Danny Phantom: More Things in Heaven and Earth

[graywand1]

"And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
-T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.
Then are dreamt of in your philosophy."
-William Shakespeare, Hamlet.

“The King with half the East at heel is marched from land of morning;
Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air,
And he that stands will die for naught, and home there's no returning.
The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.”
-A.E Housman, Last Poems, “Oracles”

Chapter One
Under the Night

Samantha Manson deftly tapped out a few commands into her pilot’s console, feeling the heat warming her fingers as she entered a minor course correction into the system. The computer beeped its acceptance of her commands before she looked up and out the forward window of the greatly redesigned Specter Speeder, the sixteen-year-old young woman’s breath catching and dying in her throat as she watched the view out the window. As she looked out the window, her annoyance at this flight’s odd spate of technical malfunctions oozed away into the oncoming night. The sun was starting to dip below the horizon to the west, blanketing the sky they flew through in a thick carpet of orange, red and gold, with a few wisps of purple cloud.

“My God,” the young woman with dark hair and violet eyes said, “It’s so beautiful.”

“It is, isn’t it?” another female voice said from behind her. Sam turned around in her seat and looked at her co-pilot. Jasmine Fenton was angled away from her console; the eighteen-year-old young woman with long red hair and green eyes was giving her a knowing look. “I bet you wish Danny was here with you instead of me, am I right?”

Sam let a longing sigh, thinking of her boyfriend Danny, Jazz’s brother. “Yes,” she said wistfully, before her back brain registered what she just said and she jolted upright in her chair. “Not that I don’t like you, Jazz,” she said, her face reddening with embarrassment. “You’re fun to be around and I’m glad that you’re my friend.”

Jazz, the orange jumpsuit with the black harness across the chest she was wearing glowing in the light of the setting sun, put her hand up hastily, “It’s okay, Sam,” she said quickly. “I know you don’t spend nearly as much time with him as you would like.”

“True,” Sam said. Ever since the end of the Asteroid Crisis two months ago, he’d flown most of his combat patrols with Valerie as their unique abilities, the sure and certain fact that the two of them could fly and shoot blasts of energy on their own, complemented each other. It made sense tactically, but she also lamented the fact that she didn’t see him as often anymore.

Which is why I try to make the most of what time I do have with him, she thought to herself, a mischievous smile breaking out on her face as she thought of the last time they’d spent any time together romantically. Her musings were interrupted by an all too familiar ringing sound from her console and she looked down to see a warning pop up on her master control display. Sam let loose a frustrated groan when she saw it.

Not again, she thought to herself, shaking her head as frustration and annoyance flooded her.

“WARNING” the black letters in the green message box glowed ominously at her. “FORWARD NAVIGATIONAL SENSOR OUT OF ALIGNMENT BY 1.2 MICRONS.” Sam sighed and leaned forward to adjust her sensors.

“That sensor giving you trouble again?” she heard Jazz say from behind her.

Sam, annoyance gripping her at the fact that the sensor had gone out of alignment for the seventh time that flight, was at a loss for words and was only able to release a frustrated groan as she readjusted her sensors.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Jazz said simply from behind her.

Sam finished her adjustments before slamming herself roughly back into her chair and saying, “This didn’t happen this often during the test flights, I only had to adjust the nav sensors once per flight at most.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that this could be a design flaw?” Jazz said guardedly. “Other than moving me over here and putting the seats along the back wall, much of the new technology in the Specter Speeder was reverse-engineered from Vlad’s technology we received from the Department of Defense. Tech which, by the way, is a good twenty to thirty years ahead of us and even Mom and Dad have admitted they don’t entirely understand as of yet.”

Sam sighed, steeling for one of their once-per-flight arguments over the new design, “I know you're a little miffed that your parents cleared her for flight when you wanted to run more tests, but it's already saved our lives once.” The other day Skulker had decided to take potshots at them, but the new designs capabilities, combined with the fact that Sam knew Skulker’s firing patterns, saved the day. She smirked as she remembered the ECM suite jamming Skulker’s missiles and sending them back towards Skulker in their search for a new target.

I would’ve used my own missiles to finish him off, she thought to herself. But it seemed like overkill, he was already on the run.

