2/5/25: Hello! I only just finished writing this before I posted. I can't write as much on the weekends, so I'm not sure I'll be able to post the next chapter on Sunday. It may have to be Monday.
SamXDanny: That instrumental video I sent you and said the first song is what I imagined for an epic aerial battle? Yeah, that applies here.
Warning: Danny and Sam/Shade's potty mouth.
Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom.
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Chapter 56: Power
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The speed with which Mira responded was astonishing. In less than ten minutes, she had Apaches, Blackhawks and F-35's in the air. They weren't just retaliating against The Resistance, but were shooting and bombing indiscriminately around the area of city hall. Screams could be heard for blocks as explosions rocked the streets and buildings.
Danny and Sam were on the tarmac impatiently waiting for the Marines to be ready to go. But Danny was losing it–pacing back and forth, chewing his thumb. "We can't wait for them to be ready," he growled.
He saw General Hammond coming towards them and teleported to him, startling the poor man again. "We need to go now, General, please," he pleaded.
"I'm not sending you two in there without backup, Captain," the man stated.
"Alright, how about this," Sam started, voice carrying over the longer distance as she walked over to them. "I'm gonna go play with some enemy chopper's, so you should probably send Danny with me to make sure I don't die."
George gave her a light glare. "Ms. Manson–"
"I'm not military, General. I will go," she cut him off, her look hard.
"Please," the ghost pleaded again, knowing Shade wasn't joking. "Let us go and take out as many as we can. It'll mitigate Marine losses."
General Hammond did not look happy. He raised his arm and called John over, who had been making his way to the tarmac as well.
"Yes, sir?" Sheppard said once he made it over to them.
George's eyes never left Danny's, a sign he disapproved of this. "Captain Phantom and Ms. Manson are going to go on ahead and see if they can clear a path for our Marines on the ground. Lt. Col. Sheppard, I'm going to need you to take command of both your troops, and the Captain's troops, until such a time as you rendezvous with them."
John looked between Sam and Danny. "Understood, sir."
The goth walked away from them then, getting enough distance before her form flashed and she shifted.
As Danny saluted both the general and Sheppard, John said, "Forgive me, but I don't understand why you both need to go. She's a force to be reckoned with on her own and you would be close behind."
Danny floated up, settling himself into the saddle. "If things get bad and she has a seizure, I need to be able to catch her," he explained.
"Seizure?" the general said, clearly confused.
Danny looked at the general and blinked once before turning his attention to Sam. She looked away and lowered her head like a dog that had been caught in the trash.
"Really, Sam?" Danny snapped. "You didn't think it pertinent to tell them you have epilepsy?"
"She has epilepsy?" George repeated, bewildered.
"Seriously?!" John quipped. "Is there more you guys need to tell us? Is she a one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater in disguise, too?"
The ghost felt a rumble in the saddle, a keening sort of sound of shame from the dragon. He sighed. "No, and I think that's everything you need to know." He grabbed the hand holds as she swayed a bit, moving over to give her wings room to expand.
"We'll try to take out as many as we can, so please wait to send in our choppers and Harriers. They have far more than we do, and we already lost the Vipers," Danny said as Sam's wings extended.
General Hammond nodded despite the look of disapproval on his face.
The ghost lowered himself and braced as she jumped, pumping her wings to get them airborne. She gained height first, wanting to disappear into the cloud cover, before angling them towards the enemy several miles out.
It wasn't completely overcast, with pockets of blue allowing the sunshine through, but there was enough to help keep them mostly hidden from prying eyes as she navigated from cloud to cloud. They hit turbulence, the ghost clinging to the hand holds as she wobbled.
"You want to tell me why you didn't tell them you have epilepsy?" he asked over the wind.
Her chest vibrated as she grumbled. "Not everyone needs my medical history," she retorted, knowing full well it was a horrible excuse in this situation.
He sighed. "I think in this case, they kinda do, and I know you know that. You aren't stupid, Sam. You know the stakes."
She didn't respond, flapping her wings to gain a little height into the next cloud.
