"I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better."
― Maya Angelou
"Ready?" Jack called from across the lab. Maddie bucked herself into the driver's seat of the Specter Speeder and gave him a thumbs up.
He threw a switch on the control board built into the wall. With a pneumatic hiss and the rumbling of hidden machinery, the massive black and yellow-striped shield doors parted, bathing the half-repaired lab in lurid, flickering green. Shadows stretched long and restless toward the back wall.
The hair on Maddie's neck prickled, even under her suit and behind the Speeder's specially coated windshield. The portal swirled before her, huge and glaring and altogether alien. She pulled her goggles over her eyes. It was time.
They had done all the preparations they could on short notice, spending a week repairing the speeder and other necessary gear, only breaking for coffee or to catch a few hours of sleep.
Preliminary tests had confirmed the Ghost Zone had a breathable atmosphere—remarkably high in oxygen and with no prevalent toxins—though neither of them were eager to learn what prolonged exposure to diffused ecto-particles might do to the human body.
Once, Maddie had glanced up to find Sam Manson watching them from the shadow of the staircase. The girl had looked torn, as if she couldn't decide whether to announce herself or not. She'd looked angry.
The anger, at least, Maddie understood. The horrified look Sam had turned on her in Danny's hospital room stood out sharp in her memory. Sam had always been an opinionated girl, seeing things in lines of black and white, right and wrong. Maddie had liked that passion and desire for justice, seeing them as qualities that would serve Sam well later in life.
That was before. Maddie had been so comfortable in her own assumptions, had believed herself perfectly ethical. A good person. She'd never imagined Sam's wrath would turn on her, and with good reason.
Maddie had set down her tools, steeling herself for an ugly confrontation. but before she could stand, the girl had turned away and stalked out. A conversation delayed, not prevented. Maddie would have to face Danny's friend sooner or later. This came first. Finding Danny came first.
Slipping her hands over the controls, Maddie started the engine. The speeder lifted off the laboratory floor with a smooth purr. Jack thumbed the DNA lock, setting the portal to remain open, then dashed over and jumped into the passenger seat. He grinned at her, leaning forward.
Maddie smiled back. This was the first scientific exploration into the Ghost Zone after all. Even rushed and distracted, it marked a huge step forward in their research. And Danny might be there.
She waited to hear Jack's seatbelt click, then gunned it. The Specter Speeder surged forward and right through the glowing green heart of the portal.
A cool shock ran through her, and the big glass windshield filled with bright green
"Woah," Jack shook himself.
In another second they had cleared the portal and were gliding through a vast open space, dark and laced with twisting, electric green clouds that seemed to spiral into infinity.
"Woah," Jack said again, this time in an awed whisper.
"It's incredible," Maddie barely paid attention to where she was driving as she stared out the curved glass of the forward window. There was no end, no horizon, just layer on layer of twining, gaseous structures. Dark spaces of clotted purple. Bright patches, like nebulas. In every direction, even down, one shape sprawled into another in an eerie kaleidoscope of green.
"Yeah," Jack pressed nose to glass on the other side. "It's like a radioactive swamp in space! Look at all that raw ectoplasm; it's twisting into stratified cloud formations. It's so much more structural than we expected. We thought it would be more of a sea."
"I know! Look there, in the distance." She guided the speeder over a sweeping arm of electric green cloud and pointed. "Is it just me or are those… islands of some kind?"
Dark, ragged shapes stood out against the ambient glow, apparently suspended in midair. Gravity still existed here, at least in the sense that Jack and Maddie weren't floating out of their seats, but obviously some extra-dimensional physics were in play.
Maddie turned the speeder toward the nearest structure, and soon an island-sized hunk of rock took shape, without any visible support, its base tapering into a jagged point like an inverted mountain. They swooped up to the flat side and skimmed just over the surface, the repulsors on the speeders kicking up a pool of purplish dust.
Jack tapped at the scanners. "It's reading as a solid mass—and not ectoplasmic, though there's plenty of the stuff phased right into it. Density's just like basalt. Crazy stuff."
"Where did it come from?" She frowned at the images on the screen. "This dimension doesn't have planets permeated by minerals, let alone the kind of heat that would create igneous rock—it can't be indigenous." The Ghost Zone by its very nature was amorphous and gravitationally inconsistent— it didn't possess the sheer kinetic mass that had so explosively laced their universe with heat and gravitational dynamics.
Jack snapped his fingers. "Remember when that Pariah Dark character showed up and the entire town got zapped here? There had to be other incidents like that! Portals forming naturally underground and acting like sinkholes, 'curses' where powerful ghosts shifted the dimensional barrier like Dark. I bet there's all kinds of interdimensional junk in here."
