Hello and welcome back! I want to thank those who reviewed the first chapter, it means a lot to hear that you enjoyed it! I am not an author that needs a large amount of reviews in order to complete a story, but they do help encourage me and brighten my day, even if you are taking the time to point something it that you disliked (as long as it was done with a good heart) or just to say you enjoyed it. Without further ado, here is the second chapter!
Edited: 6/25/18
The Life We Fight For
Chapter 2: Toxic
Maddie Fenton stood in the beside a long table in her basement turned lab, her eyes trained on the screen in front of her. She was not alone, not in the slightest. She was accompanied by an unconscious Danny Phantom, laying completely still on a lab table in fully ghost-proof restraints.
Maddie turned away from the screen to face the other being in the room with her, soft, lavender eyes steady and calculating.
"Well? Didn't I tell you it would work?" the slightly transparent, dark grey-skinned figure asked in boast. Its eyes were a sickening deep violet, just a hint of madness laced in its irises.
"The ghost boy will not have lasting effects from this...serum?" Maddie questioned, holding up the glowing substance kept in a small vial at eye level and staring at it with a critical eye.
"Not at all." the smirking ghost said, it's shoulder length lavender hair falling into his eyes ominously. "Now, my end of the bargain has been done. Now it's your turn."
Maddie stepped away from her computer and faced the ghost squarely and with dignity. Her movements swift but with purpose. She took three steps toward the ghost and wasted not a single second.
She leaned slightly upwards as the first was hovering, not about to give her any favors, and hesitated for only a brief, nervous moment. She then pecked the ghost on the cheek in a single, rigid movement, taking a handkerchief from a nearby cabinet and dabbing at her mouth.
"I hope your sick games have ended now, because our alliance is now over." Maddie declared. "If I see you around Amity I will personally see to it that you end up in a puddle of your own ectoplasm."
The ghost chuckled, floating backward toward the open ghost portal. The long, grey coat he wore easily visible as he neared the neon green light. The fabric, tattered with age and abuse, covered all of his body except his head, which remained a bright contrast to the dark color. His smile never faded even as silence took over between them. Finally, he turned and faced the portal, the swirls of green reflecting in his eyes as he stood staring at it.
"Until we meet again, Maddie Fenton." he said clearly, his eyes flashing a bright purple. Maddie felt frozen in place. Her senses dulled, her thoughts muddled, she felt completely helpless. "Phantom, he's so disgusting, isn't he?"
"Yes..." Her mouth moves on its own , her brain foggy and without feeling.
"He is evil, a dangerous mistake in the ghost realm, don't you agree?" those calm, purple eyes stayed fixed on the portal, but were anything but focused on it.
"I...agree."
The ghost's smile widened. He looked back, locking eyes with Maddie. She seemed to be in a daze, wobbling dangerously on her feet for a few seconds, eyes glazed over and face blank.
"Make sure he suffers." he said, his voice almost low enough to be a whisper, but she heard it loud and clear. He turned once more and dove into the void and out of her sight.
Maddie gasped as if she had been held in a choke hold, as if her lungs had been stressed to their max and she was just now getting a complete breath.
She found that she couldn't remember what the ghost had said, she only knew that she had a specimen to research and dissect, and she was going to do her job as she always did. Only, this was Phantom. Danny Phantom. Public Enemy #1. The reason her daughter was so confused and brainwashed and locked in her room in hysterics. Her eyes grew cold as a single thought flitted into her brain, like a sharp, piercing needle pressing deeper into her mind.
No mercy.
A low, pained gasp sounded from her left, and her head whipped to the table containing the ghost. Phantom was moving, slowly and awkwardly, but it didn't seem quite coherent yet. Maddie moved into its line of sight, remaining quiet.
The suddenly conscious being continued to stir, looking around in confusion. It looked disoriented, but that couldn't be true, ghosts couldn't feel, couldn't be hurt. Its eyes looked unfocused as it groaned in discomfort, not truly noticing where it was.
The ghost gasped as its arms refused to move when it tried to pull its hand up, surely the shock of being tied down had been all the ghost needed to become fully conscious, for its eyes darted around the lab it now resided in with a slowly growing panic. Its eyes, oh so disgustingly neon green, landed on the woman and she suppressed a shiver.
