Chapter Twenty-Three
CW: Murder, death, mentions of suicide, abuse/manipulation, human experimentation, brief description of injuries
Vlad Masters prided himself on being logical, careful, and patient. He had founded multiple companies, acquired dozens of subsidiaries, and spent the last two decades carefully crafting his persona as a billionaire philanthropist. He knew that there were those who disliked billionaires as a matter of course - they were not worth his efforts - but countless others viewed him with admiration, trust, and envy.
He loved it, of course, but the hollowness remained.
His accident in college was both a blessing and a curse. It lost him the love of his life and the chance at the family that so rightfully should have been his. He tried, initially, to move past it, growing in fame and fortune and acclaim, but he could not forget the pain caused by Jack Fenton. The occasional card he received in the mail with a picture of Jack and his dearest Maddie along with their two children rubbed salt in a wound that would not close.
He tried to ignore it, to pretend as if they simply did not exist as he continued to quietly make a name for himself in both worlds. He used his abilities to force the ghosts he encountered into submission, convincing them to either work beside him or retreat in terror. He was, quite simply, unstoppable, yet his conquests and unique abilities made for a rather lonely existence that he was increasingly realizing he could no longer tolerate.
He delved into research, studying and learning as much as he could, eventually discovering Dr. Alyce Winter's preliminary work on liminals, but even learning the truth of what he was proved disappointing. Liminals were rare, created when sufficient ectoplasm was present at the moment of near death. The heart needed to stop, the lungs needed to cease their breathing, if only for a second for one to be created. Dr. Winter's research was still in the early stages, yet he could not risk her learning more about liminals and potentially discovering him in turn. So he pushed her to abandon the research as he sought out the ones she had discovered. Most of them were weak, either using their powers for pathetic purposes or so crippled by encountering another realm outside their experience that they were driven to madness. But when several recognized him immediately for precisely what he was, he realized his empire was at stake, the threat too real.
Let it not be said that he was not kind to them, for he always offered them a choice: join him or suffer the consequences.
Most refused his entreaty and found themselves suffering from various, tragic accidents that could have been avoided. Others agreed, but as he experimented on them to see if he could create another that would be his equal, his friend, or perhaps even his family, they failed to achieve the same, glorious potential, wasting away to nothing due to ectoplasmic radiation poisoning.
Vlad began to accept that his existence was unique until he heard about poor young Daniel Fenton, whose father injured him in a rather nasty little accident with his portal, who ended up in the hospital for several weeks, and who continued to suffer symptoms eerily similar to his own.
He would need to tread carefully, of course. Vlad could not simply rush in overnight, and despite the similarities, there was no guarantee that the boy would be as brilliant as he himself was. There was every possibility that he was not a liminal, or that if he was, then he lacked the power and potential that Vlad held. Perhaps Vlad was both blessed and doomed to be unique.
He orchestrated the reunion as a way to try to discern the boy's potential. College reunions were quite gauche, but the pretext worked well enough to summon the Fentons and their children to his home. His dear Maddie had aged like the finest wine, only glowing and more perfect in her later years. Her daughter was a similar gem, a brilliantly shining star bristling with potential, and he momentarily regretted that she was not the one to experience the lab accident as she would no doubt have been spectacular if gifted with abilities that mirrored his own.
And Jack . . . he did not expect his fury to be so intense at the mere sight of the man, but if nothing else, perhaps he could use his rage to his advantage. He did not originally plan to kill Jack, per se, when he arrived with his family. It would bring too much negative attention to Vlad for a father of two teenagers to die in his home, no matter how carefully he disguised it as an unfortunate accident. But a threat to Jack's life, particularly one of the supernatural variety, might cause the boy to reveal himself.
