Jasmine pushed a strand of ginger hair behind her ear; she was deep in a fairly one-sided conversation with a boy nicknamed Spike, whom she took it upon herself to counsel and talk to. Spike didn't have many friends and he wasn't very talkative. He was hardcore Goth, more so than her little brother's friend Sam Manson, his hair stuck up in a spiky mohawk and he was adorned with tattoos, piercings and a deliberately torn-at-the-edges sleeveless shirt. He was actually a thoughtful person, whenever he did speak it was sensible and open-minded. It was just that he didn't talk. Jasmine wanted to help him come out of his shell.

"I think it would be a good idea to try and open up to your parents more," she said.

Spike looked at her sidelong. There was no real disregard in his expression, he was listening. That was good. They sat outside on a lunch bench, it was Spike's lunch period and Jazz, with the vice principal's permission, exempting her from an absence, skipped on her current class to try and get a break through with her 'patient.' She wasn't a legal psychiatrist, not yet, but practice made perfect.

"They love you, even if they have a hard time understanding you..." she trailed off, as the horrid scent hit both her and the Gothic teen.

Spike sat ramrod straight suddenly, "Wha' the hell?" His darkly painted eyes were glued on something in the sky, and Jazz's were, as well. An unearthly roaring rang out, jolting electricity through the air like thunder and lightning crashing. Chaos ensued as people started screaming and pointing at the monstrous being towering above them all.

Jasmine had never seen Spike so animated, he turned to her and asked definitively, "This is freaky. I'm going inside. You coming?"

Jazz, who'd begun to feel fear in the face of something that so defied the factual, hard reality she believed in, was pale, "Y-yes!"

"What in god's name is that thing?!"

"Oh my..."

"This can't be real...!"

Danny listened to the yelling and the horrified tones filling the outside commons around him. He didn't know what to do. A tugging sensation in his fingers told him to transform—when had he started thinking of it that way?—and confront the Lunch Lady, since surely that was who that monstrosity was. But something else told him to take precaution. A string of conclusions leapt through his brain. Who were the best at fighting ghosts? Ghost hunters. Who were ghost hunters? His parents. Where did his parents keep their ghost hunting stuff? In the FentonWorks laboratory.

"I gotta go," he nearly shouted to his friends, he didn't stick around long enough to witness their reactions. He ran behind a tree—no one was paying attention to some kid when they were freaking out, he went unseen—and intentionally pulled at the coldness in his chest. It came alive, or was that the wrong phrase? Whatever. I want to be a ghost again, he thought as hard as he could, and it worked. The rings formed around his midsection again and he was once more a reversal of who he normally was. The white hair still baffled him. He jumped once, failing to take off, the second time was successful. He floated. Then, he rose higher. And higher. Until he was clumsily flying through the sky.

He was in the sky.

He was flying.

He could see the rooftops of buildings...

In the distance he thought he could make out familiar ones, which he always passed by when on the bus ride to school and home in the morning and afternoon. He followed that path, eventually coming upon FentonWorks. He stared at it for a moment. His parents would interrogate him on why he wasn't at school if he walked through that front door right now. He didn't even have his keys. They were in his backpack...which he'd left with Sam and Tucker.

Danny closed his eyes and dove, flying straight through the walls of FentonWorks. When he opened them again he was inside his house. He'd done it. Without his powers shorting out! With trepidation he landed on the ground and ran to the kitchen—he froze. He could hear his parent's voices in the living room. He'd materialized just between it and the kitchen. It was a miracle he hadn't been seen. Much more cautiously he made his way to the laboratory door, praying that it wasn't locked. He immediately wanted to hit himself. Even if it was locked, he could walk right through it. That was what he did, privately wondering how he could be simultaneously so comfortable and yet uncomfortable with these new abilities.

He did just that, slowing when he arrived in front of the sliding door, which required a card to activate it. Danny cocked his head at it. It was useless now. He phased straight past it and into the lab. If it had always been this easy he'd have been in it a thousand times by the time he was six years old. He searched frantically for anything that may help him, but everything he saw was either locked up or secured tightly. That was when he saw a container-like thing—damn if he knew how to describe it—which held the black, orange and teal-blue accented armor suits he'd only seen his parents wear once in an ectologist convention in Chicago. That, the humming in his chest seemed to say, That is what we need.

But neither of them would fit!

Find one that does.

Where?

No answer.

