Hey, guys! Jeepers, this took me a long time to write. I decided in the en to split this up into two parts, as I will with every episode to give good enough timing. Besides, writing a whole thirty page chapter in a little daunting, but two fifteen-page ones is a little less scary to me.

So…enjoy!

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After dinner, Sokka says that we should get a move on, saying that we don't have much time. I don't see any danger, but he insists that we start moving. Aang suggests that we fly Appa (dude, the thing can fly? Oh yeah, flying bison. Duh), but Sokka refuses, saying it would blow our cover, even if he did bend a disguise.

We walk for a good hour or two, tired and really just wanting to pass out, before we find a river. With my night vision I can see that it's green and odd-looking.

"Okay, everybody, hop in!" Sokka says.

Katara leads Appa into the water, the ten-ton furball hopping in and splashing all of us.

"Yuck," I comment.

Aang looks at me strangely. "What? It's just water."

"Do you see how disgusting this looks?" I ask him. "I mean, look at the river!"

He looks at me strangely. "I can't," he comments. "It's too dark. How can you look at the river?"

"I—uh…um," I stutter. "My eyes must've been playing a trick on me. Sorry."

Everyone jumps onto Appa with ease. I, on the other hand, struggle and grasp his fur, dangling over the gross river.

This would be much easier if I could just fly.

I feel a hand grab my wrist and pull me up, making my body seize as I'm thrown into the air and onto the leather saddle.

Toph is laughing.

"I didn't know you were that strong," I comment.

"It's no problem," she says, waving her hand. "Besides, you're really light."

I frown. "Oh."

"Better get some sleep while you can," Sokka says to all of us. "We have a schedule to keep to."

I roll my eyes, but at least I can continue to sleep without being disturbed by ghosts. It's really the only bright side to being here.

I curl up in my spot and close my eyes. I easily drift off to sleep.

Fire is burning everything to the ground…

This is worse than Pariah, because it's not just a town. It's the whole world, turning to ashes before my eyes.

He's pure evil, more evil than I've ever known. And as the world burns, I see it. The swirling mixture of green in the middle of the sky. It's huge, bigger than I've ever seen.

It's engulfing everything. And he's laughing. He's victorious.

"Now everything," he says. "Is mine."

"Danny!" someone calls. "Danny, wake up!" Mom has a habit of waking me up during the weekends, usually for a demonstration of a new machine or something.

"Mom, it's a Saturday," I whine, not opening my eyes. "I can see the new ecto-gun at lunch, just give five more minutes."

"Ecto-gun?" the person repeats. Wait, that isn't my Mom's voice…

I open my eyes to see Katara hovering over me, concerned.

Great. I'm still here.

"Oh…hey," I say, blinking and sitting up. I yawn. "What time is it?"

"It's just after dawn," she answers.

"What?" They're waking up this early?

"Yeah, we've got to start moving," she answers.

"Start moving? At dawn?" I curl back up into a ball and close my eyes. "Screw that, I'm going back to sleep."

"Come on, Danny," Aang says. I open my eyes a little to see him. He's standing, peppy as ever, in his basic clothing. All the sleeves and stuff is gone. Now he's in his poofy pants. I notice some blue markings that run down his arms and end on the back of his hands in arrows. His headband is gone, too, revealing a large arrow on his forehead. Momo is sitting on his shoulder. "We better get ourselves clean before we start walking again."

He rockets off of the saddle in funnel of air, splashing into the water. Momo flies above him.

"Momo!" he calls. He dives into the water again. "Momo, come find me!"

The creature lands on his head and he laughs. He looks at the water, frowning, and catapults himself back onto the saddle. He's covered in greenish-brown muck that's semi solid.

"Hey, I think this river is polluted," Aang says, observing the goo that's dripping from his arm.

I think back to yesterday and my comment on the water.

"Oh," I say, my voice covered in sarcasm. "You think?"

