Hi, Zed here :)
A/N: For those of you who are coming upon this story for the first time, welcome :). For those of you who've been here since the last version, welcome back ;). I will be deleting the previous chapter soon, but I just wanted to alert those of you who've subscribed one way or the other of the story's official launching. Have had this brewing in my head for a while, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it.
Summary: The last time the heroes of Earth faced a collective ambush was a dark day, a day where they had to face their own mortality, and deal with the failure in the aftermath. While the world still recovers, another baleful threat looms ahead, but this time our heroes will be ready. Ben will make sure of it.
Disclaimer: I only own a couple characters, the rest belong to a passel of goated creatives.
Rating: R/Fiction M for language, gore, sexual hints, and strong themes.
Notes;
(1.) The appearance, origin, and universal context of some characters have been adjusted to coalesce with the foundation of this story.
(2.) I will not be announcing the members of the team, I would like you to find out as you read :)
(3.) Bear with me on updates, this fic has taken my precedence, but life be lifing you know? Lol.
(4.) "abc" = speech. Italics = thoughts. ~Italics~ = mind communication. ["abc"] = telecommunication/non-organic life form speech. Bold = emphasis. Bold Italics = narration.
Okay then, let's get it :)
I
Approximately thirty light years away from Earth, in the Panacan star system, was a planet called Vomalon.
Like our own planetary system, this one consisted of a yellow dwarf star with five planets orbiting it, with Vomalon being the third furthest. It was a unique planet in many ways, with its most noticeable characteristic being the energy that the planet seemed to naturally radiate.
This was the reason for the planet's glowing appearance, this unknown energy emanated so strongly that it affected the evolution of the populace of its moon, Exon.
Birthed from this celestial influence was the Exonites, the powerful species that lives on said moon.
Or lived, I should say.
The Exonites developed their society as a constitutional monarchy, with the descendants of the first of their ancestors to develop special abilities forming the ruling family, the House of Isthill.
They ruled over Exon for centuries, and continued to do so under King Gavan Isthill, one of the greatest warriors in their history. But one does not achieve such a status without making enemies along the way.
They weren't ready when it happened, a coup was launched on the Isthill by a fellow royal house, the House of Volkoren, led by the power-hungry Exonite, Esgaron Volkoren.
It was a brutal, unanticipated, and severely costly attack, and with the Isthill's numbers dwindling rapidly, Gavan made a choice to send his wife away on an escape ship to go bring help from a planet they had discovered a star system over from theirs.
His wife, Sevanta, escaped during the ambush with their daughter, Ialla, as well as two of her nieces, by name of Chevanti and Zanifa. Along with her sister Jahana and a group of her royal guard, they fled Exon during the Volkoren attack.
However, they were pursued when Esgaron and his men learnt of their attempt to escape. When Sevanta's ship was eventually intercepted, Jahana and the royal guard fought hard against the Volkoren soldiers but were beginning to get overwhelmed by numbers.
Realizing she had to join in the fight, Sevanta made a choice, to prioritize the lives of the young girls with her. Despite loud protests from her daughter, Sevanta sealed her along with her cousins, declaring her love to Ialla before sending the ship away in the midst of battle, with intent to see her daughter again.
Sevanta and her crew lost to the Volkoren capture squad and were taken back to Exon, and it was a similar if not worse story for Gavan, who after an outstanding battle, had fallen to Esgaron, who quickly assumed authority of Exon under a dictatorship, which lasted over a decade.
You might be wondering, "Is this important? Is this where the story takes place?". No, it's not, our story takes place on Earth, which is where Esgaron had sent his brother Baragan with a portion of his royal guard to retrieve Ialla and her cousins after tracing the path of their escape ship.
Unfortunately for them, Sevanta—who had escaped the Volkoren prison—was able to coalesce sects of the all-but-enslaved populace to rise up against Esgaron, igniting a violent revolution. Though she was discovered by Esgaron, he was already too late, he couldn't stop Sevanta from implanting something he didn't see into The Vachryma—a powerful crystal that stored and circulated energy from their home planet into Exon itself.
Sevanta had intended to destroy it, to allow energy flow into Exon in the natural—but far less concentrated and voluminous—manner it did before the Vachryma was created, but she was naive and too hasty, perhaps blinded by rage at the murder of her husband, and ended up destroying Exon as the Vachryma exploded, seemingly leaving no survivor.
Baragan and his crew learnt of the destruction of their home world while trying to contact his brother. Filled with devastation and rage, Baragan ordered a change of objective to his crew, declaring that their mission was now to kill Ialla and her cousins, and anyone who dared to stop them from doing so.
