#holiday truce 2019

[vladdyissues]

Pompep Christmas Truce 2023 🎄🎁Pompep Christmas Truce 2023 Pompep Christmas Truce 2023 🎄🎁 Pompep Christmas Truce 2023 Pompep Christmas Truce 2023 🎄🎁 Pompep Christmas Truce 2023 Pompep Christmas Truce 2023 🎄🎁 Pompep Christmas Truce 2023🎄🎁

I haven't done a fandom holiday gift exchange since 2019 and I am exxxxcccciiiittteeeddddd

[wikiuntamed]

On this day in Wikipedia: Wednesday, 21st February

Welcome, merħba, ողջու՜յն (voġčuyn), მოგესალმებით (mogesalmebit) 🤗 What does @Wikipedia say about 21st February through the years 🏛️📜🗓️?

21st February 2022 🗓️ : Event - Prelude to the Russian invasion of Ukraine In the Russo-Ukrainian crisis Russian President Vladimir Putin declares the Luhansk People's Republic and Donetsk People's Republic as independent from Ukraine, and moves troops into the region. The action is condemned by the United Nations. "In March and April 2021, prior to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces began massing thousands of personnel and military equipment near Russia's border with Ukraine and in Crimea, representing the largest mobilisation since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. This..."

Image by U.S. intelligence agencies (unclassified)

21st February 2019 🗓️ : Death - Stanley Donen Stanley Donen, American film director (b. 1924) "Stanley Donen ( DON-ən; April 13, 1924 – February 21, 2019) was an American film director and choreographer. Donen directed some of the most iconic films of the Golden Age of Cinema. He received the Honorary Academy Award in 1998, and the Career Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2004. Four..."

Image licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0? by Adam Schartoff

21st February 2014 🗓️ : Death - Héctor Maestri Héctor Maestri, Cuban-American baseball player (b. 1935) "Héctor Anibal Maestri Garcia (April 19, 1935 – February 21, 2014) was a Cuban-born Major League Baseball pitcher. Maestri was one of nine ballplayers to have appeared for both of the 20th century, American League Washington Senators franchises, and one of only three to have played for them in..."

21st February 1974 🗓️ : Event - Suez Canal The last Israeli soldiers leave the west bank of the Suez Canal pursuant to a truce with Egypt. "The Suez Canal (Egyptian Arabic: قَنَاةُ ٱلسُّوَيْسِ, Qanāt es-Suwais) is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia (and by extension, the Sinai Peninsula from the rest of Egypt). The..."

Image licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5? by Baycrest

21st February 1924 🗓️ : Birth - Thelma Estrin Thelma Estrin, American computer scientist and engineer (d. 2014) "Thelma Estrin (née Austern; February 21, 1924 – February 15, 2014) was an American computer scientist and engineer who did pioneering work in the fields of expert systems and biomedical engineering. Estrin was one of the first to apply computer technology to healthcare and medical research. In 1954,..."

Image licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0? by Achituv (talk)

21st February 1824 🗓️ : Death - Eugène de Beauharnais Eugène de Beauharnais, French general (b. 1781) "Eugène Rose de Beauharnais ([øʒɛn də boaʁnɛ]; 3 September 1781 – 21 February 1824) was a French nobleman, statesman, and military commander who served during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. Through the second marriage of his mother, Joséphine de Beauharnais, he was the stepson..."

Image by Andrea Appiani

21st February 🗓️ : Holiday - Birthday of King Harald V (Norway) "Harald V (Norwegian: Harald den femte, Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈhɑ̂rːɑɫ dɛn ˈfɛ̂mtə]; born 21 February 1937) is King of Norway. He succeeded to the throne on 17 January 1991. Harald was the third child and only son of King Olav V of Norway and Princess Märtha of Sweden. He was second in the line..."

Image licensed under CC BY 2.0? by Sámediggi - Sametinget

[kayla1993-world]

Sudan fighting: Army says foreign nationals to be evacuated

Diplomats and nationals from the UK, US, France, and China are to be evacuated from Sudan by air as fighting from the Sudanese army says chief Fattah al-Burhan agreed to facilitate and secure their evacuation "in the coming hours."

He is locked in a bitter power struggle with the leader of a rival paramilitary faction, the Rapid Support Forces. The UK government said it was preparing for "several contingencies."

Previous plans to evacuate foreign nationals have not been implemented because British, US, French, and Chinese diplomats would be evacuated by air on transport planes from Khartoum.

The UK government said it was "doing everything possible to support British nationals and diplomatic staff in Khartoum." Its defense ministry was working with the foreign office to prepare several specifying whether immediate evacuations were among those plans.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak chaired a Cobra meeting—an emergency response committee—on Saturday morning about the situation in Sudan.

Saudi Arabia also announced it was arranging the evacuation of its citizens and nationals of "brotherly" countries. State TV channel Al-Ekhbariyah reported that some Saudi citizens and others arrived in the port city of Jeddah on Saturday.

Khartoum's international airport has been closed due to the violence, with foreign embassies - including the UK and the US - unable to bring their citizens home.

The conflict has entered its second week despite both sides - the army and the RSF - agreeing to a three-day ceasefire to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, starting from Friday.

Sporadic gunfire and air strikes were heard in the capital on Saturday despite the truce. A former foreign minister, Mariam al-Mahdi, who is sheltering in the BBC the ceasefire was "not taking at all."

"We have of electricity for the last 24 hours. We have of water for the last six days," she fighting, she said, adding: "There are rotting bodies of our youth in the streets."

Fierce street battles erupted in Khartoum on 15 April after disagreements emerged between the leaders of both sides - General Burhan and the RSF's Mohamed Hamdan "Hemedti" Dagalo - over how Sudan should be run.

They both held top positions in Sudan's current military government, formed after the 2019 coup that ousted long-time leader Omar al-Bashir.

They were supposed to merge their forces RSF resisted this change, mobilizing its troops which escalated into full-scale fighting last week.

The World Health Organization says more than 400 people have been killed. The death toll is believed to be much higher as people struggle to reach hospitals.

Thousands of people, mainly civilians, have also been injured, with medical centers under pressure to deal with the influx of patients. Along with Khartoum, the western region of Darfur, where the RSF first emerged, has also been badly affected by the fighting.

The UN has warned that up to 20,000 people and children - have fled Sudan to seek safety in Chad, across the border from Darfur.

[eggthew]

hey hey @ectolights, I’m your holiday truce gifter! heard you wanted some fenton sibling fluff <3 hope you like it!

[spookberry]

A slow and steadily growing friendship :)

@hugthesquids happy holiday truce!!!

[ghostsray]

danny grows baby fangs

truce gift for @phantomofprocrastination!! happy new decade :)

word count: 3,080

____

Being friends with a rival ghost has its pros and cons. The pros are that Danny can call on them whenever he needs help fighting a bigger, badder ghost. The cons are that this does nothing to stop his ally from attacking him whenever they like.

He was awoken in the dead of night (pun intended) by his ghost sense escaping his throat. He quickly transformed and flew outside, preparing to fight a ghost wreaking havoc. Instead, he was met by Johnny, who asked for a spar.

Danny sighed and ran a hand across his face. "Really? You couldn't have picked a better time for this?"

"Of course not!" Johnny delightfully replied. "All the humans are asleep, so you don't have to worry about hurting any of them."

That was...surprisingly thoughtful. Still didn't make it any less annoying. Danny fixed him with a glare and said, "Johnny. I'm half human. I also need to sleep."

The ghost's eyes widened, and his mouth formed a circle. "Oh."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Can you go back to the GZ so I can get back to bed?"

Unfortunately, he already knew the answer he would receive when Johnny's face twisted into a wicked smirk. "But you're already here, aren't you? And I do have some energy I need to let out..."

"Dude, I swear..."

Danny didn't have time to finish his threat because the biker ghost was already sending his shadow to attack him. Inwardly, Danny groaned. Here he thought that he was making good progress this year in befriending his previous enemies, but it turns out they're too trained in Hating Danny On Sight to fully stop torturing him.

Danny blocked another swing from the shadow. He formed a ball of ectoplasm in his hands and used its light to fend the phantom off. As he watched it retreat, he bared his teeth at Johnny with a growl, trying to convey clearly that he wasn't happy.

For some reason, Johnny had the opposite reaction. He held up a hand to hold his shadow back and stared at Danny. "Wait, do that again," he said.

Danny frowned, confused. "Do what?"

"Bare your teeth."

Danny was Hella Confused, but he did as he was asked. Johnny clapped his hands and laughed.

"You're growing baby fangs!"

"...What."

The older ghost got closer until he was floating right in front of Danny's face. He pointed at the halfa's mouth, and his face adopted the kind of expression Jazz would make if she saw a baby animal. "Right there," the ghost said with a smile, "the cutest, widdwest baby fa--"

All of a sudden, a light enveloped Johnny, and he looked down to see the halfa sucking him into a Fenton thermos. "Hey! Not fair!" he whined, his voice shrinking as he went in.

"Sorry, but you deserved it," Danny spoke into the cylinder before he closed it.

He sunk from his spot in the air until his boots touched the ground. As soon as he did, he thought about what Johnny said. Now that he noticed, his gums were hurting. When he touched them with his tongue, he felt something sharp growing among his teeth. What did Johnny say? Fangs?

Danny looked at the building sitting across from his home. The lights indoors were all turned off, and the windows perfectly reflected the street and Danny on it. Danny let himself hover an inch off the ground and floated toward the glass. Once he got close enough, he studied his reflection.

Over the years, his ghost form had changed into something a bit more...ghostly. Before, the only parts of his appearance that changed were his eye and hair colors. Now, his hair became wispy, his skin grew tinted green, and even the freckles that had long ago faded from his human skin now literally glowed in ghost form.

Danny ignored these details. (He especially ignored how uncomfortable he felt seeing himself look less and less human.) Instead, he opened his mouth and focused on the trait Johnny pointed out to him.

Sure enough, two small, white points were growing from where his canine teeth should be. Danny stared. Were those really going to grow into fangs? Honestly, he's not sure why he was surprised. Pretty much every ghost he knew had fangs. Even Vlad did, and he's a halfa too.

He grinned at his reflection, and the reflection grinned back, showing off his brand new pair of fangs. Danny tried to imagine what the would look like on him once they grow, replacing the small points with something longer and sharper.

This was a mistake.

Suddenly the image before him seemed eerily familiar. Wispy hair, almost like fire. Greenish skin bordering on teal. Growing muscles underneath his jumpsuit. And fangs.

The grin was gone from Danny's face, but the reflection still smiled. Since when had its eyes turned red?

Danny took a shaky step back.

It was him.

The thermos slipped from his hands with a clunk. He gulped.

He was turning into him.

Fire entered Danny's nose. Fire, and the smell of burning flesh. He whipped around, eyes out of focus. The Nasty Burger. It was gone. The flames licked the sky and danced on where the building once stood.

His family. His friends. He couldn't save them.

"No," he softly said, as if that could erase the scene before him.

He dropped onto his knees on the pavement. The smoke stung his eyes and filled his lungs. He couldn't breathe.

"No," he repeated, gasping and gripping onto his hairs. "No, no, no."

His eyes fell on the thermos next to him. The metal surface reflected Danny's face, but it wasn't the face he saw in the mirror yesterday. It was his face from tomorrow. Red eyes, wispy hair, and grinning at him with long, sharp fangs.

An ecto-blast shot past his ear, jolting Danny back to reality. He looked up, his eyes finally focusing on someone standing over him...someone wearing a teal jumpsuit and red goggles...his mom?

But he saw her die, didn't he? There was the explosion, and...and she was blasted apart like everyone else...and then...oh, right.

It felt like he was finally waking up. The air around him was clear. He wasn't in front of the Nasty Burger, he was in front of his own house. And even if he was there, the restaurant would still be standing. The explosion never happened. Clockwork erased that timeline.

His family was still alive. Maddie was still alive.

A fact that helpfully made itself apparent by the gun she was pointing at him.

"Why are you doing that?" his mother asked, snapping him out of his reverie.

"Doing what?" he replied.

"Pretending to cry."

Danny touched his cheeks. Was he really crying? Sure enough, his gloves came back wet.

"Answer me, phantom," Maddie's voice cut through his thoughts, sharp and bitter.

Danny let his hands fall onto his lap and gulped. "I'm not pretending."

"Of course you are," Maddie stated matter-of-factly. "Ghosts can't shed genuine tears. After all, it's not like they can feel--"

"Yes, they can," Danny suddenly snapped. "They feel! All they do is feel! That's why they're aggressive. Not because they lack emotion, but because they're created from it! Not that it matters to you, since you never listen to what I say."

Maddie's jaw dropped. As soon as the words left Danny's mouth, he knew it was out of character for him. Phantom was a smooth ghost who only spoke to tell bad puns and mock his enemies. He never snapped at anyone like that. A part of him felt ashamed for yelling at his mother, but he wasn't in the mood to feel guilty about it.

He averted his eyes and wiped at his tears. Man, he must have looked pathetic. Why was Maddie even out here? Of course, he had forgotten that his parents had almost as little sleep as he did. She was probably pulling an all-nighter working on some new invention to kill him when she noticed the ghost having a breakdown outside their house.

Danny tried to ignore the embarrassment he felt and pushed himself to his feet. If Maddie noticed the way he shook as he pulled himself up, she didn't comment on it. He took a deep breath. The smell of fire still lingered in his nose.

"Never mind," he said, not looking at her as he spoke. "I'm not in the mood to deal with you tonight." He turned away and prepared to take flight, but a hand suddenly gripped at his wrist, and he turned back to see Maddie holding on to him.

"Wait," she said. After a moment of hesitation, she let go and...lowered her gun? "Let's assume I believe what you said, about ghosts feeling emotion. Why are you crying?"

Danny had to assure himself that he wasn't dreaming. Talking and not shooting? That was new. He must have stared at her for a long time in surprise, because she frowned and urged, "Well?"

He blinked and looked down. "It's nothing."

"So you are faking?"

"What? No!"

"Then what is it?"

He bit his lip. How could he even begin to explain it? Hey, no biggie, but I sort of saw an alternate timeline where I went evil and killed you, which happened a long time ago but apparently I'm not as over it as I thought. Yeah, no. Instead, he asked, "Why do you care?"

He looked up and saw something soften in her face. Her brows knitted, but in an I'm-willing-to-hear-you kind of way, just like the days in his childhood when she sat next to him in bed, ready to soothe him as he woke up crying from another nightmare. It made him meet her eyes, forgetting for just a moment that they were supposed to be enemies. She was not Maddie the ghosthunter, but Mom.

Then the illusion broke when she said, "With how much power you have, it is my duty as a ghosthunter to make sure you dont step out of line. Anything that would cause you to act differently from usual should concern me."

His chest crumpled. Of course she didn't care, and why would she? He was a ghost. This was nothing more than another duty for her as a ghosthunter.

He tried not to show his disappointment, but it must have shown anyway because Maddie asked, "Did I say something wrong?"

"No," he lied. "Of course not."

She sighed. "Of course not." She crossed her arms and turned away, then muttered under her breath, "I don't know why I thought I could help a ghost. I can't even help my own children."

Danny guessed he wasn't meant to hear that last part, but he did. He stared at her incredulously and asked, "What?"

She stiffened, then quickly said, "Nothing. I don't need to tell you about my family life."

He took one step toward her, then immediately took a step back when she aimed her gun on him. Right, he forgot she didn't holster that.

"I mean it," she warned. "This isn't about me."

He stumbled and fell onto the pavement. Maddie stood over him, still aiming her weapon at him. Were they not just having a moment? Obviously not. Maddie Fenton was never one to have moments with a ghost.

"Really, quit breathing. I know you don't need to do that."

Danny only then noticed how hard his chest was rising and falling. He gulped. "I can't keep doing this," he suddenly spoke.

The hand holding the gun faltered. "Doing what?"

