I think I may have discovered a plot. Let's get some movement in this story!

Thanks to Xoroth, Teribane, Anthiena, Sabsi13, Random Flyer, Eromancer, bluename, Kiomori, stick fight3, Angelus-alvus, Completely Different, Cotswold, irezel, Salamander Hanzo, xxBakaAkki, TwiLyght Sans Sparkles, Nylah, Invader Johnny, YumeTakato, Amazing Bluie, hawkflyer667, awalkingparadox, ImmortalPhantom22, dragondancer123, Donteatacowman and AnneriaWings!

I'm Still Here
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

Chapter Seven

Danny felt decidedly out of place, stuffed into the booth at the restaurant. Jazz (eighty-eight) was sitting on one of side of him and Sam (eighty-six) was seated on the other. Jazz's daughter Sarah (technically his niece, though she was old enough to be his mother) was across the table and still eyeing him distrustfully, apparently not having forgiven him for going ghost in the car the first time they'd met, and Jazz's three grandchildren were stuffed alongside their mother, alternating between pestering Danny with endless questions and holding an epic straw war.

It didn't help that Sam and Jazz were talking over his head, apparently having relegated him to 'child without anything important to add'. "See, Jazz," Sam said, pointing to the napkin they'd been scribbling on, "this is the part that's not going to be easy to do."

"You don't have a contact somewhere?" Jazz asked softly, wrinkling her forehead.

Sam shook her head, sighing. "No amount of money can erase someone from the government systems. Even though Danny's supposedly seventy years dead, they're not going to want to get rid of all the records that he ever existed. The local record files, sure, that's feasible. But the federal database?"

Danny swirled a french fry through his catsup, momentarily wishing for some Nasty Sauce, then wrinkling his nose when he felt a wash of depression as he realized he'd never get to eat that particular sauce ever again.

"We're not talking about all of his records," Jazz said. "We don't need to make him never exist – just the identifiers. Fingerprints, dental records, things like that."

"It's still not possible."

Jazz scowled and took a drink of her coffee. "It's got to be possible. Vlad did it, didn't he?"

A sigh came from Sarah and Danny looked up at her, seeing a long-suffering expressing on the woman's face. He recognized the look: it was the same one that Jazz used to give their parents whenever they started talking about ghosts. Danny sent her a small smile but Sarah simply stiffened and looked away.

"So find Vlad and ask him," Sam muttered sourly, using her finger to push at the ice cubes in her water in an eerily familiar gesture. "I'm sure he'd be eager to help once he finds out Danny's back."

Jazz sighed. "I'm sure," she said softly, her eyes turning to Danny for the first time in awhile. "How's your lunch, little brother?"

Danny blinked, surprised at being allowed to rejoin the conversation. "Fine," he said with a shrug. "It's no Nasty Burger though."

"I'm sure it's not," Jazz laughed. She turned serious after a moment and eyed him. "What do you think about all this?"

"Wiping me from existence?" he asked. "It's a conversation I've always dreamed about having." He sent her a sarcastic smile.

With a small roll of her eyes, Jazz prodded him with her elbow and said, "We'll get it all figured out." She was silent for a moment before leaning forwards again, looking past him to Sam. "What about Eric?"

Sam's expression was thunderous. "I'm not calling Eric."

"Doesn't he have contacts-"

"I'm not calling my ex-husband," Sam interrupted, fury scalding her voice.

Jazz let out a breath. "But…"

"No."

As the 'discussion' started to escalate over his head again, Danny tuned them out. He didn't want to hear about Sam's ex-husband and he didn't particularly want to think about Sam marrying someone. Focusing instead on the swirls of catsup on his plate, Danny felt a painful moment of longing. He wanted to go home more than anything right at that moment. No more arguing, no more everyone being too old, no more anything. Just his own bed, his own room, and his parents exploding things downstairs.

He dragged his eyes away from his plate to gaze around the restaurant. It was surprisingly similar to the ones he remembered – waiters and staff, a kitchen beyond swinging doors, clusters of tables and booths. With the notable exception of the prices, the entire restaurant itself could have been picked up and dropped seventy years into the past and no one would have been the wiser.

The patrons, however, were the giveaway that he was trapped in the future. Many were contentedly jabbering away to tiny holographic people, a few teenagers were playing some sort of video game that was being projected onto their table – Danny thought it looked a lot like Call of Duty with plates of spaghetti and forks rather than mountains and rough terrain – and others had projected their computer screens onto their tables and were busy working away.

