This one took longer than I thought. There was just that one big wall in the middle that was keeping me from finding a good way to combine the already written beginning and end of this chapter. But I've finally gotten it smoothed out enough that I feel it worthy to show you guys. So. The last part of the battle between modern and future Phantoms. Any grammatical/spelling errors, randomly placed words, or parts that just don't make sense that I may have missed in the editing process even after reading and re-reading this so many times, I again apologize for ahead of time. Hope you enjoy it. ^_^
Disclaimer: Danny Phantom is created by Butch Hartman. I donotown any part of the show or any of its original characters. Just of the design of the older version of Danielle you can view on other websites.
Chapter 36: One Last Stand
"Danny?" Dark Phantom addressed before he recovered from his surprised in seeing his younger self stepping through the great, broken doorway of the Ghost King's domain. To Danny's relief (and Danielle's for that matter), the malicious specter lowered the gauntlet he had raised over the girl's tied form and faced Danny squarely, putting his hands to his belt as if in inspection. "I can't say I'm surprised to see you here. Nevertheless, I didn't expect you to get here that fast."
"I'm not telling you how either." Danny told him sternly as he took the little sphere from his belt and readied it in his hand as it hung at his side. He had thought beforehand that it probably wasn't a good idea to hint that he had a special gadget of his own with him, but his dark self was still dangerously close enough to Danielle that he could just turn around and swipe her with the gauntlet he had in his possession. The boy would have to play cautiously if both he and his cousin were to keep their human halves by the end of this.
Dark Phantom automatically eyed the hand that Danny was supposedly hiding something in. "And what would that be, exactly? A new version of the Fenton Thermos?" He asked with a mocking laugh, but mingled with a somewhat wary look.
"If it was, you won't be able to make yourself another portal to escape it by." Danny stated. "As powerful as you're always bragging yourself to be, I know you don't have enough energy to hop between dimensions twice in the same hour."
Danny saw his evil self cock an eyebrow curiously at him after he said this. He must have been surprised that he had figured this out.
"Even if you did," Danny went on, "Sam, Tucker and the rest of my family are all back in Amity Park, ready and waiting in the event you might show your ugly green face around there again."
Dark Phantom shook his head with a chuckle. "You sound as if you think you're actually going to beat me within that time. Have you forgotten that I've confiscated this handy little doodad here?" He raised the metal gauntlet that still had the claws protruded to indicate the said device.
"And if you take so much as an inch closer to my cousin with it…" Danny threatened when Dark Phantom suddenly dashed right at him with completely unnatural speed.
He tackled Danny, nearly knocking the wind out of him before the teenage boy found himself pinned to the far wall with Dark Phantoms forearm holding him at the neck.
"You'll what? Fail another futile attempt to save her with that fancy new device of yours?" Dark Phantom grinned triumphantly as he looked down at the little metallic sphere.
Danny was having trouble breathing with Dark Phantom's arm practically shoving up against his windpipe the way it was. As he struggled to free himself, he realized only too late that his disguised gauntlet was being pulled from his fingers.
"Hey!" The boy protested as his evil self claimed it.
"How nice of you to have brought me another neat present to take care of you with." Dark Phantom said. After inspecting the gadget at eyelevel, he gave Danny a bragging look. "Tell our old man thanks for me. As soon as you watch me rip out the girl's human half."
Danny strained against Dark Phantom's arm for a second. "I thought the point of you coming here was to do that to me so I'd turn into you. Not that it'll happen anyway." He remarked chokingly.
Dark Phantom shrugged with a lazy and annoyed expression. "See, that's the problem, isn't it. You've been so stubborn about such a simple favor, I thought perhaps I'd just do it to the tied up little fan-girl over there that you ironically came all the way here to try to protect."
Dark Phantom bobbed his head over to where Danielle was held as he was rambling on, barely noticing that Danny was actually smiling mischievously at that point. "I'm sure since she's pretty much your twin, she'll fit the bill just…ah!" Before Dark Phantom could finish, he was suddenly rammed from the side by an unknown force that made him drop Danny instantly and the little sphere he had just stolen from him.
After regaining himself, the evil ghost, completely flabbergasted at what had just happened, looked up to see, to his further astonishment, that the ghost girl was now standing right in front of him.
