Author: loosedefense
Title: Weak
Pairing: Danny/Dash
Disclaimer: Danny Phantom is the property of Butch Hartman and Nickelodeon. This story implies nothing about the characters nor does the plot of the story have any effect on the show itself. This story is pure fiction and fantasy.
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With the disastrous weekend behind him, Danny woke up on Monday morning with the full intent of seeking out Kwan and putting to rest the whole matter of Vlad's ghost half behind him.
He had spent the rest of his Saturday afternoon and the entire Sunday in his room avoiding any possible contact with his friends; apparently, they were doing the same, because he hadn't heard from Tucker or Sam the entire time, and unsurprisingly, Dash hadn't bothered to contact him either.
It didn't matter, Danny had decided then. Dash could do whatever he wanted, because he, Danny, had too many things to worry about already. And so, he had used this time to clear his head and learn again the reality of his life. This time had bolstered him, like a cocoon to prepare him for what was important, and right now, the only that mattered was to solve this mystery and move on.
He arrived to school early, knowing full well that it would be practically deserted. He would need to come in before Kwan did so that he had the upper hand if he wanted to ambush the other boy – or ghost, as the case may be. He only hoped that the jock wouldn't be surrounded by friends. If he was, then Danny would have no choice but to steal him away until he told him everything.
It was very interesting to see what the school was like before the students came in. The janitor, who was usually friendly in the few times Danny had struck up a conversation with him, skulked around the halls giving him the evil eye, sure that anyone who came in before all the streetlights outside were turned off was up to no good; teachers with half-lidded eyes dragged themselves in, making a beeline for the pot of coffee in the teachers' lounge; Danny had opened his mouth to say good morning to Mr. Lancer but the latter had shushed him with a dark look.
Beating a hasty retreat from the teacher's path, Danny spent the rest of his time wondering if he should wait for Kwan in a classroom or by hiding in one of the hall's alleyways. Opting for the alleyway, he willed himself to turn invisible.
Well, perhaps it wasn't the best idea to come in this early. Minutes drifted on, and Danny slumped against the wall, completely bored. He watched with some amusement as the janitor rushed around, panicked, no doubt trying to find him, convinced that his sudden disappearing act meant that he was up to no good.
Finally, he heard students chattering as the school started to fill up. The school buses started to pull up, dropping off a load of freshman and sophomores. Soon, the upperclassmen started filing in too. Danny spotted Sam walking to her locker, and a few minutes later, Tucker came in too with a sour look on his face. Danny resisted the urge to abandon his vigil and go talk to them.
Checking the time on his cellphone, Danny bit his lip, noting that the bell was going to ring soon. There was still no sign of Kwan anywhere, although, he confessed, it probably wasn't the brightest idea to stand in one spot waiting for the jock to come to him. Still, there was nothing to be done about it now. Just as he was about to materialize again, he held his breath when he heard Dash's voice, followed by the man himself when he turned the corner. Danny's heart sank. Kwan was with him, and so were about a half-dozen other guys.
Squaring his shoulders, Danny decided that it was now or never. Bounding from his spot, he grabbed Kwan by the collar of his letterman jacket and dove into the ground with him into the school's boiler room, releasing him and allowing his momentum to fling Kwan's body to the wall. Kwan had turned tangible again as soon as Danny had let go, and hit the wall with a shrill yelp. Gasping for breath, he glared up at Danny with watery eyes. "Jeez, Danny, I still have to breathe, you know."
"Shut up," Danny said vehemently. The ball rang overhead, and the two of them heard the footsteps of the students pounding into their respective classrooms. Danny turned back to Kwan, not caring anymore that he was going to be late for class. "You're going to tell me everything."
"Tell you everything about what?" Kwan bit out.
"Everything," Danny reiterated in an imposing tone. "I want to know all about this obsession the ghosts have with the Plasmius soul. I want to know why you possessed my friend, and how, and I want to know why you think you're helping me."
I can't." Kwan shook his head.
"You will." Danny's hands started to glow with a green tinge.
"I can't," Kwan said loudly.
"Why not?" Danny challenged. "Who are you working for? Tell me or I'll destroy the soul right now!"
"No!" Kwan's eyes were wide with fear. "If you destroy it, you'll kill us all!"
"What are you talking about?" Danny growled in frustration. He was so tired of going around in circles.
Kwan was breathing hard now, and with a deep sigh, hung his head and told him, "There's a war coming."
