Yesterday, I posted a chapter a little early to make up for the week when I didn't post one. Today, I'm posting the next chapter in the hopes that it could possibly make up for the five years I was gone. It's the final battle, folks. It's gonna get a little dark. Hope you like it. ~Ms. Oregano
xxxxxx
There was nothing in the darkness. No one crying. No pain. No recollection of the past, present, or future. Not even a sense of self. It was surprisingly serene.
Until that bliss was rudely interrupted by an intense shock that shook his body off the ground.
Danny awoke with a scream. His eyes randomly darted across the room, but his brain could not register what he was seeing. All his senses were overwhelmed by the electricity coursing through him.
When the electric shocks ceased, he plummeted to the ground. His left hand fell beside his head, and Danny watched as his fingers twitched on their own.
A massive, golden shape stood past his hand. He lifted his head and tried to focus his eyes on the blob.
The haziness began to subdue, and Danny remembered who and where he was.
He was Danny Phantom, and he was in the fight of his life against an evil, alternative version of himself, who, at the moment, was sitting on a throne, playing with the ball lightning in his hand.
"Have a nice nap?" Dark Danny said. "Sure took you long enough."
Danny propped himself up against his forearm and frantically looked around.
"Looking for them?" Dark Danny said, pointing his thumb to the right of him.
Danny turned himself upright and saw his friends and future family all chained up against the wall. One person was clearly missing.
"Where's my older self?" he asked, trying to sound commanding despite his weakened voice.
Dark Danny simply pointed towards behind younger Danny.
Older Danny laid on the floor of an enormous golden cage, much like the one Angel was once trapped in.
"I'll bet he felt that shock," Dark Danny said with a sinister laugh.
"How…" younger Danny began.
"Don't you get it by now?" Dark Danny boomed. He got up from the throne and walked towards him. "Whatever happens to you happens to him as well. The pain you feel, he'll feel a 25-year version of. And if you die…"
Dark Danny knelt in front of younger Danny and smiled. "So does he."
"No…Tara and Megan…"
"Will have never existed."
Vanessa gave a pained scream as she wiggled wildly against her constraints.
"Ugh, I thought I knocked you out too," Dark Danny said.
"And I woke up. Help! Somebody help us!"
"Again with that? I told you, there's no one around to hear you. So, SHUT UP."
He geared up for another attack towards Vanessa.
"Vanesser, please."
Vanessa looked over at her best friend, who had tears in her eyes.
"Stop."
"You heard her," Dark Danny said. "And if you know what's good for you, you'll do as she says."
He then looked over at the cage.
"Now…"
He got up and walked over. Dark Danny banged on the bars.
"Get up, grandpa. I know you've got a piece of Clockwork's technology too. Where is it?"
Older Danny struggled to his feet. "I...don't know...what you're-"
"Don't lie to me! I sense the radiation! Now hand it over!"
Older Danny turned his head towards his wife and children. He sighed and took off his wedding ring.
"Of course," older Sam whispered.
"What?" older Tucker said.
Tears streamed down her face. "He never takes it off."
Older Danny dropped the ring in his nemesis' hand.
Dark Danny chuckled. "I think I'll keep this for when our kid's born. Make sure they stick around."
He calmly walked back to the throne and put the ring on it.
"Obliteration is too merciful for you," he said. "You deserve a slow and painful death."
Younger Danny stood up.
"I'm walking out of here alive," he said adamantly.
Dark Danny cocked an eyebrow. "Bold statement."
With that, he flew straight towards younger Danny and punched him in the stomach. Older Danny immediately dropped to his knees, wrapping his arms around his abdomen in agony.
Dark Danny's eyes flashed brilliantly as he blasted ghost rays at younger Danny. Younger Danny gasped and quickly formed a shield around him. He clutched his hands into fists and pulled them towards him; the green shield slowly became red with every hit. Then, with a yell, Danny let go, redirecting the beams back towards Dark Danny. The force projectiled him up to the ceiling, which cracked under Dark Danny's weight.
