#dalv essentially raised himself

[dalvs-wife]

i have thoughts about dalv's parents if you even care............

[ladylynse]

Chapter 16 [FFN | AO3] of The Trouble with Ghosts: Lancer hadn’t realized how closely young Mr. Fenton’s school troubles–and the secrets he surely wasn’t telling his parents–were tied to ghosts until after that encounter with Phantom.

(beginning | previous)

Warnings: Torture and near drowning until the dialogue starts, more threats afterwards

-|-

Despite his distorted view, Danny saw the three figures enter the lab before Vlad did. Vlad was too busy watching him. Smiling. Waiting.

Danny’s heart thundered in his chest. He couldn’t kick or thrash. He couldn’t scream, at least not without burning up the last of his oxygen. He hoped Vlad would take his widened eyes as panic or pleading instead of surprise, but—

There must have been some sound that Danny didn’t hear. Vlad turned, flicking intangible as a blast from an ectogun shot through him and hit the door of Danny’s chamber, fizzling out into a shower of green sparks. It wasn’t enough to crack the door, unfortunately, but now he could hear yelling above the blood pounding in his ears, and he knew they must’ve seen him.

Black started to swirl in front of his eyes, and something within him tried to spark to life.

Danny pushed it down, trying to focus, but all he could see now through the encroaching black was glimpses of pink and green. Vlad wasn’t holding back, then. He wasn’t pretending.

Of course, he couldn’t, not with Danny right there in his lab. Considering he looked like Masters and not Plasmius, he’d have to play at being overshadowed to even try to get away with this. Not that it would work now that everyone knew the truth. They weren’t going to take Vlad’s word over Danny’s.

Danny’s chest ached.

Every heartbeat seemed like it was building up pressure, threatening to burst out of him—

That same something sparked again, white light filtering through the black, and he pushed it down.

His vision closed off completely, and he tried to listen, to follow the fight, only to start as something banged into the door of the chamber, sending a reverberation through the entire thing.

Liquid flooded into his mouth and filled his lungs, and Danny choked, spluttering and trying to move—

The spark came again, and he didn’t have the strength to stop it.

After the change had washed over him, his body didn’t protest the lack of oxygen. The fogginess lifted from his mind, and he could see with clear eyes.

Meaning he could see the snarling expression on Valerie’s face as she attacked Vlad, flanked by his mom. Not that attacking Vlad did much good, seeing as he simply stayed intangible. Valerie’s momentum from her punch sent her stumbling through him, and the rolling desk chair lying on its side in front of his chamber didn’t seem so out of place once Valerie grabbed a beaker from the table she’d hit and hurled it at Vlad’s head. Maddie danced out of the way—Valerie really wasn’t used to fighting with allies—and swept at Vlad’s feet with the Fenton Utility Weapon, but he still wasn’t tangible, and whatever setting she had it on wasn’t enough for shock him back to tangibility. Danny saw her changing the settings, spinning the dial on the side in between hits, but she hadn’t had success yet.

Most ghosts couldn’t stay intangible for very long.

It was incredibly draining.

Thinking back on it, Danny really should’ve realized that Vlad employed that tactic more than anyone else he’d ever fought. All those years of breaking into places, maybe. He wasn’t fighting back anymore, though Danny wasn’t necessarily sure that it was a good thing. It was Vlad. Having no scruples was kinda his thing, and—

Wait.

Where was Lancer?

It shouldn’t have been difficult to lose sight of a giant ball of green energy, but to be fair, Danny hadn’t expected Lancer to ever turn off the portable ghost shield. (Once Danny had realized that must be what Lancer was using, he really couldn’t see it being anything else.)

Of course, a ghost shield was only effective against ghosts.

Danny’s heart sank a little when he spotted Lancer a mere five feet from him, half-hidden behind an examination table but held in place by a second Vlad.

A duplicate in human form was still in human form. Truthfully, Danny wasn’t sure how that worked, but it was something he’d tested with Sam and Tucker once he’d gotten the hang of actually creating a duplicate. Vlad had had twenty years to test out his abilities, so he knew perfectly well that he’d only needed to drop his intangibility and invisibility at the last second to pass through the ghost shield.

