Ghost in the Shell
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Madam Chaos Shadow
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Author Notes :
I went back to watch Bitter Reunions again (they have it on TurboNick, alongside The Ultimate Enemy). It didn't help much. I tried to watch Million Dollar Ghost, but apparently nobody wants me to see it – TuboNick kept on shunting me back down to Bitter Reunions (which is an excellent episode, but I'm trying to watch Million Dollar Ghost, thank you!).
Public Enemies and Maternal Instinct aired over the week, and I caught both of them, thankfully.
I love Wulf, and the fact that he speaks Esperanto. I don't know it myself, but the language is a kind of a fusion between Latin and Spanish from what I can tell, which means that I can understand part of it, which makes me absurdly happy. LATIN WINS AGAIN!
And having seen Maternal Instincts, I can safely say that Vlad's motives, as far as I can tell, are almost primarily centred on his vengeance on Jack, his acquisition of Maddie, and his acquisition of Danny. Jazz might be part of his plan, but getting her would only be another blow to Jack. So why did he steal the Crown and Ring? Why does he randomly sweep into the Ghost Zone to get dangerous artifacts? Why is it so darn complicated just to get the girl and her kid?Well...
I keep having a mini heart attack when I either check my e-mail or check my stats: I am not used to getting this much of a response off of a fic. I mean... Wow. Seriously. Wow. Double digit favourites is not normal for me.
Just About Everybody : Uh, that's reassuring. I was afraid Vlad would end up being... Not Vlad. My fears were mostly set aside when I finally got around to seeing Bitter Reunions and then finally saw Maternal Instinct, and I realized that Vlad's not too too hard to write for. Teenagers are easier, though -- I have a problem with sarcasm, myself, so I can relate better.
I'm now disappointed when Vlad doesn't fight ghosts with a broom. I'll make a broom-beating campaign of these days, you'll see, and then you'll know I've officially snapped (I've unofficially snapped thus far... I'm not sure what the difference is).
Does Chapter III hold up? I have no idea, I wrote half of it between one and two in the morning.
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C H A P T E R : T H R E E
: A C A D E M I A :
Danny couldn't breath for a long moment as he stared down the paper. His jaw was entirely unhinged, and it took Tucker poking him on the shoulder to finally get him to close his mouth. It took Sam slapping him to entirely wake him from his stupor.
"I'm quite shocked as well, Mister Fenton," Mr. Lancer whispered, sweeping past Danny as the boy blinked a few times, ensuring that his head was clear. "I haven't seen responses of that calibre since your sister was here... Perhaps part of her is finally rubbing off on you."
Perhaps she helped me write most of it, Danny thought, a vague smile tracing its way over his mouth. His eyes, however, remained utterly transfixed by the red ink that scrawled an 'A+' across the top of his paper. He set the paper down, feeling a tremor run through him again, and looked over his shoulder. He ignored the fact that Tucker was leaning in and muttering incoherently in shock; Danny's attention was to be torn away from his triumph by the fact that he was just about to die.
Farther back, where Dash took his seat, he had received his own essay back, and some form of admonition from Mr. Lancer. As the teacher walked past, Danny could see Dash look up and glare at him with such seething hatred that Danny almost felt himself break into a sweat despite the immortal presence of ghostly frigidity around him.
Sliding back into his chair, he placed the essay face-down and whispered: "He got an F."
Tucker reflected Danny's apprehension. "And F stands for 'Fenton', right?"
"Oh yeah."
The instant the bell rang Danny was the first one out the door and he had set himself at such an impressive sprint he was also halfway down the hallway by the time Tucker and Sam could follow him out. They took off in his general direction, and found him already at his locker, hastily exchanging books and sending paranoid glances behind him, once even sticking his head through the locker door to get a better look.
"You know," Tucker said slowly, "if you can do that and not feel weird, why can't you just ghost through the wall into the storage closet?"
Danny pulled his head back, bringing himself back from the peculiar position he had been in, with his neck cut halfway off by the locker's door. He sent a glance to Tucker, then to Sam, then back to Tucker and almost immediately to Sam again.
"That's a great idea," he said finally.
"I said it!" Tucker cried indignantly. Danny ignored him.
"Danny," Sam said, an exasperated sigh leaving her. "One of these days you're going to have to buckle down and stand up to Dash on your own. Without overshadowing him," she added dangerously, seeing that Danny was about to utter protest.
