This is really another filler chapter but it actually has a bit more significance to it. You'll understand why when you read it. This was one of the more difficult chapters to write for me. I'm not sure how it will work out for you guys. But I thought it was the best way to help set the plot up for a major event that I've been planning out. Maybe you'll be able to predict a few things by the end of it.
Chapter 19: Creatures of the Night
Time passed for the Fenton Family and everything seemed the same as before the time Freakshow had broken out of jail. Danny's bandages had long been removed and Danielle was happy to see that her choice of a healing ointment worked so well, that he didn't even have resulting scars from the burns. Not even on any of the burns that were additionally scraped from the battle against Walker.
Danielle was also starting to get used to her new lifestyle. It felt a bit strange to have been staying in one place for so long after her years of traveling all the time. But Danny and his family did their best to make it one of her best experiences.
More than once, they took her on weekend, family camping trips that were quite enjoyable, despite Jack's tendency to blow things up whenever he tried to use a barbecue grill.
There was an obstacle course the Fenton's had installed in the new lab that both Phantoms would practice on, making sure that they were always prepared for anything. Sometimes, they would even have matches against each other that almost always ended in a tie. Except when they had flying races. Since Danielle learned her Plasma-Rocket power, she always won. (Danny always playfully considered that cheating)
The Fenton's had the opportunity to test exactly how fast she could go with this power. Danny had been able to start from 112 Miles per hour and climb up to 120 in all his flying practice, but Danielle, with her plasma-rocket, they discovered that she could reach a velocity that she could use to launch herself into space. They had used it once too. Axion Labs had sent up a new satellite into Earth's orbit and Danielle was sent up to make sure everything was going well with its primary functions before it became fully operational. Danny still had visions of being an astronaut someday and was happy to be able to go into space with her and help with the satellite. Even though his ghost fighting duties were starting to drain his hopes of becoming an actual certified astronaut, at least he had the opportunity to do something like this once in a while with him being half ghost and able to withstand the conditions of space better than any normal human.
Sometimes, the Phantom, in addition to local ghost attacks, would have special calls of assistance in other places of the world. Danielle was still learning to regulate the constant emission of energy her speed power emitted, though, so she only used it to travel long distances when she knew she wouldn't need her strength to fight a ghost by the time she got to her destination. So in these out of town cases, they got to use the Fenton Jet to get to these places fast.
When Danielle didn't have to deal with any evil ghosts, Jazz would sometimes take shopping and on other activities where they had some family bonding time of their own. The two girls may have been four years apart in their ages, but Danielle found it easier to be friends with Danny's sister than anyone in the school. The young clone was always so shy when people approached her at school. Accept for Valerie, but she had always known her after she had assisted in helping Danny to save her from a liquefying death.
And there was of course Dash who would not let up coming over to talk to her whenever he had the chance, despite her frequent demands to leave her alone from both herself and her look-alike cousin. Though Dash was no longer picking on Danny, Danielle was not going to put up with the showoff after seeing what he does to other people on her first day of school. She didn't put him on the spot as the subject of humiliation like she had in the cafeteria, but her ghost-powers gave her the ability to end a conversation with Dash quite fast and leave him in at least a small pool of embarrassment. Like turning invisible and just walking away when she saw him trying to come over to her.
Aside from having to deal with Dash's repeated attempts to approach the girl and her lack of social skills with anyone else besides Danny, Jazz and Valerie, school wasn't all that bad for Danielle. She did well enough in her classes to continue to be on the teacher's good sides. Even Mr. Lancer's. She really looked forward to the classes she and her cousin shared. Both Danny and Danielle sometimes had some ghost trouble during school that resulted in after school makeup time with the vice principle, but now that Danielle was there, they would both take turns doing their detention with their English teacher while the other could be available for any ghost emergency.
But although things were going well for the clone of Danny Phantom, she still had only just gotten used to calling Danny's parents Aunt Maddie and Uncle Jack. She also couldn't help but feel slightly out of place whenever she called the Fentons' home her own. She could never put her finger why she still felt this way after several months of living under the same roof with the boy she was cloned from. At first she just thought that maybe it was just her worrying too much again, and kept dismissing it. She never brought it to Danny's attention because she figured that he would just say that it was just her unfamiliarity with her new life. But it just kept on reoccurring and it was starting to bother her.
Sooner than anyone thought, the end of the school year was approaching and finals were coming up. The teachers were pushing their students to work harder than they had all year. Danny always hated this time of the year but considering this was Danielle's first year of schooling, she didn't really seem to mind it as much. Everyone else was usually just dozing off during class.
