"I won't let you win! You'll have to go through me to take over this town!" The determined hero fired another volley of energy blasts at his sinister foe.
An orange glow sprang up in front of the shots, forcing them to dissipate into nothingness as they hit. A villainous chuckle rang through the air. "You don't have a choice! With my new energy stabilizer, and once I find the last Klytoraque crystal, I shall recreate the chaos transdimensionalizer and become the supreme ruler of all!"
"Uh, Tucker, you're starting to sound like Technus again..." Danny leaned back in his chair, massaging his hands and regretting his promise not to go ghost and phase into the game. It would make it so much easier to pound Tucker's character into the ground. "You're kind of starting to worry me when you get so into these games."
"Hey, some of us don't exactly have ghost powers to release our energy with. I've got to let it out somewhere, don't I?"
Danny frowned at his friend's response, narrowly avoiding the accompanying disintegrator beam. "You help plenty in ghost fights. Just last week you took out Skulker by yourself!"
Tucker's online villain, Bad Luck Tuck, was doing battle with Danny's online hero and just found a hidden gem, leveling up. "That was last month, Danny, and all I did was wirelessly link to Skulker's onboard navigation and upload the newest PurpleBackGorilla upgrade. It's the same stuff we've been doing for the past two years! That doesn't exactly qualify as help."
"Well, I can't do it. And if you hadn't, I would have missed English again to come down there and fight him. Maybe even History, too. Again."
"So what? It's not like you're secretly Danny Phantom anymore. All the teachers love to excuse you from class to deal with a ghost."
"Not all."
Danny could almost hear Tucker grimace. "Right, Testlaff. But she teaches gym; does anybody really care about gym. Except Dash and the rest of the football team, of course..."
Danny shook his head, despite his friend not being able to see. "Lancer's excitement has died down. He's already on my back to get more of my reports turned in."
Suddenly, Tucker found what he'd been looking for as he threw Danny's character through a museum. "Yes! Ha, eat that ghost boy! I just got myself a chaos transdimensionalizer! Now, you're going..." Suddenly Tucker's screen flashed red and a Game Over sign appeared.
"What? How'd you do that?"
Danny stared at the game for a moment, before a smile grew and he chuckled. "Wasn't me."
"Well, then who..."
Plant Manson has gained the Klytoraque crystal. Plant Manson has won an energy stabilizer.
Plant Manson has joined chat. "Hey, Tucker, looks like I've got all I need to make the chaos transdimensionalizer first. I believe that's a twenty you owe me?"
Danny snickered at her declaration. "I thought you'd learned your lesson about underestimating Sam's game skills, Tuck?"
He heard Tucker grumble through the speaker, "I thought you were supposed to be at some fancy party all day, Sam."
Danny laughed. "You tried to cheat Sam?"
"I was supposed to be at a party, thank you for taking advantage of that, Tucker, but I suddenly contracted a ghost related disease that required me to be absolutely still in bed. And if anyone asks, yes, you have heard of spectriffleton's disease and it is highly contagious." She gave an obviously fake cough for emphasis.
Danny laughed as he went to respond, only to feel a sudden gasp of frozen air escaping his lungs. He groaned, "Sorry, guys, ghost sense is going off."
"Ugh. Need any help?"
Danny shook his head, despite Sam not being able to see the response. "No, I've got it. Meet me at the Nasty Burger, same as usual."
Tucker's questioning reply sounded well-rehearsed, "Get backup if you're more than ten minutes late?"
As Danny got up and stretched, giving a quick "Yep, see you there!" before going ghost. After his jet black hair turned snow white, his blue eyes turned a bright, glowing green, and his normal clothes switched into a black and white HAZMAT suit, Danny flew into the air, diving straight up through the ceiling.
After reaching the open air and hovering for a few minutes in the sky, Danny saw the ghostly intruder. He then promptly slapped himself in the face, before muttering, "Box Ghost."
Indeed, the ghostly entity that had caused him to get off his comfortable chair and interrupted yet another chat with Sam and Tucker was none other than everybody's favorite punching bag, the Box Ghost.
The "all-things-cardboard-and-square" obsessed spirit looked around with a very confused expression on his face until he spotted Danny. He flew a little higher and shouted, "Aha! I am the Box Ghost, and I do not understand how I came to be here! Are you, human-ghost hybrid, responsible for misplacing my previous location?"
Danny raised an eyebrow. "I have no idea what you're talking about." Then he smiled and said, "Nor do I care. I'm just going to dump you back in the ghost zone and go eat lunch with my friends." As he said this, he calmly and slowly pulled out his ghost catching device, the Fenton Thermos, and started unscrewing the cap.
The Box Ghost watched this and cried out, "You would dare use your infernal devi- uh, why are you moving so slowly?"
