Things are… well, not quite going as you’d planned.
“There’s no way this is going to end well,” the hostage says, which would normally be par for the course, except it’s immediately followed by a strangely sincere, “I’m so sorry you chose me of all people. I bet even dad would handle this more with more grace than me.”
A distinct pause. You squint at the helpless boy, who seems to rethink his words for a moment.
Eventually, the kid admits, “Well, okay, maybe that’s stretching it a bit.”
“Yes,” you say, deciding not to mention that you’d scrapped the idea of holding the father Fenton for ransom not just because Mayor Masters seems… well, irreverent of him, but also because he’s a big hulking mass of a man who could probably snap steel chains by accident. The son’s practically stick-thin in comparison. “The only one who’s going to be sorry is the mayor, if he doesn’t pay up. Don’t worry, you won’t be alive to feel sorry about yourself,” you add, feeling pleased with yourself for that little quip.
The boy — Daniel — looks utterly unmoved. Maybe he’s in that stage of teenagery where he thinks he’s invincible? All the ghosts probably don’t help with that, huh. Maybe he thinks he’ll come back if he gets killed.
Admittedly, it had been unexpectedly hard to pin him down. Daniel seemed to have an uncanny knack for escaping locked rooms (it was a closet without any vents or windows, how did he get out) and any other kind of traps that would’ve made it harder to associate you with the disappearance; you’d been forced to confront the kid in person and knock him unconscious that way and just never take your eyes off him, in fear that he’d just dissolve into the air the moment you looked away.
Danny involuntarily changes forms when the other is injured as a way of protecting himself from otherwise extreme or fatal damage. He used to think the default was to go to Fenton, but really it was just because he’s never been hurt enough as Fenton to turn back to Phantom. One day, that changes.
It’s almost poetic that after so long of ghosts beating him back into human form, a human would beat him into ghost form.
That’s not to say that the human didn’t have help.
Danny groans from his place at the bottom of his locker, biting his lip against the pain of a rib stabbing into a lung. Skulker had broken it this morning, and Dash had no reason to hold back in pummeling his favorite punching bag. Even with Danny’s (rather experienced) self-administered treatment, a bit of gauze isn’t going to do much for a direct slug to an already injured area.
The taste of iron lingers on his lips as he clumsily wipes the green-speckled red smear of blood on a sleeve, light-headed.
He kind of appreciates that it’s dark in here. Something tells him that a lot of light would give him a killer headache right now. A few slivers of light do make it through the slats in the door, so he doesn’t quite believe that he’s falling weightlessly into shadows, but it’s mostly quiet and dim and not the worst place to curl up and stifle a broken cough, that’s for sure.
So my latest obsession is apparently the official twitter for the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is about half recall announcements for various shitty amazon products and half…..memes? pseudo-memes?? works of surrealist art??? what do i even call these
Whoever made these is either a random middle-aged government worker who’s spent enough time with Young Internet People to be at least 60% sure what a meme is or a Gen Z artistic genius and i can’t decide which
Vlad Masters’ housephone rang for the first time in 20 years.
Vlad jolted. It was a noise so starkly unfamiliar that he looked to his cellphone first, then the shut off television, both black and wholly silent. Quiet followed, and Vlad sat in his muddy confusion, eyes roving across the empty study, until the second ring of the phone clicked into memory, and he recognized the sound.
Vlad smiled.
He placed his heady romance novel pages-down. He adjusted both his glass of wine and Maddie the cat so that he could disentangle himself from the armchair. He stood, and followed the phone’s offbeat tittering, its imitation of clambering metal, and snagged it from the line just before the third ring died.
“Hello?” Vlad said, cradling the receiver to his ear, cushioned in the fringes of his bathrobe.
“Vlad, hello,” that lovely lovely voice answered. “It’s Maddie.” As if it could have been anyone else.
“Oh, Maddie! This is a pleasant surprise, my dear.”
This phone line was not Vlad’s business line. This was the line reserved for friends and family only—which was to say, for Maddie only. Sure, she’d shared the number with Jack, though he insisted purely on texting Vlad’s cell. To stay “hip.” To “trend with the kids.” Jack had not texted him in a long while.
“Sorry to be bothering you so late, Vlad. It’s just—"
“Oh no bother at all!” Vlad traded the phone between hands. “I feel like it’s been ages since we’ve last spoken. How are you? Wonderful as always, I imagine.”
“I’m… not so great, actually, Vlad.” Maddie answered, and Vlad could have scoffed. A remarkable understatement, given what Vlad knew, and what Maddie did not know he knew. “It’s… I’d like your opinion—your expertise—on something. It’s… it’s important. Jack and I don’t know who else to turn to.”
