Orbits of Glass

[sqweakie]

 

Chapter Three
 

Starlight twinkled over the city. A sliver of the moon was low in the sky, the rain clouds from earlier abandoning the sky. If stargazing was in her plans she would have picked a perfect night. But her search wasn’t of the sky; it was the ground and buildings below her. She had told Danny that she was going to sleep; she just forgot to tell him she decided to patrol Amity before sleeping. ‘Insomnia sucks’ was Valerie’s primary thought while drifting in the faint moonlight.

Wind played with her loose hair and drew out a sigh. Her life was like a frickin’ soap opera. There were great moments and for a time life was good. But like any good soap, a plot twist occurred and her life became hell. Starting off early in life, her mother left. Then her and her dad moved away from her house in Pennsylvania. They moved all the way to Amity Park so he could start a new job. She left her friends and had to start out with nothing in Amity. It was hard, but she gained popularity and life was good again... until the next plot twist came.

‘This wasn’t the life I wanted.’ The thoughts came on their own. ‘This wasn’t what I planned.’ Before the accident at Axion she had been on top of the world. She was popular, rich, and her father gave her everything she wanted. When her dad was fired she was devastated (at the time). She lost everything she considered important. She fell farther than she thought she ever would on the social food chain. It was worse than when she moved to Amity in fifth grade. Then the package came. The gifts, the ghost hunting equipment, from Wisconsin gave her a new hope and purpose. She became a hunter, faceless and a red fury against all ghosts and she started to control her life again.

But things happened between her freshman year of high school and the present. Some things were good, some too awful to bring up for her light musings. It caused her to change again. The transformation from a cold hunter to the protector she was now wasn’t easy. Danny was the one person that had stayed with her during her reinvention after freshman year. In turn, she stayed with him as his life spiraled out of control. They grew closer than she ever thought they would, going from acquaintances at school to friends to something even closer.

At the same time, that eventful spring and summer before sophomore year, her hate relationship with Danny Phantom twisted into a positive. In the fall she also found out that her crush, Danny Fenton, was the infamous Ghost Boy she had hunted before. If the situation when she found out wasn’t so extreme she would have killed him. Instead, he ended up living with her and Dad on and off for the past year and a half.

Shaking her head she brought herself out of the past. Taking one last look at the stars and city streets below she decided to turn in for the night. She stretched and stood up on her glider. The two years since she started hunting changed her both mentally and physically. She was a little taller, a little curvier. During her patrol nights she abandoned the red suit for something a little more low-key. Now she wore an outfit of her own creation that could blend in with the normal citizens of Amity with a few small changes. The base was a tight T-shirt hidden by a Kevlar and Ecto-armored Vest. Over the vest, she usually wore a jacket reaching past her hips. Complimenting the trench coat style, she paired faded blue jeans and black boots.

She had cut her hair, the most drastic personal change. Her dark locks were curled and they brushed her shoulder, no longer reaching the small of her back when wet. She did without a full mask while hunting ghosts. Her original mask never hid her human identity from the ghosts she hunted. Now she wore a half mask that covered her nose and mouth with the advantage of filtering out smoke and some of the special attacks ghosts sometimes used. To protect her eyes, her red glasses formed around her face like safety goggles. It was a pitiful disguise but no one said that the living population of Amity Park was the brightest or the most observant. No one had figured it out and she was not going to announce that she was one of the mysterious ghost hunters that watched over the city.

The roar of her glider drowned out the thoughts as she pulled higher into the air. She angled herself to the west and traveled above the city to her dismal apartment. It was quiet, sometime after two-thirty when she crawled back through her window and fell asleep…

oOo

Faint light streamed past her curtains. Somewhere in the apartment a radio was playing and the smell of coffee gently teased her out of sleep. It was one of her few weaknesses. Coffee was her lifeblood, her reason for getting up in the morning and her dad knew it was the safest way to wake her up.

Eyes were not even open as she made her way to the tiny kitchen. At the table sat Dad, Danny, and a fresh pot of coffee. Her mug sat out at her spot and cereal was lined up on the counter. She grabbed a random box and sat down to take her mug. The first sips were bitter but as she woke up the taste became better. With now opened eyes, she looked around and caught the time on the microwave.

“You got me up before seven!” 6:37 was the time she read.

“Danny was up when I got home,” her Dad started to explain, “and since he can’t go to bed until you are up we decided to wake you up.”

“Evil Creeps,” she growled at her cereal. Danny laughed and it was a wonderful sound. God knew he had few reasons to be happy. She hid a giggle behind her coffee cup and watched him. The other teen threw her a mischievous smile and started to tell a crazy story that involved Tucker, shaving cream, and the girls’ volleyball team.

Val relaxed back and enjoyed the almost normalcy in the kitchen. Danny finished his story to roaring laughter from her father. She laughed too and Danny flashed a huge smile at her. Warmth crawled through her belly and everything was right in the world at that moment.

“How is our guest doing?” she asked with a smile. Danny’s grin was very infectious.

