Well, here's the second back in my back-to-back update! Nothing to say here, except my backwards disclaimer.
Remialcsid: .sdrawkcab sremialcsid ym etirw od I fi neve ,motnahP ynnaD nwo t'nod I
Chapter 13: The Sorcerer
"Hey! Get away from my producer and tell me what happened!" Ember growled.
Danny ignored her and turned to Mr. Mortis.
"What is the meaning of this?" he exclaimed.
"What, don't you know?" Danny asked, his eyes narrowed. "It was you, wasn't it?"
"I don't know what you're talking about!" Mr. Mortis said, crossing his arms.
"Yes, you do. You know as well as I do that there's no way you could have seen what had happened and been awake to tell about it. The Sleeping Sickness spreads too fast for that. And you know it."
"Why would I?" he snarled.
"Because," Danny said, his green eyes widening with realization, his voice dropping to a softer, more startled tone when he next spoke. "You're the one who started it."
Mr. Mortis glared for a few seconds, then smiled. "Perceptive boy, aren't you?" he rhetorically asked, his voice icier than ever. He blasted Danny so that he was thrown across the room, and the ghosts, and Tucker, backed out of the way. Mr. Mortis made a sweeping gesture with his pen and gray bands appeared around the ghosts and Tucker, restraining them.
"You've found the cure, something that those idiots you've obviously been associating with never managed to do," he continued.
"What?" Danny said as he got to his feet.
"Well, of course! You're wearing the medallion of that meddling Clockwork. I suppose he's still around, isn't he?" Mr. Mortis spat.
Danny brushed himself off, not taking his eyes off of his foe.
"So, boy?" Mr. Mortis prompted. "Aren't you going to tell me your name?"
Danny drew himself up to his full height, which wasn't terribly much, given the fact that he was fourteen. But, still, something about his ghost powers gave him an impressive and intimidating aura. "What, aren't you going to tell me yours?"
The ghost glared from behind his glasses. "Very well then. I am Mortimer Mortis, most powerful sorcerer in the Ghost Zone!"
Tucker laughed. "What kind of name is that?" The sorcerer glared at him, but said nothing.
He turned to Danny. "Well?"
"Danny Phantom," Danny answered, trying to keep from laughing. "But, really, what kind of name is Mortimer Mortis?"
"You mock me?" the sorcerer asked dangerously.
"No! Here, how 'bout I just call you Morty," Danny suggested. The sorcerer fired a gray ectoblast from the tip of his black pen. Danny ducked this, and the one that followed it, before leaping behind a drum set for a shield.
"Geeze, he's pretty dangerous for someone who wears glasses," Danny muttered to himself.
He had no more time to comment on the ghost's eyewear, for at that moment the drum set was entirely vaporized. Danny dodged three consecutive blasts, before firing one of his own, one that the sorcerer, unfortunately, dodged quite easily.
The next ectoblast hit Danny squarely in the chest, knocking him backwards into a keyboard. Danny instinctively went intangible, but it did no good: Danny still collided with the ghostly instrument.
Leaping up into the air, the ghost boy shot straight into the sorcerer, knocking him into a wall for the same treatment Danny had received via keyboard. Danny managed to land a few punches, before he was blasted away from the sorcerer landing accidentally on the rather tied-up Ember.
"Get off of me, dipstick!" she growled, somehow managing to throw Danny straight into Tucker, who had been muttering into his Fenton Phones, which he had somehow managed to activate even while tightly bound.
Danny scrambled up from the wreckage of Tucker's PDA, Tucker exclaiming unhappily, "Hey! That's got three payments on it!"
"Sorry, Tuck," Danny muttered. "Try to talk to Sam and Jazz, okay?" The techno-geek acknowedged him with a single nod, and continued doing just that.
"...Anyway, Jazz, Sam, you'd better get over here! Danny's fighting this sorcerer-guy, M-unh!"
Mr. Mortis had shot a blast at Tucker to quiet him, then quickly gagged him with gray ectoplasmic energy. Tucker made angry "Mm-mm-MMPHFF!" sounds, but could say nothing more intelligible than that.
"Hey! Leave him alone!" Danny shouted angrily, firing a double-handed ectoblast to enhance his words. The sorcerer sneered.
"Why would a ghost even care about a human?"
Danny shouted back angrily, "He's my best friend! Besides I'm-" But Danny stopped. Obviously, this sorcerer didn't know that he was half ghost. Maybe he could use that against him...
"Ah," Mortimer said, "I see. You're that ghost child that little miss stuck-up, full-of-herself Ember always goes on about, wanting revenge. The so-called 'halfa'."
Danny winced. Okay, so he already knows. Come on, Phantom, think of something here...
Danny's thinking time was cut short, however, as another gray beam collided with him, knocking him off of his feet and into a wall. Danny sprung to his feet, trying to look wildly around for something that might help him, while still keeping his eyes on the spectral sorcerer.
