Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom rights or make money off of this fanwork. I own the things that I made up by myself. That's about it.

Warning: Slight gore this chapter.

Nyaa.

=^o.o^=

Chapter 8

The streets were as quiet as a cemetary, and twice as abandoned. Broken storefront windows and torn-down doors were a normal sight, as were the vehicles littering the roads, forgotten. She noticed a windshield that was cracked and painted with a rust-brown sludge, which was caked on the inside of the vehicle. A foul smell entered her nose the second she looked at it, and she had to turn away from a mental image of some poor human getting their skull popped like a zit.

There was a scream suddenly. Where once there was a redhead, now there was a black feline, who took off towards the sound. Her dark fur helped her melt into the shadows as effortlessly as if she had used her invisibility, but without expending her ghost energy quite as much.

A few blocks over from where Ashley had been, everything was quiet. The cat stayed in the undergrowth of some shrubs, ears quivering with attention. This was where the sound had come from, but perhaps she was too late, or someone had just been stupid...

The second shriek was much louder, as the woman making the sound burst out of a nearby house. She didn't make it far – a couple of men gave chase, the lankier of the two diving and catching their prey around the waist. His bulkier partner slowed as the woman was pinned, crying and shouting before she was punched in the face.

A rumble of hot anger began to vibrate the Witch's chest as their victim went limp, eyes rolling back in her head. It grew into something audible as she saw the way they grinned and licked their chops, like dogs about to tear apart a carcass. Her fur bristled as her claws slowly curled around a half-buried rock that she'd been crouching behind, and finally, the one on top of the woman went for his own belt.

A wildcat snarl exploded out of the bushes. The bulky one went down as a half-dirty rock connected with his temple, grunting heavily as he did. The lankier of the two was tackled, gasping for air as he stared at the sky. His chest couldn't seem to expand enough, though, and there was a horrid aching in his chest.

"You like to hunt the weak, do you?" A stitchwork monster leaned into his view, red hair bristling and silver, felid eyes watching him with a mix of adrenaline and hatred. Excited rage. A none-too-happy smile slit its way across her face. "I always preferred to put the sick out of their misery, myself."

The Witch turned her back on the man with the bloody hole in his lung and checked the muscular male that was still unconscious on the ground. He wasn't breathing, she couldn't hear a pulse... She noted the pool of blood staining the grass of the overgrown lawn.

Well... he hadn't offended her as much, she told herself bitterly.

Picking up the rock with the hand that wasn't soaked in gore already, Ashley bounced it for a moment or two – she hadn't noticed how heavy it was while flinging it – and turned at the sound of whining. The pain had begun to register. Her victim had noticed the injury preventing his breathing, and probably knew that his end was coming on quickly. Tears were pouring down his face as he let his head drop back.

"Don't."

Ashley gave a start, nearly dropping her rock. The brunette that they had been attacking had recovered quickly. While the woman was trembling while she watched her attackers bleed out, she had a familiar expression on her face: madness. Now the Witch noticed the bruises on her arms, face and throat. How long had these men had her trapped?!

"Let him suffer." the human told her, eyes never leaving the man gasping for his life. She was almost smiling, but couldn't quite seem to take that last step towards enjoying the pain of another. Her eyes were beginning to swim with tears as well. "Let him... suffer..."

Her heart gave a painful jerk in her chest, and Stitches looked around, evaluating her scene. One dead body. Another man dying slowly. Their victim who, while pleased and now safe, probably recognized that she was still watching the torture of something of her own species.

"Go." The Witch turned her full gaze on the human, allowing her glamour to fizzle and fade. The smooth parts of her face began to twist and know with scars, and the stitches of her cheeks stretched further, starting to split the skin under and around her eyes. The woman stopped shivering, eyes growing wide with sobering fear as her mind struggled to comprehend what she was seeing.

The voice that came from the halfa next was deeper, rougher, and far from recognizable as human: "I SAID LEAVE!"

The victim cried out in response to the guttural, unearthly noise. Frantically crawling at first, the woman got to her feet and fled the monster that had saved her life. Ashley had to squint through the pain as she waited until the other female was out of sight, before she looked back at her victim. He had a look of horror fixed in her direction, but his body had gone limp, and he was no longer struggling to breathe.

"Bitch!" The man's roar wasn't enough warning for the Witch to react as a pair of inhumanly strong arms wrapped around her, pinning her arms to her sides. When she snarled and struggled, she managed to get a good look at her attacker.

