Chapter Text
Valerie ground her teeth and leaned forward, urging her sled to go faster. She was sure she'd gotten Phantom on that last shot, but now he was nowhere in sight, and that was weird, even for a ghost with invisibility.
Her tracker should still sense him.
Why wasn't it picking him up?
It had been going strongly, beeping out a steady, familiar rhythm, and then it just—hadn't.
She pulled up where she'd last seen him and hovered over the tops of the trees in the forest near the observatory. If he'd gone invisible, her tracker would find him. If he'd gone intangible, she wouldn't see the evidence of him falling through the canopy, but her tracker would still find him. If he'd risked backtracking and diving intangibly into the cliff itself….
Okay, so she didn't actually know if her tracker would pick him up through solid stone, but that didn't—
Wait.
Was that what she thought it was?
Valerie narrowed her eyes and flew to her left until she was close enough to confirm the broken branches that she'd nearly missed in the darkness. The moon was bright tonight, nearly full, but Phantom had used the occasional cloud cover to his advantage. Case in point, thirty seconds ago, when she'd lost him.
Still. He'd been here, all right, and if he'd fallen without going intangible, he wouldn't have gotten far.
She expanded the range on her tracker—she'd narrow it again once she had him, but for now, she'd sacrifice accuracy in order to know a search direction—and then edged closer to the gap. There was the distinct green glow of ectoplasm below. That would fade with time, but maybe, if she was lucky enough that there was a trail, she could follow it and not have to rely on the tracker that had decided to bite the dust mid-hunt?
She'd have to collapse her sled and either follow on foot or hope there was enough room between the lower branches and whatever logs had fallen to fly, but—
Her tracker abruptly started beeping again, its tempo increasing rapidly enough to tell her that something was approaching her.
She didn't need three guesses to have an idea of who it might be.
"I really hate to have to ask this," Phantom called out from somewhere behind her even as she silenced her tracker, "but who did you chase out here?"
Oh, she was going to kill him.
Valerie rounded on him with her shoulder blasters already out and ready and steadied her sled as she took aim. Phantom wasn't an idiot, so he started flying in an erratic pattern to make aiming harder, but he wasn't smart enough to scram, which was his loss. "You are not as funny as you think you are, ghost scum."
Phantom held up both arms and paused long enough that she decided to fire. She missed because he dodged, which was weird only because she'd thought he'd have been slower than that if he were as hurt as she'd assumed he would be. Apparently, he was getting better at faking injuries. Figures.
"Hey!" he yelled, his voice dropping in volume as he tentatively—and foolishly—flew closer to her. "I don't want to fight you. I just wanna know if I'm going to get any sleep the rest of the night."
"Like you even need sleep!" Not like she did. Especially with that math test tomorrow—the thing she should have been studying for instead of hanging out at the observatory, but still. She'd have time to finish studying when she got home.
Granted, Falluca always slipped in a few brutal questions, and she didn't really want to be out here longer than necessary. Especially not with how she'd left and who she'd left behind.
Phantom made it necessary, though.
She might not get him again tonight if he was recovering practically as fast as she could shoot him, but if she could make him think twice about pulling stunts like what he'd been doing at the observatory—
Phantom held up one finger. "I don't need as much as I used to," he corrected. "Look, I know you've been through a lot. Life-changing stuff. Because of ghosts. Who are not—and I cannot stress this enough—all me or my direct responsibility. But that doesn't mean— Hey! Can you not shoot at me for two seconds? I'm trying to make a point here."
"Some of us really do need our sleep," Valerie sniped at him, "which means I want to finish this."
"Great! That makes two of us. So if you're not going to listen to what I'm trying to say, will you at least tell me who I need to track down?"
Was he really going to float there and pretend the last few minutes had never happened?
Apparently.
She fired again instead of dignifying that with an answer, but he flicked out of sight and was behind her before she could turn her tracker back on. "Okay, look. It's been a long night for you. I get it. I have those nights. Way too often. Like last night, with Technus. And I've already had one of those days, since Desiree decided to show up. So can we just call a truce for like, five seconds? Long enough for you to answer my question instead of shooting at me?"
