Bursting through the green fog from the portal entrance, Vlad, still in ghost-mode, found himself in a dark, twisted world of macabre and the damned. A haunting black nothing lay before him, green of all shades inhabiting the void. Swirls of the green spiralled into never ending, always twisting winding stairways that, if walked upon, would have people standing sideways and upside down. They seemed to be a part of the background of black, like the layers of glass put into a mulitplane camera. Blobs of a brighter green in the form of ectoplasm drifted up from between the sheets of black and green, vanishing as they travelled upward. And, lined up everywhere were floating purple doors.

Timidly, Vlad floated down the cascade of insanity, trying to settle his breath back down to a semi-normal state. He knew where he was. He had never been here before, not even in his dreams or his nightmares, and he knew nothing of what could happen here or where this place was located, but he knew about it. He, along with almost every other person studying paranormalicy, had been theorising about this place for years. This was the place that Jack had been trying to bust into a year ago when the accident took place. This was the ghost dimension.

Being distracted by the shear amazement and fear at being thrown into this world, Vlad found that he had forgotten to watch where he was going and hit his head on one of the floating doors. It was a tall door that rose up to a point at the top like a Gothic arch. Vlad stared at it for a moment. He looked around. If he didn't take a door, he'd keep floating through black and green – seemingly forever. On the other hand, anything from a skeleton to an out-of-control locomotive could be behind the door in front of him. After a minute's thought, he slowly opened the door and cautiously floated inside the black void within. Minutes later, he burst out as fast as he could, followed by a glass-shattering roar of fury. With sweat dripping all over his body, he slammed the door shut and took off. However, his fear had caused him to rush, which meant that he was again not watching where he was going, and he again ran into a door. This time, his whole body went up against it, and the purple entrance went falling, Vlad on top of it, downward.

The door went crashing down into green dust, and Vlad fell on his head nearby. He had landed in a graveyard, surrounded by a black iron fence and filled with leafless trees and aged tombstones. Somehow, the image of a full moon had materialised over the area, and a green mist covered the cemetery. One could almost hear the toll of an iron bell in the distance.

Vlad slowly walked backwards, looking around and trying to re-gather his senses, when he felt something grip his leg. A glowing green skeletal hand had come out from in front of a tombstone and had his ankle in its grip. Vlad quickly jumped away, his leg taking the hand with it. He quickly threw it back over to the grave, but by now, several full skeletons had lifted out of the ground and were marching towards him. Several of them held medieval swords in their hands. Seeing them advance towards him, Vlad decided that he should leave very quickly, and prepared to take off. No sooner had he lifted above the level of most of the tombstones, however, then another skeletal hand seized his leg, spun him around by it, and tossed him up against a tree. He attempted to phase through it, but he hit hard against the trunk. As Vlad landed, he felt something sharp pierce his back and a sting of pain explode around the inflicted area. Reaching for the wound, he found that a tree branch had caught on him, and that he was bleeding. When he pulled his hand back, he found that he was not bleeding normal blood, but green ectoplasmic goo. He was also a bit shocked that he hadn't passed through the tree – he had done everything he should have mentally to go intangible at will. Then a thought struck him.

"Figures," he muttered, "In the ghost dimension, ghosts can get hurt!" by now, the army of skeletons had completely surrounded Vlad and the tree he leaned against. Over a third of them were armed with some kind of sword. The thought in his mind was to stand up in fight, but his wound was at such a place in his back that any extensive arm or shoulder movement would have been insane. On top of that, he'd never been in this kind of situation before (how could he – he had never been here before), and the late hour and shock of the day had worn him out. If he attempted to run, he'd likely get dragged back down again. As the skeleton army closed in, he closed his eyes and waited for the steel and bone to meet with his flesh, cursing Jack in his mind one last time and trying to fix his imagination so that the last image his mind would see would be of Maddie.

"RAHTAHMAH!" a high, furious voice cried out, followed by the sound of bones falling against each other. Vlad opened one eye. His second eye opened up soon afterward and his jaw dropped. A cloaked figure had leapt into the fray of skeletons, and with a glowing yellow-green samurai sword, he was dispatching of the walking bones single-handedly. His hood was up, covering his face, but his dark-brown (almost black) cloak spread heroically around him as he spun, flipped, and dived at the skeletons, breaking them down into scattered green bones. The skeletons armed with blades attempted to engage him, but he easily took them out in quick, easy manoeuvres. Vlad just leaned against the tree in awe, holding his wound and occasionally dodging a stray bone. Within minutes, every skeleton that had risen out of the ground was no more. The cloaked figure gracefully re-sheathed his sword and turned to face Vlad, finally lowering his hood.

