A/N: Hope y'all are doing well this Friday the 13th! Well, there is some bad luck coming up in this chapter as you'll see soon enough. And just so you know, some of my wild and crazy 'theories' that you'll see in this chapter are heavily influenced by even more of pearl84's own explanations she made in some of her stories. I thought her explanations were MEGA COOL and would like to keep the 'facts' going! In the meantime, are you ready for what the title suggests? Well, hope you are, 'cause I'm going to give it to y'all anyhow!! Don't forget that "IDNOAC" thing. Have a very Happy Friday the 13th and here is Chapter 22. Enjoy!
TrueHeart—Chapter 22—Multiple Disasters
Bertrand's head finally rejoined reality and he opened his confused eyes. He looked at his unfamiliar surroundings and gasped. How did he get here? Then his mind totally cleared and he remembered how he got blasted by that red ghost hunter girl!
"Blast it!" he grumbled as he floated to a standing position. Then he jolted at his next thought. The machine! He immediately padded himself down and gasped when he felt and heard the crunching sound of broken glass. He gingerly took out each of the four vials that had been in his pocket--piece by piece. The pheromone samples, of course, were totally lost. And now maybe the machine was as well? He jerked his head around, scanning the area and frantically began to search for it. In his panic, however, he also hadn't noticed that the masking formula had worn off and his ghostly aura had returned.
Spectra impatiently paced back and forth in her lair. She had easily retrieved the lynx and had returned with both him and his wife hours ago. But now, Bertrand was taking too long! Where was he? She grunted. He had better not make her wait any longer. Besides, she didn't want to forget that she was going to give him a great big piece of her mind for giving her orders that while ago. The nerve!
She stopped. She shouldn't make herself worry this much. She stopped at the nearest mirror and glanced at her human reflection. She gasped as she drew nearer to it. Now there were four new wrinkles! She hurried past the two caged ghost animals and to the lab in the back room. She quickly began to search among the many multi-colored and multi-shaped sealed beakers and jars. But she couldn't find for what she was looking.
As she put aside yet another jar she had just inspected, the shadow ghost growled in frustration, "Blast it, Bertrand! Why do you have so much clutter in here?" In reality, though, that 'clutter' was carefully labeled; but right now, it was all just clutter to her because she couldn't find what she wanted. "And where are you?"
She continued in her rant. "I'm sure he said he had a few vials of the stuff," she muttered in annoyance as she continued to push aside unwanted concoctions.
Derek and Sarah, meanwhile, couldn't help but notice the loud clanking of glasses and objects as Spectra continued in her mad search. They grew more nervous as the din grew louder now that Spectra had let panic seize her.
The confined dove startled, fanning her wings violently upward for a moment at the next very piercing noise. One of the beakers had been accidentally—yet carelessly—pushed off the table and crashed loudly to the floor. "What is happening?" she hurriedly and nervously whispered to her husband, who was in his own cage next to her.
"I do not know," he answered, but then, his eyes widened and he jumped up in alert when he heard an agonizing, penetrating scream come out of the lab.
The dove pressed herself against the bars of her cage, vainly hoping she could move as far away from the horrible sound as she could.
Suddenly, another terrorizing screech pierced the air, followed by a spine-tingling "NOOOO!"
Not a moment later, Spectra came out of the lab and into the front room. And being that the shadow ghost hadn't taken the time to place the enchanted animals in the small isolated room that was found a little distance from the front room as she usually did, the couple was currently in the same room with the evil female ghost. However, when she had entered the front room, Spectra was holding a mirror, which shielded her face from the two now shivering ghost animals.
Sarah kept herself pressed against the bars, wishing now more than ever that she could phase right out of it; but, of course, it was a ghost cage, so therefore, ghost-proof.
Her husband, meanwhile, bared his claws, waiting in dread. It was unmistakable that their captor was distraught. And that couldn't be good news for him and his wife.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity for all the parties, Spectra lowered the mirror and the young married ghost couple gasped. Her human face was now completely old, hideously twisted with age. She looked as ancient as she had ever-looked evil.
Both livid and terrified at her appearance, she hissed to herself, "How was I to know that that was an aging potion that fell? Why does he even have such a thing anyway?"
