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Vlad took his fourth ectoblast to the chest and hit the basement floor of Fentonworks hard. The blow knocked the wind clean out of him and forced him to waste valuable time rolled over on his side, gasping for breath.
None of the ghosts he’d fought before had been this strong, and beneath the anger and pain coursing through his limbs, Vlad was scared.
He’d only just struggled to his feet, leaning heavily on the nearest wall when the ghost chasing him phased through the ceiling, arms crossed leisurely and a wide grin on his face.
“Oh man, don’t tell me you’re running away already!” the ghost taunted. “It’s been so long since I’ve had a halfway decent challenge.”
Vlad tried to put all of his weight on his feet, but his ankle was sprained from a punishing kick the ghost had landed on him and it couldn’t take the weight. Instead, he pushed lightly off of the ground and floated, if only to face his new enemy with some semblance of dignity.
“I don’t run away,” Vlad growled, not really feeling the confidence he was trying to exude. The last thing he needed was to be made fun of by his enemy. Vlad hated being made fun of; it made him sloppy and Maddie was always lecturing him about how easy it was to make him sloppy.
“Could have fooled me, kid,” the ghost replied, floating down so that they were on equal footing (so to speak). “Now, I’ll ask again—”
He raised a hand, now glowing bright green. Vlad flinched—he didn’t think he’d be able to take too many more of those and he wasn’t keen on testing the theory out.
God, why had he come to Amity again? Jack and Maddie were no where to be found (despite this fight currently taking place in Jack’s house!). If they were making out while Vlad was getting his ass kicked, they were going to be sorry they’d ever invited him to spend the summer with them in their weird, ghost infested town.
“—why were you trying to steal from Danny Fenton?”
Vlad almost rolled his eyes. The reason he’d been stealing (although he didn’t really count it as stealing if Jack asked him to do it) was that they’d needed a new Fenton Thermos after Jack had dropped the last one straight into the gutter. They’d looked for hours, but it hadn’t mattered in the end. Jack had said his old man wouldn’t notice if another went missing, so Vlad had no idea why this ghost cared so much about missing gear when the Fentons didn’t.
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” Vlad said. He risked a glance over his shoulder (Maddie had told him to never take your eyes off the enemy, Vlad, how many times do I have to tell you!), scanning over the various gadgets that Fenton senior and his friends had designed for ghost hunting. There were weapons, half finished GPS systems and ghostly detection units… and there, near the end of the table closest to Vlad, was the thermos he had come for. If he could just get to the thermos…
The ghost let out a dry laugh. “You wouldn’t, but that doesn’t make stealing any less wrong. What do you even call yourself, kid? I like to know the names of the ghosts I send back to the zone. Makes it easier to track you down next time I catch you with your fingers in the proverbial cookie jar.”
“Plasmius,” Vlad ground out, floating slightly back, away from the ghost. He hoped it would look like a tactical retreat and not an attempt at the thermos. “Vlad Plasmius.”
“Vlad Plasmius,” the ghost said, mulling it over. “That’s a pretty big name for a pipsqueak like you. So… what’s your gimmick? You shoot plasma out of your hands? Do you turn into the stuff?”
“Wh—what are you talking about?” Vlad asked, taken aback. “I don’t have a gimmick!”
The ghost shrugged, ectoblast still glowing steadily in his hand. “I doubt that, Dracula. Most ghosts have a gimmi—oh, is it blood, like plasma? That would go with the fangs, at the very least. But the rest of you looks pretty human…for a ghost. No creepy eyes, weird hair… have you considered investing in a cape?”
Vlad floated back further, now feeling defensive. Maybe he was still pretty new at this, but it wasn’t like he was some one-trick pony like Skulker or Technus or any of the other ghosts he’d fought in the last few months. Hell, there was a box ghost! And a lunch lady ghost! Vlad was at least a little more impressive than that!
The ghost laughed again, but this time, he let the ectoblast in his hand die out.
“I’m Phantom,” he said firmly, “and Amity is my territory, kid. I don’t know how you didn’t sense it, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt just this once. Get out, and I won’t give chase. That’s about the best you’re gonna get tonight.”
Vlad scoffed. “You can’t have an entire town, that’s insane! I have every right to be here as you do!”
Whatever goodwill Phantom was willing to show, whatever calm cheer he was feeling vanished from his face in a second.
“This town’s been mine for the last twenty years, Plasmius,” he growled. “Don’t think I won’t ground you into dust for threatening it.”
Vlad was so close to the thermos, but he wasn’t sure that he’d be able to beat Phantom to it if he caught on to what Vlad was trying to do. That ghost was the fastest thing he’d ever seen, and Jack and Maddie had clocked him at nearly 170 a week or two ago. He couldn’t risk turning around, not yet.
Phantom landed in front of him and stepped forward, scowling.
“If you know what’s good for you, I won’t be seeing you in this town again,” he said with a glare.
Vlad’s back hit the table (yes, yes!) and as discreetly as possible, he grabbed the thermos.
Phantom raised his hand again.
“No,” Vlad crowed, “I won’t be seeing you in this town again.”
As fast as he could, Vlad popped the top off the thermos and—
A thick piece of ice blasted from Phantom’s hand and hit Vlad’s wrists, knocking the thermos away. A second blasted him back from the table entirely.
“Oh, kid,” Phantom’s voice echoed, but Vlad’s head was spinning and he couldn’t pinpoint where Phantom was. “You really shouldn’t have tried that.”
Vlad tried to blast the ghost back anyway, but the pink ectoray he tried to fire off faded away the fainter he felt.
“That the hardest you can hit?” Vlad taunted instead, because he was a glutton for punishment if nothing else.
Phantom’s laugh echoed again, and Vlad felt dizzier. He lost track of where Phantom was completely.
“You don’t want to know how hard I can hit, Vlad,” Phantom said, and all of a sudden he was right in front of Vlad, fist driving into Vlad’s stomach before Vlad even knew he was there.
It was a hit that would drop someone twice Vlad’s size and sure enough, he was out before he hit the floor. Phantom had expected as much; most ghosts couldn’t take even half of the damage that Plasmius had taken and stay upright, let alone fight for as long as he had managed.
What he hadn’t expected were the two jet black rings that appeared around the ghost (the halfa, Phantom corrected himself in dawning horror) and revealed his human form.
“The ghost kid…is Jack’s friend?” Phantom said aloud, all previous animosity drained out of him in a second as he looked at the young man who was currently staying in a Fentonworks’ guest room.
Two shining rings appeared at Phantom’s waist as he turned back into Danny Fenton, owner and operator of this lab and father to a young Jack Fenton. He stared down at the kid, mind racing as he tried to parse what he was seeing.
“Damnit Fenton, you really know how to take care of kids, don’t ya?” he muttered under his breath, kneeling down quickly to assess Vlad’s injuries.
He put aside the fact that the kid was a halfa (that he wasn’t alone anymore, that there was someone else like him); he’d done a number on the kid and Danny needed to patch him up before they had a serious talk about how all of this had happened. Quickly, he picked up the teen and laid him on a nearby table, rifling around for medical supplies. He didn’t have exactly what he needed, but he had enough knowledge of the injuries he’d doled out and of halfa biology to make it work.
Once he patched the teen up, he brought him up to his bed and left him to rest. Danny didn’t wait around, after that. Vlad would wake up when he woke up, and in the meantime, Danny had work to do.
It wasn’t every day one discovered a second member of their species after being the only one for over twenty years, and Danny was pretty excited for what the future might bring for the two of them.