Chapter One

"I'll see you guys tomorrow at school!" Danny waved behind him as he parted from his friends, Sam and Tucker. They had enjoyed their day, going out to see a movie and grabbing dinner at the Nasty Burger after gorging themselves on popcorn and soda. The best part had been the utter lack of ghost attacks during all of this, which meant that Danny had finally managed to have a completely normal day as Daniel Fenton, normal and boring teenager extra'ordinary'.

He smiled to himself as he walked back to the Fenton Works, tired and ready to crash into bed as soon as he sat down and actually did his homework. When that thought crossed his head he had to laugh, imagining Lancer's reaction when he turned in some properly done homework on time the next day at school. As he turned the corner that was about a block from his house he reached out, stretched and yawned. Ah, yes, a day without ghosts, a day for him to at least feel like a normal human kid again, was a very welcome one indeed.

This reveling was very quickly interrupted not twenty feet from his front door; a puff of blue smoke forced itself past his lips and he groaned. Immediately he dashed into the nearest space between the homes and raised his arms, uttering "going ghost!" as the familiar rings appeared at his waist moving opposite each other to alter his molecules. In just a moment Danny Fenton was Danny Phantom, and ready to kick the ass of whatever had decided to ruin his ghost-free day.

Flying up and out of the small alleyway he glanced around, quickly finding the culprit; a small flock of the altogether too familiar ghost birds that worked for Vlad Plasmius, though this time there was more than just a few of them. There was a whole army of ghostly vultures staring him down. It took a moment for him to realize that one among them was different, however.

"Alright, what do you guys want? I'm in too good a mood for this so let's just get this over with." Danny huffed, forming a ball of ecto-energy in the palm of his hand and tossing it up and down menacingly.

The ghost that had caught his eye was the one to respond; not with words, but the brandishing of what appeared to be a bazooka-type weapon. "We've come for you, of course." It smiled, and fired.

Danny had no time to react. The weapon's ammo had an amazing amount of speed, to start with, and then he discovered that it had a momentary delay before it exploded, effectively neutralizing any chance of avoidance.

The shockwave hit him full force, knocking him back and down onto a nearby rooftop, coming to a crashing halt against a chimney. A loosened brick dropped right onto his head, giving him quite the headache and only serving to make his mood all the worse.

"Yeah well, tough luck. I actually want to graduate high school so I kind of have some homework to do. So if you'll kindly get the heck out of here…" To cap off his disgruntled retort Phantom stood and fired a quick succession of ecto-bursts from his palms, sending the pack of birds scattering and the one holding the bazooka dodging.

"Surround him you nitwits!" The leader ordered, clearly irritated that his flock was ignoring their plan once the going had become a little rough.

The vultures seemed to put two and two together and remember what they were doing, circling back around to enclose Danny in a circle of ghost birds.

"One last chance to leave." Danny growled.

"Well it's a fat one. Now!" On their leader's order all of the vultures, using their clawed toes to do so, brandished small gun-like items and fired.

The effect was almost as instantaneous as the bazooka's hit had been, only this time there was no explosion. Instead, a glimmering green orb surrounded him, staying in place even when the birds had ceased fire. It was doing no damage to him that he could tell, until he realized that he had somehow changed back to his human form without realizing it.

"Hey what the…" Danny patted his chest and pulled on his shirt, confused. "What is this thing?" He demanded, the largest bird giving him a sour laugh.

"Just one of Master Plasmius' new little toys is all! We said we would come for you, and now we have you. Time to go, my kettle." The bird flapped his wings quite happily, until the others began to fly off. "Take the ghost child you numbskulls!" It griped angrily, and a small group doubled back to sink their claws into the glowing bubble that trapped Danny within.

"What does Vlad want from me this time? Don't tell me he's trying to go after mom again, because really, that's just getting annoying more than anything." Danny fussed in between trying to go ghost again and banging angrily on the force field.

The bird didn't bother giving him a response, only yelled at his underlings that they were going exactly in the wrong direction.

