As they raced to the park, Sam and Danny whispered to one another.
"You know this is incredibly dangerous, right?"
"Yeah, but they need our help… You saw the army of ghosts. There are a ton of them."
"This is just like when Vlad unleashed Pariah Dark… Are you going to go ghost for this?"
"I'm stronger as Danny Phantom, but I think people will mistake me for a villain even if I look like I'm fighting on their side. For now, I think it is probably wiser to be human."
Jazz came up to them and handed Sam and Tucker guns. "You guys seemed to have picked up some hunting skills fighting alongside Phantom a while back. You on the other hand," she gestured to Danny, "I'll have to walk through some things."
She showed him how to hold the gun and how to pull the trigger and shoot. "You think you can do that?" She asked as if she was a kindergarten teacher trying to teach a student how to glue things together.
Danny pulled the gun from her hands. "Yes," he said curtly.
"Oh! Also, these Fenton Thermoses are super important because they catch ghosts," she said, handing them to the trio. "They work by -"
"We know how they work," Danny interrupted. He gasped, cold air escaping from his mouth, and he tightened his grasp on the gun. Jazz noticed, and, under normal circumstances, she wouldn't have thought twice about it, but, after the strange occurrences that had taken place last night and this morning, she was more suspicious of his actions, starting with the fact that he volunteered to help with ghost-fighting, a thing he dreaded to even mention.
The car came to an abrupt halt right next to the entrance of the park. "Okay, move move move!" Maddie shouted for everyone to get out of the RV.
Jazz grasped her ecto-gun and everyone made their way to the park.
"This way!" Danny shouted, easily out-running everyone and somehow knowing exactly where all the ghosts were. Once coming upon the ghosts, Danny was just about to shoot at them, when he noticed that he recognized a lot of the ghosts…Not only that, but he had befriended many of them. Skulker, a long time enemy but also a close friend in some ways, was in front. "Hey!"
Skulker turned to Danny with fierce neon green eyes. "It was unwise for you to come here in your human form, ghost boy." He then sent a blast directly at Danny who quickly dodged it and sent his own at him. The ghost was unfazed by this ecto-gun so Danny threw the gun on the ground and resorted to shoot with his own powers. Luckily, the others hadn't caught up with him. Otherwise they would've seen. Skulker fell back and growled, sending more shots at Danny who leapt out of the line of fire for the first two, then shielded himself from the third and the fourth.
I can't keep this up…people will be here soon. He looked over his shoulder and, sure enough, his family and friends were coming up from behind him, guns whirring to life. Since he was distracted, Skulker shot at him again, hitting Danny in his left thigh. The pain was nothing compared to the usual, but it still hurt and sent Danny to the ground.
"Danny!" Jazz yelled. She shot at Skulker who simply laughed as the blast could barely penetrate his thick steel armor. Other ghosts like Ember, the Lunch Lady, The Box Ghost, Technus, Johnny 13, even the yetis from the Far Frozen and Wulf, among many others attacked Danny's friends and family as well as other ghost hunters who had joined in on the fight.
"Dammit!" Danny yelled, realizing that this must be a massive puppet show…The Master is behind this crap-fest. He stood up and punched through a large crowd of ghosts, most familiar, others indistinct. A Fenton Thermos can't fit all of these ghosts, Danny thought to himself. He somersaulted and found the gun he had dropped earlier, shot at a few specters he knew it would definitely injure, then grasped the thermos from his belt and sucked in a handful of them.
Everyone seemed to be fighting off the ghosts fairly well, save for Jazz who was still toughing it out with Skulker. He was definitely the most skilled ghost she had ever seen, with great strategical thinking. The ecto-gun had proved useless by now and he leapt at her grabbed her throat, pulling her high into the air. Her feet dangled, and she grabbed at his hands trying helplessly to pull them off.
"Let go of her!" A phantom floated in front of Skulker and the girl he was strangling. She turned and her eyes widened in horror as she saw who it was: Danny Phantom!
