The first thought that came to Danny Fenton as he flickered his eyes open and saw the sunset reddened room about hm was that he was going to be late for supper. His mom was going to kill him for that. Then, as he slowly, and painfully climbed to his feet he realized, he realized with surprise that Ember had passed on the chance of killing him as well. While he was grateful to be alive it wasn't like Ember to not kick an opponent when he was down. Not only had she beaten him down as Danny Phantom but exhaustion had forced him back into being Danny Fenton, an even easier prey for her to destroy.
He looked around the room too sore and stiff to move. The sun was shining through the windows visibly lower and redder. He look at his watch and saw that he's been unconscious for a half hour. The room was a shambles. His fight with Ember had blown stuff left and right. At least he wouldn't be the one to have report the news to the boss. He wondered how they were going to explain the mess?
Danny slowly walked around the room, stretching his legs as he had been stretching his shoulders. He found the FentonFinder he dropped during the fight as well as the Fenton Thermos. Again he marveled that Ember had passed up a chance to hurt him. The Thermos wasn't that hard to operate. She probably knew how to work it was well as he did. She could have sucked him up into the inescapable containment field of the Thermos and left him there for who knows how long until someone found him. Since he hadn't told Sam or Tucker where he was going they'd never think to look here. He might have been stuck inside there forever.
The corner where Patty Melt (or was it Ember?) had made her nest was empty (according to the Fenton Finder) but the pile of old clothes on the chair that was Patty's (or Ember's) 'bed.' was still there. The guitar and leather jacket, though, were gone. Perhaps they really were Patty's or Ember's originally, Danny wondered. then recalled: the jacket was a large man's jacket, something the size that Dash Baxter, the high school football star could fit into. But Ember was closer to Danny in size, the jacket would fit her like a tent. Ghosts seem to need to wrap themselves around things that have the aura of human about them. The jacket, like the guitar probably reminded Ember of her past as a human. Her life as Patty Melt, punk rocker? Or was Ember just moving in on Patty Melt's haunting as an attempt to get rid of a rival? Danny found the issue too confusing to think about. Certainly while he was still stumbling around in pain.
A lump of something on the floor of the loft caught Danny's eye. He picked up a shriveled and partially melt ball of plastic. He couldn't figure out what it was at first but as he turned it over in his hand he noticed a small brass plaque embedded in the rest of the mass. He wiggled it loose and pulled it out. In the half-light he could just make out the inscription on the small metal square:
Heart Stomp
"Patty and the Powercats"
1982.
So Ember had made off with the guitar and Jacket that Patty (?) had stolen but had tried to incinerate the award that Patty had stolen. Was it because she was jealous of Patty Melt, or because she was Patty Melt? But if she was Patty Melt, why would she deny it?
The absence of the guitar and jacket suggested that Ember/Patty has moved to a new hideout. How was he going to find it? He'd been lucky that Rollo had known about this one. If he couldn't find her he couldn't ask why she tried to destroy the Groove Town Record Building. Danny had thought that Ember had calmed down since she'd started going to his sisters therapy group, PET'EM. Things had been quieter in Amity Park since Jazz had started the club.. Ghosts seems to prefer coming to her sessions than randomly haunting people.
So what set Ember/Patty off. Was it, as Sam suggested because this was the 30th anniversary of Patty Melt''s death? But why did she deny being Patty Melt? Why did she claim to have always existed when rock and roll obviously was only created fifty years ago. Was she just playing games with Danny, denying the true just to confuse him? He thought back to when he'd thrown those questions into her face. Some people are very good at lying, others not so much. When Ember had denied being Patty Melt she seemed entirely sincere. More over there was that strange spasm that had hit her when she heard the name Patty Melt. Did she know these answers unconsciously but for some reason had suppressed them? Danny would have to ask his sister, Jazz, about that. She was the psychologist in the family.
[I]
By the time Danny had flown back home his ghostly powers have repaired the injuries he'd suffered during his battle with Ember so when he walked down from his bedroom he was walking without any limp or stiffness. He found his sister Watching Dr. Phil as usual, in the living room. "Jazz, can we talk?" he asked, then headed back to his room. He flopped on his bed while his sister pulled up his desk chair next to the bed.
"I feel like I ought to have my 'Little Doctor Freud' notebook with me." she said.
"Not to mention your little Freudian beard, Danny added.
"I do not look good in a beard!"
"I don't know. That mustache says otherwise..."
Her hands flew to cover her lips. "I do not have a mustache!"
Danny laughed. "I ran into Ember today," he added.
"Did you tell her we miss her at the PET'EM meetings?"
"She was too busy thrashing me for casual conversation.
"What did you do to set her off?" Jazz asked, leaning back in the chair, folding her hands under her breasts in what she recognized as an instinctively defensive posture.