One day in particular in Mr. Lancer's class, several people's heads started dropping onto the surface of their desks, suddenly falling asleep. Tucker was one of these and Danny almost did the same. As you can imagine, Mr. Lancer wasn't very happy with the sudden lack of attention. Danny had to admit that the he more than once had fallen asleep in class himself during certain lectures, but with more people suddenly dropping on their work, it was getting a bit strange. He was usually one of the first ones to do it and more than half the class had fallen sound asleep by the time the bell rang. And they didn't even wake up when that happened.
Danny was just walking in the halls during the break with Sam and Tucker when he passed someone who was slumped on the floor next to the lockers, snoring. This was not a sight Danny nor any of his friends had ever seen before.
"Probably just came from Mr. Lancer's class." Danny suggested. As the three of them passed the principle's office, Tucker just casually peaked through the door window. But then suddenly stopped, stepped backward and took a closer look through the window with a very confused look on his face.
"Hey, Danny. Look at this." He said, using his hand to beckon to his half-ghost friend.
After a confused look at Sam, who could only shrug in response, Danny hurried to the window to see what Tucker was so surprised about. Danny's eyes popped when he saw. Principle Ishyama was sleeping with her head propped on the top of her desk on top of a document she must have been writing before dozing off.
"Okay. That's really weird." Sam said, when she looked over Danny's shoulder at the bizarre scene that baffled the two boys. Principle Ishyama was almost as strict as Mr. Lancer was. She was just in a much more cheerful nature. Falling asleep during school hours was the last thing she would do.
"Maybe she just had a long night." Tucker said aloud. But Danny was starting to think that there was something amiss.
"Danny!" The teenage ghost-hero turned in hearing his little cousin's urgent voice and saw her running towards him. When she had come up to him and his two friends, she asked, while panting to catch her breath, "Danny. You've seen how people have been falling asleep during classes today, right?" When Danny Sam and Tucker all nodded indefinitely, Danielle then said, indicating the passage she had just come from, "I think I just found the cause of it."
With the Goth and techno-geek in close step behind them, the two Phantoms hurried back in the direction Danielle had just come from. They slowed to a careful walk before they reached a hall intersection. Just before they peered around the corner, the Phantom's ghost senses went off.
Staying alert, all four of the teenagers looked around the corner to see several green entities floating around, creeping up on students who were just going about their own business, emitting a powdery substance from their fingers that fell on the students, who immediately after just collapsed to the floor.
"Sleepwalkers." Danny said quietly, recognizing the shape of these particular specters that actually had legs and had their eyes closed all the time, though from past experience, he figured that they could still see.
Danielle looked back at him with a weird look. "They look like they're just falling over to me." She said, meaning the students who were being victimized by the dream dust.
"No, no. I'm talking about the ghosts." Danny corrected. "They're called Sleepwalkers." He looked back up, observing the scene in thought. "Looks like Nocturn's at work again."
"But why didn't he send these guys after you first, Danny?" Tucker asked. "The last time he attacked, he made sure you were out of the way before he went for anyone else."
"Maybe he knew my ghost-sense would pick them up if they tried to sneak up on me and alert everyone else." Danny replied.
"Hmm. That makes sense." Danielle put in. "I was at my locker when two of them tried to come up behind me when my ghost-sense went off. When I turned around and saw them, they seemed to freak out."
"What do you mean?" Sam asked.
"Well, they tried to nail me with that dusty stuff anyway, but when I used my plasma ray on them, they just disintegrated. But there were a few others nearby that just took off when they saw me do it. That's when I came to find you guys."
"Wait. They just ran off?" Danny asked, a bit surprised. Danielle nodded.
The hybrid boy looked at his two friends who seemed to be pondering this as well.
"What's wrong?" Danielle asked, when she noticed the three's faces.
"The Sleepwalkers are basically just drones who mindlessly obey Nocturn. He's a ghost who gets his power from people's dreams and conjures these guys with it. Based on past battles I've had with them, they don't usually get spooked from any threat." Danny explained.
"Why'd they run from me then?" Danielle inquired after hearing this.
This is where Sam shook Danny's arm to get his attention. "What if they weren't?" she said, as if sounding suspicious.
Danny just stared at her as if asking her to spill the beans a bit more, but then creepy sounds alerted them all. Danny quickly grabbed the other three and turned himself and everyone invisible as a few Sleepwalkers suddenly hovered by where they were hiding.
