Author's Note:more and more disinterested in this story as time goes on; I over extended myself here, especially for a first fan fiction, and loaded it with far too many ideas. It seems really silly in retrospect... (And honestly, how many people out there want to read a BttF/Danny Phantom crossover? Two? Hi, Danielle!) That said, I'm still going to finish it, of course, and do the best dang job I know how!

Time Phantom: The DeLorean Chronicles
Chapter 19: Checkmate...?

Danny charged forward. The final battle had begun.

He lashed into Ember, striking her in what would be painful pressure points on a human, but they might not work so well on the dead. They didn't, and Ember lashed out with her guitar and smashed the young superhero into the crowd. Specifically, into the Lunch Lady.

"Lunch is sacred!" she yelled, swinging a butcher's knife at Danny. "You and your friend defiled lunch. Want a cookie?"

Danny blinked. He didn't know which response would set of her ire this time, but then again, it probably wouldn't matter. Here eyes were red with Vlad's mad power, and Danny really had no idea why the amulet didn't work on him, except that he had been controlled once before by Control Freak.

"You can have it!" Danny yelled at the Lunch Lady, blasting the cookie into her mouth and causing an ectoplasmic dome to explode into existence around him. He began shooting beams from his hands and flew up above the crowd of ghosts. Some of them hovered in the air to join them.

He shot them too.

"Perish!" bellowed the Lunch Lady.

"And rock on in hell, Dipstick!" Ember agreed, striking her guitar and causing waves of evil sound to slam into Danny. He didn't even flinch.

"Not this time." Suddenly, Danny's aura flared to life and he blasted down at Ember, his fist glowing, and though she blocked with her guitar, the energy he had taken from Tucker completely destroyed it. His fist burned through the punk rocker ghost, and with remorse for the girl she had been in life, he repeated the technique he had done to Tucker, pulling in Ember's energy and adding it to his aura...

The Lunch Lady thew a meat cleaver and it evaporated on contact. Danny still didn't flinch.

"I don't have time for this!" Danny complained. "Vlad! Show yourself!"

Green fire, the contents of Danny's rage over the corruption of Tucker, blasted out through the room and destroyed the remaining ghosts in the room.

Nothing happened. Danny hovered in the empty room, waiting for something—even a trap would be better than Vlad's ignoring him.

Nothing continued to happen. (1)

It seemed he was going nowhere, until the mechanism that opened the 3D ghost portal began to activate again. And again, Danny found himself pinned against the wall. But this time, he had more power... And more determination. Fighting his way to the center, he began to see more ghosts materialize—Walker, his pirate lackey, Youngblood.

Even Bertrand was there, though Spectra wasn't Perhaps she had been destroyed. Before, he had been powerless to even move... This time, however, Danny fought back, and as Ectoplasm continued to take material form, Danny struggled to the center of the maelstrom... And in the middle of it all, though pain wracked his body, he began the technique again, aiming it at the material of the 3D Ghost Portal itself.

The spherical flashes of energy surrounded his hands and began to spread, like fireflies as they pulled the energy in. Danny gasped, and his eyes shot open. He hadn't even realized he had closed them. Brilliant radiance swirled around him, entering his aura and making it grow in size and brightness. So bright was the light, that it silhouetted Danny in it's glow. He could feel the power coursing through him...

When it was over, Danny was literally glowing. He lowered to the ground where Walker and the Pirate stood, Walker holding some sort of gun, and the pirate with a cutlass. The pirate charged, red energy surrounded him, Danny dodged his slices like they were nothing and then blocked the sword with his fingers. Then he grabbed it and broke it in an action that seemed too fast even for him to comprehend.

"You aren't playing by the RULES, kid," Walker told him, Vlad magnifying his seething annoyance at Danny and turning it to power—and rage. The prison ward's eyes flared red, his skull-like face cracking around them. He fired at Danny, but the bullets had no effect.

"We're using a new set of rules now!"

But before he could attack Walker, a black-clad foot made contact with Danny's facet and knocked him across the room. He turned to see Bertrand in the form of a ninja, wielding a pair of nunchaku and posing threateningly.

