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Chapter 3- Paranormal Paranoia

A good teacher must know the rules; a good pupil, the exceptions. ~Martin H. Fischer

There’s no glamour in the life of a sidekick. Sam thought grimly as she wiped ecto-goo off her cheek, pointedly not looking at the black boy next to her as she sped towards the Fenton Portal. Tucker had the good grace to look sheepish at the goth’s obvious anger.

“I said I was sorry,” the bespectacled boy said meekly. Sam clenched her jaw, but said nothing. “Hey, in my defense, it seemed like a good idea at the time. And we didn’t get eaten! That’s a bonus, right?”

“We never speak of this incident again, Tucker Foley,” Sam said tersely through gritted teeth.

“But-!”

“NEVER.”

Wisely, Tucker shut up.

It was a relief to both of the teens when the Fenton Portal came in sight. After passing through the swirling green void, the duo found themselves back in the lab of their best friend’s ghost hunting parents. Danny was already there waiting for them as they turned off the Specter Speeder, sitting in a corner and mulling over what little information Tucker had found on their new teacher. The teen half ghost glanced up from the papers when he heard the arrival of his friends, surprise quickly overtaking his features when he saw the state the duo was in.

“What happened to you guys?” Danny asked in concern, rising out of his seat to see the two better. Both Sam and Tucker were covered from head to toe in some kind of slime, and Sam’s hair looked a little like a cartoon character’s after they stuck their finger in an outlet. Little blue sparks danced around in the strands every now and then, shocking anything that dared to get close.

“Don’t ask,” Sam said, self-consciously reaching up to try and tame her locks only to wince as she got zapped for her attempt. Tucker blushed and refused to meet Danny’s eye when the boy turned to him for an explanation.

“Alright then…” Danny said slowly when it became obvious that neither of his friends were going to divulge the reason behind their odd appearances. “So what’d you find out in the Ghost Zone?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Tucker confessed, sighing when Danny looked at him in surprise. “We asked everyone, man. No one’s heard of Miss Higurashi before, and no one recognized her in the picture we were showing around.” Snagging said picture from the tech geek, Danny stared for a moment before raising an eyebrow at his friend.

“Where’d you get a picture of Miss Higurashi in a swimsuit?”

“I have my ways,” Tucker replied, a little smugly.

“And as I’m sure you already know, there’s not much more Tucker found in her records,” Sam said grumpily, wincing a bit every time she passed a reflective surface. “She was reported missing once when she was fifteen, right before she started getting sick all the time, but she came back on her own. Her grandfather said she had hit her head on her way to school and got disoriented, which was why it took her so long to remember her way home. A policeman went out there to check and make sure she was okay, and according to his report she did seem to have hit her head, but didn’t suffer any lasting damage. She had a few scrapes since she slept in a forest, and a bite mark on her hip, which she said came from a wild dog. A doctor examined her and said she was alright, so she went back home that same day.”

“And the shrine?” Danny asked.

“No go, man.” Tucker said with an apologetic shrug. “Their main attractions are a tree that’s over a thousand years old and a dried up well that apparently eats skeletons.”

“Eats… skeletons?!” Danny was clearly disturbed by that one.

“According to the myth we found, a nearby village used to dump the dead bodies of evil demons down the dried up well, and within a few days the remains would be gone." Tucker said.

“So they’d just vanish?” Danny said, his face brightening. “Then that must be it! That well must’ve been a natural portal into the Ghost Zone!”

“What, you don’t think we thought about that possibility?” Sam scoffed. “Frostbite was the first ghost Tuck and I went to see, and he says the Infi-map doesn’t show anything about a portal on a shrine in Tokyo. It’s a dead end, just like everything else we found out about her past.”

“What about trailing her? What did that turn up?” Tucker asked with a grin.

“You mean other then the fact that Miss Higurashi can sense ghosts, see them even when they’re invisible and has ghost-proofed her house?” Danny clarified dryly, glaring sullenly at the picture Tucker had commandeered of the woman in question as his friends stared at him in alarm. “She says she’s human, but I dunno how true that is. And I definitely know she’s hiding something. She’s more than just a weird teacher from Japan on her first job.”

“Danny, are you sure you’re not just being a little bit paranoid?” Sam asked with a concerned frown. “I mean, we know she’s human. Tucker found her birth certificate and everything. We found her school records, her awards for archery… other than a little bit of weirdness here and there, there’s nothing really freaky about her past that would suggest she’s out to take over the world or try anything illegal. Heck from some of the comments Tucker found by her old classmates, you’d think this woman was Mother Teresa or something.”

“Only, you know, waaay hotter.” Tucker clarified with a grin, earning him an ugly look from Sam.

“I’m telling you there’s something weird about Miss Higurashi!” Danny insisted hotly, glaring at his friends for their reluctance to believe him.

“Well, yeah,” Sam agreed readily enough. “But weird isn’t the same as evil, Danny. You should know that by now.”

“But-!”

“Forget it, Danny. I’m gonna go home, take a long shower and change. Call me if you find a legitimate reason to keep invading our teacher’s privacy,” Sam huffed, her bad mood clearly affecting her temper. Danny didn’t have enough time to work up a good protest before the goth stormed up the stairs and into the Fenton’s house, leaving her male friends staring after her retreating form. After she was gone, Danny turned to his other, increasingly uncomfortable best friend.

“Um, as much as I’d hate to admit it, Danny… Sam’s right. Miss Higurashi’s strange, but nothing about her screams ‘evil maniac bent on ruling the world’ to me. I mean, she volunteered at a children’s hospital when she was going to college in Japan, for crying out loud! And she donated most of the money she earned in archery tournaments to help fund housing efforts for the poor! Not exactly typical criminal mastermind behavior.” Danny felt his own temper flare up when he realized that his friends didn’t believe in him or his instincts enough to realize that the new teacher was a threat.

“Fine. You guys don’t wanna help me? Then I’ll just have to do it all myself,” the half ghost snapped, turning away from his friend to gather the print outs Tucker had found on the woman. Agitated at the other boy’s behavior, Tucker reached out to grab Danny’s shoulder.

“Danny-” before Tucker could try and get through to his best friend though, Danny went intangible to shake off the other boy’s hold, startling the tech geek a bit. Too stubborn to listen, Danny stormed up the stairs and off to his room before Tucker could recover.

Inside, he was steaming the whole way.

Why on earth couldn’t Sam and Tucker trust his senses, which were all screaming at him that this woman was dangerous? He didn’t care what all the papers and documents said, he knew there was something different- something supernatural about Miss Higurashi. There had to be, otherwise she probably wouldn’t effect him as bad as she did. And every ghostly instinct inside of him screamed that whatever that something was, he was meant to fear it.

Now the question is, what is that something? Danny thought grimly as he shut his bedroom door behind him. If there was a power out there that could instinctively scare a ghost that much, then it had to be seriously bad news. After all, what could possibly be all that dangerous to someone who was, technically, already dead?

Danny was dreading the possibility of finding the answer to that question the hard way.

---

“Wait, he still goes to school? Seriously? You’d think that dying would be the best excuse there is not to go to class anymore.”

“Yeah, well believe it or not, some of us like to go to school, Souta,” Kagome said dryly as she flipped through the dated newspaper.

“You mean only weirdoes like you,” Souta teased back, getting an eye roll from his older sister.

Kagome didn’t have the heart to tell her little brother that he was right. She’d been just as annoyed and frustrated with school as any normal kid, before falling down the well and into the past. But after that, it hadn’t taken her long to appreciate the classroom that she so often had to leave behind. School was safe. Sure it had its problems, but none of them were trying to kill her. After dodging demons and greedy humans in the past, it was a relief to just sit and learn, even if she spent most of the time lost and scrambling to keep up.

Sometimes, for a minute or two, Kagome could even pretend she was a normal person.

Souta had never known how terrible things could get during the Jewel hunt though, and Kagome preferred to keep it that way. Normalcy was a blessing she had long since relinquished, but there was still hope for her brother to be someone who could live in the modern world without feeling like a penguin in the desert. She wanted that for him far more then she needed him to understand her own problems.

“So are you gonna tell Aunt Aoko that one of the students is Danny Phantom?” Souta asked curiously. It was a testament to how strange his life was already that he wasn’t more confused at the thought of a human boy with ghost powers.

“No, I don’t think so,” Kagome sighed. “Aunt Aoko wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh come on, she already knows you’re not normal, and that doesn’t seem to bug her all that much,” Souta pointed out.

“Yeah but we never told her about the well or the jewel,” Kagome reminded him with a frown. “I’m pretty sure she just thinks I woke up one day and I could see ghosts and everything.” Very few people asked many questions about the origins of her spiritual powers, even after they had learned that she was skilled at warding off evil or malicious attacks from supernatural entities.

“Bummed you’re not treated like some sort of living goddess here in the twenty-first century?” Souta teased.

“Hardly,” Kagome scoffed. “It just bugs me how people can ignore something that doesn’t make sense to them. Supernatural beings have been in existence for thousands of years now, and yet the more humans learn, the more they deny the reality of that which they cannot explain. Pretending something isn’t there doesn’t make it go away. Even here in Amity Park! People here know there are ghosts around, and they know that they can hurt people, but they haven’t taken any precautions against them, except to run screaming like a bunch of maniacs when they attack and then wait until Danny Phantom or a ghost hunter takes care of the problem. Then they have the nerve to bad-mouth the ghost hunting couple that protects them and call them freaks and weirdoes!”

“Easy, sis,” Souta soothed, laughing a bit at Kagome’s fiery tirade. “So they don’t know squat about ghosts. That’s why you’re over there, right? To teach them?”

“Yeah…” Kagome said, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “Right.”

Kagome hadn’t told anyone at home her real intentions for making the trip to Amity Park. That way, whether she failed or succeeded, her family wouldn’t be drawn into her mess any longer. Kagome suspected that her mother knew. Perhaps not the details, but the Higurashi matriarch definitely had an idea of what her daughter was up to, and simply gave her silent support as always.

“How’s that going for you, anyways? I mean, other than the ghost kid, are there any students who seem like they’d be any good with the spiritual stuff?”

“A few,” Kagome admitted with a slight smile. “Amity Park is a hive of supernatural activity, so it makes sense that the residents here would have more developed sixth senses then you see in most other places. Danny’s definitely the most in tune with his. Poor kid looked ready to jump out a window every time I walked past him. And there was one other student, Valerie Grey. She has a very strange pulse in her aura, and I think she got the sense that there was something different about me too. And Danny’s got a pair of friends, Sam Manson and Tucker Foley. They’re pretty in tune with the supernatural, and shouldn’t be that hard to train up. Believe it or not, I even found someone with purification powers.”

