No warnings for this chapter – it's very tame – but remember to watch for the names because the plot will switch between the three characters.

In The Way
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

Chapter 1 – Meetings

--Danny

I started out the summer thinking everything was going to be great. My friends and I would sit around in front of the air conditioner and waste the days playing games and visiting the water park. But then Jazz decided to go to some summer pre-college program, my best friend Tucker got a last-minute call to go to some special technology camp and would be gone until August, and my other best friend, Sam, had finally been captured (after fighting tooth and nail for nearly two weeks) and trucked off to some school for girls for the summer. Even Valerie had vanished to some summer program.

I ended up being stuck at home, alone. With my parents. Strangely, I was kind of looking forward to it.

I'm not entirely sure why.

--Danny

I slipped lower through the soft clouds, twirling through a few barrel rolls and letting my eyes drift closed. Everything was so peaceful. Amity Park was buzzing below me, the crowds of newly-freed kids were planning their summers of doing nothing, and even the birds were happily singing. It was the perfect day.

That, in and of itself, was troubling when I stopped to think about it. I'm the 'ghost-hero' of Amity Park and I'm completely jinxed when it comes to perfect days. Tucker's been keeping track of it. If there's a perfect day out there, or a perfect situation, or something I'm just dying to not miss… a ghost will show up, or some annoying ghost hunters will appear, or something else will happen that will ultimately end up ruining all my plans. It never fails.

My fingers trailed just over the tops of the roofs as I scanned the ground, suppressing a small grin when people actually waved to me. Just a few months ago, they would have pointed and screamed and run as fast as they could. I waved back to a few of them, sliding into invisibility before I turned to fly towards home.

Despite my best efforts, I couldn't find a single thing wrong in Amity Park today: no ghosts, no ghost hunters (except for my father, who was busy terrorizing a tree on Route 17), no nothing. When I landed softly on the top of the Ops Center, I glanced uneasily over my shoulder. This was just… wrong. It was a beautiful summer day and I was free to enjoy it.

I shuddered. It was so wrong.

I phased through the door into the attic-based lab, turning myself human before my feet even touched the floor. "Mom?" I called softly, not really wanting her to answer. All I was doing was testing to see if she was hiding in the lab someplace.

Grinning at the silence (and at not having to try to explain how I 'mysteriously' got into the Ops Center), I padded across the lab, down the stairs, and into my room. I flopped onto my bed and sighed, trying to figure out what could possibly be going on.

Why wasn't I being hunted? Where was Skulker? Why weren't my parents chasing me around town? I hadn't even seen the hint of the Box Ghost's spectral tail for weeks, and he could usually be counted on to bug me every few days. It had been nearly a week since the last time I'd been attacked, and that had just been some no-name dead ventriloquist. I'd never gone more than a day or two without at least being threatened.

I was still in my room hours later, staring blankly at the ceiling, when my dad drove the Fenton Ghost Assault Vehicle home and clomped into the house, yelling about the haunted tree he'd found.

When the sun began to set in the distance, painting the oh-so-perfect sky in purples and oranges, I was pacing my room. I ended up over by my window, bracing myself against the sill as I stared out into the warm night, questions racing themselves through my head. I wished, not for the first time this summer, that Sam or Tucker… or even Jazz… were around so I could talk to them. Together we could figure anything out.

They weren't here, though, and I had to do this on my own. I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. What was going on? Where were all the ghosts? Were they planning something?

It was all too stressful. The last thing I wanted to think about was all my enemies gathering around a table and talking about how best to ambush me and take over the world.

"Danny? Supper!" my mother yelled up the stairs.

I gazed out into the evening sky for a few more minutes, trying to prod my mind into coming up with a brilliant plan to figure everything out. It was right before my hand touched the bedroom door's knob that one sparked in my brain. "Oh," I whispered with a grin, "perfect."

There was more than one way to figure out where all the ghosts were hiding. Now all I had to do was wait for tonight.

--Maddie

It was the most innocuous thing. For the briefest of moments as I stood there at the top of the steps, I could almost see the boy as nothing more than a simple, harmless spirit.

He was down in the lab, sitting on Jack's computer chair, spinning around in dizzying circles. Fingers were clamped on the chair's edges, feet flicking out to push the chair faster and faster, white hair flying in every direction. Over and over I saw glimpses of his electric eyes, his face stretched into a happy smile, as he whipped around in rapid circles.

