A little background. The Hero's Villain and Thrill of the Chase are only part of an overarching canon-compliant storyline that I have written and planned. There's a whole mythology spread around stories, shorts, and many many of the entries in the Through-DP collection. A complete listing is now available on my fanfiction. net profile listed under the 'Sides of the Same Coin' series and is currently being posted on AO3 in order under the title What Was Lost.

Before Danny Fenton was even a thought of possibility Vlad was a normal grad student. And then things happened. First a portal accident, then escape from a repurposed mental institution, then years alone and on the run. Time spent drifting place to place, the only constants being the self-experimentation, the development of his powers, the need to publish his findings before someone else did. But the danger of so much research... They know where to find him...

This scene is from that time.

'Captured' is rated hard T for implications all the hell over.

-00000-

Blue eyes opened to bright white light.

Vlad Masters groaned as he clamped his eyes shut against the assaulting bright. He tried to turn over and go back to sleep, maybe drag the blankets over his head to hide from the light. But nothing happened. He pulled at his limbs, wondering why he was stuck on his back, why his arms were locked over his head.

Blue eyes shot wide open. No...

He blinked the brightness out of his eyes, willing them to adjust. He was stretched out on a table, his arms shackled above his head. Those shackles glowed a faint green through the clear white... "glass?" he asked. He tried to shift his wrists, to test how much wiggle room he really didn't have. They creaked like glass, felt like glass. The table was glass as well. And above him, maybe even all around him, copper-lined ribs of glass forming some sort of cage...

A Faraday cage...

"I see you're awake."

Wary eyes darted to the source of that voice. Dread gripped his breath and made him dizzy as he saw that hated white suit, expressionless face, pristine white gloves...

Welcoming blackness engulfed him as he fell back into unconsciousness.

Agent N scowled as Vlad fainted. Clearly the past had not been forgotten. The agent pulled a taser from his jacket holster and jabbed the prongs into Vlad's side, pulling the trigger. The machine whined as the battery was quickly drained.

Vlad stirred and groaned. His eyes fluttered open, throwing him back into the nightmare.

"Welcome back," Agent N said. He holstered the taser. "Do try and stay awake. Is it still Ge Rouge? Or have you gone to the name 'Masters' full time now?"

Vlad glared at the agent. His eyes glowed red for a moment before he looked away.

Agent N pulled up a chair and sat down. "So you're a lightning elemental," he said. "We gathered as much from the multitude of literature you've been publishing. I'm still not sure if that was a really stupid idea or absolute genius. Your research was always leaps and bounds ahead of ours. Of course... It doesn't help that you were never cooperative."

"And how could that have happened I wonder," Vlad spat.

"We always thought of you as a standard case of possession," the agent continued, ignoring Vlad's facetiousness. "It never even occurred to us that this might be something more. Even the idea of a willing possession was completely out of the question."

"And who's fault was that?" Vlad asked.

"You have a possession contract, don't you."

Vlad's eyes went wide. That was not a question, not a theory, not something the Guys in White had just randomly pulled out of the ether. That was a calculated assumption. "How..."

"You were the first case we'd come across but you are not the only. I admit, you're one of the few high-functioning cases. So either Ge Rouge is a very powerful ghost or the terms of your contract must be highly favorable. Which is it, I wonder?"

Vlad tried to inch away from the agent. He couldn't move far and the glass shackles prevented him from simply phasing out of his situation. He didn't dare attempt to transform; he wouldn't give these bastards the satisfaction of seeing his ghost form, not if he could help it. And the Faraday cage would keep any sort of elemental power contained.

"I guess that's just something we're going to have to find out, isn't it, Vladimir?"

-00000-

At least it wasn't a padded cell. But then perhaps they didn't trust him in one anymore.

Vlad had a glass cell, the copper ribs of a Faraday cage visible all along the outside. A glowing shackle around his ankle kept him from going more than six feet from the anchor in the middle of the floor. Not that it mattered, his cell was a cylinder only five feet wide and short enough that he could reach up and touch the ceiling without flying.

