This one is pretty unique. I hope you like it!

Chapter 33: Karma's Shadow, Gauntlet's Allure

Heather was starting to feel claustrophobic. She was always a little claustrophobic, but only in small spaces. It wasn't really scary, it was more unnerving. She wanted out of the house, cause being alone and stuck there was starting to make her restless and edgy.

Distant sounds of explosions from the city echoed from miles away. Heather imagined the Ghost Defense Force, one of the ghost authorities she heard of, must have gotten involved. She needed to defend her home.

She didn't know how long she was trapped in the house. She searched everywhere for whatever was messing with her powers. After spending what felt like forever searching for the thing, she finally found a big metal box in the attic marked with "FENTON GHOST FREEZER" on the lid. Unfortunately, it was locked, and nothing she did, even with her ghostly super strength, could get it open.

She ripped the box off the big wooden beam it was mounted on, tearing the screws out with chunks of wood still attached. She tried to yank out the conduit with the power wires out, but no luck there as they were sealed in tight. She ended up ripping out the wires on the other end, linked up to the house's wiring. The remaining wires shorted out and popped the circuit breaker, and the attic was now dark. Except for the Ghost Freezer, of course. A glowing battery level bar dimly glowed.

Heather flew out a window and went as high up as she could, then slammed it hard on the ground at full force. The stupid thing survived with hardly a dent! But the pavement didn't. Chunks of sidewalk went flying in all directions, including out past the ghost shield. Heather smiled at a new idea.

She picked up the Ghost Freezer and went up to the top again. But this time, she didn't throw it down. She threw it out. Out of the ghost shield. It went flying. That heavy thing under full ghostly yeeting force didn't stand a chance. Heather wasn't too good at judging distance, but she guessed it went at least a mile. At least if she ever had a chance to brag about it, that's what she'd say.

Now able to turn human again, and with mini-shield and cloaking puck worn, she was ready for battle. She walked right through the shield and took to the skies.

The cloaking puck worked. She was free to exist and fight as she wished.

So, she did.

She flew right to the heart of the city, the heart of the assault. She blasted away a dozen ant ghosts on her way, but that was hardly making a dent in the thousands of them that remained. They looked like massive red clouds when they moved in swarms, getting holes in the crowd when massive ghost cannons fired ultra-powerful blasts.

Heather sent out powerful blasts of energy at the swarms. It worked for a while until she was suddenly slammed into from behind directly into one of the cannons.

The cannon was knocked out of it's base. It toppled over, snapping it's supports and damaging the rooftop it stood on. Not only was the cannon destroyed, but it was also protected by a specter deflector giving Heather a big shock, knocking her out of her ghost form for half a minute.

While she recovered from that, she weighed her options. The bad luck was setting in. She could use the portable ghost shield she was given, but while ghost energy couldn't get in, it also couldn't get out. She would have perfect defense, but any of her attacks could not escape the shield. If she wanted to help, she needed her attacks.

So after a brief moment of recovery, she took back to the skies. Once again she went blasting holes in swarms of them. But when a swarm came after her, she dodged out of the way. Unfortunately she had an energy ball charging in her hand and flung it in the wrong direction. It hit an already very damaged building and half collapsed it.

Then she was slammed again. This time she slammed into a wall. But the spot she hit was a big metal square, and a cage popped out of it's perimeter and trapped her.

"Karma, you stupid purple double-crosser, I know you can hear me! Stop doing this to me!" Heather yelled. But of course, nothing happened. That's Karma. Both ghostly and by phrase.

She couldn't phase through the bars, which were glowing-whitish-blue animal cage bars. But feeling that claustrophobia again, getting stronger by the second, she needed OUT. Her anxiety was rising by the second.

Heather tried breaking through the cage. The bars wouldn't budge. One side of the cage had a little keypad lock: that was the side that opens. So she tried to pry the cage open with all her strength.

