Pariahs keep was without a doubt the least traveled place in the entire Ghost Zone. It meant things for the otherworldly inhabitants that they tried would rather have forgotten. The very ambience of the place was enough to drive most lesser ghosts so far away from it that they'd never see it once in all their many years of existence.
Even the more powerful ghosts avoided the place, keeping their rampages to other, less eerie areas of the Ghost Zone. Beyond the obvious ambient energy, there was another reason for the chilling atmosphere of the keep.
It made sense for it to be frightening, as it was also the current resting place of the very embodiment of fear. Freakshow followed Vlad Plasmius into the keep, a staff topped with swirling green clutched in his claw like hands. His new toy wasn't powerful enough to work with anyone he'd used the old one on, but he wouldn't be needing any of those ghosts gain.
They went past artifacts that could have been treasures themselves. Only one piece held their attention. In the deepest part of the keep was the prize that would kick off the most ambitious plan either had ever enacted. The spirit of Halloween itself, the Fright Knight.
.
.
.
"Thanks for helping me with this Red."Sam said, holding out a blood red flowed for the not-quite ghost boy. "I'd have asked Danny, but well."
Tucker had built some high powered water guns and he'd decided the hot summer day was the perfect time to test it. He and Danny had come over of course, but they were so focused on their water fight that they barely noticed anything else.
"S'fine." Red reached for the flower. "So I just hold it and see what happens?"
"They were used in witch hunts years ago." Sam said.
Red took the flower and turned it over in his hands. "Blood blossoms, huh?" He held it near his face. "I'm not feeling any…" He tossed the flower back at her, doubling over and clutching the hand that had been holding it to his chest. "That's the freaking flower from Hell!"
"I'm sorry!" Sam grabbed one of the waiting bottles of water and doused the boy's hands and face in its contents. "Do you need me to call your…"
"No!" The hand he used to wave her off was reddish and blistered. "It's not so bad." He finished rinsing his hands off himself. "I'm fine, just bloody freaked out about it."
Ever since what had happened with Vlad, Red had barely left His brother's side at all, not even to show up for the last few days of school, and Richard was always there in the background when they went out. Tucker had jokingly said the guy had a job at every place in the city. That Red didn't want her to call was weird, but if they were fighting or something she didn't want to butt in.
"Well that means they work, I guess I should plant some more." Sam put her phone away. "You know anything about plants?"
"Growing them? Zilch." Red made a cutting motion with his hands. "If ya want them dead I'm the guy to…" He was interrupted by a stream of pressurized water hitting him square in the chest hard enough to knock the unsuspecting boy off his feet.
Danny and Tucker stood a meter away, laughing their heads off. Before Sam had a chance to say anything he was on his feet and chasing after the other boys. Tucker panicked and dropped his water blaster, without slowing down Red scooped the weapon up and spent the next few minutes shooting down his friends.
"Sam! Help!" Danny cried, laughing as he ran towards her. Red shot him from behind, and the halfa wound up on the ground at Sam's feet, his blaster falling from his hands and into the bed of blood blossoms.
"Oh no." Sam deadpanned, halfheartedly waving her hands. "Please don't kill him."
"I'll spare you this time." Red scowled and slung the mock weapon across his back, he'd taken only a single step before he was blasted off to the side by Tucker who'd picked up Danny's blaster. "Avenge me!" Red tossed Sam the blaster.
"Sam, come on now, let's talk this over" Tucker said, backing away nervously.
Sam smirked as she walked slowly towards him, then he broke into a run and so did she.
A strong wind suddenly picked up and dark purple clouds rolled in, blocking out the sun completely. Sam stopped in her pursuit and looked around at her suddenly very dark back yard, now lit only by the automatic night-lights. Even though she hadn't gotten wet she shivered, something very bad was coming.
"Please tell me this is the usual weather here." Red said hopefully, looking up at the dark sky.
A garden hose suddenly sprang to life and wrapped around Tuckers feet, pulling him off the ground. "Whoa!" The techno geek screamed. "Why is it always me!?"
Danny had gone ghost a second later and blasted the hose to pieces, he caught his friend and set him gently on the ground just in time for a rake to charge at them. Red grabbed it before it got very far and snapped it across his knee.
"What is this, the Garden Ghost?" Red asked, throwing the pieces away from him.
Screams began echoing from the streets and they all rushed to the front of the house to check it out. All over mailboxes, streetlights and even cars were coming to life and chasing down anyone who had the misfortune of being on the streets. They'd only fought one ghost that had that kind of power.
"Fright Knight." Danny, Sam, and Tucker said as one, and took off for the center of town where a wide stream of ghostly light was beaming from the sky. Danny flew off while the rest of them followed more slowly on foot.
"Didn't we beat this guy like months ago?" Tucker said as they ran.
