I'm as surprised as anyone at how fast I'm getting chapters written for this story. That's what a growing count of favorites, followers, and reviews will do to you. It's keeping my motivation through the roof. So, hey, keep it up! Remember: reviews fuel the beast.

The school day progressed normally, almost disappointingly so. Danny hadn't been so idealistic that he thought his sophomore year would be wildly different from the year before, but he had at least hoped that this year his teachers would try to get the class excited on the first day of school. No such luck. In one class after the other, Danny fought to keep his eyes open as the instructors went over the class rules and syllabus for what felt like hours.

Even a ghost attack at midday didn't seem to break up the monotony. Admittedly, it was nice to get a little ghost fighting in after a few days' break, especially a fairly simple one, which was the case when Technus decided to create a ruckus in the A/V room. Danny only wished that the ghost would have had the decency to show up during his class time instead of his lunch break, but he doubted Technus would be up for creating a schedule.

Still, although a ghost attacking the school was practically an everyday occurrence for Danny, he had nearly forgotten that only in Casper High was such an event anywhere near normal, so it initially took him by surprise when he saw the reaction among the students milling in the hallway after the bell rang that signalled the end of the lunch period. The hall was noisy and packed with energy as students enthusiastically tried to piece together what had happened and argued over who had been least scared of the ghostly threat.

Danny noted that most of the people getting worked up appeared to be freshmen. He supposed the middle school didn't get many ghost fights. To be fair, the rest of Casper High had been much worse the first few times a ghost invaded the school; at least most of the new class would have spotted a ghost or two around town or on the news.

Fortunately, Danny only had to deal with the clamor during passing period, since he had American Literature right after lunch, which was an all-sophomore class. He sat through it with all the attention he usually gave Lancer's lectures – that is to say, little to none – and was enormously grateful when the bell cut the class off and he could head to study hall, where he could finally get a reprieve from the opening-day routines and maybe even catch a bit of shut-eye.

He had study hall with Sam, and she had beaten him out of Literature and made it to the classroom first to save him a desk, which he sank into with a groan. "God, I miss summer," he sighed.

Sam snorted. "It's day one, Danny. Way too early for you to crash. Now, come on, sit up, I haven't gotten to talk with you all day, what with Technus interrupting lunch and all."

"I'll have a talk with him about his manners," Danny said. He propped his elbow onto the desk and rested his chin in his hand. "All right, let's talk. And let's start with Lancer. What kind of sadist decides to start off the year with a poetry unit?"

"Oh, come on, now. Just because you don't get poetry doesn't mean it's a bad thing. I mean, we're starting off with Dickinson. Her approach toward the subject of death is actually really fascinating."

"I'm choosing to interpret that as you offering to write my report on it for me."

Sam kicked the leg of his chair. "In your dreams. Oh, hey, by the way, I didn't get the chance to tell you. We had some free time at the end of chemistry class, and Tucker used it to look up some more about that Stanford Pines person. We actually found something interesting."

"What is it?"

"Well, see – hang on." Sam set her phone on the desk, and proceeded to arrange a stack of textbooks, a binder, and a pencil case around it to block the phone from the view of the study hall supervisor. She gestured for Danny to lean in with her to see the screen. "Tucker found a full bibliography online. Complete list of all the journal publications he's an author on, listed chronologically. Tell me if you notice anything weird."

Danny pulled the phone toward him. The first article listed was the one that had been mentioned in the bio he read yesterday, about cryptoids in the arctic, published just over a month ago. The next one on the list was a treatise on the multiverse theory from the International Journal of Theoretical Physics, published in…

"1982," Danny muttered.

Sam nodded. "He made a publication every month or two for years, then suddenly took a thirty year hiatus. That struck me and Tucker as rather odd."

"No kidding. Any idea why?"

"Nope," Sam said, shaking her head. "Nothing but idle theories. Tucker had mentioned how the last paranormal researcher we know who took a sudden multi-decade break was a certain Wisconsinite with a case of ecto-acne."

"So, what, Tucker thinks this guy got into some kind of ghost portal accident too?"

"He pitched it. Of course, the odds of yet another portal accident victim in your life seemed pretty slim to me. My money was on him publishing something really absurd that was shot down, and he had to spend thirty years rebuilding his reputation."

"Sounds like an Oscar winner waiting to be made," Danny remarked. "So what do you suppose the résumé gap means?"

"I don't know. Could mean nothing, of course. But, you know, in our experience, unexplained radio silence usually means something."

"Not debating you there. If I'm ever stuck talking to the guy, I could try to squeeze some information out of him. Do some investigating, ask some questions, see if he hesitates or contradicts himself."

"You do that, Phoenix Wright," Sam said, the corner of her mouth twitching up in a smirk. She shut her phone off and slid it back into her backpack. "Anyway, that's all I've got for now. You should probably use this study hall time to start on that reading for Lancer." At Danny's petulant expression she added, "Unless you'd rather end up pulling an all-nighter to get your work finished?"

