Disclaimer: I don't own DP.
Thanks to grayghost, Invader Johnny, starwater09, Anon, ZoneRobotnik, nikodark, KraZiiePyrozHavemoreFun, Destiny W, MushuFireLorde, Midnights-AM-Child, kikicat, Lady Audentium, monsta, and JadeliketheGem for reviewing last time!
Shot Summary: A familiar spirit warns Dan that Valerie is dying at the hands of a rising evil.
IMPORTANT NOTE: To the anonymous reviewer who critiqued my use of words like "wild" and "frizzy" to describe Valerie's hair: I, in no way, intended those words to be a racial slur or disparaging remark on the hair of black women. I used those words to describe one particular woman in a military setting who fights most days and wakes up with imperfect hair and doesn't have time to care for it. I will uphold this anonymous feedback while writing in the future, however, in hopes of avoiding further injury on anyone. I apologize for any perceived affront on the dignity of any people.
Deliverance
Shot 50: Tortuga
It'd started with a pain in her hand.
Valerie had just bought a gift for her father in the Amity Park Mall. His birthday celebration was that night, and this year was the first in ten that either of them had the time to consider it. She'd watched her father begin to age in ways she'd never seen—the loss of his eye and arm had turned his hair shock white, his proud spine had stooped. The wrinkles at the edges of his eyes had deepened. When he'd realized he was about to turn one year older, he nervously laughed to hide a depression.
Valerie thought perhaps a small gift would remind him to smile.
But as she walked from the gift shop, the small trinket safe in a bag, a man in a white coat bumped into her. Something sharp caught her hand like a scratch, and Valerie wheeled around, eyes in a flare of anger. "Hey, watch it!"
The man in a white coat did not turn around or acknowledge her. He continued walking as if nothing had happened.
Valerie looked down at her hand, which stung. It seemed something had scratched her, enough to the point of drawing blood. "What the hell," she complained. "I can't even enjoy a night off without getting hurt?" Some part of her felt slighted that the man did not even turn around and recognize her as the Red Huntress. Surely, she deserved at least an apology, considering she'd probably saved this man's life a thousand times.
Her anger bubbled up, and she wheeled around to stomp toward a bathroom to wash her hand.
But as she walked, her heart began to beat in a strange way, speeding up hard. Then it began to skip beats. Dizziness overcame her. She stumbled, her sight pixelating into blurry shapes.
A thought struck her. Poison.
"Nnh," she whined unsteadily, eyes widening as her body gave out. The bag with her father's present began to slip through her fingers.
Before she or the bag could hit the floor, another man in white caught her and turned her away into a dark hall. He held her tightly. "Don't scream," he said. "I've got you, Red. I've got you."
Valerie's eyes rolled to see his face, but it was blurred. She did not recognize his voice. Confusion muddled her thoughts.
Before she fell unconscious, she heard the man say, "Sir, we've captured the target."
Sometime later, Valerie awoke to blinding fluorescent lights. She flinched, squeezing her eyes tight in pain.
But when she tried to move, something metal struck her wrists, keeping them…above her head? A deep fear that something was wrong began to seed into her muddled mind. She turned her head, feeling a smooth band of metal graze against her neck. A similar feeling at her waist. When she tried to move her legs, she felt the same bands of metal restrict her ankles.
Cold air blew on her bare toes.
At that, panic overtook her. She tried to move again to no avail. The surface beneath her was smooth and cold. She'd been wearing shoes—walking in the mall to find a gift for her father—
"No need to struggle, Commander Gray," came a gentle, old tone. "We're here to help you."
She clenched her fist and felt the sting of an IV needle in her vein. "Ngh—" Her tongue was sluggish, her thoughts blank. She tried to activate her battle suit, but nothing happened.
Then she felt a sharp prick in her neck, and suddenly she lost feeling to everything.
The face of an old man came into view, along with a sharp, long needle. "This is a mild paralytic to keep you calm. Not that you'd be able to get off that examination table anyway." As Valerie's gaze sharpened, she noticed the man was clean-shaven, at least as old as her father, and he wore a white coat with a badge on the pocket.
GIW. She couldn't read the smaller print of his name.
He turned away to grab a chair and pulled it up beside her examination table. Then he sat down, recapping the needle. "You are of paramount value to us," he said calmly. "You've managed to successfully defend Amity Park for ten years, which has given us time to rebuild a station like this one in the Wastelands. We're two-hundred feet underground to avoid detection from the menace known as Phantom. Don't worry; you're safe here."
Valerie stared at him, her heart beating madly in her chest. She could not even speak with the paralytic in her system.
The old man continued, "I'm sure you're wondering why you're here and what all of this means. The fact is, Commander Gray, you've been here for three days already. We have a professional interest in your battle suit and have been studying you to replicate it."
She blinked at that, trying to convey her confusion and anger in her eyes. My battle suit? What the hell? Why the fuc—
"We know that it's a very special suit, designed just for you. It has remarkable technology integrated into your blood that allows you—a single human woman—to not only fight Phantom, but win." There was an edge in his voice. Something passionate. Or devious. "Imagine if we had five soldiers like you. One-hundred. We could rebuild this world and extinguish Phantom for good. Surely, that's not a bad cause."
Her fingers twitched. She was fighting the paralytic. She knew she was strong—she could do it.
The scientist noticed the brief movement and then grabbed another needle. "But when we spoke to your father months ago, he said the base technology was un-replicable. Top-secret." He uncapped the needle. "He further said that he didn't want the technology to fall into the wrong hands. When we called you later, you said the same thing."
Valerie's eyes managed to widen as she saw the second needle come into view. Then another sharp prick stung her neck.
This time, her fingers relaxed limply. Her eyes began to close in exhaustion.
"You are a strong woman, and your father is a wise man. But we're trying to be practical. What we're doing is for the future of the human race."
For days, the infamous Dan Phantom floated above the cliffs in the Wastelands, waiting for his rival to show. She was never late, which made such behavior disconcerting. He wondered if this were some new kind of test she had devised.
He sniffed haughtily, raising his chin as the early morning sun dared to peek over the horizon.
Valerie Gray, the Red Huntress, the Ghost Slayer, and the Military Defense Commander of Amity Park had expressed interest in expanding Amity Park's territory. She'd been determined to reclaim portions of the Wastelands—his lands—for the sake of the city's increasing population. Every single day for the last several months, Phantom found his cat naps interrupted by the blast of jet engines and ecto-guns, his pleasant journeys across a decimated countryside ruined by her insults.
Although his powers had grown, Valerie had upgraded her battle suit just as many times with weapons she'd built herself. Such advancement had given her the confidence to not only defend her people but also seek out Phantom for battle.
The years had leveled each other out. And yet now, there was only silence.
"Have you given up on me?" he questioned to the air, voice casual to hide the strain of anger in him. He waited on no one. "Given up on your crusade?"
Nothing responded, of course. It seemed Valerie had truly abandoned him without a trace of herself to be seen, taking with her all of the fighting and bantering and—if Dan would dare to admit it—sexual tension. In his weaker moments, he found himself desiring the last part the most.
"A simple goodbye would have been nice!" Dan called petulantly, the wind whipping his flickering hair and cape. His sharp face shadowed with increasing fury. It'd been over two weeks since he'd seen her last. "A final battle to end it!"
Across the Wastelands, only his voice echoed. It bounced off the cliffs and the fallen houses and a dilapidated warehouse, then fell into oblivion along with Valerie's presence.
The powerful ghost sat down on the rocks of what was once a custom-made chimney and sighed in annoyed disappointment. The Shield was too strong now for him to knock it down, even with his Ghostly Wail. His powers had hit a plateau for the moment, although he felt confident it was only a temporary situation.
In that moment, such a longing overcame him that he would have given up all of his cat naps and Thursday-afternoon ventures of destruction into the Ghost Zone, just to see Valerie again. His only worthy opponent. The only woman who made his power core rev—whether in attraction or hatred, he did not know.
Dan sniffed, kicking a few rocks off the pile in a mindless need for violence.
"Perhaps she has forgotten me," he complained to himself. "Or took a lover in the city, or is afraid to return."
But the first and last thoughts made no sense. Valerie remembered nothing if not her vendettas, and Dan had not seen fear in her eyes for over eight years. Which left the second option that she'd taken a lover, which was entirely possible for a beautiful woman like her.
Perhaps it was that doctor of hers, Kwan.
Perhaps she was with child—certainly a reason to avoid battle.
All of these things made Dan's red eyes narrow to slits, his ectoplasmic blood rushing through his body in a furious rhythm. His fingers sparked with green power before he realized what he was doing.
"No," he seethed, struggling to control his anger and panic. "She would not abandon me." His hair flickered faster into demonic whirls. He sunk his fingers into the rocks upon which he sat, and his steel fingers sunk right through, his power splitting the rocks like water.
Then a form began to flicker in his periphery—a black shadow wavering on the horizon.
Dan's ghost sense did not trigger. The oddity of that pulled him from his wonderings, his sharp eyes honing on the source of the anomaly.
Then it happened again.
A flicker of black shadow, like a cape.
Then a thin form in all-black, wearing a cloak and carrying a scythe, suddenly came into view, floating a few inches above the cliffs.
Dan blinked in surprise, tensing up to attacked. "Get out of here," he snarled to the mysterious ghost. "These are my lands."
But instead of flinching in surprise at accidentally crossing Dan Phantom, the mysterious form stayed put and pulled back his hood. Familiar, blue eyes stared out at Dan from a familiar, boyish face.
Dan froze, eyes widening.
"Before you say anything," the boy warned, "Valerie is in trouble. She's going to die today. And Clockwork says you're the only one who can help her."
After the first few days of being poked and prodded under anesthetic, the experiments of the GIW became progressively more painful.
