Gravitational Phantoms

Chapter Thirteen

"I was born in Glass Shard Beach New Jersey, with my nerdy twin brother Stanford..."
Danny listened attentively until the story was finished. Even though quite a bit of the things that he had been told were pretty unbelievable, the hybrid doubted none of what they were saying. But they seemed to be skipping over some of the details, like what exactly Bill did when he made a deal. All that Dipper said was that you should never do it for a puppet.                                      "So that's basically our entire life story so far," Mabel concluded. "So now tell us about yourself!"          Danny took a deep breath.
"My name is Daniel James Fenton, and I was born to a family of ghost hunters in Amity Park, Illinois," he began. "My parent's names were Madeline and Jack Fenton, and I had an older sister named Jasmine. But we all called her Jazz.
"When I was little, I met one of my best friends Tucker Foley, who loved to play video games. A few years after that I met Sam Manson, an aspiring goth who hated her parents.
"Not long after I turned fourteen, my parents built a portal in our basement that they believed could access the dimension that ghosts came from, called the Ghost Zone. I invited my friends over to watch them turn it on, but when they plugged it in they device failed. They left, disappointed."
Danny paused to take a few ragged breaths. He didn't really like to talk about his death.
"I thought that I could fix the machine, so I put on a hazmat suit. Sam pulled the logo of my dad's face off of the front, and I went inside.
"It was...dark. Very dark. I couldn't really see what I was doing, so I put my hand on the side of the portal. Then...
I tripped.
"It was just over a wire, but I fell forward and hit my hand on something small. A button. And then..." Danny shuddered. "And then it turned on."
Dipper's eyes went wide. "But the amount of power that was used to punch a hole through the dimensions should have..."
"Killed you," Ford finished. Danny nodded.
"I came out different. As a ghost. It was terrifying. My parents had spent their whole lives hunting ghosts, and I had never believed them. But now I was the thing that they hated.
"After that, I worked on mastering my powers. It was hard, especially because I didn't tell my family. Sam and Tucker knew, and later I learned that Jazz had found out on her own. It seemed like maybe I could do this, live as a freak. Until the ghosts started to attack.
"I protected the town, as Danny Phantom or just plain Phantom. Amity was so stupid for never figuring it out.
"One day, our parents took my sister and I up to Wisconsin for a college reunion. It was at their old friend, Vlad Masters' house.
"I fought a ghost there. One that turned into Vlad. Jack had made a proto-portal in college, and Masters got hit. Now I knew that there were two half ghosts that my father had created.
"Vlad-Plasmius, he called himself-wanted several things in his life; to kill my dad, marry my mom, and get me as his evil son/apprentice. I constantly refused, but I don't know if it was just my obsession to protect or because I legitimately didn't want to. I hope it was the second one.
"Vlad was so desperate that he cloned me. But something went wrong, and the only one that was even remotely stable and didn't melt into a puddle of ectoplasm for no reason was a girl named Danielle, or Dani with an i. She overheard him saying that she was worthless, and helped me defeat him before flying off. She came back later, and we stabilized her.
"I met a ghost named Clockwork, who could control time and space. I...I saw the future, and fought my evil self. I hope that it never comes down to that again, but there is still a chance for me to go evil."
Danny paused again, shaking slightly.
"For a while, there were government agents around. The Guys in White, or just the GiW. They were mostly just a joke, but then they started to get stronger. They captured me, and did lots and lots of painful experiments before I managed to escape.
"I tried to put it behind me, but not long after I was caught again. And this time it was by my parents.
"They didn't believe me, even after I changed back. One day, some of the agents came for a transfer. Sam and Tuck were there too.
"They tried to rescue me..."
A few tears leaked out of Danny's eyes. "And the agents killed them in front of me."
Mabel gasped and jumped forward. The brunette girl wrapped her arms around the Halfa, snuggling into him.
"I bet that they were amazing people," she mumbled into the ghost boy's neck.
"Yeah. Sam wore combat boots, and had the most lovely black hair and purple eyes. Her parents were rich, but you wouldn't know it from her clothes.
"Tucker loved technology, and he could hack into anything with just a PDA and decent internet connection. He loved meat, and Sam would always fight with him because she was an ultra-recyclo vegetarian, which basically means that she doesn't eat anything with a face."
"How did you escape?" Stan asked. His hands were clenched into fists, and he was glaring at nothing in particular.
"I saw an opening, and I took it. But I don't know how long I was in there for. I didn't mean to teleport, or that I even had that power. It just happened. Wherever I came out, it had to have been better than with the agents. And mo-Maddie and da-Jack."
"They were there too?" Ford asked, scowling like his brother.
"Yeah. They...they carried out most of the experiments. I wasn't their son anymore. I was just a test subject that couldn't feel pain."
Danny clutched at his chest, curling up.
"I felt it," he whispered, trembling. "I felt it all."