“Seriously?” Souta said, clearly surprised. “But I thought you said that ghost guy killed off pretty much anyone who had that ability? Paralyses Dark or whatever?”

“Pariah Dark,” Kagome corrected absently, “the former ghost king. And yes, he ordered an assault on the earth three hundred years ago to kill all the humans with the ability to purify ghosts. He feared those powers more than anything else, after all. Still, I suppose some could have survived the purge and went on to have children with the power. Or maybe she’s an old soul given another chance at life like me. Whichever it is, she must have said something when she was a kid.”

“What makes you say that?” her brother wondered.

“There’s a seal on her powers,” the young teacher explained. “It’s a very clumsy seal, probably done self-consciously when she was young. Most likely, she saw a lot of stuff other people couldn’t and other kids started making fun of her for it, so she began trying to convince herself that it was all made up and cut herself off from her powers in an attempt to protect herself. You see that sort of stuff from time to time, even in the past. People don’t like it when there’s something that’s keeping them from fitting in or making friends.”

“So what are you gonna do about it?” Souta asked.

“There’s nothing I can do.” Kagome confessed with a sigh. “She doesn’t want to believe she has powers. I can’t make her see the truth about herself if she doesn’t have the courage to accept that she’s different.”

“That’s lame,” Souta griped. “I mean, who wouldn’t want to believe they have special powers? I’d kill to do the stuff that you and Inu-no-nii-san can do!”

“Lots of people don’t see spiritual powers that way, Souta.” Kagome explained somberly. “Sometimes being different is a very scary, lonely thing. Especially when you’re little. Remember the way we used to get made fun of for our eyes?”

“Yeah, well those kids were just a bunch of stupid jerks.” Souta grumbled, all too able to recall the bullies of their youth who taunted their mixed race heritage.

“Yeah well, ‘stupid jerk’ is a worldwide epidemic, I’m afraid.” Kagome chuckled. “And not everyone has a big sister who will protect little scaredy-cat brats from the bullies.”

“Hey, that was one time!” Souta protested. Kagome grinned in response. It was nice to know she could still embarrass her little brother even when there was an ocean between them. “Anyways, there can’t be that many people in Amity Park who find your kinda powers freaky if they got a ghost boy flying around protecting them from bad guys.”

“Just because someone relies on a power to protect them doesn’t mean that they don’t fear it, Souta.” Kagome informed her brother. “Especially if it's something they don't understand, or can't control. I imagine that’s one of the reasons why Danny is keeping his abilities a secret, even if it might be easier for him if other people knew.”

“It’s that bad for him?” Souta asked curiously.

“Almost all the other teachers started badmouthing him when I tried to bring his name up,” Kagome said with a sympathetic twinge in her tone. “Nine out of ten of them see him as a lazy, eccentric trouble-maker who is always showing up to class late, forgetting to hand in his homework, leaving early without much of an explanation, falling asleep during lectures… He’s been blamed for a lot of the destruction of school property, too.” Some of them weren’t quite as harsh. Mr. Lancer believed that Danny was a smart kid with a good heart, but he felt the teen wasn’t applying himself nearly as much as he should be. The gym teacher Ms. Testlaff, on the other hand, insisted the boy was a weak, smart-mouthed slacker who needed to be whipped into shape, blaming his trouble-making on a bid for attention since he wasn't smart or popular like his sister.

“Wow, and I thought school was rough for you...” Souta observed. He knew how stressful saving the world had made pursuing an education for his older sister.

“Yeah. At least I could get away from demons at school.” Kagome murmured in agreement. “This poor kid can’t get a break. And I don’t think his family knows, either.”

“Really?” Souta seemed thrown by this fact. He couldn’t imagine not noticing Kagome’s comings and goings in the past without figuring out pretty fast that something was going on, even if he hadn’t seen the centipede lady drag his sister through the time portal.

“His parents are two of the most renowned ghost hunters in Amity Park, and I've read a few articles about them trying to hunt Danny Phantom ever since he became public knowledge. Even saw a news report the other day when I was out shopping, and either the Fentons are world class actors or they honestly have no clue their son is Danny Phantom."

"Yikes, hunted by his own parents? That IS rough..."

"Mmm. He has to have some sort of support system going on, though. His friends, probably. That Tucker kid looked like he was going to have a heart attack when I started talking about people using their spiritual powers the same way a ghost does, and Sam was watching me pretty carefully during class. Maybe his sister too. She's a smart girl, and she seems like the type who doesn't like to be on the sidelines when something big is going down."

"So she's almost as nosy as you, then?" Souta joked.

"Haha. Brat," Kagome rolled her eyes at her brother's teasing.

"Anyways, I'm a little surprised at how well things have been going for you so far. I mean, you've been there what, a week now? And you haven't been attacked by anything? That's gotta be some kind of record for you, right?"

"Do you really want to see if sacred powers are possible through phones? Because I can make it happen." Kagome warned her brother grumpily. Was a little respect too much to ask for?

"Just sayin', sis."

Apparently it was.

"Wow Souta, that's so funny I forgot to laugh," Kagome said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. "Anyways, most of the ghosts who sense my powers stay clear of me even if they don't know what I am. It's an instinct thing, recognizing that something's a threat to you, you know? Other then Danny, the only one that's been brave enough to confront me is a weird blue guy in overalls who was trying to hoard my moving boxes on my first day here. He was kinda funny, and he didn't seem like that much of a threat, so I just let him be."

"So hypothetically, if someone was living with you, they probably wouldn't have to worry about ghosts either, right?" Souta said hopefully.

"You're not moving over here, Souta." Kagome responded flatly, knowing full well what her brother was fishing for. "Mom said no, remember?"

"Oh come on! How come you get to do all the cool stuff?"

"Dunno. Take it up with whoever hands out destinies or whatever before you're born. And let them know I have a few choice words for them, too."

"Please sis? I can help! You owe me for letting you practice what you'll be teaching your students on me, right?" Kagome sighed, knowing that her little brother had her there.

"Okay, tell you what; if you do well in all your classes and there hasn't been any epic threat on my life here, then we'll talk to mom about letting you come to Amity Park for Golden Week. Deal?"

"Deal!" Souta agreed happily. "I'll ask mom about it tonight at dinner! Thanks, Kagome, you're the best!"

"Don't mention it, Souta." Kagome smiled, though a little wistfully. She knew how much her little brother admired her and her abilities after what she'd done in the past. It made lying about her true intentions for coming to Amity Park a little difficult, to be honest. But all the same, she stood by her decision. Souta would understand when he was older. Hopefully. "Now hurry up and finish your homework. And don't try and tell me it's done already, brat. Us teachers can sense those sort of lies from half a world away."

"Alright, alright." Souta laughed. "Call again soon, sis, we miss you like crazy. And good luck with those American teenagers! Don't go sticking subjugation necklaces on any of 'em!"

"I make no promises!" Kagome said loftily, earning another laugh from Souta which made her grin. "I'll talk to you again soon, Souta. Love you."

"You too!" A clicking sound signaled the end of her long distance call with her teenaged brother, followed by the dial tone to remind the priestess holding the phone that she should probably hang it back up. Kagome paid it no mind though, her somber but determined eyes glued to the article she had just uncovered in the year old newspaper in front of her.

Local Ghost Hunters Build Portal into Ghost Zone

---

Stumbling half asleep through the halls of Casper High, Danny wished for the millionth time that the ability to bounce back after a night without sleep was one of the powers he'd gained from walking into the Fenton Portal. Or at the very least they should've given him the ability to sleep with his eyes open. He wasn't looking forward into yet another detention for falling asleep in Lancer's class.

"Dude, you okay?" Tucker asked without preamble as he approached the sleepy half ghost, a cautious look on his face that told Danny the tech geek hadn't forgotten their last encounter. Danny made a mental note to apologize to his friend when he could keep his eyes open for more then two seconds. "You look like a zombie, man."

"He probably pulled an all-nighter looking for imaginary demons in Miss Higurashi's past." Sam theorized as she joined them, making Danny scowl a bit.

"I'm fine Tucker," Danny said, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

"Couldn't find anything on the new teacher, huh?" Tucker said sympathetically, correctly reading the half ghost's tone to figure out that Sam had been right about their friend's activities. "We told you she doesn't have any red flags as far as evil supernatural encounters go."

"What supernatural encounters?" a new voice interjected before Danny could defend his suspicions yet again. Turning around, the sophomores found Jazz frowning at the three of them in concern. "Is there something else going on now you're not telling me about, Danny?"

"It's nothing Jazz," Sam said, rolling her eyes. "Danny just thinks the new teacher is evil."

"Miss Higurashi?" Jazz said, her eyebrows disappearing under her bangs before she turned to her brother with a worried look. "What makes you think that? Did she say something to you that sounded like a threat?"

"Well… no," Danny admitted, shifting uncomfortably as Sam and Tucker gave him pointed looks.

"Well did you see her doing something bad, then?"

"No." Danny shrank a bit as his friends' glares intensified.

"Is there any reason at all to think she's evil?" Jazz asked, sounding baffled.

"She creeps Danny out," Tucker explained in an I-told-you-so sort of tone.

"Given her subject matter compared to how she dresses and acts, I'm kinda getting a weird vibe from her too," Sam admitted, eyeing the teacher in question when she entered the hall. Sam was starting to see a pattern with the Asian woman's preferred dress, since Miss Higurashi was donned in a pastel green dress that had a white and buttercup yellow floral pattern with a satin emerald ribbon tied around her waist and a modest neckline that looked eerily similar to a modernized version of the sort of dresses her mother was constantly trying to force her into. "Not, you know, evil maniac or anything, but still kinda creepy for someone who is supposed to be teaching us about ghosts and monsters and stuff."

"Oh come on!" Tucker scoffed. "So she doesn't dress in black and act like she's allergic to the sun! That doesn't mean she's creepy!"

"Who's creepy?" Tucker yelped and jumped a foot in the air at the new interruption, spinning around with wide eyes to see the new teacher watching the group curiously.

"Miss Higurashi!" Sam squeaked out, looking over at Danny nervously. Out of all of them the half ghost looked most startled by the fact that the teacher had so easily snuck up on them.

Either she's not giving off the creepy feeling anymore, or Danny's more tired than we all thought, Sam realized. Reading Danny's confused look, Sam quickly figured that the first explanation was the culprit and sighed in annoyance, a little irritated that Danny had them all chasing their tails over something that turned out to be an even bigger nothing than she’d first thought.

"Sam, right?" Miss Higurashi smiled at the violet eyed girl, apparently oblivious to the sudden discomfort her presence caused the teens. "I was really impressed with your intuitiveness yesterday in class." Sam flushed a bit, but looked pleased with the teacher's praise despite herself.

"It was nothing, Miss Higurashi," Sam insisted modestly. "I was just stating the obvious."

