Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or Young Justice.
He had begged.
Pleaded.
Cried.
And yet Clockwork remained firm, his hands tied by the Observants behind him. His family, his friends, his town could not be saved.
Dan, his evil twin, had been locked away and Clockwork assured him that in time the being would fade from existence. The timeline had been changed. He had won, but at what cost? It felt as if he had lost.
Time, space, reality. Numbness, pain, eternity.
Maddie, Jack, Jasmine. Tucker, Sam, Valerie.
Death, destruction, bitterness.
Why?
And then Clockwork made an offer he couldn't refuse. A chance to leave and start over. Not by turning back the clock, or dropping him through a portal into another country halfway across the globe, but by sending him to a new dimension.
Earth 16
Danny had his doubts. But Clockwork was insistent. When Daniel finally got down to the logistics of the deal all Clockwork said was not to worry about an identity in this new world, as it would be easy to take one, if he acted quickly. Whatever that meant. All he needed to worry about was money.
And so, Danny gathered what he could from the rubble quickly, tears staining his face, his hands growing raw and burnt from the hot ashes of destruction. He was too numb to care. He managed to steal four or five neatly bundled stacks of hundred dollar bills from the half destroyed Nasty Burger safe and kept digging through trying to grab something, anything to remember them by. But the money was all he could snatch before he was whisked away. Clockwork needed to act quickly, before the Observants caught on.
He still had his phone in his pocket. He still had some pictures. At least.
When the swirling green portal spat him out he found himself in a dingy alley that reeked of garbage and piss. Old brick walls on one side and a rusty chain link fence on the other. He looked up at the buildings only to see boarded over windows. Sirens could be heard in the distance. It was dark and yet he could still clearly make out a fat rat scurrying by from out behind a dumpster.
And then it happened.
He jumped out of the way and hid as an old beat up red car came screeching into the alley, barrelling at what must have been sixty an hour, then subconsciously found himself invisible as four thugs stepped out of the car and opened up the trunk. They spoke jovially, one of them holding a large baseball bat behind their back.
"I swear I thought I saw a kid out here"
"Your eyes must be foolin' now hurry up, we gotta get rid of this for the Joker"
"Can't I smoke a little first"
"No idiot"
They pulled out a body. A freaking bloody body. A corpse of a young man by the looks of it. The body was tightly bound with rope and gagged with a blue bandana and had what appeared to be a bullet hole through his chest. Red blood caked onto a white shirt. His skin was greyish. Danny watched horror stricken unsure of what to do. Was 911 the same in this universe? Would his cell phone work here?
And then they jumped back into the car and sped off.
He let his invisibility drop and released the breath he didn't realize he was holding. He was literally shaking from so much adrenaline flooding his system.
The car was red. Four doors. Large dent on the left hand side. The thugs were six foot tall. They must have weighed two hundred pounds each. There were four of them. One of them had on a bright orange shirt. He tried to keep the details straight in his head. He was a witness now right?
Why had clockwork dropped him off here and now of all places? Fuck, what the hell was he supposed to do? He fiddled with his phone, his heart racing a thousand miles a minute, only to find that he might as well have been carrying a brick around. Damn it. He had no clue why he was here of all places.
Oh.
"It will be easy to take a new identity if you act quickly" Clockwork had said.
Sick.
He didn't know what else to do though. It's not like he had a birth certificate in this universe.
He looked around for cameras then transformed into Phantom. It was much easier to use his powers that way. He then phased through the dumpster until he was by the corpse, and looked through the dead man's pockets for his wallet. Hopefully he had one on him. He felt like a real slimebag stealing from the dead. Finally he found one in the boy's back pocket, a black leather one. Danny then transformed back and made his way out of the dingy alley and onto a dingy street full of bars and strung out hookers.
Great. He sure felt safe with a couple thousand in his pockets, a dead man's wallet, a useless cell phone, druggies around every corner, and not knowing where the fuck he was at all.
He walked aimlessly before he found a convenience store, the only thing open that wasn't a bar. He grabbed a bag of chips, and upon noticing a copy of "The Gotham Times" decided to purchase that. The total coming to just a little under three bucks, he cursed under his breath. That was so not worth pulling out a wad of hundreds for. He fumbled a bit, then opened up the wallet. Luckily there was a twenty stashed inside. He used it, relieved to note that money was exactly the same here.
He stood just inside the door for a bit, looking through the contents of the wallet. He noted a social security card, an ID card, a bus pass of some kind, and some kind of store rewards card. He took a longer look at the ID frowning.
His new identity was Daniel J. Miller. He had white skin, black hair and blue eyes. He was 5 foot six inches and weighed 120 pounds. The deceased was fifteen years old, if the date of the Times was accurate.
Clockwork knew what he was doing, that's for sure. The description matched him almost to a T.