I'm Still Here
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

Chapter One

The first hint of Danny's impending freedom came an indescribable amount of time later. It could have been mere seconds, it could have been months – there was just no way of knowing or putting the passage of time into words. The hint came from a tiniest bit of motion in his small world… a swirl, a slight expansion of his universe, nothing more.

The Thermos's lid was being unscrewed. Danny, having sunk into the dreamy stupor of boredom, blinked and sank back on his mental haunches, ready to run the moment he materialized in the real world. The possibility of it being his parents who were finally opening the Thermos was too high for him to stick around. He needed to get away, then figure out where he was and what to do next.

The small movements stopped and suddenly the lid was wrenched open. Blue light cascaded around Danny like angel's fire and his formless body was thrown from the confines of the Thermos. Even as his body appeared around his mind, he was trying to move, trying to run. But instead of running, his exhausted limbs collapsed underneath him and he fell to his hands and knees. Grass. Dirt. He was outside.

He glanced over his shoulder, a moment of fear that his parents would be behind him with some sort of weapon, ready to strike. His brain took in a snapshot of what his eyes were seeing: two young boys, covered in dirt, one holding a shovel and the other a rusted and dented thermos, staring at him in surprise and fear. Not his parents, not his friends… Get away, his mind told him. Run.

His muscles finally responded to his mind's prompting and pushed him to his feet, and then into the air. Even if they weren't ghost hunters, they would call for the Guys in White or for his parents in just a few moments. He needed to get far away from this place.

Looking back only once he had reached the relative safety of the sky above the neighborhood's houses, he caught sight of the two boys still standing in their backyard, staring up at him with open mouths and wide eyes. Then he saw the house and it brought him up short. Wasn't that his house? He could still see the part of the wall his dad had repaired after blowing a hole in the kitchen wall that one time.

Except… it wasn't his house. It couldn't be. There was no Ops Center. There were none of the mounds of broken bits of technology that always littered the backyard. And who were those boys anyways? They didn't live in his house, although they probably could – any normal kid would have been running in fear rather than staring up at the ghost like it was the greatest thing since TiVo. Being an idiot around ghosts seemed to be a Fenton specialty.

He shook his head: it wasn't his house, it couldn't be. They must just look the same. Pushing the strange coincidence out of his head, he drifted a little higher in the air.

Amity Park spread out before him like a map and his eyes traced down the familiar streets. After a moment of searching, he wondered what had happened to the Nasty Burger sign – he always used that as a guide to moving around town. He didn't think too much of it, however. That sign was constantly being hit by trucks trying to take a right-hand turn too sharply. It regularly fell down.

After a moment he rolled and headed towards Sam's house, his eyes half-closed, his mind reveling in the fact that he was free of that Thermos. Stupid Thermos. It was a good thing he wasn't claustrophobic, or that would have been a horrible… day? Week? Hour? How long had he been in there anyways? But, no matter how long it had been, he was going to con his parents into creating a bigger Thermos. He was feeling more than a little sorry for the ghosts he captured and forced into that thing.

Or maybe he'd just smash that particular Thermos in a million itty bitty pieces. It would feel good and it would definitely make him feel better. Misplaced aggression was something that he indulged in from time and time and surely, in this instance, Sam wouldn't be able to fault him for it. Maybe he'd bring it up after Sam told him how long he'd…

He pulled up short, staring at the blank lot in front of him. His feet drifted down and touched the ground, stumbling a bit on the cracked concrete. This was where Sam's house was supposed to be. Where was Sam's house? He was in the right place, right? Looking around, he focused on the street sign at the corner just long enough to realize he really was at the right place. His head turned back to the lot, sans house, filled with weeds and trash that had blown off the street.

"Sam?" he whispered, confused. Had some ghosts invaded and destroyed her house? Fear gripped at his throat for a moment. Had she moved? Was it possible that he'd been stuck in that Thermos long enough for Sam to have moved away? What about that date he was half-planning on asking her on… he was sure that he'd actually follow through with his somewhat plan this time without putting his foot in his mouth. Eighth time had to be the charm, right?

So caught up in his own thoughts, he missed the crackle of tires against pavement and the soft woosh of a car window descending. "Kid!"

Danny whirled around, his green eyes widening in surprise. A police car had pulled up beside him and the officer was studying him with narrowed eyes. Danny took a small step backwards – Phantom and the police never meshed well, no matter what his current popularity rating was. "What?" he asked softly, keeping his eyes peeled for any kind of weapon.

"This ain't a place to hang," the man said. "Go back towards civilization." He jerked his chin in the direction of downtown.

