I never expected this chapter to be so long, but here it is... I'm at a loss of what more to say, hehe.

Hope you all enjoy.

Danny turned a corner sharply, his elbow narrowly grazing the wall and his shoes running across the carpet. He had taken to running freely about the mansion out of boredom, seeing how far he could get in a certain amount of time. He opened a few doors here and there and had discovered a gym equipped with just about every exercise machine he could think of and a room with a flat screen TV that was twice his height. He reminded himself to remember where that was.

He stopped in front of a wide window, breathing heavily. It was nighttime, the stars specs of ethereal light speckling the dark sky. They may have been millions of miles away, but they shone so brightly down on the earth, lanterns suspended forever in space. He locked his blue eyes onto them. He'd always wanted to go into space, to experience the rush of euphoria as he looked down at the earth. Would he ever get to now? There were so many problems down here, so many things in his way. He sighed.

" What are you doing?"

Danny was alarmed and turned to face the voice. The same lift girl who had played the piano two nights before stood- well, floated- in front of him. He could see her more clearly now that she was in the full light of the nights glow. She was in the same clothes as before, her hair in the same ponytail. She looked to be at war with herself, in a conflict over something he could not fathom. Her eyes blinked slowly, gray orbs disappearing.

Danny decided to follow the girls lead. Maybe she'd tell him some more about herself. He kept his tone calm and quiet. "Just looking outside."

"The stars are beautiful, huh?" She said conversationally.

"Yeah, they are." Her manner suggested she wanted company. Danny was confident he could keep her talking. "Can you tell me who you are?" He held his breath, waiting for her response.

"My name is May," she said slowly, as if trying to confirm that fact herself. "Who are you?"

"I'm Danny. Where'd you come from May?"

She hesitated. "I don't know. It was weird. It was all green and purple, with all these... things and people floating around."

The Ghost Zone. She doesn't know. He would have to help her now, though a part of him screamed not to, that this was a bad idea. She was lost was all, and confused. "May, I need to know, do you remember anything before that weird place?"

She nodded with a distant gaze. "Yes. I remember... I remember dying, at least I think so. I also remember my big sister."

Danny froze suddenly, his mind putting together the pieces of the puzzle that was May. Could it really be...?

"May, I'm sorry to ask this, buts it's really important. How did you die?" He nearly whispered the last part.

She was quiet for a long time. She had stopped floating and now sat curled protectively into a ball against the wall. Danny noticed for the first time the faint and glow around her figure, almost invisible. She swallowed. "There was a man, one I didn't know. He came into my room while I was trying to go to sleep. I closed my eyes after I saw him, so maybe he'd think I was asleep. The next thing I knew I felt sharp glass and then I was falling through the air. I hit the ground and woke up in that strange place." May looked away from him, as if ashamed of her fate.

Danny didn't know what to say. What can you say when you near something like that? 'I'm sorry' didn't seem to be enough. But what else was there?

"Was your sisters name Kassy?"

Mays gray eyes grew to the size of dinner plates and her hands clenched into fists at her sides. "Yes! Where is she!?"

He was about to tell that he didn't know when something flew from out of nowhere and smashed on the wall about an inch from his head, shards coating his bare skin. He stared down at the broken object in fear, fingering the pieces of smashed glass. He recognized it immediately and his face paled.

The glass cube with Jazz's family photo sealed inside, now broken into little pieces. It was all he really had left of everyone... He held back the tears, closing his eyes tightly with the effort.

The flashes came quickly and with a feeling of warmth, a slideshow of blurred pictures. Danny's family's faces appeared, then his friends. They were smiling like they were looking at something beautiful, but those smiles did not reach their eyes. A light burned them away, golden at the edges and pure white in the middle.

Jazz stepped into the the white, her red hair a splash of dark. She wore her blue headband and a somber frown. She walked up to her younger brother without hesitation, taking him in her arms. Danny wrapped his arms around her with all of the desperation that missing someone brought, the beginning of a sob making its way up his throat.

