Never had a closed door seemed so menacing.
Jack knocked on its flawless surface before taking a step backwards. His eyes drifted upwards, surveying the front of a building that looked more like it belonged in Harry Potter than a place for somebody to actually live in. Footsteps from within, and Jack tried to keep his face impassive as Vlad swung the door open.
The halfa's face bore a smugness that made the hunter want to slap it off.
"Welcome," Vlad said, standing to one side. "Come in, please."
Jack moved stiffly, taking a steadying breath as he stepped over the threshold of Vlad's Wisconsin mansion. "Sorry about your driveway," he said, "but the only way to get here on time was to fly, and I've never been able to park the Fenton Jet."
Vlad's knuckles were white as they curled into fists at the sight of his once-perfectly paved driveway; the expensive stones had been shattered and their shards scattered. A ditch was carved into the carefully-maintained lawn, marking the trail that the vehicle had taken from impact on the paving stones to where it now lay in a flowerbed twenty metres away, twisted and dented and smoking gently.
His evident anger sent a stab of satisfaction through the hunter, and the deliberate crash was suddenly worth it despite the bruises and ruined vehicle. This emotion was short-lived, swept aside by the fear that had consumed Jack ever since that disastrous visit to the barn. Shoving hands into the pockets of his hazmat so as to hide their trembling, Jack realised the futility of the gesture as Vlad inhaled deeply with a smile. Of course the bastard could sense his emotions!
"Before you kill me, I want to talk to Danny."
"But of course," Vlad responded as he closed the door. "What sort of revenge would it be if I didn't do this properly?"
Vlad's heeled boots clicked against the marble floors as they headed for the library. Everything here gleamed, from the polished shoes on Vlad's feet to the ornate patterns carved into the staircase banisters.
A pretty cage for a pompous madman.
"Maddie didn't come with you?"
Jack ground his teeth at this transparent attempt at conversation, as though they were simply here for dinner and perhaps a game of chess over a glass of wine or two. "I didn't let her," he responded. "We said goodbye, and I left her in a thermos on our kitchen table. I figured that you'd let her out as soon as you're done with Danny and me."
Vlad tossed his head in an affirmative gesture, and a little of the tension in Jack's shoulders bled out at the man's belief in his story.
"Have you hurt him?"
The billionaire glared at Jack as they entered the library. "He was already injured enough without my adding to his wounds," he sneered. "The boy would have fared much better if you had simply allowed him to turn to dust."
"He would have regenerated from that, right?" Jack asked, leaning against the fireplace in an attempt at nonchalance as they reached the end of the room.
"Of course he would," Vlad said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I only use weapons on Daniel that I've already experienced myself, and it's not the first time he's come across that particular knife."
Jack frowned. "Why use them on yourself?"
Vlad sighed, passing a hand over his face, and Jack had to remind himself that he was here for this man to kill him. "I don't want to kill the boy, just claim him as my son."
"Why?" the large man implored. "We were friends, Vlad. Why would you do something so awful to me, or to Danny?"
A flash of light, and the Vlad that Jack knew was ripped away to be replaced by Plasmius. As much as he wanted to recoil, to press back against the fireplace and whip out an ectogun, Jack forced himself to stand firm.
"You have no idea what you've put the two of us through," Vlad hissed, red eyes glowing with hatred. "I warned you about the portal! We should have given up back when we ran out of funding, but no, you were too pig-headed to quit!"
"Well why didn't you quit?!" Jack shouted back, taking a step towards the ghost of his best friend. He would not show fear. He would not be bullied. For the first time in his life, Jack Fenton was ready to face the skeletons his own closet. "I've always been there for you, Vlad! If you had actually pulled out of the experiment, then we wouldn't be here right now!"
Jack's eyes burned with tears as Vlad began to tremble with fury. "Because we were friends!" the creature screamed, his entire body beginning to glow with an unnaturally bright aura. The wood in the fireplace burst into flames, along with several books on their shelves. Windows set high in the walls shattered, raining glass from the vaulted ceiling in glittering cascades. A thousand voices screamed their torment in twisted, unintelligible tongues. "Friends don't abandon each other!"
If he hadn't been afraid for his life for the past eighteen hours, Jack supposed that he would have been seriously concerned at this particular turn of events. Instead, all he could seem to summon was pity. Pity and guilt, as the hunter was suddenly reminded of Vlad's twenty years in the hospital.
