think I was being rude. "Sleep well?" I added on just to make sure she didn't take any offense.
"Looks like I slept better then you. What happened?"
"Monster attack in the middle of the night. I wish they would keep their fighting to a certain schedule."
Dani smirked and I couldn't help but smile back a little. "What, would you like the villains and monsters to sign up for a time to intrude on your schedule?" Her smirk had changed to a smile.
"Yes actually," I sniffed playing along. "That would be nice."
Dani outright laughed, she was obviously more awake then I was. She had really opened up over the last couple days. She seemed a lot happier.
"You know," Dani started. "We don't have to start training today if you and the girls are tired."
"No!" I cried, even though Blossom and Buttercup seemed to be under the impression that Dani wouldn't be able to teach us much but I was very excited. She seemed very confident in her abilities and I wouldn't be surprised if she had even more to teach us then she was letting on. And on the flipside, we could teach her too. She seemed determined to leave eventually it would make me feel better if I knew we had helped her in someway. She seemed surprised by my outburst and I blushed a little. "I really am looking forward to it." I said quietly.
"Okay…" Dani finally said after a long moment. "I'm looking forward to it too." She smiled and I relaxed.
"Hey Dad, It smells good thanks." I jumped as Buttercup's voice sounded to my right. Dani laughed at my startled expression and I threw her a betrayed look, but she just snickered.
"Good morning girls." Dad called out from the stove. "Dani, how are you this morning?"
"I'm doing well… Thanks again for letting me crash on your couch."
"Don't think anything of it. It's so good to see my girls with a friend over." Dani gave a small smile.
"You know Dani," Blossom said with a yawn. "We don't have to start training today if you don't want to." I looked over and shared a glance with Dani. It was so much like what she had just said that I grinned.
Dani smiled back at me before turning towards Blossom, "Nah I'm good. You guys however…" She trailed off and Buttercup gave a squawk of indignation.
I laughed with Dani as the professor walked over his hands full of food. "Come now girls." Dad said with a smile as he laid the plates down at the table and sat down. "You forget I want to see the results of my hard work."
Dani smiled. "Thank you for working so hard on it by the way."
"Don't worry about it. I enjoyed working on a new project."
We ate rather quickly after that. I laughed at Blossoms expression when Buttercup had burped loudly in front of Dani. Dani had just grinned. Besides that we finished quickly the five of us quickly cleaning up. There was an air of anticipation. It seemed like just a moment passed and we were all ready to head downstairs to the new training room.
The professor grinned and proudly led us through the lab. "It took sometime to make the device compatible with the normal machinery that I use. The energy source it uses really is incredible Dani." He barely paused before continuing. I looked back and was shocked to see Dani looking very pale as we walked through the lab… That's right. She didn't like laboratories… I felt a pang of sympathy. Her story was… sad. I wished with all my heart that we could help her. She was like another sister even after only a few days of knowing her I wanted to do everything I could to help her. Her discomfort however seemed to fade once we were in the training area.
"Okay," The professor started. "We're going to start out small." He pressed a few buttons and inside the room a green glow started to form and it took the shape of a floating green octopus. The creature growled it was looking around in confusion it's eyes landed on them and a broken mouth widened into a terrifying smile. It flew forward with surprising speed and just as it was about to hit the window that separated us from the room when it suddenly disappeared. I gasped and flinched away.
"What just happened?" Buttercup finally gasped.
Dad seemed very surprised but he looked more thoughtful then scared. "The ghost we just saw is an after image. I have no control besides completely shutting the simulation down. When it flew past the holo perimeters it immediately downloaded the ghost back into the program. The fact that it could sense us outside of the simulation at all is very interesting."
Dani looked up. "Dangerous interesting, or just different interesting?" Well that was a good question.
The professor looked mildly amused. "Just different interesting. The ghost's won't be able to get out the perimeters. However I'll probably have to take extra care when it comes to the holo emitters in the house." Dani still looked skeptical but she nodded.
"Okay then why don't we try it out." Dani stood and pulled a couple of gun like objects out of her bag. "We're going to see how effective you're normal powers are compared to ecto-blasts." She set one of the guns on her hip, wrapped something around her wrist and pulled out a very large gun out. It almost looked more like a bazooka then a gun. Blossom raised her eyebrow at the sight, and Buttercup gave a slightly feral grin. I stared. She looked so comfortable she obviously knew what she was doing. I took a deep breath and nodded. With that we all walked into the simulation room.
