Phantom trailed after Maddie as she walked back home, the ethereal tail replacing his legs a long serpentine streak as he meandered lazily behind the scientist. His casualty unnerved Maddie slightly, because the ghost being so at ease around her meant she wasn't holding the gun anymore. Well, technically she was, since the ghost never carried any kind of weaponry save from the stolen Fenton thermos whereas she had a gun in a holster at her side, but she clearly didn't pose a significant threat to him and thus was not in control of the situation despite being in the lead. Phantom was.

As Maddie had reached the front door and was fumbling for her keys, she told Phantom to wait outside. She didn't want him inside her house this time despite the lab being logically the best place to interview the ghost again, since while it was definitely Maddie's home base and was full of things she could defend herself with if Phantom suddenly decided to throw his friendly persona out of the proverbial window, Phantom didn't find it intimidating in any way. And since the lab was what the specter was most likely expecting, throwing him off the loop with a different location might balance the field of power a little. Plus, she really didn't want him anywhere near her family, especially her son who had had a rough day and was clearly unsettled by the presence of ghosts in general.

She did a small detour to the lab though, grabbing a few devices she might need and an additional ectogun while she was at it and stuffed them in a dynamic backpack, and quickly scanned the hand she had shaken with Phantom for lingering possibly harmful ectoplasmic residue, finding none. After informing her husband she would be going back out for an unforeseeable amount of time, she returned outside where Phantom was still waiting for her, floating upside down.

"So where are we going for this?" the ghost asked, turning right side up as Maddie locked the door after her. "The park," she answered simply. "It's private enough for us to be left alone, public enough for you to not try any funny business."

Phantom snorted. "You're making this sound like a blind date."

Maddie lifted her eyebrow questioningly, and Phantom seemed to catch the small motion despite her goggles hiding it completely. The ghost just sighed and set towards the park, floating a foot off the ground and matching the human's walking speed. "You know, the whole 'don't trust strangers from the internet, meet only in public spaces', the dangers of online dating?" The ghost looked at Maddie expectantly. She just squinted back.

"And what does a ghost know about online dating?"

"What does a human? I'm dead, not from outer space. I know stuff." Phantom's spectral tail was flicking like an irritated cat's. "How about I carry you so we can get there faster?"

Maddie was taken aback by the suggestion of flying. She looked at the ghost as if he had grown a second head, which Maddie would've actually expected to be more likely. "Absolutely not. How could that be safe for me?"

Phantom rolled his eyes like the teenager he was under his ethereal white aura, which slightly pulsed around him to highlight the motion. "I'm not gonna drop you," he sighed, "and I could fly impractically low to protect you from vertigo." After a brief pause he added: "Think what you could learn from a first-hand experience on ghost aided flight."

Maddie couldn't deny her interest. "Alright, but the moment you try anything funny, I'll shoot you." She placed her hand on the holstered gun at her side for emphasis. Phantom just smirked. "Wouldn't dream of it."

Phantom grabbed her gently under her arms and lifted off the ground. As he turned invisible and extended the state to Maddie, she felt a cold sensation, not quite shiver but something similar to the heatless flame her hand had been engulfed in earlier. She made a mental note to write it down once she was safely back on the ground. As Phantom flew them towards the park by following roads, Maddie realized she felt no wind resistance of any kind, meaning she was not only invisible but intangible as well.

"Why are you following the roads when you could fly us directly there through buildings?"

Phantom looked down at her. "I thought you'd be more comfortable knowing where we are and seeing where we are going."

"Thoughtful," Maddie commented, "for a ghost."

Phantom sighed. "Could you drop the whole 'degrade all things non-human' -thing for a while? It's not very nice." Phantom took a left, and the park was clearly visible a few blocks away. "I get that the mostly non-corporeal ghosts you've been studying have limited thought patterns don't exactly meet human standards of 'intelligent', but we aren't all just mindless blobs trapped by instincts."