But something happened. her hands turned green, then dark gray. They flattened and became a shadow. A literal shadow. She yanked them away from the door in surprise. They were hands again. She tried it again, forcing her hands at the cage door. Her hands became shadows once again. She was able to slide under the tiny gap under the cage door. Her whole body became a shadow and she escaped. Once she was out, she flew away from the wall and her body reformed. Something didn't follow her out, though. Her cloaking puck and shield generator were left behind in the cage.

The turrets almost immediately turned on her. She was shot down once again. The barrage knocked her out, turning her human again, leaving her unconscious on the sidewalk.

Alex stood with all eyes on him. Ray's dad, Tucker, stood next to Clockwork, who now had a staff.

"Alex, don't run," Clockwork said. "We need your help. I'm sure you know of the Rift. I can tell you how to fix it." His form shifted to one of an elder.

"Before we make any deals, just know I'm not taking off this Gauntlet for anything," Alex stated.

"Of course not. You clearly know how to use it, and I can't bring it to it's full potential."

'What do you mean by full potential?"

Clockwork shifted to his adult form. "There were two Reality Gauntlets once, but you already know this. I, along with the other Eternal Spirits, created them for any worst-case scenarios that might happen to our worlds and our powers aren't there to fix it. But to limit their use, we can't use them to cause direct harm to each other, and we can't use them on ourselves. None of us could." He shifted to child. "The Gems only work together if we're wearing both at once, and we all have the ability to remove them telekinetically from our siblings' hands from any distance. With one destroyed, and our covenant broken apart through Karma's antics, we can't create a new one and I can't use this one's full power."

Alex looked at the glistening gems in the Gauntlet, then back at Clockwork. "Well. That sure is a story. But it makes sense, I had to give myself powers to stop Karma. As much as I want more of that story, I need to know, can you tell me how to close the Rift?"

Clockwork nodded, shifting to elder. "All you have to do is make the Gauntlet bind the worlds back together. It knows how to do what you want it to, so all you need to do is tell it to. First, you need to get rid of the anti-portal facilities that caused the Rift in the first place."

Alex closed his eyes and willed the Gauntlet to show him all the facilities. With his eyes closed, he could see them as if he had a VR headset on. Then, he commanded the antennas transmitting the anti-portal energy to vanish. Alex opened his eyes to see Clockwork with a slight smile. His eyes seemed to glow a little brighter.

"I can feel the shift in energy." Clockwork shifted to child. "The Rift is still interfering with my power, but I'm still tuned into the resonance of the universes. We can heal the Rift now."

Tucker stepped forward. "After this, you're done. You give the Gauntlet to Clockwork. No tricks, no stepping back on your word. Got it?"

Alex still had some issues to consider. "Can't I stop the assault on the city first? Repair it too? I can completely cure cancer and stop world hunger while I'm at it. Maybe I'll eliminate pollution and create an infinite clean energy source. You know what, why stop at curing cancer? I can cure every disease."

Clockwork, in adult form again, set a hand on Alex's shoulder. "We will worry about that later. We need to fix the Rift now."

Power. That was the problem. Alex was falling for it and he knew it. But he wondered, would helping people to this degree even be abuse of power at all? Or is it just being a good person? Not to mention the fact that having power was a slippery slope. "Fine, as long as we can fix the city after the Rift."

"Rift now, Alex," Tucker said. "Everything else later."

"You know what? I'll fix the city for us. It'll only take a few seconds." Alex went back to the human realm, caring only about fixing the city. But he wanted his friends to be with him.

Heather woke up under a pile of rubble. It was pitch black; besides an ectoplasmic glow, she couldn't see a thing. The rubble muffled all the sound from outside. She was trapped, completely trapped. Something was crushing her legs, the right one worse than the left. The pain was what woke her. The dim neon green glow was just above her knee, where the boulder crushed her leg. She could see the just-hardly-there light reflect off a tiny puddle of what must've been blood. She tried to calm her nerves, but her heart was racing a million miles per hour and she was trapped in this tiny space covered in rubble.

She used a bit of her remaining energy to make her eyes glow so she could see the damage.

That was a mistake.

