Shatterglass
A Danny Phantom Fanfic by Quill N. Inque
I do not own Danny Phantom
"To them, you're just a freak…"- The Joker, "The Dark Knight," (2008)
Chapter 3: On the Run
The Southwestern United States
It was in a particularly disreputable-looking Mexican cantina that saw Danny Fenton, enemy of the world, spending what little money he had in his pocket on the rubbery taco that now slid across the bar to him. The meal itself was an abomination to any kind of decent cooking, but Danny knew he had to take whatever came his way.
It had now been over a week since the setup in City Hall, and Danny had almost destroyed himself in his desperate flight from Amity. So panicked was his exodus that the ghost boy had fled all the way to the little West Texas town in which he now took sustenance. It was a good place to hide out, Danny thought. The population was sparse, the countryside vast, and lawmen few and far in between. Perfect for someone who wanted to remain below the radar.
Danny brought a frosted glass of ice-cold water to his lips, relishing the feeling of the life-giving liquid against his tongue. But as he tilted his head back to drain the cup, Danny brought his shadowed and weary eyes to the ancient television in the corner.
He did not like what he saw.
"Danny Fenton claimed that he was a hero," Bill O'Reilly declared. "He said that he was not the enemy, and said that we should trust him to protect us. Clearly this is a sign that not only has Fenton failed to restrain himself where his powers are concerned, but also that he simply lacks the maturity to use them responsibly! Regardless of the heroism Fenton has done, or claims to have done, we cannot let the cold-blooded murder of a city official go unpunished!"
"Danny Fenton continues to remain at large," the woman on Bill's left continued. "And we went to the folks on the street to find out what they have to say about this hero-gone-bad."
The camera cut to a plump woman holding the hands of her two small children. "I'm not gonna let my kids out of my sight until they bring him in," she said. "If that villain is still out there, who knows what he might do?"
"I'd like to know what else is being done," a man in a business suit said crossly. "These are our tax dollars, after all."
"I think it's a shame that he's turned out like this," a soft-spoken, younger woman shrugged.
"We should shoot him on sight!"
"Lock him up for study, it's all he's good for now!"
That was enough for Danny. He couldn't bear to watch another minute of this, and he stood up abruptly-
-Only to bump jarringly into the large, muscular fellow who'd taken a seat to his left. A pint of tequila shattered on the wooden floor, and the entire establishment went quiet.
The man, a bull-dog faced, greasy soul, slowly stood so that he towered over his intended victim.
"You should watch where you're going, kid," he growled.
Danny stared back, unafraid, his face concealed beneath the hood of his jacket. "So should you."
The thug snarled, grabbing Danny by his shirt collar and hoisting him clear off the floor. "Maybe your ears don't work so well," he hissed. "Should I cut them off?"
"If you try, the appendage that I cut off will mean so much more to you than an ear," Danny growled. Normally such hostility was not in his nature, by the past few days had understandably frayed his nerves.
"I'd like to see you try, squirt," the giant laughed, earning a round of contemptuous snickering from everyone within earshot.
A faint, greenish glow shone from the darkness that concealed Danny's now-infamous features, and a week of pent-up rage made him quite literally see red.
"Fine."
Danny seemed to blur with the speed with which he broke the man's jaw, and the hooligan's girth made a very satisfying crash as Danny tossed him clear out of the window and into the street.
Satisfying, true, but it also had the unfortunate side effect of drawing in the cops. Danny felt his blood run cold at the sound of rapidly-approaching sirens. With ease borne of continuous practice, he discarded his guise of anonymity and transformed into his ghostly alter-ego.
Consternation reigned among the cantina's patrons, and Danny barely had time to levitate his feet off the ground when…
"Freeze, ghost kid!" an officer shouted, his voice magnified through the bullhorn he held to his lips. "Put your hands where I can see them!"
Danny slowly raised his arms, as if to comply, and the cop nodded to his partner in satisfaction. "Cuff him."
