Chapter 4

Being in the Ghost Zone again with my newly developed magical skill was an assault to my senses; I could practically see the subtle lines of power flowing through the space around me. I could sense ghostly presences from beyond the various gateways. I could detect the lingering remnants of consciousness that had yet to grow strong enough to form full Ghostly forms; pockets of awareness drifting through space.

And the power. Dear gods, the power.

On Earth, I had to draw a sigil for focus, and hope there was a strong ecto-pulse nearby in order to activate the latent currents, even to be able to try something; here, the ecto-energy was so bountiful that I practically felt it in my veins. All it would take was a tiny symbol and push, and I could manipulate the ecto-energy as good as any ghost, probably better than some. The pain in my gut didn't matter – being a human in the Ghost Zone, pain becomes ephemeral – and without that distraction, I was free to focus directly on the matters at hand.

Clockwork.

I focused the energies around the Mk. III, creating a spearhead through the drag of the space, and adding extra thrust to the engines. Clockwork claimed to be a neutral protector of the time flow, but I knew he was a meddler, and I didn't know why he was meddling yet. I was in a hurry to found out, but I wasn't going to storm in there expecting a warm welcome. He may have helped heal my wound, but I still had no idea what to expect.

Between the Fenton's new tech and my added power, it didn't take long for me to arrive in Clockwork's domain. I dismounted the Mk. III and stood in the cathedral-like home of the time ghost, looking, feeling, waiting. My intuition drew my gaze to a pedestal near the collection of time-viewing-portals, a Romanesque number that seemed oddly out of place. I moved closer to it and saw that the words "Danny Phantom" were written across its base. A slow chill crept up my spine as I wondered what that meant.

I turned to watch the time-viewing-portals. These were not labeled, and so I had no idea when I was looking at, but it was pretty clear what I was looking at: destruction. What surprised me was that no ghosts were involved; it appeared to be a purely man-made affair. Guns, lasers, missiles, tanks; no ghosts. War, in its ugliest human shapes and sizes, on every screen. I turned away and shuddered.

"Are you scared, Sam Manson?"

The chills in my spine started running in laps. This wasn't the first time I'd ever seen or heard Clockwork but his presence was impossibly disquieting; his spirit was, as close as I could figure, eternal. Eternity is not something humans are really equipped to deal with. But there he was; a ghostly vapor trail at his waist, time staff in hand, and that subtly mocking expression on his red-eyed face as he floated down from above, hovering in front of me.

"Yes," I said, steadily as I could. "But not because of you."

"No, no, of course not," he replied, somewhere between acknowledgement and sarcasm; somehow both at once. "You're scared because of the war."

"I'm scared because someone's trying to kill Danny." I tried to stare levelly at him, but in the blink of an eye, he was gone; I sensed his motion, though, and was able to turn and see him again, this time in his old-man guise, floating by the time portals. "And I don't know who it is or how to stop them."

"And you want my advice on this matter." He gazed into the portals, shifting between ages as he blinked from sight to sight, ageless thoughts churning behind his glowing red eyes. "Why do you think I would help you?"

My heart wanted to sink and that chill in my spine told me to back down and leave, but I wasn't going to be deterred just like that. "I wasn't sure you would, at least not before." I took the medallion off my neck and held it out towards him. "But since you sent me this, I thought you might feel like helping."

He laughed in a way I couldn't interpret. I swallowed down my fear and tried to focus on watching him so that he couldn't surprise me with another blink. As if aware of what I was doing, he instead just floated lazily back towards me. He took the medallion and examined it.

"Yes, I see you got my invitation. Good." He closed his hand around the medallion, and it vanished. "You wanted to come here because you wanted to ask for my help in protecting Danny, but the reason you are here is because I wanted to see you in person. Like you, I am very troubled by what I see in these portals." He paused, cracked an impossibly eerie smile. "The Earth is in danger again, and I don't know if its people will be able to avert the coming disaster. It is…extremely serious."

Still smiling. I couldn't bring myself to ask why. I knew Clockwork wouldn't find the end of the Earth amusing, since it would also mean the end of the Ghost Zone. I was honestly afraid to find out what could make a being like him smile like that.

"So you need to offer some guidance to us, without directly intervening," I offered.

"That's right," he replied, suddenly a baby-form, but with that same smug look on his face. "You always were smarter than the rest of them, Sam. I've had the most fun watching you develop. Especially with this so-called…magic. It intrigues me."

Okay, being stalked by the Ghost of Time was disturbing, but somewhat expected; it was his job to keep an eye on literally everyone. My magic being of interest to him, however, was not expected. "Really?" I said, feeling some of that power return to me, while trying to stay calm and collected. "And why is that?"

