This is a story that I've wanted to tell for a while. I'm very excited. I might continue it later this week.
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Mask
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Danny slouched against the back wall of the ballroom, mask dangling from his fingers. He didn't want to be here. If his parents weren't out there having the time of their lives, he wouldn't be here, but someone had to keep an eye on them and keep them from getting sucked into whatever scheme Vlad had this time.
He sighed, tracking the bulk of his father across the dance floor. His mother was harder to see, but she was never far behind.
A masquerade ball. Really. Ancients, Vlad was so pretentious.
(Internally, Danny thought that a masquerade ball could be cool... except, well. Vlad.)
His mother briefly emerged from the crowd, caught his eye, and mimed putting on his mask. Apparently she was watching him, too. With a grumble, he put the mask back on. Vlad had given it to him, and although he couldn't see or feel anything wrong with it, he still felt that it was suspect.
"Did your parents make you come, too?"
Danny glanced over. A girl was standing a few feet away. Her dress was red and puffy, and her mask was golden. Her hair was done up in complicated braids. She was, perhaps, one or two years younger than he was, though it was hard to tell with the mask. She was certainly shorter than him.
The silhouette of her dress crumpled as she also slumped against the wall. "You'd think that a masked ball would be, you know, cool, but it's just a bunch of old people jumping around and trying to talk business with the 'great Vlad Masters.'"
"Ouch," said Danny. "At least my parents aren't trying to do that, I guess."
"Oh, yeah? What are they doing, then?" asked the girl.
"I honestly have no idea," said Danny, watching his parents gyrate across the floor again. "Dancing? You could call it dancing." He shrugged.
"Ah," said the girl. "My name's Ellie, by the way."
"Danny," said Danny. "Nice to meet you."
"Same. So, what do your parents do?"
"They're scientists," said Danny, not wanting to get into the whole 'ghost hunting' thing. This wasn't Amity Park. Most people didn't believe in ghosts.
Ellie bobbed her head. "Cool, cool. I kinda want to be a scientist. Like, finding out new things, it just sounds really awesome?"
"Yeah, it can be fun sometimes," said Danny. "I don't understand most of it, though." He rolled his shoulders. Actually, he understood a lot more of his parents' work than he let on, in some specific areas more than them, even. Admitting that wasn't wise, however. "What field are you interested."
"Astrophysics, definitely," said Ellie, firmly. "Space is the coolest thing."
Danny grinned. "Oh, yeah. There's just so much. I mean, have you ever looked at the Hubble Deep Fields?"
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Two teens talking together and having a good time evidently had a magnetic property. Three other high school kids had come to join them, all boys.
One boy was very tall and broad. During their introduction, Danny reflected that if he was on Casper's football team, Dash wouldn't be the star player anymore. Unlike Dash, however, Dustin was quiet, barely speaking at all and always deferring to the others.
The second boy introduced himself as Damien, and he was also tall, but thin and skeletal, like a strong breeze would blow him away. He seemed to realize this, because he had a pair of small enamel pins on the lapel of his suit: a skeleton and a scarecrow.
The last, Dmitri, a redhead, was about the same size as Danny. He reminded Danny of Jazz, for some reason (clearly, her psychology-camp-induced absence was driving him a little crazy). And, less pleasantly, of Wes. He had... a lot of questions. Not quite to the point of being annoying, but still a lot. There was also something wrong with his mask. It was hard to tell, but it looked almost as if one eye of it had been filled in. Danny didn't want to mention it, and ruin the atmosphere, though.
There was an atmosphere. Shockingly enough, these kids liked him, and they were much cooler than Danny would have expected of kids who's parents had been invited by Vlad. Which, yeah, was maybe a weird prejudice on his part. His parents had been invited by Vlad, after all.
Danny liked them back.
"... and the names of the dark matter candidates, whoever thought them up was a genius," said Dmitri, waving his hands.
"Well, yeah," said Danny, grinning, "if they were allowed to pick the names, they probably were the ones to come up with the whole idea for it in the first place. But I think MACHOs might be more likely than WIMPs. You've heard about the exoplanets they found last year?" He let his eyes briefly lose focus. "I bet there are even more of them, that we just can't see yet."
