"Aw, man," I muttered under my breath. I ducked into an alleyway and watched my friends for a moment as they got farther away. They were good to head home. I could handle this - I could tell that the ghost I was sensing wasn't very strong. This would be over in a few minutes if I was lucky.

When I was sure nobody was around, I felt for the vague nebula of ice energy that always sat in my chest. As best as I could tell, it was my ghost core. It only got colder when I transformed, but the cold didn't bother me. I had always thought that the cold was normal, that it was just a ghost thing, but if I was uniquely ice... what did other ghosts feel? What about Vlad? It would be so weird to feel, I dunno, fire and heat instead of cold.

I shook my head to focus when I felt my ghost sense go off again. The ghost was getting closer, but I was even more sure that it wasn't one of the strong ones. I launched myself high into the air. It wasn't hard to find the ghost, since it was almost dark and ghosts glowed. This one had chosen the park we had just vacated, ironically. I dropped down, almost touching the ground, and got a cheap shot at it before getting a good look.

This ghost was animal-based, as many of the weaker ones were. It was shaped like a giant white snake with red eyes that glowed evilly as it turned around to face me. A long tongue flicked from its mouth. Ew. That was the worst part about snakes. Well, that and their speed. I barely dodged the snake's first strike. As I landed on the ground behind it, I noticed the trail of flattened grass it was leaving behind it. I grinned, sensing a weakness.

The snake whirled up to bite at me again, but I jumped into the air and stayed there, floating above its head. As expected, the snake just sat there, swaying, glaring at me from the ground. Yep, it was earthbound. Strange, for a ghost.

"No flying for this snake," I laughed, then sighed. "That sounded cooler in my head. Snakes don't usually fly, do they? Oh well." I shot at the snake a couple of times, mostly just practicing the curves and fancy things I'd been working on, until the snake smoked on the grass. I unclipped the Fenton Thermos from my belt, spun it around a few times, and sucked the snake in. The meter on the side blinked at me. I'd have to eject this one into the Ghost Zone before too long.

I hummed a few notes of a song stuck in my head and started to drift towards home, but stopped dead when the sound of an ectogun powering up reached me. I turned, fully expecting to see my parents, or maybe even Valerie the Red Huntress. And... nope. Anna the EctoContainment Unit recruit stood below me, pointing the nasty gun she had had earlier at me. I flipped upside-down and lowered to talk to her.

"So... how ya doing?" I asked, attempting to lighten the mood. No such luck. Ghost hunters were so stupidly serious. What, did they think I was going to play a Jedi mind trick on them or something? Ha. Well... thinking back to my parents' teachings... yeah. Yeah they did.

"Phantom." And... yep, that was my name.

"What?" At least she hadn't called me "ghost." That was one thing she had on my parents. I clipped the Thermos back onto my belt.

"So that is your name. I just thought it was a marketing ploy," Anna said with a smirk. Her eyes, though, were angry.

"Uh..." I said eloquently. "Okay. Bye." I turned right side up and started to fly away, but a flying gob of goo passed me, a bit too close for comfort. I stopped for a second time in as many minutes and turned around.

"So... you've got better aim than my paaaains in the necks, the Fentons!" I corrected myself.

Anna scowled. "Of course I do. They're scientists, not field soldiers, like they pretend to be. Now get back over here and answer my questions."

I folded my arms. "This distance is fine, thank you."

A glare and slight whirr from the gun told me I was walking - um, floating - on thin ice. Ice. Ghost powers. Something there would work, right? Invisibility, for one. I couldn't just pop out of sight, though, she'd shoot, and I didn't think I could outfly that gun at this range. I had to distract her first. Hmm. Ice. Could I make that happen on purpose?

"I want to know what ghosts' weaknesses are," Anna said quietly. She stepped closer to me. "There's got to be something that can fight every ghost with one hundred percent effectiveness." That sounded unrealistic, until I realized that humans had a lot of weaknesses like that: fire would burn everybody, a bullet would probably hurt everybody, and even too much water would drown everybody eventually. Anyway. I got back to my plan.

I went for a cold, icy glare. Anna shivered. Success!

"You seem to have forgotten something," I told her, a slow smile spreading across my face. I just couldn't hold it in. This was working!

"And what is that?" Anna asked dismissively. She no longer met my eyes, I noticed.

"I'm a ghost. And not even one of the evil, stupid ones, who can be trapped by a single ectogun." I could almost feel the cold myself, now, and knew that it had spread in a pretty wide circle around me.

Anna's teeth were chattering, but she still tried to keep the upper hand. This was a useful tactic. "Who says there's only one?"

That made me pause, until I realized it didn't matter. If I activated invisibility and intangibility at the same time, I would disappear from their scanners for at least as long as it took to get out of range.

Instead of panicking, I laughed. It came out... creepy. Kind of like Vlad's laugh. Or Dan's. I stopped. Actually, this whole scare-the-person tactic was a lot like what one of them would do. I sighed and stopped consciously trying to lower the temperature.

"Look," I said. "That was kind of childish, so I'm sorry. I'm just going to leave now. See ya around." I went both intangible and invisible, and booked it into the sky and across town. Anna yelled at me from behind, but I was too far for her gun now. Or any others that might have been there.

It didn't take long to get home, which was good. I was tired from a lack of sleep, though the ectoplasm I'd had with my fries earlier had helped. It was kind of like caffeine without a crash. There was just a slow fade... and it was pretty much gone now. I slipped into an abandoned bunch of bushes and transformed back. I half-expected a wave of tired to hit me, as it sometimes did when I used a lot of ghostly energy, but I was pleasantly surprised. Normal tired, this time. I opened the front door.

Doo, doo, doo. Some warmed up spaghetti... The microwave sure was loud in the dark house. Jazz was gone to college already, and Mom and Dad were probably downstairs in the lab. I opened the fridge, a plate of spaghetti steaming on the counter, and hesitated. Eh, nobody would come up for a while. I grabbed a jar labeled "Ecto-Contaminated Cheese!" and dumped a bunch of slightly glowing shredded cheddar on my noodles. When I turned the kitchen light on, you couldn't even tell it wasn't just normal cheese. Unless you squinted. Or had some kind of ecto-locater. But really, who used those in this house? I snorted.

I happily ate my spaghetti at the table and answered Tucker's text from earlier.

'Yep, I'm home. Sorry, a snake attacked'

'Dude'

'What'

'Snakes in amity? you're kidding. I hate snakes'

'Ghost snake'

'Oh what a relief'

I rolled my eyes and made my way upstairs, having eaten all the spaghetti. And another ectocookie. They were good, and nobody noticed, unlike when I snuck some of Dad's fudge.

A few minutes later, I lay on my bed, which I had to remake, since Sam had taken off my comforter. It still kinda smelled like her...

Boo, who needs consistency?