God Save The Queen Chapter 20: Time Is On My Side
When the portal spat out Danny and his friends, they found themselves in what appeared to be normal Amity Park. Something felt quite off about this version of Amity Park however. They didn't know what it was.
"So where are we?" Tucker asked. "Did we even leave Amity Park?"
"I don't know," Danny replied. "But we need to find Dan before he causes havoc,"
"Who is this Dan Phantom ghost anyway?" Valerie asked.
"He's me from an alternate timeline," Danny explained. "In an alternate timeline, my family and friends were killed in a Nasty Burger explosion and I ended up living with Vlad as a result. Vlad's attempt to literally rip out the pain ended up accidentally separating me from my ghost half, who in return, separate Vlad and his ghost half before attack it. The two halves ended up fusing together with my ghost half being the dominant personality but inheriting Vlad's evil. In order to ensure his survival, Dan went back in time to try and kill my friends and family again, but I managed to defeat him and seal him away,"
"So now he's back for revenge after being sealed away?" Valerie asked.
"I guess," Danny said. "Based on what he said earlier, I'd say his biggest goal right now is to cause as much mayhem and destruction as possible,"
"Whatever his plans are, we need to find him before people get hurt," Sam said.
"The only problem is that we don't even know where to begin looking," Danny said. "And sitting here talking isn't going to help us find him any faster so it might be best if we split up into two teams to look for him. Tucker, you come with me! Sam, Valerie; you two stick together. Of any of us run into any trouble, we can just call the other on our cell phones. Got it?"
"Got it," Sam, Tucker, and Valerie all said at the same time before the two teams split up and went their separate ways.
They hoped that they could find Dan sooner rather than later. A psychopath like Dan could easily wipe out an entire city without breaking a sweat. What really scared them was the fact that they had no idea what Dan had in mind other than kill people and destroy things or if he even had other things in mind.
"So… that was kinda impressive the way you fought Dan back in our timeline," Danny said to Tucker, trying to lighten the mood. "Where'd you learn how to fight like that?"
"I used my experience playing VR fighting games and what I've seen in Kung fu movies to my advantage," Tucker said, taking pride in actually being able to help in a physical fight for once. "And I've also been taking some martial arts lessons."
Dan meanwhile, was aware that his alternate self and his friends were looking for him and tried his best to keep a low profile. He was searching for this timeline's version of his younger self.
If Dan was correct, he had travelled back in time to just after Danny's first encounter with Plasmius. Knowing that his actions here would only create another alternate timeline rather than change history, Dan decided to kill this timeline's Danny Phantom to test his strength before moving on to his primary objective. The psychopath was still trying to make head and tails of how much things had changed since he was imprisoned. Amity Park knew of Danny Phantom's secret identity, Valerie was an ally of Danny despite previously wanting nothing more than to rip the ghost boy apart limb by limb, and Sam now had ghost powers. Dan swore he was going to have to look into that later.
"I need to make absolutely sure that the only reason past self fought me to a stand still is because he's gotten stronger and that I haven't gotten weaker from my time stuck in that thermos," Dan thought. "Now I just need to find this timeline's Danny, but I can't just attack him. That'll lead Danny and his friends right to me. I'll need to lure him into a trap somehow,"
Dan got back on point, trying to come up with a way to throw off the heroes when he came up with an idea. He'd create a duplicate of himself to act as a diversion while he hunted down this timeline's Danny Phantom. His duplicate should be at least tough enough to distract Team Phantom for a decent amount of time.
"Whatever you do, do not let Danny or the others out of your sight," Dan instructed his clone. "Do whatever you have to do to keep them busy until I've completed my goal, got it?"
Dan's duplicate nodded before flying off to find Danny and his friends. Dan knew he'd still have to wait a few minutes for his duplicate to catch the goodie two shoes' attention, but he was content with waiting. After all, he had all the time in the world.
"So should we try to find this timeline's versions of ourselves and fill them in or should we avoid meeting them altogether?" Tucker asked, trying to get used to using the hover board of his new ghost hunting suit.
"Why would we avoid meeting our alternate selves?" Danny asked.
"Well you know, Back to the Future, two selves can never meet otherwise it'll tear a hole in the fabric of space and time itself," Tucker joked.
"Oh come on, Tuck; that's just a movie and a pretty dated one at that" Danny said, playing along. "Besides, this isn't really time travel, it's more like traveling to an alternate universe. Multiverse theory is in full effect"
"So if that's the case, why did Clockwork even bother to prevent our deaths as well as the birth of Dan Phantom in our universe since it would have no effect on Dan's future?" Tucker asked in response.