He couldn't tell if this was better or worse. At least in the padded cell he could lie down and stretch.

The sound of an opening door drew his attention. His glass prison stood in the center of a bare white room. The only items breaking the monotony were the cameras all trained on him, the two guards flanking the single door, and a chair. An agent had come in and was now occupying that chair.

Vlad gave that agent a dispassionate stare.

"So what shall we talk about?" the agent asked.

Vlad knew the script. For days all they'd wanted to discuss was his research. What ghosts he'd used, what he'd left out, how thorough his experiments were, what they would need to repeat them. For days Vlad hadn't answered a single question, instead sat waiting until they gave up and left.

But this agent was familiar... "I know you," Vlad realized.

"The ice elemental you used," the agent said, ignoring Vlad's comment. "What are its capabilities?"

"You were in charge of me last time," Vlad said. "You were designated 'R', weren't you?"

"How powerful was it? How were you able to get it to submit to experimentation?"

"What does 'R' mean anyway?" Vlad countered. "It is the first letter of your name? What is your name?" Vlad looked the agent right in the eye. "Do you even remember your name?"

A flutter of the throat was all that showed Agent R was affected by Vlad's words. Still, he continued his questioning. "Why does the ice elemental have an obsession with friendship? What use would a ghost have for such attachments?"

Vlad saw that flutter and felt his ghost purr. They had an in. "The ghost's name is Klemper," he said. "He can't stand to be alone. He craves friendship same as any extroverted human does. For the same reasons."

"Ghosts do not have the same reasons humans do," Agent R snapped.

"And how would you know?" Vlad asked. "You have all the research in front of you and yet you insist on proving me wrong. Why? Because my conclusions go against your little anthropocentric world view?"

"Your conclusions are wrong, Ge Rouge. You're just a ghost in a stolen human body."

"And god does not play dice with the universe," Vlad purred. "Right?"

Agent R shot to his feet and stormed out of the room.

Vlad settled back against the side of his glass prison. The exposed ribs of copper pressed against him, their low-level current comforting.

-00000-

A loud pounding dragged him toward consciousness. Voices filtered through his awareness.

"Wake up, Masters. Time for food."

"Shut up, N. It's not supposed to be conscious when we feed it."

"And why the hell not? He's shackled, he's not getting away."

"You weren't there when we captured it. The beast let loose a jolt of current strong enough to put a lightning strike to shame."

The oppressive veil of the Faraday cage lifted. Vlad cracked open one eye to see a large panel of his glass cell wide open. He drew himself into a sitting position, waiting for them to realize he was aware of their conversation.

"Its primary goal is to escape, just like last time. Even the tiniest little opening could-" Agent R's eyes went wide under his black shades as he realized their captive was leveling them with an unimpressed stare.

"I'm right here, you know," Vlad drawled. His hand shot out to grab the agent by his skinny black tie, yanking him halfway into the glass prison.. "And I do not appreciate being referred to as a thing."

"Noted," Agent R said through gritted teeth.

Vlad shoved the agent away, smirking as he ended up sprawled on the floor.

Agent N held out a tray of food and an empty bucket. Vlad snatched them away and retreated back into his glass prison as the door was shut behind him. He knew the routine by now. He had five minutes to scarf down the contents of the tray and use the bucket before they left him here. If he was lucky the door would be opened just long enough for them to snatch the tray and bucket before leaving.

Today looked like a day where they weren't planning on opening the door again. Fine then. Vlad took his time, using up every second of those five minutes. Then before they left he decided to give them a little bit of what they wanted; a show of power. He knocked on the glass to get their attention.

"Five minutes are up, Masters," Agent R snapped. "You're late."

Vlad leaned against the glass, holding his used bucket. "You had your chance," he purred before he phased his hand and the bucket intangible, stuck them through the glass wall, and dumped the bucket's contents over Agent R's head.

