Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Danny Phantom, I'm a big fan and was feeling nostalgic.

Chapter 10: Infiltration

Vlad's POV

In the end, I didn't trust myself not to destroy Jack on the spot and verbally lash out at Maddie as well so I decided to go with the preferred stealthy approach. Before that plan was put into motion however, it took a few hours to adjust the old human and ghost shield to suit my needs, but the end results were well worth it once I activated it. Of course I made sure that it was programmed to ignore my signature so I could deactivate and pass through it at will without any complications regardless of which form I was in...

Once I was finished installing the device, that also gave me a chance to get everything else ready for Daniel in the meantime and check on his condition again while I was in the room with the terribly weak teenager. He looked so innocent and helpless laying there, his face as pale as a real ghost though the hint of red of his cheeks betrayed his lingering fever, but with any luck his deep level of exhaustion could work in my favor since Daniel seemed too tired to even dream at the moment. Aside from the steady rise and fall of his chest Daniel was completely still. There wasn't so much as a twitch in his fingertips or a flutter of his eyelashes as he slept on, totally oblivious to my plans of keeping him quarantined in this room until he got better or at least was rational enough to behave himself. Which hopefully meant that there was no reason to fear Daniel having yet another panic attack.

Even so, regardless of his peaceful appearance I couldn't let my guard down since that's what got me in trouble during his previous fits of delirium. That's why just to be safe before I left, I gave him another sedative to ensure that his sleep would last longer since he desperately needed the rest anyway. Better safe then sorry as they say.

And of course I was leaving Daniel with only the best bodyguard I had available at my disposal who was curled up on his chest again, purring away as if nothing dire had happened only a few hours earlier. Maddie, being neither human nor ghost could still leave the room at will so I could only hope that Daniel wouldn't somehow use her to get out of here, but then again...what could he possibly get a cat to do?

I knew I was overthinking things but still...I needed Daniel to be safe. Even if it was safe from himself. If nothing else proved to him that I cared, then showing him how far I was willing to go for his sake just had to. This was one scheme that was devoid of it's usual pettiness. I was doing all of this for the sake of someone who meant more to me then he could ever hope to realize...

"I'll be back soon little badger," I called gently, brushing some hair from his placid face. "You'll thank me for this later." After that before I could talk myself out of this to stay by his side, I activated the shield and left the mansion via teleportion.

As an added precaution I activated the outer shield as well which was invisible to the human eye, but not to a ghost. If any ghost so much as brushed past the surface of the shield they'd be in for a nasty shock, especially if they were powerful ones. I wasn't expecting any visitors, least of all from any of my allies, but they knew me well enough to come back later if I did not wish to be disturbed which was one of the reasons I would activate the shield, that. That and to keep out burglars who were foolishly unaware that I was famously known to be haunted by a particularly dangerous vampire ghost that followed me all the way from Wisconsin that didn't take kindly to intruders.

Well this time as far as the Fenton's were concerned I wasn't an intruder or a guest, I was going to be nothing more then a silent shadow. My plan was to simply take what I needed and then make it look like either Jack misplaced it or the government had stolen it, which I wouldn't put past them. That is, if they were actually any good at their job let alone being even remotely stealthy. But how could they be when their gut reaction is to point their guns at the nearest object and charge them up loudly before taking in their surroundings properly? And they call themselves professionals? No, they like Jack they were idiots, the lot of them. So if I could help it, I didn't want to draw the attention of either one...

As when anything earth-shattering happened, despite the overcast skies above everything below looked almost abhorrently normal. I never understood what it was about this little town that Daniel was so adamant about protecting so I could only assume it was the people here he wished to protect. Too bad two of the most important people in his life were now hunting him as we speak.

Flying a little lower once that obnoxious sign for Fenton Works came into view, I scanned the area and was surprised to find that the ghost shield was down. I would have assumed since they were on high alert Jack and Maddie would have kept it up and running to protect their daughter from the same ghost. Had Jasmine turned it off in the hopes of Daniel returning home? What I did expect though -or rather had been hoping for since I was in no mood to see either of them at present- Daniel's parents were nowhere to be seen. They must have gone out ghost hunting in hopes of catching Danny Phantom while he was hurt or at least a ghost that might know his whereabouts...

Of course they didn't listen, I scoffed when I noticed that the Fenton Ghost Assault -or rather their RV- was missing from their driveway.

