Teen Mother
Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom or any of its characters. That honor goes to Butch Hartman, though I doubt it'd kill him to share Vlad for an hour or two. :3
Summary: While trying to wipe out Maddie's memories of Jack, Vlad accidentally causes her to transform into an eighteen-year-old version of herself before she went to college. Now Danny has to prevent his mother from falling for Vlad and find a way to change her back before she's stuck as a teenager forever!
This takes place soon after Maternal Instinct and before Reign Storm, just to give you a timeline. :D
"I don't know about this, Jack." Maddie crossed her arms and sent her husband a concerned look.
"Nonsense, Maddie!" Jack bounded back into the room, a suitcase tucked under his arm. "This is the perfect opportunity to make amends with Vlad for the reunion!" He set the suitcase on the bed and opened it, speaking to Maddie over his shoulder as he proceeded to throw in a jumbled mass of jumpsuits and socks. "He's even sending a private jet for you and the kids."
"We can at least wait for you," insisted Maddie. She sounded hesitant.
Jack clicked the suitcase shut and seized his petit wife in a one-armed hug. "Aw, don't worry about me. I'll join you as soon as I finish maintenance on the ghost portal. You'll hardly even notice I'm gone!"
Maddie attempted a smile, but it the result was strained. "Well, if you're sure…"
"Of course I'm sure! After this week is over, you, me, and the V-man will be as close as we were in college, again."
"That's what I'm afraid of," muttered Maddie. She didn't have the heart to tell Jack about what had happened during her last encounter with "the V-man;" he would go mad with envy. But that didn't mean that she had forgiven Vlad for his behavior. His confession of love had been, admittedly, flattering, but the things he had subsequently said about Jack were simply deplorable. Maddie was in no way eager to see him again, especially not without Jack present. Jack, on the other hand, was determined to patch things up with his old college friend, and Maddie lacked the resolve to tell him why this was impossible. A part of her suspected that Vlad knew this, and that he was exploiting it for his own selfish purposes.
She wanted to tell Jack, but when she opened her mouth, the only words that came out were, "I guess I'll see you soon, then." She felt her traitorous lips curl into a smile.
"That's the spirit!" Jack beamed at her.
Oh, well; what were a couple of days of discouraging Vlad's advances? She could handle it; it wasn't anything she hadn't done before. And at least she would have Danny to help her out; her son knew what a creep Vlad was as well as she did, and if the visit gave Jack a little hope for his friendship with Vlad, what harm could it do to go?
…
Danny's jaw nearly hit the floor. "You agreed to visit Vlad?" He could hardly believe his ears. Was his mother sick? Was she crazy?
"I know, I know," admitted Maddie with a sigh. "But it'll make your father happy. And I do owe him for the time he agreed to go with me to the Women in Science conference that Jazz signed me up for."
"I really don't think the two situations even out at all," grumbled Danny.
"Now, Danny," scolded Maddie lightly. "I didn't even want to go to that conference. But it made your sister happy. That's what being in a family is all about; you have to sacrifice what you want every now and then-make compromises. It's important to remember that. Besides, Vlad is…repellant, but he's essentially harmless."
Danny sighed heavily. How was he supposed to explain to his mother that Vlad was pretty much the exact opposite of harmless–that he was, in fact, an incredibly powerful, incredibly dangerous half-ghost who wanted nothing more than to kill Danny's father?
"If you say so, Mom," he ground out, already exhausted.
Maddie placed a comforting hand on her son's arm. "Thank you for being such a good sport about this, Danny. Tell you what –how about I take you to the mall when we get back and buy you that new computer game that just came out?"
"You mean Doomed II? No thanks, I'm not really into that series, anymore." Danny smiled weakly. "I'll settle for a new pair of sneakers, though."
"You have yourself a deal, young man," agreed Maddie happily.
…
Danny's stomach was in knots as he shoved a drawer-full of clothes into a duffle bag. This was just perfect; his first week free of school in months, and he was going to be spending it trying to keep Vlad away from his parents. He could only wonder what Vlad was planning this time- what grand master scheme he had dreamed up to win the affections of Danny's mother and convince Danny to renounce his real father. The truly infuriating part about it, Danny decided, was the way that Vlad just automatically decided that he would be better for Maddie than Danny's father; how he assumed that she would just fall into his arms when her husband wasn't looking just because he was rich, or whatever twisted reason Vlad used to make his sick doings logical in his own mind.
"At least I know Mom can take of herself," Danny reminded himself. Maddie had proven during their last meeting with Vlad that she was more than capable of spurning the obsessive billionaire on her own. "Still, it would be best to keep an eye on Vlad and make sure he doesn't get her alone. I just hope he doesn't send something after dad while I'm gone."
…
"This is so much better than that ridiculous RV." Jazz sighed happily as she snuggled back into the plush leather seat of Vlad's private jet.
