Chapter One
Danny Phantom struggled to his feet, panting, sweat running down his
face. He wiped a trickle of ectoplasmic green blood seeping from his temple away with the back of his white glove, and winced at the stinging pain. He heard the determined cries of his friend Raven Riddle behind him, mixed with the loud kamikaze screams of his sister Jazz, the quiet but still in earshot cursing of his best friend Sam, and the terrified whimpering of his other best friend Tucker.
For the past six hours, the five friends had been battling Danny’s archenemy, Vlad Masters/Plasmius, and his enormous army of clones. The nutty fruit loop had been cloning himself for quite some time, and had made his move on Danny when he’d reached the solid clone count of 750. So far, Danny and his friends had wiped out 200.
They were hot. They were hurt. They were frustrated. And they were exhausted.
But still they held out.
Danny jumped out of the way of another beam fired from Clone #432, and toppled over from loss of balance. Fatigue clouded his eyes, and he struggled weakly to all fours, ignoring the burning pain in his side where only moments before he’d been blasted with a red ecto-beam.
“Oh, come, my boy!” the clone cackled. “I know you can do better than that!”
On ‘that’, he fired another beam, and Danny was too tired to even attempt to dodge it. It smashed into him and knocked him backward, into another clone. He let his head fall to the ground, completely exhausted and nearly ready to give up. He couldn’t take this much longer, it was aggravatingly enervating. He coughed from panting so hard and struggled to sit up.
A horrifying sight met his eyes.
All of Vlad’s clones had now completely surrounded him. He was encircled by Vlad after Vlad after Vlad. (AN: AAAH! Too many Vlads!) He heard Raven, Sam, Tucker, and Jazz struggling to reach him, but a group of clones were holding them back.
“Personal space here!” Danny protested weakly. “Personal—”
Before he could finish, five clones fired beams at him all at once. They collided together and did not push him backward, but stayed in one place and let their red-hot power loose over his scrawny body.
Danny screamed in pain and collapsed back to the ground, his teeth gritted, eyes tightly shut, trying to shun out the pain.
The clones suddenly began to part, giving Sam, Tucker, Raven, and Jazz a clear view of Danny. Four clones floated over to them and held them fast.
Raven glared daggers at Vlad, her fangs flashing as she bared them at him.
“Vlad,” she growled. “When I get my hands on you, I swear to God I’ll annihilate your miserable a**!”
“Shut up, girl.”
It was the real Vlad. He had come into the center of the circle, floating right above Danny with a malevolent, twisted smirk on his face. Danny’s face paled when he realized that Vlad was holding a large sword in his hands, thumbing the edges with his fingers.
He glared down at Danny twistedly, his red eyes flashing like smoldering coals.
“You, Little Badger,” he hissed. “Have become a great nuisance. You have made every plan that might bring my life back together a complete disaster. I even had a nice little daughter… until you made her hate me and run away.”
“You deserved it.” Danny retorted, panting, his voice hoarse.
“Oh, did I?” Vlad spat. “Not to be the Paragon of Virtue, but even I don’t deserve that! You don’t, either.” He raised the sword in his hand. “You deserve much worse.”
Horrified, Danny tried to scramble to his feet and run, run for his life, but he was too weak to do anything but watch helplessly as Vlad’s eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted into an evil sneer.
“Good-bye, boy.” He whispered.
“NO!” Sam, Tucker, Raven, and Jazz screamed.
But it was too late.
Vlad drove the sword downwards, straight into Danny’s heart.
Danny had only a moment to give one last strangled cry of agony
Before his body fell limply and lifelessly
To the ground.
DPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDPDP
