Here is chapter 2. I dedicate it to Cold-heart-Angel23, who liked this fic one heck of a lot more than my supposed 'best friend' did. I had a hard time with this one, because honestly, I didn't really have a plot planned out going into this. I almost never do. I just sit down and write, and if it comes it comes.

Corrections Corner: You may have noticed a few words missing here and there in the previous chapter. It was late, and I regret the error. I shall never type while drinking coffee again.

Warnings/Disclaimers: Though I would really, really like to, Butch Hartman will never concede to me even being a writer on his show. Which is probably for the best. As demonstrated quite clearly here, I am insane.

When Danny Fenton woke the next morning, it was against his will. That is to say, he might not have gotten up at all were it not for the loud, repetitive buzzing of his alarm clock.

It was a moment before he could muster the strength to turn it off, or even open his tightly shut eyes. His stomach turned over uncomfortably, and he felt sick. This did not help with his plan to wake up. The world of his mind seemed to be filled with hazy gray fog, especially the part of it concerned with remembering the previous night. In his head, he could see himself leaving Sam's house. He'd walked, instead of flying… it had been a great night, after all. One of those nights that makes you (ironically) feel alive.

Then… what then? He fought to recall some memory, some scrap of recollection, but came up with nothing. And that ridiculous alarm clock was really beginning to tick him off.

One hand, that suddenly felt stronger than normal, reached out and grabbed the offending appliance. Channeling all his annoyance into his hand, he tightened his grip…

And smashed the clock. There was a sickening crunch, like pack ice breaking up in the dead of winter, and the beeping died a slow and agonizing death. He clenched his fist around the plastic. Shards of synthetic clock-casing and those little LCD crystals flew across the room, to which the term 'blast radius' would now have applied most fittingly.

Growling in a manner most unlike himself, Danny sat up, blinking. Part of the experience was coming back to him, but the tendril of thought would slip away whenever he got close enough to comprehend it. Absently, his hand strayed to touch the place on his flesh that should have been raw and tender, torn open to the world.

Oddly enough, he was fine, or at least that part of him. Taking off his shirt, he realized that he hadn't changed into his nightclothes before sleeping. It was as if he'd collapsed into bed after returning home from somewhere, but surely that couldn't be right… he had been neatly tucked under the covers until just recently.

The wound, if it had ever existed at all, was gone. In its place was nothing. Absolutely nothing to suggest that he hadn't been dreaming… but it didn't feel right.

Bits of the dream were finding their way back to him in a rush, and he found that none of them made any semblance of sense. Maybe it had been a dream, all of it. Perhaps it hadn't been real, just another fantasy borne of a brain too overworked with ghost catching. He sighed and swung his legs out of bed.

Now he knew something was up. Nobody, no matter how tired, goes to bed in their grubby, mud coated sneakers. At least, nobody in their right mind.

A puff of blue smoke exited his mouth, and Danny felt the rings of light move over him… and nothing happened.

On the street below, a wolf trotted happily past, its tail waving jauntily in the air.

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Preoccupied by various things pertaining to his current state of mind, Danny began the daily trek to school. Of all the places he would rather not be going at that moment, Casper High was only slightly below the pits of hell. At least there people might give him some answers.

His parents had been singularly unhelpful. Jack and Maddie had both attested to the 'fact' that he had showed up at home right on time the night before, watched television for a few minutes, and then gone to sleep. He wasn't buying any of that, and he knew that they weren't either. Their eyes had taken on a glazed sort of look as they spoke, and they had seemed to be reading things off a badly printed cue card.

And none of that explained why his ghost powers had gone. Deep down inside, beneath the part of him that was secretly glad to be rid of the Phantom, was a tiny, squashed piece of consciousness that said, Yes, that's lovely, but what if Vlad comes back? He wouldn't care that you couldn't go ghost, he'd attack anyway, the crazy old frootloop. And how, exactly, do you suggest we protect Sam and Tucker while you're like this? Everyone has those voices, and all of them are equally nagging. The problem was that it just wouldn't go away.

There was also a big blank being drawn up over the new sense of power that ran through him. The longer he was awake, the weaker it got, but that didn't seem to stop it frightening the heck out of him. It was a strange, bestial kind of feeling, and rather creepy. It was the type of thing that, instinctively, you know you can't control.

Not entirely bothered with the problem of where he was going, Danny forgot to look, and subsequently ended up walking straight into someone. Picking himself up off the ground, he saw that somehow he had made it the school… and there was a girl he'd never seen before staring at him quizzically. "Well?" she asked, arms crossed on her chest, one foot tapping irritably on the concrete.

"Well what?" Danny asked, confused, his brain still stuck on what it had been occupied with seconds before.

"Aren't going to apologize for running into me?" the girl asked, somewhat incredulously.

