Disclaimer: I don't own any items of the Danny Phantom canonverse. I'm a cat.

Nyaa.

=^n.n^=

Chapter 3

Danny's lungs burned as he ran through the trees. It was between six and seven in the morning. The mountain fog still blanketed the forest. He wore a hoodie – blue, not unlike the one he had as a child – for appearance's sake alone. No one else had a cabin in this part of the range, but the last thing he needed was for some ranger to spot him and insist on driving Danny back to the Masters Lodge.

Of course, that might happen anyway, considering the pack of wolves accompanying him… Led by their large, fuzzy black alpha. Wulf insisted on joining Danny during his exercises. After all, he and Danny had been friends for years, and roaming was one of the most common ways that animals bonded. Wolves in particular – as long as Wulf was around, the wolves would frequently try to play with Danny; they also liked to go out of their way to harass Vlad if he accidentally happened upon them.

"You are breathing hard again, cub." Wulf growled in his native Esperanto. He cocked a grin, which looked strange, considering the muzzle. "You have been watching your moving pictures and 'visual games' again, eh?"

"Video games, Wulf." Danny grunted. "Maybe I should lay off the extra helpings when Mom cooks."

The wolves began yelping. Unlike dogs, they couldn't bark – they just shortened their howls. Wulf laughed heartily. "They say that they will take your portion of the meals, if you do not want them!"

Danny snickered and shook his head. Having an animal-to-human translator helped him realize just how much wild wolves were like the more energetic breeds among their domestic cousins. They got excited about play time, feeding time, travel time, hunting time… Danny and Vlad had once witnessed a struggle for dominance between two members of the pack. It was one of the few times that the younger halfa had seen Wulf bare his fangs in anger; the two that were fighting had stopped quickly when the large, lupine ghost had slammed them both to the ground at once, pinning them on their backs. Vlad had actually complimented Wulf on his 'impressive display of authority'.

They approached the lodge. Lily had set up breakfast outside already, and Vlad was contentedly reading the newspaper, already in his so-called 'leisure' clothes, which were always a pair of slacks and a polo. Give Danny a pair of jeans and a t-shirt any day…

"I've been here fifteen minutes, Little Badger." Vlad commented, not looking up as Danny plopped into the chair next to him. "You're slowing down. Perhaps I will ask Miss Manson to drag you along on her nature hikes during the week."

Danny made a face at the thought. Just what he needed: more exercise. "I think I'd rather wrestle with one of Wulf's packmates. I'd rather get bitten than run fifteen miles and throw up my own heart…"

"Fifteen miles, you say?" Now Vlad looked alert… and impressed. Danny mentally kicked himself. "Now that is something. We just ran five. And she does that for fun?"

"Er, no. Not fifteen. It's… five. Five miles. Yup. Definitely not fifteen." Danny corrected himself, frowning deeply.

"Don't worry, Danny, I won't let your father make you start running an extra ten miles." Lily had swooped in to save her stepson, placing a large plate of food in front of him. Eggs, bacon, sausage, waffles, toast… it was difficult to keep track of all of the proteins and carbs that she insisted be in a breakfast, and that was just the first plate. The second one had the potatoes and various fruits on it.

Wulf laughed from where he and his pack had stopped. "If you continue to feed the cub like that, he will have to run so much every day, or he will be fat!"

"You would know fat, too, wouldn't you, Wulf?" she asked, smiling as she disappeared back inside the lodge.

"Wolves are not sticks, like foxes!" he called after her, grinning and wagging his tail.

Danny looked in Vlad's direction. "Animals have a weird sense of humor."

"Be thankful you lead an interesting life, my boy." The elder halfa smirked. As Lily returned, he sighed and gazed at her. "Darling, you know I love your cooking and how happy it makes you, but – "

"No." she answered, smiling brightly as she set down the second plate. Sitting among the hash browns, it seemed she had decided to be well-balanced and mixed some sort of vegetable in with the potatoes. "Breakfast is supposed to be the largest meal of the day. Danny needs his energy, especially considering his weekend routine and his ghost half. He will not get fat, I promise, and neither will you."