"You were referring to this, tied up little fan-girl. Right?" Danielle asked, using her thumb to indicate herself with a smirk.
"What? But…how did you…?" Dark Phantom looked from the girl to the column where he was sure he had her securely confined, but all he saw there was his chain energy that was now just laying spread out on the floor around the base of the column in an unorganized heap.
Only Danny was the one who really saw and understood how Danielle had gotten away: The energy bonds that had her tied to the cylindrical column may have prevented her from using ghost powers, such as her plasma ray and super-strength, but she could still transform. Once Danny had arrived at the castle and Dark Phantom's attention had been completely averted to him, Danielle had turned human and simply stepped backwards right into the column she was tied to, letting the green energy that was binding her fall loosely to the floor around it before stepping out of it again. Being free of her confinement entirely, she then secretly changed back to her ghost form and then used her Plasma Rocket to speed-dash upon the enemy from behind.
"I warned you that I wasn't the helpless damsel-in-distress type." Danielle now said with a laugh in seeing the surprised reaction on Dark Phantom's face in seeing her free.
After re-obtaining the still disguised gauntlet Dark Phantom had dropped, Danny walked up to stand next to his cousin.
Danielle then leaned closer to him to ask curiously, "Not that I doubted you'd make it in time, but how did you get here so fast?"
Danny just gave her a bit of an impatient look. "You wanna ask questions, or you wanna kick some butt?"
The ghost girl looked at him with a dazed expression before it then changed to one that only a teasing sibling could give. "You did not just steal my line." She banteringly challenged.
Their argumentative conversation was cut short by an explosion of green light and rubble that came between them, causing them to jump apart to avoid getting hit by their enemy's assault.
"We are so having a talk after we're done with this!" Danielle scolded Danny from across the room after dodging another explosive attack.
Danny straightened back up with an innocent shrug, replying with an appalled tone and a roll of his eyes. "Oh sure. I come to give a family member some backup and she's all over me about saying her favorite catchphrase."
"A lecture from a so-called family member is the least of you're worries right now, Danny!" Dark Phantom interrupted, as he tightened the gauntlet he still had on his left hand as a threatening reminder of their current situation.
Danny couldn't help but admit to himself that this action did make his stomach tighten a bit, but he kept his wits about him and decided to reply teasingly, "Oh, I don't know about that. My parents have gotten pretty good at chewing me up about how much I worry them whenever I'm off playing superhero. Especially lately."
Dark Phantom growled, split himself into four, and started attacking the two teens at once, as if insulted at how the boy wasn't considering him to be dangerous, even while he had the means to rip him in half (in more than one sense), and attempting to prove him wrong. Or could it have been because of the mention of family that he no longer had, Danielle thought.
In any case, Danielle only had to avoid the blasts coming from one of the duplicates while the other three were focusing on Danny. Hmph. Still belittling her abilities, evidently. She will be making sure Dark Phantom understood that to be a big mistake on his part.
Meanwhile, the other three duplicates that had ganged up on Danny eventually overwhelmed the boy. Two of them grabbed an arm from either side and forced him down to his knees while the third portentously approached him with the clawed gauntlet.
Danny wasn't worried, though. He and Danielle had already formulated a telepathic plan. As Dark Phantom raised the gauntlet over his head, ready to strike, Danny changed to his human form, phased right out of the Dark Phantoms' grasps and rolled backwards out of their reach.
While all three of those duplicates stood stunned at what had just happened, even if only for a second, it was all the time Danielle needed to grab the Dark Phantom she was preoccupied with by his cape, swing him around, and send him flying at the duplicate that had the gauntlet. The two doubles colliding and fusing back into one started a domino effect that made them bump into the other two that had originally had Danny, forcing them all to fuse back into one being again that landed face-first on the floor with a grunt.
"You're just not going to give me any credit, are you." Danielle asked disappointedly from behind the brawny ghost as she made a dash at him to reclaim her clawed gauntlet.
Right at the last second however, Dark Phantom got up to his knees and took a swipe at Danielle with the thick metal glove. She was barely able to redirect her course, flipping right over his head to avoid getting hit while grabbing the gauntlet out of pure reactive instinct, sending a strong heat wave through the metal glove, superheating it to melting point. Dark Phantom cried out from the sudden searing pain the glove was giving his hand and that he couldn't turn intangible to escape from because of being in the Ghost Zone.