"For being so obvious it was a fact that none of the other students seemed to realize for themselves," Miss Higurashi confided to the goth, which seemed to please Sam even more.

"I would've gotten it eventually," Jazz mumbled under her breath. Apparently, the fact that she herself hadn't pointed out such an obvious fact was a bit of a sore spot for the senior.

"That aside, Miss Higurashi, I gotta admit that I wasn't really expecting you to be as knowledgeable about ghosts as you are," Sam said, realizing that Miss Higurashi had provided her with an opening to question the teacher about a comment that had bothered the goth greatly the day before. "I mean, all that stuff you said about the Ghost King… um, what was his name again…?"

"Pariah Dark." Miss Higurashi supplied readily. "I believe he's the ghost that attacked Amity Park last year in the fall, the one Danny Phantom stole the Fenton's special echo-suit in order to fight off?"

"Oh. Him." Sam felt a bit twitchy at the casual reference to Danny's counterpart. Jazz apparently felt so as well, since she broke in timidly.

"Um, do you really think that 'stole' is the right word? I mean, he did take it to defeat a super evil ghost, after all."

"Well, considering that he took it without permission from your parents and didn't return it when he was done, I really can't think of a better way to phrase that, Jasmine," Miss Higurashi pointed out patiently, making the teens flinch. They couldn't really fault the teacher's logic there, after all.

"Maybe he lost it?" Tucker suggested hopefully.

"Because a giant metal suit that amplifies the wearer's power is really that hard to misplace," Miss Higurashi joked with a grin. Danny blushed heavily at that as Tucker deflated a bit.

"It could happen!" Tucker defended meekly.

"Maybe," Miss Higurashi agreed with a chuckle. "I'm not here to accuse anyone of any wrongdoing, especially someone who's done as much good as Danny Phantom has. I know that sometimes doing the right thing involves some things that can look pretty bad when viewed from the outside. I've had to explain that to my aunt a couple of times to keep her from shielding the whole school from all ghosts entirely, since alienating good ghosts can cause just as much damage as leaving yourself open to evil ghosts."

"So, you don't think all ghosts are evil then?" Jazz asked hopefully, her face brightening considerably.

"Of course not!" Miss Higurashi laughed a little at the question. "There's no such thing as an entire race of beings that's completely good or evil, including ghosts. Actually, I happen to have a very good friend who's a ghost. That's how I learned so much about the Ghost Zone and Pariah Dark without ever setting foot into the Ghost Zone."

"Miss Higurashi? May I have a word before classes start?" Mr. Lancer called out to the younger teacher over the accumulating noise in the hall as more and more students filed into the school.

"Of course, Mr. Lancer," Miss Higurashi agreed, giving one last smile to the teens she was talking to. "I'll see you guys in class, then."

"See you, Miss Higurashi!" Tucker said cheerfully, waving at the young teacher was she made her way through the hall to the older instructor's side, a dopey grin on his face as he watched her go. Sam rolled her eyes at Tucker's actions, then turned to Danny to access the half ghost's reaction to the conversation that had just taken place.

"Still think she's the next maniacal genius, Danny?" Sam asked pointedly, feeling quite a bit better after having her questions answered by the teacher, as well as hearing Miss Higurashi openly admit to the fact that she didn't believe that ghosts- and specifically Danny Phantom- were necessarily evil.

"If she is, she's the best evil mastermind I've ever met" Jazz observed dryly. "Vlad probably would've won over you, mom and me in a heartbeat if he was half that good at faking being a nice person."

"Me too!" Tucker confessed cheerfully, to the surprise of no one.

"Look, I know you guys don't believe me, but I'm telling you Miss Higurashi's up to something!" Danny groused, glaring at the three unconvinced faces surrounding him. "And I'm gonna prove it to you!" Sam's heart sank at the half ghost's tone at that declaration. It was one she recognized all too well, since she had heard it a number of times before. Usually, right before Danny abused his powers in some form in order to get revenge on Dash.

"Danny-!" the goth started, hoping to stop her friend before he did something stupid.

"You guys go on ahead to class. I'll catch up later," Danny cut her off, darting away before Sam- or anyone else, for that matter- could stop him. Jazz, Tucker and Sam exchanged anxious looks in the wake of the half ghost's departure.

"So, anyone wanna take bets on how badly this is gonna end?" Tucker asked jokingly in hopes of breaking the tension.

"You guys are gonna stop him if he tries something stupid, right?" Jazz asked worriedly.

"Since when has anyone been able to stop Danny from doing stupid things with his powers?" Sam shot back dryly before sighing. "Don't worry. Tucker and I have gotten pretty used to damage control at this point. If things go bad, we'll just fall back on the Divert-and-Grab technique to get Danny out of harm's way."

"You wanna be the diverter or the grabber?" Tucker asked the goth cheerfully, grinning in a knowing sort of way.

"Grabber. It'll give me the chance to hit him for being an idiot," Sam answered darkly as she walked off towards their classroom as the warning bell sounded to tell students that they only had five more minutes to get to class, Tucker at her side. Shaking her head, Jazz departed for her own class, silently hoping that her little brother didn't try anything too reckless with their new teacher.

---

When the tardy bell rang and Danny was still nowhere in sight, Sam and Tucker flashed each other anxious looks, which did not go unnoticed by Kagome when she got up to close the door.

Uh-oh, that can't be good. The woman thought with a slight frown as she sensed Danny's supernatural presence suddenly spike, meaning he'd probably just transformed into his ghostly persona. With any luck, he was just going to go off and deal with a rogue spirit or something, but Kagome sort of doubted that. Sighing quietly, the young teacher decided to skip calling attendance this morning, since it just put poor Sam and Tucker on the spot to lie for their friend. She was fairly good at putting names to faces, anyways, and if she forgot someone she could always just ask.

"Alright class, time to get started!" the blue eyed Asian said cheerfully as she turned to her students. Despite being the first class of the morning, all of the students were wide awake and completely focused on their instructor, which kind of amused the former time traveler. Clearly the students were curious as to how these classes were going to go. Walking back to her desk, Kagome pulled a battered old doll from her bag, grinning when she turned to show it to the class and earned an array of confused looks in return. "Now then, can anyone here tell me what this is?"

"Um, Miss Higurashi? That's just some dumb old doll," the blonde boy near the front (Dash Baxter, if she remembered right) answered without raising his hand, giving the teacher a weird look. Before Kagome could reply to the jock's claim, the florescent light above the blonde's head suddenly exploded, making the boy scream in fright. Dash was unharmed, since the light's cover protected him from the shattered glass, but that didn't stop him and several students nearby from diving for cover.

These kids have some pretty impressive reflexes. Kagome noticed as she sent out a wave of purification energy to dispel the spirit's fury at the teen's thoughtless comment.

"It's alright, everyone. Back to your seats, there's no danger here anymore," the teacher reassured everyone. There was a moment’s hesitation from the teens despite her words, but after several seconds passed with no follow up attack, the students hesitantly slid back into their seats. Smiling slightly, Kagome raised an eyebrow at Dash. "Not that I don't appreciate your input, Dash, but you might want to watch who and what you insult in the future. It can lead to some nasty results sometimes if you're not careful."

The jock went scarlet at the pretty teacher's advice, but said nothing in response.

"However, Dash's little slip of tongue has led us to the first and most important rule to remember when you're dealing with the supernatural," Kagome told the class, setting the doll down on her desk to pick up a piece of chalk and write out a single sentence at the top of her chalkboard.

Looks can be deceiving.

"We talked yesterday about the fact that ghosts are formed from the souls of the deceased, but you guys have to understand that souls can take many different forms after death, and not all of them make sense to anyone other than the person who died," Kagome explained, setting the chalk down and turning back to face the class, who were watching her with rapt attention.

"You mean... that doll's a ghost?!" Dash squeaked, giving the battered toy a terrified look.

"Not yet," Kagome assured the jock, getting confused looks from most of the class.

"What do you mean ‘not yet’?" Valerie asked curiously, appraising the doll with steady green eyes.

"About eighty or so years ago, this doll was brand new, and it belonged to a little girl with Leukemia. When that little girl was alive, she poured her heart and soul out to this doll, and loved it so dearly that her soul became attached to it even after her death," Kagome explained confidently, fishing a pair of glasses out of her bag and handing them to the black girl, who took them with a confused look at the teacher. "Put those on. They'll make the ectoplasmic residue the doll gives off visible to the human eye." Obeying the teacher, Valerie slipped the glasses into place, her eyes immediately widening at the sight of the cloudy green mist that clung to the air around the doll.

"Oh, cool!" Valerie breathed, watching in fascination as the mist seemed to respond to her attention, shrinking away almost shyly under the ghost hunter's curious eye.

"What you're seeing right now is ectoplasm without a conscious form," Kagome told Valerie, a little amused with how impressed her student was with the glasses. "If left unchecked, this doll will serve as a catalyst to create a full-formed ghost in about a decade or so, give or take. Most likely, the ghost will have little or no memories of her life as a human, and will simply be a posthumous representation of the thoughts and feelings that the little girl expressed to her toy in life. Could you please pass them around so the rest of your classmates can see them as well?"

"Wait, so what does all that junk mean?" Dash asked in confusion as Valerie handed the glasses off to the boy on her right. "I mean, you said yesterday that ghosts were dead people, right? Now you're saying that they just represent dead people?"

"Well it's actually rather complicated, but technically both can be true. It really depends on the ghost themselves, to be honest," Kagome informed her students, walking back to the board and picking up the chalk yet again to draw out various forms. "You see, there are five different ways a ghost will commonly be formed. One way is through powerful emotions during death that might cause a soul to reject the proper spirit world in favor of lingering in the mortal realm. If someone dies with intense feelings of anger, fear or resentment, for example, it's likely they'll return as a ghost. This tends to be one of the more common ways a ghost can be formed, and if probably the way that most of the ghosts that attack Amity Park came to be.

"Then there are the ghosts who should have entered the proper spirit realm, but didn't for some reason or another. The reasons tend to vary from ghost to ghost—it could've been a curse which was placed on them in life, which prevents them from finding proper rest, or maybe there was some task in life which they wished so strongly to continue to perform that even death could not stop them, such as raising a child or protecting someone or something else that was important to them. Generally, these ghosts keep to themselves, although there are a few that have been known to threaten the living, usually if a human threatens or trespasses upon whatever it is that they chose to linger for.

"And then we have the spirits formed from those with dreams of grandiose. These are usually born from people who were so unhappy with their lot in life that they've willingly forgone the true spirit realms in hopes of obtaining their wants or desires after death. These ghosts can be violent, but mostly they're just crazy and obsessed.

