King of Clubs

Ghost hunting is the part of his life he didn’t choose.

[andrei-skelepina]

[The Ghost Prince]

While I’m cleaning more recent artworks, I’ll gladly share with you my favorites of the last Inktober :)

This one is a tribute to my first hardcore fandom and the one I always will be part of it~ I had an awful number of arts about him but I’m certain this one is a new one >uO

[leda-x]

Happy Truce Day, ectoplasmiic. Danielle? Good choice, friend. Good choice.

[starrforge]

Names Johnny 13 kid.

[dpkingofclubs]

King of Clubs—Epilogue: Anniversary

Summary:

Ghost hunting is the part of his life he didn’t choose. No free will there.

It gets tiring as the years go by; lies and excuses pile up, as do failing grades and missed classes. There’s the guilt: knowing your two best friends won’t get to be teenagers, knowing your family trusts and loves you even though you lie. Your sister has to lie too and it’s especially unfair because she knows about the psychology behind lies (and even though you don’t understand a lick of it, you know it can’t be any good). And there’s a feeling, nagging at you, settled in the pit of your stomach, that says: you know this isn’t you, but this is who you’ll always be.

Those are the cards dealt for him, and this game is starting to take its toll—until an unplanned move gives him one more, and suddenly the tables are turned. In his favor? Who knows. He certainly doesn’t.

Rating: T for some language, it’s not a big deal.

FF.net link

Story Table of Contents

***

Prompts used in this chapter:

***

They rebuilt the roller coaster.

It took a year, but it was rebuilt, this time with ghost-proof materials courtesy of his parents. He hadn’t known a thing about it until a couple weeks ago.

Seeing it doesn’t quite bother him the same way it did a year ago. He still finds it unusual, just like the looks and attention he got at school during the past two months, but he has made peace with it. He thinks, if that thing got a second chance, maybe it’s fair that he gets one, too.

And he did get one. He’s been talking a lot with Jazz lately, trying to get a hold on his sanity again. It’s really strange, to dissect and analyze everything he thinks of. Not that he hasn’t done this before—it’s hardly the first time he talks with Jazz—but this time is different.

His conversation with Scepter and Iris (or whatever they were) left him worried. He knows he can become Dan, that he has been close to that breaking point before. So he’s making a conscious effort to understand why that could happen, and how to stop it.

Also in this vein, he has made sure to spend time with his friends more often, hanging out the way they’re supposed to at this age. To be perfectly honest, sometimes it’s still kind of strange to think that he has a girlfriend, and that’s the first indicator that he’s not doing something right.

So he’s trying to do things right.

Among those things stands Valerie. Sam says Valerie really made a difference during the fight against Vlad’s drones, and that she helped her and Tucker get through school during those difficult three months. They’re hardly best friends, but Danny thinks they’re getting there. It’s nice to be friends with Valerie again.

He also told Tucker that he’s cool with him liking his sister (which he is—on most days). It was one of the weirder conversations they’ve had, but he got his point across. Tucker blew him off with something about “taking his time” and ended the conversation. They haven’t really touched upon it again, which is perfectly alright by both of them.

Other weird things: school. Graduation came and went, which was a weird affair for him because he didn’t graduate. He has to take classes during the summer to pull his grades up and earn three months’ worth of credits, a task that might have been impossible without the “ghost kid” rep backing him. That’s not to say that he’s a shoe-in—he has to earn those credits, on his own merit, or else the deal is off.

He’s okay with that. He will graduate, he’s going to make sure of it, and he’s going to attend community college in the fall—as will Sam. Tucker, on the other hand, was invited to a study abroad program in Europe, and he’s off to reconcile with everything tech. The decision wasn’t easy for Tucker, but Danny understands. Tucker never had any real interest in the paranormal, not from the beginning—he may have developed something similar over the years, but this isn’t the life he wants.

Strangely, Danny can say now that maybe it is the one he wants. He can’t quite believe it, but he thinks that after everything he has been through, every burden he has shouldered, he can’t just leave. This may not have been the life he wanted, but it is the one he got, and now he doesn’t want to give it up. It’s strange, but strange runs in his family. And Sam loves strange—how could it not be part of their lives?

Tonight is a particularly hot summer evening, but he’s not going to spend it in Amity. It’s the one-year anniversary of his coronation and, according to Anne and History, this means that his trial period is over.

He didn’t even know he had a trial period.

History explained that a vote is held after trial periods end, to determine if Danny gets to keep the crown and ring or not. It’s purely symbolic, of course, because a simple vote can’t actually remove his authority or his hold over the crown and ring. But if the vote doesn’t work in his favor, discontent could act out and trigger a coup, which could manage to remove him from power, if someone else gains ownership of the crown and ring.

He only allows himself to worry a little. If the vote doesn’t work in his favor, he isn’t going to fight back. He’ll surrender the crown and ring to someone else, somehow, before anything else happens. No more attempts at war, he thinks. No war, period.

He’s trying really hard to improve himself and his life, and he doesn’t want anything else getting in the way anymore. The past year has been a mess, and he isn’t going to allow the next to be the same.

***

History called it a formal celebration, but it’s really a party.

Courtesy of Sam’s extensive renovations, a plaza stands smack-dab in the middle of the island, large enough to hold a considerable amount of party-goers. Besides the general chaos settled there, ghosts dot the streets, crowd buildings, roofs… people everywhere.

“Scary, isn’t it?” Sam tells him with a smile that says she’s not scared at all. “They all know your name.”

It is kind of scary, especially given that, somewhere inside of him, he really wants each and every one of them to hold his name in a favorable light. He doesn’t quite understand why he wants the vote to work out in his favor—a year ago, he would have relished the chance to lose.

Sam says that some things aren’t supposed to be understood, just known. As always, she’s probably right, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it.

“Scary is the word,” he responds, watching from his spot on a balcony overlooking the plaza. His parents are here as well, seated along one side of the balcony, watching as well. On the other side are Tucker and Jazz (Valerie politely declined the invitation, chose to keep her reasons to herself).

This feels a little like last month’s graduation party—everyone formal, everyone in a party mood, a happy mood, a generally crowd-like mood that makes the atmosphere feel like it’s closing in on everyone’s goofy grins. It also resembles the party in that he feels like a separate entity, like he’s walking around with bubble wrap lining his limbs. He doesn’t quite belong here the way he didn’t quite belong back there.

He hasn’t graduated, and he doesn’t yet have a motive to be in a party mood. The vote hasn’t been cast yet.

And—here’s the thing—maybe it’s wrong of him, but he can’t stop thinking about everything he shouldn’t be thinking about right now. The first element on this list is Vlad—he hasn’t been around for a while now. His trial already happened, the verdict should be out in less than a week.

That’s not the issue so much as the news he received no more than a week ago: a psychologist talked with Vlad for some time, studied him properly. She, the psychologist, really does think Vlad is off his rocker. “Obsessed” is the word she used, when trying to use lighter terms to explain to Danny’s very distraught parents. Danny doesn’t think she realized how strangely appropriate her choice of phrasing sounded.

Vlad probably is crazy, a properly crazy fruitloop just as he always thought, but Danny doesn’t feel any gratification in knowing he was right. That’s the thing no one tells you about winning: you don’t feel so great once you remember to look around and watch how the losing party is doing.

He doesn’t know how to feel. Vlad tried to kill him, insane or not, and he hurt his parents. He attacked Amity without remorse, said so himself. What finally did him in? When did Vlad reach a breaking point, go past the point of no return?

The biggest question: could Danny have done something about it?

He hasn’t told anyone about these thoughts, though he intends to tell Jazz soon enough (definitely before she returns to college). Problem is, everything looks so perfect, everyone has all these great hopes for the future. Sam smiles so much all the time, lights up every time she sees him. It’s hard for him to understand how she and the others must feel, to have thought at some point that they’d never talk to him again, and to now see everything returning to normal, everything getting better.

Well, maybe he can understand it. Kind of. Clockwork is for the most part sane now, again, can form complete and complex thoughts and such, and can communicate them. But he still mumbles a lot, and when he tries to get in touch with his powers again, he’s overwhelmed.

He doesn’t talk much about what happened to him while Vlad had him in captivity. From the bits Danny has pieced together, he concludes that he was probably hit several times with the same gun that rendered Danny’s powers useless for short spans of time. The effects on a full ghost, as opposed to a half-ghost, could explain what happened to Clockwork. He also thinks there was violence involved, somehow. Sometimes he forgets that Clockwork has enemies the same way he does.

He wishes Clockwork were here, to see how far he has come, but today is a mumbling day. A nurse ghost, an old lady called Susan, takes care of Clockwork every now and then, on occasions like this, when everyone is out while Clockwork is stuck at the house. He’s not here today because it’s a mumbling day, rather than a lucid one.

Tucker said once that, while Danny was in coma, everyone else worked hard to make sure that things would be better once he woke up. That that’s what kept them going. This is more or less what Danny is doing right now: doing his best so he can show his mentor everything he has accomplished, once he’s in the right state of mind to appreciate it.

Sam’s fingers tighten around his, briefly, bringing him back to the balcony. “You’re up,” she says.

The ice in his stomach is curiously absent, but that doesn’t mean his fingertips aren’t trembling with nerves. “Wish me luck?”

She shakes her head. “You don’t need it.”

That’s a very Sam thing to say, he figures, but something about the way she says it translates to something stronger: I have faith in you, is what she’s really saying, what she has always said.

“Thanks,” he says. Her smile says that she can understand the subtext behind that, the grateful undertones of for putting up with me and for being here and the million others that he’s not eloquent enough to say out loud.

She moves to stand at her spot beside Tucker, and then he’s alone with the buzz of voices quieting into a murmur.

There’s a small microphone pinned to suit, inside the outline of the letter D, so he taps it once, sees a tiny green light blink to life and says as calm as he can manage: “Don’t worry, I won’t take too long.”

A polite bout of laughter from the crowd, then silence again. Silence he’s supposed to fill up with the sound of his voice. He rehearsed this in his head for ages, trying to find the best way to say what he means to say. He doesn’t quite feel like he’s improvising, but then, he doesn’t really feel prepared either. Ghostwriter offered to help, he turned him down. Why did he turn him down?

“A year ago,” he starts, choosing the introduction he finds easiest to voice, “I stood in a spot like this one, talking to you just like I am right now. That day, I tried to offer you a choice, tried to negotiate some way to keep this ordeal fair. I guess the same is happening here.

“I know a lot of you were skeptical. I’m pretty sure you guys didn’t act out against me because, really, how much of a threat could I be? I was your safest bet, convenient. I couldn’t see it that way back then, but I get it now.

“A lot has happened since then. I’ve learned, mostly through trial and error, what exactly I got myself into a year ago. I understand that now, for the most part. If you agree—if your opinion of me has changed—I want things to stay the way they are. Unless you ask me to, I won’t step down.

“If you do want me to step down, if your opinion of me hasn’t changed, I want to clarify that I won’t put up a fight. I said this last year, too—we’ll figure something out. I’m not a tyrant or a dictator. If I ever do become one, here’s permission to lock me up in a thermos until I learn my lesson.

“The past year was difficult. I don’t want to relive it. That’s my promise, if a promise is what you wanted to hear: I’ll do my best to keep from making the same mistakes twice. I suppose it’s a weak promise, but it’s honest. I can’t be sure I won’t mess up. In fact, I probably will mess up—but at least you’ll know I don’t mean to, and that I’ll fix my mistakes.

“I guess that’s it. I don’t want to try to convince you to think that your best bet is to cast a vote in my favor, because maybe it’s not. Or maybe it is. Your choice.” He pauses, awkward. “Um, thank you.”

There’s no applause here—that’s not how this works. Ghosts voting in his favor will rise, floating to stand more or less at eye-level with him. Ghosts against him will stay on the ground. It’s purely symbolic, History said.

For a moment he doesn’t know if the outcome is favorable or not—ghosts crowd his vision and leave him momentarily unable to look down at the empty streets.

***

Later on that night, he and Sam join the crowd in the middle of the plaza and dance. Surrounded by people in every direction, he thinks that he doesn’t quite feel like he’s covered in bubble wrap anymore—rather, as if he has found common ground with something strange yet familiar, something that has given him the chance to become someone he wants to be.

The End.

[sizzlyart]

we interrupt your regularly scheduled dragons for some 2000’s nostalgia

[dpkingofclubs]

King of Clubs—15: Torture

Summary:

Ghost hunting is the part of his life he didn’t choose. No free will there.

It gets tiring as the years go by; lies and excuses pile up, as do failing grades and missed classes. There’s the guilt: knowing your two best friends won’t get to be teenagers, knowing your family trusts and loves you even though you lie. Your sister has to lie too and it’s especially unfair because she knows about the psychology behind lies (and even though you don’t understand a lick of it, you know it can’t be any good). And there’s a feeling, nagging at you, settled in the pit of your stomach, that says: you know this isn’t you, but this is who you’ll always be.

Those are the cards dealt for him, and this game is starting to take its toll—until an unplanned move gives him one more, and suddenly the tables are turned. In his favor? Who knows. He certainly doesn’t.

Rating: T for some language, it’s not a big deal.

FF.net link

Story Table of Contents

***

Prompts used in this chapter:

***

Danny’s first comatose month speeds by for his friends. Thing is, they can’t focus on being emotional wrecks when they have other things to worry about, thousands of questions to answer, an island and a town to rebuild, criminals to question and lock up.

Tucker watches everything from a prudent, quiet distance. He gets involved, but not quite as much as the others do. Mostly, he keeps an eye on the girls.

