Yuki: Here is chapter 3.

Anika: Chapters 1-3 are the very first episode of DP. (FYI)

Yuki: Oh! and for May5000, Dark's origins will come up in really future chapters. You know what, just for you, I'll put a teensy bit of info.

Anika: Readers, keep in mind that this is a Yu-Gi-Oh crossover, but it's more DP than anything else, so I didn't put it in X-overs.

Y and A: HERE WE GO!

Chapter 3: Forever and a Day

Akaku akaku akaku yurete

Yume no yume no hate e

Mou nando mo akiramete wa oshikorosu tabi

Ikiba no nai kanjou ga me wo sanashiteku

Kegare no nai sono hohoemi zankoku na koto

Tooru sonzai da to wakaru yo

Mienai kizu kokoro mushibamu dake na no ni

Yami no naka ni ina mo yadoru

Omoi wo osaekirenai

Akaku akaku akaku yurete

Yume no yume no hate e deatte shimatta

Unmei ga mawaridasu

Dare mo dare mo shiranai himitsu

Ochite ochite ochite

Mou modorenai

Tsumi wo kizandemo

Kitto... (1)

"Danny! Dinner's almost ready." Aforementioned boy paused the video and sighed in exasperation. Just as he started watching Vampire Knight on YouTube, Danny's stepmother has to call him down for dinner.

"Okay, Mom!"

'Oka-sama baka... hidoi ama desu... 滅亡 我が ビデオ 暦年...' (2)

'You shouldn't call your mother so many mean things, Danny.'

Danny looked up to see a boy floating in front of him. The apparition had neon green eyes, silver hair, and pasty white skin. His name was Dark and, as one could guess, he was a ghost. (3)

"I'm serious about that. Your mother-" Danny cut his 'pet' ghost off.

"My mother should've told me that she adopted me after losing her own son. I'm nothing, but a replacement." Daniel Fenton, age 14, was entering his slightly rebellious stage of adolescence, but always obeyed his parents... for the most part. While wandering around in his parents' room, he had stumbled upon adoption papers, his name on the adoptee's line.

Daniel D. Mutou

will now be in the custody of

Jack Fenton and Madilyn Fenton.

"DANNY!" Up the stairs and through Danny's door came the voice of his 'father', Jack Fenton: ghost hunter 'extrordinaire'. Danny exited the window on his laptop and turned off the convenience machine.

"Coming, Dad!" Danny got off of his bed, hid his laptop under the bed, and began down the stairs. As he made his way to the stairs to his parents' lab, the doorbell rang. Of course, Danny, the courteous boy he was, went to answer it.

"Hi, Danny," said Sam, Danny's friend from second grade and Sara's look-alike. As far as Danny knew, the two goth girls had never met, but were very similar in both appearance and attitude. Next to her stood Tucker, Danny's friend since kindergarten.

"Sup, dude?"

"Not much, Tuck." It was times like these that Danny noticed he wasn't so terribly angsty. Especially since the accident a month earlier... Danny could feel mentally that Dark was shivering in thought of that day.

"Hey, guys, my dad wants me downstairs."

"We'll go with you." Tucker whined as Sam pulled him by shirt towards the basement/lab. Danny smiled. Although Sam was his best friend, her independent personality made her very attractive.

"So Danny, you and your little friends want to hunt ghosts." Jack Fenton stood proudly as he crossed his arms and waited for excited jabbering of ghost hunting to erupt from the three fourteen-year-olds, who each sat in a chair in front of him.

"Uh... Actually, Dad, I want to be an astronaut."

"Sorry, Mr. Fenton. I was into ghosts, but they're so mainstream now. They're like cell phones."

"Waste these looks and all this charisma hunting ghosts: Criminal."

Well, not the reaction he was hoping for, but Jack Fenton would press forward... as always. "Well, if you do want to hunt ghosts," he said, turning to a lab table with many kinds of apparatus, tubes, and flasks spread across its surface. "There are a few things you need to learn."

As his father began to lift up bottles and containers, Danny gasped, cold filling his body and Dark appearing invisibly to everyone else in the room. His breath was now visible and Danny looked to his father's greatest and most terrible invention, the Ghost Portal.

"Oh, no. This isn't good." The portal opened, a swirling, green vortex now visible to the teens. Not to Mr. Fenton, though... his back was to the portal. Two ghosts, looking like four armed octopusses with carnivorous mouths, emerged from the vortex, roaring menacingly.

Each shot an arm out and wrapped the tentacle around Sam and Tucker's mouths, pulling them out of their seats.

"True, I've never seen a ghost," Jack continued. "But when I do, I'll be prepared, and so will you. Whether you want to be or not."

Danny turned away from his father to see his friends hanging from the ecto-pusses' tentacles, said ghosts looking hungrily at the two human adolescents. His eyebrows went down and Danny gritted his teeth in anger and determination. He jumped into action.

If Jack Fenton had been paying the slightest bit of attention, he could have noticed a bright, but not blinding, light around his son and have heard the sounds of fighting.