He turned on his heels again and again trying to find something similar. Hadn't his parents once told him that they'd consider making armor suits for him and his sister as well if they were interested in ghost hunting? Did they ever go through with that? For the first time he hoped dearly that that was the case.

It didn't seem to be...

Unless...

He dashed over to a closet, when he was young he'd pestered his parents endlessly about what was what in the lab, and they mentioned a walk-in closet where they kept prototype suits. If they had made any which could be Danny's size, it would be in there, he figured. He was making jumps of logic but what else was there to do?

The tingling feeling of phasing through the door was ignored as he found he didn't have to squint in the darkness as much as he thought he would have to. He couldn't remember seeing this well in the dark, before. It didn't matter. If he was going to get dressed, he might as well change back to normal...it took some focus but he did change back to his black-haired self after a pause.

Something white and black caught his eye. It was definitely armor; it was primarily white, with black accents and a black hood, orange-tinted goggles resting where the head would be. All was eerily silent. He couldn't tell if it would fit him but it looked smaller than his parents' armor and he was desperate. He grabbed it and began attempting to put it on like a klutz. It took way too many long minutes for his taste to figure out what went where. He was nervous and screwing up a lot with it. Idiot, he thought angrily at himself, can't even dress yourself.

It was only after he had it on as best he could he realized there was probably a light switch in the closet. He groped around for it—and actually found it. He flicked it on.

He looked like an absolute fool.

It was baggy in some areas, obviously not the right cut for a fourteen year old boy. He wanted to punch the wall. Damn it. Damn it. This wasn't what he'd been going for at all. It was hopeless. Why did he even try? Why was he so dead set on doing something he couldn't dream of? He might as well march back upstairs and tell his parents everything—

The bright bluish-white rings formed.

He couldn't stop them from traversing the length of his body, and when they were done, everything was completely different about him.

The suit was suddenly entirely form fitting. White upon black instead of black upon white. The hood was white, too, and when he looked in a mirror at the far back of the walk-in closet he saw that the goggles had turned neon green.

It fit. It felt correct. Like it was supposed to be this way.

He wasn't even going to question it anymore.

Finding his way back to Casper High wasn't all that difficult.

He zoomed in on his target—the meat monster known as the Lunch Lady, or at least that's what he called her. She gurgled horrendously, otherworldly green eyes narrowing at him.

Danny allowed his instincts to take over.

He gathered momentum and kicked at her with all the force he had, it had an effect. An indignant snarl met his action, just as she hit the ground with a deafening slam. Meat splattered everywhere.

A gigantic fist rose up and Danny wasn't fast enough to avoid it. He was flung forcefully, crashing outside the fence which separated the outdoor commons from the rest of town.

Danny wasn't giving in. The anger in him wouldn't let him. The armor really was helpful. The way it felt when he was hit didn't seem as bad as it might have if he were still in a t-shirt and jeans.

He wasn't sure how long the fight lasted—how many hits he took, how many hits he gave, it was all a blur to him, much like the fight with the ghost octopuses had been. After a while he was slammed into the ground yet again and...

The Lunch Lady, smaller now, seemed concerned, "Oh, dear, what a mess. Are you okay?"

Danny eyed her, rubbing a certainly bruised arm, but answered, "Yeah...I think so."

For some reason what she said next was exactly what he'd expected, "Tough! Because you being okay isn't part of my balanced diet of doom!"

Ectoplasm-laced meat took shape around Danny, forming two feet tall vaguely humanoid...things. They were quite plainly hostile.

He leaped at them—they did the same. He stuck his leg out in midair and swiped them all at once with the edges of his boot. They splattered, for a minute it seemed like he'd beaten them, but they reformed a few feet away. He cursed internally.

He panicked when the thrum in his chest gave out momentarily, returning him to powerlessness. T-shirt and jeans. Oh, hell.

The things grabbed at his limbs and yanked him into the air, he struggled but it was to no avail. Once they reached a great height—nearly as high as Casper High itself—they dropped him. Just like that.

He screamed as he went into free fall, "Change back! Change back!"

Seconds ticked by and nothing happened—

Until something did.

A burst of light enveloped his vision and he was a ghost once more. He concentrated on flying as best he could, barely missing the earth which most definitely would have broken his neck. He panted in exhilaration.

He looked back up and the monster meat things did not seem pleased with his survival. A part of him quaked at the malice on their 'faces,' another part wanted to snort. As if they could bring him down forever.

Danny saw something out of the corner of his eye.

His parents?! They were here?!

With his sister?