A/N: Hi! I'm home on a short break from hiking the Appalachian Trail and this story was waiting to get published. This story is part of a series I'm attempting called the Exploration Series. I got the idea for it with my story "A Call to Arms". The series will be a collection of stories, long and short, about Danny's exploration of the Ghost Zone. In this series Danny is older, he starts at 18 in this story, and is independently exploring the Ghost Zone and its portals. I plan on the stories in this series to be relatively self-contained so you shouldn't need to read all of them to know what's going on, but they will reference one another and there will be some sequels. Many of these stories will also probably be crossovers since I'm a sucker for crossovers. Hope you enjoy!
I don't own Danny Phantom or Dr. Who.
Traveling Advice
Danny walked through the busy shopping strip, clutching his backpack to his chest, an impossibly large grin plastered on his face. His gaze darted from one location and passerby to another. His heart thumped in his chest, anxious from both being in such a distant place and time as well as the possibility of being found out by the inhabitants of this different world. This was his second trip exploring the Ghost Zone and its portals and Danny would be lying if he said he wasn't nervous.
Looking down at his watch, Danny checked the time again for probably the tenth time in as many minutes. He had twelve hours to visit this place, walk around, see the sights, and then hightail it back to the portal before it closed. The energy reader on the portal device was a little glitchy and Danny didn't want to run any risk of missing his only way back home. Now that he was enrolled in the local community college, missing a day of classes had less consequences with his teachers but Danny still didn't want to lose the class time after all the effort he went to raising his grades in his last year at high school.
Still, it was a shame Danny didn't have longer in this world. It looked like a futuristic city on another planet. There were some humans walking around but there were also…not humans. Danny wasn't sure if they were aliens. Some of them certainly looked like aliens, but others looked like life forms from Earth that had simply evolved past what Danny was used to seeing them as, like the cat people…people, except they were cats.
Then there was the technology. Danny didn't know how to describe it. Some of it seemed so far advanced than anything he'd ever dreamed of while some of it seemed just ridiculous and unnecessary. Even with the huge leap in technology, he still saw the dirt and grime that came with cities as well as beggars and the lowest of the low.
"I guess things don't really change. They just look a little different on the outside," Danny muttered to himself, the grin still plastered across his face.
One thing Danny failed to notice, at least at first, was the man following him. It took a few turns down different streets before Danny really got the sense he was being followed. When he did, the excited thrill he had from being on a different world in the future soured into the adrenaline burst of potential danger.
Danny turned down another exceptionally busy street, planning to lose the tail in the crowd. Gripping his backpack, Danny shoved his way through the shoppers pressed between stalls and stands of strange gadgetry, colorful cloth and clothing, food that looked like mutated variations of Earth fruits, and piles upon piles of second hand junk for sale. People bumped into him from one side and then another, shooting annoyed glares as Danny purposefully forced his way through the thickest parts of the crowd. The mass of shoppers closed behind him like the tide, cutting off anyone trying to follow him.
When he finally reached the other side of the market, Danny pulled off to the side behind a stall and glanced back, searching for the mop of dark brown hair that had been mirroring his every move. It was nowhere in sight. He saw only a teeming flow of people moving along in either direction through the street. Glancing down at his watch, he noted that nearly an hour had passed since his last time check. Being followed had a way of distracting a person. That made it another eleven hours before he wanted to be back and through the portal.
As he looked around again, Danny grimaced when he realized that in focusing on ridding himself of his tail, he'd also managed to get himself completely lost. It's alright, Danny thought, forcing himself to be optimistic, I've got plenty of time to find my way back to the portal, over ten hours in fact. The city can't be that big.
The city was that big. By Danny's count he was going on six hours later and he still hadn't found his way back to the portal or even wandered into familiar territory. The sun set hours ago, but luckily there was a second sun on this planet. It only came a little way over the horizon, placing the world in the permanent glow of late afternoon, but at least it wasn't pitch black. Danny trudged down another street thinking perhaps this one would be more familiar, but no. It was the same as the last three streets.