No mention of ghosts, or Phantom, or… anything. The man had treated him normally, just like any other kid. Although Danny knew down deep in his core that he was in ghost mode – he always knew which form he was in – he glanced down. Black clothes, white boots, white gloves, glow, feet not quite touching the ground.

Danny gave a little nod and took a small step to the side, his mind working furiously. Could it be that this was a new officer? Unlikely. Maybe it was just a person who was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Again, Danny's gut told him that wasn't the case. There was something seriously wrong with this picture. Sam was gone and now this man was treating him like a human kid. And, he thought with growing suspicion, those two kids had been living in his house. That had been his home. Just…

How long had he been in the Thermos?

His churning stomach was beginning to think it wasn't just days, or months. Years, possibly. "Wh… wha… what's the date today?" he stammered, fear clutching at his throat.

"July 18th."

Danny relaxed a little – three months wasn't that bad, not nearly as bad as he'd been thinking. It didn't really explain where Sam had gone, but he could understand three…

"2078," the officer finished.

Danny started, staring at the policeman in disbelief. "2078?" he repeated softly, terror beginning to bubble inside of him. "Seventy years?" There was no possible way that seventy years had passed. None. No. Sam would be eighty-something if she were still alive. His parents would be well into their hundreds. That just… No. It couldn't be.

The policeman gazed at him for a moment, his eyes narrowing. "You need a lift home?"

Danny blinked at him for a moment before shaking his head.

"Call if you need a ride, okay?" Then, without another word, the car hummed to life and vanished down the street.

"Seventy years?" Danny whispered to himself, his eyes wide with doubt. Slowly he turned around, staring at the empty lot. It did look like it'd been abandoned for years, if not decades. "I'm 86?" He glanced down at his body again, but when his normal sixteen-year-old body met his gaze, he just looked back up, not knowing what to think.

For a long few minutes, maybe even hours, Danny stood perfectly still and gazed at the empty lot that screamed the truth at him. Through that entire time, Danny wrestled with his own thoughts. Could he truly have been locked away for that long? He had to have been. But… what would he do next?

He was walking, then, without any sort of idea where he was headed. His boots took him blankly through town, his whole mind suspended on one thought: seventy years. I've been in that Thermos for seventy years. All around him, he could see the changes that seven decades of time had brought, each place nailing home the idea that it wasn't some sick kind of joke. The movie theatre was gone, replaced by a department store. The Nasty Burger wasn't just missing its sign… the whole store was now a parking lot. Casper High was abandoned and surrounded by an orange fence with a demolition notice stapled to it. Tucker's house – actually the whole set of row houses – was gone, a new mall standing proudly in their place.

Seventy years. It hadn't yet struck through to his mind that he was alone. Just beneath the thought that he'd lost seventy years of his life was the image that he could just go home. But he couldn't go home, not really; there was no place to go. Sam and Tucker were long gone from Amity Park, and maybe not even alive anymore. Jazz as well. And his parents had to be dead by now. Even though his conscious mind was stuck on the idea that seventy years had passed, his unconscious mind was helping to direct his feet. His unconscious mind knew that there was no going home. Before he really knew what was happening, he was standing beside the Amity Park cemetery.

That was when he allowed himself to consciously wonder if his parents were alive. He phased through the fence and stared around him, outwardly strangely calm for a boy who was shrieking inside his own head. Winding his way between the grave markers, Danny headed towards the section of Amity Park that had been set aside for the Fenton clan. Over two hundred years of Fentons were buried in that area. When his feet brought him to the edge of the plot, marked by his great-grandfather's ugly-looking memorial, Danny stopped.

He didn't want to know what was on the other side of the monument. He didn't want to see his parents' names engraved on the little white stones. He didn't want to know for sure that he was all alone.

But he had to look. Maybe they weren't. It wasn't unheard of for people to live into their hundreds. Maybe his parents were still alive… just really, really old. Dread-filled curiosity made him move. He had to know, now. If they weren't there, it would drive him nuts for the rest of his life. He took a few steps forwards, his eyes scanning the small markers, his gaze instantly locking on two headstones. It was the names carved into the simple stone that caught his eyes.

Jack Fenton, one read, born 14 June 1968: died 3 January 2054.

The other, a bit newer, read, Maddie Fenton – born 9 March 1969: died 19 July 2068.

Both of his parents were dead and gone, both by more than a decade. Danny took a few wobbling steps forwards, collapsing on his parents' graves, tracing his finger around the delicately etched names. Tears flooded his eyes as he finally let himself understand just what everything meant.