'No, I can not show weakness.' she thought. 'My family depended on me to keep them safe, my only job, my purpose in life is to keep them safe from danger.'
She met the still confused gaze of the monster before her with a hard frown. Silence reigned for several seconds before the ghost spoke the only words it would ever say to her again.
"Mom? Why am I tied down?"
Jazz paced her room, phone clutched tightly in her hand. Two hours. Two hours her brother had been in the lab with her parents. She had screamed her throat raw, pounding on her door until her wrists ached and her palms bruised. The door was locked, the windows secured, she was trapped in her own house. Her neighbors were too used to the commotion from FentonWorks to give the racket a second thought, there was little she could do.
The few seconds after Danny had passed out had been the most nerve-racking of her life. The way Sam had sprinted toward him, only to be held back by Jazz's own mother, Tucker, pulling at the net in a desperate attempt to free his friend, shouting his name in panic over and over while Jack yelled for them to get away from the dangerous ghost. It had seemed to happen in slow motion, a surreal display of a scene that just couldn't be true.
Jazz had stood frozen, standing between her own father and her unconscious brother, shaking down to her fingertips. There hadn't been much of a fight. Her parents were stronger then her, but she had fought with all her might. Everything she'd dreamed could destroy her family's lives was unfolding right before her eyes as her only sibling was dragged alongside her to the Assault Vehicle.
Sam had to be restrained by Tucker and Jack until her parents arrived to take her home, deciding to give Tucker a ride as well after the Fenton's explained the situation. All the while, Danny lay unconscious in the back of the weaponized RV, unaware of the battle of wits playing out around him. Completely oblivious to the storm about to come.
Jazz jumped as her phone rang for the third time that hour, and she quickly brought it to her ear. She knew Sam's number, they'd exchanged them secretly in case something happened to Danny, despite not being the best of friends.
"Sam?" Jazz said, desperately trying to keep her voice from shaking. The anxiety of not knowing what to do was eating her inside, like a parasite.
"I've got all the ghost weapons we stashed in both my house and Tucker's." Sam's voice, completely solemn, spoke on the other end. "We can break you out, but I don't know how far we'll get if your dad is watching the door."
"He left a few minutes ago, I think..." she took a deep breath to steady herself. "I think Danny's awake now. Sam, we have to hurry before they hurt him!"
"Me and Tucker are already on our way." Sam replied, and a shout of 'faster!' Could be heard on Jazz's end as Sam yelled at Tucker to pour on more speed as they rode to the Fenton's on their mopeds. "We'll get there as soon as we can Jazz, keep us updated. If you hear or see anything, let us know."
Jazz mumbled a quiet 'yes' before dropping the phone on her bed, falling beside it and staring at the door in front of her. Her eyes threatened to fill with years but she swiped at her face instantly, sitting back up.
'Danny needs me to be strong.' Jazz thought, squaring her shoulders. 'Don't worry little brother, help is on the way!'
Danny cringed as soon as the words left his mouth. He glanced down at his black jumpsuit and glowing aura and cursed himself for his idiotic mistake.
"What did you call me, ghost?" Maddie demanded, her voice using the same tone as when she would discuss Danny receiving detention, or refusing to talk to her about his problems. Only this time, her tone meant much more than being grounded or lectured.
His very life and afterlife was at stake. He knew more than anyone, his mom could be dangerous when she wanted to.
"I didn't mean to-"
"Quiet ghost." Maddie snapped, her eyes flashing a bright purple for a short moment. Danny's eyes widened. That was definitely new.
"Jack!" Maddie called up the stairs leading to the main floor of the house.
Danny gulped as he heard the tell-tale stomping of feet on the creaky floorboards and down the stairs, his breath growing shallow. The orange-clad ghost hunter came into view within seconds, a child-like grin plastered on his face. He wrapped an arm around his wife and stared at Danny with a gleam of excitement in his eyes. Danny refrained from looking away and simply returned the look with a neutral expression. They would use his fear against him if he showed any sign off being anxious. His parents were almost too good at their job.
"Well well," Jack's voice boomed. "Looks like we finally gotcha speechless, spook!"
Jack laughed and Maddie have him a small smile, patting his shoulder and gesturing to the table behind her, which held their equipment. Jack's smile only widened as he bounded off to begin snatching things from the table that Danny couldn't see. Maddie stepped toward him and put a hand on her hip with a cruel glint in her eyes.
