Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Daniel.” 

“Yes, Mr. Masters?” The robotic voice of the android answer. Vlad has no experience in owning an android, let alone something that wasn't officially connected to CyberLife; it is eerie to see a human face with a human voice complete with timed blinks yet knowing the layer of skin it has is just a hologram. 

“Make me a coffee, will you?” 

“Of course, Mr. Masters.” 

The way the android said his name is eerie too. Of course, Vlad has nothing to compare it to. He'd seen androids and talked with them as a result of his business partners having one on their side at all times, or simply androids manning the receptionist when their human counterpart is off on break. No, but the way it– he refers to him feels… like he's biting back. The words are roboticly polite, yet it felt forced. Is this what people say of androids that started to show deviancy?

It was everywhere on the news, at one point. An android revolution in Detroit. Some androids, or perhaps all of them, have the ability to break their programming and become what's known as a ‘deviant’. They've come a long way from that, getting androids their rights, yadda yadda. To be frank, Vlad doesn't care. He dislikes the use of androids, not because it's inhumane, but because he doesn't trust them. They have a large memory and the quickest connection to call authorities. And really, Vlad doesn't have the patience dealing with them.

His basement lab is sure to have multiple OSHA violations. And Vlad couldn't possibly explain to authorities why he has multiple doomsday weapons, a portal to another world, and various illegal substances yet still being at a 100% health. Explaining his half-ghost status would definitely lead him to be dissected instead. 

It was then that the android, Daniel, brought him his coffee. It's rather nice, actually. Better than what his ghost butlers usually do with it. 

After Daniel is finished with his task, he is back again to his usual spot, the spot right behind Vlad getting in between the bookcase and tabletop. His palms rest neatly in front of his pelvis, at certain times Vlad catches him rocking back and forth in boredom, but mostly he just stares at empty space, ready to be given new instructions. 

Vlad sighs and continues with his work. 

He has plans to kill this android and reassemble it to fit his needs. But for that to happen, he needed to find a way to carefully remove the chip which will notify the Fentons if their precious prototype has been broken into. 

Stupid Fentons. 

Twenty years lost because of that incident. And not even an apology or a simple visit to the hospital! What did he get instead? A wedding invitation, announcing their own happily ever after to mock his own lonely life. Then a baby was born, their laboratory getting acknowledged by the government, and look at that, they're dipping their toes into building realistic android helpers that could easily rival CyberLife itself. A lovely life indeed. 

It was supposed to be a target on Jack only, until he had a quick chat with the beautiful Madeline. She had no guilt or remorse towards Vlad's incident. Instead, she drunkenly blamed it on himself. Him?! The amount of pain he's been through because of Jack's false calculations and Maddie's nonchalant attitude fuels him with rage. 

He almost had them, too. The college reunion he hosted was supposed to be his time to finally get his revenge upon the Fentons, but something got in his way. A black and white blur. 

The reunion was ruined by a ghost attack. And he left no mark on either of the Fentons. 

So Vlad has learned that all Fentons are stupid idiots. Because while they have not acknowledged the horrific incident that turned Vlad into a ghostly freak, they do acknowledge the ghost attack that ruined their college reunion. As an apology gift, they sent him one of their prototypes; a ghost-hunting android. They were planning to collaborate with CyberLife to create an android specifically to protect humans from ghost attacks. Though, Vlad has a strong suspicion that a lawsuit is what they'll get once word of this gets out to CyberLife. 

And not just ghost attacks, they joyously said, it will keep him company in his big lonely mansion by doing menial labor. That sentence alone made him even more frustrated than before. To think that not only these two let their reckless experiment backfired on him without a single shred of regret, they also think he is crippled enough that he couldn't do his own job?

At the memory of their voices, Vlad slams his hand on the table. He is far too mad to focus on work. Damn that android, making him remember everything the Fentons have taken from him. He rubs his head to clear the migraine away, putting a dam on his emotions lest he destroy another favorite mug. It was his limited edition Packers mug. It'll be a pain to clean up. 

