She looked around the darkened mists, aware of the heavy breathing but ignoring it for now. "What do you want with Danny?" she called out.

"Danny's a good boy," Silver replied as she faded into view. Her smile tried to be tender, but only succeeded in looking predatory. "I love him as though he were my own, and I only have his best interests at heart."

"You stay away from my son!"

"Ah, madre, it's been a pleasure. But he's mine now: my amante…my lover…"

"And you're mine," whispered a chilling voice right next to her ear.

Danny lowered the unconscious Ed to the ground and gave a pained sigh; carrying the man around had not helped his healing process any. As he turned to survey his location, he wondered why Silver had suddenly decided to be helpful, suspecting that it had something to with the fact that Creeper had almost gotten her. Much as he didn't like the murderous ghost, he had to smile at that. It proved Silver was fallible after all and made her seem more human.

But even more than that, it proved that she could be beaten.

A gasp drew his attention back to Ed, who jerked awake looking around frantically. He actually squealed when he saw Danny, then relaxed as he remembered the boy was a good ghost.

Danny smiled slightly and leaned down. "You okay?"

Ed returned the smile and rubbed the back of his head. "I think that young woman gave me a concussion," he confessed, abashed.

"You're lucky she didn't do worse." Danny waited for the man to find his footing, then gestured toward the sewer. "I have to go down there. If you want, I can set on a roof or something until I rescue Maddie."

"If you don't mind, I think I'd be safer with you."

"Just stay behind me," the boy said with shrug as he led the way down. He blasted a mainliner before it could notice him and made sure Ed was down safely, then drifted through the disgusting environment. He tried to think of a time he had been somewhere worse; sadly, nothing came to mind. Ed muttered something behind him, but he didn't pay much attention.

He was afraid for his mother. She was down here somewhere with a sadistic murderer that made Haight look almost pleasant, and he was relatively certain that it was his fault. He couldn't think of any particular reason for it, but it nagged at him nonetheless, a vague feeling that there was something he should have done. He pushed it out of mind; agonizing over it wasn't going to help Maddie get free of Creeper. Doing something about it would.

A bumble bee ran around in his head for a few seconds, but Silver must have changed her mind. Ed clapped a hand over his mouth as a few rats nearly startled a scream out of him. A slayer dropped down from the ceiling and was promptly blasted. Something screeched from deeper in the sewers.

It was too quiet. That really should have been a good thing, but it made the boy uneasy. Monsters traveled in packs, but he had only met two, and from two different types at that. Something was wrong other than the obvious.

"What do you know about Creeper?" he asked, just to break the silence. His voice sounded unnaturally loud in the stillness.

Ed gave him a suspicious glance, then shrugged. "Oh, not much more than you, I'm sure," he answered in a guarded tone.

Danny returned the glance and decided not to press the issue. He had dealt with enough evil masterminds to know when someone was hiding something, but it might simply have meant that Ed didn't trust him. It was probably just the uneasy feeling he had since arriving here that made his traveling companion seem suspicious.

A female scream split through the sewers, followed by the sound of Creeper's excited gasping. "Mom!" Danny yelled fearfully. Completely forgetting about Ed, he shot forward to follow the sound of Maddie's voice and time stopped. She appeared a few feet away, her hand stretched out to reach him. Behind her loomed Creeper, engulfed in darkness. Then the image was gone, and Danny stopped short with a wordless cry of rage. "Let her go, Creeper!" he demanded.

Creeper giggled, his voice coming from everywhere. "Oh, does she…does she…mean something to you? Is she important to you? Does….does…does she take care of you? …Like a good WHORE?"

"She's not a whore!" Danny blasted into the darkness at random as the sound of mad laughter faded away. Sadly, he didn't manage to hit anything. He hovered with one hand protectively over his injured stomach and the other clenched into a tight fist, breathing heavily from the exertion, which made the pain worse. He closed his eyes and tried to calm down.

Ed walked forward, ostensibly to offer comfort, although he really just wanted an excuse to actually touch a ghost. "Are you okay?" he asked.

Danny gasped and jerked away as Ed touched one of the wounds on his back, then grinned apologetically. "Sorry. I got stabbed earlier. We better go after him."

