Valerie's Beautiful Death

Well, here is Val's side to TUE. It's written in the same format as 8000.

Valerie's Beautiful Death

Casper high stood silent. Absolutely none of us could believe what happened. We stood in silence as he broke down by the gravestone. We were all there, heck, even Vlad was. Mr. Masters stood silently beside our friend, holding him as he cried. Vlad took him away quickly, as neither could handle the funeral.

We all understood, hell, even Baxter put his hands on the kid's shoulder…the kid…Jesus, it's been such a long time. His eyes were so empty when he came back to school. They shouldn't have made him. Mr. Masters took him out less than a week later and hired him private tutors.

One reminded me of the late Mr. Lancer.

During that week, everyone tried to cheer him up somehow. The only one to get a reaction out of him was Dash. He bullied the kid, like always, but this time he did it to try to put some normalcy back into all our lives. The kid told him to, "fuck off", though not using such kind words.

I sat with him at lunch all that week, and that was when he told me he was moving. I gave him a tight hug, which he returned in kind, and a kiss on the cheek, which made him bury his face into my shoulder. He looked so vulnerable in that moment, like a little child.

Half of me was nauseated.

I didn't see him for a while, until Christmas. A lot of us showed up to give him gifts. I hadn't seen him so happy since the incident. He was messing with a fat, white Persian cat under a giant evergreen…scratch that, MASSIVE evergreen. Only now do I know how he got that thing in the house.

When we showed up there, the kid got up and embraced us all. Let me see, who was there again? Me, Dash, Star, Paulina, Kwan, Mikey, Mr. and Mrs. Foley, Mr. and Mrs. Manson, my dad, and a few other people I never really bothered to get to know.

Honestly, I never cared enough to try. Not before and not since.

Mr. Masters was there too, trumping all our gifts with his own, more expensive ones. Most of the Casper students pooled our money together to buy him a trip to Kennedy Space Station. He shrieked like a little girl when we gave him that, and for a while, everything seemed normal, that is, until Mr. Masters threw us a huge and awkward feast.

Or, maybe I should say it was after the feast that things got weird. The kid asked me if he could talk to me for a moment in the other room. I agreed and went with him, half-hearing Dash let out a catcall and Paulina smack him. I think I flipped him the bird, but I don't remember clearly.

Keep in mind, this happened ten years ago.

I wasn't prepared for what I was to be shown. The boy in front of me melted away into the very bane of my existence. I couldn't move. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. I wanted to blast him until there was nothing left. But I didn't. I just stood there with a look of horror clear on my face. He turned away and became the kid I know.

I almost said his name then, wanting to make sure it was still him, wasn't some horrible spectre possessing my friend, when Mr. Masters made himself known. He told me everything that had happened to them. How they used to fight, how Mr. Masters had tried to kill the kid's father, and how the kid was just trying to help me during my almost-fight with Pariah.

I cried.

I cried and clung to him with everything I was. I told him I was sorry. I wasn't really, until he told me about the dog. Cujo I think his name was? He told me he was just trying to figure out what exactly had brought the dog back to this side of death. How it was sheer accident that it happened on the single worst day of my life.

I hated how he was able to explain it all in such a way that made him seem completely innocent. I hated the way his voice sounded, so lost in comparison to his chatty self not ten minutes before.

But most of all, I hated myself for forgiving him.

We made amends in that moment, all the animosity passed between us was dropped. I gave him a kiss on the cheek and he blushed. Whether from embarrassment or from some underlying feelings for me, I'll never know.

We all returned to the party and everyone spent a few days at Mr. Masters' mansion. I overheard Dash lamenting over how he couldn't use the giant pool in the Wisconsin Winter. Danny laughed hard at that.

We all left soon after that.

I made regular calls to the kid, filling him in on what he was missing here at Casper. It was on one of those phone calls that I noticed it. He hadn't come back completely. I didn't read too much into it. It was way too soon to tell, and no one comes back completely.

But this time was different. He sounded sadder then, like he'd been thinking about the incident again. His voice sounded small and far away, like he was hiding in a place I couldn't reach him; hiding in a dark place I couldn't save him from. We said our goodbyes, after he assured me he was fine.

It was the last time I'd heard from him.

Two days later, I'd gotten a call from Mr. Masters. I thought he was kidding when he first told me what had happened. He told me that the kid had wanted him to rip the humanity out of him and that it had backfired horribly.

Phantom had fused with Plasmius and was on a murderous rampage in Canada. I'd flicked on the television, and he was right. The ghost was in Ontario, moving to hit New York. I dropped the phone and listened to the anchorwoman. They showed a clip of his murderous laughter, and there was no mistaking it.

No mistaking that fucking emblem.

I scrambled for the phone, asking if the kid was alright. Nearly screaming my questions of what had happened to him. Mr. Masters was silent on the other end and I kept screaming. After a long while, I finally stopped.

I heard a sob from the other end. He was saying it was his fault, but not talking to me. And then I heard it: a heart monitor. I asked him what hospital he was in and told my father to throw up a ghost shield before I headed to Wisconsin, fully stocked on anti-ghost weapons.

Dad…

As I got more information from Mr. Masters (not all of it, I still feel he was hiding something), I got a barely-audible message from my father. This was before video-screened walkies, so I had to rely on what I heard.

