#I do not know the names of things—replaced 'streamers' with 'pennant banners'. I mean the string of triangles.

[asjjohnson]

Ta-da—I've finished the first part of this holiday Danny Phantom ghost story. Which I'd thought of the idea for last year just after Christmas.

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Phantom stepped into his lair and the glowing green portal vanished behind him.

It had been a good day—tiring, but good. For him, that was.

With a practiced ease, he turned and flopped onto a large melted stump of a stalagmite, as though flopping onto a couch, and put his arms comfortably behind his head.

Valerie may have erected that shield of hers, but he had other methods of getting his fun.

Today he'd blasted an impassable trench all along the circumference of Amity Park. A canyon surrounded by jagged metal.

No one would be able to enter or leave.

It might've been too late to stop Amity Park from having their food and gifts, but their celebrations would be tainted by foreboding. The knowledge of his blockade, of their days of plenty soon transitioning into dwindling supplies and starvation.

A different type of ruin and destruction.

A grin stretched across his face as he imagined it.

But the thought was cut short. An uncomfortable tickle of vapor brushed through his nose and triggered a gasp.

He tensed, and pushed himself up on one elbow, eyes narrowing as he scanned his shadowed surroundings.

His lair was a large cavern, dimly lit by a sourceless glow. The floors were littered with chunks of broken cave formations that he’d left lying after having blasted them apart.

Nothing looked out of place. He saw no movement, and heard only a slow drip of water from the cave ceiling.

No one could enter his lair. He knew this. There were no entrances or exits other than through his own portals.

It must not have been his Ghost Sense after all, but instead a thread of cold air passing by to tickle his nose, or else indigestion.

He shouldn’t have eaten that blob ghost earlier.

He rubbed his nose in annoyance and laid back down.

But he still felt uneasy. A feeling of paranoia, of an imagined something watching.

Simply the idea of someone else being in his personal lair bothered him. It was a place formed from his inner essence. Even he didn’t understand what a cave could mean to him. But, whatever it did mean, it was something deeply personal that he didn’t want to share. A look into his core.

It was a long several minutes before the subject faded from his mind. He began to doze, insubstantial wisps of pleasant dreams pulling him toward sleep and energy recovery. His own laughter. Valerie's face. Jagged metal.

His ear twitched and he started awake before the dreams fully took hold.

There was a noise—very faint, but unnatural to his lair.

It echoed along his walls and ceilings, making it hard to pinpoint the direction.

He stood. And waited. Ectoplasm pumped through his limbs, preparing for a possible confrontation.

The noise grew steadily louder. It was now possible to make out two distinct sounds: the high clinging of chains, and a grating noise of something scrapping against rock.

Then—it was to his left. He spun around.

There, nearly invisible, with glimmering chains draped over his shoulders, was the ghostly form of Vlad Plasmius.

His chest constricted with the shock. "You're gone!" He pushed off of the floor and away from the figure, firing a Ghost Ray straight through its middle. The ray slammed into the far wall. Not even a chain link shifted. An intangiblility that somehow felt unnatural, even for a ghost. He fired again. "You no longer exist!" Another Ghost Ray. "You're a hallucination! You aren't real!"

The figure remained unmoving, hovering with his hands clasped behind his back—visible through his translucent torso. He raised one eyebrow. "Are you quite done, Daniel?"

"What are you?!" Phantom shouted.

"You already know."

It didn't make sense. Plasmius couldn't exist, Phantom had destroyed him a long time ago, the ghost had been completely absorbed.

This figure couldn't be real. It had to be his mind playing tricks on him, or a dream, or a ghost who had followed him through his portal—maybe Amorpho.

But the fear coursing through him said otherwise—said this was the spirit of Plasmius back from oblivion, somehow pulled from his own core. A face he had been certain he would never see again. It couldn't be true. Instinctively, the repercussions of such a thing terrified him. Absolutely and completely.

"You couldn't have at least decorated the place?" the figure asked. "Perhaps some Packers memorabilia? A few pennant banners along the ceiling goes a long way."

Phantom sneered, pushing the fear to the side. "You have no say concerning my lair."

The figure somehow seemed amused by the words.

Phantom glanced at the long chains trailing down to and across the floor. "As though your taste in decoration is any better. What did you do, decide to carry the ruins of your mansion with you?" Broken pieces of gray brick and assorted other objects hung from the chain links like a giant charm bracelet.

The figure looked down at himself. He unclasped his hands and lifted his arms to either side, chains and objects clanking noisily and grinding across the cave floor with the movement.

The figure remained with his arms stretched wide, gazing at Phantom, as though inviting Phantom to examine the chains he wore.

The objects on the chains continued to sway. Broken pieces of gray brick. Books—one with a stylized ghost on the cover, and one with the year 1981 printed across it, but also other books. Cracked picture frames and photos. Quarters—a lot of dangling quarters. Test tubes stained with dried ectoplasm. Small bones, as though from animals. Broken machinery—computer monitors, an incomplete ring of metal that resembled a small Fenton Portal. A red fabric mask. A shredded white t-shirt. A pair of metal gauntlets. And so much more.

"These are the failings I'd gathered in life," Plasmius said. "I carry these burdens with me. My guilt."

Phantom snorted in disbelief. "How is the money a failing?" The coins still looked perfectly usable. He continued to idly run his eyes across the chains. There were also papers and folders—business contracts and deeds. And his eye caught the gleam of a small, familiar ring.

Plasmius's face twisted in hate, his eyes glowing a brighter red.

Phantom unconsciously drifted backward, the fear again coming to the forefront.

Plasmius loudly rattled the chains and screamed, "I wish I had never deceitfully gained one cent! I was a fool! I had traded away everything that mattered!"

The horrible sound of the rattling chains gradually died down and Phantom uncovered his ears, not remembering having covered them.

Plasmius still wore a glare, but he now talked at a normal volume. "You have done much more than I have. Your chains are ten times this long, not counting the ones you have inherited."

For a moment, Phantom imagined he could feel the invisible weight. Imaginary heaviness across his shoulders, and pushing him down toward the floor. Chains from Vlad Masters, Danny Fenton, and from the years of his current existence.

All of the steel beams and other debris surrounding Amity Park, trailing behind him like a king's long coronation robe.

Phantom crossed his arms. "That's ridiculous."

"You say that, but you worry for your fate. Your soul is uneasy. A child realizing there are consequences to his actions, fearing his Father's punishment—"

"I am not a child!" Phantom shouted.

"You will be visited by three spirits—"

"No! You aren't real! None of this is real!"

"Daniel!"

The name was said so firmly, so whiplike, the equivalent of a grounding slap, that Phantom snapped his mouth shut.

"You will be visited by three spirits tonight," Plasmius said. "Your participation is not optional. You will listen to them, go anywhere they want you to go, and observe whatever they want you to observe."

"Do you count as one of the three?" Phantom grumbled.

"You know how the story goes. Three visitors in addition to myself."

"So I'm basically in one of those Scrooge movies."

Plasmius slowly grew more transparent. "You know that isn't the title of the story." His voice grew quieter, fading.

"How would you know whether I do or not," Phantom said to himself. He could never remember the official title.

Plasmius was gone.

Phantom hovered alone in the empty cave chamber.

He whispered, "Bah. Humbug."