(sequel to 'Break Away')
14. Smile
The house was quiet and dark, having that strange, lonely atmosphere that you get at three in the morning when everybody is sleeping. With no sound of traffic coming from the outside, voices from the kitchen or the lab, the sound of the TV that always seemed to be on, the cracking sound of somebody coming down the stairs seemed to accentuate the silence. Danny nervously glanced up the stairs at the door of his sister's room, but it remained closed. He wasn't worried about his parents waking up, his father's loud snoring drowned any other sound and his mother's earplugs would prevent her from hearing anything. Jazz, however, was a light sleeper, even more so now that she was watching over him like a hawk.He breathed a little easier when he reached the bottom of the stairs. Only a little though, his ribs still hurt like mad when he tried to breathe deeply. Laughing was painful. Coughing... agony. There was nothing for it though, he'd just have to wait for it to heal. His ribs weren't broken, however they were badly bruised and he had trouble sleeping. He just laid in his bed, trying to find a comfortable position and thinking about... things.
He was fine. He knew he was fine, and yet, they all kept treating him like he was made of porcelain, carefully avoiding the subject of what had happened. He had caught Sam looking at him with those concerned purple eyes of hers, as if she was somehow afraid of him. She shouldn't be, he'd never hurt her.
Walker on the other hand...
A slow smile crept on his face, and although he was unaware of it, it made him look slightly disturbing. Pulling his arm out of the sling, he proceeded to the basement, walking with somewhat more confidence on the concrete steps. Downstairs, he let the two white, sizzling rings appear around his waist, transforming him into the most powerful being on earth. He floated for a moment, examining the power he had, the power he had discovered deep inside of him, the power he needed to do what he was going to do. The power neither his friends nor his sister knew about.
It was almost overwhelming, a deep rumbling, a white light inside of him, almost limitless. He craved it and feared it. When he let it sear through him, nothing could stop him. And nothing was going to stop him now. He pressed the red button of the genetic lock and the doors to the ghost zone slid open, allowing him to see the green swirling entrance. Within the blink of an eye, he was through it.
Once inside, he adjusted his senses somewhat, as he always needed to do when he entered the realm of the dead. It was cold in the zone, not cold in the sense that the temperature was low, but the coldness of death. He felt oddly at ease here now. He remembered how the place had scared him when he had first entered, but no longer. It was familiar to him now, and he almost had a feeling of coming home. A tiny bit of him worried about a time in the future when he would no longer want to leave the place, but he brushed it aside. First things first.
Moving away from the portal, gradually picking up speed, he flew into the direction he needed to go to accomplish his goal. Purple doors passed him by, some random ghost in the distance, quickly taking off when they saw him, as if sensing that crossing him at this point was painful at best, lethal at worst. He chuckled to himself and then groaned. No laughing.
A half hour passed, and then another one. Walker's prison was deep into the zone, which was why Sam and Tucker had had such a hard time getting to him two weeks ago. They literally had to fight their way to him, then fight their way through the prison all the way to the ghost/human proof cell block deep in the prison's dungeons. They'd both sustained burn wounds from ecto blasts, and that had angered Danny even more than that what Walker had done to him. Because really, Walker had done him a favor. He had gotten rid of something that had held Danny back all those years. And that had allowed him access to that immense pool of power that resided inside of him.
At long last, the ugly white building that was Walker's prison came into view. Walker clearly didn't expect him, or he'd have arranged for a welcoming party. Danny was almost disappointed, but shrugged it off. He could always pick a fight with Walker's goons afterwards, if they still wanted to. They might not.
He let himself float in front of the huge main entrance, transformed back into Fenton and walked through the door. Once inside, he immediately turned back into his more comfortable ghostly self. The two goons inside the hallway didn't know what hit them, and Danny lowered his glowing green hands, making sure they were unconscious. Then he quickly proceeded to Walker's office and entered the room without knocking.
The white prison warden was sitting behind his huge desk, looking important with his famous rule book in front of him. He looked up in surprise and then satisfaction.
"Come to give yourself up, punk?" he asked smugly, "You know you can't escape me forever."
"No," Danny said.
A flash of worry shot across Walker's face, but it was gone in an instant. He raised his hands and suddenly a pair of handcuffs appeared.
"Especially made for you," he grinned, "You remember these, don't you?"
Despite his resolve, Danny cringed inwardly. For a moment, he was back in that cell, chained to the wall, unable to stop what they were doing to him. They'd hit him, cut him, starved him until the only thing he could do was sit in the corner of his cell, whimpering. Unable to hold on to his ghost form, he had reverted to his human side, which had made things ten times worse. The punishment he could take as a ghost was enough to almost kill him as a human. His human form was weak.
