THE AMITY PARK PHANTOM: Resurgam
Danny Phantom and all related characters are property of Viacom. All original characters are my property.
County medical examiner's office– Amity Park, Ohio
I don't get paid nearly enough for this, a middle-aged man with a head of thinning hair thought as he walked up to a punch clock. Been working here for twenty, twenty-five years, and all I get to show for it is about $16.50 an hour! And at my age–
The beep of his pager snapped him back to reality. "Hello?"
"Fielder, need you down in the morgue. General hospital sent us some new arrivals overnight."
"Right on it."
"Remember the code?"
"Like the back of my hand."
Cold. Dark. Cramped. Like being crammed into a fridge. He didn't know where he was or how he got there, but he could at least be certain of those things, along with the sensation of plastic against his skin and something wrapped around his big toe. Through the stainless steel slab in front of him, he could hear footsteps, then men talking, and then something being wheeled towards him. A moment later, the door creaked open and the tray beneath him shifted as it was dragged out into a brightly light room that smelled strongly of antiseptic with notes of decay and formaldehyde. And as the light hit his half-opened eyes, he flinched.
"Coroner Forrest," Fielder asked a nearby black man on the cusp of middle age, "are you sure there wasn't some kind of mix-up?"
"Another twitchy cadaver?" came the reply.
"Don't think so," Fielder said. "Call me crazy, but I think I saw it…react."
Forrest shrugged. "Put it on the table anyways. If we've got a live one, cold metal should work as a wakeup call."
The sound of a zipper being undone filled his ears, fresh air flooded into his lungs, and his attention soon began to flit from one part of the room to the next. Through the veil of the harsh fluorescent lights, he could see what looked like enormous refrigerators, while a set of what he could only assume were operating tables occupied the center. Before he could do anything, though, two men in lab coats picked him up and carried him to one of said tables.
"Name?"
"Daniel…Fenton," Fielder replied, squinting as he got on his knees and began to look over the toe tag. "Caucasian male, age 14, black hair with blue eyes, no identifying marks."
"Cause of death?"
"Officially, electrocution," he said, gesturing to an array of Lichtenberg scars. "But I'm also seeing signs of blunt force trauma and some radiation burns…"
Forrest breathed out through his nose. "Get the surgical equipment," he said. "Looks like we're going to have to give him the ultimate medical audit."
Ultimate med– okay, why do I not like the sound of that? And for that matter, what's even going on here?
Just then, the snap of a rubber glove filled the air, followed a few moments thereafter by the sensation of something beginning to slice through the skin on his shoulder. And as the pain worked its way through the system, he did the only thing he could do.
"Sweet mother of mercy!" Fielder said as the "cadaver" on the autopsy table woke up howling like a banshee, hand pressed against the incision that the coroner's blade had left. "It's–"
"Get the suture kit!" Forrest barked, trying to pin the teenager down. "And once you've done that, contact any next of k–"
Before he could finish his sentence, he felt himself being shoved away and sent flying across the room. A fraction of a second later, the entirety of the morgue descended into chaos. The drawers along the back wall flew open and shut, a cabinet's doors were torn entirely off their hinges to reveal containers of mints, lollipops, and other hard candies alongside more conventional equipment, and an ancient TV set was ripped free of its wall mount and sent hurtling across the room.
"Don't just stand there! Do something!" Forrest yelled at Fielder as the teenager began to levitate off the table.
"Like what? Call a priest?"
"Don't get smart with me! Just stop the kid before he trashes the entire place!"
As if on cue, the boy shot forward and raced off the table, making a mad dash for the door…whereupon he proceeded to walk through it like it was air.
"Well," Fielder began after a long silence, "there go your chances at reelection."
"Not the time!" came the curt reply.
"I'm just saying, the attack ads write themselves."
Forrest sharply exhaled. "Just make sure the telephone's still usable."
The men's room was all but deserted as he phased through the door, a twinge of pain still lingering from the coroner's cut. Gradually pulling his hand away his shoulder, he felt the bottom of his stomach fall out as he noticed that instead of the expected blood, a viscous greenish fluid was now clinging to his palm, slowly dripping on the floor.
What the?
He turned around to face the mirror and gasped as he saw just what was in it. Staring back at him was the reflection of a person nearly identical to himself– the main differences being tanner skin, a head of snow-white hair and a set of green eyes that he could swear were glowing. And in that moment, Daniel Fenton screamed.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
For the first time in a long while, I'm happy to say that there isn't some sort of ulterior motive behind one of these fics, whether that be trying to break into the "crack fic" genre like with In Blackest Day or The Six Million Dollar Brady, launching into spinoffs for my next vision of a shared universe before I've finished setting things up like with New Face of War and Weird Times at Winick Junior High, trying to write some grandiose AU fic that gets derailed because some idea I thought was cool ends up causing things to unravel like with More Things in Heaven and Earth, polishing up someone else's work (with their all-clear, of course!) like with my rewrite of Rebirth by LuisJM (which, before anyone asks, I'm still working on), seeing how good of a job I can do when it comes to matching the source material like with Curtain Call, or trying to beat a professional creator at their own game like with Powerpuff Girls Adventures. No, this time around, it's simply just me wanting to do my own take on an IP that I enjoy.
That being said, if someone at Viacom announces they've got a teen drama based on Danny Phantom in production, then consider this to be a spiritual successor (no pun intended) to PPGA.