For a while time seemed to stop. Danny's face became drenched with tears, his eyes red and raw. He breathed in and out deeply, trying to control his whirling emotions. He was frozen in place, paralyzed by grief. Then he let all of his emotions out in one scream of anguish… A scream that evolved into a wail…a wail that unleashed powerful glowing green soundwaves that shook the building to its very foundations, blasting back Plasmius and causing his duplicates to all dissipate. Vlad was knocked unconscious as parts of the ceiling began to cave in and come crashing down. Danny soon found himself incredibly weak and fell backwards barely conscious. Sam rushed over and roused him back up.
"Danny! Danny, wake up! You have to listen to me! We can still save your sister! We just have to fix the timeline! Do you understand me?"
Unable to bring himself to speak, Danny simply nodded his head. But he suddenly felt a slight tinge of hope break through his despair.
Sam turned them intangible and flew down, down, down to the very bottom of the castle and into Vlad's secret lab.
"Sam," Danny mumbled, finally regaining the strength to talk. "We have to get to Clockwork. He's the only one who might know how to fix this."
"Find Clockwork, you got it!"
She ran over to the wall and flipped a switch, activating his ghost portal.
"You ready?" She asked him, genuinely concerned.
He nodded weakly. "I have to be… for Jazz."
She nodded in understanding. She took his hand and together they flew off into the ghost portal.
They floated through the Ghost Zone for what felt like ages before they finally found Clockwork's lair. They entered the clocktower, but found the place deserted.
"Where is he?" Sam asked. The ghostly master of time wasn't exactly known for taking vacation time, so it seemed a tad bit strange that he wasn't here. They began having a look around, half expecting to find an "Out to Lunch" sign hanging up somewhere. They searched everywhere, but found no sign of Clockwork.
Just as they were about to give up and leave, the far wall blasted apart revealing Plasmius, Skulker, Walker, and a small army of police ghosts.
"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that too much Daniel, you have much bigger problems to concern yourself with now!"
Before he could issue a command, Sam flew forwards and hit him with a massive burst of green energy, sending the villain skidding across the ground.
He picked himself up with a growl. "Get them!" he ordered.
"With pleasure," Skulker smirked. He launched himself upwards and tackled Sam out of the air, hurtling her towards the ground. He pinned her down before she even had a chance to get back up.
"At last, ghost child… Your hide will finally adorn my wall!"
A glowing green blade emerged from his wrist, which he thrust downwards. Sam was able to twist just enough, for the blade to miss her head by a mere fraction of inch, instead plunging deep into the ground. As he struggled to pull his blade back out of the ground, Sam shot glowing blue ice beams out of her eyes, freezing his mechanical arm. She swung her fist into his frozen arm and shattered it. He staggered back in shock, freeing her in the process. She quickly hit him in the chest with ball of glowing green energy, blasting him backwards. With the ghost hunter down, she turned to engage Vlad.
Danny, meanwhile, was blasting away at the squads of ghostly policeman. Unfortunately, there were far too many and he found that he wasn't really making much of a dent in their numbers. He soon found himself surrounded and overwhelmed. Suddenly he was seized from behind and raised into the air.
"You should have stayed in prison and accepted your sentence like a man, son. Now, you've earned yourself a severely increased sentence…" Walker threatened.
Out of nowhere, a burst of yellow light flared behind the ghostly warden and walker found himself being blasted forward from behind, causing him to drop Danny.
Danny turned to see Tucker in his floating chair, turrets out and ready to fire. "Don't worry, dude. I've got your back!"
Together, they blasted away at the hordes of Walker's goons.
Meanwhile, Sam and Vlad were engaged in a heated aerial battle. Each one firing energy bursts at the other, but neither making much headway over the other. Growing tired of making such little progress, Vlad created a glowing magenta energy construct of a giant spiked mace and used it to strike Sam across the room. Then he transformed the mace into a hundred glowing energy daggers and sent them flying towards his opponent. Just in time, Sam conjured an energy field in front of her. The daggers hit the shield and shattered. Then, she pushed the shield forward. The wall of energy slammed into Vlad knocking him back.