Danielle landed on her hands and feet near Danny, who had returned to his ghostly form by now and whose heart had almost stopped in seeing his cousin nearly get struck with the fateful gauntlet. That was way too close. He thought to Danielle.
Danielle's own heart thumped hard inside her chest before she realized what she had impulsively done to the gauntlet. Sorry, Danny. She thought to her cousin, seeing the now liquidized metal glove drip from Dark Phantom's burning hand down to the stone floor.
Don't worry about it. Danny reassured telepathically. We still have mine. And at least we don't have to worry about him getting one of us with that one anymore.
Grasping the wrist of his pained hand, Dark Phantom glowered at the girl who was the cause of it. So. He thought. She didn't have to have an actual source of fire nearby in order to use that pyro power, huh. Only that could have made a whole metal glove melt so fast. The plasma ray was more or less purely substantial energy. It could never be used to create such an instantaneous concentration of heat powerful enough to do something like that.
There was still no way he was going to admit this annoying half-pint was considered to be among the opponents to really be concerned over, though. Dark Phantom stood up angrily, saying scornfully to Danielle, "I have more important things to deal with than annoying, over-ecstatic fan-girls who are so obsessed with their role-model that they'd claim to be related to them."
Danielle glared in getting the hint that this blowhard was still skeptical that Danny even truly considered her as family and still thought less of her powers, despite her improved performance from her first encounter with him. To top it off, the creep then faced Danny as if putting out of his mind that Danielle was even there.
Dark Phantom then sighed, shaking his head as if disappointed with the boy. "Really Danny, how could you fear and reject becoming the most powerful ghost in the world. All you have to do is rid yourself of the weakling human side that's always holding you back from your true potential."
Danny scoffed, appalled by the very suggestion. "Honestly. Have you really become so prejudice against humans, you've forgotten that they have powers in the Ghost Zone that you don't? Or do have to remind you that it was my human side that I just barely used to walk right out of your reach? And by potential, you mean in becoming a psychopath with anger-management issues and no family or friends to keep you sane. I'll pass, thanks."
To both cousins' confusion, Danny's evil self threw his flaming head back in laughter. "Sane? Ha!" He then pointed accusingly at Danielle, making her take a defensive step backwards out of reflex. "You let a reject like that two-faced tagalong you call a cousin into your circle and you have the nerve to call yourself sane?"
Danny's eyes widened in surprise at hearing and instantly interpreting such a choice of words. He spun and looked at Danielle with the same dazed look, asking telepathically, You told him?
Dark Phantom took this reaction as surprise to hear of Danielle's association to Vlad in the first place while Danielle was trying to defend herself with an innocent shrug at Danny.
However, in reality, she was giving a quick, private explanation to her cousin on how much Dark Phantom seemed to have just figured out, so neither of them would accident let slip anything else. He just figured out about the working-for-Vlad part. Not the whole clone thing though, I think.
"That's right, Danny." Dark Phantom said after seeing them exchange these expressions, remaining oblivious to what was actually happening in their heads. "I know this outcast is no real relation of mine and that she even once worked for Plasmius. And that you seem to actually trust her to cover for you. But based on her past, did you ever even think of the strong possibility that she could turn around and shoot you in the back?"
Danny scoffed as he casually replied with a wave of his hand as if it was no big deal, "Nah. She's already done that. And believe me, it hurt. In more than one sense, too." In saying this part, he glanced a teasing smile over at Danielle who just shrugged again with a sheepish and yet apologetic smile in return at the memory. That was the time when it was officially confirmed to Danny that she was a clone working for Vlad. When she literally did shoot him in the back.
Dark Phantom kept a straight face, but on the inside he was actually quite taken aback and confused by the response of these two ghost-powered teens. Evidently, Danny really did know of this girl's past. And despite the knowledge of her once being on Vlad's side, he and his whole family trusted her and considered her as one of their own? And she in turn knew that Danny wasn't doing it just for show? Dark Phantom knew he had been in the Fenton Thermos for quite a while, but how could these two possibly have gotten that close?
