A/N: Hello. I decided to start another story...one that I swear I'll try to update every once in a while. I actually feel that I can keep this one going on...this concept has been in my head for quite some time. I hope you all enjoy it.
Disclaimer: Danny Phantom is owned by Mr. Butch Hartman. If I owned it, I would devise some plan to somehow bring out those new episodes faster...
Chapter 1...
Chapter 1 - Time Riff
...The flow of time...
It never speeds up or slows down, and yet people are forever believing that its speed seems different for them in different circumstances. They find that sometimes it can always be of the essence, they no longer have enough of it, or in rare circumstances, even too much of it.
And yet time flows at the same speed every day, each monotonous, yet precious, ticking of a second passing by every moment.
For those free to roam, each second doesn't seem to matter unless they are built up into those units we call minutes and hours. Sometimes they can work in our favor; sometimes they are cruel reminders that we will never get these moments back.
And for those unfortunate souls that are trapped, every single second seems to pass like an eternity...
Deep into a dark abyss, where clouds were green, endless doors leading to dimensions floated in the air, and the undead roamed around the zone as if there wasn't anything special about their existence in a spectral sense, was a prison.
But it wasn't an everyday prison that housed all kinds of criminals. In fact, it only housed one person...
The container seemed old with age, even though it was still relatively new. It was covered with rust, the handle was falling off, and its original silver metallic sheen was fading to lusterless grey. And the canister was mottled with endless dents all around it, misshaping its original formation as a cylinder.
But the factor behind these dents were not an indication of anyone accidentally dropping the container on the ground, nor bumping it into something, causing it to dent from the outside.
They came from within, the telltale sign of an attempt of trying to punch a way out.
This certain prisoner had to bear a small prison of such magnitudes, and it seemed that he had lost track of time all together. He didn't even know long he had been trapped in this cage, so every day it was just a matter of hopelessly trying to escape from it, even if he was constantly watched.
During his confinement, all he could think about was how it all went wrong...he was so sure that he could determine everything he had hoped to accomplish.
But the barrier that he encountered along the way was something he had never expected it to be.
How his current situation of being trapped in here was possibly beyond the belief of one's notion of time. Most would believe that time's flow could never be altered - what happened in the past stayed in the past.
This, however, was wrong. This person had found a way back to the past...just to see if he could fulfill his own existence that he would be there in the future.
He was sorely mistaken.
By going to the past, he ended up destroying his future. Someone in the past had ended up defeating him at the last second and capturing him in this prison, currently eliminating him from time's existence.
So how could his past counterpart still be living at this point, if he was here, outside of time?
The answer was chilling: his younger counterpart had to die in order for him to exist.
Yes, he was a maniacal ghost, bent on revenge to the person who destroyed his future.
And what really annoyed him the most was not the desire for revenge, but knowing who the person who put him in this predicament.
His younger self, not a full ghost like himself, but what his kind called a half-ghost.
His name was Danny. A fourteen-year old kid who accidentally gained ghost powers when a spark accident in his parents' ghost lab occurred. A machine caused his DNA to mix with a ghost, turning him into the half-ghost that he knew all too well. His younger self believed that if there was a purpose for these powers, then it would have to be the fact that he would maintain the balance of escaping ghosts and keep them in the Ghost Zone.
So for about a year, Danny accepted these powers, even discovering new ones in the process, to help protect his home before everything got out of hand. It was sort of like his side-job as a hero.
But of course, there was something about that DNA that Danny could not foretell. Every day he felt that his becoming stronger was due to the fact of these new powers he was gaining.
Once again, it wasn't true. The true intentions of the ghost were just merely surfacing behind these new powers.
Despite Danny's wanting for ghosts and people to coexist, what was stirring inside him were the beginnings of the creation of the one ghost that begged for true power...
Soon, it grew to a point where it started tapping into Danny, reading all his emotions, reading his host like a book...knowing all of his hopes, dreams, fears...
The evil ghost trying to break free...was Dan Phantom.
The one currently trapped inside of the thermos.
After some time passed, Dan soon tried devising a way to escape from his young host. All hope seemed lost until he figured out the stress that the younger Danny was always going through.
Homework.
A big test, the C.A.T, was the one thing that could determine the future of the students later in life.
Dan knew that sometimes whenever his young host got angry, he would take his frustrations out on the nearest ghost he could see. Danny's anger was the food that Dan fed upon to grow stronger. It would soon build up to enough anger before finally he could release himself...and start on his quest to find the power he desired.
He knew that Danny would try to cheat on the test...but that simply wouldn't lead to his eventual existence. It was merely a trigger...friends and family would find out about it and then when they would continually question him about it, he would soon turn defensive and angry...
...Just the sustenance Dan needed to rise out.
Through Danny's eyes, he knew of the destructive properties of the Nasty Sauce developed by the Nasty Burger. When they were all around him at once, he suddenly came out of hiding, fastened them to one of the sauce ducts, and heated it.
Danny, unaware of the situation because he was being controlled by the ghost that he had inadvertently helped nurture, did not know what was going on until finally Dan slipped behind the shadows of his humanity, just enough time for Danny to see the final few seconds of his friends, family, and teacher get killed in an explosion that he did not even know he started.
There were no witnesses.
Danny found himself alone and distraught, unknowing of what to do. Figuring that the explosion was his fault, even though he had no idea what happened, he cursed himself for not being able to save them and wanted to end it all.
Dan knew, at this point, his plan was a success.
Danny travelled to Wisconsin and met ghost expert (and secretly half-ghost) Vlad Masters, the one person that Dan was wanting to see. With his powers combined with his own, he would be unstoppable.
Masters honored Danny's wishes of no more human emotion...and using his new-found technology, ripped Dan right out of Danny using a pair of gauntlets.
Dan was now free of his host forever. In his glee, he attacked the man who helped free him and stole the gauntlets back. Putting them on, he ripped the ghost out of Vlad.
Then, merging with that ghost that he had wanted to overshadow so much, he soon gained all the power necessary he needed. With the incredible feeling surging through him as the full ghost he now was, he then disposed of younger Danny in another violent explosion.
He would go on to rule the future.
But unfortunately for him, outsiders, who controlled time itself, knew of his intentions...and were trying to devise ways to stop it.
Their plan was to kill Danny before it ever started.
Dan got wind of the situation and accessed their technology to go back in time so that he could save his young host and make sure that his future would stay the same.
Unfortunately...the plan to kill Danny was a farce, and it ended up leading to a point where Danny soon realized the evil inside of him and had to destroy it. Danny decided to meet his futuristic half head-to-head to stop it from occurring.
After a long fight, Danny succeeded - barely. Finally trapping Dan inside a thermos, he removed him from time's flow and started another timeline.
And here Dan currently was, sitting inside this device of solitary confinement. How he was able to do it, he would never know. As the futuristic version of himself, he was supposed to succeed...not him.
"That power..." he thought, replaying the defeat over and over in his head. "It took me ten years to learn that. How the hell could he have learned it before he even turned 15?!"
His rage, building on the lines of injustice, completely overwhelmed him as he continuously beat against the walls against his prison in agony, trying anything to escape.
There was almost no use...even for a simple thermos, it was a surprisingly strong piece of metal.
But he knew eventually that he would be freed from this thing...it was only a matter of time.
He would gain the status that he once had before he had fallen...
And he would get his revenge...
A/N: How about a review? Keep flames to yourself, please.