He couldn't even respond to that; he knew full well she was right (when it came to life matters, she was right frighteningly often). There would come a day when his ghost powers wouldn't be enough to help him evade Dash's grasp, or when he would find himself in a situation where their usage was impossible.
"FENTON!"
But until then, he could rely on them quite nicely. His powers and his legs.
"Oh, crap."
Danny bolted.
Sam and Tucker were unable to do anything for him once Dash went on his post-failure rampage, and as the jock dashed past them, his torn paper still clenched tightly in his hand, the two exchanged a look and Sam politely closed Danny's locker, reset the lock to zero, picked up his abandoned backpack, and accompanied Tucker to the cafeteria. He would catch up with them during lunch, and he would likely want to make sure that his backpack hadn't been left to be trampled underfoot in the hallway.
His backpack, of course, was the last thing on Danny's mind for the moment.
Why? he moaned mentally, taking the sharp right turn and keeping his accelerated pace down the hallway, pushing past kids still at their lockers and once inadvertently managing to shove somebody inside the confines of his. Why was I born scrawny, and short, and with a last name that seems synonymous with a failing grade?
He heard loud cries from behind and knew immediately that Dash was doing his level best to level everybody that got between him and Danny. Danny, who was doing his level best to keep Dash from leveling him, didn't even bother to look back; it was hard enough to manoeuver in the halls between classes and lunch, even worse when running at Danny's breakneck pace, and he couldn't risk looking back and tripping over somebody.
A left turn this time, then he slowed down a bit, feigning a creeping tiredness to allow Dash an opportunity to catch up; Danny might have been born scrawny and short and with a last name apparently synonymous with a failing grade, but he was incredible agile when it came down to it, and his ghost hunting gave him great practice for it, and this was the only opportunity he could use to keep Dash from making an indentation in the nearest wall that curiously resembled Danny's head.
Danny feinted a right turn as Dash came upon him, then caught himself and actually ran full til to the left. While Dash was momentarily distracted (he wasn't the sharpest tack in the box), the ghost kid took the opportunity to phase straight through the door he had accidentally run directly toward and realized with the loud crash of mops and buckets and brooms that he had found the very storage closet Tucker had been referring to.
Well, this was only slightly better than hiding in the bathroom.
"Gotcha!"
The door swung outward, and Danny brought up a hand to remove the bucket that had fallen over his head. Dash's muscular frame was standing before him, illuminated by the light from beyond the door, a dangerous smirk curling his lips.
"Nice hat, Fentonella," Dash said.
Danny waited for the rest of the sentence, but it turned out that Dash had already run out of words and was apparently going to move straight onto the pounding. Danny had long since grown accustomed to this ritual – Dash gets an F, Danny gets pounded. Such was as it had been since middle school.
But, of course, Danny didn't need to go quietly anymore.
He felt a cold spot in the palm of his hand and clenched his fist, tightening his grip around some that he knew to be small, green, and very bright. As Dash reached down to him, Danny reacted; he pointed, yelled "Hey, look! A brick wall!" and, while Dash was busy trying to figure that one out, the scrawny short kid promptly through the ectoplasmic flash grenade at him.
A blinding surge of green ectoplasmic energy erupted from the small orb, and with a yell Dash was sent reeling backward, hands over his eyes as he tried to get the glare out. Danny smirked and, knowing that he had bought himself perhaps five seconds, promptly phased through the floor.
Dash blinked a few times as his vision began to clear and sent a dangerous glare around the immediate area. However, even as the brilliant white fog lifted from before his eyes, it seemed that Danny had entirely disappeared; his punching bag had made a run for it. The jock was stuck as to how his target had caused such an explosion of light, thought about it for a second or so, blamed it on a really good flashlight, and then reached out to grab the kid who had the misfortune of wearing a pocket protector.
The slamming of a locker resonated through the hallway and Dash left it behind him with a terribly self-satisfied grin. Shoving somebody in their own locker always gave him a sense of elated pride, wether it was Fenton or not.
..: 00 :..
Danny landed in the basement of the school, his breath coming before him in wisps of mist. Apparently, the storage closet had been located just above the cooler; sending a glance around him, Danny confirmed that there was, indeed, quite a lot of meat down there. He couldn't help but shudder; stack of meat didn't exactly fill him with terror, but knowing that the school kept a single stockpile of meat this huge didn't assuage his latent fear that at least half of the lunches were definitely not safe for human consumption.
