Someone was carrying him. Someone with warm, strong arms and a seemingly tireless gait. He could hear leaves crunching underfoot and branches rustling around them. A bird sang out somewhere off behind him. More woods. Spectacular.

"Cold..." he mumbled, shifting. He winced as a sick, deep pain shot through his leg.

"Don't move," a voice warned him.

Danny squinted at the lights and colors that wheeled by him in a nauseating blur, reluctant to break the sleepy haze of his mind, but teased by curiosity. He knew this voice —but that wouldn't make sense because he was...something wasn't right. "Mom?"

The arms tensed around him. Their forward motion bobbed and jerked, as if she had missed a step, but she kept walking. "No," she said tersely. "It's Maddie Fenton."

Danny frowned, puzzled at the distinction. Of course Mom was Maddie...but not to him. Not unless —then it hit him. Why he was so cold, and felt so light. He was still a ghost. Phantom. Enemy number one. In the arms of Maddie Fenton, ghost hunter.

He went intangible out of sheer panic.

Maddie was still walking, so she stepped right through him. For a an instant he hovered in midair, weightless and massless. Then a wave of dizzy weakness slammed into Danny, yanking him back into tangibility. Gravity came crashing back. He hit the forest floor hard. The world turned white. Pain. It stabbed up his leg and hit every nerve on the way to his brain, convulsing him into a tight ball of agony. He felt like throwing up, wanted desperately to pass out —but it wouldn't stop. Floundering in a world made of screaming nerves —then a warm, solid hand folded over his. It gave him an anchor, a focus. The sensation ebbed away to something near bearable.

Only then did his other senses filter back in. The smell of damp earth —colored faintly with the tang of blood and ectoplasm; pine needles prickling his cheek; a hand caressed his back, soothing the tension from his muscles with sure, steady movements. He realized he was holding onto her hand with a crushing grip and relaxed his fingers. Warm daylight filtered through the trees. He could see nothing but roots and brambles. Still in the woods. Still alone with Mom. Still Phantom.

Why hadn't he changed back when he passed out? It had been hours. Nearly a day. Why had he passed out , anyway?

He'd somehow hurt himself, obviously. Danny didn't quite remember what happened, but he hadn't felt something that bad in —well, in a long time. It was like someone was actively driving a metal stake into his thigh, and then shoving it around whenever he moved for good measure. Landing right on top of it hadn't helped.

Mom was humming tunelessly, a soft counterpoint to his own harsh breathing. He shifted and the humming stopped, the hand on his back pressing down firmly between his shoulder blades.

"No sudden moves."

Danny was fully awake by now, and he knew he ought to be seriously worried. If he was still Phantom, and she was hauling him around in the woods instead of just leaving him behind, he was probably her prisoner —or worse, her catch. Their little anti-ghost-monster alliance wasn't that strong. He licked dry lips and responded cautiously. "Can I turn over?"

A pause. The hand on his back loosened, but didn't go away. "Slowly. I don't want you to tear any stitches."

Stitches? Now even more anxious to figure out what the heck was going on, Danny gingerly raised himself on one arm and rolled onto his back. This sent the pain in his leg through the roof again and he clenched his teeth, waiting for the treetops to stop spinning.

Mom just sat there, waiting patiently. Her silence made him nervous. What had happened after he blacked out?

"I'm going to check your leg," she said, and then hesitated, watching him...as if waiting for an answer. Danny was confused why she'd need consent from some ghost, but he nodded anyway and that seemed to satisfy her.

He glanced down as she moved away from his head and was surprised to see his leg covered in white gauze, stained and dotted with green. The first coherent thought he could come up with tumbled from his lips. "How much gauze can you fit in one utility belt?"

That earned a smile. She untied a tight knot and began unwinding it. "Two sleeping bags, a dozen ecto-weapons, and it's the small rolls of cloth that surprise you?"

"I guess you have a point. Ow!" Some of the ectoplasm had dried and crusted on, tugging painfully as she pulled it free.

"Sorry."

