In my last review, I got a question from GoingGhost about how Danny's powers could be just "lying around". Let me try to clear it up. Do you remember when Danny fought Compton a few chapters back? The fight ended with Compton falling off a building, and when Danny checked to make sure he was okay, Compton pressed a button on his battle suit that launched a claw out of his armor to reach INSIDE Danny and pull out his powers in physical form. Horrick just put Danny's powers in their physical form deep in the woods so Danny would have a hard time getting them.
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Now having a sense of confidence, Danny was strolling through the woods as if he had just won the world. It was very unfortunate for him to not realize that as he was walking in, Horrick had regained power by standing in loose fire and igniting all the trees around him.
After walking quickly through the woods for a second as the trees burned behind him, Danny began getting perplexed and frustrated by the complex maze of plants and wood around him that made it difficult to locate his powers.
"Man, why does Horrick have to make my life so hard?" Danny whined as he looked through. After quickly walking through the woods for several minutes, he was getting tired and was breathing a little heavier.
Danny continued walking until he stopped. He went over to a tree and sat down under it. He took a deep breath and a moment to catch his breath.
"So, where would Horrick put my powers?" Danny started thinking out loud. Normally, he'd feel stupid talking to himself, but he felt pretty optimistic about the way his fight with Horrick just went, so he didn't think he had much to worry about.
"Maybe he put them in some thick bushes that would be impossible to get to," he thought. "Or maybe he buried them in the ground. Or…maybe they're in a tree?" Danny just stared off for a second before he started thinking to himself again "Gah! At this rate, I'll never find my powers!"
Danny just sighed and looked at the ground. Then, his nose perked up about something it sensed. He looked up with a curious expression and looked around. He continued to sniff around him, thinking he was smelling something. He then made a quick, grossed out sound and pinched his nostrils closed.
"Ugh! That's gross!" Danny yelled. "That smells just like the boys' bathroom in school when those loser kids smoke!"
Danny just sat there until he realized what he just said. But when he came to his senses, he jumped up like a cat when someone steps on its tail. "Wait…smoke!"
Danny jumped up from the tree he was sitting under. His heart began racing as he ran back in the way he came, since that was where the smell was coming from.
It was noticeably getting hotter as Danny walked back. He shuffled his way through trees and bushes until he saw something to his complete horror. The trees he ran by just a minute or so before were now engulfed in flames. The fire jumped from tree to tree very quickly. If Danny just stood there, the fire would gobble him up in a matter of seconds.
Now fearing for his life and realizing that he was now in the middle of a forest that was going up in flames, Danny turned backwards and started running as fast and as hard as he could.
The fire stayed in close pursuit of him as he ran from it. Small clumps of fire were bursting up from the ground just a few feet away from him as he ran, like geysers when they burst. (Except this time, they spat out fire)
Danny continued running as the fire from behind spread to other trees and got closer and closer to him. If Danny stopped or slowed down for more than twenty seconds, the fire would catch up and roast him alive.
The fire made loud, threatening cackling noises as Danny felt it come closer and closer to him as he ran from it. The only sound he heard other than those horrible noises was his heavy breathing as his lungs began to get tired out.
Things were never looking worse for Danny than they were now. His lungs were getting weak from both the smoke inhalation and from running for so hard for such a long period of time. He had no idea how long he was running, nor did he know when it would end.
"Why am I running?" Danny had to ask himself. "The fire is eventually going to catch up with me, and I'll be as good as dead then! Why don't I just end it now and not make myself suffer anymore?"
Danny seriously considered this option for a long time before something lit up in his head. "No! I can't give up!"
Now feeling like all of his energy and stamina came strictly from his will to live. This entire situation reminded Danny of the end of Return of the Jedi, where the Millennium Falcon was racing away from the explosion and trying to make its way out of the death star. The difference, of course, being that he was running from fire on foot, and he was in a forest.
Having to think fast several times, Danny had to either push his way through thick bushes or thorns, creating painful yet bearable scratches on his arms and legs. He also had to make very quick jumps across stumps sticking up from the grounds. Danny had remembered seeing this forest countless times when he went to Horrick's mansion, but never in his wildest nightmares did he imagine himself being chased through it by a giant fire.
Danny was clearly weakening; his strides were much shorter, his breath was becoming heavier and more labored, his mouth was dangling open and his black hair was becoming very messy. He was sweating up a storm as body perspiration appeared on his red face, whether it was turning red from exhaustion or from the intense heat of the fire.
The fire just seemed to become more and more raging as Danny fought his way away from it and tried his best to keep himself alive as long as possible.
After running for what seemed like an extremely long time, Danny finally found somewhere that didn't look like the fire was going to reach any time soon. It was in a thick patch of trees that seemed far away from the chasing flames. Danny ran there as fast as he could and hid under them. Just as he predicted, the fire seemed to steer away from him under there.
Danny took a moment to catch his breath and to try to regain his strength, but it was hard not to breathe in without getting a mouthful of smoke. He felt as if he was about to collapse, either from smoke poisoning or exhaustion. He sat down under the patches of trees and curled up into a tight ball.
It was then that Danny tried taking in everything that had happened over the past couple days that had led up to this horrid run for his life. He blamed Horrick. It was entirely Horrick's fault.
If Horrick hadn't shown up to battle Danny on that night, then Danny never would have transformed and his parents wouldn't have caught him. If his parents didn't catch him, then Jack wouldn't have tried to deactivate the Fenton Portal.
