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The Night's Hike
He hated to do this, but this was the last night all month that he could really dispose of that file. So he snuck into the cave, and shook the huntress girl until she started stirring. She woke up, looking annoyed.
"Hey," he said.
"It's the middle of the night! I'm not getting up!" she said, and lay back down.
"But this is urgent," he replied.
"What time is it anyway?"
"About an hour after sunset. But as I said, there's something urgent I need your help with."
"What do you want?"
"You said you're a ghost hunter, right? Where's your equipment?"
The huntress girl growled. "What do you care?" she snapped.
"I don't know if you've seen any ghost animals around, but lately, there are more than usual. I think something's affecting the local animals that's making them ghosts. I suspect that there's an ectoplasm spill somewhere in the forest, and ghost weapons often have ectoplasm in them. This is a recent problem. There were just the normal number of ghost animals escaped from the ghost world before you came."
"Hate to break it to you, but I don't exactly know where my weapons are. I ditched them when my hover board crashed."
"Could you show me where you left them then?" he asked.
"I don't think I could find my way back," she admitted.
"Could you at least try? I'll make it worth your while." The boy grinned and pulled out a frozen bowl of food and a container of water from behind his back. "Um, the containers are made from biodegradable materials," he said.
Rolling her eyes, the huntress said, "Of course, but . . . "
The boy laughed. "Don't worry about getting lost! I know my way around this forest. I won't let you get lost, or even if I do, I'm sure your wolf friend will come looking for you again."
"All right," she said. "I'm in."
"Great! Lead on."
As she lead the boy in the direction she'd thought she'd come from, Valerie took advantage of the boy not running off to ask him some questions.
"So you're an environmentalist?" she asked.
"Yeah, that's right. I come here as often as I can to clear up potential problems, keep track of the local populations, and such."
"But why do you keep coming to this forest if it's haunted by Fenton? They told me that all the other environmentalists left."
"Would you believe me if I told you that Danny hasn't tried to hurt me, ghost hunter?" he teased. "All the other environmentalists may have left because they were afraid of him, but he's actually done the environment some good, whether he meant it or not. He frightened off the hunters and just overall reduced the traffic of any humans that are willing to wreck the environment in this forest."
"Would you stop calling me 'ghost hunter'?" Valerie asked, somewhat annoyed.
"But I don't know what else to call you," he replied.
"My name is Valerie, and yours is?"
He shrugged and said, "Well, my name, uh, I don't think it matters. I'll respond to anything."
"Just as stubborn as you were the other night. Are you ever going to tell me who you are?" she asked.
"You know who I am," he replied. "I thought I told you that I'm an environmentalist?"
"Whatever. Next question. Why wouldn't Danny Fenton try to hurt you? He scared off everyone else. Does he know you?"
The boy shrugged. "He went to Casper High. I went to Casper High. I um, I didn't really talk to him much. . . . Just about no one wanted to associate with him. Um, I kind of heard that some people . . . Some people believed that his parent's obsession with ghost hunting was hereditary. Speaking of ghost hunting, why did you become a ghost hunter anyway?"
Valerie glared at the boy. "I needed the money, okay? I have to fend for myself. I mean, I have my dad, but . . . Never mind, don't ask about my dad. With the money the Guys in White offered me, I couldn't refuse."
Valerie couldn't help but notice that the boy looked a lot more comfortable talking about her than talking about himself.
Alarmed, the boy asked. "You work for the Guys in White? B-but they're the ones that always, I mean, aren't they the ones who are the worst about trashing the environment because of ghost hunting?"
"I didn't feel like I had much of a choice when they offered me a job," she mumbled.
"Why not?"
"I'd rather not talk about it. Look," she said. "I've been here long enough that I'm willing to go back and tell them that they were mistaken about Fenton's ghost, and that they can leave this forest alone, if you'll just take me back to town with you."
The boy shook his head and said, "I can't. The only way back to town is too dangerous to pass in the winter. There's an ice-covered cliff we have to scale, and a giant, half-frozen river that's dangerous even in the safer seasons."
Valerie frowned. "If you can't get out of here, then why did you have to leave by sunset the other night?"
"I'm very allergic to UV rays," he replied. "I have to be back to my temporary shelter by the time the sun rises, or I'm in big trouble with the, um, the sunlight that can get through the barren treetops. If I get stuck in any other shelter, I, uh, can't use my environmental journals, and my uh, other stuff I use to keep an eye on the environment."
There it was again. He was nervous when he talked about himself. Besides his nervousness, there was something else that struck an off chord about it.
"Oh."
The boy looked around. "Hey, is that your stuff over there?" he asked, pointing to a distant spot.
"Yeah," she said. "It is."
They hiked over to her stuff. When they got there, the boy made an observation. "That suit doesn't look white. I thought you said you worked for the Guys in White."
Valerie shrugged, and explained. "They don't trust teenagers to keep their ghost hunting suits clean and white."
The boy looked at the pile of ghost hunting junk, and saw the corner of a folder poking out. The boy reached in and pulled it out, and started walking over to Valerie.
It was now nearly sunrise, and the ground was wet with dew. The boy tripped, and the contents of the folder fluttered in the air, before landing in the mud. The boy made to pick them up, but ended up getting the documents even more covered in mud in the process. Valerie noticed that he was making weird movements, almost like he was slipping some of the documents into his pockets.
"I'm sorry," he said quickly. "I can be a bit of a klutz sometimes. I'm kind of known at school for being so clumsy." He laughed nervously. "I guess I must've tripped over my own shoelace again."
He stood up, and Valerie noticed that both his shoes were tied securely. "Uh-huh," she said.
The boy looked up at the sky. "Look at that!" he said. "It's almost sunrise. I've got to go. Could you please clean up that bio-hazardous mess your weapons made?"
As the boy ran off, Valerie noticed something sliding out of a giant hole in the boy's back pocket.
"What's this?" she asked, as she picked it off the ground. As she examined it, she found that it was a note card.
Find out more about that ghost huntress, it said. When she tries to talk about you, remember that you are an environmentalist who is very allergic to the sun. DO NOT LET HER GET THAT FILE!
