Powerless
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

Chapter Four: The Knight of Swords

I stared at my mom in surprised disbelief, my mouth working silently. My eyes were green? My mind was working furiously, racing backwards to try and figure this out. My eyes… my hair… was I slowly turning into a ghost? "Um…"

"Daniel James Fenton," my mother whispered, a look of concern on her face. "Explain yourself right now."

"I… see… they… S-Sam… c-c-contacts!" A lie burst into my head suddenly and I licked my lips, preparing to throw myself at it whole-heartedly and then run like my life depended on it. It probably did. "See, Sam wants to make a movie about the ghost-boy and since I kinda look like him she wanted me to play him so she dyed my hair white and gave me some green contacts and I just forgot to take them out…" I trailed off, crossing my fingers that my rather clueless parents would just take the story without question.

"Where did she get white hair dye?" Jazz asked, raising an eyebrow.

I shot her a glare, trying to convey 'I don't want to talk about it at the table' though my eyes. My sister rolled her eyes, but picked up her fork to continue eating.

My father snorted. "You don't look like the ghost-boy. He's evil!" He pounded the table with one fist, then grinned suddenly. "Let's see it."

"See what?" I whispered. My stomach dropped through the floor. I knew what he wanted to see.

"The hair, Danny!" he boomed excitedly. "I went through a phase where I put streaks of white into my hair, and I looked excellent."

Mom glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and a small smile flickered on her face before she turned back to me. "Come on, sweetie, it can't be that bad."

I slowly set my fork down, debating my options. If I really didn't want to, my parents would probably be nice about it and just let it go. There was always the small chance that they'd tackle me and pry it off my head no matter what I said, but I chose to not think about that one. I wrinkled my nose. I had told them my hair was dyed for a play. If that was true, I had no real reason to not show them. But I couldn't show them… I was too obviously 'Phantom' with white hair.

I was so busy with my own thoughts that I never noticed when my sister made her move. Jazz was usually really smart, but she had inherited her own share of the 'clueless' gene and it chose right now to rear its ugly head. "Yeah, Danny, it can't be that bad," she laughed. Then she reached up and knocked the hat from my head.

Crap. I stared down into my food and struggled to breathe normally. Let the fireworks begin.

Beside me, my sister froze and a small "Oh," worked out of her lips. Now she understood. A few seconds too late.

"Danny…" my mother breathed. I glanced up at her through my impossibly white bangs, watching the connections fire in her head. My mother was day-dreamy, generally clueless, and ignorant of the real world, but she was far from stupid. I looked just like my alter-ego and she knew it.

I knew that running from the table was not going to help anything – it'd probably make it worse – but my mouth was moving almost against my will. "Can I be excused?" I swallowed heavily. "I need to call Sam and ask her a question about the… movie."

"No," she said softly, not taking her eyes off of me. "You need… I need… we…" she seemed to be struggling to come up with words to say. "Danny…"

My stomach clenched uncomfortably. She knew something. My hands were shaking so badly in my lap that the rest of me was probably shaking too. To make matters worse, that chilly feeling was growing inside of me again. Any second that strange, light bulb breaking power was going to resurface and I knew I wouldn't be able to control it. I closed my eyes, desperately trying to think of something that would get me out of this.

Something. Anything. I would have taken a giant asteroid destroying the planet over what was going to happen next. I would have gladly faced that over my parents right at this moment.

Nothing. I shivered when the temperature of the table suddenly plummeted, my breath fogging in the air. My dad gave a start, hissing, "Ghost," under his breath as he grabbed his latest ecto-weapon and looked around. My sister hugged her arms to herself and carefully watched Dad search the room.

Mom was staring at me.

The light bulbs in the kitchen light suddenly burst, small pieces of glass cascading down onto the table and throwing the whole room into shadow. I flinched, wondering if my eyes were just green or if they were actually glowing.

Running away instantly became a really good option, if only my feet would move. He who fights and runs away, lives to think up a really good excuse to tell his family later that will get him out of this alive so that he can fight another day.

Finally my feet pushed against the floor and I slid out of my chair. "I need to… call…" I murmured, not bothering to try and finish my lie. It was probably pointless by now.