Crossing his arms, Danny let himself fall into a seated position. There was no way he was breaking through the field without being Phantom, so he had no real choice other than to just sit and wait to get from point A to point B, and hope Vlad didn't have anything particular nasty planned.

"Don't get your hopes up, Fenton." He muttered to himself, watching the city of Amity Park pass by underneath him. The green hue given off by the bubble gave it an eerie look after a while, and Danny turned his gaze towards the birds, and began to berate himself for letting himself get caught like this. Part of him told him not to be stupid, since he hadn't exactly been expecting the weapons that Vlad had managed to come up with, but another part just hated that he'd been caught by this dumb flock of pigeons.

After a little while he decided to just lay back and enjoy the ride, and he found himself taking a rather relaxing nap due to the steady flapflapflap of the wind beneath the vultures' wings.

"Daniel. Daniel. Daniel!" Danny's eyes flew open, barely realizing that he was no longer in that annoying bubble. The only problem with this was the fact that he was now instead very uncomfortably restrained against a diagonally leaning metal table in Vlad Masters' lab. "Little badger you sleep like a rock." Vlad hissed.

"Yeah well…" He couldn't really think of a good comeback so he jumped straight to the good stuff. "Alright Vlad, why am I here? As I told your little pigeon friends I have homework and sleeping to be doing so I'd really appreciate it if we got it over with so I can get to that."

Vlad smirked. "Why are you here indeed. Obviously that's because I wanted you here, but I suppose you're looking for the reason behind that, right? Well, Daniel, it's really quite simple." The billionaire paced as he spoke with some enthusiasm. "I'm actually getting very tired. Tired of what you may ask?"

"No actually." Danny huffed. Vlad ignored him.

"I'm so very tired of you getting in my way. It seems like whenever I try to do something, you're there, even if only to mock me. Well, little badger, I'm through with being tired." Now he turned to look Danny straight in his blue eyes. "Surely you've heard the phrase 'if you can't beat them, join them'."

"No thanks, Vlad. I'm getting pretty tired of your attempts to get me to join your twisted side myself."

The man laughed. "Actually, I was going to rephrase that to "if you don't join them, die'."

Danny didn't like the look on the man's face. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what I said, or are you as dumb as you look right now?" Vlad responded curtly. "No more chances, Daniel. No more you doing everything in your somewhat considerable power to make my life miserable. And if you don't agree to join me…no more you."

A lump caught in Danny's throat. Vlad couldn't be serious…but the look in his enemy's eyes seemed to say otherwise. He was in deeper trouble than he'd anticipated, and he didn't see a way out of it at the moment.

"You know I'm not going to join you Vlad, not now, not ever. Why are you too damn stubborn to get that through your thick skull?" He hissed, struggling slightly against the restraints holding him to the table.

Vlad jabbed his finger at Danny's chest and positioned his face inches away from the boy's. "Boy, I am in no way joking, so I suggest that you take this very seriously. I'm not letting you escape me yet again if you refuse my extension of camaraderie."

In blatant defiance Danny did the only thing he could really do restrained as he was, and he took the close proximity between him and Vlad to spit right in his face. "There's my answer, and I'm not going to change it. Ever." He looked half-pleased with himself, half worried that he'd just made a huge mistake.

Vlad leaned back slowly, wiping the fluid from his cheek with the back of his suit sleeve. "Very well Daniel, you'll regret that…for at least a few more minutes." He had a deep scowl set into his jaw now as he turned to a control panel nearby. "I suppose the least I can do is allow this to be at least a somewhat fair fight." His fingers angrily punched a code into the keypad, and Danny found himself slipping from the table and to the floor, the latches on his body having been opened.

Before his feet had even touched the floor, Danny was in his ghost form and charging right at Vlad Plasmius. The two met initially with their fists. Vlad finally pushed Danny far enough away to get a good share of ecto-energy blasts thrown at the boy, which he easily blocked with his own.

