Bouquet
Rating: K+ [mentions of puke, for those who are squeamish with that kind of thing]
Pairings: None
Ages: Danny, Tucker, Sam are all 14
Summary: Blood Blossoms are red, Acaena Angra are blue, they cause pain and anger for things that say Boo. Narkē Neillia is pink and Ghost Nip is white, our favorite Ghost Boy shall endure quite the plight
"I can't believe you're making us come with you to this thing…" Tucker grumbled.
"Just remember that proto-type PDA I've promised you," Sam replied in a sing-song voice.
Tucker sighed. "I know…"
"And why am I here again?" Danny asked, as the trio neared the front of the school.
"Because you have nothing better to do?" Tucker quipped.
"Oh yeah…"
"Oh look!" Sam expressed, a happy grin lighting up her face. Before the three, multitudes of flower vendors were selling their wares. A particular event that rarely came to Amity this time of year, this flower festival, had even gotten them out of school. There was countless numbers of colors between all the flowers in sight. If the boys were honest with themselves, it was beautiful even to the veggie-hating Tucker.
"Wow. It's actually really impressive," Danny responded and smiled as the three started to actually walk pass the different flowers.
"See? It's not that bad. I won't take long either. I just wanted to find some new exotic flowers to try and grow. Hopefully they have varieties that won't drop seeds. I don't want to bring in an invasive species on accident."
Danny nodded absently as the three continued on. For whatever reason, the flowers were making him happy inside. It had been a stressful week and the sight of all the flowers was… what's that smell? Danny froze mid-step, not being noticed by his friends. His eyes glazed over a bit and he turned and walked the other way.
Danny found himself staring at a cart filled with various lilies and one box of a white variety was drawing his attention. The woman selling the merchandise stared uncertainly at the boy in front of her as he stared longingly at the flowers. He grabbed a few stems' worth of blossoms and offered the money needed to buy them. Was that drool?
Danny suddenly noticed he was in an alleyway. Had he walked there? The details weren't bothering him at the moment, no, only the flowers were important. Danny sat and started to smell the scent coming from the petals and then chewed on them.
zz
"Where could he have gone, Tucker?"
"Heck if I know!"
"Something's not right…"
"Hey look it's Phantom!"
Sam and Tucker looked up in shock as all the students, teachers, parents, and vendors' attentions were drawn to the white and black ghost that had appeared next to a cart. The woman selling them, yelped as Phantom started to rub his head against the flowers. The ghost boy's face was flushed with a green hue and an admittedly adorable smile lit up his young face.
"What the heck is Phantom doing?" Dash blurted out in the crowd.
Sam and Tucker exchanged horrified looks when they heard Mrs. Fenton's voice answer.
"That, young man, is the effects of Ghost Nip."
"You mean like cat nip?"
"It's practically the same thing, but with GHOSTS!" Jack bellowed as he and his wife snuck forward, weapons drawn.
Both parents aimed, unknowingly at their son, and Sam and Tucker ran forward to stop them.
"Don't you dare hurt my one true love!" Paulina yelled and latched onto Maddie, making her expertly aimed shot, miss Danny's core. The Phantom still floated peacefully, his face buried in the flowers' blooms. Jack's shot, however, struck the box that had the nip in it. The box exploded into a shower of splinters and toasted petals; Danny was flung backwards into a cart on the complete other side of the market, several rows away.
Purple thorns tore into his flesh and muscle and blood red petals burned away skin. True to Danny's typical luck, he'd landed face first into several boxes of blood blossoms. The young teen threw himself away from the evil plant and crawled far enough away for the pain to subside. He was completely alert now. "At least it wasn't a circle."
"Phantom!" Danny tensed and shot into the sky, hoping to get away. His dear and wonderful mother had different ideas though. Her eyes landed on a pinkish colored blossom with faintly glowing green leaves. She shoved a handful of the plant into the now dead Fenton Bazooka and fired. "Eat Narkē Neillia, Phantom!" The pinkish and somewhat pulverized cloud of plant remains rushed up around and then past him. Danny felt a bit tired and then his vision went black.
Some students screamed when they saw Phantom simply stop dead and start to plummet.
"What the heck was that!?" Tucker shouted
"Narkē is the root of Narco in Narcolepsy, it obviously knocked him out…"
"Okay, that's a great botany lesson, but why did it affect Danny!?"
"I don't know! Maybe it's another supernatural plant that effects ghosts. I didn't know there was anything other than Blood Blossoms!"
Sam saw Tucker's face pale and she followed his gaze, only for her own face to pale. A ring of light was forming around Danny's stomach. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on perspective, Danny clipped another box of flowers before he struck the earth. He was covered in a thin pile of wildflowers, whose blooms were shaped like spiky balls.
Everything was quiet.
Sam saw Maddie and Jack creep towards the downed Phantom's location and she ran over and blocked them.
"Okay! Haven't you done enough!?"
"Sam!" Maddie announced in surprise and then gave her a dismissive smile. "Sweetie, we need to make sure he's obliterated. Those Sleeping Sepals only knocked him out…"
Sleeping Sepals? Is that the common name?
"We could just put a circle of Blood Blossoms around him. That would do nicely."
"No!" Sam and Tucker shouted and people started to come closer, especially the teenagers.
"It's just a ghost, dear."
