The Obligatory Author's Note:
Note that the story title is indeed supposed to use a ; rather than a :, but FFN won't allow it. Sigh.

This is another escapade from my old account, rewritten to be posted here. It consists of two parts only - for some reason, I seem to have more of a soft spot for it than other stories, so I thought it'd be kinda poor of me not to treat it to a revision. Happy reading!

The Obligatory Blanket Disclaimer:
I don't think the owner of Danny Phantom would be writing fanfiction about it, do you? Thusly, I do not own this cartoon.

Lightning Rod; An Ethical Nightmare
A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ Part 1 ~

It was a bad day in Amity Park.

However, 'bad' didn't seem to be the right descriptor. If anything, a storm like this was barely short of a hurricane.

The first thing to be thought of was the lightning, shot off in so many different directions at once, illuminating the dark black clouds as it tore through them in great flashes. Down by the gallon came the rain, clogging up drains with all the litter it had quickly overflowed them with. Finally, wind howled in one of the biggest gales Amity Park had seen in years. It all combined into something that, the citizens had decided, was far worse than any ghost attack.

Fenton Works had already taken a fair thrashing from the storm, mainly due to the wind catching under the mammoth-sized, precariously built Emergency Op Centre. Not even the eccentric Maddie and Jack Fenton could take their eyes away from it, looming dangerously overhead.

The whole Fenton family had been spending their day doing their best to strengthen the foundations of the house, while Danny and Jazz had been assigned the task of boarding up the windows as best they could – without being blown away. During the worse parts of the storm, they sheltered inside the basement. After all, the sound of the Op Centre creaking on the roof was never a good one.

However, there was one thing they didn't even think to safeguard against. Not in all this weather.

The Fenton Ghost Portal was wide open... and nobody was doing anything about it.

Mayor Vladimir Masters, currently living in the richer section of town, didn't have nearly as many problems with the weather as everyone else was.

On closer analysis, however, this was because he simply wasn't there to witness the roof of his mansion fly off somewhere over the rainbow, or to notice countless irreplaceable paintings flutter about in the gale. His presence didn't even grace the flood that was streaming inside. Right now, he was – and had been for the past few days – stranded in another dimension.

The Ghost Zone was certainly a place for the unexpected; Vlad had never doubted that. The problem here was that his own arrogance disallowed him to extrapolate the direct result of his own power; this wasn't a grudging respect from the inhabitants, it was the calm before the rebellion.

Fifty hours had flown, zapped, shocked and beaten by, ghosts not attacking him one at a time, but all at once. Holding his own against this many disgruntled spirits was a feat to talk about in and of itself, but he couldn't do it forever. Gradually, Vlad's efforts were becoming increasingly futile, and there seemed twice as many to trump for every wave he defeated. He wanted to give up, surrender.

But... was that a glimmer of hope? Through a ragged, drooping eye, Vlad saw the Fenton's steely electric ghost portal off in the distance. If he could just maybe move the right ghosts out of the road, then he'd just maybe have a chance to escape. This was it. One last struggle.

All the pain aching through his body, the frustration, the sorrow, the desperation... as Vlad tapped into the very last reserves of his energy, they combined into one.

The result struggled towards the palm of his hand, not a normal ectoblast but one that burned with a vicious pink flame. This new kind of energy attack flared as he fired it, the rebound feeling for more like that of a cannonball than it visibly should have. Vlad drooped, depleted. And then he looked up, just a little, just to see...

The wall of ghosts it had been aimed at suddenly weren't there anymore. They drifted off, barely keeping form, unmoving.

He might have had no energy, but nonetheless Vlad scrambled to fly to the portal – possibly faster than he'd ever flown before. He couldn't even hold his ghost form long enough to get through, and so did the equivalent of throwing himself in, landing in the basement arranged in more or less a scrambled, lightly smoking heap.

He reached for that all-important lever to close the portal doors, one last reach...

Finally, he closed his eyes and passed out.

Danny, exhausted from boarding the upstairs windows, stumbled down to the lab where he could rest. The basement in many ways was built like a bomb shelter; it couldn't survive a blast from the inside, like a filtrator explosion, but on the other hand it could hold its own against several outside invasion forces, if it wanted to. His mother had even built it with lead lining.

