A/N: This one's a shorter chapter, but I felt like this should be separately on its own rather than several parts of one big chapter.


Chapter 15: Empty Hallway

The Son home was quiet.

Well, it had been quiet for a while now. Not in the sense of a lack of noise, Goten made sure of that especially when he'd been younger. However, there was very little conversation made between the family. The day her other half, the love of her life, died for the second time, Chi Chi had taken it hard. She tried to put up a front for her son, but he was too perceptive to be fooled. He knew her.

But she knew him as well. She could see how the death of his father had taken its toll. His smile had vanished. Even on the rare occasion when he did smile, it was noticeably thinner. Dende and the others may have been out looking for her baby boy, but he'd been lost long ago.

Goten had taken Gohan's disappearance hard as well. He had hardly come out of his room, if only to eat and to use the restroom. He wouldn't even go out to see his friend Trunks. The boy was unwilling to go anywhere near the Briefs home because he blamed Vegeta for Gohan being gone. Trunks (that poor boy) tried to talk to Goten, but he wouldn't hear of it.

Chi Chi sighed as she covered her pot of stew, carefully placing her wooden spoon upon the lid. She moved to her cutting boards, topped with carrots and peppers. She picked up a clean knife and began work at the next step for dinner.

It was nice having a familiar activity to do. It was nice to take her mind off of the relentless barrage of thoughts in her head. To not have to feel.

Only do.

Chop.

Chop.

Chop.

Chop.

Falling into the lull of her work, her mind had stilled. For a few peaceful moments, anyways, she was perfectly serene; her worries were mere wordless whispers. That is until her mind had begun to wander again.


Chi Chi's hands were firmly on her hips as she blocked off the doorway. She had no illusions that she was strong enough to keep her son, who was currently staring her down, inside and away from the outdoors and those no good brutes, but she was his mother and had no doubt that that would be enough.

"Gohan," she said, firmly but softly, "you haven't been studying lately."

Her son's stare didn't waver. "I've been busy."

"Training."

It wasn't a question. She had no doubts about what he'd been doing in his spare time, which seemed to now include his study time. He'd come back home constantly a sweaty mess and out of breath with tattered clothes. She'd allowed his activities to continue, believing that he just needed time to grieve in his own way, but his destructive habits hadn't ceased a month later. In fact, they'd gotten worse; he was barely home to do anything but eat and sleep.

"Gohan, you are going to go back to your room and study. I will not have any more fighters in this house. Study comes first!"

She thought for sure he'd see reason. She hated having to take such a harsh approach, but it was necessary. He would understand.

Unfortunately, it didn't seem like he'd comprehend her logic just yet.

"I'm the best chance this planet has when an attack comes. I have to keep training."

He tried to step past her, but Chi Chi wouldn't let it end that easily. "Gohan, think about your future! How are you going to get into a good school if you don't study? You'll never become a great scholar like this! You want a good future for yourself, don't you?"

Gohan's jaw went taut. "It doesn't matter what I want. If I choose to live the life I want, people will die."

Chi Chi grabbed hold of his arm with both hands. He hadn't moved, but she felt that he needed her touch. Or maybe she needed something to ground her. She wasn't quite sure which, but she could see that things were spiraling. Her baby was spiraling. "It isn't your responsibility, son! Let Piccolo handle it! Or-Or Vegeta! There's even that Trunks boy that you talked about! It doesn't have to be you!"

Gohan shook his head, slowly. He looked up at his mother's eyes. There was no life there. "I'm my father's son, mom. This is my responsibility now that he's not here. It is my responsibility, I'm responsible. I'm the most powerful asset this world has. I can't just ignore my duty."

Gohan wrenched himself free and was off in the blink of an eye. Chi Chi still wasn't sure if he'd pulled free or if she'd let go.


THUD.

Chi Chi's eyes snapped into focus as she hurried towards her pot. She carefully picked up the fallen spoon and opened the pot's lid. Her nose scrunched up at the smell of the burnt meat that was now surely sticking to the bottom of the pot. It wasn't horribly burnt from the smell of it, but it was certainly below her standards of cooking.

She sighed as quickly washed the spoon and returned to turning the stew. "That's the third burn this week. . ."

That was three more than she'd had for as long as she could remember. She picked up her cut vegetables as she poured them into the pot, her thoughts not any less cluttered.

She had been doing a lot of thinking. She hadn't known much about her Goku's heritage. The most she knew of it was that he was an alien and fighting was in his blood. Goku had never been one for many words, but she never pressed for much more of it.

She wanted her son away from all of the violence. She could still remember how Goku had been nearly killed by Piccolo. She knew at that moment that her children couldn't be fighters. She needed them to be safer, doing something that would keep them alive.

But. . .

'Have I been pulling Gohan away from his nature? Is this what he wanted to do with his life? To fight?'

That question was cast aside as soon as it was raised. He didn't like to fight. She knew it as much as he did. Every time he'd talked about fighting around her, it was out of necessity. It was a duty.

But the burden was something she'd been afraid of. As the foes that came to Earth became greater and greater, she'd become more and more fearful for her son's future.

She tried to push him away from it, but he kept going back. He kept getting pulled back.

And now, he was gone.

'Did I put too much pressure on him to study? Did I add to his burden?'

If there was an answer, she didn't know it.


Maddie's trek up the stairs was a slow one. She had wanted to continue working on triangulating the rift's locations, but Jack wasn't having it. As oblivious as the man could be, Jack could see when she was overworking herself.

However, a reluctance to take a rest wasn't the only thing that was causing Maddie to drag her feet. She was heading left rather than right on the upper hallway, something she hadn't done in the past couple of weeks. The reason for that harsh fact was that that was where her babies' rooms were located.

