Disclaimer: I still don't own Danny Phantom. Butch Hartman does, and I somehow doubt that will be changing any time soon. Since I'm not making any money from this, there is nothing for the law-ninjas to sue out of me.
Author's Note:"Fifth" rampage, some of you might be pondering. Don't worry, the title is merely a passing reference to my other two fics Jeremiad and Anathema, in which Dan had been rampaging loose in Amity Park on four separate occasions spanning that decade between the normal timeline and the trashed future from TUE. As always, reviews are muchly appreciated, even if they're merely threats to update soon or to yell at me for the end of the chapter.
In fact, if you'll excuse me now, I'm going to go find a fortified bunker to hide in.
Chapter 2: Fifth Rampage
"Rage and fear from skies above, the fire fuels my veins.
Destruction of humanity, the everlasting flame.
Cast away, no turning back from long forgotten shores.
We'll show no mercy as they fall!"
-"Prepare for War" - Dragonforce
That was one fragment of the past restored to its proper condition. He floated above the blast crater, studying what was left of the Nasty Burger. That sauce really was a high-grade explosive; he'd only used a small beam to set off the sauce tanks, but the damage done was comparable to nearly any of his earliest explosive exploits. How in the world did that get past the FDA for human consumption? He mused to himself as his face twisted into a smile and he began blasting nearby buildings. It reminded him of his proper past in a way, people screaming in panic, fleeing for their lives as brick and mortar cracked and fell.
It wouldn't be long, he knew. Either his weakness would show up to stop him, or Valerie would show up in a pathetic attempt at stopping him. Perhaps both. He didn't particularly care which of the two arrived first. He would rip his weakness to pieces, just as he had in the proper past. The child would die, and it would be in a suitably painful, gruesome manner. If Valerie appeared... well, he wasn't certain yet how he would kill the huntress. He could rip her apart the same way he would his weakness, or perhaps a consuming explosion to burn her to ash? Maybe he would lure her high into the air and destroy her jet sled, leaving her to plummet a few thousand feet to a grisly ending as a red splotch sprayed over the concrete.
He scowled, blasting a police car, the shrieks of the occupants nothing short of sweet music to his pointy ears. After he'd taken down the ghost shield ten years in the future, there hadn't been much left to do. People who survived got quite good at hiding, the pleasure of killing them diminished when the only way to get them was to blast huge craters in the twisted debris. He couldn't hear them plead in terror then. Even playing a deadly game of tag with Valerie had rapidly lost its shine; the huntress was quite good at stalking and prowling, but there was no danger from her. He had become strong enough that none of her weapons so much as tickled. Indeed, the only thing that had proved a challenge was his weakness, and only because the boy had the element of surprise and a great deal of Fenton gadgetry at his disposal.
I know what he's capable of. He won't take me by surprise this time. He won't be able to win.
---
"I'm going ghost!" Danny jumped into the air, swim shorts replaced in a flash with the black and white jumpsuit of his ghost form. He wasn't sure what he was going to do when he got to the battle, but there was no way he could sit by and do nothing. He had grown more powerful since that desperate fight, but would it be enough?
"Danny, what-" Sam was already toweling off, her expression worried.
"I've got to stop him." Danny interrupted, glancing in the direction of the smoke, where more explosions could be heard in the distance.
Tucker clambered out of the pool and grabbed his towel. "Be careful, dude. Y'know we've got your back."
Danny frowned at that where he floated, about ready to take off. His friends had helped bail him out of difficult situations countless times before, but this one-? He didn't know for certain what his evil alternate self was after, but the teen half-ghost suspected it had to do with setting the timeline back to that bleak future of ruin.
"Guys, I want you to stay here." He finally declared. Danny interrupted the immediate indignant protests of his two friends. "This is my fight, and I don't want you guys getting hurt. Remember, he exists because you guys were all supposed to be dead. If he goes after you guys..."
"Danny..."
"... If he goes after you guys, I might not be able to protect you." The admission hurt to give voice to, but it was the truth. Danny wasn't about to go overestimating his abilities, not after all the near-misses, all the close calls. Everyone nearly died in that explosion, and he hadn't been able to save anyone. It had been thanks to Clockwork's power that they had survived, not him. It had been entirely too close for comfort when Freakshow nearly succeeded in ripping the very foundations of reality apart. Danny would never forget his mother's scream when she thought her son had been killed by that rollercoaster train. He didn't want them put in danger because of him again, and his demented alternate self was likely the most dangerous opponent he'd ever faced. "I'll be back soon."
