Happy Friday, and happy belated Halloween!
So sorry about falling one week behind; I am a grad student, have mercy. Plus, there was a lot to figure out before I could write any more. There's a scene coming up in the next chapter which took two full days of drafting and settling logistics (you'll see), and it could have appeared in this chapter but didn't in the end, thus my hesitation to publish.
Long story short: Sh*t's gettin' real.
We are rapidly approaching the one-year anniversary of my first having published on FanFiction. I've been thinking about cross-posting on AO3 (meaning, creating an account on AO3 and re-publishing already-published chapters). We'll see if that happens.
Anyway, enjoy! Thanks again to my betas, RosyThorn and DPTTRocks!
General Notes:
"This is dialogue."
"This is alternative dialogue, meaning whispered or spoken from a distance such as on the phone."
'This is thought.'
This and THIS and *this* are emphasis. The *this* emphasis is more along the lines of the snarky or sarcastic.
[This is digital text, such as notifications on a computer.]
I do not own Danny Phantom or Young Justice.
Ch. 06 originally published: Friday, November 2, 2018
RECOGNIZED
Chapter 06
Shell Game
When Maddie had found [FAILURE: IRRECONCILABLE CONTAMINATION] flashing on her computer screen Saturday morning, she was shocked. It was a simple swab from a water glass; what contamination could there possibly be? Maddie took the swab and glass to a lab table to run some tests.
Imagine her surprise when trace ectoplasmic radiation could be detected. And this was a swab, and the contamination was measurable without molecular analysis. So on a hunch, she passed another swab through a desktop version of the ghost catcher. Maddie then grabbed a handheld scanner and passed it over the purified sample.
[NO ECTOPLASMIC RADIATION DETECTED]
"How very reassuring, I think not," Maddie muttered to herself. She merely earned a passive glance in her direction from Jack as he left to take Jazz to the store.
Maddie processed the purified swab for analysis and initiated the test once again. It would only be a few hours until the test would finish.
Only a few more hours until she'd know. Now to figure out that contamination issue. Perhaps it was residual contamination from working on projects in the kitchen? And it was on the glass and not in Danny's saliva? Yes. This sounded better. Horrifying, but better the entire household be a biohazard than her son be a walking Chernobyl.
Perhaps a hair sample from his hairbrush as a control sample…
…and a childhood blood sample from cryo-storage. That was reasonable…right?
"Fenton RV has left the property. Danny left on foot twenty minutes ago. House is quiet."
"Copy," Robin answered. He shot a line across the street and zipped to Danny's bedroom window.
'Huh. Unlocked.' He slipped inside and crouched down on the floor of the teenager's messy bedroom.
"INTRUDER ALERT. INTRUDER ALERT."
A defense system immediately engaged with red beacon lights flashing everywhere. Jack Fenton's voice repeated the alarm incessantly. When what appeared to be ectoplasmically charged gatling guns lowered from the ceiling, Robin crouched down, ready to jump out of the way of flying bullets.
"Anti-Creep Mode activated. Provide nominal override or die a painful death."
Seeing as he resembled Danny in almost every capacity, and Danny had been able to enter the zeta tube on his credentials, Robin shouted on a frenzied hunch, "Override: Daniel Fenton!"
For a suffocatingly long moment, all sirens silenced. The flashing red lights suddenly turned green, and the guns retracted into the ceiling. "Recognized: Daniel Fenton," the computer spoke, then said more jovially in Jack's voice, "Sorry about that, Dann-o! Have a great day!"
And the room once again looked as if it were just a normal teenager's bedroom.
Robin let out a long breath and stood upright once more. "That was interesting."
"That was CLOSE. As if we needed any more confirmation you guys look alike," Wally added over their comm link.
Robin rummaged around the room until he found a hairbrush on the dresser. He removed a large amount of the hair, just in case there was cross-contamination with Sam (Robin wouldn't be surprised, given how close Sam and Danny were proving to be.) and more testing was needed. He placed it securely in a ziploc baggie before reaching for the window.
"What are you doing home?"
Robin whipped around to find Maddie Fenton standing in the doorway. His jaw slackened slightly before he regained control of his senses.
