Writer's Note: At last we get to go to the future. Honestly I'm sick and tired of the past, but I really wanted to write the stuff about Amber McLean. I've always hoped the show would go into stuff like what were these people like when they were alive to make them turn out Danny's Enemies after they were dead.
But the meat of the action happens in the future, so that is where we must go now...
Somewhere Above Hill Valley
Marty sat back as he and Danny (and the young stowaway they didn't know about) were riding high above the lazy California town where Marty had been raised.
"So. When to?" Marty asked Danny. In the present they couldn't beat Vlad, and changing the past could result in disaster.
It was a question Danny was still pondering when Marty enaged the Time Circuits and saw the date that Timmy's godparents had told it to go to. April 3, 2015...
"How did that date get punched in?" Marty asked no body in particular.
"I have absolutely no idea." Danny replied. Danny didn't know about the time machine enough for a random date to concern him. It did occur to him that April Third was the aniversary of the date he'd first fought the ectopusses Vlad had sent to test his father. That Sunday Sam and Tucker had been over while his dad had lectured him about ghosts and eating horse meat... He'd had a problem with that...
But now, he'd never get another paternal lecture. He'd never again here his father exclaim "Suffering Spooks!" or accidently drink backwash again. Not that he particularly cared for that taste but... His dad...
"Take me to the distant past," Danny told Marty."I can train. For years if I have to. Then I'll come back and beat Vlad."
"Hey! You think I want to spend years in the past! I have a wife! I'm expecting a daughter... in three years..."
"Then leave me and come back."
"There is no way I'm leaving you alone in the past!" Marty reached to delete the time and change it to something.
In the back seat...
"NO!" Timmy yelled. "I wish that nothing could prevent us from going to the future!" Timmy yelled. The Fairies didn't even bother to check the rules. They didn't even use magic. In fact, Wanda did nothing at all.
"Take that!" Cosmo said, throwing Timmy's GameBuddy at the time-cicuit with suprising strenght.
"Where did that come from Cosmo?" his wife asked?
"I've been playing catch with snowball!" Cosmo yelled, reffering to his infamous three-headed fire-breathing hydra that had once fried Jorgen and once burned the set of "This is Your Wish" to ashes. Bill CrystalBall had threatened to sue, until he realized that Cosmo was bankrupt and that Fairy Mason only took human clients. Which was very convenient for Cosmo.
Up front of the Striker Z
"What the!" Marty yelled as the input device on the time circuit control suddenly shattered and broke off.
"Maybe it's another omen, like that smoke cloud that appeared over my thermos." Suddenly Danny realized that he had released the Box Ghost with Spectra and Bertrand. But there was nothing he could do about that now. He just hoped that, if Time Cop was right, that the two Box Ghost selves didn't get anywhere near each-other.
"We're going to the future, then," Marty said. Danny goggled. At first he didn't believe Marty was serous, but he was. Marty floored it.
78
80
83
86
88!
BOOM-boom-BOOM! With a tripple sonic-boom and a trail of fire, the Striker Z vanished into the future.
The fields below auburn with the harvest suddenly became the green of spring. The sky went from sunset to early morning. Indeed, Hill County seemed to be alive with life even in the supposedly dark Future marty was trying to prevent. But to the north...
Dark clouds seemed to hang over. As cliche' as it seemed, the atmosphere itself seemed to absorb the evil. Or perhaps so much smoke from what Vlad-possesed Valerie had burned had risen that the sky was permanently stained with ash. Whatever the case, Danny dreaded going near it.
"We'll need our rest," Mary sighed. "I'll see if we can crash at my place."
"If you say so." Danny said...
The house they found was prettty much empty. The power was out, but the plumbing still worked. Things had been packed up, so Marty had assumed that Jennifer and the kids--and perhaps himself, depending on what exactly the timeline had extrapolated--had gotten out of town and headed south when the ghost army had taken over the northern US. After Amity Park, Marty recalled from Doc's briefing, Green Bay had been the first city to fall.
Danny had found several economy beds in a back room, along with a box full of news papers. Some of the headlines were telling, and they managed to let the extent of the tragedy sink in.
Superhero Massacre
President Delcares National State of Emergency
Green Lanter Killed in Action
Green Bay Falls to Spectral Onslaught
On and on. Headlines of distaster. But these seemed so far-removed from the tranquility of this house. It seemed that SoCal wasn't affected by the army. How Vlad managed to control such an army and not have them rebel was beyond Danny as well. Then he found a newspaper. It was dated September 9, 2008.
