AN: Would you guys look at me funny if I said I had fun writing this? Sorry it took so long to write though, I REALLY wanted to make sure the battle scene was perfect. Chapters with battles in them do usually take me longer to write. Arggg, I made myself cry sometimes with this, especially towards the end! And though it says its over, it's not! That's right, there's a sequel coming for this one too. Because all good stories are told in two or three parts! Or at least that's my excuse for today! Hey, now I have three stories done though. Cool! Oh, right, and the ecto sabre Maddie uses is the one from the episode Maternal Instinct. They didn't name it to my knowledge, so I called it an ecto sabre, cause it reminded me of a lightsabre. Yeah, aren't I brilliant? I listened to a TON of J-Rock to help inspire me for the battle scene, especially Plastic Tree's "Ghost".

And before I go, one comment on the new episode of DP, Kindred Spirits. SOLID PROOF OF VLAD'S LOLITA COMPLEX! Yep. There's no way around it now, Vlad SO has a lolita complex.

Danny Phantom doesn't belong to me, but MAN, I wish it did.

Take Me Away

Chapter Ten: The Weapon

"This is the place?" Sam muttered under her breath, looking at Jack, Maddie and Jazz. Maddie looked at the address on the scrap of paper and nodded. Sam turned back to the place, looking back at it. It was fairly plain, a two-story stark white building, with very few windows. "It sure looks creepy enough to be a research facility..."

"So what's the plan? How do we get Danny out of there?" Jazz asked, looking at her parents. Jack and Maddie exchanged looks.

"Well, we just figured we'd go in there ghost pistols ablazing." Jack said.

"So in other words, you don't have an exact plan for this part." Jazz said, starting blankly at her parents.

"Nope. Not really." Jack said. Jazz let out a long sigh and turned her attention back to the building.

"There aren't any guards on the outside." Sam noted. "Probably in order to not attract attention."

"That means there's probably guards just on the inside. Going in through the front doors would be suicide." Maddie said, her eyes darting around the building, looking for another way in. "And it seems that there aren't any windows that would allow for an alternate entrance. So how do we get in?"

"Blast our way in?" Jack offered.

"Jack, that has got to be the stupidest idea I've ever heard." Maddie said.

"Well, can you think of anything better?" Jack challenged her, in a somewhat childlike manner.

Maddie let out a long sigh, rubbing her forehead. "No, I can't, unfortunately. Which means, foolish or not, that's probably going to be the plan we wind up going with. Unless you two have any ideas?" Maddie turned, looking to Sam and Jazz. Both shook their heads, neither of them able to come up with anything that even remotely resembled a good plan.

Maddie let out another long sigh. "Well, head on assault it its."

"Hey, maybe we should try driving the Ghost Assault Vehicle into the building!" Jack piped in.

Maddie blinked, turning to her husband. "That's... a bit crazy, and more than a little reckless, but it'll definitely surprise them, and the Assault Vehicle can definitely withstand running into a building. Something like that just might do the trick! Why didn't you suggest that earlier?" Maddie asked.

"Because I just thought of it." Jack said, nodding to himself.

Maddie shook her head and smiled, determination glinting in her eyes. "Allright, into the Fenton Ghost Assault Vehicle. It's time to pay dear old Vlad a long overdue visit."

"The brainwashing is finished si-whoa!" The scientist reporting to Vlad toppled over, as the entire building shook. Vlad himself was knocked to the ground. He got immediately back up though, grumbling in annoyance.

"What in the blue blazes was that?" He shouted.

Another of the scientists ran in, panting, leaning down and trying to get out her words. She gulped and found them. "Sir... It seems as if.. a large... RV... has rammed into... the front of the building..."

"An RV?" Vlad frowned, it then dawning on him. "Of course! It must be the Fentons. I should have known they'd try something crazy like this." A wicked smirk split Vlad's face. "Send in the ghost minions to hold them off for as long as you can. I'll prepare the weapon."

"You're going to use him on his own family?" She asked, arching an eyebrow, her voice almost sounding impressed. "That's... pure evil."

