Alright, here's chapter two! Again, Danny Phantom and all related characters belong to Butch Hartman and not me.
Chapter 2-
Danny gasped. "Vlad!" he exclaimed.
Vlad Plasmius reached down and effortlessly hauled the sixteen-year-old off the ground till he was nose to nose with him. "So you thought you could hide away all this time as your secret identity?" he practically whispered. "You thought there wouldn't be any chance I'd give up on searching for the boy that destroyed my life? You're quite mistaken."
He threw Danny down on the rain-soaked forest floor. Danny clutched his chest, the breath knocked out of him. Vlad stepped on his arms, pinning him down. Danny bit his lip in pain, but was not about to show any other signs of weakness.
"But what you don't know, Daniel, is that all the while, as you were cowardly hiding, I've been growing stronger. And now that I've got you cornered, you haven't got a chance!"
Danny's mind finally stopped reeling long enough for him to respond.
"Hiding? I haven't been hiding!"
Vlad laughed at this as he pulled out a green ray gun. "New and improved technology. Kills humans as well as ghosts. So I knew I'd be ready for whatever form you were in when I finally met you."
This sparked a memory in Danny's mind. The green bullet racing in the alleyway, hitting his best friend with such force he had no time to utter anything….
Filled with rage at this realization, Danny twisted his arms, unbalancing Vlad.
"You killed Tucker!" Danny howled.
Vlad's eyebrows rose momentarily. "Consider yourself lucky, Daniel. It could have killed you, or your gothic girlfriend."
"He was my best friend! It's just as bad!"
Danny felt an urge to hurt this man rising up him like bile. He summoned everything—anything—and let it all loose at Vlad. Dismayed, he watched as the ball of ectoplasm he'd created bounced harmlessly off of this despicable man.
Plasmius laughed again. "Do you really think you can hurt me after a year of not using your powers?"
Danny decided then that he would do the thing he was best at: running away.
He shot up in the air and fled. He looked over his shoulder; Plasmius was still standing where he had been. Danny looked forward again and flew even faster.
Without even contemplating the matter, Danny knew this wasn't over. Vlad was merely biding his time. The real revenge had yet to come. And Danny wasn't prepared.
TRANSITION!
Danny took deep breaths and smoothed his black hair. The strands stuck out again, but this was hardly of importance.
He stood underneath the overhang of the Mansons' house and pulled down his hood. Breathing deeply again, he rapped three times on Sam's door.
He stood for a minute longer, but no one came to answer. He tried again. He was about to leave when he heard a lock being turned. His heart pounding, he waited as Sam's mother opened the door.
Danny smiled, hoping it didn't look too forced.
Mrs. Manson screamed and shut the door in Danny's face. "WE'RE BEING ROBBED!" she screeched into the contents of her home. Danny sighed. At least he knew Sam's mom hadn't changed.
His heart skipped a beat when he heard Sam's voice from where he remembered was the kitchen.
"What?" she asked skeptically.
"There's a young man outside our door!"
"That doesn't mean he's a robber, Mom."
Danny stood uncomfortably as Sam opened the door. He tried to smile. She gasped and once again the door was shut in Danny's face.
"I told you he's a robber!" Mrs. Manson said in panic.
"Mom, why don't you go to the kitchen and take some more of your medicine?" Sam gently suggested. Their footsteps faded as they retreated to the kitchen. Danny was unsure whether he should have left. He decided to wait for Sam.
Soon her footsteps returned and she was at the door again. After a few moments, she opened it.
"What do you want?" she asked sharply. She kept the door open enough just to see her face.
"I need help. Please. I know for the past year I've just been moping around and ignoring you, but I really need your help now. Please," he pleaded with her.
"Why the hell should I help you?" she whispered fiercely. She slammed the door shut.
"It's about Vlad. He's back," Danny said through the door.
Slowly, painfully slowly, Sam opened the door again.
Danny continued, rushed. "I ditched school halfway through, and I changed into you-know-who for the first time in a year. And then he came out of nowhere and swore revenge."
