Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The door to the office clicked shut; it echoed in the small room. Danny flinched at the sound, a sound he was far too familiar with for his liking. His parents were sitting on either side of him. Jack’s wide frame was barely contained by the chair on his left, creaking and groaning with every futile attempt to get settled. In contrast, Maddie was sitting comfortably on his right. Neither were as jovial as they might ordinarily be, expressions of faint disappointment on their faces. Another thing Danny was far too familiar with.

The vice-principal walked around the three of them and sat down at his desk. He sighed and folded his hands. “We need to talk.”

There weren’t many more words out there that could evoke as much dread as that.

Danny shifted in his seat, unable to find any position that was comfortable. The small plastic chair was placed perfectly between the two larger ones on either side. It made Danny feel like he was still in grade school.

Knowing Mr. Lancer, that was probably intentional.

Jack leaned forward, placing his weight on his knees. “Of course, what is it?” His large frame shadowed over Danny, making him feel smaller in the room.

Mr. Lancer frowned and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t want to mince words here, but well… Daniel here is a good kid.” Whatever Danny had expected Mr. Lancer to say, that wasn’t it at all. “I’ve had more than a few children come through my office doors. Some are troubled souls, I need to intervene because they aren’t willing to put in the effort. Others, like Daniel… defy explanation.”

At the mention of his name, both his parents turned to face him. The sudden movement from both of them made Danny jump a little. His mother’s lips were drawn into a thin line; upset, but not surprised. His father’s brow was furrowed, but he remained quiet. The moment of contemplation lasted for the briefest of moments as his parents looked at him, considered the statement, and then accepted the fact he was “problematic”.

His mom turned back to Mr. Lancer and stated firmly with conviction, “We understand,” she said, ignoring Danny as he hunched in on himself. “Jack and I have had multiple discussions with Danny, but… nothing we’ve said has gotten through.”

Mr. Lancer nodded, and he reached over and grabbed the plaque on his desk that titled him as the vice-principal. “As have I. Daniel and I have had multiple conversations over the past couple of years, but as you’ve said, it feels like nothing has gotten through. There are occasional moments where it seems to. I recall the time in freshman year I supervised his studying successfully, for once. But they invariably don’t last.” If Lancer was aware of the fact that both him and his parents were speaking about Danny as if he wasn’t in the room, he didn’t show it. His gaze was fixated on the piece of metal in his hands. Why bother talking to him, after all, Danny thought bitterly. It’s not like he would actually tell them the truth, and everyone knew that by now.

Lancer ran his fingers over the brass nameplate before putting it back on his desk. “And in light of that, I would like to make a suggestion.”

“We’re listening,” Maddie answered for all of them.

“The spring festival is coming up. I think it would do Daniel some good to be involved in something greater than himself, to remind him that his actions have an impact outside himself and his circle of friends. The entire town is getting involved. I think it would be a good learning experience for him.”

It took all Danny had to not scoff then and there. He was already stretched thin, like a piece of butter over too much toast. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to do his homework, some piece of him, the tiny piece of hope in him, was still desperately clinging to the dream of being an astronaut. But, he had to put that aside, precisely because he knew far too well the impact he would have if he prioritized himself.

After all, he was the only one in the town who could keep them safe from all the attacks that kept happening.

Who cared what Shakespeare meant when he wrote the lines “To be or not to be” when you were running from someone trying to skin you? Or when the king of the dead decides he’s slept long enough? Or when you could still hear the mocking laughter of the monster you could have been echoing when it was quiet?

Jack straightened his back. “While I do think that would be a good idea, I’m not sure adding that more on his workload will help.” Jack put a hand on Danny’s shoulder, squeezing lightly. The weight of it was comforting, and it drew out a quiet breath from Danny despite himself. His dad might not have known what was going on, but he had always been able to hope he was in his corner.

And as he sat in this office with his teacher and his parents, he needed that.

Maddie sighed and placed her hand against her face. “It’s not like he’s doing his homework as is…”

“I am!” Danny interrupted, finally finding a place to stand up for himself. Though he immediately regretted it as his parents looked at him with raised eyebrows.

Lancer nodded. “I am willing to believe that,” Lancer stated, nodding, thankfully getting the attention off Danny. “While his homework, which accounts for 50 percent of his grade is very much lacking, his quiz and test scores do show that he knows the material.” Lancer shrugged, “And… to be frank, while a lot of students inform me of a loss of homework due to the attacks, your family is, unfortunately, heavily involved in all the happenings.”

Danny let out a huff as Jack patted a meaty palm against his back. “Of course he does! He’s a Fenton! We’re natural ghost hunters! This is our natural environment!”

“Quite,” Mr. Lancer said flatly, before clearing his throat and picking up a piece of paper. “I have a list of people who Danny could work with. I would assign someone, but I think that’s the opposite of what I want to happen here.” He folded his hands and looked at Danny for the first time since he sat down. Could Danny remember a time his teacher didn’t look at him like that? Stern, foreboding, and more than a little bit resigned to failure where he was concerned.

“So, Mr. Fenton, this is what I’m proposing. This weekend, there is a meeting at the community center to do some of the planning for the festival. I want your parents to take you to the meeting. I want you to find something that you might want to be involved in. I could ask you to write something up for me, but I don’t think that’ll be productive. Instead, on Tuesday we’ll have a lunch meeting where you and I will discuss what happened over the weekend.”

Maddie tilted her head and interrupted. “Not Monday?”

Lancer shook his head. “Unfortunately, I have a prior commitment.” He turned back to Danny. “In exchange, I’m going to waive your English homework.”

“Really?” Danny sat up despite himself.

“Yes, really.” Lancer leaned forward. “I know you don’t like me, Daniel. You see me as an authority figure whose job it is to make you miserable. That’s not my job, my job is to help you learn and flourish.” He tilted his head and smiled softly at him. “Some of us aren’t good in a classroom.”

Danny let out a sigh and leaned back in his chair. “I’ll… try. That’s all I can promise.”

The kindness in Mr. Lancer’s eyes left, instead of the understanding teacher, he was looking at the angry one that punished him for other students, like his bully Dash Baxter. “Daniel, I want you to understand, this isn’t just me trying to be helpful, this is your last lifeline. If this doesn’t work, you’ll be repeating years. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” Danny said around the lump in his throat.

“Good.” Mr. Lancer pulled out a set of papers. “Now then, you are dismissed. I’ll want to discuss some more with your parents, but I know you aren’t good at sitting in a room for more than fifteen minutes.”

Danny took the opportunity to flee Mr. Lancer’s office. He jumped out of his chair and then moved around his father into the hallway. His two best friends were waiting for him in the hall.

Tucker put away his PDA, that he lovingly called Patricia, before standing up, while Sam glanced back and slammed her locker shut. She offered him a soft smile and handed over his coat before she and Tucker both put on their own winter jackets, much thicker than his. Once the two of them were zipped up, his two friends fell into step with him as he left the school

“So,” Tucker began, keeping his voice low, “How screwed are you?”

“Tucker!” Sam hissed.

“Not that screwed,” Danny said, sighing and running his hand through his hair. “Mr. Lancer basically wants me to do community service in place of my English homework.”

“I thought you said you weren’t screwed,” Sam muttered as she adjusted her backpack.

Tucker scratched under a beret that he knocked askew. “I mean, he’s getting out of his homework, that sounds pretty good to me.”

Sam fixed Tucker with a glare. “Tucker, Danny already has trouble staying in class because of all the ghost attacks. Do you think he can handle community service on top of that?”

Tucker didn’t flinch under Sam’s gaze. “Oh, no, one hundred percent he can’t.”

Danny sighed as they walked outside and he sat down heavily on the school steps. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Tuck.”

Sam stood over him for a moment, raising an eyebrow. "Danny," Sam said slowly. "We're not sitting there."

"... Why not?" Danny asked blankly.

"Because it's January! It’s freezing!"

"... It is?" He tapped the blocks experimentally, shrugging up at Sam. “Feels warm to me.”

"Of course it is, it's concrete with literal ice on it, what... Are you messing with me?"

Danny let that hang for a second or two before his face split into a shit-eating grin. "Am I?"

Sam growled and reached out to finish what the portal started before Tucker coughed into his fist and then reached into one of his many cargo pockets and pulled out what appeared to be a gun. It had the basic shape of one, but it was too smooth and too shiny to be a standard gun. It didn’t help that when the safety was flicked off it let out a sharp whine that made Danny’s teeth itch. “So! I think it’s time for the rest of team Phantom to step up.”

Danny whirled on Tucker. “No!” he hissed. “I’m not-”

“You aren’t in a position to say no,” Sam said, grabbing Danny and pulling him away from Tucker. “Danny, you’re always the one running out to fight ghosts, but… you can’t. We’re in this situation because you didn’t let us help.” Her eyes softened. “It’s just for a little while, alright? And maybe, when it’s all said and done, you won’t worry about us anymore. Alright?”

Danny felt his mouth open and close several times. “Alright…” he said quietly. “Alright, for now.”

Ember felt something vibrate unpleasantly in her core and she sat bolt upright.

There was someone in her lair.

They didn’t enter. She couldn’t even really describe it as breaking in - none of the usual sensations of forced entry came to her. Just a… presence, walking through the walls of the space she created like they weren’t there.

It wasn’t Kitty. Kitty wouldn’t intrude like this, she’d sit out in front of her lair and sing annoying songs until she was let in. Johnny would pound at the door until he fell in, or Kitty had to come to collect him. Skulker would have shot down the door, or rather would have tried to - more than once his shots had rebounded from the barriers and blew up his armor. Penny would find some minor thing to blackmail her over until she was granted entrance.

Suffice to say, the number of people who would break into her lair was small, and the number who could was smaller.

Ember scrambled up from where she sat, snatching up her guitar as she went..

