Adult-FanFiction.org : Cartoons

Kindred Spirits Complete	By : RedelliaValentinos Category: +1 through F > Danny Phantom Views: 507 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom, I don't own any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from writing this story, I write this purely for the enjoyment of writing. It's just me and a keyboard and my wild brain.

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
- 5
There are many sounds that help add depth to the world. They add color, in a way. Meaning. Sound is the scent of sight. Sound announces sunrise by way of the rooster. It soothes by the patter of rain and warns by the lion's roar. It even tells a mother when her child is in pain. Some of the sounds Vlad favors the most are whimpers for mercy. Cries and pleas for relief, for him to let go or stop have always fueled his ego and his need to prove that he's above whatever victim that's crossed his path. There are many ways to acquire such sweet music. Particularly, he always enjoyed getting them by pure pettiness, threatening ruin over precious objects of sentimental or monetary value. There's a certain sense of satisfaction gained through these behaviors. It's the cheapest of thrills, but nearly an old pastime of his.
The camera lens is thoroughly blocked by the palm of his hand, preventing the collection of footage of Daniel Fenton. He grips the plastic rim firmly, hearing the frame slowly crack under his strength. The cameraman whines and gnaws on the finger he's chosen to bite down on, in false hopes it'll ease the pain. They can hear the glass of the lens itself start to fracture. Slowly.
"Filming a minor without permission, and without a parent or guardian present. Have they taught you nothing?" Vlad berates quietly. There's a distinct lack of emotion on his face. But his eyes are dangerously close to turning red. He can feel his fangs wanting to drop.
The glass finally shatters.
"Hey!" The cameraman gives the camera a hard tug, trying to pull it away. But Vlad's grip is unrelenting. "It wasn't my idea, man! I just shoot what I'm told! Hey!" Another fruitless tug, and Vlad responds by crushing the plastic. Shards of the lens scatter across the floor. "Hey, this cost me over two thousands bucks!"
"Oh," Vlad tilts his head, "is that all?" Vlad relaxes his grasp, just long enough to hear the man's heart start to slow down...and then wrenches the entire camera away with barely any effort on his part. He storms over to the window, rips it open, and though the man rushes to stop him, Vlad hurls it out before he gets to him.
Vlad watches as he runs to the window, thoroughly pleased with himself. It's worth it to see him lean partially out the frame, just enough to see the impact on the pavement below. He was briefly tempted to grab an ankle and just tilt the louse up and out to join his ruined camera. But he's a good little evil bastard and keeps himself under control. Seeing the man bolt out of the room, down the hall towards the stairs is just icing on the cake. He settles back down into the seat by Daniel's bedside.
"I don't appreciate one of my crew being harassed." A woman enters the room, without invitation. She's dressed in gray slacks and a black T-shirt, with black heels. Her brown hair is wrapped up in a bun to keep it away from her eyes. Slightly tanned, she's not dressed for the weather of the town. He supposes she's pretty, but even vampires tend to be.
She holds out a hand, "Cindy Hansen."
He looks at it, unimpressed, and looks up at her. "I don't appreciate people preying on the misfortunes of children." He could be a cruel man at times, but even Vlad drew the line at bringing harm to children, be it mental, emotional, or physical. He just wouldn't.
She nods in understanding and pulls away. "This interview wasn't my idea to begin with. But it's been several years since anything interesting has happened in this town, and my boss is desperate."
Vlad grunts. "Not the word I'd use."
"Well, I still have a job to do," Cindy looks around, then behind her, out into the hall, "I was supposed to speak to Miss Fenton tonight. Where is she?" Her tone is soft but Vlad can hear the inner beast that possesses most reporters creeping through the edge of her words.
"I've asked the girl to step out. She is a child, not a Pulitzer."
She looks back at him, eyes narrowing as she studies him. It takes a moment, but he sees the flicker of realization spark in her face. "You're a long way from home. Aren't you, Mr. Masters?"
Vlad would normally preen at the recognition. But this time, as he considers the circumstances and lays his eyes on the boy in the bed, he's not in the mood. "I'm right where I'm supposed to be," he replies, voice low and grim.
The reporter takes a seat in the other chair. "What's a millionaire like you doing in Amity Park?" She's interested, now, which is not what he wanted.
