Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It had almost been a good night. Danny, Sam, and Tucker had made their usual late night rounds. They had found nothing but a few wisps, cackling little troublemakers, and easily dealt with. Danny had dropped his friends off, gone home, released the ghostly rascals into the newly fixed Fenton Portal, and had actually finished his homework on time. He even got several hours of sleep in—almost a full six! 

Danny’s luck never lasted long though. Like a splash of cold water to the face, his ghost sense awoke him just before dawn. He had spent the past hour chasing a distant, blue form until he’d finally cornered it in some lonely, crumbling alleyway downtown. The invasion had reduced the other side of the walls to rubble and ash. Like most other buildings this side over, Danny doubted it would ever be repaired. The ecto-fires had left an odd, shifting shadow of smoke in the air. Phantom tried his best not to breathe it in. 

“Do you do anything…but run away?” Asked Danny, stifling a yawn. 

He was used to the midnight patrols, not the early mornings. The sun itself had not made up its mind on whether or not it should rise at this hour, though the dim light told him that sunrise was under serious consideration. 

His hands warmed as he approached her, forming two, pulsating disks of green plasma in each.

“I’d rather not do this the hard way,” he told her. 

The ghost was a sinewy, middle-aged woman with a long, silvery braid. She had blue skin and light, leather armor with a mean, lightning-shaped spear strapped to her back, which was all that Danny ever saw of her. 

The ghost ignored him, and instead began flying up and over the building. Danny rolled his eyes and bolted after her. 

“Oh come on, I have to get back before my parents wake up! Dude!” Danny rose higher and higher after her, and once he had finally caught up, the hairs on the back of his neck rose.

He turned just enough to see a flash of blue lightning coming out from the corner of his eye. It hit.

Danny Phantom felt nothing for an instant. His mind went blank as the glowing spear caught him midair, and pierced through his side. 

As the boy fell and lost his ghostly form, the pain grew until it consumed him. 

Danny screamed breathlessly as he hit the concrete roof of some apartment building below. The ghostly smoke filled his lungs and burned like fumes of ember. 

Two identical ghosts drifted down after him, and with a casual motion, one ripped the spear free from his now human flesh. His body jolted like a live wire. Four cold, electric blue eyes stared upon him. 

“I expected more, boy." They said in strange, echoed unison. "Are you yet far too young for such trouble?”

Danny coughed and mustered up a venomous glare, even as his eyes began to blur, and the call of blackness threatened to drown him. His hands would not stop shaking--his nerves had literally fried. This all reminded him too much of the first time he had ‘died.’

She turned to her clone, Danny now realized, and they shared a sly smile before becoming one. 

Baited, thought Danny, clenching his fists. I got baited.

He was losing too much blood. 

The woman watched as his breathing became faster but less and less...usable. His heart rate spiked dangerously, trying to answer for his body’s slow suffocation, and Danny became weaker and weaker. 

“May Lord Pariah now rest peacefully,” she said with a slight bow of her head. Then she tilted it curiously to the side with those bizarre, wolf-like eyes boring down on him. “Though I have to wonder, Usurper...if you shall truly—“

The assassin gasped as a laser blast hit her from the back and she stumbled forward. An odor of burning ectoplasm stung his nose as she whirled around with a snarl. 

A familiar voice in the wind quickly grew closer. 

He heard a girl shout, “Get the hell away from him!”

Danny fought to keep his eyes open, but his energy, quite literally, was draining away in a pool of red. 

“Val…” he whispered. 

The Red Huntress, Valerie Gray, readied her stance as the ghost flew up to meet her and whipped out that deadly, crackling spear. 

He had to...do something. Danny could not fight the darkness any longer though, and all faded away to nothing.

Chapter Text

Danny awoke in an unfamiliar place and an unfamiliar sleeping bag. He almost choked on the horrible smell of the building, an ancient factory with a specific purpose. Even decades after all production had stopped, the noxious vapors of bleached paper--smelling like a concentrated load of cow diarrhea--revealed he was inside a papermill. The office overlooked the rusting workplace below, and the jaundiced window was so filthy with dust and chemicals he could barely make out the distant outline of trees against the dim sky.

The place had been repurposed for a ghost hunter, Danny realized as he surveyed the office space covered with Vlad tech, Fenton tech, and a lot of Axion Labs tech. Guns, nets, razors, and weapons even he failed to recognize lined the walls (notable because he was more often than not the target of those weapons). Danny frowned at the Vladco models that looked a bit too familiar. 

Most of the office’s furniture had rotted away, but the bookshelf was still usable and packed wall to wall with books on ectoparalogy and combat studies. Well, that was except for the mound of medical books sitting next to a ruffled pile of ghost anatomy on a cheap, plastic picnic table from Walmart--these, alongside a numerous and peculiar row of miscellaneous objects. 

His arm pinched when he moved it, and Danny noticed the IV tube stuck in his arm. It was held in place with duct tape and connected to a blood bag hung up on the wall beside him. Dozens of mysterious, empty vials and ravaged first aid kits littered the floor, and a dehumidifier rumbled in the corner, looking over half his age, and smelling faintly of citrus. 

Danny sat up and a burst of white, hot pain greeted him from his mid-right. Danny swore. Loudly.

Right. He forgot. Spear lady. 

“Careful Fenton,” said a voice he knew far too well, “I don’t have many more bandages to spare, and you don't have much more blood to spare.”

Valerie walked towards him, proud and beautiful as ever, though there was a slight limp to her gait. He could not remember the last time he had seen Valerie with her hair up. A few black coils spiraled from the tight bun on the back of her head, and a subtle sheen of sweat made her dark face glisten under the weak, fluorescent lights. 

Danny chuckled and regretted it instantly. “Goddammit…ah…” He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth and tried to regain posture. He realized he was half naked, wrapped in red-spotted bandages, and threw her a pained smile. “Shouldn’t we at least have dinner before you take my shirt off?”

Valerie said nothing.

His smile fell. “Why…am I here?”

Valerie stared at him with those deep, dark eyes. There was a strange wariness under their surface as she approached him. Her fingers rested on the hilt of a ghost raygun. 

Danny shifted uneasily. Why was he here? This was--this had to be the Red Huntress’ hideout-- Valerie’s hideout. If he was here, as Danny Fenton, and she was looking at him like that, then that could only mean... 

He bit his lip and went for an easier question. “You didn’t take me to a hospital?”

Val narrowed her eyes. “And do what, Phantom? Let them try and fix a freak?”

Danny’s mouth went dry, and stupidly, the hurt in his chest shot straight up to his eyes. 

Valerie caught her breath. “Danny, I didn’t mean it that way—“

“Why’d you even bother helping me in the first place?” Danny snapped, stumbling to his feet despite the dangerous swirling of the ground beneath him. “Getting me all fixed up to send to Vlad on a platter? Want to avenge your dad’s fall from grace and all that? Probably should have just left me to bleed out on the rooftop!”

“Danny!” Valerie took him by the shoulders, wary of the dangling cord, and forced him back down on the sleeping bag. Her eyes were wide, and despite the firmness of her grip, she was careful. “I’d never let you die like that. I’m supposed to protect people.”

Danny shoved her hands away and the IV fell free with a clang. “Yah well, you said it yourself. I’m a freak. A ghost freak. Doesn’t apply to me. Now let me go, Val!”

“Ugh!” Valerie shouted in frustration, picking up the needle before it could leak any more blood all over the place. Danny thought the viscous fluid had an odd shine to it. She slammed the sharp tip on the table with a furious, blazing look. “Fenton you always were so fucking stubborn, how are you getting anywhere like this?”

He felt her gaze as he pulled himself up a second time, breathless, bandages darkening with warm red, and tried to take a step forward. Valerie caught him and her eyes—those damn, beautiful eyes—held him frozen in place. 

“Sit down, Danny, before you kill yourself…" Her eyebrows furrowed. "Again?”

“Half-killed myself,” Danny corrected, “Somehow.”

“Sit. Down.”

He knew it was a losing battle. That didn’t mean he’d go down easy. 

“Does Vlad know? Do my parents know?”

“God almighty, Fenton. What is your obsession with Mr. Masters? Why should he know about this? And do you want me to tell the Fentons?”

“No.”

“Then you need to get fucking better before I have to explain why I’m dragging your corpse back to Fenton Works! SIT DOWN.”

He could no longer stand anyways. Danny's legs crumpled, but Val caught him and let him down gently.

“I thought you hated me,” Danny grumbled, turning gingerly on the side that didn’t feel like a million slicing daggers. 

Valerie tisked sharply as she appraised his reddening bandages. “I don’t hate anyone this much, Fenton.”

“Not even the guy who ruined your life because of some stupid, random dog--OW!”

Valerie pulled the bandages free with a little more force than was necessary. Pretty sure some skin peeled off with them.

OW. 

“Maybe I will take you to Mr. Masters,” Valerie said darkly, “And maybe he can deal with that thankless mouth of yours.” She then bit her lip and mumbled to herself, “He probably does have better equipment…”

Danny shook his head and gripped her arm.

“I need you to believe me, Val,” said Danny, looking dead into her eyes, “when I say Vlad Masters is dangerous...to me.” 

And to you, and to anything or anyone that comes within line of sight of that egomaniacal fruit loop. 

She would definitely not believe that about her beloved weapons-sponsor. 

Valerie gave him an odd, uncertain look, but thankfully, said nothing more about it. 

Instead, she pulled out what appeared to be the last bandage wrap from a disemboweled first aid kit, and prompted him softly, “I need you to sit up, Danny.”

He groused under his breath, but began propping back up on his elbows. Val’s hand reached behind him, warm against his bare back, and helped him up until their noses almost touched. Danny flushed and she looked away quickly, instead distracting herself by doctoring his wound. 

It was a nasty one. Lichtenberg scars stretched like branches of a tree from a gaping, bright red hole. These localized, thorny patterns traced over the similar, but much older scars that decorated his entire body. 

Valerie finished wrapping him back up, though her eyes lingered. 

He stared as well. Being so close, no amount of makeup could hide the truth. He could see the redness of tear stains through the mascara, and a pair of dark, sleepless eyebags beneath carefully applied concealer. Despite her best attempts to seem otherwise, Valerie was exhausted. 

“I always thought you covered up for the other reason,” she admitted softly, seemingly transfixed by the scale of his initial scarring. It covered about every patch of skin from the palm of his left hand to the tips of his toes. He probably looked like a B-grade horror version of Humpty Dumpty where all the King’s horses and all the King’s men had glued him back together again. At least the pink, crack-like tendrils barely touched his face. 

Self-conscious, Danny let out a nervous chuckle. Again, it hurt like hell.

“Ahah…ow… I started hormones early. I mean,” he gestured to his chest with a lopsided smile, “I don’t even need a binder.”

Though I probably will if I don’t get back on my T-shots soon.

Valerie wasn’t the only one feeling like crap. Danny couldn't tell if it was the withdrawal or his injury that made him feel this particular, bone-deep level of awful. Per usual, it was probably everything stacked on all at once. 

Val peeled her eyes away and gave him a smirk. “No offense…but having a family of weirdos sometimes has its perks.”

Danny looked away with a half-hearted shrug. “Sometimes.”

“Your parents should know,” said Val, as she sterilized both the needle and the stray drops of blood from the floor and table. “They care about you a lot. If they knew about…you know…they could probably do you a lot more good than me.”

Danny winced as she stuck the needle back in and taped it down.

“Of course, if I was a complete and utter asshole,” she continued, her voice growing more and more vindictive, “I would tell them myself.”

Danny could not meet her eyes. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“No. fucking. shit.”

“It...it is different though, Val, you have to believe me. They hate ghosts,” Danny pleaded. “They despise Phantom.”

“So do I,” Val said without skipping a beat. 

Danny gave a derisive snort. “Yah. Funny how that works. Other than my two best friends, the people I care about most fucking hate my guts and want to eradicate my other half.”

Her eyebrows raised at that, and his blush returned. He only had any of that traitorous blood left in him because of her. 

Man, we’re stupid, thought Danny. His inner voice became mocking, You want me dead but you like me? Gosh!

No, it was just him being stupid. She literally just said she hated him and what he was. 

You’re a freak, remember?

“Why did you save me?” He asked bitterly. “Phantom could have been out of your hair forever.”

Val stared at him with an intensity that left him breathless. 

“I saw you bleeding out, Danny, like two blocks from my apartment. You honestly think I’m some heartless bitch, don’t you?” She stood up, using the wall for support. Her legs trembled slightly from the effort. “I didn’t take you to a hospital because they would probably kill you without knowing your…condition. I didn’t take you to your parents because I wasn’t sure they’d believe me. I mean...they are pretty vocal about how much they hate 'the ghost kid.' Figured they'd just take you to the hospital anyways. I knew you didn’t trust Vlad and he’s no doctor…”

“And…I guess you are?” Danny asked. 

The setup here was nuts, but he was still alive. His identity was safe too...for now. 

“I wanted to be a doctor,” Valerie said. “Not like I can afford medical school now, but I can still read…”

Danny looked away. She blamed him for that. She was probably right to. If he had just been smarter back then…

“Thank you, Val. I mean it,” said Danny softly.

She met his tired eyes with her own and looked out the window with an acrid sigh. 

“You better…” she muttered. Then she picked up her school bag and said, “I need to head out soon,” She started looking through the book piles as she continued saying, “I already missed a day. Called in sick. I…” Valerie’s shoulders stiffened, and she seemed to stumble over her next words, “told your parents that you, um, swung by the other morning to pick up some books I’d borrowed from Fenton Works.” She tossed the ghost anatomy book to his feet. “I didn’t see you after that.”

Danny nodded. “I…can probably work with that. They’re going to be mad as hell though.” 

Val chuckled. “Nothing I could do about that one, Fenton. You heal fast, but your blood is still wayyyyy too low. Even for uh…” she looked him up and down in quiet confliction, “well, definitely for a human. And I can tell you’re lightheaded, so you need to lay there until that bag is dried up. Also, here—“ she tossed his phone onto his lap—“It’s been blowing up nonstop. You should probably do something about that.”

Danny looked at his phone, saw the date, and groaned. “I can’t miss two days in a row, Val…”

“You will because you nearly died, and you need to recover.”

“But nobody else knows that!”

“Not my problem. Tell them the truth or come up with something crazy. Maybe you got hit by a bus and some hobo picked you up. Cured you with essential oils.” She waved her fingers in a spellcasting gesture. 

Danny groaned again. 

“Anyways, catch you later, Fenton.”

Val pulled on her suit and became the Red Huntress. She looked...better though. Sleeker. The red material had a sturdy and high quality mesh (polyethylene fibers, if he had to guess), and stylized with a black diamond theme for the visor and joint pads. A crisscross of utility belts and straps supported a new, large cast of weapons. He suspected there were even more concealed in seamless pockets. Vlad must have updated her equipment. 

Danny had not seen Valerie in uniform since Pariah’s invasion--other than yesterday. Probably. His memory surrounding the incident, at least towards the end, was void. 

With a quick leap, a dynamic, new hoverboard unfolded beneath her feet and caught her midair. Before she jetted off, Val turned with that blank, red and black mask to face him. 

“One more thing. If you tell anybody about this place, I will end you.” He faintly heard her add under her breath, “And then the cops really will be after my ass.”

Then she flew out a broken window far above, and left him alone in the cold.

Chapter Text

Danny leaned against the corner of the wall, using it like a bedrest.

“Stay until the bag’s empty, huh?” Danny looked up at the mostly full, red sack and groaned again. “She can’t be serious…”

Danny wondered where she even got that blood bag. 

His phone dinged for what was probably the hundredth time in a row since he’d conked out. Oh…there were actually two-hundred plus notifications…

I’m so dead. 

It was Sam. Danny please, please answer. What am I supposed to do if you’re gone?  

The line of unread texts above that were numerous and decidedly more panicked. Danny texted back quickly, or as quickly as a single bar of signal would let him. 

Fuck, he typed, I’m so sorry. I just got up after…I’ll have to explain in person. I got hurt real bad, but I should be ok soon.

It was sent almost a full minute later, but the response was relatively fast. 

Thank G-d. You really had us fucking going Danny. Val said she saw you yesterday morning? The police are getting involved now. There’s going to be a search party. 

Oh geez, you’re kidding me…but yah. Val helped me out. 

What??

Like I said. I’ll explain later. I need to…call my parents. 

gl with that. 

You’re telling me. 

Another ping from his phone mercifully delayed the inevitable. 

Dude where ARE you, Tucker asked just moments after his conversation with Sam. 

Uh. I honestly don’t know, Danny replied, which was technically true. He had no idea there ever was a papermill in Amity Park. Somewhere downtown? I’ll find my way back once I can like. Walk properly. 

Sam said you got hurt bad. What happened man?

Like I told her, I’ll explain later, once I’m back home. 

Do you need a ride? I can ask Jazz for you.

That’s…not a bad idea, actually. I can’t go anywhere yet though. 

What time?

After school, maybe. I don’t know what to tell Mom and Dad. I can’t let them see me like this. 

It was a ghost attack, right? Just tell them the truth. Even the school’s gotta believe it after all that craziness last month. You know. Ghost King invasion and all that. 

Yah…ok. 

Take it easy man. 

Danny took a deep breath and decided to call Mom. 

“Oh my God, Danny?” Maddie’s voice came through ragged and sniffling, and the deep Arkansas twang in her voice meant she was really upset. “Danny, please talk to me, why haven’t you answered your phone?”

“I…” Danny’s mouth went dry. 

Tell the truth, Val and Tucker had advised, or at least a small portion of it. 

“I got um…I got attacked by a ghost. I haven’t…I’m sorry, I never got the chance to call back until now.”

“A ghost?” His mother’s voice darkened, “Those awful miscreants have been out in force. Why on Earth did you go out alone? Are you okay? You sound awful! I’ll come and get you, just tell me where you are.”

I should have waited…

Danny racked his brain for an answer. “I uh, don’t know where I am exactly…I just woke up in this place. I…let me figure it out. I’ll call you back—“

“Daniel William Fenton you are not hanging up this phone call, do you hear me?”

“I…” Danny glanced at the power bar and discovered Val had done him the favor of fully charging his phone. Mom didn’t need to know that. “My phone’s nearly dead. I promise I’ll call you back as soon as I figure out where I am. I swear. I don’t want to be stranded here forever...”

“Are there people around you? Can you find a-a police station or ask someone for directions?”

“I…am in the middle of nowhere. My signal is awful, Mom.”

“Danny…”

“I’ll try. Seriously though, Mom…less than 5%.”

His mother was silent, or maybe he really had lost signal. 

“See you soon, and tell Dad I’ll be ok,” he told her, and hung up. 

Danny collapsed back on the sack and stared up at the ancient, rusting rafters. Maybe a long time ago this office was just a normal box. Most of the walls and ceilings had half fallen apart. That, or Val had purposefully remodelled it like this. More spacious?

Danny ran his fingers through his hair. Mom was not going to be happy. Dad was not going to be happy. He just really, really hoped they would take it out on anything else but him. 

He had probably laid there for another five minutes before he caved in and sat up. Between the anxiety and boredom cannibalizing his brain, the young teenager didn’t stand a chance. He used the table to pull himself up to his feet, gingerly as an old man with arthritis, and caught his breath. 

Yah… he wheezed internally, Should've stayed down. Too late now. 

Curiosity, at least, would distract him. There was so much stuff. Danny’s eyes skated over the table where a line of strange vials, petri dishes, notes, and annotated scientific journals cluttered its surface. He removed the blood bag from the hook and tucked it under his arm as he wandered closer to the other end. He spotted Val’s cute, colorful notes and highlights decorating every page. She had wide, rounded letters and dotted her i’s with a small bubble. 

Danny’s soft smile faded as his eyes rested on three familiar names at the top of “A Study of Ectoplasm and its Susceptibilities” by Jack B. Fenton, Vlad N. Masters, and Madeline J. Moore. The scanned paper was old and heavily annotated. Danny read the highlighted bits, getting the sense everything was color coded, but not having the slightest clue about the logic behind it.

Electricity has a 95% success rate of destabilizing ectoplasmic materials. This destabilization, at higher wattage, can even fully separate the plasma, which may make it ideal for dismemberment in larger samples…

Danny shuddered. What, could that ghost have ripped him in half? Her electro-spear had instantly destabilized his ghost form and left his human half an absolute wreck. A part of him feared transforming back to see how his ghost half was fairing after the...shock.

He sighed at his own brain for its lack of tact and continued reading.  

In 5% of samples, however, the effect has been opposite. Certain types of ectoplasm have increased vitality and strength in response to high wattage. Producing an electric weapon may not only be potentially dangerous to the user, but could even empower these rare ghost-types (p 28. Graph. The Effect of Wattage on the Stability of Ectoplasm types A, B, and C).

Danny furrowed his brow. C-type? He flipped through the pages until he found the graph on page 28, and sucked the air through his teeth. C-type sustained double adverse effects from high wattage attacks. It also seemed to be the rarest type at 2%. 

Danny certainly did not have the best history when it came to electricity. It almost always knocked him out cold with little effort. He had assumed it had to do with his humanity but...what if there was more to it?

Danny's thumb subconsciously traced the snaking scars along his jaw. 

When Danny found a little hand drawn comic on the bottom of the page he laughed in delight. It was a cartoony Red Huntress shooting a ghost with an electric ray gun, only for the next panel to show her running from a superpowered monster firing off lightning bolts. The comic was titled “Just My Luck.”

Yah, they had that much in common. 

Danny continued snooping around because what else was there to do? The petri dishes had blood in them, and Danny realized they were mixed with various levels of ectoplasm. He inspected his conspicuous blood bag with that strange, eerie sheen. Normal blood wasn't...iridescent. Did Val…?

A far more recent essay lay beside an empty vial of ectoplasm, written by his mother’s hand. Danny had, unfortunately, inherited Mom’s chicken-scratch handwriting. It took a while to decipher. 

Ecto-regeneration seems to occur faster within the Ghost Zone. Due to safety concerns, we are unable to attempt this experiment firsthand. However, based on field observations, ghosts are without a doubt, much more resilient within their home dimension. One leading theory is that this effect may be caused by the high quantities of free-ectoplasm that make up the very atmosphere of the Ghost Zone. It is a known fact that live-ectoplasm can incorporate free-type into its mass, creating a rapid, cloning effect of a live-ectoplasm...

Danny narrowed his eyes. What the hell did “live-ectoplasm” or “free-ectoplasm” mean? Could this “free-ectoplasm” stuff help him clone himself?

An icy breath escaped his lungs and Danny whirled around. He regretted that. Danny clutched his side with a soft hiss.  

No...not now.  

He needed to hide. Danny grit his teeth and willed himself to disappear. On a normal day, invisibility came as naturally as breathing. Neither ability came freely today though. It took nearly all his strength to fade in and out of sight, flickering like the most unconvincing mirage in history. He could not hold it. 

“Shit!” Danny swore under his breath. Going ghost was just as impossible, but he had to do something. Danny reached for one of the ghost-blasters on the wall, but a hand landed on his shoulder. 

Danny swung. A warm, living hand caught it. Or at least, a half-living one. 

“Vlad,” Danny growled. 

The tall, middle-aged man with hard, blue eyes and hair straight and gray as stainless steel loomed over him. Instead of his usual fancy suit and immaculate bow tie, he wore a dark, red polo shirt with jeans. Danny had never seen him in jeans. They had to be the stupidly expensive kind with like, a gold zipper or something just as useless to jack up the price. 

“Now, now, Daniel. Do be more careful, hm?” Said the billionaire as he laid a thumb over the IV and gently pressed down until it pinched. Danny bit his tongue and refused to give Vlad the satisfaction that it hurt. “Wouldn’t want to lose any more of that precious blood, now would we?”

Danny jerked away with a glare. 

“Fuck off, Vlad.”

“Oh, and there’s that temper again! I suppose if death could not soften that tongue the first time, it would be just as ineffective a second.”

Danny blanched. “I-I didn’t die.”

Vlad smiled and said nothing. 

Danny leaned against the wall, holding an icy glare as he tried very hard not to look like he was about to keel over. 

“I didn’t,” Danny said again, as if to assure himself, “Now what do you want?”

The older man’s face feigned sympathy and he placed a hand over where his heart (theoretically) lay. “Why Daniel, your mother has been worried sick. I am only here to make sure that fool girl did not kill you a third time, and to take you home.”

Danny recoiled. “No fucking way. You are not “saving” me a second time just so Mom has to tolerate you more.”

Disgusting old man. 

“I could always call my dear, old, pal Jack, if you’d prefer. There would be a lot more explaining to do though, don’t you think?”

Danny narrowed his eyes. “You expose me, I expose you, remember?”

“My dear boy, I would only be exposing your injury as well as Miss Gray’s little hideout. I dare say, you have caused her enough grief with that stunt you pulled on her father…” Vlad gave him an annoyed look as he continued, “Though I must expound in that simple mind of yours, that I would not be exposing your ah—how did that girl put it again—your condition , yes. Though naturally, I extend to you the same courtesy, should you ever reveal our secrets.”

“You’ve been spying on us,” Danny rebuked. 

Vlad simpered with raised eyebrows. “You’re surprised?”

Danny made a sound of disgust. “Creep.”

There was an unsettling look in those cruel, blue eyes. They both knew who would win any sort of engagement right now. 

Vlad came closer, slammed his hand on the wall over the boy’s head, and loomed over him. 

“Choose wisely, Daniel,” warned Vlad, “I could make your life much, much harder, or," he added blithely with a light smile, "I could make it a lot easier.”

A bead of sweat rolled down Danny’s brow as he glared and tried to eradicate Vlad with every ounce of hatred he felt in that moment. 

“The blood bag’s not empty yet,” Danny argued through his teeth.

“It’s a ninety-minute drive to Maddie’s. It will be by then.”

Danny folded his arms around the bag as he tried to hide the sickening fear beating inside his chest. He restrained himself from accidentally crushing it.

“It’s not just Mom’s house, weirdo.”

Sometimes it really astounded Danny how freaking obsessed Vlad was. Considering Fruit Loop’s track record, the risk of breaking Mom’s heart was about the only thing keeping Danny alive. Vlad could and would kill again. The other thing was wanting to be Danny’s father, which was an entirely different load to unpack. 

Vlad narrowed his eyes and the threat reverberated under his next words, “Tell her I found you, and that we will be there in two hours.”