With that, she kissed her husband on the cheek and marched off of the porch to busy herself in the garden. Several of the wolves wagged their tails and tilted their ears back, allowing her to pet their heads. She did the same to Wulf. He didn't mind. In fact, he smiled. "If you continue to be so kind, my brothers and sisters may mistake humans for being unthreatening things."

"Hopefully not before humans learn how to coexist with such beautiful creatures." She kissed him on the nose. His tail thumped against the ground. "After all, you were here first."

"Your mate is right. You are uncommonly kind."


Stitch Witch knew that she should have warned Vlad that Dan Phantom was in their own timeline and a threat. Now that his own timeline had been erased, Dan existed outside of the parameters of time – Clockwork had no power over him. Clockwork could not see him, he could not freeze him… which meant that very few ghosts and even fewer humans even stood a chance of surviving a fight with the ghost.

Instead, she found herself in Pariah's tomb, standing before the giant sarcophagus that kept the former king in a forced slumber. She knew that this was what Dan would be after. He couldn't stand knowing that there was a ghost anywhere in existence more powerful than himself. This wasn't something that she would entirely mind, except that, unlike Plasmius, Dan Phantom wouldn't be content to kill Pariah while he was still asleep and harmless. He would want a glorious, bloody battle; one that would rip great chunks out of the Ghost Zone, the Living Realm, possibly even reality itself as far as she knew.

Would Dan really be able to defeat Pariah? She tried to stamp out that question quickly, but she already knew that he could. She had nothing but the utmost confidence in Dan – a dangerous thing to admit, to be sure. Other dangerous things to admit were that she had missed him sorely, and that she didn't view him as a family member, as she did with Vlad and Danny Masters. He was Dan, a rare, deadly creature that both demanded respect and deserved understanding.

Ashley loved Dan; she would not admit it aloud, but she did. If she loved him, that was proof that he was the answer to her father's curse, which in turn proved his capacity for evil. She would have to kill him, before he hurt someone dear to her.

She sighed and shook her head, eyes burning with old memories as she looked down at her hands. Her usual glamour was currently lowered, and at the moment, her usually-flawless skin was covered in hideous scars among the stitches that held her body together. The least painful of them were the ones on her wrists, the only ones inflicted by her mother rather than her father. Pariah had once ripped his child's human heart from her chest. She had gone on a blood-lusting rampage of madness. Thousands had died at the hands of some barely Danny's age. Lily had found her weeks later, and had separated the heart into two halves, sewing them into Ashley's wrists.

So you will always wear your heart on your sleeve.

At the time, Stitches had viewed it as a curse; after living in such a manner for so long, she knew it was possibly the only thing that kept her moral compass in check. She still did strange things – sometimes things that were so bafflingly crazy that generations later, humans still talked about the after-effects – but, at least, she didn't have a fresh body count on her conscience at the end of each day.

"I feared I might find you here."

"Clockwork." Ashley's scowl etched its way deeper into her face. She felt tired; a sure sign that she was becoming anxious. Anxiety did not bode well.

The time ghost drew up to her side, looking up at Pariah's sarcophagus. "I caught a glimpse of Dan Phantom escaping his timeline. I was not sure if he had succeeded, but if he had, I knew I would find you here eventually. He would seek you out."

"He wants Pariah gone."

"You hope that's the only reason." Clockwork looked at her. The Stitch Witch was not being her usual taunting, teasing self, and her energy… he could feel it running wild. Her aura of chaos. If he were a lesser mortal, he would be running amuck in a fit of blind madness long before reaching her. If he were alive, he would be killing – either himself, or someone else. "You cannot let him get into your mind like this. Curses only have as much power as you allow them."

