Author's Note: Sorry about the delay. School sucks, as always. Also, it has come to my attention that

Disclaimer: I own nothing but Flare and the situations invovled. Rose is copyrighted to Legend Maker, and some of his lines were written by her. Also, I finally got a beta reader for this story, (Thank you, LM!) so it might improved in clarity a bit.

The world seemed to stand still as Danny stood there, staring at his mom. The evil power in the projectiles Rose shot had been deflecting in two-thirds portion. Flare had managed to stop two of the gunslinger's three shots with a ectoplasmic shield

But one had caught Danny's mother in her right wrist.. Danny watched as the malevolent energy worked it's way up his mother's arm, slowly passing her elbow. If it got to her heart, there would be nothing he could do….

Danny was furious. "You son of a...!"

Click! Rose had set the hammer on his revolver. "This here is Casualty Jane, boy. Never misses if I'm aimin' in the right direction up to 40 degrees. Most guns need to be aimed right at the target, well, not my girl. As long as I'm pointing in your general direction I'll still get that sweet sound of metal striking flesh...though its not metal any more, a pity...I miss the smell of history."

Rose's face twisted into a morbid smile. "By the way, Fenton, Vlad would see you alive. But he said dead would do just as well."

Danny froze in place. If that gun could do what he'd said it could, he couldn't move without getting hit. There was too much distance between them…

"Flare Whip!" Yelled the spike-haired ghost near Maddie. A strand of fire lashed out from his hand at cut Maddie's arm off, and it fell to the ground, the wound cauterized by Flare's sheer heat. His mother screamed at the sudden additional pain and the following terrible numbness. Danny felt like gagging, but he was too awed by Flare's lack of subtlety: Flare grunted and swung the whip at Rose…

What could have been a devastating blow to Rose only licked him as he dodged to away from the whip and fired at Danny simultaneously. But his angle was off and the shot missed by a good clip. Danny rushed at Rose, who rolled over and tried to fire, but Danny kicked the gun from his hand and it landed near the exit, still sans the Ghost Catcher. So Rose shot up and started to chase his gun, but he wasn't quite fast enough.

"SOULAR FLARE!" Yelled Flare as a black ball of fire shot out from his two hands, nailing Rose in right side. No body even cringed how awful a pun the attack's name was because of how effective against Rose it proved. His jacket caught with ghostly fire, and Rose writhed on pain a minute before shrugging the white overcoat off.. revealing an identical one underneath it. Apparently the coat regenerated, but that was unimportant. Rose dived on his gun. He ejected the chamber, spun it once, and shoved it back in, and aimed towards the crowd and fired once, right into Danny and Flare's combined ectoshield.

But Rose was obviously wounded. Whatever Flare's fire had done it had definitely hurt him. Suddenly, a gust of wind made a new barrier between Rose and the rest, and Danny shot an ectoplasmic bolt out at Rose, at the same time looking over at Kaze, who had just joined the fight. (Of course, this is really Timmy, but Danny doesn't know.)

Rose smirked and looked at Danny. "I suppose you want to know what happened to your sister."

"What do you mean!" Danny yelled at Rose.

Rose pulled the hammer back on his gun, and then started twirling it like Revolver Ocelot "You'll have to beat it out of me."

Danny's eyes flared green with anger. Earlier he had only 'went ghost' in the loosest sense of his transformation, uniting with his Ghost Self under the flesh. This time he went full on with his powers. "I'm Going Ghost!" The white transformation rings slid around his body and his clothes were replaced by the familiar black HAZMAT suit.

But Rose was gone, his footfalls echoing down the dark hallway.

Above the Colorado woods

Rose wiped his brow—not because of actual sweat, but due to habit. That had been a very close call. He flew up above the compound hoping his bait had worked. In reality he knew nothing about Danny's sister beyond what Vlad did.

Suddenly, he was smashed hard in the face as Danny made himself visible. Fortunately, the blow knocked him far away enough from the Phantom that he could still use his gun. He flipped the chamber out to reload again, when suddenly a pink blast of energy swept by and knocked it out of his hand.

"What in tarnation!" Rose exclaimed. He swore as he looked to his side and saw the newcomer called Kaze, his hand freshly hot from the ki blast that disarmed Rose. But rather than following up with another attack, he flew after the gun!

"Danny, take him down," yelled Kaze as he went after the gun. The diminutive superhero quickly kicked the gun off into the distance. Rose looked the way it had gone and cursed at Kaze.

At the same time, Danny took his opening and rushed Rose, drilling his fist into his face. The two exchanged a few blows until Rose got angry and sent an explosion of his ghost aura out that knocked Danny away.

Danny removed a Soul Saber from his belt and turned it on. The blade shined green, like the one his mother used. It was only single-bladed, but that was OK. Danny only needed one cutting edge now that Rose was unarmed.

"Tell me about my sister, Rose!" Danny said, his voice deadly serious. He raised the Soul Saber in threat.

" Don't y'all know you don't bring a blade to a gunfight boy?" Rose reached under his jacket…

BLAM BLAM BLAM! Three muffled explosions caught Danny off guard, and a sharp pain shot through his shoulder.

"Hey, boy. Just because I carry a magic revolver doesn't mean that's all I can use!" Danny saw through his pain-induced squinting that Rose now held two Desert Eagles. They weren't ghostly like his revolver, though. That meant they shot real bullets at least, not as nasty as the malicious power projectiles that came from Casualty Jane. But the pain in Danny's shoulder said otherwise, and Danny realized that Rose could charge the bullets with spectral energy as he fired. Imitating Dante, Danny thought.

(Why his mind would turn to a video game in the middle of a life-and-death battle was beyond his comprehension, so he put such thoughts out of his head and concentrated on Rose.)

