Gods… the horror that was the last chapter… Do you have any idea how hard it was to write that? So much angst… even if I don't think that's really considered angst, just sad mush… But still. I didn't mean for it to turn out like that. I was expecting that chapter to be funny, but then these ideas just kept popping into my head. Zach was originally supposed to die in a car crash, so it would be really quick. So much for that idea, hmmn?
So last chapter I actually got a review. Happy Dance! Last chapter also apparently ripped someone to pieces. Cool! But only a quarter of the people who looked at my story in the first chapter looked at the second, so Sad Dance. I'm hoping to get enough reviews this chapter that it'll get boosted up to six, then at least two reviews per chapter until the end.
Note that there are a LOT of metaphors I jumbled up into this chapter. There is also a super obscure reference to Raven from Teen Titans. Also, I really didn't mean to write this chapter like I did. I was going to save this until Chapter 3, but that I couldn't help myself.
Disclaimer say that all your Danny Phantom is (NOT) belong to us.
The purple field faded away, Zach and the angel slowly dissolving after it.
The scenery was pure black nothing for a moment, the depths of space staring blankly at the two boys. A flash, and the tiny pinpricks of stars were replaced by a swirling mass of green and purple. Colorful doors dotted the skies and grave sites covered the grey dirt. A raven cawed somewhere, as if in welcome to the two floating children.
"Where are we?" Zach breathed, a feeling of déjà vu coming over him.
"Ghost Zone," the angel replied, shaking a few extra tricks out of his sleeves. A dagger covered in crimson blood fell out, pierced on a tarot card labeled The Fool. "The land of the dead."
"Whatever happened to going to heaven?" Zach accused, frowning slightly.
"Hey, hey, we're getting there," the other huffed, pulling at a long string of colorful scarves tied together, protruding from his right nostril. He seemed frustrated he wasn't getting to the end. "Everyone who dies goes through the Ghost Zone for a little while. It's an unavoidable tradition." He sneezed, and the scarves turned into a bunch of ravens. He frowned. "Darn it, I was going for doves…"
"How long do we have to stay here?" Zach batted at a raven trying to settle on his head.
"Not long, I hope. This place always gives me the creeps!" A pure white rabbit popped from his hat and jumped at the raven.
Zach yelped, seeing as how the raven was on his head. "Get them off!" The two animals battled for supremacy, each holding onto the poor boy's cranium.
"Aw, but it's so funny…"
The rabbit tackled the raven, and they both fell, struggling, to the ground below. Neither moved after that.
The magician suddenly grabbed Zach's head and twisted it away from the animals in the gravesite below. "Hey, look, a floating door that's different from all the others!" he lied quickly.
"Awesome!" Zach floated over to the metal, octagonal double doorway. "How long has this been here? I didn't see it before."
"Eh? Oh, sweet! I didn't either!"
Zach blinked at him.
The other smiled guiltily. "Uhh… I mean, I didn't see it before I saw it! Or something…" Zach raised a perfectly white eyebrow at him. "Say, how do you think it got here anyway?" he said nervously.
In the world of the living, a town over from where Zachary Daniels' dead body lay, a group of fourteen-year-olds were in the basement lab of a strange house.
"Okay, I showed you the portal. Can we get outta here now, my parents could be back here any minute," Danny said, still blinking from the flash of the camera. "Besides, they say it doesn't work anyway."
"C'mon, Danny, a Ghost Zone? Aren't you curious? You gotta check it out," Sam, the one holding the camera, begged. She shot a smile at him.
Danny sighed, stepping next to her to stare at the huge mouth that was the Fenton Portal. A slow smile spread across his face.
Zach knocked on the metal frame, grinning at the hollow clunk it made. "There's something on the other side," he denounced.
The magician shuddered. "I hate to think what. C'mon, we should go look for your door. I hate this place."
"Maybe this is my door," Zach argued. He pulled on the panels. "It won't open. Man, there're probably a bunch of awesome, super cool things on the other side."
"You know what? You're right," Danny affirmed. "Who knows what kind of awesome, super cool things exist on the other side of that Portal?"
He pulled the ridiculous jumpsuit on, zipping it up to his neck.
"Hang on," Sam frowned, pulling the sticker of Jack Fenton's face off the suit. "You can't go walking around with that on your chest."
"Zach, can we leave? I've got this really bad feeling about that door."
"Oh c'mon, there's nothing to be afraid of. And to think you're supposed to protect me."
"I'm trying, but you won't listen!" Growling, the guardian angel started juggling a few pearls he had conjured.
Danny walked into the Portal cautiously, running his hand along the walls for balance in the dark cave. His accidentally pressed the ON switch.
The metallic doors started opening up. "Cool, I got it open!" Zach cheered. Blue-green energy innocently swirled within.
The angel gasped, dropping the pearls. "Look out!" He sped toward the Portal just as the ecto-energy shot out. Both boys were zapped, one trying to push the other out of the way.
Three voices screamed in unison; Danny's, Zach's and the angel's all melding into one. Danny felt part of his life force slowly ebb away, while Zach felt life rush through him. The angel knew that neither could keep existing if this kept up; the teen would die from lack of energy, and Zach would explode from having the energies of two people, a ghost and a human, in one body. He forced himself into Zach's mind, taking half his ghost energy. With the energy in hand, he separated and shoved it into Danny. Both now with equal amounts of energy, the force stopped. Zach dissolved into thin air, his spirit returning back to his body now that he had a life-force again. The angel felt a pang as he left, knowing that it would be impossible to follow him now. But he could wait.
The Portal started closing off, and he felt himself getting weaker. Realizing he couldn't survive like this for long, he dove into the only protection he could find. This unfortunately turned out to be Danny's body. Expelling some of the ghost energy into the Portal to keep it running, he made himself a place in the teen's mind. He would be silent until the time came to be with Zach again. He could wait.
Back in the Elmerton hospital, the doctors stopped working in surprise for a moment. They had just been trying to resuscitate the boy. Resuscitating never worked -- it was mainly for show. But the boy had just returned from death after one minute of fatality.
The nurse smiled again, this time for real.
Zach's mother shrieked with joy when she heard the heart monitor start up again.
"He's alive," she cheered, tears falling from her lashes, the security guard coldly ignoring her as he pulled her from the room. "He's alive, you jerks! If he dies again at your hands, I'll destroy you!" She choked on a sob. "That's my baby boy. He's a fighter. He wouldn't die like that."
The mother's rant faded out into the distance, leaving the stunned doctors staring at the gently breathing boy.
The nurse stepped forward and pushed the gurney toward the door, the doctors staring after her.
"We need a room for this little fighter," she sang in the hallways, smiling as doctors stopped what they were doing to watch her pass, the miracle boy breathing evenly in sleep.
She turned a corner. They stared at where she had disappeared from sight for a moment, then slowly got back to 'saving' lives.
They had no idea that the boy really was a miracle, that he would go on to help save the world multiple times, or that he would someday help an angel get back on its feet. All they had seen was someone lucky. Someone who'd woken up on the right side of the bed that morning. Someone who'd just had a fluke of luck. A fluke. An accident. They didn't know.
And they never would. They would see him wake up from his coma one year later, and witness him speedily move out of the hospital, but they would be as oblivious as the rest of the world as to why. They would wonder late at night how he was possible. And they would never know.
Not until the day they died.