Author's Note: Deadpool, I have thought about doing a chapter for Clockwork. Butch Hartman and Nickelodeon might be a bit more difficult because one is a real person and the other is a television channel (and television channels can't feel love). But I'm not ruling anything out yet. I'll wait and see what happens.

I hope you like this next chapter – it's the first one from a ghost's point of view! (Dani didn't count because she was only a halfa.) Please read and review!

Ember McLain

I don't know if you've heard, but I don't do duets. Especially not with twitterpated concert-wrecking dipsticks.

Youngblood is the only exception. He feels familiar, like a little brother. We had a good thing going on his pirate ship – a skeleton crew to do our bidding, immunity from ghost attacks, and a sick plan to get rid of all the adults. Ironically, we would've gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids.

Yeah, Phantom is one of those ghosts who likes to show up at the last minute to ruin everything. He's like, "You can't do that!" and I'm like, "Stop dipping in my Kool-Aid!" and we're both like, "ATTACK!" and he always wins.

Danny Phantom is a meddling doofus and I don't want to be anywhere near him.

Danny Fenton, on the other hand, is a cutie pie.

Phantom's just an over-the-top superhero persona, an act to impress that Goth gal. Fenton's the real deal. Fenton is who he is deep down. Everything changes after the rings pass over his body. He's quieter. He's less aggressive. He's more willing to fall under the spell of my mind-controlling music.

Even when we had the pirate ship, and he put on that orange jumpsuit and talked the talk, he couldn't walk the walk by himself. He needed to gather a posse of teenagers willing to hang on his every word in order to get the job done. Kind of like me, in a way.

I dig the weak guys. I hate Phantom because he's too tough, but I like Fenton because he's not tough enough. It's fun to mess with him. There's this adorable moment when his facial expression goes from confusion to realisation to irritation that gets me every time.

Some girls like a muscular dude to sweep them off their feet and move mountains for them and fight off all the other losers vying for their attention. I've never been like that. I'm a strong, independent woman who don't need no man.

Aren't I?

Maybe I need someone soft by my side so I can feel tougher than I really am.

When I was alive … wait, is that the right phrase? I know a lot of ghosts argue about it. The Continuationists – Désirée, Poindexter, the Lunch Lady – say we were all human beings, and then we died and became ghosts. The Obsessionists – Vortex, Undergrowth, Pandora – think we're totally separate creatures with awesome powers, but some of us develop fixations that make us adopt the looks, memories and personalities of human beings who may or may not have been real. You know what? I'm just going to pretend I used to be human. It's much easier to talk about things in that way.

When I was alive, I was the youngest of ten (too many) sisters. I used to hate my name. My big sisters got much cooler ones: Diamond, Blossom, Candy, Ocean, Venus, Dolly, Snow, Rose, Honey. They were names that suggested strength, beauty, youth, colour, depth, irresistibility.

But what kind of name is Ember? It told me who I really was: the soot left over from my mother's blazing affair. I was the only sister whose dad wasn't really my dad. People saw me, said, "That's Ember, the illegitimate McLain child," and moved on. I meant nothing more to anyone. Mom was very clear about that.

Not even becoming the worst kid in school got their attention. I threw tantrums and wrecked stuff, but they just waited for me to cool and then they swept me away – as if it was nothing. As if I was nothing. I could have thrown myself off a cliff and no-one would mind. And when you compare me, the troubled tearaway, to the things my big sisters were achieving, it's clear that I didn't have the best childhood.

Most kids blew their allowance on candy and comics. I blew mine on matchboxes. I used to light up every single stick one at a time just to watch the flame slide down until it scorched my fingers. Later, I went further. I laid the matches on my body and created perfectly straight burns on my skin. If I had enough of them, I could spell things, too. I could write EMBER on my chest and LOSER on one thigh and DIRTY on the other thigh. It hurt, obviously, but I honestly didn't care. Why should I have cared? It wasn't like anyone else gave a hoot about me or what I did to my body.

I wouldn't have lasted as long as I did if it wasn't for music.

