Warning: Spoilers for The Ultimate Enemy.
Danielle flew lazily over the town borders, enjoying the breeze without a care in the world. She smiled when she saw the buildings; despite whatever else she told her cousin and his friends, she actually did like visiting Amity. It was small, and quiet, and a great place to just hang out in. Of course, not many people might believe the ghost-infested streets as anything even remotely "quiet", but compared to Dani's adventures and the trouble she got into, which she would never breathe a word of to Mr. Over-Protective, the town was a haven.
Dani half-expected to see some kind of ghost fight as she flew around, but there was only the usual traffic and pedestrians going about their business. She knew a lot of the paranormal activity happened during twilight hours, but she'd seen and heard enough about the ghosts who just wanted to make life interesting all the time, day or night. She guessed she shouldn't be too disappointed, because it meant she would get to actually talk to her cousin instead of just fighting with him. There would be other times.
And speaking of which. Dani had made sure to come in the afternoon on a school day. No matter what her cousin thought, she actually was a nice half-human half-ghost and wouldn't show up on a Saturday and intrude on whatever his plans were for the weekend.
She wanted to surprise him, like she always did, but as she continued to zigzag around searching, she didn't find any sign of him, human or ghost. She hung in the air over a street lamp, debating whether to try his house, Tucker or Sam's house, or even calling him. Surprise or not, she really didn't want to put in that much effort. She shrugged to herself, pulling out her phone.
She perched on the lamp as she flipped open her phone, scaring some pigeons and a random person walking below her. She didn't pay him any mind as she dialed, though she kept an eye on the street just in case her presence was detected by those she'd rather not see.
Instead of ringing like it always did, the line went straight to voicemail. Dani raised an eyebrow before trying again, thinking maybe he was using it or something. Again, only the pre-recorded message greeted her, her cousin's awkward tone making her roll her eyes. She sat for a moment, wondering if she should try a third time, before deciding it wasn't worth it and closed the phone. She didn't have Sam or Tucker's number, which she now regretted because it meant she had to just keep looking around. She grumpily stuffed her phone in her pocket and lifted from the lamp.
"You better be doing something really important to turn it off, Danny," she mumbled to herself.
She headed towards Fentonworks, knowing it was as good a place as any to find anyone. On the way, she scared another person jogging down the sidewalk, and she decided to just fly invisibly for a while. These people weren't used to her, and she figured they hadn't seen her fight with her cousin much, or maybe at all. Oh well.
When she got to her cousin's house, she expected a lot of things. Noises, weird glowing, or anything really. It was never a dull moment with Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, which gave Dani endless material for making fun of her cousin.
What she didn't expect, or even imagine in a hundred years, was for the place to be dark. The command center was gone, and the bright neon sign which probably gave everyone in a three-mile radius a headache was completely off, which was weird because it was always on, 24/7. Dani frowned, crossing her arms.
"Weird," she muttered to herself. "Okay then."
She flew over to the front door, not bothering to knock or even try to open it and instead phasing right through. She had to blink her eyes to adjust to the dimness, and she hesitantly called out. "Danny? Jazz?" No one answered her.
She flew up to the second floor, poking her head into all the rooms, which were just as dark and empty. She then flew down to the basement, a last-ditch hope that maybe she wasn't just seeing things. A cold and gray portal greeted her, and dust swirled in the air when she used some ecto-energy to illuminate the workstations.
A thought occurred to her about what could have happened. Dani refused to entertain it. She refused to be worried. She hadn't called ahead, so maybe they were just on vacation and were saving power by turning everything off. But she knew the Fentons long enough that doing the "normal" thing wasn't exactly their thing. With an annoyed huff, Dani launched out of the house, definitely not going any faster than she had been before. No way.
She went to Tucker's house first, peeking in his bedroom and the kitchen for any sign of him, the most likely places he'd be. She only saw his mom, quietly cutting up vegetables. She then tried Sam's mansion, trying the theatre, the bowling alley, and every other place she could think of that they'd be. But as far as she could tell, the house was empty. Dani angrily flipped her phone open, trying her cousin again. She was only half surprised when it went straight to voicemail again.