He'd been locked in a Thermos for seventy years. His parents were dead. He was… he was…

"Mom," he cried, wishing he could throw himself into her arms. This was too much for him. He was sixteen. He was just sixteen. Why did this happen to him? Why couldn't anyone have freed him? "Dad," he sobbed.

Why did they have to capture him? He hadn't been doing anything wrong that day, seventy years ago. He'd just been flying, having fun, playing around, and enjoying the pure thrill of flight. He hadn't really even had a chance to get away – they had just jumped out from behind a tree and held out that stupid Thermos. And then the blue light had overtaken him, throwing him into that timeless darkness.

Seventy years.

Under the onslaught of his own emotions, Danny lost control of his ghost form. His body sparkled and shimmered, then solidified into his human appearance. Black hair, blue eyes, still sixteen… the timelessness of the Thermos had affected him in both forms. He hadn't aged a single moment inside the Thermos; time had literally stood still for him.

For the longest time he sat there, not moving when the sun began to sink below the horizon and the stars came out to play. His tears dried up after nearly an hour of crying, his body exhausted from his ordeal inside the Thermos and his mind strung out by the day's emotional turmoil. Curled up in the shadow of his mothers' grave stone, Danny fell into a fitful sleep.

The sun woke him up the next day. Danny didn't bother to stretch, instead rubbing the crusty bits out of his eyes and shaking a few spiders out of his hair as he yawned. He glanced one last time at his parents' names before turning around and leaning against his mother's headstone, staring at the morning sunlight. With a momentary wish that yesterday had all been some kind of weird dream, but knowing that it wasn't, Danny set about to face the new day. What to do now?

The night's sleep had helped to clear his mind. His parents were gone, seventy years had passed, and the world he knew was no more. Those were facts that he couldn't run from. True, he hadn't totally accepted that – part of him was still fighting the idea tooth and nail – but he wasn't crippled by the mere thought anymore. It was a new day. There were things to do, places to go, people to try to locate.

He might be stuck in 2078 right now, but he had no intention of keeping it that way. There had to be a way back to his own time; back to a time when his family and friends weren't dead or scattered to the four corners of the Earth. But first…

Food was definitely on his list of things to do right away that morning – his stomach was growling. The question was how to get it. He didn't have any money and he doubted his savings account still existed – not that there had been much in it anyways. Then he needed to find some place to use as a base of operations and perhaps stay the night. His parents' old house was obviously occupied by the family of those two boys, he couldn't go back there.

Maybe Sam or Tucker were still hanging around Amity Park. Surely they'd be willing to let their old friend haunt an attic or basement for a few days while he coordinated a trip back in time. The thought of searching for his friends bolstered his spirits and almost brought a smile to his face. He never gave a second thought to the idea that Sam and Tucker would now be well into their eighties and might not even remember him.

"Hey!" a voice called sharply.

Danny looked up into the morning sunshine, blinking in surprise at two people standing before him. One was old, short grey-red hair a mess of tight curls, the other was very young, bright red hair spilling down to her waist and three flowers clenched in her hand. Both of them stared at him – the older woman's eyes glinting with suspicion, the younger one out of curiosity.

Danny wondered for a moment how he looked to the two of them. His clothes were still bloody from a fight with Dash that had been over for seventy years, one of his eyes black and bruised from an unlucky punch. No doubt he was covered in dirt from his night sleeping in the cemetery, he probably had the strung-out look of someone who hadn't gotten enough sleep, food, or happiness in a while, and he was wearing clothes that were seventy years out of style. Most likely he looked like a homeless, crazy kid. The thought brought a small, sad smile to his face.

"This isn't the Hotel Ritz," the old woman continued, one hand holding tightly onto her granddaughter's (or maybe great-granddaughter's), the other propped up on her hip. "Scram."

For a moment, Danny wondered if he should tell the two of them to 'scram' – this was his family and they should just bug off – but he didn't want to get into an argument his morning. He was tired and hungry. "Sorry," he whispered, pushing himself to his feet. He needed to go get something to eat anyways.

He stumbled a little on his first few steps, his legs a little numb from sleeping weirdly, catching himself on a gravestone before finding his balance. Then he moved off, stuffing his dirty hands into his pockets, his mind already on the question of how he was going to get some food. With no money, he'd probably have to steal some. That thought twinged against his conscience.

"Hey, kid," the woman called after him, her voice a lot softer than earlier. When Danny glanced over his shoulder, he saw that she was following him. "You okay?" she asked.

Danny nodded. He wasn't, really, but he didn't need to tell that to some complete stranger.

