Danny awoke the next morning in one of Vlad Masters' guest beds. He groaned and squinted into the dawn light. His head was pounding and his bones felt like they'd been pummeled with a baseball bat.

He looked around the room. On a cozy chair next to the bed, Jazz sat with her eyes closed, her chin on her chest. She was wearing pajamas but her hair was still pinned up, day-old makeup on her face.

It was almost a mirror image of when she'd sat vigil by his side at the hospital months before. He didn't like the memory of it. Not one bit.

"Jazz?" he croaked. She stirred, but did not wake.

Danny assessed his wounds instead. He sat up painfully and pulled at the neck of the T-shirt he was wearing. Someone must have put it on him while he was out. Beneath the shirt were bandages taped to his shoulder, chest and arm. He poked one of the bandages and, though he was very sore, he was sure if he peeled back the bandages he would see that the wounds were healing nicely.

On his side, the first slash he'd gotten from the vultures had closed up and had not been bandaged. His parents must have missed it, not even realizing he'd been injured there.

Thankfully, since he wasn't strapped to an operating table, he must have been in his human form when they found him.

Wait, how had they found him? He didn't remember.

Did his family find him abandoned on the stone floor of the castle's dungeon? Would they have questions about why he'd been there?

He was suddenly glad he hadn't woken Jazz. He wasn't ready to answer all those questions yet.

I mean, who says 'I'm going to the bathroom' and then winds up bloodied and beaten up in the basement?

No one, that's who.

Not unless they were attacked.

Danny was just thinking about all the ways he could spin his tragic experience last night - perhaps an unsuspecting teen attacked by an unknown assailant and then kidnapped, stored, and abandoned in the basement of Vlad's castle? - when Jazz did finally wake.

When she saw that he was sitting up, she rose from the chair quickly and approached him.

"How do you feel?" she asked, hand to his forehead to check for a fever, and then to his bandages to look for infection. "Dizzy? Thirsty? Nauseous?"

"Tired," Danny croaked out. "What the hell happened?"

Maybe feigning amnesia was the best approach.

"You will never, ever believe me," Jazz said, perching herself on the edge of the bed.

"I won't?" Danny asked carefully. "Why not?"

Jazz took Danny's hand in hers. She looked seriously into his face, and spoke softly.

"Ghosts are real."

Her tone was so matter-of-fact. This was it. If she knew, then his parents knew, too. Hell, even Vlad would know now.

Who else? Everyone at the reunion?

The entire world?

"Okay," he said calmly. He didn't know what else to say. He waited for the ax to fall.

"Okay?" she asked, incredulous. "Okay? That's all you have to say? Ghosts are real, Danny! One almost killed you last night!"

"I know-"

"You know!?"

Danny felt completely upside down now.

"Wait," he said, putting his other hand up to stop her. "What are you talking about?"

Jazz stood up and started pacing frantically around the room.

"Vlad found you in the hallway covered in blood. I don't know what you remember, but when we saw you, you were covered in gaping wounds. It was like something had stabbed you - or tore you apart!"

He found me in the hall? Danny thought. How did I get there?

"That's when the ghosts arrived," Jazz continued. "Real ones! Big, terrible bird-things swooping over the party like pterodactyls, like we were in Jurassic Park!"

Danny listened, trying to catch up.

"Mom was a badass! She shot one of the birds in the eye and it fell through the floor. Through. The. Floor!"

Danny only nodded, eyes wide.

"Vlad had you in his arms. Dad was firing at the other two birds, trying to keep them off the other guests who were just panicking, stampeding out the doors. Mom told me to get you to the RV, to put up the anti-ghost shield. Vlad carried you and we got you to safety, but you were in so much pain."

Danny gulped. He'd been inside the anti-ghost shield? No wonder it felt like he'd been hit by a truck. On top of everything his sister had been basically poisoning him by trying to save him.

"And then Vlad just runs off with a plasma-rifle like he's Rambo and like… storms the castle! And then all three of them come out like ten minutes later to check on us, and they said Vlad killed one of the bird ghosts. And I mean, dead-dead. Overcooked. Gone from all existence. How is that even possible!?"