Vlad chuckled darkly at the shouts of disgust and annoyance as he sat back against the side of his prison. A little warning for them, that the shackle did not prevent him from using his powers. All it did was keep his foot imprisoned. The rest of him was free to whatever he so chose.

-00000-

Consciousness came slowly. It felt different this time, heavier, like he was trying to dig his way out of his own grave.

First, he realized the Faraday cage was gone. Then, that his wrists and ankles were encased in something cold and hard, unyielding. More glass shackles with copper cores. Then that he was held upright, nothing supporting him save for those shackles. And finally, that his shoulders hurt.

"You've taken to sedating me," he said. Just because he couldn't see anyone didn't mean they weren't watching.

"Yes," said a voice behind him. "Surely you understand why. We can't contain you as we would a human. And as you still have vital signs we don't want to risk attempting to contain you as a ghost. So what does that leave us with?"

"Oh yes, because heaven forbid I manage to escape again," Vlad said facetiously.

"Precisely."

"So, what, I'm going to be kept like this for the rest of my life?"

"Of course not. You're here because today we're going to run an experiment. Once we're done you'll be sedated and moved back to your holding cell."

Vlad's blood ran cold. He realized just how exposed he really was like this. Dread tickled at the back of his mind as he craned his head, trying to take in the empty room. A mirror in front of him, looked like a two-way mirror. Cameras in the corners. He was being watched.

Vlad took a deep breath and closed his eyes, hiding behind his own long white hair. The voice in the back of his mind soothed him, told him how they were going to escape and take their vengeance upon them all.

And then the voltage began. He gasped at the sensation. A groan broke out of his throat, betraying how good that felt. He shook his head, tried to regain himself, tried not to let it affect him any more than that.

He failed.

-00000-

Vlad curled up on the floor of his glass prison. He shook and shuddered with excess voltage as it tried desperately to force his core to flare again.

That had been humiliating. Force-fed current until he cascaded in front of an unknown audience. Electricity arcing all around him, dancing along the walls as surely as his skin. Aroused physically beyond belief while he hid in the back of his own mind, wrapped up in the blood red cloak and comforting arms of his ghost. The transformation was nearly forced with every single rise of voltage.

At least he'd managed to prevent that. Despite the humiliation of having so much of his body betray him to physical sensation he'd managed to keep his ghost form hidden.

Red eyes glared through his all too human face. The two guards pressed as close to the door as they were allowed. They would never see his ghost form. He didn't care what they did to him. They would not see who and what he had become. He would die first.

-00000-

It was hard to tell what was day and what was night in the constant bright white lights. A night's sleep was gone, a forgotten idea. Instead the best he got were hours snatched here and there, lazy naps between periods of boredom that grew shorter and shorter as time went on. First a few hours here and there, growing longer and longer as time went on. Now...

Vlad was asleep again while the agents discussed their next experiment.

"The subject is sleeping 16 hours a day," said Agent R. "At best we'll get two hours of activity out of it before it goes back to sleep. We've even stopped sedating it, hoping that will take care of the problem. There's been no effect."

"We could start dosing with stimulants," Agent N suggested. He looked to the head of the table.

At the end of the table sat a television screen, a screen that showed a man without a speck of color to him. Even his eyes were pale silver, matching his white hair and sickly pale skin. We should consider amphetamines a possibility. But first we should attempt to handle this experimentally. Agent R.

"Sir?"

You wanted to test the subject's interactions with others of its own kind. Has Delta Green managed to acquire any subjects for us?

Agent R shrugged. "You'd think it would be as easy as dropping down onto a sugar cane field and stealing a few," he said. "But the ones Delta Green acquires are very low functioning. Low enough that all they do is stand there unless given orders."

"I wonder what the difference is between the two possessions," Agent N mused.

Use the low functioning acquisitions. Introduce one to the subject on neutral territory. Observe their reactions. From there we'll move on to introducing low-functioning ghosts to the subject.