Layer upon layer of bags sat under her blood-shot red eyes as they sent dark, evil darts at her prisoners. She knew, at least, how she could vent her angry frustrations—most definitely. After swatting away the tuft of stringy, lifeless, yellowish-grey hair that had suddenly fallen into her face, Spectra floated closer to them.
She bared her jagged and deformed sallow fangs at the couple. They cringed, trying to ignore—but compelled to look--what they next saw. Green saliva oozed off of Spectra's decrepit teeth and a steam-like gas billowed out of the slime as it continued down her wart-filled chin. The sight was as if the shadow ghost had placed a broken bottle of green acid in her mouth! The jagged shards of that imaginary bottle moved hideously as she angrily spat out, "And this is both of your faults that I can do nothing about this right now! If you had done as we wanted, I would have plenty of youth potion, complements of the Ghost Boy's powerful pheromones! But not now!"
Before either of them could respond—not that they really could at how terrified they were—they both screamed in excruciating pain as Spectra's incensed purple ectoplasmic rays enveloped and electrocuted their bodies.
Sarah got the brunt of it, as the bars of her cage which she was still pressed against absorbed and magnified the energy so that the jolt to her tiny body was all the more intense.
Both of the young ghost animals fell completely stunned to the bottom of their cages once Spectra released them from her power. Smoke bellowed from both of their bodies as they lay completely defenseless and senseless.
"Now, I feel better!" the shadow ghost said with a wicked smile as she looked over the unconscious couple. Her ire was now gone, but not her anxiety. It was luck that there had been hardly any of the stuff left in that vial she had broken. So, while it had only zapped her of her beauty and youth, it left her strength unaffected. Even still, that was not enough to satisfy her. She scrunched up her sagging face and it jiggled with each of the words she blurted out, "Still, now more than ever, I need Bertrand! What's taking him so long?"
She floated past the still animals, steeling herself not to glance at any mirrors she passed on the way to her room. In her self-absorbed apprehension, she had failed to notice that smoke was also coming from some of the now dully glowing bars that had been behind Sarah. And several of them had significantly absorbed Spectra's assault...
Meanwhile, Bertrand was beginning to panic himself. He had been searching for over an hour and couldn't find the little machine! Even after creating an energy orb to help him search, he failed.
"Spectra's gonna kill me," he moaned. Then realizing how ludicrous a statement it was, he corrected himself, muttering, "Or, at least make me suffer with excruciating pain!"
He enlarged his energy orb and shuffled through more bushes. He was about to give up when his foot struck something that was definitely metal. He reached down through that bush and chuckled in triumph as he pulled the object up. He found it!
He quickly inspected it and sighed in relief when it looked like it hadn't been damaged. And the concentrated, deep purple pheromones were still safely contained in their lone receptacle that he had not removed.
"Looks like no harm done!" he snickered in self-satisfaction as he bolted upward with his prize.
But, just then, he saw flashes of bright green and red lights rivet the night sky just above him.
Right at the moment when the Red Huntress' angry missile was about to hit him, Danny managed to pull up a green ectoplasmic shield. The combined green and red explosion when the two energies collided lit up the night sky like fireworks.
Unbeknownst to the two fighting teens, however, a third teen, namely, Tucker, was started awake by the commotion. He stared up through the branches of the large oak tree under which he still was, searching the phenomenon through his blurry vision. But his hearing instantly told him what he needed to know, as the powerful sound of that explosion echoed through the dark forest.
"Those aren't fireworks!" he exclaimed, jamming his glasses on just before jumping up from where he had been sitting. "That sounded like some kind of ectoplasmic explosion! What's going on?!"
He crammed all of his techno-gear into his backpack and slung it hastily over his shoulder. He hurried through the woods as fast as the moonlight would let him. Grunting with how it was still too dark to see in some places, he whipped out his PDA that was in his pants pocket and punched a few buttons. Nothing happened! But before he panicked, he realized that he had turned it off! He stopped and quickly turned it on. He began to key in his commands. He started to run just as he pressed the last needed command. The little machine dutifully emitted a bright light, not unlike a flashlight, that hastened his pace out of the small forest.
By the time he got onto the nearby adjoining sidewalk, the night sky had returned to normal. He desperately scanned the area and saw her. Valerie! In her Red Huntress gear and on her hover-board! He gasped when she fired another missile.
