The happy chattering of students filled the lunchroom. It was finally the middle of the day, which meant that school was half over. Sadly, Danny was unable to share in the mirth. He stabbed at the mystery meat with his spork and sighed.
"Oh, come on, Danny," remarked his best friend Sam. "It can't be that bad."
The boy scoffed and stabbed his plate so hard his spork snapped. "You have no idea." He sighed again and dropped the remaining half. "All I've heard about since she showed up is how horrible her foster parents were and how abused she's been."
"Maybe you're being too hard on her, man," his other best friend Tucker pointed out.
"Yeah, well, if I thought for a minute any of it was true, I wouldn't be. But she's so perky and happy, she makes Jazz look normal."
He cringed as a high-pitched voice squealed, "Hi, Danny!" He was suddenly the center of highly amused attention as his identical twin bounced over to their table and claimed the open seat next to a suddenly awe-struck Tucker as though she belonged there. She grinned happily and introduced herself. "Wow! Isn't this great, guys? We're like one big happy family!"
Danny mumbled something incoherent and fought the near-irresistible desire to turn invisible.
"Wow!" Fiona squealed. It seemed to be the only thing she was capable of doing. "I really like this school! It's so much nicer than where I came from!"
"Where was that?" Sam asked, ignoring Danny's hissed instruction not to encourage her.
Fiona sniffed and pouted a bit. "It was just horrible," she answered in a false sad tone. "Everyone was so mean to me. No one understands me."
"I know exactly how you feel," Sam confided.
Danny dropped his head into hands. Just like at home, Fiona was suddenly the center of attention. She and Sam were prattling on like old friends while Tucker stared longingly, apparently at a loss for pickup lines. It was really disturbing to watch. At home, his parents had fawned all over her, and Jazz seemed to have forgotten he existed a few times. There was something wrong, but what?
The rest of the day couldn't pass quickly enough. He spent most of it being pelted with questions that he didn't know the answers to. Most notable was the majority of the boys he knew asking if she was single. Apparently, they thought she was really hot. Even Tucker. And considering that she looked almost exactly like Danny himself, that was very disturbing to him.
When school finally let out, he found himself thrown to wayside by even his friends as everyone gathered around to ooh and ah over his twin at the Nasty Burger. With a noise of disgust, he walked to the cemetery. Since it was too early to take in Amity Park's nightlife, the person he was looking for could probably found there. Unless she was flipping through magazines at that grocery store she liked.
Kat was a creature of habit. She liked things to not change. She had joked once that the world could come to an end, and she'd still sit in her favorite booth at the Hot Pink Lizard and listen to karaoke all night.
Sure enough, he found her sitting on her own headstone. She was in jeans and a t-shirt for once; considering her usual mode of attire was a top hat and coat over a frilled white shirt and old fashioned slacks, it was very strange to see. She squinted as she glanced in his direction and shielded her eyes. "Ah, geez! Danny?"
He stopped in confusion as she blinked owlishly in his general direction. "Kat? Are you okay?"
She rubbed her eyes. "Yeah, it's just really dark for some reason, and you're really bright by comparison. Is Dad draining the power again?" She held up a hand and shook her head. "No, no. Don't bother. I already know he's not. If he was, it would only be affecting power lines and the like, not everything."
Danny stared for a few seconds. Kat was something like a ghost, so she had something like ghostly powers. He knew one of those powers was the ability to see electrical energy fields since she was an electric ghost…like-creature…
He shrugged and sat down under the nearby tree; it was little use asking questions. She enjoyed being mysterious too much. Instead, he sighed, something he seemed to be doing a lot of lately. "I have a twin sister," he announced.
"Fascinating, I'm sure," Kat answered, completely unmoved.
He nodded slightly. "Yeah. I'm serious." She lifted an eyebrow and tilted her head in his direction. "Apparently, she was kidnapped when we were six months and got sold to some people who treated her like a slave and made her live the basement."
"That bites."
"It would bite more if it were true, but she's just…I don't know…not depressed enough, I guess. I just don't think I believe her."
Kat chewed on the knuckle of her index finger for a few minutes, then shook her head. "What do Jack and Maddie think?"
Danny stood to pace angrily. "That the sun rises and sets around her! And it's not just them either! Everyone is acting this way! There's something wrong. And, of course, Jazz says I'm just being jealous." He ended with a growl and let his eyes flash green, then looked up hopefully as a thought struck him. "Hey, you don't know of any ghosts like that, do you?"
