I know the writing sucks for the first so many chapters. If you hang on, the ride gets much better. For one thing, the sequel is loads better (in my humble opinion, that is)!

Danny's age is sixteen here because two summers (one in Reality Trip and the other in the Claw of the Wild) have passed since the beginning of the show so I'm reasoning that he's sixteen.

Summary: Post-Phantom Planet. Danny's having a hard time adjusting to his new popularity and the ghosts aren't helping matters either. But what happens when an enemy from his past, or rather his future, returns?

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Danny Phantom.

The Return

Chapter 1: Prologue

"DANNY!" a mob of excited voices called.

Sixteen-year-old Danny Fenton stopped in his tracks and turned around to see a crowd of fan girls closing him in. He sighed as he realized that he would again be late to school.

It had been several weeks since he, Amity Park's town hero, had recruited hundreds of ghosts to turn the earth intangible to allow an enormous asteroid to phase right through. Since then, he had trouble adjusting to his new popularity with the girls.

"Will you go out with me?" several voices cried out.

"Sorry." Danny put his hands up and backed away. "I'm taken."

It was true that he was taken as Samantha Manson, a Gothic girl who helped his ghost half capture ghosts, was his newfound girlfriend.

"Now if you'll excuse me"—the raven-haired teenager backed up some more—"I'm going to be late to school."

The halfa ran away as soon as he finished his sentence, the fan girls hot on his tail. His earlier remark hadn't even fazed them. In fact, it seemed to fuel their desire.

'Oh, well,' he thought, 'at least the reporters have stopped bugging me.'

After he had first revealed his secret, Danny and his family had been plagued by the pests. But due to a little "persuasion" on Danny's part, they left the Fentons alone. At least, that was what Danny thought. He never knew when an incognito reporter would show up and ask him questions disguised as friendly remarks. When that happened, he normally got a nasty shock the next day when he saw the newspaper.

Ten minutes later…

"You're late, Mr. Fenton," Mr. Lancer, his overweight teacher said.

"Sorry," the boy puffed out. Not wanting to transform into his ghost half, he had taken all the back routes he knew to evade the crazy girls.

"You know," the teacher continued, "you could have taken the limo." He pointed out the window to a long, sleek car parked outside.

"I wanted to walk," Danny muttered, sitting down and putting down his backpack.

"In any case"—Mr. Lancer turned back to the board—"as I was saying before, the Middle Ages are steeped in folklore. You won't have much trouble finding stories about brave knights vanquishing dragons from those days."

"How are the fan girls?" Tucker Foley, Danny's best friend, asked. This inconspicuous African American boy was also Amity Park's mayor.

"Crazy," Danny whispered, winking at Sam, who was seated behind him. Before Tucker could reply, a blue wisp escaped from Danny's mouth. It was his ghost sense.

"BEWARE!" a loud voice shouted. Everyone, except for Danny and his friends, jumped. "For I am the Box Ghost!" A chubby blue man phased through the board Mr. Lancer had been writing on, thoroughly shocking the pot-bellied man. "Beware of my cardboard boxes of doom!" he shouted, flailing his arms.

"Not you again," Danny groaned, aware that all eyes were on him. He got up after taking a thermos out from his backpack. "Can't you annoy me some other time?"

"I am the Box Ghost!" the ghost repeated. "You cannot trap me in your cylindrical container!"

"Wanna bet?"

A blue light was emitted from the thermos and trapped the Box Ghost. The annoying ghost was sucked in forcefully with a wail. Danny hadn't even bothered to transform during the encounter.

"Woo-hoo!" Dash Baxter, school bully and football jock, cheered. The rest of the class followed.

"They have no idea what kind of ghosts you've had to fight," Sam said amidst the noise.

"Yeah. Remember Plasmius?" Tucker reminded them.

"He's stuck in space last time I checked," Danny commented.

"Quiet, class!" Mr. Lancer called.

No one listened. They were all too busy cheering for Danny.

The next few minutes were then wasted as the teacher attempted to get the class under control again.

'It's going to be another long day,' the three friends realized.

"Jack!" Madeline Fenton scolded. She glared at her large husband. "That's tonight's dinner so keep your hands off!"

Jack guiltily removed his hand from the meatloaf.

"Now, sweetie, why don't you work on one of our projects?"

"Good idea, Maddie!" Jack brightened up. "I've got this belt I've been working on that'll be sure to help Danny during his ghost fighting!" He held up a silvery belt that had various storage units, including one for the Fenton Thermos Danny always carried around.

"That's nice, Jack. Make sure that it'll tune in with his powers." Maddie turned back to the cake she was attempting to bake. "You don't want his location to be given away when he's invisible if that belt doesn't turn invisible, too, without his conscious desire."

"Another good idea!" Jack ran down the stairs to the lab. "I'll get working on that straight away!"

"Now, to make sure that the cake doesn't try to eat us," Maddie said, reaching for the sugar.

"Thank goodness that's over," Danny told his friends. They were outside the school sitting on a tree branch after school was over. "Wanna fly home?"

"Actually, if it's all right with you," Tucker said, jumping down, "I'd like to take the limo. Not that your flying is bad or anything, dude," he added hastily, seeing Danny's face. "It's just that I've got some stuff to take care of."

"Okay," Danny said. He turned to Sam and was relieved to see her eager face.

"I'd love to go flying with you. Just don't crash into any helicopters, okay?" Sam said.

"Will do." With that, a bluish-white ring formed around Danny's waist. It split into two and one went up while the other went down, changing his shirt and blue jeans into a black jumpsuit with a DP emblem on the chest. His black hair changed into white and his normally blue eyes transformed into an electric green. To top it all off, his whole entire body glowed with a bluish-white ghostly aura. "I'll turn us both invisible and intangible. That should serve us well."

Danny held Sam around the waist and lifted them off the ground, leaving Tucker behind, clutching his PDA.

"Hey!" Tucker protested. "What about me?" Then he slapped his hand to his forehead, remembering. "Oh, yeah, I didn't want to go. Chauffeur!"

"You called?" a gray-haired man arrived at the young mayor's side in an instant.

"Take me to the Town Hall, will you? I've got some stuff to take care of."

"Yes, sir."

Deep within the Ghost Zone, a familiar mechanical ghost floated in the air, the endless green space serving as his background. He was studying his cannons at the moment and seemed unaware of his girlfriend, Ember, floating with him.

"So when are you going to get him?" Ember said, bored. She looked like a punk teenager except that her eyes were green and her hair looked like bluish-white flames.

"Soon," Skulker grunted. His hair was a fiery green. "I have only a few more supplies needed before that ghost boy's pelt adorns my walls."

"Whatever." Ember rolled her eyes. "Just try not to make a mess."

"Out of the town or the boy?"

"The boy. The town I couldn't care less about," Ember said. "I don't want his ectoplasm all over our floors."

"I'll do my best. That is, if he doesn't resist too much."

Ember raised an eyebrow. "Why do I have trouble believing you?"

Skulker only grinned and shot a rock that looked suspiciously Danny's ghost form. He blasted it to smithereens. His laugh echoed through the Ghost Zone as his prey flew through the sky, holding his girlfriend safely to his side. Neither could have known what the Ghost Zone's greatest hunter had in store for a certain halfa.

EDIT (07/23/11): Just polishing up the chapters for this story. It makes me wince to read my writing from several years back... I'm really planning on completely redoing this story.

Review please?