Black hair, blue eyes. White hair, green eyes. As Valerie tried to remember every single detail she could about the little ghost (Human? Ghost-human? She wasn't sure anymore) girl whom she had helped save the day before, she got increasingly frustrated.

So humans could turn into ghosts and ghosts could turn into humans, and she couldn't even tell herself she was being a lunatic because she'd seen two of them do it with her own two eyes. Which brought to mind her even bigger problem with an even bigger name: Vlad Masters.

He was a ghost. A ghost. And he sent her on a crusade to become a skilled ghost huntress just so he could see himself free of his little ghost rivals. She had been tricked by him. She'd been used as an unaware pawn in his plans, and that made her blood boil under her skin. She had been tricked by a ghost. She had been tricked by a man.

Yes, he was a man, for his history on the Internet couldn't have been completely fake; there were pictures of him in his college years on his wikipedia page, and you could see the age difference throughout his mayor campaigning. So yes, he was a ghost, and, yes, he was a man. Just like Danielle was both a young pre-teen and a quite powerful ghost-girl.

That last thought drove her eyes back to the sheet of paper in front of her. Two columns of words could already be seen on it, titled Human and Ghost, but then she added a third one. Consistencies, she wrote on top of it. Right beneath it, she wrote three words: skin, height, features.

Valerie was weighing the physical differences of Danielle's human and ghost forms. She had been thinking about that for the whole day, but only when nightime fell she had the time to sit at her desk and put it all down neatly. The girl took a sip of her coffee mug and analysed the words, scraping at the back of her tired brain for confirmation or denial.

Skin. Yes, the color of her skin had been the same before and after transformation, although if outlined by a spooky glow in her ghost form. The glow was a regular ghost thing, she figured. But the pinkish cheeks weren't, she thought.

...

Next.

Height. Okay, the height stayed the same too. No biggie here.

Features. This was a little harder. Valerie never realised until now how difficult it was to recall people's face features without having their eyes or hair color mess up her mental picture. Maybe if she was an artist it would be easier, but she was a huntress, and that was clearly not her field of work.

That said, she was convinced she would be able to at least recognize the most distinguishable changes on her features. The problem was, she couldn't remember any. So, as far as she could tell, Dani (with an I, said the disgusting voice of a certain billionaire mayor somewhere in her head) mantained the exact same facial features both as a human girl and as a ghost.

She shook her head at the paper, confounded. She saw Dani change. But she saw Masters and she saw Plasmius too. And the latter two were absolutely nothing alike. Plasmius's complexion was much more alike that of a normal ghost, and the vampire fangs combined very well with the vampire hair and the vampire costume. She would actually laugh at a ghost like that if she didn't know how powerful he was – and who he was.

She got up in a sudden motion and paced around her room for a few seconds. Then, she threw herself on the bed. Gosh, why did this have to be so confusing? And it got worse... She'd been trying to avoid his name in her thoughts for a while now, but since the end of their rescue mission, one word had obnoxiously clung to the back of her mind.

Family.

Danny Phantom had said Dani Phantom was his cousin. And if she was a half-human, half-ghost or whatever, that could have some mighty implications on the so-called protector of Amity Park himself. It had to be one of three options: 1) they were just concidently similar, and so he had just adopted her as his cousin out of fondness (Yeah, right, as if you could believe that, Valerie); 2) they were actually related, but only on Danielle's ghost part, meaning Phantom would still be a full-on ghost (It's possible, right?); and 3) they were fully related, meaning they shared more than just appearance, and so the ghost-boy would also be... just a boy.

She wished from the depths of her heart that the third one would not be true. She was terrified of that possibility. Yes, the combination of DNA and ectoplasm in one single being would definitely explain the abnormal strength and powers Phantom seemed to have compared to most ghosts – as it did appear to explain Plasmius's levels of power -, but that was not what scared her the most. Because if he was part human, then she would have been shooting, hunting and (God!) torturing one of her own all this time.

Valerie was scared, and she was scared of herself.

The teenager closed her eyes and, after a couple of seconds, let out a deep sigh. She then got up off her bed and walked over to her desk. Turning to the next page, she copied the same three columns she had drawed before, but this time she added a name on top of them. Danny Phantom.

She stared at it for a while before putting on her pajamas and brushing her teeth. She wasn't going to spend time on that now, she was tired. And besides, she thought, looking at the up-and-down motion of her hand in the mirror, Tomorrow's Saturday.

I got a completely free day ahead of me.

Author's Note: Hello! This is my first fic! Be critic, yes, but be gentle, please! Also, English is NOT my first language, so if you see any dumb mistakes just let me know!