I held perfectly still, watching him as butterflies danced in my stomach. The most powerful being in Amity Park was about twenty feet away and I couldn't tear my eyes away from him. For a moment, the idea that I should at least try to catch him crossed my mind, accompanied by that odd, queasy feeling in my stomach. There was no way I'd be able to reach a single weapon before the specter did something. I knew that he could be supernaturally fast when he wanted to be. At least that was my excuse later; at the time I was too fascinated by his presence to want to chase him away.

I stayed where I was, one hand holding the basement door slightly ajar, and watched one of the most powerful ghosts in existence twirl in a mundane computer chair. A few months ago, I would have felt a trickle of fear being this close to him. But now I wasn't so sure what his motives really were. Jazz's constant badgering, along with a strong dose of evidence, had made me stop and consider what he might truly be. I wasn't sure I liked him being in the human world though. He was too powerful… besides, ghosts belong in the Ghost Zone.

I studied the spinning specter quietly, watching his quick and sure movements as he controlled the chair. What would he do when he finally noticed my presence? Would he run like he always did? Or would he show his ghostly colors and attack me now that I'm unarmed and alone?

Suddenly his hand zipped out, catching hold of the edge of a table and stopping his endless rotations. A giddy grin crossed his face even though he didn't seem to be at all dizzy. For a few moments he held perfectly still, perhaps reveling in some ghostly feeling, before his emerald eyes opened. He kicked against the table and sent himself wheeling across the room.

When he stopped the chair on the other side of the room, his fingers tapped against a computer keyboard and he studied the screen. Frowning, he pushed himself back into the middle of the room. "Where are they…" he muttered, his voice overlaid with a ghostly echo. He propped one arm up on his knee and cupped his chin in his hand, staring at the ghost portal.

Digging the toe of his boot into the ground, he sent himself spinning again. Slowly at first, but he easily gained speed.

I forgot myself for a moment and let the door click shut. A spin of the chair, a glimpse of his startled, neon green eyes, and the ghost was gone. I looked around, but all that was left of the specter was the still-spinning chair in the middle of the room. He had chosen to run, again. I sighed and quietly chalked the encounter up as another point in Jazz's argument.

Picking up the ghost tracker on the way to the computer the ghost had been typing on, I carefully scanned the room. Random flickers of energy, but nothing large enough to be a corporeal spirit. Looking at the computer screen, I was startled by the program he'd been running. It was a scanner – one that scanned the Ghost Zone.

Why would a ghost be scanning for other ghosts?

--Danny

"Damn it," I whispered angrily as I dropped back onto my bed, flickering back into my human form. I was so curious about what was going on in the Ghost Zone that I had dropped my guard for a few minutes and had let my mom see me in the lab. I had enough things to worry about without having to wonder about what my parents were thinking.

My mother had been acting so oddly about Phantom lately that I had stepped up my efforts to stay as far away from her as possible. She would get this weird look on her face every time my alter-ego was mentioned. Whatever was up with my mother, it probably wasn't healthy for me. I'd decided weeks ago that the main objective for the summer was to give my parents as few chances as possible to interact with my ghost form.

Unfortunately, the scanner hadn't finished compiling the data yet. I hadn't learned anything from my foray into the lab.

I fell backwards, propping a pillow beneath my head, and glared at the ceiling. Where were all the ghosts?

Well, at least I had all of tomorrow to try and figure it out. And all the next day. And all the day after that. And all next week. And all next month.

With a groan, I rolled over and buried my head in my pillow. For the first time, I began to wonder if I needed more friends. I was going to be so bored. It was a good thing I had a mystery on my hands.

--Danny

Two days later I was standing in the kitchen, trying to decide where my parents were holed up. I figured it would either be the Ops Center or the lab and I was to the point of choosing which to check out first.

I hesitated for a moment, fingering the letter in my hands. It was an invitation to a legitimate mother/son science campout at a nearby state park. I'd already checked to make sure it was real. I really couldn't believe I was sinking this low this fast. I'd only been alone for five days and already I was scrambling for things to do. A science camp? With my mother? I shook my head sadly. "Danny, you have officially hit rock bottom and need more friends."

