Maddie looked at the sample bottle in her hand against the light. The organic test subject inside had gained greenish see-through qualities during the experiment.

After gaining partial yet interesting information about a ghost portal's effect on ghosts forming in them from Phantom and to some extent the Red Huntress, Maddie had taken to experimenting. After the first two test subjects had literally blown up in her face, she had roped Jack in and they had built a miniature model of the portal embedded in their basement lab wall. It was significantly smaller in both size and power it put out; similar to the proto-portal they built in college but with better safeties and energy output controls. It was the perfect tool for experiments like this, and completely functional as a portal if the ophiuroid ghost trying to stick its whippy arms through it was any proof.

So far none of the test subjects had changed in a way Phantom's loose explanation would've suggested, but then again, none of the test subjects had been living beings. Cockroaches were next on her subject list though, but she had been putting them off due to her son's resistance to the idea of subjecting actual alive things to large amounts of ghost energy.

Danny was in fact opposed to many of their experiments, and seemed to always know when one was taking place. Once he had even called her from upstairs to stop whatever she was doing. After that, they had diagnosed Danny as extremely sensitive to ectoplasmic imbalances, and from that day on Maddie made always sure to inform her children before an experiment so Danny could get out of the house if he wanted to. Danny's ectoplasm sensitivity might explain why he always seemed so unsettled by ghosts despite them being a common occurrence in Amity Park, especially in the Fenton residence.

That being said, Danny and Jazz were out for some quality sibling time, Maddie was carefully loading cockroaches to small-holed metal wire cages and Jack was assembling a new gun all the while humming off-key along to a song playing on the radio.

Maddie was just about to put two cockroaches inside the small portal on the workbench before her, when the alarm from the big portal on the wall began to beep loudly while flashing a red light. Both scientists paused immediately what they were doing; not many things would set off the portal alarm, and absolutely none of them were good.

Jack was already three steps closer to the portal, when the closed blast doors started to part slowly like something was prying them open from the other side with all their might. Foul-smelling smoke of unidentifiable color spilled out of the widening crack accompanied by an unearthly screeching. The usual green glow of the Ghost Zone was tainted with red and orange and something very big was definitely moving behind the slowly but steadily opening blast doors.

The two humans watched as a black glowing claw struggled its way between the doors, and backed off as an intense wave of heat rolled towards them from the now faster opening doors.

As another talon made its way through the gap, Jack yelled "Let's get out of here!" at Maddie. The doors flew open just as the two turned around and ran across the floor as fast as they could, and neither wished to remain to witness the black and scarlet monstrosity hauling its bulk through the beeping portal. Lower quality glass equipment exploded left and right from the heat the ghost brought in its wake, and Maddie and Jack made it up the stairs and out of the lab just in time as something bigger exploded either from the heat of by the monster's claw. Intense heat and ethereal screeches poured over the edges of the door even though the two scientists were pushing down on it so it wouldn't open.

"The lab shield!" Maddie exclaimed and dashed to the panel not far from the door from where the basement ghost shield could be accessed remotely in case of emergency like this, but just as she was about to press enter, the entire house shook right down to its foundations. The pressure pushing from the lab seemingly subsided as Jack who was still leaning on the door sagged a bit, but the ghost's infernal presence could be felt zooming upwards through the floors. Suddenly it was gone quicker than it had come, only proof of its passing the lingering heat and quickly distancing howls coming from outside.

"Let's go hunt that ghost!" Jack exclaimed and yanked open the door he had been holding shut seconds earlier and bounded down the stairs. Maddie followed with more hesitation, fearing what kind of sight would await her.

The lab was a mess. The portal alarm was still blaring, though distorted and a lot more anxiety-inducing than before. The floor, ceiling and walls were scorched and full of burn holes and some kind of claw marks despite being solid metal made especially to withstand everything short of direct nuclear impact. The portal control unit was throwing sparks, the floor was covered in half melted glass shards, boiled over experiments had stained their nearby areas with different splatter shapes of green, metal parts lay mangled on equally disfigured tables, and only one lamp was still on, flickering. The strong smell of sulfur, burned ectoplasm and overall stench of fiery disaster hung in the air. Surprisingly, nothing was on fire.

"Let's see if we can get the weapons vault open first, dear," Maddie said, noting the slightly deflated expression at the lab's state of her husband's face. "Everything in it should be intact."

After Jack's curt nod, the two set to carefully yet fast to clear all the destroyed stuff from in front of the weapons vault door. Everything was burning to the touch even though the tough latex gloves which thankfully weren't melting stuck to anything, and Maddie spared a few glances and several muttered curses to the lab computer, which was further away from the portal but still smoking gently, implying total destruction of all files.