“Ohhhhh,” Vlad sucked air through his teeth, “now I am quite busy. The McGovern merger is going through by end of the month and with the re-election campaign and everything--”
“Lunch? Just.. lunch? An hour or two of your time. Really. I can make it fast.”
“My dear I would so love for all of us to meet up like old times but I really cannot overstate how busy I am with--.”
“I won’t bring Jack.”
Vlad fell quiet, smile cracking unseen on his lips. He wasn’t even here to play this game, but he was a man who so loved being handed a victory.
“Just us. Just us two, Vlad. You can pick the place.”
“Oh now that does make things a touch more convenient. You see I already have a reservation for two set up at a nice little spot near the campaign office tomorrow,” Vlad lied. “It was going to be a quick little affair with one of my donors, but, I am sure they can reschedule.”
“Thank you. Thank you. Just tell me the place and time, I’ll be there.”
“Oh don’t even fret. I’ll send a driver to pick you up. Expect him around 11:30. Anything I should know before our… consultation?”
Maddie fell silent.
“…No. No, I don’t think so. I don’t want to give you anything that might… make you jump to any conclusions. I think I need to explain it all at once.”
“I understand completely, my dear. Wear something red, won’t you? It’s a stunning color on you.”
“Sure. I’ll—11:30? I’ll keep an eye out. Here. For the driver.”
“Yes, 11:30. Until then~”
Vlad hung up, and he ruminated on what he’d agreed to—or perhaps instigated.
This was a matter of clinical curiosity. After all, he was tabling his pursual of Maddie for the time being. A project on hold—cooled, but not soured, he assured himself, as he did not care enough about what happened to feel truly sour.
Vlad suppressed a small laugh. It was funny almost, powerfully ironic, how ideal this situation would have been to him 2 weeks earlier. But it was tainted by the knowledge of what Maddie wanted to discuss.
Vlad knew, and the swaths of blood stains on the carpet knew, which neither bleach nor vinegar had been able to fully lift from its fibers.
…
Sunlight fell like waterfalls through the second-story bay windows of Le Petit Capot. The tables were well-spaced, private despite the vastly open floors. Each was decorated with a satin white table cloth, napkins folded into roses, candles brand new and unlit. A string quartet played near the fountain, a dash of ambient background noise and mindfully polite chatter from the tables already seated. Vlad sat, confident and eager, perusing the wine menu and wondered whether Maddie might be jealous of everything she’d missed out on when Vlad ordered the most expensive bottle on the list.
“Sir.”
Vlad raised his eyes. The host approached, pulling out the second chair from Vlad’s table and gesturing to it. He watched Maddie enter from behind, clad in a stunning red dress whose creases suggested it had lived in her closet for the better part of many years. Vlad took another small victory in how so very out of place Maddie was here. Stunning, beautiful, yes. But she could not carry herself well. She shifted visibly in her dress. They were different creatures, clearly, she and Vlad.
“Thank you,” Maddie took her seat, and the host bowed and exited.
“Wine menu, my dear,” Vlad handed over the menu as though offering a business contract. “I am already intending to order this cabernet,” Vlad said, tapping the priciest item on the list. “We can order a second bottle of course, if anything else catches your eye.”
The wine list did not catch her eye. They were too tired and dull and lifeless for much at all to catch their attention.
“No thank you.”
“Appetizers, then? I know escargot can be a bit cliché in this kind of establishment, but if you’ve never had truly superb—”
“I think I should just. Get started.” Maddie’s hands had vanished beneath the tablecloth, but Vlad could tell she was wringing them out of sight from the uncomfortable shift and shuffle of her arms. Her eyes darted about. Her voice dropped. “Since you’re… busy. I don’t want to waste time.”
“Just the cabernet then. And the escargot, for the table.” Vlad flagged the waiter over. Maddie avoided looking at either of them as Vlad ordered.
“Now then—” Vlad leaned forward, one arm out and palm up, inviting conversation. “You seem quite bothered. What is it you’d like to tell me?”
“Danny’s dead.”
Maddie’s eyes refused to find his as she spoke. Vlad arched an eyebrow, less surprised by the statement as much as he was by its bluntness, by its phrasing. Not “a ghost.” Not “Phantom.” Dead.