Jazz goes back to school on time, a week after the events of January eleventh. She returns to Amity a week after that, with a signed document allowing her a semester off school. She says that her scholarship might be on the line for it; she also says she doesn’t quite care.

Just because she’s not doing schoolwork doesn’t mean she’s not working. She tasks herself with answering Amity’s questions, becomes an advocate for ghosts when the people start to consider pulling the GIW into this mess. Dani gets involved shortly after, and together the girls launch the Identity Project into the ghost-human relations phase.

Besides this task, Dani keeps busy visiting Anne & History, keeps them updated. They’re keeping a close eye on everything, but they only ever ask Dani their questions. They don’t butt in much, though Tucker has seen them visiting Danny every now and then at the Far Frozen.

Given Danny’s particular condition and past experiences and traumas, Sam and Tucker agreed early on that hospitals are out of the question. So they’ve entrusted Frostbiteto the task of restoring their best friend to life, settled for hoping for the best. Tucker supposes that this is the best, in a sense—Danny is perfectly fine. By the end of his first month asleep, his bruises are gone, his bones are mended, his blood is replenished. Normal heartbeat, normal breathing, normal everything.

But his eyes are perpetually closed.

And despite them being closed, Sam spends about an hour every night watching over him, re-reading his progress charts (they always read the same) and sometimes just talking to him. Tucker spends half of that hour with her. Now more than ever, his parents don’t want him out before midnight, so he has taken care to arrive home a little early.

He also leaves early because he knows she won’t break down in front of him, and keeping everything in while watching Danny sleep takes a toll on her. He doesn’t know if she cries or screams or does anything out of the ordinary once he leaves—Frostbite hasn’t mentioned anything and he doesn’t want to ask.

For all intents and purposes, she’s fine. She just misses him, and even that she keeps to herself sometimes. She does her schoolwork, has a fairly decent relationship with her parents (which is more than he would’ve expected a year ago), still acts like his best friend. She continues to plow through the Census Project and works on the island, rebuilding everything that the fire consumed.

She wears the crown and ring together while she works. Tucker doesn’t think it’s healthy for her, and he’s pretty sure that if Clockwork were in his right mind, he’d agree with him.

But Clockwork isn’t in his right mind. He’s a wide-awake sleepwalker intent on exploring every last corner of the rebuilt place housing him and Dani at the island. No one else is about to argue this point (or anything, really) with Sam, so the problem remains. This is the first phase of her coping: overworking. He shouldn’t wake up to this mess, she says every time he brings it up. He supposes she’s right, but he doesn’t remember the island being quite so large or ornate before it burned down.

***

The second month, in comparison, is slow and difficult on everyone.

Jazz and Dani are still working on the Identity Project. They recently announced that, officially, the definition of person will switch from human being regarded as an individual to simply being regarded as an individual. This means progress, but now that more people are involved with the Identity Project, its progress has slowed, as does anything that gets the authorities involved.

Jazz finds another distraction before she can start regretting her semester off school: after hearing Dani’s recount of the battle with Dan, she sets out to ponder on the little details, as per usual. Tucker has helped her, assuming his role of personal assistant and  working the nitty-gritty of sorting out details. Based on the evidence gathered during her meetings with Spectra and a close analysis of Dan’s behavior, she comes up with the concept of ghost rage.

“They manage negative emotions with more ease than they do positive ones,” she says. “It’s visible even in their biology, how their strength is fueled more by bitterness or by ire. I think this is why they act out, why they exhibit their obsessive behaviors with violence.”

It takes her three weeks of research and thinking to come up with the solution: “They need an outlet. It’s natural, it’s not something they should repress, but that doesn’t mean violence is the answer. They need an outlet.”

As the third month approaches, she and Sam work on introducing some sort of tournament, an event that’ll allow the ghosts to beat themselves to the ground in a relatively safe environment. Jazz means to test her theory with this event, keeping a close watch on all the participants.

Tucker thinks her idea is brilliant. He also thinks it’s her way of keeping close to her brother, who is always a few minutes away from her workplace in the Ghost Zone. He doesn’t say anything, though, only helps her in any way he can and cheers her on when she’s stumped.

Dani counts herself out of this one, starts spending even more time with Anne and History. At some point, the Fentons talk to her about schooling, about living in Amity with them while Sam rebuilds the island (as if they don’t know the island isn’t being re-built so much as it’s being over-built). Tucker doesn’t know the particulars, but he does know she took it the wrong way, thought they meant to replace Danny with her.

A few days after that episode, she apologizes but politely declines the offer, insists that Anne and History are the best tutors she could ask for. She doesn’t visit Amity quite so frequently after that. Sam keeps him updated, says she’s still living in her room at the island, that she spends a lot of time with Anne and History or training with Frostbite.

Meanwhile, Sam enters some sort of emotional phase. Her temper becomes a shorter fuse by the hour, and at first she takes it out on everyone. Tucker thinks it’s the influence of the crown and ring; he enters a nasty argument with her over the subject.

The day after the argument, she apologizes, says she’s going to do something about it. No, she won’t stop wearing them—someone has to, and that someone isn’t going to be the coma patient. She says she’s going to help Walker out at the prison, conducting trials. Verbal abuse is her favorite kind of abuse, and it seems that she’ll be able to dish out as much of it as she likes at Vlad’s trial.

Tucker doesn’t think that’s a very healthy way of kicking herself out of that mood, but he’s not about to enter another argument with her. So while she and Jazz prepare for the experimental tournaments, she also travels to and from Walker’s prison.

Vlad’s trial takes four days, after which he’s released to trial and sentence in the human world. Ghost law is different from human law. You get locked up if they can’t find anything for you to do—but if they can… Sam says that the jury (basically Walker and some of his guards chosen at random) figured that Vlad would suffer far more through humiliation in the human world than he would behind bars in the Ghost Zone.

She also mentions that he will not be allowed to use his ghost powers for a year. Tucker isn’t quite sure how Walker plans to accomplish that, but he decides he doesn’t really want to know.

When Sam explains this, she doesn’t have mirth in her eyes. When she tells the Fentons, they don’t really react. Justice is uncomfortable business—after a while, no one really wants to hear about it anymore.

Sam stops working with Walker after Vlad’s trial, which ends just two days before the end of the second month. She does, however, consent to join the dozen or so guards that escort him back to the human world on the day after the trial. She is present when Vlad is delivered to the authorities, in what she later describes as a quiet room with lots of quiet people.

She skips school the next day.

Human law is tedious and slow. Vlad’s verdict won’t be out for a while, but at this point, no one really cares anymore.

***

The third month, Tucker thinks, is the worst of all.

It is not slow and it is not fast. It is time walking by while people start thinking about graduation at school, while Dani starts up a formal apprenticeship with History and Anne, while Clockwork finally stops mumbling to himself and starts mumbling to others. Tucker still doesn’t know what Vlad’s guys did to Clockwork, has had some time to conclude that maybe he’d rather stay ignorant.

Among other developments: the Fentons start attending paranormal-studies conferences again during this month. By the end of it, they’re giving them out. His and Sam’s parents are moving on and trying very hard to pretend that nothing happened during the twenty-four hours between January tenth and January twelfth.

Neither he nor Sam have done anything to try to persuade them to think otherwise.

Dani also resumes travelling, though she leaves for short periods spanning three to ten days, always leaving some sort of notice beforehand. In the spaces between trips, she spends her time working on her apprenticeship with Anne and History.

Every remaining trial in the Ghost Zone has been taken care of, though Spectra and Bertrand are missing. Jazz spoke with Walker on the matter—if they don’t show up, the warden promised not to go looking for them. Jazz says she’d rather finish compiling her notes on Spectra’s behavior before explaining the reasoning behind that crazy deal.

Jazz is still working on the ghost rage tests. She’s now following volunteer ghosts around for a few days at a time, taking notes. She says she’ll probably do this for a month or two before compiling those notes and drafting a report. She’s keeping busy. She doesn’t seem to regret her semester off school.

But she, like Sam, is still keeping a very close eye on Danny. Tucker doesn’t think Dani has abandoned hope on him, but Sam for one had some pretty nasty things to say on that matter during her angry phase. Jazz sides with Tucker on this one: this is how Dani copes with her issues—when they get too pressing, she runs away.

Tucker left Sam to her opinions that one time, not wanting to trigger another argument. She apologized for it a few days later, Dani never heard a word about it.

During one visit, Frostbite confides that Dani has visited, a few times, just to look at him. She doesn’t say a thing to anyone, and then she walks back out. Returns the following week.

Sam and Jazz still visit daily, as does he. The Fentons sometimes accompany him on the Speeder, if they’re not out on a trip, but for the most part they visit on weekends in the morning. That’s the bad thing about being an adult, he figures—you’ve got to prioritize in every way you don’t want to.

The third month rolls by, and nearing the end comes Sam’s birthday, April eighth. It’s not a good birthday. She spends it smiling as politely as she can, trying to pretend for the sake of everyone else’s pretending. In the evening, she and Tucker spend her usual six hours in the Ghost Zone. Some ghosts come up to give her their best, so she spends about four of those hours smiling politely.

The fifth one, she makes Tucker swear he won’t say a word, and cries, because this is the first birthday in twelve years that he’s not celebrating with her, and she’s scared to think it’s the first of many. Of the rest of them.

The sixth hour she spends seated at Danny’s bedside, reading the same progress charts she can already recite in her sleep.

***

All of this is not to say that Tucker does not deal with his own coping methods. And it doesn’t mean that the Fentons have not moped and kicked and cried and worried. It doesn’t mean that his and Sam’s parents aren’t immersed in shock, trying to kick the weird out of their lives for the sake of normalcy. It doesn’t mean that life at Casper hasn’t been strange, with weird looks and strange questions following them around in the halls.

But the four of them are kind of untouchable by everything else. They watch and manipulate what happens around them, but that’s just the thing—it all happens around, like the eye of a hurricane, and this is why Tucker chooses to watch only the other three. Danny calls them “the girls” plain and simple, basically because they’re the three females their lives revolve around. They’re even more special to him than they are to Tucker, and this leaves the latter with a sense of duty to his best friend: he’s going to take care of their girls.

This ishis coping method. He butts in on everything, keeps tabs on them at all times. He keeps notes, meaning to make a full report, tells himself that he’s making sure everything will be in order when Danny wakes up.  

If Danny wakes up.

Tucker can’t stand to look at him for too long when he’s visiting. It’s not that the makeshift hospital room he’s staying in makes him queasy—it’s not like a hospital, it isn’t a hospital, it doesn’t bother him. It’s how lifeless he looks, perfectly unmoving except for the rise and fall of his chest, the single physical reminder that he’s asleep but not permanently. Supposedly.

He can’t stand to look at him and wonder if someday he’ll just stop breathing. It’s morbid and uncomfortable, he hasn’t told anyone about it (how could he, when everyone out there has to cope with unspoken thoughts of their own?). But that’s what he thinks, when he looks at his best friend. He hasn’t spoken to him in three months.

It bothers him, how life has gone on without him. Although his presence is constant in his mind, and in the others’, his presence is not palpable or visible for twenty-three hours every day, and he has adjusted to that—out of necessity. They’ve rebuilt, worked on trials, answered questions, endured stares. Eventually, they’ve gotten used to it. Tucker hates it.

This is the aftermath. This is the seemingly unending process they’ve faced from the moment silence settled around Amity on the evening of January eleventh. It’d be easier to bear, knowing he’ll wake up. There’s satisfaction in watching the city rise and move on, in seeing Jazz and Dani send the Identity Project into the ghost-human relations phase, in watching something old become something better.

But he’s bitter because everyone is working so hard. Everyone wants everything to be perfect when he wakes up—show him this and that, tell him the good news, look at what I did. They want him to wake up and sigh in relief, see him sit back into his bed and listen eagerly to everything they’ve got to say. That will be real satisfaction, to know that this one burden they really did manage to pull off his shoulders.

They’re working so hard to make things better, for everyone and for him. While the former category has been grateful and critical and everything in between, the latter is asleep, and no one knows if he will or won’t wake up.

Clockwork could tell them, except his powers are still messed up. On days he’s more lucid, he says that his powers come and go, says that everything he sees is untrustworthy and best left unsaid. He always caps it off with a simple and defeated I don’t know, and that’s disconcerting. Clockwork is supposed to know.

But life goes on, Danny sleeps the months away, and no one knows.

***

Danny knows he’s asleep.

He feels as though he is omnipresent within his mind. More clearly than ever, he can pull out and sort through specific memories and bits of information at a whim. He knows exactly everything he knows, all at once, and it’s not quite that disconcerting. It comes to him naturally.

It is strange, though, in the sense that he is clear-headed. He can sift through ideas with ease and watch they take form and depth. It has been a long time since he last felt this way. It’s a subtle form of confidence, and that’s the first factor that keeps him sane during this strange experience.

He doesn’t think he’s dead, but sometimes he wonders if he really is alive. Is he stuck in here? Is this some sorry excuse for limbo, living inside his own head, left alone with his thoughts, forever?

He hopes not.

At first he spends some time sifting through long-forgotten memories, mostly enjoying himself while he relives some of his best moments with his friends. Though it doesn’t get old soon, it does get old, as worry begins to consume him. He has to get out. He has to return.

He can’t feel his body. This is fantastic, because he can’t feel that damned broken nose anymore, but it’s terrible, because shit—what if he has no nose to break anymore?

Well, some part of him thinks, maybe that way you won’t go around breaking them anymore.