With that, Danny shot off into the sky, his two friends staring after him. Sam's expression set into a determined mask; the goth girl ducked into the pool dressing room to get back into her normal attire. After a moment she emerged, cutting an imposing figure in her dark outfit, a Fenton Thermos strapped across her back.
"Uh, Sam?" Tucker eyed the resolute girl.
"Who's going to protect him?" Sam snapped. "You coming?"
---
"Oh man, I hope Mom and Dad didn't see the news..." Danny muttered, his voice almost lost to his ears from the speed he was flying. The ghost hunters would be all over it if they knew about it. Danny didn't want to think what would happen if they were there; what might happen if that sick alternate future saw his parents raising ineffective ecto-weapons against an enemy lightyears out of their league.
A quick glance down made the half-ghost groan. Weaving through traffic, sirens blaring was the unmistakable form of the Fenton RV, doubtlessly heading in the same direction as Danny. Okay, so I just need to make sure that he isn't where they're going. How am I going to buy enough time to get him somewhere else-? Frowning, Danny put on an extra burst of speed, leaving the RV below mired in traffic. An idea hit as another explosion rocked the area. Danny didn't much care for unnecessary property damage, but with the situation as it was, a few more craters in the streets below was a small price to pay if it meant impeding his parents' arrival.
Man, this isn't going to do my reputation any good. He grumped, firing the first of several blasts into the streets below, carving out potholes in the asphalt that would prevent cars, and most importantly the RV, from crossing them. It wouldn't buy him much time, his parents would probably be willing to leave the RV and cover the remaining distance on foot. But it was better than nothing, and Jack would probably waste valuable time trying to find a drivable route.
In entirely too short a time he was there, gaping at the ruins he had seen in that horrible future now made real. If this was what Valerie had witnessed happening in that twisted alternate future, Danny couldn't blame the future huntress for her actions. And there, standing atop the burned out hull of a police car, a green ecto-blast in one hand and a demented smile plastered across that pale face...
...Was him.
You know, I really hope I don't look anything like that when I'm twenty-four. The thought was absurd, and Danny knew it. At least it was better than being paralyzed with fear. I hope everyone in the area was able to get away in time... Looking at the burned out cars and tattered buildings though, Danny had a sinking suspicion that wasn't the case. The time for speculation and planning was over. Any moment his ghost sense would go off, the blue mist matched by red from below. Then he would know Danny was there to fight him.
Now or never. The ambush trick had worked before, so Danny rose higher into the air to maximize his momentum. Taking a deep breath to steel his nerves, he dove. It worked, his alternate self had little to no time to react before Danny slammed into him, fists first at close to two-hundred miles per hour.
"Shouldn't you still be in time-out for bad behavior?" Danny quipped as his twisted mirror image sailed several miles through the air from the impact with a snarl.
"And you should be dead." He hissed, launching a blast at Danny. "But then you don't always get what you want, do you?"
Danny yelped and threw a hasty shield up, the blast deflecting into the air off the spherical defense. Something was different this time. Before, his demented alternate self had been more calculating; a more sinister, scheming evil. Now though, the twenty-four year old ghost seemed more ruthless, and even less rational. The ghost had certainly thrown paradox to the wind if that blast was any indication. Danny didn't want to think what it would have been like if that blast had hit him instead of the shield.
Well, at least that got him away from where my parents are heading. Danny dodged around several smaller blasts, mind racing for some sort of solution. If he used his Ghostly Wail now, it might be enough to incapacitate the ghost long enough to cram him into a thermos again. He'd yet to use it for a single full-power blast, but Danny was relatively certain that the attack had grown more potent since he first used it against his alternate self. But if the attack failed, it would leave him extremely vulnerable. Would a thermos even work? Somehow the guy had escaped from one already, and Danny didn't think that Clockwork would be so careless with it as to accidently let the ghost loose.
"This isn't about what I want." Danny snapped, blasting the ghost in the face. "It's about protecting my family!"
With a sound somewhere between a growl and a hiss, the ghost shot forward, pale face only lightly scorched from the explosion. "You think you can protect them? They're supposed to be dead, along with everything else in this stupid city!"
Danny tried to dive out of the way, but his flight was arrested by a nearly bone-crunching grip clamping down on his wrist. It hurt, and Danny bit his lip to keep from crying out as he swung both legs forward, kicking his twisted future self in the jaw. The ghost yelped, perhaps having bitten that grotesque tongue, and loosened his grip just enough for the teen to slip free.