"Ugh," Danny groaned, sitting down on a step. His stomach growled in protest of the long day with too much walking and too little food. He was never going to go traveling without a night's worth of food in his pack ever again. His feet throbbed at the punishment and small muscles in his legs twitched at being used too much. "Just think, Danny," he muttered to himself. "You know the general direction of the portal, hopefully, so forget about finding a familiar street and focus more on going in the correct direction." If nothing else he could always go ghost and cut a straight line up and over the city to get back.
Rubbing his hands over his face, Danny braced himself on his knees in preparation to stand. A pair of red tennis shoes stepped in front of him before he could make the arduous climb to vertical. Danny stared at them for a moment, unsure what they were doing there, but then he blinked and his gaze traveled up to see the person to which they were attached.
The man was a little taller than Danny, wearing a long trench coat and a striped suit with a red tie. He smirked down at Danny, a sharp intelligence shining out of his eyes and the same styled brown hair that had been following Danny over six hours ago. "Found you," the man said, the smirk pulling at the corners of his mouth. The look of absolute excitement in the man's gaze destroyed any sinister overtones that might have come with the statement. "You're pretty good at losing me. I wasn't sure I'd ever find you again, but to be fair I'm pretty good at finding people."
Danny sighed, too tired for his earlier anxiety to really work its way into his system. That didn't mean he wasn't going to take precautions though. Pulling up the strength from deep inside, Danny climbed to his feet and took a few steps back out into the street so he wasn't cornered by the man on the doorstep.
"You found me, congratulations," Danny said, waving a hand while swinging his backpack up and onto his shoulders. "I don't have any money if you're looking to sell something, and I'm not interested in anything you have anyway."
The man blinked a moment, forehead crinkling before he shook his head. "No, no, no, I just wanted to ask you some questions." A British accent came through with the statement.
Danny's gaze narrowed, not sure where the conversation was going. "Ok…"
"First off, before we get to the questions I just want to say you are amazing." The man smiled wide, excitement nearly doubling.
"Ok…" Danny said, backing up a few more steps. Apparently the future failed to rid the world of mental illness even though it did manage to invent personal flying miniature robots that followed people around the streets and did whatever they needed. "Thanks?"
The clear disbelief on Danny's face and in his tone only made the man's smile widen. "No, I mean it. You are probably the best thing I've seen for a while. Now, on to the questions—what year are you from, and how did you get here?" the man asked with a straight face, though the eyes were still bright and fixed on Danny.
"Uh," Danny scrambled for a response, desperately wondering what gave him away. "I'm not quite sure what you mean."
"Yes, you do," the man said, pressing forward a few steps, "You're clearly from the early twenty-first century on Earth. You shouldn't have any means of time or space travel, and yet you're here in the twenty-ninth century on a completely different planet. Plus," here the man pulled out a long thin metal device. He pointed it at Danny and a blue light appeared at one end with a high-pitched whine. "You're emitting an energy signature I have never seen before and trust me, it takes a lot for me to see something completely new."
Danny gulped. This was exactly what he wanted to avoid. At least this man hadn't attacked him on sight, and he didn't seem to have any weapons or containment devices with him. Plus, the man's expression was mostly friendly, but Danny hadn't survived ghosts and ghost hunters to make it to his eighteenth birthday by luck alone. "Who are you?" he asked.
"I'm the Doctor," the man grinned, cocking his head with a proud smile, "but I did ask my question first."
Danny shrugged, ignoring the comment. "The Doctor's not a name. If I'm going to be dealing with anyone, I need to at least have a name."
The self-proclaimed "Doctor" drew back, chin lifting in the air. "It is too a proper name," he said frowning. "Besides, you haven't given me a proper name either, so you're hardly one to talk."
"It's Danny. So, what are you a doctor of?" Danny pressed, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his head.
"Are you questioning my credentials? You're questioning my credentials." The man seemed very offended now, though the light in his eyes had only grown stronger. "And you're evading my questions which means the answers must be interesting."