She found the invader in her “green” room, and Ember couldn't help but add Kitty’s oft repeated air quotes about it. While the room was obviously what would normally be called a green room, a waiting area for performers before going on stage, the room couldn’t quite be called green; Instead, every fixture, plant, and liquor laid out in the room was tinted the same turquoise as her hair.

Which made the man standing in her lair and pouring out whiskey into two glasses stick out even more, and instantly set her on edge when she recognised him. Oh, sure, he looked human at the moment, but where this guy was concerned, looks meant even less than it did for the goody-two-shoes dipstick in town.

“Excellent timing, Ember,” Vlad Masters said, smoothly. He turned and gave her a smarmy grin, dropping a glass into her hand. He raised his own glass filled with her whiskey, the whiskey she had been saving for years, saving for… more or less anything except this, and clinked it against the glass in her hand.

“Plasmius,” she growled, “To what do I owe the pleasure.”

“Well, my dear, the spring equinox is upon us!” He knocked back the drink and let out an obnoxious gasp as he smacked his lips. “Do you know, this is a much better spirit than I expected from you? My compliments. But yes, the equinox is upon us and I have a particular need for you.”

“I’m not dancing around naked in the forest for you, you goddamn pervert.”

“Wha… I… No!” Vlad sputtered, his air of smug superiority vanishing in an instant. “That’s not what I meant!”

“Right, because you break into just anyone’s lair and start babbling about shit only druids care about,” Ember deadpanned. “Explain what you want, dipstick, or I’m throwing your ass out.”

An absolute bluff, if ever she made one - her and Phantom were about on par with one another, but she knew from the Ghost Zone grapevine (which was mostly Kitty) Plasmius outclassed damn near everyone. But hey, pride.

Vlad closed his eyes and took a deep breath, visibly attempting to regain his composure and thus control of the conversation, before fixing her with a condescending little smile. “Well, I suppose first things first after that little outburst - do you even know what an equinox is?”

Ember scoffed. “It’s the start of spring, and it’s when night and day are equal in length.”

Vlad tutted at her and waggled a finger. “Yes, but that’s not all it is. It’s also one of the times that the veil between this world and the more mundane one is thin. This year the full moon is on the same night. The veil is so thin already, I feel I can tear it asunder with my bare hands. I imagine even someone like you could achieve that.”

Vlad had been speaking for all of thirty seconds, and Ember was already sick of him.

“Fuck it,” she said to herself.

Vlad looked distinctly unimpressed as her lair became alive. The furniture shook for a second before flinging themselves across the room to crush Vlad. The furniture passed through the (currently) human like he wasn’t even there. He simply cocked an eyebrow and dusted his suit lackadaisically. “Have you quite finished?”

“You invaded my lair, poured my drinks, and you’re being vague as hell. Are you finished?”

“Hardly, but apparently you need this spelled out.” He lifted his glass again. “Amity Park is already easier to break through than most places, and with a full moon equinox? With the right preparation, this could be a golden opportunity.”

“Can you get to the damn point already?” Ember snapped.

Vlad sighed. “If we have someone, anyone with knowledge of what is needed to tear open a portal to the ghost zone, we can tear open a portal to let every ghost, spirit, and forgotten out into the real world.”

Ember blinked before narrowing her eyes. “Great, wonderful, what the fuck does that have to do with me?”

Vlad smiled. “Why, my dear, everything.” He leaned in and whispered, “how did we humans used to call out to the spirits to guide us?”

“Songs…” Ember whispered back immediately. She shook her head. “So you want me to help you tear open the veil?”

Vlad leaned back. “I’m so glad you’ve caught up. Yes. That is exactly what I want you to do. I want you to be the medium through which my… associates can breach the veil. I’ll help of course, there are other methods, sacrifices, runes, and offerings to make it more potent, to tear the fabric between realities before you rip it apart. But the music, the truest way that humans have communicated with spirits before now, that’s what I’m asking for. I’d do it myself, but our mutual enemy would notice if I tried something so overt.”

Ember gestured to herself, from her flaming hair to her metal boots. “I’m not exactly subtle here.”

“No, I admit everything about you is painfully obvious,” the man sneered, and Ember almost tried to throw him out again, futility be damned. “But then, part of the reason for this meeting is I’ve come to realize I perhaps need to be a little less subtle.”

He paused, refilling his whiskey glass. Ember let the silence stretch out, leaning against the wall, and pointedly not asking the question she saw in Vlad’s eyes whenever they flicked to her. It was the same look Skulker used to get whenever he wanted to pontificate on something or other, with her as the unwilling audience. She wasn’t going to give him the excuse.

He cracked first.

“Must you?” Vlad sighed, turning back to Ember with mild exasperation.

“I dunno, must you? If you wanna spew your plan and why it’s totally justified or whatever, then fine, but don’t expect me to play along just ‘cause you set me up to.”

“Oh, very well. I suppose it’s only fair for you to know what prompted this request.”

Ember rolled her eyes at him.

“You see,” he began, sipping from the whiskey. “For some time, I’ve allowed myself to become… distracted, from the goal I’ve held above all others. I’m sure nobody would blame me - after all, who could resist the allure of having as powerful a piece as the Fright Knight in my employ, to name but one example. The shadow wars with Daniel for artifacts and power, oh it’s all very exhilarating. But then on New Years Eve I was reminded, powerfully reminded of what matters most, the one thing I don’t possess that I deserve.”

Vlad slugged the whiskey back, keeping the glass in a death grip, rage burning in his eyes. Ember could piece it together easily - everyone knew what pushed Plasmius to do what he does, two and half years of smarming his way around their end of the Zone did that. New Years Eve, a party, a happy couple he couldn’t stand to see, something like that.

“Revenge. I let myself get so caught up in winning over Madeline and Daniel, that I forgot the crucial first step of doing so. Destroying his reputation has done me no good. Subtler methods of assasination have failed or been thwarted. I think it’s time I stopped trying to be coy about ending the life of the man who ruined me. So. No elaborate conspiracy, no ulterior motive or plots within plots. A single night of chaos to provide adequate cover, and the man I hate most is simply another victim of a ghost incursion no one could have seen coming. And nobody will know, not for sure, that it was me,” he finished, punctuating his monologing with a devious smile.

OK, Ember will admit, that isn’t a bad plan. Needs some setup, apparently, a lot of stacking the deck in his favor, but the means are simple enough, and so is the goal. Both were usually his problem. From what she’d heard, anyway. This was only, like, the second time she’d seen him, never mind spoken to him.

“Uh-huh. I’ve heard worse,” she shrugged. “Dunno how you expect me to help, though. I stick out. Actually, dunno why you expect me to help. What’s in this for me?”

Vlad smiled. “Well, my dear, I can answer both of those questions at once. I’m more than aware of several ways to disguise oneself.” He frowned. “I’ll admit, the one I have in mind for your reward is in some ways less than ideal for the goal of manipulating events, seeing as unless you go to high school you’ll raise far too many questions, but…” he swirled the glass around and his smile grew cruel.

She growled as he sipped at his drink. “Out with it!”

“With the ritual I’ve discovered, what it can do? For all intents and purposes, you’ll be alive.”

Ember wasn’t sure how long she had stood there. The words echoed in her ears, repeating over and over again and again. She’d be alive. She wouldn’t be trapped in her lair or stuck in the endlessly deadly Zone. Stuck in an infinite series of hallways and rooms with the sound of a stage so close that she could never find. She’d be in the real world.

The living world.

“What’s the catch?” She finally breathed out. The lair shifted and shook as she shivered.

“No catch. The ritual needs repeating every year or so, but how to perform it will be given to you. You fulfill your role, and you’ll get to live, and I’ll have an army come through and I’ll get what I want.”

Vlad raised his glass in the air. “To the death of Jack Fenton.”

And Ember numbly raised her glass to the death of a man she never met.

Chapter Text

Ember looked at herself in the mirror, observing herself as she ran her hands through her hair. The feeling was… wrong. The strands of hair sliding through her fingers didn’t feel right; they were too smooth, too crisp. All of her senses were no longer muted by death. She could feel every single thread sliding through her fingers. The brown hair was too dark against her white flesh.

And it was flesh.

Or at least, it was the closest thing to skin that Ember had had in years. She watched as gravity performed its tireless work against her hair, and it fell into place, dangling from her scalp. The clothes on her body itched, the fabric rubbing against her skin rubbed against her in a way that she had forgotten. The loose-fitting tank top had a weight to it none of her outfits as a ghost had, and the belt around her waist pinched just slightly, not enough to be uncomfortable, but enough for her to be aware that it was holding her jeans in place.

She looked up at the mirror in the room Vlad had left her in and let out a slow breath. She was close enough that if she were truly alive, her breath should have fogged the mirror.

It didn’t.

The door behind her opened, and she looked up through the mirror to see Vlad entering the room with a stack of papers in one hand and a bag in another. “Everything is in order,” he said, getting right to the point. “Except for a few small details that we should go over before finalizing them.”

Ember turned and faced him. “What did you do?” Vlad raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to elaborate. She indicated her body. “This… this isn’t a transformation, this… what did you do?”

“Ah,” Vlad muttered. He let out a hum as he reached into a pocket and pulled out a pen, clicking it twice. “Simply put, I gave you a human body.”

Ember shook her head. “Nothing about that is simple. I thought I heard people calling you an ectobiologist, Skulker, usually. But… you gave me a body. I’m alive…” the last words came out of her mouth in a whisper.

“Hardly,” Vlad began. He narrowed his eyes. “While you might look like a living, breathing, girl, you’re not. The heart pumping in your chest isn’t yours, and the air leaving your lungs isn’t breath. Your soul is trapped in that body, but it isn’t tied to it at all. It’s a soulless body with no spark of life in it. Grown anew for you to inhabit. The alchemy alone was quite challenging, to say nothing of the difficulty of the more arcane rituals to ensure you could inhabit the thing.”

