It had been six months since Danny, Randy and Jake stopped the Ghostlock…but Danny Fenton had just saved the world six hours ago, and his secret was out. Already he had received thousands of messages thanking him for saving the world, social media sites were exploding under the hashtag "Phantom Planet."
But there were two messages that let Danny know just how much things were about to change, and they both said the same thing; "We've got to talk."
Excusing himself from an interview, Danny quickly flew off to New York, the joy of having saved the planet being replaced by the dread of what came next.
Phasing through the New York apartment of Jake Long, he landed in his friend's room and de-morphed with a sigh of relief that no one was hounding him with cameras for once.
"Let's hear it for Danny Phantom, ladies and gentlemen, aka…Mr. Worldwide!"
Turning around at the sound of Jake's voice, Danny was greeted with a wave of applause from his friends who had assembled in to meet him.
"Sam, Tucker… Dani?" Danny said as he hugged his friends from Amity Park, "Man you guys got here quick."
"Well you know; flying air dragon is a lot easier than taking the Spector Speeder from a house brimming with paparazzi."
"Yeah, I'm kind of the talk of the town now aren't I?"
"Not just the town," Jake said, pulling up a Chinese newsfeed with Danny's picture, "like we said, you're literally Mr. Worldwide."
"Which is sort of why we called this meeting."
Jake nodded, suddenly turning serious. "Randy's right, now that you're out there, I think… it's time we call off the trio."
The room fell silent at that point, no one wanting to interact in the wake of this serious development.
"So… so just like that we're finished? Phantom's global so the trio just stops?"
"Look, it's not like we're not gonna be friends, we just…" Randy took a long pause, looking at Theresa, "think about it like this: Danny Phantom is Danny Fenton…"
"Danny Phantom hangs out with the Norrisville Ninja and supposedly the Dragon of New York…" Dani cut in.
"Danny Fenton is friends with Randy Cunningham and Jake Long…" Sam continued.
"Randy Cunningham is from the same town as the ninja…."
"And Jake Long lives in the same city as the dragon, which doesn't sound so ridiculous now that we have worldwide proof of ghosts…"
Tucker looked at Danny, waiting for him to make the connection. "Three teenage boys, three mysterious protectors, but how are they connected?"
"And more importantly…why do Phantom, the Ninja, and the Dragon show up at the same time that Danny, Randy, and Jake disappear?"
Danny sat beside Sam on Jake's bed, covering her hand with his.
"You guys though of all of this…and yet you're all terrible, terrible students?"
"Eh, we have our priorities."
The room erupted in laughter, the tension of the moment dissolved by the good natured ribbing.
"So… we're really doing this?"
Randy sighed. "Just until the Phantom hype dies down, and evil then it'll still be hard for us to keep secrets, but Tucker's got some kind of plan for that."
Danny looked at Tuck and raised an eyebrow.
"Hey, you have your thing, I have mine."
"Enough of this 'being sad' though," Haley said, finally speaking up from her beanbag chair in front of the window, "the reason we called you here is that we can't say goodbye to the Secret Trio…"
Dani phased up through the floorboards carrying a giant cake, "Without a little party to celebrate all the good times!"
"Alright! Cake!"
"And," Jake said, throwing open the closet doors, "we've got pizza and sodas, too."
Danny almost teared up. "You guys…I don't know what to say."
"Then allow me." Randy stood behind Danny and Sam on Jake's bed and raised his drink into the air, "Eh-em, a toast! To Danny Phantom!"
"To Jake Long!" Danny yelled out.
"To Randy Cunningham!" Jake roared.
"To the Secret Trio!" Everyone shouted together.
So busy on Earth in their moment of euphoria, no one bothered looking to the stars that night, and no one thought of what else what out there.
No one thought back on Vlad Plasmius, the man responsible for this entire mess, and so no one was there when, one week later, he began plotting.
"I've lost…" he said as he floated through the cosmic debris field, "beaten by buffoons and…teenagers! But I can never go back to Earth, not like this, everyone knows that I'm a ghost."
Closer to the planet now, he thought back on that.
"Everyone knows that I'm a ghost, but they don't know what I can do!" Evil laughter poured from his mouth. "Not yet anyway…"
Speeding towards Earth, Vlad began to piece together his greatest trick ever, determined that if he was going down, so were the Fentons.
As he touched down near his fallout shelter buried in the Canadian wasteland, Vlad laughed at the brilliance of his own plan.
Vlad Plasmius was a menace, but Vlad Master's was still a mastermind. It would take some time, but he'd show them all what it truly meant to be ruled by fear.
He would take everything from them, everything.
As he entered the facility, he turned on some of the older machines and began his varied machinations.
"Ah, hello Maxwell," Vlad said, looking at a stasis pod on the wall that contained the dragon spawn he'd encountered months ago, "did you miss me?"
The dragon woke with a stir, thrashing around its container with an intense hunger for freedom that Vlad only smiled at.
"If the devil's greatest trick was convincing the world he didn't exist, then mine shall be proving to the people just how many false gods walk among them."