Valerie rammed an elbow behind her and connected with something—something too soft to be his head, unfortunately—and Phantom let out a groan behind her. "Seriously," he wheezed. "I was asking for a truce. Can't you play fair for once?"
Huh. Normally he'd drop the act by now. Maybe she hadn't actually shot him earlier and the ectoplasm she'd spotted had been from a different ghost. "Fine." She withdrew her blasters and took a sharp turn on her sled to face him. This close, she could see that he wasn't remotely hurt. Whoever she'd gotten earlier really hadn't been him. "Five seconds. One—"
"At least tell me who you were shooting at in those five seconds!"
"You. Two—"
"What? You weren't—"
"Then a shapeshifter. Three—"
"Amorpho wouldn't dare. He learned his lesson after last time. If he comes back here, it's not going to be as me."
"Then maybe you have an evil twin," she snapped. There was no sense in asking who Amorpho was; even if Phantom deigned to tell her the truth, the information wouldn't be useful to her. Not if he thought the ghost in question might be someone he could work with in the future, anyway. They only really collaborated on threats that they couldn't handle on their own or immediately threatened the entire town, and those two tended to overlap more often than not. "Or an eviller one, anyway. Four—"
"Wait." Phantom's expression, false or not, had shifted to one of sudden, horrified understanding. "You saw one, too?"
What the heck did he mean by that?
She'd pulled out a handheld ecto-gun to level at his chest when she'd said five, ready to shoot at six, but she left her hand by her side. "Saw one what?"
Phantom glanced around, as if there might be anyone around who might see or overheard them, and then leaned in close and lowered his voice anyway. "Another ghost who looks like me."
Valerie raised a skeptical eyebrow. Pity he didn't have a clear view of her face behind her helmet, but she wasn't going to retract it when it gave her better night vision. "So, what, you really are going to claim to my face that you have an evil twin and that he's the one who ruined my life, not you?"
Phantom winced but straightened up, and she didn't take a potshot at him even though he floated a few inches closer to her sled. "Not exactly. That was…before all this. And this wasn't technically a twin. Well, I guess maybe it was technically a twin? I'd have to ask Ja—a friend to be sure. But not a shapeshifter. These guys definitely have the same DNA as I do, they're basically clones, but shifters don't. Or at least I don't think they do. Honestly, I never asked if their mimicry actually goes to that level. But, uh, let's just say that someone thinks they can control me by giving me a bad name by sending out a whole bunch of doppelgängers that look like me to cause trouble. And apparently it's working." He held up his stolen Fenton Thermos. "I have what's left of two of them in here."
"What's left?" Valerie didn't even pretend to disguise her disgust. "And you say you're the good guy?"
"It's not as bad as it sounds!" Phantom hurriedly held up his hands in a placating gesture. "Seriously. They aren't stable, not like regular ghosts. You get in one or two good shots, and they'll turn into a puddle of goo, especially if they've already used up most of their energy giving me a bad name."
Valerie couldn't stop her frown. Phantom being so blasé about total annihilation was out of character for the little show he always tried to put on, and she doubted he'd drop the act just because the two of them were alone. He never had before. "So what are they if they aren't regular ghosts? Why don't you care? Aren't they sentient?"
The Phantom who'd threatened them at the observatory had certainly seemed sentient, so if Phantom tried to tell her they weren't—
"Okay, yeah, they're sentient, but the ones I've run into are fairly one-track minded, if you catch my drift. They can do whatever little task was set for them, but they can't adjust for anything on the fly." He ran his free hand through his hair. "It's possible for them to be way more complex, though. Their own selves, their own beings. But he's not going to waste someone more complex on something like this."
"Who isn't?"
"The guy pulling all the strings." Phantom waggled his fingers. Both his hands were free now, meaning he'd dealt with the thermos when she hadn't been paying attention. "He's not important right now. The point is—"
"How the heck is he not important if he's behind all this?"
"Because I can deal with him!"