"Ugh," Danny groaned then grimaced. At this rate, he wasn't going to get rid of this guy and Danny was running out of time to find the portal back to the Ghost Zone. Danny pursed his lips. If getting rid of the guy wasn't an option, maybe he could get something out of him and get some directions. "You can detect stuff with that device, right?" He gestured toward the blue light thing the Doctor used moments ago.
The Doctor waggled the metal instrument. "It's a sonic screwdriver," he said with a proud sniff as if that should mean something to Danny.
Danny blinked. A screwdriver was about the last thing he expected, but whatever. "Right," Danny said and mentally moved past it. "You're right, I am from the early twenty-first century. I came through a portal to do some sightseeing, but I'm lost and can't find my way back to the portal. Can that thing pick it up in some kind of scan, like what you did for me? Because I could really use some directions, even just an azimuth."
The Doctor was beaming now, practically glowing with excitement. "A fellow traveler, excellent!" He stepped up to Danny with a long stride and quick movements. Before Danny could react, the Doctor had an arm around Danny's shoulders in a chummy manner and was pulling Danny down the street. Danny tensed, clenching one hand and almost jerking away out sheer instinct, but the Doctor ignored Danny's stiffness and continued as if they were the oldest of friends. "I can tell you're new to this sort of traveling. So I'd be delighted to give you some pointers and help you find your way back to your time in exchange for answering my questions."
Danny weighed the dangers and benefits of answering any questions, bobbing his head back and forth in a small motion.
"Some suspicion is good when traveling abroad," the Doctor said as though they'd already struck the deal, "but paranoia will sap all the fun out of traveling."
Danny huffed a laugh, "Alright fine, I'll answer the questions I can, and you show me the way back to the portal."
"What are you?" the Doctor asked, jumping right into the hardest question Danny could imagine him asking. "You're partly human, but there's something else that's there, probably added after the fact."
Danny sighed, and braced himself because Lord help him, he was going to be mostly honest. It couldn't hurt too much. There were cat people walking down the street for Clockwork's sake so hybrids weren't new here in the future. "I'm a hybrid—half human and half something else. Got on the wrong side of an experiment in my parents' lab and my system was fused with some of the element they were experimenting with at the time, or something like that. Never actually figured it all out."
"Does this substance have anything to do with the portal you're looking for, by any chance?" the Doctor asked, nose lifted in a knowing manner.
Danny's eyes narrowed, suspicion immediately rising again. "Why do you say that?"
"I've heard stories," the grin on the Doctor's face was pure Cheshire cat.
Well that wasn't confusing at all, Danny grumbled to himself. "I don't see how," Danny said, "this is only my second trip. The first place I went was this random town near Albuquerque, not very noteworthy for anyone but me."
"Weeell," the Doctor said, scrunching his face and bobbing his head back and forth. "Time's a little more complicated than just one event after another. It's more a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey-wimey stuff." He finished that sentence with a soft grin, turned inward this time as though remembering a private joke.
Danny thought about it, mind immediately going back to almost every instance he'd dealt with Clockwork, especially that first time. "Yeah, I can see how'd that'd be the case. So you're saying that because you're from the future, you've had time to hear rumors about my travels after they happen for you in the future but before they happen to me in the past, right?"
"Precisely," the Doctor said. He looked down at Danny in pleasant surprise, "You catch on quick—I like that." The eager smile was still there, but Danny thought he was getting used to it. "I've heard some stories about someone who sounds like they could be you, but they're usually incomplete. The rumors never really tell the whole story."
"Well, that's fine with me. I like my privacy," Danny muttered. He didn't want his secret spread everywhere, even in the future.
This man was more like Clockwork than Danny really liked to admit—a Clockwork with a sense of humor. Danny liked to think he'd developed a pretty good intuition for people who were dangerous or untrustworthy. Perhaps it was a part of being half ghost or maybe it was just something he'd developed after an untold number of ghost fights and hunters targeting him every day for the past several years, but he generally could trust his gut on these things. Right now, his gut was saying this Doctor was alright, to a certain point, so Danny let the man pull him along. They moved through the street, the Doctor steering them down some invisible course as they wove their way through the crowds and flow of traffic.
