!Disclaimer: I do not own DP.

!Disclaimer 2: This author is guilty of posting this update late—again...

Background Information

"We knew he was evil!"

"He fooled us all!"

"Phantom how could you?!"

"How could I? How could you!?" Dan sneered as he shot off another blast of flickering green power igniting another building on fire. Amity Park would be destroyed within the day. He simply bid his time waiting for the Red Huntress to show, the only one who could possibly present a threat to his rising power. He was done playing hero—look where it got him: alone. The citizens had never seen him as anything but a villain, who bid his time hoping to lower their guards before he attacked. Well, congratulations! Dan was more than happy to prove them right. This is what they always wanted, right? Humans always wanted to be right?!

He laughed at the fear and shrieks as he hurled attack after attack at the not-so-innocent citizens he once gave his all to protect. He'd given away any chance at a normal life to ensure they could all have one. But without those pathetic human emotions to hold him back, he could finally make them pay for his sacrifice. Her parents and her mansion had been the first to go, him wanting to test if he had truly ridden himself of his humanity that fueled the hurt that had overwhelmed him. He'd felt nothing but justice and smirked as he set off to take control of the world as his enemies often failed to do. But he was Phantom, so he wouldn't fail. He had never failed before. The ghosts had already realized this as they fled to their Ghost Zone in hopes he would focus on the humans long enough for them to flee to the neutral territories. He scoffed at the term 'neutral' for he would not leave any stone untouched in his quest for vengeance.

He raised his hands to strike Amity Elementary school, the bright colors of the playground giving him a headache as he repressed memories he no longer wished to keep, but had to stop his attack in order to deflect an ecto-ray aimed at the back of his head as a trembling voice called, "Hey cuz, what's up?"

He narrowed his eyes at his clone, who stood tall and rigid though the tears trailing down her cheeks showed weakness. She must have visited the damn statues—to which he made a mental note of destroying when he had more free time—because he had been sure she would have shown up immediately after he began his destruction or never at all. "Danielle," he greeted with a hiss.

"Stop Danny, this isn't right!" she screamed as she powered up, her fists glowing a pale neon green to reflect the sadness curling around her heart and core. She'd never been a match for him but she would be damned if she gave up without a fight. Maybe she could help calm him down before he did anything else he would later regret.

"My name is Dan, child, and you have no right to tell me what to do," he spoke low and feral, the fire glistening off his newly acquired fangs as he mentally prepared himself for a short battle. His eyebrows knit together in concentration though strange feelings began uncurling inside his stomach, but he ignored it because he could no longer feel. He'd given that up because he no longer wished to feel.

"If you're not willing to talk, I'll be forced to fight you," she warned, another tear slipping past her eyelashes. She did not want to fight with him, but she would because she was a hero. She could not throw away the responsibility she once shared with the older halfa due to her fear or her grief. She needed to remain strong if she had any hope of pulling Danny away from his drowning grief long enough to remind him of the morals he had shared with her. The morals of a hero in which she knew the really Danny valued with all his soul.

Unfortunately, Dani ran out of time as Dan tensely answered, "Then so be it." He flew forward to throw a now red blast but she phased out of visibility to avoid the hit and landed her foot hard on his back as she returned to it. He spun around after quickly retaining his balance and shot her with an ice ray, burning her exposed abdomen though she didn't allow the pain to slow her down.

"You don't have to do this Danny!" she shouted as they continued to brawl, her arms raising in a defensive stance.

"Stop calling me that!" he demanded after he had attacked again, wiping his chin of the trickle of ectoplasm she'd caused with a lucky shot. He forced himself to remain on the offense though the rising feeling in his upper body fought against his will. He stubbornly refused to listen to his heart and core any longer!

"This is not what they would have wanted!" Danielle continued to plead as Dan grew more and more ferocious in his fighting

"I will destroy you!"

"You're stronger than this Danny! You're letting Vlad win!"

