Chapter 9: Psychobabble
Disclaimer: No, I don't own Danny Phantom or its characters. If I'd had an idea half that good I'd be producing shows too.
"Was it just me, or was Lancer even more out there than usual?" asked Danny as they headed back to FentonWorks, invisible again.
"No, he was definitely waxing on about something vague," Sam agreed. "At least what we told him sank in and he'll go into hiding."
"You'd think finishing high school would make him easier to understand," Danny complained. "Instead it's an excuse for him to get even weirder on us."
"Maybe once we're done with college we'll be able to decipher him." Danny felt Sam shrug. "I almost wish we'd brought Jazz along to translate."
"There's only so many people I can make invisible at a time. Three's pushing it," Danny reminded her, although she was well aware of the extent of his powers. "Besides, it's nice to have some time with just the two of us. Things have gotten so crazy since Graduation Take One."
"No kidding."
There was a pause.
"Sam, I did want to say: if this is it…"
"No, Danny, we've been through this before. We are going to make it. We are going to win. The plan is a long shot, but…" She laughed. "All our plans seem to be."
"Boy is that ever true." Danny sighed gustily.
"And yet we're still here."
"Somehow." Now it was Danny who laughed, though it was a little strained. "I was going to say this is different, but it isn't, really, is it? He's just another enemy to fight."
"And we've proven we can beat him," Sam reminded. "It won't be easy, but we've beaten powerful ghosts before. We can do it again."
Another pause. Long, drawn out. "He…scares me, Sam."
"Danny…"
"Last time we met him I never had time to stop and think. It was just trying to find any way to get back to our present time and stop him from…from…"
"Killing all of us," Sam finished. She stopped, tugging on Danny's hand to indicate he should stop as well even though they were both invisible. He could feel her looking up into his face, sense her purple eyes boring into his. "Danny. I don't believe you'll turn into that, now or ever."
"It's not that. I know I'll never turn into him. But what scares me is that there's anything of me flying around in that suit. He's half me, Sam, don't you get it? The ghost part of me—the part that's in him—isn't evil. Why isn't the good half stopping him?"
Sam was silent for awhile. He knew her well enough to imagine her frown as she thought hard. "You're right," she said slowly. "Danny Phantom isn't evil. Vlad Plasmius is. I get the sense the Plasmius half is in the driver's seat."
"But then where's Danny Phantom been through all of this? Future Vlad Masters told me the evil in Plasmius overwhelmed Danny Phantom when they merged. But if we're half and half, how is that possible? I feel like there should be more conflict between right and wrong going on in him. Instead, he's evil on a level even Vlad in his heyday couldn't imagine."
"Maybe there was conflict going on at some point. Remember, he had ten years to become what he is now. Maybe as he did more and more horrible stuff the good half that was already outmatched got quieter and quieter. But I think you may be onto something. The good Danny Phantom we knew from back then is still buried in there somewhere. Maybe we can find it somehow."
"This sounds suspiciously like a Plan C."
"Not really a plan. I have no idea how we'd go about doing something like that."
"Jazz may have some ideas," Danny said, brightening as he thought about this.
"If you can get around the psycho-babble we'll have to put up with to get it out of her," grumbled Sam.
-0-0-0-
They found FentonWorks still standing and quiet. The Ghost Shield was up, which meant Danny had to become Danny Fenton before crossing it. The first thing he and Sam did was set up Danny's Plan B. Then they wandered down into the lab.
The four occupants had retreated to their own separate corners. Jack was still snacking, Maddie was still tinkering, Tucker had begun a videogame on his PDA, and Jazz was typing something into the Fentons' ghost database. Each had at least one weapon within easy reach.
"Hey, we're back," Danny announced as they came in.
"Hi, hon," Maddie said, glancing up with a smile. "Heard you come in, and I didn't think that filthy evil version of you would use the door. Glad you're back. Did you have a nice walk?"
"Sure."
"Fine."
"Good. Still nothing here." Maddie went back to screwing something into the device she was working on.
"We'd noticed," Sam muttered. She went over to see what Tucker was doing, leaving Danny to address his sister.
"Hey, Jazz," Danny greeted. "What are you doing?"
Jazz frowned at the computer screen. "Entering what we know about this evil future you-and-Vlad hybrid into the database so I can analyze it. He must have a weakness somewhere. All ghosts do, even if it's just round things like in the Box Ghost's case."
"I dunno, Jazz. He's me and Vlad combined. That's not a lot of scope for weakness."
"You all have weaknesses, Danny," Jazz repeated, smiling.
"Jazz…" Danny paused. "Can I talk to you?"
Even someone untrained in psychology could not misunderstand the tone of Danny's voice. As it was, Jazz immediately turned in her chair to give her brother her full attention. "Sure. What is it?"
"Sam and I were talking during our…walk. We thought maybe…well…since this blue-skinned menace is part me, there might be, well…"
"Something left of you in there?" Jazz finished for him. "I've thought of the same thing. I can't figure out why he's behaving the way he is—from a psychological standpoint it makes no sense. Even though this case is highly unusual where two distinct personalities seem to have been melded into one, the sum of the two parts just doesn't add up into the resulting whole. At least of what I've observed of him thus far. It's got to be because I'm missing some piece of the complex puzzle that makes him what he is."
Danny had almost followed this. "Sam thinks it might be because he had ten years to get more evil."