Vlad inhaled shakily, his features twisting. "Don't you dare pity me!" he howled, slamming Jack against the wall in one smooth movement and holding him in place. "You not only did this to me, but to your own son! Why do you think I want him for myself? You're not worthy of the boy, not when you've tried to kill him for the past few years!"
This all seemed horribly unfair. Sure, Jack had carried on with his life while Vlad's had been halted, but that really wasn't justification for the billionaire's actions.
"You've tried to kill him as well," Jack choked around the arm that was pressed against his throat.
"That's been the nature of our relationship from the start." Vlad pressed harder against his former friend's neck, smirking as Jack gagged. "The boy was created with the desire to help you hunt ghosts, so he didn't have the opportunity to develop a grudge, and he couldn't possibly understand how important mine is."
Jack's eyes fluttered, his chest spasming as coloured lights exploded in his rapidly blackening vision.
Vlad smirked and dropped the human. Jack collapsed on the rug, wheezing and scrabbling at a bruised throat as shards of glass cut into his legs and backside. While the hunter struggled to regain his breath, Vlad's face slipped back into a mask of smugness. A wave of his hand, and the burning books were extinguished.
"Get up," Vlad sneered as Jack wiped at streaming eyes. The monster grasped the man's arm, hoisting him to his feet. Before the hunter could say anything the floor disappeared beneath them, Vlad intangibly carrying them both down to a subterranean laboratory. He dropped Jack about a metre above the floor, grinning when the unfortunate man was sent sprawling by an off-balance landing.
The place was brightly-lit, every surface gleaming in fluorescent light. A portal was open in one wall, much the Jack's relief; if it had been shut, he would have had to figure out a way to convince the halfa to open it.
Danny was strapped to a wall in ghost form, his good arm and both legs trapped by metal constraints that glowed green. The boy's face had been wiped clean of bruises and burns thanks to rapid healing, head hanging with eyes closed. His other arm hung limply, the stump glistening with ectoplasm. Jack found himself staring – it appeared as though the ectoplasm had managed to form a ghostly radius and ulna that dripped with glowing slime, and had already started on chunks of the carpals and metacarpals. It was both revolting and fascinating, and if not for the immediate threat of a murderous half ghost hovering behind him, the hunter would have immediately begun to photograph this skeletal limb.
A gun on a tripod was pointed directly at the boy's body.
"Danny!" Jack shouted, lurching towards his son.
The young halfa lifted his head, eyes opening at his father's cry. "No," he breathed before beginning to yank at the restraints. "Why the hell did you come?! Vlad's gunna kill you!"
Reaching the boy, Jack pulled him into a hug as best he could. "No, he's not," he whispered just loud enough for Danny to hear.
Vlad drifted towards the wall of computers, keying a command into the system. The gun began to whine, lights flickering to life along its length. The biggest screen lit up with a clock, its numbers flicking from three minutes to two minutes and fifty-nine seconds.
"Are you serious?!" Danny demanded, wrenching against his bonds with new force. Green eyes were wide with terror, and Jack's stomach lurched with guilt – this entire situation was his fault, after all. If everything went wrong, there was no way to ever fix it.
The other halfa shrugged. "I am going to give you ample time, Daniel. Pledge yourself to me now, and I will spare both your father and your core."
Danny stiffened. "No way…" he choked, the bare bones of his healing limb twitching as a tremor ran through the teen's body.
Jack slipped a hand into his pocket, thumbing the call button on his mobile phone.
"You wouldn't really spare me," the hunter said.
Vlad's smile grew nasty, lips splitting to reveal a set of fangs that gleamed as brightly as his eyes. "I would give you week's head start," he responded. "Daniel's core, however, will be safe from me."
Danny sighed, slumping in his restraints as the clock flicked to two-and-a-half minutes.
"Don't do it," Jack implored. He really wasn't sure whom the plea was directed towards, but that didn't matter, right? All that mattered was getting all of them out of here, alive and hopefully unscathed.
Vlad relaxed into a plush office chair, confident in this ultimatum – he even had the audacity to pour himself a glass of ectoplasm!
Jack began to tug at his son's restraints, sending Danny a glare when he opened his mouth. "Don't even think about it," the hunter hissed.
