Vlad's lab was filled with activity that afternoon. Having returned from his business meeting and had some more rest, he was now scrutinising an ectoplasmic sample under a microscope, jotting down notes without looking up to see them. Skulker and Technus were hunched over a new weapon, trying to decipher the last flaw in its operating system. The vultures, each with a hammer in their beaks, were taking turns whacking at the last nail to enter into a new desk, and Eel was providing an initial power source to get a new generator up and running.

All the activity came to a halt as the proximity alarm sounded.

A view-screen lowered from the ceiling, and provided an image of what lay just on the other side of the portal doors. Vlad felt his eyebrow arch at the site of King Arthur and Wizikute of the Order standing just outside his gateway, anxious looks on their faces.

"Vat gives with these guys?" one of the vultures inquired. Vlad did not answer.

"Should we prepare for battle?" Skulker asked. Vlad still said nothing. His eyes were fixed on the image of the two members of the Order before him.

'Unexpected,' he thought, 'though perhaps profitable.' He had never been paid a visit by any member of the Order except Katou, and the look on these ghosts' faces did not suggest their mission was one under the olive branch. But Vlad had been considering how well his experiments and equipment tests had been going. Nothing seemed to be amiss with them. And practice did little good without experience to go with it.

He now saw a way to get experience with the perfect excuse to prevent the cowardice of his men from getting in the way.

"Drop security," he finally said. "Step into my office, and let them in."

---

"Well, my hero," Arthur sighed, "it appears we have arrived."

He and Wizikute stood before the pentagonal striped door, having stepped through the similarly shaped vortex in The Ghost Zone. They had followed the map drawn for Katou five years ago. Manach and Shao-lin remained at the Order's headquarters, watching over everything. They had armed themselves, just as a precaution.

But one is never fully ready to confront a long-time ally as an enemy.

Arthur prepared to draw his sword and wedge the door open when it slid apart on its own. Though taken by surprise, the two sages moved forward without hesitation. They stepped into a dimly lit laboratory. Bits and scraps of material littered the floor, as though a hasty clean up had just taken place. A hard steel door on the right side of the lab was thrown open. The two stepped towards it, Arthur's boots sending off long, ominous echoes as they hit the dark marble floor.

The two ghosts slowly scanned the room. Cages with glowing bars were turned over on their sides, some with doors ripped off as if a hurried evacuation of the holding pen's contents had recently taken place. The lights above were blood-red and flickering, bathing the room in alternate light and shadow. Surgical tables on rollers were pushed to the side walls, again giving the impression of a rapid departure.

The far wall contained a single open doorway, through which the two could see the shadowed form of Vlad Masters, clad in black and sitting behind a monstrous oak desk.

The two old warriors lifted off the ground together and glided over to rendezvous with their targer. Upon arriving, Arthur knocked on the door frame.

"Ah…hello, Arthur!" Vlad greeted the king enthusiastically as he looked up. "And Wizikute, what a surprise! It's been a while, hasn't it? Well, come in! Come in! Make yourselves at home!"

Arthur and Wizikute stepped inside, though doubt was beginning to enter their minds. There was something in Vlad's tone that confirmed that things here were not right.

"And to what do I owe this unexpected honour?" Vlad asked, leaning back in his chair.

"Vlad," Arthur sighed, "I'm afraid our mission is not as friendly as you seem to think."

"I'm sure you know of the problems The Ghost-Zone has faced," Wizikute said.

"Ah, yes…the disappearances. Quite the tragedy," Vlad seemed unfazed.

"Katou told us that when he came here five years ago, he saw weapons that left marks like the ones being used in The Ghost Zone," the chief continued. "He also said that, when Guyart disappeared, he found your hat in the place where Guyart last was."

Vlad showed his first sign of suspicion – he raised his left eyebrow.

"Did he now?" he cooed.

"Yes," Arthur resumed. "And we would like to know about all that research you did concerning the legends of Pariah."

Vlad stared at the two for a moment. Then, his eyebrow still arched, he put on a fox-like grin.

"Oh well," he sighed dramatically. "I can't say I expected this to come up, but never mind. I have a very simple answer to all your concerns."

"Oh?" the two sages said together.

"Yes indeed," Vlad put his feet up onto his desk and leaned back even further, "and here it is."

Still grinning, he snapped his fingers.

A flurry of activity filled the office as masses of green in all sorts of distorted shapes phased through the floor, walls, and ceiling to fill the room. Vlad's ghost-animal experiments, already mad from whatever hell they had been subjected to, savagely snapped and clawed at the two shocked members of the Order.

Arthur was the first to recover his wits enough to fight back. Drawing Excalibur, he caught a large ghost-bear on its edge just before the beast could get its jaws around the king's head. Wizikute, who had been pulled to the floor by two ghost-wolves, managed to wedge his knife loose and have it meet with the animals. Rising back to his feet, he drew his bow and let arrows fly.

Enclosed they may have been, the two human ghosts managed to provide an even fight. Vicious though they were, the ghost-beasts had little intellect. As talons, claws, teeth and tails lashed out, well-timed strokes from Excalibur and precise arrow fire made many a monster vanish in a cloud of green smoke. As more animals filled the room, the king and the chief continued to fight valiantly, meeting each blow and keeping most of their attackers at bay. After a time, it began to look as though they might yet win the day.

