"Hey kiddo, what're you drawing?" Danny asked the light-haired toddler in front of him. He wasn't sure how it happened, but Skulker had shown up at his door with the child just a couple of days ago. He wore an adult's button-down shirt and nothing else. Skulker had explained that it was an experiment that went awry, and he needed Danny to watch the now toddler Vlad Masters until he could find a way to reverse the experiment, or it wore off on its own. The child squeaked out a word that Danny didn't understand, still scribbling on the paper in front of him.
"In English please Vlad." Danny said to him. He'd had to say this often to the boy. Russian had been his first language, but he must have learned English at the same time since he could translate most of the words after some coaxing. "Castle!" The toddler replied, now in English. The scribbles on the page looked like wonky shapes, but if Danny looked hard enough, he could see a castle. In fact, it almost looked like Vlad's castle in Wisconsin, complete with green and gold everywhere.
Once the scribbles that looked like a castle were finished, he started another scribble. This time it was black, long, and appeared to have white hair and green eyes. It had large wings and seemed to also be breathing green fire. Already knowing the answer, Danny knew it would please the toddler to ask about the drawing. "Is this a dragon?" He asked, pointing at the scribble featuring his ghost form's colors. The little Vlad nodded happily as he colored in his dragon.
The boy continued his drawing, adding some scribbles resembling trees, and some more resembling a sun. When it was done, he held the drawing up to Danny and smiled. "Aw done!" He said, giving the picture to Danny. Danny smiled gratefully, and then when he noticed that the toddler was eye to eye with him, he had a moment of surprise and fear. Of course Vlad would be floating in front of him, waiting for praise on his art.
"You did very good Vlad. Now be careful with your flying. Don't go too high. I don't want you to fall and get hurt." Danny spoke to Vlad with a parental tone, despite not being his parent. The toddler hadn't asked where his parents were, thankfully, and Danny wasn't sure how much of his adult life the toddler remembered right now. He hadn't recognized Skulker but had known Danny. He knew he had ghost powers, but didn't know where he lived. He did however, remember what his home looked like, as noted by the artwork that Danny was currently putting up on the fridge.
"I live in a castle when I is big." Vlad said, floating behind Danny as Danny put up the picture. Danny chuckled and felt two small hands grip his shoulders. Vlad did this when he flew around, probably to let Danny pull him around. "Oh yeah? You'll need a lot of money for that. Or you need to be a king. How are you going to get your castle?" Danny slowly walked around the kitchen, pulling Vlad around behind him. He could practically hear the child thinking as he tried to plan how he would get a castle someday. "I...I rich, Dandel. I got a lotsa money." The toddler said. Okay, so Vlad remembered that at least. Danny chuckled at his response and looked at the picture again.
I'm seeing some college era Vlad around again~ 8D Makes me want to go poke at that deaged Vlad idea. Which still needs some major plotting to work out.
wulffriend answered your question: Camp NaNo: Day 1
GLOW IN THE DARK VEINS. and maybe a ghost sence of their own?
Glow in the dark veins sounds kind of cool! XD The ghost sense could be helpful since he does deal with ghosts.
clay-phoenix answered your question: Camp NaNo: Day 1
I think ectoplasm would either be a bit toxic or it would be like a non-habit-forming version of cocaine. That’s just me though. lD
Toxic! D: Oh no! In that case, the idea wouldn't work. I don't want him to die from it! Non-habit forming? XD Don't want him getting that feeding on ectoplasm thing that's been going around with Danny lately? XD;;
Woooooooooooooooooooooo! It's April 1st! Camp NaNo has begun!
I still need to finish out A World Unseen, which should be, uh, 2 more chapters, I think. Ah, I want to kick Skulker in the head already!
My plan is to work on PhantomEXE for Camp NaNo, though knowing me, I might jump around a bit. I'm already going, "Ugh! I don't know how to start the next chapter!" I have a thing that I'm looking forward to writing. *evil laugh* But that's down the road, and I need to fill stuff in before getting there.