"And in your old Halloween costume, no less!" she added and shook her head, a sentimental smile inching its way across her mouth. "I remember when you came home with that thing. Your father was so disappointed when you didn't want to go as Peter Venkman…"
Robin chuckled nervously. "I was just curious if it still fit. And it does!" he said.
"Didn't you say you were on your way to Tucker's to study?"
"Um…yeah, I was just about to leave."
"Wearing that?"
Robin looked down at his uniform—costume, in Mrs. Fenton's mind.
"At least take off the mask, or someone might mistake you for the real one."
Robin's heart stopped until Maddie lightly chuckled at her own joke. He nervously joined in. A shaking hand rose to his domino mask and hovered over the accessory. The hand dropped. "Actually, it took a while to get it to stay in place. I think I'll just leave it on."
"Nonsense, Danny. I won't have you leaving this house wearing a mask like a burglar."
She strode forward, and before Robin knew what was happening—'God, this woman has fast reflexes'—he was unmasked. Dick winced in pain from where the spirit gum had pulled at his face.
"Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry! I didn't know you were using spirit gum..." Maddie said. She caressed his cheeks and appraised the reddening skin.
Dick gulped and awaited his impending logistical doom once Mrs. Fenton recognized him. But, it never came. She simply frowned slightly, cocked her head to the side, shrugged and held out the mask.
"You look much better," she assured. "Get a move on, sweetie. You don't want to keep Tucker waiting!"
"I sure don't!" he agreed with a little too much enthusiasm. "See you later, Mrs.- uh, Mom."
"Just Mom is fine," she corrected with a twinkle in her eye.
Dick smiled and sped downstairs and out the front door. He waited until he was out of sight of the house before darting behind some trash bins. Kid Flash appeared moments later.
"That was even closer! Oh, man, I would have wet my pants."
"When you deal with the Bat every day, a middle-aged mom ripping off the one thing protecting your secret identity: Not scary."
The two boys laughed it off and fist-bumped.
"So you realize what this means, right?" KF asked.
"What?"
Wally grinned ear-to-ear. "Danny went as you for Halloween at some point in the recent past."
Robin flushed a shade of red similar to that of his uniform. He cleared his throat, took out the baggie of hair and handed it to Kid Flash. "Here. Can you run this to Batman for him to have analyzed?"
"Sure." KF put the sample away.
"I'm headed to Tucker Foley's for recon. Apparently they're studying."
"Ok, meet you there." KF dashed off to deliver the hair to Batman. Robin took to the rooftops to shadow Danny. Much to Robin's surprise, Danny had yet to arrive at the Foley's and showed no signs of appearing anytime soon. Robin instead found entertainment in hacking the city's traffic cameras to watch a ghost fight happening across town.
Lucius Fox lazily spun in his desk chair to face the windows. His 79th-flooroffice suite's balcony overlooking Gotham Bay seemed much more inviting than the expense reports cluttering his computer screen.
A midtone electronic bleeping caught his attention. Lucius' gaze fell on the computer screen where a security alert was flashing.
[Attention: SECURITY PROTOCOL OVERRIDE BW-1]
The lock on the sliding glass doors to the balcony clicked before the doors slid apart automatically. Within seconds, a harsh buzzing noise filled Lucius' ears as a drone dropped down outside and piloted itself into the room. It set itself down on the floor in front of Lucius' desk and cut its power, not before disturbing most of the loose paperwork in the room.
Mr. Fox sighed.
The top of the drone soundlessly slid open and began projecting a holographic image.
"When I developed the prototype of a long-distance, supersonic drone, this is not quite what I had in mind," Lucius drawled.
"I need some testing done immediately," Batman's visage replied. Another panel on the drone opened with a hiss. "DNA and chemical analysis on both. Cross-reference it with the RG-R data on file and see what comes up. This is beyond Ultra Top Secret."
"Isn't everything?" Lucius quipped, but the hologram was already gone. The aging scientist retrieved the samples from the drone and didn't look back as it flew itself away, the balcony doors shutting themselves behind it.
