Valerie sighed lightly and checked her gear one last time. It was all in perfect working condition, as usual, but she was nervous and feeling exposed. For a moment, she envied ghosts their ability to become invisible. She was high above the streets hunting down the two strongest ghosts she had ever met: Danny Phantom and the Wisconsin Ghost, or as Phantom tended to call him, Plasmius. Actually, once, she could have sworn she heard him call the older ghost Vlad, but she had to have been hearing things.
She couldn't help but feel that she was being led into a trap. They had been fighting when she arrived, against her better judgment, to send them back where they belonged. Phantom, she was certain she could handle. He was strong, but he'd never beaten her. No, her concern was for Plasmius. She had never had to fight him, but knew from observation that he was stronger than most of the ghosts she had trouble with.
So she arrived to put a stop to the ghost fight and both ghosts ran. Well, technically, they flew, but…the point was that she had absolutely no hope of beating them both off together, and they had, unanimous and unspoken, chosen retreat. It didn't make any sense.
A flash of green and red dragged her from her ruminations to the rooftops below. "Where are you, ghosts?" she muttered, scanning the area. A stray blast of red passed dangerously close and the girl dove toward its source.
"Why?" Phantom was yelling. "So you can kill my dad and make out with my mom?"
Plasmius opened his mouth, perhaps for some witty comeback, but closed it again as his eyes flicked briefly in Valerie's direction. "My dear boy," he said instead in a voice like silken innocence. "Why would I possibly wish to do a thing like that?"
Phantom may have answered, but Valerie didn't really care to hear any more. She fired her weapons, yelling, "You're going down, ghosts!" The ghosts dodged out of the way; for a moment, she saw the look of surprise on her usual nemesis' face and was half-tempted to laugh at him.
"Valerie, stay out of this!" he called to her. "You're going to get hurt!"
"Or you will!" she retorted. Momentarily forgetting the other combatant's presence, she lunged down after the boy who ducked through the building. She cursed inwardly and tried to figure out the best way to go after, but a pained moan reminded her of Plasmius. She felt a thrill of victory at the knowledge that she had hit him. Suddenly, a pair of black rings appeared to cross his body, and her thrill disappeared in a gasp of shock.
"Mr. Masters?" she whispered. It couldn't be. It had to be a trick. It just had to be. There was no way…
Vlad coughed weakly and let his head rest against the skylight. "Valerie," he greeted, considerably abashed. "My most…sincere and humble-" He brought off to cough a few times before finishing. "Apologies. I suppose now you know my little secret."
The ghost hunter clenched her fists, torn between betrayal and a desire to understand. "Why?" she stammered. "How? You're dead?"
"No, no. It was a lab accident, many years ago. I suppose you could say that I…half died."
Valerie shook her head violently. "But…but…I don't understand! You're a ghost!"
Vlad motioned her closer, and against the screaming in her brain, she complied. "Half-ghost, my dear," he corrected with an apologetic smile. "Please don't think ill of me; I don't think my heart could take it."
About to retort, she found her mouth effectively glued shut by that comment. He cared?
Of course, he cared. He was still Vlad, even if he was Plasmius, right?
"I hope you can understand, now," he continued, taking her silence as the signal to do so, "why I have chosen you to help me defeat these scourges. Ghosts have rather destroyed both of our lives, after all, and I admit that I feel a certain kinship with you."
Things were falling into place. The similarities between Phantom and Danny, things she had disregarded as the worst kinds of coincidence, suddenly took on a whole new meaning. "Danny?" she whispered.
Vlad nodded. "Yes, I'm afraid so. The poor child…I tried to help him, offered to teach him to control that aspect of himself, but he turned me away. I fear he has chosen to walk a darker path than I."
"He…used me," the girl said, almost testing the phrase to see how it sounded. To her surprise and dismay, it seemed to work. "He…lied to me!" She felt a hand against her wrist and glanced up to see Vlad staring at her.
"Don't be too hard on him," the man begged. "He's only a boy. I don't believe he knows what he's doing."
Valerie felt a thrill quite unlike the one she felt earlier. Vlad was a good man; that he could possibly beg her to forgive Danny after the things he'd done proved it. The fact she couldn't think of anything in particular was lost to her in the face of her growing crush. No, she couldn't hate him, even if he was a ghost. "What do you want me to do?" she asked, trying to keep her voice level.
He tried to stand, so she helped, delighted at the grateful smiled he gave just before those rings appeared again. It was surprisingly easy to look past the ghost when she knew the man behind it, she realized. "Capture him," Vlad said, his hands on her shoulders in a gesture of earnest. "Bring him to me, and perhaps I can yet get through to him."
Filled with a new sense of purpose, the young ghost hunter nodded decisively. She activated her jet sled and checked her ghost radar, then, with a wave, she went after Phantom. Behind her, Vlad smirked and shook his head. "Too easy."