Warning - this one's a bit gory


Legacy

"Oh please," the ghost who was once Vlad Masters sneered, dodging a shot of anti-ecto energy. "The 'Fenton Family Ghost Assault Vehicle'? As if I'd let you get that far."

A particularly nasty bolt of violet ectoplasm blasted Jack Fenton back and away from the armored vehicle. The large man landed with a 'hoof!' on the bottom steps of the castle's entryway.

"Jack!" Maddie Fenton cried. She tried to get to her husband but was thwarted again by the clones that floated in front of her, dodging the majority of her attacks and taunting her. Part of her attention was also focused on her children, one of whom had plastered herself to the wall of the castle, partially hidden behind a half-column and watching the battle with wide, fearful eyes. But Maddie's youngest, her son, was nowhere to be found. It had been several minutes since Maddie had last seen Danny, and the fact she could not find him now was more terrifying than anything this ghost could do to her.

Not like Vlad actually wanted to hurt her. The man, in his delusion, seemed convinced that if Jack were 'out of the way', Maddie would run into his arms. As if.

What had Danny called him? A "seriously crazed-up fruitloop"? Maddie had scolded her son at the time, but now she understood that Danny had been right on the money. How was it Danny was the only one who saw that this present-day Vlad was not the man from their past? That something had snapped in his mind?

That cruel reality probably had something to do with his transformation into a ghost. When the shift had occurred, Maddie wanted at first to say that their friend was overshadowed, but the behavior of this ghost left Maddie thinking otherwise. It was as though the ghostly energy had entirely melded with the man, corrupting his mind in the process. The only question she had now was – How? How had this happened? Had Vlad done it to himself?

Maddie fired off another round of shots at the clones, all of which missed their targets. She could have screamed her frustration, but the most that she allowed to escape her throat was a low and dangerous growl.

Behind the wall of fanged smirks, Maddie's eye caught movement. For a brief moment, she let her eyes move to it, to discover her son emerging from behind the GAV. Slowly, carefully, her slight and gangly son was creeping alongside the Assault Vehicle toward its door. She could hardly believe it – Danny, Danny, who was constantly bullied at school, could barely pass his Physical Education courses, and had shown nothing but total terror toward ghosts in the past, was attempting to join the battle. It caused her heart to swell in pride. She knew that, if she and Jack could keep this ghost occupied, Danny would make it to his destination. They would be saved.

Her eyes had betrayed her. By the time she returned her gaze to Vlad's clones, they were already looking at Danny. Icy dread swirled through her gut. Two of the clones vanished; Maddie quickly activated the Ecto-Energy Scanner on her goggles, which could detect a ghost's ectosignature and would allow her to view ghosts even when they were invisible. The clones were speeding toward the GAV, on which the shields were currently and regrettably disabled. Within seconds, they had phased inside of it.

"Danny!" she called out, voice breaking in terror for her son. "Get away from there!"

Danny looked at her, expression bewildered. He was not going to move. Nor could she reach him in time. "Danny!" she screamed. He looked at the GAV beside him, and Maddie could see the dread creeping into his features. "Move!"

It was too late. A second later, the Ghost Assault Vehicle exploded, a blinding green-red-purple fireball of energy radiating outward, blasting Danny away and flinging parts of the machine upward and outward.

Maddie ran to her son where he had landed but drew up short when she caught sight of him. Danny lay on his back on the ground, arms and legs limp. His clothes were torn and burnt, as was his skin. Worst, however, was the long and jagged piece of shrapnel protruding from his middle. It was flat and about five inches wide; from what Maddie could judge, it had likely sliced through her son's stomach and liver.

All of a sudden, Danny's body flew up into the air. Vlad's ghost shimmered into existence behind him, one arm wrapped around Danny's chest. A quick survey told Maddie that he had dismissed his clones; her dying son was the only weapon he felt he needed now.

"Let him go!" Jack wheezed, suddenly beside her. Maddie saw a stream of blood trickling down the side of his face from a wound somewhere above his hairline. His orange jumpsuit was dirty and torn, and he favored one leg.

"Or what?" said Vlad. His echoing voice carried over the grounds with little effort. "You shoot me, and you risk hitting young Daniel. Although that may not matter a few minutes from now."

Danny coughed weakly, sending a shudder through his entire body. A second later, he spit up a mouthful of blood over his chin. His eyes, sky blue and filled with tears of pain, caught Maddie's for a second before closing.

"What do you want?" said Maddie, softly.

"You, my dear. I want you." Vlad smiled grimly, mouth a taught line. "You agree to stay here, with me, of your own volition, and I will not only save Daniel's life, I will also allow dear old Jack to live. How about it, Maddie, my dear? Live here with me, and we can raise Daniel as our own. Jack can take that insufferable girl back to Amity Park, where I promise you they will never be threatened again by my hand."

Her mind tried to work quickly, searching for any way to free Danny and save him, but so far their attacks on Vlad had been entirely ineffectual, and every second she spent thinking meant that much more blood lost by her son. Maddie's eyes, heavy and sluggish with resignation, drifted to Jack's. Jack, looking utterly lost, nodded his acceptance without meeting Maddie's gaze. Maddie turned back to Vlad and growled, "Fine. But if Danny dies, nothing will stop me from destroying you."