It was a little eerie to think about; bits of the earth eaten away over eons by this shapeless dimension, a space that had no natural mineral or organic resources. Just like it skimmed the electromagnetic fields from dying humans. For a moment in her mind's eye, Maddie saw a huge, gaunt scavenger bird, hunched over the earth and tearing it away piece by piece. The idea was ridiculous, of course, entirely unscientific. But she couldn't help the chill that ran up her spine as they coasted across the silent, lifeless plain of this little island.
Fanciful anthropomorphisms aside, it was still an amazing sight; neither of them had imagined anything this structural within the ghost zone.
The Pariah Dark crisis had been their first and only glimpse into this dimension, vague and distorted beyond the shield: A dark expanse that swallowed up the sky, isolating them from any help except their own ingenuity. They'd been racing against the clock, keeping the ghost shield running at top capacity, scrambling to finish the Ecto-Skeleton, all the time worrying about that fundamental, fatal flaw in the technology. In the confusion, Phantom had—
Maddie slammed on the brakes.
"What? What is it?" Jack looked around, reaching for a blaster. "Ghosts already?"
Phantom. Danny. She stared at Jack with wide eyes. "Jack! It was Danny who stole the ecto-skeleton."
Jack frowned, puzzled. Then he paled. "Sufferin'... you're right. Danny took on Pariah Dark with that faulty old prototype—and beat him." He sat back in his seat and let out a long breath. "That was Danny."
As people scattered back to their homes the next day, it became apparent that Danny was missing. A full-scale search had just gotten underway when Vlad had strolled in, the unconscious teen bundled in his arms. Maddie's eyes narrowed. Knowing what she knew now, she was sure Vlad hadn't so innocently 'found him outside of town.'
Danny had been headachy and exhausted for days. The doctors could only shrug and label it as 'ghost-related anemia.' There had been a lot of strange injuries over those two days of siege. No one thought much of it, not even Maddie and Jack, even with the symptoms of overusing their exoskeleton staring them right in the face.
Jack ran his hands over his face, brows knitting into one worried line. "Danny's lucky his nervous system didn't fry. He could've killed himself! When he gets back that boy is so grounded."
"Grounded?" She laughed, dropping her head into her hands. "For what, saving our lives?"
"He's a teenager, for gosh's sake!
"A teenager who put on a dangerous suit and flew off to fight a ghost big enough to warp two dimensions."
"That's no excuse for being so goshdarn reckless." he muttered, crossing his arms. "I'll take away his cell phone, for starters. That kid goes through those things like wet toilet paper."
Jack paused. They looked at each other, considering.
Danny constantly came home with dented, smashed, and cracked cell phones, or empty-handed and telling them sheepishly that he'd "lost" another one. If they hadn't been so adamant on keeping in touch with their children she and Jack would have stopped buying them.
"Ghost fights?" Jack ventured.
"Probably," Maddie agreed, feeling numb.
"Agh," Jack scrubbed at his hair, leaving tufts of white sticking out behind his ears as if he'd jammed his finger into an electrical socket. "It's like everything I remember from the last two years is all wrong. I keep thinking of things 'that ghost' Phantom did and I have to remember it was Danny doing all those things. And then the things Danny did are all different because he was hiding ghost hunting. It's like trying to think backwards and forwards at the same time."
The cell phones hadn't been all, or even the worst of it.
Maddie remembered sorting through laundry, finding ripped jeans, scorched t-shirts, and once or twice, spots of blood. Danny had always laughed it off, saying he'd tripped or played too rough in the park. He'd blame the scorch marks on Jack's latest explosion and promise to be more careful. Fentons weren't strangers to weird stains and skinned knees.
Maddie wracked her brain, wondering if there had ever been a definite sign, something that should've tipped her off. She didn't remember. Most days she was more scientist than housewife; with so many formulas and diagrams buzzing through her brain, laundry was often the last thing on her mind.
"It's frightening," she whispered. "Danny was in danger all that time and what did we see?"
She ran her thumbs over the rough grips of the Speeder's controls and bit her lip. The Ghost Zone wound out around her, vast and strange, bathing them both in sickly green light, distorting her husband's familiar face with strange shadows.
The Phantom she had known in the lab had talked about this place as if it were a neighborhood — chaotic yet familiar, full of ghostly lairs in set living spaces—something she could barely begin to connect to the alien wilderness surrounding them. He must have come here dozens of times.
She couldn't picture her Danny—sometimes lazy, sometimes timid— doing that. Yet he had. He'd faced ghosts, and visited their lairs—as far from lazy and timid as you could get. That was the real Danny.