He touched the ground lightly and became tangible as he did so. No point to keep going down – he had phased through floor and streets and underground walls before, and quite frankly it was all rather boring by the time you got underground. Unless you liked looking at dirt.
A lot of dirt.
He felt infinitely better now that he was roaming the underground meat-infested halls of the school – sure, it was somewhat creepy, but as long as the meat wasn't going to lash outor strike him or eat him or something, he was okay with its presence. To think of it, being attacked by a five-story meat monster wasstill beat being beaten by Dash, and he really wouldn't have minded too much even if...
On his breath, already a fine mist, a wisp of blue escaped, and with an involuntary, sharp inhalation he stopped dead. He steeled himself, pulling back into a defensive position, his hands clasped into fists as medium blue eyes surveyed the immediate area, butnothing seemed to be going on. Nothing down here, at least...
"Oh, no..."
A sharp scream from above and the resounding slamming of a locker. However much that sounded like signs that Dash had been present, Danny had a feeling that it wasn't the popular kid doing something.
Still, y'know, if you just wait a minute, Danny...
Another scream, and this time he almost distinctly heard the word 'ghost!' in its cry. He sighed.
Okay, fine, good enough.
"Going ghost!"
A flash of electric white, and immediately Danny Phantom was through the floor of the central hallway and keeping himself invisible so as not to set off a second set of ghost alarms. Another wisp of blue, this time more substantial and visible, escaped him, and he spun just in time to take the impact from a low-flying spectral entity. He and the whatever that had just hit him immediately went intangible and fell through the walls until coming to a stop in the middle of the cafeteria.
As Danny looked up, he had the great pleasure of seeing the hulking, angry remnant of Tucker's old ghost.
Thankfully, this was enough to send the class out of the cafeteria in terror. Most of the class, anyway; Sam and Tucker had taken the great position of ducking under their table instantly. Danny figured the only other person that cared – Valerie – was off slipping into her ghost-hunting equipment. At that moment, he didn't entirely care.
"That big ugly thing looks familiar," he heard Sam whisper.
"Don't remind me," Tucker hissed back.
"Seriously, why's that thing look like you?"
"Don't remind me, Sam..."
"I wasn't there!"
"I'd rather not get into it. Ever."
The incident came back to Danny rather fluently and he ran over the scenario in his mind again as he shoved the brute off of him and prepared to fire a blast of ectoplasm at him. He realized that he was definitely not going to have a good time. Last time he had to combat this particular beast Tucker had been under the influence of some pretty powerful ghost 'magic', and Danny had only been able to defeat him though use of the Ghost Catcher. In this case, however, the ugly beast-like perversion of his friend was no longer fused to a human, and the Ghost Catcher wasn't available anyway.
Danny's train of thought began to slow as he realized that had been a few months ago; since then, he had more control over his own powers, was better trained, was more powerful, was–
"Augh!"
CRACK!
Still going to get his ghostly little butt handed to him on a silver platter.
Danny looked up from where he had hit the opposite wall, automatically bringing his hand to the welt forming on the back of his head. That was going to sting for a while.
"Wail!" Tucker yelled suddenly.
Sam sent him a glance. "Do you realize how stupid that sounds?"
Danny sent a quick glance to Tucker, then to Sam, then to Tucker and almost immediately back to Sam. "That's a really good idea," he said simply.
"I said it!" Tucker cried indignantly.
Danny ignored him and instead went about taking his advice. He inhaled sharply (for nothing more than effect; ghosts certainly had no need to breath)and released the low, haunting melody of the Ghostly Wail. A shockwave of energy, marked by the borderline inaudible sound and the cold freeze that originated from the ghost's form, overtook the ghost and sent him rocketing back, sending the hulk flying into the opposite wall, a low crack mirroring the sound of impact from Danny's blast.
He ended the barrage and nearly toppled over, watching the electric sparks clinging to the walls dance before his eyes. Regardless of the fact that he had gotten enough practice to pull off the attack without needing anger or sorrow to back him up, he could not recover from the incredibly draining effects. Looking up, he could see that Beast Tucker couldn't either; the ghost had already phased through the wall in retreat.
"Hah!" was as far as Danny got in his taunt.
SLAM!
And quite suddenly Danny was out on the grass in a very, veryawkward position; his left arm was pinned uncomfortably under the rest of his body, his right hand acting to keep him from falling over while the rest of him was, somewhat comically, still suspended in the air, a shallow furrow dug around him and marking the trajectory he had just sailed along. As he looked up through the thin strands of white hair, he happened to see Jazz standing over him.
