Chapter Text
It wasn’t a fight.
Ember had known it wasn’t going to be, though. She’d known even through the sheer rage she’d felt at the sight of him.
Skulker couldn’t beat her under normal circumstances, as they’d both found out when she’d decided the emotional train wreck that she called her desperate attempt to feel something other than empty, which to outside observers vaguely resembled a relationship, had run its course. Skulker had his objections, and then shortly after withdrew those objections as he was too preoccupied with fleeing for his afterlife and scavenging broken pieces of his suit.
And that was before Ember had a battleaxe and a seemingly bottomless well of anger and fear to drive her. Her first swing of Heavy Metal had taken his arm clean off, metal bubbling as it melted on contact with the flaming axe. She’d have laughed at the look on his face when that happened if she wasn’t so focused on taking the rest of his limbs from him.
So no, it wasn’t a fight. But standing here now, amidst rubble and sparking metal, with explosions and shouting and ghost powers of all sorts going off around them, and with Skulker’s tiny true form in her grip, she was trying to decide if it was an execution or not.
Ember’s hand turned this way and that, looking at the angry blob of a ghost, her gaze almost dispassionate, the axe held loosely in her other hand.
“You know,” she remarked, in a tone that could be called conversational, were it not for the reverberation of anger in her voice. “You coulda skipped this. All of it.”
She gestured vaguely with the axe at the battle raging around them, but her eyes never left Skulkers. “Everything that’s happened in the last day. Everything that’s happened to you in the last two years. You could’ve just eaten the loss to Danny, first time you tried your luck, and moved on. Other things to hunt, right? Nobody would’ve known but you. But no!”
She snarled, her grip tightening unconsciously on the blob in her hand.
“No! You just couldn’t stand it! Couldn’t stand not getting what you wanted! And look where that got you! Look at all of this!”
Ember swung around, her arm outstretched, forcing Skulker to watch as cannons blasted the earth around them, hundreds of Technodrones swarmed the skies, and blasts of energy weapons rang out across the whole of the asteroid.
“Look what you did! All of this, because you couldn’t take a hit to your pride! Because you were too petty to let something you wanted go! Because your life didn’t go the way you wanted, and the first chance you get in death, you tunnel vision onto something that doesn’t matter! That doesn’t even make you happy! You just do it because you don’t know what else to do! What…”
Ember’s hand dropped slowly, her voice getting quieter.
She wasn’t just talking about Skulker anymore.
What even was the difference between her and Skulker? Or her and Technus, or her and Spectra, any of the jerk ghosts. It was a question she’d asked herself, quietly, for a while now.
There hadn’t been some single moment, some epiphany, something that would make her stop dead in her tracks and question everything about herself. It was slower than that, more gradual, a piecing together of little things, little moments that piled up until she was drowning under them. Ever since her baby pop found her in the woods, gave her a chance she knew even then she didn’t deserve. It had only gotten worse since making nice with spooks, the geek, 2001. Being around all these people, good people, people who didn’t have to stop themselves from diving headfirst into old grooves of anger and hatred, and didn’t always succeed. It made her realise… who she’d been, truly.
She didn’t kill anyone; she didn’t end any ghosts. Nobody got hurt in any permanent way. But what she did? Brainwashing, mind control? It was worse than the physical, in a way. How many lives had she ruined, just by making thousands of people buy her stupid merch to the point of bankruptcy? How many people had she traumatised by taking their free will from them, for the stupid, petty, pointless obsession that had driven her for all her time in the Zone, the obsession that meant nothing when she got it, because of how she got it? She’d be so angry, so violated if someone did that to her.
And she hadn’t even thought twice about doing it to someone else. Hadn’t thought twice about trying to do that to the world. What did that make her?
How did they feel? The people she’d controlled, before? She hadn’t looked into it, tried not to think about it.
But right now, looking at the true face of Skulker, and seeing how many of his flaws and mistakes were hers too… She couldn’t find it in her to hide from that anymore.
Was it this place, she wondered, looking at the green sky. Did the Ghost Zone have this effect on all of them that came to it? Or did they come here because they were like this in life? Flawed people, self-centred people, people with unfinished business and nothing else to think about? Or were the Fenton’s right, way back before her baby pop revealed himself? Were they all just driven by some obsession, and stopping would mean the end, fading all over again?
She couldn’t tell anymore.
“What’s the point?” She said, anger bleeding away. Just tired. She sat down heavily on a boulder. “What has any of this ever gotten you, except your butt beaten up every other week? Even if you finished your collection of pelts, what then? You think that’s gonna magically make everything you did alright? You think you’ll finally feel satisfied?”
She didn’t expect an answer from the blob. He’d been oddly silent since she’d busted him out of the suit. Oh, a brief stint of angry ranting, for sure, but even Skulker seemed to notice she’d been on a knife edge.
She got one, anyway.
“… What else is there for me?”
Ember couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard Skulker – hell, any ghost – ask something like that with actual curiosity, instead of mocking sarcasm. It surprised her, a little.
