-Just one more chapter after this, but I'm in the middle of Chapter 3 of the sequel, which should be posted sometime in March
Disclaimer: I don't own anything
The Master Plan
Uric Igi Shelps
Chapter 9
Freedom?
The Plasmius duplicate flew through the Ghost-Zone with all the confidence of the original. He knew exactly where he was going, and though there had been a few bumps in the road, the plan was still moving along better than expected.
Right when he expected it to, the floating jungle that was his destination appeared in the distance. Speeding up, Plasmius reached Skulker's lair moments later, using his perfected ghost-sense to guide him straight to his employee.
He dropped down through the jungle canopy and reflexively became intangible rather than dodge the dense trees and branches. The dense underbrush swept by and through him, and more than a few ghostly predators glanced at him as he flew by, but fortunately for them, he was gone an instant later.
Finally, a glowing green, wooden cabin came into view. Though it was only a cabin in the barest sense of the word; being made of wood and in a forest. It was much larger then your proto-typical cabin, it was about the size of a small school. There were two stories, and at the very center, above the front, double wooden doors, there was a long, wrought iron railing, enclosing what Vlad assumed to be a balcony.
Plasmius stopped and regained tangibility before the front door. Cursing Skulker for his ghost-proof lair, Plasmius raised one arm and brought it down forcefully. After a few moments, the doors disappeared entirely, and Vlad took the hint.
Floating through the door, he found himself in a familiar hallway, which he knew led into Skulker's personal weapon's vault.
Skulker had a tendency to show off when he had guests. The hallway was lit by strategically placed, green-flamed torches, which, coupled with the Ghost-Zone's natural cold, had the effect of making the traveler feel as if he were underground.
Eventually, the hallway emptied into the large, ecto-steel reinforced room where the Ghost-Zone's greatest hunter housed his weaponry. Skulker himself sat at an out of place looking wooden stool, fiddling with his latest invention. "What do you want?" The hunter asked without turning around.
"Another distraction," Plasmius said simply and immediately, "Young Daniel and his friends are likely to escape Walker's prison anytime now — you need to be there,"
Skulker gave a weary sigh and turned from his work. "Why would I do that — I wanted to get this Ghost-Shield disrupter done tonight,"
Vlad tossed the briefcase into Skulker's surprised hands. The confused machine fiddled with the handle for a moment before he finally just ripped the top off, causing the money to pile up on the floor at his feet.
Skulker tossed the broken briefcase away and eyed the money, arching an eyebrow before looking back to Vlad, nonplussed. "What do I need money for? I'm a ghost!"
Vlad smiled, "The next time young Daniel dismantles that armor of yours — you'll need the money,"
Skulker frowned, and raised a contemplative mechanical arm , "Fine," Skulker said using a vacuum type device in his arm to suck up the money.
"Excellent," Plasmius said succinctly before he disappeared in a magenta flash.
Maddie, Vlad, and the Mansons walked through the front door to Fentonworks despondently. That Wisconsin ghost had beaten them easily, and he'd gotten away without leaving any clues to Danny or Sam's whereabouts.
Left with no other options, they'd decided to bring the fight to the Ghost-Zone — and this time they weren't coming back without rescuing Danny, Sam and Jack.
They traipsed down to the lab in silence, each — with the exception of Vlad—worried about their family. Once Samantha was helped down the long staircase, they walked towards the portal, planning to use the Specter Speeder once again.
"Where is it?" Maddie asked suddenly in alarm, looking from the designated parking spot to the open, spiraling vortex of ectoplasm that was the Ghost-Portal. "And where are Jazz and Tucker?"
"Maddie," Vlad called out, restraining from smiling in joy at his good fortune— "you should see this," he held out a hastily written note, which Maddie quickly snatched.
"Darn it Jazz!" She shouted in frustration a moment later, crumbling the loose leaf and hurling it into the open portal. "They took the Speeder and went after Danny!" She nearly shouted, turning to the Mansons in explanation.
"I think it's time to inform the police," Vlad said quickly, making for the stairs.
