Frozen wastelands.
Jagged purple mountains.
Floating graveyards.
And lots and lots of random doors.
The initial rage and terror that consumed me had worn off an hour earlier, and I slumped exhausted in the middle seat of the Specter Speeder. Kara sat in the driver's seat to his left and Fitter mulled over the map on my left. The suppressing quiet didn't do much to ease my nerves, but it did give me a chance to muddle through his situation.
Mom disappeared. Dad disappeared. Connection? Husband and wife, of course. The lived in the same house and ate the same food. Could it have been a contamination in the food? No. I would have vanished as well. Could there have been a childhood connection? Nah, that couldn't be it either. Tucker still resided in FentonWorks, recovering from the shock of watching his best friend in life disappear.
Kendra proved her smarts by leaving a note before they left. If Tucker had snapped out of his daze to find his children and me missing as well, the poor man might've had a heart attack.
There had to be some connection, and I knew it. If only I could peg it!
Fitter's voice softly shattered the silence. "It should be behind that purple rock."
Thoughts aside, I looked with more interest out of the windshield. Looming behind the giant rock stood the largest structure I had ever seen. Numerous dials and gears framed the initial doors, and a myriad of mechanics decorated the exterior of the foreboding building. Leaving the Specter Speeder on a pavement near the iron entrance, our trio idly waited for a response to their knock on the door.
We didn't wait long.
Without warning, the door swung open, permitting us entrance inside.
"Do we just walk in?" Kendra asked tentatively, inspecting the empty hallway.
Shoving my nervousness down, I took the first step in. Nothing terrible happened. "I suppose so." Suddenly a green wisp of a cloud-like form dashed in front of me. I jumped back and grabbed Fitter's hand, frightened. All three of us held our breaths as it disappeared into the air. Okay, so maybe jerking back wasn't the manliest thing to do when surrounded by two girls, but this was unchartered territory, alright?
Kendra raised an eyebrow at my reaction. "I think I'll take the lead." She moved ahead, and Fitter and I shared a glance before continuing. Alright, and maybe holding Fitter's hand while walking wasn't manly either...but my mind wasn't focused on that.
It was focused on the cloaked figure that appeared ten yards away.
The rage that I had buried earlier returned with a newfound passion. Releasing Fit's hand, I jerked forward and glared at the one who knew my problem without having to say a word. He knew what I was going to ask, and the answer I would receive. He knew my reaction. He knew the steps I would take to get my family back.
"Clockwork," I growled. All he had to do was tell me exactly what needed to happen and everything would be okay. We could all go back to our normal lives, happy and such.
The ghost shrank.
"Daemyn!" Kendra shushed in front of me. "That's not how you address Clockwork!"
"Seriously!" her sister agreed. "Not the right way to get the guy to help you."
I gritted my teeth. Didn't they understand? Didn't they see that all he had to do was open his mouth and-
"Your friends are wise, young one." Clockwork's voice echoed loudly across the room, startling us. He turned halfway, and I met his piercing gaze. "Calm yourself, and we will get to business."
I was calm. "Where are my parents? What happened to them? Why didn't you tell Dad how to save her?"
"Like father, like son," the now older ghost replied, chuckling to himself.
"Don't laugh! Tell me what's going on!"
Kendra stepped forward, passing me a pleading look. "Clockwork, what he means to say is that we're all worried about Uncle Danny and Aunt Sam. And none of us think that this is the way the present was supposed to occur. But only you know that for sure." She paused, waiting for a reaction.
"I am." Clockwork affirmed.
Well, thanks for the obvious, Mr. Ego.
"And you are correct; this was not the intended way for the timeline to pan out."
Finally! Fitter shot me a hopeful look, and I managed to nod in agreement.
"And yet, it is the best way. All contributing factors, players, and events best result from the occurrences that appear in this version of the future."
Say what?
"What are you talking about? My parents are GONE and I don't know how to get them back." I shouted, my face turning red.
The ghost suddenly appeared right next to me, and I glimpsed the everlasting timepiece within his cloak. "Daemyn! Do not test my patience. I haven't the time for it. And neither do you, if you want to see your parents again."
I drew a breath and waited until my heart-rate lowered before meeting his eyes. He searched them for a moment, and I felt as if time paused and the ghost perceived every emotion that passed through me.
"Better," he nodded, agreeing with himself. "Now, you come seeking advice and a solution to your problem."
Three heads nodded in agreement.
"There is a problem-" -thank you again, Mr. Obvious- "-but it is not one within your power to fix at this moment."
No. I wouldn't accept that. I opened my mouth to tell him just that when he continued.
"It involves the past."
Oh, that made sense....why didn't he just say that in the first place?
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Let me show you." The ghost turned towards a giant circle that stood erect in the center of the room. Without warning, an image flickered on the screen. If, within the past twenty-four hours I had not lost both of my parents, what Clockwork showed me would have shaken me to my core.
In this current reality, it only penetrated my skin and caused shivers to roll up my spine.
The dust lingered dramatically for a moment, and then disappeared.
All that remained was the tattered and limp form of Danny Fenton.
"Oh! Danny! Please, NO!" Jazz cried out. She jumped off of the bleachers and ran towards the body of her brother. Upon reaching it, she found a bloody and derranged mess. His hair was a chalky color, matter with blood. His arms were ridden with dirt and had become raw with the constant beating it had undergone.
