"I'm confused," I announce the second the white fades from my vision and I take in Danny's mindscape.
It looks like Amity Park, but in the winter. Snow coats the buildings, and random ice blocks are scattered around. FentonWorks, the place Jazz-and apparently Danny-live is covered in ice so much that I can barely make out the fact that it is FentonWorks.
Actually, everything is coated in ice. Everything but a couple random things. The school, for instance, is clear of ice on the very front and the flagpole is unfrozen, but past the front wall it's frozen like everything else.
The weirdest part is the green sky. It swirls green and purple, random doors and ice blocks floating around. There is no sun, but it's plenty light.
I wander around, looking for mind-Danny. As I walk, I take note of thicker ice at some places and thinner at others. I wonder where myself is. I'd be a memory here, right?
After a while, I call Danny's name. No response. I groan in frustration as I search streets. Where is this dude? "Danny!"
"What?"
I turn to the voice, watching as Danny stumbles from an alley down the street. "Are you okay?"
He rubs his head. "I think so."
"What is this?" I ask, gesturing around.
He shrugs. I expected nothing else.
"Let's start with what you remember before the GIW," I suggest. He nods, and leads me up into the sky, taking my hand and floating up.
He floats to a seemingly random door and pulls it open. Instantly, I'm looking in a reflection, my hair white, my eyes green. My expression is horrified but relieved, curious. I turn when I hear my-Danny's- name being called, and see Sam and Tucker, Sam's hands hiding her mouth and Tucker terrified.
I shake my head in confusion when I find myself back with Danny outside the door. "What was that?"
"My memory," he answers, confusion lacing his words. "Didn't you ask to see them?"
"Oh, I get it now. Experience the memory, right." He has a strange expression on his face, as if trying to figure me out, before taking my wrist again and floating me over to another door. He shows me an amount of memories that I wouldn't need more than my hands to count. Six, maybe seven? Is that all?
"Do you have the memories now?" Danny asks. I nod.
Even though I already know the answer, I ask him if there are any more.
"No."
Yep. I was right.
"Alright, bring me to the very first memory you remember," I demand. He looks at me blankly. "You know, in the GIW where-"
He holds up a hand to stop me. "Yeah, I know what you mean, but there's no way."
"Why not?"
"If you experience my memory, you'll experience the pain. It's almost as bad remembering it as the experience itself. There's no way I'm letting you do that."
"I can take it," I argue.
"No, you can't. For one, I have a higher pain tolerance because I'm a ghost, and with an ice core. I'm not letting you feel that with your own pain tolerance." Subconsciously, his hand falls to his chest.
"How else do you want to figure it out?"
He grows silent. I smirk, and he throws me a glare. "There's still no way. But maybe…" He floats over to another door. "This is the one-I think- where I made the choice to lose my memories. Maybe." His expression grows clouded with confusion.
I go to open it, but he blocks my hand. "I go in first."
Reluctantly, I withdraw and watch as he grimaces at the door. "I really hope I'm right," he mutters before yanking open the door. He's sucked inside. True to his word, I wait as the door closes, but then immediately open it after it's closed. What? He said he'd go in first, not that I shouldn't follow.
I'm in the exact same place. But it's a little different. The ice is gone, even if the snow is still there. People mill around in the city area and weird ghost things fly through the strange sky, and with a jolt I realize that the ice blocks are forgotten people/ghosts.
I look down at my hand, realizing that my hand is gloved. Not white, though. Black. My cape is yellow on the inside, black on the outside. I reach up and feel my mask. I'm Robin, not Danny.
I see memory Danny. He's a little different, his suit without the cape and everything's one piece. He looks younger, more carefree, but panicked.
"Hey!"
I turn, seeing the modern Danny.
"I said wait!"
"No, you said 'I go in first'. Different." He glares at me as I wave off his comment dismissively.
"I forgot," he said finally, referring to the scene around him. "She came in my mind, so I was pulled in too. It's a mindscape, so I knew everything that happened. We can experience it as we are, no matter the angle."
"Who…"
The woman M'gann and Conner fought in the GIW facility is standing with a smile, evading every attack the younger Danny throws. She wears a scarf around her neck, billowing in the wind, with a normal sweater and black jeans. Her brown hair is cut short.
"It's my mind," he cries. "My domain! You're powerless here."
