CHAPTER 3: DEHUMANIZE

Existing outside the concept of time itself, I can see all that unfolds and comes into existence, and watch it fade away and leave existence in the same breath. From the beginning of the universe by the grandiose expansion of the Big Bang, to its eventual death and whimpering end by the Big Chill, there is no part of history that is unknown to me.

Where you see time in units and measurements, counting your limited years away by juvenile words like 'seconds' or 'years', such concepts would be alien to me if they were not in my control. For me, the seconds and the years and the eons are all the same to me; playing with each other in a medley that only I can see through and make sense of.

Danny Fenton is one of the billions on planet Earth that are not so privileged to have such a sight of time, forced like many of his own species to wander through his life with no full knowledge of what shall come to him. As such, he has found a substantially great change in his life once again, and is left on his own to sort this challenge out.

Pushing away the only family that would claim him as one of their own, even if that title was forced by the sympathetic Sam Manson, Danny Fenton no longer lives under the house of the Mansons. Instead, he lives under the guardianship of the man who once swore himself as his enemy: Vlad Masters.

Without the rock of Sam Manson to stand upon, the boy was left to fall further further down his crumbling sense of life; suffering deeper into despair and living without a sense of love. Kept financially stable and fed well enough by Vlad Masters, even if he neglected the latter necessity more often than not, there was no hope left within the budding young man that was once full of hope.

Unable to bring himself to continue to fight against the legions of undead that haunt the Earth on his own, being pushed to do so out of pure need by Vlad Masters, there is little left in the way of motivation within his soul. Still, under his depression, there is a need for stimuli; a need to feel something.

To fulfill this empty need, the course that Danny Fenton takes in the path of gaining a new outlet is self-abuse. Gaining a collection of razor blades, many of them end up dug into his wrists and arms; drawing forth droplets of blood in trade for scars that exist only to remind him of the pain.

As careful as he is to conceal his newfound taste for self-abuse, he soon will find out that such an activity is cannot be concealed forever, as he will see now. Following a long day of school that only seemed to linger so much that his own mind felt in a state of limbo, Danny sits down with Vlad for dinner; his guardian trying to accomplish at least one attempt at parental bonding.

"So, Danny, have a good day at school today?" Vlad asked.

Danny lightly nodded his head, not wishing to speak out his answer.

"Good, good. I hope that private school's not giving you too many troubles. I just want you to take it easy for now, and I've seen to it that no one gives you any harsh treatments." Vlad said.

"Thanks." Danny mumbled.

"You know that I just want the best for you, Danny. Your parents loved you very much, and I owe it that much to them to see that you're taken care of. You're all that's left of them."

"All that's left of my mother, you mean."

Discomforted by his adopted son's remark, Vlad gave a sad exhale, unable to defend his own comments.

"I did love your mother, and I was jealous of your father. I won't lie about that. But I never wanted them dead. If anything, all I see now is how wrong I was this time. I can't make things up to them now, but the very least that I could do for them is try to take care of you. I don't care how you judge me for it, but, at the very least, I would appreciate if you would acknowledge that I'm at least trying to do something right." Vlad said.

"Fine." Danny mumbled.

Nodding contently, Vlad returned to his food to take another bite, with Danny merely nibbling at his.

"You know, it's kind of funny. It wasn't just them I was wasting so much time with. I was spending so much time fighting you, too. Someone like you, I should've spent a lot more time trying to get to know you better. Getting your powers so young, at a younger age than I had mine, there was a lot we could've learned from each other in the day. I suppose we've got more time now, I suppose; make the best of the day as-" Vlad began to say.

In the midst of completing his sentence, Vlad caught eye of a drop of blood coming from Danny's wrist, taking his attention away from his food and prior speech.

"Danny? You're... Are you bleeding?" Vlad asked.

Vlad reached out for Danny's arm to inspect it, but the teenager defiantly snatched it away, not wishing to show his wounds.

"Get away from me!" Danny said.

Not willing to comply with the request, Vlad more aggressively reached out and grabbed Danny's arms, much to his protests and acts of defiance.

"LET GO OF ME! DON'T TOUCH ME! I DON'T NEED THIS FROM YOU!" Danny shouted.

Pulling the sleeve of his shirt back, Vlad revealed a series of fresh cuts on his arm, all accompanied by scars and healing cuts left behind from previous attempts at his self-destructive habits. Brought to a stop upon seeing the wounds left in the boy's arms, Vlad's grip on Danny's arms finally let loose when the teenager yanked himself away.

Not wishing to be viewed by his former greatest enemy in a vulnerable way, Danny ran to the corner of the room, covering his arms away from Vlad once again. Persistent to try to show some empathy to his new ward, Vlad reapproached the crying Danny in sympathy.

"Danny... Why didn't you tell me you were doing this?" Vlad asked.

"Why? Oh, no reason, why do you think I hid it? I didn't want you to see me like this." Danny said.

"But why are you cutting yourself? I know you better than you think, and this... this isn't like you at all."

"What's it to you?! You're not my goddamn father!"

"As far as the law is concerned, I am your father, and I'm also not only the only person both willing to hear you out and help you, but the only other half-ghost being in the entire universe. That means I'm someone you can relate to, talk to. I've been in this game far longer than you, learned plenty of tricks, and found a lot of new ground on my own. A lot of it was hard to do. You don't have to do that. So, tell me. Why are you hurting yourself?"

