Behind Blue Eyes
The Ghost Zone
I don't own Danny Phantom, but man I wish I did.
Hope this was in a timely enough manner! It's still not the end, but we're getting there! Read on, readers.
Star like a fish out of water as she sat in the Fenton Ops Center.
Sam, Tucker and Jazz acted like a well-oiled machine in tending to various aspects of Vlad Plasmius' and the ghost girl, Danielle's, injuries. Occasionally they would narrate their actions if it was easy enough to observe and didn't require an explanation for, like showing the location of med kits or the property of Ectoplasm behaving like human blood.
"Do you know where the Ecto-dejecto is?" Tucker asked Jazz.
"Danny keeps some inside his headboard." She replied quickly, leaving to get it.
"Just hold on a little longer, Danielle. This should pull you together long enough to make it to Frostbite." Tucker said, gently putting a hand on her head.
"Danny…" Was all that she replied, trying to move her arm.
Who was this girl to Danny? Star couldn't help but wonder. She was as narrowly focused on him as she Sam and Tucker were the past few days, if not more. She was on the brink of death (second death?) and the only thing she had found the strength to talk about was Danny.
"She should transform after she stabilizes." Plasmius' voice was still sore. He was spread out on the ground, head propped up with Tucker's backpack as Sam assessed his injuries.
"That could kill her!" Tucker hissed over Danielle's weakened form. Plasmius coughed but replied after.
"If you give her enough Ectoplasm with the Ecto-dejecto, it should eliminate the prospect of bleeding out. Anything else is hardly a concern with our advanced healing." Plasmius replied.
"Her healing works better in ghost form." Sam countered. Plasmius shuddered, before coughing violently again.
"We're being attacked from inside out, on the molecular level. Being a ghost is hurting as much as helping, the longer she is a ghost the more her strength is sapped; she's the same as we are. As humans we'll be torn apart marginally slower." He told them.
At the molecular level. Star replayed it in her head. That sounded… incredibly painful.
Tucker and Sam seemed to think so too, both sharing incredibly panicked looks.
"We need to get you to the Far Frozen, now. Jazz!" Tucker called.
Jazz barreled back seconds later, a handful of syringes ready. They were filled with green goo that looked like Ectoplasm. Tucker wasted no time injecting four full syringes into Danielle. Star couldn't help but cringe from the size of the needle, but the ghost girl didn't even flinch. Whether she wasn't afraid of needles or didn't have the strength to recoil, Star couldn't say.
"Is the Speeder still in the basement?" Sam asked Jazz. She nodded and pulled what looked like a key fab from her pocket.
"Ready when you are." Jazz replied. Sam nodded, and that was all the affirmation Jazz needed to press one of the buttons on the silver fab.
Just seconds later, what Star recognized as the silver flying thing the Fenton's sometimes launched from their backyard was hovering just outside of the room, bay door unhatched and ready to accept passengers. Star supposed she looked gob smacked by it, because Jazz gave a quick explanation.
"This is the Specter Speeder. It's designed for humans to travel safely into the Ghost Zone, not that our parents have ever tested it." She explained quickly.
"The.. Ghost Zone?" Star asked hesitantly. Sam and Tucker had told her a little about it, but she was still largely clueless about it. "We're going into the Ghost Zone?"
For the first time since Vlad Plasmius and Danielle crashed onto the ground, it seemed both Sam and Tucker took a moment to pause. They looked at each other for just the briefest of moments before Sam replied to her.
"You don't have to come if you don't want to. I thought you'd be grateful for the out at school, but I don't expect you to suddenly be all hands on deck with ghost stuff." Sam told her.
"Yeah, we get it if this is all too crazy for you right now. But we do have to go. Like, now." Tucker agreed. "If you're coming, great, and if not no hard feelings." He scooped up Danielle as carefully and quickly as he could.
She seemed to be dripping a lot less ectoplasm, which seemed like a good thing.
Jazz helped Vlad Plasmius stand up and walk to the Specter Speeder as the ghost looked warily at Star. Sam climbed in last, looking back at her. Star decided not to give it any more thought, lest she second guess herself, and climbed aboard.
