Hello! Hope you readers are doing well! Sorry about the delay with this chapter - I meant to get this out at the beginning of July, but sadly life got in the way. Good news is everyone's healthy again and out of hospitals. I hope to get another chapter to you by September by the latest. Thanks to all that have reviewed and followed this story so far - I hope I can live up to your wishes!
All adults seemed taken aback by this development, before jumping into action. Jack ran toward Plasmius with a yell, tackling to the ground. Plasmius was dazed for a second before dodging a punch by the enraged father. He flew up slightly, only to be jumped kicked by Maddie. Danielle ran toward the action, ready to help the older Fentons if Vlad decided to use his ghost powers.
Plasmius, remembering said ghost powers, let out a series of ecto-blasts, causing the trio of fighters to go on the defensive. Danielle countered with her own ecto-blasts, but only seemed to block the older hybrid's attacks.
As the battle went on, Danny watched on helplessly as his loved ones took on his archenemy. Steeling his resolve, he stopped struggling with Sam and Tucker and caught their eye.
"Let me go," he whispered directly, eyes drawn back to the battle in front of him. Plasmius threw Maddie into Jack and both Fenton parents slammed into a wall. Danielle blasted Vlad with an ecto-blast. Danny noted the beats of sweat on her face. She can't keep that up for much longer.
"Not a chance," Tucker replied. "Unless you have some magic plan where you can use your powers while as Fenton and Phantom, then I don't see a way out of this without some serious explaining." Danny caught his eye and Tucker looked back incredulously. "No. You are not. Please tell me you aren't."
Sam's eyes widened slightly in realization before letting go of the struggling ghost boy and pointed her index finger at him threateningly. "Don't you dare try and use that power," she accused. "Don't be stupid – you are in no condition and you can't control it yet."
Danny looked at her, then at Tucker. "When have I ever stopped because a plan was stupid?" he asked, a small smile on his face. The smile dropped as Maddie nailed a roundhouse kick to Plasmius, who dropped Danielle like a ragdoll. "It's the only way out of this mess. If it backfires, then I can just do the hero thing and we go home after I kick Plasmius' butt." He turned to his friends with a spark of determination in his eyes. "Besides, it's our best shot. Let me go."
A moment passed before Tucker sighed in resignation and stepped back against the wall furthest away from the action. Sam stayed in front of Danny for a couple more seconds, before her head dropped in acceptance. "If this backfires," Sam started, getting up, "I will lock you in the thermos with the Box Ghost. For a week." Danny flashed a smile in response before closing his eyes.
We really gonna do this?
No turning back now.
Danny crouched down with one hand in front of him. Careful to hide his face, he summoned his ghost powers. Danny felt the gold bracelet on his wrist spark to life with ecto-energy mixing with the familiar rush of his powers. Concentrate Fenton, Danny thought to himself through the pain. He searched deeper in himself, ignoring the chaos around him and focused on finding the raw energy he used for the ecto-storm. There! His eyes, both blue and green, shot open as he saw Phantom materialize in front of him. He looked up into the face of Phantom, mirroring his stance just inches away from his face.
"It worked!" Both Fenton and Phantom replied. Fenton then scrunched his eyes and curled his wrist as ecto-energy continued to course through him.
"We don't have a lot of time," Fenton told his ghost half. "I won't last long."
"Don't worry," Phantom assured, turning to the battle. "We won't need long." Phantom's green eyes darkened as the large circle with his emblem appeared at his feet. His eyes furrowed and the emblem burst out with ecto-energy. The blast went through Jack, Maddie and Danielle, hitting Plasmius with full force. The stunned ghost was blasted out of the cell, breaking through the ghost shield in the process.
"Phantom!?" Maddie exclaimed, looking between her son and her ghostly nemesis. She attempted to run across, but a hand stopped her. She looked down to see Danielle blocking her path.
"Wait," she said. Maddie noticed she was breathing hard. "He's trying to help."
Another circle appeared at Phantom's feet, this time spreading across the floor of the cell, over the walls and against the human bars of the cell. Phantom had encased the cell with green ecto-energy.
Plasmius, now recovered, sent a series of blasts toward Phantom, but the shield absorbed all the attacks.
"Plasmius," Phantom said, his voice portraying no bravado or sarcasm that was usually present in his voice.
