[Third Person Pov]
Danny stared at Vlad for a long, charged moment. Then the pieces clicked into place. "You're the sponsor Skulker was talking about."
"It seems you only take after that oaf in appearance," he said coolly, Vlad's lip curled in open disdain. He tapped two fingers lightly against his temple. "The rest… that clever little spark… you get from your mother."
Danny's eyes narrowed. As far as he could remember, he and Vlad had never had any real personal conflict—at least nothing that warranted sending a high-end bounty hunter after him.
"Why did you send Skulker after me—?"
He never finished the question.
Vlad vanished.
He did not teleport. He simply moved so fast the human eye registered only an absence—one moment standing several meters away, the next towering directly in front of Danny, so close their chests nearly touched. Crimson eyes burned inches from Danny's face. Fangs bared. Voice a low, venomous hiss.
"You seriously have some nerve—"
"Danny!" Sam lunged forward, seizing him by the arm and yanking him behind her, she didn't like the bloodlust radiating from him.
Vlad's expression twisted into pure contempt.
"Move. This does not concern you."
The back of his fist connected with the side of Sam's face in a single, contemptuous motion. The impact cracked through the ruined factory like a gunshot. Blood sprayed in a bright arc. Sam's body was launched sideways as though struck by a wrecking ball. She hit the concrete hard, skidded several meters, and lay still. The purple flames in her hair guttered out; her transformation collapsed entirely.
"Sam!" Tucker's shout was raw with panic as he sprinted toward her.
Danny was already there.
He appeared beside her in a blur of white light, crouching low, one hand hovering just above her face as he checked for breath and injury. When he spoke, his voice was ice.
"Look after her."
Tucker skidded to a halt and dropped to his knees beside Sam without another word.
Danny rose.
His eyes had become twin pinpricks of neon green. The air around him shimmered, then ignited. Ectoplasm boiled across his skin and erupted into living green flame that clung to every contour of his body like a second skin. The shockwave of pure rage that exploded outward cracked the floor beneath his feet and sent debris skittering in every direction.
He launched himself at Vlad.
The two of them became airborne in an instant, colliding midair with a thunderclap of opposing power.
"What's the matter with you?!" Danny roared, his voice layered with the distorting resonance of a Ghostly Wail. "Have you lost your mind?!"
Vlad met the assault head-on. Both of his fists glowed with dense violet energy as he blocked, redirected, and answered every strike. His face was a mask of cold fury—until the words tore free, rough and wet with something far uglier than anger.
"Good. Now you know a mere fraction of the pain you've caused me. It doesn't feel pleasant, does it? Watching the woman you love get hurt—"
Danny's next punch faltered.
The raw, guttural anguish in Vlad's voice was unmistakable. Tears had gathered at the edges of those crimson eyes, unshed but shining.
"I—what?" Danny stared, genuine shock cutting cleanly through the rage.
Vlad's expression crumpled into something almost feral.
"Because of you, the only woman I have ever loved is dead. And I swore from that day forward that I would make every remaining second of your existence a living hell."
A pink, disk-shaped construct of pure explosive energy bloomed in his palm. He hurled it point-blank into Danny's chest.
The detonation was unlike anything Danny had ever felt. His spectral armor disintegrated into glowing shards. The force drove him backward through the air, blood spraying from his lips as the shockwave tore across his torso.
He righted himself mid-flight, face streaked with blood, the earlier inferno of rage now banked into something colder and more focused.
"What the hell are you talking about?" he demanded, eyes flaring as he converted both ghost rays into concentrated optic blasts.
Vlad simply raised one open palm. The twin beams of green energy slammed into his hand and were absorbed without resistance. The power built, condensed, then reversed—released from his opposite fist in a single, compressed counterblast that distorted the very air with its pressure.
Danny manifested a reflective construct midair, a shimmering mirror of ectoplasm meant to bounce the attack back. Vlad protected himself with a contemptuous flick of power, then simply charged straight through the reflective construct at super speed. The mirror exploded into fragments. An instant later Vlad's shoulder drove into Danny's midsection, tackling him out of the sky and carrying them across the cityscape of Gotham in a tangle of limbs, energy, and unresolved fury.
