A/N: I know that I need to update my other phics, but this idea has been nagging at my brain for so long I had to start it! Just as a note, the chapters will alternate between Danny and Sam's points of view (like one chapter will be in Danny's POV, the next one Sam's, etc.) This is my first time doing a phic in first person. Anyway, enjoy!
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Danny's POV
"Hey! Get back here you little thief!"
With those words ringing in my ears, I quickly fled into an alley, clutching a small apple in my hand. I had thought for sure I'd be able to quietly sneak up to the food cart, grab some food and run before anyone noticed me. But no – the guy had to notice me. Just my luck.
"Whoever you are, when I find you, you'll wish that you had never been born!"
The cart vendor peered down the alley, his beady eyes attempting to search me out. But for once, luck was on my side. After a minute, the man turned around and left, leaving me free to emerge from behind a dumpster, my jet-black hair tainted with dirt and grime.
"That was close," I muttered, finally bringing out the apple I had managed to steal. I desperately wanted to eat it right away, since it was the only food I had managed to get for three days now. I knew I'd have to save some of it though, just in case worse came to worse. With my luck, it most likely would.
"Why?"
That was the one question I asked myself as I nibbled hungrily on the fruit. That one word summed up my life these days. "Why has my life gone wrong? Why am I forced to scrape out this existence as a fugitive?"
A fugitive. That's what I am in this town. For a full year now, I had been struggling to get by, gathering as many scraps of food as I could. But to me, I am Danny. Danny Fenton. At least, I used to be just Danny, but now I have a different name as well. And it is this name that the people fear to speak.
I groaned with a mix of anger and loneliness. I didn't like living this way, but I had no choice. I had to do something to survive. If stealing food during the day was the only way I could accomplish this, then so be it. If I had to live like this until I figured out a solution for my mission, so be it.
"Why?" I asked myself again. "Why is it I am forced to live in a curse when nightfall comes?"
Nightfall…
I jolted up, frantically looking around both sides of the alley. No one was around, so I cautiously crept out, gazing at the horizon. My heart seemed to stop cold as the fading light caught my panicked, ice blue eyes.
"Sunset!" I panicked. I didn't have a watch, but it had to be at least 6:30! I ran through the city, taking many alleyways that no one ever went through but I. I was desperate to get to a place far away from the prying eyes of the normal citizens of Amity Park. Desperate to get home.
Or at least, what used to be my home.
Luckily, few were out to see me running through the streets, but I knew why: Lockdown. Every night, the town was put under lockdown, and shields were put up. We all dreaded nightfall, but for different reasons. To them: it was due to fear and hatred of the threat. Me? I had a different reason: I was the threat.
At last, I reached the remains of what had once been my home. The place where I had once lived, back in a time when I was actually happy. Where I used to live with my parents and older sister, Jazz, where I used to chuckle at my parents blabbering on about ghosts.
Now, however, it was just a smoldered old building, much of the framework charred. Every bit of the house was either disintegrated or burnt to a crisp.
And my parents and sister were gone. Dead.
And at one point, I had been too.
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Flashback
"Danny! Danny, where are you?" Jazz coughed through the smoke and flames. "Can you hear me?"
"I'm here Jazz!" I managed to call out. The smoke in the air was so thick, it was hard for me to breathe. "Where are you? And where are Mom and Dad?"
"We're over here, sweetie!" Mom called. "We're trying to find an escape route, but the smoke…it's so thick that we can't see anything!"
"I can't either!" I called out, feeling somewhat faint. The flames seemed to be right next to me as I tried to navigate to find my way to my family.
Finally I saw them, trapped behind what seemed like a wall of flames. Jazz searched desperately for an exit, while my mom was bent over, attempting to help Dad, who was trapped under fallen beams. I felt panic and dread rise from within me. I had to get to them! I had to!