"We don't even know him," Maddie said, realizing the truth of it as she said it. "Not really."
Jack reached over and tapped the autopilot, then took Maddie's hands in his. "Maybe…" he frowned, thinking. "Maybe we don't know ghosts as well as we thought. But I do know Fentons. Fentons have a smart streak, but we're total fools, especially for things like fudge and strong women." Blue eyes crinkled at the corners and he gave her a crooked smile. "Fentons are lousy with putting down toilet seats and saying what they mean, but great with ghost hunting! And super great on protecting people! Sound like any half-ghost kids you know?"
"I'm know that." She looked up at him, smiling a little. "It's just… The more we learn about Danny, the more awful it gets. What if Pariah Dark wasn't the worst thing Danny faced? What else has he been carrying around all this time?"
"Mads, you have to stop this."
"Stop what? Caring? If you haven't noticed he put himself in danger without us even noticing! Deadly danger! From us, as much as anything out here!"
"That's not what I meant. I'm talking about this." He gestured widely, making the tiny craft wobble. "This thing we're doing now. Fretting."
"I'm open to suggestions," she sighed, massaging her forehead. "This is exhausting."
"I mean, as Jack Fenton, dad, I never want Danny to leave the house again, and lecture him on how dumb and dangerous all this has been. I wanna keep him safe. But Jack Fenton, ghost hunter, really likes all the cool stuff Phantom did." He squeezed her hands, then sat back, looking off into the far green skyscape that stretched out before them. Green lights played in his blue eyes. "Danny's our son, but he's also a ghost hunter. A darn good one. In our line of work, things get gnarly, but we rely on our know-how and we get through it. Danny knew what he was doing, mostly. He came through it."
"Mostly," Maddie echoed.
Their eyes met as they considered the void of harrowing possibilities that allowed. Not even possibilities. Facts. They both knew where 'mostly' had ended. Danny Fenton, ghost hunter. Half-ghost ghost hunter. Subject Phantom. Experiment 0014.
An alarm went off on the dashboard, its shrill beeps breaking the silence. Jack turned, flicking a few switches and scanning the open space outside the Speeder. "We've got incoming. Looks like three or four mid-level ghosts. The anti-ecto coating'll deflect little blasts, but we'd better rev up the big guns for when they—"
"Wait," Maddie said, touching his arm. "Let's... " she hesitated. "Let's not start up the cannons. Let's try talking to them first."
Jack "But Mads, they're ghosts."
"Like Danny."
"Full ghosts." Jack scowled out at the shifting green void that surrounded them. "These creeps don't have a human half stabilizing 'em. They could go nuts just like that."
"Not all of them want to hurt people," she said quietly. "Danny told me that."
He glanced at her, startled. "Danno did?"
"At the lab."
Jack's eyes dropped to the floor. "You talked with him, huh."
Maddie wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly self-conscious. Jack had never asked her to explain what had happened with Danny at the lab, something she'd been deeply grateful for, though she'd chalked it up to his focus on the search. She realized now that he'd wondered. Of course he wondered. He was just too kind to ask.
"A little," she admitted. "He had a lot to say about ghosts, defending them mostly. Though I didn't… I didn't really listen. Not… not at first. Otherwise I would never have…" Maddie broke off, hugging herself. She turned to stare out the side window, though her eyes fixed on the vague orange reflection the glass. "We have to face it, Jack. In some ways he knew ghosts far better than we do."
A long silence. The alarm shrilled on, the beeps blurring into each other as ecto-entities drew close. Jack coughed, clearing his throat, and she heard a soft whine, the ecto-cannons powering down.
"I guess you're right," he said. "Darn risky though. I don't want you getting hurt, Mads."
"We'll be careful." She mustered a smile and touched the ectogun strapped to her waist. "All I want is to give them a chance." It's what Danny would want… she hoped.
"A chance to shoot first, you mean," Jack grumbled, but he flicked the safety onto the weapons console and got up. They stepped out of the speeder and onto the crumbling purple dust of the bare, rocky island. They could see the ghosts in the distance now, four riders on two oversized motorcycles that blazed down a streak of cloud as if it were a cosmic highway.
At first Maddie thought that the ghosts would pass them by, but then she saw the bikes make a curving loop and dive toward the far edge of the island. They kicked up twin plumes of purple dust as they made a beeline toward the Speeder.
Maddie's fingers twitched, itching for a blaster. Even if it was the right thing to do, she'd feel much more confident with a cool hard weapon in her hands. Jack gave her arm a quick squeeze. She straightened, determined. This was for Danny. They had to change how they approached the ghost world—Danny's world—and that began here. She just hoped they survived the first step.
