I have returned! If I finish this before I finish Shadows Are Supposed to Stay Sleeping I'm going to hit myself. Then again SASTSS isn't really going anywhere at the moment. Am I an idiot or what?
Eighteen: Bitter Emerald Rain
"Vlad! Ahhhhg! Slow down! You're driving too fast!"
"Be quiet! I'm trying to catch up to them!"
"I'm going to die! I'm going to die! I'm going to die! I'm going to die!"
"You're driving like my dad!"
"Daniel! Do not compare me to your father right now or, so help me, I'll blast you myself!"
"I'm going to die! I'm going to die! I'm going to die!"
"Tucker shut up!!"
Vlad slammed on the brakes and Danny jolted forward in the passenger seat, the only thing keeping him from smashing his head into the dashboard was the tightened seat belt across his chest. From the back seat, he swore he could hear the three heads of Sam, Tucker, and Jazz (who was still clutching Clockwork's staff) clattering together. His grip tightened on the Fenton Thermos. Clockwork had to be getting motion sickness from this ride.
The traffic light Vlad had stopped at turned green and the millionaire shot forward, plastering Danny to the leather seat. Rain drops started hitting the windshield and Vlad activated his windshield wipers. As the wipers swept across the glass, they left a green smear in their wake.
"That's not rain…" Danny whispered and then screamed in terror along with everyone else as a minivan crashed to the pavement in front of them. Vlad twisted the steering wheel with lightning fast reflexes, and swerved around the smashed vehicle only to plow into a fallen billboard sign, the momentum of the car flipping it up and over the heavy sign.
Danny's head was spinning. Everything was happening so fast. He felt a cold wind, heard screams and shouts, felt his heart thumping franticly in his chest, tasted the blood trickling into his mouth from a thin cut on his cheek. Something cold grabbed his arm and he shrieked, watching the car disappear away from him.
"Shut up, Daniel, and quite squirming!" Vlad released him on the street, having pulled everyone out with his intangibility. Danny looked around at the chaos.
Tucker was shaking so badly he might have been in the Artic, Sam was stony faced with shock, and Jazz was still hanging onto Clockwork's staff even though it was now snapped completely in half.
And it was raining ectoplasm.
Drops of the thick, green substance were dropping from the sky in little specks or huge globs and Danny turned his face skyward, shielding his eyes with the thermos to see what was going on.
"Oh crud…" He muttered, making everyone else follow his gaze, "Dan and Phantom are fighting…"
Dark evening clouds boiled in the background, howls of rage and fear and pain echoed down to them from above, and bright flashes of energy acted as the lightning to complete the whole effect. It was horrible to watch.
"Dan's holding back," Sam said, squinting up, not caring that her arm was splattered with ghost blood, "He doesn't want to risk destroying Phantom."
"He's losing." Vlad hissed but didn't go to the future Danny's aid.
Dan and Phantom locked hands, Dan's claws digging into Phantom's glove and causing tiny beads of ectoplasm to well up. But these injuries were nothing compared to the ones Dan was sustaining. To his credit, he was making a valiant effort not to kill Phantom and in the process was ruining his own fighting style. As a result, he was losing horribly and he knew it.
"GET AWAY!" Phantom screamed, unleashing a blast of energy from his palms that sent Dan reeling through the sky. Dan Phantom hissed, flicking his forked tongue out as he assessed his wounds. His gloves were shredded and his hands blistered and burnt from Phantom's last attack, there were already forming bruises on about every inch of his body from the pummeling he'd taken, his violet cloak was torn beyond repair, and there were bleeding gouges in his ghostly flesh. It seemed that Phantom had learned to poke holes in people. Irritated, Dan ripped off his cloak and tossed it aside, not caring who it fell on. What he needed was some help. But help wasn't going to come.
Phantom started laughing and Dan growled at him.
"Look at you! You're so intent in not killing me that you're killing yourself!" Green energy boiled in his hands, "I hate you! I hate you and Danny and Vlad and Jazz and Tucker and—!"
