Taking Flight

Taking Flight

It's kind of odd, looking back on my life. It's not exactly been a long one, and not exactly normal either, though that isn't important. It's had its ups and its downs. But I gotta say, it's great, and getting better.

My name is Danielle Phantom, or Dani, with an “i.” I'm half-girl, half-ghost, a clone of Danny Fenton made by Vlad Masters. I can be in either form I want, and like Danny, I have ghost powers, like flight, invisibility, and going through things. I look like I'm twelve, but really I'm around a year or so, I think - I'm not great with math. Most of that time, I've been on my own, traveling where I want and doing what I please.

Being a clone, I could be unhappy, or mad at Danny or Vlad. But I'm not – at least at Danny, and I'm mad at Vlad for reasons that have nothing to do with me being a clone. But really, being a clone never really has bothered me. Even though Danny and I are so alike, we look alike, we like the same things, have the same powers, even my name, Danielle, is a more girly version of Daniel. Maybe it's just because when I was created, Vlad made it so clear I wasn't him. Danny always has seemed just different from me. The way I see it, we really are cousins, not clones.

It doesn't mean that being a clone hasn't complicated my life at all. Not many people have had to literally pull themselves together, but I used to have to do it on a daily basis. Until pretty recently, I was  genetically unstable, and if I wasn't careful or used my powers too much, I would start dissolving into ectoplasmic goo. And then there's the fact about why I was created.

Like I said, Vlad Masters made me, along with several other Danny clones. I guess you could say that makes him my “dad,” but if you ask me, all he did was show me what dads aren't supposed to do. He ordered me around like some kind of servant, had me chased and attacked, even nearly killed me once.  Like the other clones, Vlad only really thought I was a mistake, an imperfection. He didn't want a daughter who turned to goo if she used her powers too much. He wanted a son, just like Danny.

Not that I knew this at the time. Because Vlad actually acted like a father to me, at first. I was the only clone he'd made with free will, with my own thoughts and mind, and he'd treated me with care and respect. When he asked me to help capture the real Danny Phantom, I wanted to do it. Vlad had made me, he cared about me, so what was the problem? I don't have any of Danny's memories, so all I learned, I learned from Vlad, and the programs he had to teach me. I used those to find Danny's house, and there I waited.

Then I met Danny, and the thing about my cousin that I couldn't help noticing, right off, is that he's a pretty cool guy. Part of it's the cloning, I know, but we have so much in common. He likes NASA, Dumpty Humpty, and he has great comic books. And there's the whole “ghost powers,” thing...

He was a lot smarter than Vlad gave him credit for, I think. My excuse for being there didn't satisfy him. I had to stall a lot, until one of my “siblings” was able to start the next part of the plan, where I was able to reveal my ghost powers to Danny. In that part, at least, Vlad was right. Danny suspected that something was off, but he didn't think enough of it to do more than want to ask me questions, something that I managed to hold off by pretending to faint.

The next day, I popped up – literally – at lunch, surprising Danny and his friends. It probably wasn't a great first impression for them, but it was funny! And then Vlad came, with another one of my siblings, and I helped him defeat Danny, which may seem odd given how much fun we'd been having together. But things were simpler in my head then. My dad needed Danny for something, and he needed my help.

It wasn't until we were back in Vlad's lab in Colorado that I first began to discover things weren't all as simple as I thought they were. I overheard Vlad talking to Danny about my siblings. Imperfections, he called them. Mistakes. Then he showed the clone that he was working on, who needed Danny's DNA to be complete. At that moment, I suddenly was afraid. If that was the clone that Vlad was working so hard on, was I one of the ones he considered a mistake? Did he really care about me at all? And then I saw what happened to my sibling, the one who tried to overshadow Danny. Seeing that, seeing how he just dissolved into nothing, terrified me.

I confronted  my father, and he reassured me, telling me how he needed Danny's DNA to stabilize me. I believed him, even stood up for him to Danny, whose words echoed my earlier fears. But soon enough, Danny's beliefs and my fears turned out to be all too true. If Vlad was truly a father to me, if he truly cared, he wouldn't have put my life on the line. He wouldn't think that the reason for my existence was only to serve him. He forgot that I wasn't my siblings, mindlessly obeying his commands. I had my own thoughts and feelings, and if he didn't care if I was killed trying to get what he wanted, then I wasn't going to help him. I set Danny free, and together we faced Vlad down.

And even then, even when we'd been fighting before, Danny showed how much he cared about me, despite what I'd done to him. I'd helped Vlad capture him, twice, but when I turned on my father, he defended me. And when his friends came to save him, it really sank in. I was free of my father now, free of  his lies and illusions.

So I returned the favor, overshadowing Danny's mom and teacher so that they wouldn't get into trouble for helping me. I wish I could have told them how much they really had, but it wasn't something I really understood then. After that, though, I left. I wasn't about to try to fit myself into Danny's life, especially since his parents didn't know about him being a ghost yet or anything. Besides, I knew so little. I wanted to explore the world, see what I wanted to see, do whatever I wanted to do, and learn what I could. So with after telling Danny I'd see him again, I flew off dramatically.

