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danny-phantom-slut · 3 months ago

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heavy is the crown (12k)

A rewrite of Season 2, Episode 5, Reign Storm.

Phantom wins the throne through trial by combat.

Danny was in the middle of English class, head down on his desk in the back of the room, trying to hide from Dash and Kwan (it wasn’t his fault they were after his ass – well, okay, maybe it was his fault, because he’s the one that played multiple pranks on them, but still!), when he felt something in his core shudder. It felt like a wave – a tsunami, really – of ectoplasmic energy slamming into his core. Danny froze and tensed up for a few seconds, gripping his pencil so hard that it snapped, damn his ghostly strength. Then the moment passed, and the energy was gone. Danny immediately looked up, startling Star, who sat next to him. She gave him and his pencil a dirty look, but Danny didn’t pay attention to her. He was too distracted by the foreboding feeling in his core. It wasn’t the typical blue mist that indicated a ghost, but somehow, he knew that a ghost was causing his core to cower.

It was strange. Usually, his core reacted angrily to another ghost coming into his haunt, or it reacted happily to his friends being around, but never had it cowered before. Danny didn’t do fear, he got too much adrenaline from the fighting to even consider being scared.

Unfortunately, it was in that moment that Mr. Lancer called on him to read the part of Sebastian in the “Twelfth Night” by Shakespeare, forcing Danny to actually pay attention to what they were doing in class. Danny sighed as he picked up his book – “act two, scene one, Mr. Fenton,” Mr. Lancer said – and flipped to the required page. His core continued to shudder for a moment, then settled.

Danny started to read in a dead voice, “By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me …”

Danny Fenton and Valerie Gray were running as fast as they could – or rather, Danny was keeping pace with Valerie, trying his best to resist the urge to jump into the air and fly away at Mach speed. They both had good reasons for running; Valerie, from her stalker, Nathan; Danny, from Dash and Kwan, whom he had pulled multiple pranks on earlier in the day. Fenton Works was close, but up ahead there was an alleyway that was even closer. Danny and Valerie locked eyes for only a moment before hastily jumping into said alley, pushing each other behind the dumpster that gave prime hiding real estate. Except – there was already someone there. Behind the dumpster sat Sam Manson, one of Danny’s best friends.

All three looked at each other, confused. Danny shoved at Sam to make room for him behind the dumpster, sitting beside her. His recent growth spurt made it hard to pull his lanky legs out of sight, but he managed. Without a word, Sam pointed at Danny, and he shrugged, arms hugged around his legs. “Hiding from Dash.”

Sam pointed at Valerie. “Hiding from Nathan. You?”

Sam only jerked a thumb over at the alley entrance, where her mother, Pamela Manson, ran by. “Sammy-kins!” She screeched; her eyes were wide. She looked around, and Valerie ducked behind the dumpster just in time. Pamela was holding a god-awful looking dress; it was a pastel pink, yellow, and white. It had puffy sleeves, a frilled collar lined with pink hearts, and a ballroom-skirt with lots of pink, frills, and hearts. Pamela looked very distressed. “At least try it on!”

She kept running, going right past their hiding spot.

“Fair enough,” Danny conceded. “But we can’t stay here – my house isn’t far, and we can all hide in it.”

The three of them got up and quickly hauled ass to Fenton Works.

As they ran, Sam frowned over at Danny. “So, what’s up with this?” She asked discreetly, making sure Valerie didn’t hear. “Why are you helping her all of a sudden? After everything she’s done to Phantom?”

Danny knew what Sam was talking about. Valerie had become the Red Huntress in the last month of their freshman year, almost a year after Danny had his accident in the summer before and became Phantom. Ever since getting her ghost hunting suit, Valerie had been relentless in her pursuit of ghosts – and all of it was bad. She absolutely hated all ghosts. The Red Huntress was indiscriminatory and went after both the destructive ghosts, like the Box Ghost, and the local ghostly hero, Phantom. Not to mention that the Red Huntress didn’t care about keeping ghosts safe and alive (heh – alive, ghosts), and that she had the mindset of “tear them apart molecule by molecule,” just like Danny’s parents. So, Danny often had to save the ghosts she went after, only painting him more as a villain in her eyes.

“Well, she helped hide me from Dash earlier,” Danny said, picking his words carefully. He chose not to mention how he may have still held an old candle for Valerie, even after everything that had happened. “I’m just returning the favour. It doesn’t need to mean anything.”

“Well, just be careful,” Sam whispered, just as they reached the steps to Fenton Works. “The last thing you’d want to do is invite your arch enemy into your own house.”

His arch enemy was inside his house.

His father’s hulking figure, dressed in a neon orange and black hazmat suit, sat over a small chess table, his features frowning down at the pieces. For as much as Jack Fenton was a genius when it came to engineering, he was not very bright in other aspects of life – case in point, chess. His sister, Jazz, sat on the sofa reading a book on psychology. Her bright orange hair was pushed back with a teal headband that matched her pants. And his mother, Maddie Fenton, stood above both; she was wearing her teal hazmat suit with her red goggles pulled up over her eyes. She held a teapot in one hand, with her other hand on her hip. She glared down at …

Vlad Masters, otherwise known as the halfa Vlad Plasmius, Danny’s self-proclaimed arch nemesis.

Vlad sat across from Jack, hand on his rook, as he turned to face Danny at the door. “Ah! Hello, Daniel!” He grinned maliciously; his voice way too chipper for all the devious deeds Danny knew he’d done before.

“Too late,” Sam muttered.

“You!” Danny said. “What are you doing here?”

His mother, who didn’t like Vlad anymore than Danny did, and was actually quite obvious in her dislike, ‘accidentally’ poured hot tea onto Vlad’s crotch. Vlad cried out in pain. Maddie narrowed her eyes behind her goggles. “Totally valid question, Danny.”

“Still steaming!” Vlad said, voice cracking.

“You have no idea,” Maddie growled out.

Vlad looked appropriately cowed, up until Maddie left the room, and he turned back to Danny with a smirk. Danny didn’t like that look on his face. “I was just, you know, passing through. And then I saw that marvelous battle suit –” Danny remembered the Fenton Ecto Skeleton his parents were working on, and just how powerful of a weapon it would be … if it actually worked “– and thought, since I can’t just destroy Jack and take it, I suppose I’ll steal its secrets right out from under his nose!” He followed up his words by flicking a finger at Jack’s nose, causing Jack to look up in confusion, too stupid to understand the threat.

Vlad and Jack stared at each other for a good long while, until they both burst into laughter at the same time, as if Vlad had just told a funny joke and hadn’t threatened Jack’s livelihood. They held onto each other like they were good friends and not estranged college classmates.

“Oh, I swear,” Vlad laughed, “I am such a joker! More tea, please?” Maddie poured the tea over Vlad’s head, not even pretending for it to be an accident, and Vlad cried out, “not there, oh!”

Maddie swiftly left the room, along with Jack, who followed her, looking lost.

Danny was quick to jump on Vlad now that his parents weren’t in the room. He got in Vlad’s face. “I don’t know what you’re up to, Vlad, but – well, no, actually, I do know. You literally just told everyone your plans. You’re going to try to steal the Fenton Ecto Skeleton.”

“That’s right!” Vlad snapped, “and say a word about it, and I’ll share your little … secret. I’m sure mom and dad would love to know their son is a freak and – ah, the young Miss Gray.” It was only then that Vlad seemed to notice Valerie standing behind Danny. Vlad’s eyes sparked red for a split second, so quickly that if you blinked, you would have missed it, thinking it was just a trick of the light.

Valerie blinked. “You know me?”

“How do you know her?” Danny demanded, feeling protective.

Just then, there was a loud beeping sound, coming from the bust of Jack Fenton on their fireplace mantle. The eyes kept flashing red as a warning. Jack rushed over to the bust, flipped the head up, and pressed the giant red button underneath. Above the mantle, the TV flickered to life, showing a black screen with “GHOST ZONE RADAR” written in bright red on the top, with a neon green grid below. In the middle of the grid was a giant green swirl, and in the corner, little ghost icons slowly encroached on the middle. It was obviously some sort of map – something anti-ghost that his parents had once again created. Danny had thought the bust was stupid when his father first created it, thinking it nothing but a conceited self-portrait – in the same way his father had to name everything “Fenton” such and such – but now it put him on edge. He hadn’t known it was actually some sort of anti-ghost tool.

“Galloping goblins!” Jack exclaimed, staring with wide eyes at the screen. “It’s the Ecto Exodus Alarm!”

“The Ecto what?!” Danny asked – no, demanded. He needed to know if this was something dangerous, something that could harm him or other ghosts. Behind him, his sister and friends seemed just as confused and concerned. Fenton inventions weren’t exactly known for working well …

“The Ecto Exodus Alarm,” Maddie repeated, looking just as frazzled as Jack, “or the EEA. It’s an alarm we attached to the sensors on the ghost portal, which are linked to this map on the screen. That right there –” she pointed to the green swirl “– is our ghost portal. And that –” she pointed to the ghost blob icons “– are the ghosts. The alarm can sense when large amounts of powerful, sentient ectoplasm encroach on the portal – and it’s only supposed to go off if we’re about to face a massive ghost invasion!”

Danny immediately looked over at Sam and Jazz. “Stall them!” He hissed, then he was off, running downstairs to the Fenton Ghost Portal.

Danny ran downstairs, pushing off the last step and doing a front-flip, transforming mid-air. Familiar blinding white halos flickered into existence at his waist, splitting apart and traveling up and down his body. His skin faded into a light shade of blue, his eyes flashed an ectoplasm green, and his hair was shocked white and started to float. His ears elongated into points, his canines sharpened into fangs, and his freckled started glowing and moving like the constellations. His clothes morphed into his iconic black and white hazmat suit; his boots a glowing white, and his gloves making room for his claws.

Phantom’s core pulsed excitedly, eager to face the ghosts (he couldn’t help it, fighting was just in his ghostly nature), making the room drop several degrees. Adrenaline was already flowing. Right before his feet hit the ground, he automatically started to float in the air, the natural state of ghosts.

Phantom sped toward the portal to try to shut it off before any ghosts could get through, but he was too late. A ghost flew out of the portal, a blur of blue and white, barreling into Phantom, pushing them further into the room … but it was just the Box Ghost. Phantom got up off the floor and reached for the Fenton Thermos at his waist, already laughing.

“BEWARE!” The Box Ghost shouted.

“Oh, Ancients,” Phantom said, chuckling. “It was just you?”

Just then, a bright green beam came out of the ghost portal, hitting Phantom and knocking him back several feet. He was still looking down when a large metal boot slammed in front of him, and Phantom looked up, only to see – “Skulker?” Phantom gasped.

But Skulker didn’t even look at Phantom.

“I told you there was a way out through here,” Skulker said. He turned to face the portal. Behind him, through the swirling green ectoplasm of the ghost portal, multiple heads popped out. Phantom recognised some of them – Ember, Lunch Lady, Walker – and some of them he didn’t recognise – ghost eels, ghost demons, and ectopuses. They all had one thing in common – they all looked scared. Skulker grimaced. “Now, save yourself – go, go, go, go!”

They didn’t need anymore direction. The ghosts all immediately left the poral – not just Phantom’s usual rogue gallery, but hundreds of unidentifiable ghosts, ghost animals, and even blob ghosts. They shot out of the portal like there was something chasing them.

Behind Phantom, he heard his parents cries as they got closer.

They could not see Phantom and these ghosts in their basement, or they would lose it.

Phantom grabbed onto Skulker, turned them intangible, and shot them up through the roof. As soon as they were in the sky and alone, Phantom turned to face Skulker, fists at the ready. “Now, what in the hell is going on –”

Someone grabbed onto his fists, holding him back, and Phantom looked up, surprised. He came face to face with Dora in her dragon form, with Sidney Pointdexter sitting on her back. Sidney frowned down at Phantom. “Phantom, I know this might sound a little fishy, but Skulker isn’t the bully here. Not this time.”

“Bully?” Phantom exclaimed. He backed off, floating a few feet away from Skulker. “What are you talking about? What is going on – what are all you guys running from?”