But where was the ghost?
Danny screamed in pain as the explosion from the powerful red ectoplasmic rocket shattered his green shield, and the remnants of both his shield and the rocket penetrated his left side. But the shield had managed to dampen most of the blow or else he would have been obliterated. He instantly clutched his bleeding side with one hand, panting heavily from the rather large raw sting riveting his body. He tried to ignore his ragged breathing and the black curtain that was beginning to come down over his eyes as he desperately struggled to produce his wulf claws with his free hand. A moment later, and he jammed them into the atmosphere, quickly wrenching open a crude portal. Shaking with the strain, he finally pulled himself through it just as Valerie's instruments confirmed that he had survived her first attack.
Without hesitation, she sent another missile to him to finish the deed.
The injured teen ghost had barely pulled himself through the quickly closing portal when the second missile impacted the site. The strong blast managed to send several powerful waves of destructive energy through the portal just before it closed, delivering to the boy on the other side another mighty punch to his entire body. He screamed in pain again, helpless as his body flew out of control, tumbling wildly through the Ghost Zone until he flung toward a green and purple ghost shelf. He felt his body ram violently into the large black boulder perched upon that same shelf.
As Danny slid down the boulder, rapidly loosing his grip on consciousness, he tried to will his healing powers. He could feel the blue energy begin to surround him with his effort. But it had come too late and he felt a sudden drain of energy. His head dropped as he saw total blackness at the base of the dark ghost boulder.
Suddenly having a sick gut feeling about all of this, Tucker gasped as he witnessed another bright red flash coming from Valerie's second exploding missile. He frantically searched the sky and still only saw Valerie.
He quickly extinguished the light from his PDA and aimed it toward the general direction of the impact site and frantically punched on the keys.
He gasped again in horror when he read the results: there were traces of Danny's ectoplasmic blood at that precise site!
He stood with his mouth agape as Valerie hovered momentarily and then took off. He just knew that she had attacked his friend! And though it was all in his mind, he could swear that he could hear every one of her hate-filled words she threw at his best friend, Danny Phantom, as she did!
He gritted his teeth in anger. She could never be special to him if she was so capable of hating anyone as much as she hated his friend! And so capable of hurting others—permanently. He was now glad he had never told her the truth about his friend! She would never understand with all that hatred built up inside of her.
His eyes stung all of the sudden, but he roughly wiped away the pain from them. He knew what he had to do. He had been a fool to have ever thought otherwise.
He started running forward, worried sick about his friend. All of the sudden, more flashes of red energy penetrated the night. Maybe Danny was OK! He hurriedly tracked their origin and was slightly relieved that they were not too far away. He darted toward that direction.
Just as Tucker had spied her, Valerie had put her board on hover while she had checked her instruments. She had double-checked them before confirming that they no longer registered Phantom's signature.
"Finally!" she yelled. But her yell was a mixture of hatred and triumph. "I'm surprised it took me this long to get him! He's never put up a good fight and then just would run off like the loser he was! Oh, well, at least I've ridded myself of him, so I'm not going to worry about the details."
She pushed the button underneath her black boot and her hover-board immediately began to move rapidly forward. But she hadn't gone even ten feet when her ghost alarms were activated.
"What the…?" she said, baffled. She studied the readings and growled, "Better take care of him!"
As she flew onward in the moonlight, she continually monitored her instruments, making sure that she was headed in the right direction. Finally, she no longer needed any of her instruments' confirmations. She could now see the guilty ghost straight ahead in the near distance.
But what she didn't know was that the ghost on her scanner was Bertrand, and he had seen her first.
"Now, I think, is just the right time for me to get rid of that pesky little ghost hunter," Bertrand said darkly. "And she will no longer be a thorn in my side!" The shape-shifter quickly shoved the little machine in his pocket and just as quickly morphed into a large wasp.
Before Valerie could arm herself, the giant wasp attacked her with a powerful green ectoplasmic ray he produced with his large insect incisors.
"Incoming enemy fire. Evasive action taken," her hover-board instantly told her.
It immediately pulled Valerie downward. Her "Whoaaah!" response to the sudden movement echoed downward as Valerie felt her stomach suddenly in her throat. But she managed to keep her balance through it all and instantly steered the board to the left and upward for a counterattack.