But she didn't have to–he knew where her thoughts were. "It doesn't make you weak, Sam."
She snarled, the sound bouncing from side to side in her throat like a startled rabbit. He knew he'd hit a nerve and that the conversation wasn't going any further, so he let it die and simply surveyed the air space below them.
The sounds of the helicopter rotors were getting louder and becoming more distinct. They could hear the F-35's, but couldn't see them. It made the ghost nervous because the sound was ricocheting around the clouds like a bullet and distorting it, meaning he couldn't figure out exactly where they were, or if they were in the clouds with them. Unless Sam had incredible strength in her flight arms, they weren't going to be able to match the jets in speed–not even close. He thanked whatever God was listening that Mira hadn't sent the F-15's because there was no way the Marines' Harriers would take them down. The F-35's would be difficult enough. It really pissed him off that the government was holding out on them.
Sam's sharp eyes detected something else and her lips lifted in annoyance, showing off her fangs. "There's a news chopper they aren't attacking. Mira wants the public to see what's happening."
"Shit, they're broadcasting this?" he cursed.
"We're almost above them. Are you ready to dive?" she asked, spreading her wings in a way the membranes caught the wind and slowed them so she could line up a good angle.
He leaned forward and placed his cool hand on her obsidian scales. Her eyes grew brighter and she let out an involuntary growl as his energy surged within her core. "Let's do this."
Sam chirruped once before folding her massive wings and leaning forward, plunging into a dive. As they descended through the cloud, more moisture coalesced and clung to them, making Danny's clothes damp and causing streams of water to flow across the dragons' scales.
They punched through the cloud, a giant wisp of vapor twirling away from them as they came through. Sam tilted her wings and fanned her tail fins to adjust their course, a synchronicity that amazed Danny, especially considering Sam wasn't a natural born dragon ghost and hadn't been one for long. She was a natural at this type of flying.
He heard the whistling in her chest and sent her more power. Adding his power to her fireball meant she could use less of her own fire to create it while still having the same kinetic energy. It meant she could create more fireballs before she ran out of fire in her bladder.
Sam adjusted them one last time to nudge their angle just right and–bam–let the fireball loose. The blast sailed through the rotors of one Blackhawk, shredding them, before hitting the cockpit of an Apache further out. Both aircraft plummeted from the sky in a haze of fire.
"Nice shot!" Danny yelled, his core swelling with pride. He may not be able to hit shit, but his fiance could hit two choppers with one fireball.
The shot, while a victory, did attract unwanted attention. Most of the Apaches and Blackhawks broke off from their attack on this section of the city and went to meet them. Sam's sharp eyes darted between them, counting eight in all: three Blackhawks and five Apaches. She could also hear the jets in the clouds above them, but they'd yet to descend. Danny made a face when he noticed the news helicopter had also switched their attention to the pair.
Sam spread her wings and angled them, unfurling her tail fins completely, and brought them out of the dive. She leveled off to keep from dropping below the altitude of the enemy aircraft. However, the chopper closest halted and hovered. "Phantom," the pilot called. "Just you two?"
Danny glared darkly. "We are the first line of defense. Do not concern yourself with the second–it is beyond your reach."
The pilot was silent for a moment before he said, "Mira didn't expect you to join this war."
"She has a habit of underestimating me," the ghost retorted.
"Enough chat!" Shade snarled, throat vibrating. "I want you to die now."
The whistling sounded again and the chopper set off flares, but they were of no help against a dragon. The fireball struck true and the Apache exploded, debris raining down to the streets below.
The goth's ears picked up the sound of one flanking them. She felt Danny's pat as he spotted it, too.
They were coming up on some fairly tall skyscrapers. She aimed for them, tilting her wings and just barely ducking behind a building when the chopper's 30mm autocannon began firing. The sound grated on Sam's hearing and caused some minor panic, her breathing picking up. It was a scary sound.
She charged another fireball before abruptly flipping them over so she was belly up and pointed her muzzle behind them. The moment the chopper came around the building, she fired, nailing it head on. They were falling out of the sky now so she flipped back over, her wings catching air and causing her right one to ache.