Dark gained consciousness, throwing punches and kicks, paying attention as to not hurt the small glowing white orb floating next to him.

"It all starts with your equipment," he said, not missing a moment of what he thought was the teenagers' enrichment in ghost hunting. An ectopuss was tossed across the lab and Sam and Tucker were thrown back into their seats.

"Sam, Tucker, this is the Fenton Thermos." He handed the kids a normal-looking silver and green thermos with a capital 'F' in what appeared to be in green flames. Jack turned back to the lab table, saying that it was supposed to trap ghosts.

"But since it doesn't work," the man said, missing the ectopuss that whizzed by behind him, "and it's just a thermos, a thermos with the word 'Fenton' in front of it." The second ectopuss went by, floating beside its comrade by the Ghost Portal.

The ectopusses finally decided that they didn't want to hang around, and they disappeared into the green vortex once again. Another light enveloped Danny completely, and he stood in front of the portal and watched as it closed.

Danny quickly jumped back to his seat as Jack returned his attention to the teens rather suddenly.

"And that," he explained, pointing at the black and yellow striped doors that hid the vortex.

"That is the Fenton Portal." Mr. Fenton walked up to the portal, pride in his eyes. "It releases ghosts into our world whether I want it to or not. Someday, I'll figure out how that works to." He tapped the metal doors as he spoke the last sentence.

"Now," Jack said, turning around and strolling up to where the kids were.

Sam and Tucker were shaking, their eyes open, wary, and alert. Danny had his hand on the back of Tucker's chair, supporting him as he placed his other hand on his knee and panted heavily from the recent exertion of what had just transpired with the ectopusses.

Jack smiled. "You kids, look at you! You're too excited to speak. So I'll just go on speaking. I was born many years ago in a log cabin in the woods. Don't remember exactly where, but I do remember I wanted a pony. Never got the pony. As a matter of fact, we had to eat horse meat during the war. Had a problem with that."

As Jack continued his speech that became a mumbled rant, Sam and Tucker each met Danny's eyes. He met their lines of vision and he hung his head in embarrassment.

'Good old dad, right?'

'Uresei.' (4)

"Danny?" Dark lay in bed on his stomach next to Danny, who was in the same position. Danny was watching Vampire Knight again. Dark could swear he was obsessed with the spooky. That was Danny's reason for becoming an astronaut. He wanted to find aliens... and he also wanted to get away from home.

"Hmm?" The boy he protected was lovely. Black ebony hair, clear, ocean blue eyes, and pale, healthy skin; a vision of beauty in Danny's eyes.

"How long have I been with you?" This caught the boy's attention, pausing the YouTube video... again.

"Let's see. How old am I?"

"Fourteen."

"That's how many years you've been with me." Danny sat back, on his knees and his backside touching his socked feet. "Why do you ask?" Danny looked at the ghost next to him, the pearly white hair catching the light ever so perfectly that Dark's green eyes seemed to glow brighter.

"I just want to know... because I went out today."

"Yeah, you fought the ectopusses. Thanks, by the way." Danny shifted his position as he spoke, now on his butt, knees touching his chest. His arms were wrapped around his knees, as if wanting something to hold.

"No need, but... what if something happened to you... me... us?" Dark was never at a struggle for words, so Danny knew he was serious.

"Nothing bad will happen." The blue eyed boy smiled, Dark dropping his emotional guard in response. "If anything bad happens... well, I'll be sad, but happy."

Dark smirked. "Still having those tendencies?"

"Shut up."

"Danny! Dinner!"

"Okay, Mom!" Dark floated from the bed and began to follow the boy, who had also gotten up and made his way to the door.

"Eat healthy and good, okay." Danny smiled the the ghostly speaker, kissing his cheek.

"Mm-hm." That was their relationship, just friends... really close friends.

Dark's heart seemed heavier than just a few moments ago.

1) Theme song for Vampire Knight

Beyond the red, red dreams shaking...

Beyond the red, red dreams shaking...

How many times have we given up to stifling pressure?

These feelings with nowhere to go begin to close their eyes.

Has that smile with no impurities been lost to cruelty?

I already know that we're distant existences.

Although the unseen wounds are just eating away at my heart,

Even now, as I remain in the darkness

Thoughts of you won't stop weighing down my mind.

Beyond the red, red dreams shaking...

Beyond the red, red dreams shaking, the two of us had to meet.

Our fates the met begin to turn.

A secret that nobody, nobody knows.

Falling, falling, falling

We can't return things to how they used to be,

No matter how much we slice apart these sins.

Surely...

2) 'Mother's an idiot... awful bitch... ruining my video time' (Japanese)

3) Dark is my own wonderful name for Phantom. (Bet you can't guess the pairing now.) He will be addressed as Phantom in the chapter of... episode 2?

4) 'Shut up.' (Japanese)

Yuki: Whoo... I think we did okay.

Anika: I think so too. We hope you're kind of confuzzled.

Yuki: Please read and review.