Nasty Burger explosion happens, leaving Danny homeless and friendless, he gets adopted by Vlad but Vlad, in all of his ambition to get Danny as his son and even telling said boy such thing multiple times.
Genuinely doesn't know what to do.
He never, well, thought this far, and certainly never in the circumstances that made this possible.
He tries a few parenting techniques (that he's read from multiple books to get the perfect child) and nothing sticks both because of Danny's stubbornness and pettiness.
So, Vlad tries from a... different angle.
He doesn't need a perfect son, he realized, he just wanted one, and now that he's gotten one, he realizes that Danny would be the one to succeed Vladco in the off-chance (which is low as hell already) that Vlad someone gets taken out of commission.
So what does he do?
He shows Danny how fun the business world can be when you're on top of it. One of the giants, an Emperor among kings.
Slowly sinking your fangs into an enemy, backing them into a corner bit by bit, until before they realized it, they can do nothing but be a defenseless little grub. Watching them crumble to bits in their own panic, and by their own hand making their situation worse and worse until, with one final blow, nothing is left of them.
Either by their own hand, or yours.
Danny took to it like a fish to water and, dare Vlad say, they even drew closer throughout it. Not quite father and son, yet not enemies either.
He thinks the term would be... frenemies?
Yes, on the best of days allies and on every other day frenemies.
===
Danny doesn't... hate, Vlad. Yet he doesn't love him either, he thinks he likes Vlad at the very least. When the man backed off from trying to get him to be his son and replace his father.
Which was still a dick move considering his father had just died, but he's since managed to get over it. (The replacing his dad move, not his dad's death.)
Then Vlad started treating his less as a son and more of a... roommate, that he teaches business too. He will admit, he liked the change, gave him more room to grieve the loss of his family, and then, a while after that, Vlad showed him what made the business world... 'fun.'
And he was right, it is fun.
It was a great distraction from the pain of losing his family, and the fear that he would become like his dark future that he managed to avoid. He's not destroying the world, he's just destroying rival companies.
Way better in his opinion.
Of course, there are other 'Emperor among kings' out there, would be weird if there weren't honestly. To name a few, being Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne.
In other words, a guy who hates an overpowered alien superhero and a himbo playboy.
Honestly, he doesn't really care about Lex Luthor, he's more of Vlad's chess mate rather than his. Who he does care for, however, is on Timothy Drake-Wayne.
Two years older than him, that is true, yet a fun chess mate all the same. Does he care for the boy's father and siblings? No, not really, not at all actually.
He's tried to corner the boy before (Most of which he planned out with his own chess set that Vlad got him, Vlad has one as well in fact), mostly on a whim really. To test the waters, so to speak. But, Timothy Drake succeeded his expectations and, well, more.
He tries more than once, gaining an inch, Timothy finds a way to gain two more. Corner him, and Drake finds a way out and even reserving the tides.
He's never able to completely corner Timothy Drake-Wayne, and Timothy Drake-Wayne has never been able to completely corner him, which is honestly what makes this so fun.
Vlad was right, the business world can be fun.
1K notes
·
View notes