She leveled them off just as a Blackhawk appeared from behind another skyscraper in front of them, blocking their way. Danny lifted his left hand and fired a shot, cursing when it missed. He aimed again, making the blast larger this time, and fired again. It sailed forward and smashed into the chopper's tail rotor, ripping it off. The enemy aircraft started a death spin without the stabilizing tail rotor.
The pair were too close now and Sam made the split second decision to try and duck under it, folding her wings and diving below the spinning chopper. They lost altitude quickly and managed to clear under it. There was a tall highway overpass ahead of them and Sam opened her wings again, pulling them up and tucking her legs in as close as she could. They passed under the bridge, the dragon's lips lifting in a silent snarl at just how close she was to scraping her legs and chest across the ground. Once safely through, she immediately angled her wing arms up and started flapping them hard, gaining height quickly.
An odd noise hit their ears and got their attention. Danny looked around until he spotted another Apache on their tail. The noise was the chopper firing a huge portion of its large payload of 76 70mm rockets. The ghost's eyes widened in terror. He put his hand up and erected a shield, putting his free hand on Sam's scales and funneling some of her power to make the shield stronger.
While it helped, the anti-ghost tech in the rockets negated most of the power. The rockets exploded in the air around them, sending shrapnel, flames and smoke in all directions. The small pieces of metal pelted them, creating a myriad of small cuts in Danny's clothes and flesh. Sam's armor and scales gave her more protection, but the shrapnel did tear up the membranes in her wings. The flames caused burns as well, the ghost bringing an arm up to cover his face from the heat and flying metal. The smoke made it hard for Sam to see anything, so she relied on her hearing and sense of balance to determine where she was in the air and to avoid as many of the rockets as she could.
It was like being caught in a hailstorm of exploding weapons. The sheer noise from each detonation was deafening and caused an almost instinctual panic in both of them. "New fear unlocked!" Danny shouted.
The goth was sick of it. "Hold on!" she yelled back, putting on an intense burst of speed, ignoring the pain it jolted through her right wing. She then shot straight up, leaning further still, and sending them in a large backwards loop over the offending Apache behind them. The chopper was not nearly so maneuverable. It tried to spin around to catch them as she dove down behind it, but she was faster, coming down under it before angling back up. She brought her legs forward and grabbed the Apaches belly, and then simply used her weight to throw it off balance as she'd done with her first Blackhawk takedown.
Danny used his ghost flight to help keep him in the saddle as he dangled upside down on her back, hands gripping the hand holds. He felt kinda useless right now, but decided it was best to let her do her thing.
They started falling through the sky, but straight down. Sam flapped her wings, careful to keep the ends out of the rotors, and pulled the Apache on its side.
Then the pair heard the sound of the 30mm autocannon firing up, but it wasn't from the Apache they were holding onto. The sound of the gun rented the air as it fired ten rounds per second. Danny erected the shield to cover as much of Sam as possible, but the shield could only slow the anti-ghost bullets, not stop them.
The goth twisted and put the Apache between them and the autocannon. A few rounds still managed to smash into the armor on her tail, but they didn't penetrate. Then she heard Danny yelp and felt a cool splash on her shoulder. "Danny?!" she called.
The ghost was gripping his upper chest, right between his neck and right shoulder, as ecto-plasm streamed from the gunshot wound. It had gone clear through, leaving a good amount of damage on its way out. His right arm was hard to move and he wouldn't be surprised if his collar bone was broken.
"I'm fine," he responded, voice full of pain.
It enraged the dragon.
She snarled, a deep, guttural sound that ripped through the air and struck fear even within Danny. With herculean effort, Sam flapped her wings and twisted the chopper around in a 360 degree arc before letting go. It flew at the firing Apache, but it was too far to actually hit. So, the dragon coalesced her biggest fireball yet, using quite a bit of her fire, and adding some of Danny's power when he put his bloodied hand on her shoulder, before releasing it. It was so strong that the sonic boom blasted out the windows of every building on the block, even windows high above them. It struck the Apache she'd thrown and exploded, tearing it to pieces and sending the remains at the Apache behind it, taking them both out.
