Chapter LXXIII
That hideous creature nearly killed you!
It is good that it fled when it did. Otherwise it might have succeeded.
You were unprepared!
Daniel has been caught off guard before. Normally his aggressors are weak and can be dispatched easily. This one was . . . different.
That was a monster bred for battle! We must prepare you for when it returns!
The dumb one is correct. You must be ready for when it, inevitably, comes back to finish what it started.
"Danny? You awake?"
The boy's eyes squinted open, taking in a blurry picture of his surroundings before snapping back shut. The light was too bright for some reason.
"Could you dim that light or something?" Danny asked groggily. He raised an arm to shield his eyes.
"Sure. Tucker? Would you mind?"
The room was instantly made several levels darker than before as Tucker hit the switch, leaving Sam's room illuminated only by candlelight. Danny opened his eyes cautiously, allowing his pupils to dilate accordingly. Once he was comfortable enough, he sat up and found that he was sitting in Sam's bed.
"Ok, so how did I get here?" Danny started as he slid his feet over the end of the bed to face Sam. "Last thing I remember, I was dog food."
"Dog food, huh?" Tucker asked from across the room. He was busy on Sam's computer, looking for whatever it was Tucker looked for.
"Well maybe werewolf food." Danny rubbed his face, trying to clear his disorientation. "It sure didn't act like a dog."
"Ghosts, werewolves, women that dress suspiciously like vampires," Tucker sighed. "Van Helsing is going to be knocking on your door one day. I guarantee it."
Danny rolled his eyes, but the action made his minuscule headache flare up. He winced and smacked the affected area, intensifying the pain even further.
"Take it easy there, Super-Man," Sam said, laying a hand on Danny's shoulder. "We wouldn't want you to pass out again."
"No, I guess not," Danny rubbed his head, gently this time. "How did I get here, anyway?"
"Well," Sam blushed slightly. "I saw you hovering outside my window. I figured you came to talk about . . . earlier today, but then that wolf thing attacked you," Sam smiled sheepishly. "Guess you never got around to it. So I called Tucker and we brought you up here."
Danny returned Sam's smile with a weak one of his own. "Guess I owe you my life," he said seriously.
Sam pushed him back onto her bed and walked over to her window. "So it's gone?"
"Yeah. I think it can teleport. It ripped open a portal with its claws right after it stabbed me with them."
Sam looked over her shoulder at Danny who was still lying on her bed, not having made the effort to sit back up. "Are you ok?"
"I can regenerate," Danny said in a condescending tone. "Physically, anyway."
Sam walked back over to the bed and sat down next to her friend. This time, Danny forced himself to sit up. They looked around uncomfortably, gazing at anything except into each other's eyes.
"I swear you could cut the sexual tension in here with a knife." Tucker said with an annoyed edge to his voice. "Sam, I believe Danny has something he needs to tell you."
Sam was about to yell at Tucker, but Danny held up a hand, stopping her. "He's right." The boy ran a hand through his messy black hair and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry if I made you feel awkward today at the arcade. I got caught up in the moment, I mean, come on. I have one of the highest scores in the world on that game! If some snot nosed little-" a pen flew through the air and smacked Danny in the side of the head. Tucker glared at him. "Right. I know I crossed the line, but I don't want you to be mad at me for running away or for . . . actually, er, kissing . . . you. You're my friend, and I guess the rules are different for friends that are girls. That doesn't mean I should just make out with you every time something good happens . . ."
Danny caught the blush on Sam's cheeks and the amused look she was giving him and began coughing. "I, uh, you know, just wanted you to know that I like you, you're my best friend, and I don't want you to get freaked out because of that."
Sam scooted closer to Danny and hugged him. "Don't you worry about that," she said reassuringly. "Something like a celebratory kiss isn't going to make me hate you. If you freak out and run away every time it happens, though, I might get a little angry."
Danny smiled as he hugged Sam back. "I'm glad we got that cleared u – every time it happens?" Danny's eyes widened. "What's that supposed to, what do you, I, uh, that's, um, well geeze, I-"
"Sam?" Tucker turned around in his chair. "Please stop pushing his buttons. His head might explode. On the other hand, if you want to pull his knob I can leave the room . . ."
An ecto-beam hit Tucker's beret off his head. Sam was much less forgiving, and the dictionary she hurled at him knocked him clean off his high horse and left him gasping in pain on the floor. "Ok, ok, I get it. No more sex jokes."