Before he had a chance to charge back at her, the ceiling blew apart. Everyone looked up to see Jack and Maddie flying overhead in a variation of the Specter Speeder. They fired rockets into the hordes of Vlad's henchman, blasting them away.
"Eat hot ecto-rockets, you ghost scum!"
Between Danny and Tucker on the ground and Jack and Maddy in the air, Walker's police force was quickly whittled down to nothing. This, of course, did not sit well with the ghostly warden himself, who fired a glowing pink energy blast at Tucker's Modulus Chair. The chair quickly began to sputter and smoke, and flew around completely out of control.
"I thought I had taken you down once already, punk. Now, I intend to finish the job…"
He fired another ball of energy at the chair, which blew apart, sending Tucker's robot body flying. It fell limply to the ground, losing a few small pieces in the process. Tucker turned his head and looked at Danny, his red mechanical eye flickering on and off.
"It's up to you now, dude…" Tucker said weakly. "You have to stop Vlad… You have to…"
But then his red eye went out and Tucker lay still.
"Tucker, no!" Danny screamed in grief at the sight of his fallen friend.
But he didn't have time to grieve. He was hit from behind by one of Walker's energy blasts. Before Walker could fire another and finish Danny off, he was hit dead on by one of Jack and Maddie's rockets, blasting him through a wall and out of the clocktower.
Skulker, meanwhile, had set his sights on the Specter Speeder. "I grew tired of your meddling, humans," he mumbled to himself, aiming a massive rocket of his own at the vehicle.
"Skulker, no! You imbecile! You'll hit Maddie!" Vlad shouted at his henchman.
But it was too late. He had already launched the missile. It struck the side of the vehicle, causing it to erupt into a giant ball of green flames, blowing it apart.
"Mom…Dad…" Danny choked out weakly. He felt utterly broken, having just watched his best friend and parents die only a few minutes apart from each other.
Danny wasn't the only one deeply hurt by this loss. Vlad was irate. He launched a massive ball of magenta energy at the ghostly hunter, blasting his mechanical armor to pieces.
Taking advantage of his temporary distraction, Sam hit Vlad from behind. He went flying across the room and crashed into one of the gears. However, this did little to slow him down and he rose into the air, enraged.
"I've had enough of this nonsense! The time has come for me to end this!"
He quickly split himself into nearly a hundred duplicates, completely surrounding them on all sides.
"Get behind me," Sam ordered Danny who happily obliged. She let loose a powerful ghostly wail, blowing away all of Vlad's duplicates, causing them all to dissipate. Vlad himself was blown backwards into wall, crashing to the ground below, seemingly knocked unconscious.
Sam felt weak and dizzy and fell backwards, changing back into her human form. Danny caught her midfall and helped her back to her feet. To his horror, he discovered that Vlad was already beginning to stir. With no powers, neither of them would be any match for Plasmius. Their only hope of survival was to hide and hope that the master of time would show up in time to fix things.
He took Sam by the hand and together they ran to the far side of the room and tucked in behind a large vertical gear.
Plasmius picked himself up and looked around. The room looked deserted, but Vlad knew his enemies couldn't have gotten far. They were hiding here someplace…
Knowing that his foes were powerless, he casually strolled through the room, peeking behind gears and posts.
"Playing a game of hide and seek now, are we Daniel? Or is it a game of seek and destroy?"
Suddenly a large vertical gear caught his eye. It would be the perfect place to hide behind. He lunged behind it…Nothing.
Meanwhile, Danny and Sam grabbed the side of the gear they were hiding behind and allowed it to carry them up. They climbed the gears and cogs higher and higher, desperate to get away from Vlad.
Vlad continued looking behind and under objects, but to no avail. There was no sign of his opponents anywhere. Then he looked up and noticed the array of gearwork grinding above him. A sinister smile spread across his face as he realized where they must have gone and flew up after them.
