Danny Phantom Fan Fiction ❯ Glitches in Time ❯ Chapter 5 ( Chapter 5 )

Chapter 5

"Hold on a minute, what is going on here?!" Danny demanded glaring at the two other versions of himself. He had taken note that Sam and Tucker had actually appeared on the scene shortly after the appearance of the first ghost in the company of the second one. And for him that raised quite a few questions for not only the two ghosts, but his two friends as well.

"Would you like the truth or a plausible lie?" The girl Phantom said as she examined her gloved left hand with sudden interest.

"The truth!" Danny exploded, glaring at the girl.

"I'm sorry," she answered looking up at him, "You don't have the security clearance for that."

A masculine snort came from the second ghost boy as he lifted his staff from Valerie's head, the green mist of stillness still encasing the hunter's body. "Quit playing."

"Fine," the ghost girl said with a brief roll of her eyes in exasperation. "Someone has messed up the flow of time."

"What!?" shouted eight voices in unison.

"Messed up time?" Star exclaimed, "Like in 'Back to the Future'(1)?"

"Not exactly," the girl Phantom answered as she began to float.

"So we're time travellers?" Kwan questioned with interest.

"Not sure, we might be the ones," ghost girl replied with a shrug.

"Whoa, back up a moment," Danny said as he held up his hands. "Who are you and how the heck do you know all this stuff?"

"Oh, sorry, we haven't introduced ourselves," the girl said as the two ghosts exchanged glances, "We're so rarely are asked to after all."

"I'm Sam," the boy Phantom grumbled as he stood with his arms crossed threateningly across his chest.

"And I'm Danni(2)!" The Phantom girl chirped as she did a cute cheerleading pose in the air.

Jaws dropped and eyes bulged. Particularly two others whose names also happened to be 'Sam' and 'Danny.'

"Weird," Tucker commented as he looked between the two pairs of Sam and Danny. "You guys have got the same names."

"It's their fault after all," the female 'Danny' muttered angrily.

"Shut up!" The male 'Sam' snarled, glaring at his sister.

"Oops," the girl ghost said as she hung her head in mortification.

Tucker's curiosity perked in sudden interest, the little scene between the two siblings inspiring interesting suspicious within his own mind. They had mentioned time travelling and then there was the fact that they looked an awful lot like Danny…

 "But I guess you'll just have to call us by our full names, Samuel and Danielle." Samuel said as he kept a stern eye on his sister as he lifted into the air and drifting away.

"I hate them," Danielle pouted, throwing off her embarrassment as if it had never been, following her brother.

"Hate what?" Star questioned, "Your name?"

"Yeah," Danielle muttered before brightening. "Come on, let's get you guys home."

"Wait, you can get us home? How? And how do we know we can trust you?" Dash demanded, taking an aggressive step forward. Fear and frustration caused by everything that kept happening one thing after another a dangerous cocktail mix in his bloodstream.

Danielle's head tilted to the side as she gazed at the champion quarterback. "No."

"But you just said—" Dash began in irritation.

"We can't get you home, but we know who can, and we're the only ones who know how to get to him." The girl Phantom clarified as she waved her staff and released a much calmer Valerie, "Sorry, 'bout that, I though my brother had placed a time limit on your freeze, guess not."

"Who—"

"Clockwork," Danny said, finally spotting the gold and black medallions inscribed with the Master of Times emblem upon the throats of the Phantom siblings.

Dash shot an irritated look at Phantom and wished privately that Fenton was present so that he could pound on him and release some of his tension.

"Brilliant detection, it only took you what—ten minutes?" Samuel said drolly.

"What about Fenton? How's he getting home?" Kwan questioned, puzzled that the boy's two best-friends hadn't mentioned anything.

The two ghost siblings looked at each other. As did a gothic girl, techno wiz, and ghost boy. Each suddenly veryuneasy. Each groping for some plausible lie.

"Fenton? Oh, don't worry about him; we'll get him home too." The girl Phantom finally said after an uneasy silence as she motioned the group forward.

"This Clockwork persona(3)," Paulina questioned as the group actually began follow the two ghosts, "Who is he?"