Danny stood up and stretched, feeling a dull pain in his abdomen. "Those claws must have done more damage than I thought," he mumbled.
Sam looked over at him from her bookshelf and frowned. "Are you sure you're ok? You've never been hit like that before." Sam and Danny immediately turned to Tucker, whose mouth was open in preparation for delivering another crude joke. He shut it and returned to his web browsing.
"I should be fine," Danny said with a yawn. "Better go ghost and go home. What time is it?"
"11:34," Tucker replied casually.
Danny's eyes shot open. "WHAT? Oh my God, I'm so dead!"
Danny jumped in the air, transformed into Phantom, and was about to fly away when he realized that the dull pain in his stomach had flared up to almost beyond-excruciating levels. And that odd noise was, in fact, his screams of pain.
"Danny!" Sam shouted as Phantom's body now lay sprawled on the floor. His screams now hushed whimpers. Tucker was at his other side, trying to help him up.
"What the hell, man?" Tucker asked as he hoisted his friend up, supporting Phantom's weight on his shoulder.
Sam gasped as Phantom's stomach became visible. Ten gruesome puncture wounds decorated his stomach. The flesh around them looked rotten and decayed. Tucker helped Phantom out of his top, revealing a large number of blackened veins emanating from the claw marks. The holes slowly oozed out a dull green ectoplasmic substance, a stark contrast to the bright green fluid that normally filled the body of a ghost.
"Guys," Phantom whispered. "What happened to me?"
"You'll be ok, Danny," Sam reassured him. "Tucker, go get some towels, hurry!"
"No, don't!" Phantom cried out. He pressed a gloved fist into his forehead as the voices spoke up, despite his massive head ache.
There is no human remedy for this toxin. Those towels will do nothing for you.
That monster did this to you! You must exact your revenge! Kill it!
Not now! Now you must heal.
He cannot! The beast sabotaged his healing factor!
This is true . . . The toxin must naturally block out any curative powers to increase its effectiveness. This was obviously a hunting mechanism, now it is used for a much more sinister purpose.
You cannot fight in this state. You would be killed. Return to human form. Ghost toxins cannot harm humans. Slay that . . . abomination another day.
"Guys, that ghost must have poisonous claws," Phantom struggled to breath. The pain continued to worsen. "I think its toxin blocking out my healing powers."
"Well if that isn't the dandiest thing I've heard all day – ghost toxins? Wow! What will they think of next?"
Phantom ignored Tucker and transformed back into Danny Fenton. The transformation was painful and slow, but it worked. The pain subsided to a barely noticeable ache. Danny drew a clean, painless breath and exhaled with a goofy smile on his face. "That's better."
"Dude, how are you going to fix that?" Tucker sat down in the chair that he had pulled closer to Sam's bed. "You can't go ghost if it's going to kill you."
"I'm sure Valerie can handle things while we figure it out," Danny replied. "The poison doesn't seem to bother me as a human."
"That doesn't mean it isn't there, Danny," Sam noted. "You should really find some way to cure yourself. Maybe find an anti-venom for our dimension's equivalent poison."
"Oh sure, Sam, Danny can just waltz into the Poison Control Center and ask to see all the anti-venoms available for venomous wolf bites."
"I'm sorry I'm not an expert on the subject, Tucker, I don't spend all day watching documentaries on Animal Planet."
"I'll have you know that those documentaries are the very same ones that keep us from making dumb decisions like your-"
"Enough!" Danny ordered, holding up his hands. "I'm fine right now! There's no pain, no blood, no anything! Just stop, ok? Now I really need to get home, so I-"
"Dude, your parents think you're staying at my house," Tucker said. "My parents think I'm staying at your house."
"And my parents aren't home," Sam added. "They took my grandma to New York for some thing or another. They'll be back in a day or two."
"And while you two get cozy up here, I'll be playing Halo 3 downstairs on Sam's ginormous projector! Have fun!" Tucker was gone before the book and ecto-beam aimed at him could do any damage.
"What if my parents call Tucker's house?" Danny asked as he sat back down on Sam's bed. "Or his parents call my house? Then what?"
Sam laughed and walked over to her massive closet. "What are we, three years old? We all have cell phones, Danny, they can call you themselves if they need to tell you something. Now don't you dare come in here. I'm changing." Sam flicked the light on and shut the door behind her.
Danny felt his pocket for his cell phone. His fingers wrapped around the rectangular plastic and his anxiety over the matter disappeared. Danny stood up and walked over to the window.
