Jazz straightened up and shook the plaster out of her hair as best she could. Breaking through the wall had been relatively easy once she'd gotten it started. Vlad hadn't used concrete throughout the entire building—something that had crossed her mind after her first swing—and she'd managed to open a hole between two of the studs and go from there.
Unfortunately, the fact that Vlad hadn't stopped her made it pretty clear that he wasn't around right now.
He could get the wall fixed, sure, but she didn't envy him coming up with a believable explanation.
Of course, with as much money as he had, he might not need an explanation.
She'd texted a warning to Danny on both his phone and his borrowed phone, for all the good that would do if he was still in Spittoon, but maybe she'd get lucky and the text would go through where a phone call might not if he flew high enough.
Because that was the trouble, really.
She'd had as much luck contacting Danny as she'd had trying to contact Jack, and if Danny had just kept a few Fenton Phones on him like she kept telling him, this would be slightly less of a mess.
Maybe.
Assuming Vlad hadn't figured out that they usually did that and had managed to track Danny's position from it somehow. That might be a thing he could do? Tucker would know. Tucker would have done it at some point if it were possible—though, if it were, chances were good he'd have done it again when they were trying to figure out where Danny was.
Jazz tapped her Fenton Phone. "The only good news I have is that I'm out and the cat never did more than hiss at me. I never saw her."
"So the bad news is you don't have news," surmised Tucker.
"No, the bad news is that Vlad's definitely not here, meaning he's found Danny and moved onto whatever the next phase of his creepy plan is." She might not know what that plan was, but it was Vlad. It had to be creepy. It was practically a requirement at this point.
"Are you going to take the Ops Centre and follow him?" asked Sam.
Jazz chewed her lip. "It's crossed my mind, but I don't know if I'd be the cavalry or a liability if I went charging into that fight." She might not even make it in time for the fight, in which case she'd be wasting her time entirely. "Maybe I should go into the Ghost Zone and help you guys?"
Silence.
She was starting to really hate silence in response to her questions.
"I dunno if that'll help," Tucker admitted. "A bunch of ghosts are helping as much because Skulker turned it into a competition as because they don't want Jack Fenton accidentally destroying their lairs, but we still haven't…. No one's seen anything."
And if Jack were close by, someone would have seen something.
"Clockwork might refuse to show his face because he's afraid of interfering or whatever even if it hasn't stopped him before," started Sam, "but I still think we can ask Frostbite if we can borrow the Infi-Map. He can even come with us if he wants so we don't ever touch it. If Mr. F went through a natural portal by mistake, that might be the only way we find him."
Jazz didn't know what the Infi-Map was, but if it was a map that showed whatever you were looking for, she wanted to know why they hadn't tried that already. "So what's stopping you?"
"Things didn't go great the last time we had it."
Judging by Sam's snort, Tucker's words were an understatement. Fantastic. The chances of this map being lent to them were slim to nil, then, even with a chaperone.
Stealing wasn't something she wanted to endorse, but— "Could you take it and put it back before Frostbite notices?"
"Nuh-uh. He's got guards on it now."
"Can you bargain for it? Trade something, promise something—?"
"Danny might be able to," Sam said, "but I doubt our word alone would be enough."
"Ghost thing, huh?"
"Something like that."
Some year, she'd get more of these stories out of her little brother.
"If you've talked to Danny and he's okay, maybe he can ask for a favour?"
Sam's voice trailed off at the end, but Jazz had an idea of what else she was asking. "Danny's in Spittoon with Aunt Alicia, and there's no cell service there. He has to fly out to contact me, and he hasn't done that since the last time I told you about. Even if he weren't…. I don't know if he'd want to go right now even if I could ask him. He says Dani's okay, but he says he's fine when he's lost like three pints of blood, so I question his judgement about her actually being okay. He'd probably stay with her and say that you guys could get the favour on his behalf."
"Fine, I'll go freeze my butt off again and ask Frostbite if we can use the Infi-Map, but if he says no, don't say Sam didn't warn you."
Jazz groaned. "We should have found Dad by now without this."