Kat shook her head. "Nope, sorry. Spectra maybe, but that's not her M.O. But I can go ask around." She stood, and her usual clothing appeared around her. "Meet me back here same time tomorrow and I'll tell you what I learn. Cheerio." She drew a glowing circle in the air, a portal to her father's lair in the Ghost Zone, and vanished through it.
Danny waved half-heartedly and changed into a ghost to fly around the city for a while. He would have liked Kat to stay; he could have used the sanity. But if he was lucky, she would find out that flawless Fiona Fenton was really an evil ghost, and he'd be able to give her a sound thrashing.
That thought made him smile.
"…And then I got sold to Mexico!" Fiona said far too brightly for someone in her supposed position.
Danny picked at his food while the rest of his family was gathered around his "sister". They had been acting somewhat strangely ever since he got home. Fiona had gone to the mall with her new fan club, and so wasn't home yet. His parents had been going about their daily routines in somewhat of a daze. They barely acknowledged his presence, even when the Fenton Finder started going off. Jazz had been the same way when she got home, as well.
When Fiona finally got back, they had started to act their usual selves again for a few minutes. Then the fawning had started again. It was as though she had them hypnotized, further convincing the ghost boy that she was an evil ghost. It didn't matter that she didn't set off his ghost sense; he had encountered something like it before. In that case, the two ghosts had been working from very far away; he could feel their power, but had been unable to sense them. This felt almost the same way.
He finished choking down his dinner and sneaked upstairs where it was quiet. While he never been a huge fan of homework, puzzling though math was almost pleasant compared to the nonstop jabbering. He wanted to get it finished before patrolling the city since Lancer had informed him in no uncertain terms that he would be suspended if he turned in one more half-finished assignment. Fortunately, the ghost attacks had been quiet of late.
"Sold to Mexico…" he muttered, uncertain whether to laugh or throw up. That girl's story had more holes in it than the Wal-Mart parking lot. His family had to have been hypnotized; Maddie would never have believed that fairy tale under normal circumstances.
Suddenly, his door slammed open and he cringed. "Don't you ever knock?" he demanded after the obligatory squealed greeting.
Fiona sat on the edge of his bed, bouncing excitedly. "Uh oh!" she chastised, shaking her finger at him. "Looks like Mr. Grumpy got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning!"
He repressed the desire to start throwing ectoplasmic energy blasts at her. "Do you mind? I'm trying to do my homework."
"Homework is boring!" Fiona cried, throwing herself back against the bed. "Let's do something! Why don't we go to the park?"
"I don't have time." Danny looked down at his math book and tried to ignore the girl.
"Oh, come on! Let's do something here! How about…I spy…with my little eye…"
"Would you just get out of here already?" he yelled.
Fiona cringed slightly, then stuck out her tongue. "It was just a game. Lighten up."
Not so very long ago, the Fentons had been invited to go ghost hunting on an abandoned prison island by the name of Carnate. Although they were only there for a few hours, Danny spent most of that time stuck in a nightmare courtesy of the insanely twisted Silver Meryll Santiago. She had shown him horrible images of his family dying in the most brutally depraved ways, all the while telling him it was just a game. Fiona used that same patronizing tone that Silver had.
The pencil snapped in Danny's hand. He jumped to his feet so quickly that he kicked his chair quite a ways behind him. "GET OUT!" he roared, as memories of that time became confused with what was actually going on.
Fiona actually cowered for a second before fleeing as fast as her feet would carry her. Danny stayed where he was, fists clenched and eyes closed, trying to sort out reality from remembrance. He had been reacting to Silver, not Fiona. His twin had merely brought out a flashback of that private war. It didn't bother him like it had, but every once in a while, something would happen to bring it all back. Her tone coupled with her words had been that something.
He slowly righted his chair and sank into it, then dropped his head into his hands and counted to ten. He was not some angsty teenager; he was not depressed; he was not going to do something he'd regret later…
Finally, he went back to his homework and was able to enjoy blessed silence for the rest of the day.
A/N: For those of you just joining us, Kat first appears in Pandora's Box, and has been a fixture in my stories ever since. Silver was from my last fic, Cat and Mouse. I apologize for the bit of angst there at the end, but it seems kind of shallow to have him just go on as if he'd never been totured like that.If this was real life, he'd still be affected by it in some way or another.