"Well it's pretty obvious he got out." Sam looked around at all the people trying to escape into their home only for them to run out screaming their possessed furniture chasing closely behind.
"It's not obvious to me, what's going on here?" Red asked.
"He's the spirit of Halloween." Sam said.
"He showed up the last one caused all kinds of freaky trouble." Tucker shivered. "He makes you see your worst fears man." He patted the blaster still slung across his back, ad when he turned ahead he was almost wrapped in a shaggy rug.
Red leaped in front of the geek and sliced the rug in half. Both pieces then attacked separately and were themselves sliced. "The Boss can beat this guy again. Right?" Red asked, a knife in each hand.
"Sure, all you gotta do is stick the Soul Shredder in a pumpkin." Tucker said, ducking out of a mailboxes path.
"The Soul Shredder?" Red asked. Kicking in the mailbox until it was a flattened hunk of unmoving metal.
"His sword." Sam used her own small knife to stab a living slipper that had been thrown out of a window.
"Great." Red said. "You two get the pumpkin, Ima go help the Boss." Red leaped on top on the back of an out of control car and stabbed his knives it the roof, letting it carry him away.
"Yeah, great." Sam deadpanned. "Tucker hurry up."
"I'm trying!" The boy called, stomping down on a trio of remote controlled cars.
.
.
.
Getting a pumpkin had been easy, all they had to do was go to a grocery store and buy one from a shopkeeper that was very confused to have customers in all the chaos. Getting the pumpkin to where their friends were facing off against a ghost, now that was the hard part.
The closer they got to the center of town the more frequently they ran into freaky things that shouldn't have been moving in the first place.
Now Tucker liked to think of himself as a pretty chill guy, but when he was attacked by a giant teddy bear, he knew he was going to need therapy for a few years. He and Sam hurried through the anarchy in the streets, and the signs that a fight had been taking place grew more evident.
They heard a scream and Danny came falling out of the air, crashing into a street light and flattening it under him. He stood up slowly, cradling his head in his hands. "You guys get the pumpkin?" He asked.
Sam held up the large orange vegetable. "You guys get the sword?"
"Working on it." Danny took off into the air again and the Fright Knight came into view.
Red, now dressed in his red and black bodysuit was hanging at the ghosts back, arms wrapped tightly around the knights neck. The ghost was flailing, trying to dislodge the boy while also dodging Danny's blasts. After a particularly powerful lurch, Red was flung around to the ghost's front, he raised one on his knives high over his head and thrust it at the ghost's chest.
The knife snapped off, and Red had just enough time for the shock to be evident on his face before he was thrown of the ghost. He barely caught himself in time to avoid becoming a smear on the paving by gripping onto a streetlight before dropping into the back seat of a convertible.
"Sup guys." He groaned, practically falling out of the car. Tucker helped the boy to his feet and noticed a thin trail of blood leaking out the corner of his mouth.
"You okay, man?" Tucker asked, he'd never seen blood in a ghost fight before, and it made him really uncomfortable, especially coming a kid the same age as him.
"I'm good." Red wiped the blood away, his mask hiding any hint of his expression. "Broke my knife." He tucked the broken knife away and got ready to make another run at the ghost.
"Look out!" Sam cried.
The Fright Knight rushed at the boys, the Soul Shredder raised high above his head. Tucker panicked used the only weapon he had on him. He squirted the ghost with a highly pressurized stream of water from his blaster. The ghost stopped in his tracks, red eyes blazing. Tucker eyes widened in horror, it was going to go after him next, he knew it, then he'd be the one getting thrown around. The ghost took one halting step forward, then steam began to lift off his armor.
The Fright Knight's horse flew in, he leaped onto it's back and was carried away, out of sight before anyone could even think of chasing after him. The sky was instantly brighter and all of the possessed objects dropped down, becoming lifeless once again.
Tucker stared ahead in shock, barely noticing when Red eased the blaster out of his hands and opened the large water compartment.
"What the heck did you put in this freaking thing?"
.
.
.
"Looks like pollen." Richard said his eyes pressed against his microscope. "I can do some tests to figure out which kind, but you kids know already, don't you?"
"The blood blossoms." Red said while he sprayed whipped cream over some mugs.
Sam looked guiltily at the bandages wrapped around his hand when he set one of the mugs in front of her. He caught the look and gave her a smile before sitting down himself
They'd all gone to Richards apartment after the fight to get the weapon analyzed and were now sitting at his kitchen counter. Richard had seemed surprised to see them at first, but then he'd seen the blisters on Red's hand and practically flown for his first aid kit.
"Powerful stuff that, huh?" The man looked up from the telescope and took a sip of his hot coco. "Do you have anymore?"
