Author's Note: Remember the author's note on Chapter One where I said this was my first fanfic? Yeah, I made a bunch of mistakes with this story. One of those mistakes was losing a significant scene to the netherverse of the internet, in which Danny learns that Amber McLean is so miserable in part because Penelope Spectra is her guidance counselor. I have no idea where that scene went, and I don't remember how exactly it happened. So yeah, what you're about to read doesn't follow from the previous chapter. Suffice it to say, Spectra is about to attack Danny because, as always, Danny wants to do the right thing, even if it means changing history.

Hill Valey, California, October 13, 1985

Spectra's claws went up to come down on Danny's head. They seemed to elongate as she raised her arm for the deathblow, and Danny would never know if that was just his perception or they actually did become more menacing. He couldn't move, he couldn't turn intangible. All he could do was...

..."GET DOWN!" yelled a voice from right behind him. Danny obeyed, almost subconsciously falling, letting gravity take hold and not caring how much it hurt. He'd suffered worse. Much worse.

"MAKANKOSAPPO!" Flare yelled with all his might. He extended his palm and a drilling corkscrew of fire lanced out and slammed right into Spectra's black face. She when flying backwards, riding the long beam. "Go," Flare yelled at Danny. "Get your thermos-thing and lock her up!"

"Right." Suddenly rejuvenated by the ectodrenaline a ghost flame passing two feet over him generated, Danny took off for the cansiter, which Spectra had just passed over. (The whole battle since Danny used the Soul Reaver has taken place in a straight line over about fifty yards.) Last time he had his flight speed clocked, Sam registered it at 112 Miles Per Hour. But with Danny's experience since then, he was sure he was breaking 120 as he flew towards the Fenton Thermos. Reaching down with his hand, he scooped it up, flying not a foot below Flare's fire beam.

Now the hard part: catching Spectra before she recovered. Danny floored it as he made much ghostly haste to catch up with Spectra. He passed centimeters under the spiked boots her current form wore, and kept it up as hard as he needed to, firing the Thermos in front of her. The ghostly shrink slammed into the blue wave and was pulled into the thermos, this time with her youth intact. Then Danny lost all control and black out as he slamed into the ground at at least 80 MPH and bounced 20 or more feet before skidding to a halt. His ghost form deactivated itself...

"That guy ROCKS!" Timmy said, observing the fight through binoculars from a nearby Redwood. The entire battle from the time

"And he fights," Cosmo said, still oblivous. Wanda gave him a glare. "Well. He does.."

"Wanda. Can you heal that guy? The Pinhead isn't going to leave without him as much as he hates changing the past..."

"Sure thing, Sport," Wanda said. A puff of purple smoke with the word "BandAid" in the middle appeared over the Phantom Kid, and he sat up, seemingly confused. Not that Timmy actually knew what seemingly meant.

At the College Campus

"Tell your sister I said 'Hi' for me," Biff Tannen said as he and his son walked away from 1995's Marty. "If you ever come near my son again, we're gonna press charges! Ya' Butthead!"

"Yeesh," Marty sighed. Appearantly his dad KO'ing Biff in one punch had earned respect for the McFly side of the family only. If Biff thought Marty was a Baines, then he was still fair game, Marty supposed. Marty decided he would never understand the id of the Tannen family. Especially the part that thought calling someone a butthead was a terribly stinging insult.

Thankfully, there had been witnesses who vouched that Cliff had provoked the fight, Marty had been able to walk away with just a warning from the police. He was just thankful he had a fake ID under the name "Joey Baines", among others like Calvin Kline and Clint Eastwood, made for time traveling emergencies. But since Joey was currently in prison, he might want to get that changed to another of his uncles. Meh. He wasn't going to be in this era for much longer anyway...

At Eastwood Ravine

Danny opened his eyes. Why am I not half dead. Wait. I am always half dead... I mean.. Why am I awake? His thoughts after those were a bit muddled. But otherwise he felt fine as he sat up. A blue gust escaped from his mouth and he stood up to see Flare standing by him. Danny was surprised that he had the capacity to go ghost, and found that the Thermos was still with that form. How he'd managed to hold on to it through that ordeal, he had no idea...

