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 Notes: Okay, I didn't quiiiite meet the two week deadline this time. But I only overshot it by a few days, right? And I think having a cold is suitable justification for my tardiness... and it totally has NOTHING to do with my having gotten Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations a little over a week ago. TOTALLY. Yeah... you're not buying that, are you?
Chapter 10: The Answers I Don't Know
"The tattered thought balloons above our heads
Sinking in the weight of all we need to say
Whys and what ifs have since long played out
Left us short on happy endings"
-"Now or Never" - Josh Groban
"He's awake now." Vlad's declaration brought the conference room to a screeching halt as every human and ghost in the room stared at the former villain. "He's awake, and rather irate at his situation."
"He's lucky he even has a situation to be irate about!" Paulina huffed.
"He wouldn't be if I'd had any say in it."Valerie leveled dark looks at Tucker and Vlad.
"Guess that's our cue." Tucker hopped to his feet and quickly dropped through the floor. It wasn't much time to prep the ghost before Valerie got downstairs, but it was something at least.
"Let's see what he knows then." Paulina muttered, propping an ecto gun against her shoulder. "And then figure out what to do with him."
"Nowthat should be obvious!" Valerie snarled, checking over one of her own guns and shoving past Vlad to be the first down the stairs.
Inwardly, the huntress was shaking. She knew how to deal with the ghost... at least under the hostile circumstances from the past decade. Show no fear, taunt mercilessly, dodge constantly, and fire liberally. This time however, the circumstances were totally alien. Talk, pry for information. This was the unknown, something she wasn't prepared for.
That alone was reason for fear. What would he say? What would she say to him? Valerie had no idea.
The rest were a step behind her, whispering among themselves about what was locked up in the basement lab.
"-lping her!" The voice carrying from below was clearly irate.
"-ot just about her!" The second voice was Tucker, sounding exasperated.
The two ghosts fell silent when the rest of the group clustered in the doorway, the sudden absence of conversation stifling. For many present, it was their first time getting a good, long look at a figure that had haunted their nightmares. A chance to take in the fire-headed ghost's appearance at close range without immediately focusing on survival tactics and evasion.
Valerie felt her blood run cold. Most of Dan's injuries were no longer visible, and the ghost had somehow mended the gaping holes in his suit. Visibly, the spook seemed to be in top form; and those restraints holding him prone did little to soothe the huntress' nerves. She had long been conditioned to equate seeing him with life-threatening danger, and it was all she could do not to immediately seek cover.
"Spit it out, Phantom." Valerie finally split the silence, the words coming out as a hiss.
"I told you I'm not helping her." Dan snapped at Tucker.
"I was afraid this would happen." Vlad noted with an over-dramatic sigh.
"Either you start talking, ghost-" Valerie snarled, lifting her gun and pointing it at Dan. "-or you've outlived your usefulness."
"Do you think that little toy of yours scares me, Valerie?" Dan hissed in response, clenched fists pulling against the restraining straps.
"Knock it off, both of you!" Tucker interjected, stepping between the ghost and the huntress.
"Okay, so you're not going to talk to Valerie?" Paulina pinched the bridge of her nose in thought.
"The Ghost Zone will freeze over before I talk to her. The only things I have to say to her-" Dan spat, voice gaining that sinister edge that everyone remembered all too well. "-involve how badly I wish she would die."
"Same to you, Phantom!" Valerie growled, glaring past Tucker at Dan.
"Valerie!" Paulina cut the huntress off before the conversation could degenerate further. "Why don't you go upstairs for now, alright?"
That made the huntress bristle even more. "I'm your commanding-"
"Not in this, Valerie." Paulina interrupted again. "This isn't just patrol business, it concerns the entire city. And in that, I outrank you."
"Ah yes, the Mayor Pro Temp certainly has the authority to command the police." Vlad pointed out. "So if you would do as Miss Sanchez has suggested, Valerie, then perhaps we can get somewhere."
"What, you think he-" Valerie gestured at Dan with her gun. "-will talk to you, either?"
"Actually." Dan smiled wickedly, showing both fangs. "I will."
If Valerie's expression had been withering before, now it looked as though her glare could take the paint off a battleship at five-hundred yards. There was little doubt that Dan's willingness to talk to anyone but Valerie was purely out of spite.