Dani gave the thumbs up to the professor and the octopus like creature started to form again. "Okay," Dani's voice was clear and concise. "Blossom, you'll go first. I'll watch for the first few minutes and then we'll stop the simulation and talk about what happened." We all nodded and as the ghost finished forming. It glanced around and locked on us but before it could attack Blossom shot forward. She was a flurry of punches and the green blob was thrown into the wall she was about to follow up when it disappeared. I watched as my sister looked around in confusion. Blossom turned around but Dani was just standing there her eyes scanning the room.
"Did it run into the simulation wall again?" Blossom asked a bit confused but before Dani could answer suddenly Blossom was thrown into the wall by an invisible force. The Octopus appeared snarling at her. I gasped as the ghost started to spin rapidly and shot right at my sister. Blossom who was still shaking her head clear from the unexpected attack seemed shocked at the attack. I bit my lip as she only just dodged. The ghost didn't stop though… As Blossom seemed to gain her bearings she went flying towards the creature just as she was about to hit it the ghost went translucent and Blossom flew right through. I gasped as the octopus went back to green and grabbed my sister in its tentacles. The creature started to pull her closer and Blossom activated her eye beams. The creature screeched and dropped her. I let out a small sigh. Blossom started shooting more eye beams but the ghost turned intangible again. And started flying towards her. Blossom dodged to the side and the Ghost turned and stretched one of its limbs with surprising speed and slammed Blossom into the wall. I started forward but Dani beat me to it. With speed I didn't know she possessed she burst forward bazooka shooting off blasts of faintly glowing green power. The ghost turned to face the new threat and was blasted into oblivion with in a few moments. The simulation fully ended as the window that the professor was examining us from became visible again. Blossom groaned as she got out from the wall I was there in a flash. She gave me a grateful look and I pulled her up.
"Okay," Dani started "That went well. The intangibility seemed to be you're only real problem. Buttercup your turn. You saw how blossoms fight went now I want you to try and learn from that try and find a way to work around ghosts natural ability to use invisibility and intangibility." I frowned why hadn't she warned Blossom about those two powers? Blossom was frowning as well but she seemed more thoughtful. Buttercup actually seemed angry.
"Hey!" buttercup finally snapped. "Why didn't you tell Blossom this stuff? She wouldn't have been hurt if you had actually thought to tell her anything." Dani seemed surprised by the outburst and I felt my frown deepen. Had she really not contemplated Blossom getting hurt?
"I'm… Sorry I guess I wanted to see how you three would react to a ghost without much information before hand… I wasn't really thinking about afterwards."
Blossom shook her head "Dani I understand that you wanted to see what would happen but it was also a little manipulative." Dani's face had turned stony, but Blossom continued on anyways. "Ghosts aren't something that we've really run into before but we have fought off monsters before. We really can handle ourselves but we would appreciate it if you would teach us what you know before you set us loose." I watched afraid to break the suddenly thick atmosphere. Dani's face seemed frozen. Her eyes however were very expressive: fear, anger, horror, acceptance, loss, self-loathing. She seemed so confused for some reason. Finally she took a deep breath and I felt myself relax. Dani gave a small smile.
"I can do that… lets move on then." I nodded and we continued.
As Buttercup stared her fight with the ectopus as Dani called it. I kept my eyes on our houseguest. She seemed a lot more concentrated on this fight then she had been the last one. She occasionally called out something to buttercup. 'It can't see you when you're underneath it.' 'Keep an eye on the main body, it'll tell you where it's headed.' She was definitely trying harder but I couldn't still see a bit of that emotional turmoil inside… I couldn't help but wonder if there was someway we could help… or if she was already closed off to everyone.
Dani POV
I was an idiot… How could I assume… Just because I knew more about ghosts then they did didn't meant that I knew what was best… and now I had lost their respect. Sure Blossom had just shrugged off being thrown into the wall but if it had been anyone else they would have been in a lot of pain. It hurt to think that I had overlooked something like that… I almost didn't want to look deeper just keep moving had always been my motto. But… I had messed up, and I needed to know why if I didn't want to make that mistake again. I watched as buttercup managed to get a good grip on the ectopus's tentacles and slammed it into the ground with a lot more speed and strength then I had. The projection had obviously reached its limit and the ectopus faded out of existence. I motioned for Bubbles to take her turn. She gave me a smile, like I hadn't just been an idiot, and flew towards the center of the room as the professor restarted the simulation. She was doing even better then her sisters moving to fast for the ghost to retaliate there was still some trouble with intangibility but the blue girl had obviously figured out that ghosts didn't often stay intangible for more then a few seconds. The tactic wouldn't work as well with ghosts that had higher mental capabilities but it was working well at the moment. As the ghost hit the wall and faded out in half the time it had taken Buttercup I closed my eyes and identified the emotion that was rolling inside of me… I was jealous.