Danny straightened and lifted his chin. “Only if you promise to stay out of my personal space and stop spying on me!”

Vlad sighed, but backed away. Danny watched him like a cornered hawk with broken wings. 

“You have no idea what I’ve done for you—what I can do for you,” the old man told him. 

Danny continued to stare, unwavering. 

Vlad rolled his eyes. “Fine. We have a deal, so long as these stipulations are mutual.” He tilted his head back with a single, raised eyebrow. “No trespassing on my property or snooping through my lab, boy.”

Danny narrowed his eyes. “Done.”

Vlad smiled expectantly at him and folded his hands. Danny snatched his phone from his pocket and group-texted his parents. 

Vlad-- Danny exhaled sharply through his nose as he steadied his resolve-- found me. We’ll be there in a couple hours. 

Vlad reached out with an open hand, and gestured for Danny to give the phone to him. Danny continued to glare as he held it up with the screen facing outwards instead. 

“It’s sending,” said Danny shortly. “The signal’s bad.”

Vlad inspected the message and frowned ever so slightly. 

“Hm. Fine.” Vlad tossed him an odd vial full of green dust. It was labeled fe. “Apply that to your wound.” 

Danny raised an eyebrow. “Iron?”

The sigh that escaped Vlad was long and exasperated. 

“Yes, Daniel. What else could those glowing, green vapors possibly be, but iron?” 

Danny scowled. “It’s labelled F-E, Fruit Loop.”

Vlad hated being called that, which was exactly why Danny did so at any given opportunity. 

“Ugh, Daniel,” Vlad complained as he wrinkled his nose with a cough, “Just do as I say so we can depart immediately from this odious ramshackle.” Vlad shook his head and pulled out a handkerchief over his mouth. His next words were muffled. “It may be worth the investment to purchase a more suitable hideout for the girl...”

“Is there any particular reason you harass 14-year-olds instead of like. Someone your own age?” Danny asked, popping open the vial and eyeing its contents with suspicion.  

“Like my employees, competitors, and adversaries?” Vlad let out a booming laugh. “Oh, I can assure you Daniel, 14-year-olds only make up the slightest fraction of pawns at my disposal.”

“What a relief,” said Danny dryly, as he (regretfully) peeled away the fresh bandages. 

“Oh, do put it on before it escapes, boy!”

Danny cupped his hand over the top and decided this would be a very stupid and pointless way for Vlad to try and poison him. Danny pressed the vial bottoms-up against his side. 

His wound grew hot. Danny hissed through his teeth as the mist burned through his skin, glowing a brighter and brighter green. Shock slammed into him like an avalanche when the affected area became a concentrated, blistering, arctic cold. Danny leaned fully against the wall, starting to fall, but the pain forced him to stay upright and rigid. The slightest movement was agony. He panted heavily until the worst of the sensations subsided. 

“What the hell…” Danny gasped, “did you do to me?”

“I did see you reading over Maddie’s notes on ecto-regeneration, Daniel.” He had a dumb, dreamy look on his face as he said, “She really is quite clever...but did you not comprehend their meaning?”

“About--agh--cloning?” 

It felt like fucking icicles stabbing into him. Repeatedly. 

“What exactly do you think regeneration means, my dear boy?”

Danny creased his brow as the realization sunk in. Ghosts retreated to the Zone to heal. Which meant the vial was full of--

“Free-ectoplasm...the atmosphere of the Ghost Zone,” Danny finished his thought out loud. "It fixes ghost-wounds."

Vlad almost looked proud of him. Patronizing ass. 

“Yes, very good, Daniel! Now, you should be fine--or mostly so--in a few moments. The effects interact strangely with our human halves.”

"Yah. Painfully."

"But truly, does the smell not bother you?”

Danny stared deadpan and spoke between gasps of breath, “You could say…I have other things on my mind...right now.”

As Vlad had promised, Danny started feeling better sooner than later. He brushed his fingers over the wound. It looked and felt more like a bizarre, star-like bruise than anything. That was probably going to scar…which would eventually mean a lot of explaining, and a lot of weaseling out of Mom's doctoring. Another stupid complication in his stupid, complicated life.

Half-life, Danny begrudgingly corrected himself. 

Danny pushed away from the wall and began walking...slowly. The ground was straight, but his legs were decidedly not. 

“Forgive me,” said Vlad as he caught the boy from falling, “You really should be more careful while your body is stabilizing.”

Danny jerked away, but did not hold it against their agreement--for now. 

“Why didn’t you do this in the first place?” Danny grumbled. 

“Well, Daniel, you did need the blood. Miss Gray was doing a fine job of creating some more for you, so I allowed it.”

Danny muttered complaints under his breath, but did not argue further.

A long silence fell over them, but as Danny’s ragged respiration eased, Vlad checked his new Rolex with a happy nod. 

“Ah, there we are!” Vlad cheered, half-skipping towards the exit. “Come along now, Daniel. We can’t keep Maddie waiting any longer!” Vlad glanced over his shoulder as he approached the stairs and raised a devious eyebrow. “If you prefer, of course, I could carry you...”

Danny moved steadily, but surely forward. Finally. He could walk. 

“Absolutely not.”

Chapter Text

“So Daniel, how do you plan to make up for these recent absences?”

They had been driving for about twenty minutes through the winding forest roads, and Vlad was still trying to force a conversation. Danny shot an icy glare at the rearview mirror before looking back at his phone. The one good thing about Vlad’s stupid, fancy Rolls-Royce was...well, honestly, a lot of things. The exterior was dark, sinister Vlad all the way, but the inside was surprisingly cool. It had plush seats, a sleek, aesthetically antique dashboard, and the car’s ceiling was dotted with LED lighting like the night sky--a few even mimicked shooting stars. 

The important thing though, was the phone charger that gave him an excuse for Mom if anyone asked about his phone battery-life. The bad thing was the lack of backseat storage. What kind of crazy car had a mini TV where the seat pouch was supposed to be? Danny kept the blood bag snugged carefully between his legs. 

That’d be none of your business, Fruit Loop, thought Danny as he texted Sam and Tucker a distressed emoji holding a water gun to its head. At least he had two bars of signal now. 

😫🔫 I’m stuck in a car with Vlad, kill me now, he told them. 

WTF? They texted back, near simultaneously. 

He’s pretending to be my dad again, but physically I’m fine.

Why??? Are you in a car with him??? Did Val tell him?????? Sam fired off questions quicker than gunshots. 

I...dk, Danny replied with a frown. 

Val said she had not...or maybe she just meant she hadn’t told Vlad about the Phantom thing. What a nasty shock if she learned the truth about dear, old Mr. Masters too. 

Tucker’s response was slower, but on no account of his insane wpm. Does this mean I should tell Jazz you have a ride…? Or uh. Are you being kidnapped and I should definitely tell her to pick you up at Vlad’s?

If I’m being kidnapped Mom and Dad will not only be pissed tf off, but they’ll know exactly who did it. Vlad made me tell them he was “saving me” again. He’d be crazy not to take me home. 

Is that supposed to be encouraging? asked Tucker. 

^^^ When you look up crazy in the dictionary Vlad’s pic is there, said Sam. 

I should be fine, guys. I can kinda use my powers again. 

Kinda???

Danny sighed. Fine, he’d talk. 

“So when can I go ghost again?” Danny asked, trying his best to change at that very moment. So far the best he could manage was invisibility. Without knowing if he could fly, testing intangibility in a moving car seemed pretty stupid. Though desperation might force his hand. 

“And his majesty deigns to acknowledge me, if you can believe it.” Vlad hit a bump as he said so, and Danny wheezed in pain as his wound compressed on the impact. 

“Jesus, Vlad!”

“Oh! My bad,” he called back. Danny could see his greasy smile in the mirror. “These backroads are truly horrendous.”

“If this bag pops it's your fault,” Danny spat, and moved the blood bag onto the seat next to him. He had almost squashed it. That bump had fucking hurt. 

Danny checked under the oversized Packers jacket Vlad had lent him (Val had probably tossed his own shirt--which was…maybe…sadly…for the best. He would miss that Dumpty Humpty concert T...), and found the wound still closed and bruise-like. It was throbbing, but not bleeding. 

“I suppose you still need it, but your human half may be well enough by now. I should warn you though, I was not kidding about the potholes.” Vlad veered the car left and sighed in annoyance as Danny swore again. “Tell me Daniel, are you going to lash out that tongue every time the road becomes a ditch?”

“Fuck you.”

Vlad shook his head in exasperation. “In hindsight, I should have brought painkillers.”

Danny gripped the grab handle over his right side, wincing as the movement stretched his injury. “Yah. Like you care.”

“You might be surprised,” said Vlad softly. He cleared his throat. “In any case, Daniel, I do have important questions for you. Since I have been kind enough to help you in more than one regard today, I hope you can at least manage to humor me.”

Danny frowned. No favor from Vlad came for free. Danny still worried about that fe stuff. Vlad could have put nanotechnology or some other nefarious thing in it, and Danny’d be none the wiser. Still…it had helped. 

“...What kind of questions?” asked Danny. 

“That ghost which attacked you--did you notice anything about her?”

“Her? I never said it was a her.” Danny’s grip became white-knuckled. “You saw the whole thing!?”

“Well, Valerie did, obviously. She often patrols the early mornings--”

“You’ve got her suit bugged,” Danny growled, and his eyes flashed bright green. “And before you say it, I’m angry, not surprised!”

Danny could hear Vlad’s eyes roll. “Daniel, that ghost disables electronics by her mere presence. My alleged spyware was useless; Valerie merely described the ghost to me. I was hoping you had more information.”

“You’re not denying it,” Danny said. 

“Would it make you feel better if I did?”

“It’d make me feel better if you stopped being such an actual creep! Like, you get how that’s fucked up, right?”

Vlad’s voice raised, “If it wasn’t for me, you and Miss Gray would be fully dead, many times over.”

“If it wasn’t for you none of this would have happened! That ghost was a friend of the Ghost King. I think she wants to avenge him, or something. But yah. Everything about this, everything about the state of the city right now, that’s absolutely, one hundred percent, your fault. People died Vlad. A lot more lost their homes."

I almost died, Danny thought with a disturbed frown. Twice now, since the invasion, not counting some bad situations... 

Danny had lost count altogether though.

He started to wonder what Vlad had meant by saying...that he had died more than once. Was he implying that Danny was immortal? That he could keep dying over and over just to come right back? That didn't seem right. Yesterday had felt too close , too real, and if it hadn't been for Val…

Vlad’s mouth pressed into a straight line. After a long pause, he said, “Miss Gray did not mention anything about Pariah Dark.”

“I don’t think she heard as much as she saw,” Danny muttered. “But yah. Lightning-Spear Lady or whatever said…something about Dark resting in peace now…and called me…something. It had to do with um…overthrowing him?” Danny tried to remember more, but pain and smoke clouded those memories. He could recall most of the chase though. 

“I mostly just saw her back and…and that spear,” Danny shuddered as he remembered that cruel, sparked edge. “She looked kind of…Barbaric, I guess. Her accent was like Dark’s. She seemed really old, too—OW!”

Vlad hit another pothole, and Danny wanted to strangle him. 

“Sorry,” Vlad almost sounded genuine, “We are almost out of the woods…at least in one regard.”

Danny frowned. “What happened to that ghost anyways? Did Valerie catch her?”

“No, the ghost escaped. I presume Miss Gray was preoccupied with other things.” Vlad glanced back at him. “You know Daniel, considering you defeated the Ghost King himself, I’m rather shocked one of his lackeys would give you this much trouble. Did you lose your edge out there?”

Danny glared back. “First of all, she played dirty. Second of all, the Ecto-Skeleton miraculously disappeared after the fight last month. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you, Unky Vlad?”

“Not a clue,” he replied cheerfully. 

“Riiight,” Danny drawled. “Haven’t you stolen enough of Dad’s tech? Some of those Vladco weapons in Val’s HQ are copy-paste.”

“Pardon me?” Vlad sputtered, “Steal from that idiot?”

Danny’s eyes flashed green again. “My Dad’s forgetful, not stupid. He makes everything at Fenton Works, and you know, it does actually work .”

“After Maddie adjusts the calculations, I’m sure,” Vlad rolled his eyes. 

“Yah, well, they work good together. They’re a team like that,” Danny could not keep the smugness from his tone. He did love rubbing it in that creep’s face what an actual relationship looked like. 

“Forgetful, idiotic, stupid,” Vlad laughed, ignoring Danny’s last bit, “Why Daniel, I can’t tell the difference. Your father created two monsters right under his nose without having the slightest clue . Are you familiar with the definition of idiocy?”

Danny jolted upright. “Wait, hold on. You think Dad did this to me?”

“Of course he did—that’s exactly how it happened to me! That blasted fool not only botched the portal, but he ignored Maddie when she told him—“

“Look, Vlad,” Danny interrupted, “Sorry if I don’t exactly trust your judgement, considering your track record with accountability...among other things. But it definitely wasn’t Dad’s fault either of us stuck our heads into half-baked Ghost Portals.” Danny folded his arms and stared down Vlad’s (literally) reddening eyes. “See, I can take responsibility for my mistakes. Maybe you should try it sometime.”

Vlad looked…more insane than usual. His nostrils flared, his eyes glowed crimson as blood, and Danny grabbed the handle, the blood bag, and the headrest as the Rolls-Royce lurched forward at daunting speeds down the winding road. Good thing Vlad brought the car with four wheel drive.

“Responsibility for my mistakes?” Vlad asked, “Daniel Fenton have you looked in a mirror?” Danny grit his teeth as the car sped like a wooden roller coaster over rocks and pavement. He felt like Darla’s pet fish in its final moments. “You haven’t a single shred of foresight. Tell me, what future do you expect with your current grades? You are teetering closer and closer to a D-average as we speak, and you want to become an astronaut? Ha!” 

“How the FUCK—“ Danny shouted as the car leapt over a gap and slammed back down on the other side—“is any of that your business—“

“You want to talk about mistakes, Daniel?” Vlad asked as Danny struggled to keep the IV in place without slamming his head against the ceiling every five seconds, “How about every failed opportunity I have given you, hm? I could get you into the best schools in the country, private tutoring even—name your pick. I could get you out of this city where you so foolishly squander your precious time ghost hunting. I don’t need spyware to see you wasting away—I could see your ribs, Daniel. And it’s not just your human half you neglect, but your ghost half as well! You haven’t the slightest idea as to how you should manage yourself. You jeopardize any hope of a future every second you remain here, and there are plenty of other candidates to protect this useless city!” 

Danny’s eyes watered from tangible pain. He didn’t give a shit what Vlad thought. 

“The only one jeopardizing my future right now is you, Vlad!” yelled Danny. “Slow the fuck down before I spill this blood--” and my brains-- “all over your fancy, fucking car!”

Vlad let out a deep breath and mercifully eased on the gas pedal. Danny collapsed back in the seat, relieved as the car slowed to a gentle crawl. 

The city’s outskirts laid before them. Danny could see the Bank of Amity across the flat, Minnesotan farm fields, alongside most of Amity Park’s tallest buildings. Some of them, near Amity’s perimeter, had been sliced through. The ones that remained standing looked surreal…like giant versions of petits fours, cut in half. He tried not to think about all the people who had worked in some of those buildings. He tried not to think about the people who had lived in the others. A quarter of the kids at school had lost their parents.

It wasn’t all Vlad’s doing. I pulled the sword and nearly got everyone killed…

“I’m not worried about the damn car, Daniel,” said Vlad tiredly as he watched Danny wipe his eyes in anger. “I can just buy a new one. No, Little Badger, what I am trying to say is that I am deeply concerned. Once again, I’ll extend my offer--”

Danny’s eyes rolled straight up to the moon. “I am not denouncing my father to live with a wack job.”

“See, this is exactly what I am talking about!” Vlad snapped. “I hate to say it Daniel, but you could so very easily lie to me. Of course…” Vlad cleared his throat, “I would prefer it was honest, but that’s beside the point. You have to play by your own rules to succeed in life, and spitting on opportunities is nothing but pure self-sabotage!”

“You would know—“

Vlad gave a short laugh. “Why Daniel, what is stopping you from going to space now, hm? You could so easily overshadow any poor fool taking off within the next, say, five months or so. Take a spring break in the stars, yes?”

Danny furrowed his brow. “But that...that would take away their experience forever.”

“Your point being…?”

Danny stared, disbelieving, and sat up in his seat with a slashing motion of his upper limbs. “I’m not doing that! I’m not doing any of that!” Danny then crossed his arms and glared out the window. They had to be less than an hour from his house by now. “Jesus, Vlad, just take me home already so we can start ignoring each other like you promised.”

“Excuse me? I don’t remember agreeing to anything of the sort.”

Danny smirked and held his hands far apart in the mirror so Vlad could see. “My personal space is a very wide bubble. Like, suuuuper wide. You could say it’s a state apart wide.”

“Are you implying that your personal space exceeds the limitations of a restraining order?” Vlad scoffed. 

“Yes.”

Chapter Text

Danny and Vlad had spent the last forty minutes arguing over the terms of their ‘gentlemen’s agreement.’ As they drove by the school, its parking lot filled to the brim under a groggy, autumn afternoon, Danny wanted more than anything to phase through the car door and join Sam and Tucker in the cafeteria. Which was nuts. He wanted to go to school. To be fair, he’d take Dash over Vlad any day, especially without the excuse of pummeling into Cheesehead’s smug, ghostly face. He only got to really wail on Dash that one time when Walker and his goons had possessed him. Speaking of A-listers, or at least, previous ones…

“Spying on Val counts!” Danny restated, refusing to drop this point. 

Vlad gave another one of his long-suffering sighs. “No, I specifically agreed to not spying or getting near you , Daniel. Which also does not mean I am barred from entering the state of Minnesota, or this city for that matter! You do realize I have official business in Amity Park outside of you or anyone you are directly affiliated with?”

Danny looked out towards the downtown area, where the strange, shifting clouds of ecto-smoke still roamed around the city towers like lazy, stubborn pythons. Sure, they could use a thermos to suck up about…twenty square feet at a time. Not the most effective method. Fenton Works and Axion Labs were working on a more practical solution. Until then, breathing it in burned, and the long-term effects were unknown. 

After what you did, why do I even need to tell you to stay out? The words tempted his tongue, but the last thing he wanted to deal with was another bout of road rage from Unky Vlad. 

The 40-something-year-old continued on, “Now, if Valerie just so happens to come across you in the field, it is simply a matter of circumstance.” Vlad gave him a knowing smirk. “It’s rather simple, isn’t it? Just avoid her.” 

Danny scowled. “This has to be illegal, Vlad.”

“Bwahaha!” Vlad guffawed and wiped a single tear of mirth from his eye. “Why yes, actually, extremely—if you can convince the jury, that is. This sort of lawsuit can go either way at a drop of the hat. What will you do about it though, hm? Report me to the authorities?” Vlad threw his head back with a short laugh. “Ha! The only way you’ll prove that is with her suit. Oh, and that really would expose Miss Gray’s little secret to the world then, hm? At worst I’ll have to pay off some fines and bribe certain authorities. The damage to Miss Gray’s reputation, however, would be permanent. Tell me Daniel, how do you think she’ll retaliate?”

Danny clenched his fists. He hated Vlad’s endless mind games.

“Yet again, we are at an impasse, my dear boy.” 

Vlad furrowed his brow and his expression sobered. “Though I must admit…I’m curious as to why your attitude concerning your parents has changed so dramatically since our initial agreement. I seem to recall your preferred secrecy being less...desperate. No longer convinced of their unconditional love upon discovering the enemy within their child?”

Danny glared out the window. Rows and rows of old town houses meant home laid somewhere just around the bend. He surveyed the rooftops in search of that blinding, metal disk known as the Emergency Ops Centre. 

“Or worse, they’ll try to, ah…” Vlad’s words laced with dread as he continued, “expel the perceived ecto-contamination with an exorcism of sorts?”

Danny’s eyes shot towards Vlad’s with a flash of green. 

“Shut the hell up, Vlad.”

The older man shrugged. 

“I’m just saying, Daniel. Amity Park is not safe for you. Even if your parents only had the best intentions—Which, I have no doubt even that bumbling oaf would naturally possess—well, you know how they are about ghosts.”

Danny laughed coldly. “And you think I’ll be safe with you?” Danny waved the crumpled, limp blood bag in the air. “I feel like this thing after riding with you once. Promise me you will never ever drive an ambulance.” Danny rubbed his sore head. “Seriously, were you trying to give me a concussion back there?”

Vlad shot him an annoyed look. “Of course not.”

Danny peeled away the tape and set the IV stuff to the side. A few drops of viscous red leaked from the puncture wound and then sealed. Val wasn’t kidding when she said he healed fast. At least with the small stuff. 

“Yah, sure,” Danny replied. “Anyways, and this is the last time I’m going to say it, Vlad, so listen closely: I’m. Never. Going. To Live. With You.” 

Vlad met his eyes in the rearview with a grave, glinting steeliness. “And if that ghost targets you again, Daniel?”

Danny blanched but swallowed his apprehension. “I’ll deal with it. She’s not going to get the jump on me a second time.”

“Of course not.”

“Great note of confidence there. Not that I need it,” Danny huffed, and refused to look as Vlad probably rolled his eyes for the umpteenth time. 

How would he face her again? She had not seemed that dangerous before. She kind of reminded him of one of the older teachers at school. Oh, right, Tucker’s sewing teacher, Mrs. What’s-her-face. They had that tall, reedy look about them. Though he probably should have worried more about that armor and spear.

Danny shivered as his mind wandered back to that moment, that split second where he could have dodged it. His nails dug into his palms as the memory flooded his mind with the shadow of that terrible pain, burying into his side, setting every nerve inside his body onto cold, endless fire. It reminded him too much of The Accident. The idea of it happening again was unbearable. Another, hazy memory resurfaced and chilled him to the core. A pair of ruthless, dispassionate, alien eyes boring down on Valerie with murderous intent. Danny began an internal review of his mistakes. 

He had not reacted fast enough, and if reacting had been impossible, he should have anticipated the trap. He had convinced himself, at the time, that he had been too quick for her to get away. Stupid. Arrogant. That ghost had never let him break line of sight. He should have suspected her relaxed posture and calculating side glances. He should have noticed her true presence sooner. He should not have followed her into that smoke. He should have—

“Daniel, there is something you should know,” said Vlad, performing an unintentional kindness as he broke Danny’s spiraling train of thought, “You cannot allow your human half to die, or else…”

Danny’s mouth quirked upwards as he finished Vlad’s sentence for him. “I’ll become a ghost-ghost?”

Vlad snorted in genuine amusement at his frankness. “Correct.”

Danny blew dark bangs away from his eyes. “Figured.”

He had figured but had never really thought about it before. Would it be such a bad thing, becoming a full ghost? Was his thread-hold to humanity the only thing keeping him sane and non-malevolent? Not all ghosts were bad though...who said he would be?

Danny’s heart leapt when he caught sight of the neon, blinking Fenton Works sign at the end of the street, slapped in front of that unmistakable techno-monster of a repurposed, old town house. Jazz and he used to hate it. It marked them as the “Freaky Fentons” the moment anyone laid eyes on it. Today, Danny could have kissed every brick and obnoxious, oversized, electrical cable jutting out from its walls. His fingers curled around the car door handle. Mom and Dad could chew him out to next Friday for all he cared. He just wanted out. 

Vlad slicked back his long, silver hair as he slowed the car to a stop along the curve. “Ah, we've arrived. Now before we go in--”

Danny had already climbed halfway out the car, but Vlad reached an invisible, intangible hand through the passenger seat and dragged him back inside. Danny hissed in pain as, once again, Vlad treated him with less care than a Packer’s football. 

“As I was saying, because this is important, Daniel--”

Danny balled his fists, which flickered with a weak, green light. Lucky for Vlad, his ecto-blasts still refused to work. 

“Dude, that was totally a violation of our agreement.”

“Will you listen to me!” Vlad snapped and turned to face him. “Valerie compromised herself by saying she was the last to see you. I doubt you’ll press charges, but if they do, there’s nothing that can be done about it. I came up with a cover story, and I need you to follow along--”

“Danny?” Called his father, bolting out from the front door with surprising speed for a man his size. He looked like a huge, orange bull charging down the stairway. He had about as much grace. Dad smacked into the hood of the car to stop his momentum, and unperturbed by the hard thud , his eyes locked onto Vlad and a wide smile enveloped his broad face. “Vladdie!” 

Mom hurried behind her husband with a worried expression and far greater subtlety. Considering her bright blue hazmat and well-armed utility belt, the comparison was relative. 

Both his parents wore fresh, clean jumpsuits, but he saw traces of oil grease on their faces and tiny, fluorescent specs of ectoplasm on their goggles—they had rushed decontamination. Danny knew they barely left the lab these days, trying to fix everything both in the house and out. The demand for anti-ecto inventions had spiked dramatically since the invasion. They had probably come up with fifty new prototypes this month alone. Those included detection devices…and he thought they were paranoid before the invasion. Hiding in plain sight became harder and harder. How many more times would his parents ignore the ‘Danny bug’ in their equipment? Did they already suspect, like Jazz had?

“Jaaack,” Vlad shot a look at Danny and stepped out of the car to greet his ‘dear, old, pal.’ “And Maddie! What a delight. Terrible circumstances though, truly.” 

You had an entire car ride to tell me the plan, and you wait until we’re standing outside my house. Nice one, Vlad, Danny thought and slammed the car door behind him. It hurt his side, but then everything hurt anyways. It doesn’t even matter, I already told them it was a ghost attack. Vlad would know that. He’s got another angle in this.

The sound drew their attention and Vlad narrowed his eyes. Mom pulled back her hood and goggles as she approached Danny and wrapped her arms around his neck. He realized, at some point between his last birthday and now, he had outgrown her by an inch. The two men talked behind them. He overheard Dad mention something about Vlad not having aged a day since college. He made a joke about plastic surgery before delving into the subject of Danny and how Vlad had found him. 

“Danny, are you alright?” Mom had sharp, violet eyes that seemed to look straight through him. Their strange, reflective quality seemed like a Mirror of Truth. It made him feel stupid every time he tried to lie to her. He pulled away from her gently, avoiding that incisive gaze. 

“Yah. I’m…really sorry for the scare.”