Vlad set the bag and papers down on a nearby desk. “And as for the ectobiology statement… I never called myself that. The Fenton’s did. Maddie loved her science, but as much as they wanted to dress it up in pretty words, what is opening a portal to study the dead but necromancy?”

“Alchemy? Rituals? Necromancy?” Ember asked, raising an eyebrow. “That shit’s real?”

“Oh, yes,” Vlad confirmed absently, picking up the stack of papers and sorting through them. “Not too reliable, it must be said, at least the knowledge on this side of the dimensional divide. Human conception of such things is a useless hodge podge of mad ravings, religious superstition and charlatans attempting to con the gullible, with the occasional kernel of truth in there. But in the Infinite Realms? Ah, the archives I’ve found in the depths of that place. I wish I’d built a portal earlier. So many missed opportunities. Ah well.”

He held out a hand containing the selected documents. Ember took the papers from Vlad and looked over them. “What is this?”

“Paperwork, accommodating your transfer into Amity Park High School,” Ember shot him a look which he matched, “I am aware it’s not ideal, but putting you in the school will prevent additional questions about where you came from.”

“You want to put a ghost next to the resident ghost hunter?”

“Hunters,” Vlad clarified, “There are two in the school. Valerie Gray and of course Danny Fenton.” Vlad grimaced and folded his hands behind his back. “Unfortunately, Amity Park has a law demanding highschool attendance until after the age of 18, unlike the rest of the state.” He shrugged and continued unabashed, “It’s helpful for keeping the boy from trying to do more of his “hero” work,” Vlad said, making finger quotes around the word before folding his hands again, “but I’ll admit it’s an annoyance for now.”

Ember grumbled but looked over the papers, seeing several sections left blank. “So what do you need from me?” She asked as she glanced up at Vlad with a quirked eyebrow.

Vlad waved a hand at the documents. “You need to pick your name.”

“My name?”

“What will your name be in this human form?”

“Amber-”

“No.”

“No?” Ember hissed. What was wrong with that name?

Vlad gave her a look. “The boy isn’t completely stupid, and even if he was, Valerie is intelligent and perceptive. That’s too close to your name, given enough time and the fact that we want you to use your musical talents to pierce what will be left of the veil, it’s a risk that we should not take.”

Ember huffed, but refused to acknowledge the statement beyond that. She looked back at the mirror and cast her gaze over herself.

Her new eyes stood out from her features, two pools of dark brown with little flecks of green in pale white skin. The face that was in the mirror was almost like hers, the girl she had been before, just… slightly softer, almost elfin in some ways.

Which made her think of a song.

“Rosie McCann…” Ember said, quietly. She turned and faced Vlad, “It’s Rosie then.”

“Rosie…” Vlad said dully, as if the name offended him. He shrugged. “Very well, if that’s what you want.”

Ember indicated the bag Vlad had walked in with. “What’s with that?”

Vlad lifted the bag up. “Various items, a phone, keys to an apartment, driver’s license, a credit card-”

“You’re giving me access to your money?”

“It does have a limit, but I doubt you’ll be able to hit it.”

Ember was quiet for a moment before she huffed. “Just to be clear, no matter how much money you give me, I am not calling you daddy.”

Vlad’s eyes widened for a moment before he slammed his palm against his forehead and shouted, “Could you please have some professionalism about this?”

“Hm. Nah,” Ember smirked. She really couldn’t help herself - she should be grateful, probably, but good God the man just oozed condescension like a slug. It set her teeth on edge. “Like seriously, you can’t just reveal you’ve got the ability to create teenage girls on a whim and not expect me to get some ideas about how you use it.”

“Historically doing that hasn’t gone well for me,” Vlad deadpanned exasperatedly, before his eyes widened again. “Not like that!”

“... The fuck?!”

Danny leaned comfortably against the side of the car. While his dad had insisted on bringing him to these festival meetings, Jazz had volunteered to be the driver. That meant the drive was relaxing and not an exercise in crash course existentialism, where Danny was forced to confront head on the question of whether he was already dead or if his dad’s driving would kill him.

Jack hummed along to the music that was playing on the radio, off-tune and very off-beat. Jazz cast him sideways glances as she drove through the town. Danny tried to get her to ignore him, mostly by voicing out loud any passing animals he saw to divert her attention, but eventually the supply of adorable dogs dried up, and Jazz turned to their father. “Dad, are you okay? I haven’t heard you mention anything involving ghosts in the last 5 minutes.”

“Ah… well…” Jack hawed for a moment, Danny saw Jack glance at him through the rearview mirror. “Maddie asked me to leave all the ghost hunting equipment at home today.”

Danny blinked, and sat up slightly. He looked over his dad and realized that some of the pockets in his jumpsuit were empty. Jack’s eyes met his and he sighed. The large man leaned back. “Your mom told me to take this seriously, and if I had any ghost hunting equipment on me, she thought I’d be too distracted….”

Jazz let out a hum and Danny felt her start thinking about him before she even said anything. “Jazz, don’t even-” he started.

Only to be cut off by a sound like a beaver's teeth as Jack began gnawing at his gloves.

Jazz reached over and smacked his hand away, and then immediately pointed two fingers in his face. “Dad! Stop it!” She waggled her fingers back and forth. “You’re not wearing regular clothes, you can stop pretending that you’re having an allergic reaction.”

Jack whined, “But Jazzy pants! I don’t have anything to blast ectoplasmic scum with! It’s uncomfortable!”

“You can live with it for now,” Jazz said, sighing, “Mom did ask you to take this seriously…” She glanced back at Danny as she parked as far away from the front door of the community center as she could.

Danny looked at the hundred or so feet between the car and the building. “Jazz… why did you park so far away?”

“Two reasons,” Jazz said, not yet unbuckling herself and giving her dad a look. “One, if a ghost attacks the community center, I want my car as far away as possible.”

Danny sighed and unbuckled himself. “It says so much about living here that that’s a valid reason.”

“Two,” Jazz continued as he got out of the car, “the library is closer here, and that’s where I’m going.”

Jack frowned. “You really think a ghost will show up at the community center?”

Jazz glanced up at Danny through the window. “Honestly? I’d be shocked if there wasn’t at least one.”

Danny groaned at the veiled joke and shut the car door. Jazz hadn’t started unbuckling herself which meant she wanted to talk to their dad in private, which probably meant it was about him. He scratched at the back of his head and started making his way to the front of the car.

He couldn’t say he didn’t appreciate Jazz sticking her nose in his business. He used to hate it, but over the years Jazz had done enough for him that he couldn’t in good conscience deny the fact that she really did help. He had plenty of people who could back him up in a fight. Jazz did something different.

Danny might have been the family’s shame, at least publicly, but Jazz made it up for in spades. She hadn’t graduated high school, yet she was far enough ahead in PSEO credits that she almost had her degree in psychology.

So when Jazz told her parents that they needed to give Danny space, they would listen.

Sometimes, at least.

Jack opened the door and stepped out of the car. The car’s frame shifted with a creak now that it was no longer burdened with his massive size. He leaned back in and smiled brightly at Jazz. “It’s okay, Jazz, don’t worry, I’m just here to make sure Danny doesn’t disappear.” He patted the top of the car as Jazz stepped out. “I’ll make sure to be on my best behavior so I won’t embarrass him!”

“Too late for that,” Danny muttered as he looked his dad’s jumpsuit up and down.

Jazz rolled her eyes and got out of the car as well and the three of them split ways. Jazz crossed the street to the library, while Jack and Danny walked into the community center.

Danny sighed as he walked in. The Christmas and New Year decorations hadn’t yet been taken down, but other than that, the center was immaculate. There were a few families milling about, probably for the pool or the basketball courts.

But, as Danny walked in a bit deeper past the bulletin boards, he started seeing another group of people, most of them had a good twenty years on him. The signs for the spring festival guided them deeper into the building.

Jack stopped and let out a hum as he looked at one of the signs. Danny turned and looked back at him. “Forget something?” Danny asked.

Jack shook his head. “No, just…” he pointed at two images printed on the directions. “These two sigils here? They brought me back to college, I haven't seen them in years.” Jack tapped one. “This one is meant to keep your house safe.”

Danny inspected the paper. It was a cross with the arms off-center making a large square in the middle. It didn’t look like anything special to Danny, but then again, Danny wasn’t the type to put stock in sigils or tradition as a form of protection.

That being said… “I didn’t know you cared about stuff like that?”

Jack laughed and patted Danny on the back. “Well, I guess I can’t fault you for not knowing. Your mother has always focused more on the practical matters. Breaking down what worked and didn’t with experiment after experiment. But the Fenton’s have been ghost hunters for generations, even back in the middle ages! Everything got passed down in the old family grimoire. Used to drive Mads nuts in college whenever I’d use it as a reference!”

“Not Vlad?” Danny asked, surprised. He was so used to seeing his mom indulge his dad’s wilder flights of fancy, and Vlad taking any opportunity to knock the man down.

“No, of course not! V-Man was right here with me, arguing with Maddie!” Jack flashed a grin to no one in particular, tinged with nostalgia. “He always said that if we were assuming ghosts existed, there was no reason to assume the older means of dealing with them were without value until we could prove otherwise. He was worse than me! I at least backed down when we weren’t getting anywhere debating. Vlad wouldn’t ever stop arguing his point.”

“That’s… very much not the picture Vlad paints whenever he’s talked about it to me,” Danny muttered almost to himself, but his dad heard anyway. The smile faded a little.

“Yeah,” the older man sighed. “It used to be me and him, standing up for the old ways, making sure what everyone that came before us went through wasn’t dismissed out of hand. We even got this one,” he said, gesturing to a third sigil. “Tattooed on ourselves.”

“Really? What does that one mean?” Danny asked.