For a moment, Danny didn’t know why Vlad wouldn’t just overshadow Lancer. A scalpel to the throat was a little much, even for him. Maddie and Valerie were too focused on the first Vlad to notice, and Danny couldn’t hear Mr. Lancer making any attempt to get their attention. It just didn’t seem like an effective tactic, so Danny couldn’t understand Vlad’s game. If it were just to keep Lancer from reaching him—and he had clearly been Lancer’s goal; Danny had no doubt Valerie and Maddie had agreed to something like that beforehand, letting Lancer do the rescuing while they did the distracting—there were easier ways to do that.

Holo-Maddie reappeared at that moment, causing the real one to freeze in place and stare as the hologram chirped out, “Sample processed, sweetums!”

Valerie was the first one to recover—unless you counted Vlad, who was already flying towards the computer console. The version of him who wasn’t holding Lancer captive, anyway. “What the heck is that supposed to mean?” Valerie shrieked, her words even clearer to him now that he was Phantom. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the hologram, but Maddie had the moment Vlad had begun to move. She was taking aim with her weapon, and—

Vlad screamed as the blast hit him in the back, throwing him forward into the console. His suit was smoking slightly at the edges, distinct despite Danny’s watery view. Maddie took another shot, this time hitting the computer in a flurry of sparks.

It was only once the Maddie hologram flickered that Danny realized that might have been his mother’s intention all along. Had Vlad let himself be hit? Had he been trying to protect the computer?

Valerie had her ectogun raised again, too. Except— It wasn’t the one she’d held earlier, the one Maddie must’ve given her. It was definitely Dalv tech, the same one he’d faced down only yesterday. She wasn’t in her suit—at least she knew enough not to trust that—but he knew that look on her face. She was a split second away from pulling the trigger, and Danny was sure that it was only Vlad’s voice from behind her when she could clearly see him in front of her that had her freeze before she could take her shot.

“I’d hold your fire,” the scalpel-wielding Vlad said, effectively drawing the attention of the others.

Holo-Maddie reappeared by the first Vlad at the computer console, but neither Valerie nor Maddie gave any indication that they’d noticed. Valerie took two steps towards Mr. Lancer and the Vlad who was holding him captive, still aiming her gun at them, but Maddie stopped her. She started trying to bargain, but Danny could recognize the distraction for what it was, and he looked back to see if he could figure out what Vlad was doing at the computer.

The angle wasn’t great; Danny couldn’t see the screen, let alone make out what Vlad was typing. Still, he could see Vlad pocket something—a flash drive, maybe?—before he keyed something into the computer. Holo-Maddie disappeared, and one of the large buttons on the console started flashing red.

Vlad changed into Plasmius, catching Valerie’s attention once more, but she only got off one shot before he flew through the wall.

It had missed him by less than half an inch, the tiny little dart embedded in the wall instead.

The remaining Vlad smiled before dropping the scalpel and vanishing himself.

Danny couldn’t make out Lancer’s gasping words, but he waved off Maddie and Valerie and pointed towards Danny. At a word from Maddie, Valerie nodded and moved towards him anyway, but Danny couldn’t see if Lancer had downplayed his injuries because Maddie was all he could see as she came over to examine the chamber.

“Hold on, Danny,” she said. “I’ll get you out of there.”

Either Vlad’s work was incredibly intuitive or he’d based it off an old invention with which Maddie was familiar, because the water was draining in less than thirty seconds. Danny might not strictly need to breathe as much in ghost mode (or at all? He always got really uncomfortable whenever they tried to test it, so he wasn’t wholly sure if it had a time limit), but he still sucked in huge lungfuls of air the moment he could.

“Thanks,” he whispered, just before the door’s seal released with a pop.

“Don’t thank us yet,” Maddie murmured as she pulled the door open and peered at the contraption sticking out of his abdomen. “Do you know what this is?”

“Vlad was trying to get…got…a mid-morph sample. Like, a DNA sample or something from the moment I changed.” Danny glanced down at it. “You can probably just pull it out without killing me.” Vlad didn’t know if the sample was all he needed, after all. At least, Danny hoped he didn’t. That doubt would keep Vlad from pulling anything worse right now.

“Let’s get you out of this first. Then I’ll take a better look at that.”

A detached part of Danny knew most mothers didn’t carry around lockpicks, let alone know how to use them. It wasn’t one of the things he could ever remember Jazz rolling her eyes over—being able to chase ghosts past the first locked door or gate or whatever was rather essential to a successful ghosthunter, and his parents didn’t exactly have a life of crime on the side like Vlad—but it was something he’d gotten used to long before his parents had ever opened the portal. He could still remember the look on Mrs. Foley’s face the first time he’d asked her where she kept hers if she didn’t have any pockets in her clothes. He’d been five or six, maybe, and she’d been too stunned by the seemingly random question to speak.

