#I just think a personal statement that's like yeah I got attacked by ghosts. drowned by ghost books

[clonerightsagenda]

In the last week before Podcast Girls Week I have had 2 new ideas and I am now in a race against the clock to finish them. Did I finish the first thing I wanted to make? Don't ask me that.

[ayamari-no-goshi]

Eidolon 11 | (T)

ff.net | AO3

Fandom: Danny Phantom (DP)

Summary:  AU: What started off as the result of a simple act of rebellion ends up causing his life to spin out of control. How will young Danny cope with the results as well as a past that has a strange habit of coming back to haunt him.

Warnings: rated T for violence, mentions of death, kidnapping, and various other things

Parings: hints of Danny/Sam much later on

Notes: originally uploaded to Ff.net. Cross-posted to AO3 and tumblr

11: Alternative Paths

The police officers told him they needed to ask him a few questions. What they forgot to mention was he would be locked in a small, remarkably bare room for five hours with a police officer who was dead set in viewing him as a suspect. Danny had never been more relieved to get out of a room before in his life. Yeah, he understood family members needed to be questioned due to the statistics surrounding such crimes, but seriously! Did someone as scrawny as him really look like he could have hurt Winston that badly without getting any sort of injury in the process?

However, he couldn't really blame them for being suspicious, especially when it came to his whereabouts the previous night. How do you rationally explain you were chased by a murderous robot-ghost-thing? The obvious answer was to avoid the topic all together. He hoped he was convincing enough when he said he and his friends had taken a walk in the evening and returned to Sam's house to watch some movies. He specifically avoided mentioning the park. There was no telling what the officers would think if they learned he might have been around when it got torn up. He was actually kind of surprised no one in the precinct had mentioned it.

A few times during his interview, he had nervously flattened his bangs a few times, hoping to hide the cut he had suddenly remembered getting at the beginning of his terrifying adventure. The officer interviewing him had noticed the motion, which caused him to leave it alone the rest of the time he was in the room. Surprisingly, Danny wasn't asked about it. A little wary after he was finished and allowed to exit the room, he touched the spot only to find smooth skin. It took a lot of self-control to not dash to a reflective surface and examine his forehead. There was no use in making the officers more suspicious. As weird as a missing cut was he could wait until he got home to check.

Scratch that… he could check after he found a place to stay for a while. As he was about to exit the station, an older officer kindly reminded him of the fact his house was currently considered a crime scene. After apologizing for a lack of effort from the staff for trying to contact his family and promising to personally look into it in the morning, he directed Danny to a nearby phone situated at the front desk.

Danny was a little surprised at the kind attitude of the officer as he had been dealing with a special type of dick for the past several hours, but it was a nice change. Shaking his head a little, he moved to the phone to call Sam, praying she was still awake as it was approaching midnight. Both of his friends told him they wanted an update, but with it being late and he being emotionally, physically, and mentally drained, the only topic he wanted to discuss involved where he would be staying for the night.

As he was dialing her number, the door to the station opened and a tall man strolled in. The newcomer was tall and rather thin. He wore a clean black business suit which appeared to be expertly cared for and rather expensive. Gray hair had been slicked back into a neat ponytail, and calculating cold blue eyes surveyed his surroundings. Danny dropped the phone in surprise as he realized the man in front of him was the one and only Vlad Masters.

The sound from the phone brought him to Masters' attention, causing the man to adopt an unsettling grin. "Why here you are! I've been looking all over for you!" The tone of his voice and his expression adopted a semblance of concern, but it did not reach his eyes. "I was so worried after I found out what happened to Winston. My condolences, but I'm glad you're safe and sound."

"Don't talk about Winston like he's dead!" Danny snapped. "Look, can you just go away? If you haven't realized, it's been a pretty bad day for me, and I don't feel like talking to you right now."

"Of course. How inconsiderate of me. After everything you've been through today, you must be exhausted. Come, I'll make sure you're well taken care of."

It took Danny a moment to grasp the implications of Vlad's statement. "Wait… what? There's no way I'm going with you!"

"Poor boy, you must be more tired than you realize." The businessman pinched the bridge of his nose as he let out a dramatic sigh. "Don't you remember? It was determined that you would be placed into my care if anything were to happen to Winston."

"That's news to me!"