The small, teenage half-ghost stopped dead, however, when he saw his archenemy lying unconscious on the floor, just next to the portal lever. His sharp black business suit was torn up, his hair askew... and he graced cuts, bruises, scars and scrapes over every conceivable inch of his body.

"...Vlad?"

They mayor of Amity Park didn't answer. Danny looked around for any evidence that might tell him what might have happened, and the only conclusion he could come to was that Vlad had been beaten almost to death in the Ghost Zone and been forced to escape through their portal. At least he'd had the common decency to shut the doors behind him, although Danny strongly suspected that was more out of selfishness than selflessness.

There was no other choice – he wasn't going to exploit even Vlad in a state like this. He'd have to tell his parents.

Vladimir Masters, multi-billionaire mayor of Amity Park, awoke on top of the Fenton's dissection table.

With an agonised groan, Vlad rolled over and clutched a particularly painful part on his side. He'd been bludgeoned in that location more than several times, and he could tell that it had already become a massive bruise. This didn't matter, however, when you put things in perspective. There were parts of him that had been bandaged up, and his suit was completely blood-soaked. He was quite hungry, and his head was spinning, just to add to the trouble.

So busy identifying the list of things wrong with his body, Vlad hadn't noticed that the Fentons were watching, Maddie and Jack's necks arched over in a sort of worried curiosity. That said, Maddie appeared more worried about correctly injecting him with something. Jasmine was there, too, and appeared to be doing her best to make him comfortable...

... Danny, on the other hand, was nowhere to be found.

Jack began to grin broadly, making excited waving motions with his arms. Then, totally contrary to all feasible forms of logic, grabbed Vlad around the shoulders and hugged him, managing to hit all the wrong cuts and bruises in the process. It stole the breath out of Vlad's mouth, made his eyes pop, and otherwise rendered him even more incapacitated than he already was. There was no denying it; within the unforgiving friendly grasp of Jack, there was nothing to be but helpless.

"Glad to have you back, V-Man!"

"...J- J- Jack..." Vlad whimpered, desperately resisting the urge to phase through the ghost hunter. It was only Maddie who managed to save him, who sharply told off her husband for causing even more pain. Jack eventually listened to reason and put his old college buddy down, a sheepish smile covering his face.

"Sorry... just glad to know you're alright," Jack shrugged. "We didn't know whether you'd even wake up or not."

"Jack's right..." Maddie frowned, lightly brushing her fingers over Vlad's forehead. "It really is a miracle you survived. We were about to call an ambulance, but our scanner indicated that your collapsed lung – it was just... it was fixing itself. That was just a minute before you woke up. I've... honestly never seen something so absurd."

"I guess we'll never know..." Vlad stated, quite weakly. His consciousness was evidently going to refuse to continue for much longer – he could already feel it petering out. With one last effort, he gave the woman he loved a small, slightly longing smile, and then succumbed to the peaceful, quiet, painless and most importantly Jack-free oblivion.

Unfortunately, he found himself woken during the middle of the night by the Op Centre's awful creaking sounds. The great rolls of thunder only added to the effect.

Still, there was no denying that he now felt much better than he had beforehand. In fact, most of his wounds had already healed properly – quite a possibility, since his ghost half granted him insane healing speeds, an ability for which he was eternally grateful. Especially after a beating like that; rightfully, he should have been dead.

This didn't stop Vlad from being totally drained – he barely had enough energy to move, let alone get up – but the sight of the spare ecto-filtrators sitting on the laboratory shelf was a promising one, and just sufficiently motivating to make him slump to his feet. A filtrator meant a power source... maybe not so much for the portal they serviced, but to a ghost, certainly. Vlad didn't hesitate in the slightest when it came to dipping his finger in, knowing that instant replenishment was going to be the only way to bring him back up to scratch anytime soon.

"... V-Man?"

Vlad nearly dropped the glass capsule altogether, the call echoing through the basement. He stayed still, like a statue, hoping to God that Jack wouldn't notice him, that he'd just walk away... there hadn't been anyone in the lab when he'd woken up! Maybe he should have kept more of an ear out for surveillance...

"What are you doing with that...?" Jack hesitated. "... It's an ecto-filtrator. You shouldn't be doing that..."

"I'm, uh, checking, Jack." Assured Vlad, trying his best to convince himself that that was indeed the case. "Just checking to see that nothing contaminated it. One of the ghosts that got through seemed dangerously interested in the device after I got thrown out of the portal."

