Story time! I wrote the rough draft of this at the tail end of my deployment way back in the summer of 2013, a whopping nine hand-written pages in a pocket-sized notebook. I've been poking at it on and off ever since, without much luck into developing it into the full story I wanted to write. Frankly, I'm sick of beating a dead horse! So this is me shelving the WIP at last and posting as much of what I'm satisfied with as I can. Hope you all enjoy what's here! Title comes from A Perfect Circle's "Gravity."

Skulker isn't hunting you, for once. That's the good news.

The bad news is that the giant blue slug… thing he's after just happened to squeeze its bulk through the Ghost Portal, completely trash the basement, and take out the living room and most of the front brickwork on its way out the door. This mess is definitely going to leave your family sitting pretty in a hotel for a few weeks while FentonWorks gets some serious repairs done.

The worse news—because there is always worse news—is that the ghost smashed your dad's shelves full of experimental samples of Ecto-Dejecto, which still does the exact opposite of weakening ghosts. Big, blue, and slimy went from being about the size of the lab to something that would have had a grand old time trashing Tokyo. There are now a lot of tentacles and a lot of spikes and a lot of teeth. Basically there is now a lot of it in general. It's just—big. Gargantuan is a great word to describe the thing absently absorbing a city bus (thankfully evacuated by the time you get on the scene) into its gelatinous side.

There's already a lot gone wrong. A lot of damage, and no doubt at least one person's gonna be headed for the hospital as soon as the roads are clear. Guilt twists your gut like a taffy maker, but what could you have done? You'd been dead to the world in your bedroom, enjoying a rare Saturday morning sleeping in for once. You couldn't have known this was gonna be your alarm clock.

Guilt later. Right now, you've got a date with a couple of ghosts tearing your neighborhood apart.

"Couldn't you have kept this thing in the Ghost Zone?" you shout at Skulker over the grating peals of a city block's worth of car alarms.

Skulker tosses you a manic grin, swooping up on his jetpack. "I don't lead the prey along the chase, only to the trap at its end."

Yeah, no. You fold your arms and spare a second to give him a deeply unimpressed look. "It got away, didn't it?"

"There was—I had it right where I wanted it but—" He sighs, his huge steel shoulders slumping. "Yes."

Well, at least he had the decency to look embarrassed when he screwed up. "Fine, O Greatest Hunter of the Ghost Zone, how about you lend me a hand here? Get Big Blue off of the rampage and back through the Portal without leveling Amity Park and we call it even?"

Skulker doesn't reply, since Big Blue chooses right then to slam a spiny tentacle 40 feet long right down on his tin can head. Even over the thing's watery shriek you can hear his exosuit groan. You're, uh. You're just gonna take that as a "yes."

"Hey you!" It turns both—no, all three—er, well almost four heads—whatever—to look up at you. "Yeah, you! I know he's a huge jerk who tried to capture you for his creepy trophy wall, but you didn't have to smear him all over the street! Now we'll never get the smell out!"

Far below, Skulker indignantly shouts a few choice words you ignore, keeping your attention focused on Big Blue's huge jaws, which are all lunging toward you at a speed you didn't expect the big guy to have. It's like having a skyscraper bear down on you, which is altogether a kind of dwarfing feeling. Intangibility is awesome; ghost rays even more so!

Big Blue makes a sound like a garbage disposal and a jet engine had the world's loudest baby. Oh good! It can feel pain. That should make this easier.

The Fenton GAV comes screeching onto the scene while you're doing your best impression of an irritating mosquito. Your parents burst out, ectoguns blazing, and that just pisses Big Blue off more. It keeps retreating away from you and your parents, thrashing its dozen or so tentacles mostly at you because its neck—necks? man this this thing is an anatomical disaster—is too stumpy for it to look down at its sluggy foot. Skulker's making himself useful by haphazardly clearing a path for it down the street and towards Central Park. Smart; there's way more room to stretch out and brawl properly that way. Hopefully nobody liked these cars?

"Do you have a cage for this thing or what?" you shout at Skulker as he jets by.

"I always come prepared!" he bellows back, sounding more confident than a dude with one smoking engine and a face that looks like a crumpled soda can has any right to.

