The air of the human world seemed unusually invigorating after spending so long confined within the Ghost Zone. Johnny's bike made quick work of the distance, flying through the air as easily as it had flown through the Ghost Zone. Sam seemed to be getting more comfortable with the powerful machine, dodging through trees and occasional mountains that showed up in their flight path.
Danny kept his arms locked around Sam's waist, pressing his chest against her back to lessen the wind resistance as much as possible. One more hour... one more hour before time was up and the Reaper would be able to absorb Vlad. After that... no, there was no point in thinking about that now. It wouldn't come to that. Danny would be consigned to oblivion before it did.
In another fifteen minutes they spotted a small summer home nestled on the beach in front of the ocean. It wasn't the only one of its kind, but the prominent green and gold color scheme was one only a single person would ever curse an entire building with.
"Alright, that must be Vlad's summer home." Danny said. "Now we just turn northwest and..." Danny trailed off when a flash of movement caught his eye from one of the building's windows. He swore he saw someone with red hair walking past. He stared intently at that same spot, but didn't see it again.
"Danny?" Sam called over her shoulder.
"Let's set down for a few minutes..." Danny replied. Sam looked over her shoulder at him quizzically, but turned the bike to bring it down on the sandy beach beside the large wooden home. Danny climbed off of the bike and took a step back. It was a pretty big building for one that went unused all the time. "I could've sworn I saw Jazz in there for a second."
"Really?" Sam moved to stand beside him, looking up at the building. "This must be where he left her before the Reaper nabbed him. But you know, she might be..." Sam trailed off uncomfortably. They both knew what Vlad had begun to do to her, though they had no idea how.
"I have to find out. Then we can go get Vlad." Danny replied. Sam nodded and moved to follow as Danny walked around to the front of the house, making his way up the long wooden staircase to the patio that led up to the front entrance. As he approached the door he stopped suddenly and took a deep breath as a thin blue mist began to emanate from his open mouth.
"Ghost sense?" Danny looked down in surprise.
Suddenly the floorboard exploded upwards in a wave of sound, throwing both Sam and Danny back through the air all the way down to the sandy beach. Sam and Danny sputtered and coughed as they scrambled up to their feet, looking back up toward the summer home to see Ember McLain floating out of the hole in the patio, holding her guitar in both hands. Her face was a blank mask, her eyes concealed by glowing red pools of energy.
The revving of a powerful engine drew both of their gazes off to the side, where Johnny 13 was mounted on his motorcycle, holding the handlebars in a death grip. Kitty sat on the seat behind him, in one hand clutching a length of long chain with spikes welded to its surface. She whirled the weapon over her head, then brought it crashing down to the sand. Each of their faces were blank, and their eyes blood red.
Sam's sudden shriek of shock and terror made Danny whirl on his heels. He gasped and stumbled away from the sight before him, putting one hand out to pull Sam back with him. Rising out of the sand before them was a third ghost, this one a shorter, scrawnier boy no older than Danny himself. He glared at Danny from under his backwards baseball cap, his eyes glowing blood red.
"T... Tuck...?" Sam stammered in horror. "That's Tucker!"
"What do you think of my bodyguards, little brother?" Danny turned back numbly, looking up at the balcony above the patio to see Jazz sitting daintily on the rail with one leg on the balcony. She was wearing a sheer black dress slit up the sides to her thighs and cut down low on the neckline. A shimmering violet jewel shined from a golden necklace around her neck, visible all around her neck since her hair was brought up in a thick ponytail that flowed down to the middle of her back. "He was kind enough to send them to me to protect me from you."
Danny just stared up at her blankly. It was as if everything he'd been fighting to prevent was happening all at once. He'd failed, again and again. He thought Tucker would be safe... but he should've known. He'd used his powers at Ember's again, he'd led the Reaper straight there. He'd hoped the Reaper would think he was leaving, but he must have gone to check anyway...
"What's the matter, little brother?" Jazz's voice was light and mocking when she spoke, with a trace of a smile on her lips. "Do you need your big sister to tell you what to do? As if you were ever smart enough to listen to her before."