"Excuse me, but what exactly is going on here?" The sound of the officer's voice made him jump. He had forgotten there was another soul in the room. However, he couldn't be more relieved. Being in the room alone with the businessman was an unnerving thought. It was even more relieving when he realized the officer seemed to be equally suspicious.

In a truly professional manner, Vlad introduced himself and explained his relationship to Danny as well as his involvement in the custody battle. Again, he mentioned how he was now to act as a guardian in Winston's stead.

"I already told you, I'm not going anywhere with you!" Danny growled as he glared at the man. Something was very wrong with the picture. Winston didn't trust Vlad, and there was no way he would let him fall into the billionaire's hands.

"You have to forgive the boy. We had a little spat the last time we saw each other, and I'm afraid he hasn't forgiven me," Vlad apologetically explained to the officer.

"Spat? You broke into my house?"

Before Vlad could respond, the officer held up his hand to halt the brewing argument. "Mr. Masters, do you have some sort of proof you can take the boy?" Vlad's expression quickly changed from shocked to insulted as the officer spoke. "Surely a man of your standing can understand our position. With the way Mr. Wolfe was attacked, we cannot rule anyone out as a potential suspect. With you being involved in a custody battle and Danny's status as a minor, we are rather uncomfortable sending him on his way like this. I'm also fairly certain you weren't notified of the situation…" The officer's eyes narrowed as he appraised the man. "Which leads me to wonder how you found out."

"One of my staff members was going to drop off some papers at the house when she saw the police cars and asked what happened" Vlad explained with an impatient air. "But that's not important right now…"

As he watched Vlad begin to argue with the officer, Danny couldn't help but feel a rush of gratitude. For whatever reason, the officer did not seem to believe Vlad's story and generally seemed concerned for his wellbeing.

Everything seemed to be going in his favor when Danny was nearly bowled over by a sudden blast of cold air rushed by him. Startled, he started looking around to find some possible source… and open window, a vent, something to explain it. While he tried to wrack his brains for some other answer when the normal explanations were ruled out, he noticed the officer stumble slightly. He didn't think anything of it until the man rubbed his forehead and excused himself for a moment.

Rather unsettled by the officer's display and being left alone with Vlad, Danny moved back to the phone to attempt to resume his call. Though he was able to reach Sam's house this time, a presumed butler answered and informed him that "Miss Samantha is asleep and no longer taking calls for the night." While Danny was pretty sure it was a lie, he went with it and asked the man to give a message to her when he could.

Displeased by the turn of events, he was about to try calling Tucker when the officer returned to the room. Something did not seem right as he looked at him. The man's posture seemed stiff, and his eyes were unfocused and reddish. Wait… Danny blinked and rubbed his eyes before checking again. The man's eyes were actually red! Weren't they brown before?

"Sorry for the inconvenience." The officer's voice had an unusual mechanical quality to it… almost as if the words he was saying weren't actually his. He held up a document of some sorts as he spoke again. "It seems like someone did verify this earlier, but just forgot to place it somewhere it could be found."

"Does this mean everything's in order?" Vlad asked with a voice filled with hardly concealed delight.

"Yes. You can take the boy. We'll be in touch within the next few days to let you know how Wolfe is doing."

"Splendid! Come on my boy, it's time to go!"

Danny backed away as Vlad beckoned to him, nearly tripping over the desk in the process. His mind was screaming all sorts of warnings at him. The entire situation felt wrong, but he had no idea how to escape it. Vlad was blocking his way to the front door, and he doubted the few officers left in the building would appreciate a desperate search for the rear exit.

"What did you do to him?" he demanded as his eyes darted between both men before he pointed at Vlad. He knew he probably wasn't going to get an answer, but he hoped he could stall the man long enough to come up with some sort of plan.

"Pardon me? Whatever do you mean?"

"Y-you know what I mean!" While he tried to keep the anger in his voice, it was quickly giving way to panic. Vlad kept moving towards him wearing an increasingly predatory expression which was really creeping him out. Strangely, the thought of accidently falling through the wall crossed his mind. Unsettling as it was, it was a far better situation than the one he was currently in. "The officer's not acting right!"

