A/N: Behold! Your harassment has come to fruition! I wasn't actually planning on doing another one of these until inspiration hit, but you guys just begged me so much (yes, I'm talking to YOU FullMetal :)) that I figured I could rap out a little something. Just to let y'all know, I am planning on tossing Danny in here at some point. This installment is a little more homey than the others, but never fear, for I shall deliver massively squeeful action adventuring soon enough.

Doom via Chia

By JadeRabbyt

Vlad flipped up the visor and wiped his brow. He'd almost completed the repairs on his ghost portal, though it had taken him an unreasonably long time to do it. The thing about stealing equipment, he thought as he set the welder on a bench, was that you had to remember to steal the manual as well. In the case of ghost-hunting devices, you had to remember to pump the owners for information on how to take care of it, since most of the Fentons' stuff was too uncommon and specialized to come with manuals.

Unfortunately, he had to learn both those lessons the hard way. After stealing blueprints for and assembling the ghost portal, Vladimir Masters hadn't had the slightest clue how to take care of it. Did it need oil? Polish? A foot massage? He didn't know, and by the time he knew what it needed, the thing had already broken down. Like now. Apparently he'd been powering it with the wrong kind of plasma, and the main engine drives had frozen up. He hated getting his hands dirty, but Skulker was out of town and it wasn't exactly like he could just call the electrician to fix it. Fortunately, he'd just about finished up repairs. Vlad left the lab for the upper floors. He wanted some lunch.

Kitty met him at the top of the stairs, meowing as Vlad ascended. He brushed her head with the tips of his fingers. "Good Kitty." She meowed again, softer and longer, a feline noise of gracious impatience as she followed him into the kitchen.

Vlad zapped leftover filet mignon for himself and opened a can of gunk for Kitty. She took one look at her greasy brown meal and ignored it entirely. Vlad leaned against the counter, bit off a chunk of the juicy beef and chewed thoughtfully, still thinking of the portal. There had to be a better way to maintain it, other than trial and error. A call to Jack with a nice excuse might do the trick. Maddie might even pick up the phone. In fact, she'd probably have to be the one to answer his questions, since Jack wasn't exactly the world's brightest bulb. Vlad would enjoy a chance to talk to her again.

Something pressed lightly against his shins. He looked down to see Kitty standing on her hind legs, her two front paws reaching up on his pants. Her oval eyes were stretched wide open to show her green irises, and her slitted black pupils were centered right on his mignon. "Mrrrrreow."

Vlad gestured with a fork to the cat dish. "You already have your food."

This comment did nothing to change Kitty's mind. She continued to give him that same expectant stare, and looking at the crud in her bowl, Vlad couldn't blame her. He cut off a small chunk of his meat and tossed it in her dish, hoping she'd eat the rest of its contents and stop bothering him. Because he definitely was not sharing any more of his meat. He paid a chef a small fortune to prepare such luscious meals for him.

A moment later, Kitty was back, leaning the soft white pads of her paws against Vlad's shin. "No Kitty." He shook his leg. She lost her balance and dropped to all fours. She meowed loudly, showing her teeth and pulling her cheeks—lips—whatever cats had, to show her gums. She moved to his side, directly under his meat-bearing fork, and mrowed expectantly.

Vlad sighed. He cut the last piece of beef in two, eating one piece himself and tossing the rest to his Kitty.

XXX

Vlad put his welder down for the second time at six o'clock that night, just when it was beginning to get dark outside. He figured he'd do an hour or two of reading, do a half hour of research on ghosts or machinery or something like that, then head on over to the internet nooze to see if there was anything worth stealing. After that, he'd call it a night.

In pursuit of such noble ends, he took the stairs from his lab to the living room. One wall held towering bookcases, and the other was hung with paintings. The third wall had been fitted with arching windows that gave an excellent view of the surrounding hills and the not-so-distant city of Green Bay. Vlad walked to the bookshelves and grabbed a book at random. Ectomagic: Theory and Practice. He'd gotten it several years ago in a Chinese book shop. It was supposed to describe ghost powers in detail, but a drugged-up Oriental medicine man had written it, so Vlad didn't give it too much credit. It did have some fairly interesting myths and fables, so he sat down in the red felt armchair and started reading. Ten or fifteen minutes later, Kitty came along and jumped in his lap. She did that sometimes, and Vlad would stroke her white, black, and brown-splotched fur while he read. They were deep in the midst of this evening ritual when something crashed upstairs.

