When Tucker finally transformed, he wasn't even really trying. He was just sitting on the grass in the park late at night, watching the glowing forms of Danny and Sam fly circles around each other fifty feet in the air. And then, for a single instant, what he wanted more than anything else in the world was to join them. More than he wanted to protect their secret or their town, more than he wanted to study for their test tomorrow, fiddle with his PDA, or even draw his next breath.

And finally, finally, his ghost half responded.

The flash of light startled him. He lifted his hand to rub at his eyes and froze when he saw a glowing white glove. It took him a few seconds to process what he was seeing, then he looked down at himself and the black and white jumpsuit identical to those of his friends above.

Tucker didn't waste another moment. He grinned, braced his feet against the ground, and then rocketed into the air. Flying, he quickly realized, was ten times easier in this form. His body wasn't nearly as heavy like this or maybe he was simply stronger, it was hard to say. But boy could he move!

Neither Danny nor Sam noticed his approach until he was right up on them. Sam spotted him first and gasped so loud that Danny whipped around in full battle mode. But his aggressive stance, along with his jaw, dropped immediately.

"T-Tucker!"

"You—!"

"I did it!" Tucker crowed, punching the air with both fists.

Sam zipped in a circle around him to get a good look at him. Not that there was much to look at, in Tucker's opinion, since their suits were completely identical. Well, almost identical. Tucker had been wearing his favorite beanie when he'd gone into the portal and unlike the clothes under the suit, it had converted over. Come to think of it, he hadn't actually taken a look at it when he was transforming in the beginning, only felt it. He could feel it now, too, and he reached up to pull it off. When it didn't immediately slip off his head, he felt a surge of panic and tugged harder. It came off...but he definitely hadn't imagined that moment of resistance. He filed that little piece of information away for later and held his beanie up for inspection.

Huh. It was white. He would've expected the colors to invert like the rest had, but maybe that wasn't how it worked?

Danny snickered. Tucker peered over his hat at him. "What?"

"Your hair is white."

"Uh, so's yours?" Tucker pointed out.

"Well yeah but yours is hidden under the hat so it—it just looked funny when you took it off." He snickered again. "I'm sorry."

Tucker shrugged and held his hat up so he could rub his cheek against it. Texture wise, didn't feel any different than before but the material itself seemed lighter. Weird. He shrugged once more to himself and put his hat back on. The moment it slid into place, a small tingle raced along his skin where the hat made contact.

Sam zipped around Tucker again, and her legs did that thing where they sort of fused to become a single wispy tail. Danny did it sometimes, too. They had to know they were doing it but was it a conscious choice? Instinctive? He looked down at his legs and wondered if they'd do it, too.

"How are you doing that?" he asked. Sam drew herself upright next to Danny and cocked her head. He pointed at her tail. "How do you make it change?"

Sam looked down at her tail and pursed her lips. "Y'know, I'm honestly not sure. I just do it? It's like breathing."

"You'll get used to it," Danny assured him. "In this form, all the stuff we have to focus on in human form is like breathing. Intangibility, invisibility, all of it."

Tucker raised his hand to eye level and the thought that he wanted it to be intangible had barely formed when his body obeyed him. He startled and his hand blipped back to normal. "Freaky. But awesome."

"Oh, you wanna see awesome? We can show you awesome." Danny darted forward and tugged on his hand. Sam looked in the direction Danny was indicating and grinned.

"What? Where are we going?"

"You'll see! Come on!"

Flying as a human took a certain level of concentration and will. Not only did he have to want it, he had to focus on the place within him where his ghost side lurked and let its power flow through him. Flight as a human was a chore. Flight as a ghost was freedom. It was joy, exhilaration, fearlessness. It was drawing a breath and letting it out. It was effortless. It was living.

And his friends, they knew it, they'd embraced it. They kept pace with him as they flew, in tune with the sky and each other. It was as fascinating up close as it had been from below, the way Danny and Sam could flit around each other without colliding. Their wispy tails flicked and flickered, never the same shape or length from one moment to the next. They flew close enough to him that their arms would bump and brush every so often, silently urging him on.

