Danny beat his fists into the brick wall keeping him inside the storage room, "Hazel! Hazel! Get back here!" he yelled. He pressed his body against the wall of the building and tried phasing through. "Dammit- Hazel!" he roared. He closed his eyes and fell to his knees, resting his forehead on the wall. "You idiot…" he breathed. He glared at the wall in front of him. He pulled back his fist to ready a punch, but stopped as his phone began buzzing in his pocket. He dug out the phone and checked the caller ID, seeing that it was Sam. "Sam!" he answered. "It's-"
"Danny! Thank god! Where are you?" Sam interrupted him, "We see Vlad, but you're not with him?"
"Is Hazel out there?" Danny asked. "He just left to go after Vlad! He's gonna get himself killed!"
"We don't see him anywhere. In fact, Vlad seems to be looking around for something. Where are you?"
Danny looked around, "Some storage room, or something. I can't go intangible, Vlad shorted out my powers."
"Great." Sam said sarcastically, "Well, get out of there. And figure out where you are outside. We'll meet with you. We called your parents."
"Okay." Danny confirmed, almost tempted to argue, but decided it was for the better that they got involved. "I'll call you when I figure things out." He said and hung up, trying against the wall again, but having no luck. He rolled his eyes and tried the door. As the door opened, he was met with several pairs of eyes that looked at him strangely. He glanced around and realized he was in a video game store.
"Kid, what were you doing back there?" one of the clerks asked.
Danny turned red, "It's a long story…" he sheepishly stepped out of the storage room and closed the door behind him. "Ignore me…" he awkwardly walked out of the store, "Nothing to see…"
When he finally got outside, he dialed Sam and checked the skies, "Okay, Sam, I was in The Game Bunker." He informed her.
"We just passed that. We'll meet you outside."
"Alright-" Danny jumped as a van swerved in front of him, narrowly missing him. "Mom and Dad are here." He said and hung up.
Jazz jumped out of the back of the van and hugged Danny, "Are you okay?" she grabbed each side of his face and turned him side to side. "Where is he?" she asked.
Maddie rushed to Danny and hugged him, "Are you hurt?" she asked.
"No." Danny shook them off, "Guys, Vlad is the Wisconsin Ghost." He said.
"What?!" Maddie shrieked.
Jazz kept her mouth shut, knowing this beforehand.
"Nonsense, Danny." Jack said, "Vlad can't possibly be-" A beam of pink plasma hit the van and caused for it to blow the engine. Jack flinched and covered the family. "What the-"
Vlad emerged from the flames, eyes locked on Danny, "So this is where he hid you?" he growled.
Danny fought his father's grip and ran down the street.
Jazz reached over and grabbed Maddie's weapon, "Leave him alone, Masters!" she growled.
The older couple looked at their children in shock, then up at Vlad, who laughed mockingly, "Or what, Jasmine? You'll shoot your father's idol?" he asked.
"Don't tempt me." She growled.
Vlad chuckled, "You're mildly amusing, child." He teleported and punched the weapon out of her hands. He then grabbed her by her collar and held her up.
Maddie lunged forward to attack, but was knocked back by a duplicate of their attacker.
Danny rushed in as his ghost half and hit the duplicate with an ice beam, tearing the real Vlad away from his sister. "This has gone far enough." He punched him, "This isn't about them, so leave them out of this!" he snarled.
Vlad nursed his jaw, "Very well, Fenton…" he growled, "Let's finish this." He vanished in the pink swirl.
Danny flew off and chased after where he saw him reappear.
"Jazz?" Jack knelt to help his daughter stand, "What were they talking about?" he asked.
Maddie grabbed her shoulders, "Where's your brother? Why did that ghost- why did Vlad call the ghost boy 'Fenton'?" she asked in a panic.
A grey Impala pulled up next to the family. Sam, Tucker, and Bleu all jumped out of the vehicle and looked around, "Where's Danny?" Sam and Tucker asked.
"Where is Hazel?" Bleu asked, her eyes watering.
Jazz trembled and shook her head, "I don't know where Hazel is. Danny was by himself when we found him." She answered Bleu. Then she sighed, "Danny just took off after Vlad."
