Our Time Chapter 2
Danny found himself suddenly floating inside Clock Work's castle. The master of time floated in front of him, constantly changing his age. "What have you done?" The near monotonous voice asked. The time ghost grabbed the medal from the boy and placed it back where it belonged.
"Remember last time when I changed the past and messed up? Well, I tried again, but this time it worked. No one got hit and there is no Plasmius… or ghostly Jack." Danny explained as he looked back through the mirror he had just come out of. He saw Vlad staring out the window Danny had just flown out of.
"You forget, time is a very picky thing. You can't just go changing things as you see fit." The older ghost stared down the boy. "Just be ready for the consequences." He floated to the mirror and changed it to the present. It showed what was going on inside Danny's house. The morning had come and his parents were together in the kitchen starting their day with a cup of coffee as his sister Jaz dove into a book at the table. It even showed that his room still existed in almost the exact same way it was before he left.
"What consequences? Every thing looks fine." Danny smiled. For once he had done something very right.
"Here's a little catch though. When you go back and affect the past, the effect will be you loosing your memory of the time you came from. Everything from your time will slowly be replaced by memories you would have after living a life in this time stream." Clock Work explained. He prompted the screen to change to a distant past.
"Why didn't that happen last time than?" Danny quizzed.
"Simple, last time you changed it to a future where you didn't exist. It's impossible to have memories replace the ones you have if you didn't exist in that time stream. Now that you do, you will quickly forget the time you came from. I hope you're ready for this." The elder version of the ghost looked down on the teen and waited for his answer.
"As long as Plasmius doesn't exist and my family still does, I'm sure I'll be fine." The teen stated with absolutely no doubt what so ever.
"Just remember this, as soon as you leave the ghost zone, time from this dimension will effect you and your life will adjust to it and memories will rapidly be replaced." With that, the ghost floated into the mirror portal and left the teen to his own.
"He just worries too much." Danny muttered as he floated back to the Fenton portal. He was happy to see it still existed and the whole house was unchanged. He dove into it and found himself becoming reacquainted with the gray metal basement floor. Danny looked down at himself to see that he had somehow changed back to his human form after exiting the portal. He shrugged it off.
A dull pain assaulted his head as fragments of what he assumed to be memory from this dimension flooded his mind. He still remember much of his old life, but now he recalled a large green and yellow bed he remember spending so many afternoons napping on as a child.
On his way up to the kitchen, he stopped and stole a glace at the calendar. Lucky for him it was Sunday morning. He could just go up to his room and get some more sleep. He smiled and walked out of the basement. His parents smiled at him and said good morning as he passed by.
"What were you doing down in the basement so early? Usually we have to forcibly drag you out of your bed." Jaz noted. She stared quizzically at her brother.
"Oh ah… I was up all night playing video games. I think I'm going to sleep for the rest of the day." Danny bluffed as he quickly left the kitchen. No one pried any further and he was left alone for most of the day to catch up on his much needed sleep.
A knock sounded on his door around five in the afternoon. He woke up slightly and just called out permission to enter. He sat up to see who was coming in. To his shock and horror, the tall gray haired billionaire arch-nemesis stood in the doorway. He smiled a seemingly evil smile and walked into the small dirty room. "Vlad!" Danny exclaimed in surprise. "What are you doing here?" The teen threw the intruder an angry glare as the man stood next to his bed.
"Did you forget? I'm off work for today and we promised to watch movies at my house. I didn't want to wake you up earlier since I heard that you were up all night." The man showed an honesty that was rather unusual of him.
"Huh? Wait… what? But…" Danny was speechless. What happened that brought this change about. "Tell me about your days in college. What happened?" The teen wanted to be sure he was in the right dimension.
"You mean the lab accident? You do seem to enjoy that story quite a bit. Fine, I'll tell you again. Just hurry up and get dressed to leave. We'll pick up some dinner on the way to my house." Danny hesitantly got up and shuffled around his room picking up the scattered cloths. "It was your parent's and my first year in college and we were in our ghost club. It was a day of grand proportions, at least we hoped it would be. Your dad had thrown the switch and the prototype portal we had built roared to life. For a second we all though we had succeeded in making a doorway into the ghost realm. But suddenly something went horribly wrong. Just like your mother had pointed out, there was something wrong with the calculations and the portal was reacting horribly. Just before a horrible, quite possibly deadly, blast of ecto energy shot out, a ghost boy came out of nowhere and pushed me to the ground. He saved my life. We all ended up unscathed thanks to him. I watched as he quickly rushed out of the window and pop, was gone forever."