“Be that as it may,” Jazz said guardedly. “I think it’s a little dangerous to design an entirely new build vehicle based on technology we only just started studying two months ago.”

Sam opened her mouth to respond when she heard a ringing sound from her board again. Annoyed at what she thought was the sensor again, Sam looked down, when what she saw on her display caused whatever spat of swearing she had ready to die and lodge in her throat, as shock and more than a little fear gripped her. The starboard engine nacelle on the top down view was glowing an ominous blood red, with the words in pitch black WARNING: ENGINE MALFUNCTION, flashing below it.

“The nav sensor again?” Jazz asked pointedly.

“No,” Sam responded, her voice edged with concern. “I’m reading a malfunction in the starboard engine.” A starboard engine malfunction could be anything, from something totally innocuous to a fouled up intake valve that could blow the entire starboard pod off, sending them hurtling to their deaths.

“I think maybe we should land,” Jazz said immediately, as she tapped out commands on her console. “I’m reading a nice empty field not two kilometers from our present position. I’m sending you the coordinates.”

She watched the latitude and longitude readout appear on her screen and she immediately set a course, trying to clamp down on the anxiety that was doing cartwheels in her stomach

. Maybe Jazz was right, she couldn’t help but think as her hands played over her board. Once she heard the computer acknowledge the course change, she reached over and keyed the comm.-system, telling the computer to connect to FentonWorks. The computer abruptly chimed and she heard Maddie Fenton’s voice over the speaker.

“Hello?” The curious sounding of her boyfriend’s mother said over her channel.

“Mrs. Fenton?” Sam said quickly. “It’s me, Sam.”

“Hi, sweetie,” Maddie said cheerfully. “What can I do for you?”

“Listen,” Sam said, trying to mask the anxiety on her voice. “We’re going to be late returning from our patrol. We’re having engine problems and we’re going to set down, try to see what the problem is.”

“Okay,” Maddie responded, the cheerfulness immediately morphing into guarded concern. “If you can’t figure it out, I can always send Jack around with the tow truck.”

Sam shuddered instinctively at that thought. This was Jack Fenton they were discussing. He was well-meaning, but he wasn’t exactly safe behind the wheel of…well anything, and the last thing any of them needed, including Jack Fenton, was to end up flipping over in a ditch somewhere.

“That’s okay,” Sam said quickly. “We’ll be fine. We’ll see you when we get back to the nest, bye.” Sam quickly closed the channel. Looking at each other, the two women breathed a collective sigh of relief as she continued to maneuver towards the field. It was 5:30.

------------------------------------

Sam stepped off the Speeder and onto the soft green grass below her, instinctively shivering against the fall cold. She looked around at her surroundings, breathing in the cold, heady scent of nature. Off in front of them, not fifty feet from where they stood, bathed in the shadows of the setting sun, was a large copse of trees. In the light of the sun setting behind it however, it looked like a black hole, drinking in the light never to be seen again. A gnawing worm of fear woke in her breast, only to be squashed an instant later under a burning wave of embarrassment.

That’s just the primitive stirrings of your ancestor’s fears, she thought to herself, shaking her head. You’re a human, Sam, not a rodent scampering among the feet of dinosaurs. Odds are there’s nothing in those woods that can harm you, apart from the odd coyote and they don’t normally attack humans.

“I think you should’ve parked closer to the road,” Jazz said from behind her, “that way my Dad wouldn’t have to drive cross-country in the event he had to pick us up.”

“Yeah, probably,” Sam said, cursing herself for not paying attention to where she was setting down as they walked over to the engine pod. “Let’s just open up the engine and see if there’s anything wrong.” The engine, looking like a giant metal thermos half her size, stuck out of the back of the Speeder like an atrophied wing. Sam sighed, opened up her kit, grabbed her wrench and gently set it against the bolt that hung out of the top of the cylinder…


Darkness enveloped Samantha Manson as she floated in a sea of nothingness, her mind blank, and all sensation of the world around her gone. Finally, after what felt like an eternity drifting in a mind numbing fog, she felt a tingle run through her as feeling began to return in the rest of her body. She opened her eyes, only to have them pressed against by something large and heavy.