"You little—"

"Sam and Tucker would be disappointed!" He froze in his spot in mid-air, hovering with tense muscles. She breathed heavily as she struggled to remain conscious, his fighting having been rougher than he'd ever allowed himself to spar with her. He was growing muscle mass fast and learning how to use it effectively while she was limited in such areas, considering her female genetics. Yet just as she thought she'd broken through to him, standing straight and beginning to float towards him in hopes of offering her comfort, Dan lashed out with a wave of ectoplasm and a grunt, his new red eyes flaring. The attack shoved her back into one of the brick walls of the elementary school but he didn't stop at there. "You know nothing!"

A few minutes later found Danielle tumbling through the air and landing with a sickening thump on the deserted road in front of Dan and the playground. Momentarily he debated setting her body on fire to completely destroy her for what she'd said, but something held him back in a subtle surprise. Floating down he observed she had transformed back into her human form and she was barely breathing. However, what had him in his small shock was realizing the way her long raven hair splayed across her closed eyes and how much it reminded him of the way Sam had slept, often resulting in the worst bed head he'd ever seen. His core clenched as a nauseating wave of pain, guilt, and longing passed through his soul.

As he stared down at his clone his mind flashed back to the explosion from the Nasty Burger. His parents finally seemed to understand in those last moments of living why he'd been such an 'irresponsible' teen. His favorite teacher understood why he couldn't reach his full potential in class. His sister's fear not for herself but for him shone in her teal eyes as bright as the sun as she stared at his tripping form. Tucker promised with his gaze that he would take care of their girls as they passed into whatever life came next even if he felt afraid, always best friends. And Sam accepted what was to happen just like she accepted all his other faults; she had forgiven him for failing just as the explosion ignited.

In looking at Danielle he saw Sam, and in seeing Sam he saw his life, and no matter if he had humanity or not, he could not force himself to kill her.

Scooping up her body silently and cautiously, he flew to the currently unharmed Fenton portal and navigated his way to his destination before he could change his mind. He didn't think nor did he want to think as his body flew on auto-pilot. The ghosts naïve enough to have yet to flee watched in curious fascination as the new tyrant flew a dying girl to the Far Frozen. The yetis greeted him with weapons trained, but Frostbite had yet to order the attack as he saw that Dan carried precious cargo. "Great One, what have you?"

"I will destroy all of you and this land unless you take her in and save her," he threatened with a growl, straight to the point as he landed and handed Danielle over to Frostbite without another word. He could not help her, and he was still far too young at the age of sixteen to know the first thing about dealing with a child, especially as he grieved and took revenge on the world for allowing his life to fall apart.

"If she dies I will know." He could feel her life slipping away even as he took to the skies again on his way back to the human world, and it wasn't until weeks later he felt her life energy begin to thrive. True to his word, Dan left the Far Frozen alone as he began his rule over the Zone. He ignored its presence as though it didn't exist, not willing to give too much thought into something that could tear him apart once more.

He may hate to admit it, but somewhere inside him remained Danny. And Danny could never hurt the girl he'd come to think of as his responsibility. His Plasmius half had no chance of defeating his Phantom half by killing any more of his family.

"You know, I must admit," Val said as she cuddled next to her husband, Nathan, while watching the time stream of their Sam in the other timeline with Clockwork at his tower, "I didn't think he could actually change, but I'll be damned."

"He looks normal," Nathan commented as he intertwined his fingers with Val's. He felt forever grateful to Tucker for convincing Val to go out at least once with him their junior year in high school. It had been a dream come true for him, and after he overcame his nervousness and Val her stubborn pride they had a great time.

"Everything is how it should be," Clockwork repeated as he changed into his child form from his young man's one, but Val could tell something bothered him. The Time Lord had no need to worry, as he was all seeing, but a God he was not. He could not guarantee a happy ending nor could he see everything if time itself had yet to decide which road to drive.

"What is it?" Val curiously asked, sitting up in order to pay more attention as she sensed the uneasiness in his words. Instead of speaking again, Clockwork waved his staff before the mirror and replayed the earlier fight, starting the scene moments before Dani screamed.

