Just one big thing before you start reading: this is a story beginning, born from me squishing lots of headcanons together. It has horrible pacing and does not have an ending, though I will be marking it as complete once the whole piece has been uploaded here. It's older, so there are plenty of typos and I don't think everything makes sense, but I wasn't really writing this to be read, you know, so... anyway. I like the voice, and would like to use a lot of the story seeds here, but this, for now, is going nowhere. Enjoy?


Break, break, break, I chanted inside my head. There were only three people between me and the machine of death. Um, the scanner that measured students' ectocontamination levels. Everybody in town had at least a slight reading, but after the latest Ember disaster, the newly-formed Ghost Hunters in Charge (okay, actually just the EctoContainment Unit) had decided that everybody needed to be checked for lingering issues. It was a total surprise, or I would have skipped out on school. Not like it had been the first time. A cold ball of tension hardened inside me as I wrung my fingers inside my shirt.

I ran through excuses in my head. Everybody assumed that all the teenagers would have higher levels, being the main targets of Ember's music, and it wasn't totally a wild shot to assume that she would have singled out a few. I was sure that my two friends would bluff for me and say that I had been chosen for special duties or something. Okay, check. That worked. Two people between me and the big metal doorway now.

That only left the problem of decontamination. Every time I even got a whiff of that nasty gel stuff they used, I not only got a headache, but my ghost powers weakened considerably. I wasn't sure what direct contact would do. At least Sam was glad it was all-natural. The gel stuff was homemade (thankfully not at my house), derived from blood blossoms. My friends had bravely suffered a few rounds of decontamination before, but I wasn't so sure I could get out of it this time. What if they just attacked me with those evil aerosol cans?

Okay, one more person. My brain ran in circles, trying to figure out a solution. I could ice the scanner, but that would be a definite sign of ghostly activity. The goal as to appear normal. Human. Completely fine. I had to nix trying to mess with the electronics, as I had only succeeded in doing a few times, for the same reasons. Could I fake food poisoning and run to the bathroom right now?

"Next."

Oh, crap. Nope. No way was I going through that evil doorway. The beeps of other detectors fuzzed as blood rushed in my ears. I stepped forward, thinking hard. These things ran some energy down and then reacted when some bounced back, right? The solution was staring me in the face.

"You okay, kid?" The college guy manning this scanner was looking at me funny.

"Oh, yeah, I'm okay," I lied, then relaxed as best I could.

A moment before I passed through the doorway thing, I went mostly intangible. If you were really watching, parts of me might have blurred, but I was able to keep pretty much all of my visible skin from doing anything you could see. As a result, the scanner beeped in confirmation that I was within safe levels. I breathed out in relief and joined the growing throng to get out of the gym. Sam and Tucker had gotten out far ahead of me, since I had been late for school. Again.

Then something else blared a warning. I jumped at least a foot and whirled around to find the source of the alarm. People around me shuffled to do the same. I backed up a few steps, burying myself deeper into the group. Unfortunately, I stood head and shoulders above most of the tiny freshmen. I didn't easily hide in a crowd like that.

"No need to panic!" an ECU member shouted through a bullhorn. "Please stay where you are!"

More official-looking young adults dressed in black held scanners I recognized out in front of them. My heart dropped. I had been so afraid of the contamination detectors that I forgot about the ghost activity sensors! What an idiot.

Students moved around nervously, and a few near the door bolted from the gym. That left a new ring of students with sudden free access to the outside world. I stepped back with everybody else, hoping to get to the door quickly. Pressed in as I was, I didn't dare try anything ghostly, so I was stuck moving at a snail's pace with the rest of them.

Too late. Before I could even get close to the doors, I was surrounded by a few scary people only a few years older than myself, but with a lot more weaponry. Well, visible weaponry, I amended. Stuff like Fenton Thermoses and a few small guns went away with the rest of my ghost self when I transformed. I wasn't sure how that happened, but I was glad it did anyway.

"He's displaying signs of serious ectocontamination," one of them said, holding a scanner thingy.

How could I play this?

Luckily, a few years of dealing with this sort of thing on a virtual daily basis had given me good tactical skills. I looked into the future at a few different stories, then chose the last likely to backfire. Hopefully.

I decided to laugh. "What, me? Of course I am. My parents are the Fentons." Anybody who worked in a ghost industry here knew who my parents were, and the ECU specifically knew a lot about them. They were the official heads of the ECU, even if somebody else made the really important decisions.

"We're going to have to pull you aside for a few minutes. A decontamination is probably in order." An older girl, one I had run into before as Phantom, came forward. The confident way she held her ectogun on her shoulder probably would have been attractive, with a tight blonde ponytail and pretty eyes, if she hadn't also been evil personified.

Okay, that was unfair. They were just doing their jobs, and they were good at it. Their work helped people. But it also made it harder for me to help people in, not sorry, more effective ways.

I followed the girl reluctantly, leaving the relative safety of the freshman crowd behind. The students just turned back to the doors and continued to filter out, not particularly concerned. Decontamination was harmless.

Apparently.

