Gravitational Phantoms

Chapter Fourteen

The format here will be different, because I'm typing this on the computer instead of on my phone.

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Danny sat on the floor, the Pines family watching him. Mabel had tears in her eyes, and her brother looked rather close to that stage himself. Ford and Stan looked like they were about to hit something, namely a certain pair of adults. As the ghost boy watched, Stan gave in to the  impulse and drove his fist into the side of Mabel's bed. He winced in pain.

"That was a bad idea," he muttered. Stan looked at Danny. "Kid, I don't care what your blood relationship to those monsters is, they aren't your parents. And they never were."

The younger set of twins nodded in agreement. Dipper wrapped his arms around Mabel's shoulders. The brunette girl twisted her sweater in her hands. 

"What happened to Jazz?" She asked tentatively. "Did you ever see her again?"

Danny shook his head. "No. I d-don't even kn-know  if she's st-still alive."

Dipper crawled forward, with his sister close behind. Danny leaned away, fear spiking in the hybrid's body. But instead of hurting him, the two twelve-year-olds hugged him. 

"I'm sorry," Dipper said. "I don't know what I would do if I lost Mabel."

"Or if I lost Dipper," his sister added. "And we already know what would happen if Stan and Ford lost each other. It's not pretty."

They sat like that for a very long time-until the world collapsed and everything turned to blackness and dust.

The universe was grey again. Except, this time, he wasn't alone.

The Pines family was there with him. Mabel and Dipper stood back to back, eyeing the strange plains and cliffs warily. Ford had a...thing, that looked like a cross between a gun and a mirror. Stan looked mostly confused, but he seemed to understand that this was bad news.

"How you doing, Pine Tree, Shooting Star, old men, DP. That was quite the moment there, don't you think? Very sappy." Bill spun down and landed in front of them, hovering about a foot off of the ground. 

Ford pointed the gun at the triangular demon. "Back off, Cipher."

"Relax. I just want to talk to DP over here," he snapped his fingers, and the four other people were flung backwards. A blue dome formed around the ghost boy and the yellow demon. Bill smirked, or at least he would have if he had a mouth. 

"You see, Halfa, I have a bit of a proposition for you," he began. Danny watched out of the corner of his eye as the Pines family slammed their hands on the blue light. Dipper was shouting something, but Danny couldn't tell what it was. The dome was soundproof.

The dream demon snapped his fingers. A window opened from nowhere, and Danny saw a very familiar face backed into a corner. His eyes widened, and he gasped. "No! Dani!"

Bill smirked at his reaction to Danielle's pain. "You see, it's very simple. Either you give me a puppet, or Glow here gets captured. And I would imagine that you don't want the same thing that happened to you to happen to Glow."

Immediately, alarm bells started to ring in Danny's head. The Pines family had warned him about making deals with Bill, especially for puppets. But Dipper and Ford hadn't exactly specified what happened, just that it was really bad. 

But if he didn't do something than the girl who was basically his little sister would get hurt. And he knew that whatever nightmares had happened to him, it would seem like a daydream compared to what they did to Dani when they found out that she was a clone.

The hybrid watched as the female Halfa raised trembling fists lit with bright green energy. The GiW advanced at her, and one of the agents fired. The blast smashed into the ground at Dani's feet, sending up a shower of stone.

Danny looked up at Bill. The demon extended one of his black hands, lit with blue fire. "Tick tock, DP."

The ghost boy's eyes flicked back and forth, between the demon and his genetic identical. Between his family and his new enemy. Between hope and fear. But something seemed off about the whole thing. 

And then it clicked. Danny looked back at the image of Dani. There were tears streaming down her cheeks, and  her entire body was trembling. But it was the blue that swirled through her ectoblasts that was unusual. 

Danny made direct eye contact with Bill. "No."

Bill's body turned bright red. "What do you mean, 'no?!'"

"I mean exactly what I say. That creation is not Dani. Where is the real girl?"

"That is her! Watch..."

The hybrid saw Dani fall under a barrage of ectogun fire. He felt his heart snap in two as the clone was dragged away. But he stood strong. "That is not my clone. That is a fake, a copy, a hologram. You can't hurt me."

The demon's body stayed scarlet for another moment, before turning yellow again. "Are you so sure about that? Because I think that it will only take a few select hits for you to break."

The words hit him like a punch in the gut. All of the things that the agents had told him, all of the names that his parents called him. The bullies at school. His ghostly enemies. They all came back.

Monster. Inhuman. Inviso-Bill. Creature. Lab rat. Nerd. Experiment. Ectoplasmic cluster of post-human consciousness. Criminal. Scum. Whelp. Slave. Worthless. Bitch. Weakling. Loser. Alien. Murderer. Thief. Kidnapper.  Evil. Dead. Unstable. Cruel. 

And the worst one. Dan.

That one whispered of the inevitable, of the unstoppable future. Of how no matter how hard he tried, something would still happen to make him turn his back on humanity. Make him change into something else. Something cruel and monstrous. 

Bill laughed. "You see? You're already on your way there. It just takes one little push for you to fall, DP. And I'm going to be there when you do. Ready to make a deal."

And then he was gone, the dome was gone, and Danny was falling, falling into oblivion. The last thing that he felt was someone catching him and shouting for him to stay awake, to wake up, to stay alive.

But the darkness was so tempting, so amazing. It tickled his skin and danced in his brain, making it feel like A thousand doses of adrenaline. But it had the opposite effect, and Danny fell.