"Yes, I know." Vlad remarked, opening the door and heading into the now deactivated brainwashing room. This would provide a perfect opportunity for him to test both the effectiveness of his brainwashing program and the battle prowess of his newly finished ghostly weapon.

The ghostly teenager was slumped over in his restraints, not moving. His snow white hair hung down over his face, covering it.

"326, Experiment Phantom." Vlad said in a stern and commanding voice. "Awaken."

Danny snapped into movement suddenly, his head jolting up quickly. His one good eye was a dull tuscan red, like the color of dried blood, and it had a serpentine slit down the middle for a pupil. An amused and triumphant smirk crossed over Vlad's face as he saw this, as well as the prompt obeying of his command. He unlocked the restraints around the ghost.

"There are intruders downstairs that seek to destroy us. Do be a dear, and dispose of them, will you?" Vlad asked. "Oh, but the woman in the aqua Hazmat... I want you to bring her to me. Do be as kind to her as possible, and try not to hurt her too badly if she puts up a fight. I wouldn't want that." A cold, eerie smile spread across Vlad's face.

Danny nodded. "As you wish, master." He quickly flew from the room, floating down the stairs and towards the intruders, not knowing that the people he had been ordered to destroy and capture were none other than his friends and family. He knew nothing, in fact, except for the fact that he had been given orders by his master, Vlad Masters, and that he must obey them. There was no questioning the master, absolutely none.

The brainwashing had, in essence, made him nothing more than an emotionless minion, incapable of doing anything except for executing his orders to their fullest. He couldn't act, couldn't think without an order from Vlad. He had ceased to become Danny Fenton, and had truly become just a number, just an experiment, just a weapon.

"How many ghost minions does he have!" Sam shouted, while blasting away a ghost, one that was a simple blob of green ectoplasm with arms and claws, with her ecto gun. "Geez, somebody needs another hobby..."

"Does anyone have any idea where he might be keeping Danny?" Jazz shouted over the noise. "Or are we just supposed to barge into every room we come across to see if he's in there!"

"That was the general plan, yes." Maddie said, smacking away two more ghosts with her ecto sabre. "Unless you have a better idea...?"

"Hey, Maddie, maybe we could get one of these ghosts to tell us!" Jack yelled.

"Yes dear, I'm quite sure the ghosts that are trying to destroy us will tell us everything we want to know. Besides, these are just low level..." Maddie spun around, striking out with the ecto sabre, causing another ghost, a horrible chimera ghost, to fade into oblivion. "...ghosts!" She continued. "They can't even talk, I'll bet! Most likely, they're just cannon fodder to wear us down."

"And unfortunately, it's working..." Sam said, through gritted teeth. "They just keep on coming. I don't think I can see an end anytime..." Sam blinked. The ghosts around them had suddenly stilled, ceasing their attack on Sam and the three Fentons. And just as suddenly as they had stopped, they all vanished.

"...soon?" Sam finished, sounding incredibly confused. "What happened? Did we win or something?"

"I don't know, but I'm getting a really bad feeling about this..." Maddie said cautiously, her eyes sliding across the room, covering every inch of it that was in her range of visibility. "Vlad wouldn't have just stopped attacking us like that... He must have something up his sleeve..." Her eyes continued to survey the room, her muscles tense, ready to strike out at the first out of place thing that she saw.

She was the first one to see Danny emerge from the curve in the stairwell. He was floating close towards the ground, his face obscured partly by his hair.

"Danny!" Jazz shouted, sounding relived. "He must have broken through..." She said, moving towards her brother. She stopped in her tracks though, blinking rapidly. Her mother had thrown an arm up in front of her, blocking her path to her brother. "Mom?" Jazz asked, confused.

"Something's wrong with him..." Maddie said slowly, her other hand gripping her ecto sabre tighter.

"What do you..." Jazz began, then turned her eyes back to Danny. They quickly shot up in shock, her brother had lifted his head, revealing the serpentine-silted tuscan red eye. Jazz blinked, taking an involuntary, confused step backwards. "Danny?"