From the densely packed group of ghosts crowding the sky, Ember floated out. She strummed her guitar, creating a foreboding melody. “His name … is Pariah Dark,” Ember said. “The Ghost King and ruler of the Infinite Realms. Somehow, he’s escaped from the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep, and he’s angry. He’s searching for something – but we don’t know what. He declared the entire Ghost Zone as his, though, and that’s why we needed to escape.”

“Pariah Dark? I’ve never heard of him before,” Phantom said. “How could one ghost chase out thousands of other ghosts? He’s just one person.”

“You misunderstand,” Skulker growled. “Pariah Dark is not just ‘one person.’ He is the Ghost King, in possession of the Ring of Rage and Crown of Fire. With both, he has near limitless power. He existed long before all the other ghosts in the Ghost Zone even spawned, and he will exist long after we have all faded. He used to run his kingdom with an iron fist, until the Ancients decided he was a tyrant. It took all of them teaming up to finally seal him away in the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep – and now he’s escaped!”

“The – the Ancients had to team up to defeat him?” Phantom thought about the sheer power Clockwork, the Ancient of Time held, just on his own, and then imagined that tenfold. And even that had barely been enough to defeat this ‘Pariah Dark’ guy? His throat ran dry.

“Yes, and now he’s really angry, and really powerful,” Ember said.

“You said he was searching for something – what? Maybe if we give it to him, he’ll leave the rest of you guys alone?” Phantom said, grasping for straws. “Because you guys cannot stay in the Living Realms. It’s not safe for you guys – not with my parents and Val – er, the Red Huntress around.”

“You think if we knew we would be here right now?” Sidney demanded. “Pariah Dark is just a big bully – even if we gave him what he wanted, he would just go back to being a tyrant.”

“Well, you guys can’t stay here –”

As if to prove his point, an ecto blast shot past him right at that moment, almost clipping his shoulder. Phantom immediately flew to the side to dodge the other incoming blasts. He glanced down at the ground, spotting his parents. Jack had a Fenton Bazooka hooked over his shoulder, and Maddie held an anti-ghost net, ready to throw it down over any unsuspecting ghosts that got close by. Phantom’s core shuddered angrily – how dare they try to hurt his rogues?

“Scatter!” Phantom yelled.

All the ghosts listened immediately, rogue or not.

“So, the equipment is to your liking? It functions properly, does it?”

Vlad sat on the edge of the building beside the young Miss Gray, who was dressed in her hunting suit and floating on her hoverboard. After the Ecto Exodus Alarm went off, it was easy to snatch the girl’s backpack while she was distracted, essentially cutting her off from her ghost hunting equipment. From there, he only needed to reveal that he was the one who gave it to her – providing information that only one who created the suit would know to prove it – and to share his “ghost-hunting” inclination to get the girl to trust him. From there, he gave the ghost hunting equipment back and convinced the girl to fly them out of Fenton Works to somewhere a bit more … private.

“Heck yeah!” Valerie exclaimed. She folded her hoverboard up back into her suit, sitting down beside Vlad and dangling her feet over the edge of the building. “It’s like you designed it just for me!” Then she paused, as if realising how creepy that was. “… Why would you do that? I’m like, fifteen.”

Vlad smiled – a soft thing, with wide eyes. “Why, Miss Gray, you’re the most capable ghost hunter I’ve ever seen! You’re smart, you’re fast, you’re strong, and most importantly – you’re motivated.”

“Really?”

It was like luring flies in with the sickly-sweet smell of the venus fly trap. Now he just had to close the claws before she could fly away. Vlad put on the charm, chuckling as he spoke. “Of course! Why else would I say such a thing? I’d have to be some sort of … diabolical villain to manipulate you like that!” Valerie stared at him for a moment, as if unsure about the joke. Then she started to giggle, and Vlad joined in. Together, they laughed heartily. Finally, she was in his trap. And now, to finish the plan … “And, my dear, it’s the reason I can trust you with this …”

Vlad put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a ring.

But not just any ring – it was the Ring of Rage.

It looked like a ghostly signet ring – it was a bright neon green, made of crystallised ectoplasm, and on the broad side was black obsidian, with an emerald inset skull engraved in the stone. The ring was magically enchanted to fit the finger of every person who came in possession of it, as well as giving a power boost to any ectoplasmic entity that owned it. The only nasty side effect was that it could also enhance the emotions of the wearer, sometimes causing emotional – and wrathful – outbursts.

Valerie stared down at it in confusion. “A … ring?”

“Not just any ring!” Vlad lied. “It’s a ring from my family, and it’s been passed down from ghost hunter to ghost hunter for generations. Made of the very ectoplasm that ghosts are made of, it’s virtually indestructible, so no nasty ghosts can ruin it.”

“I … don’t know what to say,” Valerie said, eyes now wide.

“Don’t say anything, dear – but please, let’s keep it our secret, hmm? We wouldn’t want anyone else to find out and try to take it from us, would we?” Vlad asked. He slipped the ring on her finger, grinning.

Valerie nodded. “I won’t let you down, Mr. Masters!”

Vlad chuckled darkly. “I’m sure you won’t.”

Deep within the ghost zone lay Pariah Dark’s keep. Once upon a time, it used to be a large castle surrounded by acres and acres of land, with a whole kingdom standing on the island. But after the battle between the Ancients and Pariah Darm, during which Pariah was trapped in the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep, the Ancients destroyed the area surrounding the castle, scared of the power and wealth Pariah had built up. The buildings and land surrounding the castle crumbled, leaving Pariah’s Keep isolated on its own small island in the Ghost Zone.

That didn’t mean it was now unimpressive, however. Pariah’s Keep was still a large concentric castle, well put together and not crumbling, resembling one castle nestled inside the other. It looked like something straight out of the middle ages, with a moat and everything.

Inside said Keep stood hundreds and hundreds of ghost skeleton soldiers, all dressed for battle and war. They all floated inches off the ground and glowed an ectoplasmic neon green, gnashing their fangs in excitement. At the head of these soldiers stood Fright Knight, an ancient and powerful ghost, the spirit of Halloween, and the Ghost King’s second in command. He had large and muscled body, adorned with black and grey full-body armour. His faced was obscured by a black helmet with a mohawk of spikes on top, which was only accentuated by the flaming purple hair and cape and flaming grey gauntlets. It was paired with his ectoplasmic sword called Soul Shredder, which had the ability to make ghosts fade.

A ruthless knight, Fright Knight was known to strike fear into the hearts of anyone he went against.

At the very front of the group of skeleton soldiers stood three unique ghost skeletons. One wore typical Roman armour, with a gladius at its side. Another wore a World War II uniform. The last one wore clothing typical of the Vikings, paired with a Viking helm and long braids. All had vicious fangs and canines, glowing red eyes, and long claws. They were the generals of the skeleton army.

“Your armies are amassed?” Fright Knight asked. The three skeleton generals all saluted Fright Knight, silent but sure. Fright Knight grinned. “Then, on my orders –”

“On my orders,” a loud, booming voice said from behind.

Fright Knight spun around, surprised. Fright Knight was a looming eight feet tall, but Pariah Dark absolutely towered over the Fright Knight at almost twenty feet tall. Pariah was a large, well-built ghost, with a white face outlined by a red helmet. He wore an eye-patch over his left eye and had a scare over his right. Pariah also had a gorgeous mane of long, green hair, and a braided green beard. He had two grey horns on either side of his head, the left of which was broken. His outfit consisted of black full-body armour, with grey shoulder guards, boots, and gauntlets, and he had a green belt with a metallic circular buckle with a green skull in the middle. At his waist was his sword, Reaper, which had the power of absorbing ghostly cores to enhance his power. And on his head sat the Crown of Fire, a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. It was made of crystallised ectoplasm infused with the power of Pariah’s core, lighting it on fire eternally. It was supposed to be paired with the Ring of Rage, which would have sat on his left-hand ring finger, but …

“Go to that world,” Pariah demanded, baring his razor-sharp teeth, “bring the Ring of Rage to me, and to those that stand in your way – show them no mercy!”

“Dude, you okay?” Tucker asked, looking concerned. In the fluorescent lights of the cafeteria, Danny looked dead … well, deader than usual. His features were gaunt, skin impossibly pale, with large circles under his eyes. Danny gave Tucker a deadpan stare, and Tucker blushed. “Sorry, standard question. Late night?”

“Of course, it was a late night. Every ghost I know – and about a million I don’t – are loose in the Living Realm and there wasn’t a single thing I could do about it, because apparently, they’ve been kicked out of the Ghost Zone by some maniac Ghost King who wants the entire Zone to himself! And instead of having to fight them, I had to protect them from my parents all night, who were trying to capture them for experimenting!” Danny exclaimed, getting more and more frustrated as he went on. He threw his hands out in helplessness. “Not to mention, I couldn’t sleep because my arch enemy was in the guest room next to me.”

“My parents sleep in the bedroom next to me,” Sam offered. At Danny’s glare, she shrugged. “I mean, it’s not the same, but I can’t sleep either.”

Danny was about to retort – no, it was not the same thing at all, especially since Sam didn’t need to worry about her parents ripping her apart molecule by molecule – when behind him, he heard: “Oh hey, Danny.”

Danny immediately plastered a smile across his face, just for the sake of things. “Hey, Val.”

“‘Hey, Val’?” Tucker repeated, looking unimpressed. He turned to Sam, jerking a finger over at Valerie. “Isn’t that the same ‘Val’ who’s usually on a jet sled trying to kill Danny?”

“Yup,” Sam said, voice sarcastic, “and apparently, next week, we’re having cookies with Skulker!”

“You might want to … uh, bag-lunch-it outside,” Valerie said, looking concerned for something Danny couldn’t fathom. She, too, didn’t look too good that day. She had large bags under her eyes, her hair was frizzy, and her outfit seemed ill put-together, as if she hadn’t had time to look at what she was putting on before leaving the house. One thing that struck Danny as odd was the green and black ring she wore – Valerie had never been one to wear jewelry, even when popular. But then Valerie started speaking again, distracting Danny. “This isn’t exactly the safest place for you right now.”

“What makes you say that?” Danny asked, confused.

Just then, he felt two large presences approach behind him. Danny sighed.

“Hey, Fenturd!” Dash said, grinning down at Danny maliciously. His stupid blond hair was styled perfectly with gel, and he wore his football jacket, like he did the other three-hundred-sixty-five days of the year. “Guess what? There are no teachers around to protect you now.”

“Dash, take a hike, will you?” Danny snapped. His core pulsed angrily, wanting to freeze the jock in a block of ice – but that was a big no-no. Not if he wanted to keep his identity as Phantom a secret, and if he wanted to stay as a hero instead of a villain. When Dash didn’t budge, Danny frowned. He resisted the urge to bare his fangs. “I’m way too tired to put up with you! Besides, shouldn’t you be failing a test, kicking a puppy, or beating up someone weaker than you right now?”

“Come to think of it? Yeah! And guess what? You’re weaker than me!”

Dash went to throw a punch, but at the last minute, Danny went intangible, letting the fist fly right through his chin. Dash stumbled from the motion of the punch, not expecting to not hit anything. For a solid few seconds, everyone in the cafeteria stood stalk still. Dash looked down at his fist like there was something wrong with it. While everyone was distracted, Danny discreetly shot an ecto-beam at Dash’s shoes. Ectoplasm had highly acidic properties, was extremely corrosive and, at high enough temperatures – like, per say, a ghost’s ecto-blast – could melt things. Danny’s ecto-beam easily melted the plastic of Dash’s shoes to the ground. Luckily, no one noticed.

When Dash finally regained his wits, he growled. “Oh, that’s it, Fenturd!”

But when he went to take a step forward, his shoes stuck to the tiles, making him trip and fall to the ground. Danny was quick to take his chance, and he ran away from the cafeteria while Dash was incapacitated. Behind him, his friends ran after him. They only came to a stop once they reached the bleachers in the back fields, far enough away – and hidden behind the bleachers – for no one to see them.