This bit of his conscience begins to poke and prod, reminding him that he has been a sorry idiot for a while now. This is the downside of this newfound mental clarity: he is perfectly aware of how badly he has messed up as of late.

This becomes the second factor that keeps desperation at bay: he metaphorically sits down to think, really think. He looks over things he has done and said, analyzes from an uncomfortably objective point of view. He watches his fears from a distance, but close enough to understand how they feel. He cringes at his poorer moments, things like his argument with Sam and the time he broke Dash’s nose.

His mistakes line up before him, and for a while, the only thing he does is scrutinize them and see everything he has been doing wrong. Recurring themes in his life boil down to fear—fear of becoming evil, fear of being alone, fear of messing up, fear of losing or hurting the people he loves. Fear is his real antagonist, the force that feeds his insecurities, problems and flaws.

It’s strange. He always knew this, but thinking about this feels like a realization. He feels a little stupid because of it.

It would be too much to say that he makes peace with his inner demons. He does acknowledge them, at least a significant portion of them, and he tries to feel proud of himself for this. But as he thinks more and more on these things, his mood falls, and a small thought suddenly breaks through his calm: how long has he been thinking?

This is the factor that pushes everything else aside and makes panic (fear) settle in like fog.

He isn’t aware of time in here. Things don’t feel like they consume time; they only happen, start and end, in the space of a second that lasts a millennium. Because of this twisted feeling of always beginning and never ending, he figures he could have spent a year or a day in this funk.

This worry is beginning to drive him mad when the first oddity arrives.

The oddity says her name is Iris, which scares the crap out of him, enough to bring him back to his senses. He’s no history buff, but he know she’s supposed to have… faded.

Wait. Is that what happened to him? Has he faded and gone to… wherever it is that faded ghosts go? Does this mean he is dead?

Iris rolls her eyes at him, though if asked, he wouldn’t be able to say what color or shape or size her eyes are. She says, though he can’t quite identify the tone of her voice: “You are alive. Take comfort in that.”

Something compels him to believe her. He decides that, even if she is lying, he wants to believe her. For now.

He can’t quite speak in here—it’s his head. His voice is everywhere, even though his vocal chords probably don’t exist in this place.

She seems to understand him just fine when he says, or perhaps thinks: Am I going to get out of here?

She nods, though he doesn’t exactly see her do it. “We’re going to have a conversation. Then I’ll let you go.”

You’re keeping me here?

This question triggers oddity number two. Somehow he knows, the way you know in a dream, that this new, though still unidentifiable voice is Scepter’s: “We both are.”

This is among the strangest things that have happened to him, but he goes along with it, because Iris said the magic words—“I’ll let you go.” So he answers: How? It’s my head.

“Yes, we’re very familiar with it,” Iris says.

Why?

“We’re not really here,” Scepter says. “Iris and Scepter are gone and they won’t be coming back. I am your crown.”

“I am your ring,” Iris continues. “The objects are not sentient, boy, but they capture bits of their users’ essences over time. We are manifestations of those essences, here to give you a warning.”

Danny thinks he was better off believing Iris and Scepter were alive and kicking somewhere in his head.  A warning?

Something flickers around him, like a TV turning on or someone turning a dial on a scratchy radio. Then Sam’s voice floats into his thoughts, and he doesn’t bother wondering if it’s the real thing or not—he knows it is. If he could only figure out where it’s coming from…

“You know,” Sam says, “it bothers me a little that people are dismissing Vlad’s attack as a big scare, like some sort of elaborate prank. Like everyone is suddenly embarrassed to admit that they were honestly afraid.

“It was a small attack. He had few allies. He meant to threaten you with the big ghosts, experiments of his meant to look imposing and take a few hits for him. He wanted to scare you into surrender—he hadn’t actually planned for a fight. Everything went downhill for him after you defeated Dan, you see.

“His trial ends today. I’m going to stop working at the prison after that. I think—”

Her voice is cut off, and something within Danny constricts. He wanted to continue listening, wanted to know what she thought. What had she meant, stop working at the prison? Walker’s prison?

“The people of your town are right,” Iris says. “That attack was small. We cannot see the future, boy. We don’t know if you’ll ever have to face anything greater.”

“But supposing you do,” Scepter says, “you must be strong. This entity you call Dan—he is not here anymore. But you can still become him, and I think you already knew that.”

He… does. When did that happen? The stirring sensation in his gut when he blew Dan into oblivion, when he overshadowed Freakshow. The indifference in his mind when he first punched Dash, when he saw that Vlad was about to crash to his death. There’s something evil inside of everyone, and he is no exception.

Iris nods, as if she knows that he’s thinking about this, which she probably does. “Power is overwhelming and it can corrupt even the best people. Don’t feel guilty about this, only prepare.”

“This warning,” Scepter says, “is best defined as a defense mechanism. You overused your power in a small space of time, and it drained you. It could have killed you. You could have become Dan, too. A new, different version of him that likely would have been worse than what you knew.”

Iris says: “By entrapping you within your own thoughts, we have given you time to sort your priorities and reflect on your actions. This is the only warning you will ever receive, Danny. After this, you are alone in your judgment. We are not real. We cannot do anything for you after this. Do you understand?”

He thinks about that for a while. In this state of mental clarity, he finds it easy to be honest when he says: I understand.

 “Then our purpose has been served,” Scepter says. “You may leave.”

***

Opening his eyes is a serious effort, akin to the feeling he gets waking up for school after cramming for a test, but worse. When his pupils adjust, though, the effort is worth it, so worth it, because his two best friends are smiling down at him.

[lilacocclusion]

He’s A Phantom~ to my best friend, Ashley!!

I just wanted to let you know how proud of you I am!! I hope everything is going well for you! I haven’t seen you in a while and start to worry sometimes, but I have faith in you and know great things are coming!

I know how much you love Danny Phantom, so here you go!! I hope he looks alright~~ orz  Can’t tell if he looks like 14 or a girl… or both~~ I’m sorry >xD

Love you so much!!

[dpkingofclubs]

King of Clubs—14: Vlad Masters (P1)

Summary:

Ghost hunting is the part of his life he didn’t choose. No free will there.

It gets tiring as the years go by; lies and excuses pile up, as do failing grades and missed classes. There’s the guilt: knowing your two best friends won’t get to be teenagers, knowing your family trusts and loves you even though you lie. Your sister has to lie too and it’s especially unfair because she knows about the psychology behind lies (and even though you don’t understand a lick of it, you know it can’t be any good). And there’s a feeling, nagging at you, settled in the pit of your stomach, that says: you know this isn’t you, but this is who you’ll always be.

Those are the cards dealt for him, and this game is starting to take its toll—until an unplanned move gives him one more, and suddenly the tables are turned. In his favor? Who knows. He certainly doesn’t.

Rating: T for some language, it’s not a big deal.

FF.net link

Story Table of Contents

***

Prompts used in this chapter:

***

The word murderer is background music within his head. Even though Sam is taking care of his injuries, coating his throat in a viscous substance with warm and delicate fingers, he feels as if he’s still choking.

Dan said he wanted to die. And, technically, he killed himself, didn’t he? His attack on Dan could be categorized as self-defense, right? Self-defense against oneself?

No.

No, there’s no way around it. The bottom line is that someone is gone and he’s still here, and he does not know how to cope with that because it’s his fault. His doing—conscious, deliberate.

It’s a thousand times worse than the time he punched Dash.

He sits in his living room back in Amity, holding still while Sam tends to his injuries. Tucker sits on the couch opposite them, holding his cell phone in one hand while the three of them listen to Jazz on speaker.

“Some people have left,” Jazz says. Her voice is muffled through the phone, so the three of them are extra quiet, listening  closely. “Mom escorts them home, but it feels kind of unnecessary. Nothing happened while you guys were gone.”

Tucker asks something, but Danny doesn’t pay attention. He’s thinking about Dani, who is napping upstairs. He’d really like to take a nap right now. If he were asleep, this would be a nightmare, and all he’d have to do is pinch himself. Then he’d be safe. Everything  that happened in the past few hours would be little more than a stressful stretch of his imagination, and it’d all vanish in the space of a second.

He wouldn’t be a murderer. He would have faced his fears without having to suffer the consequences, and he would act differently. Truth is, he isn’t afraid of Dan anymore, though he’s not sure why—maybe it’s because of some deep and philosophical reason, or maybe it’s because Dan isn’t here and can’t hurt him anymore. Regardless of the reason, the point is that his fears have shifted and now he’s afraid of himself.

He killed someone. He’s a murderer. He’s no better than any of his enemies, and this sole idea begs the question that chills his blood: is he turning into Dan?                                        

A few minutes into his reverie, Tucker’s voice brings him back to his living room, asking the question that turns the whole thing upside down: “How can we be sure that he’s gone? Ghosts can’t die like that.”

He freezes. Sam’s hand stills against his cheek, pressing gauze a little too forcefully into a cut.

He processes what Tucker just said. He hadn’t even considered the possibility—it was too final, how Dan died. Faded. Whatever. He couldn’t have survived that. The idea doesn’t fit in his head, doesn’t make sense.

Sam looks just as confused as he.

No one says anything, so Tucker elaborates: “I mean, we know ghosts fade when their obsessions die out, but—is that what happened? Think about it: humans die from millions of different things, but we don’t know if the same applies to ghosts.”

Sam’s hand remains perfectly unmoving, an imitation of Danny’s body—but at this distance, she must be able to his heart rate picking up.

Jazz responds: “Well, we basically die because our bodies stop working somehow. I guess the equivalent of a body for a ghost is their obsession… so the obsession is the root, but the manifestation of a dead obsession can vary.”

Danny asks, tentatively: “Meaning…?”

“His obsession has to die,” Sam says. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see her hand trembling as she starts to dab at his cut again. “The question of how it dies doesn’t matter—the point is that for Dan to fade, the obsession has to die.”

Tucker nods. “So if we want to know if Dan really is gone…”

“We need to know what his obsession was,” Danny says.

“Exactly,” Jazz says. “I have a few guesses, but… I don’t know.”

Danny knows it pains his sister to admit that she doesn’t know something, knows that suddenly everyone feels stumped. Like him. So he might not be a murderer. Dan might still be around.

But what good will that do everyone else? Him? He wants Dan gone, true, he just doesn’t want to feel the weight in his conscience that reminds him that he’s responsible.

Shit, that sounded selfish. And stupid. So stupid.

“He has to be gone,” Sam says. “Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t…” she trails off, shakes her head. She throws a bloodied bit of gauze into the trash can and misses.

She looks really upset, almost unusually so, and a reflex in his head tells him that he’s missing something, that there’s something she’s not telling him.

It clicks in his head that it’s the second time today that he feels this way—the first being during the battle. She was in and out of there fast, confident, didn’t offer any explanations. She’d handed him the ring, certain that he’d need it, and she’d evacuated the island. How had she known?

As he goes over that memory in his head, trying to pick up on whatever he missed, a detail sticks out—we’ll find Clockwork, she’d said. They didn’t, though—not them, not Walker’s men, not the volunteers crossing the Ghost Zone in an organized chaos of search parties. But the detail sticks with him—Clockwork.

“He told you,” he says, suddenly realizing it. “Clockwork told you, didn’t he?”

Sam freezes, misses the trash can gain. She picks the little bit of gauze up, drops it in the trash. When she turns to face him, her lips are pursed.

“Guys?” Jazz’s voice says through static. “Not actually there, remember?”

Sam clears her throat. “Clockwork told me you’d fight Dan and win. He said you’d need the ring, the island would burn down. I swore not to tell you. I told Tucker earlier today.” She slumps back into her seat beside him. “It’s stupid—I was stuck on the idea that you were going to win, that Dan would be gone. I didn’t expect you to get hurt, even though I always expect you to get hurt.” She’s not looking at him in the eye as she says it, she’s staring at his throat.

“I’m fine,” he says.

“You are now,” she mutters.

“The thing is,” Tucker says, “Clockwork said you’d win. We don’t know if that means Dan is gone for good.”

“We have to ask him,” Jazz says. “Any number of theories on Dan’s obsession won’t get us anywhere. Maybe you guys should go back into the Ghost Zone, see if any of the search parties has returned…”

Jazz continues talking, but he tunes her out, thinking. Clockwork knew.

If he were here, he could tell them so much more. But he’s missing, kidnapped, because Danny and his friends weren’t there to help when they took him, when Dan blew his place to bits. He’s worried now—who else might they have taken?

A muffled shriek and a loud thump shake him out of his thoughts. The sounds came from the phone.

“Jazz?” Tucker says, an anxious edge to his voice. “Jazz, what happened?”

Background noise, static, and then Jazz’s voice, breathless: “Turn on the news.”

Tucker does so. The image is a view of Amity from above, a helicopter. He can see Casper, the Nasty Burger, the mall, the park, his house… Whoever’s flying that chopper must be really high up, because the view is extensive.

He can’t see the streets, though. They’re infested, but not with people—they’re all at home, probably watching this same image and trying to think coherently. Like him.

The same shot repeats itself a few times: one moment the streets are empty, and then it begins. One green dot turns up at one corner of the city, then another someplace else, then another. They spread like wildfire and close in on the center, covering the streets in a bright green glow—ghosts coming into view, invisible and then visible, green blobs by the thousands crowding the place until you can’t see one bit of clear pavement.

“I have to go,” Jazz says. “I have to alert Mom and Dad.”

“I’ll meet you there,” Danny says. “I’ll take Dani. Sam, Tuck, if we have allies, find them.”

They nod. Jazz says: “I’ll see you here, then. Bye.”