He peered down, cringing at the jagged line of skin held together by crude surgical stitches. "Yikes."

His leg lay exposed and white; there wasn't much left of that part of his suit, though somehow his boot had made it okay. The dark, oozy green line snaked from the front near his hip down and back to behind his left knee. It looked every bit as deep and nasty as it felt —and that was saying something.

"You're lucky it didn't take your leg clean off."

"Y —yeah," Danny gulped, looking away. He only remembered bits and pieces of the fight, but at the thought a sudden impression of a huge, rotting paw with gleaming claws bearing down on him flashed in his mind. "Lucky."

"The stitches are fine —somehow. It looks like it's finally closing over. No sign of infection, though of course for a ghost that would be...unlikely."

"One of the upsides of having a body temperature like the inside of a freezer. It has to be a pretty nasty infection to get to me."

"The realism is so amazing though—" Some of Mom's ghost hunting enthusiasm crept into her voice, full of curiosity. The sort of creepy fascination that shouldn't go hand in hand with mortal injuries. "You have rudimentary structures mimicking musculature, ligaments, bone... it's almost like human anatomy."

Danny decided he wouldn't try to think too hard about how exactly Mom had gotten a glimpse of his bones. "Almost, huh." Of course she wouldn't think of him as human. Not that he wanted her to, exactly. Iif she put two and two together and came up with Danny Fenton… yeah, that was a conversation he did not feel up to having at the moment.

She regarded him with an odd expression, maybe catching the touch of wistfulness in his voice. "Lucky for you. No human would have survived that wound."

So Vlad had saved his life. Ironic.

He dared another glance at the stitches. It was odd material, blue-white and faintly glowing. "Is that… ecto-proof fishing line?"

"I tried regular thread," she said, a little apologetically. "You kept…" her hand smoothed down his hair, as if reflexively feeling the need to comfort him. "You were phasing right through."

"I was awake?" He frowned, thinking back. There was the plan Mom had come up with, that huge ghost thing, and the fight… and… nothing. Just a blank wall. Brain static.

She hesitated. "You were...conscious."

"I didn't say anything embarrassing, did I?" The silence became uncomfortable. Oh, crap. "What —what did I say?"

"This morning's not the first time you've called me Mom." She had her goggles down, and that made it hard to guess what she was thinking, but there was a thickness to her voice that made Danny wince. If that was the worst thing he'd said, he was lucky. Was she angry? Creeped out?

"Sorry." He licked his lips and tried an uneasy smile. "I didn't mean to…"

"No —no, it's alright. You were… less than coherent, and you…" It was weird to hear the usually articulate Maddie Fenton stop and start, like she couldn't wrap words around whatever it was that she was trying to say. She hesitated, then nodded to herself. "If you don't remember, that's good."

"I'll uh, take your word for it," he said weakly. Sam had sewed up his arm once —three stitches, and that had been after a shot of some awful amber alcohol stolen from Sam's parents. He didn't want to think about what last night might have felt like.

He stared up at the interwoven branches. Sunlight glared back. It must be nearly noon, because the leaves were a bright yellow-green, with patches of blue sky visible here and there. It had to be past twenty-four hours by now. Why was he still a ghost?

As Maddie rewrapped the wound, he cringed and decided against trying to change back. Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing after all. As long as he was ghost, he wouldn't bleed as much.

Danny blinked. Blood. He'd definitely smelled blood, and it couldn't be his. Was Mom injured somehow?

Danny's gaze flew up to his mom's familiar, teal suit, checking anxiously for injuries. The neat bandage on her shoulder was still there from the first fight, and… there, a rip through the sturdy fabric across her ribs. White gauze peeked through the slashed teal cloth. It didn't look too bad… His eyes fell on the white and green device still buckled around Maddie's hips. The Specter Deflector.

He stiffened on reflex. Then it hit him. "Wait —you're touching me."

The hands winding gauze around his leg didn't pause. "Yes."

"A —and it doesn't hurt? But how did you...?" Danny blinked stupidly at her.

