Most people live their lives without having to dodge lasers, but not Maddie Fenton. She belonged to the small group of people who had to dodge all kinds of lasers on a daily basis.
Today, she was dodging otherworldly lasers shot at her by a giant see-through squid, the unholy mother of all ectopi.
Actually, there had initially been two of the giant undead calamari, but Maddie had disabled and captured the other. The effort had exhausted her guns' energy reserves and the remaining squid was too big, high and fast to actually damage with the short range ghost weapons she had on her person, so she was currently practicing the fine art of running away from ghosts which everyone living in Amity Park had mastered ages ago.
At least the ghost giant squid was focusing on her, the source and target of its ire, and not any other pedestrians they passed as she led the beast through the not-so empty streets in a vain attempt to either lose it between the tall buildings of the downtown area or manage to stay ahead of it long enough to make it to Fentonworks and turn on the new experimental ghost shield which was supposed to function like a giant specter deflector. Both ideas were unlikely, seeing as the humongous hexapod was faster than her and she was already growing tired. She wasn't twenty-five anymore, after all.
Just as she was almost ready to turn around and bodily throw herself at the creature in an attempt to stab it in the eye with something, her ghost detector beeped faintly. It was the same one she used to find Phantom; she had since their last meeting tuned its sensors to at least in theory be able to detect the ghost even during one of his disappearing acts and to alarm her when the ghost was within four hundred feet of her.
Maddie ducked into an alley opening on her right and dug out the detector. She would have time to check the other ghost's location as the squid turned because despite the skill of ignoring most known laws of physics, very large ghosts oftentimes turned around slowly. Having studied ectoplasm for decades, she was convinced it was a psychological thing.
She got the detector on her hands and true to its alarm, a red dot was closing in on the big green one locating the squid. The red dot was smaller than it should've been and flickering, but Maddie assumed Phantom was in whatever 'stealth mode' he used to hide from hunters' detection. She watched on the small screen as the red dot barreled into the green splotch and heard the squid screech. She had come to trust Phantom enough to let him handle the squid for her, and after the fight she might have the chance to question him again.
She returned the detector to its place and walked to the alley's entrance to watch the ghost fight taking place above the bigger street, but as she got out of the alley, she was shocked to find that the newly-arrived party was not Phantom.
It was the Red Huntress.
Maddie watched in fascination as the mysterious woman on her forked hoverboard rained ectoplasmic grenades and magenta lasers upon the suddenly overpowered squid. The Huntress easily dodged all the beast's tentacles and blasts and returned the fire twofold with her own cannons. As the squid was on the verge of collapse from the short but vicious attack, the Huntress leaped off her board onto a lamppost nearby and let her board, still shooting and sparking with ecto-electricity, plunge itself into the squid's huge eye. The squid screeched in pain as the board not only violently entered its eye but also exited through the squid's equivalent of a forehead.
After its small adventure through the squid's head the board returned to the Huntress as the squid itself collapsed on the ground, from where the remounted Huntress swept its remains into her ghost containment device.
Maddie decided she could talk to the Huntress instead. Phantom had had a truce with her for almost four years now and they had hunted together countless times. She was bound to know more about Phantom and his origin. She might also know why Maddie's ghost detector picked her up, as the scientist did not.
"Red Huntress!" She called while walking out of the alley's shadow where she had watched the one-sided fight. "May I speak with you?"
The Huntress looked at her and steered her board down until she was in front of Maddie. "Sure," she answered, "There's no other malevolent ghosts out at the moment."
Maddie was mildly confused by the Huntress' reply as she had thought the other woman hunted all ghosts with the exception of Phantom, but decided to brush it off as she had not really talked to the Huntress before.
"I've been studying Phantom for a while now, and I thought you might know more about him," Maddie started, "since you've been allies for so long. I've talked to him twice in the last month but he's hard to get a hold of and keep focused."
The Huntress crossed her arms and smirked behind her visor; a surprisingly Phantomesque gesture. "Classic Phantom," the younger woman muttered. "But yeah," she continued louder, "I'm down. There's a lot of stuff I can't say, though."
Maddie nodded in understanding, although she was a bit disappointed. "Shall we talk on the way to Fentonworks? I have a ghost to get rid of and I suppose you do too." Maddie turned to leave, but the Huntress stopped her.
"Yeah, no. I don't do walking. If you wanna get home, I can give you a ride." She nodded slightly towards the hoverboard which she was still standing on and Maddie noticed for the first time she was taller than the famed Huntress before her. "Not quite as exciting as ghost-aided flight, but beats any other form of transportation."
