The ghost dog is a well-known specter among Amity Park's ghost hunters. It has personally invaded Maddie's lab time and time enough for her to recognize its ectosignature in her radars, and the Red Huntress has been observed to treat it with particular violence.

Despite how much of a nuisance it is, the dog is not a particularly dangerous ghost. Maddie and Jack can contain it relatively easily, and it responds to a fair amount of the commands living dogs do. To be fair, it doesn't always obey those commands, but it doesn't outright ignore them, which is a step further than they've gotten with most other ghosts.

No, the ghost dog would be more of a pest than a threat, and as such a target for destruction or dissection, were it not for one factor: that it seems particularly attached to Phantom.

When provoked, the ghost dog can be truly formidable. What kind of destruction might it reap, were Phantom to command it? How many lives might it take before she and Jack could contain it? Aside from the potential dangers, if she and Jack were to dispose of the dog, what might they lose in regards to Phantom?

It's rare to catch the ghost boy in one place for very long, but the few times he's been spotted engaging with the dog have been the longest he's stayed in one area to date. Neither Maddie or Jack forsook those opportunities. First, they attempted to catch him. When that proved fruitless, they took to observation, and what a gold mine such an endeavor begot.

Danny Phantom, in his moments spent with the ghost dog, does not display the same territorial, threatening behavior he does when in combat with other invading ghosts. Rather, he regards the dog with an apparent fondness similar to that of a human with their pet. He plays fetch with it. It's baffling, and a research opportunity like no other.

Maddie has countless pages of data, extrapolations, and theories as to the relationships between ghosts. She has analyses that factor in volatility, goals, obsession, the differences between humanoid and animalistic ghosts and their relationships with and between each other, what factors are conducive to a relationship, what factors detract from one. Most of it is hypothesis. Aside from the occasional ghostly team-ups, which are admittedly short-lived and based upon hostile intention, Phantom is the only sapient ghost on record to have been observed positively interacting with another ghost.

The phone rings upstairs. Maddie starts, her tunnel vision clearing—she'd been focusing too diligently on her stacks of notes. A glance at the clock tells her its been much longer than she'd realized that she was sitting there, scouring every detail, searching for a new piece of evidence to tie her hypotheses together.

Across the room, Jack starts to get up, but Maddie stops him with a wave of her hand. "I'll get it," she offers, already heading for the stairs. "I need a break."

She picks it up on the last ring, and is treated to the familiar tones of the Casper High School secretary, whose voice trembles in that way it always does when he's calling about ghost-related troubles. It doesn't tremble quite enough for the incident to be very serious, though, and Maddie bites back a sigh. At least it isn't another Danny issue.

He stutters out a harried explanation: the ghost dog has taken over the gym, and is preventing Ms. Tetslaff from teaching. How fitting, Maddie thinks, and she cuts off the man's nervous ramblings. "Of course. We'll be there right away to take care of it. Don't worry."

All it takes is a quick call of, "Jack, there's a ghost at the high school!" for her husband to come running up, weapons already in hand. She smiles at him—his enthusiasm has never stopped being endearing—and matches his pace as he heads for the door.

When they get there, they're redirected in short order to the school gym, which reeks of ghoul before they get anywhere near it. Maddie's sensors pick it up immediately, though she looks at them in confusion before turning to the secretary, who leads them nervously toward the doors.

"I thought you said only the ghost dog was here? I'm picking up two ghosts." At that, the man seems to shrivel even further, his anxiety mounting.

"That's what I was told, ma'am," he squeaks out, and then gestures to the doors, which have loomed up before them. A flimsy barricade has been erected, which would prove as absolutely no obstacle to a ghost, but which probably made the school officials feel better. Maddie doesn't comment on it.

"Well, we can take it from here. Thank you for escorting us," she says firmly, and he takes the dismissal to heart, retreating so swiftly he almost jogs back the way they came.

Without further ado, Jack scatters the barrier—made up of mostly chairs and desks—before slamming the doors open, barging into the gym, Maddie following quickly behind.

She gets an answer to her question immediately. Standing before them in the center of the gym, and interfering with their equipment as usual, is Danny. Around him runs the ghost dog, circling him and yipping happily. Danny's clearly noticed their entrance—he gives his father a little wave, makes eye contact with her—but he doesn't seem concerned at their presence, nor does he run to them for protection. He doesn't even seem scared, which, for a boy who's notoriously terrified of ghosts, is huge. Maddie has to squash her pride as the mother in her threatens to overwhelm the scientist.