Danny sent the man a small, sad smile. "The truth is, Dad, I can't live without a core. To be stuck forever as just plain old me, without any powers? I'd rather die. And I can't let him kill you, I can't."
Jack shook his head numbly, trying to fight down rising panic.
Two minutes.
Danny's wrist had split from the tugging, sending streams of ectoplasm and blood trickling over the restraint. The teen was breathing heavily, eyes darting wildly from the clock to the gun to Vlad to Jack…
Jack pressed the call button on his phone again, praying that she'd make it in time. He had no hope of defeating Vlad on his own, after all.
One minute and forty seconds.
Behind Vlad, the swirling portal shimmered with that familiar swirl of greens and yellows. Its perfect surface distorted, sparking as a ghost clad in red entered the lab.
Jack couldn't stop a smile at the sight of his wife, relief sweeping through him. They were going to make it out of here!
Vlad stiffened at his ghost sense, spinning the chair to face the portal. "Maddie? Jack said you were…" the halfa trailed off with a sigh, shooting a smirk back at Jack. "Did you really think that the two of you could beat me?" the billionaire drawled, kicking away the chair and drifting towards the newcomer. "All you've done is save me a trip to Amity Park."
Jack inched towards a control panel set into the wall a few metres away.
Maddie stiffened as Vlad teleported into her personal space. The very sight sent fury coursing through Jack's limbs, but he forced himself to focus on the control panel. One mistake, and this whole rescue could blow up in their faces. Vlad's hand moved to caress the woman's face, the other curving around her waist to pull her flush against him. Maddie's brow creased, and she twisted in his grasp. An elbow slammed into Vlad's nose as a knee met his groin, and the man cried out as Maddie grasped his wrist and twisted him into a lock that drove him to his knees.
Jack reached the control panel and slammed his hand onto the release button.
Danny dropped to the floor, his legs buckling upon impact. Jack pulled the halfa to his feet, pointing to the ghost portal. "The Speeder's just inside the Ghost Zone," he said. "No matter what happens, I want you to get out of here."
The teen shook his head. "No," he insisted, "we all get out of this together."
Vlad had phased through Maddie's grasp, shooting an ectoblast point blank into her unprotected gut. The huntress crumbled, clutching at the spot with a cry.
"Go!" Jack begged, pushing Danny towards the portal. The boy stumbled, colliding with the gun's tripod and going down again, his ectoplasmic skeleton of an arm tangled in the tripod's legs. The gun skidded across the steel floor, coming to rest across the room.
Vlad moved in a flash of light, hands curling around the human's throat and slamming him back against the wall. Jack spluttered, grasping at those vicious fingers as they began to glow red. He looked his oldest friend in those murderous red eyes, and knew without a shadow of a doubt that this time, there was no escape.
Those fingers began to crackle with energy, and Vlad smirked. "Goodbye, Jack."
Three seconds.
Two.
One.
The gun fired, its brilliant white beam illuminating the wall just to their left with a smell like burning hair. With herculean effort, Jack buried his feet in his attacker's stomach. The unexpected blow sent the halfa off balance, just enough to widen his stance…
Vlad's foot slid into the beam's path.
Red eyes grew impossibly wide, the halfa letting out a horrific scream as white lightning buzzed across his body. The bolts of power passed into Jack harmlessly, and Vlad dropped to his hands and knees. Jack collapsed on top of him, trapping the billionaire in that horrible stream of light.
Vlad howled like an animal, writhing as the colour began to seep from his hair and skin, ghost form dissipating like mist beneath the sun. "Help!"
Danny was on his feet in a flash, shooting a continuous stream of energy at the gun. It glowed red and then white before exploding, shrapnel clattering harmlessly against the ghost boy's ectoshield.
Squashed beneath Jack, a certain billionaire whimpered. Smoke coiled lazily from the man's singed business suit and silver hair, and Vlad tremored as the final charges played along his skin before sinking beneath it.
Jack finally managed to roll onto the floor, still struggling to catch his breath after the latest attack to his person. Vlad simply lay where he had fallen, fists slowly opening and closing as his breathing hitched in a sob. A spark appeared between his fingers before winking out, and the man moaned. "No," he breathed.
The smell of burning ectoplasm was heavy in the air, and Jack remembered with a sickening jolt what the gun did.