"Why don't we just call them?" Thomas asked, seeing Vlad's hurried pace. Vlad stopped and spun.
"Because they will take Vlad Masters seriously," was all he said, sprinting up the stairs and quickly becoming Plasmius in a flash of dark light. He doubled back right away, and flew through the portal, invisibly, intent on joining his duplicate.
Sam was starting to regret knocking Valerie out.
Not that she felt sorry for the girl who routinely made Danny's life hell. No, not at all — it was just getting extremely tiring to continue to drag her prone form towards the exit. She'd turned the Mini-Shield off to save the energy, but she was starting to wonder if her own energy was worth more then the battery power of the device.
She'd parted ways with Danny nearly ten minutes ago, but she'd just heard what was unmistakably his Ghostly-Wail a surprisingly short time later.
She wasn't sure how she felt about that — on one hand, it meant that Danny was still fighting, which was obviously good. But on the other hand, it meant he was desperate enough to use it — which couldn't be a good thing.
Sam stopped as she reached a corner, and with one more heave, she sat Valerie up against the wall next to her as she leaned back against the cold surface, trying to catch her breath.
She was just beginning to feel semi-comfortable again when a groan announced Valerie's return to consciousness.
Valerie's eyes fluttered open slowly, and it took them a few seconds to adjust. Once they did, and she was focused on Sam's face, she put a hand to her head and groaned again.
"What happened?" She asked, adjusting her position so that she was sitting more comfortably.
"Uh — you got hit with an ecto — I mean a ghost-ray in the cell," Sam said, playing dumb, "Then that Phantom came and fought off Walker,"
"Where's Danny?" Valerie asked after a moment of searching.
"Oh—" Sam said, thinking, "He went to look for a way out—yeah he should be back soon," she said with more confidence.
"You let him go off alone — in this place?" Valerie asked throwing her arms in the air incredulously. "What kind of a friend are you?"
Sam crossed her arms and glared at the arrogant girl, "What should I have done?" She asked, "Gone with him and left you here alone — defenseless because you're the expert ghost-hunter who got caught with her back turned?" Sam knew that was low, considering she'd been the one to attack Val, but at the moment, she didn't care.
Valerie crossed her arms and returned Sam's glare, but never got a chance to retort , because at that moment, a shout coming from the hallway they'd just left interrupted them.
"Sam!" Jack Fenton shouted as he sprinted closer, "Valerie!" The big man skidded to a halt in front of the two girls, as Sam inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. If Danny's dad was okay—then surely Danny would appear any minute. "Where's Danny?" Jack asked, looking around.
"He's looking for a way out," Valerie said with a glance back to Sam — who merely glared in return.
"That a boy," Mr. Fenton said with pride, oblivious to the feud, as he grabbed both girls by their collars and pulled them to their feet. "Let's get going," he said, starting around the corner, as a reluctant Valerie and Sam followed.
"Shouldn't we wait for Danny?" Valerie asked, glancing back at where they'd been. "He won't know where to find us,"
"Nonsense," Jack said at once, "A Fenton always has a back up plan—Danny'll find us,"
Valerie glanced at Sam, who decided to forgo the glare and merely shrugged, hopelessly. "Um—Mr. Fenton?" She asked, hoping to sound nonchalant, "How did you get away from the ghosts?"
Mr. Fenton stopped at a "T" crossing and looked both ways before he picked one, seemingly at random and started down the hall. If Sam hadn't known he was going in the right direction, she wouldn't have known what to do. "Are you kidding?" He asked incredulously, "No ghosts can hold Jack Fenton for long!"
He glanced back, and meeting Sam's raised eyebrows added quietly, "And that ghost-kid Phantom helped out," next to her, Sam heard Valerie groan in annoyance.
"He fought off all of those ghosts by himself?" Sam asked cautiously, hoping that she didn't sound too nervous. At the edge of her field of vision, she saw Valerie give her a questioning look. Sam ignored it.
"How should I know," Jack said, and Sam suddenly had that sinking feeling, "He was still fighting them off when he told me to leave," he shrugged, and resumed his silence.