The lady stopped a few feet away from him, studying him with her narrowed green eyes, her head tipped slightly to the side. Finally she held out her hand, a twenty dollar bill between her fingers. "Here."

Danny didn't take it. "Why?" he asked softly, wondering why the crabby old woman was giving him money.

She gazed at him for a long moment before shaking her head. "Get something to eat," she said simply, shaking the bill a few times until Danny took it out of her hands. "You look like you need it."

"Thanks," Danny mumbled.

Turning on her heel, the old woman walked back towards her granddaughter. "Then go home," she shot over her shoulder.

"I wish I could," Danny whispered, twisting back around and wandering towards where he thought the mall should be. Hopefully they would have some kind of foot court that was open for breakfast. If not, maybe he could find a fast food place.

He should have stopped and looked back one last time. If he had, he would have seen the old woman take three flowers from her granddaughter's hand and place them on three graves in the Fenton section. One for Jack, one for Maddie… and one for a small headstone that read Daniel Fenton.

Danny paid twelve dollars and twenty-five cents for his breakfast. He'd been surprised at the prices when he had scanned the menu at the fast food place he'd managed to find. Everything was almost triple the price he remembered it being.

Now he was perched on top of the old city hall, slowly chewing the last few bites of his breakfast, deciding what to do next. He ran a hand through his white hair, sighing. There were few options at this point. He could either stick around in this time and just accept it as his fate, or he could try to get back to his own time. One of those was infinitely preferable to the other.

Incinerating the paper his breakfast had come wrapped in, Danny took to the sky, heading towards his old home. If he wanted to get back to his own time, he'd need the help of the only ghost who could send him there. There was a question on whether or not Clockwork would agree to help, but Danny needed to ask. He'd beg if he needed to. And to get to Clockwork, he'd need the ghost portal.

His home was a lot harder to find without the blinding fluorescent lights and the city-ordinance-breaking Ops Center. After a few flybys, Danny was forced to actually land on the street and walk. Invisibly checking the street signs, it still took him several minutes to find his old address. He stared up at it, green eyes glowing faintly in the bright sunlight, trying to decide if this really was his house or not. After a moment, he figured it probably was. The address was right and the house looked vaguely like his.

He phased through the ground and flew towards the basement, coming into the large room just as he expected. Landing on the floor, Danny looked around at the strange room, surprised to find that it looked a lot like a normal basement when you took out all the scientific equipment and painted the walls. Boxes piled in the corner, an old couch collapsing along one wall, a card table set up with some chairs, covered in a half-finished puzzle.

The cement floor, though, told the tale of the years of it being a next-generation laboratory. Burn marks were still visible between the scattered throw rugs. The strange green stain from when Danny had dropped an experiment when he was fifteen was still there. Along one wall, where the ghost portal used to be, the cement was burned a strange emerald. In the semi-dark of the basement, the stain still glowed vaguely.

The portal itself, however, was gone.

Danny walked over to the wall, putting his hand against the boards, then phasing his head through to check the other side. It was totally filled in with dirt and cement. Taking a few steps backwards, Danny glared at the place where the portal had been, despair nipping at him. He hadn't really expected the portal to still be there. Without his crazy-ghost-hunting parents, and now in the possession of a normal family, there wouldn't be a ghost portal in the basement. No doubt it had been gone for decades. In a fit of frustration, he punched the wall, then pushed himself up into the sky.

Screaming through the air, Danny was on a bee-line for a house up in the better part of Amity Park. After all, there wasn't just one portal to the ghost zone in Amity Park. Or, at least, there used to be more than one.

"Vlad," Danny ground out, his eyes glittering and watering from the rush of air. He was going faster than usual, fear gnawing at his heels as he barreled through the sky. It had been seventy years. Vlad could have moved, or closed down his portal, or even have died… and Vlad's portal was Danny's one hope at the moment.

Danny didn't bother to land; he stood in the air and stared down at what used to be the richest, best section of Amity Park. It obviously wasn't anymore. The large mansions and gardens had given way to row houses and small homes with tiny yards. Kids were running and playing in the streets, adults taking the day off of work mowing their bits of grass and trimming hedges.

Vlad wouldn't have lived there in a million years. Not even if he were a hundred ten years old.

Running his hand through his hair in defeat, Danny whirled around and flew, hell-bent, back towards the center of Amity Park. No portals. But there was a chance, a small chance but still a chance, that Vlad was still alive somewhere. Maybe he just moved. He couldn't imagine Vlad Masters, billionaire and evil maniac, to be resting peacefully in the dirt somewhere. And wherever Vlad went, a ghost portal went with.