Well, whatever the reason, it was now clear to him that a psychological strategy simply wasn't going to help in this fight. But if attempting to get them to distrust each other wasn't going to work, he'd have to rely more on his own strength and endurance; a few qualities he did have plenty of, but these brats had quite a bit of energy themselves. Additionally, his left hand was now so stiff from the burn the now liquidized gauntlet had given him.
Having no intention of revealing these thoughts of his to these two children in any way, Dark Phantom tried to shake out his burnt hand to try to get some feeling other than pain back into it, in an attempt to disguise his weakness as being nothing more than a minor annoyance. He then looked at the two teens with a serious expression. "That gauntlet may be gone, but I hope you realize that only means you can no longer use it against me." He inquired.
"There's more than just that way to beat you that the both of us have up our sleeves." Danny replied with a smirk. "So unless you already have enough energy to head back to where a particularly futuristically-knowledgeable anti-ghost team is waiting for you anyway, it's just you and two of me." With that, Danny and Danielle stood back-to-back in their favorite prepared, battle stance.
As if accepting the challenge, Dark Phantom was the one to strike first, sending two beams of green plasma energy at the both of the cousins. The teenage Phantoms each extended a hand out in front of them in unison, combining their green and yellow energies to shield themselves from the attack.
From that point on, the battle went into full swing. And the more they fought, the more Dark Phantom was beginning to realize how well the two of them really did work together as a team. Even their plasma energy seemed to agree with each other instead of canceling each other out when they made that combined shield. How long had these two opponents of his been working together to be able to do something like that? It was almost as if they were even thinking the same things every now and then, too.
Unfortunately, Dark Phantom wasn't the only one who was starting to have his insecurities. Danny was the one who was starting to get the most tired now. Having used quite a bit of his energy to claw himself a rough portal to the Ghost Zone and then rushing to get to this castle as fast as he could, he wasn't exactly at full strength again by the time he had rejoined with Danielle to begin with. That itself wasn't good. And he still was having a hard time finding a good opening to take out his hidden gauntlet and use it.
Before long, Dark Phantom decided that he wanted to deal with just one of the two opponents he was facing. After managing to blast Danny to the side, probably more out of pure chance, he started shooting a whole frenzy of shots directly at Danielle, who dodged by weaving and spiraling upwards between the columns that extended to the ceiling.
As she was reaching the top, a whole circle of emerald beams suddenly flew right passed the girl. She cringed, shielding herself from the attacks that were evidently not even aimed directly at her. The shots instead hit the ceiling and the tops of the surrounding columns, blasting off huge chunks of ruble that fell right on top of the girl, making her tumble all the way down to the floor where she was buried underneath it all.
In feeling how much this collapsing on Danielle had hurt her through the link, Danny was instantly reminded of the time Dark Phantom had thrown a huge piece of that building at her to force her underwater where she nearly drowned after losing all of her power.
This time though, he also discovered a long-awaited opportunity had suddenly opened to him. While Dark Phantom was focusing all his attention on Danielle, Danny took out and activated the right-handed gauntlet he had at his belt. Just as Dark Phantom was smirking at having seen the female nuisance go down, Danny dashed at him from behind with the claws of the gauntlet extending.
Just as he was lunging his hand forward to finally claim the Time Medallion that his evil self had fused inside him, Dark Phantom spun around, grabbing the wrist of the gauntlet and then punching Danny in the gut.
Danny felt the wind get knocked out of him and his hand slip out of the metal glove as he suddenly found himself flying backwards, landing on his back on the hard, stone floor.
"I had a feeling that other gauntlet was part of a matched set." Dark Phantom said as he walked up to Danny's fallen form, examining the now fully revealed glove before slipping it over his own hand.
Danny involuntarily scooted back in seeing his evil self approaching him with that malicious glint in his blood-red eyes as he desperately tried to communicate with Danielle telepathically. That last hit was making him struggle to just get his breath back, much less the strength he would need to get out of the way of another attack quickly enough. And now his enemy had the only remaining gauntlet.
Dark Phantom tightened the metal glove over his hand as he now stood over his past self. "Honestly Danny. It doesn't matter what you do to detain me. I'm always going to come back to destroy your family and ruin your life." Dark Phantom ranted, while behind him, Danny saw the intangible human Danielle was stumbling out of the debris she had been buried in.