"Next we have the spirits who have been banned from finding peace in the spirit world due to misdeeds they've performed in life. Usually, the crimes have to be pretty heavy if they don't even bother to judge the soul after their deaths, so ghosts formed from these guys tend to be pretty vicious. Thankfully, they're also pretty rare, and usually suffer some sort of limitation on their powers due to their crimes.

"And finally, we have the ghosts that are formed from the thoughts, fears or beliefs of a large mass of people. These tend to be powerful ghosts who don't look as human as the others do. They can be representations of nature or intangible forces that man cannot control, and aren't actually born from a single person but rather little bits and pieces of many, many people over a long period of time. These ghosts tend to be all over the place as far as their alignment to good or evil goes, but one thing that's true is that they're usually very strong, and that they generally have less of a grasp on humanity then ghosts that were formed from a single person do."

“What about ghosts who are born as ghosts?” Tucker asked, thinking of the future daughter of the Lunch Lady and the Box Ghost (though not without a slight grimace). “I mean, they don’t come from dead people, right?” This question earned Tucker several confused looks that clearly said his classmates were now questioning his sanity, but before any of them could jump on him for it, Kagome spoke up.

“Actually, souls who are ‘born’ ghosts, as you put it, are generally formed from infants who die during or shortly after pregnancy or childbirth(comma)” Kagome explained, frowning a little. “Sometimes these souls get confused when they die so quickly after being born, and this can prevent them from entering the proper spirit world. But since they’re spirits aren’t as solidly formed as a ghost who has been around for a while, they kind of latch onto formed ghosts for support until they’re capable of maintaining a form on their own. Because of that, the energies of the ghosts tend to leave a powerful imprint on the infant’s soul, which in turn ‘makes’ them into the ghosts’ baby. They generally don’t understand the concept of life and death very well either, since they’ve been undead for as long as they can remember.

"The thing you have to realize when dealing with ghosts is that sometimes certain memories or feeling can affect a soul so strongly that it carries over after death, and becomes their reason for existing. For those of you who have studied psychology, think of the more violent ghosts as what people would be like if they didn't have the superego to control the id and ego. Depending on how they died and how strongly in tune they are with their former humanity, ghosts can be seen as either a person just like you and me-- only, you know, dead—or the wants and needs of the deceased person, without morals to guide them." This thought had a lot of her students exchanging uneasy looks with one another, clearly uncomfortable with the teacher's words.

"What about half ghosts?"

Tucker fumbled and dropped the glasses that Mikey was handing to him when Valerie voiced that question, and Sam went deathly still beside him. Kagome, on the other hand, merely regarded the pretty curly haired girl with a curious look.

"I'm sorry, half ghosts?" she repeated, raising an eyebrow at the strange term.

"Yeah. You know, people who are human and ghosts at the same time," Valerie insisted, pursing her lips at the thought of the billionaire who had deceived her into doing his dirty work for so long. Before Kagome could answer, Dash, Paulina and Kwan all burst into loud, obnoxious laugher at the girl's question.

"Are you seriously suggesting that there's someone out there who can be a human and a ghost?" Paulina asked between her giggles, looking at Valerie incredulously. "I knew you lost you mind when we stopped hanging out, Valerie, but this is too much!"

"Yeah! You can't be, like, dead and alive, you know!" Dash said with a confident sneer. "Isn't that right, Miss Higurashi?"

Oh, you'd be surprised... Kagome thought flatly, recalling her former incarnation and the Band of Seven, and various other living dead she'd come across while looking for the jewel. Before she could say anything though, the tell-tale energy of a very strange ghost made its presence known to Kagome's senses. Realizing that Danny had returned to the school, Kagome relaxed minutely as she tried to figure out the best way to answer this new line of question.

"Actually, I know of several ways the dead have been reanimated before," Kagome told Dash.

"Wait, you mean zombies?!" Tucker exclaimed. "There was a zombie apocalypse in Japan and I MISSED it?!!" Sam scowled at her friend as Kagome's glasses slipped through his fingers and to the floor yet again, then narrowly missed getting stepped on by his boots.

"Will you give me those before you break them?!" Sam snapped, snatching the glasses off of the floor and giving her friend a dirty look.

"Not zombies exactly, but souls reanimated into false bodies," Kagome assured Tucker.

"So, basically a ghost wearing a people-suit instead of just possessing someone?" Sam suggested as she slipped the glasses up the bridge of her nose. Kagome grinned a bit at the visual the goth gave her.

"Exactly!" the miko said cheerfully, though she was a little distracted by the fact that Danny's energy was getting much closer. He didn't plan on changing back into his human form in the classroom did he?

Before Kagome could wonder about this much longer, Danny entered the room through the wall behind her and, seconds later, there were a pair of gloved hands on either sides of her waist, lifting the startled teacher into the air as a loud, exaggerated moaning sound echoed from directly behind her.

"GHOST!" Dash shrieked, jumping out of his seat and backpedaling away from the floating teacher. Many of the other students followed suit, save for a very confused looking Tucker, Valerie, who almost immediately tensed for attack and Sam, who was staring slack-jawed with horrified embarrassment at something over Kagome's shoulder.

What on earth is this kid DOING?! Kagome thought irritably, craning around to look over her shoulder at the ghost that was carrying her. Kagome's annoyance was replaced with shock and disbelief at the sight that greeted her. Oh you have got to be kidding me.

Danny, it seemed, had left school not to fight a ghost as Kagome had first assumed, but to drape a bed sheet with eyeholes over himself. Kagome probably would have laughed herself into a coma at the sight of a real ghost using such a cheesy and unoriginal disguise if she wasn't so busy suffering from second-hand humiliation at the knowledge that, yes, this was the guy who was supposed to be protecting Amity Park from the forces of evil.

God she hoped she had never done anything this stupid or embarrassing when she was trying to save the world...

Sighing through her nose, Kagome glanced dryly around her classroom at the panicking students below her. Apparently, Phantom was still invisible so all they could see was their new teacher floating in midair. Well, except for Sam, who still had the special energy seeing glasses on. Clearly, the goth was just as impressed with Danny's disguise as Kagome herself.

"Settle down, class. No need for alarm," Kagome said flatly as she dug her elbow into Danny's side. Yelping, the boy dropped her, leaving Kagome to fall to the floor. Years of experience at getting tossed around like a rag doll by demons kicked in, allowing Kagome to catch herself before she got hurt and land in a crouched position. Straightening up, a very cranky Kagome turned to face the ghost that had grabbed her, pulling her house keys out of the pocket of her dress and detaching the small, silk bag tied to the keychain and sprinkling a little bit of the contents into her hand.

Before Danny could recover from her 'attack,' Kagome blew the powder from her hand onto the ghost boy. The instant it made contact, Danny immediately became visible for all to see.

Not to mention susceptible to the laws of gravity.

"OOF!" The hero grunted in pain as he landed ungracefully on his backside, alarmed and confused as to why he was in his ghost form, yet his powers weren't working. Then, a certain, angry blue-eyed teacher suddenly loomed over him and Danny realized that he had bigger problems to deal with at the moment.

"What did you do?!" Valerie asked, clearly intrigued by how effortlessly the teacher had dealt with the threat.

"It's just a simple mixture of herbs and minerals that can temporarily short out a ghost's powers." Kagome replied airily, tossing the silk bag of said mixture put and down with her free hand as she stood before the disguised ghost in the floor, a hand at her hip and glare on her face. Powerless, Danny shrank back meekly at the fire in the teacher's eyes. "Now then, since I'm sure this was just a silly, stupid prank by a bored ghost with too much time on his hands that Danny Phantom couldn't be bothered to deal with, I'm going to let to leave without any further punishment. But if you ever try to pull something in my class again, especially when there are students present, your powers are going to be the least of your worries. Do we have an understanding, Spooky?"

Eyes wide as dinner plates, Danny nodded, the bed sheet jerking up and down with the movement of his head. Relaxing slightly, Kagome stepped past the ghost, not missing the way that he flinched at bit as she drew closer, then relaxed when she continued to the door without so much as another glare in his direction. Opening the door, Kagome set a hand on her hip again and speared Danny with a flat look.

"Good. Now then, I'm willing to bet that you have somewhere else to be, young man. I suggest not wasting any more time getting there." Needing no more nudging, Danny promptly shot out the door like a bullet. Sighing quietly to herself, Kagome shut the door behind him and turned back to face the class again.

And then faltered a bit at the sight of thirty plus faces staring at her in awe and respect.

Well, that certainly upped my credibility a bit... Kagome thought in bemusement.

"Alright then, everyone return to your seats," Kagome called out. The kids needed no further prompting from the teacher, practically diving back into their desks in order to get on with the lessons, questions falling from their lips in rapid succession.

"How did you do that?!" Dash asked eagerly.

"Can we seriously learn to do stuff like that, too?" Kwan wondered with wide eyes.

"Are there other ways to incapacitate a ghost?" Valerie questioned, a rather frightening grin on her face that reminded Kagome a bit of when Shippo was planning an especially nasty prank.

"That ghost you just met is gonna be okay, right?" Sam said, failing to mask her concern for her friend.

Before Kagome could respond to any of the questions being fired at her, the classroom door creaked open again and a surprisingly nervous looking Danny Fenton peeked his head in.

"I'm, um, sorry I'm late, ma'am," the blue eyed boy said meekly. "I was having some... uh... stomach issues." Kagome watched in amusement as Danny rubbed his side where she'd elbowed him as he said that.

"That's alright Danny," Kagome said sweetly. "I'm glad you’re feeling better now. Please take your seat so we can continue class." Danny didn't need to be told twice, practically teleporting to his seat between Sam and Tucker, who both shot him concerned looks as he sat down and tried to make himself as small as humanly possible. Deciding to cut the boy a break despite his supremely stupid move earlier, Kagome turned her attention back to the rest of the class, returning to the front of the board.

"Settle down, everyone. I promise you, we'll learn the various ways you can stop a ghost later on in the year. For now, though, we need to focus on making sure we know what ghosts are, and why they act the way they do. A little understanding can go a long way, and sometimes if just know how to talk to someone, there won't be any need for violence at all. Wouldn't you agree, Danny?" Kagome grinned a bit as the teen in question paled for a moment at her inquiry. Okay, so she wasn't completely over his boneheaded move earlier, so sue her. Clearly, she wasn't the only one who was pleased to see the boy squirming at being put on the spot. Sam was hiding a smirk behind a pale hand, and Tucker snickered quietly at his friend's side.

"Y-yes, ma'am," Danny mumbled, shrinking a little further into his seat to avoid being called on again, so that only the top of his head was visible. Figuring that the teen had learned his lesson, Kagome turned back to her teachings and left Danny alone for the rest of the class period. Inwardly, though, the former priestess preened.

Ghost powers of not, Danny Phantom was about ten years too early to try and get the drop on her.

