AN: Ok. Before I start with the chapter I'm going to clarify something. I LOVE the ghost writer. I don't think he is evil. I probably should have asked if you wanted him as an antagonist instead of villain. I shall ramble more about the subject at the footnote for those who are interested. Having said that, there goes the chapter.

THIS CHAPTER IS UNBETAED SO BEWARE!

Chapter 3: The insanity before Christmas.

Snowflakes fell slowly from the clouds in the sky, to the cheerful, and slightly snowy, streets of Amity Park; the unique crystals were landing softly in the heads of the kids playing happily at the time of the day they would have usually been stuck in their schools, but, much to their glee, a snow day caused the closing of each and every single school in the whole town, which had long since been saturated with iconic decorations of the Christmas holidays.

The festive atmosphere was easy to see with every door having a Christmas wreath placed on it, every tree adorned with colorful little lights, and the sound of singing carols echoing all over the place. Likewise, plastic representations of Santa Claus (along with some real people dressed in the signature red and white attire) were placed in the showcase of every store to lure in more costumers to but their offered product.

The inside of housed and buildings looked just as festive as the outside: the families had all arranged presents on the foot of their Christmas trees, hung socks on top of the warmly light chimneys, and the tell-tale bags of groceries that would be used to cook the Christmas feast were on top of their kitchen counters.

Smiles were easily found in every face since both, young and old, had been touched by the very special and magical spark of wonder that floated in the air this time of the year; however, if you were to look for a frown or an upset face, you would have a much harder time finding it, for only one single teen had managed to perpetually keep both in the happiest time of the year.

"Merry Christmas!" Yelled a female teen that walked next to the sole gloomy soul of the town, who moodily kept his eyes on the ground in front of him. "Happy holidays! Happy Hanukah!" The girl cheered just as loudly, waving her hand towards whoever looked her way with an amused expression every time she opened her mouth.

The amethyst eyed teen that had been greeting anyone and everybody in Amity Park's mall suddenly focused on one nerdy-looking brunette. "Merry Christmas, Mickey."

Funnily, the short, skinny guy who had been addressed as Mickey didn't take the greeting for what it was; which was easy to see on the way his expression filled with shocked disbelief, then those very same feelings reflected in his face climbed to his voice as he paranoid gasped, "You? Are being cheery!?" His eyes widened as what looked like realization shone behind his round glasses. "It's a trap! IT'S A TRAP!" He ran in panic as he yelled waving his arms comically over his head.

"What's with him?" The confused steel-toed-boots-wearing female asked as she watched "Mickey" leave in rush.

"What's with him? What's with you?" The grumpy, black-haired teen to her right asked.

"Oh, perk up Danny," Another teen, this time and African-American, addressed the grumpy boy. "I know you are in your annual holiday funk, but this is the time of a year Sam isn't an instant downer."

"Have a kicking Cuanza!" Sam loudly voiced, as if to prove the previously spoken words.

"And the one time of a year that I can boast out the Foley Mistletoevere," Tucker declared changing his red beret for an identical one that had a mistletoe floating over it –the green plant being supported only by a thin cord of metal. "Hi there, miss," The teen talked to a pretty, young adult woman who stopped next to him. "How about spreading some Christmas joy?" He asked, closing his eyes and puffing out his lips exaggeratedly, showing his want to receive a kiss.

The woman lowered her dog-carrying-purse towards the blunt and un-expecting youngster's face, having her brown schnauzer pet lick the unsuspecting kid on the lips. The little dog seemed to cringe at the flavor on Tucker's lips, but the female mercilessly kept on walking breezily, narrowly missing the remark of, "Mmm, you had liver for lunch."

Danny, however, had not stayed beside his chatty friend long enough to face-palm at that; somebody had sent him sprawling down, the random middle aged man having been blinded by a mountain of boxes that covered almost all the way to his graying hair. Danny had barely managed to get back on his feet when another person almost collided with him; this time, he stepped aside only to be forced to duck once more not to be sent to a face plant by a much bigger guy that didn't seem to have any focus on his surroundings —several people bumped into his shoulders after that. Blaming the rushing of the shoppers to the holidays —as he did anything bad that happened this time of a year— he lashed out to the universe, while yelling on top of his lungs a "I hate the holidays!" not caring the weird looks he would be getting by yelling such a thing in the markets heavily crowded area.

"I don't get it, how can anyone hate this time of the year?" Sam, who was the usual killjoy of the trio, wondered out-loud. "I don't even celebrate it, and I love it," she added with a smile on her face that was the complete opposite of her usual dark expression. Even Goths, like her, couldn't stop being affected by the magic of happiness floating in the air.

