You enter the building. After decades of disuse, vines and grass have covered the outside. A layer of dirt and dust has caked everything. The once-gleaming "Fenton Works" sign is in disrepair, now spelling out "F-on W-k-" instead. The spaceship-like building on top was missing. You infer that it was once a giant metal plate up there, with satellites and strange gun equipment on the top, but it's been too long for anyone to remember.
You look at the kitchen. Once stocked and full of life, the fridge still stinks of rotting food from the lack of refrigeration, since you notice all of the outlets had been covered in plastic years before. Chairs are still set at the table in the middle, like the ghosts of people still there. The living room is in the same condition, worn but preserved from years of nothing.
You don't have the nerve to go upstairs.
Finally, you reach the basement. Glowing, green guns still line the walls, though they were dimmer than you once thought. A desk with an old computer sits, its screen bashed in, looks as though it knows it's outlived its use. The tower for it is missing. The cabinets are dented, and papers are scattered on the floor everywhere. Pipes stick out of walls, still occasionally bursting with steam. The giant, closed portal still sits there, in the wall, untouched. But that's not what catches your eye. A small, thin laptop sits, unmoving. Dust is in layers on it but still looks undamaged. Inside the DVD cartridge is a small DVD, sealed off and surprisingly clean. You wonder if it was put there just today.
You take it home. Inserting it into your computer, you are disappointed that it is audio only, but still, put your earphones in and listen.
"Hey. My name is Danny. You know, Danny Phantom? Kid ghost-hero who saved the world? Yeah, that's me.
"...I've never been good with introductions. At this very moment, I'm recording this on my new laptop. Funny, huh? I'd never thought I'd live to see the day that computers could be so thin. Seriously, I feel like if I so much as touch this thing, it'll break apart.
After a very long silence, you almost turn it off and call it night, before he continues. "I'm going to tell my story to you. And you better listen to me and shut the hell up, because this better not happen again.
"It all started when I was seventeen. I was the ghost hero. People loved me. I had the girlfriend of my dreams! My parents had accepted me as the halfa they hunted! I was no longer bullied! I had saved the freaking world!
"But.. that all changed. I noticed something. I should have done something. Said something. Maybe then, I wouldn't be in this mess.
"At first, it was my height. Sam was taller than me. All my life, I'd been at least half an inch taller than her. That got me wondering, 'what's happening here?' and, with my naive, stupid, idiotic self, I pushed it down as coincidence. No way that would happen to me, the luckiest kid in the world.
"Then, Sam and I were looking through old photos, trying to have an awkward picture contest or something. I don't remember the details. But I saw the photos of eighth grade, the day the three of us got together in a photo and smiled, three best friends. I stared at it and realized something. That was my face. Well, it was always my face, but… it was the same face I had then. Years later, and I realized it. I finally understood.
"I wasn't aging.
"I told Sam about it. She didn't know what to do - I didn't know what to do. My mind was a mess until we finally decided to go to the Ghost Zone and ask Clockwork for help.
"Yeah, right. Like that geezer would tell me. He just said, 'in time, you will know' or some cheesy crap like that. What an ass. We didn't stick around to hear what other, useless things he had to say.
"I wasn't too worried at first though. So, I'd still look fourteen when I was on my deathbed. I would die someday. I was sure of it. There was no fuckin' way I'd stay while everyone else left behind.
"Jazz… was the first to go. She had just graduated college and was moving things out of her dorm when a mover slipped and crushed her on the stairwell with a box of her favorite books. Sad, isn't it? She was killed by one of the things she loved most. I felt horrible. I was twenty-two when it happened. I spent the next week drinking and skipping class. But I had finally composed myself enough to go, where I was met by fans and friends to help me through it. They helped me a lot in that time.
"For years, I stuck to my friends like glue. They were my supports to hold up my weight. My burden. I hoped they never left. But they did.
"Next was Tucker. He died in a car crash years later while texting his fiance about the wedding they were having the next day. What was her name? Vanessa? Violet...? Oh right, Valerie.
"...I tried to get in touch with her years later, to find she had killed herself in the grief of Tucker's death. You know how she died? Electrocuted herself in the bath with many of Tucker's favorite PDA's.
"The last death of the famous little trio… was Sam's. She and I were on a plane ride. We were going on our third vacation of our twenty-year careers, but we didn't care. Everything was going great, perfect since Sam was there until someone discovered the plane was going to crash. A flock of birds was sucked into the engine, breaking it down. I only ended up wasting my time trying to get them out.
"I flew everyone else off first, at Sam's request, landing them on an island. I tried to get Sam. I flew faster than I had ever before, but the plane had already started sinking below the surface. The entire inside had been completely flooded. She was the only one to not get off in time. I wasn't strong enough to get her.
"I soon tried to get into contact with Danielle, my clone. I heard that she had already melted. I never even got to tell her that she wasn't just a clone, that she was something closer. She was like a sister to me, and even if we only met a couple times I wanted to protect her the way Jazz protected me.