His eyes stung, but he held back his tears because he knew she would tell him he was faking again, and he didn't want that to happen. Instead, he fixed his eyes on the red goggles that covered hers and said, "Fighting you, being your enemy, until the day you die."

Maddie remained calm as she said, "You're a ghost. I'm a ghosthunter."

"That doesn't mean we have to fight." He gestured between them and added, "I mean, we were just having a conversation. At least until you pulled out your gun again."

"Is that why you brought me out here?"

"I didn't. You came on your own."

"You were acting strange," she replied. "You still didn't answer why."

His core thrummed against his chest as he continued to stare into her gun. Why are you crying? Because he's still scared of becoming his evil self. Because he doesn't want to hurt his family. Because every time he closed his eyes, he saw their scorched remains, and he doesn't want to be the person to cause that to happen.

"I don't want to be a bad ghost," he answered.

Maddie tilted her head. "That can't be it," she spoke in her snobby scientist voice. "Ghosts dont have a sense of right and wrong--"

"Would you stop making assumptions about ghost morals? I'm the ghost here, not you."

That was the second time he snapped at her. He tore his eyes away from her, instead choosing to glare at the street. Maddie was quiet. "...You're serious," she finally said.

"Yeah, no shit."

She lowered her gun...just slightly. "That still doesn't explain things," she said. "Why the sudden reaction? The tears?"

His eyes landed on the thermos that lay a few feet away, reflecting his green skin and wispy hair and glowing eyes on its surface. His gums hurt.

Danny shut his eyes and gulped back bile. "I...I did something bad, okay?" he said, his voice small. "I thought I could forget about it, but I can't. I--I don't want it to happen again."

A moment of silence hung between them, broken only by the soft whistle of the breeze. He hoped she wouldn't ask, but he knew the question was coming anyway. "What did you do?"

His hands shook. He gripped them into fists, but that did nothing to ebb his emotions.

"Phantom," Maddie urged. "What did--"

"I killed people!" The tears escaped his eyes, which opened to reveal toxic green irises that shone brighter than the streetlights. He faced Maddie, his expression contorted in guilt and pain and Ancients why do his gums still hurt as he cried, "I killed people. They died, and it was because of me. I killed them."

He waited for her to get angry at him, to shoot him. Instead, she gave him a reaction he didn't expect.

"Now I know you're faking," she said, lowering her gun completely.

He blinked away his tears. "What?"

"Feeling guilt over someone's death? Ghosts can't care about that." She held up a hand and continued, "Before you argue again about whether ghosts have morals or not, I'm talking about the concept of life and death. You're dead, so you shouldn't be able to bother over whether others are, too."

Danny sat back and let those words sink in. Was that why his alternate self had seemed so heartless? He had removed his humanity, and along with it, any sympathy he had left toward life. If Danny had fully died in that portal, would he...?

He shook his head. He didn't want to think about that. "But I don't want others to suffer the same fate I did," he argued.

"That's not what other ghosts seem to think," Maddie pointed out. "Even if your obsession was saving others, it should be easy for you to get over a few deaths after some time has passed. It simply doesn't make sense for you to care." She crouched until she was at eye level with him and inquired, "So tell me, Phantom. What makes you so different?"

"...I don't know." What else could he say without revealing his secret? He truthfully told her, "I never asked to be this way."

She scrutinized him, as if looking at him could somehow reveal the truth. After a while, she sighed and stood up...and holstered her gun.

"I can never understand you," she said. "You're just...so human. Your emotions, your thinking, your morals, even your appearance."

He perked up. "You think I look human?"

She looked at him as if he just said the dumbest thing on the planet. "Of course you do," she answered. "Even if you've changed since your first appearance, the change isn't nearly as much as it should be for such an increase in power as yours. Other ghosts your power level would look much more monstrous. But not you. You may grow claws and fangs, but you can still pass as a person."

Danny was dumbfounded. Here he was worried that he might be losing his humanity, and now he was proven wrong by none other than one of the world's leading ghost researchers, his own mother. He thought that was as much relief as he could feel, and then she said,

"You're not a bad ghost, Phantom."

He bit the insides of his mouth to keep himself from crying again because dammit he's already cried enough times this night already. Instead, he blurted out the thing that was on his mind in that moment, which was, "You're not a bad mom."

Mom faltered. For a second, Danny worried that he screwed up. He should not have said that, now she's going to try shooting him again and then everything that just happened would be a waste... But she didn't do that. He couldn't read her face well from underneath her mask, but something crossed her face. She observed him silently, and he squirmed, wondering what she saw. She opened her mouth to say something, but then changed her mind and turned away without a word, leaving the halfa behind as she went back indoors.

Danny sat in the middle of the empty street, watching his mom leave. What just happened? He wasn't sure, but Mom just left without leaving him an injury, which he didn't think could be possible. The world lit up around him as the sun rose from the east.

Shit, he had to return home before someone could walk into his room and find it empty. He fumbled around until he caught the thermos, then paused to look at his reflection. He saw...himself. No evil alternate self. No monster from the future. Just Danny Phantom, existing in the present.

He grinned, showing off his brand new pair of fangs.

Now that he thought about it, having fangs sounds pretty cool.

[hashtag-art]

Happy holiday truce, @fretful-ferret! You said you like Clockwork, Danny, and wretched angst, and I am here to deliver on those goods as best as I can. Hope you like it!

[galaxyghostart]

together through the end, and through a new beginning too.

it’s a little early, but here’s my holiday truce present for @eggskie ! i’ve never tried a future au before, but i tried my hand at some designs and i hope you like them! ^^ happy holidays!

[gggoingghost]

Happy Truce to @little-egg-buddy !!

Danny gets so overwhelmed with fear that he can't control his abilities.. This is my take on "internal problems manifesting in an outward way"

[hugthesquids]

It’s a bit early but here is my Holiday Truce gift for @phlabberghasted​ with some Gray Ghost art.

Sketch below the cut:

[gh0stzonedarchive]

A Dead Man's Stare

merry christmas! this is my piece for this years Holiday Truce! I was given @auroraphantasma as the person to receive my gift, so i hope it is to your liking! its my first time participating in the holiday truce, so i hope i did your prompt correctly ^_^

one of your prompts included "the town talllying/noticing danny's ghostliness/weirdness", and one of my first thoughts for this was his eyes. i mean, dead people usually don't have bright eyes full of life, right? so i played around with the concept that danny's eyes always have that far off, glassy look that corpses have, and people [in this case kwan and wes] noticing the way his eyes dont shine like a normal humans.

in all honesty, i havent tried to make a comic-type piece in a long time, so im sorry if its hard to follow.. i tried my best!

[lesbianpegbar]

“Stop, you know me, Danny! Danny Fenton! You have to know me...”

Happy holiday truce @currently-lurking! Sorry it took so long, hope you like it!

[wastefulreverie]

amaranthine

— [adj] unfading, everlasting

word count: 8323

Happy Holiday Truce @daddyphannypack! I loved all of your prompts, but I decided to go with an A-Lister reveal with a twist. I hope you like it because this was a lot of fun to write! —Rev

Amity Park was a weird place. Even before the Fentons ripped a hole in the dimensional fabric, the town was already a supernatural hotspot. Everyone knew that weird things happened in Amity, that sometimes alleys spun you back out into the street you came. Sometimes shadows breathed, whispering forgotten nothings.

Other times, portals appeared out of thin air. Three-dimensional ellipses that sparked and sputtered with an otherworldly exuberance. Kwan eyed the portal that appeared in his bedroom carefully. He'd been texting Star when it tore into existence, hovering two feet above his bed.

Why did this town have to be so weird?

Against his better judgment, Kwan reached out and touched the portal. It felt cold and liquidy like he was dipping his fingers into a near-frozen lake instead of an inter-dimensional rip. He tentatively pressed his hand deeper into the portal and suddenly everything lurched forward. The breath was vacuumed from his lungs and he was flying, suspended in some kind of colorful expanse of green and purple. Was this… the Ghost Zone?

It was a lot prettier than he thought it would be. Which might have been exciting, if he hadn't just been sucked into a ghost portal with no idea where he was. Kwan flailed his arms around, trying to find a sense of gravity. The world tipped and just a few feet away, he spotted a portal. A way back home!