"What, no yelling? Begging? Maybe some witty banter?" Maddie snapped, making Danny tense. "Doesn't matter, I'm fed up with hearing your voice anyway."
She reached over and pulled a phase-proof gag from a cart Jack was wheeling toward her, and Danny finally got a grip with reality.
"W-wait a second, I have to tell you something!" Danny shouted, moving his head away as his mom gripped his hair. "Just listen to me for a second, don't you want to know where your son is?!"
Maddie froze for a short, precious second before taking the boy's white hair toward her. Danny hissed in pain and cringed all at once as she got in his face, those lavender eyes flashing bright violet again.
"Tell me where my son is, or I'll make sure your death is long, drawn out, and so painful you'll beg me to end you." Maddie threatened.
Danny swallowed thickly. He had to tell them, his only choice was to tell his parents the secret he'd been keeping from them for almost a year now. He couldn't help the butterflies fluttering inside his stomach in nervousness, or the constricting feeling in his chest, but as he stared into his mother's eyes he found the carefully hidden concern, concern for her son, and was comforted ever so slightly.
"It's... it's me, I'm your son," as Danny said this, he brought forth the rings around his waist and willed them forward, replacing his sleek, black jumpsuit with faded jeans, sneakers, and a white and red T-shirt.
"D-Danny?" Jack's voice choked from beside Maddie. "Son is that...?"
Maddie's breath grew shallow. Her boy, he was a...ghost? A ghost, but how? Her logical mind couldn't for the life of her come up with a how or why to the situation that was so clearly in front of her. Her eyes blinked in confusion, before she reached out as if in a trance and brushed back Danny's hair, which produced a slight wince of pain from the previous tough treatment the boy had received.
"But, how?" Her eyes widened. "There's no way your body could remain perfectly fine with this amount of radioactive ectoplasm in your body, let alone your DNA!"
Danny shrugged, not liking the panicked look in her eyes. "I'm okay, I'm not radioactive or something, just half ghost."
"Half ghost." Jack said in a hoarse voice. "My son is half ghost?"
Danny bit his lip, unsure how to explain. He and his friends barely understood the process his body had undergone after a whole year of receiving a crash course in human and ghost anatomy, his survival had always been difficult for them to explain. they weren't scientists after all, they were teenagers!
"Wait, what about all those crimes? The mayor..." Maddie looked at him in disbelief. This was her son right? She wasn't easily fooled, but she had somehow missed her son being injured by her own hands, coming home late and tired with no explainable reason, getting worse grades than ever before? She set her hands on the table in despair. What kind of mother was she?
"That wasn't me, I was framed I swear!" Danny promised, unsure whether or not she would believe him, his mother's head was down, he couldn't see her face. "I wouldn't hurt anyone...so, please can you let me out of this?"
Jack moved toward the computer to set the restraints to 'release', but his arm was caught by his wife's slender fingers, stopping him from going any further.
Danny frowned, his muscles tensing up. "Mom?"
"My son is not a ghost." she said, one hand still clutching the gag. "I'm going to fix this Danny, I promise."
Danny's eyes widened as she shoved the gag into his gaping mouth and secured it, turning away from the struggling boy and to her husband, who was looking uncertainly at her.
"It's our son Jack, my baby, he's half dead!" She cried, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. "Help me reverse this, I want my son to live a normal life, no more Danny Phantom!"
Danny fought to free himself in a state of panic as his parents drew closer to him. He shied away from his father's reassuring hand on his shoulder and stared at his mother in slight fear, knowing exactly what she was capable of.
"Okay sweetie, hold still," Maddie said softly, a long empty syringe in her hand. "It won't hurt for long, I promise."
Danny shook his head frantically and tried to move his arm away but Jack held him still while Maddie pierced his skin with expert precision. Danny cried out at the sharp pinch but the sound was muffled by the gag, and his parents didn't so much as glance at him.
"Jack, look at this." Danny's arm was released by his father in favor of staring at his half red, half green blood filling the syringe. Jack made a noise of concern and glanced over at Danny, who was looking more frightened by the minute.
"Danny?" Maddie said, placing the needle to the side. "Can you...change into Phantom please?"