He shakes his head and uses his bending-magic-stuff to remove the muck. It lands on us. Some of the muck on my nose slides into my mouth.

"Gross!" I exclaim, trying to spit it out. "This tastes worse than Dash's underwear!"

"Bleck!" Toph comments.

Aang smiles sheepishly and bends the mud off of us.

"Well that explains why I can't catch any fish around here," Sokka says. He's got our back to us, reeling up a fishing pole. "Because usually, my fishing skills are off the hook!" He holds us a fishing hook. "Get it? Like a fishing hook?"

Everyone frowns.

"Dude," I say. "Work on your puns. Seriously."

Toph smirks. "Too bad you're skills aren't on the hook."

She's actually kind of funny. I laugh along with everyone else as Sokka scowls.

Katara holds up a thick scroll of paper. "It looks like we're going to have to find food somewhere else." She unrolls the scroll, revealing a long, detailed document in a language I can't understand. "That is, if it'll fit into Sokka's 'master schedule'."

Sokka puts the fishing rod down and picks up a section of the paper, examining it. "Hmmm…it's doable. But that means only two bathroom breaks today, people."

Aang turns his attention to something else. "Hey, maybe we can get food over there!" He points to something ahead.

I focus on where he's pointing. It looks like a small settlement on the river, made of various platforms buildings.

We park ourselves a little ways inland from the river, away from all the muck. Aang covers Appa and Mom is patches of moss.

"There," he says. "Now you just look like a small hill with horns."

I laugh. "Nice disguise," I say.

Aang shrugs. "It's the best we can do. It's not like we can turn them invisible."

I'm about to say that I actually can when I shut my mouth. "Uh, yeah," I say instead. "Right." I gulp. "So let's go!"

We trek down to the coast, where I see the village. Bamboo dowels and string hold the platforms together as the river slowly trudges below them. Small houses and stands are scattered everywhere. It's almost silent.

"I don't feel anything," Toph says. "Where's this place that we can get food?"

"There's a village in the middle of the river," Aang explains.

I turn to Toph. "I thought you could use earthbending to see."

"I can," she says. "But this is out in the water, not connected to Earth at all. I'm pretty much as blind as I would be without my earthbending."

"So how are we going to get to it?" Sokka asks.

"I think I can help!" a voice says below us. I look down. An old man in a funny red hat and a vest that is way too small for him is waving at us from his boat. He stops waving. "The name's Doc. Mind if I ask where you're from?"

"Oh, we're, uh, from the Earth Kingdom colonies," Katara answers with a smile.

I lean over to Sokka. "I thought we were journeying to our grandma in the capital," I whisper.

"Shhh!" he shushes.

"Wow," Doc says. "Colonials! Hop in; I'll give a ride into town."

We slide down the hill and into the boat. Doc sets off, dragging a long pole through the sludge.

"So…why do you live on the river?" Katara asks. She looks at the water in distaste.

"Because we're a fishing town!" Doc answers. He sighs. "At least, we were before the factory moved in." He points the pole to said factory.

It's large, black, and metal. It digs into the hill and even from here I can see the smoke coming out of top. Funnels at the bottom are exerting something very similar to the muck in the river.

"Army makes their metal there," Doc continues. "Moved in a few years ago and started gunking up our river. Now our little village is struggling to survive."

We near the village, and I can see what he meant by 'struggling to survive'. The whole place is somber and sad-looking. It almost looks deserted.

We hop off of the boat.

"Thanks for the ride!" Aang says, waving and smiling. Doc reciprocates and starts moving his boat down the side of the village.

As we walk further into the village, we start seeing actual people. The whole place is still giving off a sad vibe, though. Children are looking mournfully over the dock, other people are lying down and looking like they're slowly fading away. My dumb hero complex starts kicking in, saying that I should start helping these people.

"Wow," I say. "Look at this place."

Katara nods, agreeing. "It's so sad." She turns to Sokka. "We have to do something to help."

Sokka shakes his head. "No, we can't waste our time here."

