Author's Note:
Yay, another rewrite! Also, as a beginning note, I'd like to make it clear that it is very definitely ME who owns the account MoonlightUmbreon, and that I was the original writer of this story... the conception of which was over four years ago. I say this because I recently saw a fic that... well, maybe not directly "copied", but suspiciously heavily borrowed from the oldest rendition. You know who you are - if you're reading this, hint hint, I'm not particularly happy. I won't be taking any action or confronting you about it, but trust me, I'm watching you. :( Please do not let it happen again; it's not so much the stolen idea as the fact that you didn't care enough about me to respect what I've written.

Either way, coincidence had it that I'd started "reconditioning" this fic the weekend before I discovered that. Everything has been pre-written, and updates will come through every few days, as I edit. It totals at just over 10K words and will be split into three parts. Also, it's written to perhaps be a little more amusing than its rather old and dusty renditions. I'm not the angsty sad-sack I used to be, thank God. :P

Hope you enjoy, kids. :) Sorry about the lack of updates lately, I did the NaNoWriMo and that took out all my time. We're going back to normal now, however!

Blanket Disclaimer of Imperviousness:
Pseudinymous covered herself in a potentially-impervious blanket displaying the words "I do not own Danny Phantom or Related Characters!". So far it seems to be working.

The Origin of the Ghostwriter
A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ 1 ~
- When Everything Was Normal -

I suppose the best way to begin this is with her; Marietta.

Mary was my younger sister and only remaining sibling, way back when. We lived together with our parents, the girl being five years younger than I. That fateful day was the day of Mary's twenty-first birthday, and this is where our story starts.

Mary was holding a party in celebration of the event; a raucous and somewhat alcohol-fuelled disco in her own home – one that she would never be completely satisfied with, but nevertheless promised to be a lot of fun. The entire afternoon beforehand had thus become dedicated to decorating and catering for the entire celebration, something that mum and dad were all-too happy to do for her special day. I too found myself climbing up the ladder and sticking streamers over the roof; she was a good sister, considering how most other sets of siblings fought and squabbled, so I considered this a sign of my gratitude. Too many others would have been intent on being annoying, disruptive ratbags, but not her – a sort of mutual understanding occurs when the both of you are artists.

I hadn't even finished helping to decorate the room when the guests started rolling in, some early and others quite late. I'd probably have been done had I not left her birthday present until the very last minute, but I sighed and persisted, observing as the attendance grew. Always I would wait for Randy to show up at events like these, but he never did. Our half-brother had gone missing three years previously, and it had long ago been accepted that he was never coming back... no matter how much we continued to hope otherwise.

In the end, I counted something like nineteen guests before losing track and giving up, as all the heads milled about the ladder. The last streamer was up and I stepped down, taking the ladder back out to the garage where it would be safe (and unlikely to cause serious injury to a group of very childish post-teens under the influence of alcohol).

The party only really began to get started after I returned, however, and it didn't take long at all for the drinks to start getting passed around – even our underage twin cousins received one helping of beer each. I myself was nursing a glass of scotch that probably could have used a bit more cola, although I didn't really care. One of Mary's friends – I think Helen was her name – put everyone else to shame, however. Before my parents could notice or stop her, she'd already downed five more-than-decent sized glasses of champagne. It didn't seem to come to anyone's attention until the swagger in her step became particularly large, and she was sent to Mary's room to lie down and sleep off the approaching headache.

I watched all this with an air of amusement, the slightest of smiles gracing the side of my mouth as I leaned on the wall in a corner, swilling my scotch. I had no intention of getting drunk tonight, the memory of the one and only hangover I'd ever had still clear in my mind. At one point my sister urged me to join in a bit more, but these weren't my friends and in any case I'd always been a quiet person. Relatively happy where I was, I continued to simply observe.