She kissed his cheek, but her words had a steady edge, like an axe balanced on a threshold. He got the sense his life depended on which side the axe fell. 

“We’re going to talk about it inside. And…where are your shoes?”

Danny looked down at his bare feet. He had left in the middle of the night without changing (in one sense of the word). His pajamas consisted of an oversized T-shirt, comfy sweats, and no shoes. Right now he had the sweats and Vlad’s jacket. 

It had technically been morning when he’d gone after the ghost, but Danny refused to acknowledge anything before sunrise as the next day. Was he supposed to say ‘good morning’ every time he waved goodnight to Sam and Tucker after patrol? It was pitch black! 

“Um…I forgot them?”

Vlad facepalmed. Danny wondered if the gesture was intended for him or his father. His mother scrutinized him further, eyes widening as she noticed his pants. 

“Danny,” she said, her voice teetering towards panic, “is that blood?” 

“Blood?” Dad echoed her concern and abandoned his conversation with Vlad to hurry closer. 

Danny took a step back and turned to shield the long, dark stain from their eyes. It must have come from laying on his side…

Another blurred memory returned to him. A puddle of red swelling underneath him, a smell like rusted copper, his hands sticky and warm as he tried to pull himself up from it. 

He had lost so much…

A bead of sweat trailed down from the tip of his nose. 

“Oh, oh that. No. I mean, not mine. I mean, it was a bleeding ghost.”

His parents shared a look. “A bleeding ghost?”

“Y-yah. Really scary, but I’m ok. Promise.” He was stammering and shaking like an idiot. 

Stop freaking them out! Danny berated himself. You are fine, look around you. Pleasant breeze, cloudy sky, perfect temperature, and you’re home. You are fine. 

Danny took a deep, calming breath but jumped out of his skin when Dad gripped him with two, enormous hands and knelt down real close. His eyes, just like Danny’s, were an intense, ocean blue. Right now, they surged tempestuously.

“What did it look like, Danny? We’re going to find it and tear it to shreds for this, don’t you worry.”

Danny’s eyes darted to Vlad for a split second, who looked annoyed but passive. The ghost part must not matter.

“I-it was red? And bleeding?”

Jack cupped his chin in thought. “Huh, didn’t know ghosts came in warm colors.” He smiled at his son in reassurance and gave him a rough pat on the shoulder, jostling the injury. Danny bit his tongue to stop from crying out. “That’ll just make it easier to spot!” 

At some point Mom had snuck behind him to inspect his sweats. She plucked off a piece of crusted blood with a pair of Fenton tweezers. Gross. 

“We’ll have to run some analysis on this,” she said. “Highly energized states of ectoplasm affect their photon radiation, but for a ghost to maintain such a state…” Her eyes fell on Danny with dismay. “Goodness, Sweety, you’re shaking. Let’s go inside and get you cleaned up. This gunk could be dangerous.” She placed the sample in a vial on her belt and ushered Danny inside. 

He and Vlad shared a glance. Danny made a mental note to dispose of the evidence later, before Mom had a chance to recognize some fucked up Fenton DNA. Which sounded a lot worse when he thought about it like that.

As Vlad followed them up the entry stairway after Dad, Mom looked tempted to slam the door in the old coot’s face. 

Please do it. 

She didn’t. Danny sagged in disappointment. Damn, he would have paid money to see that. 

“Alright Danny,” she said, turning towards him as she shut the door after Vlad had walked inside, “I know you’ve done this a hundred times before, but if you need any help--”

Danny shook his head and headed towards the basement. “Nope! I got it covered. Just...throw down some new clothes, alright?”

“They’ll be there. Try not to touch anything on your way down, unless you want to sanitize the stairway.”

“Yup.”

Dammit, Danny swore internally. He had already used the railing for its intended purpose. He’d have to remember that later too. 

“And you’re going to meet us in the living room immediately after. Got it?”

“Yes ma’am,” he called back as he stepped into the lab’s foyer and opened the decontamination chamber. He stripped down and threw everything into the incinerator. He grinned in mild amusement at the soft, muffled kaboom that followed soon after; a sound that echoed from down the chute and deep underground. 

That never got old. 

There was no use salvaging any of these clothes. The only thing that would have tempted him, despite the tediousness of cleansing such awful stains, would have been the Dumpty Humpty T-shirt. That decision had been made for him though. 

Danny sighed and skipped over the biosafe ecto-cleanser to activate the normal soap. He had a weird allergy to the other stuff. It wasn’t that big of a deal though; ectoplasm (mostly) came off with soap and water. It just took a century. He only had to worry about his own ‘gunk’ today though. 

But…it has ectoplasm in it too, doesn’t it?

Danny frowned as he scrubbed away the obsolete scabs and caked blood. It must have, or else the clothes wouldn’t have exploded, Val wouldn’t have mixed it in with the green stuff, nor would Vlad’s vial of f-e have worked at all. 

Danny scrubbed shampoo through his hair with closed eyes and furrowed brows. Ever since The Accident, he had avoided (human) doctors and hospitals like the plague. For whatever reason, his parents agreed with him. They never forced him to go, even on that very day when his skin smoked and cracked with burns. Sure, they had freaked out, but once they realized he was still conscious they had fixed him up themselves. He technically had a lifetime ban from entering the basement unsupervised, but they rarely enforced it these days, so long as he stayed away from the portal or dangerous equipment. He was absolutely banned from the inner lab without his parents hovering over his shoulder, however. They had even revoked his access from the main door. 

Danny smirked at the sealed, solid steel barrier on the other end of the room.

That ban didn’t apply to Phantom. Though he had gotten caught ‘trespassing’ a few times while releasing some fiends into the portal, and subsequently, his parents had chased him into the Zone. Which uh, was not fun. Being locked in another dimension. With the ghosts he’d just beat. 

Lucky for him, Jazz always unlocked the portal when his parents weren’t looking. Which was absolutely bizarre, because otherwise, Jazz avoided the lab like the skeleton of her closet. She was also a goody-goody who strictly followed the supervised access only thing. After the third time, he’d confronted her about it. Turns out Jazz had known his secret since…the beginning, pretty much. 

He was glad for her help, but it made him nervous at how easily she’d discovered it. If the wrong people found out, if even one medical professional took a single look at his bloodwork…

He didn’t want to think about it. 

Instead, he listened to the conversation upstairs, courtesy of the powers he had received that fateful day. 

“You know, it was actually young Miss Gray that helped me find him at all.” Said the distant voice of Vlad. “She called me the other day about one of our old papers from college, if you can believe it. Something about “The Susceptibilities of Ghost Cores” or the like.”

“A Study of Ectoplasm and its Susceptibilities?” Asked Mom. “Goodness, that’s horribly outdated. The terminology and statistics would be skewed, but I suppose the basics still hold true.”

“Yes, I told her she should call you about that, but she told me she couldn’t possibly bother you at a time like this. And I asked, ‘how is that?’ To which she replied, ‘Their son is missing.’ You can imagine my surprise.”

“Valerie did mention a paper she and Danny were working on, but that still doesn’t explain why you’re here, Vlad. Or how you found him.”

“Vladco drones is how he found him, Mads,” Dad answered. “They must have been top notch to find our boy in the middle of Hardwick Forest. How the heck did he end up all the way out there in the first place?”

“On that account, I’m not sure,” Vlad replied. “The ghost must have dropped him off there as a cruel game. The…er…ecto-blood alarmed me at first, but I found his actual injuries to be tame. He does have a peculiar bruise on his side, which I imagine will leave him sore for the next few days, but I believe Daniel was more shaken up by the ordeal than anything else. I’m certain he’ll bounce right back after a good rest.”

Danny had to strain his ears to hear his mother’s next words above the water smacking against the glass. 

“Do you think…getting him checked somewhere would be a bad idea?”

He heard nothing for a while and wondered if he had missed an even softer exchange of words.

Vlad broke the quiet with tight, barely concealed anger. “Well, assuming they found a spec of unknown substances on his person, and decided they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him, they very well could lock him away indefinitely. I didn’t come all this way to discuss that, however.” 

Oh. That was their reason.

“Vlad,” his father began sadly, but was quickly shut down. 

“You asked me why I was already in town? I came here for business. Specifically, a collaboration offer on behalf of Vladco. I have already spoken with Axion Lab’s CEO about tackling Amity Park’s reconstruction, but with the additional support of Fenton Works, I believe we can push for something far greater. Something that could change the world.” 

“I’m not sure—“

“What are you thinking, Vladdie?”

“I’m thinking with the world’s leading scientists and engineers we could develop an endless, renewable power source.”

Danny turned the water off. He was not liking the sound of this, though he figured Sam would appreciate the concept. 

“Oh, Danny must have finished downstairs,” his mother interjected. “He always did take forever in the shower. Maybe we can get some more answers from him. As for the offer,” Danny heard a sharp crinkle of paper, “Jack and I are going to discuss it. After we’ve read over the terms. Carefully.” 

She sighed. “Not that…we really do appreciate your help, Vlad. Truly. I don’t know how we would have found him otherwise. He could have been lost…on his own…for ages.” Her words shook and Danny’s eyes squinched in shame. He had scared her so badly… “I just can’t wrap my head around what possessed him to leave the house in the first place. Does he like that girl? He only ever talks about Sam and Paulina, though at least we’ve met this Valerie before—”

Danny stuck his head in the stairway and called up, “Mom! Clothes? Please?”

“Gosh darn it. I’ll be right back.” Then she hollered back, “Just a minute, Danny!”

“A minute? Will I get in more trouble if my butt freezes off by then?”

“Oh, good lord.”

He heard a light smack.

“Ow! Mad’s, what was that for?”

“Giving that boy his fool’s sense of humor.”

“Heyyyy, I resent that! Danny and I only have the most refined taste in jokes imaginable.”

“Please, spare me the entertainment,” Vlad implored.

Danny raised his eyebrows as he heard all three of them break into a long chuckle. 

As Mom’s footsteps trailed upstairs, his father let out a long sigh. “I missed this. The old gang, hanging out. I’d grab the beers if I didn’t know you were driving.”

“Yes well, that would be a foolish mistake now, wouldn’t it?” 

Danny rolled his fingers on the glass nervously. Dad had no idea how dangerous his old college pal had become. Danny tried to go ghost, just in case, but nothingness. He felt...nothingness. 

That wasn’t right. 

“Vladdie…I know it won’t make up for it, but I’ll talk to her. It sounds like a great idea. If nothing else, this contract will help pay the bills. We…can’t afford to keep the shields going all day and night long, as it is. If we can figure out a way to harness ecto-energy on such a massive scale…it really could change things.”

“Indeed.” Then Vlad added reluctantly, after a short spell, “Jack, I must admit I am concerned about your son. Whatever snatched him the first time is still out there. Keep him safe and inside the shields for a while, until we figure out what’s after him. Don’t worry about the bills.”

“Vladdie, I—“

“Take it, and don’t speak of it. I guarantee you it’s nothing but pocket change.”

“…Thank you.”

Danny grimaced. Vlad, you did not just put me under house arrest! And fund an on-going ghost shield! 

He was already grounded before his official sentence. What ever happened to a fair trial? 

His mother came back from upstairs. 

“Danny, heads up!” His Mom opened the basement door and threw the clothes down. 

He reached out to catch the bundle, but flinched as his side sparked with pain. Danny grumbled in annoyance as he slowly knelt to pick them up off the (presumably) sanitized floor. 

Danny dressed quickly, but paused before he pulled on the shirt. It was his T-shirt from Junior Astronauts Camp last year. 

Last year. He struggled to wrap his head around it...and get his head through it. So much had changed since then, including his size, and the shirt was a little small. He finally managed to push through the neck hole, and it covered most of him but his arms. Danny almost regretted tossing Vlad’s jacket into the incinerator. Almost. 

Danny grabbed one of the Fenton clean wipes from the utility drawer and wiped the stair railing on the way up. He took a deep breath before opening the door. Then he threw away the rag and walked into the living room. 

Three pairs of eyes settled on him from the modern-styled seating. His parents sat closely together on the couch, looking grave as tombstones. Something in Dad’s eyes hardened when he saw Danny’s bare arms, covered in scars. Danny folded them uneasily, hoping to obscure the worst of it. He often wore long sleeves for a reason. Mom pursed her lips, disquieted by the sight of him. Vlad crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair, making himself comfortable for the show. Danny restrained himself from flashing any ‘scary eyes’ in front of his parents. They would definitely think he was possessed. 

“Son, can you explain to your mother and I what in blue blazes you were thinking by sneaking out in the middle of the night?” 

Danny shrunk at his father’s unusually harsh tone.

“I…I guess I wasn’t, really,” he mumbled. He tried to remember the pieces of the cover story, or at least what Val told him. He had little to go by, but it was important it made some margin of sense… 

“Val messaged me the other night, saying she needed some research about ghosts before school the next day. I was already awake so…I just grabbed some Fenton books and headed out. I was supposed to…” 

Oh fuck, I forgot the book. 

Danny stared at his empty hands and wanted to kick himself. 

“Supposed to what, Danny?” Asked Mom with narrowed eyes. 

Danny rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, uh, I was supposed to bring some back. Did she borrow anything from you guys before?”

Mom raised her eyebrows. “Well, actually yes. Though I told her she could keep Ectoparalogy for Beginners for as long as she wanted. There was hardly any urgency in its return. I don’t think I could ever get you or Jazz to read it…” 

She raised a cross eyebrow. “But Daniel, that does not explain why you went out there without your shoes. You didn’t even take your power scooter. How far away does she live? Was her father aware of this?”

Danny swallowed. “Well, um, I didn’t see him when I uh, dropped off the books. And you know, it only takes maybe…thirty minutes on foot. I didn’t want to wake anyone up with the scooter, and I guess I just…didn’t even think of my shoes? They should still be in my closet upstairs. I was planning on coming right back, but…that didn’t happen.” Perspiration dripped from his face, and he shrugged. “You pretty much know the rest.”

Vlad gave a subtle, so-so, shake of his head, but he seemed to want something else. 

Great to have an audience for this, Danny thought angrily. Why is he still here??

“What time did you leave?” Asked Mom, her violet gaze like razors. 

Danny looked down. “I’m not sure. Sometime around 4 or 5am, I guess. It was kinda dark.”

“And when did you get attacked?”

Danny furrowed his brow. “Ok that, I really don’t know. I guess the sun was rising?”

Her fingers rolled on her lap, and Danny got a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. 

“Danny, the sun rises around 7:30 this time of year. That leaves 2-3 hours in between the time you left, and the time you were coming back. You said it’s a 30 minute walk?”

Oh no.

“M-maybe a bit longer.”

Vlad covered his mouth as he let out a cough of barely concealed amusement. Mom shot him a venomous glare before narrowing back on Danny with crossed arms. 

“Mhm. Danny, you were at Valerie’s house for at minimum, two hours. Were you aware Mr. Gray is currently out of town on a business trip?”

Danny’s mouth gaped open and closed like a beached fish, grasping for breath. 

“I—Mom you can’t be serious. You think I showed up at Val’s in my PJ’s to…no.”

She raised an eyebrow. “According to you, Mister, you walked out of this house before dawn, in your bare feet and pajamas, in the middle of November, to sneak to a girl’s house. You and your father are going to have a talk.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I might get some books on this as well. That you will read.”

“We need The Talk this early?” Dad stared at Danny in disbelief. 

“Wait—“ Danny held up his arms. 

“Unless there’s something you’re not telling us, Danny,” Mom said with those crystal-like eyes staring straight through him, daring him to challenge her assumptions. Assumptions, he suspected, she did not fully believe.

This cannot be happening.

“I—I…ok. Maybe I did hang out with Val for a bit, but she…” Danny’s eyes lit up as he remembered—“She was sick. I was just trying to help. That’s all.”

“She was sick?”

Vlad cut in, “Actually yes. Miss Gray was ill yesterday when she called me. To think she ended up staying home after all their efforts to get that paper in on time. Too many sleepless nights does wretched things to a child’s immune system, you know.”

Danny did not appreciate the pointed glance towards him. 

Mom rubbed her temple, having likely started a massive headache. “I suppose she did sound hoarse the other day, now that you mention it. But just…Danny, I know you’re smarter than this. You understand how dangerous and foolish that was? Leaving the safety of Fenton Works to wander around the city in the dark? Alone? You know there are ghosts out there! Even people out there who could hurt you, Danny. Please, tell me you understand why your father and I are upset. No girl or any amount of schoolwork is worth your safety, do you understand me?”

Danny stared at the floor. “Yes ma’am.” 

“Which is why, Daniel, you are grounded—“

“Indefinitely,” finished Dad. 

Vlad tinkered with his watch settings. 

“Indefinitely!?” Danny exclaimed.

Mom glanced at his father in consternation. “Jack…”

He placed a hand on her shoulder and got up from his seat. Danny might have outgrown Mom, but Dad was a monster on the closer end of seven feet tall. Danny dug his nails into his palms and tried to meet his father’s stern gaze far above him. 

“Danny, you no longer have to worry about a curfew, because immediately after school, Jazz is taking you home. You’ll finish your homework and help your mother and I in the lab until bed.”

“But—“

Dad squinted and knelt down to look him directly in the eyes. He jabbed Danny’s chest with a large, gloved finger. 

“And if I ever catch you sneaking out like that again, I’m breaking down that computer of yours for parts. Understood?”

Danny backed away and stared in shock. “That—that’s not fair! I promised Sam and Tucker, I mean, Sam’s birthday is next week—“

“You should have thought of that before pulling this stunt. Now you’ve got a ghost after you, and it might do worse than drop you off in the woods the next time it finds you.” Dad let out a long sigh and rubbed the back of his graying head. “Danny, this really is for your own good. You know I hate doing this. Tell me you understand that—“ His father reached out a reassuring hand towards him, but his face twisted in guilt when he noticed Danny’s scars again.

Danny would have rejected his touch anyways. 

How could Dad do this to him? Bad enough he was getting punished for nearly dying in the first place. Now he was supposed to stay locked up in either the house, the lab, or school? Indefinitely?? They didn’t even need to take away his electronics or games. He would never get the chance to use them.

Danny turned his back to the three of them and started walking towards the upstairs. “No. I really don’t. ”

You shouldn’t be surprised, idiot. This is what you get for lying. This is what you get for not paying attention and nearly getting yourself killed. You can’t even go ghost. It’s your fault if anything else happens to Amity Park because of this. 

“Danny—“ his father warned behind him. 

Danny kept walking. He had to get away from their stares. He had to get away from that bastard’s smug face.

Why did they let Vlad watch this??? Fucking humiliating!

Light footsteps came from outside and Danny heard the front door unlock.

“Mom, Dad, I’m home!” Announced Jazz like clockwork. 4pm on a Tuesday. Dash had football practice today, which meant Jazz had no tutoring after school. She paused after noticing her brother race up the stairs. “…Danny? Hey, are you okay? You never texted me back, you jerk!”

“In the living room, Sweetie!” Mom yelled. He heard her soothe Dad in a much softer voice. “Jack, let him blow off some steam. That was…a little harsh.”

“You think I’m wrong, Mads?” he asked quietly.

“No.”

Danny slammed his door behind him. Fuck this worthless half-life. 

Chapter Text

“Ok…” said Tucker slowly, setting down his orange Fanta on their cafeteria table, “so, just to set things straight…” 

Tucker kept his voice reasonably low within the chatter of Casper High’s Mess Hall, and Danny focused on his voice alone. He’d lose his mind trying to listen to everything else at once. That or end up with the world’s biggest headache. 

Tucker counted off a mental list with his bronze-toned fingers as he continued, “You had the worst Monday ever. Got attacked by an old, ghost lady. Who almost killed you. Valerie saw you go human. Chased off the ghost. Saved your life. And told your folks you came over early that morning to help with a school project before disappearing to cover up for the fact she was fixing you up at her secret hideout which you won’t tell us where it is because reasons--” Tucker inhaled-- “Vlad’s got her bugged so he knew the whole deal. Came to pick you up the next day. Made a deal with you that y’all would leave each other alone if he got cred for saving you. Gave you some Zone Dust and super-healed the stab wound. Drove you home like a maniac. And now your parents have grounded you forever because they think you and Val got it on.”

“What!” Danny coughed, his whole face growing redder than a cherry.

“You know, I don’t have enough fingers for all that,” said Tucker, picking up his hamburger with one hand and making a scissors gesture with the other, “Did you?” 

“Tucker!” Danny hissed through his teeth as the other boy nearly choked on his lunch from laughter. 

Danny glanced over at Val sitting on the table next to them. 

She had not heard that, right? 

Valerie raised a bemused eyebrow at his panicked expression before continuing her conversation with Kwan. Danny sighed in relief. She surely would have reacted poorly to that if she’d heard. Danny tensed right back up when he noticed the look on Sam’s face. 

Her vivid, scintillating eyes were jagged like amethyst geodes, and her knuckles were bleach-white against her Trinity of Doom thermos as she stared straight ahead. Danny swallowed and focused directly on Tucker. 

“No,” he stated firmly. “They grounded me for sneaking out. At night. To…go to a girl’s place…” 

Tucker waggled his eyebrows and a few crumbs fell to his tray. 

“Ok no,” Danny insisted, “I chased after the ghost—I never actually went to Val’s apartment!”

Tucker swallowed, his grin only growing wider. “Yah, you went to her secret hideout--” He nudged Sam with his elbow, and she stomped on his foot. 

“Ouch! Dude, you’re wearing military grade combat boots,” Tucker whined. 

“Maybe watch where you stick those bony arms then, dude,” Sam retorted, stabbing at the remaining clump of her salad and stuffing it into her mouth.

“Bony?” Tucker exclaimed. He raised his wiry arms and flexed. For all the calories Tucker inhaled on a daily basis, it exclusively went to his height . He looked much like a beanstalk, and shot up like one too. Danny wished he could grow that fast. “I think you mean manly.”

Sam poked his narrow bicep with a raised eyebrow and said through a mouth full of leaves, “Whatever you say, Gamer Sticks.”

Tucker leaned back on the bench and looked down on her through his hands, curled like binoculars. “What was that, Shrimpy?”

“I can kick you again.”

“Please don’t.”

Danny’s lip twitched with a smile and he shook his head for a brief moment before letting out a despairing sigh. 

“Ok, but seriously guys, I’m so screwed. They think there’s a red, bleeding ghost hunting me and have put me under house arrest until they catch it.” Danny groaned. “Which is never going to happen, because it doesn’t actually exist! In fact, I’ve never seen a red ghost that wasn’t some kinda giant monster!”

“I guess this means you're missing my birthday party next week, huh?” Sam rolled a cherry tomato on her salad plate back and forth with a sullen expression. 

Danny covered his face. 

“Sam, I’m so sorry. You know I’d rather be there. Which would mean more if I’d rather be anywhere than stuck in ‘community service’ for the next decade.”

“Community service?” She asked, furrowing her brow. 

“Involuntary volunteer work?” Danny smiled ruefully. “You see, my parents,” Danny cleared his throat, “excuse me, my wardens, are making me help out with the lab after school. Every day. Indefinitely.”

“Whaaat?” Tucker intoned. “But dude, when are we gonna have time to hang? And...you know?”

“We won’t,” Danny sagged on the table, pushing away his food tray and laying his head flat between outstretched arms. “I’m not going to have time for anything anymore. No patrols, no games, no bowling, no nothing. They’re basically forcing me into the family business until further notice. So they can keep an eye on me. Indefinitely.”

“Dude, that’s so unfair,” Tucker complained. “They can’t expect you to give up your extracurriculars and social life forever.”

“What, like they have healthy, thrilling lives outside of work? Yah. Right. Doubt I’m going to get any sympathy there. I wish that ghost had finished the job so I wouldn’t have to suffer through all this shit.”

“Danny, that’s not funny,” Sam told him seriously, “and you’re being dramatic. Your parents aren’t going to ground you forever.”

“Yah, the word was ‘indefinitely,’ I thought I made that clear,” said Danny, testily. “Side note: I got stabbed by a spear this long,” Danny spread his arms out as far as they would go. “No, actually more like twice that. I think it shot out even more or something when it struck, like an actual bolt of lightning. Anyways. I got stabbed. I’m allowed to be dramatic.”

Sam cupped her chin and mumbled, “Isn’t it technically ‘pierced,’ since it was a spear?

Tucker shifted uneasily. “Or did you get...skewered. Like a shish kabob?”

Danny blanched. “Uhhhhh…I don’t think so. Maybe you guys can check my back later in case it… did go all the way through.” Danny shook away the thought and gestured with the palm of one hand facing up. “Also, I don’t think the vernacular matters, Sam.” 

She checked the definition on her phone and shrugged. “Yah, it doesn’t. Still, stabbing is usually a knife thing.”

Danny huffed in annoyance. “Look, all I know is that it hurt like hell. It still kinda does.”

Tucker and Sam gave him concerned looks. 

“Should you even be here, Danny?” Sam asked him softly, urgently. 

Tucker frowned. “Yah, maybe you should be recovering or something. You’re acting normal, but if it doesn’t feel normal, then you should be taking it easy. How much did that Zone Dust actually help?”

Danny sighed. There was a big thing to add to Tucker’s mental list.

“I mean,” Danny began slowly, “on this side I’m just sore, but as for my ghost half…” He stared straight down and spoke in a hushed voice. “I still can’t do it. I can’t change back. She did something to it, something bad, and I...I don’t know. I can feel it when I sleep, or if I zone out hard enough…”

Falling apart, the memory of last night’s dream came unbidden, Shattered pieces of ice. Pain so terrible it couldn't be real. 

Danny stared at his hands as if they held the answer to all his dread. “Vlad said I died again. Is this what he meant? Is it...is my ghost half just gone?”

His friends shared a glance. 

Tucker’s warm, amber eyes swam deep in thought as he faced Danny again. “I...don’t know, man. How can something that's, you know, already dead, die?”

“Tucker’s got a point,” Sam agreed. “Have you ever heard of a ghost dying? I mean, you didn’t even kill the Ghost King. You locked him in the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep.” She bit her cheek. “You said you could kinda still use your powers, right?”

Danny scouted their surroundings for prying eyes, and finding only Val’s gaze, stole a fry from Tucker’s plate with an invisible hand. The dumbfounded expression on the mighty Red Huntress’ face was priceless. Tucker shot him an annoyed look as his fry made its final disappearing act into Danny’s mouth. 