"Okay, dude," I say. "Do you not see how bad they have it here? I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be wasting our time."

He scowls. "We have a bigger mission that we need to stay focused on," he explains. "These people are on their own."

Okay, now Katara's mad. I've seen her slightly offended, maybe even annoyed, but never mad. From the whole day or so I've known her she just seemed nice and caring.

But her face is turning an unnatural shade of red. "These people are starving!" she points out. "But you turn your back to them? How can you be so cold and heartless?"

"I'm not turning my back, I'm just being realistic," he says. "We can't just go around helping every run-down village we walk into. We'll be helping them all by taking out the Fire Lord-"

Toph places a hand on Sokka's mouth. "Hey, loud mouth," she seethes. "Maybe we could be a little bit quieter when talking about 'taking out the Fire Lord'."

She releases her hand from his mouth.

"Okay, I'm plenty realistic," I say. "But even then I don't think we should leave these people to die."

He rolls his eyes. "You, too?" He then sighs. "Come on, guys, be reasonable. You know the mission has to come first."

"I would if I knew the mission," I mutter. Honestly, they keep talking about an eclipse and the Fire Lord and a really long war, but I have no idea what they're talking about. It's like they're speaking Russian sometimes.

Katara looks down, defeated. "I guess so," she says reluctantly. She glares, annoyed.

Aang, meanwhile, has been the poor kid witnessing all of this. "Let's just get what we need and go," he says. He smiles at Katara, trying to cheer her up, but she continues to frown. He looks downtrodden.

We walk around until we find what looks like an outdoor shopping stand. Doc is standing there, but now he's in a yellow hat somewhat resembling Santa Claus if Santa liked yellow.

"Hey, Doc!" Sokka greets. "You work here, too?"

Doc smiles. "I'm not Doc. I'm Xu!" He pronounces it like "shoe".

We look at each other, seeing if we buy it.

"But we just saw you," Aang points out. "You're even wearing the same clothes. The only difference is your hat."

"Doc works on the dock, that's why we call him 'Doc'," the man apparently named Xu explains. "I work in the shop, and that's why they call me 'Xu'!"

"That makes no sense," I comment.

Aang nods, agreeing. "I don't get it."

"Me neither!" Xu exclaims. He's even crazier than Vlad…and that's a hard record to beat. He jumps behind the stand counter and pulls out a box of rancid-looking sea life that smells like my dad's socks. "What can I getcha?"

Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's our choice in food? I'd rather starve.

"Hey, I'll give you a special deal," Doc says. "If you buy three fish, I'll throw in one clam free!"

Sokka examines one clams in the box, poking his finger and pressing down on it. Gunk squirts out.

Aang flails his arms, retreating back. "Ew!"

Katara mirrors his actions. "Gross!"

I smirk. "Lovebirds," I mutter.

Katara glares at me while Aang smiles sheepishly, turning a bright shade of crimson.

Huh. This feels pretty good when you're not the one blushing.

Sokka picks up three fish, and I swear I can see stink lines. "We'll just take the fish." Xu smiles and takes the fish from hi, wrapping them up. "Oh, and mind telling your brother we need a ride back to shore?"

Xu nods and dives back under the counter again, returning with Doc's red hat. "Hello, colonials!" he says. "My brother says you need a lift."

Okay, this universe is getting way too weird.

We follow him anyway. Don't want to anger a crazy person, you know? We're halfway to the docks when I realize that Katara isn't with us. I turn around to see her giving one of our fishes a small boy, who then runs up to a woman—probably his mother—who looks to be very weak. He hands the fish to her.

Katara catches up with us, and I pretend that I haven't seen a thing.

#

I sit back as everyone else is working. It's a weird feeling, being the person in the background for once. I also think this is the longest time in a while that I haven't fought a ghost.

This whole "bending" trick is pretty cool. Aang lifts up a bucket full of river water slowly moving his arms around to keep it in place, as Toph extracts all the gunk. The crystal clear water is then passed onto Katara, who guides the liquid into a pot, steam rising up everywhere.