Nine o'clock slipped to ten, and as the old grandfather clock gonged, the legendary cutting of the cake was held. Mary, having had slightly too much to drink, didn't even think to hesitate; she dived right in, knife in hand, and drove its point through the iced surface and spongy innards. The cake was cut right through to the very bottom, to her own detriment.

See, the thing you must know about Mary's friends is that they were a particularly childish bunch, even when completely sober. So when they discovered that the bottom of the cake had been reached, they were going to have her kiss the closest boy regardless of what either participant thought of the unfortunate matter. I just happened to be the other participant.

"Mary, you cut to the bottom!" Anne gasped, a broad and playful grin spreading across her face. "Come on, you know what that means-" Mary and I cringed in between her sentence "-Kiss time!"

We stared at each other, not tearing our eyes away for quite a bit longer than just a few seconds. Mary's face transformed from a pout into something fiendishly angry, teeth clenched and fists shaking. "Hey, this is sick!" she began, pointing vehemently at Anne. "Writer's my brother, for heaven's sake!"

In amongst the disarray, my mind noted how odd it was that no one I knew ever really used my actual name. Probably had something to do with that insatiable appetite for written words, I guess... Nonetheless, as I pondered this for a moment the debate roared onwards. I decided that maybe I should at least have a say, as well.

"I agree with her," I cut in, flatly unimpressed. "I'm not really into the whole incest thing, to be honest."

The guests were suffice to say unsatisfied with our reaction; like bloodthirsty vampires, they weren't going to stop until they got what they wanted. A chant broke out among them – "Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!" – as they looked excitedly from me to my sister. She shot them a revolted look, and began to approach. I stepped backwards.

"It'll be over in a second!" Mary hissed, but I stared at her with that what-are-you-doing-don't-touch-me expression, begging her to go against the crowd and stop.

Unfortunately, as much as I loved her, she was a little weak-minded. She half-complied, grabbing me by the shoulders to hold me still and giving me a completely meaningless brush on the cheek.

"There, is that enough for you sick people?!" she hollered, glaring and waggling her finger at the crowd in general, threateningly. Many seemed disappointed; a kiss on the cheek? What was that? It certainly wasn't their money's worth! Nonetheless, it was indeed a kiss. "Silence? Good. 'Cause there's no way in the world that's happening again, got it?"

The party raved on for many more hours into the night; midnight itself came without much notice, the only thing at all placing it in conscious awareness was the masses of pizza my parents managed to get delivered. Mary, to her further detriment, decided to try an extra-spicy slice of Americano pizza. Two seconds after the first bite she was chugging the nearest can of cola, face red and eyes streaming. In my little corner, I tried not to giggle at her adventure into foods a little less bland than what we were used to.

It was four in the morning when just five of us were left – Mary, her friend Julie (who had declared she was staying the night), my parents and I. Having finally died down, the party left a tangled mess of torn streamers, party poppers and junk food all over the floor, but it was something the family had collectively decided could be stressed about in the morning. The thought of even thinking about cleaning up such a mess up at this hour, after all, was daunting.

I said goodnight to those who remained and plodded to my exceedingly cold second-story room. The ground floor had always been warm, and so had the first, but despite the logical idea of warmer air rising, the second floor was like walking into an arctic block of ice. Feeling a little frostbitten, I tightened my coat and dove my hands into its insulated pockets. Changing into pyjamas could wait, and possibly even be foregone until morning; part of me was currently favouring the idea of going to sleep fully dressed.

I kicked off my shoes, allowing them to land disorderly wherever physics decided was fit, and propped myself up against my pillow. A very fat notebook and an ornate custom acrylic pen lay upon my dresser, and I picked them up without hesitation despite it being such an unholy hour. The need to write, admittedly, was far greater than any need to sleep, sometimes - I suppose that was another reason they all called me Writer. In any case, I was on the second last chapter of this book and that was exciting. I'd come out of the precarious start, the great swampy middle, and had somehow managed to struggle all the way to the end, only remembering how fun it had been as the subplots intertwined and finally began to mingle. By this point I think every word I put down was causing a wry sort of grin to cover my face, although it's hard to remember. Such expressions are very much unconscious.

