Disclaimer: I don't own DP, Superman, Spider-Man, The Spectacular Spider-Man or Star Wars.
BGM: "Enter Sandman" by Metallica.
Thank you both, really. This time last year, my brightest prospect was lasting another day without starving, melting into a puddle of goo or worst of all, getting recaptured by the nutcase who created me.
Maybe I should start from the beginning. It starts with my version of a story my father used to tell me: Twenty-three years ago, there were two friends who did everything together. One was a big man with a little kid's heart. One was a skinny little man with big dreams. The two men shared everything, until one day they met a girl. The girl had red hair, and a temper to match. One man fell in love with her looks, one fell for her kindness and inner strength, and both for her smarts. The girl looked around, and fell for the big man who loved who she was inside. They got married and had kids, and lived happily ever after. Right? Wrong.
See, the problem was, the two men had no clue they were competing for the same woman, at least not at first. The little man wanted the woman very badly because she fit his image of the perfect future wife, and he never imagined that the big man would take something that he felt belonged to him alone. The big man was just the opposite. He came up to the girl and talked to her like he would anyone else, and he was so friendly and nice and ah, touchy-feely that his friend never noticed that the big man liked her too. The big man was so sure that a big kid like him could never have such a pretty girlfriend, so he never asked her out. As for the girl, she was trying to find a way to get the big man to go on a date with her without hurting his best friend's feelings. The two men and the girl liked a lot of the same things, so they worked together on a big project, all pretending to be friends. It kept on like that for months, with the big man and the woman falling more and more in love, until the big project was almost finished.
On the day they were ready to put the finishing touches on their project, they all met in their workshop, and the big man and the woman started to celebrate early. The little man was being a grouch and complaining about everything, because he'd started to notice that maybe, just maybe, the woman liked his friend better than him. Of course, that made no sense. He was smarter, and better looking and more polite than the big man, so why would the pretty girl choose a big oaf like him? The little man figured that if he couldn't be happy, neither could anybody else. Yeah, the little man is a jerk. Don't worry, he doesn't get a happy ending.
Anyway, the big man and the woman started to put the finishing touches on the project. One of those finishing touches was something called "Ecto-Purifier", and it works kind of like motor oil does in cars. Well, it was supposed to keep everything clean and working properly. Only, the big man kind of flubbed up. He meant well, really, but he was too busy looking at the pretty girl to pay attention to what he was doing. Instead of Ecto-Purifier, he put in diet soda. Yeah, the big man wasn't the sharpest tool in the set, at least not with a pretty girl around.
The big man and the woman turned on the machine they were making, but because the big man put in the wrong fluid, it didn't work. When it didn't work, the little man leaned in for a closer look and it blew up in his face. Really. Blew up and blasted the creep in the face with a ton of really painful ecto-energy, and it made him really ugly and really sick. He was in a coma, and when he woke up he found out that the big man had gotten married to the woman. He pretended to be happy for them, but he still secretly lusted after the woman, and because he was a nutcase, he thought that if he could kill the big man, the woman would "realize her mistake" and go running to him. Sounds like your typical "guy loses the girl of his dreams and goes koo-koo" story, right? Well, unfortunately for the original Danny, that's not the end of it. You see, when the little man got blasted, he didn't just get a bad case of ugly and sick, he got a small case of dead. When the little man was in the hospital recovering from the coma, he found out that he had supernatural powers. Let's just say that "supernatural" means magic, okay? And no, I can't tell you their names, at least not yet.
What would you do if you found out you had magic powers? The little half-man, because half of him wasn't really a living man anymore, had a lot of powers. At first, it was pretty simple. He could defy gravity, turn invisible and phase through stuff. Yeah, just like a superhero, but remember that the half-man is crazy. That's right, he used his powers to become a supervillain. The half-man started small. He walked into bank vaults and walked out with other people's money. Then he found out he could take over people's bodies and wear them like a second skin. Ew, no, he didn't kill them! He didn't want to leave a trail. He just used his victims as disguises to get into secure places his original powers weren't good enough for, and when he left they didn't remember anything he did to them.
Time went on, and the little half-man stopped being so little. See, the half-man had two faces. One was his human face. As far as anyone whose opinion he cared about knew, he was squeaky-clean, victim of a tragic accident who overcame adversity to advance in the world. The other face was, um, let's call it his creature face. As a creature, he was really powerful. He used his human face to do research and learn more about the kind of creature he'd partly turned into, and learned to use more and more powers. He could shoot energy beams, make shields, duplicate himself and shoot black lightning from his hands. And his lightning was black, okay? I've seen him use it. Yeah, I know him. Let me explain!