His face was that of an older man, about fifty. His black hair was messy and cut short, grey streaks running along the sides of his head just above short sideburns. His goatee was thick and black, though the hair on his chin was greying as well. With the battle fought, his heroic air seemed to leave him, leaving behind a thin, tall man with a concerned and generous feel to him and tired green eyes. His cloak went down to his legs, and underneath was a second robe, this one a lighter brown and folded over itself, held by the belt that carried his sword. Underneath that cloak was a tunic that was slightly darker than his pale skin. Underneath all his robes he had on black boots. All and all, he bore a resemblance to a samurai warrior. A blue glow surrounded his form. His eyes were studying Vlad intently, and he had a small, worried smile on his face.

"Well, hello there," he said in a kind voice not at all like the battle cry he had given, "I take it you're new to The Ghost-Zone?"

"You could say that…" Vlad nodded, his jaw still hanging low.

"You'll want to stay clear of this place from now on," the figure noted, "There aren't many sane or good ghosts in this place nowadays, but this is one of the worst spots. I have to come here every so often by duty, but I'm never happy about it," he noticed that Vlad was holding his wound, "Are you alright?"

"Just a scratch from the tree," Vlad pointed upward, "I'm fine," the figure nodded.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Vlad Masters."

"Good to know you, Vlad. I am Katou. How did you end up…you know…" he nodded upward towards the endless display of The Ghost-Zone, and Vlad got what he meant. Unfortunately, he had no answer.

"I…" as he struggled for a believable story, a ghost-ring shot out from around his middle and split in two, converting him back into human form, acne and all. As he became human again, he felt himself pass through the ground as though intangible, and he had to claw his way back up before he was solid again. He noticed Katou staring at him wide-eyed, his jaw now dropping.

"It's a long story," Vlad sighed, finally caught. Katou stared at him a moment longer. Then he offered him a hand in getting up.

"It's a good thing I like long stories, then," he said as Vlad took his hand and got up on his feet, "Come on. Let's go to my home. This is the last place to stand around and tell stories at," he took off. With nothing else to do, Vlad followed. He had nothing to lose by doing so, and it would be more of a risk to stay behind…

----

Katou's home was a cave floating on an island that had been carved out into a private layer for meditation, combat practice, study, and living. Bottles, lamps paintings, sketches, sculptures, pendants, weapons, jewellery, antiques…anything imaginable dating back pre-1700s was represented in some form or another in this lair. Ropes were strung around pieces of old ships' masts to make an obstacle course for training, and a layout on a marble floor showed various steps in many different styles of fencing and swordplay. Many of the lamps and bottles held samples of various kinds of ectoplasm.

It was one of these lamps that Katou used to treat Vlad's wound when they arrived. The lamp poured out blue smoke that he slowly let onto the wound. Vlad felt a strange, crackling sensation overcome his skin around the puncture, and soon everything was healed over. He was tempted to ask just how that happened, but the shock of this place and the rescue was still affecting him. In any case, Katou immediately sat across from him, ready to hear how Vlad had gotten into The Ghost-Zone. After gathering his composure for a few minutes, Vlad told him everything.

Katou was a very good listener. He paid close attention to everything, drinking in every word. He made no interruptions, and he made no strange expressions that would have been distracting. The only movement he did the entire time apart from blinking was to cross his legs and fold his hands in his lap.

Vlad was meticulously detailed in his telling of the tale. He left out not one piece of information. He covered minute things, such as the types of machines he had broken on accident, to such important details as when he first learned to fly and the result of Scar's testing. He covered the uncovering of his powers and the way life went at the hospital. The tale started as a fairly balanced portrayal, but as he got into it, Vlad found himself focusing more and more on Maddie and Jack. He explained Jack's attempts to break into the hospital to see him, he explained Maddie's letters, and he explained what he knew of what had been happening between them while he'd been in the hospital. As soon as he hit on the subject, he completely took off in a rant about Jack's idiocy and his love for Maddie, repeating what he had said and shouting unnecessarily. He got so into it that by the time he had finally finished, he was red in the face, sweating, and out of breath. Through it all, Katou remained calm, and when Vlad did finish, he offered him a glass of water to help relax.

"So," he finally spoke up, "they couldn't find any way to cure you?"

"None," Vlad gulped down the water.

"Well," Katou offered a small smile, "Your powers I'm afraid you're left with for life, but I can do something about that ecto-acne situation of yours," with that, the samurai suddenly lifted up his hand and let loose a green ectoplasmic blast that slammed into Vlad's face like the explosion set off by the first Proto-Portal all those years ago. The pain was identical to the blast from a year ago save for the fact that no additional cold was going over his body, and it went on even longer than the original blast had. When it was finally over, Vlad felt himself fall off his chair and onto the floor.

"What was that for!?" he spat, rising to his feet in a hurry. Katou's smile just grew wider.