How is that even possible? Danny asked himself.

There was no way a ghost had been… killed. That couldn't be possible - right? It made zero sense.

"I don't know," Jazz continued, reading his expression. She was waving her hands while she talked as if lecturing to a class of unruly children. "That's not the point. The point is that ghosts are REAL, Danny! Mom and Dad were right all along, and I was wrong which I hate! And you almost died, AGAIN. Mom is like a freaking ninja, and Dad tried to die to save her I guess, and Vlad sniper-shot one out of the air, and I just can't… I can't process this!"

Danny couldn't either.

"Ghosts are real," Danny repeated. "They're real."

"Yes," Jazz cried. She sat down on the side of the bed again with a huge sigh. Not of relief, but almost like she had to let the pressure building inside her go or she would burst. "Right? Isn't that the wildest thing you've ever heard? You should have seen Mom and Dad. They were totally different people, they were like… soldiers fighting a war. Mom was out for blood! Or… ectoplasm, I guess."

Danny gulped.

Right, he thought. Out for blood. Soldiers in a war against all of ghostkind.

"So Vlad saved the day?" Danny asked. He thought of the basement, of all its tools and flashing monitors."Does he… is he a ghost hunter?"

"He is!" Jazz leaned forward.

Danny almost laughed at the anxious, excited energy she was giving off. It was no wonder. Her world had completely changed all in one night - like Danny's had months ago.

He knew the feeling.

"Apparently he's been studying specimens that have leaked out of his own Ghost Portal for about a year now. He showed Mom and Dad his laboratory. Apparently it's insane. Way higher tech than ours, but like… duh, the man's a billionaire. I guess he's been sitting on this massive secret. And you know what? Mom and Dad weren't even mad. They're too busy feeling full of like, vindication I guess. Vlad says this was why he invited them here. To share the knowledge, to reconnect. That's why he's been so weird."

"But he lied," Danny said, suddenly remembering. "He told me he'd never seen a ghost. Not once in his entire life."

"Well," Jazz shrugged. "I don't know, maybe he didn't want to spoil the big surprise. And let me tell you, Mom and Dad are so impressed. Dad wants to like… move in. But Mom said no to that - and I don't blame her. This place is fucking haunted."

He so badly wanted to say 'So is our house, Jazz' but he knew better.

Danny closed his eyes and pressed a hand to his forehead. He was really feeling sick now.

"Hey, are you okay?" Jazz sobered immediately and reached out to touch his face again. "You look really pale."

"I think I'm gonna hurl," he said.

Jazz jumped up and grabbed the bedroom's wastebasket and handed it to him. Danny dry heaved over the small container but nothing came out. He panted, his head swimming with dizziness and the overwhelming information that Jazz was layering onto him.

His family knew that ghosts were real. Vlad was a ghost hunter with a not-so-secret lab. A lab where he dissected ghosts. Where he'd been studying them for almost a year without telling anyone.

Danny was overwhelmed. There was too much to consider.

What if Vlad had vital information that Danny and his friends could use to flesh out the Gothica? Clearly he's been unable to catch the very powerful ghost, Plasmius, who seemed to haunt the castle, but he could still know a lot more about the Ghost Zone than Danny currently did.

But what if Vlad found out what Danny was?

"The ghost," Danny said suddenly. "The one that attacked me… did you see a man?"

"A man?" Jazz suddenly looked pale, too. "No, just the birds. You saw a ghost that looks like a man? Is that who attacked you?"

Danny turned away and shrugged. "It's all a little fuzzy."

"That's okay," she reassured him. "You've had a long, long night. But luckily you're healing up well. I think whatever meds Mom and Dad had in the RV really helped. But you have to tell me if you feel queasy again. In case you're having a bad reaction."

"I think I'm fine now," Danny said. "I just… um, it's still really early. Could I get some more sleep?"

"Oh, for sure!" Jazz got up, combed his hair away from his face with her fingers and pressed her hand to his forehead to check his temperature again. Then she nodded. "Get some rest. We're leaving for home in a few hours. Mom's orders. She's kind of my hero all over again and I'm ride or die."