Vlad replied, but his words were drowned out as a strange coldness started to seep into his body, quickly filling every aspect. He tried to escape, thinking it was somehow tied to where he was standing, but his legs wouldn't respond. They felt heavy and strangely detached; his arms were beginning to feel the same way. He tried to yell out without any success. He soon realized his mind was being pushed further away from the sensations of his body and into something like a dark crevasse to be stored and forgotten.

But the coldness was not finished. It briefly brushed against his mind and seemed to whisper in an almost familiar voice, "Relax… It'll be safer for you and me if you do…"

Danny's last conscious thought before the darkness completely took him was to wonder if he was ever going to wake up.

….

When he came to, Danny found himself lying on his back and staring at an unfamiliar white ceiling. His mind felt groggy and his body heavy. Though he wasn't sure, he felt as if he had been asleep for quite some time. Sitting up, he tried to remember how he got where he was… only, he didn't know where that might be.

Looking around, he realized something wasn't right. The room he was in was rather large. It was a bedroom, not much different from Sam's, only it didn't have any posters or the same dark decorations. In fact, the room was mostly white save for some wooden furniture. Even the four-poster bed he was sitting on had a white comforter and curtains. The only real decoration in the room was a painting on the wall directly across from him which seemed to show military conquest with… a paranormal influence. It was rather grotesques.

The blank room gave him an uneasy feeling. Although it definitely wasn't, it gave him the feeling he was in a jail of sorts. Unnerved, he slowly got up and moved to the room's single window. After moving the curtains aside, he cursed as he realized the glass was heavily frosted, preventing him from seeing any scenery. His next move was to try the door, but it was locked.

After a panicked few minutes trying everything he could think of to attempt to open the door, he placed his back against the door and slid down it. What was he going to do? The better question was what was going to happen to him? With the room being blank, it gave him no indication of what he should expect. He should, he supposed, be thankful for it, but the wait might be too much for him to handle. What was the old adage? The suspense is worse than the actual event? He really hoped that wouldn't be the case.

xxxxxx

The sound of one of her parents calling for her to come into the downstairs wafted through the room, however, Sam was dead set on ignoring the summons. There were far more important things on her mind than dealing with whatever new 'daughter improvement project' they had come up with.

She was incredibly worried about her friend who neither she nor Tucker had heard from in a little over two days. At first she thought it might be due to being overwhelmed by suddenly finding out the man who raised him had been severely attacked and/or the police being jerks, but a call earlier in the day really concerned her.

She had been thinking about calling the police in the morning (while skipping class due to a feigned illness), however they beat her to the punch. Around eleven, she had received a call from one of the detectives asking her if she had heard from Danny. She told him no right before demanding to know what was wrong. Though it took a little bit of coaxing (and a reminder of her parents' influences), the officer admitted they had no idea where the boy was. He disappeared after his interview with another officer, and though they hated to admit it, after failing to contact him or anyone else who might have the boy, he was being labeled as a missing person. Her immediate response was to insult the competence of him and the rest of the force as the boy had gone missing from underneath their noses, but after she calmed down a bit, she promised to help in whatever way she could.

Sam sat down on her large purple clad bed and stared up at one of the posters on the ceiling as she tried to understand the situation. Her friend, who seemed to attract terrible and odd events, was now missing. Danny had tried to contact her the night he disappeared, but her family had forbidden her from further calls when she had returned home that night after they learned about the attack on Winston. Somehow, they had gotten the notion whatever had harmed Winston could attack her if she continued to talk to Danny. Though it was kind of nice to know they cared, they had taken it way overbroad.

But what was strange about the situation was there was no security image of Danny leaving the precinct. The officer had explained to her they had installed cameras a while back after someone had tried to break in to the office in an attempt to steal their guns. Due to safely concerns, they regularly had them checked, but the night Danny disappeared, they had a major malfunction. There was an image of him entering the entrance area, but after a few minutes, the image distorted so badly they could not make heads or tails of it. It also seemed to return to normal rather suddenly after a while, but Danny was long gone by then.

A look at the clock told her she was going to have to wait a while before she could contact Tucker. Unlike her, he had been forced to go to school. She had no idea if he already knew Danny was missing, but no matter what, he was going to help her try to find him. Tucker was the probably the only person in town who could possibly get an image off of the damaged security tape, and the only other person (besides her) who Danny had trusted with his issues. They had to try and do what they could to help him.

