I'm not particularly fond of starting stories out with an author's note, but I think it needs to be stated that these first few chapters are going into a major rewrite and after that, I fully plan to finish this story off. If you finish reading the rewritten chapters before I finish rewriting them all, it is more likely than not that the next chapter won't make a whole lot of sense. I'm pretty much starting from scratch here.

Last edit: 2\21\16

I hung the phone up with a heavy sigh. It had been so long since I'd seen my family, and I wanted to run back home to them more than anything else- especailly Sam. God, I missed her, but I had a job to do. Me and Dani both did, and until we had a firm grasp on what was going on, going home just wasn't an option. If mom and dad could figure this out from the house, they would have already, but the fact remains that they hadn't and Dani and I needed to be out here to figure it out. Until we knew exactly what we were facing, mom and dad needed us to be travleing the world, tracking down each new anamaoly as it apppeared and gathering as much information as possible.

A few months ago, Dani and I started getting these little twinges in our cores. At first, we wrote it off and attributed it to the sudden increase in ghost activity in town. Then, the first new halfa appeared in town at almost the same tiem as we felt that tell tale twinge. It happened again and again, and we knew for a fact that this wasn't just a matter of more ghosts coming out into the real world. Halfas were appearing out of nowhere and we needed to find out why. The first few to show up were pretty weak, with ghost powers that couldn't do a whole lot more than just keep them from getting killed, but in the past few weeks more and more have been getting close to the same power levels as Dani and I.

Once they started getting stronger, we were able to find most of them, but most of the weaker ones were still unaccounted for and my team and family had made the decision to leave the weak ones be and chase after the strongest ones we could find. Mom had this theory going that we were more likely to get useful information where the stronger halfas were appearing. The signatures have moving steadily south through the United States, and if this pattern keeps up, we'll have to start crossing national borders and that could cause issues. In our ghost forms, it didn't matter much- even if someone questioned how legal our international travel was, we'd be able to escape without too many issues. It's not hard to tell we aren't human when we're floating in midair, but we have to eat and we have to be in our human forms to do that. If we get arrested in human form, we can't do much without making the existance of halfas well known. Right now, it's just an urban legend as most of the new halfas are staying out of sight, but if there's an international incident, there will be no going back. Once it gets out in the real world, it will be only a matter of time until that information makes it back to the Ghost Zone and there are way too many ghosts out there that would love the "honor and glory" of killing a halfa- even if said halfa didn't even know what they were yet.

I suddenly stopped midair, feeling a new tug in my gut; only this time, something new happened- I swear the sky flashed green. It didn't last very long, and if it weren't for the look on Dani's face, I probably would have just assumed it was a trick of the light. The scary thing was that I was almost completely certain that partivular shade of green came from the Ghost Zone. Nothing in the real world had that exact shade of green- it was only found in the Ghost Zone.

That could indicate that the veil between the worlds was starting to break down and that could only mean that all hell was about to break loose.

I called mom on instinct, the action barely registering until she picked up the phone.

"Did you see that?" I said, my mind still trying to process what it had just seen. "The sky just turned Ghost Zone green. Did you see that?" For the first time in a long time, I was hoping that I was just starting to go crazy. I had no idea what that flash of green could mean, but I could be almost certain it wasn't anything good.

"I didn't see it, but our equipment definitly picked it up. There was a massive spike in ecto energy in town, and if you saw it too, I'd guess it was a world wide event. Did it coincide with another halfa appearance?"

"It felt like it did, and the signature hasn't disappeared yet. Do you want me to come home or chase after them?"

"Find them. Until we know what this is, I need you out there looking for any patterns. There has got to be a reason all these halfas are appearing, and we need to figure it out before it's too late.""

"Understood," I said before ending the call.

Five years of being half ghost and dealing with the Ghost Zone, and I still didn't have a damn clue what was going on.

They had to be crazy if they honestly thought they were going to get me to believe that, in the midst of my anger, my eyes had started glowing green. I mean, sure the lighting in the mall had gone pretty wonky there for a second, but for them to claim the glowing continued after that event? They had to be losing their minds/

You know, that would actually explain a lot. All of them had been such great people, such great friends, in middle school, but now? They'd spent the last school year leaving me out and hardly even acknoledging my existance. It was only the begging of the one true friend I had left that had convinced me to come to this stupid get together before school started again. Well, it was her begging and the idea of watching her awkwardly interact with her crush. I couldn't say anything to anyone else about it, but I knew she had a thing for Noah, and one way or another, this group had actually gotten him to tag along.

I'd be willing to bet they literally dragged him by the ear.