He would have to look Vlad up. And for that, Danny would need access to the internet.

He glared at the computer screen in the library, frustrated with his endless running around in circles. In the seventy years that had passed, computer technology had become almost unrecognizable. The entire computer was a thin clear plate lying on the desk with a small hologram of a woman hovering above it, repeating the exactly same stupid (and extremely unhelpful) words.

"Unknown request. Please restate query."

"Vlad Masters. I want to know about Vlad Masters," he ground out, wishing he had a keyboard or a mouse or anything to input the data other than through voice commands. Where was Google when you needed it?

"Unknown request. Please restate query."

A boy stuck his head around the corner, blinking a moment at Danny's unusual blood- and dirt-covered clothes. "Need some help?" he asked hesitantly.

"Yes!" Danny twisted around. "I need to find out about Vlad Masters; he used to be mayor of Amity Park about seventy years ago, and this stupid thing isn't cooperating."

"It's an old model," the boy laughed, a smile appearing on his face, "you have to be nice to it – nice and direct. Computer, search: Vlad Masters."

"Searching: Vlad Masters."

Danny let out a short breath. "Thanks."

"No problem, amigo," the boy grinned. "Remember, direct." Then he vanished back around the corner.

"Search returned over two billion results. Please narrow search by profession, region, or date."

Licking his lips, Danny leaned forwards. "Vlad Masters, Mayor of Amity Park seventy years ago."

"Searching."

What would he do if Vlad were still alive? He had no idea if having ghost powers extended their life spans. Tucker had joked a few times about the fact that ghosts were immortal, making Danny and Vlad half-immortal. Would he have to beg? Would Vlad even remember him after all this time? Resting his head on his hands, he waited.

"Search complete. Confirm: Vladimir Douglas Masters, Mayor of Amity Park 2003 through 2011, born December 9th, 1968."

"Yes, that's him," Danny whispered as the hologram of the woman disappeared, a picture of Vlad taking her place. Information scrolled through the air – birthdays, major events, places of residence. Then the date of his death: January 29th, 2073.

Danny felt like he'd been punched. Vlad was gone, along with his access to the ghost world. Dimly he read through the rest of the information, reading about Vlad's 'spotless' career as a businessman and politician. Apparently the fruit loop had managed to take the secret of his evil, second career with him to the grave. "That's so unfair," Danny muttered.

"Unknown search parameters. Please restate query."

Danny was silent for a long few moments, staring at the smiling picture of his dead arch-enemy. "Search: ghost zone portals," he finally said.

"Searching: ghost zone portals."

There had to be a way to get to the ghost zone and to Clockwork. It couldn't be that every hole would be plugged up – there were natural portals being created all the time. And, with more than seventy years since his parents had created the first ghost portal, that kind of technology had to be in use out there somewhere. His parents had always talked about how pivotal their breakthroughs were; it wasn't possible that all their experiments led to nothing.

"Search complete."

Vlad vanished and, just for a moment, Danny wanted the image back. At least Vlad was something he recognized. But the information about the ghost zone swirled into existence and Danny leaned forwards, pushing the strange desire to see more of Vlad out of his mind for the moment.

He read through the parts about his parents' greatest invention, and how the Guys in White finally managed to recreate the technology nearly twenty years after Danny's accident. There was a section on natural ghost portals, then a large glop of information about the 'great ghost invasion of the early twenty-first century'. Danny skimmed through most of it, having witnessed it first-hand, laughing a little at how much of the article was about him. Phantom, it read, mysteriously vanished one day and most people believe that he had finally found peace and had 'moved on' to the next world.

"So not," he whispered. Then he got to the part about the end of the ghost invasion. Nearly twenty-five years after the creation of the first working ghost portal, the anti-ghost coalition succeeded in collapsing the ghost zone, eradicating the ghost threat and putting an end to ghost portals all together.

Danny read that sentence over and over. "What?" he finally managed to spit out. "That can't be. If the ghost zone was destroyed, the human world would have been too!"

"Answer located," the tiny hologram fizzled into life next to the information about the portals, her mouth moving as she answered Danny's not-quite-asked question. "Theoretically the ghost zone still exists. It was merely transformed back into its basic elements – much like doing a data wipe of a server. The computer still exists, but the data does not. In essence, the ghost zone has been 'reformatted', deleting the ghosts but preserving the place itself."

"So all the ghosts are gone?" Danny breathed.

"Affirmative. New search query?"

"Even Clockwork?"

"Unknown search parameters. Please restate query."

Not bothering to log off or even look around, Danny transformed back into Phantom and vanished up into the sky.

To be continued.