Their destination quickly came into view: the bay.

Danny arced his body and dove for the water in one smooth moment. Tucker tried to mirror him but ended up doing a somersault in the air and rolled off course. Then Sam was there steadying him with her hands on his shoulders.

"Easy," she cautioned and then put her fingers in her mouth and let out a shrill whistle in Danny's direction. Turning back to Tucker, she squeezed his shoulder. "At that speed, the slightest shift in your shoulders can change your entire trajectory. So when you want to do a dive like that—"

Danny flew up beside them, concerned. "Everything okay?"

"Just teaching him how to dive," Sam explained. "He did the same thing you did the first few times. So, Tucker, if you want to change direction like that, you have to roll your body from head to toe. If you stay bent, you'll end up flipping like that."

"And don't forget the arms." Danny held his out in front of him. "We don't just stick our arms out like this 'cos it looks cool—which it does—but, if you lead with your hands, it's easier for the rest of your body to follow. Does that make sense?"

Tucker pressed his lips together, running through what they'd told him once more. "I think so. I just need to try it."

His friends grinned at him and Sam clapped him on the back. Danny began to drift backwards. "It's easier to fly down an angle, like this." He held up his hand and tilted it down at about a forty-five degree angle. "And when we get down to the water you'll want to basically do this…." He moved his hand downward at the same angle then curved his fingers upward and the rest of his hand followed, continuing out parallel to the ground.

Tucker nodded. "Got it."

Danny took off again, slower than before, and this time Sam brought up the rear with Tucker between them. When Danny arched his back to dive, Tucker watched closely, and then repeated the motion and this time he found himself shooting towards the surface of the water instead of aimlessly through the air. He felt himself beginning to pick up speed as they hurtled towards the water but Danny remained a steady distance ahead so Tucker didn't slow, and he risked a quick glance over his shoulder to confirm Sam was still there.

He looked down just in time to see Danny level out with the surface of the water. Tucker licked his lips, exhaled, and braced himself. The water was thirty feet away. Twenty. Ten—

Water sprayed into the air from the force of his descent but he did not fall in. He let out a whoop and Sam laughed behind him. Danny circled back around to meet them, grinning from ear to ear, and pointed down at the water. Though what lay below the surface was nothing more than indistinguishable darkness, the surface of it glittered under the light of the moon and their own ghostly auras.

He lowered his hand towards the water and let his fingers skim along the surface, sending up a steady stream of water droplets as they flew.

Sam shot past them, going intangible, and dove into the water. She reappeared a moment or two later twenty feet ahead of them, shooting out from the water like a dolphin. She flipped over mid-air and continued flying along on her back and waved at them.

"Alright," Tucker shouted over the wind, "you were right! This is awesome!"

"Told ya!"

And it probably would've stayed that way, if they hadn't circled back around towards the marina. Because that was when their ghost senses went off.


The spirits of the dead were as myriad as they were numerous, but every last one of them fell into one of two categories: Those Who Remembered and Those Who Forgot. From there it got a bit messy.

Those Who Remembered were, as implied, those who could recall any significant portions of their human lives. How much of the human personality remained varied from ghost to ghost but, if suitably motivated, any of Those Who Remembered could tell you of the mortal they had once been. The Lunch Lady who had once been a woman named Dorothy was but one of infinite examples.

Those Who Forgot were the exact opposites. Any ghostly scholar worth their ectoplasm knew that the only thing strong enough to erase one's entire sense of self from their core was the will of the person themselves. The Forgotten had done so by choice. Those whose desire for a new life free of their old one won out in those eternal instants betwixt mortal death and their spirit taking root in the Zone. With no facet to Form around, these ghosts were as infants upon formation, slates blank of everything but the most basic of information, the most poignant of which was either the cause of their death or that which they had craved most in life. Hardly fair, given that they could not remember these lives, but it was what it was.

