Author's Note: Okay guys we are wrapping up book one today! And Book 2 will be up October 1st! Thank you all for reading, and I hope to hear from you in your reviews.
Yours Truly, RoxieDivine :)
(Back with Clockwork)
Clockwork presses the button on his staff, and pushes time forward once more. He was almost done with this exhausting task. He almost had a perfect future where both Danny, and the rest of them lived in harmony. Still he needed to stay sharp, Dan was beginning to catch on to his meddling again, and he hated to rewind yet again.
The time rift stops zooming forward and shows the wreckage of the Nasty Burger, the tanks are still over heating; and the indicator needle shudders higher.
Mr. Lancer stands before the restaurant, Danny's CAT test in hand. His perfect score has furthered his suspicions, and even though he found the answer key in his office moments after the rest of the students left; he was still convince that Danny had cheated somehow.
A car pulls up, it's the Fenton RV, and its head lights illuminate the parking lot. Maddie parks a good ways away from the Nasty Burger, looking unsure. "Mr. Lancer sounded urgent on the phone. Danny, is something wrong?"
"Not yet." Dan mused as they got out of the car and walked over to the awaiting teacher. 'This is it, it's almost over.' He assured himself. 'Just a little bit longer.'
Mr. Lancer's eyes narrowed at their approach. "Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, Daniel, this s the Nasty Burger." He said holding up Danny's test. "When people fail, this is where they end up- whether they fail because they don't study, or because they cheat.
Jack and Maddie gasp.
"Danny! Is this true?" His father asked.
"Did you cheat?" His mother yelled.
Suddenly Sam and Tucker run up to them. "You have to get out of here!"
"The Nasty Burger's gonna blow, and we're three feet from it!" Tucker screamed.
"South Beach Diet, people, what's going on here!" Mr. Lancer asked.
Dark Dan's brow rises, 'I thought I told them I handled it!' He thought. 'They should be begging Mr. Lancer to spare me, not trying to get everyone to safety.'
Yes. Something had gone wrong here, but before he could figure it out, a new problem appeared.
Jazz's foot slams down, encased in the Fenton Peeler. "I'll tell you what's going on." She said.
Everyone looks over, surprised, and in Dark Dan's case, angry.
"Or better yet, I'll show you." She fires the Fenton Peeler at Dark Dan, peeling away his disguise and revealing his true form. Everyone looks on in shock. "That's not Danny!" She exclaimed.
Jack and Maddie go from stunned to angry, and immediately train weapons on the fallen Dark Dan.
"Where is he?" Jack growled. "Where's our son?"
"What have you done to our boy?" Maddie screamed.
Dan laughs and looks up at her knowingly. "Don't you see?" He asked. "I am your boy!"
"What?!" His parents asked in unison.
Mr. Lancer, Sam, and Tucker look on, shocked. Dan springs into the air, where the clouds are starting to swirl green.
"What kind of parents are you anyway?" Dan mused. "The world's leading ghost experts, and you couldn't figure out your own son was half ghost!"
With their weapons still trained on him, Jack looks to Maddie and says, "For the record, I blame you."
Dan Laughed. I mean seriously Hello. Danny Fenton? Danny Phantom? Ever notice the similarity? Jazz did." He mused looking to his sister.
"She did?" Sam and Tucker asked.
"Liar! Don't move!" Jack screamed.
"You're going to tell us where our son is!" Maddie demanded. "And then we are all going home where we will put you back in the ghost Zone where you belong Ghost!"
"Actually, nobody's going anywhere." Dan says…well darkly. "Not until it's time for you to be blown everywhere." He flings out a strand of ectoplasm, binding Jack, Maddie, Mr. Lancer, Sam, and Tucker to a tank, then releases five more blobs of it from his fingertips, gagging them. Jazz attempts to punch him from behind, but his flesh moves around her fist, leaving a hole in his chest. She gasps and pulls back her arm.
Dan shakes his head as his chest springs back to normal and he turns his neck 180 degrees to look at her. "Nice try, Jazz. But in my future I'm inevitable." Two copies of himself manifest, surrounding her. One seizes her helmet and yanks it off. She screams and another copy covers her mouth with an ectoplasm gag. The three copies reunite and he lassos her with an ectoplasm rope, swinging her suit and all to join the others. He laughs evilly.
"Are you watching this you old time Wizard?" He screamed, making everyone around him think he's crazy. "You still lost! I am still here! And there is nothing that you can do that will stop me!"
Clockwork appeared before him, and to Dark Dan's Surprise he was smiling! "Oh I know." He said. "But then again I'm not the one you have to worry about."
"Hey, old man!" A familiar voice calls out from behind him.
