Halloween party time [Danny, double exp]

Halloween, a time of the year when people went around dressing up as things they were not, and going to peoples doors for candy. It was a fun thing really, but something Ryan had never gotten to experience personally, not that he quite understood why. His mom always gave some kind of excuse, but now they all blurred together to the point that he forgot what they were, beyond him having to stay home and do what he usually did. Not that he was deprived of the candy portion, as his mother always bought him a fair amount the day after, but he never did get to enjoy the costume wearing part. It did suck, but that was life for him, so he got used to it. A small amount of rain was falling upon Las Angeles that day, dampening the city, and perhaps everyone's spirits, but they still did their parties, dances or whatever it was that people did.

Ryan however had nothing of importance to do, all he did was walk about the city as he usually did, basking in the light rain some. Small droplets would fall against his face, trailing down it in small streams, along with the sound of the rain falling around him as well. Ryan sighed softly, a small visible cloud of mist trailing from his lips as a few vehicles drove by, one of them hitting a puddle and sending a large portion of it splashing into him. Wait, now that he thought about it there was something he was supposed to be doing today, something important, but his mind found it difficult to remember what that was. He was supposed to be going to some manner of dance, invitation extended to him by someone he had met a while ago, though they had taken a step further by actually getting him into a school.

However, the problem with school was that he was not quite ready for that, and so he was a little handicapped by that, but that was unimportant in the long run. He had a small idea of where he was supposed to go, and he could run off of that. This dance was supposed to be a chance for him to meet people, make friends, and things like that. So he would go along with that, remembering that he should have dressed up better or dressed up as something for a dance, but then again he was just happy he had managed to look presentable, and be presentable. So he was in no danger, and maybe he could lie and say this was his costume, if his mind did allow him a certain amount of cunning in that department.

With that small thought process done, he would seek out the nearest puddle, and concentrate, imagine where he was supposed to be going, and within an instant his body would allow the rest. Turning even clothing into water, as he would slip through the puddle and within an instant he would appear out of it, hands burying into his pockets as he looked up to the night sky. ”Okay...this is the place, but where is Danny?” He muttered, hazel eyes scanning about for the girl in question, until he finally caught sight of her and casually approached, waving to show he was there.

While most girls paraded around in a superheroine type costumes, Danny knew she didn't need the costume to be a hero. She didn't know exactly how she aspired to such lofty goals yet, but she could feel in the back of her mind she did something worth the merit of getting called by the Benevolent Man. While not the leader of the group, Danny felt more like the secretary of the group. The girl who took all the notes because everyone else in the class was either lazy, couldn't read, or was thirteen years old.

Back to the dress style she chose for herself. Instead of donning a revealing outfit to tease would be pedofiles, Danny put on a headdress with a snake coming forth from the forehead with her hair pulled back. She made the cloth for the outfit out of pure Egyptian cotton and draped a layered robe in the style of the ancient Egyptian culture. Still catching the shimmer of the lights bouncing from the eloquently lit hallway leading to the auditorium, Danny kept her sacred bracelet close to her. Even in such a large private school, most people knew Danny despite her constantly missing class to go world traveling for independent study. Or, perhaps they knew her because of her privilege.

It took some time for Danny to move through the throngs of classmates to find the derelict superhero she found at a recent rendezvous with an evil and obnoxious travelling museum curator. He eluded arrest that day, but Danny doubted she saw the last of such a vengeful and perfection seeking man. Tonight would not be his night. Tonight belong to the worst kind of monsters- popular high school girls. Finding Ryan didn't take Danny any time once she realized the girls she recognized from cheerleading were riled up by their mean spirited captian, Veronica Billingsworth.

Danny and Veronica met. Several times. Veronica,  whom took control of the cheerleading squad through mean spirited accusations and false promises, never liked the Junior co-captain Danny or her overachieving attitude that should have won her the captain title. Now, she heard through the grapevine Danny gained some kind of reputation for heroics. She even found a group of freaks who shared the same weird habits and hobbies. "How cute." Dressed in a white top too small for her figure and fishnet stocking all over her arms and legs, Veronica really did not wear a costume as much as just showcase herself under the guise of Halloween. "Is the fact your water bill is so high the reason you think you can come to our school dressed like that?" The cackle of laughter from her entourage covered the illogical jab. "I hear you go here on scholarship. You probably should've come up with something else, because scholarship kids are all gross and poor. Oh wait, those mean the same thing." Veronica noticed Danny stepping towards them and turned her head back to Ryan. "I guess you owe Africa girl for whatever she's done to get you here."

"Go. Now." Danny pushed herself in between Veronica and Ryan. "Green isn't a great color on you, so stop picking on people because they can do things for other people and actually do them."