Danny cast a cold glance over the four of them, assessing their threat level. Of them all, the highest threat was from the aqua jumpsuit-clad woman, the one his master wanted brought to him. The other three were fairly tied, although it seemed to him the one in the orange jumpsuit would get distracted very easily. His eye paused involuntarily on Sam for a few moments before he managed to drag it away from her violet eyes.

"The master has ordered me to destroy you..." Danny said coldly, his voice lacking any form of emotion. He cast his one eye on Maddie. "And take you to him, by force if necessary." He said to her.

"Danny, what are you saying?" Sam began, frowning deeply. She hadn't notice that he was looking at her for slightly longer than any of the others. She just knew that something had gone wrong in her new friend. Something had gone dead wrong.

Danny didn't respond to her question. He was ordered only to respond to Vlad, and to either the names of 326, or Phantom. He didn't know who Danny was.

"I don't think that's our Danny anymore..." Maddie said slowly. "Vlad must have already gotten to him. He must have already preformed the brainwashing." Maddie let out a long, depressed sigh. "We were too late to save him from it..."

"Well what do we do?" Jazz asked, staring at her mother, then back at Danny. He was watching them carefully, like a predator, waiting for the right moment to pounce. "We can't fight him!"

"We have no choice, Jazz. It might sound cruel, but it's the only thing we can do." Maddie said, dropping her arm. "He's lost, and I'm not sure if we can get him back. The least we can do for him is prevent Vlad from using him any further..." She bit her lip, and forced back the tears that were threatening to fall. She couldn't afford to cry right now. The tears would have to wait until later.

No sooner than Maddie had spoken the last sentence, Danny moved from his positron, raising a hand and firing off a blast of crimson-colored ecto energy at those assembled. Maddie's eyes widened, and she grabbed Jazz by the arm, yanking her back and away from the blast. Jack, who had managed to emerge from his shock as well, did similar with Sam, who he was closest to.

Not wasting anytime after firing the blast, Danny flew at head speed into Jack, intercepting his retreat, and delivering a powerful blow to the large man which sent him skidding back into a nearby wall, crashing into it.

Sam stood there, staring at Jack, then slowly turned back around, only to find Danny in her face. The weaponized ghost ducked down quickly, performing a sweep of her feet. Sam screamed, crashing hard into the ground, her ecto gun clattering out of her hands and across the floor. Danny grabbed her by the hair, pulling her upwards. He let her go then, delivering a kick at her abdomen that sent her too, hurtling and crashing into the wall.

Maddie had been in motion since the second the ecto gun had left Sam's hand. She skillfully moved through the rubble caused from the earlier ecto-blast impacting with the floor, and scooped up the gun, aiming it at her brainwashed and deceased son, firing quickly.

The ghost boy straightened out from his kick, only to find himself being shot at. He moved to dodge the shot, but the ecto energy still grazed over his side, nicking off a small piece of his ear, and cutting a tear into his eyepatch. It snapped apart, falling onto the ground, the empty socket with the hole in it staring out at his mother.

After that, he wasted no time in springing up from his position, and flying full force into Maddie. He was fast, and the human woman, though skilled in combat, had no possible way to avoid him. She found herself flying across the room, tumbling over a pile of rubble, hit by a painful punch to her stomach. Her ecto sabre had flown from her hand, colliding with the opposite wall. She coughed, a painful moan escaping from her lips.

Danny paused then, and slowly turned towards Jazz, his tuscan red eye and his empty eye staring at her. There was a bit of ectoplasm trickling down from his wound over his empty eye, but it didn't seem to bother him all that much. Jazz backed up slowly, unsure of what to do. She didn't want to hurt her brother, but she wasn't too keen on the idea of joining him on the other side either.

She tightly gripped her ecto gun and swung it, firing blindly at him. The blast only managed to graze his right arm, opening another wound for the green ectoplasm to leak out of. He looked at it briefly, and then turned to his shaking sister, her hand trembling, unable to believe that she had just shot at her brother, and furthermore terrified by the fact that he didn't express any pain at all when he was wounded this, or the first time.