Danny and Sam reached a point where two gears were grinding together and would crush them if they stayed on the one they were currently holding on to. Instead, they leaped across to a nearby gear and grabbed hold. Then they prepared to fling themselves over to another vertical gear that could carry them up further.
Vlad, meanwhile, caught sight of the two teenagers and fired a ball of pink energy at them. The ball instead bounced back and Vlad cursed himself as he realized he had just fired at their reflections in one of the shiny gears. He whirled around in time to see them take hold of the vertical gear and climb upwards. Annoyed, he flew after them.
Danny and Sam climbed up to a massive horizontal gear, with a smaller vertical gear in the center. Unfortunately, that gear connected to another large horizontal gear on the ceiling. They realized the could climb no higher and that Vlad had them trapped. With no other alternative, they tucked in behind the central gear.
"Clockwork, if there was ever a time for you to show up, now would be it!" Danny whispered to himself.
Vlad flew up and looked around. There was no sign of them, but there was a good-sized cog in the center and it didn't take a genius to figure out where they were hiding. He blasted the central cog away, revealing Danny and Sam. They both screamed in alarm and stumbled back. Desperately, Danny fired a series of energy blasts at Plasmius from his Wrist Rays, but Plasmius casually conjured up a shield deflecting them.
"Really, Daniel…Did you honestly believe those pathetic little trinkets could possibly stop me?"
Faster than Danny could react to, Vlad lunged forward and seized him by the hand raising him up and crushing the wrist-mounted weapon in the process. Danny raised his other hand to fire, but Vlad crushed that device too. Plasmius sent a current of purple energy through Danny, shocking him. He then threw the weakened boy aside, causing him to slide across the gear and over the side. Danny grabbed the edge with one hand before he fully went over and struggled to pull himself back up. Vlad casually walked over and prepared to finish him off.
"Leave him alone!" Sam shouted. She charged at Vlad, but he made himself intangible and she passed right through him falling over the side herself. Just in time, she was able to grab hold of Danny's foot and held on for dear life.
"At long last, here ends the chase… Goodbye, little badger!"
Vlad fired one last energy beam at Danny's hand, forcing him to let go and drop below.
"Clockwork!" he screamed as they fell to their doom below.
Out of sheer dumb luck, they were both able to grab onto a horizontal gear right before they hit the ground. However, before they could pull themselves up, Vlad fired another bolt of energy at the gear, causing it to come crashing to the ground below, taking Danny and Sam with it.
They hit the ground, the wind knocked completely out of them. He locked up to see Vlad dive down towards them like a falcon, his hands ablaze with magenta energy. Danny realized it was hopeless and that there was no way out of this. Vlad, at last, had won. Danny closed his eyes and waited for the end…
…But it never came. He had expected to feel a sudden burning sensation as he was incinerated by Vlad's energy blasts, but he felt nothing. Everything was quiet…
He opened his eyes to see Vlad frozen midair.
"I am here," a familiar voice called from behind. Danny turned to see that, finally, the master of time had arrived. "I have heard your calls for assistance and come to offer you my aid."
"I don't know how, but Vlad altered the timeline," Danny explained. "I got rid of his time medallion but he's still here. I don't know how to fix this. I need your help!"
"With this matter, I'm afraid, I cannot help you," Clockwork stated matter-of-factly.
"But he enslaved the earth! I lost people I care about…You have to help me!"
"You misunderstand me. It is not that I will not help, but that I cannot help. I can fix only matters of time, but the timeline has not been changed. You are still in the timeline you have always known. "
"But that's impossible! The Ghost Zone invaded the earth. Sam has ghost powers instead of me…"
"I assure you that your timeline is still intact. If it had changed I would now… I suspect that the problem does not lie within time itself, but rather in your perception of time."
"I don't understand. What do you mean?"
"Answer me this: Where would you say you are right now?"
