#meddling clockwork

Danny was doing just fine, just fine indeed as he was sitting in Jazz’s house, his niece rebraiding his hair as he shoved another giant handful of Fudge brownies into his mouth.

Ellie was moving into her boyfriend six month ago, and there was nothing Danny could do seeing his little girl move on without him.

Empty nest syndrome Jazz and his parents told him. Sam suggested another online dating, but being a famous, well-known Savior of Earth after Disasteroid came a lot of girls and even boys who see danny as a hero or for his fame and fortune instead of Danny.

Not to mention the ghosts, the stupid eyeballs trying to present another candidate for him to Wed which he refused.

He has used raising ellie as the common excuse that turned into actually doting parenting, but now..

He couldn't go back to his haunt castle after she moved out without burying himself in her childhood room, holding her old worned out red beanie hat that she didn't wear anymore.

Kids grow up and move on from their parents, but they always come back when in need.

He did something out of impulse due to his empty nest syndrome, which was going a bit haywire by the day and Sam, Val and Tucker won't let him bring them over to hang out especially when they are busy.

He made a ritual with clockwork help that randomly appeared in any other dimensions, then his own to pick the right person to court at the right time.

Now all he has to do is wait.

It was for the preservation of the Time Stream that Clockwork aided the other Ancients in entombing Pariah Dark. The Tyrant Ghost King would never have been happy with his subjects in the Realms. Eventually he would have wanted to conquer the universe to add all of existence to his control. Even if he somehow managed to slaughter every living thing that existed across all the infinite dimensions and realities he then would have turned his gaze back to the Zone and set about slaughtering and shattering his own citizens. 

Since the fall of Pariah Dark, no single being has had as much of an impact on the security of the Realms and the Time Stream. That was until a single boy, in action so unlikely that in all the infinite timelines Clockwork had witnessed it had only happened once. Daniel Fenton, known to the ghosts as Phantom, became the second ever Halfa. Half ghost, half alive. The moment echoes across the new timeline, carving and reshaping the possible futures from this one radiating moment. 

At first there had been numerous timelines where it was Danny who broke the Time Stream,  or who slaughtered his way across the cosmos. Maybe he went back in time and had accidentally unwritten his own birth causing the timeline to collapse into a singularity or a paradox. Maybe he was tortured into insanity by the Ghost Investigation Ward or his parents and in his madness brought about the end of all things. Maybe he cheated on a test and then watched his family die in front of him and then killed almost all life on the planet. 

However unlike others with this amount of potential for harm, it only took a single instance of Daniel facing his own dark potential future for those possibilities to vanish. Again the boy had the bizarre ability to simply will timelines into or out of existence. There were no longer any timelines where he would harm the Time Stream, or threaten the realities. 

Daniel believed in his own personal rules for himself so strongly that they could rewrite all manner of possible alternate realities. He told himself he had to protect and so he did so. He told himself he couldn’t become Dan, so he didn’t. It was an ability, a belief in himself that Clockwork had rarely seen before, no matter how many timelines he observed. 

When Daniel faced Pariah Dark, unknowingly challenging the Tyrant for the throne of the Infinite Realms, Clockwork could see the future of the Time Stream brighten with every blow he landed against him. When he successfully defeated Pariah in single combat Clockwork watched the numerous time lines wherein High King Phantom led the Infinite Realms into a golden age of peace and prosperity. 

However, even Daniel wasn’t perfect. He was untrained in many areas, self taught in others. There were beings, ghosts or mortals who were better fighters than him and if they challenged him could unmake the good work he could do. He needed to be trained, to be taught all he needed to know about how to fight, how to lead, how to govern, how to negotiate. All of that training would take time, and for once, Clockwork the god of time, who had witnessed timelines and futures beyond count, didn’t have enough time. 

Clockwork had managed to convince Daniel that he would not officially have to take the crown until he was ready. Daniel interpreted that as he had until his eighteenth birthday, only a few short months away now. Clockwork could not see any timeline where the boy did not take up the crown upon his birthday. So Clockwork, who had watched eons pass, was suddenly on a time crunch, to infuse Daniel’s mind with what some ghosts spent centuries learning and perfecting. 

