The day started out well enough. Danny managed to get through the school day with only three tardies and one missed class which was a new personal best for time spent in class. Besides, the only thing he missed was math and he couldn't really feel bad about that. Sam had let him carry her bag when he walked her home and Tucker had even managed to get a date with the new girl. Danny thought her name was Fiona. At any rate, it had been a pretty good day so far. He supposed that fact alone should have set off alarm bells. Danny was not known for his good fortune.
When Danny got home that day he went straight to the lab. Going ghost and flying through the portal, he entered the Ghost Zone and set off on a path that only a select few knew. It was a path that would take him to the lair of one of the most powerful ghosts in both the Ghost Zone and Earth. He might be the most powerful ghost ever to die, Danny thought so, but he had always insisted that he was only second at best. Danny had scoffed at this, but the ghost had insisted. Danny knew better than to question him by now.
Eventually, the lair came into sight. It was a tower shaped like a clock; a pendulum swung slowly to and fro about the enormous double doors. Gears larger than the op-center adorned the building and floated nearby, ticking and turning as time trudged on and sometimes when it didn't. Danny grinned. It was the lair of Clockwork, the Master of Time, Keeper of Secrets, and Danny's teacher. He still wasn't certain how they came to that arrangement, but it didn't really matter. Clockwork taught Danny about the Ghost Zone and Danny got to pull rank whenever some low level ghost decided to try their luck taking over Amity Park. Let it never be said that being Time's Apprentice didn't have it's advantages.
Clockwork was waiting for Danny when he entered. The Time Master was watching the ever shifting screens, sometimes frowning, sometimes smirking, and sometimes with a poker face perfected over the millennia. When Danny entered, however, he turned away from the images and gave him an enormous smile. Suddenly, Danny knew that everything could only go downhill from here.
"Daniel, you're here! I have a job for you."
Danny was immediately on guard. Clockwork + smile + job = not good things. "It isn't negotiating peace treaties with the Roman Empire again, is it? Because almost being sacrificed to the gods once was enough."
"No, nothing like that." Clockwork lead his apprentice to the screens that he had been observing earlier. The elder waved his staff and the images stopped shifting. All of them showed multiple angles of a seemingly empty section of the Ghost Zone. All at once, the space began to bend and shift, drawing energy from the surroundings. A tear appeared, and widened. All at once, Danny realized that he was watching the formation of a portal. A big one.
"This portal will form In the Far Reaches in three hours, six minutes, and forty two seconds. What I need you to do is to go there as it opens and make certain that nothing escapes. Can you do this?"
"Of course I can!"
"Good. Take one of my Medallions. It will guide you to the exact location of the portal." Danny nodded and moved headed to the row of Time Medallions hanging on the wall. "And Danny?" Clockwork called.
"Yeah?"
"Don't screw this up."
Danny had been following the Medallion for the past three hours. Three hours one minute. Three hours two minutes. If there was one upside to being Clockwork's apprentice, it was that you always knew exactly how late you were for anything at any given moment. At three hours five minutes the Time Medallion stopped pulling on his neck. He had arrived- and not a moment too soon. Already the Zone was beginning to bend and buckle around the forming portal. He watched with bated breath as the tear grew and grew. It was one thing to watch a portal form from the tower, but to be there yourself? To feel time slip out of joint and space condense into something smaller than a pinhead and then expand faster than it had any right to was terrifying. But finally- finally, it was over and Danny let out a breath that he hadn't known he was holding. All he had to do now was wait.
Three minutes after the portal formed Danny smelled something burning. He knew that it could only be coming from the unsightly gap in time and space as there was nothing within a fifteen mile radius that could burn. Nervously, he allowed ecto-energy to form in his palms and he shifter into a battle stance. Another minute passed. Danny let the energy go.
And then his world exploded around him. A withered arm covered in burns shot out of the portal and grabbed his waist. With a surprised yell, he summoned the energy back and blasted his captor, kicking and hitting, but it did no good. It merely tightened its grip on him and pulled. As Danny fell through light and sound bent around him. He seemed to be moving impossibly fast and yet staying exactly where he was. His entire body protested and his last thoughts as his vision went black were, impossibly enough, Clockwork said not to screw this up. He's gonna kill me for this.
One minute and twelve seconds after Danny vanished through the portal, it closed with a snap. Miles away, Clockwork tightened his grip on his staff. "Good luck, Daniel," he muttered. "You'll need it."