Speaking of which, it looked like Jasmine's car was there actually which surprised me since I assumed they would have made her go to school regardless of the current situation. Then again the poor girl was probably distraught that her little brother wasn't only missing, but hurt as well. And since she actually knew his secret then the truth of what her parents had done to him must have come as even more of a shock. Yet for his sake Jasmine was probably doing her utmost best to keep that to herself, even now.

I'd best be careful so she doesn't notice my presence. Which reminds me, there is something else I need to take care of while I'm here as well, Knowing exactly where I needed to go I took a risk and teleported inside Fenton Works itself.

Like it's own occupants I knew their home like the back of my hand, and even in the confusion since there were so many pieces of loose equipment scattered about it was relatively easy to find what I needed. Jack still hadn't changed since our college days and had this bad habit of piling things in corners where he'd soon forget about them. Typical case of organized chaos. Luckily I was much more organized and despite his protests would often even organize the items in said corners so we could still access what we needed. Needless to say that saved us a few times when a report was due and we needed a specific piece of study material hidden in his piles of documents, because back then we had to print up everything.

I smiled sadly when I floated to their pile of blueprints and noticed Maddie's pattern of organization as well when I recognized her handwriting in the side notes after making corrections in the calculations. She was always good at pointing out both our and her own mistakes to hopefully prevent us from making the same ones. Well sadly, this time I was correcting a mistake that was just as much her fault as it was Jack's, though it pained me to do so since it never should have happened. Not to Daniel...

I remember how much we were all fascinated by ghosts and the supernatural back then, but now that I think about it, since when was there also this hatred of them too in their hearts? In the twenty years I was gone what could've happened to make them feel so much hostility towards something they couldn't see as sentient let alone capable of human emotion...?

Shaking my head and remembering that I wasn't alone in this house since Jasmine was home, I quickened my pace and flipped through the blueprints, searching for the most recent ones. Confound it all why weren't any of these properly dated!? If I could get away with it I would have just taken all of them with me but that would look too suspicious even if I did blame the government for taking them. The pile was still relatively small though thankfully so there wasn't too much to sort through, but I was still on edge because a darker part of me wanted to destroy this entire laboratory so that they could never invent such a dangerous weapon again that could hurt Daniel so badly.

I sighed in relief once I finally found the blueprints I was looking for and safely tucked it away in the fold of my belt along with the blueprints for two other weapons of a similar design, one from an old abandoned project and the other from a newer yet unfinished one. Then I turned my attention to searching for the actual gun Daniel was shot with now that I knew what it looked like. Though I prayed that my earlier theory was correct and they hadn't taken the gun with them ghost hunting.

Aside from the gun blueprints, I was also looking for a certain boomerang-shaped tracking device which had led Daniel's friends straight to us during the cloning incident. I couldn't risk them using it again to find him so I had plans to erase his signature from it, disguising it as more of Jack's compulsive tinkering with something that already worked fine. More often then not Jack would end up breaking something rather then 'improve it' which is why Maddie had to step in so often and stop him from messing with something too much.

While that usually worked in Daniel's favor when Jack messed up a tracking device in-particular, when Jack did this with their most important and ironically dangerous invention, the Ghost Portal, it had nearly proven fatal when Daniel was attempting to use it escape their attack. From the looks of it their portal was STILL closed and powered down, which at least right now might actually be a good thing because it greatly reduced the chances of one of Daniel's enemies appearing at this crucial time and causing a problem while he was too weak to fight back. Not that I was going to let him do any ghost fighting anytime soon though...

Striding over to the inactive portal, I shuttered as I recalled Daniel's description of the pain the gun made him experience when he was first injured and compared it to his own accident from when he received his ghost powers. He felt the pain throughout his entire body at once and not from just a blast to the face as I had, if I'd known that sooner I never would have made light of it so often. For a fourteen year old to have felt such an all consuming pain was-

It...it felt like when I first got my powers when I messed with my parents ghost portal...I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't escape from the agony ripping through my entire body because it was everywhere, inside and out. I couldn't even see the button to turn it off and save myself. I seriously thought that I was going to die that day-

"Those fools...how could they have left something so dangerous out in the open like this? What sort of parents, inventors or not, would willingly expose their own children to the SAME DANGEROUS GHOST PORTAL THAT HOSPITALIZED ME?! All they had to do was lock the door, make this place off limits to them at all times, and yet they were this careless? And Jack he-!" I snarled, forgetting for a moment where I was as I punched the nearest wall to vent at least some of my anger without letting it consume me. "Curse you Jack, as if I didn't have enough of a reason to despise you! Now you've gone too far! It wasn't enough that you've ruined my life, but now you've done the same to your own son!"

