There Were Ashes

November 13, 2012

~ For SRL541 ~

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There were ashes raining down from the sky. Glowing orange at their edges. Buildings burnt to a crisp. Pools of blood. Death and destruction everywhere. Screaming amid the chaos of falling rubble. No one strong enough to stand against him. And it was beautiful.

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Time passed and what had once been a near crippling fear of the future that could have been sank back. Never to be forgotten, no, but no longer the all consuming terror that made him want to stop speaking, looking in mirrors, or using any ghostly powers.

It became a warning, a harsh warning, granted, but one that stayed in the back of his mind. One that turned from threat to resolute promise. That he would remember, always, what he was capable of. And he would never become it. Ever. Because his friends would never let him and he would never let himself.

---

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There was darkness once he had been contained. A void so empty that it couldn't have been called a place. It was nothing. It was always nothing. It would always be nothing. It forced him to think of nothing, release everything but the most tenuous hold on his everlasting hatred. And there was no way out.

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Valerie flew leisurely through the streets on her rounds. At this point, it was more routine than anything else. There hadn't been much ghost trouble lately and after a quick sweep of the town, she would be able to go home for the night with an easy conscience. She took the time to enjoy the scene around her even as her eyes were sharp to every detail that might be amiss.

Spotting a familiar mop of spiky black hair on the sidewalk, she steered her board to nearly his level.

"Fenton," she greeted with a nod.

He turned to smile up at her. "Hey, Red," he replied.

She stared at him for a while as he walked and she rode to keep pace. After years, she still didn't know what to make of that expression.

Happy-go-lucky, shy Danny Fenton had actually turned out to know something about hunting ghosts. As his parents' son, he had learned more than just the basics of fighting and he had helped her out in more than one tight pinch. He wasn't nearly as clumsy as he let most people believe. They had dated for a little bit, back in high school, and had continued to be good friends.

He knew her tics better than almost anyone in this town and was well aware of the odd schedule she kept. He had to know it was her in that suit. But she never confirmed any suspicions he might have and he never called her out on it. Never called her anything but 'Red', because "Red Huntress" or "hey you, fighter person on the board" was too long to shout in the middle of a fight and "Red" had stuck long ago, appropriately fiery and to the point.

---

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There was a crack. An escape, a whirlwind of fury out of a space so small it had no right to exist. The world around him exploded in the face of his sheer raging power. The glass faces of clocks before him shattered, freezing their hands in place. And there was no one standing in his way.

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Danny shivered, suddenly cold and uncomfortable despite the warm weather and shining sun.

Valerie noticed and thought it odd. "Are you okay?" she asked.

He nodded slowly, brow furrowed, as if he wasn't quite sure what had happened. He swallowed several times. "Yeah, I'm good." Then he looked at her and, in an attempt to change the subject, nodded his head toward the gadgets on her wrist and asked, "So, any ghostly activity tonight, or has it been pretty quiet?"

"It's been quiet so far," she said, checking her homing device to see if anything had appeared in the past thirty seconds, not that it would have without beeping to let her know. "And it's still clear."

Danny rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, that's good, then." He looked at her sideways. "You and Phantom have done a pretty good job of keeping the town safe."

She stiffened at the name, instinctively, before relaxing and agreeing with Danny's statement with a tight nod. It was still odd to think of herself as allied with the ghost, no matter how informally. Years of hatred were hard to erase. She had to remind herself every time she saw or heard the name that they were working together now, that she didn't have to pull the trigger or fly off the handle on a tirade.

"Yeah, we've made a good…" she paused for a long time. "Team."

"Glad to hear it," Danny said with a bright smile. "Everyone in our family always knew he was different."

She scoffed, and looked like she was about to say something else when Danny stopped walking and doubled over in place.

Valerie paused in her flight and moved backward to see what was wrong. She was about to dismount from her board and help as best she could, but he waved her off, protesting that he was fine despite the coughs that wracked his frame and something coming out of his mouth.

Between them, he tried to tell her something, but seemed unable to get the words out. He settled for covering his mouth with one hand and pointing toward her.

---

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There was something insisting on being remembered. It screamed after so long in the darkness. Faces seared into his memory. Voices that haunted him. Smiles, laughter, ignorant glances that he hated, hated, hated with every fiber of his being. (how could he have forgotten that, even in that nothingness?) And the only way to purge them was with blood.

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"What?" Valerie asked, looking between Danny and his pointing finger.