"You mean the war against Walker," Danny said when Kwan didn't offer anything more. Kwan lifted his head, a frown on his face.
"Yes," he said slowly. "The war against Walker."
"Why is there a war?"
"The ghosts are sick of him," Kwan said. "They will not take it anymore."
"But why now?" Danny pressed. "After all this time?"
"We have an opportunity now," Kwan told him. "Unused power which a ghost can possess for himself. If there were ever a time to strike—"
"Then why are you keeping the soul away from them?" Danny demanded. "You told me you were here to protect it."
Kwan's eyes darted wildly.
"Who knows what would happen if it got into the wrong hands," he said. "This power doesn't just revolve around defeating Walker, the consequences will be forever-long. You can be sure that it will be abused, and we will be right back where we started."
"So you don't want Walker gone?" Danny surmised.
"It's not worth the risk. Not yet."
Danny relaxed his fighting stance. Another question resolved. It seemed that this mystery was finally coming to an end. "You're going to have to get out of my friend," he told the ghost awkwardly. His rage was dissipated for the moment, and now all he could think of was the fact that he was late for class again, and the fact that if not for the ghost inside him, Danny probably would never refer to Kwan as one of his friends. It was a strange realization that left him wondering where he stood. "Oh, yeah, that reminds me – is there someone overshadowing Dash?"
"The Jock God?" Kwan raised an eyebrow. "None that I know of. Then again, I don't work with others; I wouldn't be the person to ask. Why, do you think he is?"
"Oh!" Danny swept a hand through his black hair conscientiously. "No reason. I was just wondering."
Kwan raised an eyebrow. "I already know you like him," he said. "I saw the two of you fucking—"
"We were not fucking!" Danny said loudly.
"—around the other day," Kwan finished with a smirk.
"Oh," Danny said meekly. He remembered Paulina telling him that she and Kwan had spotted them together at her party.
"And now you're worried that he's being possessed, and, what, that he won't remember any of this when the ghost leaves him?" Kwan guessed.
Danny blushed. "No! It's just my job. Whatever's going on between me and Dash is totally beside the point. I can't have a ghost overshadowing a student right under my own nose. I've been beating myself up over not figuring out you were possessing Kwan as it is, I don't need another one to get past me."
"All right then, now that we've got this settled, I'll see you at your house after school," Kwan got to his feet, raised his head high and began to saunter off.
"Hold on," Danny called back. "There's still the little matter of you overshadowing a student?"
Kwan grinned. "Danny, trust me, you're not going to want me to leave this body just yet. We could be in a world of trouble if I do."
"What do you mean?" Danny's fears began to rise again.
"Never mind," Kwan said breezily. "But you'll need my help beating back those ghosts. You can count on that."
Needless to say, by the time he took his seat in American History – receiving a stern lecture from Lancer, who seemed much perkier now that he'd had his morning coffee – Danny's nerves were shot. He had walked slowly all the way from the boiler room to class wondering with every step what Kwan meant. He knew that he was referring to the ghost attacks, but couldn't understand why he was so certain Danny would be requiring his help. He understood that the ghosts were desperate for the soul, but he had been fighting ghosts for four years now, and so far none of them had gotten what they wanted.
Deciding to forget it for now, he spent the lecture sending messages to Sam and Tucker on his cellphone, which he kept out of sight under his desk so that Lancer wouldn't confiscate it.
'So you just let him walk away from you without doing anything?' Sam's message asked.
'Yeah,' Danny messaged back.
'I can't say I'm very comforted.'
Danny didn't want to argue. Maybe it hadn't been the best idea to just let Kwan walk away scott-free, but he was tired of stumbling all over himself trying to find out what was going on. Right now, he just felt exhausted with the burden Vlad had placed on him, and Kwan seemed convinced he had some bigger role to play, and Danny just didn't care right now. Sighing heavily, he pocketed the phone and focused on the lulling drone of Mr. Lancer's voice.
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"Where's Dash?" Kwan asked as soon as he stepped into the house.
Danny, changed into a very baggy shirt and a pair of sweatpants, shrugged carelessly.
"Lovers' quarrel?" Kwan laughed.
"Hey, you don't even live in this realm. You have no right to judge," Danny sat back down in front of the television. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm your bodyguard, baby," he winked.
Danny was left unimpressed. "I should just zap you into the Fenton Thermos, but I can't really bring myself to care go through all this bullshit right now."
