Okay, so this may not be the best chapter around. I was kind of writing it while watching TV with my sister. Yep. Lots of long paragraphs and thinking going on in this chapter. Yup.

Danny couldn't help it. The more time he spent with Rachel, the more he liked her.

The one thing about Rachel was that she was so very real. She didn't care about fitting in with everyone else, but unlike Sam, she didn't purposely make herself stand out – she just did whatever she wanted to do. She just went around in her ratty shirts and paint-splattered, marker-covered jeans, with her blue plastic hairbrush sticking out of her pocket.

He'd asked her about that hairbrush, one day, when they were in the gym. Rachel had uncovered a painting of someone who was supposed to be Zeus, the most important Greek god or something like that.

She'd collapsed on the ground laughing for fifteen minutes straight before getting Danny to help her lift it up so she could figure out somewhere she could put it up, and he'd noticed the blue plastic hairbrush, where it always was.

"What is it with you and that hairbrush?" he'd asked her.

She'd looked down at the plastic hairbrush, then, as if surprised, and then she'd laughed. "Let's just say it's gone through a lot with me."

"Does it have something to do with that Percy Jackson guy you're always talking about?" Danny had asked, then. Every time he asked about her friends or her family, his was the name that inevitably came up.

Rachel had smiled, then, a faraway smile. "Yeah. It does."

She hadn't offered anything else after that, and Danny hadn't asked.

The ghost attacks had been occurring just as they normally did, though Danny had noticed that the Box Ghost never came out anymore. It was the absence of the most annoying ghost on the planet that made Danny remember just why he should be so suspicious around Rachel; but the more time he spent around her, the easier it was to forget that he was supposed to be suspicious of her, especially when she hadn't actually done anything to the ghosts yet.

Every morning she was up early in the kitchen, either hurriedly making her own breakfast or bravely trying one of Maddie's or Jack's breakfasts. (She had a lot of courage, that he had to admit.) He would walk with her to school, and she would always be talking, or asking him endless questions about Amity Park, and Casper High, and his family, and the ghosts.

And then, when they reached Casper High, they would split ways – Rachel to the gym, and Danny to his first class. Rachel, while not in any of the classes, had already gained a reputation in the school by the second day; all were now wary of the crazy redheaded girl who roped in anyone who wandered into the gym to help out with the art exhibition.

Dash, of course, had been eager to help. He never seemed to mind that she wasn't impressed with him, or his words, or his popularity status, or his money, or the fact that he was the star of the football team, or anything about him, really, but he simply did whatever she asked him to do, which was usually carrying the heavy stuff around. Because of Dash, Kwan had been roped in as well, and instead of them spending their afternoons with Paulina and Star and the rest of the A-list crowd, they were usually in the gym helping out Rachel.

Danny had been wary, at first. But Rachel had, rather accurately, got Kwan to help him out instead; and Kwan, who really had no issues with the Fenton kid, had gotten along rather well with him.

Even Sam and Tucker had been dragged in, helping out whenever Danny got dragged into help – which really was every day. Often, they covered for him when there was a ghost attack in town, which he was extremely grateful for. Rachel didn't seem the type to miss out on things easily.

But the times that he was there, he found himself wanting to spend even more time in the gym. There was something about Rachel, like a magnetic force that he couldn't pull away from. She made him laugh, she made him feel relaxed; he didn't feel like a loser around her, and because she didn't know his secret, he never felt like she had any expectations of him to do something heroic or to take up a responsibility.

Some nights, when he came home, exhausted from fending off Johnny 13 and his Shadow or Skulker or Technus or whoever it was, he would find her in the living room, a sketchbook in her hands, drawing while Maddie and Jack messed around in the lab downstairs. She would be sketching one of the students from school, or something she'd seen around Amity Park. And she would always have a mug of hot chocolate for him, on the kitchen table. She never asked where he went, just passed him the chocolate and talked to him.

Even Jazz and Tucker and Sam hadn't done anything like that for him before.

Other nights, he'd sail in through Jazz's room and he'd find her sketching the ghosts she'd seen around the town, or the ones wrecking the school. He'd never seen anyone with her talent before – with a few strokes, she could capture Kitty's likeness exactly, or Ember, or Walker.

The only sketch he'd yet to see was one of himself as Danny Phantom. He supposed that was partly because of his own attempts at avoiding her. She had an artists' eye – if she put down his likeness on a paper, he was worried that she would see just how much Danny Phantom resembled Danny Fenton. So his ghost half kept away, while his human half spent more than three-quarters of the day with the girl.

