"Honestly, the nerve of that boy," Vlad grumbled to himself as he floated through Fentonworks, sifting through papers on side tables and pictures on ledges. "He thinks he can just leave whenever he wants, as if he's well enough to go gallivanting around the woods. Heck, he could be in the Ghost Zone or have been recaptured by those blasted agents for all I know!" The billionaire threw his fist into a nearby wall in his frustration.
All the note said was that Daniel would 'be back later.' No specifications of where the young halfa was going or why, just a simple 'be back later' as if that would keep Vlad's worries away. Really all it did was make the man worry more. What if Daniel was kidnapped while out or went into a fit? Nobody would know where he was or how to handle him, if there was anybody around in the first place.
Angrily, the businessman flipped through a photo album that was in a closet. He paused when he came across a photo of himself fast asleep with clown make-up on and surrounded by three familiar mischievous teenagers. Vlad didn't know if he wanted to scowl at it or smile fondly at how Daniel used to act around his nemesis. Though he'd never admit it out loud, the man missed the boy that had no problem speaking his mind and causing trouble. His frustration dampening, Vlad snapped the album closed and tossed it into the box floating beside him.
With a sigh he moved on to his next location: the bedrooms. He already had a decent amount of photographs and the occasional scrap book in the box, but he wanted more than that to help Daniel remember his past. Luckily, the man didn't need to worry about the security system with the power in Amity Park shut down. After Jack and Maddie found out about Daniel's powers, they installed more precise security on each room to keep specific *cough*Vlad*cough* ghosts out.
Flippantly the businessman glanced around Jack and Maddie's room before settling on taking an old family portrait on one of the nightstands. Boredly, he phased through the wall that led to Jasmine's room by the door. On the desk on the far wall was a scrapbook laid open with newspaper clippings and photos of Danny Phantom strewn around it. Tucking the clippings and pictures into the book, Vlad added it to his box.
Just as he was about to exit the room he spotted the Einstein-esque bear on Jasmine's bed. He vaguely remembered sending that when Jack and Maddie told him of the girl's birth, though he never would have thought she'd have such an attachment to it. With a nostalgic hum, the halfa swiped the bear from the bed, smoothing down the wild grey hair, and placed it in the box.
Vlad wasn't that surprised when he saw the mess that Daniel claimed as his own. Scorch marks on the walls and duct taped chair legs and holes displayed the history of the battle-worn room, then add to that the filthy clothes and crumpled forgotten homework dead on the ground. The businessman couldn't fathom how the boy could function in such a room. Vlad would send his staff over immediately to clean the house if there were any point to it; unfortunately, the likelihood of anyone being back in the deserted town anytime soon was as high as Daniel admitting his mental problems.
Pushing those thoughts aside, Vlad continued his search. Opting not to touch the stale clothes, the man used his powers to move items across the room to find the hidden treasures buried beneath. His endeavors found him a beaten cellphone and the smudged, dented thermos Daniel used while ghost hunting. Everything else could only be described as useless, at least for Vlad's purposes.
With one more sweeping glance over the room, the halfa moved to the Opts Center; he knew the Fentons used it as extra storage. Vlad shouldn't have been surprised to find the massive contraption nearly as messy as Daniel's room except instead of dirty clothes and homework, the room was covered in old food and pieces of old inventions. And who could forget about the scorch marks and a couple broken windows no doubt from teenagers looking to cause trouble in the abandoned town.
Skipping over the main room of the part-time aircraft, Vlad went straight to a series of rooms at the back that were dubbed the 'attic rooms.' If he hadn't been regulating the ghost portals, the billionaire would have expected the Box Ghost to be going crazy with the amount of boxes piled into the various rooms. Yet, even with so many boxes depicting the family's history in the house, hardly any were of any use.
Making some of the boxes invisible so he could see the contents, Vlad mainly found clothes of varying sizes and long forgotten toys that were probably only kept for eventual grand children and slight sentimental value. The halfa spread his power to a couple boxes he thought might be useful and moved them to join his original box.
One exasperated sigh later and the man was floating out of the room with every intent to get home as fast as possible so he could do something interesting with his day, maybe work on some inventions or hunt down Daniel. Just as fate would have it, though, voices drifting to an open window in the Opts Center made Vlad pause. He took a moment to debate with himself if he actually wanted to take the time to investigate the voices or if he'd rather get on with his life.
Normally he'd simply leave, but there was a strange pull in the back of his mind serenading him to the window. If his brain wasn't suddenly so fuzzy, Vlad would have taken in the strangely beautiful sight of Amity Park framed by autunm or the absence of cars zooming by and people screaming about a ghost attack. And maybe he'd ponder about how the town felt especially empty when actually standing there and seeing the lack of life instead of simply hearing it on the news.
But, again, the billionaire's mind was unusually foggy.
Rather than pan the horizon, Vlad's eyes were drawn to a man down below dressed in a black, decorative trench coat and tiny matching hat, and holding a staff that appeared to have recently taken a nasty fall. The man looked too pale to belong somewhere as sunny as Amity Park, even if it had become the meeting place for thrill-seeking punks hoping to catch a glimpse of the dead residents they assumed lurked the town.