Val was staring at him a lot, wasn’t she?

Spying. Vlad’s got her bugged, remember? 

Not that she knew that. Probably. 

You’ve been staring at her too, weirdo.

Danny went back to ignoring her. 

“Only the easy stuff,” he replied. “I can’t ectoblast at all. Even intangibility is...hard.”

He remembered a time when he had trouble staying tangible. 

He could see the cogs whirring behind Sam’s eyes. Between the three of them, she usually had the brain cell. Granted, she had a lot of brain cells. Danny wished he had two to rub together most days. 

“Then maybe your ghost-half is recovering too,” she said slowly. Sam cocked her head towards Val. “I mean...Miss Sleeper Agent over there, along with her boss, only helped your human half. Maybe your ghost half just needs help too?”

Danny stuck a fork into his barely touched sandwich. He sort of regretted eating that fry. He could smell the rot inside the nearby trash cans. Not particularly appetizing. Nor was all this stress. 

“How am I supposed to help it when I can’t even be it?”

“How do you usually transform, Danny?” asked Tucker. 

His friends looked genuinely curious. They both leaned forward, eyes bright with intrigue. 

Welp. He hated to disappoint them. 

“Uh. I guess...I just kind of. Let it?”

His friends shared another look. 

“Which means…?”

Danny sighed and closed his eyes. “I just...surrender to the cold.” 

He searched for it, that soothing, freezing essence deep within himself. It felt like a blue sky against a mountain’s snowy peak, or the northern lights dancing across an endless white tundra, or even the vastness of space before the silver halo of the moon. 

He missed flying, especially now. Maybe it was for the best that he couldn’t change yesterday, now that his parents checked his room periodically throughout the night. He just couldn't find his ghost, as if it were fully, terribly gone. He refused to believe that, though. He kept pushing deeper and deeper until… 

Danny gasped and curled around himself as he found something else. Something like splintered icicles in a hailstorm. 

“Danny?” Sam and Tucker got up from their seats. 

He shook his head and clenched convulsing fingers, wrapping tighter and tighter around himself, as if he were trying to hold the pieces of his body together. 

He felt like--it felt like--

“I-it’s ok. I’m ok,” he stammered around an icy breath and chattering teeth. “I could have a-accidentally changed here…in front of e-everyone. That would have b-been really stupid.”

Sam’s vivid eyes widened. Danny often found himself transfixed by the jewel-like quality of her contacts. 

“You’re saying this is what happens when you try to change now?” she asked him, horrified. “Danny, this is seriously bad.”

Tucker pulled off his sweater and wrapped it around Danny. “Here, you’re… oosh! ” He exclaimed as Danny’s fingers brushed his. “Literally freezing. What the hell?”

“Danny?” Asked another voice. 

Valerie stood an awkward distance away between their tables, looking at him with brows creased in worry. She wore her hair in long, shimmering braids today. Her blouse was a sunshine yellow. He wondered if that was her favorite color. She almost always wore yellow, but maybe she just liked warm colors in general…like red. She wore a lot of orange too. No bright, ruffled skirt today though; she wore jeans. 

Had he ever seen Valerie in jeans? Or pants? At school?

Sam and Tucker stepped in front of Danny with level, uncertain expressions.

“It’s none of your business, Valerie,” Sam said, sounding as cold as he felt. 

“Sam…” he murmured, beginning to placate her. 

Valerie opened her mouth to retaliate, but Dash shoved her out of the way with a tray full of lunch waste. Some of the mess transferred to her shirt, and Val looked ready to vault him, along with the rest of the trash, into the bin. 

Please, please do it. I’d go a million bucks into debt to see Val body Dash instead of me for once. 

Granted, she only fought ghosts in her alter ego, but still. She could do it whenever she wanted--to whoever she wanted.

Yet again, Danny was disappointed by undeserving restraint. Valerie locked her jaw and began lightly tapping away at a ketchup stain on her shirt. She refused to look up. 

The rest of the A-listers filed in behind Dash like a king’s personal guard. He had earned their respect becoming a record-breaking quarterback in his freshman year. It was still his first semester. The letterman’s jackets and high fashion wardrobes made A-listers stand out regardless of whether you knew their names or not. 

This was the bad part about the Loser’s Corner in the Cafeteria. It was right next to the trash bins, and everyone started funneling here towards the end of lunch. The putrid smell made it hard to eat sometimes, or maybe that was just him and his freaky powers. No one else seemed as bothered by it, other than by association of status. 

“Rejected by the Loser Squad, Val?” Asked the bulking freshman with a cruel glint in his sky, blue eyes. If the football thing fell out, Dash could always turn to modeling—same as anyone else in his posse. “Wow, didn’t think you could sink any lower. We’re gonna have to come up with a new category of bottom feeder.”

Danny stood. He regretted that as a wave of nausea overcame him.

Pieces of himself swirling —

No. 

He was whole, on solid ground. He was fine. 

“Leave her alone, Dash.”

Danny sounded pathetic. He looked pathetic. Right now, with his powers only making him weaker, he was pathetic. 

The A-listers jeered and laughed. 

“Leave her alone, Dash,” mocked Dale in a high falsetto. “Fenturd, can you squeak any higher?”

“Oh, I dunno boys,” said Paulina, the most beautiful girl in school, strolling over to dump her tray with a graceful flick of her wrist, “the windows might shatter.”

Danny’s face flushed bright red, a warmth that nearly counteracted his freezing limbs. 

Did he really sound that high-pitched? Like some budget Mickey Mouse on puberty? He’d just taken his T-shot last night. Was it even working anymore? Had he gone too far behind schedule? Once every two to four weeks. He’d put it off like an idiot. Now he was three days late because he had forgotten to take it Sunday, and then of course, all the stupid, painful bullshit since Monday. 

Valerie finished tapping away the stain and tossed the crumpled napkin into one of the bins with a precise toss from several feet away. Danny knew better than anyone how accurate a shot Valerie was. 

“Don’t you guys have some ass to kiss in your next class?” Val asked, her words light and sharp like well-placed shurikens. “Teacher’s perks don’t come for free, you know.”

They all glared at her, but Paulina’s demeanor shifted into something devious. 

“Ooooh, I get it,” she purred, sauntering around Val with large, cat-like eyes. “Did you guys know Fenton went missing for a day? My Papa’s on the force. He even asked me about it—asked me about you for some reason.” She looked Val up and down with a growing smugness. “You were gone Monday too.”

“I was sick,” Valerie stated. A warning. 

“Star told me your Papa was out of town.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Val snapped. 

“Fenton was last seen at your cruddy apartment.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Now the dyke’s all green and jealous—“

Danny and Tucker’s jaws dropped. 

“Oh, you just did not—“ Sam snarled. 

“And now you’re begging to sit next to your new boyfriend, aren’t you? Well,” she giggled, “if you can call ‘him’ that.” 

Danny bit his lip, hard. Tucker squeezed his shoulder and let Sam go forth, freely. Tucker’s eyes had narrowed into slits. 

Paulina ignored Sam even as she stalked towards the popular girl in a straight line like a slow, deliberate missile. 

Valerie clenched her fists with a dangerous fury behind her eyes.  

Paulina smiled, mistaking her silence for confirmation. “I knew it. You and Fenton spent the night together. Skipped school together. I never took you for such a groveling sl—“

Sam’s fist landed on her jaw. A crack echoed in the large room. 

“Call me that again, you fucking snake,” Sam growled, shaking with anger. 

Paulina reeled back and cupped her jaw in shock. Dale picked Sam up. Bad idea, never try that on someone built like a tank and wearing combat boots, no matter how tiny they seemed. Her composite toe landed solidly beneath his ribs, and both teens collapsed onto the floor. She pulled herself up, unlike Dale, who held his stomach with his dark face scrunched up in pain. Danny and Tucker moved to help her, but Dash shoved them back, hard. 

Danny froze as his insides convulsed. 

The ground swirled dangerously. Pieces of himself spun with no meaning, only horrible, endless pain in a void lacking all orientation or reason. He was in his body, but he wasn’t. Nothing was right. Everything was wrong.

Danny lost balance. He fell to his knees and his stomach heaved its contents onto the floor. Everyone scrambled away with sounds of surprise, disgust and…shrieks of horror? He could feel a hundred eyes on him as he stared at the glowing green splash of sick before him. His throat burned like ice and stung like fire. He covered his mouth to stop anymore from coming out. He had to stop it. It was too late though. Everyone would know his secret. What human could throw up ectoplasm? No, no, no, he had already messed up with Val. He couldn’t expose himself to everyone!

“Jesus, Fenton,” said Dash, shriveling his nose as he helped Dale off the floor. “Stay away from the glow sticks. They’re not for eating.”

Some members of their growing audience laughed, but most kids just gagged or went ewwww. Not the A-listers though. They were pissed. Danny’s arms shook as he stared at the bubbling ectoplasm. Sam and Tucker moved to block the view from the line of phone cameras trained on him. 

This was it. This was going to be how everyone found out. 

“The Emperor of All Maladies!” Cried the unmistakable voice of Mr. Lancer as he pushed through the crowd, “What is going on here?”

Paulina’s eyes were huge and sparkling with tears. She covered a dark, swelling bruise marring her normally pristine face. “Sam Manson punched me, Mr. Lancer!”

“What!?” The Vice Principal turned to face Sam with eyes flashing. A single finger pointed towards the exit. “My office, now, Miss Manson.”

Sam shouted, “But she—” 

“Now!” 

Sam shot a concerned glance at Danny, but as Mr. Lancer drew his breath for another, perhaps final command, she turned and marched out the door. 

Tucker pointed at the blonde quarterback. “Well, Dash pushed Danny so hard he threw up!”

“How is it my fault he’s a freaking pipsqueak?” Dash threw his hands up. “Mr. Lancer, listen—“

The Vice Principal pinched the bridge of his nose. “My office as well, Mr. Baxter.”

“But—“

“Explain yourself there. But go.”

Danny could hear Dash whisper in Tucker’s ear as he passed, “You’re dead, Foley.”

Tucker’s face became wan. 

“Mr. Baxter,” Lancer warned, though Danny highly doubted he had heard the exchange. 

“I’m going!” Dash snapped. “Sir,” he added with resignation. 

Dash gave them a final, menacing glare and pushed through the swinging doors. 

“As for all of you,” Mr. Lancer turned to face the crowd with such fury, “Delete those videos. If I find out a single one has made it online, I will get rid of the ice cream machines and there will be no pizza for the remainder of the school year. Now, if I find out any specific culprit, that student will face an automatic, weeks’ worth of suspension. Now get to class. Lunch is over.”

Sure enough, the bell sounded overhead. The students muttered and complained under their breaths but conceded. As they funneled past the trash and exit, Danny saw a few of them, from the corner of his eyes, delete the video.

Not all of them though. Nowhere near.

“Um, Mr. Lancer,” Kwan asked carefully, limping over in a crutch. Danny knew he was off the football team because of a broken leg. He didn't know the details, but Kwan only sat with Val and Star now. No longer useful in the A-lister crowd. Wow. They actually treated their friends like disposable shit. Wasn’t Kwan supposed to be Dash’s best friend? Since like, forever?

But once an A-lister, always an A-lister.

“I saw the whole thing,” Kwan said with eyebrows furrowed. “Dash really didn't push them that hard…”

“Them, Mr. Jeon?” asked the teacher with narrowed eyes. 

“Um,” Kwan balked, “he pushed Tucker as well.”

“I see. Will you be able to stay after school to answer some questions?”

“Of course, sir…just let me text my sister.”

“You better tell him how that bitch kicked my guts in,” Dale spat as he brushed past Kwan and dumped his tray. 

“Mr. Murray, language. Who kicked you?”

“Spider legs, combat boots, and freaky makeup. Who else?”

“You picked Sam up like you were gonna throw her across the room!” Danny growled with eyes flashing. 

Oh no, literally. 

Stupid! Danny stared straight back at the floor, but he had seen the look on Dale’s face. Who else saw?? How could he be this stupid? 

“You really are a freak, Fenton,” Dale said, recoiling. 

“Mr. Murray! Nurse’s office or mine. I will be speaking with you either way.”

“I don’t need a useless nurse, but Fenton needs something.” Danny could feel Dale’s eyes on him as the tall sophomore left with a shudder. 

Freak. You’re a freak. Everyone knows it. 

Lancer sighed and waved a hand at Paulina. His tone was sympathetic. “Miss Sanchez, do you need any help reaching the Nurse’s office?”

“No, sir,” She sniffed and began hurrying towards the exit, covering the blemish with both hands. 

Mr. Lancer turned to face Tucker. “Mr. Foley? Are you alright?”

“I am,” Tucker said with sagged shoulders. Danny could feel his worried stare. 

“Then why don’t you escort Miss Sanchez to the nurse’s, as a courtesy. Get yourself checked as well, just in case.”

Tucker swallowed. “B-but…”

Mr. Lancer raised an eyebrow. “Do you have a problem with that, Mr. Foley?”

“I--but she--” Tucker shrunk under Mr. Lancer’s expression. “Sam didn’t hit her for no reason, sir,” he mumbled, staring at his shoes.  

“There is no excuse for violence, Mr. Foley, but I won’t make you. Go to class, if you would rather.”

Tucker looked back at Danny as if he were trying to tell him something. No matter how much they’d joked about it though, the brothers from another mother would never share a telepathic connection. 

Tucker sighed. “Ok.” 

He left through the doors and made a sharp turn away from the Nurse’s. That was either a fuck Paulina or a fuck anything to do with needles and sickness. Danny had only recently come to understand Tucker’s nosocomephobia, and on a deeply personal level at that.  

What had Danny ever seen in Paulina, anyways? She was so mean…always had been. The only time she even pretended to be nice to him was when she was using him. Using him to piss off Sam, using him to…well, that had been Kitty. Though he had gotten a pretty good insiders’ look at the A-lister crowd. At least Kwan and Val were nicer these days, or maybe sadder. Paulina just seemed…worse.

“Miss Gray, is there something you wanted to say?” 

Valerie sounded grave and tired. 

“I’m just worried, is all. Have you read my paper, Mr. Lancer? About the long-term effects of ectoplasmic exposure?”

Mr. Lancer sighed. “Not yet, Miss Gray. I’m sure it is excellent.” He gave a short chuckle. “I remember a time when I would have written it off as fiction… What a strange world we live in now, Miss Gray.”

Danny felt those intense, dark eyes on his back. 

“Very strange, sir,” she agreed softly. 

“You’re going to be late, Miss Gray.”

“I can help him.”

Lancer turned with a raised eyebrow to face her. “Miss Gray, a few high school papers do not make you an expert in Ghost Science or Medicine.”

“And you think a school nurse would be qualified? For anything but applying an ice pack?” She challenged. 

Mr. Lancer’s expression hardened. “Please hurry to your next class, Miss Gray. I would hate to see your recent scholarship efforts go to waste on account of another absence.”

Valerie scowled and left before, Danny imagined, she could say anything that landed her in trouble with the rest of them.

The cafeteria was empty of all but Danny, Mr. Lancer, and the lunch ladies cleaning and gossiping away in the kitchen. Not that they were superhuman freaks that could hear the males’ conversation from all the way back there, behind solid walls and closed doors. 

Danny focused on his breathing. He didn’t care about some random history teacher cheating on…Ms. Tetslaff? Oh, God, the things he wished he never heard. At least when someone talked to him, he could drown everything else out. He was not smart enough to listen to more than one conversation at a time. 

“And last but certainly not least, Mr. Fenton…” Danny had barely moved this entire time, and Mr. Lancer’s voice was as cautious as his approaching footsteps. 

All Danny could do was stare at the one, stupid thing that would completely ruin his life. Ectoplasm. In his stomach. Why? It was the blood of his ghost half. Why was it in his human stomach? He had thrown up since The Accident like a normal person. Food chunks. Stomach acid. Mostly stomach acid.

Okay, maybe normal for a starving person, but still. 

He would’ve fought it more if he’d known it would be this. He would have swallowed it back down no matter how hard. It wasn’t fair. His mistakes kept stacking endlessly, one after another. Why!? What was he thinking trying to go ghost in the school cafeteria? It hadn’t worked, no, but it started all this—all these horrible feelings under his skin and in his head that wouldn’t go away even now, fully awake and so terribly aware. He felt as though he’d unlocked Pandora’s box and gotten sucked inside it. 

They were going to force him into a hospital. They were going to test him. The GIW were going to see the video. He was going to be locked away just like Vlad had been. Vlad had escaped, but Danny? He could never go home even if he managed to get free. His parents would be horrified…they would try to fix him or they would…they would…they wouldn’t…no.

We’re gonna peel that ghost like an onion! Dad jeered in his memory, aiming down the sights with the Fenton Peeler, imagining splitting Phantom apart molecule by molecule. 

Well we can't completely vaporize it, His mother replied, Don't you want to at least examine the remains? She had clasped her hands in delight. Oh, I would give anything to see what’s inside that ghost boy that makes it tick!

Mr. Lancer put a hand on his shoulder, where Tuck’s sweater still hung like a scarf, and Danny jumped. 

Mr. Lancer retracted quickly and said in a soft voice, “My apologies. Your parents informed me yesterday evening of what happened. I know for a fact how scary and strange a ghost attack can be. The things it can do to your body…”

Danny blinked away a few, stubborn tears that had leaked out and looked up at his aging teacher. Lancer’s forest-green eyes looked…haunted. The older man stared at his hands in an all too familiar way. The lines in his face seemed deeper and more numerous. Danny felt a surge of guilt as he remembered beating him up a couple months ago. Lancer had been possessed by a violent ghost, but still. 

“It’s part of the reason we have begun running the ghost shields as much as state funding will allow,” he reassured Danny, "I certainly feel safer these days. I am…very sorry if I ever disrespected your family before. They do good work, Mr. Fenton. They save lives. That’s something to take pride in, no matter what anyone else says.”

Danny nodded, but after a long moment he rasped, “Mr. Lancer…can you please not tell them about this?”

“Daniel…”

“I mean. About this,” he gestured to the ever-frothing pile of goo. 

Mr. Lancer was silent for a long moment. 

“Daniel…you realize my efforts to stop this from reaching the World Wide Web were futile, correct? I can mitigate it, I can punish it, but I can’t stop it.”

Danny let out a shuddering, icy breath. He couldn’t tell if it was his ghost sense or not. His whole body felt…split. Neither here, nor there… Wherever in hell there was. 

What had he done, what had he done…

“You look ill, Daniel. I’ll send you home, just let me—”

“No! I mean,” Danny shook his head as he caught Lancer’s alarmed expression, “Sorry, I mean, no. I’m fine, Mr. Lancer. I can’t miss another day; I have a test.”

Danny stood and swallowed the bile that tried to rise with him. He had to keep it together. He had to figure out a way to explain this. To everyone. 

“A test you can retake,” Mr. Lancer assured him. 

“No, I’m fine. It’s fine,” Danny said, even as every cell in his body screamed otherwise. 

Mr. Lancer studied him intently. Everyone was staring at him these past few days. He hated it. He hated feeling like this revolting spectacle for them to pity. Every time Danny started feeling halfway normal or good about himself, bull shit happened. 

“Forgive me for asking, Daniel, but…are you afraid of going home?”

All color drained from Danny’s face. He shook his head. He loved his parents. He loved his stupid house. You couldn’t love something and be terrified of it, right?

“I am in a lot of trouble for sneaking out, Mr. Lancer,” Danny replied with a dry smile. “But it’s not…it’s not like that. I just. Don’t want to keep missing class. You said it yourself, ‘the least I can do is show up.’”

Danny walked away, ignoring Lancer’s wince. Just before he opened the doors, however, he said, “Mr. Lancer, if you get the chance, tell the janitor that ectoplasm comes off with sodium hydroxide and elbow grease. My parents have better and less toxic cleaning agents…but that should work on the fly, if he’s got drain cleaner or anything like that.”

“Daniel, wait--”

Danny left without another word. 

On his way to Algebra, he knew he would find Tucker there, as far away from the Nurse’s office as physically possible. 

Sam though…Sam would be gone. It was probably his fault, somehow. Most things were.

Certainly this pain. Certainly all this…

Chapter Text

Jasmine “Jazz” Fenton flipped open her pocket agenda and crossed out the entire page. She considered crossing out next week as well, but who knew when indefinitely would end? A rhetorical, nigh oxymoronic question, who only the insane would dare muse.

Write your entire schedule in ink, she had thought. The permanence will help you commit to plans. 

She snapped the book shut and massaged her temple. 

Her mistake for believing anything resembling consistency was possible in her nutso family. 

Until her parents decided to free Danny from a rather...concerning punishment, she would have to write in pencil. Perhaps flexibility was a more realistic mental state she should embrace. 

Whatever. This whole mess was giving her a migraine. 

Jazz peered out the library entrance from where she waited to inform Dash Baxter that tutoring would have to be rescheduled (indefinitely). Worst case scenario she would have to take both him and Danny home after school. 

Jazz cringed at the thought. 

She knew Dash picked on Danny. She also knew her brother was in an incredibly delicate state of mind since Monday’s incident, and that any further stressors could cause him to shut down entirely.

Of course, if Danny would just tell me the extent of the harassment instead of shrugging it off every time I ask, maybe I could make a more decisive judgement call on the issue. But nooooo, he leaves me on limbo, and no one will tell me anything about anything and I always have to figure it out myself--

Jazz took a deep, calming breath and pulled out her phone. 

3:45 pm. Dash was fifteen minutes late. Which meant she was fifteen minutes late to drive Danny home. She sent her brother a text, letting him know (not that he would acknowledge it). Then she frowned, looking at the endless blue line of frantic, unread texts above it.

She understood why their parents were so mad. They didn’t know the full story. She didn’t know the full story. She had hoped that...once he knew that she knew about his powers, he would open up more. That he might trust her more now that she kept his secret too. Very foolishly, perhaps, she thought it would be fun. Her little brother, having superpowers and taunting their parents with his flying tricks and quips. At the very least she wished he would tell her where he was going. Instead, he avoided her. Ignored her texts. Refused to talk about anything. One of these days she feared Danny would get himself killed out there, and no one would even know, because he never told anyone when or where or why! 

Does he...resent me?

Jazz sunk to the floor and stared at her shoes.

She should not make assumptions. Danny had his reasons. If he ever wanted to, he would tell her. Until then, she would just try her best to be supportive. He had so little help out there. Sam and Tucker were just kids like him. 

And they’re kids like you…who can’t drive yet.

Jazz watched another minute tick by on her phone. She had hoped to run into Dash before the final bell--he often tried to find her between classes--but she had never seen him. Not once today, of all days, the one day she had to cancel. For the first time in months since she had done it, she regretted deleting and blocking Dash’s phone number. She refused to talk about anything but schoolwork during their sessions, so he had taken that as an invitation to spam her inbox. During class. After tutoring. At three in the morning. 

At least he paid well. Exceptionally well. With money like that, he could probably just cheat and find a “tutor” who would do the homework for him. Which as a matter of fact, during their first few sessions, had been his expectation. 

Not Jazz though, she made him do the work. All of it. Though it was often akin to pulling teeth, Dash Baxter earned every B he made. Which was the minimum requirement for staying on the football team, but he had done it honestly just the same. She gave him due credit and praised any breakthrough he made, as she would for any other student. Dash, however, craved approval. His eyes would sparkle, and he would flash this almost shy smile whenever she applauded his successes. 

Unfortunately, inadvertently, he had developed a hard crush on her. 

Jazz might have considered dating him. He was pretty, heart-wrenchingly so. He was the most popular kid in school. He was fairly rich. The A-listers club had connections to some of the most powerful and wealthy families in Casper High’s school district. It would be so much easier to become whatever she wanted, be that a brain surgeon or psychologist or both if they went steady until her graduation. 

Despite all this, he repulsed her. Because in his heart, Dash was an entitled jackass. 

The star quarterback suffered from delusions of strict social hierarchy and his behavior was indicative of an authoritarian mindset. His opinions often slipped out despite his attempts to seem chivalrous towards her--which might function as another indicator, actually. Chivalry, at least in the modern sense of the word, was often a self-serving performance that operated on principle rather than true consideration of the people it claimed to serve. In short, it was infantilizing and insensitive when accompanied by forceful persistence. The way he talked about people--particularly women--he didn’t like, suggested misogyny. He was painfully sexist, a mentality that he directed inwards as well. He buried the softer aspects of himself under aggression and hostility whenever such sentimentalities arose. He was ashamed of his passions outside of football, such as popular boy bands and romantic dramas. Most disturbing of all, however, Dash was only kind to those he considered deserving of his kindness. His respect for others was arbitrarily earned and relinquished. It had poor indications on his upbringing. Jazz suspected his parents harbored conditional love for him, with precious, few rewards and ample critique. She dared not speculate further, as his parents were certainly a sensitive issue, and Jazz knew he needed a proper therapist without, frankly, their own dysfunctional dynamic.

Her phone vibrated in her hand. 

Dash is in detention, Danny texted back, can you hurry, plz?

Well, that explained a lot. 

Of course, she had noticed her peers whispering and gossiping all day, but she never got the details. She had only heard snippets, something about a kid with ‘melted glowsticks.’ Did that have anything to do with it? She didn’t know. Be it at school or home, Jazz was never part of the in-crowd. 

Jazz pursed her lips as she texted Danny back, On my way.

So now he replies, she grumbled internally, pulling on her jacket and backpack. She pushed the library door open--covered with crudely drawn but lovely posters of We ♥ Phantom--and started a brisk pace down the hall. When he needs something. When he doesn’t have a choice. 

Jazz sighed and concluded that she’d have to hold Danny at gunpoint to get him to tell her anything at all. 

She would be half right. 

Jazz tried to exit the building, but jolted in surprise as someone caught and held the door open from outside. A sturdy, young girl with pretty box braids and a ketchup-stained shirt greeted her. 

“Thanks,” she said curtly, without even looking at Jazz. “They locked the doors and I left something important inside.”

She looked rather upset as she walked stiffly past Jazz, who raised an eyebrow when she heard the girl mutter under her breath, “It’s not my fault if that dumbass kills himself. It’s not my fault he won’t accept help...”

Well, that sounded serious. Jazz could certainly relate to such problems. 

Wait, she recognized that girl. 

