Before I start, here's a bit of an update. I don't know if any of you looked at my profile, but if you have, then you'd know it was completely blank. Well, for the first time in ever, I put stuff in there. So, if you want to take a look at it, please do.
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It was a good feeling for Danny. The room was dark and cold, there was heavy breathing to be heard, and there were three defeated bodies on the floor. But to Danny, it was actually a quite pleasant feeling. The three bodies were enemies that he had just defeated: Count Xissil Van Horrick, Mr. Compton, and the traitor, Aria. (but that's not to say Compton wasn't a traitor, either)
As Danny stared and regained himself after giving the three a quick beating, he just snickered. "Hmm, that was enjoyable."
He went over to the massive door and began to open it so he could get out of the Ghost Zone and Horrick's mansion, ready to forget about the entire thing. But just as he touched the doorknob, he got smacked in the back of neck with someone's elbow.
"Gah!" he screamed in pain as he plummeted on the ground. He looked over his shoulder and saw Horrick staring down at him, looking nastier than Danny ever remembered him looking.
"Foolish ghost child," Horrick said, now sounding completely serious and deathly instead of snobby. "Did you think for once that there could possibly be a reason I was out looking for you?"
"I don't know, I didn't think you were smart enough to think things out to step two," Danny replied, still lying on the ground, unable to get up.
Horrick chuckled. Danny saw that behind him Compton and Aria also got up. They stared at him with a savage gaze that struck fear into Danny's heart.
"You really are quite an amusing little boy," Horrick taunted. He looked around and pointed his attention at Aria. "Aria, help me carry this boy into the dungeon."
"Right away," Aria said. She walked over to Danny and grabbed him by the ankles, and then lifted him up. Horrick took a hold of Danny's wrists, and the two lifted him off the ground. Danny struggled to break free, but it was no use.
Danny was completely helpless as Aria and Horrick carried him away. After trying and failing to break free, there was nothing he could do now that would help him escape. He only listened to the footsteps loudly clanking off the blank walls in Horrick's mansion as he was taken down the seemingly endless hallways and corridors. The entire room was silent, aside from the sound of the echoing steps.
It wasn't until Danny had been captured and taken off for a few seconds that he realized Compton was also following them to wherever he was being taken. It wasn't long before Danny found out.
"Compton!" Aria yelled. "Open the door for us."
Danny looked ahead and saw he had been carried to a giant door. What was behind the door, he didn't know.
Compton jumped to the front and opened up the large door. It made a large creaking sound, and Danny lifted his head up to see what was inside the room. All he saw was a giant metal table with some painful-looking instruments around it.
"Lay him down on the table!" Horrick yelled.
In just a few seconds, Danny had been slammed down onto the solid metal table in the center of the room. It hurt his back as he was slammed onto it, but that was the least of his worries, he thought. When he was slammed on the table, Aria and Compton put straps on his hands and feet so he couldn't get out. Before he realized what had happened, he was strapped down onto the metal table with no hope of getting out.
For a while, the entire room was silent. Danny just looked at Compton, Horrick and Aria's faces as he gave grunts for breath. There was nothing he hated more than being beaten after he thought he had won.
Horrick was the first one to break the silence. "Compton, leave us."
Compton obeyed. He opened up the large door that led into the room and walked out, closing it tightly behind him. Aria and Horrick stared at him as he shut the door. When the door was completely closed and the loud sound it made finished ringing through their ears, they turned their attention back to Danny.
Horrick stared at Danny and started pacing around the room, giving Danny a cold look as he circulated the area. Danny could only follow Horrick with his eyes. After Horrick had made one complete circle around the room, he stopped in front of Danny.
"So, Ghost Child, do you know why I wanted others to capture you?" he asked.
"Because you wanted revenge for me beating you the first time we met?" Danny asked.
"No. Then, I was just another one of your casual nuisances. I wanted nothing more to do with you once you beat me a couple days ago."
"Then why are you still bugging me?"
"Do I have to explain everything!" Horrick yelled loudly, beginning to circle around the room once again. "Why don't you use your own head for once! Don't you remember what happened the night you fought me for the second time?"
