Harry was having a really weird dream. He had gone to visit his grandparents, but as soon as he entered the large brick building their ghost sensors went off. Jack and Maddie ran out from the kitchen pointing large, bazooka-like weapons at him and yelling that he was a ghost. He tried to protest that, no, he was their grandson, but they just wouldn't listen. He frantically looked around for a way out, and his eyes alighted upon the door to the basement lab. He tore through it amidst the cries of "Quick, Maddie, he's going to use some of our weapons against us!"
When he reached the bottom of the stairs the first thing he noticed was that the whole room was bathed in green light. He glanced to the left-hand wall and realized that the Fenton Portal was open. The second thing he noticed was a person, no, a ghost, standing in front of the open portal, his shadow casting a line of darkness that cleaved the green glow of the portal in two. As Harry approached the ghost, he realized that it wasn't just any ghost. It was himself, in ghost form. Upon closer inspection, though, he noticed that this specter was different, somehow. His eyes were red, not green speckled with purple, and his white hair wasn't messy and floppy; it was up and back. It almost looked as though it was on fire.
"Who…who are you?" The nervous boy asked.
"Why, I'm you, Harry." His alter-ego's voice was somehow not his own; it was colder, more sinister. It gave Harry the chills.
"I…no…you're evil!" He managed to articulate.
"But of course, Harry. All ghosts are evil. Even half-ghosts have an evil side to them. Or didn't your father explain that to you? Probably because he's afraid of what the evil version of himself was capable of when they met."
"I'm not evil!" Harry shouted. "I refuse to believe that. I'm not you!"
"Even if you don't acknowledge me, I'm still here. I still exist. Even if you try to push me away, I'll always be lurking in the back of your mind. Even if you don't let me out like Plasmius did, I'll be a presence that's just waiting to escape. And when I do, all of your loved ones will suffer. Believe it." He vanished into thin air just as his grandparents reached the bottom of the stairs.
"There he is, Maddie!" Jack shouted as he shot a large, green, blast of energy at Harry that seared into his abdomen and forced him backwards into the portal.
"NOOOOO" he screamed as his vision became green. He woke up twisted in his sheets, in a cold sweat. Luckily, he accidentally lost tangibility and phased through both the sheets and the bed and landed on the floor. He rolled out from under his bed and sat on top of it. What a crazy nightmare, he thought. Am I really evil? I need to talk to Dad about this. And who the hell is Plasmius? He stood up and went into the hallway. He was about to enter his parents' room, but stopped once he noticed the doorknob. There was a black baseball cap with his dad's DP insignia hanging on it. He shuddered at the memory of what had happened when he didn't know what that meant-he had had a nightmare when he was four and barged in to find his parents in a rather…awkward…situation.
Ugh…I'll never be able to un-see that, he thought. He went back into his room and lay down on his bed. Thankfully, he was still energy-deficient, so it wasn't long before he passed outinto a blissfully dreamless sleep.
He woke up the next day at around 2:30 in the afternoon. Amazed that he had been able to sleep for so long, he jumped out of bed and washed up. He got dressed and came down for breakfast, noticing both the fact that he was rejuvenated and that he was ravenous. He sat at the table where his sister was waiting for him. Their mother was practically singing as she placed a massive stack of pancakes down in front of them.
"Wow, someone's in a good mood this morning," Jaime noted, having clued into their mother's demeanor. I can't imagine why, Harry thought wryly.
"Afternoon," he corrected. "By the way, did you happen to have any weird dreams last night?"
"No, why?" his sister responded just as Sam sat down at the table.
"I had a dream that grandma and grandpa Fenton were chasing me with Fenton Bazookas."
"Don't worry about it," his mom reassured him. "Danny used to dream about his parents hunting him all the time. Of course, they actually did hunt him, but it shouldn't make a difference. The key thing is that if you ever encounter them while in ghost mode you just need to be smarter than they are."
"Shouldn't be too hard to outsmart grandpa," Jaime said with a smirk.