Tucker had been too busy laughing to realize Danny hadn’t been joking like he’d assumed.

Still, it didn’t take very long for Maddie to free his wrists, and by the time she dropped down to work on the lock at his feet, Lancer was hovering anxiously in the background and Valerie had gone to glower at the computer console.

“Thanks for coming,” Danny said, trying not to focus on the thin line of red where Vlad had scored Lancer’s skin. He really hadn’t thought Vlad would kill anyone—it was more his style to utterly discredit them—and seeing that this might not have been an empty threat on Vlad’s part made Danny’s stomach turn. He was fine with the danger being focused on himself, but everyone else, especially someone like Mr. Lancer….

“The others are headed over,” Valerie said without turning around, and Lancer closed his mouth without speaking. “Good thing, too. I think Tucker’ll need to figure out whatever Mr. Masters did, because I definitely can’t.”

“Come on, sweetie,” Maddie said as she eased him free, keeping his torso straight even as she turned him, pivoting him out of the chamber without pulling free whatever was stuck inside him. “Just hold on a few more seconds while I look at this.”

Danny nodded and didn’t breathe, letting her work.

He felt like he’d lost. Mr. Lancer, Valerie, his parents— They all knew and accepted him, and now they all knew the truth about Vlad, too. That should have been a victory. Maybe it still was, of a sort, but if Danny had won that battle, Vlad had won the other one. He’d gotten the mid-morph sample. His play with Valerie had worked. He’d…he’d be able to create stable clones….

Would he even be satisfied with a clone? He might create the perfect half-ghost son that looked exactly like Danny, might be able to brainwash him or program him or whatever he’d done to Danielle to make the clone as like Danny as possible, but a clone would never be as good as the original, however perfect a replica it was. How far would Vlad get before he realized this wouldn’t make him happy, either? How long would it be until he came back? Tried to capture Danny again, tried to split his parents up and win over Maddie? If he did manage to create perfect clones, he could use them to his advantage—

“He won’t get away with this,” Maddie was saying. “He won’t simply lose his position on the city council; his estate—his entire empire—will come under scrutiny. I know he kept residences here and in Wisconsin, and there are all those hunting cabins, too. He won’t be easy to track down, but we’ll find him, even if he tries to hide in the Ghost Zone. In the meantime, we’ll make sure he can never come back and never hurt you like this again. It’s going to be okay, sweetie. He can’t fool us now that we know the truth, and he won’t be able to keep his political power, either.”

“We should perhaps focus on the most immediate problem—” Lancer started.

“I’ve almost got it,” Maddie said without looking up from her tinkering, but from the look on Lancer’s face, that wasn’t what he’d meant.

“Uh, guys?” There was a note of panic in Valerie’s voice that hadn’t been there before. “I think Vlad sealed us in.” Danny looked over at her, and she had her phone to her ear. “Jack’s outside in the office, and Jazz is headed back to school to pick up Sam and Tucker, but apparently this place is blast proof.”

“There should be a control panel on the wall where we came through,” Maddie said. “Get it open and I’ll come when I’m finished here.”

“I can bandage him up,” Lancer said with a touch on her shoulder. “First aid is within my skill set.”

Danny had felt the poking and prodding and pulling around his abdomen, of course, but he hadn’t realized his mother had tugged out the device—long and sharp with what might be electrodes hanging off of it for all Danny knew—until he saw it in her hand. She set it on the bench beside her and pulled his own hands to press against the wound before removing her own and straightening up. She pulled out a sample bag from one of her many pockets and put the device inside before tucking it away. As she stripped off her green-stained gloves and pulled another pair from a different pockt, she said, “Thank you.” Pointing with her free hand towards the wall with the portal, she added, “I saw the first aid kit over there.”

As she walked over to join Valerie at the far wall, Lancer dropped to a crouch to examine the wound for himself, gently nudging Danny’s hands out of the way.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Danny said after Lancer sucked in a sharp breath.

“I think I’ll be the judge of that, Mr. Fenton.”

“You don’t know what I’ve been through.”

Lancer closed his eyes briefly before standing. “No, I daresay I still don’t, but I do know it is not something I would wish on someone as young as you. Come along; I’ll see what I can do.”

