This one's a little shorter, but Vlad is ridiculously fun to write. enjoy!

As Vlad Masters speeds towards the earth at stupidly fast mph, he thinks that there is a distinct lack of a welcoming. A banner is all he's asking for, maybe a couple of parties and bunting. Bunting would be nice.

He had envisioned people lining the streets to clap and cheer as he made his triumphant return. They would be overjoyed to see him, and they would accept him as ruler of the earth without a second thought – why wouldn't they!

The reality is a little depressing. He loses control of his flight about twenty metres above a statue in amity park and falls the rest of the way to the ground, landing on his behind.

It hurts. A lot.

It's then that he realises that there isn't a statue in amity park. Why is there a statue? He glances up, taking in…

Dear god, why is there a statue of Daniel?

He's holding up… the earth?... in one hand, smiling that infuriating goody goody hero smile of his. The one he always gives Vlad when he's rescuing a cat that Vlad put up a tree (he was trying to be evil – couldn't Daniel let him have that one evil moment?) or when he's flying over the city and watching everyone cheer for him. How come Daniel gets cheering and Vlad doesn't?

The point is, Vlad is rather shaken by the statue. It just looks wrong. He thinks it would look a lot better if it was of someone else. Someone richer, and more handsome, and more mature and someone whose name was Vlad Masters.

Vlad is starting to see what his alien therapist meant about his overinflated ego.

After recovering from the hideous depiction of Daniel, Vlad wanders down the street. He thinks he can remember where his old house is – it has been fifteen years after all – but all the houses look the same, and none of them look like his. He ends up at Fentonworks eventually, after deciding that he really has no hope of finding his home. Perhaps it has been demolished?

He knocks on the door warily, noting that the roof extensions have gotten even bigger and more ridiculous while he's been gone. Is that a tank up on there?

He probably should feel more worried about seeing Maddie and Jack, especially given how he left them, but he figures that it's been fifteen years and they should have forgiven him by now. He knows they're the type of people to forgive and let go.

The door is answered by Jack Fenton, and holy fudge he looks old.

Holy fudge? Jack really did rub off on him in college.

Jack Fenton was always quite a young man in Vlad's opinion. Of course, that might have been because he only had his own grey hair to compare it to. This Jack has grey hair. And wrinkles round his eyes from smiling too much.

The man doesn't seem to realise that it's him for a good two minutes, or perhaps he's simply overwhelmed with happiness to see his old buddy. Vlad hopes it's the former, although he doesn't think he's changed that much. All he's done is cut his hair, and he hasn't even aged that visibly. At least, he hopes he hasn't. he hasn't exactly looked in a mirror recently.

"Vlad?" Jack breathes, his eyes wide and hand on his heart. "Shit. What?"

"Hello, Jack!" Vlad says, infusing his voice with as much happiness as he can muster. "I don't suppose you have a spare bed? My house appears to have been destroyed."

To his credit, Jack doesn't reject him immediately. He stands for a while on the doorstep, gaping at Vlad.

"Jack?" someone shouts from inside the house, "Who is it?" that must be Maddie. Oh, how good it is to hear her voice again. Vlad had almost forgotten it.

Jack scowls. "Just someone handing out leaflets!" he yells back, and shuts the door in Vlad's face.

Well, that was rude.

Feeling rather dejected, Vlad slumps away from the Fenton's house. He could, of course, phase in and take one of the spare bedrooms, assuming the children don't still live at home. They must both be in their thirties now.

Gosh.

Daniel is thirty.

That's something he needs to get his head round.

He's not quite sure where to go after his blatant rejection, but when he sees a familiar face flying down the street, he grins and rushes over to where Danny Phantom is locked in combat with a ghost. It's a ghost he doesn't know, which he is more than a little surprised about, since he takes pride in knowing everyone and everything. Maybe he has been away a little too long.

Daniel does look older now, and he's grown into his father's height. That's a shame. Vlad used to enjoy looking down on him, but he's probably taller than him now.

The ghost Daniel's fighting doesn't look like a particularly hard one, and with a quick bit of duplication (which Daniel can apparently do now) and a few ectoblasts, it is safely in a thermos.

Vlad is thrown a little when Daniel lands on the ground and changes to human in front of all the people on the street.

"Idiot boy." He mumbles.

Except, no one seems to be at all fazed, and they just keep on cheering. Valerie (is that Valerie? She's cut her hair and it's hard to tell) is smiling, even though Vlad is sure she has a huge hatred towards Phantom. Is he misremembering or has everything gone to chaos while he's been away?

Well, whatever the case, he needs to talk to Daniel.

The moment Daniel sees him, he transforms into Phantom and gets into a fighting stance which is surprisingly good. Perhaps he's had some martial arts lessons.

"Plasmius." He growls.

"That wasn't quite the welcome I was hoping for." Vlad says, affronted. "Don't you want to see your favourite uncle Vlad?"

Vlad is going to ignore the incredulous look that comes over Daniel's face at that. he must be possessed. Why wouldn't he be happy to see him?

He is answered by a punch. In the face. That hurts.

"What was that for?"

"Oh, I don't know." Drawls Daniel. "Maybe it's for when you decided to take over the human race? Or when you decided to avert an asteroid's course and send it straight into the earth? Or that time you cloned me!"

"Daniel…"

"I could keep going on." He says. "Did you seriously expect to come back to everything as you'd left it and everyone happy to see you? Seriously?"

What is he supposed to say? Daniel knows him.

"Yes?"

The boy's head shakes, and if Vlad didn't know better, he would say it was disappointment.

"I'll say it again, you are one seriously crazed up fruitloop."

Vlad, believe it or not, has missed that nickname.

"Just get in the thermos." Danny sighs. "I'm taking you back to space. You need to see more of that therapist you got."

"You've been spying on me?" Vlad realises. "You're more like me than I thought."

Danny shrugs. "Maybe. It was a good excuse to go to space. Get in."

It appears that Daniel has become more mature. Well, there goes all Vlad's plans to rile him up and ultimately defeat him.

He is sucked inside the Fenton thermos and he doesn't even scream.

Thinking about it cramped in that tiny thermos, space doesn't sound so bad. He is obviously way too amazing for the earth now. He's outgrown it.

Maybe he can drift further afield and expand his one tiny planet empire.

When he says planet, Vlad means an uninhabited meteor, but he will have a planet one day! Maybe he'll go for Pluto?

"Pluto's not a planet anymore." Daniel's voice comes from outside the thermos. "Sorry, Vlad."