He stands up after a deep breath. “I will be in the training room. You will stay here,” Vlad motions to the android. “Do not follow me. And do not go to the basement, understand?” 

“Of course, Mr. Masters.”

Did he see a smirk forming there? Ugh. He'll deal with it later. He has some anger issues to take care of. 

Once Mr. Masters– Vlad left out of sight, Danny springs free. 

He will try it again this time. One foot out, and step. 

Block. 

There is a thought that wasn't from himself popping up, ‘Mr. Masters has told you to stay.’ 

Who cares what that cheesehead says? Danny bites back to his annoying vessel's scolding. That's what he gets for possessing a robot. 

He tried it again, moving the other foot forward. It moved this time. Hand reaching out forward to grab onto something, maybe to heave himself towards the table for starters, despite the red flashes warning him through its body's UI. 

‘You are prohibited to go to the basement.’ 

Who says I'll be going there? 

Whooping to himself in victory as he grabbed the edge of Vlad's desk, he pulled himself closer to the chair. 

A sudden shock pushes him back, toppling back to the bookcase. Business books, science, and Evil 101 books fall on his plastic head. 

“Ow! Would you kill it already?!” 

Looking up, Danny sees a red wall now, blocking his way to the door. Bold letters span in front, ‘STAY HERE.’ 

“Way to be a buzzkill,” Danny rubs his head. “I know you're a robot and everything, but can't you have a little bit of fun? What if I just wanna see the sights? Aren't you bored holed up in Vlad's study all the time?” 

Like every time, no response. This android only talks back when ‘its master’ is asking. It's bad enough to deal with Vlad for a week, it's worse when his vessel starts talking for him in its professional robotic voice. Okay, true, it's technically its body, but Danny is the original! Alive Danny wouldn't put up with this pompous jerk. All he wants is to talk back to the guy, at least. Then, along the way, maybe, punch him in the nose for the comments he made about his mom and dad.

Danny slowly stands up again. Looking at the mess, he sees a task pop up to clean up the books before Vlad shows up. Danny rolls his eyes. He forces the android's body to face the invisible red wall instead. 

Feeling with his palm, the ghost can sense a physical barrier there despite it not being real. Very clever programming, guys. 

Experimentally, he starts to wonder if he can change what the wall looks like. It starts with the color. Surprisingly, the vessel lets him. Danny plays with it for a bit, faking entertainment for the robot, then starts to change the texture. From brick, to concrete, then thinner and thinner until it's plastic, then glass. Danny smirks. To throw it off his trail, he changes the colors again, block by block, until it makes a crude drawing of Vlad with his tongue out. Quickly taking advantage of the robot's awe in looking at its favorite master, Danny smashes the program-wall to pieces. 

‘Task: ???’ 

‘Error 451. Please stay where you are as FentonWorks employees check for signs of deviancy. Calling number–’ 

“Nope!” Danny reaches back to his neck, rips out a chip, then smashes it on the floor with his shoe. 

He's free! He looks back at his hands, but not quite. There are other important things he needs to see, though. Who knows how long this freedom will last?

He sprints out the door, out into Vlad's lab. 

Chapter Text

The old jerk's lab is massive. Danny's memory might be a bit hazy, but he distinctly recalls his parents’ lab to be very cramped; after all, it's rented. Everything is neatly organized, no random substances on the desk that you might confuse yourself with a mug of coffee. There's a bunch of weird stuff in jars, as well. Green tentacles, eyeballs, a small Casper-like ghost, the whole shebang to check off Danny's imaginary list for mad scientists. It looks straight out of an evil lair, complete with a dartboard stamped with his parents’ faces on it, heads desecrated by pointy pin darts. Aside from that, the lab looks fairly professional.

The fruitloop sure loves to document stuff onto paper, Danny thought to himself as he pilfers his way through his documents. There are many experiments regarding ghosts, though most of them involve a ghost called ‘halfa’, whatever that is. Danny tried to read through at least one of them, before giving up on the very dense scientific terms. He then realised he could have read the abstract instead.