"Uh huh." Like that was convincing. "So if you can deal with him, then why exactly are you in this situation? For all I know, there's no mysterious guy at all, and you've just figured out duplication and are trying to seem like you're the hero for stopping someone who's pretending to pose as you to—"
"Okay, one, no, I'm not behind this, I do not have a secret agenda, every word out of my mouth is not a lie, and I genuinely am trying to protect people. Two, how is that scenario not even more complicated than what's actually happening? And, hey, three— Even if it weren't more complicated, why would I take a risk like that when it could blow up in my face more easily than not? If I hadn't spotted you out here, I dunno how long it would've been till I'd noticed there was another one out here." He hesitated. "I can't, um, track them like I should be able to."
"So you stole more tech and it doesn't work on them for some reason or what?"
"No, more like a sixth sense thing. That doesn't matter either. Point is, I guess, can we call a temporary truce? Just till no one's impersonating me? If it looks like I'm genuinely terrorizing people, then by all means, shoot, but if I show up to help you out, don't shoot. Does that work? Then maybe neither of us will be up all night, and you can go home and stu—uh, do whatever you were going to do before it gets too late."
She glanced at her watch at the reminder and winced. "Speaking of late, I've gotta run. I need to make sure my friend's okay before I split for real."
Phantom blinked at her. "You ran out to hunt ghosts while you were at someone's house?"
The truth wasn't really better than that. She hadn't been on a date, technically, since they weren't dating, but she'd been hanging out with—
She wasn't going to tell that to Phantom. Well, she could, but she didn’t need to unless he pressed the point.
She pointed towards the hole in the canopy instead. "Start over there if you want to catch the ghost I'd been chasing. I'll give you three seconds before I shoot."
"What about our truce?"
"I didn't agree to that."
"Well, can you? Please?"
"I don't get anything out of it."
"Val." He looked desperate, and she nearly shot at him despite that for using her name with so much familiarity. "Please. I just…. I don't know what the end game is yet, but little tricks like this? They're usually just the start. And I really, really don't want to be up all night trying to worry about this because I need to be awake tomorrow. So can we call a truce for a couple of days? I'll even—" He grimaced. "If you want, I'll go back with you and pretend to just happen to show up and then let myself be convinced to sign autographs for Star or whoever you're hanging out with."
She snorted. Chances were good he'd follow her to pester her if she didn't chase him off first, and it was no real secret who she was out with, so she said what was on her mind. "Danny's parents would probably shoot him if he showed up at his place with your autograph."
Phantom went unnaturally still; even his hair was no longer touched by the wind. He seemed dimmer, too. Except for his eyes. Those were a brighter green than they'd been a moment before. "What?"
"I was hanging out with Danny Fenton," she said, deciding that as long as Phantom didn't think it had been a date, he wouldn't go out of his way to cause trouble. He'd worked with Danny before, too. "He was showing me a bunch of star stuff at the observatory. I was surprised when he called me up, sure, but we both needed a break from studying." There was math in astronomy, enough of it that she was kinda surprised Danny didn't have better grades in math than he did since he seemed to be good at that math, but not everyone who was good at a particular subject could test well in it. "Anyway, he's the reason I need to get back, so if you want this encounter to end without me shooting you—"
"That wasn't Danny Fenton."
Phantom, of all people, shouldn't sound so certain. She put on an overly syrupy voice so that he'd know exactly what she thought of that. "Right, of course it wasn't. How silly of me. It was another one of your evil twins." Dropping the act, she added, "Or quintuplets or whatever that would make you."
"Just go home. I'll handle this." He vanished from sight before she had a chance to protest.
Go home. Yeah, right. And leave Danny to deal with Phantom when he was terrified of ghosts? Danny being in ghost-related danger because she was the Red Huntress was one of the reasons she'd broken off their relationship before it had had a chance to go any further in the first place. She wasn't going to let Phantom ruin their friendship, too—and with it, any chance of something else in the future.
She'd destroy him like he'd apparently destroyed a pair of his own doppelgängers before she let that happen.
The clones had been a distraction. Danny had figured that. The things they'd been doing while pretending to be him would have never stuck and been blamed on him once he'd shown up to fight them, so his name would be as clear as it ever was by the end of things.
He'd never thought they'd have been a distraction for this, though.