Ghosts and Metahumans Reach Unstable Truce; Expansionism of Valorian Empire slowed to a Crawl
The story went on to detail what had happened. After three years of war, a shaky ceasation of hostilites had developed. Vlad controlled an area stretch out from Green Bay as far north as Quebec and as far south as Metropolis. Seattle had been the farthest target west, and Liberty City had fallen in the East. Of America's greatest cities, only Las Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Jump City, and Gotham remained unscathed by the attacks. But the attacks had also weakend the US to the point of collapse, and the federal government had to do something it was never prepared to do before:
Become efficient.
But what of survivors? Danny thought.
Marty came in carrying a box. Full of yet more news papers.They were all USA Today, Hill Valey eddition. And he dropped one at Danny's lap.
Danny gasped. Superman Killed!
Paramilitary Compound, Colorado
Maddie leaned back in her chair and sighed. Another day, more bad news. She watched the recording of Superman's final minutes over and over. He had been confronted on his way back from a covert mission by a Spanish-speaking ghost who'd called himself "El Matador." That term ususally was applied to bull fighters, but literally it meant The Killer. Against this ghost, Superman had been pretty much powerless, as super strenght will only get you so far when you target can phase intangible.
Maddie was working on a device that could make ghosts solid objects, but she was missing something important. She knew Jack could have done it. But he'd been dead for more than 10 years. And every day, her operation was looking more and more hopeless.
"One more time, Gyzz?" Maddie addressed the green-clad teenager next to him. Despite a reportedly checkered past, Gyzz had become quite the operations expert in Tucker Foley's absence. He was said to be a genius, and Maddie didn't doubt it. Maddie watched the clip again, in the dark AV chamber on a small moniter. Superman had been possesed by the ghost, who then used Superman's body to fight his way to a no-longer-secret government facility where kryptonite was stored. Exposure to even a small amounth could easily kill Kal El, but an entire vault full of the stuff? He had litterally exploded from all the energy escaping so fast.
Maddie coudln't explain why she kept watching it. Something to do, perhaps? On the video, the over-shadowed Superman dashed downward, slamming his fist through an M1-AX tank, detonation the shells inside. Then he backflipped off the tank and landed on an armored Humvee, shattering it, and using his heat vision to ignite the fuel. He'd flown out of the explosion into the building with the kryptonite vault, which had no cameras. Then there was another explosion and face filled the screen...
No. This is ridiculous. Now I'm seeing things, I've watched it so much.But Gyzz played it back of his own volition, frame by frame...
He'd. Seen. It. Too.
And sure enough, there was some sort of being--the ghost?--coming out of the inferno Superman's self-detonation had caused. And it had screwed up and passed to close to a camera. It was only there for two frames, and then gone, but even with those images Maddie recognized it. The same ghost that had stolen her from their Ghost Assault Vehicle 11 years prior. Who her husband had defeated in a contest of wills.
Whom Danny had defeated, in her husbands body, she reminded herself.
"What do you make of that? Is that El Matador?" Gyzz asked. "That snot-head is gonna pay if I ever..." he was getting worked up.
"Gyzz." Maddie tried to calm him. She needed say nothing more...
And now, everything made sense. The war. The ghost invasion. Why Jack was singled out for murder, beyond his ghost-hunting reputation. It was revenge. Revenge... It was said that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. And Sizzle had been living proof of that. But what of a man? Maddie had rejected him. And he'd dealt such a blow to the world in retallaiton. Maddie almost cried at the bitter irony; all this because of that accident thirty years ago. All because Jack had forgotten to carry that darned 2!
Maddie rose to do what needed to be done. "Tell Dora and Paulina to review the video when they get back, Gyzz. I need to go talk to Sam. Keep all of us on alert, too. If anything at all comes this way, I want to know yesterday."
She didn't know why she'd given those orders. Those things were Gyzz's job and he'd always done them well. But she had some feeling inside her that she couldn't explain. A mixture of dread and hope. She didn't know which side of the feeling to trust, but she was anticipating something..
