The sounds of machinery filled the air. Jazz's first thought as she headed to the kitchen was mild surprise that her parents were already working. The feeling became blatant astonishment when she realized that they were calmly having breakfast. The only person missing was her brother, and he couldn't have been working in the lab.

Could he? He didn't usually sit in his room doing homework for hours on end, either. He was hiding something, and she thought it had something to do with Lancer's question from a few days before. The news that Danny Fenton had, without hesitation, offered the correct answer to a question even the nerds had trouble with had been all over the school. Jazz just hoped he hadn't found a new way to cheat. Or worse…

Jack, on the other hand, positively beamed. "Jazzy-pants!" he exclaimed happily, startling her out of memories of Danny's evil older self. "Your brother's finally interested in ghost hunting! Listen to him down there." He sniffled sentimentally. "He's finally taking after his old man."

"That's great, Dad," she muttered, distracted. She sighed as her father went on at some length about his youth, and was startled to see her own worry reflected on her mother's face. Maddie quickly smoothed her expression with an indulgent smile, though not quickly enough. Jazz wondered if she had found out and decided not to say anything. It was possible she had simply noticed that Danny was acting stranger than usual.

There was something there, something wrong, and he didn't know what it was. The lack of knowledge bothered him more than anything else ever had in his life, and he couldn't understand why. He had never cared about not knowing things before. This thing in particular, though, had him on edge. He felt like he should know, but something was blocking the information.

He stared down at the tiny screw with single-minded intensity in the hopes that he could stop thinking for a few minutes. It didn't work, and he thought it had something to do with familiarity. But where had the familiarity come from? He didn't know the first thing about machinery except how to use it.

He jumped as a hand descended on his shoulder and swiveled around to face the interruption. "Can't you see I'm busy?" he demanded, cringing inwardly at his tone. He felt even worse at the hurt expression on his sister's face, but pride wouldn't let him back down. Or was it something…

Where was he going with thought again?

"Danny, are you feeling okay?" Jazz asked.

She was just worried, but so was everyone else of late. "I'm fine!" he snapped, turning back to the Fenton Ghost Finder. He didn't even know what he was doing. He'd had an idea, but it was long gone. After a moment, he sighed and turned slightly. "I'm just tired. I haven't been sleeping well."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

No, he really didn't, but part of him kind of did. It couldn't hurt, anyway. "I've been having nightmares that bugs are crawling all over me," he confessed. "Only, they're not just on me, they get into my mouth and my nose, and…" He trailed off with an involuntary shudder.

Jazz thought about that for a moment. She held to the theory that dreams were meaningful in some way. Obviously, they weren't prophetic, but the study of dreams could give a person insight into his own mind. She smiled slightly, certain that she had it all figured out. "You must be feeling overwhelmed," she explained gently. "You should take the day off and go have some fun. I bet you'll be feeling better in no time."

Danny managed a small smile in return and waited until she was back upstairs before he rolled his eyes. She was right; he did feel overwhelmed by the barrage of source-less information that made thinking difficult. Somehow, the very fact that she was right was what grated the worst. No one else was allowed to be right except him.

He finished putting the Ghost Finder back together and debated whether or not to start on the Ghost Bazooka. It wasn't helping to clear his head, but he was bored. He couldn't even stand being around Sam and Tucker anymore because their simple ignorance got on his nerves. It was impossible to have an intelligent conversation with anyone.

He decided to go looking for Kat. She was a genius, or at least claimed to be. He never actually seen evidence of her intellect, but she was Technus' daughter. She shouldn't have to prove herself to lower beings like him…

After a few moments of blessed silence in his head, he wondered what he'd even been thinking about. It was getting rather hard to keep track. He decided to make his excuses to his parents and go for a walk. Maybe the fresh air would help.

Skulker snickered as his prey exited Fenton Works. Just as he thought, the plan was falling apart. Plasmius had completely lost track of Technus; Danny still wasn't brainwashed; and Skulker, of course, had his own agenda.