Danny shrugged. "It's not like we haven't been doing this almost every day for the past two years. I know how fast you go, you can't beat my time." He finished unscrewing it.
The Box Ghost blinked and then shouted "Beware!" before flying away as fast as he could. Which wasn't fast enough.
Danny shook his head and chased after him. 'I'll get to the Nasty Burger a little earlier than usual,' he thought.
As Danny neared the crate creep, however, he was shocked at a sudden burst of speed that propelled his quarry further on. Danny increased his own speed to catch up, and nearly hit his limit. The Box Ghost had never moved this fast before!
The two ghosts flew through town, twisting and turning as they went back and forth at high speeds, flying between buildings, trees, and a pink and green hot air balloon. It was strangely out of place, carrying a small boy wearing a pink hat, and seemed to have faces plastered on the side. Danny almost slowed down for a better look, but shrugged it off. Boxy was oddly fast today, and the town hero couldn't afford to let him get away.
The chase was fairly quick, but it seemed to Danny like it lasted hours. Suddenly, the Box Ghost slowed considerably and seemed unable to control a strange, rapid descent towards the ground. It took a moment for the pursuing hybrid to realize the specter was somehow falling. As Danny stopped and looked, he noticed the Box Ghost was about to crash into Sam and Tucker, calmly heading to the Nasty Burger on their motorized scooters.
Danny activated the Fenton Phone attached to his left ear. "Sam, Tucker, you've got incoming. The Box Ghost's dropping down on you, and something's weird with him. Duck!"
The ghost boy's two friends got the message and ducked just as the Box Ghost nearly collided directly with Sam's head. The ghost corrected his course before flying ahead and into an alley.
Tucker and Sam got back up and shot off on their scooter in hot pursuit, with Danny quickly catching up to them. However, when they turned into the alley, the Box Ghost was nowhere in sight. And a moment later, neither were they.
Deep in the depths of the Ghost Zone, on the flip-side of this earth, is a quiet spot where few ghosts tread. In a clock tower, located throughout time in this place, is a ghost who is so very old. And then so very young.
A small child-like ghost known as Clockwork floated in front of his portals with his staff, monitoring time as he had done for so long, and not very long at all. He watched as his portals displayed scenes from Danny's life, watched as Sam convinced Danny to step into his parent's non-working ghost portal, watched as Danny met his archenemy, and watched as Danny met his ultimate enemy. More scenes flipped by, showing little Danielle, Valerie Grey, the incident where Danny altered time to save his friends, and his shining moment, when he stood in front of a crowd in the Antarctic after saving the world. Both worlds; human and ghost.
As the ghost of time sat there, silently observing his young charge, Clockwork's small form shifted into a larger one, aging into an adult in the span of a millisecond. His blank expression remained unchanged, however, and he whispered, "I have put you through many tests, Danny, with many reasons." He looked at one of his many clocks on the wall, before continuing with a rising voice, "For one of which, it...is...TIME!"
Upon Clockwork's command, both verbal and mental, the clocks around the room started going off with loud noises of various types. Clanging, banging, and bonging filled the room as he turned around and stared at the center of it.
Under his gaze, a bright light filled the room as a rift in more than even time and space opened, and universes were traversed by a young girl who wore time as her body. A deep, powerful glow radiated from her, most intensely from her eyes. Upon her arrival, all the noise in the clock tower abruptly froze.
Clockwork bowed to the newcomer like the gentleman he was. "Welcome to my home. I'm sorry for your loss."
The being in front of him bowed her head slightly, to return the gesture. "I come in need of assistance. The universes are calling to me because they hurt. I need help to heal their wounds."
Clockwork nodded. "I know exactly what you need. Or, should I say, whom."
The lady of time replied slowly, yet shortly. When two beings understand each other as well as they, many words are not necessary. And when time is at your command, there is no need to rush. "You offer me an assistant."
Clockwork smiled mysteriously. "Likely, more than one..." He turned around and the center, screen-like portals all changed to show Danny and his friends playing around a computer game.
The girl whose name once held the image of a flower gazed intensely at Danny. "I can sense him. Through time and space, I can sense him. The boy's destiny is great."
Clockwork smirked, satisfied with her appraisal. "And his friends will help lead him there." One of the screens showing Danny in a fight switched to the present location of the Box Ghost, happily terrorizing a warehouse janitor. Clockwork brought the hand not holding his staff to the button at its top. "But, occasionally, they need a small... push." At that, he pressed down the button and the Box Ghost found himself in front of Danny's home. A few moments later, the chase began as Danny flew after the Box Ghost. The small, box-obsessed spirit would not last long.