"And you've broken the most important one," Bertrand quipped. "Keep your eye on the birdie!" The mad midget assumed the shape of a falcon and dived at Danny tearing at his face. Danny wiped off the ecto-blood and jumped up, standing on the wall and blasting outward as the throngs of minions tried to over power him.

He ran up the wall and flew across the room, and grabbed. Bertrand. The shape shifter tried to ship out, but with minimal effort, he was nothing but ecto-feathers. Danny began to take hits from ghosts on the floor and around him, blasting at him.

Danny grew anxious. And since Vlad obviously wasn't going to let him in, Danny decided he'd settle for breaking and entering.

He would really enjoy the breaking part.

Summoning power from his unfortunate foes, he blasted downward with an sound blast he'd stolen from Ember, destroying the portal and all the ghosts below him. Then he turned his attention in the direction Vlad's room had seemed to be, though with the door and window now closed, he couldn't tell one wall from another in the perfectly symmetrical (and large) room.

"I hope I'm right." And a huge wave of Ectoplasmic Energy exploded from his hands, a bright light like he hadn't seen since he fought Jinx, and tore through stone and metal and wood.

He was right. A very stunned looking Vlad Plasmius stood, glaring at him with a monumental surprise on his face. By his side stood the diminutive ghost Deal, flipping some cards around and awaiting his punishment for tempting Saladin's ghost like he'd done...

Though Danny barely noticed the card dealer. His much aroused ire was focused only on Vlad.

"It's over now, you know," Danny said.

0000

Dora continued to hack and slash her way through the army of ghosts. Her cousin Paulina was dead, and the battle was probably lost. She ducked low under the spines of a very prickly looking Gothic ghosts and stabbed him with her Soul Saber.

Suddenly, she realized she'd broken off from the rest of her group and was alone, with some of Vlad's specters closing in quickly. She was surrounded. Lashing out with her sword, she fought back, but they kept coming, and soon she found herself over powered and knocked over.

She puled out her guns and began firing at anything that moved. But her guns were low on energy, and soon they ran out. A ghost tore into her arm and she reeled away and tried to hit it, but it wouldn't be hit. It refused to take a punch...

Another ghost shot her in the leg and she stumbled. There was little she could do, now, but wait for the end.

0000

"So, what's behind door number five?" Marty parodied as the door crumbled.

Maddie and Marty burst into a store house, the fifth one they'd tried so far. And finally, they found the grand prize—The 1983 DeLorean, white unpainted steel surface reflecting little light, the trademark DMC on the front grill. Little rust, but quite a bit dusty, Marty thought.

"It looks to be in pretty good shape," Marty stated as he examined the now ancient car.

"Let's get to work fixing it up," said Qwan.

0000

Dora tried to rise, but couldn't. A good chunk her her right leg leg was now gone...

She rolled over and saw the mindless drones of Vlad's army. And most of them were leaving. Unfortunately, the three that were staying were a bit more than she could handle in her current state.

"AAAHH!" Dora yelled...

"SKVVVT!" fate replied.

Dora looked up. And over her, with an anti-ghost lance piercing the attackers, stood Samantha Manson, on her glider, suited up. With Paulina over her shoulder, burnt but breathing.

It was the most wonderful think Dora had ever seen!

"Paulina!" Dora screamed "Ay! Gracias a Dios!" And she burst into a stream of Spanish, thanking Sam for rescuing her cousin and her own life.

"No problem. I guess I let my conscience impair my judgment." Sam said. The two women blinked for a minute during an awkward pause. "You know," Sam elaborated. "Saving Paulina and all."

Dora knew what she really meant; coming back when all hope seemed lost—at least in her eyes. "Yeah. Sure."

"Listen," Sam said. "All the ghosts are retreating, or being called back or something. They are heading back towards Wisconsin."

"Danny!" Dora blurted...

"I know." Sam dropped a Fenton Pill and wet it. It turned into a helicopter of all things... "Get in."

0000

Danny held up his hands and blasted out, the bolt catching Vlad in the chest and knocking him through the wall. Deal took the opportunity to vanish.

"Well, hello, son," Vlad said, getting up from the rubble. They were now in Vlad's throne chamber, it's opulent extravagance evident from themoment Danny entered. Lavish red carpets adorned the center of the jewel-colored floor, from the walls red drapes dangeled, laden in gold. They all bore Vlad's logo, and his monstrous image adorning some.