"The first thing to remember is to stay flexible," the Doctor said, changing their direction as a large mechanized pushcart pulled out in front of them. "You really never know how things are going to turn out. Trust me, I know how history was supposed to go, but remember the wibbly-wobbly? Time's always changing and unless it's a fixed event, it's possible for history to change."
Danny nodded. That was like the fiasco with the ecto-acne, an event he wasn't going to forget anytime soon. One little action on Danny's part in the past had enormous consequences later in the time stream. Though, that didn't particularly explain Clockwork guarding the timeline. "What about the guardian of the time stream?" Danny asked, curious in his own right, but also curious what this fellow time traveler would say.
The Doctor frowned, stopping his forward push through the crowd. He turned to face Danny. "Guardian of the time stream? Well, besides Time Lords like myself, there really isn't any such thing."
Danny's eyebrows lifted in surprise and disbelief, making the Doctor frown. People passing by swirled around them, a never-ending flow of shoppers, tourists, and locals trying to get to the next thing in their day.
"Unless there is and you've met him," the Doctor said in the slow, measured tone of someone putting one and two together.
"Well," Danny said, shrugging as he slid his hands in his pockets. "You've obviously been at this longer than I have, so if you say there isn't one then there must not be." He looked down the street to the next turn in the road, then glanced at his watch. He still had over three hours before the portal might close and now he had someone who in theory could help him find the right direction, so he refused to allow the twinge of anxiety to gain purchase in his gut. There was plenty of time. He wasn't going to get stuck in the future. Still, he couldn't quite shake the feeling like he were coming up on the deadline for an important school project and hadn't lifted a finger to start it.
The Doctor's gaze narrowed, excitement and suspicion warring behind those old eyes. He opened his mouth to comment, but stopped as Danny's stomach gave a loud rumble. The Doctor laughed then looked around the square they stood in before pointing to a large glass window a dozen yards away. "Let's get something to eat. Questions are better answered on full stomachs."
Danny was hardly going to argue with that. His hunger resurged with a vengeance. "And then you'll point me in the direction of the portal, right?"
"Or take you there myself," the Doctor said, waving one hand while he grabbed Danny with the other.
"That really isn't necessary," Danny said with a heavy frown. Getting directions back to the portal was one thing, letting a stranger gain access to it was another. Not for the first time on this trip, Danny got the impression he was in over his head.
"And miss the chance to see a natural temporal rift? Not likely," the Doctor said. He pulled the door to the shop open and ushered Danny inside before the boy could offer any objection.
The restaurant was just like any other small neighborhood deli that Danny had ever seen, only completely different. The customers were the same mishmash of life forms that passed by on the street. The tables and amenities varied to suit the different needs. The food was lumps of meat that Danny failed to identify as well as what had to be cheese and vats of strange concoctions. Spicy and sweet scents filled the air. It was off from what he was accustomed to in a restaurant, a tang that was almost exotic in its lack of familiarity. Yet despite all those differences, people still ordered at the bar, carried their food in various containers over to the tables, and paid at a kiosk set up by the door. It was a futuristic diner, but a diner nonetheless.
The Doctor whisked up to the counter and ordered in an unknown language. It was the same language everyone around was using and sounded more like gibberish to Danny. A moment later, one of the attendants placed a tray with two sandwiches filled with the unknown meat and cheese-like substance on the counter. The Doctor scooped it up and swiped a card on what must have been the payment machine. Then they were seated in the back corner booth. Danny made sure to take the spot with both windows and door in view, a long-standing habit from his ghost hunting career.
"You must speak a lot of languages, traveling through time," Danny observed, a little impressed.
The Doctor frowned at him. "The TARDIS translates…oh, you're hearing everything without any translation help. Never been in the TARDIS, and you're from the past before instant translation technology was invented, so you're hearing it all straight as it sounds."
"Well, yeah," Danny said. Of course people in the future would have instant translation technology. "So you don't actually know their language. You've just got something translating it for you. That makes sense."