The clone at the observatory looked like him, of course, but the clone looked like him right down to the scuffed red and white shoes. Should he see him in a photograph, Danny's only hope of telling who was who would be whether or not he remembered the picture being taken in the first place. If the clone hadn't had blue eyes, Danny would wonder if it really was just Amorpho coming back to mess with him again. Or worse.
But it wasn't Amorpho, and it wasn't his evil future self because, last Danny had checked with Clockwork, the thermos was still safe, and the veritable ghost of time wouldn't remove someone from the timeline only to unleash them on it again.
At least, he wouldn't do that without warning Danny.
Probably.
At any rate, he could be reasonably confident that this Danny wasn't the Danny from, like, next week, come to help him with something—mostly because, should Clockwork ever pull something like that and get away with it, Danny intended to warn himself. Or at least warn Jazz so that she could warn him about it.
Besides, the fact that Danny had fought 'Phantom' twice over already, and Valerie apparently had once, made it pretty clear that Vlad was the real culprit here, even if this Danny Fenton clone looked more convincing than the Phantom clones had.
This clone hadn't been destroying stuff in the meantime, though. He'd left that to the clone Val had chased off and was instead gathered with the rest of the crowd on the observation deck outside, sending wistful glances towards anywhere that looked like it had a modicum of privacy.
It probably would've been easier for him to sneak off if Mikey hadn't found him and proceeded to talk his ear off. Mikey was in one of Falluca's advanced classes now, so he might not even know Danny was supposed to be studying for a math test tomorrow.
Danny didn't mind the conversations—Mikey liked everything space-related as much as he did, and they might even be more friends than acquaintances if Mikey were less likely to rat him out to Dash to escape a whaling—but this clone was definitely more distracted than he was listening, and—
His gaze found Danny, which was ridiculous, because Danny wasn't just standing in the shadows of the entryway. He was invisible.
The clone's eyes hadn't wandered past him, though. They'd stayed focused on him, and—
"Danny!"
Or they'd been focused on Valerie, who was apparently coming out of the door behind him.
Danny had been intangible as well as invisible so the clone in question couldn't somehow get a jump on him, which was the only reason Valerie didn't collide with him when she ran through him in her rush to rejoin the clone.
"Sorry, Mikey," Valerie said as she reached the two of them. "I was here with Danny, and then we got separated when Phantom attacked."
Of course she would still blame Phantom.
"I don't think it was Phantom," the clone said, which made Danny pause, mostly because he had no idea why anyone pretending to be him would defend Phantom when Vlad's orders were clearly to trash his good name.
"Me either," said Mikey. "I think it was a shapeshifting ghost. If it's not, someone's controlling him or something. But, uh…." He glanced between the two of them. "When did you two—?"
"Can it," Valerie snapped, taking the clone's hand and dragging him away. Mikey (wisely) did not follow. Danny did.
Valerie being with the clone made this a lot harder but not impossible. She'd be reluctant to reveal her secret to the guy she thought was Danny, and the clone wouldn't want to give away the game by using his powers, either, so Danny could play this like a regular ghost and come out on top.
"Hey, Val, before we head back," the clone said, casting a glance over his shoulder as Valerie slowed, "can we talk somewhere in private? Real quick?"
"Yeah, sure, but—"
"Great! There's a spot in the far corner of the parking lot that people avoid unless they're tossing out trash because it's close to the edge of the cliff and the wall still needs to be fixed after a ghost fight from months ago; we can go there."
Danny blinked.
He knew that spot.
It was usually the spot where he landed when he flew here and transformed back. The trash cans provided as decent cover as the trees did, and someone was a lot less likely to remember him coming in from the parking lot than the forest.
It would be a great spot to try to throw someone off said cliff, which if it were anyone but Val would be bad, but Valerie had a sled she could call out on a whim, and the clone would know that as well as Danny did.
Okay.
Fine.
Maybe he should intervene. If he interrupted before the clone got Valerie alone, it wouldn't matter why the clone had tried in the first place. He might be in his human form right now, but once he was no longer stable, that wouldn't matter; his ectoplasm would be drawn to the thermos the same as any ghost's.
But if Danny interfered now, he might lose a golden opportunity to figure out what the heck was going on. Beyond Vlad's usual plots, anyway.
