Disclaimer: I do not own 'Danny Phantom' or any of the characters, concepts etc. Those are owned by Butch Hartman/Nickelodeon, I believe. I make no claim to anything in this story, it is a perspective with hypothetical scenarios added in.
[AN: And here's the next one, Nocturne. Enjoy!/AN]
Nocturne is a curious foe. He's a powerful emotiphage, but he augments his own abilities with the substantial use of technology, in direct contrast to most innately powerful ghosts.
His powers all revolve around sleep, specifically intense periods of neural activity found during the main segments of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) Sleep.
In other words, dreams.
As an emotiphage, he draws most of his power from emitted neural energy, but unlike most emotiphages, he does not seek to generate fear or despair in his targets, instead, he induces REM sleep in his victim and then holds them there, manipulating their subconscious and generating a steady stream of pleasant dreams.
While this may not sound particularly threatening, it is actually extremely insidious. The human body begins to wither and decay if it is not used for long periods of time and REM sleep is a surprisingly taxing process to maintain. And since sleeping individuals don't eat or drink, they will eventually perish, often in less than a week.
Of course, REM sleep normally resolves itself naturally during sleep and it is the main portion that results in you feeling well rested afterwards; without it, sleeping would be rather ineffective. But Nocturne weakly overshadows his victims and holds them in this state. Since it is only a weak hold, a surge of adrenaline, such as from a nightmare or a sudden fright, is enough to break out of the induced state, but this is why he ensures all dreams are positive; it ensures you can never wake yourself up.
Additionally, he also commands a veritable army of simplistic ghosts known as 'Sleepwalkers'. These creatures are relatively weak and show no signs of independent thought, but what they lack in ability, they make up for in numbers. Nocturne's ability to manifest these creatures appears to be directly linked to how much energy he is receiving, and he uses them to gather more victims and protect himself, rarely fighting personally. We think they may actually be manifestations of his previous victims, weak and powerless without him to direct them; if so then the implications are… unpleasant, to say the least, based on their sheer numbers.
When he first attacked Amity Park, he came with a complex array of receivers and transmitters that allowed him to use his abilities to affect the entire town's populace in one go, while also protecting the affected individuals from outside interference.
It seems, however, that he spread his powers slightly to thin. He had captured and moved Danny deep into the Ghost Zone after inducing the Dream State, but that distance and the strain of the focus required to manipulate the rest of the town allowed a slip of control that forced Danny out of that state and allowed him to eventually defeat Nocturne, with our help.
We got rather lucky that time, and Nocturne hasn't tried a similar attack again, but when people started showing up at Amity General in a near-comatose state with no obvious cause, we quickly discovered Nocturne had returned with a more subtle plan. We now keep a careful watch for similar reports in other cities and countries, just in case he tries to pick a new feeding ground.
[AN: Not much to say really, I'm trying to stick as close to weekly updates as possible, but there's always stuff that gets in the way. It's also limiting my ability to reply to Reviews, so if I take a while or miss you completely, please accept my apologies, it's not intentional.
Thank you once again and I hope you continue to enjoy the chapters. /AN]