Danny's alarm was the thing that woke him up. It blared loudly, and with all the strength Danny could muster, he managed to turn it off.
Every muscle ached in his body, and part of him didn't want to get out of bed, but rather sleep it off and let himself heal quicker.
Last night during patrol, Plasmius turned up out of nowhere and began a fight; and over that, he began a fight that left Danny pretty battered. He was ruthless. Every other move was performed by his clones that he was able to generate; the technique of cloning was still in the process of learning for the young ghost boy. Although he almost had it down… almost.
Finally, he found the strength needed to get out of bed, but when he pulled himself up, painful nerves in his abdomen sent pain signals to his brain and he cringed at his sore stomach. Today was going to be rough, he could just tell.
Once he put both feet on the ground, he tried to push himself off the bed to get up, but his thighs were in too much agony to support his body weight. He tried pushing off with his hands, but they sank into the bed, and it didn't give him enough leverage. Finally, he did the one last option he had.
Falling back like an ebbing wave he cringed at first, but was soon come over with an intense feeling of relaxation and he couldn't help but love the feeling of getting a few more moments of rest. A few more moments that was soon disrupted.
"Danny?" he heard a familiar voice call out, and then a soft knock at the door. He groaned his reply, and a young ginger girl stepped through the door, her long hair swaying as she leaned in.
"Are you up, yet?" the motherly sister of his asked.
"Hmm-mmh," he muttered, not realizing she'd opened the door.
"I can see you," she smirked, and Danny jumped. The sudden nearness of her voice was what really got him, but Jazz thought it was the fact that he lied to her about being up, and he let her believe it. He couldn't really lie to himself, anyways – it was partially that he wasn't actually up yet.
After laughing off his reaction with a stabbing pain punching his stomach at every intake of breath, he told the older girl, "Okay, I'm up. Stop worrying," he laughed again, causing more pain to travel to his brain via nerve pulse.
"Hey, are you okay?" Jazz began to ask in very serious tone to the young boy. He simply shrugged it off and nodded. "You're all yellow and purple and bruised. In the face, on the arms… what happened last night? I didn't hear you get back till late."
Although Danny appreciated his sister's love and concern for him, he simply couldn't handle it right now. He didn't like talking about his pain or problems with people who really cared about him – it just made them worry about dumb things. That was why he hadn't told anyone about the new girl that showed up once, although he did feel her around him a few times. He was planning on having the conversation, but he didn't want to worry them if it was nothing worth worrying about. Or so he told himself, anyways.
"Nothing. Just plain old Vlad, I can handle him," Danny promised.
"Okay," Jazz sighed, but she seemed very unconvinced. No doubt thinking to herself that it sure looked like he could not handle it, based on his condition, but if she told him that, they both knew that he'd take it the wrong way, so she kept her mouth shut, and smiled, giving her brother a hug.
"I know you can. Just be careful." Before exiting her little brother's room and softly shutting the door behind her.
Danny slowly began to limp over to the bathroom once the he was sure Jazz was not coming back.
…
Kim walked into the boring hallway on Friday morning. The first thing she noticed was a familiar raven-haired boy at the end, searching in his locker for something.
"Hey," she called out to Danny. He quickly turned his head to look at the familiar sound of his name, but immediately flinched and grasped his neck. His body seemed to undergo an odd twitch, and his eyes pinched tightly shut.
As Kim hurried over to check on the boy, she saw a flash of green come from his direction. She stopped her hurried pace, and pondered. Where did that flash come from? It was one of the brightest greens she'd ever seen. Almost unnatural… just almost.
She decided to look at that area later to maybe find the source. Right now, she needed to rush over to help Danny. He seemed almost dazed, and a little out of it. He stood at the end of the locker room, pinching the area between his eyes like he was in a lot of pain.
"Are you okay?" She asked when she finally got close enough that she didn't need to shout.
The sound of her voice seemed to cause Danny to shake up and out of his trace, though he still seemed a tad phased.
"Are you okay?" She repeated. He simply blinked at her, and asked, "Okay?" His heart began to beat as he was growing nervous. "W-why wouldn't I be okay?" He begged of her.
"I don't know… you just seem sorta out of it," she shrugged.
"Oh that?" Danny was relieved she hadn't noticed the flash of his eyes in anger and pain. "It's nothing, I'm just a bit tired," he put her worries to rest, or so it seemed.
"Right… well anyways, wanna head over to English?" She asked, her lips spreading into a wide cheerful, genuine smile.