The two agents nodded their heads. "Yes sir," they said.

-00000-

The first thing Vlad realized was that he was lying down. That was a new development. He stretched out luxuriously, fully intending to go back to sleep.

Wake up.

Vlad rolled over and stretched out, intending to take up as much space as possible.

Wake up, horse.

Snore.

Fine then.

Vlad's eyes shot open as he felt his consciousness being forcibly dragged out of control and thrown into the back of his own mind.

What the hell was that for? I was sleeping!

"Now is not the time for sleeping, Vladimir," Ge Rouge snapped. He dragged their tired body into a sitting position.

They were not alone.

Deep brown eyes shone a faint red in the bright white lights. Ragged clothing draped a sinewy dark frame. He stank of the fields, of work and poverty. His hands and feet were solid callouses. Marked on his chest, black ink against dark skin, was a symbol.

Ge Rouge dragged themselves into a crouch, the better to wake up. He recognized that symbol. He knew who and what this was. "Your bokor misses you, Couzen."

The man moved, turning to stare at Ge Rouge.

Who or... what is that?

"That is what I would have been if I'd bowed to the will of the bokor," Ge Rouge said. "Trapped animating a body with no mind of its own. Living solely to complete the bokor's tasks. That... is a zombie."

What about the human's mind?

"The human is dead, Vladimir. Or at best so damaged that he no longer has the ability to control his own body. There's only the loa in there, trapped in a human body until it dies."

Oh...

Behind the two-way mirror, Agent N watched. This wasn't going as planned. The two creatures were both formed from the same type of possession, both inhabited by the same type of ghost. But they weren't interacting. They were simply staring at each other from opposite sides of the room.

At least it wasn't a total failure. Ge Rouge had taken control over the human Masters and was talking to him. It was a one-sided conversation but the information it was freely giving away... This wasn't a case of a favorable possession contract or an overly powerful ghost. Masters was powerful because he was still alive.

It was time to move on to the low-level ghosts.

-00000-

Vlad awoke to the sensation of something pawing at him. He rolled over and groaned, trying to go back to sleep.

The pawing stopped right before it was replaced by a heavy thud and the feel of something trying to climb over him. The pawing turned to scrabbling then to the sensation of being lain on. Happy little noises mere made by something laying halfway over his torso. Vlad rolled over, specifically trying to throw the annoying little creature off of him.

An indignant yowl drew him up to consciousness. Vlad growled, his eyes glowing red in warning as he dragged himself up to sit on the cold glass floor.

Tiny red eyes looked up at him.

Vlad stared at the creature. It was once some sort of animal, that much he was certain of. Someone's pet, given the tattered collar around its neck. A small spectral tag was still stamped with the word "Muffin". It was a tiny little note of civil nicety among the creature's green fur, the black stripe ripped into its side, and the oily dark slime that stained its fur, dripped from its maw, leaked from its eyes.

Vlad scootched away from the creature. It came closer to him, creeping up on oily green paws. One paw was twisted inward, the leg likely broken in whatever death had befallen it. The glass stopped him from going very far.

"Mew?"

Vlad swallowed. He reached out a tentative hand, almost pulling away in shock when the creature leapt up to rub its head against his palm. It began to purr.

"You were someone's cat," he whispered. "What happened to you?"

The cat snuggled up close to him. From here he could see the tire tread in the black stripe across its torso. "You were hit by a car, weren't you," he realized. He gently wrapped his hands around the cat, trying not to hurt its injuries. It wiggled, uncomfortable when his fingers touched the tire tread that nearly bisected the animal's ghost.

Vlad pulled the cat into his lap. He gently pet it, listened to it purr. It snuggled in his arms, batting at his hands with its paws.

A sound from outside his glass cell drew his attention.

Agent R stood just outside the cell, a containment vessel at his feet. A smug smile graced the agent's lips.

Vlad glared back at the man as Agent R sauntered out of the room. He would find a way out of this prison. There had to be a way.