A/N: A big thanks to all my readers!! OH, and if you have the time, check out another awesome story that also deals with the Dark Phantom, though it's on a different and interesting track! It's by Aaron12 and is called "Danny Phantom: Facing the Future"! I do not own any characters! Here is Chapter 2. Enjoy
His Own Worst Enemy—Chapter 2—Many Discoveries
Danny nears Clockwork's castle and slows his approach. His face melts from curiosity to worry. "It looks a little too dark in there! Something's not right!" He phases through the entrance and just as he enters the foyer, calls out, "Clockwork?" Only his echo answers.
Repeating his friend's name again, and still hearing no answer, he cautiously continues, looking in each room. "Hello? Clockwork?" His voice echoes eerily after entering each chamber. But he still gets no answer, and the place is unusually quiet.
After searching for several more minutes, he stops, frowning with a creeping sense of dread. "I don't like this," He says to himself. "It's not like Clockwork to be gone this long, or for this place to be so, well, dead."
He finally arrives at the main room, which contains most of Clockwork's tools, especially the time medallions and, more importantly, the special device that allows those who enter it to travel through time: the time portal.
He looks around and he notices some time medallions are missing. He then approaches the time portal and sees that it has been activated. It has been set to ten years from now at Amity Park. He finds himself suddenly thinking, "Why that time period and place? I have a bad feeling about this!" But then he counters himself, "Now, don't get all paranoid about it, Fenton! You know how mysterious Clockwork is! Maybe he just had an errand to run!" He looks down at his watch. "Anyway, I'll have to check on him later. It's time for Lancer's class!"
He quickly claws into the dimension and returns to the Real World.
But what Danny didn't know was what actually happened a few hours before he had gone to see Clockwork:
After escaping the thermos and vault, Dan Phantom had quickly become intangible and invisible, and headed out of Clockwork's castle. Then, as he soared into the Ghost Zone, he glanced back over his shoulder at Clockwork's home, and angrily muttered, "I'll deal with you soon!"
He scanned the ghost horizon, searching; and finally, his patience paid off. He saw that an active portal had formed near a wandering ghost. As he was still intangible and invisible, he easily surprised the ghost and stunned it near the portal. He then eagerly entered the revolving aperture.
Now in the Real World, the still invisible evil ghost searched the horizon again. "Now, let's see. Has it been that long? Yes, but, good! This looks familiar! It looks much neater, of course, but this must be Amity Park!"
He continued his search, and then when he didn't find what he wanted, grew impatient. "It must be here somewhere! This place is much bigger than it is in the future."
He went on, and finally stopped when he spied his goal in the near distance. "Ah, there it is! Still as gaudy as ever. Fenton Works!"
He quickly phased into the building and headed toward the lab. Maintaining his invisibility, he drifted from one part of the room to another, hunting. Finally, he spotted what he wanted and grabbed it. Then he made a quick exit via the Fenton ghost portal and returned to Clockwork's castle.
"Now it's time I got rid of that meddling old man," He sneered, phasing through the front door. His jaw was tense with determination as the Dark Phantom headed toward the main room and thought, "He has to be there!"
He stealthily entered the room and seeing his chance, flipped the switch of the Fenton weasel sucking machine.
The old man form of Clockwork, who at first had his back to Phantom, immediately reacted to the noise. Reaching for the button on top of his time staff, Clockwork yelled, "Time ou--….."
But his attacker responded faster than Clockwork expected. Instantly, the younger ghost shot the staff right out of the Ghost of Time's hand just as the Fenton weasel sucked the hapless and fearful Clockwork into it.
"Now it's your turn, old man, to be swallowed up and thrown away! But it won't be so cozy for you!" Phantom contemptuously spat out as he zapped the machine, sending a charge through it.
And Clockwork remembered no more.
"Ha, ha, ha!" Dark Phantom snickered. "This is better than I could have hoped!" He soared over to the staff, turned it intangible and shoved it inside his chest, groaning in pain as it pierced through him. "Now, I'm definitely and totally outside of time! And speaking of 'time', I think that now would be ideal to return to my time period. I have my own lab, my own technology. And since I've been gone a while, I want to see what kind of history the one person I'm most interested in has made for me!"
He grabbed some medallions, entered the time portal, and was transported ten years into the future.
Several hours later, the older Phantom sat at his computer, engrossed in examining historical videos and electronic papers. Finally, he stumbled upon a rather lengthy file on the events surrounding the "Disasterorid Incident", which almost destroyed the world; and, more importantly to the evil ghost, the younger Danny Phantom's role in them.
As he half-reviewed the videos, he ranted, "Mighty impressive for a little twerp! And what about all those other ghosts? They actually helped him out, too? Why?"
He reviewed the documentation again and his eyes narrowed in agitation as he muttered, "I don't believe it! Don't tell me that all those ghosts have gone soft? Then,….they don't deserve to exist, either!"
Suddenly, when his eye caught something on the clip, he interrupted his tirade and stopped the image.
"What's that?" He said as he rewound back to that part. He pushed another button, and the video moved forward again. Immediately pushing the "slow" button, he scrutinized each frame.
Just as sudden, he saw the Disasteroid hit part of a mountain, shearing off pieces of the large green asteroid just as the planet went intangible. He paused that frame, and zoomed to a small area on top of the mountain. His eyes widened when he noticed that those same chunks of rock still remained on the mountain after the asteroid passed through the Earth.
"Interesting," He uttered, his mouth slowly curling to a self-satisfied, yet wicked, smile at his discovery. "I need to retrieve those items and expand my research on them. Something tells me that this will be the answer to my little big problem, Danny Phantom!"