"I have to take care of something, first, but I'll meet you there."
"Okay," she answered questionably before she turned to leave, with everyone else in the hall.
Danny's warm blue eyes narrowed once the rhythmic swing of the ginger's pony tail whooped around the corner. An icy bundle of air began to form in his larynx, and he knew the familiar feeling before the air escaped from his lips, leaving behind a cold imprint.
He groaned. He was still sore from last night and he wasn't sure how well he could take on whatever ghost was causing trouble. He heard loud stomps of boots from the end of the hall, and a panting Sam began to come into view. He ran to meet her in the middle of the hallway.
"Sam!" He called. "What's wrong?"
She was completely out of breath and couldn't talk.
"Ghost?" He guessed and was unfortunately greeted with a nod from the Goth girl. "…that must've been what set off my ghost sense…" he thought, mostly to himself.
"I'm going ghost," he began to yell as he ducked into the boys' bathroom for one second. All Sam saw was a flash come from the crack under the door, and suddenly a familiar looking ghost boy was standing in front of her, having phased through the door.
"Where is it?" He asked in a serious tone.
Sam panted, having slighly caught her breath, "Band room."
"And who is it?"
"Skulker."
"And where's Tucker?"
"In class."
Danny was perplexed, but he realized someone else the ghost could hold captive. "And where's Jazz?" He asked nervously.
Sam gulped. "Band room."
Danny's eyes flashed a brighter green than they already were, and he seized his friend's hand before plunging head first into the first floor of the school.
They arrived in the band room in seconds. Once he appeared on the other side of the door, Jazz screamed, "Danny!" She knew she could count on Danny, if only he weren't already so weak.
"Behind you!" Danny immediately spun around, and he was greeted with a viciously smiling Skulker who was less than a foot away from him.
He smirked at the familiar enemy. "Oh, is it just you?"
This angered Skulker even more, something that Danny had hoped to do.
"I'd ask the same, only it's not just you, is it?" His demon smile appeared which sent shivers down Danny's spine. His mind suddenly went to Jazz, and he turned around to face her scared face.
"Danny, I'm trapped!" She called, and he noticed she was entangled in some sort of ectochain that was wrapped around her several times.
Suddenly he was sent flying backwards and crashed into the drum set of some poor band geek. He looked at where he had landed and noticed the entire thing was broken.
I'll have to remember to fix that...
Skulker stomped over to the piano and began to tear the keys out one by one and load them like bullets in his arm gun. Fire, fire, fire. He just kept firing them over and over again. Danny easily dodged them all due to his training of dodge ball during PE for the past 3 years.
And that. He added the piano to his growing list of things he'd broken while dealing with ghosts.
Fed up with acting on defense, Danny's fists immediately lit up in glowing flames of green. He charged at the metal figure, and was able to jab a slice at one of his weapons, disabling it. Skulker turned angrier than ever before. "That's new!" he grumbled before blasting the ghost boy with a different gun square in the gut.
The force of the blow pushed Danny backwards and sent him flying towards the wall; he closed his eyes, went intangible with a nick of time to spare, and kept his eyes closed until he stopped flying uncontrollably through midair. Finally his velocity stopped, and he found himself lying face up on something rather soft.
He could smell the grass and trees, and instantly realized he was out in the courtyard. Opening his eyes, the first thing he saw was a hurling man of metal flying towards him.
On instinct, he grabbed for his thermos, and held it in front of him. With a simple push of a button, a vacuuming cone of light appeared, and Skulker unknowingly flew right into it.
His eyes widened in realization when he felt the familiar tugging and pulling and sucking, but it was too late. He was trapped inside the suction, and though he wanted to try and escape, he had been in this situation too many times to know it would do nothing. Instead he cursed the ghost who put him in there.
After capping the thermos, Danny smiled to himself. That was much easier than he had expected.
…
Kim sat with her head rested on her arm as Ms. Greene talked for what seemed like hours. There was no end with her; no sentence breaks; no draws in of breath: just a continual, monotonous noise that filled the room. Kim would rather listen to static then endure this class another moment.
Suddenly, Kim saw her escape. She peeped outside the window right before closing her eyes to rest, but noticed a suddenly knocked down Phantom boy. She smiled to herself. It would appear she was getting to ditch English and try out her new suit on the same day.
She quietly and calmly got up and left as if going to the bathroom – as that was the rule with Ms. Greene: get up and go – and slowly shut the door behind her with a light click signaling it was shut. As soon as her hands drew away from the door, she began to sprint towards the courtyard, and as she did so, she noticed the suit that she was currently wearing underneath everything began to grow down her body. She almost cringed at the tickling touch of the slowly encasing spandex.
