"Are you sure you'll be alright?" Anderson's eyebrows furrowed, the concern was clear on his faces. The pale and ever so slightly shaky teen gave the older man a small smile.
"Yea..." Danny nodded, looking down at the cup of water before him. His mind reeling to try and explain who was the reason for his fainting spell. He bit his lip, and glanced up. He tensed and pulled in on himself at the sight of Spectra and her minion Bertrand. "It's just..."
"It's Ms. Spectra, isn't it." Anderson was met with a wide eyed teen. The man released a sigh, looking of at the demon-like redhead. "The way you two look at each other, it's like a predator looking at a prey. I'm going to see what I can do to get her removed-"
"You don't have to." Danny cursed himself inside. He didn't want Spectra here, she fed on his emotions which made him worse, but he didn't want Anderson to go through the trouble. He's already helped him enough. "I-I can handle it..."
"Danny, you knew she worked for Vlad. That alone shows that something happened between the two of you, and I can tell it wasn't good." The blonde slouched to the teen's level. "I know it's hard handling this with Masters alone, so I'm going to help have Spectra dismissed. "
Daniel didn't know how to the respond to the man's kindness. A man who he didn't even know existed until a few weeks ago. His response was a watery smile, which was returned with a sturdier smile as the agent left to speak with the Judge. Danny curled in on himself, trying everything he could to drown out the soft whispers that sounded like roars. He didn't expect anything else anyway, he was the kid who fainted in the middle of a hearing.
A sigh escaped him, he kept his cobalt eyes on the white tile at his feet. The raven haired teen just couldn't help but be glad to have had Anderson, who had told him everything that he didn't catch in his hazy. Spectra somehow had a video of him acting like Phantom, rather than shifting. That made things a lot easier, he could have been acting for all everyone knew. It couldn't be that hard, right?
"Any evidence, or testimony that Ms. Penelope Spectra is to be ignored." Judge Montreal addressed before turning to the two lawyers before him. "Mr. Anderson will start."
"I call Tucker Foley to the stand." Danny's head shot up to see his best friend walking to the podium. He felt happy that Tucker decided to show, but he couldn't believe he missed him. How could he not notice this? "Mr. Foley can you tell me about the first time my client, Daniel, came to you about Vlad." Even from his seat, Danny can see the slight tremors running through his friend. Tucker never did fair well under pressure.
"Uhm, he had gotten back from the reunion. I had questioned him what was wrong, I've been his best friend for years, I can tell when something is bothering him, ya know? He didn't tell me at first, but I promised not to tell anyone unless he gave the gr-green light. When he told me, I tried to get him to tell someone just how much of a froot-loop Vlad is." Tucker paused when he caught the dark gaze of the silver haired man. Anderson noticing the small exchange effortlessly blocked the teen's view. Prompting Tucker to go on, said teen swallowed thickly before continuing. "But he didn't want to. I got-get it really, the man had threatened to kill his dad and somehow marry his mum! With all the surveillance Vlad had, Danny was to worried that Vlad would find out if he planned to tell anyone and he would hurt his family."
"What about his parents? Do you remember either of them making a move or noticing what Mr. Masters was doing?"
"No..." Tucker paused, his eyebrows furrowing slightly. "Wait, I know his mum thought something wrong was going on with the man. So they stopped visiting him, but then he became Mayor and he spent more time in Amity Park and..."
"What about Jack Fenton?" Anderson decided to save the kid from having to finish the sentence. Meanwhile, Danny was dumbstruck by how well his friend was lying... Well partially lying.
"He can be a little slow when it came to things like that..." Tucker gave a nervous chuckle. wishing nothing more than to have his PDA which sat in Jazz's lap out of the techno geeks reach. "He still thought Vlad for being his best bud from College."
"So would you say that Vlad Masters didn't only seem psychologically and physically capable of harming the Fenton family, but he also was able to manipulate people?" His answer was a jerky nod from the antsy teen who sat at the stand. Anderson bit back a sigh, he wasn't going to drain the kid before the shark of a defense attorney got to him. "No further questions." Anderson nodded, taking a seat at his table next to the still fidgeting Danny.
"Thanks for coming." Danny smiled at his two friends. "I wasn't sure if you were going to..." The teen gave a nervous smile and rubbed the back of his neck.
"Of course we were coming!" Chris shook his head in mock disbelief. The blonde beside him chuckled softly. "What kind of friends do you think we are!" The teen exaggerated his point by placing a hand over his heart. The smirk playing on his lips dismissed any notion of actual hurt. The purple haired teen's smirk only grew at his friends laugh.
"So, how'd you think it went?" Danny questioned, glancing between the two of his friends. He kept his knees pressed to his chest, and bit his lip. He wasn't hopeful about the whole thing. Vlad had power and influence, knowing him he would have somehow paid off the jury.
"I think it looks great actually." Dash spoke, taking his seat on one side of Danny while Chris took the other. Although a bench was seated not even five feet away from the trio, they had chosen to join their distraught friend on the floor. "Masters lawyer didn't have a case against you. You've got this in the bag."
"Yea Dash is right. That lawyer of his is just grasping at straws, theirs no way you'll be losing." Chris agreed with the jock, giving Danny a smile. "Besides, even if the prick paid any Jury people to vote in his favor no one will do that, not after the panic attack you had in there."