It wasn't that Noah wasn't our friend, it was that he was almost unbareably socially awkward and if he had a way to get out of this, he probably would have taken it. He was probably one of the few guys in existence that would complain about spending a day alone with a bunch of girls that would actually rather raid a game store than go clothes shopping. Noah was friendly at school, where he was used to talking to other people and interacting with us, but out here in the real world it was painfully obvious just how far out of his element he was.

Him feeling so out of place had to have been why he went along with the story the others tried to tell about my eyes glowing green. I was sure that he had just assumed he missed something and went along with the story so he wouldn't stick out so much. That could almost explain away why Noah did it, but I still didn't have an answer as to why Anne would do it.

She was a giggle box and had done as much as she could to stay my friend without leaving the rest of the group. Sure, she followed them at lunch, which I can't say I appreciated, but at least she actually acknowledged my existence the rest of time and wasn't afraid to talk to me outside of school. As far as I knew, she also never sided against me when the rest of the group had started to single me out as "unworthy." She was probably the only one sticking up for me, in all honesty. That was why I had come against my better judgement when she had begged me to. Anne had yet to wrong me, and it had seemed relatively important to her that all of her friends were at the last get together before she left the local highschool to attend a dual credit program at one of the nearby colleges.

Anne had no reason to lie to me about something that stupid. She wasn't even the type to just follow whatever her crush said. So, why would she say something like that?

As I contined to storm away and hunt down the nearest exit, I started to think back to the argument that happened just before the absurd claims about my eyes started to happen. I know I had insulted almost everyone there, but I had intentionally left both Anna and Noah out of it. They hadn't wronged me, so I had done my best to return the favor when the altercation with the rest of the group started. I didn't think I had said anything that would irritate them or give them any reason to jump on the "glowing eyes" bandwagon, but maybe something had slipped past my filter that I didn't really mean. Blind rage was something that ran in my family, so I guess it was possible I said something I didn't even remember, but I didn't think I had gotten anywhere near that mad.

Then again, it had centered around what was a rather touchy subject for me.

The rest of the group had tried to act like falling into a deep depression was entirely my fault and a path that I had chosen to take when being happy was such an easy option.

Idiots.

Either they were stupid (highly unlikely) or extrememly delusional.

A year earlier, my best friend, someone I had known for 8 years, seemingly disappeared off the face of the planet, right as I was starting to realize that somewhere along the way, I'd fallen in love with him. Looking back, the conversations leading up to the event gives me the idea that he knew it was going to happen, but he never told me what was going on before he disappeared and none of his family was coming forward with any information. All I could do is hope he would come back to tell me the whole story myself.

For some reason, my group of "friends" couldn't understand how that series of events could possibly lead to legitimate depression. I wasn't sure what happy drug they were on to give them this view of a fucking perfect world, but I sure as hell could use some. Maybe then I would at least start to understand their side of things

I sighed, sitting down on a bench outside. I was only half surprised that no one had come after me yet. Sure, I was walking pretty fast, but seeing as I made a bee line to the door, it couldn't have been hard to figure out where I was heading. I figured Anne, or at least Noah, would eventually get around to finding me. Unless I'd said something that I didn't remember, they had no reason to abandon me now. Anne knew and understood what I had been going through, and Noah knew enough that I highly doubted he would side witht he rest of the group as he was usually pretty realistic. They were probably trying to smooth things over with the others. It wouldn't do much good to come get me until the they for sure whether or not the others were busy planning my execution.

I don't know how long I sat there before Noah finally showed up. "Anne's in there trying to calm them down without taking a side. It's not going so well."

"Well, that's to be expected. They're all so busy following little miss fucking perfect that they can't see their own issues, much less anyone else's. I can't understand why the hell they would try to convince me my eyes were fucking glowing though."

"Ellie, they weren't lying about that."

I stared at him in shock. He couldn't really still be on that kick, could he?

"Maybe it was just a trick of the light, but from where I was standing, it really did look like they were glowing unnaturally. Even with that moment where the lights went all funky, it's pretty hard to explain that. Your eyes looked like they were glowing and there's really no other way to describe it."

"You have got to be kidding. Tell me, how the hell could blue eyes ever glow green?"

"I don't know how, Ellie. I just know what I saw."

"Well, I guess if a blue sky can flash green, a pair of blue eyes can do it too." I laughed darkly. "Just watch- I'm sure this will turn out to be life finding a whole new way to fuck me over. Why could anything ever be easy for me?"

Well... that was honestly a lot easier to rewrite that I thought... Like I said, this is only the first of several chapters to be rewritten before taking this story back on and making an attempt to finally finish it.

Comments and feedback are as welcome as always! :D

Invisible One