Six more pages had been immortalised in my notepad by the time that little glint of sunlight peaking over the hills caught my eye. I glanced quickly at the clock radio and then back out the window, trying in a vain attempt at denial not to believe that I'd just stayed up all night; five in the morning was not a good time to be awake. I guess I'd gotten carried away as I wrote; I'd intended fifteen minutes, not the whole damn hour. Writing was occasionally too absorbing for its own good.

The notebook and pen was placed carefully back upon my dresser, and I sunk further into a complex disarray of blankets and sheets. The light in my room was still turned on but I was too tired to be bothered getting out of bed to turn it off, and thus it remained. That was, until it started to flicker.

I looked up at my bedroom light curiously, watching as it blinked on and off and eventually went out altogether. The whole house appeared to have been plunged into a power out, although admittedly I didn't think a whole lot of it. The electricity would probably be back on by whatever obscene hour I managed to wake, so it wasn't really my concern...

... until I smelt the smoke.

It wasn't until my nose picked it up that I spotted a thin layer of it hanging around the ceiling. I twisted my neck to see the door, observing a thin layer puffing through the top – my brain didn't even immediately connect it with fire. But when it did, my first reaction was to grab my notebook and run for the door. What I opened it up to wasn't something I wanted to see.

The common room greeted me with a wall of flames, filling the air with ash-black smoke. Panic shivered through my spine, but I still had enough of my wits to try and escape; I bolted to the stairs, avoiding numerous spot-fires along the way, silently praying to just about every god and angelic being I knew the name of. As if Satan himself had heard the cry for help, however, that very set of stairs and my only safe way down collapsed in on itself right in front of me.

Terrified, I ran back to my room and tore the window open, an icy breeze blowing straight in. The roof above my head creaked and strained, and the floor below became rickety and unstable as the floorboards holding it together started coming loose. Every second that flew by... more panic flooded through my veins, a fear that I would never see the ones I held close ever again.

It made me happy, however, when I stuck my head out the side of the window and spotted my sister and parents on the lawn, all screaming at me to get down. It wasn't exactly an option, then, so I screamed back. "I can't!" I yelled. "The stairs are gone! Do you have the ladder down there?!"

Maybe it was a long shot. But when a long shot was the only thing stopping you from getting burnt to a crisp, you tried it.

"It's in the garage somewhere!" Mary screamed back. "I'll go get it!"

Had I been within arm's length, I would have slapped my sister senseless. But I wasn't, and as she ran back inside to fetch the object of my safety I almost could have killed her. "What the hell do you think you're doing?!" I called, but no one seemed to hear. My mother, of course, screamed and dashed straight after her, straight into the burning building.

Really, there was no time for ripping hair out, but on a metaphorical level I was doing just that. My dad did not follow them, however – instead he looked straight up at me. "You're going to have to jump! If they get too far in the fire might stop them from getting back out!"

I looked downwards; a three story drop awaited me. Suddenly the ground seemed so much further away than it ever had before, even though I'd never had a fear of heights. I couldn't help but play it over in my head, and the conclusion was not pretty; serious injury and possibly even death awaited a fall like that...

But I didn't have any other choice. The smoke was getting to my head even with the open window, and as I sagged my notebook slipped out of my grasp. To his detriment, my dad ran to pick it up from the ground, dangerously close to the burning garage. The sick explosion as he got there made my eyes water and my heart burn. Numerous gas bottles had been stored inside, but obviously they were no more; my dad, as well as the rest of the ground floor, became engulfed.

I knew what was coming next, as the fire licked my back and the house began to lean. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, I clenched my teeth, and I hoped, I hoped to everyone including Satan, that someone would come and save me and my family.

Anyone.