He kicked forward, like he was underwater, and flew towards the portal. He passed through the cold, amorphous sphere and fell flat on the ground. It wasn't a big fall, only about a foot or so, but it still knocked the breath out of him again for the second time in less than a minute.

"Ow," he mumbled, pulling himself into a sitting position. That had been an experience. In Amity, you heard about creatures that lurked in corners and kids falling into portals, but not many people actually lived to tell about them. Well, or so they said. Once he got back home, he couldn't wait to tell Dash about it! He'd be totally ecstatic!

Where was he, anyway?

He was beside a street, cross-legged in the grass, but he couldn't place what street. He looked up and found a foreign skyline, which… clearly, wasn't good. The portal had thrown him outside Amity Park, which was definitely a first. If only he had his phone, he'd be able to track his location and ask his Mom to come get him, but unfortunately, he'd left it on his bed.

It looked like he had to find his own way back home. So, Kwan pulled himself to his feet and started looking around. Though, the longer he walked the stranger things appeared.

For instance, he'd initially assessed that this wasn't Amity Park, but that's not what the street signs said.

Unless the city had gone through an entire renovation overnight, there was no way that this could be Amity Park. There were so many buildings here! And the houses looked super modern, like out of Tokyo or San Francisco! Yet, whenever he read the signs they heralded familiar names such as 'Casper Crossing' and 'Ebony Street'.

After about four minutes of walking, Kwan spotted another person. It was a man with swept-back blond hair wearing a gray sweater and dark pants. Something about the style of his clothing seemed off, a bit hipster-ish, but Kwan didn't think much of it. He was standing out in his yard, walking his dog (a labrador, maybe?) to the property line.

Kwan caught the man's attention and waved. "Hey!"

The man tightened his grip on the dog's leash. "Hi?"

"This is Amity Park, right?"

The man furrowed his brow. "Uh, yeah? You good, kid?"

"Mm-hm, I'm fine. I fell through a ghost portal, though. Things… seem different."

"A ghost portal?"

Kwan understood why he was skeptical, but surely it wasn't unheard of. "Yeah."

"Look, if you're looking for FentonWorks, it's five blocks that way. Just… don't post this on whatever paranormal documentary you're making, okay?"

And with that, he walked back towards his house, keeping his dog close.

"That was weird," Kwan noted. Why did he think he wanted to go to FentonWorks or was filming something? He supposed that the Fentons did attract some international paranormal attention, so that could be it.

Kwan trekked up the street, trying to make a mental map of where he was. If FentonWorks was five blocks away like that guy said, then that meant the school was only seven blocks east… so Kwan's house should be at least ten streets beyond that. Ugh! Maybe he should just swing by Dash's house and hang out there before going home because he was not in the mood to walk that much.

Kwan weighed his options some more, paying little mind to his surroundings. He must've been thinking really deep because the next thing he knew, he'd collided face-first with some sort of… flying thing? Kwan jerked back and ran his hand over his throbbing face, hoping that would soothe the ache. Lo and behold, there was a drone hovering in front of him. A super high-tech drone, like something that Foley would gush about.

He couldn't really name any of the parts because he wasn't smart enough, but there was obviously a camera mounted on the front. And some kind of laser projector thing, that was… scanning him?

"Uh… what?"

The device chirped and turned red. "Facial scan: adolescent. School hours in session. FaceID not registered."

"What?" It wasn't a school day. Kwan was pretty sure it was a Saturday, otherwise, his parents were going to flip.

The drone moved with robust speed and used a mechanical arm to clamp something on his wrist. "Alerting authorities."

What the hell? A drone was calling the cops on him?

"I—I didn't do anything, though!"

The drone was silent. Kwan waved his hand in front of it, but it just hovered there. Would it follow him if he left? Would it fire at him? Most importantly, when did the police department even get these things? Kwan knew he didn't pay attention to the news or anything, but surely he would've noticed one of these things flying around.

Kwan swallowed. "Are they still coming?" he asked it.

The drone didn't reply, so Kwan tried taking a few steps back to see what it would do. Still, nothing. Weird. He took more steps back, faster this time. When the drone didn't follow, he broke into a mad run. He wanted away from that thing.

He must have ran for a good three minutes before he saw the squad car. It looked like something out of one of those sci-fi movies, hell, it didn't even have a driver! The cop was sitting in the front and messing with some panels on the interior of the vehicle. The cop unbuckled and started to get out of the vehicle and Kwan wondered how he had found him. He'd ran far enough away from the drone.

Something on his wrist beeped and Kwan remembered that the drone had put something on him. A tracker. How hadn't he noticed that?

The cop was in front of him now. He was saying something about how it wasn't smart to cut class and that he was getting an earful from his principal.

"Sir," Kwan interrupted. "I don't even know what you're talking about. I was just walking around! It's not a school day!"

"Kid, it's a Wednesday."

"What?"

"Don't play dumb, just get in the car."

"How is it Wednesday?" Kwan asked. "It was Saturday!"

It was Saturday… before he'd fallen through the portal. Had he jumped forward a few days? Wait, had he jumped forward a few years? No way, time-travel wasn't real! This couldn't be the future, could it?

"W—what year is it?"

The cop rolled his eyes. "What are you trying?"

"Please, I think I uh, might have hit my head?"

The cop regarded him carefully. "You need the hospital?"

"No, no. Just the year. What year is it?"

"2098?"

"Oh shit. Fuck. Please, tell me you're joking."

"Kid… just get in the car."

Kwan got in the car. The self-driving car. And the cop drove him all the way to Casper High… to meet his doom with some principal that wasn't even Mrs. Ishiyama. Because Mrs. Ishiyama was dead because it was 2098.

How was he going to get home? How could he explain to these people that he was from ninety years in the past? Would they even believe him?

As they approached the school, Kwan's stomach turned in knots. This wasn't good. He had a bad feeling about this.

"What's your name, kid?" the cop asked. "You're not showing up in the system. Must be a glitch."

"System?"

"The facial database. Now, name?"

He gulped. "Kwan."

"Kwan…?"

"Kwan Li."

The cop pulled out a napkin and a pen and wrote down his name.

"Alright, 'Kwan', you better not be lying to me. Because this incident will be going on someone's record."

"Okay?"

"Now," he threw open the car door, "let's have a meeting with Principal Carr, shall we?"

Kwan didn't move. He didn't want to meet the principal. He wanted to go home.

"Come on, I don't have all day."

Unfortunately, neither did Kwan. If he wanted to get home, he'd have to move from this car at some point. It was best to just get this mess over and figure things out from there.

Kwan stepped out of the police car and followed the cop across the parking lot. The front of the school had been completely renovated, which wasn't exactly surprising. You can't expect a building to stay the same after ninety years, especially a building that gets routinely destroyed by ghosts. Wait, do ghosts still attack in the future? Kwan hadn't seen any ghosts yet, but he'd only been in the future for a few minutes.

"Do ghosts attack the town, still?" he blurted.

The cop looked back at him. "What?"

Kwan's face felt hot. "I, um. Heard something… about ghost attacks. I was wondering if they still happened? I figured that a cop would know."

"What? You mean those urban legends? Don't buy into that, kid. I've lived here for thirty years and I've never seen anything like a ghost. Our ancestors were paranoid and that's that."

"Oh."

Well, that answers that.

They stopped in front of Principal Ishiyama's office, except it wasn't her office. Through the window, Kwan could see a lanky man in a simple blazer. It felt wrong. That should be Ishiyama's office, but it wasn't. Because Ishiyama wasn't here. Not Mr. Falluca or Mrs. Rosenburg or Ms. Reynolds. Although Lancer might still be here—Kwan's friends had a joke that since he was already older than dust, he probably just couldn't die.

"So?" the cop asked. "Are you going to go in?"

"Do I have to?"

He gave Kwan a pointed look.

Kwan took a deep breath and pushed open the door. It took him a moment to register that there was someone else in the principal's office.

"—not my fault that he makes the class so bad."