Vlad didn't pay any attention to it until something crashed again. Something that sounded like the splintering of wood. "Hey! Who's up there?"

Nobody answered him. Kitty, who had almost fallen asleep, raised her head from her paws and pricked up her ears.

Vlad sighed and stood up, brushing the irritated Kitty from his lap as he changed to his ghost form. He growled to himself, irritated. Every once in a while something like this would happen. Some idiotic ghost, having heard of the powerful devices of Plasmius, would try to break in and steal something. Generally the alarms went off to warn him of the thief, but the bunglers could be clumsy, although they usually weren't stupid enough to make this much noise. Vlad approached the stairs to the upper floors cautiously, reminding himself not to worry. He had enough power to fry just about anything troublesome in the Ghost Zone, but nobody liked to have their home invaded.

"This is your last warning! Show yourself."

Predictably, silence answered him once again. Vlad frowned and turned invisible, whisking through the halls and stairwells. He got to the third floor before anything unusual appeared, but what he finally spotted was very unusual.

A small green thing that looked like a plant was sitting in the middle of the red-carpeted hallway. Vlad clicked on the light switch, keeping his distance from the green shae. There were huge gouges in the walls on either side of the thing, just as if a wrecking ball had swung back and forth. He didn't want whatever had made those dents to come his way.

As the hall light hit the green thing, it hissed and snarled. Vlad didn't know what to make of it. It didn't move, but it had snarled at him. This had to be a trick. Somebody had planted this thing in his carpet and taken off, and it was some kind of ectoplasmic time bomb. Problem was, it didn't look like a time bomb. It looked like a Chia Pet. A Chia Pet of a beetle, from the looks of it. There was no pot which held it, but Vlad could clearly see the tiny sprouts of grass that made up its surface. They shimmered with strange colors of sea-green and teal, and it continued to growl mouthlessly at him.

Whatever it was, the thing had invaded his house and maybe smashed up his walls, so it was history. Vlad fired up a plasma beam and blasted it. The green thing roared, and something bludgeoned the whole side of his face. Vlad was thrown against the hallway's back wall, and he saw that the innocent green plant had sprouted enormous tendrils that had begun to smash up everything they could lay hold of. They huge tendrils crackled with electrical colors, leaving bright streaks across his vision as the plant lifted itself and lunged forward, its shape hidden behind twenty or thirty whipping vines. Vlad turned intangible just as one crashed toward him, but it somehow managed to smack him anyway, sending him crashing through the floors. The whole mansion had begun to shake with its rage. This thing was going to leave him one nasty repair bill.

Vlad split himself in four and sent one copy out to find Kitty. Another headed for the thing, to try and keep it occupied if not contained, and the last two headed for the lab and its guns.

He found Kitty without much trouble. She had been trotting up the stairs, drawn to the source of the racket. "No Kitty! Not safe." He grabbed her and dumped her in the only safe, distant, contained place he could think of: the laundry room. It was in the basement and walled on three sides with concrete, about the size of a park's public restrooms. He set her down and went to join the fight, but the plant had too many arms. Whatever the guns shot away, it grew back. Whatever he struck it with, it either deflected or electrified, and the presumed plant had slowly begun to demolish his home from the top down.

Back in the laundry, Kitty meowed loudly and vainly at the heavy wooden door. She crouched at each thump from above, ears flattened against her small skull, her eyes darting over the ceiling. She got up and scratched at the door, meowing for Vlad, who was, at the moment, very much occupied. The shaking got closer and louder, and finally Kitty leaned the whole right side of her body against the door. Slowly, colors of all shades began to flash and dance over her coat, accelerating to an epileptic frenzy. The wood of the door turned red and flickered with a small, controlled flame. Kitty dashed out through the hole she had burned in the laundry room door.

Upstairs, two of Vlad's copies had already succumbed, and the plant was still going strong. It had smashed its way halfway through the second floor, and he could hear the beams creaking and groaning in other parts of the house. He was hitting it with everything he had, but he couldn't get close enough to the source of the tangled vines to do any significant damage. And suddenly, things got worse.

"Hssssssssssss!" She had turned colors, the same as she had done at Yeman's party. They burned much more brightly, now.

