Do not ask me to do more. This is a One shot and will always be a One shot, and its there for the pure angsty horrible madness that courses through my very veins. And if you think i'm bad, you should go read Cordria's stuff. seriously, go do it, she's way better at angst than me, she's my GOD.
Death out
Danny wheeled by the clock tower. The blast he was too quick for smashed into it, pink flame and building ruble erupting in a small explosion. "Give it up Plasmius! Before you hurt someone…like yourself, for annoying me!" Danny yelled back as he zoomed towards Vlad as though he were going to punch him. Predictably, Vlad threw out his hand to catch Danny around the neck, but Danny caught him by the wrist and flipped him over. He slammed into the ground, creating a small crater that the school groundskeeper would have to fill in… just like all the other craters from Danny's fights.
"I may not rule the world anymore Daniel, but that doesn't mean I'm not still older, more experienced, and stronger than you, and you'd do well not to forget that!" Vlad moved faster than Danny expected for someone who had just returned from space and been thrown into the ground. And apart from that, he pulled off one of his annoying teleportation tricks. One minute he was speeding up beneath Danny, the next he was above him, pushing a large ball of pink ectoplasm down on Danny's head.
Danny threw up a shield instinctively, but the force at close range was enough to send him hurtling towards the ground. He smacked into the earth on his back. Were he in his human form, he would have been winded. Not needing to breathe as a ghost, he couldn't be winded, but he got the equivalent of pain.
Vlad bore down on him with a fist and Danny went intangible. Vlad growled in anger and pain as his fist slammed into the ground. Danny didn't move far. He appeared only a half a foot to the side, his fist mid-way to Vlad's face. There was no escaping the blow, and it hit Vlad squarely upside the head. He reeled backwards with another yell, only this one was louder and angrier still. Danny stood up and faced him, panting.
"Older yes, more experienced maybe, but this wouldn't be the first time I've beaten you Vlad… Why are you here!? You've already lost everything. Even my dad hates your guts now, my dad! Go home… you have a cat that needs feeding. I'm tired of fighting you, I have enough to do as it is…" He gave the school beside them a wan glance, seeing all the students with their faces pressed against the windows. All keen to watch Danny FENTON using his ghost powers to defend them as usual… and possibly find out whether he was wearing boxers or briefs today.
(for the record, it was briefs)
Vlad stopped rubbing his jaw roughly and glared at Danny. "Exactly! I HAVE lost EVERYTHING. Including my money, my house AND my cat. And your father LEFT me OUT THERE…"
"Don't even start on that one! Like I didn't hear everything you said to him over the intercoms. You MADE him hate you. You have no one to blame for this but yourself. You made your bed Vlad, so lie in it already!" Danny filled his fist with ecto-energy and blasted it at Vlad, who deflected it with a pink blast of his own.
The fighting began again. "Come on dude, we have to finish this, we have science in five minutes! You know Lancer doesn't like our ghost fighting passes to run over ten minutes…" Tucker called out. He and Sam were standing on the roof of the school. Tucker had finally found his thermos, hiding in the bottom of his bag. Danny and Sam's thermoses were full. He threw his to Sam.
"Yea yea, I'm working on it, Lancer can see that… I am fighting the ex-ruler of the entire world, he can cut me some slack!" Danny said irately as he zoomed by, knocking into Vlad's chest and ramming him higher into the air. He needed to make him a clear target for Sam, but Vlad wasn't an idiot, he was a lot harder to trick into position than most ghosts.
"Oh please, like one of those tin cans is REALLY going to hold ME" he gloated condescendingly as he blasted Danny ten feet away from him with a general energy burst. "It's held worse than you" Danny replied mockingly.
"Oh really? Like what, Undergrowth? The Fright knight? Nocturne?"
"No…me" Danny replied, glaring at Vlad with an icy blue gaze. Vlad dodged the twin blue beams. They hit the roof of the school five feet from Tucker and Sam. Vlad merely laughed. "YOU? Oh yes, because you're so much harder to contain than the most powerful specters the ghost zone has to offer. And I suppose you made the earth intangible all by yourself did you?"
"I don't mean me NOW fruit loop…"
Vlad's eye twitched
"I mean alternate future me. A thermos is the only reason you aren't dead at his hands yet" Danny said as he sent small ectoblasts in Vlad's direction like bullets, his expression sober and serious. Vlad frowned and growled as the ectoblasts he couldn't dodge in time stung his arms and chest. "And you question MY mental health…I have no interest in rambling stories about a future you that I doubt even exists. That is mathematically and scientifically impossible"
"Why are you even HERE plasmius? Why can't you just leave us in peace for once, is that so HARD?" Danny yelled in exasperation as he dodged pink ectoplasmic discs that whizzed past his head. He dove for Vlad again and they exchanged blows.
"I already told you, I have nothing left, except the revenge I owe the FENTON family. ESPECIALLY YOU" Vlad growled viciously, throwing a punch that missed Danny's head and clipped his shoulder. "So just the usual fruitloopism…" Danny replied snidely, sniggering as he planted his knee in Vlad's stomach. Danny then grunted in pain as Vlad's fist caught him upside the head. Vlad's other fist blasted him twenty feet away. Danny slowed himself. They were hovering near the roof now, but twenty feet away from the edge. He needed to get Vlad just a little closer… Sam was there waiting, Thermos in hand. Danny threw her a grin and she reciprocated. It made him forget the pain of the bruises and ecto related injuries. But the more he had, the more kisses he'd need to get better…
Danny lost concentration and only barely noticed in time when Vlad threw a large ball of ecto energy at him. He shielded automatically, and the ecto-ball ricocheted off it and hit the roof of the school. It sent Tucker tumbling backwards and he fell over some piping. Sam stumbled and stepped on Danny's previous ice-blast. Her combat boots found no purchase on the slippery, part melted surface and she slipped and staggered desperately to stay upright. She dropped the thermos. She lurched forward toward the broken wall of the roof's edge. It was like a surreal slow motion in the corner of Danny's eye, but it quickly drew him in when she screamed.