“Valerie?” Jazz called out, “Valerie Gray, right?”

The freshman turned around in brief confusion, but upon recognizing Jazz, froze in place. 

“J-Jasmine. Fenton. Of course,” Valerie said strangely. 

“Please,” the junior replied warmly. “Everyone calls me Jazz.”

“Right.”

Jazz furrowed her brow and tried to discern Valerie’s bizarre behavior.

Ah, of course. Monday’s incident. Valerie was involved somehow. Jazz surmised it wasn’t what her parents thought, however. Valerie probably expected Jazz to pull out the ‘protective older sister’ act. 

“I heard you helped my brother a couple days ago,” Jazz smiled in assurance. 

For some reason, Valerie only tensed more. The freshman narrowed her eyes into slits and seemed ready to retort back sharply, but she stopped herself. 

“And how do you mean by that?” she asked in abrupt calmness, searching Jazz’s eyes with an intense, intelligent gaze. 

She’s testing me? Jazz wondered, baffled. About Monday? About Danny?

Jazz hesitated. 

Did Valerie know Danny’s secret…?

Just another piece of vital information she would have to drag out of Danny and his friends. Ugh. 

It would explain so much though. Jazz knew Danny had gotten hurt during a ghost hunt. She knew Valerie had helped him but lacked the specifics (had she helped Danny Fenton or Phantom?). Valerie had covered for him though, and now their parents thought Danny had snuck out to see her. That story could hurt Valerie’s reputation even more than Danny’s.

Considering these factors, the probability was very high. 

Not absolute, however. 

“Tucker said you practically saved his life, is all,” said Jazz with a noncommittal shrug. 

Valerie’s brow furrowed, momentarily perplexed by Jazz’s ambiguity. At least she seemed less defensive, even as her hickory-brown gaze narrowed in suspicion. 

“Really,” Valerie stated. “He and his friends don’t seem particularly grateful about it.”

Jazz sighed. “They have trust issues. Don’t take it personally.”

Valerie frowned and turned away. 

“Well, it feels pretty personal,” she muttered. “I stuck my neck out for him and…” Valerie sighed. “Anyways. You should hurry before Danny throws up anymore ‘glow sticks.’”

Jazz blinked. 

Danny was the melted glow sticks kid??

“Wait what--” 

Valerie had vanished. Jazz stared down the empty hall and rolled her eyes. 

“Oh great, another kid with the cryptic disappearing act,” she grumbled, stepping outside and into the windy, November chill. “Two peas in a pod, her and Danny.”

Between Jazz’s building sense of unease, flustered guilt upon being so late, and the dreadful weather, her pace broke into a sprint (mindful of traffic). She spotted her car easily within the sparse parking lot and was near breathless by the time she made it across the asphalt. 

“Oh my gosh, Danny, I’m so sorry I’m late. I had to change my whole schedule and I didn’t know about Dash and--”

Her words fell off into nothing as she stared at Danny with his back against her rear wheel, hugging his knees tight, face hidden under a mess of dark hair, and sitting still as death. 

This was...not right. 

“Danny?” she asked in a small voice.  

His fingers twisted into the fabric of his jeans, and he made a quiet sound like a whimper. 

“Are you okay?”

Two, dark blue, baggy eyes peered from under raven-black hair slicked with sweat. 

Do I look okay? They asked. 

Jazz chewed her lip. 

“We need to talk, Jazz,” he said out loud. His voice was raw, as though he had spent the past couple hours swallowing sandpaper. “Can we...go. Now?”

“Yes, yes of course, Danny,” she answered quickly, unlocking the car doors with a chiming beep beep! She leaned down to help him up, but he recoiled. 

“No--don’t. Please. I can...I can get up.”

She gripped her arms tight as she watched him drag himself up to his feet. His entire body shook, and he froze in place every few moments, reminding her of a broken wind-up toy, sputtering and disjointed in predetermined motion. 

She felt ill, watching him suffer.

Jazz opened the passenger door for him, and Danny’s nigh emaciated, narrow body climbed inside. She was grateful her old Ford convertible hovered so close to the ground. Once Danny had seated himself, she shut it after him and hurried to get behind the wheel. 

The old girl rumbled to life and Danny gripped the armrest with a shudder. Jazz’s crystal-blue eyes widened in alarm when she saw a mist of cool air escape his lips. 

“Danny,” she began urgently, “I have a thermos in the glove compartment. I don’t have any ghost weapons though. I think it’s illegal? At least to bring it to school. Do ghost guns count as firearms? Anyways, I think it may be best to--”

He grit his teeth with an annoyed expression. “I don’t think it’s my ghost sense, Jazz. I’m just cold.”

Jazz twisted around in her seat to look behind as they backed out. With the roof pulled all the way up, the blind spots were terrible.  

“Cold?” She asked him. “As in you feel cold?”

He shot her a cross look. Jazz gestured with her free hand indignantly. 

“You’re never cold, Danny. You could walk into an icebox with nothing but swim trunks and say, ‘the weather here is great!’”

A soft smile flitted across his lips at her bad attempt to deepen her voice. She smiled back, just as slight. 

“I’d never make it as a voice actor, huh? Well, here--” she cranked up the heat--”that might help.”

Danny looked unchanged but thanked her flatly.  

Jazz turned sharply onto the main road, and Danny bent over in pain, looking rather like he was about to hurl. 

Oh, she really hoped he wouldn't do that in her clean car. Not that--that was any sort of priority.

“Sorry, Danny!” she apologized. “I have to keep up with traffic. I heard you were sick?”

“You could...say that.” His voice sounded even worse. 

“We can take this slow. I’ll pull over as soon as I can.”

He popped open the glove compartment and pulled out the Fenton Thermos. She shot him a confused glance. 

“That...that would be good,” he said calmly, no indication of a ghost attack impending, “No people though… I don’t know how much longer I can--” he bent over again and covered his mouth. His whole body shook with tremors. 

Jazz watched the curbside for any spot to turn to and a bead of perspiration slid down her brow. 

“Um. Danny, I know you don’t feel well, and don’t feel too rushed when I ask, but you said there was something you wanted to talk about? Perhaps related somehow to the fact you look and sound like you’re actually dying?”

He still covered his mouth but nodded. She caught a glimpse of something glowing fluorescent green between his fingers. Something akin to…melted glow sticks.

That’s definitely not normal. ...Even for this family. 

Jazz pulled over onto the first right shoulder she was offered. Danny threw open the door, stumbled out of the car, and vomited onto the grass. Jazz’s eyes bulged in shock as she recognized the tell-tale glow of ectoplasm. He was vomiting ectoplasm. A lot of it. 

All that gossip today… The whole school had seen this. Mocked him for this.

Jazz grinded her teeth. 

That’s why nobody would tell me, she thought, enraged. They knew I’d tear them apart. 

Valerie though...who was that girl? She had been talking about Danny, hadn’t she? She had known about this. She had been worried about Danny getting himself killed.

Jazz squeezed her eyes shut, but she couldn’t block out the sounds of her brother almost certainly dying less than five feet away. She wondered if he had been poisoned. This...this had to run its course, though. 

It seemed like ages before his retching stopped. She heard his labored breathing for another eternity. Finally, his shoulders sagged, releasing all tension, and exhaustion took its place. He popped open the thermos and cleaned everything up before crawling back inside. He stared at the floor, still breathing heavily next to her. 

Silence overtook them, until Danny smiled that classic, rueful, Danny smile. “I’ve been holding that in all day.”

He seemed marginally better, at least, but sounded a thousand times worse. It was as though he had just expelled a bundle of knives from his throat. 

“Side note,” he rasped in humor, “What’s the word for the fear of cars, Jazz?”

“Amaxophobia,” she replied automatically, her heart racing in her chest, “But you might remember motorphobia better.”

“Motorphobia…” he repeated, still grinning. “Yah, by the time this week’s over with, I’m gonna have that…”

Jazz stared at him. “Is that what happened? A car accident? A ghost car accident?”

He laughed. She would have felt better if it sounded less painful. 

“No,” he chortled still, “but getting rocked around like a plastic dolphin trapped inside a water wiggly sure makes everything worse after getting stabbed by a crazy, spear lady.”

He let out a long, shaking sigh and slid back into his seat. 

“Sorry for ignoring you, Jazz. Had…so much on my mind. Forgot.” 

Danny closed his eyes. 

“Got any napkins?” He asked a moment later. A thin layer of dried ectoplasm caked his mouth and chin. 

Jazz grabbed the entire wad from the side pocket and handed it to him. He was careful not to touch her as he received them. She shivered despite his efforts. He radiated cold. Almost like…an anti-fever of sorts.  

“Thanks,” he said again, without sarcasm. 

She watched him wipe away the gunk with growing unease. The smell of it was vile—bile mixed with extra-dimensional goop. Were there words for that? Ectoplasm had a very chemical odor, akin to ozone, but more…musty. 

Igh. She wanted to gag as well. 

Instead, Jazz reached back for her school bag and pulled out a water bottle. 

“It’s probably warm by now,” she told him, “but here’s some water. You’re probably dehydrated, and your throat sounds…bad.”

He accepted it, but only stared at its clear contents. His eyes, so much like the open sea, frothed like waves at war with itself. 

Instead of drinking, he twisted off the cap and drizzled it onto the remaining napkins to help clean the rest of his face. 

“We can stop and get some ginger ale,” she offered. 

He shuddered. That was a no, then. 

“Jazz, if I put anything in my mouth right now, I will start spewing again.”

The soiled napkins went down the thermos when he opened the cover. So it could hold terrestrial things as well? Or was it because of the ecto-contamination? Maybe she was thinking about it too much—it used to be a regular old thermos before all the real craziness began. 

Before reality shattered. 

Danny let out another, shaking sigh and held his midsection in an odd manner, as if trying to placate his unsettled, internal organs. Or perhaps, more disturbingly, he looked as though he were trying to physically hold himself together.

“Tucker and I discussed it every second between classes today,” he told her in that uncomfortable, scratchy voice. 

Jazz took note of the omission of Sam. Did something happen to her as well?

“I tried to force my ghost out,” he continued, “but it was hiding for a reason, I think. I got hurt badly last Monday. My ghost took the full blow. I—“ he convulsed in pain again— “I need to fix it!” He gasped. “I need to—the Ghost Zone. I have to get to the Zone or I think I’m going to—“ Danny clenched his teeth as another wave of agony rolled over him. 

Jazz started the car back up and drove. Carefully. Quickly. 

She felt her eyes swell with tears but blinked them away. She had to stay strong for Danny. She could cry later, in relief, when he was miraculously okay again. 

Or if he—

“Danny,” she whispered, “I know you really, really don’t want to, but we’re not getting into the Fenton Portal without Mom and Dad knowing.”

His breathing became frantic. She feared she had triggered a panic attack. “There has to be a way, Jazz. I thought…you were supposed to be…a genius. Please, please, can you figure something out?”

Jazz’s heart stung at the breathless desperation in his voice. 

“Danny,” she sounded hollow, “If it's this serious you should tell them—“

“Jazz. I’m begging you. Please. I’ll—I’ll do all the chores for a month. No, as long as you want. I’ll always text you back. I’ll—I’ll—” something in his voice broke—“I’ll let you psychoanalyze me, you can write your college thesis on how fucked my brain is, I don’t care just—“ he convulsed into a ball once again—“Just don’t tell anyone it’s me,” he cried, either in physical or emotional pain. She couldn’t tell. 

“Please,” he whispered. 

The road blurred in front of her, and Jazz couldn’t stop the streaks from pouring down. 

“Is—is that what you think of me, Danny? That I would…”

Jazz knew she could unnerve people with her constant speculation of their behavior—of her own behavior. She kept most of those thoughts to herself now, but perhaps it filtered out. Maybe everyone still thought she was...even her little brother thought--

The rational part of her mind stepped in. 

Danny suffered from paranoia, anxiety, depression, and almost certainly PTSD. She had to remember that. She had to remember he didn’t mean these things, or didn’t mean them in that way, especially in such a distressing physical and mental state. This was fear and pain talking, not Danny.

It’s not about you, it’s not about you, it’s not about you—

She took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. 

“Okay, Danny.” She sniffed. “I’ll help you. Not because of any of that, though.” 

“You…mean it?” He looked up at her in near disbelief and hope beyond hope. 

More tears spilled down her face. “I’m your big sister, stupid. Of course I’ll help you.” 

“You…thank you—“ he shuddered again as that aberrant pain seized him—“so much, Jazz.”

She nodded towards the distance, distracted by a whirlwind of thoughts.

How does Danny get into the Ghost Zone without Mom and Dad knowing?

The rational part of Jazz reeled against the very idea, Crazy, this is crazy! 

But she had to, for Danny’s sake. 

The sane option was to tell Mom and Dad, but the more she thought, the more she realized Danny’s fears were not unfounded. Even if she told them, there was no way she could predict their reaction to this under such short notice. The only thing she knew for certain was that they would never let Danny go through the portal in such a state. Too dangerous. Too crazy, even for them. They didn’t trust Danny at all right now. They would try something else, anything else, but they wouldn’t listen. Not about anything concerning ghosts. Not about what was best for their son. 

Oh, the dangerous arrogance of experts.  

Her mind swelled and raced even further at the implications of this problem. 

Danny had been grounded yesterday. Their parents were in poor moods and even more stressed from lack of sleep. They checked on Danny throughout the night. They were extremely vigilant of him right now. This was the first day of his effective punishment. They would be greatly frustrated or upset if he was unable to work in the lab—but they couldn’t know why he was unable—

“I need time to think,” Jazz said, clenching the wheel as if she intended to snap it in half. “How much longer can you last?”

“As long as it takes,” Danny replied, balling his trembling fists and staring at them with fierce determination. “As long as you need.”

Chapter Text

He’s too good at this, Jazz thought, disturbed as her brother forced down the worst of his symptoms, adorned the mask of a reasonably sullen teenager, and walked through the door. 

Danny had always been good at hiding. Even when they were kids, he had a knack for disappearing, and he was so unbelievably stubborn he would skip dinner to win a game of hide and seek. It had been one of the few games Danny could ever beat her at, and apparently this skill extended to total-eclipsing his inner world. 

Jazz suspected he would also beat her at poker. 

Moreover, Danny now had powers to turn invisible and a daunting resolve to conceal his ghostly abilities from their own parents. Their ghost hunting parents. Their world’s leading experts of ectoparalogy parents. For a living, they invented ghost detectors, ecto-cleaners, and all sorts of defensive, anti-ghost machines that ran automatically throughout the house day and night.

Only Danny could maintain such a secret. 

Even so, Mom and Dad had to suspect something was up with him, but between his clandestine tendencies and the sheer impossibility of his condition, even they could not guess the truth. 

Jazz sure hadn’t. The supposed prodigal genius had only discovered it by sheer chance. She had never suspected.  

Sure, Danny had the same face as his ghost, even had the same scars peeking out from underneath his inverted lab suit, but who even got close enough to see through all that glow? He had an uncanny speed in his other form, somersaulting, backflipping, and darting a hundred feet above ground. Phantom’s other-wordly luminescence obscured every picture taken of him. His eyes were beaming, neon green lights, his hair floated like wisps of white smoke, and his voice took on this surreal, haunting echo. 

Phantom was an alien. A beloved and kindly one, by most accounts, but a real live alien. 

He was also, impossibly, her little brother, who was probably dying. 

She used to think he couldn’t. At least, not really.   

“Mom! Da--” Jazz’s normal announcement fell off when she saw their parents sitting at the kitchen table, looking directly at them with ill-humored expressions. 

“You’re an hour late, Jasmine,” Mom said with a frown, turning the page of a lengthy, stapled mound of papers. Jazz noted the dark bags under her eyes, comparable to Danny’s (which was deeply concerning, because Danny had serious insomnia). Mom typed into a calculator with autonomous practice and jotted the numbers down onto a notepad. 

Dad blinked away a glassy look in his eyes, having nearly fallen asleep over his own stack. 

A pot of hamburger helper simmered on the stove behind them. The warm, savory smell made her stomach growl. She had forgotten her hunger, in the midst of all this craziness.

Danny, however, waned at the aroma. He looked down and pressed a closed fist over his mouth and nose, as if he were doing an impression of Augusta Rodin’s The Thinker. 

“Did you get stuck in traffic, Princess?” Dad slurred in exhaustion. 

Jazz glanced at Danny, who had put down his hand and stared ahead with a near flawless impassivity. The only indicator of anything wrong, besides his pallor and light perspiration, was his breathing: a shuddering, subtle susurration through his nose. 

The most assiduous eye would doubt the full scale of what he obscured. 

Jazz did not like the implications of that at all.

I’ve been holding that in all day, his raw, joking words echoed in her mind. 

Jazz cleared her throat. “A little bit, but it’s mostly my fault. I couldn’t find Dash after school today to reschedule our tutoring sessions. Turns out he got detention.” She looked at her brother again and sighed. “Also Danny is sick.”

All three of them shot her a look and Jazz sunk her head between her shoulders like a nervous turtle. Danny’s eyes, in particular, flashed in warning (not literally). 

Mom looked away with a sigh. “We did get a call, but they didn’t send him home.” She stood up with a stretch and walked over. “Are you alright, Danny? You haven’t said a word.”

Danny coughed and gave a shrug.

“His throat is pretty sore,” Jazz explained. “He’s been um...throwing up a bit. The car ride made it worse.” Jazz shuddered despite herself. 

Danny stared at the floor and Mom’s eyes softened. 

“Don’t worry about the lab, our plans got canceled today. Are you hungry?”

Danny shook his head with a bit too much vigor. 

Mom reached up to his forehead and Danny tensed. 

“Oosh!” she shivered. “Baby, you’re cold as ice. Go upstairs and rest. I’ll warm up some heat packs. Get some homework done if you can. No games though.”

Danny nodded slowly and started moving towards the stairs. 

“First rule of The Talk, son: don’t kiss sick girls,” Dad teased as he trudged by. 

A hint of color returned to Danny’s face and Mom shook her head. 

“Jack,” she admonished, “it was forty degrees Fahrenheit last Monday night, not including wind-chill! He probably caught a cold walking around without any real clothes on. At least he’s dressed warmly now...” She paused, and her head tilted in surprise. “Is that Tucker’s sweater?” 

Jazz had not even questioned it. The yellow, woolly fabric sagged down past Danny’s knees and well over his arms. He looked so small and thin in the oversized garment, which (as a fashion choice?) was a tad oversized on Tucker as well. Tucker had grown as tall as Jazz, and both of them were a head taller than Danny. Jazz suspected Danny still had her thermos hidden somewhere within the deep, baggy folds. A thermos she would never ever touch again (he could have it).

“Just…cold,” Danny whispered. 

Mom frowned at the sound of his voice. Jazz could see the beginnings of panic in her acute gaze. 

Shit. 

“That was nice of him to lend it to you,” Jazz piped up, hoping to distract and diffuse Mom’s (valid) misgivings. 

Danny smiled and nodded. He looked enervated but genuine. 

Mom relaxed a bit. 

He was too good at this. 

Danny arrived at the base of the stairs and hesitated on the first step. 

Can he make it up there on his own? she worried.

Jazz started to move towards him. Maybe she could find a way to help him without alarming Mom and Dad--

Danny started climbing, slowly, with an adjacent semblance to the disjointed, mechanical movements she had seen in the parking lot. He managed to make it smoother and faster, however. Convincing, so convincing. Unless one noticed his white-knuckled grip on the railing, he only looked like a tired, moderately sick teenager. 

Not at all like a boy with potentially shredding internal organs, or one potentially poisoned by interdimensional goop, or one who had been stabbed by a ‘crazy spear lady’ two days ago. 

Her ignorance of these matters frightened her. 

Honest to God, she had no idea what was wrong with him. She could only guess. She could only trust him, as he had trusted her. 

Yes, trust her pathological lying, little brother. 

Who had finally, desperately, opened up to her. 

And had terrified her to the absolute core with a glimpse of the truth. 

Jazz suppressed the urge to follow him up to his room despite the lack of necessity. 

I’m fine, he always said. 

Jazz knew he wasn’t, even before, but she had never known he could hide something as bad as this!

Jazz bit her lip and looked away. 

Well, Phase One was complete: get Danny out of Mom and Dad’s sight and free of lab duties. 

Easy...

Jazz jumped a bit when Mom placed her hand on her shoulder. “You look worried, Jazz. Is there something going on with Danny I should know about?”

The color drained from Jazz’s face. Every instinct begged her to answer her mother honestly. Mom would fix things. Mom would know what to do. Mom could help Danny. Mom knew everything there was to know about ghosts and ectoplasm and…

“He’s just sick, Mom,” Jazz replied. “He’ll be alright after some rest.”

Mom kissed her cheek. “Well, that’s a relief.”

Dad gave her a thumbs up. 

It hurt how much they trusted her.

“On another hand, Jazz…” the older woman seemed uncharacteristically sheepish, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen a vial of dried, red ecto-residue anywhere, have you?”

Jazz blinked. “No, why? Is it important?”

Her mother nodded seriously with trembling lips. “I...I don’t know how I lost it. It was our one clue to finding that horrible ghost which attacked your brother. I was going to use the sample in an ecto-locator prototype your father and I’ve been working on. Danny incinerated the rest of the evidence--which he’s supposed to get rid of anything that soiled in ecto-contamination--but…” 

“Mads, I’m telling you,” Dad called from the kitchen, pulling out four, large bowls from the cabinet as the stove timer went off, “Teleporting ghost! It even explains how Danny ended up all the way in Hardwick. That’s fifty miles outside of Amity!”

Mom shook her head. “Teleporting is improbable, Jack. Not to mention impossible of a dismembered sample! We’ve discussed this--”

“Well crusty ectoplasm is also impossible. It doesn’t crust, it oozes.”

“That’s why it’s a residue, not plasm!” Her mother sighed again. “Well, Jazz, if you find anything like that, let me know. Your father and I have looked just about everywhere.”

“I’ll keep my eyes peeled, Mom,” Jazz nodded firmly. 

I hope we do find it, Jazz thought, clenching her fists as she considered all the agony this ‘crazy spear lady’ had caused Danny, I hope you and Dad tear that ghost to shreds. 

Jazz took a deep breath. Vengeance could wait, Danny needed help right now. She had to prepare for Phase Two. 

Jazz swallowed her nerves and approached the kitchen table where Mom had begun clearing it of all office work. Jazz noticed some scary looking bills and other papers stamped with the Vladco logo. 

There was something about that man both Mom and Danny were keeping from her. He unnerved them for some reason. 

Why were Mom and Dad looking over Vlad’s business papers? Why did Danny hate him after Vlad had, according to their parents, saved him twice: once after the invasion and again yesterday? Both those instances had left Danny severely weakened. Both those instances had involved Valerie as well. 

Danny and his friends didn’t trust either of them. 

Coincidence or direct association?

Yet another crucial gap in her knowledge. 

“Can I talk to you guys about something?” Jazz asked, taking a seat across from them both. 

“If this is about Danny’s punishment,” Mom warned, “your father and I have discussed it. Until that ghost is neutralized, he stays inside a shield or with one of us.” She thanked Dad for the bowl full of supper with a quick kiss. “Though he’ll be free to play games and invite his friends over in two weeks, assuming he doesn’t break the rules again.” She stirred the molten lava impatiently, waiting for it to cool. “Unfortunately, your father and I will not be able to drive him ourselves. Our own schedule is about to change…dramatically.” There was a twinge of dread in her voice as she continued, “We will be very busy.”

“Speaking of which,” Dad said with a smile as he placed Jazz’s bowl in front of her with a light kiss on the top of her head, “We wanted to give you a few things. Just in case.”

“Things she needs to learn to use,” Mom said sternly as she blew over her spoon, raising a skeptical eyebrow at Dad.

“I have perfect faith in her,” he said with an insider’s wink towards Jazz. He snuck something into her hand from under the table. It was small and metallic. She stole a glance of it and felt her heart race as she recognized the lipstick ectoblaster. 

Right. Mom didn’t know about that time a bunch of ghosts attacked the house while it was just her and Dad. 

Jazz paled as her hand closed around the deceptively powerful weapon. 

Good, she reasoned against the panic rising in her chest, I might need it tonight. In the Ghost Zone. Thanks, Dad. 

Finally, Dad set down an empty bowl in Danny’s spot, almost reverently. Mom’s eyes lingered on it.

Then Dad sighed and sat down with his own steaming bowl. His calloused hands barely felt the heat. He must have had a calloused mouth as well, because normally, he would have inhaled his food by now. Not today though. 

“Jazz…” he began slowly, reluctantly, “you know all about those mental problems and such. Do you think that…” He looked at Danny’s empty seat with a pained expression. “Do any of them make it hard to eat?”

Jazz almost choked. She had not expected this diversion whatsoever. She had not expected Dad of all people to ask her… Her grip tightened on her spoon. 

“Well, he’s physically ill right now—“ Jazz said quickly. 

“He never eats, Jasmine,” Mom said quietly. “Not nearly enough.”

Anxiety, paranoia, insomnia, depression, Jazz mentally listed his known symptoms. …Suicidal tendencies? 

The Accident…had that been…

No, no, no, no, Danny was trying very hard to stay alive right now. He wasn’t suicidal. Probably. 

“Most mental disorders have an effect on eating habits, yes,” Jazz finally answered. “Particularly ones with anxiety or depression.”

The three of them looked down at their scarcely touched bowls. 

A small, rueful smirk curled her lips. 

Case in point.

“It can also make you want to eat more, or even binge. Anxiety—specifically anxiety about weight—is the root cause of eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia.”

“How do you spell that, Jazz?” Mom asked, pulling out her phone. 

Jazz balked. “Oh, gosh, Mom. I don’t know if Danny has that! Only Danny can know what’s causing his symptoms, and the only way to properly diagnose the issue would be consultation with a professional. That or if he identified his own symptoms with research…or if he just…”

Talked. Honestly. With me, with himself. Someone. Anyone.

Jazz shook her head. “The point is, only Danny knows, even if he doesn’t have the words for it.” Jazz glanced up the stairs. “I can only speculate.”

“And how do you speculate?” Mom questioned.

Those incisive eyes bored into Jazz, the eyes of one of the smartest and most pertinacious women in the world. 

Jazz swallowed. 

PTSD PTSD PTSD--

“GAD, perhaps?” Jazz peeped. 