He was well aware that two young ghosts had been following him ever since he met with the Ghost Master, and he approved of their reluctance to trust him. While he had no current plans to betray the team, they couldn't know that. Besides, he wasn't sure he wouldn't change his mind. For the moment, however, they might serve a better purpose. He turned to where he knew they hiding and called, "I know you're there."

He could almost hear the uncertainty as they exchanged glances in his mind's eye. For a hunter such as himself, people were very predictable, and these two did disappoint. They faded into view as they drifted up to join him on the roof, revealing themselves to be the twins.

"Very well," said the first.

"What do you want?" asked the second.

"Because you're not getting an apology."

"We don't trust you."

Skulker smirked. That was almost amusing, though he had no doubts it would get very annoying, very quickly. "I never expected you to," he informed them. "But since you're here, why not make yourselves useful?"

They exchanged glances again and began jabbering quietly in some foreign language. After a few lines, he realized they were speaking their secret twin language and stopped trying to run his translator.

"What do you want?" they asked in unison.

He pointed down to the street. "I want you to attack him, but don't tell anyone I put you up to it. You don't have to hurt him," he added as they narrowed their eyes. "Just distract him."

A few more lines of Twin followed. In all honesty, Skulker wanted to go attack the boy himself. On the other hand, he didn't want word to get back to Vlad that he had done so. He felt relatively confident that the half ghost would never hear about this arrangement as long as he did nothing to draw attention to himself.

The twins became a pair of identical white tigers and launched themselves from the rooftop without so much as a "by your leave". Skulker chuckled a bit and shook his head, more amused than offended by their open dislike. He was just happy they had agreed; he wanted to confirm something, and he couldn't do that as easily if he was down there himself.

So lost in thought was Danny that he didn't even notice his ghost sense going off until something invisible knocked him back. He hit his head against the pavement, but was distracted from the pain by a set of gleaming white teeth. "You are weak, aren't you?" remarked the creature.

"We heard, but didn't believe," her twin added, pacing a circle around him.

Danny let his eyes blaze and smirked a bit at the shocked gasp. "I'm strong enough to beat you!" he announced before sinking into the pavement.

The twins wordlessly paced in circles, taking great care to watch in opposite directions. They expected an attack from below. They didn't expect a nearby car to start up and race towards them, and only one jumped out of the way in time. Danny abandoned his mechanical host and let it crash into a wall, then started blasting at the large white orangutan. They rushed headlong and began to grapple, the twin trying to create a diversion for her sister.

The remaining tiger turned into a white blob and oozed her way to the pavement, where she stood trying to reclaim her bearings. After a moment, she turned into a horse and charged the fighting pair, trusting her sibling to get out of the way.

Danny heard the rhythmic clopping and became intangible at the last second, forcing equine hooves to inadvertently meet furred hide. The first ghost was thrown several dozen feet, changing to her true, blob-like form as she did so. The second ghost transformed back into her more usual human form, collected her sister, and fled without another word. The boy smirked arrogantly and set off in pursuit. As much as he wanted to avoid a fight with the other eighteen members of the Ghost Master's team, he couldn't let them continue with such a dangerous misconception. They may have been less hostile than other ghosts, but they were still ghosts.

Besides, his ego demanded revenge.

Skulker nodded to himself as the three combatants vanished out of sight. He would have liked to follow, but he expected Vlad to arrive shortly and demand to know what happened. He needed to play ignorant when the man arrived. He leaned back and pretended to fall asleep, but his mind was awhirl.

He had been right; Technus was no longer following the plan. He was not going to share that information because it meant revealing that he'd been monitoring the nanobots' progress on his own. His own plots would need to be altered slightly, he realized. Technus was too well entrenched in Danny's brain. Maybe…

Well, he'd have to think about that later. He growled in irritation as his employer arrived, then reactivated the ecto-skeleton and rose to make his slightly altered report.

A/N: Quick answer to your question, Danielle. Maddie found out back in Hounds and Hunters, but Danny gained the temporary ability to mess with people's heads and made her kind of forget. She shook it off and managed to remember again in Whistlin' Dixie, but Danny doesn't know she knows this time.