Danny ran home in the pouring rain. He was tempted to go intangible, but the last thing he needed was for his parents to figure out his secret. While Jack might not think too much about it, Maddie probably would if he came home perfectly dry.
It had been a fascinating day, at the very least. With Walker's barricades down, ghosts were free to come and go through the Fenton Portal again. In response, the Ghost Master had spread his team out over the town to find interlopers and be rid of them, leading to no end of the entertainment around school. Danny's ghost sense hadn't stopped going off since Troll arrived, although fortunately, the vacant-eyed drummer was less inclined to torment humans than his fellows.
The ghost boy thought for sure he would have to go back to being late to school and ditching classes, but he only needed to use his powers twice: once on the Box Ghost while Troll was otherwise occupied, and once on Desiree. Since everyone else had been running and screaming at that point, no one even noticed his absence. He was rather pleased with his idea to let the haunting team stay. They were finally earning their keep.
His ghost sense went off once again as the sound of voices reached his ears. He thought he was prepared for anything as he crept forward, but what he actually saw nearly caused him to faint with shock. Jack Fenton stared suspiciously, yet calmly, at a pair of red eyes floating above a bed sheet. The two men sat at the kitchen table with Maddie between them, apparently in a perfectly civil conversation.
"Hi, sweetie!" his mother greeted him brightly. He was almost relieved to see that the second her attention was elsewhere, Jack switched to a hostile glare. "I believe you've met the Ghost Master."
"Oh, yeah," the ghost agreed, winking. "Him and the Ghost Master goes way back."
Danny was saved from having to comment by his father, who finally couldn't take it any more. "You just keep away from my son, ghost!" he exclaimed, thumping his fist heavily onto the table.
"Now, Jack," Maddie warned quietly. "We're being pleasant to the haunters, remember." He grumbled quietly.
"Okay…" Danny began, confusion warring with amusement. He blinked and pointed vaguely toward the stairs. "I'm just going to do homework, then."
"Oh, don't leave on my account!" the Ghost Master announced in his jovial "come and go" southern accent. "I was just going meself. Thank you for a lovely time, ma'am." He kissed Maddie's hand as best as he was able without lips and seemed to smirk at Jack's snarled comment of "Get away from my wife."
The three humans waited until they were sure he was gone before moving again. "So, Dan, how was your day?" Jack asked, shoving the saltshaker around in lieu of irritated fidgeting.
Danny shrugged and sat down. "It was okay, I guess," he replied, wondering what was going on. His mother had never cared about ghosts or offered to think of them as human before, and suddenly she was inviting them over for coffee? True that she had warmed up to her son's alter ego considerably, but…
His train of thought was interrupted by the doorbell, and Jack jumped boisterously to his feet. "I'll get it!" he exclaimed, running from the room. Mother and son shared an indulgent smile.
"So…" Danny began, carefully measuring his words and tone. "Why was there a ghost here?"
"Well, after some long thought on the subject, I've decided that maybe not all ghosts are evil after all, and I'm trying to swing your father around to my point of view. I had hoped Rex would just send that nice Alto girl, but…"
"Rex?"
The woman chuckled. "The Ghost Master's real name, but don't let on that you know. He hates it." Danny snickered, vowing to call the ghost by his name at every available opportunity. He was trying to think up a safe and witty way to respond when she added, "I wonder what's taking your father so long…" By the look on her face as she stood, she had a good idea why and was not pleased.
Danny spared a brief moment to be disturbed. They couldn't possibly know about him, could they? They would have kicked him out of the house or tried to "cure" him or something, wouldn't they? Well, maybe they wouldn't kick him out. Maddie had been a lot nicer to his alter ego of late, even to the point of completely dropping her suspicion of him. It really was nice not to have to worry about-
"Hello, Danny," a voice all but purred as his ghost sense went off. He'd had nightmares about that voice for weeks.
Danny stood, whirled around, and transformed all in one smooth movement, knocking his chair over as he did so. "You!" he exclaimed, torn between anger and terror at the sight of that emblem, so like his own. His eyes fell on the clock-topped staff as he backed through the table to get away. "Where'd you get that?" he demanded, fearing the worst.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" his older self responded, the mockery plainly evident. Dan laughed derisively as the boy's eyes flicked briefly toward his parents' path of retreat. "Oh, don't worry. They won't be intruding on us."
