Chapter 9
Danny awoke very suddenly, encompassed by an alarming falling sensation. A brief moment of terror later his back hit his bed and he was nearly bounced off the mattress onto the floor of his bedroom. He looked up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. There was no one there, at least no one he could see. His ghost sense wasn't going off. Had he been floating?
It wouldn't surprise him if he had been floating just then in his sleep. His powers hadn't been this volatile since he was fourteen years old. Then again briefly when he discovered his ice powers, but even then it was only with the one thing. Now he was misfiring in all directions.
In a moment of dark humor, he imagined himself racing down a crowded hallway, shooting ecto-blasts everywhere, as GIW operatives chased after him with different bazookas firing off in all directions, screaming all the way. Was he screaming? Were they screaming? Everyone was screaming.
He wanted to scream for real. But that would wake his parents. If they were even home.
Not even thirty seconds after the exhausted teen made it quakily to his feet did a breath of wispy white escape his mouth.
A brief wave of confidence.
Finally, something he knew how to do! Knew that he could do.
Freezing panic.
Couldn't do. Wasn't safe, wasn't safe for him, wasn't safe for anyone.
A roll of rage.
Can't do nothing!
Inaction wasn't safe either. This was Danny's job, his purpose, and just about the only thing he could do with his pathetic life.
Why should he have to give that up after all that he'd sacrificed? After the years of neglecting himself and everything else he cared about, after hours upon hours upon hours of training and crying and victory and defeat. Why should he have to stop now?
Danny's cold, pale feet took him steadily to his window and he peered out. No ghosts in sight, which admittedly didn't mean much.
Can't change here, he thought to himself, some part of his mind still logical, Mom and Dad will have this place sensored to the nines right now.
Or maybe not. Either way, he was very used to avoiding detection, and that logical part of his brain knew that he was taking a gigantic risk.
In doing his job. His only job.
This was a pretty neat window. Just a bit farther up from the floor than his bed, it reached to the ceiling and opened outward towards the street, usually letting in a cool breeze. Of course, he hadn't opened it since the start of winter….
Mind devoid of thought, his fingers fumbled to undo the locks. The house was deathly silent.
Mind devoid of thought, he threw the windows open. Frigid wind struck him immediately, blowing a few sheets of undone homework around the room.
Mind devoid of thought, he stepped up onto the brick window sill. The soles of his feet burned from cold, and his teeth began to chatter without him telling him to. And he wasn't usually very susceptible to the cold.
Mind bright white and empty, Danny jumped.
Though it was only the second story, it was a high, city-building second story. Danny had gotten over any fear of heights years ago, when he'd learned to fly. During all those fights, he'd also learned to fall.
But this was different.
A heartbeat later than he would have liked, two glowing rings formed around his waist, encompassing his entire body and allowing him to put a stopper on gravity.
As he floated to a stop two feet above the snowbanks, a worm of doubt popped up from the back corner of what was left of his brain. His powers had been very unreliable lately; if they could do things without his direct will, could they stop doing things without his direct will? Stop doing things like defying gravity perhaps?
His ghost form could take it at least. He was as sure about that as he was about anything these days.
With an unnecessary gulp of familiar air, he flew comfortably into the space above his snowy street.
The streetlamps were back on, their little bursts of light illuminating the surrounding white. The sky was clear, and the stars were out. God he loved the stars.
A sudden force struck him from behind, slamming his body into the exterior wall of his room, missing the still open window by three feet or so. For a few seconds he fell, clumsy fingers trying desperately to get a hold of the slippery powder which coated the wall in some areas, fear of falling preventing him from recalling his power of flight.
His body knew what his imagination did not, which was that if he could do anything he could fly. So he stopped mid air and whirled to face his opponent.
"Hello, whelp," a deep mechanical voice called from ten feet away.
Metallic skin shining, his flaming green hair drew attention away from the stars.