Her parents gasped in surprise. "You mean that ghost-"
"Is Danny, yes." Jazz squeezed her eyes shut in frustration. "When he was fourteen, three years ago- he went into your guys' ghost portal and accidently activated it." She said, "Well, when it turned on, it shocked him with ghost DNA and turned him into the Ghost Boy you two were obsessed with hunting." She explained. She looked at Bleu, "I thought you were keeping track with Hazel."
"We found hazel after school bleeding out." Sam spoke before Bleu.
"He said he was attacked by Vlad and was overshadowed to get closer to Danny." Bleu said. "He's in serious trouble if we don't find him quick."
Jazz shook her head and looked up at the family's burning van, "Dad, do you think there's ghost-tracking equipment in there?" she asked. "Anything that's intact?"
Jack took a moment to process everything that had just happened. He blinked and turned to the van. "Yeah… it's just the front of the van. I'll get it, nobody get close." He went to the van and searched for everything that wouldn't hurt a ghost and set it outside of the van. "It wouldn't hurt to test out a few of these weapons anyway.
"Jack!" Maddie snapped, "We are not hurting our son!"
"I never said it had to be on Danny…" he checked one of the basters. He turned and handed it to Maddie. "Here you go, Babe…" he picked up a few detector panels. They had silver edging and transparent green screens. He handed them each to Sam, Tucker, Jazz and Bleu, "These are new." He said, "They visually lock onto a ghost's ectoplasmic signature and shows you how far they are and what they are doing. It even shows through walls. So you can see their silhouettes even through two, five, ten, even fifty buildings. Their ranges go as far as maybe about two or three miles." He explained, "They are glass, so don't drop them." He said and went back to the van, retrieving a few thermoses, "You know how to use these?" he asked Sam, Tucker, and Bleu.
"Yeah," Sam and Tucker nodded. "We help Danny ghost hunt all the time." Tucker said and strapped it over his shoulder.
Jack paused, almost touched that Danny used his own father's inventions to ghost hunt behind his back. But then hurt that Danny used his own father's inventions to ghost hunt behind his back and not trust him to tell him that he was half-ghost. He shook his head, "Bleu?"
"I don't." she shook her head.
"We'll show her." Sam volunteered.
"Thank you, Sam." He turned and handed them each a small blaster. "Only on Vlad." He said. "Shoot if you need to." He instructed.
The four children prepared themselves and looked at each other.
"Sam and Bleu, you two go look for Hazel." Jazz instructed. "Tucker, my parents and I will go help Danny."
Sam and Bleu nodded and jumped into the car while the other ran into action. The girls buckled in their seatbelts and drove off, Sam holding her ghost-detecting tablet in front of her and looking around. "How exactly will this show us Hazel and not some ghost?"
Bleu took a deep breath, "He's… he's probably lying down…" she said sadly, "Check the ground area."
Sam looked at Bleu, then lowered her gaze.
Danny flipped around and crash-landed into a building. He shook his head and got back up, throwing up a quick shield so he wasn't hit by Vlad's punch. Before Vlad's punch hit the shield, he teleported behind Danny and prepared another punch. Danny quickly turned around and vanished in a small flurry of ice crystals. Vlad paused with confusion, then he growled while searching the area, "What's the matter, Daniel?" he asked, still having a ghost sense and knowing Danny was still close by, "Don't you want to come visit your Uncle Vlad?" he asked.
Danny reappeared and punched him, "You are not my uncle!" he growled, "You are not my family, you're not my dad, not my friend, and not worth my time." He growled with every punch.
Vlad caught Danny's wrist and grabbed the collar of his shirt, "I'm hurt, Daniel, after all I've done for you."
Danny quickly brought a knee up to kick Vlad's stomach, "What have you done for me besides manipulate my friends and piss off my family?" he asked.
Vlad threw Danny back through the building and landed in front of him, "Who have I mani- Oh! Richards?" he chuckled darkly, "You call a brash, emotional, lashing-out wreck like that a friend?" he asked, "Didn't he try to kill you?"
"But he didn't." Danny forced himself up, "And with that logic you even bothered calling yourself my uncle? A member of my family?" he asked, "Do you realize just how stupid you sound?"
"Family is forgivable." Vlad stated. "You can forgive family."