"D-danny... don't do this please!" She managed to spit out, her voice shuddering. "Please, I know you're still in there somewhere Danny... Please, fight it! Please..." Her eyes widened as she suddenly found herself crumpling down on the ground. Danny stood above her, his hand closed in a fist. She hadn't even seen him move.

"Danny..." She muttered, staring up at him, fear in her eyes. He had hit her hard, and had quite possibly broken one or two ribs. "...please... don't... I'm you're sister..." She said, her voice quavering.

Danny simply stared at her blankly, raising a hand in front of her head, preparing to finish her off with an ecto-blast. He soon found himself, however, being pulled away from her, a glowing blue line wrapped around him. Jack was standing, holding the Fenton Fisher. Danny's eyes narrowed in mild annoyance, though he honestly felt it no more than a weapon might feel it in response to being thwarted.

"Nobody touches Jack Fenton's family, not even Jack Fenton's family!" The large man yelled. He really didn't want to fight Danny, but, like his wife, he saw no other choice. It was better to free him from Vlad's control than to just give in and let him spend the rest of his afterlife as a weapon for some crazed-up fruit loop.

Danny hissed at him, struggling to break free from the Fenton Fisher. When he found that he could not break free with brute strength, nor turn intangible and phase through, he raised a hand to the best of his ability while restrained, and fired off an ecto blast. Since he did not have complete control over aiming with it, it only succeeded in just barely hitting Jack's hand, but that was enough for the Fisher to clatter to the ground. The line around Danny grew limp and fell to the floor around him.

Danny didn't hesitate to pounce, changing position in mid-air to deliver a strong kick to Jack's neck, sending him hurtling into the wall. The large man crashed into it at full force, causing a large dent to form in the wall. The kick had just barely avoided breaking his neck, which would have ended his fighting quickly and permanently. None the less, he was no longer in any condition to do anything to stop him.

"Hey!" He heard a shout from the other side of the room, and he turned around to meet it. Maddie was standing there, having found her lost ecto sabre. "Come on Danny... Don't make this any harder for me than it already is."

The weaponized ghost frowned at her, though blankly. He wasn't quite sure why these people were calling him Danny. The names his master had given him were 326 and Phantom. Not Danny. He pushed the thought aside, focusing once again on what he was made for-combat. His master had told him to be gentle with this one, so he would have to try and simply relive her of consciousness.

This time, Maddie struck first, jumping over a bit of stray rubble and slicing down with the ecto sabre. Danny jumped back, landing in a crouch, cleanly avoiding it. He pulled up from his crouch quickly, using it to help put more momentum into his flight as he hurled himself towards Maddie, grabbing at her arm and smashing her head downwards, into the floor. She was skilled, but he was faster, he knew.

Maddie moaned and slipped into unconsciousness, bleeding. Danny stepped back, admiring his handiwork for a moment. For him, this was gentle. Now all that was left was to kill the other three. He frowned then, his eyes narrowing as he came to a disturbing realization.

He hadn't seen the raven-haired teenager for quite some time.

Sam had managed to pull herself up from the ground she had collapsed on. She looked over at Danny, currently focused on Maddie. She coughed a bit, then cast her eyes around the rest of the room, her eyes falling on the staircase that Danny had emerged from. She turned back to Danny and Maddie briefly, then headed towards the staircase as quickly as her wounded body allowed for. She was clutching a sharp piece of debris that she had found when she had cut her hand against in the process of getting up. Maybe if she could find Vlad, she could find a way to reverse this. She knew that he would most likely be unguarded, confident in his knowledge that no one could slip past Danny.

She reached the top of the staircase and paused for a brief second, to catch her breath. She was in pain all over, but she had to keep going. She tucked the debris away into her shirt, hiding it from view. She stumbled into the first room that she saw, looking up.

"How on earth did you...?" Vlad began, stunned at seeing that someone had slipped past Danny's grasp. His eyes narrowed. "Well, aren't you the clever one..." He muttered. "Come to try and stop your friend by stopping me?" He asked in an amused voice. "A nice idea, dear girl, but it won't work. You can barely stand."