Meanwhile, the captured bystanders kicked and moved every which way to try to break free.
"There's no way out of this!" younger Tucker said.
Older Tucker looked over at Megan, who was reaching her little arms towards the pockets of her shorts.
"Megan, what are you doing?" he said.
"My pockets!" she said. "My pockets have sage!"
"What?" older Sam said.
"Sage! I asked Tucker to get it for me!"
Younger Sam gave her friend a confused look.
"She said it was for her science experiments!" he said, equally perplexed.
"Honey, what is sage going to do for us?" older Tucker asked.
"I looked it up on the computer!" Megan said. "Ghosts don't like sage!"
"Sage? Are you sure? Of all the things-" her mother began.
"You gotta believe me, Mommy! Get the tube-thing in my pocket!"
Older Tucker looked over at the fight in front of him, where he saw younger Danny push off the ground and fly towards Dark Danny.
"Which pocket, hon?" he said.
Dark Danny saw younger Danny speeding towards him but didn't budge. Instead, he aimed the Ring of Rage towards him. Younger Danny saw a green beam emit from the ring and dodged the attack, only to have it zap Danny's shadow. His shadow briefly illuminated green; then the shadow lifted itself off the ground and into Danny's physical body.
Danny grabbed his head, screaming as he felt the shadow surge through his brain and rush into his veins, spreading to every fiber of his being. He felt as if every bone in his body had been broken, yet he was forced to stay awake through the pain.
Older Tucker struggled in the restraints as his fingers reached for Megan's shorts pocket.
"Almost..." he groaned.
Then, he felt fabric.
Older Danny clutched his hand over his mouth as he tried to stifle the yells so as to not scare his children even further. But the pain was unimaginable. It was as if someone had inserted a needle into his chest and popped his lungs like balloons. His breathing labored. Suddenly, he had the inkling to look at his hands.
The tips of his fingers were disappearing.
"Got it!"
Older Tucker opened the test tube.
"Now what?" he asked.
"Pass it over to me, Dad," Vanessa said. "He may have taken your weapons when he threw you all in the cell, but he forgot to search me."
He passed the plastic tube back to Megan, who passed it to Vanessa.
She pulled the sage out and watched the chain across her body disintegrate.
"Looks like the old legends were right! Sage really does work!"
Once liberated, Vanessa pushed herself off the wall and bolted towards Dark Danny.
She skidded to a stop and positioned her wrist ray towards his hand.
The strike knocked his wrist back, and Dark Danny yelped at the surprise attack.
With the ring no longer pointed at him, the power was redirected, and younger Danny's shadow returned to the floor.
Younger Danny could feel the pain subside slowly, but the vertigo remained. Yet even in his feeble state, he knew this distraction served as the perfect time to attack. Mustering up as much strength as he could, he lifted his hands up and sent a flurry of icicles at Dark Danny.
Due to younger Danny's dizziness, most of the icy spears missed their target; nevertheless, some found their mark, and Dark Danny shrieked in pain as they stabbed through his suit.
Older Danny's cage began to vibrate, and soon disappeared all together.
"DANNY!" older Sam screamed.
She sprinted over to her husband and tried to pick him up.
"We need to get you out of here!" she shouted.
Throwing his arm over her shoulder, she helped him hobble over to a nearby pile of debris that once helped to make up one of the castle walls.
She laid him back down on the ground once they were behind it. The rumble of a distant explosion echoed in the room as the ground shook gently, and older Sam pulled him closer to her to try to make them smaller.
"I have to go out there. Maybe there are some more weapons in the old Speeder. Stay here, and-" she said.
"Wait," older Danny interrupted. He held up his hand. Older Sam gasped as she spotted his two missing fingers.
"I think...I think I'm dying."
"Payback!" Tara yelled at Dark Danny as she tore through the air towards him. She danced a blue fireball between her fingers as he blew his icy breath on the flames eating away at his clothing.
"You think a little fire's enough to defeat me?" he said.
