Clockwork, floating in his lair observing all of time, on a whim turned his attention back to one timeline in particular. A much darker timeline than the one that was currently set into motion. One that had a very real possibility of occurring, had he not intentionally left traces for Plasmius to follow back to him.

In this timeline, Plasmius never learned of Clockwork's intervention and thus never confronted him about it. He simply assumed Danny had died in the explosion along with the rest of his friends and family, thus tumbling into a downward spiral of depression that eventually ended with him taking his own life. After that he would wander the Ghost Zone forever searching for something to give his existence purpose again. Something he would never find, thus living out his own personal Hell in perpetuity.

As a result, everything was different. Danny had no one to guide him, look after him, teach him, make him pursue his education, or anything else. Vlad had been the trigger for so much. And with him never having done any of that, the entire timeline fell apart into something Clockwork never intended.

(In the alternate timeline)

"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 it 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 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 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 Michael 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 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, a concept you should all be very familiar with but taken to even more of an extreme then in your case. 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.

Later, Danny was floating above the main hang out of a pair of Overlords who were apparently friends. Vox and Valentino. Two relatively new Overlords in the grand scheme of Hell. They had both died roughly around the time of the nineteen fifties, not a very long time for the residents of Hell. After that they rose to power roughly around the same time and quickly became friends and business partners.

He chose them specifically because of how powerful they were. It had originally been a toss up between them, Alastor, and the Von Eldritch family. He ultimately decided on them because at least in theory killing two overlords at once would be more impressive and earn him more fear and respect than killing just one, and the Von Eldritch family had known connections to the upper echelons of higher ranking Hellborn demons such as the Morningstar family. Danny had no idea how powerful Lucifer was in terms of raw combat ability but considering he was the King of Hell Danny couldn't imagine him being any less powerful than Pariah Dark. And Danny knew full well he wasn't powerful enough to take on Pariah Dark by himself let alone without the exosuit his parents had made, so he didn't want to risk provoking Lucifer by killing Overlords with connections to him. He wasn't stupid or suicidal. So Vox and Valentino were his best options.

Besides which, he had read up on the two of them and investigated their territories whilst invisible. What he found in Vox's was bad, but fairly bog standard for Hell. Valentino, on the other hand… The things Danny saw in Valentino's territory would haunt him for the rest of eternity. And Vox was complicit in Valentino's crimes by willingly distributing the "porn" Valentino made, some of which had legitimately made Danny puke to see, especially in person. So as far as Danny was concerned, if anyone deserved to have their souls destroyed it was Vox and Valentino.

So he waited invisibly in the sky above their favorite hang out for a few hours, waiting for them both to arrive. Vox showed up first and entered the building. Then Valentino showed up.

At that point Danny split himself in two, creating a clone of himself. Having his clone start recording what he was about to do using a camera he stole, Danny then flew down towards Valentino at a fraction of the speed of light, grabbed him, and proceeded to smash him through several walls and out the other side of the building. Danny casually dodged laser beams on a regular basis, so flying toward someone moving at a walking pace at one fifth the speed of light then slamming them through a building was child's play for him. Once he and Valentino were out the other side of the building Danny flew him several miles up into the air before flying back towards the ground at two thirds the speed of light. When they impacted the ground they created a massive crater in the street and Valentino started coughing up blood.

Not letting up, ecto-energy blazed around Danny's fists as he proceeded to pummel Valentino with pure unbridled hatred and fury.

Suddenly he was blasted by a powerful bolt of electricity from behind that caused his body to lock up. He could feel his flesh boiling from the intensity of the electricity. When it was over, he collapsed to the ground next to Valentino groaning in pain.

"Val! Are you alright?!" Vox shouted as he ran out of the building.

Valentino threw Danny off of him and pushed himself back up. "Yeah, I'm alright… Fuck! This was a brand new coat too! Fuckin' damn it… Ah well… Gotta admit, you throw a damn strong punch, kid. But you just caught me off guard. If I had been prepared for that, that entire fuckin' thing would'a gone very differently."

Danny pushed himself back up to his feet and snarled at Valentino and Vox. Ecto Energy blazed around him as he floated back up into the air. "Maybe, but neither of you will be walking away from this fight either way." He then split himself into even more clones.


For this chapter I only really have one question. When should Lucifer intervene and effectively adopt Danny? Before or during Skulker's attack? Or do you think Danny should die during Skulker's attack and become a cambion/half demon that way?