#pbbbttttt

Danny chews on his lip for a moment and then stands from his chair around the outdoor table, “I’m gonna go check it out.”

“Danny—“ Sam begins to protest.

“Relax guys, I’m just gonna pop my head in for a minute. I’ll be back before my ice cream melts.” Danny grins and ducks around the corner, out of sight of the rest of the ice cream shop’s patrons. One flash of light later and he’s in ghost mode and dropped into invisibility. He sours over the roof tops and follows the trail of rich folks to the convention center, dropping intangibly through the roof when he’s close enough. The air conditioning is cranked high and the place is chilly enough that Danny feels downright comfortable. He lingers in the air, invisible, watching the throng of people move about below him, before he swoops down for a closer look.

The people are dressed well but there’s something…off about them. Danny can’t quite put his finger on what it is but there’s a metallic taste in the air and the sense of things a lot bigger than he is crowding his senses. He flits away to search for a more open space where he can parse things better and rounds a corner into a mostly empty hall.

There is a scattering of people, clustered into groups of two or three, and far enough apart that they wouldn’t be able to pick up each other’s conversations. Danny hovers closer to the nearest group, still invisible, curiosity about that unsettling sensation growing.

There’s a man in a dark suit with a top hat and a polished black cane speaking in a low, growling voice to another man dressed in jeans and a lab coat who—Danny blinks and shakes his head. He can’t focus on the man’s face, can’t make out any defining features. His eyes refuse to stay and keep sliding away to something else. It had been hard to notice in the large crowd but now, with these individuals, he finds that he can’t really focus on any details about them. There are generic things like what clothes they’re wearing or how tall they are, but nothing defining like the structure of their face or the color of their eyes. Something is definitely not right here.

That’s when he feels eyes on him.

He jerks and looks down by the suit-wearing man’s feet. There is a young woman sitting on the floor, her back against the wall, legs criss-crossed and head titled ever so slightly to one side. Danny still can’t focus on her face but he knows, without a doubt, that she is looking at him. He checks and, no, he’s still invisible. But when he drifts to the left, she definitely turns her head to follow him. She’s watching him. He’s invisible and she’s watching him.

“Hay un espía invisible mirándonos.” She says and the other two instantly turn to face her. The man in the suit looks up, following his companion’s gaze, and Danny’s stomach drops because the man is looking right at him.

“¡Demencia! ¡Cosiguele!” The man in the suit snarls. Before Danny can blink the girl has launched herself off the floor in a whirl of bright colors and tackled him out of the air.

Danny struggles as he’s hauled backwards, trying to get a bead on his attacker. But she’s fast and lithe and moves like an eel through water, twisting out of his reach and slithering around him even as she drags him across the floor on his back. He doesn’t dare try and fire blasts off willy-nilly for fear of hitting an innocent or accidentally bringing the roof down on their heads.

He’s jostled over a threshold, a door slams, and the room is dark. His arms are yanked over his head, wrists pinched together. He prepares to fire an ecto-blast but yells in pain as someone—probably the girl—sits down hard on his arms, grinding his elbows into the floor. Florescent lights flare to life, momentarily blinding him as he bucks and kicks and struggles. There’s a sound like a nerf gun being fired and his ankles are bound with something so heavy it feels like a planet is strapped to his feet. He can’t phase through whatever it is and it makes his panic spike. He yells and struggles harder. Until something small and hard presses into his chest and, for whatever reason, makes him freeze.

Danny’s gaze travels up the silver end of the cane poking right into the middle of his DP symbol, up the polished black beam, up until he sees the black, gloved hand holding the cane in place.

The man is no longer keeping up his façade of pretending to be human.

His skin is dark grey and there’s and unnatural look to it, like something that doesn’t fit quite right in the dimensions of this universe. Only one of his eyes is visible, the other hidden behind a polished monocle, and it burns red with curious sort of anger. And his teeth…his teeth are dagger sharp and a pale, acidic green. Everything about him screams evil.

And for the first time in a very long time, Danny is afraid.

“Now, what have do we have here, hm?” It’s perfect English coming out of the creature’s mouth, not a hint of an accent. And he’s grinning, showing all of those horrible teeth, smug, confident, and utterly in control.

