Every year at Casper High, the theater club held a musical. This year, in response to all the ghost sightings and attacks, they had decided to perform Phantom of the Opera. Two friends sat in the very back of the auditorium watching the rehearsals, ostensibly to support their other friend.
"Think of me…" sang the female lead in the character of Christine. "Think of me fondly…When we've said-"
The song cut off abruptly as a sandbag fell inches from the girl's face to hit the stage with a resounding bang. She didn't even flinch, an astounding feat achieved simply because she was too startled to jump. Not that she would have admitted that. Instead, she crossed her eyes and heaved a long-suffering sigh as the entire cast broke into applause.
"Thank you, Danny!" she called dryly with baleful glare at the catwalk.
Danny Fenton cringed and smiled apologetically. "Sorry!"
He was still amazed that Kat had talked him into this. One of the stage hands had quit on the grounds that the auditorium was haunted, which, to be honest, it was. The chemistry wiz turned thespian Katrina Cadwell often moonlighted as the technology-loving opera ghost Electra. Not a very original name, but she liked it.
"Okay," the theater director said. "Why don't we just go ahead and call it a day?"
Danny slid down the ladder and waved to Kat, then trotted over to join his friends, goth girl Sam Manson, and techno geek Tucker Foley. "Nicely done, man," Tucker laughed.
"Did you see the look on the Kat's face?" Sam snickered. "I though she was going to kill you."
Danny sighed. "Oh, she got me back." He brushed the metal door knob and flinched as he got shocked for a second time. "You guys might want to walk a little further away until the charge wears off."
His two friends obligingly took a few steps back and followed him to his locker. "So we didn't get to hear," Sam began. "Why is the auditorium haunted?"
"Because every time the kid who's playing the Phantom comes on, weird things start happening." Distracted, he reached out to open his locker and jerked back once again as the metal conductor reacted to the electricity coursing through his body. He gratefully stepped back to let Tucker open it for him as he continued. "Things like lights flickering or the audio system running on its own…"
"In other words," Tucker interrupted. "Kat's acting up because they wouldn't give her the part."
"Yeah, pretty much."
They fell silent to reflect on their eccentric friend's abnormalities. She reacted to a new computer the same way most girls reacted to high school football all-star Dash Baxter. She was none to be rivaled at chemistry, but she made worse grades in math than Danny. And while science was her best subject, her passion was theater. Then, there was her alter ego.
As Electra, she dressed like a gentleman from the eighteen hundreds and haunted karaoke bars and record stores. She could hurl cars with her mind, but she couldn't fly for more than a few minutes at a time, and then not very quickly. Her powers were clearly ghostly in nature, but she never set off Danny's ghost sense, leaving her new friends to wonder if she was a ghost, a half ghost, or something else entirely.
Danny sighed and shook his head as he carefully and gratefully took his books from Tucker. "Well, I got to get home. Mom was expecting me about twenty minutes ago."
"It's not your fault rehearsal ran late," Sam pointed out.
"Yeah, I know. But still…I'm late for curfew enough as it is." They said their goodbyes and parted company: Sam and Tucker to go through the door, and Danny to go through the ceiling. He turned into his own alter ego, the white-haired ghost boy Danny Phantom, and shot straight through the building and into the sky above. He did not want to be any later getting home than he already was, and flying was the fastest way to get there.
As he flew, he kept a keen eye out for any escapees from the Ghost Zone. It was his self-imposed mission to keep Amity Park ghost free, a goal that had as many drawbacks as benefits. He was a hero, or something like it, but no one knew it. His own parents thought he was unreliable and, at times, lazy. And the worst part was he couldn't tell them the truth. They were ghost hunters, and while he was sure they would love him no matter what, part of him was afraid.
Still, it was very rewarding to be able to save the city from things like an enraged fire spirit bent on destroying the world. Barely a week ago was he given the pleasure of meeting just such a ghost. Pandora, the wish-granting ifreet, had manipulated him into freeing her, whereupon she had reduced half the city to burning rubble in a misguided attempt to save the world from the evils of humanity. Danny had just barely managed to defeat her by showing her that there was still some good left in the world. Faced with her own foolishness, she had convinced Clockwork to reset time back to before Danny had found her. He had not heard from her since.
Actually, he kind of missed having her around. She had kept all the other ghosts away. He swooped down to take care of a relatively weak snake ghost that was debating whether to menace some kids or bask in the setting sun. It didn't even notice him until it found itself sucked into the Fenton Thermos. Danny waved to a group of girls that started screaming gleefully and demanding that he take them with him.
Oh, yes. It certainly was a shame he couldn't tell anyone who he really was. Girls would be all over him.
He sighed as he found an unobserved location to change back into a human. Walking into his house was often a hazardous affair, and today was no exception. The second he stepped foot over the threshold, a loud siren began to sound.
"Ghost!" his father Jack yelled, and came charging into view with the Fenton Ghost Weasel, Maddie hot on his heels with the Ghost Bazooka. They looked around frantically. "Danny! Did you see the ghost?"
"Um…um…no?" Danny answered in a state bordering on panic.