“Good question. Still working on the answer,” she admitted, begrudgingly. “But there’s gotta be something better than this. Letting ourselves just… stew in bitterness. This can’t be all we can be. I won’t let it be all I am.”
She raised her hand, brought Skulker to eye level.
“I should end you,” she said evenly, watching as Skulker flinched slightly. “You know that. There’s no good reason to assume you’ll change. You won’t even try to be better than the garbage you are, because you don’t see why you should, do you? You’ll just keep on coming back, trying to kill my Danny, and even if you succeed, you’ll still be hunting down anything else, some other person you’ve decided would look good as a trophy, ‘cause they’re not valuable to you otherwise. There’s no point in letting you stick around.”
She raised her hand high…
And opened it.
“But,” she sighed. “If that’s you, it’s me too.”
Skulker floated up, wary, like he was expecting a trick.
“Go on. Get outta here.”
He paused, a moment. Looked at Ember, his expression unreadable, before he took off as fast as he was able, away from the battlefield.
Ember breathed out heavily, slumping on her boulder. That… That was a lot. But it felt… important. She didn’t understand how, but it did.
For a long moment, she simply sat there, trying to process what she’d just done, trying to shake off the sudden exhaustion that hit her as her righteous fury at Skulker had petered out the more she spoke. Would it make any difference to Skulker, that she’d shown mercy when by all sense she shouldn’t have? Her gut said no, but… It had worked for her, after all. She had to hope it did, otherwise what hope did she have for herself?
So absorbed did she become for those few seconds that she didn’t notice the roar of the motorbike engine approach.
“Ember!” A voice cried from behind her, and she started, jarring the introspective melancholy from her mind.
“Kitty?” Ember inquired, getting up from the rock turning. Sure enough, it was her best friend, hanging from the sidecar of Johnny’s bike, her hair windswept and her face streaked with grime. “What’re you doing here?”
“Coming to get you, girlfriend! Well, Mr. Fenton asked us to as well, but we were already coming!”
“Kitty was worried,” Johnny said, leaning over the handlebars of his bike and kicking nonchalantly at one of Skulker’s severed legs, the metal sparking as he did. By contrast, Johnny didn’t look much different, which really spoke to how covered in oil and grease he normally was. “Dunno why, no chance Skulker would stop ya.”
“Because this whole hunt is for Ember, you emotionally stunted moron!” Kitty retorted, slapping his arm. “I wasn’t gonna leave my bestie alone with all this!”
Ember felt the big, wide smile hit her face before she could even try to stop it, and honestly, she didn’t want to.
“Thanks, Kitty,” she replied, sincerely, and Kitty beamed. “But I was fine. Johnny’s right, nothing I couldn’t handle. And none of the other stuff even came after me.”
“Yeah, was gonna ask, why have the turrets and robo-Technuses left you alone?” Johnny asked. “Don’t make much sense to me.”
“Prolly ‘cause…” Ember started, before trailing off, a horrible feeling of dread catching her.
Because Technus didn’t want to hurt Skulker.
Who wasn’t here anymore.
“Ah, FU-”
Whatever she’d been intending to say was drowned out as cannon fire slammed into the ground all around them, rock chips bouncing off all three as they scrambled to flee.
“Danno! Good news, that biker punk and his girlfriend have found Ember! They’re heading to you! Looks like they’re bringing everyone else with them!”
“Great, Dad!” Danny replied, dodging a punch that slammed into the ground, before pirouetting around a sizzling bolt of lightning. “More people to fight, really what we need right now!”
An orchestra of blows, explosions and screeching metal surrounded the ghost boy as he sprinted and leapt from cover to cover, the tight clusters of the rock trenches keeping the robot horde from bringing their numbers to bear. Even still, he couldn’t fire an ectobeam that would miss or a punch that wouldn’t hit something, every crack, crevice and bend in the rock formations around him filled with metal goons. The Technodrones (as Danny discovered they were called when he just asked one. Technus programmed his robots to be polite, apparently) swarmed him as best they could, a running battle he couldn’t shake through a maze he couldn’t solve. The ghost boy had been designated the primary target. Made sense, Technus probably didn’t actually care much about him and Ember, he just saw this as a good chance to rid himself of the primary obstacle between him and the world domination he craved.
Danny’s leg lashed out, and his foot caved through a robot’s chest, before he swung it again, the metal shell ripping from his shins at it crashed into its neighbour. No time to recover, nor take stock – he planted one hand on a boulder and hurled himself over, twisting mid-air to blast another drone behind him through the head. It stumbled, sharp fingers still crackling with electricity, then discharged, lightning streaking up and away as the droid fell.
That lightning was all the signal the genuine Technus needed.
The cannons Technus stole rained into the trenches around Danny, throwing rock and smoke into the sky, alongside a tremendous shockwave that sent Phantom tumbling to the ground. Technodrones began advancing from all sides as the dust settled, closing on the grounded boy.
Were he alone, that would have been it.