Leave it to English Literature homework to distract oneself from greater woes. Danny and Tucker trudged all afternoon through their group project analyzing "The Pre-Raisins of Vexation," as Tucker insisted on calling the Steinbeck classic as a form of rebellious disrespect for the mandatory assignment.
"If I have to overthink one more line of what's essentially filler text, I'm going to kill myself the rest of the way," Danny guaranteed from his sprawled position on the floor.
"I've developed a twitch every time I read the name 'Joad,' " Tucker said.
"Oh, quit being so melodramatic," Sam groaned. Her Skype window's auto-exposure accounted for her returning to her desk. "Besides, at least you guys finished the whole thing today. Trying to make any progress with Kwan is like getting a mental root canal."
"Now who's melodramatic?" Danny retorted. He sighed. "I guess I'd better walk home. I'm already gonna be late for dinner."
"Why not just fly?"
"Mom amped up the sensors again. She's been kinda paranoid and…weird lately," Danny explained. He righted himself and stretched. "I'd better just walk unless I want to be ambushed on my way home."
"Alright, see you later, Danny."
"See ya."
"Bye," Sam called.
Danny instantly knew something was wrong the second he walked out Tucker's front door. The street was quiet. He took an appraising look around and decided to just start on his way. He only made it past a few houses, however, before a group made their presence known.
"Hey, look, it's Richard Grayson!" Dash called mockingly. A group of A-Listers from the football team instantly surrounded Danny. "Oh, just kidding. It's his twin, Dick *Gayson!*"
Danny glared at the blond's evil cackle. "Come on, that's not even creative, Dash."
The bully feigned offense. "That hurts, Fenton. In fact, it's making me feel a little spiteful for how stupid you made us look at the soirée yesterday." Dash's grin induced fear.
"Oh…"
Dash leaned in close, his group of cronies hovering threateningly. "I'll give you a head start, Photocopy."
"Ahaha…." Danny laughed nervously, then ducked between Kwan and the linebacker before sprinting away at full speed.
Danny turned at the first alley. He lost his footing on some loose newspapers and tumbled to the ground. Slightly panicked, Danny scrambled to regain his footing and took off once more. It wasn't three seconds later when his breath swirled with an icy mist. Danny immediately looked around. "Oh, come on, not now!" he whined.
"Fenton just turned up the alley," Robin whispered. "The football players are right on him. Huh, looks like he dropped something…"
"Can you see what it is?" Kid Flash replied over their comms device.
"Not from here. I'll wait for them to pass. Are you ready to tail?"
"Yeah. Fenton's headed right this way anyway."
"Good." The football players stampeded past. "Clear. I'll go see what he dropped." Robin rappelled down the side of his chosen perch and darted over to the black object on the ground; it was Danny's wallet.
"Uh…hey, Rob?"
"Yeah?"
"This alley doesn't have another exit…does it?"
Dick shot his grappling hook to the roof of another house. "No, why?"
"There's no sign of Fenton."
Dick paused upon landing at the top. "What?"
"Just the jocks. Fenton's gone-HOLY CRAP!"
"Have you been made?"
"No! Phantom just flew by with, like, MILLIMETERS to spare, and now the jocks are chasing after him for an autograph."
Robin rolled his eyes. "Alright, follow him instead. Twenty bucks says we won't find Fenton now anyway."
"I'll take that bet. You DID see them both in the same place, after all."
"I'm not convinced," Robin replied and began rummaging through the wallet for information. "You stay on Phantom; I'll check out the wallet and see where it takes me. Maybe even to Danny."
"You got- Hey, babe. How you doin'?" Robin frowned when Kid Flash's voice turned sultry. "Don't mind me, just busy…bein' a superhero and all."
"Focus!" Robin barked. "Besides, you have a girlfriend!"
"Right…sorry."
The comms line went quiet. Robin continued to search through Danny's wallet until he found a business card for Axion Labs.
"Your guest has arrived, Mr. Masters."
"How very prompt," Vlad retorted without looking up from his computer.
Walt stepped aside to allow a man in a perfectly tailored suit to pass. Vlad pulled his gaze away from the screen. His frosty demeanor turned instantly hostile.