Danny didn't think twice and shook his head roughly, earning a hard stare from Maddie. He held his ground however and refused to transform, knowing that as soon as he did, the real fun would begin.
"I'm not playing this game with you right now Danny." his mother warned, snatching the gag from his mouth. "Obey me now."
"Where's Jazz?" Danny questioned, ignoring her request. "Is she hurt? What about my friends?"
Maddie seemed to grow even more outraged for a moment, but instead of exploding as Danny thought she would, she got a grip on herself and let Jack speak instead.
"Maybe we won't tell you until you transform." Danny's father said evenly. "We could be here all day."
"Y-you'll dissect me!"
"Danny!" Maddie cried, her eyes wide. "We would never dissect you like some animal. We just want to take a look at your...inner anatomy, is all. We won't be taking anything out of you."
Danny hesitated, looking between both his parents a few times before making a decision.
"Promise." he said to them, his eyes calm but his insides churning, trying not to succumb to his fight or flight reflex. "Promise me you won't treat me like a lab rat, and I'll do what you want."
His mom nodded seriously while his dad laughed at the possibility. Their son, a lab rat? Jack was certain if there was anyone on earth smart enough to cure his son, it was his beautiful wife, with his own help of course!
"You got a deal kiddo!" Jack said excitedly, looking over to the cart of medical supplies beside him in restrained suspense. "Now, time to tear- I mean, cure you, son!"
Danny rolled his eyes absentmindedly. He was not afraid of his bear-like fudge loving dad. His main concern was his mom, who at times could get majorly carried away. It did not help that she remained silent and calculating for a while now, simply looking at him.
"Alright, transform...please," she said evenly. As Danny did so there was a spark of something Danny couldn't recognize in her eyes, something dark that was definitely not his mother. "Now, in order to find the cure for your...condition, we need to understand how exactly it happened in the first place. There was a surge of electrical pulses that ran through your body with chemicals containing large amounts of ectoplasmic radiation, correct?"
Danny nodded once, having barely understood what she said. It was clear that she'd figured out his accident was the cause of his halfa status, but Danny wasn't so sure he liked where her thought process was headed.
"Jack honey? Would you turn on the ecto-current generator and hook it up please?" Maddie asked removing her hand from the table Danny rested on and stepping back to face the monitors in concentration.
"Wait a second, your going to- you can't shock me!" Danny cried, every fiber of his body on high alert. He watched in disbelief as his dad removed his jumpsuit and stuck electrodes to his chest, legs and head. "S-stop it."
"Don't worry Danny-boy this won't take long, right baby?" Jack said, still wearing his signature goofy, oblivious smile. Maddie returned his smile and patted his arm affectionately.
"Of course." She then turned and stood next to the computer, ready to fire up the machine, but hesitated. "Jack? Could you go check on Jazz while I do this?"
"Aw, but we never get to use the ecto-shocky thing!" he whined. Maddie sighed and sent him a condescending look and the orange wearing hunter deflated like a popped balloon. "Alright, I'm going."
Danny waited till his dad was well out of sight before turning his slightly angry gaze to his mother, who was typing away on the keyboard in front of her.
"Please don't do this."
Maddie jumped, almost as if she had forgotten he was even there. Danny held his stoic expression on the outside but inside he was a nervous wreck. His restraints were ghost-proof! The only way out was to use his Ghostly Wail, and he really didn't want to resort to that.
"I'm sorry honey, try to hold as still as you can so I can get a good reading, m'kay?" she answered, a bit of her old personality shining through the child, scientist persons she adopted when dealing with ghosts.
She then hit a button on the keyboard with an expressionless face and turned to the large, generator-type machine that would send the shockwaves into Danny's body. She hesitated for one second, looking anywhere but her son's face, and flipped the switch to start up the machine.
Danny's breaths came out in short, nervous gasps as he felt small jolts of electricity jerk into him from the points in his body that were attached to the machine, tingling sensations pooling into his veins and rushing through his entire being. Maddie noticed his nervousness and decided she would not torture him with waiting, and turned up the current to its 4th power.
He gasped and twisted his body as best he could while restrained, his brain screaming at him to run, to escape the pain, to use his powers on his mother and be done with it. But his rational self yelled in reason against the instincts of his ghost half, creating a painful rift within Danny's internal self.