"Righteous job, man," Flare yelled as he approached Danny.

"Makanko? What'sit? Where in the Hill did that come from?" Danny asked

"You said to think Japanese so I did. Makankosappo is basically Screw Beam of the Devil.. And since it was a drilling beam of fire, I thought.. you know.."

"You know Japanese." Danny more stated than asked.

"I am Japanese," Flare replied, looking directly at Danny for the first time. Indeed, Danny now noticed beyond his transparent and pale skin, Flare was indeed ethnically Japanese. Flare wore faded grey ecto-jeans and a red ecto-denim shirt with big sleeves and a stylized F on it. Under his shirt he wore a black shirt that was probably ecto-cotton, and a crooked belt of ecto-felt was tied over the whole thing. Flare's hair looked like fire. It was oranges and reds mixed with bright spots of yellow and off-white. It stood up in spikes, similar to Yamucha-sama's from Dragon Ball Z before he let it grow back out during the android saga. And why Danny was watching Dragon Ball Z in a universe that showed Maho-Mushi? Heck, even he didn't have the answer. Maybe he watched them both. After all, the idea for Soul Reaver did come from Maho-Mushi..

"Right." Danny laughed. All his observations, of course, only took a second or two in real time.

Just then, Amber darted in. That was unexpected, Danny thought!

"OMIGOSH! THAT WAS AMAZING!" Amber yelled in Danny's face! "You're like some-kind of super hero or something! Who are you!"

She was leaning way too close for Danny's comfort too. But at least she looked happy... But that might not be a good thing...

Paradox Warning Alarm!...

Then she kissed him...

Time seemed to freeze. Danny didn't know what to do. His head warned him of paradox... But his heart couln't bare to hurt her again...

"Amber, we can't do this. I am not who you want me to be..." But she just kissed him harder. She's so desperate, Danny thought.

Amber backed away. "You want this..."

"No." Danny replied. I'm.. I'm from the future...

"You expect me to believe that?" She said. Her eyes were almost glossed over with tears. Yet another rejection... NO! It woudln't happen. This guy was her hero... her savior!

"Ember!" Danny pushed her away.

"Say my name!" Her right eye twitched in classic Hartman style as she grabbed Danny again.

"You don't get it, Amber! In the future, we are enemies! You tried to kill me and my best friend!" Danny couldn't tell if the expression on her face was horror or anger. But he didn't like it.

Danny didn't know what to do. But then, something happened. He felt dizzy and pushed Amber away again as he collapsed to his knees. He held up his hand and goggled in horror as he realized it was phasing out. But he felt as he pushed her away it made it worse. His hand instinctively went to the tape in his pocket. He pulled it out. And it no longer was a memorial, but just a tape. The kind bought in a store. And the eulogy on the back...

Was fading back in.

In his pocket, it had changed. And when he pushed her away, it had become something worse... So he raised his hand up. And Amber took it. Suddenly, the pain vanished and he stopped phasing out. This can't be happening. Either I comfort her or she does something terrible to me and Sam. So Danny let her kiss him again. He just wished he had more time... And a plan.

Outside the College

Marty suddenly felt better. He got back up. He suddenly became aware of why he had fallen over. It was something he'd felt before and something he'd never wanted to experience again. But he just had. Phasing out of existence. Of becoming a living paradox. The ice that had run through his body and consumed his hand on that stage in that gym was indesicribible. The existense of the entire universe depended on his parents getting together, and only his father's last minute decison had saved him... Saved everyone.

"Marty," he mouthed. "What have you done?"

Hiding in the Foliage

"What was that?" Timmy gaped, sitting up. "It felt like my legs were just dipped in liquid nitrogen..."

The Ravine

The kiss ended and Amber stepped back. "This isn't right," she said at lenght, hurt but not crushed. "But I needed it all the same. Thank you..."

