Vlad Masters, space-roaming nomad extraordinaire, woke up. And then he proceeded to double take so hard that he felt his entire neck pop.
He closed his eyes again. Rubbed them a few times. Maybe he was just hallucinating. Constant, oppressive solitude combined with the cold vacuum of space would do that to a halfa.
He opened his eyes again.
The fact that he was awake wasn't odd. No, it was the face that he was on a planet. With an atmosphere, and trees, and sunlight, and was that a mansion he saw?
And a familiar mansion at that. In fact, he had once owned a mansion like that…
"Impossible."
Vlad noticed, with a jolt, that his voice lacked the echo of Plasmius. He noticed that he was in his human form for the first time in whoever knew how long.
He rubbed a hand over his face in disbelief. All evidence was pointing to the fact that he was on Earth. He could recognize these trees - that right there was a black cherry tree , and the bird on its boughs was a red-winged black bird.
An alien planet wouldn't have species native to earth.
The only other option was that this was a hallucination, but if that was the case he would be suffocating right now due to his human form.
And that mansion…if it was truly his…
Vlad knew that time travel wasn't impossible. He knew of Clockwork - any ghost worth their ectoplasm did - but he never in a million years thought he would ever traverse time like this.
But if he was truly in the past…he forced himself to stop that train of thought. He could dwell on past regrets once he had more information.
Of course, the only way to tell for real would be to locate his younger self.
He stood up slowly, and then stumbled a bit as his humanity decided to assert itself by reminding him that he needed plebeian things like food and water to survive and that it had been ten years since he had either of those things, thank you very much.
He made the executive decision to transform into Plasmius.
Right. First, he would investigate his(?) mansion. Second, he would try to find his younger self. Third, he would….well, he'd improvise from there.
It only took Vlad half a minute to get to the mansion. The closer he drew to it, the more his suspicions solidified into reality.
It was exactly as he remembered it: A monument to his wealth, his ego, and his crippling loneliness. All done up in Packer greens and golds.
God, he had really been pathetic, hadn't he?
At the very least, Vlad would be able to get some catharsis from beating the tar out of his foolish younger self. He knew himself quite well, after all. There wasn't much to do aside from think in space.
His younger self wouldn't listen to anything but force.
Vlad slowed, for a moment, when he passed by one of the windows. His reflection was - well.
It wasn't a good thing he didn't care nearly as much for appearances as he used to. His cape was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn't surprising. He had destroyed it in a fit of isolation-induced mania years ago.
His overshirt was gone too, as was his belt. All that was left was the black undershirt and his white pants. His hair was longer than he had ever allowed it to be in the past, as was his beard and mustache.
To be perfectly honest, he looked like one of the 'free spirits' he went to school with in the 80s. All in all, he barely resembled the man he used to be. Good.
Vlad came to a stop in front of the mansion doors. He felt his body heat in a way it had only done occasionally in space - yes, there were ghosts in space, and no they hadn't been pleasant conversationalists - and his exhale came out in the form of pink vapour.
He waited patiently on the grandiose porch. His younger self would come to investigate, and there was no need to barge in and make things more ridiculous than they had to be.
Patience was something he had always had in spades.
He felt his core pulse and lurch forwards as if it were trying to escape his body. Vlad forced himself to keep still.
The door opened, revealing…himself.
A younger, neater, version of himself. But it was still him.
He was in the past. He was in the past.
That meant that…that he could change things. He could be a better man, he could protect Daniel instead of trying to possess him, he could build himself a family if he played his cards right.
And even if he wasn't able to get the family he had always desired, he could at least keep himself from being universally reviled by the people of Earth.
And as for Maddie and Jack…he could think about that later. That was a matter of Obsession and Vengeance. He would deal with it after this.
He younger self made to say something, but then stopped. Shock passed over his face as he got a taste of Vlad's ecto-signature and realised who was standing in front of him.
Vlad smiled in genuine relief.
And then he decked his younger self in the face. With all of his ghostly strength.
He felt the satisfying crunch of flesh impacting flesh, but the sensation was fleeting in the face of the agony that erupted from his core at the impact.