The huge metal fist of the Ectoskeleton swept wide over the ghost boy, scattering the drones like bowling pins, the robots cracking and breaking as the slammed into rock walls and pillars, before it stomped forward, standing protectively over Danny.
“Tucker!” Screamed Sam within the cockpit, as the mech raised its arms to the sky.
“Got it!” The tech geek replied, his monocle flaring blue as he activated the device welded to the forearms. Glowing green flechettes poured forth, flowing in a stream, before they dropped, spearing out to follow the path of Tucker’s eye. The mass of them twisted and turned through the trenches, embedding themselves in Technodrones as they went, before exploding. Debris scattered, and yet…
“They just don’t stop,” Danny muttered to himself as he stood back up. “I think Technus is making them on the spot. And those turret blasts…”
“Yeah,” Tucker said, grimly, still focused on guiding the diminishing flechette swarm. “Technus is either getting close to just being able to fire them directly, or he’s figured out how to mess with the minimum safe distance of a warning shot. Either way…”
“Bad news,” Danny finished, before tapping his ear. “Dad, any chance you and Dani can take out the Technus head earlier? It’s getting kinda hot down here!”
“Sorry, son, but there’s still too many guarding the perimeter. Once everyone’s in one place it should divert attention!”
“Nuts.”
“Don’t worry, I dropped the girls too! They should be heading your way!”
“You dropped Jazz and Star? Where?”
“Nearby!”
“Less vague, dad!”
“Plan later!” Sam shouted as the final flechette detonated, and the drones marched once again through the rocky furrows to assault them. “Fight now!”
“Fine!” Danny snarled, his hands flaring blue as he pushed pure ice from his core. Glacial walls erupted as he poured it on, the ice climbing higher around them, spreading wider, until all but two of the passageways to this part of the narrow trenches were open. “There! That should keep the pressure off for a bit! We stick here until the others can join us!”
“Oh, hey, you planned and fought,” Tucker pointed out mildly.
“I can do two things!”
“Just two. It’s a good two, though” Sam said, before smashing herself some breathing room in the nearby boulders, and beginning her work.
The Ectoskeleton stood strong in front of the entrance as the Technodrones tried to push through, fists swinging left and right, as Tucker fired weapons whenever he got the opportunity, and Danny blasted acid green beams through the other entrance. The endless tide was checked and held.
“Anyone else getting VRCade flashbacks?” Tucker asked, almost casually but for the note of tension in his voice.
“Yes! Thank you! I’ve been thinking it the whole time!” Sam replied, backhanding robots. “Big robot with many guns, replenishing minions, Ember has an axe. If Clockwork turned up and gave Danny temporary time powers, it’d be exact!”
“Well, great, now you’ve put the image of Technus in the Psychic Empress outfit in my head,” Danny groused. “And he’d try to wear it, too, I can just tell.”
“Points to him, honestly. Say what you want about Technus, but he doesn’t let convention get in the way of what he wants.”
“Tucker, he’s trying to conquer the world,” Danny said flatly.
“Who’re you dating, again?”
“… Fine, shutting up.”
Although speaking of bad guys, Danny wondered to himself as he resumed firing. Where the heck did Walker get to?
Danny had a list of about fifteen or so different things he was worrying about at the moment, with neat little subheadings under all of them for more specifics, but where the warden had gotten to was a big one. He’d seen Walker all of once, since the Technodrones had closed in on himself and the mech, standing on the sidelines, smiling, watching.
Waiting.
Danny really, really didn’t want to find out what it was he was waiting for.
A shuddering crack stirred him from his thoughts, and he whipped his head to the ice walls. The turrets had fired, crashing energy blast after energy blast into them, and it was beginning to show results. Spiderwebbing fractures spread, and chunks began to fall off. Danny was less worried than he probably should be by that.
Mostly because he saw a flicker of blue fire through on the gaps and heard her voice above the din.
“Let’s see if the Tin Men have a heart!”
“PLEASE. NO. I HAVE A FA-MI-LY.”
A sound of wrenching metal reached his ears, and the feeble (and disturbing) protests of the Technodrone faded to static. Something clinked off the ground in the ensuing silence, the drones pausing their attack to stare. Reacting. That was also kind of disturbing. How sapient were these things?
“Hm. Nope. Not this one,” the voice of Ember uttered through the gap. “Anyone else wanna volunteer?!”
“… ATTACK! VEN-GEANCE FOR GA-RY!”
“ALL PRI-MARY TAR-GETS PRE-SENT! CON-VERGE!”
“EX-TER-MIN-ATE!”
Well, that was good and bad.
“Sam! Tucker! Friends on the other side!”
Both his best friends paused in robot smashing to glance at each other.
“Uh, yeah, Danny, we know we have ghost friends.”
“That’s the whole point of this entire thing. What?”
“No, you… you dipsticks!” Danny retorted. “I mean on the other side of the ice wall!
“Oooooooh.”
“Why didn’t you say that?”
“Oh, whatever, just follow me through when I knock it down!”
Ember knew well enough how to fake some enthusiasm, and it deeply annoyed her that destroying robots with her new axe was a time she had to do so.
