Chapter 4: A Strike of the Clock
Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or its characters. Any characters I might have happened to invent, however, belong to me.
Danny and Jazz sat quietly munching breakfast. Jazz had whole-wheat toast, while Danny was chowing down on his second bowl of some overly-sugared cereal he hadn't even bothered to learn the name of.
Jack was in the Op Center, eating pancakes, ham, and fudge (not necessarily in that order and possibly all at once) and tinkering with the Ghost Shield. Maddie was in the lab downstairs, working on some new weapon she hoped could stop Vlad.
Graduation Take One was a day behind them. Tucker and Sam had spent practically the whole rest of the day at the Fentons', trying to work out some way of keeping Vlad Plasmius from wrecking Take Two. Efforts thus far had been unsuccessful; there was no way to keep out both humans and ghosts while allowing humans to enjoy the ceremony. The best they had was making the Fenton Shield completely impenetrable once the crowd and graduates were inside. Modifying the Shield to do so was no small feat. There was also the fact that it put everyone inside at risk of being trapped if something did go wrong. Still, it was all they could come up with that had a hope of working.
"Hey," said Jazz, "I just thought of something."
"Hmmph?" answered Danny around a mouthful of sugar and fiber. He swallowed. "You think of a lot of things. Is this one helpful in any way?"
Jazz glared at him. "Remember that time I ran away to Vlad's?"
"Yeees…" Danny hedged. He did remember, and not with a lot of pleasure, since he had been the cause. "Sorry about that, Jazz."
"Apology accepted, though that wasn't really an attempt to get you to say you're sorry. It was three years ago, and I think we're both adult enough to let it go by now. I mean, do you remember what he did when Skulker brought you in?"
"Of course. He tried to get us to fight each other. Like we needed the help. Though your 'Oh, no! What have I done?' was pretty priceless."
Jazz rolled her eyes. "Like you did any better of an acting job, Mr. Shakespeare. Anyone but Uncle Vlad wouldn't have fallen for it. I mean, he tried to get us to fight using…" Jazz prompted.
"He put you in Dad's Ecto-Skeleton. I just had my powers."
"And how did he keep us from escaping?"
"The Shield!" Danny exclaimed, finally catching on. "He modified it for both ghosts and humans! And put it around his football field! He's done our work for us! So all we have to do…"
"Is go out to Wisconsin and see what we can find," Jazz finished.
"I bet there's enough of it left for us to use. But can we get there and back in time?"
"Sure. If you're driving. And we save some time for the inevitable speeding ticket or two."
"Hilarious, Jazz. I don't drive that…OK, maybe I do."
"You had to inherit something from Dad besides the height. You got his lead foot, too. At least you care enough to either swerve or turn the RV intangible when there's somebody in the way."
"What's the point of driving if you can't get where you want to go in a reasonable amount of time?" Danny grumbled.
"This one time—and this is once, remember—I am just going to hang on and not say anything about speed laws and how they apply to everyone, including superheroes. I'll tell Mom and Dad what we're doing. You go get the RV."
"Assault vehicle."
"Right. I forgot if I say 'RV' Dad won't know what I mean."
"You need to visit more."
True to her word, Jazz did not bother Danny about speed laws. Nor did she object to occasionally turning intangible to avoid a too-slow pedestrian on a crosswalk. She did clutch a paper bag and mutter "It's better than flying," every once in awhile. Tucker and Sam, strapped into the back seats, were also quiet. Tucker peaceably played "Mortal Death Assault IV" on his PDA, and Sam read a book of dark poetry Danny had gotten her for her birthday.
"How can you two be so calm?" a white-faced Jazz asked, about an hour into the trip.
"You haven't been on a cross-country trip with him when the deadline was our families' lives," answered Tucker without looking up.
"You haven't been to the Ghost Zone with him when we're chasing Vlad down after he stole an all-powerful map," Sam replied at the same time, barely taking her attention from her book.
"Then it's worse," they said together.
"Heeey," Danny protested. "I'm not that bad a driver."
"You've gotten way better since you actually took Drivers' Ed," Tucker agreed.
Jazz didn't comment after that.
They arrived at Vlad Masters' former estate in half the time it would have taken had Jazz been driving. Jazz was still a little weak-kneed, but she shook off Danny's offer of a hand to climb down out of the RV.
"I'm fine. Let's do what we came here to do."
They made their way around the castle, which was showing some signs of being the worse for wear. Moss was growing on the stones and ivy strung up one side.