"Danny?" Sam's voice shuddered in fear and worry, her hand slipping around Danny's so that their fingers could intertwine. "Danny, you've got to do something. Snap out of it."
"Those words aren't hers..." Danny said softly. "He's managed to do everything she feared most. Take away who she is." Danny turned his gaze up toward Jazz again, gritting his jaw and clenching his free fist. Gently he pushed Sam's hand away from him and took a step forward, the light engulfing his body as his ghostly self took over. The three ghosts around him all took preparatory stances.
"You're not going to run away like you've been doing for days?" Jazz smirked mockingly. Out of the corner of his eye Danny could see Sam discreetly putting some distance between them. "Not like you could get far, but once a coward always a coward."
"No. I'm not running anymore. No more plotting and planning and searching. I'm saving you right here and now." Danny launched himself up from the ground, flying high into the air. Johnny, Ember, and Tucker all followed him into the sky. Danny clenched his fists at his sides, letting them glow with green ecto-energy as Ember placed her pick to her guitar strings and Johnny revved up his bike.
Danny's arms flashed out in front of him, two ecto-blasts flying at Johnny and Ember. Ember blocked with her guitar while Johnny simply brought the front of his bike up to block the blast.
Ember charged forward, whirling through the air with her guitar flying like a baseball bat. Danny whirled out of the way, his ghostly body stretching out behind him to avoid being struck before he fired back a return punch, but her guitar came back around to slam heavily into his arm. Danny yelped, but didn't let the pain stop him from bringing his other arm around, an ecto-blast slamming into Ember's shoulder from point blank range to knock her away from him.
A sickening crack split the air as Johnny rode past right behind him and Kitty's spiked chain dug deep into his shoulders. Danny hurdled forward end over end until he came down on top of Vlad's roof. With a grunt he pushed himself to his hands and knees, struggling against the pain of the gashes in his back. No time to recover, Johnny was already bringing his bike around again.
Danny climbed up to a crouching position, watching as the bike roared toward him. Kitty whipped the chain around her head, building momentum for a violent swing just as they got within range. Danny leapt into the air in a backwards summersault, flinging both arms down with a brilliant flash of blue ghost energy. The bike sputtered and roared as a thick sheet of ice coated its entire frame, freezing its wheels and gears in place.
Danny floated to a stop as the bike hurtled uselessly toward the ground. A quick burst of his Ghost Sense made Danny whirl, raising his glowing green hands in front of him. He stopped dead when he found himself staring down the barrel of some kind of gun that was leaking electricity into the air around them. Right behind the barrel shone Tucker's ghostly red eyes.
Sam watched the battle with her hands clasped in front of her. She always hated this part. The watching and waiting. It was even worse now, knowing what was at stake and who Danny was fighting. Her eyes drifted downward from the sky battle to Jazz, who was kneeling down behind the balcony railing for a moment. When she emerged she was holding a massive ecto-cannon perched on her shoulder with a broad grin on her face.
"Danny! DANNY!" Sam tried to scream, but Danny was too caught up in his ghost troubles. Sam looked around frantically for anything to throw, then knelt down and pulled off one of her thick steel-toed boots. She whirled it around her head for a moment before spinning and letting it arc through the air toward the building.
Jazz yelped when the boot slammed into her cannon, causing it to discharge straight into the bottom of her balcony with a deafening crash. The floor caved in underneath her, leaving her dangling halfway through the floor, clutching at it desperately so she wouldn't fall through.
Sam ran toward the house, scaling the front steps and leaping easily over the hole in the patio to get inside. She stopped in the front entranceway, which was directly under the upstairs balcony. She could see Jazz's legs kicking, trying to get back up on the second floor. Sam marched up to her ankles and grabbed hold of them, yanking them away from the hole viciously. Jazz screamed as her hands slipped straight off of the floorboards upstairs, bringing her crashing down to the first floor with a sickening thump and a gasp of pain.