The Box Ghost was one such spirit. An absolute blank slate from the first, neither knowing nor caring of what came before, except that boxes had been involved. Or maybe it was a singular box. Who knew? He did not. (Of course, most modern ghosts could take one look at him and know what he had been in life but none of them bothered to tell him. It wouldn't matter. Also, he was annoying.)

Did Ol' Boxy care? Nope. He didn't care for much if boxes weren't involved. A bit on the extreme end of things, even for one of the Forgotten, but he was annoying and nobody could be arsed to deal with him long enough to help. And, so, he was left to his own square devices.

Devices which, unfortunately for the three new half-ghosts, now extended to the mortal world and its plethora of objects both cardboard and square.


"BEWARE!"

"Well, guy's got guts." Danny muttered. Sure, he, Sam, and Tucker didn't look like much, but there were three of them and this blue guy was alone. And nowhere near intimidating enough to start off with such a warning.

"THIS IS MY WAREHOUSE! GET YOUR OWN!"

"And pipes," Sam added.

"Why is he yelling?" Tucker asked no one in particular, then raised his voice. "Dude, chill! You wanna let the whole marina know you're here?"

"NO! I WISH FOR YOU TO LEAVE!"

"Yeah, no, not gonna happen." Danny folded his arms. "You need to go back to the Ghost Zone, A-S-A-P."

"NEVER!"

And the ghost darted through the wall behind him.

Danny heaved a sigh. "Just once, I wish that would work."

Sam clapped him on the back. "At least this will only take a minute."

"But you don't even have your bat." Tucker pointed out.

"Well, yeah, but there's three of us now! And we have our thermoses." To prove her point, she unclipped hers from her belt and waved it in the air. "Come on. Let's do this."

The building the blue-collar ghost had disappeared into turned out to be a processing warehouse for a local shipping company, filled to the brim with countless cardboard boxes. The three half-ghosts came through the ceiling, hoping to spot the ghost from above before he could spot them, and settled down on the rafters.

They spotted him immediately. Not just because he was glowing. He was taking absolutely no pains to hide himself. He drifted along the rows of boxes, humming to himself while he looked up and down the stacks. Nothing menacing at all.

"What's a ghost doing haunting a place like this?" Tucker wondered, his voice scarcely more than a whisper.

"Uh, Tucker? We fought a ghost haunting our school's cafeteria," Sam pointed out.

"Well, yeah, but she worked there all her life."

"Well, maybe this guy worked here."

"What are the odds that we get two ghosts in the same month who died in Amity Park?"

"Well, maybe it was somewhere else," Danny reasoned, "and this was just convenient. It doesn't seem haunted though. Not yet."

"Which means he must've just showed up," Sam reasoned. "'Cos if he'd come out of the portal while you were at school, this place would be lit up by now."

"Give it an hour," Danny muttered. "Alright. Let's do this."

"Do we really have to, though?" Tucker asked. "He's just…chilling."

"Yeah, and what do you think happens when this place opens tomorrow and humans start showing up? Either he'll chase them out or take someone over, like the Lunch Lady wanted to."

"I still don't get how she planned to possess someone," Sam muttered.

"Me either, but, point is: he's gotta go."

"Alright. I'll follow your lead."

Danny pretended not to notice the significant glance she threw Tucker who sighed. "Yeah, alright. So how we doing this?"

"Sam, give Tucker your Thermos. You and I will fly down there and distract him while Tucker, you sneak up behind him and catch him."

"And how do we distract him?" Sam asked, passing the Thermos to Tucker, who accepted it eagerly.

"I think just us being here will be distraction enough. Come on!"

He dove down from the rafters with Sam right on his tail. They flew down towards the ghost who, still, did not realize he wasn't alone. That, or he didn't care that he was treating them to a hummed rendition of The Wheels on the Bus.

"What's up?" Danny called.

