To put it gently, Danny felt a little like he had been punched in the gut. When it was framed like that, well...he really didn't know what he would do if faced with a situation a little Fenton magic and resourcefulness wouldn't fix. Ghost fighting, he always knew was going to be dangerous, of course, but he had just always felt like he had a safety net to fall back on—there was always a new invention or something that would help him save the day, or if he fell his friends would pick him back up. Somehow, up until now, everything had always worked out, and he supposed some part of him figured that it would always be that way. Now, the harsh reality of uncertainty was settling in that came with a haunting fear deep inside of him of the true consequences of taking up the mantle of hero. His palms sweat as his mind raced with doubts.

Of course he knew that he wasn't invincible. But to know it and truly believe it are two different things sometimes.

Danny was now being smacked with the realization that fighting ghosts had become something of a routine song and dance, witty banter and comedy as an act one to the whole show of a battle. It was all a veil he had pulled in front of his own eyes to protect himself from the real threat of ghosts. If they really wanted to, they could level Amity Park and burn all its citizens to the ground. It wasn't always going to be some trash cans or walls getting destroyed and then thermos time. Suddenly, the name Danny Phantom seemed to be a burden heavy on his shoulders. Someday, if somebody died at the hands of a ghost, Danny knew that he would always see the red on his own hands.

Just how far are you willing to take your role as Danny Phantom before enough is enough?

Danny liked to think that he would gladly lay it all down to protect Amity if it came down to it, but how could he really be sure? He had a life in here, one that wasn't perfect but was his. He had friends and a family that he couldn't ever imagine leaving behind, goals he could never stop pursuing. To start back over completely from scratch would be unimaginable. It would be torture.

Man, he thought, I'm fourteen. I'm not ready for this.

Only four months he'd been doing the Danny Phantom gig, and sure, it left scars, cuts, bruises, tears. But the image of the burns was imprinted in his mind—how many rounds of skin grafts had it taken for Conan's—Kudo's arms to heal? More pressingly, he had a hunch as to just who was responsible for them. It had only been a fever dream, but the piercing stare of the man in black still seemed to slice through his very core, wearing him down to his very essence. To think that he was a real person in Amity Park was not something Danny wanted to think about too much.

In fact, the whole situation was not something Danny wanted to read too much into.

Yet he must. Standing right in front of him was the Shinichi Kudo, risen from the grave but still in the shadows. It seemed impossible—ghosts were one thing, but this was another thing entirely (though, he supposed, he was long past the concept of "impossible"). Danny couldn't even begin to grasp how hard it would be, to be right there surrounded by the scraps of your life, and never able to take them and glue them back together, to actually have to "kill" yourself and never say a word about it, to spend so long trying to pick up the pieces for nothing.

It made a lot of sense, though. Conan—Kudo—didn't really act much like anyone else at Casper High. The awkward quality to his voice in what Danny assumed was an attempt to sound younger, the calculating look ever-present in his eyes, his distance to everything...once Danny's eyes were opened to the truth, he could see all the evidence in plain sight.

Danny was snapped out of his thoughts by Sam clearing her throat. Glancing around at everyone, he could see that Kudo's long silence was starting to wear upon the room. Hattori was squinting at Kudo like he was trying to send brain waves to influence his decision as Tucker and Sam fidgeted, creating soft sounds that echoed through the huge room. All eyes were fixed on Kudo.

Finally, he looked up and straightened his posture. "Truce accepted. We're in this together now."

Danny let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. "All right. Where do we go from here? Spectra's not exactly an easy ghost to find."

"I can't imagine that any...ghosts," he still sounded reluctant to even consider saying the word, "are easy ones to find. How do you all normally deal with them?" Kudo asked as he crossed his arms.

Danny reached up to rub the back of his neck. "We, uh..."

"We kind of just leave them alone until they attack Amity, send 'em back to the Ghost Zone, rinse and repeat," Tucker finished with a shrug. "It's kind of hard to actually track a ghost, since they can like, you know, phase into the ground and stuff. I'm pretty sure Danny's parents are in the beta stage for a tracking device right now, but it's not at the level of finished that we can use it. And a normal tracking device would either slip off the ghost when they turned intangible or just plain stop working."

Kudo tilted his head to the side, his glasses slipping down his nose a little bit. "This Ghost Zone, this is where ghosts live?"

"In a manner of speaking," the corners of Sam's lips twitched upwards. "Since they're dead and all. We honestly don't know a whole lot about it, other than that it's the spooky green place that the ghosts come from. It's still pretty uncharted territory."

"All right, then I guess we're just sitting ducks until she makes a move?" Kudo sighed, his shoulders slumping a bit.

Pretty much. Danny was barely handling the ghost fighting as it was without worrying about tracking them through the Ghost Zone. Besides, what was he going to do? Knock on the door to their lair and give them a lecture on manners? Somehow, he didn't think that would be too well-received. It was better to try not to provoke them until they actually left the portal and started firing.

"It's not so bad," Danny chimed in. A piece of glass crunched underneath his shoes, momentarily bringing his eyes back to the broken dream machine. "Spectra is more subtle—a lot more subtle—than the others ghosts we've encountered. Knowing to keep an eye peeled out for her still beats being taken by surprise again. And besides, I know her trick to hiding herself from my ghost sense now. It'll be harder for her to do anything unnoticed next time."

"True."

"Not to derail, but does anyone else think that we should get out of here before people who work here show up and see a trashed factory and five very guilty-looking people standing around in the middle of it?" Tucker cut in. "Everyone should be waking up or awake now with the Nocturn gone."

"Good point. The last thing any of us needs is attention." Hattori turned away towards the exit and motioned for all to follow. "I think everyone's beat anyway. I know I am."

And now, with the adrenaline leaving his system and the aftermath of the fight lying scattered and still all around him, Danny was feeling the exhaustion. His bones ached from all the fighting, and he was certain he would be covered in bruises later. All he wanted to do was sleep. On the street, everyone parted to go to their own houses, Danny trudging through the door of Fentonworks fifteen minutes later with an inability to keep his eyelids open for a second more.

As fate would have it, he didn't really get to sleep; the familiar chill ran through his system and startled him awake at two in the morning to go deal with that absolute nuisance of a ghost. If he heard "beware" one more time, Danny might actually consider just leaving him in the thermos instead of being nice and letting him go back to the Ghost Zone.

It was almost normal, the late Box Ghost run with banter and all, but at the back of his mind, a voice whispered to him, Sure it's only the Box Ghost, but what if things went south? What if tonight's the night that the thermos fails you? I don't know if I can trust you to keep things under control anymore.

Despite his fatigue, once Danny's head hit the pillow again, he found himself unable to sleep.