Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom!

"Have you considered my offer, young Harry?" Vlad asked as he re-entered the lab, this time in ghost form.

"I have."

"And what do you say?"

"I say…yes. I will join you, Plasmius."

"Excellent!" Vlad cheered and pressed the blue button on the remote. Harry's cage phased out of existence, and the young halfa transformed and flew straight up. Plasmius sighed and pressed a button on the wall, and instead of phasing through the ceiling as Harry had hoped, he bounced off of it.

"Hey, what gives?"

"You don't think that I hadn't thought you might try something like that? Of course I had this lab built ghost-proof. Now you can't escape and you'll suffer the punishment of having defied the most powerful ghost in existence!" He charged up a pink ectoplasmic blast and fired it at Harry. It hit dead-on and the boy fell from the sky and landed on the cold floor of the lab. He got up clutching one of his shoulders, which he feared was dislocated.

Harry flicked his eyes back up just in time to see Plasmius charging at him with the force of a Mack truck. He jumped back just as the elder halfa thrust his fist into the floor where he had been standing just half a second before. The force of the attack was so great that Vlad's fist had actually made a hole in the metal floor. He pivoted around the fist in a devastating whirlwind kick, but Harry was able to vault over Vlad's legs just in time and land behind him. Vlad phased his trapped fist out of the floor and launched a lighting-fast series of punches at Harry. He dodged most of them but the last one made contact with his gut and sent him flying across the room. He hit the opposite wall of the lab and was immediately struck by a pink energy blast. Harry fell to the ground and stood up on shaking limbs. He glared daggers at his opponent.

"I don't care if you're clearly more powerful than me," he growled. "I will never, I repeat never, join you."

"Oh, we'll see about that, Harry," Vlad replied with a smirk. Seven duplicates appeared around him and the eight of them surrounded Harry.

"Still want to refuse me?" They asked in unison as they all charged up pink energy in their open palms.

"Leave my son ALONE!" A new voice yelled as Danny burst into the lab.

"Ah, Daniel, so nice of you to join us," the eight clones said as they turned to face him.

"Get out of here now and I promise not to totally destroy you," Danny growled.

"Like you could even touch me," the duplicates mocked. "Strong you may be, but I'm even stronger. And I still have twenty years of experience over you." The eight of them shot beams of pink energy at him. Danny swiftly duplicated into four and each of the clones formed a rectangular green mirror shield with each hand. They pointed the eight shields at the pink energy blasts and the blasts reflected off them and rebounded to their owners. The Plasmius clones grunted as they were struck by their own attacks but quickly recovered and made a circle around Danny and his duplicates, which retracted into a single Danny. This time, Danny made a semi-spherical shield that absorbed the Plasmius duplicates' renewed attacks. He dropped the shield and phased down into the ground. Danny rose up from below the lab behind the circle of clones. He shot an optic blast at one of them and it dissolved into pink smoke. The other seven lined up and Danny noticed that the pink smoke from the destroyed duplicate re-entered the third Plasmius from the left. Not bothering himself with the other six, he shot another optic blast at this version of the evil halfa. This being the original Plasmius, instead of simply dissolving he was thrust back and had to recall three of his duplicates to conserve energy. One of the four remaining duplicates hit Danny with a punch that he was too slow to dodge. Danny slid backwards along the ground and collided with the opposite wall. He stood up and noticed that he was right next to Harry.

"He's so powerful…" the boy said. "I tried fighting him off, but he's just too strong." Danny grinned.

"But I have an attack that'll take out all of his clones and weaken him significantly. Cover your ears and get behind me." Harry did so and Danny built up a tremendous amount of energy in his throat and diaphragm.

The four clones barely had time to widen their eyes in shock, surprise, and Déjà vu before they were struck by Danny's Ghostly Wail. The sonic waves knocked the four of them into the opposite wall where the real Plasmius called his clones back to him. He was struck by wave after wave of the attack before he was forced to revert back to his human form. Even this wasn't enough to leave Vlad with enough energy to stay conscious; he passed out and when Danny stopped the attack he fell to the ground.

"Dad, that was so awesome! Whenever I hear people talk about your Ghostly Wail, I never imagine it to be like that at all, but the real thing is so much better than I imagined it!"

"You probably never saw it in person because I never use it; it's so destructive that if I were to try it on a ghost it would take out most of the surrounding buildings."

"How long have you had it?"

"Since I was fifteen. But it takes so much energy that I couldn't hold it for more then a few seconds back then and I'd change back as soon as I finished using it. Thank god I'm finally past that stage."

"Do you think I'll ever learn how to do that?"

"Maybe. How much energy do you have?"

"Some; not enough to fly all the way home from Wisconsin, though."

"Then I guess we'll have to go via the Plasmius Portal, then."

"You mean Vlad's portal?"

"Yeah. It's a much faster flight if we go through the Ghost Zone. Once we go through this portal it's only about a half-hour flight back to the one at FentonWorks. From there we can get home in a couple of minutes."

"But I've never been in the Ghost Zone before! And you're Public Enemy #1 there and you're at reduced strength from using the Wail!" Danny shrugged.

"Eh, you worry too much. There's a first time for everything, including seeing the Ghost Zone. And even though I'm at reduced strength, I'm still strong enough to fight off anyone that gets in our way. But, we may not need to worry about other ghosts…do you mind if we make a pit-stop?"

"Huh?"

"If we stop to see Box Lunch on the way home, we'll be able to argue that I was in the Ghost Zone on ghostfatherly duties, so I'm immune to any dangers of the Ghost Zone and through me, you."

"Ghostfather?"

"It's sort of like a godfather, but for ghosts. The second day after you were born, the Box Ghost and his daughter came to me while you, your mom and I were in the hospital. He asked that I become his daughter's ghostfather and I accepted. You should meet her."

"Well, I'm kind of low on energy so if we're going to do this, we should do it now." The two of them rose up into the air and flew into Vlad's ghost portal just as his eyes fluttered open.

"I will have you as my apprentice, Harry," the man swore. "You can count on it."