"Well? Sometime this century would be—oof!" Your turn to get hit. Big Blue flicks you aside with one dismissive tentacle. You go flying, arcing up and over one building and down into a pizzeria. The brick wall gives like a cheap plywood set. You bounce and flop your way through a tangle of tables and chairs and fancy centerpieces before coming to a graceless crash against the cashier counter. People run screaming, but you don't pay them any mind.

Ugh, you're gonna feel that tomorrow. Oh well. You haul yourself up, popping your twinging back with a groan. A look around makes you wince. Crud, you seriously trashed the place. "Sorry about the wall!" you say to the man cowering behind the register, then hurl yourself out of the hole you made and back into the fight. You can't make out the man's reply, but you sure aren't expecting any accolades thrown your way.

While you were gone Big Blue turned its attention on your family, which is absolutely not cool. You aim for its center...ish...pseudo-head, power up a charge as quick as you can, and fire. It's Big Blue's turn to go sprawling at last, and your aim was good enough that its falling spire of a body—seriously, it's like somebody pissed off a replica of the Eiffel Tower made out of jello and teeth, this thing is ridiculous—only tears up the street further. Not a single tentacle hits so much as a window. You're so pleased you could high five yourself, except once its faces hit the ground it makes a noise like fork tines squealing against flatware, loud enough to make you clutch your ears and drop out of the air.

You hit the asphalt like a sack of potatoes. The whole world's shaking, or maybe that's just Big Blue trying to get up. Somebody grabs your shoulder and starts to shake you; you twist and phase out of reach, only barely resisting the instinct to blast a hole through Sam's face. She yells something once, twice, but her voice is too muddled for you to make anything out words. She's wearing the Fenton Phones, which explains why she's not sprawled out on the ground bleeding from the ears like everyone else. You touch your ears, just in case, and breathe a sigh of relief when your fingertips come away green-free.

"Where's Tucker?" you ask, or at least feel yourself ask. Sam points. He's by your parents, your dad sprawled out and your mom on all fours, but at least they're responding to him. They'll be fine. They'll be fine.

Sam presses another pair of Fenton Phones into your hands. Better late than never, you think, popping them in. A couple of jaw flexes later your ears ring clear, and you can Sam mutter to herself, "—ing serious bringing something like this out of the Ghost Zone?"

"Skulker didn't mean to," you say, and she jumps.

"Oh hey, I didn't think those would work so quick," she says.

"Yeah, me neither. Thanks."

"No problem." She waves her hand. Her palm's all scraped up and gritty with dirt. "What's going on? What is that thing?"

"No idea. Something Skulker was hunting that got splashed by a couple gallons of Ecto-Dejecto." You shrug. "So, y'know. A usual Saturday morning."

"Most kids get cartoons and breakfast in pajamas. We get rampaging slug monsters." Sam's grin is all canines, and you know she loves every minute of the chaotic life you all share. Big Blue roars behind you though, and her grin slips.

"Don't worry," you say. "Skulker's got a way to get rid of this thing. It shouldn't be much longer. After this though? Remind Tucker to hack his dumb suit again."

"We'll make it something really horrible, for all this." The last of her grin evaporates. "Oh, crap."

"What?" You ask, turning to look. "Oh, crap."

Big Blue has lasers.

Without another word, you throw yourself into the air and lob as many ghost rays as you can at it to keep its attention up at you instead of down towards the bystanders who haven't run out of range yet. You're a heck of a lot quicker than anybody down there; a deadly lightshow is practically a walk in the park for you.

"Whelp!"

"I swear, if you call me that one more time—!" You grit your teeth; now's not the time for the usual witty banter. "What?"

He appears on your left, holding up a silver cube covered in shiny green circuitry. "I can contain it, send it back to my lair!"

You roll your eyes. If he was had to rip off Fenton tech, he could have at least changed the color scheme, wow. You hope he's made some upgrades, because no way a Fenton Thermos could suck up something as big as this thing.

Note to self, actually: subtly goad parents into making a Fenton Soup Tureen or something.

"How?" you ask.

"It has to be weakened before I can capture it!"