Sokka continues to look at his scroll. "Our detour in town today has completely thrown off our schedule. It's going to take some serious finagling to get us back on track."

Toph rolls his eyes. "Finagle away, oh schedule master," she says.

Sokka looks at her, but returns to the paper. "Well, for starters, we're going to have to wake up forty-three minutes earlier than usual."

"Oh, come on!" I say. "I can barely survive getting up at dawn."

"You still aren't fully on our team," Sokka points out. "Therefore, you don't get input."

I stick my tongue. Yes, call me immature, but he started it!

"Forty-three minutes?" Katara repeats, totally shocked.

"Look, we only have a few weeks to get to the Fire Lord in time for the invasion and the eclipse…" And here we meet a bunch of words that hold no meaning to me. It's like they expect me to know this stuff.

"Well, I'm not waking up that early," Toph says.

I raise my hand. "I agree to the furthest extent." Sokka glares at me. "What? I'm just agreeing with her. She's the one in the team, not me."

He returns to that scroll again. "Or we could just cut out all our eating breaks."

All hell breaks loose.

"What?"

"No way!"

"Forget it!"

"Seriously?"

Sokka grins. "Oh, I got it! What if we take our eating breaks and our potty breaks at the same time?"

I didn't catch Aang drinking anything, but the guy does a spit take. We all recoil in disgust.

"Ew!" the girls say.

"That is messed up beyond belief," I tell him.

He puts his hands up in surrender. "Hey, it might be gross, but it's efficient. Either way, we're leaving first thing tomorrow morning."

After a couple more schedule debates and disgusting fish, we finally settle down to sleep. I lay myself on a nice soft patch of moss, trying to fall asleep, but my hero complex is nagging me endlessly.

I have to help those people before we leave. It's just not right to leave them like this.

I wait until I hear snoring and stand up, tip-toeing over to the rocks and shivering. It's surprising cold at night.

I maneuver past a couple branches, scraping myself pretty bad on the arm against one of them. Oh well. It'll heal in the next hour or so anyway.

Hiding behind one of the rocks, I let a shiver run down my back. The blue rings of light form and pass my body. I look down to see a black and white jumpsuit with the famous DP logo on my chest.

At least I can still be Danny Phantom here.

I fly up into the air, heading towards the village and landing on one of the many platforms.

"Now," I say to myself. "What to do…"

I look around, trying to find something to help these people. I can't exactly heal people and I have medicine around with me. They're starving…maybe I could go fishing.

I smirk and dive into the water, turning intangible. Now I don't have the feel all that guck around me.

I can already see a couple of fish swimmingly idly in the water. They're weird-looking, like the rest of the animals here in this messed-up universe. They have glassy, pupil-less eyes and two heads.

I start up a small ectoplasmic shield, trying to manipulate it. Vlad can make fly swatters and glass panes, so why can't I do the same?

It takes some concentration, but I finally begin the workings of a small net. Concentrating a little more, I expand it so that's the size of a king size bed. I make my hands tangible and grab either side of the glowing green net.

It's fishing season.

I rocket myself through the water, angling my transparent body towards every fish in sight. They go into the net not knowing what hit them.

I do this for a good half an hour when the net is becoming especially heavy, even for my super strength. I fly out of the water and make myself tangible, cleaning off the muck on my hands. The net is filled to the top with squirming fish.

I start off on the side of the village farthest away from the docks and the factory. Phasing through the door I look at the family before me. A mother and father, both looking half-dead, are holding a small child close. Even in their sleep they look restless and gaunt. I set a few fish on the ground before them and leave.

I do this for every house, trying to be as quiet as I can manage.

Almost finished, I place a dozen fish on the floor of a family of five's home. They've got a mom and four kids, with no dad in sight. He's probably fighting that war that's going on right now.

I so close to the door when I hear something rustle. I whip around.