They had everything I wanted. A family the ability to use their powers in public without a crazy half ghost coming after them, a stable home… and to top that all off they were better then I was. They were faster, stronger, and had more experience. I could see that so when the moment came to teach them I had tried to use ghosts to create an advantage for me.
I was an idiot.
I couldn't deal with this right now… I had to deal with this right now… The girls needed me right now…
Now…
I looked up at the girls and nodded. "Okay, as you can tell that intangibility is still going to be a problem. But I kind of thought it would be. So, I should have done this before, but here's the run down. I told you every ghost has several basic powers. Flight won't be a problem for you three but invisibility might be. Ghosts don't stay invisible for too long… usually. Being invisible doesn't stop ghosts from being heard though and that will be your greatest advantage most ghosts don't breathe-"
"Most ghosts?" Blossom questioned. But I continued on.
"And so your going to have to listen to other things like the moving of air or the charging of an ecto-blast if they're shooting at you." Watching the girls absorb the information with the calm understanding of a fighter, I felt the jealousy surge again. It was like now that I had acknowledged it there was a glaring red-eyed monster laughing at me. I pushed down the urge to make a remark and continued. "The other problem will be intangibility being unable to touch your target can be annoying and dangerous. There are a couple of weapons that once you have the ghost wrapped around in it won't be able to get out but first you have to catch it. From what I've seen your fighting style doesn't rely on weapons much but fighting ghosts will most definitely require that you change that. However, whether all you end up needing is the thermos or if you need more is what we're going to try and find out next. Professor, would you activate the simulation again only this time with two ectopus. Oh and that's the next thing the ectopus always attack in pairs so Blossom I want you to shoot for the one on the right and I've got the one on the left I want to see the difference between your eye beams and an ectoblast."
Blossom nodded and I stood up ready to prove myself and at the same time a feeling of dread settled into my stomach. I pulled out the ectogun and turned the safety off the sound of the charging gun mixed with the faint hissing sound the room made as the illusions were formed. The moment the two ghosts were completely corporeal the sound of two shots going off in sync filled the room. I watched as the green blast shot forward and both ectopus were forced back the red shot pushing back a bit farther but the green blast obviously doing more damage. I stared for a split second and something snapped.
I couldn't stay here.
They were fine.
They would always be fine.
They didn't need me.
The rest of the hour was a blur I knew I was giving them a crash course and I knew they were grasping things far better then I ever did mixed in with all of this was flashes of my first few months of life. Of Vlad's training and his frustration when overextending my powers started to make me melt. And then I'd see Blossom's excitement at learning new things, Buttercups ready to go gleam in her eyes, and Bubbles softer confidence that balanced her sisters. It was too much… or maybe I was just a coward… After all, me getting close to people it was never meant to be. I was a monster. "Yes Father…" The words echoed through my head and the red-eyed monster just kept laughing.
Hey Danny
It's hard not being able to talk to you in person and yet I'm not sure I'd be able to say this in person I feel like you would hate me if you knew that sometimes I feel like I'm the 'good guy' just because that's how I'm expected to act. I proved that to myself today. I wanted to be the one in charge the obviously more powerful, I wanted to… be stronger than what I am. And I'm not. I'm not you and I can't be the one to save the day because there is nothing for me to save. I'm to afraid to really let people in and when it comes to saving people it's like it's not even me really saving them it's a reflex. Not a choice a reaction. If the going gets tough I get going. I can't stand by myself and I hate myself for it. The girls have been so kind to me the last couple of days they have been supportive and protective and have shared everything with me and I can't even tell them who I really am. I'm terrified and a coward. I'm leaving tonight. I'll leave the thermos. A part of me wishes I had never come here and another part wishes I was going to stay. And I hate myself for being so torn. I hate myself… isn't that pathetic.
