Author's Note
HAPPY... SOMETHING DAY SHINY-SAMA! Yep, this is a gift for you, and by Gods you deserve it. This is the sad, twisted tale of the desperate measures Vlad resorts to when his secret is revealed to Maddie.
Who knows? You might just feel sorry for the guy. ;)
PS: Sorry, I know I didn't answer all the last reviews... I'll get to that tomorrow, hopefully. Thank-you all for reading Lightning Rod, though! I really appreciate it!
Whatever the Cost
-MoonlightUmbreon-
In Amity Park, Illinois, there are three Golden – though unwritten – Rules that you should follow. They're an essential part of your health and general wellbeing. And though they are seldom spoken of, they're etched into every inhabitant's brain with a red-hot poker.
For a human; never tangle in the affairs of ghosts, unless, of course, you're a head donor.
For a ghost; never tangle in the affairs of ghost hunters, humans, or Phantom, unless you want to be crammed into – no, I'm not kidding – a thermos for at least a day, and then shoved back into the Ghost Zone with as much force as necessary.
For a half-ghost hybrid; never, EVER let anyone know you have a ghost half. You'll be shunned in the Ghost Zone for having a human half and dissected as an experiment in the real world for having ectoplasm run in your veins.
Vlad Masters, multi-billionaire mayor of Amity Park, was a half-ghost. He had a tall stance, an English accent, and a strangely malevolent grin consistently plastered across his face. None of this, however, saved him from accidentally breaking his Golden Rule. And now, unfortunately, he was staring down the wrong end of a freakishly large barrel.
He was stunned, needless to say. Especially when whom was pointing it at him was Maddie Fenton – still the love of his life after twenty years, and fifteen years of marriage on her part. Too bad she wasn't exactly that keen on him anymore. Well, she hadn't ever been keen, but now she seemed to hate him with nothing less than a burning passion.
How he'd slipped, he'd never know. Vlad had been in perfect control of his powers since a few months after he'd received them; to have them briefly malfunction there, right at that very moment in time, was about the worst luck he'd ever had. Aside from the fact that he was probably about to be vaporised (and that was getting off lightly), he'd just blown his last-ditch chance at Madeline Fenton once and for all. There couldn't be any way that she'd ever accept him again...
The gun nudged his forehead, and Vlad had to admit that it really was quite brutal for just a nudge. Maddie wasn't happy at all, and she showed it. A large part of Vlad's heart melted in despair.
"Maddie, look, this really isn't-"
"Save it!" she screeched, shoving the weapon further into Vlad's temple. "You filthy lying putrid ghost! All these years of crime, betrayal and plotting! Don't you dare think you can ever come and waltz into my house to spread your ectoplasmic filth again!"
These few agonisingly long moments, Vlad decided, had to be worse than death itself. Staring into Maddie's livid eyes was more like slowly diving into the bowels of hell. It hurt Vlad. Sure, it was an internal kind of hurt, but it still hurt him more than he was willing to admit.
Maddie had him out of the house quicker than Jack driving the RV. She trooped him out, blood boiling in her veins, continuing to hold the Fenton Bazooka to his head in a shaky fury.
Vlad ended up returning to his mansion on the richer side of Amity Park, nearly in tears. Maddie had seen him right out of the street, just to make sure he was actually leaving; the raw hate she was channelling might as well have been tangible.
There had to be something, Vlad thought desperately, that he could do to make it up to her. Well, anything even slightly above the purest forms of hatred, anyway. When he got back inside his house, he sat down on his big, expensive chair and cradled his white, fluffy, expensive cat while he rested. Really, he continued on, she couldn't actually be angry at him. Yes; she was angry at Plasmius. Plasmius had done all the wrongs. Granted, Plasmius was as good as him anyway... but she didn't have to know that.
Vlad leaned forward, deep in thought. So deep that he hadn't noticed Maddie the cat tip off his lap with an unsettled yowl. Perhaps, if he could separate himself from Plasmius and then give her a bit of a talk of the so-called physics of the whole situation, then things would straighten out. At least enough, of course, that she wouldn't shoot him the next time she saw him.
However, that was an extremely extreme measure. Vlad knew that ripping his ghost half out was the equivalent of ripping out half of himself; he'd be two separate beings, and would probably be unable to merge back together.
But even extremely extreme measures were all worth it for Madeline Fenton.
It was the next day when Vlad picked up the phone, albeit nervously. He twiddled it in his fingers, knowing exactly what he was going to say like it was in a script. Well, he had rehearsed it. He wasn't going to get this wrong.
Maddie appeared on the other end of the line and asked warily who it was. She sounded as though she still had some heavy things on her mind, but was trying to hide it. Vlad took a breath, but found all of his rehearsed words try to force their way out at once, resulting in a strangled sound at the other end.
"Hello? Who is that...?" the ghost hunter's voice trailed off, but then fired right back up. "Vlad?!"
Finally, the billionaire managed to spit out the garbled mess of a poem in quick succession, hoping to God that his poor poetry skills hadn't bled into the verse.
"There's no limit to how much I love you,
and no length too extreme to do.
Please, Maddie; listen to what I have to say-
I'm going to split myself in two."
Before Maddie had time to react beyond anything but a gasp, Vlad slammed the phone down and breathed in and out, deeply. He had no idea what her reaction was going to be, and the part of him that forced the phone feebly back onto the hook really didn't want to know, anyway.