"My guess is that the existence of two Dan Phantoms would be too much for the multiverse to handle since Dan is a person of mass destruction," Danny replied.
"But if we come across another timeline that features Dan that totally ruins your theory," Tucker pointed out.
"Hey, I don't know everything about time travel so save your questions for Clockwork when we get back home," Danny said. "Besides, what are the chances of us running into another version of Dan?"
Just then, the two were interrupted when Dan's duplicate attacked them out of nowhere, hitting Tucker with a double axe handle from behind, knocking him into a tree. Before Danny could react accordingly, Dan uppercutted him. The Dan duplicate then grabbed Tucker and used him as a club to whack Danny in the face. Tucker, after regaining his footing, phoned the girls to let them know what was going on.
"Yeah, we found Dan and we could use a little help here," Tucker said, narrowly avoiding being impaled by a tree limb being tossed at him by Dan.
"Try to hang in there until we get there, we're coming as fast as we can," Valerie advised him.
The Dan duplicate viciously karate chopped Danny in the neck before throwing him into a tree. The duplicate back elbowed Tucker in the side of the head when the techno geek tried attacking him from behind. Dan moved behind Tucker with astounding speed and clubbed him in between the shoulder blades with his forearm. Danny surprised Dan with a dropkick to the back of the head. Dan spun around and caught a punch right in between the eyes from Danny before being tossed into a tree. Dan was about to lunge at the boys before being hit with a blast from Sam. Dan smirked and turned his attention to the Red Huntress and Sammy Specter.
Sam punched Dan in the face and then kicked him in the stomach while Valerie tossed three shurikens into his back. Dan hissed in pain and turned towards Valerie, firing a blast at her. Valerie dodged and the boys took advantage by simultaneously blasting Dan in the back. Dan exploded with rage and tried to punch her.
Meanwhile, Dan had finally found this timeline's Danny Phantom and now it was time to make his presence felt. Timeline B Danny was flying around Amity Park, trying to make it home before his curfew when his ghost sense went off. Danny didn't even have time to react before being blindsided by a vicious kick to the head, sending him crashing into the ground.
"Get up!" Dan barked, not wanting to be kept waiting. "I didn't travel back all the way back in time just to see you take a nap,"
"Time travel huh, does every ghost in this town have some type of shtick?" Danny asked, getting to his feet, unfamiliar with this new menace. Then he noticed Dan's outfit, specifically his logo in the center of Dan's chest. "Is that my logo on your chest?! Are you me?!"
Dan nodded and said "Yes, and no. Yes because I'm you from twenty years in the future. No because you'll have no future when I'm done with you!"
"But you can't kill me," Danny replied. "You'll end up wiping yourself from existence!"
"Thanks to an earlier encounter with you, I exist outside of your timeline," Dan informed him.
"Well if you think I'm just going to lay down and die, you've got another thing coming!" Danny declared, flying at Dan to attack him.
Dan ducked to the side, avoiding Danny's attack. Danny tried swinging his leg back to kick him, but Dan turned intangible, allowing Danny's leg to harmlessly pass through him. Danny tried hitting Dan with an ax handle but Dan moved out the way. Danny started throwing punches at Dan, who easily avoided them while casually looking away, not paying Danny the slightest bit of attention. Danny, getting a little worried, charged up energy before blasting Dan. Dan blocked the attack with merely one hand, coming out with little harm. Now Danny was scared and practically shaking with fear. He'd faced enemies stronger than him before, his encounter with Vlad being the most recent, but even then he managed to get in a few good hits when he was fighting them. This was possibly the first time, Danny was completely outclassed.
"Are you done?" Dan asked with a smirk. "Such a shame, I really expected more from you. Oh well"
Dan punched Danny in the face, sending Danny crashing into the side of a building. Danny bounced off the building and was immediately elbowed in the head by Dan. Dan kneed Danny in the stomach and then punched him high into the air. Dan followed after Danny and backhanded Danny across the sky before flying over and viciously driving his knee into Danny's lower back. Dan wrapped his hand around Danny's neck and held him in the air.
"You're pathetic," Dan spat. "To think that a weakling such as yourself composes part of me sickens me,"
Danny surprised Dan by shooting a blast in both of his eyes. Dan gasped in pain and released Danny from his chokehold. Danny tried to take advantage of the opening by flying full force into Dan's abdomen. Dan was only momentarily stunned from the attack and grabbed Danny by his waist, hoisting him into the air. Dan delivered a vicious series of strikes right to the boy's torso, causing Danny to cough up a bit of blood. Dan then head butted Danny numerous times, opening up a nasty gash on the boy's head. Danny was barely conscious at this point as Dan used The Ghostly Wail on him.
