The Others

A Danny Phantom Fanfiction by Annab3ll3 L33

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Pride of the Pack-Part 1

"Whether a man is burdened by power or enjoys power; whether he is trapped by responsibility or made free by it; whether he is moved by other people and outer forces or moves them — this is of the essence of leadership."-Theodore H. White

A young Daniel Fenton has just received his abilities. He has recently mastered one of the basic ghostly abilities, an ectoplasmic energy blast. Though he has not yet met Vladimir, he has suspicions of there being other ghost hybrids on the planet.

He is quickly giving up the idea of living a normal life, and is just beginning to adjust to the fact that he will never be able to live a life like his peers.

But this is somewhat comforted by the fact that his friends don't exactly live normal lives, either. Samantha Manson and Tucker Foley. They have been his friends for just over nine years.

Samantha has parents that refuse to give into the fact that time moves forward, and that the fifties are over. They are ultra peppy and very overbearing, though they still care for their daughter. But, and be honest, would that not drive you to rebellion? Even I, the Master of Time, who have seen thousands of empires rise and fall, can not deny that the the fifties were a bit much for me. So yes, it is rather logical for Samantha to attempt to make her parents see sense. She dresses in the general Goth style, and goes for some of the more supernatural view points.

Tucker could live a perfectly normal life, and most likely be on the "A-list" if it weren't for two things. One: His obsession with technology, and two: his lack of fashion sense. When looking at it from an average teenage girl's point of view, he's not at all bad looking. Get some contacts (or at least sleeker glasses), ditch the "living in the desert" color scheme, and get an iPhone instead of thirty other knick-knacks, and he would probably be irresistible. Of course, he can not give up either.

If you really think about it, even if Daniel was completely human, it is unlikely that he would still be accepted by his peers. His parents are widely considered...absolute nutjobs, if you catch my drift. Even if their reputation has become slightly better since the Guys in White approved their ghost portal project. And in this day and age, blood is everything. If your parents are nutjobs, you must be one as well.

Daniel has just arrived home three hours after curfew. He is beaten up, and longs for sleep. His parents are sleeping on the couch, as they had fallen asleep waiting for him. Daniel smiles slightly as an idea comes to him. He sneaks up the stairs without waking his parents, and goes to bed.

---

He awakens with a stomachache. A sort of apprehensive feeling, like something big is about to happen. It is not unlike a sixth sense, something warning him that he should be ready. He bites his lip and rolls over to face the clock.

5:30 AM. Only four and a half hours of sleep? Not healthy. He lays down and attempts to get more sleep, but the feeling in his stomach will not permit him to rest. Fifteen minutes later, he grudgingly rolls off of the bed and turns off his alarm clock, which is set to go off in another fifteen minutes, at six o'clock.

He shrugs on an intact T-shirt and shoves his shoes on. He hardly glances at the mirror before he straightens his hair out, using his fingers as a makeshift comb. Crude, but effective. He doesn't look like he just emerged from World War II anymore.

As he still has a bit of time to kill, he finishes a math sheet on the quadratic formula before going downstairs. His mother is waiting for him at the table. "Danny, where were you last night?"

He feigns surprise in a completely honest appearing way. "I was doing my homework in my room. I came home at about...nine, was it? I guess you just didn't notice."

His mother narrows her eyes. "We came up to see if you were there. You weren't."

Daniel thinks fast. "It was some memorization work. You ever heard the method of locking yourself in a dark closet and repeating it over and over again? That's what I was doing." Inside, Daniel feels guilty. He has gotten so good at lying, it is almost natural. "When I came down to say goodnight, you were already asleep. And I didn't want to wake you up."

Maddie gives up. "Well, alright then." She pours herself a cup of coffee. "So, what has you up before your alarm goes off?"

"Tension," Daniel says quickly, opening the cupboard and looking for anything to eat for breakfast. "We have an English test today. Thankfully it's the last one before spring break."