Surrounding the clown-like man were some weak (to Vlad, at least) ghosts with glowing red eyes that remained drawn to the cracked red orb atop the man's staff, the same place Vlad's eyes strayed to before he realized the mind controlling abilities of it. With a jerk of his head, the halfa bid the fogginess of his mind away and cursed his momentary weakness. He let out a frustrated growl, then focused back on the strange group outside of Fentonworks.
Now that his mind wasn't being consumed, he observed the members of the group and found mostly blob-like ghosts and some ectopuses. Alongside them was another ghost: a young woman with spikes lining her skull, a deep maroon cloak waving slightly in the breeze, and the hint of countless tattoos peeking out from her collarbone where the cloak didn't cover. Concentrating, Vlad tuned into the distant conversation.
"We've scared away any wanderers; the town is completely empty," the cloaked ghost addressed the clown-like man. He gave her a critical look over his long, pointed nose.
"So what you're saying is that it's a ghost town." He paused, darting his wide eyes from one ghost to another with a manic grin. They met his crazed look with dead stares -no pun intended.
"Ah-haaa!" he unleashed an obnoxious laugh that the other ghosts were unaffected by and threw his arms behind him, leaning toward his minions. Vlad, in the meantime, wanted to rip his ear drums out and boil his brain to get the memory of the sound out of his head. "Well, the police have given up and any stragglers are long gone! I have no use of anything in this place, so let's get outta here and move to the next phase."
"Of course, Master," the ghosts chorused. The man's face curled with a pleased smirk, clearly loving having followers even if against their will. The twig of a man spun on his heels and marched down the sidewalk, his minions following lifelessly by his side like trained rats. "Next stop: the Guys In White Headquarters to check up on a certain ghost boy!" he announced enthusiastically.
And just like that Vlad wasn't so unsure about his decision to listen in on the strange man. Slipping into invisibility and teleporting the boxes of Fenton memorabilia to his lab, Vlad prepared himself to stalk the suspicious man with the gothic clothes and information on Daniel's situation.
After following the man to the train tracks where a circus long train waited, Vlad planted himself in one of the gothic themed cars and studied the hypnotized ghosts inside while the train lurched to a start and headed out. The journey took them only a few miles from the outskirts of Amity Park where the woods thickened and a lone road led into its depths.
The man with the staff stepped out and scanned the area. Convinced he wasn't being watched, he lifted the red orb of his staff to his lips and appeared to whisper into it. For a moment Vlad was confused by the action and invisibly moved closer to figure out what the man was doing, but when the train erupted with an echoed "yes, master," Vlad knew the whispers were an order, probably to stay put. With that taken care of, the clown-like man marched his way into the darkening woods.
As the man walked, Vlad followed invisibly behind him listening to the sound of crunching leaves and cawing crows bounce off the slumbering trees. The woods smelt of decay, of animals preparing for months of darkness, of ectoplasm burning to nonexistence. The businessman was fighting off a sound of repulsion when a strangely fresh breeze fluttered to him. He might have disregarded the scent if not for the fact that Illinois hadn't had any snowfall recently -at least not Amity Park's part.
The halfa gave the surrounding area a once over for snow or any form of ice, but found none except for a glimmer of light in the distance. Luckily the man Vlad was stalking was heading in that direction, so the halfa simply continued to follow for the next few minutes, not having to worry about losing him to investigate the light. Getting closer, he noticed more shimmers of light coming from the same area as the original glimmer and bouncing onto the crowded trees and crumbled leaves on the ground.
When there were only a few dozen meters between the men and the source of the lights, figures began taking shape behind the intense glimmers. Squinting to see past the light, Vlad could make out what seemed to be the forms of people, or, more accurately, Guys in White agents with guns pointed to a nonexistent centered target.
A wave of panic shot through Vlad's chest at the thought of being detected by them. He knew he could handle them, of course -or at least keep them off long enough to make an escape- but after Daniel being captured and tortured far beyond honest repair, the thought of facing that same fate set Vlad's mind in unease. Heck, the most conditioned of men wouldn't be able to stand the thought of going through that if they saw how Daniel, a stubbornly strong super hero, turned out afterwards.
But just as he paused to consider abandoning his venture, the businessman took another glance over the agents and his face twisted in confusion the same way the clown-like man's face was at the moment. The agents were slicked in a heavy layer of ice. By the horizontal icicles projecting from their backs and the menacing expressions glued to their faces, they were flash frozen. And even with the sun radiating onto their icy forms, no water dripped from their chins or the tips of their oversized weapons; they could have been there for a couple days or a couple months for all the onlookers could tell. It almost looked as if the sun was shining right through them.
"What," the human stuttered as he stumbled up to the pack of frozen agents, "how is this possible?" He paused to examine a frozen agent standing closer to the center than his comrades. His crimson eyes scanned the man from where his boots stuck to the ground to where an almost lunatic smirk laced with evil intent faced his missing target. Then he got to the eyes that were intensified by the crystal clear ice over them. The man jolted back when he saw the look to kill in those orbs.