"Where did that blast come from?" Nathan asked shortly after the replay, having not spent much time wondering earlier as they'd been too busy anxiously hoping someone would save the youngest Phantom. To answer, Clockwork paused the picture and moved their sight around until Val pointed to something in the distance. Zooming in revealed a pink blob of something, rewinding proved it to be the threat that had attacked Dani.

"What is that thing? And why did it attack her?" Val questioned in her confusion as she motioned for Clockwork to replay the dramatic event again, watching for any clue of the blob. "It's like it appears from thin air, stares at them, shoots, and then disappears. It's almost as though it was...on a mission or something."

"So it seems," Clockwork agreed as he aged into his elder ghost form, stoic yet solemn as he caught on to what he believed was beginning to unravel.

"But who sent it on its mission?" Nathan asked. The two humans sat in concentration with Clockwork waiting for them to catch on. He replayed the scene as many times as they asked him to, pausing it and replaying certain parts.

"Shit!" Val suddenly exclaimed once she began to understand the deeper reasoning behind the shallow attack, grabbing Nathan's arm and shoving him on her jet sled as she rushed to ghost portal they had arrived from. "We need to find her now!"

"Whoa, care to explain?" Nathan asked as he held onto his wife for dear life, though he knew to whom she referred to. When her emotions were strong her steering tended to be life-threatening to any passengers.

"He sent that bot and now that he knows how important Danielle is to both Phantoms, he can use her against them!"

"Wait, so the rumors about Dan saving Danielle were true? How come she told us she had barely escaped on her own?"

"She should have told us the truth instead of lying!" Val muttered to herself, not willing to dwell on the younger girl's reasoning when they had a much more important matter to focus on. "And if he gets his hands on her, we're gunna have a problem…"

Though he too was in deep shit, Dan couldn't help but snicker at seeing that Danny was still sitting outside his bedroom door frame, now half asleep yet still mumbling apologies. When the two Phantoms had calmed enough to join the others and confidently state they were on the same side now for sure, they were met with ticked off Sams who each shared a smack over their heads. As soon as they made it back, Sam took Danielle to Sam's room and locked Danny out, miniature ghost shield and all. He'd been pleading with her for hours to let him in and give him a chance to explain as he continuously apologized. Dan, on the other hand, didn't share a room with Vi and therefore could go into his lair in the Ghost Zone whenever he pleased, but he too was unhappily experiencing the cold shoulder. Everyone else felt amused and laughed without consequence.

"Come on, we needed that or we'd probably still hate each other's guts," Dan reasoned with Vi, who sat on the sofa reading and sipping a cup of coffee. The others had gone to their respective homes to rest, and Val and Nathan had volunteered to head out on patrol for the night.

"I know, but I don't have to like it," Vi finally replied. In reality, she'd forgiven the two quickly, understanding it had needed to happen. However, her mind had been assaulted with trying to identify the hurricane of feelings that had risen in her heart during the earlier events, which was why she was unable to fall to sleep like the other team members who had retired for bed as evening set in.

For reasons unknown, Dan knew Vi wasn't as upset with him as she was with whatever she'd been thinking of all this time. She hadn't turned the page in her book for ten minutes now and he wasn't dumb. Walking behind her, he grabbed the novel and closed it, setting it to the side so there wouldn't be a barrier between them as he returned to stand before her. "Alright, out with it."

"Is everything okay with you? Is this new look changing the way you're able to fight? If your DNA turns out to be damaged do you think it will affect the knowledge your mind has acquired?" Vi asked, putting her mug on the side table so she could hold her folded legs closer to her chest.

"We've already been over this with Maddie and Jack; stop beating around the bush." He was right, and she knew it. A thorough talk had been had between all team members about Dan's changes in appearance and what it could signal. He went through a multitude of tests for his powers, his health, and his DNA structure and was currently waiting for the results. The two men had been shocked to find after they had settled from their fight that Dan looked almost exactly like Danny, the only variation being Dan's voice and goatee.