It began with the old man sitting down beside her examination table. They'd woken her up from her anesthetic with some kind of drug that made her heart race and her lungs gasp for air. Her wild eyes darted around the small, sterile room. Her arms felt sore from needles. She felt dazed, as if they'd taken too much blood. She had to get out of there—she had to get out—
He sighed a bit as he stared at the sweat-soaked woman. "I'm terribly sorry," he said, as if he were telling his grandchild that he had no more cookies. "But it seems your suit doesn't respond at a cellular level when you're unconscious, and we need it to in order to extract it from you. It appears we'll have to continue experimenting without anesthetic. It might hurt."
It was the first time in days Valerie could weakly twitch her toes. Her throat was sore from something being jammed down her throat—tube-feeding? Had she eaten anything at all? She was beginning to feel strange tubes attached to her body beneath a hospital gown, which made her feel terribly violated.
She stared up at the kind-looking man in consternation. "Suit?" she rasped.
"Yes, your suit. Your blood registers foreign materials that are suppressed when you're experiencing sleep paralysis. So we'll try again while you're awake."
Valerie's dazed, glassy eyes blinked. "What?" She tried to fight her bonds, to activate her suit. They'd done something to her mind to confuse the signals between her mind and her body. She felt disjointed. "Again?"
It felt as if her lips were wading through peanut butter to speak even just one word.
The scientist patted her shoulder. "We have to extract your suit fully, study it fully, to make copies. We need you awake so we can activate the suit and allow us to drill it off of you."
Her muddy mind struggled with the fact that she was strapped to an examination table, and that a kind-looking man wanted to cause her pain if it meant getting her best weapon. She was protective over her suit. "N-no," she rasped. "Only—me. No one else—activates."
She'd understood by now why her father had rejected this group's request, and why she'd trusted him enough to follow suit. Perhaps he'd known instinctively that there was no good way to study it. That it was a miracle of science from an intelligent mind ahead of its time.
Perhaps he knew these people did not have moral plans for that technology. Or for her.
The scientist scratched his chin. Then he smiled at her. "But now that we have your brain-mapping complete, we can activate your suit on your behalf. Fire it up, Agent C."
Dan suddenly slammed the boy against a tree, the bark cracking.
"I killed you," he seethed, eyes glowing a hot orange. "I tore your life from your body—how are you here?"
The image of one fourteen-year-old Danny Fenton twisted his face in pain and then shoved Dan back with a completely inhuman force. "Hi to you too," he deadpanned. He peeled himself off the tree and cracked his neck, his black hair shifting with his movements. Aside from his black clothing and cloak, nothing else seemed different about the boy. Especially not the short-tempered mock of his voice. "What's wrong, don't want a blast from your past?"
Dan's face darkened. "No." There was almost a panic about him, to see his old face. "Your heart is beating. What is this?" He began to look around, his hands crackling with defensive energy. "Who is the puppet master behind this illusion? Is it you, Clockwork?"
The boy rolled his eyes. "I'm not an illusion, I'm a—" His eyes suddenly widened, and he barely missed a sudden blast from Dan, twisting his body out of the way in a honed movement too fast for a human.
"—Shut up!" Dan hissed. "I smell the stench of Clockwork upon you. Surely this is yet again a miserable attempt to meddle in my life, and you are some…face through which he hopes to manipulate me." He stared at the boy more closely, taking in the incredible life-like detail of his old body.
The boy floated down to grab his fallen scythe from the ground. "So. You're like, on the right track, but you're deaf because I already told you why I'm here." He stood the scythe back up and raised an eyebrow.
"You are dead, yes?" Dan demanded, curling his lip up to bare his fangs at the boy's insolence.
"Oh, you did a pretty good job of disemboweling me and blowing up the house." The boy smiled without humor, tilting his head. "No one even had a body to bury. Probably why I could never move on. I'd offer you a nice pop-up picture book explaining ghost origins, but you destroyed all of those too." His voice carried a dangerous edge.
The older ghost backed away, haunted. His mind raced, and for a second, he did not know what to do.
So his raised his hands and shot at the boy again—this time, with more power behind it.
The image of Danny Fenton easily twirled the scythe in his hand, slamming the blade against the blast. The light split in two and then shriveled into nothing as it seared harmlessly behind the boy. "Look, dude," he said. "I'm kinda on a schedule here, right? I'd love to rip your power core out, but Valerie needs our help."
Dan stared at his power, surprised that the boy could disrupt it so easily. "You are not simply a ghost, to wield such power and to mimic human life so well," he murmured more to himself. "And you are here, on Clockwork's behalf…for Valerie? Why?"
The boy was not amused. "Seriously? I was kinda hoping you'd figure out what my new gig was, what with the black cloak and scythe and all. Valerie's dying. And if you don't save her, like now, then I'll have to split her soul from her body. Permanently."
Sometimes, when the scientists took too much blood and she lay in a daze, Valerie had thoughts of her father's birthday gift. She could not remember what she'd gotten him—only that it'd had the color green on it. She could remember the flash of glass as she carried it in her bag.
Daddy, she thought. She felt as if she were five again, reaching out for him as he left for work. She was beginning to lose track of time and thoughts. She knew only that she was scared, and that no one could help her.
These GIWs already had control of her body and her battle suit. It would only be a matter of time before they destroyed whatever was left of Valerie Gray.
Over the course of two days, they managed to activate her battle suit and remove it, panel by panel. But the bond she had with her suit was deeper than they knew. It knew it was being taken. It'd tried to cling to her and burrow deep in her blood. The pain was so great from their forcible extraction, all she could do was gasp and cry on the table, fighting her bonds.
It was as if they were cutting off a limb. Her vision tunneled.
"Fascinating," their voices wavered in and out. "The quantum nanoparticles bonded to her extracellular matrix to ensure it keeps her form. It's like it's…alive with her. Evolving."
They never looked at her face as they worked to pry the pieces off of her. She tried to cry to them, but the paralytic and neural disrupter technology kept her from doing anything beyond twitch and tremble. By the time they finished extracting each panel, she passed out from the pain and separation.
Hours later, she awoke to darkness. She felt the silence of only her own skin, riddled with blown veins and needle marks and burns.
"Nnh," she cried, trying to fight against her bonds. Daddy. Gift. Green. My armor.
But she did not realize her body no longer moved. They'd kept her hooked up to their computers, disrupting the nervous signals throughout her whole body. Her limbs simply trembled in her attempts to kick.
Involuntary tears slipped from her eyes as she tried to fight.
"You know the problem with that suit of yours?" Dan declared haughtily. They'd been eighteen at the time. "You're just a human beneath it. What a pity."
Dan's spine stiffened, and he clenched his fist. "I don't care what you are now; you will not take Valerie from me." There was a deep threat in his voice as he narrowed his eyes at the boy before him.
Danny Fenton narrowed his eyes right back. "I don't want to," he said. "Clockwork says it's not meant to be her time yet. But the more time we spend arguing here, the less you have to save her."
At that, the powerful ghost began to snarl, his face twisting in several ways. Valerie was a weakness that Clockwork was trying to exploit, using Danny Fenton to further pour salt in the wounds. "And why can you not save her?"
The boy huffed, growing more worried. "Because I'm a Grim Reaper!" he hissed. "I help people move on—that's my job. I have very limited powers when it comes to keeping people alive, which is why I need you."
Dan snarled, "Me?"
His blue eyes tightened in worry. "Clockwork said only you would know how to save her. And Clockwork doesn't lie about this kind of stuff."
"Yes, he does," Dan snapped. His red eyes darted to the horizon, his power core revving uncomfortably. Valerie Gray was supposed to be his enemy. Danny Fenton was supposed to be gone forever. "It's probably some pathetic trap to end me. I'm sure the real Valerie is in the city somewhere, drunk with a lover."
Danny stepped forward. "I can feel her life force draining," he said, voice halted. He slammed the pole of his scythe on the ground in frustration. "I wouldn't lie to you about her, and you know it."
The older ghost fell silent, searching the boy's eyes.
Danny pressed, "The Guys in White are hurting her. They're going to kill her."
At that, Dan's eyes sharpened. "The Guys in White are disbanded and incompetent."
"They've been rebuilding. And they've learned a lot in ten years."
The older ghost's face twisted with increasing apprehension. "But they are human as well. Why would they kill Valerie? What are they doing?"
"Clockwork wouldn't let me see. But Clockwork called it an—an abomination."
Suddenly, Dan Phantom grabbed hard onto the boy's arm. His red eyes were wide in alert fear. "You will take me to her. Now."
By the day Clockwork had involved Dan and Danny, Valerie had been in GIW custody for over two weeks.
The kind-looking scientist was sitting down by her examination table, and she was looking up in a drugged daze. "You are a very strong woman, Commander Gray," he murmured. "Even without your suit."
Her breath was a light wheeze. Valerie had begun to forget her own name in a mad attempt to survive. The title Commander hardly registered.
"I do apologize for the inconveniences," the old man continued. "You've been so helpful. We've successfully copied your battle suit for our use and have reintegrated your suit with you. But we're maintaining control of your motor cortex for a very important reason. The fact is, we need to end our soldiers if they go…out of line." He looked grim. "We're innovating in a somewhat risky area of biogenetic technology, you see. So for us to finalize testing of our prototype, we need to ensure our contingency plan works. And I'm terribly afraid that, with all the pain we've caused you, we can't possibly let you go."
Valerie was half-mindless in exhaustion and weakness, and so she barely heard it when he said, "We've upgraded your suit to test this functionality, given your status as a liability. The organization thanks you for your service and dedication in the fight to annihilate evil. Goodbye, Commander Gray."
The scientist stood up and then began to walk away and shut the lights out, leaving her to die in the darkness, gasping for breath in her bonds.
After a minute, something sickening dropped into her stomach and weaved through her entire body. It manifested as a buzz in her ear. Her battle suit, without any command from her, activated slowly over her.
Then the pain hit. It was an electric fire in her nerves.
And Valerie began to scream, every muscle in her body arching up off the table.
Dan materialized into the GIW underground base in a blur of black and silver, his cape surging around him. Followed closely behind was Danny, who struggled to catch his breath from the speed of Dan's flight powers. The boy swallowed hard, then inhaled deeply.