Maddie tied off the end of the gauze and sat back on her heels. She tugged the belt still locked around her waist to one side, showing him the blast-scarred hole in the middle of its heavy circuitry.

Danny's mouth dropped open in shock. "You shot yourself?! Mo —Maddie, do you have any idea how risky that was? What if you missed? What if it blew up? What if it ricocheted —and —-and —why would you do that?"

She smiled wryly, looking amused at his dismay. "I needed to help you. It had to come off."

"But —but all the ghosts! You're a lot more vulnerable now."

"I can take care of myself."

He glanced pointedly at her wounded arm. "Not always."

"No." She pushed back her goggles and looked at him. Instead of the anger he'd expected, she was strangely solemn. "Which is why I owe you my gratitude."

Danny stared at her, speechless. Was that a… thank you? To him, a ghost? To Phantom?

"And —and why I should be worried!" he stammered out.

Maddie shrugged. "Our plan worked. I haven't seen so much as a wisp of ectoplasm all day."

"Really?" Glee trickled into his voice. He wished he could remember it. There was something deeply satisfying in the idea of Vlad's pet horror show getting splattered into oblivion.

"Your confidence in me is staggering. Of course it worked." Maddie tied off the gauze with a firm tug that made him wince, but she smiled as she scooted back and stretched. "We've made good progress, considering." She looked past Danny toward a brighter patch of woods, where he could just hear the sound of rushing water. The ravine must be that way. "The bridge can't be more than a few miles upstream." Her brow creased with worry. "I'll get back soon."

Her clothes were a mess, he realized —something he hadn't noticed in the first anxious look-over. Soot coated her chest and arms, and the dark greenish gunk splattered up to her elbows didn't quite blend into the blue of her suit.

Danny eyed it queasily. That was ectoplasm. The lingering, limey smell grew stronger when it dried out. He had the awful feeling that it was his. What would've happened if he'd just... kept bleeding? He'd watched a ghost run out of ectoplasm once —a mistake he'd been careful never, ever to inflict on anyone since. It was a nasty, bubbly, dissolving death that left nothing but a green stain on the floor.

Halfas were different. He'd always figured, with a morbid sort of optimism, that he'd revert to human and bleed to death before that would ever happen. Leave it to Vlad to come up with a way to make it possible. Once they got home, Danny was going to de-thermos Vlad's creepy butt into the nastiest lair he could find.

He glanced at his mom. She'd tipped her chin up so that the sunlight warmed her face and glinted off the lenses of her goggles. She'd saved him. A ghost. That was… something else.

She looked tired, he thought. Something about the set of her shoulders, the deep creases around her eyes. The past couple of days had been tiring even as a ghost. That had to go double for a human.

This thought had barely crossed his mind before Maddie straightened and climbed to her feet. She readjusted her goggles, then crouched down and put an arm around Danny's shoulders. It was only when her fingers tightened under his arm that he realized she was going to pick him up again. A blush flared on his cheeks. That broke all kinds of hero and too-old-for-this rules.

"You don't have to —" Danny flailed. "I can —" His leg brushed the ground and pain seared up his thigh. The ground took another stomach-lurching swoop and black spots burst across his eyes.

"Walk?" Maddie's eyebrow climbed above her goggles.

"Right." he moaned and threw an arm over his eyes. Ow. "Nevermind."

They made it to the road just at sundown; there was a little picnic shelter next to the bridge that crossed the gorge, and though there was little hope of being spotted in such a remote corner of the park, it was as good a place as any to catch a couple hours of sleep. The sleeping bags were long gone, buried in the explosion. The picnic tables were hard and lumpy, but at least it was off the wet, dewy ground.

She lay Phantom on the nearest picnic bench and stretched, rubbing at the soreness in her lower back. He was lighter than a human of that size would ever be, but even ninety pounds or so wasn't a light burden. It would have been easier to carry him on her back, but the position of his wound made that impossible.