"Learned a new trick have we?" Plasmius replied bitterly, planting his feet on the floor and crossing his arms. A sarcastic smirk appeared on his face. "Tell me – form duplication or long range teleportation?" Phantom glared in response. Behind him, Danny Fenton started to shake in strain. "No matter. While impressive, it changes nothing."
"I won't let you hurt them," Phantom told him. Only Sam and Tucker noticed Fenton's mouth as well.
Plasmius looked at the cell's surroundings and the occupants, his mind racing with calculations, before replying. "Perhaps," he said with a grimace. Realizing he could do nothing in the moment, Plasmius flew up into the ceiling and out of sight.
Phantom's eyes returned back to his normal green, swaying slight. "I can't believe that worked!" he said excitedly, before a small frown appeared. He spun around to Fenton to see his human half shaking uncontrollably. "You okay?"
"Peachy," Fenton grunted, a hint of sarcasm glimmering through the pain. "Bracelet. Off. Now."
Phantom started to reach down towards the bracelet, only to stop when a large hand grabbed his arm. He looked up into the angry face of Jack Fenton.
"Do not touch my son," he said angrily, pulling the ghost away. Phantom planted his feet firmly in place, pulled his arm out of his father's grasp and frowned slightly.
"Fine. But we need to get that cuff off him. Or at least stop it from electrocuting him." Phantom furrowed his brow slightly in thought. "We need something to block the ecto-energy; glass… or rubber or something. Something that's meant to withstand a ton of ghost energy."
Sam coughed slightly. "Like… I don't know…. a glove of a ghost hunter?" Phantom, Jack and Maddie all looked down at their gloved hands. Maddie moved towards her son in quick strides while Jack quickly took off one of his gloves. She grabbed the offered glove and with quick precision started to thread the edges of the glove underneath the sizzling bracelet. Once complete, the effect was instantaneous; Fenton's arms gave way and collapsed into his mother's arms, gasping in exhaustion. The bracelet still sizzled against the rubber, but could no longer hurt him.
Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief as they gathered around the fallen teen. Jack eyed Phantom warily before nodding to him in thanks. Phantom acknowledged, and locked eyes with his friends. Sam was glaring at him in disapproval while Tucker simply tried to reassure him of the decision.
"We still need to figure how to get that off him," Tucker said. "Plasmius took all my tech, I can't hack into it if I wanted to."
"And he's probably accounted for your powers," Maddie mused, looking to Phantom with a hint of bitterness. "I assume that was your blast that made our restraints came off." She turned to Danielle, "Or was that you?"
Danielle held up her hands in defence. "Hey, if I could do something like that, I wouldn't be in this mess."
Phantom nodded. "Knowing Plasmius, he made sure my ecto-signature couldn't take off… his… cuff. The blast I sent out was stronger than he could anticipate. And the shield I put up should have stopped any of the ecto-energy surging through it." The cell was quiet; only the beeping of the lab and Fenton's gasps for air heard as they thought of what to do next. Tucker moved to speak first. Turning to Danielle, he awkwardly opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it. Danielle gave him a quizzical look before he finally spoke.
"He might have accounted for Danny's – uh – Phantom's powers… but what about yours?"
Phantom turned to look at the ghost girl. Feeling his gaze, she shuffled her feet slightly before answering. "Maybe… I mean, our ecto-signatures are only slightly different. It's the only reason I was more stable – different gender and ecto-signature irregularity."
"That might be enough," Jack said, looking helplessly at his son. Fenton, by some force of nature, was still conscious but had his eyes closed.
"Plasmius is smart though," Phantom replied. "Intangibility won't work. Do you think you can precisely blast off that bracelet? Are you up for it?"
Danielle looked at him in understanding and swallowed. "I can try."
"Wait a minute!" Maddie exclaimed, holding her son firmly. "I'm not letting you throw an ecto-blast at my –"
"Mom," Fenton whispered, cutting through his mother's outburst. Everyone turned to Fenton as he attempted to sit up, eyes still closed. Maddie braced him while Phantom awkwardly looked anywhere but his human half. "It's okay."
Maddie deflated a bit and turned toward her husband for some guidance. He looked back at her and sighed, nodding his head. She could see the hundreds of questions she had mirrored in his eyes. "Okay," she said softly. She was out of her depth.
Danielle knelt down to Fenton, a slight frown of doubt on her face. "You sure about this Danny?"
