lil authors note
Hey uuuh, I really suck at keeping my tenses straight—past, present, etc—it's my biggest hurdle with writing. I just can never keep it in mind, especially in 3rd person. I'm trying to get better at it. Have pityyyyy on my amateur mistakes! I hope to become more mindful of it in time. Writing is very new and scary for me.
As it is in this, tenses switch from passage to passage, and probably I mess up in individual sentences a lot. Sorry :c
at the moment this is gen, and I honestly don't know if it will switch to uh. what word do ppl use these days. ''slash''? u know,, gay, I don't know if that will happen but it potentially will who knows (not me))
It's generally best not to go shouting into a sleeping bear's cave. But see, that bear has messed with him an awful lot, and it's a crazy jerk, and Danny is a stupid teenager with too much energy and too many feelings to listen to reason, so he's going to go throwing stones all up in there. Just for a little fun he calls 'justice'.
When it all began, he didn't enlist Sam or Tucker's help with these little pranks, because they started out on a much smaller scale. On a whim (if you could call flying a full hour across the state a 'whim') Danny decided that Vlad had enjoyed peace and quiet for too long; such a scummy person hadn't done anything to earn uninterrupted solitude. He always waited around for Vlad to pop-up in front of him with a fully-formed, partially-enacted scheme—so why not take the offensive side once or twice? Danny thought it was very reasonable, but not reasonable enough to propose it to his friends just yet.
The first time he visited Master's estate unprovoked, he didn't... actually have anything like a plan. He was just suddenly very indignant, dwelling on Vlad all day, ranting to himself about what a selfish dreadful pathetic prick the man was, and how he just invaded Danny's life whenever he felt like it. He couldn't stop thinking about it all the way to Wisconsin; then he floated on Vladimir's doorstep, looking half-lost like he'd sleepwalked there.
He hadn't exactly thought this through. What he wound up doing was sliding into Vlad's house, and roaming its expansive halls aimlessly. It was so massive, he flippantly concludes that the chances of actually running into Vlad- wherever he was- were slim. He ought to have considered the danger of it and prepared, but he just didn't. This whole scheme was pretty devoid of critical thinking. Other than this impromptu trip, the only time he'd been to the estate was when the reunion was going on. At the time, the house was filled with music rolling down the corridors, various bright decorations, and people ambling about the halls looking for a bathroom in the labyrinth of (unnecessary) rooms. Right now, on a random mid-afternoon, it was completely dead. The halls were so immaculately kept; there wasn't a single spider-web inhabiting a corner or mouse creeping through the walls. The absence of these things, he finds, was more unsettling than their presence would have been. Even a little ghost-mouse would have been a welcome disturbance in the pristine passages.
He wanders carelessly, eyes leering over every closed door, supposing that most of them had likely never been opened (if things weren't kept so clean, they would certainly be covered in dust). It's when he feels a twinge of melancholy that he snaps out of it, remembering whose house this is, and what had been done to earn this solitude. Vlad had truly built this lonely miserable empire all by himself.
Rekindling his sense of purpose, Danny half-heartedly sprays whipped cream into the most-favored pair of Italian leather boots sitting in Vlad's study, and disappears.
A day later, Danny is huffy and won't say much to anybody. The rebuttal he anticipated never came crashing into his house. Vlad was nowhere to be found, and that made him furious. Sam and Tucker press for only so long; they knew Danny's bratty habits; that he'll come forward in a few days bristling and ready to pour it all out. For now, he's mostly ignored. Danny was too stubborn to be provoked into talking when he got like this. He's lost in his head. Frankly, it creeped them out when Danny got like this, so they let him stew on his own.
Away from the lonely mansion, Danny wondered how he could ever have a feeling like empathy for a wretched old creep like Vlad, and how the hell he left that castle feeling like a bully. He knew full well the guy deserved everything he... didn't have. It was his choice to continue his life down that villainous path. If only he had gotten to see Vlad's foul smirk while he was there- it would have immediately eradicated all of this sympathetic melancholy. There was nothing like Vlad's demeaning drivel to convince you the guy was gross to his core.
Danny felt twisted, like he'd been tricked; as if this is all some mind game orchestrated by Vlad to get him to have pity for the poor, sad, lonely man. He knew full well it wasn't. But imagining it might be distracted him from it all.
Danny leaves the moment school is out, determined. A few days to stew on it left him rattled. While he knew he was being hormonal and irrational about the whole situation- really, Vlad would inevitably prove to Danny that he was a selfish creep without any urging- he still couldn't drop it. Something about it all messed up his moral compass. He needed, absolutely needed, to remember that Vlad wasn't worth a spare thought.
Flying over, Danny decided that he would seek out Plasmius this time. Somewhere in that silent mansion, he'd find him lovingly petting a new torture device, or thumbing through a notebook filled with plans to tear apart his family. Something dastardly. Something worth hating.