#Valdan Song-Lumano

[goliath-de-senfina-sango]

A Phantom Adopted

Murder Misery

A devil and a priest go on the hunt, while a late fee collector and his cousins withdraw from attempting to teach a 15-year-old baby. discussions are had, plans are made.

Ao3

One would expect that a soul-sucking shadow demon would be somewhat difficult for people not particularly well versed in tracking others down to find - even more so considering that Leico’s attempt to scry her failed him.  Still, it turned out that feeding on misery in order to sustain one’s looks made one unpopular, and so finding Penelope Spectra was no challenge.  The irritating part was merely that she had someone with her.

A green blob with red eyes, claws, and a fanged mouth arched a brow that wasn’t there a moment ago at them, looking wholly unimpressed.  A corpse-pale woman wearing a cropped black shirt and black pants covered in green flame accents turned around to look at them both, purple lips pulling back to reveal a smile full of fangs.

“My my, it appears someone went about seeking us out, Penelope.  We don’t get many clients who want us, do we?”

“No, we don’t.  I assure you, gentlemen, that I’ll be perfectly able to help you through whatever it is that you’ve got going on in those little heads of yours.”

Leico reached under his cloak, pulling from behind him a silver mace that hummed with power.  Duncan pulled out his pistol, disabling the safety he’d installed after one too many close calls with drunken family.

“You can help me by sitting still and letting us purge you from existence.”

“You can help me by giving me a moving target.”

Five cracks rang through the air as bullets, engraved with infernal sigils, flew and dug into the pair of ghosts with lightning speed and deadly precision.  Duncan grinned at the pair, 3 holes blasted into Spectra and 2 splatters of goo flung from Bertrand’s gelatinous form.

The grin fell and a yelp escaped him as the blob took on the form of a large cat of some kind, and claws sliced into his tail as Duncan tried to dodge out of the way.  Wonderful to learn that one of his opponents could change form like that, very nice.

“What violent little men you are!  You are men, aren’t you, not a pair of monsters trying to make themselves-AH!”

Bertrand was forced back rather quickly when Leico’s hand, wreathed in blinding grey light, slapped the shapeshifter in the center of his body and over half of it was burned away by the light.  The warbling screech Bertrand made as he retreated was music to Duncan’s ears, and he fist bumped Leico while Bertrand turned into a small bird.  

A crackling bolt of violet light flew toward them and the brothers jumped away, putting some space between themselves.  Grey-violet-green light swirled into a ball in his hand, a veritable maelstrom of color, and scoffed at Spectra.

“May your soul face proper judgment at the hands of the Queen.”

“The only Queen I answer to is myself, you pest!”

Spectra rose into the sky, as much as it was the sky, and raised a wall of ectoplasm.  The bolt of holy light pierced it like a rocket through glass, and with a flare of incandescence and a hellish wail, Penelope Spectra was nothing more than a wispy ball of shadow floating aimlessly through the void.

Bertrand flew after the core, hoping to fly his oil stain of a mistress away from the battle.

CRACK

Metal coated in literal hellfire slammed through Bertrand’s wing, and he lost hold of his falcon form.

CRACK

Pain became his world and Bertrand was reduced to naught but his core, the ectoplasm around him too thick with holy and infernal magic from their attackers to pull into himself, to build a new body.  That was fine, he would be fine, they’d assume this was the worst that could be done and walk away.  Humans didn’t know how the soul worked, after all.

CRACK

Another bullet sailed through Penelope Spectra’s core, and even stripped down to a core himself, Bertrand could feel her screams, fire and shadows exploding into nothing.  He shuddered with a violent sorrow that threatened to rip him apart.

CRACK

Rather than joining his precious Penelope, Bertrand was faced with a far more horrific reality.  Without his core, he was unbound from the ectoplasm that made up the liminal realm, and without it there was nothing.  No sight, no sound, no touch or smell or taste.  The countless senses that being a ghost afforded them, gone.  He simply was.

True destruction would have been a mercy, but demons and priests were not known for mercy when dealing out retribution.

Duncan sighed, checking over his pistol before holstering it.  Taking a deep breath, he let fire rise from within, sealing up the miniscule cuts that Bertrand had managed to land on him, and shook out his limbs.

“That was disappointing.  I expected a fight not 12 seconds of executing a couple of weaklings.”