Description
Chapter 3- Paranormal Paranoia

A good teacher must know the rules; a good pupil, the exceptions. ~Martin H. Fischer

There’s no glamour in the life of a sidekick. Sam thought grimly as she wiped ecto-goo off her cheek, pointedly not looking at the black boy next to her as she sped towards the Fenton Portal. Tucker had the good grace to look sheepish at the goth’s obvious anger.

“I said I was sorry,” the bespectacled boy said meekly. Sam clenched her jaw, but said nothing. “Hey, in my defense, it seemed like a good idea at the time. And we didn’t get eaten! That’s a bonus, right?”

“We never speak of this incident again, Tucker Foley,” Sam said tersely through gritted teeth.

“But-!”

“NEVER.”

Wisely, Tucker shut up.

It was a relief to both of the teens when the Fenton Portal came in sight. After passing through the swirling green void, the duo found themselves back in the lab of their best friend’s ghost hunting parents. Danny was already there waiting for them as they turned off the Specter Speeder, sitting in a corner and mulling over what little information Tucker had found on their new teacher. The teen half ghost glanced up from the papers when he heard the arrival of his friends, surprise quickly overtaking his features when he saw the state the duo was in.

“What happened to you guys?” Danny asked in concern, rising out of his seat to see the two better. Both Sam and Tucker were covered from head to toe in some kind of slime, and Sam’s hair looked a little like a cartoon character’s after they stuck their finger in an outlet. Little blue sparks danced around in the strands every now and then, shocking anything that dared to get close.

“Don’t ask,” Sam said, self-consciously reaching up to try and tame her locks only to wince as she got zapped for her attempt. Tucker blushed and refused to meet Danny’s eye when the boy turned to him for an explanation.

“Alright then…” Danny said slowly when it became obvious that neither of his friends were going to divulge the reason behind their odd appearances. “So what’d you find out in the Ghost Zone?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Tucker confessed, sighing when Danny looked at him in surprise. “We asked everyone, man. No one’s heard of Miss Higurashi before, and no one recognized her in the picture we were showing around.” Snagging said picture from the tech geek, Danny stared for a moment before raising an eyebrow at his friend.

“Where’d you get a picture of Miss Higurashi in a swimsuit?”

“I have my ways,” Tucker replied, a little smugly.

“And as I’m sure you already know, there’s not much more Tucker found in her records,” Sam said grumpily, wincing a bit every time she passed a reflective surface. “She was reported missing once when she was fifteen, right before she started getting sick all the time, but she came back on her own. Her grandfather said she had hit her head on her way to school and got disoriented, which was why it took her so long to remember her way home. A policeman went out there to check and make sure she was okay, and according to his report she did seem to have hit her head, but didn’t suffer any lasting damage. She had a few scrapes since she slept in a forest, and a bite mark on her hip, which she said came from a wild dog. A doctor examined her and said she was alright, so she went back home that same day.”

“And the shrine?” Danny asked.

“No go, man.” Tucker said with an apologetic shrug. “Their main attractions are a tree that’s over a thousand years old and a dried up well that apparently eats skeletons.”

“Eats… skeletons?!” Danny was clearly disturbed by that one.

“According to the myth we found, a nearby village used to dump the dead bodies of evil demons down the dried up well, and within a few days the remains would be gone." Tucker said.

“So they’d just vanish?” Danny said, his face brightening. “Then that must be it! That well must’ve been a natural portal into the Ghost Zone!”

“What, you don’t think we thought about that possibility?” Sam scoffed. “Frostbite was the first ghost Tuck and I went to see, and he says the Infi-map doesn’t show anything about a portal on a shrine in Tokyo. It’s a dead end, just like everything else we found out about her past.”

“What about trailing her? What did that turn up?” Tucker asked with a grin.

“You mean other then the fact that Miss Higurashi can sense ghosts, see them even when they’re invisible and has ghost-proofed her house?” Danny clarified dryly, glaring sullenly at the picture Tucker had commandeered of the woman in question as his friends stared at him in alarm. “She says she’s human, but I dunno how true that is. And I definitely know she’s hiding something. She’s more than just a weird teacher from Japan on her first job.”

“Danny, are you sure you’re not just being a little bit paranoid?” Sam asked with a concerned frown. “I mean, we know she’s human. Tucker found her birth certificate and everything. We found her school records, her awards for archery… other than a little bit of weirdness here and there, there’s nothing really freaky about her past that would suggest she’s out to take over the world or try anything illegal. Heck from some of the comments Tucker found by her old classmates, you’d think this woman was Mother Teresa or something.”

“Only, you know, waaay hotter.” Tucker clarified with a grin, earning him an ugly look from Sam.

“I’m telling you there’s something weird about Miss Higurashi!” Danny insisted hotly, glaring at his friends for their reluctance to believe him.

“Well, yeah,” Sam agreed readily enough. “But weird isn’t the same as evil, Danny. You should know that by now.”

“But-!”

“Forget it, Danny. I’m gonna go home, take a long shower and change. Call me if you find a legitimate reason to keep invading our teacher’s privacy,” Sam huffed, her bad mood clearly affecting her temper. Danny didn’t have enough time to work up a good protest before the goth stormed up the stairs and into the Fenton’s house, leaving her male friends staring after her retreating form. After she was gone, Danny turned to his other, increasingly uncomfortable best friend.

“Um, as much as I’d hate to admit it, Danny… Sam’s right. Miss Higurashi’s strange, but nothing about her screams ‘evil maniac bent on ruling the world’ to me. I mean, she volunteered at a children’s hospital when she was going to college in Japan, for crying out loud! And she donated most of the money she earned in archery tournaments to help fund housing efforts for the poor! Not exactly typical criminal mastermind behavior.” Danny felt his own temper flare up when he realized that his friends didn’t believe in him or his instincts enough to realize that the new teacher was a threat.

“Fine. You guys don’t wanna help me? Then I’ll just have to do it all myself,” the half ghost snapped, turning away from his friend to gather the print outs Tucker had found on the woman. Agitated at the other boy’s behavior, Tucker reached out to grab Danny’s shoulder.

“Danny-” before Tucker could try and get through to his best friend though, Danny went intangible to shake off the other boy’s hold, startling the tech geek a bit. Too stubborn to listen, Danny stormed up the stairs and off to his room before Tucker could recover.

Inside, he was steaming the whole way.

Why on earth couldn’t Sam and Tucker trust his senses, which were all screaming at him that this woman was dangerous? He didn’t care what all the papers and documents said, he knew there was something different- something supernatural about Miss Higurashi. There had to be, otherwise she probably wouldn’t effect him as bad as she did. And every ghostly instinct inside of him screamed that whatever that something was, he was meant to fear it.

Now the question is, what is that something? Danny thought grimly as he shut his bedroom door behind him. If there was a power out there that could instinctively scare a ghost that much, then it had to be seriously bad news. After all, what could possibly be all that dangerous to someone who was, technically, already dead?

Danny was dreading the possibility of finding the answer to that question the hard way.

---

“Wait, he still goes to school? Seriously? You’d think that dying would be the best excuse there is not to go to class anymore.”

“Yeah, well believe it or not, some of us like to go to school, Souta,” Kagome said dryly as she flipped through the dated newspaper.

“You mean only weirdoes like you,” Souta teased back, getting an eye roll from his older sister.

Kagome didn’t have the heart to tell her little brother that he was right. She’d been just as annoyed and frustrated with school as any normal kid, before falling down the well and into the past. But after that, it hadn’t taken her long to appreciate the classroom that she so often had to leave behind. School was safe. Sure it had its problems, but none of them were trying to kill her. After dodging demons and greedy humans in the past, it was a relief to just sit and learn, even if she spent most of the time lost and scrambling to keep up.

Sometimes, for a minute or two, Kagome could even pretend she was a normal person.

Souta had never known how terrible things could get during the Jewel hunt though, and Kagome preferred to keep it that way. Normalcy was a blessing she had long since relinquished, but there was still hope for her brother to be someone who could live in the modern world without feeling like a penguin in the desert. She wanted that for him far more then she needed him to understand her own problems.

“So are you gonna tell Aunt Aoko that one of the students is Danny Phantom?” Souta asked curiously. It was a testament to how strange his life was already that he wasn’t more confused at the thought of a human boy with ghost powers.

“No, I don’t think so,” Kagome sighed. “Aunt Aoko wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh come on, she already knows you’re not normal, and that doesn’t seem to bug her all that much,” Souta pointed out.

“Yeah but we never told her about the well or the jewel,” Kagome reminded him with a frown. “I’m pretty sure she just thinks I woke up one day and I could see ghosts and everything.” Very few people asked many questions about the origins of her spiritual powers, even after they had learned that she was skilled at warding off evil or malicious attacks from supernatural entities.

“Bummed you’re not treated like some sort of living goddess here in the twenty-first century?” Souta teased.

“Hardly,” Kagome scoffed. “It just bugs me how people can ignore something that doesn’t make sense to them. Supernatural beings have been in existence for thousands of years now, and yet the more humans learn, the more they deny the reality of that which they cannot explain. Pretending something isn’t there doesn’t make it go away. Even here in Amity Park! People here know there are ghosts around, and they know that they can hurt people, but they haven’t taken any precautions against them, except to run screaming like a bunch of maniacs when they attack and then wait until Danny Phantom or a ghost hunter takes care of the problem. Then they have the nerve to bad-mouth the ghost hunting couple that protects them and call them freaks and weirdoes!”

“Easy, sis,” Souta soothed, laughing a bit at Kagome’s fiery tirade. “So they don’t know squat about ghosts. That’s why you’re over there, right? To teach them?”

“Yeah…” Kagome said, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “Right.”

Kagome hadn’t told anyone at home her real intentions for making the trip to Amity Park. That way, whether she failed or succeeded, her family wouldn’t be drawn into her mess any longer. Kagome suspected that her mother knew. Perhaps not the details, but the Higurashi matriarch definitely had an idea of what her daughter was up to, and simply gave her silent support as always.

“How’s that going for you, anyways? I mean, other than the ghost kid, are there any students who seem like they’d be any good with the spiritual stuff?”

“A few,” Kagome admitted with a slight smile. “Amity Park is a hive of supernatural activity, so it makes sense that the residents here would have more developed sixth senses then you see in most other places. Danny’s definitely the most in tune with his. Poor kid looked ready to jump out a window every time I walked past him. And there was one other student, Valerie Grey. She has a very strange pulse in her aura, and I think she got the sense that there was something different about me too. And Danny’s got a pair of friends, Sam Manson and Tucker Foley. They’re pretty in tune with the supernatural, and shouldn’t be that hard to train up. Believe it or not, I even found someone with purification powers.”

