White and red silk billowed out behind him, the familiar tug on his neck soothing as he flew towards his destination. He was high enough to not bother with invisibility and his heated core kept ice from forming over him at this altitude. It wasn't much to keep at his top speed, so it took perhaps an hour before he started to descend, slipping out of the visible spectrum as the corn fields and highways turned back to city limits. It wasn't a particularly large city, but it was the next one on his list despite how much he'd wanted to avoid the area. He knew who lived here, and he did not intend on running into that buffoon.
Still, he had a job he'd given himself, and he intended on succeeding. As he slowed to a hovering stop above the edge of town, he unclipped a sleek black scanner from his belt. He wished he could say it was his newest invention, but it was certainly no longer that. A few scratches here and there, the battery life wasn't as strong as before, and the button stuck a little on occasion. Still, the mechanisms and screen worked perfectly fine, so the device hardly needed an update. It was more just a disappointment that he'd yet to find his perfect specimen even after all the time he's had searching. Not that he was merely accepting defeat- far from it. He had arranged for vacation time from his various positions and would dedicate the next two weeks (minus the three days which had passed already) to finding what he wanted. And the technology in his hand would lead him to it. He turned it on and after loading a few seconds, the map lit up the screen. It was a perfectly topographical view of the city in front of him including every building in its proper height and spread across it were twenty to thirty green dots glowing steadily as they moved around. He made a mental note of where that building was and decided it was far enough away to work in his usual manner. Start with the closest dot and work his way through the city.
The specter kept himself perfectly invisible and silent as he steadily flew between the locations, turning off the keys for each one as they failed to be what he wanted from them. Too big, too small, too old, too young, too ugly, too loud, always at least one thing wrong with each of them. He was doing his best to keep his temper, but his patience was growing thin. Spending years, almost three by this point, trying to find the perfect person, going from city to city, state to state, looking everywhere and at every possible specimen all in between his other goals and running his business empire. And he'd only reached Illinois after starting on the East Coast! He believed he had every right to be frustrated. Still, he was stubborn and would continue.
A few of his options were slightly better ones, so he observed them a touch longer than usual before marking two of them on a "maybe" list that he'd go back through if he couldn't find his absolute perfect specimen. Then he came upon a school where several dots lit up the screen- four of them. He considered passing them all by (it was a high school, after all, and he'd prefer to not deal with teenagers), but he figured one of them might suit the maybe list for in the future when they were older. He dove into the building towards the closest, having an answer immediately for that one as the boy would be far too strong for anyone's good. He passed the blond by and went a few classrooms down, tapping on his screen silently to mark that one off before shaking his head to himself at the second as well. A Goth girl would surely enjoy it far too much and would be severely rebellious. The next was far too small and wimpy, another easy no. At least this was a quick process with these teenagers.
He almost passed by the next one. This boy was barely any bigger than the band kid he'd just passed up, but something made him pause. Something familiar... He landed, just as silent and invisible as before, and watched. The boy was taking notes, clearly bored as the teacher lectured on about Langston Hughes in far too monotoned a voice for proper teaching. There was something there in this child that was making him pause, and he wasn't sure what.
He stepped over closer and leaned down to look straight at the boy's face, careful not to breathe for the moment lest the boy detect him there by that. Still not enough to understand the familiarity... He started to move upright again, prepared to put the boy on his "maybe" list for now until he glanced the name across the top of an assignment just below the boy's notebook. He froze and stared a few moments.
Then, Vlad Plasmius grinned wickedly. Perfect specimen? Not quite. Perfect revenge with a good-enough specimen? Excellent.
Nobody expects bad things to happen to or around them. All those stories on the news of killings and robberies and missing persons seem to be just that. Stories. Sure, most towns and cities will have the occasional shock towards reality, but it was something very infrequent for the small city of Amity Park, Illinois. They had a share fair of standard crime, but it was overall a pretty safe place to live and even recognized for that fact. That was why the general reaction of the townspeople when the resident maniacs started shouting around town through megaphones and barely avoiding every other vehicle on the road was to say the crazies had just overlooked their son or that their son was hiding from them out of embarrassment. That was why the town was satisfied when the police finally caught up to the Fenton's RV after midnight and told them they'd be fined with disturbing the peace if they did not immediately return to their home and stop the noise, figuring things would be solved by the morning as the town grew quiet.
Nobody expected that there would be "Missing" flyers on every possible surface the next morning, a photo of a black-haired, blue-eyed teen staring at everyone. Definitely nobody expected in the afternoon that an Amber Alert would be put out by the police that Daniel James Fenton, age 14, was missing, last seen by a school bus of students as he got off and went into his home, alone because his sister had gone to the library to study. He wasn't there when the Fenton parents arrived a couple hours later after a "ghost hunting patrol" to which the couple had an alibi because they'd been stopped by the police after damaging public property. Everyone else around him had equally solid alibis, so the police had to decidedly rule it as a runaway situation despite how much the Fenton parents swore their son would never do such a thing. And with that decision, everyone who wasn't part of his life decided to continue going about their usual business.
That is, until he city grew uneasy again as no news came in. Most of the posters stayed up and reminded people constantly of the missing teen. The Fenton parents were either out and about, shouting for their son, or completely out of sight with the ridiculous sign upon their house even shut off. His classmates in particular—all except his few friends and sister—said at first "of course he'd want away from his crazy family". But after a few days of staring at the empty seat in their classrooms and noticing for once just how distressed his friends and sister were, even Danny's worst bullies grew quiet and somewhat worried. On the Tuesday of the next week, six days since Danny's disappearance, Dash Baxter himself even apologized to Sam and Tucker at realizing how heavy the situation was and how upset the goth-and-geek duo were. It set in that Danny was genuinely missing.
Almost another week went by before the police released some more information, the results of searching the Fenton household. There was no evidence of forced entry, no evidence of a struggle, but there was also no evidence of Danny simply leaving. No note. The boy's keys and cell phone had been left in his backpack inside, but the front door was locked when the Fenton parents got home. No windows had been left open that he might've climbed through, no ladder marks or rope remnants were found anywhere, and nothing was missing from his room to say he'd actually run away. He didn't even seem to have a jacket with him though a chill of fall had begun earlier than usual. Daniel Fenton had vanished, and Amity Park was starting to suffer in ways they hadn't known of.
AN: What's this? A new fanfiction for once? I really hope I don't leave you all hanging for three years on this one because I'm actually exited to write it. It's going to be dark, possibly gorey, and I can't guarantee what the ending will be.
This is about to be darker than anything I've posted on here, and you all will get to see my improvements from my older works as well. I hope you enjoy it at least. -Via