Danny was there in an instant, crouching at the trembling man's side. "Vlad? Come on, Vlad, you have to get up!"
"Leave."
The billionaire's voice was hollow, broken. Jack should have been satisfied, but the only thing he could register was mounting horror. This had not been part of the plan…
Danny shook his head. "No way."
"I thought that you wanted to go. Take your chance, boy."
The halfa sniffed, blinking rapidly as though he was trying to hold back tears. "Vlad-"
"Go home with your father!" the man roared, curling tighter into himself so as to hide his face. "You deserve each other."
Danny tilted his head heavenward as tears spilled down his cheeks, and Jack frowned. They had won. The would-be murderer was lying helpless on the floor. Shouldn't the boy be happy, or at least ready to get the hell out of there before Vlad regained his composure?
"No, Vlad. You and me, we're the ones who deserve each other," Danny said through lips salty with tears. "We're the first and last to be made by the raw power of the Ghost Zone, remember? I'll always be here for you, maybe not how you want it, but how you need it."
Those words were like a knife of betrayal between Jack's ribs. Of course, Maddie and Danny had both hinted at a truce that Phantom and Plasmius had enjoyed for a significant amount of time, but that was before Jack knew who Vlad was. It had been so easy at the barn to forget all about the connection that those two must have developed, and to view the vengeful halfa as nothing more than a vicious criminal.
The man huddled on the floor was definitely not the same man from the barn, and Jack wondered if he and Vlad were really so different. After all, they were both men who had embraced obsessions that did nothing but harm the ones they cared for.
Maddie had managed to stand, but kept her hands pressed against the spot where Vlad had shot her. Through her fingers Jack could glimpse burned cloth and mutilated flesh slick with blood and ectoplasm. For a moment, superimposed over her form, was Phantom – a memory from a hunt that Jack had led many years ago. The ghost kid was hugging his stomach, face glistening with perspiration and panic as he tried to form a shield for protection against the orange-clad hunter's relentless attacks. Another breath, and the vision was gone.
Jack Fenton and Vladimir Masters were not different at all. In fact, they were mirror images of each other, linked by obsession and a woman. Sitting on Vlad's floor, Jack finally realised that each, in their own way, had managed to ruin everything.
Danny was reaching for the man in front of him, whispering Vlad's name.
Jack blinked, finally realising exactly what was going on. This was the reason they were all still here – from the disaster at the bank, to the nightmare at the barn, and now crouched in a gleaming subterranean basement, Danny had always managed to save them. All the boy ever did was give of himself, cutting away little pieces and grafting these fragments into others in order to make them whole again.
Every single time, he gave all that he could, never asking for anything in return. Gifting them with his heart, his selfless, precious heart.
Finally, Jack understood.
Danny's hand closed over Vlad's shoulder, and the older man uncurled, whipping an ectogun from within his jacket. "I said leave!"
The teen drew back, his good hand raised in a placating gesture. Perhaps Jack finally understood, but it was obvious that Vlad still had no clue how much they all relied on this extraordinary ghost child. One glance at the man's wild expression was all the persuasion that any Fenton needed to obey their host's wishes.
"Alright," Danny said in a voice that was far gentler than anybody expected. He stood, grasping Jack's shoulder to steady himself on unsure feet. "I'll be back tomorrow," he promised.
Vlad held the gun steady, blinking through his own tears to glare at the retreating family. "Get. Out."
Jack nodded, leading his wife and son in the direction of the portal. Its swirling surface of yellows and greens was suddenly far more welcoming than the cold, blood-streaked laboratory, and Jack almost sighed in relief as they passed into the Ghost Zone.
They had barely made it to the Speeder before the portal exploded in a burst of flaming energy. As the heat washed over them in an exhilarating burst, Jack knew that Danny wouldn't be visiting tomorrow, or ever again.
Maddie ushered her husband and son into the vehicle and Jack moaned as he settled into the drivers' seat, a plethora of aches and pains making themselves known all at once.
It was finished. Finally, blessedly, they were safe. Now all Jack wanted to do was curl up in his nice, warm bed and sleep for the rest of the week. No more secrets. No more lies. No more hunting teenage halfas and tearing their family apart.
It was time for Maddie and Jack Fenton to fix their mistakes.
"Let's go home," he said, putting the Speeder into drive.