BELLWOOD, CALIFORNIA: EVERGREEN CEMETERY, 2025
It was an unusually cold evening for March, but maybe that was contextually apt for a cemetery, he always felt a bit chilly whenever he visited, in every sense of the word.
He tried smoking cigs for a bit, but that didn't last very long, they really did taste like trash. She would kick his ass if she knew he was voluntarily hurting his lungs anyway, and he couldn't disrespect her in her presence.
Just in-case you were wondering who "he" was, it was somebody very well known, he'd be surprised if you didn't recognize him, no matter where you lived in the world. After all, he was one of the most popular heroes on Earth, and the only one who'd actually saved the whole universe, even if not everyone believed that.
He had brown, tousled neck length hair that he refused to keep too neat, letting his natural wave do its thing. His face was covered in a short stubble almost resembling baby hairs, which made him certainly easy to look at. His emerald green eyes aided that effect as well.
His green, white sleeved letterman jacket with a "10" emblem on the right side might give you some idea of who this was, if not, the "BT" letters on the left side should give it away. He wore a simple white tee under said jacket, with black cargo pants and premium, white Nike Air Force One's, the green hue of the Nike signs on them suggested they were likely custom made.
Well, of-course they were, you get that privilege if you were as famous as he was. Still unsure of who it was? Then maybe the green and silver device that resembled a large wristwatch on his left wrist surely lit the bulb over your head? Black dial in the middle resembling a watch face? With a softly glowing green hourglass symbol on it rather than an actual dial?
Yeah, I think you've gotten it by now.
Perhaps now the question you're asking is, what is the Omnitrix-wielding Ben Tennyson doing in a cemetery?
Ben slurped on his cup of Mr Smoothie, sitting cross-legged across from a marble made tombstone. The skies were starting to darken, the breeze that came with the sun's occlusion now in full effect. The rustling leaves provided a strangely nice background for the otherwise dead-silent graveyard.
"How are you doing?" Ben asked, eyes on the tombstone with a doleful smile. "Hope you're resting easy, wanted to come check up on you."
He raised the smoothie to his lips, taking another sip before continuing.
"So, let's see, I'd say things are pretty normal now, but nothing feels normal without you here you know? Today makes it two years since you've been gone but it still feels fresh... really fresh."
Sip.
"Your folks are getting better, your dad's still in therapy but Ken's being strong for him, and your mom too. Hmm, what else? Kevin's still in the pocket dimension, grandpa says his readings still show he's really mentally unstable."
Sip.
"Grandpa would be here too right now, but he's at the Plumber base taking care of the security shields, we want to make sure we're never taken by surprise like last time again. If we'd been more cautious then you'd probably still be here, but I know you wouldn't want me sulking over that."
Sip.
"You have a statue you know, don't worry it's accurate, I made sure they got your dinner-plate eyes. It's at Wrigley Memorial right next to mine. Mine's still cooler though, just so you know. They teach sorcery as an elective at Friedkin now too, named the course after you and everything, Charmcaster teaches part-time too, I know right? Oh, and you know dragons are actually real? I owe you fifty bucks for that one, I'll bring my wallet next time I visit."
The next sip he took was the last one available. He shook the now empty smoothie cup and dropped it beside his knee.
He continued to stare deeply at the tombstone, until his dinky smile finally fell.
"I miss you so much, sometimes I want to try to... bring you back, but I lost control of Alien-X again, so that's not an option, probably for the best. It was really tough losing you, but I can't imagine how pissed off you'd be if I stopped being a hero because of that, that would be an insult to the sacrifice you made." His gaze intensified as he continued to speak.
"I want you to know I'm doing okay, I understand now more than ever the responsibility this gives me—" he raised his left hand for emphasis. "—and I don't take it for granted anymore, I know, took me a while to learn that didn't it? I wish I didn't have to lose you to realize it..."
He dropped his hand without taking his eyes away from the stone, before releasing a tepid chuckle. "You'd be proud of the person I've become, well prouder, 'cause I know you were always proud of me but probably couldn't even get paid to admit it."
The wind picked up above him and really began to whistle into the leaves, almost producing a scattered cadence. Ben stood, grabbing the empty smoothie cup on his way up, before looking at it, and dropping it back to the ground.
"I should go patrol the city, freeloaders try to use the distractions today to get down to petty crimes." He said, giving the tombstone one last protracted gaze before his smile returned.
"Love you, cous."