"Hello, Vladimir," the visitor greeted.
"Alexander Luthor. What a treat that you could drag yourself all the way out to this godforsaken backwater," Vlad growled. "Thank you, Walt, that will be all."
The assistant disappeared, shutting the door behind him. The room went into audial and visual isolation mode.
"You have been dabbling, Luthor," Vlad reprimanded. "I don't like dabbling."
"You haven't exactly been idle, have you, Vladimir?" Luthor retorted.
The afternoon golden hour came to a close as Robin stalked the perimeter of Axion Labs. His wrist computer ran a scan of the immediate environment. It detected an invisible electromagnetic energy field pulsating through the chain link fence. He smirked and scurried to a nondescript control box hidden in the brush.
Twenty seconds later, the energy field was disabled. Robin scrambled up a tree and sailed gracefully over the high fence. "Small-town security's a joke," he chuckled to himself.
[PERIMETER DEFENSES DISABLED]
Damon Gray sat up instantly. The notification only flashed for a moment since it wasn't processed as an alert. He harrumphed and typed in a command. When the exterior camera feeds opened on his screen, Damon scoured them for movement. All was quiet...
There! A blur, a shadow on the north lawn. It was definitely human but couldn't be identified at just a glance. The person's movements were swift, evasive, practiced.
"Hmmmm…" Damon muttered to himself and switched views. Sure enough, the figure somersaulted and flattened itself against the wall next to the rear door where the figure examined the entry keypad. Damon smiled. "Good luck getting past there, sweetheart." He reached for the button which would summon the security teams to converge on the location.
The room went dark before Damon could press the button. All of his Axion-bespoke systems were completely disabled and powered off. Damon jumped up and raced to the master control box. Before he could override the power loss, the entire security room rebooted as if nothing had happened. Damon, perplexed, returned to the screens and opened every single camera feed in the entire facility. It took a few minutes of watching the feeds closely, but he finally found the evidence he needed: a single distant moth crossing the screen in one of the hallways. It fluttered erratically towards the camera, until it disappeared.
And re-approached ten seconds later from its original position.
"Looped," he surmised and reached for the desk phone.
RING RING
Vlad's line of vision fell on the desk phone announcing an incoming call from the security office. He answered the phone with a growl, "What is it, Damon? I'm busy." There was a pause, then- "Let me have a look."
Vlad opened the incoming security feed on his computer screen and watched the fleeting footage of Axion's unannounced visitor. While a furrowed brow gave away his initial confusion, a small smile danced across Vlad's face once he realized who it was. "No, no, quite alright, I'll take care of it. Wait for further instruction." He hung up. "Well, Lex, it seems Cadmus' thorns are in everyone's sides now," he quipped and turned his screen to show just who was attempting to break into Axion.
Lex grinned ruefully. "Fortunately, we came prepared." Both men began contacting assistants. Once his call connected, Luthor simply said, "Nightwing."
Robin crept around another corner. The first underground level of Axion was virtually deserted. He continued searching below ground until he came to a storage room on sublevel three. Robin ducked inside and, much to his relief, found rows upon rows of filing cabinets. He began searching for archives relating to the past two and a half years.
Upon finding that fateful July file, Robin noticed a sudden drop in temperature and pressure change. He immediately stood and saw a tall stack of file boxes toppling from above the next row of cabinets. He gasped, but the stack buried him before he could get out of the way. Robin smacked his forehead against a drawer pull on the way down. A trickle of blood down his face was the last sensation he registered before blacking out.
Tracking Phantom down initially wasn't too difficult. Batman *borrowed*Fenton Works' satellite to track ecto-energetic activity around town to guide Kid Flash to him. It was not an easy job keeping up with the ghost boy, though; that much was certain. But for Kid Flash, it was far easier than the typical person. With infrared goggles and super-speed, it was merely a matter of not running into things while constantly watching the sky.
It all came to a head later that evening, though, when Phantom began battling a glowing green, talking panther near city hall.
'Good GOD, that thing is snarky.'
