FIRSTLY! I didn't die from Covid! It did suck when I got it, but I survived. My advice if you do get it, try to stay upright and avoid laying down unless you're sleeping. It made my lungs feel heavier than they already did, and it wasn't fun.

I feel like every time I write a new chapter to this story I'm apologizing at the header. So instead of that, here's an update on what I've been doing this last year. Starting in January, I felt like I was ready to begin working on a novel of my own. It's a fantasy novel set around a wizard coming to the crossroads of his destiny right as a war breaks out. I've been doing a lot of research on medieval architecture, living in that kind of society, and how warfare evolved for us, and how I could adapt it with the concept of magic involved. This novel has been in development for a long while, and I'm excited that I now have enough info to coble together the first draft of it! Anyway, onward with the story!

Nightshade

NS-One Month Later-NS

Danny had woken up early in the morning to the sound of his alarm clock buzzer breaking him from a rather good dream he'd been having. He sat up in the bed and turned the alarm off, observing the numbers displayed. For the last month, Danny woke up a six in the morning to go for a two-lap run around the island. It wasn't a large island, as Danny found out on the first day, but he felt that the mindless running helped him work out some of his stress.

After Danny finishes his morning jog, which he'd had shaved down to about five minutes per lap, he'd head back into the tower, then take his shower. On the first day, he'd worn his white T-shirt and blue jeans, but Star took it upon herself to take the newest Titan in training clothes shopping. Now he had a wardrobe that was much more varied. He threw on a grey shirt and a good pair of light blue pants. After that, Danny would go into the kitchen and make himself an omelet or something similar. Then he'd make his way to Raven for an almost therapy session. Today was no different, as he made his way to the little den off the side of the living room around eight.

He sat down across from Raven who'd been sitting there sipping on some chai. Danny learned quickly not to interrupt her while reading, otherwise the rest of the session wouldn't go very well, her six red eyes burned into his memory. She finished whatever line that she was at on one of her black, no label book on poems before she closed the book. She looked up from her book, took one last sip of her drink, then greeted him.

"Good morning," She said in her typical, tired morning monotone voice.

"Good morning, Raven. Reading anything interesting?" Danny asked politely.

"Just a short story about a mariner who's trying to find his way home," Raven answered.

"Like the Odyssey?" Danny inquired.

"Something like that," She replied, before taking another sip of her tea. "So, how are you this morning?" She asked.

"Pretty good. Went for a jog this morning, had my morning omelet. Had a pretty good dream, barely remember much of it though," Danny answered, trying to recall what he'd dreamt the night before.

"Shame. Dreams are the gateway to the inner workings of your mind. How are your friends? Have they settled in to their lives?" Raven dug a bit.

"Tucker is trying to fit in to the L.A. lifestyle, but he's too much of a geek. Sam, however, seems like she's finally getting into a better life. She's apparently taking commissions online for art. She's pretty good," Danny replied.

Most of his sessions were quick, back and forth for about ten minutes before they decided that it was time to move on. The conversations would go from dreams, to friends, to training, then aspirations and the like. Once a week after his sessions with Raven, Danny would go to Cyborg for a physical. Danny couldn't stay in his ghost form for very long, due to some of the effects of the Blood Blossom. Today, Danny was getting the results of a blood test from the brightest minds in the Justice League.

Danny navigated the hall himself from his, raven, and star's hallway, down past the living room towards what used to be dubbed the men's hall. There wasn't enough room on their side for Danny, so he went to what used to be the women's hallway. Danny stopped at the last door at the end of the hall, and did the Shave and a haircut knock.

The door slid open to reveal Cyborg, standing tall on the other side. He rubbed some sleep out of his human eye, and waved him into the room. Danny sat down on a chair, while Cy went over to his computers. He opened a file and a hologram projected into the center of the room. It showed flakes of the red substance that were mixed into the green ectoplasm.

"I take it this isn't good news?" Danny asked, not knowing what he was looking at.

"Remember when we took your blood at various intervals a few weeks back. Both in ghost and out of ghost form. This is what your body is producing when you turn into your ghost half. You're lucky it's only being formed in your ghost half, as it appears to be flushed out of your system in your human half. It appears your liver is able to filter the toxin out of the bloodstream," Cyborg stated.

He then looked at a clipboard, and asked, "How long were you able to keep up your ghost form yesterday?"

Danny pulled out his phone from his jeans pocket, and brought up the timer function. "Yesterday was an hour and fifty-seven minutes. The day before was one hour and thirty even," Danny answered, turning the screen off and stowing it back into his pocket.

"Okay, which day were you exerting more power?"

"Yesterday I think I was more aggressive with my power usage," came the answer that intrigued Cyborg.