“That was sweet!” Tucker said, out of breath from running after Danny.

“Is it?” Sam asked, putting her hands on her hips. She, too, was slightly out of breath. Danny rolled his eyes, his core sending out static annoyance. They’d already had this argument before; Sam didn’t believe in Danny using his powers for anything other than hero work, but Danny tried to get her to understand that he was literally a ghost – or, well, half-ghost – and that using his powers casually, even for mischief (especially for mischief) was in his ghostly nature. “I know Dash is a jerk, but what if he saw something?”

“He’s not going to see something,” Danny dismissed. “If no one has noticed anything for the past year and a half, no one is going to notice anything now. Besides, I’m tired of getting kicked around all the time. It’s time I do something for myself!”

Sam’s expression twisted into something Danny couldn’t read, but Danny wasn’t willing to argue with her about this, so he turned away.

The large ghost had commanded the skeleton ghosts to “find the King’s ring,” whatever that meant. Ghosts were always doing insensible things, courtesy of their cores and obsessions driving them to far extremes. They just weren’t capable of higher, intelligent thought. Besides, Maddie was too busy trying to get Jack out of the Fenton Ecto Skeleton pants to focus on what the ghosts were looking for. The Fenton Ecto Skeleton pants, which were draining Jack of his energy, using him as a battery to charge the machine. It was a scary thought, being a battery and potentially being burned out.

If only there were some other sources of energy, something that was naturally occurring and had large amounts of power – like a ghost’s core! Hmm …

The army of mindless ghost skeletons swarmed Amity Park. They marched through the streets, throwing and breaking cars, cutting fire hydrants, pulling parking meters, crashing storefronts, and causing immeasurable property damage. They searched through apartments, stores, and more. They even chased after humans, determined to find their King’s Ring of Rage.

“Those poor humans,” Sidney Pointdexter said. He was hiding out on the roof of one of the many apartment buildings in Amity Park. He turned the gaggle of ghosts behind him, who didn’t look nearly as concerned as him. “They’re being overrun by ghost bullies!”

“Oh, who cares about them!” Ember scoffed. “That is the Ghost King’s crew, which means he’s on his way here! And did you hear what Fright Knight said? They’re looking for his ring!”

“A ring that we do not have,” Skulker said. “Which means when Pariah Dark comes through that portal, he will not hesitate to set Fright Knight on us, whether we have what he wants or not. So, we have to camouflage ourselves.” He turned to the streets of Amity Park, where a hoard of humans was running from the ghost skeletons. He grinned. “And you hear that? That’s confusion and panic, which means it’s the perfect time to find our hiding places.”

Behind him, the ghosts smiled.

The screen showed a pretty woman with orange hair and teal eyes, dressed in a pink dress with matching earrings. She shuffled her papers in front of her, professional as always, despite her shaking hands. “Hello, this is Tiffany Snow, with Action News! And tonight, we are covering the Ghost Emergency Broadcasting System, or the GEBS. Amity Park is in the midst of a massive ghost attack! Sources say that while the attacks have been happening for over several hours, and there has been numerous property damage –” the screen showed multiple ghost skeletons flipping a car over, and other clips from the news station “– no humans have been seriously harmed. There are no reported injuries or fatalities. And now here’s Lance Thunder, with the ghost weather.”

“As you can see, we have random ghost activities in restaurants, malls, and this box store.” Action News showed a brief clip of the Box Ghost haunting the box store, shouting “BEWARE!” at any approaching humans, but running at the sight of the ghost skeletons. “If you look to the West, you can see a huge wave of ghost skeletons heading from the center of town toward Casper High. All parents are advised to immediately pick up their children and run – run for your lives! No! NO –”

Maddie gasped as she saw the news reporter overrun by ghost skeletons in their news station.

No injuries or fatalities, her ass.

She needed to go get Danny and Jazz – right away!

What was Plasmius doing in the school? Was Danny’s only thought when he first saw him.

He was quick to escape from his friends and the rest of the student body by running into a janitor’s closet and transforming into Phantom. The familiar white halos appeared within seconds, and Phantom turned intangible and flew through the school, chasing after Plasmius, all the way to the football field. When Plasmius finally landed and stopped, Phantom bared his fangs and readied an ecto-blast. “What do you want, Plasmius?” He demanded. He knew he could kick Plasmius’ ass ten ways to Sunday if he wanted to – and man, did he want to – but right now, he needed answers.

“Calm down, Phantom!” Plasmius scolded. “I didn’t come here to fight you; I have other things to worry about!”

The sound of a horse, and the stomping of hundreds of feet, interrupted the two. Both turned, eyes wide, as they saw Fright Knight riding atop a black horse with large, bat-like wings. It had massive canines, like a sabre-tooth tiger, and had glowing red eyes. Behind it came a rushing skeleton army, all dressed in a mix of modern military uniforms, Roman armour, and Viking-esque armour.

Fright Knight plowed through the football field on his ghostly pegasus, wielding Soul Shredder. Phantom knew full well what the sword could do – and how it could made ghosts fade – so he dodged immediately, flipping away through the air as Fright Knight swung the six-foot long blade. Unfortunately, the football goal post was in the way, and was easily cut in two. Phantom landed on the ground, ducking and rolling, and jumped back up right in front of several ghost skeletons. He was quick to shoot a powerful ecto-blast at the first one, then punched the next one that got too close. It went down like a sack of potatoes, the bones collapsing in on themselves. A blue mist escaped from his mouth, and he turned just in time to see the sword of a Viking ghost skeleton coming down – only for a pink ecto-blast to destroy it, saving Phantom.

Phantom turned to Plasmius, who had shot the ecto-blast. He was baffled. “You’re helping me?”

Before Plasmius could say anything, he was grabbed by the front of his suit by Fright Knight, lifted off the ground. Plasmius may have been six feet tall, but Fright Knight was eight – and atop a horse. Fright Knight growled. “The King’s ring – return it!” He demanded.

Ring – they were looking for a ring? Phantom knew about Pariah Dark from the other ghosts, but they had originally not known what Pariah was looking for. Was he really causing all this fuss for a ring?

“I don’t have it!” Plasmius snapped. “But, if you join me, perhaps we could –”

Just then, a large red ectoplasmic blast shot at Plasmius and the Fright Knight, effectively knocking Fright Knight off his horse and Plasmius several feet behind. From the sky, the Red Huntress descended on her hoverboard, carrying her blaster over her shoulder. “Guess what everybody?” She yelled, “the best ghost hunter in Amity Park is here! And that means you’re –” she pointed to the ghosts “– about to get your ass handed to you!”

Plasmius staggered to his feet, whispering to Phantom, “she really is quite good at this.”

“She also thinks we’re the enemy!” Phantom hissed.

“… Good point,” Plasmius said.

The Red Huntress swerved down to the field, hovering in front of Phantom. She aimed her blaster directly at him. “Alright, ghost,” she spat, as if talking to him physically disgusted her. “What’s going on here?”

“It’s, uh, kind of hard to explain right now!” Phantom said. “Wait, look out –”

The Fright Knight got up and was back on his pegasus, charging straight toward Phantom and the Red Huntress. The skeleton ghost army followed behind him. Before they could get too close, Plasmius shot up and made multiple duplicates of himself, using them to shoot down the incoming skeletons. He protected Phantom and the Huntress. The Red Huntress, though her mask covered her face, still looked visibly confused. “Uh … thanks?”

“You’re welcome,” Phantom said. He floated out of line of her blaster. “Look, I know this is going to be hard to believe –” behind him, Plasmius was body-tackled by Fright Knight “– but right now, that guy is the problem right now, not Plasmius. And I could really use your help to get rid of him.”

“I still don’t trust you,” the Red Huntress said, “Or your spooky friend.”

“You don’t have to trust me!” Phantom yelled, “just fight with me! Or else the entire Living Realm is going to be overrun with ghosts and a rabid Ghost King forever!”

Phantom held out his hand for the Huntress to shake, and after a moment of hesitation, she took it.

Phantom grinned.

Together, the two flew in to save Plasmius. Phantom shot multiple quick-fire ecto-blasts, while the Red Huntress used her blaster. The Fright Knight was pushed back several feet by all the blasts, and the unlikely team – two halfas and a ghost hunter – continued to fight. They must have taken out hundreds of ecto-skeletons, with Phantom and Plasmius focusing solely on the Fright Knight, making sure Soul Shredder didn’t hit anyone, before Fright Knight seemed to finally snap. “You fools!” He growled. “All I wanted to do was seize the Ring of Rage and return to Pariah Dark’s Keep. But now you give me no choice. By the authority vested in me by my King –” Fright Knight took Soul Shredder and stabbed it into the ground, until only three feet of the blade was left in the open “– I claim this town, now and forever under the banner of Pariah Dark, the King of all Ghosts!”

From the blade, an ectoplasmic green light shot upward into the sky, changing the skyline to greens of the Ghost Zone. Amity Park shook as if under attack from an earthquake. Cracks appeared in the ground, surrounding the entire town, and all the skeleton ghosts stopped moving. A huge, green-like dome descended upon Amity Park, separating it from the outside world. Then, finally, Fright Knight stood before Soul Shredder and spoke. “The sword is sunk, the die now cast. The sword removed shall signal fast, make reappear the ring thou hast, or your next day shall be your last.” And with that, Fright Knight disappeared into thin air.

“Again, with the ring!” Phantom said. “Where is this ring he’s talking about?!”

He glanced over at Plasmius, suspicious.

Plasmius only shrugged with a small smile.

Phantom’s eyes narrowed.

On the screen sat the pretty woman from before. Her hands were no longer shaking, probably from the fact that she was in a new studio and away from the ghost skeletons. “Welcome back, to the big scary town watch! Otherwise known as Ghost Emergency Broadcasting. I’m Tiffany Snow! We’re in our fourth hour of captivity, and tenth hour of ghost invasion. Amity Park remains cut-off from the outside world. With more on that, outside the safety of our studio is our very own weatherman, Lance Thunder! Lance?”

The station cut to a view of the outskirts of the dome, with Lance Thunder in front of the camera. His blond hair was styled perfectly once again, clearly having been fixed since being overrun by ghosts. His suit, however, was still rumpled from earlier.

Lance didn’t seem to realise he was on air yet.

“Why the hell do I have to be here, I’m a weatherman, for the love of – oh!” Lance finally noticed the person behind the camera making cutting motions with their hands. He plastered a wide smile on his face. “Tiffany! Despite the odd circumstances, an eerie calm has fallen over Amity Park, with the ghost skeletons having stopped attacking. Unfortunately, emergency teams are still having no luck in piercing the dome surrounding Amity Park.” Behind him, there was a giant metal drill, with several volunteers in hazmat suits manning the machine. They attempted to drill through the dome, but it only sparked and made the drill blow up, causing the volunteers to run away, screaming. “It seems to be made of some sort of electrically charged ectoplasm, which is why everyone is advised to stay away from the outer edges of the dome, lest they be shocked or hurt. Wishing he had taken that job in Chicago, this is Lance Thunder, Action News, out!”

Danny and Valerie, who had been watching the news on the Fenton TV, turned to each other with matching looks of concern. They were currently hunkered down in the basement of Fenton Works, with carbon-steel enforced metal walls and anti-ghost tools up the wazoo. If there was anywhere safe to be in a ghost invasion, then this was it.

Behind the two teenagers, Maddie and Vlad worked tirelessly to finish the Fenton Ecto Skeleton. Even Vlad, who usually wore pristine suits and had his hair gelled back, was now wearing overalls and work boots, and his hair was pulled back in a high bun to keep it out of his face. Jack would have been helping his wife and friend, if he hadn’t still been too drained and ill from using the Fenton Ecto Skeleton pants earlier, protecting Maddie and Vlad from Fright Knight. The pants had literally drained the strength and energy from his body to charge the suit, and he was paying the price.

“This suit is the only hope we have to punch through that ghost dome,” Maddie said, welding a piece of the suit together. She took a step back to admire her work, and she pulled her goggles up and over her head to reveal her blue, almost purple eyes. “But I still don’t think we’ll be able to perfect the neural receptors. The suit simply needs a lot of energy, and we don’t have a battery powerful enough to substitute.”