Danny couldn't help but to laugh, "You're digging even deeper." He growled, shooting an ice beam at Vlad and vanishing as Vlad went to deflect the attack. He whipped around, and received a boot to his face, "You would've forgiven my dad for the ghost portal incident." He growled and stepped back. "That's the difference between you and me." He said, "Dad shocked you with a portal by accident and apologized for it. Since then he's tried patching things up with you. I can't tell you how many damn headaches Jazz and I get from listening to him go on and on about how awesome he thought you were!" he snapped, "Hazel was only trying to defend himself because I would always start those fights thinking he was a threat! I hit him on the head and pissed him off and he lost control of himself. That's what I get for pissing off a bipolar kid with ghost powers. He never asked for me to forgive him and in fact, I found out that he tried to kill himself." He said, "After I told him that I forgave him, he did everything he could to keep me from you, even if it killed him…" he said.
Vlad rubbed his face for a good while and only listened to the teenager's argument.
"If either of us is the shitty friend- it's me." He said, "I kicked him out of the house that night and made him go stay with someone else… scared that I'd be pissed with him for as long as we'd know each other." He sighed, "Hazel doesn't need that… I'm his first friend in years, and he's even told me that. I was able to get him to relax, to not get tense anytime anyone even looked at him. To get him to even give a shit about his life because…" he shook his head, "I mean- the guy's a month younger than I am… he's got so much to live for, yet he's got so many scars because he doesn't think so." He sighed, then he growled, "And it's because of you, that kid is going to die." He snarled.
Vlad was silent, "You're right, Daniel…" he stood up. "What kind of friend am I to loathe your father for an accident? For an injury that he didn't intend?" he rubbed his cheek, a look of pure guilt washing over his face. He looked at Danny sincerely, "Would you ever forgive me?" he asked.
Danny looked at him for a while, "Why should I? Give me one good reason. What kind of redeeming factor do you have that would make me want to forgive you?"
"Now, Daniel, don't be a hypocrite." Vlad said.
"There's no hypocrisy here, you son-of-a-bitch, you were never a friend of mine." His eyes turned solid green with no traces of white, "You went and pissed me off by killing Hazel."
Vlad smiled and closed his eyes, "And here I thought I had a change of heart-"
"Can't change what you don't have." Danny crossed his arms, "Besides, even if you did have one, doesn't it only fit my mom and your creepy cat named after my mom?"
Vlad growled and teleported two inches in front of Danny and caught the teen around his throat, "That's quite enough from you, Daniel…" he channeled his ghost energy through his arm and shocked Danny.
Danny roared in pain and fought to keep his human half from taking over. When Vlad finished his ghost-stinger, he threw Danny through the preexisting hole in the wall and sent him crashing to the pavement below. Danny laid on the ground, curling in on himself in pain and twitching every so often.
"Danny!" Jazz gasped and ran to his side.
Tucker glared up at the building where Vlad hovered, "He's still not done."
"Oh my god, is he okay?" Maddie ran over and dropped down to her knees, still having to get used to seeing her son as the ghost boy. "Wh-why is he shaking like that?" she asked in fear.
Jack rushed over, "Danny?"
Jazz carefully picked up Danny and rested him on her lap, "Danny, are you gonna be alright?"
Without a response, two glowing white rings flashed over his body and changing him back to the ordinary human they once knew him to be. He laid fully relaxed in front of them.
Maddie pulled Danny from Jazz's arms and hugged him, "Why didn't he tell us?"
Jack growled and aimed his blaster up at Vlad, "You son of a bitch, you hurt my son!" he barked.
"Did I, Jack?" Vlad duplicated himself once, showing two versions of himself, both identical, one fake. "Would I be the only one to inflict any damage on your punching bag of a son?" he asked, duplicating himself again, having four copies. "And would this be the first time at all that your son has been thrown around, sent through walls, beaten to a pulp? Do you really believes he gets into that many fights at school? Or at the mall?"
Jack lowered his weapon in realization. Danny had been half-ghost for a long time. Three years at least. He shook his head and glared up at Vlad and his clones, trying to identify which one was the real Vlad.