Oddly enough, Dan felt more comfortable in this original body design. He could move more fluidly and he felt less awkward when making his way throughout Fenton Works. His hazmat suit had also transformed to fit his size, though strangely enough his cape had failed to accommodate the same way, instead shrouding his new body frame. He also needed a trim, having to flip his bangs to the side of his face every few seconds. That's what really annoyed him most about this physical alterations: his newly acquired bangs seemed to grow at the same speed his pony tail seemed to shrink.

After a few more minutes of tense silence Vi realized Dan wouldn't settle for his half-truths and timidly asked, "What happened to the Danielle in our timeline?"

With a straight face Dan answered, "She was hurt. I brought her to some allies and she now lives a healthy life with them."

"Was she, uh…is she like this Danielle?" She carefully continued to question.

"Are you asking if Vlad cloned her? Yes."

"The same way as this Danielle?"

"The only difference is their ages since we are four years older than this point in the timeline." Dan shifted into a kneel to try and see more of her face as she tried hiding behind her helmet even further. He didn't understand what about Danielle could be gnawing at Vi this deeply.

Suddenly she moved so her face was inches in front of Dan's with her facial shield retracted and amethyst eyes narrowed as she asked, "Just to make sure, you didn't kill her, did you?"

Though caught slightly off-guard at hearing the hostility in her voice, Dan assuredly answered, "No, I did not."

Easing her way back to her seated position as she nodded her head, Vi muttered, "Good."

She'd had a chat with Sam earlier when they brought Dani back to clean up her wounds from the blast, and Sam had happily shared more of Dani's story to fill the awkard silence between the two as they ignored Danny's desperate pleas. According to the files they confiscated, Vlad somehow stole and used one of Sam's eggs in order to keep the clone stable during the beginning stages, which meant Dani wasn't so much a clone as she was a test tube baby of sorts. That meant that Danny wasn't her original but her father, and Sam wasn't only a donor but her mother. For the last few hours Vi had been seriously trying to figure out if that meant Dan was Danielle's father in their timeline, which would make her the mother as well. It would make sense considering Dan and Danny shared the first sixteen years of their lives identically, meaning everyone else probably had as well. And it would also explain the feelings she'd almost drowned in upon seeing Dani hurtle towards the ground: maternal instincts. Sam had spoken of her inkling in relationship to the youngest halfa after first being introduced to her, too. Vi had yet to speak further with Sam about her thoughts and she didn't know how much longer she could go. She wanted to talk to someone before she confronted Dan, seeing as he truly was as oblivious as Danny had been famous for being.

Before Dan could question her again she excused herself to try speaking with Sam, promising Dan it was important and she would make it as quick as she could. It took a lot of strength to walk up the stairs while suppressing her nerves so Dan would not grow more suspicious or worried only to chuckle and dispel her anxiousness at seeing Danny's head leaning against the bedroom door as he sat on the ground restlessly sleeping. Vi tried to quietly reach over him to tap the dark stained wood but he must have sensed her presence because his hand snapped up to grab hers just before she could place her first knock. Embarrassed she quietly muttered, "Uh, hi."

As soon as the fuzziness from sleep left him, Danny let go of her arm to rub his eyes, answering, "Hey. What did you need?"

"I just wanted to talk with Sam."

Through his yawning, Danny managed to inform her, "Sam fell asleep an hour ago, but if you'd like I can try answering whatever questions you have for her."

"O, well…uh…" Backtracking a few steps, Vi glimpsed around the corner and over the banister to see Dan scrutinizing her paperback. Feeling confident he wouldn't overhear her or interrupt, she quickly took a seat on the ground across from Danny. She shifted and avoided eye contact as she thought about how she could bring up her thoughts, but eventually she settled with an interrogation type of tactic. "Danielle is your daughter?"

She didn't much appreciate how Danny looked at her as though she owned a second head as he answered, "Uh, ya." He'd already introduced her as such, so why would she be asking?

"And Sam is most definitely her mother?"