"Uh, my parents found out I…" Danny started, but abruptly cut himself off in speech. He didn't want Horrick to know that his parents knew he was half-ghost, or he risked putting them in danger if Horrick were to escape. He stopped and said, "No, not really."
"Didn't you get zapped by anything?" Horrick asked, trying his best to get Danny to recall the events that occurred that night. "Like an electric ray or something similar?"
Danny gasped. He suddenly got a flashback to the night when his dad tried deactivating the Fenton portal. If Danny remembered, his dad made a mistake that caused some sort of electric current to flow into him. The last thing Danny remembered about that event was that he was knocked unconscious.
"How do you know about that?" Danny asked, now getting very disturbed with Horrick knowing about that incident.
"The same thing happened to me," Horrick replied coolly, still not taking his fixed eyes off Danny. "And now, I'm going to sever the link between us."
"Sever the link?" Danny asked. He had now gotten to ignore the cold feeling of the metal table he was laying on top of after getting involved in this discussion. "What the heck do you mean by that?"
Horrick got angrier and angrier, thinking Danny should know what he was talking about. "Weren't you feeling random pains over the course of this week?"
Danny froze up even more. He felt as if he had tabs being kept on him from ghosts everywhere. "Yes. I did."
"And surely you know why?"
"Uh…not really," Danny said, trying to be as casual as possible.
Horrick looked like he was ready to slam his head into the wall from frustration, but Aria was able to keep him under control somehow. "That current of electricity that went into you and electrocuted you…also electrocuted me."
"How?" Danny asked.
"Don't ask me how!" Horrick yelled. "Luck of the draw, I guess. That electric ray bounced off you and phased through your family's portal and into the Ghost Zone, did it not?"
"If I remember correctly, it did," Danny said, trying his best to follow what Horrick was getting at. Horrick's cape flew gently in the breeze it created as he casually strolled through the room.
"Well, when that ray bounced off you after going into your body, it went through the ghost portal and connected to another ghost. That ghost was me."
"Don't complain. You deserved it," Danny scuffed. "I'm glad that of all ghosts in the ghost zone that it was you who got zapped by the ray that connected to my body, because you have been a pain in the you-know-what this week."
"You shouldn't be," Horrick said. "You see, if it didn't connect to me, then I would have left you alone. But now that I know it connected to you, I had to keep hunting you down."
"You realize you're making about as much sense as a monologue in a Shakespeare play, right?" Danny said.
"Bottom line, Ghost Child," Horrick said, finally picking up the pace, "is that when the electric ray connected you and me, whatever one felt, the other felt. Get it?"
"Wait a minute!" Danny yelled. "Are you saying that all those weird pains I've been getting in my back and stuff have been because of you?"
"Yes," Horrick said, stopping in mid stride. "Whatever you felt, I felt; whatever I felt, you felt. That's why I'm bringing you here, to sever the link between us so we don't have to be feeling each other's pains."
"Really? Wow, thanks for taking the trouble to do it," Danny said excitedly, knowing he wouldn't be feeling those pains too much longer.
"Wait a minute, before you thank me, I should probably let you know I'm going to rip out your ghost half and then kill you after it's done," Horrick said, passing Danny an evil stare.
"Hey! If you're gonna kill me, why aren't you doing it now?" Danny challenged.
"We're still connected. If you died, then I would die, too."
Danny groaned, but he tried to recall everything Horrick had just said. When he was trying to convince Jack not to give up his ghost hunting-ways, Jack messed up when closing the Fenton Portal and sent an electric current from the portal into Danny's body and to some location in the Ghost Zone at the same time. By sheer coincidence, the electric current hit Horrick, the very ghost that had bugged Danny the same night Danny's parents figured out he was a ghost. Because of the current zapping both of them, the two were now inexplicably linked. Whatever Danny felt, Horrick also felt, and vice versa. Horrick was trying to track down Danny so he could break the link between them, and then kill him. Once Danny's ghost half was extracted from his body, Horrick would use it to enhance his own strength, and then kill Danny. The entire thing seemed needlessly drawn out and complicated.