The other man glanced at their supposedly subdued quarry. "What's he doin'?"
The first cop glanced at Danny with confusion that was rapidly replaced with terror. True, the kid had his hands above his head-
-But the white-gloved palms that Danny had raised in the illusion of surrender were now accumulating ectoplasm with a high-pitched whine. The ghost boy had long discarded any notions of restraint because he wanted to ensure that he lived to see the sun go down.
"OH SHIT! GET DOWN!"
KABOOM!
Danny focused the blast up and out with a twist of his hands, and the resulting explosion blew the cantina's entire roof into the adjacent alleyway. A fine dust of plaster and tile made it difficult for anyone to see, and while the asbestos in the air made his lungs heave, Danny immediately used the new exit he created to facilitate his getaway.
It was an example of extraordinary bad luck that he was almost in the clear when one of the stunned officers shook off the disorienting effects of the blast. Blinking his eyes to rid them of debris, the cop reached for his gun with still-shaking fingers.
The man, like all of his colleagues, had received his orders. With absolutely no hesitation, he sighted down the handgun's barrel, aimed, and fired.
BANG!
The Teflon-clad slug, traveling at an impossible speed, ripped through the flesh and muscle of Danny Fenton's lower left arm with devastating force. A crimson spray soaked his clothes as the hero cried out in pain and surprise, spinning earthward like a downed fighter plane. Normally he would have gone intangible, but understandably, Danny wasn't thinking as clearly as he should have been.
It was not a smooth landing. Danny skidded to a grating halt on the unforgiving sidewalk just yards away from his pursuers, and his mind overloaded with blind panic as he tried to hobble away on his bloody leg.
BANG!
Another round chewed the pavement in a very near miss, and Danny fought to concentrate through his agonized haze long enough to become airborne again.
With his entire body running on adrenaline and nerve-wracking fear, Danny lost his usual tendency to hold back in favor of immediate self-preservation. His feet pounding the sidewalk, Danny blindly pointed a hand behind him and let loose another ecto-blast, squarely hitting the squad car's gasoline tank by pure chance. Fifty gallons of gasoline ignited instantly.
KA-BOOOOOOOOOM!
The acrid stench of spent fuel and burning debris made Danny's eyes water as the ensuing detonation sent a roiling, mushroom-shaped fireball rocketing skyward amidst a lethal show of red sparks and a spray of razor-sharp debris, and the flaming wreckage, torn clean in half with a grating r-i-i-i-p, spun through the dry Texas air several times before finally landing with a sickening crunch. Danny felt a pang of guilt at the startled screams of the pedestrians who now ran for their lives, and he himself only just avoided being knocked flat by the blast's shockwave. The two officers, winded but alive, had been thrown almost five feet by the concussive force of the explosion that Danny had lobbed at them, and the once-proud hero took advantage of the pandemonium to make good his escape once more while his wounded arm hung awkwardly at his side. His clothes were now ragged and torn from the spray of asphalt that had heralded the ruined car's return to earth, and the stinging granules had shredded the fabric of his pants and shirt like a sand blaster while scratching the newly exposed skin. Danny's ears rang painfully, and the only thing he was able to hear at the moment was the thunderous tattoo of his panicked heartbeat. Everyone was screaming, and the ghost boy had to make a conscious effort to keep running while his brain screamed at him to go and render any assistance that might be needed.
But going back was certain death. He couldn't help anyone right now, and Danny Fenton hated himself for it.
Danny felt the blood pooling beneath his fingers as he clapped a hand to his injury. It was the same blood that he had, for over a year, so willingly shed in the defense of those who could not defend themselves. It was the same blood that had been spilled so many times by so many enemies, the blood that the legions of malevolent spirits still craved.
And now, it was the same blood that was shed by those whom Danny had so tirelessly protected, flowing freely from a gaping hole torn from a people consumed by hatred and bigotry.
Danny gritted his teeth. There was no other option left but to flee beyond America's borders.