It was as if the suit was alive, and it was growing larger and larger. Down and up her midriff, over both seams of clothing to fully cover them, until finally latching together in the middle; spiraling down her arms to the very finger tips, traveling to her toned legs and calves; she was ready and pumped up for this fight, thinking that she had a much better advantage this time. Which, of course, she did.
Finally, the suit crawled over the crown of her head, over her face save the eye area where a Plexiglas piece appeared, and then attached to the piece over neck.
…
Danny was cheering to himself at the easy defeat – which was perfect for his injured state – and closed the thermos back onto his belt before getting ready to launch off the ground and fly back to the school. Suddenly, the thermos was blasted out his hand with a green ectoplasmic ray. He stared at what had happened, thinking he must have missed something, but then turned his attention to where the shot came from. He squinted, but at first saw nothing but clouds and rays of sun. As they shifted out of the way, he realized there was something flying towards him. As the thing got closer, he noticed the it was now a she, and she was clad in a white and blue superhero suit that almost made Danny feel like he was being mocked. She stood before him, having ended her short flight, and the two stared at one another for a while.
Danny had no idea who this was or what she wanted. Was she even human? She could be a… a robot, or something!
Before he could dwell on what this thing wanted, Danny noticed she was in a sort of battle stance, her hands up and prepared to protect her face. He was completely lost. Was she here to fight? If she was, then why? What had he ever done to this girl? He didn't even—
Danny stopped his thoughts short when he began to notice a shot of gooey ectoplasm headed his way. He crouched and rolled on the grass to the left to dodge the shot.
When he looked up, he noticed the girl was closer than before, with only 3 feet between them.
"Who are you?" Danny asked, accusingly, as he stood up and began to brush the grass off his suit. He suddenly felt a jolt behind his legs and realized a little too late he was losing his balance, and went falling backwards, landing flat on his back. Ghost or not, the impact still knocked the wind out of him, and he wheezed and gasped a bit just to grasp a sufficient amount of air, keeping his eyes tightly closed, trying to lessen the pain. He opened his neon green eyes, and was welcomed with the strange girl standing over him, pointing her fist at his face.
"You've made this two easy," she smirked.
Three years of ghost hunting made Danny Phantom better than that, he witnessed the ectoplasm emerge from the ray sitting on top the girl's right hand, and immediately went intangible, so that the he was completely unaffected by the blow.
He saw the white clad girl gape around in search of him, so he appeared directly behind her, unbeknownst to her.
He hovered right by her ear, and inhaled silently.
"Boo," he whispered, and watched her do a complete 180 in shock, but Danny was too quick for her. He had already shot a blast of ectoplasm from his palm, sending her back 20ft before she even placed her feet back on the ground after jumping.
She now lay sprawled out on the grass, sitting against a tree. A tree that her back hit very hard. Danny accelerated towards her. "Don't worry," he laughed at her naïveness. "I won't make it that easy."
He went in for a punch at her limp body, but all Danny's fist hit was the rough bark of the tree she was leaning against just a moment before.
He pulled back and shook his hand in pain. He noticed the oozing green ectoplasm leaking from the scrapes against his knuckles and the tears in his glove.
He began searching for the girl that had spontaneously disappeared when he suddenly felt a breeze from behind and spun around, in battle stance.
The girl in white stood facing him, and Danny took the mutual, violence-free moment to take in her appearance. Her petite figure was encased in an odd white material with a transparent, blue Plexiglas on her joints, probably there to give her the most flexibility possible. The Plexiglas was also stamped on her eyes, which appeared to be a weird teal behind the plastic.
She stood with her head cocked to one side, and her arms folded across her chest. She wasn't even preparing to fight. Who was this girl, and why did she think she got to make the calls? Danny was certainly not going to take that. They were on his turf, and he would be the one calling the shots.
As swiftly as he could, he reeled his arm back and prepared to blast her with a huge dose of ectoplasm, but she easily evaded that by jumping high up into the air. The ectoplasm melted against tree trunk, and he witnessed the girl do two somersaults in the air and land silently behind him, with her back facing him.
She viscously turned to look at him over her shoulder, and, much quicker than Danny had, aimed a fist full of ectoplasm at the ghost boy. It hit him square in the face, and he fell backwards, for the second time in a span of a few minutes. Thankfully, he was able to roll back up onto his feet, a move he'd been practicing for a few weeks, and just got at that moment.