The ghost startled and spun around, flinging his hands out wide, and bellowed, "NO! YOU CANNOT BE IN HERE!"

"Sorry not sorry, but we are."

The ghost looked baffled. Nothing at all like the Lunch Lady. He was territorial for sure but he didn't seem to know what to do when his initial blustering didn't work.

"I'm gonna regret this," Sam muttered, then asked, "Who are you?"

The ghost puffed out his chest and placed his hands on his hips. "I AM THE BOX GHOST! I HAVE POWER OVER ALL CONTAINERS CARDBOARD AND SQUARE! WHO ARE YOU!?"

Danny and Sam glanced at each other. "Uh, I'm Phantom and this is Wraith, we—"

"WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH MY BOXES?"

"Nothing—" Danny started to say but Sam cut him off.

"These aren't your boxes though. Come tomorrow, they'll all be moving someplace else."

"WELL, DUH! AND THEN NEW BOXES WILL ARRIVE! ALL FOR ME!"

Danny sighed, dragging his hand across his face. "Could you just, maybe, please stop yelling?"

The Box Ghost threw his arms and legs out wide. "NEVER!"

"Okay we're done here. Hey Tucker, lets go!"

Tucker appeared directlybehind the Box Ghost with a grin on his face. "And goodnight everybody!"

The Box Ghost whirled around with a yelp, which elongated into a furious wail as he was caught by the blue beam of the Thermos. Tucker capped the Thermos and grinned smugly.

"Perimeter secure."

"'Perimeter secure'?" Sam scoffed. "What are you, a Navy Seal?"

"No." Tucker tossed her the Thermos, which she quickly swapped with Danny for his empty one. He was the one who had to put the ghost back in the Zone, after all. "But now that I am a full member of this team, it's time to start going by my code name."

"Which is…? I swear, if you expect me to call you 'Ghouly'—"

Tucker shook his head. "No, no. I got one better." He paused, hands in front of him, then flicked his fingers out for dramatic effect. "Specter."

Danny and Sam considered it, and him. They glanced at each other. Danny shrugged. "I like it," he said. "It works."

Sam nodded slowly for a few moments. "Wraith, Phantom, and Specter. Ghostly protectors of Amity Park."

"That's us!" Tucker crowed.

"Kill me now."


Two hundred feet away, another ghost watched the girl's mouth form those words through a pair of binoculars and chuckled to himself. No, he would not kill her. He wouldn't kill any of them. Half ghost, half human, those children were the rarest creatures in existence. Whichever he took would be the jewel of his collection.

At first the hunter thought to take the boy and girl he had heard about. They were obviously pair bonded, and if the rumors were true, where one was, the other was not far behind.

But, then, tonight, he saw the third boy transform and realized they weren't a pair but a pack! How fortuitous! He couldn't take them all, of course. Only a hunter of poor principles would take an entire population for himself. One would do. So long as he left two of them free, the girl and one of the boys, there would eventually be little ones. It was nature's course, after all.

Ah, but, which to choose? That question had plagued him as he followed them from a distance. If the rumors were true, they could sense other ghosts who got close. Didn't want to alert them to his presence just yet.

After just a few minutes of observation, he was sure he knew the hierarchy within their group. The darker boy was their junior, clumsy and unsure in his movements, relying on guidance and instruction from the other two to even navigate competently. He had been under the impression they were all the same age but perhaps not. Or perhaps he was weaker than the other two. After all, he had known nothing of him before tonight.

Capturing him would not prove any manner of challenge. There was no thrill in capturing weak prey and these children had proven themselves quite capable for ones so young.

The other boy, then. The paler one. The unspoken leader.

Yes. He would make a fine addition to the collection.


Danny woke up in a good mood. Last night couldn't have gone better. Tucker had finally transformed, they'd gone flying for over an hour, the one ghost they encountered hadn't resulted in a fight, and he had enough steam left to finish his homework before crashing around eleven.