You are trapped in this weak human form! When that creature strikes again, you are finished!
He is right. You could not survive a second attack in this state. We will try to use your body's natural defenses to battle this toxin. In the meantime, you stay as far away from battle as possible. You can't afford another altercation.
BAH! To hell with these precautions! You are destined to fight! Your home is the battlefield! It is where you belong! You don't need ghost powers to destroy and kill! The arsenal in your parents' basement holds enough firepower to conquer a small nation!
Silence! Daniel needs to recuperate. He cannot do battle if he is dead, now can he?
Growl.
Danny couldn't help but grin at the antics of the voices in his head. The fact that he was actually hearing voices wiped the grin off his face. Tucker was the only one who knew about the voices so far, and he seemed to have forgotten about them.
"Danny?"
Danny turned around and looked at Sam. Her dark purple nightgown hung loosely off her shoulders and the laced edge dangled around her knees.
"Yeah?" he replied absent mindedly.
Sam looked down at herself and blushed. "Too much? Or, uh, too little?"
Danny's face reddened furiously. "I guess it could be both, depending on who you're asking."
Sam's smiled. "Well I'm asking you."
Danny's mouth opened and closed several times as words fought to form in his mind.
Oh for Christ's sake, say 'you look amazing'.
"Y-you look amazing," Danny said, his voice cracking during the mere three word sentence.
Pathetic. Learn to vocalize, would you?
Sam rolled her eyes and grabbed a fluffy black robe off the back of her closet door. "You don't think I'd walk around like that in front of you all night, do you? Give me some credit, I come from a wealthy family, I have class. Even though I don't like to brag about it."
Danny's heart rate slowed, due in no small part to Danny's other selves working inside his body. Still, Sam's curvy figure being covered helped a great deal.
"Let's go scare Tucker by turning the couch intangi-" Sam stopped midsentence, remembering Danny's affliction. "Oh, right. We can still peg him in the head with something."
"That sounds fun; inflicting pain the ol' fashioned way." Danny offered his elbow to Sam, who graciously took it. "Shall we?"
"We shall."
Wulf looked up at his master from the huddled mass of black fur he had curled himself into. Walker looked back in confusion.
"My friend, do not fear me," the deathly white ghost knelt down and scratched his canine companion right behind the ears. The ghost's tail began to wag and his foot steadily began to pound the floor. "I do not punish the innocent for minor inconveniences. Even in failure, you have succeeded in accomplishing my task."
Wulf's ears perked up and the hulking lupine specter stood to his full height. "Mi fari'ne kompreni."
Walker looked at Wulf with a raised eyebrow. "You can understand what I say and vocalize a response in Esperanto? Curious." Walker turned and looked out over the top of the abandoned prison that had become his home over the past few weeks. "You have not only given me more time to prepare for my attack on Phantom, but in poisoning him, you have trapped him in his human form. Eventually he will come here, to the Ghost Zone, seeking a cure and that is when I will kill him."
"Vi hipokrito mortigi Phantom," Wulf barked worriedly. "Se vi fari, vin voli cesi al ekzisti!"
Walker chuckled. "I am well aware of the possibility of a temporal paradox, my friend. But my father did give me one useful gift. When the time stream is altered, we will not be affected."
Wulf's head tipped to the side. "Kiel tiel?"
"My limited control over time protects me from such things, and our bond protects you as well."
Wulf looked at his master with awe and fascination. "Kiel?"
Walker chuckled, more to himself than to his bestial friend. "It is one of the few benefits that come with being the spawn of the ghost that commands time itself."
To Be Continued
A/N: Yay for reviews and hits! I wanted to get this chapter up because I'm going to visit a college for most of the morning tomorrow, which means that I will not only be kept from writing, but I will also miss the newest episode of Transformers: Animated
Speaking of sentient robots, the cookie goes to The Golden Hat for picking up the Beast Machines reference.
And, deviating slightly from that, I messed up the title of this segment. I already used SEED of Evil for the mini-chapter thing, and Shadows OF THE FUTURE was the one where Johnny 13 gets his shadow. But I don't have any ideas for a better name for this segment, so I'll stick with it. Hope this can appease you until the next update, which won't take another year.
Thanks to all my reviewers, especially Musicallity, TDG3RD, Fulcon, dpphan333, Bloxham, MissMeliss4251, The Golden Hat, and TPcrazy.
PS: Extra special thanks to Bloxham; the only person who seemed to care that I was shot… :(