"How can you try to hurt Danny!?" Sam shouted. "Come on Jazz! You're smarter than this! You're stronger than this!"
Jazz slowly raised her head, facing away from Sam as she slid up to her hands and knees. "You're right, slut..." She slowly turned her head around. The bright, glowing red pools of ecto energy in her eyes caused Sam to recoil in shock. "I am stronger!" She whirled suddenly with supernatural speed, lunging straight at Sam with her arms outstretched and her hands glowing violet.
Danny howled as he flew back through the air, his inert form skipping over the sand for several steps before finally rolling to a stop. His body was twitching with electricity as he tried to roll to his feet. Tucker was floating after him slowly, the weapons in his hands rolling and shifting from electrical cannons to some strange tubes from which a pair of ectoplasmic ropes flew towards him.
Danny raised his arms, putting up his ecto shield to block the ropes and throwing his arms out to break them both in one jerk. "Tucker! The others may be just ghosts! But YOU'RE not! You're my friend, Tucker!"
Tucker didn't respond as the rods in his hands shifted again into a pair of prongs the length of his arms. He touched them together in front of them, a massive jolt of lightning passing between the two metal points. At his sides Danny could also see Ember rejoining the fight, and beside her Johnny and Kitty moved to join them on foot, since Johnny's bike was still a useless hunk of ice.
Danny raised his hands in front of him as Kitty and Ember both attacked at once. He managed to slip past Kitty's slashing claw, but the tip of Ember's swinging guitar got him in the stomach, knocking him back. He fired two ecto-blasts, but they both leaned back in unison as if reenacting a famous movie scene. They didn't bother getting back up as Johnny and Tucker took their place, stepping into the fray.
Johnny swung a clumsy fist, unable to summon his Shadow in the fading sunlight. Danny blocked it easily and blasted him back with a bolt to the stomach, but a blast of lightning from Tucker's rods caught him off-guard. Danny hurtled back through the air with a pained scream, rolling from the sand straight into the gentle ocean waves that crawled up and down the beach.
Ember stepped forward and raised one hand, bringing it down on her guitar strings with a theatrical flare. Tucker raised his lightning rods at the same time, his electrical energy catching onto Ember's powerful sound wave to ride together toward the ocean, where Danny struggled to clear his head from the last blast.
Sam flew back through one of the thin wooden doors that served decorative purposes more than functional ones. She fell to her back amid the splinters of the door, doubling over and coughing in pain on the floor. She tried to roll to her hands and knees, looking up as Jazz pushed the remains of the door aside, raising one glowing violet hand in front of her with a wry grin.
"But you're... you're not a ghost. You're not." Sam complained.
"Why little slut..." Jazz smirked mockingly. "Didn't you know? All you need is a ghost inside of you." She raised her hand to her head, closing her eyes. "Ghostly DNA, a free spirit, ectoplasm, whatever you feel like calling it. The human body can tap into it... it's what we're all truly made of, after all. On the inside." She opened her eyes, grinning down at Sam. "And Vlad was kind enough to give me the glorious gift of his own ectoplasm... so much of it." She lowered both of her hands to her stomach, cradling it tenderly in both hands with a loving smile.
Sam watched her for a moment, then twisted her face in disgust. "Eeeeewe. And you call me 'slut'? At Least I LIKE Danny."
"Shut up!" Jazz howled.
"Hey, calm down." Sam raised her hands in front of her, slowly rising to her feet. "I don't mean to hurt you... I want to help you. This isn't you, at all. You would never do this. You would never do anything with Vlad, and you would never try to hurt Danny. I know you wouldn't. You'd try to help him even if he didn't want you to. You're a different person now, Jazz." She thought she saw Jazz's eyes quiver at that last statement, but it faded quickly.
"I know what I want to be, and I know what I will be. I also know what you will be, slut." Jazz raised her hands, the violet energy around them glowing brighter than before. "Dead." Sam raised her hands defensively in front of her, bracing for the coming assault. Suddenly the entire building began to rock to the side as a thunderous roar echoed through the vibrating walls.