Although another yearning part of him hoped desperately that she'd pick the phone up again to tell him not to take part in such a self-destructive act. Of course, that didn't happen. On the other end, Maddie still hadn't returned her phone back to its rightful place; her brain was trying and failing to catch up with the situation presented.
Vladimir Masters waited for that one call for over an hour. He stood in front of the receiver, every so often taking a glance at the time or a disgruntled Maddie-cat, but the love of his life never replied. Dejectedly, the billionaire allowed himself to drop through the floor and into his experimental basement.
His basement – in other words, his secret ghost laboratory – was much like the Fentons. There were beakers, there were strange glowing fluids, there were painful-looking weapons, there was a ghost portal.... The only real difference, other than the neatness of the room, was that there wasn't any obvious way to get in; the entrance was missing entirely.
Vlad didn't bother to transform while he was down there. Instead, he paced, eyes jumping from gadget to weapon to gadget. One in particular caught his eye.
The Plasmius Maximus.
It was a device capable of shorting out a ghost's powers for three hours – and in the case of a half ghost, it left them completely unable to transform for the same period of time. However, three hours simply wasn't long enough. Vlad knew that he'd have to short his powers out, say, once a month. That way, he could still use them every now and then when the need arose, and fool Maddie at the same time. It'd take a day to fix it up, but...
Well, it was better than tearing himself down the middle, at any rate.
The forty year-old half ghost grimaced at his invention. It wasn't working out at all; sure, he had the sprockets in the right place, the gears oiled, the wires correctly positioned... everything was there.
And yet it still refused to work.
Well, sure, it worked, but he couldn't get it to work beyond three hours. It made him feel like he should just hurl it into the bin and be done with the nightmare once and for all. Obviously, it just wasn't going to be possible to short out his own ghost powers and therefore conceal his ghost half for a decent amount of time, which would prove problematic. Those shocks, after all, felt like you'd just stuck a knife in a high-voltage electricity main. Sooner or later he'd end up going into cardiac arrest – and it was a bit hard to build a relationship with someone when you were either in hospital receiving a heart transplant or worse; dead.
He tapped his fingers on a clean space of bench, thinking wistfully at what could have been. If only he'd never received ghost powers, then perhaps Maddie would have been his, not the idiotic Jack Fenton's. It would be Maddie Masters, not Fenton. They would have bought a farm somewhere in Wisconsin – a nice little place; not one of those huge, empty mansions. They'd work together in the dairy industry, and...
Vlad trailed off in his daydream, almost daring to believe it was real. Unfortunately, his fantasies were far too little too late.
Later that day, he picked up the phone and dialled the one number he knew by heart.
"Today I tried and failed
to short my ghost half out.
But I couldn't do it;
yet I'm not going to go and pout.
"I will do anything for you,
my dear.
Don't even give me a clue;
I've wanted you forever,
and now I know what I should do.
"Shorting my ghost half was an incomplete idea;
something that wasn't permanent at all.
So I've decided to really split myself in half today;
it's just how far I'm willing to fall.
"Because whatever it takes-
whatever the cost...
I'll keep trying 'till I've lost."
There was silence on the other end. After a good ten seconds, Vlad couldn't take it anymore and returned the phone to the hook with a shaky hand. Poetry wasn't his strong point by any means, but he was at least hoping to invoke a reaction of some kind.
Still, he was motivated. He was going to go through with this, and he was going to do it right. Perhaps if he split himself right in front of her, and then destroyed his ghost half, then she'd (falsely, of course) realise that he wasn't all bad and that the worst of his personality had died with Plasmius.
A part of him, deep inside, urged him not to do it. Vlad ignored that part; Maddie was far better than any ghost, and that included himself.
But there was still one problem.
How did you get rid of ghost powers, anyway? Vlad thought about it for some time, before coming to a conclusion. If a ghost portal powering up gave him a ghost half, then what would happen if he powered it down? In theory, it could remove his ghost half altogether as the ectoplasm was sucked out of the main portal in preparation for shutdown.
In theory, of course.
Still, it was the only idea he had. It'd certainly hurt when the original proto-portal had blasted him in the face, but that wasn't going to stop him. If it meant that he was going to win over Maddie as a result, then he didn't care how damaging it was to him.
A black ring formed around his waistline, splitting and moving in opposite directions. As they went, they revealed his vampire-like ghost half, which he stared at for possibly the last time. That strangled part of him was now screaming and jeering at Vlad's mind not to do it, but his mind was set. Well and truly set.
In fact, he was actually a little scared. If it didn't work out, then what else could he do? He'd be left bitter and alone for the rest of his life, and it'd get progressively worse as time went on. That in Vlad's mind, was a thought horrifying enough to provoke anyone into doing anything.
He headed back into his laboratory and picked out a prototype weapon that he'd been working on for months – originally he'd designed it in case the need ever arose to extinguish Daniel altogether, but now he knew he could use it for something else. Gingerly, he picked it up and looked it over, wondering how his ghost half would react once separated. Like him, he'd expect, but would it accept being vaporised? It probably would gain a kind of consciousness – or at least have a duplicate of his own, at any rate.
Vlad approached the portal, now more nervous than ever. It was now that he'd find out if he'd ever have another chance at Maddie ever again – the centre of his entire life.
Biting down on his lip, the billionaire entered some combinations into the security lock, and then recoded some of the programming. He also replaced the ecto-filtrator, which should have hopefully encouraged a bit of a cleaner 'accident'.
If only Vlad had known, when he stepped inside that portal and directed it to power down, that his ghost half had become so hopelessly attached to him over the years that his human body just couldn't cope without it, anymore...