"Agreed. It's grandma we need to worry about," Harry replied, and the three of them dug into the pancakes. After a few minutes, Jaime said that she was supposed to meet Tamara and left, leaving just Harry and Sam at the table.
"Is there anything else you dreamed about that you want to talk about?"
"Actually, there is. Is Dad…evil?" Sam was taken aback by the question.
"Whoa. Where did that come from?"
"Well, I said that grandma and grandpa were chasing me, and they chased me into the lab. The Fenton Portal was on, and my ghost half was standing in front of it. Except that this ghost was evil, and sort of didn't look like me. He said that he was part of me, and that all ghosts have an evil side, even Dad. He also said that Dad's evil version of himself was really powerful, and scared Dad really badly when they fought, and he mentioned another ghost named Plasmius. Then he said that even if I try to be good, he'll always exist in the back of my mind, and then he disappeared. Just then, grandpa came downstairs and shot at me and I fell into the portal, and then I woke up." His mother was silent for a long time. Finally, she spoke up:
"I'm glad you're telling me this now without your father here, just because of the degree that Dan scarred him mentally…the evil in you spoke the truth. Both you and he have an element of malevolence in you. It comes with being a ghost, I suppose. Anyway, a year after he got his powers, a ghost named Clockwork tried to kill your dad because he was supposed to grow up into the most powerful ghost in existence. He was powerful, but extremely evil, and he destroyed both our world and the Ghost Zone. The reason for this was because there was supposed to be an accident that killed Tucker, your grandparents, your aunt Jazz, me, and a teacher at our school, Mr. Lancer. The pain from having everyone he cared about dead supposedly caused him to ask to have his humanity ripped out. He had asked Vlad to do it, but I'll let him explain who that is. So Vlad ripped out Danny's humanity and he became a full-fledged, evil ghost. The ghost killed your father's human shell and fused with Plasmius to become Dan Phantom, the most powerful and evil ghost in history."
"But that never ended up happening?"
"No. Due to a mistake, Danny, Tucker, and I ended up ten years in the future, where Danny had to fight Dan. Tucker and I managed to get back to our own time just before Dan killed us, and Dan threw Danny into the future Ghost Zone, disguised himself as Danny, and came to our time in order to make sure the accident that killed us took place. Danny managed to get out of the future Ghost Zone and he fought Dan in the present. He won by using the Ghostly Wail for the first time ever. You've heard of it?" Harry nodded; no self-respecting fan of his father's wouldn't know about his most powerful and devastating ability. "Anyway, Danny won and Clockwork saved all of our lives, so Danny wouldn't have to live out that terrible future."
"And that scarred Dad for life?"
"Your dad pretty much has a hero complex; he'll sacrifice anything for the ones close to him. He was appalled by a future in which he was responsible for our deaths, as well as the deaths of the billions of people Dan killed during his ten-year rampage. He's always afraid of letting out the evil that he knows is inside of him because he's afraid of what it's capable of. I'm guessing that the fact that you're taking this whole evil thing so seriously indicates that you feel the same way."
"Yeah, pretty much."
"Danny always says that you just have to keep a firm hold on your emotions. Don't let them control you, because when you do, you're just asking for the evil feelings such as greed and bloodlust govern your actions."
"I guess…"
"What did your evil self look like?"
"Sort of like me, like he was wearing my jumpsuit and everything, but his eyes were red, and his hair looked like it was on fire."
"Yeah, that's basically what Dan looked like, except for the fact that he had blue skin and pointed ears. Oh yeah, and a forked tongue. He probably got those from fusing with Plasmius, though."
"Why can't you tell me who Plasmius us?"
"Honestly? Because your sister is going to ask the same thing this evening and I don't want to have to explain twice in the same day. I'll let Danny do it over dinner." He gave a weak chuckle.
"Thanks, Mom. I feel a lot better now."
"No problem," she said, planting a kiss on his forehead. They both got up and started cleaning up the breakfast plates.
Yeah, I realize that it's short, but never fear: I'm already in the process of writing the next chapter. Thank you, Sleep Warrior, for always reviewing; I feel as though at this point I'm writing new chapters just for you. That's right. You feel special.