"I'll have you know every color looks good on me gorilla girl." Veronica turned her head with enough force to slap Danny in the face with her hair. Once their leader turned, each one of the girls she brought with her followed suit, leaving Danny and Ryan without anymore harassment.

"Well, besides that, is everything else going alright?" Placing two cups of punch between them, Dancing kept her hands on the one she claimed for herself and brought it up to take a drink. A bile filled her mouth, forcing her to spit out every last drop she swallowed. "This is terrible." Ripples in her cheeks hardened her face into bitter resentment. Bubbles began forming along side the rim of the cup with a hissing fizz. All around her, the same hissing grew louder from both cups and stomachs of those who already drank the punch. "Will it take too long to send this to the lab? Or, do we even have something like that?"

One thing that Ryan was not quite expecting to encounter at a high school dance was snobby girls, not that he should have been too surprised by that revelation, considering that this was a high school. Okay, his being home schooled may have helped within his being ignorant of matters at hand, but that was besides the point really. So this lead to a small amount of surprise when one of them would begin to berate them in a fashion that went a few inches beyond his scope of understanding but did not leave him totally baffled. He could tell they were saying something rude, but luckily his mind was not known for being able to grasp the finer things, and so at least his feelings were spared. At the start, all he heard was something being cute and wondered if that was referring to him, looking down at how he was dressed and then looking back to her with a raised brow.

Then something about water bills, though he could not exactly say anything about the rain following him, since metahumans were bad and one did not go about saying they were those, because they were bad. So all he did do was keep silent, avoid any kind of outburst that would allow the high school pirhana's to tear him apart, or so the afterschool specials showed. Okay, perhaps he was not internally quoting anything properly, butt hat was besides the point. Then came something about him being poor, which was true but he did not like hearing people making fun of him for that fact. Until Danny leapt in and saved the day in that special way of her, throwing out witty retort and chasing the girls away.

With a palpable sigh of relief, Ryan would smile softly at Danny, the only person that he could really call his friend in this building, though he wished at least one of his other friends were around. ”yeah, things are goin pretty good.” He answered with a nod, trying not to seem more awkward than he already was. A cup of punch was placed next to him, along with one for her, and he looked down at it with a curious expression, perhaps silently considering what the liquid was. It took a few seconds for him to register what it was, and then he could get to the not so difficult portion. Taking an experimental sip, it washed over his tongue and sent a rather strange sensation through his entire being. His lips curled downward into a frown as he glared at the liquid and let all fo the drink in his mouth back into the cup with a spray.

”Eyuck, this tastes gross.” he grumbled softly, glaring at the cup for a few more moments before setting it down. ”I don't know what that stuff is, but it definitely is not punch.” He muttered before looking to Danny. She said something about a lab, which made him think over that. ”I dunno about that actually. I do know that punch isn't supposed to hiss....so something doesn't look right about this.”

Nothing about the startling discovery sat well on Danny's mind. Especially not with the bitter taste of the poorly discovered substance still fresh on her lips. "I guess I'll try a vending machine or something. You can come with if you don't want to stay and have Veronica come back for another round." Pressing the cup alone on the table left it bubbling until the rim finally ran over with a black foam. "If this is some kind of joke, it isn't funny." Danny looked around to see other cups falling to the floor from shocked and disgusted party goers. A girl yelled as the thick substance stained the rainbow socks of her Rainbow Bright costume, another boy grabbed a bottle of water and tried gulping the entire contents to get rid of the taste. "Some loser probably spiked it to be funny."

"Ow, get off me loser." A solid swing from a bag connected from Veronica to a boy and girl who came too close to her. "These people are acting like animals."

"Um..." A red headed mermaid member of the entourage started to hold her rumbling stomach. "I don't feel so good."

"Did you drink that punch?" Veronica looked on in horror. "Do you know what that sugar will do to your fat ass? I'm putting you in Danny's..."

"Shut up and listen." Leaving for a drink no longer called as a major objective for Danny to accomplish. "We need to get everyone who drank the punch..."

"Why are you talking to me right now?"

"You know, that's a good point." Danny turned to Ryan for more useful help. "We need to get everyone together, keep them calm, and..." A pair of sharp claws brought Danny's sentence to an abrupt end. Neither claw scratched her, but the force of the beast knocked Danny to the ground. Above her stood a monstrous beast towering over six and a half feet made from muscle and vitriol. A deep black pit rested in the back of its eye sockets, barely giving enough clarity to be called eyes. A few traces of a mermaid outfit still clung to the beast hulking over her. It seemed Veronica's clique now literally wanted to tear Danny apart.

