AN : See below for my excuse.
Phantom pin wheeled through the air with little say in the matter as he tried to right himself despite the heavy winds still hitting him. Fighting back seemed to be useless but Phantom had a reputation of being stubborn and this was no different. He wasn't going to lose this easily when so much was on the line. Hitting one of the numerous rocks floating in the Ghost Zone stopped his mad flailing as he used it as a brace against the windstorm he was fighting against. Once it stopped he was going to launch his counterattack and show them why you don't mess with the King of the Ghost Zone. With all of his strength he held onto the rock despite the ghost repeated attempts to blow him off of it and into the rest of the Zone to most likely never be seen again. That would probably work on any other ghost in the Ghost Zone but this wasn't just a self-proclaimed King of the Ghost Zone. This was the King of the Ghost Zone himself and he had no intentions of losing this fight. Finally the wind stopped as Phantom saw his opportunity to counterattack.
He moved until he was behind the rock he had collided with and with substantial effort began pushing it. With nothing to brace himself against for leverage he found himself using all of the strength his flying ability had and then some. It was slow going at first until he gained more and more momentum to send it hurtling towards his opponent with the natural gravity of the Zone making it go faster even after he had stopped pushing it himself. The ghost gave a panicked yell as he found his windstorms to be ineffective against the natural strength of the rock hurtling towards him. Quickly deciding that he couldn't stop the rock he chose to go over it and his triumphant shout was cut off midway when Phantom came over the rock himself with his fist cocked back and sent the ghost reeling with it. Phantom wasn't done yet though. He grabbed his opponents foot and with a shout threw them onto the rock. Phantom's foot was firmly planted on his chest before he could so much as shake his head to clear it.
"That was so not cool Vortex." Phantom said to the pinned ghost who only grinned at him in return.
"I see no harm done." Vortex's smile seemed to widen.
"You attacked me the moment I came out the portal." Phantom raised an eyebrow at him. "You really think the crown would recognize you for something like that."
"Farewell Phantom." Vortex turned intangible and phased through the rock before Phantom could do anything and Vortex no doubt followed it up with a teleportation to get away from him.
"Good riddance." Phantom knew he was speaking to nothing and resumed his flight to Clockwork's tower.
Phantom landed with barely any noise at the foot of Clockwork's tower. The flight there had been uneventful after Vortex's surprise attack. He had barely seen any ghosts and none of them even tried to attack him or get in his way. They all had given him a wide berth as soon as they caught sight of him flying. It was an improvement from all the countless amount of times they had attacked him on sight though. Phantom walked up to one of the giant doors at the base of the tower and gave it a few hard knocks.
Not even five seconds later, the doors swung open and revealed a purple cloaked figure with their hood up, a time medallion hanging around their neck, and a golden staff with a clock on the top of it.
"Welcome to Clockwork's Tower King Phantom." The ghost bent at the waist to give a small bow and Phantom let out a sigh.
The ghost was Alice, one of Clockwork's numerous students, and she smiled before pulling down her hood to let her red hair show. This was her new hair color after several other colors that she had dyed it which included pink, blue, orange, yellow, gray, rainbow, and others too numerous to list. Her skin was the usual gray of a ghost and her eyes were a dark red that Phantom had to suppress a shudder at even after seeing her so times. Red eyes still gave him a twinge of fear every time he saw them, even after spending all the time he did with both her and Vlad. The memories he had of his future self were trying to rise again and he barely managed to keep them down.
"You alright Danny?" she asked with concern on her face.
"Yeah I'm fine Alice. Just trying to wrap my head around a few things." Phantom quickly lied, not wanting to upset the friendly ghost, truly a dying breed when it came to him.
"If you say so." She let out a sigh as she saw through the lie but gave a reassuring smile. "Come on. Clocky's been waiting for you."
"Doesn't the Master of Time know when I'll be here?"
"He refused to peek. Said something about you always being on time, give or take a few minutes." She shrugged her shoulders and stepped aside to let Phantom in.
The door swung closed as soon as Phantom was fully inside with a loud bang. Alice just smirked at the halfa's startled reaction and pulled her hood back up as she led the way through the hallways towards the main staircase. Phantom couldn't help but notice the thousands upon thousands of clocks on the wall of the tower. It seemed like there wasn't a single square inch that didn't have a clock occupying it.
"How can you stay sane with all of these clocks ticking? I could never sleep with them all going."
"You know ghosts don't really need to sleep. The zone gives us our energy. Besides, I would just sleep somewhere else anyway."
"I would still go crazy with all the ticks."
"Who said I'm not already." She smiled again and vanished in a swirl of red energy.
"Never said you weren't."
Phantom looked at the grand spiral staircase, a tower of gears of various sizes dominating the area inside the steps, Alice had led him to and resigned himself to climbing the steps. The time alone would give him time to think and get his nerves under control anyway. The last thing he needed was to embarrass himself in front of anyone Clockwork had actually managed to get to join him.
Climbing the steps quickly wore out its welcome though.
"I'll take the shortcut after all."
Phantom flew through the steps and arrived at the top floor to find a waiting Clockwork.
"Hey there Clockwork." Danny nervously began, still not entirely sure on how to address the ghost.
"Hello Danny. Take a seat please." He motioned towards a set of chairs and a table that Phantom quickly took a seat in with Clockwork quickly taking the other. "There are some matters that need to be addressed."