Vlad was not terribly impressed with the boy. Daniel was quiet and dull, spending most of his time in a corner texting and playing video games on his phone, indulging in nothing but the most mind-rotting nonsense. Nothing about the child seemed to indicate a supernatural awareness. When the Dairy King that shared Vlad's castle passed within a few feet of him and his family, Jazz responded with shock and awe, her parents with their insatiable desire to capture and research the specimen, and Daniel flinched away, cowering in terror from perhaps the most benign, powerless specter in existence. What an utter disappointment.
Still, Vlad knew it might be an act, and so he made an appearance as Plasmius, threatening Daniel's family, and the boy retreated to their ridiculous vehicle while his parents and sister fought him off. He sent a clone, expecting to see Daniel transform now that he was isolated from the rest of the Fentons, cornering him in private and telling him at length how he would kill his father and take Maddie at long last for himself, but the boy simply screamed and knocked himself unconscious in his efforts to escape. If Vlad had an ounce of empathy, he might have been embarrassed for the boy, but instead, he was disgusted. Vlad wanted nothing to do with Daniel. It would be best to eliminate him alongside his father when the time finally came, and Vlad allowed his alter ego to be defeated by Jack for now.
And for a time, he forgot about the child, focusing instead on what to do next, what more power he could attain, what final conquest might make Maddie fall in love with him and see that only he was worthy of being at her side.
He hired Skulker to steal some technology for him along with some additional research from the government's Ghost Investigation Ward. He spied on Amity Park, noting the rise of the odd ghost Phantom, who fought against his own kind to protect humanity but whose identity was a mystery. He gave tools and equipment to Valerie Gray so that she might seek vengeance and capture some of the more unusual specimens that arose, and so that he could watch for signs of any other liminals. With all of the ectoplasmic energy in Amity Park and the danger from the attacks, surely another like himself would eventually be created.
And then he began to hear rumors of Daniel, the cowardly, sniveling child, quietly confronting the ghosts. "What do you know of Daniel Fenton?" he asked Skulker as the ghost dropped off a zip drive with some research.
"He's a fool, mostly," said Skulker, "but kind and oddly endearing. He approaches all of us at some point, trying to find non-violent paths for our obsessions." Obsessions. A madness that did not afflict him, at least. "But even if we refuse to play along, he still helps us. I know the whelp helped Ember and several others escape from his parents."
The image was jarring, not remotely matching his mental image of the pathetic child from the reunion. It could not be the same boy. But he found himself going to Amity Park more directly, visiting the Fentons under the guise of trying to rekindle their friendship, all while keeping a close eye on Daniel.
Sullen. Quiet. A poor student. But the more Vlad made himself present in the Fentons' lives, the harder it became for Daniel to hide that there was more to him than there appeared to be on the surface. Vlad remained unconvinced he was a liminal, but there was indeed something peculiar about the boy, and then he obtained the evidence he needed, the possible key to everything, quite by accident.
It was security footage of a fight with a powerful ghost, one of the Ancients from deep within the Ghost Zone that Vlad previously believed to be little more than a myth: Nocturn. The ghost was defeated, apparently by Phantom. It seemed quite improbable to Vlad that a young specter like Phantom could overcome an ancient spirit like Nocturn, and all over town there were stories of a horrifying, echoing wail, a scream that shook the buildings and woke the sleepers, which was not a power held by any ghost Vlad knew. He watched as the battle escalated on the footage, as Phantom was put to sleep, and then as Valerie arrived. He watched as ice crept across Phantom's suit and shattered it, revealing a rather odd creature beneath that could easily be Nocturn's brother if ghosts or spirits had such things. And then the scream, the sight of an impossibly horrifying and large mouth that was more monstrous than not, and Nocturn was defeated.
The ghost on screen was a massive potential threat, holding a power unlike any other. Vlad had yet to encounter one whose raw power alone might make them his equal when pitted against his own experience and finesse and strategy, and yet here it was. But more than anything he saw or watched was what he heard.
Liminal child.
Most of their conversation was consumed in static, utterly worthless, but those few words were clear to Vlad and, as he watched, made a perfect sort of sense. Phantom was a young ghost, from what he knew from his contacts in the Ghost Zone, and his power was far beyond the levels he should be able to achieve at this point in his development unless he were like Vlad. A liminal.