Sam had just thought up an excuse to go back and look for Danny when Mr. Fenton stopped suddenly, making both Sam and Valerie collide with him and fall to the ground. "Here we go!" He said, seeming not to notice the girls on the ground. He turned around and looked at them with some surprise before he hefted them up again and pushed them through what Sam recognized as the front gates.
Jack kept a hand on each of their shoulders, guiding them past the gates and out onto the edge of the floating island that comprised the prison grounds. Jack guided them to the edge of the island and looked in the direction of the Fenton Portal, which Sam knew to be just out of sight in the green haze that comprised the Ghost-Zone's atmosphere.
"Hello, humans," a voice spoke from behind them. All three spun around, and met Skulker's sneering face a mere five feet away — his right arm raised, cannon armed and glowing its characteristic blue. "No whelp?" Skulker asked rhetorically, looking around cautiously, he shrugged his massive metallic shoulders indifferently, "Goodbye then,"
He smiled cruelly, and fired. The report was incredibly loud, and Sam closed her eyes, resigned to being blasted off the edge and falling to the bottom of the Ghost-Zone. She had just begun to wonder what the bottom of the Ghost-Zone was like when another, louder sound forced her to open her eyes.
Directly in front of her was a ten-foot high translucent green wall. The shield was still vibrating madly from the impact, and Sam had just enough time to see Skulker's annoyed expression before Danny's back blocked him from view. The shield disappeared, and Sam heard Valerie mutter something under her breath as Mr. Fenton whooped with joy.
The one thing that worried her was the fact that she could already hear Danny panting from exertion, and she knew he couldn't have much energy left after his using his wail.
How long could he last?
Across the Ghost-Zone, on the other side of the Fenton Portal and through the seemingly endless vacancy, Pariah Dark's castle stood as haughtily as ever. The palace had evidently been restored since the rest of the ghosts sealed the King inside his sarcophagus, as well as sending the entire town of Amity Park back from the Ghost-Zone.
The castle had remained untouched since; until today.
Two dozen of Walker's most trusted and powerful guards swooped into the invitingly open doorway. The leader, a ghost by the name of Bullet paused on the threshold and looked around. After another moment's hesitation, he raised his hand, and signaled the rest of his guards to follow.
They made their way through the extravagantly decorated halls, following the directions their employer had provided. Finally, they burst through a pair of excessively decorated doors and ahead of them, bathed in the unnatural light of the Ghost-Zone sat the same sarcophagus.
"There he is," Bullet said, seemingly indifferent as he led the way up to the tomb. As they had planned, the guards encircled the standing coffin. Nodding towards each other, each guard held up a long, thin, cylindrical object not unlike the Jack-A-Nine-Tails. Though the color scheme was different, these favoring red shades, the weapons looked nearly identical otherwise.
Bullet glanced behind him and nodded once again, extracting a long, old fashioned key, which he expertly put into the a hole in the skull on the tomb's lid, and turned. There was a satisfyingly loud lurch from within, and the guards moved closer still to the coffin digging their fingers into a grove along the side.
Together, they all lifted the lid from the coffin with surprising ease, and quickly tossed it up and over their collective heads, where it clattered to the ground behind them. Immediately, they all raised their weapons and fired them into the darkness of the tomb.
Elastic looking ropes shot from the tips and disappeared into the darkness. A moment later, they started to glow a bright red, illuminating a still groggy, though waking Pariah Dark. "What is this?" He asked, struggling against the dozen ecto-reinforced binds.
With another silent signal, each ghost pressed a button on the side, and the already bright lines pulsed with energy. A split second later, Pariah Dark screamed in obvious agony, a sound that seemed incredibly unlikely to come from the Ghost-Zone's greatest king. The ghosts pressed the buttons again a moment later, leaving the once almighty ghost-king slumped up against the back of his tomb, panting from exertion.
"That's better," Bullet said, striding forward and grabbing the king's gloved hand.
Pariah, still slightly dazed, took a moment to realize what was going on. "No!" He suddenly yelled, ripping his massive hand from the ghost's grasp. Bullet merely sighed and rolled his eyes as another blast from his men sent Dark into a series of convulsions and more screams.