Danny stepped off the local bus line just a few stops down from Shannon's house, emerging into the bright afternoon sunshine. A few early fall leaves scattered around his feet on the sidewalk, and he took a deep breath of the cool air, tilting his face toward the sun as he walked down the street.
Shannon had sent him to the convenience store with a couple of twenties and a list of last-minute groceries, though he suspected it was mostly to get him out of the way while she worked on the big dinner she was hosting.
In the chaos of her cooking he'd been able to slip a second up of real coffee past Shannon (she kept trying to make him go decaf), and the extra energy buzzed pleasantly in his head. Even his ghost core felt renewed, a hopeful spot of cold right next to his heart.
A little black shadow detached itself from a nearby trash can and wound its way around his legs; he slowed and pushed a little ectoplasmic energy into his ankles. He felt the brush of phantom fur, vibrating with an unhearable purr. Then the shade slipped off and vanished down an alley.
Danny paused to watch it go; he wondered if giving it energy was actually a bad idea—prolonging its haunting. Maybe. He couldn't help wanting to make it a little less lonely. It's not like he was much use for anything else...
He brushed off the gloomy thought. He was getting better. At least, his hand was.
Another flurry of wind swept down the street, scattering the leaves and a few crumpled paper cups. Danny shivered. He'd left his sweatshirt at Shannon's. His backpack too, he realized belatedly. For a split second he froze, struck by sudden panic, reflexively twisting around to scan the street behind him. Empty, except for an elderly woman with a shopping bag, who scuttled into a nearby shop as another gust of wind swept down the street. Goosebumps raised on Danny's arm, but just from the cold.
"Don't be so paranoid, Fentwerp," he muttered to himself, turning around and shoving his hands deep into his pockets. His ghost sense hadn't so much as twinged in over a month.
Maybe Vlad really was gone.
The fruit loop had made big news a week or so ago—Enigmatic Billionaire Vanishes. The police had turned the mansion inside out and couldn't find a lead. No note, no ransom, no will, nothing. Danny scowled and dug his nails into the lining of his pockets, walking a little faster.
He wouldn't put it past Vlad to fake it just to draw him out of hiding, but... they were breaking up the estate now. He couldn't imagine Vlad giving up on all the stuff he'd hoarded up — especially that stupid cheesy castle.
Halfas made plenty of enemies, inside the Ghost Zone and out.
Danny shuddered. He almost hoped Vlad was laying some kind of trap. At least that meant he wasn't making his own visit to some underground lab somewhere, with the GIW playing host. Even Vlad didn't deserve that.
Not that Danny could help, if he had been caught.
Right now he didn't even qualify as a ghost. He was just some stray loser kid with defunct ghost powers, out to buy napkins and potato chips for a completely mundane dinner.
...and, guilty as that thought made him, he kind of liked it that way.
This dinner was for a football game, officially, and would involve a handful of people Danny barely knew. Shannon, as she hefted a fifteen-pound turkey into the sink, had cheerfully dubbed it "practice Thanksgiving." A few of Shannon's co-workers were coming, plus some people from the clinic—Frank, the director Danny had never met, Dr. Wagner, a female doctor named Regina whom he'd seen a couple of times, Nicki and her little sister Liz.
The last time he'd been around that many people, newscasters were trying to get his "survival story." Not that they'd gotten much of one— a skinny kid staring off into space barely made the local channels. This was different though— most of them didn't know who he was, or really care. And again, he kind of liked it. Danny had plans to load up his plate and possibly swipe a pie and hide out with Harley, who'd been banished to the back porch.
After he'd bought the chips. And maybe another cup of coffee.
Danny stepped into the corner store—and froze as a gun pointed at his chest.
He took in the scene with one quick glance: An ashen-faced girl stood behind the counter to the left of the entrance, pushing twenties into a paper guy behind the gun wore a black sweatshirt, gloves and jeans, shortish and thickest. He had sneakers, threadbare ones with a toe sticking out of the right one. The lower half of his face was covered with a blue bandanna. His eyes darted between Danny and the clerk as he held the gun extended in two hands.
Black glass littered the floor; the security camera in the ceiling was a mess of splintered plastic and wires. Lucky.
The door swung shut behind him, the bells attached to it chiming. Nobody moved.
"Wow," Danny said, carefully casual, "They didn't tell me you were having a blowout sale."
Both the robber and the girl getting robbed stared at him. Arguably, this was a stupid thing to do. Danny had a track record of doing stupid things.