She hangs up, and Tucker pockets his phone. “Let’s go,” he says.

“Hold on a second,” Sam says. “Tuck, wake Dani. Just give us a minute.”

Tucker spares two seconds for an exasperated look, then turns on his heel and runs up the stairs.

Sam turns to face him. “Don’t you dare do anything I wouldn’t approve of, understand? Head straight to Casper, wait for us there.”

“But what if—?”

“I don’t care,” she says. “That army out there? It’s waiting for orders. Those orders won’t arrive if they’re not provoked. They won’t advance without a response from us. Don’t provoke them, don’t respond. Wait for us.”

“I don’t want to provoke them,” Danny says. “I don’t want to fight them, Sam. There’s too many, they’ll destroy everything.” She starts to say something, but he cuts her off: “No, listen. Think about it: If I find Vlad, if I beat him before he orders the attack, we won’t have to fight. No one will get hurt.”

“No one but you,” she counters. “You’re not serious, are you?Pulling Vlad out of the game won’t make it end, Danny. He’s not that important, even if he wants to think so. This is all of us against all of them, understand? Don’t do anything stupid. Wait for us at Casper.”

He doesn’t answer at first, determined. He doesn’t want a fight, doesn’t want casualties, doesn’t want the messy destruction that’s bound to follow. He wants to cut off the core of the issue and watch everything else dismantle itself.

“Please,” she says. “Promise me you won’t do anything rash, and that you’ll be careful.”

“I promise I’ll be careful.” He says nothing else, and she looks like she wants to strangle him.

Whatever she’s about to say in response is cut off by the sound of feet pounding on the stairs. Tucker walks over to the basement stairs, says “I’ll start up the engine” and heads down without waiting for a response.

Sam struggles for a moment to find words. Finally, she turns to tell Dani: “Don’t let him do anything stupid.” She stands up and follows Tucker.

Dani looks at him, groans. “I knew taking a nap was a bad idea. Tell me everything.”

***

He chooses the sewage route to Casper, just to be on the safe side, and so he and Dani phase straight into the gym upon arrival, keeping invisible. His classmates are now scattered across the gym, seated on the floor, on the bleachers, leaning against walls. There’s a camera crew resting to one side, and the reporter looks like Lance Thunder. Poor guy.

Jazz stands nearby, talking with his parents and… Valerie? She’s not wearing any of her gear, but she is carrying an ectogun strapped across her back. She looks tired.

He and Dani approach them quietly, still invisible, and he whispers to Jazz: “Tetslaff’s office?”

Jazz stiffens, nods slowly. “You scared me!”

“Hello—ghost, remember?”

Jazz rolls her eyes and he stifles a laugh, heading toward the bleachers. He and Dani turn visible once inside Tetslaff’s office, and promptly slump into chairs.

“You still owe me an explanation,” Dani says.

“In a minute,” he says. “In case I have to explain things to Mom and Dad, too.”

Dani nods, and they wait a few minutes before Jazz enters, followed by Valerie.

“Where are Mom and Dad?” Danny asks.

“It’s best to keep an eye on the crowd,” Jazz says. “The Mansons and the Foleys are helping, but we’re the ones with rep. Don’t worry, they know what’s going on.”

“Well I don’t,” Dani says.

Valerie looks startled. She hadn’t noticed Dani. “Hey, I remember you!”

Dani looks down at her feet. “Great.”

“Yes, great,” Jazz says. “No time to lose with introductions. Dani, we’ll explain everything later. Listen, Valerie has something to show you guys.”

Valerie pulls a phone out of her pocket, taps it a few times before handing it to Danny, “This is security footage from a relatively remote spot outside of Amity. The cameras there are only activated if they detect ectoplasmic signatures. They’re actually there to keep ghosts from leaving town, rather than entering—most ghosts come from your parents’ portal, you know. Anyway, the recording is from less than an hour ago, and it’s not very long. Take a look.”

Dani walks over and watches the video with him; it starts simply enough, just an empty field with a chain-link fence crossing it. Then ghosts start to appear, flying in and settling across the field. The grand majority of them are familiar—Spectra, Bertrand, Technus, the Fright Knight, Nocturne, Undergrowth, Freakshow, Lydia… some others he can’t recognize, gruesome and strange entities that look as murderous as the others. He thinks there are more outside the camera’s line of sight.

That’s when Vlad shows up, flanked by three very tall and very familiar ghosts.

“Are those…?” Danny asks.

“I thought the same thing,” Valerie says. “But they look a little different.”

They do. The ghosts that attacked him and Valerie a couple months back had a more crude appearance—ectoplasm dripping down their chins, arms, and legs. Lolling heads, unfocused eyes. These look sharper, no dripping ectoplasm, a cold gaze that looks dead but not quite lost.

Vlad holds up a hand, and they halt. One of them comes into view, and both he and Dani suck in harsh breaths. Clockwork.

Clockwork, out cold and slumped across one of those ghosts’ shoulder, shifting between forms unevenly—quick transitions, then none, then a couple, then none, then too many. His staff is nowhere to be seen.

Vlad grins up at the camera, holds up a sign written in hasty red marker: Come get him.

The recording fades with a bright shot of ectoplasm. Dani asks: “He blew up the camera?”

Valerie nods. “That one, and the other two in the area. We don’t really know what’s going on there—no one wants to take a look, of course. I was going to go, but my dad said no, and we argued for a bit, and then he confiscated my stuff…” Valerie groans. “He gave me my board back when we saw the news, made me promise I’d come straight to Casper and wait here.” She holds up the phone, says: “This is about as useful as I get until he gives my stuff back.”

“It’s very useful,” Danny says. He tries to shift his focus away from Clockwork. No need to do anything rash. Not yet. “Thanks, Valerie. How did you get that video, anyway?”

“My dad,” she says. “He works down at the police department—mostly with tech, you know, so he’s always the first to know about faulty cameras. By the way, he mentioned that he closed your sister’s case, said you might’ve forgotten.”

“You reported me missing?” Jazz asks. She doesn’t look particularly touched or grateful.

“What else was I supposed to do? Nobody let me go look for you!”

“How about not report me missing? The cops can’t handle ghosts—no offense, Valerie, but it’s true. Supposed they’d found me. Vlad’s guys had me locked up here in Amity, they could have found me, and it wouldn’t have been pretty.”

“They locked you up?”

“No, Danny, they gave me a five-star hotel suite with room service.” Jazz rolls her eyes. “Okay, next time, no involving the cops with ghost stuff. Onto more important matters. You can’t go look for Clockwork, because it’s obviously a trap.”

“Just like I didn’t go looking for you?”

“It was the smart thing to do, Danny, even if I didn’t like it at the time. Now, shut up.”

He does, only because she looks really, really shaken. What did they do to her?

“If you don’t look for him, though, Vlad might order an attack, to draw you out from hiding.”

Valerie nods. “The ghosts on the streets are just standing there. When I flew by, they did turn to look at me, but they didn’t attack.”

“So they’re waiting for orders,” Danny says. “And those orders won’t arrive if I go looking for Vlad.”

“But if you go looking for Vlad,” Dani says, “you’re walking straight into a trap.”

“Been there, done that,” Danny says. “And look, I’m still here! I’ll take my chances.”

Sam’s voice chimes in, startling them all: “No, you won’t.” She turns visible, standing close enough to him to whack him on the back of his head. “Do you ever listen to me?”

“Uh…” He looks around, a quiet plea in his eyes: help? Jazz and Dani have hands over their mouths to conceal snickers. Valerie isn’t paying him any attention, staring at Sam like she grew three heads overnight.

Valerie pokes Sam in the arm, making the latter whip her head around in surprise. Valerie furrows her brow. “So I’m not imagining things?”

“Sorry, no,” Sam says, looking genuinely sheepish.

“I think everyone has a few things to catch up on,” Dani says. “Like me, maybe?”

***

Jazz took care of answering Dani and Valerie’s questions. Meanwhile, Sam explained that she and Tucker have gathered the ghosts that volunteered to fight near the portal.

“We decided that we might provoke Vlad into a fight if we show up with an army,” she says. “Tucker’s waiting with them right now.”

“Good thinking,” he says.  He tries to swallow the anxiety that accompanies his next question: “How many are there?”

Sam grins. “A lot. People like your more than they dislike you.”

Given that he’s at Casper, he has a hard time believing that. Still, he allows himself to relax, just a little. Somewhere inside of him, he’d feared that no one would show up at all, and that he’d have to deal with this alone.

So while he allows some of the ice in his gut to melt away, he explains what he saw in Valerie’s video. He doesn’t feel quite so unnerved, thinking of so many of his enemies gathered in one place, now that he knows that he’ll have backup.

But the ice settles back in, like a punch to his gut, when he tells her about Clockwork. “We need to find him,” he says.

“Clearly. But you know it’s a trap, right?”

“Everyone else does.”

“Danny, use your head. He took Jazz, too, and that was a trap. We need a plan. He doesn’t know we have allies, or how many of them, so we need to use that to our advantage.”

A plan. Right. Always plans. Plans that never go the way they’re supposed to, plans that are torn in half before they’re through, plans rebuilt from scraps in the heat of the moment. He hates plans—they’re organized false hopes, and because he knows this from the start, always, they’re not even proper false hopes. They’re just… plans.

Before he can put any of these thoughts in a sensible order, Jazz and Dani join them. Behind him, he hears the door to Tetslaff’s office close.

“Valerie is going to take a nap in the infirmary,” Jazz says. “When you told her to keep an eye out at two am, she took it a bit too literally. She and her dad have been staring at security feeds ever since.”

He and Sam wince. Now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t recall seeing her at school in the morning.

“I have a pretty decent idea of how she feels,” Sam says, yawning.

Jazz gives her a tight smile. “Are you guys hungry? We raided the cafeteria a couple hours ago. It’s all… fairly edible. Cafeteria food, you know. You guys are more used to it than I am.”

They agree, and the three of them phase through walls until they reach the (thankfully empty) cafeteria. While they scoop up whatever looks decent and edible (which is pretty much everything, considering his empty stomach), he thinks about Tucker. He, more than any of them, must be suffering through mild starvation. He hadn’t realized it, but it’s nearly five pm.

“Don’t feel too bad,” Sam says, as if reading his mind. “Tucker is bound to raid your kitchen soon enough, and that’ll be a thousand times better than this.”

They eat in silence, though perhaps gobble is the better word. Sam doesn’t lecture him on manners for once, which is saying a lot. His stream of thought should be a miserable sludge of thoughts on Clockwork and the ghosts surrounding Amity and Vlad and dead-or-maybe-not Dan… but, really, all he’s thinking about is food.

***

[Part 2]

[dpkingofclubs]

King of Clubs—14: Vlad Masters (P2)

[Part 1]

At least, for a little while. Then he hears the screams.

The three of them freeze in place, forks caught in mid-air as the sound becomes louder, accompanied by the frenzied rush of feet thumping against the ground.

It tries to bite Dani’s ponytail, but she crushes it in one hand. “What…?”

Danny’s teeth gnash together to keep him from screaming. The Ghostly Wail isn’t painful enough for these guys.

If it were just Lydia, he might not have been so angry. But no, Freakshow is here, too, contemplating the disaster churning around him with mirth in his eyes.

The look fades when his gaze meets Danny’s glare.

He’s pretty powerless, really. He doesn’t have his staff anymore, or the Reality Gauntlet, and he’s not a ghost. He is, however, holding a gun in his hand.

“This feels repetitive,” Danny mutters, blasting the gun out of Freakshow’s hands. Freakshow, now completely unarmed, stands very still.

Upon further inspection, Danny confirms it: it’s the same gun from earlier, a perfect replica. “I think you’re running out of ideas,” he says. Turning around, he sees Sam and Dani fighting with Lydia. Everyone else has retreated to the far end of the gym, and his parents and Jazz are standing in front of the crowd, holding ecto-guns out.

“Why are you here?” he asks. “Did Vlad send you with a message?”

Freakshow nods. “You’re running out of time.”

“To what?”

“Find him.”

Come find him. Danny sighs quietly, to himself. Stupid plans. “What happens if I don’t rush?”

“He might not recover.”

There is a limited amount of people in the world (in any world) that can properly pull off cryptic. Freakshow can’t. “From what?”

Freakshow grins, just a little, as if some small part of him truly finds this funny. “He might… lose his mind, you could say.”

Lose his mind. Something inside him snaps as he pictures Clockwork, the epitome of mind and mindful and in his right mind, losing his mind.  He spits: “That would be your area of expertise, huh?”

Punching Freakshow isn’t quite right, the way an ectoblast or the Ghostly Wail aren’t quite right. It’s not the way Freakshow fights—and though he doesn’t really care for a fair fight where he is involved, this calls for something different.

Freakshow doesn’t even have time to blink before he realizes what’s happening to him. Danny overshadows him.

This is your specialty, isn’t it? he asks. Sharing mind space with someone else is always uncomfortable, even more so when the other person is pushing thoughts into your space. It feels wrong. Invasive in a way nothing else feels invasive.

It’s an intrusion, Danny says. The worst form of restraint and manipulation. You’ve done it before, we know that, but has anyone done it to you? I bet you can feel the difference.

Freakshow tries to fight him back, but his resolve is weak. He’s not answering back, but Danny isn’t sure if it’s because he can’t or because he’d rather not. Regardless, it makes everything easier. Danny slips along his senses, until he can open Freakshow’s eyes and see what he sees. Lydia is still fighting Dani and Sam, but half-heartedly. The three girls are watching him.

