Before I begin, I'm going to answer a question that was asked in the last review, because an answer won't come along to it. Writer's-BlockDP asked me why I couldn't have Danny just make both of them intangible and pass through the walls and avoid all the Bhyspawn. The reason I didn't do that is simply because it would be boring. I thought just going through the walls would be too obvious and easy, so I just did that to make things a little more interesting.
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The entire room was silent. The masked man watched in horror as he stared at the sharp needle go right through Danny's torso. Danny himself looked very shocked and upset. Skyler, naturally, was the only one smiling.
After what seemed like the longest time, Danny finally began to vaporize. His entire body disappeared into a puff of smoke, and less than three seconds later, he was completely gone. He was dead.
Skyler broke the tragic silence with his most evil laugh yet. "I've done it!" he shrieked with glee. "I've finally done it! With that ghost boy dead, my problems shall be no more!"
The masked man was not just looking worried anymore, but now he was shaking. His life was going to be over soon, and he knew it. Skyler turned his attention towards him with a malicious sneer. He slowly started walking over to the masked man and started charging up a massive ball of dark red energy in his hand. The masked man, still being injured from Skyler's electric ray attack, was slumped on the floor and couldn't move that well yet.
"You've gotten in my way and Bhyrun's way long enough," Skyler said in a hissing tone, losing the grin and switching to a murderous looking face. "Bhyrun and I have been waiting a long time to say this. It's time to die, N-"
"Hey Skyler!" interrupted a familiar voice from a little bit behind. "April Fool's!"
Skyler grunted and turned around, only to get a blast in the face from someone. It was Danny!
Skyler fell on the ground, writhing in pain. He sat up a moment later and was obviously confused. "What?...but how! You were dead!"
Danny started laughing to himself. "You really think it'd be that easy to kill me?" Danny smirked. He was floating a few inches off the ground with his hands on his hips. Even though there was no wind around, his hair seemed to be blowing heroically.
Skyler continued stuttering. Danny didn't waste any time and sent another ray of ectoplasma energy at him. Skyler was knocked around again, and Danny ran over to him.
"You really want to know how I'm still alive?" Danny asked with a self-confident expression on his face. Now, it was Skyler who was in trouble instead of him for once. "I thought for sure you'd want to know how I even got into your lab in the first place."
"…How?" Skyler asked, sounding as if he simply had to know.
"You see, I've been working on a new skill for a while," Danny explained, keeping a very close eye on Skyler to make sure he didn't pull anything suspicious. "It's the ability to duplicate myself. I could never get it quite right, but this time I found the motivation to do it. Bottom line, I duplicated myself, and made it stay with this guy. (he was referring to the masked person) The real me went in ahead to lure the Bhyspawn out of the way so this guy and my duplicate could sneak in while I confused the Bhyspawn and had them keep running in circles. In the meantime, my duplicate tried to lead the way into here and led you right into the false sense of security I wanted you in."
"Impossible!" Skyler said in disbelief. He sounded like he was going to have a heart attack any minute. "I was an Oxford and Harvard graduate; I was a professor in human biology at M.I.T." There was a short pause. "How could I lose to someone like you?"
"You can have all the diplomas and teacher's licenses you want," Danny said without really answering, "but you'll always just be another one of the stupid baddies I have to fight day in and day out."
"You little…" Skyler said, still struggling to get up after the surprise blast.
As he tried moving, Danny fired another blast at Skyler and knocked him into the ground even more. Skyler was moaning in pain, thinking his life was only moments away from ending. Danny started approaching Skyler as he slouched on the ground, and the cocky attitude disappeared and was replaced by a cold, serious expression.
"You've given me a bunch of trouble this week," Danny said, sounding like he had just been possessed and sounding evil. "You know I don't want to have to kill you, but between an insane jerk like you and literally millions of innocent people's lives, I'd much rather see you go. My least favorite part is that if you need to die for those people's lives to be saved, I'm the one who's going to have to do the killing!"
Skyler continued grumbling, thinking Danny still didn't have it in him to actually kill someone. But he would soon be proven wrong.
"Hey dude, can I borrow your sword for a second?" Danny asked, turning his head to the masked figure, who was finally getting off of the floor.
Not saying anything, the masked figure pulled out his sword and handed it to Danny. Danny took the sword and gripped it like iron, then went over to Skyler, ready to impale him to the floor with the sword.
Danny looked like he was about to break out into emotional tears from having to do the one thing he'd never want to do: killing someone. But he was going to listen to the masked man, who had more than earned Danny's trust over the past few days.
"So, you like stabbing things through people, huh!" Danny raged, raising the sword in the air and about to push it right through Skyler. "Let's see how fun it really is!"
Just as Danny was about to thrust the sword into Skyler and end his existence once and for all, Skyler performed one last tricky move: he rolled his leg around and hit the back of Danny's ankles, knocking him off balance.
Danny fell to the ground and dropped the sword, and Skyler launched himself up on his feet again at the exact same moment.
"You're one stubborn kid!" he criticized, looking at Danny lying on the ground. He started preparing a fatal blast of energy in his hand and pointed it at Danny's head. Just as he was about to fire it, he got blasted in the face by a yellow ray of light that the masked man fired out of his hand.
Skyler fell backwards, but he didn't appear to be in great pain. As soon as he regained focus, he realized that with Danny and the masked man fighting him in this enclosed area, he would be outmatched. Realizing this, he blew open a hole in the wall and escaped through it. He flew outside and started ascending higher and higher into the air.