"What is this, Pokémon?" Fine, fine. You've got plenty of juice left. You swoop up over Big Blue's bloated body, upright and wriggling again, and begin to prep a blast that—fingers crossed—should blow a hole right through its ooey gooey center. There's shouting below you, and you want to ignore it because putting this thing out of commission would save everybody a lot of trouble, but that's your mom you're hearing.

"Phantom!" she shouts, all professional ire a hundred of feet below you. "Phantom, get out of the way!"

Rookie mistake. You got distracted, focused on the heads and not the tentacles too, and it turns out the lasers don't just come from Big Blue's eyes. You recoil but you're not fast enough, not nearly, and everything goes white.

A scream feathers out between your clenched teeth, one hand clutching your face. It burns, bubbling hot sticky wetness dribbling down your cheek. It hurts. It hurts. You shudder, try to remember how to breathe. It only grazed you, it only grazed you, there's nothing wrong with a little pain, a minor burn is fine, you're fine, you'll be fine, move.

You make a tactical retreat, let Skulker swing in with a few explosives to piss it off, keep it busy while you reorient yourself and try to tamp down the pain eating up your face. Adrenaline, adrenaline's supposed to numb you or—or it's shock, or nerve damage, or something. It shouldn't be hurting so much at once, is the point. Stupid ghost half screwing up your vague understanding of human anatomy. Whatever, you're fine. You'll be fine.

You wipe your hand on your thigh, resolutely not looking at the warm smear you feel through your jumpsuit, and shake your head clear. Another tentacle comes swinging at you, but you phase through it to build up momentum for one furious punch. You're small in comparison to it but that doesn't mean anything for a ghost like you.

Big Blue staggers with a roar, crashes once more to the asphalt with the force of an earthquake. You don't give it a chance to get back up this time, following up with a series of bright bursts of energy. You aim for all those yawning mouths and don't hold back. Its shrieking dies in a garbled, smoking gurgle; it falls back to the road, dazed.

Time to change tactics. There's no way you and Skulker are gonna get this thing anywhere near Central Park at the rate you're going. You swoop down, press the heels of your palms together, and crank up the ice as strong as you can. Big Blue burbles in protest and one writhing tentacle comes within a few feet of squashing you like a gnat, but you dodge it easy enough. In a matter of minutes you freeze it stuck right there in the middle of a four-way intersection. Good enough, decent amount of wriggle room. Hopefully Skulker's keeping up.

Speaking of, "Skulker!" Your scream cracks on a vowel, nearly slips into a Wail. Tamp it down now, Fenton, get a hold of yourself. "Skulker, if you ditched me—"

"I'm right here, quit your squawking." His exosuit is badly dented, but at least his weapons system still looks mostly functional. He aims a huge, over-the-shoulder bazooka-looking thing you've never seen before at Big Blue's nearest head and pulls the trigger. The whine-whistle-boom of the rocket shorts out your Fenton Phones and the recoil is strong enough to shunt him into a nearby balcony. The blast itself completely decimates an entire head and the central hub for half of its tentacles. If you hadn't turned the rest of its throats to soup already you're pretty sure it'd be kicking up a real fuss right now.

"Wow," you say, impressed despite yourself. "Where can I get one of those?"

Behind you, all laid out and useless again, Skulker laughs. "And give you a chance to even the playing field? Not a chance. Now quick, while it's reeling—" He freezes when you look at him, mouth gaping. "Phantom, your face—"

"It's fine," you snap, pretending very hard that you're right. Just a flesh wound and all that. Think of the Black Knight hopping around on one foot instead of the hot wet definitely-not-blood smeared down your face. "How does your trap work?"

He wastes a few seconds staring at you, then shakes his dented head. "It's both a containment field and a teleportation device. Get both halves of it in position and the beast will be transported to an inescapable cage in my Lair."

"As inescapable as your trap?" you deadpan, but grab the half-cube he's got left out of his hands. "Just keep it distracted for me."

"Phantom, wait—!"

But you're gone, dropped three stories and flinging yourself pell-mell around Big Blue again. You find the other half of Skulker's cube on one side of it, lit up like a Christmas tree and making a shrill, old school alarm clock noise. Hopefully it's supposed to do that? You kick off the asphalt for an extra boost, careen over Big Blue's squirming body and to its other side. You slam the cube down hard into a crack in the street. It chimes like an Easy Bake Oven and begins to whine.