""You mean the Fenton Family Assault vehicle?" replied Danny with a grin. As much as he hated to admit it, he agreed whole-heartedly with his sister. Where the RV was cramped and completely devoid of comfortable seating, the VladCo jet was bright, roomy, and lacking only benign-looking buttons that would leave you covered with ectoplasmic goop. Jazz was especially grateful for this last fact.
"You know what the best part of this is?" said Jazz. "There's no Dad to blather on about ghosts like a crazy person."
"He'll be here on the flight back," Danny reminded her, feeling a twinge of loyalty toward his father.
"And he can sit with Mom in the other cabin." Jazz gestured over her shoulder to the second compartment of the plane that the Fenton family had left entirely unoccupied.
Danny's grin drifted downward as he turned away to stare out this window. At least they knew they were going to Vlad's this time, which meant they likely wouldn't be forced out of the plane over a not-so-random patch of woods.
The sound of his mother returning from the bathroom caught Danny's attention. She dropped unceremoniously into her seat, a film of worry spread thick over her features.
Jazz leaned over to Danny, using the child psychology book she was reading to shield her words from Maddie. "Did Mom and Dad get into a fight before we left?"
"No," said Danny. "Why?"
"She hasn't smiled once since we left the house."
Danny frowned. Come to think of it, what Jazz said was true- Maddie's cheerful smile had lasted only as long as it had taken to kiss Jack goodbye and promise to call him at the slightest trace of the Dairy King's ghost. He hadn't thought she was that upset to go see Vlad- he was, heaven knew, but he had a reason to be.
"We could ask," suggested Danny. Though Jazz began to protest, he only sat up and turned to his mother. "Are you okay, Mom?"
Maddie blinked, surprised, then broke out into a bright smile. "Oh, I'm fine. I was just trying to remember whether I labeled the casseroles I left in the freezer for your father. You know how he can never tell the difference between food and ectoplasmic residue samples unless I put it on the container for him."
Danny sent Jazz a relieved grin, and she nodded shortly before returning to her book. For the rest of the flight, Danny's mother was perfectly cheerful, prompting Danny for information about school –his grades in particular– and his friends. Danny's responses were noncommittal, for the most part, but he found himself getting pretty animated as he related a story about Tucker accidentally throwing a spoon into a beehive at lunch a few weeks previously. It wasn't until the pilot announced that they were descending into Wisconsin that a heavy feeling of dread began to creep back into his intestines.
Vlad met them at the airport, all charm and beguiling smiles, the very picture of elegant wealth in his impeccable black suit.
"Ah, the Fentons. How wonderful to see you all again." He spread his hands in an elegant gesture of welcome before focusing on Danny's mother. "My goodness, Maddie, you grow lovelier every time I see you," he told her amicably, showcasing his uncanny ability to forget any action of his own that cast himself in a bad light. Maddie thanked him with tangibly frigid politeness, which caused Jazz to frown slightly in confusion. Danny positioned himself between Vlad and his mother, the threat of a scowl pulling at the corners of his mouth. Vlad acknowledged this action with a raised eyebrow and an amused smile.
"Hello, Daniel." His voice was velvety and venomous.
"Vlad," grunted Danny.
Jazz's puzzled frown deepened. "Danny, don't be rude," she hissed. Vlad directed a smile at her.
"Jasmine, was it?"
Jazz, who was currently inclined to like Vlad if for nothing other than his jet, nodded "Yup."
But Vlad wasn't listening to her. He had been distracted by one very large detail, or rather, the lack thereof. His eyes took in the perfectly incomplete group before him, his smile growing steadily wider.
"What's this?" he asked, barely able to contain the gleeful surprise in his voice. "No Jack?"
"He was a little held up at home," replied Maddie. "But he'll be along in a few days."
"Excellent," murmured Vlad, though he showed no signs of having heard her. Brightening significantly, he swept forward, one hand at Danny's back pushing the teen onward. Danny let out a squawk of protest, attempting to twist out of Vlad's reach, but the older man simply fisted his fingers into the fabric of Danny's t-shirt.
"Come along, everyone," he chirped. "I have a car waiting outside." Once they reached the door, he waved Maddie and Jazz ahead of him, then followed with Danny in tow.
…
Vlad gave Danny the same bedroom he'd given the boy upon their first meeting. It was one of the largest spare rooms, but also the farthest away from where the rest of them would be sleeping, which made Danny nervous. He didn't even bother to unpack- he wanted to be ready just in case Vlad did something that made Maddie angry enough to simply grab her children and leave, and, knowing Vlad, the possibility wasn't so far off. Instead, Danny took to pacing the floor for nearly an hour, checking the room for anything remotely suspicious, and, finally, going ghost and making a more thorough investigation of the house.