Okay, I don't want to try and fight him in close quarters. Danny cringed as he put some space between himself and that warped reflection. His wrist was throbbing still with pain, it would probably be bothering him for a few days at least. I guess I'll just have to hope it works...
Danny inhaled sharply, wincing to himself at the likely collateral damage the attack would cause. Not a full-strength Wail, but hopefully just enough to set the ghost off-balance like before. The fact that his alternate self had already been weakened from the Specter Deflector and the Ghost Gauntlets in their previous fight was a thought he tried to ignore.
"I don't think so-" The ghost was cut off mid-lunge and sent careening into the side of a building by a pink beam of energy.
Danny got knocked backwards by a similar pink blast a split second later, aborting his Ghostly Wail and cringing when he realized who had just joined the fight. Oh crud, Valerie-! Her new black and red suit and matching jet sled made for a terribly imposing figure, an array of cube-shaped mini-guns floating near her shoulders. He knew from the future that Valerie's weaponry was all but useless against that warped mirror image of himself, but it didn't seem likely he could just ask her to leave. Well, he could, but the odds of Valerie heeding the advice were slimmer than the odds of Vlad finding a girlfriend. In other words Valerie choosing willingly to abandon the battlefield was not going to happen.
"What's this? You got a big brother, ghost?" Valerie snarled, aiming her weapons at Danny.
"Ur, not exactly." He only happens to be what I could have been in ten years.
Valerie was interrupted from her gunpoint interrogation by a green blast smacking into her jet sled and sending it tumbling. She quickly regained control of the sharp device and looked where the blast came from.
Standing on top of the building he'd hit, he stood, one hand still glowing and a wide demented smile stretching across his face, daylight glinting off cruel fangs. The wind caught his cape and splayed it out behind him, his entire stance emanating a truly demented glee at the huntress' presence. Of course, the ghost did seem to have a special brand of hatred for her. After all, in that twisted future, Valerie had been the only thing between him and the absolute annihilation of everything.
"Valerie. It's been awhile." The ghost purred, leaping into the air, a volley of green blasts preceeding him.
"Not long enough, spook!" Valerie darted through the storm of beams, though her tone betrayed her confusion. She closed quarters with the half-mad ghost, only to yelp when a punch to the stomach dislodged her from the jet sled and sent her plummeting with a shriek.
"It never is, is it?" That twisted reflection took aim, a brilliant blast that would certainly hit the prone huntress before the sled could turn around and stop her freefall. "But we won't have to see each other ever again."
Danny didn't waste time thinking, he merely acted, pure reflex. With all the speed he could muster, he shot beneath Valerie, locking his arms around her waist and flying them both barely out of the line of fire. It took Valerie a moment for her brain to catch up to what had just happened as the report from the blast's impact rolled for miles. She started thrashing in Danny's grip, flailing angrily at her rescuer.
"Let me go! Put me down!"
"Yeah, you're welcome." Danny quipped as Valerie's sled arced beneath the pair. "Look, right now really isn't a good time for you to be here."
"You think I'm just gonna let you ghosts run loose without-" Valerie snarled as Danny let go of her so she could reclaim her sled.
"Look out-!" Danny threw himself at Valerie, shoving huntress and sled out of the way of a second blast. He launched a blast of his own, the green beam connecting and sending his future self tumbling back to the rooftop with an angry shout.
Valerie recovered more rapidly from the second save than the first, glaring at Danny through her red visor. "What is going on, ghost?"
Well, at least she's starting to listen. Danny glanced in the direction of his alternate self. "If you're going to stay, I could really use your help."
"My help?" Valerie raised one eyebrow warily as they both darted around a third blast. "You aren't with him?"
"NO!" Danny shouted, not meaning to put so much anger into the one little word. Valerie even recoiled slightly from the force of the declaration. "I mean... no. I'm not, and I never will be. But right now, he's only about a billion times more dangerous to you and everybody else in this city than I'll ever be."
Valerie looked past Danny, where the ghost still stood on top of that building, smirking coldly at the both of them. With the new visor allowing Danny to see the huntress' face, he could clearly tell she was considering what he'd just told her.
"I'm tired of waiting for you idiots." The ghost growled, crouching on the rooftop, hands glowing vivid green.
"No, wait-!" Danny yelped, the sentiment echoed by Valerie as a giant explosion ripped the entire building apart, the ghost leaping into the air with a sinister snarl.