After waiting for a moment to listen for any small explosions that would give their position away (which there weren't), I picked the lab since it was closer and there were fewer steps to climb. Pushing open the door, I stepped down onto the stairs. The lights were on and a dim, green glow was making the steel walls glimmer. "Mom?" I called.

"Down here, sweetie."

Stepping off of the last step, I let a small smile cross my face. Both of my parents were sitting down, working on separate inventions. Hopefully my mom wouldn't be too caught up in something to listen to the idea.

"Mom?" I walked up to her. She was carefully putting some glowing bits into a new invention. "What are you doing?"

She looked up at me and pulled the goggles off of her eyes. "I'm finishing this while we wait for one of our experiments to come out of the oven." She held up the bread-loaf-sized object she was working on. "This is going to be a probe that we can send into the Ghost Zone when it's too dangerous to send a human. I'm trying to get the directional nozzles to fire correctly." Mom carefully set the invention back down and picked up another of the glowing pieces. She slid it into a hole in the side of the barrel. "What did you want, honey?"

"Um…" I glanced down at the letter. Suddenly, this didn't sound like such a good idea after all. Butterflies began dancing in my stomach as questions flittered through my head. Why would she want to go with me – she's got so much other stuff to do. Why couldn't I find something to do with someone my own age? Why a stupid science campout?

In the end I just took a deep breath and spilled it out as fast as possible. "I got this letter that there's going to be a mother/son campout this weekend in Spooky Hollow and there's going to be contests and campfires and stuff and I remember how much you wanted to go on that mother/son science thing last time and it didn't work out too great so I was thinking that maybe you and I could go together?" I bit my lip to stop myself from rambling and waited.

And waited. Butterflies had turned into gigantic dancing boulders inside of my stomach. Mom looked up at me, a smile crossing her face. "Sweetie, that's…"

She was interrupted by a shrill beeping. Her head wiped around and she got to her feet, stepping over to the monitor. I followed her, glancing at the glowing screen. On it, the greenish goop seemed to shiver slightly. I shook my head. To me, goop is goop is goop. I don't think I'll ever see the wonderfulness of it. I glanced down at the letter about the campout. "Mom?"

"Danny, can we talk later?" Mom whispered distractedly. She stared down at the display. "Jack! Look at this. The ectoplasmic mitochondria are dividing…"

Dad dropped the invention he'd been working on. He raced over to stare at the microscope, absentmindedly brushing me out of the way. "Look at that!" He grinned. "This is the best thing that has happened all day. This proves our theory!"

Mom twirled around in a small circle, her grin threatening to take over her face. "Jack, this will take weeks to work through! We can't waste a second getting started – we might loose the samples."

I leaned against the wall and tapped my heel on the ground. They didn't even bother to listen to me. Yes, they get carried away with this ghost stuff and they'd been doing this all of my life… but it still stung a bit. Finally, sick of staring at the greenish goop on the computer screen, I started up the stairs.

"Danny?" my father called after me. I ignored him. When I reached the kitchen I crumpled the letter into a tiny ball and lobbed it into the trash.

--Jack

The ghost was asleep. Not too surprising – it was nearly two in the morning and anything sentient really should be in dream land. The fact that he was asleep on my couch was a bit more of a shock.

I leaned over the couch, resting my arms against the back, studying him. Boots kicked off, gloves removed, feet dangling over the edge, he was relaxed against the cushions. A nasty-looking cut on his cheek was still sluggishly bleeding glowing ectoplasm, and his snowy hair was messier than usual. He didn't look all that dangerous at the moment, but I knew appearances could be deceiving.

Here was my chance to catch the infamous Ghost Boy of Amity Park. The weapon's vault was just up the stairs and to the right. The lab was downstairs. I could have everything I needed to destroy the spook for good in a matter of minutes.

I'd be famous, just like I always wanted. Jack Fenton: world renowned ghost hunter. They might even give me a metal. The thought made me smile.

But I didn't move. I'd been standing there, watching the boy sleep, for more than twenty minutes.

Maddie had told me about meeting him in the lab – how he had vanished when he saw her. Not even the smallest attempt at attacking her. And I couldn't get that incident with the vultures and the Wisconsin Ghost out of my head. The boy clearly hadn't been malevolent then either.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for catching ghosts and ripping them apart. Spirits don't belong on this plane of existence and only by catching and dissecting one were we going to get enough information to keep them out of our world. But I wasn't going to obliterate an innocent teenager… at least not when he was doing nothing but sleep.

