A/N: Here's another installment in my Request Saga!
This one is for Lucky Number Two, who is an anonymous reviewer known only as Kassidy. Sweet. That sounds so mysterious. Anywho, I basically wrote the intro for Kassidy's plot, and left it there for someone to adopt. (Yes, guys, ALL OF THESE ARE ADOPTABLE!) So, hope you like how your shot turned out, Kass! ;)
Also, aside from the fluff you will find in this—don't worry, it's good fluff—I have some good/bad news. I'm assuming you all have heard of ScriptFrenzy. It's my first year, and I'm giving it most of my attention. There's no need to fret, however. I'm expecting tons of writer's block to come my way, and I'll be working on the requests while I am blocked-up. Just don't expect regular updates... not that I gave them already or anything.
(And Warning: There's something totally awkward somewhere in the middle of this piece. I can't exactly pinpoint it and it's driving me CRAZY! Tell me if you find it, so I can fix it.)
"Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes."
~ Gloria Naylor
Future Blossoms
Every Fenton in the long, drawn-out history of Fentons knew when was the right time to give up—though they were usually too stubborn to listen to themselves. This, she consented, was not one of those time.
Ariel flipped backwards, barely managing to dodge the glowing rod of the ecto-stick as it trailed behind her. It clipped her shoulder, though, making her stumble into some misplaced boxes of nameless junk. She hissed in pain, her teeth clenching as her hand traveled to massage the forming bruise.
"You didn't have your formation in place, sweetie," Sam soothed, letting the ecto-stick in her hand revert back to its compact size. "Your legs weren't as far apart as we practiced, and your arms were too stiff. You left the entire upper half of your body open for attack."
Ariel managed a small smile, flinching as she stood up. "I know, Mom. Sorry."
Sam shook her head, tossing the ecto-stick to her work bench as her tongue clicked in apprehension. "You being sorry doesn't stop the fact that you might accidentally do that in an actual fight," she grumbled. She ran a hand through her hair, eyes glowing with maternal affection, as she slipped into a crouch. Her lavender hazmat (that she only used for these training sessions) caught the lights and shinned against her body. "What d'ya say? Want to try to some hand-to-hand for now?"
Ariel rolled her eyes. Yeah, right. "No offense," she drawled, "but I don't like getting beat up by my own mother."
"Beat up?" Sam chuckled, standing up straight. "I don't beat you up, sweetheart. I just make sure you can handle all forms of attack. It's not like I've ever hurt you."
"It's not the training that hurts," Ariel emphasized, still massaging her shoulder. "It's being soar for days that hurts."
"Remember, we're only doing this until you've mastered your powers. Until you can beat me, you're not ready."
"Not ready?" Ariel gasped in mock horror, her hand flying to her mouth. "Say it isn't so! I shall never be able to withstand the shame I have brought upon my family!"
"Why is it," Sam wondered, rolling her eyes as she watched her daughter, "that you and your father have to be so melodramatic?"
"I resent that," came the response from the ceiling, though Ariel wasn't the one to reply. Not a second later, Daniel Fenton—international ghost-fighting superstar/superhero (and beloved father and husband)—appeared, wearing his trademark smirk and familiar black hazmat. His green eyes flickered to Ariel. "She gets that from you, Sam."
Sam settled her hands on her hips, falling into the familiar pattern of teasing they had never outgrown. "Since when have I been the dramatic one?"
Danny floated to the floor, his smirk growing to a grin as he crossed his arms. "Since the time you decided to join the drama club."
"That was for one week!"
"And I warned that I would hold it over your head for years to come." The bright light that accompanied his transformation blinded the room for a moment before Danny rose from it, carrying his briefcase casually.
Ariel smiled, coming over to hug Danny across his waist, wincing slightly as her shoulder moved. "Hi, Daddy."
Danny turned his smile towards his daughter, carefully placing a cool hand—ah, got to love those ice powers, the perfect ice pack—on her bruised skin. "Did your mother hurt you again?" he teased.
Ariel settled for her best wounded puppy-dog expression. "Mm-hmm. She's just so abusive."
He couldn't help—though he knew Sam would give him hell for it later. He laughed. Hard.
Just as predicted, a feminine glove-covered hand came to smack him across the top of his head. Danny winced away from his enraged wife, managing a tiny smile before looking back at Ariel. "You're right," he whispered. "She is abusive."
