Lightning Rod; An Ethical Nightmare
Part 2 of 2

Danny screamed. It was all he could think of to do. The cogs and gears in his brain stopped altogether, leaving him frozen in midair, shaking. He saw it in stop-motion; the red-haired girl he knew as his sister slowly, agonisingly, clutched the base of her neck as she was blasted backwards and slammed into the stairs. The mug in her hand came loose and fell from her grip, the cocoa flying through the air and splattering on the ground.

Jazz’s teeth were gritted together as she, with great effort, brought her head back up, bulging aqua eyes staring in to that of Vlad’s. His were remorseless, red, empty.... She attempted to say something, but found her voice and her breath had been snatched away from her throat.

Jack couldn’t see what was happening around the corner, because it was out of his line of vision. But he’d heard his daughter’s strangled gasp, and even took notice of the ghost kid’s horrified scream, which somehow managed to rebound and come from every direction, trapping the lab in the middle.

The last thing Jazz said was nothing but a whisper; heard by none except for those with exceptionally sharp hearing.

“Uncle Vlad...” She choked, desperately trying to take control of her shaking voice and throbbing neck. “Why did you do it, Uncle Vlad...?”

That day, in the Fenton’s basement laboratory, Vlad showed his first expression of remorse in over twenty years, as the teenage daughter of the love of his life closed her eyes forever.

Danny finally regained possession of his ailing mental control, diving so quickly towards her that he looked more like a black and white streak. He’d already frantically checked for even the smallest of breaths and a pulse before Jack got to her, but Jazz was... gone. Even though he refused to accept it, he could feel it. Her presence was... lost.

Jack pushed Danny out of the way instinctively, crashing down before his fallen daughter and performing the exact same procedure as his son. Of course, it turned up nothing, as Jack’s face plainly indicated when he turned his head to face his old friend.

“Call an ambulance.”

“Jack, I-”

“CALL ONE!” Jack bellowed in command, loud enough to be heard by all of Amity Park atop the thunder. An awful, crushing silence followed, where the only thing to be heard was the distant creaking of the roof.

Vlad didn’t move. He just stood there, becoming paler than his skin usually allowed. Jack eventually, though not without questioning himself on why he was doing this, turned to Danny with a pleading look.

Danny looked up, trying to get a grip of himself by rubbing off the few green ectoplasmic tears that had appeared in his eyes. “Dad, get mom and tell her what happened. And – and while you’re upstairs, call 911. I’ll look after Jazz.”

Jack looked at him with the kind of shocked curiosity that seriously worried Danny.
And then – something that worried him even more – a sudden, though short-lived, dawning look of enlightenment. It was only after Danny’s dad had raced up the stairs that he realised his very small, very important mistake.

Though really, in perspective, it didn’t matter. All Danny’s thoughts did were loop straight back to his sister. He didn’t notice nor care about the vampiric ghost behind him, trying instead to hold his sister at a point where the stairs weren’t grating into her back. Not that that helped anything....

But then it really hit him. Vlad had done this. Even though Danny had knocked his
aim off, he was still aiming to kill Jack and therefore a part of his family. And instead, he'd ended up taking Jazz.

What had Jazz done to deserve this?

Danny picked her up carefully, and then placed her on the floor in what looked like a more comfortable position. He proceeded to look up at Vlad with painstaking slowness. “You killed her.”

Vlad couldn’t really say anything. He wasn’t overcome by remorse – he’d gotten over that in less than a minute. Instead, he was overcome by shock. He hadn’t meant to kill the girl at all....

Danny stared at him, blankly. It made the boy look unearthly – almost as though he’d been possessed by a kind of demon. It wasn’t just the blank staring, either; there was a strange sparkle in his eyes that had nothing to do with inspiration.
Vlad’s eyebrows knitted together, though the movement itself was hard to pick. Both hybrids stared at each other for what seemed the longest time, and while their expressions were unreadable, the air between them was colder than the chill of the Antarctic winds. Anyone who had’ve been watching would never have seen it coming, and yet, at the same time, what was going to happen was blindingly obvious...

In short, Danny’s face twisted into something that could have been brought up from the depths of hell as he dived without warning. Vlad barely had time to react before the teenage half ghost had him pinned to the ground, snarling.

“You killed my sister!”

“Daniel-!”

“You killed her! Jazz! You killed Jazz! I’ll kill you!”

Danny’s hands headed straight for his archenemy’s throat. He was barely thinking. He never thought he’d ever want to kill someone, to feel that horrible urge to reach into someone’s chest and pull out their heart; not even for Vlad. But at this very moment, it was unbelievable – a rage like no other Danny had ever felt; even against his future self. Because this time someone really had died.

“It was your fault, Daniel!”

That was where Danny froze, staring at Vlad’s eyes in horror and disbelief.