"In your clocktower, in the Ghost Zone. Why?"
"What if I were to tell you that you are still in Amity Park?"
Danny gasped, very much confused. But before he could enquire further, Clockwork disappeared and time resumed.
Vlad landed in front of them, a sinister smile on his face. His hand glowed purple as he prepared to blast them.
"Please don't!" Sam pleaded. "Have mercy, please!"
Suddenly something clicked inside Danny's brain and he finally understood what Clockwork meant.
"It's not real…" he realized. "I don't care what kind of changes were made, there is no timeline where Sam would ever beg for mercy! Which means that you, her…none of this is real!"
Suddenly Clockwork's tower began to twist and distort. The image of Vlad dissolved away. Sam began to laugh…but it wasn't her voice. It was a male voice, one he'd heard before. The imposter Sam turned around. Its eyes now glowing red.
"I have to admit, I'm impressed," it said, with an evil grin. "No one has ever broken free from my trap before."
It fired a sphere of energy at Danny, knocking him back. False Sam suddenly changed shape into a form Danny recognized. It was the same purple and gray horned harlequin face. The same celestial night sky body.
"Nocturn…" Danny muttered, finally catching on to what was happening here. It was suddenly all very clear. When he passed out in the sewer after being blasted by the GIW's ecto-ranium wave gun, Nocturn invaded his sleep and conjured up this false reality, tricking him into thinking the timeline had been altered by Vlad. Danny had to admit it was an ingenious ruse, one that certainly had him fooled.
"Yes, it is I. I have returned to your city to seek my revenge. Imagine my sheer delight when I find you weakened and forced into unconsciousness. The perfect opportunity to pay you back for ruining my plans the first time I invaded your city. I took control of your dreams and trapped you in a nightmare of my own design. I conjured a world that would force you to experience your deepest fears. A world where you failed the people you care about. A world where you turned your back on the ones you loved. Where you would have to watch them die, powerless to save them. Where you lived happily with your archenemy. A world perfectly designed to make you suffer. For the more you believed it, the more entwined into the trap you became. And the deeper you fell, the stronger I became. There's something about you half-ghosts. Your dreams are supercharged. They allow me to tap into powers unfathomable. Imagine it, I was able to get my revenge and grow more powerful at the same time.
"It was an ingenious scheme, one that should have worked perfectly… Unfortunately, I did not count on your powers responding to the shock of seeing your loved ones die. Seeing your sister perish allowed you to tap into your powers just enough to produce a weak wail. It almost forced me out, but just wasn't strong enough. Still, it weakened me enough for that meddling time master to get a message through to you!"
"And he gave me just the right clue to wake me up from this nightmare!"
"Ahhhh, but you aren't awake, are you? You're still here, in the dreamscape. In MY world. Where I am all powerful."
Nocturn suddenly grew to a gigantic size. He raised one massive hand a fired a series of bolts of blue lightning in Danny's direction, destroying the ground beneath his feet and sending him falling into oblivion. Nocturn snapped his fingers again causing a vat of acid to appear below the falling phantom, which he fell into with a splash. With another snap, Danny was back on firm ground, only for an iron maiden to close around him. Snap! Tied to a railroad track about to pulverized by an oncoming train. Snap! Dropped into a tank full of sharks. Snap! Crushed by a giant anvil.
"As you can see, you are trapped here. Forced to endure whatever horrible fate I deem most entertaining. Trapped forever in your own twisted dream…"
"You're right…" Danny whispered, suddenly realizing how to beat him. "This is MY dream! And I control everything that happens here. You might be the master of sleep, but you're still in MY head. And in my head, whatever I say goes. And I say… I'M GOING GHOST!"
He immediately felt himself change back into his ghostly form. Nocturn, meanwhile, felt himself shrink uncontrollably against his will.
"No! What is happening to me! I am the master of sleep! Me! You cannot control me!"
"Actually, I can. Welcome to your worst nightmare."