Under the purple glow from her eyes, she saw a horrifying sight. One leg pinned between rubble, one leg gone. Completely crushed. Blood was everywhere. What was glowing was ectoplasm desperately trying to heal a leg that was practically gone. But the blood dripping on the floor, ectoplasm mixed in and losing it's glow as it hit the ground, was truly terrifying. The longer she looked at it, the more the pain became real.

She closed her eyes and screamed. She was in the tightest spot she could be. In her panic and need to escape, the shadow thing happened again. She tried to pull her leg out of that tight spot, and tried to dig through the rocks, so panicked she didn't even think about simple intangibility. The remains of her leg became shadow first. Next, the rest of her body. She, as a shadow, slithered out of that debris pile and reformed in the middle of the street. She took a peek at her leg, and saw it was made completely out of bright neon ectoplasm now. She couldn't move it, but the pain faded away at least.

That fear was true fear. The deepest, most terrifying type of fear.

It was all getting to her now. The damaged buildings towering around her. The green of the ghost shield above her. The thousands of ant ghosts and blasters firing at them. It was all too much. It was too bright, but she never wanted to be in darkness again. It was too loud, way too loud, too many sounds around her everywhere and never stopping. But thinking of silence just made her think of the most terrifying thirty seconds of her life. She couldn't fight the panic attack that was brought on. She couldn't move, all she could do was curl up into a ball and scream and cry, and the image of her crushed leg wouldn't leave her head.

She didn't remember what happened next. Maybe she passed out, maybe her brain freaked out too much, she didn't know. But whatever it was, she didn't know why she was waking up under a big tree in a large open field. The grass was soft and cut short around the tree. There were a few small, wispy clouds in the sky. It wasn't too hot or too cold, and it was quiet, save for the gentle breeze rustling the tree leaves. Laying on the other side of the tree were Alex and Ray.

She couldn't think of an easy way to break the silence. "Hey guys, where are we?"

Ray moved over in front of her. "Oh man, thank goodness you're ok!" he said with relief. "You went full ghost, dude."

Alex wore a very concerned face. "Yeah, what happened? I brought us all to one spot, and you were, well," he paused. Heather guessed it was cause he didn't want to hurt her dignity to mention her tears. "Well, we tried to console you, but you just became this walking shadow thing."

"He's not kidding about the shadow part. Your whole body was just a black blob in your shape. As in, completely absorbing all light, black. And your eyes, man, they were all purple! You attacked everything that got close to you. Alex had to use the Gauntlet to get you to chill out."

Heather sat up a little straighter. "I had the worst experience of my life. The most terrifying thing I had ever experienced. I don't want to talk about it." She looked at her right leg. The pant leg was torn off at the thigh, just above where her leg was crushed. Her leggings being black hid all of the bloodstains. Her formerly crushed leg was there again, but still had a glowing green tinge to it. "Karma caused that experience, though, and I will never forgive him for it."

"So, would you like to maybe... talk to him?" Alex mumbled out.

"Yeah, I actually would. I want to find out what he's doing to me. I've got some new powers that I gotta figure out, especially now that I know turning into a monster is a part of it."

Alex held out the Gauntlet. Out of Heather's back came a cloud of purple mist that in a few seconds shaped itself into Karma. "Karma can see through his overshadowing spirits," Alex said. "I'm gonna summon him here."

The mist cloud let off a flash of blinding purple light, and Karma in all his greatness was there. "Ah, once again you get rid of me from another servant. Alex, when are you going to let me collect my payment?"

"This isn't about him, this is about me!" Heather shouted. "What are you doing to me?"

Karma laughed. "Ah, you're talking about your new shadow powers, aren't you? Well, your core was undecided but predisposed to becoming an ice core because of your heritage. But predisposed is not predetermined. Your personality influences your core just as much, you see. You and your father both had to run and hide, but the difference is, he did it to survive but did his hero stuff regardless. You did it cause you simply wanted to lay low. You like hiding, you don't want to be the hero. At least, not for the same reasons as your dear old dad. As for the fast development of your powers, well, you spent your most crucial developmental period as a ghost in the ghost zone, you got the healthy dose of energy you needed. Unlike your father, who took months to even step foot in there." He leaned over to whisper in her ear: "Also, I may have given you a power boost here or there."