He gave a wan smile. 'This is nice. I haven't felt this numb since I was twelve.'
Kwan shrugged. "Whatever." He lay down on another couch, closing his eyes as Danny continued to watch television. "Give me a call if you need me to help you with a ghost."
"You know, for a bodyguard, you didn't really do much of anything when you followed me around," Danny commented. "Mostly you would just stay invisible and I didn't know you were there. In fact, you were more of a hindrance since you were blocking my ghost powers all the time."
"I tossed you the Fenton Thermos," Kwan reminded lazily.
"And that's about all you did," Danny felt an edge to his voice, so allowed the argument to slide.
Kwan tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. "Can I try out your ghost equipment?"
"On the list of dumbest things I could ever do, I think that would be about number three."
Kwan grinned. "Is Dash number one?"
"I haven't done Dash," Danny said curtly. "And for your information, he's number two."
"Oh, so being with him is not the end of the world then?"
"What makes you say that?"
"You said he was only number two – which means being with him is still conceivable, doesn't it?"
Danny shrugged. "Sure, it's conceivable. Number one is conceivable too." As a matter of fact, number one had once been more than conceivable, but thanks to Clockwork, Danny had managed not to stray down that road again. "But now, being with Dash is just going to be a distant memory."
He had no idea why he said that. Kwan raised his eyebrow in response.
"The two of you broke up?"
Danny shrugged listlessly. "Don't tell me you were hoping for a faghag position."
"What's that?"
"Doesn't matter."
"Can I try your ghost equipment?"
"No."
"Oh, come on!" Kwan whined. "How am I supposed to help protect you if I don't get in any practice rounds?"
"Don't you have your own powers you can use?"
"Sure," Kwan said, "but those guys have powers too."
"Never stopped me before."
"It might stop me. Can I try it?"
Danny sighed. He was not in the mood to carry on. "Sure, whatever." He turned off the television and led the jock downstairs. Just because he wanted nothing more than to be left alone so that he could rot in front of the tube didn't mean he was stupid enough to let a ghost down into his parents' lab without supervision.
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"How did I let you talk me into this again?"
"It took very little talking," Kwan replied. "You know you want to do it."
"Do not."
"Please. You've had this thing in your house for four years and you've never once thought about taking it out for a spin?"
"The first time I took this thing 'out for a spin', I only just managed to talked my way out of prison. A ghost prison," Danny shuddered. All in all, the Specter Speeder didn't hold very fond memories for Danny. "Besides, I have a car."
"Cars are boring," Kwan said. "The novelty totally wore off after I tried to park Dash's car outside your house that day. I only just managed to blast that fire hydrant so I wouldn't crash into it."
"So that's what happened," Danny replied. He couldn't believe he hadn't realized Kwan was a ghost when he had come across that scene that day. Then again, his attention had been diverted onto more immediate problems. He still wasn't sure how Kwan had managed to talk him into joyriding in the Specter Speeder though. What was worse was that it wasn't even confined to the Ghost Zone; they were shooting through the city in midair, Danny occasionally drifting down so that it hung only a few inches above the road, imitating a hovercar in movies set in the future.
He almost crashed to the ground when he caught sight of something flit by the corner of his eye.
"Watch it!" Kwan snapped, arm darting out to the slam against the side of the Speeder to keep himself from falling forward.
"Sorry," Danny quickly turned his eyes back to the sky. What was it that had caught his attention so?
Suddenly he saw it again, a quick dart. Straining his eyes, he tried to find it again in the horizon.
When suddenly it was on them. Both Danny and Kwan gave a little jump when the pile of bones resembling a bird shot straight at them. Just before it hit the windshield, however, it shot upwards.
There was only one ghost Danny knew that had birds flayed to the bones, literally, following him. Narrowing his eyes, he raised the Speeder as high in the sky as he dared to, searching for Youngblood.
"What are you doing?" Kwan asked dryly as they zoomed over the city.
"Looking for something," Danny muttered, keeping his eyes ahead. Figuring that there was no reason to distract the other boy, he willed himself to transform into Danny Phantom immediately.
"Battle mode?" Kwan raised an eyebrow. Danny didn't reply.
The bird was gone – as far as Danny could see, there was no sight of it anywhere. Loosening his grip on the controls, he attempted to bring them down closer to the city.
It was just then that the Speeder gave a frightful shake. Kwan's hands shot out again to brace against the Speeder, and Danny clenched the controls tightly again, stumbling forward in his seat. Swearing under his breath, he turned to see what had happened.
