Room 2342

[gone_byebye]

Ray had considered clearing as much of his stuff out of his room as possible for the impromptu containment facility for Dan Phantom, but it eventually came down to this: for the kind of work he was going to be doing, carpeting was out of the question. So he asked the Bar politely for a room key, away from too many other people, and he'd gotten it: 2342.

Room 2342 was of an acceptable size for two people to stay in, but was by and large devoid of furniture at the moment. This was largely because he'd had to cover the floor, the walls, and the ceiling with enough geomantic patterns and cuneiform incantations to make his hand fall off from writer's cramp. He'd installed the other layers of protection after that: the theta-wave blocking material of the Men in Black, the magnetic bottling normally used in controlling antimatter pellets, the local-area Fenton Ghost Shield... and several standard-issue ghost traps, some rigged with stomp pedals, some with wireless control. The sensory instruments he felt most necessary were aligned and in place. He had his proton pack on, and his 'sabre hung at his belt as usual.

Everything, it seemed, was in order.

He hoped.

Comments

[goinghost.livejournal.com]

Every so often the trap would shake. It wasn't made to hold someone like Danny.

[gone_byebye]

No, it wasn't.

Ray eyed the trap one more time, then moved to the door. He stuck a sign on the outside- "IF YOU ATTEMPT TO OPEN THIS DOOR YOU WILL BE SHOT"- and then returned to the room.

He didn't like this at all, but the trap was going to explode if he didn't do something about it, so...


He pulled up the one piece of furniture he'd brought into the room- a light folding chair- and sat himself down. Then, very deliberately, he positioned his foot above one trap's stomp pedal and brought his thumb down on the wireless remote for the one shaking on the floor in front of him.

[goinghost.livejournal.com]

The trap exploded.

Green smoke filled the area inside the containment field, obscuring Ray's vision, and for a moment there was silence.

Then Danny's body slammed into the field loud enough to send a vibration through the floor. Then he did it again, and again, and after about five slamed, he roared in anger, and fell to his hands and knees, exhausted, and obviously hurt from the trap.

He looked up, a hateful expression on his face, as the smoke cleared.

"I will get out," he said.

[gone_byebye]

Ray flung up an arm in front of his face, reflexively shielding it from flying trap parts. In the silent moment, he dropped it; then he flinched, as the slamming started. But he stayed where he was, watching, waiting.

"Maybe," he said. "I wouldn't count on it. You look like hell right now, frankly."

Not that he could've looked much better, given how long he'd worked on the room and the shielding, but.

[goinghost.livejournal.com]

The ghost climbed to his feet, shaking, and rubbing at his arm.

He stared at Ray, then stared around the room, looking for some weakness he could take advantage of, then huffed slightly in frustration, his face steely, his eyes flaring.

He started pacing, back and forth.

Finally, he looked up at Ray. If he couldn't get his hands on him, at the very least, he was going to torture him in the best way he knew how.

"He's dead, you know," he said, conversationally. "As soon as I took control, I rended what left of the little weakling to pieces. He screamed with no voice." A wicked, happy grin stole over his face. "It was pretty cool."

[gone_byebye]

Evil villain, Ray, you know he's messing with you, they always do that-

"I don't believe you," he said, and he mostly managed to keep the shaking out of his voice.

[goinghost.livejournal.com]

"'I don't believe you,' boo hoo hoo. He'd dead. You lose," Danny spat out at him, pressing his hands against the barrier.

[gone_byebye]

Ray closed his eyes. Inhaled.

Search your feelings, Father, you can't do this. I feel the conflict within you. Let go of your hate.
It is too late for me, son. The Emperor will show you the true nature of the Force. He is your master now.
Then my father is truly dead.

Eyes closed, he said, "Then I have nothing to lose. I can trigger the other traps and get Tim Hunter or one of the other magic-slingers to teleport it into what's going on Outside."

He opened his eyes, looked back at Danny, and jerked his hands apart in Egon's old 'boom' gesture.

[goinghost.livejournal.com]

His face flickered, and that was probably all that Ray needed to see.

"That wouldn't stop me, Ray. You can't kill what's already dead."

[gone_byebye]

Ray's expression thinned out; he had, indeed, caught the change of look.

"Who said anything about kill? That's the end of existence going on out there. Once you're outside the Bar's field, there's no more dimensional bubble to protect you from the annihilation of the universe. All Tim or the others have to do is pick the right star and you'd be as undone in its destruction as the demon that gave us so much trouble last time."

He settled back on his chair. "But it's a moot point, because I still don't believe you. Evil lies. That's sort of part of the definition."

[goinghost.livejournal.com]

"And good always loses because it's stupid," Dan spat at him. He had Spacenuts in his universe, obviously.

He crossed his arms, leaning back against the back part of the field, then commented idly, "Hits a little close to home, doesn't it Ray? You want to be good enough to save him."

He tapped his head. "You told him you got picked on, too. Bet you wish someone had saved you, don't you? Someone to tell you everything was going to be okay, that it was alright that you were a pathetic little acne-prone geek, even though it wasn't, even though it meant you were nobody. Still are nobody."

[gone_byebye]

Oooh. That one stung.

Ray didn't say anything. He stared off into the corner of the room, one hand's fingers flexing and clenching reflexively, and tried to put the words out of his mind- but they were true. His parents had always taken his side, but they were parents, they weren't there, they didn't see-

Abruptly he shook himself, looking back to the ghost.

