Chapter 10 – Social Networking

"Urg, where the heck are they all coming from?" Danni made a disgusted face as she wiped away the slimy remains of her latest spooky encounter. She didn't know how the ghosts were getting through to the mortal realm; they were all weak or under-developed so she doubted they had any kind of dimension ripping abilities. Randomly forming portals shouldn't last as long as this recent spree of ghosts.

Danielle sighed and looked around, eyes narrowing and her jaw tightening in thought as she surveyed the goo-splattered area. That was another interesting point about these encounters—they were all happening in the very same area, around roughly the same time. She frequented this park often, so she should know if there was a stable ghost portal around the area. She hadn't sensed anything during the day; it seemed to only be at night when her ghost sense went off around the park. It had gotten to the point where she'd shifted her routine, sleeping later into the day in order to stay out later, making purposeful efforts to hang around the affected area more so than usual. It was a fortunate thing that she did so; the recent round of proto-spooks would definitely be able to cause some damage before they withered away due to lack of stable ectoplasm.

She didn't understand. It'd been a week since they'd suddenly begun showing up, it happened pretty much within a day or two of her encounter with THE thief, and she was no closer to understanding the cause of it all. Danni growled softly in frustration and kicked at a tree root, having checked every area in the park twice without any sign of ectoplasmic activity—it was just getting frustrating!

As if to make matters worse, her breath hitched just as she was about to call it quits and head home for the night, ejecting a faintly luminescent blue mist onto the night air. She growled again at her ghost sense, kicking into the sky to get a better view of the immediate area. There was one good thing about the location—the lack of light made spotting a ghostly glow quite easily, even in the heavier forested sections. Green eyes snapped toward a faint glimmer, and Danni shot toward it, the chill of the ghost's presence growing stronger as she neared.

Unlike most of her ghost encounters, there wasn't an ambush waiting for her as she slipped beneath the sparse canopy of leaves. Apparently she'd been alerted in time to arrive before the spook was able to fully manifest, and was able to catch a good look at its method of arrival. There was a small, glowing vortex set amongst the quivering green grass, a hypnotic spiral that acted as a gateway between the ghost zone and the human world. Seeing the portal threw her back to the recent past, and even the surroundings snapped into place in accordance with the memory.

This was the exact same spot as the portal a few weeks ago! It was significantly smaller in size than the original, but it wasn't like there was a standard portal size. Why was it here? A random portal did not pop up in exactly the same place within such a short amount of time—it just didn't make sense!

Unfortunately, Danni's musings on ecto-physics were cut short as the portal began to ripple, and a green blur shot out accompanied by what seemed to be a childish exclamation of surprise and excitement. Danni sprang back, drawing a small amount of energy into her fists—it was all she could spare since she'd had to spend some destroying the spook earlier. She didn't have the luxury of a Fenton Thermos, or even a stable portal to evict the unwanted denizens of the Ghost Zone, so Danni had little choice but to completely destroy each specter as she found them. Unfortunately destroying was more difficult than capturing, and took far more energy.

Her heart sank as she realized this ghost was unlikely to be a mindless, instinct driven mass of ectoplasm and post-human consciousness like the previous ones. It was giving her a completely different feel from her ghost sense, not to mention she'd actually heard spoken words jumbled into the yell. Her conclusion was proven correct when the green blur finally quit bouncing around the area, landing on the grass before her and revealing a decidedly humanoid spook.

"That was fun! Can we do it again?"

It was most assuredly a child's voice, and even seemed to be child-like in shape and temperament. It—he was turned away from her, and addressing something in front of him. She couldn't see from her vantage point, hidden as she was from ducking behind a tree when the ghost had emerged from the portal, but the annoyed reply was quite audible.

"No you twit, the portal closed again."

"Aww…"

"Sorry to interrupt," Danni found herself saying, stepping out from behind the tree, the small energy-ball still glowing faintly from around her fist, "But you better tell me what you're doing in my territory."

