A/N: Hi. So, again, please vote in the poll on my profile and continue sending in gadget ideas! There are lots of creative people reading!
Also, the ending of this chapter marks where I got stuck on this story for about a year and a half (yay…). You'll all be pleased to know that this also marks what I believe is the halfway point in this story. For some strange reason, the final battle and all its lead-in and aftermath keep getting longer and longer. I believe that there will be about five chapters and an epilogue after this, provided nothing else decides to add itself in.
So, enjoy!
Playlist for this chapter: Breaking Benjamin's "Fade Away," My Chemical Romance's "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)," and Flyleaf's "Again."
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Reid blinked. "That last—Samantha Manson was your—?"
"Her name is Sam," Danny snapped.
"Sam. She was your obsession?"
"Is."
Reid's brow furrowed. "Why hasn't your obsession changed?"
Danny glared. "Because I haven't given up on her."
"Why?"
And so, Danny found himself explaining what she had said before she died. "I have to save them. All of them." He glared down at himself, as though he could see the words written on his chest through the sheets. "Even if they don't want me to," he murmured.
Reid knew he wasn't supposed to hear that. "What was that?"
"Nothing."
"Danny…."
"It's nothing, okay?" He glanced down again, muttering, "Just—Just save them, if I can't."
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The nurses quickly threw Reid out after Danny went silent, saying he was "disturbing the patient." Morgan seemed to understand that now was not the time to joke. They drove back to the office listening to the radio. After pulling in and shutting off the car, Morgan turned to Reid.
"I know a lot of that was personal, but is there anything you can tell us?"
Reid thought back to Danny's attitude during their conversation. "I get the feeling that I can say whatever I want."
Morgan frowned. "Kid's been secretive 'til now. What changed?"
Reid thought a moment, then glanced back up. "Masters attacked him."
Morgan blinked. "So?"
"Something that Masters did or said has changed Danny's outlook. He—He told me that I needed to save his friends and family if he couldn't. It was like…." Reid trailed off, staring straight ahead.
"…Like what?"
Reid blinked and shook his head to clear it. "Like he knew he wouldn't be able to."
"Wait, are we still talking about what he said today?"
"Morgan, we need to have hospital security check in on him. A lot."
"Why?"
"I think there's a chance he could try to suicide."
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A nurse nodded as she wrote down what the man on the phone was saying. "Of course, Dr. Reid. …Mmhm, someone's checking on him now. …Oh, no, we take suicide risks very seriously, don't you wor—"
A sudden, blaring siren cut her off. She glanced around as the man on the phone panicked. "Hold on a moment, sir." She covered the speaker on the phone, waving someone over. "Who pulled the alarm?" she hissed. "Which room?"
"Room 525. A guard pulled it."
The nurse let the orderly go, pulling the phone back up and nibbling on her lip. "I—I'm sorry, sir, I'll have to call you again in a moment. …There's been an, um, emergency." He urgently asked what happened. "I'm not too sure, but it involves the young man in room 525." The man was frantic once more. "I'm sorry, sir, but I have to go. …Yes, of course. …Yes, sir, I'll let you know. Good-bye." She tossed the phone and joined the mass of nurses and doctors rushing to room 525.
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Morgan had watched Reid during the call. He'd seen those emotions that flickered across the genius' face. Authority, worry, panic, frustration, anxiety, and finally a tense calm that he didn't trust for a second. When he hung up, his back was rigid.
"Reid?" Morgan tried cautiously.
"We need to get back to the hospital. Now."
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"What's going on?"
"He's bleeding out!"
"Where'd he get a knife blade?"
The boy was resting calmly in a pool of red, a blade in his broken hand. The restraints had been cut, and thin lines traced all the way up his left arm. None of the cuts were large enough for stitches, and the doctors were doing all they could to wrap them before the teen lost any more blood.
The nurse who had spoken with Reid watched the scene unfold. Something was seriously wrong with this.
She just couldn't figure out what.
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As Morgan spun into a parking spot, Reid jumped out of the car. Morgan was right behind him. They rushed into the wing Danny was in, demanding to know what had happened.
The nurse Reid had spoken with pulled them off to the side. "He has cuts all down his left arm, and we found him with a blade in his hand."
Reid's brow furrowed. "He didn't have anything when I was in there."
"Exactly. Something isn't right about this. He'd been in the OR for hours, there was no way or place for him to hide it."
"Someone set this up to look like a suicide," Morgan stated. "They probably weren't expecting us to call him out as a risk."
The nurse blinked up at him. "But, he's only a child! Who would do something like that?"
"The only one who can benefit from Danny being dead. The person who put him here in the first place."
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"Garcia, call Hotch and tell him to pick Masters up," Reid demanded, hanging tightly on to his seat as Morgan drove wildly.
"Okay, may I ask why?"
"We need to put together enough proof to arrest him. He just tried to make it look like Danny suicided."
She gasped. "Y—You mean, he's—?"
"No, they got to him in time. But it was a close call."
She exhaled. "Oh, thank God…. Now, don't you worry, Boy Genius, I'll get the team together faster than you can say 'lickety-split.'"
Reid's brow furrowed. "Why would I say—?"
She had already hung up.
"What'd she say?" Morgan asked.