Jazz ignored it, throwing herself forward as several ecto-blasts ripped through the walls of the building when Sam dodged off to the side, running through the swaying building and into one of the back rooms. She lurched deeper into the room, suddenly tripping to one side as the building began to rock again on its foundations, sending her stumbling sidelong into the wall with a heavy thud.
Jazz floated into the room after her with a wicked grin on her face, her fists pulsing with violet energy. "You can't run forever, slut. And you can't fight me now!" She thrust her palms out, sending several ecto-blasts flying at Sam. Sam shoved off of the wall, falling to the ground as the blasts ripped through the wall of the building behind her. The building was already swaying from the explosion outside, but this set it to leaning heavily to one side.
"Jazz! Stop! I don't want to fight you!" Sam shouted. She tried to stand up, but the building shuddered and leaned suddenly, tossing her to the ground again and sliding her against the wall. As she looked up, she could see the ceiling beginning to come down on top of her. "Jazz! Please! JAZZ!" Sam raised her arms over her head, trying to absorb the blow, though she knew she didn't have a chance.
The combined blast ripped into the ocean in a massive explosion that rocked the summer home down to its very foundation. Ember, Tucker, Johnny and Kitty gathered at the water's edge as the ocean spray rained down around them. Their ghostly red eyes scanned the horizon, the air, anything for any sign of their target. But he seemed to have vanished.
Danny rose out of the sand behind them intangibly, sucking in a deep breath before letting it out all at once in a massive Ghostly Wail that kicked up the sand in an opaque wall. The four ghosts whirled, but the power being pushed into them was unstoppable, and one-by-one the ghosts were flung away from him into the ocean waters. Only Tucker managed to hold on, digging his lightning-rods into the sand and clinging to them to hold him in place, though he seemed to be getting weaker.
Danny's body flashed back to his human form when the Wail died down and he stumbled woozily, falling to his knees on the sand panting for breath. When he looked up he saw Tucker plucking his lightning rods out of the sand. Danny climbed to his feet and stumbled away as his best friend followed close, letting the electricity crackle and sparkle along the length of his two rods.
"Tucker... come on..." Danny pleaded as he stumbled on the sand and fell to his back. "Please, Tucker! You don't want to hurt me! Whatever control the Reaper has over you, you're still my friend! TUCKER!" Danny raised his hands in front of him as the lightning rods moved closer, almost close enough to touch his arms. Danny shivered on the sand, knowing without his powers he was completely at Tucker's mercy.
"You don't... need me." Tucker's voice said in a ghostly whisper. Danny opened his eyes slowly, seeing the red energy faded from his eyes, replaced with deep regret and sadness. "You don't need a friend anymore."
"What are you talking about, Tuck?" Danny stood up slowly, his arms still shaking.
"You have Sam..." Tucker sighed. "You don't need me now that you have her."
"Tuck, I..." Danny stopped when he heard a thunderous crash from behind him. He looked back quickly, seeing the remains of Vlad's summer home now lying in a jumbled pile of wood and concrete on top of the beach. Danny looked around the building, but couldn't see anyone anywhere. "J... Jazz? Sam? JAZZ! SAM!" Danny screamed and ran across the sand toward the building.
"SAM!" Danny slid to a stop in the sand and his body flashed with ghostly light, but it didn't solidify around his body. It dispersed into the air around him, leaving him a normal, helpless child standing before a pile of rubble and ruin. Still Danny threw himself against the pile, his hands ripping and pulling at the pieces of the building. His breath came in desperate gasps as he worked, his heart racing.
He clawed at the larger chunks of debris, desperately hauling one out of the way before moving onto shoveling smaller pieces away from the next big one. He heard Tucker float up in the air behind him. Danny whirled to look up at him frantically. "Tucker, help me!" Tucker looked away slowly, his eyes glossing over. "Damnit Tucker, if you don't want to do it for me then do it for them!"
"Maybe I don't want to." Tucker replied stubbornly, turning to look at Danny.