“You heard me! If you hadn’t have pushed me aside, then that ray would never
have hit young Jasmine.”

“You bastard!” Danny screamed, tears beginning to trail down his cheeks. “You were trying to kill my dad! It’s ALL your fault! If you weren’t trying to kill him, then Jazz wouldn’t be dead! You bastard!”

“You’re trying to give the blame away when it really is your fault, Daniel. At least
face up to what you caused, blundering about just like your idiot of an old man.”

“Take it back!”

“You know it, Daniel!”

What exactly Vlad was trying to do with these mind games was up for discussion. Perhaps on the contrary, he himself was trying to move the blame to Danny, just for his own mental wellbeing. Whatever the reason, however, it only seemed to provoke Danny, who ended up punching Vlad in the nose as hard as he could. There was a horrible crunching sound as his fist connected, and judging by the way Vlad’s nose was bent and the amount of blood that poured out of it after the blow,  it was well and truly broken.

The older hybrid choked and spat out reddish green blood, glaring up at the younger. Danny might have been fuelled by anger, but Vlad knew that on a level playing ground, he could outwit, outlast and overpower Danny any day of the year. In one swift motion, he threw himself to his feet and elbowed Danny in the mouth, knocking the boy to the ground.

“Yo’re dust a silliy li’le boy ‘oo needs do ged his brioribies in orda!” It was supposed to sound menacing, although even Vlad had to admit, that through a broken nose, it wasn’t very menacing at all. It somehow took the credibility out when it sounded as though he had a very bad cold.

Danny growled, diving for one of the tables against the walls, where some weapons had been left unattended from his parents’ various tinkerings. He had no idea what exactly he’d just picked up, but whatever it was, it looked like it’d hurt.
The playing field wasn’t level anymore.

Vlad knew that he had no choice but to flee. He didn’t know what the mystery weapon did either, but wasn’t exactly willing to be the first to find out. Trying to blast it out of Danny’s hands would need tedious aiming that he didn’t have time for. Even if the sky wasn’t a good place to be during a storm like this, he didn’t trust his chances in such an enclosed area.

Danny had it aimed and was about to fire, but the billionaire was too quick for him. He’d already managed to jump into the air and make his escape through the roof of the basement. But that, of course, meant nothing to Danny. Holding the enormous weapon tightly in his grip, he allowed intangibility to pour through his body, and continued on to disregard a number of very important physical laws.

Jack, who’d gone unnoticed when he’d come back down the stairs with Maddie, now saw Danny Fenton in a very different light – especially when he burst into a solid mass of concrete, metal, and a number of other very strong compounds with absolutely no physical resistance.

--

The whole of Amity Park knows about Danny Phantom and Vlad Plasmius’s fight on that wretched day, though few actually saw it with their own eyes.

There was one person who saw the fight in full – it was Jack. Maddie had ridden on the ambulance with Jazz, even though everyone knew that there simply was no hope. Neither parent really had the time to pull out of shock and grieve, either, as their son battled their college friend with such an unrelentless hate it was surprising he hadn’t blown up in the middle of the sky and taken several city blocks with him.

Jack followed the ghost fight through the town in the Fenton Family Ghost Assault Vehicle, finding that driving like a maniac was a lot easier with the other drivers off the roads and out of the weather, and also a lot harder with the storm pushing the
‘RV’ in all kinds of unwanted directions.

Up in the sky, Danny wasn’t fighting for his life. Vlad was.
The wind churned, blowing the combatants the wrong way, causing them to misfire, misconnect, and become more lost than anything else. Though Danny was still winning in terms of obvious advantages, and was frustratedly trying to shoot at what he, through the storm, thought was Vlad. (not to mention, with a weapon that was voted No. 1 in the yearly contest by The Ghost Hunter’s Association of Ridiculously Unnecessary Firepower)

They’d been up there for over five minutes, and still neither had actually connected with each other. The storm blew them around like paper, and lightning was a constant threat. Especially, Jack thought uncomfortably, considering Danny was holding a highly-powered ectoplasmic weapon that was made mostly with metal.

And all through this, there wasn’t any banter at all. Not even a single dryly-said comment, sarcastic statement, or any signs of any use of the vocal chords at all. These two were locked in an eerie silent combat, apart from, of course, the roll of thunder, the pounding of rain, the gusting of winds and the whining of a charging ectoplasmic weapon.

Vlad’s bloody nose dripped down everywhere, but the rain was so strong; it was just washed away. By the time it’d hit the ground, it was unnoticeable. The pain, however, Vlad thought bitterly, was not gone. And it only intensified when Danny hit him squarely in the face with a devastatingly large neon energy beam.

It was like being struck over the head with a flying mallet. If Vlad’s nose wasn’t broken before, it certainly was now. The electrical charge in the weapon forced his hair to stand on end much more than it usually did, (even through the horrendous rain and wind) and his face had been turned into something you wouldn’t have wanted to be forced to look at for long periods of time.

