I own nothing, not the characters, the space where this story exists, or even the eyes that you are using to read it. This is for entertainment purposes only, no money involved.
(Danny's POV)
"Come on. Come on." I said through clenched teeth as I poured all my strength into breaking the glowing green bonds that held Danielle to the steel slab table. Her screams of pain echoed through the small room as electricity was being pumped through her, increasing the rate in which she was destabilizing.
Glancing up, I could see the beads of green moisture running down her body as it started to fall apart. "No!" I shouted, jumping back and starting to send a beam of bright green energy to try to cut through the chains. But it wasn't working. Nothing was working.
Reaching into my belt, I felt the untested Ecto-Dejecto. I remembered my parents trying to destroy weaker ghosts with it and having it only make them stronger, but I didn't know if it would work on a half ghost. I didn't know what kind of side effects it might have.
But as Dani gave another scream of pain, I knew I would just have to at least try. "Danielle, are you feeling brave?" I said, trying to prepare myself as much as I was trying to prepare her.
"I'm... actually feeling rather weak in the knees." Danielle tried to joke. I nearly lost my cool when I saw that her knees were literally falling apart.
"I hope this works." I mumbled to myself as I raised the spray bottle over to her and gave it a strong squeeze. A moment passed as I held my breath before she gave one finally scream and turned into a puddle, sliding into a basin that had been placed underneath the experimenting table. "No!" I screamed, going down onto my knees, trying to sense her presense, though I could tell she was already gone. Tears started to swell up in my eyes. "Dani."
"Stop your crying." The snide voice of Vlad Masters cut through my grief like a knife. I turned to look at him, standing there in the middle of his basement lab with his usual annoyed look as he stared down at him. His crisp business suit and gray hair pulled back in a ponytail. Not a single thing out of place about him. It made me sick to my stomach. "She wasn't even real. Just a failed clone. It isn't like anything of actual value was lost. And now with her base materials, perhaps I can actually make a complete copy."
"You. How could you. She was just a little girl." I said, my hands tightening until the bottle of Ecto-Dejecto crumpled in my hand like an empty soda can, the useless liquid dripping over my gloved fingers and splattering on the floor.
"I told you, she wasn't a little girl. Just a failed experiment. Get over it." Vlad's casual manner about it all, his uncaring dismissal of Dani's existence. It set me over the edge.
"You bastard!" I cried, turning to his with hands glowing bright green as I gathered more and more power. I let loose a volley of ectoblasts which the business man dodged, diving like a coward and leaving the shots to travel on to smash into his computers, blowing them to pieces.
"You insolent child. Do you have any idea how much it is going to cost to place those again?" Vlad shouted as he stood up, a black ring traveling over his body to reveal a vampiric man with pointy black hair and a white suit with matching cap. His dark red eyes that used to scare me only made me mad, his fangs just things that I wanted to rip out of his face.
"Cost... cost... What do you care you bastard!?" I shouted again, firing still more shots at him. He put up a shield to stop it by I just keep firing them one after another, giving him no chance to run.
Finally, my rage reaching its peak, I took in a deep breath and let out a scream that shook the entire building. A wave of bright green light pulsated from my open mouth, shattering Vlad's shield as if it was made of nothing but glass and pushing the insane businessman down into the ground, grinding him in the dirt while the wave pounded at his body, doing more damage than was visible to the naked eye.
After a few seconds, my attack started to run dry. The room was a wreck, and Plasmius lay weakened and defenseless against the far wall.
I heard a sound similar to a jet, and Valerie entered the room on her hover board. "Phantom, the Ghost I was fighting just disappeared, what happ..." She started before seeing Plasmius in the corner of the room. The black ring appearing around his waist, turning him back into his human form. "Vlad Masters!? He was... he was the ghost all along?" Valerie said. I could hear her disbelief and confusion, but I didn't care. I walked straight up to Vlad, glaring down at him.
"Ah Daniel. It would seem like you have foiled my plans once again and cost me another few millions of dollars in damages." Vlad said staring up at me with a snide grin. "But lets be honest Daniel, that is all you've managed to do." I held out a hand, feeling my power flowing into it as I glared down at Vlad. Vlad just laughed as he looked into the light of my attack that was inches away from killing him. "We both know you don't have it in you to kill me."
I held the attack in his face. I wanted to. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to smeer that stupid grin of his against the ground. To wipe his evil out of existence... but he was right. I couldn't bring myself to do it. Even after everything he had just done. I couldn't kill him.
The power left my hand as I turned, looking at the green goo that was all that was left of Danielle Phantom, the mostly innocent little girl. I couldn't save her. I couldn't avenge her. What else could I do?
'Change the past.' A small voice seemed to whisper in the back of my mind. I clenched my teeth, thinking of all the ways I had messed up when changing the past before. But I wouldn't stop. I had to try. Dani deserved to live.
I started to fly out passing Valerie. "Danny... is that really you?" She said, connecting the dots.
