Surprisingly, the shape that Danny's mind took was more formal than anything, and he supposed that was what was irritating him to no end. He was a fun loving guy, a tad of a spaz, and moreover a bit of a badass, if he did say so himself. But his mind, or the shape that it took, didn't reflect that at all. He realized that when he woke up and he found the bare parts of his arms sweating and sticking to the hardwood of a office meeting room table.

An audible "Yuck" came from his mouth as he sat up, eyes blurring into focus as he wiped the crust from his eyes. There was an audible hitch in his breath, and he winced as he popped his knee into function. He already hated this place. It was too bright, even with the dark of the leather seats, the fluorescent lights that swung overhead bore into the blue of his eyes and burned his retinas out, and adjacently, the wide open full-pane windows that let the visions of an overcast day into the room. Panning to the wide windows, Danny gawked at the skyline, which proposed that he had to be at least fifty stories in the air. He supposed that he was in a skyscraper, one that overlooked the windings of a city that was more silent than the dead in their graves. Danny chewed on his bottom lip, activating the keen ends of his ghost vision, and found nobody on the streets. Not a soul, nor car crawling the pavement in their daily routine.

He felt uneasy.

Danny peeled his eyes from the glass, and padded over to the door on the opposite side of the room, looking out into the neatly organized office building, with cubicles arranged in rows of 6 across the walls and down the carpet, all dead silent, except for one, which harbored a ringing telephone.

The unease grew.

He stepped out, the carpet crunching under his shoes, and the air growing colder as he descended down through the cubicles, looking for the ringing phone. Danny's shakiness grew with each bleat of the unseen phone, and it seemed as he moved on, that the air took a dive in terms of temperature, and danny felt his fingertips begin to go numb. He didn't like this. He didn't like this at all. The setting was too gloomy, and the walls between the cubicles seemed to close in on him like the walls in an indiana jones movie. He shivered internally, feeling the soul of regret kissing the back of his neck, and silently, he wished that he was home. With the beating that he had taken he should be used to this. The frost in the air was something he could take, amity got cold often, and the ghost zone was even colder, but this type of cold wasn't of this world. This frost seemed alive, and with every step that he took, advancing down the hallway to the ringing phone, it crept underneath his arms, and chilled the back of his legs.

He shook off the intimidation of the cold as he rounded the corner, and found a phone, ringing off its god-given hook, and Danny exhaled happily at his expense, approaching the ringing phone, and gazing at it with his big blue eyes. initially he withheld the intent to answer the phone and hopefully get an idea where he was, but he was wiser than that. Countless fights with the likes of Technus and Desiree taught him that traps were all too common in places like this.

His hand came to rest as the side of the phone, whose ringing was burning his numb ears at this point, and with opened eyes he searched for a clue. Had he learned a shred of anything from any movie at all, he knew full well that this wasn't right, and as an expose on his mind? If even. I mean, what part of the psyche does a phone with the pulchritude of a small child represent in his psyche anyway? It was simply absurd!

Bypassing, he went to the clunky computer at the side of the station and examined it. It was an older model one that would be outdated to the point of being thrown out in favor for for a newer version, and strangely, wires came out the back of it, but didn't connect to anything. They just went through through a hole in the computer desk and down, seemingly through the floor. Hesitantly, he pressed the button to turn on on the monitor, but nothing happened. He wonder what this meant to represent, but settled on leaving that part of the hunt alone for now, Lest he die in wonder. He pulled on the wires, but they were tightly strung, like the strings on a cello.

Danny didn't like that.

Begrudgingly, he turned back to the phone,which had his ears bleeding at this point, and inspected the wires that went into the floor, grimacing at having no way to unplug it. It was a state of of the art conference phone, a lot like the one that Vlad had in his office, with a screen for the caller ID and everything. Danny recalled fiddling with it when Vlad wasn't around to make calls to his family and friends back home. But this feature was different, it had a slot for the caller ID of the incoming call. Curiosity overtook him as he ignored the phones screaming, and he squinted to read the number, and then, wished he hadn't.

It was his home phone number.