"Tucker... please..." Danny looked down and closed his eyes. "I know I haven't been a very good hero... or a very good friend. If I was either of those things you might be... might be..." He clenched his teeth and gulped back a sob as he continued. "And I'm sorry, Tucker! But I can't... we can't let Sam and Jazz die too! We can't! They don't deserve to die because I failed you."
Danny sighed deeply, opening his eyes to stare down at the sand uselessly. "I'm sorry I failed you and abandoned you. There's nothing I can do to make up for that, but let you do whatever you want to me. If you want ghostly revenge, fine... but do it after we save Sam and Jazz. Please." He raised his eyes to Tucker, watching the ghost look down at him with a thoughtful expression.
Suddenly Tucker turned to the building, raising the two lightning rods in front of him. They both shifted once again in his palms, reforming into a pair of powerful magnet-looking devices that exuded blue energy. The energy flashed outward into the building, engulfing the pieces of rubble and flinging them aside as if they were feathers. Danny watched anxiously, gripping his hands in front of him and looking for any sign of the girls.
At last Tucker heaved a massive piece of the roof out of the way, still intact and lying flat against the floor. There, underneath the section was a pair of bodies, miraculously untouched by the mess around them. Jazz was lying on top of Sam, her arms wrapped tightly around her. Their bodies were slightly transparent, as if somehow they had managed to go intangible.
Danny rushed through the rubble that remained and knelt down beside the two girls. Jazz opened her eyes weakly, then collapsed against Sam's chest with her eyes closed as their bodies returned fully to their normal state. Sam was panting heavily as if in shock, struggling to move Jazz off of her.
"Sam! Sam, you're okay! You're both okay!" Danny fell to his knees beside them, reaching out to wrap his arms around Sam's torso, pulling her head against his chest.
Sam coughed through the dust that continued to filter down around them. "Danny... Danny, I can't believe it." Sam gasped out through her coughs. Danny held her tightly against his chest, trying to calm her down with a hand against her cheek. "I'm alive... we're alive because of Jazz." She looked down at Danny's older sister. "She must've broken Vlad's control enough to save me..."
"Sam... Sam, Sam, Sam." Danny kissed her on the lips, as if eager to prove to himself that she was still alive.
Sam grunted in surprise, her fingers pushing at his face until he pulled back. "Hey, knock it off... you're getting mushy and this isn't the time." She blushed hotly. "We still have to get to the Reaper before he can absorb Vlad."
Danny blinked. "You're right... how much time do we have left?" Danny asked quickly.
Sam looked down at the watch on her left wrist, then closed her eyes. "Ten minutes." She looked up at Danny. Danny gulped and just stared back at her. "We have ten minutes before the Reaper absorbs Vlad."
"Time to party like it's 1999?" Danny smiled weakly.
Sam smiled back and put one hand on his shoulder, allowing him to lift her off the ground. Sam was careful to hold Jazz up until she could get her arms underneath her to cradle her against her chest. Danny put a hand on Sam's shoulder to support her as they moved away from the debris, out through the path Tucker had carved. To Danny's surprise Tucker was gone by the time they emerged, but Ember, Johnny and Kitty were just leaving the ocean, back to their old selves.
"Geeze, what the heck happened to me?" Ember stretched her back out with a crack. "One second I'm lying in bed, the next I'm sleeping with the fishes."
"Deja-Vu, huh?" Kitty smirked. Ember glared over at her.
"Hey, what're you doing here and... my bike!" Johnny screamed when he saw his bike frozen on the sand. One wheel had popped off on impact and was currently floating somewhere out in the ocean. "What did you do to my bike!?"
"It's over." Danny announced. All eyes turned back to him, even Johnny's rants about his busted bike died away as he spoke. "We've lost... the Reaper's won. In five minutes now, he'll be able to absorb Vlad. He'll destroy everything, and everyone in the human world to create a second Ghost Zone." The ghosts exchanged a silent glance while Danny shook his head. "In five minutes, the world is going to end."
TO BE CONTINUED