Chapter Twenty-Six: Huntress In Red
"This girl doesn't look like a ghost," Bart says.
and Beast Boy actually had to agree with him. From what they saw of Skulker and Ember, not to mention Clockwork, ghosts definitely looked different from her. They all had almost glowing auras around them and definitely did not have African-American skin.
This girl also seemed more angry than the needless chaos that ghosts cause when they attacked the city before from the stories Phantom and Siren told them. So that left them with the thought that she was possibly a mystic. A technopath was their first idea from the armor she had on her.
"I think there has been a bit of a mix-up," M'gann tried to calm the girl down.
"I've had it with you GIW cronies," the girl was seriously angry. "Your paranoia and continuous hunting have already chased away the only real heroes that this town ever had. I won't let you continuously ruin this world by with your ridiculous ideas that all ghosts and mystics are evil."
The three heroes immediately shared looks. She was obviously talking about Phantom and Siren. They were the only heroes that this realm had ever known outside of mythological heroes. Not that Hercules or King Arthur could hold a candle to a half-ghost teenager and a siren prince.
They did remember the twins always mentioning another person they left behind in Amity other than their sister. Her name escaped them and they weren't a hundred percent sure the two even mentioned her name. But she's definitely someone they were never going to forget again. Can you really ever forget a person that has tried to kill you? Probably not.
"Guys, you need to be careful," Jazz warned them. "She is very stubborn and doesn't really listen when she's fighting."
"You know Little-Miss-Trigger-Happy," Bart asked her.
Before the telepath could answer, Red Huntress decided she was tired of waiting for them to make the first move. She dived toward them, launching a volley of her stinger laser beams. Almost like energy bullets.
quickly flew out of the way. Beast Boy changed into a kangaroo and jumped out of their path. Impulse, of course, had the easiest time running from the lasers.
"A shapeshifter, a kid with super speed, and a flying green girl," the girl muttered. "Those agents must be really stepping up their recruitment programs."
"We are not a part of the Guys In White," Bart yelled at her.
The girl scoffed in response.
"Been there, heard that, been attempted to be stabbed in the back by them," she said.
"This girl must get around as much as Phantom and Siren," Bart said through the link.
"IMPULSE," the rest of the team yelled at him.
"Ow," Jazz held her head. "Easy on the yelling. I'm not used to having other people talking in my head. Just because I can take a peek into another person's skull doesn't mean I hear things like this."
"Sorry, Jazz," Nightwing apologized for the team.
Red Huntress decided Impulse was the biggest threat because of his speed. She dived down toward him and launched several energy rings from her hoverboard. As Impulse raced up and down buildings and walls, they exploded when they made contact with anything and everything.
"Where does she even get this stuff," Gar asked over the link.
"Trust me, you do not want to know how she got started," Jazz stated.
"I don't know who you are, but you won't escape me," Huntress yelled.
Three cubes came out of her armor. They call fired individual blasts of energy at the three of them. Beast Boy quickly changed from a kangaroo to a hummingbird to avoid the ray. density shifted to let the beam pass right through her. The laser was meant for humans, ghosts, or mystics, so her alien biology was unaffected by it. Impulse was zig-zagging around to dodge the beams sent at him.
"The rest of us are on our way, you three," Dick tells them over the link.
"Good, cause we kind of need it," Gar responded.
"I'm on my way too," Jazz said.
"Jazz, I don't think that is such a good idea," Mal tried to convince her. "This girl seems to mean business."
"She thinks you guys are a threat," Jazz explained. "I can calm her down. She will listen to me. When Danny and White return from the council meeting, it will just make it easier to get her to see reason."
"Is she always this trigger happy," M'gann asked, dodging another blast from the cubic cannons.
"In this town, the way it currently is, you can't afford to pull any punches," Jazz says. "You go big or buy a coffin in advance."
"Never been so happy the twins got out of here when they did," Karen said.
"You are not the only one, Bumblebee," Jazz stated, sounding relieved.
As the rest of the team got to the scene, Red Huntress had replaced her cubic cannons. She had pulled out a few small spheres from her armor. They were mechanical silver with a pink line across the center of it.
"I have a bad feeling about this," Jaime said.
"I don't know what Blue Beetle is looking at, but most of her arsenal cause that feeling," Jazz sped their way, having grabbed her brother's old motor scooter for the trip.
Beetle's feeling was proven correct when Red Huntress threw her spheres at the three heroes nearest her. Each of them exploded when they came into contact with anything solid. Beast Boy and were both knocked out of the sky, Beast Boy changing back into his regular form on the way down. Superboy and Blue Beetle caught them before they hit the ground. Impulse was thrown off his feet by the force and nearly tossed off the roof. A quick grab of his hand by Guardian saved him.
"Girl means business," Karen whistled. "But I do have to admit, the girl's got skills."