Dan stops and turns to see his younger self zips out of the swirling sky wearing a backpack and some kind of rocket belt. "Ready for a blast from your past?"
Clockwork chuckles and disappears once more as Danny collides with Dark Dan, knocking him a couple blocks away. He then goes to check on his friends and family. "Don't worry. I won't turn into that. Ever. I promise." He says before turning to Mr. Lancer who is staring back at him. "I guess this sort of explains my periodic absences, huh?"
A rope of ecto-energy suddenly catches him around the waist. Dan reels him in to seize him by the collar.
However Danny isn't worried. "What are you gonna do? Waste me? What happens to you then?" He snapped.
Dan forces a laugh. "You don't get it, do you? I'm still here. I still exist. That means you still turn into me." He punches Danny into a light post. The backpack falls off and tips over, revealing the Ghost Gauntlets. I don't have to waste you. I just have to run out the clock until your entire life falls apart."
Dan dives at Danny, who grabs the backpack and sinks into the ground just in time. Dan knocks over the light post and spins around, looking for him.
Behind him, Danny rises out of the street, wearing the Ghost Gauntlets. "Maybe if you'd remembered more about your family, you'd have remembered the Specter Deflector!" He pulls it out, flying at Dan and snapping the belt around his waist. Immediately the older Danny screams as he is electrocuted by the anti-ghost device. "Or the Ghost Gauntlets!" He hauls back and sends Dan crashing through an oil truck with a punch.
Dan looks around for a second nervously and then the whole thing goes up in a blue blast. In the air, Danny shields his face. As the explosion subsides to blue flame, he lands and begins to walk away. Behind him, a furious Dan emerges from the flame. He rips off the Specter Deflector, grabs Danny by the arm with a still-burning hand, and throws him to the ground. Your time is up, Danny." He says copying himself into four. Suddenly the copies speaking as one. "It's been up for 10 years."
They all punch him at once, and Danny falls smoking to the ground and Dark Dan's copies reunite. "What makes you think you can change my past?"
Danny forces himself on all fours and glaring up at him. "Because I promised my family!"
Dan laughed. "Oh, you are such a child! You promised?"
Danny's eyes narrowed, as he gets to his feet. "Yes! I PROMISED!" Suddenly his words turn into a Ghostly Wail, sending Dan flying and digging up a divot in the street.
Dan is stunned. "That power, ugh, it's not possible! I don't get that power until ten years from now!"
"I guess the future isn't as set in stone as you think it is." Danny retorted. Sending out another Ghostly Wail practically in Dark Dan's face, sending him flying again; it breaks out windows and blows him through a doorway, then demolishes the building on top of him.
Completely exhausted, Danny drops to his knees in human form. A fist rises from the rubble pile, and Danny looks up and gasps. Dan bursts from the wreckage, bruised up, flames dying, and uniform ripped. "Well, that's it, isn't it?" He asked.
Danny's eyes narrowed as he pulls out a Fenton Thermos, he aims it at Dan and begins to suck him in. "Time's up!" he declared.
Dan allows himself to be sucked in since he's too weak to escape, besides it doesn't matter anyways "and you're too late to save them!" He yells.
Danny caps the thermos then looks over his shoulder. "Oh no."
The heat indicator is now all the way over in the red. the glass over it cracks then shatters. The cracking, leaking tanks hiss with steam. Danny runs toward the Nasty Burger, trying to go ghost, but the ring of light fizzles out, he can't change! "I can't go ghost!" He screams then trips on a rock and falls flat on his front "Nooo!"
He and his loved ones stare at each other for an instant, and then the Nasty Burger blows up. The shockwave sends Danny flying with the dust and rubble; then everything freezes. A clock hand traces out a blueish white circle, which resolves into a child Clockwork. Smiling, the ghost flies up to Danny and drops a time medallion around his neck.
Danny gasps and tries to gain his balance where he floats in midair without falling, then notices Clockwork. "Clockwork?" He asked.
Clockwork points past Danny, and he looks, then gasps happily. All of his loved ones are floating, unharmed and asleep or unconscious, in a nimbus of green light.
"You saved them? I-I don't understand!" He admitted.
Clockwork switches back to his adult form. "The Observants look at time like they're watching a parade, one thing after another passing sequence right in front of them." He explains and gestures down at the wrecked Nasty Burger. "I see the parade from above, all the twists and turns it might or might not take." He gives the boy a settle wink.
Danny gasped. "You knew all this was going to happen. All of it! Even this part."
Clockwork nods "Everything's the way it's supposed to be. And here we are with you, a fourteen-year-old child, risking everything to save the people you care about."