The man in the bandanna stalked toward Danny, gun still raised, though when the girl behind the counter flinched, he flicked it in her direction, a wordless threat. He stopped with the barrel inches from Danny's face. "You think you're funny, kid?"
"Nah," Danny replied easily, inching just a tiny bit closer to a shelf full of oversized pickle jars. "I'm usually a lot funnier."
"You might be funnier with a bullet in your brain," the guy snarled, earning a whimper from the girl behind the counter. "Keep putting away those twenties, blondie."
Danny locked eyes above the mask, and realized this guy wasn't much older than Danny himself. The mask didn't hide the acne still marking his cheeks that peeked out over the rough blue cloth. He had grey eyes, bloodshot and darkly circled. Maybe he'd been losing sleep. Not a good thing to mix with deadly weapons.
A few months ago Danny could've gone invisible, possessed the guy, and flown three blocks away before anyone realized anything had happened. Totally impossible now; he'd have to work with what he had.
Danny focused on the cool point in his chest and pulled, phasing out of tangibility. Familiar, tingling numbness blurred the sounds around him: the hum of drink coolers, the girl's panicked breathing, cars swishing by oblivious outside. The caffeine buzz vanished, replaced with another piercing headache.
Danny kept his eyes on the gun.
"You picked the wrong day to buy a candy bar," the guy snarled. His eyes kept darting from Danny to the girl, back and forth. It gave him a wild look, like a dog showing the whites of its eyes. "Now get down on your knees, and—"
Danny started and looked suddenly right. When the thug instinctively followed suit, Danny moved. He pushed the gun arm up and toward the ceiling—intangibility gone—kicking the stack of jars so it collapsed onto on the guy's foot. Glass shattered right into the gunman's shin. He screamed in pain. A shot went off into the ceiling, then the gun clattered to the floor.
The thief jerked back, gasping, and made a half-movement to dive after the gun. Danny leapt forward and caught him mid-movement. His fist drove into an uppercut that snapped the guy's head back. Falling straight back, his head connected with the counter with a solid, wet thock.
He crumpled. Out cold.
Danny breathed a sigh of relief and shook out his stinging hand, thankful that he'd managed to remember to use his left. He spotted the gun and kicked it, sending it skidding to the far end of the aisle.
"Omigosh, omigosh, omigosh," somebody gasped. Danny looked up and met the huge brown eyes of the girl behind the counter, still clutching the paper bag half full of money.
He tried for a reassuring grin. "Uh, hi?"
The girl leaned forward to stare at the unconscious man crumpled under the counter. "You just—you just—"
The moment she looked down, Danny sank into invisibility. He stepped backwards through the door, then walked invisibly around the corner. His invisibility stuttered out, and nausea hit him like a punch to the gut. Danny swallowed back the urge and ran.
Safely behind a dumpster three blocks away, Danny leaned against the cool rough brick and caught his breath. His head ached fiercely, a stabbing pain right behind his eyes. He felt dizzy and sick, but he couldn't help the smile that crept onto his face. Not exactly as cool as taking down a ghost, but still. It felt good to help.
Maybe he wasn't totally useless.
Police sirens wailed in the distance. Danny sighed; oh well. He'd have to find somewhere else that sold chips and napkins. Pushing himself away from the wall, he swayed, caught himself, then set off in the opposite direction, whistling.
Hands that Heal :: tbc...
A/N:
Aw, look at him, he's almost… happy. Well. This'll last for a while, I'm sure. Haha.
Hi everyone! It was so nice to get back to our two (supposed) main characters for a change! I'm super excited for the next four chapters, which will wrap up Part 3. As a quick reminder, the SoaD illustration contest is now officially open! Prizes include real-life Danny Phantom merchandise and an option to cameo in the fic itself. Be sure to check out the link in my profile for details! Deadline is March 20th.
Many thanks to my beta reader, MyAibou, for her ever-thoughtful comments and sharp eyes, and to Dragon-Skulleton, who did some awesome last-minute beta reading and is setting up a new story on Fictionpress this week!
And thank you, dear readers, for your reviews and for sticking with this ever-growing epic! Gosh, I got some really nice reviews in the past week, they gave me super warm fuzzies. I wish I could thank you all personally… oh well. Maybe at the end I can figure out a way to do that.
To gretchen:
I know, it sprawls unbelievably wide, and that probably dilutes the story more than it should. If I could go back in time and start over I would cut many of the side characters and make it a much more focused fic, but this late in the game I've gotta stick to my guns. All I can tell you is that I'm going somewhere with this, I promise. Rather inefficiently and inelegantly at times, but it will come together in the end. I hope so, anyway.
Till next time,
-Hj