He was about to turn his gaze back to the teenagers playing their game when he saw a woman standing by the door. She was dressed all in blue with her red hair pushed behind her ears. His mouth dropped open in astonishment and he stared at her, his eyes growing wider with every heartbeat. The woman looked just like his mother! She was just standing there, looking around with a small frown on her face. The staff never gave her a second glance, passing right next to her without a single question as to why she was there.

Danny glanced over at Jazz, but she was too busy arguing with Sam to answer the questions growing in his mind. When he looked back, the woman was gazing in his direction, meeting his eyes, a smile growing on her face.

There was no question about it. She was Maddie Fenton.

He stared at her in dazed amazement, his mind struggling to understand how she could be standing there if she was dead and buried, surprised to feel the ache in his heart and the burning of tears in his eyes. Just for a moment, it all felt like a horrible trick and that someone was going to jump out with a camera and yell 'surprise'. "Mom," he mouthed, looking from Jazz to his mother with a desperate desire to understand growing in his mind. "J-J-Jazz…"

"Not now, Danny," she said.

One of the waitresses seemed to walk right through his mother, not even batting an eye about it, and Danny finally caught on. His mother wasn't really there. She really was dead... a ghost.

The idea didn't process, however. The ghost zone had been reformatted – there were no more ghosts. But a second, new thought was right on its heels. Perhaps new ghosts were still being created and the ghost zone was slowly rebuilding itself from the ground up. Maybe whatever the Guys in White had done wasn't permanent. His mother had died long after the government had destroyed the ghost zone; she wouldn't have been affected by what they had done.

The story suddenly made too much sense in Danny's mind. His mother, tormented over the fact that he was lost and that it was her fault, was continuing her search even after death. The person who despised ghosts more than anything had become one. She had stayed, waiting for him.

"Sam…" he started, but stopped himself. These two weren't his Sam and his Jazz anymore. Despite the fact that they were so close, he was alone. The harsh reality was that seventy years separated them and he had to start learning to solve his own problems. He couldn't go running to them all the time anymore. "I'm going to the bathroom," he said simply, finding no reason to change an age-old excuse, turned himself invisible, and phased through the table.

Ignoring the annoyed voices of Sam and Jazz – and the excited jabbering of Jazz's grandkids when he reappeared next to them – Danny worked his way over to his mother. The closer he got, the more sure he was that he was seeing Maddie Fenton. The small scar on her face was still there, she smiled just the right way, and that lock of hair was tucked behind her ear the way it always was. He couldn't tear his eyes off his mother, only blinking when his eyes got blurry from the tears that were threatening to form.

The fact that his ghost sense hadn't gone off never registered in his mind.

He was only a few feet away when his mother smiled, turned, and walked straight through the wall behind her, beckoning him to follow. Danny glanced over his shoulder at his 'family', then shook his head and followed.

"Mom?" The word was wrenched from his throat the moment he stepped into the alley behind the restaurant. Four days (seventy years) of longing and homesickness slammed into him when his mother smiled and nodded. Danny took a small step towards her, reaching out with his hand but stopping himself from actually touching her. He didn't want to break the illusion… if this was one.

"Danny," she said softly, her eyes brimming with tears. "Danny, we missed you."

Her voice snapped what little control Danny had left over himself. He took a few steps forwards and reached out, feeling tears in his eyes when his hand passed straight through her. Hands fell to his sides, useless, and he gazed at her with a sort of desperate longing. He wanted to throw himself into her arms, feel the solidness of her body hugging him one last time.

But none of that was possible. Not anymore.

"It's okay, Danny," she whispered, bringing her hand up and brushing it over his cheek. He couldn't feel it, but it managed to dislodge a tear anyways. "It'll be okay now." His mother smiled just like she always had, full of confidence and power. There wasn't a problem in the universe Maddie Fenton couldn't tackle.

Words caught in Danny's throat. He wanted to say so much, to explain about everything that had happened, but the only thing that made it through was a chocked out, "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," she whispered. Her phantom fingers traced the line on his cheek where the tear had fallen. "Don't cry, sweetheart. It's not your fault."

Danny reached a hand up and swiped at the tears still growing in his eyes. "How can you say that?" Danny said. "If I would have told you about the accident-"

"None of this is your fault," she repeated, more firmly. "Don't ever think that."

He nodded and swallowed heavily. "Okay."

She smiled, her eyes twinkling at his agreement, and that brought a small smile to Danny's face. "We've been looking for you for so long," she said. "Sweetheart… where have you been?"