"It has to power up, are you kidding me?" You're not even surprised anymore. At this point you're willing to give Skulker every spare Thermos you have just so he can upgrade solid tech instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. Oh well. Later.

You fly back to the balcony. Skulker's managed to pick himself out of the wreck of some poor schmuck's balcony garden. Apart from the smashed sliding glass door and a very distraught-looking cat, the apartment itself is untouched. You don't bother giving him any grief, just paw wetness off your face and ask, "How long 'til it's ready?"

"Two minutes. Think you can keep the beast in place until then?"

"No problem. What are you going to do?"

You're still not sure how he gets his steel face so expressive, but that grin is downright malicious. "I'll keep its attention."

He jettisons off, firing wildly with a pair of arm-mounted rockets that barely leave a mark but sure as hell keep Big Blue irritated. You spare a chuckle as you arc back down, keeping a steady stream of ice built up across its body. In the distance you see Sam, Tucker, and your parents doing crowd control. Sirens are finally wailing onto the scene, which means more crowd control and medical aid for anybody who might've got dinged by flying debris.

You hear Big Blue gurgle out a pained shriek, and a second later throw yourself out of the way of a falling tentacle, sloughed clean off its boiling shoulder. It slams against the ground with enough force to throw everyone nearby off their feet, and its sheer dumb luck no one gets hit by a thousand spiny pounds of ectoplasm.

A look up confirms that Skulker's focused on the bits most likely to hurt bystanders, the lasers and the flailing tentacles, but the rest of that tentacle hub looks like it won't last much longer. You fly up, looking for a good place to grip. If it's just gonna fall off anyway….

The whole thing tears loose with a long, gross slurping sound and Big Blue howls. Even with the Fenton Phones on your head feels like it's gonna split wide open, but you just grind your teeth together and ease the squirming mass of limbs down to the pavement. You let go as soon as the majority of the weight's on the ground and quickly switch back to freezing duty so it will all quit squirming. Less chance of somebody getting hurt. And anyway, squirming disembodied limbs? Eew.

On your right Tucker shouts your name but Skulker goes careening off the scene at the same time, a hot white laser punched through his exosuit's chest and slamming him through a furniture store roof. He goes down hard. That leaves Big Blue distraction-free and that's a big ol' no-go. You bolt up, peppering ghost rays up its heaving side, and it turns its five remaining eyes onto you.

Now it's just a matter of playing the clock. Duck and dodge lasers, fire as many rays as you can at its sizzling wounds, throw a kick, throw a punch, get backhanded by a tentacle Skulker missed and get thrown into a gas station quick-mart.

Yeah, okay, that hurt. You're gonna be picking glass out of your jumpsuit for a week. Whatever. Wipe definitely-not-blood off your face again and get back out there, firing firing firing when you can, slaloming through hot lasers and tight curls of spiny armor when you can't, nearly get yourself swallowed when you lose track of which way the heads face, do everything you can to wear Big Blue down and wonder why the hell Skulker's cube-thing hasn't gone off yet—

"Phantom! Phantom!"

Skulker's dragged himself out of the furniture store's rubble, sparking and jerking fitfully and in no shape to stand, let alone pitch in. You freeze one of Big Blue's heads and fire off a few rays at another before flying down to see what the lunkhead wants now.

"What is it!" you snap, harsher than you meant to, but your face hurts too much for you to care.

"The cube! It's been compromised!"

"What?" You whip around, expecting to see either half crashed or lasered or something suitably dramatic, but nope. Nope, instead the half he'd placed down had gone and fallen over.

There are a lot of things you could say to Skulker right now, but your mom is within hearing range so you just point one finger at him and snarl, "You are a terrible hunter and you so owe me."

"Phantom, wait—!" But you're gone again, and whatever he says is lost in Big Blue's screeching. It'll just have to wait, like everything else.

You zigzag through rubble and wrecked cars, skimming the asphalt so close you feel it hiss against your chest. You skid to a rough halt just above the fallen device. A pause to catch your breath and wipe definitely-not-blood off your cheek again. Jazz is running toward you, calling your name. When had she even gotten here? Doesn't matter, you'll ask her later. You jam the half-cube upright in another crack in the street and then you're up up and away again, ignoring the way the dusty air burns your face, ignoring the sting of a dozen different scrapes and scratches. Your energy's flagging; you can feel yourself slowing down, like gravity's trying to grind you into the dirt. Almost there, almost done, and then you can crawl off to Sam's room and let her get a good look at your face, and then you can go back to sleep.