The likelihood that it was Daniel Fenton was high, of course. Phantom wore a Hazmat suit not unlike the old ones his parents used to keep and still used occasionally for more dangerous lab work. He only first became known about a year and a half ago, not long after Daniel's own portal accident. The pieces were lining up nicely, but Vlad wanted to confirm it if possible before he moved.
He planned, then, carefully as always. Made an announcement about a large public gift from his private foundation to the recovery effort, scheduled a meeting with the mayor to discuss the specific allocation of his funds, and called dear Jack and Maddie to request a visit to make sure they were okay, he was so terribly worried after all. Sweet Maddie agreed, of course, but when he arrived at dinner, Daniel was not there. Out with friends, apparently.
Vlad hid his disappointment. There would be another opportunity to confirm his suspicions, he did not doubt it, and then of all things, the bumbling oaf revealed the truth. That their son, Daniel, was a liminal. And everything slid into place, so perfectly that Vlad found himself almost believing in fate.
He should wait to approach him, of course, but this close to another that was truly like him, that could understand him and that would be thrilled at the prospect of a mentor such as himself . . . He did not want to be alone, and in a rare moment of impatience, he feigned an urgent text from the mayor and excused himself, seeking out the boy.
He found him faster than he anticipated. He was fighting some other ghost as Phantom, and when Vlad approached he could tell the boy was immediately suspicious of him. No matter. He waited over twenty years, and he gave him quite the excellent pitch, having practiced various versions of it in the past with the others that all failed to live up to his expectations.
"You would not need to be alone, not with me. I am the only one who could possibly understand you and accept you, dear boy," he finished. "I am the only one that can see you for who you truly are. Join me, Daniel, and I can be your teacher, your mentor, your guide–"
"-my father?" finished Daniel, static crackling over his radio. "I have one, thanks. And plenty of teachers. I don't need a narcissistic creep for a mentor. If I did, I would've asked you when I figured out what you were over a year ago."
His rage filled him, but Vlad tried to push past it. The boy was young, naive, and an idealist. He simply did not understand. "Your family will reject you if they see what's beneath that suit. A ghost that is the perfect embodiment of the monsters of their worst nightmares, child." The boy flinched, then. Good. Perhaps he was beginning to understand. "Your father will shoot you down, your mother will dissect you. Your friends will abandon you when they see the truth."
"My friends have seen it," said Daniel. "And they haven't abandoned me - they saved me. So the answer is no, Plasmius. It will always be no."
"Daniel, that–"
"-I get it, okay?" he interrupted, eyes full of pity, and Vlad loathed the way the child gazed upon him. "I can see it in you - the hollowness, the emptiness, the just longing and hope that there will be some way you can fill it. But you can't fix it by killing my father. My mother will never love you. Jazz will never be your daughter. And I'll never be your son. So get lost, Plasmius."
He reacted poorly, then, his carefully restrained temper rearing forth as Daniel began to detransform and turn away from him, and before the boy could so much as blink he fired a powerful, focused ectoblast at Daniel's core.
Daniel's eyes went wide in shock as it struck him, piercing right through his chest and his suit a hair to the left of where Vlad intended, but no matter. He watched as the boy collapsed, his transformation halting and snapping back as he forcibly retreated into his ghostly form, ectoplasm spilling from the suit, and if Daniel survived then perhaps this would be a lesson to him to not refuse Vlad again. And if he did not, well, then, it was no real loss, of course. Vlad had been alone for many years. He was used to disappointment.
"Impudent brat," he hissed, teleporting back to his home, the child's insinuations digging in under his skin. How dare the child presume to know him or what he wanted?
