This was fucking bullshit.
Valerie dived and equipped a machete out of her elbow, using it to sever the stem of five of the nearest flower pods. The damp pink petals plopped onto the concrete and opened up, revealing the people curled up inside. Green vines dug into the napes of their necks and pulsed with a wet glow as they shriveled and the flowers began to wilt. The people sat up blinking and swaying, not having yet registered danger.
Valerie moved to go down and pull them away, but a flurry of vines attacked her in midair and she had to focus on blasting them away with her hoverboard. Her only advantage lay in her techno suit. It had learned from its mistakes after Undergrowth had bypassed it when he took over last year. As a result, it was now invulnerable to the mind vine.
Below her, two of the freed people were ahead of the curve and began to scramble out of the weeds, plant mush clinging in green clumps to their skin. In the next second, the severed stems reattached themselves in a swarm of roots. The flowers began to blossom again and the pods lurched back into life. They swallowed the three still-groggy people with muffled screams.
Valerie dove back down to help after defeating one group of vines, only to have to lurch into a sudden stop as she was almost hit with a stray blast of lightning raining down from the clouds.
"Cease, you pathetic weed! This ecosystem belongs to Vortex!" The ghost with a tornado for a tail laughed.
"My plants will inherit the earth!" Undergrowth growled, clawing upwards at the dodging clouds.
"Weather permitting, of course!"
The air began to dry and any sweat that may have been on Valerie's skin evaporated in an instant as the sun beat down with malicious force. The ground cracked with the heat and dozens of the vines and flowers that had taken over the City Center of Amity Park shriveled up into dried husks.
A ghostly scream buffeted the air with near physical force.
Valerie speed towards the main body of the enormous plant, hoping to take advantage of the moment of weakness. All her plans came to nothing when another strike of lightning rained down.
In an instant, all those dried up vines and flowers still holding half-asleep people were nothing more than dried tinder.
Before Valerie could blink, half the block went up in flames.
She watched, frozen in horror for a moment as plants and people began to burn.
The two ghosts suddenly didn't matter as she scrambled towards the nearest pod.
Above her, the titans continued to do battle.
In studying Phantom, it was impossible to work past the question of why, exactly, he fought others of his own kind. Valerie had always thought she had the answer. He was territorial, she told herself, he has some private beef with them, she figured. But watching these titans roar, a single persistent thought assaulted Valerie as she desperately clawed person after crying begging burning person from fiery cocoons while the two ghosts raged above, not giving their casualties a second glance:
Phantom would never behave like this.
It was an undeniable fact no matter how much she disliked the ghost boy. Valerie had never seen a fight between ghosts that didn't include Phantom. She had never had an opportunity to see the true callousness these creatures were capable of.
She searched through the dark rising smoke, grateful for the filter in her mask and only wishing she could share it. There were people draped over every inch of her hoverboard and back.
Above her, Undergrowth managed to get his vines around Vortex and smashed him into the ground. The galeforce winds of Vortex's body demolished two apartment buildings.
The flames were spreading over the still scorching dry ground. They were heading towards more yet unopened pods, but Valerie couldn't worry about them, now. She knew she couldn't carry anymore. Her only option was to drop these people off at a hospital before returning. She could only hope she would be back before it was too late.
Squeezing her eyes shut with guilt, Valerie flew away as the flames consumed the ground below her.
… She had never envied Phantom his ice powers more.
It was that thought, the thought of his usefulness, that plagued Valerie the most.
It wasn't a new thought.
It had been two months since Phantom had left and one month since his official announcement. That was enough time for Valerie to feel she had to admit that those were two months of hell. The ghost attacks were an unrelenting barrage that knocked on the walls of her resolve with a little more force every day. If that mental scarring wasn't enough to break her down, the physical scarring was doing its best to compensate. New gashes and sloppily done stitches (that got neater as practice made perfect) riddled her arms and legs. She had had to sit two weeks of that time out for a concussion, and it ashamed her to admit that she had treasured the break, more than tempted to lie on her living room couch with an ice-pack to her head forever.
But that wasn't an option. When the first week was up an attack at the mall and City Hall had left the Fenton's with a choice that only she could solve. She worked the next week with her head pounding until her dad had held her down begging her to stop, tears in his eyes.
Did you know getting a second concussion while recovering from a first can cause hemorrhaging that has a fifty percent fatality rate and a one hundred percent chance of permanent brain damage?
Valerie hadn't known that. It was lucky that her dad did.
She spent a ridiculous amount of time after that wondering if Phantom had someone who knew things like that, someone who kept him from injuring himself past the point of no return. It was such a stupid thing to think about a ghost… that's what she told herself, anyway. But still…
Amity Park South Mercy Hospital came into view, and Valerie stopped thinking about things that wouldn't help.
"Fentons, come in Fentons," Valerie called through her headset. She had teamed up with the ghost hunting couple not too long after Phantom's leaving. Both of them had come to realize mobilizing together was the only course of action that would keep the worst of the ghosts at bay. "Fentons?"
Static.
She dropped the people off with scurrying doctors and swung back to the burning part of the city.
A shadow overtook Valerie, and she looked up to see vines the width of semi-trucks blotting out the sun. They angled downwards and burrowed into the burning streets with the sound of static screaming out of a full volume television.
The wet vines choked out almost all the patches of flames, but at the same time, the whole area that had been burning began to cave under the pressure. Buildings tilted into the new sinkhole as the vines stretched further into the city.
Fucking. Bullshit.