“Which is why I’ll wear the suit,” Jack said. He was sitting over by a lab work bench, ice pack on his head to ease his raging migraine. “If anybody is going to beat that ghost back into the Ghost Zone, it’s me!”

He stood, as if making a point, but almost immediately became dizzy. He groaned.

“No, Jack!” Maddie scolded. “Look at you! You’re still wiped out from the last time!”

Danny grinned as he leaned over to whisper to Vlad, who was still under the Fenton Ecto Skeleton, tinkering with the bolts. “It kills you, doesn’t it? How much they love each other?”

“I have other things to worry about!” Vlad snapped. “And … so do you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

But Vlad was already turning back to the suit to tinker some more.

Valerie decided to get away from … whatever weirdly charged tension was between Danny and Vlad and headed back upstairs in Fenton Works. In the living room, though it was scattered with open wires, various ecto-guns, and had ectoplasm stains everywhere, it was still a somewhat cosy place, if only because the furniture was all over two decades old, there were multiple blankets, and the TV was one of those old box television sets from the seventies.

Still hurt from the ghost fight earlier against – what was it Phantom called him? Fright Knight? – Valerie was quick to take a seat on the couch in from of the TV, sighing into the soft cushions. Sam and Tucker were also in the living room – when were they not at Fenton Works or around Danny? – and Tucker looked over at her, concerned. “You feeling any better?” He asked.

“A little,” Valerie admitted, “though I’m surprised you care.” And she was surprised. Sam and Tucker seemed to hold a grudge against her since day one. “You guys don’t like me very much, do you?”

“Well, we don’t know you very much,” Sam said snidely. She crossed her arms, frowning; Tucker also looked over Valerie with a critical eye. “And honestly, you used to be pretty mean to us when you were still hanging out with the A-listers, like Paulina and Dash. You think we’re going to just start hanging out with you without wondering what you want? And what you’re going to do with that obviously ecto-infused ring?”

“What I want?” Valerie asked. “I don’t want anything from you guys. And the ring officially falls under the category of none of your –”

Before she could finish, Danny skipped up the steps behind them, almost like he was flying. He smiled when he saw Valerie, and Valerie smiled back at him. She couldn’t help it – he was cute! With his tousled black hair and baby blue eyes, anyone would think he was adorable. “Hey, guys!”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. She leapt off the couch to storm up to Danny, grabbing him by the forearm. “Can I talk to you for a second?” She asked, before not even listening to him and dragging him off to the nearest closet. On the way, she also grabbed Tucker. She locked eyes with Valerie, right before slamming the closet door closed behind her, cutting Valerie off from the group.

Valerie glared after her.

In the closet, Sam turned the light on, so at least two of the three could see something. Danny didn’t need it because he was a ghost, and ghosts could naturally see things in the dark. All three sat in a cramped circle, surrounded by spare hazmat suits and winter boots.

“Yo, dude!” Tucker said, almost immediately. “You do know that the minute you turn into Phantom, she’s going to shoot first and ask questions never, right?”

“She’s not going to find out!” Danny dismissed.

“How do you know she’s not snooping right now?” Sam demanded. She leaned in, worried. “What if that ecto ring on her finger is some sort of ghost detection device?”

“Wait – ring? What ring?” Sam only rolled her eyes and pointed at the door. Danny turned intangible and invisible and peeked his head out from the closet, spying on Valerie, who was still sitting on the couch and watching the news on their older-than-dinosaurs television set. He spotted a green and black ring on her finger, and with his enhanced vision, he was able to see the green skull carved into the obsidian gem. If he focused, he could feel the strong power of ectoplasm leaking from the ring. He didn’t know how he didn’t notice before. Suddenly, he remembered seeing the same ring on her before, in the cafeteria of Casper High. It had struck him as odd, because Valerie didn’t wear jewelry – at least not usually.

Danny pulled himself back into the closet and turned visible again. “Oh, man. We have a problem. I think that’s the ring that the Fright Knight is looking for! But I just don’t know how she could have gotten her hands on it, unless … Vlad must have given it to her!”

“Isn’t Vlad a little old for her?” Tucker joked.

“He’s obviously using her to hide the ring from Fright Knight,” Danny said, slowly piecing everything together. “But why the ring is so important, I don’t know. Something fishy is going on. And I have a feeling that the other ghosts know what is going on.”

“Skulker!” Phantom called.

Using his ghost sense to find the other ghosts was usually easy – after all, he only needed to trace the sentient ectoplasm he could sense, and he usually ended up finding whatever ghost it was that was wreaking havoc on Amity Park at the time. But Amity Park was now filled to the brim with hundreds of thousands of ghosts, and paired with the natural ambient ectoplasm that was always present, it was harder to discern the different ectosignatures and find the specific ghost he was looking for. Luckily, he had lots of practice in finding ectosignatures, thanks to all the times he needed to hunt down certain ghosts in the Ghost Zone.

“Skulker!” Phantom called again. The abandoned gun shop was completely trashed, but Phantom knew that Skulker was around, he could sense him. “Skulker! Skulk – Ember? Sidney?”

Phantom’s eyes widened when he took in the gaggle of ghosts in the store. Bullet, Dora, Ember, Klemper, Lunch Lady, Sidney Pointdexter, Technus, Walker – it was like his entire rogue gallery was here. He knew that they all came through the portal together, but he hadn’t known that they had stuck together in the Living Realm. Ghosts were mostly solitary creatures, so it surprised him.

“Phantom,” Sidney said, “we need your help.”

“Only if you tell me what’s going on,” Phantom said, hands on his hips. “And what is this big fuss about a – a ring? That Fright Knight wants.”

“Very well,” Skulker said. “You already know part of the story: it was many years ago, before you, before me – before most of us – that there was a ghost called Pariah Dark. He was the king of both the Ghost Zone and the entire Infinite Realms.” Phantom remembered Skulker saying that before, but even now, he struggled to wrap his head around ruling the entire Infinite Realms. It was, well, infinite, after all. “Pariah ruled with an iron fist alongside his second in command and enforcer, Fright Knight.”

“Another thing you need to know –” Skulker said “– there are many ghostly artifacts that can only be used by ghosts or denizens of the Ghost Zone. One of these artifacts was the Crown of Fire – a crown which was made of crystallised ectoplasm, and which gave the wearer power over other ghosts. With this power, no ghost could refuse any order made while the person wore the crown. Well, they could try, but only the most powerful ghosts – the Ancients – could resist the Voice of the Crown of Fire. The other artifact was the Ring of Rage. Also made of crystallised ectoplasm and obsidian, the Ring of Rage lends the power of the Ghost Zone to the wearer – fueling them with infinite ectoplasm. But it had a nasty side effect of enhancing the emotions of the owner, oftentimes causing emotional – and wrathful – outbursts. Paired together, the Crown of Fire and Ring of Rage give the user infinite power. But it is also dangerous, because that infinite power could overtake the core of the user and make them fade.”

“Pariah was a ghost of such power and magnitude alone that he was able to control the energies contained within both artifacts. When wearing both, Pariah could do anything he wanted. He was a tyrant. That was, until a group of powerful ghosts – the Ancients – banded together in a last-ditch effort to defeat the King. They locked him within the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep, another powerful ghostly artifact, capable of putting any ghost to sleep for an eternity … or so we thought. Somehow, he escaped. And now he’s wreaking havoc in the Ghost Zone once again.”

“He’s looking for the Ring of Rage,” Ember said, “as you’ve already figured out. Pariah has only been free for a day, and he’s already destroyed our homes.”

“And that’s without the ring,” Phantom summarised, finally seeing just how strong Pariah Dark was. He bit his lip, thinking about what to do next. If Valerie had the ring, that meant that she was going to be a target for Pariah and Fright Knight. But … that must have been exactly what Vlad wanted, to keep the heat off his own back. He needed to get the ring away from Valerie, and quickly. “We can’t let him get the ring back,” Phantom decided. “Somehow, we need to get him back into the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep again. But I’m going to need your guys help to do so.”

“And what, exactly, do you think we can do against a ghost like Pariah?” Skulker demanded.

“Well …”

Phantom flew down to the front door of Fenton Works, de-transforming back into Danny mid-air and flipping down to the ground. His skin melted from the icy blue to a sickly pale colour, punctuated by strong freckles across his cheeks and shoulders. His ghostly white hair fell to the power of gravity and became tousled and a night black. His eyes went from their shocking green to a baby blue. His black and white hazmat suit shifted to his usual NASA t-shirt and ripped jeans. For all intents and purposes, he looked like a normal human boy. But both he and Vlad knew otherwise.

“You wanted to talk to me?” Vlad asked, looking smug as he leaned on the Ghost Assault Vehicle, which was parked in front of Fenton Works. He was back in his stupid, pristine suit, hair gelled back obnoxiously.

“You’re putting innocent people in danger,” Danny growled. “It stops – now.”

“Really?” Vlad said, chuckling darkly. He crossed his arms, looming over Danny. “You know what I’m up to? Your tiny teen mind has pieced together the rest of my plot?”

“Yes, it has,” Danny said, not rising to the bait. “I know that you stole the Ring of Rage, woke Pariah Dark from the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep, gave the Ring of Rage to Valerie to hide it, and now you’re waiting for your chance to steal it back.”

“That’s pretty good!” Vlad said, as if he was complimenting Danny, but they both knew better. “It’s almost as thought I barely consider you a threat.” Danny felt his core pulse angrily – he was just so angry at how nonchalant Vlad was being about putting so many people in danger – and he knew his eyes were burning a toxic ectoplasm green. Vlad only grinned. “Oh, there’s that temper of yours, again. What are you going to do? What if Valerie sees us, hmm? You wouldn’t want her to know you’re a freak, would you?”

Danny growled. He shot an ecto-blast at the nearby streetlamp, causing the light to shatter and drench the area in pitch dark. Vlad cursed – that was one thing that he hadn’t developed as a halfa that Danny did: night vision. Now with the upper hand, and ensuring no humans could see, Danny shot an ecto-blast at Vlad. It knocked Vlad almost a whole block, enough to land at the next streetlight. Danny jumped and rolled, letting familiar transformation rings slide over his body. His core sparked, eager for the fight to put out his aggression. When he jumped up after his roll, he kicked at Vlad, sending him hundreds of feet into the air, and halfway across the town. Sometimes, ghostly strength helped.

Vlad hit a billboard sign and slid down to the top of a roof, letting his own transformation rings appear, changing him into Plasmius. He floated up from the roof. “Sneak attach – very good, Phantom. You’re getting more like me with every battle.”

“I am nothing like you!” Phantom growled. “I don’t put innocent people in danger!”

He flew upwards and punched Plasmius directly in the sternum, knocking him another few hundred yards away. He hit him so hard, in fact, that Plasmius landed back in the football fields of Casper High School. Phantom flew up to Plasmius and grabbed him by the front of his suit, only for Plasmius to grin at him. Phantom furrowed his brows, until Plasmius spoke. “Oh, you’re not like me? Using your powers to get back at people you don’t like? Throwing the first punch? You’re more like me than you know!”

Plasmius shot an ecto-blast and knocked Phantom across the field. When Phantom got to his feet, however, he realised he was directly next to the Soul Shredder, still stuck in the ground from earlier. He remembered the words from Fright Knight earlier. He frowned.

“Oh, yeah?” He said to Plasmius. “Well, if I’m more like you than I though, then instead of asking you to give the ring to me, I’ll make you!”

He reached out to Soul Shredder, both hands wrapping around the hilt of the giant sword.

“Phantom, no!” Plasmius cried. “The sword is a signal!”

“I know,” Phantom said. And then he pulled the sword free, having to use all his ghostly strength to do so. As soon as the sword came out of the ground, the ghostly green dome that surrounded Amity Park … fell apart. From the centre of the dome, large cracks appeared, until the entire dome looked like a starburst of fractures. The pieces then started to drop, large, crystallised chunks of ectoplasm falling from the sky. But as the pieces fell away, it revealed that the entire town was no longer in the Living Realms, but instead, in the Ghost Zone. The sky was painted many shades of swirling green, random purple and black doors floated about, and the edges of Amity Park dropped off into nothingness.

