Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Danny Phantom.

Note: To "Dp-Marvel94" yeah, as it turns out Daniel does have a connection to his sister, the only problem was she was too far away for him to feel any trace of it until now. Not to mention Dani wasn't unconsciously reaching out to him via her thoughts about Danny nearly as strongly as she is now since Dani is not doing very well at all. Poor thing...

Also, on a side note, this is getting annoying but I haven't been getting any emails about reviews or follows so is it like that for anyone else? It's so frustrating! But yeah, things are about to get interesting here again with a couple of events that are going to become closely intertwined so hope you're looking forward to that!

Chapter 20: Nexus

Vlad's POV

I find it rather ironic that I had to resort to reacquiring some important medical data regarding Danny, most of which I had deleted after the cloning experiment failed. I repurposed several inventions from it however, such as the incubation pod which we would need for Daniel's procedure in the near future of merging his program and ghost core into a new body. Of course, for his sake I planned to explore the option of integrating him within a physical half-ghost vessel similar to Dani so perhaps with some convincing she'll be willing to contribute to that noble cause. After all, like the truce with the original Danny, Daniel is the one who made me even remotely consider it.

At times the boy does not realize how much power he has over me and likewise...I find myself still fearful that one day I'll lose him too which is why I am so desperate to ensure his survival. Daniel is more than just the perfect half-ghost son I've yearned for, he is MY son in every sense of the word. I've repeated this many times before but, the amount of love Daniel has to give, his capacity to forgive even someone like me, is staggering. I cannot even compare it to the fabricated devotion he had towards me before, no, this child was willing to sacrifice everything for my sake in much the same way Danny would for his friends and family...

I once thought it was a foolish notion. But now, now that I have someone who genuinely wishes to help me, to be with me, and wants do everything in his power to put a smile on my face, is something I haven't had in my life for a long time. Daniel chose to endure such terrible torment from me in silence hoping, praying, that one day he would get the chance to reach me and spark a change. And he has more than accomplished that goal. So now, it's my turn to make his dream of becoming a 'real boy' so to speak a reality.

Now that the nanobots had successfully been reprogrammed and tested, the next order of business was to question Skulker without alerting him to the true reason behind my questions. Technus obviously would have been the better choice but I was not about to risk him catching wind of Daniel's existence because I have no doubt in my mind he would attempt to weaponize his powerful technological capabilities or perhaps even try to copy them to upgrade himself. Thankfully I also still had plenty of information leftover from when I created Valerie's original battle suit which was designed to only work for her in much the same way I planned for Daniel's new body to only work for him.

As I said, similar to what I had done with Jasmine, I would give Daniel an injection of nanobots which we would then use to monitor and regulate his vitals. And then, I would build an android body with an ecto-converter to act as the boosters Daniel needs to strengthen his ghost core along with regularly exercising his powers like we did earlier starting with defense rather than combat. It would take time before I could make it look more humanoid with synthetic skin and such, but it would have to suffice for the time being until I could gather the necessary research to clone a brand new hybrid body for him that unlike the other clones would simply be an avatar with no consciousness of its own...

Creating either one of these bodies for Daniel would take time, however, he was well worth the trouble because I wanted him to be a true part of my life as much as he did. I want the world to know Daniel as my son even if I must fabricate a convincing story along with legal documents and such. I didn't want to merely adopt the boy, I wanted him to truly be my son although...I hated the thought of pretending I had a an illegitimate child with a random woman at one point in my life. And picturing myself with anyone but Maddie was neigh impossible.

Then again, it didn't matter what the truth was as long as everyone else was convinced he's my biological son. Truth be told, I would have had to do the same with the prime clone as well because I wanted to be able to have him proudly stand beside me. Of course, that would have been difficult to do with Danny still in the picture since there couldn't be two Danny Fenton's running around. I would have had to confine the original before setting my plan into motion to have him infiltrate the Fenton family and help me manipulate things in such a way that Maddie would see Jack for the menace he is and leave him to marry me instead. None of that matters now of course because as much as it pains me to admit...the fact that even my own Maddie Program chose the simulation of Jack has made me realize that perhaps its time to let go of that dream to focus on my new role as a father.

