Calamity Park, Valeria

Danny and Marty, in the Striker Z, flew over the landscape of the destroyed town, following Johnny. He lead them to a familiar sight with unfamiliar landscaping. As far as the eye could see, every moving being was a ghost. As the two landed, Danny maintained his human form to avoid revenge or autograph seekers. Strangely, he encountered some humans living among the ghosts. He guessed that since ghosts didn't have to eat, they could tolerate humans staying with them. Or maybe things had gotten so bad they had no choice. According to Johnny, without the device he'd stolen from Jack's lab, the only way to get back into the ghost zone would be form him to selfdestruct like Ember's band had to avoid capture. This was unfortunately very painful. But still appearantly less painful than the Fenton Thermos.

"So, then she says, 'I am no man!' in the most melodramatic way possible and rams the sword through his face!" Danny told Marty, continuing their idle conversation.

"Sounds like an awesome trilogy," Marty replied.

"Hey Marty.." Danny said, seemingly serious. "I have something important to ask you."

Marty arched an eyebrow inquisitively.

"What in the name of all that is decent possesed you to name your band 'The Pinheads!'"

Marty would have facevaulted if it were possible. "How is that an important question?"

"I was joking."

"Right. I don't know. I just thought it was a good idea at the time. All the guys agreed. Maybe we were all stupid in the eighties. After all, we made He-man popular."

"Yeah. You definitely did that."

"Well. What would you call your band?"

Danny shruged. "I can't even play an instrument, let alone have a band."

"Ok Fine. Band, superhero group, shuffle board team... Whatever. If you had a group of like-minded individuals who did the same thngs you did what would you call it?"

"I don't know. Maybe something like The Spectres or Ghost of a Chance."

"You really are like your dad, man. Competely obsessed with ectoplasmic beings."

A head of them, Johnny signaled they were nearing the place. They stopped at the only building in the area that hadn't been completely gutted, Bucky's Music Mega Store. Marty stayed in the car, not wanting to get messed up in a bunch of ghosts. He'd seen what mess Luke Skywaker had gotten into when he'd gone into the cantina full of strange aliens. (It was still two years before the Special Editions came out for him, so he was savouring every moment of the original that he could, including the Wolf Man in the cantina.)

Inside Bucky's

"I hid it in the basement." Johnny told Danny. "After Vlad attacked, I mean. Nobody ever goes down there because that's where they keep the Insane Clown Posse music."

"Creative thinking," Danny said. He still didn't like Johnny, but they'd made a mutual truce sometime after Kitty had possessed Paulina to get close to Danny, all for the sake of making Johnny jealous.

"You really owe me one after this," Johnny told him.

"Excuse me? I owe you one? You're the one who tried to make my sister a prisoner in her own body!"

"Actually if she had stayed possessed by Kitty for more than a few hours she would have been forced out of her body."

Danny looked livid. "You realize that was exactly the wrong thing to say, right?"

"About two seconds after I said it," Johnny replied even as Danny's fist slammed into his face. "How did you hit me without Freaking Out first?"

"It's called going ghost. Freaking out was Freakazoid. Man I hated that show. Especially the voice of the main character." (If you got that one, you might be a nerd.)

"Right... but how you hit me?"

"Something I learned fighting Sizzle." Danny replied.

Then the found it. Under a table in the basement...Danny opened the oversized box.

And there it was. The Soul Shredder! The Soul Shredder was the blade the Fright Knight had wielded during his brief stay on Earth. It made whoever was cut by it experience their deepest most secret fears for enternity, or until the Fright Knight decided to let them out. Which he had to do if he was defeated. And the only way Danny could defeat an enemy so much more powerful than himself was to sheath his sword in a nearby Pumpkin. Hey. I told you the episode sucked.

And if you're wondering why Johnny had it? Time for a flashback! Cue the wavy-screen effect!
Amity Park, 3 months prior to Vlad's attack

After a un robo facil-turned murder, the the sorceress and Teen Titans enemy named Jinx had showed up in Amity Park looking for the ghost of the unintentional victim. But rather than finding her, Jinx had gone mad with the power of a ghost-controlling amulet she had somehow aquired and used the amulet to control Kitty and Ember.

Try as he might, Danny could not get close enough to disable the bad-luck soceress. And it had only gotten worse when Jinx had instructed Kitty and Ember to over-shadow Paulina and Sam respectively. Danny could still fight them with the Ecto-Fist technique he'd ad-libbed during his fight with Sizzle. But he didn't have the same power that he'd had then, and he'd got his butt kicked.