Danny smiled at Jazz. He understood where she was coming from. Their mom had always been a bit of a badass, even before last night.

All the more reason to keep his guard up.

Danny watched Jazz leave, but when the door closed behind her, he stood up from the bed. There was a mirror over the dresser against the wall, so he peeled back the bandages and assessed himself.

"Yup. Healed."

He ran his hands over his shoulder, his chest. Everything was a little pink and raw, but when he pressed on the wounds they were solid without much pain. He looked like shit, though. His face was pale - like, really pale - and bags sat under his eyes as dark as Jazz's day-old makeup. His hair was a mess, he probably smelled, and there was dried blood on his neck and cheek.

He scrubbed them with the heel of his hand and held back a shout of frustration and fear.

His parents had seen the vultures. His whole family knew that ghosts were real.

Was it only a matter of time? Would they realize what he was?

And if they did, would they accept him?

Danny felt like flying very far away.

What would happen if he disappeared anyway, huh? He was almost eighteen, or he would be in February. He could wait until he went off to college but that wasn't until next fall. If he made it into college.

And even if he did run, what would that accomplish? He'd devastate his parents and sister who would have no idea what happened to him. Or, he could try and reveal his secret and hope for the best, and if they tried to dissect him…

Danny leaned down and pressed his forehead to the dresser under the mirror. The cool wood felt nice on his skin, which helped with the nausea.

"I can't do this," he groaned.

He was in no condition to fly a couple of hours back home, nor was he ready to reveal anything at all to anyone else. It wasn't like Tucker was going to be a shoulder he could lean on, and he hadn't gotten a single text from Sam about that whole deal. What if everyone found out about him, but he had no friends to turn to?

He was starting to make himself sick, both in body and mind. And his body - though healing well - hurt.

He hurt so much.

Against all of his survival instincts, Danny crawled back into bed. By the time he'd settled against the pillow and closed his eyes, he was plunged into a merciful sleep.

...

He woke again two hours later to his mother's soft touch on his arm, and he almost dissolved into blubbering tears when he saw how lovingly she looked down at him, as though he were the most important person in the whole world.

If only she knew the truth.

"My baby boy," she whispered. "Look at you, you're doing great. I was so… I was so scared, Danny."

Danny took her hand, which was shaking. "I'm okay, Mom."

"I know you are. Vlad saved your life! I can't believe…"

Danny let her sit silently for a minute, but he had to know.

"Mom?"

"Yes?"

Danny swallowed. "What's the deal with Vlad?"

"What do you mean?"

"I meant to ask… the whole time we were here you seemed so uncomfortable with him. And now he's some ghost hunting, genius scientist with the world's biggest secret on his hands. I just… I don't know what you think about him, and I'd like to know."

Maddie Fenton raised her eyebrows. She'd never known her son to be so perceptive like this.

"I…" She never thought she would have to talk about Vlad of all people with her children. But now everything had changed. "Vlad used to have feelings for me back in college. It was all very… puppy love, I guess? I shut it down as best I could. I mean, clearly I was meant for your father."

Danny smiled. Clearly.

"But I could tell he'd always carried that torch. I guess I assumed that I wouldn't have to think about it ever again after… well after everything went wrong. But now he's back and part of me is a little wary."

"So he does make you uncomfortable?"

"Well, yes and no. He's a good man, and there were good times, too." She turned her head and stared out the window. "He was one of my best friends in the whole world. No, it was never easy with Vlad - he was always teasing your father, making snarky remarks - but I'd also never met anyone else who challenged me like he did. Who thought the same way, who had the same dreams and ambitions. Besides your dad, of course, but Jack's a dreamer. Vlad's a pragmatist like me. I liked that part of him."

Danny tilted his head. "So it's complicated?"

Maddie laughed. "It's complicated. But he saved your life last night, and he is a good man. I wish he'd gotten married or something in the last twenty years, but what can you do?"

"We should get him a cat," Danny said. His mother glared at him but with humor in her eyes.

"That's not nice," she scolded, but she was giggling.