The clock ticked loudly in the dark silence, chiming away the seconds as I held still, trying to decide what to do. The thought to wake the boy up, send him on his way with a few blasts from an ectogun filtered through my mind, but I dismissed it. Something about the young ghost was preventing me from waking him up.

Something was trying to tell me that the ghost needed his rest.

I finally turned away from the couch, sitting down on the bottom tread of the stairs, propping my chin up on my fist. I'm not much of a thinker. I don't like problems – that's what Maddie is for. She'd be able to solve the problem, but I didn't want to wake her up. She hadn't been sleeping well recently and she needed what sleep she could get.

Minutes passed as I sat there. Finally, with a sigh, I got to my feet and trudged over to the cabinet, yanking out two blankets and a small ectogun that I had stashed beside the television. I couldn't wake the ghost up. Whatever it was inside of me was preventing me from doing that. But there was no way I was going let a ghost sleep in my living room alone.

I tucked the blanket around the boy's shoulders, letting my fingers rest on his chill skin. I'd never touched a ghost before – it was amazing – so much like human skin, just colder than I'd ever thought possible.

Wrapping the other blanket around my shoulders, I settled into the big armchair, wincing at the soft squeaks and groans. The boy moved slightly at the noise, but didn't wake up. Ectogun in one hand, warm blanket surrounding me, I relaxed into the comfort of the chair, prepared to stay up all night. I was not going to sleep with a ghost in the house.

The next thing I knew, Maddie was shaking my shoulder. The sun was rising. I glanced with shock at the couch, but the ghost boy was gone, blanket folded messily into one corner.

--Danny

Summer was officially boring. It had taken less than a week for me to get completely fed up with trying to solve the mystery of the missing ghosts. Dad had turned on nearly every ghost sensor in the lab in the hope that 'Phantom' would be stupid enough to come back. Of course, he told me all about it, so I planned on making sure my ghost half stayed as far away as possible.

With no ghosts around to hunt and release (except for Cujo, who had decided to show up to play tag last night), sneaking into the lab – even to try running the ghost scanner again – didn't seem worth it. I had absolutely no clue what was going on, and there was no guarantee that the limited range of my parent's scanner would tell me anything worth the trouble of disabling all the equipment. So by the time the sun was setting on Sunday, I had given up.

Not that I wasn't still waiting for the hammer to drop and every ghost in existence to suddenly appear on my doorstep… No, it was more like anxiously waiting for the inevitable. I knew the hammer was up there – I could practically see the thing. But I had no idea what to do about it, so I just let it hang there.

I spent hours upon hours staring at the computer screen and playing solo versions of my favorite online games. When that got old, I wandered around Amity Park. After walking down virtually every street in the town, I sat through three showings of 'Dead Teacher VIII: The Return of P.E.'.

At one point, I even tried training on my own. Just outside of city limits there is an old forest with this big clearing where Sam, Tucker, and I had trained before. Just after lunch, I flew out to the forest and hovered in the clearing, trying to decide what to do first. Tucker was the one who kept all the lists and made up the schedules of what needed to be done first.

Finally I held out my hand, letting cool ectoplasmic energy gather in my palm. It drifted lazily between my fingers before I formed it into a ball and tossed it up into the air, playing catch with myself.

I sighed and whipped the baseball-sized glob of energy off into the woods. I didn't want to do this anymore. It wasn't any fun without Sam and Tucker around. After just a few minutes, I ended up flying back to Amity Park and phasing through my bedroom window. I plopped into my desk chair, desperately searching my mind for something to do.

There wasn't anything I wanted to do. Doing something didn't sound interesting – but sitting here and doing nothing sounded boring. I gazed at my reflection in the blank computer screen.

After nearly fifteen minutes of debating what I could do (but didn't want to), I groaned and buried my head in my arms. School had been out for a grand total of two weeks… and I was bored out of my mind.

--Maddie

Science is a data-driven enterprise. We conduct experiments to obtain our data and then use the information we've found to formulate theories. These theories are then tested with more experiments and data. The cycle of science is well established and known around the globe.

Paranormal scientists (ghost hunters), such as myself, have always languished as a 'quasi-science' in the eyes of the world mostly due to the data we collected. It was not based on real-world data… the usual basis for our theories were the millions of stories about things that go bump in the night. It's only been recently that technology has reached the point where it's possible to create paranormal teams around the world – ones that collect real data.