The Doctor frowned at Danny, "Well, my ship can translate it psychically. That's usually how people I travel with get by. It's still impressive."
Danny shrugged. "Not as impressive as learning the language yourself…but probably more convenient." Maybe offending his ticket home was not the best strategy at the moment. Better to stop talking about it.
The Doctor rolled his eyes and took a bite of his sandwich. "I can speak loads of languages without my ship translating for me." He huffed, "So, you are human, but at the same time a hybrid, you said." He looked at Danny and received a nod. "What is your other half?"
Danny frowned, glancing at the Doctor but looking back down to his sandwich as he examined the contents. "I'd rather not say. People get uncomfortable when I do. Let's just say it's an energy-based entity."
"The same energy that makes up this portal?" the Doctor asked and received another reluctant nod. "And the portal leads to the past?"
Danny bobbed his head back and forth, less a confirmation than a motion emphasizing the difficulty to explain. "Basically. It's sorta a group type thing, lots of portals opening to lots of different times." Keeping it vague was probably for the best. He took a bite of his sandwich and blinked in surprise. It tasted like chicken even though it looked more like ham.
The Doctor stared, putting down his sandwich. His face scrunched a moment and he scratched his chin, cocking his head. "And these are naturally occurring portals?"
"For the most part," Danny said, dearly hoping he wouldn't get food poisoning from the mystery meat. It would also be good if in telling this near stranger about the portals and the Ghost Zone in general, he didn't accidently reveal the Zone's secrets to someone who would turn into a threat later, but as Danny had noted before he was going with his gut on this. He glanced up at the Doctor, noting the scrunched face. "Problem?"
"Temporal portals don't just pop into existence on their own. There must be a cause. If they're just popping up on their own that's…not good." The expression on the Doctor's face was one Danny recognized, filled with disbelief and skepticism that Danny actually understood the portal he used.
Danny shrugged. "These portals have been forming naturally since I was a kid in the twenty-first century. The world hasn't shattered yet." Danny took another large bite of his sandwich. The taste was starting to grow on him. The dressing was what really pulled it together.
"Remember the wibbly-wobbly," the Doctor said, attention only half on the comment. He snapped back, looking at Danny with new interest. "Now I have to see this portal."
"It's really nothing to look at," Danny shifted in his seat and cast around for another topic. "So stay flexible, be suspicious but not paranoid—any other pieces of advice?"
"Don't be afraid to go explore and ask questions, and always try something new," the Doctor said and added a moment later, "Though I guess that really goes without saying, considering you're already here completely out of your time and place."
Danny thought it was still a good piece of advice.
"Running is important," the Doctor added. "More important than people realize."
"So cardio," Danny said, thinking back to the zombie, horror, and disaster movies he'd seen and the sheer amount of running people did in them. Danny would say that those movies didn't really reflect real life, but cardio had been pretty important in Danny's life so far, despite what real life was supposed to be like.
"Don't worry too much about changing timelines," the Doctor shrugged. He picked up his sandwich and took another bite, but kept an eye on Danny the whole time. "If things change, they change. If they're not supposed to, then nothing you do is going to alter them in the long run... But don't go around specifically trying to change the timeline. That's a recipe for disaster."
Danny frowned at that. That tidbit was different from what Clockwork said. "I guess sometimes going back or forward in time is part of the intended timeline…"
"Intended," the Doctor said, gaze fixed on Danny with laser-like focus. "You said intended timeline. I'm telling you there's no fixed way things turn out and it's always changing, but you say otherwise. Like the guardian you mentioned before, like there's a way things are supposed to be. Why do you say that?"
Shrugging, Danny focused on his sandwich. "Habit, I guess. I'm not used to time travel."
"No, that's not it," the Doctor said. The gears turned behind those eyes. He was trying to figure Danny out and that wasn't something Danny liked at all.
Danny popped the remaining bite of his sandwich into his mouth and washed it down with his drink. "Well, like I said, I'm new to this whole thing so my terminology is bound to be messed up. You're a Lord of Time, so that would make you the expert, right?" Making that last statement sound anything other than sarcastic took a lot more effort than Danny expected. He doubted he was completely successful.
"It's Time Lord," the Doctor said, voice flat. "And it's less a title than it is a species."
Blinking, Danny looked over the man once more. "So you're not human? But you're talking with a British accent."
The Doctor scoffed. "Lots of people talk with a British accent who aren't British."
"Touché," Danny said. He checked his watch, very specifically ignoring the Doctor's steady stare. "Speaking of time, it's time I get started for home, so thanks for the sandwich and the advice. If you could just point me in the direction of any weird energy signals you pick up that matches mine, I'll be on my way." Danny reached down and gathered up his backpack, standing up in the aisle.
"Oh no, you're not getting rid of me that easy," the Doctor smirked, good humor and excitement banishing the annoyance from moments ago. Taking one last large bite of his sandwich, he stood up. "We'll go together. I have to look at this portal."
Danny shifted from one foot to the other, gripping the straps of his backpack. "Uh…that's really not necessary. If you just point me the right direction as the crow flies, that'd be fine."
"What's the matter, Danny?" the Doctor asked, flashing a knowing grin. "You admitted it yourself—I'm the expert so if anyone is qualified to tell if these randomly occurring temporal rifts are something to be concerned about it would be me. C'mon." He turned and left the diner in a twirl of his coat and sauntered out into the street.
"Me and my big mouth," Danny muttered to himself then followed the Doctor out the door.
The crowd was thinner in the street. Several of the street vendors closed their stalls even though the sky still glowed with an unending twilight aided by street lights. The Doctor led them off down the street and to an alleyway. The narrow passage sheltered them from the crowd a little with boxes pilled on one side. Spinning to face Danny, the Doctor pulled out his screwdriver again.
"Now, you said that the energy signal you're emitting is the same as the portal, correct?" the Doctor asked, scanning Danny again then fiddling with the device.
"Pretty much," Danny said, shifting the backpack around on his shoulders. He silently prayed this wouldn't blow up in his face.
"Right." The Doctor turned in a slow circle, screwdriver held out in front of him. The device let out a soft whine, probably the "sonic" part, Danny thought. The whine grew louder halfway through the Doctor's turn and he stopped. A quick sweep to either side of the direction confirmed their heading. "It's this way." Then, he took off.
Danny followed the Doctor through the alley to the adjoining street. They turned right and started a long process of zigzagging their way through the thoroughfares and narrow passages of the city. Danny was surprised at how far he'd wandered from the portal. They had to backtrack a few times since the screwdriver only pointed in the general direction and took no consideration of street layout, but it was nearly an hour before they came across anything that was familiar. More than once Danny consider simply flying off now that he had a bearing, but this Doctor person would probably still find his way to the portal. If that happened, Danny wanted to be there to conduct damage control.
"Oh, I know this plaza," Danny said, turning in a quick circle as he followed the Doctor cutting a straight line through the wide plaza. Fountains marked the four corners and a half empty market area sat in the center. People still milled around the plaza, but nowhere near the number from earlier in the day. Music and colored light spilled out from a few bars and nightclubs. "I think I can find it from here, so if you've got someplace else you need to be…" One last effort to get the man to leave wouldn't hurt.
"Nah, we're almost there!" the Doctor waved off Danny's comment with ease. He wove his way through a group standing outside a loud nightclub and into a narrow side street.
Danny hurried to catch up. The last thing he wanted was for this Doctor person to find the portal and fall through or something equally disastrous before Danny had a chance to stop him. Being in familiar territory again, Danny kicked himself for involving the man, a stranger, and inadvertently giving him access to the portal. Maybe he could just knock the guy out from behind. Hopefully, the portal was closing soon anyway, so it wouldn't matter.
The portal hung six feet off the ground in the wall of an old alleyway. The shadows of the alley only served to highlight the occasional flash of toxic green that filtered through from the Ghost Zone. Danny caught up to the Doctor just as they entered the alley and spotted the portal.
"I really don't need any more help, Doctor," Danny said, a little breathless. The Doctor's legs were longer than Danny's, and the man could move deceptively fast. Cardio really was important, Danny reflected as he pulled ahead of the Doctor and positioned himself in front of the portal. "Really, thanks for your help."
"Well, I rather disagree that you don't need my help anymore, Danny," the Doctor said, eyes fixed on the portal. He made an adjustment on his screwdriver then pointed it at the portal. It let out a high-pitched whine. "Because that is not a temporal portal, and I think you knew that."
Of course the man would recognize Danny's fib as soon as he laid eyes on the portal. That was just how Danny's luck went. Sighing, Danny said, "It leads to a pocket dimension. Then from there you can jump back and forth between times, as long as they're connected through the intermediary pocket dimension, so it serves the same function."
The Doctor's gaze cut to Danny with laser focus. "Interdimensional travel isn't supposed to be possible without shattering the dimensions you're traveling between. There's a barrier between dimensions and when you punch a hole in it, cracks form. Those cracks eventually destabilize and shatter everything." The Doctor's voice sped up and grew louder as he spoke. He stepped around Danny to a pile of crates. Pulling them over, he pushed them up against the wall under the portal.
"It's not going to shatter the universe," Danny said. This had been a complaint from some members of the mainstream scientific community when his parents first built the portal. They were wrong then, and the Doctor was wrong now. "It's been around since the twenty-first century after all."
"Remember the wibbly-wobbly, Danny," the Doctor said, climbing up the pile of crates to get closer to the top. "Things don't necessarily happen in a traditionally sequential order. Things could crumble all at once, multiple points of time in the same instant."
Danny eyed the rickety stack of crates. It would probably come down if he gave it one good kick. "Look," he said, "I promise these things aren't going to cause the universe to shatter. It's really nothing to worry about."
The Doctor shook his head, running the screwdriver up and down the length of the portal with ever increasingly frantic motions. "No, no. These things just don't pop up on their own. Someone is doing this, causing this, and they're going to go too far. I know because they always go too far and then I have to fix it."
Attracting a time traveler to Amity Park was about the last thing Danny wanted to do. He glanced up at the portal. It seemed smaller than it had been a moment ago. He stepped back as the Doctor muttered to himself. Danny pulled out the portal gun, still developmental at the moment, but it should tell him the rate of ecto-decay. Sure enough, the portal was collapsing into itself. It only had a few minutes before it would be completely gone.
"What is that?!"
Danny looked up at the Doctor staring wide eyed at him. Danny froze. The Doctor's gaze went from Danny to the portal gun and back to Danny.
"Uh," Danny said panicking. He was full of bad decisions today, might as well make one more. He jumped forward, grabbed a box from the middle of the stack and ripped it from its place. The stack collapsed, bringing the Doctor down with it. Danny jumped up and tapped into his powers just enough to get up and through the portal without triggering any ghostly transformations. Once safely in the Ghost Zone, Danny turned. He caught the briefest glimpse of the Doctor staring in open-mouthed shock at the portal and heard the man yell one last incredulous, "What?!" Then, the door collapsed and disappeared entirely.
"Too close," Danny said to himself then shuddered at the thought of how close he came to being stuck in the future, not to mention almost letting a stranger have access to the Ghost Zone. "Way to close." He fully transformed into his ghost half and put the portal gun back into his backpack. "Hopefully meeting that guy won't come back to bite me…though knowing my luck it probably will."
Shaking his head, Danny glanced down at his watch. It was going to be late when he got home, and he still had homework to do for class the next day. He put the thought of the strange Doctor character out of his mind. After all, how would the guy follow him anyway? You'd need a spaceship combined with a time machine to do that, some sort of time and space machine, and how likely was that? Shaking his head again, Danny turned toward home and started his long flight back.
::The End::
A/N: Hope you enjoyed this. I write fanfiction to improve my writing skills so constructive criticism is greatly appreciated. Please leave a review and let me know how I did!