If Danny were being honest with himself, this wasn't how he imagined reaching his career goal. None of the flight simulators, flying throughout the country, or anything else he had learned about space could have prepared him to become the world's only hope to save a stranded astronaut on a mission to Mars.

The plan was relatively straightforward. Once the ship achieved liftoff, Danny would turn the spacecraft intangible to pass through the atmosphere for the rescue attempt. Once in space, Danny could push the craft closer to Mars with his superhuman strength… in theory.

Never had Danny felt this much pressure before. With all of the world's eyes on him, he alone was the only hope for the woman, and she was quickly running out of oxygen. Danny hadn't had time to train; his deal with the GIW after the Disasteroid was to help the world's governments in times of crisis - including at the drop of a hat.

Danny had suited up for the challenge and was ready to get on the ship when Sam grabbed his wrist. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her lips. When they parted, she said, "You better come back to me."

He let out his iconic chuckle. "This moment seems familiar somehow…."

Sam playfully slapped his arm with a smirk. "Go get her."

On the spacecraft, Danny's body went rigged as the countdown began. He closed his eyes, attempting to slow his breathing; he had a job to do.

And liftoff was achieved.

The force of the ship reaching the atmosphere clued Danny into going intangible. The entire spacecraft shifted with ease; at this point, Danny was a seasoned veteran for changing the tangibility of other objects. Holding it for so long - however - was another story. He clenched his teeth as a groan escaped him and sweat dripped down below his temples.

He heaved for air once he made it. "Uh… Phantom to… NASA? I've passed through the atmosphere successfully."

Over the comms unit, he could hear cheers erupting. "Nice work, Phantom. You know where you're going from here?" came a gruff voice on the other end.

"Aye, aye, Captain." he replied with a small salute.

"Uh… I ain't a captain, but I'll take that as a yes."

Danny was able to read the maps and radar on the screens around him for the most part. The crew had told him just where to go with as much precision as they could expect him to comprehend without a PhD in astrophysics.

"Here goes everything, I guess." Danny phased through his seatbelt and drifted through the windshield, out into the expanse of space. He looked around, only briefly in awe since he had been this far once before now. He turned to face the craft and flew to the back. He rubbed his hands together, pressed them up against the hull and pushed.

Unexpectedly, he moved the craft with relative ease. He had only done what he was about to attempt by accident a handful of times - and out his ass, no less - but he concentrated all of his energy from his core down to his feet. He breathed in… and released.

To his bewilderment, his ecto-blast shot out from both of his feet, jettisoning both the spacecraft and Danny forward with enough speed to aim toward their destination.

"Woohoo!" Danny whooped.

"Everything going accordingly, Phantom?" came the same voice over the comms.

Embarrassed, Danny chuckled. "Heh, you could say that."

At the speeds Danny could reach without the limitation of human technology, Danny could see Mars in the distance in just a few hours. "I think I'm close." he said.

"That's impossible," came back the familiar gruff tone of the man on the other end. "It would have taken the craft at least a day or two."

"We don't have that kind of time," Danny stated. "I tried some abilities I hadn't really tested before, but it worked. I'm almost there."

"Good work then, Phantom. We haven't had contact with our astronaut in two days now. Be prepared to find anything."

Danny nodded and pressed his lips into a thin line.

As Danny approached the landing site, he scanned the area best he could. The air around Mars was dry; Danny could feel his throat constrict and his lips tightened. He pressed forward a bit longer before he phased back through the craft and into the passenger seat. "Phantom to NASA, I've about to make a landing. Gonna need some guidance though."

"Alright, kid. Press those buttons glowing on your right and flip the switch up on your left. Pull back on the throttle, just like those sims."

"Roger that," he said, his voice strained. He did as instructed and gripped the control. He breathed in.

He pulled back on the throttle as the spacecraft passed through the atmosphere. Danny could feel the shuttle start to shake from the force and grit his teeth.

"Easy, Phantom. Bring it down easy."

"I'm trying," he said through teeth. He pulled back a little more on the control as the ship approached the ground… rapidly.

Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.

Danny closed his eyes as he rammed the throttle back as hard as he could. He could feel the rocky touchdown as he made a landing, but the craft was still moving too fast to stop.

Danny opened his eyes and looked around the controls. An alarm started to sound, making Danny flick his eyes down to the radar. He was in a mountain range… and was approaching a crevice in the ground.

"Phantom! Hit the controls!" came the voice in his ears again, blaringly loud.

Danny had other plans.

He phased through the front of the craft and braced his hands against the front of the ship. "I can do this… I can do this…." he whispered.

"Phantom!"

Danny went tangible again and threw his stance into the dusty red dirt of the planet he now faced, making his eyes water. The dryness of the planet was more than Danny had expected and he could feel his arms shake as he tried to slow the ship down. He peered back over his shoulder. If the craft went down, neither him nor the survivor were making it home. He swallowed back against the dryness and dug in.

Danny groaned and strained under the pressure. As the craft slowed but continued to approach, he cried out as the muscles in his arms burned and his breathing quickened. The ship creaked as it slid through the rocks and red dust tumbled around Danny. He clenched his eyes shut tight.

Finally, the burning stopped, his muscles relaxed, and he looked up. He let out his breath and slowly looked over his shoulder.

Well, at least I'm not teetering over the edge.

But he was damn near close, having about two feet between himself and the edge.

Danny slumped to the ground and reached a hand up to swipe at his forehead but clumsily slapped the glass in front of his face.

"Probably takes some getting used to," said the voice in his ears again, having heard the clang of the suit against the glass. "Nice work, kid. Quick thinking."