He stumbled forwards, into his younger self. Literally, into him.
He felt ecto-energy begin to leave his body at an alarming rate. It was being absorbed , he realized, but he was taking in energy as well. Familiar, pink-tinged ectoplasmic energy.
Vlad felt his younger self attempt to separate himself from whatever it was that was happening, but he forced his younger self to stay in place even as the waves of energy went higher and higher.
He realized what was happening when he felt his core crack open and begin to slowly, painfully, combine with another one.
They were merging. Becoming one.
Vlad would not let his younger self overtake him.
So he pushed all of his energy out of his core, into his younger self's and surrendered himself to fusion.
And then everything went black.
For the second time in an hour Vlad woke up. This time, with a raging headache.
He was in the doorway of his house. The sky was stained with oranges and pinks.
He didn't get up just yet. No he looked at the sunset - beautiful, it had been so long, he should have appreciated it more when he was younger - and took stock of himself.
His memories were the same, obviously, but some things were fresher now. He felt a flash of anger and possessiveness at the thought of Daniel because if the world was truly just that boy would be his son , but after a moment it was overtaken by guilt and regret.
But the true test was thinking of Jack, the focus of his ghostly Vengeance, and Maddie, his (former) Obsession.
Thought of Jack still brought rage. It always did. Jack was the reason why he was like this. Jack Fenton's negligence, his idiocy , had sentenced him to five years of a slow, painful death. Jack hadn't visited him in the hospital, or called him, or even apologized for what he had done - Vlad took a deep breath.
So. That was still there. But that was to be expected. He was half ghost, after all. Ten years of regret was nothing in the face of ghostly Vengeance.
And then there was Maddie. The thought of her was…different. She was beautiful, yes, and the thought of her did make him smile. He wanted to be around her, he wanted to work with her, to have her in his life, but…that was it.
He wanted those things. But he didn't need them. Not anymore.
The thought of her didn't make his core pulse in his chest. It didn't make ectoplasm race through his veins at the thought of his Obsession like it used to.
She wasn't the thing that tied him to this existence. No, that was…something else. Something more nebulous, this time around.
Ghosts weren't supposed to be able to change Obsessions as relatively easily as he had. At the very least, it would take more than regret and a desire for change to make it happen. But, Vlad wasn't just a ghost. He was human. And with his humanity came a greater flexibility - unlike his dead compatriots, his Obsession wasn't set in stone.
Which was good. He did still have feelings for Maddie, but he could not allow himself to go down the road of Obsessing for her once more. That would only lead him back to the abyss of space.
Vlad got up. There was no point in laying around any longer.
He absentmindedly closed the door behind himself, and then he stopped and sighed when he saw the interior of the mansion.
There was so much green and gold. So much Packers memorabilia. He enjoyed football as much as or even more than the next person, but dear lord, he knew could have sworn that he had better taste than this.
He shook his head, and went deeper into his mansion. Renovations. That would certainly be on his list of things to do.
Vlad pulled out the phone his younger self had been carrying - he was wearing his younger self's clothes now, but his body hadn't changed at all, how interesting – to check the date.
And then he cursed. Loudly.
February 1, 2006. He was in the middle of making clones of Daniel.
Which meant that he had already made contact with the Fentons, and thoroughly disgraced himself. Daniel hated him, for good reason, as did Jasmine. Jack and Maddie likely didn't think well of him as well.
Vlad wasn't an idiot - he knew that Maddie was aware of his feelings for her. He was also very aware of the fact that she did not reciprocate them. And Jack wasn't nearly as idiotic as he acted, loathe though he was to admit it.
No, it was best to assume that no one in the Fenton family was a fan of him. Which made this all that much more difficult, but not impossible.
He would start small, he decided. He would stop needlessly antagonizing Daniel for one, and he would at least… try to not be as overtly antagonistic towards Jack.
And Maddie…well. He would treat her as an old friend. Nothing more, nothing less. It was the least he could do for her.
But that was an issue for later.
Right now, he needed to get a handle on the clone situation.