"Kitty!" Hadn't he locked her up? That stupid animal would be crushed, colors and all!

She hissed again at the plant, which, oddly enough, responded to her noise. It screeched and flailed and ignored Vlad entirely, aiming its strikes at Kitty instead. As Vlad watched, she dodged the blows with almost precognitive ease, leaping farther and farther into the tangle until Vlad lost sight of her. The plant curled in on itself as Kitty raced into it. He floated motionless, spellbound, as the plant let out one last blood-curdling screaming shrieking pain-filled cry and sucked into itself entirely.

When it was gone, all that was left was beams of broken wood, the smell of lettuce, and a thin veil of dust from all the mess it had made of the house. And Kitty crouched in the middle of the hallway carpet, coughing little cat coughs. Vlad rushed over to her and turned human.

"Kitty? Kitty!" Her coat had returned to its normal colors but she didn't look good. Vlad had absolutely no idea what had just happened, but Kitty had made it happen. She'd saved him and his house, and he didn't want anything to happen to her.

She coughed and heaved, stretching out her neck as Vlad stood away and worried. He didn't know any vets, and with her dull coat and that bone-rattling cough, she definitely looked sick. By the time a vet had arrived—

Kitty gagged and coughed up a huge brown hairball. All over his carpet. It was a lumpy brown, poop-looking thing that sat in a pool of cat spit and stomach fluids.

She sat up, shook herself, and began to clean her front paw, perfectly well again.

Vlad didn't know whether to be furious, curious, or grateful. He still had no idea what Kitty had managed to do. He reached down and stroked her head, out of a lack of any other available reaction, and in the process he brought himself closer to the nasty hairball. Vlad tried to ignore it, but he it shimmered in the corner of his eye, and he took a closer look at it. Sure enough, the thing was shimmering, and with the colors of sea-green and teal. The colors of the monster. He looked up at Kitty, who continued to clean herself innocently. The plant had had strange coloring, and so did his lovable little pet.

"You two know each other, Kitty?" Vlad didn't want to be dealing with this on a regular basis. Whatever that thing had been, Kitty had probably attracted it, but at least she had also managed to dispatch it. He would have to run some tests on the hairball, with Skulker's help. If that lion-bot was as good a hunter as he said he was, then he should know something about creatures like these.

The other call he'd have to make would be to his building contractors. Vlad figured they should be rich off him by now, what with all the things that periodically exploded, misfired, or ran amok in his mansion. He went down to his living room—miraculously intact—and picked the book off his chair. The house was a little breezy, but the damage had been limited to the northwest wing, so it probably wouldn't collapse overnight. Vlad sank down in his chair, feeling the bruises on his legs and back as he put pressure on them. A couple minutes later Kitty trotted up and hopped back in his lap. Vlad staunchly refused to pet her.

"I can't have you drawing monsters into my house. You should be put on dry cat food for this little trick."

Kitty rubbed her cheek against his chest and purred, kneading his pants with her claws. Vlad might have been able to resist the accursed cat's charms if he hadn't just had two of his four butts kicked by the world's largest evil Chia Pet. He surrendered the use of one hand to scratch the fur at her neck.

If only the cat could talk. Where did she come from that there were such strange monsters and brilliant colors? He'd have to look into it. It shouldn't require any more than a blood sample from Kitty, and Skulker would probably be a big help in resolving things. Vlad was determined to look at the bright side of his house being demolished. There could be priceless technical inventions just waiting to be made. Maybe even something to impress Maddie. People loved shiny things. The phosphorescent colors might have some hypnotic powers.

Vlad looked down at the cat in his lap. Kitty was draped across his legs, laying on her side, exposing the soft white hair of her stomach to petting. Her chest rose and fell rhythmically as she breathed. Vlad picked up the book and read a little more, struggling to keep his eyes open as the blackness of the sky deepened, the stars glowing like gemstones through the big windows. His hand sagged. He should go up to bed, but the chair was really, really comfortable, perfect for napping, and Kitty was already settled in, and he was really tired from fighting that plant thing…

Vlad fell asleep, one hand hanging over the armrest and the other draped across his cat, snoring lightly under the glow of the stars.

A/N: Comments welcome! Remember, the more you guys squee at me, the more story thee shall see!