It was just as large and forbidding as Danny remembered it, from the bare stone walls to the vast, empty corridors. Even the usually cheerful gold and green of the Green Bay Packers seemed to take on an ominous hue in the medieval mansion. Danny shivered as he passed through the walls from room to room, not because he was cold, but because of the eerie atmosphere the place gave off. It was unnatural; the place was huge, and Vlad was the only living in it. All the dank, vacant rooms seemed to have taken on a life of their own as if to compensate. Wherever he went, Danny felt like he was being watched, but he didn't sense a single ghost.
"Forget what I said," decided Danny as he peered through the black doorway of yet another unused room. "Vlad needs to get like eight cats."
"For the last time, Daniel," growled a voice behind him. "I am not getting a cat."
Danny spun around to face a scowling Vlad Plasmius. He raised his fists, preparing to fire an ecto-blast, but stopped and froze. Hanging limp from Vlad's arms was his mother.
"What did you do to her?" demanded Danny.
"Relax," said Vlad, infuriatingly nonchalant and condescending. "You don't really think I'd hurt her, do you? She's merely been knocked out for a little while. You see, I have a very important part for her in my latest plan, and I just don't think it would work quite as well if she was conscious." He was advancing slowly, now, forcing Danny to retreat into the room behind him. Vlad looked intently into the darkness over Danny's left shoulder and nodded.
The lights whirred to life, flooding the room with aching white brilliance. Danny shielded his eyes against the unexpected brightness and, as he blinked rapidly to force his eyes to adjust, he found himself seized by the wrists and ankles and hurled against the far wall. He groaned in pain and then in dismay. There were very familiar green ecto-bonds fastening his limbs to one another and their equally familiar inventor was leering at him in undisguised delight.
"Greetings, Ghost Child," said Skulker happily.
Danny gave a roar and attempted to tear the bonds; something that had always proven possible, if not necessarily easy, in the past. But this time they refused to break. They stretched with Danny's violent struggling, snapping back painfully every time he stopped, like giant, super-strong rubber bands.
"Let me guess," said Danny dryly. "Another upgrade?"
Skulker grinned. "Neat, huh?"
Vlad was growing impatient. "Skulker, get him in the cage," he ordered.
"You're putting me in a cage?" Danny was dumbstruck. Skulker seized him by the collar and lugged him over to a small metal platform, where he dropped him brusquely. Then, with an expression more befitting a Cheshire cat than a ghost, Skulker threw a switch protruding from the wall next to him. Crackling pink bars of electric ecto-energy surrounded Danny, and he felt his powers being drained from him. His bonds were cut, but not before delivering an excruciating shock, and Danny fell to his knees on the floor of the cage.
"Shouldn't you be going to get a magazine about a Purple-Back Gorilla?" he spat at the ghostly hunter.
"Actually, I," began Skulker smugly, but he was cut off by a beeping noise coming from the console on his wrist. His face fell. "Actually, I have to go take pictures at the zoo," he grumbled. Wings erupted from the shoulders of his armor and propelled his hulking frame towards the ceiling and out of the room.
"That's one down." Danny struggled to his feet. "Now I just have to find a way out of this thing so I can get to Vlad."
Plasmius chuckled. "Really, now, Daniel. Talking to yourself like that is not a sign of a healthy mind."
"Right, because you're the poster boy for mental stability. Let's review the situation, shall we? The love of your life, who has already shot you down multiple times, is currently unconscious through your own doing, and you have her son—" Here, he gestured to himself. "—a fourteen-year-old boy, locked in a cage."
"Yes, well." Vlad looked guiltily down at Maddie's form in his arms. "The situation is about to change."
"You're going to let me out?"
"No."
"You're going to leave my mother alone so she can go back to being happy with the man she chose over you?"
"No," repeated Vlad, unamused. "I'm going to even out the playing field. Then we'll see who Maddie falls in love with."
Danny frowned. "What are you talking about?" He'd always teased the older man about it, but he was now genuinely beginning to suspect that Vlad had dropped a few essential marbles somewhere in the Ghost Zone.
Vlad grinned, setting Maddie on an empty tabletop and spreading his arms to indicate a huge machine directly behind him. It took up the entire wall, and resembled a massive MRI machine, with tubes of neon-pink lights lining its gleaming metallic face. The air around it was warped with its sick, rosy glow, and the whole thing hummed with energy.
"Behold," breathed Vlad. "The Plasmius Memor Haud Magis. I like to call it the Vaporizer"
"Memor who whatis?"
Vlad sighed. "It's Latin. It means 'Remember no more.'"
"Huh," said Danny. "Brushing up on your dead languages? I guess that counts as a hobby."
"This machine," continued Vlad, ignoring Danny's comment. "Will erase all of your mother's memories of your fat, idiot father, leaving me free to swoop in and sweep her off her feet!"