“They preyed on children, Duncan, what did you expect?   I’m honestly just surprised they managed to nick you.”

“Yeah yeah, rub it in.  I just didn’t know that there’d be a shapeshifter, or I’d’ve backed up a bit more.   Whatever.   Think there’s a bounty we can collect on?”

“What currency would ghosts in a multicultural melting pot of an afterlife even use?  Energy?”

“True, it’d probably be a barter system or IOUs.  Whatever, let’s get back home, shall we?  Truly a riveting tale on how long this took to get to.”

Leico snorted and put away his mace, gesturing at the air in front of them.   The ectoplasm swirled up and out into a shimmering grey-violet disc, resolving into a gateway onto the deck of the Rose Phoenix.  Sharp winds and arctic cold flew out of the Gate and Leico shivered, wrapping an arm around Duncan for warmth.

“Well, if Toby and Valdan got wrapped up with the kid, Dave is dealing with learning the medicinal technology.   Hopefully this doesn’t turn into a fight.  I can feel that place sucking in my heat from here.”

The pair walked onto their spelljammer, leaving Spectra and her assistant to think about what they’d done for however long it took for souls to connect with ectoplasm.  Or however long it took until a lich found them, either or.

#

Jazz rushed over to check on Danny, and after several minutes of making sure there were no bruises, bumps, or cuts, she had to admit to that overprotective sister within that he was fine.  She turned to glare at Cole, who drifted lazily down beside her to give Danny his own cursory once over.  She took a deep breath, and spoke in a near hiss.

“What just happened?”

Cole held up his hands in surrender and shrugged, which did little to soothe Jazz’s building irritation.

“I dunno, probably used up a lot of energy learning a new power and tossing it out at me.  I’m not the best at all this spirituality stuff-“

“You’re literally half air spirit but alright, cous.”

“-I do know how to keep people from pulling on my magic to fill up their own drained supply.  Your brother needs to eat more.”

“Most likely needs more food filled with ectoplasm, it’s incredibly energy rich.  Maybe he should spend some time in the Ghost Zone?  Who knows.”

“As I asked, do you know where Elle is?  I personally haven’t tried my hand at scrying her but I’m rather certain that she’d feel it if we did that and I’d rather not creep her out when we go find her to offer her help.”

“I can try to look for her, I guess, but I’m pretty sure that Elle is laying low to avoid grabbing Vlad’s attention.”

“Who exactly is this Elle person, Tucker?”

“Oh yeah, we never did end up telling you about her.  Save any and all yelling until the end of the explanation or I’m going to stop telling you, got it?”

Jazz took a deep, measured breath, and nodded to Sam.

“Ok, before you start telling that tale, I’ve gotta say I’d find her better if I had the Fenton Finder­­­TM since that could track down her ectosignature.  Buuut, I’d need Vlad’s record of that ectosignature in order to look for it in particular.”

“We should also probably get Danny into an energy rich environment so he can recover faster.  How do you kids feel about seeing our ship?”

“No.  We’ve just met you, it’ll take more than one meeting to establish the trust needed to get us to a secondary location, especially with Danny passed out.  I’m taking Danny home now, we’ll contact you when we’re ready to meet you again.”

“Well, that’s a fair enough point I guess.  After we sneak into Vlad’s place to get some more data, I’ll get back to you on finding Elle if we do before you.  Regardless, you should probably tell us before you go to get her, so we can talk with her as a group - familiar faces and all that.”

“Well now, if it’s breaking into some rich guy’s house to steal information, I can help you out with that.  Kinda my specialty and all that.”

“You don’t have a specialty; you just do everything.”

“Thank you, yes.  So, you guys head back to your place, we’ll figure out what we’re gonna do on our end, and we can meet back… well, how about here?”

“Oh sure, we can turn the observatory into a real homebase.”

Tucker paused as he considered that, tilting his head.

“Actually, yeah, why don’t we do that?”

“Tucker, schemes later, getting Danny in the car now.  Thank you, Toby, Valdan, Cole, for helping us out.  We’ll keep in touch, see what you can teach the kids.  For now, have a good day.”

Tempting as it was to ask just how old Jazz was to be calling the others kids, Valdan knew when to cut his losses.  So he nodded and shook Jazz’s free hand, while Cole picked Danny up and carried him over to Jazz’s… car.