That brings to mind what Danny told me shortly after revealing he had known about Daniel long before I discovered his sentience. "We can't change the past, and as much as I hate to say it, I know you didn't mean to hurt Daniel on purpose. That's why I'm going to risk taking a chance on you. Your problem is with me and my dad, I get it. But maybe if we can stop trying to tear each other apart for two seconds, then there will be plenty of time for us to focus on more important things in our lives from now on, like taking care of our families. Because that's what you are to him, Vlad. You're his dad! So you'd better start acting like it or we're going to have a serious problem, got it?"

Then there were also Jasmine's parting words that had a ring of truth to them as well. "...All Daniel wants is to be a part of your family..."

I frowned when I recalled what she pointed out about Dani's role in all of this as well since Daniel feels responsible for her. As if I didn't have enough to do without wasting time tracking down that brat. But as I said, if that's what Daniel needs before he can finally move on and put his own needs first then so be it. It was a small price to pay to finally have the loving son I thought I had long since lost.

Setting those thoughts aside I managed to create a checklist of everything I needed so needless to say I would need to pay a visit to Axion Labs first for multiple reasons. I planned to contact Skulker as well but I would prefer to do that once Daniel goes to bed for the night, hopefully in much better spirits than when he left. Truth be told, I could hardly wait to see how much he'll be able to do once he starts taking care of most of my security systems from now on. But I truly believe that by doing this it will help him feel more helpful, not to mention give him all the more reason to stay close to me at all times and keep his mind off more troubling topics. There's so much I wanted to teach him and so much I wanted to learn about him to help strengthen our bond. The rest will only be a matter of time and careful planning as all the remaining loose ends are tied up.

Daniel's POV

By the time Danny and the others came back from fighting and catching that ghost, I could tell they were pretty worn out. We did a lot of talking about serious and silly things but at the same time, I didn't want to go home yet. I wanted to give Father more time to work on his stuff without me there distracting him.

At the same time though, I wanted to give Danny and his friends a breather too so, against my better judgment I turned to him and offered with a smile. "You guys seem pretty beat so why don't I go ahead and do my own thing for a bit? Father said he should be done with everything around 10pm but he never said I had to stay here the whole time. Based on what you told me I pretty much just have to avoid Fenton Works until your parents are done messing with their latest invention. I probably need to stretch my legs so to speak and get used to doing a bit more exploring if we're going to find Dani."

"Hey man, you don't have to leave on our account." Tucker said confidently. "That ghost wasn't all that tough. We're not that tired so don't worry so much. Honestly I think we still have a lot on our minds since we've had a lot of complicated stuff to think about lately, especially given the new truce with Vlad and all. It doesn't feel real sometimes and any second now he's gong to show up and say, 'Ha! Had you going there didn't I?' It's hard to believe that we really won't have to deal with most of Vlad's crap anymore which is gonna take some getting used to. Unfortunately for us that doesn't mean ghosts are gonna stop showing up any time soon."

Nodding, Sam added. "It's sweet of you to worry about us, but yeah. Like Tucker said this is nothing we haven't done before a thousand times. Especially Danny since he does most of the work and we just back him up as much as possible. All we need is a quick breather and then we can go back to hanging out. Personally I'm glad I managed to get over the awkwardness of there being two of you since you guys are similar in the ways that matter and it's not like that one time Danny split himself in two. Now that was a pain in the butt to deal with..."

"Hang on. He did what...?" I gaped in shock and Danny groaned, running his hands down his face dramatically.

"Really Sam? Why do you keep telling him so many embarrassing stories about me? You're so heartless." I couldn't help but smile after that as we all laughed together and the three of them told me more about some of their other interesting ghost hunting adventures.

I knew about a lot of Danny's ghost enemies from his profile data, but it was cool actually hearing the stories about their first encounters and how they overcame those challenges. Hearing all that only motivated me to do just as good a job protecting my home from now on even though Father doesn't have many enemies to speak of. He has a few of them of course, but they're few and far between as far as I know. And I had a feeling Father was going to tell me a bit more about them too just in case one of them ever showed up at his mansion.