"Yeah, but there have been a lot of tests for MACHOs," said Damien. "You'd think we'd have seen a least a couple. And what about dark energy?"
"I don't think those two are actually related," said Ellie.
"Sure they are. They both have the word dark in them."
"Yeah, but I don't think they actually have anything to do with each other," said Ellie.
"They just have similar names," said Dustin.
"We can look it up, later," said Dmitri.
"Speaking of related," said Danny, "how are you guys related?"
There was a pause. "How'd you know?" asked Ellie. "Like, I could understand if you could see our faces, but..."
Danny shrugged. "I don't know. It just... Felt that way?
"We're cousins," said Damien, leaning forward. His body language spoke of nerves.
Danny couldn't imagine why Damien would be nervous about that, but he probably had his reasons. Family drama, maybe. It wasn't Danny's place to ask, he was a stranger.
Even if he was rather wishing he wasn't. How often did he meet people who shared so many of his interests? Never.
(Well, they were mostly just talking about the one interest, space, but still. And Dustin had mentioned liking Dumpty Humpty.)
"That's cool," he said. He would have liked to have helped. Maybe he still could, somehow? He and his parents were going to be here for a few days.
If he focused, there was an aura of something being not quite right with the cousins. Nothing he could put his finger on, and nothing to do with them as people, but... something.
"Hey," said Ellie, "what do you say we raid the snack table? It can't all be super fancy stuff we can't name, can it? I mean, at least there's punch."
Danny followed Ellie's gaze to the refreshments table. When he'd been over there before, everything had been covered, and he hadn't felt like fighting his way back across the floor and potentially losing sight of his parents. He glanced at them now. They looked like they were having fun.
He lightly bit at his lower lip. He knew Vlad had to be up to something. Otherwise, why bother with all of this?
But... new friends... He liked friends, and Vlad was always up to something. Danny deserved to have a little fun now and again, even so.
"Sure," he said. "We can ruin our dinner."
Ellie snickered. "That's the spirit!" she said, patting Danny on the back and slipping past him.
He smirked at the pun, even if it was unintentional.
"Yeah, better do it now, before there's a punchline," said Dmitri. "Wouldn't want people to think we're in a joke."
Danny choked a little, trying to swallow a laugh.
"That was terrible. You're terrible," said Damien.
"Hey, our new friend seems to like it," said Ellie.
Danny's core did a little bounce when she said friend. He really did want to be friends. "What can I say," he said, shrugging. "Better a joke, than a fist?"
Dmitri smiled broadly. Damien groaned, arcing his long body back dramatically.
There wasn't a line for the punch, or even very many people around the snack table at all. What few people had been there moved off, glaring, when the five children descended on the table. He caught Ellie sticking her tongue out at a woman who was giving them a particularly dirty look.
They gathered cups of punch and piled tiny plates high with pastries before retreating to a nearby corner to resume their conversation.
Danny was having a harder time following it this time, though. He felt tired. Drained. A little overheated. He wasn't used to wearing this suit. He went back to refill his punch a few times.
Words started to blur together. The inside of his head felt staticky. But he also... really content... New friends... His core felt strange...
"Danny?" a hand on his shoulder made him flinch, which made him sway rather dangerously. "Are you okay?"
Danny blinked at Ellie. "I don't feel..." he mumbled. What? What didn't he feel?
"Did someone spike the punch?"
"There's a room back here, you can lie down."
"I'll go get Father, he'll know what to do."
He was gently guided out of the ballroom, most of his weight resting on Dustin. There was a reason he should stay in the ballroom, but he couldn't remember what it was. Was someone missing?
Wait, spike the punch? Was he drunk?
The thought was lost almost instantly. His core, and therefore his mind, was lost in delirium and delight. New friends! But they needed his help, there was something wrong with them. But he could help! So, everything was good, and he loved his new friends very much.
The place they took him to was darker and quieter than before. They laid him down on something soft and squishy, and he giggled, weakly. They were talking. They might have been talking to him, but he couldn't understand aaaaaaaaanything.
He was so happy, helping his new friends.
The light changed as the door to the room opened. Music and other noises from the party briefly grew in volume, and were muffled again as the door swung closed.
"Well, that was faster than expected."