“My… my goodness,” Vlad said, constructing whatever kind of faux reaction an uninvolved, non-half-ghost billionaire may have. One who did not already know every detail of what Maddie intended to divulge today. “Oh my sweet dear. I’m devastated. I saw him just a few days ago it feels like.” Vlad reached a hand out, and he pulled Maddie’s right arm up above the table, cradling her hand in his. “When did this happen?”
“Last week. Sometime. I don’t know precisely.”
And Vlad faltered. He was not usually one to falter, but he’d come to this meeting knowing everything, and the everything he knew would not have included an answer like that. “A year ago,” she should have said. “When Jack and I built the portal,” she should have said.
So she was lying to him then, maybe, Vlad thought, a bit colder. An odd choice for a woman who’d come absolutely begging to him for help.
He let none of this show on his face.
“My god. Did he go missing? My Dear you should have told me sooner. I could have had the whole town’s forces out searching for him. I’d have dropped my re-election responsibilities in a second if—”
“Can I… explain please? Can I just explain?” Maddie whispered. Vlad nodded, and rubbed his thumb in circles along her hand, still grasped in his.
“Last week—a week ago today—Jack and I captured Phantom. We brought him back to the lab and dissected him. To study him.”
The rhythm of Vlad’s thumb faltered. He kept it off his face, but it soured something in him, deeper and worse, to hear how few words it took her to say it. How clinical it was, the way she said it.
Vlad remembered it differently.
The desperate slamming pounding on his front door from a boy too weak to phase through. Arms hugged deathly tight around midsection as the only pressure holding organs inside. The whole front of his suit torn away, skin peeled and the whites of his clothing dyed black with rusted crimson and crusted ectoplasm. And the noise—the attempt at speaking—the look in his eyes which was so far gone—the elements which Vlad could not remember without the memories clamping like a fist around his entrails.
Vlad swallowed it all down. His heart rate was rising, and that was silly, as he had nothing to be worked up about.
“Phantom escaped. Jack and I were taking a break, and a cuff was loose—Jack had meant to fix it before, but must have forgot—and it. When we came back down into the lab, Phantom was gone.”
Vlad nodded, staring with an expression he was making sure looked rapt. He was studying her face. He was finding she hadn’t aged quite as well as he’d always thought. That rapturous beauty that had held him throughout college had gone somewhere.
“That—by itself, missing a subject. It wasn’t a problem. Ghosts have escaped before. It happens. Jack and I didn’t think too deeply about it.” Maddie glanced to the right. The waiter hovered against the other wall, wine bottle in hand. He’d read the atmosphere of the table and tried to tuck himself away until a good moment. Maddie sighed. She pulled her hand from Vlad’s. She stared down as she spoke, quieter. “I never… thought Phantom was a vengeful spirit. …I was wrong. God. I was wrong. If I could have just destroyed him on the table. …If Jack and I had never captured him.”
Vlad was glad, in the moment, that Maddie would not meet his eyes. There was emotion bleeding through on his own face which he could not wipe away.
(“I have to tell them, right…? That it’s me…?” Danny, stitched back together to the best of Vlad’s ability, kept alive with the entanglement of machines Vlad had once used to incubate Danny’s clones. He could only speak when the machine breathed for him. A rasp instead of a voice. Eyes too dry to cry, dehydrated and spent from all the screaming and sobbing Vlad had not been around to witness, and could only imagine. “I can’t hide this. They’re gonna know…”)
“Maddie… my dear… I’m—perhaps not quite following—it sounds like you mean—”
“Phantom killed Danny,” Maddie said, and she said it with no emotion in her voice, because the alternative was to fall completely apart.
“That’s—”
“It’s worse,” Maddie said, her voice wavering. “He took Danny’s body. And he told Jazz—told all of us—that Jack and I did this to him. To Danny. He’s still walking around. In Danny’s body. Pretending to be Danny. Jack and I know the truth of course but he has Jazz convinced. Jazz believes it. She thinks Phantom was Danny, that it’s been him all along, and she doesn’t know that Danny—and she thinks that we—Jack and I—thinks that we—”
Maddie’s breath hitched. She was pale now, so starkly pale against the sequin red of her dress and breathing all too quickly. The waiter with the wine retreated. Despite the open air, Vlad felt a pressure closing in around his chest.
(“It’s…………….. going okay.” Danny flinched as Vlad threaded another stitch. It took too much effort on Vlad’s part to align the needle with how badly Danny’s body trembled. It wasn’t because of the stitches. Danny’s body trembled on its own, perpetually, for the last four days. As if it had forgotten how not to, as if those untold hours on the dissection table had broken him into this state. “It was scary when I—thought I couldn’t actually convince Mom and Dad but… Jazz convinced them. They get it, I think. That it’s me. …They haven’t attacked me, you know, haha? …..It’s awkward. I think they’re sorry. It’s weird. ….I think it’s okay.”)
