"So how are you feeling?" Vlad asked, after he and Danny settled down on opposite sides of Vlad's mahogany desk.
"I feel…betrayed because Tucker went out with Sam even though he knew that I was in love with her. I'm hurt that they were getting together but they didn't even tell me. I mean, it'd be much easier to accept if they had just said that they were going out instead of being all secretive about it!"
"If you love this girl as much as you say you do, would you really have been more accepting if she'd told you that she was going out with your best friend? Do you honestly mean to tell me that you wouldn't attack him as soon as you saw him?" Danny held up a hand that was glowing with green energy. It was answer enough.
"What if they were to break up? What if the two of them were to stop being together? Would you accept them then?" Vlad asked him.
"I…don't know. If Sam were to come to me, then maybe I'd forgive her. As for Tucker…I could learn to forgive him over time if he could provide a really good excuse as to why he did what he did." Danny gave a long sigh, and deflated slightly as all of his pent-up emotions ebbed out of him.
"Feeling better?" Vlad asked him.
"A little. Not as betrayed as before. But I'm still angry at the world." Vlad chuckled.
"That I can help you with. Come on, let's spar." Danny grinned maliciously and went ghost at the same time as Vlad.
"Hello misplaced aggression!" Danny exclaimed as he launched a series of lightning-fast punches at Vlad, who managed to dodge all of them. Vlad flew outside of the castle and Danny turned intangible and followed. As soon as Danny regained tangibility, Vlad shot a pink ectoblast at him but Danny separated at the waist to avoid it.
"One piece of advice, Daniel. Look behind you!" Vlad shouted and Danny turned around. A Plasmius duplicate had caught the original Vlad's ectoblast and sent it right at Danny, who took the hit dead-on and sank a couple of feet in the air.
"I could say the same thing to you," Danny replied as he vanished from sight. The two Vlads scanned the area. That is, until one of them was hit by a green ectoblast from above and disappeared in a flash of pink light. The original Vlad looked up and saw Danny, his right hand smoking.
"Very good, Daniel!" he exclaimed, then teleported up to Danny's level. "But not good enough." Vlad and Danny each launched ectoblasts at each other, and the two blasts met in mid-air. Each of the two halfas put all of their strength into the blasts, and gave them all of their concentration. The point of impact shifted left, then right, then left again, then went back to the center. All of a sudden, they heard a ringing noise. Danny recognized it as his cell phone.
"Mine," he announced as he dropped the blast and reached into the pocket of his jumpsuit. He pulled the phone out of his pocket as he was hit by Vlad's ectoblast and was launched into the side of the castle.
"Hello?" he asked as he shook his head slightly to relieve himself of the shock and flew back up into the aerial battle.
"DANNY! WHERE THE HECK ARE YOU?" Jazz shouted.
"I…had to get away for a bit," Danny replied as he dodged a couple of pink ectoblasts and took a punch to the gut.
"Away? AWAY? Why could you possibly have to get away?" She asked as Danny fired a blast at Vlad, who dodged. Danny fired a second blast at where he predicted Vlad would move to dodge the first blast, and the second shot made contact.
"Something personal," Danny answered, then ducked an optic blast.
"What personal thing could have driven you to up and vanish to who-knows-where overnight?" Jazz demanded. Danny had split his upper and lower bodies and his upper body was moving every which way to dodge numerous oncoming ectoblasts, much like a Jack-in-the-box after it's sprung out of the box.
"It has to do with Sam…" Danny mumbled, then pulled both halves together and crouched into a ball.
"Sam? What about her? On second thought…don't tell me. Anyway, where are you?" She asked as an orb of green ectoplasmic energy emanated from Danny and exploded outward, eliminating two Plasmius duplicates.
"Can't tell you," he replied, then turned part of his face into a gaseous material so that the ectoblast headed his way would pass through the gigantic hole instead of hitting him.
"What? Why not?" Jazz inquired just before Danny went intangible so that Vlad's dive-bomb passed right through him.
"Because if I tell you, you'll just come looking for me. Listen, Jazz, I'm doing just fine. Promise. If I need you, I promise that I'll call. And I don't plan on staying here forever. I just came to blow off some steam. I'll talk to you later." He pressed 'end' to cut off Jazz's continued ranting, then placed the cell phone back in his pocket.
"Sorry about that, Jazz can be so annoying sometimes." Vlad shrugged.
"I had a younger brother, and I can promise you that every older sibling cares about their younger ones. They always want to protect and look out for them, even if it means seeming overprotective."
"I never knew you had any siblings, Vlad. What happened to him?"
"He died in the car accident that killed my parents."
"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry!"
"Don't be, dear boy. It's one of the few things in my life I've come to grips with, there's no need for you to feel any pity or anything like that." Suddenly, Danny sensed something shooting towards him from behind him. He quickly created a hole in-between his upper and lower bodies to allow the something to pass through the middle. The something turned out to be a rocket, which passed through Danny and instead hit whatever was directly in front of him. Which happened to be Vlad.
"Oof!" Vlad grunted as the rocket hit him dead-on and exploded. However, he didn't seem to be too hurt by the blast, so Danny paid him no heed. Instead, he turned around to see who had fired the rocket in the first place. Skulker floated behind him with a case of rockets popped out of a weapons port on his shoulder.
"What the heck was that for?" Danny asked him.
"To get your attention, whelp. Dinner is ready." With that, Skulker turned intangible and flew into the mansion. Vlad and Danny followed, and changed back to human once they were seated in the kitchen.
"How long were you watching us?" Vlad asked suspiciously.
"Oh, fifteen minutes or so. You know how much people hitting people piques my interest," Skulker replied as he placed a couple of covered trays on the table and lifted the covers with a flourish. The contents were a glowing green gelatinous substance that smelled something vile.
"Skulker, what in heaven's name is this rubbish?" Vlad angrily asked.
"The ectopusses after I threw them in the oven for a couple of hours." Danny and Vlad gaped at him as they each turned varying shades of green.
"Suddenly, I'm not so hungry," Danny noted.
"Me either. Are you up for some more Madden?" Vlad inquired.
"Are you kidding? I'm a teenager, when am I not up for video games?" Danny and Vlad turned intangible and phased down through the floor. After they left, Walker entered the room and his eyes immediately alighted on the mush sitting on the trays.
"I take it the halfas didn't like roast ectopuss?" he asked sarcastically.
"You think? I don't understand it, this is a delicacy for ghosts. If they're part ghost, shouldn't at least half of them like it?"
"That makes no sense whatsoever. But ignoring that last comment, there's more for us, right?"
"Right," Skulker replied with a smirk, and the two of them dug into the food.
"Who the hell changed the TV from ESPN to…to…this?" Vlad angrily asked as he gestured towards the old western playing on his plasma-screen TV. He and Danny watched as Sheriff Walker caught the varmints and dragged them into prison.
"I'll give you three guesses which rule-obsessed, egomaniac sheriff ghost did it, and the first two don't count," Danny quipped.
"WALKER!" the two of them shouted in unison. The ghost in white phased down through the ceiling, the corners of his mouth dripping with glowing green goop.
"Hurry this up, I was enjoying my dinner," he said as his feet touched the ground.
"Wait a minute," Danny replied. "Dinner? You mean…you ate that stuff?" Walker simply shrugged. Danny's face turned green and he sprinted for the door.
"I think I'm gonna be sick," he mumbled as he ran past Vlad.
"Me too," the elder halfa muttered, then followed Danny out of the TV room. Walker shrugged again and plopped down in front of the TV.
"That Sheriff person is one sharp-looking guy," he noted as he licked the remains of the ectopusses from the corner of his mouth.