Maddie jumps, recalling what they had wanted to tell Daniel about last night. The movement does not go unnoticed by Daniel, who gives her an apprehensive look. "Something bothering you, Mom?"

She waves away the suggestion. "No, no, nothing's wrong. I just forgot about this..." she rummages through a stack of papers, consisting of petitions for funding, letters from family, and electricity bills. Finally she pulls out a fancy looking flyer. "A college friend of ours, Vlad Masters, invited us to a college reunion. It takes place on Tuesday, so we could leave Sunday, get there Monday and get to spend quality time with Vlad, and the shindig is on Tuesday, so we'd have that. We could leave Wednesday, get back there Thursday, and then have resting time the rest of the weekend. How does that sound?"

A chill runs down Daniel's spine at the name, but he ignores it. He shrugs, rummaging through the cupboard for a mug. 'A ghost free weekend? Sounds good to me,' he thinks. Out loud he says "Sounds fun." He finds a mug and pours himself a cup of coffee as well.

Maddie looks flustered. "Oh Danny, don't drink that! I don't want you to be hooked..." But her protests fall on deaf ears. He takes a sip.

"Mom, I was doing that memorization work until one. I won't make it through the day without something with caffeine."

She sighs, reaching for the cream. "Well, at least dilute it a little bit," she suggests in a slightly pleading tone. Daniel pushes it away.

"No thanks, I prefer it straight." He downs the rest of the mug. "Well...I'm going to miss the bus if I stay any longer..." he slings his backpack over his shoulder. "Bye!"

He breaks into a run the moment he thinks he might be our of earshot, and Maddie smiles.

---

"Vlad Masters? " Tucker asks incredulously. "The Vlad Masters?"

Daniel raises an eyebrow. "That's what they said. I dunno of any others. But the name makes me nervous..."

Tucker starts typing on his laptop. "There's a Vlad Masters--"

"Will you stop saying his name!?!" Daniel yells angrily. Tucker blinks.

"What is up with you today?" he asks nervously. Daniel shakes his head, dispelling paranoid thoughts.

"It's nothing."

Tucker gives Daniel a calculating look over the top of the laptop. Finally, he lets out a noisy breath and turns the screen in Daniel's direction. "Read this. Somehow, I think this Vlad Masters is the Vlad Masters your parents were talking about." He ignores the death glare Daniel sends him and turns on his MP3 player.

Daniel can not help being intrigued by the webpage, and begins reading.

Vladimir "Vlad" Masters is a very wealthy Wisconsin native. When an experiment pertaining to an alleged "Ghost Prota-Portal" in college with colleagues Jack Fenton and Maddie Keis hospitalized him for three years, he mapped out how he wanted his life to go, and became a billionaire. When asked about what he thinks his life would have been like if the accident were not to have happened, he chuckled and sat back in his leather chair. "In all honesty, I don't like to think about that. All I know for sure is that it is because of the accident that I became wealthy, and Jack is in my eternal gratitude. Which is why I am hosting a college reunion in one month, inviting all of my old college friends from U of W." The interviewer then asked for an invitation, and Vlad refused to answer any more questions.

"Kind of tactless," Daniel mutters, "kissing up to the rich man. But yeah, this is probably the guy." He looks up at Tucker, who has his eyes closed and is listening to something by Weird Al. "Hey Tuck?" Tucker opens his eyes and moves his headphones to around his neck. "This says he had an accident...with a ghost portal..."

Tucker catches what he means. "Danny, the odds that you would get ghost powers from an unstable portal were a million to one. The odds that two people would get the same result are a trillion to one."

Samantha chooses this moment to join her friends. "Hey guys. Thanks for waiting for me. I shouldn't have gotten detention for pointing out the teacher was wrong..." she says. She spots the webpage. "Hey, why are you reading about Vlad--"

"Don't say his name! "

Samantha raises an eyebrow at his hostile reaction. "You okay?" she asks.