"We have to be—" Danny said breathlessly— "careful. They don't have an underground Ghost Shield up yet. But they've got weapons."
Dan lifted his chin. "All without sanction from Amity Park," he murmured in interest at the conspiracy, eyeing the sleek, white walls of the abandoned hallway. "Now show me Valerie's location in this labyrinth."
Then the fluorescent lights above them flickered.
The boy admitted, "Clockwork didn't tell me everything—he said I'd figure it—"
Suddenly, Dan clapped a hand over the boy's mouth, sharp ears began to pick up a sound. "Shut up." His eyebrows furrowed. "I hear screaming."
And then it hit him what that meant.
The two look at each other and blurred forward again, racing through the hall and slipping into the room where the screams originated.
Dan's eyes widened.
Valerie body was stretched out on an examination table, convulsing in her red and black battle suit, which gleamed in a sickly way. Her breath shuddered.
Dan dropped down beside the table. A fury and consternation overcame him. "How much time do we have?" He grabbed on hard to the metal band around one of Valerie's shaking wrists. It did not easily give, but the metal broke under his increasing strength.
Valerie gasped for air in her battle suit, only for the strength of her lungs to fail as she convulsed.
Danny lifted his hands helplessly. "She's dying—I can stop time for a few seconds, but she can't take more than five more minutes of this."
"What do you suggest then, pip-squeak?" Dan snapped desperately as he broke the bands around her remaining wrist and then her waist. He almost feared she would convulse off the table.
Danny leaned down to break the bands around her ankles, pained at the sight of her suffering, "I don't know—I don't know what they've done."
The vessels in Valerie's nose burst from the pressure, and suddenly blood was running beneath her visor, dripping into her open lips and down her chin.
Danny paused in fear. "Three minutes."
"You just said five," Dan hissed, grabbing onto Valerie and sweeping her into his arms, struggling to hold her in her convulsions.
"Yeah, but it's getting worse!" Danny cried. "Whatever this is. It's leeching more of her away faster."
But the instant Dan touched Valerie's suit, he suddenly knew.
It wasn't that the suit was reflecting the damage they'd inflicted on Valerie—it was thesuit inflicting damage. It carried a high-pitched hum that he could hear and feel through touch alone. He nearly dropped her in a sharp gasp of pain, his ears popping and buzzing. "The suit," he rasped, forcing himself to hold her closer. "The suit."
Danny reached out to steady him, eyes wide. "What?"
Dan's face began to pale as he held her. "Like an electrical—poison." He allowed himself to lean against Danny, who did not feel the effects and stood strong enough to steady them all. "It's giving off some kind of field that's not compatible with life."
"But it looks like her regular suit!" the boy argued.
"They weaponized it." One of Dan's hands shakily began to move against Valerie, testing the panels. He tried to pull one off, as he had managed to do before, but they were fully locked in. As he worked, searching for known weaknesses in the armor, felt a terribly odd sensation—which was that this battle suit knew it was corrupted.
In its own pain, it was reaching out to him, asking for help from Dan Phantom himself.
He nearly pulled away in surprise, eyes widening. He had never such awareness from it before. "What the—?" he murmured in awe.
"What's happening?" Danny pressed. "We're wasting time!"
"It's talking to me," Dan snapped, turning his attention back to the woman shaking in his arms. His ears buzzed again as he suddenly felt a transfer of an image—the body armor being pulled off Valerie. The emotions attached to it were a chokehold of fear and pain. "The scientists split it off Valerie and then…changed it. But it doesn't know how."
"A split?" Danny demanded sharply.
Dan did not answer. It hit him suddenly why Clockwork had chosen him to assist. Only he would know Valerie's battle suit as well as herself. Ten years of watching her fight gave him a blueprint of every hidden weapon, every major control unit. "They must have added something," he murmured shakily, looking her over. In some strange way, this all felt so similar—the very object of protection turning against the host…
Beneath her visor, Valerie's gaze began to unfocus, her limbs beginning to still into quivers. Wavering images of a cobblestone road struck the dying sparks of her mind.
Danny began to panic. She was dying. Really dying. "Hurry up," he begged. "She's starting to give out."
Suddenly, Dan turned the woman on her side and swept his nimble fingers down her neck. The back of her suit looked to be just the same—a sickened color but otherwise—
"—Got you," he hissed. His nimble fingers locked on a small metal spinal reinforcement, painted to match the usual décor of her suit. It was a foreign object difficult to see in the black of the armor. He leaned down and began to rip the unnatural spinal cord reinforcement off the battle suit, his muscles straining under the force acquired.
Several of his fingers began to snap, the tendons and joints breaking. Dan winced, his power core revving as he gasped in pain.
Danny suddenly grabbed onto the hard metal as well, his thinner hands carrying them in a strength that rivaled any ghost's. "Come on," he growled, feeling his own body begin to react to the magnetic field of the device. His ears buzzed. "We can do this."
"…We have to," Dan said, voice rough as he grabbed harder onto the device. His broken fingers pulsed with pain.
Link by link, the spinal cord reinforcement began to pull away with a snake-like. The armor beneath it sizzled and scorched their fingers. With a final snap, the corrupted cord pulled off of Valerie's suit, and then the two of them found themselves holding it in their burnt hands. The cord began to die at the loss of its energy source, the little feelers on the inside sinking down into silence.
They both dropped the thing in wary fear of it.
"Was this the abomination Clockwork spoke of?" Dan asked breathlessly, curious if Clockwork had feared such technology, or if it were simply Valerie's suffering that had disgusted him.
Danny swallowed hard, feeling a bit nauseated as he stared at his burnt hands, then at a Dan's mangled fingers. "Probably. I don't know."
The older ghost snapped a few of his fingers back into place, clenching his jaw. The injured bones and tendons, away from the odd technology, began to quickly heal. Then he turned to Valerie, narrowing his eyes in concern for her.
It didn't quite hit Dan that he had never willingly sustained injury for anyone before. All he knew in that moment was his innate need to maintain Valerie's life.
Her battle suit sparked in odd ways, but when Dan turned her on her back, he felt a general sense of relief come from it. Beneath her visor, Valerie's teal eyes were open without seeing, her breaths still shuddering. The battle suit unsteadily began to retract in panels to conserve energy, no longer under the control of the GIW. It left her in a bloodied and scorch-marked hospital gown, shivering against the table. Her exposed wrists and ankles were bruised and scraped.
Without thinking, Dan shoved Danny out of the way and unclipped his cape, eyes narrowed at the thin material of the gown. He swept the cape over her and then pulled her up into his arms. She was unnaturally light, as if she'd lost muscle mass.
Danny reached out and touched her face, which was sweaty and pale. "She's still dying," Danny said, voice rushed. His dark brows furrowed. "Her mind's not connecting with her body."
"What do you suggest, then?" the ghost demanded shortly, a genuine worry tightening his face. "I am not a doctor, and neither are you."
"D-dan…ny?" the woman rasped, staring up into heaven as her soul wavered between life and death. She was seeing a boy in a black cloak. Cobblestone roads.
Danny looked at Dan in panic, then raised his hands and froze time.
The entire world stopped in that second except for the soul of Danny Fenton. He stared at the frozen woman in the frozen Dan's arms. The powerful ghost was holding her almost intimately, his hands still healing from breaking them to save her.
If Valerie died like this, it hit Danny that his own wayward ghost counterpart would reach heights of fury that would challenge even Clockwork. And Valerie herself—betrayed by humanity, killed by her own battle suit, and probably not in the right state of mind—what would she become while standing at the Final Threshold and deciding whether to move on or become a ghost?
"Clockwork!" the boy cried desperately. Two seconds had passed. "Please, we need more time! We need more time!"
Three seconds.
Four seconds.
No response. Danny's eyes began to water as the fifth second passed, and his small control over the timeline gave way back to normalcy. "No," he whispered in pain. He looked up at the ceiling in betrayal that Clockwork had done nothing. "No! You have to save her!"
As time restarted, Dan snarled, "I heard you the first time." Then he placed his hand on Valerie's neck, listening to her heart beat.
Valerie stared up at him without really looking, her cracked lips gasping for breaths she could not catch. Her fingers curled into his cape, which covered her with almost a warmth.
Danny surged forward, holding tightly onto his scythe. "Can you give her some of your own energy?" he begged.
In the moment's panic, Dan did not care where the suggestion came from. He called forth a tendril of raw energy from his core to roll into her. If Valerie had been a ghost herself, it might have worked. But the energy bounced off of her as a breath in the wind, seeping out like a wisp.
"Dammit," the older ghost said, increasingly worried. He tried again.
It failed.
Danny suddenly turned around. "People are coming. They know something's wrong." He grabbed onto Dan's arm and then stopped time once more, his body weakening from such a drain.
One second. With his touch, Dan and Valerie were still active outside of time. Danny began to lift on Dan's arm, turning them intangible and invisible. The corridors of the GIW building suddenly began to fly by in a blur.
"What are you doing now?" Dan hissed, embracing Valerie's limp body more tightly against him in fear that she would slip from his grasp.
Three seconds.
"I can confuse them," Danny said, voice breathless, "until you stabilize her. Please hurry."
Five seconds.
Time started again, and they found themselves in research lab with the words "Hazardous Materials" printed in red on the doors. Everything was dark but for the oddly glowing petri dishes behind a glass wall.
"Oh, I'm sure hazardous materials will help us!" Dan's voice was a harsh, sarcastic bite as he looked around desperately. Valerie was still shivering in his arms.
Danny gave him an exasperated look. "It's a cover. Unless you wanna fight the Guys in Whiteand try to save Valerie?"
The ghost did not answer, still looking for any materials to help her. The wall he was staring at held mostly used needles, useless paper reports. He could feel Valerie's breath growing weaker in his arms. He felt no sign of the battle suit that usually hummed beneath her skin. "Dammit, we're not looking in the right place."