"Well, either way," Danny began, turning visible again when the ghosts had passed. "The longer we let these guys work, the more powerful Nocturn's gonna get. And we can't have that." With that said, he switched to his ghost mode. "Tucker. Sam. The people they put to sleep already didn't seem to have those weird headsets this time. You guys go around and wake up anyone you can. Get the Fenton Wrist Rays in case you run into any Sleepwalkers on the way."
Then he flew around the corner as Sam and Tucker ran off to do what Danny suggested. Danielle was about to follow her cousin into battle but just then, more Sleepwalkers suddenly phased from the ceiling, blocking her way. She swung her arm around, setting off a wave of ecto energy from her hand that hit all of them at once. On contact, the green, entities dissolved away.
Then she channeled her own power and changed to her Phantom form. But just as she finished, she heard an unfamiliar voice coming from behind her. "Ah. So it is you." Danielle spun around just in time to see a huge, ghost suddenly appear in a cloud of purple mist. His tall and dark body almost stretched to the height of the ceiling and almost looked like it was an opening to a black and star-filled night. His ram-horned head was purple, but his face was white and his eyes were a menacing red. One of them seemed to have a scar on it. He also had a small black beard on his pointed chin. Instead of feet, there were six creepy tentacles that slowly moved about as if they were under water. "You're the new ghost-girl everyone has been talking about." He said this with an evil smile. Danielle could see small, pointed fangs in his mouth as he spoke.
"Nice to meet you too, Nocturn." Danielle said back, after getting over the surprise of how he had known who she was. "In fact, I've got a little something for you." Then she fired a powerful plasma ray from her palm that hit the horned ghost right in the middle of his body, blasting a big hole in his form. But to her surprise, he didn't even flinch at her attack. After just a moment, the hole she had just made resealed itself as if the ghost had never been hit.
Nocturn smiled after his recovery was complete. "How convenient. I have a present for you as well." Then he elevated his long arms with spiky elbows and ended with huge, hands with claw-like fingers. "Sleepwalkers! Form!" He bellowed. His voice echoed, making the walls almost vibrate and more of the green drones of his suddenly materialized, surrounding the girl.
She tried to beat them back with a series of Plasma rays, but they kept coming. Eventually they became too many for her to handle and two of them successfully grabbed hold of her. The Phantom clone tried to phase out of their grasp, but for some reason, she couldn't.
Nocturn had heard of Danielle coming as a bit of a surprise during other battles Danny Phantom had been in with other ghosts lately. The ghost of sleep wanted to make doubly sure that this same stunt wasn't pulled on him. So he sprung his own trap on Danny's element of surprise.
Just as he thought he was triumphant in seeing young Danielle trying to break free, blue beams of energy suddenly came out of nowhere, hitting the Sleepwalkers and freezing them solid in ice. The same blue beams hit the ones that had Danielle.
Nocturn's own sneak-attack backfired enough for the ghost girl to take advantage of it. The now frozen Sleepwalkers still had her by the arms, but she used her enhanced ghost-strength to spin around like a windmill until they were flung off her and thrown right at Nocturn. The frozen ghosts hit him dead on, forcing him back and onto the floor. The ice-encased specters shattered when they hit the floor after him.
By this time Danny had landed next to his little cousin with blue auras just fading from his hands. "I thought coming to school was already a nightmare, Nocturn. But seeing your face again?" He said to the dream thief.
Tucker and Sam were just coming down the hall in hearing the commotion. They had woken several people and had asked them to help wake anyone else they found sleeping and to be on the lookout for the Sleepwalkers. The two had just come back around the corner to see Nocturn suddenly look up from his place on the floor and send a wave of his own blue ghost-energy. But it hit only Danny instead of both of the Phantoms, like expected.
After the ghost boy was blown several feet back, Danielle gasped in feeling herself suddenly rise above the ground, but not of her own doing. Nocturn was using a telekinetic power and he used it to throw the girl into the grasp of more Sleepwalkers he had called forth. Before Danielle could do anything, the horned ghost extended a dark hand out towards her and his fingers emitted a blue misty substance. She instantly felt herself getting drowsy when the blue mist started floating around her face and Nocturn let out an echoing laugh as the girl's eyes drooped shut.
Danny was still recovering from being blown back and only saw as Danielle suddenly went limp in the grasp of the green dream-powered henchmen who then started to vanish with her. "No!" Danny cried as he tried to go after them, but had to dodge another blast, sent by Nocturn, before the Sleepwalkers disappeared with his cousin entirely. "What do you want with Danielle? Where are you taking her?" Danny demanded to Nocturn.