It had been a vain hope, but neither Sam nor Tucker contradicted her. Hours of searching, gathering more and more people for help to cover an ever-expanding area— This was Jack Fenton. He wasn't quiet. He wasn't subtle. He especially wasn't quiet or subtle when he was looking for his son. Jazz still remembered the day her parents had driven around town in search of Danny and how people who'd recognized her (which was, given who her parents were, practically everyone) had stopped to ask her how she was doing or how the search was coming along or where she thought Danny might have gone or if this entire thing was a prank on his part and if so, could she tell him to knock it off so they could get some sleep.
The point was, when Jack was looking for someone near and dear to his heart, everyone knew about it.
Which made no one seeing any trace of him incredibly suspicious, even if it was the Ghost Zone.
Suspecting Vlad's involvement didn't tell her how he was involved when any ghost she could remember offhand who worked for him was already helping them with the search.
Come to that, though—
"Hey, I just thought of something," Jazz said. "What are the chances that one of the ghosts who's helping look actually knows where Dad is and is leading everyone else away, you guys included? What if someone's been sabotaging us this entire time?"
"Do you really think they'd plan ahead like that?" asked Sam.
"I dunno that anyone would risk it. Leaving Mr. F somewhere unsupervised, I mean. They've seen him in a fight. They know the damage he can do by accident alone."
"They're ghosts. If they can split themselves, who says he's unsupervised?"
"It's more than that," Sam said. "Humans are basically ghosts in the Ghost Zone. We can walk through walls if we want to. There are ways of keeping a human trapped just like there are ways of keeping a ghost trapped—Aragon did it to me once—but as I understand it, it's not really an 'on a whim' thing. I don't know if a ghost can pull off a trap in the, what, half hour or so warning they would've had from Vlad finding out your dad was going into the Ghost Zone until he actually went. Keeping your dad trapped here is harder than you think. That's why I'm thinking he might've gone through a natural portal by mistake. They pop up without warning all the time. There's a chance he didn't have time to avoid one."
"That, or this was planned a long time ago," Jazz murmured. "It is Vlad."
"I'll double back and start checking places the ghosts have looked, starting with Skulker's island," Sam said. "I ran into him before checking the island itself, and I'd rather be wrong than not look at this point."
"Me, too. Especially if Frostbite doesn't let me have the map," muttered Tucker. "We'll keep you posted. Promise."
"Thanks." Jazz let the conversation die with a whisper. She wanted Sam to be wrong. She wanted Vlad to have planned this. It was easier if he had planned this; that would mean Jack was somewhere they could find him, however difficult that was currently proving to be.
Vlad wasn't exactly allergic to scheming, and ghosts didn't need to sleep in the same way humans did, so it was possible he could have triggered something at a moment's notice.
But if one (or more) of the ghosts in the search wasn't covering for him, then that meant none of them knew about it. And some of the ghosts Jazz had seen Danny fight really didn't strike her as being great at keeping secrets. The pool of ghosts who could do that had to be tiny—unless Vlad had dug up an ally from the woodwork who hadn't faced Danny before, but Jazz really didn't want to think about that.
She should, though.
Vlad had practically twenty years on Danny, or at least however long it had taken him to build his own portal and start establishing connections in the Ghost Zone before her parents figured out the last few bugs in their design.
Jazz blew out an aggravated breath. When it came down to it, she didn't know enough to be useful on this front.
Maybe, the best thing she could do after all was pack a bunch of spare Fenton Phones and head to Aunt Alicia's. Those wouldn't have any trouble working in Spittoon when they worked fine between here and the Ghost Zone, and if Tucker needed Danny's word to get that map from Frostbite, he'd be able to get it.
Well, she could take more than just Fenton Phones. If she did take the Ops Centre, it was already equipped with various ghost-hunting equipment. Jazz still wouldn't be able to beat Vlad there, but bringing weaponry that would work against him when she doubted her mom had packed anything could be the difference between her being an asset and a liability.
Okay.
That's what she'd do, then.
Well, she could do a few quick things to sabotage Vlad's lab, and then she'd do that. In theory, it would be easy enough. Destroy a few key components of important-looking things in Vlad's lab, including tossing water onto everything that ran off normal electricity because she was far more willing to do that than to set stuff on fire and leave, and then she'd head home, update the note left for Jack just in case, grab some emergency rations (contrary to Danny's complaints, Jazz knew they had more than just fudge and ham), stock up on weapons, and head out.
Hopefully, she wouldn't be too late to help.