"But I nearly…" Danny began.
"We'll all have the power to become evil." Clockwork told him. "Every being on this planet has an evil version of them self in some alternate reality. And they can become that person at any time if they make the wrong decisions. However you made the right one, in the end, and that is all that matters."
Danny smiles at him.
Clockwork pressing the button on his Time Staff, and yells "Time in!"
Danny watches as they are surrounded for a moment by ticking clocks, then reappear in the classroom, where Danny's classmates are taking the C.A.T., frozen in time.
Clockwork picks up the answer packet from Danny's desk and hands it to Danny. "You've given everyone else a second chance. Why not you?"
Danny takes it and Clockwork vanishes, and everyone start to move again. Danny stares at Mr. Lancer, standing by his own desk with the packet in his hands, then smiles slightly.
Mr. Lancer looks up at Danny questioningly "Mr. Fenton, is there a problem?"
"Um, actually Mr. Lancer, there is." Danny admitted.
Out in the hall, Jazz sneaks up to the door with the Fenton Peeler. Looking in the window, she gasps. Danny approaches Mr. Lancer's desk.
"I, uh, found this the other day. Outside the Nasty Burger." He says and slides the answer packet across the desk.
Mr. Lancer picks it up, and notices something. "Hm. The seal is broken."
Danny bit his lip. "Yeah. I know. A-and, I'm sorry. I couldn't stop myself from looking at the answers. But I'm not a cheater! And I never will be!"
Out in the hall, Jazz smiles as she realizes that this is her real brother, and he must have already dealt with the imposter who knocked her out last night. She was relived He had gotten her letter in time. All was well now, and Jazz walks back down the hall to wait for him outside.
"Well, you'll have a chance to prove that when you take the make-up test next week, now won't you?" Mr. Lancer asked.
Danny is surprised "Really? You're not going to expel me?"
"It takes a lot of courage to admit you made a mistake." Mr. Lancer said. "The point is to learn from them. Besides you'll have plenty of time to study for your make-up test in detention. But for now..." He gestures to the door.
Danny smiles and exists the classroom, and walks down the hall, and out the school doors only to stop and notice that Jazz is sitting on the stairs waiting for him. His smile widens and he sits down beside her. "So, how long have you known?" He asked.
"About the test?" Jazz asked. "For days. But I'm really proud of you for not cheating."
Danny shook his head, and pulls the note and headband out of his pocket and holds it out to her "No, not that. Your headband, your note, your handwriting...'
"What? That?" Jazz blushes. "Oh, I didn't write that. And there must be dozens of headbands."
Danny gave her a knowing look. "Jazz?"
Jazz sighed. "I've known since the Spectra thing. I didn't want to tell you until you wanted to tell me. It's your secret." She whispered.
"Well, it's our secret now." Danny said as they hug.
"Don't think this means I'll stop being meddling and overprotective." Jazz warned.
Danny laughed. "I wouldn't have it any other way." He admitted, and it was true. He didn't know it before but now he knew that without his sister and her meddling, and the rest of the people in his life, like Tucker Sam, His parents, and even Mr. Lancer. Danny would not be the hero he is today, nor would he be in the future.
They made him who he was, and he was thankful for it.
Suddenly his ghost sense goes off and sirens sound. A giant tentacle monster chases a cop car past the school as the siblings watch.
Jazz gives him a knowing smile. "Go, I'll wait here, and we can tell Mom and Dad the truth about the test together."
Danny gives her a nod before running and transforming into his ghost form. Going ghost!" he shouted before confronting the monster before him. "Hey! Giant, green, and gruesome! Guess who's back and better than ever!"
The slime monster makes a worried sound. Danny hauls back and punches it, drenching Jazz in ecto-slime.
"This is gonna take some getting used to." She admitted.
Back in the Ghost Zone a child Clockwork watches, smiling, with the thermos in one hand. The Observants stand with their hands clasped behind him.
"You manipulated the boy! You influenced his choice!" Melk said, pointing at him accusingly.
"That's a direct violation of the Protocol of Temporal Displacement!" Klem added.
"In other words, you cheated!" Both Observants declared as one.
Clockwork's smile grew. "True, I cheated." He admitted switching to adult form. "But I assure you his choice was his own."
"You realize the boy is your responsibility now." Melk told him. "As is his evil self, now that he exists outside of time."
"I know." Clockwork said. "But then, I know everything." Flying past the Observants through a door, he sets down the thermos. It bulges out on the sides as though something is bouncing around and punching, then Dark Dan's face prints on the front of the thermos, his laughter echoing around them.
Then suddenly everything stops...
-To Be Continued