"That's right," Tucker inched closer to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. "You don't know about the fight."

"The fight?"

Tucker needn't say anything else, he turned to look behind himself, and Sam followed his line of sight until her eyes landed on an scene that brought the answer to the question she asked. In front of the kids lining to ask a guy disguised as Santa for their yearly Christmas presents, a woman in a familiar blue jumpsuit hotly declared: "Santa is a Ho, ho hoax."

Offended, a huge guy sporting a similar jumpsuit, but colored orange, called her "Heretic!" before adding "Santa is real as real can be!"

Needles to say, that Danny had recognized this two jumpsuit-wearing people as his parents, both of whom were glaring at each other over the poor mall's employee, whose only sin of the day had been to impersonate the most famous North Pole resident. The mall's Santa admirably kept on a blank look and stood in place, instead of running for the hills while complaining that he wasn't being paid enough to stand the town two most famous eccentrics —or lunatics depending on who you asked— invading his personal space while fighting each, with him sandwiched in the middle like he was invisible. There was no doubt in the Santa's mind that the quarrel of the couple was most likely traumatizing the kids queuing to sit on his laps. He did, however —and Danny could tell by the way his eyes darted around hastily— wonder something among the lines of 'why the security has not arrived to kick them out and lock them somewhere?'. This wish that reflected in the red-clad increased his urgency twofold when each crazy Fenton pulled a megaphone, seemingly out of nowhere, as if the victims within earshot of their yells weren't enough in their deranged minds... it was as if the ghost hunters wanted the whole mall to witness their petty squabble.

Danny, who had been just as aggravated by his peers as "Santa", but thankfully not as captive at the moment —and didn't want to stick around until the security on of mall humiliatingly dragged his parents away— decided to go away from the mall right then and there. "If you need me I'll be in the Ghost Zone... getting rid of some frustration," The youngest Fenton lifted a bag full of recently-bought Christmas decorations for emphasis, before stomping towards the exit of the building and then the street. The ultimate goal of Danny's rampaging walk being a place where he could transform into his ghostly persona, Danny Phantom, and vent some of his anger by blasting with ecto-blasts the holiday-related contents of his bag, in what was, undoubtedly, a conscious act of misplaced aggression. Thankfully, the teen had the head to restrain himself from destroying the decorations all around him, settling only to do so to those he himself had bought for the occasion.

Outside on the streets that lead to Fentonworks, his angry mood continued to rise at every decorated corner he crossed and every random greeting he heard —be it for Christmas or Hanukah— and continued to stomp until a Christmas brochure hit his face spot on, making the snap-ish Danny grit his white teeth as he growled and grumbled things that would make his mother want to disinfect his mouth with an ecto-bazooka.

Even though Danny had almost tripped a couple of times because he had been a tad too absorbed in his brooding to notice the small lumps of snow on the ground, no amount grumpy absentmindedness could completely eclipse the instinctive wariness honed during months of Ghost fighting that had caused Danny Fenton's mind to become a tad too sharp for noticing certain kind of things —like suspicious movements on is surroundings. Stopping dead in his tracks, the raven haired turned his head around slowly towards a hallway where he swore a very big, grey blur had just gotten itself into… not that he could be positive, since he had been barely glimpsed at whatever he saw out of the corner of his eye. After some moments of intense scrutiny towards the alley, the teen superhero couldn't spot anything that justified the bumping of his heart. His intense staring was brought to an abrupt end as he saw a cat jumping out from an open dumpster. Since the color of the animal matched the color of the blur he saw, the youngest Fenton thought of it as reason enough to quell his alertness and label his jumpiness as over-reacting.

"Get a hold of yourself Fenton-Phantom," Danny chided himself. "Is not like your ghost sense went off, or anything," he mumbled, talking to himself while trying to shrug off the odd, uneasy feeling that remained in his stomach as something caused by mother's cooking and not a monster ready to pounce at him when he so much as turned away —both options equally probable in his life. Nevertheless, it had been five minutes after he saw the cat, and the halfa could still feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up in a way he knew his mother's cooking couldn't cause —not unless the food came alive and was actively attacking him at the moment. Despite not having seen anything out of the ordinary, and that the streets seemed to be completely empty, somehow he knew he was being watched and, for a brief moment, he felt tempted to go ghost and fly away from the creepy feeling, but he didn't; whoever was around couldn't be a ghost and, for all he knew, it could be Dash Baxter and the football team hiding in the shadows, waiting for the perfect chance to drag him into some prank. It wasn't like he was going to so readily expose his secret to the school jocks.