I’m lying face down, she thought to herself, confusion stabbing at her. She felt a tingling sensation, of a dozen tiny strands rubbed against her forehead and the base of her neck, as though she were lying down on a carpet or-

Grass, she realized suddenly. Why am I lying face down on grass? Less than a minute ago I was helping to open up the starboard engine housing? After a moment, she felt strength trickle back into her arms and legs and she pushed down hard on the ground pushing herself up and onto her back. She opened her eyes, and shock slammed into her as though someone had savagely kicked her in the gut.

What the hell! her stunned mind managed to eke out when faced with the impossible sky. Thirty seconds ago, the sun was just starting to set! What happened! Instead of staring at the brilliant red-orange gold of the sky at sunset, the sky before her was dark, and laced with thousands of glowing stars. Hanging in the sky like a great swollen orb was a first quarter moon, its right half shone with the silvery reflected light of the sun its left was enshrouded in darkness, barely visible against the night. Pushing herself up off the ground she scrambled to her feet.

Damn, she thought to herself, as she wobbled unsteadily on her feet. Was there an energy surge from the engines? As soon as the thought popped into her head, though, she discounted it. That makes no sense. One, I powered down the engines so that wouldn’t happen and two, if I had been electrocuted it would’ve been at least three to four hundred miliamperes that hit us. I wouldn’t have survived and neither would… Her train of thought trailed off as she felt a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach, banishing all speculation as to what happened as it took hold.

Where’s Jazz? she thought to herself, eyes scanning the field frantically for any sign of the older woman. After a stomach-churning few moments she saw, illuminated in the pale moonlight beating down from the night sky, a figure with the rough size and shape of an adult female human lying spread-eagle on the ground.

Oh, no, the sheer horror of seeing her lying in the grass as though dead breaking through the numbing shock as Sam’s mind urged her feet, which felt like they were weighed down with two lead weights each, forward. Adrenaline coursing through the sixteen-year-old, she broke into a dead run towards the other woman. As she ran, she saw, relieved, that the figure was beginning to stir and push herself off the ground. Reaching her side, Sam desperately reached her hand down. Jazz, her green eyes half-lidded, groped for her hand and Sam grabbed it and hauled the older woman to her feet. She wobbled slightly and she grabbed her shoulder to keep her from falling back down.

What happened?" she asked a weary, far away tone on her voice. Then she angled her head up and her green eyes widened in utter shock. After a moment, she managed to blurt out, “How long was I out!”

"I don't know," Sam said, shaking her head. “I just woke up myself.”

"Well," Jazz said, a frantic tone on her voice. "Where's the Speeder?"

Where’s the-, Sam thought, confusion gripping her as she looked behind her. The Speeder’s right-. Then the realization finally broke through the befuddlement. Not only had they been rendered unconscious, but they’d been moved to an entirely different position, away from the speeder.

We were attacked, knocked out and moved, she realized, feeling dread rush through her. She looked over at Jazz and knew from the look in her eyes that she’d reached the same conclusion.

Sam, frantic now, wheeled her head from side to side in search of the Speeder and, thirty feet to the left of the two women, she saw it lying in the field just as they'd left her, looking in the dark of night like a giant Ibuprofen with cigars sticking out of it, its doors wide open. The two looked at each other, each one’s face mirroring the concern of the other, and they both drew their sidearms and moved towards the Speeder, eyes alert for any threat. When they got to the entry hatch Sam scanned the darkness alertly, looking for movement or any other sign that there was an intruder in the pod. After a moment she reached her hand inside, groping in the dark for the light switch. Feeling the switch under her hand, she flipped it up and flooded the Speeder with light. The instant the light turned on, Sam lunged forward into the ship, weapon outstretched, looking for any clue or sign of whatever may have knocked them unconscious and left them in the middle of the field.

There’s nothing, she thought to herself, internally raging at the realization. Something had happened to the two of them, and there was no clue as to who or what it was.

"It's been powered down," Sam said, holstering her weapon as Jazz followed her into the speeder, closing the door behind her with the whine of activating servomotors, "Exactly like I left the ship."

"Sam," Jazz said, eyes still as wide as dinner plates, her arms locked like a suit of armor around her chest. "What time is it? How long were we out?"

Sam looked at the black watch wrapped around her left wrist, and sighed. The display’s numbers just kept blinking 12:00, over and over and over again in an almost mocking tone.

