TUE?
Chapter Ten
"Well, that's about as subtle as a flying mallet."
Danny and Danielle had finally reached Vlad's portal, which was covered up by a giant purple football.
"Heh, yeah, I know, right?" Danny said, moving to push it aside. He turned back to Danni. "Ready?"
Danni tensed and clenched her teeth, but she wasn't about to give up now. "Ready as I'll ever be."
Together, they flew through the portal, their boots landing softly on the sickeningly familiar tile floor of Mr. Master's secret lab. Danni gasped as she looked around. The room looked to be completely destroyed. The lab was closed off, leaving the room completely dark, save for a few computer monitors and the ghostly green glow of the Ghost Portal, and the countertops and the experiments on them were ruined, making it seem as if the castle overhead had been completely destroyed. They had barely gone two steps before they heard the one voice Danni had never wanted to ever hear again echo off the walls of the destroyed lab.
"Come to kick the defensless old man when he's down?"
-
Danielle heard her cousin's sharp intake of breath beside her and she snapped her head towards the direction of the voice. That's when she saw him.
There, in front of the outdated, broken, barely glowing monitors, uncharacteristically slouching in a dusty leather chair, was Vlad. But it wasn't the Vlad she knew. This Vlad was older, scruffier, and much more…unhygienic than her father. His patched suited had holes everywhere, no longer even reaching his ankles, and he looked like he hadn't shaved, bathed, or really even gone outside for at least the past couple of months. He was silently staring at her with such intensity that Danni thought her heart would stop, his hardened glare wordlessly telling her what a failure and monster she was. "Vlad…" she breathed quietly. "What happened to you?"
"I could ask the same of you, my dear girl," he replied slowly, raising a once regal eyebrow. "Or rather, what hasn't happened to you…yet."
The emotionally odd delicacy of the current situation was broken when, for reasons unknown to Danielle, Danny chose that moment to snort at the irony.
"Okay, okay already. Let's just get this over with," he turned from his cousin to Vlad. "Do you have the Ghost Gauntlets?"
If Vlad hadn't been at all surprised before, he was now shocked stupid. A few silent moments passed as Vlad turned his gaze from Danielle to Danny before he finally managed to rasp, "…Daniel, my dear boy, I… You're alive."
"Um, yeah. I'm pretty sure I am. Anyways, we don't have much ti-"
"And you killed him!" he cried, turning his accusing glare back to Danni. "You killed Daniel Fenton, just like you did the rest of the Fentons!"