He let his tongue slide over the caps on his front teeth and gathered his wits. This was no time go reminiscing about the good old days.
Walker approached him, unaware of Danny's swaying mental stability, the handcuffs swinging in his hands and a cruel smile on his face. He obviously thought he could take Danny down easily, as he had before. Danny waited until he was close enough.
Just when Walker slapped the handcuffs on his left wrist, sending a burning sensation through Danny's arm, he reached out with his right hand and grabbed the white ghost's neck. He squeezed, letting a little of the white rage seep into his hand. Walker started choking.
"What... what are you doing, punk, let go of me, I'm..."
He ended in a gurgling sound and Danny kept squeezing, his green eyes burning brightly. The soft white glow that always surrounded him became brighter as he tapped into his rage, that white hot lava that now ran through his ghostly body as if burning through his veins, painful yet pleasant. The pain in his left wrist forgotten, he directed more of it into his right hand, into the shrinking prison warden.
Walker was melting. He no longer made a sound, as Danny had destroyed his vocal chords. His face was distorted, both from fear and from the acid like white glow that now came from within. Danny pushed his hand further down, literally pushing, burning his way through Walker's ghostly body. His eyes now shone like mad and if it hadn't been so painful, he would have laughed.
Walker shouldn't have messed with him.
White blotches were starting to fall off the ghost, dripping to the ground, sizzling, burning their way through the floor. His left arm suddenly came off and floated away from him, the hand still clawing aimlessly as if trying to prevent what was happening. Danny looked at it in fascination. Then he squeezed just a little bit harder again, and the cruel, rule obsessed ghost ceased to be, dissolving into a white, bubbling puddle on the ground.
Danny looked at it. He was still glowing brightly, but the rage was leaving him. Not leaving him, settling back into him. Ready to be accessed whenever he needed it. The arm was still floating around, but he decided to leave it. Slowly, he turned around, to see three of Walker's goons in the doorway, staring at him, their mouths agape.
"Who's next?" Danny asked in a low voice.
They bolted. Danny shrugged and sauntered to the desk, carefully avoiding the white blotches on the ground, slightly smoking, eating their way through floor. He rummaged through the drawers until he found what he was looking for: the keys to the handcuffs that were still attached to his left wrist, sending short, electric shocks through his arm. Unhurriedly he opened the lock and let them slip down on the floor. Then he hesitated. They might come in handy against some other ghost hybrid he knew. Quickly, he picked them up again, ignoring the stinging of the things, and pocketed the keys. Then he left.
He flew through the ghost zone unchallenged and entered the lab through the still open portal. He closed it neatly, changed back to his human form and climbed the stairs to the kitchen. He quickly made himself a sandwich – obliterating ghosts obviously made hungry – to give himself an excuse to be down there and then went back to bed.
Jazz watched her brother come down the stairs, yawning. He was fully dressed, his hair still a mess as usual and awkwardly carrying his backpack in one hand, the other still being in a sling. She hurried to him and quickly relieved him of it, earning her a grateful grunt. One week in the hospital and one week at home, recuperating from what his friends had said was a car accident. Jazz knew better. And now he was going back to school, although he was excused from gym.
"So, are you up to it?" Jazz asked in a perky voice.
He looked at her in surprise. "Am I ever?" he asked.
Laughing, she handed him the bowl of cereal she had prepared for him. He sat down at the table, poured the milk over it and started eating, a pensive expression on his face. Jazz glanced at the clock.
"You'd better hurry," she said, "Sam and Tucker should be here any minute."
She had hardly finished her sentence when the doorbell rang.
"I got it," her father yelled from the living room, and moments later Danny's friends entered the kitchen.
"Um," Tucker said, "That green goo that's all over the couch..."
Danny shuddered visibly. "Don't talk about it," he said, "Dad tried to goo the Box Ghost yesterday. Needless to say he missed. But..." He grinned at Jazz. "At least I don't get to clean it up this time, with my arm and all."
Jazz scowled at him. She wondered how much longer he would be able to use his now probably fully healed arm to get out of his chores. Sam laughed, but it sounded strained. Jazz looked at Danny again.
"What?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.
She decided to change the subject.
"Any ghost trouble last night?" she asked, and then caught the look on his face. She shivered.
"Nope. No more ghost trouble. Ever."
He smiled.
OK, um, I'm kinda busy with something else, so don't expect updates soon. But I couldn't resist this one. I'm feeling evil today :)