"I was trapped in the Thermos," he said. "Jazz's grandkids dug me out of the backyard and set me free a couple days ago." He glanced over his shoulder at the wall, looking towards where Sam and Jazz would be sitting. "I've been living with Sam," he added, quietly glossing over his night in the cemetery, his night in the tree, and the night in the hotel.

"All that time," she said softly, shaking her head, "you were buried in the backyard in a Thermos?"

"Which explains the lack of aging."

Danny's head whipped around at the new voice, his heart slamming to full force in his chest at the very familiar tones. Blue eyes sparkled with red embers in the darkness, the shadowed figure's long white hair pulled back into a small ponytail at the nape of his neck. "Vlad…" he whispered, tensing at the sight of his enemy.

"Matthew, if you please," the man said, stepping out of the shadows and picking a bit of dirt off his jacket. "Vlad Masters would be a hundred and ten this year. I'm his 'son', for all intents and purposes."

'Matthew' was quite a bit older than Danny remembered Vlad being. Wrinkles and lines drifted across his face, making him look to be in his sixties. "How are you still alive?" Danny demanded, shifting his weight so that he was between Vlad… 'Matthew'… and his mother.

"Apparently half-ghosts age about half as fast as normal people," Vlad said with a shrug. "It's been ninety years since your father destroyed my life and yet I look like only forty years have passed." His eyes gleamed, the smile on his face twisting a little. "And you look just like you did all those years past. Still has stubborn as always?"

Danny's eyes narrowed at the slight jab, his hands curling into fists. Even after all these years, Vlad knew exactly how to rub him the wrong way. Judging from the quirk in Vlad's smile, the older halfa knew it all too well. "Go away. I'm busy," he said shortly, wanting to turn back to talk to his mother. He didn't have time for Vlad's mind games.

"I'm afraid you're not," Vlad said, shaking his head. He shifted his gaze from Danny to Maddie. "Come here, Maddie."

The blue-suited woman nodded and stepped towards him, walking past Danny without even glancing back at him. Danny watched, his mouth open slightly and his heart almost stopping in his chest, as his mother – his mother – smiled brilliantly at Vlad and greeted him with a "Hi, Sweetie."

Vlad touched the watch on his wrist and his mother vanished without a trace.

Danny felt the world crack in two.

Seeing the expression on Daniel's face when his 'mother' vanished hurt Vlad a lot more than he would ever admit. The plan had been a great one – send in the hologram and lure Daniel outside. The one thing Vlad hadn't counted on was the boy's pesky emotional attachment to his family. He hadn't even thought to contemplate what it would be like for Daniel, finding out his family was dead and then, scant days later, see one seemingly rise from the grave.

The moment Daniel had stepped through the wall with that look on his face, Vlad had wanted to stop the plan and take it all back. Suddenly it had jumped to a level of cruelty that even Vlad Masters wouldn't sink to. But he had decided to let it play out for awhile; not nearly as long as he had originally intended, but long enough for him to understand what had happened to Daniel. It had been instantly obvious that once the deception was uncovered, Daniel would likely never speak to him again.

For some reason, that knowledge bit deeper into Vlad than he'd been expecting.

None of that compared, however, to watching the young half-ghost process the fact that Vlad had made his mother disappear. Vlad sighed at the confused mix of anger, fear, and loneliness that swirled in Daniel's face. "I'm sorry, Daniel," he said softly.

"What did you do to her?" Daniel demanded, his hands clenching into fists and green lights sparkling into his eyes. "Bring my mom back!"

Vlad kept his face impassive, but it took all of his hundred ten years of experience to do so. "That wasn't your mother," he said slowly, gently. When Daniel started to shake his head in denial, Vlad added, "That was a hologram. I programmed her years ago to look like Maddie and to act like her."

Daniel's mouth moved, no sound coming out, and Vlad could see the understanding slamming into him.

"I used her to bring you out here so we could talk without Samantha and Jasmine," he said, watching as Daniel made the transition from confusion to raw fury. "I hadn't meant for you to-"

He never got the chance to finish his sentence. Not that it mattered; he highly doubted Daniel would have accepted his half-apology anyway. Daniel switched over to his ghost form in a flash of light and threw himself at Vlad, murder gleaming in his green eyes.

And, oddly, Vlad didn't blame him.