Bertrand-as-a-ghost-wasp easily dodged the red ray Valerie had then thrown at him. He shot another green beam in retaliation, but the Red Huntress jerked away, wobbling slightly on her board when she evaded the attack just as deftly as a surfer managing a wayward wave.
Instantly regaining her balance and momentum, Valerie answered that with a volley of small red balls that burst outward like flak riveting an enemy aircraft. Bertrand screamed as her counterblow hit him. His ghostly bug eyes burned from the intense light set off by the blasts and one of the bursts of energy tore at his wing.
Now livid, he whipped his abdomen violently around and aimed his stinger. He charged at the Red Huntress with his wasp blade with incredible speed. He was so fast that Valerie could barely respond. She hadn't anticipated a ploy such as this. Still, she tried to evade him but he found his mark and rent a large hole into her hover-board, knocking her right off of it as he did. Valerie screamed as she plummeted helplessly toward the ground.
Bertrand smiled in triumph and continued in his flight toward the portal. He didn't think he needed to watch his foe plunge downward to her doom…..
In the meantime, Tucker had finally caught up to what was happening between Bertrand and Valerie. He gasped as he watched the moon-lit scene above him unfold. He bit his lower lip in worry when he saw Valerie's hover-board jerk her downward but sighed when she quickly righted herself. He whipped out his PDA as he did, desperately looking for the right time so that he could intervene. Then he gasped when he saw that Valerie was rapidly approaching a hard introduction to the defiant ground. He frantically punched on the PDA's buttons.
But before he could finally key in the commands, Valerie's hover-board had barely swooped down and gently caught her. With Valerie now splayed upon it flat on her back, the hover-board climbed upward in an unbalanced flight. Both Valerie and the boy sighed in relief at the same time, though neither of them knew that they had done that.
Valerie quickly righted herself on her board and tried to ignore how hard it was for her to steer it now that it had been damaged by that ghost. She didn't hesitate to scan the horizon. And then, suddenly, she spied him in the distance making his escape.
"Oh, no, you don't," she growled through gritted teeth and whipped out a rather large gun. She immediately fired at the fleeing ghost. She could tell from the sudden flash of red light and booming sound that followed it that her aim was true.
The resulting red fireball rocketed toward the ground. Its trajectory reflected off the shiny faceplate of her helmet as she followed its smoking trail. But she frowned suddenly in disappointment when there was no other 'boom' at the certain crash site as she expected. Instead, the ghost seemed to have disappeared!
Wondering how this could be, and that it should not have been able to do that since she had blasted it with anti-ghost ammo, she soared downward as fast as her damaged hover-board would let her. She kept her gun ready, all the while anxiously checking her instruments, and scanning the area for ectoplasmic residue.
In the meantime, Bertrand had indeed been hit, but as he fell toward the earth, he managed to morph into a tiny fly again, and that sudden change in size effectively extinguished the flames.
"OWW!" he hissed at the burning pain and eking smoke that still surrounded his small body. "Now that irritating hunter did it!" he seethed through his fly mouth. He headed to a nearby tree and quickly morphing into a ghost ninja warrior, waited in ambush.
Valerie was about to give up when her ghost alarm located the ghost for her. She quickly fired three ghost-seeking missiles, the same kind that had effectively ridded her of that Phantom kid.
But Bertrand was ready. He didn't change his position as he pulled out his nunchucks. He visually tracked the missiles as carefully as they tracked him. And just when he thought it was the right moment, he swung at the missiles with his ninja weapon, knocking them away as a bat would hit a baseball.
The anti-ghost missiles ricocheted out-of-control back toward the Red Huntress. She gasped in worry. She couldn't estimate their final path. She wasn't sure if they would be too close to her in the end or if they could actually hurt her should they strike, but she didn't want to find out. She fired at the returning missiles.
Tucker, meanwhile, had a hard time keeping up with the feuding duo. He had just gotten to this new site when he saw the missiles charging back at Valerie. Even though he was upset and hurt by everything she had done, especially when it came to Danny, he still didn't want to see her hurt by anyone, especially not by a ghost. He saw the rebounding missiles head right to her. He could tell that they were out-of-control and gasped, certain that they would harm her.