"No, but this might help," came a voice from below.
With a battle cry, Vanessa lunged her arm forward and released the wires of the Jack o' Nine Tails towards him.
With an unimpressed look on his face, Dark Danny morphed into green gas, allowing the weapon to pass harmlessly through him.
"You really are insistent. Just like your poor mother."
Vanessa's face dropped. "What?"
He flew down and swooped Vanessa up, dangling her by her wrist.
"Vanessa!" Tara screamed.
"When I freed myself from the Thermos and defeated Clockwork and his goons, I went through the first time portal I could find to get myself out of there. I ended up in your past."
He ascended higher and higher.
"I had no idea where I was. It looked like Amity Park, but it was not the Amity Park I knew. There was...life. And a whole campus of Spector Detectors."
"What…" Vanessa whispered.
"A woman saw me. She was getting into her car when she saw me fly over her."
"You're lying…"
"And when she saw me, she had this...this face. Like she knew me. Or maybe she heard all about me. Either way, she recognized me, and, well, I couldn't let my little secret slip."
"Stop it!"
"And when she got into her car and drove away, I knew I had to stop her before she could tell anyone. So, I overshadowed a guy in a beat-up car…"
"No!"
"And, well, I could immediately tell he was intoxicated. I mean, I just got lucky!"
"Mama!" she screamed, tears running down her cheeks.
"You killed Emma?"
Dark Danny looked down at older Tucker, who held the Fenton Bazooka in his hands.
"It was you?" Tucker yelled as he trained up the weapon.
Dark Danny smiled. "She looks exactly like her, doesn't she?"
Then, he let go of her.
In her overwhelming shock, Vanessa didn't scream. She simply watched as the vision of Dark Danny got smaller and smaller, and his laughter grew more and more faint. She closed her eyes tight.
Instead of feeling her bones crack on the solid ground, she felt her body slip into a pair of strong arms.
"Got you," younger Danny said.
"Thank you," she choked out as she was placed carefully on the ground.
"Together!" Tara yelled. With her arms over her head, she created an ectoplasmic snowball the size of a car and threw it at him. Older Tucker let out a primal, wounded roar and fired the bazooka; his daughter fired her wrist ray again and again. Younger Danny blasted a sphere of ecto energy towards him.
Meanwhile, younger Sam fitted a wrist laser to herself as younger Tucker grabbed the Fenton Divider from the back of the Specter Speeder.
"I don't see Mommy and Daddy," Megan said as she peered through the windows from inside the vehicle.
"I know, but don't worry, Megan. We'll find them. In the meantime, you stay here, okay? Please promise us you'll stay safe," younger Tucker said while putting on the gloves.
"Okay. I promise."
Younger Sam kissed the little girl's cheek, and the two ran off.
"You take the right side! Find Danny, and give him the gloves!" younger Sam yelled. "I'll take the left and find our older selves!"
"Got it!" younger Tucker yelled back.
As the rest of the group attacked Dark Danny in the center of the room, younger Sam jumped between broken pillars and piles of debris.
"I think we got him," Tara exclaimed as she witnessed Dark Danny become engulfed in green light from all sides. She stopped shooting, and they all followed suit.
There was an empty space where Dark Danny used to float.
"Where'd he go?" older Tucker yelled.
Suddenly, younger Danny felt his back propelled upwards. He grunted as he collided face-first into the ceiling and collapsed on the ground, limp and unmoving.
"Boo," Dark Danny said.
Tara felt lightheaded. Her vision blurred, and she could tell she was descending very quickly.
"Tara?" Vanessa said. "Tara, what's wrong with you?"
Younger Tucker saw Tara gaining speed as she floated down. He ran across and grabbed her before she collided with the ground.
"Tara, what's wrong?"
"I...I don't know...I just-"
She gasped.
"Tucker."
She lifted her right hand up, and Tucker watched as Tara's thumb disappeared completely.
Younger Sam had just jumped to the next broken pillar when she saw older Danny's lower legs disappear.
