Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom. A majority of the characters in the story are owned by Nickelodeon.
Super Group
Chapter 6: Behind the Music
After school had finally ended, Danny, finally free of the M'BER hype that had drowned his school, flew to the Amity Arena. It was a large open-roof arena, capable of holding some twenty thousand people, where many a concert was held. Ranging from Amity Park staple Dumpty Humpty to the latest craze of M'BER, it was the place to get an amazing concert experience. But with the idea that M'BER could be a plot against humanity, Danny needed to investigate.
Danny, in his Danny Phantom persona, flew above the arena, overseeing organizers and production trucks getting ready for the concert. Among the newer additions appeared to be a large antenna being hoisted above the main stage. "Well, that certainly isn't suspicious," Danny sarcastically said. "Better check inside to see everything's just fine."
Danny flew down to ground level to sneak into the arena. He phased through an area of the arena with no attention paid to it, emerging from a backstage wall to find himself in a surprisingly empty hallway. "Weird," he noticed. "Must be more action somewhere else."
An alarm suddenly blared. Danny looked around frantically to look for what could have possibly spotted him. "I hate it when my parents ghost security is actually effective," Danny said.
No sooner had Danny finished thinking out loud, laser turrets emerged from the walls, floor, and ceiling. Their firing tips glowed bright as they pointed right in Danny's direction. Danny gulped and immediately flew through a wall into another section of the arena as the laser turrets fired.
Danny emerged into another hallway, the alarms still blaring. "Okay, time to go extra stealthy," he said, making himself invisible. "Anti-ghost weapons can't hit what they can't see."
"Hey you!" a voice shouted. Danny turned to spot a security guard in the distance, running toward him with a glowing nightstick.
"What?!" Danny gasped. That security guard shouldn't be able to see him. "How did he-" He looked up and spotted the lighting fixtures. Framed around the lights was the Fentonworks logo.
"Infra-Dread!" Danny said, noticing his parents' handiwork. "Do parents exist solely to ruin every aspect of their kids' lives?" Danny flew through another wall just as the security guard delivered a wild swing, his missing causing him to fall over.
Danny found himself in what appeared to be a men's restroom, finally in a less hectic place. He took the calm to formulate a new plan.
"Okay," Danny said, explaining aloud to himself. "Ghost detecting alarms means I can't go in without alerting the whole arena. Infra-Dread lights means invisibility's not an option either. Maybe if Danny Phantom can't investigate..." Danny shifted back to his human form, continuing, "Danny Fenton might get a little more leeway."
Danny believed that with all the anti-ghost security, he shouldn't put himself in as much danger in his ghost form. He had hoped that if he gets caught in his human form, he can get away with being the curious son of the heads of ghost-related security looking to get a few pictures of celebrities for his social media profile.
He stepped out of the bathroom and having not even taken two steps, walks face-first into a wall of bare abs and pecs. Danny looks up to instinctively apologize only to recognize the face based on a series of posters he's seen before.
"You're Martín Ricardo," Danny said, as the pop star just looked at him quizzically. He continued, rambling his best to not appear suspicious, "Uh, my friend's a big fan of yours. I'm just gonna let you do Latin pop star things while I look for my parents. They kinda run security. So, bye!"
Before Danny could get away, he felt a grip around his arm. He looked back to see Martín had grabbed him, preventing him from leaving.
"That's a really impressive grip," Danny complimented, trying to yank himself away. "Seriously, though, I should be going!" Danny attempted to use an old trick of turning his arm intangible and getting away that way, hoping Martín would just blame it on a poor grip. Somehow, this didn't work, as he couldn't even shake out of a grip that seemed as if Martín's muscle's weren't just for show. Danny looked at the arm holding onto him and noticed a rubber wristband with a series of seemingly nonsense letters.
Fenton Rubber Wristbands! "Of course my parents are three-for-three..." Danny muttered.
"We were actually expecting you, young Fenton," Martín said to him, in a casual manner that seemed a little too eerie to be friendly. "In fact, it is our manager who is... most eager." Upon saying those final words, Martín's eyes flashed red. From Danny's experience, it was a common sign that Martín's actions were not his own.
"I can only imagine," Danny said, going along with Martín as he pulled him toward what he could only assume was the manager's office.
A short walk down the hallway and a left turn later, Martín had taken Danny to a door marked as the manager's office. Martín opened the door and pushed the teen in front of him, still gripping his wrist before grabbing his other to keep him from escaping. Danny surveyed the office, noticing a large wooden desk with a black leather chair behind it, its back facing him. A pale blue vapor escaping Danny's mouth gave him all he needed to know who was sitting in that chair.
"I had a feeling you'd show up for this, dipstick," the voice behind the chair said. The chair spun around, in classic movie villain fashion, and the figure seated added, "Though I certainly wasn't expecting you to show up as some lame kid."