This time, Pariah was dazed enough so that he didn't even seem to notice when Bullet slipped the ring off his finger and put it into an inside pocket. Satisfied, Bullet waved a hand — signaling his men to cease their attack.
He held out his hand, and a moment later, yet another weapon was dropped into it. This one looked much more like a weapon than other devices had.
For starters, it was shaped like a revolver, and though it looked more state of the art, one difference was the twin barrels, each aiming in two directions. "This is the Plasmius Terminus," Bullet said, eyeing the contraption almost lovingly. He flipped a small switch on the side and aimed it at the ghost-king's forehead. "The new king, Lord Vlad Plasmius, thanks you for the ring,"
The king almost had a chance to look shocked before the trigger was pulled.
Danny hit the ground again with a groan. "Give it up, whelp," Skulker said, standing over him, sneering. "You may have the upper hand in your world — but the Ghost-Zone is my domain!"
Danny pushed himself up and glanced at his friends again. They were standing in a close circle, talking quietly, though Danny noticed the worried glances Sam kept shooting his way when she thought no one was looking.
WHAM!
In his distraction, Skulker blasted him again, sending him tumbling into the prison wall, causing several pieces of rock and stone to collapse on him. Growling in frustration, Danny launched himself back to Skulker, flying full-speed.
As he wound up for an uppercut, Skulker became intangible and Danny shot right through him. By the time Danny had regained his bearings Skulker blasted him back into the ground again. Cursing, Danny sat up on his knees and changed tactics.
Danny cupped both hands in front of him and formed the beginnings of an ectoblast. Once the sphere of energy was completed in his hands, he had it explode outward — a continuous blast of green energy.
Skulker had been advancing on the downed halfa when the blast struck him clean in the jaw. The upward angle, combined with the force of the blast sent Skulker careening crazily up into the air.
Wasting no time, Danny shot into the air after him — and before Skulker could recover, Danny drew back and punched him across the face — this time sending the hunter back towards the ground, where he blasted clear through one of the prison walls. A moment later the wall collapsed on top of him in a shower of dust and stone.
Danny touched down once again and watched the crash zone with more then some trepidation, as the pile of rubble started to shake a moment later. With an angry bellow, the rubble blasted away from Skulker in all directions.
With a quick mental command — Danny simultaneously became intangible and formed a shield in front of his friends to block the rain of shrapnel. A moment later he dropped the shield and phased back to normal.
"It will take much more than that to defeat me, whelp," Skulker said arrogantly as one of his cannons emerged from a compartment on his arm. In the blink of an eye, he shot of three quick blasts.
Danny dodged the first and second shots, and went intangible in the face of the third. SLAM!
The blast hit him anyway and sent Danny rolling head over heels a good ten feet from where he'd stood. Note to self, Danny thought, next time; dodge. He had just enough time to disappear through the ground before Skulker's next blast made an incredibly large crater where he'd been.
Skulker tensed, looking around for any signs of the ghost-boy. A small, pair of optical lenses sprung from his shoulder and positioned themselves in front of the hunter's eyes. He made an interested sound a split-second before Danny shot through the ground — and found himself being held tightly by the throat.
The sudden — unexpected lack of air kept Danny from gathering enough concentration to do much of anything. "Nice try, ghost-child," Skulker said as he tossed the boy into a wall, and fired his cannon once again.
Danny saw it coming, and dodged the blast — which meant that the wall behind him took the full force. It collapsed forward onto him—and he disappeared in a cloud of ecto-rubble and dust.
"Danny!" Sam shouted before she could stop herself.
"Where?" Jack asked, as he and Valerie began looking around frantically.
Sam was too busy watching Skulker move with agonizing leisure towards the pile of rubble, which didn't appear to be moving. She was just about to jump away from Val and Jack when a shout distracted her. She spun around and saw the Specter Speeder coasting to a stop feet away.
The door opened, reveling a smiling Tucker and Jazz in the driver's seat. "You need a lift?" Tucker offered, as the three escapees ran towards their ride, Sam momentarily forgetting Danny's questionable peril.