Then she ran away. Danny looked down at the tape again. The date of death had changed one last time. December 22, 1985. Another month and twenty days, Danny realized. That was how long such a simple action as dropping one's defenses had given her. How a girl so tormented could seem so kind and then turn out so evil was beyond Danny's comprehension now. Perhaps it was simply as it seemed. She spent her entire short life searching for someone to approve of her. To not believe rumors and call her terrible things. To esteem her as an equal, not trample her like a doormat. And when she couldn't find that in her life she killed herself. And was still seeking it in death.

Only now she has music that can brainwash her into people worshiping her. It almost scared Danny, really. She got more powerful when they chanted her name. She derived power from the 'approval' of others. Even if the approval was entirely artifical, and she knew it. There was a lesson in there somewhere, Danny thought.

"So. See you in the future?" Danny asked Flare.

"Maybe." Flare said. And then he faded out.

And...

Marty showed up about that time, finally away from the cops and the Tannens. He swore to himself that if he ever met another member of the Tannen family anywhen other than his own current year, he would destroy the time machine outright as soon as he got back home.

"What happened?" Marty asked Danny as he approched the teenager.

"Amber came. She thought... She thought that I.. was her hero. That I could save her from her misery."

"What happened!" Marty repeated.

"She..." Danny sighed. "Never mind. It's over. The timeline is set right. We have to get out of this crazy decade before I get us all killed. Or worse, I go insane."

Then it occured to Danny that he had two very angry dead phsychologists in his thermos. "But first, we have to go back by the Paranormal Lab."

What!"

"I have to dump these two into the ghost zone. If I don't, they'll keep causing trouble here."

"Then just take 'em with us!"

"Uh. That would cause a major paradox. Geez I thought you were the time-travel expert here."

"Right. Ok.. This is heavy."

"Trust me. If I know my dad, his "Incorrect calculations" were something a braindead Keanu Reaves could figure out."

"Keanu who?" Marty asked.

Danny just sighed again.

Hill Valley University

"I knew Masters and Fenton were slackers," Dean Harvey Strickland said has he left the barren-but-still-somehow-messy computer lab"But for Maddie Fisher to be hanging out with those two? Such a brilliant young mind gone to waste."

"Geez, doesn't anyone in Strickland's family have hair," Marty joke as they went to examine the notes on which Jack had made the calculations. The accident earlier had meant that the lab was off limits for anyone, but that wasn't a problem for Danny and his intangibility.

Marty scanned the documents and found they were way out of his league. Then Danny looked at them...

"THIS IS UNBELIEVE ABLE!" Danny yelled. Most of the calculations were advanced Calculus that Danny had no idea how to work. But There was a blatantly obvious mistake right in the middle of the page. In a simple arithmetic problem, Jack had forgotten to carry a 2. "He blasted Vlad in the face, thereby creating my arch nemisis by forgetting to carry a two?"

Danny skimmed through several other papers worth of calculations until he found one that wasn't math. It was... A grocery list... He turned it over and wrote on the back, working the arithmetic, this time carrying the 2. Then he plugged the new answer into the original equations.. (and thanked God he had a caclulator on his otherwise usless cell phone) and got the answers he needed...

"Ok, Marty. You won't believe this. Set the motor to run at 88 RPMs, and dial the wattage down to 1.21 kilowatts."

"I don't believe this." Marty said has he made the adjustments. "Maybe those numbers are some sort of para-physical multi-unviersal constant. Otherwise it's just an incredible conincedence..."

Danny and Marty stood back as the young Fenton plugged in the prototype portal. There was a green ecto blast that shot out reminiscant of Stargate SG1, and then it became a stable portal. Danny beamed success, and then an annoying realization hit him.

"What if they remember me?"

Suddenly, as if on cue, a puff of purple smoke with words in it appeared over the thermos.

Totally Forgotten!

"Um, Marty. Was there just a puff of smoke with the words 'Totaly Forgotten' appearing over that thermos..."

"Um.. Yeah. I think so..."

"That was weird."

"Most definitely."

"You think it is some sort of good omen?"

"Do we have any other choice?"

Danny strode across the room. Suddenly another poof of smoke and a note appeared on the table where the grocery list had been. Danny read it. YES, THEY HAVE FORGOTTEN IT!

"Good enough for me." Danny sighed, blasting the duo of misery aborbers into the ghost zone.