On another topic though, I have an idea to put into another story, but it may or may not actually happen. It's sort of just a vague idea at this point. But the idea was that at some point the character gets injured. Maybe during the fight, there's a tray of ectoplasm samples that the GiW have collected to study/experiment on, and he gets thrown into it, glass is shattered, he's got shards in his arm/shoulder, the glass is coated with ectoplasm, so the ectoplasm is now sort of in his blood stream from that. It's not a whole lot, but just a little. He's completely human. So the question is:
How do you think ectoplasm in a normal human's blood stream would effect them, if at all?
Last night, I was hit again with thoughts for my de-aged Vlad fic idea that I posted a teaser prologue for earlier. I wonder what Vlad's ghost form originally looked like when he first discovered his ghost powers after the proto Portal incident. Because I doubt it originally looked like what we see when we first meet him in Bitter Reunions. If Technus could evolve his appearance, I'm sure Vlad could figure out how to change his ghost appearance after twenty years. I'm just trying to think of how younger Vlad might decide to appear if he turns ghost in front of Danny but doesn't want Danny to realize who he really is, if I go with the idea that upon meeting after Vlad de-ages, Danny doesn't recognize him. And since hair seems to invert in color for them, Vlad's silvery hair turning black and Danny's black hair turning white. I wonder, should I have younger Vlad's ghost hair be white and styled like his human self or leave it black and horned?
Summary: When an experiment goes wrong, Vlad finds he may need Danny's help to fix the unexpected results.
Months of planning and calculating and recalculating went into this one moment. Vlad tilted the vial ever so slowly over the beaker, the clear liquid within it boiling over the heat of the burner. A single drop was all that was needed to complete this experiment. His theories were sound on the result it would produce, but he needed to be extremely cautious. The mixture was very temperamental. One wrong move, one slip up, would make this entire effort wasted. If Daniel was present, the whole thing was bound to turn into one chaotic mess. Vlad snorted at the thought. Daniel, as he knew from checking on the man's grades, was horribly clumsy when it came to things like this. In fact, he was banned from even participating in lab experiments in his science classes during high school. A smirk tugged on Vlad's mouth. That bit of clumsiness was certainly inherited from his father, the big bumbling oaf Jack Fenton.
His hand shook as he tilted the vial. Vlad held his breath and tried to steady his hand. One drop, just one drop of the bright green fluid. It clung to the lip of the vial before spilling over and dropping into the clear liquid below, dying it almost immediately into a similar bright green. Vlad sighed with relief as that nervous moment passed. The sudden gong of the grandfather clock in his study above the laboratory made him jump as the silence of the night was broken.
The vial slipped from his grasp in that startled moment. More than a little of the green fluid spilling into the beaker before the vial crashed onto the table top, shattering shards of glass across the surface along with some of the green fluid. Vlad cursed under his breath as the mixture in the beaker darkened to black and plumes of smoke wafted into the air. He hurriedly shut off the flames from the burner, but it was much too late. The mixture bubbled, and frothy foam rose up over the sides, spilling onto the table. He cursed again when he heard the glass beaker cracked under the pressure. In seconds, the experiment exploded, spraying out sticky clumps of black foam all over his laboratory.
"Curse you, Jack Fenton!" Vlad shouted to the empty laboratory as he wiped the black foam from his face. Nothing about this accident was Jack's fault, but after more than twenty years, it was easier to simply shove all the blame onto the man. It was mostly a habit now, even if there was no longer any real malice behind his shout. Vlad swept his gaze around his laboratory then released a tired sigh at the mess he saw. It wasn't as bad as it could be, but the black foam exploded into tiny clumps that seemed to spread out all over his laboratory. He considered simply leaving it until morning to clean up the mess, but he would have meetings to attend. And who knew what would happen if he left the mysterious black foam to sit upon his inventions for the rest of the night?
When the mess was cleaned up as best as it could be, at least he didn't see any lingering clumps around, Vlad placed his hands on his backside and arched his back. He cringed as he heard it crack. He was getting much too old now to spend all night in the laboratory. His back would be stiff and his body sore when he woke in the morning, or in three hours by his guess of when the alarm would wake him to prepare for work. He rubbed tiredly at his eyes as he left the laboratory. So close, he thought in frustration, wandering the lonely hallways of his castle on his way toward his bedroom. He nearly succeeded in finishing the experiment only to be foiled by the blasted clock ringing out the hour as usual. He wasn't even aware of how long he spent in the laboratory that night until the clock sounded. When he reached his bedroom, Vlad barely had enough consciousness left in him to kick off his shoes before he crawled into bed, burying himself under the thick covers.