Maddie wasn't entirely sure what she'd been expecting when Vlad made his move. Another attack on Danielle, maybe, either with more remotely deployed robots or a horde of ghosts. If Plasmius came alone, it would be reasonable to expect to deal with duplication. If Vlad came alone, then she would have to be prepared for lies—and be even warier of the possibility of overshadowing when she might not see the attack coming and didn't have the tools to detect it.
It began with Cujo barking the alarm.
"That'll be Vlad," Danny yelled down from upstairs, as if she needed another reminder.
"You close on that?" Alicia asked with a tilt of her head toward Maddie's project. It wasn't spread out in pieces across the kitchen table anymore, but Maddie hadn't moved from the spot once she'd started, and Alicia had ducked in and out the entire time.
In truth, Maddie had only finished half as much as she'd wanted to, but she'd worked in such a way that she could wrap it up in under a minute. She hummed an affirmative, closed the circuit, and hoped the device wouldn't explode in her hands because she hadn't had any time to build a safety shield for the user. "Once I know this works, do you want it?" It still had the same basic shape and function as the cattle prod, at least if the switch that integrated Vlad's technology and turned it into a ranged weapon was turned off, so Alicia wouldn't have any trouble adapting to it. Maddie could hand it over once she knew it was safe to use.
"Long as you're willing to use it, you should keep it. It'd be a mite suspicious if you hadn't crafted yourself a weapon after all this."
Well.
Alicia wasn't wrong on that front.
Maddie wasn't sure how she could possibly be expected to mistake Vlad's attack for anything other than what it was when she could recognize his work and deduce the purpose of his inventions. If Vlad gave her weapon more than a passing glance, he'd recognize the remains of his own technology, and he should know she'd use it on him if she felt she needed to.
Alicia slipped out of the kitchen, going off who knew where—though Maddie admittedly wasn't convinced she wouldn't come back with her shotgun, since Vlad wouldn't know it was unloaded (assuming Alicia had the sense not to load it). She could worry about that later, though. Right now….
Maddie stood, clutching her weapon in both hands as Cujo's barking grew louder and deeper, a sure sign of his change. Vlad was familiar with the ghost dog and wouldn't be surprised, but she was glad that Cujo was on their side, as she wouldn't want to face the giant when he was angry at her; the earlier experience was more than enough to last her a lifetime, she was sure.
It was only a few steps from the kitchen to the entryway, but Maddie had to steel her nerve before reaching for the door. Danny wanted her to shoot first and ask questions later, a policy she'd once never had a problem with when it came to ghosts, but knowing that Vlad was like Danny and Danielle—
Maddie wrenched open the door and stared at the dishevelled-looking Vlad Masters that stood on the other side of the threshold, one hand still outstretched to grab the doorknob she'd pulled out of his reach.
"Maddie," he gasped, withdrawing his hand and wrapping it around to clutch his side like he had a stitch, "are you still safe?"
No part of her had expected the conversation to start off like that.
She hadn't even been sure there would be a conversation.
One part of her dimly registered that Cujo was about to swipe at Vlad with a giant paw and pull him off Alicia's porch, but Vlad was seemly unaware of that impending fact. Her lips parted and she managed, "What?"
Vlad pushed past her, stumbling inside just in time to avoid Cujo's claws. Maddie had intended to stand her ground, to keep him out there while she and the others stayed in here, something she logically knew wasn't possible with his ghost powers, but—
He'd simply walked right by her.
"I had to make sure you were safe," he said, turning back to her as she pivoted to stare at him. "You're safe?"
He'd been more put-together at three in the morning than he was right now, though the strands of hair that had been teased free of his ponytail, the rumbled clothes, and the mud-stained hems of his pants could be explained by Cujo. (Saliva could make puddles as easily as rain when that ghost dog was involved, after all.)
"What are you really doing here?" she asked.
He ran a hand through his hair, tousling it even further. "I had to check up on you. I didn't find Jack, not yet, but— Look, you need to understand. I put on a show as Plasmius, but I can't truly trust the other ghosts, and this has only reinforced why. I— This is more than a betrayal, more than a declaration of war. This is unspeakable, but someone was trying to curry favour, and they— I'm sorry. This must be because of me."
"What are you talking about?" She knew what answer to expect, given what Danny had told her, but—
"You—your family—means so much to me, but true ghosts don't understand those emotions. You know that. And one of them—possibly more than one; I've hardly had the time to do a thorough examination of all of this—" He broke off. "There isn't a way to put this delicately, but I fear one of them created a facsimile of you."