"Just remember ghost, who you owe your continued existence right now to!" Valerie retorted, turning and storming toward the stairs.
"Ah yes, why don't you run off on one of your little 'patrols'." Dan's voice taunted after her. "Clearly, they've proven so veryuseful in the past!"
"Dan, I know you don't like her-" Tucker rolled his eyes.
"Idespise her and hate her for everything she was, is, and willever be." Dan interrupted with a hiss.
"-But could you try not to needle her so much?"
"Aaaanyway." Paulina warily pulled a stool over and eased herself down onto it, eyes on the ghost at all times.
"Feh, I make no promises." Dan scoffed.
"What happened to you back there-" Paulina inquired. "-Danny?"
---
"Howdare he?" Valerie shouted to no one in particular as she stormed to the upper floor launch deck of the building.
What was everybody so worried about? New powerful ghost in the Ghost Zone, so what? To her, there was no excuse for permitting that ghost to continue existing; not when the opportunity had so neatly presented itself to end it once and for all.
Fine, I'll go run around making sure no minor threats show up, while they chat up the biggest threat of all in our own headquarters!
That would also put the most capable of the Patrol's agents far from where an initial assault would take place; thus ensuring that at least one hunter remained to deal with the ghost after he invariably went berserk again. Despite the mounting evidence contradicting her, there was still no doubt in Valerie's mind that Dan would resume his rampages. There was no "if" the ghost would attack again; there was only "when" he would attack again.
You know you're being childish about all this. Any ghost that could whuphim that bad probably is only bad news for everyone else. Some traitorous part of her mind noted dryly as Valerie took to the open skies above the city.
"So if it's that big a deal, all we gotta do is close down the portals. No portals, no super-powered mystery ghosts showing up." Valerie nodded to herself at the simple solution to the problem that had everyone up in arms.
Yeah, and your friends who happen to reside in the Ghost Zone would really appreciate being left on their own to deal with it.
She couldn't leave Danny, Sam, and Tucker to deal with whatever this Maghnus guy was alone. Not in good conscience, at least. Certainly not knowing that Tucker had already lost his home to the new spook, if Dora's report was to be believed; and Valerie had no reason to doubt the dragon princess. No, she couldn't leave her friends hanging.
I abandoned you once before, Danny. I won't again. Even if it means dealing with him. After all, it was partly because of me thathe even exists.
It was a thought she tried not to think about too much; one of those nagging memories that would always rise to haunt her dreams at night. That day a decade ago when she'd unwittingly put in motion events that had sent Danny running in fear to Wisconsin...
"Val, before I tell you..." Danny pleaded. "You've gotta promise me you'll let me finish. Please, don't freak out on me, please..."
"Danny, calm down! Relax. Whatever it is, I swear I won't freak out or anything." She readily promised, grabbing the grieving boy's shoulders and giving his a reassuring shake. "We're friends, right?"
It took him several moments to calm down, and she could see fresh tears in his eyes; the raw grief a startling contrast to his tense stance. "Okay. Y'know how my parents are...were-"
He choked back a sob, and she hugged him, offering what little comfort she could for a friend who had lost everything. In that blast, Danny had lost more than she ever had thanks to the ghost kid. She still had her father, after all.
"Danny... I'm sorry. It's okay to cry."
He went rigid and pulled away abruptly, almost as though the contact burned. "You don't understand! It was my fault! I couldn't-!"
Amazingly he managed to get a handle on his distress, regaining some facade of calm much faster than she could have thought possible. He recited in brief for her the history of the Fenton Portal, and how the device hadn't worked at first; until he tampered with it, causing an accident that by all rights ought to have killed him.
"Oh please, Valerie, don't hate me for this, please-" His earlier desperation paled in comparison to his final plea as he stepped back, falling into a slight crouch that seemed strangely familiar... "I'm going ghost!"
Then he simply changed, and the world as she knew it was turned upside-down. Yet all she could think in that first moment of staring into those tear-filled glowing green eyes...
DANNYLIED TO ME!
"It was your fault?! YOU did this?!" She never did figure out what exactly "this" was that she blamed him for in that instant.
All she knew was that her enemy was standing where her friend had been a moment ago, and that she didn't know what to think anymore.
"Valerie-" He squeaked, backing away from the ecto-gun she had trained on him.