He stepped back twice, almost tripping over nothing, and with each step he took the ringing became louder and louder. His back hit an invisible wall, and shockingly, the halfa couldn't move his feet anymore. Paralysis took him like a thief in the shadows, and he swallowed harshly, as he came to a decision. Pandering eyes came back to the words on the screen, his home phone number reaching out to him as if it was begging to be answered. Danny was scared. Too scared, and the more and more he tried to make it go away, the louder and louder the ringing got. He realized that he had had a choice to make. He could stand here for all eternity, trapped in his personal hell, or he could answer the phone and hopefully find a way back to the real world.

The minute Danny pulled that phone off off the hook, he wished he hadn't.

It rattled him at first, but then it came into play with the rest of his body, an he could feel the white hot pain of his eardrums bursting again and again. Danny dropped the phone to the ground to cover his ears, and felt tears sting at the ends of his eyes from from the pain. beside him, the bleating of the receiver took to a deafening scream, blood curdling like thousands upon thousands being churned into dust for the dogs. He squirmed against it, praying that maybe, just maybe, if he dug his pathetic head into the rug that it would drown out the noise, but he felt his eardrums pop in tandem, and he almost came to vomit. Blood trickled from his ears and the boys stomach did a sickening flip when it touched his hands and began to trickle through his hands and down his arms. The screeching increased and Danny buried himself deeper and deeper into into the carpet, and he opened his mouth and began to scream against it to drown out out the noise, but It overtook him, and went a pitch up. Danny's eardrums were searing and he rolled around In agony, blood staining the carpet along with his hot tears. The The sound prevailed to an alarming level, and the building began to quaver along along with along with the boy. The lights flickered at an erratic pace and burned through Danny's eyelids. He wanted it to stop, he wanted the flashing flashing and flashing, and the screaming screaming and screaming, stop but he couldn't think of anything. Any type of hand movement let more of the alarm of sound getting in, more of the sound in, and If he dared to open his eyes, the lights would steal his vision.

He didn't know what to do.

And then, almost as if on cue with his suffering, the screech from the telephone grew to such a high pitch that it blew out everything. The glass that lined the windows burst into pieces, followed by the lights, and the phone itself. Danny felt felt the shards bounce off his back but was too scared to look up and see what had happened.

In the real world, Vlad watched with fear in his throat as the boys ears began to bleed. In sympathy, he poured more and more of his power into keeping Danny stable.

It was all he could do.

After the horrid ringing from the telephone earpiece had stopped, Danny was left alone with the blood on his hands, and the ringing in his ears. He unclasped his eyes, and pulled his hands off the sides of his head, and groggily looked up to survey what had happened while he had taken was glass and light bulb fragments everywhere, along with the serrated shards of the windowpanes that had blown inward upon the building, and gave the outer ring an even thicker coating of glass that was deadly sharp. Danny got to his feet, shivering against the cold and the draft that came with the winding ends of the now-open windows, and set his eyes on an exit sign which beamed at him to his left. The pounding in his head was crippling as he increased towards the exit, and the limp from his general soreness of his head exploding made pushing the heavy metal door open a task for even the strongest of men.

He stepped out into the stairwell, the door slamming behind him shook him a tad before he began down the stairs. The air was different here, more stale, as if it had just been circulating in the stairway for years, it carried a heavy thickness of dust that stung his eyes as he took his steps slowly. The marker on the wall told him that he was descending towards the forty-fourth floor in the building.

Danny came to the stopway, and furrowed his brow. There was a door with an exit sign, and no other stairwell to go down. It stopped down as if this was the ground floor, and Danny began to question the protocol of whoever designed the godforsaken building. He sucked it up, and supposed that he would have to find another stairwell or an elevator that worked, and mentally, he prayed that he could find a way out without another altercation with a telephone or any of its kin.

He opened the door and stepped out, a blinding light searing into his eyes and a wild gust of air smacking him in the face and numbing his ears. He brought his hands up defensively, and blocked his face with his arms, setting his feet up to run in the opposite direction, but grimaced as the door gave a rough slam behind him. He stayed there like that, for an upwards of thirty seconds, minding himself before the hands came down and he gasped to take in the sight.