The ice won't hold much longer, but fingers crossed it won't have to. You burn a steady stream of energy up Big Blue's side, marveling at how much damage has been done and how much damage it's just shrugged off. You reach its three remaining heads and backflip in mid-air, blasting two more eyes to sludge. "C'mon big guy!" you shout over its own pained screaming. "Whatcha got left? You've barely left a scratch on me!" Never mind you feel like one big asphalt burn, never mind whatever is definitely not wrong with your face. Never mind, it's fine, you'll be fine.

Big Blue throws its last uninjured tentacle up at you, but you dodge it neatly, swing in close to get one last shot at it. You throw your right arm out to take aim just as there's a warning blare far, far below, and then everything goes white again, and then there is pain.

It's like a shockwave without the sound. It's instantaneous, it's the worst thing you've ever felt and that's including the accident that nearly killed you. One second Big Blue's opening its fanged mouths to shriek again and the next there's absolutely no trace of it at all, just an empty stretch of dust-free, electrically-charged air and an immediate, instinctive knowledge that you are in trouble. The moment you're hit—by what, by who?—you know it's bad, real bad. There's hot pressure and a noise like a fistful of snapped kindling and a hard tug, and then your whole right arm goes numb and your shoulder, your shoulder, oh god—

You scream and jerk away from nothing, lose all sense of self to the pain and heat and wet. You fall out of the sky, crash through the roof of the same wrecked furniture store Skulker had dragged himself out of. What happened, what happened, oh god you hurt, you don't even have the words to describe how much you hurt, your brain's a live wire thrashing around your skull, no room for coherency, no room to assess, what happened oh god oh god—

Someone screams behind you, a little girl's terror-stricken squeal. Of course she's scared; two ghosts just took on a mountain of a monster then took turns swan diving through the building she took refuge in. Focus on this girl, wherever she is, and not on the heat soaking down your side. Don't look, absolutely do not look. It's bad, you're hurt bad, so bad you can hardly breathe, but this squat little building is a sneeze away from falling down around your ears and there's at least one human trapped in here, so.

So.

You use a nearby coffee table to pull yourself to your feet, paying no attention to the splattering sounds or how off-balance you are or how your right arm is completely unresponsive. You're fine. Don't look. You'll be fine. The dust is starting to settle; it's still hard to see but you can make out movement a few couches away, nearer the back of the store. Somebody small dashing out of sight. It's fifteen, twenty yards away at the most, and it feels like you've gotta cross all of Middle Earth. You manage a few weak, shuffling steps before dizziness sets in like a physical blow to the head. You stagger into a dresser and a twisted noise peels itself between your teeth; not quite a scream, not quite a sob.

Flying. Yeah. Yeah, that's easier.

You fly after the little girl, find her curled up under a table—six years old at the most, her dark skin chalky with grit. She's hovering near a man twice your size, half buried by rubble and out cold. There's a smear of blood at his temple and one leg is bent at an angle that would make your stomach clench if it wasn't already doing backflips.

The girl looks up at you like you're the monster that crawled out of her closet, all wide-eyed and one creaky floorboard away from bolting, only still here because her dad or uncle or whoever is there and needs her to protect them. It'd be cute if you didn't want to pull your nervous system out of your body and flay yourself with it just to make the pain stop.

"Hey," you rasp, holding up your left hand and stretching a smile across your teeth that's hopefully charming and not the rictus grin it feels like. You are one long scream waiting to let loose. "Hey, it's okay. I—I'm here to help. Looks—looks like your dad's hurt pretty bad, yeah? Don't worry, I—there's, ambulances outside. I took—I took care of that monster and it's—it's safe to come out. I—I'll get you out of here. Then the, the paramedics can get a good look at—at your dad." Talking is suddenly an exhausting task; just that bit of comforting leaves you winded like you sprinted a 5k at top speed. "...Okay?"

