Annie Phantom Chapter One: An Accident
Anna Fenton was a regular girl, living in a far-from-normal house. Attached to the roof of their red brick apartment building and looking very much like a flying saucer was a bizarre collection of powered-down and disrepaired contraptions with all kinds of weird names like "The Fenton Specter Deflector" and "Ghost-Shield Generator". The crooked neon "Fenton Works" sign hung at an even odder angle than it once had, and the dirty light fixture hadn't so much as flickered for half a decade.
Her mom and dad, Samantha and Daniel respectively, rented out most of the apartment to the few— the very few —who wanted to stay in such an odd place, but the family lived on the top floor and locked the basement behind a steel door with three different security devices. Even if Anna had the key and had figured out the keypad code, it would be impossible to fool the high-tech palm scanner.
Once, when she was really little, Anna asked her mom why Daddy didn't just throw out all the stuff on the rooftop, and what he kept locked in the basement. Sam told her that it was for nostalgic reasons, and reminded her that the memories behind the locked door were very dangerous and shouldn't be touched. Anna couldn't help wondering what was down there, though. Maybe that was why she acted like she did when the power went out and her parents weren't in the house.
It was the weekend before school, Friday. She would turn thirteen Saturday, but for now she was enjoying Mom and Dad's all day dual job interview slash date. A few moments after she finished breakfast, the lights flickered and died. Anna waited a bit for the backup generator to kick in, but when nothing happened she began to hear complaints from the few tenants below. Remembering hushed conversations between Sam and Danny about a generator in the basement, she grabbed the secret duplicate key she'd been harboring for such a time as this and slipped down the stairs, assuring the angry people she met that she was on the problem.
Anna pushed the key in the lock, checking the electronic security devices to be sure they were off. Knowing the power could turn back on at any moment, she forced herself to turn the key and open the door. The inactive hydraulics hissed slightly as they were pushed into the open position, and then she got her first look at what had once been known as the ghost lab.
At one end was a strange, tunnel-like device with half-open doors painted in yellow and black diagonal stripes. Its mouth was surrounded by a glowing dome of energy emitting from a small, slightly humming machine that appeared to be drawing from another device which was probably he dome-making machine's own backup power source. Of all the weird devices and machines in the room, it was the tunnel that drew her eye the most. What in the world was it for?
The next thing her flashlight beam landed on was an entire wall of photos and newspaper clippings. Anna observed a collage of her dad's old photos, things she recognized from the album like high school pictures and vacation photos. The wall was plastered with pictures of Danny, often with one or both of his high-school friend Sam and Tucker, all of them teenagers then. Actually, that was the thing about the wall; it didn't reach chronologically beyond high school. Given the stated purpose of the room, that meant that there was something about that time her dad wanted to remember. As she searched towards the middle of the wall, she knew.
There were articles about a ghost kid, Inviso-Bill. She could trace the ghost kid's media life from "Mysterious Specter Sighted near Eccentric Fenton's House" to "Ghost Robbery— Inviso-Bill Believed Responsible" to "Inviso-Bill Now Danny Phantom… And on Our Side?" to "Ghost Kid Hoax!" with all kinds of adventures and exploits in between. Danny was clearly obsessed with the ghost kid, if not in an unhealthy way. But why hide it?
Then, in the very center of the wall, she saw a particular photograph. It was of Tucker and Sam in prom outfits, looking pointedly away from each other with lips pursed in whistles as they leaned against a photo booth. A hint of light from around the curtain showed that it was occupied. Partially obscured by that pic was a string of photos as if from that very booth, with an image of the ghost kid peeping out. "Suspicious," Anna observed. She lifted the bottom of the Sam and Tucker photo, fully expecting to see a prankster donning a costume, maybe even her dad. She saw him, alright, but he wasn't pulling a cheap suit over his clothing, oh, no.
He was literally, impossibly, morphing into the ghost kid.
Anna stumbled back away from the wall as the flashlight fell skittering across the floor. She didn't even notice it as her feet stumbled over the dome-making machine, or even as she fell easily through the mysterious dome and into the mouth of the tunnel. She vaguely registered the blueprint across the room as she waved her arms to keep her balance, and then her hand accidentally pressed the key she was still holding into a tiny depression and snapped a plastic panel shut, inadvertently repairing a deliberate breakage in the circuitry. She squinted through the darkness to read the words "Ghost Portal" on the diagrams, and then she put her hands in front of her face to shield her eyes as the lights snapped back on with the power.
Sticking her head, tentatively at first, through the translucent, glowing green portal which obscured her vision of the portal blueprints, Anna declared the design utterly unworkable and stepped back inside the tunnel, realizing it, now, for the intended portal it was. Forcing herself to ignore the evidence she'd just seen, she shoved out a laugh. "Ha," she said a bit too loudly, "Ghost Portal, as if. Ghosts DO NOT exist!" She crossed her forearms and moved her downturned palms sharply outward in a no gesture to underline her point, as if to prove it to herself.
Her left hand bumped gently against a green button labeled "on."
At the moment, a cat was walking down the sidewalk outside the house and quickly ran screeching away. There was a tremendous sound of machinery powering up and a blinking of bright lights in the windows. The mechanical screech and the lights held steady for a split second at their peak, and then the machine powered down as all the electricity within a hundred-mile radius switched off home by home.
Inside the well-insulated basement of the Fenton house, Anna Fenton was screaming.
Young Anna Fenton, she was just thirteen
When she found a very strange machine
In a locked-up back room left unseen.
(Gonna catch 'em all, cuz sheeee's Annie Phantom)
She saw pictures of her dad, and Portal blueprints,
And Anna took a look inside of it.
There was a great big flash, everything just changed.
Her molecules got all rearranged!
(Phantom, phantom)
When she first woke up, she realized
She had snow-white hair, and glowing green eyes.
She could walk through walls, disappear, and fly!
She was much more unique than the other guy.
It was then Anna knew
What she had to do;
She had to stop all the ghosts that were coming through—
She's here to fight for me and you!
(She's gonna catch 'em all cuz sheeee's Annie Phantom, gonna catch 'em all cuz sheeee's Annie Phantom, gonna catch 'em all, cuz she's— Annie Phantom.)