The ghost skeletons, who had previously been stationary in the streets of Amity Park, now all flew upwards into the Ghost Zone, to congregate at the side of the Fright Knight. And beside Fright Knight … that must have been Pariah Dark. He was twice as big as Fright Knight, adorned in black and grey armour, and wore what was obviously the Crown of Fire atop his head.

Fright Knight held out his hand and though Phantom resisted it, Soul Shredder was pulled from his grasp and shot toward the Fright Knight.

The Ghost King floated gently down to the ground, but when his feet touched the dirt, it cracked and splintered under him, as if the sheer force of him was too much to withstand. Pariah observed Phantom and Plasmius, who had both frozen under his gaze. Pariah tilted his head, as if confused. His eyes glowed a bright red. “You’re not … ghosts. But you’re not, not ghosts, either. Freaks of nature – will there ever be an end to today’s surprises?”

Phantom’s core cowered under the gaze of Pariah Dark.

Then, behind him, Phantom heard – “hey, stone-face! Surprise!”

From the sky descended the Red Huntress, holding her blaster over her shoulder. She shot it at Pariah Dark, blinding him momentarily. Pariah yowled like a hyena, then turned around and shot a strong, red, laser-beam from his one good eye. The Huntress was forced to dodge the large beam, dropping her blaster in the process, and accidentally running into the football goal post. She fell to the ground but was quick to get up, forming a smaller blaster on his wrist to shoot – except, it malfunctioned, broken from the fall, and sparked. The Red Huntress yelled out in pain at the heated blaster sparking, and she ripped her glove and the blaster off her hand. But by doing so, she revealed –

“The ring!” Fright Knight yelled. “Give that to the King, now!”

The Huntress looked down at the ring that sat on her finger, then back up at Pariah Dark and Fright Knight. She knew she was in over her head – and she needed a distraction. Her visor turned downward. She removed the ring, pulled out a torpedo shooter, placed the ring on the torpedo, and hefted it over her shoulder. “You want it?” She said, “then go get it!”

She shot the torpedo out into the endless Ghost Zone, watching it disappear into the green. Then she booked it out of there, heading toward the Fenton Ghost Shield like her life depended on it.

Fright Knight was quick to follow after the Red Huntress, raging as he hit Soul Shredder into the ghost shield over and over again. He had long lost sight of his King, who he had left back at the fields of Casper High, but he knew he needed to go after that miscreant that had dared attack his King. He yelled as he hit the shield again, the glowing green dome not giving under his ghostly sword.

“This – is – not – over!” He grunted with each hit, in a rage watching that dastardly hunter walk away.

“Actually, my loyal servant,” Pariah’s voice said behind him, “it is.”

Fright Knight stopped, letting go of his sword and dropping into a deep bow at the feet of Pariah. His frown, which bared his fangs, was vicious. But then – then he smiled. Pariah never smiled. Except then Pariah opened one of his clenched fists, showing the Ring of Rage within his palm. Pariah chuckled darkly, escalating into a loud, shrill laugh, as he carefully put the ring on his finger. Once the ring was on, Pariah’s features scrunched up in pain as the sky glowed bright, and the ring sparked. A bright, blinding light lit up the sky, the source of it being Pariah Dark – it flickered, turning the world white, black, and green for several moments, as Pariah screamed in pain. But it only took a minute, and then the light died down, showing how Pariah dark was glowing an endless ectoplasm green, courtesy of the ring. The flames of the Crown of Fire were brighter, larger, and hotter than before.

“Come, we have plans to make,” Pariah said, slightly out of breath, “for soon, this human world will also be mine!”

“Danny!” Sam exclaimed, bursting into his room, “you’re – you’re okay!” Danny turned around, revealing a passed-out Valerie behind him. She was covered in bruises and dirt. Sam took a step back, startled. “Whoa – what happened to her?”

“You name it, it happened,” Danny said. “Fright Knight, Pariah Dark, Plasmius – all of my enemies.”

“Dude, you can’t blame yourself for this. It’s not your fault,” Tucker said, stepping into the room from behind Sam. “Valerie chooses to go into ghost fights – you know this.”

“Maybe it’s not my fault,” Danny said, “but it is my responsibility. The humans in Amity Park, the ghosts, the Ghost Zone – all of it. It’s my responsibility to keep it all safe as Phantom. But this time, I just … I froze. As soon as Pariah Dark came, it was like … it was like my core stopped working. I couldn’t handle his presence. And Valerie got hurt as a result. She passed out just within the ghost shield, and I was barely able to drag her to my room after, escaping Pariah and Fright Knight. Now I don’t know where Vlad is, Pariah has the Ring of Rage, along with the Crown of Fire, and the entirety of Amity Park is stuck within the Ghost Zone. I don’t know what to do!”

“Danny,�� Sam said, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder, “you need to stop catastrophizing. Take a deep breath, and let’s go through this logically. You’re powerful on your own – and you have the support of hundreds of ghosts right now. You said they agreed to help you. If you all attack together, then you must have a chance against Pariah Dark!”

“Sam’s right,” Tucker said. “As much as I don’t like it, we need a plan to go up against Pariah – and you’re our best bet.”

Danny sighed. “Okay, let’s do this, then …”

Travelling through the Ghost Zone with almost a hundred rowdy ghosts was not easy, but eventually, they made their way to Pariah’s Keep. When they got there, there was maybe a hundred – no, thousands of ghost skeletons surrounding the Keep. Phantom quickly realised he didn’t need to defeat all of them – he only needed to make a path through them, enough to get to the doors of the Keep and find Pariah Dark. With his rogue gallery behind him, Phantom let loose on the ghost skeletons. He blasted away hundreds of skeletons with his ecto-blasts and froze hundreds of others. Klemper was right behind him with his icy breath, covering them in a deep impenetrable snow. The Box Ghost assaulted several with boxes and bubble wrap, while Dora let loose a torrent of fire from her maw. Ember knocked some out with her sonic blasts, and Skulker shot multiple bombs and used his nets to incapacitate them.

When they finally carved out a pathway to the Keep, Skulker turned to Phantom. “Now go, defeat Pariah! So, that I may be free to hunt you another day!”

“Wow, you really know how to motivate people,” Phantom snarked, but entered the Keep, nonetheless.

He flew through long, tall corridors, until he finally came to a set of red wooden doors over twenty feet tall. His core shuddered at the sheer power emanating from behind the door, and he deep down, he knew, that this was going to be his final stand. He kicked the doors open, knocking them off their hinges, to open into a large throne room. At the end of the room, behind the throne, sat the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep. And standing between the sarcophagus and him was none other than Pariah Dark.

Standing twenty feet tall, adorned in strong armour, and holding a glow spiked mace, Pariah was every bit the fearsome King that he was thousands of years ago. Pariah grinned at him. “I was hoping you would come,” Pariah said, “if only so I could see the freak of nature again.”

“What do you say,” Phantom said, “we skip the snappy banter and go right to the part where I kick your ass! You shouldn’t have the Crown of Fire or the Ring of Rage!”

“Very well,” Pariah conceded, “I accept your challenge and terms.”

Pariah launched himself at Phantom, swinging his mace – which was almost as big as Phantom – downward. Phantom put up a large ectoplasmic shield, blocking the hit. The mace came in contact and immediately shattered the shield from the sheer force of Pariah’s power and strength, forcing Phantom to flip backwards and away from Pariah. He regained his wits quickly and shot a powerful ecto-blast at Pariah, following it up with a sheet of ice on the ground, knocking Pariah to the ground and making him slide into the throne and destroying it. Pariah’s sword fell from its sheath, clattering to the ground, but Pariah didn’t seem to notice. Pariah recovered, floating to his feet. He glanced down at Phantom, reassessing what he had previously thought of the ghost child.

“That much power – it’s a burden, isn’t it, child?” Pariah said, grinning with fangs. “But I wonder – how did you come across it? Is it due to your freakish nature?”

“The power isn’t the burden,” Phantom said, “it’s in how you use it – and you’ve been using yours very poorly!”

Phantom jumped up, floating in the air, but Pariah threw his mace, curving it along the walls before it hit Phantom and sent him forward, closer to the King. Before Phantom could reorient himself, Pariah gave a roundhouse kick and sent him sprawling. Phantom’s back hit the wall and he fell, dropping to the ground. While Pariah watched in amusement, Phantom got to his feet. He grunted as several duplicates of himself appeared around Pariah, all with their eyes blazing and fists clenched. Together, all the duplicates flew at Pariah, punching and kicking and sending stray ecto-blasts.

Pariah cried out in pain as an ecto-blast hit his eye. He called his mace back to him and swung, making one of the duplicates disappear into dust. Another duplicate pile-drove him from behind. Several of them approached, and all together, they spoke – “You better leave my town alone!”

Pariah shot another red charged ecto-blast, making another duplicate disappear.

“Surrender, child. You can’t possibly win,” Pariah said, growling.

Phantom’s core shuddered at the order from the Voice of the crown, but he refused to give in.

“That’s the thing, I don’t have to win,” Phantom said. “I just have to make sure that you lose!”

From behind Pariah, one duplicate opened the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep, while another shot a perfectly aimed ecto-blast, which knocked the Crown of Fire from Pariah’s head. The crown flew through the air until it landed in Phantom’s hands. Face lit up from the flames of the crown, Phantom glanced up at Pariah with a sinister grin. He placed the crown atop his own head. The crown’s fire rose several feet, spluttering and raging. Phantom could physically feel the itch in the back of his throat, the Voice of the crown trying to overwhelm him – the power that it held. Pariah howled.

“No – NO!”

“Now,” Phantom said. He let the itch overtake him. “G̶i̵ve̴ ̵m̷e̴ th̷e̶ ̶R̷i̵ng̴ ̴of̷ R̵a̵ge̷.”

Pariah’s whole body froze. He visibly struggled to resist the order from the crown. “N-never,” he said, voice rough. “I will never – never give this power to you!”

“G̶̟͕̭̤̭͔̤̲̜̱̝̉̐̇͜I̷̢̨̱͍̬̓̆̏̑̉̈͆̒̿̀̃̐͋̾͗̊͜V̶̛͖̝̝͇͉̞̗̤̾͊̐͋̓̄́͗͋́̑̾̇́͊͜Ȩ̶̥̜̳͇̱̹͍̺̟͓̜̐͌̽̀͆̇̓͗͒̈̌̾͘̚͝͝ ̴̢̛̻̮̖̮̖͉͓͕͙̤̱̞̼̲̇́̿̅̇͆͋͌̏͐̒̄̚̚ͅṀ̵̛͚͇̪͙̟͇̫̬̭̭̱͕͔̓̋̉̀́É̢̛̯̘̝̞̗̦̯̻͙̝̮͓̖́̎͋̊̐͛͌̈́͒͊ ̧̢̠̤͇̞͓̝̲͈̫͉̀͝Ṭ̥͚̗̤̞͜ͅĤ̴̡̻̝̪̫̬̦͌̎̌̐́́̋̅̿̊̎͋̑͝È̘̺̻̘͔͔̯̭̟̹̘̍̍̅̾̍͆̾̐͝ͅ ̴͈̈́̏̕͠R̷̡̧̡̨͎̳͍̘̬̻̪̦͔͓̫̖̈̾͊̐͋͛͗̓͗̐̽̋̒͝ͅI̵̺͚̠͎͎̅̌̔̒͗N̴͎̟̊̿̉͌̓ͅG̵̠̟̺̻͎̫͙̭̼̠͉̹̬̅͌̋̈́̅̂̓ ̨̱̼͉͙̫͓͕̘̃̈́̈́͋̅͗́̓̀O̷̯̳̮͒͛͗͆́̎̃̌͐F̶͙͉͖͕̯͕̘͔̹̪͆͌̓͒́͂̉͆͝ͅ ̶̻̊͘R̷̢̺̙̠̜̤͈͛́̈̏̃͛͛̒̍Ȧ̴̰̘̀̋̆̂̏̈͆̐̆͂̀̎̓̿͛͝G̵̡͈̪͔͎̱̈̆̓̏̏̈́̿̀͂̀́͋̑̈́̈́̃̕E̵̢̡̢̧̛͓͔͖̮̅̃͂̅̍̔̈́̚͘!̷̡̧̡̡̨̻̟̮͚͔͖͈̝̲̩̤̍̏̆̂̿̈́͌́̕̕̕!̴͓̥̮̺̓̀̇̚͜”

Pariah Dark fell to his knees and cried out in pain, still resisting.

