Author's Note: I own nothing.

13 A New Deal

Dani was a little surprised to find Johnny and Kitty exactly where she'd left them, sullenly refusing to meet each others eyes. She landed, crossing her arms looking back and forth between the two. She was going over options in her head, she had her thermos, she could just use it, but she'd done that to Johnny's shadow a few times that week and it didn't seem to stop him from getting back out. What would Jazz do, she was the most level headed adult-like person Dani knew. She sighed.

"Ok here's how this is gonna go. I have some questions, we're gonna start with Kitty." She turned to the ghost in question. "Why? Why possess Paulina, why do any of it?" Kitty huffed but deflated slightly and sighed after a moment.

"So Johnny stole some do-dad from your dad's lab last time he was here, it lets him ride in and out of the Ghost Zone." Johnny opened his mouth looking downright betrayed. Dani glared at him until he closed his mouth, she gestured for Kitty to continue. "Once he got finished wiring it to his bike I begged him to bring me back." Dani raised a hand.

"How come you can leave the Ghost Zone now? You were stuck in it last time I checked." Johnny had tried to use Jazz to reconstitute Kitty into the living world, which by all appearances would have killed Jazz in the process.

"When you tossed my stuff back into the Zone I reabsorbed my energy from them. It took me time to stabilize though. But when he did finally agree to take me back it was great for about a minute! All Johnny wanted to do was check out every living girl in town!" He again made to protest. This time Kitty shut him up with a look. "You ran us into a meat truck!" Dani couldn't help her laugh. She straightened back up quickly as Kitty continued though. "So I decided to leave and check out some shit on my own you know? Only problem, his stupid bad luck shadow is great at tracking me. Unless I'm inside a human. I knew Johnny hated you so I was gonna possess your friend, Tanya. But I wound up in Paulina instead." She shrugged. "I just wanted to have some fun without Johnny for a while, I mean we've spent our whole death together, and I love him but he get's so annoying sometimes." She huffed, crossing her arms again. Dani fought the urge to sigh and instead turned to Johnny. He was frowning.

"Ok, your turn." Dani said, wondering in the back of her mind when she'd turned into a dead couples therapist.

"Kitten I didn't mean anything by it. You know you're the girl for me, we were made for each other. I know sometimes I'm careless but I will love you for eternity babe, remember we promised." Dani filed that away as Kitty's lip trembled. Dani cleared her throat.

"Ok clearly you two still love each other, so why not go home and work things out. I get needing to get away from things for a while though so Kitty I'll make you a deal." She frowned, red eyes looking up at Dani. "Once a month, if you feel you need to get away from Johnny for a day we can hang out, as long as it's just me, Sam and Tanya around, and you don't go around possessing people." Kitty leaped to her feet pulling Dani into a hug.

"That sounds like fun." She released Dani as Johnny got to his feet. He looked at her guiltily.

"Forgive me Kitten?" He asked and Kitty tackled him, pulling him into an enthusiastic kiss.

"Always." Kitty said pulling away from his face, but remaining in his arms. Dani couldn't help her grin, it was nice that love could survive after death, even if Johnny was a bit of a deadbeat.

"Ok, please take this love fest, back to the Zone." Dani said shooing them back to Johnny's bike. He laughed as they mounted it.

"You know, you're not half bad Kid."

"It's Phantom, Dani Phantom." She corrected and he rolled his eyes pressing a button attached to a small box on the handle of his bike. A bright green portal opened and he drove them through it. Dani followed and the moment they were all in the Zone she blasted the box he'd used to open the portal to bits. He gasped indigently.

"This way you two have plenty of time to talk. Kitty you know where the portal is." Dani waved and flew back through the shrinking portal as Kitty laughed and Johnny swore. The last thing she heard was Kitty exclaiming 'I like her!' as the portal closed fully and she landed on the grass. She flopped down on the blanket she'd set up back when this had been a night for stargazing and changed back into herself with a sigh. It was sort of ironic that she had made a new friend this week, in a dead teen ghost. She frowned looking up at the stars. It was growing cloudy, she wouldn't be able to see them for much longer. So instead she pulled out her phone and began searching. After about twenty minutes she found what she was looking for.