My eyes flew open at midnight the girls were asleep or at least I thought so I got up and grabbed my bag. Pulling it up over my shoulders I got up and started towards the door. There was a soft cough behind me. Instantly I whirled around and dropped into a steadier pose. Only to be met with the raised eyebrow of the Professor.
"Dani," His voice was soft and I kind of hated how he said my name like he knew me. "We're you even going to say goodbye to them?" I paused, I could have overshadowed him and left before he woke up again. As I was staring at him though I couldn't do it. He was so completely defenseless sitting there that I finally relaxed slightly.
"No" The truth in that one word cut at me more then I thought it would. "How did you know I was leaving?" I asked quickly not wanting to hear his answer to that.
He paused before a small quirk of his lips prompted an answer. "Each of my girls has tried running away from home at least once. I could see the signs however it was when you made sure to get your cleaning supplies out of the bathroom that I was completely sure."
I nodded slowly trying to keep my calm. "Are you going to try and convince me to stay?" I tensed slightly ready to bolt.
"Only if you want me to." The answer threw me for a loop. What? "I'm sure you've had a hard life. I can see it in your eyes. If you really want to leave I wont stop you but if you want to stay and you're just leaving right now to see if anyone will follow then I will make sure I give you the proper excuse to stay."
I felt a flash of anger. "You're wrong. I don't need anyone to follow me. I'm leaving because it's safer for everyone." I hissed at him trying desperately to keep my eyes blue.
"But they would." I flinched back at his suddenly serious tone. I didn't understand what was he talking about. "The Girls." He clarified seeing my confusion. "If you leave tonight they will follow you. I'm not sure if you've realized it but you've made a bigger impact on this house then you realize. When the girls were in second grade a psychopath attacked their school looking for them. He killed seven of their friends before they brought him down. Ever since then they have always kept their classmates at arms length and the students have done the same. I don't know why they broke their usual pattern with you but suddenly they're all so much happier. And then you proved you weren't defenseless and they wouldn't have to worry about you so much. Today they were happier then I have seen them in years. And it's because of you. So tomorrow morning they wake up and you're gone… they'll be frantic. And yes they will look for you and they will keep looking until they find you."
I stared at him for a long moment. I couldn't even think anymore. I was a coward. 'Yes father.' I hated myself. 'are you going to save them or I'm I going to have to.' They were better then I was. 'happier then I have seen them in years.' The professor's voice seemed so much more powerful then any of the other repeating mantra's in my head.
"Dani," He said my name like he knew me… maybe he did. "You are wanted here. They want you here. And I want you here. It took me years of raising my girls for me to become the father I am today. I know you've only been here a couple of days but I invite you to please stay a little longer. Let us really get to know you, and I know you don't have records." That made me freeze. "When you showed up I did my research and when I couldn't find you I made a profile for you. I tell you this incase you do decide to leave tonight I'll give you all the codes and access to it if you wanted you could go to somewhere safe… I want you to know though that you are wanted here." He stood up and pulled a paper out of his pocket my eyes were glued to his as he passed it towards me. His eyes were warm.
Finally I shook my head. "Keep it." I finally whispered feeling like something was either breaking or healing inside of me. "I think it'll be safer with you." I felt a shuddering breath course through me my backpack was sliding off my shoulders and I didn't have the will in me to stop it. I felt cold and warm all at once.
"Dani" How did he know exactly what to say? "You are safe in this house I promise. And we all want you here." I didn't realize I was crying until he reached out and wiped a tear from my cheek. "Go to bed now. I'll see you in the morning?"
I nodded suddenly wanting nothing more then to fall asleep. "Goodnight professor… I'll see you in the morning."
He smiled at me gently before putting the paper back into his pocket giving my shoulder a quick squeeze and making his way up the stairs. I stared at his back as he walked away slowly I made my way back to the couch and closed my eyes.
Okay before you all harp on me about how Dani's breakdown wasn't very realistic. I tried okay. She is still only physically thirteen mentally even younger. Besides I've been hinting at her leaving for a while. And with the confrontation with the professor I wanted it to be him to stop her and not the girls partially because I feel like the professor is underappreciated, and partially because he is the adult in the situation he would be able to see Dani's insecurities better then the puffs would. Anyways once again this is unbeta'd and is going to have a lot of mistakes. Still I wanted it out ASAP so here you go.