Clockwork smiled and bent time around the Box Ghost; just a fraction. Danny had a difficult time catching him and, with a little bit of help from Clockwork, the two ghosts found their way to Sam and Tucker. As they made their way to an alley, he took advantage of it and pulled the Box Ghost from the narrow gap. A moment later, the blue, overall-wearing specter found himself in his box-filled lair in the ghost zone. With that done, Clockwork pulled the three teens, leaving behind their scooters, into his own lair, off to the side of him and his other guest.
As the teens groaned from their literal trip, as it's hard to keep your balance going through a portal, Clockwork's special guest turned to him, confusion in her voice. "Their discomfort could have been spared had you simply pulled them to you separately. Why force more than necessary?"
Clockwork shifted into his elder form, with a thin, frail body and a long, white beard. "Allow an old ghost a little fun, will you?" He smiled with a twinkle in his eye. The impossible girl turned to regard the children once again, who were now standing in slightly defensive positions, unsure about this glowing stranger in front of them. She certainly wasn't a ghost, that much they could tell. At least, not like any other ghost they had ever seen.
"Clockwork?" Danny asked as he gathered his bearings. He turned back to the stranger, a blonde woman whose brightly shining eyes were unnerving. "Who are you?"
Clockwork replied for the lady of time, "Her name is unimportant at this moment, Danny. She needs your help."
The stranger spoke up, causing the three kids to quickly turn to her in amazement as her strange reverberations shook them to their core, "Reality is broken. Time and space need mending, I cannot do it all alone. I need help... your help."
Sam, Tucker, and Danny all looked at each other, unsure of what to say or do. Clockwork clarified for them as to what was being asked, "The multiverse, Danny, is an infinitely sized collection of universes. Though it is common to break the wall between very similar universes to allow travel, our friend here would seem to be one of the few that can go further, into realities far different from our own. A newly acquired talent, if I'm not mistaken." The glowing girl nodded her head at this, and Clockwork continued, "She has detected breaks in between the universes, rifts that, left unchecked, could grow into problems that threaten all of reality. What she needs, is an assistant to help her mend the more subtle cracks." Clockwork's tone fell into a more dramatic note. "You are needed, Danny Phantom, to fix the multiverse."
"Whoa, hold on!" Sam had stepped forward, waving her arm in front of her. "You're asking Danny to travel into other realities? For how long?"
"Unknown. The wounds are everywhere, and more are growing. Years may be necessary to heal them, though time here can be adjusted so none will have passed on this world."
Tucker's eyes widened. "Years? Danny's not going anywhere without us for years!"
Her bright eyes focused on him, making Tucker slightly uncomfortable. "That is acceptable, but the road ahead is dangerous."
Tucker looked confused for a moment, before realizing what he'd said. "Uh... I didn't mean I wanted to go!"
Sam turned around and glared at him, whispering, "Danny's needed. And we're not going to let him go by himself." She returned her steadfast gaze on Clockwork's friend and crossed her arms. "When do we leave?"
Clockwork smiled. "I was hoping you'd say that. The answer... is immediately. But first, you will need more than just your ordinary tools for this job."
A few minutes and a bit of debriefing later, the three teens were standing in front of a rift opened up to their first world in need. They were all a little on edge, but Tucker's nervousness was offset by his shiny, refitted-for-multiversal-travel PDA. The mystery girl had done some shiny light stuff to it, and it was now capable of opening rifts by itself. It even had a nice tracker for finding rift activity, but he was warned it might be difficult to work. Tucker didn't care, though, because he was picking up a radio station from the world they were headed to, with a fascinating song from a group he'd never heard of. He turned to Danny, "This thing rocks!"
Danny smiled nervously before turning back towards Clockwork's brightly glowing friend. "Okay, so quick recap. The multiverse is a connection of infinite universes, and something caused it to start breaking down. While you take on the big stuff and find out how it happened, we'll be trying to fix the small cracks that bleed through."
The powerful entity in front of him slowly nodded her head in confirmation.
Danny glanced back at the rift for a moment before refocusing on her. "We'll do our best, but I've still got a question. What do we call you?"
She was silent for a moment before she finally spoke, "I am the Bad Wolf."
And with that, Danny Fenton, Sam Manson, and Tucker Foley were suddenly yanked through the rift in front of them by some unseen force, blasting through impossible walls of reality to a new adventure.
Next Time, on Phantom Agents...
"In the midst of this crisis, I have great news! Kim Possible has just arrived on the scene, and the crowds are cheering!"
Ron pointed at the three, "Agh! Alien attack! Where are you from, and what do you want with our nacos?"
"If this tear between universes isn't fixed soon, it'll grow out of control! The whole world could be sucked inside and torn apart!"
Tucker frowned. "Is it just me, or is that a man in a skirt hitting golf balls into the rift?"
"Come, Junior. Soon the whole world will do my bidding!"
"You don't stand a chance against the intellectual genius of Professor Dementor!"
"Shego, attack!"