“This is Phantom’s revenge for what we did to him. He killed our son. And no one knows but Jack and me… and you, now. Danny’s dead and I can’t even bury my son… It’s Phantom, now. Reminding us every single moment of what we did to him. And we have to pretend like—because Jazz is there. He turned Jazz against us. She believes Jack and I did this to Danny. We tried to explain but she just thinks we’re trying to avoid the blame. Like it’s denial.” Maddie dropped her forehead to her palm, elbow on the table, holding herself up. “I can’t tell Jazz that her baby brother’s dead. She won’t believe me anyway. I can’t have a funeral for my baby boy. I have to look at his corpse every single day and pretend it’s him, and not the monster that killed him.”
Maddie’s body trembled, and the sight of it was all too familiar to Vlad.
“Jack and I don’t sleep. We don’t eat. That thing lives in our house and our baby boy is dead. And I’m begging you, Vlad, to please tell me what to do.”
Maddie looked up, and the disquiet on Vlad’s face was hopefully not out of place with whatever she expected of him.
“Surely,” Vlad said, mouth dry, “there are ways to prove if it is or isn’t Danny. There must be… a million things Danny would know, which Phantom would not.”
“He’s in Danny’s body, Vlad. He has access to all of Danny’s memories right there. He can read any memory he needs right from Danny’s own brain…” Maddie’s voice caught. “And he can overwrite other people’s memories with possession. Physically, he has Danny’s body. Mentally, he has Danny’s mind. And there is absolutely nothing Jack and I can do to prove he’s not Danny.” Maddie fell quiet a moment, eyes dropping. “And if we go after him the only way we can—as a ghost—Jazz will think we killed our little boy. His friends, too. Do we do that…? Do we just do that, and destroy him, and lose Jazz right after we lost Danny…? Or do we live with the monster. Forever.”
(“It’s… I can’t really tell what they think. It’s maybe more awkward now but, it’s getting better in some ways, maybe, I think. I don’t really spend any time alone with them… or talk about the—haha—the uh—” Danny let out a stressed laugh, blinking away tears as he ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t really talk about the—not yet. Maybe eventually. Maybe we’re—I think we’re healing. Slowly, I think. It’s okay. I’m gonna figure out how to forgive them and it’ll be okay.”)
Vlad wasn’t speaking.
Vlad needed to speak.
“Maddie, I… My dear I hear what you’re saying. But what if—well—if he is so physically and mentally indistinguishable from Danny, what if he simply is Danny? It’s—what would this be—a half-human half-ghost hybrid of sorts? From my research I feel that could be distinctly possible—”
Vlad met Maddie’s eyes, and the pain in them silenced him immediately.
“…Not you too,” Maddie breathed. “Did he get to you already? Overshadow you already?”
“Maddie my love I am not overshadowed.”
“But he’s gotten to you first somehow, hasn’t he…?”
Vlad did not speak. He did not speak, and he thought of the blood lingering in his mansion carpet and the gore he’d seen inside his laboratory walls and the dead dead dead eyes of the boy coming back, day after day, clinging to the same exhausted hopefuls of “It’s getting better...” “It’s getting better...” “It’s getting better...”
The waiter set down the wine bottle, hurrying through a speech about its origin before Vlad raised a hand to dismiss him, and with clear shining relief the waiter bowed out. Vlad had not so much as looked at him. He was staring at Maddie. And she was staring back.
Maddie pushed her seat back, and she set her napkin on the table.
“Sorry to bother you about this, Vlad. You’re much too busy. Forget you ever heard any of this.”
She went quietly. Vlad watched her back disappear without so much as a word.
There was proof, surely, for the existence of half ghosts. There was proof directly within his reach, inside him, which could be shown at a moment’s notice.
But the crimes of Vlad Plasmius ran numerous and deep. It was not a decision to make lightly. It was not a decision to make at all for the broken shards of a family Vlad was no longer interested in pursuing—for a broken woman who’d lost her charm and a son too fractured for Vlad to ever proudly call his own.
Besides, what might it mean to Maddie to see Vlad become such a creature before her eyes? What might that make Vlad to her, if not simply another vengeful ghost in another familiar corpse?
