"I don't know if we should be trusting her like this," Superboy said over the mind link to Miss Martian. "She did attack you."
"That was a misunderstanding," M'Gann insisted. "Besides, this is the first possible lead anyone has had. We have to check it out."
They had found a more out of the way location to talk, although both sides were still somewhat tense. The woman had given them a summary of the peculiar variety of supernatural creatures that infested Amity Park, and Superboy and Miss Martian had explained to the armored woman what had happened to the presumably kidnapped boy, Dick Grayson.
"So, why were you watching Axion Labs?" she asked suspiciously.
"Well," Miss Martian hesitated before deciding to lay all their cards on the table. "Dick Grayson is the ward of the billionaire businessman Bruce Wayne. Mr. Wayne is currently involved in an important business deal, and so we suspected maybe one of his corporate rivals kidnapped him in order to ruin the deal."
The woman in armor stiffened and her tone grew dark, "Vlad Masters? You think he might be involved?"
"It's just one of several possibilities we're working on," M'Gann said, apprehensive at the hostility she suddenly sensed.
The other woman's fists clenched and unclenched slowly. "I certainly wouldn't put it past him." She paused, collecting herself. "All right, first thing we need to do is try to find out exactly what happened. I know someone who may be able to analyze your traffic cam footage for ghostly activity. C'mon."
A hoverboard appeared beneath the armored woman's feet as she hopped into the air. She turned uncertainly back to Superboy. "Can you fly?"
"No," he replied with a scowl.
"Well, you can ride with me if you want." Superboy looked between her and Miss Martian, weighing riding on the hoverboard versus being carried, then leaped up on the board. "Hang on," she said as they took off, back toward the city. As Miss Martian followed, she called the rest of the team to inform them what they were doing and request a copy of the traffic camera footage be brought to their location.
They flew high until they were midway through the city then came down in an empty section of a park. Superboy stepped to the ground and then the hoverboard disappeared from under the woman allowing her to drop the last foot. She looked around to make sure the area was deserted.
Moments later she was startled by a yellow and red blur that sped into the clearing. "Kid Flash delivery, at your service," the new boy joked as he slid to a stop in front of the three, although M'gann noticed the humor was still only superficial.
"He's with us," M'gann quickly explained.
"Yeah, I can see that," the woman responded wryly. She and Kid Flash sized each other up for a moment before the woman shook her head. "Whatever. We're going to walk the last bit. It will be better if we're not too conspicuous," she said, eyeing the Martian and the costumed speedster. She turned to Miss Martian, "You can be invisible again, right?"
"Oh, yes," she quickly replied. "Or I can just do this." M'Gann's skin changed from green to a pale peach and her clothes morphed into a white top with a dark pink skirt and matching sweater. "Does this work?"
"Yeah," the armored huntress said, surprised. "So, what about you?" she began to ask Kid Flash, but before she could finish the sentence he had disappeared in a whirlwind and reappeared wearing jeans and a long sleeve blue t-shirt. He still had his red goggles on over his eyes however. The armored woman tilted her head curiously at them.
"Uh, Wally..." Superboy began.
"Yeah, yeah, I know," Kid Flash cut him off. "But I didn't have any sunglasses handy. Maybe we can pick some up along the way."
The woman sighed and waved a hand at him, "You know what? Leave them on. You'll fit right in."
Wally gave her a perplexed look and then shrugged at his team mates.
The woman stared at the heroes uncertainly. "So, I guess as superheroes you're used to the whole secret identity thing, right? Can I trust you with mine?"
"Of course," M'Gann said with a reassuring smile and Wally chimed in with a "Yeah." Conner gave a curt nod.
The black and red armor retracted and swiftly vanished from sight. M'Gann was startled to realize this person was a teenager, probably about the same age as most of the Team. She was a dark-skinned girl with curly hair, wearing yellow and orange. She stared at them for a moment, her green eyes narrowed, daring them to say something about her age or who she was. Then she held out her hand, "I'm Valerie."
They walked the five blocks to their destination quickly. As they turned the corner for the last block, Superboy looked up perplexed and asked, "What is that?"
"That's where we're going," Valerie said with a resigned sigh. "Just follow my lead, ok?"
"That" was a monstrosity of a building, half brownstone and half U.F.O., with a glaring neon sign on the front reading "Fenton Works." All three of the newcomer's ogled it as they approached.
"Why is it glowing?" Kid Flash asked, noting a faint white glow to the place, not unlike what Valerie's armor had had.
"Ghost proof shielding," Valerie answered tersely.
Wally's mouth fell open as he looked at M'Gann. "You guys weren't kidding about the ghost thing?" She just gave a little shake of her head in reply.
At Valerie's knock, the door was opened by a slightly older red-headed girl with wide teal eyes which narrowed a little as she saw who was there. "Valerie," she acknowledged in a carefully neutral tone. "What are you doing here so early?"
"Hi, Jazz," Valerie greeted, straining to put some warmth in her voice. "Are your parents here? We were hoping to get their help with something."