Skulker hesitated for the slightest second then tightened his grasp around Jazz's neck who started gasping for breath. "I can't let go," his eyes narrowed. Danny didn't see another way. He threw a hard punch at Skulker's chest, sending him flying backwards into a tree, and Jazz crumpling to the ground, coughing, tears rolling down her face and hands holding her neck. Did Phantom just save me?
The ghoul stood up, clenching his teeth and making a straight path to Danny. "Skulker, you are being controlled. All of you are under some kind of spell just like I was."
"You think we don't know that?" Skulker threw a hand-grenade at Danny's feet. Danny raised his sister up from the grass and away from the small bomb that went off seconds later. "We feel it controlling us but can't make it stop," he shot again at Danny who put his sister down, then put a shield up to block the blast.
"It's a lot easier to hurt you when you are actually deliberately attacking me," Danny noticed, as he continued to fight with Skulker.
Yelling and chaos ensued throughout the park, civilians scrambling to get away and hunters attempting to get rid of the ghosts. Sam and Tucker luckily remembered everything they had learned as if it was like riding a bike, and had captured a good bit of the ghosts, but their thermoses were filling up quick and there were still so many ghosts.
Danny finally froze Skulker, hindering the ghost from moving, and sucked him into the thermos. "Just like old times…Well, sort of," he said to himself.
Jazz stood up and backed away from Phantom with confused and terrified eyes, threatening him with her ecto-gun. "What do you want with us? Haven't you done enough damage here?"
"I - um - I'd really rather you not point that at me."
Jazz didn't lower it. "You - you killed all those people."
"I didn't do that. I was being controlled I swear," he said, stepping closer to her.
"Controlled by whom? I've never seen a ghost who can control other ghosts."
"In the Ghost Zone he is known as The Master."
"You expect me to believe you?"
"I don't expect anything from you…I just thought I would try to prove myself to you… Anyway, whether you believe me or not, these ghosts are being controlled. Most of them at least."
"And?"
"They aren't evil. We shouldn't injure them too badly because they don't mean any harm to us."
"Like you weren't evil for killing all those people?"
"Can you please just - not talk about that?"
"Why not?! It happened."
"It wasn't me."
Jazz felt so confused. All this time she thought for sure he had killed all those people. But he seemed so sincere when he said he didn't. And he honestly didn't seem like the killing type. She cocked her head to the side, looking at his neck where she had wounded him last night. She stepped closer to him and put her hand on the back of his neck, flinching a bit from his cold skin. She didn't feel any wound, but it honestly didn't prove anything. She raised a brow when she noticed that he looked a bit nervous. Maybe he wasn't used to humans touching him?
"Sorry…" She realized her actions were a little odd and put her hand down to her side awkwardly.
Phantom chuckled. "We should probably go help."
"Um, you might want to make yourself scarce…"
"Good point."
Danny scrambled behind a tree, became human again and rushed back to help fight the ghouls. Jazz saw that he had just arrived back at a similar time as her which made her question even more about Danny and Phantom's connection. She shook her head and got back into fighting mode. Sam tossed him an ecto-knife from her belt and they fought alongside each other for the first time in a while, moves in sync with each other's as they sliced and diced the ghosts and caught them in their thermoses. "Crap!" Sam hook her thermos back to her belt. "It's full."
Danny trapped three more, "Mine too."
Everyone was getting to that point and soon all the thermoses were filled. Unfortunately, many ghosts were still occupying the park.
"What are we going to do?" Jazz asked to no one in particular.
"The only thing we can do is empty these thermoses back into the Ghost Zone, while a handful stay here and fend off the remaining forces…Then we can bring those thermoses back to capture the rest of them."
Ear perked up at this and everyone looked for its source. They were surprised to see it was Daniel Fenton speaking. When did he become an expert with hunting ghosts? Jazz was particularly stunned and becoming more and more confused by the minute.