“I don’t like the vibes this thing gives off.  You got here in this?”

“Well if you’re connected to the weather like you claimed then I imagine you wouldn’t be all that pleased near a car.  I’ve tried to convince my parents to make an engine that’s eco friendly and isn’t running on ectoplasm, since that’d just animate the car itself.  They’re not much into making things that aren’t related to ectoplasm.  I might just make a new engine myself, actually, that’s probably a lost cause.”

“Welp, you’ve lost me so I’m gonna go now before you start rambling about machine parts the way Duncan and David do.  Bye.”

A cloud of shimmering vapor and ice swirled into Cole’s hand and flew out to an empty spot a few feet away.  Lightning flew from his hand to the cloud and it compressed into a flat circle of sky blue and toxic green, which swept out to the edges.  On the other side was the deck of a ship, surrounded by a howling blizzard and blinding white snow and ice.  Laughing at the sight, Cole grabbed his husband and cousin before jumping through the portal, which sealed shut behind him.

“Alright, a lot of things happened just now.  Let’s talk about that on the way home.  But first, Tucker, you’re going to tell me about this Elle person.  We’ve got plenty of drive to go before we even get to Sam’s house, so don’t try to say ‘it’s a long story’.”

Tucker sighed and settled down in shotgun, sticking tongue out at Sam when she glared from the backseat.

“Ok, so it all starts with Vlad.”

#

The Rose Pheonix was currently in the shape of a submarine, and David wondered about that.  He did not, after all, instruct it to change into any particular kind of vessel when they approached the massive iceberg that bordered the seemingly infinite Far Frozen realm, having no plans to go into it on the ship – he’d modified his and Apogo’s armor to be perfectly suited for the cold after all.  He would have to check the engines and see how the ectoplasm around them was affecting the mythallars.

Returning his attention to his family, however, David looked them all over and sighed.

“Duncan, didn’t we agree not to have weapons at the table?  Put your guns away before Valdan and Leico see them.  You don’t need em to regale us with how amazing your battle with Spectra and Bertrand was.”

Duncan rolled his eyes but got up anyway, stalking out of the room with a shout over his shoulder.

“It was barely a fight anyway!  Next targets need to be tougher.”

“Next time we need you to kill someone, I’m sure they’ll be a better opponent.  For now, we should focus on finding this Elle kid and getting her the help she needs.  Thankfully, the Far Frozen have agreed to lend us their medical technology and offered their services in actually checking out Elle’s stability issues and all that after we mentioned that she’s the clone of Danny.”

“Apparently they had this prophecy about him beating the big bad King of Ghosts single-handedly, and he did, so they find him worthy of worship or whatever.  Makes me wonder what kind of tyrant that king had to be for that kind of love for a kid ya don’t know.”

“Welp, that’s a whole other thing to look into but let’s keep our priorities straight, shall we?  First we need to find and help Elle, then we track down this Vlad character and see how best to eliminate him from the equation.  After that, I kinda wanna stay here for a bit, their world feels like it’s in need of help to maintain a balance with nature.”

“Before we can take out Vlad we need to find out if he’ll come back as a regular old ghost or if there’s a way to properly purge him, because there’s no reason he can’t shapeshift to look like his living self and resuming business as usual.  He’s a threat to everyone we’ve gone and gotten attached to here, and there’s no guarantee that he isn’t a major threat to Elle too since he made her.”

“Find and help Elle, research and kill Vlad, guarantee he stays properly dead for long enough that the kids don’t have to deal with him until they’re adults, and then we can split up jobs between helping the material world with whatever imbalance it’s having with nature and technology.  That sound good?”

There were agreements all around the table, and the twins walked in setting down food along the table.

“Glad you guys decided on a plan, cause it’s time to eat now.”  

“We’ll start actually working on things after, got it?” A chorus of ‘yes sirs’ rang out in a rainbow of tones and the Lumanos sat down to eat.

#

This here is for @floralflowerpower, @ebonyheartnet, and @five-rivers ! I hope you enjoyed! Have a lovely December and feel free to toss out conflicts I can shovel onto Danny's plate if you think I've been a touch too nice to him.

[goliath-de-senfina-sango]

Family, Suspicions, Rage and Plans

A Phantom adopted, Chapter 2, ao3

Team Phantom and the Lumano Clan discuss, separately this time.