“It has a few meanings, but for me and Vladdy…” Jack said wistfully, brushing his thumb against the sigil. His thumb ran along the ring, before stopping where the circle turned into a hand, touching a heart. Jack stilled, and for a moment, Danny thought Jack wasn’t going to continue.

“Friendship.” Jack uttered quietly, breaking the silence. “It meant friendship.”

Jack looked sadly at the second sigil whilst Danny stared at his dad. Did… Did he know that Vlad resented him, blamed him, hated him? He never thought the elder Fenton was aware of the bitter old fruitloops feelings, but…

Before he could ask, Jack shook himself, his big cheery smile returning to his face abruptly.

“Come on Danno, we’ll be late!”

The two of them walked into the meeting hall where a circle of chairs was set up. Danny shoved his hands in his pockets and scoffed. “This feels like an intervention.”

Jack let out a hum. “Not sure about that, usually they’re all sitting down already.” Jack turned and pointed at a table. “Oh! Punch! You want any?”

“Uh… no,” Danny said, fumbling for words. “What was that about-”

“Alright! Have fun son!” Jack said, rushing off, “Oh! They have donuts!”

Danny sighed and rolled his shoulders. He sat down in one of the chairs, and as if he had set off some sort of signal the others began to drift into the seating area as well.

Eventually, just his dad and a few others stood by the punch bowl and snacks, everyone else sitting down, or they were the one lone figure standing in the center of the room. He was somewhat familiar to Danny, but he couldn’t quite place them. That wasn’t exactly unexpected, though, Phantom had saved everyone in town at some point or another, and Danny couldn’t be expected to remember every single face he had pulled out the path of an ectoblast.

“Alright, well, it’s a little late, but let’s get started!” He shouted holding up a piece of paper. “Today, I think we’re just looking for ideas. But if there’s anything you feel really strongly about, I’m sure we can make it work!”

“Well, it wouldn’t be our spring festival without the market!” Someone shouted.

“Of course, of course!”

After that it was a flurry of voices. There was some order to the chaos, but ideas were flouted and received with various levels of enthusiasm. Danny felt a part of him dying inside as more ideas were suggested. So many ideas sounded just so boring. He didn’t want to spend all his free time helping set up a market, food tasting, or whatever else they were coming up with.

“Really? Are we planning a festival without music?” The familiar voice that cut across the room set Danny on edge and he whirled around to find the speaker.

And Danny immediately knew he had to have been mistaken. There was no way he had encountered this girl before in his life. She was just slightly shorter than him, like Sam, but Sam usually wore platform boots to make her taller, and around the same age, maybe a little older. Brown hair gathered in a messy ponytail fell down her back, and a few loose strands fell down either side of her face, framing an expression that had to be similar to his own - boredom and mild contempt. He felt immediate kinship with her on that basis alone. She was leaning against the wall with her arms folded.

She pushed off the wall and walked towards the chairs. She put both her hands on two chairs and leaned over them. The vest she was wearing gleamed with various pins and patches, which managed to distract Danny for a moment as he tried to place all the classic bands she was showing off.

“Really?” She continued, and Danny realized he had missed what the response to her question had been. “There’s no one else in town? Amity Park isn’t that small is it?” The statement was punctuated by a frown that was made more pronounced by her dark-painted lips.

Danny looked back at the organizer who was looking at his papers. “Else? Does that mean you’re willing to do it?”

The teen sighed and ran her hand through her hair, glaring at it as she got it out of her face. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll put together a setlist. It’s… been a while since I’ve played in front of people but…” She shrugged and folded her arms again. The gesture felt oddly familiar to Danny, and he spent a few moments trying to figure out why before it clicked - it was a defensive thing he’d do whenever he was nervous about the people he was talking to, but couldn’t show it.

Well, now he was just curious about this girl.

“Ah, well, Chris, err… Chris Vernon, I don’t think you know him, do you, miss?” Danny recognized that name, he was a worker at the town’s home improvement store, and often ran afoul of the box ghost.

But everyone in Amity Park knew of Chris, the constant ghost attacks meant that Chris was well known. There were several hardware stores in Amity Park, but Chris’s was the biggest and most well known.

Instead of acknowledging that she knew him, she just huffed as she narrowed her eyes, and tapped her feet against the ground. Her reaction confirmed what Danny had already known, she was definitely new to Amity Park.

If the organizer was perturbed by her reaction, he didn’t show it at all. Instead, he simply continued, “Well, he can help you get material together for a stage or something similar. We’re not setting up anywhere there’s one ready for you. The mayor’s given us a bigger budget this year, finally, but not that big.”

“Ughh…. Really?” She shook her head, and Danny watched her hair sway side to side. “Alright, that’s fine. I’m sure we can come up with something.”

“My parents can probably help with that,” Danny offered before his brain caught up with him. The entire room turned toward Danny, everyone surprised that he had finally spoken since the meeting had started. After acknowledging his presence, the rest of the room slowly turned toward Jack with trepidation.

Except for her. She was completely focused on him, displaying the same amount of surprise the others had at his presence before she hid the expression behind a mask of indifference. Only then did she turn to look at Jack.

Jack’s eyes widened and he took a moment to swig the last of his punch. He then shrugged and spoke up, “Sure, we probably have something around that could help.” He brought a hand up to his chin in thought. “The anti-grav thrusters could probably work to help keep the stage up. We also have ectoplasm generators for the sound system…”

“Uh… I don’t think that’ll be necessary!” The organizer said, as soon as Jack trailed off, “But we’ll keep you in mind!” The smile on his was just a little too wide to be real. “That being said, we’ve gotten some great ideas here! Anything else anyone thinks should be done?”

“Well, if we’re planning on music this year, what about seeing if we can get that dance studio to help set up some dancing?” someone asked after a few seconds of silence. Once again, the floodgates were opened and people started.

The teen who had spoken up turned and saw Danny looking at her. She scoffed and raised an eyebrow. “There a problem?” she snapped.

Danny jumped and shook his head before coughing into his hand and straightening. Looking anywhere but at her…

Though… he might have kept her in the corner of his eye. Involuntarily. Obviously.

After she looked away from him, Danny slunk back down in his chair. Only to jump when he felt his dad clap him on the shoulder. “So… you think we should help the little lady, huh, Danno?”

“Uh… yeah!” Danny said, realizing that the meeting was coming to an end. He stood up and followed his dad out the door, glancing around and seeing that she was gone. “Oh… shoot, I didn’t actually figure out what I was going to do for Lancer.”

Jack chuckled. “Well, Danny, my favorite son of mine.”

“I’m your only son.”

“I think you’d like to know that one miss Rosie is going to be working with Mister Yates to set up the music performance this spring festival.”

“Oh!” Danny said. “Thank you!” His dad’s eyes twinkled with a knowing look, one that Danny was all too familiar with. It was usually proceeded by some comment or another about Sam. Danny immediately clarified, “For that project… thing… for find out something for Lancer.”

“Mmhmm…” Jack hummed while leading them to Jazz’s car.

She was waiting inside the car, with several books on the passenger seat. Those got tossed in the back seat causing her to squawk before sighing. She looked up at Jack, who was still smiling and sighed. “Well, it looks like it went well?”

“Yup!” Jack said, just a bit too loudly for the small car, “Danno found something he’d like to help with, or rather someone….”

Danny groaned and put his head in his hands. “Dad… no…”

“Dad, yes!” Jack responded, before continuing, “Danny couldn’t keep his eyes off her. He completely missed the actual conversation about what she was planning.”

Jazz chuckled. “Oh, really now?” she said looking back at Danny as she turned the ignition starting the car.

“Dad…” Danny began, “Weren’t you supposed to not embarrass me?”

“Did you really think that was going to happen?”

“No,” Danny huffed, slouching in the car.

At least he got something for Mr. Lancer.

Chapter Text

Ember walked into Casper High. Not for the first time, nor the second. In fact, it would probably be something like her five hundredth time or so. Even if you ignored her various escapades trying to conquer the world through music, this once had been as familiar to her as the back of her hand. Even now, years later, she didn’t need to be told where to go to meet the administration.

The halls hadn’t changed much. The lockers had been updated, the floors had been replaced, and the ceiling had been fixed, but the school itself was the same. They could repaint the exteriors as much as they wanted, but they couldn’t change what they had been.

Which meant she scowled as she walked by the trophy case. The girl in the reflection made her flinch. She had spent more time than she should have this morning just staring at herself in the mirror. The body she was inhabiting still didn’t feel like it was her, but at least she was feeling more comfortable in her… this body.

Her new body… Rosie’s body… it had been more than a few days in this body, and she hadn’t quite grown used to it yet. It didn’t feel right. She knew what living felt like. She had craved it for years, and this wasn’t it. There were a million little things that didn’t quite match right. She was constantly being assailed by a hundred sensations that as one of the living she would have never thought twice about. The constant stimulation reminded her that she wasn’t actually alive, she was just borrowing a body that wasn’t her.

Plasmius, the creepy fucker, might have said the heart beating in her chest wasn’t her own, but this body moved with her will. It was her decision to do what she wanted.

And that was life enough for Ember.

At least so she told herself.

Ember walked into the small office, the vice principal felt like someone she should have remembered, but frankly she didn’t care. He was just another authority figure, drunk on whatever miniscule amount of power he had over the people in his charge, probably useless at actually helping or protecting them in any meaningful way. She had more of those in her first time around the living world, let alone her afterlife.

It wasn’t just the two of them there, however. There was another student, this one she did recognize. She had… encouraged him to act as a bouncer for her at one point or another. She frowned as she walked in because god damn it couldn’t Vlad have made this body a little taller? She really should have given him a series of requirements for the new body. She hadn't expected to just wake up in a living body. She had been able to look into his eyes without having to look up before, but now she was quite a bit smaller.

