Valerie dropped her book bag on the floor in uncaring exhaustion, grateful that the ghosts had done enough damage that school was canceled for the day. Everything had gone just fine until lunch, when the freaky, bi-polar Lunch Lady had shown up. Before she had a chance to do much damage, the ghost that called himself Warden Walker had arrived with about ten of his goons to "apprehend" her. Apparently, he was something like the Ghost Zone police force.
Walker didn't seem very interested in doing much damage, so Valerie had decided to keep a low profile in the hopes that they would just take the Lunch Lady and go. She thought everything would be alright until the haunters from 917 Maple Street decided to defend their territory. The alligator wasn't with them, fortunately; they had done enough damage without adding injuries to the list. Naturally, the ghost kid arrived at that point, and the whole thing turned into a free-for-all. Everyone was attacking everyone else, including the people on their own sides; there was a banshee that the young ghost hunter didn't know about, shape-shifters, and the ghost kid kept throwing himself in any line of fire directed at her.
She wasn't sure what happened, actually. One minute, she was trying to destroy him, and the next, they were back to back trying to ward off the GZPD. The Fentons arrived at some point, heralding the panicked retreat of the haunters. Phantom had stayed just long enough to catch Walker and the Lunch Lady inside a Fenton Thermos before Maddie convinced him to go. That left three guards, who were easily defeated before Valerie fled as well, leaving the Fentons to take the credit and/or blame.
She winced and put a hand to her bruised ribs as she lowered herself into her computer chair. She didn't even remember getting hurt, and her father had been livid when he found out. It had been all she could do to convince him that she just needed some painkillers and she'd be fine, that it was wasn't nearly as bad as it seemed even though it was. Fortunately, her early classes hadn't involved homework; she just wanted to check her email for any messages from Vlad Masters, and then it was off to bed for a few weeks.
"What the heck?" she muttered. The expected message from Vlad was there, but she ignored it favor of one with "About Phantom…" in the subject line. The sender's address was mangled into something like L33T with some binary thrown in for good measure. It had to be a virus, but her hand clicked on it almost of its own accord.
"I be1i3v3 w3 hve a mu7ua1 9urp05e," it rather painfully read. "F0r n0w, at th3 v3ry 1ea5t. Nam3ly, the a6j3c7 hu/i1i7i0n of a c3r7ain gh0st child wh0 ha5 nam3d m3 a m057 5land3rou5 in5ult. I 7ru5t 7ha7 y0u wi11 pu7 wha7 I pr0vid3 to g00d u5e." It was signed in more L33t mingled with binary, and she almost didn't almost bother trying to puzzle through it. She changed her mind on noticing a small ASCII lightning bolt below the "name."
It was mysterious, over dramatic, and signed with a symbol for electricity. "Electra," Valerie scoffed, then winced as her ribs complained. "And here I thought you two were friends." She wasn't certain what she expected when she opened the attached text file, but it certainly wasn't the ghost boy's private journal. She clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle her laughter. Bed could wait.
'It rains too much in Washington, and it's way too cold. I swear, it feels like there's ghosts everywhere. The house is pretty nice, though. That mural bugs me, though. I keep expecting it to move or something. And I know there were two people on it yesterday.'
Valerie stared at the text, trying to make sense of it. She knew the Fentons had gone to Washington around November; the ghost kid had followed them there? She scrolled down to the next entry, laughing faintly. Very few of them were longer than a paragraph or two from what she could see.
'That thing attacked Jazz. I think it may have been Julia, actually. She was all bloated and covered in seaweed, and I think her neck was broken. It was really creepy and disgusting, but Jazz seems okay. She didn't even know anything was going on. I will never understand how she could sleep through that screaming, though. That thing didn't set off my ghost sense, for some reason. I mean, Kat never does either, but being around her is like being around normal humans. This place makes me feel like it should be going off and just isn't.'
'Julia came back. She actually possessed Jazz, this time, and Ronan had that Roy guy down on the beach. I fought them off, but I'm going to have to go after them. Can I even survive under water? I've never really needed to find out if I need air.'
Valerie blinked in confusion. He was a ghost; how could he be concerned about survival if he was already dead? Why would he need air if ghosts didn't have lungs? She read on, hoping that some kind of answer would be forthcoming.
'Home, at last! Ronan and Julia were really freaking me out. I wonder what Vlad wanted. I didn't even see him the whole time, and that's not like him.'
She filed that away to ask Mr. Masters about and skimmed through a few accounts of ghost battles. Although part of her wanted to believe that it was all some trick Phantom and Electra had put together, she had to admit that hearing his point of view was fascinating. It also reminded her disturbingly of Danny, but what about the ghost kid didn't? She yawned and started to stretch, but her ribs took that moment to remind her that they were in pain. She stood carefully to shut off the light and made her way to bed.