"Looks like he hasn't decided to come back here," Sam commented, hands on hips.
"Good thing, too," said Danny. "I don't he'd like us just waltzing up to his house and taking stuff he invented in order to defeat him with it."
"Mom and Dad invented the Shield," Jazz reminded him.
"OK, stuff he stole from us and modified."
The football field was quite overgrown. One of the goal posts had actually fallen over.
"What are we looking for, exactly?" asked Sam.
"Generators that look something like this." Tucker held up his PDA, which projected an image above it of a mechanical device.
"Wow, you've really updated that thing since I last saw it," Jazz said, her eyebrows raised.
"I'm a former mayor and a techno-geek. Always gotta have the latest stuff," Tucker answered proudly. "Comes with the territory."
"How do you even know what these things should look like?" asked Danny as he studied the 3-D image.
"This is one of your parents' generators. I modified the image to look as if Vlad had been tinkering with it." Tucker shrugged. "He has a pretty distinctive style. Technologically speaking. His—"
"OK, OK," interrupted Sam before Tucker could get going. "Enough with the hows and whys. We've got a job to do. Let's go do it. We have to make sure our graduation doesn't get wrecked again, or we'll be doing re-tries all summer until it's time to go off to college."
"You've got a lot more to worry about than that," said a voice from behind the four of them.
"Ghost alert!" Danny cried, blue mist still trailing from his mouth. He jumped in front of the others and stood like a shield, going ghost as he did so. Jazz, Tucker and Sam peered out from behind his tall frame at the intruder.
It was not Vlad. That much was obvious immediately. This ghost was female, unsmiling, slender and fit-looking, with a long ponytail of coppery hair pulled high on her head. Like many ghosts, her skin was blue and her eyes red. Across her left cheek slashed a black mark like a scar that stretched from her nose almost to her ear, marring an otherwise attractive face. She wore calf-length leggings and a cutoff top of a style not unlike the one Sam usually wore, in a deep purple color that clashed horribly with her hair. She also, oddly enough, sported a cape in the same purple hue. Around her neck dangled a pocketwatch set like a pendant in a necklace, and both wrists had cufflike bracelets with watches set into them. In one hand she carried a long staff with a glowing green knob on the top. As they watched, her hair faded to white, and back to red again.
She landed on the grass in front of them, leaning on the staff. "Oh, relax, ghost-kid. I didn't mean you should be worried about me. You've got bigger problems. We all do."
"OK, who are you?" Sam demanded.
"And how did you sneak up on us?" Danny wanted to know. "My ghost-sense didn't warn me until you were right on top of us."
"Your ghost-sense didn't warn you because I didn't want it to. You can never be too careful with a job like mine."
"Um, excuse me, what is your job?" asked Jazz from the back of the group.
The ghost fingered her staff. "Think of me as a time cop. I work with—"
"Clockwork." Danny finished for her. He'd finally realized what the color of the cape and jumpsuit, the overabundance of watches, the shifting color of her hair, and the gear-shaped clasp of her cape meant.
"Clockwork?" Jazz repeated. "You've never mentioned him."
"We don't like to be mentioned a lot. The less people know about Clockwork and me and what we do, the less come bugging us about changing stuff in the past. Like this one has, occasionally," the ghost added with a nod at Danny.
"Hey, he meddled with me first," Danny reminded. "And how come I've never seen you around his tower?"
"I told you, I'm a cop. What good is a cop who sits around her office all day? Not much. Clockwork does what you humans would consider 'deskwork'—he keeps an eye on everything and puts together the big picture. He's the captain, if you will. I'm the enforcer." She tapped her staff, much like a human cop would tap her gun.
"With a stick?" asked Tucker, a little too boldly.
"Don't underestimate this thing," the ghost glared. She twisted part of the staff around, and it became a scythe. She twisted it back, then tapped the top. "Time out!"
Sam, and only Sam, was frozen. The ghost tapped the knob on top again, and Sam came to life once more. "Time in! See, that's how it works. I can't stop everything the way Clockwork can, but I'm much more precise." She spun the staff lazily between her fingers. "So. Formal introductions. I'm Clockstrike, Protector of Time, but that's too much of a mouthful. Call me Strike. Of course I already know you four—we've been monitoring you for years." Her face became even more serious, if that was possible. "That's partially why I'm here. I take it you remember your first encounter with Clockwork."