The explosion also slammed into them, sending the pair careening through the air. Danny turned them both intangible when it was clear she wouldn't be able to correct their flight to avoid a skyscraper. They tumbled through the air, harmlessly passing through the building and coming out the other side before Sam was finally able to get enough air under her wings to stop their rolling and right herself. She steadied them, taking heavy breaths as the blast had knocked the wind out of her.
Danny patted her shoulder. "Damn good job, hon," he praised.
She alarmed him when she didn't respond, but she was just trying to catch her breath. Her chest was still very sore from the tank hit, and getting the wind knocked out of her, coupled with the strain she was putting on her chest and shoulder muscles with her flying, was starting to take its toll. He could hear her breaths–a loud drumming noise that he could feel vibrating in his legs and humming in his ears.
"You need to land," he said, his concern for her spiking.
Sam didn't get the chance to respond before explosions started going off everywhere. She let out a squeak of surprise and immediately started evasive maneuvers, which was difficult as she couldn't see the projectiles until they burst in the air in a cloud of smoke and fire. "What the hell is that?!" she screeched.
Danny looked down, trying to see the ground through the smoke and fire and around her crazy twists and turns. Finally, he spotted the issue. "They've got anti aircraft guns!"
The dragon growled as she tried to get behind a building. "How the hell are they more equipped than the damn Marines?"
"Because Amity Park is a waste of resources," he retorted sarcastically and with anger, but his anger was not directed at her.
She got them behind a skyscraper and away from the flak, taking a moment to hover and try to catch her breath again. "Speaking of Marines, where the hell are they?" she snapped, her exhaustion getting to her. If they didn't show up soon, her wings were going to give out.
"I don't kn–" the ghost cut himself off when he heard the tell tale sound of 70mm rockets coming their way.
"Oh, for f***'s sake!" Shade snarled, frustration boiling over. She suddenly stopped flapping her wings and they fell through the sky like dead weight, quickly dropping below where the rockets had been aimed. As they fell, she used her tail fins to right herself, aiming down.
They were diving down the side of the skyscraper, the building to her belly. Away from the building was a huge national park with a very large lake.
She could hear the rockets exploding behind her and feel the heat on her tail. As they neared the ground, she brought them out of the dive, snapping her wings open forcefully and catching air.
Her muscles were not up to the task.
Far too exhausted and at their limit, the muscles that supported her flight arms gave up and her wings whipped back, unable to hold air. Both of them realized too late they weren't fully coming out of the dive and Sam was unable to turn intangible before she hit the surface of the lake, throwing him off her.
He went sailing through the air–but not far as he kicked in his ghost flight. "Sam!" he shouted as she tumbled, an enormous splash jettisoning out of the lake and inundating the shore. After a moment, she stopped, sinking under the water.
"Damnit!" Danny snapped as he went to try and pull her out, but she beat him to it, her head snapping out of the water. Sam shook her great head like a dog would, water droplets raining down from her scales and horns. She snorted then, more water shooting from her nostrils.
The ghost flew down and floated in front of her muzzle. He reached out his left hand and gently laid it on her snout. "Are you okay?"
Her muzzle was wrinkled, lips pulled up in a grimace of pain. "I'm not sure that was much better than hitting the ground," she commented, breathing heavily.
Now that the wind wasn't whipping past her face, her nose picked up the strong scent of his ecto-plasm. Her large amethyst eyes focused on his wound and he watched as her pupils constricted to slits in her anger. But she calmed herself, pupils dilating as her gaze met his. "Are you okay?"
He nodded. "Right arm isn't much use, but I'm okay."
Their keen ears picked up the sound of the Apache that had shot the rockets at them approaching. Sam turned her head towards it in dread. "I'm grounded," she said. "My wings are done."
"Shift," he said. "Make yourself a smaller target, and I can fly us from there."