By this time Danny had tossed on his shirt and pants while the man wasn't paying him much attention. He smiled slightly to himself, glad to know his actions had made an impact. He was a little sorry that the story didn't include how Vlad had come to be in his room chatting with his as if they were life long friends though. "So ah… what about my parent's wedding?"
Vlad gestured to the teen to walk with him. They were down the stairs and out the house walking down the street in a way Danny wasn't quite familiar with, though it started to feel like he had walked this way many times before. "Inquisitive today, aren't you? Well, your parents decided they were in love after Jack saved your mom from that terrible accident. They went on to get married four years later when they graduated college. It was a wonderful wedding, your mom was beautiful in her white dress and your old man had actually dressed the part of a husband, even if it was just for a few hours. I was their best man. I watched them exchange their vows and step into the life of families and kids from the sidelines." The two of them walked in quite for a bit as Danny thought over what he was told.
"What about now?" He asked hesitantly curious to know more of this future.
"What do you mean?" Vlad lead the boy down a side street to the nearby pizza restaurant.
"Well, what made it all come to this?" Danny gestured widely as if he was trying to include the entire world in his question. "Why are we getting pizza together and watching movies at your house?" He finally pointedly asked.
"Ha you must have had some dream if you have to ask that. I should be checking you for memory loss or something shouldn't I?" Vlad stopped to talk to the cashier before continuing the conversation. "I stayed friends with your parents and helped them bring up you kids when they needed it. Your sister never took the help I offered and grew into a pleasant young lady quickly. You on the other hand, seemed to value my presence in your life much more."
The raven haired teen thought back as more and more memories seemed to be flooding in his mind. This conversation seemed to be triggering a lot for him. Suddenly an image of him as a little kid playing with a red wagon came to mind. Vlad was in that memory pushing the wagon down a rather steep hill and running after him. Another dominate memory was of the two laying down in the same green and gold colored bed. He was a kid of about ten and was listening to the older man recite the three little pigs in a rather unusual way.
Danny was forced back into the present. He was pleasantly surprised by the fact that not only did he rid himself of such a horrible nemesis, but he gained a best friend in the process apparently. He liked this turn of events so far, though it was hard getting used to.
The teen sat in silence waiting for the pizza to bake. Vlad was up looking at a poster that was hung rather sloppily on the wall near the doors. The world seemed to be rather enjoyable. The smell of fresh baked bread and warm melted cheese danced the tango of temptation through the small restaurant. The two men grabbed their food and departed.
"So, mind if I ask you a few questions?" Vlad prompted as they walked towards the nicer part of town where the more wealthy seemed to live in. Danny nodded and waited for the questions to flow. He hoped he could answer them and that the gray haired man wasn't suspicious of anything. "What kind of dream did you have?"
"It was…" Danny hesitated not knowing what to say. "… I was in a different world. One where I was a ghost and you were my enemy." He finally said.
"Strange. Want to tell me more?" Vlad looked over at the slow going teen and waited to hear more of this dream he had.
"I was half ghost really. We were the same age as now, and we fought all the time. I had … er you had black hair and a white outfit you wore constantly and called yourself Plasmius."
After a while of walking with out talking Vlad finally piped up. "You know Daniel, you look a lot like the ghost boy who saved my life all those years ago. Every time I've looked at you for the last couple years that's the first thing I think of."
"Yeah, well it's not like I could be him though. He's a ghost and I'm not." Danny rushed to say, hoping the older man wasn't jumping to any conclusions.
"I guess you're right. Not to mention that was about thirty years ago. There's no way, it's just not possible." The two men had finally arrived at a rather large two story house and ventured inside. The interior looked very… Vlad. It was dark purple and black in many areas and the whole place had an underlying tone of mystery. They walked down the stairs into the basement that had been turned into a giant Packers themed bedroom. The green and gold bed from Danny's memories sat in the corner. "I'll start the movie, get situated. Soda's in the same place as always."
Danny hesitated to sit on the large bed, but did so anyways as to not draw too much attention to himself. He quickly found a comfortable way to lay down and look at the screen. Vlad set the DVD of Treasure Planet up and joined him on the bed. They sat back and dug into the pepperoni pizza as they watched Doctor Doppler make a fool out of himself.
The two men cracked jokes and did their own commentary on the video as they watched it and gorged themselves on food and bubbly confections. The evening wore on and turned to night as they enjoyed themselves in the small windowless basement.