Suddenly, Danny didn't feel much like apologizing. If someone makes you do it, you aren't generally very inclined to do as they wish. "No, actually," he said, staring back at her with as much hostility as he could affect at that moment which, admittedly, wasn't much.

"Good," the girl said decisively. It came out as more of a bark. "People who go around sorrying their lives away don't have enough time to live." She stuck out a hand, which was covered in burnished steel rings. Most of them featured skulls or bats. The whole style was like something Sam might wear, he thought. "I'm Kai, by the way, and don't bother telling me that's a boy's name; my parents are cruel people in that respect."

Danny was definitely confused now, but was liking the girl more. "Ah… hi?" he said tentatively, grasping her hand as if it was made of red-hot lava. Her grip was firm enough to crush bones, bringing tears to his eyes. "I'm Danny Fenton. It's…" he fumbled for a word that was both polite and accurate, "interesting to meet you."

Kai mercifully let go of his hand and shoved her own in the pocket of her well-worn blue jeans. She was wearing a black t-shirt with a wolf emblem embroidered on it. She looked at him up and down. "I'm an expert on the weird," she said, looking straight into his eyes as if searching for something. Apparently she found it, because she snapped her gaze away to glare interestedly into a clump of bushes. "If you need any info on… ghosts or vampires or stuff like that, come to me. Especially werewolves. They're my specialty." She gestured at her clothing.

Danny gulped, wondering if she could tell he was a halfa, but was spared further conversation by the arrival of Tucker, who was panting. "Hey Danny," he managed to choke out between gasps of air. "I see you've met Kai."

Kai looked at him with more nonchalance than was humanly possible. "You need to get out more, Tuck. A little exercise nearly killed you there."

Tucker glared at her, and then diverted his attention to his beloved PDA in defeat. "Since when is running five miles at top speed after your idiotic friend considered a 'little' exercise?" he grumbled.

Danny looked from Kai to tucker and back again. "Do you know Tucker?" he asked, wondering where the new kid had come from.

Kai yawned and scratched her neck. Bending over, she rummaged around in a large navy blue duffel bag that she had set on the pavement. "Yeah," she muttered, throwing various useless or broken objects out of the sack as she talked. "He's my pen pal. Or, more accurately, my e-mail pal. I don't think he even know how to use a normal post office, like regular people."

Danny chuckled, and watched her remove a large leather-bound book from her bag. "What's that?"

She squinted at the cover, possibly to make sure she'd gotten the right thing, and, blowing dust off the tome, flipped through the pages. "Can't see how that's much of anyone's business. It's a book on the paranormal. I wrote it."

"You wrote it?"

"I did say I was an expert, you know. I've spent years researching this stuff."

Years? How could that be? Kai looked to be about the same age as Danny and Tucker, so that didn't leave much time for ghost researching…

Sam picked that moment to walk up. "Hey, Danny, hey Tucker," she said, staring at Kai. "Who's this?"

Kai proffered a hand, slipping the book back into its bag. "Kai Wolfstein," she said, a strange look in her eyes. "And let me guess, if that's Danny, then you must be Sam. Tucker told me all about you guys."

"She's Tuck's pen pal," Danny explained.

"Right! I'm from..." she turned to Tucker and hissed, "Quick, where am I from again? Oh, yeah… I'm from Ontario. My moron parents blew up our house last week, so I decided to take a vacation."

Sam shot her an odd look. "Okay… how did that happen, exactly?"

Kai shrugged. "Eh, I dunno. That the bad thing about having mad scientist parents; half the time their crazy experiments don't work, and I end up living in a hotel for a month. Unsurprisingly, that's what I'm doing now."

"You're not staying at Tucker's house?"

"Nope. I don't like other people's houses much; they make me feel out of place." The bell rang. "Time for class!" She shouted, as she was already halfway up the sidewalk. Danny groaned. This was going to be one strange week, he could tell.

(page break)

"Wow, Kai, that's really good!" Tucker whispered, presumably to his pen pal. Danny felt a little guilty for spying on their conversation, but it wasn't his fault they sat right behind him. He couldn't help overhearing.

"Not my best work, actually. It'll be better once I color it, but I forgot my markers at the motel." He heard her turn slightly in her seat. "As soon as I saw them, I just had to draw it. I mean, you told me in your letters but I never thought… They just are so perfect together."

"Man, it looks just like them except… do you always have to draw everyone as a supernatural being?"

Danny could practically feel the withering glance aimed at Tucker. He wasn't sure he liked the direction this was going in. "What do you take me for, Tuck?" she asked, sounding slightly offended. "Some kind of idiot? I'm not stupid, you know; I'm an expert. It's nice you can keep people's secrets, but honestly. It's fairly obvious, if you know what to look for."

"All the same-" he was cut off by Lancer.