Exit fallen hero, stage right.

"Damn it, Skulker!" I snapped as I threw myself to the side to avoid his latest barrage of missiles. "I'm not in the mood today!"

"But I am, prey," he hissed. He raised an arm, another large-looking gun appearing and centering on me in the evening sky. Where does he keep those things anyway? That arm must weight a ton with all those guns stuffed into it.

I might be in a horrible mood and facing impending doom at home, but if I've learned one thing over the past few years, it's how to multi-task. I still needed to figure out what Technus was muttering about and Skulker was an excellent person to ask... as long as he didn't skin me in the process. "You still working for the fruit-loop?"

"It shouldn't matter to you who my employer is," he said darkly and launched a fat missile in my direction. "You should focus on me."

My eyes widened when the missile tracked me as I tried to dodge it. All the normal tricks to get rid of Skulker's missiles didn't work – not the barrel rolls or the loops or even the trick of intangibly flying through a sign or a tree. The thing was dead-set on following me as I raced through the sky.

"You like my newest weapon?" Skulker gloated fondly as he watched me. "It was my payment for a small job I'm working on."

The missile was faster than me. It was inches from my toes when it suddenly exploded, a glowing net appearing out of the shrapnel and wrapping itself around me. I gasped, momentarily lost control over my power of flight, and tumbled to the ground. Thankfully it was just a few feet to fall.

Skulker's metal boots crunched loudly as he landed and walked up to where I was struggling against the thick netting. "Now, whelp, you are…"

The temperature suddenly dropped around us, ice crackling into existence on the grass and a few of the nearby trees exploding in the sudden, intense cold. I kicked up my level of struggling. I knew who was coming. It was just my luck that Skulker would trap me in a net just in time for her to show up…

Wait a second.

I stopped my struggling for a moment, pieces falling into place. This wasn't a coincidence. That gray ghost was being forced to work for Vlad, Skulker was working for Vlad, whatever this was that was turning me into a ghost was probably from Vlad… "I hate Vlad's complicated plots," I muttered, "I can never figure them out until it's too late."

As the gray ghost swirled into existence along with a bank of gray, freezing fog, Skulker knelt down beside me. When he spoke, his voice contained a note of real fear. "That is one of the most powerful ghosts to ever have existed. The stories say that she could destroy the world if she wanted. If you can't even beat me, you'll never defeat her."

I interrupted him when he paused to take a breath. "Stop the rehearsed monologue," I ground out, "and go tell your fruit-loop of an 'employer' to stop playing with things he shouldn't be trying to control." I wondered if Skulker would understand the emphasis I placed on that last word.

Skulker backpedaled a little bit in surprise. Yup, he understood. I pushed against the net as his jets started to fire and he lifted off the ground. "And tell him that I want the cure for whatever it is he gave me!" I snapped after him as he fled.

"The Fool," a soft voice whispered.

I twisted around and froze. The gray ghost was sitting on the ground about a foot away from me, her red eyes glinting in the evening shadows. "Hi," I managed to say.

She reached one gray hand towards me. I slithered away from her as best I could while trapped in Skulker's net, but she slid forwards and grabbed the net, undoing the knot and letting me free. Scrambling out of the net, I watched her warily. I hadn't forgotten that she could knock me senseless without even thinking about it.

Her red eyes flickered to gray for a moment as she reached into her pocket and pulled out another tarot card. "Eight of Wands," she said simply, showing me the creased and beaten-up card. Eight wooden staffs gleamed on the card, seeming to fly over a distant landscape.

I glanced around, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Vlad was in control of her, wasn't he? Why wasn't she attacking me? Why was she just showing me more of these silly cards? "What does that mean?" I rasped.

After putting the card back into a pocket, she grinned at me and tipped her head to the side. Just for a second, she looked like nothing more than a harmless girl. "End of stagnation, activity, adventure, proving oneself."

"Meaning…" I got to my feet, tensing as her eyes shimmered back to possessed red.

She rose into the air with a fluid motion and threw herself at me, our little chat apparently over. I ducked, taking off into the air after she passed over me. There was no way I could beat this ghost on my own. I needed help.