Vlad's voice briefly pulled him back into lucidity, and he struggled to sit up before collapsing again. No, all his energy had to go to his friends. They needed it. No time for Vlad.
Still, he glared up at the older man as he leaned over him. There were two Vlads. Was that because he was seeing double, or because Vlad had split himself?
The question was answered as Vlad picked Danny up. Danny was distressingly limp. He couldn't redirect any energy to his muscles, and thinking was hard. There was a thunk, and one of the walls opened up, revealing a hidden staircase. Vlad carried Danny down, but that was okay, because his new friends came with them, and- Oh!
There was another new friend down here!
Danny's core reached out to his newest new friend.
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He came back to himself with only the sensation that something was wrong wrong wrong. He jolted up, only to be stopped by a pressure across his chest and shoulders. He squinted, trying to see. His mask was gone, and the clothing he was in felt different, looser.
"What'd you do with'm?" he demanded.
"They're just in the next room, Daniel," said Vlad. "Calm down. I had no idea you'd get attached to them so quickly. I had a whole program for this week for you to get to know them."
"No," said Danny. He finally managed to get his eyes open. He was in Vlad's lab, lying on something padded. He'd been strapped down, and there were various IVs running into his arms. One of them was a lurid ectoplasmic green.
"No?"
"Won't calm down. What did you do to me?"
"Nothing."
"This isn't nothing." He finally managed to find Vlad with his eyes. The man was sitting almost behind him. It was difficult to bend his eyes to look that way.
"Oh, very well then. I increased the energy levels in your core, allowing you to wake up and us to have this lovely conversation. The rest, my dear boy, was all you. An instinctive reaction on the part of your core, although you, as usual, took it too far."
"What?"
Vlad walked around the tube, to a position where Danny could see him more easily. "This will require some explanation. I realize this situation isn't intuitive, to one such as yourself." Vlad waved a dismissive hand.
Danny scowled, but had the presence of mind to bite his tongue. He needed to know what was going on. He was beginning to suspect that Vlad had drugged him, put something in the food or punch that only affected ghosts and half ghosts, but he had a feeling that wasn't quite right.
"After you and Jasmine blew up my football field, I came to the conclusion that you would never accept me as a father," said Vlad, with the air of someone narrating a tragedy. "I was forced to reconsider my methods and goals. You see, Daniel, all I really wanted was to be loved."
In Danny's personal opinion, that was a load of crap. Vlad, more than anything else, wanted control, he wanted power.
""To be loved," continued Vlad, "and understood." He looked up at the ceiling and sighed. "And who could understand me, but a fellow half ghost? So, I decided to make one."
"Wait, wait, hold up," said Danny, beyond horrified. "You made someone a half ghost? You killed someone?"
"What? No, don't be ridiculous, Daniel. I cloned you."
He pointed at something behind and to the left of Danny, and Danny craned his head back to see a tall, vertical tube full of ectoplasm. Inside floated a boy who looked just like Danny in Phantom form. The boy's eyes were closed, and there were tubes and wires connected to his body.
"That's just as bad. Oh my gosh, Vlad, you can't just clone people! Why didn't you clone yourself?"
Vlad's face twisted like he had just bitten into a lemon. "I had attempted to do so, initially, however, my ectoacne and other instabilities in my makeup precluded me from doing so. Cloning you was my only choice."
"We cured your ectoacne," said Danny.
"Yes. But I had already started this project. It did take time to grow your brother into maturity, Daniel. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, David was unstable."
"David?"
"The name given to him by your other siblings. Do keep up, Daniel."
"Other- You made more clones? Why?"
"I had done some research," said Vlad. "Into how ghosts normal reproduce and stabilize children. I discovered that family members, those ghosts with similar ectosignatures and core properties, play a major role in stabilizing and providing energy to newly formed ghosts. My ectosignature was too different from David's, but I thought that if I could just make one stable clone..." Vlad trailed off, the look in his eyes almost haunted. "I tried everything. A mix of your DNA and ectosignature and mine, extra DNA from your sister, your mother, even your father. Nothing worked!" Vlad threw his hands up, angrily. "They are all more stable, but none of them are completely stable!"
It took Vlad several seconds to calm down, during which Danny put a few more puzzle pieces together.