Danny, Sam, Tucker, and Valerie were still fighting Dan's duplicate, unaware that the real Dan Phantom was beating the tar out of this timeline's Danny. They did take note that "Dan" seemed to be weaker, taking far more hits than their previous fight. However, "Dan" retained the real Dan's brutality and any hit that he landed felt like being hit by a train. Just when they were finishing off the clone, they heard Danny's ultimate attack echo in the sky.
"Hold on a minute. If we're fighting Dan and neither he or Danny are using the Ghostly Wail than where is that coming-" Tucker asked before all four of them realized Dan's trick.
"This is just a duplicate!" Danny declared. "While we've been fighting him, Dan's been doing who knows what! Come on, we have to get over there and quickly!"
Danny turned to fly towards the source of the Ghostly Wail, but the Dan duplicate grabbed him by his leg. Danny sighed before destroying it with a large blast. After taking care of him, the gang rushed to the scene, hoping they weren't too late.
The Ghostly Wail left Danny near death, reverted to his human state and lying in a puddle of his own blood. A few people had called police about the fight, but Dan quickly killed the officers with a simple blast before killing a couple civilians just for kicks. Dan floated over to Danny and grabbed him by his shirt collar. He chuckled before he heard Danny's mom yell "Let go of my baby!"
Dan looked up and saw the Fenton RV speeding towards him. Dan's chilling slasher smile returned as Jack and Maddie hoped out of the RV and ran to confront Dan.
"Get your hands off of my son, you no good piece of ectoplasm!" Jack yelled. Dan dispatched him easily with disintegrating him cell by cell with an ecto blast, making sure Danny saw every last second. Dan likewise, killed Maddie with a steady stream of fire, reducing her to nothing more than a charred skeleton.
"No! You killed them!" Danny said weakly, tears falling from his eyes.
"Don't worry, you'll be seeing them soon," Dan said before preparing to deliver the finishing blow. Just before he could finish off this timeline's Danny, the four heroes arrived on the scene. "Oh look, it's the Calvary!"
"Really, this is your master plan? Hunting down and killing me in another timeline?" Danny asked. "Why are you even bothering? It's not going to change anything,"
"Ha! You think this is my master plan?!" Dan replied. "I just needed someone to test my power on since I was incapable of finishing you off previously! Needed to make sure I hadn't lost me edge,"
"You've proven you haven't gotten weaker now let him go!" Sam said.
"Fine," Dan said before placing his hand on Danny's chest and firing a huge blast through it, leaving a gaping bloody hole and killing the boy instantly. Dan then dropped Danny's corpse to the ground before pulling out Clockwork's staff again. "If you want to foil my plan, I suggest following me through the rabbit hole again!"
Dan created another wormhole and hopped through it. Naturally, Team Phantom followed close behind, being whisked to get another timeline.
In The Next Chapter:
Dan did some looking around while Vlad lied bleeding out to death on the ground. Dan was so caught up with looking for the Ghost Gauntlets, that he didn't notice Vlad crawling over to a plasma cannon on the ground. Vlad propped himself up against the wall and took aim Dan.
"There you are!" Dan exclaimed, grabbing the Ghost Gauntlets before he heard Vlad's plasma cannon charging. Dan looked over and saw Vlad aiming the plasma cannon at him, a white hot energy ball growing larger and larger at the barrel of the weapon. "Oh crap!"
Vlad pulled the trigger and the resulting blast was so powerful that it completely obliterated the remains of Vlad's mansion, taking the former billionaire with it. Vlad died with the solace that at least he was able to destroy one Dan along with himself.
Hello there, friends! Merry Christmas! I hope you've enjoyed this chapter of God Save The Queen. Curse you Dan, going around killing alternate versions of Danny Phantom. And where were Sam and Tucker while all of this was going on? And is it just me or does Dan seem to be becoming more and more unhinged as time goes on? Where are our heroes headed to next? Find out in the next exciting installment of God Save The Queen. Now here's the funny thing, I was originally going to post this chapter much earlier, but I decided to hold it off until Christmas Day to make it more special. (Beat) I've just realized that I just admitted to withholding content from you so I'm going to run before you all beat the crap out of me! Bye!
Disclaimer: The preceding was a-, wait a minute, do I really need a disclaimer? This fanfic is protected under fair use and I'm not making an profit whatsoever off of this story. If Nickelodeon is so petty as to sue a college student for writing a story based on a cartoon they cancelled 8 years ago, that tells you how well they're doing.
Peace out and have a nice day!