Sam leaned back in her chair and glared up at the ceiling. Tucker was sitting on the floor and playing some stupid game on his PDA and Danny… was nowhere to be found. She had called the Fentons, but Jazz had just mumbled something about it not being a good time and hung up.

"What's up with him?" she asked sourly. "He's acting all weird."

"He's getting a new power," Tucker muttered, suddenly jerking his PDA to the side. "Move you stupid little blinking icon, move… and Danny always acts weird when he's getting a new power. Remember when he was learning to control his ice powers? He'll get over it. YES! Ten points!"

Sam rolled her eyes. "What about his hair? That's not normal. It's white. And I could have sworn his eyes were green before he left this afternoon. It's almost like he kept trying to turn into a ghost."

Setting down his PDA for a moment, Tucker looked up at his friend with a sigh. "He'll come tell us as soon as he can, I'm sure. You need to not worry so much; he can't in that much trouble."

She ground her teeth together. "How can you not care that he's just…" A loud beep from Tucker's PDA interrupted her. "What was that?" she asked.

Tucker actually blushed. "I've got some equipment to listen in on police chatter and to alert me whenever certain words come up. Like the word 'ghost'." He snatched the remote control off her desk and flipped on Sam's small TV, searching for the local news.

"There he is," Sam said, leaning closer, "and… that's the ghost he was drawing!"

"The ghost with the cards?"

"Yeah… should we go help?" Sam was already moving, grabbing a thermos and two small ecto-guns from under her bed.

Tucker stuck his PDA into his pocket and grabbed the offered weapon. "If we can catch him. He's really moving fast."

I made it almost four blocks before the gray ghost caught up to me. She slammed into me, tossing me into the ground hard enough to crack the cement sidewalk. Groaning, I rolled over and staggered down the street, trying to keep an eye on the sky.

She hovered above me, her form surrounded by tentacles of a gray-colored fog that swirled down towards the ground and froze everything they touched. "The Fool," she laughed as she watched me stumble.

Taking to the sky again, I blew through town just a few feet off the ground. A small part of my mind was berating me for bringing this powerful ghost towards a populated place, but the rest of me was too busy trying to survive this encounter. The quickest way to help was through town. Besides, she didn't seem interested in anyone but me.

An arm of mist poured down in front of me, side-swiping a fire hydrant and causing it to crack open with the sudden change of temperature. Water bubbled up for a fraction of a second before freezing into a bizarre tree-like shape. I swerved around it and flew into an alley, turning myself invisible and not even trying to slow my speed.

I ducked through two buildings and rocketed out onto Eighth Street. Glancing over my shoulder, I couldn't see the gray ghost anywhere. "I lost her," I whispered hopefully, but my heart told me differently. The ghost was somewhere, following me.

Panting, I paused long enough to scan the sky around me. "Where did she go?"

"The Fool."

I twirled around, the gray ghost inches behind me, the swirling bands of mist swirling around us to form a bubble and block off all my escape routes. No one could get in and I couldn't win this fight on my own. Backing away from her, my eyes wide, I asked, "What do you want?"

She didn't talk; she just threw a card in my direction. It fluttered to the ground at my feet and I glanced down at it. A knight, riding a horse, one glowing sword raised to the sky, charging into battle. Fight.

"Why are you doing this?" My mouth was so dry I could barely get the words out. I was trying to get her to talk, trying to delay this impossible fight until help arrived…

She held out a second card, her eyes glittering with power. The card was of a woman, bound and blindfolded, with eight gleaming swords surrounding her. I have no choice.

"I don't want to fight you," I pleaded. "Let me go."

A last card was held up, this one of a man lying dead on the ground with ten swords stuck into him. Then you will die.

She was tucking two of the cards into a pocket and sliding forwards when I suddenly felt a swirl of that frozen power inside of me. With no other options around, I reached for it even though I knew I couldn't control it. Power flooded through me, ice starting to form on the ground around my feet. It was wild and powerful, uncontrollable…

And it hurt. Tears sprang into my eyes, freezing instantly on my cheeks. My body felt like it was going numb and stiff. I slammed my eyes shut, suddenly aware of the fact that I was going to turn myself into a half-human popsicle if I couldn't get some sort of control over this. It was like my ice powers, only a hundred times more powerful.