She glanced at his letterman jacket, (and really? He was walking around the school with that jacket on? It was cold outside, sure, but it wasn’t that cold) and saw that he had several chevrons on one of the sleeves which indicated that it had in fact been several years since she last saw him.

Which… didn’t make her feel much better about her new body’s height, considering she supposedly wasn’t going to grow.

God damn it, Plasmius.

“Ah, Ms. McCann,” the vice-principal said, looking down at a set of papers spread out across his desk. “I’m the vice principal, Mr. Lancer, hopefully you’ll just remember me as one of the teachers, not the one in charge of detention.” The man laughed, as did the other student in the room. Mr. Lancer turned toward the other student and indicated him by patting him on the back. “This here is Dash Baxter, one of our finest students here. He’s in the same grade as you, and he’ll be showing you where your locker is, along with where your classrooms are.”

Ember looked up at that. She supposed she should be thankful. She’d have thought that they’d have had Phantom be the face of Casper high, considering the reason why the place was still standing was because of him. Well, it was no skin off her new back if Phantom was too busy to show someone new around the school.

Dash held out his hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said, giving her a smarmy grin. His head tilted to the side while flashing a smile. His entire posture screamed cocky and self-assured. The type of person Ember had once looked up to.

She knew better now.

Ember glanced down at Dash’s hand and then back up at him. Leaving him hanging long enough just to be awkward.

Reluctantly she reached up and shook his hand, and he gave her a wider grin and held onto her hand longer than Ember wanted him to. She yanked her hand out of his and reached over to the papers on Mr. Lancer’s desk. She picked it up, “This is my schedule, right?” She clarified, looking it over.

The science classes were still in the C wing with her’s being in C-4. English and art were in the A building, in the same rooms she had the last time she went to school here.

She flipped the paper over, and saw that a map of the school had been printed on the back. Something she hadn’t needed at all.

Of course, that also meant Dash here wasn’t needed at all either.

“Yes, it is,” Lancer said, raising an eyebrow at her. Ember wasn’t sure if it was ‘cause of her blowing off the jock in the room, or at her general attitude, but frankly she didn’t care. She had more important things to do than stroke the ego of some big, dumb baboon and his handler. He put together the papers and handed the rest of them to her in a stack.

Ember folded up the schedule and shoved it in her vest. She then took the rest of the papers. “And these are?”

Mr. Lancer shrugged. “Study guides for the few weeks of school you’ve missed, and various notes to help you adjust to school here.” Lancer turned toward Dash and nodded. “If you have any other questions, you can ask Dash here for any help.”

Dash folded his arms and straightened his back, his face out of Mr. Lancer's eye-line as he leered at her. “Really, if you need anything….”

“I’ll remember that…” Ember said flatly, resolving to forget it immediately. She glanced at the papers before seeing nothing that needed to be looked at now. So she put them in the messenger bag she was using as a backpack, and then pulled out her schedule again. She looked up at Lancer. “I’m gonna go ahead and assume I have textbooks somewhere.”

Mr. Lancer nodded. “Of course, they’re left in your locker.”

“Peachy,” Ember said flatly before turning on her heel.

“Wha-” Dash began as Ember marched out of Mr. Lancer’s office. “Hey, wait up!” Dash said, jogging to walk side by side with her. He held up his arms and indicated himself. “Don’t you want to know where your locker is?”

Ember rolled her eyes and held up her schedule. “My locker number is C314, I’m gonna take a wild guess and say that means it’s in the C wing, on the third floor. Am I close?”

Dash frowned, but then shrugged. “Huh, you know… I never noticed that.” He shook his head, and Ember couldn’t help but picture him clearing the etch-a-sketch that was his brain. He shrugged once again and then kept pace with her easily, his longer legs keeping up with her march. Damn it, Plasmius! “Well, anyways, I figured I should tell you about our teachers and what not.” Dash started ticking down on his fingers. “You’ve met Mr. Lancer, he’s pretty chill. He’s one of the favorites. Mr. Falluca is the math teacher, he’s alright, but kind of a stickler you know? Then there’s Ms. Tetslaff, and she’s awesome-”

Ember didn’t even glance in his direction as she made her way up the stairs. “Let me guess, she’s the gym teacher?”

Dash blinked. “Wait, how did you know?”

Ember glanced at Dash’s letterman jacket, noting the fact that he had several sport patches stitched on, and no academic ones. “Call it a lucky guess…” Ember scoffed and then continued on.

She made it to her locker and started putting in the combination that was on her paper. Dash crowded her space by leaning against the locker, putting on hand on the locker next to hers and leaning on it. His arm length made it so he was practically breathing down her neck. Could this guy not take a damn hint or something? “So, what’s with the vest? And what’s with the dots over these letters?”

Ember stopped and turned around. “Are… are you serious?” She asked, glancing at the other students as they began to make their way to their own lockers. She confirmed the patch Dash was pointing at. “You really don’t know the Mötley Crüe?”

Dash scratched at the side of his head. “Uh… no? Should I?”

Ember rolled her eyes and went back to her locker. “Yes. Yes, you should.”

She had intended to leave it at that, but unfortunately, the silence was broken by Dash asking again. “So… uhhh… the vest?”

Ember yanked on the lock, and it popped open and she was finally able to get her books out. “It’s called a battle vest, di-dweeb,” she said, changing the word at the last second. Plasmius had stressed the importance of breaking some of her habits that gave her away. Going around calling all the dipsticks dipsticks would probably blow her cover.

“That sounds awesome,” Dash breathed out.

Ember couldn’t help but laugh. So his opinion wasn’t total shit, she should have known considering she had brainwashed him at some point with her music. “Yeah. That’s fair,” she allowed as she looked at her schedule and confirmed what her next first class would be. She grabbed a few of her textbooks and put them in her bag as Dash circled behind her. She glanced back at him before shutting her locker. “It’s a bunch of my favorite bands and stuff like that.” She said, sliding out and away from him.

“Oh! Cool! So it’s like my letterman jacket!”

And just like that, any respect Ember had begun to grow for him died. “No,” she said flatly, “No it isn’t.”

Dash scratched the back of his head as he tried to figure out what he said wrong. That jacket Dash was wearing was very different than what Ember was wearing. Dash’s jacket was all about his athleticism and tied to his time here at the school. Ember’s was about her passion for music and had nothing to do with school.

Ember refused to acknowledge the fact that yes, both clothing items they were wearing were representations of things that they cared about. There was nothing in common, no matter what anyone said.

Dash, however, had not figured that out. Instead, Dash jogged around her and cut her off at the corner. He leaned against the corner putting his hand up against the wall and blocking her path. “So… uh… you like quarterbacks?”

Ember paused and blinked. She probably looked pretty stupid at the moment because she literally couldn’t understand what the point of that question was. She looked up at that same smarmy grin he had on earlier and it clicked.

“Oh my god… has that line ever worked for you?” At his shocked expression, she felt something inside her die, and as a ghost, she was an expert on that. “It has hasn’t it? Holy shit, that’s just sad…” Ember ducked under his arm and continued walking past him. She turned and said, not quite shouting but definitely making her voice heard. “Listen, I don’t need a creepy, mouth-breathing monkey-brained jock chasing me around. So just… don’t. Just don't.”

And hopefully, that’d be the end of that.

Of course, it couldn’t have just ended there.

Ember knew that there was a social hierarchy in high school, that wasn’t exactly something that had changed since Ember was last here. But, she hadn’t expected how rigid it was this time around. She had told off Dash at the start of the school day, and while no one had really reacted by her first class of the day, her second class had already started trying to avoid interacting with her.

By the third class, she was a social pariah. Again.

Which… didn’t bother her as much as she thought it would. Years ago, ages ago, that had bothered her. When she was the weirdo who no one liked… The lonely girl who no one loved… The…

No, an age ago, that bothered her.

And she'd leave it at that.

Now? Now she scoffed at the people following the whims of an egotistical jock bitter about rejection. And sometimes the dipsticks wondered why she wanted a damn revolution when this shit was the pattern everywhere.

To be perfectly honest, being the social pariah was probably a good thing. The last thing she needed was anyone poking their noses into her business.

But as Ember turned away from the lunch line, a tray of gross cafeteria food in hand, (And she was fixing that as soon as she got back to the apartment, school lunches hadn't improved. They had gotten worse.) looking for a place to sit, she realized how quickly she managed to get herself ostracized from the school at large.

Her eyes looked over at every table to see that they were all staring at the “new kid” which wasn’t a surprise.

However, the fact that every table she looked at proceeded to turn away from her, clearly isolating her was… well, it wasn’t anything new, though, but she certainly didn't expect it.

Apparently, the school at large liked Dash more than she would have expected. Or they were scared of the big lummox, but what the hell could he do to all of them?

Maybe after all this, she’d burn down the school too. It obviously wasn’t a great place of learning after all. Frankly whatever school everyone else got shunted to after she torched this one would be better than being stuck in a weird dictatorship run by idiot football players.

As she walked through the cafeteria, every table she approached pulled chairs in closer, closing off friend groups, or they spread out, preventing from finding her a seat. Either way, making their opinion clear.

We don’t want you to sit with us.

If it weren’t the middle of January, she’d have said screw this and ate by herself outside, but alas, zero-degree weather did not make for a comfortable lunch experience.

That still left her with a table to sit at.

The only table left, however…

Tucker put half of his burger back on his plate. “Yeah,” he said, talking around the burger in his mouth, “so anyways, that’s why I’m on like three government watchlists and owe the plumber a new plunger”

Ember sighed. “I take it back, being cold isn’t so bad…” It was at least better than having Dash around. Phantom was annoying, sure, but at least he used his brains more than his muscles.

The three of them looked up at Ember, and Ember felt a little bit of her inside freeze when she realized Phantom’s eyes were focused on her alight with recognition. But he leaned back and smiled weakly. “I saw you at the community center! Rosie, right?” He glanced about at the rest of the cafeteria and then back at her. “So I guess you’re the one who called Dash an idiot.”

