Okay, I've decided to try updating quicker than the last time, due to several requests :D I'm still surprised that my story is racking in as many readers as it is! I never really expected it to even be this successful at only eleven (now twelve) chapters, so it's a pleasant surprise for me! Thanks for sticking with it so far!
Pollux: Okay, enough talking, Gem, get on with the story.
Sheesh, and I haven't even been talking that long! Well, fine, here's chapter 12!
Disclaimer: Me no own Danny Phantom, even though me loves the show!
Chapter 12
"Well, what do you see, Daniel?" Vlad called up to the teen, who was out of the man's line of sight. After the boy didn't reply, Vlad asked, "Are we still heading in the right direction?" Vlad Masters heard a muffled response from far above.
"What?" he shouted.
The teenager called his answer louder this time, "I said, yes!"
"Hw far are we from the end of the woods?" Vlad asked, irritated. It felt so humiliating to rely on that little brat's powers to get out of there. If only he had his back, he wouldn't need to depend on the boy. His pride was bruised, and Danny was aware of the fact.
Danny chuckled from high above Vlad, replying smugly, "Eeeeeeh… I'd say maybe… twenty to thirty miles… I think." The man sighed from far below while Danny stayed up above the canopy of leaves to enjoy the scenery again for. It was another beautiful morning, and it seemed like it was even more beautiful at dawn when the sun tinged the eastern skies pink and orange. Songbirds were warbling and the tapping of a woodpecker in the distance could be heard.
Danny sighed, "Ah, V-Man, if only you could be up here to see this! It's so gorgeous!" He grinned and glanced through the branches to the forest floor.
"How could you be admiring the scenery at a time like this?" Vlad shouted irately.
"Ya know, cheesehead, life would be soooo much easier for you if you learned to appreciate the simple things in life instead of dwelling on the bad stuff!" the teen joked.
"There is absolutely nothing worth appreciating about our situation, Daniel!"
"Yeah, yeah, the glass is half empty, blah, blah, blah…" Danny said in an amused and teasing tone, slowly lowering himself through the leaves in ghost form, feeling slightly drained of energy. He let gravity take him down the rest of the way to the ground once he could safely do so without hurting himself. Dang it! When would his powers fully recover? Danny sighed as he reverted back to his human half.
Vlad folded his arms and looked at the boy with concern; if being in the for only that long depleted Danny's energy, something was even more wrong than they had thought—even though it still slightly made the man feel better to know that the teenager was still recuperating from whatever had messed up their ghost halves. He still didn't have his powers back, and was getting concerned about how much longer he would have to wait to regain them. It seemed that Daniel's powers were jolted awake from the repeated bursts of adrenaline, but Vlad didn't want to risk killing himself as well just to get them back. He would just simply wait until other options arose... that didn't require him jumping out of a tree. Danny, brushing off some excess dust from one of his pant legs, straightened up and walked past Vlad, who was still musing on these thoughts.
"Well, I guess the sooner we get moving, the sooner we reach the end of this forest, right?" he asked, clapping his hands together before starting off into the trees, blazing his own trail. Vlad followed, stepping awkwardly through the bushes after Danny. He winced as yet another thorn snagged on his clothing and made yet another tear.
Sighing vehemently, Vlad commented, "My best suit, in tatters…"
"Yeah, well, be thankful it isn't your skin, in tatters!" Danny laughed, earning an annoyed look from Vlad.
"Yes, I guess you're right, considering the wolf..." Vlad conceded.
The two hiked over the rough terrain, picking their way slowly through the vegetation as the day wore on. By the time noon came around, Vlad and Danny hadn't made much progress from the location they had been at the beginning of the day. At most, they had advanced two or three more miles, walking along the side of the river against the direction the water was flowing in. They eventually arrived at the lake they had seen a couple days previously, but they kept on walking. A couple more hours wore on slowly as the hybrids walked. When it was around three o'clock in the afternoon, Danny halted suddenly. Vlad bumped into the boy by accident, having been trailing too close behind him at the time.