Tucker stood up and shot at each of the Vlad copies he could see, considering that Vlad had duplicated himself some more, there had to have been at least fifty, "Just shoot, Jack!"
Jack nodded and began firing at any Vlad copies he saw. He quickly turned to Maddie, "Get Danny somewhere safe!" he barked. He turned to fire more at the copies, but saw them jump and fly towards him and Tucker.
Jazz and Maddie grabbed Danny and carried him to a pick-up truck with a shell on the bed. Jazz opened the tailgate of the truck and let Maddie set him inside. "Watch your brother." She said before attempting to leave the truck.
"No way, Mom, I'm fighting with you guys." She argued.
"This is bigger than you, Jazz. I don't want you getting hurt." Maddie said firmly.
"This is bigger than you too, Mom. It's bigger than you and Dad." She argued, "It's bigger than even Danny. This whole thing has been on a personal level for… as long as Danny and Vlad have known each other." She said.
"What does Vlad want with your brother? Why is-"
"Vlad wants a son. Danny, specifically. He's obsessed with thinking that Danny would be his perfect son." She explained. "He's trying to clone him, but they're all failing."
Maddie looked at her horrifically, "How do you know this?"
"He told me. He's seen them and they've given him nightmares." She looked down, "I'd get nightmares too if I saw failed clones of myself too…" she shook her head, "Look, I can help you. I've helped Danny hunt ghosts before and even fight some. We can do this."
Maddie looked at her daughter for a while and debated on letting her help. She rolled her eyes, "Fine…" she sighed. "Just make sure he doesn't hit this truck." She said and finally jumped out of the tailgate.
Jazz followed her mother and stood by her, firing at the clones, "Where's Dad and Tucker?" she asked.
Maddie looked around, "I don't know." She said, finding no sign of either of them, "Maybe they went back to the van."
"Vlad would've followed them." Jazz said, then was hit with a plasma blast. She flew backwards and crashed against the ground.
"Jasmine!" Maddie gasped, then she turned and glared at the remaining Vlad that hovered across the street from her, smirking cruelly. Maddie continued to glare death at the man- at the monster that floated before her, taunting her.
"I am sorry you had to see that my dear, but your children truly need some more discipline. But it's no wonder where they get that from." Maddie's glare intensified as his smirk grew, her hand gripping the blaster so hard a slight creak could almost be heard. She quickly took aim at him, rage etched on her face, even as he flew towards her at blinding speeds. Right before he could reach her, she quickly aimed down and shot at the ground, blasting out debris and smoke. Vlad flew through it and expected to have Maddie in his grasp, but what he got instead was an ecto blast to his side as he was sent flying in to a nearby car. He crashed and slid down to the ground, the sudden explosive force hitting him at top speed stunning him. Maddie calmly walked out of the now settled smoke cloud, blaster smoking and still trained on him.
"Never come near my kids and family again!" she yelled in pure fury before blasting the car, blowing it and hopefully Vlad with it. She lowered the blaster and let out a sigh of relief, happy for this to be over. But the relief quickly went away as she had to dive out of the way of an oncoming piece of fiery car. She quickly rolled and recovered only to be met with a black gloved hand back-handing her and sending her across the street. Vlad stood there looking angrier than before, his eyes glowing intensely, even as some flames still clung to his suit. He floated menacingly towards where Maddie crouched on the ground, barely recovering from the hit. She quickly wiped some blood off her lip before reaching for her pouch. But Vlad was quicker. He quickly grabbed her by the neck and raised her high, blue and red burning in to one another.
"All of what I had accomplished in my life was for you, to fill the void that was made when you chose that imbecile over me. Praying that maybe one day, you would open your eyes and see how much better your life would be with me, how much better yours and the children's lives would be. But no matter what, you still chose him. Tell me, why!?" His grip tightened just a little more to entice her to talk. Maddie only glared back as a small choke escaped her lips before speaking.
