Sweetheart roared to life at her mistress' command and lunged forward through an intangible ghost boy. Danny whirled around and fired an ectoplasmic energy blast at the bike's back wheel. "So is the money really worth it?" he demanded.
Angel circled her prey as she started firing her plasma gun. "This isn't about greed!" she informed him. "I wouldn't expect a child to understand."
"I'm not a child!" Danny protested. He dodged one last blast and rushed forward to knock Angel from her bike. She grabbed him as she fell, and the two of them went rolling.
Danny fought his way free, having momentarily forgotten he could have gone intangible, and swung a fist that connected with Angel's raised forearm. She knocked his arm away and jabbed at his face, but he became intangible.
"Not fair," Angel panted. "Stay so I can hit you!"
"Not on your life!"
Angel grinned behind her helmet and swung again. This time, when the boy went intangible, she jumped through him and somersaulted across the ground to jump up, plasma gun in hand.
Danny blinked. "I should have seen that coming, huh?" He dove into the ground to dodge the shots, then threw himself back out directly under his opponent. "And you should have seen that!" he exclaimed as she was flung back several feet.
The biker jumped to her feet and started running and blasting at the same time. Danny dodged as he chased after her. He dove into the ground, intending to perform the same move as before. This time, however, he came back up just in time to be blasted in the chest at pointblank range. He hit the ground hard.
Angel righted her bike and mounted, then rushed forward to run Danny over. He went intangible at the last possible second, then gave chase. Neither of them paid much attention to the gathered news crews.
It was on all the news channels. Someone was intelligent enough to get a helicopter in the air, and all the stations played the live footage for days. It wasn't quite as big as the first time ghosts took over Amity Park, and it certainly couldn't match the day the whole town was pulled into the Ghost Zone. Still, "Local Ghost Fights for Life of Ghost Hunter" makes quite a human-interest story. Of course, the fact that said ghost was fighting the most infamous vigilante on the west coast didn't hurt, either.
Jack sat on the edge of the couch next to his wife and watched as their sworn enemy chased the would-be assassin all over Amity Park. On every single local channel, someone was either commenting on the battle royale or speculating as to why the ghost boy would be trying to save the very people who kept hunting him down.
"I just don't get it," he huffed, falling back into the cushions. "Who ever heard of a ghost helping people?"
Maddie shook her head. She thought she knew earlier; then the ghost boy had decided to torment them and proved that he and Danny were two different people. She was grateful for that, actually. Since humans couldn't have ghost powers, it would have meant that their son had died, which tore her apart to think about. "Who knows why ghosts do the things they do?" she sighed at last. "We should take the Specter Speeder into the Ghost Zone later and do some research."
Suddenly in brighter spirits, Jack started blathering about what they should take and when they should go. Maddie chuckled fondly; her husband was like a kid in a toy store at times.
A black motorcycle thundered down a blessedly empty stretch of road in the middle of town. The police had sent up roadblocks at various points after the third time someone was nearly run over, so Danny and Angel had plenty of room to duke it out without innocent people getting hurt.
Danny dodged an energy blast and returned with one of his own. His opponent slid easily out of the way, then made a sharp u-turn and drove beneath him, gun blazing. He couldn't beat her while she was on the bike; as fast as she was going, he might kill her. He'd already had one scare on the subject, and that was one too many.
They were nearing the police roadblock, which meant Angel would be turning again. Although she was barely cruising by Sweetheart's standards, Danny was flying at his top speed. He gritted his teeth and willed himself to go faster. The bike had to slow somewhat in order to turn; if he could just catch up…
Sweetheart slowed; white gloves met imitation leather. Danny made both of them intangible as they hit the pavement, then dropped Angel. There was a sound of metal hitting brick as the bike crashed into a building.
"No!" Angel yelled. Completely forgetting about Danny, the police, the news cameras, and the dozens of spectators, she ripped off her helmet and dashed toward the totaled bike. "Sweetheart!" she cried, devastated.
The astonished ghost boy floated forward slowly as his enemy who, prior to this, seemed to care for nothing, threw herself onto the wreckage, and sobbed. "I can fix this," she was whispering. "Just wait and see. You'll be good as new, baby…" So nonplussed was the boy that he didn't even realized she had turned on him until he was knocked halfway across the street by an energy blast. "I will kill you!" she raged.
Danny launched into the air to avoid another blast, then dove into ground just under a third. Even Valerie never reacted that violently when he broke one of her toys; there was something else going on here. There had to be. He went invisible and rose up behind her. She was turning in slow circles to look for him, but without her helmet, she could no longer see him.
Her face was equal parts mindless frenzy and hopeless despair. She was…pathetic. The boy shook his head and wondered what could drive a person to this. He almost felt sorry for her, until he remembered what she had tried to do to his dad. Maybe it was a cheap shot, but Danny rather thought she deserved it.
He reappeared on the ground next to her prone form and rubbed his knuckles. Unconscious like that, her name seemed very fitting. The police swarmed around and more or less ignored him. He sighed and started to fly away.
"Hey, ghost kid!" The boy stopped and looked around to see the chief of police hailing him. "That's good work," he said, and went back to his job. Danny smiled.
The hot topic all over school on Monday was Danny Phantom's triumph over Ebony Angel. It was times like that he wished he could just tell everyone who he was. It would mean instant popularity for him. He joined his two best friends at their usual table at lunch and picked at his food. It seemed to be trying to evolve into a sentient life form.
"Dude, you're all over the news," Tucker exclaimed quietly. "Even CNN and MSNBC are running the story."
Danny shrugged. "It wasn't that big of a deal."
Sam scoffed. "Do you even know who Ebony Angel is?"
"Do you?"
There was a pause. "Okay, so we looked it up yesterday."
"Every gang and crime organization in Los Angeles has a bounty on her head," Tucker interrupted. "It's been about eight years, and no one has managed to collect." The two took turns gushing about how rare it was for Angel to be defeated.
Danny shook his head. "It was nothing. Really." He sighed at the looks of pure skepticism. "I think she was just misunderstood."
"Misunderstood?" Sam asked incredulously. "Danny, we're misunderstood. Ebony Angel is just evil."
He decided not to argue, but inwardly he was thinking about a website he had found Saturday night. It was a single page with a black background and dark grey text. A picture of a man in a lab coat standing next to a motorcycle that looked suspiciously like Sweetheart graced the center of the page. Below it were the words, "Dedicated to the memory of Frank Richards. He will pay in blood for you."
Angel had said it wasn't about greed, and he knew now what she meant. Revenge was her driving force. She was right about one thing, at least: he didn't understand.
A/N: Sorry, she's just my favorite character of all the ones I've created. Let me explain. Frank is a scientist who worked on development of top secret vehicles. Hedidn't buildSweetheart, but he is the one who customized her. He and Angel had a kind of father/daughter relationship, and when Roho killed him, she snapped.