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Joy opened her eyes. The last thing she knew, Anger, Fear and Disgust were bickering about how Danny got caught cheating on the CAT. Disgust blamed Anger for placing the idea in the first place, and he replied by pointing out she's the one who manned the console throughout their plan, all the while Fear was out of control on the console. Joy was honestly too busy trying to distract Sadness from being crushed under the weight of Danny's shattered dreams to notice.
Maybe she should have noticed. Where was she? Everything here is dark and empty, except for all the memories...Fading...
Joy was in the Memory Dump. Where things go to die. And unlike Danny's many, many enemies, they don't come back, ever. Joy shook her head with determination - there has to be a way back! She just has to think! What would Tucker do? Sam? She has to come back to Headquarters for them! For Danny's mental health, for Jazz!
Sadness just stood in front of the blown-open Headquarter overview, tears laying motionless on her chubby cheeks, as Fear hyperventilated to her left. Family Island and Friendship Island were completely demolished by the blast, Astrophysics Island collapsed with Lancer's call to Mom. Even Independent Island to the far left, which replaced Sweetie Island somewhere around Danny's ninth birthday, had chunks of it blown up, most prominently its bridge. Only Phantom Island, the newest and smallest island he had, remained. And that one was too far to the right of the vaguely Joy-shaped hole in their window.
Joy is in the Memory Dump and Sadness is all alone. Joy is in the Memory Dump and Sadness is all alone.
Fear finally processed enough of the situation: Everyone who's ever known how to lead them through life was blown to bits, Joy is deader than a full ghost, and they're all alone in the world! "No, no, NO!!!" Fear started screaming and running around Headquarters, unable to stop. He kept tripping on the Core memories strewn about - By the Ancients, were the Core Memories blown away by the explosion?! Sadness realized the Core Repository has been torn off the ground and parts of it shattered, as if it was made of glass. Is Danny's entire personality doomed?!
Anger and Disgust stared at the hole in their overview. Breaking the moment of silence, Anger lashed out: "Now look what you've done!"
"Me?! Fear was on the controls!" Disgust retorted.
"Fear's an idiot, you're the one who got everyone we ever loved killed when you got us caught!" Anger replied, pointing his tubby finger at her with every pronoun.
"Oh, I'm the one who got us caught?" Disgust snarked. "Not the idiot who planted this idea in Danny's brain in the first place, then ride or died it to hell and back, and left me and Joy to keep Sadness and Fear from getting us into even more trouble?!"
"Yeah, you! You were in control when it exploded! You were in control when we took that damned CAT!" Anger roared.
"Right. What was I supposed to do, doofus?" Disgust rolled her eyes. "Run in circles like Fear, crumble like Sadness or cuss out Lancer like you almost tried to do? Joy was the only one holding it together outside of ghost fights, and she sucked at cheating! And now she's deader than dead!"
"Fenton?" A cop asked across the monitor. "Daniel Fenton?"
"You think you can handle it better? Be my guest." Disgust huffed and crossed her arms, walking away from the console.
"Hey! Don't just leave me here, you little shit!" Anger called her back. "Fine! You want me to handle this, Disgust? I'M HANDLING THIS!!!" He moved in to pull the console's levers, but nothing was happening. He mashed the console, and nothing happened, either. Looking down, Anger realized the console was blackened out. "I can't do jack shit here!" Anger screeched. "Come back here and fix your mess!!!"
Disgust scoffed, rolled her eyes and strutted over to the console, then tried to tap down a button, only to realize it didn't budge. "Great. Neither can I. I think we killed Danny the rest of the way."
"D-Danny's dead?!" Fear stuttered out, then rushed to the console, mashing its unresponsive buttons. "No, no NO!!!" He screamed again. "Danny's dead, DANNY'S DEAD!!!"
Disgust cringed. "This is so embarrassing. If Danny's dead, why's this cop asking us like he's expecting an answer?"
"Why can't we answer him???" Fear cried. "We tried everything!!!"
"Not everything!" Anger seethed. "Sadness, get your emo ass over here right fucking now!"