It seemed as if Phantom was getting nowhere, however, because the ghostly cat was just too quick on its feet and-
'…since when is it a ninja?!'
Kid Flash shook his head and saw an opening. The ninja dodged an attack from Phantom but left himself unstably perched on his back foot. KF darted in and swept his leg out from underneath him, sending the ghost tumbling to the ground. Before the visiting speedster could even get back to his feet, Phantom had trapped the aggressor inside his battered Fenton Thermos.
"Um…thanks," Phantom said uncertainly, landing next to Kid Flash. "Bertrand's always a pain."
"Happy to help!" Wally replied.
"What are you doing here in Amity? Haven't we had enough League visitors already?"
"Oh, y'know, I just like to lend a helping hand wherever I can."
"So I suppose this has nothing to do with Robin's interest in Danny Fenton?"
KF paled.
"Thought so," Phantom sighed. "Look, is there anything I can do to help you believe Fenton's not a player in whatever game you're playing?"
"Yeah, you know anything about Axion?"
"Apart from the fact that it's run by the devil incarnate? Not much. Why?"
"Vlad Masters has known associations with Lex Luthor. Lex Luthor has known associations with illicit organizations. And Masters has a borderline creepy interest in Fenton. So Fenton obviously has something they're all interested in."
"Okay first of all," Phantom scoffed and crossed his arms, "did you use a trampoline to jump to that conclusion? And second, there is nothing 'borderline' about Masters' creepiness."
"Let's hope Robin finds proof, then, for Fenton's sake."
"Yeah." Phantom did a double-take. "Wait, what? Where is he now?"
KF looked in the general direction of the facility.
Phantom groaned. "Axion has some of the best defense systems in the country and a moderately-vengeful head of security-slash-tech genius at its control. All of it runs under Masters' direct supervision."
"Rob's one of the best hackers around. I'm sure he'll get in and out without too much trouble?" Kid Flash weakly suggested.
"Oh, yeah?" Phantom crossed his arms. "When did you last hear from him?"
"It's only been-" he checked his watch. "…Shit."
"How long?"
KF cringed. "Three hours and 26 minutes since last contact." He tapped the comm device in his ear. "Come in, Robin. Are you there? …Rob?" To Phantom he confirmed, "Nothing."
"Stupid bird brain. Alright, come with me. I know a secret way in."
"Thanks. Wait…how?"
"Long story short, the security director's daughter thinks Danny Fenton is cute and a good person to vent to. Now come on, we're burning moonlight!"
Before too long, the Axion facility loomed over the pair of heroes. Harsh orange lights illuminated the perimeter of the building while strobing red lights reflecting off a helicopter's blades outlined the landing pad on the roof. A few guards patrolled the grounds with muscular Rottweilers at their sides.
"Alright, look, this place has tons of visible and hidden defenses, including anti-ghost measures," Phantom said. "But I know it pretty well. So you're going to have to trust me, okay? Because the only security hole is underground."
"Ok, cool, that shouldn't be a problem," KF answered and bounced in place while shaking his arms to loosen up.
"No, I mean, literally underground. Like we will have to go through the dirt to get past it."
"Sure, man. Gimme a shovel and I'll super-speed-dig."
"That won't be necessary." A smug grin made its way onto Phantom's face. "Do me a favor and try not to scream."
"Wh-"
KF found himself cut off as Phantom grasped his upper arm. All color was erased from the world, leaving only ghostly blue-white outlines and details to remain. The pair of heroes sank into the earth and blasted effortlessly beneath the perimeter fence. Expanses of grass whipped by overhead until they passed through a thick concrete foundation deep within the bowels of the basement. Phantom slowed them to a halt until they were gracefully hovering above the ethereal linoleum floors of a forgotten janitor's closet. As soon as Phantom's grip on Wally's arm released, color and light and depth and realism returned to his surroundings, and the reappearance of gravity brought him thumping softly to the floor.
"What the hell was that?!" KF whispered harshly.
"This place has layers and layers of invisible ghost shields, but they only enclose anything above-ground and inside the building," Phantom explained. "None of them penetrate beneath the surface. Valerie wouldn't shut up about that flaw for a month when she found out. ...A-apparently," he hastily tacked on to the end of his explanation. Phantom opened the door. "Now come on, we have to find Robin."