Before Sam could reply, everyone froze at a strange growling noise. Before anyone could event start to figure out what was going on, Phantom shot out of the pile of now grey and dead looking flowers. There was something very wrong. Danny's physical appearance didn't look quite human anymore. His white-gloved hands looked more like claws, his booted feet looked like they were melting into wisps and his mouth was much wider than a human's; there was no easy to see difference between his lips, gums, or teeth, holes formed every so often where his jaws connected, and his eyes were a darker green with no pupils or irises within the tiny seas of ectoplasm.
"Eh Mads, I think he landed in the Raging Ramets."
Maddie perked up and looked down at the strange flowers Phantom had been buried in. "Who in the world thought selling those in Amity Park was a good idea!?"
No one noticed the shady looking vendor look around nervously and then bolt.
A roar from the altered Phantom returned everyone's attentions to the sky and the main problem. Amity's protector started to blast apart several carts, forcing people to run. Screams sounded below him as his hissed and fired at innocents. He even struck Jack and Maddie once, forcing them onto their backs before Sam had had enough.
Sam shouted as loud as she could. "Danny stop! This isn't you!"
Phantom froze, ectoblast hovering ready in one palm.
"Danny… Enough."
Phantom's attack died in his hand and he stared at both palms. Then his green and empty eyes looked at her one last time and she could swear she saw heartbreak in them before the Phantom vanished into thin air.
zz
His shoulders quivered as his cried. Danny had found a place far outside Amity, overlooking a river valley and sat there to cry. He'd already slowly found himself returning to his normal Phantom form the farther from those plants he got.
But he felt so guilty and dirty. He'd attacked innocent people; he'd attacked his own parents. It was like Freakshow's staff all over again, except this time there was no one else to put blame on, in his opinion.
The front of his suit was still torn and burnt up, revealing nasty cuts and burns from landing on the blood blossoms and his other spectacular falls that day. His own tears were making his skin burn and his gut felt really hot and uncomfortable but he was too absorbed in his guilt to care about his ails.
He knew Sam, Tucker, and Jazz are probably sick with worry by now, but he couldn't face them yet.
-Click-
That was a gun. As much as Danny hated himself at the moment, he didn't want to die. He turned his head slowly, wanting to have an idea of who he was dealing with, only to see red goggles. Mo-Maddie…
She seemed frozen, looking over his face, more importantly, the tear tracks on his face. "You can cry…"
Danny stiffened. "Well… yeah."
"Ghosts can't cry."
"Yeah they can… It's like… made of ectoplasm. Times when ghosts are saddest, they'll use ectoplasm from their cores and the tears shine like little stars."
Maddie slowly lowered her weapon. Ectoplasm could simply be used for fake tears, that doesn't prove that ghosts have emotions… but core ectoplasm? There's no 'evolutionary' reason for a ghost to waste that kind of precious resource, even as a defense mechanism… They shouldn't even be concerned by such things, they're just memories given form, they shouldn't be as complex as they've been shown to be…
"I'm sorry…" Maddie looked up to see water stream down Danny's cheeks. "I didn't want to hurt anyone… I just… I was just so angry all of a sudden and something weird happened to my body-"
"That flower is called Acaena Angra, more commonly known as Raging Ramets. They cause a ghost to go into… what spectrologists call an electromagnetic overload or frenzy state."
Danny blinked and the water that had bubbled near the corners of his eyes fell. "Wha…" He turned, still looking so… dejected. "That doesn't excuse anything…" His eyes widened and he turned to her. "Did I hurt anyone!? Did I hurt you too bad!?"
Maddie slowly shook her head after taking off her cowl and goggles. "No. A few scrapes and bruises, but nothing serious." She didn't know why she was soothing him rather than hunting him, perhaps her own general curiosity was getting the better of her.
"Good." Danny nodded and Maddie actually noticed the burns and tears on his suit.
"Your suit… Why is it still torn up?"
Danny looked at her strangely. "I can't heal myself… I'm…" He gave her a nervous look and then sighed. "I don't feel good…"
Maddie furrowed her brows. Ghosts could get weak, but they couldn't… "get sick". It was fairly black and white for ghosts. They could appear sickly because of energy loss, but didn't actually get illnesses. She gasped when Phantom suddenly threw up. Some of it hit his stomach and the rest hit the ground due to his movement to try avoid too much of a mess. He faded into intangibility for a moment to get the bile off his stomach, but it seemed like it took a lot out of him.
"You... you vomited." He has a stomach!?
Danny's frame trembled on his hands and knees. "What's wrong… with me…"
Maddie suddenly realized Phantom was much more than a ghost. She leaned forward and carefully placed a hand on his forehead. Ignoring his flinch of fear, she felt he had a fever. Then he proceeded to throw-up a second time.
"Phantom, did you happen to eat the Ghost Nip?" Maddie's eyebrows were furrowed. She couldn't believe she was asking a ghost-thing if he'd eaten anything, but if Phantom was somehow more human than he looked…
"I… I… don't remember…" Danny slurred. Maddie grabbed him before he could lean forward and face-plant into his own puke. She lifted him into her arms and got a good look at him.
God he looked terrible. A constricting and agonizing type of guilt synched itself around her heart. Maybe… she and Jack had been wrong.
She turned to walk back towards where she'd parked the RV, only to come face to face with Sam, Tucker, and Jazz's startled faces. Their expressions switched between surprise, fear, then worry so quickly, Maddie wasn't sure she wasn't seeing things.
Then her sight was blinded by a bright light coming from the ghost child in her arms. After it was over, she saw she was holding her own child, who quickly started to bleed from his various wounds and a unconscious grimace took over his feverish looking face.
Danny. Her Danny.