“E-gad?” Dad exclaimed weakly. 

Mom shot him a cross look and Jazz deflated into her seat with an embarrassed groan.  

“GAD, or General Anxiety Disorder,” Jazz elaborated, straightening in her seat, “is characterized by extreme and chronic anxiety. Symptoms include insomnia, fatigue, irritability, timorousness, and nausea, to name a few.”

Obsessive planning. Indecisiveness. Constant and never-ending fear of impending doom. 

Maybe Danny shared her habits. Maybe they could exchange coping mechanisms. 

“But seriously,” Jazz said softly, “I don’t know what goes on in his head. None of us do. Don’t make assumptions.”

Yah, Jazz, said a snide, internal voice, don’t do that. 

How many years had she believed her parents suffered from delusions and possible schizophrenia? For how many years had she been so humiliatingly wrong?

She could be wrong about Danny too. She could be wrong right now. She could be making the wrong decision about hiding this from them, she could be failing Danny regardless, wasting precious time as he suffered through God knows what up there, waiting for her to initiate the plan so he could get some sort of mystical Ghost Zone treatment—

Mom typed into her phone and looked depressed at what she found. “We’ll…we’ll look into this, Jazz. We just…have to find someone we can trust.”

Her parents shared a somber look, and then Mom abruptly stood and walked over to the stove. She began boiling a small pot of water. 

Jazz should have felt exuberant. Finally, Mom and Dad were taking Mental Health seriously. Finally, Danny would get professional help. Finally, Danny could get treatment and consultation. Perhaps she could privately reach out to the therapist herself, make sure they at least knew about The Accident--even Danny could not hide the evidence of his scarring. They didn’t need to know about Phantom to help and identify trauma...they just wouldn’t know it was on-going. Anything was better than nothing though, right?  

But all she could think was, If Danny survives to find out he’s getting a therapist, he’s going to kill me.

He will never trust me again.

Jazz couldn’t bring herself to dissuade them, regardless. 

Initiating Phase Two was more important, after all. 

She took a deep breath and opened her mouth to finally get on with the plan--

“Oh, that’s right...I nearly forgot, Jazz,” said Dad suddenly, looking through his pockets for something. “Ah, here we go!” He slid an envelope across the table with her name in big, sloppy cursive. “A little thanks from us for being such a good sport about this whole mess. I know you hate it when things don’t go as planned, Princess.”

Jazz pocketed it with what she hoped was a normal, contented smile.

Dad seemed surprised she didn’t open it. His fingers tapped nervously on the table as he spoke. “That will ah, cover your gas expenses for a while. There’s also plenty left over to go into your college fund—or if you’d like to treat yourself with something nice.” He laughed. “I promise you don’t need to worry about that fund, Sweetheart. You’re so smart, the scholarships will come flooding in for as many doctorates as you want! There’s gonna be two Dr. Fentons in this family,” he said, winking at his wife. 

Mom dropped the heat packs into the pot and threw back a small, proud grin. 

Jazz raised her eyebrows. “Oh, oh, th-thanks, Dad.”

I am NOT good at this. 

“Is something wrong, Jazz?” her father’s deep, dark blue eyes were gentle, balmy. 

Nothing, at all! Danny’s just maybe dying upstairs while your stupid daughter lies to your face about everything!

Jazz stared at her bowl as tears started to form. She couldn’t hide the fact she was upset. She wasn’t like Danny, who could just shove everything down with nonchalance and wry jokes. 

“It’s just…” Jazz sniffed deeply, “This isn’t what I wanted to… Are you guys getting any sleep tonight?” 

Mom looked over her shoulder and they both stared at her. 

“Jazz? Why—“

She had wanted to be rational about this. She had planned for a proper and factual debate with her parents about the importance of self-care and safety. 

Instead, Jazz clutched her hair and months of terrible frustration and fear spilled from her mouth, “Because you guys work with dangerous equipment and chemicals and you haven’t slept in days and sleep deprivation can increase the odds of fatal accidents by twenty percent or more!”

She buried her head into her hands as the tears poured out. 

“Thousands of people die every year because they force themselves into hazardous work while drowsy! They’re too tired to think, too tired to react, they make little mistakes that-that end up costing everything.”

Danny, Mom, Dad, all of them doing these crazy, dangerous things without taking care of themselves first. Danny fighting for his life and playing hero while he got no sleep and barely ate anything. 

“You guys didn’t check the ecto-filtration last night,” she stammered. “It was ten degrees into the caution threshold, and Mom, you never lose things, especially something so important, and—and—“

She had not noticed Dad get up from his seat. He wrapped his strong, warm arms around her, and she felt his shuddering breaths against her shoulder.  

“It’s not your job to worry about us, Baby Girl,” he choked. 

She turned to bury her face into his shaking embrace as sobs racked through her body. “I-I’m sorry, I’m just so scared something else will happen. I can’t stop worrying about you guys, I can’t… Please, please promise me you’ll sleep. I don’t want you guys working yourselves to death, please. Please, Daddy.”

“Okay.”

“Jack,” her mother argued, her voice sounding strained and hurt, “Danny’s clearly not acting right. Not thinking straight. Someone has to check on him--”

“I-I’ll do it, Mom. I’ll watch him. I’ll take care of him,” Jazz stammered around shuddering gasps, “I have an IB exam tomorrow to study for, I was planning on staying up anyways. You-you know what a light sleeper I am. I’ll make-make sure he’s home and s-safe. P-please, Mom.”

Her mother’s mouth opened with an almost certain, No, but looking at her husband and daughter’s tear-stricken faces, she faltered.

Instead, she stormed past them with a whip of her short, auburn hair, swung open the front door, and slammed it behind her. 

So that’s where Danny gets it from, Jazz mused strangely, almost deliriously. 

Dad let out a long sigh and pulled himself to his feet. “I’ll talk to her. I know I’m a dumb, old man, but…”

“I’m the dumbest person in this house right now, Dad,” Jazz said with the slightest, rueful smirk. “I just ticked off Mom.”

He chuckled softly and ruffled her hair. “Dumb and brave run in the blood, kiddo. You come by it honest.”

Jazz watched him go out the door and pulled herself to her feet. She moved the pot of heat packs over, and pulled out chamomile tea, milk, honey, and a vial of liquid melatonin from the drug cabinet. 

Now...now for Phase Three.

Chapter Text

“Nice act,” came a quiet, ragged voice from Danny’s bed as she closed the door behind her in the dark room. Ultra-Stars arranged like the winter sky glowed faintly green above them. 

The words felt like a slap across Jazz’s face. 

She stared at her brother’s lain, blanketed back in disbelief. A shudder ripped through his form, but he made no acknowledgement of the pain. 

“Tell them to get some sleep.” he barked a strained, short laugh. “Jesus Christ…why didn’t I think of that? I really thought…you were smarter than me…”

“Danny,” Jazz rebuked in a sharp, low voice, “I just gave our parents over double the recommended dose of melatonin. They will sleep. All night. Some of tomorrow. They--they--” Jazz turned her back to him as a tremble racked through her entire body, “T-the probability is slim, but th-there’s a chance…”

What did statistics even mean in a world where anything was possible? Where ghosts were real, where a portal to an alternate dimension swirled in their basement? Where impossible creatures and dead people crept into their world every time someone dared open the lock? What did statistics mean in a world where her brother was a half ghost, whatever the actual fuck that meant! What were the odds of that? ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE. 

“Dad t-takes high b-blood pressure medication,” Jazz stammered, feeling her heart break into a frantic, painful pulse inside her chest, “He’s not supposed to have melatonin--not that much--a-and I don’t know if Mom’s on birth control. I-I don’t think they have a-any tolerance at a-all—it’s a p-possibility—“

Jazz began to hyperventilate.

What have I done?

“Oh,” said Danny softly. 

She heard him roll over in bed, and when she looked back to meet his gaze, she found his eyes glowing…flickering…a faint, worried green over deep blue. 

“J-Jazz, I’m sorry,” he whispered. 

He sounded so strange. He moved so weakly. She had never seen his eyes flicker like dying flames. 

Breathe! her rational voice begged, as her head clouded with an influx of carbon dioxide. Breathe, Jazz. Breathe, you can do it, pull out the app—

Panic superseded, I’m going to lose them all. I’m going to have killed my whole family! It’s all my fault, why did I do this? WHY did I let him convince me—

“J-Jazz?” Her little brother forced himself to sit up with trembling limbs, using the head rest as a support. “Jazz, I didn’t…I’m sorry. I’m…asshole.”

Jazz laughed quietly but hysterically. “Y-you r-really are.”

She pulled out her phone and hit the Stress Ball app. She tried her best to respire along with the digital orb as it floated up and down (Float was her favorite setting), and it took a few minutes, but she finally got back on rhythm. 

“Ok, Danny,” she said with a final, shuddering breath, and smoothed out her hair, “What’s the plan? We have at least twenty minutes before the effects kick in. At worst…two hours. I highly doubt it will take that long, though. You said…are you sure you can last that long?”

He stared at her with those bizarre, still flickering eyes. He nodded slowly but continued to stare. He had…never seen her have a panic attack before, had he? She was somewhat reclusive, perhaps. 

Jazz had a system. Wake up at 5am, tidy her room, make a protein shake, study until 6:45, arrive at school at 7:15, habituate the tutoring room while reviewing her homework, light reading as a reward if she finished early or no one came, attend her classes from 8am-3:30pm, private tutoring in the library until 4:30, drive home, announce her arrival, check the house for anything out of order or place, jog around the block, wave to Mr. Garcia and his husband, receive surplus harvest from their garden if they had any (which they often did, and they really liked talking about native botany), return home at 5:15pm, show Mom and Dad what the Garcia’s gifted and ask if they wanted to use it (always a yes to basil), dinner and pleasantries with the family, help with dishes, take a shower, dress in pajamas, finish homework at the dinner table until 8pm, make tea with melatonin, and finally some light reading in bed until she drifted off sometime around 9-10pm. Sometimes she would get too invested in a book or project and accidentally pull an all nighter. Rare, now that she took sleep medication, but it happened. 

Their schedules rarely aligned. She hardly saw Danny, who was usually off with his friends all hours of the day (and night). He certainly never saw her in class. After an oral report. Getting teased or worse...avoided. At lunch where she sat alone. With her books. During PE where Jazz the Spazz got hit in the head with the ball or passed it to the enemy team because there was too much going on and she couldn’t keep track of anyone or anything. Using every bathroom pass to hide in the stall until all the bad feelings went away...  

“I…” Danny asked, “you okay?”

Nope! But comparatively, I’m right as rain!

Jazz huffed in frustration. “Don’t worry about me, Danny. This is about you. I need to know the plan.”

He opened his mouth, but another spasm ripped through him. He picked up a small, empty trash can with no liner, and threw up more vile ectoplasm. A small amount, not nearly as much as before. Thinner. 

She noticed her thermos blinking red in warning as he sucked away the mess. Running out of space; it was nearly full. 

Considering how weak Danny appeared right now, she suspected that may not be a good sign. He coughed and stifled the retching sound with his back hand. 

“S-sorry,” he gasped. “Plan. Ghost Zone.”

Jazz nodded, waiting for him to continue. He said nothing more. A growing sense of unease descended upon her. 

“I understand that, Danny, but what’s the plan?” 

He stared at the floor. “We…should take Specter Speeder.”

“And?”

He curled around himself, ducking his head in shame, and taking horrible, shuddering breaths of pain. 

Jazz covered her face with both hands. “Danny.”

No way he had GAD, no way in hell. He had no plan! Nothing! Danny operated purely on instinct! He had not thought this through at all! 

Jazz wanted to scream but continued to hide her face, not moving. She focused on breathing. 

It was fine. Everything was fine. Or at least, she had to believe it would be. 

Danny’s voice shook, “I--the atmosphere. It’s supposed to...Zone Dust. Mom calls it free-ectoplasm. Vlad used it before…it helped.”

Jazz furrowed her eyebrows and let her hands slide down so she could look at him. “Vlad Masters?”

Danny gave a hesitant nod. 

“Mom’s...books,” he whispered. “Maybe help.”

Jazz stared at him in dread. 

Oh, for the love of God…

She had sworn she would never pollute her mind with such nonsense, but goddammit, it wasn’t delusional fantasies anymore, was it? It was information they desperately needed. 

“Ok,” she said. 

Jazz snuck down to the library, past her parent’s room which still had a light on, stacked as many ectoparalogy books as she could carry into her arms, hurried back upstairs, and spilled them onto Danny’s floor. After she closed the door behind her, she turned on the light, sat cross-legged on the (almost certainly filthy) carpet, and flipped through every page in a blur of movement. 

She could feel Danny’s stare as she went through the first, the second, and the third in less than ten minutes. 

“Are...you actually...reading?” he asked, a twinge of awe perceptible over the horrible scratchiness of his voice. 

Jazz’s lip trembled. “Yes.”

“I...didn’t know...you could read like that…”

She shut the fourth with a snap. “Nobody does, Danny. Nobody except Mom and Dad. It’s weird. Unpleasant, even…”

She preferred to actually digest information. Reading this fast just made everything scrambled...disorganized her thoughts...but she had to deal with it. 

For Danny, she’d do anything. 

After the seventh book Jazz groaned and massaged her temples. 

“That’s…enough…for now. She shook her aching head and picked up the first book, flipping to page twentyish…ah, 27. 

“Okay, so the basics. What is your core, Danny?”

He stared at her in confusion. “My…what?”

“Your core,” Jazz said impatiently, “it has certain strengths and weaknesses. This will give us an idea of how to treat you. At least for now, while we wait for Mom and Dad to pass out.” 

They had about five minutes before the effects would kick in. No guarantee they would immediately, however. The effects, she knew, were gradual. They could even be pushed through, if you really wanted to stay awake. Once you fell asleep though, you were out. 

“I…don’t…know?”

Jazz gave him a look and held up the book cover. “Danny, this is The Fundamentals of Ectoparalogy.”

“I…stupid.” He said that like he hated himself.  

Oh, Danny. 

Jazz got up and sat in the bed next to him. She rubbed his back with one hand, just around the 7th cervical vertebrae under his collar in small circles, just like Dad would do whenever she felt unwell. A comforting gesture. 

His skin was like ice, and about as stiff, until he finally started to relax. She wondered if, even on days he wasn’t in excruciating pain, he kept his shoulders so tense. She should look into medications for that, if needed. The long-term effects of muscle tension could lead to chronic pain in the neck and shoulders. 

“There are different types of intelligence outside of Linguistic, Danny,” she said kindly, “Humans might not have cores, but we have our own strengths and weaknesses as well. You’re not stupid because you don’t read Mom’s crazy books.”

Well, maybe I am. I’m supposed to be the reader. I’m supposed to be the smart one. I’m supposed to be the responsible one. Not the person who got talked into this utter insanity. Not the one who would drug the only two people in the world who would truly know how to help you. 

Jazz let out a shuddering sigh. She had to stay focused. No more panic attacks. No turning back. 

She placed the book on her lap where Danny could see and pointed to the passage as he leaned against her. 

Jazz physically repressed a shudder. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, the closeness was nice, it was just...

Cold. So very cold. 

“So there’s Standard, Fire, Electric, Passion, Nature, Shadow, Ice, Theurgy, and Hybrid. At least among the ones that have been classified as of—“ she checked the copyright—“this year. Great.”

The information was up to date then, excellent. She doubted anything before The Accident would be useful. She should have thought about that before binging seven fucking books, but mistakes always happened when she was rushed. 

“Does anything stand out to you?” She asked. 

Danny shrugged. “I don’t…have anything special.”

“So Standard, you think?”

He shrugged again. 

Sigh.

She flipped to the subsection on Standard. 

“Ok, so Standard types have no particular strengths or weaknesses, but this makes them sturdy and resilient. They can withstand temperatures ranging from -20 degrees Fahrenheit all the way up to 900 degrees. Lower temperatures don’t seem to actually harm them, however; it causes them to freeze due to an average composition of 80% water. Presumably, they must have some thermal capabilities to withstand freezing temperatures at all. And 900 degrees or above for extended periods of time will cause them to combust. Like…the ecto-filtrator. Or the incinerator.”

Jazz gasped. 

“Ghosts are explosive?”

“Who…wouldn’t be…at 900 degrees?” Danny laughed weakly. “Not supposed to…throw too much…in the incinerator.”

“Humans don’t explode in heat, Danny, they burn to a crisp!”

He seemed to find something very funny about that as silent gasps of laughter rolled through him. Jazz flushed in confused embarrassment and shook her head. Danny’s sense of humor was an unimportant enigma right now. 

“But why would you incinerate explosive matter in the first place?” She demanded. 

Danny grit his teeth as another wave of agony rolled over him, and the laughter died. “The only way to…destroy it.” He panted. “Cleaning doesn’t really…do that. Hard to get rid of.”

Jazz frowned. This was exactly the sort of thing she had not wanted to know. She eyed his empty trash can in suspicion. It looked clean. The house looked clean, but was it? 

Worry about that later!

Jazz breathed. “Ok, moving on then. Ghosts are powered by low electrical currents, comparable to humans’ bioelectricity except...ghosts don’t have cells. They’re not alive...not in any way we understand it. Like a…”

“Virus?” Danny asked quietly.

Jazz squeezed his shoulder ever so slightly. “No. They have no genetic material at all. It’s more...comparable to prions.”

“Prions…?”

“Proteins capable of replication. Basically...complex molecules that fold other, similar molecules into an identical shape. This can be...problematic...in a human when they alter our own chemical makeup into something that can’t function properly.”

“...Right.”

She didn’t tell him about the terrible, lethal, neurological diseases associated with them.

She didn’t want to scare him. She didn’t want to scare herself. She didn’t know enough yet. It was just a comparison, because ecto-matter wasn’t a prion, because it was a scarcely understood alien substance.

Ghosts are nonliving...things. Complex, animated proteins powered by electricity and impressions of intense postsynaptic brain waves upon the death of a terrestrial being. 

For the first time in her life she understood her parents' endless fascination with ghosts. 

Still scary though. Still crazy. Was almost definitely killing Danny right now. 

“In any case,” Jazz continued paraphrasing, “Standard Ghosts have a similar tolerance to electricity as we do. However, extremely powerful currents can cause—“

“Dismemberment.” Danny trembled. 

He tensed and pulled away from her as another wave of agony and sick flew from his mouth and into the bin.  

Wait.

No. 

Not just sick, that was ectoplasm. The chemical makeup of a ghost’s body. 

Jazz’s hands flew to her mouth as she repressed a scream. 

He’s throwing up blood! His body! His other body!

There weren’t words for it, but it was--this was wrong. 

Someone knocked on the window. Hard. 

Danny fell to his knees and groaned. 

“Come on,” he muttered. 

“Jazz, open the window, please!” a girl’s voice begged, still rapping on the glass. Loudly. 

Jazz shot a frantic glance towards the door, terrified her parents would burst into the room at any moment, and threw open the window. 

“I don’t know who the fuck you are or--you’re flying, ok--but can you shut the fuck up before our parents see this--”

The masked girl in a fully equipped ghost-hunting suit slipped through the opening as her hoverboard folded and disappeared under her feet. Jazz had no time to react as she pulled up Danny’s many layers of upper clothing, exposing a terrifying, bright green and glowing wound, and injected him with something. 

Danny’s back arched in a silent scream and his hands clawed the carpet. 

“I know you didn’t want my help, but like hell am I gonna let you die,” the girl hissed. 

Jazz recognized her voice. 

“Valerie?”

The girl let out a long sigh. “Thanks for letting me in, Jazz. We need to act quickly though.”

She pulled Danny up into her arms and he convulsed. 

“Val--stop--” he said, covering his mouth so tight his nails dug into his cheeks. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I know it hurts. If you throw up on me, well, that’s what the hazmat is for. Promise I won’t kill you. We have to go now though. We…” Valerie’s voice dropped to a low whisper, “we might...we might have waited too long as is.” Then she looked at Jazz through that strange, black and red mask. “Can you access the portal?”

Jazz nodded with wide eyes. 

“O-our parents--” Jazz stammered, still shocked by the alarming turn of events. 

“Dead to the world, thanks to you,” Valerie replied and hurried down the stairs with Danny still shaking and whimpering in her arms.

Jazz was too shaken to cry.  

Chapter Text

She hadn’t meant it that way. It’s a common expression, Jazz told herself as she hurried down the stairs after them.  

Dead to the world, Valerie’s words circled over and over in her mind. Dead. You killed them. 

As she looked up towards her parents’ room, the rational voice of Jazz scolded her, No, you did not. She would have just said dead. She would be looking at you like a murderer. The probability of 25mg of melatonin killing anyone, or even inducing a coma, are practically nonexistent. Focus, Jazz. Focus on what’s important right now. 

That’s what Jazz told herself as she reached the basement door, unlocked the deadbolt (with the key copy she had made to check on the lab—the ecto-filtration incident was the stuff of nightmares—and for when Danny got trapped down...out there ), and broke the house’s most venerated rule: no unauthorized or unsupervised personnel in the lab. Ever. 

She...abstractly...remembered the last time she had broken that rule and shuddered. Danny had come to her defense though. Danny had saved her in more ways than one. Danny had known about the influence.  

Possession. She had been possessed by a ghost for days. 

Jazz embraced herself tight, remembering the feeling of someone else inside her skin, stuffing down her consciousness until she drowned in an insidious dream of another spirit’s making.

So horribly insidious, it had taken her brother’s interference to realize her memories were being stolen even as she lived them.   

Worse still, it had felt almost...pleasant. Sickly sweet and hazy like spiked punch, and so utterly violating. It had taken months of meditation, cleansing, and self-therapy to feel like herself again. Despite this, a part of her, perhaps a part of it, still loved Johnny, still commanded her to give her body to Kitty so he would love her back.

Danny said nothing had happened, not even a kiss. God, she hoped he was telling the truth. 

Thinking about those two things made her want to vomit, as did thinking about going out there. 

Danny, of course, felt sick as well.   

Thin, vile, green, vital fluids spilled down his chin and onto the floor as Valerie repositioned him over her shoulder, so they’d fit through the narrow space. 

Jazz leapt away from them, dodging the spray. 

This is a nightmare. This is a fucking nightmare.

Valerie flinched as some of it hit her back and made a soft hiss of disgust. 

“My bad, I guess,” She grumbled with another, gentler heft of the taller, but much lighter boy. She took his wrist and positioned it securely over his limp knee, so he made a ring around her neck with half his limbs--the fireman’s carry. Her legs shook from the effort of hauling him downstairs, but she kept steady. “Almost there.” 

Danny looked agonized, mortified, or both. His eyes shut tight, and he kept his head turned away from them. 

The fact he had long since given up on walking himself worried Jazz. Danny was stubborn and proud. If he wasn’t walking, it meant he couldn’t. He couldn’t even try. 

For all Jazz knew it could have something to do with that injection. Unlikely, considering how bad his state had been after dinner, but a possibility. 

Should I be more cautious about this girl? Should I even be letting her in? Into the Ghost Portal?

Valerie, this secret ghost hunter, this stranger who Danny and his friends had no trust in, who had clearly been spying on her family, who had barged into their house, injected her brother with something , and who (despite seeming for his benefit) was hurting Danny. 

Despite all this, Jazz could only feel relief. There was no way she could have carried Danny down the stairs without breaking both their necks. She was nothing like CrossFit Sam. That girl was strong. 

Valerie looked fit as well, but she certainly wasn’t having an easy time of it. She panted and her entire body tremored from the effort. Or was it pain? The mask hid her entire face. 

Perhaps Jazz should have called Danny’s friends…but without Phantom to help sneak them out or back in, the likelihood of them getting caught rose exponentially. There was no guarantee they would have made it in time regardless. Sam lived an hour away on the other side of the city. Tucker lived about forty minutes away. That’s if they had a car. The freshmen had power scooters. 

Jazz followed a (safe) distance behind them and hit the light switches as they reached the base of the stairs. She hurried past the decontamination chamber, placed her palm on the lab’s inner lock, and the heavy door opened with a hiss.  

Valerie panted heavily as she followed inside, looking around the enormous, cluttered lab through her dark visor. 

Jazz frowned at the mess. Mom and Dad usually kept this place marginally more organized. It looked as though a tornado had ripped through the place. Empty vials, loose papers, and mechanical junk lay scattered across the floor and tables. Plenty of tripping hazards, but at least the chemical hazards were stored properly. 

Jazz wandered to the weapons cabinet, pulled out the Fenton Peeler, and hooked it to her belt with the safety on. 

“Where...where is it?” Valerie asked, sounding confused. 

Jazz hesitated. 

The Portal was Mom and Dad’s most carefully guarded secret...for good reason. If anyone discovered that the invasion had spawned from here, that all ghosts spawned from here...FentonWorks… God, they’d be ruined. 

Another spasm ripped through Danny, and Val tensed as his free hand dug into her light-armored back. 

If Val was asking about it though...well, she already knew. 

“Speak of this to no one,” Jazz warned, but it came out as a plea. 

Then she strode to the left control panel, typed in the code 0509, and the metal back wall opened up to reveal the sealed portal. Thick, steel slab locks coated with red ecto-repellant barred anyone or anything from getting through. 

Danny began to writhe under the red glow, and weak cries of pain burst from his lips, but Valerie held him tight and activated her hoverboard. 

“Hurry!” she insisted, managing to balance Danny on her back despite his sudden, desperate squirming. “Open it already!”

Jazz grit her teeth and hit the genetic lock with her thumb. The metal bars slid behind the wall one by one.

THUD

THUD

THUD

Thank God the lab was soundproof. A pneumatic hiss echoed in the large, steel chamber as the gates opened and revealed the wretched thing that had started it all. 

Danny fell still with an icy gasp of relief and Valerie stared, frozen in midair, before the green, swirling vortex. The sickly light bathed the room, shadows danced and writhed like swarming snakes across the floor and illuminated their faces. Tendrils of ecto-particles drifted around Danny, making the air scintillate and shimmer. He breathed it in deeply.

Jazz’s hand twitched for the tiny ectoblaster in her pocket as something... might ...have slithered past her. 

God, this was a major containment breach. She had skipped all the protocols. If Mom and Dad ever found out about this… If something got out that got someone killed...

Worry about it later. 

“Wait, Valerie,” Jazz said quickly, before Valerie could snap out of whatever trance she’d been put under (Jazz could hardly blame her). She opened the other wall to reveal the enclosed garage. 