"She said she'd get the team together faster than I could say 'lickety-split,' but why would I—?"
Morgan chuckled. "It's a saying, kid. You're not really supposed to say it."
Reid blushed.
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"Danny's stable, for now," Morgan stated to JJ, Rossi, and Prentiss. Garcia and Hotch were both on speaker phone since the former was in her bunker and the latter was en route to Masters' hotel. "They've sent Garcia the security footage."
"Which is very trippy, by the way," Garcia called over her line.
"What do you mean?" Rossi questioned.
"Well, the footage never shows another person, or even the knife! At least, not until the end."
"You got a picture of them?"
"No person, but the knife…."
"Garcia?"
"Let me put it this way. The vids show the restraints being cut, the lines on Danny's arm appearing, but no knife until one is placed in Danny's hand."
"It was a ghost," Reid gasped. Then he blinked and shook his head, realizing exactly how strange that sounded coming from him. "O—Or at the very least, half of one."
"Our resident genius has a point. The hospital has some thermal sensors in the high-risk rooms. They show two forms in Danny's room, but both are colder than the average person."
"Why?" Prentiss wondered.
Reid sighed. "I was figuring it out before I went to the hospital, but Danny confirmed it. Danny and Phantom are the same person."
The team all blinked at him, and from the line connected to Hotch, they heard the car swerve before he regained control. "What?" he demanded.
"He's half-ghost, strange as it sounds. And so is Masters."
Morgan cursed. "Then how're we supposed to catch him?"
"Um, we could help," a new voice said from behind them.
The team spun to face two teens, one about Danny's age and the other a couple years younger. The older girl wore a black and red full body suit made of some sort of lightweight armor and a visor mask that was currently up, showing off her green eyes. The younger wore a black and white belly shirt and pants with gloves and boots and a purple backpack slung over one shoulder. She also had green eyes, but more of a neon shade than the other girl's emerald, and her hair was bright white and held in a ponytail.
"And you two are?" Rossi demanded, an eyebrow raised.
"Valerie Grey," the elder replied, "and—"
"Danielle Phantom." The younger girl slid her backpack off as she spoke. "We know about Masters."
"Everything?" Reid asked, surprised.
"Everything from him being Plasmius to his bad habit of cloning people," Danielle declared, hands on hips. "After all, he cloned me from Danny."
Now, several of the team were staring in disbelief as Hotch muttered that he was on his way back. "Clone?" Morgan finally asked.
Danielle blushed. "I never said I was entirely successful as a clone. Basically, Vlad attempted to make a perfect clone of Danny, but he needed Danny's exact mid-morph DNA in order to stabilize said clone. He used us failures to force Danny to change so he could get that piece. Without the mid-morph DNA, our ghost sides would overpower and destroy our human sides, causing the human side to die and the ghost side to melt down without the human 'item' to shape it."
"…What?" Reid stammered. The team gaped at the fact that someone stumped Reid.
"Hm, well, most ghosts have a human 'item' that they use to stabilize and shape their ghost bodies, otherwise they're just ectoplasmic blobs, like the weakest of ghosts. For instance, half-ghosts have their human sides. Skulker, a hunter, had the ectoskeleton and weapons he used while alive, Technus has, well, his technology…."
"Ember has her guitar," Valerie continued. "And Walker has his rule book. The human item they're shaped around can also determine what powers they'll develop."
As the team attempted to absorb that information, Rossi asked, "How did you two know we knew Danny?"
"We've been following him," Valerie responded, "ever since he left. And it hasn't been easy, let me tell you. This is actually the first time we've caught up to him."
"We know where Masters is keeping the Fentons, Sam, Tuck, and the clones. We can help you rescue them, and we've got weapons that can affect ghosts and half-ghosts." Danielle rummaged through her backpack, pulling out several silver guns, a few batons, a fishing rod, and three thermoses as Hotch rushed in, looking rather harried from his drive over. She passed out the items to the team, keeping a thermos for herself and giving up on untangling the fishing rod line. "Why he ever made this stupid thing, I'll never know," she sighed, rolling her eyes and stuffing the rod back into her backpack.
"Um," Reid stuttered, "d—don't you two need weapons, too?"
"Oh, we've got ours," Valerie replied. "My suit is equipped with everything I need, and Danielle just needs a Thermos."
"How do we work these?" Prentiss asked, studying the gun she'd been given.
"Same as a regular gun, but it takes a little time to charge," Danielle explained. "The batons can lengthen into staves or I guess light sabers is more correct, since they project almost two feet of ectoplasm on either side." She mimed twisting the baton, an action that Morgan mimicked with his own baton.
Six eyes went wide as a green beam extended from each end of the metal handle. Morgan took a few swings with it, then twisted again to dismiss the beams.
"Alright," Garcia's voice complained over the phone, "what cool stuff am I missing now?"
Morgan grinned. "Come on up, baby girl, I think you'd like to see this."
"See what?"
"How we're gonna get Masters."
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A/N: Yeah, so basically from where Danielle and Val come in on was only written a month or two ago. Raise your hands, who saw those two coming in to help out? …Yeah, neither did I.
Anywayz, please remember to vote in the poll and send in gadget ideas! And please review!