The night was still in Amity Park. Silence reigned no cars or wanderers, living. Or dead.
Within a skyscraper-style building jutting like a sore thumb from the others, painted a dusty tangerine with a UFO attachment dozed Danny Fenton on its top floor. The sound of slow breaths mingled in the otherwise perfect silence and bluish nighttime. Until flurried images passed across his eyes, over and over again, in a dizzying succession.
Horrible memories that had burned themselves into his brain, a triad of voices, maybe more, all clamoring for his attention.
A cottage in Colorado of some expensive dark wood with diamond patterned windows. A large fire cast an eerie glow, or maybe that was due to being imprisoned in the idyllic retreat.
"'Just give my Dad your mid-morph DNA so he can save me,'" pleaded a short girl, snowy haired and toxic green eyes.
Like overlapping film he was in the confines of the torture pod. Danny felt the metal on his wrists spreading the electrical charge through his body.
"'He's not going to save you!'" he shot back, more than a little irritated with his imperfect clone.
He was at once in the cabin and in that lab.
A third face taking over the surreal dual vision. One that smiled at the proceedings, watching the teen writhe. "'I'm afraid you're obsolete.'"
Danny was blind. All he saw was that horrible pain. The light rimmed his eyelids.
'No, nononono,' came his frenzied thoughts.
If Vlad got what he wanted that was it.
He'd die. He'd die for real. Already he felt a cold deeper than the Far Frozen.
A final vision capped off the nightmare. A poison coursed through him in reliving that moment.
On the empty street of his town, standing against a halfa fruitloop whose words followed him even if he could and when he hit back. The blast was too much. He could sense- this wasn't a hundred percent. Vlad was still playing! But it felt brutal, it burned and it impressed upon Danny to yield. Was this ectoblast to kill him? Had he finally lost it?
Another presence was behind him. Danielle! His feet continued to give but this girl would help him. He had a partner now, except, she aimed that blast of burning energy at his back.
Danny went slack. Laying on the pavement. His last sight to be Danielle... smirking up toward Vlad, a perfect copy of his twisted satisfaction.
Blue eyes flashed open, Danny having shot viscerally to a sitting position. Letting him better take in his own bedroom. Those familiar shapes giving a little comfort from the play-by-play that had become routine. And what the Hell was the point of that? He got it; don't take your friends for granted, Vlad could kill him whenever he wanted, and ask a few more questions the next time he met a halfa. The lesson had been learned and he'd be damned to dare forget.
He trembled as if his own icy core were going wild. Hands raked his raven hair as he eased his breathing. Sugar cookies. This had to stop. Or he'd never sleep.
Reluctantly he nestled back into his bed covers, tense as he curled onto himself as if there were any protection from the dreams.
His frigid ghost sense curled out of his mouth, almost ethereal in the air.
"I dunno Miss, he's had the nightmare for two weeks now and he still hasn't succumbed," a tall young man pointed out to the shorter, porcelain girl beside him.
Crimson eyes regarded the house across the street. A soft breeze rippled her silky dark hair. "Perhaps but even the strongest souls break, he just needs his tipping point."
"Then are you thinking of- is that within the rules Miss?" asked an older woman in a flowery kimono exposing both shoulders.
"With his lifestyle Hone, it's bound to happen at some point. Why not aim it at someone who poses a legitimate threat?" proposed the younger man with a careless shrug.
"Revenge is not a weapon to be toyed with, remember what would happen to the boy," an elder man chided. He wore a layered Oxford brown kimono with a wide-brimmed hat.
"I'm just saying. Kid's obviously scared for his safety, only now somehow, and he is still the best chance of shutting down this jerk's plans," he said still playing nonchalant. Still, he wouldn't pretend that he wouldn't get more of a kick than usual at giving one mad scientist a little justice. Maybe let him see just how much DNA extraction truly hurt.
The red eyed girl began to walk up the street, her gaze turned upward. As one her companions also turned to look at a wide-eyed young boy stare at them.
Fear was in those eyes. Not an unfamiliar feeling. Barely worth the spectral girl's notice. What truly made this boy special was his restraint. For two weeks she had watched him. Sensed the sorrow roiling off such a small body in crashing waves, constantly breaking at the rocks lining the sea.
Why wasn't he mad with rage? Why did he still smile when his heart was burdened by such innumerable terror?
The boy made no sense. She felt uneasy about him. He brought a few unwanted thoughts to her consciousness. Her mind dwelled on a reporter's voice.
A nosy man with gentle features who preached forgiveness. Forgiveness. When his blood ran with an unforgivable sin. "'Send me to Hell!'" he had pleaded of his young daughter nearly a year ago now. For the first time in so many centuries a small child of all things rejected her offer.
Perhaps that's why Danny Fenton stirred such interest and unease in her. She couldn't believe that forgiveness won out. Not after all the hate she had witnessed. Even Danny hated Vlad with a vengeance.
Danny had jumped to action and for the window to find, a girl. Just a girl, with porcelain skin and a red accented outfit that was hard to make out. Still, he felt a cold chill, spidering up his spine. She didn't look like other ghosts, not even when they wore their human disguises.
The eyes that stared coldly up at him, not dissimilar to a dissection toad's in biology class, were a bloody crimson. There was no emotion and yet something darkened their magical sheen.
With a forceful pull, the blinds came down blocking her from sight. Immediately he phased through the floor to the basement.
Among the chrome tech and a maze of different colored buttons he found the honker; loudly large as it was neon green just a hue brighter than his ghost form's eyes.
Danny stamped the button, triggering the ghost shield. The green barrier cascading down the building almost like a waterfall.
Once returned he watched the girl, still staring, but making no move to the barrier. Eventually the staring contest broke in the span of a blink. She had blinked and next he knew without warning or memory how, Danny now stared toward the empty, unassuming street.