Today was going to be a good day. He could feel it.

His mother was tinkering at the breakfast table as usual and his father was in the middle of devouring a bowl of cereal beside her. Danny grabbed the milk and cereal box and poured himself some of each, then sat down at the table across from his mother.

"You're looking awfully cheerful this morning," Maddie noted, peering at him from behind her red goggles. "Get a good night's sleep?"

Danny smiled, his mouth full of cereal, and nodded. He swallowed and pointed at the device she was working on. "What's that?"

"It's called the Ghost Gabber!" Jack boomed, startling them both. "It takes the mysterious sounds that ghosts make and translates them into words you and I use every day."

He reached for it but Maddie held up her hand to stop him. "It will, once it's finished. The circuit breaker still needs some work. Don't want to risk an ectoplasmic power surge frying it!"

Danny frowned a little but shrugged and took another bite of cereal. Ghosts weren't incomprehensible, at least none that he'd met so far, so it would probably be another bust.

"Aw, Maddie, it should be safe enough for a little demonstration, right?"

Maddie pursed her lips for a moment then nodded, withdrawing her hands. "Alright, but only for a moment!"

Jack grinned and snatched it up, flipping the power switch in the same moment, and held it up to his mouth. The two lights on top of it flicked on and off and it began to emit a steady beeping. "I am Jack Fenton."

A pause, then the same robotic voice he was used to from most of their talking inventions answered: "No spectral frequencies detected."

Smiling, Jack held it out to Danny. "Now go on, say something!"

Crud.

A wordless scream of delight saved Danny from having to tempt fate and Jazz came hurtling into a kitchen in a blur of ginger and blue. "They! Said! YES!"

Danny pushed the Ghost Gabber away from his face and quipped, "Who said yes? The person you asked if you were a conceited snob?"

"No, Genius Magazine said yes!" She thrust a magazine out for them to see. Pale green and adorned with gold, it looked fancy, he had to admit, but his interest dipped when he saw the letters 'IQ' right in the middle. "They got my letter and they wanna put Mom on the cover!" She squealed, hugging the magazine to her chest.

Maddie tapped her chin. "I think I've heard of Genius Magazine."

"What is it?" Jack asked. "…Is it the swimsuit issue?"

Both teenagers shuddered.

"Dad no," Jazz snapped while Danny wrinkled his nose in revulsion. "Genius Magazine is for women geniuses, by women geniuses, and about women geniuses! Also never, ever imply anything about mom appearing on a swimsuit issue. Ever. For the rest of my life."

"Seconded." Danny piped up.

Jack grinned again. "Oh, you kids would be surprised. Back in the day, your mother was—"

"WOW!" Danny yelled, pushing back from the table. "Look at the time I would love to stay and chat but I'm meeting Tucker and Sam before school so I gotta go congrats on the magazine thing or whatever Jazz BYE!"

He could've flown out of there, and it wouldn't have been fast enough. Still, he kept his body visible and his feet on the ground until he was out the door and safely in the alley beside his house. Then he transformed and took off invisibly towards school.

His mom getting recognized by some prestigious magazine was cool. Being put on the cover was even cooler. He wondered what Jazz had told the editors about their family, though. The scientific community didn't have a high opinion of people in his parents' field. She must have omitted a few things or stretched the truth. Oh well, not his concern. His concern was the midterms he had looming.

Right now they were averaging one encounter per day. He and Sam had been taking turns dealing with the ones that popped up near school and now that Tucker was officially on the roster, the number of times they would have to leave during or outright ditch class would be lower per person. If they were lucky and played their cards right, they could get through the semester without failing. Maybe by then his parents would have an actual working lock on the portal and the ghosts would stop coming.

Midterms were spread throughout the week to avoid overwhelming them too much. Of course, those were considerations made with human students in mind, and human students didn't have super powers or have to deal with errant spirits popping up at all hours. The half-ghosts expected the week to be a bit crazier for them. But, hey, there were three of them now, and they could take proper turns on ghost duty. Or so they told themselves.