"I tried to kill myself. Multiple times, actually. But somehow, I always saved myself. I tried cutting first, letting the blood drain out, and for so long it started bleeding ectoplasm. But it eventually stitched itself up, right before my eyes. I then tried to hang myself. Apparently, my ghost half is able to kick in and relieve me of having to breathe. I tried to shoot myself, too, but I just blacked out and woke up with a small scar the size of a bullet on my forehead, the damn thing in my hand. My final attempt was to overdose on some pills. I hoped my body wouldn't take it, that I'd finally die. No dice.
"Forty years went by. I ran far, far away from that town. I was forgotten. People hadn't remembered me anymore, and that's how I liked it. No one to bring up the fact I was actually sixty-five trapped in a fourteen-year-old kid's body.
"I ran away to France. I lived and ran a small bakery, quickly learning the language. With so much free time, I learned how to bake and cook. I always kept black roses stocked on the tables for Sam.
"I met another girl. Mae, I think. Brown hair and hazel eyes that made her the most normal looking girl I'd ever seen, but also the most beautiful. She was nice. Sweet. Quiet. A little self-centered at times, but had a reason to be; she was perfect. Total opposite of Sam and I'm ashamed to admit it, but… I fell in love again. For once, I could wake up and feel like I had death weighing me down. But she grew up. I didn't.
"I finally told her everything about me while she was on her deathbed. She had a breathing tube going down her throat, random wires and pins sticking out of her. Medicine had advanced miraculously, but nothing could stop her cancer. They had finally caught her brain cancer in its late stages, meaning they could either completely replace her brain - wiping her memory, never able to remember for more than a few days -… or die. She chose that she rather die than forget me. I sat next to her, reading her favorite book when I broke down. I looked at her hair, graying with stress, and told her everything. I didn't even know if she could hear me. I told her every last detail. Me becoming a ghost, my immortality...my love for Sam and her. I wished that I could finally follow everyone with their deaths, but I couldn't.
"I ran away again. It's the only thing I knew. I couldn't face my problems - they couldn't be faced in the first place. I couldn't be fixed. I hadn't gone ghost in years.
"But then… he came back. Vlad. He had been floating in space for years when he finally came back to earth. I found him and cried into his arms. He was old. Seventy years in space can do that to a person.
"He explained that since he wasn't hit with as much force as the ghost portal, he aged, but slower. But I didn't care. I was so happy. I finally had someone else. Yeah, he was still kind of evil, but he was the same Vlad that wanted me as a son. It's kind of funny, you know? He spent months trying to convince my mom and me to join him and to leave 'that idiot Jack' (his words not mine) behind to join him. I would always say 'never!' and defeat him. But it took years- years of despair and loneliness to find out that I didn't hate him as much as I thought I did.
"We spent years just exploring the earth, every nook, and cranny. His joints were aging, but mine weren't and I was willing to carry him up Mount Everest, just to have someone else to live through this nightmare with. I wasn't alone.
"But you know that feeling you get when something you love is taken away from you? Yeah, well take that and multiply it by two-thousand, cause that's how I felt. I didn't even remember how old I was, just that I had lived for more than a century at least when a new ghost-fighting team had been made. They didn't remember me, the halfa that saved the world centuries ago, nor did they remember Vlad. They shot at us. I could get away easily, still having the body of a fourteen-year-old, but Vlad..." a long pause.
"It pierced his skull. Multiple of them, glowing green and faster than the human eye could calculate, had gone straight through his head and dented the walls of the poor stranger's house we were residing in. I stared, unable to move, as he mouthed 'Goodbye' and left me. That bastard! He was the only one I could trust and he just quit on me. Then again, I would quit if I spent around thirty years with myself.
"I had finally had enough. I had no one. No one at all. It didn't matter at all anymore.
"I killed so many people. I was so angry, sad, fearful - I would never see them again. I still remember the blood on my hands, realizing what I had done.
"I never looked at their faces. I didn't want to know their names. Living forever with the burden of that magnitude, knowing that they had families, that they were loved, would have sent me spiraling down into a whole new fit of emotions.
"This isn't what Sam would have wanted. This isn't what Mae would have wanted. I'm sorry, both of you. But what's done is done. I can't take back anything I've done.
"But I can end it all. You see, I have finally figured out the perfect way to take my powers; to reverse what has been done; to die.
"The ghost portal took away my powers once. Maybe they can take them away again. At least, that's what I've been thinking. I have a theory that if my powers are taken away, my age will finally catch up to me - oh what year is it? Whatever, it's been over a hundred, maybe more, that's all I know. I should hopefully die.
"... ... ...There! The electricity here still works. Hopefully, it'll work. I don't have any other options if it doesn't.
"...Sorry. I'm so sorry for what I've done in the past. They were horrible mistakes, but now I'll finally be free of them. No more humanity or ghostliness. Signing off for the last time, Daniel Fenton. Goodbye."
Hey. It's me. yes, of course I know I should be working on my other story but that's a major ew for me. Hey, at least I got this out my m8s.
I've been having major writer's block coming up with ideas for Danielle of the World, so I think I'm going to rewrite it. Yeah, that's what I'm going to be doing. lol, I have no ideas.
As always flame me if you want, I don't fucking care, but constructive criticism would be very helpful.