OKAY, I KNOW IT'S BEEN A WHILE, BUT DON'T CRUCIFY ME JUST YET! SOME OF YOU MAY KNOW, BUT OTHERS DON'T: I'M IN THE MILITARY AND I'M LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE RIGHT NOW, SO MY FIRST RESPONSIBILITY IS TO FOCUS ON THAT SO I CAN DO MY JOB, THE RIGHT WAY. THANKS FOR BEING PATIENT WITH ME! THIS CHAPTER IS A BIT SHORTER, SO EXPECT MORE SOON!
OH, YEAH, AND DANNY PHANTOM DOESN'T BELONG TO ME. HE AND ALL OF THE RELATED CHARACTERS BELONG TO BUTCH HARTMAN AND NICKELODEON, AND SO DOES THE EPISODE "KINDRED SPIRITS," BUT THE NEW PLOT TWISTS ARE MINE!
CHAPTER 3
Fifteen minutes. For fifteen minutes, Danny stood within the confines of Vlad's machine and repelled the invading energy attempting to permeate his body. However, the longer he fought, the more fatigued he became, and the more fatigued he became, the closer the intangible force came to his ghostly core; slowly, ever so slowly, he could feel it closing in.
And still he refused to give up.
Vlad, meanwhile, waited for the boy to either succumb to the inevitable or prevail. The wait was both disappointing, because he never enjoyed being patient, and encouraging, for if the true Daniel was this strong, then his clone would be even greater.
The struggle continued for another five minutes before Danny was finally able to rally another burst of strength. With the resultant rush of adrenaline, as a last resort, Danny attempted one final time to push the energy away from his core, and to his surprise, it was easy. With his vigor renewed, he continued to fight it, forcing it almost completely out of his body before it wouldn't go any further; he realized that the energy was now confined to the cuffs in his wrists, and experimentally lifted his left hand. He spread his fingers open, then wriggled them to be sure that he could still move them normally. He could still feel the strange thrumming sensation in his wrists, which told him that he wasn't out of harm's way yet, but he also knew that he was safer than he was when he'd woken. For now, at least.
He had to take Vlad by surprise somehow. If he could break out of the container before the millionaire knew what was happening, perhaps he would have a chance to get away by the time the man knew what exactly had occurred. But the question was: How? He couldn't exactly use his ghost powers, because that would mean giving in to Vlad's wish by transforming and taking on his ghost half, which would give the fruit loop a DNA sample to work with. No. He had to get creative with this one.
Danny looked down at Plasmius, who was still watching him with interest. Either the man had no idea that Danny was up to something, or he did, and he very much wanted to see it.
With that thought, Danny put his mind to finding a solution for his current problem. He looked around the interior of the container, hoping to find some loose wiring or some other object that he might use to do some damage, but Vlad seemed to have prepared quite well. Or perhaps not well enough. . . .
Danny tugged on the cuffs around his wrists. The cable connected to them was flexible and retracted into the side of the containment unit when released. This would allow the detainee to struggle against his bonds without severely injuring himself, but still keep him confined inside the vessel. With that realization, Danny pulled both of his wrists toward his center, bringing the electrified cuffs closer to one another. As he fought both Vlad's energy and the retracting mechanism within the walls of the device surrounding him, he thought about exactly what he was doing, and hoped it wouldn't kill him.
His body was completing a circuit within Vlad's machine, but at the same time, his body was also increasing the amount of matter through which the electricity had to travel; the circuit would be stronger if he weren't in the middle of it. If he could bring the cuffs together and provide a stronger connection, perhaps the boost in the flow of power, however small, would overload the machine or force a circuit breaker in Vlad's house to short out, causing a disruption in the power feeding the lab. If it didn't end his life in the process.
Vlad, on the other hand, knew exactly what Danny was planning, and he knew that it would work to the boy's benefit, because the amount of power generated by the machine had been carefully calculated, down to the last volt, and this was the one thing that he had been unable to prepare for when building the device. Insulating the cables to prevent an overload would have also insulated Daniel's body, shielding him from the effects of the ectoplasm-laced electricity. He simply built the machine the way it was, in the hope that young Mr. Fenton would be unable to find its weakness. Unfortunately, he had been incorrect.
