Twenty-five

Amity Park

"Jazz!" Danny grinned. "Nice timing."

Jazz raised the bazooka and got up from the grass. "Anytime. And Sam is—"

"Right behind you." Sam was brandishing a Fenton Wrist Ray, one of her favorite weapons. "Please tell me you left some of him for me."

Danny couldn't help but smile. Damn, she looked hot when she was out to kick some otherworldly ass. "Yeah, there's still plenty of him left, unfortunately, and I'm sure he'll be back any second." He frowned. "But what happened to your parents?"

"I left them back in the parking lot, where I'm sure they're trying to figure out how to ground me beyond my natural life. But never mind them. What can we do to help?"

"I need to get Tucker and Val free. You two stay here and keep an eye out for Future Boy to return." Then, he flew back to where Tucker and Valerie were still immobilized by the fields of ectoplasm that his future self had trapped them in.

"Nice of you to finally remember us," Val said.

"Yeah, well, I was a little busy." He shot a blast of ice at Tucker, crystallizing the energy field so it would be brittle enough to break. "Okay, that should—"

Out of nowhere, a bolt of green energy hit him in the shoulder, knocking him to the ground. But it didn't come from the direction Jazz had blasted his future self, and it wasn't a ghost ray. It was from a weapon. Someone had shot him. He heard Sam and Jazz call out his name in alarm, but he was more concerned with who had blasted him. Rolling over, he looked in the direction the shot had come from… and groaned. "You have got to be kidding me."

Sam's parents were standing near Tucker and Val, both aiming ecto-weapons at him. Surprisingly, they looked like they knew what they were doing. Danny started to get to his feet, but Mr. Manson waved what looked like a Fenton Phaser in his direction. "Don't move, unless you want more of the same, you… ghost!"

"Mr. and Mrs. Manson, don't!" Tucker shouted, looking as if he was trying to wave his hands to stop them, but Danny hadn't quite broken through the energy field yet, and he couldn't make any large movements.

"DANNY!" Sam dashed up from behind. "What happened? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, but could you tell Bonnie and Clyde over there I'm one of the good guys?" Once more, he started to get up, but the whine of the Fenton Phaser powering up stopped him.

"I SAID DON'T MOVE!"

Sam gasped as she finally saw her parents. "Dad?" Then, her eyes widened as she realized what was happening, and she dove in front of Danny. "NO! Leave him alone!"

"Get away from him, Samantha!" Mrs. Manson shouted, stepping up beside her husband and brandishing a Fenton Blaster, which was slightly larger than the weapon Mr. Manson had. "He was attacking your friend Tucker!"

Sam grunted in exasperation. "Have you completely lost your minds?"

"Samantha Manson, STEP AWAY FROM THE GHOST BOY!" Her father looked furious.

"NO! I will not let you hurt him!"

With Sam standing in their line of fire, Danny was finally able to get up and back over to Tucker. He punched his fist into the frozen energy field around him, cracking it, and then Tucker was free. With teeth chattering, he slapped Danny on the back. "Thanks, dude, but man, that's cold!"

"See?" Danny looked at the Mansons. "Good guy."

"Where on earth did you get those weapons?" Sam asked, aghast, while Danny, still careful to keep her between him and her parents, aimed his ice ray at the ecto-field surrounding Valerie.

"From the Fentons' speeder-rocket thing," Mr. Manson replied, still not letting down his guard. "If you think we're going to let our little girl go charging off to fight with ghosts, you've got another think coming, young lady! Now for the last time, step away from that Ghost Boy!"

A quick kick from Danny shattered the frozen ecto-field around Valerie, and she wiped the debris off her suit. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there still a big, ugly ghost out there that needs a good butt-kicking?"

Danny nodded. "Yeah, we need to go help—" A scream cut him off. "JAZZ!"

Behind them, Danny's future self was barreling toward them. Jazz was shooting at him with her Bazooka, but he got off a shot of his own and knocked the weapon from her shoulder. He then sent a storm of ectoplasm in their direction, which Danny countered with a shield. "Try and get him from behind while I hold him off!" he shouted at Valerie, Tucker, and Sam.

Valerie shot off on her sled, looping around and targeting him from behind, while Sam and Tucker each fired at him from the side. While the four of them kept Phantom busy, Jazz ran to retrieve her weapon.

"Wh-what is that thing?" Mr. Manson asked, and Danny realized that he probably hadn't seen many truly powerful ghosts.

"That would be the bad guy. Just stay behind me and—"

The assault stopped abruptly as Phantom switched his energy to shield himself from the three-sided attack. Then, he went invisible.

"Where'd he go?" Tucker called out.

Danny looked around. "Crud. I don't know. He doesn't set off my Ghost Sense for some reason."

"Let me see if my sensors pick him up." Valerie held out her left arm and a viewscreen popped up out of her gauntlet. She tapped a few keys below it.