"You LIED to me, ghost! You ruined my life, you lied to me-" The accusations were as wild as her shots as she retreated to the familiar sanctuary of anger. "-you USED me!"
She chased him into the sky, firing at him but utterly failing to land a shot in her state of upset.
"Valerie, you promised-!"
---
"Don't call me that." Dan growled.
"Well it's who you are, isn't it?" The Latina responded coldly. "I figured it out after the last time we spoke... before the shield went down."
"It's who I was, not who I am now." The ghost bristled.
"He prefers being called Dan." Tucker interrupted before another argument could really get underway.
"Right." Paulina quirked an eyebrow. "So, then, Dan. You said you'd talk to anybody but Valerie. So what happened to you? I'm surprised there's another ghost out there that could do that much damage to you."
"Guy called himself Maghnus." Dan snorted. "Apparently his brother Pariah betrayed him and stole the Ring of Rage and the Crown of Fire from him."
"I have never heard of the ghost king having a brother." Dora gaped. "Surely someone that powerful... we would have known!"
"Hah! The guy sure had fun bragging about how much stronger he was than his 'traitorous brother'." Dan snorted.
"But I don't get it!" Tucker frowned. "You completely wasted Pariah years ago. Then this guy shows up and even you couldn't beat him?"
"I can assure you, no one was more surprised by that fact than I was." Dan remarked dryly, shifting in an attempt at finding a slightly more comfortable position. "He's powerful. His army of goons, not so much. No worse than Pariah's skeleton army."
"He didn't need his army to take over our castle!" Dora protested.
"So I didn't kill them all?" Dan muttered a curse. "He arrived before I could finish them all off."
"To cut through all the pleasantries-" Vlad interrupted. "-I think what we'd all like to know is how, precisely, did this Maghnus reduce you to such a wretched state?"
Dan closed his eyes for a moment, wincing at the memory. "He's powerful. It pains me to say so, but he's probably more powerful than I am; at least in terms of sheer destructive power. And that's not his only advantage."
"He let me go to deliver a message to you." Dora frowned. "That you return what you stole from him, if that makes any sense."
"It doesn't. I can't give him the ring or the crown." Dan growled. "He is bad news, I can promise that. His goons wouldn't shut up about how he was the only one fit to rule and remake the world in his image."
"So the guy's got some kind of god complex? Wow, that takes the cake." Tucker noted.
"Wait, wouldn't 'remaking' the world mean that he needs to destroy the existing one first?" Paulina squeaked. "No way anybody could do that."
Uneasy silence fell over the room as everyone considered that with varying degrees of disbelief.
"That's utter rubbish." Vlad finally declared. "Destroy the world? Remake it? How, pray tell, could anything accomplish that?"
The tension that weighed heavily on the room began to lift at the old man's declaration. After all, how could anything destroy the world and survive the destruction to rebuild? It was impossible, simple as that!
It was the ghost tied down to the restraining table that smacked sense into the group with his next statement.
"The same way somebody could accomplish beating me to within an inch of my life." Dan hissed. "Do you think so little of my power that I would have been beaten to a pulp by sheer force alone?"
"Well then spit it out already!" Vlad retorted. "If it wasn't stupid brute strength, then how did he do it?"
"I'm not sure how. It was some strange power of his. These weird silver beams from his gauntlet that... There was no stopping them. Ecto beams, solid objects, duplicates..." Dan cringed visibly at the recollection. "Anything that they hit just... ceased to exist.That is what almost got me. He caught one of my duplicates in the arm and took it clear off; and I'll have you know it hurt."
"You feel it when a double gets hurt?" Paulina blinked in surprise, that bit of trivia apparently being news to her.
"Yes, I feel it." Dan snapped in response. "Every double is... just an extension. Disposable enough, but not the sort of thing you just shrug off. And then he caught one of my other doubles, and that was a full body shot of that weird beam."
"Ah, and that is what did you in, was it?" Vlad nodded knowingly. "The utter annihilation of one of your duplicates before you could dispel it would have to have taken quite a toll on even your resources."
"It was almost as bad as what I wish would happen to Valerie." The ghost sneered. "I barely got away from the final blast by ripping a portal out of the Ghost Zone."
"... I guess that covers the 'destroy the world' part then." Tucker squeaked.