Then Wizikute was enveloped by a strange ghost net, and a jolt of electricity running through the mesh knocked him to the floor.

A large, grinning suit of armour had phased up through the floor. The net was attached to his left arm. He snapped it off, seized it with both hands, and swung full force. Wizikute was lifted out of the fray of animals and tossed against the wall, where even more wind was knocked out of him. The ghost-beasts, suddenly displaying a show of cunning, tightened their circled around Arthur and kept at a constant attack, never allowing him an opening to escape and help his friend. Wizikute, both stunned from the blow and shocked from the surprise of the technology, was in an unfavourable position for retaliation. A strange device opened from the armour's opposite arm. He aimed it at the chief and fired off an electric blast. Smoke began to rise from Wizikute's form as the jolt from the net and the blast mixed, burning away at him and drawing from his throat a terrible yelp. Grinning even more maliciously, the armour drew from his belt a futuristic-looking gun. A large and powerful red beam shot out of it, slamming the ghost of the Order even further against the wall and knocking out the last of his wind. The chief tried nobly to hang on to consciousness, but he felt his vision blur, and he collapsed to the ground in a heap.

The armour now took a stranger device from his belt. It was small and cylindrical, with a lid like a cup and glowing red gadgetry built into it. A label on the side read "Dalv Thermos." The armour pointed it at Wizikute and lifted the lid off. A stream of spiralling blue-white energy leapt out, catching the chief in its grasp and tingeing him the same shade of colour. From behind his wall of monstrous assailants, Arthur could only watch in horror as his fallen comrade was reduced to vapour, pulled into the spinning blast, and sucked into the device, at which point the armour quickly slammed the lid shut.

It took all his years of learning with the Order for Arthur to suppress his anger and channel his desire for vengeance into the task at hand.

Sending green flames along Excalibur, he let a sharp wave of energy fly from the sword, reducing all the ghost-beasts to clouds of green smoke. He phased through the bottom of the floor, and came up suddenly in front of the armour. With a swipe of his blade, he relieved the giant metallic being of both hands, and as the one that held Wizikute's prison fell, the device rolled out of its grip and onto the floor. Kicking the suit back, Arthur made a dive for the cylindrical container, but a black-booted foot kicked him back. Vlad stood over the trap, his samurai sword in his hand and a mocking smirk on his face. He moved into a samurai stance; Arthur adopted a broadsword position. As the rest of the room's inhabitants moved off to the side to let their master have his conflict, the blades met.

Vlad had learned Katou's style of swordplay well. Though Arthur had centuries of experience over him, the half-ghost had a great deal of skill and the advantage of youth. He had also waited until this exact moment to join in the fight, when the British king was tired from other battles, shocked by the armour's technology, and emotionally unstable from the loss of Wizikute. Vlad was fresh and filled with malicious glee from victory over one member of the Order.

Their blades met blow for blow for a time, each parrying the stroke of the other, but with Vlad pressing further with each blow. Arthur managed to catch Vlad at an awkward parry and push him back, gaining more ground for himself.

Then Vlad sent flames running along his blade – not green flames, but a hot, glowing red.

Arthur, repulsed and shocked by the spectacle, did not pull himself together in time to send flames along his own blade.

And with one quick swipe, Vlad destroyed England's greatest sword.

He kicked Arthur back into the corner of his desk and fired a hard red blast from his hand, slamming the king into the edge harder. Reaching out with his sword, he rolled the thermos towards himself and kicked it up into his other hand. He popped the lid off and pointed it at his target.

Arthur had no time to escape. He merely shut his eyes and readied himself to be taken.

---

Vlad snapped the lid shut once Arthur was sucked up into the thermos. The design for this trap had been one that Jack and Maddie had collaborated on and Vlad had committed to memory. A few improvements and the use of his own power as an initial energy source had made it the ideal containment device.

Vlad now drew from his pocket a special lock that would permanently seal this particular thermos. Neither ghost nor man – including himself – could lift this lock. Smashing the thermos would be the only way to release Arthur and Wizikute – and too much damage would destroy them along with their prison.

"Gather your arms, Skulker," Vlad said dryly as he snapped the lid on. "The rest of you, gather the others who didn't come. We have a job to do."

"And vat vould that be?" the vulture with a straight beak asked.

"Let's consider what has happened here. We just eliminated two members of the founding council of the Order of Afterlife, one of the most powerful bodies in The Ghost-Zone. They surely will have told the others where they were going. When they don't come back, who do you suppose will get the blame?"

"Uh…vell…" no one could argue with him. They were in a tricky situation.

"Would you rather deal with them then, when we won't know when they're coming and when they're prepared for conflict with us, or would you rather go and remove the problem permanently now, when we're prepared and they not only don't expect us, but don't have the ability to face our advanced technology?"

"But the weapons…" Skulker began as he reassembled his arms.

"Have been doing quite well in tests, and seem good enough to carry out our needs," Vlad said simply. "Now go and gather everyone. We have a job to do."

There was no room for argument. Skulker and the animals phased out of the room to round up the rest of their army.

Vlad smiled to himself. This new plan was going perfectly. He would soon have killed two birds with one stone. With the threat of a counter-attack looming over them, his army had little choice but to go forth and gain experience for themselves and for the technology. And the Order would finally be out of his way.

He chuckled at the thought as he sheathed his sword, went ghost, and put on his overcoat and fedora.