Did one of them also attack the innocent child upstairs with weapons they stole from you?
She couldn't say that. It would give him far too much to work with, and she didn't want him to know that Danielle was here if he didn't already. He might not, if he'd really come in search of Maddie, but Cujo's presence surely gave away the fact that Danny was nearby, even if he hadn't—
A bolt of green light shot down from the ceiling and struck Vlad square in the back, causing him to stumble forward and fall to his knees. Maddie took a couple steps back towards the kitchen in her surprise. Danny appeared a split second later, bright green eyes shining with a righteous anger. "Talking about yourself again, huh?"
Vlad's hands fisted before he pushed himself to his feet and turned around. His back was to the open door now, but he wasn't close enough to be reached by Cujo. "Daniel, this isn't the time for your wild accusations."
"Fine. More fighting, less banter." Another ectoblast flew towards Vlad, but the other man created a pink shield out of his own ectoplasm and grit his teeth as the energy from Danny was redirected and scorched Alicia's floor instead of the front of Vlad's suit.
Maddie missed her HAZMAT suit.
"You don't understand the situation—" started Vlad.
"You mean you don't. You can't salvage this. That ship sailed. But if you want to leave here in pieces, Cujo and I would be happy to oblige."
There was a confirming bark from outside that seemed to rattle the house down to its foundations.
"Stop fighting," Maddie said as Vlad dodged a blast that iced half the wall. He disappeared from sight, and she spun, wondering if he'd retreated, but Danny was still here, and surely he wouldn't be if—
Danny yelped as Vlad reappeared behind him as Plasmius, reaching forward to wrench both of Danny's arms behind him and wrestle him out of the air. "Do try to watch that temper of yours, little badger, unless your intent is to level your dear aunt's house."
"If I wasn't holding back, the house wouldn't be the only thing that was levelled," Danny snarled as he tried to twist out of Vlad's grip.
"Stop it!" Maddie shouted, and she was honestly surprised when the two of them froze. "Vlad, let him go."
Vlad released Danny immediately, holding up his hands seemingly in surrender as he returned to Masters in a flash. His back was to the door again, but he was still too far away for Cujo to reach from outside. Danny remained as Phantom but scowled and retreated to her left. "I only meant to prevent the property damage that would surely result from a fight." With a nod at the floor as he lowered his hands, he added, "Even my defensive measures are not without consequences."
Danny grumbled something that might be obscene under his breath, but now was hardly the time to be scolding him about using foul language.
"As you can see," Maddie said, shooting a warning look at Danny before the glow in his hands could develop into anything damaging, "I'm fine."
Danny made a face at her in return and mouthed what she surmised was, What happened to not stopping me?
She hadn't meant to stop him as much as she had Vlad, but Vlad was right; Alicia could do without the property damage. Danny glowered as Maddie turned back to Vlad and added, "As such, there's no need for you to be here."
"There really is. I— She's here already, I think. Or close to it if she's not."
"Who is?" She was going to make Vlad say it. She needed to hear him say it.
"Your facsimile."
"You seriously think that sounds better than clone, huh?" Danny asked.
Vlad pinched the bridge of his nose. "Must we do this now?"
"We can fight instead; why don't you lead the way outside so Mom doesn't stop us again?"
Maddie tightened her grip on her makeshift weapon. "There's no need to fight, but Danny's right one about thing: you can go outside. You know I'm fine, you've delivered your warning, and there's no need for you to stay."
Vlad was eyeing her weapon now, but he kept a smile on his face. "Surely there's no need to throw me out on my ear after I flew all this way to make sure you were all right?"
"I wanted you to stay with Jazz and wait for word from me or Jack." She still had Vlad's attention, but she could read enough in his expression to know that he knew he didn't hold all the cards anymore. "I certainly never wanted you to attack anyone."
Vlad looked as baffled as she'd ever seen him, which made her wonder if she'd ever truly seen him baffled. "Attack—? Why would I attack anyone?"
"Do you really want me to answer that?" Danny put in. "Because I can. In excruciating detail."
Maddie raised her weapon, making sure to keep her eyes on Vlad and only on Vlad, and he put up his hands again. "There is no need for this," he started. "Whatever you think happened—"
"—actually happened," interrupted Danny, "so stuff it. Get out or you're headed for the rhubarb patch."