"Stop!" Danny yelled, but he was ignored. In fact his mother raised the current to the 6th power of electrical waves, and Danny cried out in pain.
His body convulsed and shook with agonizing jolts as the electricity poured into him. He couldn't think properly, he pulled desperately at the restraints in panic but couldn't not so much as bend them. Maddie frowned but continued raising the dial to an 8.
Danny's screams would have without a doubt echoed throughout the whole neighborhood had they been anywhere but the soundproof basement turned laboratory of his home. A sudden jolt of 9th power current, and Danny let himself shed tears, though he kept enough dignity to make sure he did not sob or cry aloud.
"I can't- please mom it's too- ah! please!"
Maddie Fenton took a shaky breath and willed her hand to move, sending the final wave of electrical surge through her son's body. Danny's back arched of the table and he shook and shuddered with the force of the terrible current running through him with no end in poured out from the corners of his eyes and if he hadn't been screaming his throat raw he would have noticed that the skin around the electrodes stuck to his body was becoming scarred and burnt, the tissue darkening with the pure heat coursing through his veins.
His arms and chest became zig zagged with lightning-like burns that scarred over and over thanks to his healing abilities. The marks crisscrossed and overlapped into what could only be described as what looked like a network of electric lines.
Danny dropped like dead weight as soon as his mother stopped his agony, and he panted in pain and relief, his body still twitching uncontrollably.
"Your body healed too fast." Maddie's disappointed voice proclaimed. "I suppose there are other ways I an find my answers."
"Other...ways?" Danny's voice choked out, his eyes dull and full of pain.
"I think I'll need to see how you respond to some anti-ghost alloys and repellants. Since you're only half ghost, you should have some immunity to some of them, the trick is finding out which ones." Maddie said, trying her best to sound real and not like a maniacal lunatic about to dissect a subject in front of her. The was her son after all.
"That sounds...painful." Danny gasped, beginning to regain more control over his abused body and beginning to struggle once more. "I can't do anymore, let me out. I want to get down from this table."
Maddie reached over and put a firm hand on his shoulder, halting the boy's wriggling. She wouldn't let him go. She couldn't. Danny was still half-ghost and she had no idea why or how. She would stay awake all night running tests if she had to.
"No Danny, I have to do this." Danny's eyes widened at the calculating and icy stare that penetrated him. "Don't fight me and it will be over easily and swiftly."
"B-but-"
"Enough. I'm going to retrieve the first element and your only job is to tell me how you feel, understood?"
Danny bit his lip but nodded regardless. 'It can't be as bad as the electricity, their anti-ghost equipment hardly works anyway.'
Danny allowed himself to relax for a minute as his mom left his side, realizing with a grimace that one of his wrists were definitely broken in two if not more than three places. He could feel the stinging pain and fiery, throbbing feeling of a displaced bone without even looking at it. He purposefully looked away and focused on the ghost portal at the far end of the room instead.
Before becoming half ghost, he had been wary of the subject of ghosts and his parents' work on the ghost portal. Right now however, he wanted nothing more than to fly straight into the Ghost Zone and embrace the pure freedom of the chaotic, ghostly dimension.
"Alright." Maddie's voice sounded from behind him. "I'm opening the seal, don't forget to tell me exactly what you feel."
Danny was about to ask what it was she'd retrieved when he felt a revolting, nauseating feeling rip through his being. He gagged and glanced around in slowly growing panic as his body glowed a familiar, angry red. His head throbbed in pain and his limbs tensed in fear.
"That's... Blood Blossoms!"
"How do you feel?" Maddie questioned. "Sick? Throbbing sensations? Any Headaches?"
"It hurts!"
Danny heard a loud crash upstairs and tried to look behind him at his mother. Clearly, she too had heard, as she quickly went quiet. She dropped the plant beside him and sent him a warning stare.
"I'll be back, and when I do you better be more descriptive than 'it hurts' young man." Maddie said, taking long strides to the stairs.
"No! Wait, please don't leave!" Danny pleaded, jerking as far as he could from the flowers. "Mom please stop! I promise I'll do better! Mom!"
On the first floor of the Fenton house there utter chaos exploding from every corner of the place. Dishes lay broken on the ground, chairs were now mere splinters littering the floor, the front door had been busted to pieces!