As they reached the park, Phantom let her down on a quiet stretch of grass surrounded by a few trees and turned visible himself. Maddie noted he was still frowning at her earlier comment. She almost adopted the 'disappointed mom'-pose to give the specter a piece of her mind, but decided against it and instead took her notepad out of her backpack and began to write down notes about the flight.

Phantom huffed at her lack of response and made frustrated flip in the air.

Maddie sat down on the grass and decided to veer the conversation elsewhere before Phantom could continue on the subject.

"So if you're not a mindless blob trapped by instincts, what are you?" Phantom turned towards her in the air with seal-like fluidity and blinked. "What do you mean?"

"You died in a portal correct?" Phantom nodded. "Somehow because of that, you have a dissimilar ectosignature, more superficial detail and power, and more complex thought patterns than other ghosts. I don't have any samples and I clearly won't be getting them now, so I have to ask: what in a portal death exactly makes you so different?"

Phantom looked uncomfortable. He lowered himself from his usual three to four feet sitting height to an inch or two above the grass, eye level with Maddie.

"I don't like to talk about it, but since we made that deal thing, I'm gonna tell you," the monochrome ghost began hesitantly. "When I... Died, the active ectoplasm from the portal soaked me through. Usually new ghosts form in the Ghost Zone where there's enough ectoplasm for them to form. I think I formed right there, inside my own burning body." Phantom paused for a moment to scratch the back of his neck. "I'm not sure whether I still have my former body fused in somewhere inside me as a ghost or was I just molded directly into my original human body. I've given this a thought or two over the last week since you asked me about my death."

Maddie was floored. She hadn't even considered the possibility of Phantom still having some remnants of a human body in him. As she thought about it, it was possible. She knew how much energy and ectoplasm starting and maintaining an interdimensional portal, even a small one, took, and what those amounts could do to a person. At least in theory. She would have to run tests on organic subjects as soon as possible.

As Maddie vigorously wrote notes, she took a notice on Phantom's anxious expression and decided to somewhat change the subject before the ghost boy would bolt away like a scared deer, which judging by his expression was a plausible possibility. Returning to a point she made during their last conversation, she asked: "So, if you were molded so directly to your original shape, why are your eyes so big?"

Phantom immediately stopped his anxious fiddling and snapped his electric gaze to Maddie.

"WOW. Way to be polite."

"I'm just curious."

"Yeah, whatever." Phantom rolled his eyes and rose a foot off the ground. "I actually have a reason for that." Maddie was honestly surprised to hear that he had an actual explanation. Phantom scratched his neck again. "When I first became a ghost, I honestly wasn't used to the lamp-eyes. I didn't see my reflection a whole lot, just the light from my eyes against things, so I got the image of these huge tarsius eyes. You know, those little fluffy nocturnal animals that have giant eyes and look like a cross between a toad and a bat?" Phantom made vague gestures at his eyes. "Of course they're not that big, but the feeling stuck."

Maddie made a note to look up tarsius later. Meanwhile, she decided to question Phantom's hazmat suit, which in structure seemed to be quite similar to her own, with the apparent lack of hood, goggles, visible pockets and, oddly enough, a zipper.

"Why doesn't your hazmat suit have a zipper?"

Phantom rolled his eyes at the human's question. "You just have to question everything, don't you?"

"Of course, I'm a scientist."

"Of course you are. And I do have a zipper, it's right here in the front." Maddie stared at Phantoms clearly zipperless chest and lifted an eyebrow since she was pretty sure the ghost could read her expression through her red-tinted goggles. She was proven right, as Phantom lifted an eyebrow of his own to match hers. "I do, it just follows ghost logic. It sort of appears when I need it. Here, I'll show you."

Phantom fingered the neckline of his suit and, true to his word, found a zipper there. Maddie watched as Phantom opened it to his solar plexus, revealing a black and cyan shirt. Maddie was astounded: even from several feet away she could see the shirt's fabric was more detailed than ghost clothes had any business being, and was not skintight enough to not show through a hazmat like Phantom's, meaning it was not constantly there much like the zipper. It was a secondary garment, only there on the rare occasions when Phantom opened his suit.

