(I just want to say to all of you that I have never written a story before, and I still have no idea what I am doing. Creating a cohesive storyline is challenging, so after months of head bashing, I have come up with a sample chapter for all of you to read and judge at your own discretion. This was adopted from ShadowPillow's "A King, a Knight, and a Phantom" and I have been trying figure out how to continue this as I see fit since ShadowPillow has been sporadic on updates lately. I will also point that I own nothing).

Danny could no longer hide from the truth.

I thought my life couldn't get any weirder, but apparently, it can.

That one revelatory (if not glaringly obvious) thought kept echoing in Danny's head as he sped through the clear, cool, starry night sky several thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean. Ever since he became Phantom, Danny's powers have steadily grown in strength and every ghost fight he's ever been in has helped significantly in honing his control over them. Initially, Danny could barely keep himself afloat for more than five minutes, or above twenty feet; now he can fly straight from Japan to the U.S. (or in this case, Britannia) in 2.5 hours flat. Danny, as always, felt a mixture of pride and exhilaration as he soared across the heavens.

Sam and Tucker would be so thrilled if they saw me right now.

On that note, Danny's good mood soured big time. He was still finding it hard to believe that this new world was his Earth…two thousand years in the future! Apart from the giant flying mechas, Danny could hardly tell the difference. Granted, Danny wasn't all too thrilled at the fact that an evil empire had used said mechas to take over a third of the world and treated those they conquered as second-class citizens, degrading them as insignificant "Numbers".

Not to mention, all his friends and family…practically everyone he knew…were long gone.

All things considered, this was still preferable to that other future he had witnessed a while back, courtesy of Clockwork. At least here, humanity isn't an endangered species, and more importantly, HE isn't here…Danny quickly shook away the horrible memories. The less he remembered the psychopathic alternate future version of himself, the more his sanity remains intact.

It wasn't long before Danny saw the first rays of sunlight just as a large stretch of land appeared below him, and gaped in awe at the enormous sprawling metropolis gleaming in the midday sun, modeled in such a way that seemed to pay homage to the ancient gods of Olympus.

Or more likely, as a shrine to themselves that loudly declares their own twisted sense of superiority to the world, like Vlad did with Amity Park when he was mayor, Danny thought. So, this is Pendragon. It's so beautiful. You know, for a bunch of megalomaniacs bent on world domination, they definitely have impressive taste in architecture.

Of course, much as he wanted to sightsee, he still had somewhere he needed to be at.

Six weeks later

He should have locked the door.

Danny kept cursing himself with that one statement when he saw the thermos was missing from his dorm room back at Ashford. He already knew who took it.

Milly Ashford, the Blonde Nightmare…I can't leave her alone with anything, Danny inwardly grimaced.

He heard that she and some of the Student Council members were taking a trip to some hotel near a lake and she was looking for some extra supplies. Unfortunately, Milly was a known impulsive kleptomaniac, particularly around items of new students she has yet to harass in every conceivable way.

Just as Danny had activated the newly rebuilt Fenton Ghost Portal back at the bookstore, he gets a call from Milly explaining the trip and that she needed to "borrow" his "futuristic" thermos for a few days. Danny was too stunned to get a word in edgewise before Milly hung up.

Wow, she talks fast. God, I should've just left the thing back in Amity Park. It's not as if it was in any danger of being opened before I brought it back here.

Over a month passed since his little venture to the ruins of Amity Park. After sifting through every inch of the remains of FentonWorks, Danny managed to recover two items that miraculously survived two whole millennia relatively intact: a Fenton thermos and something his parents called the "Drive". The Drive was his parents' ultimate backup: a USB flash drive designed to hold 10 terabytes of data and contained every single piece of scientific research his parents had ever come up with since their college days. Every schematic, every formula, every calculation and theory …it was all stored in the Drive. It was updated once a week, and then placed in a specialized near-indestructible containment cube with a DNA-lock that would only respond to Fenton DNA and was capable of shielding it from physical damage, disruptive energy waves, and as it turns out, the ravages of time.