And with that, he turned and headed for back for the entrance, without any motion towards his left wrist, a green glow burst into existence around Ben, and when it faded it left what looked like a blue-skinned, semi-armoured velociraptor with a cone-like helmet in his place, the visor that was slid down concealing its face.
The creature who had wheels for feet grabbed the smoothie cup with its black, blue-striped tail instead of its hand, and sped off in a blur of blue and black, leaving the vased flowers—amongst the heaps of other ones around the stone—to billow in the wind, on the seams of the headstone that read:
ONE OF THE WORLD'S GREATEST. IN LOVING MEMORY OF GWENDOLYN TENNYSON; DECEMBER 2001 — MARCH 2023
On the ninth of March 2023, the Earth faced arguably the deadliest attack in its history. Baragan and his crew had arrived, and immediately scanned for the whereabouts of any Exonites, and ambushed Zanifa who'd they'd found first.
In under thirty minutes, the invaders spread to various parts of the planet, Baragan saw that Ialla and her cousins had taken up vigilante mantles, which only invigorated him to destroy her home just like her mother had destroyed his.
His crew members went about brutally murdering people and destroying landmarks all over the world, alerting every hero on the planet, secret identity or not. It hadn't even been an hour since Baragan's arrival that any being who stood on the side of good was engaged with his crew members to stop them from destroying their world.
But the Exonites were powerful, too powerful for some heroes, who fell during the attack before the Exonites were killed, though, Baragan had managed to escape in the midst of the chaos, when the damage had already been done.
It was later assimilated that globally, over two million people had died, with many more severely injured during the Exonite invasion, a tragic day of loss, which included some of the most prominent heroes on Earth, but as the contextually cruel saying goes, the show must go on.
And it did, within months statues of the fallen heroes had been built, monuments had been rebuilt, and industrial schedules had resumed. The people themselves followed soon after as life returned to a relative normal, though the human race had been collectively shocked and traumatized in a way they'd never forget, and it was much tougher for the loved ones of the people who'd fallen.
Now you might be wondering, what about Ialla? Did she survive? Who exactly is she even?
Well yes, Ialla did survive, she along with her cousins were one of the most popular heroes on Earth, but ever since their escape ship landed on the infamous blue planet and they were found and adopted by a scientist, they'd all adopted different names.
Names you're probably more familiar with.
TOWNSVILLE, CALIFORNIA: AEGIS TRUST BANK, 2025
"Round 'em up!" yelled a tall male figure in a purple ski mask. In the vault a few meters behind him were another two men in black masks who hurriedly threw the bundles of money into large sacks.
Another four men had everyone from customers to the bank staff either kneeling or laid on the floor at all corners of the bank hall. "Don't move!" one of them yelled to the cashier he had pulled out of his booth. The dark-haired man slid hid hand back up from his pocket with a glare at the masked thief.
"Hurry before she gets here!" Purple Mask exclaimed, holding what looked like a miniature mechanized bazooka on his shoulder with a full two-hand grip. "She's gonna make our job ten times more difficult so haul some ass!". Now as for who he meant when he said "she", well, he was about to get even more frustrated.
But not before his two goons outside would.
Just outside the hall were two more masked men guarding the bank's doors, the guns they held in their hands looked every bit as technologically advanced as their boss's, but in the form of assault rifles.
They were both on high alert, scanning their surroundings constantly in prudence of the threat they hoped would never come.
"What's the hold up in there man?" the one on the left said. "We ain't getting paid enough for these risks man." he grouched.
When he didn't get so much as a grunt in response, he looked behind him to see... nothing.
He instantly jerked, backing towards the doors as he pointed the gun every which way. He heaved anxiously, whipping his eyes around in fear.
It went silent, and his breath started to regulate, he eventually lowered his gun and tapped his ear. "Boss, this is Jay, Ricky's—"
If anyone had been present to see what just happened, their human eyes would have only briefly registered a pink blur before Jay was gone.
Back inside, Purple Mask's eyes widened with trepidation when the communication in his ear went dead. "Jay? Jay!"
No response.
"Let's get out of here!" he barked at the goons in the safe, immediately knowing the reason for their leader's distress, they heaved their bags with the money they'd managed to fill in and bolted out the safe.
Of-course in reality, if she was already here, they knew they were far too slow to escape her.
The pink blur descended from the open scuttle, landing right in front of Purple Mask.
"Fuck!" he blurted and righted himself to face his mech-bazooka at the now visible figure. "Don't move! Powerpuff!"
The figure that'd revealed itself as a tall, red-headed woman, and from that alone, you probably know who it is.
