Perspectives
Maddie's wounds weren't as bad as Jazz had initially feared. The cut across her bicep was ragged, yes, but not deep. The one on her lower arm was a bit more troubling. It looked as though the spear had at first pierced the flesh on the outside of her radius, and then torn through it simply by virtue of the spear's diameter increasing as it was propelled forward. Still, it hadn't damaged the radial artery, so as long as they could get it wrapped up, it should be fine.
What really bothered Jazz, though, was that her mother had been covered in a tacky red ooze that had seeped from the broken remains of the Fenton Mortifier. She didn't know what it was, and she didn't know what it could do.
Maddie insisted that it was fine. That the substance was harmless, except to ghosts. Jazz wanted to believe that, but she highly doubted that her parents had tested the substance's effects in the human bloodstream, which is where it was going to be if Jazz didn't get Maddie's wounds cleaned.
So Jazz was a little too busy to notice what was going on with Sam and Danny, or even to pay much attention to the wisps that were providing all of her light, right up until Maddie said Danny's name, and Sam failed to keep Danny from turning to answer her.
Now Maddie's demand that the ghost get away from Danny hung in the air. Jazz bit her lip. Did Maddie mean the wisp? Did she not see Danny's eyes? There was always hope, right?
"Get away from my son!" repeated Maddie angrily, surging to her feet. "Get out of him! How dare you possess my Danny, you barely corporeal waste of space!"
A tiny frown creased Danny's face. "Rude," he said. Then, "You're hurt." He sounded surprised and concerned, if only mildly. He then vanished, only to reappear inches in front of Maddie.
Maddie started backwards, but regained her balance well enough to try to punch the will'o-the-wisp in Danny's arms. Danny caught her by the wrist of her injured arm, causing Maddie to gasp in pain.
"Why do you always want to hurt me?" asked Danny. "I'm just trying to help." He turned to Jazz. "Is it some kind of psychology thing?"
"Danny-"
"Don't talk to it, Jazz!"
"Rude," said Danny, and Jazz saw his grip on their mother's arm tighten. Danny hummed, contemplatively.
Maddie didn't react though, except to grit her teeth and say, "Resorting to violence just to get your way, Phantom?"
"No," said Danny, and he set her arm on fire.
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Jazz rapidly realized that Danny had not, in fact, set their mother's arm on fire. Yes, it certainly looked as if he had, as if Maddie's arm was wreathed with yellow-green fire. Yes, Maddie was screaming as if she was indeed on fire. But Maddie's arm wasn't crisping, there was no smell of burning, and Jazz was familiar with several ectoplasmic reactions and ghost powers that looked exactly the same, not the least of which was ignis fatuus, something that will'o-the-wisps were quite good at.
So Jazz wasn't terribly surprised when both Danny and the fire vanished, leaving Maddie's arm intact.
Wait. Intact.
Intact.
As in, healed. No longer wounded. Whole. The hole in her forearm was gone, as was the scratch on her bicep. How had Danny done that? Since when had he been able to do that? Or had the wisp done that, somehow? Wisps weren't very strong, and rarely had powers beyond the three basics and their energy filtering ability, but that was by far the largest wisp Jazz had ever seen. They tended to be closer to tennis balls in size.
More importantly: Where had Danny gone?
Actually, no, never mind, there he was, hiding shyly behind Sam. He was fully visible, but oddly hard to see. Jazz wouldn't have spotted him except that the will'o-the-wisps were all crowded around him.
Danny caught her eye and giggled. The wisps chimed and twinkled.
The sound drew the attention of the others, including Sam, who, from the way she jumped, had somehow not noticed Danny hiding behind her.
"You-!" began Maddie, clearly furious.
"I know what we should do!" said Danny, happily, bouncing slightly. "We should play a game. Like tag! Or hide-and-seek! Or, oh, oh, hide-and-seek tag! Team hide-and-seek tag! Oh my gosh this is going to be so much fun. Everyone has twenty minutes, okay? Okay!"
Then he disappeared. For real, this time. Seconds later, the wisps were all gone as well, dispersed into the woods, taking their light with them.
Mr Lancer, thankfully had left his flashlight on, even though he had dropped it, so they weren't in complete darkness. Jazz started looking for where she had dropped hers.
"Oh my god," said Maddie, breaking the silence. "Oh my god, my baby boy..."
"Mrs Fenton," Mr Lancer began cautiously, "Maddie, are you sure that was Phantom?"
"I thought- But his eyes... That wasn't a typical pattern. Maybe... Mind control instead of outright possession... Why do you ask?"
"He healed you, that doesn't seem like something Phantom would do after..."
Maddie blinked and stared down at her arm, as if she hadn't even noticed. She frowned. "No, it doesn't. It is possible for a host's personality to come through in the case of mind control. Theoretically, anyway." She frowned, deeply. "Mr Lancer, you should take the children back. I'm going to go after Danny."
"I don't think that's going to be possible," said Jazz. She had finally found her flashlight, and was now playing the little beam around the trees.
"What do you..?" Mr Lancer trailed off, seeing what Jazz was seeing, or rather, not seeing what Jazz wasn't seeing. "The Invisible Man, where did they all go?"