Prying the vault door open was more difficult than usual, as the soft insulator material between the door and the doorframe had somewhat melted, but all the equipment waiting inside was intact.

"Ha! I told you building a weapons vault was a good idea!" Jack had gained back all his temporarily lost enthusiasm, and was rummaging through the array of long-range weapons in no time at all. Maddie followed slower, making a mental list of the few qualities of the monstrosity of a ghost she had managed to pick up and choosing her to go-arsenal with more care than Jack, who could carry a lot more on him than his wife.

Just as Maddie was reaching for another rifle, a furious knocking could be heard from upstairs, even in down the lab. "I'll get it," Maddie sighed and grabbing the rifle she headed out the vault and upstairs, quickly maneuvering the mess and already forming an answer to the alarmed citizen asking them to hunt the ghost who no doubt was behind the door. Another frantic round of knocks rapped the door as she entered the kitchen.

"I'm coming," she muttered as she reached the door and flung it open, but the person behind it was no average concerned passerby.

It was the Red Huntress. After the door was open, she zoomed right in, having never dismounted her hoverboard in the first place. She made a quick loop in the living room before turning back to Maddie.

"Mrs. Fenton, do you have a ghost shield that can safely trap the ghosts in?" she sounded breathless as if she had ran there instead of flying on her board, and her voice was just as frantic as her knocks had been. "It's really important and really urgent."

Maddie bit down a comment about 'doing people's houses' and nodded. "In the Ops center, storage next to the fridge." The Huntress zoomed past her the moment she had told the location and directly towards the bedroom elevator going to the Ops center fridge. Maddie didn't spare more than half a thought to how the Red Huntress knew the layout of their house so well as she rushed back to the disaster that was the basement to drag Jack and a load of weapons up and to the ghost assault vehicle.

The Huntress reappeared outside just as the Fentons were hastily loading the GAV, holding a crate labeled 'ghost containment shield'. She set it in the back of the monstrous van and flew alongside the GAV, giving directions to wherever they were going.

"What do you need the shield for?" Maddie yelled to the Huntress over the wind. "That thing doesn't have enough power to imprison the ghost for a long enough time to drain it, and going inside would be a suicide if the state of our lab is anything to go by!"

The huntress spared her a glance. "I know, and shooting this thing only makes it angry." A sharp left. "We sicced Phantom on it, since he has his ice thing going on and that thing's like made of lava and plasma or something, but the countering energies made giant shockwaves and lightning, and we have to contain it for Phantom to kick its ass properly." Jack sped directly through a roundabout, and Maddie decided to not ask who the Huntress meant when she said 'we'.

Maddie could already see the damage from the shockwaves the Huntress had mentioned, and in the distance she could make out a dark red shape, billowing like a drop of ink in a glass of water and emitting the same screeching and howling as when it passed through Fentonworks.

As the GAV sped closer, she started seeing separate shapes vaguely resembling limbs and points that definitely were a black crown of horns. The thing indeed looked like it was made of crusted-over lava; the black surface was broken by constantly moving cracks of red, orange, and yellow, almost white in the middle of the widest cracks. The same foul-smelling smoke that had filled the lab was pouring from caldera-esque formations on its back and several orifices on what must have been a face. It was spitting huge mouthfuls of smoke, fire, ash, and overheated ectoplasm from two malformed mouths filled with uneven rows of black dagger-like teeth, all the while trying to hit a fast black and white humanoid shape zooming just outside the reach of its claws.

Phantom was throwing ectoblasts at his ever-changing fiery opponent and Maddie, to her horror, could see they did next to no harm to the monster. She leaped out the moment the GAV skidded to a halt and rushed to the back to get the shield, but the Huntress beat her to it and started to open the crate.

"What the-" the Huntress muttered as Maddie made it to her side. Inside were several beacons, eight to be exact.

"We have to dispatch them around them," Maddie explained nodding towards where Phantom was currently fluidly dodging the inferno being spat after him. "In a normal shield designed to keep the ghosts out the generator is inside, but a contained ghost could easily break it so it has to be outside. Eight beacons are needed to make a dome, and we need to put them in a hexagonal shape, this end towards the center. Understood?"

The Huntress nodded and tapped a few controls on her wrist. Maddie could hear the faint crackle of static before the huntress spoke. "Evac team, are you done?" The older hunter could hear muffled double 'yes' and one 'no'. "We need help putting up this shield." A cacophony of three responses. "Yeah. Come to the Fenton GAV."