Danny quickly reacted with his own attack, sending blades of ectoplasmic energy swirling at the other halfa before moving out of the way of Vlad's return fire. For several minutes the fight seemed to be a stalemate, until Vlad finally decided that he was tired of the monotony. He retrieved one of his favorite toys from his newly-created arsenal and took aim, Danny immediately looking for a place to duck after his experience with the two earlier.

"Hiding? Oh, come now. What happened to the hero of Amity Park? Are you scared of my little guns?" Vlad laughed bitterly, looking around for the now hiding and invisible Danny. A loud noise from behind him attracted his attention, and he swirled around to find his ghost portal opening. Danny had found the activation switch.

Rolling his eyes, Vlad took a shot at the open portal hoping that Danny would be just inside in an obvious position to enter the Ghost Zone. To his glee, the powerful ecto-blast hit something quite squarely; Phantom to be exact, resulting in him turning visible again just before tumbling backwards into the portal. Vlad of course pursued, entering it close behind the boy and finding him dazed and dizzy just inside of it.

"That's actually one of my favorite toys now, Daniel." He grinned.

"I can't see why, it doesn't seem that special to me." Danny groaned and rubbed his back nonetheless.

"Oh? Well, you'll find out why shortly then, won't you?" Danny's eyes travelled to Plasmius' side where he appeared to have some sort of controller in his palm. He blinked, only then registering that it felt like something was clinging to him where Vlad's blast had contacted his then-invisible form. Turning awkwardly to take a look he saw that, rather than an attack, the weapon was in fact some sort of attaching projectile, and he could only assume that it was connected to the remote control in Vlad's grasp.

"I'm really starting to hate your new gadgets, Plasmius." He sighed, plunging forward in an attempt to get at his enemy before he could find out what this one did. Rather than bother fighting back, Vlad opted to simply dodge Danny's punches, kicks, and ecto-blasts, coaxing him on the entire time.

"Really Daniel, are you losing your touch? You're aim is just horrendous, and your form unspeakable. Come now, do you really want to hit me or not? Tsk, tsk!"

Frustrated, Danny stopped mid-punch to give Vlad the nastiest glare that he could muster. "This is going nowhere Vlad! If you really want to kill me then why aren't you trying to? Either do it or don't, but would you just make up your mind? If not I'm just going to fly right back home. I'm sure it's past my curfew by now and Maddie is sure to be pissed at me for coming in late without a good excuse."

At the deliberate usage of his mother's name a spark flared in Vlad's eyes.

"Geez, can't even handle hearing her name? That's kind of pathetic man." Danny said, to further silence. "Man, no wonder my dad beat you to her, you're such a sore loser!"

Vlad growled, clenching the metal controller tightly. "That's it, the games are over. I'd hoped it wouldn't come to this, Daniel, but it's time to bring things to closing." With that, he pressed one of the buttons.

"Again?" Danny flailed a bit when he half-expectedly turned back into his human form and dropped to the nearest solid object. He looked up at where Vlad was still floating, holding the device's remote with a blank look in his eyes. The boy wasn't sure if he should try to run or just wait for Vlad to make the next move.

Before he could make that decision Vlad acted. He dived at Fenton, quickly and fiercely as though something in him had finally snapped.

"I told myself that if I couldn't have Maddie, then I would at least have you!" He tackled the boy ferociously, pinning him to the ground. "But you've ruined that! I could have been a better mentor, a better father to you than that bumbling oaf Jack has ever been, but no. You have denied me one time too many, Daniel, and I can only take no so many times!" He screeched, wrapping his fingers tightly around Danny's neck before the child had any time to react.

Danny grasped at Vlad's wrists, trying with all his might to release himself, to gasp for air and fill his aching lungs with air, but he was no match for the man as a human. His mouth moved, begging for mercy. This seemed like a terrible way to go, with hardly a fight, suffocated under Vlad's iron grip. His mind felt muddy, as though it was quickly losing the ability to understand what was occurring. Stars circled his eyes, lights flashing and popping in his vision like fireworks. Was he even still pushing against his attacker? If he was he no longer felt that sensation. Floating…his thoughts were floating like they were ghosts themselves.

He blinked once more, and then all was black.