Welcome(?) Home: A Danny Phantom Prompt
It was Danny Fenton’s first day of high school and he was already in for a rough year. He was by no means a genius, not that he was necessarily stupid, but he had a feeling that his English teacher—Mr. Lancer—wasn’t going to let him relax often. Not only that, but his old bully, Dash Baxter, apparently hadn’t changed since middle school and enjoyed tormenting him just as much as before.
And there was the fact his parents were complete nutjobs who believed in ghosts and were making a portal to the ‘Ghost Zone’ in their basement made him a complete and total social outcast.
Well, at least he had his best friends Sam and Tucker, so he wasn’t completely alone—but his point still stands.
He was just trying to get through first period English by doodling stars and planets in his notebook when the temperature in the room dropped so suddenly and so largely that everyone could see their breath.
“Moby Dick, it’s freezing in here!” Lancer shivered, “What’s going on?”
The lights overhead flickered and the ground began to shake slightly; the announcement speaker crackled to life, “Attention all faculty and students, we are experiencing an odd bout of tremors on the school property, please evacuate the area and head outside to the front parking lot, thank you.”
Danny raised an eyebrow as he followed the instructions and stood in between Sam and Tucker as they walked out of the building.
“Maybe an earthquake?” Tucker suggested as they walked down the front steps of the school’s entrance to exit.
“Since when did Amity Park have earthquakes?” Sam countered as she stared at the school, “And why only near the school?”
“Maybe the gross cafeteria mashed potatoes came to life,” Danny snickered as Tucker gasped playfully.
“I knew it was aliens!” Tucker shook his head mockingly, “Pretty sure it was glowing,”
The two boys laughed while Sam rolled her eyes and drawled out, “Boys,”
Once everyone was outside, Principal Ishyama took a megaphone in hand and stood in front of the crowd they had formed, “Everyone please stick with your classmates and teacher as we—”
The megaphone dropped from her hand as she struggled to stand upright; the ground was now shaking violently and the sky seemed to darken. Clouds turned black and gray in coloring while what looked to be green lightning crackled in the distance.
“This isn’t exactly what I meant when I said I wished Mondays were more interesting,” Tucker gulped as one of the lightning strikes struck a bit closer to the crowd of students and faculty, making many yelp and shout in alarm.
A loud, almost ripping-like sound, echoed ominously across the parking lot as the seemingly fabric of reality was being split right in front of them.
A large split had formed in the middle of the parking lot, floating above the ground as two clawed hands in white gloves grabbed each side of the rip and pulled it open farther; a background of swirling shades of green visible from within it.
“What is going on?!” Danny yelped as he backed up, tripping over a rock and landing flat on his back while he struggled to sit upright with the ground still shaking.
People were screaming, some were running around wildly, many were freaking out, and all were panicking.
Their chaos of confusion and panicking was interrupted when a cold, dark, sadistic laugh rang out and echoed far too much.
“Two years,” The voice was deep with its unnatural echo and words seemingly laced with static, “Two years I’ve been locked away in that damned thermos,”
The rip was now large enough to fit a tall human through; although the being who flew though it was anything but human.
Tall with an incredibly muscular build, the being was a man in perhaps his mid-twenties with pale blue skin, dangerous red eyes, too long of teeth with sharpened fangs, and wore what seemed to be an upgraded version of a black and white HAZMAT suit. A cape was wrapped around his shoulder, reaching down to a bit above his ankles with a jagged, ripped pattern like design at the bottom; purposeful or not wasn’t clear. His hair, as odd as it sounds, was stark white and flaming as though it were made of fire while being tied back into a loose ponytail. His goatee was the same white coloring, but it didn’t flame.
The being grinned, he was floating in the air and his red eyes narrowed in on the ground—his smile split wider as his fangs gleamed dangerously while the rip in reality vanished behind him, “What an audience we have here,” He chuckled.
His voice sent shivers down everyone’s back.
“Who are you?! What are you?!” Lancer stepped in front of his class, “Get away from the students! Get away from all of us!”