A clone of Vlad's appeared at her side, wrapping an arm about her waist. "Then let us assure that does not happen," it said. A chill swept through Maddie's body, then a sensation much like the tingle of a limb falling asleep. A second before they moved, Maddie realized that she had been turned intangible. Her heart fluttered. They dived into the ground, and as easily as that, Maddie's family was gone.

For several seconds, they descended in total blackness. Maddie was uncomfortably aware of the layers of dirt and rock moving through her body, which, although mostly numb, could feel the material passing through it as something of a dull ache. She did not dare breathe, unsure if there was even air available to take in.

They emerged into a lab; Maddie blinked at the light, quickly trying to adjust her vision. As soon as their feet touched the floor, the clone holding her disintegrated. Maddie took in purplish surfaces, all shining under the green glow of a large Ghost Portal – a feature that Maddie noticed with no small amount of disgust.

A groan had her spinning around. The ghost was laying Danny, barely conscious, on a wheeled table. After he had done so, a ring of black light appeared at his feet and traveled up his body, transforming him once again into the semblance of Vlad Masters. He pushed the table and Danny over to the generator and the control panel connected to the Portal.

Maddie joined him at Danny's side. "What are you going to do?"

Vlad smirked down at her son's prone form; his hungry expression churned the acid in Maddie's stomach. "Think of it as… a father passing on a legacy." With swift but confident movements, Vlad retrieved a pair of sturdy, black cables. His fingers glowing with purple energy, he twisted off one end of each of the cables, revealing the copper wires underneath. He did not hesitate before jabbing the wires into Danny's wrists.

"What are you doing?" said Maddie and seized Vlad's hand.

He smiled, a cruel look, and pulled his hand intangibly through her own. Vlad began to tape the wires in place. "Saving Daniel's life, and more. After this, your son – or should I say our son – will be stronger than any young man alive."

Shadows of understanding formed in Maddie's mind; her eyes widened in horror, and she shook her head. "No…"

"This is the only way to save him, my dear. You know as well as I, he is but inches from death."

It was true. A pool of blood had formed under Danny's body, and his skin had taken on a gray pallor, under the parts that were charred red-black. His breaths came fast and shallow. Maddie could only hope he was not conscious to feel the pain.

A pair of scissors appeared before her. "You may help me by removing his clothes."

Shaking, Maddie accepted the blades and set to work, while Vlad did something at the control panel of the Portal. As delicately as possible, Maddie cut through Danny's clothes and cut them away where they were burned to his skin. He groaned and hissed at each tug; Maddie's heart ached to know he was still awake. No one should go through this – especially not Danny. He was too gentle for this.

Maddie could still remember the first time Danny had scraped a knee while playing outside. He had sat on the edge of their couch, crying and sniffling as Maddie cleaned the gravel out of his wound, washed it in peroxide, and bandaged it with a kiss. When the pain began to ease, he had wiped his eyes and smiled wetly at her. "Thank you, Mommy." Many times since then he had gotten hurt, and many times he had sought her to take the pain away.

Only now, she could not. Tears began to fall from her eyes, and she had to remove her hood and goggles to wipe them away. She realized only afterward that her hands were stained with Danny's blood.

"Okay," she told Vlad, voice flat. "It's done."

"Then let us begin." She saw that the cables were now connected to the panel, and Vlad's fingers were clutched around a heavy switch. "I would back away if I were you, my dear."

Reluctantly, Maddie took several steps away from the table, eyes never leaving her son. A ghostly clone appeared beside the table. It gripped the piece of shrapnel – the only thing preventing Danny from completely bleeding out – and turned the metal intangible, removing it immediately afterward. Vlad's eyes narrowed slightly, his mouth twitched, and in one fluid movement, he flipped the switch.

The green face of the Portal flickered, the cables danced until they were taut, a hum filled the air, and crackling green energy, like bolts of lightning, rippled across Danny's skin while waves of green light pulsed like blood through his veins. His body was wracked by violent spasms and clattered against the cart he lay upon. The metallic smell of ectoplasm filled the air.

Danny's eyes shot wide open, glowing with green fire that his irises only loosely contained; it spilled into the whites of his eyes and into the open air. His fingers curled into claws, and his nails scrabbled at the table, breaking in the process. Though his jaws were clamped shut, a scream was trying to rip through his lips, rumbling around in his throat and chest. Maddie watched as from the roots Danny's hair turned from black to shocking snow white.

It took all of Maddie's self control to not launch herself at Vlad and force him to stop. Her heart felt as though it was being shredded into a thousand pieces. She clenched her fists tightly, set her jaw, and tried to think of nothing, feel nothing, until it was over.