He’s watching Lydia as he walks toward them. I’m using your legs to step closer, he says, and your eyes to know where I’m going. I’m using you. Do you understand that?

He raises Freakshow’s hand, channels his own powers into his fingers. You would never do this, even if you could, Danny tells him. You’re not going to do it, I am, but it’ll feel and look like you did, and you will never forgive yourself.

Freakshow starts fighting back again, but it’s too weak to overpower Danny. It’s supposed to feel like pounding, the way an erratic heartbeat feels within one’s skull during a particularly nasty migraine. But all he feels is an annoying tickle, like when you forget something and have a nagging thought at the back of your mind.

The girls are still looking at him strangely, all pretense of a fight lost between them, so he fights for them. He shoots, aiming for Lydia, but she backs away at the last second and the blast misses. He shoots again.

Lydia flies across the gym, standing closer to his classmates. Danny shoots anyway, taking care to make sure the shots won’t hit them, but Lydia makes it difficult. From behind her, though, Mom shoots at her, and though that one misses too, it makes Lydia back away from the crowd.

That’s when he finally gets her, blasting her back into the wall, and Freakshow makes a great effort to kick him out, but fails.

He doesn’t say anything else, only lets Freakshow watch while he targets Lydia again, and again, and again. She dodges most of the shots, but another two get her. When the second one hits, she flies into the roof, but instead of crashing against it, she phases through.

He doesn’t hesitate, not even when he hears Sam call behind him “Danny, wait!”

He follows Lydia.

She continues dodging his shots as she speeds across Amity. She retaliates by sending her mass of tattoo creepy crawlies against him, but does little else. She doesn’t want to hit Freakshow.

This may just be the best idea he’s ever had.

Inside his head, he can feel Freakshow writhing, trying to gain control of his arm, his hand, his fingers—anything. But maybe he’s too strong or maybe Freakshow’s just too weak, and all attempts fail. Lydia dodges more shots. They’re farther away from Casper with every passing second.

Too far, in fact. Warning bells go off in the back of his mind as they fly over the outskirts of Amity, an area mostly surrounded by trees and occasional valleys where the felling of trees has taken over.

And then Lydia dives, and he follows, and a grand feeling of oh, crap makes his (Freakshow’s) legs seize up.

He followed her into a trap.

The trap in question is Vlad and his allies standing in a clearing, the same one from Valerie’s video. The same giant ghosts stand to a side, one of them is holding Clockwork.

Like a trigger, seeing Clockwork in that state makes his temper rise again, but it falls just as quickly. If Clockwork could see him now…

He steps out of Freakshow’s body, watches him slump to a side. Lydia rushes to his aid quickly, pulls him out of the way without sparing a glance for Danny. He prefers it that way.

He looks down at the ground, at his hands, squeezes his eyes shut because he’d rather not look. What’s the matter with him? He doesn’t do stuff like that. It’s not that his thoughts are a haze, that he’s suddenly confused—it’s nothing like that. He knows exactly what he did and why he did it, and he is thoroughly disgusted.

Nausea clouds his vision and leaves him alone with his thoughts, and he feels rotten, the way he did just a few hours ago after he (supposedly) killed Dan. After that demonstration, no one is ever going to look at him the same way again, no one is going to trust him, Sam is going to hate him…

A question, the question, pops up in bright red lettering, like that from Vlad’s crudely written sign: is he turning into Dan?

“Daniel,” Vlad says. He’d never admit it aloud, but for this once, he’s glad that Vlad calls him by his full name. He isn’t Dan. Not yet, at least, and for now he’s going to hold onto that thought until it drives him insane. “Quite the entrance. No matter, you’re finally here.”

He tries to focus on Vlad, tries not to look at the glares following him from every direction. “You sent them to get me?”

Vlad nods, nonchalant. “They were… annoying me. Plus, I wasn’t keen on meeting at your school. Too many people that don’t like me in one place.”

Feeling the weight of all those glares (and the one coming from his conscience) on him, he mutters, “I know the feeling.”

“Then we are agree! Good. We have some business to do, and I’d rather keep this up.”

“Business?”

“Negotiations!” Vlad says. He sounds smug, almost cheery. Disgustingly so. “I’ll spare your town and all of its inhabitants, and I’ll return  your friend here in a decent state of mind—he’ll recover, don’t worry. See, he refused to tell me anything, so I’ve simply made sure he won’t be able to aid you.

“In exchange, you surrender the crown and ring to me, and you give my friends a fight.” He gestures to his “friends,” whose glares have been replaced with smug grins mimicking Vlad’s. “They want a fight, you see. I promised them one.”

“No agreement,” he says. “And, anyway, what the heck, Vlad? I thought you wanted my mom, not… this mess.”

“This mess, as you so eloquently put it, is all your fault. After your coronation, I realized that if you’d already revealed yourself to your parents, my secret would meet the same fate eventually. After that, your mother would never have me, not after all I’ve done.

“Truth be told, Daniel, I became very angry. You ruined everything, foiled every single one of my plans, from the beginning. You Fentons are all the same, you see. When I finally reached this conclusion, I refocused my energies. I could only antagonize your father for so long, and I figured that time was up.”

“You’ve been antagonizing me for a while now, you know.”

“Yes, but indirectly. I’ve always targeted your father, you only chose to get in my way, like the meddling teenager you are. So, I decided to step up my game—you are a worthier opponent than your father, must be your mother’s genes—and chose to ruin you.” Vlad gestures around with a grin. “And look! I’m almost there.”

You’re crazy, are the words that reach his lips. Crazy fruitloop. He doesn’t say it. Provoking Vlad is not the way to go right now, not when he’s surrounded by people that don’t like him, with an injured Clockwork nearby, and no backup plan.

Plans. Damn, he should’ve listened to Sam.

“I won’t let you get away with this,” he says, kind of lamely. The question of how exactly he’ll keep Vlad from winning is still a bit foggy.

Vlad seems to know this. “I’m inclined to think I already have. I have your town surrounded, and I assure you I harbor no lost love for it or its inhabitants. My brief time as mayor left that impression quite clear on us all, I should think.”

“I wonder whose fault that was.”

“Yours, to be perfectly honest. Don’t try to be smart, boy. All of this is your doing. You wanted to be a hero, well, good for you. Deal with the consequences.”

“How am I responsible for anything you have done? I’m not you!”

“Cause-and-effect, Daniel. Provocation. Chess.”

“Oh, you and your chess can go to hell. You’re just a crazy fruitloop with nothing better to do than meddle with other people’s lives. Who’s the teenager now, Vlad?”

Vlad makes an effort to keep it from showing, but something in his gaze hardens. “Still you, I’m afraid. Last chance, Daniel. Accept my terms or face the consequences. The only difference lies in whether your town survives said consequences unscathed or not.”

“Is this some really long-winded way of saying that you aren’t going to fight me? What, scared?”

“Hardly. I called you a worthy opponent in comparison to your father, do not misunderstand me. I will not fight you—I believe there is a line in the making for that… privilege. No, Daniel, I want to watch you surrender.”

“Not going to happen.”

“Is that your answer?”

Danny gathers his remaining wits, takes a step forward. “That’s a promise. Haven’t you found the pattern yet, Vlad? You always think you’re going to win, but you don’t, and you never will. Somehow, I’ll always stop you, and the same applies for today.”

Vlad laughs. “Brave words!” He makes a complicated hand sign, a gesture meant for the two freakishly tall ghosts that stand unoccupied at the side. They nod and start walking away, and Danny steels his nerves.

Sam said they had an army, people that’ll fight with him. Amity won’t be alone. He can’t let Vlad win, he can’t even let Vlad think he’ll win. This isn’t a game, there’s no trick up his sleeve for this one. This one is war, and it looks like his wits aren’t going to win it for him.

Why is it, he wonders, that people always want to fight wars with fists? How does brute strength prove one party superior to another?

It’s getting old, he thinks, as the first punch lands in his gut. Looking up, he sees that the perpetrator is none other than Skulker, and the sight of him feels like a follow-up to the punch. Some ghosts he could have expected here, ghosts that genuinely harbor grudges against him. But Skulker has always been one of those so-so enemies of his, people that dislike him in a strange, almost funny way.

There’s nothing comical about a punch to the gut, though, or an ectoblast that skims his hair as he ducks out of the way. He turns intangible as a series of blasts come at him from every direction. They all hit the tree against which he was standing, making it double over.

Most of the ghosts turn intangible before the tree hits the ground, but two of the unrecognizable ones are squished beneath it.

They’re not gone for good, but he’s okay with that.

He realizes he doesn’t have a thermos on him, and that he’s surrounded. Above him, Vlad flies away as he says: “I suppose I’ll see you later—or maybe not.”

Something about this scenario doesn’t quite fit, but he doesn’t have time to ponder that. He’s not intangible anymore and there’s another fist coming straight at him and… no, it hit him, too late. Ow.

“Hey!” he tries. “Hey, wait a second!”

He has their attention for literally one second before a blast hits him in the side, right where his scar from Sam’s stitches is. Sam did a good job, undoubtedly, but getting hit in that wound is always going to hurt bad.

So he groans, turning intangible just for good measure, and sits up the best he can. “Hold it! Vlad’s going to betray you! Don’t you see it?”

He has an idea, a small one that’s starting to gain volume as he connects dots in his head. The ghosts are holding back, though Lydia for one seems to be having a really hard time doing so. “Speak!” Skulker says.

“He left me here with you, I don’t know if you guys mean to kill me or just punch my lights out repeatedly. But suppose one of you guys defeats me, whatever the technical definition of defeat is. If that happens, the crown and ring won’t be mine anymore, and Vlad will target whoever does own them. And things will end badly for that person. Don’t you see that?”

The looks on their faces tell him that no, not really. “Then we won’t defeat you,” one of the unrecognizable ghosts says, a hairy guy with a raspy voice and eye sockets for eyes. “But we’ll still punch your lights out.”

That wasn’t his point, but that’s all the conversation these guys seem up to.  He needs to get back to Amity now. He figures it’s too late for a warning, but he has to help them, and he won’t be able to if someone punches his lights out.

This could be as easy as phasing through the ground and a few uncomfortable minutes of flying through dirt, but he needs to get Clockwork first. The big guy holding him looks like he’ll be able to take more than one or three blasts, not to mention everyone else surrounding him.

He’s totally alone against about three dozen ghosts, no thermos, no friends, no wits, and now he really is worried.

Another hit to his side; a cracked rib. A punch to his nose, it cracks, it hurts. Shit, that hurt. Injuries don’t usually hurt as much when he’s in ghost form, but the moment he changes back to human form, he’s going to feel the full wrath of broken bone.

He thinks he’s going to apologize to Dash one more time, should he leave this mess with his wits together. Or with his heart beating.

A blast to his chest knocks him against a tree, and pain explodes on the back of his head, no breath in his lungs. Someone kicks his legs, once, twice. How are they enjoying this? How do people stand it, inflicting pain on others like this with a grin on their faces?

Maybe the way he enjoyed controlling Freakshow earlier today.

Whatever food he managed to inhale earlier is threatening a trip back up. As he coughs up a chunky load of acid, he thinks that maybe he deserves this—Dan certainly isn’t here to retaliate for what he did to him earlier.

The laughter erupting behind him and the swift kick to his stomach make him think twice about that—nobody deserves this.

That thought is what gives him a decent idea that’ll probably get him doubly pummeled in a minute. Laying on his side, he takes advantage of their brief distraction and shoots small rays out from his fingers at any legs he can find.

Though this doesn’t work quite as well as a kick, it throws off the others’ balance, and a few of the ghosts stumble to the ground. Others regain their balance, stop laughing, and glare.

Oh, crap.

He’s expecting the worst when something really unusual happens—there’s a pair of thin, bony, sharp fingers headed straight toward his face, but a blast pushes that body out of the way. The surprised look on the bony-fingered ghost is mirrored on everyone else’s expression.

He turns, expecting to see Sam or Tucker or maybe even both, but none of his friends are there. Instead, Skulker holds a steaming ectogun at the end of one arm.

Skulker doesn’t stop to admire his handiwork, and shoots the next ghost. And the next one, and the one after that. The shots don’t seem to be regular ectoblasts, because the ghosts writhing on the ground can’t seem to get up.

“Unless you’re dead already, get up and help!” Skulker calls at him.

It’s one of the stranger things he has done, but he does just that, and standing back to back, he and Skulker fend off the rest of the ghosts. One of them falls atop his pile of vomit, and he can’t help the twinge of pity settling in his gut. Skulker shot that one—he won’t be getting up anytime soon.

They’re encased in a perfect circle of ghosts that want little else than violence right this moment, and violence they get. Strangely, the circle seems to be getting too thin far too quickly, for all the speed a coordinated attack can provide.

He finds out why a few minutes later, when the last of the ghosts on his side are stumbling against trees and falling flat on their faces. A few paces away from him, seven or eight ghosts lie on the ground, clutching at their scalps with their eyes squeezed shut and permanent grimaces lining their mouths. Behind them stands Spectra, holding what look like puppeteer strings that connect her fingers to the necks of her victims.

Behind her, Bertrand morphs from a rhinoceros to an elephant, and from that to a dragon, larger and heavier as he stomps his way across three unfortunate ghosts that run in circles until they crash against each other and land in a heap.

The ghosts under Spectra’s control stop groaning a few moments later, and they crash to the ground, motionless.

Danny looks around—all the ghosts are trapped against the ground, out cold or still writhing under the effect of whatever Skulker shot them with. Only he, Skulker, Spectra, and Bertrand are still—no, not true. One left.