Then they heard another sound: the glorious sound of Harriers as they roared into the area. "Freaking finally!" Shade said as she shifted. She realized too late that she was so exhausted that her humanoid form was too tired to keep her afloat and she yelped when she went under.
Danny caught her quickly and pulled her out, holding her with his left arm and extending his ghost flight to her.
As he supported her, one of the Harriers angled towards them and then fired a radar assisted missile. The Apache that had been in pursuit of them released chaff to try and deflect the missile, but was unsuccessful as it hit, blowing the chopper up.
"Yeah!" Sam cheered, only for it to die in her throat as the enemy's F-35's dropped out of the clouds.
"F***," Danny cursed. "They were waiting for our Harriers!"
The pair felt helpless as two F-35's proceeded to get on the tails of the Harriers, tracking them with ease. The Marine pilots were skilled, but their jets couldn't match the F-35. The enemy let loose their own missiles and Sam and Danny watched as the Harrier pilots ejected, trying to get themselves to safety before the missiles blew up their jets.
Unfortunately, the F-35 pilots were relentless, and they set their guns upon the Harrier pilots as they opened their parachutes. Danny shouted when he saw the spray of blood from the pilots signaling an end to their lives.
"Danny," Sam called, her eyes scanning the ground all around them. "I don't see any half ghosts on the ground."
His gaze followed hers and he could see that she was right. And then a horrible thought occurred to him. "General Hammond was right: this is a trap, but not for us. They're trying to lure out our aircraft so they can take them out. And now that we no longer have the Harriers they can easily go after the slow Ospreys."
The goth looked at him with terror in her eyes. "They'll take out the entire battalion."
Danny, still holding Sam with his good arm, shot off like a bullet back towards base. "If the Harriers are here, that means the Ospreys can't be too far behind. We need to stop them," he said, voice full of dread.
He made them invisible as they ascended to avoid catching the attention of the F-35's and remaining enemy choppers. As they gained height, the Ospreys became visible in the distance. "You good to teleport?" he asked.
She nodded, holding her breath before he teleported them into the nearest Osprey. Sam was impressed; it was not an easy feat to teleport into something that was moving. The men inside the chopper, however, were less impressed and more startled when they suddenly showed up in a cloud of green.
He carefully steadied Sam before going to the cockpit. "We need to turn these birds around!" he shouted over the noise.
The pilot looked back at Danny. "I can't do that, sir, not without Colonel Sheppard's permission."
"Which one is he in?" the ghost asked.
"On our right, sir."
Danny turned back to his fiance. "Are you alright here?"
She nodded. "Just go, I'm fine."
He teleported away and the goth swayed a bit on her feet. One of the Marines reached out and steadied her before directing her towards an empty seat next to him. "Are you sure you're alright, Ms. Manson?"
Sam nodded, holding her head as she sat down. She glanced over and noted it was Sergeant Ume who had asked. "I'm alright, Sergeant, just overdid it a bit," she answered before looking around at the others. "We need to turn around–it's a trap. The Harriers are gone."
The soldiers looked alarmed at her words.
Meanwhile, Danny popped in the Osprey the pilot indicated, barely becoming corporeal before calling for John.
"Captain?" John answered, getting out of his seat. Then he saw the wound on Danny's shoulder and the river of ecto-plasm that was trailing down the man's chest and back. "Holy hell, Phantom, what happened?"
The ghost shook his head. "Not important right now. You need to order these birds back to base–the Harriers are gone. They're luring in our aircraft to take them out."
"Are you sure?"
"As sure as I'll ever be," Danny confirmed.
John's eyes darted between Danny's for a moment before he reached up and tapped the com in his ear. "Abort mission. I repeat–abort mission. All birds back to base," he commanded.
The ghost went to breathe a sigh of relief but choked when we went to take the breath and only felt searing pain. He coughed, bringing his hand up. When he pulled it away, it was covered in ecto-plasm.
"Are you sure you're alright? A shot like that would've killed me." John asked, highly skeptical.
