It was Danny's night for helping clean up after supper, so while his mom wrapped up leftovers and set the clock on the refrigerator's time-locks -- Jack Fenton was on a Maddie imposed diet -- Danny scraped plates and loaded them into the dish washer. Because his father had made improvements to the washer Danny always made a point of standing off to one side when he finally pressed the 'on' button. Pleased that nothing had exploded, Danny dried his hands and walked towards the living room only to find his sister, Jazz, waiting for him in the hallway. Warily he asked, "what's up?"
"Come with me," she said and lead him to the sofa and flicked the remote to an entertainment news channel.
"Jazz, you know I hate celebrity gossip."
"Just wait."
Danny was tapping his fingers irritably for most of the half-hour show before his sister grabbed his arm and pointed, "there!"
The anchor threw the broadcast to a stand-up in Vail, Colorado, where Vlad Master was entertaining an entourage with his new girlfriend, Felixa Cowen.
"Good," Danny said after the bit was over. "Now that Vlad has a girlfriend maybe he'll leave Mom alone."
"Danny, this is all wrong. Vlad Master has held a torch for Mom for twenty years. He's tried to kill you, me and Dad on several occasions -- just to get Mom alone. There is no way he would stop all that for some -- some bimbo!"
"And maybe he had finally gotten it through his thick head that Mom isn't available. It could well be that Vlad has finally decided to move with his life."
"Danny, I've studied all this very closely. Nothing in my calculations says that Vlad has or ever will 'move on.' He's up to something and we have got to be vigilant about it."
"Jazz, you were wrong that time when you thought Mom and Dad were getting a divorce. I don't think your record is infallible."
Jazz ignored what was for her a sore point. "There's something fishy here, Danny. Look at the way that woman was hanging on to Vlad. I don't think she ever let go of him. And you know that Vlad doesn't like to be touched!"
"Being in love makes people do strange stuff."
"Danny, I'm serious..."
"So am I!"
"And she wears big hats and those big wrap-around sunglasses. It's almost like she's wearing a disguise.
Danny shrugged and got up to leave.
"And when was Vlad ever interested in extreme snowboarding!"
"He's in Vail. How can he be a threat to us here," Danny said walking away.
***
The Pep Club was busy during lunch period decorating the cafeteria for the upcoming opening of the basketball season. Members were taping up posters all around the room while the cheerleaders, in uniform, were circulating through the room signing up volunteers to help on the games. Danny's head did an owl-like 180 as Paulina, the pretty head cheerleader walked past his table. He breathed in deep her perfume and sighed as he slowly let it out.
"You know perfume was invented to hide the stench of people not bathing, don't you?" Sam said, rolling her eyes.
"But nowadays perfumes are designed to enhance the natural pheromones of women," Tucker cut in. His eyes were also tracking Paulina's movement around the room. Sam scowled at him.
"You know you're so far below her radar that she didn't even bother to try to sign you up for anything."
"So?"
"So!" Sam sputtered, at a loss for what to say. "All she's doing is signing up people to volunteer. You hate volunteering. You never wanted to help me on my Earth Day project!"
"First of all, that was a protest, not volunteering. Secondly, you wanted me to dress up like a side of beef and ask people how they felt about talking to their food."
"It was street theater, Danny. It would have been very effective if you'd gone through with it."
"She wanted to wrap me in bacon," Tucker added. "Normally I like food wrapped in bacon, but..."
"OK, OK, maybe the meat protest wasn't as well thought out as I'd like. Still I can't believe how much boys let their gonads do all their thinking."
"I have one word for you, Sam: Gregor."
Sam felt the heat mount to her cheeks. She was surprised that something didn't burst into flames, her cheeks were so hot.
"Don't ever mention that name again!" she whispered.
"Like girls don't think with their gonads, too." Danny teased.
"Uh, Danny. I don't think girls have gonads." Tucker said.
"Well, whatever girls think with when they get all gooey eyed over some boy."
"He had a cool accent."
"He was from Michigan!"
"He was so goth-like!"
"Danny," Tucker interrupted. "You were the one who was so jealous about Sam having a boyfriend. Gregor wasn't your finest hour either."