"Skulker," Danny grumbled, rubbing the shoulder that had taken the brunt of the damage, "Whatever happened to the Christmas spirit?"
"The twenty-fifth is still days away, Ghost Child. Don't your humans have calendars?"
"Well, we do, but that actually brings up an interesting question." Danny wasn't in the mood for fighting, and it showed. He was in the mood for sleeping, but apparently even that was a dangerous activity for him. "How do ghosts know when it's Christmas? Do you have calendars? Do you all subscribe to Christianity implicitly? Are there Jewish ghosts? Do they take breaks during Hanukkah? What about atheists ghosts, what do atheist ghosts—"
Skulker didn't share the anti-fighting sentiment. An enormous blast from a wrist-ray later, had Danny narrowly avoiding messing up his other shoulder.
"Ru-ude. Just trying to have a conversation is all, be friendly, that's it."
Blast blast blast blast blast. Rapid double fire from both of his enemy's wrists had the hybrid doing acrobatics in the air. Up, down, left, up, right right right, up….
Spots. Dark gray spots began encroaching on his periphery and a dull ache was slowly filling his skull and saturating his brain.
His body swayed a little, and he decided it was time for a snide remark. "You're an awful dodgeball player. You know that, right? Not that I'm one to talk."
Then his slow reaction time bit him on the side of his hip. Burned, actually, rather than bit. His slow reaction time burned through his jumpsuit in the form of an ectoblast and scalded the skin left behind. This proved that there was indeed a difference between firepower and regular old force-power.
Thus he fell with an anticlimactic plop into a snow drift.
"You wouldn't know true combat if it bit you in your ghostly core, you insolent little—"
"Highly unoriginal metaphor, Skulky, highly unoriginal," that insolent little whatever criticized from the ground, though he'd incorporated the saying into his own mental narrative only seconds before.
Before Danny could manage to regain his footing, Skulker was towering over him. "At least I can aim, anyway. And hit the correct target."
A lump rose in the teen's throat and his vision blurred in and out for a few seconds. Green orbs of power formed subconsciously around his clenched fists, burning through the nearby snow. Powered completely by rage and lack of rational thought, he raised them and lobbed them with as much force as he could muster toward the tiny-blob-robot-suit thingy that was mocking him.
More than mocking him himself, he was mocking the gravest mistake he'd ever made and all of the consequences that went along with it.
For that he would pay. Someone had to. Someone had to pay.
Skulker hadn't expected him to react so quickly and was shoved back by the shots. Taking this opportunity in stride despite the physical weakness he felt, Danny skipped the standing step and leapt straight into the air, assuming a stance of power ten feet above his temporarily stunned opponent.
The robot ghost shook off a thin dusting of white and aimed at the airborne specter. "As difficult to hunt and catch as you've been, one would have thought you could learn the spectacular consequences thoughtless ectoblasts can have—"
Danny launched another ectoblast at his metallic skull, wishing with all his might to pound him into the pavement of the road.
Unfortunately, he missed.
Skulker didn't make any attempt to dodge; he didn't move anymore than a fiery eyebrow. Danny simply missed. And swayed a little.
Hey, it had been an exhausting couple of days.
Skulker activated his jetpack and floated slowly upward until he was at eye level with the ghost boy, and even through the spots in his vision and the obvious brain injury he'd received, Danny thought he detected a look of stern concern.
This hint of pity, from a being that literally wanted nothing more than to skin him (alive, probably) and mount his pelt on his wall (shudder), multiplied the fury emanating from his core.
Suddenly his hands weren't the only things crackling in an ecto-electric cage of green. As instantaneous and as dangerous as lightning, random sparks shot out from his prepared orbs all over the place. Some bursts remained suspended in the air; others broke out too far from their source. Several window panels shattered, and at least one car parked on a curb started smoking.
Skulker, the only actual target in the vicinity, projected a shield in front of himself with a simple wave of his arm, remaining untouched.