This time he grinned and showed teeth. I shuddered again.

"It's an unusual situation. I can give you all the information you need to do exactly what you want with that magic, but to do so would upset the flow of time, and the balance of the world…on the other hand, if I don't give you some of the information, well…" He looked off at the time portals for a moment, then back at me. "The outcome seems fairly certain. It is a conundrum."

I stared at him, and he stared at me. I couldn't keep it up; I had to turn to look at something else. The time portals seemed an obvious choice, horrifying though they were, and it was difficult to avoid focusing on. "This is what's going to happen if I don't learn how to kill ghosts with my magic?"

He didn't say anything. I figured that meant "probably."

I sighed, growing frustrated with the ambiguities and feeling an ever-increasing urgency in my gut to get the hell out of there and go help Danny. I turned back to Clockwork, who was still watching me, and mustered up my will. "Look, before I can do anything about this war, I have to help Danny. I won't be able to learn anything if I'm still worried about him."

"I'm afraid you don't have a choice."

The voice came from behind me; Clockwork again. I guess my concentration must have lapsed while saying something so bold, because I never even felt him moving. I turned to see him in his elder form, pondering the pedestal with Danny's name on it. "What do you mean?" I asked, moving towards the pedestal, feeling power start to drain out of me in apprehension.

"Danny Phantom," he said, contemplating the words like they held some kind of secret. "Your...friend. He is in danger for the same reason the Earth is in danger. They share the same enemy. To protect him, you must defeat…him." On the second "him," Clockwork stared at the top of the pedestal, now appearing conspicuously vacant. "I'm sure, if you think about it, you'll realize what I mean."

This was taxing my patience. I had to fight down an actual growl of anger. "You of all people should know we don't have time for that, Clockwork. If this is one of those, 'his real enemy is his own fear' type lessons, can you save it for the after school special? According to those time portals the entire world is about to erupt in war. Who am I fighting? And how do I stop them?"

I was trembling now. Although I didn't think Clockwork would actually try to fight me – I don't think it was allowed – yelling at a being that was at least as old as humanity itself was a very unsettling thing to do. But the faintest sense of relief did come; a touch of weariness appeared on the old ghost's face, a hint of kindness, even.

The relief turned into cold dread when I saw that kindness give way to a trace of fear – Clockwork was the one who was afraid here, and that chilled me to the core. Even my wound started to hurt again as I listened to his answer.

"The rules are simple, Sam. I can't tell you much. But I can point you in the right direction. You're fighting another magician, one who has become very powerful at controlling ghosts. So much so that I can't even view him anymore…he has eluded my grasp completely. And in doing so, he has taken something that was my responsibility. It will be your job, as a human magician yourself, to become powerful enough to challenge him, and to stop the ghosts in his command…permanently."

The air grew colder; the space itself seemed to reverberate with the dread of Clockwork himself telling me to do this. And I could tell there was more to it than he was letting on, but figured I wouldn't be getting much else, which only added to my unease.

"So tell me. Is it possible to stop a ghost permanently without killing its consciousness?" I asked.

"I think that's a trivial matter compared to the real conundrum for you," he said. "You see, if I teach you how to stop a ghost once and for all, whatever that may come to mean, you will be strong enough to stand as a threat to me. Thus, you will stand as a threat to all life and order. Even if you have no intention of using that power for evil, having it at all makes you extremely unsafe. I might have to send someone after you, next."

He wasn't kidding. He didn't seem to like the idea very much, but he didn't show any remorse about it either. Suddenly I had the feeling I'd made a mistake in coming here.

"So you're going to use me to do your dirty work and then have me killed?" I asked, trying to fight down panic.

"It isn't clear," he said, drifting back to his time portals. "Even I can never know for certain what will happen."

I suppressed a violent response about how he should at least know for certain what he would do, and was then struck by the sobering reality that he really might not know. Uncertainty in the Ghost of Time meant things really were at a catastrophic level.

"Look," I said, fighting to remain calm, "if the enemy is a magician, then he's the one we have to stop, right? Maybe you don't need to teach me the ghost-killing magic. I don't really like the idea of knowing how to do that, either."

"As I said before, Sam Manson, I'm afraid you don't have a choice."

He blinked again, this time to right in front of me, and hovering upside down no less, in a ghostly mock-up of that stupid Spiderman kiss; his body turned around like a hand on a clock, those burning red eyes fixed on my own, and suddenly, his dead hands were clasping both of my own. There was a slight shock, and he backed away, leaving me to look down at the objects which had now appeared in my hands; a violet in one, and an emerald in the other.

