Choices

"Daniel, I'm Sorry"

A/N: I haven't seen anything like this and inspiration struck, so I decided to put this up. First multi-chapter story by the way. Oh, and I don't own Danny Phantom. Or this picture above

"Daniel, I'm sorry, but you're too dangerous to go out there". Danny could only barely register the fact that he said "you're" instead of "it's". Just barely was enough though. Danny knew what the only other occupant of the room was getting at, but he couldn't stay here.

"Clockwork, you have to let me go, they're going to die out there!" Danny pleaded to his mentor, soon to be the only person he had left.

"That is precisely why you cannot go! No matter what you do they will die, and your exposure to such an event would be catastrophic!". Clockwork, the master of time, said this harshly, yet with a certain look in his red eyes, that clearly communicated that Clockwork had seen the outcome of this. "I don't wish to do this, Daniel, I am as much a slave to fate as you are." Danny would have none of it however as his care for his friends and family overid any rational thought.

"I promised I would never become that monster. You know that, now move before I move you!" Danny's unbidden rage actually made our omnipotent ghost shiver. "You know, I've been practicing my Wail recently, I can destroy cities now, if I had to estimate, and I'm more powerful than ever in the, especially in the zone" This statement, guised under a student reporting progress to a teacher, only amplified the unsaid threat in his words. It was further punctuated by the utter dullness of his eyes. Clockwork however stood his ground. He couldn't let the boy pass.

Danny, seeing Clockwork tense, knew what had to be done. He wouldn't let anybody die. Especially his family, if anything, it hurt more knowing he failed before. Danny was never good at planning, and so he lunged at Clockwork, truly believing he could move faster than Clockwork could stop time. He couldn't. "Time Out!" With time frozen Clockwork had two options contain Danny within a thermos, or kill him like the Observants wanted long ago. One would lead to easily foreseeable outcomes that he couldn't risk seen as how who else was in the only thermos accessible to him. It wouldn't do if Dan got out him doing so now would ruin everything. The other going into a slightly more clouded path. It's choices like this that made him hate his job. The time ghost knew what he had to do, so he walked over to the far wall, where a scythe waited for him. Picking it up, he felt the strong wood the weapon was crafted of, the the sharpest blade in existence topping this weapon of betrayal. It hurt him, it really did, he cared for Daniel, and the guilt of having to kill him made the scythe seem all the heavier.

Walking ever closer to Danny, Clockwork took time to notice the position of his doomed apprentice. He was floating in mid-air, as he was mid-lunge, and had a hand reached out, charged with ectoplasm that would have fired straight through Clockwork's chest. Danny's eyes glowed a darker shade of green, not unlike a tinted emerald, reflecting the light of his own ectoplasm in the otherwise dim-lighted room. His eyes were the nicest part of him however, as his teeth were bared in what, Clockwork could only assume, was an attempt to hold back his wail, or perhaps he wanted to be intimidating. He shouldn't have looked, it would only make this harder. The scythe was heavy in his hands again. The scythe was a weapon of betrayal, and it would serve it's purpose.

Clockwork knew what had to be done for the best of all, and he would do it. Even if it meant the loss of his pupil. He raised the scythe... and an ectoblast blasted it to ash. "Sorry, but I can't let you do that." The intruder said, feminine lilac eyes looking up to our master of time. Said Time master showed no surprise, as if he expected this to happen. Simply reversing time on the scythe and re-equipping himself with it, Clockwork entered the last battle he would ever face.

"Can I join in too?" a malevolent baritone voice sounded through the room.

A/n: I know everybody loves cliffhangers. I'll do this and upload Powers and Headcanons in between updates on this.