She zoomed through the town, and when she found the building she was looking for, she phased straight through it, speeding down the halls for any sign of Danny, or his friends, or even his sister. No way they moved. He would've told her. If he ever turned his stupid phone on.
She stopped near one of the classrooms she knew he took, coming up empty. To be fair, it was the only class she knew he took. School was over by several hours, and only a few adults lingered. Dani went into the classroom, but it was completely empty. She floated in the middle of the room, thinking. Every place she'd tried had only come to a dead end, and she was starting to run out of places. If she didn't find him soon, she didn't know what she'd do.
A noise outside interrupted her thoughts. It sounded like voices. She quickly swung into the hallway, but her hopes were dashed when she only saw some teachers walking together. She almost sighed before realizing she was invisible. One last cursory sweep of the classroom, and she was gone.
It had only been a few minutes, and the sun was still high in the sky, but to Dani, it felt like hours had passed. She went from one spot to another, checking all of Danny's hangout spots and then some. She didn't know how long she spent practically combing the town for him. With each stop, each pause to scan the area for a head of dark hair, her anxiety increased. If she didn't find something soon, she was going to lose it.
But it turns out she could have answered all of her questions easily right from the start. All it took was going to what was probably her cousin's favorite place in the whole town. It was one of the first places he'd taken her to, and a place they usually ate at whenever she visited. It was one of her favorite spots too, though she would never tell Danny that. Anyway, she figured he knew since they liked all of the same things for obvious reasons. She didn't know why she didn't just go there first. Maybe she unconsciously knew it wouldn't be good. Maybe there was something in her that knew once she did there would be no going back.
She saw it long before she even got there, but she had to get up close to believe it. And it wasn't the building. Well, it was, but that only distracted her for a little while. No, it was the statue near the charred ruins. Five figures were sculpted around a pedestal, which had a plaque below it.
Dani stared at the words, uncomprehending. Gone, but not forgotten. Gone. Not forgotten. Her thoughts all crashed to a halt, all possible ideas. She looked around at the empty parking lot. Something was missing. Someone was missing.
She fumbled for her cell, turning her back on the ruins. The action shouldn't have taken a second thought, but she struggled just to flip open the screen, dialing three separate times before she got the right combination of numbers. Without waiting for the result, she took off again, flying high over the city.
"Pick up," she whispered. The voicemail played again, and she growled and tried again. The whole flight to the manor she dialed the number, her core pulsing faster and faster with each sound of dead air. "Pick up you idiot," she yelled into the speaker, clapping the phone shut as her boots hit the grassy lawn outside the manor. Danielle looked up at the windows, looking for any sign of occupancy, but there was no indication Vlad was home.
Danielle forwent any manners, in no mood to be civil, and phased directly through the front door. She wasted no time rushing through each and every room, searching for any sign of Vlad or her cousin. Every room was empty, so she descended through the floor into the lab he surely had below. It took a minute to find a room, but she finally came out into some kind of storage room. Seeing nothing of interest, she went through another wall into what must have been the main lab.
But as she stopped to scan the room, she wondered how. It looked like a tornado blew through the room, turning the tables and chairs over, scattering the tools all across the room, and shattering every lightbulb, although Danielle's ghostly eyes gave her a dim vision. Dark stains burned patches of the floor and walls in varying sizes, and the desk of computers was completely smashed.
It took Danielle a full minute to process the scene, and another to notice the figure at the far end of the room. He was slumped on his knees in front of the back wall near one of the bigger marks, head bent low and arms at his sides. Danielle didn't know what was going on, but she had an idea who'd done this. She didn't know how to begin guessing, however, why Vlad was in his human form.
Taking one step forward, Danielle spoke. "Vlad."
With his back to her, she expected him to stand, to turn around, or even make some kind of comment about how she hadn't snuck up on him. But he didn't. He merely stayed the way he was. He couldn't have misheard her; her voice boomed in the uncomfortable silence of the room.
"Vlad," she tried again, taking more steps toward him, slowly. "Vlad, what happened here?" He still didn't answer her, and somehow that made Danielle more frightened than if he had. Only when she reached him did he finally indicate he was still alive, but only by turning his head. If she hadn't been so close, she wouldn't have even seen it.
He muttered something. It was too quiet for even her sensitive ears to pick up.