"They represent your souls," he said. "One for you and one for him. They match your eyes. It's rather poetic, actually." Again, his voice an impossible combination of sarcasm and genuine acknowledgement. "They will amplify your power, and act as a local focus of your will. Wherever they are, you can be. Reflect on these items well, and you will understand how to stop a ghost."

He turned invisible, but as he said, the items in my hands amplified my power and I could easily sense his movement through the ecto-currents. He was circling me.

"Use these gifts wisely, Sam. As you are so keenly aware, we are very…short…on time."

And then he was gone; presence simply vanished. I didn't know if he had frozen time long enough to amble away or if he used some other strange power to do it, but that was clearly all of the information I was going to get. Cryptic warnings of impossible enemies, the promise of killing and death, and not even a hint as to where or how I might solve any of these problems beyond two mysterious objects in my hands. A violet and an emerald.

They were warm, with a strong ecto-pulse. Following instinct, I managed to tuck the violet in my hair, and secured the emerald in a skirt pocket. I felt strong, very strong; but strong enough to kill? Even though I had basically been ordered to, I was having serious doubts. Was there some other way? Did it even matter? Regardless, I didn't seem to have time to figure out anything; with the currents around me I could practically feel the sense of events progressing, spiraling out of control.

A mad magician was bringing together an army of ghosts to destroy Danny, and then, somehow, cause a world war. Tucker and Jazz were about to enter the ghost zone to try to find Danny, where we could all be sitting ducks. Something, though I couldn't figure out what, was completely out of place in Clockwork's realm, and he seemed to be relying on me to fix it. And somehow, his warnings seemed to be suggesting that Danny himself was the one I was going to have to defeat. It was way too much, way too fast; I couldn't figure it out on my own, just standing in an empty cathedral of time.

Clutching the emerald in my pocket, I jumped back into the Fenton Ghost Flyer Mk. III and charted a course for Frostbite's realm, hoping that I could make it before anything else could happen to Danny.

But once I was in the open waters of the Ghost Zone, and with my new items thrumming like a beacon in the ecto-currents, it was only a matter of moments before something else happened to me.

I was focused on pushing onwards to Frostbite, so I didn't even notice her until she crashed into the side of my Flyer. She sent me into a tailspin, but I was able to recover, and brought the Mk. III around so I could see my assailant. Flashes from my dream came back to me as I studied her appearance. It was different than the old tours, that was true; the outfit had been updated to something almost uniform-like, having lost most of the edge that her rebellious music had centered on. And the hair, though still blue and burning, was somehow hanging down by her shoulders, fiery shapes licking upwards towards her ears. Even the guitar was different, the flying v much more pronounced, and large enough for her to stand on, riding it like a surfboard. But that eye – the elaborately painted eye, filled with hate – that was just the same.

"Ember," I said, gritting my teeth. "What's with the new look? You getting ready for another come back tour?"

She didn't answer, but all of her fire seemed to emanate from the blue-hot coals of her eyes, staring me down. I waited, trying to figure out my next move; I didn't know if I could outrun her, and I didn't want to lead her straight to Danny anyway. But I didn't know if I could beat her on my own, especially since I hadn't been able to test any of my power yet. For the time being, I just returned her stare, thinking.

"I've been looking for you," she finally said. "Your spirit, your sound, it's always what stops me! But not this time. I'm going to stamp out your fire once and for all. Everyone will remember my name when I kill Danny Phantom's girlfriend."

Catty venom, check. But it was colder than it used to be, and definitely more serious.

As if to confirm my thoughts, she kicked a button on the guitar and fired a sonic blast that barely missed me, and blew a nearby asteroid to bits. I decided that I couldn't take any chances with something like that happening to the Mk. III, as I could tell I was going to need it to complete the tasks ahead. My intuition was speaking to me, and it had worked so far, so I wasn't going to start ignoring it now.

I focused my will into the emerald, left it on the seat, and punched the "autopilot" button on the console. I climbed out, touching the violet in my hair, and focused the energy around me into a cushion. I was floating, and could use the energy to move, just like a ghost; and the Mk. III was shielded, and flying on its own towards Frostbite's realm.

I faced down Ember, and she stared at me, still nothing but cold hatred on that painted face. "You're going to regret going solo against me."

I kept one hand on the violet and used the other to trace a sigil, hoping she was wrong.

As always, thank you so much for reading and reviewing, and for your patience as I work on updates! You are very considerate and wonderful. Hope things are moving along well for you~

-R