Phantom himself furrowed his brows as Maddie wrote everything down. She was paying him only minimal attention as he lifted the neck of his shirt and looked under it, but gave it fully as he suddenly gasped in surprise and recoiled back a foot or two. "What?" she asked the surprised ghost.

Phantom tore his eyes off his chest and looked directly at Maddie, making her squint at the brightness of his eyes. "It's... It's nothing. I just wasn't expecting to find this." The ghost pulled his neckline down and Maddie could see another, more form-fitting dull white and apparently sleeveless shirt underneath. Truly remarkable: a piece of clothing the ghost hadn't known to be there? Unheard of. Phantom's theory of there being real world matter in him was looking like a more and more probable explanation.

Phantom quickly zipped up his suit after that, the chest becoming smooth again as the zipper passed, leaving no evidence of its time keeping it open nor the shirts beneath it.

"Why do you have two shirts then?"

Phantom just glanced at her, shrugged, and made a non-committal noise.

Maddie felt she had drained the ghost's willingness to talk about his ectobiological oddities, and decided to change the subject yet again to keep him from flying off.

"So, what can you do ability-wise?" she asked, pen at the ready.

Phantom turned back to her from his mild sulking and lifted an eyebrow sarcastically. "Subtle," he commented. "But yeah, I can show you some stuff. Cool stuff."

With those words Phantom rose to four feet still in sitting position. "Remember that hand thing I did last time?" Maddie nodded. The ghost looked excited. "I've been practicing it. Now I can do this!"

Phantom shoved his legs in Maddie's direction, but as she watched, his feet's edges blurred and started to morph into...

...Another hands. Phantom had now four hands. As he happily wiggled his new fingers, Maddie noted his legs had assumed the bodily proportions of arms as well. While she was impressed by the level of control and imagination required to perform the trick, she was also extremely unimpressed. The scientist adopted her best 'unimpressed' face and looked at Phantom. The specter matched her gaze with his own electric one. "Don't look so unimpressed. This is totally cool and useful; I can carry way more stuff like this."

As Maddie continued to look utterly unimpressed, the ghost huffed and returned his legs and feet into their original shape. "And that's not the only cool thing I've been practicing. This isn't useful, as far as I know, but it's totally cool."

Maddie watched as Phantom spread his arms and closed his eyes in concentration, the ease of shooting him when he was not paying attention just a passing thought. He faded into invisibility, and Maddie was just about to take a leaf from the ghost's book and point out that invisibility was an old trick, when Phantom's eyes became visible again, along with a barely visible outline of his body. Then, one by one, came bones. Maddie was astounded. Ghosts didn't have bones. And while Phantom was definitely the most corporeal and human-biologically correct ghost, this shouldn't be possible.

Phantom had completed his skeleton and was now smirking at Maddie's expression of confusion and awe. She wasn't sure how he conveyed his expression as his face was currently lacking any kind of features capable of smirking, but smirking he was. "Cool, huh?"

Phantom's words shook her out of her trance. "How is that possible? You aren't supposed to have bones, how are you doing it?"

Phantom's skeleton shrugged. "Like I said, direct ectoplasmic imprint. I don't normally have bones, I think, but with enough concentration, I can just sort of make them appear." He waved his finger jestingly at Maddie. "And I had to study the human skeleton a lot for this. It's all about self-image, just as you said."

Maddie was gobsmacked. Phantom was not only capable of extensive and quick learning, a fact Maddie had become familiar with over the years hunting him, but he sought out specific information fitting his needs. Or in this case, for a trick with no useful purpose.

"Where would you get information like that?"

Phantom sighed and flickered back to complete visibility like a fluorescent light. "I already said that I'm dead, not from outer space. I have internet access, and the public library has a nice selection of anatomy books."

"You go to the library?"