Without further hesitation, he bared his fangs in a sinister snarl and growled at 'Maddie.'
"Turn it up! Level eight! Quickly, before he can make contact with the cuffs!"
"Acknowledged, Darling!" The hologram replied, twisting the dial on the machine even further.
Danny was only a couple of inches short of his goal when the power in his wrists swelled and doubled in intensity. The change was so dramatic that he lost focus, and his hands jerked away from each other. Danny had no choice; his thoughts were scattered and chaotic now, allowing the energy new purchase on its path through his body. It surged through his muscles and organs once again, this time with such strength that he cried out in pain. Before he could stop the essence in its tracks, it surged toward his spectral core and attacked it.
And this time, without anything holding it back, it broke the barrier and forced Danny's ghost energy to emerge. A white ring burst into existence around the teen's waist and split horizontally, doubling into a pair; one moved up over his torso, and the other moved down over his legs, coating his human form with his ghostly one.
Danny clenched his jaw, partly because of the pain, and partly because he had who-knows how many volts of electricity flowing through his body. Every muscle felt like it was tearing itself to pieces, but he had to avoid transforming, so he began to withdraw the energy, pulling it back toward his center. The rings traversing his body stopped at his shoulders and knees, then slowly moved toward one another, albeit only for a second, before halting again. He half-growled, half-groaned with exertion as he attempted to force his spectral half back into his body.
Vlad was surprised. But he was also angry. Daniel's resistance was much higher than he'd anticipated, and he didn't want to see another plan (especially one as expensive and pain-staking as this) flushed down the proverbial toilet simply because a child was being hard-headed and stubborn.
"Level ten!" He snapped, approaching a computer panel to the left of the machine, opposite the side where "Maddie" was standing.
"Certainly, Darling!"
Vlad waited at the computer panel for Daniel to complete his transformation. There would be a moment during the change, as Danny's rings of light dissipated and his human energy was locked away in his core, when both his ghost energy and his human energy existed at the same time within his body. At exactly that moment, Vlad would activate a program within the computer, which would do two things: cut power to the machine and activate a mechanism that would extract a DNA sample from Danny's body. Vlad grinned as "Maddie" turned up the machine once again.
The pain in Danny's body hit a whole new level as Vlad increased the machine's power yet again. He continued to lose control, and the rings of light around his body moved apart again. He strained to pull them together, but they only paused for a brief moment before continuing their journey over his body. He yelled in both pain and frustration, feeling his control slip away, and tugged one final time at his power.
Vlad smiled as Danny screamed. He looked at the video feed on his computer screen, which gave him a very clear view of Daniel's pained expression, and told him that the time for action was close. He could tell the boy was becoming increasingly frustrated, and partially because of that frustration, he was losing control. As the rings of ghostly light approached Danny's wrists and ankles, Vlad positioned his hand over the appropriate button on his terminal and waited. The bands passed over Danny's hands and feet and began losing their solidity; Vlad ever so gently touched the button, waiting for just the right. . . .
Now!
At the exact moment that the rings of light dissolved, there was an instant when Danny's ghostly power flared and squelched his human self, forcing it into his core before settling upon his body. This was the moment when both of his entities existed together within Danny, the moment when he existed as both a human and a ghost at the same time.
It was a microsecond before this phenomenon that Vlad's hand twitched downward and activated the mechanism in the machine. His timing couldn't have been more perfect.
The machine seemed to die, leaving Danny's mind with an eerie silence that he hadn't noticed was missing. He was still in pain, but he wasn't screaming anymore; his voice had left him mere moments after he had begun to utter his cries of anguish, but he couldn't suppress a grunt of discomfort as something stabbed him in the back, just to the right of his spine. He would have bet it was a needle, and he wasn't wrong.
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Thanks again for reading! Sorry again for the delay! I plan on doing some writing this weekend, so hopefully there will be more by Monday! By the way, I also have written work in my DevianArt account! Just go to .com and search for Oreochema! See you there!