Anyways, the half-man used his creature face to get a bunch of weak creatures and a few more powerful ones working for him. His creature self had a different name than his human self, and he and his creatures could do lots of things his human enemies and competitors, otherwise known as future victims, couldn't stop. He bribed, blackmailed, extorted and generally did lots of nasty things. He does sound like a magic crime lord, doesn't he? Told you he's a supervillain. Thing is, he wasn't happy being rich and owning lots of stuff from his favorite football team. He'd buy the team, but the city owned them and they weren't selling. No, all this time he was still crazy about the woman from before. That was pretty much my reaction when I figured it out myself.
Thing is, even twenty years later, he still hated the big man enough to send some of his weaker servants to kill him. Unfortunately for the half-man, by then things had changed. The big man and the woman had two kids. The older one was a bossy girl, and the younger one was a boy about your age. The big man and the woman had never forgotten the machine they were building. It was supposed to be a door into the world of the creatures, and when their kids were old enough to go to school, they started working on a new one. It was going to be bigger and better than the original in every way, and this time, it would work. Only, it didn't. No, not because the big man mixed up the Ecto-Purifier with soda. This time, the big man had the brilliant idea to put the auxiliary power switch on the inside, and then forgot about it. The woman was usually smarter than that, but she was too excited to notice a little detail when the only thing between her and the culmination of a dream she'd had for half her life was one wire. They called their two kids to watch, and the big man plugged the machine in. It sparked, lit up and fizzled out.
The big man and the woman were crushed. For days, they walked around looking like someone ran over the family dog, and their son felt really sorry for them. One day, the boy's friends talked him into trying to fix the machine. He put on a special suit and went in, and his friends didn't have suits so they just watched from outside. The machine was really big! I told you, it was supposed to be a door. Anyways, when the boy went in, it was really dark. He couldn't see much except for a few guide lights his parents put up for themselves while they were working on it. You know how it is when you go from really bright sunlight to a really dark room. The boy was practically blind. When he was almost to the end of the machine, he tripped on something. Yes, he is clumsy. He tripped and fell, and put his hands out to try and hold onto something. Yeah, his left hand hit the "on" switch. Next thing he knew, he got blasted with the same energy that got the man, only a lot stronger and on more than his face, his whole body. It must have hurt like hell. When the boy got out of the machine, it was working, and he was half-creature like the half-man. No, he did not turn into half a boy! The half-man became a half-man because he threw away all the bits that made him a person. He would have been a bad guy even if the accident hadn't happened. He's that kind of obsessive crazy.
Anyway, now that boy had powers, and used his human face to hide them. No, not like the half-man! Like Peter Parker, or Clark Kent. No, he's too sarcastic to be like Clark Kent. He's more of a Spidey. See, now that the door was open, it wouldn't really close, or if it did, it opened right back up. Creatures were coming out of it all the time. The first ones were really weak, which was lucky for the boy. Remember that DVD we found for the new Spider-Man cartoon? Hey, it was lying out in the open, so we found it. Remember how it took a while for Spider-Man to learn how to use his superpowers? Well, the boy had the same problem and then some. He was a total nerd, wimpy and helpless just like Peter Parker, only at first he had to let the bullies hit him so he wouldn't give away his secret identity. Then he couldn't let the bullies hit him, cause he could heal fast and the other nerds couldn't, and he was a hero so he couldn't let them get hurt when he could instead. Yeah, I think it's stupid too. That's why he's the hero, and not me. It really doesn't help that I'm his clone.
Yeah, three years ago, the half-man found out about the big man's superhero son who fought evil creatures, so of course he wanted the boy to turn evil and join him. I know, it's just like Star Wars! The half-man now wanted not only to own the woman – yes, "own", control, that sort of thing. He's crazy, how would I know? I listened to his rants! Now stop interrupting me and let me finish the story. The half-man didn't just want to kill the big man and steal his wife, he wanted to steal his kid too. The kid was a superhero, so he pretty much told the half-man where he could shove it. Okay, not literally, but I like to thing he did. Heck knows the half-man had enough of a stick up his butt. The half-man kept going with his evil plot, but he forgot that the former owner of his castle- He lived in a castle because villains have lairs, and the former owner had turned into a weak creature, but not a bad one. The half-man let him live there because he figured it was less trouble than chasing him out. Well, the former owner let the boy out of the trap the half-man caught him in, and the boy stopped his evil plot, and even managed to talk him into a truce. How? He threatened to expose both their human faces. The boy had family and friends to fall back on, and the half-man didn't, so the bad guy lost, for the moment. Yeah, it was a sneaky, underhanded thing to do. Even heroes don't have any choice but to cheat sometimes, 'cause their enemies sure will.