Side-stepping another blast, Danny's booted feet came in contact with something hard and relatively flat. Glancing down, he saw the pink-and-blue surface of Ember's guitar.
Bingo, the ghost boy thought to himself, picking it up.
"Hey, Morty?" he called, "This one goes out to you!"
Danny strummed the guitar with a long sweep, producing a sound that was none too pleasant but blasted the sorcerer back several feet.
Emboldened by the success of his wild attempt, Danny shouted back, "So, you wanna rock?"
"Well, if you want to play that way," Mortimer replied coolly, "Then let's play!"
Half a dozen guitars rose up into the air, surrounded by an odd gray glow, and flew towards Danny. With little time to react, the halfa wielded Ember's guitar to whack four away, shouting as he did so.
"Hey! I'm not taking requests!"
The fifth guitar, however, snapped the guitar clean in two. Ignoring Ember's disheartened wail, Danny threw the pieces behind him, and dispatched the final guitar with an ectoblast.
He did not, however, notice the two halves of the pink-and-blue guitar shooting towards him...
One piece missed entirely, but the handle, with the four strings whipping along behind it like a comet's tail, whacked Danny hard in the left shoulder, each string slapping him across the face, three cutting him deeply.
Danny raised a gloved hand to his cheek, coming away lined with green blood. Danny winced, and returned his gaze to Mr. Mortis.
"You know, there's a 'No strings attached' joke in there somewhere, but I'm not in the mood right now."
Danny fired five green blasts in quick succession, two colliding with his foe. To top it off, he gathered a triple-sized ball of energy over his head and threw it at the sorcerer, smiling as that also hit its mark.
The smile slid from his face, though, as several of the extension cords sprang to life, restraining his arms and legs. Danny tugged at them, but they only got tighter.
"So, you thought you could win," the sorcerer said, clasping his hands behind his back to look towards Danny, who was still struggling with the restraints. His tone was cool and casual, as if he were discussing the weather. "I'm actually surprised you lasted this long, to tell you the truth." The sorcerer picked up one of the cords, one which happened to be attached to Danny's right wrist, observing it thoughtfully.
"So," he added suddenly, rounding at Danny with his pen held out like a sword, "any last words, boy?"
Danny looked thoughtful for a moment, then seized the cord around his right wrist with his hand.
"Just three," he said. "Go ghost stinger!"
Danny sent as much energy as he could muster back along the cord, severely shocking the sorcerer. The cords which had restrained his other limbs uncoiled, allowing Danny to fall to the ground. Mortimer also fell to the ground, apparently in pain.
It was at that moment that the Specter Speeder burst through the wall of the studio, right behind Danny.
"Danny!" Sam called, jumping out and running towards her friend.
"Sam," Danny acknowledged. "Did you, by any chance, happen to bring the Fenton Thermos?"
Sam smiled and withdrew the containment device from behind her back.
A gray blast hit her moments later.
"Sam!" Danny shouted, running to her.
"I'm fine," she muttered. "But where's the thermos?"
And indeed, the Fenton Thermos had fallen from her grasp, and now lay underneath the rubble caused from the battle.
"Quick, help me find it!" Danny said urgently to Sam, and his sister, who had just gotten out of the Specter Speeder. The three began digging through the debris.
Another gray blast suddenly hit Danny.
"Oof!" he cried, as he was thrown backwards into an amplifier.
"I'm afraid you just can't win," Mortimer said evenly.
Danny glared. "That's what you think!" he shouted, but he could see the sorcerer's point. Danny was tired, and he'd run out of ideas, and powers. Well, there was always... but it would never work. Danny was simply too tired. If, perhaps, he had something that could amplify it...
And then, glancing at the amplifier, it hit him. Buying time, Danny threw an ectoblast to distract the sorcerer, then turned to Jazz and Sam.
"Forget the Fenton Thermos," he muttered, "help me get these plugged in to those speakers and a microphone." Danny shoved a fistful of cords into their hands. They stared questioningly for a few moments, but Danny motioned furiously for them to obey his orders. Taking a cord himself, he turned back to the sorcerer, dodging two blasts as he dove towards one of the speakers.
It was a matter of moments to get all of the equipment wired up, but it was difficult due to Mr. Mortis's constant hindrance.
"Microphone, microphone..." Danny muttered, looking furiously around for the instrument he sought. "Where's a... aha!"
The ghost boy seized the device, jamming the cord into the bottom. He turned, and looked fearlessly into the eyes of the sorcerer.
"Oh, now what?" he scoffed, clearly unaware of Danny's plan. "Are you going to sing for me?"
Not wanting to waste breath on returning with a witty remark, Danny simply nodded once and inhaled...
...Then shrieked into the microphone, as loud as he could.
The force of the Ghostly Wail would normally have shattered anything it touched, but the equipment in Ember's recording studio had been specially designed to resist sound-based attacks of a ghostly origin. The equipment still didn't hold out more than a few minutes, but it was enough.
