Ariel woke to her sister and brother screaming. Ariel quickly quieted them down and looked to see a hole in the wall of their safe place. Ariel quickly found some wood and ripped the boards apart. She boarded up the hole and prayed that no ghost came through. She hugged her siblings dearly and watched the monitor. She had changed it to the screen that was on the street, she could barely make out the hole, but it was there. She watched as ghosts sped by and didn't notice their hole. Skye gave a sigh of relief and put her finger up to her mouth before letting her siblings go back to their hiding spots. Now, there could be no talking, at all.

She stared at the monitor, making sure no ghost noticed the hole that could penetrate into their safe place. She shook her head to keep herself awake and watched the monitor more. More and more destruction was taking place, but she didn't care. She only cared about her siblings. She didn't care what happened to her, as long as nothing happened to disrupt Jason's brilliant eyes that were blue and intelligent, or Skye's perfect smile that made all the adults let her go ahead of them in line for ice cream.

Ariel smiled at them. They were sleeping together, not bothering each other, or poking each other. They were the perfect siblings, they were her siblings. Ariel turned back to the monitor and watched it like she would watch a thief. She never looked away until Skye or Jason could substitute her when she needed sleep. They ate their rations slowly and the food would be able to be used for over a year if they kept the rationing the same. The water was twice the amount of food and rationing was even more important on that than the food.

For five weeks, progress didn't change, the ghosts were still causing mayhem and nobody was strong enough to stand up to them. Ariel grew tired of watching the monitor, but she couldn't look away because her siblings were sleeping. She decided to change the screen for just a second to check on how the other survivors were faring. There was nobody in view. She changed it through several different screens and saw that nobody was left, even the ghosts had move to a different town. She kept changing the screens and didn't see one ghost or living human. She sighed with relief as she woke her siblings and told them that the ghosts were gone. Her siblings cheered without making a sound, but feared going outside.

Ariel promised them she would be back as soon as she found someone else and left them alone. She opened the door and shut it quietly behind her. Ariel looked around to make sure there were no ghosts and turned on her Specter Deflector. She walked through the body ridden streets and empty buildings, searching for survivors. She saw a comic book store that had Danny Phantom on the cover. She opened it to see that the author was a man named Tucker Foley and that he claimed to know the secret identity of Danny Phantom. Ariel shook her head and put the comic back down on the rack.

"Danny Phantom does not and has never existed." She reassured herself after remembering when her siblings had claimed to see her eyes change color and glow. She looked around the comic book store to see an old man dead. She bent down to close his eyes and saw something in his hand. She took it out to find a letter, she knew she shouldn't read it, but the man was dead anyway.

It read:

Sam! Danny isn't dead, he found a way to stay alive! I don't know where he is, but he said something about the ghost zone and Vlad. I think Vlad has captured Danny! Sam, I hope you get this soon. The ghost invasion is just another one of Plasmius' plans to get Danny to join the 'dark side!' We have to help him!

Signed, Tuck

"Sam? Tuck? Who are they?" Ariel asked. "She looked back at the comic books. Danny Phantom's name read across the top, but Tucker Foley's was underneath it. "Tuck is a nickname for Tucker!" Ariel cried.

"What was that?" Someone said, or something. Ariel ducked under the desk, next to the old, dead man. She was quiet until the things left and she made sure they were gone before peeking out of the desk.

"If Tucker is talking about Danny," Ariel started. Hey eyes looked back to the comic, "then Danny must have existed! The letter says he's alive, but joined the dark side. Who is Sam? Why are these two adults talking about the world-saving teenager?" Ariel crawled out of the desk fully and grabbed a comic book. She started to open it but heard footsteps coming her way. She ducked under the desk again when a frail voice asked for Tucker. Ariel stepped out from underneath the desk and saw an old woman crying over her lost friend.

"Are you Sam?" Ariel asked.

The woman nodded and dried her tears. "Who are you?"

"I'm Ariel. I found this note and," Ariel looked at the comic book in her hand as the old woman read the letter.

"So you guessed who he is?" The old woman smiled up at Ariel and couldn't help noticing her blue eyes.

"Yeah," Ariel looked at the ground. The sight of a depressed, old woman feeling sympathy for her made her (if nothing else) uncomfortable.

"Danny was a good friend of ours. He always had to run off somewhere and fight some ghost that had appeared outside of the ghost zone. He came after us when we were kidnapped. His ghost-self keeping him young and the realm we were in had a different speed of time. We were supposed to die seven years ago." The old woman smiled. "It took him seven years to find us, but he never gave up. He always kept looking."

"You were the two teenagers who were kidnapped!" Ariel said quietly.

The old woman nodded and began to walk outside. "We have to get you away from all of these ghosts. Here, there's a place in my home that hasn't been destroyed yet."

"I can't," Ariel stopped as she remembered her siblings, "I have to go get my brother and sister first."

"Alright dear, I'll come with you." The woman smiled and noticed Ariel's blue eyes again. They looked like Danny's, she commented to herself.