Jack burst out of the bulky van with a bazooka hoisted to his shoulder as the two huntresses unloaded and started to pre-activate the beacons. He had still a terrible aim, but with a target as big as it was missing was hard. His threats of 'tearing the spook apart molecule by molecule' went to deaf and possibly nonexistent ears though as the beast was solely focused on Phantom, who in turn had taken to blocking with transparent green shields instead of dodging. He had his hands full with trying to contain the excessive fiery pyrocumulus the monstrous ghost was spewing in his general direction from damaging neither him nor the buildings around.

Maddie could barely hear a soft whirring sound over the noise the hot ghost was making, but as she lifted her gaze from the beacons, she could see two figures approaching on what looked like motorized roller skates, both wearing very covering dark clothing and helmets similar to the Huntress'. As the two, a man and a woman, came to a practiced halt she could see both had the same 'D' symbol on an armband as Phantom had on his chest.

The Red Huntress didn't miss a beat as she handed two primed shield beacons to both of them with the same instructions Maddie had given her moments earlier. The two nodded. "We'll take the sides," the woman said and Maddie couldn't shake the feeling she knew her voice. With that, the helmeted three took off, each carrying two beacons, rollerskaters splitting into opposite directions and the Huntress straight up, clearly to fly above the calamity they were going to contain. Maddie glanced at Jack still shooting at the monstrosity, and set to place her two beacons in their positions.

Just as she was done setting the first, Jack made a solid hit with something clearly important, as the beast screeched twice as loud as it had been, and flung a tentacle or a tail towards him. Maddie let out a warning yell, but before Jack could make it out of the way, the ghostly appendage crunched into a shield that had sprung up on its path. Maddie looked up to see Phantom, clearly struggling with focusing on so many shields at once.

Speaking of which, Maddie had seen Phantom control the shields with his hands, but he had five up at the same time, all in different places. How was he- oh. OH.

Phantom had solved the problem by not changing his way of controlling the shields, but somehow adding himself more arms. Maddie's brain started immediately churning methods of doing this, but she was snapped out of it by the sight of Phantom sprouting a sixth arm with a disfigured flash of light and lobbing an ice spear appearing out of nothing at the other ghost.

The scientist shook her head and continued on her way to the spot she had decided to place her second beacon in. Just before she reached it, the Red Huntress zoomed back. "We're all done," she reported. Maddie set the beacon down in its spot and began the group activation sequence.

"There. It's one push of a button away from activating."

The Huntress flew up and yelled at Phantom to 'move his ethereal ass into the hexagon'. Phantom nodded and made his extra arms disappear in a flash of light, most of his shields dissipating at the same time. He charged his fists with blue clearly cryogenic energy and charged at the monster still more or less on the ground.

"Press it," the Red Huntress said. "He's going in with ice, we need it now."

Maddie pushed the button and all the beacons came to life at the same time, a green translucent and hexagonal shield dome began forming between them. It was fast; each beacon pushing forward its own strip of shield, and the dome closed half a second after Phantom's collision with the other.

The shockwave from the two otherworldly elements clashing was indeed just as the Huntress had described, and more. The wave of energy hit the shield and since it was ghostly in origin, the shield contained it. A huge cloud of steam, smoke and ash exploded around the collision, and several lightning flashed within the cloud, few even hitting the shield.

After the initial collision the shield dome filled with foul swirling clouds of soot and steam and everything in between, most of it too ectoplasmic to pass through the shield. The smell came through though, as did whatever smoke rose from the burned asphalt below. Maddie cringed.

The roller skaters came back, this time with the third member that had been previously still occupied with getting civilians out of the way, a woman who'd be taller than Maddie even without her skates. As nothing she could actually see was going on in the dome aside from the occasional burst of light of louder than usual screech, Maddie decided she could interrogate the 'ground force' she now remembered existed instead of paying major attention to the fight. She would still watch it, of course.

"So, who are you three then?" she asked none of them in particular.

"We're Phantom's team," the shorter woman replied. "We get the civilians away and give cover fire."

"We're his sidekicks," the man summed, "and protect him from the fans."

"We also do minor ghost hunting without Phantom, but we mostly back him up," the first woman added.

Not the answers Maddie had hoped to get, but these three clearly wanted to stay anonymous. She had seen them help Phantom on several occasions and the local paper had in more than one time done a small article wondering who these three were, but to no avail, as they wouldn't out themselves. Two years ago there had been a minor scandal when a girl from Danny's class had claimed to be one of Phantom's helpers, but the rumor had been stopped after the three had been at a scene at the same time as her.