This time, the flying hand was expected, so Danny twisted intangible for a second. "How's training going?" he asked freely, even as Sam hitched her foot in the air and aimed for his head. He ducked easily.
Ariel took two big steps backwards, fighting back her own laugh as she watched her parents 'dance.' "Oh, you know," she mused, a light chuckle escaping as Sam took to a deadly combination of punches (which Danny just phased straight through), "same old, same old."
"Good," he called back to her, spinning in a graceful circle and sticking his leg out as Sam took a step forward. She tripped (obviously), falling into Danny's waiting arms and squirming as he kissed her hair. "Got'cha."
Sam grimaced, though she didn't make a move to untangle herself. "You big jerk."
"But I'm your big jerk."
"And if you want dinner," Sam hissed, fighting down the smile that was threatening to split her face in two, "then my big jerk better let me go!"
Slowly, Danny let his arms fall, pouting the whole way there.
Ariel rolled her eyes. Sometimes, her parents were worse than a batch of hormonal teenagers. But they were fun—more fun and loose than any of her other friends' parents, so she never really complained. Not only would she run the risk of them suddenly becoming strict overlords (oh, the horror!), but she would never get the chance to laugh at their expense or have the luxury of feeling like she could tell them anything.
She smiled, not even listening anymore as her parents flirted—there really was no other word for it—back and forth. She focused for half a second so that she could phase through the floor. Landing lightly on the balls of her feet, she was glad she'd left the Ops Center—or Training Room (worthy of the capital letters), or whatever the thing above her house was called—as she heard giggling. God, could they get anymore embarrassing?
She shook her head and shifted into her ghost fourth. The name made her want to smile—fourtho: three-fourths human, one-fourth ghost. With her transformation, much like that of her father's, there came the change in clothes—which had been a nightmare to master, so that she wouldn't shift into her birthday suit—and the change in appearance. Though her hair was the same raven color as Danny's (which translated to the same chalky white when she was in ghost mode), her eyes were her mother's, in human and ghost mode. No glowing green for her, no sir. Just a pale lavender.
Ariel chuckled, flying off her feet so that she could float in her room for a while. She was going to continue floating casually, maybe try her hand on those ectoblasts and shields she was barely starting, when the world stopped. She failed to notice it at first, twisting her hand in front of her as she focused curls of purple energy into existence. It wasn't until she looked out the window and noticed an unmoving bird that she started to freak. And with the freak out came the loss of the building ectoblast—damn.
Her head swiveled back and forth, noticing the abnormal silence and stillness of her home. The clock had stopped blinking, her computer had stopped humming, and that bird from the window had yet to move a single feather.
As her head caught up with what was happening, relief flooded through her. It was just a Time Out. Her dad had told her about them some time ago and she'd met the Time Master on more than one occasion. Nothing to worry about; no end of the world.
But when her dad didn't phase through the roof and start blathering an explanation, she started to get anxious. She was going to go back to Ops Center—at her own risk, too, considering Sam and Danny were probably still caught up with each other (ew)—when a clock arrow formed above her desk.
It spun itself into a portal, where the familiar form of the ancient ghost floated away from. He smiled at her, and Ariel couldn't help but smile back.
"What's going on, Uncle Clockwork?"
"Oh, dear child," he sighed, floating closer, his body shifting to that of a young man, as he reached out to put a hand on her arm, "I need your assistance in something."
Her eyebrows scrunched together. "Me? But Daddy's right up there in the Ops Center, I'm sure that—"
"This is not a task for your father," Clockwork quickly interrupted. "This is for you. I need you to come with me."
The dry remark that was about to pop out of her mouth about following strangers to places she didn't know died on her lips when she saw his hard expression. "Uh, okay," Ariel said instead, flying behind the ghost and into the portal.
The sight of dozens upon hundreds upon thousands upon millions upon... actually, this could go on forever, but there was a lot of clocks in Clockwork's castle that always astonished her. Over the course of her fourteen years of life, she'd visited her dear, not blood-related ghostly uncle a grand total of six times, and still couldn't play cool when she came into his Time Deck (which, by far, had to be the funniest thing she'd ever heard him name a room).
"You may want to close your mouth, dear one," Clockwork quietly joked. "You might swallow a time fly."
Abruptly cutting off her staring at the differently synchronized clocks, Ariel snapped her eyes to the ghost. "There's such a thing as time flies?" she breathed in astonishment, eyes huge and glistening.