The boy in the chair carried a calm demeanor, resting his sneakers against the side of the principal's desk. His black hair stuck up in odd places, juxtaposed against his milky, pale skin. There was something in his eyes too, those sharp blue eyes. He looked like he was in his element, wearing a black, NASA T-shirt and navy blue pants.

Kwan stood in the doorway for a moment, dumbstruck.

Was that…?

No, no way.

This was 2098. Why would Danny Fenton still be alive? Why would Danny Fenton still be sixteen? This was just his relative, that's it! His relative that looked exactly like him. That happened sometimes, didn't it?

It was just uncanny, that's all.

"Excuse me?" Principal Carr turned to Kwan. "What do you need?"

The boy in the chair glanced back at the door. For a moment, their eyes met and Kwan saw something raw, vulnerable, and shocked. The boy did his best to cover up his reaction, but there was no hiding what had just happened.

He recognized Kwan.

Could that be Danny Fenton, then? Had he time-traveled too?

His mind reeled. Nothing made sense anymore. He tried to say something, really tried. But before he could act, the cop pushed Kwan forward and made himself known to the principal.

"This young man was caught off campus by one of our drones."

Principal Carr nodded. "He'll be disciplined with due process. I'm in the middle of a meeting at the moment, so he can wait outside."

Kwan's eyes were still on the boy in the chair. Danny. The cop had to pull Kwan's arm again to get him to move. Suddenly, he was seated in the waiting chair outside and the cop was talking to him.

"—have to go back on patrol, so you better not leave that chair."

Had a portal appeared in Danny's bedroom, too? He looked like he'd been here for some time, though. He looked familiar with his surroundings and had been talking about one of his classes. Maybe he time-traveled a few weeks before Kwan had arrived. That would make sense. But would that mean that he hadn't figured out how to get home? Were they stuck here?

"Kid? You spacing out on me?"

"Huh? Oh, no. I'm listening."

"Good." And with that, the cop left. Kwan hardly registered his departure, trying to piece this entire mess together in his mind.

He probably sat there for a good ten minutes before the door opened again.

Danny walked out and gave Kwan a mild look. "Your turn." Then, he swung his backpack over his shoulder and turned the corner into the next corridor.

Kwan stood there for a moment. This time, Danny hadn't given any indication that he knew him. Kwan might be dense, but he wasn't that dense. He knew that was Danny Fenton; whatever the guy was trying to pull, it wouldn't work. He couldn't just pretend everything was normal because it wasn't. After Kwan got out of this stupid principal's office, he was tracking Fenton down.

The meeting with Principal Carr went as well as Kwan expected. The man tried looking Kwan up on his… computer thing? It was another future thing that he doubted he would understand. Anyway, Carr couldn't find Kwan at all and accused him of using a fake name. Kwan wished he had his wallet so he could show him his student ID, but then again, it had his school year printed on it, so that wouldn't help at all.

Eventually, Kwan got out of the entire mess by admitting that he wasn't a student and that the cop wouldn't believe him no matter what he said and that he was sorry for wasting everyone's time. Principal Carr was reluctant but accepted Kwan's story. He shooed him out of his office and told him to get home safely.

Kwan made it about twenty feet away from the principal's office before he walked straight into Danny. He'd shed his backpack at some point, and appeared to be waiting for him.

"Kwan?"

"Danny? It's actually you?"

Danny's eyes widened. "I should ask you the same thing. How are you even here? You're dead. You've been dead. For the past twenty years and—and you still look like you're in high school."

Kwan was confused now. Why was his age such a big deal when Danny was the same age?

"I mean, so do you? Because we are still in high school?"

"Yeah but I'm… I'm me. And you're… you're so young. Ancients, this is messing with my fucking head."

Danny put his hand on Kwan's arm.

"How did this happen? Are you a ghost?"

"What? No, I fell through some portal that appeared in my room. Why? Didn't you time travel, too?"

"Time travel?"

"Yeah. It was crazy, right? One second I'm texting Star, the next there's this thing in my room. So I go to touch it and then I'm in the Ghost Zone and everything is spinning and so I try to go back into the portal, but then I come back out on some street and it's 2098."

Danny looked like he'd swallowed something vile. "I can't believe this."

"Dude, me neither."

"No, I mean… it's hard to explain."

Kwan was confused again. "What is?"

Danny stared at him for a good ten seconds before looking up at the ceiling. "When are you from? Like, what year?"

"2006."

"Month?"

Suddenly this felt like an interrogation.

"December."

"Okay. December 2006… that's when I was sixteen?"

"Aren't you sixteen, though? You look the same."

"Kwan, I always look the same. I don't… change. Clockwork, how do I put this?"

"Put what? You're not making any sense, dude."

"I don't age. I'm one-hundred-and-eight years old trapped in a fourteen-year-old body."

Kwan's breath hitched in his throat. "What?"

"I can't die either."

"What."

Danny Fenton… weak, skinny Fentoenail with baggy clothes, a weird thermos, and infamous parents, was immortal? He couldn't see it. Supposedly, Fenton was over a century old, but he looked exactly the same as he had yesterday when Dash shot spitballs into his hair.

"It's kind of a long story," Danny shrugged. "But we can talk about it if you want? Then I can help you get back to your own time?"

This was too bizarre. Dash would never believe this, even if he told him. Would anyone believe Kwan if he told them?

"Uh, alright?"

"Okay. I'll sign myself out of school and then we'll go over to my house."

Danny reached into his pocket and pulled out some kind of device that vaguely resembled a phone, but not. Then, he pulled out some kind of pen device and pressed a button. He spoke into the pen-thing and out came Jack Fenton's voice. Danny then called someone on his phone.

"Hello, I'd like to check out my son, Daniel Manson, for early dismissal?" he said in Jack's voice. "I can't get a good parking space, so I'm waiting just up the road. Do I have to come in?" He paused. "Alright, thank you."

Danny pocketed his pen-thing and Kwan gaped at him.

"What was that?"

"Voice modulator. I programmed it with my parents' voices whenever I need to pretend to be them. They used to be a problem back in the day, but they were outlawed in the early 40s, so no one bothers to check for them anymore."

"Why were they outlawed?"

"Lots of criminals were using them to frame innocent people. It was a whole controversial thing, but now using someone else's voice to abet criminal activity is illegal."

"Dang."

They started walking towards the attendance office in heavy silence. Kwan felt like he should start some kind of small talk, but what do you say to your classmate you just found out was immortal? What do you say to someone from the future?

"So…" Kwan started, "why are you even in school if you're so old?"

"Eh, it's something to do. I tried working in a few places but it wasn't as fun as just sitting around all day and learning things, so I decided to come back to where it all began."

"Oh."

The lady in the attendance office let Danny off without any problems. Suddenly, they were two blocks from the school and Kwan realized he hadn't said anything in the past ten minutes. Had he been thinking that entire time? Or had he zoned off?

"Do you still live at FentonWorks?"

They were walking in that direction, so Kwan figured that's where they were going.

"Yeah. Not officially, though."

What did that mean?

They walked for another two minutes before reaching FentonWorks, the pinnacle of Amity Park's peculiarities. Most people called it a blight on the city's landscape, but those who'd been inside knew that it was more than that. It was a death trap disguised as a house. During that ghost pirate crisis, Kwan had been unfortunate enough to open the fridge only to be attacked by a bunch of rabid, glowing hotdogs. Half of the football team had to corral them back into the fridge.

The first thing that Kwan noticed was that the UFO structure on top of the house was missing. The top of the house looked bare without that monstrosity sitting on it and hanging out into the street. The LED 'FentonWorks' sign was also nowhere to be seen. Everyone knew that sign was Jack Fenton's pride and joy—he must've rolled over in his grave whenever it was taken down. Lastly, the upstairs curtains were all drawn and the front door was boarded up. The house had an air of vacancy and Kwan couldn't possibly imagine Danny living in it.

"You sure you live here?"

"Yep."

He sounded amused. Kwan didn't see why that was funny.

"Why's it all boarded up, then?"

"To keep people out. It doesn't work, though. People break in every few months."

"Why?"

