Chapter Twenty-Five: Confrontation
Jake could barely keep his eyes open as he looked helplessly at his shocked family. A green claw was digging into his neck, not nearly causing as much blood loss as the one in his arm. As he watched the other tentacles weave around in front of him like cobras, he could only think, Oh no. They know...
"Danny..." Maddie said to Jake's father, "...how is Jake a ghost?"
"Maybe he's been overshadowed!" Jack said. "It's another trick!"
"You people are so clueless," Skulker interjected. "The world's leading experts on spirits, and you couldn't even tell that your own son was a half-ghost?"
Jack fumed. "Liars! Humans can't have ghost powers!"
"Oh, can't they?" Technus asked coyly. "How do you explain your son's little accident with your ghost portal all those years ago?"
"Son, what's he talking about?" Maddie asked.
"It's nothing mom!" Jazz said.
"It's alright, Jazz." Danny sounded resigned. "Mom, that accident made me into something more than a regular man."
In a burst of haloed light, Jake watched as his father's fine Armani suit was replaced by a black and white jumpsuit with a combination "DP" monogrammed on the chest. He saw his father's hair become shorter, bangs hanging over his glowing green eyes. Jake knew who this person was.
My father is Danny Phantom. His thought wasn't a question. Apparently, everyone but Jazz and the two ghosts that held him captive looked as shocked as they had been when he'd been unmasked.
Suddenly, it all made sense.
"Oh, how touching," Technus shrilled. "Too bad it'll have to end in a moment."
"It won't end here, Technus," Danny said. His voice had an added resonance that made it very haunting. "Now put my son down."
"I have another idea," Skulker said, turning to the robot. "Break him in half."
Jake saw the tentacles advancing for him like hungry snakes. A sense of urgent power flowed through him, exploding out of him and transforming his trickling blood into ectoplasm. With one thrust, he broke out of the HEXAPOD's grip, landing on the floor in front of Danny Phantom.
"That's it!" he shouted. "I've had it with that thing!" Making a beeline for the robot, Jake wove through the weaving cat's cradle of tentacles to tackle their central ellipse, sending them both tumbling off the balcony into the foyer. He clutched his shoulder in pain, having forgotten that it was the bleeding one.
"Now now, ghost child," Technus said, gliding down to meet Jake as Skulker engaged Danny. "We can't have any of that. If we're going to do this, we'll do it right."
The HEXAPOD clambered over Jake to its master, weaving over around to his back. With a symphony of electrical whirring, the elliptical center attached to Technus's back like a backpack, its wires forming a harness around his chest. Two of the tentacles undid the strap that held Technus's cloak to his shoulders, letting it drop to the floor. The remaining four hissed like living snakes, but looking too sinuous and liquid to be either animal or machine.
"Now this is more like it!" Technus said as the six arms rose around him. Like cobras, the upper pair reared their heads to strike, and Jake prepared to dodge...
The attack came from the right.
As soon as Jake started to dodge upwards, another tentacle clipped into the side of his head with the speed of a jackhammer. Sent reeling, Jake saw Skulker screaming at his father and sister as he sailed through a wall and into the study. The shelves were lined with books of all kinds, and lounge chairs were the main decor.
Technus followed in pursuit, the arms flailing several more attacks at the ghost boy, many of which connected. And when Jake tried to fly or phase through the questing tentacles to get at the ghost at their center, they had absolutely no trouble swatting him aside once more. It seemed impossible to fight this crazy ghost.
Technus crowed, "This is pathetic! I'll be tearing you limb from limb soon enough!"
"Do you ever..." Another dodge around a tentacle. "...stop talking?" Jake asked sardonically.
The study was being torn apart. The lounge chairs became either terrain for Technus to throw or Jake to interpose between him and his enemy. Computer outlets became weaponry, pulled out of the wall through the ghost's mechakinetic powers. Finally, the fight left the study, progressing to the roof of the house.
The fight wasn't going well for Jake. Already bruised and battered from the HEXAPOD's attacks alone, he'd been struck more than a dozen additional serious blows, including not only the previous one on the head, but two others to the ribs that left a constant throbbing pain in his side; he'd gotten Technus maybe twice, each time only a glancing blow.
As the tentacles entwined him once more around the waist, Technus laughed as he brought Jake close to his leering face. "Impudent ghost child! I am Technus! Master of Technology and Destroyer of Worlds! And once I crush you, I will rip you apart and laugh over your broken corpse!"
"Please...shut...UP!" Jake screamed, ignoring the blinding pain in his body. Bringing his fist up, he connected with Technus's face, shattering one of the lenses of his frameless sunglasses. One of his red eyes shined out from the broken lens, filled with fury.
"You punched me!" Technus snarled. Jake was slammed against the roof of the house, struggling as more tentacles twisted around his body. In Technus's hand appeared a macelike weapon, studded with power conductors around its spherical head. "Prepare yourself for the next life!" Technus said. "It's coming sooner than you think!"
Technus raised the lightning rod, its head crackling with energy that silhouetted it wielder against the blood-red sky...
...and then he was gone.
But not without help.
A blur of black and white had tackled the ghost right off the roof, freeing Jake from Technus's crushing grasp. As he got up, he realized that the black and white blur was his father, looking no worse for wear.