Thankfully for Vlad, Danny seemed to be losing his grip on the gun. It was incredibly heavy to be attempting to drag it around in the wind, and it had already taken much effort on Danny’s part to keep from dropping it. Large amounts of firepower came at a price, especially in this kind of weather.

Vlad bit through the pain in his head – which felt more like it was one enormous tumour – and used the opportune moment to his advantage. Right now, he was very glad ghosts didn’t need to breathe, because otherwise the blood running down his throat would have probably choked him to death. Before Danny could react, Vlad ripped it from his gloved fingers and quickly pulled away, making it impossible to snatch back.

Vlad was, when you got right down to it, forty-something with at least twenty years of experience. Danny was but a fragile teenager. The teen really didn’t stand much of a chance against a gun like that; one shot was enough to make Vlad looking like he’d been mauled – he hated to think what it’d do to him...

And so the fight reversed, this time with Danny flying for his life and Vlad chasing in pursuit. The anger between the two combatants was obvious to anyone who happened to be watching – each move was highly calculated and yet completely and utterly desperate at the same time. Danny quickly avoided the mass of shots fired in his general direction, though not without some difficulty.

Jack had trouble keeping up even with the RV, as the two half ghost hybrids streaked through the clouds. Their directions changed in a sporadic fashion; dodging and attacking each other combined with gale-force winds took them all over Amity Park, before they ended up over the Western Side, near where the abandoned mining shaft was from back in the old days.

This small fact, of course, didn’t stop them. And though the banter never really even got started, their intentions were clear. Both parties knew it was going to be kill or be killed. Danny went back on the offensive, deciding that that was going to be the only way to pull the weapon away from Vlad’s grip. In a failed attempt, he attempted to shoot an ectoblast into Vlad, but found it sailing off in the wrong
direction.

Vlad refrained from smiling due to the throbbing pains aching through his face, but even without his expression, it was obvious that he was gloating smugly. Danny tried to hear what his archenemy was saying when he finally did speak up, but found that the storm was just too loud. Still, he kept on listening, trying to pick it up.

At least, until the huge ectoplasmic weapon, and consequently, Vlad, attracted a thick, unforgiving bolt of lightning. It lasted only a second, but that was easily enough to knock him cold.

Vlad’s one saving grace was that it might have been the first time he’d honestly attracted anything.

Danny’s jaw dropped, however, as Vlad plummeted a few hundred metres through the air, bright pink sparks shooting from him as he went. Gravity wasn’t merciful on a half ghost when he was unconscious, and neither was whatever remained of the tattered laws of physics. He couldn’t hold his ghost form whilst in a state like this, and ended up reverting to his usual business-suited self before drilling into the ground next to the mine like a meteor.

As if the situation wasn’t bad enough, the universe had one more thing in store for the likes of Vlad Masters. He was just close enough to the edge so that, when the wind blew...

Into the shaft he fell.

Jack couldn’t get anywhere near where Vlad had fallen because most of the area was fenced off, but Danny could. He landed just above the huge hole in the ground and stared down it. If there was a bottom, then he couldn’t see it. The source of all his hurt, his pain, his sadness – it was lying pathetically at the bottom of that shaft, helpless, and probably rather close to death.

It was another one of those times where Danny’s brain simply stopped. All of the sprockets clicked out of place and jammed, leaving him nothing short of a glowing statue.

In desperation, Danny’s father broke through the fence and ran up to his son, narrowly avoiding slipping into the shaft himself. Without saying a word, he grabbed Danny and held him tightly, rocking back and forth.

If it hadn’t have been raining so heavily, Danny would have felt three fat splodges from his dad’s eyes land on the black part of his jumpsuit.

After a few moments of silence, Jack steered back in the direction of the RV, not daring to look back at the mine. He bit his lip down, looking at what he’d been attempting to dissect for over a year. Danny received another strangle-style hug as he was placed in the back seat of the Assault Vehicle.

But... something struck him. He’d wanted to kill Vlad, sure. He’d wanted to tear him limb from limb, as slowly and painfully as possible, but... now he wasn’t so sure. He might have been Vlad, but Danny was about to leave him to, quite literally, die in a hole.

Which made Danny no better than the older half ghost himself.

“Dad?”

“Yes...?” Jack replied cautiously, looking into his son’s eyes. His son’s unnaturally green eyes...

“I should get Vlad out of there...”

Jack wore a pained expression; it tore his conscience in half, this statement. But after today... there was only one answer. He shifted his gaze away from the boy’s eyes, and, with a dark look, he replied;

“Danny... sometimes... when some people are in peril... sometimes... it’s better for everyone if they're just left that way.”

Whether his father's statement was true or not, Danny really didn't know...