Heather's eyes flashed in anger. "What about what just happened to me?"

The misty form shrugged. "Payment comes due. I admit, I may have overdone it. But I forced that transformation for more karmic energy, and in your state, you were too out of it to control it."

"So I have a monster inside of me? And you activated it?"

"No, no, no! Besides your obsession, if halfas can even get one, you control your powers. The way your eyes glow when you're angry, for example. It's not a monster inside of you. Its just another natural expression of emotion. So you lashing out like that is no different than any human would. But you have ghost powers that you're still unfamiliar with, so it looks worse than it is."

Heather glared at him. "That has never happened before. Why did you do it to me?"

"You can end up in that form on your own if you try hard enough. I simply messed with you and your core cause I was bored. Alex locked me in a cage in Clockwork's place and I don't have access to my screens and the Rift got rid of my power to see anything I want just from my head without using my spirits, so I only had you to mess with," Karma said, almost whining.

"You caused me all that trauma for your own entertainment?! I was trapped! My leg was gone! You are the most vile creature I have ever met!" Heather was full on screaming now. "Alex, get rid of him!"

Alex nodded and closed his Gauntlet hand into a fist. Karma disappeared. The curse was gone.

Ray stood behind them. "Well, are we ready to stop the assault on the city now?"

Heather took a few deep breaths. "Yeah, what's going on there? Aren't we wasting time standing around here?"

"No," Alex said. "I froze time for everyone but us and Karma while you recovered. This space is an illusion, we're actually at the top of a building at the edge of the warzone." With a wave of the Gauntlet, the illusion faded away. Time was still frozen. "So I need to know, what are we gonna do with the ant ghosts? Are we gonna poof them back to the GZ or are we getting rid of them?"

"I don't want genocide, Alex," Heather stated.

Ray tapped his foot in thought. "Good point. Genocide is definitely bad. But what if they want revenge? How will we stop that?"

"Lock them inside one of those door dimensions. A massive realm perfect for them."

Alex shook his head. "Do you really think they'd be satisfied with that? I don't know how they live, what they like, or how those door dimensions even work. I think our best bet would be to just send them back and let them figure it out themselves."

"That's fair," Ray agreed. "We'll be way better prepared for next time, I suppose."

"So before I take care of it, I gotta tell you guys this. Once I get rid of the invasion and fix the city, I have to go fix the Rift. Once I do that, the Gauntlet is gonna go to Clockwork for safekeeping. Do you guys want anything before I go?"

Ray shook his head. "I want to get things fair and square. Unlimited power is too slippery a slope."

Heather, though, wasn't that noble. "I want you to make our parents forget about us and our squad and my powers. I want it to be just us, I don't want anyone in on my powers and our adventure."

Alex gave her a look she couldn't describe. "Are you sure? What if they find out again? What if it screws more things up?"

"Karma was right. I do like keeping this secret. I do like hiding it and keeping it between us. It's too complicated to have all our families know."

"How about this. I'll find a way to provide the option to make them forget. But for a while, we'll just try to live with what happened, ok?"

Heather wasn't happy about it, but she agreed to the terms. So in the end, she ended up with a necklace with a near-unbreakable glass charm. She alone could break it and everyone would forget about everything. It was true magic, something Alex had never tried. But ghost energy and the power to control the entire universe can do plenty. She had no assurance it would even work. None of the trio knew if it was possible. But Heather wanted the option. For now she would be strong, but she still wanted the option.

The future could go both ways. Heather desperately wished she could see it so she could know what to do. But that was impossible. And it was terrifying. Most of all, she wished she could forget what Karma did, but she chose to keep the memory with her. One day, she will find a way to get Karma back for that. Right now, though, she needed to rest. The whole ordeal was going to be over soon.

Alex unfroze time. It was time to end the battle.