Seriously! Axe! Robots! This should have been an absolute ball. But no. She was going through the motions, threatening the robo-Techni, cackling and swinging Heavy Metal into the hordes, but it was all a front. She couldn’t get the thoughts and feelings that had surged to the forefront during her rant at Skulker out of her head. She couldn’t push them down, not like she was used to doing. Something had… broken, when she completely saw herself, reflected in Skulker and the others. Or maybe it always had been broken, and she was just too stressed and afraid and angry to smother it anymore, to deny the parts of herself she didn’t like.
She didn’t know.
What she did know, and was thankfully still able to act on, was that these were questions for after they got out of the biggest brawl she’d ever seen outside of Pariah Dark’s return. Survival took precedence.
An engine revved behind her as Johnny soared over a rock ridge on his bike, the chain in his hand swinging down to cave in a droid, before swinging over his shoulder at another. From his back, Kitty’s raised palms launched bright blue ectobeams into the throng, firing blindly and hitting regardless. At best, however, the beams were knocking them around, not destroying them - Kitty was flagging hard, Ember could tell, her eyes barely glowing. Like she’d said, she was a lover, not a fighter.
That had to register in her mind in less than a second, however, as the blades of Heavy Metal whined, and then exploded outwards, and Ember was once again transformed into a particularly evil sounding robot blender.
The legs, arms and heads of the drones hadn’t even hit the ground before the ice wall they were fighting alongside burst apart and her boyfriend leapt through. He grabbed the nearest chunk of ice and flung it into the Technodrones massing behind her, smashing through them like wrecking ball.
“Hi honey, I’m home!” He crowed, arms outstretched and grinning at Ember.
“… Well, I guess that’s one way to find out being called honey gives me the heebie-jeebies,” Ember replied, a hollow smirk stretching across her face.
“Aw, come on, we’re cutting ourselves off from so many classic sitcom bits! Plus, it’s the only one of the standard pet names I can stand,” Danny said, his hands firing blasts even as they casually bantered.
“Oh, if it’s for a bit, it’s fine. But you try to say it and mean it, I will hit you with my guitar, and that’s if I’m feeling kind,” Ember warned, whipping her axe around to cleave some robots in two.
“Eh, fine. I can’t even disagree with most of them. The usual names just sound weird to me. Darling sounds like I should be saying it like an English lord. And if anyone tries to call me baby…” Danny said, shivering theatrically. “The heebies, they jeebie.”
She laughed, and somehow felt better. Gods above and below, how did he do this to her? How did he just appear and start talking, and instantly all her troubles felt like less? She could feel her damn smile get more genuine, feel her energy pick up out of nowhere.
She was soon reminded, forcefully, that whatever else, they also found each other very distracting.
“I HAVE YOU NOW.”
“Danny, Ember, MOVE!”
Ember span around, Danny mirroring the move, as the Ectoskeleton slammed into them, flinging them both backwards into the gap they’d created. Lightning crackled from surrounding Technodrones, and the suit lit up with electricity, the limbs jerking erratically under the onslaught.
“Tucker! Sam!” Danny cried, palm blasts loosed at the electric Technodrones as Ember did the same. The Ectoskeleton fell to a knee as the drones exploded and the green lightning dissipated, the suit smoking.
“Tell me your folks insulated the damn thing, baby pop!” Ember shouted, running to the downed pair.
“From hitting me or Tucker? Yeah,” Sam replied, panic in her voice. It took Ember only a moment to realise she wasn’t hearing her voice come from any of the speakers. “The systems? Apparently not! Danny! This thing’s gone into shutdown mode!”
“It’s overloaded! I can try to get it back up, but it’ll take five, six minutes!” Tucker shouted, furiously tapping away on his PDA, before his eyes met Danny’s in horror. “Danny, without the signal boost from the suit, I can’t keep Technus out of the turret systems anymore!”
Danny paled, and swung his eyes skyward, the crashes and shouts of Ember defending the downed mech fading into the background. He saw the nearest one, clearly, triple barrels spinning, adjusting, recalibrating… Before firing, directly at the immobile target behind him.
It was only the reflexes of two years of ghost fighting that got the dome shield up in time to cover them all, and only pure desperation made sure he’d put enough power into it to survive the first shot that landed, the green construct cracked and splintered, the shards fading to nothing as they fell.
It wouldn’t survive a second.
Or at least, it wouldn’t, if Danny’s ears weren’t filled with a mechanical roar. A yellow headlight hit his shield, the glow growing and spreading, filling in the gaps and cracks, reinforcing the protective barrier.
“Got your back, little man!” Johnny barked, his bike near screaming with the effort. Both the biker ghost and Kitty held their glowing hands to the engine, pouring power into bike to keep the headlamp flowing.
A black gloved arm slammed into place next to his and purple joined the array of colours that cracked, flowed and reformed with every blast of the turret. Ember grunted, straining with the effort. Danny realised he was doing the same thing.