It was Danny's turn to blush. He played with the food on his plate for a moment. "Vlad's got himself a girlfriend," he said to fill in the silence.
"I thought Vlad was gay," Tucker said, then added, "Not that there's anything wrong with that."
"Didn't you say he had a thing for your mother?" Sam asked, relieved that the subject of her infatuation with a poseur was behind them.
"No way!" Tucker exclaimed, "when did that happen?"
"Twenty years ago; when he, Mom and Dad were in college. He's had a thing for her all this time."
"I thought he was trying to kill your Dad because of the Ecto-Acne incident?"
"That and that Dad and Mom got married while he was in the hospital recovering."
"Why didn't you tell us this before now?"
"I thought I had. After he had infected you and Sam with Ecto-Acne and I had to get Clockwork's help to cure you. I thought I told you everything."
"I think he was reprogramming his iPod at the time." Sam suggested. "Probably wasn't listening."
"So who's this girl Vlad is running around with?' Tucker asked, "Anyone famous?" he added.
"That's the funny part. She's not anyone famous, but he's in Vail, Colorado, right now snowboarding with her."
"When did Vlad Masters become a fan of snowboarding?" Sam wondered.
"Exactly! When did Vlad ever go in for sports, let alone an extreme sport like snowboarding."
"It's hardly an 'extreme' sport, Danny. Everybody does it these days."
Danny opened his mouth to object but Sam continued. "But you're right, the only sport Vlad has ever enjoyed has been hunting Fentons. So who is this girlfriend?"
"Someone called Felixa Cowen."
"What does she look like?"
"Like a woman wearing a parka and sunglasses."
"Did you google her?" Tucker asked.
"Do you have any idea how many hits there are for 'Vlad Master and Felixa Cowen'?"
"Ah -- six million?"
"Close. Three hundred thousand hits. I must have read a hundred of them last night. Most of them just reprinted the same two or three news reports." Danny sighed. "About all I can find out is that her name is Felixa Cowen, they're fabulously happy and have been dating for 'a while'. Know how many hits there are for just 'Felixa Cowen'?"
"Why do I think the name is going to be 'zero'." Sam answered.
"Zero. It's like she doesn't exist."
"A lot of people aren't visible on the Internet," Sam said. "Doesn't mean they don't exist."
"Maybe she's his little inflatable doll."
"Don't go there, Tuck" Sam said with a tone of disgust. Of course Tucker continued to go there.
"I hear the Japanese have done wonders with robots. To smile and walk and climb stairs. I suppose it's just a matter of time before they --"
The school bell rang announcing the end of lunch, sparing Sam from hearing what Tucker really thought on the matter.
***
Ghosts are made up of ectoplasm, a substance that has neither form nor weight in this world. That's how ghosts can pass through walls, fly, turn invisible and so on; they're not really there. When Danny became a ghost he acquired all these powers and more. One of the strangest, though, was his ghost sense. When his life in danger from another ghost his breath would suddenly blow cold. So cold that the moisture in it would fog up. Ghosts often lowered the temperature in the rooms they occupied. Danny wondered if they were drawing energy from the heat of the air molecules the way plants absorb sunlight for their energy. Danny would have loved to talk to his father about this but on subjects that cut too close to the idea that he was a half-ghost Danny shied away from. So when on a Saturday morning as he was walking to the Nasty Burger to meet up with Tucker and Sam, and his breathe turned to blue fog, Danny knew he was in trouble. He just did not know where the danger was coming from.
A quick look around showed him that no one was on the sidewalk before or after him. The street to his left was empty of car as was the parking lot to his right. The office building whose workers filled up the lot during the week was closed. Danny took a quick look around the ground. There were some manhole ahead but nothing seems to be coming it there. He looked up -- just in time to roll out of the way of a pair of metallic boots hurtling down from the sky.
Danny scrambled to his feet and looked for some shelter. He couldn't change out here in the open. Even if the street looked completely deserted one never knew if someone mighty be watching. He was in the middle of a long block. Nothing, absolutely nothing he could use for cover was around. He took one quick look at the person or thing that almost crushed him, then sprinted across the empty parking lot for the shadows of an alleyway.