The Ghost Zone made her feel… uneasy, for lack of a better word. The world outside just looked wrong in every way.
Doors floated everywhere, attached to nothing. Tucker said they could lead practically anywhere. A ghost's lair, a pathway to another part of the Ghost Zone, even a different time period.
There were chunks of land floating around that ranged in size from palm sized rocks to formations that could pass for an island back on Earth. She supposed they were islands here too, but they floated in the vast nothingness of eerie green instead of the cool blue oceans.
Swirls of green of every shade painted the 'sky' and the 'air' and the 'floor'. She had no idea this many shades of green existed and was mesmerized to see them all in one place. It was beautiful, she could admit that. But that didn't make the whole experience feel any less eerie.
It looked like it went on forever.
"It does." Jazz replied to her. She hadn't realized she spoke out loud.
"Danny and I have been trying to map it a little recently, but we haven't really gotten anywhere. It all changes a lot; everything floats around generally freely. Sometimes at the will of ghosts, Danny says." Jazz explained.
"Daniel has a lot to learn still about the Ghost Zone." Plasmius said through a hoarse cough. "A powerful enough ghosts can cause the ectoplasm in the air to move and shift around. That determines whether their lair moves throughout the Zone or not. They can block it or use it to carry the lair."
"Y'know, it'd be great if you could educate us a little more often." Tucker glared at him.
"We'll be lucky if I get to do much of anything a little more often." The ghost replied, taking a very deep breath.
"You should change back, Vlad. If what they did really is tearing you apart, there's no use in staying ghost. You told us to let Danielle change back, you should too." Sam pointed out.
Star's attention was drawn to Danielle.
The girl was laying on one of the bench seats in the back of the Speeder, sprawled out while Tucker sat on the floor beside her.
She had transformed.
She had transformed right in front of Star, from a glowing ghost girl to a frail, injured human girl. And she was the spitting image of Danny Fenton. Who was this girl? Clearly, that was not the most important thing right now, so she was trying to refrain from asking. But the similarities were uncanny.
Sure she had black hair and blue eyes now, and she was practically a mini-Phantom in her ghost form, the resemblance otherwise was uncanny. If Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom looked alike, this girl matched them both to a T in facial structure. Star had only gotten scattered looks, but she was certain that staring into her face was as good as staring at Danny's.
The poor girl looked even younger than him. Star hoped she didn't have to endure the same horrors he did, not at her age.
"I'd rather die on my own terms, and that includes not revealing all my secrets to the newest member of Daniel's ghost squad." Plasmius bit, glaring at Star. Even in his weakened state, it was enough to make her turn back around from her seat in the front and stare intently out the window.
"I would say don't worry about him, but he's always this sour." Jazz comforted her, placing one hand on her knee while keeping the other on the steering wheel.
"She's bound to figure it out eventually. She figured out Danny's all on her own." Sam threw back at him. "Besides, you're out of your mind if you think Frostbite isn't gonna ask you to do the same thing. If he's going to try to help you,"
"And that's a huge emphasis on 'if'," Tucker interjected.
"I'm sure he'll want whatever it is to not be spreading as quickly." Sam finished.
Plasmius did not have any retort to that. He sat for a few more moments, everything in the Speeder was quiet.
"If you tell anyone about this, girl, any of this," He started to threaten her but winced in pain too hard to complete his own thought. His arm crossed over his chest to cradle his stomach, face contorting in pain as two black rings appeared and washed over Vlad Plasmius.
In the place of the ghostly terror was Mayor of Amity Park, Vlad Masters.
"Holy shit." Star felt like she could just about pass out again.
They fell into silence after that. Mayor Masters and Danielle were making less painful noises but were trying to conserve their strength still. Sam and Tucker seemed to alternate between looking worriedly at Danielle and then each other, no doubt thinking about Danny, while Jazz focused only on driving.
If what Mayor Masters said was true and they were being torn apart on a molecular level, what did that mean for Danny? He wasn't even free, wasn't even here, on the way to get help. How much longer could he stand something like that? Was he affected by the same thing at all?
Star had a million questions, and for every single one she was sure Sam and Tucker had a million more of their own. She didn't want to spend the entire day badgering them with her own questions. They had hardly asked many questions of their own to Mayor Masters or Danielle after the initial encounter at the school, their focus shifting immediately towards rescue.