The self-proclaimed King wasn't watching the fight on the tiny tear in the fabric of the ghost world. Instead, his red eyes were staring down at the Thermos that he was cradling in his hands, tracing his claws gently over the ragged crack in its surface. His Thermos.

He still remembered that day all those many years ago. The emptiness of being trapped in the Thermos extending on forever and ever, then there was a sudden change. A bend, a dent, a weakness in his Thermos that he'd fixated on. He'd slammed against it over and over again until the Thermos ripped open sending him tumbling into the abyss of the ghost zone in a flare of devil's fire.

He had been free, finally.

Clockwork had been missing from his usual perch – that was the first sign that something wasn't quite right – but he'd ignored it, assuming that Clockwork had run from him. It wasn't until he'd noticed that Clockwork's tower itself seemed to be melting around him that he had started to wonder what was going on.

The rest of the ghost zone had been in pure chaos that day. Ghosts were slowly dissolving, wasting away, screaming in pain and fear. Some were obsessively protecting their lairs, others were running around in panic, and still others were just sitting there and watching themselves disintegrate.

He had loved it. He had flown through the ghost zone, insane laughter bubbling in his throat whenever he saw another ghost fighting its death, on a search for one ghost in particular: the one ghost who always knew where to find anything in the human world.

It had taken days for all the ghosts to die. The shrieking had been horribly wonderful; the ghost zone more terrifying than he could ever remember. It wasn't until the screams were dying away that he found the ghost he was looking for.

The Box Ghost had been lying on one of the dissolving floating islands, his blue fingers tightly clutching what was left of his daughter. Fear and sorrow had warred for dominance in his eyes all those years ago as he listened to the new Ghost King make his demands. The pudgy ghost, pulling his daughter close to him and allowing tears to drip from his eyes, and choked out the story of Danny Phantom.

"He was sucked into a Thermos – it wasn't my fault," the Box Ghost had rasped all those years ago. "I heard his parents talking about it when I was trying to save one of the crushed boxes in his backyard. He always crushed the boxes…"

A threatening glare had brought the Box Ghost back on track, his voice little more than a whisper. "I thought it was a good plan, revenge for sucking me into that Thermos all those times. Nobody sucks the Box Ghost into a cylindrical container!" For a moment, the Box Ghost had almost sounded back to his old self, but the power in his voice died away almost as quickly as it had arrived. "I took the Thermos and buried it in the backyard."

The new Ghost King had laughed about that, nearly doubling over in hilarity at the thought of the great 'Danny Phantom' being beaten by the Box Ghost.

"I was going to let him go," the Box Ghost had said sadly, his tears dripping onto his daughter's head as she dissolved into nothingness. Staring down at his empty, melting hands, the Box Ghost whispered, "I was going to let him go, I just forgot…"

Dark Dan Phantom had left the Box Ghost to die, delighting in the information that his younger self had received an object lesson in 'what goes around, comes around'. As the rest of the ghost zone screamed its way into nothingness, the eerie screams of the doomed ghosts persisting for weeks after the last one had vanished, Dark Phantom had prowled his new domain, untouched by the bomb the Guys in White had unleashed on the ghost zone. His Thermos had protected him from the destabilizing blast that was the destruction of everything else.

The new King had no intention of ever letting Danny Phantom out of his Thermos – the twerp could rot forever inside that thing – but he had a planned for the eventuality of Danny's escape. And now that the young annoyance was out and free, Dark Phantom knew exactly what to do. After all, he'd already gone through his plan once with that clone-girl and it had worked fabulously.

"Danny Phantom," he whispered, his red eyes finally coming off his Thermos to study the images of his younger self battling an older Vlad Masters, "you'll never know what hit you."

Danny threw himself at 'Matthew' Masters, the knowledge that the elder halfa had tricked him so thoroughly burning through him like a brand. He was beyond thought. All he wanted to do was hurt the other as much as possible.

Vlad, however, had a whole lifetime of knowledge behind him: ninety-some years of practice compared to Danny's two. Danny never stood a chance.

Lost to his rage, he never saw Vlad flicker out of being for a moment and reappear right next to him. Vlad reached out an intangible hand and carefully tapped Danny's mind, swiping his hand through just the right part. Danny collapsed to the ground, unconscious, his scream of fury dying in his throat.

Vlad stood there for a long moment, gazing down at the younger halfa. "I'm sorry," he said softly. He knelt down and touched Danny's forehead. "I'm truly sorry, Daniel."

Then Vlad picked up the half-ghost, twisted himself into Plasmius, and took to the sky.

To be continued.