The power still was not on the next day, which meant that Danny was accidentally allowed to sleep in. He roamed downstairs around noon to say his goodbyes to his parents and sister before running off to enjoy the taste of freedom from bullying. The park was unusually active, so he simply kept walking. He was not even remotely in the mood to listen to Soul Fire yet again, and he could hear them playing at the park center's small stage.

It was a nice day, if slightly overcast. Perfect flying weather, but he didn't feel like meeting Valerie again. If she managed to hit him with another poisoned razor disc, and he accidentally changed back in front of her, he'd never get a moment's peace again.

The cemetery was deserted as he walked past it, and he stopped to remember a morning that never happened when he had met Electra for the second time. She had been leaning against one of the headstones, being her usual mysterious self. He wound his way past the graves; just because he couldn't see her didn't mean she wasn't there. However, while he found the stone she had been leaning against, the ghost girl was still nowhere in sight. Deciding that if she wanted to talk she could find him, he turned to go, and his breath caught in his throat.

"Katrina Andrea Technus," he read. "1979 to…" The date of death had apparently been chiseled away. "To our beloved Kitty KAT, who rests somewhere between the sun and the moon…"

And the answer lies somewhere between the sun and the moon, but I'm not going to tell you where, she had said when he unintentionally voiced his confusion that he couldn't sense her.

"Are you dead or not?" he asked quietly. "1979…"

He quickly grabbed his cell phone and dialed Tucker's number. At the lack of a response, he shut off the phone with a disgusted growl, changed into a ghost, and flew home. He decided not to bother with the front door; if the power was still out, he wouldn't be staying. In accordance with Murphy's Law, it was, which he discovered when he tried to turn on the lights. He hovered in his room and tried to think. How could someone be dead and alive at the same time?

He blinked and looked down at himself with a wry grin.

But that still didn't explain Kat. There had been a date of death on that stone; he could see the worn scratches left from its removal. And if she was born in 1979, there was no way she could only be fourteen. So if she died and was a ghost, why didn't she set off his ghost sense? And if she wasn't dead, why didn't she look older?

Danny ground his teeth. There were far too many questions, and far too few answers. He couldn't look on the internet for anything pertaining to her. Sam and Tucker were off enjoying Soul Fire's park concert, so he couldn't talk to them…

He grinned and went invisible to dive into the kitchen. His parents were gone again, but Jazz was still there, reading one of her psychology books by the light of the battery-powered Fenton Lantern. "Hey, Jazz," he said, fading back into view.

Jazz squealed and grabbed her heart. "Darn it, Danny! You scared the life out of me!"

"Sorry," he responded, not sorry at all. He went back into human mode and sat down across from her. "I just need someone to talk to."

Instantly, Jazz's whole demeanor changed to "concerned big sister". "What's wrong?"

"Oh, nothing bad," he was quick to assure her. "I just have this friend, and I'm not sure if she's a ghost or not. I found her grave, but the death date was carved out of it. And I think she may be behind the blackouts, but I don't want to believe that. I want to trust her." He hunched over miserably and sighed.

Jazz smiled and moved around to put her hand over his. "Danny, sometimes you just have to go with your instincts. If you really feel that you want to trust her, then you should. And if it turns out that you can't, then at least you'll know for sure."

He thought about that for a while. He did want to trust Kat, but he had wanted to trust Pandora as well. Of course, Pandora had only been doing what she thought was right in her own twisted way… "Thanks, Jazz," he said sincerely.

She ruffled his hair and ignored the resulting green-eyed glower. "That's what big sisters are for."

The power stayed out until close to midnight, meaning that rehearsals were canceled. Although Danny went by the auditorium later, Kat wasn't there. She was absent, as well, from her preferred karaoke bars, and steadfastly refused to be at any of the city's record stores. Finally, Danny went by her favorite parking garage; still no sign. He hovered above the top level and stared down at the darkened streets.

Kat was avoiding him; that much was painfully obvious. He didn't know her well enough to tell whether she had been angry or hurt when she sent him away, but he had a sinking feeling that it was the latter. Warring with that feeling, however, was the knowledge that she had been at the power station when both blackouts occurred. She was obviously close enough to her father to come and go as she pleased from his lair, but that didn't mean that she was evil.

Did it?

