Chapter 4: Awkward circumstance
The dragon looked blank for a moment, as if surprised. It looked at Danny in a confused fashion, then its gaze traveled down its snout down to where the arm was sticking out of its mouth. It appeared to blush for a moment, before its eyes lowered in an annoyed, exasperated look, knowing what was going to come.
But none of this would begin penetrate the impermeable membrane of his sheer rage and emotion. "Sam…"
He could feel his blood running cold, his throat going dry. A deathly cold sweat began forming on his brow, as his pupils disappeared in the horrific green glow that now emanated from his eyes, the green fires within portraying the wall of pain and guilt and anger that had permeated to his core. His hair started to whip upwards slightly in a wind, his hands burning with unreleased emotion.
"NOOOOOO!" His voice was cracked, the simple shout running like fire up his throat, the frozen flames of the call burning out his chest and scarring his tongue.
The dragon's expression remained the same. Drama queen.
He felt dead…well, MORE dead…Sam, the girl who had helped him get these powers, the girl who had given him hope for the future and given him faith in himself, who had depended on him, was now gone. There would no longer be any sarcastic comments about how his infatuations with Valerie and Paullina were childish, no more sadistically funny rampages of how pink should die or the environmental activism speeches about caring for the frogs destined to die and be dissected for educational purposes...
He felt empty…yes, as cliché as it sounded, he was an empty shell; that was it. An unshed tear found its way down his cheek, his closed eyes unable to contain it any longer. A slight flicker appeared in his darkness…His human heart was now latent, he could feel that now.
The normal soft white aura that surrounded his entity had metamorphosized into horrific green flames, licking upwards in a strange deathly caress. Rising, the wind around his form increased dramatically. There was nothing holding him back now. There was no fear of hurting another being; there was no fear of causing more damage and destroying another life as he had accidentally done. There was no fear of death in him, no fear of Plasmius, no fear of Skulker, no fear of any ghost in existence. His fists now open to reveal a gigantic ball of a ghost ray beam in his palms, there was only one thing on his mind.
How he had failed to protect her.
With a roar of unmatchable pain, he launched the blast at his scaly foe, the dragon just barely ducking beneath the deathly orb. The attack sailed over its head and smashed into the street behind the dragon, obliterating the asphalt in a titanic explosion that shook the ground.
The dragon hardly had time to recover before Danny Phantom charged in again, his fist burying itself in the dragon's scaly, though surprisingly soft, side. It let out a muffled roar, then spun sideways, a lame attempt at diverting their flight path into the side of the school building. The boy didn't even bother going intangible, he just smashed right through it in an explosion of dust and chunks of wall.
The dragon groaned slightly as it rose out of some of the rubble, and turned to the side. With an inhalation through its nose that sounded like a person about to spit, a giant water ball fell out of its mouth, dropping to the ground with a bounce.
It bounced a few more times until it came to a stop on the grass. As the water tension broke with a loud splat, Sam appeared within it. She sat and coughed for a moment, completely soaked.
Danny erupted out of the school once more, his unseeing eyes focused only on his foe.
"Danny?" she whispered, still sputtering.
In response, another ghost ray shot out of his hand, smashing into the dragon's head and causing it to teeter backwards.
"Sam?" He stopped suddenly, eyes scanning the ground for her. Indescribable relief flooded his chest, and a single tear rolled down his cheek.
The dragon's eyes sparkled.
The ghost's expression darkened. Utter loathing, his own sheer emotion, the power of a ghost, along with the confused entrails of love boiled through his undead veins. "You betrayed us!" Danny boomed, streaking through the air once more. "DRAKE!"
The wingless serpentine dragon righted itself on the ground, the annoyed look still firmly plastered on his face, even more so portrayed by his golden eyes flicked with irritation. "So, you figured it out, eh?"
He stopped short in front of the dragon's face. "Drake the dragon, REAL original," the ghost child sadistically smirked, getting into a crouching position.
"Had the name before the powers…" he muttered.
"Why did you do this? Why the hell did you try to kill Sam?"
The dragon paused, a sweatdrop forming on the back of his head. "That's a fine way to say 'thank you'."
Still in his fits of rage, he charged once again. Drake rolled his eyes, and in a huge poof of mist, the dragon disappeared. There was a crack as Danny flew into the cloud of water vapor, and as the mist cleared, his fist was clearly forced into the street. The green blood leaking from his knuckles didn't even seem to faze him at all. There was a light click of something hard coming into contact with the asphalt, and his eyes snapped open, still shining with rage.
Next to him, Drake stood.