He'd been drifting in and out of consciousness all day, surfacing to check for ghosts or chatter nervously about nothing whatsoever. She'd found a stream and carefully sterilized a pint or so in the waterproof hood of her suit. She drank it and downed a couple of energy capsules, which did nothing for the ache in her stomach but gave her enough energy to move on.

Phantom drank straight from the stream, dunking his head under the water. It hadn't occurred to her that a ghost might get thirsty, but it had revived him considerably. He'd had enough energy to scrub the ectoplasm out of his hair.

"Phantom." She touched his shoulder.

He woke with a moan. "Head's killing me," he mumbled.

Maddie studied his sunken eyes and dull skin. Phantom had lost nearly a third of his ectoplasmic fluids. Water helped, but it diluted the other aspects of his chemical makeup, inhibiting its function as "blood." What he needed was an ectoplasmic transfusion and rest, lots of it. Those were luxuries she couldn't offer out here in the wilderness.

"You're still dehydrated," she said at last. Maddie sighed and unclipped the makeshift water bag from her belt, untying the top and handing it to him. "Drink the rest of it."

He took a long sip, then handed it back. "Pretty sure humans need this stuff more than ghosts do."

She shrugged and took a sip of her own, then hung the bag on a nail that jutted out of one of the shelter's supports. Sitting at the end of the bench, close to Phantom's head, she rummaged in the pouch on her belt. It had lost most its contents, save for odds and ends: Spare parts from the cannibalized ectoguns, that bit of tech she'd picked up earlier and hadn't yet had an opportunity to study, and of course, the multi-tool. She fished it out, opened it to a screwdriver, and began unscrewing panels from the Specter Deflector that was still locked around her waist.

"It's really boring, not being able to move," Phantom remarked.

Maddie hummed a response under her breath, not really paying attention to what the ghost was saying. Her forehead creased as her screwdriver slipped. One of the screws had melted – it would be impossible to remove the panel without destroying it.

"I mean it'd be one thing if there was something to look at, but trees are just —well, trees. This forest has a lot of trees, have you noticed?"

Setting down the screwdriver, she grabbed hold of the panel and jerked. The Specter Deflector dug into her side, but the metal panel – half melted and mangled already – came off with a snap. She set it aside, then went back to staring at the wires.

"I never want to see a tree again." One gloved hand came up and made a lazy sweep, as if framing a picture. "Buildings. Concrete. Street lights. Heck, I'm starting to miss good old rusty dumpsters."

Maddie pulled a few wires out of the way, finding her prize buried deep inside, wrapped up like a cocoon. "City boy, huh?" she muttered.

"Born and raised."

"Do you remember your parents?" Maddie asked, her eyes flickering up from her work to gauge the ghost boy's reaction.

"Well, yeah." His gloved fingers took up a nervous beat, drumming against the picnic table.

"What was your mother like?"

He laughed uncomfortably. "I don't know, just, mom. Nice. Really smart. Always bugging me to clean my room."

"You died so young," she said quietly. He couldn't be more than fifteen. "She must have been devastated."

He shrugged. "It's not so bad. At least I'm still around, right?"

"You visit her?"

"Uh… what, I shouldn't?"

"No, no… it just surprised me, that's all." Maddie patiently tugged out the ruined wires, working the little capsule loose. "That's why you care so much about protecting Amity Park. Your family lives there."

"What, my heroic spirit wasn't enough?" Phantom tipped his head back and grinned at her, though it didn't quite clear the tired haze from his eyes. "Get it? 'cause I'm a spirit, and…" he frowned as those eyes focused on the power cell she'd just extracted from the belt. "What are you doing?"

"Extracting this," with one last twist of the pliers, she cracked one end open and held it out to the ghost. "It's for you." The power cell was double the size of the one from the ectogun, and at least triply potent. It required a significant amount of power to actively repel ghosts —which, rather ironically, was good news for Phantom. With this he might even make a full recovery.

His eyes widened and he pushed himself up on a shaky elbow. "I thought you were fixing the Specter Deflector!"