"Truth of the matter is, I don't know a thing about yer sister, kid. I just lured ya' out here for killing or a'capturing. Now, since I'm not real sure I can win without my good gun, why don't you just run along before I get myself all riled up!"

"You killed Dash. As much as I hate how he used to be, I can never forgive you for that, you demented freak."

"Dash? Is that the name of the varmint I gave a lobotomy?" Rose grinned evilly again. "Shame. I'd wanted to shoot him in somewheres other than his head to make him scream for a while before he died. But you're Lady-friend and 'er scary axe made that a little too dangerous for a careful sadist like myself."

Danny's eyes narrowed in disgust. "Good Lord, you're sick."

Rose flashed a brief, smug grin. "Haven't you learned the ways of life yet boy? The Lord is just another gunslinger. The best way to get ahead is to be a faster one." He suddenly let loose a bunch of shots from his two nine-millimeter guns and Danny fell, barely avoiding the majority of the shots. One caught him in the ball of the foot, and he screamed in pain as he stopped himself inches before he hit the ground.

The wound sealed and Danny returned fire with an ecotplasmic energy blast at Rose. It hit the cowboy in the face and he flipped over backwards and continued to fire at Danny...

Rose couldn't keep this up. Everytime he turned to fire at the fast-moving phantom child, the wound the little Jap had inflicted almost paralyzed him, so he took off. Darting downward, Rose made a mad dash to where Kaze had kicked the gun, dodging fire from him and Danny. A blast from Danny almost tore through Rose's shoulder, and he changed direction. Turning invisble or intangible, and firing or doing whatever else he could to avoid getting blasted. Finally, he sensed his gun coming up.

"Hey, hombres!" Rose yelled at Danny and Kaze, "hold on a minute would you!" His tone was more arrogant than pleading.

"Oh yeah. We're going to give you a break. Right. You are one totally nutted-up cherio, Rose!" I'll let you guess which superhero said that.

Timmy burst into the clearing where Rose sat just long enough to see him focus and hear him chuckle arrogantly. "Wahh!" Some sort of ghostly rope surrounded Timmy and climed up towards his neck...

"Whaddaya think of the Omnis Lasso/Hangin' Rope pard'ner. "

"You..." Timmy choked out.. "Forgot something!"

"What's that?" Rose jerked the suffocating boy closer?

"Ma-kaze-ko-ho!" yelled Timmy. Well, as good as he could yell with his trechea partially shut. A dark purple vortex of wind lashed out from his hands and hurled Rose away. Timmy rolled it in his hands like a ball of ki and then through it at Rose with enough force to knock over a few trees.

Suddenly a sharp pain shot into Timmy's right side, and Rose phased visible, pointing his gun at Timmy's abdomen. "You lose." Rose whispered. He fired several more times.

Timmy fell to the ground. Thankfully his amror had stopped the bullets, but they hurt like all get out. Rose had taken off though, and Timmy jumped up and tried to muster enough will-power to shrug off the pain.

Meanwhile, Rose flew intangibly through the trees. Lodged in a bush was his gun. Rose grabbed the gun and turned around, just in time to gasp as Danny drove both fists into his face. But when Danny saw that Rose had the gun, he turned invisible, and intangible, and flew away.

BANG!Rose fired once into the woods, blindly, but to no avail.

Suddenly, Kaze was back on him, smacking him around. He was able attack ghosts, it seemed, with his glowing pink and green gauntlets. But only when they were glowing. Rose timed his kick so that it would phase through the gauntlets when they were dormant, and backed away. But he could no longer see Kaze, so he took off to the north, hoping to lose them in the thick foliage. Then Kaze's chibi figure made itself visible above the trees and Rose threw the gun that way and pulled the trigger.

BANG!It should have been a direct hit, but Kaze just vanished.

Suddenly, Rose felt himself take a jab to the stomach and saw Kaze retreat away from him. How in tarnation had he done that? Some sort of Anime-style afterimage? Rose wondered where this guy had gotten his powers.

BANG! He fired at the retreating Kaze, only to have the same effect as last time. This time, Kaze tried to knock the gun out of Rose's hand, but he held on and pistol-whipped him away, and Kaze vanished as he sped up to avoid the a gunshot. But Rose suddenly gasped a green cloud and realized that Danny was near. He turned and pointed his gun, but Danny got the jump and he had to retreat. He was about to reload his gun when Kaze appeared.

BANG!

BANG! On the second shot, Kaze yelled in pain or surprise (either way, Rose enjoyed it) and turned and pointed his gun at the now stationary Danny. He set the hammer...

And a chill ran up his spine. There was no bullet in the chamber. But he had carefully counted off only five shots. He never mis-counted his shots! Until now, it seemed...

But.

That.

Just.

DIDN'T.

Happen!

Then it occurred to him that he had never finished reloading before Kaze had knocked the gun from his hand. And it only reloaded if he spun it. It required a certain touch and Richard Rose had that touch. Gravity didn't. The loading chamber had been knocked back in by the fall, and there was nothing he could do about it without giving the gaffe away.

All he could do was hope that his face had betrayed none of his alarm.

"What's the matter, Rose?" Danny's trademark sarcasm had returned. "Lost your nerve?"

Rose smirked with false confidence, and he felt that he would be sweating under the pressure if he'd still had the glands for it. In fact, he might have even sweatdropped. But thankfully he didn't.

"No," he lied, "just giving ya' one more chance to come and see yer Uncle Vlad before I have to kill ya'!" He kept the gun trained on Danny.

"Well, that isn't going to happen, so you're gonna have to shoot me!" Danny's arrogant smirk was infuriating. That kid had had it!

"Yer just asking for me to kill you, aren't you!"

"Go ahead Rose." Danny spat the name. "Make my day!"