"You monster!" Valerie shrieked, Danny apparently forgotten in the wake of that blatant, lethal violence. Danny couldn't tell through the red tint of the girl's visor, but he was pretty sure she had gone as pale as he did at the implications. At least the last time he'd had to fight his alternate future self, the guy had been focused on just him and the Nasty Burger. This time, the ghost seemed perfectly content to simply cause as much damage and loss of life as possible. Not even Vlad or Pariah Dark had been so twisted.
Valerie shot into action, sled blazing a wide arc around the ghost, a volley of energy beams strafing the smiling spook. He evaded some, deflected several off a green shield, and outright batted the rest aside, frowning slightly at the huntress. Danny didn't know what seemed to be so riveting. Maybe because Valerie's new equipment didn't look like anything his alternate self had ever seen before?
Danny didn't miss a beat as he flanked the ghost opposite Valerie, adding his own green volley to the melee. He couldn't use the Ghostly Wail, not with Valerie in such close range. On the other hand, he felt a little bit better about not taking on the nightmare alone. Still, he wasn't sure how much help Valerie would be, even with her new weapons.
"Isn't this cute?" His demented self snarled, evading Danny's barrage. "All the more reason to kill you both."
"What happens to you then?" Danny retorted, remembering that particular question had ever so briefly given the ghost pause in their last fight.
His warped reflection burst into laughter at the question, clutching his sides from how hard he was laughing. The reaction gave Danny and Valerie pause, giving one another matching looks of confusion. The ghost really had snapped, not that one could have called him particularly sane before.
"Didn't that fool Clockwork tell you?" The ghost finally gasped out in between peals of that chilling laughter. "I exist outside of time. That means you don't matter at all to me."
Danny's eyes widened at the information. Clockwork had implied that time wasn't a perfectly linear thing, but the idea hadn't really registered on the teen beyond the fact that everyone was safe and he'd had a chance to fess up about the test answers. If this nightmare self existed independently of the timeline...
---
"Hurry up!" Sam shouted over her shoulder at Tucker as the pair darted through crowds of people fleeing from the destruction.
"Watch out!" Tucker cried out, diving out of the way of an errant pink beam, carelessly deflected from the battle in the sky.
The two teens had simply followed the smoke and destruction that marked the erratic path the battle was taking, trying not to think too much about the heaps of rubble that littered their route. Not even Pariah's army or Walker's goons had caused so much damage to the city. This crisis of Danny's evil alternate future self was without a doubt the most serious that the half-ghost had ever faced. Freakshow may have been more demented, but the ringmaster hadn't been nearly so lethal on such a massive scale. The ringmaster's wrath had kept to a narrow focus- revenge on Danny. This was indiscriminate violence, plain and simple. Destruction for the sake of destroying things, murder for the sake of bloodshed.
"Danny, please be okay..." Sam whispered under her breath. She didn't recall her friend's last fight with that demented ghost, but Danny had told them all about the battle and just how deadly close it had been. About what would have happened if not for Clockwork's timely intervention. Sometimes she had nightmares that might have been memories, the clarity wiped out by the time manipulation. Seeing those nightmares made real did nothing to ease the goth's nerves.
"Dude, I hope Danny's folks aren't home." Tucker pointed out as they closed in on the site of the battle.
Sam shook herself from her brooding at the statement, only then realizing the fight overhead was almost directly above the distinctive roof of FentonWorks. From the ground, the crazed aerial melee seemed almost fake, a surreal pyrotechnic display of green blasts, red beams, pink rocket exhaust trails. From where she stood on the ground she could make out the trio of forms whirling about in the air: Danny was the smallest, a speck of black and white compared to the ominous black and red of Valerie and the eerily familiar yet alien black and white of that monster Danny could have become.
There was an explosion. Sam shielded her eyes from the green glare, a knot of fear lodged in her stomach as she heard Danny's voice cry out, loud and clear even across the distance and roar of the blast. As the blast faded she could hear crazed laughter drifting down, the sound making her shiver. To think that Danny could have become that-!
"Danny-!" Tucker yelped.
There! Sam's momentary relief at verifying her friend wasn't blown to smithereens faded almost instantly. Danny was intact but falling limply, the teen's descent utterly unchecked as he slammed into the roof of the ops center, the sound of tearing metal and a loud hollow thump making it clear that the half-ghost hadn't simply passed intangible through the steel, but had instead slammed into it with considerable force. The battle overhead paused for a long moment, almost as if waiting with breath held to see if Danny was going to leap skyward again.
"Danny!" Sam shrieked.
There was no answer.