There was a knock at the door, and soon Jack, Jazz and Vlad were all crowding around Danny's bed together. They fussed and asked how he was - he told them he was fine - and then his father announced they'd be leaving soon.

Though Jack Fenton looked quite upset about it.

"It's for the best," his mother said. "Jazz is an adult who has her own life and Danny's halfway through senior year. Besides, the internet is perfect for long-distance research partners."

"Of course!" Vlad agreed. "I'll send you what little research I have on the subject, I swear. It's been slow going but I'm sure having the two of you on the project will speed things up."

"Um, what is the project, exactly?" Danny asked.

Vlad smiled down at him from the side of the bed. "Why, to learn everything there is to know about the afterlife! Where do we go when we die? What are ghosts made of? What do they think, feel, understand about us, their past lives, themselves now? There are too many unanswered questions that only a select few of us are ready to solve."

"What about all the secrecy, though? Jazz said the whole reunion witnessed real-live ghosts."

Vlad glanced at Danny's parents. "I suppose the cat is out of the bag."

"But who is gonna believe it? Sure, there are others out there like us, but half the world will call it a hoax," Jack argued. "But we believe, and we know now that ghosts are fact. Without a shadow of a doubt!"

"So we are the perfect people to answer all those questions," Maddie agreed. "The three of us together, as a team."

Vlad beamed at her, and Danny finally understood what Jazz had meant about 'the way he looks at Mom.' There was definitely something there, but it wasn't his business to meddle with it. His mother was a grown-ass woman.

She could handle herself.

"Take it easy but try to pack," his mother said. "We're hoping to leave within the hour. I've got to-go sandwiches for the car in case you're hungry."

Danny nodded. "Okay, but you all have to leave so I can get dressed."

They all smiled and nodded and disappeared one after the other out of the bedroom door. Danny waited about two minutes - flexing his muscles, testing his strength - before he shifted into his ghostly form, phased through the floor, and headed one last time to the dungeons.

...

This. Is. So. Stupid.

He thought to himself, but he had to know.

Was Vlad onto something huge? Was his secret in danger? Was there valuable information on the Ghost Zone in here?

Would he see Plasmius again? And if he did, what would he do?

Clearly he couldn't fight the ghost, not after everything that had happened before, but maybe there was a way they could help one another...

Danny felt a very stupid plan formulating in his head as he perused the stacks of documents, tried to hack into the computer using vaguely Maddie-related passwords, and poked at a variety of strange ghost hunting gear.

If he weren't a ghost himself, he would consider this a pretty cool - albeit spooky - laboratory. It wasn't so much "evil genius" as it was "occult scientist", and he was sure Sam would get a real kick out of all the intricate stonework and the knowledge that Vlad was obtaining.

But he was a ghost, and this was a room meant to capture, dissect, and study the anatomy and genetic makeup of his own kind.

Well… his half-kind.

Danny could barely understand the gibberish of the papers he did manage to get his gloved-hands on. One of them read like this:

...the ecto-quantum field theory postulates that ectoplasmic entities exhibit non-Euclidean morphology, resulting from the entanglement of their ecto-nuclei with interdimensional rifts. This creates a phased plasma state that is neither entirely corporeal nor ethereal, allowing for spontaneous spectral materialization and dematerialization.

"The…fuck?" he whispered. "Is this just a fancy way of saying that ghosts like… float through stuff and disappear sometimes? Why do academics write this way?"

"I suspect it is because their minds are far more advanced than your own," came a voice from behind him.

Danny nearly jumped out of his own ghostly skin. Plasmius hovered behind him, arms crossed, a smirk on his face. Danny's heart was thudding a mile a minute, but he stood his ground. He would not run.

"I cannot believe you've come back," Plasmius drawled. "Incredible. The absolute gall."

Danny swallowed. "I had to know."

Plasmius tilted his head. "Know what?"

"You realize what this is, don't you?" he asked, gesturing around them. "This is a lab dedicated to hunting and learning about ghosts. It's literally our own personal torture chamber!"

Plasmius did not speak, merely looked around them at all there was to see. He was calm, unaffected.