For a few moments, they all stood together, the shield enduring shot after shot, cracking and reforming. They couldn’t keep it up, especially not with the drones firing and hitting and adding their efforts to the shattering of the shield.
Luckily, they didn’t have to.
“That’s it, Danno! Drones are gone, approach is clear!” Came the voice of Jack Fenton, through the earpiece.
“Then go now, dad! Operation Gunray!
“You got it, son! Watch the skies!”
“Operation… what?” Ember gritted out, both hands pulsing with energy.
“Oh, right,” Danny replied, sweat dripping down his face. “We never did get around to watching the Star Wars prequels, did we?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
Even as Ember spoke, the Spectre Speeder screamed into action overhead, the cylindrical ship spinning as it made a beeline straight for Technus’ War Head. The turret that wasn’t currently trying to turn them into paste, purely by virtue of not being able to see them, turned to fire onto it. But Jack Fenton flew like he drove, except there was much less to hit in the air. Mad swoops, swirls and dives got them through the torrent of fire.
“There’s a character in them called Nute Gunray,” Danny said, smiling ear to ear as he explained. “He’s got this one line. ‘This is getting out of hand…’”
All of a sudden, the Speeder swerved, turning almost ninety degrees in the air.
A white and black blur erupted from the door before it even came to a stop.
“‘Now there are two of them.’”
“Hee hee hee hee HAHA!” A surprisingly young voice echoed through the speakers in the War Head, picking up the chatter of this new arrival (ghost, apparently) as the sensors struggled to get a good visual lock on this new target.
What fresh nonsense had those upstart Fenton’s unleashed on he, TECHNUS, the master of these skies and the ruler of this land?!
Well, whatever it was, it was moving too fast to properly calibrate his weapons to. The turrets were occupied, either attempting to shoot that passable bit of human made technology the Fenton’s called an exploration vessel out of the sky, or to destroy the barrier separating Technus from the prizes of the whole affair.
Oh well. Blanket fire it is!
All the glorious, ingenious weaponry of the War Head unleashed itself, Technus’ finger’s sparking in the dark and complicated control room as he willed the machine to do his bidding. The shredder cannons spat sentient, murderous metal in glorious cones of grey death! The galvanic ecto-projectors launched crackling bolts of green electricity to arc in fascinating and scientifically improbably patterns! And the magnificent, classic, sweeping, triple lensed death rays! Science made a hideous error, turning away from death ray research! Another issue the Technus Empire would rectify!
The blurry ghost, by sheer luck of the fool that followed so many of his accursed opponents, hurled themselves backwards, perfectly flying through a fork in the verdant electricity. Hands and feet glowed an acid green as the girl (yes, girl, he could see that much now) span in mid-air, giggling all the while, ectobeams firing in continuous flow. A cartwheel of destruction, slicing a path through the rocks surrounding his majestic vessel, burning the cloud of malevolent metal dust that raced towards her.
Technus scowled. No one short of that irritating nuisance Phantom should have been able to burn his sentient murder cloud like that. Perhaps Ember, if she had time to focus, but of everyone present that should have been it. Something this powerful, escaping Technus’ notice? Inconceivable!
He diverted more power to the death rays and the ecto-projectors. The shredder cannons were useless, now. Drone production would be too slow with weaponry online and defences active. Their power went to the sensors. Partial lock. Good enough!
Technus cackled to himself as the teeth of his War Head flipped open, and dozens of micro-missiles launched themselves, miniature speakers just below the warheads proclaiming the oncoming glory of the Technus Empire as they flew, the Technus Manifesto blaring through them at full volume.
Destruction and propaganda! Most efficient!
The missiles exploded around the figure as she attempted to dodge the overlapping fire of death rays, her flight interrupted as the shockwaves threw her about, kicking up smoke and dust from annihilated asteroids. Aha! Nobody could escape the many and varied arsenal of TECHNUS!
“Ow…” Came the voice of the new ghost child, picked up by external microphones. “Missiles… My only weakness…”
He checked his instrumentation. Explosive smoke impaired many of the visual sensors of the mighty roaming throne that was his current vessel, but some images got through. Somewhat distressingly, whoever this new ghost was, she did look quite a lot like Phantom, albeit with more white than black in the overall colour scheme. Before he could process what that could mean, she began speaking again.
“Whaddya mean, you already made that joke?” Girl-Phantom said, pressing her finger to her ear. “Come on, how was I supposed to know? Oh, you want original material, cuz? How about tu mente es como una empanada sin carne!”
The tech ghost paused, before activating the onboard translator. Then he chuckled. OK, that was a good one. He’d use it when conquering Spanish speaking areas. Out of curiosity, he diverted a small amount of power to the cyberwarfare suite, hoping to break into their communications. A simple matter to then keep an ear to their chatter, overhear their plans, and absolutely not something he’d forgotten to do up until now. That would be a ridiculous oversight for one such as him!
Oh, right, he was in the middle of something. OBLITERATION!
The nanite factories nestled at the root of his War Heads teeth glowed, more missiles being produced from quantum compressed material at a rate greater than any other could have achieved! But until the new crop was ready? MORE LIGHTNING! MORE DEATH RAYS!