"Sam?" Dan hunched over, clenching his fists, and let his energy trickle into his hands. A ruse he'd learned, "You hate Sam? You gonna kill Sam? Are you gonna kill Danny?" He snorted and sparks flew from his nostrils, "You're no better than me! Nothing but hate now! Nothing but anger and pain and revenge!"
"I'll never be you!" Phantom screamed, firing a hail of ecto-energy that Dan easily dodged, "I'll be better than you! I'll stop you! I'll kill you!"
Dan sneered, sucked in a deep breath, and opened his mouth and fired. A wide beam of energy shot out of his mouth and hit Phantom squarely in the chest, knocking the ghost head over heels through the air. Dan shot forward before Phantom could recover, grabbed him around the neck and punched him in the stomach. Phantom gagged, spitting up green blood and raked his fingers into Dan's right eye.
Dan screamed and let go, hands flying to his face where a trickle of green blood was glowing down the side of his cheek. Phantom kicked out, catching Dan in the chest and sending the older ghost back a ways but Dan lashed out with his claws, ripping the shoulder of Phantom's jumpsuit. Phantom yelled in pain and swung out a fist coated in ectoplasm, missing by inches because Dan had ducked. Dan, his right eye squeezed shut and still oozing ectoplasm, lunged upward, grabbed Phantom's wrists, locking them together with one hand, grabbed a fistful of green-stained white hair in the other, yanking Phantom's head back, and bit down into the younger ghost's shoulder. Hard.
Phantom screamed in agony and not just because of Dan's sharp fangs sinking into his pale flesh through the exposed shoulder of his suit. Dan was shooting electrically charged ectoplasm through Phantom's body, causing the ghost to jerk and twist in his grip. But Dan did not relent.
Finally, with an exhausted and pain-filled whimper, Phantom passed out cold, smoke trailing out of his open mouth and leaking out of his ears. Ectoplasm was seeping through his black and white jumpsuit. Dan tossed the defeated ghost over his shoulder and started making a slow descent to earth again. Everyone's faces were almost exactly alike when he landed in the midst of the group: disgusted. Dan dropped the unconscious Phantom to the ground.
"Dude!? Did you kill him!?" Tucker squeaked as Dan sat cross-legged in the air and started cleaning his wounds.
"If he was dead he wouldn't be here." Vlad stated in monotone, "But now what're we going to do with him?"
"We can't go back to the mansion," Jazz looked at the broken pieces of staff in her hands, "I guess the only place left to go is Wisconsin…"
"We can't leave! Dan's got detention as Danny!" Sam pointed at the ghost and then grimaced, "That's so disgusting."
Dan, who'd been licking blood off himself with his forked tongue, smirked at her and lapped up the green ectoplasm on his lips from when he'd bitten Phantom, "If you don't like it, don't watch!"
"Cut it out, Dan." Danny muttered, "We need to get Clockwork out of the thermos, Phantom somewhere he's not going to get away, and find somewhere else to hide from the Observants."
"Why? What'd the Observants do?" Dan asked.
"They found us in Vlad's mansion." Danny responded, sounding extremely tired, "They're not just after Phantom anymore. They want you, me, and Clockwork." He looked at his two best friends and his sister, "And I think they're targeting anyone we've come into contact with too."
"They're getting a little too big for their britches, I think." Dan growled but continued to clean his out his injuries in an animalistic way.
"Our only option, it seems, is to keep moving." Vlad sighed, "I think I've aged ten years since you showed up…"
"But what about school!?" Tucker was scanning his PDA, "What about our parents!? We can't just run off without notice!" Everyone looked at him, "What?" He glanced at his PDA, "Oh no. No, no, no, no, no. That's goes against policy!"
"You hack Skulker all the time." Danny pointed out, shivering as the sky darkened and thunder rumbled over their heads. It seemed that the mock storm Dan and Phantom had been conducting had attracted a real one.
"That's different! I'm not hacking the school!"
"Just shut off the power or something for a week, Tucker, that's all we need!" Sam walked over to Danny, looping an arm around his waist. He leaned his weight on her, eyes heavy, "And, I dunno, we can let our parents think we've been kidnapped or something!"
Dan coughed something that sounded oddly like "morbid" but when Sam glared at him he went back to chewing off the burnt skin on his hands with his fangs and she quickly looked away.
