"Well," Five vampire ghosts said, calmly floating in a circle in the middle of the room. "There is a first time for everything, I suppose."
Their voices reverberated in the air as they spoke. Phantom winced at the sound of it. Worse than five pieces of chalk scrapped on a blackboard all at once.
He'd landed on the fridge. Actually he'd made a Phantom-sized dent in the door. When he lifted himself out of it he saw the shape he left behind. A steel plated snow angel.
The explosion had been so sudden he'd been too slow to react. Normally he'd have preferred to just fly through the fridge and then circle back. Not that it hurt to crumple the door of a steel fridge like tin foil with your body. When you're a ghost nothing hurts.
Unless you forget that nothing hurts, Phantom thought with another wince. He rolled his shoulders forward and flapped his arms and legs. Like when your foot falls asleep and you just need to get the blood flowing again. Except for all his limbs.
And ectoplasm instead of blood.
The ghost clones were ignoring him at the moment. They regarded each other with cheshire grins and started holding hands.
What the heck.
Anyway, the impact didn't hurt Phantom. At all. Actually, what really hurt was seeing Fenton on the ground with that creep. They looked like they were taking a nap together, which, gross. Vlad Masters gave Phantom pedo vibes up and down. Even if the man were dead he didn't want his carcass touching his-
Touching Fenton.
"You're a foolhardy boy, you know," The clones said. They'd begun slowly merging together, but they still had five mouths. "What did you think you'd accomplish with that little stunt?"
Phantom might have answered, but he was too busy staring at the way the clones melted into each other. They'd started at their arms, linking them together into these weird connected ropes. Their hands disappeared and their arms shortened between them, bringing their torsos together as the circle shrunk. Then the arms were gone and they were all torsos, half connected like some freaky twins. All shoulders and five heads.
"It's rude to stare," the ghost heads said.
"Sorry," Phantom said. "Uh, is this normal for you?"
They glared at Phantom. "No as a matter of fact!" The heads had finally reached each other and his voice wobbled as the heads swallowed each other up. "Y-you scatt-t-t-t-ered my-y-y ecto-o-o-oplasm-m!"
"Is that what I did?" Phantom said. "So sorry about that. Won't happen again." He mimed taking notes. "Yanking at core... bad. Scatters… Ectoplasm…" He pretended to click a pen. "There. Won't happen again."
"Insolent brat," the ghost said. He was in one piece now. "I should drag you into the ghost zone. Throw you in a frozen wasteland."
Phantom gasped. "And then just leave me for dead? Er, for undead? Cruel."
The ghost actually pouted. "Hardy har har, you're very funny," he sighed. "Are all teenagers like this? Is there no off button?"
"Afraid not."
Below them, Fenton groaned. Phantom glanced down for just a split second but that was all the time the creepy vampire needed to pounce. He sprang forward and grabbed Phantom by the back of his hazmat suit, lifting him like a baby kitten, and dragged him intangibly through a wall.
Through several walls. Phantom couldn't tell if they were flying up or down. He didn't know how fast they were going, but the world was a blur of colors around them.
He knew it was faster than he'd ever flown before.
Kicking, punching, screaming, Phantom struggled. At first he had fired ecto blasts in all directions, but then he heard a woman scream and stopped. There was a crowd of people in this mansion, he remembered. Innocent humans. Had he hurt someone?
Fenton would never forgive him.
oOo
"Calm down," Mr. Vampire hissed. "I'm not going to hurt you."
"No? So you're just going to imprison me in this ominously glowing cube for the rest of eternity?" Phantom said. "Just torture me, this is boring."
The cube was black and green. It looked like it had been made out of a hundred computer circuit boards pieced together like legos. Phantom's entire body was locked inside, with just his head sticking out at the top.
"For the rest of eternity," the ghost echoed. "So dramatic."
"Well excuse me mister devil horns haircut, cloak and dagger high collar cape, vampire wannabe… uh… poser," Phantom spat with as much attitude as he could muster. "You lock me up in an evil laboratory and, oh I know, next you'll pop out some more clones and all take turns maniacally laughing. But oh no I'm the dramatic one!"
The ghost rolled his eyes. "Are you done?"
Phantom opened his mouth. Paused, his brows furrowing. Opened his mouth again, but then sighed. "Yeah, I'm all out."
"Good," the ghost said. "Now, I'm tired of this 'mister vampire' nonsense. From now on you will address me as-" he paused to straighten his spine, sweeping his cape out behind him. It drifted on a celestial breeze. "Vlad Plasmius."
Neither of them spoke for a beat. Phantom tried to hold his non-existent breath, puffing his cheeks out like a chipmunk. Then he burst into giggles.
That was it. Giggles. Childish little ones. The type that come with an excessive bout of tickling, the kind Fenton allowed to leak out- just a bit- while he was chatting up Masters.
As if remembering that encounter, Plasmius smiled. It was not the reaction Phantom had been expecting. His giggling choked off abruptly. He cleared his throat.
Plasmius nodded. "Alright," he said. "Let's have it."
"What?"
"Your name. I know you have one." The older ghost drifted closer to Phantom's head and crossed his legs. Floating indian style. He crossed his arms too and looked like one of those hippy buddhists trying to levitate.
Phantom hesitated.
"Or should I just call you Daniel?"
"No!" Again, Phantom cleared his throat. "No, I'm not. There isn't-"
"A connection between you two?" Plasmius chuckled. "I'm not blind, son."
"Don't call me that either," Phantom said. "Just. It's Phantom."