He overrode the automatic controls! This would be a fight he would direct himself! The greatest mind of the Ghost Zone, directing weapons he had designed? The Phantom facsimile would stand no chance!
And indeed the girl seemed to know it, as the lightning and energy beams converged on her in a maze of destruction and death, the sweeping beams of his beautiful, beautiful death rays forcing her into the path of the green ectotricity, where the dodging and weaving became tighter and tighter.
“OK, this is too cramped, I can’t get through! Anyone gimmie a hand?! Just need a few of those weapons gone!”
“Sure thing, sweetie!”
Technus turned his attention to the console, surprised at the older feminine voice that appeared. Oh, the cyberwarfare programs had already broken into their communications.
To be expected of the superior coding and hacking ability of the only true genius present! Take that, Tucker, you beret’d hack! And her request! Foolish! All of Phantom’s forces were either busy trying to maintain a rapidly failing shield or aboard that Speeder, which was presently more than a kilometre away and too busy engaging evasive manoeuvres to target any weapons! A request doomed to-
A bolt of light streaked from the Spectre Speeder with uncanny precision, striking the cabling of the foremost galvanic ecto-projector. It sputtered and died, power cut off from the device, the icon denoting it on his control console flashing a glaring red.
What?!
In quick succession, three more of the same precise beams of light emerged from the erratically moving Speeder, depowering more of his weapons with each shot. In outrage, Technus commanded the sensors to focus on the vessel.
On screen in front of him, standing in the open back door with an expression of furious determination, he watched Maddie Fenton rack the bolt on an ectoplasmic sniper rifle.
Technus goggled. Had… Had she just made four pinpoint sniper rifle shots from an unpredictable moving platform, from a distance greater than one thousand meters?
… In that moment, Technus felt he understood Vlad Plasmius just a little bit better.
“Thanks!” Shouted the mystery ghost, before rocketing off, a white and black blur flying in an arc towards the left side of the head.
Technus’ eyes burned green as his fingers flew over the controls and his influence snaked throughout all the ship. Self-repair functions were attempting to reconnect the power couplings on the disabled weapons, but they wouldn’t be operational for another seventy two seconds. He would have to make do. Death rays fired, but with two of them nonfunctional, he couldn’t overlap them in a way to prevent the Phantom-esque girl approaching. The lightning was still densely covering the surrounding space, but even Technus could admit Dr. Fenton had picked her targets well – the left side of his mighty War Head was currently less covered than he’d like. He slammed his fist on a red button, and the newly regenerated teeth missiles launched, their green exhaust trail streaking towards their target!
Alas, it would seem this girl had the same adaptability as Technus’ most hated foe. Where before the missiles could catch her, or at least detonate nearby, now she dropped down suddenly, ectobeams flaring from her fingers as the projectiles were shot down. The tech ghost grit his teeth. This one was almost as annoying as Phantom.
Still, Technus was confident. The armour was impenetrable to all but the strongest ghosts. Rated against that ghost child menace himself! Phantom at his strongest could only break through the armour with sustained effort, and as the girl seemed about on the same level as him, perhaps a little weaker if his readings were right, he was sure she… she…
Where had Walker punched through the War Head again?
Confidence was replaced by apprehension. Oh no. Oh no. That blasted, rigid, tinpot tyrant! He’d made a literal hole in the defences! Because he lacked the patience and foresight to allow Technus to fully explain… Whatever it was he’d been explaining! Probably why he didn’t take orders from him! Well, Walker can forget becoming Minister of Justice in the new Technus Empire! With Ember gone as Minister of Culture as well, that was two cabinet positions! Maddening!
Technus recalled his drones in a panic. They were no longer needed outside the shield to capture or end the ghosts within. He couldn’t enjoy his victory if his greatest creation, his roaming throne, was destroyed by sheer stupid luck and sabotage by a jealous lawman! He only had to hold her off from discovering the hole for half a minute, he had the weapons for that, he had the mind-
“Ooooh, what’s this? You laid out the red carpet for me!”
AND OF COURSE SHE FOUND THE HOLE IMMEDIATELY. Never mind, Technus was upgrading her to equally as annoying as that pest Phantom.
He’d never built internal defences. He hadn’t thought he would need to. He thought intelligent use of his drones, death rays, missiles, all would keep any potential intruders at bay. He ignored that deploying all the drones to one location and leaving none for defence probably didn’t count as overly intelligent. He was too busy listening to voice in the walls.
“This looks important! So does this! Shiny! This one’s shiny, dibs!”
Systems shut down. Power regulation failed. The reactor core, a brilliant innovation of ectoplasm based power and portable geothermals from a miniature volcano, began to go critical. The blare of the alarm shook Technus from his stupor.
“CURSE YOU, WHOEVER YOU ARE! YOU SHALL RUE THE DAY YOU INTERFERED WITH THE MACHINATIONS OF I, TECHNUS!”
A translucent face popped out through the wall and gave Technus a bright smile.