"I...I can't move without Joy." Sadness replied numbly.
"Well tough shit, princess, 'cause I'm moving you!" And true to his word, Anger shoved Sadness across Headquarters, blowing a raspberry to Disgust on his way, then turned her around to face the monitor and console. Hesitant, she pressed a button, and, miraculously, the console reacted, turning just a hue more saturated, the button moving downwards just enough to register.
"Huh?" Danny replied blankly.
The cop looked at him in pity. "Are you Daniel Fenton?"
Sadness pressed another button, brightening the console by another hue.
"Yeah...Yeah I am." Danny answered, his broken voice barely above a whisper.
"It's working!" Anger cheered. The console blackened and deadened right back as soon as Sadness lifted the button.
"Survivor's the Fentons' kid." The cop reported on his radio. "He seems to be in shock."
"So that's why the console crapped out." Disgust commented. "Good to know."
Another cop arrived in front of the monitor, placing a blanket over Danny's upper back. "It's going to be okay, kid." He said.
As the first cop led Danny into the front of the police car and drove off, all four of his emotions knew things will never be okay, ever again.
The nurse didn't seem find anything out the usual about him, aside from his low body temperature. "That might explain his unresponsiveness." She told the cop, who still accompanied him. "He's not going to stay alive for long with this level of hypothermia. Whatever happened, it must have severely damaged his homeostasis."
The cop shook his head. "We found human remains across the scene, Officer Edmonds sent them to the lab. Whatever happened, the poor kid saw it with his own eyes. You think your body can, like, self-destruct or something?"
The nurse glared at him and gave Danny a compassionate look.
"Oh, if only they knew." Disgust mused.
"I wish it was that easy." Sadness mumbled out.
"They're talking about us as if we don't exist!" Anger roared, futilely slamming his fist on the console. "Sadness, make it work again!"
"I don't think I can." She sobbed quietly. "I barely got it to react last time."
Disgust rolled her eyes. "Well, you'll never get it to work with that attitude."
"And you've got a better idea?" Anger snipped back. Disgust scoffed.
"Guys, do you think they know?" Fear finally asked.
"No." Disgust groaned out. "They think the explosion messed up our homosomething and we're freezing to death."
"Danny?" The nurse asked.
Fear started biting his nails, completely ignoring the monitor. "Doesn't that mean we'll be stuck in a heat bed or something? Are they gonna try and fry us back to life?! I don't wanna die again!"
"Nobody's gonna die, doofus." Disgust groaned. "Though we'd probably be better off if we did."
"We'd definitely be better off if we did." Sadness concurred.
"Would you two stop it?!" Anger shouted. "We're not gonna die! We're gonna figure out how to make this goddamn console work again, and then we'll turn into Phantom and get the fuck outta here!"
"And where?!" Disgust snapped at him, counting her manicured fingers. "Sam and Tucker are dead, our family's dead, hell, even Mr. Lancer's dead! The only people we know are the kids at school, who all think we're freaks!"
"There's the other teachers..." Fear pivoted.
"Nope." Disgust vetoed. "We're not gonna live with one of our teachers. That's too pathetic."
She sighed. "It was worth a shot. Can you or your partner figure out the boy's next of kin?"
"Oh no, are they sending us to some bumblefrick nowhere with dad's ghost-hunting cousins or something?!" Fear whimpered.
"Or they could be hauling us off on Aunt Alicia." Disgust pointed out. "She was Mom's sister, after all. She's got a house and all, even if it is in some woods in the middle of nowhere."
"We can't go home again, can we?" Sadness pointed out, louder than she's been throughout the aftermath.
"What do we even have there?!" Anger hissed. "Just photos of the people we got killed, mom and dad's stupid ghost-hunting shit that killed us all and a whole lot of shattered dreams." And with that mention, Sadness started bawling.
"Great job, Anger. Now look what you've done." Disgust remarked. "You emotionally destroyed the only one of us who might know how to work this broken console!"