The man she'd hit with the rock. The guy who had definitely, absolutely left a nice puddle in the grass with his blood. Her mind jumped past trying to make sense of it. She phased through his arms, turned, and smashed the rock into his forehead. When he staggered back, she did it again.

When he fell back onto the ground, she leaped onto her attacker, planted herself on his chest, and continued smashing the rock down on his head until she couldn't recognize anything, other than the fact that her dead lungs were burning and her arm was literally ready to fall off.

On the final hit, something flashed in her peripheral vision. Done with her attack and her rage cooled, Ashley's head jerked up to see not one, but two Phantoms sitting on a neighboring rooftop. One had an old Polaroid camera, and both were grinning with amusement. As they high-fived, one of the bodies rejoined the other.

Dan Phantom looked the angry, spatter-covered Witch with a lazy smirk. "That is definitely your color, sweetheart."

Stitches gasped and yowled awake at the same time, causing her to choke and claw at the closest thing to her – in this case, Vlad's leather reading chair, which she'd been napping on. The yellow-eyed puffball looked around wildly before recalling where and when she was, and that she was generally safe at the moment. Part of her family was here, she hadn't had reason to harm anyone, and neither her stepfather nor her younger stepbrother knew what kind of monster was living with them.

She flopped onto her side as her heart and breathing rates tried to come back into a manageable range, scowling at nothing as her eyes burned. She had nightmares plenty – usually relating more to her early years, but more and more frequently they had also become about her time in Dan's timeline. She'd had to rely on skills that Pariah Dark had forced her to learn, and, in a world where many were trying to save themselves at the expense of others, it hadn't taken as much wearing down as the Witch would have liked before she had slipped into the mindset of her younger, broken self.

Her shoulder tingled as it had in the dream and she sat up again, annoyed. With a flick of her tail, Stitch Witch turned the chair back to its normal state and hopped off of it. She needed to think of something other than herself... or Dan Phantom, for that matter. It was because of his arrival that she'd been having these nightmares in particular, lately.

Following the smell of baked goods and the faint sound of birds singing, Stitches walked down a few hallways and stairways, through the kitchen, and onto the back porch. Cookies were cooling on the counter, pies were cooling on the window ledge, and Lily was napping in a lawn chair with a book. There were no birds, but there was a melodic, faint chirping, which faded after awhile, to be replaced by a nearly-inaudible rumbling like a fireplace in winter.

Clearly, Vlad and Lily's child was developing quite happily. Ashley wasn't entirely certain how well humans could hear the energies, or what they would hear if they could, but at least the effects of aromas being more robust and the world seeming brighter and healthier were something that Vlad and Danny could share in.

Well, Vlad, anyway. Danny was being slow to let the news sink in. Having been an only child for much of her own life, the Witch could only assume that he didn't know how to handle it. Could he remember much of his older sister? His parents? His old life? Danny Masters' childhood nightmares had centered around guilt, fear, and severe claustrophobia. Maybe the expected arrival of a younger sibling had stirred memories from his mind, as Dan's arrival had done to her, and he just didn't know how to react...

"Damn..." Gritting her teeth, the Witch slapped her forepaws to her cheeks a few times, trying to still her brain. Thinking about one avenue of stress had led her right back to thinking about her dreams! That aside, now she was torn between giving Danny a bit more time, and kicking down Vlad's front door at the mayor's office and demanding he talk to his son. She doubted that her mother could make even Danny feel worried about being displaced, but maybe Lily should talk to the boy, too...

Dammit, again! It was that sort of manipulation that had created Dan's timeline in the first place! Ashley stalked away from Lily to some far corner of the garden, not wanting to rouse the ghost as she grumbled curses and self-deprecating insults under her breath. This must have been how Vlad felt after marrying her mother, only their love must have made the madness of sitting on one's hands seem much more bearable. How many times had she and Vlad started a plan to get that Dash asshole shipped to a different school?! But, of course, Danny had to learn to deal with mundane threats on his own, so... Dash wasn't in a military school in Siberia.

"Psst. Mom."

Her ears perked as a familiar black-and-white tuxedo tabby and a large, orange barn cat poked their heads out of the flora. Thomas and Kenny joined her, Kenny slinking impishly on his belly as he hissed, "Mommy! We're bein' sneaky!"

Ashley grinned and felt much more like herself for it. She loved her children. They knew how to deal with people, living or not, yet they still came to her for advice, order, or just venting.

"What's with Tucker and Sam being part of this now? Doesn't that kid know what a terrible idea that is?!" Thomas complained immediately as he sat beside his mother. "What if it wasn't just us attacking? There are some really dangerous ghosts out there! He hasn't even seen a haunted house yet! If one of those two loses a limb or an eye..."