"In case you've forgotten, Sheppard, I'm not human," Danny replied, glancing at the Lt. Col. before taking an offered handkerchief from a Marine. He nodded his thanks before reaching out and grabbing onto the ceiling as the Osprey turned around sharply. "It was likely a lung shot. As long as I don't try to draw breath, I'll be fine."
"Sir!" the pilot called suddenly. "Enemy F-35's inbound."
John saw the look in Danny's eyes. "Don't, Captain; you're not in any shape to confront a damn jet of all things."
That only made the ghost more determined and his look hardened. "We aren't losing a single Osprey on my watch. As I told one of them, I am the first line of defense. They won't reach the second." He teleported from the Osprey before Sheppard could respond.
The choppers Sheppard and Sam were in had been the leading Ospreys on the way to the city, but now that they'd turned around, they were in the back. The ghost felt a tingle of panic when it was those two Ospreys that released flares, a good indicator that the two F-35's had heat seeking missiles locked on to them.
The missiles were fast, Danny knew that from experience, so he was going to have to be faster. He spotted them coming and put himself in the line of fire of the closest one. He raised his left hand and aimed, concentrating before releasing the shot. It struck true and the ghost felt relief that he'd hit it.
He missed the second one, so as it approached the Osprey, Danny teleported to it, remembering how he'd managed to take out one of the missiles the Blackhawk had sent at him during his first few weeks in China all those years ago. He used his left arm and grabbed the missile, barely being able to hold it with just one arm, and forced its flight path down and under the Osprey. When he was close enough to the ground he released it and it hit the ground, exploding and sending dirt in all directions.
As Danny started heading back for the Ospreys he noticed one of the jets had fired another missile. It was headed directly for the one Sam was in. He teleported to it, but this time it slipped through his grasp. "Sam!" he yelled as the missile bore down on the chopper.
Right before it collided, the entire Osprey disappeared. Danny blinked before looking around. "Where the hell did it go?"
The missile sailed through the air where the chopper had been before spiraling and exploding in the air, its target no longer in range.
The jets were still pursuing and Danny knew he couldn't do this alone. He flared his core, waiting barely seconds before Vlad appeared in front of him. "Daniel?" he asked, eyes going to the gaping wound in Danny's chest, eyes widening.
"I need a little help," the young man said quickly.
"With what?"
"That!" Danny pointed as an F-35 rocketed towards them. It fired up its cannon, causing the pair of ghosts to teleport away.
"Well, this isn't exactly what I expected to be doing today!" Vlad said as he teleported just to the front and side of the jet's path. He then erected a shield in front of it. The F-35 collided with the shield and blew up, the sound nearly deafening.
"Why the hell didn't I think of that?" Danny chided himself before doing the same with the second jet. He looked around but didn't see anything else chasing them. The few remaining enemy choppers were already leaving the area and he couldn't hear anything in the clouds.
Still, he took off after the Ospreys and stayed with them as they returned to base, Vlad joining him. "I need to find Sam," the young ghost said.
"You got separated?" the billionaire asked.
Danny nodded. "She was in an Osprey that one of the jets attacked. I was too slow to get the missile, but then the aircraft just disappeared. I have no idea where it is."
A worried look crossed Vlad's face, but he remained quiet. It took them longer than Danny wanted for them to make it back, but as the base came into sight, he felt relief as he spotted Sam's Osprey on the tarmac.
They landed and the ghost looked around frantically. Lt. Lorne saw his superior quietly freaking out and jogged over to him. "Captain! If you're looking for Ms. Manson, she's in medical." He slowed and stared at Danny's wound. "Whoa…Looks like you need to go there, too, sir."
"Is she okay?" the ghost asked.
"She did something funky with the Osprey, sir, and then started seizing," Lorne explained.
"Shit," Danny cursed. "Thank you," he said quickly before he and Vlad teleported to the medical building.
They appeared amongst the cots to find Sam was the only patient. They were quite surprised to see Bruce was already there and looking her over. General Hammond was also there speaking with Dr. Tanning.
