Full Summary:
Danny Phantom and Vlad Plasmius.
If he's being honest with himself, Danny cannot remember a time where he could look at Vlad Masters and not instantly be overwhelmed by a wave of rage, frustration, and disgust. It has been almost a full year since the pair became enemies, and Danny is at his breaking point.
With peers and teachers that seem to make it their goal to drag him down, friends that can never understand his pressures no matter how hard they try, and parents that seem to forget he even exists at times unless it's to berate him on his worsening grades or fire a gun at him, Daniel Fenton finds himself sinking lower and lower. But what makes matters worse: nobody seems to notice.
On the other side of the spectrum, Vlad Masters has had enough. Daniel has foiled his plans and spurned his affections one too many times, and he is done playing games. If Daniel wants him to play the villain so badly, then he'll give him something even his wild teenage imagination could never hope to conjure up. Increased security. More money for new (deadlier) Fenton weapons. A steady rise of ghost attacks. And yet, despite the cruel punishments and ruthless demeanor, Vlad can only deny the truth for so long.
With both halfas so close to cracking, something must be done. Danny knows it. Vlad knows it. Clockwork knows it. The only difference is. . . Clockwork is ready to do something about it. But he has a sneaking suspicion the dueling pair will not find much pleasure in it. Though they will find even less pleasure in their self-destruction - which the Time Master knows is steadily approaching.
Two people - two halfas - so lost in their own ways. So. . . alone.
Can two people who feel so much hate for each other truly be the key to saving one another? Do they even want to be saved? And, more importantly, is it really hate they feel towards each other, or something deeper?
Two Halves . . . And a Spark
Prologue
Two Halves . . .
Balance between the Whole; reached through the split; the divide between two extremes.
Night and Day
Dark and Light
Good and Evil
Two halves to separate; two halves to split; two halves to divide.
For the longest time, the cross was easily seen. It was noticeable in the way the Earth spun, the way the sun dipped and the moon rose, the way the good in the world could always find a way to balance the evil. And for many of the Earth's people, the divide in themselves was merely an internal notion; something only a select few could ever really understand, whether it be in the way behaviors can shift depending on locations, or who is around you.
In fact, the people most inclined to understanding just how different a person could really be were children. Personalities and morals instantly shifting between school and home. Two entirely different people teetering on the edge of who to become, whether it be to impress the popular cliques, gain the approval of parents, or simply to keep check on the fragile structure that was a teen's sanity. Despite the difficulties that came from balancing one's halves, the struggle was usually an internal one; something tangible only to said person's thoughts and emotions.
That was the case until a strange new species came into existence the day a single young man was exposed to and consumed by supercharged ectoplasm. The resulting creature was one the world had never seen before, and would not see again until twenty years later.
Daniel Fenton and Vladimir Masters single-handedly redefined the word 'balanced' simply by existing as what they truly were, or rather, what they had become:
Halfas.
Teetering on the edge of Life and Death, the pair quickly learned just what it meant to have two halves.
On one side of the spectrum, they had their human halves. The half that was born into the world naturally. The half that lived, breathed, ate, slept - just like anybody else. The half that controlled their emotions, their desires and dreams. The half that was, for the longest time, them.
And then, on the other side, they had their ghost halves. The half that was foreign and strange. The half that was unnatural and terrifying. The half that sucked them from the normalcy they had surrounded themselves in and dumped them into an entirely new world. The half that changed them forever.
Daniel Fenton had been born to a . . . . strange family. After all, not many could declare that their parents were inventors and avid spectral investigators, complete with their very own lab and original equipment. As a young boy, Danny had loved what his parents did. They were basically superheroes! Fighting off the evil ghosts to help protect people! They were awesome!
But then, as the boy grew up - grew out of his parents' delusions, his admiration turned to humiliation. His parents became the laughingstock of the entire town, who declared them insane crackpot inventors who wasted their time and money on hunting creatures conjured up from bedtime stories and myths. From then on, Danny tried to stay as far away from his parents' ghost obsession as possible. After all, it was hard to feel pride for their work when it would constantly equal ridicule and teasing at school. Children he had been friends with since kindergarten quickly turned away from him, save for his two best friends: Samantha Manson and Tucker Foley.
But it wasn't just the town's mockery and school troubles that turned Danny away from ghosts and the supernatural. No - it was the fact that ghosts were taking his parents away from him.