I was so buried into my mind, struggling to control whatever-it-was that I had unleashed, that I momentarily forgot all about the gray ghost standing right in front of me. That changed when she landed a solid punch to my face.

Something slipped into my head and all that wild power vanished like it had never been. My eyes flickered open and I stared into the gray eyes of the ghost girl inches from mine. She looked almost worried for a second before the gray of her irises was replaced by red. Control, a voice whispered in my mind.

She bent down and picked up the fallen card with the charging knight on it and shot me a look, slipping the card back into her jacket. One hand came up, pointing carelessly at me, a roiling wave of power slamming into me. I threw up my hands to try and block it, but I was thrown backwards through the wall of gray fog.

I rolled to a stop, dozens of people peering out at me through windows as they cowered away from the spectral fogbank. The gray ghost floated serenely out of the supernatural bubble of mist, her dirty dreadlocks blowing around her on an invisible breeze. She hovered over me, a dark angel filled with an impossible power.

I was so dead.

Then she vanished.

For a long, quiet minute, I just sat there, staring up into the sky where she had been. The fog dissipated almost as quickly as it had appeared, the ice melting in the warmth of the evening sun.

"Excellent," I whispered sarcastically, turning myself invisible to avoid the prying stares, and buried my face in my hands. "Now what?"

"Danny!" Sam skidded to a stop on a large patch of ice, her amethyst eyes searching for her friend. Tucker, panting and sweating, clomped up a few seconds later. "He was just here, Tucker. Where do you think he went?"

"Did he win?" Tucker gasped, collapsing to the frozen ground.

Sam shook her head, looking around. "I'm not sure."

Tucker swallowed heavily. "Now what? Should we try to find him?"

She hesitated, a little bit of hurt sparkling in her eyes. "No," she finally said softly. "He wants to try to figure things out on his own. If he needs our help he'll come find us."

Snorting, Tucker watched as Sam wandered up the street. "Yeah, right," he muttered. He pushed himself to his feet and followed slowly. "Dollars to doughnuts, we're going to be up all night doing research."

When the two of them made it back to Sam's house, he found out that he wasn't wrong.

I avoided my family like the plague that night. Every time my mother stuck her head into my room to see if I was there, I would turn myself invisible. From the look on her face, I think she knew I was there… but she never said anything.

It wasn't that I didn't want to talk to them… it was that I wanted to get everything straightened out first. That, and I was a little afraid of what they were going to say. I knew that they would accept me and I didn't think that they were going to do anything drastic... but I still didn't want to talk to them. I had lied to them for years, broken a half-a-million promises, let them hunt me, and I had a lot of explaining to do. Prying questions were just not something I could handle right now.

Which was just one more thing to add to my list of things I would have to explain when this whole thing with that tarot ghost was over.

Everything was just too confusing. What was Vlad after? He probably sent the gray ghost to scare me, Skulker to annoy me, and this 'turn me into a ghost' thing to… what? Everything was connected, everything traced back to Vlad… but what was the point? And what was up with this odd new power of mine? And the gray ghost – what was her real story? What was she doing?

The next morning, I tailed my friends invisibly to school, listening half-heartedly as they talked about what they had seen of my fight on the news, not entirely willing to be bombarded with questions from them either. They'd ask me about the fight, about this new power, about my hair and my eyes… I'd answer them at lunch. Eerily though, Sam kept glancing over her shoulder, looking straight back at me as we walked.

I didn't let myself flicker back into visibility until I sank into the desk in the far corner of my first period class and let my head fall into hand crossed arms. My hat was firmly on my head to hide my hair and a pair of sunglasses kept my odd eyes hidden from view. This was going to be a very long day.

"Mr. Fenton."

My head came up off my desk and I glanced up at my math teacher. He pointed towards the door and I flinched when I met the gaze of Mr. Lancer. I stared at him in dismay for a few moments, wondering what he was going to say. When the vice principal tracks you down during your first period, it can't be anything good. When he may or may not know an Earth-shattering secret about your life, it really can't be good.