Daniel nods. "Fine. He just..." he seems at a loss for words. "He gives me a bad feeling," he says lamely.

Tucker looks hurt, but if you knew him, you would know that he was either joking, or about to make a joke about how Daniel and Samantha like each other. "Dan-ny...you told me you were just fine!" Samantha gives him a put-off look, aware of what was coming next. "Does you twust Sammy more than me?"

Daniel steals his red beret and pushes him down. "I can get away with lying to you. Sam can read me like a book."

Tucker stands up, brushing bits of grass and dirt off of his shirt. "And I wonder why that is..." he says sarcastically.

Daniel tosses the beret to Samantha, who begins running in the opposite direction. Tucker's eyes widen fearfully, and he slams his laptop shut, shoves it in his backpack, slides it on, and begins to run after her. Daniel laughs, and it is cut short by blue mist fogging the air around his mouth. "Dammit," he whispers, backing into a wall. He does not shout his battle cry, because there are most likely people on the other side of the wall that would hear him.

He takes a deep breath, and lets the cold yet relaxing feeling that is normally bottled up in the back of his mind flow loose. In a flash of light mostly contained by the insulation of the wall, the human becomes a ghost.

A black and white blur soars from apparently out of a wall.

Daniel flies up to get a birds' eye view of the town. Samantha is running around the school, Tucker following. No activity that he can see...

Three green blurs shoot past. Danny blinks before shooting off after them. When he comes within their range, the feeling of foreboding increases. The ghosts are large green vultures. Wearing fezzes.

"Any sign of him?" one shouts.

"Ve're vorking on it!" the largest replies.

"Yes, keep your 'air on!" the last vulture adds.

Without warning, all three soar downwards. Daniel almost loses sight of them, but large glowing green blobs are easy to spot against a black street. He catches up, and gets their attention. "Hey, you three look lost. Any chance you'll stay that way?"

"Cram it!" vulture #1 shouts.

"Abel, be polite. Maybe zis child can 'elp us!" vulture #3 responds, slowing to a stop. Daniel crosses his arms expectantly.

The second vulture sighs and floats forward. Daniel raises an eyebrow. "Ve are on a search and destroy mission. Can you help us find, and peck to death, this fella here?" he pulls out a tattered photograph corner.

Daniel gasps. He knows the man. "Dad?" he mutters, grabbing the photo. Indeed, it is his father, albeit younger. And with a shaggier hairstyle. He looks up at the waiting vultures. "He looks familiar. If you don't mind me asking, why do you need to...um...kill him?"

The first vulture, Abel, shrugs. "Plasmius knows what he's doing. And he said something about this guy being an insensitive bumbling moron that ruined his life."

"And Plasmius is?"

Abel is going to respond, but vulture #3 covers his beak with a wing. "Zis child obviously does not know zis man. You 'ave given up too much information already. Let us dispose of 'im and continue on."

Vulture #2 glares at #3. "Vye are you so violent? Ve vere only given orders to find and destroy theman. Leave this mere child alone."

'Mere child?' Daniel thinks angrily. "I'm not a kid, you know," he says.

All three vultures look at him. "Vatever," #3 says, turning to fly away. Then he squawks as a bright green light goes directly through his stomach. The vulture vanishes.

The other two suddenly look far more afraid. "Um...Bill, look what he did to Borris..."

#2, Bill, doesn't seem to care. "Let's destroy 'im."

Two well-aimed ecto blasts melted them, leaving Daniel unscathed. He looks down at the photograph. He flips it over. Written on the side is a short message. "Me with Jack and Ma--" the rest was cut off. There was a watermarked date on the corner. 9-12-1987.

Daniel bites his lip. "Dad would have been in...college!"

"an experiment pertaining to an alleged "Ghost Prota-Portal" in college with colleagues Jack Fenton and Maddie Keis hospitalized him for three years" "...an old college friend..."

His eyes widen in realization. One word escapes his lips.

"Dammit."