"Look at yourself. You're out of sync, you're out of control. You're endangering those pathetic humans you say you care about by just being here. For all you know, those windows aren't the only thing that's broken right now."
Danny's body was shaking in mid-air, and electricity hissed in constant lightning-bolt bursts around him. His breathing had quickened rapidly, egging on the darkness devouring his sight.
"Everyone would be safer if you just came with me. You're an invalid, you're a disease, a spectacle."
Faces flashed by in his mind's eye. Sam, Tucker, Jazz, Mom, Dad…. Mr. Baker. Sam's head smashing against unforgiving metal, Tucker still on the ground, Jazz bleeding out in a pool of her own blood…. Mr. Baker's widow.
Open your eyes,
Look up to the skies and see….
A bright wave of nausea and pain.
Crack!
There was a brilliant flash of light and energy, then Danny was on the ground. His glow beamed more intensely than he had ever seen, though he had never felt so broken.
Just when he had decided to just stay where he was in the snow, a thought struck him: Skulker's getting away.
So he rose to follow the bastard.
Standing was hard; flying was too easy. He felt like he'd set a new record for amount of energy drinks consumed in a limited amount of time, and that was saying something even if his only competition was himself.
At least some people must have been awakened by the commotion. He imagined himself as they would see him through their windows, a dazzling blur of black, white, and green. A dazzling, dangerous blur going way too fast.
Thus it was easy to catch up to Skulker. Thus it was simple to aim and child's play to encase him in ice and send him plummeting to the ground, smashing another innocent automobile.
Immediately Danny was dispirited. It really was a miracle no one had ever died as a result of his careless actions before this week. It was a miracle that anyone at all had even survived his first week as a menace to society, let alone his first several years.
Then again he was weak then. He was more powerful now, that much was obvious. Maybe too powerful.
It was as if his sin had opened up a great door inside of him and activated a level of power exclusively for the most destructive and malicious.
Maybe Skulker was onto something. He was out of control, a spectacle, a disease. Maybe his core would take a hint and destabilize before he could do anything else wrong.
Disease. Spectacle.
A new train of thought entered Danny's mind and suddenly he was replaying bits and pieces of what Skulker had actually said to him.
A disease, a spectacle. Spectacular consequences. Bit him in the ghostly core….
Skulker had gone out of his way to emphasize certain keywords. He'd also spent way less time than usual actually trying to capture the hybrid. Though he'd dealt a good beating, his taunting game was his real focus.
Johnny had been acting oddly too. He'd said something about bugs, called him ill for sure, then given him a Fenton thermos that still needed to be investigated.
Maybe they were trying to tell him something.
The whole thing felt ridiculous, and he felt like he needed a pencil and paper; it was way too late at night/early in the morning for all of this inference crap. Danny was known for his slacking off and his truancy, not his skill in discerning nuance and making connections.
Bugging him.
Bit him in the ghostly core.
Ill, disease, ill, diseased….
Spectacle, Spectacular, Spectra!
The epiphany broke him out of his introspection, drawing his attention to the outer world. A small crowd had gathered, alerted by noise that just a few nights ago wouldn't even have phased them. The citizens of Amity Park were used to ghost attacks. They had grown used to shots and bad puns being fired off snap snap back and forth. Phantom and/or Fentons vs. random ghost of the hour was a regular old show that was practically permanently set on reruns at this point.
Now it was different. They must have been scared, but not too scared. After all, they'd left the vague comfort and safety of their beds to observe, so their terror-meter wasn't full yet.
But they were wary.
Danny himself had to admit that he'd gotten used to seeing gratitude in the eyes of the populace. He'd adjusted to being in the spotlight in a positive way, he'd come to enjoy it. Now those eyes were wary, wary of him, and he didn't know what to do.
So he froze.
And that was a bad idea.
He heard the familiar screech before anyone could truly register it. Once the gawkers identified it, they collaborated to clear a path in the street faster than anyone would have thought possible, leaving their maybe-hero/maybe-villain alone.