After the initial shock, the man did a double take. Vlad, his curiosity piquing when the clown's did, positioned himself just over the human's shoulder so he could see those same eyes. In them was the hint of a picture as if the last scene the agent beheld was trapped inside, just a reflection that could only be viewed at a precise angle. The gothic man's eyes narrowed when he made out what that picture was and he threw himself away from the frozen figure, barely giving Vlad enough time to move out of the way.
"Good for nothing agents! All they had to do was keep him contained-" the strange man ranted, but Vlad tuned him out to get a closer look at the agent.
Now that the human was out of the way, the halfa could see better into the agent's eyes. What he saw nearly made his core stop. The terrified eyes of Daniel, beaten and weak, tears running down his face, stared back at Vlad practically begging for sanctuary, for someone to rescue him or death to finally take his last labored breath. Never had the need to coddle Daniel, to make him feel more than an unwanted hero and failure of a child, been more alive in the older half ghost. Suddenly, he didn't just want to find Daniel soon, he needed to find Daniel now.
"Actually," the other man's ranting finally came to a close, "this might just work out in my favor." He stroked his pointed chin with a black gloved hand as he turned his critical look to the frozen agent. "He's alone, now," the man continued, taking a couple steps around the iced figure, "that is, if he's even alive… ah-haaa!" his manic grin came back and his eyes widened in his mirth.
"Once he comes to, he'll figure out just how alone he is! That brat's mind won't be able to handle the realization that I took his entire town and family from him," his hand moved to run over the red orb on his staff. "Not only will he be broken beyond repair, but he won't even have a distant relative to turn to for comfort and Clockwork knows his enemies will never want to help him. If I'm lucky, they'll take advantage of his unstable state and break him even more."
No doubt remained in Vlad's mind that the clown-like man in front of him was the man behind Amity Park's disappearance and Daniel's containment. If the cellphone in his tunic hadn't gone off that moment, the halfa would have tortured the information right out of the gothic man the same way Daniel was tortured by the hands of the wretched agents, then snapped his twig of a neck. Screw his morals against murder! People like the clown deserved to die.
But the brief beep from his pocket instantly put him on alert. Though not one accustomed to fleeing, Vlad had to play careful with the Guys in White facility looming in the distance and a man with the ability to call a small army of ghosts with the slip of a word right beside him. Already, the human was suspicious from the sound of the phone in the near silent setting. The man's head scanned the area with narrowed eyes, muttering under his breath, and pointing his staff to follow his line of sight. Vlad could tell the man was suspecting some ghost and was attempting to lure it in. Unfortunately for him, the ghost he wanted had far too strong a will than the orb could handle.
Cautious eyes still on the goth, Vlad slunk behind a tree a few feet from the frozen clearing and pulled his phone from his pocket to read the message from Skulker.
Get home. Whelp had a revealing experience today.
Revealing experience? That could either mean an extremely awkward conversation for Vlad or that Daniel developed a new power that he desperately needed help with. The businessman kept his fingers crossed for the latter. At least then he could teach the boy or find someone in the Ghost Zone to do the teaching.
"Hmph," the sound bouncing around the clearing broke Vlad from having to think about the other situation he might be facing upon his return home. Instead, his focus came to the clown of a man slowly lowering his staff when no ghosts appeared at his command. As he straightened up and spared the forest one last glance, Vlad took another sweep of the man. He wanted to remember the bald head and long, pointed nose when looking through police reports and newspapers later. The billionaire might not be able to follow the human due to Daniel being his top priority, but he could find out where he lived and what his history was.
Silently, Vlad slipped his cellphone back into his pocket and watched the gothic man's form shrink in the distance. Finally, he bid the haunting setting goodbye in favor of the golden sky and the promise of a long night and following days, because nobody knew better than Vlad that when Daniel was involved nothing could be simple.
Powers of the Ghost Zone, Vlad really hoped it was the latter situation.
I know some people are a little skeptical about Davy right now, but -I'll tell you this right now- he's going to play a big part in getting Danny's mental health back in order, and I'm playing around with a bigger part for him. Currently, Danny's still pretty messed up and needs someone (that's not a former enemy) to help him. But more on that later.
Next order of business: Delilah. Looking over my notes on this story, I realized she doesn't have as much of a purpose as I thought she did, so heads up, I think I'm cutting her. If you guys are devastated by this, let me know and maybe I can actually give her a purpose, but I'm not putting her in without said purpose. I'm not a fan of useless characters.
I hope you're all still liking the update; I'm trying to get the story moving better. This chapter took longer to write than I thought it would, but I'm pretty happy with it. Anyways, my college classes just ended and my high school classes are almost done (all I can say is it's complicated), so I'll have more time to write once I get done making up for my time of art deprivation. Sorry this wasn't up earlier; besides the slow going part, I thought my computer died until I realized a couple days later that I just didn't have the charger plugged in...
Thank you dear reviewers, followers, and favoriters. If you have time leave me a long review and tell me what you're really feeling about Humming. Nothing excites me more than an honest review!