“We’ll take the Specter Speeder. It’s safer, and…” she frowned as Valerie sank lower under Danny’s weight, her knees caving closer and closer to the tiled floor. Even the hoverboard dipped a bit. Jazz doubted it was designed to carry anyone but Valerie herself. 

Something’s wrong with her, Jazz’s reasoned internally. 

Val’s stout musculature was fairly apparent within the form-fitting suit. Danny was practically emaciated. If Jazz had to guess...Valerie had also sustained some injury from last Monday. Hiding it. Just like Danny. 

“...Easier on you both,” she continued slowly. 

“She’s right, Val,” Danny whispered, sounding somewhat, surprisingly improved from earlier. He still looked deathly tired, however. “I can’t help you maneuver...if something happens.”

Valerie hesitated. “You just don’t want to be carried anymore,” she teased in a low, strained voice.  

Danny chuckled breathlessly. “Hmm...not...when hurts.”

“Sorry,” she said softly, and glided quickly to the stationed vehicle’s back door. 

The hoverboard folded and disappeared into her boots once again, and she landed with a faint, suppressed cry—definitely pain—on the railing beneath her. Then she slid open the door and helped him buckle up in the secure, horsecollar safety restraints. Jazz nearly offered to help when the girl hesitated over the numerous buckles and straps, but Valerie had already figured it out by the time Jazz had walked over. 

Fast learner.

Danny wavered at the commotion, but no ejecta came out of his mouth, at least. He continued to take deep, pained breaths that lifted his shoulders to his ears. When Valerie shut the door, the faint tendrils dissipated, and Danny’s hands tore into the fabric of his jeans. 

Was that the Zone Dust…free-ectoplasm…? So it did help. Maybe she could get the window open for him. If that wouldn’t kill the fully human passengers. 

No, of course, she remembered.

The Zone’s atmosphere was comparable to Earth’s. There was a distinct difference in its composition, however: 30% ecto-particles. There had been no distinction of ecto-particles from free-ectoplasm, however. In fact, Jazz could remember nothing about the books mentioning the latter. Did Vlad know something about ghosts that even Mom didn’t? That or Jazz had simply not picked up the right book. Mom had written an astounding amount of material throughout her life, though so little of it ever got published. 

Jazz got behind the wheel and took a deep breath as she turned the key and the Specter Speeder rumbled to life. The vehicle bobbed slightly upwards as the hover-jets activated and glowed with blue light. 

She had driven this infernal thing before. Dad insisted his kids should know the basics of everything in the lab, especially after the invasion. Not even Jazz the Princess could wiggle her way out of impromptu ghost hunter training. That involved driving lessons with the Specter Speeder and the RV. 

Guess Dad was right about her needing it all one day. Jazz wished she had let him show her everything, that she had not bolted out of the lab or the Fenton vehicles the moment she was allowed. Maybe all this could have been preventable if she’d just accepted the fact she was a goddamn Freaky Fenton in a world without reason and there was no escaping it. 

Valerie swung open the door, slid into the passenger’s seat from the station platform, and shut it behind her. 

“I assume you need a navigator,” Valerie said quickly, a slight waver in her voice as she stared at the portal with fists balled in tension. Then she reached back and fastened her belt with a snap. She left the horsecollar off. “Let’s go.”

Jazz cleared the station, hit the gas, and sped through the cursed gateway before she could change her mind.

 “Please tell me you have a plan,” Jazz begged, eyes darting at every moving shadow and twisting, green spiral. 

The void was endless. Large, indistinct islands floated in the distance. Green portals opened and closed at random across the Zone like bizarre, twinkling stars. Strange doors of all shapes, colors, sizes, and period designs cluttered the sky—which had neither an up nor down. No ground beneath them that Jazz could see. No celestial space above them. All that existed was the fluorescent, coiling spirals of mist, illuminating the black void. 

“You guys don’t?” Valerie asked in a tight voice. Then she swallowed. “Okay, well, Dr. Fenton said that this world’s atmosphere is made up of what we’re looking for. Except…” she frowned at Jazz. “You don’t have a suit, do you?”

Jazz tensed. “Sort of.“

Valerie sighed. “It should be alright as long as you don’t expose yourself too much. The atmosphere is breathable. Not that I’d recommend it. Unless…” she looked back at Danny, whose breathing had become shallow. “Unless you’re a ghost.”

“So, you know what he is?” Jazz asked, stating the obvious.

“Do you?” Asked Valerie. 

Jazz gave her a pained smile. “I don’t think anybody really knows.”

Valerie shook her head. “Ain’t that the truth…”

“You know…” Danny whispered quietly, his head leaning against the safety restraints, “I’m right here.”

Jazz smiled sadly back at him. “You are.”

Please stay that way. 

“And…” he grit his teeth. “Up.”

Valerie and Jazz stared at him for a moment before they looked up through the domed glass of the Specter Speeder’s windshield. An enormous spiral of green swirled far above their heads. 

“Ok,” Jazz said. 

Jazz pulled back the wheel, angled the flying vehicle straight up at a steady tilt, and was shocked to find their orientation shift with it. Zero Gravity. Sort of. Oh, this hurt her head. How easily they could get lost in this place. She was definitely lost already. Danny and Valerie would know the way back, right? Her heart pounded against her chest, and she felt the claws of panic--but no, she had to keep it together!

Worry about it later. 

She pushed on the gas pedal and drove steadily towards the spiral, picking up speed as her mind adjusted to the alteration. 

Valerie popped open the glove compartment and found the user’s manual. She made frequent glances out the window in between reading and speaking. “I bought us more time...I hope. Gave him a mixture of electrolytes, ectoplasm, and blood: his. I considered morphine as well, but I couldn’t risk him losing consciousness like this. I thought--” Valerie inhaled sharply-- “I checked his vitals, before, but…” She looked back. “What happened in the cafeteria, Danny? You just destabilized out of nowhere!”

Danny’s pallid face lit with a dim blush. He looked away. “I was...stupid. I was just...trying to find my ghost half, I guess. Worried about it.” His shallow breathing increased and a slight spasm, weaker than before, racked through him. “Fuck,” he swore with a hiss, “I found it... sorta…”

Jazz furrowed her eyebrows and pressed further down on the pedal. “You...have his blood?” She asked the other girl, suppressing her alarm.

Valerie turned the page, thumb tabbed near the beginning. “There was plenty of it, yah.” Valerie cringed. “It doesn’t,” she spoke slowly and incredulously, “it was still alive too, well beyond external exposure. With a bit of weak live-ectoplasm, it even um...replicates. It took less than two hours to make a whole batch. Enough blood to fix two of him. Which is crazy!” She sounded animated, looking right at Jazz with one hand gesturing out to the world, “Imagine if we could do that for normal humans. It could change the game for blood transfusions! But…” She sighed, deflating as her hand fell back into her lap. “I guess it didn’t really work.”

Danny coughed. “It--it did, Val. I just...fucked up. That or my ghost half is worse off. Human half,” he shuddered in agony, “ was ok.”

Val stared at him for a long time. 

“You keep saying half, Danny,” she said slowly. “Half-killed. Half ghost. Half human. You mean that... literally?”

His wan face managed to look wry. 

“Did you really think…I was being metaphorical…this whole time?”

Valerie rolled her head with a gesture that implied her eyes were rolling as well. 

“Who the fuck would take that literally?”

“Halfa...is what ghosts call me,” Danny explained between rasping breaths, “Probably...literal.” 

Valerie shook her head in disbelieving amusement then stiffened. She set the book down in her lap and became still.  

“So...I did a half-job?” she asked. 

Danny snorted. Even on death’s row, that boy could always crack a smile. “Better...than anyone else could do…” His eyes, flickering even faster now from green to blue, darted to the left as he finished that sentence. 

Jazz wondered if that was a lie. If Mom or Dad or even Vlad would have been able to do more for him. He didn’t trust them though. He barely trusted her. On principle, he didn’t seem to trust Valerie. 

Paranoia. I humored his paranoia. 

She hoped to a cruel and negligent God she wouldn’t regret it. 

“50% is a failure, Danny,” said Valerie quietly. “An F.”

“Wanna retake the test?” He joked.

Jazz’s knuckles whitened against the wheel as a portal spawned in front of them, and she swerved. Valerie shouted in surprise as her head banged against the ceiling, and Danny gasped in pain, despite going nowhere. 

“Jesus H. Christ!” Jazz swore. “Sorry. Shit. Does that happen all the time in this damned place?”

Danny shot her a look (after he was done spitting ectoplasm). 

“Ooooh, Princess said...a bad word.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m telling,” he joked, another round of that silent, pained laughter rolling through him. 

“How are you still talking,” Jazz seethed incredulously, “You’re puking up your guts!”

“Only...half of em.”

Jazz wanted to crack her head against the windshield, hard enough to blackout. Unfortunately, she had to drive her dying half-ghost brother into the giant, glowing, swirling vortex in the sky. What the fuck was this reality? 

Valerie had a thumb on the lower part of her helmet and her forefinger pressed against the glass where her temple would be. 

“Is he always like this?”

“He gets it from Dad,” Jazz groaned. “Compulsive coping mechanism, perhaps.”

“Yah...well...you got Mom’s brains,” he replied, still joking, but it had a hard edge. 

Jazz frowned. “You think that’s a good thing?”

“You get to be...whatever you want to be…” he whispered. 

Jazz’s eyes widened. “Danny…” she glanced back at him briefly, afraid another portal could spawn at random. She could see the scintillating particles in the spiral’s arm as they fast approached. “I’m a Freaky Fenton...same as the rest of y’all.” Sometimes Mom’s accent crept into her vernacular. It happened with Danny and even Dad sometimes too. “I’m just as crazy...obviously. We're in this together, and...” 

She pulled the Specter Speeder to a fast, but gentle halt as the air brightened and glistened around them, bathing them in its haunting, green glow. “We’re here.”

Chapter Text

Valerie messed with something on the dashboard, connecting a wire from her suit’s console device on her wrist, hit a few switches, and Jazz raised her eyebrows as a map projected on the navigator’s side. 

“There,” Valerie said, pointing at a green spot on the grid, “It’s got the Fenton Portal’s coordinates already, but at least we can make a quick getaway if needed. I’ve also updated the ghost tracking device. If we have company, we’ll know.”

Valerie opened the door and climbed out. Jazz sneezed as the mist flooded inside, tickling her nose. Valerie hesitated, checking over her with that obscured gaze. Jazz smiled in reassurance. The air was thick and strange, but not adversely unpleasant. It reminded her of a strangely warm night in the Arizona desert, clouds of dust sifting through the air. 

Valerie nodded and used the hoverboard to help her maneuver through the pseudo-weightless space, and opened the back door to help Danny out. 

Jazz trusted her to know more about this free-ectoplasm-Zone Dust-whatever than her. In the meantime, the older girl made herself useful. 

Jazz studied the map and grabbed the user’s manual, committing everything to careful memory. She had made a decision, somewhere along the way. It had taken Danny mentioning the future to realize it. She would become a ghost hunter just like the rest of her family. No more running from that fate. It had to be done. Either Danny needed help fighting out there, or he would need avenging. Either way, Jazz needed to become good at this bullshit. 

Yes, Jazz Fenton had a bit of experience already, an occupational hazard of living in Fenton Works. Unfortunately, about the only time she managed to hit something, was when the target was either running straight at her or when she could catch it off-guard. 

Jazz shuddered as she remembered the last time she had used the Fenton Peeler. Even if that parasitic, demonic, pseudo-therapist had deserved it, Penelope Spectra had looked far too human when Jazz had ripped her apart layer by layer. She could still remember that thing’s scream. 

“How did you know it was here? There’s barely any information about this stuff,” Valerie asked, undoing Danny’s restraints, and looking around at the swirling, glinting, and spiraling fog. It looked like an arm of the Milky Way out there, if their galaxy was a sparkling, radioactive green. The dense mist sprung to life around Danny. It circled and flitted around him with something akin to uncertainty, if Jazz had to describe it. 

Danny shrugged. “I’ve seen it before… The vapors, Vlad called it.” He pointed outside, eyes reflecting the swirls as a soft wistfulness filled his pained breath. “Huge, green clouds like nebulas…galaxies… When I saw them, I figured those were just big clusters of Zone Dust and—” he sucked the uncanny air through his teeth; it then relaxed him—“It was a hunch. Kinda like…” 

Danny’s eyes flashed even faster than before from natural blue to alien green. Valerie pulled him onto the hoverboard and sat next to him with their legs hanging over the edge. He grit his teeth and squinched his face in pained concentration, but only ended up bending over and projecting more ectoplasm into the air. Valerie squeezed his hand, dark visor glinting in the strange light as she looked at him. The mist latched onto the weightless blobs like a swarm of ants, making it glow, but abandoned it after the plasma faded and broke into pieces. 

Unsettling. 

Jazz remembered Mom talking about dismembered samples of ectoplasm effectively dying after a certain point. Disconnected from the core meant it could not regenerate or even fully activate. Ghost duplications were physically unstable for similar reasons, according to Dr. Fenton’s theories.

A look of panic developed on Danny’s face. 

“No, I have to…” he whispered, as his face and hands twisted in distress. A sharp, short scream of agony escaped him, as well as more vomit. Valerie flinched. Jazz felt a horrid, clawing numbness travel down her spine and straight throughout every nerve ending in her body. The process repeated. The bile disintegrated over time, dissolving in the mist. Returning to it, perhaps… 

Jazz furrowed her brow. 

“Danny,” she asked nervously, mouth as dry as the stale, windless air, “are you sure about this?” 

Danny wouldn’t look at her.  

“Danny, I don’t…what are you trying to do?” Valerie questioned as well, alarmed as Danny convulsed into a ball with ragged, sharp gasps of air. 

“I have to go ghost. I have to,” he said, eyes flashing like strobe lights. “I can’t just…” he glanced up at them, eyes wild with panic and guilt. “I have to.” Danny’s breathing quickened. “I-it’s so easy, most of the time. I just, I just think about it and it happens. It’s there, I can feel it. I don’t get why—AH!” Danny clutched his midsection with a scream.

“Danny, stop!” Valerie cried. She left the hoverboard, moving with an odd, swimming motion, and opened the trunk. Then she pulled him towards the back of the Specter Speeder and placed him behind the seats. She left the hoverboard on standby. 

For all its weirdness, the vehicle looked and functioned much like a van—minus the hover jets and submarine-esque front. 

“You’re going to reopen the wound,” Valerie said as she laid him on his back and restrained his convulsing hands. “I know it hurts, but you can’t claw at it like that! Try to relax for a bit. Take a break.”

Danny resigned, for any number of reasons. Exhaustion, most likely. His eyes became a solid, ocean blue and the tension left his body. He looked…dangerously pale. White as a skeleton, and about as thin.

How did we let him get this bad? Jazz berated herself silently. Ever since the invasion his symptoms have only gotten worse. Nightmares, generalized anorexia, increased hypervigilance…

These factors did not bode well for Danny’s recovery.  

Jazz hopped inelegantly over the seat with a strange lightness, found the tarp, and flattened it out for him to lie on. Both girls helped him onto it, made much easier by the weak gravity.

“I…I know I haven’t been asking,” Valerie said with a hint of awkwardness, “but can I take your top off? I need to see it, Danny.” 

A tiny smirk curled his lips and he gestured limply at his chest. “Just can’t…stand to keep all this hidden away, I know,” he rasped, but his voice grew stronger and smoother as he breathed in the mist. 

Valerie let out a sigh of exasperation and Danny stared up at her with…longing?

“Can I see your face?” He asked softly, shyly. That smirk returned. “How else am I supposed to tell when I’m ticking you off?”

“In the highest-grade suit and gear ectoparalogy can offer?” She chuffed, “You’ll know.” Even so, after a moment of hesitation, she unclamped the helmet and set it to the side. 

They held each other's gaze for a long moment. Her braids shimmered in the odd light. It could have been pain and fear that made their eyes so dark and glistening, but…

Oh, Danny. You love her.

Valerie might just love him back. 

Maybe Mom and Dad had uh, assumed correctly…

Nope. None of her business.

Or at least, not a priority, currently. 

Jazz cleared her throat, and their gaze broke. Danny’s face burned a faint red. That disturbed Jazz. Embarrassment often lit his entire face, making him look like a candied cherry with red ears. 

He didn’t have enough blood…

“Do you have any more of that bio-solution, Valerie?” Jazz asked. 

Valerie pulled out a vial filled with blood. “I can make more, at least the basic kind. Last batch though.”

Danny groaned faintly. “You’re gonna needle me again?” 

Valerie rolled her eyes. “You can handle it, Mr. Look How Many Times I Can Make Myself Puke.”

Danny snorted. “I guess it’s not that bad.”

Valerie shook her head, pulling out another vial, but this one had dim, green ectoplasm. Both vials, Jazz noticed, had condensation. Her belt must have a way of keeping them cold, somewhere within all the gadgets and hidden compartments.

“You guess,” Valerie scoffed.  

“Healing hurts,” he replied quietly in a voice that broke Jazz’s heart. 

Valerie looked down at him with a deep silence. “…Yes,” she said finally, measuring the eerie solution inside the barrel of the syringe at eye level. “It does.” She swirled it in tight circles until it shifted into an odd, iridescent red. “But no one ever said living was easy. Not even half-living,” she added with a sad smile. 

Jazz helped her peel off the layers of clothing to expose his torso, and that faint redness in his ears and cheeks lingered. Danny always had been modest, especially after The Accident. 

Jazz had only seen glimpses of those old scars before, when Danny rushed down the hallway towards his room, towel wrapped tightly around his waist and trailing behind him, having forgotten to bring his forty-something-layers of clothing to the bathroom. 

She knew it was bad. This was worse. 

Jazz could not help but stare at that enormous, malignant, reopened wound on his lateral right side. The ghost’s spear, Jazz inferred, had shot through his liver, straight through his lower rib cage. It had potentially broken the bones there, as deep, dark bruising spotted the area. Jazz recognized the tell-tale, fresh, electrical scarring of burst blood vessels beneath his skin. He looked as though he had been struck by lightning. The wound’s green glow from before had dimmed to almost nothing, until the strange mist dove into it. 

Danny clapped his hand over his mouth and muffled a terrible cry while the other hand twisted into the tarp and ripped clean through the tough, plastic material. 

Jazz moved to stop it, to close the doors and the trunk, but Valerie held her back. 

“It–it’s supposed to do that,” the younger girl said, her words shaking. “Hyper-regeneration. But on a ghost...they don’t have neuroreceptors; they can’t feel this.”

A puff of cold air escaped his lips as Danny’s hand slid down to his side, and he took deep, shuddering breaths with eyes squeezed tight. Force of habit made Jazz skirt the outside around them with wide, darting eyes. 

This was the Ghost Zone after all. Danny could have sensed something, but the Zone appeared vacant. They had not seen a single ghost. The warning system Valerie had activated remained silent.

After a long moment, Danny offered up his arm to Valerie, staring straight up at the ceiling with half-lidded eyes. They had begun flashing again. 

Stubborn as a mule, Jazz thought with a mixture of disquiet and hope. As long as he didn’t give up, there was a chance.

Valerie’s dark brow creased in pity, but she obliged. Jazz watched her prepare his antecubital fossa for insertion with an alcohol swab. 

The other girl frowned and spoke in a low, serious voice, “You are severely dehydrated, Danny.” 

“Hm…” he made a noncommittal sound. 

Jazz could see his veins bulging out from where she sat, and watched Valerie insert the needle into his cephalic vein--the accessory, if Jazz remembered correctly. She knew anatomical charts, and had a decent memory, but that hardly made her qualified to actively practice medicine or doctoring of any sort. Valerie, however, seemed to know what she was doing...a fourteen-year-old freshman. Danny, a fourteen-year-old freshman, fighting for his life and bearing the weight of an entire city on his shoulders…but not alone. 

“That was you at the school during the invasion, wasn’t it?” Jazz asked the girl as she steadily pushed down on the plunger, forcing the vital fluids into Danny’s body. He grit his teeth with a soft hiss. 

Valerie glanced back at Jazz. “Um. Yah…”

It seemed obvious now. The hoverboard and red suit were extremely different and far more advanced, but how many red ghost hunters on hoverboards could there really be out there?

“You and Danny worked together,” Jazz said slowly, remembering the sea of green skeletons with a shudder, “Saved everyone there, including my family and I.”

“I wasn’t much of a hero then, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Valerie replied. “I just wanted to tear apart some ghosts,” she shrugged offhandedly, “including this one, I guess.”

Danny’s lip curled dryly, but there was a hardness in his gaze.

Jazz frowned, wondering how seriously she should take anything said between these two. Interpreting sarcasm had never been her forte.

Valerie stretched the fingers of her gloved hand and stared at the sturdy, meshed material. “I’ve started to realize some things now. I needed upgrades that might actually do some good.” She then reached down to squeeze Danny’s hand. “I...I couldn’t help a lot of people. A couple times I couldn’t even help myself. I only had fucking guns.” Valerie shook her head with a short laugh. “Some wannabe doctor I turned out to be.”

“You saved me, Val. More than once. Vlad too, I guess,” Danny said, that dry smile still present as he squeezed her hand back, gently. Then he frowned. “I’m sorry, Val. I-I should have done more. I should’ve been smarter. You got hurt. You…” he narrowed his eyes up at her, “you are hurt, aren’t you?”

Valerie tensed and let go of his hand. “I’m fine.”

Danny and Jazz shared a glance. 

“Oh...is that how I sound?” Danny joked weakly. 

“The suit has internal splints,” Valerie stated. “I will manage.”

Danny furrowed his brow. “Splints...for what?”

Valerie let out a bitter sigh and folded her arms. “That ghost disabled my hoverboard and most of my tech with one of her attacks. That won’t happen again, but I fell and hit the roof pretty hard. Minor fractures. No big deal.”

Danny stared at her with wide eyes. “You’re walking around with broken legs?”

“Minor. Fractures.” Valerie then scoffed and gestured at his midsection. “You are the last person to get on my case about that, Mr. Half-Dead and Staying at School While My Guts Spew Out. At least my problems aren’t a goddamn contamination breach.”

Danny flushed, this time in anger, and stared at the far wall away from them with a hurt glare. 

Valerie bit her lip. “Sorry,” she said, looking away from him as well. 

“I never asked for any of this, you know,” he said in a terse whisper. “You think I like being a freak? All I ever wanted was to be normal, but you and everyone at school, since like, forever, treated my family like a fucking circus act .” 

Jazz winced. Valerie’s brow furrowed.

“Freaky Fentons,” he continued, voice becoming acrid as poison, “Amity’s biggest fucking joke. Dragging Tucker and Sam through the mud just for associating with me. The way people talk about--” he stopped himself, eyes darting at a perturbed Jazz for a brief second-- “about us. Now I can’t even pretend to be normal, even if I…” Danny’s respiration quickened, his eyes flashing faster, “Even if I can…” His fists clenched, knuckles white as snow, and his eyes blinked out tears. 

They watched in silence as Danny tried again, and again, and again. Each attempt grew more desperate and more agonized than the last, draining him of all the color and strength he had so briefly gained. He had stopped puking, but something worse had begun. His nose, mouth, ears, and even eyes began to leak streaks of red and green. 

Jazz could not take it any longer and pulled Danny up into her arms, wrapping tightly around him. 

“I c-can’t do it,” Danny stammered, his voice broken, eyes flashing from green to blue like faulty, blinking bulbs. “I-I’m sorry, I can’t...I…” Tears spilled down his face, and he wept, despairing, choking sobs. “It’s all my fault. Everything. I caused this. I caused everything. I’m sorry!”

Jazz squeezed tighter as her little brother cried and writhed weakly against her shoulder from that accursed, lethal pain. 

It’s still killing him. Even now, after all this. 

“Danny, Danny no, no it’s not--” she murmured frantically, touching her forehead against his. Ice cold, and somehow, growing colder still. 

“It is!” His hands tangled in her long, ginger hair as he clasped against her back in agony, though even now, careful not to hurt her. “I--” he gasped, “I did it. I made the portal. I-I broke the rules. I wanted…” he barked a painful laugh, “I wanted to show Sam and Tuck the lab. I-I fucked up. I started it. I’m the reason for everything. Mr. Gray’s job, and the invasion, and people getting hurt, and this… It’s all my fault. I’m so stupid . I’m sorry. I-I’m so sorry.”

He’s dying. 

“Danny,” Jazz said as her own tears spilled down her cheeks, “Look at me.”

She straightened her back and tilted his chin up. He kept his eyes shut tight for a long while before they fluttered reluctantly open, blinking away the wetness. So much pain and regret in those stormy, glistening, and dimming eyes. So much agony and shame in his youthful face. 

He was just a kid. It wasn’t fair. 

“It’s not your fault, Danny,” she told him. He tried to look away, but she held him there. “And even if it was,” her lips trembled as she spoke, “Everyone makes mistakes. It doesn’t mean I love you any less.” Then she pulled his head against her, weaving her fingers into his dark hair. “It just means you’re human.”

Imperfection and chaos was an unfortunate fact of life, and Jazz was beginning to realize, somewhere along the way, she had made her own unalterable mistake. Perhaps they all had.

Danny buried his face against her as quiet sobs racked his body. Jazz could feel his body weakening in her arms, his breaths shallow and fading, and she held him even tighter. 

“Danny, Danny,” she whimpered, “Please, don’t leave me. Please, don’t leave us. Mom, Dad, Sam, Tucker, even Valerie want to help you.” She gasped for air, not caring about Valerie’s stare, not caring about anything else but making him stay. “ Y-you’ve saved so many lives. You’re always trying to do the right thing. You’re always trying to help no matter how bad you’re feeling. You care so much about everyone you meet, and you never give up. Please, Danny!”

“I’m sorry…tell them...that,” he breathed next to her ear. A final quiver shook his body and Danny slumped against her. Lifeless.

Jazz’s heart dropped and a crater filled its place. A hollow sound escaped her, neither a scream nor a moan. A sound like someone had wrenched out a handful of her very essence and crushed it. Loss. She pulled him even tighter, as if she could bring him back.  

No.

This had to be a nightmare.

None of it was real. This wasn’t real.

Danny was fine. He was just sleeping. He was just…

Still. Cold. 

So very, very cold. 