"Trust me, the circuits are fried. No amount of tinkering would help." She helped him sit up the rest of the way and pressed the cell into his hands. "If you don't start carrying your own weight, it'll take twice as long for me to get back."

"You're worried about your son, huh." The ghost sipped at the ectoplasmic substance. He grimaced and swallowed.

Maddie gripped the multitool and nodded shortly. More than she could say.

He studied her, eyes flickering briefly from the effects of the power core like distant heat lightning. "You could've left me."

She didn't answer. Just… leaving Phantom wasn't really an option. Not now. There was an odd sense of responsibility that came with her choice that morning.

Back during a pre-Y2K survivalist kick, she'd taken training in emergency field surgery, but no one could be prepared for wrestling down a raving teenager and stitching his leg back together as he screamed in your ear.

It had been slippery and cold, and the growing dawn had only exposed the sheer volume of blood… of ectoplasm that he'd lost. She'd spent half her time cursing her shaking hands and the other half muttering soothing nonsense to the boy. She'd finally hit on using the ecto-resin cord and made it stick. Then he'd gone so deathly still. It had been hours before his breathing resumed. It was a small miracle that he'd survived at all.

Survived. She laughed at herself. Now who was imposing living delusions onto a ghost?

"Danny's smart," she said at last. "He'll stay inside the GAV. I am worried, but… I trust him to make the right decisions. He'll be okay."

Assuming he'd made it back. That he wasn't searching for her, and that he'd had time to activate the ghost defense system. That it hadn't been overpowered in the hours she'd been gone. Assuming a lot of things.

"We'll rest for an hour or two, then move on. Get some sleep, Phantom. You'll —" she paused as she glanced and realized that he'd slumped onto the picnic table and his eyes had drooped shut. He was breathing softly. Maddie grinned. That pure ectoplasmic energy seemed to have a soporific effect. It must be his core's way of resetting in order to metabolize the new energy. Not too different from humans, in that respect.

She pulled off a glove and rested her hand on his forehead. It was still warm and clammy, but there was a promising chill to his breath. Given a few hours, he might recover enough to fly back to Amity Park on his own. If he didn't...

Maddie wondered what Danny would think if she showed up with the ghost boy in tow. Her son would be frightened and suspicious. He'd want to know why she was putting so much at risk for a ghost —this ghost, especially. What had possessed her to carry him so far?

"I don't know myself," she said aloud. On impulse she ruffled the sleeping ghost's hair. He sighed, shifting. Echoing his sigh, Maddie curled up on a bench just across from Phantom. She'd cross that bridge when she came to it.

Danny woke from a dead sleep as a shiver ran through him; he sat up, slow and silent, and took in the deserted, dark little picnic shelter. The shadowy rafters of the shelter above them, dark and empty; the bare grey strip of road lit only by the stars. The quiet woods that whispered soft nothings to each other, night birds and crickets calling out tranquilly. Whatever it was, it hadn't caused a disturbance.

Had he just dreamed it?

His eyes fell on his mother, who lay on her side on the bench of one of the picnic tables, arms tucked up under her chin. A soft, bluish glow lit her face, blank with sleep.

A glow from… what? Danny squinted.

Fear crawled down his spine as what he was seeing sank in. Vlad Plasmius, transparent and oddly blurry, slipping his hand inside his mother's head as she slept . Her eyelids fluttered, then she went limp and still.

"Get your hands off my mom," Danny snarled, springing into the air. Fire snaked down his side and burrowed into his knee — his injury did not like that sudden movement. Still, the ecto-energy from the power core had worked wonders; he could levitate just fine. Ectoplasm crackled in his hand, a sharp, tingling counterpoint to the deep ache in his leg.

Vlad didn't even glance his way, eyes half-lidded with lazy condescension. "Relax, Daniel. Do you think I would attempt such a dangerous thing if I did not know precisely what I was doing?" His ephemeral blue fingers brushed through a strand of hair that hung in Maddie's face. "She's merely forced to sleep. No need for her to witness any… unpleasantries."