"Dad?" he asked softly.
"It's okay, Jake," Danny replied as he phased through the roof. Jake followed, ending up in an L-sectioned hallway where his father stood.
"But why didn't you tell anybody?" Jake asked.
"Why didn't you?" Danny asked in return.
Before Jake could answer, a crashing came from one end of the L-hallway. Skulker stomped through the wall, his weaponry mostly destroyed and his suit battered. "Ghost-boy!" he yelled. "Nothing will keep me from mounting your body over my fireplace!"
As Skulker lumbered towards the two, Jake also saw Technus at the end of the other section of hallway, dragging himself along by the tentacles of his machine. His arrogant, hysterical laughter matched that of Skulker's as his speed picked up.
"Don't worry," Danny whispered to his son. "I have an idea. When I give the signal, phase through the floor. Understand?"
Jake nodded.
Both ghosts shouted as they attacked, both bragged about their own unstoppability and the gruesomeness of the murders that they were about to commit, both cackled madly with a mixture of haughtiness and insanity. Neither one, hidden from the other's sight by the bend of the corridor, had any idea that their exact actions were being copied–even mirrored–by the actions of an equally dangerous teammate. Fittingly enough, each was probably in his own little world, where everything existed to cater to their whims.
Coming down one branch of hallway, Skulker charged toward the halfas, his gorilla arms outstretched for combat.
Racing up the other, Technus got into position and hurled all six tentacles at his enemies' chests, each one spouting lightning from a ghost taser that had emerged out of them
Then, Danny said, "Now!"
At the very last instant, the two phased through the floor, allowing Skulker to pass through the space where they had just been. The tentacles that struck the Ghost Zone's greatest hunter completed a powerful circuit. The ectoplasmic voltage that passed through Skulker's metal body may not have affected the suit at all, for it was a creation of metal. But the ghost at its center was not, screaming in pain as the systems of the suit shut down.
Technus, however, received more of his own medicine. As he was electrocuted, he twitched, jerked, made incoherent noise, and danced a spastic jig to an angry electric symphony. His mullet standing on end, his red eyes wide and terrified, he sank to his knees and then plopped onto his chest with a very audible thud! The tentacles retracted from the metal form of Skulker, becoming as powerless as their master as they shorted out.
Jake and Danny reemerged shortly, and witnessed their handiwork.
"C–cool," Jake said weakly.
"Yeah," Danny said. "They're always so predictable."
"And we came out of it unscathed."
"Not really. Are you aware about your head?"
Jake brought his hand to where his head was throbbing. Something sticky and wet was seeping out from where the HEXAPOD's tentacle had clipped him. He was bleeding from a head artery.
Darkness was pinching at the edges of his vision as the exhaustion claimed him. Finally, it swallowed him whole, and he pitched into his father's outstretched arms just as sirens could be heard in the distance.
"I offer you everything," Vlad hissed through his sharp teeth, "the entire world served on a silver platter...and you have the audacity to throw it back in my face! Who do you think you are?"
Ellie wasn't moved by Vlad's words. As she dropped the empty vial and crushed it underfoot, she imagined that it was her fears that she was grinding to dust, that the horrid voice that had plagued her all these months she was dying beneath her boot as she kept her green eyes on Vlad.
"I don't want your world, you creep." Her voice was dripping with venom. "My brother doesn't want it either, and neither does my dad. I know everything about you, and I'm going to make sure you don't force your world on anybody!"
Wiping the ectoplasm off his sneering face, Vlad let his eyes glow like fiery coals. Ellie stood there shocked as he roared in anger, rushing Ellie with the speed of a locomotive. The backhand he delivered sent the ghost-girl flying into a nearby table.
"FOOL!" he shouted in fury.
Ellie got to her feet, nursing a fresh bruise to her cheek. The very thing stung from the combination of the force of the blow and the fact that Vlad could even have such strength in him.
"Now then, Ellen," Vlad continued, his voice regaining control, "I don't believe you quite understood me before. You will become my protegee, no matter what you say. You're shackled by a chain, Ellie; one for which you don't have a hacksaw. So I guess it's up to me to expose the weakest link!"
His hand glowing amethyst, Vlad let loose a ghost ray that struck Ellie with the force of a speeding car. As she passed through several tables, a wall, and the racquetball court back in the lounge, she thought that she made a huge mistake.
Well, two huge mistakes.
The first was throwing the vial of rubic ectoplasm in Vlad's face. Some of it was bound to be ingested, whether through his eyes, nose, or mouth. This would only serve to increase his power and madness to a larger, if temporary degree.
The second was even choosing to fight Vlad in the first place.
What am I gonna do? Ellie asked herself. I saw what he could do in the clock face; how can I possibly beat him? What have I gotten myself into?
It's quite simple really. Let me out.
Her eyes went wide at the sound of that voice. What? You again?
Yes, me. He's coming for you, Ellie. He'll kill you unless you fight back. Unleash me.
"No!" she replied out loud. "I won't let you do anything!"
Getting back up once more, Ellie readied herself as she saw Vlad phase through the wall, his red-lined cape billowing behind him as he completed the touchdown of his dignified glide.
"Well then, my dear," he said with a sharp smile, "shall we dance?"
And then, like a lightning bolt, he was upon her.