Jasmine Fenton was a good person, as many people would agree, and as such did not deserve to be startled by gremlin-like little brothers phasing their heads through her walls.   Thankfully she had only one of those, and so her startle was only a tiny bit, followed by a scowl.

“Danny!  Can’t you knock?”

Danny laughed, falling into her bedroom with each breath, and flopped onto the floor.  Jazz rolled her eyes and nudged him onto his back with her foot.

“Ok, sorry, you’re right.  I finally got you though!”

“Ah yes, a jumpscare, truly the height of being frightening.  Was there something you wanted to talk about, Danny, or was this just to tell your friends you managed to scare a single person in your whole life?”

Danny clutched his heart and curled up with a few more laughs and Jazz smiled.

“Oof, friendly fire there.  Yeah, big news actually and we felt like you should probably be filled in cause you’re smart and all that.”

Danny picked himself up by floating until he could get his legs under himself and Jazz couldn’t help the fuzzy warmth in her chest, knowing he trusted her enough now to use his powers so freely in her presence.  It wasn’t too long ago that Danny would overact normalcy around her the same that he did for their parents, and while Jazz had been determined to wait that period out, it still hurt to be put in the same boat as them.

“Ok, I assume Sam and Tucker are in your room and I’m not letting Sam and her nature-covered boots all over my nice clean floor.”

Danny pointedly looked down at papers strewn about near her desk and Jazz turned him around by the shoulders.

“My floor is without dirt upon it, Danny, I’ll not have your friends change that just because Sam feels the need to rebel against her parents when they aren’t even here.”

“Gosh, tell me what you really feel.”

“Ah, but this is about your big news, not views I have the good manners to keep quiet about little brother.”

Once they were in Danny’s room, door closed firmly, Jazz took a seat on the bed next to Danny, with Tucker on his other side and Sam in the spinning desk chair.

“Ok, so what happened today that I need to know?”

“Well,” Sam said, fingers steepled in a triangle like some rich supervillain.  “Today we met a ghost who was appalled at the treatment other ghosts give Danny and decided to purge them all.”

“He specifically swore not to slaughter them all, Sam,” Danny all but pleaded.  “Maybe his magic binds him to his word?”

“Dude, he said, and I quote,” Tucker said, pulling up his PDA to read from, “’I promise not to slaughter all of the ghosts you inform me of that have hurt you in the past few months.’  There’s so many loopholes in that.”

“But the spirit of the deal-“

“Isn’t the deal, Danny.”  

Jazz shrugged when Danny turned a betrayed look her way.

“Sorry, that left way too many openings.  I’m not sure a ghost can truly be destroyed anyway, though, so do you really need to worry about that?”

“Besides, he promised you and Sam that, dude, I gave him the list.”

Tucker laughed as he was shoved nearly off the bed and shook his head.

“I’ve got to say, that’s suspiciously serendipitous, Danny.”

Jazz leaned back, crossing her legs and drumming her fingers against her arm.

“What does he get out of swooping in and dealing with all of your enemies for you?  You might’ve given him a list of allies to rally together into an organized force to attack you with.”

“He’s a liminal like me, for one thing.”

Danny grinned and Jazz’s eyes widened slowly.

“He said that Danny’s basically a toddler in ghost years and so he’s just absolutely horrified that he’s being basically hunted down for brawls by adult ghosts.”

Sam caught the pillow that Danny threw at her, and Jazz just barely managed to dodge it herself when Danny phased through the return throw.

“He put on the kind of fake cheery tone that you only hear from someone ready to explode, and his wings lit up again.”

“Ok, Tucker, wait.  Start from the beginning, please.” #

Valdan watched Toby burn his way across a massive purple rock floating in the void, slashing it apart with his claws and smashing it to bits with hooves, tails, and all manner of weaponry gifted by nature to its beasts.  Even upon reaching the coveted arch-druid status, Valdan had rarely seen him act like this.

He couldn’t blame him, of course.  The ectoplasm around him buzzed with the whisper of notes to a war song that could bring down fortresses and rally armies out of civilians.  He balanced a knife on his finger, daring the tip to pierce him, and watched the flames dance off the blade.

A warm hand pressed against his back, heat pouring into muscles that relaxed like thawing ice, and Valdan hummed, leaning into Duncan at his side.