We approached a few temporary shower stall things, which gave off a strong smell of the blood blossom goop. Ew. A few portable tables and some "borrowed" desks held a myriad of ghost fighting equipment. I recognized a lot of it, since Fenton tech was still the industry standard. Most of it would, if turned on, pose a problem. Tucker could calibrate my parents' personal tech to ignore me, but there wasn't a lot we could do for the stuff they sold.

The girl turned around with a hard expression. I tried to look casual. "We have a problem."

I waited for her to explain, hoping I appeared innocent.

"You set off the activity alarms, but not the contamination detectors. That should be impossible. Even accidental ghostly activity should have enough contamination to alert the detectors. And I don't think 'my parents are Fentons' is going to cut it." The girl scowled. "Do you have any explanation?"

Actually, I did. I had spent the last thirty seconds making it up. But first, plan A: would they just forget it?

"No. Are you sure your instruments are working right?"

"Of course they are," she snapped back. "Something weird happened, and I'm not letting you go without an explanation."

Well, that stank. It didn't look like they would just write the whole thing off as a faulty detector. I couldn't pretend nothing had happened. Okay, then, plan B. Half-truths.

I looked away in annoyance, then faded one of my hands from the visible spectrum and pretended not to notice. The girl immediately zeroed in on it, though, as I hoped she would. I didn't hope for the immediate ectogun barrel in my face, but a victory was still a victory.

"What was that?" she demanded. A few of the other ECU guys watching muttered and reached for their own weapons. Some alarms went off.

"What was what?" I echoed, then followed her eyes to my hand. "Ahh!" I shook the arm, then made it visible again. "Ahh!"

"You have five seconds to explain." The girl's ectogun powered up with an ominous green glow, and I could hear others around me doing the same.

I opened my mouth, a flimsy but hopefully satisfactory excuse ready to go, but I didn't need it. My parents had noticed the commotion and rushed over. I winced. I had forgotten about them.

"Danny!" Mom called. She and Dad rushed over. The blonde girl reluctantly lowered her gun, though she narrowed her eyes at me. My parents shouldered their way into the circle of ECU members that had formed around me.

"Anna, what in the world is going on?" Mom sounded defensive, and I had to quickly rethink a few details of my stories so that my parents would believe them, too.

The girl - Anna - scowled deeper. "Your son set off our ghostly activity sensors, and his arm went invisible. I have a strong suspicion that this isn't actually your son."

I blinked. "What?" That was unexpected, until I thought about it more. Obviously, they thought I was overshadowed. I hoped they didn't pull out any more detectors... I might have to text Tucker or Sam for a distraction.

"No ghost would mess with my son!" Dad put a fist in the air, then leaned close to me. I could smell fudge on his breath. "Prove you're Danny."

"Um..." I said hesitantly, then glanced at Mom. She nodded, like "go ahead". Of course she would. I thought for a second. "We would have had turkey for Thanksgiving at Grandma's house, but Dad insisted on stuffing it with fudge, so we ordered pizza instead."

Dad straightened up and beamed. "It's my son! Not a ghost!"

I swallowed as I caught sight of Anna's face. I knew what she was going to say.

"So how do you explain the invisible hand?"

"Actually," I cut in. My turn. "I think I know. Hey, Mom, remember those cookies that you left out during that one temperature experiment? The ones that came to life and bit Dad's finger?"

Mom nodded with some confusion.

"I... ate a couple," I finished. Half-truth. I had actually eaten almost all of those cookies, and hid the rest in the kitchen, letting my parents think the cookies had run away or whatever. For some reason, a lot of the ectocontaminated food Mom and Dad made on accident was actually pretty good, and seemed to even make my ghost half stronger. I had even stolen some base ectoplasm samples to use as fry sauce. Sam thought I was insane, which was probably accurate. Tucker had tried it, then had to suffer a whole ten minutes of only being able to speak ghost. We all thought that was hilarious.

"That explains it," Mom said, looking relieved. She turned to Anna and clipped her voice harshly. "So you can turn the safety of that gun back on and holster it. You don't need it."

Anna didn't look happy about it, but she did as asked. Mom thought it was a good idea to send me through decontamination anyway, but it turned out that it was easier to avoid than I had expected.

You took your clothes off inside of a little temporary stall, then went into a second part and pressed two buttons: one for the blood blossom goop, then another to rinse it all off you. I simply stayed inside the first part and pressed the goop button, then actually stood under the rinsing water. No cameras anywhere meant that nobody knew I hadn't actually been dunked in the icky stuff.

Even still, I walked out of that stall with a massive headache and wet hair. I felt my icy ghost core shrink away from the smell. It wasn't pleasant being so close to nature's most repellent flower. And that's counting the one that smells like poop.

The rest of the day went relatively smoothly. No ghost attacks during school, so that was good. Just a little spider thing chewing at some building's foundations as we walked home. I told Tucker and Sam about the speed bump of decontamination, and we laughed it off. I didn't let them know about the headache, though. They didn't need to worry even more. It was one little nerve-wracking thing that had turned out completely fine. I'd gone through dozens of those.