"NOOOO!" Danny screamed as the Nasty Burger sauce overheated and exploded, killing his friends and family.
He was thrown back by the explosion and suddenly time stopped. Clockwork appeared out of a portal next to Danny's frozen form and said, "Ah, Danny… I had hoped you would be able to avoid this future if you were just given a chance to try. But it seems that this was simply inevitable. Fine. Then it seems I have no choice but to do my job. However, there are more ways to prevent this future from coming to pass than just killing you. In fact, killing you is probably the worst option. Though, with what I have in mind there really isn't much difference. Perhaps killing you now would even be a mercy since there's still a chance no matter how small that you may still go to Heaven. But after seeing what you do in the future, I'm afraid I can't afford to risk being merciful."
Holding out a hand directly next to him he created what appeared to be a burning crimson portal with a large orange pentagram in the middle. He then took the Fenton Thermos containing Dan Phantom away from Danny, just to ensure the boy couldn't release Dan later. Dan still had one of Clockwork's medallions, which made him unbound by the rules of time, Clockwork would need to take it from him so he could cease to exist in his current form.
"If you are going to become evil, then I'll simply put you where all the other evil humans go when they die. You'll fit right in, I'm sure. Hmph… Don't cause too much trouble down there, though. I would rather not have Lucifer coming to my realm and having to listen to him shouting at me for making you his problem. He can be quite insufferable when he's angry." With that said, he grabbed Danny's frozen form and tossed him through the portal and into Hell before closing the portal behind him.
Time resumed and several Observants appeared behind Clockwork. "You sent the boy to Hell? What if he escapes?! You know there are ways to create portals back to the realm of the living in Hell!" One of the Observants shouted at Clockwork.
"Oh, please… Do you really think I have so little foresight?" Clockwork asked, turning to face the observants. "I'm currently in multiple locations across space and time speaking to Stolas and the other members of the Ars Goetia who have books with spells to create portals to ensure the boy never escapes. Besides, if I killed him then it's entirely possible he would have ended up there anyway, especially with how strictly Heaven enforces their asinine rules, and his escape would have been just as likely. And by killing him I would have just made him even more powerful because then he would be half ghost half demon instead of half ghost half human."
Clockwork's form shifted from that of an adult to that of an old man, and he created an illusion to show the Observants everything he was saying. "We could easily have been dealing with a being surpassing even the highest archangels and demons rather than being just on par with them. A veritable demigod. Need I remind you that he defeated Pariah Dark, the King of Ghosts, a being on par with Lucifer and Gabriel as a mere teenager? As an adult he was significantly more powerful than he is currently. Plus he has already caused the apocalypse once by himself as a mere ghost. He even destroyed all of the angels that Heaven sent to stop him and the armies of demons, including the entire Ars Goetia, that Lucifer sent to deal with him in this timeline. If he became half demon instead of half human the apocalypse would only come faster and would be significantly worse for all of the realms and none but the creator himself would be able to stop him. And the creator never intervenes, something you should all be very familiar with. So this was simply the safest option."
"To be fair, he was wearing a mechanical suit that increased his power significantly when he defeated the Ghost King." Another Observant stated.
"And what is to stop him from building another? Or even just hunting down and stealing the Ring of Rage and Crown of Fire? His ghost half makes him immortal so he has plenty of time to learn how to do what his parents did in order to build another suit if he so desires. And as an adult he was still every bit the Ghost King's equal, and that is factoring in Pariah's crown and ring. Thus the reason he never hunted down the crown or ring and never bothered with the suit, he simply never needed them because he was already more than powerful enough." Clockwork countered.
"Fine… But if this goes wrong, we expect you to fix it." The third Observant stated.
"Of course. Protecting the timeline is my job after all. Moreso, even, than it is yours." Clockwork stated.
(Danny)
Danny skidded to a stop in the middle of a road, but his surroundings had changed completely. He was now in the middle of a city that he did not recognize. Then he noticed all of the creatures surrounding him. Some looked like the classical depiction of demons with horns, red skin, pointed tails, and hooves while others looked completely different.