The being just laughed, “Don’t you recognize me, Lancer? I suppose you wouldn’t, I have changed quite a bit. I believe you never did see me before you exploded,”
The creature narrowed his eyes, “You see, the name’s Dark Dan, and I’m one of your students ten years into the future from another Timeline; terrifying, isn’t it?”
Lancer’s eyes widened, “Impossible, I’d remember you if you were. And I most certainly don’t know you,”
Dark Dan’s eyes shifted from Lancer and focused in on the trio of Tucker, Sam, and Danny, his red eyes flashed as they glowed, but it disappeared as he turned back to the teacher.
“I went by a different name,” Dark Dan shrugged, “That and I changed my look a lot after I died,”
“You what?!” Someone shouted out, and Dan barked out a laugh.
“Died,” He repeated, “You see, when I died and became a full ghost, I had ripped out my humanity, ate the soul of my godfather, combined my powers with the ghost of Plasmius, became unstoppable, murdered the entirety of Earth’s population in my Timeline and ultimately destroyed it until it faded out of existence completely because Father Time himself deemed me ‘too dangerous’,”
Dark Dan yawned and a forked tongue poked out, “Not that he was wrong, but still,”
“You’re a gh-ghost?” A girl named Paulina squeaked.
“Yep!” Dan gave her finger guns, “But that’s unimportant, I was trying to get to a different Timeline to get revenge against the person who trapped me away; but I’m in the wrong Timeline and since I used a lot of energy to make that rip once I found the weak spot in the Veil—I’m stuck here for easily the next seven days until the Veil weakens just enough for me to slip back through.”
“You’re stuck here,” Principal Ishyama swallowed, “In our…Timeline, was it? What’re you going to do?”
“Well, I may be a sociopathic murderer,” Dark Dan floated down to the ground and stood, “But I have no bone to pick here, so I guess I’ll let this dimension live and stuff. Besides, what better place to stay with but with an alternate dimensional version of a living, younger me?”
Dark Dan narrowed his eyes at Danny, making unwanted eye contact, “So I’ll be staying with Mini-Me over there, and that means you're stuck with me for a week, Danny Fenton,”
Danny Fenton then passed out.
“Absolutely not!” Maddie Fenton shouted at the sociopathic murderer-ghost that sat in her living room while snacking on a bag of Doritos, “You cannot stay here!”
“Really feeling the love here, Mother Dearest,” Dan raised an amused eyebrow.
“You are not my son!” Maddie spat.
Dark Dan, the entire Fenton family, Sam and Tucker, Lancer, Principal Ishyama, a news reporter plus a cameraman, and two police officers were standing in the middle of Danny’s living room—staring at the alternate dimensional version of the youngest Fenton.
“How rude,” Dan mocked, “And I here I thought we could have a nice little family reunion,”
“I don’t understand,” Jazz pinched the bridge of her nose, “So you’re a ghost; and not just any ghost, the ghost of Danny from an alternate universe’s future?”
“Yep,” Dan made the empty bag of Doritos disintegrate in a flame of green energy he made in his hand.
“But–how?” Jazz sputtered, “How did you become…this?”
The temperature dropped and Dan snarled, his hair flaming brighter as his eyes narrowed dangerously with their blood red glow lighting up the room.
“It’s quite rude,” His voice growled out, “To ask how a ghost died, dear sister.”
The room then went back to normal as Dan’s features turned to their default spookiness level. The police officer then coughed, his badge reading Captain Daimes.
“We can’t let Dan stay with anyone else; the station is not…ghost proof and if he were to stay with someone, I suppose his alternate self would be understandable. Besides, this place is filled to the brim with defensive weapons against ghosts,” Daimes reasoned, “And…well, weapons may not be a bad thing to have with Dan around,”
“I feel so welcomed,” Dan raised an unamused eyebrow, “You destroy one Timeline and no one trusts you again, what ever happened to second chances?”
“Didn’t you say you ate our godfather?” Jazz put her hands on her hips, “I think it’s more than destroying a Timeline that worries us,”
“You ate Vladdie?!” Jack Fenton went green in the face.
“Just his soul,” Dan grinned.
And that was the start of Dark Dan Phantom’s stay in (this universe’s version) Fenton Family’s home.