"Ellie and the others, they're all clones?" That hurt, for some reason. Did they like him at all, or were they only being nice to him because Vlad told them to.
"Yes," said Vlad. "Danielle is the most stable." He smoothed down the front of his lab coat.
"So, you need me to stabilize them. That's why you drugged me?"
"I didn't drug you Daniel. Your collapse was a surprising to me as it was to you. Based on my readings, I can only conclude that your core recognized Danielle, Dustin, Damien, and Dmitri as family, registered their instability, and attempted to rectify it by boosting your ectosignature and sending them energy. Unfortunately, the effort overwhelmed you. You are only a child yourself, and..." Vlad trailed off, almost sheepish, "it is my understanding that they process is usually undertaken by multiple adult family members, and with only one child at a time."
"Great," said Danny. "And you didn't plan for that to happen at all."
"I had believed that you would bond with them more slowly," said Vlad. "That your reaction wouldn't be so extreme."
"Well, it was," said Danny. "But they're stable now, right? So, you can let me go." He tugged against the restraints again. He hoped they were stable. He had heard his parents talk about what happened to destabilized ghosts.
"Sadly," said Vlad, sounding like he was gritting his teeth, "that is an incorrect assumption."
There was a long pause.
"I want to make a deal with you, Daniel," said Vlad.
"You- Are you asking me for help?" Not that Danny could refuse. For one, he was tied up, for another...
"I suppose. For my children. They are children, Daniel, and they will die if they aren't stabilized. Painfully. Perhaps not today, but within the month."
Danny's heart clenched, and his core shivered. Even if Ellie and the others had been tricking him, he didn't want them to die. He would do what Vlad asked, if it stabilized his... cousins.
He was going to go with cousins for now. Siblings felt a little too close at the moment, and 'clones' was sort of dehumanizing. They were the ones who had started it, calling each other cousins.
But even if he was going to cooperate with Vlad, that didn't mean he wasn't going to try to get as many concessions out of Vlad as possible. True, he wasn't going to get very many, Vlad was holding the cards in this game, but he still might be able to get something.
"What kind of deal?" he asked, cautiously.
"You cooperate with stabilizing the cores of my children," said Vlad, "and I will make sure your little town stays safe and protected. Fail to cooperate, and not only will Amity Park be exposed and helpless against any ridiculous poltergeist that comes through your parents' portal, but you will be unconscious. As demonstrated earlier, you do not need to be awake for your core to be at work."
Danny frowned. Apart from the threat (honestly, Vlad was borderline pathological) that was a pretty good deal. Heck, Danny wasn't even supposed to be back in Amity Park until the end of the week.
It was a good deal... too good.
"Exactly how long do you think it'll take, anyway?" he asked. "To stabilize all of them?"
"I don't know, Daniel, this hasn't ever been done before."
Danny scowled. He hated it when Vlad said his name with that supercilious tone of voice. "Fine. How long does it take with ghosts, Vlad? You said you researched it, didn't you?"
"The time varied based on a number of factors," said Vlad.
"It takes a long time, doesn't it?" asked Danny. "I want a cover story. One that doesn't make me disappearing for Ancients know how long my fault. I want to be able to talk to Sam, Tucker, and Jazz whenever I want. And I want to be able to veto anything too invasive or dangerous."
"You're hardly in a position to make demands."
Danny made a shrugging motion, hoping that Vlad wouldn't call his bluff.
"I can do the first," said Vlad, finally, "but if you want it to hold up, the second is impossible. The last is ridiculous. Cooperation means full cooperation, nothing less."
That was about what he had expected. "If I can't communicate with them, they'll just show up here, guns blazing. You know that."
"I think I can handle three human teenagers."
"Sure, but do you want to have to?"
Vlad frowned. "I will consider the merits of your suggestion," he said. "I'm impressed, actually. I didn't think you had it in you, to bargain with lives on the line." Danny swallowed to keep himself from gagging. "But in the meantime, do you agree to cooperate, or no?" He drummed his fingers on something Danny couldn't see.
Between Danny's Obsession, and what were apparently ghostly family bonding instincts, there really wasn't any way for him to say no. "Yes, fine, whatever. I'll cooperate. You can let me out of these things, now." He pulled at the restraints again.