It occurred to him that she might be at her grave, but he decided not to check. He would simply trust her, and if she betrayed that trust…

Ghost, half-ghost, or not a ghost at all, he had a feeling she could still be sucked into the Fenton Thermos.

Danny picked at the tasteless cafeteria food and stared mournfully at his friends who had chosen to sit at a different table today. They were angry, and he wasn't sure why, but he suspected it had something to do with the class-wide detention from which he had been exempt. Any and all attempts to talk to them about it had resulted in stone-faced silence.

He was not having a good day. Dash had taken special care to shove him into his locker between every class, and Sam and Tucker refused to let him out. This, of course, meant that he was forced to wait until everyone else went to class so that he could become intangible and escape, which further meant that he was late to every class.

He repressed a cold shudder. In his distracted misery, it took several seconds of watching his breath before he realized that his ghost sense was going off. He froze, then casually got up and walked into the deserted hall. After a cursory glance to confirm that no one was watching, he turned into Danny Phantom and dove invisibly back into the cafeteria to find the ghost.

As he drifted around above everyone's heads, the lights started to pulse and two of them exploded directly above the cool kids' table. He shouted and threw himself at popular girl Paulina to shield her from the sparks.

"Get off of me, you freak!" she shouted, fighting her way away from him.

Danny paused in astonishment. While Paulina despised him as a human, she adored him as a ghost to the point that she kept a shrine to him in her locker. His puzzlement was short-lived, however, as burning agony coursed through him in the form of an electric current from the two exploded lights. He dropped to his hands and knees on the floor, fighting to retain consciousness before he transformed back into a human in front of everybody. In a sudden burst of insight, he went intangible and fell through the floor into the blessedly empty boiler room. He was out cold before he even hit the floor.

His surroundings slowly swam into focus. He wondered why his room looked so strange, and why was his bed so hard? He pulled himself to a sitting position and looked around.

"What…?" he began, then the day's events slammed into his brain with enough force to almost knock him out again. He put a hand on his head as meager defense against the growing migraine and stood weakly. Shaking slightly from the powerful shock, he made his way across the floor and practically crawled upstairs. Thinking was painful, but his brain seemed determined to do so anyway.

Exploding lights and electric jolts were two of Kat's main methods of attack. Kat was behind the blackouts. She was draining the power from city, and she…

"She's evil," he whispered, betrayed.

"Danny?" yelled the voice of his mother. He had never been so happy to hear her in his life. He didn't even bother to wonder what they were doing there, or care if anyone was around to see. He fell into her arms and sobbed from pain, both physical and emotional.

"What happened, son?" Jack asked once Danny had calmed down some. He very nearly blurted out the whole story beginning from all those months ago.

"A ghost…" he sniffled. That was true enough, at least.

Instead of the expected outburst, his parents merely exchanged a knowing look. "Did it hurt you, sweetie?"

He started to shake his head, but what was the point of denying being involved? They already knew. "It shocked me," he confessed. "Knocked me out, and I woke up in the basement."

Again with that knowing look. "When you didn't come home," Maddie started. "We knew something was wrong. We thought that ghost boy had kidnapped you."

He shook his head. "He saved my life." Well, that was true, too. If he hadn't been half-ghost and in ghost form when he got shocked, it probably would have killed him.

This time, the exchanged glance was puzzled incredulity, but they didn't press him further. Instead, after some argument about taking him to the hospital, they took him home. He spent the entire ride in a kind of numb disbelief. He had never been betrayed like that before. Once, Tucker had turned on him, but that was different. He had been under a spell and couldn't be held responsible for his actions.

Kat had no such excuse. He should never have trusted her; she was the daughter of one of his enemies, after all. They were probably at the lair now, laughing at his stupidity.

He was barely aware of his surroundings as his dad half carried him to his room. He stared up at the ceiling in an electroshock-induced daze and listened vaguely as his parents discussed forcing him to go to the hospital anyway. Finally, however, they left. In the darkness, a pair of angry green eyes suddenly began to glow.

A/N: Faded Hope: You know, I was thinking those two names sound familiar...It's possible I inadvertantly stole them from somewhere. But dang if I can think where...And as for your comments, /grins evilly/ I'm not telling. I will give you this, though. I myself only figured out what was going on with Kat this morning. She's a mystery even to me.