“If it’s bad enough that you need to stitch me up, you don’t have to be that good at it for it to be good enough. Sam didn’t know what she was doing when she started, and all Jazz and I knew about sewing when we began doing this was whatever Dad had shown us, and that never involved stitching up people.”

“You are not making the situation sound any better, I’m afraid.”

“It’s just….” Danny bit his lip but let Lancer guide him closer to the portal and didn’t protest when the teacher bent to pick him up and sit him down on an examination table. Well. Dissection table, going by the bindings. He decided not to think about that, something that wasn’t hard to do when his wound was throbbing after the jostling, and instead changed back to Fenton before Mr. Lancer asked. The change, at least, came as easily as it always had. “It’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be once it started.”

“Should that not be cause for celebration?”

Danny wasn’t sure if Lancer was trying (and failing) to be facetious, so he shrugged and then hissed as the movement stung, stabbing into him with more ferocity than he’d expected from such a slight movement. “I don’t think it’ll be as easy as Mom thinks it is.”

Lancer was quiet for a moment, busying himself by grabbing the first aid kit from the wall, setting it down beside Danny, and looking through the contents to find what he wanted. Finally, “Things rarely are as simple as they should be, but you needn’t take it all on by yourself any longer—and, rest assured, I am not referring to your friends. I strongly suggest the matter be left primarily to your parents, with my assistance wherever I am able to help. If there are any legal proceedings—”

“Are you serious? We can’t take Vlad down using the proper channels. If he can’t buy people off, he’ll just overshadow them or get some other ghosts to do it for him.”

“Mr. Fen—”

“This isn’t something you can just fix. It’s not that easy.”

“I understand, but—”

“No, you don’t. You can’t or you wouldn’t be standing there talking about legal proceedings.” Danny started to sigh and then coughed as the pain spiked again. His healing was still too slow. How long was this thing supposed to last? He couldn’t remember Vlad helpfully monologuing about that little detail. Too bad Technus wasn’t likely to know.

“I’m sorry.”

Danny blinked and looked up at Mr. Lancer, who was still focused on disinfecting Danny’s wound. Danny hissed through his teeth as a new sort of stinging took hold, but Lancer didn’t pay that any mind.

“I should have done something before,” Lancer continued as he reached for some butterfly stitches, something that Danny knew from experience would hold well enough until he could get stitched up properly. They were better than nothing, anyway. Lancer held the wound closed as he put them in place, and Danny did his best not to wince. “I knew something had changed in your life, and it took me entirely too long to find out what it was. I allowed myself to be distracted, to neglect you in favour of the school—”

“What?”

Lancer had pulled out the gauze now. No big surprise there. When in doubt, cover it and deal with it later. It would not be the first time Danny had pulled that trick. With his usual healing rate, he typically only needed stitches and splints and stuff to make sure he didn’t heal improperly; he’d never had to worry about infection.

“Let’s just say seeing Mr. Baxter appropriately punished for his actions has been an ongoing fight, one I have not dedicated myself to as much as I should have, as you are not his only target.”

Oh.

Being Dash’s favourite punching bag wasn’t even on Danny’s radar right now.

“That’s okay. I’m used to it. But you—”

“You being used to it, as you say, is part of the problem—and, quite frankly, yet more evidence of my failing. Thankfully, that is a fight I am better suited for than this one has been.” The hand that had been tracking towards to the first aid kit—probably for medical tape to hold the gauze in place—jerked towards Lancer’s neck instead, no doubt pulled by the reminder of what had happened and the realization of what could have been, but it resumed course before it could make contact. “Just because you are used to something does not mean it does not need to be addressed.”

“I mean, I guess, but priorities, y’know? Vlad’s definitely worse than Dash.”

“And your parents will focus on that problem with the help I can give them, as I’ve said.”

“But it’s Vlad. It’s not just…. I mean, yeah, he’s one person, but he’s not one problem. He can create a whole bunch more problems really easily, especially now that he has a mid-morph sample from me. That’s what he needed to stabilize his clones. He can create a perfect clone of me now, at least once he gets a lab set up or overshadows someone in charge of one that does have the right stuff, and—”

“I am not saying that you are incapable of handling the problem—or problems—Vlad poses,” Lancer said delicately as he finished taping the gauze into place, “but you need to understand that you aren’t alone in this anymore.”