"I sensed something about her dreams that gives me more energy than anyone else's." Was the huge ghost's calm response. "It won't matter how many of your fellow students your friends were able to waken if I have her dreams to give me the power I need." This is where Danny realized why the Sleepwalkers had run from Danielle before. They weren't afraid of her, they were just scouts. Sent to find the human identity of the girl Phantom before Nocturn sprung his trap.
Nocturn raised his hands again, conjuring more Sleepwalkers that went after Danny. Tucker and Sam now jumped in the battle with Fenton Wrist Rays and started blasting away at the specters. With his friends help, Danny was able to fight them all off. Some even got caught in the Fenton Thermos if they didn't have to be disintegrated. But by the time the hall was clear of the Sleepwalkers, Nocturn had disappeared.
Danny let out an angered cry and slammed a clenched fist on the lockers that lined the wall next to him. "I should have know he was planning something with Dani when he snuck up on her instead of me." He said aloud, but more to himself than his friends. Sam and Tucker looked at him sympathetically before he turned his full attention on them. "We've got to find him before he uses her dreams and becomes too strong for us to handle. Tuck. Can you use your PDA to track any weird technology?"
"I can try, but do you really think Nocturn will be using another dream-machine if he's not even using those headsets, like last time?" Tucker asked, attaching a satellite-type gadget to his PDA.
"Based on what he just said, he might be using one on Dani."
This was logical enough. So Tucker went to work with his PDA. It wasn't long before he did indeed find something strange that had not been there the day before. And it was still inside the building. Or rather, on top of it.
After Tucker told Danny the exact location the signal was coming from, Danny took a Fenton Thermos, went intangible and flew through the ceiling. Sam was about to object, that it could be a trap, but Danny went too fast. Tucker then ran off to see if he could get back to waking people up. The less people asleep, the slower Nocturn would gain power from their dreams, and the easier it would be for Danny to take him on.
Sam would have done the same, but she started to have some thoughts, staring up at the ceiling at the place where Danny had just disappeared. Ever since hearing him explain how Danielle was really a clone, Sam had always had some uncertainties. She at first had passed them up as simple paranoia. But lately, she had observed Danielle's behavior in certain situations: Especially in her methods of dealing with Dash. And there were a few other instances during battles with some ghosts that also started to rouse suspicions in the Goth about the female hybrid. Sam had never brought the subject up to anyone else, especially Danny, because she knew how he was. He would more than likely just get upset at her for even thinking negatively about the girl he considered family. Nevertheless, the Goth friend of the ghost hero was starting to question to herself if having the hybrid double around all the time was such a good idea.
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Danny appeared outside on the roof of the school and after a few seconds of looking around, he saw the unmistakable form of Nocturn. He was bending over Danielle's limp form that indeed now had the metal helmet-like device on her head. Nocturn was steadily growing bigger as he was absorbing the energy her dreams gave him and the metal headset kept her in a deep sleep that she would never be able to awaken from: At lease not on her own.
Danny learned the hard way that he could not touch the headset without receiving a literal shock. But he had dealt with this before. All he would have to do is overshadow her and see what she was dreaming. Then he would be able to come up with something creative and unexpected that would turn that dream into a nightmare that would scare her awake.
As he tried to sneak up behind Nocturn to jump inside Danielle's dream, the large, dark ghost spun around, shouting, "Sleepwalkers! Form!"
This surprised Danny a bit as the green apparitions came swarming around him, but Danny simply scoffed, rubbing his head as if irritated. "Nocturn, have you come up with anything new at all since the first time we fought?" He asked.
"Have you, ghost boy?" Nocturn replied.
"Like I need to. It's only a few people in the school who are asleep this time Nocturn, and my friends are going around taking care of that."
"Ah, but I have the power I need to sustain myself right here." Nocturn indicated Danielle who was laid close by him, where he could easily absorb whatever dreams she was having.
Danny looked at his clone's motionless body. "What makes her dreams so powerful, anyway." He demanded, when the thought occurred to him.
"I've told you once before. Dreams are the gateway to the subconscious. And the dreams your look-alike has here are ones that she feels very strongly have a very likely chance of coming true. Ones that she fears very greatly will come to pass."
As soon as he said the word "Fear", Danny's concerns were starting to grow. The dreams Nocturn had him and his peers in were ones of living in a paradise that they didn't want to wake up from. But as the ghost-boy looked back at his cousin and seeing her expression, he could tell that she was not envisioning any such place. "You're making her live through her worst nightmare." Danny realized aloud.