"Why don't you just keep us invisible the whole time and ghost us through the walls?"
"Uses a lot of my energy, and the cameras are full-spectrum anyway, so it wouldn't matter what wavelength we're at. Plus, Masters and the security head are both super-wary of ghosts, so any activity beyond my mere existence may trip the sensors, if our arrival hasn't done so already. Now, where would Robin be?"
"I dunno. He loves, like...research and data and whatever."
"Archives. Let's see, that's...sublevel three."
"How do you know that?!"
"Because I do. Let's go."
The two crept warily into the hallway and began searching. That is, they were searching until a security guard approached and Phantom made Kid Flash and himself invisible on instinct.
"GHOST ACTIVITY DETECTED. AUTOMATIC LOCKDOWN INITIATED."
Phantom cursed under his breath as soon as the computer finished its blaring announcement.
"Rob? Robin, come in, now!" KF practically begged of his communicator.
A single bright light.
Its brilliance assaulted Robin's eyes the moment he regained consciousness. Even his domino mask's automatic filters couldn't dim its strength enough. He felt heavy—very heavy—and shifted uncomfortably.
Trapped.
He was trapped. That's why he was so heavy. But it wasn't shackles or anything. Something was piled on top of him. He felt like he should be doing something, like getting up, assessing his surroundings, making sure no one had found him. Yet his brain felt foggy, like merely remembering his own name was too much effort. Robin pressed his palms into his eyes and rubbed hard, wincing under the unrelenting throbbing of his headache. What happened?
Robin finally dedicated some energy to shifting the weight holding him down. The rough cardboard items rubbed noisily against the fabric of his clothes, but they gave way without too much resistance. Once free, Robin pulled himself to a seated position, leaning against the row of cabinets for support. He let out a long breath from the surprising amount of effort it took to do so and began to think again.
'What's- Why the hell am I here? I must've gotten one hell of a head trauma.' The events of the evening slowly came back to him, and the toppled pile of file boxes suddenly made sense. He opened a camera setting on his wrist computer to check his appearance…
…only to find no blood or signs of significant injury.
'That's odd.' He shifted to a more comfortable position and felt a bulge in his chest pocket. A wallet; not his…
…probably.
He took out the ID and squinted at it, the lenses of his domino mask automatically scanning it for authenticity. It was definitely real, and it was definitely Danny Fenton's, and that was definitely Robin's face on it.
'Fenton? No...that doesn't feel right.' He scrunched his face in concentration, hoping that more clarity would come. Eventually, it did. 'Oh, duh, I'm here investigating Fenton. Stupid head injury...'
He shook his head to rid himself of any further confusion and put the wallet away for safe-keeping. It was then that his eyes fell onto an elastic rope-closed accordion folder resting on top of the file.
JULY 2016
"How convenient," Robin muttered to himself and gleefully picked it up. He spread his left hand's fingers apart and typed a command into the wrist computer. A laser-red matrix danced between the glove's digits and formed a single linear beam. He slowly passed it over the folder and glanced at the screen's progress bar.
[Analyzing…Analyzing…304 Pages Successfully Scanned]
Robin smirked and set the folder aside. He soon found August and September amongst the mess and scanned those as well. It was then that overhead red beacon lights came to life and his comm device crackled in his ear.
"Rob? Robin, come in, now!"
Robin frowned. "KF? Where are you? How long have I been out?"
"Couple hours, maybe. We're in Axion. Where are YOU?"
"Archives," Robin answered automatically and sprinted to the door. "Wait…'we'?"
"Tell him to get his butt in gear and get out of there!" Robin heard his own voice order from the other end of the channel. The Gothamite shook his head at Wally aligning himself with the target.
"Yeah, Phantom got me in. You've been out for hours, man! But, wait, we've got bigger problems. Phantom sort of set off an alarm and now every security guard in northern Ohio is chasing us!"
"Wasn't my fault!"Phantom whined in the distance. "That one guy showed up out of nowhere and I panicked!"