The home he had loved was no longer safe for him…
The J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building, Washington, D.C.
Thomas Brody glanced up irritably at the pasty-faced young intern who had so rudely barged into his office unannounced. "This had better be important," he growled, gesturing to the stack of files around his desk. "I'm up to my ass in paperwork here."
"I know that, sir," the younger agent replied, handing Brody an unassuming piece of paper. "But I was told that you should read this immediately."
Brody brusquely snatched the missive, his eyes roving over it at a seemingly impossible speed. "I see," he murmured quietly.
"Sir?"
"Nothing," Brody told the intern. "Sorry I snapped at you like that."
"I understand, sir," his colleague replied. "I've had days like that, too."
"Dismissed," Brody nodded, picking up his office phone, punching in a very special number as he swiveled in his chair.
"O'Malley?" he said, after the person on the other end picked up. "It's Brody. Fenton's been spotted near the Mexican border. I think he might be trying to flee the country.
"And you're sure about that?" O'Malley asked, his voice made tinny by old wiring.
"Well, if I were in his position, that's what I'd do," Brody replied confidently. "I've been chasing people like this for over twenty years. I know how they think. Fenton's bound to have realized by now that he can't stay in the States much longer."
"So he will be fleeing south?"
"No, too obvious," Brody murmured after a moment's thought. "It's more likely he'll head overseas. Europe would be my best guess."
"Gosh, that narrows it down," O'Malley said sarcastically.
"You seem to forget just how many people Fenton has after him," Brody snorted. "Think about that for a moment."
O'Malley knew that he spoke the truth. The sheer number of agencies and organizations in Brody's network was staggering. "What should I do?"
"Pack your bags," Brody told him. "I want C-17s ready for departure in one hour. We're going after him."
"All of us?" O'Malley asked. "That seems like overkill."
Brody made no effort to conceal his skepticism. "Are you kidding? From what I hear, this boy could handle a whole Army division."
"Point taken, sir," O'Malley replied tightly, just as the line went dead.
Brody scowled as he placed the device back onto the receiver. "God, what an asshole…"
Somewhere…
Tucker Foley's power nap in the Fenton Jet's metal chair was rudely interrupted as a swift nudge of Sam's boot sent him sprawling onto the riveted floor.
"Ow! What was that for?"
"Break time's over," Jazz told him. "They've spotted Danny in Laredo."
"Texas? Cool!"
"This is not a pleasure trip, Tucker," Sam growled, punching a new set of coordinates into the Jet's navigation system.
The geek rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "Right. I'll, uh, see if I can find anything useful on the web."
"You do that," Jazz nodded. "If the trail in Laredo grows cold, we need other clues to fall back on."
Like a silver fish in a sea of sky, the sleek aircraft banked sharply as it carried its three passengers further and further on their desperate quest...
Epilogue
"Flight 244, you are cleared for takeoff."
The crackly voice of the control tower's on-duty personnel was loud in the pilot's ear as he taxied gently down the runway of some obscure Texas airport. Freight and shipping were far more common than passengers on his small aircraft, and therefore he thought little of the abnormally heavy wooden crate that the ground crews had laboriously heaved into the cargo hold. It was probably nothing more than the bags of cow feed that were regularly flown into the far-flung cattle ranches that dotted this part of the countryside, or cement to be shipped to some big construction company.
Neither of these conclusions was correct.
In the chilly darkness below the pilot's shoes, Danny Fenton shivered violently in tandem with the throbbing of his wounded arm…
A/N: Yes, I know it's a little bit shorter than usual, but nevertheless I needed to crank this chapter out before the real fun begins! And PLEASE REVIEW! If you have an ideas or suggestions on how I can make this story better, LET ME KNOW! In coming installments, more of Vlad's intricate scheme will be revealed, but his true motivations, as well as the final outcome of his final confrontation with Danny, may leave you all very surprised…
Your humble servant,
-Quill N. Inque