Conner crossed his arms as Robin spoke.

"I'm not sure why," the younger boy was saying, "but the salt seemed to burn Danny."

Wally looked a little shocked. "It actually worked." Then he grinned. "Cool!"

Robin and Kaldur had just gotten back from the detainment room. The two heroes weren't sure what to do. None of them were.

Aqualad was the next to speak. "But what does this mean? Is Danny really a ghost?"

"Well what else could he be?" M'gann asked.

No one said what came to to mind. A demon.

"Maybe he has a salt allergy?" Zatanna suggested.

"He seemed surprised," Robin murmured. "Like he didn't know before."

Conner shifted his weight to his other foot. "Ghosts are supposed to be dead, right?"

Artemis narrowed her eyes. "Yeah."

"Well, he has a pulse. A strong one. I've been able to hear it since we first got close to him."

The team's eyes widened. "So he's not actually dead? Then how does he do all that ghostly stuff?" Wally asked.

Robin scowled. "I dunno. I was thinking about letting him go, but I'm not so sure now. We need to get to the bottom of this."

"It doesn't seem as though he wants to answer any of our questions," Aqualad pointed out.

"Then we can make him answer," Conner suggested.

"Conner!" M'gann said in shock.

Realizing what they thought he meant, the Kryptonian rolled his eyes. "I don't want to hurt the guy. I'm just saying we could have M'gann read his mind."

Kaldur frowned. "Conner, that is still an invasion of his privacy. Remember how violated you felt when Miss Martian first entered your mind?"

Conner scowled. "And kidnapping him isn't an invasion of his privacy?"

Wally grinned. "Supey's got a point."

Conner looked to Robin and Kaldur. "Well?" he growled.

Robin shrugged when the Atlantian looked at him for an opinion. Kaldur sighed. "Fine. M'gann, you may interrogate him using telepathy if he resists questioning."

* * *

Danny looked at the black-haired boy apprehensively as he entered the room.

The boy was tall, and he wore a black shirt with a red Superman symbol on it. His arms and chest were muscular, and he was handsome, although he wore a scowl. His blue eyes flashed as he walked.

He looked strikingly like Superman.

Danny couldn't put the resemblance out of his mind. Was he Superman's son? No, he looked exactly like the famous hero, only younger.

Was he a clone?

It was definitely possible, Danny supposed.

However, he became a lot less curious about the boy's relations to Superman when he caught sight of the high-grade handcuffs the boy was carrying.

Danny couldn't help pressing his back against the wall, wanting to be as far away as he could get from those handcuffs. They glowed with a similar electricity to the bars of his cell, which he had figured out by now deterred ghosts. When he had gotten near to the bars, his hand had been repelled in the way two magnets might be. The bars had also given him a nasty shock.

So it was understandable that he, being a ghost, did not want to be anywhere near those handcuffs.

The boy punched in a code to unlock Danny's cell. He then pulled open the door and walked in.

Danny could have escaped then in a number of ways, but instead he silently and reluctantly allowed the boy to handcuff him. The cuffs didn't shock or repel him, but he couldn't phase through them.

With one had on Danny's shoulder and one hand on the cuffs, the boy marched Danny down to the end of the hall. He opened a door and brought him into a white interrogation room, where he uncuffed him, sat him down, and then cuffed him again, this time to the table.

Danny finally spoke to the boy as he was walking away. "What's your name?"

He paused. "Superboy." He left the room.

A minute or so later, Robin and Aqualad walked back in. Danny was about to make a snarky comment when he saw the green girl following them. She closed the door, and then sat across from him. The boys stood behind her.

Danny felt his blood run cold. This girl was a shapeshifter. She, or rather it, could not be trusted.

"Danny," Aqualad said, "this is Miss Martian. She, Robin and I are going to ask you some questions."

Danny clenched his fists. "I'm not going to answer to a shapeshifter."

Miss Martian frowned. "I'm not going to hurt you, Danny. We just need some answers from you, all right?"

The halfa said nothing, but he definitely hadn't agreed to anything. Robin, however, started asking questions anyway.

"Are you a ghost, Danny?" the boy asked.

Danny remained silent. Robin repeated the question, and then asked a few others, none of which he responded to.

Aqualad sighed. "Danny, I apologize in advance for this, but we have no other options."

Phantom's brows furrowed in confusion.

Miss Martian spoke. "Are you a ghost, Danny Phantom?" He said nothing.

Suddenly, he felt someone else's mind brushing against his, vast and alien. It was Miss Martian. As he had guessed, she was not human. She was the same kind of being as the shapeshifter.

Danny struggled to build a wall around his conscious. He repeated one phrase in his mind over and over, blocking everything else out: go away.

Go away, go away, go away! He shouted mentally. Danny grimaced, staring at Miss Martian's face. She was scowling as well, staring right back. The halfa's eyes glowed green as he worked to fight against her.

She gasped as he went on the offensive, struggling to find a hole in her shield. She hadn't been prepared to protect her own mind, but she shoved him away before he could find anything of importance. He retreated to defend his thoughts.

The girl was stronger than him, but he knew that she would not go any farther, else she would break him. He was confident that she didn't want to do that, which confused him. Shapeshifters were malevolent creatures, from his experience.

Finally, they disengaged and returned to their own respective minds. Danny hadn't realized it when he was battling, but people were shouting all around him. The entire team of young superheroes was gathered around the table.

Miss Martian blinked a few times. "I'm fine, you guys," she told her team, addressing their concerns. "I'm okay. I guess I just wasn't expecting a challenge."

"Are you sure you're okay?" Superboy asked, concerned. He turned to look at Danny. "If you hurt her--"

"I'm fine, Superboy," she said quickly. "I'm okay."

He scowled and glared at Danny.

Miss Martian looked at the boy with a completely different expression. "I didn't know that a human's mental barriers could be so strong."

"I'm a ghost," he grumbled. "I'm a ghost, okay?" He turned invisible for a few seconds and then turned visible again. "See?"

Kid Flash rolled his eyes. "Dude, that doesn't prove anything. Show him, Miss M."

Promptly, she did the same thing that Danny had done. He looked at her wearily. The shapeshifter from Gravity Falls hadn't been able to do that. Yet her consciousness felt similar. Were they the same species, or a related species?

"You're not normal," he grumbled to her.

She just looked at him funny. "Well, neither are you. I'm a Martian."

His lips formed the word slowly. Out of the entire team, he trusted her the least. He couldn't forget what the other shapeshifter had done, even when he knew that it was dead and in the Ghost Zone.

Whatever she did, however she tried to earn his trust, he doubted that he would ever answer any questions from her.