Three teenagers walked home from school one brisk afternoon. Sometimes they talked about one thing or another, but most of the time they walked in contented silence. Two of them were at ease, but the third, a skinny, dark-haired by with bright blue eyes, was not. He was glancing around nervously and light blue wisps of air kept sneaking out of his mouth.
The only girl, dressed mostly in black, spoke in a worried tone. "Danny, is everything okay?"
"You've been acting kind of weird," the African-American boy wearing glasses and a red beret chimed in.
"It's… it's nothing, really," the raven-haired boy answered distantly. "Have you ever had the feeling you were being watched?"
That phenomenon had been occurring more and more to the citizens of Amity Park lately. It could have been something in the air, but it was more likely the young ghost that stepped through the Fenton Portal a few days ago, unnoticed.
She had always gone unnoticed. At home, in the Ghost Zone, she didn't fit in. She was always being compared to her older sister, Ember, who had both musical talent and a desire to take over the human world. No one cared about Chara, the introverted little sister of the charismatic rock star. She had often been left to her own devices. That is how she had learned to love her favorite pastime: observing. She would find a spot, sit (or float), and watch. She learned much and said little.
When observing, going unnoticed was an advantage. She perfected the ghost powers she had that helped her remain unseen, like invisibility, intangibility and stealth, and those that helped her to understand what she observed, like telepathy.
She soon tired of observing the inhabitants of the Ghost Zone. All most of them had on their minds was violence and revenge. All one oddball could think about were boxes… and how to use them to achieve world domination. She yearned for more stimulating thoughts to read and more complex beings to observe. She decided to enter the human world through the closest portal.
Chara stepped through a quickly opening and closing portal to find a very large man in an equally large orange jumpsuit rapidly pushing a button labeled, "Open Fenton Portal." Curious, she read his thoughts.
"So… bored…" The man thought, his back to her. "I wonder how many times I can push this button per minute?" He pushed the button even faster.
Disappointed by her first subject, Chara phased through the ceiling, floating off to find more interesting people to observe.
Ever since that day, the people of Amity Park would feel the sensation of being watched at random times. They shrugged it off and gave one reason or another, be it lack of sleep or too much coffee, completely unaware of a pair of observant gray eyes following them.
And Danny was just as unaware that the little ghost those eyes belonged to would someday help him save a girl from destruction.