The back of the vehicle was charred and rusty. Danny couldn't believe his eyes. It looked about to fall apart.
"How—" he'd been about to ask when a floating black mass drifted in through the roof of the Speeder.
"What the hell is that?" Kwan yelped. Johnny 13's shadow bared its fangs.
"Take the controls. Do it!" Danny ordered over Kwan's protests. Jumping into a fighting stance, he followed Shadow's exit through the bottom of the vehicle. The effect of the malignant spirit phasing through the Speeder resulted in it giving another alarming jerk. Kwan desperately attempted to gain control of it, pushing and pulling every button and lever he could reach when the Specter Speeder started to plummet.
His back turned to the scene, Danny was too immersed in his fight against Shadow to notice. Experience had taught him that simply blasting rays didn't go very far with this one. Danny would have to rely on his wit.
As he fought, ducked, dodged, and phased Shadow's aggressive swipes, Danny's mind raced to find a way to beat it. He hadn't seen Johnny 13 in a while, and couldn't imagine what he had done to deserve Shadow's attention, but if he couldn't find a way to beat him quickly, he was sure he would not be above searching the ghost out and asking him to call off his monstrous shadow.
The Speeder was quickly approaching the road, and no matter what he did, Kwan didn't seem to be able to stop it. None of the controls he had tried had responded in a positive manner, and the yoke seemed to be locked in place.
Traffic on the street below had come to an absolute standstill, as far as cars were concerned. The citizens below had noticed the oncoming flying object, seemed to realize that it was going to crash into the ground, and had abandoned their cars with terrified screams. Most of them were running away from the scene as fast as they possibly could while few others were scrambling in the middle of the road, lost in the confusion and seemingly unable to make up their minds as to where to go.
Giving up his fruitless attempts, Kwan turned himself intangible, freezing in position so that he hovered in the air, solid metal sliding right through his body as the Specter Speeder zoomed on, effectively freeing himself from its confines.
The horrible crash it created tore Danny and Shadow's attentions away. Growling, Shadow sped off in the opposite direction.
Fear gripped Danny's heart. He did not bother chasing the apparition, heading to the location of the accident as fast as he could possibly go. How could he have left Kwan at the controls? One half of his brain praying that no one had been hurt, the other half chastising himself for his recklessness, Danny flew through the air, eyes wide and somehow feeling mostly numb.
Heavy smoke was pouring from the Specter Speeder. Danny almost had to turn his head away when he took in the scene that greeted him. The Specter Speeder was totaled in a way he had never imagined a vehicle could be. The front half of the cruiser had broken asphalt and was lying lodged in the road. The side of the speeder had leaned into one side of a house, completely demolishing a wall. A fire had started on an edge of the back of the Speeder, heavy smoke pouring out and filling the air with an acrid smell. Cars were smashed and overturned, a small heap pointing to the smoking vehicle. A streetlamp had been knocked down, not by the Specter Speeder itself but by a car that had been driven straight into it in haste.
Nobody had been hurt. Danny's mouth tasted sour at the thought of innocent people dead in the middle of the street because of his mistake, but thankfully that was not the case. Some people were bleeding – he could see them now, stepping woozily back into the vicinity, clutching broken or strained appendages, blood running down their faces from crashing their cars. For the moment, the air was silent.
It had happened so fast. Danny wasn't sure he had even processed everything just yet. He simply hovered there, dazed, staring at the area with disbelieving eyes.
A sudden urge to leave broke through, and before he knew it, he turned around and began to fly away. This wasn't the place for him right now. They could clean up the mess on their own. Whatever explanation he would have to give his parents about why the Specter Speeder was involved in such a disastrous incident could be figured out later. Right now, he needed to be somewhere far away from here.
Danny stopped.
Kwan. He had forgotten all about him, hadn't checked the Speeder to see if he was still in it. He couldn't be – he had ghost powers; Tyrant would have gotten out.
He hesitated, almost turning back to check the vehicle. If he thought trying to explain why the Specter Speeder had crashed in the middle of a crowded street to his parents was going to be bad, he could only imagine what it would be like to explain why a boy from his school had been found in it.