Moments after she began to snore softly, an errant wisp of consciousness grumbled as it drifted out ofher computer. The ghost hunter was supposed to have emailed the rest of the school. Obviously, Kat had misjudged her. "Whatever," she muttered, turning the monitor back on. "I'll just get someone else to do it. Let's see; who's in your address book?"
The most popular girl in Casper High stared dreamily at her monitor, or more specifically, at her desktop wallpaper. She was rather proud of that picture since it was usually so difficult to get them. Ghosts never showed up well on film, but Danny Phantom showed up just fine for some reason. It had caused no end of controversy over whether or not he was really a ghost.
No, the reason it was so difficult to get the ghost boy on film was simply because he was so difficult to catch. He was seldom found not in a fight with some other ghost, making it nigh impossible to get a good picture without being killed or the camera destroyed. Paulina knew she had been lucky to get a shot of him fighting the Wisconsin Ghost, both locked in a gloriously fierce struggle for the upper hand. A pity he'd lost that fight, she thought.
The computer beeped suddenly, startling her out of her reverie. She made a face at the little window announcing that she had mail and almost didn't click on it. However, the vague hope that the ghost boy would send her an email prompted her to go ahead. She completely missed the address in the face of the subject line. With a sudden thrill of delight, she moved on to the obscurely written message.
"Da3r Pau1ina," she read aloud, unsure whether to giggle at the L33T or simply be annoyed. Unlike Valerie's message, written in the heat of anger, this one was almost readable. It made an appeal to her "love" of the ghost boy before informing her of what was contained. The girl repressed a squeal of delight as she brought up the file and skimmed through it.
'I got caught staring at Paulina again. I thought Sam was going to kill me, but that banshee showed up and distracted her. Why is it always the tourists who stand right in the middle of a fight? You'd think everyone running and screaming around them would convince them to move, but no. That guy better appreciate me saving him. Dang, my arm hurts.'
Paulina giggled and stared dreamily at the text. She was beyond delighted to know that her ghost boy thought of her, but she did wonder why that freaky goth girl's opinion meant anything to him. She started to use her curiosity on that point as justification to continue reading, then decided that she didn't need any justification and read on anyway.
'Okay, it is way too late, and I am so grounded. But who cares? I just spent the day trying to beat some crazy lady on a motorcycle. I can't believe how tough she was to beat! I mean, the only weapon she had to use against me was an ecto-pistol. I'd almost rather have been fighting Technus. At least, he's predictable. Oh well, Ebony Angel's in prison, and that's all that matters.'
An instant messenger window popped up. She started to close it with an aggravated huff, then stopped. Really, this was too good not to share. "Hey Star," she typed. "U have got to c this!"
"?" was the reply. Paulina ignored her and sent the file across before going back to the journal.
'Angel escaped. She just wanted to talk; it was weird. She asked me not to stop her because she didn't want to hurt me because I reminded her of her, or something like that. She showed me her face, too. Apparently, that's pretty rare. Anyway, then we fought for a while and I had to chase her all over town twice before the police set up some roadblocks and we finally got her boxed in. I accidentally destroyed her bike and she totally freaked out. It was weird, but it was kind of sad, too. What would that be like, to have a motorcycle as your only friend? I found out that it was made by this guy named Frank, and when he died, she just lost it. It was actually kind of scary. I mean, how close am I to turning into that?'
Star sent another message, but Paulina shut down the program. She stared at the last entry in a considerably more somber mood, almost regretting that she sent the journal to her friend. In fact, she almost stopped reading, but curiosity overwhelmed her guilt.
'Okay, that was the freakiest week I have ever had. I was trying to help Wulf, but Walker almost caught us, so I ran and hid in this room full of mirrors. But they're not ordinary mirrors; I mean, what is ordinary in the Ghost zone, right? Anyway, there were these creatures there, behind the mirrors, that called themselves the Guardians of Space. I guess they're a little like Clockwork or something. Anyway, they sent me to this freaky alternate dimension where I never got ghost powers, and so there was no one to beat Pariah Dark when he attacked. It was horrible. Mom was dead. Dad was just…well, he wasn't Dad. Everyone was living in these little shielded communities. Then it turned out that Plasmius had destroyed Pariah and taken over, and he was the one behind everything, now. We beat him off, so I think everything's okay now, but it still kind of scares me to wonder if that had happened here.'
Paulina blinked and bit her lip shamefully. Had it been anyone else, she might not have cared, but this was her hero. She didn't have any right to invade his privacy. She opened her instant messenger program to tell Star not to send that to anyone else, but it was probably all over school already. She was the worst gossip sometimes.
A/N: Apologies for the 1337, and any mistakes it may contain. This site won't allow most of the symbols; I went through and re-did it, but I may have missed a symbol or two. I hate that "language" so much...