Phantom was already exhausted by the time he made his way back to Clockwork's Tower. Many of the ghosts that Clockwork had swayed to his cause wanted to fight to test their strength against the king. Sure it was easy, but fighting so many ghosts one after another would put a strain on anyone. Phantom had just found the time to check up on Clock…his spies in Pariah's army before coming back. He was glad for Clockwork's intervention even though at first he had hated him for it. Now he had time to plan and he knew Pariah's plan. Or at least the first stage of it.
Pariah was preparing to make his move now and he just had to be faster in preparing a counterattack. The spies had figured out that he was going to invade the Human World again in an effort to weaken him while he remained in the Ghost Zone. Phantom didn't know exactly what he had planned but knew he couldn't stress about every little thing. Besides he had Vlad and Clockwork for that. The top priority on Phantom's mind was to ensure that he couldn't send his entire army out of the Ghost Zone.
He could only use 2 portals as a permanent way in while others only opened randomly. The Fenton portal could be temporarily shut down along with Vlad's. The main problem with that was that he needed to have people on the other side that knew how to start them back up. Tucker and Jazz could stay at the Fenton Portal while Valerie and Sam went to Vlad's. Things were beginning to slowly take shape the more he thought about them.
Phantom was abruptly brought out of his thoughts when something hit the top of his head, hard. He turned around ready to face his attacker only to find a smiling Alice.
"Was that really necessary?" Phantom asked.
"No. But it was pretty funny." Alice said with barely contained laughter.
"Now I'm sure you're crazy. Is Clockwork still here?"
"Nope. Left on some important business. I heard him mumble something along the lines of 'Those one-eyed idiots and their stupid attitudes'"
"The Observants. Did he say when he would be back?"
"Nope. He also wanted me to give you this." She pulled an envelope from some pocket in her robe and handed it to me. "Said that what's in it is for your eyes only and shouldn't be shared."
"Thanks Alice. I probably won't be able to see him again until this whole mess is over. If I survive that it." The last part slipped out before he could stop it but Alice only laughed.
"I'm sure you'll be fine. I can't see you losing to Pariah anytime soon. Unless of course you've gone soft." She said with a smirk.
"I can assure you that I haven't. Pariah probably has though."
"We'll see. Now though I have to leave. Clockwork left me in charge until he returned. I would prefer that he didn't find out that I had spent so much time waiting for you to show up. The time stream is too important to leave unattended."
She vanished in a swirl of energy with a wave to the Ghost King and he took that as his cue to leave as well. Phantom was too tired to fly all the way back to the portal and simply teleported there instead. Playing this real life version of chest was far more annoying in his eyes than Vlad had said. He was constantly going on about the feeling of check-mating an opponent after hundreds if not thousands of well-played moves. Phantom emerged from the portal yawning and into pitch blackness. Every single light in the lab was off. He didn't even think that much time had passed. He honestly thought he would just miss the school day. He didn't think it would take all day.
He reverted back to his human form and slowly crept towards the stairs.
"I wonder what my clone is doing?"
Danny was going to see when the clone came barreling down the steps and he heard his sister yelling.
"You're dead Danny!"
Jazz must've jumped off the stairs because the next thing Danny saw was her diving to tackle the clone with the Fenton Anti Creep Stick. She was about to hit him when she saw her real brother and kept glancing back and forth between the two of them until she just sighed and dropped the weapon.
"What's going on?"
"I think you should go first. Mine's a little long."
"Well you decided that it would be fun to go around the town using your ghost powers for pranks. I just spent the last hour trying to get the paint out of my hair. Oh and mom and dad are going crazy looking for the Prank Ghost."
Danny did finally notice a few streaks of silver in Jazz's usual orange hair.
"Well it looks like he had the right color in mind." Danny went intangible to avoid the beaker thrown at him by his sister. "But I don't know why he did it still. I just made him to be sick for the day so I could go to the Ghost Zone without ditching school."
"And what were you doing in the Ghost Zone then?"
"You know. Ghost King stuff. Besides I have to watch out for Pariah. He's still a little sore about me taking the kingship from him."
"You can somehow rule over an entire realm but still can't do your homework without my help." She said with a smile. "Some things just never change do they."
"Nope. Your hair would look better silver though."
"Let's try making yours red then." Jazz grabbed the bat again and advanced on her brother.
"Jazz no!" Danny ran past his sister just as the smirking clone disappeared.
AN : Well I'm not really sure what to say here. But hey on the bright side it's only been 2 years, 4 months, and 4 days since the last chapter. That's better than...something...cannibal reindeer...I'm sorry.
There is a reason that it took so long though. It might not be the best to everyone but it is what stopped me every time I tried to write this. I felt like my writing style had changed and thought about starting over from scratch more times than I can count. I felt like it would be weird to go from the last chapter to this and that always stopped me. I tried writing it in different perspectives to see if that would help and then had to change all of that back when I realized how weird it was to go from 3rd person to 1st person. What I was doing just always felt wrong and I couldn't put out something like that for all of you to read.
So yeah the reason might not be great to everyone but it was what stopped me. I'm not drawing this out because I want to publish this.
I'm pretty sure I can promise the next chapter won't take 2 years to get out though. Now I'm just going to write the story.
Questions, comments, concerns?
PM me or leave a review.
Again sorry for the wait.