"Thanks, sir," he coughed back. He pressed his hands down in front of him and turned them over to examine the chalky sand. A puff of rusty smoke billowed as Danny let it slip through his gloved hands. "Any idea how close I am to her?"

"Give me a few minutes to pinpoint your exact coordinates on the planet."

Danny nodded - mostly to himself - and shakily made his way back into the ship. Inside, he looked around the storage cabinets, picking up supplies to stow in his backpack: several food and water packets, a fire blanket, a spare oxygen tank, an ecto-blaster (at the insistence of his parents), and a large, black, plastic bag with a zipper. Danny stuffed the last item into the bag with a turn of his stomach and tossed it over his shoulder.

"Given the landing, the urgency of the mission, inexperience, and all that, you're pretty damn close, kid. About four miles due southeast."

Danny faltered. "Do I have a compass that works on Mars, handy?"

"Should be strapped to the backpack."

He looked down at the strap to his left. There was a small dangling piece of metal. "Got it." He phased through the ship to look around him. He checked the compass. "You recommend flying or walking?"

"That depends. You feel confident floating around when you now weigh about… 40 pounds?"

Danny quirked his eyebrow. "Worth a shot, I guess." He did a little hop up and floated about 20 feet off the ground. "I'll definitely be faster this way." He threw his arms to one side, took a breath… and flew.

Danny had never been able to reach speeds like this before. He had loved the rush of chasing down ghosts on Earth or trying to teach Dani to meet him, but this was something else. Had he not been wearing the helmet, his eyes would have been tearing. His heart threatened to pound out of his chest; he'd only dreamt of truly being this free.

"Don't overshoot it," the voice warned him. "You should be approaching pretty quickly."

Danny scanned the area as he slowed himself down and caught his breath. He couldn't immediately see wreckage of the first ship or the tell-tale white space suit.

He furrowed his eyebrows. "I'm not seeing much of anything. Could the coordinates be wrong?"

"Doesn't look like it. Check the perimeter while I take a look."

Danny pursed his lips and flew up to get a better view. He put a hand over his forehead and squinted against the dry haze over the land.

His eyes widened. "I see something!" He sped down, aiming for a crevice in the ground. At a quick glance, it didn't look big enough for a spacecraft to fit inside, but upon further inspection, Danny could see that the gap widened a bit at the middle. What caught his eye, however, was the glint of light that bounced off of something.

Danny approached cautiously, spotting the culprit; the ship was wedged in the hole, tilted to one side. He went intangible and phased inside the ship.

Empty.

He looked around, flicked switches, and scoured for any information that could lead him to what happened to the pilot. He came up empty handed. "I found the ship, but she's not here."

"Not here? Are you sure?"

Danny pinched his lips into a thin line. His eyes narrowed as he approached the captain's chair. The window was tilted forward into the crevice… and broken.

"Oh no…."

"Phantom? What's wrong?"

"I… I - I think she fell."

"Fell? Where?"

Danny swallowed. "The ship is in some kind of rift the ground. The windshield is broken."

Danny could hear a sigh on the other end. "We'll inform the family. You can return to your craft, kid."

Danny's eyes widened. "What? She could be down there!"

"A fall like that would likely kill her. If not, it would at least break her gear somehow and she couldn't breathe. Let her go."

He squinted down into the crevice. "I'm going down there."

"Phantom, do not go down there. You are too valuable to our planet. One person is not -!"

"I'm too valuable?" Danny scoffed. "Tell that to the Guys in White before they found out." Danny phased through the window and took a nose-dive.

"Phantom!"

Not a moment after the shout, the comms turned to static. Danny clicked a button on his wrist to turn it off as he continued his descent.

Danny guessed the drop was about forty to fifty feet, making his mouth go dry. The hole was dark that far down, so Danny pressed his eyes shut and open again to reveal his night vision. It only took a few glances before he heard whimpering. He spun around.

Danny spotted the astronaut in a heap just a few feet away. She was still wearing her suit, but there were scratches covering it. Danny took notice of her labored breaths and wide eyes, so he approached slowly.

"Hey," he said quietly. He knelt down in front of her. "I'm Danny. What's your name?"

She sucked in a breath as she looked him up and down. "You… you're the Ghost Kid. You saved the planet."

Danny chuckled and thoughtlessly scratched at the back of his neck. "You got me there." He looked her over a little more carefully. It was his turn to suck in a breath when he saw the angles her legs were bent.

She looked down. "It's bad, I know," she said. "I've been in a lot of pain, but that doesn't matter now." Her voice wavered on the last word. "I might actually live now." Tears started running down her face.

Danny gave her a small smile. "That I can promise you."

"We're about to re-enter the atmosphere, Cap!" Danny said, settling back into the seat. He glanced over at Alice. "You're about to become a hero. First human on Mars and lived."

She chuckled. "You've got a pretty good outlook on the world, don't you?" She smiled. "Stay that way."

Danny received precise direction on how to properly land the craft back on the launch pad with Alice guiding him. As the craft was secured and sanitized of any space material, he gently helped her undo her suit and took off his own. Danny carried her in his arms as he walked out of the craft to greet the emergency team. As he helped put her onto the stretcher, she clutched his wrist. She locked onto his eyes. "Thank you. Thank you for not giving up on me."

Danny smiled and held her hand. "I might save the world once-in-awhile, but that'll never change either."

She smiled and was wheeled away.

The booming of fireworks forced Danny's gaze out over the field to the fence where the press and everyone else was waiting for him. But he focused his eyes on the girl in black at the front of the crowd with her poster that read, "YOU'RE DEAD IF YOU AREN'T ALREADY!"

Danny smirked and looked at his feet. He closed his eyes and phased back to human. He breathed in slowly and looked up at the clear sky.

"I've never felt more alive."