Deciding to do what was the most natural thing to do when you are being followed in a dark, lonely street felt, the often bullied Fenton started to run as fast as his feet would take him. He took a different path to the one that lead to his home, not wanting to reveal to his chaser where he lived just in case this person wasn't from around. The few months Danny Phantom had been the town protector had given him quite the knowledge about the layout of it, and he was fairly sure he would be able to lose the person in the complex maze that was once an unfamiliar street. Having seen the older part of Amity Park from above more times that he could count, he now knew where the most obscures of alleys were placed, he knew the blind spots of the security cameras of the shops and arcades… Beside, even if Danny himself got lost, the only thing he needed to do was find a corner dark enough to hid him for view to make sure he lost whoever was on the chase, then turn invisible and fly back home. Nevertheless, much to Danny's displeasure, instead of the distance between him and the most likely bullies widening, whoever was after him was gaining on him despite the effort his poor, abused legs were doing under the effect of the adrenaline generated from being chased by doom.

The most un-athletic Fenton found panicky that delivering air to his lungs was proving to be an increasingly daunting task as the minutes ticked by, and he was painfully aware that whoever had been chasing him would catch up any time soon if nothing short of a miracle happened. Worse still, Danny got a feeling that if the one after him had actually wanted to make a grab for him already he would have done so. He was being toyed with. Out of the blue, the aggravated teen could faintly hear something that sounded like "Stop running!" being shouted in a unfamiliar, heavily accented voice.

Great, now he had foreign creeps chasing after him.

In his panic, Danny had long since stopped playing attention to where he was going, and headed straight into a dead end. Currently he was about to stampede into a wall, as if he wanted this skull to leave a deep imprint on it. It would have been impossible for any human being to stop dead in his tracks in time to avoid hitting the wall with his face with full force, and the halfa was no exception in his human form. Thankfully –or maybe not— he felt a yank on the opposite direction he was running, pulling him backwards and saving his cranium, and the wall, of getting cracked. However, not noticing that this pull had been meant with the best of intentions, the halfa naturally processed someone grabbing him suddenly as a a move that would have made his nine degree black-belt, ghost-hunting mother proud, Danny twirled around with great speed and precision, landing a rotating flying kick into a face… an unexpectedly furry, grey face.

Danny's eyes widened impossibly as he finally noticed who had been on the receiving end of his impromptu attack. Letting go of the bag he didn't know he still had been holding, he let out a surprised gasp at seeing a seven foot tall weirdo dressed in a very realistic-looking rabbit costume, rubbing his face with two furry paws that Danny immediately decided were gloves, made of the same material than the fake bunny ears on his head.

"You kicked me," The rabbit dude said to Danny, seemingly surprised by the teen's actions.

"Well, you grabbed me," Danny replied, feeling very loss at the wronged attitude of the man whose foreign voice belonged to someone older —and taller— than himself.

There was a moment of pause in which the African bunny looked at the raven haired teen with surprise, before said "bunny" asked the one stupidest questions Danny had ever been asked in his life. "You can see me?"

Danny had to roll his eyes at that. "No, you are completely invisible," the town protector's voice was heavily saturated with sarcasm.

The stranger with the Australian accent got up from the floor slowly with a complex expression on his face, and the half ghost jumped into a defensive position, much to the further bewilderment of the Australian. "Name's E. Aster Bunnymund," he introduced himself proudly.

Noticing how the name provided clearly included "Easter Bunny" in it, Danny let out a snort. "…Yeah right, and I'm Neil Armstrong," Danny's cynicism –fed by his traditional bad mood this time of a year, and the incoherent conversation he was sharing with the stalker that was proving to be madhouse material—kept on rising to new heights.

Completely missing the inflections on Danny's voice, the nut who had just introduced himself a E. Aster Bunnymund frowned. "Neil Armstrong? Ain't it Danny Fenton?"

Danny could feel his blood drain from his face at the last statement, while a bunch of emotions rushed into him with impeding force. For once he felt the irresistible urge to face-palm that this guy really thought he was actually referring to himself as the first man to put a foot in the moon, the second being a want to punch Rabbitman for making his night even more irritating by making him waste his precious time —time he would have been using to blast the Christmas motifs in the long forgotten bag on the floor. There were several more emotions blooming into Daniel Fenton chest after the rabbit's response, than those two, but the emotion that seemed to overpower all the other's was shock at finding out this fruitloop knew his real name.

"Who are you?" Danny asked with narrowed eyes, his battle stance sharpening. He had already scratched the possibility of this person belonging to the football team —there were no foreigners in it—, and dressing as a grey rabbit wasn't the Guys In White, much less Vlad's, and, given that his ghost sense hadn't reacted despite the proximity of the guy, he couldn't think of any of his enemies the Australian could be associated with.