Following a deep breath, Danny's exhale took with it the explanation of his extreme excisions to the external shell of his existential being.

"Ever since I lost my family in that blast, ever since I felt that amount of pain from their deaths, I haven't felt anything else at all but anger. I just wanted to feel something different, to let out that anger somewhere. I know that if I hurt anyone at school, you'd just have me tossed somewhere else to be somebody else's problem. That's what Sam's parents did. I won't criticize you if you want to do whatever crimes you want with your powers. How about you at least grant me some outlet of my own?" Danny asked.

Understanding the boy's reasoning, Vlad thought carefully over the situation, contemplating on how to bring and end to the self-destructive habits of the young Danny Fenton. Following a moment of thought moving about in his head, the thought eventually led him to a solution, and the solution subsequently made its way to his mouth and into the air as speech in its final destination.

Just before speaking out his thought, however, Vlad changed from his human form to ghost form, standing tall before Danny once again.

"I'm not going to let you continue hurting yourself. I owe it to your parents to at least ensure that what's left of them doesn't hurt himself. I can offer you a better outlet than that nasty cutting habit." Vlad said.

"Oh, yeah? And what's that?" Danny asked.

"You said you hurt yourself only because you want to hurt someone else, because you can't. What if you can?"


After a short flight across the night sky, reaching an entirely different state in mere seconds, Vlad and Danny landed outside a facility belonging to NectarMine Industries. The aforementioned facility rested comfortably in an isolated area of desert, with multiple soldiers surrounding the building to prevent any unwanted entry, making breaking in impossible.

"What's this place?" Danny asked.

"NectarMine Industries. One of the top suppliers to the United States military. I tried to buy them off a few months ago, but they refused my generous offer, costing VladCo the chance to be the top supplier to the military, and therefore cutting into money that should be mine." Vlad said.

"So why are we here?"

"I've calculated that most of their honeypot is here in this facility, and I've been meaning to trash it. Taking this out will put them in a financial downturn so heavy, they'll come begging for someone to buy them off, but nobody'll touch them with a 10-foot cattle prod with most of their product gone."

"Then comes VladCo to save the day."

"Exactly."

"Won't it be a waste, everything here going up in smoke?"

"I've taken the time to lift the most important blueprints and prototypes, thanks to my walking through their walls. Besides, most of it sucked anyway."

"So now what?"

"I told you, this place gets destroyed. That's all that's left."

"So, you drag me out here because you want me to rough up your business rivals, and you say it's to help me. Heh, fine. What am I supposed to do?"

"Whatever you want, Danny."

"Huh?"

"You need somewhere to let that anger out, to destroy something. You want to make something hurt, like you hurt. I present to you a place just for that; a playground for your own personal destructive tendencies. Raze this place to the ground, throw it up in smoke, do whatever you want with it whatsoever. It's all yours."

"What if I killed someone?"

The question had come unexpectedly from the boy, leaving Vlad stumped on how to answer it. Despite having no moral lines of his own, the topic of killing never aroused in such situations, making him think quickly on how to reply to the inquiry. Most of these thoughts were slowed by the pure shock of the question, still unable to see Danny Phantom casually flaunting the idea of murder.

Nonetheless, he had no true answer, and merely shrugged the question off.

"Well... Just try to focus on the buildings. For now." Vlad said.

Flying off towards the research facility, Danny scanned over the general area, carefully analyzing the destructive zone and contemplating how and where to strike first. Letting the sadistic ideas fly in his head, a smile began to crawl its way across his face; the first time such a show of positive emotion had shown from him.

Finally making his first move, Danny fired an ectoplasmic bolt towards a watchtower, sending it toppling to the ground and clashing with power lines, causing sparks to fly about and send all nearby into a panic. Within seconds of the attack, an alarm began to go off, sending the rest of the facility into panic and fear.

Moving on to his next target with haste, Danny began firing at various buildings and construction sites, demolishing several facilities in his way during his attack. What soldiers were not scattered or scared off from the surprise attack began firing back at the attacking Danny Phantom.

Their efforts did not pay off; their bullets passing straight through his body and leaving him unaffected by their counterattacks. Firing more ectoplasmic energy back at his enemies, Danny knocked the troops of soldiers back with his blasts, severely injuring several in the act.

Seeing the soldiers come to injury under his hand, a larger smile came to Danny's face, one that bore a show of teeth.

Watching the attack from afar, Vlad witnessed the attack in a sense of fear; barely able to process his own full emotions on the matter. The sheer excitement and giddiness that Danny exhibited seemed to prove his treatment for his pain an effective one, but it gave him a sense of terror in pondering what more of this activity could lead to if unchecked.

For one brief moment, Vlad began to regret his decision, but not well enough to change his stance.

After Danny had concluded his work upon the base, he returned to Vlad, showing off his efforts like a son displaying his work to his father in search for approval.

"Well, how'd I do?" Danny asked.

"You did... fine. Just fine. Did this little exercise help you?" Vlad asked.

"Definitely."

"And how do you feel now?"

Glad to hear the question asked, Danny's smile continued to grow wide, with a taste of sinister growing underneath it.

"I feel... godlike." Danny said.