“Seriously?” Souta said, clearly surprised. “But I thought you said that ghost guy killed off pretty much anyone who had that ability? Paralyses Dark or whatever?”

“Pariah Dark,” Kagome corrected absently, “the former ghost king. And yes, he ordered an assault on the earth three hundred years ago to kill all the humans with the ability to purify ghosts. He feared those powers more than anything else, after all. Still, I suppose some could have survived the purge and went on to have children with the power. Or maybe she’s an old soul given another chance at life like me. Whichever it is, she must have said something when she was a kid.”

“What makes you say that?” her brother wondered.

“There’s a seal on her powers,” the young teacher explained. “It’s a very clumsy seal, probably done self-consciously when she was young. Most likely, she saw a lot of stuff other people couldn’t and other kids started making fun of her for it, so she began trying to convince herself that it was all made up and cut herself off from her powers in an attempt to protect herself. You see that sort of stuff from time to time, even in the past. People don’t like it when there’s something that’s keeping them from fitting in or making friends.”

“So what are you gonna do about it?” Souta asked.

“There’s nothing I can do.” Kagome confessed with a sigh. “She doesn’t want to believe she has powers. I can’t make her see the truth about herself if she doesn’t have the courage to accept that she’s different.”

“That’s lame,” Souta griped. “I mean, who wouldn’t want to believe they have special powers? I’d kill to do the stuff that you and Inu-no-nii-san can do!”

“Lots of people don’t see spiritual powers that way, Souta.” Kagome explained somberly. “Sometimes being different is a very scary, lonely thing. Especially when you’re little. Remember the way we used to get made fun of for our eyes?”

“Yeah, well those kids were just a bunch of stupid jerks.” Souta grumbled, all too able to recall the bullies of their youth who taunted their mixed race heritage.

“Yeah well, ‘stupid jerk’ is a worldwide epidemic, I’m afraid.” Kagome chuckled. “And not everyone has a big sister who will protect little scaredy-cat brats from the bullies.”

“Hey, that was one time!” Souta protested. Kagome grinned in response. It was nice to know she could still embarrass her little brother even when there was an ocean between them. “Anyways, there can’t be that many people in Amity Park who find your kinda powers freaky if they got a ghost boy flying around protecting them from bad guys.”

“Just because someone relies on a power to protect them doesn’t mean that they don’t fear it, Souta.” Kagome informed her brother. “Especially if it's something they don't understand, or can't control. I imagine that’s one of the reasons why Danny is keeping his abilities a secret, even if it might be easier for him if other people knew.”

“It’s that bad for him?” Souta asked curiously.

“Almost all the other teachers started badmouthing him when I tried to bring his name up,” Kagome said with a sympathetic twinge in her tone. “Nine out of ten of them see him as a lazy, eccentric trouble-maker who is always showing up to class late, forgetting to hand in his homework, leaving early without much of an explanation, falling asleep during lectures… He’s been blamed for a lot of the destruction of school property, too.” Some of them weren’t quite as harsh. Mr. Lancer believed that Danny was a smart kid with a good heart, but he felt the teen wasn’t applying himself nearly as much as he should be. The gym teacher Ms. Testlaff, on the other hand, insisted the boy was a weak, smart-mouthed slacker who needed to be whipped into shape, blaming his trouble-making on a bid for attention since he wasn't smart or popular like his sister.

“Wow, and I thought school was rough for you...” Souta observed. He knew how stressful saving the world had made pursuing an education for his older sister.

“Yeah. At least I could get away from demons at school.” Kagome murmured in agreement. “This poor kid can’t get a break. And I don’t think his family knows, either.”

“Really?” Souta seemed thrown by this fact. He couldn’t imagine not noticing Kagome’s comings and goings in the past without figuring out pretty fast that something was going on, even if he hadn’t seen the centipede lady drag his sister through the time portal.

“His parents are two of the most renowned ghost hunters in Amity Park, and I've read a few articles about them trying to hunt Danny Phantom ever since he became public knowledge. Even saw a news report the other day when I was out shopping, and either the Fentons are world class actors or they honestly have no clue their son is Danny Phantom."

"Yikes, hunted by his own parents? That IS rough..."

"Mmm. He has to have some sort of support system going on, though. His friends, probably. That Tucker kid looked like he was going to have a heart attack when I started talking about people using their spiritual powers the same way a ghost does, and Sam was watching me pretty carefully during class. Maybe his sister too. She's a smart girl, and she seems like the type who doesn't like to be on the sidelines when something big is going down."

"So she's almost as nosy as you, then?" Souta joked.

"Haha. Brat," Kagome rolled her eyes at her brother's teasing.

"Anyways, I'm a little surprised at how well things have been going for you so far. I mean, you've been there what, a week now? And you haven't been attacked by anything? That's gotta be some kind of record for you, right?"

"Do you really want to see if sacred powers are possible through phones? Because I can make it happen." Kagome warned her brother grumpily. Was a little respect too much to ask for?

"Just sayin', sis."

Apparently it was.

"Wow Souta, that's so funny I forgot to laugh," Kagome said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. "Anyways, most of the ghosts who sense my powers stay clear of me even if they don't know what I am. It's an instinct thing, recognizing that something's a threat to you, you know? Other then Danny, the only one that's been brave enough to confront me is a weird blue guy in overalls who was trying to hoard my moving boxes on my first day here. He was kinda funny, and he didn't seem like that much of a threat, so I just let him be."

"So hypothetically, if someone was living with you, they probably wouldn't have to worry about ghosts either, right?" Souta said hopefully.

"You're not moving over here, Souta." Kagome responded flatly, knowing full well what her brother was fishing for. "Mom said no, remember?"

"Oh come on! How come you get to do all the cool stuff?"

"Dunno. Take it up with whoever hands out destinies or whatever before you're born. And let them know I have a few choice words for them, too."

"Please sis? I can help! You owe me for letting you practice what you'll be teaching your students on me, right?" Kagome sighed, knowing that her little brother had her there.

"Okay, tell you what; if you do well in all your classes and there hasn't been any epic threat on my life here, then we'll talk to mom about letting you come to Amity Park for Golden Week. Deal?"

"Deal!" Souta agreed happily. "I'll ask mom about it tonight at dinner! Thanks, Kagome, you're the best!"

"Don't mention it, Souta." Kagome smiled, though a little wistfully. She knew how much her little brother admired her and her abilities after what she'd done in the past. It made lying about her true intentions for coming to Amity Park a little difficult, to be honest. But all the same, she stood by her decision. Souta would understand when he was older. Hopefully. "Now hurry up and finish your homework. And don't try and tell me it's done already, brat. Us teachers can sense those sort of lies from half a world away."

"Alright, alright." Souta laughed. "Call again soon, sis, we miss you like crazy. And good luck with those American teenagers! Don't go sticking subjugation necklaces on any of 'em!"

"I make no promises!" Kagome said loftily, earning another laugh from Souta which made her grin. "I'll talk to you again soon, Souta. Love you."

"You too!" A clicking sound signaled the end of her long distance call with her teenaged brother, followed by the dial tone to remind the priestess holding the phone that she should probably hang it back up. Kagome paid it no mind though, her somber but determined eyes glued to the article she had just uncovered in the year old newspaper in front of her.

Local Ghost Hunters Build Portal into Ghost Zone

---

Stumbling half asleep through the halls of Casper High, Danny wished for the millionth time that the ability to bounce back after a night without sleep was one of the powers he'd gained from walking into the Fenton Portal. Or at the very least they should've given him the ability to sleep with his eyes open. He wasn't looking forward into yet another detention for falling asleep in Lancer's class.

"Dude, you okay?" Tucker asked without preamble as he approached the sleepy half ghost, a cautious look on his face that told Danny the tech geek hadn't forgotten their last encounter. Danny made a mental note to apologize to his friend when he could keep his eyes open for more then two seconds. "You look like a zombie, man."

"He probably pulled an all-nighter looking for imaginary demons in Miss Higurashi's past." Sam theorized as she joined them, making Danny scowl a bit.

"I'm fine Tucker," Danny said, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

"Couldn't find anything on the new teacher, huh?" Tucker said sympathetically, correctly reading the half ghost's tone to figure out that Sam had been right about their friend's activities. "We told you she doesn't have any red flags as far as evil supernatural encounters go."

"What supernatural encounters?" a new voice interjected before Danny could defend his suspicions yet again. Turning around, the sophomores found Jazz frowning at the three of them in concern. "Is there something else going on now you're not telling me about, Danny?"

"It's nothing Jazz," Sam said, rolling her eyes. "Danny just thinks the new teacher is evil."

"Miss Higurashi?" Jazz said, her eyebrows disappearing under her bangs before she turned to her brother with a worried look. "What makes you think that? Did she say something to you that sounded like a threat?"

"Well… no," Danny admitted, shifting uncomfortably as Sam and Tucker gave him pointed looks.

"Well did you see her doing something bad, then?"

"No." Danny shrank a bit as his friends' glares intensified.

"Is there any reason at all to think she's evil?" Jazz asked, sounding baffled.

"She creeps Danny out," Tucker explained in an I-told-you-so sort of tone.

"Given her subject matter compared to how she dresses and acts, I'm kinda getting a weird vibe from her too," Sam admitted, eyeing the teacher in question when she entered the hall. Sam was starting to see a pattern with the Asian woman's preferred dress, since Miss Higurashi was donned in a pastel green dress that had a white and buttercup yellow floral pattern with a satin emerald ribbon tied around her waist and a modest neckline that looked eerily similar to a modernized version of the sort of dresses her mother was constantly trying to force her into. "Not, you know, evil maniac or anything, but still kinda creepy for someone who is supposed to be teaching us about ghosts and monsters and stuff."

"Oh come on!" Tucker scoffed. "So she doesn't dress in black and act like she's allergic to the sun! That doesn't mean she's creepy!"

"Who's creepy?" Tucker yelped and jumped a foot in the air at the new interruption, spinning around with wide eyes to see the new teacher watching the group curiously.

"Miss Higurashi!" Sam squeaked out, looking over at Danny nervously. Out of all of them the half ghost looked most startled by the fact that the teacher had so easily snuck up on them.

Either she's not giving off the creepy feeling anymore, or Danny's more tired than we all thought, Sam realized. Reading Danny's confused look, Sam quickly figured that the first explanation was the culprit and sighed in annoyance, a little irritated that Danny had them all chasing their tails over something that turned out to be an even bigger nothing than she’d first thought.

"Sam, right?" Miss Higurashi smiled at the violet eyed girl, apparently oblivious to the sudden discomfort her presence caused the teens. "I was really impressed with your intuitiveness yesterday in class." Sam flushed a bit, but looked pleased with the teacher's praise despite herself.

"It was nothing, Miss Higurashi," Sam insisted modestly. "I was just stating the obvious."