Ember shrugged. “Actually, I called him monkey brained, but the sentiment is the same.”

Phantom smiled and pushed out a chair, inviting her to sit with the three of them. “And just like that, you’re now my hero.”

The goth at the table leaned back and folded her arms. “That also would explain why he’s been on the warpath today. We already had to keep him from trying to shove you in a locker twice today.”

Ember frowned at that. Why the hell was Phantom worrying about getting shoved in a locker? Said dipstick (and she really needed to avoid thinking that word, she could feel it on the tip of her tongue) must have thought she was worrying about him because he shrugged. “It’s not like he can really hurt me. Better he’s trying to come after me than any of the band geeks.”

She really wanted to ask a couple of other questions, but the first to come out. “Why the band geeks versus… I dunno. The tech geeks?”

Tucker looked up from his burger and shrugged. “Dash won’t touch the tech nerds, they’re the ones who usually wind up doing his papers.”

Sam put her chin on her hand and leaned against the table. “And the drama kids are also pretty protected. The school plays might not bring in as much as the jocks, but they at least bring some money in.”

Oh, now Ember was getting it. Phantom was protecting everyone and being the good ole superman for the town, but Dash was his own level of importance. Unfortunately, that tracked. At least they didn’t get on, Ember mused. God knows how bad it’d be if Phantom and the Baboon actually joined forces. She’d have to break cover and burn them both just to deal with the sheer annoyance. “Wonderful,” Ember groaned, “so I take it this means that Dash is the school’s golden boy?”

“Three touchdown passes in nationals during football season, and fifty percent accuracy on three-point shots in basketball,” the three of them groaned at once.

“Greeeaaattt…”

Phantom sighed. “Yup. Some people’s mind is like a steel trap, sharp and useful…” He looked up at Ember and gave her a half-hearted shrug while his smile filled with mischief. “Dash, on the other hand, has an etch-a-sketch.”

Ember barked out a laugh. “I noticed!” She said, finally taking the offered seat. No one else was gonna take her, and well… the idea of buddying up with the town protector without him knowing did have a certain appeal. “That’s a little unfair though. Those toys can be fun!”

Sam looked between Ember and Phantom a few times. It made Ember, and Tucker, raise an eyebrow, but Phantom hadn’t noticed at all. Sam’s eyes narrowed as she looked for… something, but Ember couldn’t tell what. “So, gonna apologize to him?” Sam asked, a bite behind her words.

“Who Dash? Fuck no,” Ember scoffed. “I bent over backwards to appease people like him back when… at my old school. I’m not doing that again.”

Danny smiled at her and indicated the table with a wave of his hand. “Whelp, welcome to the weirdo table.”

Ember shrugged and began to eat. The hunger her body got was… a weird sensation. She now understood why Vlad had wasted no time in getting her into it. The hunger it felt was stronger than what she had felt while she was alive. It was a little too easy to let that distract her.

Phantom leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. “So… you wanted to put on a live music session at the Spring Festival?”

Ember paused as she got ready to eat her food. She looked up at him. “You actually care about that?”

Danny shrugged, not quite non-committal, the interest on his face was too obvious in order for it to be apathy, but it also wasn’t serious enough for her to be worried about his interest. “It sounded interesting. So I thought I could try to help out with that.”

Ember scoffed. “Really?” She said, leaning forward, “And how do you know I’m not some criminal that’s doing this as community service as part of my probation?”

Danny shrugged. This time, a bright smile on his face. “Well, I figured the chances of two people doing that was very unlikely.”

The snort that left Ember’s nose ruined any chances of her looking cool.

Not that she really cared.

Chapter Text

When Danny had heard this morning that some new student had really pissed off Dash, hopeful was not the word that he would have used to describe his reaction. Panicked was more apt, Dash needed a punching bag, and with Dash practically single-handedly winning the game last weekend (which was total bullshit, what the hell happened to ‘there’s no I in team’?) Mr. Lancer would almost certainly look the other way as long as Dash wasn’t too overt.

Which happened to be Danny’s saving grace because while Dash was faster, stronger, and taller (and god damn it, Danny had to take more after his mother that way) there was one thing Danny had that Dash didn’t.

The ability to walk through walls.

That being said, Danny also had actual friends that weren’t parasites based off the social hierarchy, a sense of purpose, and the ability to score higher than a C+ on a given test, but the ability to walk through walls was the important one right now.

So when lunch came around and Danny had yet to be caught by Dash. Danny couldn’t help but give him a little wave as he walked by the A-Lister’s table. Sam scoffed, “You sure you want to be antagonizing him?”

“Oh, definitely not,” Danny answered with a shrug, “But I can’t help it. It’s too funny.”

Sam let out a hum. “I mean… I’m not disagreeing with you,” she said, glancing back at the fuming Dash. “But… if you keep dodging him, he’s gonna start wondering how you’re able to avoid him so well…”

Danny scoffed as he slid into their table. And it was their table, no one else in the school was willing to approach it. They were the school’s weirdos, the outcasts, the freaks.

Honestly? It was kind of nice.

Sure, being ostracized from the school at large was a bit depressing, but lunch was the time they could be themselves. No one wanted to even look at them. Sure they couldn’t do anything too overt.

But after the third time Tucker took apart a malfunctioning ecto pistol at the table and put it back together, they had figured out that as long as they weren’t loud they could do whatever they wanted and no one would care.

But even before Danny could continue their conversation about how there was no way Dash would ever make the connection between him and Phantom, Danny felt his chest tighten. Usually, this was proceeded by a gasp of air rushing out of his throat and looking around in a panic trying to find the ghost, but it never came.

He looked around the cafeteria to see if he could see any threats, but instead, he found something much more interesting. Across the way and going through the lunch line was Rosie, he hadn't gotten her last name and he was not going to ask his dad to find out for him, but she was wearing the same distinctive battle vest that she was wearing over the weekend.

And then Danny realized that the "new kid" who Danny was hearing about that had called Dash a moron this morning was the same Rosie that wanted to put on a music show during the spring festival.

She was his hero already.

Danny watched as she walked through the cafeteria, trying to find a place to sit. Danny felt frustration bubble inside of him as he watched her turn slightly from table to table and everyone made it clear that no one wanted her to sit with them.

It was so stupid, because she insulted Dash, who everyone knew was dumb as a brick, the entire school was declaring her another persona non grata.

The frustration bubbled up, and he had to work to keep it from boiling over into anger. Anger was reserved for the ghosts that tried to attack Amity Park, frustration was for annoyances like Dash. It was far too dangerous for him to let himself do otherwise. He had memories of a wasteland outside time, and a horrible toothed smile with red eyes to remind himself of that.

She was new. There was no way she could have known who Dash was, and knowing what Danny did about Dash's personality, he probably did something obnoxious. So could you really blame her for…

Wait…

The entire school was casting her out.

Like it had him.

Rosie stood over his table and groaned. "I take it back, being cold isn’t so bad…"

You know what? Danny thought to himself, For once, I'm thankful for the stupidity of idiots.

Lunch went by too quickly for Danny. Rosie had been a little stand-offish, but Danny wasn't surprised by that at all. Rosie obviously didn't want to be here, and Dash hadn't exactly made a good impression.

But fortunately for Danny, Rosie had been walking around with a conversation starter on hand.

"So, you like the Mötley Crüe?" Danny asked as they got up when the bell rang.

Rosie paused and before she snapped her head in his direction and glared at him. "Yeah, I do? Why? Gonna quiz me on them?"

Danny held up his hands placatingly, and took a slow step back. Going through the same motions that he did when he pissed off Sam. “Oh no, no. Nothing like that, I wanted to ask what your favorite album was. Mine’s Dr. Feelgood.”

Rosie froze for a second. There was a moment where a look of what Danny could only describe as unbridled joy flashed across her face. Her eyes widened and her mouth started going into a smile as she sucked in a breath. Before she scoffed and instantly went back into a scowl. “Well, if you gotta know, I liked Shout at the Devil the most.” She then shot him a glare before walking off.

Danny quickly stepped around the table to follow her. “Really? Why that one?” he asked, falling into lock step next to her. Prying like this would typically be really annoying, but he saw that look on her face

There was no mistaking how excited she got when he asked.

So when she snapped back at him, he didn’t take it personally. “What’s it to you, Di-...” she trailed off for a moment before she cleared her throat, “Space Cadet?”

Danny blinked at the nickname, she had started saying something but then gave him a nickname. It was probably just that she forgot his name, but… “Not that I’m complaining, but why Space Cadet?”

Rosie scoffed and gave a pointed look at his chest. Danny looked down and saw that he was wearing his N.A.S.A shirt from when he had visited the Kennedy Space Center. “Right, fair enough. But to answer your question, I’m just curious. Honest! I like the Mötley Crüe a lot!”

She glared at him, and he thought that maybe he pushed a little too hard, but then she faced forward. “It was my first real music album,” she answered tersely, the same way Sam would when she’d defend some of her niche interests. She glanced at him again before asking, “What about you? Why Dr. Feelgood?”

Danny laughed and held out his arms as he walked next to her. “Why not? Kickstart my Heart has got to be one of their best songs! Who hasn't heard it?”

There was that flash of joy again before it was quickly hidden away again. She scoffed. “Well, I’d guess Dash hasn't.”

Danny felt his face scrunch up as he processed that. “Seriously? I know he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer but he’s had to have heard of them before.”

Rosie huffed through her nose. “Sharp as a spoon, maybe. But no. He was asking why they had an umlaut.”

“Did he actually ask that? Or did he ask about the funny dots?”

That got an honest laugh out of her. She didn't laugh like Paulina or Star, trying to coyly hide a giggle because God forbid someone saw them when they weren't composed. No she laughed more like his dad, throwing back her head and belting the laugh out.