The clone still held Valerie's hand once they'd reached the secluded (and slightly smelly) spot. There was a nice view of the moonlight on the water, but neither of them was focused on it. Valerie was staring at the clone, and the clone was rubbing awkwardly at the back of his neck and staring at his shoes.
Danny winced.
Did he really do that?
Probably.
"Um. I don't know if I should just come out and say this, but stuff's obviously happening, so I thought— I thought it might be easier, I guess? Maybe? I—" He glanced back up at Valerie. "I don't know, but I— We'll be better friends if we have fewer secrets between us, right?"
Oh, no.
Oh, crud.
Danny could not let him keep going. The clone telling Valerie his secret would not make the real reveal go over much better because that would invariably be after he showed up to dispute everything, and—
No.
Not happening.
Danny let his invisibility lapse—he'd dropped his intangibility once the likelihood of someone walking into something that wasn't there had dropped to near zero—and planted himself so he could take the clone out in one clear shot if he had to. "Okay, show's over! That's all, folks."
The clone's eyes had widened. "Crud," he muttered, and he shuffled to put Valerie behind him, which was hilarious because she was trying to get around him to stand in front, and— "Okay, look, whoever you are, I'm done with this. You're not the real Phantom, and you're not going to convince me you are by threatening us."
"What?" It took Danny precious seconds to recover from the accusation. "You're the clone, not me." To Valerie, he added, "He's the clone. If you're going to shoot someone, make sure it's him."
The clone's mouth twisted. "Well, I guess he's right about one thing." He stepped to the side and said to Val, "You're probably carrying more ecto-weapons than I am. You might as well take him down. I've just got a laser lipstick on me."
Valerie suddenly looked uncertain. Danny could appreciate the sentiment. "I'm a pretty good shot if you can lend me the lipstick, but—"
"It's okay. I know you're the Red Huntress," the clone said, looking over at Valerie without completely turning away from Danny. "I've known for a while. I just didn't know how to tell you I knew. I'm sorry."
Valerie's mouth opened and closed without her saying anything, and then she glanced around and hissed, "We'll talk later," before she called out her suit.
Which meant there were a lot of weapons suddenly pointed Danny's way.
The clone had pulled the laser lipstick out of his pocket, but until he uncapped it or handed it over, Danny wouldn't be able to tell if Vlad had swiped one of the real ones or just the blueprints.
Not that that mattered right now.
Enough had already happened that Danny knew exactly which way the clone was going to play this, but two could play at that game. "Run a scan," he said to Valerie. "Right now. How many ghosts are you picking up? Because the guy you think is Danny Fenton is actually—"
The clone tackled him.
Honestly, Danny should've been expecting it, but he hadn't been, so they both hit the dirt. Danny phased free first and grabbed the lipstick the clone had dropped. The familiar green F told him it was a legitimate FentonWorks product instead of one of Vlad's knockoffs.
Huh.
Vlad was really committing to the bit with this one, wasn't he?
Because he'd been paying attention to the clone and the laser lipstick, the shot from Valerie's blaster caught him easily, hitting him hard enough to send him into the garbage cans.
That had hurt.
Fine.
This might not look good for his optics, but he'd explain everything to Valerie after the clone was a pile of goo. He shot an ectoblast towards the clone, who ducked and rolled, and Valerie snarled about how he was finally letting his true colours show by shooting at innocent humans and sent enough missiles after him to make Skulker proud, and Danny was forced to shoot those down instead.
Considering they were still less than ten feet apart, shooting them down didn't really help him avoid the blasts, and with certain types of ecto-weaponry, going intangible only got you so far.
Namely, you still got hit.
Meaning he still got hit.
And the clone—
The clone was riding on the back of Valerie's sled as she hightailed it away, his arms wrapped around her waist.
He should've looked smug when he glanced back over his shoulder to Danny, but he just looked worried.
Great.
He'd probably been expecting backup that would pounce on Danny in two seconds if he didn't get out of here.
Oh well.
Valerie and the clone weren't out of sight, which meant he could chase them down.
Likely as not, that was what they were expecting anyway.