Danny grunted angrily, realizing that that was the closest he had ever gotten to finishing Skyler, and the opportunity slipped out from right between his fingers.
Now filling with rage, Danny got ready to shoot up after Skyler and fight him to the death in the sky. He really didn't want to kill someone, but Skyler had given him so much trouble that he just wanted to get him out of his way. And he might have, but the masked man put his arms around Danny and restrained him.
"Danny!" yelled the masked figure, keeping the firmest grip he could on Danny. "Forget it! Skyler will be back, and he won't have much time left. Trust me."
Danny tried calming down, and after a while, he could really feel a decrease in his adrenaline. It was a weird feeling to be so pumped up and to then feel the pressure drop, but Danny didn't have time to worry about it.
"You want to tell me why you did that!" Danny yelled. "I could've caught Skyler and finished him! Why did you stop me!"
"Calm down!" the masked stranger commanded. He started shaking Danny until he was calm. "Listen, we don't have time to worry about him right now. I have a feeling he's going to go down very soon, and we need to strategize what we're going to do after he loses and how we're going to use that to stop Bhyrun."
"And where are we supposed to go?" Danny asked, finally feeling much more calm and sane. "There is nowhere we can go where Skyler won't find us."
"How about your hotel room?" the masked man suggested. "I don't believe he's found you there yet. He probably wouldn't expect to find such a big enemy like you in a hotel resort."
"All right," Danny agreed. "Come on, let's go."
The two of them started flying out of the hole Skyler created in the wall and headed back towards the hotel.
When they finally arrived at the hotel, Danny made both of them go intangible and they passed right through the window into Danny's room. As soon as they were inside, Danny sighed loudly and put his hands on his hips. He started pacing around the room, looking down at the floor and licking his lips.
The masked man, on the other hand, was obviously feeling pretty exhausted after that ordeal in the laboratory. He sat down on the end of one of the beds and looked like he could just tumble backwards and fall asleep.
"So, what exactly is it that we want to do?" Danny asked, still pacing around the room and not looking at the masked man. "Do we want to kill Skyler and then go attack that cloud?"
The masked man looked at Danny and patted the side of the bed next to him, signaling Danny to sit down next to him. Danny obeyed and gently planted himself on the bed next to him.
"Danny, what we want to do is kill Skyler," the masked person said. "Because once we kill Skyler, a lot of Bhyrun's power will disappear. It is imperative that that happens! If Bhyrun doesn't lose his power, then neither one of us will stand any hope."
"Really?" Danny asked. "I thought we made a pretty good team, especially back in the lab against Skyler."
"Actually, I really made a mistake in there," the masked stranger replied. "I gave you some of my powers a little while ago, when I put my hand on your arm and you felt like power was flowing through you. That was mine."
"Really?" Danny asked.
"Yes. My energy hurts Skyler more than your regular ectoplasmic rays do. That was why they seemed to get much more hurt by your blasts than before."
"Then, how's that a mistake?" Danny curiously asked. "If we both have powers that can kick their butts, then how can it be bad?"
"Because, I gave you a lot of my power when doing so," the masked man said. "Now, your power would be at about 70 percent while it would put mine at about 30 percent. You would have all the weight of the battle dumped on you, because I would definitely not be able to fight with that little power."
"Well, how are we going to get around that?" Danny asked.
The masked man didn't seem to have an answer. He looked down at the floor and sighed. He slowly lifted his head back up. "The last time we were talking like this, I was about to tell you something important, remember?"
"Yeah," Danny said, "and then Skyler came and screwed everything up. What were you about to say?"
The masked man stood up, but continued looking Danny in the eye. Slowly, he said something breath taking. "Danny, I think it's about time you learned who I really am."
Danny gasped and choked on his own breath. He watched in complete shock and disbelief as the masked person lifted his hands up and put them on each side of his gold-colored helmet. Slowly, the person began lifting the helmet off his head, slowly revealing more and more of his face. Danny watched in complete shock.
Finally, the helmet was completely off and Danny was staring at the person who was behind the mask the whole time.
"…you?" Danny asked, not sure what to believe. He was staring at someone with a plain face and dark hair hanging over his face from being crushed by the mask. "…the police sergeant?"
Danny was actually a little disappointed. Yes, the man behind the mask who had saved him time and time again was in reality the police sergeant who showed up the night Skyler and Danny fought for the first time and arrested him. (the one from Chapter 12, in case you forgot)
"I had to protect my identity for your protection, Daniel Fenton," the sergeant said.
"What the?..." Danny asked. "This doesn't make any sense! How can…but you can't be…"
"Danny, believe it," the sergeant said, his grey-blue eyes fixing themselves on Danny. "The thing you have to worry about the most now is saving your friends and stopping Skyler and Bhyrun."
"How am I supposed to save them?" Danny asked, still trying to take in everything that just happened.
"To change your friends and everyone else out of their Bhyspawn forms," the sergeant said in an almost depressed voice, "we're going to have to destroy this curse once and for all. We must destroy Skyler and Bhyrun, and to do that, we need to get inside that cloud."
"Go inside the cloud!" Danny said in complete surprise. "No thanks. I've already been in that cloud once already, and I don't want to go inside it again!"
"You want to save your friends and all those other people, don't you?" the sergeant asked.
"Well, yeah, but…"
"Then that's the only way to do it," the figure said bluntly.
"Do you actually have a plan to get inside that cloud?" Danny asked.
"Yes, I do."