As Vlad Masters sped away from the hospital in his long, black mayoral limo, his mind was racing rapidly with ideas of success in his conquest of Daniel, ideas which materialized quickly and with ease, and that, in all truthfulness, seemed to have been driven by a newly-cultivated anger inside him. For, the man's brain was not solely wrapping itself around his plan of action, but also raging with the idea that he had reached out to Daniel only to be shot down as cruelly as he had. It was not so much the knowledge that the boy was so disgusted with him he did not desire to be in his presence—that vibe always seemed to radiate from Daniel, and it did not surprise him in the least—but rather the knowledge that the boy would dare refuse him after he'd shown kindness in his time of need. It was as if the boy did not understand that he did not have to coax him in this way; if the boy knew anything, Vlad thought, he would have realized that if he'd really wanted to, he could have converted him a very long time ago—or destroyed him, for that matter. If Vlad Masters had truly needed the half-ghost child in his life, already the boy and he would reside in his castle in Wisconsin, watching a riveting Packers game. But he didn't; rather, he thought that the boy's presence in his life would be calming, and very desirable, and he would have liked it. He also would have liked their new life together to begin positively—and it was, as he'd come to learn through experience, much less complex to cajole rather than force—and perhaps this fueled him to treat the boy who lay in the hospital bed as if he were a child of his own. But because he didn't need the Ghost Boy, he did not need to waste his efforts winning him over, either.
Later, the man would decide he had lied to himself that night as he sat in the back of the limo, looking out at the streets of Amity Park with hardened eyes, because he would soon discover that he did, in fact, need the Ghost Boy. And stranger still, he would speculate, his desire to please the child almost surpassed this need, for his goal of enticing the boy would always seem so far gone, no matter the circumstance. Perhaps his anger, which seemed at its peak on this night, had caused him to think in such a manner—that was, Danny's poor behavior prior to his accident had not helped, but this refusal of Vlad's new apparently peace-keeping mindset seemed the straw that broke the camel's back. And while the man perhaps should have expected this, for he had turned down the boy when he'd offered himself up peacefully—and it was no mystery why Danny had done what he'd done tonight—it still infuriated him beyond comprehension, because his soured outlook on life seemed to suggest that the boy was simply refusing so blatantly to let him in than, say, having trouble coping with those demons spawned by the man's horrendous past actions—specifically the ordeal with his sister Jazz and the Ectosuit, which struck something especially sensitive in him—jealousy, maybe?
He was angered at Daniel this night, but his aggression had become very displaced, and soon enough he was hollering to the driver of his limo to head for the home on the street with the neon Fenton Works sign and the spaceship-like structure atop it. As it always did—a shield from guilt, perhaps?—Vlad Masters began to list his reasons for doing so, and while he might have labeled this trip as being reserved for catching up with his two college pals, his intent, similarly as always, wavered so drastically that his brain had to work twice as hard to even vaguely convince himself of its sincerity. Behind the cover of reminiscing in the memories of his college days, Vlad could imagine himself cornering Jack, and transforming into Plasmius as he hissed, "You aren't to kill what is mine, you fool. You aren't to ever lay a hand on him again." The boy's sister, for whom he felt hatred of such high degree it paled in comparison to the anger he felt for Daniel now—anger that was really a father's irritation with his willful son—Vlad Masters fantasized similarly, because he did not take kindly to being used as he had when she'd come crying to him in search of assistance. The mother, Jack's wife, and his long-lost lover, Vlad disregarded, perhaps in a feeble attempt to salvage the image he'd formed of the woman—a beautiful mother and wife who couldn't hurt a fly…and if she did, who would be remorseful enough to at least stay by that fly's side in its time of need. In Vlad's mind she was a woman who could do no wrong, and he did not want to tarnish this idea he'd formulated on Daniel's behalf—yet. That night, speeding toward Fenton Works, it was already becoming apparent that he would, in the end, be forced with the decision he'd always known he would need to make at one point or another; in the end, he would need to chose between Danny Phantom, his not-so-perfect half-ghost son, and Maddie, the girl who had betrayed him in college and left him to rot in the hospital but for whose body he would lay up in bed into the late hours of the night, masturbating furiously as he undressed the picture he'd hung of her on the adjacent wall with his hungry eyes. And though his anger with the boy had hindered his confidence in this, he felt as though he could not love Maddie Fenton, even if Jack was to suddenly die and she was left to spend the rest of her days as a widow, for something about the woman came across as very tainted now—that was, he felt that he could never make love to her with the knowledge that Jack, the man whose voice alone made fury flare up inside him, had put himself inside her and created these two children of theirs. Daniel, unlike his mother, seemed very clean—still unaffected by the oaf he was forced to call his father, and though he inherited a good deal of Jack Fenton's raggedy features, his brain seemed to derive solely from his mother. It would seem the boy could escape relatively unscathed now—perhaps slightly scarred from the years of humiliation he endured because of his father's antics—if he were to come to his senses. Because, having his mother's brain meant that he was very smart…but also meant that he would make incredibly unwise decisions, decisions which would always be looked on by outsiders with undiluted confusion, that why would he do that? What does he see in so and so?
Yes, Daniel seemed to arouse something bright and so incredibly alive inside him; it excited him, and provided him with untold amounts of comfort, the realization that someone who was not himself shared his pain. It made him strangely giddy to think that he could go conquering realms in the Ghost Zone with another halfa like he, that he could pass the knowledge he kept constantly bundled tightly inside him onto someone else, someone young and relatively inexperienced in the matter, and instill a new happiness in him with the relief of being in control. Maddie, however, evoked something else in him—while at the thought of Daniel his heart skipped to a butterfly's wing-beat, the image of his mother made it thud as if it had been covered with cloth and someone had taken a large mallet and continuously struck it. Oddly, the sensation made him feel incredibly heavy, claustrophobic, but it also evoked feelings of being so far gone from reality, like a child locked away in his room while his best friends play football outside his window, or a man buried alive in an oblong box who can hear the proceedings of his funeral above him but cannot call out to those souls who have gathered there for him—those of the living world.
It's like she's standing right in front of me and I'm running after her with that slowness of a dream, but I can never catch her. Vlad mused when his heart began to beat with this diluted thud, and he was clutching his chest as he did. If I reach out to touch her, she just disappears.
So while he might harbor emotions of anger toward the boy now, he could not deny the excitement that caused his heart to flutter lightly with the idea that soon he would be his to rule alongside of and to watch the football game on Sunday with like fathers and sons should. For soon, he would have dealt with his parents…both of them, and while Vlad's mind had a way of so artfully disguising the truth, one thing remained clear—once he was done with them, they would never see Danny Fenton again. He would make sure of it.
Chuckling bitterly, the man exited the limo and walked swiftly up the cracked concrete steps of Fenton Works. One hand behind his back, his face twisted in a snarl, he reached out and rang the bell.