The kid froze and spun around, giving Danni her first good look at him. He was smaller than she was, but not by much, sea-green hair sweeping to one side and giving a slight hint of color to the almost paper-white face and color-less grey eyes. He was wearing what looked to be a modified police uniform, done in green and white instead of navy blue. The second voice she heard turned out to be some sort of skeletal…creature. She tentatively labeled it as a dog, to go with the police theme.

"Oh for Pete's sake." The dog whined, springing to its Master's side and bearing its teeth (not that there was anything covering them in the first place) "There's another halfa-brat?"

Another…? That meant this pair knew Danny! This wasn't good. It wasn't good at all. There was no way she'd be able to completely atomize a ghost that had fought against her cousin, it was beyond her current capacities to do so safely. Stay calm Danielle, she told herself, keeping up the confident façade, you'll think of something.

"A cute halfa-brat." The boy responded with a slow smile, a response that apparently surprised both his partner and the afore-mentioned girl. The bony canine's head nearly did a complete 180, jaw hanging open in surprise, "You have got to be jokin—"

The humanoid ghost kicked the dog lightly, muttering a quick 'shut-up!' before returning his attention to the confused halfa, "So what's a pretty little spirit like you doing out here this late at night?"

"Defending my territory from invading spooks like you." She retorted, still not loosening the energy blast even though he didn't seem to want to fight. She did not want to back down and show a weakness he could exploit. "How did you get here?"

"The portal, duh." The utterly childish response completely destroyed the cool image the miniaturized police ghost had tried to cultivate, "It's connected to my area of the ghost-zone. I just found it and decided to explore; Captain Youngblood at your service!"

"You aren't a pirate anymore, remember?"

"So? I'm a police captain!"

Danni really didn't know what to do. Despite the negative attitude of the dog-thing, the boy didn't seem interested in causing trouble. She wasn't confident in her energy stores to take him on either. As much as it pained her to do it, it would be better to try and solve this without fighting if it was at all possible. She'd already expended more than enough energy tonight from destroying the first ghost, a humanoid ghost would be at least ten times more difficult in both power and cunning. "Could you maybe go back? This area isn't used to ghosts, and I've had my hands full with all of the half-formed blobs popping up recently."

"Aww…but I just want to hangout in the living-world for a while." Youngblood pouted, "I promise I won't try and enslave the city! I swore off that when The Halfa kicked me back into the Ghost Zone for the fifteenth time." Danni raised an eyebrow at the last remark, muffling a laugh at the image created by it. Youngblood seemed put-off by her amusement, before the proverbial light bulb flickered into existence over his head, "I got it! You let me hang out for a day or so, and I'll get my crew—("Squad." The sulking skeleton interjected)—to guard the portal from our side. It seems to open up every night or so. They'd be able to stop the newbie ghosts from bothering you, and I'd get my vacation. Deal?"

Danni thought it over, before reabsorbing the energy in her hand, reaching out and sliding her black-gloved hand into the ghost's green-gloved one, "Deal. But if you cause any trouble, I'm going to be the one kicking you back through that portal when it opens again, understood?"

"Yes Ma'am!" The police-wannabe ghost snapped into a sloppy salute, rising up into the sky with the skeleton in close pursuit. It seemed to have decided it wanted nothing to do with the hybrid—probably because it held a grudge against her cousin. That suited her fine—at least the boy had decided to be reasonable. Although, judging by his initial reaction to her, the fact that she was a girl around his apparent age managed to make up for the fact that she was pretty much a female Danny Phantom look-alike.

For some reason she didn't think he would go back on his promise, and it was because of that gut feeling that she let Youngblood go on his merry way, heading back home for some much needed sleep.

--

It had been a while since he last logged on, but at length Conan once again found himself with a sleepless night. It wasn't so much any one incident that led the child to open up the otherwise unused file, and to type in the log-in information, but just a general feeling of restlessness that permeated his life. Ever since the last heist things had slowed down, both on the work side and on the personal. Conan, much like his literary idol, Sherlock Holmes, hated inaction more than anything. Since he was far too responsible a boy to follow in his idol's footsteps and seek stimulation in some drug, he turned to other methods.