Even at a young age, his parents had been the busy time. They were usually off in the lab building some new invention or trying to draw the schematics for a new design. Yet they always made time to play with him or give encouraging smiles when he would come home with smiley-face stickers on his report card. And yet, as time went on, his parents delved deeper and deeper into their work.
It wasn't until Danny was five that he began to notice just how much the ghosts were taking up Mommy and Daddy's time. There were some nights - times they believed they had made a breakthrough - that they would forget to make dinner, or tuck the child in at night. But what really convinced the child of the sad fact was when he was seven and he ran away from home. It wasn't until he came back bruised and muddy later that night that the truth really set it, simply by the way his father continued rummaging through the fridge and smiled nonchalantly at the boy before returning downstairs. No fuss. No screams of relief. No crying. Nothing.
That hadn't even realized he was gone.
This alone would be enough to make a child sink, and Danny was sure he would have if it hadn't been for his only sibling: his older sister, Jasmine. Even at a young age, Jazz had been a mature one. She was always ready to take up the responsibilities around the house and do the chores whenever her Mommy and Daddy were busy with work. But her main priority was and always would be her little brother, Danny.
She learned to cut the crust off of his peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches, help him with his homework, clean up his scraped knees, comfort him through his nightmares. By the time she was eight, Jazz had already taken on the responsibility of becoming a parental figure to her little brother. Now, as they got older, Danny came to grow annoyed of his sister's constant hovering at times, but realized it was only because she was worried.
Someone had to be worried for him after all. Yet despite their quirks and their forgetfulness, Danny loved his parents. He just couldn't find it in him to resent them.
Not even when they killed him.
In hindsight, stepping into an unfinished, highly advanced piece of technology that could potentially shoot enough highly-concentrated, supercharged ectoplasm at a strong enough force to punch a hole through the dimensional barriers perhaps wasn't the best idea.
Many people could call Danny a forgetful person and he would have to agree with them. But he would never forget what it felt like to die, or rather, half die.
Bright white lights filled his eyes as his hand pulled away from the newly-pressed button and rose to his face as he tried to shield himself from the onslaught of shining lights. A loud humming filled the air, which quickly turned into a piercing shriek that made the boy wince and tense his shoulders. The electricity buzzing through the air made the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end as he felt his heart racing at a million miles per second. His mind was screaming at him to move; to leap away from the portal and race back upstairs. But for some odd reason, his body wasn't listening to him anymore. He was frozen to the metallic floor, almost as if the metal had turned to liquid and wrapped around his feet, planting him to the ground.
Sparks and crackles of light bounced off of the walls as from deep within the portal, a growing white light began to form. Danny's eyes widened as he watched the light grow bigger and bigger until it engulfed him.
The lights came first. Then the pain.
It felt like he had been pierced by a million long hot needles and then dropped into a lake of boiling lava. He opened his mouth to scream, only to choke on the superheated substance that poured in. His throat quickly turned to fire as his body began to burn from the inside out. His bones began to splinter and crack. His blood boiled and hissed and his skin crackled and flared as it fought to stay connected to muscle and tissue. Everything was so hot, yet so cold at the same time. His skin was burning. His hair was burning. His face was burning. His eyes were burning. He was BURNING! He felt as though his body was ripping apart atom by atom. He tried to open his eyes, to move his body, to do anything! But all he felt was painpainpainpainpainpainpainpainpain please god someone help me make it stop make it stop MAKE IT STOP!
And yet, whenever Danny would reluctantly recall the painful memory, he couldn't suppress the bitter chuckle that bubbled out of his throat. The one thing that killed him ended up saving him at the same time. In actuality, the portal should have killed him. It was shocking anyone could survive such an experience, and if it weren't for the ectoplasm merging with his human DNA, he wouldn't have
To tell the truth, the whole concept was still a bit strange to the fourteen-year-old, but from what he could understand, the 250,000 volts of electricity that shot through him charged the ectoplasm to a point that it was effectively able to latch onto his cells and alter his chemical makeup and DNA structure. His blood was now mingled with specks of shimmering green dots of ectoplasm. His skin was now abnormally pale, his eyes had turned an arctic blue, and his body temperature was now a chilling 95.2. But of course, that was only when he was human.
His ghost half was an entirely different story.