The scientist regarded the ghost boy for a few minutes as they progressed. He had a multitude of questions, of course; who wouldn't, faced with a real ghost? There was one in particular, but he wanted to lead into it. "You got stabbed in the back?" he asked instead.

"Um…all the way, through, actually. In two different places."

"What could hurt a ghost?"

"A blue slayer."

Ed nodded understandingly. He, personally, had never seen one of the monsters that had been dubbed "captains", but he had heard of them from several reliable sources. Supposedly, they glowed with an ethereal light and were impervious to all manner of weapons; he theorized that they were the ghosts of the various monsters.

He continued to pelt the increasingly irritable ghost boy with all manner of questions, very few of which the boy could actually answer. Finally, having assuaged most of his curiosity, Ed asked, "Why did you call Maddie Fenton 'Mom'?"

Danny froze. He supposed he could tell the man the truth, but the thought made him cringe. He hadn't even been able to tell his parents; was telling a complete stranger really any easier? He looked around as though an answer might jump out of hiding.

Ed grinned, thinking he had the whole mystery solved. "It's just that you look a lot like their son…"

"Their…son?" Danny laughed nervously. "Yeah, you know, I…I get that a lot…heh…"

The man nodded superiorly. "So that's why you haunt them. You're Danny's twin brother, aren't you?"

Danny opened his mouth to deny whatever had been said, then what he had heard clicked and he shut it again. "Um…no…" He took off again, but Ed could be very persistent when he wanted.

"Come on, what's your real name? I know it's not Phantom. Is it…David?"

"No."

"Donny?"

"Nope."

"Devon?"

Danny mumbled something under his breath. "It's Danny, okay? Danny Phantom."

There was a short pause. "They gave you both the same name?"

"We're not-"

He was cut off by a loud bang and threw himself forward to just avoid being hit by a speeding bullet. Ed whimpered as the growling of a dozen maulers heralded the presence of Copperfield

"You again?" Danny exclaimed. He was just about to point out that the dogs couldn't hurt him until he realized that, in addition to being larger than normal maulers, this breed was surrounded by a blue glow. He gulped, grabbed Ed, and shot straight up, only to slam most painfully against the ceiling and fall back down.

"I'm not one of those mindless malefactors, boy," Copperfield pointed out. "I learn from my mistakes. The woman may have eluded me for now, but you certainly will not." He used the barrel of his rifle to point at his quarry and addressed the hounds. "Sic'em!"

Ed cried out and tried to run, but only succeeded in falling on his face; fortunately, the area was relatively free of muck. He put his hands over his eyes and waited for the hounds to close in for the kill.

Danny blasted the one in the lead, then grabbed Ed by the back of the shirt and shot forward through the close tunnels. The man peeked out from between his fingers and yelled fearfully as a wall came within inches of his face. After that, he just kept his eyes tightly shut and let the ghost boy do the work.

"You are only making it worse on yourselves!" Copperfield called. "The more you run my hounds, the hungrier they get! And they are vicious when they are hungry!"

"Then I'll just have to make sure they don't catch us, won't I?" Danny returned. This was, without a doubt, the most nerve-racking flight he had ever taken. He was going as fast as he could, but the maulers were still right behind him. If he slowed down at all, they'd catch him, but if he didn't he was afraid he would crash. And at 112 miles per hour, he might survive, but Ed certainly wouldn't.

The tunnel opens onto a water station up ahead; I suggest you go up.

He passed something white; although he was flying too fast to see any details, he knew who it had to be. "Why should I trust you?" he yelled, unsure whether or not she could actually hear him.

You're so cute when you're confused…

Was she trying to flirt?

A huge pipe suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Danny thought he screamed, but he wasn't paying enough attention to be sure. Rather than try to faze through it and risk not being able to, he decided to trust Silver on the grounds that they were both dead anyway. Fortunately, she had been telling the truth. He ducked through another tunnel to escape the gunfire, then dropped Ed and collapsed to the ground. Somewhere along the way, he had started bleeding again, which he noted with an irritated sigh.

Well done, amante!

"Come on," Danny said, standing. "Let's get out of here before anything else decides to chase us around." He pulled the whimpering man to his feet and hauled him along.

She held her hands over her face as the image of Danny faded. A cold ring of metal lightly touched her temple as her tormentor said, "You see? I won't let Copperfield have him. He's mine, and I won't let anyone stand in my way. Not even you…"