"I miss you," Jazz whispered. "We all do." She took something blue from her pocket, pulled away from him and draped it around his neck.

He shivered, looked down at the cool metal chain that hung in front of him. A little blue bird with outstretched wings rested at the end, its eyes two crystal-like pieces that looked like Sapphire. They looked skyward, as if the little thing was about to fly away. He knew this necklace. His mother had given it to Jazz for her sixth birthday. He remembered her words, her violet eyes as she handed it to her daughter.

"This bird is freedom sweetie. See how it's about to fly away?

Jazz blinked, running her little hand over the birds eyes. "But why does it want to fly away so bad mommy? What's so bad about being on the ground?"

Her mother seemed to think about that for a moment, then smiled slightly. "Maybe it's not happy on the ground. It doesn't belong there, not using the wings it was given."

"So the bird is sad because it doesn't belong anywhere?" Jazz played with her hair, fascinated by the story.

Her mother shook her head. "Everyone belongs somewhere baby. They've just got to find that place."

Danny's eyes clouded with tears from the memory. No one knew he'd been listening in from the other room.

"I want you to have this," Jazz said, closing his fingers around the bird. "It means freedom, remember? I know you haven't gotten a lot of that."

"You knew," Danny said plainly, brushing a lock of hair out of hid eyes.

She nodded her head. Her form flickered with brightness, like a broken lightbulb. She looked down at herself sadly. "This is the last time."

He didn't need to ask what she meant. He grabbed her hand, felt it tragically slip right through his own. "You can't go! I need you..."

She looked at the bird necklace, a smile coming to her lips. "You were there that day. Remember what mom said about belonging? Everyone has a place."

Danny continued to grab at her, his hands going right through her form like mist. He had so much bottled up inside, and now it was all pouring out in a mess of tears and yelling. "Please stay." It was a useless plead and he wanted to smack himself for expecting anything out of it.

"I'm not meant to," Jazz said , her voice softening as she disappeared for the final time. There was no big light show, no explosion. It was like her very existence was controlled by a light switch that someone had just flicked off.

He was devastated. He'd just lost his sister all over again. It was one tragedy after another it seemed. He had nothing more to say to this terrible and just maybe someone understood that, because the white space that he was residing in became an inky blackness, then the blackness becoming another scene.

Sam, Tucker, and him were walking down the street a couple of blocks from his house, the Nasty Burger in sight with teenagers walking in and out of its doors.

"Well, are you going to try it Danny? I'm telling you, they're amazing. Better than the regular kind even."

Danny got a slightly disgusted look on his face. "Sam, why do they even call it a burger when it's made of vegetables? That's just not right."

Sam stopped walking and sighed. "Don't knock it till you try it. You don't have to be a vegetarian or vegan to like veggie burgers."

Danny raised his eyes to the sky, the blinding glare of the winter sun making him look away. At least he wasn't flying right now. The sun became a major problem then.

"What's up dude?" Tucker asked, pausing his game of Tetris on his PDA."You're zoning out on us."

"I just feel...weird." He didn't know how else to describe the odd feeling he'd gotten when they'd left Sam's house for their favorite takeout restaurant. It felt so foreboding, like something was terribly off, but he didn't know what. He was just having one of those days, he supposed. How often did anything actually come out of such a feeling? Almost never.

His friends both raised an eyebrow, but when he didn't say anything else just continued on. He caught them glancing at him every now and again.

Danny tried to clear his worried mind and focused instead on the Nasty Burger in front of him with it's large sign. The painted letters were fading into a rosy pink rather from the original red with age.

He never noticed that Sam and Tucker had frozen on the sidewalk, their eyes wide with confusion and growing panic. This only lasted for a second before Tucker grabbed Danny's hand and started running full speed back down the street, Sam right beside them. Danny struggled not to trip over his own feet. "What the hell is going on!?" He shouted, watching their determined faces with amazement. What made them run away that fast?