"Clockwork said you're the only one who could save her," Danny pressed. "So come on, man. You gotta have something!"
"Like what?" Dan demanded. "She will not accept my power—"
"—Maybe it's not about your power." The boy's blue eyes suddenly lit with an idea. "It's her mind that's disjointed from her body, right? And you know her mind better than anyone else. So…say something that will make her want to stay here! Like, you love her!"
In that second, Dan's body stiffened, his red eyes narrowing to slits. A tinge of green seeped into his cheeks in fury and embarrassment. "Do not dare to suggest that," he hissed. "I love nothing."
"You're hugging her pretty tight," Danny deadpanned. "You're concerned for her. That's love."
Dan growled, baring his sharp fangs in displeasure. Such accusations made him feel caged. "You want an emotional awakening? Fine." Then he looked down to the dying woman in his arms, gently tilting her chin up. "Valerie," he murmured, voice dark with a threat, "if you can hear me, you should know I'll take great pleasure in destroying your city, brick by brick. In your honor, I'll incinerate the resistance. Disembowel your friends. Hang your father's head from a stake in front of my castle. And what's left of him, I'll throw to the wild dogs and the buzzards."
The woman in his arms stared up sightlessly at him.
And then something hardened in her gaze, her entire soul remembering its purpose. Dan Phantom. Threat. "N-no," she rasped, suddenly beginning to struggle in his grasp. Her visions of a cobblestone road hardened back into Dan's leering face. Her shaky fingers latched onto one of his flickering locks, and she pulled with all her strength. "No."
Dan winced, an instinctive snarl curling his lips, but he held onto her tight. He could feel some renewed sense of purpose in the shake of her hand. The Red Huntress could not die without at least taking him with her, and so he allowed her to continue pulling on his lock of hair with a disjointed grip. "You'll have to do better than that," he hissed to her.
Then her fingers found his sensitive elfin ear, and she pinched hard enough to make him grunt in pain. Dan gnashed his teeth, leaning his head toward her in a desperate attempt to lessen the pain. "Only I could piss her off enough to stay here, apparently."
Danny's eyes widened at the spectacle. His hand tightened on his scythe as he felt the life force of Valerie regroup under the directive of causing Dan Phantom pain. Though her movements and struggles were disjointed and unnatural, she was fighting to stay. The boy stared in disbelief. Instead of some beautiful reconciliation between Valerie and Dan, Valerie's weak life force was sustained by anger—and Dan was feeding right into it. "You've got to be kidding me," he cried out. "Really, guys? Really?"
Without much warning, the powerful ghost suddenly shoved the struggling, weak woman at Danny. "Get her out of here," he ordered, red eyes glowing hot in irritation. He rubbed his bruised ear. "She'll be more pissed if she can't see me."
Danny stared at him, bewildered. This was not at all how he'd expected things to go, but in his interests to save Valerie, he shouldered his scythe and nodded. He had faith in Clockwork's orders and foresight. Perhaps this was how it was all meant to be. "And what about you?"
"I'm going to raze this place to the ground."
Valerie's gaze did not break from Dan as she felt smaller hands suddenly pull her close. "No!" Her voice was a hoarse cry, her vision blurring in exhaustion as she felt Dan slip away from her. Her weak heart stormed madly in her chest.
Amity Park. Her father—he was going to kill everyone—she had to stop him—!
Danny shouldered her and his scythe uneasily, face growing red as he also tried to adjust Dan's cape to protect the struggling woman's modesty. Her whole body twitched unnaturally at times, which had made her difficult to hold. "Don't kill people," he warned. "You'll regret it."
Dan sniffed once, then nodded, jerking his chin. "Get out of here." He cracked his fingers, for a moment something almost vulnerable coming over him as he stared at Valerie. "I've got unfinished business."
In another blur of stopped time, Danny managed to get Valerie out of the building. The ground was surging around them as they flew intangibly up the two-hundred-foot drop, Valerie's matted curls a stream in the wind of his movements. Her weak, shaking fingers had grabbed onto him in some realization that they were flying.
"Come on," he breathed, feeling his own body scream at the pull of stopping time once again.
Then his five seconds were up, and time restarted. "Come on," he begged again, praying they were out of the way of any hidden GIW sensors. But then the darkness of the earth cut wide into an open sky, their bodies free of the underground tomb.
Danny nearly collapsed at the sight of the sunset and green grass, exhausted from his power usage. He flew a bit longer, still keeping himself and the half-coherent Valerie invisible and intangible. "It's okay," he told Valerie, who was wheezing for air against his ear. She felt gaunt against him, as if her muscles had wasted away. "It's okay, I'm helping you."
"Nnh," she whined against him, confused. She could not see him—everything was a blur. She could feel only his solid presence. "N-no—!"
Danny set Valerie down in the warm grass beside a lake, sweat shining upon his brow. The sunset around them cast purple and orange light in every direction, the darkness offered by the trees stretching out in increasing distances. The grass was cool and soft. "It's okay," he said again to calm her. "We're outside. They're not going to hurt you again."
The instant her bare feet and arms touched the ground, it seemed as if something undid in her. She knew it was not an examination table. Tears rose in her eyes.
Danny kneeled beside her in worry. "You're going to be okay," that voice of a familiar boy echoed in her ears.
Valerie squeezed her eyes shut, trying to make her legs wiggle. Trying to get up. "Killer," she gasped out, tears streaking down her face. "He'll kill—"
"—He won't without looking for you first," the voice assured her. In truth, Danny did not know if his wayward ghost self had been fabricating a story, or if he had truly dreamt of such aspirations of killing everyone in Amity Park. "Just hold on, and he won't."
He reached for her hand, which was dirty and sweaty, and he gripped her hand tight. Her fingers were long and scarred with heavy callouses. He could remember holding her soft hand atop the Ferris wheel, back when things had been simple.
Despite the unnatural twitch and fire of her muscles, Valerie managed to weakly grip back, still gasping her way through a near-death.
The infamous Dan Phantom stood in the heart of the GIW lair, seething in fury against them even as the emergency alarms began to ring. The Hazardous Materials lab had various reports of experiments, which Dan dared to glance at in hopes of ascertaining what this odd group of humans had hoped to accomplish. "You wanted Valerie's battle suit," he murmured roughly, "likely to destroy me. But why update the suit with a kill switch?"
There was something not right about that. If they'd simply wanted to hide what they'd done, they could have killed Valerie in a far simpler way. The kill switch was an intentional addition, and their attempt to destroy Valerie with it was not flippant.
Given the nature of the lab, Dan dared to move closer to the petri dishes glowing behind a wall. The covering was a hard Plexiglas with various scientific notes typed out and taped. Dan's red eyes narrowed, and something cold and foreboding entered him as he read the stark text.
"Operation Super-Soldier, Test Subjects K5W through K15W," he read.
The notes went on to explain that the petri dishes held fertilized eggs within incubation modules. Maternal lineage: V. Gray via donation. Human. Paternal lineage:
And then his eyes widened, and he backed away, eyes wild. "…What?"
Paternal lineage: D. Phantom via gene splice and recoding from ectoplasmic blood samples. Ghost.
For a second or two, Dan stared at the notes almost dumbly. The notes continued to provide documentation on the various battle sites from which they'd collected his blood and tested its viability in cloning processes.
The projected time to completion was two months, incorporating the math for advancing the aging process, which was based off the successes of another experiment in progress, J4X. It appeared they'd been anticipating an experiment using Valerie's lineage for months and months prior, and this EXPERIMENT J4X project had initiated the day they'd captured her.
Dan swallowed hard, his line of sight following the notes for this other project, J4X. "What have they done," he whispered, daring to take more time to discover the answer. It wouldn't be long now before GIWs found him and attempted to engage him in battle.
A large, metallic structure was in the back of the room with the label EXPERIMENT J4X. He flew to it and pulled off the locks. A part of him already knew what he would find. A part of him did not want to see it.
When he opened the heavy, metal doors, his ghost sense triggered, and he came face-to-face with a green-glowing tube almost the size of himself. And then he froze.
Floating in it was a boy who looked to be five. He was curled up in a fetal position, tubes inserted into ports on his sides. His black hair flickered like flames, his skin dark like Valerie's. When his fingers twitched, sparks of silver metal armor appeared up to his wrist, then died away.
Dan's hands slipped from the metal doors as he stepped back, beholding the master plan of the GIWs. A test-tube child with the blood of Valerie and his own. It seemed the hybrid had either inherited a battle suit or had one inserted into him to make him the unstoppable warrior—cured of the weaknesses within both the mother and father.
Dan swallowed hard. The petri dishes held but a collection of cells swiftly multiplying in ways he could not see with the naked eye. But this—this was a formed child artificially aged, likely to be aged again for immediate combat. And if the technology of the GIWs meant anything, they could control every thought this child had.
Breath that Dan did not need stuck in chest as he stared at the artificially designed child between him and Valerie. He planted a hand against the cold glass, feeling the hum of life that sustained the child. Somewhere in that boy was a power core and a living heartbeat. But the child seemed to be in some kind of stasis, its small lungs expanding and contracting as if in sleep, its twitches like that of dreams. It was fully unaware of anything.
Dan turned away. He entertained the thought of breaking the child out. He imagined holding its small body in his arms, in awe that it held the blood of Valerie and himself. His own son.
A weapon of mass destruction bred to destroy him.
Then his eyes hardened, wild with an emotion he could not describe. He blasted the whole wall to his right, the petri dishes exploding into shards, one after another. Then he turned back, staring in betrayal at the boy.
Before Dan dared to think another thought, he released a Ghostly Wail—a cry of a pain he could not quite describe.
The tube with the boy exploded in a surge of light.
Nearly a half-hour passed before Dan met up with the hiding Danny and Valerie. By the time he reappeared, the injured woman had fallen unconscious in exhaustion, and Danny sat cross-legged beside her, worrying over her still-uneven breaths. "She's stable," the boy called to Dan. "But she needs a doctor. That suit still did a lot of damage to her." He'd ripped a strip off his cloak and soaked it in the lake. He was ringing it out once more to place over Valerie's forehead. It appeared he'd tried to wipe the blood from her face.