Maddie ran through the kitchen and found none other than Sam Manson and Tucker Foley holding ecto-blasters and wrist rays, both pointed at her husband, who in turn held a Fenton bazooka.
"Kids stop!" Maddie yelled. "Jack put that weapon down!"
"We know he's here!" Sam cried, her eyes glaring daggers at the two adults. "Let him go, he's not a lab rat!"
'Danny said that too...' Maddie vaguely remembered. She jogged to her husband's side and usher his arm done, lowering the gun he held tightly. 'They're children, they don't know what's best for them. I'm not in the wrong here, I can't be.'
"We are doing our best to fix him, he's in good hands!" Jack said. "He'll be fully human again in no time!"
"He...told you?" Tucker asked in disbelief.
Maddie stepped forward, her hands raised. "We don't know the whole story, but we're doing all that we can to cure Danny of his condition."
"Cure? You want to fix him?!" Sam exploded, shooting a nearby wall. "There was never anything wrong with him! He doesn't need your help!"
Jazz could hear the loud shouts from her bedroom, her hands desperately trying to shove her small hair pin through the lock and free herself. She shook the doorknob with all her might, jamming the small pin inside the opening and giving it a sharp twist.
The doorknob gave way and Jazz whooped with joy, racing down the stairs quietly but swiftly, slowing to a sneak as she neared her parents from behind. Meanwhile, they continued to argue with each other, ignorant of what was going on below.
"Danny is safe with us! Maddie just finished doing a shocky-type test to find answers to his ghostliness!" Jack argued to Danny's two friends.
Jazz couldn't believe what she was hearing, she glanced at Sam, who nodded slightly and inconspicuously to her, motioning to her blaster.
"Danny doesn't need to be 'fixed', he's a hero!" Sam declared. And we're going to free him! Jazz, catch!"
Sam threw the blaster over the Fenton parents' heads and Jazz caught it easily, pointing it at her parents with a scowl of her face.
"Go, guys." Jazz said. "I can handle this."
Sam and Tucker didn't need a second order. They raced to the stairs leading to the lab and took them down two at a time, hearing muffled screams as they grew near.
"It's Danny!" Sam cried, wrenching the door open, the sound of agonized screams echoing through the house.
"Danny!" Tucker yelled, running over to the steel table. He spotted the flowers and instantly gasped, grabbing the them and pulling away from the half-ghost.
Sam grasped Danny's sweaty, pale face and hushed him as Tucker all but inhaled the plants in one go, the ghost boy's screams dying down into gasps and coughs.
"We're here, you're going to be fine." Sam said softly, pushing his sweat-darkened hair away from his clammy face.
Tucker set himself to releasing the restraints and shutting down all programs designed to test ghosts in the Fenton's files, deleting all software related to ghosts and the reports on Danny's previous response to the electrical current of the ecto-generator.
"Sam, you guys...made it..." Danny's voice was hoarse and cracked mid sentence, making him cough and turn away from the black-haired girl. "Jazz?"
"She's fine, she's got your parents held up in you living room." Sam replied, to which Danny merely nodded. He didn't move although he was no longer restrained, but he could feel bile start to rise and he jerked his head to the side, away from Sam, and vomited.
Green splattered against the floor, a toxic, pulsating puddle of ectoplasm coated the cold ground in disturbing quantity. Sam rubbed Danny's back and looked at Tucker with concern, the dark skinned boy glancing with equal emotion at his friend.
"We need to get him out of here." Tucker said, turning to the stairs.
"And go where? The first place they'll look will be our homes, we'll get busted within a day!"
Danny heaved once more over the edge of the table and coughed up more ectoplasm, this time not as much but still enough to be concerning.
"No, we can't help him at our places." Tucker said.
"What are you suggesting?" Sam asked, her hands holding her crush steady as her eyes searched Tucker's for answers.
"Think about it, who's the one person that knows all about half ghosts, and has an obsession with Danny?"
Sam cocked her head to the side, bewildered. She heard Danny groan, and let go as he pushed himself up onto his elbows. His head spun and his chest ached, but he coherent, and he didn't like what his friend was suggesting.
"Not the fruitloop!"
Next Chapter: Sam, Danny and Tucker go into hiding with the only other halfa in existence. Danny is not happy.
Thanks for reading! Updates are posted on my profile page. See you soon!
-P