Oh, no, another prompt. :)
This one is from gabbypie64 via danphanwritingprompts.
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Awake
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It began with a buzzing.
Valerie ignored it. Her suit always buzzed a little, the electronics humming away at a thousand esoteric tasks. She had never examined it too closely. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, as her grandma used to say.
True, the buzzing was a little more insistent than it usually was, a little louder, a little more distracting, but that was probably just because Valerie was tired. She hadn't gotten a good night's sleep in ages, thanks to the ghost kid.
The ghost kid was the reason for her sleeplessness. Not that the buzzing in her ear was mirrored by a buzzing under her skin, a nervous energy that never seemed to go away, especially at night.
She ignored it.
And it went away.
Valerie was able to sleep again. Her grades went back up. When she went to fight Phantom (or whatever that stupid ghost was calling himself now), it was when she was rested, prepared, and had him at a disadvantage. When he just finished fighting another ghost, for instance. When she fought other ghosts, it was on her own terms.
Like it always had been. Of course.
Valerie slept deeply, the sleep of the just.
She began to dream.
They started out normally, like they always had. They were dreams of going to school, or flying, of talking to her mother, of living in her old house. But, always, before she woke, they would warp into something else.
First, she'd find herself in her suit, all slick red armor and danger, hoverboard purring beneath her feat even when she was walking. Then, her perspective would shift, subtly but surely, her motions no longer purposeful, but guided, a long hand on her spine, herself, her being, hollow, only a surface.
She ignored them. They were just dreams.
They didn't go away, but they stopped being memorable.
She couldn't ignore the sleepwalking.
Her father caught her at it as he came home from his shift. She hadn't been doing anything, just slowly pacing back and forth across the living room, eyes closed.
She couldn't ignore it, but she could get treatment. Her sleepwalking episodes stopped.
At least, she thought they had. Apparently, she had been wrong, because she just woke up standing on her hoverboard, far over Amity Park, Phantom floating in front of her, a contemplative look on his face.
She tried to move. She couldn't. It was like her suit had become a cage around her.
"She is awake," said a robotic voice just behind her ear.
"Good," said Phantom. "Hi, Valerie."
"What did you do to me?" she demanded, trying not to let her fear show in her voice.
He rolled his eyes. "Right, because it's always my fault. Not. Your suit has developed a personality, by the way. Tends to happen to things with a lot of ectoplasm in them. We're negotiating. I thought you'd like to be a part of that, but if you'd prefer to sleep…"
Valerie swore.
"Anyway, where were we?" asked Phantom, seemingly unconcerned.
"I need a host to give me structure," stated the robotic voice. Her suit?
"Right. That. But you've been carting her body around at night for weeks. You can't keep doing that without her permission."
"You have done similar things."
"Mitigating circumstances," said Phantom. "The survival of myself and others was on the line."
"My survival is on the line. She will seek to destroy me if I do not intervene, as she has done to you."
"Yeah," said Phantom. "Anyway. So that's about where we are. I do have a couple people who wouldn't mind sharing body space in exchange for cool powers, their words not mine, but we don't know how compatible they'll be, so, I'm turning the decision over to you."
"What?" This was too much for Valerie to cope with five minutes from waking up.
"Do you want to keep the current arrangement with, um, Red, here, or do you want to have your body to yourself and Red can go to someone else? With the addition that Red has to tell you when they're taking you on night walks.
"Th- This- This is a ghost, isn't it?" said Valerie. "You have a ghost overshadowing me! That's why I can't move! Get out of me!"
Phantom sighed, and pulled something cubic from his belt. "Well. I guess that's your answer, then, Red. Remember what we discussed?"
Something that wasn't her nodded her head, then her suit was coming off, leaving her shivering on her hoverboard in her pajamas. Then the hoverboard was gone, and she was falling, and she couldn't call it back, where-?
Phantom caught her. A minute later she was being set down on the roof of her apartment complex.
"What did you do to me?" she demanded, shoving him away.
Phantom's gaze was vaguely disappointed. He didn't answer her as he flew away.
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The prompt was 'Valerie's suit becomes self-aware.'