Johnny, though, had been able to overshadow Jinx while Danny distracted her. It had been hard. It had almost seemed like Jinx knew what she was doing when it came to being possessed. But Johnny had gotten in somehow and broken the amulet. After the help, Danny was able to knock Ember out of Sam. Kitty came out of Paulina willingly to reprimand Johnny for being with.. er.. in another woman. So in gratitude, Danny had proposed a truce. But Johnny had wanted some leverage which he still didn't have. If Danny knew how to defeat Shadow, then Johnny was powerless. Therefore, Danny had retrieved the Pumpkin and the Soul Shredder. If Johnny broke the truce, Danny would use the Ghost Pealer on him. If Danny broke it, Johnny would release the Fright Knight, and another Fright Night would grip Amity Park...

End Flashback

Danny reached in to the box and pulled it out and immediately realized something was wrong. Johnny had been getting nervous as Danny had opened the box and was gone by the time Danny turned around. The Soul Shredder and pumpkin were just plaster replicas! Hollow inside, and poorly painted to boot.

"Johnny!" he yelled.

Johnny phased back in. "Hiyah," he said.

"What is this!"

"I'm sorry!" he begged. "The sword is with Kitty."

"I thought you said Vlad destroyed Kitty."

"No he didn't. Even worse than that. He controls her now. I don't know how, but he holds power over all the ghosts that come near him. He like brainwashes them; messes with their heads. There's nothing I can do about it. If I go to rescue her, he'll do the same to me."

"So Vlad has the Soul Shredder too? What else can go wrong." Danny stomped up the stairs and out of the building. Johnny caught up with him.

"He might not have it himself. Kitty sealed it in her ring." Danny continued walking. "Where are you going?"

"I'll tell you when I figure it out," Danny snapped.

Just then Danny saw a flash in the distance. It looked like a missile discharge. Then he saw the missile itself. Heading straight for the Striker Z and the obvlivious Marty. "Holy crap!" Danny cursed, going ghost and flying at the car. He turned intangible, making the power include Marty too as he hit the car and then flew straight up, as the car exploded right below them and fell to the ground, a smoldering pile of metal.

"NO!" Marty yelled.

"This is bad." Danny commented, as the shockwave from the car's explosion hit them and sent them flying across the street. Danny collided with a streetpost and found it hard to open his eyes.

"Well, well. Mr. Fenton. You have returned to this place at last," a voice said above him. It sounded like Mr. Lancer in a very bad mood. Danny tried to roll over and look up. He expected to wake up suddenly in poetry class and have to peel a saliva-soaked test from his forehead. But this nightmare wasn't going away. He opened his eyes and saw a tall combat boot. He turned over and followed it up to the rest of the figure. Stocking a bunch of guns and a two-tone combat mask that covered his right eye, Danny knew who he was looking at. Deathstroke the Terminator! Also known as Slade, the arch-enemy of the Teen Titans.

But he was transparent.

"You're.."

"A ghost? Yes. Sometimes even 90 of your brain isn't enough to strategize perfectly."

"I was going to say standing on my arm." Danny replied, sarcastic as ever.

About this time Marty woke up. And saw Slade. "Holy cross-overs Batman!" he yelled.

Slade turned to the older time traveler, his head jerking once or twice in rage. If he had had a right eye it would have twitched.

"You're treading dangerously close to the fourth wall boy," he said walking over to Marty. "Don't push it." Despite being an adult, Marty was still very much a 'boy' compared to Deathstroke the Terminator, who'd been in the business of assassination since Marty was a toddler. Still, age and even death hadn't seemed to slow Deathstroke down. He picked Marty up by his shirt collar. He wouldn't kill him, of course. That would only give the Potentate one more ghost to add to her army. But he would rough him up some.

Making a few strikes to the torso, Ghost Slade knocked the breath out of Marty and tossed him across the street. Unfortunately, dying had seemed to reset all the training he'd given his brain, perhaps because he now no-longer had one. This meant it was back to square one of mental capacity. But he still had his skill.

"I'm going ghost!" Danny yelled, the white rings of transformation sliding over him. Danny Phantom darted at Slade, punching him twice in the face. Slade staggered back, but then countered with a crescent kick that knocked Danny in the direction of Marty. Recovering before he hit the ground, Danny landed hard and skidded across the asphault, firing two ectoplasmic blasts at Slade, who just blocked them with his fists.

"Face it, child," Slade said. "You are grossly out classed."

"Why are you even attacking us? Do you work for Vlad?"

"Hardly. I'm just bored really. Nobody pays a ghost for a hit-job. And half the Titans are already dead. So I thought I'd fight someone who looked like a worthy opponent. The fabled ghost boy who defeated the fire demon--The Prime Immortal. You've fallen far in ten years, Danny."

"Slade dashed forward, kicking Danny in the face and sending him flying straight up, where he then leapt into the air and smashed him downwards back toward the rough pavement. But Danny span backwards out of the descent and shot an ecto-blast straight up towards Slade that hit him in the face. He stopped, and the two continued to fight in the air, breifly trading punches and kicks before Slade pulled out a shotgun and fired it at Danny, point blank.