Rock wasn't my first passion. I first learnt to play a plain old acoustic guitar, and I used to write ballads about falling in love and other such nonsense. We lived in a tourist town by the sea, and the view of the ocean from the beach was always beautiful. Every Saturday, I woke up before everyone else, snuck out onto the sand, sat on a boulder, scribbled and strummed while watching the waves crashing on the shore, and returned with a new song in time for breakfast.

The rock phase came in the September I turned sixteen. Instead of buying a new matchbox each week, I saved my money for an electric guitar. After I got it, I reinvented myself. My hair, once dirty and black, was dyed electric blue to complement the guitar. My skirts grew shorter and tighter. My face was caked in eyeliner.

I had it all planned out. I was going to make something of myself. I was going to be a rock star, and Johnny Thornton would go on tour with me.

Johnny Thornton was the most popular guy in school. He was the blond-haired green-eyed captain of the football team, and he owned a motorcycle – in other words, he was a chick magnet. My first dream was to get a record deal, and my second dream was to get him to notice me. And then, almost out of nowhere, he did. He invited me to the movies to see a cheesy chick flick.

I waited outside all night. In December. Wearing nothing but a black mini-skirt and a vest that didn't cover my midriff. (I had problems with dressing myself.) Occasionally an usher with acne would ask me if I was okay. I told her every time that I was waiting for my boyfriend. "He's just running late," I said. In fact, he ran so late he never turned up. I missed the entire movie. It probably sucked.

I walked home in the snow and flopped onto the couch. I no longer had the energy to crawl up the stairs.

(A few years later, Johnny and I finally found each other in the Ghost Zone. He said he was sorry for the prank. I whacked him in the face with my guitar. I wanted nothing to do with him. Luckily, he's attached to someone else now and doesn't bother me. Looking at how badly those two fall out and how sickeningly they make out, I think I dodged a bullet.)

The next morning was a Saturday. My parents – well, Mom and her husband – wanted to take us out to the mall to do some Christmas shopping. I told them I was still tired from my date that wasn't a date, so they left me home alone.

A couple of seconds after the van went out of sight, I gathered up the wrapping paper that Mom had neatly arranged in the living room. I spread it all over the floor. I draped it over the furniture. I taped it to the walls. Then, for good measure, I soaked the place in alcohol from Mom's "special chest."

I coiled the remaining sheets around myself, lit a match and dropped it at my feet.

I don't remember too much after that, except for the golden flecks stinging my eyes, the black smoke frying my lungs, and the flames' sandpaper tongues ripping open my skin.

I hate my life. I hate how short it was, how pointless, how lacking in love and fulfilment. Okay, yes, I'm the one who ended it, but it wasn't an easy decision. I only started the fire because I'd seen the awful truth. I used to believe in happy endings, but after that night I knew that staying alive wasn't going to make things better. I was cursed. My dreams would never come true. I would have lost every record deal I got, let myself be used by a string of boyfriends, and become addicted to drugs. I sank into the darkness because it promised me no more pain.

I'm sick of being soft and breakable. I'm sick of being played with and tossed aside. I need to take charge and be in control, even just for a little while. I need to be the one deciding who loves me and making sure they keep their promises, because I'm the only one I trust not to mess up my afterlife.

So having a babypop boyfriend like Danny Fenton would be perfect for me. He doesn't look like the kind of guy who says he's going to be at the theatre and then doesn't turn up. He seems more willing to listen and understand and let me cry if I need to. He wouldn't try to control me – he would let me take control. Phantom would try to be strong, but Fenton would rather help me to be strong. Phantom would sit and brood and look out for himself, but Fenton would stand up and look out for me. Plus, I hear he knows a lot about the stars, and I love the sea, so something like swimming in the ocean on a clear night would be a perfect first date.

But the times they are a-changin'. Ever since we stopped the Disasteroid, Danny's been hailed as a hero. The articles, the interviews, the TV series about his life that's being filmed right now – it's getting to his head. He's been gradually losing that sweet scent of vulnerability.

No problem. All it'll take is a well-timed love song … and then he'll be in my clutches.