It was an admirable trait to have, Star noted. They wore their goodness on their sleeves today, in much the same way Danny did. She wondered if that was a trait they all had in common or if Danny brought that out in them. Or maybe it was a learned behavior, like everything else had proven to be.
They were cautious when they needed to be, but clearly knew when caution could turn dangerous. They were closed off in ways that Danny Fenton wasn't, but large parts of that was most likely due to their protectiveness over him. They had both changed so much since freshman year, outwardly a lot more than Danny had.
The double life, literally, was Danny's. But it had effected them in huge ways too. A secret so huge was bound to do so.
Then just when she was maybe starting to digest Danny's, she finds out that he isn't the only one. And that the others are a girl who looks exactly like both his human and ghost sides, and Mayor freaking Masters.
And suddenly, just like that, she was struck with another wave of empathy for Danny, Sam and Tucker at the pure depth levels their secrets reached. Danny, knowing that the mayor of his home town was a ghost seemingly bent on causing nothing but chaos and destruction the entire time and could do nothing about it except fight back, also as ghost. Because there was surely no way to go after Mayor Masters for it. Nobody would even believe the idea, and had Star not literally seen him transform with her own eyes she wouldn't have believed it coming from nearly anyone either!
He was up to a 97% approval rating!
At least now Danny Fenton's vitriolic hatred for Mayor Masters seemed to make a lot more sense.
Star was pulled from her thoughts as she felt the Specter Speeder come to a sudden stop. She jolted around, looking for the cause just to see they were stopped on top of what looked like… snow?
She gave a confused look to Jazz.
"We're here." She said simply, pressing a button and flipping a switch. The Speeder stabilized and the hatch in the back opened. Cold air filled the metal cabin instantly, and Star wished she had brought her hoodie from her locker.
"Come on, someone'll be coming to inspect our landing." Jazz said as she helped Vlad stand up again. He leaned weakly on her but seemed more determined to stand on his own than he had been before. She guessed being in human form was helping.
Danielle still had it much worse, but the bleeding seemed to stop after she transformed. Tucker picked her up again and followed Jazz outside. Sam helped her from the front seat into the back and let her out first before following and shutting the hatch.
There was nothing but wind and snow around them, and they were all vastly underdressed for the weather. Luckily, they didn't have to wait long before shapes appeared in the distance. They advanced quickly, three of them, each of them a hulking yeti-like creature with white fur.
"Welcome, friends of the Great One! What brings you to," The one in the middle, with an arm made completely of ice, started to greet them politely, but Sam ran up to him.
"Frostbite, you've got to help us! Danielle and Vlad are both in terrible condition, and we have no idea how to help them! Vlad says something's attacking them on a molecular level." Sam pleaded. Frostbite gasped.
"What? Such a thing should be impossible. What humans could have the capability of doing such a thing?" Frostbite asked as his assistants moved forward. One took Danielle from Tucker, and the other was just getting ready to haul Vlad, when he replied.
"The Ghost Interrogation Ward." Vlad said, reluctantly allowing himself to be picked up.
The silence was deafening once again. Even over the sound of wind blearing and snow crunching under their weight, Star could've felt a pin drop.
"Who?" She couldn't stop herself from asking.
"The Guys in White." Sam translated; her shock was apparent.
Star could feel her stomach turning in knots.
I hope this chapter was engaging for everybody! Part of me is still scrambling to see if I can recall any pieces of the plans I had for this, but I'm totally flying blind right now lol. I don't think this is a bad direction, though, and I'm proud to continue the story in any way at all. (Not remembering WILL bug me for years, though.)
Thanks for your patience and understanding, readers. I know you're supposed to write for you, but when I was in a space where that seemed impossible I found a way to write for you guys. Now that I'm in a better place, I want to say thanks to everyone who followed, reviewed and of course, even just READ this story while it (and I) was on an unforseen, indefinite hiatus. That means the world to me, and I hope you enjoy the rest of this story, and whatever comes next!
Like I said before, I have plans of adopting another fic thats currently in indefinite hiatus. As I always say, read on!