He stepped closer and tapped the glass on the ghost-locating device on her wrist. "That…" he coughed, "is there a ghost?"

She looked again at the still inactive screen. "No, there's no ghost."

"There will be soon." Another cough. "Two of them… or someone really powerful."

This time it was her turn to be puzzled. "How do you know?"

He met her gaze with intense blue eyes as the world around them trembled slightly.

The tracker began beeping and a large red dot appeared, telling her that it was indeed, a powerful ectoplasmic being. The map didn't seem to know where to place it, though, as the dot kept jumping around, refusing to be pinned down. Valerie turned toward Danny, her raised eyebrow covered by her mask, to ask how he had known about the ghost before her equipment, but stopped when she got a good look at him.

He wasn't coughing anymore. Danny's mouth hung open in disbelief as he appeared to be listening to something that she couldn't hear. His eyes were wide and stared in front of him unseeing, until he blinked back to her.

"You have to run," he said.

"What?" she asked. She was the red huntress. It was her job to fight the powerful ghosts, not to run away from them.

"Run!" he yelled at her, already whipping out his cell phone and beginning to move in the other direction.

"Tucker?" he said, breathless. "Code red. He's back. I don't want you or Sam out here. Get Jazz and my parents and hide, got that? And tell Vlad. I'll take care of this." He paused to stand in the street as he listened to the voice on the other side. "Yeah man," his voice broke as he replied. "You too."

---

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There was nothing that could distract him from his flight, his mad rush toward the real world. Doors flew past. Ghosts shrank back. He didn't notice. He didn't care. He would deal with them later if they really mattered. He needed to get to Amity Park. And he couldn't get there fast enough.

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Then the phone was gone and he was looking back at Valerie, who hadn't moved. "What are you waiting for?" Danny asked, his voice rising to a yell. "You've got to get out of here!"

"No!" Valerie replied, "If a powerful ghost is coming, I need to fight it; that's my responsibility."

"Leave this one to Phantom," he practically ordered, as if his saying so would make her give up her post.

"I'm not going to…" she huffed indignantly before he cut her off.

"Phantom's beaten him before, now please, just trust me on this one and go," he pleaded.

"No!" she protested.

"GO!" Danny shouted at her, running up and shoving his arms into her face as much as he could.

She leaned back and half demanded half whispered, "Why?"

"Because he's coming for you, okay?" He yelled. "Is that what you wanted to hear? You can't beat him if his only goal is to tear you limb from limb! And I can't…" he paused, chest heaving. He sighed. "Phantom can't beat this guy if he has to worry about you the entire time."

Valerie opened her mouth to respond, but Danny continued speaking.

"I know that you can handle yourself, but please, this is one time when you can't be out here." He reached up to put his hands on her shoulders and he stared through the mask, desperate to make eye contact. "You're the best ghost hunter in the entire city. There's no one I would trust more to protect everyone."

"Then why won't you-!"

"Listen to me!" Danny snapped. "We don't have much time. This guy, he's going to target a few people specifically. And he's not going to rest until he's killed them and he doesn't care about collateral damage. I've got Sam and Tucker taking care of my parents. Between them and the ops center's security, they should be fine. But when he can't get to them right away, he's going to go after Lancer. And Val. And people from the school. Dash. Paulina. People we know. People who don't know the first thing about how to fight ghosts." He took a deep breath. "You can protect them. You'll have to leave here and not tackle this ghost head on, but you're the only person who can do it. So please, promise me and go."

She was silent for a moment.

"Promise me, Red!" he yelled, insistent.

"Okay," she whispered.

Without saying anything else, she kicked her board into high gear and flew away, leaving a trembling Danny Fenton behind in her wake.

---

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There was sunshine and birds calling and a breeze ruffling the leaves on the trees. People were milling about below, unaware of his presence. The place looked the same as it had when he left. So long ago. He ground his teeth. He hated it. Hated its normality. Hated that it could go on when everything had been taken from him. And now, he would take it all back.

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---

Danny heard the explosions and transformed, not caring whether anyone was around to see. He flew off as fast as he could, hoping that he could get there in time, hoping that Dan had decided to only blow inanimate objects up instead of cars or buildings with people trapped inside.

He arrived to smoke billowing out across several blocks where the buildings had been destroyed and the very brick and stone pulverized. People were screaming, whether from fear or pain he would never know because there was no time to check.

His own yell pierced through the fog, "Get out here, you monster! It's me you want, so come get me!"