At times, he would see her stand up to a ghost and yell about him wrecking the exhibition, or the town, or the school – he'd heard her yell in Technus' face, backing him into a corner until he'd slinked away and run straight to Danny, pleading with him to take him back to the Ghost Zone. Even when faced with Skulker, she'd just tilted her head and asked him his name and then scribbled it onto her hand, before running down the corridor away from the ghost hunter.

It had made Danny wonder even more about her and what exactly she was doing.

Tucker, on the other hand, had had little information to pass to Danny about the Nico di Angelo guy. Nothing at all. The only record was of a kid from the 1940s who'd died in some explosion. And while that guy could be a ghost, Danny had never heard of him, and doubted that a kid could hold that much power to send even the Box Ghost running back to the Ghost Zone. And there was also another guy who'd attended school at some place called Westover Hall, but there was nothing to connect him to Rachel Elizabeth Dare.

So they'd given up on that.

Today was Friday, and officially the last day of school until summer was over.

"If you want," Danny heard Dash say, as he walked into the gym with Sam after school – Tucker was already inside, staring at a painting that Danny had seen before, which was supposed to be of the Lady Artemis and her Hunters or something, "I don't mind coming back during the summer to help out."

He was standing across from Rachel, Kwan beside him looking faintly nauseous at the offer that Dash had just made.

Rachel blinked at him. "Really? You'd come back to help?"

"Yeah, sure. If you want."

Rachel smiled at him, then. "Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great."

"So it's a date?" Dash asked, hopefully, almost. Danny blinked, as he stepped closer with Sam, who was trying to control her laughter. He'd never seen Dash like this before. Never.

He ignored the fact that his stomach seemed to drop when Dash had asked that question.

Rachel's face fell. "Um, I don't date."

Dash's face fell as well: "Do you, uh, have a boyfriend back in New York or something?"

Danny thought of the guy Rachel was always talking about. Percy Jackson.

Rachel shook her head: "No, I just don't date." And then she turned to see Danny and Sam, and a relieved expression came over her face: "Hey! You guys made it on time. I'm about to pack up in, like, half an hour."

"So fast?" Danny asked. "That has to be a first. Usually you make us work for hours."

"And half the time, you're not here," said Rachel. Danny winced. Clearly Sam and Tucker hadn't been as good for covering for him as they usually were – or maybe Rachel was just a lot sharper than the majority of people in Amity Park. "It's a Friday! I know the value of a Friday."

True to her word, Rachel was done in half an hour. Dash stayed for the entire duration, and it was as if Danny and Tucker and Sam weren't the people they'd always been to him. He was actually nice to them – when he had to talk to them. Apart from those moments, he usually spent his time hanging around Rachel.

It was so difficult to be suspicious of Rachel, when she was so real.

It wasn't easy to make herself find out Danny's secret, when she was liking the guy more and more every day.

He reminded her so much of Percy it hurt sometimes. It was partly why she talked so much about Percy; because Danny reminded her so much of him.

"You don't ever stop talking, do you?" he'd asked her one day.

She'd blinked at him, and laugh. "No, I don't think I do, actually. My friend once said I asked so many question it felt like I was throwing rocks at him."

And he was interesting.

And he definitely had a huge, important secret.

She could see it on Sam's and Tucker's faces, whenever they tried to cover for him with flimsy excuses. She'd seen through their attempts in seconds.

That Friday, she walked back with Danny. Sam and Tucker had given him a somewhat mysterious look before disappearing off – she assumed it had something to do with his big secret – and Dash had loped off with Kwan.

Dash. Another problem. One which she would push aside, until she'd helped Nico out.

"You ever think life would be better without all the ghosts in your town?" Rachel asked him.

Danny blinked at that: "Are you kidding me? Definitely! No more ghosts, no more attacks, no more late nights and having to evade everyone and everything – "

No more late nights. Evade everyone and everything.

That didn't sound right, coming from a guy who'd fled the scene at the appearance of the Box Ghost – or who seemed to disappear every time any other ghost came along, really. She wasn't an idiot, she knew that he came back late most nights - heck, she was usually there with a mug of hot chocolate for him; coffee was good, but the guy didn't look like he actually needed caffeine - and that he looked exhausted half the time.