"That's right." Nocturn said, with a very menacing grin. "And you won't be able to wake her from a dream that's already a nightmare."
Danny glared at the dream-manipulating ghost. "We'll see about that." He proclaimed, with a deadly whisper, and he shot blue rays of his ice-cold energy, encasing the surrounding Sleepwalkers in ice. Then he flew at Danielle, turning intangible and before Nocturn could stop him, he jumped into his ghost clone's head.
But just as the boy disappeared, Nocturn simply laughed folding his long arms. He had confidence that Danny was not going to be able to wake this one. So many overwhelming things were already happening in her dream that another shock was not going to help. In the meantime, his conjured army would continue to put the Casper High students to sleep. Then he would move on to the rest of the town. The ghost hero's two friends wouldn't be able to take on so many at once. If all went well, soon they would be asleep as well. And once Danny gave up trying to wake his cousin, he would have his dreams helping to power him up as well, until nothing could stop him.
Danielle continued to lay where she was as the ghost of the night continued to absorb her dreams and steadily get stronger. She started to move around in her sleep as her dream began to disturb her. In the visions she was having in her mind's eye, she was fighting against Vlad who had returned when everyone thought that he was gone for good. She couldn't defeat him. He overpowered her greatly. He had after all created her. He knew and predicted her every move. Her new speed power didn't even help because he could teleport. She couldn't do anything as he was taking her back to his lab to try again to find out what about her made her so different from the other clones he had made. But then something completely unexpected happened. Something so weird, it couldn't be happening at all. Why in the world, or even the whole universe, would Vlad suddenly drop what he was doing and start doing the Funky Chicken?
Danielle gasped (and so did Nocturn) as her eyes suddenly shot open and she bolted upright. The medal helmet that the evil ghost had placed on her head shattered and Danny, in his intangible state was suddenly shot from her head and he landed hard, several feet away on the concrete roof of the school.
"What? But how?" Nocturn questioned, completely astonished at the possibility of his enemy being able to wake his main source of power. The dark ghost felt himself grow suddenly weaker despite the other dreams he was absorbing in addition to Danielle's. This incident came so unexpectedly, he didn't even notice Danny take out the Fenton Thermos and point it at the ghost who had made his cousin live out possible the worst dream she had in her whole time of existence.
"Say goodnight, Dream-eater." Danny stated. The next thing anyone new, Nocturn was sucked into the Thermos and his power over everyone else in Casper High was lifted.
Danny shoved the lid on the Thermos and looked up at Danielle who was still sitting where she had only seconds before been asleep. She had a fearful look on her face as it reflected back on what she had just been dreaming despite the weird sight that she had seen that resulted in her waking up. Danny walked over to her as she started looking around, wondering how she had gotten on the roof of the school. Danny knelt next to her and put a hand on her shoulder. "Dani, are you okay?" He asked, shaking her just a bit.
She didn't answer. A silent moment passed before she finally let out a distressed moan. She hugged her knees and hid her face as if trying to forget the nightmare that Danny had just witnessed her having. "Do you have dreams like that often?" Danny continued.
This time Danielle nodded and looked up from her knees. "It seemed so real this time, though." She almost whispered this and Danny saw her eyes beginning to water with tears.
Danny helped the clone to her feet and gave her a hug. "It's okay, Dani." He said, trying to comfort her as she started to weep softly. "Vlad's gone. He's been gone. It was just a nightmare."
Maybe so. But Danielle had had several reoccurring nightmares of Vlad returning and coming after her to continue his cloning research. Sometimes she was back in the lab and about to be melted down again. But what really was eating at her was the way Vlad had deceived her in making her think that he really cared for her as his own child. Then he suddenly turns around saying that his prime clone was the only one he really cared about and tries to murder her.
Sometimes she did wish that Vlad would come back, but knew that if he did, he would never even begin to pretend to love her again without it being some sort of trap. Ever since that day when she had found out her creator's true feelings for her, she had felt an empty place inside her that had grown since Vlad nearly destroyed her. A place she was never able to fill. Not even to this day.
I had always thought of doing a fight with Nocturn where people thought at first that classes were just getting extra boring because of finals coming up. Blackjay was the one who came up with the idea of Danny overshadowing Vlad and making him do the Funky Chicken. My sister and I laughed our heads off when she came up with that. I hope you readers were as amused as we were. In fact I hope this whole plot of the chapter turned out okay. Danielle's and Sam's current feeling are actually supposed to be a big part of a scene that's coming up in a later chapter. I promise things will start getting more exciting like it did at the beginning before this whole story is over. I'm just trying to set the stage here.