He hovered mid air, panting now that his challenge had been delivered. Everything seemed to grow quiet. No more rubble fell, none of the people trapped below made a sound. The dust seemed to dampen everything and for a moment, he wondered if he had been wrong. If it really wasn't his other self. If that noise he'd heard hadn't been a ghostly wail that couldn't belong to anyone else.

But no, who else could have done this? Who else would give him the sensation of sameness and duality and pure malice? It had to be him.

And his suspicions were confirmed as a figure flew through the mist straight toward him.

Danny barely had time to react in order to miss the hand that clawed at his face, charged with ectoplasm.

"Whoa!" he yelled as he fell backwards and dematerialized around a blast.

When he finally got a good look at his opponent, he let out another "whoa!"

It was him. But not as he remembered, not overly muscled with flaming hair. It was a red-eyed clone, identical to him now. "You're me!" After a moment, he remembered that this had indeed been a power his alternate future self possessed.

"Yes," the ghost purred in a gravelly voice. "Do you like it? I had to make a few changes because you've grown since the last time I saw you. I thought it was fitting, though, since, of course, we are the same."

"No!" Danny yelled, sending twin ectoblasts that his doppelganger easily avoided. "I will never turn into you! I'm nothing like you!"

Then Dan smiled, a predatory grin. "You're right," he said, casually duplicating. Danny's eyes went wide and he summoned his ice powers, sending glass-sharp shards out at all of the ghosts, who quirked their eyebrows as one. "That's new," he observed. "So we aren't alike at all," he said sarcastically, patronizingly. Then, in surround sound, he whispered, "But I've got a new power too."

They disappeared.

---

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There was a puff of pink smoke as he surrounded the boy. Smirking in his astonished face. Holding him as he squirmed to get free. He would never be free. Sliding long fingers through him and drawing them out wet with blood. Again and again. Even with a shredded stomach, he tried to take a breath to repel him with his strongest attack. And his expression when he beat him to it…!

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---

Tucker was the only one who found it hard to shoot the ghost.

Mr. and Mrs. Fenton had never had a problem shooting at any kind of ectoplasmic being and, although there had been a tentative truce between them and Phantom, they had no qualms about shooting at him when the kids told them they had to. Even if the explanation about look-alikes didn't seem to make sense to them, they were all too happy to unload the weapon's vault and take the Ops Center to its highest security level.

Jazz had waited in the Fenton Peeler with a grim face.

Sam had donned her fiercest scowl and had laid out a ring of weapons around her like she couldn't decide which one she wanted to use first.

He was ready, too, with guns and gadgets strapped to his side an in each of his pockets.

They had been ready for Dan.

But they hadn't been ready for the fact that he looked exactly like Danny. That he could have been Danny except that he was attacking them with glinting red eyes. The hissing and snarling helped to differentiate them. As well as the duplication and teleportation tricks that their Danny had never been able to master like that.

Still, it was hard to shoot at the carbon copy of his best friend since kindergarten. Hard to shoot without second guessing himself.

Especially since Danny didn't show up. They had thought the two would come together, Danny right on his evil older self's heels, blasting away. But after twenty minutes of harrowing battle, he still hadn't arrived.

When Dan wailed his way past the Ops Center's ghost shield, he still hadn't come.

Eventually Vlad joined them, in his ghostly form of course, and they'd all somehow been able to hit Danny's look-alike at the same time, stunning him long enough to capture him in an upgraded thermos. One that Vlad promised he would be able to secure for long enough for them all to figure out what could be done with the ghost.

And still, even after all that, there was no Danny.

---

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There was ringing. Frantic waiting for a voice to answer the phone but he wasn't picking up. Jazz turned on the news to see footage that had them all scrambling out to the RV with as many medical supplies as they could carry. And they were out the door before the cameras panned to a pool of blood.

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They arrived on the scene with a screech of tires. After the camera crew, but before the rescue teams.

Jack was quick to offer his girth clearing the streets of rubble and lifting beams that held townsfolk captive.

Maddie, after running a quick perimeter check and confident that there were no more ghosts on the rampage, quickly opened the boxes of medical supplies and began treating people out of the back of the RV. Jazz talked to people in shock.

Sam and Tucker ran off in search of Danny, half hoping they would find him, half hoping they wouldn't. Because what kind of shape must he be in if he was still here and hadn't followed his evil alternate self?