She turned her head and gave him the first actual smile he had seen on her. “He asked about the funny dots.”

Rosie abruptly reached into her battle vest and pulled out a piece of paper. Danny noticed she did that a lot, jerky movements that seemed to be too fast to start before moving back to a more normal speed. Like she wasn’t completely used to things? Growth spurt, probably. Puberty was an absolute hell. She glanced over it and groaned.

“Not looking forward to your next class?” Danny asked.

“Not looking forward to the next teacher,” she muttered. “Lancer.”

Danny noted she didn't call him “Mr. Lancer”, like everyone else did. But then what she said fully processed. “Oh! Me too!” he let out a sigh, “Fortunately, today’s just a review so you won't need your books or anything, but we’ve been going over Frankenstein.” He pursed his lips before asking, “You have a problem with Mr. Lancer?”

She rolled her eyes and scoffed. “The guy who talked up Mr. Funny Dots and tried to make him my guide? Yeah, yeah, I do have a problem with him.”

“Oh, well, good news. He's gonna be too disappointed in me to give you any crap.” She raised an eyebrow at his statement and he explained, “So uh… that quip I made earlier about two of us doing community service? Yeah, that wasn't really a joke…”

Ember was just so goddamn giddy as she entered the classroom that she didn't even notice at first that Lancer was frowning at them, or that Baboon Buffoon was seething. Phantom had reminded her of something that she hadn't realized.

She had died, yes, but her favorite bands didn’t.

When Ember had died, she was stuck in the real world for a while, forced to watch as everyone just collectively went, ‘Oh well… anyways…’ after her death.

It was months of seeing her classmates joke about her, and her parents taking the insurance money and going on a vacation before she finally found herself in the ghost zone. It wasn’t something anyone liked to talk about, but she knew it had happened to at least Kitty and Johnny. Kitty had just admitted she’d spent some time floating near her parents and having to listen to how much of a disappointment she was to them, running off with that boy. Johnny only talked about it when he was drunk and melancholy, but his old man barely noticed he’d gone. “Didn’t notice much,” Johnny had said, “after he’d reached for a needle.”

Fading that slowly was a cruel joke on them all, Ember just knew it. And of course Phantom manages to dodge it entirely, just breezing straight to the fun lasers and ghost powers and not watching your life fall apart and vanish from people’s memories.

She shook her head, dislodging the weird existential nonsense her brain had supplied. Didn’t matter, now she was back, she didn't know how long it had been since she died – she couldn't remember. She didn't want to remember – and the world has kept spinning, and her favorite bands have kept making music.

She slipped into a desk near Phantom too fast, cursing herself for still not being used to goddamn gravity again, then put her elbow on the desk and leaned into her palm with more exaggerated care. “So…” she began, trying hard not to sound too excited, “Do you like Black Sabbath?”

Phantom made a so-so gesture and her opinion of him immediately dropped. “Sorta? I mean I do. But I prefer Ozzy’s work after he left.”

Never mind, opinion restored. Also, hello new music!

“I like his Scream album more, but Black Rain has one of my favorite songs on it. Never Gonna Stop.” Phantom continued. It took a lot of effort on Ember’s part to not break out into a smile right there. Phantom wasn't just giving her the greatest news of her new life, but was giving her a map right to where she wanted to go. “But yeah, Black Sabbath’s War Pigs is famous for a reason.”

“You like the classics, huh?” Ember couldn't help but chuckle. When she first met Phantom, she assumed he wouldn't have known a thing about music, or if he did he'd be interested in the kind of crap the rest of her school listened to.

Not some of her favorite bands.

“Yeah, kinda got to blame my dad for that.” Ember felt her new throat tighten at that. But Phantom continued on ignoring Ember’s sudden mood shift. “He’s super embarrassing and all, but he does like his music a lot.”

… Well damn. Now she actually felt a bit of guilt about this whole plan. Not enough she was willing to die again, but she did feel so much worse about ending someone who also liked music.

Though, speaking of the plan. “Actually, that reminds me. That whole spring festival thing, are you serious about that? Like, this doesn’t seem like something you’d be interested in.”

Phantom rolled his eyes and huffed. “Yeah, unfortunately. I’m basically doing community service here.” He nodded up at Lancer, who she just realized was giving them both a look like he was seeing someone licking dirt but was trying to hide how grossed out they were. “My grades aren’t exactly the greatest, so… yeah.”

Ember scoffed and looked back at Phantom. Really? The goody two shoes who kept ruining not just her plans, but the plans of every ghost in the Ghost zone had to perform community service? “How do bad grades equal community service?”

Danny scoffed back and slumped in his chair. “Apparently it’s supposed to teach me something about a sense of community or something.” He cleared his throat and bobbed his head as he got into character. He then spoke in a barely passing resemblance to Lancer, “That my actions have consequences beyond myself.”

Ember felt her jaw drop. Of all the people who needed to know that, Phantom was the one they thought needed that lesson? Phantom? The guy who literally would show up day or night to fight Ember or any of her friends? (Or the jackasses she knew?) Did they not realize what he did? Fortunately, she managed to not react to that immediately. If the town ran anything like it did when she was alive, and the fact that Dash Baxter of all people was regarded as a model student indicated to her that it was, they were probably covering up how bad the ghost attacks got to protect the town’s image or some dumb shit like that. So as far as they were concerned, Phantom was just hiding behind excuses for bad grades. Not like there could possibly be something else going on.

Nothing ever changed, did it?.

Instead, she managed to only keep it to a scoff as she looked towards the front of the room. “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Chapter Text

Ember walked into her apartment, not bothering to take off her boots at the door. She threw her backpack down and collapsed face-first into her couch. She briefly contemplated just letting herself suffocate down there before she groaned into the couch cushions and rolled over onto her back.

Life was great.

School, on the other hand, was not.

It has been so long, she had forgotten. But school sucked. It was Thursday, four whole days of school, and Dash was still being an ass. Either trying to make life difficult for her, or worse, trying to flirt with her. Phantom also hadn't stopped his excited puppy act, but at least he was endearing, which was damn weird to realize. He took hints and backed off when she made it clear she wasn't in the mood to talk.

But neither of those things were that big of a deal, Skulker was worse than Dash on a good day, and seeing the town hero falling over himself trying to befriend her was hilarious, in a schadenfreude kind of way. She was kinda tempted to let it play out, if only until she could get some more music recs out of him, and if she were being honest, he wasn’t actually bad company - his sense of humor landed a lot better when they weren’t in the middle of a fight. But, she reflected, that was leaving aside what she was here to do in the first place…

She stopped thinking about that immediately for pettier concerns.

Namely, the homework…

The last time she needed to use algebra was when she had still been alive. She didn't like to think about how long that had been.

But, it had to be done - whatever else happened, when she was done here, a diploma would be useful for a few plans. Even if it was just to hold up in front of music industry execs to stop them assuming she’d be an easy mark.

And then there was the other thing she’d picked up over the last two days or so, the thing that had her mind working overtime trying to figure out.

Her musings were cut off as her phone began to ring. She groaned and reached into her pocket and pulled it out. "Who the hell calls nowadays?" She grumbled, before looking at the number.

She froze. She had forgotten in the whirl of the days, but she was here at someone’s behest.

And that someone was calling her.

"Plasmius," Ember stated when she answered the phone. "Couldn't you have texted like a civilized person?"

"Charming…" he drawled, and wow was he able to fit so much condescension in one word. Ember briefly wondered how in the hell he’d made it in business with his attitude before remembering both the ghost powers and that most CEO’s were smarmy sociopaths anyway. He paused for a moment and then began, "I decided to check in. It's been a few days, and I hadn't gotten any messages warning me about unusual purchases…" he chuckled and Ember didn't resist her urge to grimace. She knew that Vlad was going to be watching her finances considering she was using his money, but the fact that Vlad was actively watching was disturbing.

"Are you settling in all right?" Vlad asked, "Is there anything you need?"

Ember blinked and glanced about the room, eventually finding her reflection in the 60-inch OLED TV she had purchased with Vlad's money…

Which also reflected the half dozen guitars she purchased.

"I've got the basics," Ember began slowly, "But I haven't really settled in yet. Only so much I can get done in a weekend."

Vlad let out a hum. "Excellent," he stated, sounding like it was anything but. “I admit I was expecting to find rather more extensive evidence of… Customization, as it were. Of your new body.”

“Thought about it. Don’t really have the time to deal with a tattoo now, and none of the artists in Amity really catch my eye.” This was a surreal, and kinda uncomfortable, turn for the conversation to take. “What do you care anyway?”

“Oh, not at all,” Vlad dismissed airily. “I was just reminded of a mistake I made in college recently, and the discomfort of tattoo removal. I would hate for you to act in haste and have need of such a thing.”

“Awful sweet of you, but stop thinking about my damn body, you creep.”

Ember rejoiced at the exasperated sigh that emerged from the phone, muffled, as though he tried to hide it. He really was too easy. Seriously, she and Phantom bounced off each other all the time during class, how could a grown man not keep up?

“I’m beginning to remember why I never sought you for work before now…” He muttered, before clearing his throat. “Have you looked over the instructions I left you?”

Ember turned her head to a file, sat on her couch, some papers spilling from it, all covered in Plasmius’ neat handwriting.

“Yeah, I skimmed. You don’t actually need much done until a couple weeks before the festival, right?”

“Correct. Timing matters on many of these preparations - too soon, and it will wear off before time, too late and it will not be as effective. Not to mention the cover setting up for the festival will provide for them in the first place. I will of course provide the correct materials in due course.”

“Wonderful,” Ember snarked. “Not that I’m complaining, but why the hell did you have me come through like two months before I even need to do anything? Was it really just to show up at that stupid meeting?”