So he had stumbled upon a solution. He needed to push back Daniel’s birthday. But how to do it? If he did the simplest solution and just held Daniel in his clocktower lair, outside of the Time Stream, it would be a matter of hours of instruction before the boy grew bored and left. Any other solutions would end up breaking Daniel’s very shallow trust in Clockwork which could lead to catastrophes in the futures. 

Daniel either had to choose to delay his own birthday, which he would never do because with his birthday also came with freedom from his parents, or he couldn’t know that Clockwork had delayed the day. It was fortunate then that Clockwork had the ability to manipulate a being’s place in the Time Stream. In the common vernacular he could make things age forward or in reverse at any rate he desired. It would be a simple affair to regress Daniel to a younger age, restrict his memories, locked behind certain aging milestones. But what to do with the boy then?

Clock could certainly train Daniel himself, or have one of the other powerful and trustworthy ghosts watch over the deaged boy king. There were however two flaws with that idea. Even before he officially accepts the crown, Daniel could still be challenged by other ghosts, so he would have to be hidden away from the ghosts that would threaten him. The other flaw was that Daniel was only half a ghost. His human half had needs that couldn’t be seen to in the Infinite Realms. He would need to be watched over in the Mortal Realms. 

Where to place a young boy, who would inevitably develop his ghostly powers and his heroic tendencies? Where could he learn to fight or to lead so that he could not be bested in combat and instead lead the Infinite Realms to the brighter future Clockwork had seen? If only there were heroes in the world that could guide the child king. Oh wait. 

There were numerous heroes in the Mortal Realm, many of whom would be delighted to care for, raise, and train a young hero. The Kryptonian, the Amazon, the Atlantean. All of them have things they could teach the boy, their moral codes: incorruptible iron. However, being Master of Time meant weighing all sides to try and gain the most benefits from a decision. While these power houses would be able to teach Daniel much before he took up the crown, they would benefit little from their tutelage. 

Searching for someone who had the skills Daniel needed to learn, the connections to fill in any gaps, and would benefit from raising a lonely and broken child led Clockwork to the Bats of Gotham. The Bat himself wouldn’t do, he had too many children already, and Daniel did not need another absentee or emotionally stunted parent. The children of the Cowl however… there were many options there. Cassandra to learn the way of Shadows, Damian to learn the way of Blades, Richard to learn how to fly even before his powers develop. Daniel would benefit equally from any of the Knights of Gotham, as the siblings would always, in every timeline, reach out to each other to ensure the best possible care. 

There was one that would benefit the most. The one who’s compassion had been drowned in the rage of corrupted ectoplasm. Yet still, fought every day for control, fought to protect. The one who would without question care for a hurt child, who would be calmed by the child king’s aura of pure ectoplasm. And with the network of heroes he would have access to all the help he could ever ask for in the training of his ghost child. 

Decision made, Clockwork turned to look at the floating gears around his head. In one a hero wearing a red helmet was being called to a source of ectoplasm that called to the Pit inside him. Danny had bled on Clockwork’s floor after the last time his parents had caught him in his Phantom form. Clockwork simply kept the blood and then poured it out onto a Gotham rooftop in order to bring his hero of choice into the proper position. 

In another, a tired Daniel flew back to the portal to the Mortal Realms. He had been through a long day. Multiple fights in Amity Park, then a long lesson in Clockwork’s lair. In the last gear, Daniel’s parents descended into their basement with Vlad Masters, the first halfa, otherwise known as Plasmius. Clockwork could have shortened the conversation with Daniel to prevent the coming confrontation, or he could have held him there in the Infinite Realms longer, but this needed to happen. 

He watched as Daniel stepped out of the swirling portal, transforming into his human form mid yawn. The Fentons reacted at once, his mother pulling and firing a blaster in the blink of an eye. Daniel lept back, flight taking over in an instant, one hand clamped over the blaster wound on his side. A flash of light again started to travel up Daniel’s body as his father levied his, much larger, ecto bazooka and fired. A sneer gleaming in Masters’ eyes at Daniel’s misfortune. 