Phantom took the chance. He rushed forward and slashed downward with his arm, created a sharp ice attack which cut off Pariah’s left hand. Pariah howled again. The hand fell the to ground, limp and spewing green ectoplasm and blood. Phantom bent down and picked up the hand, taking the Ring of Rage off Pariah’s now limp finger. In his hands, it felt so small – so insignificant. But he knew of the true power that it held. If he focused, he could feel the infinite ectoplasm that it leaked, fueling its wearer. And carefully – ever so carefully – he slipped it onto his own hand. For several moments, there was nothing – and then pain, pain like he had never felt before. The room lit up in green light, which emanated from both the Crown of Fire and Ring of Rage. Phantom could physically feel his core being ripped apart.

His core pulsed and shuddered, overwhelmed by the power of both artifacts. But it only took one look down at Pariah – the sniveling king, who had taken his town, his people and ghosts, and destroyed their homes – to know that he couldn’t give into the power of the artifacts. There was no way he would let himself burn away and fade, leaving anyone at the mercy of Pariah Dark ever again.

The light faded. The Crown of Fire and Ring of Rage stopped glowing. Phantom’s core slowly released the heat, ice spreading out in fractures from beneath his feet, freezing over the entire throne room. Snowflakes fell from the ceiling, the wooden throne splintered under the cold, and the Sarcophagus of Forever sleep slowly froze over. When the ice reached Pariah, it melted around his feet at first, but slowly, it overtook him, too. Phantom stepped forward, spreading more rapid-fire ice under his heel, causing craters in the ground and sharp ice pillars to form with every step.

“Go̵ ̶i̶n̴t̵o t̵h̵e̴ ̴Sa̶rc̵o̷ph̴a̶g̷u̷s o̷f̴ F̷o̶r̴ev̵e̷r̴ ̴S̴le̶e̴p,” Phantom ordered.

And Pariah, features still scrunched up in pain, was forced to obey.

Phantom closed the Sarcophagus of Forever sleep. He didn’t have the key, so he froze over the sarcophagus with his impenetrable ice, freezing it into a solid block of ice, so that Pariah may never escape again.

On the way out, Phantom picked up the sword that Pariah had dropped during the fight. The sword shrunk as soon as it was in his hands, going from over ten feet in length to only five feet of blade. It looked like crystallised ectoplasm, with a glow surrounding the blade. On the hilt, which was made of some sort of green leather, was the inscription “Reaper.” By only holding it, Phantom could feel that it had similar properties to Soul Shredder. He very carefully held the blade as he left Pariah’s Keep, not sure if he would need it or not, but knowing he couldn’t leave it out for anyone to take.

While the inside of Pariah’s Keep was quiet, when Phantom stepped out of the Keep, he found the battle was still very much ongoing with the ghost skeletons. And, unfortunately, his rogues were started to flag in their energy. Phantom saw Ember fall beneath several ghost skeletons, he saw Skulker’s blasters fail to go off, he saw the Box Ghost’s boxes crushed, and his core pulsed angrily. He took a single step outside he Keep, and the ground cracked beneath his feet. Another step, and frost started to spread. The ghost skeletons around him froze over quickly, but this wasn’t a battle that Phantom needed to fight. He knew, as long as the Crown of Fire sat on his head, and the Ring of Rage stayed on his finger, that this was his army to command.

“S̷͎͎̝̣̠̫̤̠̣̙̱̩͇̉̿̾̒͒̈́̽̋̾͛̀̀̚͠T̶̛͙̤̬̯̜̗͍͈̮̮̖̻̿̊̆͛̈́͐̃̌̑͒̽͌̈͂̎̌͜Ő̷̡̱͇͕̤̞̓̏́̐̿͜P̵̡͉̯̫̮̌̌̍̈́̉̽͂̓̎̔!̶̢̢̛̻̱͇̙̙͕̫̅̔͐͋̑̓̈͛̏̅͊̕” He commanded, his Voice loud and clear. He held out Reaper in threat.

And they listened.

Figuring out how to bring Amity Park back into the Living Realms was a bit of a harder task than stopping an army of hundreds of thousands of ghosts. His rogues weren’t any help because none of them could open a portal on their own, not like Wulf could – but Wulf wasn’t here right now. Pariah had known how to open portals, too, but he was gone now. Except … Fright Knight was still left, his second in command. And if anyone were to know how to do what Pariah did, then Fright Knight would.

It wasn’t hard to find Fright Knight considering he was waiting outside Pariah’s Keep with the rest of the army. When Phantom floated in front of him, Fright Knight immediately dropped to his knees and bowed before him, no Command or Voice needed.

“My Liege,” Fright Knight said, startling Phantom.

“I’m no king,” Phantom denied.

“You are now,” Fright Knight said. “You are my King now. By trial of combat, you have defeated Pariah Dark, and you now possess both the Crown of Fire and Ring of Rage. I will follow you wherever you go, I will do whatever you wish.”

“I don’t want to be a king, I want to bring Amity Park back to the Living Realms,” Phantom said. “How do I do that?”

The Zone swirled around him, the purple doors moved out of his way, the islands appeared at his will, and Amity Park was safe. It was like the Ghost Zone responded to his emotions and wishes. He only felt marginally bad when he used his claws as he ripped a giant hole in the space and time around him. The Infinite Realms bent around him, splintering and ripping under his will, creating a large rip in the Ghost Zone. The dawn-lit sky from the Living Realms bled through, and Phantom used all his ghostly strength to push the island that was Amity Park through the rift, right back to where it belonged.

Phantom invisibly flew to Fenton Works, phasing through the walls and dropping right into his bed. He de-transformed, turning back into Danny, and groaned into his sheets. After using so much power, and his core being abused so much, he felt like he had been run over by a bus. Behind him, his friends, who had been waiting in his room, startled.

“Danny!” They both exclaimed.

“What happened?” Sam demanded.

“Are you okay?” Tucker asked.

Danny groaned again. “Let’s just say, Pariah Dark will never be a problem … ever again.”

#danny phantom #dp #danny fenton #vlad masters #ghost king danny phantom #op danny phantom #season 2 episode 5 #reign storm #pariah dark #fright knight #powerful danny phantom #bamf danny phantom #non canon compliant #valerie gray #sam manson #tucker foley #ao3 link #dp fic #danny phantom fic

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hannahmanderr · 1 year ago

Text

DannyMay Day 31 - Free Day

Words: 6,341

Summary: How do you convince someone to allow you to get yourself killed for them? (rewrite of a scene from "Reign Storm"; takes place a bit further down the timeline)

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Danny brushed the flyaway strands of hair from Valerie’s sleeping face. The sight of the burns and bruises dotting her skin filled him with an array of emotions - rage, terror, anguish, drive - each of them their own force to be reckoned with. He inhaled shakily.

Tucker and Sam inched closer to him. He didn’t need to see their faces to know they were looking at each other with that worried glance that they thought he never noticed. They could recognize one of his spirals before it even happened at this point.

“Dude, you can’t blame yourself for this,” Tucker said in a gentle whisper. He placed a hand on Danny’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault.” Sam’s eyes echoed the sentiment.

Deep down, Danny knew his friends were right. They’d been over the whole guilt thing before, and logically, he knew he couldn’t pile all the blame on himself. “Maybe not,” he admitted, even as flashes of everything that had happened in the past few days fluttered across his mind - provoking Vlad, provoking the other ghosts, pulling the Soul Shredder from the football field… Each one taunted him, singing songs of his failures and shortcomings, whispering his fears of not being enough back at him.

And yet there was another voice too, a sweet soprano voice peering through the clouds, serenading him with a different set of memories.

“I think I might’ve finally figured out what these powers are for…”

“So even with everybody thinking you’re a bad ghost, you’re still gonna try to be the hero?”

“Well, somebody’s gotta. Hey, if not me, who’s gonna protect this town? Besides, it’s not like I can ignore a scream for help.”

They bled together in a dulcet harmony and wrapped around his core and made it resonate with a sudden burst of clarity, reminding him of his purpose and his reason why he even tried in the first place.

Just like that, he knew what he had to do.

He turned and looked Tucker dead in the eye. “But it is my responsibility,” he said, the sincerity and boldness firm in his voice.

Before either of them could say anything, he stood and transformed. As his core flared to life, the surge of power coursed through his veins and strengthened his resolve for what he was about to do. It was almost enough to quell the wave of fear beginning to wash over him.

Almost.

No. He couldn’t focus on that. Now was not the time. Shaking his head, he grabbed each of his friends’ wrists and shot upward, setting them on the roof in front of the short addition Dad had added to house their defense system mainframes.

“Tucker, I need you to get working on hacking into the ghost shield,” he instructed as he phased his hand through the door to jolt the lock out of place. “With it working overtime to cover such a big part of the city, I don’t know if it’s gonna be easier or harder.”

“You want to take it down?” Sam asked, visibly confused.

Danny shook his head. “Just temporarily. I’ll explain more in a minute.” Except would he? Could he bring himself to explain just how far his plan went? Could he trust the two of them to avoid panicking and keeping him from what he knew he needed to do?

First things first. Sighing, he said, “Get working on that. I’ll be right back, I gotta grab something.” Without further explanation, he dove through the roof again, making a beeline for the basement.

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Maddie’s brow furrowed lightly as she watched her husband’s sleeping form. She’d insisted on taking him up to bed a couple of hours ago after overworking himself trying to get the ghost shield’s range increased and alerting the town. Even in his sleep, his breathing was labored, and tremors from the nerve damage wracked his body.

Curse that sleazy rat of a man, Vlad! He’d been the one to persuade Jack to use the Ecto-Skeleton’s lower half in the first place. And that was after Jack had told him use of the incomplete Ecto-Skeleton could be fatal! She closed her eyes to keep from seething. If only Jack hadn’t given in to Vlad’s sweet talk…

But Jack was an honorable man, especially to the people he held dear. Of course he’d follow Vlad’s suggestion. He trusted the man he believed to be his best friend, and she knew he loved her enough to move heaven and earth for her, to lay his own life down to protect hers. His fierce loyalty was one of the things she loved most about him.

It was what inspired her to do what she was about to do.

Two floors down, in the basement, sat the Ecto-Skeleton that she’d finished only half an hour ago. Well, nearly finished. The work was hardly her best, what with it being a rush job, and she still had yet to perfect the neural receptors. The suit was far from being safe for use, but with the threat of this self-proclaimed ghost king looming over her town, she had little other choice.

She leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss into Jack’s forehead. “I love you so much,” she whispered before standing and leaving their room.

As she made her way downstairs, she peeked in her kids’ rooms. Jazz’s was dark and empty; Maddie figured she was still outside, helping keep panic from spreading. The thought made her smile. It was a job Jazz was born for, especially with her love of therapy and psychology.

Danny’s room had the light on, and Damon Gray’s girl, the one who’d been injured during the initial wave, was still on the ground, propped up on a beanbag chair. Oddly enough, though, her son and his friends were nowhere to be found. It was strange, considering she’d just told Sam and Tucker a few minutes ago that she’d seen Danny and Damon’s daughter up here a while ago (the initial sight of them both asleep in his room had set off her mom alarms, but given the fact that he was on his bed while she was on the floor and there were far bigger things to be concerned about, she let it slide).

Maddie sighed. There wasn’t time to hunt the three of them down. She’d have to cross her fingers and hope they were somewhere safe and out of trouble - perhaps helping Jazz.