"Wait a second..." Danny said warily, looking up at the sun's position in the sky. He knew it was some time after noon, at least a couple of hours.
"I think we're going in the wrong direction now." He explained to Vlad, who was confused. Their intended direction was westward, and the sun, instead of being in front of them, was more towards their left.
"Really." Vlad said faintly, more like a statement than anything else. The man was exhausted, and in more ways than one. Not only was he tired physically from the day's endless marching, lack of a decent meal, and good night's rest, he was also tired of being stranded in this place. As if it wasn't obvious enough, he had better things to do than wandering in the wilderness, going on the word of a teenager who was most likely getting them more lost than they already were! And just by that last comment by Danny, it only made his temper rise even more. His patience was wearing thin, now.
Danny, who was of course just as irritated as Vlad, couldn't believe their luck either. They hadn't found anything to eat since they came across that blackberry bush by the river, and the two of them were absolutely starving. He wanted to reach the end of that forest now more than ever, being just as sick, if not more than Vlad, of the circumstances. After pondering what direction they were currently heading in, he concluded that they had veered north.
"We need to be going… that way." He pointed towards their left.
"But… that would mean leaving the river." Vlad pointed out, gesturing toward their only source of water like it would be suicide to leave its side—which would, frankly, be quite true. They didn't know if they would come across any more rivers or streams any time soon, but if they continued following this river, it might make them take even longer to reach the end of the forest. The river, instead of going west, continued on in a northern direction, and who was to say that it stayed in that direction for the rest of the range? All the major mountain ranges in North America generally ran north to south, so they could probably conclude that either going west or east was the answer, no matter how painful the concept seemed—not that they even knew if they were in North America or not.
"Well, we need to leave it, f we want to get back to Amity Park sooner," Danny sighed bitterly, "You'd better get your fill of water, while you still can." Danny stooped beside the river, cupped his hands, lowered them down into the water, and drew out a handful of the liquid. It seemed to be much cleaner than the rapids before, most likely because it was flowing a lot slower than the other, so it didn't pick up nearly as much dirt. But, then again, he heard that even seemingly clear water from streams or rivers could make you sick, too, but he was frankly too thirsty at the moment to really care. He eagerly drank from it until his thirst was quenched. It also seemed that Vlad's pride had lowered to the same level as Danny's finally, in this respect, because he too drank from it. After splashing some water on his face and the back of his neck to rinse away the sweat, Danny stood and waited for Vlad. Once he finished, the two of them reluctantly turned their backs on the river and began hiking westward again.
The terrain became even rougher than it was by the river, forcing them to take detours every once in a while if it was necessary. The way that they took sloped upwards steeply, making it really difficult to climb. In fact, the two halfas were more often than not using their hands to aid them in scaling uphill. The soil underneath their feet was also fairly loose, so their feet frequently slipped and slid out from beneath them. This happening often, their already dirty clothes were made even filthier—not that they really minded anymore. Dirt a little more or less, it didn't really make much of a difference anymore.
It was very strenuous and exhausting work, but just when Danny was sure he couldn't go one more step uphill, the ground leveled out and became more solid since vegetation (aka, more bushes) was holding it down once again. Then, only a short time after that, a faint sound could be heard.
"Hallelujah…" Vlad muttered as he recognized the noise as flowing water gain. He was already thirsty again, and so was Danny. However, he was pleasantly surprised at having running to water that soon after leaving it. Perhaps it was the same river and it looped around, turning southwards? But, neither Danny nor Vlad questioned the sound more than that fleeting thought; they ran towards it, realizing it was coming from in front of them, so they weren't leaving their general path. They eventually arrived at the source.