Dan landed hard in the grass, the ground nearly buckling beneath him at the force. He carried with him the scent of ash and death. In the distance, plumes of smoke began to rise from the deep crater in the earth that was once the GIW outpost.
He flickered haunted eyes to Danny and Valerie, then looked away. Something was terribly off about him, even as he declared roughly, "Then go away; your work is done here if she's no longer dying." He flicked his fingers, which carried drying blood on them. In irritation and nausea, he pulled off his gloves and threw them to the grass.
Danny watched intently. Disappointment dropped his shoulders. "Did you seriously kill them all?"
The older ghost did not answer, but the silence was enough.
The boy's lips pressed together in a grim line, an anger coming over him. He returned to his original task of wiping dirt off Valerie's forehead. "You said you wouldn't. Those people had lives. They had families and children."
The word struck Dan the wrong way, and he suddenly tensed up. "I said no such thing," he hissed, eyes glowing a hot orange. "They deserved to lose everything they care about. Perhaps I should seek out their children and ensure the blight of this organization is finished forever."
"Don't you dare," Danny said, voice hardening. "You've killed enough innocent lives. Don't keep adding to the list of the peopleI have to help move on before they've even lived."
Dan flinched and nearly shot at the boy, stopping himself only when he realized Valerie was beginning to wake up from her healing sleep. He narrowed his eyes at Danny. "I am what I am," he snarled, voice low. "And the Guys in White deserved what I did on Valerie's behalf."
"On her behalf?" Danny repeated in disbelief. "You didn't do that for her. You did it for yourself because you love violence."
An image of the small boy floating in the tube came to Dan's mind, and a pain ripped through him. His voice grew halted. "Do not dare to judge me for today. They would have killed her."
Danny gently ran the wet scrap of cloth down Valerie's dirty cheek, pulling back her matted curls. "Doesn't make it right," he said in anger. "You played god with their lives and didn't even give them a chance for a trial."
Dan pointed at Valerie, face tight. "Her father would have executed them all anyway. What difference does it make?"
"You don't know that," Danny snapped. He looked up with great pain. "You don't even understand what drove them to be so desperate. Don't you get it? This is the cycle of evil, man."
The older ghost snarled at him, his fingers sparking with green energy. "I understand their motives just fine. They wanted to destroy me using her."
"Because you destroyed their friends and families and homes first!" Danny pressed. "It's because of you. You made them desperate enough to try anything."
Dan's jaw clenched. For a time, he seemed chastised, unable to accept Danny's suggestion that Valerie's suffering—the boy he'd killed in the lab—was a consequence of his own violence. "Get out of here," he said, voice rough. "I'd hate to awaken Valerie with your screams of pain."
"You just can't handle the truth," Danny challenged.
That did it. Dan blurred forward and grabbed the boy by the front of his black cloak, pulling him back. Danny's eyes widened as he grabbed for his neck, only to be slammed against a distant tree.
Dan pinned him there, red eyes searing with anger. "You little shit. You have no right to come here and judge me. You created me. I was your every negative emotion, and yet you speak like you belong on some righteous pedestal."
Danny stared up at his evil counterpart in pain. He struggled to breathe under Dan's grip. "N-no," he gasped. "No, I'm not—" He grabbed onto Dan's wrist, trying to pry his fingers away from his neck.
"—Save it," Dan hissed. He squeezed his fingers in, watching the boy's eyes bulge a bit. He felt satisfaction, being in such control.
And then he thought of the boy in the tube. A living child of his own blood with a living heartbeat.
He suddenly released Danny, recoiling as if the boy were on fire.
Danny fell forward onto the grass, his cloak fanning out in rumpled angles. He gasped for air as he placed a hand over his bruised throat. It felt as if his lungs were on fire. His blue eyes were still wide in shock.
Dan sniffed, then turned away. The sun had fully set now, and all was black save for the bright glow of his body. "You will leave now." His voice was quiet but edged with harsh fury. He leaned down and grabbed Danny's fallen scythe, tossing it backwards like a useless trinket.
The weapon fell before the reaper with a soft plunk. Its sharp metal edge caught the moonlight above and Danny's own still-bewildered expression.
A great silence tensed the air, broken only by the distant sound of Valerie's wheezing breaths.
With a bit of maneuvering, Danny stood back up. He rubbed his neck to ensure it was still there, then grabbed his scythe. "I'll leave," he retorted, voice hoarse. "I had to anyway, now that you've killed so many people who need to cross to the afterlife." But as he began to dematerialize, Danny added, "But take care of Valerie. I'm serious. You'll regret it if you don't."
Dan turned around to witness the departure of the reaper.
And then the powerful ghost, for all his turmoil over Danny, nodded curtly in some respect to his wish.
Danny's blue eyes softened, and then he faded out completely.
Later that night, Valerie awoke in the arms of Dan Phantom, her body cradled by his chest and shoulder while his free hand dabbed a wet cloth against a cut on her neck. It stung. She tensed against him, eyes wild. And then it hit her once more: She was in the arms of Dan Phantom. She was not tied to an examination table. There were no scientists trying to prod her or cut her open.
She blinked and then shifted her head to look up at him, eyes wide.
The world was dark except for Dan's bright glow.
"Let's face it," came a baritone deadpan that vibrated down the chest she was leaning against. His handsome face was sharp with exhaustion. "This isn't the strangest thing we've done."
He could not look in her eyes as he swept the wet cloth against her neck once more. He was afraid that she would pick up his turmoil and then would question why. He'd already decided he would never tell her of the mixed-blood boy he'd found.
Her cracked lips opened a fraction as she inhaled shakily. "City?" she rasped out.
The ghost dipped the cloth in the lake beside them once more, squeezing out the flecks of dried blood. "Your city is fine. I've not attacked it, and I'm sure your father is still pacing the floors in worry for you."
"B-but you—"
"—I said what I did to keep you here." There was some kind of final ring in his voice, but he still did not look her in the eyes, even as he returned to his task of dabbing the wet cloth against her neck.
For a time, the half-awake Valerie did not know what any of this meant. Dan Phantom had been aloof with her ever since she'd begun attacking him to gain more territory. They'd done odd things in the past—touching each other in questionable ways and rudely flirting while they fought. Valerie had learned that several other ghosts—Skulker, Dora, and so on—held running bets on whether she and Dan were having sex in secret. But something had changed when she'd sought more territory. Dan had grown cold against her.
"Wh-why s-save—?" she whispered, the action making her flinch in pain. All of her muscles felt pulled in the worst way, and the longer she was awake, the more aware she became. Her back and stomach particularly felt as if she were on fire.
Dan met her gaze, his red eyes dark in concern as she began to twitch with increasingly uneven breaths. "I'd much rather deal with you than them," he said. He set down the wet cloth as she squeezed her eyes shut, face twisting in pain.
Despite her best efforts, Valerie's eyes began to burn. Silent tears slipped from her. She felt as if her every nerve was pinched between bone. A cold sweat shined on her temples. She didn't even care if Dan saw her pain at this point. "On f-fire," she gasped in a moan. "On fire."
"Where?" he demanded.
She opened blurry eyes, which were tight with misery. "Back," she whispered. "St-stomach."
Without thinking, Dan activated his ice powers, which made his hands glow slightly blue. He planted his hand supporting her firmly against her spine, then his other on her stomach. The cooling sensation seemed to dampen her nerves a bit, but he was still off one major origin of her pain.
Her shaky, twitching hands found his fingers upon her stomach, and she moved them lower until his palm rested on her low abdomen—just above her womb.
She felt him tense against her.
He hissed, "What are you doing?"
"Shut up," she snapped shakily. "Feels good." The cramps of her body began to react to the cool of his hand. Relief relaxed a bit of the tension on her face, and she leaned back against him fully. Her breath still came in shuddering gasps.
The ghost swallowed hard, feeling the tips of his elfin ears begin to burn with a blush, even as his eyes darkened in some kind of realization. He could guess why she felt such pain there, and it had to do with how the scientists had collected her genetic material for their test-tube children.
"You need a doctor," he said, voice halted. "Perhaps your suit will be active soon enough to call your people. I can take you only so close to Amity Park and remain undetected."
"How—did you know? To f-find me?"
"The Ghost of Christmas Future blessed me with his existence," Dan deadpanned. "He warned of dark Christmases to come if I did not save you from the Guys in White." By this point, he was beginning to grow more comfortable with their arrangement. He had a terrible feeling that he liked holding Valerie more than he should.
Like this, he felt purpose.
Valerie stared up at him in full vulnerability, searching his eyes. She had a huge blank in her memory, which made her feel more afraid and less comforted. She had a vague memory of seeing a swinging GIW badge from the pocket of a man wearing white. "What did they d-do to me?" she whispered shakily.
His red eyes darkened as he tried to think of how to phrase it. "They tried to steal your battle suit to design their own super-soldier army against me. Then they tried to kill you with it, probably to hide what they did."
The woman's face twisted. "Wh-what?" She closed her eyes, unable to speak for a time, feeling a sense of déjà vu, as if perhaps someone had told her the same thing before at the GIW station. "Stupid."
"Very stupid," Dan agreed dryly.
A wind tore through the valley, brushing against them. She realized then she wore little beyond a hospital gown beneath Dan's cape, the edges of which flickered like his hair, wrapping against her ankles and then pulling away.
Her scarred fingers curled around his wrist, and she held onto him as if he were the only lifeline between life and death. For a time, she could say nothing. Her face was tinged red with a blush of several emotions that she was in the arms of an enemy, wrapped in his clothing to hide what the gown could not. She was beginning to realize that Dan had done things not simply to save her life—he'd done some things in respect of her.
His thumb caressed her lower abdomen in a slow sweep. "You realize this now counts as the strangest thing we've done?"