Two four-toed dragon-like feet had replaced the human feet that had adorned his legs in their previous encounter, the dull talons clicking impatiently on the asphalt. Light black stripes covered the grey scales on his legs where they were visible beneath his black shorts, a black sleeveless shirt framing his upper body and equally striped arms. His hair had been let down from his pony tail, small patches of grey scales stamped on his cheeks below his eyes. A tail, exactly like the one in his dragon form, twitched slightly from side to side. Soft, iguana-like spines trailed down the top of the rather vertically flat tail, ending in a tuft at the end of it. The light grey and striped black combination adorned this appendage also.
All in all, he looked sorta like a mutated, hairless weretiger…
His head was cocked to the side, arms folded, golden hazel eyes dull with irritation. "Are you done yet? Because we have other problems."
"RAaaaahhhhh!" He threw his head back in an explosion of radiant energy, the shrill oscillation of horror and rage making the blood run cold of anyone who heard it.
Eyes rolled again at Danny's mindless charge. "Guess not…"
But Danny appeared right in front of Drake before he could react, his fist connecting with the dragon's chest, propelling him into the wall with a grunt of pain and a poof of dust.
The ghost child didn't wait for his counterpart to recover, diving into the dusty cloud. Drake flew out of the mass of dust shortly afterwards, limbs swinging randomly like a rag doll. He skipped roughly across the concrete a few times, before righting himself and assuming a cat-like 3-pointed stance.
"Man, are you having your period or something? 'Cause you're really—URK!"
WHAM!
Drake righted himself out of a dumpster, spitting out a mouthful of blood to one side as a banana peel fell off his now-disheveled hair. "This is REALLY getting old…"
Danny charged once again, fist readied to strike, Drake finally dashing forward as well.
There was a whirl of movement, and before he knew it, the ghost boy was on the ground, face up, sprawled and no clue how he had gotten there.
"Look, I realize that you're a LITTLE bit upset about your girlfriend over there being in my mouth, (which I wasn't too happy about, either…she needs to clean her shoes…) but we have a few other BIGGER problems…"
"Wha…what?" Danny sat up. Wait…what was going on? With his confusion, his anger wavered. Pupils returned to normal as his hand rested against his skull, the sheer rage and pain in his eyes fading with the horrific green glow.
Drake rolled his eyes once more, and got into another fighting stance. However, this time he was not facing Danny.
"Um…as much as I LOVE playing the role of damsel in distress… CAN I GET SOME HELP OVER HERE?"
Danny turned towards the sound of the voice that at the moment was like one he had never heard before, yet stirred some kind of primal instinct in him. His gaze shifted, and he stopped cold.
A second later, he felt his eye twitch. His breath caught in his throat, his tongue froze and refused to utter a word. His entire body iced over in confusion, his only moving limb was his eye, which continued to twitch readily. A moment later, he felt his eyes begin to burn, both from his lack of blinking as well as the frank stupidity and "unconventionality" of the whole thing…
Before him stood two men dressed as playgirl bunnies.
Complete with the fishnet stockings, high heels, strangely realistic ears coming out of their heads, identical tassels of medium-length blond hair falling over their heads like mops. They had sadistic smiles framing their faces, and there was a lusty glint in their eyes that made Danny's stomach tie itself in a knot.
One was holding a still thoroughly Sam firmly with both hands, the other smiling gaily at the odd pair a few tens of yards away.
"Ooo, we have another fine one!" the first one said so gleefully it gave Danny the urge to hurl. "I love the white hair! It's just so sexy!"
Danny blinked once more, before he felt his insides implode on itself. "Friends of yours?" he squeaked.
Drake sighed. "Sadly, yes. They just won't freakin' DIE…"
"I have to say," said the second bunny, "this girl is awfully cute too…it's too bad we couldn't keep her for ourselves…"
The other sighed, looking longingly at the half dragon and ghost, before turning back to his companion. "Well, we are on a schedule after all. Better hop to it!"
Danny's face went blank. "Did they just make the pun I thought they did?"
"That's an unusually good one this time around, too…" Drake muttered, shaking his head sadly.
The ghost kid rubbed his head once more. "I still don't understand what the heck is going on…"
"It'll end soon enough, one way or another."
Danny stood up abruptly. "Oh, I know how this is going to end!" Rising into the air, he shot like a bullet towards the two gender-confused kidnappers. "With both of you going down!"
He charged as Drake's palm connected with his forehead. "This is getting repetitive…" he muttered.
Phantom charged, eyes blazing once again with a fiery glow. The two men looked at him in astonishment, before the second one, the one not holding Sam, grinned.
He rushed blindly at his foe, hands clenching into fists ready to pummel these freaks who had kidnapped Sam. Fist coiled back, he swung.
