November Whyte sat in a corner of the holding cell the police had thrown her into.

Stripped of her identity…

Robbed of her name…

She hated the police. More than anything. Not enough to go on a mad cop-killing spree, maybe, but still more than anything else. At least these guys had let her keep her pants and T-shirt. Back home, they usually forced her into an orange prison uniform just because they knew how much she hated it. It was cruel and unusual, darn it!

She watched a guard walk by with thinly veiled hate in her eyes and fingered the set of lock picks that she kept sewn into the lining of her shirt. As soon as the far door slammed shut, she darted forward and went to work.

She smirked. Back home, they always kept her in a cell with an electronic lock.

At long last, it was Saturday morning, and Danny couldn't even go out with his friends because he had been grounding for coming home late. He sat the kitchen table and doodled on his homework while his parents talked about him over his head. Of course, they didn't realize they were talking about him. He tried, and failed, to hide a knowing smile as they discussed his alter ego's motives. They were decidedly perplexed.

Jack Fenton had spent most of night at the police station filing reports and telling his story to about sixty different people. He almost was arrested himself for trying to take matters into his own hands, but they decided to be lenient due to his role in rescuing the town from the occasional ghost infestation.

Upon finally returning home some time around four in the morning and waking up everyone in the house, he had gone on a very long, very loud rant about having been left alone with the police while the ghost kid just skipped away without a care in the world. It was now sometime after nine, and no one had slept since he got home. Jazz had finally become fed up and gone to the library. Danny was still stuck at home listening to his parents' theories.

"I tell you, Maddie," Jack muttered as he stopped pacing to fall into a chair. "That ghost kid is so much like Danny, it's scary." Danny froze and kept his eyes firmly glued to the paper in front of him. He could almost feel their eyes on him.

"You noticed that, too, huh?" Maddie replied vaguely.

Danny couldn't resist any longer. He tilted his eyes upwards slightly, and met his father's gaze.

When any living creature is scared into a state of panic, they will reflexively fight or run away. This common phenomenon, called the "fight or flight reflex," is built into the self-preservation instincts to enable one's continued survival. When said creature is able to terminate another's existence with little thought and less effort, it will often choose to fight without even realizing it. The ghost boy forced his eyes back down until he could get their color under control again.

"Danny?" his mother said sweetly. "Is there something you want to tell us?"

"Um…"

The TV flicked on suddenly and flipped through several stations before shutting itself off as whatever force abandoned it in favor of the toaster. Jack and Maddie jumped to their feet with a shout to grab their ghost hunting gear, which promptly began malfunctioning. Danny Phantom suddenly materialized to laugh at them before dashing off to fly upstairs. The two ghost hunters charged after him, leaving the real Danny to wonder what the heck just happened and why wasn't his ghost sense going off?

Oh.

He dropped his head into his hands as his not-really-a-ghost friend Kat Technus appeared sitting on the table in front of him. She leaned forward slightly. "You know you owe me now, right?"

"Why are you here, and how did you do that?"

Kat gave him a superior look and leaned back slightly. "Two, wouldn't you like know? And one, to warn you that Ebony Angel character escaped."

Danny's eyes flashed an angry green. "What?" The TV flicked on by itself again and switched to a local news station.

"…just vanished like that," Jack was grumbling as he led the way back downstairs. "That's exactly what he did to me yesterday!" Danny quickly hit the power button to turn the TV off again and grabbed his homework.

"Hey, mom?" he asked. "I need to go to the library and do some research. Is that okay?"

Maddie gave him a skeptical look. "This is something you can't do on the internet?"

"I…need…Jazz to help me."

His parents exchanged glances. Jack shrugged as though to say, "You're the one who grounded him." Maddie sighed and fixed her son with a stern glare. "If I find that you were hanging out with Sam and Tucker-"

"I know, I know," Danny said quickly. "I'll be grounded until I'm thirty." He shifted his weight from foot to foot while his mother regarded him suspiciously. At least this time, the suspicion was about his motives and not his ghostly counterpart. As soon as she told him to go, he practically flew out the door, dashed around the corner to summon said counterpart, and took off for the library.

He found Jazz thankfully alone in a far corner of the research section and materialized, eliciting a barely repressed squeal. "Danny!" she quietly exclaimed through her teeth.

"Angel escaped," he whispered. Jazz stammered to a stop in whatever lecture she was about give and looked at him blankly. He shoved his books into her hands and went on. "I told mom I'd be here. Can you cover for me?"

Jazz stared blankly for a second longer before shaking herself out of it. She nodded grimly. "Come back after you've dealt with her. I won't leave until you get here." Danny nodded tersely and started to fly away. He turned back as his sister reached out to grab his wrist. "Danny…stay safe."

The ghost boy grinned egotistically. "Oh, come on, Jazz. What can she possibly do to me?" He fazed through her hand and took off before she could remind him about the plasma gun and the rapidly healing gash in his arm. The knife wound had more or less vanished when he returned to his human form, and the scratches left by the banshee had stopped hurting as much. He thought he was perfectly capable of dealing with Ebony Angel now that he didn't have to baby-sit his dad. After all, that plasma gun was the only ghost-hunting weapon she had.

Now, if he could just find her...

Ebony Angel stood with one foot on a black-lacquered tailpipe, her arm straight up the air. She'd been firing energy bursts from her plasma gun for the past thirty minutes, and it was finally paying off. She lowered her arm as the black and white form of her current target came into view.

"Humans are like sheep," she called when Danny came within hearing distance. "Run them one way, and then run them the other. Eventually, they run down. Then you bring into the pen like good little lambs. But not you. You're like me."

"I'm nothing like you!" Danny objected.

Angel laughed and pulled off her helmet. "You're more like me than you know. Come down here. Show me your face. Show me who's behind the Phantom."

Danny hesitated a moment. He did not trust this woman at all, but he felt that something important was going on, something he was too young to understand. He landed and dismissed his ghost form. Angel seemed surprised.

She shook her head. "You really are just a boy…"

The boy inspected the face of hitherto anonymous enemy. Her skin was almost the color of attire, her hair a slightly lighter shade. Her eyes were so brown they were practically black. Suddenly, her chosen moniker made sense on a completely new level.

"I used to be like you, Mr. Hero," Angel continued. She seemed nervous to be seen without her helmet.

"What changed?" Danny asked. He pointedly stared in an effort to augment his advantage.

"I did," she answered with an uncaring shrug. "Do you know what it's like to try to do good deeds when no one cares? It can really jade a lady after a while. So one day, out of spite, I decided to prove them right. I killed my first man that day, and turned my back on this." She gestured at her face. "Back then, I tried to be a hero. Now, my only goal is bringing down El Diablo Roho by any means necessary."

"Who's that?" Danny asked vaguely. His mind was on what she had said. He felt that way sometimes, that no matter what he did, no one would care. After all the people he had saved, all the ghosts he had defeated, even his parents wouldn't believe he was anything other than evil. Maybe he did have something in common with Angel.

She replaced her helmet and waved her arm nonchalantly. "It doesn't matter to you. You'll never have to meet him. Listen, kid. I don't want to kill you anymore. You remind of myself. Just walk away from this."

Danny went back into ghost mode. He set his jaw and shook his head. "Maybe we are a little alike," he admitted. "But I'll never become like you. And I won't walk away, either. That's my dad you're trying to kill." He fancied Angel was shocked by that revelation; she was certainly silent for long enough. Eventually, however, she mounted Sweetheart.

"Sorry you won't live to see your next birthday, kid," she said, sounding honestly apologetic.

Danny floated into the air and charged both hands with ecto energy. "I might surprise you."