The clattering of footsteps and the whine of more ecto-weapons drew Danny's attention behind him as his parents and Mr. Gray burst into view from the glade of trees behind the Mansons. "Kids!" Danny's dad sounded ready for action. "Where's the spectral scum? Jazzy-pants said he was a real dangerous one."

"Daaaad!"

Danny ignored his sister's protest and answered his father. "We don't know. He disappeared."

"He's not showing up on my scanners," Valerie said. "Think we scared him off?"

"I doubt it. He's not gonna be happy until…" Danny decided he didn't want to finish that thought.

"Valerie Elizabeth Gray! I do not remember giving you permission to use that suit!" Mr. Gray looked ready to kill Valerie, and the fact that he was holding a Fenton Bazooka over his shoulder wasn't helping.

"Valerie? That's Valerie?" Mrs. Manson asked in surprise.

Danny's mom noticed the Mansons for the first time. "Pam? Jeremy? What are you doing here?" Then, she noticed their weapons. "Is that a Fenton Blaster?"

They never got a chance to answer. Danny's dark counterpart burst up out of the ground in the middle of them, turning visible and tangible as soon as he was clear. Before anyone could recover from the surprise to get a weapon aimed, he'd blasted out with another random storm of ectoplasm, sending all of them diving for cover. Danny couldn't get a shield up fast enough, and Phantom blasted him aside, knocking him to the ground. He then struck out with one of his ecto-coils, but Danny's face was half ground into the dirt, and he couldn't tell whom Phantom was going for until he heard Valerie scream, "DADDY!"

Danny got up as fast as he could, but Tucker was closer. He dove head first, knocking Mr. Gray to the ground, and the coil whipped past over their heads.

Everything was chaos after that. Valerie, enraged, attacked from above, while Sam knelt down low and shot at him with her Wrist Ray.

"Let's see how you like being blasted back where you came from, spook!" Danny's father called out and, as he aimed his Bazooka, Danny realized what he meant.

"No, wait! Don't use the Ghost Portal setting! We've gotta capture him, not suck him into the Ghost Zone. He's the one who destroyed Clockwork's Tower!"

Phantom howled in rage from behind the shield he'd created for himself. "You don't listen! I didn't destroy Clockwork's Tower!" The shield blew apart, turning from defensive shield to offensive blast and, once more, they had to duck for cover. Another of his coils shot out, and Danny hurtled himself at his future counterpart but, before he could get there, the green rope-like tendril of energy had found its target—Jazz. It knocked her Bazooka out of her hands and wrapped around her torso and, with a flick of his wrist, Phantom had pulled her up against his chest and held her there with his other arm.

Everyone stopped shooting, and Danny's mom screamed out Jazz's name.

Phantom looked half-crazed. "EVERYONE BACK THE HELL OFF!"

Danny stopped short. "Let. Her. Go."

"Not until you listen to me!"

"You don't need to do this. They don't have to die for you to exist. But I promise you, if you so much as scratch her, you will wish you didn't exist."

Jazz struggled in his grasp, defiant. "Don't worry about me, Danny. Just kick his butt!"

Phantom jerked his arm up closer toward her neck. "Careful, big sister. I don't need you. I just need him." He glared at Danny.

"Fine. Let her go, and you can have me."

There was a gasp from their mom, but she didn't say anything, and Danny kept his focus on his future self, who scoffed at him. "Oh, please. If I let her go, everyone starts blasting me. I don't think so. We're gonna do this my way because, as much as it disgusts me to have to say it, I need your help."

Danny's eyebrow arched. "My help? To do what? Take down more of the Ghost Zone, like you did to Clockwork's Tower? Not gonna happen."

"I told you, that wasn't me. Think about it. How do you think I got out of the Thermos? It was destroyed from the outside by the ghost who did take down Clockwork. We need to team up to defeat him."

Danny gave him an incredulous look. "You have got to be kidding me. I'm supposed to believe you care what happened to Clockwork? Or anybody who isn't you?" Although he had to admit, the part about the Thermos being destroyed from the outside did sort of make sense.

"Don't be stupid. Of course I don't care what happened to Clockwork. Good riddance to the old meddler, I say. But I have worse enemies than Clockwork—or rather, we have worse enemies—and somehow in this screwed up parallel time stream that you created, one of them became more powerful than any ghost I've ever seen, with some sort of energy that goes way beyond ectoplasm. Why do you think you've gotten even this close to holding me off? I'm still weak from breaking out of his containment field. Think about what that means, for a ghost to have those kind of powers. To be more powerful than me, and I'm twice the ghost the others are, if you know what I mean." There was an evil glint to his eye, and Danny shuddered. "You, Danny, whether you like it or not, are half of who I am. You and I together—we'd be three times the ghost. We can take him down. All you have to do is team up with me."