…

"So, any luck?" Sam asked the boy currently sitting on her rug surrounded by any number of other electronic equipment. He had been staring at the screen of his PDA with an intense look for quite some time.

She had managed to contact Tucker mere moments after he was finished with his classes for the day and explained the situation. After freaking out a bit, he told her he would be over soon after he made a quick stop. He arrived about forty minutes later looking more determined than he had ever seen him while carrying a bookbag filled to the brim with tech supplies she had never seen before. After asking if he needed anything, Tucker quickly went to work with his task.

"…Whoever did this to this footage is really good…" he eventually replied after a few more minutes of silence.

"What do you mean?" Sam asked hesitantly. It was rare to hear such a tone in Tucker's voice when it came to technology. He could usually work his way around a system in a few seconds, minutes if it was more complicated, but this was really causing him problems.

"It's hard to explain… Usually, people just modify existing images when they don't something seen, but this guy actually managed to replace some of the footage with an error screen…"

"So… it's gone… Like completely, gone? You can't trace it or anything?" There was no way for her to hide the hint of panic in her voice. If Tucker couldn't bring up anything, no one could… which meant they weren't going to have anything to use to find Danny.

A small laugh escaped Tucker, which caused her to stare at the boy. "Jeez, Sam, you shouldn't think so little of me. Who do you think I am? This guy, though good, made a small mistake. I guess he got interrupted or something because he started just covering up the image after a while instead of changing it. To most people, it's nearly impossible to catch, but it's there. Just give me a little bit of time…."

"A little bit of time?" Sam repeated as she watched him frantically work with his PDA. "How long are we talking about?"

He hit a few more buttons on the screen before he looked up and smiled. "Does 'now' work for you?"

"Tucker, you're amazing!"

"I know, I know. But it's nice to have my fans remind me."

Sam pulled down his hat in response as she sat next to him on the floor. "Anyways, do you have the entire footage?"

"I couldn't get part of it due to the replacement… but it looks like a little less than half was just modified…. So, let's see what no one wanted us to find…." He pressed a button on the screen and a fuzzy image began to appear. On the footage, they could see Danny backing away from someone standing near the door. It was difficult to make out, but judging from Danny's posture, he did not seem to be happy to see the person. After a little bit, Danny stopped retreating and followed the unknown man out the door.

Without any prodding, Tucker tried to see if he could clear the image a little or at least clear up the image of the suspect. After frantically trying several different techniques, he sighed and rubbed his eyes with his free hand. According to him, even though the person had changed methods, they were still able to damage the rest of the footage.

"I'll continue to work with it when I get home," he promised. "This is going to require some big guns for me to get something useful out of this. But don't worry; I'm not going to give up. After he saved our lives, I think this is the least I can do for him."

…..

Tucker had been booted from the house as soon as Sam's parents caught him being there. Thinking back, she was a little surprised he had managed to sneak past them in the first place since they were particularly good at catching people going up to her room. They had punished her in response by having her stay in her room for the rest of the night, which didn't bother her in the least bit.

Around seven in the evening she received a call on her cell. Noticing the number, she picked it up as quickly as possible, hoping her parents didn't hear it ringing. "Did you find anything?" she asked the caller as a form of greeting. The caller's reply was spoken too quickly and frantically for her to understand. "Whoa, slow down Tucker! I can't understand you!"

"Sam… it's worse than we thought!" came his panicked reply. "I managed to identify who was in the police station with Danny."

"Yeah? Well, who was it?"

"It was… Vlad Masters…."

Sam barely registered the phone slipping from her fingers and landing on the floor. How could she be so stupid? She knew that man had an interest in getting hold of Danny and should be the first logical suspect, but she didn't realize he would have stooped so low.

Angry with herself, she reached down to grab her phone so she could calm a frantic Tucker but stopped midway as a thought crossed her mind. How were they going to be able to get Danny back from a man who had mastered in lies with an unimaginable fortune to back him up?

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I just wanted to point out that the way these officers are depicted is due to experience. The ones in the borough where I grew up were usually nice, but if they had it in their minds you did something wrong, you could be treated like trash. But at the same time, they're the reason why my childhood bully wasn't excepted into the NFL - they slapped him with assault charges when he decided to get into a fight while he was in college. I have mixed feelings. The officers from the neighboring borough were wonderful.