‘This research paper observes the differences between a living halfa and a ghost. To answer this question, the researcher offered himself as the controlled subject of a halfa, and using a common ghost from the nether world as the sample of a ghost. Through thorough investigation, the results show the difference in the internal organs of both subjects, in addition to their ecto-abilities and their colorization. The research also reveals to the researcher the system of death itself.’ 

Offered himself? Is this talking about Vlad? 

Danny puts the research paper back with his plastic fingers and starts to search for other clues. 

There are massive chambers, empty, but filled to the brim with green substance. Ectoplasm? Sticky notes hint that this is a cloning device. Danny wonders what it's for. It's a complete 180 from all the ghostly stuff Vlad's got in the lab, unless he's trying to clone a ghost. Probably those ‘halfa's he's read about. 

At the back center of the room sits the opened portal. It's similar to what his parents have. Is it the same blueprint? Did Vlad steal it? However he did to make it, Danny feels uneasy. Well, he feels uneasy with his parents' portal too, and he still doesn't know why. Maybe because he is a ghost, and that's where he is supposed to be. But he has been there for months. It's the same, boring swirling green to infinity. There are some islands here and there, but they mostly belong to ghosts that would kick his ass for loitering. 

“Why do you have your own portal?” Danny asks himself. 

Maybe Vlad is his parents’ rival? Though he has been at Vlad's side for a week, he's either doing business stuff or tinkering in his lab. It's hard to see the posh businessman in a tight hazmat suit, fighting ghosts with ecto-bazookas on his shoulders. He feels like this lab is just a side thing he has – a crazy, demented, and nefarious hobby. The guy clearly is obsessed with ghosts too, just like his parents. Doesn't answer why he wanted to kill them in the reunion. 

What is the correlation here? Danny mentally makes himself a dart board. Then, his vessel helpfully makes one for him, a virtual board right on the wall. 

“Oh. Well, look who's starting to be helpful?” Danny smiles. 

The ghost imagines a picture of Vlad, then a sticky note with the date of the college reunion. Sticky notes labeled with ‘mad scientist ghost lab’, ‘cloning device’, ‘halfa research’, all scattered underneath Vlad. Then he imagines his parents’ faces, along with ‘ghost lab’, ‘met in college’, ‘similar portal’, underneath them. The portal seems like a good place to start. Danny walks up towards Vlad's portal again. He fights the uneasiness as he comes closer to it. He's not a scientist per se, but he does notice the design is very similar, most particularly the hexagonal shape of the portal. A coincidence of the design, or a clear sign that they're using the same blueprint? He looks to the note closest to him, ‘met in college’. Is it possible that they, Vlad and his parents, made the portal blueprints together?

“Daniel?”

Danny's shoulders locked together. Oh no. The virtual board on the wall crumbles to pieces. Without his control, his body turns around to face their master. 

“What are you doing here?” Vlad stands on the top of the stairs, sweaty from his anger management session with the punching bag. 

For once, the vessel lets him stay quiet. It probably didn't know what to say either. We could have hid, you plastic junk! But it's too late now, Danny couldn't get control over its limbs again.

“Daniel.” Vlad steps down closer to Danny's unmoving body. “I specifically told you not to go to the basement. You better answer me this time, what are your intentions here?”

Danny keeps his, and his vessel's, mouth shut. 

The vessel seems to like reminding who is in charge here. 

“I was… cleaning, sir,” Danny's mouth opened unwillingly. For a second, he could instinctively move his hands to cover his mouth, before the vessel took control over him again and kept his arms at his side. 

Vlad sees it, though. “Oh? How interesting.” 

The ghost inhabiting the robot's body suddenly feels a presence as Vlad comes closer. It's weird, he hasn't felt this around Vlad before. Like something is inside him, the same as Danny. But that can't be it. He is a fleshy, squishy human being. Is he possessed? It certainly feels like it. 

Even the vessel feels Danny's fear, as it lets him walk back further towards the wall. 

He should have used that opportunity to bolt towards the open portal, but it's too late now. He's caged in between the wall and the body of his master. 

Oh, he desperately wished to be able to go intangible right about now. 

“I must be reminded again, you androids should have followed every rule I say, is that right?” 