"Oh, no," said Vlad, smiling, then moving out of Danny's line of sight. "Those are for your own protection. You see, your core isn't really mature enough to cope with sustaining five other cores, so we are going to have to significantly supplement your ectoenergy levels."
There was a small click, and the table Danny was on started moving backwards. After a few inches, it angled up, until it was vertical. Danny discovered that there were little platforms under his bare feet, and other supports to keep him upright in his new position. Directly to his left, floated the clone, David, in the glass tube. Danny's core seemed to strain in that direction. His eyelids fluttered.
Vlad walked back over and pulled something with two tubes attached to it from the space over Danny's head. "Open up," he said.
"Why?" asked Danny.
"This is a breathing mask," said Vlad. "It will supply you with oxygen and atomized ectoplasm at three times the levels generally available in the Ghost Zone. But this part," he tapped part of the mask that was fitted with something like a bite guard, "needs to go inside your mouth."
After a moment of hesitation, Danny opened his mouth, and Vlad inserted the breathing mask. Almost at once, Danny could tell the difference. The air coming through was just so much richer.
Vlad pressed the cup of the mask over Danny's mouth and nose and sealed the edges with tape.
"Now," Vlad said, as he began pulling other things from the ceiling and attaching them to Danny, "in a few minutes, I'm going to start giving you instructions. I want you to follow them. Cooperate, do you understand? The first thing I want to do is stabilize David enough that he is no longer dependent on the containment chamber to survive."
Danny was getting a bad feeling. Many of the wires Vlad was attaching to him mirrored wires attached to David. Vlad attached a few more wires, and inserted several needles. Danny tried to hiss at those, but the mask acted as an effective gag. Finally, Vlad inserted two small plugs into Danny's ears and stepped back, half smiling.
As Danny had almost expected, a curved glass barrier sprang from behind him and encircled him, trapping him in a chamber much like the one David occupied. Ectoplasm began to bubble up from below, from a source Danny couldn't see.
"You will be submerged shortly." Vlad's voice rang clear in the earbuds. "This will allow you to intake ectoplasm through your skin. You will also be in the same environment as David."
The ectoplasm hit the soles of Danny's feet, and he flinched. It was rising rapidly.
"Do try not to panic," said Vlad. "Now, I want you to focus on David."
It was at Danny's knees, now. He took a deep breath, reassuring himself that the mask was in place. He wasn't going to drown. He looked over at David. What did it even mean, to focus on him? Danny had no idea what he was like, not really. Like him, he guessed, but not?
"With your ghost sense, Daniel," said Vlad. "Not your eyes."
Danny scowled at him, trying to distract himself from the fact that the ectoplasm was up to his chest. He closed his eyes and tried to do... that. It wasn't something he normally did and had no idea how to go about it but-
Ah. Oh, there it was. There he was, Danny's new friend. That was easier than expected. Danny's core began to purr, some of the euphoria from earlier in the night returning.
The ectoplasm closed over his head.
"Good," said Vlad, his voice slightly warped. "It appears that you have connected. Now, I am going to stimulate and amplify that connection. I want you to stay focused."
Of course Danny would stay focused. He was helping his friend, wasn't he? He always stayed focused when it came to that.
Several of the places Vlad had attached wires began to tingle. His core jumped and he twitched. Everything briefly took on a very severe cast.
It was very hard to think, after that.
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Vlad smiled at his readouts. Securing Daniel's cooperation beforehand had been worthwhile. Had he been struggling, it would have been difficult to establish the connection to this extent. David's energy and stability levels were increasing slowly but steadily. Despite the measure he was taking, Daniel's were dropping. Some of the data concerning his human half was less than ideal. That would be troublesome to deal with later on.
He took a moment to check in on his duplicate upstairs. The party was going well. Jack and Maddie hadn't noticed Daniel's absence yet. With luck, they wouldn't until the next morning.
Overall, tonight had been fruitful. With Daniel, he would be able to stabilize all five of the clones, and, perhaps, he would even be able to win over Daniel. He had seen the relaxed smile on his face when he had been with the clones. Vlad knew how powerful ghost instincts could be.
He stood up and walked over to the room where he had asked his children to wait. They should be told that their elder siblings would make a full recovery shortly.