No matter what other people might think about the supernatural, however, I am a scientist. I pride myself on that. Which is why I was sitting at a table in the lab, surrounded by pieces of paper that were covered in bits of information about ghosts that Jack and I had collected over the past few months.

Unfortunately, my mind wasn't on the data at the moment. Instead, my mind kept drifting towards my son. Danny was a perpetual mystery lately and I was worried about him. During his freshman year of high school, I had been inches away from sending him to some kind of therapist: he had been jumpy, anxious, his grades had dropped like a rock, and he'd become secretive. Then, for some strange reason, he'd gotten better. His grades had gone back up and he seemed to have gained some new-found confidence in himself. I ended up ignoring it, merely vowing to keep a closer eye on him in the future.

But lately… I sighed and dropped the paper I'd been holding, rubbing my eyes. Lately, Danny had gotten worse again. I suspected it had something to do with the fact that his friends were all gone for the summer and he was left on his own. He'd gotten overly secretive again, spending too much time in his room. His eyes were constantly flickering around, his muscles tense and anxious.

If anything, I would have thought that he'd be less nervous right now. I know he's noticed the bizarre lack of ghosts – he's mentioned it a few times when we've talked. Danny's always been so frightened of ghosts; he's always running away when one's in the area. I figured he'd be happier without ghosts around. Oddly, he's been getting jumpier instead.

I had no idea what to do with my son. I couldn't make friends for him, not when he's fifteen. What I really needed to do was spend more time with him. This summer would be the perfect time for me to reconnect with my youngest child. There's so much I don't know about him anymore. I've been so wrapped up in my work and Danny's been spending so much time with Sam and Tucker… maybe we just need to sit down and talk and I would be able to figure out what was wrong.

But I had to get this work done. My hands dropped to the table. "I'll get this finished tonight," I whispered, "and spend all of tomorrow with Danny. We'll go for a picnic or something."

I picked up a long list of the various ghosts we'd managed to get readings on over the past four weeks, scanning it quickly. Jack had recently formed a minor obsession with catching 'Ghost B17' – the one that was constantly emptying every box in the garage – so that particular spirit showed up time and again on the list. Another, 'Ghost C3', showed up nearly as often. Of course, there were basically no ghost readings at all for the past two weeks. All the ghosts had vanished.

I was about to set the paper down when a thought struck me. A certain ghost seemed to be missing from the list. Again. I stared at the paper for a moment and searched for the ghost-boy, a.k.a. Danny Phantom, coded into our system as 'Ghost A1'. He was only on the list for the time I'd caught him in the lab and the time Jack had found him asleep on the couch.

Pushing with my feet, I wheeled my chair across the room to a file cabinet. I grabbed the folder that held all the lists of the ghosts we'd encountered and gazed at lists. Jack and I had no records of encountering the ghost-boy on our patrols for nearly two months.

Was he avoiding us?

I shook my head at the thought and dropped the folder back into the cabinet. True, we were ghost hunters that had shot at him in the past, but this particular ghost seemed to be dead set on never coming face-to-face with us. Staying as far from us as possible seemed to be almost an obsession of his. Unlike all of the other ghosts we'd encountered, he'd vanish the moment a human appeared on the scene.

The longest I'd ever even seen Phantom up close was for a brief moment during that fiasco with the mayor. I wrinkled my forehead as I snatched Phantom's file out of the bottom drawer. Grainy pictures were paper-clipped to the folder. The best picture we had of him, a close-up snapshot as he was robbing a bank nearly a year ago, was blurry and hard to make out. I shook my head in amazement as I flipped through the pictures.

Whatever his plan was, Phantom was doing an awesome job of making sure nobody knew what he really looked like. All I really knew about him was that he had white hair, green eyes, looked to be about fifteen, was lean, wiry, and 'handsome' depending on who you talked to. He was a mystery.

I sighed and put his file back. There wasn't anything I could do about it. Apparently the resident ghost was trying his hardest to stay away from the ghost hunters, and I couldn't really blame him. I wasn't going to get a picture of him any time soon – not if Phantom had anything to say about it. That was too bad. I wondered what he actually looked like.