A ferocious thunderclap sounded from the clouded-over dome and the ground shook slightly. Phantom's form was smacked right into the shield and blasted with what must've been a full mouthful of scorching energy. Maddie gasped in slight terror as Phantom melted into white smoke against the green force field.

"Chill, that was just a clone of the real thing, made to be a distraction," the man spoke with a relaxed voice but his shoulders were tense. And soon enough, the monster's 'face' was plastered into the shield with an electrical smack, its head rooted tightly to its place with a plentiful ice covering, droplets of boiling ectoplasm falling from its lower mouth against the shield. After a few grimaces probably meaning a thorough beating to its backside, it yanked itself free with a loud crack leaving three horns behind. Maddie was about to returns to talking to the younger hunters, when the entire dome suddenly lit up in a blaze of green, yellow and orange fire. The hunters gasped, be whether it was in awe or alarm.

After the blaze died down, all the smog had burned away and the inside of the shield was clear. The monster was a lot worse for wear, bleeding the same golden lava-looking ectoplasm that had earlier been visible in places where the beasts black surface had cracked. It was lighter in color, black skin turned red and overall looked like it was melting. Phantom looked damaged as well, partly covered in a mess of ectoplasm and ice no doubt covering burns.

He made a few slow motions with his hands towards the group of humans, and the taller woman crossed to form an 'X' shape in response. Sign language, Maddie realized. "What did he ask?"

The tall woman signed something to her in response. "He asked how strong the shield was, she told him 'no'," the shorter woman translated and jabbed a gloved thumb at the taller. "We don't want him to destroy that thing."

Maddie wasn't sure whether the woman meant the shield or the ghost, but had no time to think when Phantom broke their moment of stillness and yelled something at the beast. Maddie immediately recognized it as the language of ghosts as half of the noise that came out of the ghost's mouth seemed to be static.

Whatever Phantom said had definitely riled up the beast, as it let out an earsplitting screech with a big puff of smoke and glowed twice as bright as before. This must've been what Phantom was aiming for, as the moment the bigger ghost opened its mouths he charged up a giant ball of cryokinetic and ectoplasmic energy and shot it directly into the beast's maw.

The monster let out a gurgling yowl and a wave of the orange-yellow not-quite-liquid it was bleeding splurted out of its still open mouths. It hunched over and for the first time said something, even if it was in ghost. Then its glow started to slowly brighten.

"It's going to blow itself up," The Red Huntress whispered.

Phantom seemed to catch on too, as he froze and looked at the brightening monster. It was expanding too, and something was churning under its surface.

Phantom, big eyes wide in panic, dropped most of the ice covering him and darted to the direction of the closest dome wall. He does realize he's inside a ghost shield, Maddie thought.

Just as the volatile ghost monster reached its breaking point Phantom reached the shield but unlike Maddie had thought, he didn't smack into it. A white ring of light formed at his nose and stayed just inside the barrier. The beast finally blew up, engulfing the dome again in an inferno, and Maddie caught a small flash of black at Phantom's head before he flew straight through the ghost shield, another white ring appearing just as close to the shield as the other, just on the other side. Maddie's jaw dropped and he heard Jack exclaim somewhere to her left. Phantom crashed into a building head first and would've fallen face first on the ground had the Red Huntress not swooped down to catch him. The Huntress gathered the battered ghost on her arms bridal style and shot off to the sky.

"Where are they going?" Maddie asked the shorter masked woman who seemed to be the black clad group's most vocal member.

"Red knows and can get to most of Phantom's favorite places in his haunt. She's taking him somewhere quiet to fix him up."

Maddie didn't quite understand why a ghost would need 'fixing up' in addition to resting and recovering lost energy, but decided it must be a 'portalborn' thing since the real world matter in him might slow down the healing process. It would be most enlightening to see the damage Phantom had suffered during the fight. It was kind of messed up, but seeing his wounds might be the closest thing Maddie could come to seeing how the ghost worked with their truce-deal.

"Do you want to dissect what's left of this ghost?" Jack's excited yell derailed her train of thought. She looked at him standing right outside the still-on shield like a puppy waiting for a walk.

"Sure, darling, but I have to take care of something first and we need new equipment." With that, Maddie walked over to the hastily parked GAV in search of her trusty modified Fenton finder. Jack exclaiming "I'll collect the samples!" went to deaf ears when his wife found the device and began jogging on a steady pace to where the green radar screen showed two red dots.

AN: I have no concept of putting the plot's climax towards the end. There will be more of this and I am doing my best but I am a literal potato so it might take a while. Or not; you'll never know.