It was weird being back in Amity Park. Though Amity Mall had been a bust, Danny wasn't exactly keen to go running back into the woods.
When was the last time she'd been in a city?
Not a rural area, not surrounded by a bunch of trees?
Danny couldn't remember and that concerned her.
She sat down at a bus stop, suddenly feeling light-headed. An uncomfortable pain began to churn in her guts, but she ignored it like most sensations.
Danny got comfortable, stretching out across the whole bus bench.
Hopefully no one else would insist on sitting down and bothering her.
She closed her eyes, intent on a nap.
"Oh my, isn't it a bit late for you to be out here, sonny?"
Her blurry eyes caught sight of an apparently nosy old hag with stark white hair…riding a mopad?
What. The. Fuck?
Danny was in no mood to talk to anyone, not even Vlad.
But she couldn't ignore someone who insisted on talking to her. She eyed the mopad with suspicion – it was silver and looked much too expensive to be handled around such a sketchy neighborhood.
Danny felt her free hand clump up into a fist, the other supported her sleeping baby, cradled in his sling.
She wished she'd had the foresight to steal a magazine or newspaper, anything to look busy on the bench, to discreetly chase the women away, short of running away into the bushes like a feral animal.
Not like it'd be too far from the truth...
Not like a random nosy old lady would have any reason to chase after her if she did, right?
It's not like the old lady knew she'd stolen her food and clothing.
She had nothing to worry about.
Typically.
"The buses don't run until sun up, dear. What are you doing out here? It's freezing!"
'Thankfully, there's snow,' Danny thought.
She looked at the old lady sternly, hoping to scare her away.
"None of your business lady," then she added, "My baby just fell asleep and if you wake him up, so help me I'll-" Catching sight of the lady's startled expression, her words trailed off, thinking better of finishing her mean-spirited sentence.
She didn't want to give the old lady a heart-attack.
"Mr. Danny Fenton, I had no idea you were a teenage father. Sammie-Sam told me you haven't been over lately since you were under a lot of stress, much like your sister Jasmine, but it looks to me that Sammie made light of it all. Danny I had no idea you had to deal with parenthood so young."
At the mentioning of her own name, Danny felt paranoia prickle against her skin. She had never seen this lady before, ever.
"No wonder I never see you at the mansion anymore. I still see Tucker though. Know you're always welcome to come."
Just who was this lady?
Who was Sam?
Just what was a Tucker?
'How do you know who I am!?' she seethed.
This random person shouldn't have been able to recognize her.
Danny Fenton, on paper, was legally dead last she checked, along with the entire Fenton family.
Who was this person? How was she recognized?
'My sister Jazz is dead! I'm dead,' she wanted to shout at the top of her lungs, but instead she clutched her baby closer and protectively hunched over him with a glare. To say Danny was on edge would've been an understatement.
Perhaps this old lady wasn't perfectly human.
Expecting the women to attack her, she got up to leave, backpedaling towards the woods.
Only a ghost would talk about the dead as if they were alive.
She hated ghosts.
'Buzz off!' She almost shouted, before remembering the sleeping baby against her.
"Leave me alone lady, I don't wanna talk." It took everything in her power to keep to whispers, and to not throw the first punch. Her undead heart swelled into her throat, seizing with acidic bile.
She wanted to scream.
She wanted to be alone.
Yet the baby was still asleep
The lady looked away, as if making up her mind about something. She took a sharp looking object out of her front jacket pocket, which made Danny flinch before she realized it was harmless - a pen and paper?
"Here Danny, my phone number. Please call me if you ever need help, or just a place to rest. I know those ghost hunting parents of yours can be a bit...much. Please don't be afraid to ask for help, I'm here for you, friend of Sam's or not."
Then the old lady spun around on her mopad a bit too quickly, finally leaving her alone.
Danny's first inclination was to crumple up the paper she'd been handed, but her curiosity won out.
Ida Manson, was the name written along with a phone number.
Throwing the paper into her belly, she was sure it'd be forgotten with the rest of her junk.
Vlad Masters blinked open his eyes, feeling startlingly more sluggish than his usual days.
He only felt so terrible on days his plans fell through and he immediately felt uneasy.
'What had happened?' He thought.
He stood up in a panic, concluding he must've forgotten something important.
Instantly he regretted it, almost faceplanting forward from sitting up too quickly. Masters wobbled on his knees for a split-second before remembering he could fly and hovered in place. He took in a broken tea cup at his feet, and noticed how dark tea had stained his dress slacks.
A shame, the cup had come from one of his favorite discontinued sets and his dry cleaning service wasn't due for pick up in another day or so.
A ringing alarm from his wristwatch drew his attention. It must've been what woke him up. He rubbed his forehead, finding it feverous as a headache raged inside. With a nail verging on transformation into a claw, he muted his scheduled alarm – and it was not his typical 6 am wake-up call.
Instead it was a notification, for an emergency fireside chat to be held at Amity Town Hall, scheduled for that very afternoon – concerning another deadly ghost attack.
Unfortunately, as he was Amity's Mayor, expected to give it.
Vlad Masters was in no mood for such useless work.
Already he was scheduled at noon for a meeting to address the "Nasty Burger Explosion," which had surprisingly killed his best agent – Valerie Gray, the Red-Hunter, was dead.