"I'm the Easted Rabbit," the costumed dude said his crazy delusion straight instead of repeating the estrange, fabricated name that could have come out of a children's book or a Disney movie.

Danny's eyes twitched for a moment then teen took a deep breath and finally sighed. "Dude, I don't know what your parents told you when you were growing up, but the Easter Rabbit doesn't exist." The "Easter Rabbit" put a bewildered face. It was clear, for the halfa, that this guy –whose real name couldn't possibly be E. Aster Bunnymund— was deeply convinced that there was actually a furry little animal hiding painted eggs in bushes during spring. Worse still, the wacko thought he was it.

"He does exist, mate , I'm the Easter Rabbit," The wacko repeated, and the youngest Fenton instantly tried his best to remember where Amity's asylum was placed.

At least this insane person didn't think of himself as Santa Claus or Rudolf the red nose Reindeer. Danny tried to find some sort of relief in the fact that he wasn't stuck with an insane Christmas fanatic —which would make more sense, in his mind, that an Easter Rabbit mislead groupie—. After a brief pondering, Danny realized that making a break for it and run back home would prove to be very pointless if the lunatic ha was dealing with already knew where he lived —he already had called him Danny Fenton, and Fentonworks had his last name blaring in green neon lights, announcing where he lived for the world to see. Then again, Danny wasn't even sure he could outrun the self-proclaimed holiday icon. He hadn't been able to before, after all.

The younger Fenton decided to change tactics. Appease the guy and lead him back to the madhouse, instead of fighting him right on.

"Of course you are," Danny cooed, losing his battle stance while opting for a kinder approach. If something he had learnt from his psychology talks with Jazz, it was that it was never wise to emotionally corner a lunatic: they could be unpredictable and dangerous. "It's ok, I truly believe you. In fact, I know all about the Easter Rabbit, and I can help you make it back to your cushioned, white den in the ment-magicalfacility."

Danny was inwardly wondering how his attempts to convince the loony to return to the loony bin were faring, all the while thinking on some logical reasons why he should go back to it —some that would actually appeal to the crazy. The half ghost had just decided to point out the fact that it was December, and he should go hibernate or whatever until it was time for the right festivity or something. However, before the teen could voice the speech that had already began to take shape in his mind, anger erupted from the guy with the fake long ears. "What's that supposed to mean?" the costumed seven-foot tall man asked, rage making its way to his facial expression and voice as he moved closer until his taller form was looming threateningly over Danny's small frame.

"Nothing," the loomed over citizen replied as a reflex. It seemed that his efforts to calm down the self-proclaimed rabbit proved to be futile. Not that Danny was too worried about that: the word of someone who had lost it enough to think of himself as the real Easter Rabbit couldn't be something that the doctors of any self-respecting mental institution would so readily believe, and it would be the nut's word against his if the former claimed the son of the town's most famous ghost hunters was actually the ghost superhero Danny Phantom.

This mixed up situation would have lead to a very interesting conversation if fate hadn't decided to interfere; whatever oncoming following inquiry the bunny would have made died in his throat as the secluded alley both had landed themselves at became several times colder and darker."Pitch," The rabbit muttered to himself, and Danny barely heard him with his enhanced hearing. Not knowing what this guy was talking about, the halfa raised an eyebrow, ready to turn invisible while the nut looked around paranoid, then get back home and call the police to let them know of the asylum's late escapee. Danny found his resolve a moment too late, though; just before he could will the familiar rings of light to replace him for his alter-ego, Danny Phantom, a hollow chuckle resounded in the brick walls of the alley. Then, before the half ghost could react, the shadows jumped from the walls towards him suddenly and everything went black.

To be continued.

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AN: Hi there guys! I'm sorry this one took so long and that I have utterly butchered my portraying Australian accent. Thanks to Inviso-Al for pointing out that I wrote African instead of Autralian -I mixed the two and spent hours researching the wrong one.

I tried seven times to fix the things I didn't like and I'm still not too sure in how I did with Bunnymund there, but I do like how I did Danny's portrayal. Also, I'm sorry to inform you the next one will also take me several months —the ideas I have are going to be hard to write.

I want to deeply thank you for your reviews, and opinions. And decided to ask you once more what you guys would like to have next. So, do you guys want next chapter to happen in: A. Bunnymunds POV or, B. Pitch's POV (you can chose pretty much every other character if you want to know what they are doing at the time, but I think the last two would be the ones making more sense plot-wise).

Vote now and, more importantly REVIEW!