He was being quiet, as if someone was stalking him. He asked me to come back before the line went dead. He spoke in hurried, frightened whispers, and I knew that Phantom had something to do with it.

I rushed back.

I found Amity Park almost in ruins. Dash was hit in the spine while attempting to fight Phantom, and was paralyzed from the waist down. Paulina had deep gashes across her face, but seemed generally unhurt, and was helping load people into emergency busses. Kwan was alright, but Star was dead.

I jetted back to FentonWorks. Dad and I had taken over the ghost-hunting after the kid's parent's died, and that was command central. I saw my dad being loaded onto a gurney and carted off into a nearby ambulance. They told me that his left arm had been completely severed, and his right eye had been forcibly removed.

They didn't know weather or not he'd make it through the night.

I sat on the stoop of FentonWorks and just held my head in my hands and cried. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up. It was Paulina, with bandages covering the gashes. She told me to be strong and gave me a squeeze. I laid my head in her lap and cried.

Eventually, she was called back to help the injured, and so was I. So I swallowed my tears and went to help. We carried those who couldn't walk, and aided those who could into the safety vans.

FentonWorks was untouched.

A few months after fixing up the town, I saw a figure wandering outside the Ghost Shield. I flew over to see what was wrong. I almost screamed at what I saw. The kid was out there, waving me down! I jumped off my jetsled and ran to him once I was close enough to the ground. He opened his arms to hug me, and I gladly embraced him. His black hair and blue eyes were a familiar sight and a welcome one.

He told me that Vlad lied. He told me that Vlad had made a clone of him way back when they were still enemies, but never perfected it till now. He wanted to put his old enemy to shame, and force the kid to never leave the house. Rage flowed through me. Pure, unadulterated rage. I told him that I'd hide him from Vlad, that I'd keep him safe, and pulled him towards the ghost shield where a crowd started to gather.

I never got him there.

He lashed out at me, cutting into my back and cackling madly. The crowd that gathered to see what happened quickly yelped in surprise and dispersed. I whipped around to look at him. His blue irises were replaced by blood red, and his hair caught fire. His skin turned blue, like someone who died from hypothermia.

I made a hard left turn and shook him off the jetsled, but he rebounded quickly. He laughed again as I felt blood make its way farther down my back and soak into my suit. I narrowed my eyes. I yelled at him, demanding he tell me who he was. He landed on an upturned billboard, something he'd done last time he was here probably. The ghost grinned at me.

And vanished, leaving only a lingering cackle in the air.

I looked around me, fearing he'd gone intangible. But no blows came; no ectoblasts, nothing. I found myself shaking. I heard Paulina yelling at me to get back inside the ghost shield. I obeyed her mechanically, not putting any thought into the motion. She put her hands on my shoulders, asking me if I was alright and telling me that that was the ghost who did all this.

In the years following the incident, life went on. Kwan became a scientist, Paulina became a nurse, and Dash became our weapons technician. Some of my hair had been lopped of by Phantom, so I just buzzed the majority of it off…Bastard. I'd always been proud of my hair. No weave, no tracks, all me.

Just another thing in my life that Phantom ruined.

He'd attacked many times since then, but never could get through the ghost shield. Vlad had hidden from him, and constructed a new Ghost Zone portal somewhere near Lake Winnebago. He'd never tell us exactly where, just that he'd contact us if Phantom was on the move again.

I'd always wondered what the full story was. Hell, I'd even gone looking for Mr. Masters and wound up getting jumped by the Fright Knight. The "loyal" Knight had gone and joined up with the man who stuffed his king in a locked box and burned the key to bits in Ember's hair. Odd ghost woman thought it was hilarious.

But then it happened.

I saw that damned young-Phantom illusion again. He fell out of a bluish light and floated about as to not fall on his ass. I caught him talking about how it may have been his fault that our hometown ended up in hell. I jumped out of hiding, bazooka drawn, glad to confirm his suspicion. He had the stupidest face as I pulled the trigger, and floated there like an idiot. Just before the blast hit him, he went intangible and ducked into the concrete.

He flew up and demanded my attention. I opened fire, remembering how he fooled me with this trick nearly 10 years ago. He dodged fire, so I charged the jetsled at him after jumping off. It was a successful decoy. He dropped his guard and I fired off a net. It snagged him. I landed before him and my bazooka charged pleasantly in my hands. I was about to fire. I was good and ready, and then…

Sam…Tucker…

Phantom interrupted us a few moments later, blasting me back into a pile of rubble. He rendered Sam and Tucker immobile, before noting ClockWork as the one who brought them here. So they were from the past… I returned fire quickly before he had a chance to do anything more.

He was blasted back, but recovered quickly, flying over at me and grabbing my hands. The kid-Phantom saw this and broke through the energy net. How the hell was it supposed to hold my Phantom if he can break through it. I took a bit of a beating before Phantom threw me, intending to turn me into road kill on the side of a building.

He caught me.

Kid-Phantom grabbed me and phased us through the building. We landed roughly on the ground. I asked him if he was from the past, and he confirmed what I'd suspected. I teased him a bit, telling him I'd almost forgotten how cute he was. His response was kind of funny. I didn't really. Even now, I consider Phantom handsome. You'd have to be crazy to think he wasn't.

I blacked out right then, trusting kid-Phantom to handle his older self.

No, not kid-Phantom.

Danny.