He was in a field, full of tall grasses and marigolds of the same and the different, accented by goldenrod that perched themselves above the others as if the view the skyline. The hills rolled on upon one another, and in the distance there was the greenery of trees that could be barely be made out by the naked eye. The wind blew in wandering circles, in and out upon one another, and Danny clapped his arms behind the breeze in an effort to keep warm. The Halfa turned to look behind him, only to find that the building wasn't there, and there was nary a mark nor murder to ever hit that it had even existed. The only testaments to it being the ringing in the boys ears and the pounding in his head.

The ghost boy turned back to the rolling fields, and overcame shock as his ghost breath went off like an alarm, and his ghost vision gave him the advantage of locking onto a figure in the distance. Sporadically, a hope was planted in Danny's mind, and he took off running, almost tripping as he slipped and slid along the most dew of the grasslands beneath his feet.

"HEY!" he bellowed, the hoarseness of his own voice scaring him a tad as he whimsied along and came to a stop, the cloaked figure turned, face still hidden by the dark of the cloak, and Danny felt the tension between them shock through him, and considered running as the air became static like in demeanor.

In the real world, Vlad began to sweat as he poured more of his power into keeping the boys table, His blue eyes meeting the green voids that had replaced Danny's. Fear grew in his heart to the boys power began to resonate and build up, and he prayed that he was doing alright inside his own head. He shook some sweat off his brow, not daring to break the stream of power for even a moment, before he tried to transform, only to fail.

Outside the room, the windings of lighter blues began to creep along the sky. The clock read five twenty-one A.M.

He was running out of time

When Danny looked into the cloaked mans eyes, he saw himself, the same pointed chin, and the same straight nose. He saw the same eyes, and the ame hair, respectively, in their white and green states. When the hood came off, he was greeted with the same goofy smile, and the same upturned eyebrows. And when he opened his mouth, he was met with the same voice that echoed in his ears every time he said something.

"Youre me."

The other arched a brow and licked his bottom lip before placing his hands back in his cloak. "More or less." Danny opened his mouth to say something in response but was broken when the boy said."You're really stupid for coming here."

"What?" He was taken aback. Far back.

"Vlad told you specifically not to come here, and now look at you." He said gesturing to the boy, head to toe.

"You just gestured to all of me!"

"Exactly my point."

"Danny crossed his arms and looked to the side, realizing how much like himself the other is, before gandering a glance back at the other to express his discontent to the other. He was so crass, and wild, and with the tragedy of the events following him getting here, the boy in the cloak (which he speculated was a projection of his mind or something of the sort) was a tad anticlimactic. At this point he was in the expecting something of the sorts to pop out and eat his face, or a hole full of blades or something. He turned back to the cloaked boy, whose face had darkened with the cloak itself, and Danny swallowed nervously.

"How do I...How do I get home?" Hesitation was apparent in his voice as clear as day, and the other boy noted it, twisting his hands in the cloak boredly, and meeting the boy eyes.

"Didnt you come here for some new power?" He teased ceremoniously, smirking lowly as he came to tease the other boy in his squalor. Danny furrowed his brow embarrassedly, and kicked the dirt at his feet.

"I dont care. Just take me home."

It wouldn't end there, The other knew what his intentions were. "No, no, youre going to get your little power, and then ill send you home." He rattled deeply in the baritones of his voice.

Danny thought that he almost sounded malicious, and the quaver in his voice was borderline evil, but he didn't stop the double as the double repositioned Danny and placed his and on his chest.

He didn't know how, but he felt the pressure, and then the hole blast through his chest like a cannonball had flown through him.

Initially, the boy winced against his own words, the others hands pressed Deeply past his ribcage, Danny gave a false gasp, and then allowed the quaver of the hand that ventured around his left lung, and too his heart. Danny couldn't speak, couldn't breath, but could only tremble against the lateral of a arm inside his chest. It was such a searing pain, like ten thousand pounds of glass being pressed into one point on his chest, and continuously inched into him with the pace of a snail. It hurt to move, but perseverance came to the younger man, and he was able to position his hands on the writ of the other, who was grinning with malice and salt in his smile. Danny clasped a grip around the others arm, but the boy countered, and flicked past his lungs, and into his heart. Danny coughed mediocrely, and felt some blood come up out his mouth, and a little trickle out his nose. His eyes managed with all its might to meet his Double's while the others hands grasped around his heart. Eyes filled with white hot tears edged his eyes, and the blood trickled profusely from his nose.