Fear let out a distressed whine. "Does that mean we'll be stuck inside our heads forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever--" He was cut off by a cracking sound.
The monitor displayed a familiar scepter as the nurse and cop both ran away screaming. "Beware! I am the Box Ghost!"'
"We're doomed!" Fear cried. "We can't fight, we can't run, all we can do is lie down and not-die!!!"
"Oh, for the love of..." Anger muttered, then noticed his palms got a reaction from the console. Sporting a massive, menacing grin, he tightly grasped both levels. "You want a fight boxy?! LET'S FIGHT!!!" He screamed as his head burnt a white flame, his button-down-tie attire was swapped for the Phantom jumpsuit and his form became an flaming, almost orange, glowing red, rather than the deep, fuzzy one he usually held. Disgust tsked as her own green dress was swapped for the jumpsuit, her hair turning white and floating mermaid style as she glowed a warmer, ectoplasmic green.
"A ghost fight?" Fear said, his bowtied sweater also swapped for the jumpsuit, and his single hair now forming a white halo, contrasted against his now-pastel-pink skin. "In this state? What if the console stops working?"
"Then we finally die." Sadness remarked, her turtleneck swapped for Danny's original astronaut-based jumpsuit, her hair in a similar state to Disgust's though her glasses were nowhere to be found, instead having a glowing Lichtenburg scar run from her palm up to her eyes and down to both her feet.
"Shut up!" Anger commanded, his echoing baritone reminiscent of Plasmius's. Headquarters also changed as Danny turned ghost - the periwinkle walls were now a pumpkin orange, and the warm, beige console was supposed to be an icy blue. Now, it was more like a dark denim. "I'll make this fucker pay! It's his fault!"
Danny flew towards The Box Ghost. "You did this to them! You killed them all!"
"The Box Ghost knows not of what you speak, child!" He replied. "The Box Ghost only seeks the finest, most desirable, perfectly square containers!
"It was your attack at the Nasty Burger that made everything blow up!" Danny shrieked, and a power came out of his mouth. A power that blew The Box Ghost far, far away.
"Holy shit, guys! We got a new power!" Anger cheered.
"No we don't, we've got no idea how it works." Disgust shot him down.
"Or if it'll ever be controlled." Fear added.
"I don't give a shit! We got a new power, end of story! Now, lets get the fuck out of this dump!" Anger ordered, and mashed a button.
Danny narrowed the monitor's view, then turned intangible, flying out of the hospital and up the sky.
"What if we run into someone dangerous? Like Skulker, or Valerie?" Fear bit his nails again.
"Would you shut the fuck up already?!" Anger spat. "We're going home and figuring out this new power. There's no one left to bother us, anyway."
"Yeah." Sadness added. "Because we're all alone in the world." Anger growled at her.
Joy found herself transformed into Danny Phantom. "We're going ghost. We're going ghost!" She cheered. "I can float like this, fly all the way back to Headquarters! Figure out what's going on!" She yelled, jetting her way up the Memory Dump. Just as she reached Long-Term Memory, she found herself stripped back to her yellow, fuzzy form, complete with a froggy-yellow sundress, and fell back in.
As soon as she hit the ground, she got lugged out on her head by an Angry memory.
Danny flew towards The Box Ghost. "You did this to them! You killed them all!"
"The Box Ghost knows not of what you speak, child!" He replied. "The Box Ghost only seeks the finest, most desirable, perfectly square containers!"
"It was your attack at the Nasty Burger that made everything blow up!" Danny shrieked, and the memory ended.
"Everyone...Died, at the Nasty Burger?" Joy concluded numbly. "I got blown down here by that?"
And as her light intensified, she resigned to her fate, picking up one of the old memories - Sam, Danny and Tucker, all in the Fifth Grade, once Danny built an accurate scaled-down rocket to display to the whole class. Tucker wanted to add a mechanical component but couldn't get his hands on it, and Sam 'miraculously' found it the day after. She picked up another memory, seven-year-old Danny stargazing with his mother, his second incisors both missing as he traced Ursa Minor. And another memory, Dad giving him a piggyback ride at four years old. And another memory, Jazz consoling him up after another hellish day at middle school.