If Jack hadn't tried to deactivate the Fenton Portal, then that spark connecting Danny and Horrick never would have happened. If that didn't happen, Aria wouldn't have come up, and if Aria didn't come up, then Compton wouldn't have seen Danny go ghost when he was staring out his window.
If Compton hadn't seen Danny transform, then Horrick wouldn't have convinced Compton to join forces with him. Danny would never have gone over Compton's house, so he therefore wouldn't have gotten captured and taken to Horrick's mansion.
If Danny hadn't been taken to Horrick's mansion, then he wouldn't have fought Aria and she wouldn't have died. If she didn't die, Horrick wouldn't be after him. If Horrick wasn't after him, Danny wouldn't have had to run away. If he didn't run away, then he wouldn't have gotten captured by Horrick and Compton.
If those two didn't bring him back to Horrick's mansion, then Danny and Horrick wouldn't have fought and Horrick wouldn't have turned into the fire monster that he had become. At the same time, Compton wouldn't have ended up telling everyone at Danny's school Danny's secret for not surrendering his powers. If that didn't happen, then Danny and Compton wouldn't have fought, and Compton wouldn't have died, nor would he end up stealing Danny's powers for Horrick.
If Horrick hadn't gotten Danny's powers, then obviously he would not have had to fight Horrick, therefore he wouldn't be trapped in this forest that was going up in flames around him.
All these "wouldn't haves" seemed to create a spiral that not even Danny himself could believe. The thought of that entire sequence of events seemed unreal to him. If just one little thing had been changed in that entire sequence, then he wouldn't be fearing for his life. He just couldn't believe that all of those events had come down to this chase.
"Oh man," Danny said as he realized something awful after those thoughts just whooshed through his head. The fire was now coming closer towards him, and soon it would trap him again.
Now back on his feet, Danny was once again fleeing for the privilege to continue living. But after sitting down, his body had gotten considerably slower and he couldn't feel like he could run much longer.
Danny continued his struggle to escape the fire, but his legs now felt heavier than concrete, not to mention they felt pretty wobbly. He was going so slow that he considered that he seriously might have been able to go faster if he walked.
Then, the unimaginable happened. When running, Danny lost his footing and slipped. He plummeted to the ground, but still had enough energy to reflexively put his hands down to cushion the impact. He was now sprawled flat on the ground, though, and when he looked up, he saw there was a giant wall of fire in front of him, preventing him from moving forward any further.
Danny gasped at that sight, and then pushed himself up. He tried running backwards, looking for a way out, but there was more fire there, too. Fire was blocking him in at every single direction. He was stuck in a giant box of fire, and it was slowly closing in on him. He would be dead in a matter of seconds when the giant flames came into contact with him.
A small whine came from Danny's mouth. This was more of a whine of fear, the same kind a little puppy makes when it gets scared of a toy that moves on its own. It was all over for him now.
Danny slowly crouched down on the ground and waited for the four walls of fire to completely encase him, and ultimately kill him. Although his face looked it, he wasn't about to break down or to completely die like he was being executed; he was trying to take this inevitability the best he could.
Then, when Danny was slouching onto the ground, he felt something press up against his leg. It felt like there was something in his pants that pushed itself against him as he curled up. There was obviously something in his pocket.
"Hello?" Danny asked, reaching in and pulling out a small gray box that had a small latch on the top of it. "What's this?"
At first, Danny had no idea what it was that he was holding, but then the memory came to him. "Oh yeah! This is dad's 'final' invention!" Danny yelled. "But, what does it do?"
Danny thought long and hard about what it was his dad's invention did, but his thoughts were quickly distracted by the closing-in fire. Then, Jack's words explaining the tool popped into his head.
"When opened, it releases a super-thick cloud of vapor that contains toxic chemicals. This time, I made sure those chemicals were only toxic to pure ghosts, so they wouldn't hurt you if you breathed them in." Danny remembered his dad saying that when he first got the invention.
Immediately following that, more words popped into Danny's head. He remembered what Lancer said in chemistry class the very next day when they were doing that experiment about trying to count how many calories were in a single peanut. Lancer was drilling them on safety features in the class about how there would be an open flame in the classroom during the experiment and where the fire extinguisher was. He then remembered Lancer stressed the reasons why a fire extinguisher put out fire.
"Yes, the gases and steam suffocates the fire so the fire can't get any oxygen, and without any oxygen, the fire will die." Danny recalled hearing Lancer say in that class. Then, two ideas just clicked in his mind.
"Wait a minute!" Danny yelled. "I'm surrounded by fire…with a little box that lets out a ton of steam…and that can put out the fire!"
It was Danny's last hope. He opened up the small latch on the gray box, and enough steam to fill a water tower came pouring out of it. True to his dad's words, Danny didn't lose any breath from it, since the steam was supposed to only be poisonous to pure ghosts.
However, the steam did create a huge amount of fog, and it clouded Danny's vision. He couldn't tell whether or not the steam was actually putting the fire out.
It was several seconds before the steam started clearing, but Danny could tell things were getting better. It was a pretty obvious sign, now that the intense heat seemed to be dying down around him.
Danny still couldn't see very well, but he saw that a lot of the black smoke was now turning brighter. He looked around after the steam finally cleared, and around him stood a giant charred box where the fire had been. He was disturbed by how close the black box was around him, considering the fact that was how close the fire had been.
Danny couldn't believe it. His dad's last invention actually proved useful in a time of need, and at a much unexpected time, at that. That invention ended up saving Danny's life.
The greatest surprise for Danny, though, was what he saw after the smoke and remaining steam had cleared and allowed him to see straight again.