The large ghost holding Clockwork stands still, watching them closely, from one side. He has not moved, and doesn’t look like he intends to, which suits Danny just fine for now.

But he can’t relax just yet. He turns to his improvised allies: “Thanks. But, um… why?”

The three of them fix him with hard, scrutinizing looks. Skulker speaks up first: “My girlfriend is on your side. Crossing her scares me more than crossing you or that Vlad guy.” He pauses. “You really aren’t the brains of your group, are you?”

He chooses to ignore the jab. Now that the adrenaline rush is ebbing away, he feels the pain spreading around his face and chest very acutely. He turns to Spectra, trying to keep his expression impassive, and failing. “And you?”

“Thank your sister,” Spectra says, checking her nails. She gestures to the big guy holding Clockwork. “But do not misunderstand us, this is the last favor we will ever do for you. We’ll handle him, you take the unconscious one. After that, we’re leaving this town. Should we ever return to the Ghost Zone, I don’t want a bounty on my head. Am I clear?”

He’s really tempted to accept that deal. He has never, ever liked Spectra, no matter what Jazz may think or what favors she and Bertrand may grant him. But still, he says; “Where are you going? I can’t just let you go make someone else’s life miserable, someplace else.”

Spectra rolls her eyes. “I don’t need your permission to do anything, boy. Anyhow, that’s not why we’re leaving. We’re starting fresh, someplace very far from here. Ask your sister, if you want, but that’ll have to wait. My offer expires in a minute. Choose.”

Ask your sister. He will. “If Jazz gives any indication that you’re lying to me…”

“Yes, you’ll find us, I understand that. So we have a deal?”

He nods, wondering if this is one of those things he’ll regret later.

Spectra nods back, first at him and then at Bertrand. Bertrand morphs into a hawk, flies over to the large guard, picks Clockwork up with swift ease as he escapes the ghost’s clutches, and leaves him at Danny’s feet.

“Go,” Spectra says, facing toward the suddenly irate ghost. “Hurry.”

Danny doesn’t waste time. “Thank you,” he says, picking up Clockwork’s limp form.

Though not exactly heavy, it’s a bit difficult to get a strong grasp on him, what with all the morphing.

“Allow me,” Skulker says.

Danny hesitates, but then Spectra calls out go! once again. He lets Skulker carry Clockwork, watching him very carefully as he powers up his jetpack and follows him into the sky, away from the many ghosts littering the ground, and the three engaged in a battle that is probably nothing compared to what awaits him back at home.

***

He’s right, for once.

The battle happening in the streets of Amity is best viewed up here, high enough to watch a grid of colorful explosions surrounding the buildings. He is pleased to see that the tall green goons are under siege—perhaps not outnumbered, but still challenged and nearing defeat.

He doesn’t know if those three dozen ghosts were really all the people comprising Vlad’s army, but he’s tempted to believe it. Though he could be wrong, he doesn’t quite believe that this tall, green army was just out there waiting for him, and as such concludes that they’re the follow-up to Vlad’s short career in cloning. If that’s the case, Vlad wouldn’t have created them if he’d had a real army at his disposal.

So maybe he didn’t have all that many allies, which means that Danny maybe didn’t have that many enemies. Or maybe he’s missing something, as usual.

“Look who’s here,” Vlad calls from behind him, and Danny figures that maybe that’s what he was missing.

“Surprise,” Danny says, without much cheer. He turns to Skulker, says: “If you betray me, I will have your pelt. Somehow. I’ll figure it out, promise.” Skulker says nothing, probably not feeling the least bit threatened. Danny continues: “Take Clockwork to my house. Stay there, guard him. Don’t join the fight. I’ll figure out something to give you in exchange later, you can use the time to think of it. A new armor or something. Tucker would have fun creating that.”

Skulker doesn’t look particularly impressed, but he leaves.

Behind him, Vlad chuckles. “You’re not a very natural leader, are you?”

“Says the mayor that resigned six months into his term.”

Vlad doesn’t like that. “Look below you, Daniel. How long will your town last? Supposing you do come out of this alive, supposing you even defeat me, how will they ever forgive you? I hear you put on quite a spectacle an hour ago.”

“I don’t need them to forgive me,” he says. Though perhaps that’s true, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t desperately want them to. “I just need to keep them safe from you.”

“Such heroism,” Vlad mocks. Why do adults like to mock him so much? “A pity you’re so young. You had a lifetime of maturing to live, so many cold confrontations with reality to be felt.” Vlad pulls out a familiar-looking gun, the third of its kind Danny has seen today. “Goodbye, Daniel.”

Danny tries to shoot the gun out of Vlad’s hands, but Vlad creates a shield. Before Danny has recovered from the previous blast to prepare a new one, it happens—a trigger is pulled, he ducks out of the way a second too late, an electrical sting hitting his calf and rising to his torso, spreading through his body.

He’s not weightless anymore, not in the usual sense. He’s falling, he can’t stop, and he’s going to crash.

He closes his eyes.

His first official pre-death thought is ow. Followed by oh, shit, ow. Now that he’s in human form, he can feel the full extent of what a broken nose and a broken rib (or two) really means. Huh. He’s not going to get to apologize to Dash. Maybe the guy will find some small gratification in seeing a corpse with a broken nose.

 He doesn’t get to see his life flash before him—maybe that doesn’t really happen to people, or maybe it doesn’t happen to halfas. He does get to wonder, briefly, if he’ll wake up a full ghost or if his ghost half will die along with him. Fade. Geez, he hates terminology.

He sees Vlad’s silhouette above him, turns away because he won’t give that man the satisfaction of knowing he was the last thing Danny saw before dying. So instead he turns around, sees the hills and trees lining the outskirts of Amity, sees an orange and red sun preparing to sink behind them. Then he sees buildings, watching him, awaiting him, probably wondering which of them he’s going to hit.

Well, maybe they’re not wondering. Buildings don’t wonder. But he is thinking about that, posing the question in his head so as to distract himself from the fact that he’s about to die.

It’s not the best distraction.

The crash comes. It feels as though every bone in his body has been rearranged, like wind still tousling his hair—but in another direction—and it sounds like a feminine grunt.

Wait a minute. If buildings can’t think, he’s fairly certain that streets can’t grunt. Especially not feminine grunts. Streets aren’t feminine. Are they?

Somewhere inside his head, he realizes that he’s slightly delirious, maybe from shock. But a part of him is returning to consciousness, and that part is turning his head to the side, facing pretty violet eyes.

Following the grunt comes a string of swear words he chooses to tune out, and after those comes the part he did not expect but is glad to hear: “Oh my god, you idiot. You’re going to pay for that, you hear me? Scared us shitless. I am never, ever leaving you unsupervised again. Ever. You’re a four-year-old in a seventeen-year-old’s body, and that is not something to be smiling about—quit smiling, Daniel Fenton, or I swear I will punch that grin off your face.”

He can’t stop smiling. He’s alive, and that’s always something worth smiling about, right? “Thanks,” he says. “Splattered on a street, I think my seventeen-year-old body wouldn’t be quite as attractive.”

She laughs, and it sounds kind of painful. “You idiot,” she mutters, pulling him a little closer to her. “You grandiose idiot.”

“I thought I was a dork.”

“Not when you’re three seconds from being roadkill, you’re not.” She breathes deep, exhales, repeats that twice. “Okay, Idiot Fenton, I’m guessing you don’t have your powers anymore.”

“Right.”

“And I’m guessing you’re aware that the only reason we’re still flying is because Vlad is trying to play tag with us.”

What? “Err, wrong.” He cranes his neck, sees Vlad flying behind them with murder in his eyes. “Oh, shit.”

“Oh shit, is right, mister. Do you have a plan?”

“I hate plans.”

Despite it all, a small smile plays at her lips. “Yeah, so do I. I think we need one, anyway, so listen up…”

***

Flying around Amity at full speed is a dangerous task, more so if you’re carrying someone else, and even more so if you’re concentrating on the flying while also doing some planning.

Taking this into consideration, Danny does his best to help along with the planning, and that seems to speed up the process. Vlad is not shooting them from behind, which he finds fantastic, though he can’t help but wonder why.

According to the plan, Sam lands on the streets, not wanting to risk anyone falling off a rooftop. And according to the plan, the moment she lands she pushes the ring into his hand, and then takes off running like a madwoman.

Vlad doesn’t follow her, thankfully, and touches down just a few feet away from Danny. He looks… insane. Properly insane, the straightjacket kind.

Danny puts on the ring, immediately feels that uncomfortable surge of power. He tries to disguise his expression, tries to make sure that Vlad can’t see the ring or the effect it’s having on him.

He feels his heartbeat in his throat and, somewhere in the back of his mind, he can’t help but think if this sort of power surge, twice in a day, after several months of avoiding it, is a bad idea.

But he thinks it’s working, too. Vlad’s tech, no matter how modern, will never be able to compete with the power of the crown and ring combined. It might be the first time he’s truly, honestly grateful to have them, to be wearing them, especially considering the look on Vlad’s face now.

His features are contorted and a vein is bulging from the blue skin of his ghost form.

By now, the strange sensation within his gut should have stopped. The explosion of power struggling to escape his fingers should have settled.

It hasn’t. It’s stronger, threatening to make him burst. Could that happen?

His mom once explained how blood blossoms work—their pollen is like an allergen, and it triggers a reaction within ectoplasm. Ectoplasm, like human biology, works with electricity. The reaction from the blood blossoms makes electricity accumulate, rather than disperse. If exposed long enough, a ghost explodes, becoming little more than a semi-conscious mass of goo. It takes months, if not years, to re-form.

Danny wonders if that’s what about to happen to him. It certainly feels like it, even if it doesn’t hurt quite like blood blossoms do.

“End of the line, Daniel,” Vlad says. “Surrender the crown and ring to me, or you can kiss your town goodbye.”

Danny doesn’t think Vlad is even paying attention. The battle erupting around them is little more than an occasional sputter of ectoplasmic residue.

“It’s over, Vlad,” Danny says. Except it’s not, because he feels sick to his stomach, feels as if the ground is spinning while the rest of the world holds very, very still. “It’s over.”

He changes into his ghost form, breaking through the effect of Vlad’s gun. The twin rings that surround him are unusually bright, and the cold sensation that passes through him feels too strong, as if it’s pressing the contents of his body toward the ends of his limbs, from which it will all pour out. He’s a tube of toothpaste and something really strong and cold is pushing out the last of what he has left.

What leaves him is a nuclear blast, something bright and sharp that pushes Vlad six blocks down. When Vlad is about to collapse against a building at the far end of the street, surely a crash to his death, a thermos sucks him in, just like he and Sam planned.

But Sam is still standing a block away from him, thermos in hand. In her stead, Dad is holding a thermos in his hands, screwing on the lid with a grim look on his face.

The last of his energy leaves him, and Danny collapses.

Sam reaches him first, closely followed by Tucker. “Danny? Are you alright?”

He doesn’t even have energy to glare at her, can’t even hear her say the usual sorry, standard question. If there were still food in his stomach, he’d definitely be trying (and failing) to spit it out, because he doesn’t even have strength for that.

“Danny? Come on!” That’s Tucker. “We did it, Danny!” For such a cheery statement, Tucker sounds downright miserable. Panicky. “Danny?”

He feels himself retreating into that backup corner of his mind, the place he went to earlier while he was falling. The crazy delirious side of him is thinking that there’s no toothpaste left in the tube, and that the tube should get thrown out. The other side of his head, the one that retreats into strange thoughts that drift by when he’s bored in class or during a car ride, wonders about war. Something he has never understood is why people think winning a war is the best case scenario. He knows it’s not—it’s the least-worst. There is no best-case scenario in war. He knows there’s no foolproof plan. 

A few more words make it into his head: “—hear me? We won! Wake up, you idiot, you dork! We won!” It’s Sam’s voice. She’s confirming it, that they got through with the least-worst case scenario.

Well, that’s good. The thought is faint, so much that he repeats it a few times so that it can gain form: good, good, good. We won.

Why, then, does he feel like he lost?

[the-madness-mind]

#206 Danny Phantom by 365-DaysOfDoodles

[spirits-of-kin]

Sad Cujo Pixel by ~Spirits-of-Kin

Forgot to post this xD

Little Cujo Pixel~

[twistedmiroir-deactivated201410]

Revamp of Tucker’s main outfit

I don’t care what you say he is a hipster

[twistedmiroir-deactivated201410]

My fav revamp so far, Sam’s gorgeous gown from Parental Bonding

all clothing redesigns are by me fyi

[twistedmiroir-deactivated201410]

Revamp of Sam’s bridal dress from Beauty Marked, I tried making it more ghostly and bride like

also look at dat derp face

[cheshireparadoxart-blog]

Valerie Gray in: Livin’ Large!

(Money is the root of all EVIL!)

It’s basically the same concept as the original Livin’ Large, except with Valerie Gray instead of Danny Fenton. In fact, Danny doesn’t really show up, instead it focuses on Valerie and how she reacts when her family regains their wealth and status. Will she give up ghost hunting in favor of old habits? Will she realize that money isn’t everything in life? Or will she use it to her advantage when helping Amity Park get rid of its ghost infestation?

Well, that’s the basic concept at least. I tried to imitate the title cards seen in very episode, And I’m very happy with the way Valerie turned out.

Tune in next time for Frightmare!