"That's how I'll remember you all, with what time I have left." Joy solemnly promised to herself as she picked up one memory after another, sobbing. "The good, happy times we did have. Gone, but not forgotten."
Danny arrived at the FentonWorks lab, his ghostly form eluding him as soon as he arrived.
The console reverted to pitch black, refusing to budge to Anger's demands. He roared as he was stripped back to his usual, fuzzy form, pacing around Headquarters as he screamed: "Fuck! Shit! Fucking shitfuck goddamn Ancient-cursed fucking bullshit!!!"
Disgust scoffed. "Are you done?" She pointed at the monitor, being held perfectly still as Danny stood in the middle of the lab, unmoving. "We need to figure out how to get our boy moving again!"
"What if we're stuck like this forever?" Fear voiced.
"What if you shove a memory in your mouth?" Disgust snipped back.
To their surprise, rage, and terror, a familiar entity appeared on the monitor.
"Daniel." Vlad Plasmius acknowledged, then detransformed himself.
"What do you want now, Plasmius?" Anger asked, smacking a button that remained defiantly firm. "You finally have what you want, my dad's dead."
"Dad's dead!!!" Sadness blubbered out the echo, the console reacting to her elbow as she buried her face in her palms.
"They're all dead." Danny acknowledged softly.
"I've just heard, my boy." Vlad stated sympathetically, placing a hand on his shoulder.
"Get your evil hand off of me, you crazy old fuck!" Anger demanded, slamming a button.
Disgust instinctively moved to counter with her own tap of a button. "We can't use real swear words with him. He's a grownup, remember?"
"Grownup my ass! He's our archnemesis!" Anger blew her off. "Why?! Won't!? This goddamn FUCKING USELESS PIECE OF SHIT OF A CONSOLE WORK?!?!?!" His head burnt with hot orange flames.
"Cause it only responds to Sadness, duh?" Disgust pointed out expressively. Sadness, on her own part, was still crying an oceanful of sorrow.
"Your father named me your guardian, in case something was to happen to him." Vlad explained. "Come, let us pack your thing, son."
"My dad's dead." Danny replied. "It should've been me."
Sadness's eyes looked absolutely bloodshot, and not only were her cheeks adorned by twin rivers, but her nose leaked a translucent fountain of tears on its own. She didn't seem to notice how she'd been clicking the console, as if in a trance.
"Suuure." Disgust snipped. "And there's no possible way you arranged to be our legal guardian after you'd have bopped off dad."
"No, please, my boy, don't say that." Vlad pleaded. "You're alive, in a manner of speaking, and that's what's important. I know...knew Jack and Maddie well enough to have known they'd have wanted you to be happy."
"Tough crap, old man, we can't be happy without joy." Disgust commented.
Sadness nodded and dabbed the console.
"I can't be happy without them." Danny replied somberly.
"I know that's how it feels right now, little badger, but that day will come." Vlad insisted. "Come, I'll start packing. Let me know if there's something you'd rather leave behind."
He led Danny towards the office chair and carefully placed him on it, then went ghost and duplicated, getting to work.
"I can't believe we're letting the fruitloop steal all of Mom and Dad's research!" Anger protested. "Mom would have hated every second of this bullshit!"
"Dad would have been overjoyed." Sadness remarked, smiling slightly. "He always wanted to leave a legacy behind him. Now Vlad will keep his works alive."
"Vlad's gonna rename everything Fenton after himself." Disgust pointed out.
"Dad wouldn't have minded." Sadness stated in uncharacteristic bliss. "He would have just been happy to see his best friend becoming a real ghost-hunter." She started sobbing the last words out, then devolve into a bawl.
Vlad's duplicates dematerialized, and the man reverted to human form. "I'm going to pack the rest of their personal effects. Would you like to join me, Daniel? Perhaps stay in your room for a bit longer?"
Anger scoffed. "Is he gonna steal Dad's fridge?"