His attacker was human-shaped. A six or seven foot tall grey metallic body with a mirrored visor that hid either the robotic workings of this device or the eyes of a person inside some kind of armored suit. There were no clothes or marking on the things body. Nothing to indicate who, what, when, where or why it was attacking him. It looked like a medieval knight.
The machine had landed heavily on its feet. It tottered for a moment then fell down. It bounded to its feet a moment later and took after Danny with long, loping strides.
Something bright and purply-pink splashed past Danny, striking the wall of the building forming one side of the alley. It exploded there, showering Danny with a hail of stinging rocks and pebbles. "Cripes!" Danny exclaimed as he rounded the end of a dumpster set up in the alley. It smelling gagtastically of rotten food but Danny didn't notice as he pull up short at the other end, pushing a second dumpster out of his way, making a space small enough for him to crawl into.
He was crouched here, trying hard not to pant as the metallic figure ran past. For wearing steel shoes it was light on its feet. It also seemed more to be hopping than running, suggesting that robot or armor, it was stronger than the average person.
Danny knew it would be back in a moment so he slipped out of his hiding place and concentrating for a moment, slipped from Fenton to Phantom. He immediately turned invisible and levitated ten feet into the air, where he didn't expect the silver knight, as he dubbed it, would find him.
From his vantage point he could see the silver knight slide to a halt at the end of the alley. It spun around, tossed away a couple garbage cans with ease, then came charging back the way it came. It moved slower, and paused to test each door and window of the buildings that formed the alleyway.
Danny held his breath as the silver knight moved under him. It lifted the lids to the dumpsters and peered inside. It looked on the ground and may have noticed fresh scratch marks from when he had moved the one dumpster. It stood still for a moment, seeming to listen for something. Danny's heart was pounding so hard he half-expected his stalker could hear it, as unlikely as that would be.
Suddenly the silvery armored person jumped to the top of the dumpster with one powerful lunge and from there leap up and out into the alleyway -- right at Danny. With a gasp Danny let his breath out and dashed forward, out of the attacker's way.
But he had been too slow. A metal gauntlet closed around one ankle and dragged him out of the sky as the silver knight came crashing back to the earth.
Danny twisted as they fell and threw a gout of ecto-plasm as his attacker. The spectral energy seemed to bounce off the metal surface harmlessly, but it did cause it to loose its grip on his foot. Danny jerked free and sprinted ahead. He climbed into the air, gaining altitude and spurted ahead as fast as he could.
His attacker crashed to the earth with a heavy clang. It rolled to its feet with noticeable agility. Suddenly two small pods erupted from the waist of the metal outfit. Flames erupted and the silver knight was suddenly in the air, too. The belt-mounted rockets must have packed quite punch because the knight was quickly catching up with Danny.
He took a corner at a tight angle, hoping the silver knight could not make the turn but the tiny rockets readjusted their angles and the knight skidded around the corner.
Danny tried shooting more ecto-plasm at his attacker. This seemed only to encourage his attacker to extrude another blister, this time on its wrist, from which it fired answering bolts of spectral fire. Danny twisted around a few more intersections, hoping to loose his attacked in the jumble of tight turns or at least make he, she or it use up so much rocket fuel that they would have to give up pursuit. Apparently it had a greater supply of rocket fuel than Danny expected because it just kept on coming.
Maybe he should play on his attacker's weaknesses, such as its physical weight. As a ghost Danny didn't have any weight, mass or inertia. He reversed directions and charged at the silver knight. But instead of trying to reverse directions or even to move aside to avoid Danny's hurtling form, his attacked reached for a package mounted on its waist and heaved it at Danny. The package expanded with a puff, spreading out into a weighted net. Danny tried to duck but the net was too close, It wrapped about him tightly, electrified currents running through its webbing, shocking him into immobility.
Danny crashed onto the rooftop of a building. He struggled to get out of the netting while his foe had time to brake and fly back to where he lay.