[twistedmiroir-deactivated201410]

Revamp of Sam’s preppy look from Memory Blank

because the 80’s called and wanted their leg warmers and polka dot mini skirts back okay

[dpkingofclubs]

King of Clubs—13: Dan (P2)

[Part 1]

*

“I’m sure that kid’s nose would beg to differ, but so be it. What about your teachers? The one that died in the accident—what was his subject, Math? No, English. I could deal with him, if you like. A favor, for the kid that created me.”

He resists the urge to point out that, technically, Lancer had a decent role in his creation, too. Instead, he says: “I didn’t create you.”

“You did once, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

“Vlad created you.”

“On your orders. Though I owe him my thanks, which is actually part of why I’m here.” So Vlad’s behind this. “I agreed to this little scheme to watch you squirm a little before you go ka-boom. Fun.”

Not.

“At any rate, I’m getting bored.” And then, without further preamble, he blasts Danny straight into the wall.

He lands in a heap of groaning limbs, blinking away black spots. Gasps erupt from around him, and he figures now would be a bad time to leave Dan without a punching bag. He stands up, a hand against the wall, and ducks out the way the moment he sees a bright green flash out of the corner of his eye.

“Much better,” Dan says. He laughs, looks around at his audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, sit back and enjoy the show.”

“Stop talking to them.” Danny takes a tentative step forward, confirms he’s got his balance back and keeps going. “Leave them out of this.”

“Can’t,” Dan says, firing again, carelessly. Danny ducks out of the way. “See, I’ll let you in on a couple secrets. I’m supposed to toy with you for a little while, just until the rest of the plan is in motion. As much as I’d love to watch your guts spill, that’s not my job. And don’t worry too much”—he gestures to the gun—“I set this to twenty minutes, just enough time to get the ball rolling. I don’t really care for a fair fight, but this”—he gestures to him—“is pathetic.”

Gee, thanks. “So you got relegated to—what? Opening act? You’re actually taking orders from someone. From Vlad of all people. How the mighty have fallen.”

“Mighty, yes, thank you. Fallen, not quite.”

“Not yet.”

“Well if we’re talking about me, as in you, I suppose that’s true.”

“I am not you.”

Dan rolls his eyes. “So you keep saying.” He shoots again, and Danny avoids the blasts as much as he can, taking care to keep everyone else out of the line of fire. Eventually, this caution is what gets him hit, sends him sprawling toward the gym entrance.

He coughs, tries to get air back into his lungs, wonders how much longer it’ll take before the twenty minutes are up.

A few feet away, Dan groans. “This is embarrassing. To think I used to be that weak, that pathetic. You could’ve been so much more than this.”

“I’ll pass,” he grunts, standing back up.

Dan shoots again, and he’s too weak to sidestep. His clothes are singed and his hair probably is, too. He has burn marks on his arms and legs, and experience has taught him that they’ll take a long while to heal. He doesn’t know how much more of this he’ll be able to take before he really gets injured, especially knowing he’s in his human form. He thinks Dan is purposefully hitting him with mild blasts. How did he put it? As much as I’d love to watch your guts spill, that’s not my job.

Dan can’t kill him. He can certainly maim him, though, so he has to be careful. But this is an advantage. He just needs to get his powers back. He just needs to keep Dan busy.

He leans on the wall to stand back up, walks closer to the center so as to keep far from the bleachers. “How did you get out of the thermos?”

“Someone opened the lid.”

He wonders if he’s this annoying when he tries to be smart with his own enemies. “Why?”

“You’ve got enemies, kid. Why do you think?” Dan shoots again, and he sidesteps. Another blast, he dodges. Another, he ducks. Another, another, another.

He’s basically running in circles along this side of the gym, doing exactly what Dan wants: tiring himself out. But he’s running, and that’s clearing his head. He’s running and in the middle of a battle, and there’s adrenaline in his bloodstream, and he’s finally doing some real thinking.

You’ve got enemies. That’s not my job.

He has established that Vlad is behind this, right? Seeing as Dan said enemies, plural, it probably means that the escapees are involved as well. In fact, they’re probably the ones that have the school surrounded, unless that was an empty threat. Dan doesn’t mean to kill him, and that means that the other ghosts don’t either, because that’s not their job.

It’s probably Vlad’s. Because if Vlad kills him… if Vlad kills him…

Oh, he should’ve known.

In the midst of his discovery, he doesn’t notice an incoming blast until it’s too late. It hits him in the side, shoves in the direction of the bleachers, right into Lancer. They’re both knocked to the ground, and that’s when he feels static run through his body as he tries to sit up. He sighs quietly, checks that Lancer is okay.

His twenty minutes are up, and now would be a great time to think of a plan.

But he doesn’t have time to think of one, because there’s another blast headed his way and ducking isn’t going to cut it. And there’s Lancer to consider, so he does the only thing his instincts can mange as his blood runs cold in panic: he creates a shield.

He enjoys the look of absolute dismay on Dan’s face, glares down at the gun in his hands. He seems to be about to shoot, but Danny blasts it out of his hands, then shoots again to render it useless. It ends up in a smoking heap at the other end of the gym.

Satisfied, he turns to smirk at Dan, to challenge him, to ask him how confident he’s feeling now. But Dan, though bewildered, looks kind of amused. He’s not supposed to look amused.

Beside him, Lancer says: “I was expecting that.”

Expecting what?

He doesn’t need to look away from Dan to feel Lancer’s stare—Lancer’s, and the faculty’s, and the student body’s… He looks down and realizes why he suddenly hears murmurs. He changed into ghost form without realizing it, which basically means that three years of secrecy have boiled down to this—a confrontation in the gym, a molten gun, and Lancer chiming in with self-satisfaction. He expected it? Okay, then.

“Well, would you look at that,” Dan says. “You finally did it.”

He chooses to tune out the ripples of shock that stretch across the bleachers, chooses to turn away and face Dan and Dan only. He takes a step forward to stand in front of his teacher.

“I meant to expose you, you know,” Dan continues. “Not sure what I was hoping for—maybe deflate everyone’s opinion of you, make them watch their hero bruise. Maybe teach them something cliché about being judgmental with books’ covers. Or maybe,” he grins, the way only people like him and Vlad know how to grin. “Maybe I wanted to show them what their hero is bound to become. Me.”

“I’ll never—”

“Yes, keep telling yourself that. I bet that’s what you tell them—your friends, your parents, your sister. You tell them that so they won’t be afraid, right? ‘Cause if they abandon you out of fear, they’ll only have more reasons to be afraid, because then you’ll definitely turn into me. Because I am you, I’m in there somewhere, in your head. I’m biding my time. Someday, I’m going to take over, and there’s nothing you or anyone else will be able to do about it.” Dan shrugs. “Well, I would have, except that you’re going to die today. Your loss.”

Dan ismessing with his head—fact. It’s like he’s transported back to the time when Spectra invaded his life, back when he fought with Sam and broke Dash’s nose. He misdirected his anger and hurt other people back then. Now, he only intends to hurt Dan.

So he doesn’t answer, settles for a glare. He joins his hands, stretches them away from him, and takes aim. Dan raises an eyebrow, almost daring him to try.

He makes sure that, should Dan turn intangible, the blasts won’t hit anyone. Then, he shoots.

But it’s not one shot, it’s dozens of them, rapid fire growing increasingly stronger as Dan dodges. He’s closing in on him, cornering him. He splits, and his double creates shields around them so that Dan can’t go intangible and get past him. Dan can avoid the shots as long as he wants, but he’ll be cornered soon enough. And then he’ll strike.

But one of the shots actually hits him, sends him flying straight into the wall, and the impact sounds unpleasant. He continues shooting, makes sure that Dan can’t stand up, until Dan fires a shot of his own and catches him off guard.

He switches places with his double, misses the shot, but by then he has lost his momentum and Dan is firing back. He counters them all, makes sure none of them can get past him and hit the bleachers, and it’s exhausting.

It doesn’t last long, though—the impact of the gym doors swinging open shocks them both into stillness, just for a moment, and many things happen in the space of those precious few seconds: Dan’s incensed, holding a blast ready to shoot whoever just entered the gym, but is shot straight in the chest and falls back onto the wall.

On the other side of the gym, his mom is holding a steaming ecto-gun. Beside her stand Sam and Dad, and behind them, armed and wearing hazmat suits, the Mansons and the Foleys.

Dan growls, standing up. “What—how did you get past the others?”

Sam grins, a scary one. She twirls a finger in the air, three small, tight turns. He catches a glint on her middle finger—she’s wearing the ring. Come to think of it, he doesn’t remember her taking it off today. Smart.

A coronet of blood blossoms falls on Dan’s head, tightens around his neck. Dan howls, falls to his knees.

Not far off to the side, he sees Lancer blink, still seated on the floor and looking back and forth between Sam and Dan. Danny figures his teacher wasn’t expecting that.

Dan struggles with the collar, manages to rip it off a moment later. Howling, he throws it to the ground and blasts it to ashes. He glares at Sam, turns to face Danny. “Consider yourself lucky,” he says, and phases through the ground.

Danny has every intention of following him, but he hears Sam call out: “Wait!” He turns to see her running up to him. “Don’t,” she says. “Bad idea.”

She’s probably right, she probably has a good chunk of logic to support this eloquent argument, but he doesn’t care. He wants to follow Dan and punch his lights out, and then he wants to find Vlad and do the same.

Though she holds her head high and fixes her gaze on him, he can tell that Sam feels really uncomfortable under the entire school’s gaze as she says: “We’ve messed up their plans for now. They’ll have to regroup.”

“So if I follow him, I find them all.” That sounds fantastic to him.

“Exactly,” she says, and he suddenly doesn’t understand anything, because she doesn’t really sound like she’s agreeing with him. “And then it’ll be a dozen to one, remember?”

“You’re saying you’re not coming?”

“I’m saying there will be more than a dozen.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“Neither can you.”

“I’ll just cut in right here,” Dani’s voice says from… somewhere. She appears a few paces away from them. “Look, Dan is far away from here by now, count on it. We need to regroup, compare notes. Some of Walker’s guards are back on their feet—they can help. And…” she looks around, bouncing on her heels. “We need to do something about, well, everyone.”

He looks around the gym, suddenly realizes how much of it is in tatters—basketball hoops and assorted equipment smoking, burn marks on the floor and walls, ashes on the floor from the mangled banners above.

A few hundred pairs of very wide eyes staring down at him.

He faces his classmates, his teachers, suddenly feels exhausted. “We owe you an explanation,” he says, not even raising his voice because in the absolute silence he doesn’t really need to, “but that’ll have to wait. It’s probably safest for you to stay here. I think.” He turns to Sam, a silent plea: help.

She nods. “We need to alert the city, probably place everyone under lockdown, but getting everyone home sounds more dangerous than keeping them in here. Until we figure out a plan, we can stay here and keep watch.”

That’s a good start. Sound an alert, make a plan, keep watch. He turns to see Jazz and Tucker, still at the far end of the gym. “Jazz needs a med kit,” he says. “She might know something. Let’s start there.”

He starts walking toward them when Sam pulls him back by the arm. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. C’mon, we don’t have time to spare.”

Again, she pulls him back. She looks nervous. “Listen, there’s something I need to tell you…”

“Where is he?” a voice booms from behind. He looks over Sam’s shoulder to see Dad walking up to them with purpose in his step and a bazooka hoisted across one shoulder. “Was he here? Where’d he go?”

Sam winces. “He’s in the anger stage of denial, I think,” she whispers. “Please go along with it, don’t ask too many questions. I’ll explain everything.”

He frowns. “What are you talking about?”

“That imposter!” Dad continues. “Rotten, scum-of-the-earth, that liar!”

Imposter. Liar.

“Your mom took it better, I think she expected it,” Sam continues. “I’m sorry, Danny, I know this isn’t how you wanted to deal with this.”

She told them.

He and Jazz hadn’t gathered the guts to tell his parents about Vlad for months, and now they know, because Sam told them. And she probably did so with good reason—imminent battle, unknown sorts of danger, best be cautious and warn them against any possible chances of deceit. She did the right thing, he and Jazz did the wrong one.

She told them.

“I’ll find him, you’ll see—!” Dad is saying.

“Dad?” he says, walking up to him and pulling him by the arm. “C’mon, Dad. Let’s find Jazz a med kit and then we can talk.”

He turns to Sam, who looks apologetic. He shake his head slowly, it’s not your fault.

“He’ll be sorry!” Dad is saying. “He’ll wish he’d never—!”

“I know,” Danny cuts him off. “He’s going to pay, I know. C’mon, Dad, let’s go.”

***

They take refuge in Tetslaff’s office, which is concealed behind the bleachers. It has a med kit and enough chairs for them all.

Sam tends to Jazz’s wounds, which are little more than a few cuts on her shoe-less foot and the bruise on her arm. Tucker finds her a rubber band, with which she ties back her hair. Danny gets her a water bottle.

 After Jazz hears their side of the story, she’s content to sit back and relax with her water bottle, so the focus shifts to Dad.

Now that his adrenaline rush has worn off, so has most of his anger, and now he’s quiet. Very quiet, staring straight at the wall. Mom breaks the silence first, says: “You could have told us.”

Jazz answers for him: “We should have.”

“You didn’t,” Dad says.

“No,” Danny says, feeling as rotten as the day he punched Dash. “I’m sorry.”

Dad looks down at his feet. “But he’s my best friend.”

“I’m sure he was at some point,” Jazz says. “Maybe some part of him still is, but… a small part. He’s different now.”

Dad nods, doesn’t say anything else.

Dani is the one that chooses to cut this segment of their meeting short: “We need to find him,” she says. “Think about it: it’s been months since coronation. Why did he take this long to put his plan in action? He must have something big planned out.”