He pounded on his PDA again and just as the beam from Valerie's gun met the missiles head-on, a loud explosion resulted, the force of which soundly hit Valerie and her hover-board. Valerie screamed at the pain that pushed inward upon her and assaulted her hover-board. Both of them careened out-of-control.
Tucker just knew she would not be able to correct her flight path before hitting the large nearby tree that suddenly presented itself to her and her board.
He activated the final commands on his PDA and a swirling green portal opened up right in front of the tree. Valerie and her board plowed right into the ghost portal and it quickly closed right afterward.
Valerie was now safe, but floating in a daze in the Ghost Zone.
But before Tucker could activate another escape portal for Valerie, a large green beam burnt a hole too close for comfort from where he was standing. He yelped as he jumped away from the still sizzling pit and immediately pushed another key on his PDA. An instant later, he became invisible and darted several feet from this area, just in case Bertrand would follow up with another blast—which is precisely what the ghost did. But Tucker had moved far enough away in his stealth mode and avoided getting hit.
Bertrand grumbled at his failure. "Now where did he go? I swear he was right there! How did I miss him twice? I should have gotten him this time!"
Still in his ninja warrior form, he flew down to investigate.
Tucker, however, was waiting for him. He activated the program he wanted and the beam that shot forth from his wondrous little machine successfully captured Bertrand within an ectoplasmic net.
Bertrand yelled in frustration at being tricked, immediately struggling against the net that had popped out of nowhere. But Tucker ignored him as he continued to hack in coordinates and meld in programs. All the while, the techno-boy's mind whirled. "Let's see," he quickly told himself. "Hmmm… we're in the second parallel and the Ghost Zone is in the third right now, so that would mean…."
He drifted out of thought as he concentrated on programming his PDA. He had already figured out what he needed to know about the positions of the two interconnected worlds. Something he and his friends had figured out a very long time ago when Danny first wanted to map out the Ghost Zone….
They knew that the Ghost Zone and the Real World were complimentary of each other and interconnected as well. But what the trio had discovered when they were plotting the map of the Ghost Zone was that they were also different.
One of the distinctions they noticed was that the two worlds rotated differently from the other. While the Real World rotated west to east to the casual observer, the Ghost Zone rotated in the opposite way, east to west. But the Ghost Zone differed even more with the Real World in its rotation laws. Sometimes it would wobble in its rotation, changing at one precise point whenever it did, so those same rotations would reverse.
And once in a blue moon, it also did something very odd. It would fold in on itself as well on its north-south line, so that half of its rotation would rotate east to west and the other west to east. Where they joined created an infinite corridor that actually allowed the Ghost Zone to be essentially endless, spanning in all directions from that point of intersection.
And the Ghost Zone rotations did not go the same speed as the Real World. They were much, much slower because of the odd, changing rotations. So, time didn't elapse as quickly as in the Real World—or sometimes time would stop all together when the odd rotations manifested themselves. Aging in the ghosts was really almost a second thought because of it.
And even though it seemed to an inexperienced visitor that the ghosts did age, by how much was anyone's guess. A ghost who appeared to be, say, twenty, could very well be ten times that age in relative terms in the Real World—all due to the odd effects of the Ghost Zone's rotation laws.
But the three best friends had always wondered why the ghost had aged in the alternate parallel universe where Evil Dan existed. They guessed that these laws must have somehow all changed there. They couldn't be sure, but they did have a theory:
The havoc which that wicked shadow of that altered future had inflicted upon the Real World must have been so devastating, that the calamitous energy generated by the evil ghost had had a ripple effect on the Ghost Zone. And that ripple became an irreversible wave of destruction of tsunami proportions, riveting the Ghost Zone on its axes to such a horrific extent that the rotation of the Ghost Zone had actually been put permanently in sync with the Real World. And because of that, the ghosts began to age just as their counterparts in the Real World did; which of course, would explain how Danny had encountered very old versions of some of his ghostly enemies in the Ghost Zone during that alternate future....
But, there was another feature of the whole Ghost Zone rotation thing that was especially unique. No matter how it rotated, the points of change in the rotating axes all intersected at Amity Park, and more specifically, at the Fenton Portal. The little town, then, served like the North Star as it were for the Ghost Zone, which would explain why ghosts seemed to gravitate toward it, and why that little town was the most haunted place on Earth.