Big. Bigger than Superman's murder. Perhaps it would be the turning point. Maybe the truce would end and the pendulum would finally swing one way or another. Only time would tell. She had gotten to the door when a transmission alarm buzzed. Any activity coming from the Amity Park area was heavily monitered. She didn't know why, but Gyzz always monitered the ruined city without question. Too bad he was only on night shift.
"What is it?"
"It is some sort of message, I think." Gyzz said. "It says it is from a Doctor Emmet Brown."
Above Amity Park Ruins, April 4, 2015
Danny was deeply saddened by what he saw. Shock and horror were long gone. This wasn't the first time his town had been wrecked. But now, he had to find someone very specific, and Amity Park was the only place he could think to start his search... Only one person knew the location what he needed.
The car landed around town hall. The whole area was gutted and blackened by fires and warfare. But any semblance of normal life had long since dissapeared. If anyone still lived here at all, Danny would be surprised. He passed by the sign that had once welcomed newcomers. Where as before it had said "Amity Park, A nice Place To Live"...
A CAL had been painted in front of the 'Amity' and the sign had been mangled with a sawed off shot gun, so that the sign now simply read: Calamity Park. A place. That was all it was anymore. Not a city or anyones home. Just a place. So tracking down the one ghost Danny wanted to find might not be easy. Then agian, it might be cake. Either way, it was stll the easy part of his plan.
(Imagine this scene to the Sounds of Greenday's Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Who doesn't know that song by now?)
Johnny 13 rounded the corner. Ever since Danny Phantom had dissapeared, the city had literally become a ghost town. Ghosts.. Not lived, but existed here. And with Kitty gone, Johnny was alone in the worlds.
Johnny found the place he'd been looking for. It was where Fentonworks had once stood. The place where he had first set foot on Eath since he'd died in that kludge-mucking bike race. He glanced down at his "Bad Luck Shadow" and shook his head. He would find nothing here. The bulding was gutted. This entire trip was pointless.
Johnny thought he heard a noise behind them, and looked at his only protection. "Shadow, stay alert," he whispered.
He found where he'd parked his bike. Before Kitty would have acompanied him. Now thanks to Vlad... How he hated the monster! Kitty was gone, and nothing could change that.
He himself wasn't really alive, per se'... But at least he still existed.
Suddenly, he heard a noise again. Perhaps someone was tracking him.
"Who's there!" he turned around and demanded. Shadow was clearly itching for a fight, so much that he had situated himself in a discontinuous position realitive to the light. It looked like an early PS2 game's shadowing. It wouldn't fool anybody. But it didn't have to, because shadow was quick and lethal. If his pursuer was alive.
But then the one peson who he'd least expected stepped out of the shadow.
"Hello, Johnny." Danny said.
"Phanom." Johnny's voice was acidic.
Johnny's eyes lit up with rage. "Shadow! Have some fun with him." Shaddow was more than ready for some revenge, albeit for different reasons than Johnny.
The black shade lashed up from the ground at Johny's feet and rushed at Danny. But the Phantom Kid remained calm. "KameHameHa!" he said, quite awkwardly.
"Oh come on, Chaltab!" Danny yelled at the sky as the bright light evaporated Shadow. "'Kamehameha?' Now you've gotten me quoting DBZ attacks too? Do I look like a Physics Police officer to you?"
"Heh. Dragonball..." Johhny chuckled...
"What was that?" Danny asked.
"Uhh... I... Uh... YOU MUST BE DRAGGIN'.. a lot of ba--"
"--Please don't say it!" Danny cut him off. "That was the lamest attempt to not look like a geek... ever."
Johnny's face twisted in rage. "You must have a lot of guts showing up here after you dissapeared! And now Kitty's.. Gone! You... You could have done something Mr. Superhero! You should have stopped that madman Plasmius! I blame this all on you! You coward! Get out of my sight"
Danny was suddenly stung hard. He wanted to say something sarcastic, like "Oh yeah. You're really in a position to be giving me commands!"...
But instead what came out was, "I'm sorry."
Johnny looked up at him.
"I'd have died too, though. There was nothing I could have done in the past. But I'm going to make it right now..."
"So why have you come to me?"
"Johnny. I think you know what I want.""What makes you think I still have that?"
"Because as long as you have it, you have leverage agaisnt me." The ghost boy had a point...
And for more about the Physics Police, go read Bobcat's hilarious fic The Ballad of the Physics Police.
www(dot)fanfiction(dot)net/s/475172/1/