"The ghost we work for," Danielle answered cheerfully. "And I have to admit, its a lot more interested then bagging groceries over the summer!"

"This is your summer job?" Danny exclaimed in surprised curiosity as he floated between Sam and Tucker.

"Yep! Pays a lot better too… although it is workers compensation for all of the dangerous stuff we get into," the girl Phantom chirped, concluding with a 'Hey-What-Can-You-Do' shrug.

"Your parents let you? Do dangerous stuff I mean?" Tucker asked in amassment, ignoring the strange looks he got from the others as they continued walking through the Ghost-Zone. He was more and more convinced that these two Phantoms were the future children of Danny. But that raised another interesting question, who was their mom? And as they obviously had ghost powers, were they Phantom's children or Fenton's?

Danielle pulled a face, "Well they're not exactly happy with everything that we do, but they trust Clockwork and well… it's the only thing really open to us."

"What exactly do you do?" Sam questioned warily as the group clambered upwards, getting a helping hand occasionally from a ghostly Danny and the other two Phantoms.

"I believe you are familiar with the concept of a Grim Reaper?" Samuel said as he hauled Star over a particularly rough patch.

"Yes, they're a form of psychopomp; a spirit or deity whose task is to conduct the souls of the recently dead into the afterlife." Sam answered, violet eyes widening as she suddenly made a few mental connections of her own. As did a few other intellects of the group.

"Precisely. Although sometimes a little more force is used," Samuel purred as he looked at the suddenly fearful expression upon the gothic girl's face as well as others.

Dash looked back and forth between the ghost and members of the group, knowing that he'd missed something but being unwilling to admit it.

"You're a Reaper!" Sam exclaim in horror, back-pedalling into Danny.

Dash blanched. Now he wished he did not know.

"No…" the boy Phantom drawled sarcastically, arching his pierced eyebrow upwards, "We just carry the scythes 'cause they look pretty."

The group looked with understanding nervousness at the two innocent looking metal staffs that the two carried. Weapons that they had already seen could become a scythe or even a spear.

"Hey! We're not bad!" Danielle protested, shooting her brother a dirty look, "What about Adolf Hitler?"

Valerie gave the ghost girl a strange look, "What about him? He committed suicide anyway."

The two ghosts' expressions turned purely evil.

"Did he now?" the girl Phantom said softly in a very suggestive tone. Eight pairs of eyes blinked as the intended point sunk in.

"You mean you—he didn't kill himself?" Sam said incredulously, surprise almost halting her in mid stride.

"In general Mother condones violence," Samuel said with a shrug, "But she said she'd make an exception for him and thus we got the job."

"Heck, even I'd make exceptions for him!" Sam muttered pausing to remove a piece of rubble from her boot treads.

"You did," Samuel said blankly, looking at the Goth curiously.

"Samuel!" Danielle hissed, looming over her brother threateningly, who blinked and then cursed softly when he realised that this time he was the one to slip up.

"Anyway, it wasn't that bad of a mission," Danielle said, "It was actually rather cool visiting that time period even if everyone was at war."

"You're one to talk," Samuel muttered as he rubbed the back of his neck looking pointedly at his sibling.

"Hey!" Danielle protested, "I told you to duck!"

"I didn't know you were swinging the bloody Lancea Longini! It still hurts you know."

"Well it's notmy fault. After all, what are the three things Auntie's always preaching about?" Danielle said before saying in ringing tones obviously imitating someone, "Study hard, do your best, and duck!"

A growl was her answer. A snicker was her response.

Danny blinked. Wait—that was Jazz's saying. And the girl Phantom had said 'Auntie'. In fact the girl ghost's name was a feminine version of hisfull name. Also they both admitted to working for Clockwork and doing some time travelling. Wait a minute…. Was it possible…? Could it be…? Were these two ghosts his future children?

Footnotes:
(1) Back to the Future, a 1985 film directed by Robert Zemeckis.
(2) This story was written and completed before the airing of episode 37, "Kindred Spirits"; the Danni of "Glitches in Time" is in no way related to the Dani of "Danny Phantom" and is an independent and individual character.
(3) Persona (Spanish) n. person