A grim silence filtered between the two, all of them sat against the wall. Daniel was hugging his knees, with his chin resting between them. Dash sat with one leg bent and the other stretched out. While Chris sat with his feet pressed together, leaving an opening between his legs. The trio sat and waited, waited for the case to be called in and for the verdict to be told.
"Danny!" The teen jumped, his cobalt eyes landed on a panicked Jazz running towards them. Her aqua eyes wide, swimming in tears while she panted, stopping in front of the three. "Danny, it's dad. We have to get to the hospital!"
Danny froze, his mind swimming in possibilities. He couldn't just leave could he? But he had to go, he had to see how his dad was doing... But the verdict. The pressure started to build on his chest, but all he could do was stare at his fraught sister. The feeling of a hand on his shoulder snapped him from his panic. He turned quickly to be met with Dash's slightly worried blue eyes.
"We'll call and tell you the verdict, you should go"
"Mum?" Jazz questioned, walking up to her crying mother. Danny lagged a few steps behind, a familiar sense of dread and trepidation growing inside him, wrapping tightly around his throat. His eyes flashed to his father's room... Or what was his father's room. The bed was bare, any sigh of anyone having occupied the room was now gone. The tears began to slide down his cheeks before he came to the full conclusion.
"He's gone." Danny stated, knowing immediately that it was true. "Dad... He's dead?" The harsh sob his mother gave told the siblings what they needed to know. Jazz acted first, pulling her mum into a tight hug, letting her cry into her shoulders. But Danny stood frozen, his whole body felt like it was just drenched into an ice cold bath. He felt numb, but he felt so much at the same time.
"-Your fault!" Danny looked wide eyed and crying at his angry mother. Her leaking eyes trained on him, anger flaring them. Just hearing the two words from her, he knew what she thought. He couldn't agree more, he knew he was at fault. He deserved the anger and hatred from her.
"Mum, wait-"
"No Jazz!" Maddie cut her daughter off, moving towards her trembling son. "It's all your fault! If you had just-If you had just done something before none of this would be happening! Your father would still be here, we would still be living in OUR home. This-This is all on you." Her words got colder the more she spoke, they dug deep into Daniel. Even if he felt that way, it hurt more than any wound hes gotten to hear his own mother say them.
"No!" Jazz got between the two, everyone seemingly forgetting about everyone else in the hospital. Everyone who stood or sat around watching the exchange with various emotions. "This isn't Danny's fault! This is-"
"She's right." Daniel's soft whisper shocked his sister into silence, but seemed to please his mother. "Mum's right, this is all my fault." He chocked out, the tears clouded his vision as he turned and booked it out of the room. He didn't want to see his mother's rightfully hateful glares, or his sister's pity looks. The pressure on his chest increased by ten folds, making it harder for him to breath.
All he knew was that he needed to get away from all of this.
"Dude you won! Masters got 25 years!"
Danny's blurry eyes stared down at the sentence on his phone. Those word did nothing to appease the pressure, or the guilt inside him. If anything it all increased, he figured getting Vlad out of the situation would make everything so much better, but it didn't. Everything hurt, everything was falling apart and there was nothing he could do.
A choked sob escaped him, he tossed his phone roughly onto the cement of the roof he found himself on. His eyes found the large billboard that sat in front of him. Confusion and paranoia raced through him when it shut off. The electronic billboards were always up, so why would this one suddenly shut off? Nonetheless his questions and worries were answered and confirmed when the face of a certain silver haired halfa found itself on screen.
"Hello everyone of Amity Park, this is your Mayor. The same Mayor who had just been wrongly convicted of child abuse if you are watching this. I had hoped all this could have passed over without the need to reveal young Daniel Fenton's secret. A secret he had thrown his own godfather under the bus to protect. A secret he in trusted me with for some time. I had hope little badger would have came to his senses and retract his false statement so I wouldn't have to go to such extreme measures to clear my now tarnished name..."
Danny's vision focused instantly, fear curling through him. The alarm raced through his veins, his mind going to the only thing he could think Vlad would do with his. Vlad was going to expose him...
"Many of you may not believe my words, and so I had decided to display for all of you video evidence to support this. Very well, for all of Amity Park to know, Our resident Daniel Fenton is also our resident hero Danny Phantom. He had gathered his injuries doing nothing more than protecting this town, he did not want you to know of this, and so Daniel had put the blame on me. I can see how this is hard to grasp, and so here is the proof."
From his perch on the roof, Danny could hear the out roar below him as the video of his transformation played on loop. The very transformation he had been forced to do by Vlad well before any of this occurred. Danny should have expected Vlad to have insurance, should have expected things to never be easy for him. His head snapped up, eyes trained on the white hover craft heading his way. They GIW already tracked his ecto-signature. They were getting better.
Swallowing down the fury of emotions running through him, Danny knew one thing for sure. He needed to get out of Amity Park.
AN: I'm so happy a few of you liked the direction I took the last chapter.
I hope you guys like how this one turned out, I'm a bit iffy on keeping it the way it is, but I haven't changed any chapter after typing it so I decided to go for it.
I don't have much to say, so let me know what you all thought in the Reviews!