So, um. I am continuing this. Not sure how long it will ultimately be. Thank you for all your encouragement in the comments. :)
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Chapter 2
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The very first thing Vlad did, once his brain got past the impossibility, the ridiculousness, of the situation, was crush the watch. It was difficult to do. It was designed to keep ghosts from tampering with it. The shock burned his hand. Still, it was nothing compared to the raw, red band wrapped around Daniel's wrist, or the- No, he wouldn't think about that, not yet. Daniel's wounds would heal much faster without something suppressing his powers.
And he would heal. He had to heal. Vlad refused to consider any other possibility.
There were calls for police. For an ambulance. Vlad cursed internally, moving to cradle Daniel, and splitting off a pair of invisible duplicate and sending it rushing to the hospital.
Vlad and Daniel's physiology differed significantly from the norm, even when they were in human form. Not so much as to be called impossible, they weren't completely outside the human range, but enough to be remarked upon, enough to throw up warning flags and to attract attention. These were not things that Vlad wanted. More pressingly, a doctor trying to normalize their vitals might do more harm than good.
Therefore, Vlad had maneuvered a few doctors and nurses of his acquaintance into various positions in the local hospitals and clinics, just in case he, or Daniel, happened to wind up at one of them. Doctors that he kept on his secret payrolls. Doctors he could count on to keep a secret. Of course, he also had a good number of doctors on his public payroll, private physicians, specialists, but they weren't always available. Most of them were strewn across the country, placed strategically in cities Vlad had to visit frequently.
Vlad's first duplicate had been sent to corral those doctors into useful positions via creative overshadowing.
In theory, there was doctor-patient confidentiality, but Vlad hadn't had the best experiences with the morality of doctors over his long, post-accident hospital stay. He preferred to rely on human greed, rather than human principles.
Yet, there was only one of these many, many doctors he truly trusted. That was the doctor he wanted tending to Daniel, and wanted tending to Daniel now. Or at least as quickly as possible. Vlad's second duplicate had been sent to fetch him.
But at the moment- At the moment, Daniel was bleeding out on Vlad's suit and the stage, a deep, ugly furrow carved into his temple.
Head wounds always looked worse than they really were, Vlad reminded himself as Maddie vaulted up onto the stage, past the policemen now screening it and trying to pull Vlad off of it. As if a normal bullet could actually kill him, or even seriously hurt him. He could have very well phased through the bullet. He would have phased through the bullet instinctively, unlike Daniel under the influence of that moronic 'ghost-proof' watch.
Maddie was performing first aid on Daniel, having laid him flat on the stage. The police were getting awfully insistent. Didn't they know who he was? Didn't they know..?
Daniel couldn't die. He couldn't. No. Vlad refused to let it happen. Besides, Daniel was a hybrid, just like him. If mundane weapons, if a bullet couldn't kill Vlad, then it certainly couldn't kill Daniel, either.
But death was a many-layered thing, whispered a treacherous voice in the back of his head. Brain death was a thing, and sometimes people just never woke up.
The sharp whine of an ambulance broke through his thoughts, and Vlad realized how he had let the world just... Rush away from him.
Now... The best thing to do... The best thing to do...
Stand aside. That would be the best. Stand aside for now. That's what he would do. Let Daniel be taken care of. Yes.
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Vlad knew that he didn't look his best. Normally, he wouldn't even dream of being out and about looking so... disheveled. But he didn't trust hospitals. One nosy lab technician would all it took to have the GIW crawling all over the hospital.
Alright, that wasn't quite true, Vlad had put a number of city ordinances limiting the GIW into effect, but still. Vlad had to keep an eye on things. Both as the mayor, and as the only other half-ghost in town.
No matter what the police said. He thought it would be unlikely for his assassin to target him here, in the hospital, in any event. No matter what the police said. He had to say.
Even if that meant being civil to Jack. Some things in life and death were more important than revenge. Not many. But some.
In his current state, split between half a dozen duplicates, he barely noticed the oaf, anyway.
A doctor, escorted by a police officer, entered the small waiting room where Vlad and the Fenton family had been sequestered.
"He's stable," said the doctor. "He was lucky. The bullet did quite a bit of damage to his skull, and we had to remove several bone fragments that posed a risk to his brain, but the bullet did not impact the brain itself. He has a concussion and some swelling, but," he favored the family with a reassuring smile, "we know how to deal with those. However, the bullet seems to have been coated with something that he wasn't reacting well to. We cleaned the wound, and that seemed to stop the reaction, but we're not sure what it was."
"What kind of reaction?" asked Vlad, his voice pitched unnaturally high. His duplicate had missed that somehow. How had it missed that?
The doctor glanced at Maddie and Jack, keeping up the pretense that Vlad wasn't the one who paid most of his bills. Maddie nodded, movements tight.
"His blood was... fizzing. Fizzing on contact with the, ah, bullet fragments. Fizzing green. I've never seen anything quite like it." He looked at the police officer. "When your people find the bullet, we'd appreciate if you tested it. We'd like to know what the substance was, in case it could cause other complications."
"But he's stable now," said Jack, unusually quiet.
"Yes," said the doctor. "We're watching him very closely, though. Head injuries can be unpredictable."
"Can we see him?" asked Jazz.
The doctor seemed to consider the question, then nodded. "One at a time," he said. "Family members only." He looked at Vlad with an expression that mixed genuine regret and professional terror. "Sorry, it's a hospital rule."
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"Found it!" exclaimed the officer.
"Good! Don't touch it!" shouted a detective from the other side of the stage.
"I'm not a rookie."
"Doesn't mean you can't make rookie mistakes," said the detective, jogging the long way around the stage. "Hm. Deflected quite a bit off the victim." The detective leaned closer, examining the bullet lodged neatly between the planks of the stage. "Must have still had a lot of momentum." He squinted. "Hey, does this look green to you?"