"Er... Hi?"
A vague warmth spread over him as the electric coils, the transformation rings, promptly marked his transition back from ghost to human, and he fell entirely to the ground, exhaustion beginning to overtake him.
"Danny!" Jazz yelped, sending a quick glance around the area to make sure that everybody else was too preoccupied to notice that the ghost boy had just landed in front of her and promptly transformed into her brother. They were, and she, no longer feeling quite so paranoid, knelt down to help him to his feet. He took the procured hand and, as he rose, she began firing off questions demanding to know what was going on. He told her the first thing that came to his mind.
"You got me an A+ on my essay," he said foolishly.
She stopped, blinked, then frowned. "This is a bit more important than your essay..."
"I know. But I thought you'd like to know..."
Clearly, he was somewhat beaten and definitely dazed. Jazz took it upon herself to make sure he didn't do anything stupid. She wrapped her arm over his shoulders to keep his stable and looked back into the school. Everybody had evacuated, it seemed, since the attack from that monstrous ghost...
No. Not everybody.
Sam and Tucker hit the ground before her as well, small furrows falling them as they were thrown from the confines of Casper High. Sam stood and coughed slightly, spitting some dirt of her mouth. Tucker sent her a sidelong glare.
"I thought you liked to eat that stuff," he murmured darkly.
She ignored him.
"What's going on?" Jazz whispered. "Danny just came flying out and he doesn't look all that good..." She indicated the child hanging on to her shoulder, his body growing limper as time passed; it was everything in his power to remain conscious.
"I think there's a massive ghost invasion," Sam said quietly. "There was this one really big, ugly ghost-"
"I'm sure he had redeeming qualities," Tucker input quickly.
"-and after Danny beat that one back he was attacked by another one. And after he was attacked we were thrown out. It doesn't look like they're after anything right now, though." She looked back to the building. "They just wanted the school."
"That's a weird thin' t'want," Danny said drowsily, nearly slurring his words.
"Point there," Tucker offered.
"Ghost invasion?" Jazz asked, and the colour seemed to immediately drain fro her face. "Oh, no..."
And then, as if on cue, the RV appeared;amonsterous vehicle, armoured likea tank with twice as many weapons and three times as many different radar systems. The white armoured vehicile came to a full stop and idled for a moment before the low hissof steam escaped the brakes, and slowly the sides opened, a thin roll of mist exiting the sides of the truck as an entirely useless (yet somewhat cool) introductory measure.
Jazz sent a glance to Tucker, then to Sam, then to Danny, and there was a mutual understanding that they had to leave for the sake of protecting Danny's identityand Jazz's little remaining integrity.
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1 : Danny's freeze upon receiving his essay grade was entirely inspired by the time I got an A+ on an Essay Test of Death after repeatedly telling myself that a C was too much to hope for. Only I wasn't slapped, because the person I was talking to has a very strong standing about hitting girls (what a nice guy!) and was simply giving me the instructions to breathe. What a great day. My last essay actually got a B-, but I did well on my arguments and just ran out of time to even write the last paragraph, so I don't feel bad about it (besides, she drops the lowest test grade, and my lowest grade was that test, which... Really shocks me... I suck at history)
2 : My school has no hallways. O.o Hallways in schools scare me since mine doesn't have any. Our buildings are also colour-coded. We went to a Latin competition where all of the buildings were green and wondered why they needed so many English departments. The next one we went to the school was all indoors and we were claustrophobic. And the drink machines there were mean.
3 : Resetting the lock to zero came from the last episode of the last season of Monk, when Monk had a flashback to when he was a little kid at school. I, personally, don't use my own locker, so I don't have anything to do with locks and don't know if this works better, but it's... It's there.
4 : "Hey, look! A brick wall!" comes from one episode of Fairly Oddparents where Timmy distracts Francis by pointing and yelling... Well... "Hey, look! A brick wall!" I figured an FoP reference was appropriate.
5 : Don't tell me ghostly flash grenades aren't a good idea. It's so much easier than carrying them with you.
6: Stopped dead is a funny term t'use in reference to Danny...
7: I remembered "What you Want"! YAY!
8: The Ghostly Wail kinda sucks in the show. I mean, it's really powerful definitely, but the sound itself makes me want to cry. Go. Use your imaginations and make it better. I don't care how. But do it.