Maddie nodded in agreement and stepped on the board behind the Huntress, taking a hold of her black and red armored shoulders. She was nervous; this time there was nobody holding her, and if she were to lose her grip or balance, she would fall. She had never understood how the Red Huntress kept on her board during the aerial fights she so eagerly flung herself into.
The takeoff was surprisingly smooth and Maddie was sure the Huntress was flying as smoothly and calmly as she could to not to drop her passenger, but she could not help tightening her grip on the armored woman's shoulders as they rose.
"Alright there Mrs. Fenton?" the Huntress asked and turned her head to look at her. Maddie nodded, deciding to not vocalize her concern for flying without looking forward. She studied the Huntress' face for a while instead until the other turned to face the invisible route she was following.
The Huntress' visor was fascinating. It was transparent and tinted red, no doubt showing all kinds of data to the person inside, but it didn't let any recognizable features through. Maddie could see the Huntress' face shape, eyes and expressions, but it somehow muddled any features that might've made the face underneath recognizable. Whoever had made the armor and hoverboard for the Huntress must've been a genius.
Maddie could see why some conspiracy theorists claimed the Huntress wasn't a human at all but an android designed to be the perfect ghost hunting weapon.
The Huntress' board was fast, and the two arrived at Fentonworks in not time, but instead of dropping Maddie on the doorstep like the scientist had expected, she landed on the roof. When Maddie shot her a questioning glance, she merely shrugged and said "I don't do people's houses on duty." Maddie simply shook her head and sat down on a seat her son had dragged there long time ago for stargazing, while the Huntress sat on her board two feet off the rooftop.
After making herself comfortable, Maddie started her inquiry. "First off, I'd like to ask about your armor. I had modified a ghost detector to pick up Phantom's very unique ectosignature and show him on the screen as a red dot instead of green," Maddie dug out the very same detector again and showed its red-dotted screen to the Huntress, "but it shows you as a red dot as well. Do you know why?"
The Huntress looked at the offered device and shrugged. "It's probably because my suit's partly composed of God knows what ghost matter. I kind of got it from a ghost, after all. Not enough to stop me from flying through ghost shields, but clearly enough for your scanners."
Maddie was connecting different pieces of information in her head at incredible speeds. Phantom and the red Huntress had a similar signature –both remarkably different from other ectoplasmic entities and composed of both ectoplasmic and real world matter. Maddie wasn't one hundred percent sure of Phantom's unique state of matter before, but now she had another subject with similar results, which confirmed her hypothesis.
Weak ghosts with a signature as strong as the Huntress' weren't capable of passing through ghost shields, but Maddie could confirm from experience that the Huntress could. She couldn't fly through walls the ghost way though, as far as Maddie knew. The presence of real world matter must dampen the otherworldly matter's effects when infused together. That didn't quite explain how Phantom as one of the most powerful known ecto-entities could pass through their ghost shields without damaging them or himself, but it gave the teal-clad scientist something to work on and to base possible later questions on.
She had never actually seen Phantom go through a ghost shield before, but she had seen him on different sides of one in ten second intervals, meaning the ghost had had to perfect whatever tactic he used to disappear from their sensors to pass through them. Maybe he suppressed his core inside a barrier of real world matter to hide his signature? Maddie shook her head gently. It was a ridiculous idea, but she'd have to run tests later.
"I think I'll ask him about it the next time I see him," the Huntress voiced the same thought Maddie had been thinking.
"I'll do the same," the scientist agreed. "And since we're in the topic of Phantom, I'd like to ask more about him." The Huntress nodded, and Maddie continued. "Do you know who he was before he died?" The question had been bothering her since first talk with the ghost.
The Huntress stared at her. "I don't know what you need that information for, but I know who he was. Not many know, and he's made it clear he doesn't want anyone to know who doesn't already."
The Huntress' tone made it clear that this was information Maddie wasn't going to get. She mentally cursed but decided to pursue other topics and be bitter later. She checked her mental list of things she had either forgotten to ask Phantom or had come up with after their last meeting.
"Where does he go when he isn't 'patrolling' the town or fighting other ghosts? Does he have a lair in the Ghost Zone where he goes to recuperate?"
The Huntress was idly swinging her legs over the edge of her board as she thought of her reply. "He hangs around the town, doesn't go to the Zone much. Or leave anywhere, like, at all. I've seen him in Elmerton once or twice chasing a ghost, but that hardly counts." The Huntress took an artistic thinking pause. "He doesn't have a lair in the Zone as far as I know, but he sometimes visits his allies there. I've met few, theyre surprisingly cool."