"I'm going to get her back. One way or another. I won't let Dani die." I said as I moved past her, leaving her in the ruins of the manor as I flew out through the roof.
It didn't take me too long to find Clockwork's tower again. I had been there a few times in the past, no pun intended, though every time I went there, something emotionally traumatizing happened.
Flying up, I was about to knock on the door when it just opened by itself, same as it always did. Letting the sound of hundreds of ticking clocks echo out of the opening. "Come in." The timeless voice of the master of time echoed from all directions. Taking a short breath, hoping that Clockwork would help me, I flouted into his tower. "You're right on time, young Phantom. I'm glad you didn't get lost."
Clockwork turned towards me, giving his usual half smile that also gave me the strange feeling he was laughing at everyone and everything for being stupider than he was. Not that I cared, he could laugh all he wanted if he would help me fix what happened. "Can we please skip over the whole me telling you why I'm here and you saying that you 'already knew that, but then again you know everything' deal." I said, not really being in the mood for his running gag. I can usually put up with it, even enjoy the simplicity of the humor, but today was not a good day.
He nodded his head as he shape shifted from the form of a middle aged man to that of an elderly one. "Alright then, the answer is no. You can't travel back in time to save Danielle." Clockwork said. My body tensed as I was about to argue with him, but he cut me off. "It wouldn't do you any good. Save her now, she will just destabilize down the road and die a week later. If you want to save her, you will have to do something else."
"Name it." I said, not caring what the price would be, I would be ready to do any of Clockwork's traumatizing tasks if it meant saving Danielle.
"That is the thing I always enjoyed about you Daniel. You always leap before you look. Having faith in your own inner strength to see you through, and willing to do whatever it takes to protect those you care about." Clockwork said, tapping his finger together as he shank into the form of a toddler. "I have the power needed to rescue Danielle, but in order for me to do this, you will need to agree to do a job for me. So what do you say?"
"I already said to name it." I answered quickly.
"Good." He said leaning back in empty air, as if congratulating himself. "I assume you know about the infinite worlds by now. Well, one word in particular is give the Observant a good deal of things to worry about. You see a foreign power has infected the world, feeding off of it as a parasite. We need someone to go in and take care of this problem." Clockwork said waving a hand so that one of his looking glasses came over to him. "Sadly, you are ill suited to the task."
"What!?" I shouted angry, was he going to say that he would save Danielle if he did a task that couldn't be done.
"You are ill suited to the task, because it requires one thing that you are not able to do. You will have to kill the foreign power that spoke of. You will have to kill a sentient being." Clockwork said as he changed yet again from a baby to a middle aged man. The looking glass he brought down showed an image of me standing over Vlad from just a few minutes ago, unable to kill him. "Even someone who has done unthinkable crimes. You cannot kill them. It is your weakness." Clockwork said dismissing the lense.
I looked down, thinking hard about what he had just said. "Give me a chance. If it is to save Danielle, I will kill this parasite." I said looking up at the master of time.
He smiled. "Yes, you will. I am going to use my power to surprise your ability to feel mercy towards your enemies until you return from you mission. While you are there, you will kill anyone who stands in opposition to you." He said coldly. The thought made me shiver. "While you back out? This is your only chance." He said, knowing full well that I wouldn't.
"I'll do it." I said, not letting myself second guess my path.
"As I knew you would. Then again, I know everything." He said tapping his staff on the ground, causing a large magic circle to appear. "You will now be an Erase. I look forward to seeing how you and Danielle will adapt to your knew situation." He said with a grin.
Before I could even wonder what he meant by that, the world faded from around me and everything began to shack.
"Oh my head." I said as I started to push myself up and began to rub at my throbbing skull. Only... it wasn't my voice. It wasn't me who was saying it. It wasn't me who was controlling the arm.
My body sat up and started to look around. I was in my room, only it was a complete disaster zone, looking as if a earthquake had hit. Standing up my body started to walk around the room. "What happened here." The voice that wasn't mine said, head turning back and forth as it looked at my model space ships that had been thrown to the ground and broken or the alarm clock that was smashed against the floor. Everything in the room looked a lot bigger than I remembered it.
The voice was much light than my own voice, though I felt like it was familiar some how. Looking out the window, I could see large monstrous birds with four legs and oddly shaped beaks. Looking past them, I could see a dense jungle that really shouldn't have been there.
Whoever it was controlling my body shivered at the sight of them. "Some weird birds they have around here." Their voice said as my body moved backwards and bumped into my desk. Turning around I could now see into the mirror that was on my desk, and what I saw would have made my jaw drop if I was the one controlling my body.
Looking back at me in the mirror was the light blue eyes, childish face and long black hair in a ponytail of Danielle.
'Clockwork... you bastard.'
This is a story I threatened to make a long time ago. So here it is, the first chapter of such a story.
I made it because I noticed that there are literally zero crossovers from MAZE. Meaning no competition for the number one story slot. Yeah!