With that, he fired a ghostly green ray at the evil spirit, knocking him to the ground. Nocturn tried to pick himself up, but a dozen glowing green ghostly Danny arms sprang from the ground and zapped him with ecto-energy. The lightly toasted ghost looked up to see Danny grow over a hundred feet tall. He was frozen in terror as giant Danny's foot came crashing down on top of him, squashing him like a bug. As Danny lifted his giant foot, Nocturn was left flattened on the ground, moaning in pain on the ground most pathetically. Danny scooped up his flattened foe in one hand and clutched him tightly in one fist.
"And now…" he said determinedly, "GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" He threw the screaming spirit like a baseball, far off into the distance.
Danny woke up with a start, eyes wide open. He looked around. He was in an old warehouse, likely by the docks somewhere. His eyes then focused on Nocturn, who had been blasted out of his head and thrown onto the floor. The ghost of sleep struggled to pick himself back up.
"You may have beaten me in there, but I'm more than strong enough to beat you out here!"
Nocturn conjured up a sphere of glowing blue energy and chucked it at Danny. Danny countered by creating a sphere of his own out of green energy and threw it to intercept Nocturn's. Both spheres collided, creating an explosion of neon light, which blew both of them back.
Nocturn's fingers sharpened into long talons and his hands began to glow blue. He lunged at Danny, glowing claws outstretched and ready to strike. Out of pure instinct, Danny conjured a giant glowing green baseball bat out of pure energy. He swung the bat, striking the ghost and sending him flying backwards, crashing into a stack of shipping crates and burying the wicked spirit beneath them.
"Cool, I've got a new power!" Danny exclaimed excitedly.
Nocturn, meanwhile, had dug himself out from under the crates and moved to strike again. Before he could, however, Danny pulled out the Fenton Thermos and uncapped it. Nocturn soon found himself caught in a blue beam of light and pulled inside the container.
"Good night, sleep tight, and don't let the ghost bugs bite," Danny teased, capping the lid back on. "Now to get out of here and—"
"Freeze, ghost scum!"
He turned around to see over three dozen Guys in White operatives, all armed with one of those ecto-ranium wave guns.
Operatives O and K stepped forward. "Hand over the thermos or we will open fire."
Danny hesitated. Nocturn was his enemy, and he just put him through a torturous ordeal. Nevertheless, Danny still didn't feel right turning him over to the GIW. Whatever they would do with him, Danny knew would be no good. On the other hand, he knew he didn't stand a chance against that many wave guns at once. Just one on the lowest setting had completely crippled him. He knew he wouldn't survive being hit by over thirty of them on full blast.
Reluctantly, he tossed the thermos over to Operative K, who caught it.
"Good decision," Operative O nodded. "Now there's just the small matter of your crime…"
He motioned to his men, who all charged their weapons and pointed them at Danny.
"Wait! I did as you asked! You have the thermos!"
"For which we are very grateful. But you still broke the law and for that you must pay…"
Suddenly, Operative K held up a hand, signaling his men to back down. He held his other hand to an earpiece and listened closely to what was being said.
"Yes ma'am. Right away!" He turned to his men. "Alright. New orders: We take the thermos and leave Mr. Fenton alone." He turned towards Danny. "You're in luck, ghost boy. It looks like someone at the top still wants you alive…for now."
With that, the Guys in White turned and departed, taking the thermos that contained the ghost of sleep with them. Danny was left alone in the warehouse, a little confused about what had just transpired.
"I've got a really bad feeling about this," he muttered to himself before flying of into the city.
The next day…
"So, you're saying that in that world I had ghost powers?" Sam asked
They were sitting at a table outside their school eating lunch. Danny told them the entire story of being trapped in Nocturn's illusion. Sam was listening intently fascinated by the notion of her having ghost powers. She'd be lying if she said she never fantasized about the prospect before.
"Yeah, crazy right? The best part is, you mastered all my skills in half the time it took me."
"So you could say, I made a better superhero…" she said with a smirk.