Only to get a high-heeled shoe kick in the neck. Luckily, the point and toe had been on opposite sides of his neck, so that he didn't get a puncture from it, but it still sent him reeling backwards so fast that he skidded along the ground for quite some time before coming to rest in the street where he and Drake had originally been fighting.
Drake leaned down, apparently unmoved from before the ghost child had hurled himself into battle. "Do you always charge in head first like that?"
"Is it any of your business?" Danny challenged, grunting as he righted himself.
"It seems….effective…." Drake observed sarcastically.
"Well, if you actually ARE on my side, why don't you HELP me then, eh?"
"No need at the moment."
"What?"
His reply was the slightest inclination of his right eyebrow and a smirk, before the dragon looked upwards. Danny followed his gaze with his own before he was rewarded with the sight of a flying black-robed figure, floating about 100 yards above the school.
A long-haired blond one.
"Oh, for crying out—" Danny started. "You two BOTH have superpowers?"
His only response was an "I know something you don't know" smile that bloomed on Drake's face.
The second bunny sprang at Drake, feet tucked against his body and ready to spring a punishing blow. The dragon easily dodged sideways, the bunny's kick slicing the asphalt beneath them, leaving two giant punctures identical to the ones Danny had found earlier.
So that's what caused all the damage from before…Danny thought to himself. He glanced upwards once more, seeing the floating figure holding her hands above her head, a look of concentration carving out her features.
The attacking bunny kept on swinging his legs at Drake; however few of the blows landed. He was bending in ridiculous fashions, his incredible flexibility allowing him to flip and roll all around his frustrated opponent. Finally, he looked upwards towards. He smiled suddenly, and launched at his enemy.
The heel of his palm connected with his opponent's sternum, pushing a startled gasp out his mouth. Then, with a simple motion, Drake tensed his body, and blew his foe away with a titanic blast of water.
Much to Danny's horror, the blast was heading right towards Sam.
Before he could move however, the torrent of water smashed into the spot where the other bunny had been keeping a firm hold on her. He let out a startled yelp, quickly going under the flood of liquid engulfing him.
"You idiot!" Danny roared. "Why the hell did you do that! You just killed Sam!"
"Danny!"
"Why did you fire a blast at them when they had a hostage!"
"Danny!"
"Quiet Sam, I'm trying to give them a piece of my mind!" Danny hushed. "You just—"
He turned, seeing Sam perfectly ok, albeit wet, but unharmed nonetheless.
"How…?" his face went blank. "Karimia?"
As a response, she merely smirked.
Drake padded over to where their previous foes lay unconscious in puddles of mud and water, dusting his arms off as he shook his head sadly. "I'm really starting to hate bunny demons…" he muttered under his breath.
"Demons?" Sam blurted.
Karimia nodded. "Why else do you think they could do that," she pointed at the indents in the street and ground, "with titanium high-heeled shoes?"
"I'm gonna need YEARS of therapy for this…" Danny said sourly as he felt his eye twitch again, ineffectively trying to stop it by smacking his hand to the unruly area of his face. "So how often have you had to fight these guys?"
"Alone like this? Not very often. But these guys are just more creepy than anything else," Karimia said half seriously.
Sam shivered, looking uncharacteristically. "Can I go change? I'm freezing here…"
Danny started for her, planning to use his intangibility to phase her out of it, but instead Drake made a simple motion with his hands and all of the water lifted off of her, as if by magic. It shifted into a floating sphere of water, before it floated over to his hands and seemingly absorbed into them.
"That's a neat trick," Danny said half to himself, eyes widened slightly in wonder. "Can you do that Karimia?"
"It's actually Senka," she monotoned. "And no, I can't."
Sam, realizing she wasn't just staring at the water, had a quick blush before she turned to Karimia. "No kidding. What exactly ARE you guys, anyways?"
Senka's eyes drifted over to Drake, who looked thoughtful for a moment before he shrugged. "I think it would be better if we talked about this in another place," Senka said. "I don't really know where the police are right now, but it's only going to be a matter of time before they show up."
"They always arrive conveniently AFTER the battle is over…"
Senka elbowed Drake for the comment, rewarded with a slight yelp of pain, but started towards the back of the school. Strangely enough, a set of bat-like wings and a thin tail ending in a spade adorned her. Danny was surprised that he hadn't noticed them before…perhaps it was because of their previous angle.
"Follow us," Senka instructed. "Oh, and Danny?"
"Yeah?"
"You might want to go invisible for this…"
"What about you two?"
"We've got it covered."
Drake squatted slightly, allowing for Senka to grab him around the waist from behind, and with an enormous beat of her wings, she took off.
"So HOW is that not suspicious?" Sam asked. To this Danny just shrugged his shoulders. He picked Sam up from around the waist, went invisible, then followed after them.