The fight with Vlad left me pretty tired, but life at first on my own was fun, and simple. I mostly flew from place to place, learning about the world and taking care of myself. I tried to take it easy, to conserve my strength. I knew I was still unstable, but I hoped that the longer I existed that maybe I would get in the practice of being stable, or that I'd be able to get myself so that I didn't have to worry about falling apart unless I used my powers too much. But it didn't work. My strength kept getting weaker and weaker, and every day it felt like more of it was going into literally just pulling myself together. I had to do some things I wasn't proud of, like stealing food, just to keep myself alive. What was worse, Vlad was looking for me. Occasionally I would have to either run from or fight  ghosts that were looking for me on his behalf. As time passed, I had to run more and more, as I lost the ability to use several of my powers without risking dissolving.

Finally I knew that I wouldn't last much longer on my own, and Danny was the only one who I could trust, the only one who had any chance at saving me. It took a while, but I finally made it back to Amity Park. I tried to lay low, but somehow Vlad found out that I was there, and set a ghost hunter on me. He fed her some lie, apparently, that I was going to destroy him. She didn't know I was half human, though, because the only reason she was able to catch me was because I had to reveal myself to save her from some falling debris in an abandoned building she chased me into, thinking I was being chased by ghosts instead of actually being one. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.

I was terrified when she caught me, especially when she said she was going to give me to Vlad. I told her how he was going to kill me, but she didn't seem to believe it until I mentioned Danny. I wish that I'd been more suspicious, because I found out Vlad wasn't the only person who could fool me. The hunter let me go, saying she wanted to meet Danny, when really she only wanted to capture him too. When I found out she'd tricked me, I tried to stop her, but she hit me with something that knocked me out. The only good thing that came out of all of it is that at least Danny knew I was in trouble.

I woke up next on Vlad's operating table, with him welcoming me home. He checked my stability, and seemed surprised at how I'd lasted longer than my siblings, despite being just as unstable. For one moment, I wondered if I could have been wrong. Did he really care about me after all? Had he made something that would stabilize me? But no, he corrected me soon enough. He just wanted to see what had made me different, so he could keep perfecting his “perfect” clone. And to do that, he would have to make me dissolve so that he could study what was left of me. I would have done something, anything to stop him, but at that point, I was so weak it took all of my energy to hold myself together.

I'd almost given up hope by the time Vlad strapped me to the machine that would dissolve me, until his hologram version of Danny's mom pointed out that Danny and the ghost hunter were flying towards Vlad's mansion. I held on, knowing that Danny would save me if I could just keep myself together until he got there. Only when they got close enough, Vlad turned on the machine that would make me dissolve. Danny tried to free me, but he couldn't break the metal strips holding me there. Then he pulled out and sprayed me with it, saying it was our last hope. But at that point, I could feel it, more than ever, the melting, falling apart that came whenever I was dissolving. It was too late, I was sure of it, even as I fell into the puddle of ectoplasm that had been forming beneath me. But then suddenly, I can't describe it, but I felt it. I felt myself coming back together. It had worked, whatever Danny had used, it worked. I poked my head up, but seemed miserable, thinking I was dead. But when I jumped up out of the puddle of ectoplasm, I knew I wouldn't have to worry about dissolving every again.

After thanking Danny and the hunter, I left off again, knowing what I'd told Danny was true: Nothing could hurt me now. It was like the freedom I'd had before, only double. I could fly, I could do anything I wanted to now, without having to worry that I'd dissolve into nothing. I traveled more, learned a lot about myself and the world, even did a little small-time ghost-fighting here and there. It didn't last all that long, though.

I did my best to keep an eye on Danny, finding newspapers where I could and watching TVs through windows, and it was watching a TV through someone's window that I saw the Disasteriod. I watched angrily as Vlad made his offer to save the world, then tried and failed. All the while, I wanted to know why Danny was doing nothing. He'd never taken the sidelines before, especially not on something like this. When I saw him, as Vlad was executing his plan, he seemed different, and in more ways than just the silver streak in his hair. I was supposed to be his clone, and we had so much in common, but at that moment, while I watched him along with the rest of the world, he felt like a stranger.

And then suddenly, he was back. He had a plan, to do the opposite of what Vlad had, to turn the whole Earth intangible, so the asteroid would pass right through it. I found him, caught him at the South Pole, right before he was about to leave for the Ghost Zone. I told him I wanted in, I wanted to help. He told me that it was dangerous, that it take more energy than ever before, but I insisted. I reminded him that I wasn't going to turn into a puddle of goo anymore, and that it was my world too, and that he would need all the help he could get. He gave in.

He was right. It took more energy than I ever could have imagined, trying to hold the intangibility for those long seconds that the asteroid hurtled through Earth. But it was worth it, to see that asteroid come shooting out from beneath our feet, past us into space.

After the asteroid passed us and we turned tangible again, I remember flying up to Danny and giving him a hug, celebrating. My cousin had saved the world, and I was so proud of him, and of everyone. It was so incredible, to think that I was there, that I helped do it, that I was a part of that. I stayed and watched from afar as Danny flew down to his family and friends, and revealed his true identity to the world. Maybe I'll do that too, someday, when the time is right.

But for now, I'm still on my own. Maybe the world is ready to accept Danny Phantom, but the world doesn't even know about me yet. Besides, when I'm alone, like I am now, I can fly. I can fly high and far, where no one and nothing can catch me. That thing, the freedom I've come to appreciate so much in my life, I wouldn't trade for anything in the world.

Let Danny have the spotlight all he wants. That's why he's Danny and I'm Dani, with an “i.”