It was no doubt Ember McLain in that chair, though she did not appear as Danny was used to. Normally clad in a daring black leather ensemble, she now appeared in a bright purple suit jacket with a matching pencil skirt. Her eyes, normally adorned with intricate black makeup, now sported flashy, frameless glasses. Her blue hair, normally a flaming ponytail, was now held back in a tight, conservative bun. To Danny, she appeared dressed everything that a rock star like her would rebel against.
"And I wasn't expecting to see you dressed as a corporate sellout," Danny mocked, "Ember McLain." Danny said her name in an extra spicy manner, as further punching down the ghostly rock star.
"Actually, it's Amber," Ember said, pointing at a name plate sitting on top of her desk. "Amber McCain."
"Amber McCain?" Danny said, confused and annoyed. "Is that the name you used to even get this far? That's barely a change at all!"
"They're not that similar," Ember plainly said.
"They're really-" Danny cut himself off. He'd already been involved in two of these exact conversations and was in no mood to step into a third. "You know what? Forget it. Very clever. What are you even doing here? Like, here here? With all this ghost security, how haven't you been figured out?"
"You know, it's the most amazing thing," Ember said, in mock fascination. "In all this security setup, this office is the epicenter of a safe zone. As long as I'm hunkered down here, I won't be setting off any bells and whistles anytime soon."
"I guess it was a lot to expect my parents to be perfect," Danny muttered to himself. He turned back to Ember and said, "Can we just skip to the part where you explain your evil plot?"
"You know, I always wanted to do that," Ember said, amused. "Tell me something, kid: you ever hear about residuals?"
"You mean that thing where artists get paid a little bit whenever their content gets played?" Danny said, vaguely remembering a rant from Sam.
"Well that very principle applies to my power," Ember explained.
"But your power only comes from people saying your name, how does that-" Danny stopped mid-sentence before realizing something he should have so long ago. "Your song."
"Your friend's horrendously off-key singing may have stopped me from total domination the first time," Ember continued, slowly making her way in front of her desk, "but that doesn't mean people stopped loving me or my song. Whether they're muttering it quietly on a bus or shrieking their lungs out when it shows up on the radio, people are still saying my name! Why do you think I put it in the song?! Every moron that says my name is still giving me power! Power I used to sneak into the inner circles of the hottest names in music and put them under my control!"
The door behind Danny and Martín opened and, as if on cue, made way for Ryan Lucas, Edward Cuttan, and BT Dub. They all walked past Danny and positioned themselves behind Ember, each of their eyes glowing that eerie red.
"I can feel my power continue to climb with all the M'BER hype," Ember continued, sticking her arm out. The action caused her bright pink guitar to fly through the door of a nearby storage closet and into her hand. "And once my little opening act has everyone screaming my name, I'll plug into my new antenna, play the most powerful power chord you've ever heard, and just like that, I have a worldwide Ember Army at my feet!"
"We're about to spark a whole new revolution," Ryan Lucas said, his deep voice sound making his statement far more menacing.
"There's nothing you can do to us," Edward Cuttan added, his English accent making the statement sound like a spy movie trope, but still so sinister.
"이 세상은 곧 엠버의 것이 될 거야," BT Dub said. Danny, not at all fluent in Korean, didn't know what to make of that.
"Yeah, I don't know what he's saying either," Ember shrugged. She continued, "So, tell me, ghost kid: is this the part where you say, 'You won't get away with this'?"
Danny was still bound by the Latin heartthrob. However, as Ember was giving her speech about how her plan came to be, Danny took the time to notice that while Martín was holding Danny wrists in each hand, only one of them had the Fenton Rubber Wristband.
"Actually," Danny said, releasing the bright flash that transformed him into Danny Phantom, "this is the part where I say that the next time you equip your Heartbreakers with ghost grabbing technology, make sure they wear two!"
Danny phased his arm out of Martín's bandless grip and grabbed the collar of his shirt, tossing the pop star over his head, the surprise of the move breaking the grip on Danny's other wrist. Martín was sent careening into Ember, sending both over her desk.
Angered and humiliated, Ember got back to her feet and shouted to her new minions, "Get him!"
Before they could move, Danny dashed forward with a powerful leaping kick at Ember's desk, sending it into Ember and her boy band and pinning them against a wall. With his enemy and her victims trapped for the moment, Danny took the opportunity to escape, phasing through the wall for a quick exit.
Ember's anger hit a new boiling point. She raised her guitar over her head and brought it down on her desk, splintering it into pieces and freeing her minions in the process. "This isn't over!" she screamed, loud enough to make sure Danny could hear it over however many walls he's passed up to this point.
Danny, meanwhile, flew out of the arena at blazing speed, past every blaring alarm and avoiding any laser fired at him until he was finally out. Danny took to the sky and stared back down at the arena he had just escaped from.
"Okay, so Ember is definitely behind this," Danny said, reiterating what was now obvious. "Now to relay it to the others." Danny took off to the park to share the news with his friends, and maybe even form a new strategy. With only a day until the concert, every second counted.