"For being so obvious it was a fact that none of the other students seemed to realize for themselves," Miss Higurashi confided to the goth, which seemed to please Sam even more.

"I would've gotten it eventually," Jazz mumbled under her breath. Apparently, the fact that she herself hadn't pointed out such an obvious fact was a bit of a sore spot for the senior.

"That aside, Miss Higurashi, I gotta admit that I wasn't really expecting you to be as knowledgeable about ghosts as you are," Sam said, realizing that Miss Higurashi had provided her with an opening to question the teacher about a comment that had bothered the goth greatly the day before. "I mean, all that stuff you said about the Ghost King… um, what was his name again…?"

"Pariah Dark." Miss Higurashi supplied readily. "I believe he's the ghost that attacked Amity Park last year in the fall, the one Danny Phantom stole the Fenton's special echo-suit in order to fight off?"

"Oh. Him." Sam felt a bit twitchy at the casual reference to Danny's counterpart. Jazz apparently felt so as well, since she broke in timidly.

"Um, do you really think that 'stole' is the right word? I mean, he did take it to defeat a super evil ghost, after all."

"Well, considering that he took it without permission from your parents and didn't return it when he was done, I really can't think of a better way to phrase that, Jasmine," Miss Higurashi pointed out patiently, making the teens flinch. They couldn't really fault the teacher's logic there, after all.

"Maybe he lost it?" Tucker suggested hopefully.

"Because a giant metal suit that amplifies the wearer's power is really that hard to misplace," Miss Higurashi joked with a grin. Danny blushed heavily at that as Tucker deflated a bit.

"It could happen!" Tucker defended meekly.

"Maybe," Miss Higurashi agreed with a chuckle. "I'm not here to accuse anyone of any wrongdoing, especially someone who's done as much good as Danny Phantom has. I know that sometimes doing the right thing involves some things that can look pretty bad when viewed from the outside. I've had to explain that to my aunt a couple of times to keep her from shielding the whole school from all ghosts entirely, since alienating good ghosts can cause just as much damage as leaving yourself open to evil ghosts."

"So, you don't think all ghosts are evil then?" Jazz asked hopefully, her face brightening considerably.

"Of course not!" Miss Higurashi laughed a little at the question. "There's no such thing as an entire race of beings that's completely good or evil, including ghosts. Actually, I happen to have a very good friend who's a ghost. That's how I learned so much about the Ghost Zone and Pariah Dark without ever setting foot into the Ghost Zone."

"Miss Higurashi? May I have a word before classes start?" Mr. Lancer called out to the younger teacher over the accumulating noise in the hall as more and more students filed into the school.

"Of course, Mr. Lancer," Miss Higurashi agreed, giving one last smile to the teens she was talking to. "I'll see you guys in class, then."

"See you, Miss Higurashi!" Tucker said cheerfully, waving at the young teacher was she made her way through the hall to the older instructor's side, a dopey grin on his face as he watched her go. Sam rolled her eyes at Tucker's actions, then turned to Danny to access the half ghost's reaction to the conversation that had just taken place.

"Still think she's the next maniacal genius, Danny?" Sam asked pointedly, feeling quite a bit better after having her questions answered by the teacher, as well as hearing Miss Higurashi openly admit to the fact that she didn't believe that ghosts- and specifically Danny Phantom- were necessarily evil.

"If she is, she's the best evil mastermind I've ever met" Jazz observed dryly. "Vlad probably would've won over you, mom and me in a heartbeat if he was half that good at faking being a nice person."

"Me too!" Tucker confessed cheerfully, to the surprise of no one.

"Look, I know you guys don't believe me, but I'm telling you Miss Higurashi's up to something!" Danny groused, glaring at the three unconvinced faces surrounding him. "And I'm gonna prove it to you!" Sam's heart sank at the half ghost's tone at that declaration. It was one she recognized all too well, since she had heard it a number of times before. Usually, right before Danny abused his powers in some form in order to get revenge on Dash.

"Danny-!" the goth started, hoping to stop her friend before he did something stupid.

"You guys go on ahead to class. I'll catch up later," Danny cut her off, darting away before Sam- or anyone else, for that matter- could stop him. Jazz, Tucker and Sam exchanged anxious looks in the wake of the half ghost's departure.

"So, anyone wanna take bets on how badly this is gonna end?" Tucker asked jokingly in hopes of breaking the tension.

"You guys are gonna stop him if he tries something stupid, right?" Jazz asked worriedly.

"Since when has anyone been able to stop Danny from doing stupid things with his powers?" Sam shot back dryly before sighing. "Don't worry. Tucker and I have gotten pretty used to damage control at this point. If things go bad, we'll just fall back on the Divert-and-Grab technique to get Danny out of harm's way."

"You wanna be the diverter or the grabber?" Tucker asked the goth cheerfully, grinning in a knowing sort of way.

"Grabber. It'll give me the chance to hit him for being an idiot," Sam answered darkly as she walked off towards their classroom as the warning bell sounded to tell students that they only had five more minutes to get to class, Tucker at her side. Shaking her head, Jazz departed for her own class, silently hoping that her little brother didn't try anything too reckless with their new teacher.

---

When the tardy bell rang and Danny was still nowhere in sight, Sam and Tucker flashed each other anxious looks, which did not go unnoticed by Kagome when she got up to close the door.

Uh-oh, that can't be good. The woman thought with a slight frown as she sensed Danny's supernatural presence suddenly spike, meaning he'd probably just transformed into his ghostly persona. With any luck, he was just going to go off and deal with a rogue spirit or something, but Kagome sort of doubted that. Sighing quietly, the young teacher decided to skip calling attendance this morning, since it just put poor Sam and Tucker on the spot to lie for their friend. She was fairly good at putting names to faces, anyways, and if she forgot someone she could always just ask.

"Alright class, time to get started!" the blue eyed Asian said cheerfully as she turned to her students. Despite being the first class of the morning, all of the students were wide awake and completely focused on their instructor, which kind of amused the former time traveler. Clearly the students were curious as to how these classes were going to go. Walking back to her desk, Kagome pulled a battered old doll from her bag, grinning when she turned to show it to the class and earned an array of confused looks in return. "Now then, can anyone here tell me what this is?"

"Um, Miss Higurashi? That's just some dumb old doll," the blonde boy near the front (Dash Baxter, if she remembered right) answered without raising his hand, giving the teacher a weird look. Before Kagome could reply to the jock's claim, the florescent light above the blonde's head suddenly exploded, making the boy scream in fright. Dash was unharmed, since the light's cover protected him from the shattered glass, but that didn't stop him and several students nearby from diving for cover.

These kids have some pretty impressive reflexes. Kagome noticed as she sent out a wave of purification energy to dispel the spirit's fury at the teen's thoughtless comment.

"It's alright, everyone. Back to your seats, there's no danger here anymore," the teacher reassured everyone. There was a moment’s hesitation from the teens despite her words, but after several seconds passed with no follow up attack, the students hesitantly slid back into their seats. Smiling slightly, Kagome raised an eyebrow at Dash. "Not that I don't appreciate your input, Dash, but you might want to watch who and what you insult in the future. It can lead to some nasty results sometimes if you're not careful."

The jock went scarlet at the pretty teacher's advice, but said nothing in response.

"However, Dash's little slip of tongue has led us to the first and most important rule to remember when you're dealing with the supernatural," Kagome told the class, setting the doll down on her desk to pick up a piece of chalk and write out a single sentence at the top of her chalkboard.

Looks can be deceiving.

"We talked yesterday about the fact that ghosts are formed from the souls of the deceased, but you guys have to understand that souls can take many different forms after death, and not all of them make sense to anyone other than the person who died," Kagome explained, setting the chalk down and turning back to face the class, who were watching her with rapt attention.

"You mean... that doll's a ghost?!" Dash squeaked, giving the battered toy a terrified look.

"Not yet," Kagome assured the jock, getting confused looks from most of the class.

"What do you mean ‘not yet’?" Valerie asked curiously, appraising the doll with steady green eyes.

"About eighty or so years ago, this doll was brand new, and it belonged to a little girl with Leukemia. When that little girl was alive, she poured her heart and soul out to this doll, and loved it so dearly that her soul became attached to it even after her death," Kagome explained confidently, fishing a pair of glasses out of her bag and handing them to the black girl, who took them with a confused look at the teacher. "Put those on. They'll make the ectoplasmic residue the doll gives off visible to the human eye." Obeying the teacher, Valerie slipped the glasses into place, her eyes immediately widening at the sight of the cloudy green mist that clung to the air around the doll.

"Oh, cool!" Valerie breathed, watching in fascination as the mist seemed to respond to her attention, shrinking away almost shyly under the ghost hunter's curious eye.

"What you're seeing right now is ectoplasm without a conscious form," Kagome told Valerie, a little amused with how impressed her student was with the glasses. "If left unchecked, this doll will serve as a catalyst to create a full-formed ghost in about a decade or so, give or take. Most likely, the ghost will have little or no memories of her life as a human, and will simply be a posthumous representation of the thoughts and feelings that the little girl expressed to her toy in life. Could you please pass them around so the rest of your classmates can see them as well?"

"Wait, so what does all that junk mean?" Dash asked in confusion as Valerie handed the glasses off to the boy on her right. "I mean, you said yesterday that ghosts were dead people, right? Now you're saying that they just represent dead people?"

"Well it's actually rather complicated, but technically both can be true. It really depends on the ghost themselves, to be honest," Kagome informed her students, walking back to the board and picking up the chalk yet again to draw out various forms. "You see, there are five different ways a ghost will commonly be formed. One way is through powerful emotions during death that might cause a soul to reject the proper spirit world in favor of lingering in the mortal realm. If someone dies with intense feelings of anger, fear or resentment, for example, it's likely they'll return as a ghost. This tends to be one of the more common ways a ghost can be formed, and if probably the way that most of the ghosts that attack Amity Park came to be.

"Then there are the ghosts who should have entered the proper spirit realm, but didn't for some reason or another. The reasons tend to vary from ghost to ghost—it could've been a curse which was placed on them in life, which prevents them from finding proper rest, or maybe there was some task in life which they wished so strongly to continue to perform that even death could not stop them, such as raising a child or protecting someone or something else that was important to them. Generally, these ghosts keep to themselves, although there are a few that have been known to threaten the living, usually if a human threatens or trespasses upon whatever it is that they chose to linger for.

"And then we have the spirits formed from those with dreams of grandiose. These are usually born from people who were so unhappy with their lot in life that they've willingly forgone the true spirit realms in hopes of obtaining their wants or desires after death. These ghosts can be violent, but mostly they're just crazy and obsessed.