“Sam and—”

“Did I not tell you that your friends and your sister should not be the only ones facing the danger alongside you? You know that isn’t what I mean.”

Danny frowned. “You’re still seriously underestimating Vlad, even though he threatened you and you’re standing in his secret lab.”

“Which is one reason why I am not trying to say you should sit out all of this while the adults take care of the situation,” Lancer said, not looking the least bit surprised when Danny bristled. “You have more knowledge and experience than we do—even, I daresay, than your parents do. You may have fewer years of ghost hunting under your belt, but your perspective and the intensity of your, ah, training, for lack of a better word—”

“Experience is the best teacher.”

Lancer raised an eyebrow at Danny’s glib interruption but otherwise didn’t comment on it. “You should not be sidelined, but neither should you continue to be the one leading the charge and taking the heaviest fire. One of the reasons your parents fight ghosts is to protect you and your sister, is it not? Is throwing yourself into the most danger possible not against everything they are fighting for?”

Danny shifted and tugged his shirt down to cover up Lancer’s patch job as the teacher packed away the supplies. At least that meant his previous wounds must not look too bad; otherwise, Lancer would’ve insisted on redressing them. Of course, the one in his side was near enough to the one in his abdomen that Lancer could’ve done it at the same time. Danny had been paying more attention to what he’d held in his hands than where he was putting them, mostly because thinking about what Lancer was doing would just make it hurt more.

Still.

If Lancer hadn’t continued talking, that meant he was waiting for an answer. Danny took a careful breath, and it didn’t hurt this time. “Sometimes it’s necessary.”

“It is not necessary right now, and I am quite sure your parents will do everything in their power to ensure it remains unnecessary for you, your sister, or your friends to do that.” He glanced over his shoulder and added dryly, “And I am very much including Miss Gray in that assessment.”

Danny glanced towards Valerie. She was still hovering by the door, watching Maddie work on the panel. “Val’s a good fighter.”

“I never said she wasn’t. I’m trying to say that none of you should fight, but as you have the most knowledge of the situation, it is prudent that you help the adults—”

“But don’t you get it? Yeah, we’re kids, and it sucks that we have to risk so much to do this—but we aren’t the only ones in situations like this. Well, not like this, dealing with ghosts, but with high stakes. And it’s great that you care and want to take care of us, but we don’t need taking care of. Maybe you think it’s a shame we had to grow up fast or whatever to deal with this, but we can’t just pretend what we’ve gone through never happened. We’ve already had to learn to fight, so we did, and we’re good at it. It doesn’t make sense for you to just up and stop us and make us into, I dunno, consultants or something instead of fighters.”

Lancer blinked.

“We always knew there was risk. We accepted that, just like Mom and Dad did. Just like you did. We might not be legal adults but that doesn’t mean we don’t know what we were getting into with this. This whole thing with Vlad is messed up. We know. We know better than you do. He has what he wants, something he’s been trying forever to get, which is scary because it means I don’t know what he’s going to do next. And neither do you.”

Danny stared at his hands, not wanting to look Lancer in the eye after he’d let his tongue run away with him. “It’s just…. I can make a better guess of what this means than you or Mom and Dad can. And if you guys try to block us at every turn and insist it’s too dangerous to be directly involved ourselves just because we’re kids, we’re never going to stop him, and things will get worse.”

He pushed himself off the table, landing on his feet and wincing but holding in a whimper of pain. He’d get through this. He had to. Vlad’s drug had to work its way through his system and wear off soon, and then he’d be back to normal in no time. “I’ve picked up some things from Tucker, so I’m going to check out the computer. You can go through Vlad’s files or something and see if you can find the formula for whatever Val shot me with. Mom can probably make an antidote once she has that.”

Lancer made no move to follow as Danny strode off, and when he called Danny’s name, Danny pretended not to hear.

(see more fics | next)

[dannyphantomrpg]

Analysis: Ten Years Later

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Ten Years Later videos lately, and this analysis post just sort of happened~

To be fair, I did need to work it all out since I mildly referenced it in my Foley Fest drabble.

If I get any comic book info wrong, I'm so sorry. I don't know anything about Marvel aside what my husband knows about the 90's Spiderman cartoon.

Let's start off with Sam and Tucker, cause honestly? There's not much to go over with them.

Sam is sort of basic. Sort of dull. Butch says "leather" trench, but it's most likely pleather, or something more animal-friendly. Even (especially) ten years later, I don't see Sam giving up the good fight.