"Ha! Your mental shields are strong, but you are naive to think I have no power here. It may be your mind, but I'm not another mind simply wandering here. I am a psychic." She wanders around, her attacks either missing her completely or going straight through her.
His eyes narrow. "Whatcha gonna do?" His tone is dead serious, and he has a glare of ice and fire.
Her smirk grows even more sinister as her gaze lowers in concentration. "What aren't I going to do?" she taunts, and her eyes glow purple. The entire landscape shakes. People start panicking and the buildings start to rock on their foundations.
Younger Danny looks around in horror. He tries to fight her, but she's untouchable. I've seen psychics like this, so strong they are virtually ghosts in this world. But Danny should be able to at least deter her. That kind of strength against Danny's will might've been a lost battle, but it would've been a battle.
"You… You're a ghost," he gasps in realization, backing away from her and looking around his mind in desperation. But he then focuses on her, blocking out the fear. I have even more respect for this guy. Calmly choose a plan and stick to it.
"What makes you think that?" she purrs, her eyes focusing on him but still bright purple. The shaking continues, but the past Danny ignores it.
"The emotion… You shouldn't have been able to pass through my emotion like that… Or fight against my obsession unless…" Realization grows. "Unless yours was stronger than mine."
She laughs. "Stronger? Nothing's stronger than a protection obsession. And yours? It's so broad! Yours easily outranks mine. But it's broad, so it's easy to find loopholes in the barriers."
The scene cuts out several times in a single second, and my vision flashes with the changes. I turn to Danny as the scene completely freezes, Danny in the air, the girl on the ground, both staring at each other. "What gives?"
"I don't…" His vision becomes laced with a mixture of emotions. "This is before my first memory. I'm surprised I remembered... this much…"
"But we have nothing to go on," I tell him. "Focus!"
"It's not a focus thing!" He shouts back, his hands to his temples now. "It's an 'It is literally not in my skill set to remember!' sort of thing!"
I run through a dozen different things to say in my head. What would Batman say? He always has the right words. Which is weird, given he doesn't talk much. "I could've slipped into a coma," I say at last.
"What?" He turns to me, and his panicked face mixing with confusion.
"You saved me from slipping into a coma. I couldn't follow a conversation, my eyes were all messed up. You kept me awake."
"Anyone else could've done that," he answers. He's modest. But that might ruin my plan, so… Modesty sucks.
"But they didn't. You did."
He mulls it over. The scene plays again as Danny thinks about it. That was so straightforward. Wow.
"What's your obsession? Destroying people's minds?" begins the past Danny again.
"No," she hisses. "The mind is a beautiful thing. I wouldn't seek to destroy it."
Danny gives her a pointed look and waves at the destruction happening around him.
"My sister wants it broken," she explains. "So it will fall."
"Sister…" Danny mutters.
Present Danny gasps. "Evil Barbie!"
"What…"
"It's this lady! She's like the leader of it all, at least in my facility. It makes sense! Pixie would follow her around like a puppy, do all her biddings and all that."
Past Danny growls. "But why?"
"I don't question her!"
"I'm literally powerless. Can't you give me this?" His expression changes ever so slightly. The panic leaks in again, and he looks more boyish. Vulnerable. He oozes safety and innocence.
I look at present Danny. He shrugs. "Must be a ghost aura thing."
The subtle genius of past Danny's tactic works, and the girl softens ever so slightly. The shaking doesn't stop, but her focus isn't on it anymore. It's just shaking, not destroying.
She's silent a moment. "She wants all your secrets, but then wants it broken. You're a different sort of ghost." She mulls over her own words. "But how, I wonder?" Her eyes glow an intense purple, almost too bright too look at.
All of a sudden, the past Danny flickers in and out, his hair switching black and white again, his eyes from green to blue. His dress changes, too. It lands on the black haired boy, pale skin, white T-shirt and jeans, a look of sheer panic. The safety/innocent spell is broken.
"Ahh…" She tilts her head, growing a bright smile. "A human boy with ghost powers? Or a ghost with human's powers?"
"What…" gasps present Danny.
"Danny Fenton," I breathe. He looks at me, demanding an explanation. "I found out while we were in Amity."
"The real reason you wanted it to just be you…" But he isn't focused on me. He's watching the scene. It starts to break again, but I feed Danny another story of his heroism… The day of his escape, where he saved M'gann and Conner.
The scene plays on.
"No!" cries past Danny, looking in horror at his revealed secret.