Then there were the portals that appeared between the worlds. Frostbite had said they were random, yet naturally-occurring, and only the Infi-Map could find them all. But what Frostbite hadn't told them was what the trio had—again—discovered on their own. And that was that there were two kinds of portals. Some were stationery, like the North Star and, depending on the particular pattern of rotation that was occurring in the Ghost Zone, opened at random times in terms of when they would appear and for how long they would remain open.
Other portals appeared randomly in place and time and those were harder to find—unless you had the Infi-Map, or if you knew another little characteristic of the Ghost Zone. Something that Tucker and his friends had also found out from their many dealings there. And that was that the place and time of these random portals almost followed several patterns of movement in their behavior--not unlike the weather patterns in different parts of the Real World. And if you knew those patterns, you could get pretty good at being able to predict when and where the portals might appear. That was why so many ghosts could enter the Real World—and why Danny was so busy fighting the ghosts that did.
Another complimentary characteristic about the two worlds was that whenever it was night in Amity Park, it was the ghosts' daylight and vice versa. For that reason, ghosts were mostly active during the night in Amity Park. It was their 'daytime' hours in that little town, even if they didn't have a 'real' sun during those 'daylight' hours.
They did have a sun of sorts, but it was just a ghostly one that was so wraithlike it hardly was identifiable in their world. Instead, their ghostly lighting orb bathed the Ghost Zone in a diffuse light for their 'daylight' hours and was replaced by a much weaker moon-like one during their 'nighttime'.
And even though most ghosts were only active during the nights in the Real World, ghosts of higher power levels were able to remain active at will, saving their need for rest in snippets.
So, with all this information, the three best friends realized how complicated and interconnected the two worlds were. And especially because of how complicated and strange the Ghost Zone was, it was very easy for a visitor to get lost there. In order to make it as trouble-free to map as possible--and discern where they were in the Ghost Zone--the friends had decided to divide the two worlds into what they called parallels, which, for reference, ran from north pole to south pole not unlike longitudinal lines. And whenever the three wanted to enter or leave the Ghost Zone, they needed to line up those parallels in order to get back to Amity Park—or to find a particular point in the Ghost Zone to where they wanted to go.
Tucker had made it a cinch for them—well, really, easier for him and Sam—to find their way between the two worlds ever since they found out all about the Ghost Zone's 'laws'. He had meticulously entered all the data into his PDA and created a "GPS" program exclusive for the Ghost Zone, which he called the Ghost Zone Global Positioning System—or GZ-GPS for short. With it, the only way they would get lost was for him to be without his PDA. And he knew what the chances were that he would be without it.
Danny, on the other hand, had Tucker download his "GZ-GPS" program onto his cell phone so that he would have it when he needed it. But, really, once he was familiar with the areas of the Ghost Zone, he didn't use the mapping system. He still got lost, of course, but that was occurring less frequently now that he had realized how important it was to pay more attention to his surroundings. And when he finally got that into his head, he made a surprising discovery about himself.
Once he knew the area, he had an uncanny inner "GPS" sense of his own--in both worlds. He hardly needed more than one reference point and never needed more than two to know exactly where he was in the Ghost Zone, or know exactly where he was in relationship to the Real World. But he also didn't need more than two points of reference to know how to coordinate the two world's parallels so that he could pinpoint nearly right where he wanted to go. Therefore, he could effortlessly enter and exit either world at will.
And Danny could also tell time in both worlds with a similar kind of inner sense—by using the position of either of their suns. That never ceased to amaze his friends, even if Danny had taken all that in stride now……
Tucker finally got all the programs he needed interfaced and pushed the final button. Bertrand, still unhappily trapped in the ghost-proof netting, was suddenly pushed through the portal Tucker's PDA created. Just as the ghost entered the portal, Tucker cut off the energy source and the portal disappeared, along with Bertrand.
And Bertrand now found himself floating in the Far Frozen. He instantly growled in as much irritation as the amount of shivering he was doing from the frigid elements.
Tucker finally could sigh in relief, but then his heart skipped a beat with the dreadful realization. "Valerie!" he cried out.
Because of his unplanned encounter with Bertrand, he hadn't been able to get her out of the Ghost Zone!