"What?" she whispered.
"I said go," he said, louder but with the slowness of a dying man.
Danielle shook her head sharply. "No, I need to know what happened. Why is your lab destroyed? Why is everyone in Amity gone? Where is my cousin?"
Wild eyes looked up at Danielle, making her take a full step back. "Gone," he said. "All gone."
"How?"
"Gauntlets. Split in half. Only one half remains."
"You… what did you do?" Danielle shouted. "What did you do to Danny?!" She clenched her fists, summoning green energy. It illuminated the ground in two large circles, throwing Vlad's haggard features in sharp relief. He looked awful. But Danielle didn't notice. She was too busy staring at the spot right in front of Vlad, the bright glow finally giving her a good look at the burnt patch in front of him, which wasn't just a burnt patch. It was also a too-small bundle, curled up in a futile attempt at protection which hadn't helped in the slightest.
The room spun in circles, staggering Danielle back several feet from the man in front of her, nausea curling in her stomach and a painful fist tightening in her chest. Ectoplasm roared in her ears. The ground vibrated, an otherworldly light shining somewhere off to the side. Danielle couldn't tear her eyes away, and for the first time in her life, she didn't know what to do. Her balance rocked as her world started to finally fall apart.
She only noticed the presence because Vlad looked at her, and then his eyes shifted behind her. His face went impossibly whiter, his whole body slouching protectively over the body, minutes or maybe hours too late.
Danielle turned around. In the place of where her cousin, her brave, kind cousin, once stood, she met a familiar and yet unfamiliar gaze. He had blue skin, red eyes, and fangs. His hair was still the same color, but it was a white-hot flame on top of the head, hungrily reaching for oxygen.
The light of her ectoplasm fizzled out, overshadowed by the bright, sickly aura coming off of the being in front of her that looked an awful lot like Phantom.
"Danny." Her voice was a sob, more of a crackling sound than an audible word. She desperately wanted to reach for him, to pull him into an embrace and never let him go-never let him be hurt again-but her feet were stuck to the ground, and her limbs wouldn't obey her brain's command to move. He looked at her with something between amusement and anger, a look she had seen on every other ghost she'd fought. But not Danny. Never Danny.
This wasn't Danny.
This… this was someone else. Something else.
To do such a horrible thing to your other half. Only a monster would.
The thing in front of her smirked at her anguish. "Did you miss me, cousin?" Even its voice was alien.
"Please, not her too," Vlad croaked behind them. Danielle couldn't even look back at him.
The creature cocked its head, staring at the helpless human and then waving a hand dismissively, unimpressed. "You've got a lot to learn about the way things work now, old man. And as for you," he turned his attention back on Danielle, "I think you could be useful to me. After all, you've got all the powers, but you also have more backbone than the other one ever did."
Danielle only stared, uncomprehending. She tried to stifle the sound of her sobs with a hand over her mouth, her vision going blurring in and out, and she realized belatedly there were tears streaming from them.
"We'll just have to get rid of that pesky human side of you."
That did it. The realization of what exactly it was talking about finally cleared the deafening noise in Danielle's ears. She leapt up out of reach, flying up to the ceiling near the back wall. It reached for her, but she threw it off guard and was too far away. She turned and sprinted at full speed, phasing through the whole house until she was outside, but she didn't turn back. She didn't dare.
Danielle flew on and on, never stopping or even slowing down. Even when she knew she wasn't being followed, still she flew, as if she could outrun the agony that had so suddenly and so horribly crashed down on her.
Maybe if she didn't stop, she wouldn't have to acknowledge it. She was alone. That thing didn't count. Vlad... Vlad didn't matter. As long as she kept flying, it wouldn't catch up to her. She tried to convince herself that she wouldn't eventually tire, that her body wouldn't shut down from lack of rest. She tried to convince herself that if she just never stopped, it would all be a lie. Amity wouldn't have lost its most important members. Vlad would still be his evil, villainous self. And her cousin wouldn't be…
Somehow, that last thought was the driving force of truth hitting home. It hissed, cold and harsh, that nothing anyone ever did would change what had happened. What she saw was seared into history forever. Someday it would be lost, long in the past. Lost to everyone but one.
Danielle stopped.