He couldn't make out exactly what Double murmured into him has he crushed his heart, but he could wonder about that later.

Vlad was fading.

He could smell the sun on the brink of the horizon, and the more he looked towards Danny, the more anxious he became. He was shaking, His hands barely holding onto the connection between him and the chalk circle. For a good thirty minutes, Danny had been convulsing and rattling in his levitating state, thrashing about and opening his mouth as if to screech. Vlad had been shaken with fear, and prayed to whatever god was out there that the boy was okay, and that the encroaching sun wouldn't take him before he could.

Again, he shook the sweat from his brow, as Danny, again, began to resonate, this time a creeping frost coming from his power, and beginning to flash freeze the whole room. Vlad gasped, not picking his hands up, but spreading what little power he had left over his own body to keep him warm and prepared as the blue twinges of the boys ice core created an example along the bedroom. He was becoming desperate, the instability of a ghosts core meant that the boy was most likely fading from this world. He was scared, his throat full of fear and his heart full of regret.

He didn't know what to do, and he gave the last bit of what he had to him, to try and call the boy back from the depths of his mind.

"DANIEL! DANIEL I NEED YOU TO WAKE UP. THE SUN IS COMING!" He tried as formally as he could. In response, more frost came, such a wave that threatened to break through his shield of heat. His voice was hoarse, and his eyes were tired, but he would not let go. "DANIEL. PLEASE," The stress behind that word was with all he could pour in it. "WERE RUNNING OUT OF TIME!" He couldn't sound more urgent. His hands were beginning to numb and the sun was beginning to peek out from behind the sky. The boy was thrashing violently, clawing at his chest as if to tear his heart out. Vlad on the other hand, was out of power and out of time, and his connection to the circle was becoming more and more faint. A blur came to his eyes as the boys ice core wound itself up again to relinquish another blast of ice, and Vlad did all he could to brace himself for it. His eyes clamped shut and his hands pressed as hard as he could into the chalk lines, the connection threatening to break, and the man himself threatening to pass out from exhaustion.

He didn't see the core of the boy expel all that it had, but he felt it press up against the heat of his core, dangerously close to eating through his heat covering that protected him so. There was a deafening crack of a body on hardwood, and a insufferable cross between a gurgle and a moan that could only foretell the worst.

Vlad finally unclasped his tired eyes, and count the boy, on his knees, clutching his glowing chest, as the ground began to freeze behind him. Vlad thought him being alive was a miracle, but he saw the boy painfully clutching the upper portion of his stomach, an ice blue fissure of light glowing beneath his pained hands. He sat up, and pushed the wisps of his ponytail back behind his ears.

"Daniel?"

The boy gave no response, Vlad didn't think he could muster one to begin with, but he could hear the deficit of a slow sub that crept under the minors breath like a hushed whisper that nobody would ever hear.

Sympathy washed over him, and he came to the boy, who nary jump back nor push him away. He placed one hand on Danny's shoulder, and the other, on the boys hands covering his core. Danny hitched painfully, but the softness of the older halfa's touch came to him like a comfort, and slowly, he peeled away the hands and presented the glowing core of frost that shook painfully at his chest.

He was unstable, and with the amount of energy that he was putting off, He could alert andy formidable ghosts to challenge him.

Desperate times called for desperate measures he supposed, and with a slow inhale, Vlad did all he could do.

The exhale came with sharpness, and his heat core came to resonate in his chest. He allowed his to link in conjunction with the others, permitting some of his energy to abstain the others. Danny gasped in surprised, but allowed the other to do his work, making an attempt to regulate the others corrupted core to a minimal safe point.

They stayed there long after the sun came up and kissed their tired bones with orange light.

It was all the two could muster.

Hi, Id like to thank you for making it to chapter 5!, I feel a bit hallow asking for this, but some feedback (aside from follows/favorites) would really help the development of this project. Thank you!