Clad in a white super suit that covered everywhere from her neck down to her toes, along the trims of the neck and spread out to the rest of the suit were pink, patterned lines that piped to median point 'X' symbol on her chest. Finishing off her look was a flowing pink cape draped over her back.
"It's The Powerpuff, I go solo now, don't you see the news?." she replied, offering a wry, freckle-faced smile behind a mane of long, wavy red hair, accentuated with neat bangs.
"Doesn't matter to me bitch." the coward before her said, priming his weapon as he clicked something where a sling swivel would usually be. The mech-bazooka hummed in warning.
"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" Blossom said, her arms folded calmly as she stared him down, her pink eyes half-lidded in boredom.
"Don't try to be smug," Purple Mask said, a motion on his mask suggested he was now smirking behind it. "We've got all the people here at gun point, and these are the level 5 technology blasters."
Blossom already knew that, she'd x-rayed the building and counted seven of them in here. She'd recognized the weapons immediately as well, they probably got them on the alien black market.
None of it mattered though, a laser pointer might as well be a bubble gun to her.
"And what do you think that means exactly? Who do you think has the upper hand here?" Blossom said in stable tone, her relaxed stance unwavering.
The leader's smile fell in irritation at her composure. He swivelled his eyes to take the whole picture in, his two men from the safe had their sacks at their feet, hands placed on their guns that were pointed at Blossom. The other four tensed with their guns pointed at the separated clusters of civilians with each of them.
When his eyes landed back on Blossom, she was still staring at him through dull eyes. He gritted his teeth, she was taunting him.
"Okay puff, eat THIS!" he yelled and fired off a large beam from the bazooka. Or at least, he almost did.
Before he could even pull the trigger, Blossom flashed in-front of him, ripped the weapon out of his hands and swung the back end at his head, he'd fallen into unconsciousness before he even hit the floor.
Blossom looked down at him while loosely holding the bazooka in her left hand. There was a sudden humming sound, that was notably louder than the bazooka's from a few moments ago.
She looked up to see all the goons had forgotten the civilians and now had their blasters pointed at her in fear.
Good, she thought.
They all fired at practically the same instant, all the lasers met a spherical pink shield where they dissipated into nothing upon contact. Blossom dropped the shield the instant after and zoomed over to the goons behind her, smacking their heads together, then over to the others who she picked off one by one and tossed up and out of the building through the scuttle.
She watched their forms continue to soar, setting their blasters that she'd swiped on a floating circular platform she'd manifested as their screams faded. She dragged Purple Mask by his leg to the two others who were knocked out and bound them together with an energy rope.
She turned and raised her hand towards the floating platform, which drifted out from directly under the scuttle, a beam of energy shot out from her hands to form a giant glove. The goons' screams began to slowly grow back into existence as one by one as they fell through the scuttle and onto the glove.
Once the four of them were on it, while still disoriented, four energy moulded fists popped out of the glove's form and knocked each of them on the head simultaneously. Now like the rest of their colleagues, they too were no longer in the land of the conscious.
Blossom made a motion with her hand and the glove turned into a similar looking rope and bound four of them together, before she proceeded to reel them in and dumped them under a cashier desk with their leader.
A string of clapping suddenly washed over the entire hall as the citizens stood back to their feet and applauded Blossom with their hands and voices.
The redhead smiled at the scene before placing her hands on her waist. "Come on guys, you should be used to this." she smiled, looking sheepish despite her statement.
Blossom waited until the police arrived to arrest the perpetrators and confiscate their weapons before she flew off.
After a couple laps around the city, she decided that she'd probably set an effective warning with the robbers earlier and headed home.
She arced in the air, streaking towards the suburbs. From the actual movie trilogy made about her to her innumerable brand deals, you'd think someone as famous and successful as Blossom Utonium would have moved into the city.
But she was a woman of simple pleasures, much preferring the serenity of a suburban neighbourhood to the constantly pulsating city life. Plus, she felt it pointless to move into a bigger space, her place was big enough for her and her dad, the only person she lived with currently.
She landed on the walkway to her front door, waving at her neighbour who was watering flowers on her balcony. She tapped her wrist and her cape literally got suctioned into the back of her suit, the suit itself glowed a semi-bright pink and shrunk like water soaked up by a sponge until it was just a glow on her wrist, a glow which slowly faded to reveal a simple looking silver bracelet.
It left her in a hot pink, one size too big sweater with a red heart on the front, and dark loose jeans that landed on a pair of lavender hued star sneakers. The sun reflected off her silver, heart pendant necklace before she entered under the shade of her front porch.
