A/N: for Cordria's june contest 'She was running down the alley...' (now closed).

Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom.

DANGEROUS

She was running down the alley. He watched her go, her hover board – what was left of it – tucked under her arm, her black hair curling out from under her broken helmet. A good piece of leg was visible through her shredded red suit.

Damaged. Seriously damaged, maybe hurt. But alive.

A sigh of relief escaped him, and as she disappeared around the corner he allowed himself to become visible. He was still high up, perched on the edge of the roof, muscles tensed in a flight-or-fight mode. But her walking away from this, her actually standing up after that devastating crash, that was something. He hadn't killed her.

He might have.

Pushing himself off the roof, he dove down towards the ground, slowing down only at the last moment. Hovering in the middle of the alley, he took stock of what he saw. Overturned trashcans, scorch marks on the wall, pieces of red material – parts of her hover board she hadn't bothered to pick up – everywhere.

Remnants of a battle that took place here, down in the alley. The last part of it, anyway. It had started at the school, right after he had captured the Box Ghost – again – and had lasted a good half hour before he had managed to...

Don't think about it...

...had managed to pin her down in the alley and destroy her hover board.

Almost killing her in the process.

Frustration welled up. He had been forced, she had forced him to return fire, she had forced him to blast her for real instead of firing warning shots. He had never wanted this, if she had left him alone...

"Stupid Valerie," he muttered, "Serves you right."

Placing his feet on the ground in a semblance of actually standing there, he looked around at the scattered pieces of the hover board and immediately noticed something. There was a rather large chunk laying behind an overturned trashcan. A piece of hover board with some switches and lights on it. He stepped closer and picked it up.

One of the lights blinked. He almost dropped it.

It was still active. Suddenly worried, he decided that he'd better just leave it where he had found it, so he bent down to place it on the ground again. A soft whine and something cold pressed against his neck made him pause.

"Put that down, spook."

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes and comment that that was exactly what he was doing anyway, he slowly placed the piece back on the ground. The little light blinked again. Red. Then, slowly as not to alarm the ghost hunter any further, he turned around. To stare right into the gaping hole of a huge cannon set firmly on her shoulder. She was looking at him through the sight, which he would have found slightly ridiculous if he hadn't been on the receiving end of said cannon.

"Um," he said, not liking the squeaky quality his voice had taken on, "Hi, Val."

"Don't call me that!"

He cleared his throat. "But... it's your name."

He was rewarded with a rough shove in the face with the barrel. He stumbled backwards and caught himself by simply floating where he would have fallen. A slight twinge of annoyance floated into his mind.

"Not to you it isn't."

Her glare intensified, hatred directed at him pouring out of her in waves that made him slightly dizzy. If only she knew what she was doing to him, if only she knew that her determination, her anger, her desire to fight made him want to do the same...

Her hating him made him hate her right back.

"OK," he said, sarcasm dripping from his voice, "Ms Gray then."

He could feel her tense up, her finger putting pressure on the trigger. He started gathering energy, a half mind on the possibility of creating a shield that would deflect her blast, the other half on simply blasting her and be done with it.

He ended up doing both.

A green swirling appeared deep down in the blackness of the barrel of her cannon, a huge ectoblast building up. He had a perfectly good view on it, which worried him a little so he hastily drew up the half cooked shield he had been planning, at the same time arching back in an impossible angle – for humans – to evade the blast.

Three things happened. One, the blast left the cannon, partially penetrated the shield and singed his eyebrows. Two, the part that was deflected by the shield bounced right back at Valerie. And three, he fired a huge ectoblast of his own.

Silence hung in the alley. And ozone, that too. Danny sniffed and wrinkled his nose, detecting not just ozone but also something else... burnt meat. He was still floating on his back, recovering from the shock that she had actually tried to shoot him from up close...

Up close...

Valerie had been close.

Slowly, he righted himself. There she was, a crumpled red... heap of... charred...

"Val?"

He swallowed. The scent of burnt meat increased tenfold. Slowly, he drifted closer. Her cannon was beside her, a small plume of smoke coming from the barrel. She was just laying on the ground, on her back, staring up at the sky that she didn't see and would never see again.

"Run, spook!"

If his heart had been beating, it'd have stopped right then and there. Pressure against his skull, something cold and solid pressing against it. With some difficulty he tore his eyes away from the smoking corpse and slowly turned around, fighting the deja-vue that threatened to overwhelm him.

There she was. Red, shredded suit. Gaping black hole where her chest was supposed to be. Huge, glowing cannon, pointing directly at him. Feet not entirely on the ground.

"I'll hunt you for all eternity!" she hissed.

He ran.