The Worst 30 Seconds

〜〜〜〜〜〜

Tucker grinned at the blip on his monitor. "He's coming back!"

Jazz beamed from behind him. Maybe this whole catastrophe would end up okay, after all.

There was a moment of joy as the Specter Speeder shot out of the portal. In the base, everyone cheered for their returning hero.

Then the Speeder's nose dipped.

It rocketed down, careening wildly through the air as the cheering cut off. The entire team gasped as it sped over their heads and headlong into a glacier.

Jazz, Tucker, and Sam felt something inside them plummet.

"Danny…" Jazz murmured.

Sam ran forward, pressing her face against the window. "No! He-he can't be!"

Maddie looked up at Jack. Yes, they all depended on that Phantom kid making it back, and yes, this was horribly wrong, but the way the three kids were reacting, it was as if they'd lost someone close to them.

Maddie felt something niggling at the back of her mind, something just waiting for her to find it.

Tucker's monitor beeped again, this time with a message of doom. He gulped. "It's coming!"

As the Disasteroid loomed ever closer, eclipsing the sun in a new and terrible way, Jazz's face blanched.

Wrapping an arm around his daughter and wife, Jack sighed. "Listen. I just want you all to know that…I love you, and I'm so proud of each and every one of you for trying your best."

Jazz put her hand over her dad's. "We love you, too, Dad."

"At least we're all together…" Maddie bit her lip, on the verge of outright bawling.

Jazz turned to her mother with tears in her eyes. She sniffled. "I…oh, Mom, there's something you need to know." She glanced at 'Danny.'

And that's when something clicked.

Madeline Fenton darted to 'Danny' and whipped the wig off. "A robot?! Where's Danny?!" She whirled to Jazz, her voice shooting up. "Jasmine, where's your brother?!"

Jazz cast a grief-stricken look to the remains of the Speeder, and everything fell into place.

〜〜〜〜〜〜

"SOMEBODY COME QUICK!"

Jack leapt down the stairs two at a time, Maddie right behind him "Is there a ghost?!"

"WORSE!" Came the answer.

Tucker and Sam were kneeling by Danny and the smoking Portal. Between the two of them, they managed to make a somewhat understandable sentence.

"He went inside-"

"-and he-"

"-he said he wanted to-"

"-try and fix it-"

"-but he hit a button-"

"-and-"

"-and then-"

"-and then THIS!"

Danny's street clothes were still covered in dust, and his every move resulted in a big cloud of it puffing up into the air.

"Danny, why didn't you wear your hazmat suit?!" Maddie demanded, though out of worry rather than anger.

Sam and Tucker shared a knowing look as Danny coughed. "Musta…forgot…"

〜〜〜〜〜〜

"Hey, Mom, Dad, I'm heading over to Tucker's tonight!"

"But sweetie, you love it when we have my beef stew!"

"ISH DA BESH!"

"Chew with your mouth closed, dear."

"Yeah, uh, he needs help with his, um, homework and I gotta go help him work it out BYE!"

"DANNY YOU FORGOT YOUR…backpack…Where'd he go so fast?"

"WHAT IS THAT?!"

"IT'S A GHOST! JACK, GET THE ECTO-GUNS!"

"Wait, Mom, Dad, what about-?"

"WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON THAT GHOST BOY I'M GONNA TEAR HIM APART MOLECULE BY MOLECULE!!!"

〜〜〜〜〜〜

Danny plopped down onto the chair in the kitchen, long after his bedtime. He yawned and flipped on the TV, warming up beef stew leftovers.

'…and the mysterious ghost boy has disappeared once again, having defeated his technological foe. According to these numbers, while before this event, the town was heavily in favor of eliminating him and all ghosts, the tables are turning, with the townspeople evenly split on Phantom's alignment-'

Danny groaned and turned the TV back off, reaching for his reheated stew.

Jazz walked in then, her eyes red and puffy. "Heya, little brother."

"Hi, Jazz." Danny mumbled through a mouthful of carrot and potato.

She looked to the TV, a soft smile on her face. "You did good out there, you know that, right?"

Danny made a noncommittal sound, shoving another forkful of stew in his mouth.

Jazz sighed. "Try to get some sleep before the sun comes up. I already staved off the parentals from asking why you were taking so long, I don't wanna have to explain why you didn't get any sleep."

Danny finished his broth and dumped his bowl in the sink. "…Thanks, Jazz."

"Anytime, Mister Sleepy McTiredFace." Jazz chuckled, heading back to her room.

From behind the door to the basement lab, Maddie furrowed her brow in confusion.

〜〜〜〜〜〜

"But honey, if we destroy him at the molecular level, how are we supposed to dissect him?" Maddie pointed out.

Danny flinched, and Jazz patted his arm.

"But I wanna use our new weapons!" Jack grumbled.