"Yes," Danny answered, growing more suspicious with each statement sounding more like a question than a fact. Normally he'd have a short temper with anyone who questioned Danielle's past, but this was Sam—or, well, a version of Sam. She would never do anything to cause hurt and self-loathing towards him or his family. She thought objectively and often followed obscured trails of thought. In fact, it was one of her strongest traits, and even if Vi had been locked in a comatose state for years this still came natural to her person. Danny believed the only reason Sam and Vi were as different as they are was due to their living situations in each of their drastically different realities.

"How did you two come to realize Danielle was in fact your daughter and not a clone?" She hadn't had the chance to elaborate in her talk with Sam due to the family interruptions and the idiocy of the boys, but sitting with him now she began to realize Danny would probably be the best to talk to about this. He had always been close to Danielle and had known her much longer than anyone else. For the first year of her existence, Danny hadn't told anyone about her—including Sam. The Goth had been introduced to the clone-really-daughter just before Danny saved the world from the Disasteroid and even afterwards it took a while for the truth of Danielle to surface.

"Actually, Danielle accidentally called me dad one day," Danny divulge, adding with a short laugh, "She had been giving me the cold shoulder because I convinced my parents to put a sensor in her room that alerted me whenever she left, considering she liked to travel, leave, and arrive unannounced. I felt responsible for her which is why I had seemed obsessed with her moving in with me and my family after the Disasteroid. She'd been holed up in her room all day and I'd been down in the basement with my dad doing some experiment that played with my Ghost Sense, so I didn't know it had gone off on an alert instead of on command.

"The house shook with an explosion," Danny continued, his blue eyes darkening to a stormy grey as he replayed the event in his mind, "so we ran upstairs to investigate and found Skulker ready to chop off Danielle's head to place on his mantle. We made eye contact and she screamed, 'Daddy!' I actually thought I'd heard wrong, since 'Danny' and 'Daddy' sound similar, so I rushed off into the air and defeated Skulker pretty brutally without second thought, like I had already planned on doing when I first saw them. When I brought Danielle safely back to the ground, my Dad had already told my Mom out of amusement but she thought there may be some credibility behind it. Weeks of research and mountains of Vlad's files later on top of DNA testing, the truth emerged and I can't remember ever being happier," he finished with a warm smile.

"So, she kind of knew all along?" Vi asked curiously.

"Ya, we'd both actually had this gut feeling that told us we were way more than cousins," Danny sheepishly confessed as he rubbed the nape of his neck. "And when she found out Sam was her mother she felt ecstatic. The two had always gotten along well and every little girl wants a mom to bond with. Plus, no other woman could love Danielle as a daughter as fully as Sam, I don't think."

This made Vi smile. Though she couldn't remember how many times she'd actually met her Danielle, considering Sam had rarely met her during Dani's first year of living, it seemed things would most likely flow positively if she were to bring up the topic with the young halfa. After all, Danny had a point: what little girl wouldn't want a mother? And if Dan saved her, she must have some good feelings towards him, so he would be able to help her find Danielle quickly and give their daughter the chance at a partially normal rest of her life after everything was said and done. It's important she have both parental figures to help guide her through the maze that has been created and weaved ahead.

Vi knew she would have to talk to Dan about this so she stood to do so before her nerve left her after thanking Danny for answering her curious questions. Only, as soon as she reached midway on her descent down the stairs, her communicator alerted her that Val was trying to contact her. She felt a sense of dread as she quickly answered, remembering that the two weren't supposed to speak with one another unless something dire had taken place. "Red, what's up?" she curiously answered.

Grimly Val replied, "We have a problem."

Author's Note

So, I was going to publish this yesterday but when I read through it I realized it still needed some major editing. Thus, I waited an extra day so I had time in between editing and reviewing for the best possible results of my fruitless labor. Especially since this is mostly filler(: I know, I love you all too!

So, I know I've been hopping between times and memories and what not, but I want you to know that after the next chapter, everything should be caught up together. Meaning: everything should be happening at the same time as everything else!

See ya this weekend for the next update!