"If you look behind you, promise not to stop running? We need to find cover first," Sam said, her black hair flying in front of her eyes with the wind she created.

"Yes!" He wasn't actually sure if he could stop, if they thought whatever was behind them was enough to scare him, when he already fought ghosts daily. But curiosity got the better of him and he quickly turned his head around, never stopping his feet.

He didn't know what he was expecting to see but it sure wasn't this. A woman in a tattered gray robe was chasing them, her legs showing through large holes as she sprinted. She looked to be around thirty years old with hair long and black trailing behind her, her feet bare as they propelled her after her targets. She had the palest skin he'd ever seen, like white polished marble, all over her body.

Danny couldn't understand why they were running. This woman was strange, definitely, and a little frightening, but it didn't look like she had any weapons. Didn't his friends think he could handle it with his ghost powers?

As she pursed her lips in concentration and managed to get a few feet closer to them, Danny saw her ghostly glow, an unfamiliar purple color that pulsed as she came closer, his ghost sense going off simultaneously. So that's why they were running, he thought.

Danny forced his eyes back to the street in front of him. That's when he noticed something. There was not one person outside. The streets of Amity Park were empty, no cars driving, not even someone looking out any windows. It was too perfect for a ghost attack, and his thoughts came to the woman behind them. She must have something to do with it.

The grocery store was coming up, and he was happy to see cars parked in the the parking lot. Sam and Tucker would be better off in a crowd.

"Guys!" He said, looking at each of them in turn. "I want you to go into the store and hide. Warn the people and get to the safest place in there!"

Tucker nodded and grabbed Sam's arm, tugging her towards the store. She looked back at him worriedly with violet irises before she disappeared behind the glass doors.

Danny felt a stab if sympathy for her. He knew she worried at times like this, Tucker too. He'd have to make it up to them somehow after this.

He turned to face the ghost woman determinedly. She had stopped running about five feet from him, a distance that put him on edge with glowing ectoplasm in his palms. He could see her pale face in more detail now, her blue tinted lips and eyes spotted with blank clouds of white. She looked... dead, and not like a ghost. She looked like she had just crawled out of her grave.

They stood face to face with each other, both scoping out the other in morbid curiosity. The woman was a strange kind of beauty, much like the kind you see when you look at a dead tree in winter. Frozen in a stage of death that people looked upon with quiet fascination.

"What do you want?" Danny demanded, watching her stillness as a slight breeze ruffled her cloak. She didn't move at all. It was like she wasn't even breathing.

She never said a word, just raised her pale hand that seemed to only be bone and skin and pointed at the grocery store.

"No," he replied to her silent answer, removing the Fenton Thermos from the backpack he'd been carrying. "I don't know why you're so interested in my friends, but it's time for you to go back to the ghost zone."

Her response was to rush past him in a blur of black and gray, his blue eyes widening as he heard the doors of the store open and close. Why she chose to go through the doors rather than the wall when she was a ghost was unknown to him.

He transformed in a hurry, the tingle of the white rings passing through him. He did go through the wall, his eyes scanning the empty aisles of the grocery store. There wasn't even a cashier in the place. What was going on?

He floated carefully above the shelves stacked with boxes and bags of food, trying to locate the silent woman.

He didn't have to search long. A scream sounded on the other side of the store, an alarm going off in his head. A female scream. Sam.

He was at the place where he'd heard her in less than a minute with his speed. The dairy aisle. What he saw was haunting and grotesque in the worst way.

Large pieces of broken plastic from a milk gallon were on the the tiled floor, milk spread all around it in a large white puddle. Milk was not the only liquid that occupied the space however. Fresh blood was spattered across the floor and on the shelves and food, some of it mixing grossly with the milk and making an almost soupy concoction. Half the aisle was covered with the stuff.