"Really?" This was fascinating and unexpected development. Maddie nor Jack had ever actually gone to the Zone, but they had sent several probes there so they knew what it looked like and what the heavy liquid-like atmosphere consisted of. "What is it like in the Zone and what his allies are?"
The Huntress rolled her eyes at the teal-clad scientist's childish excitement and hungry curiosity, but answered nonetheless. "Considering here's a door to another dimension in your basement, you seem pretty curious to hear from an outsider what it's like, but whatever. The air's breathable but smells weird, the temperature is oddly undefinable even to my suit's sensors, and the laws of physics take a vacation. Long range vicinity is target-particular, like some places become visible only from close by and others can be seen from an eternity away, and trying to map the place is impossible. The ghosts there seem to know where they are going though. As for Phantom's allies I've met..." The Huntress spent a moment thinking. "I've met the one you call 'the Wisconsin ghost' several times –the two of them fight a lot less now- and Phantom's sort of ward who every now and then shows up here. I've also met a dragon princess who rules an entire kingdom in the Zone."
Maddie was mentally rubbing her hands together in a villainesque manner. Momentarily dismissing the concept and possibility of an entire kingdom in the Zone, she pursued a topic closer to her current target of study.
"Can you tell me about Phantom's ward?" Though Phantom in his own questionable way looked after the city, he didn't seem mature enough to actually look after anything in the need of parenting.
The Huntress' face hardened under her helmet. "That topic is strictly off limits." It sounded like the armored woman regretted mentioning it in the first place.
Maddie was surprised at the Huntress' harsh and resolute tone, and decided to not press it further though she was dying to learn more. "Can you tell me about the Wisconsin ghost instead?" Maddie asked, redirecting the topic elsewhere. "I didn't know he and Phantom were allied. I've only ever seen them fight each other."
The Wisconsin ghost was another mystery. He showed up rarely since he took mostly residence in Wisconsin, but when he did, big things happened. He had been present in during several of the trans-dimensional invasions Amity Park had faced over the years, and gave Phantom a run for his money; one of the Fentons' most impressive video clips of Phantom fighting was from a fight with the Wisconsin ghost, half a mile above the city. Of course, one could hardly see either ghost, but the powers display was astonishing.
"Yeah, the two of them could stand each other only half the time, but fighting was getting them nowhere with how their obsessions clashed so they decided to join forces," the Huntress told. "They get along a bit better now. And his name's not 'the Wisconsin ghost', it's Plasmius. You can keep calling him that though, it's pissing him off."
The Huntress took a moment to giggle at something, probably the Wis- no, Plasmius', Maddie corrected herself- face when he was called by the wrong name. Maddie could actually recall a time when she had called the blue ghost that right to his face, and let out a giggle or two herself.
"I don't like him, but he comes in handy every now and then, since he's pretty well connected and can pull more strings in the real world than you'd think. He, umm, resides in Wisconsin and I think that's where he died as well. He might not want me to tell this but since you know about Phantom and I don't care about his feelings, I can tell you he died in a portal too, just earlier."
If Maddie had not already been sitting down, she would've sat now. There was another 'portalborn' out there, not to mention one she knew from before? The Huntress had just confirmed her hypothesis of there being a ghost portal in Wisconsin, which in turn was back-up for her theory of Phantom being 'born' there. The fact that Plasmius had formed before Phantom gave the latter a reason to be in Illinois instead, if Plasmius had claimed the area for himself already. Amity Park would obviously be the second best location for a strong ghost like Phantom to haunt, with the Fenton Portal being here.
She was awoken from her musings by a faint beeping noise coming from somewhere on the Huntress' person. "I've got to go," the red and black woman said, hopping on her board and obviously looking at something on the inside of her visor's screen. "See you around, Mrs. Fenton." With that, the huntress blasted off, going in the general direction of Elmerton.
Maddie sighed. There was a lot more she could've asked the Huntress. Oh well, she still got something new to work with. The information, vague though it was, about Plasmius' forming could help her in figuring out what differences their kind of ghost with organic matter still in them had to the average fully ectoplasmic ghost formed in the Zone. Maddie started to make a mental list as she made her way to the hatch leading inside. Wider emotional range, more detail, more power, sense of morality of some kind, an inclination to large worldly haunts...
She would have to draw diagrams.
AN: The Red Huntress kinda looks like a robot, doesn't she? I feel like I'm beating a dead horse, but I have more ideas for at least one story for this series. I just want to get some headcanons out there.