"It's a haunted house. Home to the mad scientists that supposedly tore a hole into the ghost dimension. Why else would people try and break in?"

Kwan gaped at him. "It's haunted and you still live there?"

"To be fair, I'm technically the one haunting it."

"Huh?"

Danny didn't answer. Instead, he grabbed Kwan's shoulder and pulled him forward.

"This is going to be cold, but don't freak out."

Before he could respond, his entire body seized with numb, iciness. He gasped in shock, realizing that his entire body was cast in some kind of blue haze. Danny was pushing him towards the boarded-up door. He was going to hit his head on it. He was going to hit his head—

He passed through the door and was thrust into darkness. Danny let go of his shoulder and the icy feeling receded.

What the hell?

"Did we just go through the door?"

Danny nodded. "Mm-hm."

"How?"

"I phased us through." He said it like it was obvious.

"Yeah, but how?"

"I really thought you'd've guessed by now. I mean, you already know that I'm immortal."

It was like he was having fun dangling this over his head. Kwan still had no idea what Danny was going on about. Didn't he get that?

"I'm a ghost. Well, technically half-ghost."

At this point, if Danny told Kwan that he was God, he might actually believe him. At first, he thought that Danny was just another time traveler. But then apparently he's over a hundred years old and can't die. Now he's a ghost? What was today turning into?

In the darkness, Kwan could see Danny waving his hand in front of his face. "Earth to Kwan, you good?"

"Do you have any other mind-shattering secrets?"

"Oh, plenty," Danny laughed. "Why, do you want to hear them?"

"You're shitting me."

"Nope." Danny spun around and walked further into the darkness. Kwan could see the vague outlines of furniture, but not much else. All he knew for certain was that everything smelled like dust.

"Isn't there a light switch or something?"

"Not down here. I only live upstairs. I don't really bother with the downstairs anymore. So many people break into this place, that I don't really have a choice. It has to look like a haunted house, otherwise, people might get suspicious and wonder why my house looks lived in. It's fine though, I've blocked off the upstairs and rigged it to a generator. My own little annex."

"Isn't that the place where Anne Frank lived?"

"Sorta. It just means extra space."

Danny's voice was farther away now. Was Kwan supposed to follow him? He couldn't see. What if he walked into something?

"You coming, or what?"

"It's uh, dark." Kwan felt stupid saying it.

"Oh. That's right. I forget about my night vision sometimes, sorry."

Something grabbed his wrist. Kwan jerked back before he realized that it was just Danny. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears and the darkness still felt like it was closing in on him.

"You good, man?"

He forced a laugh. "Yeah."

Danny led him through the darkness to the other side of the room. This time, Danny warned him and they phased through the wall. It felt less disorienting than it had the first time but it still wasn't pleasant. On the other side of the wall, there was a staircase leading to the rest of the house. Kwan had to give it to Danny, it was pretty clever dividing the house up so he wasn't caught by trespassers and paranormal 'specialists'.

Danny opened the door to his bedroom and switched on the light. The first thing that Kwan noticed was that the walls were very blue. Danny had a few posters here and there, mostly of spaceships and sci-fi movies (some which hadn't even come out yet!), but Danny's royal wallpaper drew the eye like a moth to a flame. The color suited him and Kwan could see why he'd picked it.

The rest of Danny's room was cluttered with typical bedroom stuff, save for a few futuristic knick-knacks laying around. He had some kind of hybrid bed; it was somehow a couch and a bed that could slide up and down, so that was cool. It looked really comfortable, especially with that fluffy galaxy comforter. Kwas would probably never leave his room if he had a bed like that.

Beside his bed, Danny had lots of bookshelves. He never pegged Fenton for the reading type, so that took him off-guard. Then again, Danny was over a hundred-years-old so he'd probably found solace in books sometime in the past century. There were also a bunch of photos taped to the inside of the shelves; old, grainy pictures juxtaposed by fresh, glossy prints. Kwan caught glimpses of Danny's family and friends, purple caps and gowns, green wastelands, and futuristic cities... a timeline of Danny's life.

Kwan suddenly realized that he wasn't standing in the future anymore.

He was standing in someone else's past.

Everything was so surreal. Danny had lived more than a lifetime and had accumulated so many experiences that Kwan couldn't even begin to imagine. While his brain ran itself in circles, Danny strode across his bedroom and hop up on his bed with a sense of ease. He patted the mattress beside him.

"You can take a seat if you want."

If it were any other day, sitting next to Danny Fenton on his bed would be weird. Actually, no. It was still weird. To be honest, this was probably weirder if he was sitting next to sixteen-year-old Danny.

"Okay," he breathed.

The bed shifted under Kwan's weight and Danny leaned to the side so that they both had some legroom.

"So… you're probably wondering why I'm still alive."

That and everything else he'd let slip. "Yeah."

"Like I said, it's a long story. I guess it really started with Vlad Masters and my parents, but that'd take even longer to explain. Pretty much, you know the portal that my parents built? The one that let ghosts into the human world?"

"Who doesn't know about it?" Kwan cocked his head. "It's all they talk about besides catching Phantom."

He winced. "Man, you're really from the beginning, aren't you?"

"Huh?"

"Doesn't matter. Pretty much, the portal wasn't working right. So when I was a Freshman—the first time, anyway—I tried fixing it. And lucky me, I did it! Shocked me to hell and back. And I've been fourteen ever since."

Kwan was sure his eyes were the size of saucers. "Just like that? An electrocution?"

"I mean, if you want to go into technicalities... a lot more happened than just a shock. My entire body was infused with ectoplasm, which killed me pretty much instantly. But then the ectoplasm revived me, trapping me in some kind of suspended state between life and death. My body is alive, but I can't age and I can't die. I'm half-ghost, with ghost powers and the whole shebang."

Kwan tried to process what he was saying but his mind failed to grasp Danny's words.

"B—but how?"

"It's been ninety-four years and I still don't understand it. I like to think that I'm just a ghost with a heartbeat because that's not too far off the mark."

"So you… the Danny I go to school with in 2006 is already a ghost?"

"Yep. As soon as I realize what happened to me, I panicked. Sam and Tucker saw it happen, but we tried our best to keep it under wraps. I was so scared of my parents finding out about it all because you know how they acted around ghosts. Plus, at the time, I just thought that I was a human with ghost powers. I never imagined that I was immortal. I didn't figure the aging thing out until I was eighteen, and I found out that I couldn't die… when I was twenty-six?"

There was something in Danny's tone that Kwan didn't like. Something… indicative and self-deprecating. He wanted to ask how Danny found out he couldn't die, but Kwan wasn't that dumb. He knew that there were some subjects that you didn't ask about.

Instead, he opted for another question.

"But since you can't age… people noticed, didn't they? People will notice," he realized.

Danny nodded. "When I was nineteen, my parents started getting concerned that I wasn't growing or aging or anything. They wanted to take me to doctors and—and run all sorts of things. So, I came out to them. I told them exactly what had happened to me and what I'd been doing. They were really upset for a while. They got over it in a few months. After that, I dropped out of college and stayed home, helping them with the lab and stuff. I sorta stayed out of the public eye for as long as I could. As Fenton, anyway."

"'As Fenton?'"

Danny grinned and for a moment Kwan swore that his eyes flashed green.

"I guess I forgot to mention that part."

"What part?"

"The part where I accidentally became a superhero."

"What?"

He laughed. "Yeah. I was Phantom."

Danny… was Phantom? He couldn't see it. Phantom was so strong and witty. He was Amity Park's idol. Danny might be half-ghost, but there was no way that they could be the same person.

"Nuh-uh. I don't—you're bullshitting me. Seriously, this is too much."

"Want me to show you?"

He was amused. Why was he amused? There's no way that this could be true.

"You're making this up."

Danny stood in the middle of the room and raised his arms into the air. "Am I?" With that, a white ring circled around his waist and split. Two halos slid over Danny's clothes and changed them into some kind of black, glossy material. Kwan's breath hitched in his throat. Holy shit

Green eyes slid over blue, and white hair emerged in lieu of black. His face was the same. How had he never realized that their—his—face was the same?