She nods, uneasy, her big eyes darting to the jagged hole at the front of the store where a door used to be. Skulker probably scared her worse than you have. At least you don't look like the Terminator's punk robobrother. "Don't..." You're fine, you'll be fine, just focus on the kid. "Don't worry 'bout him. I'm—it's just me here now."

Probably. If Skulker hasn't run off with his tail between his legs it's because his suit's too busted to let him. There's no need to worry about him now. Later, you'll tear him a whole laundry list of new ones. Later. "Alright. I—I'm gonna need your help, okay? That big ghost—did a number on me." You get another big-eyed nod. "What's—what's your name?"

"Alana," she says, then points at the unconscious man. "My dad's name is Michael."

"I—I'm Danny." Okay, that's more than enough reassuring-the-kid time. You're gonna fall over any second now. "I'm gonna ph-phase your dad out from under that stuff. You—you back up. In case it moves. Then. Then follow me, quick as you can. Okay?"

"Okay," she says, and moves where you point. Your hand definitely doesn't shake.

Getting the guy out of the rubble is easy enough, though bending down and back up gets you so dizzy you have to take a few seconds to grip the nearby couch so tight you rip the cushion. After that it's just a matter of slinging him over your left shoulder with minimal staggering—hurray for super strength—and heading back outside, Alana picking her way after you.

You land a safe distance away in the street just as the whole store goes down like a house of cards. Instinctively you push the girl away to shield her from debris. If you happen to be grinding your teeth the whole time to swallow a scream, well, it's not like anybody's around to see. It takes approximately forever for the rumbling and the grinding to settle, and once it finally does the intersection is so dirty-gray and quiet it's like it's just the three of you left in the whole city; definitely-not-hurt you and a dusty little girl and her busted-up dad. You fall to your knees, ease him down soft as you can manage and then just sit there, swaying, wet heat all down your side and an awful number of alarm bells going off inside you.

The girl opens her mouth to say something but Sam and Tucker come charging out of the settling dust clouds, shouting your name. They're filthy. Sam's leggings are shredded and one forearm is scraped raw. Tucker looks like he went and dragged himself face first down the street for funsies. His glasses are missing, and his eyes look weirdly small without them. They're both torn up, yeah, but they're fine. It's fine. It'll all be fine.

"Danny!" They freeze a few yards away, staring like you've got all your guts out on display, like they don't know if they should come closer or keep away for their own sakes.

"I know," you say hoarsely, forcing your mouth into a smile that twitches despite your best effort. "What a mess, right?"

"Dude." Tucker's face has gone gray, taken on that pinched, might-just-puke look he gets around needles. It's bad then. Worse than what you're trying very hard not to think about. Splintered bones jutting out of Day-Glo green meat. Don't look at yourself. Don't look. It's fine. You'll be fine.

"The girl's okay," you rattle out desperately, "but her dad's—he's in pretty bad shape. I heard sirens earlier. Was anybody else hurt? Where're my—"

"Sam! Tucker!"

Your dad's an orange wall clearing a way through the worst of the dust for your mom and Jazz. They all look terrified, just as battered as Sam and Tucker, but they're alive. They're all alive. You go weak with relief, or maybe that's just the rush from the fight wearing off. Pain is eating you up like a thing alive, sharp enough to make the whole world spin out from under you.

"Danny!" Sam grabs you, pulls you down or maybe you're falling and she's just trying to soften the landing. Green ends up smeared on her shirt and all the jostling makes you cry out, a strangled animal noise that startles you. You make a grab for your right elbow to pin your hurt arm to your side, but you just get a handful of air.

Your mom's trying to order Sam to drop you, to get away. Sam's calling your name, over and over, and Tucker and Jazz both just stare.

You look. You finally let yourself look down, and it's gone.

Your arm's gone.

Your arm.

Your whole arm is gone—

"Danny!"

A/N: And now that we're at the end of the story, I'll say that the original plan included a great deal of time spent in a hospital and almost as much time with Frostbite! Also, the picture that inspired this thing and all that might have been is one of darkeneddawning's over on tumblr. This is the part where I would link it, except ffn is still terrible and doesn't allow for that! So I guess just hop into their archive early 2013-ish and take a guess at which one! (Hint: it's the one where his arm is at an all-time record cold.)