Disclaimer: "I do not own Danny Phantom" said while beating away lawyers with a stick

Phantom had changed.

The people of Amity Park could sense it. Even the people who had only seen him once or twice knew he was different. He still fought off the ghosts and protected the town (not that his enemies among the public would admit it). He still patrolled the sky and frightened the people. It was his aura that had changed, his demeanor, but most of all was his eyes.

His once soft and innocent eyes were now hard with a never ending diligence. Once they danced playfully, looking for distractions and fun while patrolling. Now they searched only for the next fight. These eyes were cold, challenging, ready to completely destroy any who dared oppose him.

Phantom had changed.

Tonight Phantom flew over the warehouse district; little more than a cluster of storage sheds in a town this size. He flew quickly over the rooftops, head turning methodically trying to find it. Phantom knew it was around here. He had felt it enter this dimension like siren in his head. An enemy was in his territory and he would destroy it.

A blue mist could be seen coming from Phantom's mouth as he suddenly turned left and phased through a large warehouse roof. He returned to the visible spectrum crouching in the middle of the work floor. It would come to him from here, it always did. This would be the last time.

"BEWARE! I am the Box Ghost!"

A month ago Phantom would have groaned, tonight he glared. Floating before him was a well rounded spectral factory worker sporting boots and overalls. It froze there in its signature pose, hands high, fingers flexed and knees bent. It waited silently for Phantom's response. None came...

"BEWARE!" the box ghost screamed expectantly.

"Leave" Phantom glared as he spoke in a hushed menacing tone, his hands glowing with untold amounts of ectoplasmic energy.

The box ghost seemed dumbfounded. No groaning, no witty banter, not even a thermos!

"I will never leave, this world is full of boxes. And boxes are mine to control, no box can resist my pow-

The poor box ghost was not given a chance to finish. His rant was cut short by a concentrated blast of glowing green energy to the chest. He was violently sent flying almost fifteen feet into the nearest row of crates. 'What did I do?' he wondered, 'me and phantom aren't friends but he would never attack without warning. He usually complains a bit then sucks him in a thermos and that's that. Nobody gets hurt, that hasn't happened in years.' Nobody had told the Box Ghost about what had happened, and it would cost him his afterlife.

Phantom was standing above him in an instant. He glared down at his victim with his new cold eyes and felt only anger. He had told him to leave, The Box Ghost had refused, now there was no mercy. Phantom charged a ghost ray in his hand and fired it into the cowering ghost's chest. The ghost ray was both continuous and powerful. It ate through the now screaming ghost and slowly, excruciatingly slowly burning him away into nothing. And the Box Ghost was no more.

Phantom then flew home. Not that anyone would call it a home, in fact Phantom himself would not call it a home. It was a haunt, a tie down. It was the one thing in this world that Phantom could claim as his. And there he sat, brooding in his obsession. In the Amity Park Cemetery, on a tombstone labeled "Danny Fenton".