Disclaimer.
Imprint:
A continuation of Cordria's work. Except not quite. You'll have to read hers first, they're in Star Shots. Go. Shoo. Then come back and leave feedback, if you would be so kind.
A/N: Uh...this is a more direct link to canon, I suppose...but it's not really that good, in my opinion. Of course, I dislike the majority of my work after rereading them again, so my recommendations on my own work probably aren't that reliable. Oh well. Notes on the pure continuity errors at the bottom. Oh, and this is a repost because I forgot that FFNet absolutely ruins your work by swallowing up punctuation and giving you strange line breaks when you don't want them and squeezing your words together when you want line breaks. Note to self: Never again judge writers on FFN based on poor punctuation or line breaks, it's the site's fault!
A man sat on the edge of the rebuilt rooftop, legs swinging idly, right hand twitching out to touch the lighted screen beside him. Time and time again, his fingers twitched across the buttons of the little box, before giving up to stare once more at the stars. The moon shone brightly, a sharp crescent knife slicing through what should have been a gloomy night. Yet it wasn't, the moist cool of the night belying the tragedy that had happened, again and again.
Every year.
Occasionally, when he was at his most hopeful, he'd look up, and discover that the stars seemed brighter, and were smiling down on him. And at those times, he thought he saw two stars, forever joined, forever orbiting, made brighter by each other.
When he was at his most depressed, (and none of his friends could help him out of it), he'd ascend to some high rooftop, (so similar to this one) and contemplate just letting it all go.
But no matter what he felt like, he always came back here, on this night. To watch it happen and curse that he hadn't been there for them, when he could have been. Even when he'd studied overseas, even when he'd gone on his honeymoon, he'd always disappeared 'on that day' and no questions, whether asked or implied, were answered. The man looked ahead, older by another year, never having grown up as of yet. Perhaps it was the chill that warned him. Perhaps the eerie silence that seemed to mute the birds and insects on the trees in the park nearby.
Or perhaps the lights.
Translucent green rays flashed through the empty spaces between the rooftops, impacting on something that wasn't there anymore, a flickering ghost covered in chains. A white-haired, black hazmat-clad figure floated in the spaces, undoubtedly hurling quips at the bound enemy. He was bruised and tattered, green blood oozing down his pants from fifty different places. He half-turned, showing green eyes glowing with unusual hatred, raising his gloved hand and firing off a blast in the watching man's direction. The ecto-blast left a scorch mark on the rooftop concrete, its shape familiar now, after so many years, to the man. Tracing its outline absently with one finger, the man watched again the happenings above the central junction of Amity Park.
Just like always, the figure in the center opened his mouth in a scream, though not a Wail. The Wails had had been used up, long before. The figure would scream a long, loud scream that echoed through memory, though not reality. It was still silent as a film noir. Eyes dull in pain, now, Danny seemed to concentrate and focus when his eyes widened, looking at the opposite rooftop from where the man was, where a vaguely feminine figure appeared.
The man continued watching Danny. He knew what was going to happen. He'd seen it happen from that rooftop, when it had happened in truth.
As always, the sounds began to flick on, ghostly moans mixed with the clanking of chains and the calls of crickets. "Danny!" The black-haired, violet-eyed girl rushed to the edge, a Thermos in her hand.
"Sam, stay back!" Danny ordered, white hair swishing back in a nonexistent breeze.
Through the mist of tears, the man watched an immaterial ghost, even more transparent than normal, appeared and sent a blast of ectoplasm, shaped like a link in a chain, through Sam. Her eyes widened, then drooped as she began to fall forwards, Thermos clattering on the ledge before tilting over and falling. A second later, Sam followed, sliding over the edge of the rooftop.
Danny screamed again, a scream that had nothing to do with physical pain, before flashing down to catch Sam in viridian-oozing arms, completely forgetting about the chain ghost.
The chain ghost laughed, firing another chain of links at Danny, who took them all in the back, shielding Sam from more of the things that had caught her unawares.
Their voices drifted over to where the man sat.
"Is there any hope?"
"No. If I feel like this - perfectly fine - when I'm jetting out blood all over you - then there's no chance, Danny."
"None at all?"
"No. None. I never did get a chance to say what I wanted to say to you, though...I just wanted to say..."
"What is it, Sam?"
"I..."
The last echoes of the conversation faded, and the man watched the boy cradling his best friend in midair as she struggled for breath. His expression was a mix of regret and sorrow, then all that faded away and he turned around, eyes a calm willow green, to face the chain ghost, who was still chuckling.
Danny drifted closer to the chain ghost, Sam's head nestled on his left shoulder. His hands, wrapped around her limp body, began to glow with a green light. Their blood mixed, human red with ectoplasmic green, as the light spread up Danny's arms until the area around Sam's head, eyes closed to the world, shone with an emerald brilliance.
Danny clutched Sam tighter to his body as his legs began to assume that same fluorescent jade shade that his other limbs had done.
A strange, timeless moment passed as he leaned down to whisper something lost forever to the mists of time in her ear. She stiffened for a while, smiling enigmatically up at Danny, violet eyes opening as the glorious light spilled up Danny's chest, glowing over his shoulders and up his neck and covering the logo that Sam had made for him and stuck on him when they'd once had a fight.
Danny closed his eyes in some expression of exaltation, giving himself up to the ectoplasma. All of the jade light left his body, shrinking to one pinprick-sized sphere, illuminating the two figures next to it.
Two rings of lightsaber blue light ran vertically up and down Danny's body, transforming him back to Danny Fenton. Looking at her face, Danny switched grips on Sam, holding on to her shoulders. Sam held on to his waist and they embraced, gazing at each other as though their partner was the world. They hung upside down, suspended in a moment that lasted forever, before falling head-first towards the ground as the pinprick detonated, a swirling soundless explosion of emerald lasting both a flash and eternity.
