Disclaimer: I own none of the characters in this story nor anything else that you might recognize.

Chapter 1: Origins

Since the beginning there has always been the realms of time. Each realm held a host of beings that lived under the effect of time and these beings had to be watched in order not to destroy their own time. Also since the beginning there have been those who watch over the realms of time and the beings who are trapped inside them. These "Time Keepers" were set one to each realm of time. They kept a watchful eye on the lives of those that were in their realm and gently and secretly corrected the paths of those who were on a course to destroy it.

The Time Keepers from time to time were required to descend down into their realm and fix mistakes brought on by a foolish mistake made either by the beings in the time or the meddling of the Time Keeper. In order to blend in and to not be noticed, the Time Keepers had the form of the beings in their realm with only one exception; Clockwork, Time Keeper of Earth. Clockwork held the form of a ghost.

In addition to being a ghost watching over humans, there was one other acute difference to the Time Keeper of Earth; he had helpers. Clockwork enlisted the help of fellow ghosts along the way. These ghosts helped him correct the courses of humans and to keep certain events from changing too dramatically.

Clockwork chose very few of these helpers and he chose them very specifically to be trained for one purpose only, foreseeing the future. After gathering ten of his ghostly helpers he was beginning to lose hope in ever finding a helper who actually possessed the talent to see into the future, then came Danny.

Danny Fenton was a happy boy and although he wasn't too terribly popular, he had his friends and was satisfied. He was never one to have nightmares, just dreams of rocket ships and flying, so the awful flash of green and excruciating pain that had woke him up screaming for the past three nights was an unexpected and understandably unwelcome shock. He ignored his dreams, though, in hopes that they would eventually pass.

Danny, being fourteen years of age, was a smart boy. He knew that his parents in their blathering on about ghosts were a bit crazy. He also knew, with his parents being the crazy scientists that everyone knew them to be, not to mess around with his parents inventions, having witnessed the damaging effects that said inventions could cause.

He knew that it had been a bad idea to bring Sam and Tucker into the lab, but he didn't want to disappoint his friends and a small part of him wanted to show his friends that his parents were at least intelligent even if they were a bit crazy. After a quick tour had wanted to go back upstairs and play video games, but with Sam looking at him like that how could he resist? He didn't realize what would come of his entering that empty tunnel, and if he had known the future, he may have been a little forceful and made his friends to go back up stairs.

The green flash sent a bolt of fear down his spine and before he could register anything else, there was suddenly pain. Mind numbing, excruciating pain that felt all-encompassing,. It prevented him from screaming and from thinking, breathing, then, after what felt like hours of this terrible pain, suddenly it stopped and Danny looked up into his best friend's terrified faces before blackness surrounded him.

When Danny woke up in his own bed he thought everything had been just another of his all to common nightmares, until he tried to get up and only collapsed back onto his bed. Although terrified of what could have happened, Danny felt a great sense of relief when he realized that all things considered, he came out lucky.

In the few days following, Danny noticed strange things were starting to happen. He didn't pay much mind to them until one day he woke up and couldn't see himself. At first he thought that maybe it was a trick of the light or his tired eyes, but as he focused more, all he could see in his bathroom mirror was the wall behind him. He brought a hand to his face and had to bite back a scream when he realized that it was completely invisible. As his bout of panic rose to a crescendo all of the sudden he faded back into view and was left questioning his own sanity.

He didn't tell Sam or Tucker about these strange occurrences until he fell straight through the couch and onto the ground below. They soon came clean and told him of his strange appearance after tumbling out pf the portal. His hair and his eyes had been changed to white and glowing green and his skin had become almost translucent, but Sam and Tucker had been too concerned for Danny's safety than to freak out over a few changed features and before they had even made it up the stairs of the lab he had turned back to normal in a quick flash. They chalked it up to lingering effects of the portal and deemed it unimportant.

After they had left, Danny thought through all of the things that had happened to him and compared it to a list of characteristics that his parents had described as belonging to ghosts. Invisibility...check, intangibility...check, flight...check, glowing...check, all he had on his list that didn't match up were the inherent maleficence and being dead.

Danny sat on his bed for the entirety of Saturday and realized that maybe his parents hadn't been crazy after all.

Meanwhile Clockwork watched as Danny's transformation took place and resolved to keep an eye on him, though not necessarily his own eye.

"Reuben, come here please." He said in no particular direction, they always camw when he called no matter where or when they were. Be fore long the very first of his helpers that had been collected was standing before him. "Reuben, I need you to watch over this boy. I mean to make something out of him."

Reuben nodded towards Clockwork before walking towards the closest closed portal base and opening a portal to Danny's town, Amity Park.