"Hm? What's this? You don't look like a demon… Don't smell like one either. Wait… Are you human?" Said a massive creature that looked like a wolf with crimson red eyes.
Danny ignored the creature still in shock about watching his friends and family die before his very eyes. Tears were streaming down his face and he started sobbing.
The demon snarled at him and grabbed him by the shirt. Lifting Danny up into the air the demon growled furiously, "Hey, kid! I'm talking to you! Fucking say something, you dumbass piece of shit!"
"Leave me alone!" Danny shouted back before turning into his ghost form and blasted the demon. The demon was forced to release Danny as he was sent flying backwards. Danny then floated up into the air, still sobbing and flew away. He wasn't in the mood to fight anymore ghosts right now. Quite the opposite in fact. He just watched his friends and family die right before his very eyes. He just wanted to be left alone.
So he flew and he flew and he flew. Until he was outside of this city and was in the middle of nowhere. He then landed and continued sobbing for a couple hours. Eventually he started to calm down a bit. At that point he decided he needed to learn where he was, because it was clear to him by the pentagram in the sky in place of the sun and the monster that tried to attack him earlier that he was no longer on Earth. He had to be somewhere in the Ghost Zone.
So he flew back to the city he had just been in. Landing in the middle of it he looked around and was disgusted by what he saw. Vending machines full of drugs, cannibalistic butcher shops, homeless people pissing or defecating in the streets, murderers, rapists, women and children being outright kidnapped in broad daylight. He tried to stop some of the crimes he witnessed but there were just too many. This place was absolutely revolting to him.
And reading the signs on the streets Danny started to get a bad feeling that he knew where he had ended up. Hell. He was in Hell. He had never believed in Hell before, especially after visiting the Ghost Zone. However if it existed, and he was starting to believe it did, then this was definitely it.
"Great… First everyone I know and love is murdered by my future self and now I'm in Hell? Literal, biblical Hell… And I can't exactly find any portals out of here… What did I ever do to deserve this? All I wanted to do was to pass that stupid test…" Danny muttered morosely.
Then his sadness started turning to anger. He was angry at that time Ghost for not trying to help him. He was Angry at his future self for murdering his family. And above all else, he was angry at himself for cheating on the C.A.T. thus setting all of this into motion in the first place. He was now determined to prove Clockwork and his future self wrong. He would not become Dan Phantom, he refused. No matter how much he hurt, no matter how much he missed them, he would not become the man… no, the monster who murdered them. And if he was going to be stuck in Hell, he would continue doing what he did in Amity Park and protect the people who need to be protected and punish those who needed to be punished.
But if he was going to do that, he needed a place to keep the criminals since he no longer had access to the ghost portal and thus couldn't just banish them to the ghost zone. Perhaps he could build a new ghost portal? He wasn't as good with making technology as his parents were but he had learned quite a bit from them and he did have a few things they made with him at the moment. Perhaps he could reverse engineer the technology to make a ghost portal? But if he could do that then why not just use it to escape? No…
He could turn back into a human so he was still alive. So he hadn't died and been sent here. If he had to guess, Clockwork had probably sent him here. Probably intending for it to serve as his eternal prison so if he turned into Dan Phantom, he couldn't do anything to the world of the living. That suggested if he tried to create a ghost portal it either wouldn't work, or Clockwork would just destroy it before he could use it to escape. So Danny had to think of something else. A prison, maybe? He supposed he might be able to build something like that. But it would take time, materials, and manpower. Manpower he could supplement by splitting himself into clones, at least to an extent. He might still have to hire some demons to help him, if possible. Time, he had plenty of. Materials, on the other hand… He would need to acquire those somehow.
He decided he would also need to learn more about demons and how their powers worked. If they all had the same powers as ghosts and could turn intangible, then he would have to design his prison with that in mind. Otherwise he could build a fairly standard prison like the ones they had on Earth, at least in theory.