After a moment, his parents sighed dejectedly and Maddie went to turn off the alarm. "I thought for sure we had it fixed that time…" she muttered. "So, Danny, where've you been?"
"Rehearsal ran late," he apologized. He didn't quite succeed in hiding the relief in his voice, but his parents didn't seem to notice.
"Well, dinner will be ready soon, so go work on your homework."
Danny made an exasperated noise, but complied. It wouldn't do to argue while his parents were holding the Fenton Ghost Finder. If they noticed it was targeting him right after he set off the new ghost alarm, he'd be stuck in the Ghost Zone before he could say "Boo." At least, he wasn't grounded for being late.
"Welcome home!" Jazz called as he dashed past her door. "By the way, Mom and Dad are testing the Fenton Ghost Security System."
"Gee, thanks for the warning," Danny responded sarcastically. His sister seemed to find no end of amusement to the fact that all their parents inventions responded to Danny's presence.
By the time dinner was ready, he had given up on biology and was simply listening to his music as loudly as possible. It didn't help much to drown out the squealing of the GSS.
Danny yawned and tried to keep his eyes open. First period was always the worst; he had the most boring teacher in the school. The Ben Stein monotone lectures always made it difficult to stay awake, and after a night of ghost hunting, it was even harder. He propped his head on his fist and didn't even bother trying to pay attention.
He yawned again and thought about how great it would be to get out of class. As if on cue, the lights went out. Suddenly wide awake, he sat straight up and looked around. Pandora was gone; he knew she was gone, but the timing was just perfect. Still, it wasn't her style. She had granted wishes by burning things up, not turning off the lights.
"All right, just stay calm, kids," the teacher intoned, pointedly ignoring his students' continued lack of interest. "I'm sure the power will be back on shortly." Since the window provided enough light to see, he resumed his lecture, and Danny resumed falling asleep. It was probably just a normal power outage.
An hour later, someone knocked on the door, and the teacher went out to find out what was going on. "Dude!" someone yelled from the back. "We were, like, supposed to be out of here ten minutes ago!"
"The power's out, stupid!" someone else informed him. "That means the bell isn't working. Duh."
"That doesn't mean we got to stay late!" responded the first kid.
"It does if no one's watching the clock."
"All right, class," droned the teacher as he came back into the room. "Apparently the power outage is city wide, and it will not be back on for the next several hours. Therefore, you are all dismissed to go home."
A cheer went up, and the entire class was gone as if teleported away by magic. Danny, the last to leave, caught up with Sam coming out of her first class across the hall. "I wish they'd canceled school an hour ago," he said. "I still had to sit through that stupid lecture."
"What was it about?" Sam laughed.
Danny shrugged. "I don't know. I was asleep for most of it."
"Hey, guys!" Tucker yelled, running up to join them.
"You're in a good mood," Sam noted.
"History test was canceled because we couldn't see to take it," he said happily. "So you guys want to go do something?"
"Do what? The whole town is blacked out."
Danny yawned again, and Tucker broke off whatever he was going to say in favor of, "Tired?"
"Oh, man…" he sighed. "Okay, first, I was up past midnight trying to catch Johnny 13, which I finally did do. But then, my parents woke me bright and early this morning testing the new Ghost Security System."
"Ghost Security System?" Sam repeated dubiously.
Danny nodded. "It goes off whenever there's a ghost in the house, which means…"
"It goes off every time they turn it on," she finished.
"Pretty much. So I intend to take full advantage of this blackout to get some sleep. See you, guys."
Danny awoke to his alarm clock flashing 12:00 and almost went back to sleep. However, after several minutes of simply laying there, he groaned miserably and rolled out of bed. He was mildly surprised to see that no one was home, but a note on the fridge informed him that his parents were out buying parts. Relieved that they wouldn't be working on the GSS for a while longer, he made a sandwich and went to the living room to watch TV.
"Over a hundred channels, and nothing to watch," he muttered as he cycled through the various stations. He paused at an ad for a new band called Soul Fire. The lead singer looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place her right off. There was a cartoon about teenaged spy girls, which he watched just long enough to reflect on how stupid it was before moving on. He wound up watching the last ten minutes of an old Star Trek episode before flipping it over to the news to check for ghost attacks; he was just bored enough that he would have welcomed the change of pace.
After a short commentary entitled "Danny Phantom: Savior or Menace," they brought up the main story. "I should get more screen time than that," Danny informed the newscaster.
"And for today's top story, we go live to the Amity Park Power Station. Casey?"
The scene switched to a view of reporter Casey Starr standing outside the power plant. "Thanks, Shellie. As you can see behind me, things are still pretty hectic right now." In fact, there was very little activity going on in the background. "Apparently, today's city wide blackout was due to a sudden power drain. Authorities still don't know what caused it."
The scene switched back to the newsroom where the anchorwoman was conversing with someone out of frame. She said something, nodded once, then turned back to the camera. "Well, this just in. The station has anonymously received some security footage taken a matter of minutes before the blackout."
A few seconds went by before it played, and Danny gasped. The image was fuzzy, and it was in black and white, but it undeniably showed someone in a black top hat wearing an eighteen hundred's style long coat. Sandwich and broadcast forgotten, he threw himself over the back of the couch and ran for the phone.