Danny cringed. "And just when I thought you were making progress on the desperate front." Inwardly, he began to panic.
Vlad scooped up the unconscious body of Danny's mother and frowned. "Make all the jokes you like, Daniel. But once I wipe the slate of Maddie's lovely mind clean, there will be nothing to stop me from gaining her love for myself!"
"You mean aside from the fact that you're a creepy, obsessive loser?"
Vlad glared at Danny heatedly. "I would've won your mother years ago if it hadn't been for that accident. Now, I will restore things to the way they should have been. And with you stuck in that cage, there's nothing you can do to stop me!" He hovered close and leered at Danny, who glared at him in return, wishing madly but vainly for a way out of his prison.
"Be patient, Daniel. When your mother is finally mine, you'll be free to stay here with us and join me as my son."
"Never!" hissed Danny.
Vlad's mouth pursed into a scowl "We'll see about that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have twenty years of memories to vaporize." Vlad threw his head back to indulge in a Grade-A super-villain laugh before going to the Vaporizer and gingerly strapping Maddie to a large metal table. He slid it into the machine with all the care of a brain surgeon, a pensive grimace clinging to his lips. Danny stood, horrified, as the other half-ghost began flipping switches and punching in complicated patterns of codes on the Vaporizer's hull. He attempted to go ghost, then to simply stick his hands through the pulsing bars of his cage, but all he received in return was another agonizing volt of electricity.
"Don't hurt yourself too badly, Daniel," called Vlad lightly from the far end of the room. Danny made a noise remarkably like a growl. Vlad smiled. One more switch, and the machine would wipe Maddie's memories cleaner than new-fallen snow. One simple flick of a finger, and the woman of his dreams would finally, finally be his. He felt triumphant. Beaming like a bride on her wedding day, he reached out and flicked.
The Vaporizer began to whine, a high, obviously mechanical sound that thinned and heightened until it resembled a wail. The machine began to shake, then to smoke.
"No, this isn't right," said Vlad desperately, rushing forward to pull Maddie away. "No, no, no, no, no!"
The Vaporizer screamed like a siren, and every light in the lab went out.
In the heavy darkness of the room, two voices called out in unison. The words they spoke were not the same, but their broken, wailing tones matched one another perfectly.
"Maddie!" howled Vlad, groping his way through the pitch-black to where she was.
"Mom!" The bars of Danny's cage had disappeared with the rest of the power, and he now rushed into the room, not even pausing to go ghost, scanning the inky gloom frantically for the shapes of Vlad and his mother.
"If you hurt her, I swear I'll…I'll…where are you?" Danny waved his arms blindly.
"Ouch—hey!"
Danny froze. The voice was definitely not Vlad's; at least not unless the Vaporizer had done something horribly wrong and turned Vlad into a girl.
"Mom?" he asked hopefully.
"I'm not anyone's mom, kid," replied the voice. It was familiar, but Danny couldn't quite place where he's heard it. "Sorry."
"Yeah, me too," replied Danny awkwardly. "For hitting you."
"It's all right. Uh, say, you wouldn't happen to know where I am, would you?"
Danny was prevented from speaking by the return of the lights. Vlad, now out of ghost form, gave a whoop of triumph from where he stood at the circuit breaker, turning with a wicked grin to face Danny. His gaze, however, fell directly next to the teen, and his jaw fell slack.
"M-Maddie?" he stammered.
Danny raised an eyebrow and turned to his right. Next to him stood a girl, probably somewhere around Jazz's age, with a mess of auburn curls and a puzzled, slightly frightened expression.
"How do you know my name?" she asked, drawing back slightly, and Danny noticed that she still wore his mother's ghost-hunting jumpsuit.
Suddenly, everything clicked into place, and Danny swallowed a gasp.
The Vaporizer had done its job- had done it with incredible skill and faultless efficiency. Danny's mother had vanished, but he recognized the girl who had been left behind in her place. He had seen her before, smiling out from a frame in Vlad's lab alongside Danny's father and a pre-Plasmius Vlad. It was the Maddie Vlad had first fallen in love with. Danny gawked, speechless, as he realized that the Vaporizer had not only erased his mother's memories of his father, it had reverted her to an age when she had never even met him!
"Oh man," groaned Danny, the color draining from his face. "This is not good."
"You're telling me," huffed Maddie, crossing her arms. "This is so bogus."
Danny, not for the first time in his relatively short life, felt like screaming.
This is my first piece of fanfic ever, so please RandR! Concrit is also welcome, but please try to keep it gentle.
A/N:I'm not so sure about the Latin I used for Vlad's machine, so if I got that wrong please feel free to tell me! If you can see any other problems with the story, please bring those to my attention, too. :) I appreciate it.