"Yeah, sure. If you want to look at that way", he said staring into her eyes.
"Not necessarily," Tucker chimed in. "Afterall, she did let the whole earth fall under Vlad's control on her watch. Plus, it was really Nocturn all along, so you could say that he made the better superhero!"
A frustrated look of annoyance crossed Sam's face. "Tucker, you know…Sometimes…"
Tucker laughed nervously and looked down at his PDA. "Oh hey, would you look at that. A message from city hall. I guess a mayor's work is never done. Gotta go! Bye," he called, running off before he had to face the wrath of Hurricane Sam.
Satisfied, she turned back to Danny. He had a troubled expression on his face and was looking down at the ground.
"Danny you know it was all bogus, right? Nothing you saw there was real. It was just conjured up by Nocturn to get under your skin. It could never really happen. You'd never let it."
"Yeah, I know. It's not that…" The truth is what he saw there had disturbed him and had been on his mind ever since he woke up. But that wasn't what concerned him know.
"It's the Guy's in White. I've fought them I don't know how many times and they've never been that much of a challenge before. But recently… I don't know who this new commander is, but he's got me worried. He's turned them from a joke to a force to be reckoned with in just a couple months. And those new weapons he built… Just one of them on low took me out, and he's made countless more. They get more dangerous every time I encounter them and they almost got me this time. The next time, I don't know if I can beat them…"
"Of course, you can," Sam replied, kissing him. "You're the savior of two worlds. You've gone up against worse than those losers. When the time comes, I know you'll find a way to beat them!"
"Yeah," he agreed, a smile finally returning to his face. "I guess you're right! There's nothing they can do to make it so I can't beat them…"
Meanwhile, in a top-secret facility…
Agent Alpha marched through the halls like she owned the place. To an extent, she did. She was practically the most powerful person there, second only to the commander himself. She had total authority, provided she had the commander's approval, which she always did. Afterall, he trusted her implicitly. And why wouldn't he? Since succeeding the previous Alpha, she had proven herself time and time again to be as cunning and capable of an agent as he could possibly want.
She walked up to the door of the commander's office, knocked, and went in. She was always nervous when speaking with the commander. He was an extremely intimidating person. Perhaps not physically, but mentally… He possessed an IQ the likes of which the world had never seen before. He could view people like chess pieces and problems as though they were pieces to a puzzle. He was twenty steps (at least) ahead of his opponent at all times. With but a single thought, he could utterly obliterate his enemy with little to no effort on his part. Yes, he was someone who's bad side she did not want to be on…
At the same time, there was no one whom she respected more on the whole planet. When she first came to this organization she was treated very poorly and was greatly disrespected. Afterall, it wasn't easy being the only woman in an agency called the Guys in White. But he was the only one who never treated her differently, but instead immediately saw the potential in her. He gave her every opportunity possible to prove herself. Opportunities she gratefully took advantage of. In doing so, she managed to impress enough people that she was chosen as Agent Alpha's replacement when he was fired.
She would never have attained the status she had today if the commander hadn't supported her from the start. As such, there was no one on the planet whom she was more loyal to. She would follow him to oblivion itself if he needed her to. And her loyalty was rewarded too. He was not the kind of man who would let unwavering loyalty go unnoticed or unrewarded. This is why he trusted her so implicitly. In fact, he trusted her so much that she was one of very few people on the planet who knew the commander's true identity… A secret she guarded ferociously.
She entered his office. It was dark as always, with only the dimmest of lights illuminating its features. There was a large map of the Ghost Zone. On the right was a row of bookshelves, all stacked with books on ghosts and the supernatural. On the right were displays with various artifacts of ghostly origin. The commander himself sat at his desk which was pushed just slightly to the left. In one corner was a small, dim lamp which provided what little light there was in this room. In the other corner was an old, antique music box, its dancer figurine spinning gracefully in circles as it played a haunting melody.