"Don't be absurd, he said 'personal effects'." Disgust shot back. "He's probably gonna steal all of mom's stuff and maybe shove Bearbert into a box or something."
"This is our last chance to see our room." Sadness pointed out, dabbing a button.
"I'll hang around my room." Danny replied, mechanically rising from the chair and walking towards the stairs.
"So, what? We're just gonna wallow in memories until Plasmius is done robbing us blind?!" Anger protested.
"That's so pathetic." Disgust concurred.
"We can't just hang around here!" Fear vetoed, frantically fighting for a reaction from the console. "What if he double-kills us?!"
"I wish he would." Sadness remarked.
"He's not gonna kill us, you two numbskulls. He's Obsessed with having Mom and wants us to be his kid, remember?" Disgust pointed out. "Seriously, stop being so pathetic."
"We're not his son!" Anger roared.
"We don't have anyone left!" Fear argued back. "Vlad's all we have."
"He's the only one who understands us, anyway." Sadness remarked.
"Who died and made you two losers Danny Phantom Central, anyway?" Disgust protested this newfound coalition.
Anger crossed his arms and smiled. "Just what I was about to ask."
Sadness gave Disgust a flat look more becoming of the well-groomed green emotion herself, and began counting. "Mom, Dad, Jazz, Sam, Tucker, our hopes and dreams, our entire future, not to mention Joy."
"Fine. You win." Disgust raised her hands up in concession. "Have fun manning this barely-functional crapshow of a console. I'm out."
"Where do you think you're gonna go?" Anger protested.
Disgust crossed her arms, rolled her eyes and began counting. "Oh, I dunno, read through the manuals so we can figure out what the hell is going on with Danny's console right now, and how to fix it? Check if someone deeper in his mind has any idea how to rebuild the Core Memory Repository, so we can at least save Independent and Phantom Islands, and get to work finding new Core Memories? literally anything other than catastrophizing and passive suicide?"
"Fine! I'm gonna go round some of 'em builder thingies up!" Anger suggested and stomped away, leaving Fear and Sadness alone in Headquarters.
"So here's everything I gathered about what Vlad might do with us." Fear began. "Molecular dissection, Ghost Core experiments, dressing us up in a Heidi costume.."
"Treating us like we chose to live with him, trying to rebuild Astronomy Island for us." Sadness voiced her own suggestions. "Trying to fill the emptiness in his life."
"So, any idea where we are now, oh great commander?" Disgust snipped.
"Why do you keep asking me that?!" Anger snapped.
"Because for the last three days, you keep insisting you know exactly how all this crap works!" Disgust snapped back.
Anger rolled his eyes. "Well, do you know where we are, princess?!"
"Why are you asking me when you got us lost?!" Disgust defended. "Let's go into long-term memory. Someone must know something about the Console there!" She lowered and gruffed her voice mockingly.
"What was your idea?" Anger retorted. "Scream or make a mess until one of the workers notice us?!"
"Yeah, well at least they know their way around this dump!" Disgust roared. "All you know is how to screw us over!"
"I got the console working through something other than little miss gloom-and-doom's mental breakdown!" Anger matched and surpassed her tone. "You've done nothing but backseat drive ever since the Nasty Burger!!!"
Disgust scoffed, her tone starting level and sarcastic before bursting."I'm awfully sorry the console doesn't react to THE ONLY ONE OF US WITH HER HEAD SCREWED ON STRAIGHT!!!!"
"You ever thought there's a reason the console doesn't react to you, dumbass?!" Anger snipped back.
"Cause Danny's completely wrecked. He's not thinking straight, and we're here to fix that." Disgust summarized.
"Good job fixing that." Anger remarked snidely.
"You know what?! Good luck fixing this half-a-mind all on your own, when I'm down at the Memory Dump! I bet Joy's in a better state to help me than you are!"
"Fine!"
"Fine!"
Anger and disgust kept screaming "fine" at each other for several hours, until Anger, his fire spent, relented. "You're not gonna do it, are you?"