"I don't know,” Sam said, bristling with confusion. “This thing's reset itself, back to its factory settings."

Jazz sighed, sitting down at the sensor station. "Well," she said quickly. "Let's get back in the air and get home, whatever time it is."

"You'll get no argument from me," Sam responded, sliding into the pilot's seat, and running her hands over the controls. In an instant, the consoles and screens flared to life and she heard the familiar gentle hum reverberate through the cabin as the engines powered up. "I'm going to power up the engines. Let's get the pre-flight checklist out of the way then get out of here."


Sam sighed as she deftly piloted the Specter Speeder in the direction of Amity Park, memory of the events that just happened still flowing through her like water. What happened back there? According to her status board there was no indication that any energy surge from the engines had hit her or Jazz. The obvious answer, given what they knew was that they'd been drugged for some purpose and left after who or whatever was behind it had finished their work. Nothing had been taken, however, nothing at all. Even their tools had been left behind. Also, they still had no idea what time it was, as the clocks on both their consoles were reading 0000. She released a worried sigh. Something weird had definitely happened, but what it was, she couldn't even begin to say. As a woman, some part of her mind began to suspect that the two of them may have been sexually assaulted, but if they had somehow been overpowered, drugged, and violated, whoever did it had done a good job of covering their tracks. There wasn’t so much as a scratch on them that they couldn’t account for.

It wasn't rape, she thought to herself. Probably. I suppose I should be thankful for that at least.

Jazz's adrenaline laced warning shout ripped through her reverie, forcing her to focus on the present.

"Incoming contact!" Her friend shouted, the sounds of her tapping commands into her console rapping like tap dancers behind her. "Unknown classification!"

"Get me a targeting lock," Sam said immediately, the surge of adrenaline coursing through her banishing the fear and doubt of the last few seconds as her hands played across her board, listening with relief to the chiming of the computer telling her that her weapons online. If it was a ghost, the full complement of Anti-Ecto weapons on the Speeder would hopefully be enough to deal with the threat. In the unlikely event that it was a human hostile contact, she'd switch over to the conventional weapons on board. The thought perturbed her. She'd never been in a dogfight against a human except for a few mock engagements with Valerie. Fighting ghosts was one thing, having to kill a flesh and blood human being, even one that meant to kill them, was quite another matter entirely.

Then again, she thought to herself, thinking it may be a disgruntled ex-agent of the Guys in White looking for payback for the testimony that had cost the agent his or her job after Homeland Security cleaned house. Or some trigger happy Air Force pilot who was looking to shoot down a UFO, the design did bear a striking resemblance to the classic cigar-shaped UFOs of lore. Or, she thought to herself, maybe whomever attacked us is coming back.

"Wait!" A shocked and relieved sounding Jazz shouted an instant later, her board ringing out with a sensor alarm that told her that the computer had managed to ID the target. "I'm getting an IFF signal." Sam heard Jazz sigh in relief. "It's the second Specter Speeder. It must've been sent to look for us." She heard a ringing sensation from her own console and looked down to see the blinking words Incoming Transmission on her own status board.

“They're signaling us," she said quickly, relief coursing through her at the fact that they were no longer alone out there. Tapping in a few commands she accepted the incoming channel.

"Sam," Danny's blessedly familiar voice said, relief on her voice. "Where've you been?"

Sam and Jazz turned to look at each other, confusion fresh in their eyes as both struggled to figure out something to actually say. "I'll let you know when I figure that out. What are you doing in the Specter Speeder?"

“It's me and Valerie actually,” Danny said. "When you failed to report in we were sent back out to look for you, and we took the Speeder so we could use its sensor array. What happened? You've been radio silent for a long time."

"Uh, Danny," Sam said, her voice edged with concern. "How long were we out?"

"You don't know?!" Danny said, the anxiety and fear redoubling in her breast. "Sam, you're last comm-check was at 5:30. You failed to check in at seven or nine and we've been flying for an hour. It's 10:00."

Sam just sat there frozen in her seat, at a loss for words as her mind struggled to comprehend what Danny had just told her. Not only had they been inexplicably knocked out by something that left no physical trace of what it had been, but they’d been gone so long they’d been sent out to rescue them. Finally, her shock addled mind found its ability to string words together in a coherent sentence again.