"I think I'm gonna pass out."

Phantom's wisecrack grin played on his lips. "Good thing you're on a bed, then."

His head actually felt heavy. He'd never been this shocked before, but he was pretty sure this was what it felt like to go into cardiac arrest.

"This is fucking crazy."

"Welcome to my life.It never ends."

Did he just—?

Oh, God. He did. He made an immortality pun. This was definitely Phantom.

"You're the worst person I've ever met," he groaned.

Why did he have to make this so hard? Why was understanding Danny so damn difficult?

"I get that a lot, believe it or not."

"I think you're going to have to start over because I'm trying to process this and I just can't."

Phantom seemed to understand. He floated back over to the bed and shifted back into Danny, black hair and blue eyes. "Take your time."

If anything, that made Kwan's mind spiral even more. He leaned forward, digging his fingers into his hair.

"I know that you're half-ghost and I know that you're Phantom, but for some reason, I can't put the two together."

It didn't register. The idea that Danny Fenton was a superhero was ludicrous. Yet, he'd watched him change right in front of him. There was no denying it, he was just... denying it.

"I think it helps if you don't think of my ghost form as Phantom. Phantom is just a name I used. It was always me, I was playing the part of Phantom."

"But why do you… why do you do it? You're just a kid, like me. We always—I always thought that Phantom was some old spirit that protected Amity Park. You still go to school! And—and your parents go after you!"

Danny shrugged. "I mean, it's not really that different from what you thought. I protected Amity because I was strong enough and nobody else was going to do it. Sure, I did miss out on a lot. But I'm fourteen forever, so most of it's nothing I haven't made up already. Most, anyway."

He didn't know what to say to that. "Wow."

Danny was silent for a moment. From his solemn demeanor, Kwan wondered if he'd said something wrong, but after a few seconds, Danny shook his head.

"This is probably doesn't mean much from me, but life goes fast. So if you have the chance, don't miss out on things. Because sometimes it's something you'll never get back again, even with all the time in the world."

That was… heavy.

"Spoken like a true old man," he tried to ease the tension.

"I mean it, though," Danny insisted. "Sometimes that dance you thought you'd get… you never get it back. That wedding, graduation, or even just watching a movie—gone. You think that person will always be there for you, but they won't. I learned that lesson way too late. And then, I—" he choked, "—then I wasted so much time wallowing in my mistakes."

Kwan didn't want to overstep boundaries, but he couldn't help but ask.

'"Are you okay?"

"I am now. Mostly. It's just… you lose so many people in one-hundred and eight years. There was a time, where I tried everything to die. Literally, everything. I thought if I could be with them, that everything would be alright again. But the longer I tried to die, the more people died around me… and I… kept losing." He looked somewhere behind Kwan. He traced his gaze and realized he was looking at something on his bookshelf. "Live life to the fullest and don't let that time get away from you and the people you love."

Kwan could see it in his eyes. His pain, his regrets, his misery. Although, that wasn't all there was. Underneath it all… there was something warm, looking forward. He'd seen eyes like that before. His grandfather had served in World War II and had that same look. He'd pressed himself down into the trenches, surrounded by the corpses of his fallen comrades. He'd seen the horrors of war and loss, however, he was still one of the most jovial men than Kwan had ever known. Before he died, he told heartfelt anecdotes about the little things in life.

Deep down he was a sad person. But he learned from the darkness inside of him and grew to appreciate everything that life offered. That's what was in Danny's eyes. Something visceral, something honest.

"That's really good advice."

Danny brushed the back of his neck. "Eh, I probably said too much."

"No, no. You're fine."

"Oh, okay. So uh, do you have more questions?"

Kwan thought for a moment. He had so much that he didn't know that he didn't even know what to ask.

"If you're Phantom, how don't your parents know? And why haven't I noticed before? And is there anyone that knows? Am I allowed to tell you I know? Or is this gonna be like one of those sci-fi movies where you erase my memory—oh, God! Please don't erase my memory. Also, I was talking to this guy earlier and he said there aren't any ghosts in Amity anymore. What's with that?"

Danny chuckled. "First off, I really don't know why anyone didn't realize I was Phantom. I kinda made it obvious, running off whenever ghosts appeared and turning up again after a fight—usually injured. My parents thought I was contaminated for a while, which wasn't wrong I guess? Then uh, I'm not gonna erase your memory because I can't do that and the only ghosts I know that can wipe memories aren't that reliable."

"Whew, thank God."

"For letting me know… I don't think that you should change the timeline. From my recollection, you've never known my secret. So you should pretend that you don't know my secrets and that you never traveled to the future. If anything, you could always pretend to 'discover' my secret, but don't tell past-me about the future. I'll freak out."

"Oh, okay."

Kwan was horrible at keeping secrets. Paulina said so, and she was the worst at keeping secrets! Once Paulina knew something, the entire school knew within a day. So if Kwan blew this, Danny was doomed.

I can't mess this up, then.

"For your last question, that goes back to around the time my Dad died. My Mom wasn't able to deal with all the ghosts coming out of the portal anymore, not with Dad gone. She didn't want to continue their research, especially after what it did to me, so she shut it down for good."

"So you quit fighting ghosts?"

"Oh, no. I'd already retired the hero gig by then. I kept it up for ten years before the public campaigned for more reliable ghost hunters, so I just handed it off to them. Protecting people was what kept my ghost half grounded, but by the time the police organized a Ghost Unit I was so sick of fighting. Then, when Mom shut the portal down, the Ghost Unit dissolved altogether. Amity Park hasn't been haunted in nearly sixty years, excluding me."

"And nobody believes in ghosts anymore, either?"

"Not many people remember. The young folks think that it's just an old superstition or some kind of tourist bullshit. Every once in a while… they say if you visit the park at night, you'll see a ghost with white hair and green eyes, though. The Amity cryptid."

"You—you're kidding me."

He laughed. "I get bored sometimes, and I like stargazing."

"Jeez, do you know how hard it's going to be for me to go back to my own time and not tell everyone that Danny Fenton is an immortal, half-ghost, cryptid in the future?"

"I'm sure you can do it. After all, you managed to hold your tongue all throughout Senior year that Dash had a thing for Zac Efron."

"H—he does?"

"Yeah, and it was great. There had to be better ways to come out, but nope. Three weeks before graduation, he let it slip to Paulina that he had the hots for Troy Bolton. The entire school knew within an hour. I figure that there was no way that you didn't know, being his best-friend and all. So, I trust you."

"Thanks."

Danny glanced at a device on his nightstand, some kind of futuristic clock thing. "It's getting late. We should probably try and get you home now. I mean, not that I want you gone. It's nice having someone… back from my childhood. But I don't want you to feel stuck here, or anything. Or to find out too much about the future."

Kwan didn't want to leave, but he didn't want to disagree with Danny either. "Alright."

"I have a friend in the Ghost Zone, Clockwork. He's the Master of Time and can send you straight back to the past."

"Didn't you say your Mom shut down the portal?"

Danny grinned. "I have my ways. Once she died, I figured out how the open the portal temporarily and set it on a timer. Took a few months of hardcore engineering, so I guess it's good I learned the basics before I dropped out of college."

Danny led him back into the main part of the house. He'd cut off the lab from the rest of the house—just like he'd done with the upstairs—to keep it safe. Together, they phased through the wall into the lab. Kwan hated to admit it, but the first thing he did when Danny turned on the lights was scream.

"Why is there a skeleton in a lawn chair?"

Danny eyed the skeleton in the center of the room. "Oh, I forgot about him."

Holy shit, did Fenton starve someone to death down here? Holy shit, holy SHIT—

"Just in case someone knocked down the wall and broke into the lab, I set this up as a joke. I got it from Halloween Express… eight years ago?"

"Oh." Luckily, he was just a shitty prankster. "I thought you'd killed someone."

He scoffed. "Like I'd put their body on display. I'm a 'bury-the-body-in-the-woods' kind of guy."

Kwan laughed, then paused. "You are kidding, right?"