An odd pressure against his ankle interrupted him, and he looked down to notice a weird clamp tangled around his left foot.
With no warning, the girl launched off the ground, and flew twenty feet into the air, the thin rope holding the clasp was the only thing that had Danny connected to the girl. He immediately tried to sit up, though every rule of physics was working against him.
The flying girl came to an abrupt stop, and the stop in force made him loose the strength to continue sitting upright, and he fell back, now hanging upside down and still hardly attached to the girl.
He suddenly felt himself spinning, and thought it was because the blood — or ectoplasm at the moment — currently rushing to his head, and he prayed that he wouldn't faint; but he soon realized the spinning feeling wasn't from the direction his body was in, but that the girl was flying around in small circles. The speed began to pick up, and Danny was soon flying around in the open air, still attached to the girl.
He tried going intangible, but the clasp at his ankle simply went intangible with him.
He cursed this new technology under his breath, and again tried to break the rule of velocity by sitting upright, against the force of motion. This time he managed, and clung to the rope so that he wouldn't use all his strength in his abdomen while trying to remain upright.
He closed his eyes in concentration, and suddenly ice began to appear at the tips of his fingers. It spread down the chain, and he put all his energy into the ice flowing down his arms, flooding away from his fingertips towards both the clasp and the other end. Finally, all his efforts were put to use when a he felt the rope snap and send his exhausted body back 20 yards. He opened his eyes just in time to see himself being hurdled towards a tree, but it was too late. In his exhausted state, it didn't register in his mind to go intangible, and he crashed straight into the prickly branches of the large pine tree.
He hit his face against one branch, which sent him falling backwards in what felt like slow motion before he cracked his back against another spikey branch. His feet then flipped over his head and he landed on his stomach on another branch, hitting the exact spot that Vlad had gotten the night before. Pain signals seemed to be triggered on every inch of his body, and he felt himself falling again, this time forward, towards what he guessed was the ground.
If Danny thought the branches of the pine tree were high when standing from the ground, he'd never imagined what it must feel like to have your limp, exhausted body tumble from the top. He seemed to do somersault after somersault before face planting the ground on his stomach. He rolled over, and crouched into a fetal position, in too much pain to even open his eyes. He realized that he had no idea whether he had transformed back into Danny Fenton, so he opened his eyes for a few moments, and focused on his gloved hand. He was about to reclose them when he saw two small, white feet with blue encased ankles slowly approach him.
Adrenaline forced his body to get up quickly, and he dizzily put his hands up while trying to block out the stars and dots obstructing his vision.
"I thought we weren't making things easy," her honey-like voice smirked before aiming another arm laser at the boy, and preparing to finish him off for good.
Suddenly all the pain in Danny subsided and he was able to kick the wrist of the girl out the way and throw a punch — without any ectoplasm for a change — straight into the pointed chin of the girl. The blow sent her to actually fall backwards, and Danny smiled to himself, though the pain was quickly returning. "I'm not. Are you?"
She quickly stood up, clearly offended by his words, and prepared another attack. Danny was quicker though; he threw ectoblast after ectoblast at the girl, and even shot a few from his feet as he spun around in elaborate kicks. He could hardly see, and he was beginning to taste ectoplasm in his mouth.
But when he finally stopped to observe how much damage he had done, he realized there wasn't a scratch on her clean white suit, and his short, panting breaths only quickened as he went into panic mode. All his attacks were working against him, but he knew of one last thing he could do: run.
With one last spurt of energy, he went intangible, and pushed off the grass in the windy, afternoon air, not really sure of his destination yet, but knowing he had to get away from the girl. And with one quick glance back at her, he realized she was only looking in his direction as he flew towards the sun.
I'm sorry that this took so long to get out, but I'd rather write 4,000 words every 2 weeks than 1,000 once a week. Which do you prefer?
It's also December, and as my fellow students out there know, it is exam time *gag*
But, hey, I managed to write this down, and I really liked the way it turned out, so did you? Please let me know by blowing up the reviews! :D
I don't know when I'll be able to have the next chapter out, but I do have exams starting this Monday, so we'll see if I can squeeze in writing a few pages during my study breaks, because honestly, what would you rather do? Study or write FanFiction? Alas, it isn't exactly a question of what I want to do, but more what I have to do.
Although I can promise I always want to write more when I get a bunch of review notifications :):):)
Please review, and tell all your friends who like either of these two shows about this FanFic :P
See you next time!