“Time Out.” Clockwork said. The images in the gears froze. The hero and his brother were almost at the rooftop. Daniel was frozen mid transformation. A powerful beam of ecto energy was stationary, stopped on its course towards Daniel’s body. 

Clockwork willed himself to Daniel’s side. If he didn’t involve himself now this would be the worst of Daniel’s tortures at his parent’s hands, almost enough to drive him to a world ending madness. However even this wasn’t enough to overcome Daniel’s strength of character. Instead Daniel would withdraw from the world, turn his back on the humans. It would break him in a different way. 

He tapped Daniel with his staff and watched as the boy regressed, the consequences of puberty undoing themselves before his eyes. He stopped when Daniel was just short of five years old. Daniel would be old enough to learn from his new mentor without being an undue burden on someone not expecting to be caring for a child. And he would have 13 years to learn as much as he could from the heroes. 

Clockwork grabbed the deaged child in his arms then glanced around at the scene he was leaving. Anger and hatred radiating off the faces of Daniel’s parents. Cruel glee on the face of Plasmius. If the Fentons were allowed to live they would never stop hunting Phantom, the ghost they assumed had killed their son. They would keep escalating their attacks until war between the Realms was inevitable. 

Their hatred and rage would only be fueled by the man standing behind them. If Vlad Masters learned that Daniel was in a vulnerable state, he would not hesitate to try and manipulate control over him or to challenge a toddler for the crown of the High King. Under the rule of Plasmius the Infinite Realms would rot away in his constant search for more and greater power. Removing Masters at least temporarily and Daniel’s parents permanently could only be good for realms, at least if Daniel eventually could bring himself to forgive Clockwork for it. 

He tapped a panel of the portal with his staff and watched as the screws holding the panel in place corroded and rusted, aging decades before his eyes. When the screws finally crumpled to dust the panel fell to the ground exposing wires and charged ectoplasm that powered the portal. The ecto blast was directly lined up with the exposed components now that Daniel wasn’t in the way. 

It was the perfect time for an explosion. Daniel’s two companions were at their homes. Tucker Foley and Samantha Manson wouldn’t find out about the explosion until the following morning. His sister, Jasmine Fenton wouldn’t find out about it for a week. He had thought about trying to prevent her from reconnecting with her brother, but the girl was tenacious. It was a family trait. Trying to stop her from finding her brother was like trying to stop the very flow of time. When she inevitably found him, it would do nothing but help the boy’s emotional growth. 

Clockwork pulled Daniel away, changing his clothes from those fit for a teenager to those of a toddler. Daniel might be angry at him later, but Clockwork couldn’t resist the star themed footie pajamas. Bearing the weight of the Time Stream was a lot. He had to take his small moments of enjoyment where he could. 

The two of them appeared on the rooftop in Gotham. Clockwork knew the heroes were only a few roofs away. He set Daniel down on the rooftop next to the small puddle of his blood. Next to the boy, who had during his transformation to a child had fallen asleep, Clockwork placed his gifts. A red beanie saturated with Foley’s ecto signature. A pair of black, fingerless gloves saturated with Manson’s. And finally a teddy bear dressed up as an astronaut. The bear not only contained Jasmine’s ecto signature, but smelled like her favorite shampoo, a mix of her namesake and apple blossoms. Inside he had recorded a final gift from Jasmine to Daniel that the boy would discover later. The last thing he wanted was for Daniel to forget completely about the people who had loved him, even if his memories of them would be restrained for now. 

Clockwork glanced around to make sure that everything was how he wanted it, then appeared back in his haunt in the Infinite Realms. The two gears again showed their frozen scenes, just as he had left them. 

“Time In.” 

Out of the corner of his eye he could see one gear suddenly light up with green light as the portal overloaded and exploded, wiping out the Fenton home. He flicked his wrist and banished the gear away from his sight as he focused on the last. He watched as the Red Hood swung up and onto the rooftop. He watched as the hero came to a sudden stop at the scene before him. And even though he couldn’t see the man’ face through the helmet, he knew his eyes had widened in surprise.