Chapter 1

Danny woke up one Tuesday morning with a pounding headache. He sat up and reached up with one hand to clutch the side of his head, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and touching his feet to the cold, wood floor. He gave himself a moment to try and recover from the pain; within the space of a few moments it slowly died down to a dull ache. Standing up, he undressed, then pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. It didn't take him long afterwards to find both his sneakers and a pair of clean socks. Fully clothed, he opened the door to his bedroom and descended the stairs, heading towards the kitchen for his usual cereal breakfast.

A loud crash sounded from the underground lab, startling Danny into full alertness. The passageway leading down into the basement was down the hall, through the dining room. He crossed the room in nearly four strides, rushing to see what had happened to make such a noise.

He remembered that Jack had been up all night, working on a new Fenton-gadget for tracking ghosts. How could he forget? His dad had been blathering on all about it after dinner last night, eager to show Danny exactly how it was going to work. Thinking back to how his dad said that all the machine did was track the location and movement of a ghost through a coordinate system, and yet had no large moving parts that could cause damage to anyone, Danny wondered if perhaps Jack had started working on a different machine that did have mechanical arms or other appendages that could have possibly knocked something over in its test run and thus made that loud crash.

He was downstairs in an instant, inside his mom and dad's ghost research laboratory. The only light in the room came from the Fentonportal, which stood open, its inner spectral void casting an eerie green glow over everything else in the room. Danny was about to rush over and close the portal when he heard a sound off to his right, back towards the far corner of the room. It was a very faint sound, like someone moaning after having been exhausted of all strength. Turning his back on the open portal, Danny ran towards the source of the sound, discovering a knocked-over cabinet with its contents scattered all over the floor, out from underneath which lay an arm, clothed in the sleave of an orange jumpsuit and a black glove.

"...Dad!"

Danny began tearing at the pile of rubble with fervor, and soon had the barely-conscious form of Jack Fenton uncovered. Danny knelt on one leg to Jack's side, putting his hands down on his shoulders. His father lay on his stomach, one side of his face against the floor, his arms spread out. Danny shook his shoulders, attempting to arouse him from his inertness.

"Dad! Dad! ... Dad, can you hear me? It's me, Danny! Wake up, dad..."

Jack groaned, but otherwise did not move. Danny shoved harder.

"Wake up... Please, dad, wake up..."

Danny saw his father open one eye slightly, and he took his hands off his shoulders, reaching down to touch his cold, clammy cheek. He moved aside as he felt Jack draw his arms closer, moving them underneath him, trying to raise himself up... then suddenly fall back down to the floor with a loud thud. Jack exhaled through his mouth, and his eye slowly shut. He lay still, save for his still-beating heart and his slow and steady yet inaudible breathing.

Danny fell to his knees beside his father's unconscious form. All of a sudden, the sound of a glass shattering close by grabbed Danny's attention. He leapt to his feet, preparing to switch to ghost form. Before he could do so, something smacked him hard in the side of his head, sending him staggering backwards. Unable to regain balance, he fell backward, landing full-length on his back on the hard floor; the back of his head hit the metal tile with a crack, sending stars sparking like electric firecrackers across his vision.

Before he could recover and attempt to get back up, he was pinned down by something heavy, each one of his limbs suddenly pressed against the floor by an individual leg. Something else, something cold and hard, wrapped itself around his neck and pulled itself tight against his skin, constricting his breathing somewhat. Coming to his senses, Danny jerked his body, trying to throw off whatever was on top of him, but it did no good. Within a few seconds he was able to open one eye.

Standing over him, his four furry legs pinning him down, was a ghost cougar. Danny blinked, then it came to him. Bertrand!

"You! I'm going gh-AAAACK!!"

The restraint on his neck, as if sensing his intentions, suddenly pulled tighter, momentarily cutting off his breathing. The bond then relaxed slightly, allowing him to gasp in a breath. His tongue lolled out, red spots swimming about in front of his closed eyes. He was somewhat aware of Bertrand leaning forward to bring his face closer to Danny's. The ghost began to speak; the scent of human blood was on his breath.

"So nice of you to join us, little ghost-boy freak." He chuckled darkly. "You should stick around to see me tear your stupid father limb from limb, then toss his remains into the Ghost Zone... Or maybe, maybe instead I could do the same to your dear mother, first... I guess it all depends on what the little loser would rather see me do."

Bertrand then leapt off of Danny, leaving him free to move about; however, still severely weakened from being nearly strangled by the bond around his neck, he had no energy with which to move about. His head fell to the side, and he was able to open one eye, watching as Bertrand approached Jack's prone body. Stepping up to the unconscious form of Danny's father, Bertrand lifted one paw, unsheathing a single, sharp claw. He brought it down gently on Jack's shoulder, drawing an imaginary line with the lethal tip.

"Perhaps I could cut him apart using the designs on his dumb-looking outfit... This area around his neck would come off rather nicely... Not to say cleanly, though, I want to see how far his blood would run across the floor before his heart stops beating."

Slowly having come to his senses again, Danny tried to get up. He could feel something pulling back on his neck, as if it were wrapping around and joining its ends together behind him, weighing down on his neck and shoulders. He did not reach up to feel it; he was too preoccupied with Bertrand standing poised, ready to kill his father. His breathing became more labored, his chest burning as anger began to course through his system... How dare he... How dare he invade my home... How dare he attack my dad... How dare he stand there and just think that he could get away with it...!!

