Vlad and Maddie woke up to the sound of someone pounding on the door to his room. "Vlad, are you in there?" Jack's booming voice called out from the other side.
"Oh my gosh, Jack!" Maddie exclaimed as she jumped out of the bed and began throwing her clothes on. "We probably missed dinner with him. What should we tell him?"
"The truth." Maddie goggled at him. "We'll say that we went for a picnic lunch and just weren't feeling hungry afterwards."
"You might not've been hungry, but I sure had my fill of home cookin'" (a/n: please hit me with an oar for having just written a line that corny. Really, really, hard. I beg of you.) Vlad blushed and began getting dressed. When they were finished, they opened the door and Jack bounded into the room.
"Sorry we weren't able to make the dinner date, Jack" Vlad tried to explain.
"It's okay, guys, really. I just ordered for you and when you never came, I got to eat your food. No big deal."
"Well, I'm glad that it turned out okay for everyone."
"Why? What were you two doing in here before I came in?"
"Uh," Vlad stammered for a moment, "Maddie was just teaching me some kung-fu! She's a third degree blackbelt, you know."
"Oh yeah, I remember her saying something like that. So, Maddie, is my good buddy a tough fighter or what?"
"I have to admit he has a lot of stamina," Maddie replied. Vlad blushed again, but Jack didn't notice.
"I knew it! By the way, have either of you two seen my Fenton Thermos? I left it in the lab yesterday and now it's gone."
"You mean we didn't tell you? Yesterday, while we were having lunch, a ghost appeared and we got it in the thermos. Afterwards we activated the proto-portal and threw the thermos inside."
"You guys caught a ghost? Without me?" Jack's lower lip began to quiver. "Why didn't you tell me that there was a ghost around?" He immediately bounced back and began jumping up and down excitedly. "Hey, this gives me an idea! I'll build another thermos and also invent an interface with the portal so that we won't have to lose a thermos every time we send a ghost back!" He grabbed a cooler and a sleeping bag from under his bed and dragged them over to the lab complex."
"Uh…why did he just take a sleeping bag and cooler?" Maddie asked.
"When he gets really excited over a project he'll do that sometimes and basically live in the lab for a few days until he invents whatever he's been working on."
"Does it usually work?"
"Nah, most of the time he just does it until whatever he's building blows up in his face and he needs to be dragged over to the infirmary." Maddie laughed, until the mental image of Jack without having cleaned himself in a week or so hit her. Then she began feeling nauseous. She grimaced. Vlad saw her facial expression and laughed.
Graduation finally arrived. As they had planned, Vlad and Maddie married and moved to Wisconsin where Vlad could work for his uncle, who ran a technology company. Jack disappeared into Chicago, and they lost touch with him after a few months. After Vlad's uncle suddenly passed away in his sleep and left the company to Vlad, the hybrid secretly opened a branch of spectral research and defense so that if any more ghosts came out of the portal that Jack was certain to leave open, they would be ready. With Vlad's business sense and Maddie's genius, the company, renamed Dalv Corp., grew tremendously and became extremely profitable. Vlad and Maddie Masters became fabulously wealthy through the company in a very short period of time. They bought a castle outside Green Bay that had formerly belonged to the Dairy King. They decided to keep most of the eighteenth-century décor, except for the lab and Vlad's personal wing, which Maddie allowed him to decorate green and gold in homage to his strange, though acceptable, Packers fanaticism.
Four years into their marriage, a girl was born to them. Maddie asked for her to be named Jazzmine because she wanted a unique and exotic name, and Vlad acquiesced. She grew into the spitting image of her mother. Two years later, they had another child, a son. He was named Daniel, after Vlad's late uncle. He had the same ice-blue eyes as his father, as well as the black hair that Vlad had had before the accident. Both were graced with ghost powers; in their ghost forms they were clad in HAZMAT suits that Vlad had borrowed from his company; both were black, except for the gloves, boots, belt, and collar. On Jazz's suit these were blue, and on Danny's, white. When Jazz transformed, her hair would go from orange to the same blue that adorned her costume and her eyes would change from a blue-green to a solid ice blue. Danny, when in ghost mode, had snow-white hair, and glowing green eyes. Jazz and Danny Plasmius also had a JP and DP insignia emblazoned on their costumes. Although they sometimes questioned why their skin wasn't blue and their features vampiric, as were those of their father, they dispelled these thoughts with the assumption that their mother's human DNA caused their forms to be more humanoid. The Masters children were very close, and loved their parents very much. One day, after they had come home from school, Vlad and Maddie called them into their study. The two siblings entered the large room to find that their parents were sitting in adjacent armchairs and poring over a book that they were holding between them.