"That would be fine if she wasn't using those skills to try and kill us," Mal pointed out to his girlfriend as he pulled Impulse back onto the roof.
"Amen to that," the speedster said.
"M'gann, do you think you can knock her out with telepathy," Dick asked the martian over the link.
"I'm on it," M'gann responded.
Her eyes started to glow green. Huntress reached behind her and pulled out a giant bazooka. It even had a large hole in the middle for the main blast with a smaller one under it with two ghost zapper rays coming out of the sides with a four missile launcher on top of it.
"Where was she even keeping that thing," Garth raised an eyebrow.
All the heroes got into fighting stances. It was normally only Darkside that got this many heroes to fight against a single enemy at once. Their stances were met with more cannons or blasters coming out of her armor.
"She's a one-woman arsenal," Roy says.
The team and Huntress all looked ready to attack each other. But they were all stopped at the same time when a shriek spread across the area. They all dropped or called their weapons back in order to cover their ears. A nearby skylight shattered from the sound.
"That's a familiar sound," Dick stated.
"He knows how to make an entrance, I'll give him that," Robin chuckled.
When the noise stopped, all of them turned around. Even Red Huntress. Phantom, Siren, and Aqualad were standing on the roof of the building next to them. Well, Siren was more floating a few feet above the roof, but that was beside the point.
"Well, that got your attention rather quickly," White calmly said. "And I repeat myself just how much I love my siren shriek."
"I am suddenly a little jealous that I only have my ghostly wail for a sound attack," Danny chuckled.
"In another world, our parts might be switched," White snickered. "I could be the one that is a ghost and you'd be the siren."
"If that world does exist, we are so visiting it at one point," Danny stated.
"Let's deal with the problems at hand first, brother of mine," White was trying not to roll his eyes.
Aqualad jumped to the other roof as Phantom and Siren floated down beside him. All the other flyers on the team came down to the roof as well. Red Huntress… she came down slowly, as if she could not believe what she was seeing. Or rather, who she was seeing.
"I… I can't believe it," she managed to get out.
Phantom and Siren each pulled out their respected pendants. If there is one thing their friend knows about them, is that they go nowhere without them.
"Hi, Valerie," the twins greeted the armored girl.
The girl took off her helmet, revealing her face and head. She was an eighteen-year-old African-American girl with long curly hair and dark green eyes. In her hair, pulling it back, was a yellow headband.
"Y...You're back," she stuttered. "You're actually back."
"Not by choice, I tell you that," Danny informed her.
"If Clockwork hadn't asked for our help, we'd be perfectly happy with getting you, Dani, and Jazz out of here and letting everyone else rot," White put a hand on his hip.
There was a SCREECH sound from the street below them. They all looked and saw that Jazz had finally arrived on Phantom's old electric scooter.
"I missed the big reveal to Valerie, didn't I," she asked immediately, but didn't wait for an answer. "Dang it! This thing is way too slow."
"Is that my old scooter," Danny raised an eyebrow.
Siren could not help but start laughing at his brother's face and his tone when he asked that question. Beast Boy and Cyborg easily followed him into laughter.
The entire group was now sitting in Phantom and Siren HQ. was pouring hot chocolate into cups in everyone's hands. Or rather, she was letting her powers pour the delicious drink.
"So, you're the other friend the twins had to leave behind," Kaldur was never known for being subtle when he talked.
Phantom and Siren both nodded in response.
"Valerie and us go way back," Danny says. "All the way back to when she was trying to kill us."
That got the attention of the team. Especially when Phantom had said it in a way like it was no big deal that she had tried to kill them.
"Do you… normally make allies with those that have tried to kill you," Robin asked.
"It wasn't like she knew who we were," White says. "There had been a misunderstanding with Cujo the ghost dog and a place where Valerie's dad was head of security."
The team knew about Cujo and were all quite frankly smitten with the sweet and sometimes vicious phantom pup. The canine spirit was shown up at Mount Justice one day and had tackled Phantom the second he was in his line of sight. The team was all set to attack until Phantom started laughing as the sweet specter licked his face. It also did help that Cujo did one-time scare Kid Flash out of his wits when he turned into his fifteen-foot tall form when he was about to go on another of his "ghosts aren't real" rants. Anyone that can shut him up is okay in their books.
"What happened," Cyborg asked.
"Cujo used to be a guard dog where her dad used to work when it was a different company altogether," Danny explained. "As even animals can have an obsession or unfinished business, Cujo started to haunt the place and wreak havoc because he was looking for his favorite chew toy."
"We didn't know, at first, because even with my powers we can't understand animals," White took over. "We would keep sending him back to the Ghost Zone, but he would literally dig his way back through the portal even when the doors were closed. He broke into the facility that Val's father was working at and none of their security measures worked because of how Cujo is a ghost. He was fired from the resulting destruction."