Silently it landed and slowly walked towards Danny. In all this time it had said nothing. Slowly, methodically, it raised an arm with a blaster blister open on top. But Danny, working frantically, had thrown off most of the netting, enough to regain use of his ghost powers. Just as the silver knight fired Danny went intangible and fell through the roof into the offices below them. He continued down a couple more floors, before scooting off to the side and out of the building. Danny continued distancing himself from his attacker.
From the safety of distance it looked like his attacker was shooting a bunch of holes in the roof. Did he think Danny had remained just under the roof and was trying to wing him with one of these blind shots, or was the silver knight having a temper tantrum?
Danny flew back to FentonWorks where he could be safe behind his Parent's company's security devices. He plopped back on his bed and wondered about his latest enemy. The electrified net was something Skulker, the Ghost Big Game Hunter had often used. And the weapons and rocket engines mounted in extrudable blisters -- that was also some of Skulker's stuff. But Skulker didn't use full-body armor. And he liked to talk -- a lot. Skulker couldn't move without boasting about it. Well, maybe not as much as Technus, but he couldn't have remained as quiet as this enemy had. So this silver knight couldn't be Skulker but had access to Skulker's technology. That didn't seem likely, either. Skulker wasn't known for his sharing. So maybe someone had found the same source of technology as Skulker did. But Danny was pretty sure that Skulker built his own stuff.
When he found his thoughts going around and around in the same circle, he gave up thinking about it and called Sam and Tucker. He would be wary the next few days just in case. Getting attacked by unknown ghosts wasn't that unusual for him and he had learned that if nothing came of it after a couple days, nothing would.
***
Jazz walked into the living room and snagged the remote out of Danny's hand before he even knew she was there.
"Hey! I was watching that," he protested as she flipped through the menu for the channel she wanted.
"A badly drawn cartoon show about a hyperactive eleven-year? Danny you should be ashamed of yourself."
"It's timeless pratfall humor."
"This is more important."
'This' was the celebrity gossip channel.
"What? Vlad's a new girlfriend?"
"Just watch."
"Live from Cozumel, Mexico," the reporter began. "We're talking to America's richest man, Vlad Masters. What brings you to Mexico's vacation coast?"
"The sun, the fine hotels, the exotic reefs, Dana. We're planning on scuba - diving the reefs while we're here."
"Ya ya, ya, ya, barf!" Danny growled. "Can I have the remote, please?"
"Look at who he's with," Jazz directed.
"It's that Felixa Cowen woman. So Vlad's still dating the same woman."
"No, look at what she's wearing!"
It took a while for the camera to drift away from 'America's richest man' ("Tenth richest" Danny groused) to his companion. Vlad had been wearing knee-length baggy pants, showing off his naked and surprisingly well-toned abs. Felixa Cowen, however, was wearing a brightly colored wet-suit with full-length arms and legs. A Straw hat covered her short hair and big, mirrored sunglasses once again covered her face.
Danny cast a confused look towards his sister. "So?"
"She's in Mexico! And She's not wearing a bikini!"
"Is there a law saying she has to?"
"What woman in her right mind would pass up a chance to show off her body?"
Danny considered whether this was a trick question from his sister. As a fourteen year old boy he was still hazy on why girls bought the bathing suits they did, though he appreciated how they looked in them. Felixa's wet suit hugged her body like a second skin and the effect looked pretty good to him. And don't you wear a wet suit when you're scuba diving?
"Maybe she's trying to avoid skin cancer?" Danny suggested at last.
"There's something wrong about that woman!"
"She's dating a psychopathic ghost."
"Vlad Masters isn't a psychopathic. He's more a megalomaniac. And he'd hardly tell her that he's a ghost."
"Whatever. Jazz, as long as Vlad is in Cozumel he isn't in Amity Park, and that's all I care about."
"Ohhh!" His sister growled, flung the remote on the sofa next to Danny and stalked away. Danny took one last look at Felixa Cowen before hitting the "Last Channel" button on the remote. She was, as before, holding on to Vlad's' arm. He wondered if she kept a hold of Vlad even when he went to the bathroom. Now that would be weird. The sunglasses, the big hats, people wore that kind of stuff all the time but the way Felixa Cowen kept a hand on Vlad, that seemed a little too weird.