Steeling herself, she shut Danny’s door and headed down the stairs. She dashed into the kitchen and opened the door to the lab only to run into Damon.

“Oh, my bad!” he said, catching her arm. “I know we wanted to monitor the shield and the probe as close as possible, but I haven’t seen Valerie in a bit and I want to make sure she’s okay. Is that alright if I go and check on her? I might ask if she wants anything for dinner while I’m at it.”

“Of course!” Maddie answered immediately. “Take as long as you need! Last time I saw her, she’d fallen asleep in Danny’s room. I’m not sure where he or Sam and Tucker went, but she seemed comfortable and safe.”

Damon’s form relaxed just slightly. “That’s good to know.” He sidled past her and towards the kitchen entry. “I’ll go check on her real fast and then be right back down there to help out.”

Maddie smiled. She hadn’t known Damon for long - less than 48 hours, really - but she could tell he was a good man with a heart of gold. The fact that he’d so readily thrown himself into assisting her and Jack warmed her heart.

It seemed like so many people in her life were of such a high caliber. She only hoped what she was about to do allowed her to even measure up just slightly.

“Help yourself to anything in the fridge,” she said, nodding towards it. “Just be careful of what’s in the containment box on the top shelf - trust me, that’s our secondary refrigeration storage unit.”

He let out a good-hearted chuckle. “Thanks so much, Maddie.” He turned to head up the stairs, leaving her in the kitchen alone with her thoughts. Such a good father, she thought to herself before beginning her descent into the basement lab.

The moment she stepped into the stairwell, she knew something was horribly wrong. The air was cold and sharp, so much so that she was certain she was seeing her breath mist in front of her. A heavy, thick presence filled the air, one of worry and fear. Someone was in the lab, muttering under their breath.

Somehow, she knew exactly who it was.

A careful, silent creep down the stairs proved her right. There, flitting around the Ecto-Skeleton and examining it, was Phantom. In her lab. In her house. Under a ghost shield that had thus far been proven to be impenetrable by any ghost, including the supposed king attacking the town and his knight.

Without taking her eyes off of him, she drew the pistol holstered to her belt and aimed it at him. “Make another move and I’ll shoot you,” she said, surprising herself with the darkness of her voice.

His back was to her when she spoke, but, following her order, he didn’t turn around. “M-Maddie,” he whispered, his voice heavy with dread. “Please, I’m - I promise this isn’t what it looks like.”

“Really? Because from where I stand, it looks like you’re in the middle of sabotaging the one hope anyone has of saving this town!”

“Sabot- Really?” He turned around to face her, but didn’t move closer. She gripped the trigger just a little tighter. “Even in the middle of the worst attack we’ve seen yet, you’re still bent on making me into the main problem?”

“Well, what am I supposed to think when I find you tampering with our weapons?” She did find his insistence to turn the situation into something revolving around him haughty and very typical for him in particular, but she held her tongue about the issue for now. Unlike him, she was focused on the real problem at hand.

Phantom huffed, a move that should’ve been impossible for a being without lungs. “I’m not tampering with it,” he said with strained patience. “I’m trying to figure out how to get in this thing. Or where the ‘on’ button is, or something.”

“And just what do you plan on doing with it?”’

“Seriously? What do you think I’m gonna do with it?” He threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. “I have to stop that guy!” he exclaimed, pointing up and vaguely out of the house.

“Even if I believed you,” she scoffed, “you have no right to invade our home and steal our invention to use for your own gain!”

Without warning, his face grew suddenly somber. Before Maddie’s eyes, he seemed to age years beyond his portrayed age. For the first time since discovering Phantom’s existence, she wondered if his teenage stature was a conscious choice or merely the body he’d had when he died.

That thought chilled her to the bone.

He lowered his gaze to the floor. “It isn’t for my own gain,” he said quietly. “It… I know you don’t believe me, but I really am doing this for you. For everyone.” Then in a near whisper, he said, “It’s my responsibility.”

Maddie narrowed her eyes as she pondered his words. The claim was the same as it had been since day one: he was trying to be the hero, the one good ghost in a sea of evil ones. He hadn’t wavered from that, except for a few times, which, admittedly, could be counted on one hand. At least he was consistent, if nothing else.

She just couldn’t make sense of it. The MO went against everything she and Jack understood about ghosts. If she were to accept his claimed intentions as true, it would mean dozens of theories, hundreds of hours of heated discussion and research, many attempts at creating basic behavioral profiles, they’d all be thrown out the window.

Not to mention the inherent danger of letting their guard down. Ghosts were notoriously tricky, and their ability to do things beyond human capabilities made them even more dangerous of a threat. Phantom especially was one who seemed harmless at first, but who had displayed impressive, terrifying power (and the potential to take it even further). He, like this ghost king, could probably raze the town in less than an hour if he really wanted to.

So… did he want to?

She studied his body language closer. His eyes were still fixed on a distant spot on the floor, and they were glassy as his own thoughts raced through his head. Though he seemed more serious, more battle-worn, he also seemed to be retreating into himself, making himself try and appear smaller than normal. It was hard to believe anyone who looked so solemn and resigned could be secretly plotting to wreak destruction.

“No one ever said it was your responsibility,” she said, matching his tone.

He smiled wryly. “I know,” he admitted with a one-shoulder shrug. “But it doesn’t make it any less true.”

Maddie sighed deeply and holstered her weapon, much to Phantom’s astonishment. She crossed the room and laid a hand on the cold titanium exterior of the Ecto-Skeleton. “It doesn’t matter if it’s your responsibility or not,” she said. Now was not the time to decide ground-breaking things about his true intentions. More important things were at hand. “You won’t be the one using this.”

He glanced up at her, then to the Ecto-Skeleton. His gaze flicked back and forth a few times, growing wider as the realization of her implications hit him. “No, no,” he breathed. She jolted when he caught her wrist; his touch was freezing, but unexpectedly gentle. “Mo… Maddie, you can’t! You saw what that thing did to… to Jack, you can’t seriously expect to go up against a ghost that powerful with that thing!”

She didn’t know how he knew what had happened to Jack, but frankly, she didn’t care at the moment. “It’s the only shot we have of defeating him,” she said soberly, pulling her wrist away. “I have to do it.”

“No one ever said it was your responsibility.” Of course he would stoop so low as to use her own words against her.

“Figures a ghost wouldn’t understand the concept of putting your life on the line for the ones you love,” she muttered. There wasn’t time for this nonsense!

His eyes became thunderous. “That’s just - I’ve…” he stuttered, accentuating it with a shout of exasperation. “Argh, you have no idea what I do and don’t understand! Are you telling me that’s what this is all about?”

“What, proving a factual point to you? I shouldn’t -”

“No, trying to be some self-sacrificial hero for everyone!” he shouted, spreading his arms. “Like why choose now of all the times to play the martyr?”

“It hasn’t been necessary until now!” She hoped her eyes were as piercing as she wanted them to be. Phantom’s inability to understand this only helped prove her and Jack right about his hero act being just that. The fall into familiar territory only marginally soothed her frayed nerves. “My family is in danger. I’m not just going to sit idly by and let them get hurt!”

He lowered his arms and regarded her with a stony expression. It was difficult not to flinch under his gaze, and she got the same aura of a battle-worn boy that had washed over him earlier. Her heart fluttered faster and faster.

She was nearing her breaking point of lashing out just to stop that piercing stare of his by the time he finally did something. Sighing, he hung his head low and, so very quietly, said, “I know.”

That… hadn’t been quite what she was expecting. “You know?”

“Yeah. I know. You’re always looking out for the people you care about. You’d never just leave them hanging.” He lifted his head and she found herself taken aback by the reverent, proud twinkle that had taken its place in his eyes. He smiled sadly. “It’s always been one of the things I admire most about you.”

Her mouth opened and twisted, but no words came out. Where did she even begin with a statement like that? The idea that he’d been watching her, possibly Jack too, closely enough to form some sort of attachment sent her heart dropping into her stomach, but it was quickly wrenched back into an anxious thump as she realized the implication of him holding admiration.

It should’ve been a distinctly human conception. Ghosts did not admire one another, they couldn’t. They were too proud of themselves and their own power to look into another and find something to emulate. Their individual powers and cores were their entire world.

So how was Phantom demonstrating the exact opposite of that?

She wanted to shout. She wanted to bang her fist against the Ecto-Skeleton. She wanted to stomp her foot and throw something. Why did he always have to do this? Waltz in and out of their lives, poking careless holes in their life’s work? It wasn’t fair! Before he’d shown his face, they’d never held a shadow of a doubt that their theories were true.

But now, though she could never admit it truly, he had forced her to second-guess herself. She couldn’t help but doubt everything she’d ever known as his otherworldly green eyes bore into her own.

She hated everything about it with every fiber of her being.

He raised his eyebrows in concern as she floundered for a response. “Sorry,” he mumbled sheepishly. “I didn’t - well, I did mean what I said, I just… didn’t mean to say it.”

Her own eyebrows frowned, but softly. “If you admire that about me,” she said slowly, not believing the words coming out of her own mouth, “then you understand why I have to do this.”

His smile faded in tandem with the twinkle in his eye. “I… I understand why you think you have to do this,” he admitted. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you can’t.”

“Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t do?” she snapped. This game of cat and mouse was growing on her last nerve, and with each minute that passed, she knew the ghost king grew closer to launching his final assault.

For some reason, it made her angrier that his face was one of solemnity again, not anger. Anger, she could deal with. Angry ghosts were easy.

Ghosts that supposedly admired humans and understood self-sacrifice weren’t.

He bit his lip. “I’m not - no, I’m not trying to… to tell you that you - you’re not allowed to think that way,” he tried to explain, stumbling over his words. “I know I can’t stop you from believing that, and - and that’s fine. I get it. I’m the same way, even if you don’t believe me. I just… What I’m trying to tell you is that you - you physically can’t do this.”

Her frown deepened now into one of perplexity. “Why not? The Ecto-Skeleton is right here. It’s the only thing that could possibly work against that ghost.”

“Sure, you could take it,” he said, “but I keep trying to tell you, you saw what that did to Jack, and that was only the bottom half! Do you really think you’ll be able to use the whole thing and be okay?”

Again, the question of how he knew these details crossed her mind, but she shoved them into the back of her mind. “It may still be glitchy,” she admitted. There was no sense lying to him about the issues with the neural interface; if he knew it had hurt Jack, he probably knew it was still highly dangerous. “But it’s what I keep trying to tell you: there isn’t another choice.”

“Maddie, please.” She could hear the frustration growing in his voice. “This isn’t - it’s not a choice that exists! You really think you’re gonna be able to take that thing and stop him?”

“I’ll stop him or I’ll die trying!” she bit out.

Phantom looked like her words had just punched him in the gut. “Yeah,” he said hollowly. “Yeah, you’ll try. And one way or another, you’ll end up dead, whether it’s the king or the suit that gets to you first, and then what? What’s supposed to happen?”

She didn’t answer. The way it played out in her head, she imagined the Ecto-Skeleton being enough to cripple the ghost king, at least to the point where someone else, even another ghost could come in and take care of the rest of him. The way Phantom phrased it, though, he made it sound like she’d barely make a dent in his defenses before she got killed.

And the worst part of it was that she was inclined to believe him. The suit’s pants really had sapped such a huge chunk of Jack’s energy in such a short period of time, and though she and Vlad had managed to remedy some of the interface’s complications, there hadn’t been nearly enough time to fix them all, and none of the three of them were quite as familiar with the level of programming knowledge necessary to fix them quickly.

In other words, with the top half of the suit, using the Ecto-Skeleton as a whole was just as dangerous as it had been with the bottom half alone. She knew this perfectly well. For her to use it - for any human to use it - was practically a death sentence.

And Phantom knew this too. He stared at her, hard and intense. “If you take the suit and go off to fight him,” he told her in a low voice, “you’ll die. And he won’t care. You’re just a puny little thing to him. You’d be nothing more than some annoying fly to take care of before he continues on his warpath. And then what?”