"... You're checking it... with your bare finger? That liquid burns human skin."

"You see-"

"Don't lie." Jack cut him off, although softly, and gulped. "We're such great friends; we shouldn't lie to each other. Vlad, I... found out. No one else knows that when I took a blood test, I looked, and... your cells, they're combined with ectoplasm. That's why you healed so quickly. I guess... sort of... I mean, figuratively speaking... you're half ghost."

Vlad stood there, stunned. He could feel those bright, angry eyes surfacing to the top, but pushed them straight back down with all his might. Was there no way of convincing someone otherwise after something like this? No, there probably wasn't. What was he supposed to do? Vlad stuttered a few times, before closing his mouth and deciding that the best course of action was to avoid saying anything at all. Getting found out... had never been a part of his anticipations.

A very awkward silence followed. Jack stared directly at Vlad. Vlad looked at just about everything that wasn't Jack. Eventually, the usually bumbling man shuffled his feet and patted the bewildered half ghost on the back.

"It was the accident in college, wasn't it?"

Vlad began to chew his lip, an uncharacteristic nervous tick. The only option his brain was giving him was 'Kill Jack', but he didn't want to do that. Not now, anyway. There'd always be time for Jack-killing later.

"Yes, but thankfully there hasn't been any other effects." Vlad managed. "Unfortunately... the ectoplasm in my blood requires occasional replenishment, if I'm to function properly. But as you know... I forgave you for this quite some time ago."

Jack looked even worse, hearing that. "... Actually, I think it's affected you more than you know. You've been asleep for ten or so hours, but already you've almost completely healed. That, and... I swear I saw you shift out of phase..."

That's it! He knows too much! Vlad's mind screamed, gritting his teeth. Something would have to be done about Jack in case he told anyone; especially Maddie, which would most-likely wind up happening sooner or later. Vlad's thoughts looped like a mantra, always resonating with the core issue – the need to have Jack well and truly dead.

"Fine, Jack, you're such a good friend, after all... I'll show you what that accident did to me."

For the rather bulky ghost hunter, the change was a mix of terrifically amazing and amazingly terrifying. None other than the Wisconsin Ghost stood before him, glaring its intense and gleaming red eyes straight into Jack's own. A ghost form? It should have been impossible! And even so, of all the ghost forms Vlad could have had... why did it have to be this one?

"You turned me into a monster, Jack Fenton!" Vlad hissed. "You the proceeded to steal the love of my life while I was rotting away in hospital. And then you rubbed my nose in it each and every time I saw you since! Even when, even when I attempted to have you assassinated!"

"V-Man..."

"Don't you dare call me that!" Vlad spat, throwing the back of his gloved hand straight into Jack's face. With freshly replenished energy reserves, the strength of the attack sent Jack careening across the laboratory, knocking several important-looking beakers clean off the table behind him. Vlad glared, eyes aglow, and then he whispered, "Jack Addison Fenton, fear me, for I will tear you apart just as you tore apart my own hopes and dreams. Don't worry – I hear you're a fan of things being separated molecule-by-molecule..."

Jack said nothing, finding enough will only to stare at his old college friend's rage. It burned within Vlad, nearly tangible enough to leap out and grab him. Jack couldn't even work out whether he was scared, sad or a mixture between the two.

Horrifyingly strong pink ectoplasmic energy leapt from the palms of Vlad's two hands, crackling and sparking, maybe even smouldering. It flickered like a flame, acted as though it were alive, and seemed to hold a promise more certain than any lesser enemy – and that was all of them. This sort of shot? It had more than the intention of killing. Disintegration was also in mind.

The commotion going on downstairs had roused all but the mother of the household, and Jazz, who had previously been pouring herself some hot cocoa in the kitchen, was beginning to get an unhealthy curiosity bug. Danny had been woken, too, but unlike his sibling suspected something much more sinister. So he dropped down through the floor, keeping himself totally invisible.

The invisibility didn't have a chance to last long. Danny forgot about it completely and nearly fell out of the air when he saw who Vlad's glowing palms were aimed at – thinking went out the window. The teenager immediately dived at the demonic half-ghost and tackled him to the ground, throwing Vlad's aim well off target.

Unfortunately, Vlad had already begun the process of firing the deadly ray, and instead of hitting Jack –

A mug of cocoa rolled down the rest of the stairs, spilling its contents over the laboratory floor.