"He was my father. I hate him. I hate what he did to me. But he was my father." Stitches fixed Clockwork with a firm look. "I couldn't bring myself to kill him then. Now, I may have to."

"You don't have that resolve. I don't want to see the day when you do have that resolve." His jaw was set. "Ashley, do you really want to surrender to a creature like Dan Phantom? Do you want to surrender your children and their families to his brand of livelihood? He is a murderer. He is a sociopath; unlike you, he doesn't see the line in the sand as something that shouldn't be erased. All he cares about is that it can be erased, that he can go beyond mere human cruelty and completely rewrite the book on hideous acts!"

She at last threw him a look of mirth. "You think I'd let him rewrite my biography? Clockwork, I'm disappointed in you. And here I thought my mother appointed a wise man to be my godfather…"

It almost made him feel better that she could change her outward persona so quickly. Almost. "I'm serious. We need to get rid of Dan Phantom. You need to get rid of him. Danny is too young, and Vlad could be irreparably changed by seeing what his son could have been. He may begin to think that Danny isn't as mentally resistant as he actually is. We can't run the risk of this sort of thing happening twice in a lifetime."

"Then you're barking up the wrong tree." Back to being moody – great. Ashley narrowed her eyes at him. "I've seen what Dan is. He's not Vlad; he's not Danny; he's everything beyond their greatest fall from grace. He's so much darker than either could be, even if they were two personalities trapped in a dissociative human's body working together in tandem. You don't get it, do you? If Dan were here merely to destroy the world, we'd all be dead right now. Danny, Vlad, my mother, my children, and especially you, Clockwork. God only knows what he'd do with me, seeing as I'm not lucky enough to be able to die or fade – all he'd need to do with Danny and Vlad is separate the ghost part first. After all," – Her steady gaze at him darkened considerably, and it hadn't been very kind to begin with. – "that's how he was made in the first place."

His expression didn't change, but a surge of guilt welled up in Clockwork. "I didn't tell you because I knew you would split hairs, or else use the information to inevitably kill Vlad if you did go to war with one another."

"And now you know how fucked you are!" she spat angrily. If not for the thin veil of water beginning to cover her entire body, her hair would have bristled with her temper. "You're the one most responsible for preventing his creation, and you're pretty much the reason he almost died. You know he'll be gunning for you sooner or later. So tell me, Clockwork, how creative do you think he's going to be when he gets around to you? How long do you fear he's going to torture you before he lets you fade into nothingness?" A bitter smirk stained her lips. "If your obsession will allow you to fade, that is."

It took a great deal of constitution not to recoil at how much she resembled her former self with such a sadistic look on her face… or how much she looked like her father. Clockwork had let a slight wince through – a mere twinge of his cheeks, his lips turning up slightly – and for a moment, he was afraid. Not of Dan or the very possible situation Stitch Witch was describing, but of the Witch herself, and what she could do to him.

He hadn't felt that way in a very long time, and he immediately regretted it.

"You disappoint me." she muttered, frowning and turning away. She was incapable of hurting him, just as she was incapable of harming her mother, her children, Vlad, Danny… Just because she had the power to do something, didn't mean she could bring herself to do such a thing.

Clockwork raised a hand slightly. "Ashley…"

"I have better things to do; I've moped here long enough." She retreated, calm and quick, from his hand. Soon, she was at the door. "Don't stick around here too long, Clockwork. This place has a way of reopening old wounds."

He sighed and looked up at Pariah's sarcophagus, feeling slightly forlorn now. "Don't I know it…"

=^T_T^=

And just like that, things got DEEP.

NYAA.

Hm. Hrm-a-hrm-hrm. Hrm. This chapter felt long, but it's… short. Shorter than I thought it'd be, anyway. That's somewhat disappointing, even if it's all in my head, which I know it is. It'll bother me. Until the next thought, anyway.

Oo! Catnip!

Nyaa!

*runs away*