He jotted down some new notes, then said to Danny, "I think I have a new hypothesis. The blood blossom in your body definitively limits the time you can use your powers. However, the hypothesis is that the limit is on the lower limit of your time, and expending energy can increase your overall time, but only until you're out of the upper limit of ectoplasm."

Danny thought for a second, then asked, "I think I follow, but why then?"

Cyborg looked up at Danny and pondered, "I can only speculate right now, but if you are generating more ectoplasm in ghost form, then the blood blossom is also being generated with it. When you expend that ectoplasm in blasts and shields, it burns the blossom with it. The max limit is based on how much you expend overall before being forced to recover. Speaking of recovering, how long before you can transform again?" Cyborg inquired.

"It varies from day to day, but usually a few hours in between exhaustion. I'd say two minimum hours and four at most," Danny answered. He stood up to stretch his back, when the Tower alarm went off. Both the teens jumped to the door, Danny phased through it, and ran to the living room. Everyone ran to the central console and watched as Robin sat down and quickly began typing at the console.

"What is the problem, Robin?" Starfire asked. She looked a mixture of concerned and eager to fight.

"The JLA detected an increase of radioactivity in Jump City this morning. It looks like it could be an A-bomb is somewhere at the North Waterfront Storage. Whoever has the bomb isn't even trying to cover their tracks. Cy, Beast and Raven have the northern half, while Star and I take the southern half. Danny, I want you close by in human form. If you get a call, ghost up and get into the fray. Titans, GO!" Robin screamed.

Everyone went in their own directions. The flyers went to the roof, while Cy and Robin went to the basement. It was only Danny who stood in disbelief. Every call for the last month, of which there were plenty, Danny was benched. Even patrols were out of the question to Danny. He knew why, of course, he wasn't going on missions. But now was his first Mission as a Titan. A smile broke across his face, as he levitated off of the ground. He pulled out his phone, put the timer on, and turned intangible. He flew through the window at top speed, going as fast as he could to the streets near the storage facility…

NS-Vlad's Mansion-NS

Maddy finally felt a small semblance of normality begin to creep into her life again. After a few weeks of waking up with full blown nightmares, nausea, and deep crying and regret, she could now claim to only suffer from the nightmares and crying. Every day she felt like she could open up just a little bit more. Vlad quickly became the perfect listener for all of her woes, even going as far as to help her somewhat with her survivers guilt. He even offered to pay for a therapist to help her more thoroughly through the grieving process.

As she left the bed she'd fallen asleep in, it was hard for her to tell some of the rooms apart from one another, she moved to the joined bathroom. Maddy shed her nightgown and hopped into the shower. As the hot water cascaded over her, she thought of her husband and daughter, and tears flowed once more from her eyes. The warm shower she was just in felt so far away now, as she focused on the loss she endured. Eventually, a knock at the door snapped Maddy back to reality.

"Maddy, you've been in there for almost an hour!" Vlad's voice echoed through the door.

Maddy turned the water off, and got out. She patted herself down with a towel and dressed herself in a casual outfit. A pair of pants and cool blue shirt. She brushed her hair up, and left the room. A butler outside of her room guided her to the dinning room, where Vlad was. She sat down as a plate of scrambled eggs, sausages, and bacon was brought to her placemat. She thanked the server before turning to Vlad.

He sat at the head of the table, reading a newspaper on the events and going on's of the world since Amity was vaporized. It apparently had spurred another global debate on disarmament of weapons of mass destruction. Vlad was wearing a nice red coat, and a grey pair of slacks, and his hair was disheveled. This was a rarity, but the prim and proper Vlad Masters was too in grief with Maddy. He looked up to her and gave a weak smile.

"How was your night?" He asked her.

"Full of nightmares. Jack and the kids are…" She paused, and choked up a little. "Vlad. I think it's time I tell you about Danny," She finished.

If Vlad had been drinking something, he'd have spit it out. He hadn't realized that she had known about Danny's ghost half. Or perhaps she was talking about something else. That had to be it. "Let us move to the living room then. That would be a better place for a deep conversation," Vlad interjected.

The two stood from their places. A maid bussed their plates as they moved down the hallway to a lounge like room. It had a wall of nothing but books with a couple chairs in the corner with reading lamps next to them. In the center of the room sat a sofa, loveseat, and a lazyboy recliner, with a coffee table that had a few magazines in front of a small fireplace. A TV sat mounted above the fireplace, where licks of fire threatened to jump into the glass.

Maddy sat at the sofa as Vlad settled in his favorite chair, the lazy boy. Vlad leaned forward to the coffee table, grabbed the remote, and muted the TV, so the two could really talk about what was bothering her about Danny.

"Vlad, Jack and I installed a camera in the lab a few months back. On the day we started up the Portal, Danny had the accident. On the footage, he… he…" She said, but burst into tears.