The first two days of midterms passed without incident. The ghost scene was quiet. Hauntingly quiet, as Danny might say. (Which he did, to Sam's disgust.)

A ghost lion turned up near Sam's house on the third evening but the worst part of that was the verbal thrashing she gave Danny for allowing the ghost to sneak past him. Like it was his fault his ghost sense didn't wake him out of a dead (ha ha) sleep. It happened again the next morning, too, with a ghost tiger near Tucker's. Except Danny had been wide awake this time and he was absolutely sure that his ghost sense had not gone off. Which meant either it and the lion had gotten out at the same time, or these animals had another way out of the Ghost Zone. Danny zipped over to Tucker's with the thermos to trap the ghost then zipped back home to finish getting ready for school.

That evening, Danny's ghost sense went off while he was working on his homework in his room. He sighed, grabbed the thermos, and transformed. He checked the lab first, invisibly, and sure enough the portal was wide open, and both his parents were in there. Danny sighed. His dad was one thing, but how had his mom failed to notice a ghost sneaking past her less than ten feet away?

And this, he thought, is why we can't leave the ghost hunting to them.

Even though his ghost sense had not gone off again, he could still sense that the culprit was nearby. Withdrawing from the lab, he headed up and out of the house, and several dozen feet into the air to survey the neighborhood. The green and white wolf wasn't too difficult to spot, nor did it seem to be taking any pains to conceal itself. He wasn't surprised. None of the animal ghosts they encountered so far had been anything more than dead versions of their living counterparts, showing no sentience or intelligence beyond the expected norm.

Danny cracked his knuckles and dove after it.


The hunter watched from a safe distance.

When he unleashed the lion on the female the night before, he had done so with the intention of observing her capabilities, logging the leader male's response time to the threat, and observing their teamwork. What he hadn't expected was for the female take down the lion herself with some manner of black baton. She then visited the leader male's home directly, likely to return the specimen to the Ghost Zone herself. Following her discreetly, the hunter discovered that the leader male had been sleeping the whole time.

Her ferocity was admittedly impressive and she displayed no signs of hesitation but otherwise her performance was underwhelming. She did not utilize any form of ectoplasmic energy, not even the most fundamental of blasts. Was she flawed? Disabled in some way? Or did she deem the lion so far beneath her that it wasn't worth it? All viable considerations.

The junior male had taken the tiger's appearance with significantly less grace. And he didn't fight it so much as he kept it busy. He used a handheld device, likely one of those phone things, and kept trying to spray…something at the ghost from a tiny canister. Whatever it was, it either had no effect or was not finding its mark. Two minutes later after the boy put the phone away, the leader male had come tearing in to deal with the tiger.

His prior observations had been more accurate than he'd realized. The junior male really was quite helpless. All signs indicated that they had Formed at the same time so why was this one significantly weaker? None of them displayed any ecto-energy abilities but at least the leader male and female could fight! The hunter considered killing him just to put him out of his misery.

Each altercation had given the hunter valuable information. Enough to exploit. Weak or no, the halfbreeds had numbers and containment devices. If he attempted to capture one of them from their midst, it would lead to an all-out brawl, and he was not interested in such a wager. No, he would isolate the leader male from the rest.

So he chose three of his finest specimens, waited for the halfbreeds to leave their place of human education and part ways, then released them. To the female he sent a horse so swift that the hunter himself had needed to rely on traps to catch it. To the junior male, an eagle with talons sharp enough to pierce the hunter's armor. And, finally, he returned to the leader male's home and released a wolf. Eight feet tall, elegant and strong, once the leader of a pack of his own before the hunter had captured him.

The leader male had taken longer than expected to emerge from his home but once he had, he located the wolf with ease. As the hunter expected, the leader male did not hesitate to charge and the wolf, sensing the threat, rose to meet the challenge.

The hunter smiled and moved in.