'Tragic car accident kills three. Earlier this morning police discovered the grizzly crash sight of a car on motorcycle accident that resulted in the deaths of all drivers and passengers. The bodies of Katherine Ramirez, Johnathan Reese and an as yet unidentified driver were recovered at the scene. Family members state that Miss Ramirez had fought with her family earlier yesterday about her relationship with Mr. Reese. The eighteen year old left the house supposedly to meet up with Mr. Reese and had not been seen since.' Dani closed the browser looking back up at the darkening sky. So Johnny and Kitty had died trying to run away together, or at least that's what it sounded like to Dani. What about the other driver, the one who'd gone unidentified. Had they become a ghost too? Dani shook her head, she wasn't sure she wanted to think about that right now. Besides there was another entity that hung around Johnny and Kitty. Dani sat up and began to gather her things. She made her way back towards town when a whirring sound caught her attention. She looked up and just spotted a flash of red and silver in the trees. She frowned, red and silver in Amity generally meant the Red Hunter, Vincent. Dani cleared her throat.

"You make a habit of spying on people Red?" She asked and a soft swear told her she was right before he ever swooped out of the tree line. He landed in front of her, body language sheepish even if she couldn't see his face. "There hasn't been a ghost sighting for over a week, what are you doing here?" Did he know? Probably not, he would probably come at her guns blazing if he did. He rubbed the back of his head.

"I saw movement out here and wanted to make sure everything was alright." It was true, Vince had been trying to keep a closer eye on Dani since the invasion. He'd figured out that a lot of his classmates had been possessed but he was still trying to figure out what the goal had been. He hadn't been able to get to City Hall until it was over. He was considering wearing the suit under his clothes, just to make life a little easier. He'd noticed Paulina acting weird around Dani for the past week. He'd begun to wonder if Paulina had been possessed again. He hadn't been able to track her and Dani as they left school that day, Tetslaff had wanted to have a talk with him about his slipping grades. He'd been looking for her for a few hours now, but when he'd found her she'd been alone on the hill looking at something on her phone. He'd decided to follow her home, just to make sure she was ok. He totally wasn't stalking her. She would be a target, because of her parents. Right, not because he had feelings for her and wanted her safe. That totally had nothing to do with it. She raised an eyebrow, looking like she was about to call his bluff. But she just shook her head.

"Well at least I wasn't stargazing alone." She lamented and he frowned.

"You were out here alone?" Stupid dangerous in Amity these days. Most people traveled in packs since the invasion, especially at night.

"Yeah, Paulina said she'd be here but she never showed." Dani shrugged. "Knowing the A-listers that's probably a good thing, since last time one of them wanted to hang with me it turned out to be for a bet." Vince winced. He'd made that bet with Dash, back when he was an A lister, a stupid kid who thought the most important thing in life was the next football game. He'd learned he was wrong the hard way.

Dani didn't like lying to Vince, even when he was the Red Hunter, but it would keep suspicion off of Dani Fenton if no one knew she and Paulina had last been seen together before she mysteriously showed up at the hospital suffering the after effects of a possession.

"Do you want a ride home?" His question broke through her thoughts and she blinked at him. He was holding out a hand to her again. Did she want to do this? Did she want to give herself any kind of hope? She hadn't had much time to contemplate her own feelings since her accident. She liked Vince though. He was sweet once away from the A-listers. He did seem to genuinely care about her, even risking his secret ID by being seen and heard up close, something she had yet to risk as Phantom. But Phantom was the problem here. Vince hated ghosts, Phantom specifically, though she'd tried to explain that it hadn't been her fault. A lot of things that weren't her fault were being pinned on her these days. She shook her head.

"I'm fine. And you don't have to follow me home either. It's not like my parents never taught me anything." She said patting the Fenton Thermos at her hip. He nodded, but Dani was pretty sure that beyond the mask he looked a bit crestfallen. She simply couldn't risk getting too close to another ghost hunter. She already lived under the same roof as two people who would want nothing better than to rip her ghost half apart molecule by molecule. She didn't need that at school too.

"Ok, but stay safe out there." He said stepping back onto his board and flying off. Dani didn't miss the fact that he hovered in the tree line until she was safer under the street lights of Amity. It didn't make it hurt any less. She sighed as she made it home, tucking away her things and slipping unnoticed into her room. Thinking back on the last week this was a best case scenario. Paulina didn't remember who she was and Kitty wasn't about to go blabbing, not that the living would likely believe her if she did. But what if… What if it hadn't gone so well. She shuddered to think about it but it was a possibility. She'd need to talk to Tanya and Sam about what they would do if she was revealed. She shook her head flopping down on her bed, staring up at the plastic stars on her ceiling without really seeing them.