Her crop top, tho, seems to be a constant. I don't know if that's really her aesthetic, or if Butch just thinks all women like to show off their stomachs. Either way, the DP logo is something Sam would definitely sport.

Something I wanted to point out: in her first TYL sketch, Butch compares her to Black Widow. A quick Wiki skim later gives a bit more depth to the comic book ignorant like me. Black Widow's origin story is that of an orphan child being raised by the Russian government as a sort of Anti-Capitan America. She met up with Tony Stark by trying to assassinate someone in his company.

Sort of interesting to compare Sam with Black Widow, and then give her all those huge anti-ghost guns, hm~?

Tucker, I have a few issues with. Not his design (aside how he only got one sketch and then his final design - show your own characters some love, Butch!), but how Butch talks about him.

Specifically, that he's running for president. Quoting from Wikipedia:

“Article Two, Section 1 of the United States Constitution sets forth the eligibility requirements for serving as President of the United States:

   No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”

Tucker would only be twenty-four in TYL. He's still got 11 years to go before he can even think about running for president. So, like...

What happened to that little bit of legality?

Also of note, Tucker is the only redesign without the DP logo. Most likely, this is because he was the first and therefore before Butch had the idea, but he did give the majority of Sam's the logo.

Moving right along, we get into the meat of TYL. The Fentons.

A moment of silence for my baby Jazz.

How did "I want to go into psychology to help troubled teens" turn into "I'm essentially Tucker now"? Yes, she's the only one we've seen use the Fenton Peeler, but that doesn't really equate to getting "into the tech side of things."

Even in her sketch of just being in a jumpsuit with a "Maddie" haircut, Butch specifically gives her a piece of technology. He has her in a lab, leaning against a circuitry panel. Not a book in sight - not even one on ghost hunting!

And her final design? Oh, my sweet, smart child. There's just something so inhuman and terrifying about this image. Physically wired into Fenton Works? She "helps run all the gadgets"? She has control over traffic lights and automatic doors? Somehow, I feel like Tucker being up close and personal with his iPhone would be way more helpful than Jazz in a building on the other side of the city would be.

What happens the moment she runs into Technus? Heck, just send someone in to cut the power physically and she's completely vulnerable.

I guess Jack would be happy to be half robot? I mean, it seems like half his brain would be gone, so he can probably just be programmed to be excited about it anyway. I've never really seen Jack as the kind of guy to be upset about hygiene. If anything, I see him as a really clean person (until he gets completely distracted with an invention or something).

His second sketch is the one I really prefer - older, but still Jack. He’s big and buff and still a big old teddy bear. I can see this as a man who saw his son save the world and think "I'm slapping that logo on everything to show how proud of him I am".

Jack's finalized sketch is what really gave me pause in the first place. He's missing an eye. He's missing a leg. He has a prosthetic that, according to Butch, runs on ectoplasm. And, ok, I can see that happening. For God's sake, he turned his son and college best friend into halfas on accident because he wasn't paying attention - this man is not someone you really want in a lab setting.

But that's not what happened.

According to Butch, there is a possibility that people did this. That flesh and blood humans went after the Fentons and did them personal harm simply because of their connection to Danny. Jack lost a limb because a person decided to a) take out ghost-hunting competition, or b) cause Danny some kind of psychological harm, i.e. "If we can't get to you, we can get to your family".

And Maddie?

She was first and foremost a mother. Despite all the angst and family drama this fandom produces, Maddie loves her son above anything else. I feel, personally, if there was a choice between continuing her research and her children, she would give it all up in a heartbeat to make sure they're safe and happy.

That's all gone in her sketches.

Her very first image, she has a buzz cut, she has a huge weapon that's creating some sort of unmerciful death-ray, her goggles are down and she means business. There's nothing matronly about her in that image, no remnants of the mother that would look fondly on her son. No, she's murdering the F out of some ghost and does not care.

Again, in he second sketch, her hair is cut off and the goggles are down. There is something out there and she is going to destroy it. There is something out there that made Maddie leap "out of some sort of an airborne vehicle" with the ghost equivalent of the Little Boy and the Fat Man.

And, again, Butch is not helping.

"Well, I think maybe the Ghost Zone is in turmoil. I think that the ghosts need to live somewhere, and they’re trying to come here. So that’s why the Fentons get involved and that’s why there are so many weapons and why they’re up night and day, fighting off the ghosts."