"Settled.' Danny yawned, "We need a car. And stuff…" He shook himself as another rumble of thunder sounded over head, "A big car…and lots of…food…" He sagged in Sam's arms and she tried to hold him upright. The thermos clattered out of his fingers and rolled across the pavement. Vlad took Danny from Sam, Dan picked up Phantom again, and Sam took the thermos. Jazz handed the broken staff to the Goth and ran towards Fenton Works to grab the RV, the biggest vehicle with the most space. Well, it would have the most space as soon as she got all the junk cleared out of it.
Tucker quickly hacked the school's system, chewing nervously on his lip the whole time, and then under the instruction of Vlad, went and raided the nearby grocery store for supplies. Lucky for them the street was empty, everyone so terrified of the ghost fight that they'd run off.
This mess… Vlad grumbled to himself, looking at the sleeping Fenton boy in his arms, It just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And more dangerous.
Jazz looked over her shoulder as the Fenton RV made its way down a back road that was sheltered by trees. She was in the passenger seat next to Vlad who was driving, Dan was in the next seat back with Phantom who was strapped down tightly to the seat with ectoplasm blocking bonds and kept unconscious with a strong sedative, Sam and Tucker were in the next row of seats, Tucker attempting to force the thermos open with his PDA and Sam contemplating the broken halves of Clockwork's staff, and in the very back, splayed out across the whole seat with a seatbelt twisted oddly around his middle, was the sleeping Danny Fenton. He was lying on his left side, head propped up on ZeE's laptop, snorting softly every now and then.
Everything seemed so peaceful and almost normal. Hopefully, it would really be that way soon enough.
"How's it coming, Tucker?" Sam asked, pressing the button on the top of the clock of the Time Ghost's staff repeatedly even though nothing was happening, "Anything?"
"Almost…" The techie said through his teeth, "Almost there…this thing's hard to get into."
"Well it is one of Vlad's modified ones…" Sam responded. In the driver's seat, Vlad shifted uncomfortably and muttered something unintelligible under his breath.
"Ouch!" A spark of electricity jumped its way over the thermos, shocking Tucker in the process. There was a loud hammering from the inside of the container and Jazz and Dan looked around to stare at it.
"Well," Jazz said slowly, "At least we know he's okay…"
"Hmph." Dan snorted, "More than likely he's pissed." And he turned back around with a growl. His injuries weren't healing quite as quickly as he would have liked. He twitched as another round of hammering issued from inside.
Tucker pulled at the cap, grunting with the effort, but it did him little good, "It's jammed on there like a bottle cap with its threads twisted the wrong way!" He spat, pouting with the thermos in his lap.
"Nice analogy." Sam muttered, rolling her eyes, "Keep trying! We have to get Clockwork out of there!"
The Fenton RV suddenly swerved with a squeal of tires off the road and then jostled its way back onto the dirt path again. Everyone stared towards the driver's seat at Vlad who hunched his shoulders, looking extremely hostile, and gave no response to his actions. A few moments later, the first drops of rain splattered against the windshield and Danny yawned, stretching as he came into wakefulness.
"Look who's awake," Sam said with a smile, "Feeling better, Danny?"
"A little bit." The boy replied, readjusting his seatbelt so it was strapped properly across his waist and chest, "My arm and chest have been hurting a bit and I'm hungry but I think I'll live." He smiled back at Sam, "Got anything to eat?"
The Goth reached into the cooler in the space between her seat and Tucker's (who was now furiously trying to hack the thermos again), pulled out a sub and tossed it to Danny who eagerly unwrapped it and took a huge bite. Sam passed him a bottle of water as well and he took a quick swing.
"Where're we headed, Plasmius?" He called up to the front before taking another bite of his sandwich.
"Wisconsin, at the moment." Vlad responded, "I need to grab some things from my lab before we take off again. As long as we don't stay too long, the Observants will never find us."
"Any luck with that thermos, Tucker?" Danny was as anxious for news and progress as he was for food. A clap of thunder made everyone jump and the rain was suddenly coming down in sheets. Vlad flicked the windshield wipers on, sighing with relief when that was the only thing that came on.