That said, Danny is standing next to a dangerous spectral entity, and so the moment she collects herself, she calls out, "Danny, dear, get away from that ectoplasmic scum!" She strides forward, removing a Fenton Blaster from her belt as she does, aiming for the dog.

"Mom, wait!" Danny protests. She wouldn't have stopped, but the dog finally notices her, yips, and skitters behind Danny's legs, cowering. "Come on, he's not going to hurt you. Cujo's just a dog!"

"Cujo?" Maddie questions, looking sharply at her son.

"That's his name. Look, it's on his collar." Danny kneels next to the dog and reaches for it. Maddie tenses, her finger on the trigger, but the dog sits pretty, letting Danny pull it forward to show off the tag on its collar.

On the front is, curiously, the logo for Axion Labs. On the back, etched in neat letting, is the name Cujo, though the validity of what Danny said is the farthest thing from her mind at the moment. No, the important detail here is that Danny—her son, who is terrified of ghosts and wants nothing to do with the family business—is comfortable enough with this dog that he can tell her with complete confidence not to attack it. Not only that, but the fact that he knows its name tells her he's been around it before, most possibly on multiple occasions—and he hadn't breathed a word of it to her or Jack.

"Danny-boy, don't touch it! It'll contaminate you!" Jack levels a gun far larger than necessary at both Danny and the ghost dog. "Stay still, pal, I'll get it!"

Danny's eyes widen. Before Jack can do anything, however, Maddie reaches out and pushes the barrel of the gun up, so the shot fires high, missing Danny and… Cujo entirely.

"Hold on, dear. It hasn't attacked yet," she says, placating her husband. Danny shoots her a grateful look, a small smile tugging at the edges of his mouth. It hits her, suddenly, how little she's seen her son these past few years. This one small, tentative smile seems monumental, laid before her so simply. How long has it been since she'd listened to Danny when he asked her to back down?

How long has it been since they've talked, without a ghost standing between them?

"Guys, really," Danny says, drawing her out of her thoughts. "Cujo's just a dog. If I ask, he'll go back to the Ghost Zone." He says it casually, but Maddie snaps to attention. Danny didn't say, "if we ask," or "if you ask." He said "if I ask," like the dog has some attachment to him. Like Cujo is his.

"Look," Danny says, and she watches him walk over to the side of the gym where an equipment cart is parked. From it, he pulls a softball. Cujo still sits where Danny had left it, but perks up when he raises the ball. "Go, fetch!" Danny calls, tossing the ball towards the other end of the gym. It soars over Cujo's head, and the little ghost yips and tears after it, claws clicking on the gym floor.

As Maddie watches Danny watch the ghost, she sees how relaxed his shoulders are, the soft smile playing on his lips. He looks at Cujo with fondness, the picture of a boy and his dog. A human and their pet.

For all her focus has been on her ghost hunting, how has she missed her son growing up? How has she not noticed the way he's grown into his body: lean muscle, comfortable slouch, a confident set to his shoulders. The last she'd looked, really looked, he'd seemed so small and meek.

How long has she observed Danny Phantom, studying that same figure?

Her arm droops by her side, gun pointed uselessly at the floor. She feels boneless, all of a sudden, watching her son walk calmly across the gym floor, ready to meet the ghost dog as it careens back toward him, softball held awkwardly in its tiny mouth. Danny and Danny. Fenton and Phantom. A boy and his dog.

Against the light of the late afternoon sun, streaming in from one of the far windows, Danny's hair is lit up like a beacon. Haloed, it appears almost white.

How many times has she caught his eye in the darkness and thought she saw a hint of green?

Danny grunts as Cujo jumps at his chest, but he catches the little dog, prying the softball from its mouth with some difficulty. "Hah, give that to me, you little rascal," he says, talking to it with the same tone of voice Maddie's father used to talk to her childhood dog with.

Her son, knelt beside a ghost, playing with it.

Fondness. A human and their pet.

Confident set to his shoulders.

"Okay, boy. Time to go home." The wag of Cujo's tail slows a little. "Yeah. Go on home, buddy." He makes a little shooing motion with his hands, and, though the dog looks disappointed, it turns tail and goes.

And Maddie lets it.