Realizing what a racket I was making I snapped out of it and quickly scanned the room for the gun so I could get out of here. As luck would have it it was right next to the work bench closest to the stairs. Because I had let my emotions get the better of me after all I knew I'd have to come back for that tracking device later tonight if not tomorrow before someone attempted to use it...

Flying over to it, I reached for the weapon when the door upstairs leading to the lab burst open and Jasmine exclaimed, "Danny w-wait!"

I froze and instinctively went invisible, snatching the gun and preparing to teleport when I noticed the other important object I was looking for was in her trembling hands. Blast it, how was I going to get it without having to overshadow the poor girl? I stared at her in disbelief for a moment, only to remember that she knew Daniel's secret that he was a halfa too. It would seem to me that while Jasmine was home alone she had likely been debating on whether or not to use that device to track her brother or not and risking her parents finding out that the means of finding Daniel was already within their grasp and they didn't need my assistance after all.

As expected, when I took a closer look at the distraught teenager Jasmine's eyes were puffy and red from weeping and when she called out to me thinking I was her brother I noticed that her voice was terribly cracked. I pitied the poor girl and was reminded of just how much she loved Daniel. If nothing else, at least he would always have her on his side no matter what. And that came as much as of a comfort to me as I'm sure it did to Daniel, knowing that there was at least one person who cared about all of him and not just one side.

Still hoping that I was there in the empty room, or that Daniel was rather, Jasmine continued desperately, "I-I know it was dangerous to come back here but if that's you, please come out so I know you're ok. Danny I'm so sorry I wasn't there for you! I know our parents don't like your ghost half, but I n-never thought they w-would-!" she covered her mouth and whimpered pitifully, still horrified by what had happened even though she didn't see it herself. Taking a deep breath and stepping further inside, Jasmine continued, "Danny, l-listen. I know there's probably not much t-time but please...listen to me, if you need a place to go since you and I both know that you c-can't stay at your friends houses then there's only one place where you'll be safe. Our p-parents will find you since they think you k-kidnapped yourself if you try Tucker or Sam's, you know that!" Raising the boomerang with a sad smile, Jasmine caught me completely off guard with what she said next, albeit a bit hysterically. "I deleted your signature from the Booomarang Danny, because I didn't want mom and dad realizing it could track you or let Sam and Tucker make things worse by going missing too to take care of you. I was...the truth is that I wanted to look for you myself, but that would've only put you in more danger. Please Danny I know you say you hate his guts but he's our only chance! We both know that there's only one person in this town -maybe even the world- that can keep you safe from our parents! If anyone can help, Vlad Masters can. I mean h-he helped you before didn't he? In that other timeline? That's why you know that deep down Vlad really does care and that he'll help you this time too. Danny, please, you know I'm right about this! You need help and Vlad's the only one who can give you that. I-I don't know what else to do Danny, I wish I was older and already moved out then I could hide you, but I'm not, I'm only sixteen. I wish...god I wish we didn't have ghost hunters for parents now more then ever because why did they have to shoot my baby brother?! WHY!? Danny you're always doing the right thing even when no one thanks you, when it HURTS, so why did this have to happen? You didn't deserve to lose everything...but maybe...maybe Vlad can help you get it back. Danny, you care so much about other people that you always put your life and dreams on hold for everyone else's sake, but for once in your life please, let someone save YOU for once. Promise me you'll try to talk to him Danny and ask for help, even if you can't bring yourself to tell him the truth about 'him.'"

My eyes narrowed, trying to wrap my mind around all of that while slowly floating further away from Jasmine, knowing it was a mistake to linger for too much longer yet, what she just said made me wonder. She knows about this 'him?' No, more importantly is Jasmine saying that she trusts me to take care of Daniel even after everything I've done to him? Why? And what was that about helping Daniel in another timeline? How is that even possible?

"Danny? Are you still there?" Jasmine asked timidly, wiping her eyes to clear them of a fresh coat of tears. "Be safe, even if you're not here please, just be safe. I don't know if I'm doing the right thing but...I love you. And while he might not admit it, Vlad loves you too in his own weird way. He's...always cared but just doesn't know how to show it. But you can remind him Danny. Remind him that he's human too, just like you and that he has a heart buried under all that hate. It's not just being half-ghost that makes the two of you close, I just know it! If Vlad was that happy with the idea of taking me in when I ran away from home because he really does want a family, even though I'm just some stupid human and not something as amazing as you...I know he'll welcome you with open arms and put all his evil plots aside for your sake. And Danny? You need that. You need someone who accepts you, and so does he..."