Things were not going well.

Skulker had caught Valerie and the ghost boy Phantom, had handcuffed the two of them to each other while dropping them onto his island in the Ghost Zone. She was without weapons, and had nothing but the suit on her back. The ghost boy wasn't much better off, having been hit with some sort of power suppressant.

They'd run so far, had had to dodge as countless traps, and the ghost boy had been hit by poison darts and could barely move, becoming nothing more than a heavy weight for her to drag everywhere. The only good news was that one of their encounters had left her with one of the ghost hunter's swords. Unfortunately, it was proving useless in cutting the handcuffs that bound her to the ghost boy.

"Valerie, wait." She looked up at the ghost boy, and he returned it with a resigned look in his eyes. He free arm weakly gripped the blade of the sword, and Valerie tightened her grip on the handle as he redirected the edge away from the cuffs themselves towards...

"No." She didn't want to do it, drew the line at mutilation. Valerie attempted to pull away, but the ghost boy's grip on the blade was too good.

"Yes." Another sigh, and the edge was pressed back against his wrist. "Skulker will keep hunting us until we're both goners. This way I can lead him away while you get your stuff and escape."

"Escape where?" Valerie jerked her head in lieu of waving her arm, as she wouldn't let go of the sword under any circumstances. "You said it yourself; this is the Ghost Zone. Where is there to escape to?"

"The Fenton Portal." The ghost boy let go of the handle to point skywards, to where her helmet's sensors indicated was north-northeast, and just above the treeline. "About a mile that way should be a metal doorway shaped like an octagon. Trust me, you'll know it when you see it. Now, we've only got a few minutes, at most, before Skulker finds us. So... are you gonna do it or– or am I?"

"I..." Just one swing, putting all of her weight and strength in it, and the two of them would be free of one another. And if his word was to be trusted, she had been given a way out, with the Fenton Portal. But would she trust his word?

"Oh, forget it!" His hand slid down to the handle, bringing the sword up just enough to build the momentum needed – and swung down. There was a wet shlick as the blade went through the skin and muscle, tore through tendons and sinew, scraped against bone, before... clunk as it hit the rock underneath. "Go! Run now!"

Valerie was pushed away, and she stumbled into a run as the ghost hunter – Skulker, the ghost boy had called it – crashed through the underbrush, its metal suit outfitted with enough blasters to kill a ghost several times over. Behind her, the ghost boy would provide as much of a distraction as he could so she could get her weapons, get to safety. She wondered how effective his own attacks would be, with only one hand to use.

She never looked back.