They'd started out together, but couldn't see far in the thick smoke which still billowed up from the buildings, although it was beginning to finally settle now that the fighting wasn't knocking it back up. Eventually, they decided to split up, but stay close by and maintaining contact via cell phone.

After ten minutes of wandering, Tucker realized that Sam had gone silent. He was about to ask if she had found anything when he heard his name jaggedly whispered through his mobile. His heart began to race and he quickly traced her location and ran until he saw her doubled over, dry heaving above the lost contents of her stomach.

He grabbed her shoulders and all traces of hope shattered when he saw her eyes. He looked beyond her as she tightened both her fists in his shirt.

Tucker stared at the deep red puddle that spread and splattered across the street.

There was a foot at this end of it. His eyes wandered to one hand by the curb and the other one still curled into a fist on the outermost edge of the sickening crimson. There were strips of fabric and what he assumed had once been a body spread across the middle. And matted black hair on the far side.

A part of him almost wanted to walk through the liquid to see what was on the other side, to see if it was a head, or a smashed mess. If the eyes would stare at him or if he could even tell that it was Danny.

But Sam kept him rooted in place. And a heartbeat later, Valerie—the Red Huntress—flew down, taking everything in at a moment's glance.

---

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There is only rage blinded by tears. She doesn't hear Tucker speaking to her, explaining something about ghosts altering appearances. She brushes him off and flies away, eyes seeking a single target. She had trusted Danny. Through him, Phantom. Now Phantom had turned on them like she always knew he would. And Danny is dead because of it.

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Danny awoke severely disoriented, with an ectoblast already built in his fist before he knew why. But then he remembered. He remembered his evil future self coming to carry out the plan he had failed to carry out when Danny interfered.

He remembered getting stabbed and blasted and ripped apart and he didn't understand how he could have woken up in one piece because there was no way that had been a dream. But he wouldn't question it.

He didn't have any time; he had to stop Dan and save his friends and family. He shot up, a little too quickly because his head began to spin, and oriented himself to fly to FentonWorks. That would be his first stop. Hopefully the weapons arsenal was good enough and Tucker's amendments to the ghost shield's code would hold out long enough for him to get there!

He had only made it down one block when a flash of red caught his eye. Valerie was here. After she had promised to take care of everyone else. What if his evil counterpart found her? He had to make her get out of here before that happened.

He pulled up and yelled, "Hey, Red! What are you doing here?"

She flinched at the sound and turned toward him.

"You can't be here, I told you, you have to get out before he…" Danny broke off as Valerie pulled out her largest bazooka and came straight toward him.

"Red?" he asked warily, putting his hands up in front of him. There was no enemy standing behind him. "What's going on? I thought you were going to help Lancer. Is everything okay?"

"No!" came her agonized response as she pulled the trigger.

He dodged the shot that was meant for him. "What do you mean? What's wrong?" he asked, starting to get really worried.

"How can you be asking that? You know exactly what's wrong, you ghost!" She shot again as soon as her gun's whine told her it was ready to go.

"But I don't!" he protested as he avoided this blast as well. "What happened?"

"You killed Danny!" She screamed, coming at him with a weapon in each hand now.

He froze, eyes going wide as the pieces of the story connected in his head. He only remembered to go intangible at the last second and she flew through him, turning to come at him again.

"I didn't," he whispered, protesting even though he knew she would never listen. "I didn't. I never. It wasn't me…"

"Liar! I saw you!" She shot. "You ghost!" She blasted. "Ectoplasmic scum!" she emptied the gun's capacity and drew two more as she continued to chase him. "I'm going to rip you apart!" She fired both guns one after another in a whirl of beams and blasts that he had a hard time weaving through.

"Hold on, Val!" his protest went unheard as she screamed, voice breaking, "I TRUSTED YOU!"

Danny was running out of options. He couldn't fight her, but he was running out of energy and luck to continue dodging her shots and she didn't look like she was going to run out of firearms any time soon.

Turning invisible disoriented for her a moment and he took advantage of the opportunity to jam her ectoplasmic tracer. He flew away as fast as he could, not caring where he ended up, as long as it wasn't here.

---

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There was nothing left for him, he realized. Dan had taken it all away. Killed him, and framed him for his own murder. It had been caught on tape and now no one would ever accept him. Valerie and his parents wanted to rip him apart and the rest of the town was out for vengeance. What could Sam and Tucker do in the face of that? Nothing. And when he realized that, he found there was nothing to do but collapse into a tiny ball to cry.

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