The two were faced with several problems that Danny and Vlad realized the split second that they first laid eyes on the river. One, it was in their way. Two, the water was flowing too fast to wade across (which probably meant that it was indeed the same river they had been following before), and three—it was too wide to swim across. True, they could just continue on by the river and hope that it turned so they could get back on track again, but they couldn't be certain that it would change paths soon enough, if even at all.
Both Danny and Vlad stared silently as the water loudly rushed by.
Slowly, Danny turned to Vlad, "…Well, this stinks…"
"You could say that again! How in the blazes are we supposed to cross?" Vlad gestured at the obstacle in their path, frustrated.
But, before giving any more thought on how to solve this problem, Danny strode over to the river and crouched beside the flowing water. Vlad scowled at Danny as the teenager drank from it.
"What, Vlad? I'm thirsty!" Danny said defensively as he looked up, noticing the man's reproving stare.
"Never mind. I can't believe that out of all people to be stranded with in the middle of nowhere, I get the brat with a short attention span!"
Well, Danny could see the obvious way across the river. He bit one of his fingernails, trying to figure out if he felt up to carrying the weight of a fully-grown man. He immediately regretted the action, spitting out dirt from his mouth. Danny had almost forgotten that the underneath his fingernails were filthy from all the time using his hands to climb.
"Hmm, well the brat with the short attention span has a plan, if you can be polite enough to listen to it!" Danny said.
"Really?" Vlad asked, annoyance gone, replaced with curiosity.
"I think I might be strong enough to carry you across!" Danny said slowly, a little uncertainly though. Vlad stared critically at the boy for a few minutes silently, making the teen feel uncomfortable.
"If you drop me over that river, so help me… I will kill the half of you that still lives…!" Vlad hissed, finally responding as he begrudgingly lifted his arms.
Danny floated up, chuckling as he took a hold under each of the man's arms. Picking him up, the teenager groaned; yep, he definitely didn't have his full strength returned yet.
As quickly as he could, he flew over the river, eager to relieve himself of the burden. He dropped Vlad unceremoniously to the earthy ground on the other side, crashing a few yards farther than the man. Vlad grunted as he stood up, brushing more soil off of his suit.
"Uuugh… you weigh a ton…!" Danny moaned, reverting back to Fenton. Vlad frowned at the subdued teenager.
"Thank you, Daniel," Vlad called over his shoulder curtly as he began walking ahead. Danny stood and caught up to the man.
"Yeah, that's right—you'd better be thankful, because I hope you know that I could've just left you and gone on ahead without you... not that I'm that kind of a person!" Danny grinned, examining his filthy fingernails modestly.
"Exactly, and if you did or do leave me, I will see to it that you sincerely regret that decision. Got that, Daniel?" Vlad replied with narrowed eyes.
Danny shook his head sorrowfully as he made a tsk-ing sound, "My, my, such mighty words... I wonder how you'd plan on backing them up when your powers still haven't recovered? In any normal situation, you might be able to beat me, but this time I have the upper hand, Vlad. You do realize that, right?"
Vlad laughed sardonically, "You wouldn't have the guts! You know as well as I do that you're too righteous to stoop low enough and attack someone who couldn't fight back!" He sneered.
"How do you know what I would or wouldn't do?" Danny pointed accusingly at Vlad, a green blast of energy accidentally coming from his finger.
The blast hit Vlad on the right shoulder, making him lose his balance and fall backwards onto the forest floor. Danny peered sheepishly down at his pointed finger, surprised as much as Vlad was that it had happened.
"Why you little brat! What was that for?" Vlad shouted angrily, standing back up as he rubbed his aching shoulder.
"Hehe… oops? Sorry, I didn't mean to do that…!"
"Sure you didn't, you little rat…" Vlad growled as the two continued on in their westward direction.
Castor: Okay, people, hope you enjoyed this chappie! You all know what to do now!
Pollux: Yeah, go on and succumb to the urge to click on the review button! Come on, you know you want to!
Alright, until next time, then!