"You aren't my father!" Danny yelled, and blasted Vlad again. "You took my father from me, left me to suffocate in my grief. You engineered it so that Valerie would be your pawn, and her blood's on your hands too. You're a monster in every sense of the word, Vlad."

"Thank you." Plasmius replied.

"That wasn't a complement!" And Danny blasted him again, knocking him against the throne, where something new caught his eye...

"MOM?" He blurted. No, it wasn't his mother, he soon realized—she still had two arms, whoever she was. But she was dressed in the same teal jumpsuit her mother wore. "Oh my—" Danny darted across the room and punched Vlad in the face, then kicked him in the groin. "You pervert! Who is this girl and what have you done to her..."

Vlad responded by punching him across the room. "Now really, Daniel," Vlad said. "Must you resort to physical violence? Blowing up portions of my palace was bad enough, but this?" A wicked grin played out on Vlad's face. And reaching out with his hand, Vlad commanded the jumpsuit on the woman to dissipate... revealing...

"KITTY!" Danny blurted. The jewel around her neck was still there. Which meant...

"I thought I'd keep her around, you know. To make up for the ONE THING I still cant have after these ten years..."

"What about the Packers?" Danny asked with an arch eyebrow.

"Oh, them? They're all dead." Vlad's grin twisted into a frown of concentration, and Kitty vanished into his aura, the amulet glowing with use. And then he grabbed the jewel that had hung around her neck out of the empty air. Energy coursed through it, and a pumpkin materialized over top of it... With the Soul Shredder deposited in it's top.

"You wouldn't? The touch of his blade will make you suffer you worst fears for eternity! You can't wield that!" Danny dived at Vlad, but with a flicked wrist, Vlad blasted Danny away.

"Watch me." Vlad pulled the sword from the pumpkin, holding it high above his head. And then the Fright Knight appeared.

"What is the meaning of this?" it blurted.

Vlad responded by driving his fist through it's armored abdomen. Danny gasped as the figure inside the armor disintegrated, joining Kitty as yet more fuel for Vlad's power. "The meaning of this is the meaning of everything—to serve me!" Vlad through his head back and power exploded over him, burning crimson waves of pure self-interest.

Taking the Soul Shredder, Vlad held it up, and the aura around him washed over it, corrupting it and making it his own. The green blade became a black silhouette in the red sea, and then it subsided, and the Soul Shredder was now the same color as Vlad's new aura.

"I think I'll give it a new name to commemorate this occasion, Daniel." Vlad smirked, and the blade grew at least six inches and contorted into a Gothic shape with multiple points from the sides and a forked tip. "I'll call it the Master's Sword," Vlad said.

"I wouldn't shed a tear if Miyamoto sued," Danny said without humor.

Vlad obviously didn't understand the how much of a pun the new name of his blade was, because he shrugged Danny's comment off and pointed the sword at Danny. "And I wouldn't shed a tear if I knew your father was burning in the pit of hell," Vlad replied, and charged at Danny. "If you won't join me, then you can join him!"

Danny leaped back, sucking his gut in as the blade passed millimeters from his stomach, and then he shot upward, going intangible and flying through the ceiling of Vlad's throne room into a new room, filled with Packer's memorabilia.

"As far as shedding tears goes," Danny said to himself, "fighting here might make Vlad shed a few. I'd find that entertaining."

"Would you, Daniel?" Vlad phased through the floor, not in a fit of rage, but calmly. Seething. "The Packers are dead, Daniel; their merchandise no longer means anything to me."

Danny pulled the Soul Saber from his belt; he must have dropped the ax in one of the previous scuffles. He tried to recall his sword training with Dora, and found enough of it coming back to grip the sword competently. "Then let's finish this," he said. Though he really had been hoping Vlad still cared about Green Bay's football team. If he had, he would be more likely to hold back.

Danny charged with absurd speed forward, smashing his fist into Vlad's chest, and knocking him back through a pile of Packers merchandise, destroying it. He continued forward, swinging his Soul Saber, trying not to get himself caught off guard... He didn't really succeed, as Vlad leaped up and released a shock wave of red energy around him. The wave blasted Danny backwards into a tall trophy, which snapped in two, and Danny kept going until he willed himself to stop with his ghostly flight powers.

