Hello, everybody! Yes, it's mostly from Starr's and Paulina's focus, hope you don't mind. Hmm. I had more to say but I can't remember now, funny how that works. Everyone thank IvyVine6 for the sudden revival of this story (it's alive!), and I highly recommend going back and reading the earlier chapters cuz it's been a while. Please chalk up any inconsistencies to the fact that I was writing this without access to the original chapters (my technology situation is pathetic).
To recap: At a school wide assembly, a ghost named Shinigami attacks the assembly by overshadowing the principal and wielding a weapon fatal to humans but not ghosts. Danny Phantom defeats him with some unexpected help from Skulker, but not before Shinigami partially succeeds in kidnapping all of the adults.
Thanks for reading, and I do not own Danny Phantom!
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Starr shifted uneasily on the hard bench seat and glanced anxiously at her best friend. Yes, Phantom was super cute and totally hot, but…their lives were in danger! She had a mental image of her funeral, with everyone from school there and snickering at her corpse's scorched hair and mangled nails. Eww.
She shuddered. If she was going to die, she wanted to die beautifully and romantically, or at least tragically. She did not want to die by being shot by an awful, brutish ghost.
During Starr's musings, Paulina had snatched her phone out of her purse and was avidly recording the grim scene with all the glee of a teenage girl with a crush. "This is gold, Starr!" She squealed. "The ghost-boy will come, and he'll save us, and save me, more importantly, and he'll carry me off into the sunset, and – oh my gosh!"
Paulina's satellite – oops, best friend – was so preoccupied with making sure that the ghost and his minions hadn't heard the outburst that she missed it. "What?" She asked quietly.
Paulina shoved the phone at her and hissed, "Keep recording." Her expressions altered to a completely inappropriate dreamy expression. "I need to get closer so the ghost boy can rescue me!"
Starr opened her mouth to protest, but Paulina was already shoving her way down. Anxiously she turned her attention back to the gym floor and was confronted with the sight of a dead teenager lying limp on the grond, a smoking scorch mark blasted through his shirt.
Wait, she thought. Is that Fenton? But he was just sitting two rows down – Dash was taunting him earlier! She shook it off. He's dead, Starr, have a little compassion!
'Don't bother', said an ugly little voice in the back of her mind. 'He was a loser. He doesn't matter.'
Starr avoided the thought by glancing towards Paulina, who was…not very far down yet. The petrified student body was to stunned to yield to the Latina's demands to "Move over, geeks! Ergh, loser breath!"
Then reality caught up to Starr. Danny Fenton was dead. As in, not alive. Like all those stories on TV, except – he was human, he was alive,and now he wasn't, it was, it was…all the adults were unconscious, someone help, someone…!
Someone screamed in shock and Starr clapped her hands over her ears and screwed her eyes tightly shut, unheeded tears running unchecked.
The shocked scream was because Danny had moved – was alive – but Starr didn't know that.
All she knew was that Fenton had been a living, thinking, person, and now he was dead.
In the back of her mind the voice whispered, 'He wasn't human, didn't matter, to you before, why should that change now? Why can't you be more like Paulina? Why can't you-'
Shut up! She shrieked at it, Shut up shut up shut up… Starr's panicked breathing worsened until the distraught teen blacked out.
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Skulker advanced menacingly. His malicious smirk was wide as he threatened the exhausted halfa. "And now, whelp, I shall have your pelt!" The menacing whine of charging weaponry at its peak was abruptly interrupted when Paulina finally forced her through the immobile student body.
"Phantom! Ghost-boy! It's me, Paulina!" She called out, and paused to pose alluringly, her blinding smile flashing, "Your true love, remember?"
Danny sighed in exhaustion. Sam, too far away to do anything about the popular pest, scowled. Tucker was too busy fiddling with his PDA to notice.
Grinning evilly, Skulker declared, "Maybe I should attack your true love instead, whelp. The human love of the rare halfa would be a decent conquest for the Ghost Zone's greatest hunter!"
Danny groaned and grudgingly flew to Paulina's side and put up a stuttering, toxic green shield against the onslaught of Skulker's missile barrage. "Don't even start," he shot back tiredly. "Seriously."
Still scowling, Sam muttered darkly, "Shallow witch, endangering – Tucker!" She elbowed him – "Can you separate yourself from your PDA for one second?!"
His absorbed expression didn't waver, and the focused tech geek didn't react except to push his glasses up his nose with one finger. "Her name is Julia," He corrected absently, "And…there!"
The Goth girl's scowl faded. Slightly. "What did you do?" She asked.
Tucker's smug smile and pointing finger were her answer. "Ta da!"
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Danny delivered a round house kick followed with a weak ecto-blast to the side of Skulker's helmet, panting raggedly.
Skulker's triumphant smile was unbearable as he blasted his prey into the wall. "I, Skulker, am about to – hunt all of the ghosts in Amity except for the whelp?! What…but…no!" Despite his protests, his mechanical body betrayed him and the armored ghost blasted off trough the ceiling.
Sam smacked herself in the forehead. "Of course."
Tucker grinned.
Danny, of course, had turned invisible and left immediately, leaving a stunned school, disappointed Paulina, and a dozen unconscious adults behind.
"We should go find Danny."
Sigh. "I'll grab the medical kit and bandages."
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While the emergency workers, police, and ghost hunters attempted to make sense of the events that had half-destroyed the gym and resulted in several missing teachers, Paulina was most likely the only student that wasn't in serious need of therapy, being far too focused on her crush to care about any danger or violence.
She was in the girl's bathroom - taking refuge from the chaos of all the hurt, wimpy losers that needed reassuring - and was rewatching the video her phone had been recording of the event. Stupid Starr, dropping my iPhone! The queen bee thought irritably. Her annoyance vanished, however, when she found what she had been looking for...
It was only a few seconds, but it was all she needed.
After all, when you have video of Fenton - who she knew had some sort of connection to Phantom (that was why she had invited Fenton to her party the other day, after all) - suddenly disappearing and reappearing just in time to take the fatal blast from Shinigami's human-killing gun...
The Latina's shark smile would have terrified any lower life form (read: anyone lower on the popularity ladder than she) as she plotted just how, exactly, she would turn this whole disaster to her advantage...
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Please review! Let me know you're there, if you liked it, if you hated it, any concrit, or something random, like "Paulina reminds me of my little sister." You're all wonderful! *gives cookies to everyone even if they don't review*
P.S. Help with line breaks would be appreciated (as you can probably tell)