The Ghost Assault Vehicle was coming, and it sounded like Jack was driving.
When some kids snuck out of their rooms in the dead of night, their parents dragged them home by the ear. Danny had bigger concerns.
As the weaponized family vehicle came into view, his instincts kicked in a little. Not a lot; just a little. His now unpredictable body managed to let him take a few steps backward, though neither his eyes nor his memories clued him into the fact that there was a giant hunk of ice/robo-ghost behind him. So he merely fell. Like a doofus.
Before he could regain his footing, he heard to sets of rushed footsteps clomping through the snow in his direction.
"I've got 'im, Maddie!"
Standing up, turning invisible, or even phasing away sounded like too much work. Something in his chest was pulsing deeply and erratically, simultaneously consuming and expelling energy. He was too hot.
He felt like he was choking, melting and asphyxiating on the inside when he knew that was impossible. He wanted to wretch, he wanted to run, he wanted to disappear. All he could manage to do was drag himself a few feet farther away through the blissfully frigid ice powder.
Maybe I just won't get away this time, he thought, Maybe Skulker's right. Maybe it's for the best…
Then they were on him.
What would happen if they killed me? For he was pretty sure he could be killed. It was a valid question. Would he just be still and gone? Would he melt away into green mush? What if he phased back into human form, right in front of them, their son back and deader than ever?
They wouldn't understand. They'd be angry and confused and hopefully at least a little sad. Then they'd realize what that meant, what that meant their little Danny boy had done. Then they'd just be mad, they'd hate him, they'd hate everyone who had helped him. He couldn't leave them like that.
God, his chest was burning pulsing burning pulsing. A slimy, heavy monster wanted out.
They were on top of him then. One on either side. He couldn't see their faces, for the only light in the scene came from empty windows, sad streetlamps, and ready weapons. The shadows transformed them; these weren't the loving, smiling faces that tucked him in at night or kissed his boo-boos when he was small. These shrouded eyes had never offered him reassurance, those gloved hands had never held him while he cried.
I'm just a
Poor boy.
I need no
Sympathy.
It didn't look like he'd have much of a choice about leaving them. Jazz had spent plenty of time when he was bedridden telling him about how she was sure they'd wait and ask questions first. He'd smiled and nodded, pretending to believe his sister when deep in his soul he knew that they would never stop. It wasn't in their nature.
'Cause I'm easy come, easy go,
Little high, little low.
The bond between parent and child was supposed to change around this age. By all rights, they should be sending their baby boy all grown up off to college in a few months. They'd probably known that wasn't going to happen for a while now; he'd been watching them slowly lose faith in his future for years now. They knew that he was a bad student, a bad son. They probably knew he had no future even before he did himself.
Any way the wind blows
Doesn't really matter to me...
With this knowledge now at the forefront of his mind, Danny used one arm to tuck his legs up against his chest and raised a feeble hand as if (impossibly) to defend his face and—
To me.
Waited.
How could one describe pure agony? A level of pain so acute one does not have the mental capacity to wonder whether they are freezing or burning? A state of torment where everything except the pain becomes completely and irrevocably irrelevant—one's location, one's tormentor, one's own salvation, one's own self. How could anyone who has not experienced it fathom the sensation which is the world's hottest flame devouring each molecule of one's brain and body somehow singularly and simultaneously?
And how could anyone undergoing it think that anything could be worth enduring it for?
Danny could have been in a deserted desert or the farthest corner of the ever growing universe. He could have been alive, he could have been dead, but he couldn't tell. He would have said anything, done anything, promised anything at all in the world if there was the slightest possibility that it could have lessened his anguish in the slightest.
Nothing really matters,
But he couldn't so much as think, let alone move or speak.
Everyone else could move, and everyone else could speak. And everyone else was torn.
It had been mere seconds since one of Amity's proudest ghost hunters pulled a trigger for nearly the first time. Out of the newest weapon in their arsenal came a beautiful spotlight. They saw all of the colors swirling in that ray; in that moment it was the purest, brightest rainbow in existence. Men, women, children—all were in awe at the sight of that glittering beam.