Danny jumped to his feet and charged toward Bertrand, seemingly forgetting to switch to ghost mode before doing so, mostly due to the adrenaline and fury surging through his veins. He leapt to pounce upon him, ready to do to him what he threatened to do to Jack...

His blood suddenly turned to ice in his heart. His senses detached themselves from his body; within an instant he lay suspended in nothing. His vision turned to black.

Almost immediately afterwards, a bright white light flooded his vision, blinding him. The lab rapidly came into focus. Startled out of his hate, he found himself suspended somewhere between the floor and the ceiling, looking down on the lab. He felt his feet on the ground, and he looked down--but all he saw was the dark, flaming ghost form of Penelope Spectra, the misery-feeder who passed herself off as a motivational speaker not too long ago in order to suck the optimism out of almost every single student at Casper High. What was she doing out of the Ghost Zone? For that matter, what about Bertrand being free as well? He saw Bertrand not too far away, standing a small distance away from Jack, sitting and looking up at something up above where Danny was watching him. Both Spectra and Bertrand had the same dark grin on their faces, and yet they weren't looking at him. He looked up, but saw nothing except the dark corner of the ceiling.

Danny looked back down toward his feet, where he could feel them touching the ground, but there was nothing there. He could feel where his hands were, and he tried to hold them out in front of him where he knew for sure he could see them. But not only could he not move his arms, even though he felt perfectly capable of doing so, he couldn't see his hands where they were, either. Looking around each way he could, he could see nothing of himself. It was like his entire essence has been reverted into a pair of transparent eyeballs.

"What happened? What have you done to me?" he wanted to cry out to Spectra, but no voice came from his mouth, nor did he feel his lips move. He looked down once more, and saw Spectra and Bertrand still looking up toward the corner of the ceiling, above Danny. Slowly, they backed away until they were both at least halfway to the lab walls, still grinning.

A loud roar erupted from a point close to the ceiling. Danny turned his gaze toward the sound, which seemed to have originated from something vibrating close to his head. Suddenly, a huge gouge opened up in the ceiling. Then, another. Something huge and invisible to Danny was tearing open the ceiling to the lab, roaring loudly as it did so. Soon enough a giant hole was ripped out of the ceiling, and Danny could see the dining room's ceiling above. He cried out in silence as his field of view was carried upwards, into the dining room, and then through another huge hole out into the open air, into the light of sunrise. If the air was cold or humid, he couldn't feel it; what he could feel, however, was a pair of long limbs that seemed to come straight out from his shoulder blades, moving up and down, beating the air. He was carried up and out of the house, up towards the sky, then out over the neighborhood that surrounded his house. He felt the wind brushing past his limbs that he could not see; he felt yet another limb behind him, an extension of his spine that went down, curved, and then straightened out... a tail? Gradually the temperature of the surrounding air became apparent to him: it was cool and comforting. He tried to close his eyes, but then found that impossible, as even his eyelids were invisible. The chill in the air soothed his whirling mind and brought him to tranquility. Looking down, he saw houses, buildings, and low-flying clouds sweeping past him; he was traveling faster now.

He blinked, and although not able to clear his vision with momentary darkness, was able to bring to mind the events that had just taken place. His dad, still in danger, lay on the lab floor. Spectra and Bertrand were free, and Bertrand just tried to make it look like he was going to kill his dad. Something happened when he tried to attack Bertrand, and now he was flying about, having no control over his body except for his eyes, his perspective somewhat distorted, his body invisible, and yet it seemed like Spectra and Bertrand could see him. But why didn't they look toward him where his eyes were, and instead looked up at a space over his head? What was there that they could see, but he couldn't? And what were these extra limbs of his that he could feel, but like the rest of his body, could not see: a pair of wings and a tail? What had happened to him?

He tried turning his gaze backward without turning his head, and found himself staring backwards at his house, far away yet visible from the air because of the large metal structure sitting atop the building's roof. He could see the hole in the side of the house where he had departed from. Compared to the building itself, the hole was rather large, perhaps large enough for an elephant or...

An image formed in his mind. A recent memory came to light.

No, no... It can't be...

Not me.

"So, Penelope, should I go ahead and snuff this guy? He practically looks like he's asking for it."

"NO, Bertrand. When we finally come after his family and friends, it'll be just before we kill him. There are worse things than death, as you already know, but there are also worse things than knowing that those dear to you are dead and gone, both physically AND mentally. Oh, don't look so down, Bertie... In due time we may complete our revenge against that horrid little twerp. He will definitely deserve it, especially after what he did to me."

"I see your point. He's not worth it... At least not right now. Oh, I'm so glad to be free of that irritable Ghost Zone... No one to scare, no one living to sap energy from. Now we're back in business... It's wonderful how you've found out how to channel energy given off from terror instead of just misery. Gives us a bigger range of victims."

"Yes, Bertie... You know, it's lucky that we came across that ghost maiden when we did... Earned us a powerful tool with which to exact our revenge on the little freak. From what we've seen, I'd say it serves its purpose rather well. Well, I'd say it's time we left this dump and had a look at what our little loser has managed to accomplish so far... He's probably already halfway towards the park or the mall. He might even reach the school first... Very unpredictable these creatures are, you know."

"I hear you, Penelope... Can't wait to get a front row seat to the carnage. Let's get out of here."