When the commander saw her, he closed the music box, cutting off the eerie tune, and stood up to greet her. He was dressed as he always was: in a long white overcoat that ran down to his ankles, completely buttoned up the neck. He wore a pair of white tactical gloves and white boots. Over his head he wore a white helmet with a large black visor. Every inch of his body was covered by his outfit, leaving absolutely no clue to his identity.
"Good evening sir," she began. "I am here to report that the operatives have successful returned with the ghost called Nocturn."
"Very good, Agent," he responded, his voice quiet, calm, and calculating. "A thorough investigation of his oneiric abilities should prove most fruitful towards our future endeavors."
"If you don't mind my asking sir… Why did you have me order them to let the hybrid go? We could have taken him out right there and then."
A faint sound emanated from beneath the commander's helmet, that may have been a brief, muffled laugh. "When they brought me on as an advisor following the Ghost King's invasion, I provided them with cutting edge technology that could mimic a ghost's abilities perfectly and level the playing field. I created new weapons and equipment to give them the upper hand. I designed detailed battle strategies and plans to ensure victory against our incorporeal foes. They accepted the technology, but not the plans. When they targeted the hybrid, they chose to attack by overwhelming him with sheer force, but with no strategy. As a result, he was able to defeat them time and time again, even though they had all the equipment necessary for victory.
"When I took over from my predecessor, I knew that a change in leadership style was required. No longer would we charge in, guns blazing, without a plan. Instead, we would draw our opponents into a trap and use their own weaknesses against them. Attacking Mr. Fenton today would have gone against my new philosophy for our approach towards the war on ghosts. Had we chosen to engage him today, we would have made the same egregious error as my predecessor—attacking with the best technology available, but no sound strategy. As a result, we would have been just as successful. After all, 'the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.'"
"So that's why you ordered them to withdraw, sir? So we could wait until we had the perfect strategy to defeat him?"
"Indeed… Tell me Agent, are you familiar with Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War'?"
"Not explicitly, sir."
"Pity. It's a personal favorite of mine. There are two quotes from that work that define how I intend to approach our strategy for dealing with the hybrid. The first is this: 'Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.' The other is 'If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.'
"What I mean to say is, we must first know everything there is to know about our opponent. How he thinks, how he fights, and how he reacts. We need to know his beliefs, opinions, morals, philosophies…His past experiences and his future aspirations. In short, we must know what makes him him. For that is the key to our victory. I am convinced that we will always be faced with failure if we fight him ourselves. Rather, the surest path to victory is to have him destroy himself, to tear himself apart from the inside out."
He walked over to his desk and opened a drawer, withdrawing a small remote. He turned around and pressed a button on the remote. Instantly, the map rotated around, revealing an array of monitors. He pressed another button and the monitors came to life. They displayed recorded videos of Danny in action and also displayed various stats, models, and graphs.
"That is why I have ordered our operatives to pursue him these last couple of months. Not to capture or eradicate him, but to observe him. To see how he fights, how he reacts to certain stimuli... In the days that have passed since the Disasteroid crisis, I have gained almost enough data to be able to predict his every move, before he even has the chance to think it. By the time I am through, I will know his own thoughts better, even, than he does. And I almost have enough data to complete my analysis. There are just a few more tests I need to run before we can move on to the next phase of the plan."
"What do we do then, sir?"
"What then, Agent? Then, I believe it will be time for Danny Phantom and I to meet, face to face…"
End of Episode 2…
Final Words: Well, there it is everyone! My first foray into fanfiction. Hopefully I didn't butcher it! Leave a review, suggestions, and comments. I will try to respond to as many as I can! At the end of my stories, I like to do a segment called dream casting where I suggest actors or voice actors who would perform the roles of new characters had the episode been real.
Dream Casting: Since he is largely based on Grand Admiral Thrawn, I would say Lars Mikkelsen would be perfect for the role. I would also recommend Vanessa Marshall for Agent Alpha.
My next story will be called "Final Exam", so look out for it if you enjoyed this one…