"Whatever, dude! Look, Rob, we're lost somewhere in the basement. Where are you?"
Robin waited as a squad of guards stampeded by, heading towards the northeast. He opened the door as soon as their footsteps receded.
"Also basement. I downloaded schematics of the building when I hacked security, so I'm sending them to you now."
"Got it," KF confirmed.
"Good. Ok, I just tripped the sensors in the northeast end of the hallway, so that should open up the southwest stairs for us. Meet me there in one minute."
"Copy."
Another squad of guards burst from the elevators forty feet down from him. Robin smiled somewhat evilly and whipped his eskrima sticks from their harnesses.
"Make it two minutes."
He went to work.
Damon Gray's live feed of the chaos on sublevel three proved to be quite the spectacle. The black-haired intruder easily plowed through his highly-trained security force, and the garishly-dressed redhead's combat skills certainly weren't unimpressive. But there was one camera feed from which he couldn't look away: one cataloguing the presence of a ghost in his allegedly ghost-proof facility. Perhaps he should listen to Valerie's gripes after all.
Nothing, though, could compare to the well of emotion rising up within the single father when he finally identified the ghost. He had prepared, updated, renovated, theorized for years on ways to defeat the punk whose presence had threatened Gray's standing at Axion multiple times.
And it looked like today could be the day he one-upped Danny Phantom.
Another ecto-energy sensor tripped at the opposite end of the basement level. Damon tore his gaze from the monitors. Damon propped his elbows on the desk and interwove his fingers, thoughtfully resting his chin on his knuckles as he assessed the situation.
'That's the opposite direction of Phantom's progress, sooooo…'
He looked at a cyan-tinted holographic model of sublevel 3 with blue dots representing security personnel. All ghost shields integrated into the walls were active, meaning Phantom would need a footpath out just like a normal intruder.
And then Damon's eyes fell on something in the floor plan far from where the sensors had tripped.
"Proceeding to the northeast corner, sir," a team leader informed over their secure channel.
"Negative," Damon replied. "Redirect to the southwest stairs. I've got a hunch."
"A hunch, sir?"
"Just do it! I'll meet you there. Go, now!" Damon stood and rushed to his biometrically-secured weapons cabinet.
"Augh, ah, oh, god!" Phantom cried out and writhed on the floor in pain. An ecto-weapon charged above him.
"Did you think we wouldn't take precautions against overshadowing, ghost punk?" the security guard growled. He aimed his weapon at Phantom's chest.
Just as the rifle was about to release its first blast, Kid Flash flung Phantom into the air. As he arched upwards, KF elbowed the weapon out of the guard's hands in close range and, with a burst of super-speed, struck the guard's nose with the heel of his palm. The man cried out in pain and flew backwards from the force, leaving room for KF to catch Phantom and momentarily cradle him in his arms.
"You okay, dude?"
"I will be, as soon as you stop holding me like a hurt puppy," Phantom barked.
Kid Flash rolled his eyes and let Phantom drop to the floor. Phantom's flight kicked back in before he could land. "You're welcome," the speedster said in reply.
"Where's Robin?" Phantom asked.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than a single guard slammed into the wall from around the nearest corner. Robin emerged with a victorious smirk and eskrima sticks in hand. "We ditchin' this place or what?" he asked.
A door behind Phantom and Kid Flash burst open. "I'd say 'or what,' " a deep voice replied.
The trio of heroes turned around to face the latest obstacle: an infuriated Damon Gray. "Oh, come on," Phantom moaned. Two more squads of security came from either direction in the hallway, meaning they were surrounded with ghost shields preventing them from making an easy escape.
"Your unwanted and destruction-oriented visits are getting tiresome, Phantom," Gray said. He cocked a weapon of his own, a seemingly standard handgun, and raised it at them. "These are normal bullets with ectoplasmic cores. Your friends here will be hit for sure. But you? It hasn't been tested on ghosts yet, but being that it was developed under my personal supervision, you've gotta ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, ghost punk?"