While the beast above her looked like a biped bear, many other beasts shot up from all over the room. Wolves, rats, even tigers burst forth. A line of drool dripped down from the creature's mouth as it prepared to swipe Danny with its might. Danny rolled away from the beast with her hand grasping at her bracelet to channel the spirit of a warrior more given over to fighting wild beasts. Just in time to give Danny a heads up, an ape like creature flew over to tackle the bear and began grappling the living muscle. To Danny's comfort, creatures took more joy in fighting each other than the scared students who had yet to drink the vile drink. "New plan. We need to figure out what this is and get a way to reverse it. Can you do something to keep everyone from killing each other?"

One thing that Danny said was true. If this were some kind of joke, it was not funny at all. Maybe someone had spiked the punch, but then again booze didn't bubble as far as he knew, so it might have been poison or maybe even acid. What did  show that this was beyond a joke was that his cup would begin to bubble and foam over with a strange black substance, definitely not something that punch did. A muttered curse would slip from his lips as he looked to the black foaming cup for a second before turning to Danny as if she would have some kind of answer for all of this; co dependance at its finest. ”If its a joke, its a really weird joke.” Ryan muttered chewing on his lower lip worried, hands burying into his pockets and feeling over what felt like his cellphone.

It was really only a way for him to contact Luci if he needed him, but this did not look like one of those times. Still, if he had Luci, then this would have probably been less scary than it was now. Danny mentioned something about someone probably spiking it, which made his rather biased mind snap to that Veronica chick, and part of him was set upon her being the one that did it. Childish one might argue, but then again Ryan had never claimed to be mature. Thinking of the devil, he heard the females voice ring out as she seemed to strike someone with a bag. This was followed by her saying something about people acting like animals, and then even his mind could make a connection with the evil looking black stuff.

Maybe it had something to do with the drinks, but not as if he could do anything now. Trailing along beside Danny, his friend would begin to talk to the standoffish female, while he personally just stood there as silent as ever. Would have worked with someone who was tall and built, but then again it was just how he functioned. Danny would turn to him once figuring out that the female would be of no help, and seemed to brew some kind of plan within the panic, but how he would help was the unknown variable. If they could keep people calm however, maybe they could figure out what was happening and fix it before things got worst than it was already. Okay, things were not too bad, but they could have so gotten bad if they did not somehow stop it. Before they could do anything like that, claws would come close to striking Danny, forcing Ryan to take a few steps back.

Now with a few steps between him and the monstrous looking...monster, Ryan blinked a couple of times and sighed deeply, considering how he could restrain the monster. However before he could do anything, something else appeared from nowhere and began to wrestle with the bear thing, and got it off of their backs. With precious few seconds gained, Ryan nodded to himself and then turn to Danny as she shouted instructions to him. ”Keep people from killing each other? I think I can do that.” Ryan said with a nod and a smirk, a little confident that he could do this as he would breath deeply and consider how his powers would help without needing to do something massive. One way was keep them from being able to stand up, and so he would draw upon his own powers. With a flick of the wrists, he would unleash frost that would spread along the floors in the direction of the more troublesome of individuals, hoping to make them trip over the flick surface.

Another possibility was them being caught within icy shackles from the floor.

Surprisingly, nothing bad came from the horribly acting clique of high school mean girls. Instead, it originated through a perfect storm of mystical energies, fantastic creatures, and pure, unadulterated, dumb luck. The type that would never end unless someone got to the bottom of a thousand year curse on a specific night in a matter of minutes. "Okay that's pretty cool." Danny looked on as Ryan froze every malcontent in the auditorium in place. He did what would take Danny probably an hour to do while fighting every creature in the room without breaking a sweat. "What's that in the ice?"

While calamity broke out and fled towards the exits, Danny stepped up with heavy breath materializing in the coldness of the room. Each creature thrashed and roared, keeping Danny startled out of her in depth investigation, but something bled black in the ice. A horned creature shivered with red eyes holding rage behind clattering teeth. Cracks began running through the ice holding the creature in place. Each break gave more leeway to the creature to put a hooved foot through the ice barrier. A loud clank pressed into the ice, breaking the solid form with a sharp plant. "You've chilled my revelry. It was such a splendid festivity." A beard ran down his cheeks in bushy fashion with his horns bursting forth from his temples. His voice ran like honey trapping an insect in the crevice of bark.

"It's a satyr." Danny stepped back. A swipe from a wererat scratched her shoulder, pushing her back towards the satyr.