"Of course there isn't," he chuckled, shifting to an old man. "I just needed to get you back on topic."
Ariel harrumphed, crossing her arms (ignoring her sluggishly-healing shoulder) and sourly glared at a mass of swirling green on a screen. Stupid time-controlling prankster. Mom said that he got it from her father, but it still didn't make it any less humiliating getting caught in one of their many jokes. "What was the topic again?" she grumbled, not wanting to but asking anyway.
Clockwork smiled cheekily. "You're going to love this: you have to rescue your father."
Childish fit of annoyance currently forgotten, Ariel turned back to her uncle and raised an eyebrow, understandably disbelieving. "Come again?"
His smile grew, emphasizing his chubby cheeks now that he had shifted into a kid. "You're going to rescue your father," he repeated simply. "In the past, he's currently trapped in the Guys in White's holding facility. On any other occasion, I would have sent this time line's version of Danny, but the Danny we are rescuing has an understandable fear of any of his future-selves." At her questioning expression, he smirked. "Long story."
"So let me get this straight," Ariel backtracked, blinking. "You want me—fourtho in training that has yet to master proper hand-to-hand and ecto-manipulation—to rescue my halfa father of the past? Do you have any idea how crazy that sounds? What makes you so sure that I won't just get captured, too?"
"You mean aside from the fact that I know everything?" Clockwork replied innocently. "Your father's trapped in the facility just because he made a stupid mistake. It doesn't take an expert to break him loose. If it wasn't for the fact that sending this time's version of your father would be completely counter-productive, then he could have gone and been home in time for dinner."
"So I'm not gonna be home for dinner? But it's tofu salad night," Ariel whined halfheartedly, knowing it was a lost cause. "I love tofu salad!"
"How about a little less talk and a lot more debriefing?" Clockwork said hastily. "There are some rules you need to follow before going into the past."
"Like?"
"For starters, there shall be no mention of time flies—or any other time insects."
Needless to say, the conversation dragged on and on for a good hour or so—don't reveal you're from the past; don't interact with your father aside from saving his butt; if you encounter any butterflies, don't scare them off or something stupid like that (who knew he believed in the Butterfly Effect?); don't fall in love... I'm serious; do not, under any circumstance, die on me; you can tell him your name, but not that you're a Fenton; if he somehow figures you out, call out to me; don't take off your Time Medallion; you get one shot at this, don't mess it up. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Ariel's head felt like mush and her eyes were crisscrossed by the time Clockwork finished explaining all the rules of time travel.
"Do you understand?" he asked, leaning lightly on his staff as he floated closer to one of his time portals.
Ariel rapidly blinked away her muddled thoughts, slightly shaking her head, as she stared back at him blankly. "Uhhh..."
The ghost groaned, letting his head fall back in aggravation. "You are your father's daughter," he mumbled, dipping a fingertip into the swirling green mass of the time portal. "You are just going to have to try your best, I guess."
The screen swirled hypnotically, spinning and spinning until the constant green was replaced with the landscape of a cheery-looking federal building. Ariel raised an eyebrow, incredulous that the GiW holding facility really was in the shape of a giant white 'W'. Could you say 'obvious'?
"That's one of the reasons the Guys in White got shut down, isn't it?" Ariel asked, pursing her lips at the thought.
Clockwork smirked, nodding. "The agents didn't necessarily have a sense of secrecy."
"I see."
Clockwork chuckled and lightly pushed her forward, motioning with his chin to the portal. "It's time for you to go."
Ariel nodded, biting her lower lip. "Okay, so I just go in, spring him out, and you bring me back. Right?"
"Right. Now go."
Not wasting time for a hasty farewell, Ariel shook her sudden nerves away and jumped into the portal. She landed on soft grass, rolling to a standstill as she shut her eyes against the afternoon sunshine. She waited a few seconds before squinting her eyes open to watch the portal disappear.
Shaking her head, adjusting her eyes with one more blink, she turned and stood precariously, shifting her gaze to the holding facility where a bunch of government goons held her father prisoner. Her eyes narrowed and she slipped into her ghost mode, bright light traveling down her body to turn her hair white and change her clothes into her customized hazmat—a silvery white body with a stylized lavender 'A' that had a 'P' in its center.
Ariel Phantom smiled and twisted into invisibility as she descended down the hill and towards her dear-old daddy.
A Danny Phantom motion picture by Sundae Cinema.
~Plotted and Requested by Kassidy.~