She fetched her key from her back pocket and let herself in. She met an arcadian atmosphere, quickly using her advanced hearing to see if her dad was in the lab downstairs.
He wasn't, and she frowned as she closed the door behind her. She was the adoptive daughter of one of the most famous scientists in the world, Professor John Utonium.
Or at least, that was the abridged version.
In actuality she and her cousins had crash landed on this planet sixteen years ago, in an escape ship directed to Earth by her mother, in what she'd originally thought was her final action.
The ship had landed in a restricted mountain area in a western province in Canada, a site where John had coincidentally been during an expedition. He found the three sleeping girls and immediately took them in, eventually taking them with him back to America. Well, they had to fly themselves over there for legal travel reasons, but you get the point.
John was the one who told them everything about this new planet, and after some initial reticence, they told him everything about their home world as well.
They'd initially planned to live with their powers secret, as John told them would be best, so they did, but that didn't last very long seeing as the first monster sighting in history happened a mere four months post their arrival on Earth.
At the time, reality was much different compared to what it was now. Back then the closest humanity got to seeing unnaturally powerful beings were superhero movies from comic book adaptations, but when a group of hulking creatures that looked like something straight out of Skull Island emerged from the Santa Cruz docks, fiction suddenly became reality.
The girls stepped in to save the day and, well, the rest was history. It was almost as though their emergence was a spark for the crazy, because everything started happening after that. From alien invasions to mutated beings with a goal for world domination, and that was before you talked about the literal demons—long story.
By the time Blossom and who she really considered her sisters were eighteen, they were far from the only superheroes on the planet and were no longer even at the outright top of the most popular heroes in the world.
They didn't mind the help, as a matter of fact with the level of villainy that skyrocketed since their first appearance, they appreciated all the help they could get.
Little did they know the real challenge was yet to come.
Blossom pivoted into the kitchen, catching the lingering aroma of her dad's famous chicken soup. She stalked over to the sauce pot and smiled at its content, then her lips fell slightly.
Ever since the incident, John had buried himself into work, most of his time was spent at the City Laboratory downtown, and when he wasn't there, he was in the lab downstairs here at home.
Blossom walked back into the living room, where her eyes immediately centred on the framed pictures above the TV. Her eyes stayed locked on them as she rounded the glass table in the middle of the couches.
They'd been taken about four years ago, when the four of them were still... together. She stared at the one who looked the happiest in the pictures, her blonde, incomprehensibly illuminous cou... sister, her sister.
Blossom hated how her heart felt too heavy at the sight to even shed a tear, maybe because deep down she hadn't accepted the reality that Bubbles... Chevanti, was gone. The memory of Baragan's bloody fist through her chest flashed in her mind and she inhaled sharply, unconscious of how tightly she was clenching her fist.
Her lip trembled as she stared at Bubbles simpering face, her beautiful smile frozen in time. She sniffed, but still her eyes remained dry, a few more seconds passed before she released her hand to gently touch the frame.
"We will avenge you, I promise." she said in a voice just above a whisper as she looked into the picture's eyes like they were real.
She dropped her hand and inhaled gentler this time, she skimmed over the three other frames, stopping at Buttercup's. Her second sister Buttercup was currently off-world, like Blossom and John, she'd been broken after the battle, and was the one who suggested they keep Bubbles' dead body with them in the lab, which is where she currently rested in crystallized form.
Buttercup was different to Blossom, in the sense that she was very embracing of her anger, and while Blossom had still been in a mourning, crestfallen state five months post Bubbles' death, Buttercup had already moved into the next stage of grief.
Rage.
She left Earth to Blossom, swearing to find Baragan and bring him back herself, and that was only because Blossom had made her make the promise not to kill him, because that would be mercy.
She hadn't seen Buttercup since but still kept communication with her through some interstellar technology, though she hadn't heard from her for a few months.
Blossom's phone chimed, and she smiled at the screen once she drew it out from her pocket. It was a text from her friend Robin, she opened it to see two buckets of ice-cream with Harry—another one of her friends—goofily gesturing at them with a beam.
[Can we come over?] read the text under the picture, with a postface of multiple googly eyed emojis and hearts.
Blossom chuckled, then thought about it.
She'd get alerted by Mayor Bellum if there was any more trouble in the city anyway.
She smiled.
[As long as I get to pick to the movie] she texted back, Robin replied within seconds.
[Deal! We're gonna drag Kim out of work and be right over *dance emoji*]
Blossom chuckled again and pocketed her phone. She looked over to the kitchen door frame.
"Chicken sauce for breakfast tomorrow then."