They were smiling to each other, moon blue at royal velvet, leaning in for a non-fake 'fake-out make-out', as ectoplasmic radiation heated the air around them and swallowed up the chain ghost.
They kissed, light leaving their eyes as the greater light of a verdant inferno consumed them and passed through them. They were locked into eternity as the explosion, though powerful with ectoplasmic energy, intangibly bypassed everything around them before completely fading away, erasing the half-conscious lovers, forever falling, hair flapping in the intangible flight of their fall, taking even the remnants of the mortal fight with it.
The night resumed and the man looked at the detector beside him. It hummed slightly before showing the results of his scan. It was expected, but every year the man wanted it to change.
"I'm sorry, Danny. You were so much to Amity Park, and even to me," his voice shook ever so slightly, "Only to be an imprint." He looked away. "Sam? I really hope you're doing well, with Danny. I know even if he's an imprint here, he'll be happy wherever you are, so...at least he's happy now. He deserves it. He really did...does." There were tears now, eyes red with his tears.
"I guess you'll be happy to know I just got a son, and I've named him Danny, after you. Jazz says hi, by the way, but the only reason she's not up here is because she doesn't want to see you die. I keep telling her and telling her that you'll never die when we still remember you both, but she's good at coming up with logical reasons not to come up here. And I think you'd be happy to know that I've started a professional ghost hunting company in your memory. I figure it's what you would have wanted, what with the sudden outpouring of ghosts. But hey, I'm only back here for tonight, I'm heading back out tomorrow to be back with my family. And yours, too. I wouldn't worry about Amity Park, if you're still here. Or there, watching. Or something. Amity is protected, after all. Always will be. By my partner, but you know him well." He took a deep breath, stood in silence for a moment, remembering.
"Your parents and Valerie've joined my company as armourers, and Tucker said to tell you that...that he knows it's been another year too long, and that he'll be home soon. I don't know what that means, but...I'm sure you'll know. Well, this is another year gone by. I'll see you next year, Danny." The man laid a bouquet of roses on the rooftop.
The man felt a chill on his back, and knew who it was. He turned around. "Hey, Phantom."
The figure illuminated the area around him as he looked at the man with as close to pity as Phantom could get.
"It's good to see you. Watching Danny's death again?"
"Yes. I owe him so much."
"I know."
They stood in silence for a while before the man bent down to pick up his scanner, leaving.
Phantom watched the bustling of Amity Park, his senses picking up the emotional signatures of dozens of imprint ghosts. Most of them weren't very strong, but to tell the truth, even Danny and Sam's death wasn't. His gloved fingers brushed the fully black area where the DP logo that Sam had designed and slapped on Danny had been. Watching their death had always felt strange, because he knew that ghosts generally never got to see the people he had lived with die over and over again. His palm lit up with a pure white glow. He had never been alive, but somehow some part of him seemed to wither away whenever he saw it happen, an envy for Danny who'd always be happy, up in some sort of heaven.
Well, Danny'd left an imprint which played every year, so it would stand to reason that his ghost side would, too.
Phantom looked down at his white-sparking hands before gazing out at Amity's upgraded skyline, which was almost as busy as the major cities elsewhere in the nation. Scratch that, it was as busy as other major cities in the nation. Danny's fame had brought that much more thanks and business to Amity Park. Even in death, Danny 'upgraded' Amity Park. Shifting his senses to the Ghost Zone, Phantom felt one of Danny's old foes break out. Feeling the signature, Phantom drifted in the direction of Casper High, leaving behind his own gesture of remembrance next to the man's.
Who was down at the bottom of the stairs, clutching his scanner tightly, a lump fighting to rise into his throat. The man got into his car, putting the scanner carefully back into its little case.
Dash Baxter paused to wipe the tears from his eyes before starting his car's engine and driving towards the new airport, christened Fenton after Amity Park's protector.
'Imprint Ghosts' - ectoplasmic manifestations that are created due to a strong, emotional occurance (usually death) or an action that has been repeated often enough to create an "imprint" in the area. These imprints cannot interact with people or the true environment - they merely play out the same few seconds of time every time they appear. They never deviate. Imprint ghosts encompass most of the "real life" ghost hauntings. They are also sometimes called "remnants." -- Cordria, 'The Nursery'
A/N: Okay, continuity errors.
-Technically, only the death of one person with the strong emotional occurance appears in imprints, because usually a murder (or other strong emotion-causing event) is individual. However, in this case there are two, and in fact, three beings appearing in a fairly major occurrence - Danny, Sam, and the unnamed chain ghost. I figure they're there because they're linked and because they were all giving off fairly strong emotions.
-If you reckon that Danny shouldn't have been having a problem with such a lame ghost, you're right. Just call it that he was tired and depressed and there'd been a fairly large breakout of ghosts and he'd drawn Dash in for that.
-Yes, Phantom is an imprint. He has white-coloured ectoplasm instead of green because in terms of light green, red, and blue make white and he's technically soul, body, and ego-based. He is not linked to Danny in any way - 'Danny Phantom' is gone, totally and utterly.
-Yes, despite leaving an imprint, Danny and Sam are in the Ghost Zone/Heaven, depending on which one you believe in.
-If there's anything else, and I'm sure that there will be because I took major artistic license with this story, don't hesitate to PM me and ask. I'll try to answer, and if I can't, I'll...make something up. XD
-And no, the explosion wasn't a new power. It was a...well, something too long to explain here.
Scribere jussit amor.
--KorelC--