Suddenly, a rumbling sound emitted from the ceiling, right above where my parents and Jazz were. "GET OUT OF THERE!" I screamed, but it was too late. The burning ceiling collapsed on top of them. I could see their skin whiten and their eyes glaze over, and I realized, with a terrible anger and despair clawing at my heart, that they were dead.
With a sinking feeling, I saw their ghostly spirits rise from their bodies. All three of them seemed to come to a conclusion at once: they were dead, but I was still alive.
"Run Danny!" Dad yelled. "Save yourself!"
"Don't worry about us!" Mom cried out. "Just get out of here!"
"Run before the flames get you!" Jazz added. "Run!"
Before I could do anything, a falling beam scraped the edge of one of my parent's inventions: the Fenton Ghost Vacuum. The beam had flicked the switch, and I watched in open-mouthed horror as the spirits of my family were sucked into the vacuum, trapped.
Just as I was about to try to find a way to get over there and release my family, I heard the ceiling creak once more. I stared, numb with terror as a flaming beam fell on top of the vacuum, causing it to explode into millions of fragments.
"NO!" I screamed in horror, for as the vacuum exploded, I had seen bits of ectoplasm fly among the wreckage. I knew at once that it meant my family was destroyed. Forever.
I collapsed onto the ground, not daring to try to stop the tears falling from my eyes. I could feel the dense smoke suffocating my lungs; the burning fire licking my body. But I didn't care. All I could do was lie there and think "They're gone. They're all gone."
I don't remember if it was the smoke or the fire that killed me. I was in too much grief to really tell. Only when the physical pain left me did I realize that I was dead. A ghost.
It was then that I heard a sound. It was faint, but still audible to me: laughter. Cold, cruel, maniacal laughter. "Who's there?" I asked, my voice shaking. "What do you want?" I didn't hear the laughter again, but I knew that was what I had heard. "This was no accident," I whispered angrily. "This was arson."
Gazing around, I saw that my house wasn't the only one that had fallen victim to the fire. Burning houses surrounded me on all sides; it seemed as if the entire town was burning. Everywhere I turned, there was smoke and flame.
I buried my head in my hands, lost in despair. My family was gone, and I was a ghost. A ghost! "What am I going to do?" I moaned.
At once, something began to come back to me. I remembered a friend of Dad's I had once met: Vlad Masters. He was a scientist. The best in the city, in fact. "I have to find him," I said to myself. "If he can't help me, no one can."
End Flashback
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I shook my head, unable to forget that fateful night. The night my life had, quite literately, ended. I had eventually found Vlad, who did his best to help me. Unfortunately, his invention was missing an important piece, so it malfunctioned. It managed to restore me back to life – at least in daylight. But at night…
I was jarred out of my thoughts as the last rays of sunlight faded, and a terrible pain surged through my body. I kneeled down on the ground, knowing that I was starting to go through the same terrifying process that I had been going through for a year now. My flesh turned pale as death, and my hands had turned ice-cold. My fingers lengthened, giving my hands an almost skeletal appearance.
My jet-black hair slowly began to turn snowy white, and as I painfully gazed into a puddle of water, my ice blue eyes morphed into a dangerous, neon green. My clothes too, changed from a red-and-white T-shirt and jeans to a suit as black as night, with blood-red gloves, collar, and boots. I had become the one being the citizens of Amity Park feared most – Phantom.
I couldn't help grinning as I started to fly, looking for anyone unfortunate enough to be out during lockdown. Usually it was any newcomers or those who "don't believe in ghosts." "I'll make sure they regret being out!" I smirked.
Ever since the fire, I had blamed the destruction of my family on the humans. They had started the mass fire, after all. True, I had been full human once, but the past was past.
"If I have to make the humans live in fear of me, so be it," I muttered darkly, all trace of emotion gone from my voice. "If I must torture, and perhaps even kill the humans in order to complete my mission…then so be it."
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A/N: Whew! Finally I got that up! Hope you enjoyed the first chapter, and remember to review!