Anyone can see….
Which is what made the scream sound so out of place.
Nothing really matters….
So while everyone stared, they covered their ears. Covered their ears and for one second couldn't imagine that what was happening could be happening.
Nothing really matters….
The beam slowly shifted in angle as the wail seemed to slowly push the ghost hunters away. Two pairs of black boots dug into the ground in an attempt to stay stationary, and gradually it got easier. Until the screaming stopped completely.
To me…
Seconds after that, the beam faded. And the Fentons approached to examine their work. Before they could even get close enough to use any of their detectors, a particular set of eyes in the crowd was scrutinizing his fellows' reactions. After several moments of deliberation, he drew the conclusion that no one among all those people was willing to step out of line and do something.
Phantom may have looked pretty guilty lately, but Dash Baxter was nothing if not consistent. As a very consistent person, he believed in consistency as a universal thing, even among ghosts. From the bits and pieces he'd gathered from his tutoring sessions with Jazz Fenton, they weren't that different from everybody else. Except Phantom; he was different from everyone in that he stood up for the greater good.
Now he needed someone to stand up for him.
So Dash took a gamble in that moment. If this didn't go well, if the Fentons kicked his ass or if Phantom flipped out unexpectedly, he'd be labeled as a stupid pansy. A million things could go wrong, but in that moment he believed that nearly anything was better than letting these, these people just cart away his hero like he was just any ecto-scum from off the street.
So, still in his PJs, he jogged forward. "Hey!" he called, losing a slipper in the snow, "Wait a second!"
The Fentons stopped right in front of the still, smoking figure on the ground and looked up at him.
As soon as they recognized the odd man out, several nearby members of the football team were on alert. The crowd was growing exponentially, and the whispers by now had become quite the roar.
"Step back, son, this is official city business," Jack Fenton warned solemnly, "We still have no idea about the contamination level these remains—"
Dash's eyes widened in shock. "Remains!?" he shouted, stopping momentarily, "What do you mean remains?"
Everyone who heard that suddenly felt ten degrees colder.
"Remains, ghosts don't have…."
"Holy shit holy shit holy shit…."
"Mommy, where'd Phantom go?"
Words words words words words. Disbelief slowly rose into panic which was quickly heading into hysteria territory. Only the Fenton's vague comment on 'contamination levels' kept anyone at bay.
"Let me through! Goddammit, let me through!" Jazz Fenton was somehow squeezing her way through the crowd, making room only via aggressive shoves, not caring who she hit. Flanking her on either side were Sam and Tucker, who, living farther away from the scene, had met outside the still-growing crowd.
As the news traveled through the throngs, the words words words got louder and louder, turning into shouts of dismay and confusion, demanding answers, telling others to calm down.
When Jazz broke through to the clearing in the middle of the street, eyes locked on Danny, she broke into a dead sprint toward her family. Her entire, little family.
"Sweetie?" Maddie called out, confused. The sight of her mother (Danny's mother too— Danny's own mother), standing that way, armed over his tiny-looking limp body, shook her to her core. Sobs she hadn't noticed before increased in volume and frequency as she stopped short.
Red hair tangled and loose, pink nightgown covered only by an inside-out sweater, Jazz stood ankle-deep in white and stared at her mother. She'd hardly delayed leaving the house long enough to throw on a cardigan and a pair of too-big tennis shoes (Danny's shoes—they'd been lying both hazardously and conveniently near the doorway). When she'd heard all of the commotion, she'd known it'd have something to do with Danny. When she'd checked and seen the thrown open window and no little brother, she hadn't felt like she had time.
Now, as tiny flecks of snow began to fall and mix with the tears on her face, she wished she'd stayed in bed.