Sam nods. “We don’t know what exactly they’re planning, though, or where they are. We need to prepare for whatever that might be, gather allies. Walker’s men will probably up and about again in a few hours, but we need more than that.”

“The ghosts at the island might be up for it,” Dani says. “Or the ones at Desiree’s. Technically, they all kind of owe you guys.”

“As long as they volunteer their help,” Danny says. “I don’t want anyone thinking they have to fight. I’m not even sure that there will be a fight—maybe this is just going to be Vlad against me.”

Tucker rolls his eyes. “Right. And he broke out all those prisoners for the fun of it, huh?”

“He could have done it to make a statement, scare us, mislead us,” Sam says. “But Tucker’s probably right, Danny. I think he gathered an army to make his threat larger, and he probably intends to make a show of it.”

“But none of them are actually after me,” Danny says. “Dan said that his job isn’t to kill me, which pretty much implies that none of those ghosts will try to kill me either. Vlad will.”

To his side, Dad winces.

Sparing him a pained look, Sam nods. “Of course,” she says. “If he kills you, Vlad becomes king.”

Dani blinks. “That would be bad.”

“Very,” Danny says. “But my point is, no one else can really hurt me—not that bad. So if I go in alone, find their hideout, I can probably fight Vlad without having to worry about the others. And if that happens, and I win, the others will probably scatter.”

Sam looks at him like he’s the greatest idiot to ever walk the planet. “Or,” she says, grinding her teeth, “once Vlad is out of the question, someone else will try to take his place because, hey, who doesn’t want that sort of power?”

I don’t, he thinks, instinctively. “Okay, so I’ll fight Vlad someplace away from them, and once he’s out, we can recapture the others.”

“No,” Jazz says, speaking up for the first time. “There’s still Dan to consider—he’s your priority now, not Vlad. I’m worried over how he even escaped. Have you heard from Clockwork?”

Oh, crud. No, he hasn’t.

***

They split up. The parents stay with Jazz at the school, to keep watch and alert them if anything happens in Amity. He and Dani head to Clockwork’s tower, and Sam and Tucker start looking for allies. He first picks up the crown at his house, though, not wanting to risk theft, even though theft alone won’t do the thief any good.

They don’t actually reach Clockwork’s tower because it’s not there anymore.

Somewhere in his mind, a backup generator flips on while the rest of his consciousness falls to his feet, and the word annihilation floats its way to his lips, but doesn’t actually leave them. The remnants are scattered chunks of rock and assorted debris, too much of it—enough to let him know that he didn’t take a wrong turn and up someplace else.

This is Clockwork’s tower, what’s left of it, but there’s no Clockwork.

Instead… “How does it look? My own handiwork—just a bit of payback, not too over the top. Never liked that guy.”

He and Dani stiffen, turn to face a self-satisfied Dan.

“Took you hours to notice,” Dan continues. “Some friend you are.”

His gut clenches. He’d taken enough measures to protect the Mansons and the Foleys, but he’d never thought… “Where is he?”

“Not here. If you must know, he was fairly complacent, after realizing he was vastly outnumbered. Where, oh where, were his friends when he needed them? Hm?” Dan chuckles. “Oh, the look on you kids’ faces. Cheer up! So much guilt, so much anguish. Almost makes me feel—”

“You don’t know a thing about feelings!” Dani cuts him off. “Stop it, just—stop!”

She shoots, aims straight for Dan’s head, and the hit would’ve struck its target, but Dan sidesteps at the last moment and glares. “You too?” he says, his nonchalance now edgy. “Don’t presume to know me, girl. Has it ever occurred to you that, just because I’ve lost my human half, doesn’t mean I do not feel? That’s the secret, Danielle. I destroyed my human half so that I could stop feeling. It did not work, and it drove me mad.

“It’s hypocritical of you to insult me like this. Both of you—aren’t you going around, vouching for things like ghosts are people too and similar whatnot? Aren’t you? You two are pathetic, and that is the only reason I ever agreed to this ridiculous plot—the three of us, we’re the same person, but I think that’s two more than the world needs.”

Dan’s voice is raised, fists aflame, glare hardened. He’s not, however, going ballistic or losing control of himself, and therein lies the problem: Danny’s enemies usually lose their cool at some point, which leaves him an advantage.

Joke’s on him now, because his temper rises and rises. “I am not you!”

“And neither am I,” Dani says, much more collected than he. “But you’re right—three’s a crowd.”

She fires, and Danny catches on quickly. He shoots, too.

It turns into a chase. Although his strength and Dani’s combined surpass Dan’s, and though this isn’t supposed to be a fair fight for the latter, the battle is difficult. Danny’s priorities rearrange themselves again and again—protect Dani, hit Dan, protect Dani, protect himself. It’s instinct to look out for whoever is at his side, and Dan notices quickly enough.

They close in on his island scant minutes later, and he panics. He tries to redirect them someplace else, but Dan holds firm. He has the advantage—Danny means to protect everyone down there.

Everyone, of course, is a liability because they could just as well join the fight and have Dan surrounded. But the confidence in Dan’s eyes does not waver, making Danny nervous.

With good reason. The first target is his home, and it starts to burn quickly, dozens of windows shattering loudly, like a makeshift alarm—danger. Run. Go.

Dan aims for some of the small buildings surrounding his house, but Danny blasts him out of the way while Dani puts up a few shields. The fight turns into this: them, protecting the island and themselves; him, the embodiment of the verbs to attack, to destroy.

Then the Speeder shows up, and Sam and Tucker step out of it, and Danny freezes for a moment because they’re alone. Hadn’t they been gathering an army?

His spirits plunge, as does he the moment Dan takes advantage of his startled shock and shoots him straight in the chest, sending him hurling toward the fiery mess that used to be his house.

Something green wraps around his wrist and pulls him away, pulls on his momentum so hard that his arm may as well have fallen off. He’s dazed, quite bruised, and his wrist stings bad. He’s not sure how the impact happens—one moment he’s in the air and the next he’s in a heap on the ground, not too far from the fire, atop his two best friends.

“Ow,” Sam says. “The crash wasn’t planned.”

Standing up, he glances at Dani, who seems to be holding her own okay. Quickly, he says: “Get out of here! Listen, you’ve got to find Clockwork, they kidnapped him, too.”

Tucker grates his teeth, but Sam loses no time with the shock. “Okay, on it. Take this”—she swiftly pulls the ring off her middle finger and shoves it into his palm—“and be careful.”

“And this,” Tucker adds, handing him a thermos. He’s looking up at Dani too, nervous.

He straps the thermos to his back, but shoves the ring back at Sam. “You need it.”

“No I don’t,” she says, conjuring green mesh around her wrists. “It’s an added advantage; I’m used to fighting without it.”

“I’m not used to fighting with it.”

“This looks like a good time to start.” She gestures around, says: “We evacuated, so don’t worry about the island. We’ll find Clockwork. Now, go.”

Tucker looks nervous, but Sam only looks annoyed, rattled. She’s not telling him something. “What are you—”

“Go!” She turns on her heel and drags Tucker behind her, steps into the Speeder.

She’s about to shut the door when he presses a palm against the it and holds it back. She looks out, glares at him for being stubborn, a look so piercing that he momentarily forgets what he’s about to say. Something about her not telling him stuff, again. But he ends up blabbering: “Be careful—both of you.”

Her gaze softens, long enough for her to say “you too,” but then she tenses again. She kicks his hand, makes him yelp and release a rather undignified ouch! while she takes advantage of his distraction and shuts the door. She and Tucker fly off a moment later, and he supposes that he should do the same.

Behind him, Dani shrieks.

He whips around, sees her land among the chaos. The fire is spreading into the rest of the island, slipping through the cracks in the cobblestoned streets like a gasoline trail. He’s relieved to see Dani haul herself up and even more so to see that Dan has switched targets and is about to land a punch square in his face.

He sidesteps, and Dan would’ve landed in a pile of dust, but he corrects his trajectory and loops upward at the last second, turning to face him. Dan sneers, loses no time, and fires.

He creates a shield, spares a glance to his side to see if Dani is alright. She’s trying to stand, but stumbles. She doesn’t stand back up.

He loses focus and doesn’t realize that Dan is standing behind him until a strong sting spreads around his back, pushing him into the ground. A pile of rocks scrape his left cheek, and he tastes blood and dirt.

Laying on his side, he sees the green flash and conjures up a shield, and in the few seconds between the shield and the blast exploding across it, he sees the ring, thirty feet away from him, a glinting reflection of the fire roaring above.

Dan’s feet land before him, and he can’t see it anymore.

A cold hand grips him by the neck and hauls him to his feet, and then off the ground, and he’s choking. He’s choking, but not on fear, or anger, or panic—he’s choking on his own breath, and it’s the worst kind of choking there is.

He pulls at Dan’s fingers, gasps for air, tries to breathe through his nose, tries everything but nothing reaches his lungs. He’s in ghost form but he still needs to breathe, and he can’t.

“Like I said, I’m not allowed to kill you,” Dan says. He inches closer. “But I don’t give a damn.”

He starts to squeeze his throat, and it burns.

“I didn’t stop feeling, Danny,” he says. “It didn’t go away. I missed them, so much. It messed with my head and it didn’t stop. I wanted to die, but I couldn’t. This is the luxury I’m granting you, my deepest wish—I’m granting myself my own death, through you, because I can’t die. You’ll argue that I’m already dead, on the inside, and you’re probably right. But I’m still here.

“I don’t miss them anymore, I can’t. But I do feel that same pressure on my chest, and it never goes away, doesn’t let me breathe. Can you feel it? It’s why I’ve chosen to choke you to death, Danny—I want you to feel it. Pain in your chest, blurred vision and black spots, no air in your lungs, no blood in your limbs. Your head is about to implode and you—can’t—breathe. You’re paling, turning blue—I bet you can feel it.”

He can. It hurts.

“Years on end like that, Danny, because I can’t die, but I can feel. They did this to me. They did it, and now you’re going to die, and it’ll happen to them. And then they’ll know exactly what it’s like to be a walking corpse, a real ghost, like the horror stories, Danny, and—”

Dan releases him with a guttural cry, and Danny falls. He falls, regains his breath far too quickly for his own good, coughs and coughs and falls and falls.

And then he breaks his fall, because if he’s not mistaken, Dani was the one that got him out of that, and he needs to go back and help her. So he wheezes and goes up, speeds even though it’s not the best idea, forces air into his lungs and back out, clenches his teeth because it hurts. He has a headache that probably won’t fade anytime soon, but in a way it clears his thoughts and splits the little thinking space he has left in three: Dani, the ring, Dan.

He doesn’t think of anything else. He swoops down and picks Dani up from the ground, dodges blasts and hits coming from every direction, acts on autopilot. He checks that Dani is okay, and she is—awake and everything, but her eyelids are drooping and she’s pale. She says: “I hit him good,” and rolls her head into his chest.

He leaves her on the far edge of the island. Dan is still on his trail, but he’s flying fast, really fast, doesn’t let him catch up. Their paths cross as he makes his way back to the mainland, far from Dani and close to the ring. He only turns back once, surprising Dan enough to hit him square in the chest and leave him momentarily dazed.

He spots the ring, feels the heat of a blast about to connect with his back, and drops to the ground quickly enough to avoid the hit. His body slams hard against the ground. Rolling onto his side, he focuses on picking up the ring.

He slips it onto his finger, feels the surge of energy he left behind months ago. It’s invasive, but he doesn’t fight against it, doesn’t have the strength to do so. Pain explodes in his head, along with a series of images and sounds. It’s like opening up a closet door and having everything tumble upon you, things you’d meant to lock away and leave behind racing for freedom, pushing and punching their way to the exit, and you’re roadkill beneath their feet.

Then, like a shockwave settling, it all stops. Every last tidbit finds a niche inside his head, and his thoughts clear. His senses turn hyperaware of every last detail: Dan is about to shoot him, the shot is about to get him.

The shot doesn’t get him, bounces back against a shield. He stands up as Dan lands a few feet away from him. He realizes what he must look like, to Dan—his posture sags, he has a split lip and dirt covering him from his crash against the ground. His throat aches and breathing is painful, slowing his breathing rate and leaving him perpetually winded. It’s probably swollen and red.

No wonder Dan is cackling. “I win,” he says. Then the dark humor on his face leaves, and he locks a narrowed gaze onto him. “The girl is out of the game now, Danny, and you will be soon. You know what that means? You will have turned into me, because I’ll be the only you that’s left.”

Danny doesn’t spare any theatrics for him, doesn’t even bother with the element of surprise. He only stretches out his hand, enjoys the brief confusion and panic on Dan’s face as he spots the ring.

He feels the rush of power accumulating in his fingers—a bomb that waited on a timer that stretched too long, coke and mentos in his bloodstream—but he stands still, tenses his aim. “I win,” he says as he powers up his shot, uses his spare hand to confine Dan’s feet in ice to make sure he can’t escape.

Then he shoots, a thickening beam that spreads from Dan’s chest to the rest of his body, pushing him backward and upward, an infinite and speedy trajectory across the vast space of the Ghost Zone.

Dan does not scream, but the muscles on his neck tense and a vein pops across his temple. The last Danny sees of his face is a confused gaze, almost hopeful. Then the beam grows thick enough to encase Dan’s form entirely.

When the shot fades, Dan isn’t there anymore, and he only hears the fire crackling behind him, only feels its heat grazing his back and the empty thermos strapped to it, only sees the silent and stagnant green void before him.