"Danny," she said slowly, part of her refusing to accept the evidence of both her senses and Danny's testimony. "Are you saying that we've been out of contact for four and a half hours?!"

"Yes," Danny responded anxiously. "Sam, what happened?"

She shook her head, words failing her. "I-I honestly don't know. I'll tell you more when we get back. For now, I just want to focus on flying."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Danny sat on the left in his living room, feeling the warm heat of his girlfriend pressed against the right side of his chest as he cradled her to him as they waited for the results of all of his mother’s testing. He could feel her own arm cradling around him like a snake and driving him hard into her left. Even feeling the normally comforting heat of his love against him wasn’t enough to calm the fires of fear and worry that were burning through him like the fire that was burning along happily in the fireplace, throwing the room in a warming orange light. The fire was stoked by the fact that he could feel her trembling slightly under his arms, as though something were resonating inside her very bones. He leaned over and pressed a warm kiss to her forehead, feeling her tremble against him.

“It’s okay,” he whispered softly in her ear a moment later. “You’ll be fine. Nothing happened, you’ll see.”

“I hope so,” Sam whispered back, her voice tinged with fear. The fear on her voice sent a jolt of anger through him.

Nothing, he thought to himself vehemently. Nothing should be allowed to make Sam and my sister, the bravest, toughest women I’ve ever met so afraid. I shouldn’t have allowed it. I should’ve been there. He looked over at Jazz. His elder sister was sitting in a dark red armchair close to the fire, her green eyes danced from side to side, scanning for any threat even in the ghost shield protected sanctuary of FentonWorks. He looked over at Valerie. The pretty dark-skinned young woman, dressed in her favored combination of a yellow tank-top and red shorts had her arms folded as she stood against the doorway, worry in her eyes as she surveyed the room. Every few seconds she met Danny’s eyes, and the worried and concerned look in her eyes told him that they were thinking the same thing.

You didn’t have to be with me, those eyes seemed to say as they pierced him. You may feel guilty about fighting me all this time but you should’ve been with Sam, that way Jazz would’ve been with me, far away from whatever happened and you could’ve fought off whatever happened out there tonight.

Feeling the normally unflappable Sam trembling in fear against her, he agreed.

I won’t let this happen again, he thought to himself. I swear to both of you, I won’t.

It was at that point that he heard the sound of someone walking up the basement stairs and he saw his mother emerge. The fortyish woman with short brown hair had an apprehensive look in her eyes as she navigated through the room with a clipboard in hand. As soon as she entered the living room, she came to a stop and fixed everyone with an apprehensive look.

“Well,” she said, sighing and looking down at her clipboard. “I can find no trace of rape or any other form of sexual assault.”

Danny felt himself release a breath that he didn’t even know he’d been holding until that moment, even though it hadn’t made any sort of sense. There wasn’t a scratch or anything out of place on either of them.

“However, I can find no trace of any sort of sedative in either of your systems,” she said, raising her clipboard up and flipping through several pages, “as well as evidence of any sorts of aneurysms, tumors, concussions or any other condition which could account for being unconscious for several hours.”

Danny sat there as though rooted to the spot, briefly struck dumb with shock. “You can’t find any,” he heard Sam say after a moment, shock on her voice. “That’s impossible; we were unconscious for four and a half hours. One second we were opening up the starboard engine on the Speeder and the next moment we were picking ourselves unconscious from off the ground.”

“That's another thing," Maddie said, shaking her head. “Tucker and Jack have been going over the Specter Speeder from cockpit to engine to undercarriage and so far have found absolutely nothing to account for either the malfunctioning navigational sensors or engine problems you reported before you touched down.”

“But weren’t the malfunction alerts logged,” Jazz said disbelievingly from her armchair a moment later.

Maddie nodded. “Yes, they were logged. The onboard computers believe that there were energy fluctuations in the right engine and that the forward navigational sensors kept coming out of alignment, but there's nothing to account for them.”

Danny turned to look at Sam, who had a look of utter horror on her face.

What happened out there? was all Danny could manage to think as he stared at the two women.

[silverlily]

It's like Nancy Drew but kicked up a few notches!!! Keep it up. I loved Danny Phantom almost as much as Avatar: The Last Airbender.

[Zutarafan101]

Yes! I love Danny Phantom!! Great Story.