"Who are you?" Danny demanded. "What do you want with me and why are you harming my friends?"
"I want to destroy you," the figure remarked indifferently. Danny noted that the voice seemed rather young, seeming to come from a person only several years older than himself. "Because you are a disgrace to the Ghost Zone."
The ghost turned around, and Danny was able to get a good look at him for the first time. He was lanky, much taller than Danny, and slightly older-looking, appearing to be anywhere from nineteen to twenty-three years old. Of course, Danny reflected, who really knew how long he had been dead?
He seemed to have once been a redhead, with long scruffy hair and freckles that were now merely pale gray and transparent along with the rest of his ghostly complexion. His pointy nose gave him a rather austere and sneering expression, and his deep red eyes were the same color of those of his possessed victims.
Even more peculiar was his outfit. Not only was he clad in a black cloak, he also sported a black fancy top hat with a dark red rose pinned to the outside, and white gloves. In his fingers he lazily twirled a wand, black with white tips at either end, which added to the appearance of a stereotypical magician.
"Ah, yes, a formal introduction is probably what you seek," mused the ghost, snapping Danny back to reality. "All right, then, Danny Phantom.
"At the time of my death, I regarded humans with utmost scorn. I felt them to be low forms of being; disgusting, impulsive creatures. In some ways it was almost a relief to die. I had found out about ghosts and the afterlife, and was intrigued. But there was no way to conduct my research on Earth, especially being so young and unknown in the scientific world. So I poured myself a glass of poison and departed the world."
He committed suicide? Danny thought. What a pretentious way to say it. He had always suspected that some of the ghosts he encountered had more morbid pasts than he knew of – the lyrics to Ember's song seemed to hint at suicide as well, especially coupled with the youthful appearance of her ghost – but the thought still made him shudder.
"I realized shortly after my death that being a ghost was my true calling. I had powers unimaginable and was part of a race of creatures that held humans in almost as much contempt as I did. Slowly, I begun to train, and developed my ghostly abilities, until I discovered a new ghost power beyond the basics. I learned that I could possess humans from an unusually far distance. I started off possessing two or three at once, and soon found that I could control entire armies from miles away.
"This by itself wasn't anything too revolutionary, of course. But I soon discovered that for me, this power had a few unique qualities. For one, the more humans I possessed, the stronger I became, rather than weakening by splitting myself into many ectoplasmic clones and dividing my energy."
Danny knew what he was talking about: when Vlad had split himself into hundreds of clones in order to possess the voters of Amity Park during the mayoral election, he had to be in the vicinity of the clones in order to control them, and each clone had been significantly weaker than Vlad usually was. Even Danny found splitting into four clones taxing on his energy, almost as much as using his Ghostly Wail.
"But what was most intriguing was how this affected my victims. People I possessed suddenly became fiercer warriors and stronger foes than ever before. As I started to learn how to possess ghosts as well, I realized that my possessions amplified their ghost powers far beyond their normal strength. As I discovered myself and discovered my powers, I completely disregarded my human name and gave myself a ghostly alias: Parasite."
"How macabre," Danny interjected. He received no response.
"For a while, I was content to just practice my powers and be content with my own strength. But then you came along, a halfa, a human-ghost hybrid, Danny Phantom, and I realized I could not rest any longer. What you were doing with your powers was appalling. You captured ghosts in order to aid the repulsive humans, and caused them no end of pain and misery. Ghosts were thrown in Walker's jail and made to suffer long, grueling sentences due to your disregard for their respect. And all the while you relished in your status as a hero on the human plane.
"Now, Danny Phantom, it is time for me to rid this world of you once and for all. You are a disgrace to the purity of ghosts, and I will never let this stand!"
Danny bridled. "But I haven't done anything wrong!" he protested. "I like being a human and I didn't ask for ghost powers! But I can't just stand by and watch ghosts invade my city and torment my friends and family. Maybe if you guys just stayed out of our way, there wouldn't be this whole conflict in the first place!"
"And stay in the Ghost Zone?" Parasite snapped back, sounding offended. "I don't think you quite understand, Danny Phantom. You humans would rather live on the human plane, but so would we. It's much more interesting than the endless swirling void of the Ghost Zone. If we visit, we are sent back because we are ghosts. We don't really think that it's fair that you can travel between the two world with ease because of some freak lab accident."
Danny opened his mouth to retort, but hesitated. Ghosts would rather live on the human plane? He had never really looked at it that way before. Maybe by sending them back to the Ghost Zone in the Fenton Thermos, he had been crossing a moral boundary without even realizing it.
Before he could apologize and try to straighten things out, Parasite spoke again, taking Danny's hesitation to be a sign of weakness. "No one's ever challenged your righteous position before, Phantom? No matter. You won't be around long enough to process it."
With that, he rushed at Danny with frightening speed. Danny barely had time to sidestep out of the way, and even so, Parasite's cloak whipped his cheek as he passed. He yelped in pain at the sting and raised his hand to his face – only to find, much to his surprise, that his cheek was wet. He raised his hand in front of his face to find that it was dripping green; the impact from the cloak had created a bloody welt.
"He's not playing around," Danny muttered. "Well, then, neither can I."
He drew a deep breath and unleashed his most powerful attack, his Ghostly Wail. Everything around him seemed to blur as it was drowned out by the reverberating note. The floor began to shake and crack beneath him, the beams of the wall splintering. The staircase he had used to reach the second floor crumbled into a pile of wood scraps, and the floor itself soon followed.
Head spinning from loss of energy, Danny felt himself falling, closing his eyes so he wouldn't have to see the rubble spinning out of control around him – or maybe it was himself that was spinning. His head struck the ground, and a flash of red light seemed to explode under his eyelids. Had his attack been deflected? Was that even possible?
A sharp pain jabbed at Danny's side, and he felt his body spasm and go limp, completely exhausted of energy. He looked up to see Parasite standing over him, a bored expression on his face and his wand was pointed at Danny's neck. "Nice try, boy, but I've absorbed more power than you realize." A slight smirk flickered over his face. "I've had enough fun messing around, though. It's time for you to leave."
The last thing Danny saw was a bolt of blue energy sparking from out of the wand, aimed directly at him. He felt his entire body explode with the sensation of whiplash, and his vision clouded.
"This is too easy." Parasite's voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, fading in and out. "Oh well. See you back in the ghost zone, Danny Phantom… permanently."