“Wow! My first rueing!” She said. “You know, you’d think Vlad would’ve been into that kind of talk, but noooo, he had to pretend to be above the villain classics! Wouldn’t even shake his fist in rage.”
Technus paused as he saw how… familiar the face of the newcomer was. It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t actually seen Phantom up close today, and, well… Was he going to have to update the pronouns in the child’s file? It would seem Phantom had been working some things out. Oh no, he’d worked out all his taunts in advance assuming he was a guy! Or assuming she was a guy? They’re all getting rewritten anyway! Never let it be said Technus is not an inclusive emperor!
… Wait, no, Phantom is definitely in the shield. So…
“Who are you?!” He screeched, even as his other hand fumbled for the emergency teleport controls.
“Name’s Danielle,” she replied, grinning. “I’d stick around to talk some more, buuuuuut pretty sure this thing’s about to blow, so, adios!”
The head of his latest adversary vanished back into the bowels of his doomed craft, and Technus caught the first glimpses of green and red tinted fire before energy swirled around him, and he vanished far from the failed field of battle.
The sound of the explosion reached them a fraction of a second before the light left the eyes of the Technodrones.
All of a sudden, they went from pounding on the shield, pouring lightning onto it in an attempt to shatter their last line of defence, to instantaneous, eerily uniform stillness. The staccato chatter stopped, fists that had been held to strike froze in mid-air, building lightning fizzled and died.
Then, all at once, the robots keeled over, slamming into the ground in a cacophony of crashing metal. The resounding noises bounced off the rocks, the clanging fading slowly into nothing.
Ember let her hands drop to her sides, panting heavily, before wiping the sweat from her brow. God, but that had been exhausting. She’d never had to maintain a shield against a barrage like that for that long, and honestly if it wasn’t for the others, it wouldn’t have lasted that long.
“Got ‘em!” Tucker cried, his PDA chiming. “Turrets are… Well, not back under control, but I shut them down. Technus wiped the original programming, so, probably safer.”
The halfa shot him a shaky thumbs up, slumped over his knees, panting. “Nice work, Tuck.”
“Phantom? The heck happened?” Johnny said, leaning on the handles of his bike, Kitty resting on his back as they both recovered. “What kinda nuke did your folks just sling at Technus?”
Danny smiled even through the strain, before pointing. “Not a nuke. Her.”
The other ghosts followed his finger skywards.
Floating besides the now stationary Specter Speeder a dozen or so meters above them, chatting animatedly with the pilots, was a ghost they hadn’t seen before. If Ember were to hazard a guess, she’d say she was about fourteen years old, white hair up in a ponytail not unlike her own. Her outfit was pretty good, asymmetric blacks and whites with an exposed midriff. Ember did, however, recognise that she was probably biased in the fashion department.
All of that was, however, was shunted very quickly to the back of Ember’s mind as she caught a glimpse of the logo on her chest and took a closer look at her face, and even body language.
“Baby pop,” Ember said, slowly. “Why is there a mini, girl version of you? And why is she wearing hammer pants?”
Danny frowned, before shrugging. “It’s a long story.”
“Gimmie the short version, then.”
“Clone.”
“… OK, gimmie the medium version.”
“Fruitloop.”
“How does that -” Ember began, before pausing, slotting things into place in her mind. “OK. Actually, yeah. I think I can figure it out from there.”
“You can get the full story back home, from her. Because, yeah, as you’ve probably also figured out, that’s Dani.”
“Awwww,” Kitty whined, exhausted. “You mean she’s not yours and Ember’s daughter from the future?”
Danny stared at the biker ghost. “… What?!”
“It was a whole thing,” Tucker replied nonchalantly. “Got dealt with. Another minute or so for the suit, by the way. Decided big shooty guns took precedence over big stompy mech.”
“Give me back my legs,” Sam said sullenly, arms crossed in the cockpit.
“Does it not register for you, like at all, that we nearly died?” Tucker replied, deadpan heavy, tapping at his PDA as he tried to reactivate the mech’s systems.
Sam opened her mouth to retort but then stopped. Her expression seemed to shift, away from annoyance. Her eyes dropped to her hands as she flexed them open and closed. She looked worried, in fact, a faraway look to her, like she was remembering something unpleasant.
“I guess not,” she sighed. “Just… Get this thing moving again. I want to get this done and get out.”
Danny shared a glance with Tucker, both boys concerned. OK. Following up whatever that was after this gets done.
“Hey, mom, dad,” Danny said, tapping his earpiece. “Any sign of Walker or Spectra? He vanished midway through the fight, and I’ve not seen her since the canyon.”
“Scanners say they’re still there, dear. Them and… Do either of them have henchmen?”
“A couple, I think. A few riot cops, Bertrand, and that one ghost who looks like an edgy superhero a neglected middle schooler would come up with.”
“… Who?”
“Bullet,” Ember cut in, snickering. “Oh my god, Danny, he’s already dead, you don’t need to kill him again.”
“Then he needs to not look like he should be on the cover of a badly drawn comic book called Blood Bullet.”