"You want to know why I chose Jack over you, Fine. First of all, despite his mistakes, he knows exactly who he is and what his mistakes are. He doesn't go around pretending and stealing like some slimy coward! You… only know how to steal, cheat, and lie. You're nothing but a lie, a sad, pathetic lie who can't stop living in the past. He's honest, loyal, and twice the man you could ever dream to be! I love him, and that will never change. I will never love you, no matter what. And like Danny said, you're just a seriously messed-up fruit loop." Maddie had a smile of victory on her face as the pure rage on his face only grew. She used that moment of distraction to quickly pull out her laser lipstick and shoot him point blank in the chest, causing him to drop her. He stumbled back in pain before growling at her, before she could shoot again, he quickly teleported behind her, grabbed her by the arm, picked her up and hurling her at the truck Danny was in. Maddie was barely able to twist her body so that her side took the impact, but it didn't do much. She hit the shell hard, a few cracks and snaps rang out as she screamed in pain before falling limp to the ground.
The noise from the impact startled Danny and woke him, he looked around quickly in a panic and gathered that he was inside the back of a stationary truck with a shell. The shell had windows on each side, allowing him to peer outside. To his left, where buildings stood closer to the truck than they did on the right, he saw his mother roll off the roof of the truck over the window. He gasped and phased through the wall of the truck to kneel by Maddie's side. "Mom?" he called and carefully shook her shoulder. With no response, he looked up and found Tucker lying on the sidewalk on the other side of a car, and a large hole in one of the buildings that he knew he didn't make. He growled, his eyes turning green. He stood up and turned to Vlad and walked through the truck, changing to Phantom in the process.
"Well, look who's awake." Vlad commented, "Enjoy your nap?"
Danny clenched his fists so tightly his nails would've dug into his palms and the pain in the center of his right hand didn't even matter anymore. Raged filled his body so much, the tension would've made others tense just by looking at him. He took a deep breath, "You coward!" he roared with the ghostly wail.
Vlad stumbled back, not expecting the noise from the seventeen-year-old in front of him.
Danny teleported in front of him and send a plasma-covered punch into Vlad's stomach, "You think this'll accomplish anything?" he growled, "Do you think your clones would even love you after they find out that you've obsessively hunted me down to clone me? After they find out the kind of man that you are?"
"Who's to say they'll find out?" Vlad threw a punch, but the ghost boy vanished before his fist could make contact with him.
Danny reappeared behind him and kicked Vlad's back, "They'll find out." He growled, "If he watches the news one day and sees me, he's gonna start asking questions. What then?" he asked furiously, grabbing him by his cape and throwing him against a wall, "Tell him that you killed, and lied, and cheated, and hurt good people just to get a clone? For the perfect son?"
Vlad recovered from the hit, "I didn't kill anyone." He growled.
Danny snarled, his anger intensifying, "No?! What about Hazel!?" he roared, sending out a small sound wave to knock Vlad back slightly, "He was barely breathing by the time you were done with him."
Vlad began laughing, "The boy had a death wish. He hardly even put up a fight."
Danny growled, his eyes turning a solid blue, and a small amount of blue electricity sparking in his hand. He charged forward and threw a punch at Vlad again, only missing due to Vlad's teleportation ability. He turned around, and used the wasted momentum to hit Vlad in the temple with the electric punch.
Vlad fell down to one knee and tried recovering from the hit.
Danny kicked Vlad hard enough to send him up to the sky, then flew up to catch up with him. He caught Vlad and channeled the electric energy into his hands, shocking Vlad with more intensity than before. Vlad now hung limply in Danny's hands.
"Daniel, please-" he glanced down, noticing that his coat was starting to freeze with a visible layer of ice.
"Give me one good reason…" he growled.
Vlad thought for too long before looking back up at Danny in fear.
"And for once, he has nothing to say…" he said and froze the rest of Vlad's body. He gave him one more cold look before glancing at the ground.
He let him fall.
**So… that took a lot longer than expected. I really needed help with this one though. Since I needed help so badly, I let my fiancé and fellow author write the fight scene between Vlad and Maddie. So I'm giving him credit for that, I didn't write that, I just edited that part. The rest was all me though. No Hazel in this chapter, but definitely the next chapter. Sorry if Danny seemed out of character, but the seventeen-year-old Ghost Boy be pissed. Anger, rage, and revenge do things to people. Plus, the kid needed to let loose and a baseball bat to Hazel's face wasn't gonna cut it. Please leave reviews, you guys, I really want to know what you all think about this. Thanks for reading and stay awesome, folks!**