"I'll stay here to fight," Jazz said.
"Me too," Maddie said.
"I'll go with Danny and Sam to empty these thermoses," Jack said.
"I think I should stay here to help fight actually," Danny insisted. Everyone agreed.
"I'll go with you Mr. Fenton," Tucker said.
The rest of the hunters stayed while Sam, Tucker, and Jack took off in the RV to empty the thermoses. They started back the fighting again. Sam had given Danny her gun when she left and he still had the knife she had handed him. He fought like a pro, which confused and frustrated Jazz at the same time. It had taken her a while to get to where she was now. Danny caught on fast… Or maybe he has prior experience. Jazz didn't have much time to think about it, but there was definitely something off about Phantom. And clearly there was something wrong with her brother too. She just couldn't figure out how the two boys connected. Or maybe she just didn't want to face the idea. A ghost girl was in the mix, battling a ghost hunter to Danny's left. He turned and seemed to do a double take. To Jazz's surprise, the girl looked a lot like a younger, girl version of Phantom. Does Danny notice this too? The ghost hunter slit the ghost's right cheek, and she started bleeding red and green. Wait, red? Danny looked strangely angered by this.
"Hey, let's switch," Danny told the ghost hunter. He seemed taken aback but complied. Jazz tried to listen to what he was saying to this ghost as he blocked her attempts to hurt him because he was clearly saying something, but it sounded like he was speaking another language…
"Dani," Danny said in Esperanto, "Are you okay?"
"What do you think? We are all trying to fight back, but we can't. I'm scared…" She shot a blast at him, but he dodged it.
"I know you are, and I'm sorry," Danny frowned.
"How do you make it stop?"
Danny sighed heavily. "It wears off eventually. But it won't soon enough," Danny explained rigt before his ghost sense went off again. He looked away from Dani and towards a new large group of ghosts heading their way. "Oh no."
Dani blasted Danny in the stomach, and he fell to the ground. "Sorry…"
"That's okay," Danny got up and wiped dirt off of his clothes. "I don't want anyone hurting you and, as long as you are fighting us, you are a danger to yourself so I'm going to freeze you."
Dani nodded reluctantly. He picked her up and threw her to a place where they wouldn't be seen, knowing she would be fine thanks to her regenerative properties and rushed after her. His eyes glowed blue as he froze her. He ran back to fight more of the ghosts then shouted. "There are more ghosts headed our way!"
"Even when we do get those thermoses back, we aren't gonna be able to get all these ghosts in them!" One hunter named Dean shouted.
His brother Sam nodded. "Yeah, there are too many of them!"
Danny shrugged. "Well, we're just gonna have to try."
They continued fighting the ghosts, but, the more that came, the more difficult it became to hold them back.
"How…much…longer?" Danny asked, throwing a blow between words.
The way he said it reminded her of when Phantom said the same exact thing when they had to make the world intangible for the Phantom Planet to pass harmlessly through. That's when Jazz realized something very strange she had never thought about because she seldom said the whole name… It freaked her out to called Danny Phantom by the name Danny Phantom because that was her brother's name. But when she thought about it more, she realized that Danny Phantom sounded a whole lot like Danny Fenton. But why would that be?
"Jazz?" He asked, breaking Jazz out of her thoughts.
"Oh! Um, they should be here in a few seconds! Dad texted me and said they were on their way back."
He nodded, punching one ghost in the face, a second blasting it in the stomach with the ecto-gun, another chopping its head off. Since when can he fight? My brother…he fights as if he has been fighting for years. I mean Vlad was a halfa all along. Vlad Masters was Vlad Plasmius. Could it be that Danny Fenton is Danny Phantom? The very thought sent shivers down Jazz's spine. One because it had taken so long for her to figure out, and two because it terrified her…
Lol felt like throwing in a little Supernatural reference in there ;) Anyway, thanks for reading!