"Fine, fine, I'll do my homework, Mom," Danny grumbled. That earned him another kick, which he pretended not to have noticed.

He pulled out his enormous Literature textbook and opened it on the desk, flicking to the pages Lancer had assigned, and started to read the first of the poems on the page. Two stanzas in, he felt his eyes starting to glaze over. After making it to the end of the poem only to notice that he'd barely taken in a word of it, he sighed and laid his head down, his cheek pressed against the open book. He was so not in the mood for this.

His eyelids drooped and he thought that perhaps he was going to get that nap in after all, but the hope was dashed when he realized how noisy the study hall was. One teacher's voice he could ignore, no problem, but an entire double-sized classroom full of chattering was harder. So, rather than sleeping, he found himself listening to conversations around him. He overheard a couple of seniors complaining about scholarship applications, a boy relating some drunken exploits that Danny was 100% sure had happened only in this guy's imagination, and, of course, the word 'ghost' was echoing from various voices around the classroom. Apparently to some students, Technus's minor disruption earlier still counted as news.

Danny chose to concentrate on just one of these conversations, selecting on that was occurring just a few desks away. It sounded like an older student was explaining the school's tendency toward ghost attacks to an enraptured freshman.

"Trust me, once you've gone through a couple of ghost attack drills, the novelty will wear off," the older one was saying. It was a female voice, flat and a little adenoidal. "Now the only time when it's actually interesting is if it's a ghost we haven't seen before."

"So, wait, you get the same ghosts multiple times? How do they keep coming back?" That would be the freshman. Her voice was rather gravelly, with a singsong tone and a hint of a lisp.

"Beats me. But, I mean, they're ghosts, yeah? You can't kill what's already dead, so they must be tough to get rid of."

"Well, yeah, but there are ways. Has anyone ever tried an exorcism on the school?"

"Ew, what year do you think we're in, 1600? That's creepy."

"But has anyone tried it?"

"Maybe. I dunno. We've got a bunch of ghost hunters in town, so they've probably tried everything."

"They couldn't have tried everything, or you wouldn't still have a ghost problem."

Danny had to fight the urge to whip around in his seat and start arguing with this freshman. You try hunting down powerful ghosts from another dimension every night, he thought bitterly. See how you like it. Maybe give the ghost hunters here a little more apprecation, huh?

"Eh, it's not really a problem, exactly," the older student was continuing. "I think the spike in tourism makes up for the cost of the property damage. Besides, Danny Phantom takes care of most of them before there are any casualties or anything."

"That's the guy who was fighting the robot ghost earlier, right?"

"Yeah. Don't tell you haven't heard of Phantom. I know you're not from here, but that's, like, national news."

"I might have heard of him. I kind of tend to tune out news about paranormal stuff most of the time. If you lived with my brother, you'd understand. It's interesting, sure, but not after listening to someone talk about it for two hours."

"Well, this guy's, like, a super big deal. You're not a real Amity Park local until you've seen him in action and gotten pictures."

"You have pictures?"

"Of course. Here, there's a couple from today. Although, hang on, these are blurry. I'll pull up a better one."

"That's Phantom?"

"Yeah."

"Oooh, he's really cute!" the freshman squealed.

This time Danny couldn't help but turn around and take a look at the pair who were discussing him. The older student he recognized as Ashley, a student in his year who had sat in front of him in Algebra I last year. The freshman, of course, was a new face. The girl flicking eagerly through the pictures on Ashley's phone would be hard to miss in a crowd. Thick, wavy brown hair fell halfway down her back, held in place by a bright blue headband that matched the color of her sweater, on which was stitched a smiling panda bear. Oversized plastic ice cream cone earrings dangled almost to her shoulders, and Danny could swear he caught the sight of glitter on her pink cheeks.

The girl seemed to have noticed Danny's eyes on her, since she glanced up from the phone and met his gaze. While most people would have awkwardly looked away at this point, she instead shot him a beaming smile that revealed a mouth full of powder-blue braces. "Did you want to see the pictures?" she asked brightly, earning her a scowl from Ashley.

"Um, no thanks," Danny replied, quickly turning back around. He felt warmth in his cheeks from sheepishness, and hoped to high heaven that his face hadn't gone red. Once he was facing forward again, he noticed that Sam was looking at him, brow quirked. "What?" he asked.

"I'm just impressed. Your pool of fangirls keeps on growing, doesn't it?"

Danny moaned and rubbed at his temples. "Why is it that Danny Phantom can get an entire unwanted fan club, yet Danny Fenton can't get and keep a girlfriend if his life depended on it?"

"Because your flirting ability is piss-poor," Sam answered matter-of-factly. "I thought you knew that. It's not exactly a well-kept secret."

It was Danny's turn to kick her chair leg. "Aw, shut up," he grunted. "You're distracting me from my reading." He lifted his textbook and stared intently at the page, pointedly ignoring Sam's taunting smirk.