Danny didn't get the chance to choose, however, because in that moment, a burning white-hot sensation hit him, and, letting out a cry, he fell to his knees, clutching his side with an agonized grimace. He found Skulker balancing himself on the slanted roof of a house, arm extended with a gun rising from it, a wicked expression on his face. He was standing too far away for Danny to approach, and he realized with a jolt of fear that even if he wanted to, he couldn't. His body ached, and the pain wasn't going to lift up anytime soon.
Skulker made no move to catch him, which puzzled Danny and thus scared him even more. The parrot, Shadow, Skulker – it had been an organized hit.
Hardly able to do anything more than breathe, Danny waited apprehensively for what was coming next. If Skulker wasn't going to do anything, that meant there was something even worse planned. All he could do was to try and prepare himself for it.
And then Skulker raised his arm. The gun that he had been shot with was now pointing straight up at the sky. A slender blue beam shot out of it, not in a short burst, but continuously. And as Danny realized with a sinking heart that it was a signal, something began to happen. He watched with terrified eyes as the clouds parted, revealing as they dispersed an enormous ship coated in green that somehow seemed to glow ethereally. Youngblood's ship.
The gun from Skulker's armor slid back inside, the beam it had been emitting immediately cutting off. The ship floating overhead grew larger and larger as it began to descend, coming to rest just before his feet. Expecting to see Youngblood and his crew smirking down at him mischievously, Danny instantly lost his breath when he met a cold smile and soulless eyes instead.
"Walker," he whispered.
All thoughts left him when the figure next to the ghost warden stepped into view. Bullet was gazing evilly down at him with an air that suggested that he was a tiny insect that he had to get rid of before continuing his day. Behind them stood various other ghosts that Danny had met over the course of his ghost-hunting activities. Technus hovered impassively with his hands behind him. Ember glared disdainfully, standing next to Bertrand, who's face was as unemotional as Technus yet alive with a malicious glee. Many others loomed alongside them, half covered in shadow.
"How long I have been planning this moment," Walker said quietly. "Every step of the way, leading you on just to make sure we all ended up here."
Danny tried to make sense of what was being said to him, but it was as though his brain had shut down in a bid to protect itself. He lay there on the street, resting almost solely on his right hip, his left arm curving to rest delicately on his side, where part of his costume had been singed off by the blast from the beam Skulker had hit him with. The skin revealed was burned pretty badly.
"You dug this grave for yourself," Walker told him. "It had nothing to do with you, but you forced our hand. Had you given us what we wanted when we came for it, you could have saved yourself this pain.
"I couldn't ignore the protests of the ghosts. So I came up with a plan to bring you down, do you like it Ghost-kid?"
Danny panted, "I – you—"
"I don't have time to break you in half. So I'm offering you one last out – give me the Plasmius soul, and you get to live."
There was nothing he could do about it. Skulker hadn't moved from his spot, and Danny could see the ghosts twitching behind Walker and Bullet, each one aching to take their anger out on him. If he tried anything, there was no doubt that he would be walking away from this in one piece. "I don't have it," he gasped out.
"You will tell us where it is," Bullet commanded. He unsheathed a sword, pointing it right at the half-ghost's throat. Behind them, the rest of the ghosts began equipping themselves with weapons too, some simply flaring up their ghost energy in anticipation of a fight. Danny felt like crying. All the work, all the uncertainty … Sam had told him not to put so much trust in Walker. They had all at one point or another been certain that there was more to this story than what they were being told, but he had simply walked blindly on, supplying Walker with information only for it to be used against him.
He wanted to say no, tell them that there was no way they would be able to get the soul from him; tears pricked his eyes and there were sobs building up inside him trying to come out. There was a lump forming in his throat. He needed air.
All of this fell away when he saw a streak paint itself upon the scenery. The ghosts were oblivious to it, still focusing on him, but Danny had seen it, and his eyes lit up with hope and his muscles suddenly feeling like they had been released from paralysis. Help was coming.
Kwan was speeding towards them with a determined look on his face. The streak he had created was a combination of dust and pieces of rubble and soot trailing behind him as he flew in the air.
By now, the ghosts had noticed the change in demeanor in him, and raised their eyes to see seek out what it was that had him so enthralled. Following his eyes, they turned over their shoulder to find the athlete aiming straight for them. As he approached even closer, Kwan's entire body was illuminated in a green glow that radiated power. As though he were made of stone, he broke through the side of the ship, causing many on board to cry out as the ship tilted from the force of the attack, and before Danny even truly realized it, Kwan had broken out through the other side, having shot through the entire width of the ship, to land before him.
