This story is like Cori's Real Life, and yet not. This is taking Danny Phantom to a different level-mainly, my level. This is Phantom from my persective and how I would write it if it was my creation-which it is not by the way, but I find great inspiration from this show and other fics. If you like my other stories, this is sure to be a blast!

I do not own Danny Phantom (what a bummer)

Chapter 1—

Amity Park, you could almost hear the bugles softly blowing as you were introduced to it. It was a strongly advancing town—great educational system, amazing advances in technology, and the most spectacular sightseeing areas in the whole state of Illinois. The only thing people had to be wary of, was one of the eyesores of the town—besides the highschool that is.

"Fire in the hole!"

The whole block that the Fenton's lived on did a slight earthquake number as smoke came billowing out of the basement windows. The neighbors rushed out to make sure they didn't need to call the police again or to spit angry words into the Fenton's empty front lawn.

A rather large man came out of the front door, waving the smoke out with him as he coughed to clear his lungs. His jumpsuit—yes jumpsuit—was a brilliant orange with black gloves and boots, smudged in soot and singed in places, saying that he had been pretty close to the explosion in his basement.

"It's alright!" he shouted to the angry and concerned people. "No fire, just slight feedback on the portal connection to the house."

A much smaller form stepped out into the front lawn, carrying a bucket filled with glowing green gunk. Her jumpsuit was a teal blue, showing off her curvy frame and also saying that she was dangerous if she wanted to be. She went over to the gutter and splashed the contents down the street.

"Hope the rats don't mutate again," she said, the accent of her Irish decent showing in her voice, then noticed the neighbors staring at her. "False alarm!" she yelled to reassure them.

"DAD!" came the shriek from the upstairs window. "What the heck are you doing this time?"

"Hey Jazzy-pants!" the large man turned and waved to his red-headed daughter. "Guess what, we think we can make the portal work this time!"

"Dad, you've been saying that ever since you found the old blueprints for that four years ago," the teenager looked angry and aggrieved with her father. "When are you going to get it that there are no ghosts!"

Jazz shut the windows before Jack could reply by blathering on about how obvious it was that ghosts existed—but the list is rather long and I don't want to bore you dear reader.

Many couldn't figure out the Fenton family. The parents were ghost obsessive, but never seemed to fail in their job as parents. The woman—Maddie—was very smart and very nurturing as a mother, she could also protect her kids with that ninth-degree black-belt she had framed in their front room along with the many sparing trophies on the mantel. The husband—Jack—was different from his wife. While he was very imaginative and sweet, he was also bumbling and almost always missing the main point of the conversation. Many agreed that he wouldn't be the successful man he was without his wife. The kids were even more different.

Jazz was completely her own person, always trying to push it into her parents to give up their life of ghost hunting so that they could be normal parents and better benefit society with their brains. She completely believed in facts, never once believing that ghosts existed. She had picked up her parents brains though, being a straight A student and blooming psychologist. She already had her pick of colleges and she was only in her junior year.

The boy, well, not much was known about Daniel Fenton. He was the only quiet one in the family, very reserved, and often stunned people with his logic of the world. He was like a mini Sherlock Holmes sometimes, always find solutions to the problems adults found so daunting. He may not have been smart like his sister, but his sweet nature and quiet demeanor made him the most liked of the family. Many said he took mostly after his mother, having her body build as well as her achievement in the martial arts, but no one could figure out where he had gotten his humble character—the Fentons were anything but quiet and reserved.

As the morning wore on and the neighborhood kids got ready to catch the bus, the Fentons were busy trying to get the smoke out of their house.

"Danny, hun, turn on that fan and get the smoke to go through the window," Maddie instructed her youngest as she plugged in said fan.

The black haired freshman did as she said without question and turned the fan on, watching the blades whirl to life behind the metal netting and blow the smoke through the open window by the couch. Danny watched the smoke for a minute to make sure it would stay like this, and then moved to grab his school bag. Jazz was waving for him to move it at the front door. Danny nodded and tried to get his mother's attention.

"Mom?" he said quietly, tugging on her sleeve.

She stopped what she was doing to look at him.

"We're going now," Danny said in a hushed voice.

"Have a good day sweety," Maddie smiled at him. "We'll be sure to have the house cleaned up before you get home tonight."

Danny nodded, smiled back, and went out the door to catch a ride with Jazz to school.