Luckily, video games were a mind-numbing solution to this problem, and especially so when the video game had a link to a personal case. Conan hadn't forgotten the issue of the tenant in his home, or the apparent link between him or her and the 'GhostBoy' he'd met online, but he thought of the case as a curiosity, and as such didn't place much importance on solving it. The runaway had been living in his home for well over a month without causing problems—there were no missing items, the house wasn't disturbed too much, and it wasn't like there was anyone in residence anyway—so Conan didn't see any reason to pry into the whos, hows, and whys. It was much the way he viewed Kid; he was an interesting opponent, and a curiosity, but there were bigger fish to fry.

Of course, when he had nothing better to do, the smaller fish were fair game as well.

As the game screen loaded Conan reached into his desk, withdrawing the notebook that he'd used upon his last foray into the world of DOOMED. Looking back, he was quite annoyed at the small amount of information he'd gleaned from the encounter, it wounded his pride as a detective to be so…unsuccessful. True, he'd been rather tired at that point, but still.

Conan's character appeared in the center of the town, exactly where he'd logged out some week or two ago. A quick check to the list showed that, once again there were few people on this certain level. Conan noted briefly that his power-ups had vanished with the logging out, but it didn't bother him. They wouldn't be difficult to regain.

He was about to start the quest to regain some of the more important ones when a small message box appeared in the corner of the screen. An eyebrow rose as he read the message, noting the sender at the same time. He hadn't expected FryerTuck to add him to his friend's list, nor to be noticed so quickly. The social teenager (just a rough estimate based on Conan's recollection of the boy's personality) was pretty much demanding for some help with something, probably cheat finding or something similar. The boy almost scowled at the thought of being used like that, before shrugging it off and filing it under an unfortunate necessity. He needed to be needed; otherwise there would be no reason for them to interact. It was the way of business.

After he sent back an inquiry, Fryer told him to meet at the next level up, supplying a special item to allow him to bypass the experience limit. The teenager seemed slightly harried, even a tiny bit worried in the messages, something that intrigued the detective and pushed him to hurry.

And so, a few minutes found Shintantei waiting at the indicated spot, anticipating the arrival of the yellow-suited dark-skinned avatar. FryerTuck appeared soon after, stepping out of a nearby warp portal that led from the outside wilderness. This level seemed to be some sort of astral realm, undefined and surreal in a way that was only possible in video games. It was a large difference from the ones before—at least they'd been modeled after existing environments.

"Sorry for bothering you about this." Came the Fryer's opening message, the avatar coming to a stop nearly in the center of Conan's screen, "But Danny and I have an issue with someone, and I could really use some help."

"Danny?" Conan responded, feigning ignorance in an effort to confirm his earlier speculation. The other was silent for a moment, probably kicking himself over the slip once it'd been pointed out for him. At length he reluctantly confirmed that "Ghost" was indeed Danny, before abruptly shifting the topic again, "This guy—Technus—got a hold of one of the most powerful cheats in the game, and while Ghost has a similar one he's having trouble. Another friend of mine knows this mega-cheat that was added with the recent upgrade, but neither of us can decipher the code needed in order to activate it. Come on Shin, help us?"

Conan shrugged, even though he knew that there was no way the other could see it, typing only a short response.

"Lead the way."

--

Sam waited.

Tucker had told her that he had a friend that would definitely be able to help, and had promptly left to retrieve that friend. She highly doubted it; her connections in the game's company had informed her that this particular code had required an outside source to create an insane level of difficulty. She'd only mentioned it in passing to Tucker, along with a list of easier obtained powers. At first the boy hadn't seemed interested in this particular one, but then his attitude had suddenly changed upon the arrival of this 'Shintantei'.

She'd heard about this newbie from both Danny and Tucker—more Tucker since the dark-skinned boy loved to brag about how he'd discovered him—and about his "uber" code-breaking skills. Apparently he'd bumped into the duo not long after Sam had been forced offline by her parents, appearing three levels above where he belonged, conveniently in place to lead Tucker and Danny to victory against one of the better players in the game, Zaurihin. It was just far too convenient for her tastes. Tucker always told her to chill—it was just a game, not a life or death situation—but Sam couldn't help it. Technus's presence in the game proved that Danny's enemies could use their favorite past-time against him.