AMITY PARK, MINNESOTA: FENTON WORKS, 2025
Fenton Works was by far the most popular building in Amity, for obvious reasons, with the most prominent one being its occupants. It hadn't changed much save for a slight renovation which added an extra floor to the top of the regular building. And when describing the Fenton residence to someone, you'd have to use the distinction of "regular" when talking about it. Why? Well, because it wasn't every house that had a literal observatory built on top of it.
Yeah, a massive metallic chamber which loosely resembled a war spaceship, with everything from satellite dishes to cylindrical ray guns protruding from its surface, casually laying on top a regular looking three-story building. Let's just forget the fact that the Fentons dubbed it their Emergency Ops Center.
Amity residents drove past it without a glance, like it was a local drug store. Which was understandable looking at what was considered "normal" nowadays, never mind that Amity Park was the fastest growing city in the world in terms of technological advancement, thanks to a mayor who they were more than proud to boast about as equally the youngest and best mayor on the planet, you certainly couldn't tell them otherwise.
But we were talking about the Fentons, who were even more popular among Amity folk than their beloved mayor.
The regular building seemed empty, and that's because it currently was, but that soon changed. Deep in the basement was one of the only known ghost portals on Earth, at least one of the only artificial ones.
The octagonal metal plate was built into the wall, with the control box attached to its side. The room was dimly lit as it usually was, with an ambient purple light providing the only illumination. The control panel was adjacent to the portal by the wall facing the basement door, and through that panel slithered in a soft-blue, wisp-like figure that wouldn't be visible to the naked eye.
The figure quickly gained a humanoid form, and just as quicky became visible, revealing itself to indeed be one of the residents of the Fenton household, Dani Fenton.
Although she preferred to go by Danielle in full now, wanting a differentiation from her brother in the way people addressed her. And that went as far as her alias, as she was now known as 'Shade' by the public, the powerful ghost hero sister of 'Phantom'.
She'd grown quite a bit since she was adopted by the Fentons at twelve years old, with an obvious factor being that nine years had passed since then. She had a septum piercing now, but that was only one of many changes.
Her hair was long as ever, but she now held her ponytail up at her crown rather than at the nape of her neck, allowing some of it fall in-front onto her face. Her suit had undergone some modifications as well, she still donned a cropped top with a collar that hugged her neck, but it was fully black now, while both her gloves were white. There was a white, robotic belt round her waist now, holding her slim black pants that fell into her equally slim white boots.
The last change was of the 'D' logo on her chest, which had been switched out for a flame-themed 'S'.
She smirked as she detached the ghost-catching thermos that was held on her belt and stalked over to the portal. She opened up the control box and hit the glaring red button behind it, the 'warning shield' on the portal opened up instantly to reveal a swirling mass of ecto-energy.
She held the thermos up to look at it as she made to open it. "I just want to say that it was extremely rude of you guys to start shit on today of all days, how about a little empathy next year?" she taunted before opening up the thermos and pointing it at the portal.
A string of ghosts shot out from the thermos in the form of incoherent blobs of ecto-energy and swiftly got suctioned into the portal. Danielle hit the button and the warning shield closed, shutting the portal.
She smirked as she reattached the thermos to her belt and cracked her knuckles. She'd briefly but expansively scanned the house before flying down to the basement and hadn't seen anyone, meaning her siblings were probably in the EOC.
Her feet floated off the ground and she went intangible, flying through a few walls before she emerged in the EOC's kitchen, where she could see someone sliding on mitts and walking towards the oven.
She very quickly recognized that someone as her sister, and her smile turned devious. Staying intangible, she drifted slowly behind her red-haired sibling as she lifted out a tray of cookies from the oven. Danielle waited for her to place them on the kitchen counter and take off her mitts before she floated closer to her, opening her mouth with a—
"I know you're there Danielle."
The intangible girl frowned, descending to the ground and making herself visible. "You kidding Jazz? How did you know?"
Jazz turned to her little sister with an amused smirk, reaching for her necklace that noticeably had a glowing green pendant. "You know this is an ectoplasm detector, right?"
Danielle huffed. "Having ghost powers is no fun in this house." she huffed with folded arms as an energy ring appeared at her waist, splitting into two rings that moved opposite ways, reverting her back to human form, where she was now clad in a black, cropped hoodie and grey sweatpants, finished off with red converse shoes.
"Well, I'm the only one without those, so I have to make using them in here as boring as possible." Jazz answered simply.
"Real hater energy, I respect it." Danielle joked, getting a chuckle out of Jazz.
"Help me carry the cookies." Jazz requested as she walked over to the fridge to grab some milk.