His normally raven-black hair turned a stark white. His ivory skin shaded down into a tannish-cream, and his eyes turned harlequin green, shimmering like liquid jewels. The day Fenton stepped into his parents' portal was the day Phantom was born; the day the world's second Halfa came into existence.
But of course, Danny was only one half.
The other came in the form of an older man in his early forties. He had light tan skin and long grey hair that was usually tied back into a ponytail. Vlad Masters: the world's first Halfa.
Plasmius - Vlad's ghost half, came into existence in a very similar fashion to his younger counterpart, only - unlike Daniel - he did not veer the blame away from Jack and Madeline Fenton. Oh no, he focused it on the one person he had once considered a brother. And as the years passed by, Vlad's pain and grief quickly morphed into something else. Something uglier. And for years, this hate, this. . . fire burned in the man's heart until it was little more than a charred, blackened mess of ash and soot.
And it was in this blackened state that Danny met Vlad for the first time.
Upon realization that there were others out there like him, the two could not have been happier. There were others! They weren't the only ones! They weren't . . . alone anymore. But it didn't take them long to realize that it was not to be. Vlad's heart was too consumed with revenge and anger while Danny felt a needed obligation to use his powers for good, to sacrifice himself for people who didn't appreciate him. And neither understood each other. Neither understood why.
In their own ways, Daniel and Vladimir had two halves to themselves: Daniel Fenton - Danny Phantom; Vlad Masters - Vlad Plasmius. But not only did they contain two halves, they were two halves. Two halves in their own right; embodying all that they believed in.
Good - Evil
Light - Dark
Ice - Fire
Perhaps that was how it was meant to be. Perhaps Daniel and Vladimir were destined to always be enemies; always be two separate halves.
And yet, deep in the dark and strange realm deemed the Ghost Zone, there was one who saw something better; something brighter.
Clockwork watched as the two Halfas dueled through the Viewing Orb, an unreadable expression on his face as he watched the fight ensue. It would be one of many.
Normally, the ancient ghost would not bother with watching single moments. He most often spent his time juggling the many different timelines; the infinite possibilities that unfolded in some timelines and weren't even considered in others. Each and every choice created a new stream that had to be observed; that had to be monitored.
However, every few hundred centuries or so, a new timeline would be created that would catch the attention of the ghost, even if it was for just a moment or so. Sometimes it was nothing, and the ghost would continue on, never passing the timeline a second glance, and other times he wasn't as fortunate. Despite the wishes of his "superiors" Clockwork would sometimes take matters into his own hands and do some adjusting.
Usually, it was never anything big. A tweak here, a prick there. Then, there were the rare occasions where Clockwork was forced to erase a timeline altogether. Thankfully for the ancient ghost, it was barely even considered, only when no other options were available. For the longest time, Clockwork had gone through his existence peacefully, never experiencing anything he didn't already know was bound to happen.
Then it happened. Something the ghost never thought could happen. He was shocked.
But of course, witnessing the creation of an entirely new species is never really something to bat an eye at, especially when it was one as strong and powerful as Halfas. Upon coming across the particular timestream, Clockwork had quickly dissected it, investigating and taking note of all the twists and turns it could and couldn't take. All the possibilities and lives that were touched thoroughly surprised him.
Of course, something as large as this wasn't something Clockwork was ready to ignore and send on its merry way. He had to investigate. At first, he considered erasing the timeline altogether, but was astonished to learn that this particular timeline seemed to be somehow connected with the others. Erasing it would come with damaging the other timelines.
So that was out.
He considered destroying the first of the species. After all, a number of problems stemmed from the first Halfa. But after a bit of digging, he realized that if the first halfa was killed, then the second would never come to creation. And Clockwork knew this could not happen. Ther was something about that second halfa that was just . . . too important to remove from the timeline.
So then he considered preventing the creation of the species altogether. But Clockwork soon realized that by preventing the accident, the second halfa would never even be born. And that could not become a possibility.
So Clockwork decided something his superiors were not pleased with whatsoever.
He decided to not interfere.
The two halfas had to exist. They had to be created. Their roles throughout Time were just too important to Existence and its natural Order. And yet, the Master of Time knew that something had to be done about the two halfas. They couldn't simply just continue as they were; fighting day in and day out with such rage and anger.
Clockwork lifted his staff and waved it gently before the Viewing Orb. The image of the fight instantly shifted and parted to reveal two different images, one on either side of the orb, divided down the center.
