Marbles on Glass
"Does it feel like a trial?"
It was a simple plan.
Go back into the past to prevent Vlad from getting his original case of Ecto-acne. No original Ecto-acne meant no Ecto-acne in the present-and no half ghost Vlad. His friends wouldn't be infected, Vlad wouldn't be his arch enemy, and he wouldn't have to deal with the packers fanatic plotting to kill his dad to steal his mom. It was perfect, in theory.
But perfect theories often resulted in being very imperfect in practice.
Danny peeked into lab 101, watching the three lab coat adorned young adults studying various parts of their experiment. Two of them, his future parents, the third Vlad. Danny grimaced as Vlad attempted to lay his heart bare out before Maddie, secretly thankful that she kept her attention on the device in her hands. She called to her future husband, asking him if he'd filled the filtrator with ecto-purifier. The large, orange suited man immediately fulfilled the task-much to Danny's horror. He watched his dad grab a can of diet col, the ecto-purifier remaining on the table. Danny resisted the urge to go stop the liquid from entered the filtrator. He couldn't act yet. It'd be too risky, he'd be seen and ruin the timeline.
He bit his lip as the sugary drink finished pouring into the machine. He watched as Vlad doubted the functionality of the proto-portal, exactly as his dad had told him on the way to Master's mansion in Wisconsin. The way Vlad leaned in closer to the portal made the young halfa uncomfortable. What if he couldn't get to Vlad in time? Phasing himself completely into the room, refraining his viability, he waited.
"Jack, these calculations aren't right!"
Danny blinked. Calculations? Incorrect? But they hadn't done any new calculations after his dad put the wrong stuff into the filtrator-those papers his mother was reading hadn't been touched for the entire time Danny had been there.
"BONZAI!"
The machine grumbled and sputtered, seeming to roar in anger as it malfunctioned. The familiar green swirl materialized in the proto-portal, but it bubbled dangerously and hissed loudly. Sharp sparks and electrical arches jumped from the metal framework, even running down the wires to the machine beside the lab table. It whined like an angry cat that did not want to be touched.
Danny leapt forward, flying as fast as he could towards Vlad. Time seemed to slow as he tackled the young man out of the way of the plasmatic blast, and Danny didn't know if that was Clockwork's doing or just his own senses. Behind him, the energy blast ricocheted off the thesis board, to the ceiling, into a trophy and off a computer, not even being slowed or dissipating in the slightest. Danny was shoved off Vlad, his head colliding painfully with the board of a lab table. White filled his vision and he groaned, momentarily dazed. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. His form fizzled and he was removed from the past with a slight burst of light and and static. He distantly heard Jack shout, and Vlad scream, seeing a blurry desperate arm reaching out for something.
Unbeknownst to him, his mother screamed in pain.
The potent blast stopped, leaving the young woman to stumble a few steps, and fall to her knees. She covered her face with her arm, terrified and horrified at the sizzling, bubbling feeling of her very skin. The stench of burnt soda and human skin was a foul mix in the air that still resonated with her pained cries. Vlad was at her side in an instant, his hands hooking under her arms and pulling her to her feet. Jack's hurried steps brought him over too, the first questions spilling from his mouth: "Are you okay?!"
She didn't respond.
Vlad tried to gently pry her arm away from her face, pure worry coarsening through his veins, "Maddie? Maddie, can you hear us? Can you speak?"
Maddie bit back her pained whimpers as her sleeve rubbed her pained skin. But she allowed Vlad to move it away from her face, and she looked up at her friends in horror. Jack jerked away from her and Vlad's jaw dropped, speechless. Her face was covered in red blisters and boils, her eyes a glowing toxic hot pink. Her tangled, bushy curled hair was stained a bright ivory white, the ends singed black and crusted. The two men could do nothing but gape. Tears welled in Maddies eyes and she covered her face again as she rushed out of the room.
The shock that had frozen him disappeared, replaced with scalding rage as Vlad spun on his heel, pointing a finger at Jack, "What have you done?!"
Jack blinked in surprise, floundering for an answer, "Me?! I didn't do anything! The portal malfunctioned! Oh, god, Maddie!"
"It's your portal, you built the damned thing! This is your fault!" Vlad roared. He curled his fingers so tightly into a fist that his nailed would leave half moons behind. Still, Jack disagreed.
"Now's not the time to point fingers! We need to go help her!" he boomed, darted around the tables, ignoring the heated glare on the back of his neck, "She needs to go to the hospital!"
Vlad twitched with his fury, but rushed after his friend not a moment later, his worry for his crush trumping any anger he had at the situation. Even if it was Jack's fault, the man was right about one thing: Maddie needed urgent medical care, and she needed it now.
AN:
Aey, this is it! The Wilted Rose AU! And if you don't know what that means, basically its Maddie getting hit instead of Jack in Masters of All Time. I theorized about this AU on my tumblr a while ago, but I couldn't really do anything with it until I got a proper writing tool (aka: laptop because like hell I was writing this on a fucking ipad.)
This is one of my lengthier projects I have planned, I actually think that only the Mirror AU will be longer. Right now, this story is planned to be spit into two, one right after the other. The title is a reference to Exile Vilify, which is actually kinda the themesong for the first part of this story.