Danielle watched her sister's retreating back, noting the sundress she was wearing was probably new, but mostly focusing on her recently cut hair that was just above chin length.
"It's been a week since you cut your hair, but I still can't stop staring it," she said as Jazz shut the fridge and grabbed a large glass jar from beside the sink. "It just makes you look... so much like—"
"Mom?" Jazz finished for her, Danielle nodded slowly. "Yeah, I know, sometimes I feel like that's probably why I cut it." she said with a somber tone as she poured milk from the carton into the jar.
"Yeah, I dig," Danielle said. "Honestly though? It is literally impossible to picture mom in anything besides that jumpsuit."
Jazz managed a small laugh. "So true." she chuckled as she dropped the carton. "Okay, let's go to the guest room."
Danielle frowned slightly. "Danny's already in there?"
Jazz nodded.
He plucked at his guitar strings softly from his position on the sofa chair beside the queen-sized bed, eyes focused on the two Vibranium sculpted vases in the middle of said bed, standing on a small, circular wooden board.
He'd been playing pieces he knew subconsciously, not wanting to take his eyes off the vases. The piece he was currently playing had been his dad's favourite, so he'd taken time to learn it to the extent he knew it by heart. He'd done the same for his mom's favourite, which—a bit ironically—was more of an upbeat tune compared the one he currently strung out.
He would play that after, maybe when his sisters got here.
He had raven black scruffy hair that was a bit faded at the back as well as the sides of his head, with the rest of it falling over his forehead, barely an inch above his sky-blue eyes. Both his lobes were pierced with skull earrings, with the only other piece of jewelry on him being a pair of rings on his right index and ring fingers. That seemed in-theme with the black leather jacket draped over his shoulders, worn over a simple white tee. The faded denim jeans he wore were slightly ripped at the knees and tucked into black grunge boots.
'He' was Daniel Fenton, casually known as Danny, publicly known as Phantom.
But you already knew that.
The bedroom door opened, momentarily drawing Danny's attention away from the vases. A dinky smile crawled its way onto his lips when he saw Danielle step into the room with a tray of cookies, doing a little dance with her shoulders, Jazz followed in after her with a smaller tray, carrying a jar of milk and three glasses.
"Man, you look like shit." Danielle said, dropping her tray beside the vases.
"Thanks." Danny said, knowing that was the closest he usually got to getting a compliment from her. By the time he dropped the guitar and stood she was already wrapping him in a hug, he smiled wider and wrapped his arms around her in return.
"Any trouble ghost hunting today?" he said when they separated.
Danielle scoffed. "Nah, just a couple rebels from Skulker's island and, get this, this ghost who called herself Box Ghost's girlfriend."
Danny made a face. "What?"
Danielle mimicked his face. "Right?"
"Am I sensing discrimination?" They both looked to Jazz who was stood on the other side of the bed. "Ghosts can find love too." she finished.
"Not Box Ghost." the halfas echoed.
Jazz shook her head with a chuckle, ushering them over with her hand. "Come on guys, let's start."
Danielle turned, bending to untie her shoes, behind her Danny frowned for a moment, before kicking off his boots to join Jazz on the bed.
A few seconds later they were all sitting around the vases, and the cookies and milk. And they continued to just sit, staring at the vases, save for Jazz who had her eyes shut.
About twenty seconds passed before Danielle allowed herself a glance around the room, it had been refurbished after the incident, now painted an amethyst purple—the colour of their mother's eyes. The bed they were currently sitting on was wrapped in orange sheets and pillow cases—their dad's favourite colour.
It was a pretty chaotic combination, but it didn't matter to them, whenever they came in here, they felt connected to their parents, and that was all that mattered.
Just a couple beats over a minute had passed when Jazz audibly exhaled, opening her eyes.
"Okay, I'll start." she said, smiling at the vases.
Vases that contained the ashes of their parents.
"Hey mom and dad, I miss you guys. Much hasn't changed for me since last year, Fenton Works is doing great, Tucker's really holding it down for us and business is booming. I passed the bar exam, first sitting, told you I would mom—"
She stopped for a bit when her voice got weaker at the last couple of words, her lips fell initially, but she picked them back up and continued. "—I still don't have a boyfriend, it actually gets harder to pick one the smarter you get, you were right about that. I journal when I think about you guys, and it helps most times. I want to start practicing professionally, so hopefully next year I'll be telling you guys about all my cases, and don't worry dad, I'm making sure there's no political apathy in his household."
She paused again, inhaled and continued.