Maybe his secret about ghosts was bigger than she'd thought.

And then, quite suddenly, she caught sight of a red convertible, and a familiar, golden-haired seventeen-year-old boy sitting behind the wheel, staring at her intently.

She swallowed.

"Uh, Danny," she said, cutting in halfway through his sentence: "I gotta go – I gotta go see about something. I'll see you back at the house, okay?" If you're even there.

Danny blinked at her. "You sure?"

"Yeah." Rachel was very aware of the red convertible and the golden-haired boy still looking at her over his sunglasses. "Yeah, I'm sure. Go."

She waited until he turned the corner before she jogged to the convertible. The boy had finally slipped off his sunglasses, and he had stepped out of the car, standing across from her, looking at her gravely.

She swallowed again. "Apollo."

"We need to talk," said Apollo.

"Here's as good a spot as any." Rachel couldn't understand why she felt so nervous. This wasn't the first time Apollo had dropped by for a visit – after the Giant War, he'd dropped by from time to time, to talk to her about the spirit of Delphi and blah, blah, blah.

But there was something ominous in the air today. She knew it. She could feel it.

Maybe it had something to do with Apollo's serious face, as well. She'd never seen him so grave.

"You know that Zeus blames me for the Giant War," he said.

She winced. "Um, yeah. They mentioned that."

He'd never mentioned it, the times he'd come to see her. She'd thought it better not to ask. She did have some tact, after all. And besides, as far as she'd gathered, it had something to do with him abruptly allowing her to take her place as Oracle, and for the prophecy she'd issued almost immediately after she'd accepted the spirit of Delphi.

Suddenly there were lines on his face – the lines of an old man, forced to make a terrible decision. Forced to follow orders that he couldn't not follow, but orders that would make him regret his actions for the rest of his life.

Suddenly Rachel felt very, very scared.

"My father has ordered me to – " Apollo swallowed, looking sadder and more serious than Rachel had ever seen " – he's ordered me to – he – Rachel, I'm sorry – I don't have a choice – I'm so, so sorry – "

"Say it," Rachel demanded, suddenly. "Just – just say it. What's the punishment?"

He looked at her, sadly. "I have to take away your position and your right as Oracle."

No.

No.

It was as if the world was spinning around her – everything was swirling, blurring, a whirl of colours and sounds and smells –

"No," she whispered, and suddenly she was on the ground which was much too close and much too cold and empty and hard and unyielding.

"No."

Danny was halfway along the street when he thought maybe he should just check on Rachel.

In his ghost form, of course. Definitely not his human form. He could just go invisible and float alongside her.

There had been something wrong about her, when she had asked him to head home first. Her eyes had held something that looked a lot like panic and fear and worry; a flash of it, quickly replaced by the usual brightness of her green eyes. He'd shrugged it off - maybe she'd forgotten something back at the gym, and she was worried the school would close up and she wouldn't be able to get it until Monday - but now he hesitated.

The more he thought about it, the more he thought that maybe he really should just go check on her. To check that she was okay.

Plus, it could have something to do with her possible activities as a ghost hunter.

So he went ghost behind a tree and took off into the sky, sailing back onto the street where he'd left her.

Only to see her collapse onto the ground in front of an athletic-looking guy, with what looked a lot like pain and sorrow and just pure sadness and shock on her face.

And then what looked like a green mist, thick and smoky, had come out from her, floating up from her into the air, before promptly vanishing. Danny had never seen anything like it before.

And Rachel was shaking, shivering, on the ground, the guy still standing in front of her, unmoving.

Something fisted in Danny's stomach. What had this guy done to her?

Danny didn't even think.

He yelled: "HEY!"

Yup. So. Rachel is no longer the Oracle. Dundundunnnnn. I don't know if that works, exactly, but uh, I thought it did. Heh. Let's just pretend that things work that way in this universe.

Besides, as far as I can remember (I lent my BoO to a friend), Zeus really was very pissed at Apollo. After all, he did need someone to blame. And, you know, the Olympian gods being what they are, I figured that Zeus might do something annoying like that, since, like Apollo said (as far as I can recall), that Zeus felt that Apollo'd picked a new Oracle way too quickly. So, yep.

Thank you, once again, to Matt, for the review. Heh. I totally get who you mean. Maybe Nico'll drop by the next chapter, or the chapter after.

(Reviews would be wonderful. Just saying.)