He tried to focus on his businesses and ignore the Fentons. Bringing them back into his life had been a mistake. He could see that now. Daniel was his father's son, always would be, and Maddie was too brainwashed to know how much her life was wasted beside them. No doubt Jasmine suffered from the worst impulses of her father, too. The whole family line was poison, a tree with fruit not worth taking. He would forget about them, move past it and seek a new path, a new goal, a new dream.
Vlad did not anticipate, however, how far Daniel's reach extended.
He sent a message to Skulker after a few days, hoping to hire him for another job, only to receive a curt response in return from the ghost that had been his to command for years. Frustrated, Vlad sought out the creature, but Skulker refused to budge.
"You murdered a child, Plasmius," Skulker replied, and it was only then that Vlad learned of Daniel's demise. The Fentons left him messages about the boy being missing, and he assumed he was hiding while he recovered but did not care. It was not his concern. The boy was even more of a disappointment than he realized, then, if he could not overcome such a trivial wound. It was for the best that Daniel was dead. "I swore to what remains of him that I won't work for you again."
"You hunted him before, when he was Phantom–"
"-I didn't know," said Skulker. "But you did, according to the whelp. Consider this a warning, Plasmius, out of respect for the work we've done together: Daniel was well beloved by the ghosts. We won't take kindly to what you've done."
He lost his temper then, smashing Skulker's suit and leaving the tiny blob ghost to float alone in the Ghost Zone. Despicable creatures, ghosts. Always so traitorous. But he doubted that Daniel's influence was quite as strong as Skulker intimated, at least until he was attacked again.
It was some punks on motorcycles he vaguely recognized from Amity Park, their power levels so pathetic compared to his own that they were barely worth his attention. He dispensed with them with ease, but they were not alone. The attacks continued despite, as he learned, the temporary truce enacted by the handful of rulers in the zone in honor of a spoiled, short-sighted brat. Apparently that truce did not extend to him, if the constant battles were any indication.
The ghosts, he knew, would move on eventually. Their anger over his attack and their love for Daniel could not sustain this indefinitely. But it made going into the Ghost Zone exhausting, the ghosts constantly putting themselves in his path and attacking him, and so after several weeks, he determined that a pause in his ventures within the Ghost Zone would be appropriate. Perhaps another few weeks and it would pass.
The Fentons called again and again, and although he owed them nothing, he eventually sent a private detective and some funds to aid in the search. It was expected, the appropriate move for an old friend and philanthropist like himself, and would help deflect any possibility that someone might look in his direction as the source of Daniel's demise (or disappearance, as they still believed it to be).
And just as he thought perhaps things were calming down, the Ghost Investigation Ward came knocking on his door.
"What can I do for you two gentlemen this evening?" he said as his butler led them inside. They would not be permitted past the foyer, of course, but until he knew their intentions it paid to be polite.
"We've received intelligence that you are suffering from dangerous levels of ecto-contamination," replied one of them - Agent K, he thought, but he barely paid the specific agents of the bureau any mind, the men largely interchangeable and faceless drones. "We will need to quarantine you and decontaminate you and this household immediately."
"Ah, I see. That would be rather unfortunate if true, but clearly, I am in perfect health, as my lawyer will attest to," he said. "And you will not be speaking to anyone but him going forward."
"We have broad authority under the Anti-Ecto Control Act of–"
"-my lawyer, gentlemen," he said, handing them a card as he nodded to his butler. "Please show them out."
He could feel his eyes burning as he walked away and up the stairs. He never lost control, not over something trivial like this, not since he first had his powers. It felt shameful, disgraceful, but no doubt it was simply a result of the intense pressure he was under. His lawyer would handle the GIW, no doubt. But then the calls came from his law firm, explaining that while they would fight it and his right to his privacy and personal decision-making authority with respect to his health, there was still a small chance he would need to go through the decontamination process due to the broad authority given to the GIW under the current law. The best they could guarantee was that they could stall it, and maybe Vlad could quietly lobby to have some of the current laws shifted.