First off - it's been established that the Ghost Zone and the Human World are connected. Anything that happens to one, will affect the other. So if the Ghost Zone has become so uninhabitable that the ghosts are coming here? How bad off is our world?

Second, Butch didn't say the ghosts were attacking. He said they wanted to live here. Yes, there are some ghost jerks out there *cough*Skulker*cough* but what about peaceful ones like Dora and Poindexter? The people of the Far Frozen? Shouldn't the Fentons know by now that not all ghosts are hostile? (Plus, this would have been an amazing use of Jazz's psychology to talk to some of these ghosts, to calm them down and learn from them.)

Maddie's final version manages to paint an even more bleak image for her. Butch mentions Mad Max and, a quick Wiki read later, that's, like, not good. Civilization is gone, lawlessness runs rampant, murder seems to be the only way to protect yourself. And Maddie is supposed to call forth that image?

Her hair is now essentially the shortest length Butch can give her without shaving her head. She's still wearing those goggles. We have yet to see this woman's eyes, she keeps them so hidden from the world. She has no guns to defend herself, only an ectoplasm-charged bat. She doesn't care about keeping her distance - oh no, she wants to be in the middle of the action.

And those BDSM ghosts? She keeps them on leashes short enough that they could touch her. She keeps them around to "help her sense other ghosts", nevermind the fact that, from what I recall, Danny is the only one with an actual ghost sense. Those ghosts look angry and not at all subdued.

And she's still wearing the DP logo. Somehow, even knowing her son is part ghost, she still has enough detachment/hatred of ghosts to demean them down to an animalistic level.

Vlad's designs are, whoo boy... Unique? Different? Each one portrays a completely different vision of the future that don't really mesh together. His first sketch is rather, uh, let's be completely honest here, Satanic. But other than that apparent dive into absolute evil, he looks more or less the same. Like no time has passed. I guess Clockwork could have yanked him out of space before too long?

By now everybody knows about the second sketch with fat!Vlad, tiger!Maddie, and perfect clone!Daniel. Heck, I knew about Daniel before I even knew there was a Ten Years Later video.

And let me just say this real quick: I love that, as soon as the words "He’s finally got himself a cloned child." were said we all, individually, came to the conclusion that: his name is Daniel Masters, he can be a spoiled jerk but isn't really evil, and he just wants someone to be friends with and play video games with. Like, I've yet to even see him in a TYL setting, he's more of a "Season 4" character.

My other thing I love about this image? Fat!Vlad. For a middle-aged man who kept in perfect shape, who fights with ghost teenagers every day, to suddenly put on weight? To me, in my experience, that means he's happy. He's found a way to be calm and relax and, yes, be settled enough to put on a few pounds. That's what happened to my husband. Before we got together she was an anxious, angry (precious) emo chick. And now she's calm, she's happy, she's adorably chubby~ (don't tell her I said this lol). Like, Vlad's so chill in this sketch that, whenever he finds out Daniel's been hanging out with Danny, he's not even mad! He's just like, "Be home by curfew, love you!" (My TYL Vlad is -absolutely- Maes Hughes. There isn't a single employee at Dalv Corp that hasn't seen a fold out wallet full of Daniel's pictures.)

(And just think, when Daniel brings home his boyfriend/girlfriend, Vlad brings out the baby book and Daniel's S/O is just like, "Why were your first steps when you were fourteen???")

Tiger!Maddie is great, if a little odd. Then again, Vlad's just living the dream of every five year old that just went to the zoo for the first time: "I wanna bring home the big kitty!"

And we get back to crazytown with the third sketch. Vlad wants to be king, what? When? Butch do you... do you know who Vlad is? You were so close with perfect clone!Daniel, and then you pull this. The only thing I can see this working as is some kind of Medieval AU with Dora and Aragon/pre-Sarcophagus Pariah Dark. Other than that, I can't see this sketch fitting in anywhere in DP.

But Vlad's final sketch returns us to the nightmare that is TYL. Vlad was abandoned in space, all human contact cut off, the only person that willingly called him a friend turned his back on him. He's probably ready to curl up and die at that point and then aliens come and kidnap him, forcing him to be a miner and then a coliseum fighter. I can't imagine the blow to his pride all that did.

I can accept that he would keep enough presence of mind to escape. Heck, I can almost believe that he would willingly keep the chain on his arm (though as less of a "reminder of where he came from" and more of a "I'm going to make these guys pay!"). But what really gets me is Butch saying, "he really, really wants to get Danny now".