Tucker stared silently at his friend, his eyes brimming with tears. "I can't believe it. After all we've gone through..."
Danni flew down from the sky and stood next to Tucker, tears trickling down her face. "Cousin..."
Reluctantly, Jazz turned Danny over, praying that he would stir and say something. Anything. "Please Danny, wake up." Nothing. His eyes remained cold, lifeless, and unmoving. The shining blue orbs she had always protected were gone. No more.
Clockwork was showing me my Dad's death.
And the one who murdered him...
...my mother.
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"Do you have any respect for the dead?" Tucker yelled at Sam as she landed next to them. "You just took my best friend from me and now you dare to show your face here?" His fists curled into balls. "How could you do it Sam? He freakin' loved you, for crying aloud! Do you know what he went through to save you? What all of us went through? We battled EVERY SINGLE GHOST IN THE GHOST ZONE just to rescue you and how do you repay us? You KILL the one who loved you?"
"I know Tucker," Sam whispered, a tremor in her voice.
"Then what are you doing here?" Jazz asked. Her eyes bore threateningly through Sam's pale face.
"I..I.." Tears began to form at the edge of her eyes. "...I think I know how to bring him back."
The blood of everyone on the field froze as they stared at her.
"What do you mean?" Jazz eyed Sam carefully.
Quietly, she turned towards Danny. Sam kneeled down next to him, and placed her hands over his heart. Within her mind, she summond a power that had been hidden in her mind for the past few days. A power she had never wanted to use. Without hesitation, she now grasped it and willed it to the surface.
Tucker gasped as Sam began to glow a soft purple. What was she doing?
"She's regathering their essences," Danni stated, confounded.
"What?" Jazz asked, wiping a tear from her eye.
"Essence, like the soul," Danni explained. "She's...well, it's complicated to explain. A ghost is the soul of a departed person that has taken on an image. Everytime a ghost touches something, or someone, a bit of their essence stays behind."
"So what does that have to do with anything?" Tucker asked.
"Well," Danni thought for a moment. "When Danny died, his ghost should have appeared. It didn't, which reveals that he somehow didn't have one left...Sam is summoning it all back at the moment." Danni paused as she thought about it. "It's amazing that she's able to do this."
"Why?" Jazz asked.
"Not all ghosts can withstand the amount of energy it takes to summon the essence of someone 's why it's never been done before..." Danni looked at Sam in awe. "Astounding..."
The trio watched as beautiful sparklets of purple surrounded Danny and Sam in a sphere-like form. It began to glow.
"Hey, what's that Danni?" Tucker pointed off to the distance where blue specks similar to the purple had appeared.
"Say what?" Danni spouted out, staring between the blue and purple sphere. "No way! That's impossible!"
"What is?" Jazz asked, staring intently at her brother's clone. "Is something going wrong?"
"It's incomprehendable!"
"What is?" Tucker echoed.
"THERE'S NO WAY!"
Jazz and Tucker began to yell in unison, "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?"
Danni looked bewildered, "I think I made a mistake...the BLUE sparklets are Danny's essence, which means the purple's are..."
"Sam's?" Tucker guessed. Danni's silent nod confirmed it.
The blue essence began gathering with the purple essence, and they shimmered as they danced in the sphere.
"I'm not sure how to essences will react to um, mixing, like they are..." Danni said concerningly... "They might..." Suddenly the area filled with a blinding with light, emitting from the sphere. Tucker put his hands over his eyes, as did Jazz and Danni. A whining noise filled the air as all the surrounding particles began to vibrate, causing an intense force to shimmer around the tearful group.
---------------------------------
They had waited for minutes until they could see clearly, then rushed to the side of the perfectly healed Danny, who had been blinking, rather confused.
"Am I dead?" were the first words that had come out of the boy's mouth. Jazz and Tucker had laughed through tears and hugged him until he was forced to use the universal choking sign to prove he WOULD be dead if they didn't let go.
After celebrating he was alive, they realized Sam had disappeared. After a very dedicated hunt, they found her pounding on a door, demanding to be let out of the room she was locked in. Sam and Danny had immediately embraced, both very much human.
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I knew the story. I'd heard it several times over from my father. Of course, he could only tell of it when Mom wasn't around. It still hurt her to this day to think that after all of the crime-fighting, encounters with Walker and Skulker, defeats of Vlad, and the ever-annoying presence of the Box Ghost, she was the one who ultimately killed Danny Phantom.
Sometimes, well, a lot of the times, Uncle Tucker added in details. Only when I complained that Dad couldn't finish the story. He felt like Mom, only helpless because there was nothing he could do.
One way or another though, the story had ingrained itself into my heart. I still bore the tell-tale DP logo everywhere I went.
"Why did you show that to me?" I asked, confused.
"So you could understand what went wrong," the Master of Time answered.
"I don't get it..." Fitter stated with a confused look on her face.
"Oh no...." We both turned to Kendra, whose face was frozen in shock. "It was the essences. Danni mentioned the trick had never been used before! Something went wrong with the essences, didn't it?"
After a long grueling couple months of work in school and fighting through the tide and rut that is life, I have succeeded in bringing another chapter forth! ...I won't lie, the reviews brought me back to keep strolling on this story. Thanks to everyone who helped dig me out of the grave. Keep reviewing, I've learned it works. : )
~Lynn