"Not often, but sometimes. Something wrong with that?" Phantom crossed his arms and lifted an eyebrow.

"But you're a ghost."

"Yeah, and you're a human." The ghost waved his arms in frustration. "It's public library, available for all who live in Amity Park. Absolutely nowhere does it say it isn't open to those who after-live here too. I'm not bothering the living in there, and it's a part of my haunt. I see absolutely no reason I shouldn't go to the library."

Maddie was silent. The specter sulking in front of her did have a point. Except...

"Your haunt?" the scientist repeated in a questioning manner. Phantom's haunt was something neither Maddie nor Jack had figured out. The ghost didn't seem to have any particular place he stuck to, so finding out he had a haunt might be a key element to figuring him out.

"Yeah, you know, the entirety of Amity Park?" Phantom looked surprised she didn't know his chosen territory. "How did you not know that? It's obvious."

"Well, now that you mentioned it, sure." Maddie could almost feel the ghost's teenage attitude bleeding into her. "We never thought a ghost could claim such a big worldly haunt on their own. It's unsustainable."

Phantom smirked. "Well, I sure spend a lot of time looking after it, don't I?"

That... Would explain a lot. His constant fights with other ghosts, his apparent benevolence towards the humans living there. Phantom was a powerful ghost and had been able to keep his haunt in check for five years, and would probably continue to do so in the future. Maddie added exclamation marks to her notes. This was valuable information.

"So, if you protect your haunt, why do humans matter to you?"

Phantom's head turned straight towards her so fast that had he been human he'd surely have gotten a whiplash. He had a disbelieving look in his bright eyes. "You're kidding, right? The people in town make it worth looking after. Without them, it's just a bunch of buildings and empty houses clumped together. While I haunt the town, the people are what I'm haunting it for. I need to look after them. While you are good ghost hunters, it's my responsibility to protect you all from threats. It's my f..."

Phantom stopped his rant and clapped a hands over his mouth, as if to stop himself from saying anything more.

"Your what?" Maddie questioned. The ghost just shook his head and floated a few feet back. "Nothing. Just... Humans matter to me. Comparing to most ghosts in the Zone, I'm young. I know people here."

Maddie turned a new page on her notebook. "How old are you then?"

Phantom looked pensive. "Nineteen," he finally replied.

"I meant how long exactly have you been a ghost."

The specter in front of her merely shrugged.

Maddie observed the ghost's face again. Despite the glow and slightly green skin, he did seem the same age as her son, who was also nineteen. He even looked a bit like Danny, but then again, so did a lot of his peers with similar build. Maddie started her furious note-writing again, and was soon lost in thought. Phantom had wider shoulders than her son, whom she used as a mental image of an average sized almost-adult, and was otherwise stronger in build. In the rare moments she had seen Phantom standing on the ground instead of floating or flying, he held himself proudly and defiantly, as if challenging anyone in his line of sight to a fight with his posture. He was taller than her son, who might almost match the ghost in height if he ever straightened himself from his constant slouch.

Phantom was clearly getting impatient, as when Maddie looked at him from her notebook he was not only floating upside down, but also sporting a pair of legs in place of his arms. When he caught Maddie staring, he righted himself and returned his limbs to their original shape. "Are you quite done with that? I thought we were here to-"

His sentence was stopped by a small fit of coughs, as he accidentally swallowed a surprisingly solid puff of ectoplasmic fog that came out of his mouth as he needlessly inhaled.

"Sorry," the ghost directed his words to Maddie after his coughing had subsided. "I've got to take this."

With that, he shot upwards to the sky, where he was met with a gang of humanoid-shaped prehistoric mammals, the black mammoth from earlier in the lead.

"What? Couldn't handle me without your gang?" Phantom's taunt could be heard clearly even from the ground, and just as he finished his sentence a woolly rhino charged at him and threw him off balance.

Maddie smiled. She would have an excellent view of the soon-to-come events.

AN: I cannot guarantee any kind of constant schedule of chapter length, but there will be at least one more chapter.