She couldn’t bear to look at his face, so she looked down at her hands, which hurt for some reason. She raised one from his neck. Flushed with blood and prickling, as if she’d been throwing snowballs with her bare hands. Throwing them at Danny, often missing, and then getting shot right back in the face. He’d always been a good shot, even back then when he’d been “Dani.” He should have played baseball. Mom would yell at them to put on gloves and scold him about playing nice…but she was always soft on him, because Danny was the baby. 

“Jazz,” Valerie’s voice was raw and abruptly close, “Jazz, please, let him go.”

Jazz buried her face into his shoulder and continued to rock him back and forth. 

“Jasmine!” Valerie raised her voice, pulling her away with a firm but careful grip. Danny crumpled onto the trunk’s floor. Valerie made a choked sound and knelt down over him, righting his body. “I have a defibrillator, basically,” she said, checking under his chin for a pulse. Finding none, she shooed at Jazz, looking down at Danny with pained eyes. Her voice hardened, “You have to get out the way!”

What good is it? Jazz thought listlessly, as she drifted out into the void just behind the Specter Speeder and bumped against the hoverboard. We can’t help him even if we bring him back. He’ll just die...again.

Valerie locked her fingers together and began CPR over his chest. It didn’t look easy on either of them as bruising blossomed under her compressions and perspiration began to form on her brow. She wiped the particles of gunk and blood from her lips in disgust after mouth to mouth but stared down at him in fierce determination. Tears fell from her face. 

“Come on, Danny,” she said, pounding on his chest. “You’re not giving up that easy. You’re going to keep being stubborn when it counts! Come on.”

Jazz twined her aching, stiff fingers as she watched Valerie spread (what Jazz assumed to be) conductive gel on his chest. She connected two cords from her utility belt: one to his upper right pectoral beneath the clavicle, and the other beneath and lateral of his left pectoral. 

As the other girl ran the numbers over her console device, Jazz furrowed her brow. 

“V-Valerie,” she stammered, using the trunk’s railing to pull herself closer with cold, burning fingers. 

The other girl raised a hand. “Stand clear , Jazz. Unless you want 500 plus Volts ripping straight through you.”

“Wait,” Jazz said. She stared at her hands. Hypothermia. Stage one hypothermia. From touching him. “He’s cold.”

Valerie stared at her like she was crazy. “He’s...effectively dead, Jazz.”

The older girl shook her head and showed Valerie her frost-burned fingers with an intense, crystalline stare. “He’s ice cold.”

Valerie furrowed her brow at Jazz, took off a glove, and placed a light palm over Danny’s heart. She shivered and retracted her touch. 

“I…” Valerie murmured, “you don’t think…”

“Ice core?” Jazz prompted in a shaking voice. 

Valerie bit her lip, doubtful. “But…” her hand flew to her mouth in realization. “Oh, God.”

Ice Cores were doubly susceptible to electrical currents, due to their low temperatures and high conductivity. The normal guidelines regarding defibrillation would probably fail to apply to Danny, if her suspicions were correct. 

Val typed something into her console, paused, hovered the attached device over his chest, ran more numbers, then said, “Make that a hundred. Clear!”

She stepped back, hit a button, and Danny spasmed as the shock coursed through his body. Valerie waited a tense moment after hitting the button a second time, shutting it off, then began another round of chest compressions. “A little higher then,” she said, interlocking her fingers, and pressed hard against his sternum, two times a second. “Unless, I don’t…” Valerie’s brows furrowed deeply as those dark eyes worked through an invisible puzzle, “It is affecting his human half, but he’s not—“ she looked down at his skin and limp fingers, “no signs of hypothermia. His body temperature is 40 degrees Fahrenheit. That…” she panted, running out of breath as she looked directly up at Jazz in confusion, “was he like that before he stopped breathing?”

Jazz nodded. Her voice still sounded hollow. “He’s been getting colder and colder since after school…”

Much like Danny’s secret identity, the truth seemed obvious after the fact.

Valerie grit her teeth, pinched Danny’s nose, and breathed into his mouth. Jazz watched his chest inflate and Valerie wait for the air to escape. A mechanical process: no life. She wiped her mouth again after she breathed into him a second time, then returned to beating his chest with interlocked fingers and the flat of her palm.

“Then…” Val said in a breathless voice tinged with the barest hint of hope, “we might have a chance then. Ice cores are supposed to be the fastest regenerative ghosts out there. We just...maybe…” She backed away, opened the console again, and adjusted the numbers. “200 Volts. Clear!” 

Danny’s eyes flew open as he convulsed with a horrible, grating gasp. Valerie switched it off, and as he started coughing, she rolled him over onto his side. Danny vomited another splash of ectoplasm and blood, thin as water. 

“I have an idea, Danny,” Valerie panted as they both struggled to catch their breath. She rubbed his back with eyes daring to seem optimistic. “I don’t think you’re going to like it though.”

Danny seemed too exhausted to respond. He only continued to breathe, staring into the distance as the green tendrils wove around him with that same, bizarre uncertainty. 

Jazz pulled herself back inside and knelt beside him, stroking her fingers through damp, black strands. She brushed them away from living, ocean-blue eyes with a feeling of wonder married with dread.  

Alive. But still dying. Still in so much pain. 

“What are you thinking, Valerie?” Jazz asked, speaking around a throat full of rocks. 

“Ghost cores are like hearts,” Valerie explained, looking down at Danny with a soft, almost apologetic expression. “They run on electric impulses,” she continued quickly, “Did you see the way his eyes were flashing? It’s got nothing to do with willpower, or else he would have changed. No,” Valerie raised a finger, wagging it as she thought aloud, “if he’s destabilizing like this, it means his core is shutting down. If we can restart that— ” She ran numbers on her console, and looked down at Danny with sad eyes—“He’s got a chance.” She ran her ungloved thumb over the scars of his jaw, her brow creasing in worry as she stared at him. “I just…Danny, can you understand me?”

Blue eyes looked up at her, brimming with pained apathy. He nodded. 

“I am going to run some shocks through you—“ Danny flinched— “but I need you to be…” Valerie hesitated as she searched for words, “as ghostly as you can be while I’m doing it, okay?”

He squinched his face and Valerie’s gaze fell. 

“I…don’t…please, no,” he begged. 

Jazz’s stomach twisted at the raw fear in his voice. Then she took his hand, his left one. Old Lichtenberg scars from last August wove in a perfect circle around the center of his palm where a unique scar lay. She ran her thumb over the webbing, pink musculature exposed beneath strangely smooth skin. The button-shaped scar of a 3rd degree burn. 

This is where it started, came an instinctual whisper, This is where it all began. 

She closed her hands around it, despite the painful chill, and he looked up at her with that same, agonized shame he had died with. Her grip tightened. 

“Danny,” she said quietly, “tell me about the stars.”

His eyes clouded in confusion as he stared up at her. 

“You don’t have to think about anything but the stars,” she told him, residual wetness in her eyes for she had no more tears to give. “Flying in the stars. Tell me their names. I know you remember.”

It was one of the few things he could never forget.

“You’re going to point them out to us like you do every year,” Jazz told him, gripping him even tighter, “You’re going to be 15, and you’re going to tell me about every star in the winter sky. It’s-it’s--” she laughed once, softly-- “in my schedule, Danny. December 21st, 9-11pm. It’s going to be a perfect, clear night on the Solstice, and you’re going to see it.”

His fingers closed around hers and she saw it, that same fierce, relentless determination that always drove him to do the impossible.

“Ok,” said Danny.

Upon Jazz’s indomitable insistence , Valerie had lent her the insulated, specialized glove of her suit so Jazz could hold his hand through the shocks. Valerie warned her to get rid of any conductive metals on her person. Jazz, not knowing much about the actual components of Fenton Work’s weapons (she really should have paid more attention to Dad’s rambling…), had removed her belt with the Fenton Peeler still attached, tucked them into her jacket with the small ectoblaster, and set the clump aside. 

Jazz felt the dangerous prickling of her skin and hairs as the electricity ran through him again and again. His grip hurt. He might have broken her hand at some point, but that dangerous numbness had fully overtaken Jazz, and she barely felt anything at all. He kept his eyes closed, and sometimes a star's name came out in a shriek.

Both girls had long since dissociated from this wretched reality. This had to happen. They had no other option. Could they live with themselves if they had not even tried? If they had let him die right before their eyes? How could Jazz go home without him? How could she face her parents or Sam and Tucker if they failed?

How can I live with myself if we brought him back just to torture him to death?

Had Danny not suffered enough? It would have been kinder to just let him go. It would have been kinder to let him sleep. He needed sleep, so, so badly. She could not bear his permanent rest, however, so Jazz continued to whisper assurances and weak praises as he named every single star he could remember. 

“Beta Arae,” Danny slurred, his grip loosening on her hand. She saw a pure, dim green under half-lidded eyes. She curled her fingers to keep their hold, but felt his skin give in like melting foam.

Before Jazz had time to process that, another shock raced through him and Danny’s back arched. A terrible, drawn-out scream tore from his lungs and straight through her soul as a flash of white light burst from his midsection—that signature halo—and transitioned him from Danny to Phantom.

Somehow, Phantom was worse off than Danny. The former who, despite the involuntary twitching, appeared mercifully unconscious. If, that is, a ghost or halfa could ever truly be unconscious. 

Phantom’s form blurred at the edges of his silhouette like a mirage, his white glow flickered so faintly Jazz struggled to perceive it, and his hand fell through Jazz’s with a wet splat onto the floor. It looked as though someone had taken a blender and mixed his glove and skin into a puddle of green ectoplasm. He had…bones in this form. Most of his skeletal arm from the humerus’ epicondyle down peaked from under the melted flesh, glinting with dull, blue light. 

Worst of all, however, was his midsection. 

That bizarre, star-like scar gaped and oozed in his ghost form. She could see his liver, a bizarre, radiant green within, and the strange, bluish-white ribs overlaying it. The arms of the injury, electrical scars of burst blood vessels, wove like thorny cracks throughout his midsection. Sweating, but solid forms of ice stitched the broken pieces of fleshy and bony ectoplasm together, shimmering like clear sapphires and distorting the green glow underneath. In some twisted way, it reminded Jazz of kintsukuroi: cracked, Japanese pottery mended with glistening, precious metals. Glass-like ice, in this case. 

Valerie switched off the cords with a shocked cry and stumbled back, tripping, and fell onto her backside. 

The mist sprung to action. It wove into him, permeating his skin and pouring into his mouth and nose. Phantom glowed bright green. 

He looked half melted. Most of his left arm had dissolved, save for the bone, and the mist swarmed it, trying to fix it, trying to fix the rest of him but...

Jazz could only stare. 

“How did this happen?” She heard herself ask, staring at his disintegrating body, struggling to stay intact, wavering and not quite tangible. 

Valerie’s expression flashed with guilt, but before she could open her mouth to respond, the console on both her arm and the Specter Speeder blared in alarm. 

A portal opened a few yards away, and a tall, glowing figure stepped through it. It held something like a large, dark scroll before it locked sights onto them and tucked the parchment away beneath ancient, leather armor and a flowing, frayed cloak.

Valerie took one glance between it and the device, her expression shifting to horror, and burst into action. She snatched her helmet, snapped it in place, and leapt onto the hoverboard. 

“Hit the shield, Jazz!” Valerie yelled, pulling out the largest weapon she had and jetting a short distance away, between that thing and the Specter Speeder. 

It moved fast. Jazz saw it bolt towards them like lightning, powerful blue sparks shooting off it and trailing a tail of flaring, white light behind.

Valerie pulled the trigger and a wide, blistering wave of magenta plasma fired with a keening, echoing blast that made Jazz’s ears ring. It shot out like a tidal wave at lightspeed, devouring the mist with a hissing sound as the surrounding green scattered. Valerie’s legs gave in from the recoil, and she lost balance, falling to one knee with a sharp cry. The ghost managed to scale over the attack in the blink of an eye, but the diversion had bought them enough time. 

Jazz clambered towards the front end of the vehicle, flipped open the casing, and slammed the button down. She saw the battery level drop as the blue force-field encased them in a two-foot perimeter outside the vehicle. 

Ghost shields drained fast. They took a lot of power to keep running. Dad warned her that the Specter Speeder’s battery could only maintain it for thirty minutes before they became dead in the water. It was a last resort. 

Valerie scrambled to right herself on the board and retreat into the field, having overflown the range by a few feet, but the ghost slammed into her and propelled the young ghost hunter through the dome. Valerie slammed against the side of the Specter Speeder, a horrible crack and sizzling sounding after an ear-shattering BOOM. The Speeder careened from the impact. Jazz got thrown against the driver’s door. Danny remained abnormally anchored to the ship’s orientation by the remaining mist, and the ghost screeched in agonized rage as she--it was a she--hit the shield at full force. 

Jazz covered her ears at the sounds, all the horrible sounds that pierced and pounded from every direction. The thing shrieked like a goddamn banshee. 

“NO!” the ghost screamed, taking the most terrifying spear Jazz had ever seen, a spear crafted like a bolt of lightning itself, and struck the dome over and over, each strike cracking like thunder. 

BOOM

BOOM

BOOM

Its scream rose in pitch until Jazz’s nose and ears bled from the sound. 

MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP, begged a voice inside her.  

Jazz fumbled for her jacket, which had mercifully ended up tossed against the dashboard, and pulled out the tiny ectoblaster. Concealing it in her hands and pushing the dial to its maximum power with her thumb, she sent a sharp, green beam straight at the thing's chest--and through the passenger window. The monster choked in surprise as it carved a hole clean through, and Jazz sliced down at an angle, careful not to damage the door itself. In a human, that would have made a cut from the left lung to the right kidney. Of course, ghosts were not humans. They had no organs--unlike her brother. It had a similar effect, however.

The older woman-- no, that thing-- staggered back, clutching her midsection, as if trying to hold the pieces of herself together, like Danny had-- she deserves it-- and her form split slightly, gooing and radiating green like...pulling apart an ectoplasmic, grilled-cheese sandwich. 

Jazz could still smell Danny’s bile in the vehicle. She suppressed the urge to vomit, however, climbed on top of the Specter Speeder, and activated the Fenton Peeler. The metal weapon encased her in armor from head to toe. She bit her tongue as it wrapped around her (definitely broken) hand and aimed her good one, now an ecto-shredding blaster, straight for the thing that had caused all this misery. 

Crazy spear lady with lightning. What else could have done this? 

From the corner of her eyes, Jazz saw Valerie still floating, unmoving, beneath her.

Jazz hoped beyond belief that Valerie was merely unconscious. 

The ghost looked up with wild, electric blue eyes, wolf-like and black around the irises as Jazz aimed down the sights. She hesitated. Despite their bizarre, beastly nature, she saw something else. Intelligence, pain, fear, desperation. A clever and pertinacious woman only a decade older than her mother. 

Ghosts, at their cores, are unliving things driven by a single purpose: their Obsession, Jazz remembered Dr. Fenton’s--Mom’s--writing, It motivates and consumes their every action, making them incapable of true reasoning or thought. In the same way they are unliving, they are unsentient. Do not attempt to empathize or sympathize with these creatures: they have no morality or compassion for humanity, nor even their own kind. They are motivated solely by Obsession alone. Take the utmost caution when becoming an obstacle to their desires, for they will--they must-- destroy anything that interferes. 

Jazz squeezed her fist, ramping up the beams that would shred that thing to pieces--

“Wait, I beseech you, child.” The woman’s voice was soft (that or Jazz’s hearing was completely shot) and pained. It possessed that echoing quality all ghosts--even Phantom--shared. She let the spear fall from her hands in surrender. 

Jazz saw the mist surround and permeate the monster’s flesh, beginning the regeneration process.

Don’t let her manipulate you, she’s just buying herself time--

“You care for him, do you not?”

Jazz narrowed her eyes. “Yes, and I know who did this.” The last words came out in a snarl. 

“You fail to understand my intent,” the ghost said frantically and gestured at Danny. “I did not wish for this. I can aid the King, please, I bid you. This entire realm depends on him. Please.”

Jazz stared. “King?”

Sure, Danny could, at times, be a brat—a beloved one—but King? 

Crazy spear lady indeed, Danny. 

The older woman looked down, and that long, silvery braid waved out behind her like the tail of a kite. “The Usurper, the crown’s victor. He must claim it, he cannot dissolve. No, no, the crown will die with him, ” the woman’s voice became panicked, “You must dispel this enchantment so I might revive him!”

Jazz grit her teeth. “You did this to him! I’m not letting you in just so you can just finish the job!”

Something dangerous flashed in those eyes and Jazz took an involuntary step back. 

“If you allow him to perish,” the woman said, straightening with a glare that bored through Jazz’s very soul, “then this Realm will be doomed to anguish in Chaos forever, and the blame will fall on you.” Arcing, white and blue sparks flashed from her eyes in cold fury. “I am no mortal abomination you can hope to destroy. I will exist beyond your comprehension. I will return, and I will find you, and I will destroy everything you hold dear, as you would have done so to me.”

Do it, Jazz. Take the shot. Tear her to shreds. She’s lying.

“Tell me how to help him,” Jazz said, struggling to sound brave and rational, keeping her good hand trained on the ghost. “I’m not letting you in, but if you really do know something, and if you care as much as you say you do, you’ll tell me.”

The ghost narrowed her eyes but then shook her head with a low chuckle. “Clever girl, but I doubt you shall do what must be done.”

“He’s my little brother, you wretch,” Jazz spat, “Just tell me!”

She had to know. She had to believe there was still a chance. If the ghost refused, Jazz would just shred her to pieces before that mist had a chance to fix her.

The ghost raised a silver eyebrow. “Brother?” She smiled. Her teeth were sharp. “Heed my words, and he might live long enough to disappoint you.” 

Shoot her, Jazz. Just shoot her!

“He requires a sacrifice of blood and ichor.” The ghost waved her hand, sparks wove out into the air, and summoned the thinned mist around her fingers, which coalesced into a large, green goblet. “A...substantial sacrifice,” she added in dismay, eyeing Phantom’s weak figure through the open trunk. 

The ghost dipped the cup into her frothing midsection, arm shaking with stress, and filled it halfway. Then she held it out for Jazz to take, just on the outside of the shield. 

Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. 

Jazz swallowed. Ancient forms of medicine were not as refined as modern methods, but...had Valerie not essentially given Danny the same thing? Without the...ominous mysticism and unethical implications?

“We...we’re not the same blood type,” Jazz stammered. 

Danny was O Negative, he could only receive O Negative… Jazz, however, was O Positive. Her blood would kill him. 

The ghost craned her neck and stared at Jazz like she was crazy. “Are you a cretin, girl?” She gestured to her spear. “Fulgora has pierced through more human hearts than you could possibly conceive. The blood type is the same: red.”

Jazz blinked. 

CRAZY.

“Will you do what must be done, or will you force my hand? Take of it!” The ghost growled with jagged teeth, jerking the goblet as close as she dared to the dome’s edge. 

How much time left on the battery? Jazz thought, eyes darting down towards the Speeder’s dashboard through the glass. She couldn’t tell from here.

Was Valerie…alive? Jazz glanced over at the young girl’s broken body, feeling ill at the scent of burning flesh filling her nose and lungs. She had to get Valerie to a hospital. They had to get away—but Danny. They’d both come here for Danny. She couldn’t leave him here with that monster, nor could she take him away from the mist before he was stabilized.

Jazz closed her eyes.

After everything we’ve done, can I really throw away this last, insane chance to save his life? 

Jazz had never considered herself a gambler, but if there was a chance she could save them both, then she’d roll the dice.

Even if there was a higher probability of losing everything.

Jazz approached the edge of the dome, feeling her heart stutter as she came close to the towering, ancient warrior. Jazz felt much like a little kid in the aquarium, staring up at a great white shark on the other side of the glass, a hungry one. 

Against Jazz’s better judgment, she deactivated the Fenton Peeler, fearing an electrical attack in the metal suit, and placed an open hand at the dome’s edge. The ghost’s monstrous, intelligent eyes bored down on her, and it pushed the goblet through the shield and into Jazz’s expecting grasp. It shocked her upon contact, but only enough to frizz her hair. The cup was warm, and its contents frothed within, as if boiling.

So dismembered ectoplasm and constructs can get through the shield...noted, thought Jazz, forcing herself to stay calm. 

She jumped, sloshing the ‘ichor’ as the ghost waved her hand again, this time forming a green dagger from the mist, and handed it to Jazz through the dome--sharp end pointed away from the nervous receiver. The human girl took the strange, statically-charged handle with two, careful fingers, never looking away from those wolfish eyes. 

Jazz felt that predatory gaze on her back as she floated into the trunk, where Danny...Phantom...still glowed with green mist. It seemed agitated, trying to stretch or mold from what little ectoplasm he had left. Everything it managed to reform only fell apart a moment later. He truly was dissolving right before her eyes. She could see most of his ribcage now, and his heart...encased in a crystal of ice. His core. The muscle was green and frozen solid, but its diamond-shaped casing flickered like a heartbeat of sapphire light. She watched it slowly dim.

Jazz set the goblet beside him, held up the dagger, and stared at her arm. Her right side was fucked anyways. No use hurting her left. She was decently ambidextrous. If it worked, she could live with it. If it didn’t, well, that ghost promised to return. Jazz would be ready. Her family would be ready; she’d make sure of it. If that fucker wanted to start a war, then it could have it. Jazz would make sure this abominable, iniquitous crime was answered for, whatever the cost. 

The young high schooler placed her arm down at an angle towards the vessel, lined up the glowing blade parallel to her radius, careful to avoid vital blood vessels,  tendons, and nerves, closed her eyes, and sliced deep.

It hurt, obviously. Stung like a thin line of fire, and hot, crimson blood dripped down into the goblet. The gentle stream hissed as it made contact with the ectoplasm below.

Jazz gulped and whimpered at the pain, and she saw the ghost had positioned herself behind the trunk to watch her every move.

“Fill the cup,” it said. “I have given my share.”

Jazz stared at the narrow streaks of red that dribbled into the vessel, its contents barely raising a centimeter higher. Too slowly. Not enough. 

Jazz made two more decisive cuts, trying her best not to think about anything but filling the cup without killing herself. She tried not thinking about the pain. She tried not thinking about the growing destabilization of her brother and his exposed organs. She tried not to think about the evil, hungry eyes on her back. She tried not to think about Valerie, or her parents, or the fact she had no idea how much longer the shield would last, because time had no meaning in this goddamn hell. 

Her breathing quickened and shallowed, but all Jazz could tell herself was…

Worry about it later. 

“M-My family, we’re not normal humans,” Jazz said, arm and voice shaking as the cup filled with a steady, thick stream of her blood. 

Just a little more, Danny. Please, just hold on a little longer. You promised. 

“We have ways of destroying you completely, if we catch you,” Jazz continued in a low voice, imagining throwing that ghost straight down the incinerator.  

Jazz itched to grab one of the Fenton Thermoses from storage. It would be so easy, not even Jazz the Spazz could miss. The ghost was right there. She had to finish this first, but after…

The ghost was silent for a long moment. “I…may be inclined to believe you. Humans and halfas are far more resilient than I remember,” she shook her head in disbelief, “children even! My brother is truly a despicable fool for...” She glanced between Jazz and Valerie in what seemed like a cross between annoyance and respect. Then her gaze fell onto Phantom with true remorse. 

“The boy should have died,” said the ghost with such a senseless, genuine softness it left Jazz speechless. “I have seen grown, seasoned warriors perish having lost a quarter of the blood he had. Halfas being no exception.” She furrowed her silvery brow. “I do not understand how his cursed body survived.” She narrowed her eyes onto Valerie. “Perhaps it was a mistake to spare that child, and she even lives still... how? ” She looked back at Danny and regret sagged her shoulders down. “Certainly, am I at fault for missing his heart.” 

Jazz felt her own heart stop for a moment.  

“Despite my efforts, he still sensed me,” the ghost continued softly. “Turned. So alert and jittery. Never relaxing, like a small prey creature. Failed to finish him cleanly once downed, as well. Did not think it necessary. His ghost should have been free, and all this suffering would have been avoided.” The ghost sighed. “Hate me, if you must, but I never intended for this.”

Jazz’s eyes flashed in rage as she found her voice again. “You regret not efficiently murdering him!?” Still draining blood over the cup, she seethed with all the venomous hatred in her body and turned to bore her eyes into the ghost’s. “I’ll destroy you myself,” Jazz swore in an acrid hiss, “I’ll make you regret the day you were coalesced. And you better hope to hell he lives, or it won’t be quick. I promise you that, you fucking wretch.”

Jazz’s incisive, crystalline glare was met with narrowed, monstrous eyes. An ancient, seething danger glinted therein, but Jazz’s anger drowned out any fear she should have felt. 

“It is done,” the ghost said abruptly. “Anoint him.”

Jazz broke the gaze and saw her arm tremoring with a clenched fist over a full cup of swirling, iridescent liquid. Unlike Valerie’s solution, this one had distinct separation. Her blood circled like red, snaking oil within the ghost’s ectoplasm. 

Jazz picked it up.

Don’t do this. This. Is. Crazy. You’re gullible, Jazz. She’s just buying herself time and weakening you. She probably just wanted you to slit your own wrist doing this. Jazz, you fucking moron. Even if, in some impossible world this was how transfusions worked, your blood type is incompatible. Do NOT--

Jazz poured the revolting mixture over him, starting from the head down. She dumped the rest onto his destabilized arm and core, praying to all hope in this wretched reality that it would somehow, unbelievably work. 

The liquid seeped into his body.

Jazz flinched away with a shout as the mist billowed and burst into green flames. She clutched her stinging, slicked, and sticky arm, staring in horror as Phantom was encased in the strange heat--not blistering, but warm. The ice melted away and green filled its place. His core flashed wildly as the plasm encased it, encased everything, framing over him and filling out his entire form into seamless slime. 

Jazz had no way of knowing how long this process had taken, before Danny’s back abruptly arched, and a blinding burst of freezing, white light coated the Specter Speeder’s interior with a thin layer of frost.

He looked like himself again...or perhaps something more. 

Jazz held herself tight, teeth chattering, mucus frozen and crackling within her nose, as Phantom, beaming white as fresh snow in the sunlight, breathed out a puff of condensation. Then Danny’s eyes fluttered open, a dazzling, sapphire blue.

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