The general was the first to notice them as they hurriedly walked up. "Captain, good Lord, you need to sit down," he said, astonished that Danny was upright.
"I'm fine, sir," Danny answered as he saluted. "I've been through worse. How is she? What the hell happened? And how is Bruce here?"
The general ignored the young man's tone and explained, "I figured he'd be needed seeing as how you two decided to go after them alone, so I called him as soon as you left. As for Sam, near as we can tell from the eyewitness reports of some very confused Marines, she teleported the entire Osprey here with everyone in it and then had a seizure."
"Son of a bitch," Danny said, grabbing Sam's hand.
"Are you sure?" Vlad asked, looking concerned. "That's not possible."
Bruce nodded and answered this time. "They described it to a T, including the purple smoke. They just suddenly went from flying over the city to directly above the base."
"It scared the daylights out of the pilots," George added.
Danny noticed the odd look on the billionaire's face when he started to speak again. "You don't understand–that kind of power isn't possible," Vlad said. "The amount of power it would take to teleport an entire moving object as big as an Osprey with every soul on board over that distance should have killed her."
"Is she okay?" Danny asked desperately, eyes pleading with Bruce.
The doctor nodded. "Other than the seizure, she seems okay." The ghost lowered his head in relief until Bruce continued. "But the baby is weak."
"What?" Danny snapped, watching as the man wrapped Sam's belly with a strap. It had a small square thing on the front and when Bruce hit a button, they could suddenly hear a thumping noise.
"That's the baby's heartbeat and it's far slower than it should be," the doctor explained.
The ghost swallowed the lump in his throat. "Is she losing it?"
Dr. Tanning shook his head and gave Danny a sympathetic look. "I'm not sure. She's not bleeding, which is a good sign, but that won't matter if the baby's heart stops."
"Is there anything we can do?" Vlad asked this time.
The man shook his head. "It's far too early, and the baby is much too small to be able to do much. We'll have to wait and see. I am going to do an ultrasound to see if, by some small miracle, we can see anything."
"You should get looked at yourself, Captain. You're getting…whatever that green stuff is all over the floor," George said kindly.
"I'm fine," Danny reiterated. "It can wait until after the ultrasound."
"Stubborn as a mule, that one," Vlad commented fondly.
Bruce powered on the ultrasound machine and pulled Sam's shirt up a little. He applied the gel and then placed the wand on her abdomen, moving it around. Soon, he had the dark bubble on the screen and they watched nervously.
Everyone, even Danny who had no general idea as to what he was looking at, knew something wasn't right. At the very center of the tiny blob was the heart, but directly next to it was an odd reflection, almost like a light shining.
"That's not normal, is it?" Danny asked, confused.
"It is not," Bruce replied, hitting buttons on the machine and moving the wand around.
"It's a core," Vlad said suddenly, voice full of wonder. "It's a ghost core and it's been activated."
Danny's gaze met his. "You don't think–"
"-that the baby helped her teleport the Osprey? I don't know," Vlad answered after finishing Danny's question. "Even the two of you together shouldn't be able to do that. You'd need both the Crown of Fire and the Ring of Rage."
Bruce took some images before turning off the machine and wiping her stomach. Vlad then took Bruce's place and held his hand over Sam's stomach. He closed his eyes and placed his palm on her skin. Just as soon as he touched her, he snapped his hand back as though he'd been burned, eyes wide.
"What's wrong?" Danny asked impatiently, his anxiety getting the better of him.
"Put your hand on her stomach, Daniel."
The young man looked nervous, but he put Sam's hand down and tentatively reached over, placing his palm where Vlad had. There was a sudden surge of power, an energy so raw and wild that it sent sparks behind his eyes and made his entire body feel as though he'd been shocked, like pins and needles all over him. He retracted his hand quickly and stared in stunned silence.
"What's going on?" the general asked.
"That child is the most powerful thing I've ever felt," Vlad responded.
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2/7/2025: This chapter would've been done sooner if it hadn't run away with itself!