The two siblings might have looked different—and had totally different characters, but with both of them being stuck in their parents' professions since birth, there was a strong bond between them. It was almost like fighting for survival in that house, never knowing when something was going blow up or implode on them. Danny always looked up to Jazz for help, not just with their parents, but with school now that he was starting highschool. Jazz always felt protective of her little brother as well, then again, everybody did. Danny was probably the weakest of them all. He was short for his age, shaggy hair slumping into his eyes, and a thin frame of a growing teenager, made him look every inch a wimp. Jazz always stood up for him when her parents couldn't. Her status at school made him almost untouchable, but she knew kids mocked him in the halls and that the football players sometimes roughed him up a bit, but Danny never talked about it.

"What Jazz?" Danny asked in his soft voice when he caught his sister staring at him.

"Nothing Danny," she said, reassuring him as she put her car in gear. "Just thinking about what happened this morning."

Danny didn't seem to believe her, but he let it go and strapped in. Jazz watched from the corner of her eye as he brought out his sketch book and started to doodle with his feet on the lip of the seat and his shoulders hunched down in concentration.

Jazz smiled fondly. Danny always found a way to escape this world though that battered book of his. He had always had one since Jazz could remember. He never once showed her the pictures he drew, but she always seemed to know when he was running out of paper. To be honest, she worried about his mental health with the bad influence of their parents screaming from every corner of that house, but she was surprised to see Danny coped just fine with having ghost obsessive-parents. He hadn't completely crawled out of the hole like Jazz had, but he was well on his way. With being the outcast and the weakest of the family, her parents hovered over him all of the time like he was a breakable vase.

"We can run by Hobby Lobby later after school if you want," Jazz suggested at a light. "Get you a new sketch book and some new pencils too. Plus it will give the house more chance to air out."

"Thanks Jazz, that would be great," Danny smiled, his weak voice piercing Jazz's heart.

Many wondered why Danny's voice was so soft. Many blamed it on the fact that he was shy, and he was, but it wasn't the reason. Danny had been premature at birth, and the chord had been wrapped around his neck, stopping the flow of blood and development of his vocal-chords from expanding fully. Other than that, Danny had been perfectly healthy. The doctors said it was a miracle that he didn't have brain damage.

Sometimes it was hard to understand Danny in a large room or if he was in trouble. Jazz remembered when Danny was five and he had accidently bumped his head on the end of the stove, tearing his skin open and blood was pouring everywhere. Their parents had been in the basement with the door closed and could hear his weak screams and cries for help. If it hadn't been for Maddie's bad feeling for her son, Danny might have bled to death that day on the kitchen floor. He had lost a lot of blood when Maddie found him nearly half an hour later however and Danny spent two days in the hospital to make sure he would recover. He still had the scars in the back of his head if people looked hard enough.

Jazz pulled up into the highschool parking lot and got out. Danny copied her and looked quickly around to spot his best friends. He saw Tucker waving at him from across the lot, standing next to him was Sam, giving a short wave then pulling her arm back down—Tucker kept on waving as if Danny still hadn't noticed him. Danny waved back to pacify his friend and walked up to them.

"Dude, was all of that smoke from your house?" Tucker asked, that goofy smile in place as he pointed over his shoulder towards the general direction of Fenton Works.

Danny looked and saw the column of smoke rising in the distance and nodded.

"Sweet!" Tucker exclaimed.

"Uh, it's not sweet," Sam interjected, looking ready to punch Tucker in the mouth. "All of that smoke is going to pollute the air, and contribute to the destruction of human life. How would you like it if you stepped out of your house and you were breathing in poison all of the time?"

Danny and Tucker looked at each other, knowing better then to answer her. With Sam on the subject of preserving the earth, it was just as bad as Jack blathering on about ghosts.

"I didn't think so," Sam said, turning around and walking towards the front doors of the building.

Danny and Tucker gave each other a knowing look and followed her into the school. They made it to their first period class without running into Dash, the school's most profound idiot and muscle head. Danny honestly thought that Dash had a problem with reality, thinking that his parents stuck him in front of the T.V. when he was little and polluted his brain.

That's probably why he was so good at sports—he just imitated the pros on television. Danny shook his head at the lunacy of it all and took his sketch book out. He messed around with a few ideas before the bell rang and their English teacher walked into the room.

Mr. Lancer was known for being overly dramatic and shouted out the names of classic book titles in place of curses. He was also overweight, bald, and in dire need of a back wax.

Lancer looked around the room of freshmen with almost trepidation and sighed heavily. Danny knew Lancer didn't want to be here, but to the boy, it didn't seem like the adult had much of a choice. Lancer monotone the whole lecture and assigned the homework by writing it on the board. By the time the teacher was done, there was almost fifteen minutes until the bell rang. All the teens turned in their seats to talk to one another while Lancer just sat in his chair and drowned himself in a book.

