"Thanks again for helping us. Oh, could you pass me the EER?" Mom extended an arm in my direction without bothering to look up from her work. I quickly looked at the parts scattered around me trying to figure out which one was the one she wanted. Then I passed her a small, cylindrical part, praying it was the right one. She looked at it, and immediately extended her arm to me again, signaling it wasn't the right part. I replaced it by a small metal plate that kind of reminded me of a motherboard.

"No need to thank me. You're letting me stay here for a while, the least I can do is help you with your work." Mom extended her arm to me again, presenting me with the board I'd just given here. I sheepishly laughed while I replaced with as many different parts as I could find scattered around. "And it seems I'm not very good at it anyway." Mom sighed and looked up, selecting the EER from the pile of parts in her hand and handed the rest of them back to me.

"Hey, I could use another hand over here!" Dad screamed from the other side of the lab. I looked at my mother to see whether or not I could go and help him. She sighed.

"Fine, you can go help Jack. I'm probably faster on my own anyways," she said with a hint of a smile hidden in her voice. I wasted no time in jumping of the table I'd been sitting on and sprinted over to Dad's work. My head was spinning from all the different names, parts and inventions I didn't know. Helping my father would probably be a lot simpler. When I reached him, he was standing proudly with some sort of high-tech bow and arrows.

"What's that?"

"I call it the Fenton Ghost Piercer! I need some help testing it out," he said with a big smile on his face.

I gulped. "That's not gonna hurt, right?"

"That's what we're testing!"

"Guys, take it outside please! I'm trying to concentrate here!" Mom told us. Dad followed her instructions, and grabbed me by my arm before dragging me to the door. "Wait!" I tried to stop him, but he wouldn't listen. I wasn't getting out of this anymore.

I was floating a few inches above an empty parking lot, facing an orange jumpsuit clad ghost hunter, armed with weapons meant to destroy me. Yet, I was pretty calm.

"So... I basically just have to try to dodge those?"

"That's right, buddy! Weapons that can't even hit you have no chance against the king anyway. Don't hold anything back! This ain't training from now on, it's an all-out hunt!" After shrugging off some of the obvious degradation, a grin formed on my face. Dad with a bow and arrows? With his aim? This would be easier than stuffing the Box Ghost into the thermos. I flew higher, and signaled I was ready.

"Alright, here I come..." He got into position, and aimed at me. "Eat Ghost Piercer, ghost!" The arrow was released from his bow, and missed me by several feet. I laughed, and leaned back a little.

"Is that the best you can-" I was startled by an arrow flying in front of me, missing my face by a few hairs. No, it hadn't missed, I'd dodged it when I leaned back earlier. I turned my gaze to the direction the arrow had flown to, and sure enough it had changed its trajectory in mid-air.

"Wow!" I flew away at full speed, and made several sudden turns, but when I looked back not only was I still being followed by the darned arrow, the distance between us was getting smaller and smaller. Okay, I might have underestimated this a bit. I shifted my gaze to Dad, while circling above the parking lot. He followed my every move, and I could tell from his facial expression his new weapon was working better than expected.

"Well, he did say not to hold back. Let's raise the level of this test a bit." I turned intangible, and dove right into the ground, followed by the arrow. I came back above ground on the other side of the parking lot.

"That should've... Woah!" The arrow had followed my path while staying just an inch above the ground, and had almost completely closed in. Just in time, I could gain enough speed to avoid getting hit. This thing was amazing, as long as it wasn't aiming for me.

"Well, you're leaving me with no choice," I declared. I turned around, now flying backwards, so I could face the arrow. Destroying it with an ecto ray was probably not the best idea, freezing it sounded better. That way, he wouldn't have to build new ones later and could just melt the ice. After the arrow was incased by a cube of ice, it couldn't stay airborne anymore and fell to the ground. However, I didn't have much time to celebrate my victory. Not seconds later, I was hit in the stomach by some flying projectile. When I looked down, I saw it was a second arrow. I started falling down, and was forced to change back when I couldn't stay in ghost form anymore. I vaguely noticed Dad catching me before I couldn't stay conscious anymore either.

When I woke up, I found myself in the lab again. I was lying on some sort of mattress, and could hear the sounds of my parents working on their inventions. I tried to get up, but was struck by a stinging pain from my stomach. When I looked down at the place where I'd been pierced by the arrow, I saw some sort of ectoplasmic substance had been applied to the wound, like a cream of some sorts.

"What's this...?" I rubbed the green goo covering my stomach. It was soft and bouncy like jelly, but also sticky like glue.