"Of course," Danny answered. "The CAT test and…"
He suddenly felt Sam clutch his arm. "You don't mean…it's him? He's back?" she whispered in horror. Danny moved and put his arm around her, drawing her close.
Strike nodded. Tucker sucked in his breath, and Danny felt a general sinking in the pit of his stomach.
"Wait. Who are we talking about?" asked Jazz. "Vlad Plasmius? We already know about him."
"No." Strike shook her head. Her hair went white, and stayed that way. "It was my understanding you had an encounter with this ghost, Jazz. Part of that time was erased by Clockwork, but some of your memories should be intact."
"Let me," said Tucker. He pushed a few buttons on his PDA, and an image appeared above it. It showed a tall, muscular ghost in a jumpsuit similar to Danny in his Phantom guise, but with flaming white hair and a cape. His expression was neutral, almost bored, in the picture, but even in the image there was something dangerous about him. "Remember him now?"
Jazz went even whiter than she had while Danny was driving the RV.
"Ah. I see you did meet him," said Strike. "Most who've had an encounter with this one tend to react like that."
"But that's…that's evil Danny," whispered Jazz. "The one who said he was from the future."
"He is. Or was. But I thought, when I changed what happened by not cheating on the test, he was, well…erased?" Danny asked, turning back to Strike.
"Unfortunately not. Something protected him from erasure. He still exists, outside of time. Which means he no longer ages, or gains greater power. He hasn't gotten any stronger in the past three years. That's some of the precious little good news I have at the moment."
"What happened, exactly?" asked Tucker. "You lose track of the Fenton Thermos, or something?"
"He's gone, that's what happened," snapped Strike. "We had his Fenton Thermos stored in the tower. Clockwork left on business, and of course I wasn't there. When we came back, the Thermos was broken on the floor, and he'd vanished. He's loose somewhere."
The humans and Danny exchanged appalled glances.
"So Vlad and Alternate Evil Danny both are on the loose?" asked Sam after a moment.
"We've located Plasmius; in fact, we think he had something to do with releasing Danny's—and his—alternate self. We found him caught somewhere in the late Jurassic period." Strike's mouth twitched in a small smile. "Your other self is quite effective in dealing with foes. Something I reluctantly admire about him. Needless to say, we didn't want to be dealing with Plasmius,too. We decided to leave him there, at least for now. It's not like he can cause permanent harm to the time stream. Any damage he does will be obliterated at the end of the Cretaceous Period with the rest of the dinosaurs. But that's not important. What's important is that I found you first."
"First? You mean…?" asked Danny.
"That he's after you? Certainly. In fact, you're all in danger, as are Mr. and Mrs. Fenton and your vice principal, a Mr. Lancer." Strike's hair went red again.
"Mr. Lancer? What does he have to do with this?" asked Jazz.
"He—and Mom and Dad, and you and Tucker and Sam—were all supposed to die in the alternate future he comes from. We'll fill you in on the way. We've got to get back home!" Danny was already floating.
"Normally I'd suggest taking a shortcut through our tower, but the fugitive's last-known location was the Ghost Zone. Until I'm certain where he is, nowhere in my realm is safe for you four."
"'Somewhere' in the Ghost Zone? That's not very specific," Sam panted as they sprinted for the RV. "Don't you know? With your, I don't know, ghostly future sight, or something?"
"Clockwork went into one of his mysterious modes, and wouldn't tell me. He sent me to protect you instead." Strike sounded aggravated. "One of the downsides of being Protector instead of Master—I can't see the future. And he operates on a need-to-know basis. You know."
"Yeah," Danny agreed, flying along beside her.
"So you're, what, our personal time-stopping bodyguard now?" wheezed Tucker.
"In a way. I'm also hoping to recapture the prisoner before he causes any harm to this time stream. He did enough damage in his own." Strike fingered her stick, lips pressed together.
They reached the RV. Danny turned intangible long enough to ferry Sam, Tucker and Jazz inside, but then Strike shouted something unintelligible. An explosion set the RV rocking.
"Danny—" Sam gasped.
"Looks like our time just ran out. Get going," Danny ordered.
"But—" Sam started again.
"We'll catch up with you. Go!"
Jazz met his gaze with a steely calm he recognized as her battle mode. "See you later, little brother." She moved easily into the driver's seat and turned the ignition.
Her unwavering confidence in him steeled his own nerves at seeing his evil self again. "Later," he agreed.
Then he turned intangible and flew out to face his past. Or his future. He wasn't sure which.