---
"Okay, so we've searched the entire tower, and no sign of Clockwork." Sam frowned, eyeing the staff that was the only trace of the time-controlling ghost.
"Except for his staff, and as far as anybody knows, he doesn't just leave this thing lying around." Danny nodded.
"Maybe this thing can give us a clue where he is..." Sam shifted her grip to try and fiddle with the clock set in the top of the shaft.
Unfortunately for the two ghosts, a whole lot of nothing happened. Clicking the stopwatch button on the top of the staff yielded absolutely no response. The clock itself didn't even seem to be running; like the gearworks of the tower, it was stopped cold.
"You don't think..." Danny lowered his voice. "That something happened to him, do you?"
"Got me." Sam shrugged, still fussing with the staff. "He's so elusive, but it doesn't seem right that he'd leave this behind. It's practically his trademark!"
Further conversation was brought crashing to a halt by the sound of a boulder crashing into the side of the tower. The two ghosts yelped and were thrown by the concussion of the impact, their shouts lost amid the clanking of the disturbed clocks in the tower.
"Wh-what was that?!" Danny yelped as he got his bearings, flicking some bits of blasted grit from his hair.
"How should I-" Sam's response was cut short by another ecto-green boulder slamming into the side of the tower, narrowly missing the time viewer and spraying the both of them with debris.
Danny grabbed Clockwork's staff and used the shaft to lever some of the debris off Sam, both listening to the mounting cacophony from outside. Once untangled from the debris, they both crept toward the new hole in the tower, peering out at the scene below.
Veiled ghosts, a mass of them easily on par with the army Pariah had fielded years ago. Making up the ranks in the rear were several ghosts manning giant war machines; some sort of catapaults, and clearly the source of the two attacks that had struck Clockwork's tower. The nearest ranks were soldiers, fighters carrying swords, a phalanx of spooks with wicked polearms instead of hands, archers with skeletal bows aimed at the tower.
"Whoa-!" Danny yelped, ducking instinctively when a third boulder clipped the tower wall, showering the interior with more debris. "Who are they?!"
"My money is on-" Sam paused, also ducking as the clatter of stone subsided again. "That they're the same guys that stormed Dora and Tucker's place."
"We've gotta get out of here, Sam!" Danny declared, grabbing her arm and tugging her toward the balcony on the opposite side of the tower from the approaching army.
"Don't have to tell me twice! Maybe they got Clockwork!" Sam agreed as they dodged another shower of debris.
The two stopped short at the balcony, matching stares of disbelief as they saw what was beyond the Master of Time's lair.
Another mass of ghosts with veiled faces, some carrying banners with a four-horned crest flapping in a non-existant breeze. It wasn't just a frontal assault on Clockwork's tower. These guys had the place surrounded with full siege equipment.
"KILL FOR THE KING!"
"Danny..." Sam squeaked, staring at the mob that had the tower, and the two ghosts inside it completely surrounded. "I think we're in trouble."
Author's Notes: Well, as of this chapter, Indemnification is now longer than Benediction was (the Word file is up to 86 pages now, while Benediction was 81 pages.) This is also one of the shorter chapters at just six pages, but it's a sort of transition. Dan's awake, everybody's starting to realize the scope of the problem. Expect more action next chapter!
Now for a bit of shameless plugging. With the help of DPO and the DP-RealFans club on DeviantArt, I've gotten about a dozen Danny Phantom fan communities to support and promote a holiday fan poster project. You can look up the details on DP-RealFans, but basically the idea is to do a huge collaborative collage poster to send to Butch Hartman for the holidays. So check it out!
And as always, major props to my super cool readers who have been merciful enough to NOT kill me for the barrage of evil cliffhangers that this story has thrown at them: Angelic Kittens, Eleirah, Akino Ame, Esme Kali Phantom, Tie-dyed Trickster, Fulcon, Selofain, Anne Camp aka Obi-quiet, Moony's Metamorphmagus, Luiz4200, zara2148, i AM the Random Idiot, SkeiththeTerrorofDeath, Sukoru, and Kitty Kyinsky! You guys get... crud, I've done Halloween candy before, I've done pumpkin pie before... last year, actually. Holy smokes, has it really been that long already?! Okay, virtual SMORES for my super cool readers- you guys rock (and please don't kill me for yet another cliffhanger!!)