He planned to begin calling his political contacts, but the story made the news by far more quickly than he imagined it would. He found his business partners reluctant to take his calls as stories came out from folks thrilled at the suspicion leveled at Vlad Masters, talking about how they believed they may have been drugged or forced to consent to the sale of their stocks or companies against their will. Utter nonsense, of course, he only overshadowed a dozen or so individuals over the years, the rest of his conquests won fairly, but that did not stop the charlatans from coming out of the woodwork.
And then the son of one of his employees published a foolish TikTok video about how Vlad was actually possessed, claiming he saw the signs at a conference, once, including a brief flash of red light in his eyes that Vlad knew couldn't be real, he had never lost control like that in public, but still it spread like wildfire. Most of the world dismissed it - outside of Amity Park and the central US, ghosts were still largely children's stories - but the gentlemen from the GIW became more overzealous, insisting now that they needed access to all of his phone calls, texts, financials, and business agreements, and his law firm began to suggest politely that perhaps submitting to at least a scan would cause all of this to quietly blow over.
He considered a tactical retreat overseas, but naturally, his lawyers also suggested he remain in the country, that fleeing during an active investigation and while there was a case pending against him would only make the rumors stronger. They did not believe, of course, that he was possessed or anything of the sort. But perhaps that scan or decontamination procedure, at least? If he did that much, they could certainly find a way to exempt his household and belongings from the GIW inquiry and get the other parts of the rapidly evolving court case against him if the scan and decontamination procedure came back without any issues.
In a moment of uncertainty, he found himself calling the Fentons. "I'm sorry, Vlad, but we're busy looking for Danny. We could always do the decontamination procedure for you if you'd prefer to go through friends instead. We're authorized by the GIW to conduct them."
"That will not be necessary, my dear," he said, slamming the phone down on the receiver, and it shattered to pieces beneath his hand as he loosed a small ecto blast and poured himself a drink, downing it rapidly.
This could not be a coincidence, of course. Someone had pieced it together, but the Fentons seemed oblivious so far. He could not imagine Maddie or Jack being quite so polite if they knew the truth. Daniel's little friends, then? Had not Daniel claimed that they knew the truth about his ghostly nature and accepted him? He knew the one, Samantha, from functions with her parents. But even if it was Samantha and the other child, what could he do? The pair would likely have some type of plan in place, some contingencies just in case he made a move against them now, and Samantha was too high profile to move against, her disappearance or demise the sort that no one would ever believe could simply be an accident. No doubt they heard the full truth of what he was from Daniel before the boy's death. He couldn't act against them without drawing suspicion. At least, not yet.
He tried to retreat to the Ghost Zone, frustrated by the proceedings in the human world and seeking a victory wherever he could take it, but found himself besieged almost immediately, the ghosts continuing to maintain their attacks against him even now, despite it being weeks since Daniel passed. He dealt with them easily, but he would need a plan to manage the ghosts more effectively if they were going to continue to watch his portal and remain hostile to him. Was there not some way he could force the ghosts to comply, at least?
Storming back into his lab, he grabbed a few books that Skulker picked up ages ago but that he discarded, deeming the prospects too risky. But at this point, he needed at least one world under his control, one place where he could be at peace, and the Ghost Zone offered a pathway that the Earth currently lacked.
The Crown of Fire and Ring of Rage would be hard to obtain, but if he managed it, they would grant him a power untold and the ghosts would be forced to obey his commands. He had no doubt that he could easily control both artifacts despite the warnings in the ancient texts. There was a minor note about seizing power by defeating the prior king, but it would be easy enough to manage. Pariah lay asleep in his sarcophagus. He would be no match for Vlad while so helpless, and the ancient laws of the Ghost Zone cared little for tactics that would be deemed dishonorable by ordinary humans dismayed at their own lack of power and control.
If the only option was to be a King, then a King he would be.
A/N: Thanks as always for the follows, favorites, reviews, etc! The next chapter needs some heavy editing, so it might be a bit longer before it goes up, but hopefully it won't take too long.
