Chapter Text
When the Blackest Night comes to Amity Park, he's on the roof.
Specifically, he (Danny Fenton) is enjoying a bit of stargazing after having patrolled a bit around town as, of course, the local friendly neighborhood ghost-turned-superhero known as Phantom.
It had been a short patrol, because it had been a quiet one.
He keeps worrying about that. He doesn't trust "quiet". In his experience, when it comes to the local ghosts of Amity Park, "quiet" – at least, this kind of "quiet", the kind where even the Box Ghost and random animal ghosts don't so much as show up enough for his ghost sense to go off – well. That is nearly always just the calm before a storm.
(Sometimes literally; see: Vortex)
It doesn't help that something inside him, some deep intuition, has been softly screaming Something is Wrong! for basically hours now.
He talked to Jazz about that less than an hour ago, but since he couldn't figure out why he felt that way, since nothing obviously, overtly threatening was happening, since nobody other than him seemed to notice anything amiss or ominous... she had, tentatively, suggested that maybe he was just feeling a bit stressed in general.
It had taken a lot of willpower not to snarl at her for the suggestion.
Because Jazz cares. Jazz is a good person, and kind, and caring. Jazz does not deserve a snarl, he reminds himself, as he locates the star Antares one of the brightest in the sky of the Northern Hemisphere this time of year; in the constellation of Scorpio.
But by the same token, he knows damn well what being merely "stressed" feels like, and this isn't it.
It's not just anxiety; mostly because anxiety has gradually become his default (for damn good reason, if you ask him), he can tell this is something worse than that.
But it's also not, like, a panic attack? It might give him one at this rate if he doesn't figure it out soon, doesn't figure out where to target all the goddamn adrenaline, but.
He's 99% sure it is, in fact, his instincts screaming at him.
The same way they do for his Ghost Sense, but way more ominously.
He attempts briefly to examine the feeling again, because he hates this, hates how even a peaceful day can give him no peace, without any frickin explanation.
Darkness.
Silence.
Eternal void, like the depths of space, the total absence of –
– he shudders, taking a sharp, deep breath as he shoves those thoughts way the hell down, and grits his teeth against how uselessly vague that impression was.
Seriously, what the hell is he supposed to do with a sense of impending doom that only gives him crap like "eternal void"? Thanks, Ghostly Instincts! You are so very helpful today!
He lets out the breath slowly, and goes back to tracing Scorpio's lines, resigned to just having to feel tense for now; until the bleep hits the fan, there's no way of telling one way or the other.
...the bleep hits the fan right as he traces Scorpio's tail.
DANIEL JAMES FENTON, OF EARTH
He jolts upright. Nothing that Full Names him can be good, even and especially if it's not his Mom.
He will end up hating how right his instinct on that is, because next thing he knows, there is a great, terrible sense of cold sweeping over him, starting from his right hand, and it is Wrong, it is so very, very, Wrong.
It's almost reminiscent of when he changes forms to his more ghostly side, but not so much a little to the left, as a lot to the left. Too far to the left. Tipping over from how far it goes.
Instead of coming from his center, it comes from Elsewhere; instead of the cold being familiar, and safe, instead of coming with a rush of ectoplasmic energy that lets him know his power is at full accessibility, it – it bites into him, latching on like a vampire and draining.
It's not the cold of a ghost – it's the cold of hypothermia, of heat being rapidly leeched out, being stolen; it's like being emptied out, his every molecule slowing its movement, inexorably, towards 0°Kelvin.
He feels his heart stop; this wouldn't be a problem if he were actually going ghost, but he isn't, he's in his human form, in the body that needs to at least occasionally have a pulse, in the body that needs to eat and sleep and breathe, but it stops doing that, either; his lungs rattle as he exhales, and despite wanting to, he can't get them to draw another breath in to replace it.
He tries to move, to at least look at his right arm, to see what the hell has latched on to him, to see what the hell is doing this to him, but he can't.
He can't move his body.
He can't move his body.
His vision goes dim; his body, numb.
The last thing he sees is the fading pinpricks of Scorpio's tail.
The last thing he hears – if you can even call it hearing, when it's not so much with your ears as with your soul – is that same, awful, cold Voice that called him by Full Name, that Voice that somehow sounds like Nothingness even as it booms, even as its Command reverberates in his mind:
RISE.
What Rises is no longer Danny Fenton.