It didn't kill him, though. It just knocked him back and stung like... A lot of really painful things.

"You like it?" Slade asked. "I designed it myself. Just turns the tide in a close up battle. Nothing lethal. To you, anyway."

Still stinging, Danny through a flurry of ectoplasmic blasts at Slade, who dodged them and hit Danny hard with a chop to the neck, then smacked him in the face with the butt of the shotgun. Finally, Slade flipped over and dropped an axe-kick onto the now-prone Danny's stomach, sending him towards the ground...

Where Danny landed hard, pain shooting up his back. and down his legs and arms. The only thing that didn't hurt from that attack was his head, which hurt from Slade's slamming a shotgun into his face.

Slade powered up his ecto-flight energies and started to descend quickly. Killing the halfa... What would happen indeed? Would he become all ghost? Would he just quit existing? Slade had no idea. But killing the halfa would make his name legendary again. But as he approached, no more than twenty feet above Danny Phantom, a wide lavendur blast of energy caught him in the side of the head and shoulder, knocking him away and through several gutted out buildings. Danny sat up, ignoring the pain to try and find where his un-expected rescue came from.

"Are you alright?" the voice asked Danny. He turned to see...

Valierie!..

No, it wasn't Valerie. But the armored combat suit was identical, save it was purple instead of bright red. And the voice that had come out of it had a hispanic accent, not the tell-tale rasp of Valerie's voice. And the hovering metal battle platform she rode on was different too. It was shaped more like a falcon than a manta-ray.

"You're..." she stammered when she'd finally taken a good look at Danny. Then she flew off her metal platform as an invisible Slade had knocked her away. She skipped along the asphault like a stone across water until the platfrom corrected itself and caught her, just as Valerie's would have.

"Another one bites the dust?" Slade said into all the dust this battle was putting into the air. It seemed his one eye made it harder to see his opponent in the darkness and dust.

"Nope. I'm fine, ghost. But you won't be able to say the same in just a minute!" the purple-clad ghost-fighter leapt out of the dust and kicked Slade in the face with a boot-mounted device that repeled ectoplasm. Slade's head split in to for a moment, and while he recovered, the warrior drew from her belt...

"A Fenton Soul Sabre?" Danny puzzled as she activated the purple blade that matched the one from her suit and from her gun. He ran over to the prone Marty, but keeping his eye on the fight above him. Marty had some bruises on his torso, visible because his shirt had been ripped by the same sharp object that made a huge gash in his face.

Well, Danny thought, good a time as ever to field test what Raven taught me...

He reached down and focused his energies into healing the big cut on Marty's left cheek. (Yes, I mean his face.) Raven had taught him a few healing techniques she knew outside her empathetic ones. Because Danny did not have the power of Empathy, he would never be able to heal like Raven could. But he could use small bursts of ectoplasm to mend small wounds and fuse broken bones. It was crude compared to a senzu bean or an ER, but it would do for now... If it worked.

Several small flashes of green-white light appeared around the laceration, and moved inward as the gash stitched itself shut. But Marty remained unconsious. Whatever Slade had done to him, he would need time to recover.

Danny, no longer worried about Marty bleeding to death, looked up towards the fight. The Purple Girl now seemed to have the upper hand. She shot two more beams at Slade from her gun. It looked like something he'd seen his mom planning a long time ago. Who was this girl and how did she have ghost-gear? Slade dropped back and pulled out a submachine gun from his belt. From the way Purple was dodging, Danny knew those shots had to have been lethal or something like it.

He flew up, and pulled out his thermos.

"HEY MISTER WILSON!" Danny screamed at Deathstroke in his best Denace the Menace impersonation. The Terminator looked that way, again angry. His right eye would have been twitching again, if it had existed. But Danny was suprised that his distraction had worked. Slade dodged away from where Danny was pointing the thermos, right into Purple Girl's roundhouse, that sent him flying. Danny lanced out a blue wave from the thermos and pulled Slade in.

Slade sighed, "Once the worlds greatest mercenary, reduced to this."

Danny landed and so did the ghost-huntress. She ran over to him, hand on a Fenton Pistol, but not drawing it. "It is you!" She yelled when she was in visual range of Danny. "Danny Phantom! Daniel Fenton!"

"Who are you?" Danny asked.

The woman took off her helmet. Her hair was black, and her eyes were enourmous, sub-anime in size She was indeed hispanic, and she was quite attractive. "My name is Dora Toledo," she told Danny. "I can take you to your mother!"

"My mom! She's alive.." That was the best news Danny had heard all year... But could this ghost-hunter lady be trusted?