"Don't touch it. The wound could open up again." I was startled by the sudden appearance of my father, whose giant figure was very intimidating to me, who was still somewhere halfway a sitting and lying position. He grabbed me under my arms, and helped me stand on the ground. His face was decorated with a giant grin of pride.

"The Ghost Piercer worked like a charm! Thanks to you, we can now perfect it!"

"Well, you're... welcome, I guess..." I was shot in the stomach though.

"Jack, aren't you forgetting something?"

"Forgetting... Oh, that's right! Vladdie said he wanted to speak you when you woke up!" I was reminded of my appointment with Vlad, and searched the walls for a clock. I found one just above the mattress. It was almost a quarter to nine. It seemed I had been out for quite a while.

"Woah, better get going," I told myself out loud. I left the lab and changed into my ghost form. I took off and flew all the way to the top floor in one go. I changed back, and found myself in front of the two big doors leading to Vlad's office. I slowly opened one of them.

Vlad was sitting at his desk, looking at a bunch of papers. He immediately looked up when he heard the door creak, and signaled for me to come closer. When I reached him, he made a weird sort of wave that I didn't understand.

"You wanted to speak with me?"

"Take that thing off. Don't worry, we won't be bothered." I finally understood his gesture, and lowered my hoodie. "Have you seen this before?" He pointed to a page, most likely ripped out of an old book, lying on his desk. It featured an illustration of three red orbs of different sizes.

"No, sorry."

"These are called the Blood Orbs. If all three are together, they could create a seemingly endless amount of energy. More than enough for Jack and Maddie's invention."

"So you found a power source? Great, where are they?"

"That's the point, I don't know. I've done endless amounts of research, but nothing about their location. I was hoping you could help me."

"Sorry, but I don't know anything about these Blood Orb things..." I searched my memory for any mention of the orbs, but I came back with nothing. Do I know someone who I could ask?

Wait...

Vlad sighed. "Back to square one, I see..."

"Wait!"

"What is it?"

"I might know something that can lead us to the Blood Orbs!"

"Then why didn't you say so in the first place? Tell me about it."

"It's called the..." I hesitated. This was Vlad I was talking to. When he got his hands on the Infi-map in my own timeline, well... you know what happened. Should I really tell him about my idea?

"Yes? Just so you know, I don't have all day," he told me with an impatient expression.

"You don't? What, need to take care of your cat?"

"I don't have a cat!" He loaded an ecto-blast in the palm of his hand. "Speak your mind, boy!"

"I was considering the possibility that if I told you, you would steal it and use it for evil." Vlad didn't look very amused at my comment.

"Back to this again, I see." He walked up to me, phasing through his desk in the process. He grabbed me by my collar and lifted me a few inches above the ground. "I won't let your weird ideas about me get in my way, how can I find the Blood Orbs!?" When he asked that question, his eyes turned a glowing red.

"It's just... I might be better if I go by myself..." That made Vlad so mad he threw me into one of his bookcases. I fell to the ground in a sitting position, and one of the books fell on my head, and then on the ground. It was a book about items from the Ghost Zone. I opened it and quickly found the page I was looking for. I showed it to Vlad.

"The Infi-map? Nonsense, that's just a legend."

"I know its location."

Vlad grinned. "And here I thought you were done surprising me." He changed into his ghost form and took a threatening pose. "Where is it?"

I crossed my arms. "Give it up, you can't steal it. It's well hidden and heavily guarded." Well, maybe not that heavy, but Vlad doesn't need to know. "If I go by myself, they might just lend it to me, but if you come along and start threatening them like you're doing now, you can give up on the map."

"...Fine. However," Vlad snapped his fingers. A short while later, the doors opened, and his secretary stood there. "She will accompany you."

"Into the Ghost Zone?" A woman of her age? Vlad snapped his fingers again, and the woman started glowing, melted together and reformed into a ghost. Instead of an old woman trying to look young, her ghost form looked like a mature young woman. She had green skin, her hair was neatly tied into a ponytail and she wore a long polka dot dress. My ghost sense went off.

"Wait, she's a ghost?" How did she manage to mask herself from my ghost sense?

"You're leaving tomorrow morning." He walked past the woman. "Keep an eye on him." Then he left the room through the door. I made eye contact with the woman for a moment, then she turned intangible and phased through the floor. I wanted to do the same, but my attention was drawn to Vlad's desk. I was taken aback by the amount of information on the Blood Orbs. I could see he'd really put an effort in searching for them. He genuinely wanted to defeat the ghost king. I sighed. Maybe I had been too hard on him. As such thoughts appeared in my mind, my eye fell on a small piece of paper that didn't seem like the others in the sense it didn't look old at all. I picked it up, and my jaw dropped from the shock. It was a photograph of my family. My parents, Jazz, and me.

He knew.