Wheeling my chair back over to the table, I picked up the list again, carefully transferring the information onto our permanent charts. This was going to take awhile. But I was going to finish it. Tomorrow was going to be a Danny day. I glanced up at the clock and flinched, quietly correcting myself when I noticed what time of the night it was. Today was going be a Danny day.

--Danny

My feet scuffed against the floor of the lab and I stormed over to the Ghost Portal. My normal luck when it comes to ghosts seemed to be returning, breaking the 'no ghosts' week I'd been having. Some ghost straight out of the sixties had decided that the city needed to be more 'psychedelic' and had managed to paint nearly three city blocks in headache-inducing colors before I caught him. As the thermos beeped softly to show it was empty, I shook my head sourly. He was yet another powerless spirit that I'd never have to see again.

I unscrewed the thermos from the portal, not paying any attention to what has happening around me. Figuring it was somewhere around two in the morning, I hadn't bothered to stop and look around the lab – everybody had to be asleep. I wanted to be asleep. I stifled a yawn and started to turn around to wander upstairs to my warm bed when a net appeared out of nowhere. It wrapped around me and slammed into a wall.

"Ghost." I raised my head despite the sticky webbing of the net yanking my hair. My mom was standing there, odd-looking gun in her hands, studying me carefully.

I tensed, not answering her. This was bad… this was very bad. The last thing I wanted was to be captured by my mother when she was in this weird mood. She might dissect me before I have a chance to explain. Pushing against the net, I struggled for a few seconds, wincing as a handful of my hair parted from my scalp. The net was strong, extremely sticky, and ghost-proof all at the same time.

"What were you doing?" Her voice came from right next to me. I glanced at her through my hair, twisting to try and stay away from her. She was crouched mere feet from the net, an ectogun hanging loose in her hands, watching me through her goggles.

I tried to stretch out my legs and succeeding only in tangling my feet up worse. With a scowl, I stopped struggling for a moment, debating what to do next. I'd spent over a year avidly avoiding my more perceptive and observant parent… and now it looked like I had no choice. I took a deep breath. This would be the first conversation we'd ever had. "Does it matter?" I asked softly, crossing my fingers she wouldn't be able to recognize my voice.

She was silent for a moment. "You look just like…" her whispered voice trailed off before she could finish. Her hand reached out to touch the net, trying to force my head up so she could see my face better.

I winced away from her, cursing silently in my head and twisting my face away from her. This was exactly why I'd been avoiding her. She was bound to recognize me given half the chance. That was a clue to my identity she did not need. "Can I go? Please?"

"What were you scanning for last week when I saw you in the lab?"

I fidgeted my fingers, trying desperately to get them unstuck. "Ghosts," I whispered.

"Why?" she asked. Her voice sounded odd. There was none of the hatred and rancor that usually colored her tone when she talked about me. I shot her a confused look. By this point, she was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to me. The ectogun was sitting her lap.

I hesitated, debating my answer. "I was trying to figure out where the ghosts are."

She nodded, leaning a bit closer and meeting my eyes. I shuffled backwards as good as I could while trussed up in the net – it was decidedly creepy looking her in the face from this close. "Of course you would have noticed the lack of ghosts in the area." She blinked, a startled look crossing her face. "You don't know why they're not haunting Amity Park?"

"Why would I?" I yanked on one of my hands, the sticky net pulling against my hair as I did so.

"You're a ghost too." She tilted her head to the side. "So, what were you doing in the lab this morning?"

This was not going how I'd expected it would. My mother was the 'blast first and ask questions never' kind of person when it came to ghosts. Why was she peppering me with questions? I shifted uncomfortably in the net. "Can you let me go?"

She shook her head. "Answer the question, Phantom."

"I was putting a ghost back in the Ghost Zone."

"Why?" She shot the question at me almost before I had finished answering.

I looked up at her in confusion. Why would she ask something like that? She knew very well why hunters captured ghosts and threw them back into the Zone. "Ghosts don't belong in the human world."

My eyes widened at the surprised look that crossed my mother's face. I knew what she was going to say next. I'd probably just doomed myself. "What about you? If ghosts don't belong in the human world, why are you here?"

There were any number of ways to answer this one. Since saying I was part-human and needed the warmth and food the human world provided was obviously not going to work, I settled for a combination of my, common other excuses. "Ghosts don't like me very much and someone's got to stop them from terrorizing Amity Park. I'm good at it. Can you let me go now?"