"Next we have the spirits who have been banned from finding peace in the spirit world due to misdeeds they've performed in life. Usually, the crimes have to be pretty heavy if they don't even bother to judge the soul after their deaths, so ghosts formed from these guys tend to be pretty vicious. Thankfully, they're also pretty rare, and usually suffer some sort of limitation on their powers due to their crimes.

"And finally, we have the ghosts that are formed from the thoughts, fears or beliefs of a large mass of people. These tend to be powerful ghosts who don't look as human as the others do. They can be representations of nature or intangible forces that man cannot control, and aren't actually born from a single person but rather little bits and pieces of many, many people over a long period of time. These ghosts tend to be all over the place as far as their alignment to good or evil goes, but one thing that's true is that they're usually very strong, and that they generally have less of a grasp on humanity then ghosts that were formed from a single person do."

“What about ghosts who are born as ghosts?” Tucker asked, thinking of the future daughter of the Lunch Lady and the Box Ghost (though not without a slight grimace). “I mean, they don’t come from dead people, right?” This question earned Tucker several confused looks that clearly said his classmates were now questioning his sanity, but before any of them could jump on him for it, Kagome spoke up.

“Actually, souls who are ‘born’ ghosts, as you put it, are generally formed from infants who die during or shortly after pregnancy or childbirth(comma)” Kagome explained, frowning a little. “Sometimes these souls get confused when they die so quickly after being born, and this can prevent them from entering the proper spirit world. But since they’re spirits aren’t as solidly formed as a ghost who has been around for a while, they kind of latch onto formed ghosts for support until they’re capable of maintaining a form on their own. Because of that, the energies of the ghosts tend to leave a powerful imprint on the infant’s soul, which in turn ‘makes’ them into the ghosts’ baby. They generally don’t understand the concept of life and death very well either, since they’ve been undead for as long as they can remember.

"The thing you have to realize when dealing with ghosts is that sometimes certain memories or feeling can affect a soul so strongly that it carries over after death, and becomes their reason for existing. For those of you who have studied psychology, think of the more violent ghosts as what people would be like if they didn't have the superego to control the id and ego. Depending on how they died and how strongly in tune they are with their former humanity, ghosts can be seen as either a person just like you and me-- only, you know, dead—or the wants and needs of the deceased person, without morals to guide them." This thought had a lot of her students exchanging uneasy looks with one another, clearly uncomfortable with the teacher's words.

"What about half ghosts?"

Tucker fumbled and dropped the glasses that Mikey was handing to him when Valerie voiced that question, and Sam went deathly still beside him. Kagome, on the other hand, merely regarded the pretty curly haired girl with a curious look.

"I'm sorry, half ghosts?" she repeated, raising an eyebrow at the strange term.

"Yeah. You know, people who are human and ghosts at the same time," Valerie insisted, pursing her lips at the thought of the billionaire who had deceived her into doing his dirty work for so long. Before Kagome could answer, Dash, Paulina and Kwan all burst into loud, obnoxious laugher at the girl's question.

"Are you seriously suggesting that there's someone out there who can be a human and a ghost?" Paulina asked between her giggles, looking at Valerie incredulously. "I knew you lost you mind when we stopped hanging out, Valerie, but this is too much!"

"Yeah! You can't be, like, dead and alive, you know!" Dash said with a confident sneer. "Isn't that right, Miss Higurashi?"

Oh, you'd be surprised... Kagome thought flatly, recalling her former incarnation and the Band of Seven, and various other living dead she'd come across while looking for the jewel. Before she could say anything though, the tell-tale energy of a very strange ghost made its presence known to Kagome's senses. Realizing that Danny had returned to the school, Kagome relaxed minutely as she tried to figure out the best way to answer this new line of question.

"Actually, I know of several ways the dead have been reanimated before," Kagome told Dash.

"Wait, you mean zombies?!" Tucker exclaimed. "There was a zombie apocalypse in Japan and I MISSED it?!!" Sam scowled at her friend as Kagome's glasses slipped through his fingers and to the floor yet again, then narrowly missed getting stepped on by his boots.

"Will you give me those before you break them?!" Sam snapped, snatching the glasses off of the floor and giving her friend a dirty look.

"Not zombies exactly, but souls reanimated into false bodies," Kagome assured Tucker.

"So, basically a ghost wearing a people-suit instead of just possessing someone?" Sam suggested as she slipped the glasses up the bridge of her nose. Kagome grinned a bit at the visual the goth gave her.

"Exactly!" the miko said cheerfully, though she was a little distracted by the fact that Danny's energy was getting much closer. He didn't plan on changing back into his human form in the classroom did he?

Before Kagome could wonder about this much longer, Danny entered the room through the wall behind her and, seconds later, there were a pair of gloved hands on either sides of her waist, lifting the startled teacher into the air as a loud, exaggerated moaning sound echoed from directly behind her.

"GHOST!" Dash shrieked, jumping out of his seat and backpedaling away from the floating teacher. Many of the other students followed suit, save for a very confused looking Tucker, Valerie, who almost immediately tensed for attack and Sam, who was staring slack-jawed with horrified embarrassment at something over Kagome's shoulder.

What on earth is this kid DOING?! Kagome thought irritably, craning around to look over her shoulder at the ghost that was carrying her. Kagome's annoyance was replaced with shock and disbelief at the sight that greeted her. Oh you have got to be kidding me.

Danny, it seemed, had left school not to fight a ghost as Kagome had first assumed, but to drape a bed sheet with eyeholes over himself. Kagome probably would have laughed herself into a coma at the sight of a real ghost using such a cheesy and unoriginal disguise if she wasn't so busy suffering from second-hand humiliation at the knowledge that, yes, this was the guy who was supposed to be protecting Amity Park from the forces of evil.

God she hoped she had never done anything this stupid or embarrassing when she was trying to save the world...

Sighing through her nose, Kagome glanced dryly around her classroom at the panicking students below her. Apparently, Phantom was still invisible so all they could see was their new teacher floating in midair. Well, except for Sam, who still had the special energy seeing glasses on. Clearly, the goth was just as impressed with Danny's disguise as Kagome herself.

"Settle down, class. No need for alarm," Kagome said flatly as she dug her elbow into Danny's side. Yelping, the boy dropped her, leaving Kagome to fall to the floor. Years of experience at getting tossed around like a rag doll by demons kicked in, allowing Kagome to catch herself before she got hurt and land in a crouched position. Straightening up, a very cranky Kagome turned to face the ghost that had grabbed her, pulling her house keys out of the pocket of her dress and detaching the small, silk bag tied to the keychain and sprinkling a little bit of the contents into her hand.

Before Danny could recover from her 'attack,' Kagome blew the powder from her hand onto the ghost boy. The instant it made contact, Danny immediately became visible for all to see.

Not to mention susceptible to the laws of gravity.

"OOF!" The hero grunted in pain as he landed ungracefully on his backside, alarmed and confused as to why he was in his ghost form, yet his powers weren't working. Then, a certain, angry blue-eyed teacher suddenly loomed over him and Danny realized that he had bigger problems to deal with at the moment.

"What did you do?!" Valerie asked, clearly intrigued by how effortlessly the teacher had dealt with the threat.

"It's just a simple mixture of herbs and minerals that can temporarily short out a ghost's powers." Kagome replied airily, tossing the silk bag of said mixture put and down with her free hand as she stood before the disguised ghost in the floor, a hand at her hip and glare on her face. Powerless, Danny shrank back meekly at the fire in the teacher's eyes. "Now then, since I'm sure this was just a silly, stupid prank by a bored ghost with too much time on his hands that Danny Phantom couldn't be bothered to deal with, I'm going to let to leave without any further punishment. But if you ever try to pull something in my class again, especially when there are students present, your powers are going to be the least of your worries. Do we have an understanding, Spooky?"

Eyes wide as dinner plates, Danny nodded, the bed sheet jerking up and down with the movement of his head. Relaxing slightly, Kagome stepped past the ghost, not missing the way that he flinched at bit as she drew closer, then relaxed when she continued to the door without so much as another glare in his direction. Opening the door, Kagome set a hand on her hip again and speared Danny with a flat look.

"Good. Now then, I'm willing to bet that you have somewhere else to be, young man. I suggest not wasting any more time getting there." Needing no more nudging, Danny promptly shot out the door like a bullet. Sighing quietly to herself, Kagome shut the door behind him and turned back to face the class again.

And then faltered a bit at the sight of thirty plus faces staring at her in awe and respect.

Well, that certainly upped my credibility a bit... Kagome thought in bemusement.

"Alright then, everyone return to your seats," Kagome called out. The kids needed no further prompting from the teacher, practically diving back into their desks in order to get on with the lessons, questions falling from their lips in rapid succession.

"How did you do that?!" Dash asked eagerly.

"Can we seriously learn to do stuff like that, too?" Kwan wondered with wide eyes.

"Are there other ways to incapacitate a ghost?" Valerie questioned, a rather frightening grin on her face that reminded Kagome a bit of when Shippo was planning an especially nasty prank.

"That ghost you just met is gonna be okay, right?" Sam said, failing to mask her concern for her friend.

Before Kagome could respond to any of the questions being fired at her, the classroom door creaked open again and a surprisingly nervous looking Danny Fenton peeked his head in.

"I'm, um, sorry I'm late, ma'am," the blue eyed boy said meekly. "I was having some... uh... stomach issues." Kagome watched in amusement as Danny rubbed his side where she'd elbowed him as he said that.

"That's alright Danny," Kagome said sweetly. "I'm glad you’re feeling better now. Please take your seat so we can continue class." Danny didn't need to be told twice, practically teleporting to his seat between Sam and Tucker, who both shot him concerned looks as he sat down and tried to make himself as small as humanly possible. Deciding to cut the boy a break despite his supremely stupid move earlier, Kagome turned her attention back to the rest of the class, returning to the front of the board.

"Settle down, everyone. I promise you, we'll learn the various ways you can stop a ghost later on in the year. For now, though, we need to focus on making sure we know what ghosts are, and why they act the way they do. A little understanding can go a long way, and sometimes if just know how to talk to someone, there won't be any need for violence at all. Wouldn't you agree, Danny?" Kagome grinned a bit as the teen in question paled for a moment at her inquiry. Okay, so she wasn't completely over his boneheaded move earlier, so sue her. Clearly, she wasn't the only one who was pleased to see the boy squirming at being put on the spot. Sam was hiding a smirk behind a pale hand, and Tucker snickered quietly at his friend's side.

"Y-yes, ma'am," Danny mumbled, shrinking a little further into his seat to avoid being called on again, so that only the top of his head was visible. Figuring that the teen had learned his lesson, Kagome turned back to her teachings and left Danny alone for the rest of the class period. Inwardly, though, the former priestess preened.

Ghost powers of not, Danny Phantom was about ten years too early to try and get the drop on her.