“An ectoplasmic entity of some kind, jefecito.” Danny’s head snaps away from the man in black to the man standing at his weighed down ankles. There’s…a paper bag over his head? Maybe it’s not paper because the goggles he’s wearing over them aren’t bending or tearing the material like it’s normal paper, “Though it doesn’t look like it’s the same as other ghostly creatures we’ve come across.” He peers closer at a device in his hands, the glint of his eyes through his goggles narrowed, “Hm, it appears to also be exhibiting mortal traits…odd…”

There’s a gun-like device dangling at the man’s (scientist’s?) side and from this angle, Danny can barely make out the thick, viscous substance clinging stubbornly to his feet. It shimmers like oil in the florescent lights.

“Señor Black Hat, puedo comerlo?” Says the girl presumably sitting on his arms. Danny doesn’t know exactly what she says but he recognizes the word “eat” and wonders just what the hell he’s stumbled in on.

“No, Demencia, I don’t think so.” The creature—Black Hat?—leans over Danny, his shadow blocking out the lights, his eye bright and glaring, “You’re a sneaky little brat, poking your nose where it doesn’t belong. But you’re strong. Stupid, but strong.”

“Who are you!? What are you doing here!?” Danny’s glad there’s bravado in his voice because there’s none in his hearts. Something about this terrifying being is filling him with an intensely cold and almost irrational fear that he wants nothing more than to run home and hide under his bed. This is a thing of nightmares and Danny knows, deep in his core, that this thing could erase him from existence before he could blink.

Black Hat cackles, a deep, throaty laugh that makes Danny’s head swim with images of snapping bones and slowly churning meat grinders.

“Ah, sir—“

“What, Flug?” Apparently Black Hat doesn’t like being interrupted while he’s gloating.

Flug shrinks back into his lab coat, “Ah, sir, sorry to interrupt, but I think that’s the local town hero. Danny Phantom.”

Black Hat grins and this time it’s predatory. He looks back down at Danny who has never felt more like a prized turkey ready for the oven, “A hero, eh? A child who thinks he has the power to save everyone? How cute.” He grinds the end of his cane into Danny’s chest, making the boy squirm, “If this were any other day, I might have let Dr. Flug here have some fun with you. But we’re here on business and at the graces of a potential client. Wouldn’t want to get on anyone’s bad side now, would we~” Black Hat removes his cane and steps back. At the same time, Demencia leaps off Danny’s arms and Flug dissolves the restraints with a shot from his gun. Danny is instantly in the air, fists clenched and teeth gritted. Ectoplasm swirls around his hands, blobs of energy gathering and dispersing as he struggles with himself.

On the floor, looking up at him without a trace of worry or fear, Black Hat says, “Run along home, little ghost boy, I’m sure there’s someone waiting for you.”

His grin and the tone of his voice make Danny feel sick. He rockets up through ceiling, zig-zagging through the sky and dropping back into the alley beside the ice cream shop. When he’s human and gravity is holding him down again, he almost collapses onto shaking legs. Taking several deep gulps of air and struggling to compose himself, Danny carefully makes his way back to where his friends are sitting. They notice him immediately and Sam half rises from her seat but Danny waves a hand at her as he flops into his. The ice cream in the bowl in front of him is mostly sugary blue soup by now.

“Dude, you okay?” Tucker asks, “You look like you’ve seen a—I mean, uh, you look…not good.”

“Um.” Danny says. The gears of his mind groan with ice from the cold fear still nestled in his chest, refusing to turn. He can’t tell them about those three in the convention center, they can’t know. Because Danny knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that it would get them killed.

“Danny?” Sam says softly.

“Oh, uh, it was…really freaky old rich people stuff.” Danny manages to push the words out, squashing the tremor that wants to sneak into his voice, “Like, really freaky. Gross freaky. Zero out of ten, would not recommend finding out what is happening in there.”

“Whoa, musta been bad if it left you lookin’ like that!” Tucker laughs. Sam looks doubtful but when Danny laments his melted ice cream, she scolds him for taking too long. And then gets him another one.

That night, when he can’t sleep, Danny uses his phone under the bedcovers to search the internet for any mention of Black Hat or this Dr. Flug. A page only half loads before his phone screen cracks on its own, starts leaking something sticky and dark, and dies.

He chucks it in the bin and tells his parents he lost another phone to a ghost attack.

He never tells anyone about that day and he never goes looking for Black Hat ever again.

-------

I admit, this one got away from me a bit and it ended up going in a direction that I really did not expect it to. Dang thing wrote itself. Ah well.

Not my best Villainous work but I’m not used to writing the Black Hat crew from an outside perspective. Anyway, this was fun to write even though it’s not what I initially wanted to do with it.