"No, Kwan. Obviously, my moral compass has degraded over the past century and I've turned to homicide. I'm—I'm a serial ghost. Phantom of the uh, shit, what's an opera pun?"

"Opera?"

He sighed. "Just forget it."

"Oh, okay."

Danny moved to the back of the lab and started fiddling with a control panel beside an empty cavity in the wall. "You might want to step back because once the portal turns on, it can get a bit unpredictable."

Knowing that the portal was what made Danny immortal in the first place, Kwan pressed himself against the furthest wall possible. Danny pulled a lever and green light erupted all throughout the lab. In the eye of the explosion, reality pulled itself apart at the seams and the portal filled the cavity in the wall—just as it was made to.

Kwan was pretty sure his jaw was on the floor. That was… spectacular. It reminded him of one of those light shows he'd watched as a kid!

"I don't mean to rush us, but we have two hours before this closes."

He stretched his arms over his head and swiftly transformed into Phantom. The change wasn't as jarring as last time, but it still threw Kwan off-guard. He blinked a few times, trying to solidify the idea that Danny was Phantom.

Phantom floated forward and wrapped his arm around Kwan's back. "We gotta go fast, so I really hope you don't get motion sick."

Kwan didn't know what that meant and he wasn't sure that he wanted to know. And then, Phantom pulled Kwan into the air and leaned into the portal. The world passed in blurs of green and it took him a good twenty seconds to realize that he was flying.

Oh my God, I'm flying? What?

He was pretty sure he'd left his stomach back in the lab because he couldn't even feel it at this point.

"You good?" Phantom asked.

Kwan's response was unintelligible.

"Cool."

Dude…

They didn't fly as long as Kwan had anticipated, which was a relief. They reached Clockman's Tower in about ten minutes. It was a tall, green structure that actually looked like a grandfather clock—so that was cool. Phantom phased through them through the wall and they landed in a room full of more clock knick-knacks.

"Your friend really has a hard-on for clocks."

For a moment, Phantom's face was unreadable and Kwan wondered if his joke hadn't been all that funny. Then, someone spoke behind him.

"That's not the worst first impression I've received, but that still stings."

Kwan felt himself blush. Did he just… say that in front of the dude? Yikes. He turned behind him and came face to face with a floating kid in a purple cloak. Oh, he'd said that about a kid—double yikes.

"Then again, Daniel tried to fight me the first time we met, so the bar is pretty low."

Phantom pressed his hand to head. "Do you always have to bring that up?"

"It's a fond memory. It was amusing watching you slam into my bell over and over."

"There's so many things I could say right now, but I don't have time for another argument with you. Clockwork, this is Kwan. Kwan, this is Clockwork."

Kwan held his hand out to shake, but Clockwork just floated past him.

"I know why he's here."

Phantom didn't falter. "Right. So, you'll send him back to his time?"

"Well, that's where it gets a little complicated. You know how my medallions work, correct?"

Suddenly, Clockwork's form shimmered and he transformed into an adult. Kwan gaped at the change, but Phantom acted as if nothing had happened.

"Yeah, whenever you send someone into a time that's not their own, they have to wear the medallion to stay displaced. Once they take it off, they're zapped back into their natural time."

"Exactly. My powers are limited. I can't permanently displace someone in time."

"So… where's the problem?"

"Kwan traveled into the future through a ghost portal. This is his natural time, now."

"Oh."

"So if he wants to stay in his own time, he'll have to wear a time medallion for the rest of his life."

They'd lost him. "Wear a what?"

Phantom turned to him. "A time medallion. It's this necklace that lets you stay in another time—if you take it off, you'll be sent back to the time you've come from. Since you're coming from this time, you can't take it off. Like, ever. Or you'll be sent back here."

"Oh. I don't really mind but I feel like I'll accidentally take it off or something," Kwan flustered.

"Yeah… that's kinda an unrealistic expectation. I'm pretty sure it's made of metal, so you're screwed if you have to go through any security checkpoints."

He had a point. "Well, is there any alternative?"

Phantom frowned. "I mean… there was that one time that, uh, with my evil future self. You know? He phased the medallion into me and I got stuck for a while? We could try that with Kwan."

Clockwork cocked his head to the side and shifted into an old man. "Daniel, he's human. You can't just… phase random objects into his body. That could pierce one of his meat cores."

"Do you mean organs?"

Kwan followed the ghosts' conversation with something akin to horror. "I—I don't think I want anything piercing my organs."

Phantom sighed. "I guess that's fair."

"If you give me some time, I may be able to build a more compact version of the medallion technology, something that could be embedded underneath his skin," Clockwork offered. "Although, that would take months. He'll still have to wear the medallion in the meantime."

"But you're the ghost of time! Can't you just make one right now? Or borrow one from the future?"

Clockwork rolled his eyes. "It's time technology, Daniel. Sometimes even I have to do things the long way."

"That's really inconvenient." He gravitated back towards Kwan. "You're okay with wearing the medallion, for now, right?"

He shrugged. "I don't think I have a choice?"

"Eh, I guess you don't."

Clockwork led them to another room, with lo and behold, more clocks. With a flourish, he pulled a clunky, gray medallion with a gold rim off of its hook on the wall. At least it didn't look trashy. It didn't look like it'd attract much attention either—he could stuff it under his shirt and nobody would ever notice. It could be a pain during football season, but that was future Kwan's problem.

He accepted the medallion from Clockwork and slipped it around his neck. Phantom floated to the side, lost in thought. "It kind of suits you."

"Thanks?"

Clockwork coughed. "Kwan. You understand that you won't be able to take this off for as long as you wear it, right? Under no circumstances. Otherwise, you'll be pulled straight back into the future and will have to harass Daniel into returning you to my tower."

Phantom crossed his arms. "He won't have to 'harass' me—"

"Yeah, I get it. And this is only temporary. Once you finish a smaller version, you'll stick it in me like some kinda chip."

"Indeed. I expect that you're ready to return, now?"

Return.

Return back to his time, back to his life. Back to 2006. Where Danny Fenton was sixteen, a teenage superhero under the guise of one of Kwan's peers. A boy that had eons ahead of him, unbeknownst to anyone but Kwan. And he couldn't say anything about it to anyone. Not even Danny himself.

Was he ready?

"I think so."

Not at all.

Phantom's face softened. "It was good seeing you again, Kwan. It's kinda ironic—I spend all day with high schoolers, but I've forgotten what it's really like to be sixteen with the rest of my life ahead of me. You're—" his voice cracked, "I think I needed a blast from my past. Thank you."

Kwan didn't know Danny at all. He'd learned so much about him today, but he was still a mystery. So why did he feel like crying?

"You're welcome."

Clockwork twirled his staff and suddenly the world blurred around him. Everything looked like it was underwater, rippled and distorted. The last thing that Kwan saw before it all went black was Phantom—Danny—smiling.

At that moment, Kwan knew that he would carry that smile within him like a torch. If Danny could shoulder an endless future with that kind of smile, then surely Kwan could embrace that warmth in his own future.

Because what's life if you don't live it to the fullest?

[hauntingyourself]

Merry holiday truce @cyroclastic!

You asked for blob ghosts interacting with other characters than Danny :)

[qhostbyrd]

Gosh this is last minute, but here’s my Holiday/Christmas Truce gift for @wanna-bee-artsy!! They asked for somethin with Dan, Dani, and Danny hanging out. I’m really sorry its not much !! ended up getting swamped in Dec. with some college application stuff. I had something else in the works, but my art program was crashing because of some new virus protection software my dad put on my computer yesterday, and it corrupted a lot of stuff i was workin on. Was gonna post this back on the 30th but I couldn’t find your @ ;0;” The BG is from a screencap of Clockwork’s lair that I painted over w/ some extra details. I really hope ya like it though! Its Jan 1st here right now, so happy new year too! Hope you had a good holiday!

[artisticallygay]

I'd like to wish a Happy Holidays to @five-rivers, my Holiday Truce giftee! I went with your request of “Platonic Danny and Clockwork (Lost Time), especially with a mentor/student or parent/child relationship."

I had so much fun making it, and I hope you have a great 2020!

And the separate frames!