"Taking everything I have, even my human half, won't make me turn evil, or make me miserable." Danny pointed out through gasped breaths. "That'll still be my choice."
Meanwhile, Danielle had changed back to her ghost form and was powering up for a high-speed surprise-attack. Even looking quite beat up from that ceiling collapse as it was, if she could just sneak up on him and get the gauntlet back…
"Very poetic." Dark Phantom said sarcastically. "But trying old tactics twice in a row won't get you anywhere with that little daydream of yours. Allow me to demonstrate!"
Right at the last second, as Danielle was dashing at the ghost from behind, Dark Phantom unexpectedly spun around and, to Danny's horror, drove the claws of the gauntlet right into Danielle's stomach. Danny felt his own stomach jolt right as he watched Danielle's body instantly recoil from being stabbed so violently.
All time suddenly froze, forcing Danny to live out that exact moment for a torturing amount of prolonged time: That very moment of seeing the utmost look of shock on Danielle's face as his evil self was now a mere pull away from removing a whole half of her very self. Danny couldn't find his voice anymore to even scream. His mind had suddenly left his body, traumatized with disbelief at what he was seeing.
Danielle herself was feeling no different. She suddenly recalled the memory of being torn apart back in Vlad's lab as she felt the claws slowly begin to withdraw from inside her. Was this what it also felt like to have your humanity removed?
Suddenly regaining her senses and registering what was happening and how much pain it was causing her, the teenage girl grabbed the wrist of the gauntlet as if desperately trying to stop it from doing what its user was intending. No! She was not going to allow it to end like this. Not after all the work she and Danny and so many others had put into defeating this beast from the future.
Cringing to keep the gauntlet inside herself with the whole half of herself it was trying to pull out, she slowly glanced at Danny, hoping desperately that he was getting the telepathic waves she was sending to him. Danny's already shocked and sorrowful eyes widened even more with an added realization.
Hoping this meant that he had gotten the message, Danielle then looked back at Dark Phantom who was glaring at her mercilessly as he was still determined to rid her of her human self right before Danny's eyes.
Dark Phantom seemed to be confused at how the girl he had stabbed the gauntlet into was still looking so strong-minded and willing to fight as her shaking hands were keeping a surprisingly firm hold on his metal-covered wrist.
Now, Danny! End it! Danny heard Danielle's voice ring in his head.
Then, to both the past and future Dannys' surprise, Danielle, with the gauntlet still in her stomach, spun into Dark Phantom's arm, as a flash of white light changed her to her human form. This unexpected movement surprised Dark Phantom as her back came into contact with his chest. Within the same instant, a boost from Danielle's Plasma Rocket lunged her intangible human body right through his person, driving the clawed gauntlet into his chest and forcing him to remove his hand from the inside of it.
Now Dark Phantom was the one with the pained and surprised look on his face in seeing only the wrist part of the clawed gauntlet sticking out of his own being as Danielle was stumbling backwards, phasing out of his back.
Danny didn't wait to even see if Danielle was still standing by the time she had exited the back of Dark Phantom's body. He sprang up from the floor, not giving his enemy any time to register the switcharoo Danielle had just pulled on him and he thrust his hand into the metallic glove that was already in the chest of his evil self.
It was then that Dark Phantom began to cry out in pain in feeling the familiar feeling of being dug into searchingly with those sharp claws. Danny stifled a gasp when his evil self grabbed his arm with a murderous look in his eyes. Then Danny began to feel a surge of pain run up his arm and through his whole body. Dark Phantom was trying to relinquish him and the gauntlet from his body before he could remove the time medallion!
No! Danny said determinedly to himself. Danielle had barely escaped in one piece (supposedly) to give him this chance to remove this menace from his time once and for all. He wasn't going to waste it! If he didn't get the time medallion now, he probably never would. Danny strained against the pain of the energy that was surging through him as he tried to focus on finding something the gauntlet could grab hold of. Was this the kind of pain Danielle was going through when she went for the Crown of Fire? If she could endure it to reach her goal, than so could he.