Sam lay on the floor in the middle of it all curled into a ball and singing, her skin coated with a thick scarlet layer of her own blood. Her black shirt was stretched tight against her shaking back, darker stains plainly seen.

"Sam!" Danny screamed, leaning down to touch her arm, horrified by the sight of her and the sticky blood that coated his hand.

Sam raised her pain-filled eyes to his, and something in them told him the things she wished she could say. She slowly moved her hand into his with a slight gasp, wrapping her wet fingers around his own, smiling slightly when he squeezed it. He stroked her hair and felt a waterfall running down his face, felt his heart break in half. Tears were shining on her face too, her favorite purple lipstick smudged across her cheek. She was the saddest he'd ever seen her then.

"Tucker..." She breathed, coughing up a spray of blood. "G-gone..."

That's when he noticed the dagger sticking out of her chest. It was so small he barely noticed it. He made a move to pull it out, then stopped himself. That would only make it worse on her. He let loose a loud sob that he felt the whole world could hear. "I know, I know..."

She shuddered violently once, like a large wave of cold had passed through her, and he put his hands on her shoulders desperately. "Sam? Sam!?"

Her chest moved in the motion of breathing for a few more moments, then gradually slowed to nothing, her heart come to a stop.

Danny was totally gone from the world then, lost in the shock of what had just occurred. Someone could have come and driven another dagger through him and he wouldn't have seen it coming. He wished they would, just to end the pain now.

He had seen Sam's eyes when she was happy, when she was sad, angry, scared. They always showed something. Now they showed nothing at all. It was the hardest thing he had ever had to look at.

He heard the wet slapping sound of liquid and slowly twisted half around. The silent woman was back, her bare feet slick with blood and milk, her gray cloak dyed in large places with red. Her face was blank, and in her hand she held a syringe.

The last thing Danny saw was that syringe, the woman's white hand wrapped around its middle.

Blackness. Once again, that's all there was to see. It didn't really bother him though. He needed the alone time. He felt broken, a person who has seen far too much to fast.

He knew in his heart that he'd just reclaimed his lost memories. He could deny it all he wanted, could futilely try to push the terror of it all of out his mind, but that was the truth, and it couldn't be changed.

"What did I do to deserve this!?" He yelled at nothing, dropping to his knees and wondering how on earth he could still cry, with all the tears that had already been used.

"Nothing, not that I can see," a female voice said.

Danny raised his head. Kassy stood in front of him in her T-shirt and sweats, a painful way about her of her own. She wasn't alone this time. She had her hand clasped around a small girls with a long white nightgown..

"May?" He whispered, and the girl nodded her head slightly. That's when he noticed a thin scar on the bottom of her neck. He remembered her saying she had died after being thrown out a window. She still had the wound from a piece of broken glass, maybe at the spot that had killed her. He understood now.

"Sometimes things just happen," May finished surprisingly, looking up at her sister for approval.

Kassy smiled sadly down at her. "Yeah." Her focus shifted back to him. "I just wanted to say, um, thank you for, uh, you know."

Danny was having trouble speaking, but he got a "You're welcome," out clearly enough.

The two girls looked at each other and May tugged on Kassy's shirt. "What happens now?" She asked worriedly.

'I wish I knew. I guess we're just gonna have to find out together." She looked into the distance at something that Danny couldn't see. "But I have a good feeling about this. Come on May."

May grabbed her sisters larger hand in her small one and watched the same direction with starry eyes knowingly She turned her brunette head to Danny. "That man cares about you you know. Just give him a chance," she said.

Danny looked at her astonished. She couldn't have know about him and Vlad. She wasn't around long enough to be witness to key events. Was she?

Before another word could leave his lips, the two girls flickered like dying lanterns in the dark, a palette of colors, and were no longer standing before him. Danny took it with subdued bitterness. Everyone was leaving at once lately...

Which left him with a lingering question. Was it easier to be the person that died, or the survivor who was left with one less companion in the world?