"Ya think we can make an infusion?" Red asked Tucker with a smirk. "It'd be like that Foley stuff ya used to get rid of Spectra's bugs, only a hundred times better."
"A little pollen made the Fright Knight run away screaming, imagine what it'll do to another ghost." Danny rubbed his hands together, a grin on his face.
"Or to you in your ghost form, Red too." Sam said, and the grin melted off Danny's face.
"You'll be fine if you transform fast enough." Red shrugged. "I won't be sticking around to get shot. It's perfect to give you guys an edge when Sir Pumpkin shows up again."
"Wait, you think he's coming back?" Tucker asked, clutching the warm mug tightly. "Aw man, he's gonna kill me for that."
"Don't sweat it Tuck. Next time, we'll be ready for him." Danny said confidently.
They all would have felt much more reassured if the halfa's mouth hadn't been covered in whipped cream.
.
.
.
Sam, Tucker, and Danny had spent the rest of the day harvesting flowers in her garden. The techno geek still had all of the equipment he'd used in his previous attempt at making his own cologne, and within a few hours of starting, they had enough of the bright red liquid to fill one of the blasters.
Jason got a text informing him that they'd finished their task while he was slouched on the sofa, eating take out curry dinner back at Dicks apartment. Holding one of those flowers for a few seconds had hurt like he'd been holding his hand over an open flame, and there was no way he was putting himself near it if he didn't have to.
He was just about to get up and head to Tucker's place for a strategy meeting when Dick stopped him.
"They still don't know." The acrobat said, not taking his eyes off the corny rom-com on the T.V. "Jason, the longer you wait…"
"I know." Jason cut in, and settled himself back onto the lumpy cushions. "I just…" He licked his lips, the tightness in his chest that he'd been pushing away all day hitting him. "This thing doesn't fell right."
"What doesn't feel right?" Dick asked, his expressive eyes doing nothing to hide his anxiety.
Jason immediately pushed the tightness away, whatever happened he wouldn't make Dick put up with another if his breakdowns. Seeing his brother – man it felt weird to really think of Dick as that – near tears after Jason's last panic attack had been hard. Before that he'd never really thought about how much Dick was going through trying to help him. The boy had been so wrapped up in his own problems that he hadn't noticed how much he'd been hurting all of them.
He gave Dick his best grin and stood again. "It's nothing, I'm just worried they make a dumb mistake if I tell them before we deal with this guy. They're just kids, ya know."
"Sure Little Wing." Dick looked a little more relaxed, but Jason could still see the signs of stress peeking through. "You call if it's too much, got it?."
"Got it, Bro." Jason saluted sloppily, embracing the warm feeling that fell over him. He really had a brother, family, someone that was waiting for him when he got back from fighting off a ghost with his own friends that were waiting for him to meet up with them. After a moment he had a name for the feeling, excitement. He was excited to see his friends, but he was also excited to get back home and see the rest of his family.
As he waved his indecision drifted away. As soon as they had this next freak back where he belonged, Jason would tell them all that he'd be going home soon.
"Be careful!" Dick called after him as he ran down the hall. Jason laughed, he didn't need to be careful, it felt like nothing could hurt him, not even that little ball of tightness that was still nestled in his chest.
.
.
.
When the Fright Knight appeared again it was near the end of another perfect, sunny day. This time, Danny was more than ready from him, summer was short enough without having to wait all day for a ghost to show up and ruin it. They'd all been hanging around near the center of town, as soon as the sky began to darken, Danny had gone ghost and shot off for the bright column of light.
The Fright Knight didn't waste any time in going after him, swooping down on Knightmare, sword ready to take a swing at the nimble halfa. Danny ducked under the blade, and put some distance between hi, and the ghost. He fired off a few ecto-blasts, they didn't do much harm, but that wasn't really the point. Getting hit by that sword would put him out of the fight right away, and he couldn't let that happen.
One of his shots got Fright Knight right in the face and the enraged ghost charged forward with even greater speed.
"Whoa, someone woke up on the wrong side of the Soul Shredder."Danny chuckled and dove out of the way, using a road sign as a temporary shield. The hero took a chance and looked down at the street, almost all of the civilians had been evacuated and Red was busily spreading pumpkins all around the area. The boy caught Danny looking and held up a hand in an okay sign while he set down the last vegetable.
Danny grinned and pulled up more power from his core. With everyone gone he didn't have to worry about innocent people being caught in the crossfire. He aimed for the sword now, his bright green shots lighting up the dark sky. Not many of his ecto-blasts hit their mark, but those that did jolted the sword just a little in its master's hold.
"You will feel the sting of the Soul Shredder before the night is through, boy!" The Fight Knight called out and lunged at the halfa.