Sleep didn't come easily to him. He dozed off quickly when his head hit the pillow, but the peaceful sleep soon turned restless. He rolled from side to side, trying to get comfortable in his large bed. At some point, he kicked of the covers when it felt insufferably hot beneath them. It felt like every nerve ending in his body was set ablaze. Sweat collected upon his brow, but even that did little to help cool the heat.
When the alarm bleeped hours later, Vlad groaned as he reached out to slap the machine and shut off the irritating noise. He threw his legs over the side of the bed, rubbing a hand over his face. The sweat drenched state of his clothing from last night only received a passing notice as he stood and made his way toward the bathroom. He was glad he always allowed enough time in the morning for a shower without having to rush through his usual morning routine. Heaven forbid he ever show up to work looking a mess or scrambling to eat a quick bite for breakfast! He did have an image to uphold before his employees after all. Vlad stripped out of his clothes and stepped into the shower. The blast of water that hit him was frigid. Though it felt refreshing after the heated night of sleep, it was much too cold for comfort. He quickly adjusted the temperature to much more suited warmth. Exhaustion still clung to him as he washed his body and hair. Even if he did manage to sleep, albeit restlessly, for the remaining hours of the night, it didn't feel like he got a wink of sleep. He was almost tempted to call into work and cancel all his meetings for the day then crawl right back into bed. But he refused to do so.
Stepping out of the shower, he grabbed a clean towel from the rack and rubbed his hair dry as best as he could. When his body was dried off, he wrapped the towel around his waist then stepped up to the sink. The mirror was fogged from the steam of the shower. Sighing out his tiredness, Vlad reached out and wiped the mirror clean. Then he froze with wide dark blue eyes locked on his reflection. Who was that he was staring at? He grabbed at a lock of his hair and yanked it forward until he could see the dark strands. What was going? Panic crept through him as he stared at the wet black lock of hair in his hand. Then he snapped his gaze back to the mirror.
Why did he look years younger? No, years wasn't strong enough to describe it. He was decades younger than when he crawled into bed last night. His heart drummed in his chest as he looked down at his body for the first time that morning. He ran a hand over his thin framed torso, hardly believing this was real. It reminded him of how he looked in college, minus the mullet. His hair was still long but resembled more the style he wore now in his later years rather than back in college. How did this even happen? He pinched an arm, half expecting this to be some sort of dream. But with a wince of pain, he realized this was all very real. Somehow, he became younger. His mind went back over everything that happened recently, trying to uncover the event that led to this sudden de-aging process.
When it hit him, Vlad nearly slapped himself for being so slow to think of it. The experiment last night! That overdose into the mixture must have had some strange reaction that he didn't anticipate. He stood right next to it when it exploded and received most of the blast from the black foam. After he finished cleaning up the laboratory, Vlad didn't think much to fully wipe himself clean of any lingering foam. Some of it must have remained and resulted in his body turning back the hands of time. He swallowed as a different thought occurred to him. If the de-aging process worked in correlation to how much of the foam landed on him, then he could have been at risk of turning even younger than this! What would have happened to him if he woke up this morning as a baby? He dread to think of it. He lived alone in his castle, and no one would have been around to help him if that happened. Then another thought made his stomach nearly drop right out of him. What if the de-aging process wasn't finished? What if he kept getting younger? If he de-aged decades in only a matter of hours, that didn't give him much time. He was already around twenty years old after only about three hours!
The thought of heading into work today flew out the window as Vlad stormed through his castle to his laboratory. He needed to run tests. He needed answers! A million panicked thoughts filled his head about this unexpected result. He almost couldn't breathe when he reached the laboratory as the thought that he might de-age into nothingness struck him. How could a simple experiment go so wrong? Quickly, he got to work, running every test upon himself that he could think of. He kept his mind focused on his work for fear that he might drive himself into a panic induced insanity if he kept letting his mind fill with scenarios of what might be happening to him. He prayed whatever it was that he could stop it before it was too late.