"Meaning you don't want her to kick your butt again?"

That earned a scowl from the older hybrid. "Catching me by surprise hardly constitutes a defeat, Daniel." He straightened, floating at his full height, head and shoulders taller than Danny. He crossed his arms and scowled. "Now let's get to the point."

"There was a point to all this? I thought this was just you being a creepy, stuck-up jerkwad and putting us both in danger —again." Danny matched Vlad's sour expression look for look.

"I'm in no mood for trifling today, Daniel. The Plasmius Maximus. Where is it?"

"How should I know? You're the one who zapped me with that stupid thing."

"And yet it's you that insists on continuing to parade around in ghost form? Do you fancy yourself some kind of protector for a woman who would shoot you as soon as look at you? How heroic." Vlad's eyes fell on Danny's bandaged leg and he shook his head, clicking his tongue. "And making a mess of it as usual, I see. I suspect you'd be considerably less worse for wear if you had resumed the role of hapless teenager. "

Cold dread settled into Danny's stomach. "So it was supposed to wear off," he muttered. Crap. What had gone wrong?

Maddie moved, her fingers uncurling as she sighed deeply. They both held their breath until she went still.

Vlad's cold red eyes flicked to the deflector still buckled around her waist, and this time he positively smirked. "Why Daniel, you haven't been exposing yourself to an undue amount of ecto-resonant electricity, have you? That could easily prolong the effects of my little gift to you." His grin widened. "It might even make it...permanent."

Danny blanched, then glowered, cracking his knuckles. "You'd better be wrong, Fruitloop. Where have you been, anyway? Those stupid creepy animals of yours almost killed both of us, more than once."

Vlad's amused expression vanished. He flickered out of sight, then reappeared, but only from the waist up, staticky and fragmented. "Thermoses are not designed to be opened underwater. Especially if the process involves the device being crushed to pieces."

Danny stared at the flickering, not-quite-there Vlad Plasmius, and suddenly it clicked. Where he'd been all this time. What had kept him from acting out his crazed scheme. Why he looked so flimsy, why his hand hadn't actually been able to move the hair from Mom's face. "Vlad, you're… you're stuck too, aren't you?"

The ghost hovered there in furious silence.

This time it was Danny's turn to laugh. He chuckled, jabbing an accusing finger right at Vlad. "Why else would you show up like this? When the thermos broke, it messed you up worse than me. You need the Plasmius Maximus to zap you back." Danny blinked. "Hey, that could work on me too, right?"

"Then we have a common goal. If we don't find the device, Daniel, then you and I will be trapped in these forms until further notice. You will not be able to return home, and neither will I."

"I told you, I don't know where the stupid thing is! You must have dropped it while you were busy beating the crap out of me. Thanks for that, by the way, that's real conducive to convincing me that I should help you."

"You mean this thing?" They both looked down to find Maddie sitting up, watching them. She slipped her hand inside a compartment of her utility belt, producing the Plasmius Maximus.


tbc...


A/N: Aaand we're back! Hopefully a satisfactory resolve to that little ole cliffie I left you with.

Sorry it took a while! Life has been even more nuts than usual, what with quitting an old job (July-August), finding a new one (August-September), moving (September-October), Nanowrimo (November) and driving all over creation for the holidays (November-December). January feels like the first moment I've had to catch my breath and take stock of all the things that have been shoved to the back of the fridge, so to speak. I'm slowly working through those long-deferred responsibilities. SoaD's on its new schedule, this chapter is done, there a bazillion things I need to mail... one thing at a time. I'll get there.

Thank you dear readers for your gratifying level of horro—uh, I mean enthusiasm and comments! It's awesome as a writer to hear that people are really getting engaged and invested in the story. Especially the evil parts. Hehehe.

Many thanks to Cordria for her impeccable beta reading and Anneriawings for advice and a final proofread. Also shoutout to Represent for the "friendly reminders." (Can I get off this cliff now?)

Till next time!

-Hj