Danny's mind clicked when he finally felt the gauntlet grasp something solid. Still cringing in pain, he squinted up to see his evil self had a spark of fearful realization. He knew that Danny had gotten a hold of it too. And now the pain was coursing through Danny's body even more furiously than before, trying to get Danny out while trying to keep the medallion inside.
Pulling together every last bit of strength he could muster, Danny gave a final heave as Dark Phantom gave a violent shove with his energy, as well as his own hands. With this combined force of separation, both figures went flying backwards. Danny landed hard on his back, barely able to keep his metallic gloved fingers around the thing he had grasped in his hand while his evil self fell to his knees, grasping his chest in pain.
Danny rolled over to hoist himself up to his hands and knees and shook his head to clear it before looking up to see in confused dread that his evil self was still there! But the removal of the time medallion was supposed to…! …Oh wait…
A blue rippling aura began to encompass Dark Phantom's figure. He looked at his hands in horror, seeing that he was becoming more transparent as his body was dematerializing from this time period. He looked at Danny as if demanding an explanation when Danny held up his gauntleted hand. Dangling from the torn ribbon that was in its grasp was the large pendant shaped like a polished gear with the letters C and W in the center.
"You're history." Danny said quietly, but indefinitely as he presented the Time Medallion as proof of his victory.
"NOOOOOOO!" Dark Phantom cried out in panicked anger as he lunged at Danny with that homicidal rage in his eyes again as he was still fading away, either with a last desperate attempt to reclaim the Time Medallion, or simply rid this timeline of Danny himself.
Either way, Danny's mind suddenly went blank at this reaction. He was still feeling so weak from having endured all that pain that had been jolted through him to move. All he could think to do was cringe, bracing himself as his evil self was coming at him at full speed.
"Time—Out!" A loud and yet calming voice steadily rang out as an oddly familiar sensation came over Danny. A sort of wave rushed over him that practically blanketed even the air of the entire location: Possibly the entire world, or whole universe.
A silent stillness followed the sensation. After several seconds of Danny hiding behind his own arm, he slowly opened his eyes, allowing his muscles to relax as he looked up. He nearly gasped in seeing the transparent figure of his evil self suspended in midair, right in front of him: His outstretched hand barely within a foot of Danny's face.
Danny recognized this sort of thing from a time that happened to him before. His evil self was completely frozen. Frozen in time. Even his flaming white hair was no longer flickering. But how was he, Danny still able to…Oh wait. Danny looked down at his metallic gloved hand that still had a hold of the time medallion he had claimed from Dark Phantom. The device that, through only a touch, allowed him mobility while the whole rest of the world was stalled in this frozen state.
Suddenly, a flash of blue light directed Danny's attention to his left where a pale-blue-skinned ghost in a hooded purple cloak appeared in the middle of the room.
"Clockwork?" Danny said in surprise, startled by the sound of his own voice in the silence of all time being stopped.
"I highly suggest removing yourself." Clockwork simply stated with a smile.
Despite his body being so sore and fatigued already, Danny didn't hesitate in rolling to the side, out of range of Dark Phantom's reach. "But…" Danny panted as he sat up, clutching the Time Medallion to his chest as he looked up at the Master of Time. "The Observants…I thought…"
Clockwork simply chuckled, winking at Danny before raising his scepter and calling out in the same steady tone he always did whenever he harnessed his time-manipulative power, "Time—In!"
That sensation came over Danny again and the veil of stopped time lifted from the entirety of the castle. Danny blinked as his evil self flew right through the spot he himself had been only seconds ago. The movements of the specter's body seemed to slow down again as he turned his head to look straight at Danny with a confused and disbelieving expression before his face, as well as the entire rest of his figure, vanished along with the rippling blue aura that forcefully returned him, by default, to his own time.
Another silent moment passed in which Danny could only feel the beat of his own heart before he closed his eyes, breathing out a huge sigh of relief. He still held the Time Medallion to his chest as if making sure it was real. That he really had it as proof that it was really over. That he really had won.
He looked up at Clockwork with a gratifying look, knowing that if he hadn't intervened, who knew what would have happened. However, the returning look Clockwork was giving him wasn't one of congratulations, but one of warning. That it wasn't over just yet.