Jazz looked past Valerie, just then noticing the large entourage the other girl had with her. Her tone became slightly friendlier, "What do you need?"
"Um, these guys are new in town and they think they may have caught some video of a ghost, outside of Amity Park, a little while back. We were hoping your parents could take a look at it."
Jazz sighed. "Dad had a really grueling day of physical therapy yesterday, so he's still upstairs sleeping. Mom's down in the lab though." She stood aside so they could enter.
"Thanks," Valerie said as she led the way across a neat and tidy, if well lived in, living room – completely and surprisingly normal-looking considering what was on their roof. Once they went down the basement stairs however, it was a different story.
"Hello, Mrs. Fenton?" Valerie called to a woman wearing a teal hazmat suit and red goggles who was bent over a shiny metal worktable along one wall. She turned to them, pushing back her hood to reveal shoulder length red hair, as she greeted, "Valerie! I wasn't expecting you until later…" She was interrupted by a figure rushing into the room.
"Oh my gosh!" Wally exclaimed, looking around the lab with wide-eyed excitement. "You have your own gas chromatograph, and a spectrophotometer, and an Experion electrophoresis system, and a C10 refractometer, and a cryogentic storage system, and…. OH, and what's this? Or this?" He raced from item to item, luckily still at human speeds, to inspect them as he named them. "When you said ghosts, I didn't expect it to be so… so…"
"Scientific," Maddie finished for him, with a small smirk of amusement on her face.
"Yeah!" he nodded enthusiastically, examining an item that looked like a cross between an autoclave and a vacuum cleaner, neatly labeled with the face of a large man in an orange jumpsuit and the words "Fenton Ectoplasmic Incinerator" on the side.
"We get that a lot," Maddie answered. "When most people hear ghosts, they think candles and séances and psychics. But we've endeavored to study ghosts using the full rigor of the scientific process." She walked over to them and extended her hand, "I'm Maddie Fenton. It's nice to meet you."
"Are you sure she's not a distant relation or something?" M'Gann teased Wally over the mindlink. She flashed an image of the redheaded woman in her goggles compared to Wally in his. Wally blushed and hastily contained his enthusiasm, rejoining the group. Meanwhile M'Gann shook Maddie's hand and out loud introduced them, "Hi! I'm Megan, this is Conner, and this is… KF."
"Mrs. Fenton," Valerie drew her attention, "they have some video footage they think might contain a ghost - an invisible one. We were hoping you could take a look at it?"
"Of course," Maddie instantly agreed. "Let's see what we can do."
Twenty minutes later they were all crowded around Maddie's computer, which was hooked up to the Fenton Spectral Analyzer. "Now, film footage would really have been best," the paranormal scientist was explaining, "because it captures more electromagnetic frequencies than digital does. A wider spectrum of visible and invisible light, if you will. But as long as the digital video is of high enough quality, we should be able to at least detect the phase shifts in the visible spectrum associated with a non-visible spectral entity."
M'Gann and Valerie both looked baffled, but Wally was eating the explanations up. Conner wore a look of intense concentration, but he too seemed to be following along. They were all at full attention however when the Spectral Analyzer indicated it was done processing the footage and the video came up on Maddie's monitor.
The footage, which was spliced together to follow a black limo from camera to camera down a two-lane highway, at first seemed perfectly routine. Then suddenly, a faint shape came into view in the picture – the outline of a slim figure in black with white gloves and boots, swooping through the air after the limo. Maddie froze the video. The contrasting light and dark portions of the figure were all that could be made out, no real details, but they heard Maddie gasp, "Phantom."
"So, it is a ghost?" M'Gann asked.
"Yeah, a very specific ghost," Valerie answered, her posture tensing and teeth clenching. "Let's watch the rest."
Maddie unpaused the video. The rest was brief – the ghostly figure flew into the limo and when it came out it was holding another child-sized human shape. They disappeared off screen, flying straight up, and thirty seconds later the limo screeched to a halt. Maddie stopped the video again and they all sat there in silence for a moment.
"He kidnapped someone," Maddie finally said, half statement and half question.
M'Gann nodded. "A boy named Dick Grayson was riding in that limo and disappeared," she explained. Wally reached past Maddie to back up the video to where Phantom and the boy were visible and just stared intently at the screen, as if trying to memorize what few details were there.
I've been wondering where that spook went," Valerie spat, shaking her head. The Team looked at her curiously. "Phantom hasn't been seen around here in almost two months. Kidnapping kids isn't really his M.O., but then again he's been unpredictable lately."
"Tell us everything you know," Wally demanded, his full attention now on the ghost hunters.
AN: Ok, so this chapter got away from me a little bit and there's still quite a bit of catching up for the Team and Batman to do, so the next chapter may continue with them rather than getting on to what I know we are all looking forward to most (seriously, I keep working ahead on Dick/Danny's chapter rather than getting through the exposition I need for everyone else first). We'll see if I have that much willpower. THANK YOU again to all the wonderful reviewers!