"Sam can handle herself and the boys, and I'm sure that Tucker is much more tactical than he lets on." the Witch replied, ruffling between Kenny's ears with one paw. She smiled. "Danny's trying to be part of a team. Teams have better survival odds than individuals do."

"Yeah! But Tommy ruined my visit!" Kenny whined, pouting and burying his face in the grass. "I was gonna let 'em kick my butt, then do a comeback thingy to scare them before running away or something, but then he showed up and went all ranty and crazy, and he tried to curb-stomp Sam!"

"I did not!" Thomas snapped. "There was no 'curb' involved, for one thing! Second, that would have killed her!"

"So you were trying to kill her! He admits it!" Kenny yelped hysterically.

Stitches was glad that Vlad insisted on having distant neighbors as she watched the twins go back and forth. "Tommy, did you butt in on Kenny's mission?"

"No! Well... yes. But I had a good reason! If Danny's ready to play with a team, he might as well start figuring out how to play against a team. Right?" The tuxedo tabby puffed himself up indignantly and looked elsewhere.

"Tommy."

"What?"

"Did you start making threats?"

At that, the young man flustered, even in his feline form. His ears lay flat on his skull. "I may have... said some things..." he muttered uneasily.

Kenny sat up, clearing his throat, before holding up a paw and doing a bad impression of his twin due to his high pitch: "'This is what happens when you bring your girlfriend to the dog fights. Sometimes, a mongrel gets loose and tries to rip her pretty little face off. So, Ghost Boy, tell me: What are you going to do?'"

Thomas glared daggers at the blonde as their mother smacked a paw to her face. "Tommy... You know you're not Clint Eastwood, right?"

"I wasn't trying to be Clint Eastwood!" he yowled back at her.

"Still, that's... that's too much, too fast. You should have let Kenny do his thing, and then saved your speech for next time." Stitches sighed, lowering her paw. Frowning tiredly, she thought for a moment. "You know, maybe... maybe the family should back off for awhile. It's a good time. With Mom expecting a new wisp, she wants Danny and Vlad to get to know my kids and their families, and I think she might be making a good point. Besides, I might need you guys ready for something else, and I know you both have your own kids to harass."

"What about Danny's training?" Thomas frowned, ears drawing back again. "Our families know how to handle themselves around ghosts a lot better than he does. If anything, maybe you should up the ante! Send Emilia, or Hannalore, or Hitomi... Well, maybe not Hitomi."

"Definitely not Hitomi." Kenny agreed.

Thomas nodded along. "Definitely not Hitomi."

"Hitomi should meet them as herself. In fact, I think that everyone would be a lot safer if she were here, at least for a little while. Same with Emi and Hanna, and Mom sure could use people more helpful than me right now..." Stitches weighed thoughtfully.

"Are you mental?!" Thomas howled, puffing up and arching his back. "Hitomi's on her own level of crazy! She's a total sociopath! She's – "

"Right behind you." A fourth cat marched through the fence and flowers towards then, a white youth with black patches and a calm expression. Even as she walked casually up to her older brother and smacked the back of the larger cat's head. "Be respectful."

"Hi, Hitomi!" Kenny pounced on his sister, wrapping his forelegs around her in a hug when she refused to be toppled. "If you promise not to be all murder-pants cray-cray, I'll be your best friend!"

"I can try but make no promises." she said flatly.

Thomas looked more annoyed, scooting a safe distance away from her. "Where did you come from? The Ghost Portal? I didn't sense it opening..."

Hitomi glanced at him, hummed blandly, and looked back at Ashley. "So, you said I get to come out and play?"

"Sort of. Mind playing bodyguard?"

At that, a slight smile appeared on the pale kitten's face and she purred softly. "What kind of bodyguard?"

=^n.n^=

I have a hard time gauging how to write horror or gore scenes in a way that balances what's happening during actions as well as what's going through a character's mind. I hope that Stitches' dream sequence did, however, sort of set the tone for the world Dan had created on his own earth as well as explain some of her sudden change in tactics and disposition from Vlad's Son. Writing for 'immortal' characters that also have their humanity intact is difficult, too, since they're hard to empathize with and, in most cases, have a hard time remembering how to empathize with others.

That's my experience, anyway. Yeay, books and comics!

Nyaa!

Anyway, I'll try to make the next chapter a little more upbeat. No promises, though. Hitomi's pretty deadpan.

Get it? Dead? Ha!

Nyaa! *runs away before pun haters throw stuff*