“Is everyone back, yet?  I’m not talking about this over dinner, that’s for pleasant things.”

“Well, I think Apo and Cole are back from chatting with the dragon princess, and they’re only a little charred, so I think that’s everyone.”

“Right, well, someone’s gonna have to reign in mister Wrath of Nature over there.  I’m not doin it.”

“Lazy bones,” Cole calls out as he jumps off the deck of the ship that was still taking the shape of a somewhat standard sea vessel.  Valdan can’t hear what they say to each other, doesn’t need to, but soon enough Toby is his human looking self again, and the both of them are on the deck.

It doesn’t take long to gather everyone below deck in their little meeting area, there were only 7 of them after all.  Still, Valdan paced a bit, eyes narrowed as he thought.

In a trip around the table all the weapons that could be removed had been placed in a neat pile in the corner, which did nothing to ease the tension in the room.

“Right, so.  We’ve got a handful in our lap, damn that compassion of ours.  The kids provided us with a lovely little list of problematic poltergeists that attack their little hometown.  They isolated for us three particularly bad pests but summarized only two of them.  Both of these threats need to be eliminated as soon as possible, but I imagine we’re gonna have an easier time finding one than the other two.”

“There’s also another plane-touched child that particularly needs our help and isn’t gonna get that help from anyone else on their material plane.  She’s a result of the only adult plane-touched round here being a total scum bag.”

Apogo sighed, waving a hand to make sure he had their attention.  Valdan braced himself for the speech that would come at some point in the conversation.

“Hold on now, look.  I know that whoever’s on that list needs a good ass kicking, obviously, but are we gonna go around destroying souls just like that?”

“I don’t think any of us have the magic to destroy a soul, Apo.  Well, unless the weird power boost we’ve been getting from being here between Realms has gifted me the illustrious power of eating them.  We just shoot them in the core and they’re souls floating around in the void.”

“Deprived of their senses and unable to control their movement.  I’m not saying we don’t take out the worst of them, I’m sure you’re about to tell me something irredeemable about these two ‘worst child fighters’ but maybe we should get a bit more information from them before we go on a bloody campaign?”

“Oh absolutely, just from the hilarious names given I suspect most of these people aren’t a major problem, we can handle them in an afternoon or two.  But, well, I took your weapons away cause I don’t want you to blow holes in the ship when I tell you about this Vlad Masters guy.”

“We have developed self-control, Val, what could he have done?”

Simply because he was the one to say that, Valdan kept his eyes on his brother while he relayed everything Danny told them about his clone.  He did, however, have the tact to keep a hand on one of Apogo’s shoulders through the tale.

With the powder keg of magic in the room, Valdan wondered if he should’ve had this conversation on the deck.

David drummed his clawed fingers against the table and closed his eyes.  His other hand was occupied with holding onto Leico’s, more to keep him from leaving than comfort.  Leico himself was looking rather ready to call on his precious goddess to smite the man in his stead, but Valdan knew he wouldn’t.  That would be too easy.

“So, the misery demon lady will die first, I think.  Easier target, no clean-up really needed.  While Leico and Duncan track her down, Valdan I want you to find where Vlad lives, see how easily we can turn his environment against him.  Toby, you head to the Far Frozen and see if they can help, learn some new medicine stuff even.  Cole, how do you feel about training a kid with weather powers?”

“I feel like I need to know what you plan on doing, David.  Don’t forget to let everyone else in on your master plan.”

“Oh, I’m going to learn the new technology of this place’s prime material plane, maintain our ship so it doesn’t fall apart, and prepare to commit murder.  Perhaps you and I can even go out and socialize, find some of the other ghosts on that list of Valdan’s so that we can judge them ourselves.  When we take down this Vlad Masters, we should raid his laboratory so that we have all the relevant data on Elle needed to help her.”

“Until then, how about we eat ourselves some dinner, yeah?  We’re all stressed, and acting without thinking is going to get us nowhere.  Besides, I have a feeling the kids are gonna call us again soon anyway.”

“Of course, Lei, you always make the best food to get over rage with.”

That night, while everyone else was getting much needed sleep after a patrol around the city and several smaller ghosts captured or sent on their way, Danny took to the roof of the Ops center, staring up at the stars.  He looked down at his hand, curling it into fists over and over.

“The weather, huh?  Wonder how far up that goes.”