"Contemplating homicide if you don't leave in the next five minutes."
"Oh, come on. Seriously. Amity Park is barely a dot on the map. Why are you, of all people, here? It's Amity Park. There's no theme parks, there's no factories, there's barely even a playground. The land isn't even worth developing. There's nothing special here."
'But there is,' Vlad thinks, fixated on the raven haired boy.
"Don't tell me you're here for this," she points a thumb towards the bed. Vlad glances at her for a moment, with a look that anyone with a decent survival instinct would cower under. He looks back at the bed.
"You've gotta be kidding. This kid's a loser. I mean, he's the school punching bag. His grades suck, he doesn't have any special talents, barely any friends, he can't even run a lap around the football field. And his parents wreck the town, like, twice a week."
The halfa doesn't pick up on the tone of dismissal so much as he's smacked clear across the face with it.
"Miss Hansen?"
"Mm?"
"Get out."
She blinks. "What?"
Vlad bolts upright before she can process it, and grabs her arm with a grip he has to remind himself not to overdue, or he'll bruise her, and Cindy finds herself hauled to her feet. Before a word of protest can be uttered, he drags her out of the room and down the hall. A nurse is just stepping off the elevator when he pulls the reporter over and gives her a shove inside. He slams his arm against the frame to keep the doors from closing and she whirls around, dizzy and stumbling, to face him.
"I find very little amusement in the failures of the local educational system, and to see that even the adults of this town would sooner give kinder regards to a mutt in the street brings me even less comfort."
He swipes his hand across every button on the panel, "And that boy is worth more than you." Six floors up, she won't be stuck in there for long. But he gets the feeling he's gotten his point across. Free from distractions, he just needs to sit, defuse and wait for the shift change. To confirm, or hopefully and preferably, deny his theory.
-
It's absurdly late when the shift change finally comes, and Vlad keeps a sharp ear out for the brief few minutes he'll have. Footsteps and chatter slowly drift down the hall. The elevator dings, the doors open. He waits until everyone's piled on. Then, the agonizing microseconds as the doors begin to slide shut. Somewhere in his consciousness, a piece of his brain wonders where he learned to such patience.
The moment he hears them slide, he's on his feet. As quick as he can, the halfa gets up and nudges the plush blanket and hospital sheet down to the boy's waist. He shifts the cords to the side, but doesn't disconnect them. He'll alert the staff if he does.
"Please," he begs quietly, "let me be wrong. Just this once."
He holds a hand over the small torso, just inches above, and feels for traces of ecto-energy. For a brief moment, nothing comes to him, and he starts to feel relief. His heart even starts to settle, for the first time in hours. But just as he's about to pull away, he feels a spark in his fingertips. It's tiny. Miniscule. Barely there. But he feels it, nonetheless.
It's a faint pulse, infantile in its strength. But he recognizes it immediately. His heart sinks into a stomach filled with dread. Now he has to think. He knows it's been a month. The core should be developed, by now. At least partially. Is it possible that in his moment of death, Daniel's body took just enough internal damage to delay the process? Vlad concentrates again. He'll need to tap into the new core.
All ghosts have a core, and while some are situated slightly differently, over the stomach, the back of a neck or even in the head, the most common placing is in the chest, either centered or over the heart. Vlad's own fire core is where his heart would be. And finding the boy's core placed over his own speeds the process along. He won't need to waste precious time searching for it. Hovering his hand, he builds a small charge of energy that targets the core. A void opens. Nothingness, like the center of a black hole that divets into the smaller body. And there, in the middle, perhaps the size of a marble, is a bright blue orb. It crackles softly, and Vlad is mildly startled to feel the temperature is significantly lower than his own and dropping. Rapidly. He recalls Jasmine mentioning hypothermia.
'An ice core, then,' he realizes, but it's drastically underdeveloped. He can feel the raw energy now that it's exposed, and it's apparent that instead of focusing in on itself and growing, most of the ecto-energy is flowing through Daniel's body. Vlad briefly wonders how much voltage he took. At the current rate of development, with most of its energy diverted to the healing process, the youngling halfa could be locked in this state for as much as a year. If he's going to recover in a more timely manner, he needs a boost.
"Forgive me, this is going to hurt. But it's for your own good."
