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Danny lets the transformation wash over him, and everyone cheers. His parents embrace him.
They love him. They don’t care that he’s Phantom. He just saved the world and now everyone knows that the ghost that saved the world is actually Danny Fenton.
The whole world is watching. They’re all cheering for him. It’s so different from what he’s used to. He’d thought the world would never accept him. That they could never accept ghosts as anything other than monsters. At most he was tolerated. Maybe things wold have eventually gotten better as his generation grew up. They supported Phantom.
But now, after he had saved the world, they all loved him.
For fifteen minutes everything is wonderful. For fifteen glorious minutes the world celebrates, they praise him, his parents hug him.
Then the GIW show up.
Then people are screaming. HIs parents try to protect him, but the GIW are numerous and they aren’t afraid to shoot anyone who is ‘standing in the way of the law’ and ‘obstructing justice.’
In the end, Danny is held down, glowing bands are snapped around his wrists, his ankles, his throat, and a metal gag forces his mouth closed. He can’t even scream as he’s dragged away from the forms of his fallen parents. He doesn’t even know if they’re still alive, if Jazz or his friends are alive.
He had fifteen minutes of acceptance, of love, of hope that things would be better. And in fifteen minutes he’s lost everything.
And he’s going to lose more.
Will anyone even search for him? His friends and Jazz would. His parents might.
If any of them are even alive.
He mourns.
He doesn’t know how long it takes to get him to a secure GIW facility, he doesn’t know where he’s at. He doesn’t think it matters.
The cuffs drain him of his powers, and the collar sparks electricity into his veins.
But the worst pain comes from the very center of his being, from his core.
He hadn’t really been sure what his obsession was, if it was protection or space.
Frostbite had told him it might have been both, so very little was known about halfas.
And now he had failed to protect those he loved, and he was being locked away from the great expanse of space. And his core ached.
The GIW don’t waste any time. Danny thinks only fifteen minutes have passes since he entered the facility, and already they’re strapping him down to the table.
Danny wishes what followed only took fifteen minutes.
And what followed after that.
And that
And that
And that
And that
And that
He doesn’t know how long he’s been here anymore. He doesn’t know how long he’ll be here. Is anyone coming for him?
In the end, fifteen months go by before he sees the light of the sun again.
It is Ellie who comes for him, with allies from the Zone.
She tells him that the Anti-Ecto Laws had been outlawed, but that the GIW had been working under the radar.
She keeps apologizing. Danny can’t bring himself to say anything at all.
He follows her into the Zone where she takes him to see Frostbite, the ghost they pass all stare at him. He keeps his eyes forward.
He doesn’t know how long it is before he falls into a fitful sleep.
He dreams of those glorious fifteen minutes when everything was wonderful, but soon his dreams change to all that followed after.
Far off in the distance, a being gazes into a screen. His core aches, but the timestream is more important than anything.
Afterall, fifteen months is not much when compared to the immortal life of the next Infinite King.