She hadn't been able to bring herself to go in once they'd gone missing. Tucker's mother, Angela, thought much of the same. She could barely even think of her son's room, much less enter it, without feeling like breaking down. She said it felt as if that empty room was mocking her. Maddie could sympathize. The two had grown closer over this unfortunate ordeal, as she had with Tucker's father, Maurice, as well.

This was the strength she drew from as she made her way to her daughter's door; her trials weren't just unique to her, and she had her new friends to back her up. Her hand only hesitated for the briefest of moments before she opened the door.

It still smelled lived in with her perfume in the air. The last thing she likely sprayed before heading out to drive Danny and his friends. . . before she. . .

Maddie shook her head as she made her way over to her daughter's desk. It was tidy just like the rest of her room. Maddie could feel a little smile cross her face as she gazed at Jazz's table filled with textbooks and other books she happened to enjoy.

Her little girl really took after her that way: always on the thirst for knowledge. She even remembered how bright Jazz had smiled when she and Jack had first gotten her that desk. Where most kids would have been excited for a new phone or game, Jazz was like a kid in a candy store when she got that new desk to learn in.

Maddie sat at the desk with a sigh, her eyes looking about the room and the memories it held. ". . . Damn. I've got to get them back. . ."

Her eyes fell on Jazz's bed. Or more particularly, a lump on Jazz's bed. She stood up but hesitated. Should she go snooping through her daughter's room? A part of her told her that it would be an invasion of privacy. However, another part said that it was just a little curiosity. At worst, she could find some clothing hidden away and she could have it fresh and washed for when Jazz returned.

With a slight shrug, Maddie walked towards the bed and gripped the lump. She frowned as her fingers traced the object. It definitely wasn't clothing. It was too rigid. It felt like a book.

She smiled, sadly. It must've been something she'd been reading earlier. "Well," she started, slapping her hands against her thighs, "might as well fix her bed while I'm here! I bet she'd love coming back to a nice, clean bed."

She picked up the comforter and set it aside to straighten the bed sheets. To her surprise, it wasn't just any random book that Jazz had left on her bed. In big, dark letters read the word: DIARY.

She froze up as she stared at the book. It wasn't that she was surprised that her daughter had a diary; Maddie herself had had one when she was younger. It was more of the fact that it was right there. A link to her child that she hadn't had in weeks.

'More like years' her mind told her.

She wanted to banish that thought out of her mind, but there wasn't much she could say to refute it. Ever since the portal had been up and running, she and Jack had grown away from their kids. Heck, even before that they had been drawn more towards their work and away from their children.

'That doesn't mean that you can just go and snoop through her diary just because you're feeling guilty for being a bad mom!'

Maddie frowned at that. She'd normally agree in most circumstances, but these weren't exactly most circumstances. Jazz's diary might've held some clues about her and Danny's sudden disappearance. And if there was a way to bring her babies home in that diary, then some privacy would have to be breached.

"Alright," she muttered, "here goes nothing. . ."

She turned the pages, forcing her eyes to focus on the dates, alone. Once she arrived at her desired location, a few months before present day, she began to read.

04/05/07

Danny and I went on patrol today! I'm glad that he finally trusted me enough to go with him. Not to brag, but I think that I'm doing a wonderful job ghost hunting. Ghost X was a little hard to handle, but I helped bring him in! It's so much more fun than I thought it would be! I can't let Mom and Dad know that though. I'd never hear the end of it.

Maddie felt a strange sense of emotions run over her. On the one hand, it felt like the conclusion that she'd come to had been correct; ghosts were behind the disappearances of her babies and their friends. She didn't have concrete proof just yet, but the knowledge that they'd been ghost hunters meant the trail hadn't gone cold either.

Even among those comforting feelings, she could feel the guilt gnaw at her. "How did I never realize Danny and Jazz were ghost hunters? Have I really been that oblivious?"

Shoving her guilt down for the moment, Maddie shook her head as she returned to skimming through her daughter's diary, looking for anything suspicious.

There were some more ghost-related stories notated, some mundane while others were more dangerous. It seemed that the only thing she was discovering was that Jack might not have been the only oblivious parent in the house. That is until she read over a particularly promising entry.

07/20/07

Ghosts are very interesting to watch communicate and interact with other beings. They're supposedly emotionally stagnant and vacant, but that assessment couldn't be farther from the truth. Sure ghosts can be rather stubborn and one track minded, but I'd argue that they're not that much different from humans in personality. They're just a little more eccentric about certain topics than other people are. I truly hope to visit the Zone one day and pick a ghost's brain. Danny doesn't think I'd be able to handle it right now. He says that it's incredibly vast and hard to map out (which I'd believe from the looks of his map). Still, a girl can hope, right?

Maddie blinked once. Twice. She had to reread the final part more than a few times. No matter how many times she read it, the info came back the same: Danny made a map of the Zone. Likely not one up to a scientific cartographer's standards, from his sister's description, but it was still amazing to learn of its existence. If nothing else for the fact that there was now a meaningful step ahead.

'OK, let's collect our thoughts here, Maddie. What do we know?'

She knew that her kids and their friends had disappeared about three weeks ago. She knew that Vlad had disappeared for around the same amount of time. She knew that an interdimensional rift (possibly ghostly) had appeared in Amity and nearby her home. She now knew that her kids and their friends had been ghost hunters. At some point, her son had ventured into the Ghost Zone, mapping part of it out.

All of these on their own could have been a hint towards something larger, but when put together, they started to paint a picture; she just wasn't sure what that picture might have been.

What she did know was simple: she needed to find that map.


A/N: Thas a wrap for this chapter! I'm gonna start working on Chapter 16 right now. Stay safe and feel free to review!