Following that assault, Vlad charged, lashing with his newly rechristened Master's Sword. Danny tried to block, and tried to parry. But it was just too much, too fast. Vlad had ten years to learn to outclass him in swords, not counting whatever he might have known before Danny traveled to the future.

"Just give it up, Daniel." Vlad insisted, easily parrying a thrust by Danny and removing the Soul Saber from his grip with a move so fast Danny couldn't copy it if his life depended on it. "This fight was over before it began."

"Maybe the sword fight was!" Danny yelled, summoning his power, absorbed from the souls and pure ectoplasmic energy of the Ghost Zone, and blasted outward with a beam large enough to encompass all of Vlad's body. "But I will never give up! You murdered my father, my friend; you turned my sister into a nut! I won't let it go unpunished!"

"Big words from a teenager," Vlad sighed. "You haven't changed a bit."

Their aura's flared again, and they began to clash, red and green. Good and Evil. Danny and Vlad blasted together and then apart, fired ectoplasm blasts at each other.

Danny ducked under one, which fell into a warehouse and detonated. "No!" Danny blurted, fearing that his mom was in there...

"That was the house with the Time Machine car, wasn't it?"

Ice ran up Danny's gut. If the machine was destroyed, then...

0000

Thankfully, Marty and Maddie and Qwan had finally managed to get the DeLorean moving, and took it half a kilometer from the battle well before Vlad blasted the building.

The problem was, Marty explained, that Doc had heavily protected the computers with multiple passwords. The small screen displayed the face of Emmet Brown. "I am recording this message on August 23, 2005," it said. "I sincerely hope that one day, in Time, my friend Marty McFly, or someone with good intentions will find this machine and crack the code of the computer. I have placed safeguards, however that will destroy the DeLorean permanently if security is violated. Press the red button to continue."

A red orb appeared below "Doc" on the screen. Marty pressed it.

"You have precisely thirty seconds to state the exact date on which I sent you back to the future," said Doc.

"November... 12, 1955," Marty said.

"Very good, boy. The voice recognition software recognizes that it's you. I wish I could say it's nice to see you," Doc said. "You have now unlocked the ability of the car to attain the proper speed for Time Travel. The time circuits won't work, however, until you answer this question: What is the exact speed at which the time machine activates.. to two significant figures?"

"88 Miles Per Hour," Marty told the computer. It chimed an affirmative.

"This is taking too long," Qwan said. As if to add emphasis to his words, a nearby warehouse exploded—the one where the DeLorean had been found!

"We're makin' progress," Marty reassured him.

0000

Vlad chuckled. "Oh well, it didn't really do me any good. I could never get it to run. If I really ever need to Time Travel, I can always track down that Time Traveling ghost. What's his name?"

Danny looked up, fury in his eyes. "I don't care if I have to die to defeat you, Plasmius!" he yelled. "But I swear I'm ridding this world of every trace of you!" Power cosmic surged throughout Danny, and he let out a massive energy blast that consumed Vlad and drove him back.

"Daniel..."

Danny gave Vlad no time to speak; he hit him again, and again, knocking him from side to side, and knocking him senseless. Vlad recoiled from the punches and blasted out red darts of his power, but Danny dodged, blurring in a wavelength of green out of the way and continuing his rabid assault. "No more words," he said icily...

The assault continued, and as Danny's aura grew brighter, Vlad's grew smaller. "It's over Plasmius!" And with one final blow, Danny smashed a huge portion of his energy into Vlad, shattering the Soul Shredder and tearing the white Plasmius suit apart.

Vlad stumbled to his feet, finally recovering from Danny's brutal attack. And then, his face fell off

Or at least the green one did...

And underneath, was a face familiar and yet shockingly, disturbing different. The face of Vlad Masters, wrinkled, as if whithered away, his eyes insane and bloodshot, his skin practically chafing off is bones. He was like a walking corpse. And then, Danny's entire body and soul felt as though dipped in liquid nitrogen and the chill consumed him as he realized what this meant...

"No..." Danny gasped. HE WASN'T EVEN TRANSFORMED!

(1) I cannot take credit for the line "Nothing continued to happen." That genius of wordplay was coined, as far as I know, buy Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels.