So, I vaguely recall saying something about providing actual chapters. I have no doubt that this does not qualify and I'll probably be pelted with rancid vegetables for this, because: While it does explain a lot of lovely things that were very much left unclear, it also opens the door for a whole slew of new questions. Buuuuuuuuuuut, it had to be done, and actual chapters really will be forthcoming after this, I promise!
Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or any of the characters. I do own the plot and a defective immune system.
The night he met Sam, he had been curled into a fuzzy white ball inside an overturned garbage bin, rain-soaked and miserable. The same storm that had caught him raged overhead, darkening the murky evening further.
He'd been used. Betrayed. The man he had trusted as a father - the man who had claimed to love him - had been experimenting on him. Changing him. He wasn't human; not anymore. And the bastard had had the gall to gloat! Called him a "marvelous creation": the "product of genius".
Danny was cold, wet... and a cat. Vlad had almost gotten what he wanted; the changes he had wrought had almost made Danny give in. But somehow, this small, feline body had enveloped him. "Just a glitch in the programming," Vlad had mused quietly. "Most likely the stress of rejecting a contract. A useful defense mechanism, I suppose." The scientist was oddly chatty with a hole in his stomach. He'd been smiling, like it was a pleasant conversation about the weather.
Danny wished the memory of that smile would vanish. He wished all of the memories would. He wished he could go back in time, to before Vlad, to when he was human... to when he had a family.
Because he had had a family, once. He didn't remember them - he remembered almost nothing before Vlad - and he wasn't the same Danny who had been taken from them: their Danny had been blue-eyed with black hair. Vlad's creation was a white haired ... creature with neon green eyes. And that was so even before the feline genetics.
... But if he could find them, surely he'd know them. Maybe they would still accept him? If he could change back, even. But he had no idea how. He was panicked and tiny, with no clue where he was, and no memories to guide him. He'd fled Vlad's lab blindly: he didn't think he could find his way back if he wanted to. Not that the man would be much help now; being dead and all.
Shaking with hopelessness and cold, he gave a morose little mewl, curling tighter. He was nothing more than a broken Shield, twisted and without a purpose.
That was when she appeared. Holding her little purple umbrella and flanked by two Shields (neither of them bonded to her; he didn't know how or why, but he could tell), she knelt next to his tin shelter and eyed him with concerned curiosity.
"You're all wet, Mr. Kitty," she pointed out sadly, outstretching her palm slowly and looking worried.
Terrified, he uncurled and flinched away, almost thinking to bristle and hiss. She seemed to expect it, though, and made no sudden movements or noises.
"I won't hurt you," she assured soothingly. "I heard you crying. It's miserable out here, why don't you come home with me?" He was sorely tempted. Time had skewed, and it had been so long since he had had a place to sincerely name as home. The lab, the mansion, they had been nothing more than a prison: even before the horrid realization that Vlad was changing him, that little fact had not escaped his attention. "...You look lost." Her voice - pitched so quiet that the Shields behind her wouldn't even have heard it from their position - was understanding and gentle: and so much more human and real than anything he'd heard in the three years of his life that he remembered.
One of her escort rumbled something that he couldn't make out over the rain, and she turned, amethyst eyes flashing in tune with the lightning overhead.
"I don't care if they throw a fit, I won't just leave a harmless little kitten to die in the rain!"
He wasn't harmless. Danny knew beyond a doubt that that word had ceased to apply to him when he killed his creator. But something about her was comforting; had he known the word (he had forgotten so many of them since his transformation: it terrified him to think that his humanity might be abandoning him the longer he stayed in this form), he might have referred to the feeling as nostalgia. Familiarity.
That was enough to propel him from his shelter and into her arms, albeit warily. Crooning words of comfort, she opened the collar of her jacket and tucked him away from the frigid wetness of the air, cradling him with one hand and stroking away his fears as she stood and resumed walking, presumably in the direction of 'home'. She managed to hold him securely with one hand and an elbow - mindful not to drop the umbrella - ignoring entirely the wet spot he created as her shirt absorbed the rain water from his bedraggled fur.
He was lulled to sleep by the warmth and steady thrum of her heart.
It was too late for him to regain his innocence, but the night he met Sam, she saved his life, his mind, and his humanity - what there was left of each to salvage, anyway.
He promised to himself that one day he'd return the favor. No matter what.
"Phantom," Sam decided proudly, setting him on her pillow and flopping down after him on the black and purple sheet. After making herself comfortable, she absently began to pet him, stroking his ears with quiet finesse. "It suits you. Whattuya think?" She was pleased to feel the slight rumble of a purr in response. The ten year old grinned, laying her head down on her mattress and watching her new companion with affection, scratching gently on the underside of his chin. "Phantom it is, then."
Phantom. He warmed himself to it, loving it solely because it was from her.
Sam Manson was the daughter of Jeremy and Pamela Manson - the millionaire couple who had pioneered the Shields: an engineered race of bodyguards. A biotechnological wonder, they were a trend too good to pass up, until the craze had swept the country. Seldom a home was without them.
To avoid confusion, even generic models had unique appearances, with features that could be adjusted to taste. On the surface, it was impossible to tell them apart from the human populace. Personalities worked much the same.
There was no fear of betrayal or uprising. Shields, once bound to contract, would defend their Master to death.
Sometime after the death of renowned scientist Vlad Masters over a decade later, new research came into light; Shields, enhanced with animal traits and properties. Using his work, an exotic line of zuoShields hit the market under the Manson brand name.
After displeasure expressed by the masses, contracts became reversible in newer models. Upgrades became available.
Sam deplored the entire practice. Thirteen years old and heir to the company, she refused to select a Shield of her own. This was one of the many issues on which she and her 'esteemed' parents most distinctly did not see eye to eye.
"Sammykins... Pick. One." Pamela Manson ordered through clenched teeth behind an embarrassed smile.
The youth in question scowled, crossing slender arms over her slim chest. "You can't make me. The practice of Shields is sick and inhuma-"
"Samantha," the older Manson hissed, decorum cracking.
Scowl deepening on lavender tinted lips, Sam bit back the remainder of her spiel and glared defiantly at her female parental unit. Already it was obvious - at least, from his vantage in the rafters - which Manson was going to win this battle. Pamela wouldn't make any more of a scene in front of an employee. Sam would get hell for it later, but at the moment she was once again the victor in the Manson battle of wills.
A satisfied purr rumbled in his chest. His girl was good.
When Sam was fourteen, the Mansons invested in the brightest Shield technician of the time: Tucker Foley.
...To say that the two clashed would be like saying a hurricane is a bit windy.
"You realize that starvation is a horrible way to die, right?" The new techy asked with wide eyes, surveying her lunch in horro as he slid into a seat across from her.
Expression calculated, she inquired with false concern if he realized that undercooked meat carried some truly awful diseases and that be eating it in such profuse amounts he was undoubtedly shortening his lifespan by 20 years at the least.
A truly awe-inspiring food fight took place not long after.
It was a month later that the two became friends, despite their differences.
It was a month after that that Phantom finally cleaned the last of the tofu from his fur. The things he went through for his Sam...
By sixteen, Sam had lost count. It was in the hundreds, she was sure.
"I won't. I don't care, whatever! Scream at me, ground me... DISOWN me, for all I care! I won't do it, and you can't make me!" Her door slammed, and she stormed to the bed, twisting the volume control on her stereo until their indignant calls were drowned out and she could curl up and cry quietly under the comfortable throb of her music with none the wiser.
They argued about a lot of things, Sam and her parents, but never as fiercely as over the topic of Shields.
He was always there for her when she cried. It occurred to him, on nights like that one, how little he could really do for his girl, his Sam.
That was probably why, eventually, the inevitable happened.