"What's up?" Danny asked.
"Well, son, our college reunion is going to be in a few days, and since your mother and I are invited to bring you two along with us, we figured that you should at least have some knowledge of the people that we went to college with. You see the woman with the long, black hair? Her name is Harriet Chin, and she majored in journalism."
"Ooh, I've heard of her!" Jazz exclaimed. "She's an anchor on the Today show!"
"That's right, Jazz," Maddie answered. "Harry and I were close friends in our college days; she became very successful after we all graduated."
"Who's that guy?" Danny asked, pointing at a large man wearing a lab coat. Almost immediately, he regretted asking. His parents shot a look at each other, and the warmth of the room suddenly vanished, almost as though the roaring fire in the fireplace had been extinguished.
"His name is Jack Fenton," Maddie said coldly.
"Oh…what's wrong with him?"
"He caused the accident that made me half ghost," Vlad said stiffly.
"So isn't that a good thing?" Danny protested. "He gave you powers that no mortal could ever hope to comprehend, and through you, us. Also, because of the accident, you and mom went to work at great-uncle Danny's company and got really rich from it. So shouldn't we be thankful for what he did?"
"I know you mean well, Danny, but you don't understand," Vlad countered, a touch of sadness apparent in his voice. "You say it's wonderful that we have the powers of the undead, but you don't know what it's like to be fully alive. Yes, these powers are amazing, but I would gladly give them all up to have a strong heartbeat and a normal body temperature. This half-life we live is unbelievable, yes, but you've never experienced a full life, so I can't expect you to understand what the last twenty years have been like for me. And as for the company, your mother and I were going to work there anyway. Jack had nothing to do with that. He was a bumbling idiot who could never think about anyone other than himself and his stupid inventions, and he probably still is!" he finished, venom clearly seeping into his voice. Jazz and Danny shied away; they had never seen him this angry before. Vlad took a couple of deep breaths and composed himself.
"Sorry about that, children. Danny, I apologize for losing my temper; it's not your fault for being curious."
"It's okay, Dad."
"Where will the reunion be taking place?" Jazz asked.
"Here," Maddie answered. Vlad thought that it would be a good idea to hold the reunion here, at our home."
"It sounds like it'll be a lot of fun!"
"Can I invite Sam and Tucker?" Danny asked.
"Sure, little badger, you can bring your little friends if you like. In fact, they can both sleep over the night before as well."
"Awesome! Thanks, Dad!"
"It's time for you two to get to bed," Maddie said suddenly. The Masters children looked at the clock and realized with a shock that it was already 10:15. "The reunion won't be until Saturday night, so Danny, invite your friends over for Friday night."
"Sure, Mom. G'night!"
"Good night, Mom, good night, Dad!"
"Good night, sweetie."
"Sleep tight, kids." Danny and Jazz went up to bed, and Maddie and Vlad sat for a minute perusing the yearbook. Finally, Maddie stood up.
"It's time we got to bed too, honey."
"You're right," he put one hand around her waist and the two of them walked towards the door. Vlad took one look back at the yearbook, which lay open to a particular picture. The picture showed Jack, hands outstretched and an exhuberant grin on his face, standing next to an upturned bowl of punch that he had unknowingly knocked onto Vlad's head, covering him with the stuff. The day was forever referred to as 'the Backwash incident.' Vlad grimaced at the memory, flicked the lights off, and followed his wife to bed.
SAVE DANNY PHANTOM!