"He's a satyr my dear. Rolos is my name and I'm a collector." The horse legged creature strode forward as the animals parted into a frenzy at the shrill call of his voice. "I take treasures and replace them with gilded beasts. Soon, this night will turn these beasts you see into gold. Quite a good trade off considering everything works out for me."

"Um, I don't have a plan for this."

"You don't need one. You just need to feast upon the wine of my summers and you will fit in just perfect." Containers of liquid shot out from Rolos' hands as he reached down to grab more of vials. Each vial exploded with a fizzy display, blinding Danny as the bubbles filled her eyes. "You look better already."

Alright, so all it took was one move and there was a lot of ice, Typically things went messier than that, but then again he could not complain about a good thing at a time like this. Turning his attention too Danny, she said something about it being cool and the fact it was a pun flew over his head rather well. However what cut him off from basking in the brief praise was that something was apparently in the ice, and if Danny did not know what it was, he likely had no idea what it was either. One thing that caught his interest was a strange creature shivering within the ice, but the ice holding him was beginning to crack. Ryan blinked as if seeing that was one of the most impossible things within his life, someone causing ice he had created to crack. ”Thats....not good.” He muttered with a frown, eyes narrowing and without his knowing, begginning to take on a small icy blue glow.

Danny said something about a satyr, not that he was ever planned to fight something like that. Alright, he did not even know how one dealt with a Satyr, let alone fought one, so that was two things he was ignorant about in this matter. Still, he had some kind of advantage, and he would use that until it was gone, or until he had some victory within the matter. Grinding his teeth together, Ryan forced his mind to think faster and faster, but nothing came out of that, besides a headache. However a swipe from something forced Danny towards the goatman, which meant that she was one step closer to the cause of this whole mess, and somehow all of these things were breaking through his ice.

Ryan was beginning to lose faith in his own powers, but then he remembered he didn't put all of his power into it, to avoid killing anything. Something about the creatures voice was strange, sending a weird sensation through hos body with each word. It was like he was dealing with some kind of magic, but as far as he knew magic didn't exist, which left him with a lot more questions than answer, but then again it should not have been impossible. Afterall, he froze things with a thought, so magic was always possible. Sadly Danny did not have a plan for this one, and that meant that Ryan would have to bear the burden. More of the bubbling liquid would appear, coming from the hands of the creature and into the face of Danny. With a grunt, he felt something slam into him and thrown him to the ground, claws having bitten thrugh his shirt and drawn blood on his arm.

Taking advantage of that, he in an instant seemed to slip into the ice that coated the floor, and appeared next to Danny within a matter of a second. His arm hurt, but there were more important matters. He took notice of something around her eyes, forming a small sphere of water and splashing it at her face in the hopes of washing it away. ”Alright, I have a plan...I think.” He would say unleashing frost with the intent to freeze over the satyrs hands.

Okay, so Danny could not work magic or generate ice or break it with cloven hooves, but she could still work some magic in this ice field. Digging deep into her well of warrior spirits, Danny summoned out the inner soul of an Inuit warrior from ages past. A blast of frost flew past Danny as she lunged for a cloth draped table. She wrapped the napkins around her knuckles with silverware at the brunt of her fists, better to keep the jagged and biting cold of the frigid environment from breaking her skin.

Ice froze around the Satyr's hands, binding his fingers in unison. A fire replaced the pitch black orbs he kept hidden above his cheeks. Two savage blows rang out to connect with Ryan, using the harsh, destructive power of the icy gloves now adorning his hands. Danny would react as quickly as she could to try to defend Ryan from the onslaught, opting to try to bring a chair down on his icy fists in an attempt to break the ice and his wrists in the process. Once the chair fell to the ground, Danny would strike at the Satyr with her silverware clad knuckles in an attempt to give Ryan more room to enact his own plan.

Alright, freezing the hands worked wonders for him, but he forgot that his ice would also make something painful to punch someone with. He saw the fists coming his way, but there was no way that he could react, yet his body would do most of the work for him. Skin would become hard enough to hopefully take the strikes coming, and his head was forcibly jerked to the side from the force of the hit. The sound of something cracking could be heard, not loud but it could be heard. Another hit struck him, and sent his world kind of reeling, but he was conscious enough. Falling to his knees, he would take notice of Danny attempting to buy him some time, which meant time to actually think. The guys wrists were basically covered within ice, so the thought hit him like a ton of bricks, he could just bind the guy.

Using all of his strength, he would attempt to control the ice about the guys hands, likely forcing them behind his back if it indeed did work. Okay, then came the next and perhaps most important part of this plan that he thought of in the spur of the moment, making sure he did not break out again. Freezing their face would have likely worked, and so he went for that, unleashing a torrent of ice upon the satyrs face in the hope of freezing it with a thick layer of ice. From there he was hoping Danny could knock it out, probably with blows to the gut or something.