"Not really…" Tucker had his tongue between his teeth again with concentration, "Maybe I can just drop it and it'll pop open, huh?" He, Sam, and Danny laughed at the joke and Dan rolled his vivid red eyes with annoyance. There was a dark purple bruise around the edge of the right one, spotted with green specks of ectoplasm. However, the holes that Phantom had shot in him had healed over and his hands were starting to heal as well. The good thing about being all ghost was that he healed quicker than a halfa.
Danny finished off his sandwich and, after gulping down the rest of the water, loosened the cap slightly and started twisting the center of the bottle. Sam tapped Tucker on the shoulder and they both ducked, covering their heads. The water bottle cap rocketed off, shooting straight through the middle four seats, bounced off the windshield, ricocheted off the floor, and smacked the unconscious Phantom right in the middle of the forehead.
Everyone froze (expect Vlad, he just kept flicking his eyes to the review mirror) and held their breath. Phantom groaned, shifted in his bonds, and then settled back down. There was a collective sigh of relief from everyone in the RV.
"Okay, no more shooting bottle caps in the RV, Danny." Sam reached around and yanked the plastic bottle out of her friends' hands, "Someone's going to lose an eye and if it's Phantom…well I think that would hurt you more than it would hurt me!"
Danny frowned, sinking back into his seat, and crossed his arms as best he could with his right limb so bandaged up. Thunder rumbled overhead and a blaze of lightning glared across the sky. Danny's frown disappeared into a blank expression. Rain drummed against the roof of the Fenton RV. Vlad's driving slowed as leaves, dirt, rain, and pebbles were thrown against the windshield by a horrendous wind and the thunder got louder and the lightning came more frequently. Tucker glanced up at the ceiling of the vehicle, the thermos still clutched in one hand, his PDA in the other, Dan sank lower and lower in his seatbelt, and Jazz's knuckles were white from clenching on the sides of her seat.
Vlad suddenly slammed on the brakes, causing everyone to jolt forward.
"I can't drive in this." He grumbled, squinting through the thick rain outside, "We're going to have to wait this out on the side of the road."
"But the Observants…" Danny's voice cracked and he cleared his throat, "But the Observants and their guards could find us."
"Oh, they might find us," Dan sneered, unbuckling his seatbelt and standing up, "But they won't get anywhere near us." And he flew out the roof of the RV without another word.
Vlad set the RV into reverse, backed up a little in the muddy road, and swerved off, pulling as deep into the trees as he could. Then he shut the vehicle off, unbuckled his seat belt, and sank back in his seat with a heavy sigh. Jazz undid herself from her seat as well and walked to the back of the RV where Danny was undoing his own seatbelt. Sam and Tucker mimicked her; the Goth setting the two halves of Clockwork's staff gently on the floor and the techie stowing his PDA and the thermos away in his pockets.
"I think the best thing for all of us to do right now is to sleep." Jazz said, eyeing Danny who was fighting back a yawn, "Some of us need it."
A snort came from the front of the vehicle and everyone glanced at the driver's seat to see Vlad stretched out on the seat which was tilted back to its fullest extent. Tucker chuckled at the sight and then rubbed his eyes from underneath his glasses.
"I agree with Jazz," Sam put in, rolling her shoulders before tilting her own seat back, "I'm exhausted. 'Night, Danny."
"'Night, Sam…" Danny muttered in reply, kicking his legs out across the back seat as Jazz headed back up to the front and Tucker leaned his own seat back. A few minutes later, soft, steady breathing permeated the RV. Outside on the roof, Dan sighed, pulled his newly reformed cloak tighter around him, and tugged his hood farther over his face, injuries throbbing in time with the pounding rain.
Well, we've come to the end of a rather dramatic eighteenth chapter. Things are getting a little more chaotic, aren't they? Danny and company are going to be hard pressed to find a place to stop so they can put the two halves back together again. And that's only if they can find a way to put them back together at all!
Ah, the traumas of life…!
Anyway, thanks for sticking around and waiting for these horrendously long updates! Keep holding on! We're getting somewhere! Don't forget to leave me a review! Bye!