"No." She confessed.
"We're doomed anyway."
"No, we're not." Disgust steeled her gaze. "Now shut up and let me handle this, for a chance."
"Sure." Anger snarked. "Let's see how long that lasts."
"So, in conclusion, the best case scenario is--"
"Daniel, your porridge is growing cold."
Sadness dabbed a button, prompting Danny to shove spoonful into his mouth. "Best case scenario?" She got them back on track.
Fear cleared his throat. "He sends us to a boarding school, where we could be ridiculed for being that weird orphan kid and people might find out we're a ghost."
"Or we could be both literally and metaphorically a ghost, and no one will care about us." Sadness lamented, then pressed a button to swallow the porridge. It tasted okay, she guessed, but it didn't taste like Mom's.
"It's different from Mom's." Danny thought aloud
"I know, dear boy. I wish I could have made it the way you liked."
Fear rushed to man the console, only registering in retrospect that it reacted to him.
"It's fine. Just...different." Danny corrected.
"Okay, so that's happening. Nice to know I can mess us up worse than Disgust and Anger did, combined." He snarked shakily.
"You had more scenarios?" Sadness suggested.
"Oh yes, worst case scenario, he finds a way to force us to duplicate and dissects and experiments on us, not even bothering to shut down the duplicate hivemind, and we'll die a long, agonizing second death one by one." Fear shivered.
"At least then we'll be with everyone else again." Sadness stated blissfully.
"Ah, but there is one more:" Fear pulled up a sheet of paper. "He uses a mind-control device like Freakshow's, and brainwashes us to be his son."
"At least then we won't have to suffer anymore." Sadness remarked.
"So, in conclusion, we are in for a very, very bad time!!!" Fear shrieked.
"Daniel, I know you're grieving. I am, too. But please, I'm begging you, let me help you. Tell me what you need, how to bury this hatchet."
"No scenario I got prepared me for this!" Fear exclaimed, screaming and running around Headquarters.
Sadness pressed the button.
Danny sighed and mumbled out. "I don't think you can. I don't think anyone can. Nothing can bring them back."
"We can't live like this forever, Daniel, they wouldn't want us to live like this." Vlad pleaded.
"I know." Danny nodded. "But I don't know how."
"Vlad's crying. I never saw him cry." Fear pointed out, stunned.
"He's devastated, too." Sadness smpathized. "He loved Mom, and I think, deep down, he cared about Dad. And now they're gone forever."
"So if we're all he has left, that rules out most of the scenarios." Fear started going around Headquarters, blasting one sheet of paper after another with a ghost-ray. "Boarding school, experimentation, leaving us out in the woods, kicking us out, sending us to Aunt Alicia..."
"It could be worse." Sadness shrugged.
"You're back!" Fear cheered as he began his report. "We thought you fell into the Memory Dump in the past two months! Danny's mind's been collapsing! Without anything to plug the Core Memories, Independent Island crashed down and we've barely managed to lodge The Accident into what's left of the Repository, so it's the only one that didn't get sucked away with the rest of them!"
"Well, he has one functional island." Disgust shrugged. "Could be worse."
"Worse?!" Anger roared. "You jammed it into the Repository's leg, it's all scratched up! I bet it'll shatter if I so much as touch it!"
"You're turning it red." Sadness pointed out, gesturing to the purple-blue-yellow gradient memory memory now glowing a deep, angry red from being in his vicinity.
"Wait, that's it!" Anger exclaimed, a massive grin on his stocky face.
"What are you doing, loony?!" Disgust rushed to push him away from the Repository's remnant. "You're corrupting Danny's last standing Personality Island!"
"You're gonna make it so much worse!" Fear seconded and joined the pushing."
"You idiots!" Anger shoved the two back down. "I can fix this! What if Phantom Island becomes the new Family Island?!"
"Uh, I'm not following, doofus." Disgust crossed her arms.
"There's no bringing Family Island back." Sadness lamented.
Anger marched to the Console. "Family Island was the foundation of Danny's personality for the last 14 years, right Sadness?" He turned to see Sadness nodding numbly. "Spawned from that Core Memory?"