The mere motion of The Master of Time looking upward, passed Danny to his left, instantly reminding the boy of Danielle and the situation she had been left in for him to finish the job. Danny spun around, looking in that direction to see Danielle's battered and torn human body sprawled on the stone floor, covered in blood.
A flash of blue light indicated the disappearance of Clockwork behind Danny as he struggled to his feet and hurried over to his mangled cousin. "Dani!" He desperately cried out as he practically slid down to his knees to the floor by her side.
She looked even worse up close. Her breathing came out in heaving, unsteady, wheezing gasps as she tightly held her stomach with one hand. She had cuts and bruises all over her face, probably mostly from all that rubble burying her just now. But what really caught Danny's attention was the weird shifting of color her now messily tangled hair was making between light and dark. A second look told Danny that her whole body was actually doing the same thing. One second she was in her white and silver jumpsuit of her ghostly persona when it flickered to her red and blue modern-day human outfit the next.
Danielle coughed, pressing her hand to her stomach even harder as Danny gently lifted her head up off the floor, almost afraid to move her already seemingly fragile body. "Danny…help me…" Danielle said weakly through gasped breaths. That was all she said before her body went limp in his arms. Her hand fell from her stomach were a deep, open wound was revealed: The one that was the result of the clawed gauntlet being thrust into her.
Danny's heart started racing as everything made sense now: Particularly with why Danielle's body was having these random morphs without even the usually included white flash. Dark Phantom must have been able to pull her ghostly DNA partially away from her human self after all. Reverting to her human self where the wound was additionally inflicted in the middle of that extracting process probably didn't help much either. Now her whole body was going unstable. Danny could feel a tingle throughout his whole figure that indicated how much pain it was obviously causing her as well.
Danny had to do something quick! But there was no way he could get her to the realm of the Far Frozen in the condition he himself was in. He was starting to feel lightheaded as it was. What would the physicians there know about how to refasten ghostly DNA to human life forms when the phenomenon itself was supposed to be impossible anyway? And the Fenton Portal was about as far away as Frostbite was. Danny supposed he could try getting out of the Ghost Zone the same way he got in, making another clawed-out portal with the gauntlet he still had left. But he didn't know if he had enough power left for a trip like that. He didn't even know if the portal would even lead him back to Amity Park if it did get him and Danielle back to the human world. Then again, what other choice did he have right now? The human world was by far the safer of the two dimensions for the both of them. And if he didn't try something soon, Danielle especially, wasn't going to make it at all.
Surprised he was finding the strength to stand at all, Danny fastened the Time Medallion to his belt and lifted Danielle up, making her lean against him as he wrapped an arm around the back of her waist to support her while he also tried to steady his own trembling body. He felt his normal gloved hand soak up with blood from Danielle's wound he accidentally touched as he did this. He couldn't stop his knees from shaking as he lifted his gauntlet, remembering how he had clawed out a portal for himself, but this time with the desire to get back to the human world. Back to Amity Park. Back to where his friends and family were waiting for him.
With that solely in mind, he swiped at the air in front of him, creating a roughly made hole back to the human world. He felt a vast amount of whatever ghostly energy he had left suddenly drain from him as he did so, but he refused to let himself collapse just yet. His whole body trembled as he took a shaky step through the hole with Danielle's limp figure in tow.
The next minute, he stepped onto solid ground. Before he knew it, he completely collapsed, falling over on his side, unable to take another step or even look around to see where he was and barely able to think straight enough to make sure Danielle's limp body fell on top of him to cushion her own fall. He then felt her slide off of his wearied form onto what he felt to be very hard but somewhat smooth ground as he felt himself change back to his human form in losing every last bit of power needed to so much as maintain his ghostly appearance.
He only became vaguely aware of urgent voices and hustling footsteps making the ground vibrate slightly beneath his aching body as he drifted into complete darkness of mind.
Yeah, yeah, I know you guys are upset about another cliffhanger. And right when they just beat the big bad guy too. But only one more chapter to go before the completion of this whole story. Please hang in there. With school starting for me again now, it'll be difficult for me to finish the next chapter within as good time as I have for the last couple. I hope you've enjoyed it thus far nonetheless. Thank you again for all the support you readers have shown me. I never would have gotten this far since the beginning if it weren't for all of your encouragement. Until next time. ^_^