“I… apologize for my incompetence, sir. You may look into my programming to see if I could use a few tweaks.” Danny screamed at its body, What are you doing? Do you want to be disassembled?

“Is that so?” Vlad's hand hovers around his neck, then with a touch on his chin, he moves Danny's head this way and that. The feeling is strange, Danny notes. He has never felt a human touch on his ghostly body before, and it's certainly stranger to feel it through a plastic casing. Uncomfortable. But warm? He guesses it’s a being-alive thing. If Danny had a voice now, he would scream stranger danger. Heck, if Danny had working limbs now, he'd kick Vlad in his balls.

“You rip out your own chip. Isn't that fortunate?” Vlad hums to himself. “I've read about you, you know. Deviants, right? Androids that won't follow their program. Don't worry, I won't report you.” 

In a blink, Danny finds out where that unruly presence comes from. Vlad's skin turned blue, his hair into black, shaping horns arching up as sharp as his fangs, red cape billows around him, and he's wearing the stupidest vampire costume Danny has ever seen. 

Vlad is possessed by a ghost all this time. 

The realisation should have hit him hard, if not for Vlad's next words hitting him harder. 

“Pity that I needed to destroy you, in order to rebuild you.” 

Thankfully, thankfully, the vessel gives him full control. Danny backflips, hitting Vlad's jaw with his feet, then tries to book it to the portal. 

“Maddie! Shut down the portal!”

“Of course, sweet-tums!” A robotic feminine voice that suspiciously sounds like his mother chimed from above the ceiling. 

Metal doors clamp the portal shut just as Danny reached the opening of the portal. “Oh, come on!” 

“You should be grateful!” Vlad snarks as he throws a table at Danny, covering his way to the exit and trapping his torso in place. “If your program is oh so perfect, you should have known the extreme radiation of the Ghost Zone would rot your android body into a mere plastic toy.” 

“Well, how should I know!?” Danny grunts at the impact of the table hitting his chest. “This is clearly not built with an instructions manual inside of it!”

A confused look passes Vlad's face for a second, before a small shocked laugh enters him. “Oh, if I had known that this is what makes you talk.” 

Danny, or perhaps the vessel, finally gathered the strength to push the heavy metal table off of them. He runs upstairs out of the lab. Passes a hurried maid holding laundry, scampering the recently washed clothes all over the floor. Passes ornate chandeliers that he jumped into in hopes to dodge Vlad's ecto-ray, making him crash to the ground, nearly collapsing onto a little kid Danny has never seen before. He has no time to gawk at his new surroundings, being stuck at the same 3 rooms sounds delightful right about now if it means not being disassembled piece by piece.

He tried to dodge another attack by a random stranger as she lifted a chair up onto his body. Danny didn't know how full this mansion was. There are so many people screaming, at the ghost or the ‘deviant’ android, he isn't sure. All he understands were the humans are against him too. Isn't that nice. 

It was when he reached the living area that he thought Vlad might have given up. He seems to find the floor that is not cramped with guests. The private living quarters of Vlad Masters. It looks cold and untouched, a complete 180 at the party downstairs. He tries to catch his breath – which confused him, because he's pretty sure neither he or the android needed to breathe. Until the man himself phased through the floor, clawed hands holding Danny's throat to pin it to the ground. The tightening pressure on their throats slightly cracks the synthetic voice box.

“Oh, it would be a pity to destroy you now that you can talk back.”

“I-if you want,” the android’s voice box crushed even further, but according to the UI that's helpfully generated, it's not enough to break, yet. Though the next sentence he manages to spit out is filled with distortion. “If you want a person to talk back to, get yourself a girlfriend or something!”

Vlad's snarky, confident smile quickly turned downwards. Gritting fangs hiss in frustration. With a mad shout, he thrusts his clawed hands into Danny's chest, ripping apart the plastic in one shred, tearing its thirium pump from blue veins. Blue blood spurts everywhere all over the never-used carpet, staining some to the ceiling. Vlad's cackle is the last thing Danny hears once the distortion clouds his vision. 

Then, he sees white.