There, that was honest bafflement on Vlad's face. "The rhu—?"
Vlad crumpled as Alicia's baseball bat collided with the side of his head. Alicia scowled down at him as Danny let off a quiet cheer, and Maddie wouldn't have been surprised if the two of them had planned this. They'd known she'd wanted to talk, had probably known better than she had that she would keep talking and would distract Vlad, and it wouldn't have been terribly hard for Alicia to sneak out one door and come up behind Vlad the other way. Cujo would have had no issue letting her pass, after all, and Maddie had only noticed her once she'd stepped back inside. By the time Danny had finished his taunt about the rhubarb patch, Alicia had already been swinging.
"That non-lethal enough for you?" Alicia asked, rolling the bat that Maddie still thought of as the original Fenton Anti-Creep Stick between her hands. "I figured it'd be simpler than your contraption, and he seemed solid enough to me that I thought I could risk it."
"We can keep him that way for a while if you shock him now," Danny said, looking at Maddie expectantly. "You owe me that much for stopping me from fighting him when you said you wouldn't."
She hadn't strictly said she wouldn't, but pointing that out wouldn't do her any favours. "I should do one final check first—"
"It'll be fine," Alicia said as she reached for the weapon. Maddie tightened her grip and stepped back, and Alicia rolled her eyes. "I mean it. It's not like you quadrupled its output, and you took apart your first cattle prod at ten. Do you honestly think I don't think you can do this properly?"
"It just needs to keep him from using his powers," Danny added, "so if you misjudged something and it doesn't work, we'll know pretty fast. And if you misjudged something and it works too well, well, just know that we're hard to kill now so I doubt you've managed to make something that'll do that in the time you had."
That was not as comforting as Danny probably thought it was; it sounded entirely too much like he'd had more than that first brush with death.
"Please, Mom? For Dani's sake?"
Alicia reached for the weapon again at Danny's words, and Maddie let her take it. Clearly, they both also knew that would get her in spite of her doubts. She simply…. She didn't know what Vlad could do to them for doing this to him, didn't know how he could spin it (because if the last twenty-four hours had taught her anything, it was that he was very good at spinning a situation so he came out favourably), didn't know how many more puzzle pieces she was missing— However much Danny had told her, some things still didn't add up.
Vlad might not have been telling her the whole truth by any stretch of the imagination, but that didn't necessarily mean he was lying about everything.
He'd claimed another ghost had gotten the idea to clone her, and she knew Danny was likely right to suspect that Vlad was behind it, but that didn't mean he hadn't gotten help from someone else.
Danny would probably insist that that someone else was on Vlad's payroll, so it didn't technically count as helping, but Maddie didn't know enough about the ghosts in their little corner of the Ghost Zone to be sure. Danny was much more familiar with them than she was—Phantom's familiarity was hardly feigned—but if half of what they suspected about the Ghost Zone were true, Danny could hardly have met every ghost. She doubted he'd even met every ghost Vlad had.
Vlad was hardly absolved either way, but it made a difference to her. How much was Vlad, how much was outside influence, and where was that line drawn? How was it blurred? Who else besides Vlad was responsible for the experimentation that had resulted in—
Vlad's body jerked as Alicia put the modified cattle prod to him, and then Danny picked him up as if he weighed little more than a pillow and flew out through the wall in the direction of the rhubarb patch. Alicia glanced at Maddie and said, "I'll be back; I just want to get a chair and some ropes. The old-fashioned kind should hold him if he doesn't have any fancy powers."
Maddie didn't want to think about how any of this would look if Vlad brought charges against them for this, but it was hard not to.
Who outside of Amity Park would believe what would sound like wild claims about ghosts and clones? Maddie knew perfectly well what the rest of the world thought about her line of work; she and Jack were recognized in their field, but their specific field was hardly recognized by a long line of reputable institutions. Vlad would hardly need to try to turn this situation against them, and if he did—
If he did—
She couldn't stop him.
To be fair, appeasement was hardly the only other option she had, but it was the simplest. She'd never been terribly good at bargaining with Vlad, and bargaining worked best when both parties were invested. Vlad had no reason to—
A scream shattered Maddie's thoughts, but instinct had her turning towards the sound and running for the stairs.
She knew that scream.
It was Danielle's.