"Hey, dude," Tucker turned in his seat to look at Danny, "do your parents have that portal up and running yet?"

"Well, no," Danny said, wincing at the mention of the monstrosity down in his basement. "But they say that they're close. They're going to try tonight to get it running."

"Really? Sweet! Can I come and watch?"

"I don't know," Danny looked off to the side, not sure if Tucker being in his parents' dangerous lab was a good idea.

"I'll go with you," Sam spoke up from the side. "We can both keep Tucker out of trouble that way."

"Hey, I'm not a baby," Tucker protested, frowning at Sam. "You just want to see the ghosts Goth girl."

"Well duh!" Sam rolled her eyes. "How cool would it be if ghosts were real? This might change the whole world of science Tuck."

"Glad you think so," Danny muttered. "I really don't think it's going to work guys. I'm to use to their stuff failing and exploding around me all of the time."

"Yeah but you live there," Sam said, smiling at his doubt. "Something is bound to work at some point."

Danny didn't want to admit that she was right. After all, his parents couldn't fail all of the time. Well, his sister would disagree with him there. Reluctantly, he agreed to have Sam and Tucker come over to watch the big unveiling of the ghost portal—whether it worked or not.

All was well until the lunch bell rang. After first period, the trio had to split up and go to their separate classes, which meant Danny was bully-bait up until lunch hour. Normally, when the three were together, they would get bullied verbally—until Sam pinned them down with her glare and they were sent running. Tucker was more or less a distraction for Danny—the jocks tended to steal Tucker's PDA more often then shove them into a locker. Tucker always had spares so it was no big deal most of the time to be served as a distraction. With Danny on his own, it was survival of the fittest and Danny wasn't always lucky to come out on top.

Danny soon found himself cramped inside his locker and hearing the slam of the door behind him. Because of his small size, Danny fit perfectly into the school lockers, which was a bane on him because Dash loved to smash him into his own holding for his books and bag. Said jock was laughing in the hall right in front of Danny's locker.

"Dash, let me out!" Danny yelled, but it only came out as a harsh rasp that could barely be heard through the metal box.

Of course, Dash didn't hear and just left Danny standing awkwardly in the locker. Danny waited to see if he could hear anybody coming down the hall, but of course people would be in the cafeteria, eating lunch and having a good time. His only hope was either to bust out of here on his own, or to hope that Tucker and Sam noticed he was gone and got him out of here. Scratch that—his only hope of escape was to hope for Sam and Tucker to bust him out.

"I really need to get an air freshener in here," he mumbled to himself, unable to pinch his nose to block the smell of the highschool locker. "Come on guys, help me out here."

He didn't know how long he had to wait, but eventually, the lock turned and the door opened, making Danny fall backward and slam his back into the tile floor.

Sam and Tucker were standing over him, looking happy and concerned at the same time.

"You okay man?" Tucker asked, bending down to help Danny back on his feet.

"I'll be okay," Danny said, taking Tucker's arm. "Thanks for getting me out of there."

"You're welcome," Sam said simply, but she looked up at the clock on the wall. "We're going to be late though."

"I missed lunch hour?" Danny asked, whining because his now empty stomach was growling hungrily.

"Yep," Tucker handed Danny something wrapped in plastic. "You better stuff it before Lancer sees you with it."

"Thanks Tuck," Danny unwrapped the Twinky and shoved it into his mouth. "Let's go!"

The three made it to class just before the last bell rang and took their seats, looking around to make sure Dash wouldn't try something funny again. Tucker and Sam stuck by Danny throughout the rest of the school day and by the time they had to hand him off to Jazz, school was over and Dash and his companions were heading towards the football field for practice.

"I'm not a baby," Danny grumbled as his sister drove them home.

"I never said you were Danny," Jazz looked at him oddly. "Why do you think that?"

"Because you, Sam, Tucker, Mom, and Dad, think it's your job to protect me all of the time. I can take care of myself. I don't have to be body guarded."

Jazz looked at her brother, feeling sorry for him, but what he was saying she could deny. Danny couldn't take care of himself, and to be completely honest, she didn't know why. It just seemed that whenever he was alone, something always went horribly wrong. It had become habit to stand up for him, to protect him from himself, but now that Danny was older, he was fighting them, trying to make it on his own. Jazz feared that he never would be able to do that without serious consequences.

"I know Danny," Jazz said turning into their drive.