Still, she hesitated. She refused to admit he was right, even as he continued to speak. “You’d be handing this town, your family - everyone over to him if you take that thing. He’ll destroy it before someone else can use it against him, and then it’s game over. Especially if we’re right about it being the only chance.”

Though his face remained cloudy, there was something else behind his eyes that made them gleam with an anxious shine. Could he actually be… worried about her?

“Then what am I supposed to do?” she whispered. She couldn’t stand how her voice shook with fear and uncertainty. It was a vulnerability she couldn’t afford to expose, not now.

He straightened and turned to look at the Ecto-Skeleton. “I already told you,” he said, laying his hand next to hers on the suit. “You’re not gonna do anything. It’s gonna be me that takes it.”

“What?” She blinked once, twice as she tried to process what he said. “You’re going to use it?”

He drew in a shaky breath (again, something that should’ve been impossible for him to do) and nodded. “No human could ever have enough power to survive this thing long enough to fight off Pariah Dark.” His exhale was just as shaky. “But I’m no human.”

It was her turn to flick her gaze back and forth between him and the suit. “You can’t possibly expect-”

“Maddie.” He closed his eyes. “You’ve been watching and hunting me for a while now. You know my power, probably better than even me.”

He pressed his forehead against the metal and stilled. She watched him with a frown, but it was impossible to read him. For all that a ghost was supposed to be easy to understand, Phantom was the exact opposite.

“I don’t like to admit it,” he said quietly after a long moment. “I can’t… it’s not easy for me. I don’t like acknowledging what I’m capable of.”

In a flash, he opened his eyes and looked at her. There was a sort of desperation in his eyes that she couldn’t quite place. Just as quickly, he turned his eyes to the ground. “You know just as well as I do that I’m more powerful than I like to let on. We both know that I have a lot more power than just about any of the ghosts that show up around here. I… I’m the only one who even has a shot at stopping him.”

It was strange, hearing him so openly admit his power. He was probably telling the truth about not liking to acknowledge it; most ghosts loved to flaunt their power (the Wisconsin Ghost immediately came to mind), but Phantom tended to exercise restraint in that sense. Oh sure, he loved to mock his opponents and tease them when he was able to get one up on them, but things never escalated beyond battle banter.

But he was right. All of the measurements they’d taken of him, as marred by inaccuracies as they could be, put him at a level 7.3. The average level of the ghosts that attacked the town varied between 3.5 and 5.8. If he wanted to, he could take out those ghosts without breaking a sweat.

And yet he didn’t.

Nothing about him made sense.

“So you think you can actually beat him?” she asked. Normally, the question would’ve been laced with skepticism and venom, but at this point she was beyond it. Dealing with Phantom and his… eccentricities was exhausting, and that was on top of the fact that her husband was nearly bedridden at the moment, her kids were nowhere to be found, and an all-powerful ghost was about to descend on her town.

Yeah, she couldn’t bother to be scathing.

And, though she’d never admit it, as the conversation dragged on, she was beginning to become accustomed to his expressiveness. It was a sort of expressiveness that was human in the most uncanny way, and she couldn’t help but fall for it, even if it was an act. She found herself unwillingly believing his claims more and more, and it was having an effect on how she was viewing him.

To her, right now, he seemed less like the sassy trickster she and Jack had pegged him as, and he seemed less like the valiant hero he tried to be for the town. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he was simply a scared boy who’d bitten off more than he could chew. It was too easy to forget the sheer power that pulsed underneath his skin.

And scared he looked. He folded his arms and gripped his biceps, tucking his chin towards his chest. His face was drawn tight in an anxious frown.

“You want the truth?” he asked so quietly, she almost missed it.

“Obviously.”

A tiny shudder rippled across his body. “I don’t know.” His fingers dug deeper into his arms as he kept his gaze fixed below him. “I don’t know.”

Whatever words she’d been preparing to say were ripped straight from her mouth, leaving her stunned and uneasy. Never before had Phantom allowed himself to be so… vulnerable in front of someone. Or admit doubt in his own ability. For him to do so now was unnerving for a number of reasons.

Thoughts and theories whirled around her head in a violent cyclone. The implications this show of vulnerability had…

No. She couldn’t let herself be distracted by that, not right now. There was something a little more immediate that needed to be addressed. “So wait, you won’t let me use the suit because you think I won’t be able to hold out, but you think you can use it even though you don’t even know you can hold out?”

“I at least have a better chance than you,” he said indignantly. Some of the fire in his eyes reignited, but the fear that remained betrayed him.

“But you’re not planning on coming back, are you?” she accused. “You don’t think…”

The words didn’t need to be said. They both knew exactly what she was alluding to.

He sighed, then set his jaw and looked her square in the eye. “I’ll go to whatever lengths I have to if it means you’ll be protected.”

All she could do was shake her head in disbelief. “Why?”

A weak laugh bubbled past his lips. “Like I told you,” he said with a crooked, feeble grin, “it’s one of the things I admire most about you.”

The two of them stood there (or floated, in Phantom’s case) for what seemed like an eternity, especially when the threat of the king loomed over their heads. She didn’t even want to try to tackle the subject of him holding her as a role model; with a brain that felt like it was full of static, she didn’t trust herself to try, either. As it was, she could barely process this situation.

Phantom. Clearly scared out of his mind. Ready to fight for the town to the point of fading. If she hadn’t been here experiencing it for herself, she’d never have believed it.

The fact that he hadn’t simply taken off yet baffled her further. There was only so much she could do to prevent him from leaving; they both knew that. So why not just take the Ecto-Skeleton and go?

He was waiting for something from her. Something physical, or the answer to some sort of question he hadn’t voiced out loud. It had to be the reason.

She suspected she knew what he was waiting for her to tell him.

“No,” she finally said, her voice hoarse. “I can’t let you.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Danny’s heart dropped as his mom spoke those words.

She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. What was she thinking? Wasn’t she supposed to hate him? Phantom, anyway? Shouldn’t she be perfectly fine with the idea of him meeting an early end to his afterlife?

At least more fine with the idea than he was?

“M-Maddie,” he said, stumbling over her name for the umpteenth time. Normally, he was so careful to make sure to call people by the names that the proper Danny would know. For Danny Fenton, his parents were Mom and Dad, but to Danny Phantom, they were Maddie and Jack. Something about this conversation, though, just kept leading him to slip ups.

Maybe it was the fact that he was talking about going off and offering himself up like a lamb to a slaughter in front of his mother of all people?

He shook his head. “I know you don’t trust me, but I won’t let you stop me.”

Would she have to push hard to keep him from going, though?

He’d been hoping to snag the Ecto-Skeleton and fly out of there before he had a chance to really think about what he was doing, but now, thanks to this conversation, he was starting to lose the same resolve he’d found up in his room. Most of what he was showing to Mom was a false mask of confidence at this point.

Speaking of Mom, she hadn’t reacted to his pushback yet. She was preoccupied with staring at a faint smudge of oil on the shiny metal of the suit. Without her hood, he could pick out the rampant emotion in her eyes that had been present this whole time, ever since she put the gun away. What she was thinking about, though, he had no idea. He didn’t have the same talent for reading people that Jazz did.

“It’s not a matter of trust,” she said eventually. She clenched her hand into a tight fist and averted her gaze even further. “It’s… you have to realize, I… I can’t…”

He felt his face soften in sympathy. “You can’t let someone else take the fall for you,” he finished for her. “I get it.”

She apparently hadn’t been expecting him to say that. Her eyes jerked up to meet his, and behind them, he could practically see the gears in her head churning faster and faster as she tried to make sense of it.

He didn’t blame her. He wasn’t even sure what he was saying anymore, he’d said so many things he would’ve never admitted in a million years at this point. Like telling her he admired her heroism? What was he thinking? After so many months of carefully guarding his secret, what on earth had possessed him to be so careless with this stuff?

Despite his own anxiety, he tried not to shy away from her intense gaze, as difficult as it was. Like worse than when Jazz was getting ready to serve him with a lecture.

The bottoms of her eyes scrunched up in absolute befuddlement. “Who even are you, Phantom?” she finally whispered.

His expression of sympathy relaxed even further into a frown weighed down by nearly a year of sleepless nights, sacrificed grades and relationships, and scrapes and bruises from being thrown into streets and buildings. “Just someone who wants to help.”

Mom narrowed her eyes further. He was really beginning to hate how he could not figure out for the life of him what was going on in her head. Frankly, he was still half-convinced she would pull out her gun again, shoot him, and take the suit anyway. Had telling her she wouldn’t change a thing against Pariah Dark been the right way to go? Would it just make her even more stubborn?

At least he knew what side of the family he got his stubbornness from.

It was also getting harder to resist the temptation to just grab the suit and run. After all, she really couldn’t do much in the way of stopping him, what with a handy thing called intangibility, and, with his courage waning by the minute, the idea seemed more and more plausible. Not to mention that as each second ticked by, the Ghost King grew closer to launching his final attack.

Time was running out.

Just when he thought he wouldn’t be able to take any more, Mom abruptly drew her fist away from the suit and stepped back. Her eyes were closed tight. “Go.”

He had to do a double take, he could hardly believe his ears. “Are you-”

“Just go, Phantom!” The tension in her jaw was visible and obvious. Even still, quieter than before, she added, “Before I change my mind.”

A single tear slipped from the corner of her shut eye, and Danny’s heart shattered.

This… this was all wrong. How could he do this to her? Ask her to allow her own son to go up and face almost-certain death? When she didn’t even know it was her son she was talking to? And then the fact that if he really didn’t return, she’d never know the truth…

In one shallow, shaky breath, he made another decision.

Carefully, he floated toward her and laid a gentle hand on her arm. “Thank you,” he said, pouring as much warmth, sincerity, and gravity into the two words as he could.

She cracked open her eyes to look at him, and then, before he lost the guts to do so and before she could stop him, he said, “You… you asked me who I am.”

This time, Mom opened her eyes fully and regarded him with confusion. Clearly, she’d been expecting him to bolt the minute she gave her permission. “Look, I already-”

“If I don’t - if something happens to me…” he interrupted, cursing the waver in his voice. The fluttering in his stomach was quickly becoming unbearable. “... you’ll find the answer in… in your son’s room, taped to the back of his bed.”

That definitely elicited a response from her. “What does - how…?” She couldn’t find the right question to ask as the emotion in her eyes suddenly turned to panic. Well, that was reasonable at least. He’d just confirmed some involvement of Danny Fenton.

He smiled weakly, apologetic and sheepish. “He’s fine, I promise. Just… yeah. Consider it… a failsafe.” One that he’d prepared months ago, after the incident with Freakshow. Nothing more than a letter explaining the truth. He’d hoped he’d never have to resort to using it, that he’d be able to tell Mom and Dad in person, but…

Her brow knitted together. It was agony, not being able to know what she was thinking. He could only hope she wasn’t about to turn on him for getting too close to her son.

“Well,” she said after what felt like an eternity. “Don’t make me need to use it.”

Without another word, she turned and walked towards the staircase. When she paused on the fourth or fifth step, he could only float there as she looked over her shoulder at him, one last time, her eyes wet and bloodshot.

The corners of her lips turned upward. “Give him hell, Phantom,” she said. And then she was gone, leaving Danny alone in the basement.

He watched where she disappeared up the stairs for a long moment. Somewhere in the back of his mind, it occurred to him that in terms of last words to hear from his mother, those were definitely not the ones he would’ve expected to hear.

He could live with that.

Huffing a short breath, he shook his head to clear it. He needed to focus. No more worrying about Mom and what she thought of him, or if she’d go and find the letter anyway, or why she even let him go in the end. No more dwelling on the fact that he was probably living the last minutes of his life.

It was go time.

He grabbed the Ecto-Skeleton by one of its arms and hoisted it into the air, phasing back up through the ceiling to meet back up with Sam and Tucker.

#danny phantom #dannymay #dannymay2023 #dannymay 2023 #danny fenton #maddie fenton #danny phantom maddie #danny phantom fanfic #hannah writes #reign storm #i love reign storm #but that scene where the adults just all slap each other a bit is kind of silly #this is how i'd want it to go down #long post

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