"I know you want this castle for… some reason. And I know you don't care about the guy who lives here, just the Dairy King-"

"I wouldn't say that," Plasmius said with a sarcastic shrug.

"But…" Danny couldn't believe what he was about to say. "If we worked together, if you disrupted his research on this end, and I disrupted research on the other side-"

"The other side?" the ghost asked. "What other side?"

"The human who lives in this castle is teaming up with my- er, with another pair of humans. They're going to share research. They're going to discover more about ghosts, the afterlife, the Ghost Zone… all of it. They're going to tell the whole world about us. Maybe even destroy us all."

Plasmius thought for a moment. Then his mouth opened into a fanged grin that sent Danny into a fit of shivers.

"You would… disrupt the research of the other human pair? Prevent them from making scientific breakthroughs about ghosts?"

"Yes. And you would do the same here."

"Oh, naturally," Plasmius drawled again, his snarky accent catching on every syllable, like a purring cat. "But why? Don't you want to know more about the Ghost Zone, too? Are you not fresh off the Reaper's scythe, so to speak?"

"How do you know that?" Danny asked.

"I know a lot about you. But not enough. In fact, there is still one problem with your little plan."

"What's that?" Danny asked nervously.

"I still want to study you."

Plasmius advanced forward and Danny immediately floated backward. His back was quickly pressed up against the stone wall of the dungeon, cornering him.

"Why?" he asked. "What do you care?"

"That is not your concern. It is merely my condition. Someday, very soon, I will call upon you again, and you will not run. You will not fight me. You will allow me to measure and test your progress as you grow and gain powers beyond your wildest dreams."

Danny frowned, completely ill-at-ease.

"And," Plasmius finished, "you will not object to my taking samples of your ectoplasm when I see fit."

"You want like… my bodily fluids? No, that's seriously weird, my guy." Danny suddenly remembered the night before, or at least pieces of it. It was all still so fuzzy. "Didn't you... I thought you...?"

"Took a piece?" Plasmius cackled. "I did! How clever. But no, it is not enough. You would be shocked how quickly your genetic makeup changes as your powers grow."

"What do you mean?" Danny asked. "Will I get more? You said they'd be beyond my wildest dreams. How do you know all this?"

The ghost said nothing but, "Samples. You will allow me to take them."

"No," Danny snapped.

Plasmius shrugged. "Then what do I care about the research of a mere mortal? What do I care if a few ghosts wind up on his operating tables? It is no concern of mine, I assure you, for I'm too powerful for him to catch."

Danny believed him. But his demands didn't feel like an even trade. After all, the whole point of stopping his parents was to not wind up a test subject.

"What are you going to do with my ectoplasm?"

Plasmius stood there, eerily silent, and said nothing. Danny knew that he should turn around. Float away. Never come back.

But if he was going to protect himself - and he guessed, all ghostkind, even this asshole - from being discovered by the whole human world, it seemed there was no alternative.

He just wouldn't tell Sam about any of this. Or Tucker, if he ever spoke to him again.

"Fine," Danny growled. "For now, we have a deal. You disrupt the research here, without harming a human, and I'll disrupt the research there."

Plasmius grinned again, a low chuckle escaping him. His vampiric fangs glistened just above his lower lip. He stretched out a hand for Danny to shake, and Danny, with some trepidation, took it.

"We've an accord, little Halfa."

They shook on it, and then, before Danny could ask any more questions about the word Halfa, or even draw a breath, Plasmius disappeared and was gone.

Danny stood in the dungeon alone, terrified that his very strange deal with the devil had been struck.

That's the end of the Plasmius arc! I hope you like the strange turn we've taken. I'm hoping it will lead to interesting things!

I can't keep promising I will update with any sort of frequency - especially as I work to financially stabilize myself and work on my career - but I do solemnly swear that this fic WILL be finished. In the meantime, please keep commenting, guessing, speculating, and sharing your thoughts about the story! They're heartwarming and fun to read and some of your comments really help me find more ways to bring these characters to life.

Thanks again for sticking by me!

-Song