She went over the edge.
"SAM!" Danny yelled, and all else was forgotten as he sped towards her falling form. He saw her look to him. Saw her hand stretch out to his, and he felt relief, knowing that he would catch her in time, like he always did. But that wasn't what her eyes were saying. Her pupils contracted… as though she was looking through Danny and seeing the grim reaper.
And then, in a flash of pink light, the world turned upside-down.
The screaming started and stopped again… so very suddenly.
Danny felt himself hit the ground hard.
But the impact wasn't what shocked him.
Vlad hovered, silent, his hand slowly falling to his side, his smile fading to a blank look. It had been automatic. He hadn't had time to think. He had been angry… called a fruit loop again. Loveless and spiteful… had he done it by accident? Or had a part of him thought it through and decided on it deliberately?
Danny was ignoring him… he had forgotten he was there.
Danny got to his feet. The world seemed to be muted… as though there was some sort of veil over his senses. He looked to the foot of the school building. There was a heap there. A body…
No… no it couldn't be…
Danny staggered towards it, unaware of the white rings that flashed over him as he did so. Unfeeling of the raw, bleeding, red mark and hole in his shirt where the ecto-blast had hit him.
He stood over it. The face coming into view. The eyes were closed… as though she had decided she needed to sleep. But how could she? With her body at such an awkward angle…
"no…"
"DANNY! SAM?" Tucker's anxious voice came brokenly over the edge of the building.
… "n-no"
Danny suddenly found his knees were shaking too much to hold him up any more. He fell to the ground on all fours, his shaking arms reaching out to embrace her, expecting her arms to respond, to reciprocate, but they remained still.
Danny scooped her into his arms and lifted up her torso. Her head lolled back and something trickled from the corner of her mouth.
The sight of the blood snapped Danny.
He felt the warm salty water stream down his face, dripping onto her pale skin as it cooled, no longer warmed by life.
The reality hit Danny harder than any punch or ecto-ray Vlad could throw at him. And it hurt… it hurt so badly he couldn't stay silent…
Danny threw his head back and let out a despairing cry of agony that silenced everyone in the school.
Every teacher and student fell silent to that noise, no matter how distant it was from where they were.
Even as it faded to silence, and most of them couldn't hear the heart wrenching sobs, no one spoke. It was like some sort of mysterious noise that you would hear in the night. A noise that would stop you in whatever you were doing, sitting still as a deer, listening out for whatever it was, not daring to move in case you missed it. Not even sure, a few seconds later, whether you had actually heard it, or whether you had imagined it.
But they could only wish they had imagined it.
None of them more so than the one who had made the noise. The one who now kneeled, hunched over the lifeless Goth girl, sobbing into her still sweet smelling hair. Danny's racking sobs turned to whimpers, and eventually the tears came silently.
He refused to think. He kept running random words and thoughts over and over in his head to stave off thinking about what his mind was trying to scream at him…
Vlad landed ten feet away, black rings sliding over him. He walked as though in a daze, as Danny had first done. Surely, he kept thinking, I haven't done this? I didn't kill her? Did I?
"Daniel... I..."
He was silenced with a look. Danny raised his streaming ice blue eyes and glared at Vlad. That look was terrible to behold. At first, it was broken and overwhelmingly full of anguish... but then the anger crept in... And it quickly grew to rage. Danny sniffed and lay Sam's body down before he stood up. His body was tense. He didn't shake anymore.
"D-Daniel?" Vlad said, unsure, his voice faltering.
White rings flashed. Broken blue eyes became furious green.
Vlad took a step back.
It happened so fast that no one really saw what was happening.
But within a minute, Vlad was on the ground, suit torn, bruises rising, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth, deep blue eyes staring terrified into the glowing green eyes that hovered over him. Danny knelt over Vlad with one fist clenching his suit front and the other drawn back as though ready to punch him again. He was breathing heavily, blood trickling from the corner of his own mouth still from the previous fight.
"Daniel... please... don't do this... I didn't-"
"Don't tell me you didn't mean to. Don't tell me it was an accident. None of that will change what you've done... none of it... you KILLED HER! YOU KILLED HER WHEN WE ONLY JUST..." Now Danny's voice faltered. He couldn't bring himself to say it. He swallowed the painful lump in his throat as fresh cold tears slid down his pallid face.
"This is the end of it, Vlad."
Vlad's eyes widened as Danny's turned bright glowing blue and his raised hand glowed. A Shiver ran down Vlad's spine... but it wasn't just his immeasurable fear.
"DANIEL PLEASE! WAIT! YOU DON'T-" but he was silenced.
Danny's hand had come down to his chest in a heartbeat... Vlad's LAST heartbeat...
But it couldn't beat now, because under the palm that rested on his chest was an icicle that pierced right through him. An icicle formed out of the very water in his body. Danny remained, crouched over Vlad, poised at the point of attack, for at least a whole minute, before he got up.
He looked down, dead green eyes staring into dead dark blue ones.
And then the white rings slid over him once more. The numbing sensation of them did not leave him.
He looked away from Vlad. His mind couldn't take any more complex thoughts and emotions. He just shut them all down and went with some pitiful basic instinct.
I should take Sam home, he thought. And he picked up her cool and limp form and began to walk to her house.
Maybe the groundskeeper can get rid of Vlad's body by chucking it in that crater I made before, it would make cleaning everything up easier, Danny thought absently as he reached the end of the street and turned a corner out of Tucker and the other students still with their noses against the glass' view.