"What did you do to them?" Danny cringed at the answering smirk. He saw the ghost's hand move toward the button on Clockwork's staff, and…
Suddenly, he was staring at the world from atop the Fenton Command Center. He tried to look around, and realized that he couldn't move, not that it mattered much. The only person whose location he was very interested in was standing a dozen feet away, staring down at the street.
"They're like ants, aren't they?" Dan mused. "Going about their lives, not knowing it's all about the end. I almost pity them sometimes…" He turned to flash a viper's grin that revealed his words for the lie they really were. "And then I remember that I'm not human and don't care. But you…"
He walked around behind Danny, and a twist of power forced the boy to turn in response. There were his friends and there was his family, lined up as though for a firing squad. Mr. Lancer was not present, and the boy was just as glad of that; the fewer people put in danger, the better. They were frozen in time, and Danny finally noticed the faint weight around his neck.
"You…" Dan continued his rhetoric. "Why do you bother to care? You know they'll all turn their backs on you eventually, like they all did me."
Danny wanted to point out that being brutally murdered could hardly constitute turning one's back on another, and that Valerie was the only one whose response he had ever been unsure of. He would have liked to add a Jazz-style lecture on how it was kind of his responsibility to protect people from ghosts simply because he could, and that it didn't matter what they thought. It was with no surprise that he found himself unable to speak; his older self didn't really care what he had to say, anyway.
The ghost seemed to consider for a moment, eyes fixed on the sky and hands behind his back in that posture that was pure Vlad. Not for the first time, Danny wondered exactly how much of his ghost half's future self he was actually dealing with, and how much of it was just Plasmius. The two had been one for a decade or more; he really doubted there was even a difference after so long, but sometimes, he wondered. Perhaps it was simply a part of his mind that couldn't cope with what he might have become…almost did become…
"You know," that hated voice broke through his thoughts. "My long imprisonment gave me a lot of time to think. Clockwork made certain that I knew of my failure, you see, and I began to wonder: If you never become me, then how can I continue to exist? A multitude of theories presented themselves, but it wasn't until I escaped that I realized the truth."
He stopped and strode toward Danny to regard the boy with a mockingly thoughtful expression. "You do still become me," he explained in arrogant satisfaction. "And I will make sure of it."
Dan became invisible. Danny felt a moment of fear wondering where the ghost had gone, then he was battling against the alien force that invaded his mind like an oil spill. Later, he would wonder if it felt like that when he overshadowed someone, but right then, it was all he could do to maintain control without being violently ill. He could feel the interloper's laughter mocking his efforts, could hear him wonder again why he bothered to try. But he had to try; he wouldn't be used, not for murder.
He couldn't…
He wouldn't…
"I won't!" he cried, relief spreading through the void caused by the ghost's forceful exit.
Dan hit the metal rooftop hard enough to bounce and slide several feet. For barely a second, his features were split into the separate ghost halves that created him, one overlying the other. With a snarl of slightly maddened rage, he snatched Clockwork's staff out of the air as Danny lunged for it, then swung the base around to connect solidly with the boy's head. Danny literally saw flashing purple stars shoot across his vision, barely aware of what was happening when he crashed. He heard his older self speak and knew he needed to get away, but his brain refused to cooperate in the matter.
He never actually remembered becoming intangible and falling through the house, but he knew he must have because his next clear memory was of the basement. His brain kicked in just in time to avoid being impaled, allowing him to roll out of the way and counterattack with an ectoplasmic energy blast. Dan howled in wordless anger as he was thrown back.
"I won't kill them!" Danny shouted. "And I won't let you, either! I'm not going to become you! No matter what happens!"
"You don't have a choice," Dan returned snidely. "Even with all your denials, all your belief in what's good and just, you know as long as I exist that something will happen that drives you to become me." The two ghosts circled slowly, one seeking an opening, and one simply biding his time. "You know that," the older ghost continued softly, though with no less menace. "And when it happens, you'll kill them, and you will like it-"
"Never!" Danny screamed, charging blindly forward. He ducked beneath another swing, vaguely noticed the brief expression of surprise when the attack missed, and then everything blurred together in a frenzy of black and white gloves and green energy blasts. He wasn't thinking; he didn't dare stop to think. All he knew was hit here and dodge there, blast that and-
There was a smash followed by the sound a spring hitting metal at the end of a high-speed flight from its rightful place. Dan shouted, and he thought he might have as well, though he was never entirely certain. The hands on the clock atop the staff swung wildly in reverse. There was a bright flash of light that he thought would never end and…