Sam shook her head, tossing the train of thought aside. After all, she had promised Tucker she'd give this guy a chance. If he really was as good as he claimed, then maybe they could finally lock Technus up for good. She hadn't told the rest of the trio, but this particular cheat had been created to counter the appearance of Danny and Technus' ghost powers. The developers had labeled it as a mod, or a hack in the game, but for some reason wasn't able to shut them down from the administrative side, and so they implemented a counter-measure. Of course, should just anyone stumble across the power, then it would give them a huge advantage over normal players—hence the tight security.

Searching for something to distract her from the faint explosions in the background—evidence of the battle between spirits—she took a moment to study her modified character, feeling a faint sense of loss at the absence of the tall, broad-shouldered Chaos she'd grown infamous with. Some time back, Danny and Tucker had ganged up on her and persuaded her to change the model, taking after them and actually basing the avatar after her normal appearance. She'd resisted at first, but then Danny had pointed out that losing to a girl-ish avatar was far more humiliating to the average DOOMED player than the tall, powerful looking monster like the original. She had conceded the point to him, and created this alternate model. Of course, she'd refused to do anything more than change the style of the body—she refused to consider changing the color-scheme to pink and white as tucker had joking-ly suggested. While yes, it added to the humiliation factor, there were just some lines that Sam would not cross.

Her mind was drawn out of the past at the creation of a temporary portal next to her character, and she reached to the desk and picked up the high-tech helmet controller from the desk. Sam settled it gently on her black-haired head, amethyst eyes closing as she waited for her senses to adjust. When she opened them again, she WAS Chaos, facing the glowing yellow portal as it spit out two figures in front of her.

There were times she loved being rich and the occasional toys she indulged in were the reasons for those times. These VR helmets for example; they'd only been recently released with DOOMED's latest upgrade, the technology modeled after some bulky cocoon-type system released in Japan roughly half a year ago. She'd splurged last Christmas, buying a set of the ridiculously expensive equipment for herself and Tucker. Danny didn't need it, not with the way he could literally pull himself into the game.

Chaos waited patiently as the data consolidated around her friend, taking her eyes off the yellow-suited Fryer and examining his compatriot. The stiff posture of the character, not to mention the lack of facial expression and movement led her to the conclusion that it was a key-board player. It made sense considering the majority of the population fell under that category. He didn't look like much, a tall and slender blackish brown-haired avatar, eye color impossible to determine through the red visor that covered them. He had a similar battle-suit to Danny's, a base metallic blue color with luminescent patches of red light creating a random design across it.

"So, this is him, Tuck?" She wasn't convinced that some newbie (it only took a vague thought to check his level and confirm the fact) would be able to crack the code that even stumped someone like Tucker. Her African American friend nodded, motioning for this 'Shintantei' to follow as he started off down the path toward the cave entrance, "This is Shin. Last time he proved to be quite good with the game's usual puzzles and riddles so I figured there was no harm done."

Chaos shrugged, jogging a little ways behind the two, keeping an eye on the sky just in case the aerial battle between the two ghosts decided to head their way. Danny had said he'd try to keep the upgraded Technus busy while they searched for whatever they could that would give them an upper hand. None of them were exactly sure why, although Tuck had a few theories, but the Technology-obsessed ghost always had the upper hand when he and Danny fought inside this world. That was probably the reason he kept choosing it as the battle-ground.

An explosion sounded in the distance as they finally reached where her sources said the cheat was hidden. It was closer than the last she'd heard; telling her that despite Danny's attempts Technus was managing to push him back. "Here." She began hurriedly, drawing the newcomer's attention to the wall closest to the cave entrance, upon which a line of stick-figures were drawn crudely. "All we've been able to figure out is that it is some kind of code."