"You changed? And he just let you go?" Sam asked in bewilderment.
"Yeah, and yeah. I feel like he has more to come. And he has new technology and new powers."
Sam thought for a minute before replying. "You stopped using you powers for a year, and suddenly used them again, which got you into trouble. That's your own fault. Now you've come here, expecting me to suddenly forgive you and pity you and help you? No! Danny, I'm not going to do that for you. You hurt me too bad. I've got my own, new life now, and sadly, it doesn't involve ghosts. Or you."
She slammed the door again, leaving him alone on her front porch.
"FINE!" Danny screamed. He punched the door and ran away down the street, ignoring the new pain in his knuckles.
He didn't need her. What was he thinking, asking for her help? This was something he could—that he had—to do alone. So what if he hadn't used his powers in over a year? He could train. He could dodge Vlad. He'd done so before. He had just been a little rusty in the forest, and things had seemed so much worse. It's just Vlad. What bad could he have possibly come up with in Danny's absence?
Danny paused and remembered that gun Vlad had been holding. It killed humans and ghosts. And he obviously had some sort of ghost tracker, otherwise how would he have been able to find Danny so fast? He couldn't have had a human tracker because Danny would have been caught way sooner. After all, he had been a human for over a year.
Danny began to panic. Vlad was way more advanced than he, and this unsettled him. Of course, Vlad had always been more advanced than he. But he had improved even more, while Danny had become worse.
He needed Sam. He needed Tucker, too. He clenched his fists. He had to get over Tucker. His meeting with Vlad had snapped things into perspective for Danny. Mourning over his lost friend would only make matters worse. It would not help him train. He needed to move on.
He needed Sam. More than he wanted to admit. She had always been there for him. Was it too late to repair what they once had? After all, if he showed her that he had changed, she would surely long to fight ghosts with him once more, right?
He would give her one day. In one day, he would approach her again, this time at school. No doors would slam in his face then.
SCHOOL
"No! I said it before and I'm saying it again. No!" Sam said sternly.
"But I changed! Really, I did! I had a revelation yesterday," Danny tried telling her.
"Was that before or after you left a dent in my front door?" she said scathingly.
"After!" he yelled back. But it was too late. She had slammed the door to the science room in his face.
Angry, sad, and confused, Danny ran down the hallway and out the back door. This time, rather than changing into his alter-ego, he ran all the way home.
He ran right into his house and up the stairs.
"Danny, is that you?" called the voice of Maddie, his mother.
"Yeah, Mom."
"Why are you home so early? Is it a half-day?"
"Yeah, sure."
He ran up to his room.
"But it's only 9:30!" Maddie called back. She heard his bedroom door slam. She sighed. She glanced at an old family photo. Danny was a little happy boy, smiling up at the camera with his sister, Jazz. Maddie longed for that same happy boy.
Up in his room, Danny was lying on his bed and staring at a picture of Sam. The treatment he was getting from her was leading him to believe Sam hated him. She couldn't. They had dated. They had loved each other. Why had that changed? If Danny had been willing to change for her, why wouldn't she?
He threw the picture against his wall and listened to the glass shatter. So what? She was just a girl.
Danny shook his head. What had he turned into? Before Tucker's death, if he had even smudged a picture of Sam, he would panic. This grumpy boy was not who he was.
Soon, he fell asleep with thoughts of the old days, when he, Sam, and Tucker were best friends and fought ghosts together. The days when Tucker was a goofy nerd, Sam and Danny had puppy love, and the Box Ghost invaded the Nasty Burger while the three friends ate there.
And Danny fell asleep smiling.
Hours later, he awoke as a figure loomed over him. Before he could even scream, he was hit on the head and knocked into a black world that took his senses. He was forced into a glowing blue bag and was stolen, away into the night.
Ooh the suspense! Sorry if it was still too short. I'm pretty sure it was longer than chapter 1, however.
Ch3 possibly coming at some point in the future.
~Dasi