She slid closer and I pushed myself farther away. My back bumped against the metal wall and I couldn't stop my mother from drifting to within inches of me. She stared into my eyes, confusion flickering across her features. "Do you know you sound exactly like…"

"Please?" I interrupted, so nervous that my hands were shaking and my voice was squeaking. "Let me go?"

Suddenly she backed away from me, standing up and stalking to the other side of the lab. She grabbed a small scanner and came back over, the device beeping and glowing in the semi-darkness of the basement. "In a minute…" she murmured.

"What?!" The word came out as a gasp. Did she just say she'd let me go? Was she going to dissect me first?

The scanner let out a musical trill and Mom dropped it to her side. "Can you keep a secret, Phantom?"

I was dead silent, unable to decide how to answer that. Which one would get me out of this net and away from this place?

She knelt down, her head tipping to the side as she studied me. "It's uncanny, your resemblance to him," she whispered. Then, louder, she asked me again. "Can you keep a secret?"

Finally I nodded and licked my lips.

"I don't want to hunt you anymore."

I blinked, unable to find something to say to that.

"I haven't been for awhile. Actually," she took a deep breath, "and don't tell Jack this, but I've been wondering if you're not actually helpful." She glanced at me, a small smile trembling at the corners of her mouth.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. My mother loved ghost hunting. For my entire life, all she had wanted was to catch an 'evil' ghost and take it apart. She'd been talking non-stop about catching me and dissecting me for over a year. I sent her a confused and sticky look.

"I haven't been able to figure everything out yet. I don't understand why you attacked the mayor, or why you robbed all those stores, or why you've attacked us… but I can't help wonder about you." Her voice was soft. "Especially now that I've seen you."

I nodded, feeling my hair being pulled by the net.

"Everything inside of me is saying that you're not a ghost I should be hunting. I have no problem hunting other ghosts and talking about dissecting them. Lately, though, every time I think about studying you, I get this strange feeling in my stomach." She was barely whispering by this point, speaking more to herself than to me. "I've kept hunting you because you're so dangerous. You don't really belong in the human world, but maybe you need to be here." She gazed down at her fingers for a quiet moment. "But Jack would be so disappointed if I caught a ghost and then let it go."

"Please let me go," I whispered. I had no idea what was going on. I wanted to get out of here so I could figure this out.

She pulled a small pager-sized box off of her belt, cradling it in her hands. "Promise me something, Phantom."

"What?"

"Promise you'll come back tomorrow so we can talk. I want to understand."

"You'd trust my promise?" I asked, startled.

She looked up, meeting my eyes. "For some reason… yes. I do." Her eyes swimming with confusion, but she was being serious.

I hesitated before I answered. I didn't want to spend any more time around Mom than was absolutely necessary. She was too observant and smart. She'd put clues together and would learn things that I didn't want her figuring out. A lot of damage had been done already. Just in this one face-to-face conversation, my mother was questioning who I was. It was too risky. I shouldn't come back.

But I nodded anyways, cursing myself quietly. I was stepping into extremely dangerous territory. Maybe, just maybe, this would be a good thing. Maybe I could convince her that I shouldn't be hunted at all. Maybe I could get her on my side. Maybe…

She held out the box and pressed a small button, the net dissolving around me. I didn't move as the remains of the net vanished. Mom was tense, one hand on the control and the other hand dropping down to rest on her ectogun. "You'll be back tomorrow?"

"I promise," I whispered before letting myself fall into intangibility and slip through the wall.

Hovering just outside of the lab, I slapped my head with my hand. What the hell was I thinking?

To be continued…

Up next: Chapter 2 – Experiments

Thanks to the wonderful people that reviewed the prologue: Silver Shadowbreeze, Sparky the WonderWeasel, Anne Camp aka Obi-quiet, southernstarshadow, StarsOfTwilight, Mystitat, FreakLevel27, at-a-glance, AvatarKatara38, Kinoshita Kristanite, Devianta, Rakahn, New Ghost Girl, katiesparks, Joelpuppy, Invader Johnny and everybody who's reading this!!

Signed reviewers get previews, everybody gets hugs, and flamers get chopped up and put in my NEW garden as mulch! YAY for moving!

Thanks so much for reading. :) See ya'll tomorrow!

-Cori