…:::*:::...
"Jack!"
Maddie could only spare a second of attention to watching a baton-wielding ghost in riot gear tackle her husband. She had to focus the rest of her attention elsewhere to avoid sharing the same fate.
Behind her, Amity Park Post Office was in ruins. Rubble and plaster covered the street and shredded letters twirled in wind-fueled cyclones. In front of her, City Hall stood, surrounded on all sides by a veritable defending army of riot-geared ghosts.
Though she had beaten dozens upon dozens of ghosts to the ground, Maddie found herself losing the energy to continue this fight. For every ghost that fell to her bo staff, two more appeared with tasers and stun guns.
She and Jack still had ecto guns, but the charge was running lower and lower with each blast. Ecto-pods charged in the portal fueled their guns, and between the two of them there were only a few pods left. Maddie's guns hung on her belt, with the bazooka over her back, all with only two or three shots left.
Maddie's chest was heaving.
The ghosts had settled into a circle around her. They stopped attacking, eerie glowing eyes watching for the smallest twitch. Electricity crackled through their ranks. Early in the fight, the rubber of Maddie's hazmat suit had done a good job of keeping the electricity at bay, but a lot of the material had ripped away. Her arms especially were almost exposed.
Three of the ghosts lunged.
"Ha-ya!" She brought her staff down on one's head, spinning in such a way that the ghost went knocking into another. Her staff slipped in her grasp, her blood disturbing the otherwise tight grip of her gloves. Only her goggles prevented her from getting sweat in her eyes with the continuous inexplicable rise in temperature.
Ghosts were known to be chilling. Usually, their presence brought the whole area down a few degrees.
She could do with more of that effect right now as the flowers in front of City Hall finished wilting in the heat.
Not only was the heat distracting in a fight, but in the bright sun, pure white color was almost blinding. That was why she had to look away as footsteps made their way out of City Hall to stand on the top steps of the building.
"That rule breaker is using his powers again in direct violation of his sentence! I want every available unit on that weather abomination now!" A clear southern voice shouted with the chilling heat of command. For a moment, even Maddie's feet shifted with the drive to obey.
She grit her teeth and glared at the bone-white ghost standing head held high above them all.
Even without a large range of expression, the skull-faced ghost in the white pinstripe suit looked smug as he directed his army over the city.
Maddie would give a lot to be able to cover the distance between them just to give him a firm punch to that perpetually grinning jaw. But there were at least five layers of ghost police guards between him and her.
Phantom would be able to do it. Phantom would fly right through them and get to the root of the problem.
No. She would not think like that, she refused.
They didn't need him. They didn't-
"Oof-" she gasped as a ghost rammed straight into her gut, spit and oxygen flying out of her mouth. She slammed down into the concrete, her spine and shoulder blades screaming in pain.
In a blink, pain flooded her whole system. Her teeth came down on one another with a clank that she felt in her whole body, and it was only by pure luck that her tongue wasn't between them.
Her back arched off the concrete as she spasmed, eyes wide and seeing only sparks. A ghost was sitting on her, one hand on her shoulder and the other holding a stun gun to her wrist.
Maddie screamed as her throat closed for the most frightening millisecond of her life.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, the electricity stopped.
"Like that, little lady?"
In her pain, she hadn't noticed the ghost warden walk up to her. He was standing beside her body, looking down with green light glowing from the inside of a bright skull. Her eyes managed to focus on him. The ghost's jaw did move as he talked, but without the lips that would make the sounds coming out possible, it looked like a bad audio dubbing.
"It's a special type of electricity, you see. Not meant for you, exactly, but for a creature at least half like you. Ghosts can't feel it, but humans…" It shouldn't be possible for a skeletal smile to grow wider.
Electricity only humans could feel...
Maddie bared her teeth and, with a discrete pinch activated a button on her waistband. Without warning, she lunged forward and used her momentum to throw her body into a backspin. The button had activated the small ecto guns attached to her suit. As she spun it shot out short bursts, the ghost on top of her went flying off with a shot to the gut. All around her shots fired out, hitting any ghost in a three-sixty radius that had strayed too close. It pushed the warden back several yards. In a few seconds, the circle had been re-established around her. Then, as if on a timer, the small emergency echo guns died with a whine.
She knew those breakdancing lessons she had taken in college would come in handy one day.
With a tired smirk, Maddie stepped back and presented her staff in front of her, chest heaving and back pulsing.
The warden was examining a singed lapel of his otherwise pure white pinstripe suit. When he looked back up his hellfire eyes flared.
"Get her!"
A/N:
So, this made me realize a bit of a plot hole in the show. I never thought about it before, but where was Valerie in Urban Jungle? She already had her advanced suit, you wouldn't think she'd be able to be controlled as easily as everyone else. But I just rewatched the episode, and not only does she not show up to fight, they don't even show her controlled by the mind vine. So… *shrug*
This chapter was actually done a little while back, but it needed a lot of editing and I was not up to the task. But now it's Friday, so here you go. :-)
Also, i hope you don't mind but I'm adding another chapter to that 5 chapter estimate from earlier. I try for about 2,000 words per chapter and it's taking a little longer to get everything I need in frame. So maybe we'll be on this journey for an extra month, looking at 41 chapters + epilogue. But hey, what's an extra month in the face of... six years... holy shit. XD
Anyway, look at that, Walker and Vortex are here too. What a party. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It also looks like the ghost hunters are coming around... kind of. What do you think? Let me know in a review?