"No you don't," Danny grumbled, getting out before the car had been shut off. "You just don't understand."

"Hey Danny-boy!" Jack cried happily as his son came into the house. "How was school?"

"Same," Danny grumbled as he marched moodily up to his room.

Jack stared after Danny, confused as to why his son was so down. Jazz came in, not looking happy either.

"Did you two have a fight?" Jack asked as Jazz sat on the sofa dejectedly.

"Well, kind of," Jazz sighed. "Danny's just tired of people protecting him. He wants to stand up for himself."

"Well he can if he wants," Jack said, confused. "What's stopping him?"

"Dad, it's Danny's problem and I'm sure he can work it out," Jazz got up from the couch and hugged her dad. "Don't worry about it so much."

Jack watched Jazz go to her room and frowned at what she had said. Jack knew he could be forgetful sometimes—okay a lot of the time—but he would never forget his kids. If Danny was having a problem, he wanted to know.

"Danny?" Jack knocked on his son's door and waited for an answer.

Danny opened the door himself, looking better then when he had entered the house, but still pretty upset about whatever was bothering him. Jack smiled at his son, but Danny didn't return the look. Jack frowned then and motioned for Danny to go in, himself following.

"Is there something wrong son?" Jack asked, closing the door and watching Danny sit in his computer chair. "You can tell me. Are you getting bullied at school?"

"No," Danny said a little too quickly, but changed the subject to confuse his forgetful father, "I'm just tired of the hovering."

"What hovering?"

"Like what you're doing now. You guys act like I'm going to fall apart at the seams any second if you're not here to watch over me. I'm not three anymore Dad."

"Of course you're not Danny, you're ten!"

"Fourteen Dad," Danny said angrily. "I'm fourteen! I'm just small, but you don't need to be reminded of that."

Danny crossed his arms and looked at the tabletop of his desk. Jack sighed and put a hand on Danny's shoulder.

"I'm sorry Danny, I was just joking with you. I know your age—your sister never lets me forget hers, so it's easy to remember yours, no matter how you look," Jack smiled like a goof even though Danny didn't see it. "And I'm sorry, maybe we are a little over protective of you."

"A little?" Danny scoffed. "I know I'm not as strong as Mom, or as smart as Jazz, or as big as you, but I can take care of myself! I can defend myself you know."

"Of course you can," Jack said, though inside he doubted it.

"No you don't," Danny said quietly. "Just leave me alone Dad."

Jack noticed that Danny wasn't angry anymore, but tired and fed-up. Danny could never stay angry long, it always seemed to tier him out more often than a run did. This is exactly why Jack thought Danny couldn't handle himself, he was never emotionally or physically strong enough to handle anything on his own.

However, the father did as Danny wished and left his room, wanting to talk to Maddie about this problem before anything else happened. Jack didn't like to see his son depressed and he wanted to help Danny badly, but he had a feeling that there was nothing he could do. Maybe it was like Jazz said, Danny had to figure this out on his own.

Deep in the place that humans call the Ghost Zone, an entity was watching the whole thing unfold in the present from his watch dais in his main room. The being known at Clockwork was a ghost not to be messed with for he was the Master of all Time. He could foresee events, alter events to make sure time came out steady and true, but the time was coming to where he would have to intervene in the life of this young man.

"You search for a freedom you yourself can't understand," Clockwork spoke to the image of Danny Fenton, holding his head in his hands at the desk. "I am about to grant you that freedom, but I'm afraid it is not up to me entirely."

Clockwork looked up, at the spiraling pool above his head. It glowed with a heavenly light and whoever looked upon it felt great mystery and peace at the sight, everyone except Clockwork, for he knew what the rotating pool was.

"I know what will ensue if you are given this gift," Clockwork brandished his staff at the dais and the image of a glowing, white-haired teen took up the picture where Danny once was. "You will grow to be a great warrior, one who's strength and heart none can match in a lifetime, but great dangers also lay for you in this path. If you are denied this gift however," the scene changed again, but with a picture of pure destruction and shadow. "What say you Destiny? Is the boy acceptable?"

"You have found a great link in Time's chain," a booming voice echoed all around the chamber. "I do not like the thought of such power in a teenager's hands."

"But he is a link nonetheless, with or without power," Clockwork argued. "You are more powerful then I, what say you?"

The rotating pool above Clockwork began to shift, as if in uneasiness. Then it vanished without reason.

"Do what you see fit," the voice faded with the pool.

"Very well," Clockwork said, smiling slightly. "Young Daniel shall be our new Phantom."