Valerie wasted no time in hopping inside, and Jack pushed Sam in next before he spun around.
"Dad?" Jazz asked curiously from the cockpit. "What's wrong?"
Mr. Fenton looked back at his daughter with fire in his eyes. "I'm not going anywhere without Danny!" He shouted, taking one of the weapons mounted on the inside of the speeder and cocking it. "You kids go on without me,"
Sam, Tucker and Jazz exchanged fearful looks before they jumped off after him. "Wait, Mr. Fenton," Tucker shouted running to catch up. But the big man had already stopped—and it was obvious as to why.
Sam had been wondering what Skulker had been doing during their brief rendezvous, and when she saw him, she gasped audibly.
Skulker had evidently retrieved a barely conscious Danny from the rubble. His hazmat suit was torn in too many places to count, with greenish blood coating the areas around many of the tears. His face sported an innumerable amount of cuts and scrapes as well, and his whole body was hung limply in Skulker's grasp by the collar of his suit.
The Ghost-Zone's greatest hunter held Danny at arm's length and his other arm was cocked and ready, with an ectoplasmic blade to the young ghost-child's throat.
Sam, Tucker and Jazz all froze, completely clueless as to what they could do to help, while Jack seemed to be having something of an inner dilemma.
After what looked like a tough decision — where a lot of different emotions played across the man's face — Jack lifted the ectogun and expertly blasted Skulker away, forcing him to drop Danny.
Both Skulker and Danny picked themselves up, and Danny looked at his father in surprise for a moment. Then he sighed heavily, and shot a thin ectoblast from his finger, which struck the surprised Jack in the head, knocking him out.
Jazz looked at her brother in surprise and shock. "What was—"
"Now you can leave!" Danny interrupted shortly, turning back to the recovered Skulker.
"What about you?" Sam asked, even as they moved to begin to drag Mr. Fenton back towards the speeder.
Danny couldn't answer, as he had to concentrate on maintaining the ectoplasmic barrier he had just erected to protect his friends as they escaped. Skulker had finally realized what was going on. "Get out of here!" He yelled furiously through clenched teeth and draining energy.
Skulker continued to barrage the wall mercilessly with shot after shot. At first he started with a relatively small gun attached to his wrist. But as his frustration grew he continued to pull out increasingly larger weapons. He now sported an overlarge cannon that had emerged from somewhere on his back.
Each shot resulted in a trembling and slightly more transparent shield as Danny continuously groaned.
After what seemed to Danny like an eternity, the four teens finally managed to get Jack onto the vehicle. Danny met Jazz's worried look with a determined one of his own, and Jazz soon turned the speeder around and blasted back in the direction of Fentonworks.
Dropping the shield, Danny didn't even attempt to dodge Skulker's rage driven cannon blast. He was sent bouncing painfully across the ground before he eventually stopped, face down on the barren ghost-zone rock.
"I will have your head for this, ghost-child!" Skulker screamed at him, as he picked Danny up and slammed him face first into the ground again. "Those humans were mine to kill!" Skulker lifted him back out of the ground, "You. Will. Pay!" He accentuated each word by slamming Danny into the rock again and again.
He threw him away in frustration and when he landed, Danny didn't get up. "Is that all you've got, whelp?" Skulker asked, seemingly calmer. "They said you've grown stronger—but look at you know," he mocked, "bleeding, bruised and defeated, the fact that you're half-ghost just makes you weaker!"
Skulker laughed and raised an eyebrow as Danny's body started to tremble and the half-ghost slowly, painfully pushed himself up, and lifted his head, meeting Skulker's glare. "I grow weary of your continuous existence," Skulker said a moment later, as he raised his arm and a powerful looking bazooka emerged. "I told you in our first encounter that your pelt will adorn my wall—and do that it shall,"
As the cannon powered up with a high-pitched whirring, Danny gave his hunter one last, small smile before his face was blinded in a bright light and his scream obscured by the report.
But Skulker's laugh echoed throughout the Ghost-Zone, and in the cockpit of the Specter Speeder, Sam, Tucker, Jazz and Valerie all shuddered.