"I exist in my own right," he said, the hand stilling. "You had to leech your form and substance off someone else. I'm real. You're just a grotesque parody of someone who could've been incredible." Pause. "And who still will, because like I said, I don't believe you."

[goinghost.livejournal.com]

Peals of boyish laughter broke out at this, because he knew he'd pushed a button.

"Again, I repeat, I am him, Ray. I'm what he would've become. The Lady in White only helped it along faster. In a few years, he'd have been me. When I talked about the inevitable, Ray, I wasn't talking about what I'm inveitably going to do, be because that's obvious. I was talking about what I am. I am the inevitable. The only way he'd ever have avoided me was losing the ghost powers and then what? He'd have been reduced back to the pathetic, little coward he was before he got his powers, before me. His whole city would've been overrun, his enemies would've torn him and his loved ones apart. They'd have probably gone for his loved ones first , as a matter of fact, and made him watch. It's me or annihilation. That's what his future would have been."

A pause. "And he would choose me over that, Ray, thinking he could win out in the end, even though he couldn't. He'd never give them up. Because, like you, he knew what it was like to be weak, and he'd rather destroy than be that way again."

He shook his head, looking amused. "Okay, okay, so even if he was still in here? Even if you shut me up? I'd be back. In a few years, after he'd gotten more and more vicious, cared less about protecting his city, and more about destroying his enemies--I'd be back. You. Can't. Win."

[gone_byebye]

Something in Ray's head went spang at that, like the innards of a pocketwatch opened without warning or knowledge.

"What he would have been? Maybe," Ray said, looking steadily back at the ghost. "What he chose to be? No. He hasn't made that decision yet. He hasn't opted to go down that path yet. Maybe that choice is what's been looming over his future since the beginning, but it's not one that'd come to him yet. He isn't you until he does choose it, no matter how inevitable you think you are. The decision matters. To the universe, to him, and to me."

He lifted his chin a little.

"Besides. This is Milliways. Everything can happen here."

[goinghost.livejournal.com]

Kicking at the remains of the trap, irritatedly, he sat down, crosslegged on the floor.

"Not everything can happen here," he said, rolling his eyes. "For instance, you can't stop being an impossibly idealistic dork."

He paused as if searching his head, and snickered, idly picking at the remains of the trap, looking bored. "You know, the funny thing is, if by chance or geography, you and him had been the same age, and in the same world, and gone to school together, he'd have avoided you like the plague. Lest he got nerd germs and his piddling social status plunged further. Some kid you want to save here--even he'd have thought you were too pathetic to deal with."

[gone_byebye]

Possibly that might have sunk in a little harder under other circumstances, but in some indescribable way, Ray felt things had shifted fractionally in his favor.

"Entirely possible, except for one thing," he said. "When I was his age, I was filling out college applications. I was already a freshman at Columbia University by the time he was fifteen. I'll give you points for technical difficulty but the artistic merit on that one is sorely lacking. As for what it says or doesn't say about Danny himself- well, at his age I'm willing to make allowances for someone who's otherwise a decent kid occasionally acting like a jackass."

He'd picked up a couple of phrases from his grandpa Maxim, the former Marine. Sometimes they surfaced without his realizing it.

[goinghost.livejournal.com]

Dan kept fiddling with the broken remains of the trap.

He shook his head, thinking. "You are a smart one, aren't you. I guess I won't be getting you to leave me alone, huh."

Standing, he clutched the power cell and the wires he rigged up as a conduit and grinned.

"Although, I want to know: What possessed you to use my parents' tech to trap me, Ray?"

Then it seemed that his body blurred, and there were two of him, and then four--and that's all that would fit.

All of them then said, "...And did you think that it would hold all of me?"

Jamming the power cell into a juncture where the rotating fields overlapped--a weak point he knew existed because he knew his parents' technology so well--there was a spark and a crackle as the field changed color to a sickly greenish yellow, sparks flying off of it.

In cohesion, all four of him started to scream, ghostly wails that sounded like the voices of the dying over the wind. The field shorted out and the power source Ray had it connected to exploded. As the ways of undulating sound hit the traps, they exploded, too.

All four Dan's laughed, smoking debris scattered across the floor, and they merged back together once more. "One down, only one to go, Ray."

He flew forward towards the outer shield, only to smack headfirst into an invisible field in between. He tried phasing but bounced off again, then pounded ecto-laden fists against it in anger.

[gone_byebye]

Ray smiled, though probably he shouldn't have. "No, probably not-"

Then the multiplication started, and Ray's face dropped like a brick. He ducked his head, instinctively clamping his hands over the top of his head- and his forearms over his ears. They weren't as effective as they ought to have been, so his ears were still ringing when the explosions died away. Reflexively shivering, he dropped his arms-

And then smiled. It was a faintly shaky expression, but it was a well-earned smile.

"Redundancy, Danny," he said. "That's what. I like to cover all my bases. There are things out there potentially more dangerous than you, and I'm all too aware that one day I may have to deal with them. I wouldn't be working with some of the organizations that I do if I weren't such a fan of redundancy. Now, if you'll excuse me..." He stood up. "I've been consuming a really phenomenal amount of caffeine lately. I have to go see a man about a horse, but I'll be back."

He inclined his head and made for the door.

[goinghost.livejournal.com]

Angry, red eyes followed him as he left.