No words were spoken; he gripped Danny's hand tightly in his and glided off with him so fast that they had turned a corner before the ghosts had even recovered.
"I need to let you go," Kwan yelled to him as buildings passed by. "We need to take them together. Can you fight?"
Still trying to find his breath, Danny nodded. Escape didn't seem possible, but if he allowed himself to become dead weight now, they would definitely not make it out alive.
"After them!" Walker roared. "Do not let them get away! Skulker," he addressed the ghost who was still standing on the rooftop, "track them down. We need the kid alive for now, but make sure the other one is taken care of."
Skulker was gone in an instant. Unsteadily the ship began to rise, sinking quickly back down several inches for every few inches that it rose. "Can this work?" Walker growled, seizing Youngblood by his coat. "How will your men fix it?"
"Hey, I lent you my ship and you were the one who wrecked it!" Youngblood cried petulantly. "You fix it."
"Listen to me, boy," Walker slammed the tiny body in his hands against a wooden beam, "if you don't have this hole fixed in two seconds, I am going to hunt down that ghost-boy and make his stay at my prison look like a trip to the spa compared to what I'll put you through."
Youngblood trembled. The ship was quickly emptying as the search for the two ghosts was on. Several ghosts were jumping off fallen vessel and were taking to the skies trying to stake them out.
With the pirate crew working mindlessly to get the ship in the air again, Walker tossed Youngblood off with an furious litany of curses. The young ghost's body bounced on the gravel with a shocked squeak from him, narrowly missing Johnny 13's bike as he and his girlfriend drove off in search for the Phantom and his mysterious new ally.
Heavily damaged though it was, the enormous ship made greater strides through the air than the ghosts shooting all over town searching for them, and soon the headstart Danny and Kwan had gotten came to nothing as they found the shadow of the ship engulf them as it kept up with them overhead.
"There is nowhere to run, ghost-boy," Walker said determinedly, his eyes on the two boys. Loudly, he called to them, "You two aren't going anywhere – stop, boy, for your own good. Technus here," for Technus was still with him on the ship, "has built us a weapon. It will destroy you, ghost-kid, unless you give up now and take the easy way out."
'He's bluffing,' Danny thought urgently. Walker needed him, he still hadn't told them where e had kept the Plasmius soul, so if he tried to kill Danny now, Walker would find himself at a complete loss.
Still, it was never a good idea to not take a power-hungry dictator with a powerful weapon lightly. Ignoring his body's protests, he forced himself to turn 180 degrees and fire ghost rays at the ship. Though all shots were direct hits, they magnitude of them were nothing compared to the number Kwan had done on the ship earlier, and therefore did little to slow their pursuers down.
Slowly the ghosts all around the city began to close in on them, drawn in by the sight of the ship, lilting from side to side, following a path so certain that it was obvious it was on the target's tail. As they drew in, several began shooting at them, causing Danny and Kwan to swerve around their paths, mindfully trying to avoid the blasts.
'We can't keep doing this,' Danny's mind screamed to him. He had already been hurt, and now exhaustion was settling deep onto his muscles. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so worn out.
"Descend," Walker called to the ghostly crew. If they wanted to play tough, they were going to play tough. As the ship began to level down, the ghosts that had left it in pursuit of the targets gradually drifted back on board, now confident that there was no way for them to lose sight of them again. Skulker was the last to board the ship.
Danny nudged Kwan in the arm, pointing up at the descending ship. "They'll destroy all the buildings they get near," he informed. "We have to stop them."
"How? I don't know what to do!"
Anxiety was clawing at Danny's insides. For once, he was truly at a loss. There seemed to be no way to get the ghosts away from them, and time was quickly running out for them.
"We have to draw them up," he decided. "Come on, follow me."
And they raised themselves upwards, nimbly working through the small amount of space the ship's expanse left them when they were level with it. The ghosts howled ferociously, but Danny simply kept rising, taking any opportunity to bring them down, flinging balls of energy at them along with the occasional ghost ray.
The ship rose with them. Danny closed his eyes briefly in silent thanks for the plan working. They had managed to keep the ship from crushing any buildings so far, but he still had no idea how to end the game.
Walker, however, had some ideas. As the pirate crew worked to keep the two boys within sight, he ordered Skulker and Technus to raise the machine.