One of the two smaller children, a girl, is staring at me. But then again, who wouldn't be staring a floating white-haired kid in a jumpsuit? It's not an everyday occurrence in most places.

"Who are you?" she asks, rubbing her eyes. "And what are you doing here?"

"I'm here to help," I answer. "I'm just trying to make things better. Now go back to sleep."

The girl smiles. "Oh…thank you. You and the lady in the hat are nice people."

"Lady in the hat?" I repeat.

She nods and yawns. "Yup. She was here a little bit ago. She made my chest feel better." She lies back down. "Goodnight, strange boy."

I exit the house. So there's another person trying to help people? Maybe I should try and contact them…but then again, they might be scared beyond belief if they saw me. And I can't just approach them as Fenton, what if a glowing green net and everything. Questions will still be asked, and I can't answer all of them.

I continue walking to the next house when I hear something move behind me. I turn around in time to see a shadow dart out of the corner of my eye.

"Who's there?" I ask.

Silence.

"I'm serious," I say.

Why is it suddenly foggy here? That wasn't there a minute ago…

Something moves again, to my left. I turn to that direction, and see nothing.

"Stop playing with me," I demand. "Show yourself."

I turn to my left when I realize I have a shrouded face inches away from me.

I suppress a yell, so that people can keep sleeping. Instead, I fall flat on my butt.

"I've done as you said," the figure says. It's a girl, and she had a large hat and a loose, draped dress. Her voice is raspy, but somewhat recognizable. Where have I heard it before? "Now can I ask you what you're doing in other people's homes?"

I hold up the glowing green net, which still contains a couple more fish. "Just delivering food," I answer. "I'm only trying to help people." Huh, that's a nice hat… "And something tells me you're trying to do the same thing."

Even though I can't see her face, her head angles downward. She looks back up without revealing her profile. "Who told you that?"

I shrug and stand up. "Rumors spread fast."

She shakes her head. "I would suggest that you go. I have everything handled here."

"I can't. These people need help, and I'm just doing the best I can."

"Feeding them won't solve everything," she points out. "They'll still be sick if you feed them. That's why they need me."

"What can you do?" I ask.

Her whole being just gives off the impression of a smirk. She raises a hand covered in some sort of liquid and places it on my scraped arm.

It's cold, so I wince. But the coldness is replaced with warmth, and she removes her hand. The scrape is gone.

"That," she answers.

"You're a healer?" I realize. "Wow. That's pretty cool."

"So you see my point. I have everything solved here. You can go."

God, she is being stubborn…My face brightens at an idea. "Hey, how about we work together?"

"What?" she asks.

"I feed while you heal. It'll get things done faster. I can't stay for long, anyways."

She's silent for a couple moments. "Fine."

We go through a few more houses, working at a harmonious pace. Being as silent as possible, we quickly heal and feed the poor families living there. We've gone through about five or six homes together when she says we need to stop for the night.

"What?" I ask. "We haven't even covered the whole village!"

"Shh!" she hushes. "I'm getting tired. We can continue this tomorrow night."

"That's the problem," I say. "I won't be here tomorrow. I'm…not the kind of person who stays in one place for long."

She sighs. "I get it. But…it was nice for you to help me."

"It was no problem," I say. "I have this psychological need to help people. Or so my sister says. I really can't help it."

"Mind if I ask for your name before you leave?" she asks.

"Uh…Phantom. Just call me Phantom. And you are?"

"It's not very important," she tells me.

"Now, hold on-" I start. After all, she gets my name but I don't get hers? That's not fair, not in the least bit.

But she leaps off of the platforms and disappears into the mist (rather dramatically, too) before I can finish. She's gone.

I dump the rest of the fish over at Doc/Xu's place and leave.

I change back once I get to the campsite, and see that everyone is sleeping and oblivious to what I've done.

#

Part 2 will be posted soon, if not a couple hours. I wrote this piece as a whole and need to do some tweaking.

See you then!

-ZG