Fenton nodded, opening his eyes slightly and a small playful smile on his face. "Just don't miss." Danielle's hand lit ablaze with ecto-energy, and with her index finger, she shot a small stream of ecto-energy toward the cuff. It lit up in green energy, before opening and clattering to the ground. Jack's glove fluttered to the ground behind it, as Fenton brought his hand up and rubbed his wrist. "Thanks." Danielle smiled in response.
Fenton sat up, accepting his mother's support, and turned towards his ghost half. Phantom stared back, trying to think of something to say. They both knew that the next conversation was crucial if their secret was to remain so. "So," Fenton started, "Wisconsin or Colorado?"
Phantom looked around the lab, aware of his parents' brainstorming a ton of questions for him. Or for his human half. Ugh, still so weird. "Wisconsin I think," he said. "He couldn't have rebuilt Colorado so quickly."
"True," Tucker replied, joining into the conversation. "And from you've told us, Wisconsin is large enough to house this lab."
Maddie looked between her son and Phantom, watching the interactions like the seasoned researcher she was. "And how, precisely, do you all know that?" She asked. Maddie felt Danny tense slightly while Phantom surprisingly cringed as she continued. "And how did you get here Phantom? Why does Plasmius want Danny? Why does Danielle have similar properties of a ghost? Or even an ecto-signature for that matter?" The cell was silent for a few moments before it was broken.
"It's pretty simple actually," Danielle said lightly. Maddie couldn't tell if she was about to lie, going to tell the truth or cover up for the teens. "Plasmius is an evil ghost who experimented with clones and mixed Phantom's DNA with Danny's. I'm their half-ghost clone."
The cell fell silent again; the teens in the room sat with jaws dropped while Maddie and Jack stared at each other.
"You're what!?"
:-=-:
Jazz hummed happily as she turned into the FentonWorks driveway. She had spent over 4 hours in the library researching ghost envy (not that she needed it after the fight with Freakshow last month) and felt secure in her writing abilities to gain admission into whatever school she chose. She smiled fondly at the Fenton Assault Vehicle as she passed it and entered the house.
"I'm home!" she called out. The house was dark, only the light from the sunset and streetlights were peaking through. Odd, she thought. The car's here. Jazz made her way to the kitchen, a sense of dread pooling in her gut. "Hello!?" she called again. "Mom!? Dad?!"
Jazz entered the kitchen and gasped. The kitchen table was broken in two and there was a large scorch mark on the floor. "Danny!" she yelled out, running down the stairs into the lab. Please not be on a dissection table, please don't be on a dissection table! Jazz skidded to a stop at the edge of the stairs and gasped.
The lab was a wreck; many inventions lay broken and scattered across the floor. A couple of the lab benches were turned on their side with blast marks all over them. Jazz gulped as she took in the destruction. She knew that Danny would have taken the fight outside if he could help it, but her parents were limited human tactics. If they were in the mix, Danny would not have had much of a choice.
"Okay," Jazz said into the empty lab. "No Mom and Dad. No Danny. No Sam and Tucker." Jazz started to pace. "Clearly some sort of battle happened. How to figure out what…. The tapes!" Jazz stopped and ran up to the main floor, tore through the second and reached the Ops Center. Running on adrenaline, she leaped into the first chair she could find and started to comb through the surveillance tapes of FentonWorks. She had made it her mission to review the security tapes since finding out her brother's secret and deleting the ghostly things that would reveal his extra-curricular activities. Sure enough, Jazz found the footage from earlier that afternoon and watched as Plasmius took her brother and family hostage.
Jazz reviewed it a few more times; taking in all the information she could before she started pacing again. "Chessehead has everybody," she said to herself. "Danny hasn't revealed Phantom. Danny won't reveal Phantom if his life depended on it because of Mom and Dad. Danny needs help. Vlad has more than one base." Jazz paced up and down three more times before stopping. "So, it looks like it's up to me to save them!"
:-=-:
It took Jazz almost an hour to get herself ready to leave – most of that time looking for the boo-merang that her brother hid in his room. She started the Spector Speeder and flew it up and out of FentonWorks. When she was above the Fentonworks sign, she opened the front of the Speeder and threw the boo-merang, hoping that it was still keyed into Danny's ecto-signature. As she watched it soar off south west, she closed the window and got ready to leave, when the scanner on the Speeder started to shrill unexpectedly.
"What the…" Jazz questioned, looking at the scanner. It showed a large mass of ecto-energy headed her way. Jazz then gasped as she looked at the town; a huge dome of green ecto-energy was encasing the town. Worrying about getting stuck, she hurriedly closed the front of the speeder and zoomed off in pursuit of the boo-merang. Jazz made it out just in time to see the dome closing. Frowning slightly, Jazz hoped she hadn't left the town defenceless as she raced off to save her family.