"You cannot die," she could hear her older self say. "Look at me. Look at me! Stay with me. Do not give up."
Older Danny coughed. "You know I never do."
"You'll get better. You have healing abilities, for crying out loud! You'll get better in no time-"
"I'm sorry."
Older Sam looked him in the eyes. "What?"
"I'm sorry."
"For what?" she said.
"For not realizing my feelings for you sooner. We could've...we could've had more time."
Older Sam sniffled. "That's ridiculous. No. We'll have all the time in the world, Danny."
She lifted him up closer to her face.
"Listen to me. You are going to watch your daughters grow up. You're going to send them off to college. You're going to walk each of them down the aisle. You-"
She tried her best to stifle her cries, but her tears poured out anyway.
"We wouldn't have been ready if you had figured it out sooner. We were too young, too immature. It happened at the right time."
She rested her forehead on his, and their tears mixed together.
"Thank you," he said.
"For what?"
"For everything. For loving me even when I was a mess. Thank you for getting that crappy apartment with me in college, even though your parents still didn't approve of us and we had to take up part-time jobs to pay rent. Thank you for marrying me, even though you thought marriage was an antiquated tradition."
"It is." She tried to chuckle but found herself crying more. "You...have been the best husband, father, and friend anyone could ever wish for. I really should be thanking you...I know I was...a bit of a hypocrite in my teenage years. And I know sometimes I was a little difficult."
"We really grew up together, didn't we?"
"We sure did...we sure did."
"I'm still just as crazy about you now as I was back when I was 16 and skipping my own ceremony just to sit under a tree with my best friend."
She cradled her head and brushed her thumb against his cheek.
"Me too."
"Mom!"
Older Sam looked over to find younger Tucker dragging Tara off to a nearby pillar. Her left arm was completely gone.
"I'll go find your mom," he said.
She used her good arm to grab his hand.
"No, wait," she whispered. "Please don't leave. I'm...scared."
He watched helplessly as her leg disappeared. He nodded.
"I am all-powerful," Dark Danny exclaimed in an echoing voice.
Younger Danny crawled as fast as he could away from his enemy.
"I am stronger than you could ever hope to be."
He hammer-fisted the ground, the tremors pushing younger Danny further.
Dark Danny rose slowly and walked towards him, leaving a trail of fire behind him with each footstep.
"I am the best version of you."
"You are cocky and done for," younger Sam said.
He saw a burst of energy come his way out of the corner of his eye and swatted it away, causing the beam to redirect to his throne. It blasted the chair, including the wedding ring, into pieces.
"My protégé!" he yelled.
Another burst hit Dark Danny square in the face. Covering his face, he roared in agony.
She took this opportunity to run towards her boyfriend. "Now, Tucker!"
Younger Tucker laid the unresponsive Tara on the ground as her body continued to disintegrate, her abdomen disappearing.
"I will kill you all!" Dark Danny screeched once he removed his hands from his face. The blast had blown a chunk of his pale skin off his face, revealing a coal-black skeleton underneath.
Younger Tucker reached his friends.
"I can't…" Danny mumbled.
"Quick! Help me get these gloves on him!" Tucker cried.
He and Sam secured the gloves on Danny, and they glowed green. Dark Danny lunged forward and jetted towards them.
Sam and Tucker got behind Danny, each taking an arm.
"Die!" Dark Danny screamed.
"Now!" Danny yelled.
They lifted Danny's arms, and Dark Danny plunged straight into the ghost gloves. Danny pushed his arms out and to the side, as Sam and Tucker pulled the arms towards them.
Dark Danny's face contorted, and his body stretched.
"No!"
With a pop, two new ghosts fell to the sidelines, and the Ring of Rage and Crown of Fire dropped to the ground.
A fourteen-year-old Danny Phantom fell unconscious to the left side, then disappeared.
An older Vlad Plasmius fell to the right side and then, like his other half, disappeared.
The trio panted as they stared at the emptiness in front of them.
It was finally over.