Prologue

The night air was crisp and cool that particular summer evening, a far cry from the usual warm, humid nights that permeated the air within Amity. Not one citizen knew where to turn for the cause; maybe a recent, unannounced cold snap swept through the town in an effort to protect all from sweating like pigs. Perhaps the weather ghost, Vortex, was having some sort of hissy fit, leading the town hero, Danny Phantom, to attempt to stop him.

No one expected the hero himself to be the cause.

Those walking home from their jobs or a day of activities through the park would find a despondent and depressed Phantom, silently weeping to himself against a tree. He seemed to have no control over his ice core in his current state, leading the air to become chilled around him. Some would try to approach him, ask him what was wrong, but he would only either start crying more hysterically or flee; people decided to leave him alone after he nearly sent an ecto blast careening into a young girl in a panic. Not once was he able to answer in a coherent sentence.

He looked severely injured, like he had just escaped an explosion somewhere. Burns covered his body up and down, some beginning to blister. His normally bright aura had all but faded away, and his eyes were wild, constantly darting around whenever he looked up from his sobbing fits after hearing a sudden noise. His appearance overall was reminiscent of a frightened, injured animal.

"Danny?!" Phantom's head darted up at the call, head shooting around frantically to try and detect its source. In a fit of panic, he fired ecto blasts left and right at random, hoping to hit whoever or whatever was fast approaching him. It failed, and the source showed itself minutes later: a little two-man search party.

Phantom whimpered as he gazed up with unfocused eyes at the party, both sporting worrying looks of their own at him.

"There you are, son…"

"Sweetheart, it's going to be alright…"

He couldn't process any of what they were saying, mind too scrambled to perform the daunting task. Instead, he let out another whine and backed slowly into the tree he occupied, eyes screwed tightly shut. His body tightened when he felt a sudden warmth on his shoulder. Phantom's eyes shot open, and he swiped at the offender in self-defense before flying away as fast as he could.

Little did he know, the offenders were only trying to help him.

"Damn it, Jack, why did you touch him?!" Maddie Fenton cried in frustration, very upset that Phantom had gotten away when they were so close.

"I'm sorry, I thought it would have calmed him down," Jack Fenton replied softly to his fuming wife, but he knew he should have known better; the ghost was in no condition to handle a sudden touch like that, even if it came from someone of his own family.

Especially when it was their own fault to begin with.

"Don't worry, Mads. We'll find him again."

Maddie simply groaned in response, stressed at having to track down her child as if he were a feral, rabid animal. With that, they packed their gear and took off once again in their Ghost Assault Vehicle, ready to search all night in order to find Phantom.

Maddie turned around and looked in the back of the GAV. There, she witnessed the scene of her daughter, Jazz, comforting a deeply sleeping Danny Fenton. Danny sported similar injuries to Phantom, having taken the brunt of it all due to being in human form at the time of the… the 'accident' was all the family was willing to call it. Danny stirred and awoke for a few moments, staring blankly at his mother in the front seat as if in a trance before nodding back off uneventfully. The boy had been like this since the aftermath of the 'accident', soft-spoken when they managed to get him to speak, answering with only one or two words, and in a detached state the entire time. He would fall asleep if no one paid particular attention to him, or simply stare off into space in his own world.

To think a simple Ghost Catcher malfunction would turn one half of her baby borderline catatonic and the other into a terrified and feral full ghost…

I now present to you my attempt at trying to write a really screwed up Pitch Pearl. I was planning on writing something really mushy and romantic, but my love for all things angst won out.

This should really go without saying, but I am now and forever not Butch Hartman. YOU HEAR THAT, NICK LAWYERS?!