"No," she tried to snap, but her voice was weak. "The poison g-ghost who r-robbed you. I found you n-naked and sick."
About a year ago, a group of ghost bandits had shot Dan from a distance with ghost poison. He'd fallen to the ground in immediate nausea, paralyzed by the unnatural churn of his power core. The bandits then stole his collected trinkets (earth spoils, gold coins) and the clothes off his back to sell on the Ghost Zone black market.
Valerie had later found him a distance away from the blasted and mutilated bodies of the bandits, collapsed with his jumpsuit laying in the mud a distance away. He still had vague memories of Valerie's warm hand on his bare chest, searching for the hum of his power core.
Dan sniffed haughtily. "You dragged me to a ditch and complained you couldn't destroy me in such a state. Hardly an intimate affair."
The woman in his arms huffed. The sound was weak. "Y-you vomited on me."
"Did I?" he hummed, his eyebrows furrowing. "I don't recall."
"You did." She moaned at the memory of it and whined, "It was g-gross."
She'd begun to shiver, and so he recalled his ice powers, his thumb still stroking her lower abdomen in a gentle rhythm. "Then I suppose I owed you anyway. I hate to be in debt."
Valerie burrowed against his shoulder more, closing her eyes. Her breath had calmed with his touch. Some part of her felt a peace about her odd rivalry with Dan Phantom. They had history. Loved to hate each other. Kept each other's secrets for reasons no one else would understand.
"Y-you're more t-touchy than usual," she whispered, still feeling alien in her injured body.
She felt him shift his weight, readjusting the cape around her as she shivered in the cold of the night. "I was angry you wanted my lands," he said. His voice was a thrum with several emotions. "But I've been bored without you."
By now, the pain was beginning to return in her body. "How l-long was I gone?"
"A little over two weeks."
She blinked in surprise. Then it hit her then that she'd lost something. "Dad," she gasped, suddenly tensing. "I m-missed—birthday—"
Dan's face twisted as he struggled to understand her. "What?"
"Birthday," she stressed, suddenly struggling to sit up on her own. Her body pulsed with pain that made her gasp. "My dad."
The ghost grabbed onto her, helping her to sit. His red eyes narrowed. "It's not as if it's his first one."
She grabbed onto the front of his suit, her scarred fingers shaking. Her eyes were wild. She was beginning to remember things—flashes of images of the start. "I b-bought a gift. Glass t-turtle—"
And then a pain in her hand. A man grabbing her and saying, "Don't scream. I've got you, Red."
Then Valerie suddenly felt as if her poisoned battle suit was locked over her again, killing her as its electrical signals pressed in on her own, searing her nerves. Her breath hitched, then came in quick, shallow gasps. Her lips began to tingle, her vision blurring like she was under the paralytic again and looking up at the scientist who promised relief and delivered pain—
—She felt large, cold hands roughly pull her close to a broad chest, and she found herself burrowing into Dan as her panic attack ravaged her.
His fingers wove against her matted curls and the loose ties of the back of her hospital gown, brushing against her bare skin. He could feel her battle suit rebuilding in her body. It was an electrical field that rose the hair on the back of his neck. "Do not electrocute me," he demanded, but he did not know if he were speaking to Valerie or to the battle suit itself, which did not have the sentience it'd once had under the GIW technology.
Valerie's voice was a strangled cry as she began to cry against him, "It hurts—it h-hurts—it hurts—"
The panels of her battle suit swarmed in a disjointed way, her fingers sparking with metal as her skin glistened unnaturally. It was trying to protect her from a threat that was only in her mind. For a brief second, there was a sentient echo through all the quantum nanoparticles. And then the energy the battle suit had accumulated ran out. It fell back under her skin fully dormant, leaving a shaking and breathless Valerie trembling against her enemy.
Dan leaned his head atop of hers. His red eyes stared off into the distance as he held her. "I destroyed them," he murmured forcefully. "They will never rise against us again. Do you hear me?"
Valerie squeezed her eyes shut, struggling to regain her senses. She shakily managed to pull away and looked down at her arm, the dark skin of which was marred with marks. Most were scars from needles, several of which were still red. One of her veins had busted, which had in turn bruised all the way down to her wrist.
She feared discovering what the rest of her body looked like. She and her battle suit had been the perfect meld of human and machine, their quantum particles so entangled as to be the same thing. She felt as though the scientists had hacked off all her limbs and stabbed out her eyes.
Her cracked lips quivered. "I d-don't want to be—damsel in dis-distress." She felt terribly naked without an active battle suit, her nightmares swarming in her mind.
Dan reached out to her, cupping the side of her face with his cool fingers. "And what was I," he murmured, "when you found me naked and sick?"
She grabbed onto his hand. "But we're s-supposed to be invincible," she whispered.
The ghost had an image of the child floating in the tube. A little glass turtle on the counter nearby. He realized then he could still see the child's face in Valerie's own haggard visage.
His hand slipped away. "No one is invincible."
Administrative Commander Damon Gray sat alone in his office, staring blankly at a wall. There was a birthday cake rotting on the corner of his desk, where Valerie had placed it the day she'd gone missing.
Her last words had been, "Don't you dare open this before I get back, ok? Gotta run to the mall real fast. I'll be back soon."
Two days after she'd disappeared, he'd opened it up in a desperate attempt for connection with her. It'd been a cute cake with green icing. The cafeteria lady, Margie, had decorated it with little outlines of turtles—his favorite animal. Now, the turtles had shriveled and hardened, the colors fading out with mold that threatened to overtake the whole cake. He'd never eaten one bite, true to his word that he would wait for her.
The father inhaled a long and enduring breath as he stared at the wall, at the end of his every resource. Valerie's tracking devices had gone down sometime around 7 pm, nearly an hour after she'd left for the city. The entirety of Amity Park had been searched in the following days. He'd spent his whole birthday leading the searches, desperately calling her name from every building and wildlife refuge, interrogating criminals or people with possible grudges. Nothing had shown up.
It made no sense. There'd not even been ghost activity that night, which ruled out Valerie flying into the Wastelands. Damon had fears that ghosts—perhaps some even more powerful than Phantom—would become more bold if word got out that the Red Huntress was missing. The citizens of Amity Park were now living in fear of a massive ghost attack they could not win.
It seemed everything tended to fall apart without Valerie.
Damon turned a card in his hands, fingers shaking. The acronym GIW shined in silver at the top of the card. He'd wondered if perhaps they would know, but when he called, he received a, "We're sorry. The number you dialed has been disconnected. Please hang up and try again, or contact an operator for help." One of the few GIWs left in the city showed him a boarded up, small office on an old Amity Park street and explained his colleagues had shut down their organization months prior—just after Damon himself had refused to share resources with them.
Which left Damon with, once more, no leads.
"You can't be dead," he whispered to the wall, flickering his eyes to rotting cake. His eye, bright teal like Valerie's, welled with tears. "You've survived so much, baby. We were gonna celebrate this year." His breath hitched with a watery laugh. "You even bought me a turtle cake."
The wall did not answer back.
Although most had already given up hope, two weeks without even a body washing up in the river made Damon wonder how his invincible daughter could have died.
He clung hard to his belief that she was invincible. That she would come back to him, and he'd show her that he didn't eat a piece of the cake because he'd promised he'd wait until she returned.
It was somewhere in his musings that he began to hear a beep from the comm system on his desk. Thinking it an official requesting his advice, he half-heartedly pushed the button to answer, not looking at the frequency or ID blinking from the screen.
"…Daddy?" came a weak, hoarse voice. Valerie.
He blinked. And then he panicked, his heart nearly stopping. He pushed the button once more. "Valerie?"
There was static and quiet for a time, and it made him worry he'd dreamed up her voice. But then the static gave way to her voice again, "I'm h-hurt. N-need medical."
Damon's eye blurred with tears as he began to break down at the sound of her voice. He could barely see the radar to pinpoint her coordinates, in which her battle suit was now giving off a weak pulse a few miles away from Amity Park. He pressed a button for the emergency alert. It began to raise a code red alert—which would result in the entire resistance arming up for an invasion into the Wastelands. "Hang in there, baby." His voice shook. "You're gonna be okay. We're coming for you right now. And I'm gonna stay on the line the whole time, okay? You can hear my voice, right?"
"Yes." There was a waver in her voice. A wheeze in her breath. "S-sorry, daddy. So s-sorry."
He was already standing up, locking the comm device to his ear and belt. "It's okay, baby."
"I l-lost your present."
"Don't worry about that. I just want you to come home."
"Pl-please bring me—clothes," she rasped weakly. "I don't h-have any. And suit's s-screwy."
And then his heart squeezed hard, and more tears burned his eyes. He began to think the worst. "Oh my god, baby." His voice shook. "What happened? Who did this?"
And then a cry came from her, along with what sounded like the sizzle of mechanics. Damon flinched at the ragged sound of her pain, then called desperately, "Valerie? Val, you okay?"
"Have to—stop." Crackle interfered with her voice, which had grown weaker. "Have to."
And then the comm died, along with the active coordinates of her battle suit.
Within ten minutes, the entire resistance army was outfitted for an invasion into the Wastelands, caring advanced blasters they'd built off Valerie's own prototypes. Damon rode in an assault vehicle at the front of the company. A portable Ghost Shield surged around the whole procession.
They'd plugged in Valerie's last-known coordinates to their GPS and were shining lights into the Wastelands, looking for a body in the grass. The large lamp lights crossed paths often in a wild array.
Damon peered out in fear that it was all a dream—that he'd simply imagined hearing her voice over her private frequency. As they neared her coordinates, his heart began to pound. He feared what he'd find. Maybe it would be nothing. Maybe his baby girl would be mutilated, bleeding out. Maybe she'd be dead.
And then their many lights began to flood a small area of trees, their radar now a solid beep to alert them they'd arrived at coordinates.
He stopped in surprise as the lights revealed a familiar body.