"It was not my finest moments, after that," Valerie awkwardly laughed. "I blamed Danny, thinking that Cujo was his pet."
"Which only came true a few months later," Danny added.
"I was given a mysterious package later," Valerie continued. "It was after my father and I had gone broke because of how he lost his job. The package contained equipment and a suit. I made my debut as Red Huntress, hunting down any and all ghosts with Phantom as my main target."
"You picked up the skills that easily to just start right away," Dick raised an eyebrow.
"Not exactly," Valerie blushed, embarrassed.
"She had some difficulty, at first," White said. "She would not be able to hold up her heavier weapons, her aim would not be the best and she would miss us by quite a bit, plus there was the time when she couldn't even open the thermos for capturing ghosts."
"That lid still gets stuck on me, even when it was the one you guys used to use," Valerie crossed her arms. "How you always got that thing to work so easily is beyond me."
"Of all our opponents, Valerie did become one of the most formidable of all our foes," Danny says. "Definitely in the top five along with Pariah Dark, Vlad, Undergrowth, and… him."
"Has Vlad attempted to contact you, Val," White asked the teen. "Jazz said that he hasn't been since long before we even left. We didn't notice how long he was gone until we came back and she told us."
"Trust me, I'd skin that Fruitloop alive if he ever tried to manipulate me again," Valerie got an angry look on her face.
At the looks on the team's faces, they decided to continue their story to settle the confusion they had just caused.
"We have mentioned Vlad to you before, but not given the full explanation," Danny started. "He's one of our worst enemies. The only other halfa in the realms other than me. He was a college friend of Jack and Maddie and had helped them with the first prototype of the portal to the Ghost Zone. But it malfunctioned and he ended up being turned into a halfa and getting a very bad case of ecto-acne as a result."
That made a lot of eyebrows rise from their teammates.
"Ecto-acne," White explained. "Extremely gross, extremely dangerous, and yes it is a stereotype to think that it mostly appears on ghost teenagers."
"After he cured himself, Vlad had already lost in a love triangle that only existed in his mind," Danny continued. "He was in love with Maddie, but she never returned his feelings and was also completely oblivious to them. He never let go of his 'love' for her and when their high school reunion came, he decided to try and use his powers to kill Jack and take Maddie, myself, White, and Jazz all to himself."
"It was seriously creepy whenever he offered to take Danny as his ghost son and apprentice," White shivered. "It still brings chills up my spine to this day."
"You were just lucky that he had a hatred for sirens," Danny crossed his arms. "Why he hated them we never found out, but you were lucky because of it."
"I probably never helped his hatred by the number of times I've screamed until his eardrums popped," White chuckled.
"Vlad took up the name Plasmius," Danny explained. "He was always one of our most powerful foes because of how he had years of experience on us. He was able to do things that Danny wasn't able to. Projecting shields, duplicating himself, strength increasing, and energy strike, throwing energy disks, ecto-energy construction, energy absorption and redirection, ghost stinger, ghost tornado, and even teleportation."
"But, at the same time, the more power Danny gains, he got powers that Vlad didn't," White said. "Like his ghostly wail and his ice core abilities. From all we know, Vlad doesn't have a core at all. Must have been another side effect of the dysfunctional portal prototype."
"Vlad had developed his own ghost hunting equipment and secretly gave them to me when I was making my hatred of Phantom known," Valerie took over.
"Big mistake after Valerie discovered who he secretly was," White snickered.
"I didn't know that he was providing me with the weapons and equipment as a way to manipulate me," Valerie continued. "I didn't know that he was Plasmius so used that secrecy to hire me to get rid of his main ghostly rivals. Even had me hunt down Dani, making me believe that she was some sort of threat even when she risked herself to save me when a building almost collapsed on us."
"We'll need to find her," Danny says. "The most likely thing is that she is hiding with Pandora. Those two have always had a good relationship. I blame Pandora's inner mama bear."
"I tried to get her to stop going out alone," Valerie said. "Dani was just trying to just follow in her 'father's' footsteps and protect the town."
She gave Phantom a very pointed look when she had said "father."
"Alright, we have been very patient," Impulse says. "Especially me… because I'm me. But who is this 'Dani' you keep talking about? And why does she share Phantom's name?"
The three of them, plus Jazz, facepalmed at the second question. While it might not have been clear at first, it was made clear that Dani is a girl. Whoever would name a girl "Danny" was beyond them. But it also wasn't like any of them was referring to her as "Danielle."
"Uh… I guess it's time that we tell you guys about Danny's daughter," White was scratching the back of his neck like his twin usually does.
"WHAT," the entire team yelled.
(For the future, if there are names or words missing, mostly or M'gann, I have no idea why they aren't there. They seem to vanish after I publish the chapter, so I am sorry in advance if that continues to happen.)