That's not at all ominous. Not at all.

Like, what is that supposed to mean? I'm sure we're supposed to infer he's coming after Danny, but, would he? After all that time alone, after being broken down by some crazy Criminal Minds aliens? I'm sure that, in all that time Vlad was captured, he must have let it slip that he wasn't the only halfa. That this boy on Earth was more powerful that he had been in his prime. Could he be coming to warn Danny? Maybe the reason he escaped was because the aliens have their eye on a new "champion"?

Danielle is absolutely precious to me. My sweet little girl who only wants to live her own life. I love that her first sketch gives her a bit more of the Vlad influence (especially since I headcanon that she has his fire core and not Danny's ice core). The opposing black and white outfit, though, just looks like a bad Harley Quinn to me.

The second sketch is kind of cutsie, kind of bleh. There's something about Butch's femme designs that just... don't really hit the mark.

I'm adoring her third sketch. The overall feel of "ghost" really comes through with this design (and she finally has matching boots and gloves) and it feels really right with her. I've always loved the idea that she's more ghost than human, and this images hits it just right.

Her final design is ok. We go back to the alternating colors, which I don't like, but she also looks more like Danny, which I do like. Butch says she "likes to party" which I can kind of see. She's full of spunk, she has an adventurous side, she'd love to go out and see everything and get involved with as much as she can. The fact that she can shape ectoplasm into words seems like something she'd be into. Just imagine her floating outside of Vlad's window, cussing him out with floaty green writing.

Now, we finally get to Danny. His first sketch isn't too bad. He has a dedicated place for the Thermos - good idea on his part. A little simple, little plain. Loving the cargo pants, tho.

His second design looks a little more like a plain upgrade form his usual hazmat, but with more armor. Makes me think Sam and Tucker went to a sporting goods store and slapped all the knee/elbow pads they could on him to keep him from hurting himself so much.

I like the idea of the third design. When he embraces his ghost side, he gets more Dan-like qualities. I think something like this would take him a while to adjust to, but he would be better for it. This design feels like it would be the strongest one - delving into his ghost half and pulling power from it instead of fighting to keep it balanced with his human half.

Danny's final design, however, make me think. His hazmat has been replaced, or most likely upgraded, to include more Fenton gadgets - specifically trading the Thermos for a Glove. But the Glove, instead of just being a catch/release system, actually uses the caught ghost to power his suit. The green isn't just for design, it's the power he's taken from other ghosts he's captured. Does this mean he's just taking whatever the captured ghost's power is (like weather-control, or even power over boxes)? Or is it like the rest of Fenton tech where he's actually taking the ectoplasm from the captured ghost to power himself? How much is that hurting the other ghost?

As strong as Danny is, as strong as he keeps getting, why does he need to power a suit to keep fighting?

I've been thinking about this final design, thinking about the designs for all the other characters, especially the Fentons. I thought about how Danny would fight until his last breath to protect Amity Park, and, like...

Did he?

Did Danny die at some point prior to Ten Years Later?

Only once is Danny referred to as Danny Fenton, and that's during the sketch for Jack's original design. He's not even called Fenton in his own redesigns. He's had several sketches, but all of them were for Phantom. Heck, Vlad got a human drawing, even if it wasn't for his final design.

And the more I think about it, the more it seems to make sense.

Jazz gave up on psychology when her little brother died. She probably became depressed and couldn't leave the house. Wiring herself into Fenton Works seemed like the next logical step - at least this way she could help without having to face his friends who could go on without him.

Jack was probably grieving when he was attacked. He lost his son, his eye, and his leg.

Without having to reconcile her son's humanity with his ghostlyness, Maddie was free to revert back to a lifetime of thinking that all ghosts were nonsentient. She probably didn't get enough of a chance to being to change her views permanently, so she sees nothing wrong with how she's treating the leashed ghosts.

And Danny himself would even have an excuse for his suit. I've seen in the fandom that the reason Danny is such a strong ghost is because he's young, and he's still growing. That the more he ages, the stronger he becomes. When Danny died, he would have stopped growing in power. Heck, he might have even started -losing- power, and trying to revert to how strong he was when he first "died" in the accident. Having a suit that runs on other ghosts, using their power to replace his own, would actually make sense, especially if Maddie helped make it.