"I don't have to use sleeping pills anymore, so that's good. And I won a video game contest downtown, got a hundred off Danny for it, which made it way sweeter." after that sentence was the first time she looked up at her younger siblings since she started, smiling at their own smiling faces before looking back down. "I just... I miss you guys, so much."
The way she paused this time indicated she was done, and she confirmed it by looking to Danielle. Said girl looked to Danny who was also looking at her.
"My turn then," she said, releasing a small awkward laugh. "Okay, so what's new, um... I dropped out of college, sorry about that guys." she said, eliciting soft chuckles from her siblings. "I'm just really good at the ghost fighting thing, so why bother with school, you know? People finally ask for my autograph when I save them now, which is cool. Um, well unlike Jazz, I kind of have a girlfriend... it's Ember, I know, I know, but it's working, you guys would like her when she's with me, really."
Another awkward laugh escaped her throat before she continued.
"I still wear that 'testosterone repellent' anklet you got me for my eighteenth dad, I ended up never needing it obviously, but I love it, I never take it off. I have a YouTube channel mom, you always said I'd be a natural at being entertaining so you know, I'm monetizing it, and it's doing pretty well... I wish you were here to see it. I wish you both were. You know... seven years sounds like a lot of time, but now that you guys are gone, I realize how short that actually is... I—I wish you were here for longer, there's so much I still wish I experienced with you... so much I want to ask you both—"
She stopped when she felt two hands grab hers from both sides, she didn't bother to look up knowing it was her siblings, she wouldn't be seeing them very clearly right now if she did anyway, not with the tears blurring her vision.
"—I miss you guys, everyday... I miss you... so much." she finished, sniffling repeatedly. Danny briefly let her hand go so she could wipe her tears with her sleeve.
She put her hand back in his when she was done, but still kept her head down. Danny shifted his eyes over from her to Jazz, who was looking at him expectantly.
His eyes then fell to the vases, that looked like they themselves were staring back at him.
"What's up mom and dad?" he said after what felt like forever. "As you can see, today makes it two years since you guys were taken from us, and it still hurts as bad as the first day. Well, maybe it has gotten easier one day at a time, but time's been moving really slowly since we lost you. I haven't really made any moves to get a job since I graduated college, I've basically been living off Vlad's will, which I know you guys wouldn't like but... it's just been tough without you, life doesn't feel the same."
He felt Jazz's hand squeeze his gently, he inhaled, swallowed, then continued.
"I haven't fought ghosts, or monsters, or... anything, or anyone in over a year. There's lots of heroes all over the world now, and Valerie and Danielle have been helping me hold down the fort in Amity, though I know you wouldn't be happy about hearing that either. But I just don't feel like myself, I haven't since it happened... I should have protected you guys. I don't know I—I should've. I know you wouldn't want me blaming myself, but I can't not, I still have nightmares about that day..."
Danny stopped, clenching his teeth when he felt his eyes water. He felt Danielle's hand now also give a little squeeze, he squeezed back.
"I'm struggling to find peace about it, but I'm hoping I get there, because I promise you this isn't happening to anyone else we love, I swear it," he breathed, looking up at his sisters to punctuate that statement before looking back down. "Besides that... I'm in pretty good shape, I'm really good at the guitar, and I can speak a little Mandarin—long story. I'm trying, I promise, I'm trying, so um... yeah, I guess that's it... I love you guys."
After he was done, the siblings just sat there for a few passing seconds, before slowly letting go of each other's hands.
"We made these with your special recipe mom." Jazz said with a tiny smile as she gestured at the tray.
"Almond milk dad, a hundred percent dairy free, just like you like it." Danielle said with a sniff, but smiled as she began to fill up the glasses.
A ghost of a smile had returned to Danny's face too as he lifted his hand towards the sofa chair where the guitar was, his arm suddenly got weirdly misshaped and seemed to stretch towards the guitar, grabbing it and pulling it towards Danny where it returned to its normal state.
"This one's for you guys." he muttered, then began plucking a familiar tune as his sisters began to eat.
The heroes who'd lost their loved ones were affected in ways the public would never know, it would seem unfair to compare the gravity of the loss of one of Earth's protectors to a regular civilian, but it couldn't be helped, and some civilians would tell you that themselves.
Heroes bred enemies, and the more enemies there were, the more heroes were needed. Because if one thing was true, it was that heroes were never truly free of evil, never truly at a point of total peace in their lives, not with the weight of the entire planet constantly on their shoulders.
And now was no different, because despite all the grief, despite the brokenness, the heroes of Earth were about to be tested again, by a foe with as much, if not more resolve than they held themselves.
~End~