"The Phantom Dragon! Desiree! Spectra! Youngblood! Skulker!" Vlad snarled, punctuating each name with a vicious punch that forced Danny backward through the air. "Do you honestly believe every one of those disasters simply… happened? Maybe I was wrong and you're more like your father than I realized"
Danny's eyes widened in raw disbelief as he deflected the next strike and drove an uppercut into Vlad's jaw, sending the older half-ghost skidding back.
"What?! That was all you?! You orchestrated every single one of them?!"
Vlad wiped a smear of ectoplasm from his chin and gave a cold, humorless scoff.
"I did. Though at this point I'm beginning to wonder whether I even needed to involve myself. You seem to possess a remarkable talent for attracting catastrophe wherever you go. Lunch Lady. The Box Ghost. Ember. Klemper. Technus. Every deranged madman that crawls out of that cursed little city of yours." His voice dripped with contempt as the two of them crashed together once more in a furious exchange of blows. "You have a true gift for making your own life a living hell."
The night sky above Gotham city lit up in continuous bursts of green and violet—ghost energy colliding like opposing fireworks, each impact sending shockwaves rippling outward.
"Instead of worrying about my life," Danny snarled, "worry about your own!"
He opened his mouth and exhaled a condensed torrent of absolute-zero frost breath. Vlad swept his cloak around himself and vanished in a warp of his powers, reappearing behind Danny an instant later. A crackling ghostly stinger lanced toward the half-ghost's spine—only for Danny to teleport away at the last possible second and materialize directly above him. Danny's leg ignited in green flame as he dropped into a devastating axe kick. The blow met a hastily erected violet barrier that rippled violently under the force, cracks spiderwebbing across its surface.
Vlad's voice, when it came again, was quieter. Rougher. Almost broken.
"There was a time I did genuinely worry about your life. The moment I heard about the accident… all I wanted was to come to you. To take you under my protection. To raise you the way you deserved. In honor of her…" His crimson eyes darkened. "And then I learned the truth. That *you* were the cause of it. That you were the reason Maddie was taken from me. And after that… I simply couldn't."
A construct sword of dense pink energy formed in his hand. He charged. Danny met the strike with a blade of his own; the two weapons locked with a scream of opposing power.
"You took them from me," Vlad hissed, eyes bloodshot and glowing a deeper, more unhinged red, "and I will never forgive you."
Danny's expression faltered. His grip on the sword remained firm, but something in his face had shifted.
"…Them?" he repeated quietly, catching the slip.
Vlad's own features twisted as the word hung in the air between them. For a fraction of a second the pure hatred cracked, revealing something far more raw underneath.
"That's… that's right. Them." His voice dropped, almost to himself. "As much as I wanted that lard-ass out of the picture, it should have been by *my* hands. Not yours." The rage swelled again, hotter and more desperate. "I never considered him a true friend—how could I? He was the one who won Maddie in the end. Of course I hated him for it. But that doesn't erase the years of accumulated memories. The late nights in the dorms. The stupid dreams we shared. The future we once talked about like it was inevitable—"
"AHHHH!"
The roar tore out of Vlad as though something inside him had finally ruptured. He drove a vicious kick into Danny's midsection, pouring every ounce of bottled grief and resentment into the blow. Hot tears streamed freely down his pale-blue face, trailing into the air as the two of them spun apart.
His energy sword shattered into glittering fragments. Both hands rose to cover his face as the sobs finally broke free—ugly, inconsolable, and utterly human.
Danny felt his throat close. He still held his own sword raised, but there was no conviction left in the stance. He bit down hard on his lower lip until he tasted blood, voice emerging hoarse and cracked.
"I… I'm sorry—"
"NO!"
Vlad's head snapped up. He waved his hand in front of himself in a frantic, almost manic gesture, his other hand still covering his face, tears still pouring.
"Don't you *dare* apologize! You have no right! This is all your fault—every last second of it!"
The broken grief on his face twisted once more into pure, lethal wrath. When he spoke again, the words came out in a low, gravelly growl that seemed to scrape against the air itself.
"And I will not stop… until you are lying dead at my feet."
********************************************
+10 advance Chapters and my other patron exclusive content on: patreon.com/Shadow_D_Monarch3