Not only Danny, but Sam, Valerie, Dash, Kwan, Mikey, and Ricky were all gone.
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Back on the mortal plane, in a government-owned office complex an hour's drive from Amity Park, a confidential meeting was taking place.
"... so you see, if we play this correctly, we can not only gain access to the Fenton Portal and all their research," said a reedy man in a white suit, "but sufficient funding to mount an expedition to the Core of the Ghost Zone."
"And finally destroy it."
"Well, yes," said the reedy man, nervously, tapping the pointer in his hand rhythmically against his thigh. "That goes without saying."
"What about the children?" asked one older man.
"Well, of course we'll look for them. But we have to think about the greater good."
"Young man, if we tell the public that we are taking their money to go find twenty-four civilians, twenty-one of which are school children, we had better not come back without them."
"No," said a woman. "In the end, their survival, even the survival of this organization, is irrelevant. Our only goal should be to destroy those monsters."
"Miss Green, please," interjected yet another man, this one with an impeccably pressed suit and styled hair. "I think that our operatives are more than skilled enough to complete both objectives. The retrieval of the students and their teacher, and the obliteration of all ectoplasmic filth." Then he smiled. "But, Mr Brown, if you are worried that our organization will become obsolete, well, if you will recall, ectoplasm has uses beyond weaponry."
"Most of those uses are patented by the Fentons," pointed out the older man.
"Yes, and wouldn't it be tragic if none of them were to make it back?"
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Valerie took off as soon as the ghost possessing Danny did. It was easy. She had already been fading away, trying to find enough cover to change into her suit. It was the only way she could think of to get Danny back. Valerie's suit had Phantom's ectosignature saved to its tracking device.
She activated her suit, mentally urging it to find Phantom. Her board sprung from her boots, and she angled upwards, through the foliage, shielding her face with her arms.
The glow her tracker was easy to see in the moonlight. She ignored the smaller signals, the ones labeled with numbers. Those were surely those smaller, glowing orbs. She looked for Phantom's signature.
It wasn't there. Valerie growled in frustration. How was it that Phantom always disappeared?
But... Maybe it wasn't Phantom that had possessed Danny? Maybe it was one of those smaller ghosts? But then the question was, why wouldn't they possess all of them?
Valerie answered her own question. Because ghosts loved nothing more than causing pain, whether that pain be physical or emotional. The only exception was Danielle, and that was because she wasn't really a ghost. She tapped her tracker again, trying to change it so that it followed the strongest ectosignature.
Right before she did so, however, the screen flickered, and it briefly showed Phantom's signature as coming from everywhere. Valerie stared at the screen, mouth suddenly very dry. She might not be a scientist, like Mrs Fenton, but she did make sure to know how her equipment worked. She had spent hours talking to Vlad about it, particularly the scanner, before he had revealed himself to be a ghost. Half-ghost. Whatever.
The only reason for the tracker to pick up Phantom's signature as coming from all directions, was if this was his lair.
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Dash wasn't scared of ghosts. He was a big, tough guy. The quarterback. The leader of his team. The leader of his school. A guy like that couldn't be scared of ghosts, especially in a town like Amity Park.
But an army of ghosts converging on him from all sides?
Yeah. So he panicked. So sue him. He ran away from those ghosts as fast as his legs could take him, trying to follow the yarn out of the woods.
But then he heard something chasing him.
He put on another burst of speed, no longer caring where he was running. It was too dark to see where he was going, anyway. Then he tripped, fell, and whatever was chasing him fell on top of him, knocking all the breath out of him.
As soon as he regained his wits, he started to fight against his attacker. But the thing that was on top of him began to speak in a familiar voice.
"Dude! Stop!"
"Kwan?"
"Yeah, man."
"What are you doing?"
"What are you doing? Fenton's mom and Valerie are the only ones that can fight ghosts. What if you got ambushed out here?" The shadow that was Kwan looked around. "Crud, it's dark out here."
"Yeah. You think they've gotten rid of those ghosts yet?"
"You see what that one gun did to Phantom? And you know Val went off the deep end since Paulina kicked her off the A-list. Yeah. I think they've beaten those ghosts by now."
"Okay," said Dash. He took Kwan's hand and let himself be pulled up.
"You didn't sprain your ankle or anything, man?"
"Me?" Dash snorted. "No way. Now, uh, what direction did we come from? Kwan? Dude?"
"Crud."
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Ricky and Mikey had intended to hide. Just hide. Really. They weren't going to run away like idiots (also known as Dash and Kwan). Staying with the actual ghost hunter was a much better plan than running off into a dark forest that you knew was haunted.
So they ducked behind a tree. That's all they did.
Until a bunch of curious ghosts phased through the tree they were hiding behind. Then they did run. But only a little. Only to the next tree.
They didn't notice the hole until they had fallen into it. It wasn't their fault. The shadows had hidden it perfectly.
They were so surprised, they didn't even scream on the way down.
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Sam, like Valerie, left to go after Danny.
Unlike, Valerie, however, Sam had no ghost tracking devices. Well, no ghost tracking devices except for her eyes. Her plan was to follow the still-visible wisps, and hope that they led her to Danny.
Meanwhile, a question was echoing in her head. What the heck was team hide-and-seek tag?
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