"Okay, reign it back in, Eastwood," Phantom drawled. He raised his hands in surrender, and Robin and Kid Flash followed suit. "We haven't taken anything, so why don't you just put that gun down and we'll be on our merry way?"
Damon fired a warning shot into the ceiling.
"Okay, okay, cool it!" Kid Flash exclaimed. "We'll play nice, won't we Rob?"
"Of course we will!" Robin replied with a reassuring smile and repositioned his right hand into a thumbs up. The smile fell into a cocky grin, and he curled in his thumb, pressing a hidden trigger in the structure of his glove.
A string of nondestructive explosions went off in the direction from which Robin had come. The Axion staff crouched down on instinct, including Damon. Phantom used the opportunity to jump Mr. Gray and nab his gun. Kid Flash then bolted up the stairs while Phantom grabbed Robin and carried him up through the air. Within seconds, they were outside and phasing through the ground under the fence, leaving a chaotic Axion in the wake of their escape.
It really should not have been a surprise. At this point, everything in her screamed something was off about Danny. It had been—though much more silently—since the minute he was released from ICU after the stillbirth scare. But years of therapy, years of denial, years of unconditionally doting on Danny as her son had all but silenced those thoughts. Until…
[FAMILIAL MATCH NEGATIVE. BEGIN SEQUENCING OF CONTROL SAMPLE CODE 'Fenton_Daniel-James_Kindergarten'? Yes/No]
The front door slamming startled Maddie, and her 'World's Best Mom' mug of tea slipped from her grasped. She helplessly watched the mug—and the sentiment—shatter to pieces.
"Mom, I'm home from Tucker's!" 'Danny' called from upstairs.
Maddie turned back to the computer screen.
[FAMILIAL MATCH NEGATIVE. BEGIN SEQUENCING OF CONTROL SAMPLE CODE 'Fenton_Daniel-James_Kindergarten'? Yes/No]
[Yes]
[SEQUENCING INITIATED. PROGRESS 0%]
"Coming, sweetie!" she called.
It was a crowded street; nothing special, but nothing like home. The girl could barely understand two words of French but thought she could learn it within a couple months by just *shadowing* the people of Paris. She wasn't quite sure what it was, but something deep inside her drew the girl to Île-de-la-Cité, almost as if the tiny island were a part missing from her soul.
She found herself in the Shakespeare and Company Café just across the river and, with broken French—"Je…uuuhhhh, 'jhay' voulais—no, voudrayz'?" " 'Voudrais.' " "Voudrais…uuuunnnnneeeeee…cafe? Seel voo play?" " 'Je voudrais un café, s'il vous plaît?" "Yes, that." "Bien sûr, mademoiselle. And we do speak English, you know?" "Now you tell me." —ordered a coffee. She slouched into a corner table and started people-watching out the window. It wasn't long before a newspaper stand just outside caught her eye with its display of Le Monde's latest headline:
'Scandale chez Wayne: La découverte d'une seconde Richard Grayson'
Most eye-catching for the girl, though, was the presence of a familiar face just below the text. Or rather, very nearly her face, were she a boy. She slowly set the empty coffee cup down and stood from her seat.
"What have you been up to, cuz?"
Thank you for reading once again, and thank you as well for your patience!
This week's Easter eggs:
- 1979 was the year Lucius Fox first appeared in the Batman comics, thus the reason why I gave him an office suite on the 79th floor.
- Damon Gray's short monologue is a paraphrasing of Clint Eastwood's iconic quote from Dirty Harry.
Loving your feedback as always! Hearing your reactions and input really helps me better structure the chapters/plot and even helps me catch plot holes before they develop! Plus, constant email notifications from FanFiction keeps me motivated. So thank you, readers; you're beautiful.
Chapter 07 is quite a bit further along than 06 was at this point last month, so it should be published on schedule. If you just can't wait till then to get more of my writing (and, let's be honest...who can? *diva hair flip even though my hair isn't nearly long enough*), I have a number of Danny Phantom oneshots as well as one Young Justice fic already on my profile!
One final note: If anyone ever ends up making fan art for this fic (not that I expect it, per se), PLEASE let me know because I would love to see it!
-hiimian