"Indeed it is." Shin's response wasn't in sound like her's and Tuck's were, but appeared in a speech bubble next to the avatar. Chaos sighed; she never interacted with anyone but Tuck and Ghost and had gotten used to hearing actual voices. When everything seemed as real as it did with the VR helmet, it was just odd to see a floating speech-bubble next to someone.

The girl wondered what was going through the new-comer's head as he studied the code. After a good five minutes without another comment she found herself growing impatient, giving a sharp "Well?" They didn't have much time, from the sounds of things the fight was getting closer every second. Unless the kid had all sounds completely muted, even he should be able to hear the indicators of battle in the distance, and Tuck had to have explained something about their time-limit. Danny couldn't keep the technology-obsessed ghost busy forever.

"Almost done." Came the short response, and Chaos felt the doubt creep forward once again.

--

Conan turned away from the computer screen and back to his work, glancing between an open book and the notebook he was scribbling hastily in. A smile flickered on his face as he worked on piecing the code together; he'd immediately recognized the origin upon seeing it. He had to admit, it would be an extremely difficult problem to the average teenager. However, he doubted the creator had guessed that a great detective AND a Sherlock Holmes' fanatic would run across it.

Of course Conan had recognized the dancing men, and remembering the Holmes case involving them had led him to extract the novel. Using Holmes' deduction as a base, it was only a matter of time before Conan figured out the rest of the cipher. As he worked he absently wondered if his Dad had taken up video game design again, it seemed like just the type of problem he would put in. He hadn't heard from his father since the Cocoon incident, so for all he knew Kudou Yuusaku could have taken up a new hobby.

A faint sound from the screen attracted his attention, signaling that the girl was getting impatient again. It aggravated him that she was so pushy—it was just a game. Even if they lost now they could go back and challenge the other player to a rematch. It wasn't like the fate of the world rested upon the outcome of the match.

The time limit must have been one of the conditions of the battle—maybe it's a one on one fight, while the supporting team races to unlock a weapon or power that would give their champion the upper hand. If it was true, and the time-limit was a problem, then why did they pick this one? Sure, he'd be able to crack the code given just another minute to verify his conclusions, but there was no way they could have known that he would log on in time to be of any assistance in the matter. Plus, in those kinds of contests, don't the participating characters need to register before-hand?

Ah well. It was an interesting little puzzle, but not one he was willing to stress over. It'd just been good timing on both of their parts.

The boy looked down at the scribbling on the paper, noticing a little belatedly that he'd actually written on the lower half of his case files. The detective shrugged in response; he hadn't had much written beforehand, it wouldn't take much to recopy them onto a clean sheet of paper.

Another beep, signaling yet another message rang in his ears just as he finished up the verification. The boy sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose as he muttered about impatient females, and returned to the screen. There he brought up the input box, and quickly typed in the deciphered key words, adding a small note to the side for the benefit of his two companions.

"Finished."

--

A/N: Okay…not quite to 6k, only around 4.5k, but I want to get this out on Monday (today) and the next section isn't cooperating correctly. I need to map out the next part and figure out how to write it, but that would take me over my self-imposed deadline so….

Sorry, no Kaito in this one. It's too late at night and I figure unless there's a heist going on he'll be going to sleep at a decent time or else he'll incur the wrath of one police Inspector's daughter. I can see Aoko becoming fiercely protective if she sees Kaito depriving himself of sleep for some reason n.n;

…for the record, I have no idea why I threw in Youngblood originally. Since then I've come up with some interesting things that he'll help with so I see some fun in the future. The small crush on Danni I thought was cute, but it's nothing major, just a puppy-love type thing. I figure he doesn't see many ghosts his apparent age—especially ones who don't shoot first and ask questions later.

By the way, yes I did redesign Sam's DOOMED Avatar. It was mostly 'cause I wanted Conan to know right away that she was a girl. Don't get angry at me for that z-z The original Chaos is pretty misleading.

Anyways hope y'all like it and leave meh a pretty review before you go. The battle with Technus will be continued in Social Networking part II

TBC