"That's a good hypothesis." Jazz was really warming to her task now, and Danny settled in for a long wait before he got anything useful out of it. "But we don't know enough about those intervening ten years to test it. I wonder if—"
"He's been like that since day one," said another voice from behind them. Danny and Jazz jumped. Strike had returned from the Ghost Zone unnoticed by either of them. She set Tucker's old laptop down on the counter, far enough away from any other technology that if it did anything unusual, there would be plenty of time to stop it before things got out of hand.
Jazz missed only half a beat before she was over her surprise and into Harvard psychologist mode. "If you could expound on that…?"
"I mean, Phantom—not you, ghost-kid—has been deranged and destructive since he first came into being. He blew up Vlad Masters' castle after brutally murdering human Danny Fenton within about five minutes after he was created. He then went on a several-years-long rampage that nearly engulfed the entire human realm in flames. It took a coalition of humans led by Valerie Gray to defeat him in the human realm. Afterwards they set up Amity Park and a few other ghost-free haven cities. He then moved on to the Ghost Zone, which became a constant battleground for the next five years or so." Strike thoughtfully reached one hand up and touched the end of her facial scar near the ear. The gesture seemed almost involuntary. "He'd just figured out how to break down the citywide Ghost Shields in the human realm and was destroying Amity Park again when Danny, Sam and Tucker appeared in that timeline thanks to Clockwork."
"Hmmm." Jazz digested this. If she were wearing glasses, which she didn't because her vision was perfect, Danny could tell they would be on the end of her nose. "What were the circumstances that led to the merge? I don't think you ever told me, Danny."
"After you and the others were killed in an explosion at the Nasty Burger, I went to live with Vlad," Danny explained. "According to Future Vlad Masters, I asked him to separate my ghost self from my human self to make the pain of losing all of you go away. Apparently, Danny Phantom turned around and did the same to him, and then for some unknown reason decided it would be a great idea to merge with Vlad Plasmius. The rest…well, you know."
"It's a bit more complicated," Strike interjected. Her usually stern voice was quiet, almost sympathetic. "Did he tell you how the explosion at the Nasty Burger happened?"
"No. And neither did…Phantom, or whatever you call him. I just know it all came from him cheating on the C.A.T."
"That's what started the ball rolling. But in that reality, Danny Phantom deliberately took the test answers when an opportunity to do so occurred. You ended up with them in this reality as a test of Clockwork's, to see if you would react differently if you acquired them by accident."
Danny flushed. "Nothing changed. I was still going to cheat."
"True. Sending you into the future to meet your other self was a last resort on our part." Strike's voice gentled again. "But there's something else you should know. In that reality, Mr. Lancer requested that you and your parents meet him at the Nasty Burger to make a point about screwing up your future for good, or some such thing. Jazz, Sam and Tucker were all inside the Nasty Burger itself, to give you moral support but out of sight. That explosion…that was a freak accident because one of the idiots behind the counter turned the wrong knob on some sauce container; it wasn't ghost-related at all. But I think the pain of losing everyone he cared about was compounded for that Danny by the fact that he hesitated. He could have saved any of you as Danny Phantom—but only two, three at the most. The choice was too much. In the end, he couldn't do anything because he waited too long to act. You all perished, and he was forced to use his ghost powers to save himself, and only himself."
"Wow." Jazz's face was far away as she digested this. "So not only was that Danny feeling the grief and loneliness of losing all of us, but he also had major guilt knowing he could have saved someone. And realizing it never would have happened had he done the right thing and not cheated on the C.A.T. made it all worse. Separating human and ghost must have seemed like an attractive option at such a vulnerable point."
"Why?" asked Danny. "I can't imagine doing it now. Particularly not merging with Vlad Plasmius even if Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom were to become separate."
"It's natural to want to run from such deep emotional pain. Any possible way to escape it appears good compared to what the person is going through at the moment."
"Future Masters did say something about me not wanting human emotions dragging me down," Danny remembered.
"Let's work with that theory," Jazz said, her voice getting more and more prim with every word. "Though if I'm right the opposite appears to have happened—negative emotion seems to be heightened in the pure ghost state rather than taken away. Anyway, that's beside the point. In such a distressed state, rationality is weakened. Not only does this possibly explain the attack on and merger with Vlad Plasmius, but also why Danny Phantom's innate altruism has become virtually silent in the subject entity."
"In English?" Danny demanded.
Jazz blinked. "Sorry. What I mean is that Danny was so upset and guilty over what had happened that he was willing to do things that didn't make much sense. And the goodness in him got mixed up in the merger when the evil in Vlad Plasmius influenced him even further."
"So even Danny Phantom is evil by now," Danny clarified.
"Not 'evil' per say," Jazz said. "Just incredibly impulsive and emotionally volatile, which when mixed with Vlad Plasmius' lack of morals means he's pretty much capable of anything."
"We knew that already," pointed out Strike. Her usual brisk voice was back. "But it's interesting to hear a workable theory as to why. I've sometimes wondered what it was that made this ghost so completely conscienceless when Danny Phantom has always striven to protect people."
"Glad there's such a striking difference," Danny said. Strike smirked at him.
Sam and Tucker came over. "Any ideas?" asked Sam.
"Haven't gotten that far yet," Danny informed her.
Tucker opened his mouth to ask a question but was interrupted by a horrible wailing noise from outside. Everyone in the room covered their ears. The entire building shivered in its foundations, as if shuddering at the prospect of what stood outside.
"What is that?" Jack demanded, his voice managing to carry over the din.
"He's here!" Strike shouted back. "Get ready!"
Author's Note: Completely random sidenote—I've always wanted to use the word 'altruism' in a fic. It's one of my favorite words. Thank you Jazz for your lovably pretentious side that lets me use fun vocabulary words.