"Just Phantom?" the ghost said. He grinned, his canines glinting in the harsh red lights lining the ceiling.
Odd choice for a laboratory, now that Phantom thought about it. It was bright enough that he could see all the equipment clearly, which all looked about as sinister as anything that could be found at Fenton Works, but the red lighting really emphasized the evil laboratory vibe.
It was overkill, really.
Plasmius straightened up again and circled the cube. As if to thoroughly examine him. But all he could examine was Phantom's head, so what was the point?
"Born on the day of young Daniel Fenton's accident?"
Phantom sputtered. "I'm a ghost. I wasn't born-"
"You're not a normal ghost," Plasmius said. "Neither am I. Most ghosts are created when their bodies die. But we," He reached out to ruffle Phantom's hair. "We retained our bodies."
"What?" Phantom said. He thought about trying to bite Plasmius, but his hand was out of reach. "That's not how it works. It's not possible."
"Yet here we are," Plasmius said. "And there they lay, on the kitchen floor five stories above us. Unconscious, but breathing. The blood continues to coarse through our veins, even without us."
"Fenton isn't just a body," Phantom said. "He's-"
"Autonomy," Plasmius said. "Is a remarkable thing." He held an arm out and one of his clones slid out from his body. It happened more smoothly than their merging. If Phantom had blinked he would have missed it.
"The ability to act independently," The clone continued. "To see from your own perspective without interference."
The original Plasmius clapped. "Did I tell you to say that?" He addressed the clone.
"No sir," the clone said. "I took it upon myself to follow your train of thought."
"Well done," he said. "What might I have said next?"
"You have a theory about these two," the clone said. "Their separation is more…"
"Severe," Plasmius supplied. "Yes, it is more severe than ours."
"The tether of his soul has been cut out of the body," the clone said. "Nearly..."
The clone hesitated. He stared at Phantom then directed his gaze at the ceiling. Could they tell where Fenton was from here? Was that possible for a powerful ghost?
"Almost a clean cut," Plasmius said. "And when you've been separated from your clone for long enough…"
"Okay, cut it out," Phantom said. "You made your point. I think? Wait, what is your point?"
The two ghosts looked at each other and Phantom blinked. Which one was the clone again? He couldn't tell. God, this was tiresome.
"You're a clone," They said, together.
"What?!" Phantom shook his head. He felt the cube shift, just a bit, and his eyes lit up. This thing was light. He leaned his head back, as if to look at the ceiling. He made a show of groaning. "Nooooo," he said. "No, I'm not."
He brought his head forward, sharply. The cube tipped forward. It landed on its side and Phantom was left to stare at the floor. He groaned for real this time.
"Foolish child," Plasmius said. He picked the cube up and set it back down so Phantom's head was sticking out of the top again. "There is no use denying it."
"If I'm a clone then what are you?" Phantom said.
Plasmius sighed. Well, one of them did. Then he lifted his arm with the same gesture he'd made to clone himself. His clone frowned at it, like a kid unwilling to accept that it was bedtime. But Plasmius waved his hand impatiently and the clone returned to him. He phased into his body and was gone.
He was… Dead? Phantom shuddered.
"When I leave my body it falls unconscious," Plasmius said. "It breaths, but it cannot act on its own. If I'm gone for too long it would need to be hospitalized. In theory it could survive on IV fluids and nutrients. Much like a coma patient. Just waiting to wake up."
"So you aren't possessing Vlad Masters," Phantom said. "You are Masters."
Plasmius grinned. "Give the boy a prize." He grabbed something from his cape, or pocket or something. Phantom couldn't really tell exactly where it came from. Could ghosts have pockets if they wanted to? He wondered if he could will pockets into materializing on his hazmat suit. Before he could dwell on the thought Plasmius shoved the device under his nose.
It was a little green remote with one button. Plasmius pressed it.
The cube encasing him retracted, shrinking itself down to the size of a paperweight, sitting innocently by Phantom's foot.
He kicked it away. "Um," He put his fists up in what he hoped was a nice and threatening defensive fighting stance. "On guard?"
"It's en garde," Plasmius said. "But that's for fencing." He grabbed Phantom's fists, one in each hand, and paused. They both stood there like that, with their feet actually planted on the ground, Phantom's fists held tenderly in Plasmius's hands, for what felt like ages.
Actually it was probably two seconds. "Ew, could you not?"
Plasmius let him go. He chuckled. "Teenagers," he said. "I've never been in the same room with any. For any length of time."
"Weren't you locked in a building with at least a hundred of them for approximately four years?" Phantom grinned in spite of himself. "It's this weird mandatory torture, a right of passage in this country apparently."
"Ah yes," Plasmius tapped his chin, appearing to think about it. "I must have blocked that out."
Phantom almost laughed, but he caught himself, slamming a hand over his mouth to stifle the sound. "Ah!" he said. "What are you trying to do man? What's your game?"
"There is no game," Plasmius said. "You're free to shoot me in the face. Or flee the mansion. You may stick around and shadow your human counterpart, as you have been-"
"He's not my-"
"I'll allow you to keep an eye on him invisibly without alerting your ghost hunting parents," his voice seemed to change. Now he sounded like Masters. It hit Phantom for the first time that this was really him. He was just... Vlad. This was Vlad Masters. But maybe his voice didn't change.
It had always been the same voice, hadn't it?
"Or," Vlad paused. Phantom blinked.
"Or?" he said.
"Or when the Fentons leave you could stay here," Vlad said. "With me."