Vlad tossed the remote back to the table, then moved to the sofa next to her, and pulled out a handkerchief from his coat pocket. He handed it to her, and she blew her nose into it. After she settled herself, she said, "Danny had become a ghost. We thought he's still in there, but we just don't know what to do."

Vlad stood up and said, "Maddy, I'm sorry, I…" He walked over to the fireplace, and stared into the fire for a moment. Then he stifled a sigh, and turned to her. That's when he had decided to lie. "I have a confession to make," He started. He dared not step towards her, but continued, "In collage, when we made that prototype portal, I had a similar accident as you know. The ecto-acne left me bitter at Jack for what had happened, but what happened next shocked me to my core. I didn't know how to tell you this back then, but I know now…" As he finished, two blue coils formed around him and he turned into Plasmius.

Maddy felt a scream catch in her throat, but did not make a sound. She was stunned into the silence she sat at now, tears and all. Vlad returned to normal and continued, "I tried everything to turn myself back to being human, but I didn't know how. I hid it away, and tried to live my life without that other half of me. I didn't want to bother you with my shame," Vlad slumped down to his knees and began to cry.

Maddy pulled herself up and moved to Vlad. She hesitated for only a moment, but finally put a hand on his shoulder. It was in this moment that she realized that this may have been how Danny felt. Even though he ran out every night, perhaps he too felt shame for what he'd become.

Vlad's sobbing subsided for a moment, as he transformed back into his human form, and began to explain, "Last time all of you were here, I confronted Danny about what had happened. I offered to teach him to at least control his powers, so he wouldn't accidently hurt anyone. He declined my offer, so I at least made him spar with me. He proved to me that night that he had control of his power. That's when Jack and you found us. I made myself seem the bad guy so you'd focus on me, and Danny could change back."

Maddy sat next to him, she sighed, and said, "Vlad, I wish you would have come to us about what had happened. Maybe we could have helped you, and then maybe we wouldn't have ever created another portal…" Maddy trailed off after that last comment, stuck deep in thought. She took another breath, and said, "I wish I could see him again. I wish I could tell him that I'm sorry." Then she broke down into tears for the second time today.

Vlad embraced her, and in her arms he heard a muffled confession. 'I killed him…'

NS- Hidden Base of Operations -NS

Slade had been pacing for several moments, deep in thought. Even though his immense intellect would've been more than enough to plan without a whiteboard against Robin and his team of misfits, Danny was unique. He did indeed require more time and preparation than he would admit, but a plan finally came to fruition a few days ago. Robin had been smart to keep a lot of information on Danny off of the Titans network, but his cybernetic teammate had not been so keen.

Slade had Danny's medical information, which revealed much more than he could have ever hoped for. The kid wasn't quite as dead as Robin had made him out to be. What's more, he couldn't stay in his 'ghost form' for very long. His situation was similar, but not quite the same, as Terra's problems. However, Slade doubted he could manipulate Danny the way he did Terra.

Slade found a few dealers who sold some second hand ghost hunting equipment, but most of it was shiny crap. Nothing that would actually do anything against a real ghost. That was until he stumbled on some gold. The government had been buying some schematics from 'Fenton Works', that looked like it would actually work. All Slade would have to do is infiltrate this 'G.I.W.' branch of the government, and all that tech would be his. He'd have to do some more research later on them.

Slade left that train of thought, and thought of all the schemes he'd tried to get Danny in the open to test his powers. Since the second week after the city was destroyed, Slade had been trying to throw enough problems at the Titans that they would eventually send Danny. That didn't happen, so on the third week Slade procured a nuke through the Brotherhood of Blood. It cost him a pretty penny, but would definitely provide Slade with the results he was waiting on.

He quit pacing once the alarm went off, turned to his desk, and moved to sit down. He flipped two switches, the first shutting the alarm off, and the second that connected a video feed of the warehouse that had the nuke. He watched Robin and Starfire enter his warehouse, then spot the nuke.

Slade pressed a button, which armed the nuke. He smiled under his mask, as a series of robots stormed the warehouse. He saw Robin call his team on their walkie talkies. He sat back, and watched as the kids jumped into action.

END OF CHAPTER

Answering some reviews time!

To jnautking: Your wish is granted.

To sdphantom10: I started it off slowly Maddie and Vlad slowly, but now we're throwing some manipulation in there to spice things up.

To DJTimmer: The ship they left jump in was damaged by the ectosplosion that destroyed much of the city. All the points about Vlad are 100 percent true, and we'll see just how far Vlad'll go once he realizes Danny is alive and well (ISH). Maddie is playing her cards close to her chest right now, so we'll see if she believes Vlad or not.