He spent the next several weeks learning absolutely everything he needed to know about Hell. He learned about the existence of Lucifer, Heaven, Angels, the Exterminators, the Ars Goetia, and the Overlords. And he decided to start out by carving out his own territory in Pentagram City as an Overlord in his own right. But to do that, he knew he would need people willing to work with him be it through fear or respect. He would vastly prefer the option of respect, but considering he was in Hell he was willing to work with fear if he absolutely had to.
And considering the fact he was in Hell, what was the best way of going about getting both fear and respect? Obviously, the best option was taking down some big names, recording himself doing so, and sending the footage to all of the news stations along with an offer to come work for him. But this was Hell and he had no way of imprisoning anyone here long term, at least as far as he was currently aware. But he was a ghost. Or half ghost at the very least. So he could touch souls, hurt souls. And if he could hurt souls he should be able to destroy them. At least in theory.
So he started experimenting. He started out on muggers and rapists in alleys. And with each subsequent attack he began trying more and more extreme methods and started becoming more and more brutal with his approach until one day it finally happened. He destroyed the soul of a cannibal. Their body crumbled to dust and an ethereal black substance floated out of the pile of dust. Danny grabbed that substance and could immediately tell what it was. The demon's essence, it's soul. So using all the rage and hatred boiling within him, he started pumping highly destructive ecto-energy into it. The substance started turning green and Danny could hear it screaming in agony. Yet he continued. He continued until the soul could no longer hold itself together and it fizzled out completely.
"It worked… It really worked…" Danny said, looking down at his own hands which were trembling. He had just killed someone. No… Worse than that. He had just erased them from existence entirely. Even Exterminator weapons didn't work like this, as far as he was aware. No, they just severed the demon's essence from their body and that essence would then go on to possess an object and the demon would be sort of 'reborn' in said object. It wouldn't result in the same person with the same personality but it was close enough to rebirth as far as Danny was concerned. What Danny had just done was take it a step further and destroyed even that essence making any sort of 'rebirth' completely impossible. He had quite literally destroyed that demon's very soul.
Taking a deep breath to calm himself down he clenched his fists and snarled to himself. He then rushed to go attack even more criminals in alleyways. He wanted to practice this new found ability just to make sure that it wasn't simply a fluke. He attacked nine more demons and managed to repeat it consistently every time. Eventually he decided he had enough practice. He would rest for a while to build his energy back up, then it was time he killed an Overlord.
(Vlad Plasmius)
"CLOCKWORK!" Vlad roared at the top of his lungs as he burst into Clockwork's castle within Clockwork's realm within the Ghost Zone causing the entire building to tremble from the sheer force of his ghost power enhanced voice. He was wearing both the Crown of Fire and Ring of Rage which he had recently stolen from Pariah Dark after he and Danny had re-imprisoned him. Dark Purple ecto energy was blazing around him in a massive ghostly inferno.
"Vlad Plasmius, or should I call you Vlad Masters? To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?" Clockwork inquired in a slightly annoyed tone.
"You know damn well why I'm here you bastard! I know you had something to do with Danny's disappearance! My machines detected the temporal anomalies and infernal energies present at the scene where his friends and family all died! I demand that you return him to me this instant!" Vlad shouted.
"Or what?" Clockwork said, unfazed by Vlad's fury. His old form changed to that of a toddler.
"Or I will rip your soul to pieces and consume your very essence!" Vlad growled, the ecto-energy blazing around him even more intensely than before.
This chapter is a bit shorter than what I'm used to writing. But I sort of wanted to ask you all a question. Would you guys like to see Vlad go to Hell to help Danny? You know, act as a sort of father figure to him now that his family is dead? Or should Danny go it alone and build up his new city in Hell entirely by himself? Clockwork can show Vlad the future and thus avoid Vlad helping Danny separate his ghost and human halves so that's not a big issue. Just sort of curious which direction seems more interesting to you all.
No the rest of his friends and family will not be showing up at any point in this story. None of them ended up in Hell. Not even Sam, much to her immense disappointment I'm sure.