I was on my feet, grabbing my bag even before Mr. Lancer asked me to come with him. I followed him silently into the hallway and towards his office, taking my normal seat next to his desk.

He sat down, studying my hat and sunglasses for a moment. "Our talk was cut short yesterday, and we need to figure out what we're going to do."

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. So far, Lancer hadn't mentioned anything about an alter-ego. Maybe he really didn't know. But I still didn't want to be here, doing this. He was too close for comfort when it came to my ghost side. "What were the options again?"

"You talk to me about what's going on, or you talk to a counselor." I sank back into the uncomfortable chair and sighed. Mr. Lancer continued, "We're worried about you Danny. You're really stressed…"

"You think?" I whispered to myself. Ghost hunting and schoolwork was hard enough, add in Vlad and his twisted, complicated plans and I should be getting special dispensation for what I was trying to juggle in my head.

I needed an easy solution that would satisfy Lancer and put this situation off. Preferably forever, if not just for a few days. "I'll make an appointment with the counselor, okay?"

The overweight teacher smiled. "Mrs. Grenwok has an opening for tomorrow morning."

"Excellent." I really didn't want an appointment for tomorrow, but I figured I could think of something before then. Maybe I could have Jazz call me in sick or something. "Can I go now?"

"In a second, I need to ask…" Mr. Lancer trailed off, his eyes focusing behind me, his face draining of color.

"I like the hat, whelp."

I shouldn't have turned around. I really shouldn't have turned around.

Skulker was leering at me from next to the office door, his arms folded and a grin on his face. He cocked one eyebrow at me and phased through the floor. His message was clear: chase me if you dare.

"Can I go, Mr. Lancer?" I asked sourly.

He was pale, his eyes wide in surprise that a ghost had just appeared in his office. His gaze jumped to me and he have a little half-laugh. "A ghost," he whispered. "There was a real ghost in my office… with you…"

I stood up, grabbing my bag and shrugging it onto my shoulders, but not before sending him a sharp glance. 'With you?' Why had he added that? Did he or didn't he know who I was? My head hurt from trying to keep everything straight and I wasn't in the mood to deal with the paralyzed teacher at the moment. "You teach in Casper High in the most haunted town in North America… and you're surprised that there's a ghost in your office?"

"We were named after the football player…" Lancer mumbled as I walked out the door.

I stuffed my bag, hat, and sunglasses into my locker and transformed in the deserted hallway. At least I could get rid of one of my headaches by pounding Skulker and locking him in a thermos until Christmas. Technus needed some company. I dropped through the floor, beginning my search for the spectral hunter.

The screams drew me towards the language wing and I found Skulker in what looked like a Spanish class. "Skulker!" I scowled, readying an ectoblast in my hand. Then I noticed what he was doing.

Skulker was finishing tying a knot on a rather large net with what looked like three people inside. Three people I knew very well.

Sam. Tucker. Jazz.

"Skulker!" My voice had obtained a growl to it. I wasn't in the mood for this. "Let them go!"

"Make me," he snapped back, hefting the sac over his shoulder and flying towards the window.

"NO!" I followed right behind me, trying to find a way to get off a shot at the hunter without hurting my friends in the process.

"Danny!" Sam's voice was muffled from inside the sack. "It's a trap! Danny! Don't do anything rash!"

A green light flared around Skulker as he activated some sort of portable ghost portal and he vanished, dragging my friends into the Ghost Zone.

I just hung in the air, tears threatening to spill out of my eyes.

It was too much.

I didn't know what to do next.

To be continued...

Yeah... chapter four. More plots coming together to form a tangled mess.

Thanks to my wonderful reviewers of chapter four: Silver Shadowbreeze, Kinoshita Kristanite, Lockblade, dizappearingirl, Thunderstorm101, Anne Camp aka Obi-quiet, southernstarshadow, hanyou-halfa, swordbunny4486, Sasia93, and Shining Zephyr! Thank you so much for sticking with me.

Hopefully next chapter up tomorrow night. Reviews get a preview of chapter five: The Star. Up tomorrow if I get a chance.

-Cori