The scent of blood hit his nose as he entered the warehouse. He frowned, rolling the smell in his tongue as he kept walking, feet two inches away from the floor.

He'd hate it if some poor civilian had been hurt by the ghost.

Then, he smelled the ectoplasm, and smiled with cruel satisfaction. The smell was intense, which meant the ghost was near, and it's fragrance was surprisingly sweet, mixed with an unusual acrid touch of flavor that made his mind wonder for a moment what was different about that ghost.

But there was nothing different. The ghost, a vampire-looking humanoid, with sharp teeth and muscled body, was nothing more than that. A ghost.

And everyone knew ghosts were evil.

(A small voice in the back of his mind asked him what he was then, and he shut it off, the notion automatic by now.)

He stopped in his tracks, his right hand clutching the ectoweapon with decision, the left one free, but ready to grab the weapon or shot an ectoray at the slightest movement. Still, the place remained desert, the dusty floor untouched by ghostly feet, the only disruption on the place being the smell of ectoplasm and blood, which coiled around the cold air and was starting to unconsciously make him take deep breaths.

Such a strange odor.

He floated to the door and, finally seeing the first traces of the ghost, went through the pink stained door (and what a ridiculous color for ectoplasm), following the bloody 'footprints' of liquid, which had left a trail of stains in the way.

His chase led him to another room, and the stains suddenly turned red. He frowned, forgetting the ghost for a moment to follow the bloodstains and, hopefully, find its owner still alive. The stains led him to a door, where a bloody hand print stood out, as if the person had tried to open it. He clutched his teeth, bracing himself for what he was about to see, and went through the wooden door.

The image before him still revolted his insides.

A man laid on the floor, a puddle of blood slowly growing from his middle, or maybe even his chest, and the man's face was partially covered by streaks of long, white hair, tips tainted red. The bloodied suit stood out, and Danny wondered for a moment what in heaven's sake was a business person doing in an empty warehouse, now ghost-infected.

His body, though, quickly moved to check the man's pulse, and find something he could do to help the injured person.

(He'd learned how to deal with injuries of different gravity after many battles, and had been even more keen to learn how to treat an injured person after that had happened.)

The man was alive, somehow (it seemed as if his middle had been blown off, leaving an ugly hole that showed organs and some of the lower ribs with disturbing clarity), but he needed to take him out of there, bring him to a hospital, something. Danny didn't have the necessary equipment, but he would need to do something if he didn't want to have the guy's guts spill all over him while he carried him. Changing back, he quickly took the first aid kit from his schoolbag, opening it. He rummaged through gauze and packed syringes, taking out some painkillers and bandages. His supplies were low, but this would have to do until he managed to arrive to the hospital.

As he prepared the injection, the man gave a pained groan, and Danny started to whisper, trying to calm down the surely alarmed person. The man looked at him through lidded blue eyes, and Danny pierced the skin, injecting the anesthesia. Still whispering, he moved the guy a little, and the hiss of pain was enough to let him know that the wound was as bad as it seemed, if not worse.

Adjusting his folded up sleeves, he mumbled apologies as he started to wrap the bandage around the man's injury, pushing to the back of his mind how unsanitary it was to treat someone on a dusty floor, while his ears kept paying attention to strange sounds, prepared for the slightest change in the wind. The ghost was still out there and being an obsessive, selfish, evil creature, an injured man wouldn't stop it from trying to take down a helpful kid.

No matter the kid had already blown half of it off before the ghost ran away.

Glassy eyes stayed fixed on him, and Danny looked back, feeling uneasy at the stare. Once the bandage was tightly wrapped, he asked something, anything to the man, to see how his lucidity was working. At hearing the nonsensical response, and realizing that the man was probably suffering from a concussion too, Danny transformed back, school clothes being replaced by a black tee-shirt with a yellow logo, jeans turning into orange pants.

The man stared back with wide eyes, and Danny felt again the nervousness in his stomach, bile rising to his throat as the idea of stupidly having exposed his secret flashed through his mind.

Then, the man did the unthinkable.

He asked.

But, to Danny's surprise, only a question came out of his mouth.

"Why?"

Danny stared in shock at the injured man as a black ring appeared from his middle, parting in two and leaving in front of his eyes the vampire-looking ghost from before.

The boy jumped back, gun held tightly in his hands as he pointed it to the ghost.

Red eyes looked back at him, with the same intensity that the blue ones had had, and the words started to flow out from the thing's mouth.

Who are you

How did you become half-ghost too

Why are you hunting ghosts

Who are you, child

Why are you doing this

Danny told it to shut up as he pointed the gun menacingly. The ghost, though still dazed by the blood loss, stopped talking, and silence enveloped the room. Danny breathed deeply, more for the comfort it gave him than necessity, but stopped when he realized the smell, intense and almost good enough to make him give out a shuddering breath.

Forcing his mind back from his hungry thoughts, he sent a hard stare to the ghost, to the monster in front of him.

'Half-ghost'? As if. The creature had just seen him transforming, and had decided to try the trick. Ghosts normally couldn't do that but, then again, normally ghosts' ectoplasm didn't smell like this either.

The ghost tried to talk again, and Danny moved the gun, just enough to make known his intentions. Blue lips shut again, and Danny observed the ghost critically.

It was a ghost. Just a ghost. What he had seen before had been an illusion, a trick. Ghosts were like that, he'd learned from looking through his parents notes after the accident.

They really were experts in the area, their knowledge wider than any ghost hunter in the state, or even in the country. Thanks to their experiments, this knowledge had been constantly growing, and Danny had found notes, scribbles and theories from back when he was a toddler.

And all that would have disappeared. If he hadn't done something, they would have shut down the house, and possibly demolished it, given the rumors of radiation that had been circulating for years. Danny had only showed the world that the house, his home, was still needed, just by activating the Portal.

If that had given him strange powers, it was not his fault. But 'half-ghost'? That was ridiculous. There was not even a single note about something like that in his parents' studies, but the sole idea of it sounded preposterous, if not insulting and revolting.

Danny's gaze hardened. He was just a ghost. A ghost that, as the low scum it was, was trying to convince him that he was something as sick as him. His lips contorted into a grimace of distaste and repulse, and he watched the vampire-like ghost, now soaked in ectoplasm and blood.

How fitting.

With a last glare, green burning into red ones, he gave his answer.

"I'm not like you"

He shot.

I thought about explaining exactly what made Danny like this, but...

Car accident, a little obsession with his parents' work and Spectra. That's all I'm gonna say.

(It's all Spectra's fault, to be honest.)