Every window in the building shattered simultaneously. The bonds which had restrained the ghosts evaporated, leaving them free to clamp their hands over their ears. Mr. Mortis slapped his own hands to his ears, dropping his pen as he did so.
Danny wailed for all he was worth, until the ghost equipment finally gave out. He dropped the microphone and fell backwards, barely able to keep conscious and in his ghost mode, but somehow managing it all the same.
'Shambles' couldn't even begin to describe what the room looked like; it was more like ground zero after a bomb blast. And even that was somewhat of an understatement.
Ember removed her hands from her ears, looking much whiter than she normally did (if that was at all possible), and looked at Danny, her mouth agape.
"That's some singing voice you've got there, kid," she gasped. Danny could barely find the energy to smile.
Mortimer got to his feet, picking up his pen and dusting himself off. "Well, that was an interesting display of vocal talent," he said, much more calmly than he looked, with his glasses shattered, "but I think I'll be getting on now. And don't bother trying to stop me; you're too weak to even walk."
Danny strugged to his feet, only to fall back. He's right... he said angrily to himself. I can't even walk.
"Ah, and... Who have we here?" Danny looked up at the sorcerer; he was referring to, of all ghosts, Griffin.
"Ah, Griffin," the sorcerer said. "How nice to see you. Now, be a good little girl and finish the ghost boy off."
His heart sinking in his chest, if indeed it beat at all in his ghost mode, Danny looked through eyes that were somehow still green at Griffin, who was advancing steadily towards Danny.
It all made sense... Griffin had been working for the sorcerer all along...
And then, she stopped, and whirled on the sorcerer with a roar to match Danny's Ghostly Wail.
Griffin rounded on Mr. Mortis with a blue blast of flame. The sorcerer, surprise etched on his face, leapt back, unknowingly towards Danny.
"What! Griffin, no! Wait! I'm you're master, I-" Mortimer shrieked. But that was the last thing he ever said. Danny had found the Fenton Thermos, just beside him and buried under the tattered remnants of a snare drum, and took this opportunity to suck Mortimer Mortis into the depths of the ghost containment device with the word Fenton before it. Danny caught the black pen neatly as it fell from the sorcerer's grasp, and snapped the lid back onto the thermos.
Tucker and Sam walked over to him, helping their friend to his feet.
"Tucker? Sam?" Danny asked with weak surprise. "You're alright? But... I thought... The Ghostly Wail..."
Sam smiled and pulled the Fenton Phones from her ears, showing them to Danny as Tucker supported him.
"The Fenton Phones," she said with a smile. "They filter out ghost noise, remember?"
Danny smiled. "I remember. They make great techno-Goth earrings, too." Sam blushed at that.
"Very impressive," a voice said from behind them. They turned, to see a group of robed ghosts they'd never seen before, accompanied by Clockwork.
"I- Clockwork? But...where'd these guys all come from?" Danny asked.
The Master of Time smiled. "The Library," he replied simply. Danny nodded his understanding.
"So," continued the unfamiliar ghost who had first spoken. "A child has managed to defeat one of our greatest foes, and accomplished what we could not."
Danny blinked in surprise. It sounded like a compliment!
"I... Well, I... I had some help..." he said.
"As you should!" the ghost continued. "Clockwork has told us what you have done. On behalf of the entire Ghost Zone, we thank you." The group of ghosts bowed deeply.
A second ghost spoke up, his voice much deeper than the first. "If there is anything we could ever do to repay you, all you need to do is ask."
Danny blinked. Here was a bunch of ancient, all-powerful ghosts indebted to him? Offering him whatever he wanted?
"Well?" the ghost asked expectantly. Danny sighed, and looked down at the Fenton Thermos in his hands. He looked up, and moved over to Clockwork.
"Here," he said. "I think you have a safe place for these."
Griffin walked up and nudged Danny with her beak. Danny patted her gratefully.
"Thanks, Griffin," he said. "Couldn't have done it without you." Danny sighed and looked back up at the ghosts.
"You know, I don't think there's anything you could give me that I can't get for myself." Danny glanced back over at his friends and sister. "Especially that I don't already have."
"A wise answer," the ghost acknowledged.
"So," Danny said, walking over to his friends. "Let's go home." He yawned, then added. "I'm tired, and I really just want to go to sleep."
And, with that, Danny phased through the Specter Speeder before collapsing on the seat, sinking into his human mode and unconsciousness.
And there you have it! My wonderful, amazing climax complete!
You know, lots of people seem to complain about being bad at writing action scenes… But when you get into it, it really is a lot of fun!
So, I reeeeeally want to know what you all think of this. And the previous chapter, of course. I think I'm pretty much starved for reviews, heheh.
I'd like to be able to say when I'll have the epilogue up, I really would, but I can't. I'm going to Magic Mountain tomorrow (Yay!) and I'm spending the day after working on Rose Parade Floats with my church youth group. Fun!
So, I guess I'll see you all next year! (as in, probably a few days from now, heh)
See ya!
-E.P.