"Knife tag." A blade flew through the air, making a scratch on the helmet before spinning back to its thrower. Red caught the blade and waved at the ghost with a cheeky grin on his masked face "You're it ya pansy tin can!" Red yelled and flipped off the roof, disappearing into a shadowy alley.
The spirit of Halloween let out a roar and charged after the boy, Danny close behind. Just when he caught sight of Tuckers Red beret Danny fired off another ecto-blast, hitting the ghost from behind. Fright Knight spun to face the halfa, Tucker leaped out of hiding, his water blaster ready. The ghost was doused from behind with the bright red extract and screamed, dropping to his knees with a loud clank. Danny hadn't been hit by even a drop of the stuff and it still made him feel queasy. He pushed the feeling down away and swooped down to collect the sword.
"No!" The Fright Knight screamed and leaped to his feet, sword swinging at Danny.
Danny didn't see it coming in time. Red appeared in the blades path, both hands held out in front of him. The Soul Shredder crashed down on a red shield of ecto-energy, shattering the construct like glass. Red was flung back into Danny and both boys were knocked right out of the alley.
Tucker let loose another stream of water and Fright Knight dropped his sword. Sam ducked out from her hiding place behind a few trashcans near the mouth of the alley and grabbed hold of the sword. The By the time the Fright Knight noticed, Sam had already shoved the sword into the nearest pumpkin.
Both the sword and the pumpkin began glowing radiantly, the vegetable shifting into something eerie. Flashed of green lighting struck all around her and Sam rushed over to where Danny and Red were busy disentangling themselves. In the sky the clouds began spinning in the opposite direction and a strong wind picked up, pulling them all towards where the screaming Fright Knight was trying to dislodge his sword.
Danny tackled both Sam and Red into the nearest building, then reached through the wall to pull Tucker in as well. Through a busted window they witnessed the ghost front raging outside, pulling up all of the ecto-energy that had been saturating the city. Even from their shelter the wind was loud, they all crouched down and tried to block out the piercing sound by covering their ears while they watched it until it died out.
After a few minutes the dazed teens stumbled back outside and looked up at the clear, star speckled night sky.
"That's what he gets for showing up four months early." Sam breathed out a sigh of relief.
"Don't think I'm gonna make it to your Halloween part this year Sam." Tucker said.
"Hey at least this time it wasn't my fault." Danny looked around at the damage caused by the powerful ghost. There were pumpkins and formerly possessed items littering streets filled with the wreckages of thankfully empty cars and fallen road signs. "We'd better get out of here before any ghost hunters come by." He shifted back to his human form.
He was surprised Valery hadn't shown up for such a big ghost fight, but he reasoned that there had been plenty of ghostly items for her to deal with. Still, he wanted to get out before she had the chance to mess with his friends again.
"Red? Man are you okay?" Tuckers voice drifted through Danny's thoughts and the halfa turned his attention to the other boys.
Red was leaning heavily against a wall holding onto with one hand, the other pressed against his eyes while he muttered incomprehensibly, his feet dropped out from under him and he fell to the ground.
"Red!" The other teens rushed over to him.
Tucker, bent down to help his friend to his feet, while Sam hurriedly dialed a number on her phone. Danny felt something wrong shifting through the previously clear atmosphere. A black van drove up the cluttered street, momentarily distracting Danny from his friend and in that moment Red struck.
His arm shot out fast as lightning, and before anyone could stop it his hand was wrapped tightly around Tuckers throat. Danny rushed forward to pull them apart, but Red pushed Tucker away and scrambled back. Red's darker locks of hair all shifted back to white as his breathing quickened.
"This isn't about the water fight, right?" Tucker said as he and Danny cautiously approached.
"Here's Richard." Sam was at his side, her cell phone pressed against his ear.
The van got closer and Red's mouth opened and closed like he was struggling to form words. Danny could just barely hear Richard's worried voice coming through the receiver. The van got closer and a pained groan escaped the boy's mouth.
Danny didn't want to take his eyes off his friend, but the van pulled up next to them. For some reason he didn't think it was just some concerned passerby. As he watched, a patch of swirling green formed in front of the van. Danny leaped between it and his friends as Red finally began to make sense.
"…B, need to get B, need to get B..." The boy was repeating over and over into the receiver.
The van door slid open and a familiar bald headed man stepped out just as the ghost portal finished forming. Red dropped the cell phone and stood up, his distressed face now completely blank. Even without seeing his eyes Danny knew what they were fixed on.
Freakshow waved his staff and Red's head followed the swirling green gem affixed to its top.
"Come now." The man said in a whisper.
Red took a step forward and Danny's hand shot out to grab hold of his friend. With one last grief stricken look at the halfa Red turned intangible and grabbed hold of Freakshow before he was sucked into the portal.
A second later and the portal closed in on itself. Richard's voice was still crackling out of the discarded cell phone.
Red was gone.