Valerie was sitting up against a tree, rasping hard. She seemed whole. Her legs were bare with bruises around her ankles, but a hint of a hospital gown hem appeared from under the…flickering cape of Dan Phantom?
From a far distance, an invisible Dan Phantom watched the scene unfold. His gaze was hard as he watched the medical team gently lift Valerie from her resting spot and strap her into a gurney. Her father, that old fool, held tight to her hand the whole time, crying over her as he well should.
Valerie had demanded to keep his cape. She'd said it would change things forever—that she could pass off his assistance against the GIWs as some shaky alliance. The world was getting weirder, with greater and greater enemies roaming the Wastelands from the depths of the Ghost Zone. It was possible Amity Park would accept a treaty of sorts in the name of co-survival.
Dan huffed. "I do not need them," he muttered petulantly to himself, although he'd begun to fancy an open alliance between himself and the Red Huntress—even if it came at the cost of allowing Amity Park to exist.
But then, if Amity Park had not existed…
From a pocket in his suit, he pulled out a small object. In his hand was a tiny glass turtle, about the size of a half-dollar coin. He'd found it in the dirt far from the explosion of the GIW outpost, alongside various other pieces of debris. It had a chip in the dark green shell down its back but was otherwise whole.
He clenched it tight in his hand and then turned away from the scene of Valerie's rescue. "She will be fine," he said, as if speaking to someone else. There was an ashy taste in his mouth as he pressed his lips together tightly, then added, "Not as physically strong as myself, but more resilient."
Dan received no answer, but he did not expect one. At his feet was a pile of stones he'd collected. They were a light gray and stark against the dark grass.
A little memorial for the boy he'd seen floating in the lab.
He set the glass turtle atop the highest stone, as if it were a lookout. Then he stood up and straightened his spine, eyes hard. "At least you died quickly," he said to the little collection of stones. "You might have been the slave of those humans. An unstoppable monster to be killed the instant your work was done."
The wind rustled through his hair as the clouds covered up the moon above them.
"If you saw what they'd done to Valerie's armor," Dan continued, "you would have agreed this was the better end for you." His face darkened with an odd pain. "I saved you from misery and confusion, and now you will never know those things, nor the horror upon the face you might have called mother."
The little glass turtle with the chipped back stared up at Dan from its guarding post atop the stone pile. Dan began to back away, feeling strange that he had not given it back to Valerie. He did not know why he imagined the lab brat might have liked the damn thing.
Then Dan muttered to himself, "Who am I kidding. There is no purpose to this. He is not here."
But as he turned around, his red eyes fell upon a form in a black cape. It floated in the distance of the trees, carrying a scythe.
Dan tensed up, surprised yet again at not having his ghost sense trigger. "…You? Again?"
The familiar form pulled down its hood and revealed the image of Danny Fenton. His blue eyes were red-rimmed and haunted as he stared at his ghost counterpart. "Yes," he whispered in shock. His voice wavered. "I can't believe it. I just—you killed him. Your own son."
The unspoken truth hung between them, which was that any living thread of Dan Phantom was by proxy a lineage from Daniel Fenton as well.
Dan's face twisted in pain, and he did not answer as he turned away. "How would you know what I've done."
"Because I just had to collect his soul," Danny's voice broke. He blinked, and his eyes brightened with more tears. "It was pathetic. He didn't know words or a name to call his own. Had never walked. Had no clothes. He was confused and scared. Of all the souls I had to help across the Final Threshold today, that was the one. That was the one I—"
His voice trailed off, and his tears of anguish fell down his disbelieving face.
"It wasn't my son," Dan suddenly snarled. "It was a test-tube experiment. They violated Valerie to make him and infected him with a corrupted battle suit to control him. It was better this way. Who knows what he would have been."
Danny said, voice shaking with righteous anger, "You already knew how to disable the kill switch on the armor. Don't use that as an excuse." His breath hitched, and suddenly he lashed out at Dan, raising his scythe. "Don't use that as an excuse!"
Dan's eyes widened at the incredible aura of power bleeding off the boy. He narrowly avoided the scythe's blade as it surged down, cutting deep into the dewy earth.
Danny's entire body shuddered in anger, eyes blurred with tears. "He was alive," he cried. "He could have lived a full life and grown in ways we can't! He was a child!"
Before either of them could move, the air beside them shimmered with the sudden opening of a portal. In quick succession, the Master of Time himself, Clockwork, appeared from the darkness. He roughly grabbed onto Danny's collar, pulling the boy back. "Get back to your station," he said. "Now. This is not your job."
Danny hardly heard him. He gnashed his teeth as he fought against the strong hold of Clockwork. He cried out to Dan, "You stupid—you'll pay for everything you've done! I'll find a way to make you pay!"
"You have no such authority," Dan snapped, giving in.
The boy's voice was hoarse. "He was mine too! He was—!"
Clockwork sighed heavily and, with some kind of paternal annoyance, jerked the boy back into the portal. It closed up immediately until only a shimmer was left.
Then Clockwork looked back at Dan with a hard gaze and enduring sense of disappointment.
The hair on the back of Dan's neck began to rise at the feeling of Clockwork's power. He opened his palm and called forth his power. His fingers glowed a dangerous green. "You're not wanted here."
"What a surprise," the Master of Time deadpanned. "I could say the same of you and of Daniel, who is still unfortunately like you in terms of impulsive behavior and lack of foresight."
"Then get out." Dan's body tensed in preparation for a fight. His eyes briefly flickered to the little pile of stones not far away. He felt protective over the memorial. Clockwork was ruining the peace of it.
Clockwork's gaze followed Dan's. "There are reasons why I allowed Daniel to accost you, and reasons why I remain here."
"I don't care."
"You do." Clockwork tilted his head. His strong body suddenly retracted into that of a child, perhaps to mock him. His voice was still grave with an exhaustion. "That is the point. I saw you hesitate in the lab of the Guys in White, before you killed the boy. I watched you build that memorial. You attempted to justify yourself to Daniel, whereas you usually do not seek such things. Whether you realize it or not, you care."
Dan looked away, his face tinging green in a blush of embarrassment and fury at the ghost's intrusion on his life. "What does it matter to you?" he muttered petulantly. "It was an abomination. A threat."
"…It was a threat," Clockwork agreed. "Its presence upset many things, among them the natural order that ghosts and humans cannot breed in this world."
The younger ghost turned around to face him, eyes lit hot with anger. "So what? You obviously don't care for the Guys in White I killed, nor for the abomination that would have been my son and the living blood of Daniel Fenton."
Clockwork sighed. "You decapitated Agent O's daughter. Crippled Agent T's brother. Slit the throat of Agent M's pregnant wife and laughed. They were willing to compromise their own morals to end you. But those humans would have become as monstrous as you and unleashed an even greater evil, had I not allowed them to die."
"And yet you fault me for killing them while it was your plan all along?" Dan hissed.
Clockwork tilted his head. "The difference between you and me is that I am long-suffering, and I allow evil to exist in hopes that those perpetuating it might yet find their way. I gave those humans every chance to stop their madness, even at the risk of Valerie's life. They sealed their own fate in their desire for power and control, just as you sealed yours. I simply…stopped protecting them from the war they wanted, just as I stopped protecting you from your own hell of misery and self-destruction."
Dan backed away from Clockwork, who seemed to have an awful habit of crawling under his skin and making him feel small. "You sound like the pip-squeak. So fond of elevating yourself while using me for your agenda." His jaw clenched, feeling horribly like a puppet. "Did you use me to kill the lab brat as well?"
The Master of Time aged into an old man. "I used him to test you," he said tiredly. "And you failed, as I wagered you would. But you will not forget this lesson, nor Daniel's accusations against you."
"What lesson?" the younger ghost challenged. There was a hard edge in his voice to hide the odd hitch. He had not quite moved on from the thought of himself as a puppet.
The Master of Time hobbled up to him, red eyes narrowed. They were nearly eye-to-eye. "That you are an ignorant fool," he said, his gravel voice like that of a disappointed grandfather. "You are too proud to admit what you might love, and too fearful to commit to such love, and for that reason you alienate yourself from the very things that would resolve your misery. Perpetuating your own, unending punishment."
The two fell silent at that, Dan's fang glimmering from his lip curling into a snarl. "You dare to suggest I am deficient."
"I tell you these things so that one day, you will reform and be at enough peace to move onto the next world," Clockwork said. He stood up. "When you do, Daniel will no longer feel burdened with guilt at your existence; I will never have to deal with you again. The cycle of evil will end. And you will fade from the memory of history forever."
The harsh words were a stinging slap, and Dan's face twitched. In some way, he'd believed Clockwork still had faith in him. That Clockwork still genuinely cared for him as a charge.
And then Clockwork disappeared as if he were never there, the darkness of the woods closing in on the sole ghost who remained.
Valerie sat in an infirmary bed, hooked up to machines. She'd absolutely demanded clothes with no more of that hospital gown business. Beneath her many covers, she wore loose sweatpants and a baggy shirt. Dan Phantom's cape rested neatly folded at the foot of her bed. Its edges still flickered up from the unique power that sustained its existence.
The doctor, Kwan, was inserting an IV of fluids into her bruised wrist. His pale face was tight at the vision of Valerie's arm, with her already burst veins and various needle scars. Valerie's father sat beside the bed, watching carefully. It was as if everyone expected her to suddenly disappear again.
Kwan's voice was clinical, even as his eyes focused on Valerie in worry. "Your nervous systems took a hard toll from what they did. You'll need to rest for several days and undergo some therapy to reset your neural pathways."
She nodded. Her actions were still twitchy in unnatural ways. "So it's not permanent?"
"You might have lost some feeling in your arms and legs." He pulled away from her, measuring how well he'd inserted her IV. As always, Valerie could take it like a champ. "You could have a few lifelong effects from it, like tingling or numbness."
She did not seem to respond for a bit, as if mulling over the concept that human beings had permanently scarred her. "Will it mess with how I fight?" she demanded. "Is there a fix for that?"