About fifteen seconds into the flight, there was a flash of black around the strange duo flying ahead of them. After it faded, it looked like a raven was coasting on the breeze, free of any earthly worries; soaring its life away.
Danny followed the "raven" for some time, farther and farther away from the school and his familiar neighborhood. To this he paid little mind. Trying to sift through the jumble of thoughts and such in his head was no easy task, and he wanted to know exactly WHY these strange new faces had appeared at that time.
Flying often helped, and this easy coasting through the air cleansed his thoughts.
One thing was obvious: they weren't fully human. He hadn't seen Karimia's….Senka's, powers as of yet, but he didn't get a feeling that he could take both her and Drake on at the same time if worst came to worst. She could obviously fly quickly: probably how she got Sam away from those tights-wearing freaks, and for that at least, he was thankful. As for Drake…Drake alone had been able to make such a fool out of him, and make short work of the two bunnies…
Where were they now, anyways? Did the police take them in? They had just left them there….
His thoughts wandered back to his fight with the dragon, a slight burning jealousy started in his chest, but he quelled it. All in all, he had inflicted some damage, as the mental image of Drake spitting out blood confirmed…he had practically wiped the street with dragon hide, yet in that last clash, when he had actually countered…what had happened?
Had he made some stupid mistake that blasted dragon had exploited? Or was he truly that weak…?
How powerful WERE they, anyways? When he had (possibly mistakenly) attacked Drake, it appeared that he had taken him off guard, which was most likely why he had succeeded in landing so many blows right at first…
"Uh, Danny?"
Sam's voice snapped him out of his thoughts, earning a slight jolt of surprise out of him. "Oh, sorry Sam, I was just trying to figure these guys out."
"It's ok," she replied with a slight smile. "But do you mind holding me different?"
Silence. Sam waited, but still nothing. She turned her neck as far as she could, and saw a look on Danny's face that resembled a bug-eyed fish.
He caught his breath that he hadn't realized had escaped him, then swallowed hard. "What?" he asked; flabbergasted.
"Well, I feel like you're going to drop me…and I know you won't," she said to counter the look on his face, "but I'd just feel more comfortable if you held me a little different."
"Ok…well, how do you want me to hold you?" God, that sounded wrong…He was incredibly grateful that Tucker wasn't here…he had given them enough strife with the whole "fake out make out" incidents…this would just take the cake for him…
Sam was blushing hard; Danny could only hope that he was only half as beet red as she was. "Well… 'Bridal style'?"
"Um…sure…" Was that all he could manage? Here was the girl that he had just gone completely mad over because he had thought she was dead, the girl of his dreams (wow, that sounded cliché…he thought to himself) asking to be held bridal style in his arms, and all he could squeak out was "um, sure".
His love life in the future was doomed. He just knew it…
He slowed his traveling slightly, and slid an arm beneath her legs, his other arm going into the middle of her back. "B-better?" he stuttered.
"Yes, thank you." Smiling, blushing, and her eyes shining all at once, they were at the perfect distance and angle to—
"Hey lovebirds!" Danny cursed inwardly.
"We're not lovebirds!" they both said in unison.
The raven illusion sweatdropped, then faded into a hovering Senka and Drake both sweatdropping simultaneously. "You're in one another's arms in flight, with non one else around, blushing like crazy, and you're not lovebirds…Whatever…" Senka said with a wave of her wing that must have been an equivalent to a wave of the hand. "Now, go through that wall there," she continued, pointing with her long black tail towards a rather run-down building that had many cracks running up its walls.
Danny's face went even paler than its usual ghostly white, if possible. This was Valerie Gray's apartment complex…
Drake raised an eyebrow in an inquiring stare, but he turned away as the two of them flew through the wall with a puff of black energy.
"That was interesting…" Sam commented.
"Not everyday you see someone go through a wall…"
Sam looked at him inquiringly with a quirked eyebrow. "At least like that at any rate…"
She shrugged, and the two of them flew in after the equally strange duo ahead of them.
Danny hoped to god that they'd make this worth the trip…and the danger…
After all, Valerie wasn't known to be merciful to ghosts…
Dragons, and otherwise, probably weren't much better off.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Hey all, quickie author's note. Ok, for one thing, I'm really sorry if I've made it seem like my characters, Senka and Miaho, are Mary Sues (meaning perfect in every way). I have a purpose for making them seem really powerful right at first, so don't fret, I'm not adding in gods or anything. This story is about Danny
And I'm also sorry for leaving a cliffhanger like this, but I wanted to divide this one up, I'll update as soon as I can, which shouldn't be too long since it's summer now :P
As always, constructive criticism is always appreciated!
Peace out!
Dak