"Mr. Foley! Ms. Wolfstein! Would you care to share your discussion with the rest of the class? Give me that!" Kai sheepishly tore a piece of paper off her tablet and thrust it at the teacher. "Say, this isn't bad. Detention! After school!" He marched up to the blackboard and taped the drawing there. Danny felt his heart shoot straight into his stomach. Kai had been drawing Danny and Sam. The Phantom was flying her over the city, and both of them looked positively love struck. The hearts around the border helped with that effect.

The rest of the period passed in a blur. Danny dimly heard Sam get up, stomp over to Kai's desk, and threaten her with various sorts of punishment, but other than that he mostly concentrated on sinking down into his chair and being as inconspicuous as possible.

(page break)

Lunch hour came too slowly for Danny, but upon its arrival he cornered Kai. "Look," he said, taking a dangerous route, "I don't know how you figured it out, but could you possibly not tell anyone I'm a ghost? Speaking of which, how did you know, anyway?"

Kai grimaced. "Don't worry. I know what it's like to have a deadly secret. Tell you what: if you notice anything strange going on with… your powers, and it doesn't stop, give me a call. I'll explain it then." She handed him a card with the hotel phone number on it. "Ask the woman at the desk for room 205 and I'll pick up."

"Why can't you tell me now?"

"If everything is as I suspect it is, we'll have more to discuss later." This was far too cryptic for Danny, so he gave up. Halfway to the lunch room, a spasm of icy pain wracked his body. Nausea boiled in his belly, which now felt as if it had been jabbed with a white-hot poker. Staggering, he made it to the bathroom and threw up it a sink.

Wiping his mouth off, Danny looked in the mirror and jumped back a few paces. His hair was white, his eyes glowed green, and, shockingly, there was fur on his face. He reached up to touch his cheek, but felt nothing but smooth skin. Not for the first time, he wondered what could possibly be happening to him.

His head throbbed, and he lay down with it on the cool tiled floor. The day just kept getting worse and worse.

(page break)
Much later…

Even monsters get scared sometimes, though by different things than your average human. Usually, the things that can scare a werewolf would make a mortal die of fright. Or a gaping hole in the chest.

The wolf sat on the bed, an overstuffed king-size, and glowered at the dark nightmare perched in one of the armchairs. In the background, the television was going.

The other wolf stared right back, radiating the sort of bad vibrations that give you shivers in your spine. His golden eyes were like hot brands, boring into her fur. If wolves can smirk, he was doing just that. "So then," he growled in a sickly sweet voice, "I see you are still being unreasonable. I will give you one more chance, mongrel, before I have no choice other than your complete and utter destruction. Leave now, and live. There is nothing you can do."

The she-wolf cocked an eyebrow (which was anatomically impossible) and sighed. "You are the worst super villain ever, you know that. I can see it in a comic book now: Ghost Boy versus the terror of lame speeches."

The black wolf sprung to his paws, ears flattened against his skull. "You think this is funny? You think it's a game? I have won, you hear me! My master has won!"

The smaller of the two snorted and flopped down on the mattress. Admittedly it wasn't very comfortable, but she would have been surprised if it was. "That's what I'm afraid of. You don't seem to grasp the extent of what you did. You say I think it's a game? Why would I ever view it that way? I've seen what this has done to others like the boy; it never ends well."

The smirk deepened. "This time I got it right. This time, I bit the strongest human of all. He may not know it yet, but his well of untapped power is vast. I… merely helped him unearth it."

"Helped?" The she-wolf roared, enraged. The bestial part of her snapped at the air, fangs slamming together in primal fury. "How can you say you have helped? This will tear him apart, if he even survives the first transformation. His kind was never meant to become us! We are separate entities, and always have been!"

The black one shot her a pitying look. "Dear girl, don't try to kid me. I know that somewhere, some part of you wonders what's going to happen next. I have created the most powerful being in history, and you wish to see how it turns out."

The she-wolf sat in calm anger and thought. After a moment, she spoke. "Once, I thought the world was one big story, there to be read. I always wanted more, to know what happened next. That's why Antigoras told you to bite me, before you turned… into this. But now I realize that that is wrong. There is no such thing as true fate. For while fate is rigid and unchanging, you can shape your own destiny." She smiled, a grim ruthless sign of her chagrin. "That's what we're really for, you overgrown toad. We exist to help those with great skill find their destiny. We do not change it. We do not fight over the right to do so."

"Ah, but those were the old times. This is a new century, a new era."

"So? Who says we have to change this radically? You're headed for war with this, you know."

"And? My side exists to destroy all there is. Those who leave the world now are simply… avoiding the rush."

"Bastard," the she-wolf spat, and stopped. She looked at the clock. Nine at night, and the phone was ringing. "Excuse me," she said sweetly. "I have to take a call."

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This chapter was kind of sucky, but the next one will be better. Today's episode was the one with Wulf, and let's just say it gave me some 'inspiration' for later chapters. As always, reviews would help a lot.