It was surreal reading such grave news from a text message, but there it was, flashing blue into his tired eyes.
He couldn't even manifest the energy to be angry at Valerie.
He was just disappointed, curling against himself as he fell back into his armchair.
And while Vladimir considered himself a callous, prickly man of character, he had respected Miss Valerie, right up until her blunt resignation two years ago
When she had suddenly quit on him.
And he'd been momentously furious when he had found out why.
Valerie had discovered his ghostly secret, knew he was Plasmius, the Wisconsin Ghost.
'Well, looks like another loose-end tided itself up,' he thought. 'If only all my agents ended up as convenient as Valerie's death.' The girl at the time had been more useful alive than dead, keeping the ghosts in Amity at bay; and her silence was easily bought, by giving her father Damon Gray a well-paying job at Vladco Labs - then Valerie couldn't spill his secret without breaking her father's heart.
And said secret had been unraveled with the help of Daniel and… Danielle.
He didn't like to remember that little clone.
That little failure.
He wondered if Danielle still existed.
He never created her to last.
But she persisted past his expectations, last he checked.
He checked his phone further – apparently the recent incident was at…Amity Mall? He'd have only a few hours if he wanted to get another nap in before noon.
And then there was a text notification – from Jack Fenton. Shaking his head, almost laughing as he threw his phone aside onto a couch.
It was nap-time, and he had no patience for such nonsense.
Transforming into Plasmius, he found the process more taxing than normal.
The black rings which would expand across his belly with a snap, sputtered as they traveled up his body, notably slowly.
His ghostly body felt abnormally cold as it manifested, as if he had been a campfire doused by a bucket. He rubbed his hands together, desperate to make the tiniest difference in his body temperature.
Vladimir grumbled, clutching his head, firmly in denial that he had a headache.
It would take days for his plasma attacks to warm up into a healthy state, and that's if he kept his usage to a minimum.
'That's the last time I gallivant through the snow without the best jacket money can buy.'
'The troubles of being rich,' he muttered. He had so much to do and while he enjoyed his work as one of the wealthiest CEOs on the planet it came with the caveat of attending business meeting after business meeting his entire week, for every week, on account of how many he owned.
And Vladimir was much too stubborn to admit he'd bought more companies than any normal human could respectably handle – he was infamous for having no free time.
Normally he relished being busy, how his public persona was seen as a diligent hard-worker, despite his wealth.
But now was not such a time. He cracked his arched back, his poor posture unbecoming of his refined stature, but sleeping in a armchair had not been the wisest decision.
Not that he'd done it on purpose.
"I've spread myself too thin…," he said, out loud. "I'm getting old if I'm forgetting lessons I've learned as a child."
'Don't go out without a jacket, you'll catch a cold,' he remembered adults always telling him after it snowed fresh powder.
'Stupid. Fool.'
But he'd never admit that he'd gotten sick.
The baby was resting in a carved out tree stump, stuffed full with red hot charcoal, which cradled it better than any blanket, or her cold arms could.
Danny stared down at the sleeping child, envious that she was too restless to join him in a well deserved nap.
There had been something horribly wrong about that bird she'd eaten earlier and if Danny still had a digestive system, she figured she would've been retching up a storm from both ends. Her stomach rolled in a manner it rarely did, the sensation of ice defrosting into a boil.
The numerous, putrid-green chimeras which haunted the woods came to mind – and the idea of consuming such suspect ectoplasm from a moose-bear or a cougar-hare made her want to spew chunks.
She'd only made that mistake once.
Perhaps that bird had been contaminated with the same sort of rancid ectoplasm…it hadn't flown too far from the very same forest after all…
Danny's stomach burned, the pain stretching down to even her toes and fingernails. She grabbed what little snow there was, piling it together to make herself a resting space.
But so little snow peppered the ground and her bed was reduced to cold mud.
Danny could do little else but brace for the pain, sliding around in the mud. She briefly grabbed hold of a tree trunk, for support in a stiff hug.
Time blurred away, as if taken by heat stroke. Danny could no longer count her steps as she began to pace back and forth, bile reaching in her throat.
For one delusional second, Danny was certain Vlad was standing besides her, the familiar ominous hum of his heart-core pounding as blood pooled in her ears, yet when she looked over her shoulder to greet him – there was nothing - not a thing.
Not a sign of him, standing there.
Just the blistering smoke from her own hot breathing. And in a ghost who breathed ice, spewing fire might end up killing her.
There was a medicine that could cure her pain, her ridiculous digestive distress, which only Vlad knew how to find and make.
She cursed the fact she never paid close attention to his botany lessons.
She got bored after botany lesson number 7,409, and had proceeded to forget what she'd learned over the decades.
She needed Vlad, wanted him more than ever.
Eventually Danny crawled over to the baby's tree stump, and watched it sleep in its cradle-cinder bed.
She wondered what Vlad would think of the sight. Would he want to eat him, or to name him? Both?
Perhaps he'd want to name him after a sandwich?
Then she looked away, ashamed at the cursed thought.
Vlad ate many questionable things, but babies never.
She shouldn't think poorly of him.
And she missed him.
Her stomach churned violently at the thought of eating, and Danny toppled over onto her knees, vomiting red ecto into the mud.
There was a red fez hat, stained with car paint and glass.