Good evening, good people! Or morning. Or afternoon. Or night.

Here's the first chapter of the fic. I hope the prologue satisfied most of you!

Chapter One: Normalcy

"Come on, Ellie!" exclaimed Jake to his sister. "School starts in twenty minutes!"

Ellie came bursting out the door, pulling her coat on. "Don't worry, I'm here. You really should try to think positively."

"You be positive," replied Jake. "I'll be realistic."

Both fourteen year-old children got onto their hover-scooters, taking off from the landing platform towards Casper High. It would be difficult to make it there on time; the traffic during this time of day was just horrible.

As they sped through the air, they looked at the superstructure of the city: made entirely of glass and steel, towering dozens of stories above the ground. Amity Park was a center of commerce now, if a small one. This would most definitely be expected. Fentonworks made its main headquarters here.

Jake and Ellie's father, Danny Fenton, was the CEO of the company. It had been he who had introduced its products into the commercial market, pulling it out of its first focus: ghost-hunting. Nowadays, Fentonworks was the world's leading producer of commercial goods in one way or another; it owned at least five-hundred businesses worldwide.

Its main competitor, Dalv Corp., excelled in another field: weaponry. About seventy percent of all police, military, and commercial firearms in the US alone were patented by Dalv. Their father's company had never even entered this field, partly accountable to Danny's pacifistic nature. He didn't like guns.

They saw the school and lowered altitude outside. Two teens, a boy and girl about their age, were rushing out the doors that led to the quad to greet them.

"Over here!" yelled the girl, waving her arms. The twins landed next to the two, pressing a button on their scooters. The chrome-colored machines began to fold up, ending as sheets of metal the size of books. They packed the vehicles in their bags, then turned to the two.

"Hi, Chrissy," said Jake, addressing the girl. "We're not late, are we?"

"Oh no," said the boy with a hint of accent. "Not yet."

"Oh good. For a second, David, I thought–"

The bell sounded over the quad.

David grinned. "Now you're late."

The day went by slowly. At the start of their freshman year, by some weird and unwanted coincidence, Jake and Ellie had obtained the exact same schedules. This proved irksome for the both of them, one constantly trying to best the other in academics. Their parents never stressed that enough.

The first three classes, Social Studies, PE, and Math, were the least favorite of one or the other, if not both. Jake was good at History, while Ellie wasn't. Ellie excelled in gym, but Jake didn't. And neither liked math; it was the one thing that both always agreed upon.

Now, at lunch, they sat alongside their respective friends, Jake reading Carl Jung's Psychology of the Unconscious, and Ellie wracking her brain to try and find a suitable start to her paper on ghosts that both siblings had been assigned. David and Chrissy ate their lunch; watching their friends' displays was always entertaining.

Chrissy Kwan was fourteen, same as the rest of the group. Her features were almost doll-like: blonde hair, blue eyes, and a cute, smiling expression that she wore most of the time. She and Ellie had met when they were seven, introduced by their father's employee, Dr. Kwan, who had remarked that Chrissy looked just like her mother.

David Kasparov, on the other hand, was steely and rugged. Born in Ukraine, he had met Jake only a year ago, when the twins found him stuffed in a locker by the school football team. He was solidly built, though; months of weight-training had taken effect after that little incident.

Ghosts are the ectoplasmically imprinted remnants of dead creatures, wrote Ellie, who, for some reason, cannot rest easily in the afterlife.

She tapped her foot. This was hard for her.

Until twenty-five years ago, ghosts were thought to be merely the stuff of legend.

"Come on, think!" she muttered audibly.

David perked up at this. "Want some help?" he asked, his deep voice cracking ever so slightly.

"I'd really appreciate it," replied Ellie, agitated with her paper.

David started to write down a new paragraph for the essay; Jake smiled at his best friend. Kasparov concealed the crush that he had on Jake's sister very poorly. Chrissy, however, never seemed to notice this, merely thinking that David was just a selfless person.

As Ellie started to copy the essay down, Jake's ring tone went off. He activated the viewscreen on his watch, and his father's face appeared.

"Hi Dad," said Jake, putting down his book.

"Hi son," replied Danny on the screen. "Listen: I'm going to one of your grandparent's latest projects tonight, and your mother's going out of town. You think you and your sister can come?"

"Hang on; I'll ask her." He looked up at Ellie. "Hey, sis!"

She looked up from her paper.

"Dad wants us to come to work with him tonight. You wanna come?"

"Ooooh! Can we come? Can we come?" squealed Chrissy. She never passed up an opportunity to visit the Fentonworks labs. There was always something extravagant going on there, something that changed almost every other week.

"What do you mean we?" asked David incredulously. Jake knew that he didn't like being dragged along anywhere. That is, unless...

"Fine," said Ellie. "I'm done anyway. Thanks, Dave."

The boy grinned sheepishly. "Count me in!"

Typical, thought Jake. He spoke to his father, saying, "She says yes."

"Good!" said Danny. "Meet me at HQ at five o-clock. See you all there! Bye!" And the viewscreen went blank again.

"Must be pretty sweet," said Chrissy, "having all that money. You two must be knee-deep in dates."

"You know that's not true," said Ellie. "There's no point in showing off money if you don't earn it yourself. At least, not unless it'll help..." She grinned mock-evilly, as she often did.

The bell sounded out, and the four went back to their respective boring classes...

And there we have it! The first true chapter!

I hope to get the next one up soon! Please leave your opinions!

Your sincerest regards,

Monsieur Caracal.