Sam's eyes narrowed. "Go to hell, creep." She spat. Here he was. Vlad Masters. The bastard that was in charge of all the horrifying experiments that Danny had undergone. The creep who clearly disregarded any and all human rights, treating Danny as if he was some sort of lab rat. Stealing an innocent baby away from his parents, and trying to make him into a weapon. It made her stomach churn and her skin crawl, just looking at him.

"Oh, such fierce words from such a weak, helpless little girl... Ah, here he is." Vlad said, looking over Sam's head. Danny was standing in the doorway, figuring that the girl had probably gone for his master while he was distracted. The others would have to wait for later, right now he had to focus on protecting his master, his other function, his other purpose.

"I'm weak?" Sam spat out, almost laughing. "At least I can fight my own battles. I don't have to rely on someone else."

Vlad shrugged. "And look how far it's gotten you. Further than the others, granted, but not far enough. And you're unarmed. So really, what can you do now that you've gotten here?"

"You should look more carefully..." Sam said, tugging the debris out. "Normally, I frown upon the taking of human life... But you... you're the one exception." She lunged, but found herself pulled back, caught by Danny, but not before she had managed to slice deeply into Vlad's side.

If she was going to die, then at least she had gotten to wound the sick bastard.

"Dispose of her, 326." Vlad said, glaring hell fury at the gothic girl.

Sam bit her lip, looking up at Danny her, violet eyes meeting with his for what she thought would be the last time. She couldn't even recognize the sweet, though completely naive and clueless boy that she had first met. But she knew that he was buried in there somewhere, terrified of what his body was doing without him there to truly control it.

This wasn't a fairy tale, and Sam didn't expect Danny to snap from Vlad's control. This was reality, and in reality, the endings weren't always happy ones. The slight irony of the situation hit her then. If she had never tried to run away, she would never be here in this situation, not staring death in the face. But not for one moment did she regret her choice. There was no use in regretting the past anymore. It was the right choice, even if it was one that was going to inadvertently lead to her untimely death. She wondered when people would discover her rotting corpse, or if she would just be cremated, her ashes cast to the winds.

She wondered if she would come back as a ghost. She hoped not.

And without meaning too, a single, desperate laugh tumbled from her lips, and tears started to flow down her face. She really, really didn't want to die. She had always thought that she would face death, when it came, with grace and dignity, as her grandmother had. What she hadn't realized though, if her grandmother was still awake as she passed away, she too, would have said that she didn't want to die.

"I don't want to die..." She muttered out slowly, the desperate laughter continuing. Her thought process had only taken a few minutes. "I really don't..."

"326, We don't have all day. There are other things to take care of, other people to destroy, other lives to ruin. Hurry and destroy her, please."

"...no." The word was so quiet, that Vlad didn't even hear it. Sam did though, and the word banished the desperate laughter, banished the tears.

"Excuse me?" Vlad asked.

"I said no." Without another word, Danny raised his hand and fired an ecto blast at Vlad. The blast engulfed him, tearing him apart. A normal human really couldn't stand an ecto blast at full power, not at such a close range.

Danny stumbled back then, clutching his head, moaning. His tuscan red eye flashed a bright green before it shut, and he collapsed on the floor. Sam was left standing in the room, but only for a few seconds. She soon sunk to her knees as well, still slightly in shock.

Reality didn't always have happy endings. But sometimes it did.

It was over.

AN: Summery for the sequel! Whooops, forgot to put one for the Dangerous Obsessions sequel. Well, any fans of that story can still check it out, it's on my profile.

Picking up the Pieces: Seven months after the battle, Jack and Maddie Fenton have finally been able to fully stabilize their son's ghost form, and revive him, by fusing human DNA, a replica of what Danny's would have been while living, and his ectoplasm. Now once again a halfa, Danny has to struggle to catch up on the life that he missed and deal with the guilt of what happened in the lab that day. But Vlad is back from the grave, and he's pissed. And furthermore, Danny's having trouble keeping the side of him that's a weapon contained. So as always, life isn't easy for our favorite ghost boy.