Speaking of which, since I didn't want a repeat of last time when I forgot to tell them something important I turned to Danny and explained. "Oh right! There's something I need to tell you. After you left earlier something...weird happened. My ears randomly started ringing and I think I heard a voice. I'm not entirely sure though..."

Exchanging worried looks with Sam and Tucker, Danny rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. "As much as I hate to say it, I think you were just imagining it. You've been under a lot of stress lately and have been having a lot of nightmares about the other clones. But honestly, we just don't know enough about artificially created ghosts to know if...there's anything left of them. I want to believe there is as much as you do, but there's no way to know for sure. What we do know is that you can hear my voice sometimes via the twin telepathy thing so it could have just been that again and you didn't know how to control it. That said though, I'm kinda curious if we can get that to work goes ways because that might seriously come in handy someday."

"You think so?" I smiled, relieved he didn't tell me I'm going crazy or something instead.

Nodding, Danny added with a grin on his face. "Heck yeah I do. Who knows what other cool twin stuff we can do. And since I'm starting to finally figure out duplication and how to send them messages the same way Vlad does since they're extensions of myself, so how hard can it be to figure out how to do the same thing with you? It was actually Sam's idea since your comment about mythology earlier reminded her about a lot of the freaky twin stuff she's read about."

"Exactly. While Tucker might understand the beep-boop side of you more than I do, when it comes to psychic connections and all that it's basically my specialty!" Sam said proudly and added. "I've been reading a lot of books about that lately ever since we found out about you so I'd be more than happy to share what I've found so far. Do you have an email address? I mean, you had to to make a Doomed profile right?"

"That's true. Alright, I'll send you an email later and once I talk to Father I'll try to see if he'll let me send some of those old archives to you too!" I began enthusiastically before realizing how childish I sounded and blushed. "Oh geez...I must sound so ridiculous right now, getting all excited about this like a little kid. It's just that I've never had friends before. Well, besides Danny obviously."

"Hey, you've got to start giving yourself more credit than that man. I mean it's not every day you see someone manage to convince Vlad Masters of all people agree to a truce. Especially after what you went through because of him. You could have easily gone off the deep end and decided to hate him and Danny instead, but the thought didn't even cross your mind. That pretty much tells us all we need to know about the sort of person you are and that's why we're definitely friends." Tucker agreed with a kind smile, awkwardly stifling a yawn before adding. "Alright, I think this calls for some caffeine so how about I grab us a couple of sodas? I'll be right back!"

Without waiting for an answer Tucker left the room like he already knew their answer and the three of us went back to talking about the telepathic communication idea again. And I'm not gonna lie, Sam shared some really great ideas. When Tucker came back, we even made a game out of testing the twin theory where they would ask us questions or we'd have to pick something and see if Danny and I chose the same things for similar reasons.

At first I thought I was going to feel like nothing but a copy-cat, it comes with the territory of being a clone I guess, but surprisingly it actually turned out to be a good thing. It showed Sam and Tucker exactly what Danny meant when he said we understood each other like real brothers. And in the process I learned a lot about them too that the files I had couldn't tell me and about myself oddly enough. It was so much fun that I nearly lost track of time until Danny and I both realized at the same time it was time for us to head home for dinner.

I still had time to spare but Danny had some homework left too his sister promised to help with which would hopefully give her a break from babysitting their parents. In a way, I could relate to that too. For a while I had to worry about Father one day inventing something -a program most likely- that could put me in danger. Apart from that though, at least Father's attacks couldn't hit me until I managed to break through the restrictions he put on me to tell him how I felt...what I wanted.

I hope Danny gets the chance to do that someday too, come clean to his parents so he doesn't have to live in fear anymore. I understand that feeling better than anyone. I thought to myself as we said goodbye and I asked them to pass along Father's gratitude and mine to Jazz. It's a shame I didn't get to see her again, but hopefully I'd get to do that soon enough and maybe ask for some advice too on how to be a good older brother to Dani as she is to Danny. But for now, it was enough knowing that I had friends and family I could count on.