Thing is, the boy still didn't know much about his powers, so the half-man was still strong enough to beat him- Hey! Come back here! I promised you a story, now let me finish telling it. Fine, I'll skip ahead to the next important bit.
Half-man invites woman and boy to fake mother-son retreat and tricks them into thinking he wasn't behind it. Ruse lasts until they get kicked out of plane with nothing but parachutes, at which point boy gets suspicious. When they find his cabin, which was really a big fancy hunting lodge, in the middle of the woods, the boy's suspicions are confirmed and the woman really starts to get a bad feeling about the half-man. They both had their human faces on, you ninny! The big man and the woman don't know they're half-creature. That's the whole point of a secret identity. Can I finish? The half-man shorted out the boy's powers for three hours, ranted at him for a bit and kicked him out to run from monsters until his powers came back, by which time he would have won the woman over. Yeah, no. The woman was really smart, so she played along and trusted her son would be okay. Well, she didn't know the half-man was anything more than a rich, creepy, stalkery college buddy. Is too a word. The boy managed to run away for a while, but without powers the creatures caught up and were about to get him when his mom showed up and saved him. Because she was a survival expert and ninth-degree black belt. I know, cool. Why was she back in the woods? Because the half-man proposed to the already happily married woman, and she stormed off into the woods to look for her son.
Unfortunately, even though the woman could provide for their basic needs in the middle of the woods and knew how to re-kill the twisted undead creatures the half-man kept sending after them, she couldn't get either of them home. She had to get home to her family, and her son had school. So, the de-powered boy hero and his mother put their heads together and came up with a plan to trick the half-man. Or rather, they came up with a plan and the boy put his own personal twist on it. The woman snuck off to look for a phone while the boy sucked up to the half-man and pretended to be his "loving nephew". I mean, he really layered on the flattery. So, what did the bad guy do? He hugged the boy, and got zapped 'cause the boy's mom was an inventor too, and she had a belt that canceled creature powers. The boy had slipped the belt onto the bad guy, locked it and thrown away the key. Then it turned out that he'd turned the clock forward fifteen minutes, and he already had his powers back! He transformed, and got ready to deliver some long-due payback, but the bad guy had a back-up plan. He set his creepy undead animal monsters on the boy. The boy responded by asking the creatures why they wanted to kill him, when the half-man was the one who killed them and turned them all into monsters in the first place. Cue monsters turning on their creator. Oh yeah, karma is sweet. The mom found a helicopter and flew herself and the boy home. Happy ending, right? Nope, not yet.
See, the half-man was still obsessed. Whatever lesson a normal person would have learned from his humiliating defeat at the hands of a scary housewife and a rookie kid superhero, it's not what he learned. The half-man learned that standard-issue monsters could be subverted, and were too easily turned against him. If the boy would not join him, and the creatures were disloyal, then he would create his own perfectly loyal and obedient half-ghost son. And that's when Vlad Masters, aka Plasmius, decided to clone Danny Phantom. You're both gonna have to wait till tomorrow for the rest, 'cause it's nearly one in the morning. You've got work and school, and my throat is killing me.
Good night!
Author's note: Okay, A) I know it's not all that accurate. In the FL-Verse, Danni might be physically and mentally thirteen at the time of this story, but she's chronologically one-and-a-half. A lot of this information, especially the exact details of the portal incident and the cabin incident (credit to the wikia articles for Bitter Reunions, Maternal Instincts and Masters of All Time), is new to her. For the record, Danny filled her in, with occasional comments from the peanut gallery courtesy of the other members of Team Phantom. Now she's filling in her own team, and she's pretty reluctant to tell this story. B) Who the heck is she talking to? You'll find out when I post the rest of this two-shot. I'm also working on Candy Apple, which is essentially my version of D-Stabilized (and I just gave away their identities, didn't I?), and Sugar Candy, a prequel showing Dani's first summer away from the fruit loop. Yes, these all tie into the Falling Leaves timeline. I need a new name for the 'verse, now. C) Blah, this turned out long-winded. Please R&R.