"Oh!" Fear realized. "And ghosts are formed by the moment of their sudden, violent death--"
"Which for Danny, would be The Accident!" Disgust realized. "So, if Danny becomes a full ghost, Phantom Island created a new Repository, new emotions spawn again - maybe even a new Joy, and we get a functional Console again!"
"Are ghosts even capable of feeling joy?" Sadness lamented.
Disgust and Anger both shushed her.
Anger pulled out a lightbulb. "We're in this mess because we're only half-ghost! Once we get rid of the human half, we're free from mortality, from messy human emotions, and can find ghostly closure or whatever! It's a genius fix!"
"You ruined Danny's life last time you plugged that in." Fear pointed out shakily. "Are you sure it's a good idea?"
"No." Sadness answered, earning a blazing gaze from Anger.
"Not really, but it doesn't look like we've got a choice." Disgust shrugged.
"It's the best idea!" Anger insisted. "Now get out of my face and let me plug it in!"
Fear and Disgust relented, while Sadness was merely pushed aside. As he went in to plug the new lamp, the old one shattered into pieces.
"Handy." He remarked, then moved in to pull the levers.
Disgust body-blocked him. "Hold on. Are you sure just going full Phantom on the fruitloop's butt will get him to free us?"
"Any other way that this console works?"
Disgust rolled her eyes and tapped a button, turning the console green for the first time in nearly nine weeks.
Danny got up and transformed into Phantom, then floated to Vlad's master bedroom.
Disgust's jumpsuit now sported a stylish black V shape at the center, around the emblem, while the neck, arms and waist all turned white to color-block the bottom, and the gloves blackened. "I'll handle the cheesehead."
"Vlad, get up." He commanded.
Vlad coughed himself awake, then bolted up, transforming. "Daniel?!"
"I know how to get the frick over myself. But I need a seasoned ghost scientist to do it."
Anger, his own jumpsuit now adorned with a cape, not unlike the one the dutiful half of Joy sported during their split weekend, which she matched with a bedsheet tied to Hero-Danny's neck, manned the console. He gave a side-eye to Disgust, who held the cussword-soften button throughout, and she used that opening to explain their plan, matter-of-factly, to Vlad.
"Daniel, you need to understand. What you ask, it's been tried before, and it always backfired." Vlad warned. "I've never read about a ghost who was torn from its body and remained sane."
Danny rolled his eyes. "Sanity's moot. You're a crazed-up fruitloop and I'm literally asking you to kill me the rest of the way."
"Reasonable, then." Vlad tried to hide how he was gritting his teeth. "These ghosts are no less powerful than we are, but are explicitly, terrifyingly malevolent. Without our human minds to regulate us--"
"My 'human mind's done everything but regulate me!" Danny snapped. "I feel like shh-crud, I can't do ja-aa-anything without spacing out, I can't stop thinking about them for a second, I have nightmares I don't even wake up from, and the list goes on! You know any full ghost that deals with this bull-with this sort of mess?!"
Anger caught his breath after jerking the lever up and down and mashing every button, all the while Disgust frantically pushed the counter for the not-safe-for-grownups cusswords to intercept him.
Vlad sighed. "well, none of these ghosts asked to be torn from their bodies, so it's a first."
"Yeah, well I haven't heard of anyone staying alive as a ghost before us two, so who cares." Danny snipped back.
"We are far from the first, Daniel." Vlad pointed out. "I won't end your life, however, only free your ghost from its burdens. Humans can adapt more easily than us. And from what your parents indicated, you were once quite an adaptable human boy."
"Wait, so he's saying the human Danny might get Joy back?" Disgust lamented.
Fear looked at the Accident Core Memory, painted in the colors of the emotions doomed for an afterlife as Phantom. "Oh, shoot."
Fear's tried everything. Pliers, a crowbar. a 10-lbs hammer...
"It won't budge!" He cried.
"Well, you wanna switch places?!" Disgust retorted as she tried to hold back Anger.