Carefully, he reaches his hand into the void and cradles the pathetic blue core in his palm. Channeling pure electricity, as strong as he can manage, vibrant and pink, down his arm and into his hand, Vlad snaps his fingers shut and grasps the core tightly. The strength of the charge forces Daniel's spine to arch off the bed. His eyes snap open, glowing ectoplasm green. Vlad can feel his core dropping further in temperature. The room chills and frost splashes across the surface of the bed, down the frame and over the floor. He doesn't see the charred hand ice over.
The rate of growth increases dramatically, pushing on his fingers until the cold forces him to let go, and Vlad pulls away suddenly. Daniel collapses against the bed like a rock, eyes still open and alight. He's breathing heavily, despite the intubation, almost fighting it, like he's just run a marathon. The void closes.
But the goal is achieved.
Vlad's arm burns from channeling so much concentrated power, but it's worth it when he looks up and sees the monitor. It no longer reads twenty four beats per minute. Now, it's reading sixty. And holding. A brief yelp slips out as he practically falls backwards into the chair, clutching his arm tight to his chest. His fingers are numb with frostbite. His fire core is working overtime to heal him, as he's literally cooked his nerves. He feels a snicker pull free, followed by a chuckle, then a belt of laughter, until he's practically in hysterics. But the thrill of having successfully powered the boy's core melts away seconds later. Vlad Masters is left staring at the ceiling and fighting back tears as he finally swallows the reality. The whole thing took less than two minutes, but...
"Dammit, Jack," he huffs, "what have you done?" A tickle comes to his throat, he coughs once, and a whisp of hot red smoke escapes his lips.
"Fuck."
By the time the next shift has arrived, Daniel's eyes have drifted shut, he's relaxed, and Vlad has tucked him back in to be found just as he had been left. The frost has creeped back up the bed, back into the unconscious body and the floor is bone dry. The staff nudge the millionaire out of the room so they can remove the tubing. Vlad hears comments and practical trills of joy from the nurses. And he lets them speak, but listens in. Because their patient has been labeled comatose for a month. None of them thought he'd wake.
"He's still awfully cold.''
"But he's breathing on his own!"
"His parents are never in here, who's his guardian?"
"I think his sister is looking after him, at the moment."
Here, he cuts in.
"Uh, no. That would be me," Vlad re-enters the room, pulls the paperwork from his coat, and passes it to one of the nurses, "He's in my care, Jasmine is only sixteen."
It's not filed yet. But by the time the sun graces the town, it will be. The benefits of the late hour means they can't check until morning. By then, the proper documentation will be in the state's records, and the yellowed papers he's presented will just appear as proof of his claim. It's not necessarily a lie, in his opinion.
"Alright, Mr. Masters. Well, it looks like Danny could possibly wake up in the next few weeks. But we'll need to have the doctor take a look at him."
Vlad nods. "That's fine. I know it's late, or early, depending on who's asked, but I wonder if we could discuss the billing. You see, his sister chose to take on the bill, and I'm afraid it's become too much for her."
The woman smiles cheerfully, "Sure!"
She rushes over to the counter and sits down at the computer, "I know Miss Fenton currently has a payment plan set up. We don't usually allow that method with this kind of situation, but in this case, we made an exception. Now, what are yo-"
"-I want to pay it. All of it." The feeling has mostly returned to his limb, the tips of his fingers are still a little fuzzy. But he has enough sensation to reach into a back pocket and dig out his wallet. He dumps a solid metal card on the counter in front of her.
"Now, preferably."
She looks startled, and hesitantly picks up his card. "All of it? Now?"
Vlad braces against the counter in a manner that can easily be mistaken for exhaustion, "Yes. Now."
"Are you...this is a pretty big amount. Are you sure you don't want to discuss it wit-"
"-She's sixteen years old, she's in over her head. I will tell her in the morning. Just run it."
"Alright," she finally does as he tells her. The amount, he can guess. It won't hurt. His account won't even notice. She passes the card back to him a moment later.
"It's my understanding that the doctor will be by in the morning, yes?" He puts his card back in his wallet.
The nurse nods.
"Good. Have him look Daniel over, and then I'd like to speak with him. Personally."
- 3
- 4
- 5
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Kindred Spirits Complete