One was of a young teenage boy with shaggy white hair drooping down in front of his tear-stained face. His body was slumped up against the bed of a dark room decorated with posters and forgotten model rockets. Pooling underneath him was a steadily growing puddle of green ectoplasm that gushed from a wound clearly made by an ecto-gun on the child's back and others littering his lithe body. The boy remained still, his body giving no signs of movement or life whatsoever as the pool continued to grow and grow. Through the parts in his stained hair, one could see the dulled shine of his teary open eyes. The other was of a rampaging monster with blood-red eyes that seemed to glow with the heat of a thousand suns. His black hair was long and unkempt, draping around his shoulders. Despite the multiple tears and rips, one could easily see the white hazmat suit and red-lined cape that drooped down around his snarling form. Around him, agents in stark white suits shouted unintelligible words as they charged their guns.
The image faded away with another swish of Clockwork's staff.
Something had to be done. It had to be done now, while there was still Time. Clockwork turned back to the Orb, which was now replaying the fight from before. The ghost narrowed his eyes as he watched the two forms battling so viciously. How could two so similar grow to hate each other so much? He turned away from the Orb and floated over to one of his Tower outlooks, staring out at the rest of the Ghost Zone.
Daniel Fenton and Vlad Masters were two . . . interesting beings, to say the least. But they weren't without their pain.
Vlad was too caught up in the past and the tortures that followed it. He refused to let go of the rage and anger in his heart. For if he let go of all that hate, he would have nothing but the pain he had tried to bury long ago. So he embraced said feelings until he felt little else. But even he knew that it could not last forever. Sooner or later, the fire would burn out, leaving nothing but a withered husk in its place.
As for Daniel, he had quickly acquired many new fears once his powers blossomed; the most prominent being his parents and their thoughts on his new transformation. The boy's mind was troubled with the possibilities that could come from his secret being revealed to the wrong people. But most recently, his fears had shifted. Not only did he fear his parents, but he also feared himself - what could stem from his powers if they weren't used properly. Daniel felt an obligation to protect the people of his town, despite the numerous problems that it brought him. For if he could surround himself with the good he did, perhaps he could forget the bad that had been scarred into his mind. But with the added pressures he continued to weigh himself down with, the child would soon realize he was drowning himself with no means of swimming back up.
Two souls . . .
Two halves . . .
So tortured. So troubled. So alone. It was only a matter of time before things began to spiral for them and the people around them.
But perhaps if they could be brought together.
Clockwork stared out over the Ghost Zone; at the swirling trails of glowing green ooze that mingled with the floating rocks and differing landmasses. There were not many doors near his realm, for many ghosts did not know it even existed, and those who did knew better than to venture near it. After all, it was not wise to tick off the one spirit who could wipe you from the plane of Existence.
The Master of Time let out a small sigh as he rested a hand on the cool stone surface of the tower wall. Those two Halfas were a difficult case. But not an uncrackable one, he realized. He could only hope they would realize it as well, and soon.
Vlad Masters was a lost soul. Daniel Fenton was a dimming one. Apart, they would only aid in their destruction. But together. . . ? Vlad's heart was a charred one; black and burned. It had shriveled and withered into nothing short of a pile of ash. But . . . deep within the soot-covered exterior and sharp, pointed edges . . . there was something there. Something so small it was almost unnoticeable. But it was there. It was dim and dying. But it was there. It only had to be uncovered. Clockwork knew there was only one person on Earth who had a chance of saving it, and even his chances were small. Heck, he was in need of saving as well! But, if Daniel could only get close enough. If he could allow Vlad to give him the help he needed and vise versa . . . then maybe they had a chance.
Maybe those two halves could be saved.
Maybe they could save that spark.
Hello, my beauties! This is the first new story I've written in a while and I am super excited for this. At first, I had planned on saving this until I finished Equestria's Phantom but I decided to make this an entirely different story altogether. (They're completely separate stories now. Totally unrelated to one another. You don't have to read EP to understand) I then planned on just making this a one-shot that would lead into another story, but I also decided against that! Hehehe...
So anyway, I've had this idea rummaging around in my head and I decided to finally put it down. This story is mostly going to center around Danny and Vlad's relationship (there will be no shipping of these two so get that out of your heads) I'm not planning on including any OCs, but any that appear will play minor roles.
Anyway, I hope you all are able to enjoy this new story. I'm super excited about it