I need a fic where Sam is kidnapped for ransom because of her wealthy family but for some reason this 'pampered little rich girl' seems to give absolutely zero fucks and has way more snark than any human has any right to have when tied to a chair in a dingy basement
I just really enjoy the idea of the trio being exposed to various mundane threats and being completely blasé about it because yeah they have 100% experienced way worse
Same guys picked up Danny the week before and returned in after two days because man that child is mean. Danny sat there for 48 hours insulting everything from their names to their wardrobe, complained about an evil fruitloop, was attacked several times by ghosts, and somehow kept managing to get out of his binds when he was thirsty, hungry or needed to use the bathroom.
As soon as they hear Sam mention Danny they start to understand that kidnapping kids from Amity is a futile endeavour, they're all weird little escape artists with zero sense of danger. They find Sam sorting through their recycling, seperating paper and plastic, with Danny sitting on the bench chatting about something and they lose it, like KID WE SENT YOU HOME.
Danny's just like, "Yeah but Sam invited me back. I was thinking Mac & Cheese for dinner."
One of the kidnappers come home with good news about the ransom only to find the other one listening intently to Sam talk about the importance of protecting all pollinators, not just bees. And Danny's still there, eating the celebratory Hot Cheetos!
Okay but Danny and Tucker showing up like, "Hey Sam, hate to break it to ya but this place is a total downgrade than your usual place. No bowling alley, no theater, ugggg."
Sam sits there tied up, just, "Ehhh, but no morning people, room of total darkness, they don't complain about me not wearing pink AND they let me recycle. I'm tellin' ya, it ain't the fanciest, but definitely an upgrade."
The kidnappers just stand there like, "Look I don't know if we should be concerned that you prefer us over your folks, but the Fenton kid has to go. We don't want him here!"
Danny just deadpans like, "Well they like me just as much as your parents, so I vote downgrade."
If I may add/expand on a few points:
Danny as a hostage
There's a good chance that an embarrassing amount of time passes before he realizes he's in plain old human restraints that he can phase out of
Unties himself to eat/drink/go to the restroom AND ties himself back up after. Not because he's worried about getting caught, and definitely not because polite or considerate. It's just such a flex
Proceeds to complain that the ropes are too tight when he was the one that just tied them
Kinda loves the excuse to not be in school and catch up on some sleep
Goes ghost when no one is looking, then says (as Phantom): "Danny needed to run home and grab his homework. He asked me to fill in in the meantime. Hope that's cool"
"Hey, you know who'd be a much more dramatic and valuable hostage? Vlad Masters. You should kidnap him next. I'll help you!"
When the kidnappers try to ignore all his bullshit, he starts narrating everything they do. Like a very memeable nature documentary, or those Thomas Sanders vines
If the kidnappers torture him, his reaction is something like this
Sam as a hostage
Complains that the hideout is not sufficiently creepy. Needs more flickering lights, leaky pipes, etc. 2/10.
Plays mental games with the kidnappers. Mostly instigates in-fighting over the pettiest possible subjects.
Sam: None of you seem to understand. I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me.
Kidnapper: That Fenton kid already used that line on us right before he leaned too far back in his chair and tipped over
Whenever her rescue party comes there's a 50% chance she's doing a tarot reading for someone.
If it's a situation where a) Danny hasn't been there already so he doesn't show up on his own and b) Sam exhausts all self-rescue ideas, she manages to break free and throw some kind of summoning spell together. She spends the time between finishing the spell and Danny's arrival humming My Boyfriend's Back (at half speed and off-key for maximum creepy effect)
You know what, she's not waiting for rescuing so much as a lift home. "Help" arrives and sees Sam is free and the crew of kidnappers is tied to chairs
Yeah she could've made more of an effort to find keys to the vehicles on site or a phone, but when Danny arrives Sam has an extra person to point and laugh at them.
Tucker as a hostage
"Getting kidnapped isn't ideal but it's nice to be invited to things"
Gets offended if his ransom isn't very high
Complains about not having his phone/PDA non-stop until the kidnappers relent just to get him to shut up
Once he has his gadget(s) back he's perfectly behaved (unless they try to feed him vegetables). They figure he's just playing games because there's no internet or cell service where they're keeping him. He is in fact playing games, but little do they know it took him all of two minutes to get around the "no service" issue and send out an alert to Danny and Sam with his exact coordinates. He's playing games to kill time until they get there.
If the kidnappers are foolish enough to get their ransom electronically, Tucker figures out a way to have it redirect to his own bank account
god I wish tumblr would let you reblog with videos but okay I've decided these tiktoks are the perfect representation of Danny, Sam, and Tuck being kidnapped
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
pixelskylines
snowghoul
baratheonpilled
ellievsbear
discoholicmusic