They kept this up, but Danny eventually pushed his chair from the table and headed to grab his stuff. "I'm going to school so I'm not late."

A quick glance at the clock told Maddie that Danny had plenty of time left.

She caught the tail end of a…not so much a dirty look, but a disappointed one…from Jazz, but before she could process it, her daughter was back to shoveling down cereal.

What had they said?

…What had she said?

〜〜〜〜〜〜

Maddie stepped back to admire her handiwork. A chart of all ghost sightings in the city, and which ghosts had been sighted.

It was strange. The first major ghost attack had two ghosts visible. There was the strange meat ghost, and then the ghost boy, that Danny Phantom monster. Eyewitnesses had wildly different viewpoints, what with opinions and all that, but they could all agree on the things each ghost did, if not the motivations.

The ghost boy was focused on the meat ghost for the most part, but never hesitated to shove someone away from where the meat ghost attacked. The meat ghost, on the other hand, seemed bent on wreaking havoc.

For the most part, that's how most of the sightings went. Phantom and another ghost showed up, they fought, Phantom kept humans out of imminent danger while his foes sought to put them there.

There were a few out-of-character sightings. The sudden ecto-crime spree, for example. Phantom had teamed up with some other ghosts who were later seen at that Circus Gothica, and they had robbed and pillaged for quite a while before suddenly disbanding.

It could have been some outside force making Phantom act that way.

But Phantom was, well, a phantom, a ghost, and ghosts were nothing if not selfish, unpredictable scum.

He may have saved their town from other ghosts, but he most likely had his own plans for their fair city, and Maddie was going to get to the bottom of it!

With a determined grin, she wrote down her theory and her plans for Phantom before she forgot them.

The next time she saw Danny, her Danny, he was coming back up the stairs from the basement, and he looked like he was going to hurl.

〜〜〜〜〜〜

"NOOOO!" Maddie sat up in bed, eyes wide and heart pounding.

"Huh? What?" Jack sat up next, woken by his wife's scream. "Ghost?!"

Maddie forced herself to calm down. "No…no ghosts…just that nightmare again."

"The one with that creepy circus guy?" Jack asked, his face overtaken by worry.

"That's the one." Maddie nodded.

The nightmare always started out in a rollercoaster. Circus Gothica's ringmaster, 'Freakshow,' was there, except he had some superweapon or something and was changing reality.

Phantom was there, except for some reason her mind thought it was her Danny. Dreams were weird like that.

Phantom/Danny did some yelling at the Ringmaster, then flew up to the crazy rollercoaster, only to be zapped into some kind of jell-o state. The rollercoaster crashed into him, and that's always when she woke up.

Hah! Her son, Danny Phantom! As if!

The other nightmare was even weirder, truth be told!

"…hahahahaha…I AM YOUR BOY!"

Why her mind liked doing that to her was beyond her, so she rolled over and went back to sleep.

〜〜〜〜〜〜

Each memory piled up behind Maddie's eyes came crashing down, the pieces fitting together like a puzzle she'd been envisioning wrong the whole time.

She stared at the wreckage of the Speeder, the color draining from her face.

"JAAACK?! WHERE'S DANNY?!"

For a brief and terrible moment, Maddie and Jack Fenton could feel their hearts stop in their chests, because deep down, they knew the answer to that question. It had taken them a few years and a generous portion of words and deeds they now wished they could take back, but they finally knew what Danny always ran off to do.

"LOOK!" Sam pointed back where the Speeder had come from. "THE PORTAL!"

Maddie was the first to press her face against the glass.

There, in the sky, leading a massive group of ghosts toward the antenna, was Danny Phantom.

Seeing him up there made her realize she should have connected the dots sooner. There was almost never a time when both were seen simultaneously. Ever since the accident, Phantom had been around. Danny suddenly had a healthy fear of all things anti-ecto. Fenton, Phantom. Both were named Danny, for crying out loud!

Danny Phantom, or rather, Danny Fenton, grinned down at the celebrating humans in the base, victory in his eyes, before reaching the antenna and signalling the other ghosts to join him.

Danny grinned at one of the ghosts and spoke, though nobody heard what he said. The ghost replied with more than a little sass, but Danny just smiled wider.

The machinery operators rushed back into position as the last of the ghosts got to the antenna. Tucker led the team of overseers in checking the power levels of the ghosts and allocating it to each of the power distributors laid out all over the globe.

Maddie's team monitored the Disasteroid as its shadow covered more and more of the sky. She gave herself a little chuckle. Whatever disaster had given her son these powers had turned out for the best after all.

Jack signalled Valerie Gray, who activated the distributors and cast a glance at the ghosts outside.

Their team focused their power on the machinery, lighting the earth up like a global Christmas ornament. The green glow took over the antenna, then rushed out through the cables and around the world at record pace.