Danny suddenly got the urge to make Horrick absolutely furious. He looked at Horrick and yelled, "Hey, are we really connected? Prove it!"
Horrick snarled, but then reached into his long, dark cloak and pulled out a sharp knife. He looked at Danny with a malicious stare.
"Tell me how this feels," Horrick said, forming a half-smile. In one swift motion, Horrick made a deep slice in his own arm with the knife. The cut was so fine and deep that you could clearly see his ghostly blood flowing through his veins.
Danny screamed in pain, almost like the exact same thing happened to him. He too felt like his arm had just been sliced open with a razor-sharp knife. Horrick tried regaining himself from the terrible pain of the knife, but soon got his grip back. (much to Aria's relief)
There was no mistaking it; Danny and Horrick were definitely feeling what the other felt.
"Wait a minute!" Danny yelled. "How does Aria play into all this?"
"One of the first times I saw you, if you remember, you were battling a ghost," Aria said to Danny. "And I was hiding around and fired a blast that hit your wrist. I insisted it was an accident, but really, I was asking Horrick if he felt the blast in his wrist as well."
"And indeed I did," Horrick said.
Danny grit his teeth, not wanting to hear the rest of Aria's story. Unfortunately for him, he knew he'd have to hear it.
"It was then we were both sure that you and Horrick felt the same things," Aria said in her calm, cool way. Her voice sounded seducing and evil.
"But wait!" Danny yelled. "Another time when I was fighting a ghost, you jumped out and took the hit for me!"
"Of course," Aria said, smiling. "I wouldn't want Horrick to feel any pain, so I did the thing anyone in my shoes would do: I jumped in front of you so you wouldn't feel any pain so Horrick wouldn't feel any pain. It's quite simple, really."
Danny was now annoyed that Aria had been deceiving him all along and had reasons for taking hits for him. "Suck-up," he muttered to her.
"Don't call my sweetie a suck-up!" Horrick yelled.
"Your sweetie?" Danny asked, looking at Aria and Horrick. This was pretty weird, considering Horrick was older and Aria was still very young-looking. "Oh, I get it, you guys are going out with one another. Horrick, I'd better warn ya: she doesn't really love you. She's just going out with you so you write her into your will and give her this mansion when you die."
"Going out?" Horrick asked. "No, Horrick is my daughter."
Danny's heart started pounding faster and faster. Aria was Horrick's daughter? There was something he didn't see coming. Now he was even more enraged with how much Aria had been deceiving him. This entire time she was merely seeing if Danny and Horrick really felt the same thing, and any time she was fighting for Danny, it was really so Horrick wouldn't end up getting hurt.
Now Danny had everything pieced together. The first time Danny and Aria met, she purposely blasted Danny in the wrist (even though she said it was an accident) to see if Horrick felt it, and he did. From then on, she made sure Danny didn't get hurt so Horrick wouldn't end up getting hurt. And she, too, was leading Danny into a trap to get captured in Horrick's mansion.
"In other words," Horrick said, walking over to a switch in the corner of the room. (Danny assumed the switch was connected to the machine he was hooked up to on the metal table) "After I sever the link between you and me, we will no longer feel the same pain. After that is done, I am going to rip your ghost half out of you and put it into me, therefore enhancing my strength. Finally, I'm going to kill you when we're no longer connected and I have all your powers."
Danny gasped. This was definitely not how he wanted his life to end. His heart rate and his breathing increased in pace rapidly as Horrick put his hand on the switch and was prepared to flip it.
"Well then," Horrick said emotionlessly, "shall we begin?"
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Sorry if that chapter was too complex, a lot of information was passed around in it. If you don't understand something, please ask me in a review and I'll try to clear it up at the beginning of the next chapter. Right now, you should know:
Why Danny was feeling those random pains
Why Aria was deceiving Danny and how (not to mention being Horrick's daughter)
That Horrick is hooking up Danny to the machine in order to break the connection between the two so they will no longer feel the same pain
What Horrick plans to do with Danny after the link between them is severed, and why he wants to do it.
How Danny and Horrick were connected and felt the same pain