“He woke up around four. He’s a little confused, really sore but alive. He fell back asleep just before Dad came home.” Danny didn’t look at the elder Grey so he missed the smile that appeared on her father’s face. Danny was the son Damian never had and it always made him a little happier to be called ‘Dad’.

“So why do you kids think that he is a superhero,” her father asked over the normal noises of breakfast.

“Just a bunch of little things weren’t quite right when we found him. He was beat up and had those strange clothes,” Dan answered.

“And he hotwired a motorcycle,” she added. Danny looked at her with surprise.

“He did? I didn’t think you could do that.”

“Well, this kid did,” she said before digging into her cereal.

Her dad just snorted and poured a new cup of coffee for himself. She assumed that Danny had already explained what had happened. She also noticed the bag they put Robin’s clothes in was open and a piece of green spandex flopped over the side.

Things were quiet for a couple of minutes before she blurted out the question that had been bugging her since last night.

“Why aren’t superheroes allowed into Amity Park?” Both males jumped and looked over at her outburst.

“I forgot that you weren’t born here,” Danny said as he swirled his spoon thru his fruit loops. “I used to hear the story all the time from my Grampa. About sixty years ago Amity Park was like any semi-major city in the US. We had big industry and a decent economy which attracted some regular villains and then super villains.”

“Now, regular villains can be taken care of by the cops but the super villains needed someone more powerful to control them. Enter the superheroes. For a couple of years they kept order. The only problem was that they weren’t that good, neither were the villains. It wasn’t that they were evil, they just weren’t able to control their powers.”

“In other words, they sucked,” Val interrupted.

“Yeah. The city officials were getting frustrated with the whole lot of them. A lot of property was damaged and it wasn’t just the bad guys’ fault. The last straw was in 1959. A fight between the ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ got out of hand. One of the warehouses, where Axion Labs is now, caught on fire. They lost control of the blaze and it burned down about four city blocks. People died…” he trailed off for a minute before starting again.

“Well, the ones blamed were those with super powers.” Bitterness crept into his voice. “Both the villains and the heroes were at fault. The entire city blamed them equally. A meeting was called to decide what to do. A large crowd gathered by the front steps of city hall. It was raining that day and the space was filled with trench coats and black umbrellas. Every hero and villain of Amity Park stood as a group in the center. They were a bright and colorful eyesore in a sea of tan and black.”

The spoon swirled faster and Danny focused on something neither she nor her dad could see.

“Once everyone was assembled the mayor began to speak from the top of the steps. There were too many people to fit inside. He spoke of the deaths and the destruction and everything that had happened. Then he announced that the city was done. Amity would no longer play the game of good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. It was proclaimed that neither superhero nor supervillain would be allowed within ten miles of the city limits. The supers had a week to pack up and leave. Anyone that had stayed would be arrested and be sent to Arkham Asylum.

“The decree was met with shock and then skepticism in the Supers’ world. It wasn’t taken seriously until they arrested Superman.”

It was at this point that her dad choked and spit out his coffee. She dropped her spoon in surprise. Danny stopped his story and let the two of them recover. Up until now her dad was quiet but after cleaning up the wasted coffee he asked the question that she had too.

“How do you arrest Superman?”

“Very carefully and with lots of people,” Danny said with a grin.

“I heard the stories at work but no one knew which Super they actually arrested.” Her dad stared off into space before he asked how Danny knew that.

“My Grampa was a cop. He spends most of his time in Florida playing golf now. He used to tell me that story all the time when he still lived up here. Grampa was a liaison officer with the Justice League in the fifties. APPD pulled him and reassigned him to the task force that took care of the Supers.”

“So why haven’t they been allowed back? I mean, it’s been years.” Valerie asked curiously.

“They were useless and caused more problems than helping anyone. The ‘heroes’ were just in it for the fame. Once a ‘hero’ got good enough to actually help, they moved to a bigger city. The normal people just living here and walking the streets got hurt worse than any Hero did. Amity survived just fine without them.”

“Until the ghosts came,” Dad muttered to his coffee.

“We’re doing just fine,” Danny retorted. “…and no humans have died yet.”

‘Except you,’´ Val silently added. Danny looked down and concentrated on finishing his cereal, deaf to her dad’s following questions and comments. All of a sudden he set down his spoon and stood up.

“Val, I’m stealing your bed for a couple of hours.” He gently kissed her forehead and started to leave the kitchen.

“Dan, don’t forget to call your parents,” her dad said just as he was leaving the room.

The halfa stopped dead in the doorway. He never turned but his posture was suddenly soldier-straight and cold.

“Later Damian,” was all he said.

“At least let them know how long you’re staying here,” her dad advised.

Shoulders were still stiff as he left the room without a word. His good mood had evaporated in a heartbeat. Somewhere a door slammed and he didn’t come back. Dad looked at her sadly before leaving himself. She threw the dirty dishes in the sink without a word. Then she made her way to the bathroom for a desperately needed shower.

No one noticed the dark-haired, alleged hero was awake and that he had heard every word.

Chaper Four