"TUCKER! HOW? MUCH?? LONGER???" The strain in Danny's voice could almost be felt in each human's muscles, almost as if they were out there with him, using their life force to power their only hope.

Tucker kept his eye on the monitor, waiting for the Disasteroid to hit that sweet spot between "save the world" and "save the ghosts' energy." The moment there was a clear shot, he yelled, "NOW!!!"

From the top of the tower, Maddie watched as Danny-her son, her boy, her hero, her prey oh goodness no she'd hunted him howcouldshewhatkindofmother-disappeared from view, followed by the other ghosts.

Then the antenna vanished in chunks, and once it was completely unseen, the invisibility shot out like a splatter of paint, racing around the globe faster than anyone thought possible, even after watching the green light shoot through the power cables. There were surprised murmurs from the control tower as the humans experienced what it was like to become intangibile.

There was a beep from Tucker's monitor, signalling the completion of the worldwide intangibility.

Jack could only imagine the shouts of joy around the globe as their planet, their home, vanished as if into thin air. Jack could only imagine the power his son was pouring into that one gargantuan antenna. Jack could only imagine the things he would have been planning already had he not known who Danny Phantom really was.

Jack could only imagine what he'd have done, standing over the operating table with his son pulled apart before him.

For a tense few seconds, all that could be heard was the sounds of the ghosts pushing themselves to the limit. Then Danny screamed through grit teeth, "WHERE'S THE ASTEROID?!"

As if in answer, the sinister green space rock shot out from under them, blasting its way back into space without leaving so much as an impact crater.

As they all cheered, the ghosts pulled away from the antenna, and the world regained its substance. Maddie and Jack threw themselves into each other's arms, Sam and Jazz hugged like the sisters they now were, and Tucker heaved a sigh of relief, an exhausted smile on his face.

Maddie rushed to the door, the others not far behind. She was overtaken by Sam, Jazz, and Tucker, who all tackled Danny to the ground in overjoyed hugs, but she and Jack were right behind them.

Danny noticed the ghost he'd spoken with before and stood up to face him. "I don't know what to say other than…thanks, Skulker. To all of you."

"Don't get too mushy on us, Ghost Child." The gh-Skulker grabbed Danny by the jumpsuit, staring him down. "Remember, I'll never stop hunting you. And now that you've saved your world, you're a much more valuable prize." With that more-than-slightly-ominous message, he released Danny, shooting up into the sky.

Danny smiled softly as the rest of the ghosts followed Skulker's lead, flying up and away, disappearing into the portal before it vanished.

Jack cleared his throat, his voice slightly hostile. "Nice job, Danny…"

Danny froze for a second before facing them.

Jack went on, his voice softening. "Or should we say, Danny." The proud parent in his voice was almost palpable now.

Danny's heart skipped a beat as he put on some fake bravado and wagged a finger at them, cuz that's what you do in this situation, right? "What? Uh…Sorry, citizens, but I have no idea WHAT you're talking about…"

Maddie took hold of his finger, pushing it back down. "Isn't there's something you wanna tell us?"

Danny looked lost for a moment, but Jazz came up beside him. "It's okay, Danny." At her brother's (HER BROTHER'S! Jack berated himself for never realizing) confused look, she went on. "They know."

Danny looked around at everyone who'd come out to meet him.

Almost everyone stared back, slightly confused. "They know?" "They know" what? What was so important that their hero had to keep it a secret from all except a handful of people?

His parents were among the few who didn't harbor any confusion.

They stared back at him with parental pride in their eyes.

Danny seemed worried, then thoughtful. Then he set his face in its iconic "now or never" expression, and a white ring shot out from his waist. It split into an upper and lower ring, and as they parted, his jumpsuit gave way to a white tee and jeans. The gloves and boots disappeared, and his hair and eyes…

The one thing he'd kept from changing in front of anybody, even through the Specter Shrinker incident…

What was white became black, and what was green became blue.

Danny Fenton stood there, unmasked as the hero of Casper High, Amity Park, and now the whole world…and he seemed surprised at the rousing cheer he got once he was finished.

His parents swept him up into a hug, and the emotions they'd all been suppressing rose up.

"I'm so sorry I never told you guys…" Danny mumbled into his dad's shoulder.

"We never gave you any reason to, sweetie." Maddie cried into her son's shirt. "We actually gave you plenty of reasons not to! But…I'm just glad you're safe."

Jack nodded, too overcome to say anything.

The three held together that much tighter.

Whatever the future would bring, they would face it together, the way they should have in the beginning.

Around them, the people cheered as the reunited family wept in relief.

〜〜〜〜〜〜

This one's a bit shorter than the other two, but I'm planning on a really long one-shot to compensate.

Really long.

We're talking "double the length of the compilation in one shot" long.

So uh, here you go, one more revelation fic because good grief I can't get enough of people going "holy crap im an idiot that's not a clue that's a billboard"