What Jazz didn't notice was the large Danny Phantom emblem at the base of the dome, protecting Amity Park from whatever came its way.
:-=-:
In all the scenarios Danny came up that involved being kidnapped by a ghost with his family, he could never be prepared for the one he was currently in. He looked between Danielle and his parents, the latter both had still looking at the girl with disbelief and shock. Danny's attention then went to his ghost half, who seemed to mirror what he felt; exasperation, fear and concern.
Danny moved away from his mother and managed to haphazardly stagger to the wall nearest to Sam and Tucker. Once there, he braced his back against the wall, threw his head back and groaned. "Remind me not to do that again."
"What, move?" Sam asked sarcastically. He glared in response.
Phantom looked at him concerned, searching his human half for any cues to end this situation. They both knew that the longer they stayed apart, the more recovery time they would need.
Jack was the first to recover. "You're a clone." He said slowly.
"Yep," Danielle said, a guarded smile on her face and her tone still light. "Not a very good one though." Danny and Phantom both made noises in protest. "It's true! I'm missing something called a 'mid-morph' DNA sample; it's the in between stage of a ghost and human. Plasmius…. He's using Danny Fenton to create this link…with Phantom."
"But why Danny?" Maddie asked again, her face a whirlwind of confusion. "He's fifteen and nowhere near related to ghosts. Unless-" Maddie's eyes widened ever so slightly before turning to Phantom. The ghost faltered a little at her gaze. She turned to look at her son, who seemed to be looking anywhere but his mother. "Unless... the two of you have been working together this entire time."
The occupants of the cell sat in the unasked question in abrupt silence as neither Danny said a word. Sam and Tucker, uncomfortable spectators, shared a look between then before looking concerned towards their friend on the ground. His head was still against the wall, but his eyes were now closed with a pained expression on his face.
"I..um… should probably head back…to… uh… Amity," Phantom said awkwardly, floating up in the air slowly. Maddie noticed that he seemed a little transparent as she glared in annoyance. "You know… hero and all… call if you need me!" With that, Phantom disappeared, leaving the humans alone in their cell once more.
Danny's eyes scrunched in pain as he tried not to burst out into gasps. The combination of using his powers while being electrocuted had really taken a toll on him, especially now with his ghost half back with him. He knew his Mom wouldn't let this go, and his mind raced to try and come up with an excuse to get him out of this.
Coward. He thought bitterly to his ghost half. There was no response. A few more moments passed before he heard Sam sigh in resignation above him.
"It's not just Danny working with Phantom," she said solemnly. "Tucker and I help out too."
Danny opened his eyes, blinking back blurry vision. Once stable, he searched his parents. His Dad, to his credit, was listening intently to the conversation, trying to pick up on any clues left by any of the teens in the room. His Mom was staring intently at him, almost daring him to lie again. Danny felt his friends move closer to him, while Danielle sent him an apologetic grimace. He sighed, realizing that another lie was needed to protect his secret.
"I'm sorry," he started, eyes closing once again. "I… we… have been fighting with Phantom from the beginning. He's saved our lives so many times, least we can do is return the favour." Danny opened his eyes and turned towards Danielle. "And you aren't just some mistake. We'll figure out a way to stabilize you." Danielle smiled in response. He then turned towards his mother. "Mom, I know you're angry, and have a ton of questions, but now isn't the time. We need to figure out a way to get out of here."
Maddie turned to her husband. "What do you think?"
Jack turned from his wife to his son, looking him over. Danny was very pale and shaky. His face was guarded; this was definitely a different side of his child. Jack suspected that more of what Danny said was a lie, and knew that if they wanted to get out of this, they needed to be on the same side. Jack sighed. "Mads, Danny's right." Maddie raised an eyebrow at her husband. "They clearly know more of what's going on, and questioning everything won't help anything," Jack said softly. He noticed Danny, Sam and Tucker relaxing slightly. "That doesn't mean you're all off the hook," Jack said sternly. "When we get out of here, you three have a lot of explaining to do. Lying? Working with a ghost!? Trusting a ghost!? "
Danny swallowed, eyes closing as he relished at his small victory. Opening them again, he said, "Then let's get to work."
That's all for now! See you in the next installment :)
MATW