"A human boy? With a human family?" she muses.
"Leave them alone!"
"But you're just a ghost."
"You're just a ghost! I'm human and a ghost, and my family's all human!"
"My sister won't care. She'll do whatever she wishes with them."
"No! No!"
"What are you going to do about it?" she taunts.
His eyes glow ice, and his expression morphs into pure rage and determination. The city starts to freeze, and Pixie's eyes stop glowing as her power does nothing.
"What? What are you doing!?"
"I'm forgetting it! All of it! You can't tell her about something that nobody knows about!"
"So? I still have the memories of finding out!"
"But they're mine! My mind, my memories!" His eyes glow brighter, brighter. "And I'm taking them back!" She looks completely powerless. "You said my obsession's stronger, it's stronger than yours. Nobody threatens my family!"
I try not to think of that as cheesy.
I fail.
She looks scared now. The ice has started to climb around her, inching up her legs where she stands. The city is covered now, and past Danny flickers from human to ghost at terrifying speeds.
"Leave," Danny says. His voice sounds like both his human and ghost forms are speaking at once. "Unless you want to forget everything."
She sends him one last look of fear (now laced with confusion) before she vanishes, just before the ice hits her waist. Past Danny splits into two Dannys as soon as she's gone.
I whisper one more heroic (saving all of us from the facility on our first mission) to Danny to ensure that the memory continues.
"I'm sorry," the ghost Danny says. I have the impression that it's to people who aren't there, though.
"Guess I'll die," jokes the human Danny, shrugging. He grins. "It's weird. Even though we're the same person, I still feel like this is the end for my human side."
"All our memories," the other Danny agrees. The ice still swirls, getting anything still untouched. It climbs closer to Danny. "In a moment, we'll-I'll- forget being human."
"Yeah. Everything'll be gone." He watches the ice climb onto his shoes with a nervous fascination. "But I'm ghost right now."
"There's still a human body," the ghost Danny continues. His depressed acceptance starts to lift as excitement flits across his face. "With a human brain!"
"Two brains, two minds!"
"One person." They now have stupid smiles.
"Take them all with you. When you have control again, us as a human, the memories will be intact. Here, they can be destroyed." The ghost smiles widely. "Everyone will be safe, and there's still a way to get them back!"
The human Danny is covered in ice up to his waist and rising. "I'm a genius."
I can't help but agree.
"If I make it out alive," ghost Danny worries. "Even if I do, if I don't remember what I did here, I could forget forever. Nobody else knows. Where I am, what happened."
"Hey, I'm a hero, right?" The ice has climbed to his shoulders. "This is what I do. I'll escape. I'll turn back into a human. I'll save Sam. Live happily ever after." He eyes the eyes on his neck. "Still feel like I'm dying though. Here: I'm going ghos-"
The ice encases his mouth as he tries to finish the phrase, but with his last remaining couple inches, he winks, just as the ice finishes it's climb. For a second, human Danny stands, an ice statue with a wink and cocky smile, before the ghost Danny touches his shoulder and the entire thing crumbles.
It collapses as if it were hollow and made of a thin layer of snowflakes, blowing away before it even touches the ground.
That's it. Danny Fenton no longer exists. Danny Phantom frowns deeply before blinking widely, the mindscape suddenly appearing unfamiliar to him. He glances around, confused, terrified. He looks at his hands and at the ice around him.
"Where- Who-" he begins, before the memory dissolves in green light.
We're back in his mindscape, the present version.
"Wow."
He nods mutely.
"That was informative."
He nods again.
"We gotta get you human again?"
He nods.
"How?"
He shrugs.
"Do we tell anyone else?"
He shakes his head. I already know why. If we can't figure out how to get him human again, there's no guarantee that he'll-in fact it's entirely possible he won't-get his memories back.
Still. Jazz and Tucker might know how to get him back.
I voice it, and he shakes his head.
"They don't. And I can't deal with them spazzing out about this. This is something I need to remember for myself. Don't tell anyone."
"I won't. We can figure it out." I smile a big smile, suddenly giddy with the information. "We can do this."
He frowns briefly. "We'll see."
That was a big chunk of the plot right there!
Also, I wanted to let y'all know that Danny getting his memories back and getting Sam back is not the end of the story. Vlad's coming. This is only the beginning.
Ha, I'm kidding, we're a good half/two-thirds the way through. That would be a lot, if 130 pages was the beginning.