When he returned to Ashford, Danny couldn't begin to express his relief upon discovering that none of the data within the Drive had been compromised, particularly the Ghost Portal blueprints.

From there, Danny began looking for a suitable location near the academy for a laboratory, which just happened to be a basement underneath an old bookstore a few blocks away whose owner was getting on in years and since he had no family, he needed someone to take over the place after he retired. He really seemed to like Danny, though that didn't stop the old man from setting a high price for the place. For Danny, getting funds hadn't been the issue. He already started to accumulate a vast amount of money by overshadowing a few corrupt nobles and then hide it all in an untraceable bank account. However, using his powers like that…like Vlad…made Danny incredibly uncomfortable. Of course, Danny needed new lab materials along with food and shelter, and a regular job's wages to fund everything would take longer than Danny liked, so he couldn't afford to take the moral high ground for now. Plus, he really wanted to teach those asshole nobles a big lesson in karma. Until recently, it worked.

Now, Danny really wished he chucked the thermos to the bottom of the Pacific when he had the chance.

He thought of calling Milly back to warn her about the thermos, but he instantly dismissed the idea. I mean, this is Milly. Nothing stays secret with her, and if she gets curious enough to open it...Danny was too horrified to finish the thought. The worst part is that he can't remember which ghost was trapped in there. Was it Skulker? Walker? Penelope Spectra? He really hoped to God it was just the Box Ghost; that guy was always more annoying than threatening.

Trying to calm himself, Danny shifted to Phantom and flew through the ceiling of his dorm out into the night sky unseen. Clockwork can wait, but I need to get that thermos away from everyone before all hell breaks loose. What was the place called, Lake Kawaguchi? I just hope the basics I've learned on Japanese are enough. Danny was still off on some parts of the pronunciations, but he can recognize most of the kanji and speak fluently enough for standard conversations. It didn't take Danny that long to find the hotel, considering it was a massive structure several miles from the shore of a huge lake, not to mention the various news crews that surrounded the building kept repeating "Kawaguchi".

Danny figured this was the right place.

The presence of the media was troubling enough for Danny, though what he overheard sent him into panic mode. Apparently, some group called the "Japan Liberation Front" had taken hostages and demanded the release of any and all imprisoned JLF members, threatening to kill a hostage every five minutes otherwise. They had already killed one hostage, and I refuse to let them kill anyone else. This has got to stop. Danny thought with ice-cold determination. First, I can disable the wiring on all those purple mechas (I think they're called Sutherlands) guarding the hotel without anyone noticing. It's way too easy!

Just then, Danny's ghost sense flared up, making him regret he was ever born.

As if on cue, all the power in the area went out. Just as suddenly, it came back on, the lights of the hotel flickering on and off to the confusion of everyone, even the terrorists. Then, an aura of poisonous green energy covered the whole building, and before anyone knew what was happening, giant bolts of green electricity struck from the top spires of the hotel and hit all the JLF's Sutherlands, which all began glowing green as if they were highly radioactive. The pilots were all ejected out just as the mechas were instantly disassembled piece by piece, the parts still glowing and floating through the air.

Finally, a sound of malicious laughter was instantly heard in the night, and Danny paled in horror. No, it can't be…my life can't be this bad!

As the horrible laughter continued, the Sutherland parts began converging above the hotel, reassembling into a massive metal golem about the same size as the hotel, glowing with a deathly green aura. The body itself was pure obsidian, with glowing green circuitry encompassing every inch of it. The head of the robot was a large trapezoidal cylinder, and a shiny glass visor made up its face, not unlike a computer screen. A face suddenly appeared on the screen, with pale green skin and pitch-black sunglasses in place of eyes, its inhuman mouth grinning maniacally as the thing continued laughing. As it stopped cackling, it shouted to all who could hear it.

"HUMANS! TREMBLE BEFORE ME! FOR I, TECHNUS, Ghost Master of Technology, have returned after millenia of imprisonment toconquer this world!"

It's official. The universe hates me.