"Take a look," he pointed to an old Elizabethan-age mirror nearby. Vlad hurried over to the mirror, and felt his jaw drop yet again. His face looked…normal. The ecto-acne had completely vanished. His hair was still white and his still weren't as dark as they once were, but his skin was finally smooth again. He lay one hand on his cheek to make sure he wasn't hallucinating. He lay his other hand on his forehead. He felt all over his face before finally setting his hands down again. He started shaking. He let out a half-cough, half-laugh. And for a brief moment, he almost could have kissed Katou. He was cured!

"Now, about your friend Jack…"

"Former friend," Vlad managed to hiss the comment out hatefully, even amongst his joy and relief.

"Yes, about that…" Vlad could sense where this conversation was going, and his light-hearted air began to cloud. He thought he knew what Katou was going to say, and he had his response ready.

"I'm not going to forgive him," he said defiantly, "He scarred me, left me with these powers, ruined my life, there was an incident with backwash prior to this whole mishap, and now he's stealing Maddie…"

"All of it was an accident," Katou said calmly, "Your depiction of some of these events was ill-tempered, but from what I can gather, his attempts to visit you were meant to be an apology. And you never mentioned telling Jack how you felt about Maddie."

"It doesn't change the fact that he's stealing her and that this is all his fault!"

"It could have been worse. A lot worse, from what that Scar fellow said. You two seem to have been best friends before all this. Throwing it away over this seems a bit ridiculous if you ask me."

"Well, now that I'm cured, I can check out of that hospital and give Jack what he deserves! I've been planning this for months, and I finally…"

"Careful there, my friend," Katou's voice now had a bit of force and warning to it, "Revenge is a dangerous and foolish train of thought, particularly when one obsesses over it for so long. Hatred consumes very easily. I'd forgive and forget if I were you," Vlad didn't say anything in response, but the comments went in one ear and out the other. He wasn't going to drop the issue – not in a thousand years.

"Now," Katou's voice dropped back into a more friendly tone, "You also mentioned you had troubles controlling your powers?" Vlad nodded, "And your powers so far are flight, invisibility, intangibility, and going back and forth between your ghost-half and human-half at will?"

"That's about it," Vlad nodded again.

"Well…I'm not going to lie to you, Vlad. I don't think there's every been a half-human, half-ghost in the entire history of time until you came along. I don't know anything about what this has done or could to you, and I don't know to what extent your powers are likely to grow. But your abilities don't appear to be any different from that of a normal ghost. And…well, I'd hate for you to have to stumble along through life trying to get the hang of them…" Vlad caught on.

"You could teach me how to control these powers?" he asked, his jaw dropping yet again.

"I don't see why not," Katou smiled. Vlad almost grinned himself, but then he remembered a few things that would pose a problem to this offer.

"I can't stay in here," he said, "I need to get back to the hospital by morning. The only reason I ended up here to begin with was that I found out Jack had constructed another Proto-Portal, so I went into the school lab at night to try and use it to cure myself! In order to get back here I'd have to…" a strange, malicious smirk spread across Vlad's face, and Katou could sense what he was thinking.

"Ask him for it," he said authoritatively, "From what I know of this man from you, and discounting your temper, he'd likely give it to you in a heartbeat. There's no need to commit thievery. I take it you want my help then?"

"Yes," Vlad nodded, "yes, thank you. I'll be back tomorrow night. I'll wait above but not in the graveyard. Now," he went ghost, "how do I get back there?" Katou smiled yet again.

"I'll show you."

----

In the science lab, other than the humming of the Proto-Portal and the eerie green glow it cast over the room, all seemed normal for this time of night. No one had been awakened by the portal's being turned on, and no one had come by since. Not a single living soul was in the room.

A stream of blue mist came out of the green mess within the portal and assembled itself into human form. Vlad went human and shut off the portal. He was too tired to look it, but he was happier than he had been in a good long while. He was finally cured, he had discovered The Ghost-Zone, and he had met someone who could show him how to control his powers. Katou seemed a bit virtuous, but, after putting on a display like that against the skeletons, he had to know what he was doing with ghost powers.

There was only one problem: how to get back to him tomorrow?

Vlad eyed the Proto-Portal. He knew Maddie had worked on this one – it wouldn't have worked otherwise, and she had said in her note that she had handled the calculations and put her own money into this. Stealing it would mean stealing something that was half hers. On the other hand, going back to ask for it would mean confronting Jack and working something out with him, which he refused to do. No matter what Katou or anyone else said, that accident was unforgivable and worth revenge. Stealing this would hurt him more than it would hurt Maddie, the way Jack obsessed over his creations. And the more skilled Vlad was with his powers, the more he could give Jack a painful and humiliating end.

He thought for a brief second more, and then he made up his mind.

Gathering the engine and portal frame in his arms, he went ghost again and flew off towards the hospital, phasing through the walls as he went.