When the blood oozing from Danny's back and stomach turned from red to glowing, ectoplasmic green, only then did Vlad switch off the connection. The humming and crackling died away, but Danny's muscles continued to spasm. Maddie rushed to his side. Her fingers were torn between whether to clutch at her son or hold off for fear of hurting him further. Trembling, she brushed the white hair off of his forehead and cradled one side of his face in her hand. Through the material of her glove, she could feel the icy chill of his skin. "I'm so sorry, Danny…"

His eyes had been absorbed wholly by glowing green. As the energy ebbed, the green waned, his pupils and whites resurfacing, sliced through by bright emerald irises. They saw her briefly. "Mom," Danny whispered, before his eyes unfocused and drifted closed.

It took Maddie a moment to realize that her son's body was continuing to change. Where it was cut, scraped, or burnt, ectoplasm was bubbling to the surface. The wound to his abdomen stopped dripping and instead seemed to reabsorb the ectoplasm that had already fallen to the table. Danny's body became a shifting mass of the gooey, glowing substance, which shortly afterward retreated again under his skin. When this had finished, there was not a mark left on him.

Danny lay on the table before her. His skin was pale, but entirely unblemished – even scars she knew he should have had had faded. His hair was still bright white, and his entire body emitted its own luminescence, while having turned somewhat translucent – she swore she could see the table through his arms and legs. He had stilled entirely, which allowed Maddie to see that he had also stopped breathing.

He was a ghost.

A sob rose in her throat; she swallowed it back down. "You lied," she told Vlad, not taking her eyes off of Danny. "You killed him."

She was surprised to hear the man scoff. "Hardly," said Vlad. "If this… procedure succeeded – and I have no reason to doubt that it has – Daniel has become what is known colloquially as a 'halfa'."

"Halfa?" repeated Maddie, the word foreign on her tongue.

"A half-ghost, half-human hybrid. Until today, I was the only one in existence, and until recently, I could not even have hoped to create another like myself. It is impossible without a working Ghost Portal, you see, as the transformation requires the very stuff of the ghostly universe to succeed. I suppose I should thank you and Jack – if you had not completed your Portal, I would not have been able to steal your blueprint to make my own."

So that was why he had a Portal.

"Why would you do this?"

Vlad's eyes flicked to her and studied her face. "Why? If you did not notice, ghosts have the uncanny ability to heal themselves. It is a power that halfas can access just as easily. Even after the mortal wound that Daniel suffered, he was able to recover from it in a matter of minutes. But perhaps you mean, why would I want to create another hybrid?" He paused, and his eyes fell down to Danny. "I suppose I thought that twenty years alone was far too long."

"You've been like this for twenty years?" said Maddie, voice incredulous.

Vlad smirked bitterly, face twitching once. "Ever since that little accident in college that hospitalized me and ruined my life. I would have been fine – better than fine, really – had not that oaf Jack ruined the Portal's filter and given me Ecto Acne. It was only due to my regenerative powers that I did not die from it."

The light around Danny's body shimmered, and a ring of white light formed at his waist. It separated in two directions, and as each traveled the length of Danny's body, the luminescence vanished and his color and solidity returned. When the lights disappeared, her son drew in a shaky breath.

"And now, I have satisfied my end of the deal. I hope you still plan on upholding yours."

Maddie stared, almost disbelievingly, at Danny for a long time before she answered. "You want me to abandon my family and live here with you."

"Daniel will be here as well. He'll need me in order to understand his new body – a boon I never had. And of course you will be able to continue your work. Here, you will be closer to ghosts than ever before, than you could have ever dreamed of. Imagine how much you will accomplish with me at your side and my resources at your disposal."

"And what about Jack? And my daughter? Am I not supposed to see them again?"

"We can arrange for Jasmine to visit; but no, I cannot allow that imbecile to remain in your life. He stole you from me once, and I shan't let it happen again. I think that is a fair trade for the life of your son, don't you?"

"If I refuse?" said Maddie softly.

Vlad narrowed his eyes and frowned deeply. "Then Daniel's life is forfeit, and trust me, there is no being more vulnerable than a newly born halfa. You do not know my strength, nor do you know my resources, but believe me when I say that I would track him down no matter where you hid him, and I would crush both his heart and energy core with my bare hands. Remember, too, that Jack's life is also part of my deal. By returning to your husband, you would be signing his death certificate."

Vlad's frown softened as he looked at Danny. "I am not eager to kill Daniel, though. I look forward to raising him, like the son I never had."

This man is insane, thought Maddie, shuddering. But right now, he is stronger than any of us. There is no way we could fight him and win.

Maddie lowered her head in submissive resignation. "Very well," she said, her voice soft. She turned away. Unseen to their captor, her eyes gleamed with determination. Know this, Vlad – I will not rest until I discover a way to defeat you and bring my son home.


A/N: I honestly forgot that I had a one-shot collection going. LOL. Whoops.

I wrote this back in 2016 or so, a plot bunny (among many) that didn't end up going anywhere. I don't know if I actually like it or not. The whole 'wires stabbed into Danny's wrists' thing was inspired by a bizarrely wonderful Korean movie called "I'm a Cyborg, But That's Okay" - but I didn't care for that detail anymore when I reread this. It screamed "mad scientist" in a Doctor Frankenstein sort of way, and I was left to wonder, would Vlad do something that was so crude and unlikely to work? *shrug* I don't know. But here it is. Bloop.

Next time - a visit to the "Hospital of Horror!"