Wheels in Motion

Summary: As a protector, he held very little leeway. His duty, after all, was simply to protect. He had no power, just the responsibility to protect. Which, contrary to the beliefs of the Association, was all the power he needed.

Disclaimer: I, Inky Perspective, make no claims to the rights of Danny Phantom. Nor do I have any desire to, as I am content with merely exploring the worlds and scenarios in which the characters reside in.

Prologue:

Her fingers twitched as she watched the pencil roll down the desk, as though it were held in a case of permanent slow motion. From across the room she could hear the sound of a beaker breaking over the shrill shouting of her lab partner as the beaker shattered on the linoleum floor. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Tucker Foley rushing to get the teacher, inevitably stumbling into at least two desks and one lab station, his shoe lace getting snagged on an open backpack. She could feel her lab partner, Danny Fenton, tugging on her sleeve, attempting to draw her attention to the impending chaos. Inhaling slowly, she could smell the fumes of the gases that had been left alone for far too long in the distraction the dropped beaker had caused.

She briefly wondered if she should mention to Danny that she had seen Connor Ambrose slip a reactant - of what, she couldn't be certain - into one of the beakers, causing a toxin to unfurl in dark clouds.

As she opened her mouth to speak, mere seconds too late, there was a flash of light; the screams of her classmates followed a heartbeat later.

The city of Amity Park, Indiana mourned the loss of classroom five-oh-five the following week. The health report claimed of an unidentified toxin originating in the classroom. By the time anyone would have noticed it, they said, it would have already been too late: They had already inhaled the contaminant. Some health officials even dared to suggest that it had probably been merciful that the realization had not come until too late. At the cost of their lives, the students and lone administrator had ultimately saved the rest of the building; had they opened the door, the toxin could have spread, contaminating everyone else in the school.

In their deaths, the students of second period chemistry at Casper High School, room five hundred and five, were heroes.

Eventually, though, time passed - as it always does - and the citizens of Amity began to recover. Families mourned, some moved away while others gradually began to heal. Months passed - years - and it wasn't long before the event was just a distant memory, a scar, on the history of Amity Park.

If only the health officials knew that the toxin wasn't an accident, that a student brewed the chemical the night prior and waited for the opportune moment to release it; if they had known that someone had seen the poison when there was still time - that Valerie Gray had chosen to wait a moment and, in those brief seconds, tampered with the fates of her peers. If only the officials had realized that the students of room five-oh-five weren't, in fact, truly dead.

No, nothing is ever as simple as that.