Her father gently grabbed onto her hand, then looked to Kwan. "Is there anything else we should worry about? Or is that the extent of it?"
Oddly, the doctor turned around and began messing through his notes. "There's not really a fix for dead nerves. They don't usually grow back. But we can retrain your mind to be in full control over your movements, so it shouldn't interfere with your fighting."
Valerie's face relaxed with relief.
Damon's face tightened. "And any other effects?" he pressed again.
"Commander, I've never seen this technology before. But if Valerie's made it this far, she's likely to recover." The answer was vague and diplomatic, with just enough space to not be a promise.
The father nodded slowly, his sharp eye missed nothing. He patted his daughter's hand, able to feel the occasional twitch of her fried nerves. "Well. I guess that's all we can hope for."
Valerie squeezed his hand back weakly, then said, "Kwan always fixes me up. I'll be fine."
Damon turned to face her, his expression haggard. He managed a tired smile. "I know, baby. But I—" His eye brightened once more with tears, and he stopped himself in fear that he would begin to cry again. As the Administrative Commander of Amity Park, he was supposed to be a fixed image. The strong one willing to send his child into battles—willing to let her die in the name of protecting Amity Park.
For the first time ever, the father knew what it was like to have a dead daughter.
The Commander did not know if he had the strength to go through it again—or watch her suffer from a crippling injury.
He tried to speak once more, but it came out as a shaky whisper. "I don't want you to be like me."
Valerie stared at her father, knowing full well the anguish on his face. She'd seen it when he'd first woken up in a hospital bed nearly ten years ago, his arm a bloody stump and eye stabbed out. It'd taken him years to come to terms with his limitations. A tight lump formed in her throat, and she tried to squeeze his hand harder. "I'll do what I have to. And if Phantom agrees to a ceasefire, then maybe this is the end of it."
Damon tensed up at the reminder that Dan Phantom, of all people, had found his baby girl and saved her for. The feeling was the equivalent of nearly falling off a cliff—complete with the heart stopping and hair-raising replay of what could have been. He stared at the flickering cape on the foot of the bed. "You honestly believe he will agree to a treaty? That him saving you was a political move?"
She gave it some thought, then nodded. "There's a lot of new ghosts roaming around. If we let him keep part of the Wastelands, we can expand Amity Park's borders and gain an ally against some powerful ghosts he considers enemies too." She hesitated. "I know it's a deal with the devil, but he's a devil we know, unlike Pariah Dark and the others."
The father looked over to Kwan and for a time said nothing. Then, after pressing his lips together, he said, "It's a proposal that'll have to go before the mayor and his advisors."
"What do you think?" Valerie pressed curiously.
The father stood up, patting her hand. "Because he saved you, I'll listen to him. But it'll take a lot of convincing to make me or the mayor sign an official treaty. I hope you don't mind my skepticism."
Valerie's full lips stretched. "No. That's exactly what I want."
Her eyes met his in a soft way.
Damon said, "Enough of all the hard talk. You're supposed to be resting, and I gotta get a cake for us to share since I didn't eat my last one."
Valerie's eyebrow raised. "What?"
"My birthday cake. You told me not to eat any before you got back. Well, it's all moldy now, and I say having you back means we're gonna need another cake."
The daughter exhaled in a mix of amusement and sadness. "Oh, dad. Did you even look at it? Did you see the turtles?"
"I saw the turtles." Through all the pain and fear he felt, the father managed a weak smile. "Now, what do you say to me tagging down Margie and seeing what kind of magic she can bake up tonight?"
Once her father left for his errands, Valerie forced herself to sit up a little higher in bed. Dan's cape unfolded a bit, an edge flowing over the side of her bed. "Kwan?" she asked hesitantly, voice almost a whisper. "Did you find out anything on the…other stuff?"
The doctor hesitated as he set down his notes and looked away from his computer. "Yes." He wheeled his rolling chair over to her bedside, speaking in a low tone in case anyone walked by. "I ran the tests and confirmed there wasn't any foreign DNA in you. You test negative for pregnancy. But I found something else I think you need to know."
The woman blinked. She stared at her old friend, feeling vulnerable. She knew he'd delivered dozens of babies and cared for as many female patients as male. He'd even seen her partially naked before, but not like this. Not for these kinds of reasons.
"What it is?" she asked.
Kwan looked at her softly, a grim line still at the corner of his mouth. "When I tested your hormone levels, something else was off. You had a few hormones way above normal. I did a little research on what it meant." He licked his lips in distant thought, as if trying to discern the correct words to use. "Those particular hormones, along with the scrapes you have, would suggest they were trying to harvest reproductive material from you."
Her face twisted. Then it began to grow red in a slow onslaught of horror and embarrassment. "What?" Her breath began to hitch. "Why?"
Kwan raised his hands. "You said they were scientists, right? People collect eggs for anything from conception purposes to biomedical research."
Valerie blinked, and then her vision began to blur. She suddenly felt even more violated than she'd expected to. Her shaking, scarred fingers sunk to her low abdomen and held there. "You mean, they took—?" Her voice trailed off, afraid to voice it.
The doctor said, "There shouldn't be any permanent effects. You'll get better over the next few days, and trust me, you have enough left over if you ever want children. But I think this would explain the pain you're having."
"But why?" she whispered. "They just wanted my battle suit—they d-didn't need to do that."
For a time, they sat there in silence as Valerie struggled to control her tears. Kwan gave her a pained look. "I don't know, Val. Maybe they wanted to know if your armor could be inherited?"
When she blinked again, tears slipped down her face. She squeezed her eyes shut. She sniffled hard, only for a darkness to cover her mind with decreasing self-worth—an awe of her own weakness. "I'm n-not some damsel in d-distress, dammit. I should've—I was so—"
Kwan grabbed onto her hand and squeezed gently. "Valerie. You have nothing to be ashamed of, ok? What these people did is not your fault."
She stared up at him miserably. "So I'm just supposed to be a victim?" she whispered. "Just a weak girl who can't protect herself without her suit?"
The man sighed. "They targeted you. I bet if they'd targeted Phantom, he would have needed just as much help. These guys had technology decades ahead of its time, right?"
If she thought about it, she could still feel the cool power of Dan Phantom sink into her skin. His knowing look—like he'd understood why she had demanded his touch on her lower abdomen.
She placed her hand over where Phantom had held his.
Suddenly, she felt cold as a new thought hit her.
"Phantom said they were designing super soldiers," she whispered, feeling lightheaded. Everything was beginning to click. If her battle suit had infected her so fully, then that meant any child she had could naturally reflect that ability. "Kwan. He said they were designing super soldiers."
A nausea began to work itself into her stomach, her abdomen cramping hard in pain. Her breath stalled. She snatched her hand away from Kwan and clamped onto the bedrails, eyes wide. "Using me. Oh my god. Oh my god."
Kwan blinked in surprise. "What, you think they used—?"
"—Yes," she said shakily. Her eyes watered once more as she began to struggle up. "I have to get out of here. I have to go back!"
The doctor stood up, a bit wide-eyed. He gently tried to steady her, holding pressure to keep her down. "Valerie," he said. His voice was firm but gentle. "There's nothing to go back to, remember? You said it yourself, Phantom destroyed the place. Everything."
Tears slipped down her face. Her expression carried a haunt that bordered on horror.
Atop the hill in the Wastelands, there was a pile of stones marked by a glass turtle. The chipped shell on its back had collected some of the night dew, and it shined brightly when the rising sun struck it, reflecting an array of rainbow colors against the stones.
Then suddenly, the glass turtle disappeared. The stones beneath it did not rustle, nor was there even a clink of the glass to be heard.
A few seconds later, it reappeared in the darkness of the woods, floating in mid-air. It hung there for a bit, then began to turn in disjointed circles.
A little boy ghost slowly materialized onto the human plane. His dark fingers twisted the turtle in his hands, and he narrowed his red eyes in curiosity. His flickering black hair curled around his ear and shoulder.
"Nnh," he hummed, tilting his head.
Experiment J4X had a memory of the object, before the Great Light. The humans wearing white coats had passed it between them while they checked his home. They'd woken him up to check his vitals and stick him with painful things.
The boy breathed in deeply, his bare ribs expanding hard against his skin. The turtle still carried the scent of ash and snow—an aura of a powerful ghost. A being like him.
With great reverence, J4X then pulled at some of the silver sash tied around his waist, and he rubbed the turtle against the material to make it shine more. He guessed that the flecks of dirt on it were not natural to its design.
Then the little ghost began to follow the fading trail of the powerful aura, curious.
A/N: Okay, lots of notes today! (Woohoo for fifty chapters of twisted relationships, ridiculous pseudoscience, and ethical insanity! And good god, did this latest installment get complicated.)
1) I would like to thank ZoneRobotnik for letting me borrow her Grim!Danny for the purpose of this storyline (although I may have slaughtered a few things about his powers). I thought her Grim!Danny was an awesome idea and was very honored that she was willing to share him. Her Grim!Danny appears in her own stories and has a tumblr as well. I hope you like what I did here, Zone! And thanks for waiting, like a year for me to get this story out, haha.
2) I would like to thank Lady Audentium for creating Deliverance fanart! Please go to my profile and take a look at her fantastic comic that visualizes a previous installment, Wardrobe Malfunctions. She deserves all the support and kudos you can give her! And I am very grateful for her work.
3) Tortuga is Spanish for "turtle." While it references Valerie's gift and cake to Damon, it also reaches back to a comment Dan made of Valerie earlier in the Deliverance collection—that she was like a turtle, with a hard shell (her battle suit) and a squishy inside (her human body). The reference appears in the Bloopers Reel Part 1.
4) J4X is a multiverse reference to Jax, which is also the name of Valerie and Dan's son in the Aftermath series.
All of this said, my next upload for this collection will be a Karma or Aftermath installment. Which one should I choose?
Please review with your thoughts, questions, constructive criticisms, or ideas! Thanks!
