Chapter Text
Vincent smiled lightly, he was heading to Fenton Works to meet up with Dani. She was supposed to meet him for lunch and then they were going to go check out a new bookstore in town. Or well that had been the plan. That didn't look like it was going to happen as her spotted the fight happening outside of Fenton Works. He was glad he'd decided to fly as the Red Hunter. It wasn't hard to spot Phantom, her white hair, ever up in its braid, whipping around her as she dodged. Skulker was familiar to him too, having once kidnapped the both of them and forced them to work together while he hunted them. Anger flashed through Vince as he thought of that, both of these ghosts were his enemy. He took aim and fired, blasting the rocket launcher off of Skulkers shoulder. Both ghosts paused, glancing up. Phantoms eyes slid to the Ops Center.
"Look out!" She called lunging forward and knocking into him. A blast of light came from the Ops center striking Phantom in the chest. She vanished completely as though vaporized. Vincent blinked as Jack Fenton whooped from the window of the Ops center. But he didn't have time to think about what had just happened. Not when Skulker lunged at him and another flash of light engulfed them both. In a moment he was somewhere else, for an instant he thought he might have been transported to the Ghost Zone, again. But no, he was still outside Fenton Works but he could safely say he'd never seen it from this perspective before, standing only two inches high. He blinked, the sound of a blaster powering up brought him back before he could properly panic.
"I wanted the ghost girl's head on my wall but you'll do little hunter!" Skulker smirked. He was blasted off his feet and Vince spotted Phantom, floating a few feet away. He aimed a gun at her and frowned as an error message flashed up across his screen.
'Error, power stores depleted.' That was about all the warning he got before his suit retracted, leaving him in jeans and a t shirt. Phantom seized him by the shoulders and took off as he struck out at her.
"Will you stop tying to hit me! I'm saving you from Skulker!" Sher said just managing to get them through a small hole in the fence. A few feet across the yard they dropped out of the sky, landing hard in a forest of grass and weeds. Phantom shook her head, seeming confused. Vince rolled to his feet, turning on her.
"What did you do?" He demanded, she shot him a look pulling herself to her feet.
"I didn't do anything but try to save you from Jack Fenton's latest toy." She said pointing up. From all the way down here Vince could, barely make out the large man leaning out the window of the Ops center, looking around for his quarry. He turned back to Phantom and frowned. Her hair had drooped, her normally floating braid now lay flat, her bangs falling into her face. "I need a haircut." She griped pushing the bangs out of her face.
"Why did his gun stop my suit." Vince demanded, he was on edge, he didn't like being defenseless around Phantom. She glanced up at him and for the first time he noticed the freckles on her face.
"Your suits powered by ectoplasm. Best guess this new ray or whatever turns down the power on ectoplasm. I can't fly anymore. So we're gonna have to get up to the ops center together."
"Fuck that. I refuse to work with you."
"Ok you want to go up against Skulker alone without your suit, great plan."
"The hell would I work with you for! You ruined my life, blew up my dads hard work and stole the Fenton battle-suit!"
"Ok, in order, I didn't ruin your life that was Cujo, cause he wanted his toy back and your dad was the one who got the security dogs at Axiom put down, though I doubt it was his idea. Second if I hadn't blown up the satellite Technus would have taken over the world, which I think even we can agree would have been bad. Third, I barely survived my fight with Pariah Dark and I’m already dead, what do you think it would have done to you?” That question hung in the air between them for a moment.
“How do we get back to normal?” Vince demanded, not fully trusting her. But the situation didn’t really allow for anything but cooperation, she was right, facing off against Skulker without any of his equipment was a really bad plan.
“We need to get up to the weapon that did this in the first place. It’ll have a reverse switch.” She said fruitlessly shoving her hair out of her face. He frowned.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I know the Fentons. If they know one thing it’s that its always best to be able to reverse whatever you’ve done. Pretty sure they learned that the hard way.” That last sentence was muttered as though she didn’t expect him to hear it. He shook his head as they began to set off through the forest of grass.
“Why do you know the Fentons so well?” He demanded, thinking of Dani, worrying about her. If her whole family was being stalked by Phantom then she might be in more danger than he thought. Maybe he could convince Mr. Masters of the danger and get her a suit too. She seemed more ok with ghost hunting these days than she had just last year. That gave him pause, it had been nearly a full year since all of this began.
“Put yourself in my shoes. If you were a ghost in a town that’s becoming somewhat notorious for ghost hunters what would you do?” She asked shoving a large overhang of grass out of their way. He frowned but didn’t dignify that with an answer. It made a bit too much sense. He frowned as lights flashed and she froze looking down at her shoes. They were no longer the tall white boots he was used to. They were red sneakers. He frowned.
“The fuck Phantom?” She shrugged, turning away from him to climb a stalk of grass and see how much progress they’d made. He didn’t see the panic on her face as she scrambled for an answer to his question.
“What a girl can’t change her shoes? You try cleaning mud of pure white boots, it’s a pain in the ass. Don’t get me started on grass stains.” Dani was deflecting and she knew it, those were the shoes Dani Fenton had put on that morning. If they didn’t get this fixed soon Vince was going to find out her little undead secret well before she decided she wanted him to know.