The monumental force of each ice covered fist flew away from making contact with Danny directly. Her movement dived to stay away from direct contact, but something else pulled the satyr away. Both blocks of ice the satyr called hands flew back, presenting Danny with a clear shot to take the satyr down for the count. She leaped from a chair and brought her fist to connect with the jaw of the satyr. The force should have knocked the beast back, but the ice kept him frozen in place. The course of energy surging through her fist stayed contained in her joints, causing a mild contusion to rise as her fist completed the action against the satyr.

"I know that bracelet." Ripping enough force to spring his arm from the wall of ice, Rolos reached out and grabbed Danny by her wrist. "You stole this. I'll pry it from your corpse."

"It found me and only listens to me." Danny pulled herself up using the satyr's arm as a means to vault herself into an effective means of kicking the satyr under the side of his ribs. "You'll never listen to it."

Her final confrontation found itself cut short as the ice regained control of Rolos, entombing him. The frozen cell pulsed with a crimson red amulet. As color drained from the body of Rolos, the deep red bled with a deeper hue Danny could not ignore. "I got it!" Her fist broke into the ice, shattering the frozen chambers above his chest. One more blow fell, then another, finally, she grabbed the jewel and pulled it out. A deep sense of dread ran through her. She could hear the cries of panic and dismay coming from every one who turned from their normal selves into these monstrous beasts.

A sudden crack rang out from the prison holding Rolos. His strong grip wrapped around Danny's wrist again, pulling her face to smash against the ice. In complete shock and daze at the blow, her hand fell limp, allowing the gem to pass through her fingers. Rolos acted too quickly. His feet still stood firmly planted and his reach fell just short of grabbing the darkly hallowed jewel. It fell to the ground, shattering.

The world went hazing for a moment and Danny came face to face with Veronica in her scuffle again. "I'll have you know every color looks good on me gorilla girl."

"What?" Danny looked down at her wrist and still saw the contusion mark on her wrist.

Flustered by the lack of attention given to her, Veronica moved closer to Danny in a taunting fashion. "Ah, you heard me. Everything looks-"

"No, shut up. I mean what just happened?" Everything looked well put in place. No one looked injured. No ice covered the floors or people. It looked put just in place.

"You just made a huge mistake telling me to 'shut up'. No one tells me to 'shut up'." Turning to walk off gave Veronica the greatest idea her brain could think of. If Danny got to be confident and popular with her dumb bracelet, what kept Veronica from getting better powers. After all, her parents were richer than Danny's. The powers she could get would be way better than the bracelet Danny found in the bottom of some pit.

"Ryan, do you remember everyone being..." She spun around to canvas the room. "Different?"

Now contained by the ice, the beast was in the perfect place for Danny to deal a finishing blow, or one that should finish him. This came in the form of a punch to its face, one that would have likely knocked it over but the ice holding it in place kept that from happening, not that the damage done was negated as well. It was still a pretty painful looking spoon punch, one that he could hear the sound of from here, above the sound of blood pounding within his ears anyway. That did not keep the thing from grabbing onto her wrist, but the ice would fix that soon enough, rising to entomb him completely. His ice would not have too much trouble holding him down, or so he had hoped with how things were going. All he knew was that his face hurt, and was likely bleeding, as told by something warm streaming down his cheeks.

One thing he could feel glad about was that his blood was still warm, even though that made no sense. Granted his understanding of thermodynamics or whatever was not the best, not by a long shot but that was besides the point. Okay, he did not know what was happening, but it seemed like Danny was doing something to defeat the Satyr., leading to something shattering and before he knew it Veronica was where the Satyr once was. Ryan blinked a couple of times, looking from Veronica to Danny absolutely confused at the whole situation. ”Yeah....I remember, I got punched in the face.” Ryan noted with a nod, rubbing his cheek softly.

All must be well since it ended well enough. Danny still could not muster what exactly she ended, but no one in the dance looked any wiser to anything they should be wiser about. And in all honesty, with her experience in such strange events, Danny should grow wiser as well, but instead, she just wanted to dance. "Come on." She grabbed Ryan by the hand and led him out to the middle of the auditorium as the music picked up.

While they danced in revelry, Rolos looked on. The fire in his eyes subsided. Chilled. But, he would rekindle his ire. "That bracelet will be mine." His plans lay in ruin around him. His kingdom of lies exposed with ice. His revenge would be born in fire. His hate kindled in defeat.

OK.

DOUBLE XP WORTHY YAYYY!


BOTH OF YOU GET 5 bonus XP from having spooky scary halloween times!