"Stay there, Jazzerincess," her father warned her, his usually carefree voice stiff. Her father was ignorant to many things, but he was not ignorant to the dangers posed by a mob and/or 'ecto-contamination.' "It's dangerous."
The situation was so awfully ironic that Jazz could have laughed. She settled for swaying and nearly falling over.
Sam and Tucker arrived in time to catch her by the elbows, but no one in the group had the will to go any closer. From their position, their best friend/brother could have been anyone. Between the shadows and the snow, it was impossible to discern anything about his condition other than that he wasn't moving.
And that was awful enough.
Several jock types had gathered around their ringleader and stood in a separate group facing the Fenton parents. No one seemed to quite know what to do. Everyone, with the exception of parents attempting to remove distraught children from the scene, simply stared at the body on the ground.
Until the body stirred. Then everyone went crazy.
Jazz, Sam, and Tucker took that as their cue to sprint to Danny's aid, and everybody else took their sprint as a cue that it was safe to converge. Everyone wanted to see what was going on, so pretty soon the center of the used-to-be-clearing was more congested than any other area in town that night. Possibly that year.
Jack grabbed one of Tucker's arms and one of Jazz's while Maddie grabbed Sam around the waist to restrain her. Jazz, fueled completely by adrenaline, used everything she'd ever been taught about self defense to get out of that hold and reach her brother, even if it meant taking on her father. A quick arm twist maneuver later she was on her knees beside her brother, holding one of his cold hands in her's.
Quickly overrun by the curious?/angry? crowd, Maddie and Jack were forced to release the other two very determined teens for the sake of holding back the masses.
The damage was both worse than any of them had expected and better than the worst case scenario. On the one hand, he wasn't definitely completely gone. On the other, he looked as though he should be.
Though Danny was still (thankfully?) in ghost form, there was no glow coming from him whatsoever. His face was thin and slack, and what was left of his skin implied that much of it had melted off in patches. His hair and suit were more liquid than solid, like ecto-matter attempting to solidify.
"Oh God, is he okay?" Tuck whispered, pale and shivering, not daring to touch him.
"We need to get him out of here," Sam insisted quickly, voice hushed and strained.
Jazz released Danny's hand for a moment, recoiled when she noticed some greenish-matter had clung to her fingers. "Oh God," she breathed hysterically, "Oh God!"
A fourth voice surprised the three of them, barely discernible through the cacophony surrounding their little bubble. "Please tell me at least one of you three idiots has a thermos?"
"Vlad?" Jazz sniffed, holding up that quivering hand as it dripped ecto-matter that used to be her brother.
"Quiet down, imbecile," the hybrid in question snapped quietly, "I'm invisible for a reason, aren't I?"
"I have one!" Tuck exclaimed, pulling one out of a satchel he'd thrown over his shoulder on the way out of his house.
"Good. Young Daniel's health will be unable to deteriorate in here for a period of time."
"Will he be okay?" Jazz asked.
"Do I look omniscient to you, girl? I have no idea whatsoever," he retorted, remaining invisible, "He certainly won't be if no one activates the damn containment device."
Jazz and Sam turned swiftly to Tucker, who, under pressure, fumbled with the lid. Unwilling to wait, Sam snatched it out of his hands and opened it in one swift motion, pointed it at Danny, then screwed the lid back on.
"What now?" she intoned solemnly, eyes bright and wide, staring at the place where her best friend's arch-nemesis should be.
"I'll allow you to see me on the count of three. Hold out the thermos, and I'll take it to my mansion where I'll begin doing my research. You all can meet me there in the morning, and we'll have to do something."
"Wait, how do we know you're not going to—"
"Shoot him? Burn him alive? What?" He paused for effect.
He snatched the thermos from Sam's outstretched hand. "Go sleep. I doubt you want him to die because you fell asleep helping."
Then he was gone. With Danny.
….
That night, after everything had calmed down, when Sam, Tucker, and Jazz were in their respective beds, all they could see was Danny. And all they could do was pray that he would be well.
Any way the wind blows...