Danny watched as a commotion began taking place on the ship's deck. He caught a few words Walker had bellowed out, most of them blown away by the wind, but he had heard the word 'machine'. His mind flashing back, he recalled the time he had discovered Technus prowling around in his parents laboratory. The ghost must have been stealing items all along in order to create that weapon Walker had been so proud of.
'Alright, Danny,' he tried to mentally prepare himself. This was it. They were bringing out the big gun. Whatever it was meant to do to him, he had to make sure it didn't touch him. Kwan was flying on the other side of the ship, but all eyes of the crew were fixated on him.
"Last chance, ghost kid," Walker crowed. "Give up now."
Danny gave him the finger, then swerved upwards against the building in anticipation of an unfriendly response.
He knew he had gotten it wrong though, when Walker gave him that same cold smile again.
Almost in slow motion, he watched as the warden slammed his hand against the back of the device which had previously been pointing at him. His mouth dropped in an open in an 'o' of surprise when it pointed now at Kwan, who didn't seem to be paying attention. Danny tried to warn him as soon as he realized what was going to happen, but felt as though he could do nothing.
The weapon looked like a contraption in science fiction movies meant to grace the protagonist with untold powers through some hideous gamma ray exposure. Danny let out a hoarse scream just in time to see it power up with a light that went from light blue to white-hot, then sent out a blast right into Kwan's body. Danny watched helplessly while Kwan's face contorted into an expression of shock and pain, watched as the body slipped into a graceless position as swung to a stop in mid-air and almost immediately began to topple out of the sky.
The ghosts were still watching him, and Walker had already focused the machinery back on him. Danny came to a stop too, changing course to go after his friend, begging frantically that he would be able to catch the body in time, telling himself that he could not allow his classmate's body to slam into the ground like that and take his life.
A little later and it would have been too late. In a wild bid that came too close for comfort, he managed to catch Kwan's body safely in his arms before the met the ground. Glancing over his shoulder to make sure the ghosts were not coming back just yet, Danny set the other body down on the ground carefully, transforming into Danny Fenton as he did so.
The blast had created a wound, not as large as Danny would have expected considering the proximity of the weapon and Kwan's body, but it was bleeding heavily anyway. A crowd was beginning to form around them now, more people on the street this time than there had been when the Specter Speeder had crashed, the people who had been around then not wasting any time to call their friends to come over and watch the spectacle.
Danny had been about to scream for a doctor, for someone to help, just do anything, when he was grabbed by the collar hard. Kwan lay on the ground, a thick hand holding on to him by the front of his shirt. His eyes were wild and searching, and his lip was trembling uncontrollably. For the first time, Kwan actually looked very afraid. "Danny—"
"Don't worry," Danny tried to soothe, "I'm going to find a doctor. I'm going to get help. Don't worry, okay? It's – it's going to be fine—"
"No!" Kwan whispered harshly. The color was draining from his face and his eyes were growing dimmer. Fear and apprehension began to well inside Danny as he looked on. Tears slipped out of the boy's eyes, which already seemed more hollow than they had been an hour ago. "It wasn't supposed to go this way."
"I can get somebody to look at you," Danny insisted. "Kwan, if you just let go of my shirt—"
"No, no, Danny, it's not going to be," Kwan pressed his head back against the cement of the sidewalk he'd been placed on as if it were literally killing him to get the words out. "I don't – I don't know what…"
"Kwan—"
Kwan suddenly grabbed him by the wrist. He was breathing sharply, yet somehow his breaths were shallower than normal as they came out. "Tell them to take you to the Rock."
"What?"
"The Rock," Kwan hissed. "Tell them to take you there. You'll understand – everything … I—" he let out a shuddering gasp, his eyes widening in fear. Danny turned around and saw the ship struggling to turn, trying to get back t them and finish them off. "Kwan..."
"You have to go – go there," Kwan insisted. "I didn't want to do it this way." His voice was gradually growing softer. Danny couldn't bring himself to say anything. Kwan's eyelids closed, his breathing still irregular and desperate, as though he couldn't bear to keep them up any longer. His lips still moved, but there was no hope of hearing anything they formed.
And with a growing crowd of spectators around him, a damaged ship making its way towards them, and limp arms loosening their grip around him, Danny hung his head down, waiting to cry.
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Author's Note: Very sorry for the extremely late chapter, I've been really busy the past few weeks, and was also putting this chapter off because I wasn't quite sure how to write it. I'm not very satisfied with it right now either, it seemed to go better in my head. Regardless, please tell me what you think. Your comments and constructive criticism is welcome.