"You selfish assholes!" Anger screamed. "This isn't about which one of us ends up in which Danny, it's about Danny, or the Dannys, being happy!"
"This isn't right." Sadness lamented. "None of this is right."
"Nothing's right anymore, Sadness, now get over it and help me stop it from getting wronger!" Disgust shot back.
"Are you ready, Daniel?" Vlad asked shakily.
None of them could afford to respond to the console.
"I hope that's just the sedatives taking effect..." Vlad sighed to himself, and Sadness suddenly realized he had no lines on his face.
Fear, Anger and Sadness gripped the console, bracing themselves, while Disgust made her own attempt to tweeze out the lightbulb.
And so it began.
Headquarters turned a bloody red, its lighting an angry orange. Everything shook. The Accident's Core Memory sunk deeper into its jagged receptable, and as it shattered, the Repository regrew into a new one, with the silhouette of Danny Fenton entering his parents' portal engraved on it.
"Well, that's one problem solved." Disgust remarked as Anger preened. "Only 99 more to solve."
"We'll get to them, one by one." Anger replied. "Now that I'm in charge, and these two losers got left in the other Danny, we can get this show back up again!"
"Wait..." Disgust looked around, puzzled. "Are we Danny, or Phantom?"
Anger locked wide eyes with her, then turned back to the monitor. Vlad was holding him up, the altered Fenton Ghost Gauntlets jammed deep into his skin. Around his Core. Without any hesitation, any coherent thought, Anger, now wearing both the cape he had in Phantom form before, as well as Disgust's stylish redesign, let his white flame explode several feet-looking distances upwards.
Phantom growled and shoved Vlad off of him. Before the still-embodied ghost could react, Phantom grabbed the Gauntlets and tore Plasmius out as well, absorbing him.
"Anger, what did you do?!" Disgust demanded. "Did you just make us eat Plasmius?!"
And soon enough, Headquarters shook again, this time adding two emotions into the mix: Fear, and Joy.
Anger crossed his arms in pride. "See, told you I'll get us Joy back!"
"So, first time losing me, huh?" Joy greeted them. This Joy was different, and not only because he was a guy. He was less energetic, more like the version Anger recalled from the go-with-the-flow version of Joy that got split into chill-Danny. "Yeah, I'm guessing one of you'll take the wheel while I sit back and watch popcorn."
"Fine by me." Anger shrugged. "Now, as for you..."
Anger picked up the lankier, shakier and fuzzier Fear, who now had multiple hairs sticking out of his head as if permanently electrocuted, and shoved him out of the Joy-shaped crater in the Overlook window. "Have fun in the Memory Dump!"
"Good job, dumbass." Disgust sniped. "Now we got even less people manning the Console."
"We're a ghost, you moron." Anger shot back. "We can handle it with one emotion - me, with no problem! You and Chillax here are just around to look pretty."
"Right. Like I'll leave the entire console to your moronic ass."
"I still got us out of that shitshow." Anger pointed out.
"I talked Vlad into helping." Disgust pointed out.
"It's fine, you're both, like, totally awesome!" Joy tried to assuage them. "Let's stop, like, infighting, and get on with, like, doing what we wanna do! What do we wanna do?"
"Make the world pay for everything." Anger growled.
"I was thinking more like 'take Vlad's money and go on a self-discovery trip to recreate personality islands', but whatever." Disgust remarked, shrugging. "Rampage across the world and maybe we'll get 'malevolent entity' island or whatever."
"Dude, I dunno if ghosts even get new islands!" Joy remarked.
Disgust rolled her eyes at him. "Didn't you come from Vlad's ghost half? You're telling me the old coot didn't get a single new Core Memory after his Accident?" She paused. "Actually, that makes a creepy amount of sense."
"Dude, I'm, like, an emotion. I don't have, like, his memories. Well, maybe Fear does, now that he's down at wherever."
Anger grinned from ear to ear, unopposed in his rule, and flew Phantom up to the sky.
"It's rampage time, baby!"