“Pariah below, punk, you addin’ more charges to your sheet? Disrespectin’ an officer of the law, count five hundred and two.”
The whole assembled crew stiffened as the voice of Walker emerged. They couldn’t tell where from, however, even with as quiet as the battlefield had become. His voice echoed and bounced from the miniature mountains and trench walls that still surrounded them.
“Only five oh two?” Danny rejoined, head swivelling this way and that. He gestured to the skies for Danielle to come down, then began pointing people in various directions. Search time. “Rookie numbers. I have to get those up.”
“Laugh it up, Phantom. Guess you earned the right today. Never did think you could plan ahead more’n five minutes, let alone alla this. Colour me reluctantly impressed. You had most of us handled, and with me thinkin’ this posse’d actually be able to get it done. Guess it was stupid to think putting your back against the wall with the turrets and Technus’d do much except bring out your usual instincts.”
“Oh yeah? What’re those?” Danny’s eyes shifted. He really couldn't pinpoint where Walker was. Too many corners, too much echo. Ember stalked behind him, axe in hand, scanning the area. They moved cautiously, unwilling to get too far from the other groups. Who knew who might find them first?
“Cause some havoc, and hope the chaos gives you somethin’ you can use. Even I gotta admit, you’re good at it. Makes a lawman despair of ever bringin’ you justice.”
“Almost sounds like a compliment, pig,” Ember snarled. “What, you going soft on us now you know we can beat you to kingdom come?”
“Ms. McLain. I can’t tell you what a pleasure it’s been not talkin’ to you since, oh, when was it again? Oh right. When I melted your home out from under you. How’re you doin’ after that? Void in your core not feelin’ too ragged, I hope? Warrants are nasty things.”
Ember growled at the condescending voice, low and feral, before Danny put a hand on her shoulder.
“He’s trying to rile you up, rockstar. Get you angry and stupid,” Danny said quietly. “He did it to me earlier. Don’t let him get to you too.”
“Easier said than done, baby pop,” Ember whispered back, but took a deep breath and loosened the death grip on her axe. “What did he say to you?”
“He… insulted you. So, I tried to give him a vibe check. Instead, I broke a cave.”
Ember looked stunned for a moment, then smiled. “Defending my honour already, huh, baby pop? Hey, if you wanna beat up everyone who’s ever insulted me, I got a list!”
“It’s cute you think you can tame a spiteful little snake like that, Phantom. I’d lend you one of my muzzles, but you earned every bit of the nonsense you’ve got comin’ your way, setting yourself up with that harlot.”
“Yeah, yeah, Walker, we’ve done this already. You won’t get me with the same trick twice,” Danny shouted, calmly, turning away from Ember. Certainly more calmly than he felt. “Why don’t you come out? I just want to talk.”
Ember shot him an incredulous look as Walkers booming laughter resounded all around them.
“What, I really do. Final stage of the whole plan,” Danny shrugged.
“Not happenin’, punk. Y’all are criminals, lawbreakers and scum of the highest order. I ain’t stoppin’, no matter how many of your band of misfits you throw at me. You can’t stop the law, and round these here parts of the Realms, I am the law!”
“Oh good, he’s quoting Judge Dredd. This is definitely gonna end well,” Ember snarked.
“I’ll tell you something, Ms. McLain, and cherish these words ‘cause you ain’t gonna hear ‘em often…”
Before either could react, a black gloved fist emerged from behind the next corner. The back of Walker’s hand smashed hard into Ember’s unguarded face, and she flew backwards, the wind knocked from her and Heavy Metal flung from her grasp as she collided with the wall of the trench.
“You’re absolutely right!” Walker gloated, before turning his hand to catch the punch Danny threw at him. With a twist, he whirled the ghost boy around him, slamming him onto the floor with a sickening crunch.
Like that, the previously quiet trenches burst into noise as the few remaining riot officers erupted from their hiding places. The purple figure of Bullet emerged in front of Johnny, his well-timed clothesline punch knocking both biker and girlfriend from the roaring motorbike.
They couldn’t keep them locked down long. It would be only a few seconds before Dani dropped from the sky to punch Bullet, and the Ectoskeleton scattered the cops to join the fight against Walker.
A few seconds was still too late.
Ember spat ectoplasm from her mouth, the taste of the gashed cheek burning in her mouth, when she felt a hand grip her shoulder tightly. She only had a second to recognise the nearly demonic smile of Spectra, her shell ragged and patchwork as shadow leaked from every cut and tear, before she felt something pull.
“I think it’s time we had a chat, woman to woman,” Spectra whispered sadistically, as a dark swirl of energy surrounded them. Bands of purple tinted darkness wrapped around them like a cocoon, the view of anything outside swiftly fading.
“EMBER! NO!” Danny screamed as he watched his girlfriend vanish into a rapidly growing sphere of darkness.
For a moment, Ember thought she heard footsteps behind her, but soon even that faded as she felt the presence of the Ghost Zone vanish, and cold, wretched despair engulfed her whole being.