"That's the thing, I don't know." Danny was stretching all the while he was laying on his bed. "Here's the thing: I was looking for the ghost to tried to destroy the Groove Town Record Building. That had to be the ghost of Patty Melt because she was a suicide with unfinished business, and it's been 30 years exactly since her death, etc. I'd gotten a tip from Rollo that she might have set up a nest in a store room at the Hard Rock Café. I go there and find it. She's got a Gold Record plaque that she took from the Groove Town building before she tried to blow it down, and a jacket and guitar that I suppose she stole from the Hard Rock Café. So I'm waiting for Patty Melt to show up, but Ember McLain shows up instead. And goes on about how all this stuff was hers. And when I tell her, no, it's all Patty melt's stuff she kind of goes crazy and starts beating me up. In fact," Danny paused, a little embarrassed to have to say this, "she kind of knocked me out. When I came to she was gone, the jacket and guitar were gone but the plaque had been melted down into a lump of charred plastic. I never did see Patty Melt."
"Interesting," Jazz murmured. She unfolded her arms and propped her hands under her chin. "Ember had been rather distraught during the last couple meets she attended. Wouldn't say why; just got ever more wound up then she had been. I suppose that's why she hasn't come to any more meetings of PET'EM."
"Did she kind of spasm every time you pressed her?" Danny wondered "It was kind of weird, but every time I mentioned the name of Patty Melt she'd kind of twitch like she was being hit with a taser. You know, I think she completely lost it when I accused her being Patty Melt."
"You think Ember is Patty Melt?" Jazz leaned forward to stare at her brother.
"I don't know. That's what I really want to talk to you about. On the one hand, they are both ghosts of music and Ember shows up where I expected to find Patty Melt. And come to think of it, Rollo never really said who would be at the Hard Rock Café, only that the ghost who tried to destroy the Groove Town Record Building would be there. But Ember denied being Patty Melt, and as I recall, she claimed that she has always exists. What I wonder is if you've every talked about how ghosts are born during your group sessions, where they come from, and if they remember being born, if ghosts can be said to be born."
Jazz sat silent for a couple minutes, thinking, then slowly, carefully choosing her words, said, "I've asked a time or two but no one ever wants to talk about it. Whether they don't know or whether it's too painful to talk about I can't be sure, but it is something I've wondered about myself. We know that some ghosts are the spirits of the dead who linger on after death but a lot of others ghosts, like Technus or Skulker seem entirely the product of the Ghost Zone. I know we've looked to find any evidence of a prior existence for Ember after the first time she tried taking over the world and couldn't find anything, suggesting that she's another wholly original Ghost Zone creature. But that there are so many specialized ghosts..."
"I call them 'themed'," Danny interjected.
"Themed sounds good. Ember's the ghost of music, Technus is the ghost of technology, Skulker is the ghost of hunting,.."
"And Clockwork is the ghost of time, The box ghost is the ghost of boxes, Rollo's the ghost of spheres..." Danny continued.
"Right," his sister said. "So when Ember says she has always existed maybe in a sense she has. There has always been music so maybe there has always been a ghost of music, and it just changes from time to time as the music changes. Like the Greek Muses, demi-gods who were the patrons of different types of the arts."
"You're saying Ember is a god?" Danny sat up looking disgusted at his sister.
"Not a god, really. But... well, maybe. I mean, what were most of the gods of the Greeks and Romans, they were spirits, influences. They weren't 'gods' like we know of it."
"So you're saying that two thousand years ago Ember was floating around worshiped as the inspiration for music?"
"It's an idea," Jazz answered defensively. "It would explain why Ember thinks she has already existed when rock and roll, her particular idiom has only been around for fifty years."
"OK, but why was she acting like Patty Melt's stuff was her's?" Danny wondered.
"I've got two ideas on that. One is that, as the ghost of music, Ember absorbs musical ghosts as they are created, which would be how she stays up-to-date with music. So Ember is really a composite of all the other ghosts of music. So she is and isn't Patty Melt."
"Hmmmm?" Danny murmured, thoughtfully.
"The other idea, is that when ghosts are created the birthing process is so painful, or horrible that they blot out all that pain from their memorizes. So they literally can't remember who they were before, except maybe on a subconscious level. That would explain why Ember was getting anxious as she neared the thirtieth anniversary of her birth without knowing just why. And why she would deny being Patty Melt."
"So which is it?" Danny asked.
"I don't know!" Jazz protested. "I was just spinning out two ideas that have occurred to me. I have no idea why one is trust"
"And I don't see how either one is going to help me put to rest Patty Melt and or Ember McLain.
"You'll think of something," Jazz reassured. "You always do. Shot! It's past six. We're late getting the table set!" she jumped out of her chair and dashed through the door. Danny followed more slowly, thinking about what she had had to say.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: A Danny Fenton Timeline. Danny Phantom, the show debuted in 2004, and Danny, we're told. was just 14. That would mean he was born in 1990. Jazz, his sister, was born two year earlier, 1988. That would place Jack and Maddie's marriage to either 1987 or 1986. But how old were they when they got married? I know they were in college together, and had free rule of a lab to construct their prototype portal. Undergraduates don't usually get those kind of privileges. So we can assume that Jack and Maddie graduated with a , which would make than 22, and were probably in a Master's Program,which typically takes two years. I always assumed that they got their Doctorates as well, which would be another two years minimum. So John and Maddie would be at least 26. Assuming they married right after graduating, in 1986, that would mean Jack was born in 1960! Also that he would have been 22 when Patty Melt was popular, and not Danny's age as he remembered.
2004 is 8 years in the past by this point but to my way of thinking it will always be 2004 in.