"Oh, no of course not. I could easily just order the stage set up for you if it was needed. But, I'm hardly a monster Ms. McLain," Vlad replied, and this time Ember had to muffle her phone to prevent him hearing her scoff. “Why would I provide you the means to live without also allowing you to enjoy it? Especially since… Oh, how shall I put this delicately… All evidence suggests you didn’t exactly do your best the first time around.”

The mocking tone and the memories it brought back up infuriated her, and Ember went to hit the end call button, but then he continued, "There… is one more thing "

Ember rolled her eyes. "What?!" She snapped, reaching down to take off her boots. If she was going to be continuing to talk to this prick, and after his last remark that was a steep prospect, she was going to be comfortable.

"I hear that Phantom has taken an interest in you," Vlad began, "I don't think I need to explain to you to avoid him."

Ember scoffed. "It's fine. He doesn't suspect anything. Trust me."

Vlad sputtered for a moment before he shouted, "Are you joking?" Ember hissed as she pulled the phone away from her ear. "Do you have any idea how foolish this is?" Vlad continued shouting, she had the phone out an arms length away and she could still hear him clearly.

He grew quiet and she brought the phone back to her ear. "You done?" She began.

"Not in-"

"Good," Ember cut off, "Now listen here, I'm doing a job for you, but I'm not someone you get to order around like a pawn on a chessboard. If I'm hanging out with Phantom, which I wasn't planning on to begin with, that's my decision. If you don't like what I'm doing, you can find someone else to open the veil. Oh, that's right, there isn't anyone!" Ember snapped.

Ember sat up and growled into the phone, "So, next time you feel like trying to control me, remember that."

Vlad took a deep breath and then asked, "Are you done?" Ember didn't get a chance to respond before he continued. "With that out of the way, remember I have given you life. You are using my money to pay for food and housing. If you wish to learn what dying of frostbite in winter is like, then I suggest you keep up that attitude. Maybe when you escape that shell you'll have an ice core now? I hear dying by frostbite is similar to dying by fire. I'd be interested in how they compare."

Ember sucked in a breath, her chest seized as she remembered what it was like to die. "Bastard…" Ember growled.

"I've been called worse by people much better than you, I thought you were a lyricist? Have some creativity."

Ember felt the phone creak in her hand as her grip tightened about it. "You know I know what your plan is right?" Ember said, her voice much calmer than it should have been. She certainly didn't feel calm. She only regretted that she wouldn't see his face as she told him this. "It'd be quite unfortunate if Phantom got news of it before you got a chance to implement it."

"You wouldn't dare." Vlad hissed.

"You think I wouldn't if you let me die again?"

The silence from Vlad's end was deafening.

"It's fine," Ember began, leaning back against the couch again, kicking her feet up onto a guitar amp near it. "You keep me happy, I'll do your little song and dance, and you get your revenge. Now, with that out of the way, I'm going to enjoy this life. Tah-tah."

She ended the call and huffed. “How’s that for creativity, you slimy piece of shit…” Ember shook her head and then tapped out another number onto the phone. She hadn’t meant to go that far off the handle, she really hadn’t, but for the Dracula wannabe to throw her life in her face and act like he was doing her a favor by bringing up how awful it was…

It rang twice before it got picked up. She immediately began before the person on the other line could answer, “Hey, I’d like to order a large pizza? Pepper Jack cheese, jalapenos, banana peppers, pepperoni, and Italian sausage?”

“Oh, it’s you again,” the guy on the other end responded before reading her order back to her and also reading back her address. Maybe she should consider trying some other places but…

Spending what felt like an eternity in the ghost zone without really eating was…

Yeah, she was getting a damn pizza if she wanted one.

And speaking of what she wanted, an idea crossed her mind. "Actually… Can I add another two small pizzas?"

"Sure, what do you want?"

"The first one, anchovies, and for the second, can I get a Hawaiian?"

"Uhh… sure." Was the lackluster response, but that was fine. The only reason why Ember was ordering this to begin with was ‘cause she was imagining the look of disgust Vlad would have if he tried to eat these.

Was it a waste of money? Yeah, but it wasn't her money. It was Vlad's. It was a win-win as they say.

After giving Vlad's credit card information to the pizza shop, Ember ended the call and set her phone down. She grabbed her boots and tossed by the door as she stood up and walked over to the wall of guitars she had set up and grabbed one. It was her favorite of the bunch mostly ‘cause it looked somewhat like the one she had made in the ghost zone.

She sat back down and flicked the power on. The amp let out a pop as the power went through it. The sound instantly brought a smile to Ember's face, one that grew wider as she grabbed the audio cable and plugged it in.

It fell however, when she grabbed the other side and held the other side and held the end in her fingers.

When a human touches an aux cable plugged into an amp, the cable uses the human body as an antenna and produces a hum.

Ember's body wasn't a true human body.

The amp was quiet as she rolled the cable between her fingers.

That sound had always proceeded a good night for Ember. It was the start of the night, when she'd lose herself to the music and let the world just fall away.

Ember huffed and pressed the tip against the jack plate of the guitar to get that hum before she plugged it in proper. She plucked each one of the strings to ensure they were in tune, they weren't perfect but they were close.

Not good enough for Ember.

She spent quite some time tuning the strings by ear. It'd have been faster to break out a tuner, but Ember didn't want to do this quickly.

As a ghost, nothing ever changed. Not even her guitar. It wasn't even a guitar, it was more like the idea of a guitar. Yet another static constant in the infinite nothingness of the Ghost zone

Tuning the guitar was a thing she had to do because she was alive.

Once the strings were tuned to perfection, she plucked each string again, before strumming all of them. Letting the cacophony of noise fill the room and block out everything she didn't want to think about.

Lancer, Dash, homework, Vlad…

All of it.

Then she began to play in earnest. The opening notes of For Whom the Bell Tolls rang out in her apartment, a song she had been practicing before…

Better to just say it had been a while.

“Bastard, she thought, the thoughts she was trying to block slinking their way back in. Bad enough Vlad’s picked apart her past with a fine tooth comb, because he wasn’t enough of a scumbag, no, he had to make himself look omniscient, he had the goddamn gall to think he could use it to manipulate her? Fuck that.

The guitar almost played itself as she mused, the rumble of music through the air cocooning her new body like a blanket, a feeling she’d never forgotten and missed, every day in the Zone. God, but she’d missed this. Being able to release everything into a song, feel the atmosphere thrum with all the emotions she played with, letting them warp and shift the song, making it hers in that moment, an unrepeatable performance every time.

She felt her immediate anger at Plasmius ebb the longer it went on. And that was… Well, not new, but not expected. She hadn’t been able to do that, not in a long time. She was a ghost. Not letting go of things was kinda their whole deal. Music did help, but it was only ever a displacement, taking whatever she was feeling and replacing it with the joy of performance. The anger or the sadness or the despair, all of what she’d felt when she… at the end, it was all still there as a ghost, just not always as prominent. Now? Now she was practically zen.

It was a nice feeling, being able to let go for once.

She still didn’t like Plasmius, and probably never would, but the immediate urge to destroy and smash until she felt better was gone. He was just using her, she told herself, like she was using him. Like everyone did. It’d taken death to learn that, but she had. Everyone was like that.

She frowned, the music faltering slightly.

With one exception.

Ember was annoyed all over again, because she had actually been going to call Plasmius herself sooner rather than later, because she’d run into something that didn’t make sense.

Nobody in town seemed to know Danny Fenton was also Danny Phantom.

It’d taken her more time than she’d like to admit to figure this out, but when Dash had gone from rhapsodizing how cool Phantom was, and then immediately turned around and shoved Danny into a locker with a sneer and a laugh, she’d realized.

The question now was why in the hell did the dipstick keep it a secret?

Whenever conversation turned to Phantom back in the Zone, which was more often than she’d have liked, everyone she was on speaking terms with had figured he had to be getting something out of doing the superhero schtick. More than a few nights had passed with some ghost trying to figure out what that was and take it away, so maybe he’d stop. Ember usually scoffed at such ideas - she figured he was probably just getting praise and rewards, maybe taking advantage of celebrity status for whatever he felt like. You can’t take that away, it’s something you chase.

And yet here he was, suffering in school with Lancer breathing down his neck and looking at him like he was a disappointment, and dealing with jerks like Dash and the A-List daily when just outing himself would probably make everything better for him. And it did bother him, she could tell, he was anxious as hell about his school chances, and hated running into Dash. He wasn’t just a masochist. She didn’t get his angle.

It was part of the reason she kept hanging out with him. He didn’t make sense. He was getting something out of this, but whatever it was, it wasn’t obvious to her anymore.

She paused in the song for a moment to turn up her amp, before starting over again. Clear her mind, forget it all. Just play. She stood up and began to pace about the room as far as the cable let her (and considering she had sprung for a 50-foot cable, she was rocking all over the apartment) as the energy from the song filled her.

She hadn't played this song once she wound up in the Ghost Zone. It was frankly a little too on the nose for her to want to play it there. But, now that she was alive again now this felt right?

For whom the bell tolls? Not Ember.

Not anymore.

She was ripped out of her revelry by a loud pounding at her door. A quick glance at the clock in the kitchen (and when had she wound up in there?) told her it wasn't quite time for the pizza to arrive, she still had ten or so minutes.

But if it was the pizza, the guy was getting a bigger tip than she was planning.

Ancients, spending Vlads money was sooo satisfying.

But instead of a soon-to-be very happy pizza delivery boy, she instead was greeted by a stern older man. It took her a moment to place him before she remembered he was her landlord. "Can I help you?" Ember began.

"Yes, you need to turn down your music." He pointed down and frowned. "I know you just moved in, and I don't want to be a hard ass, but my office is below your apartment, and if I can hear your music in there, then your neighbors DEFINITELY can. We have a noise ordinance after seven-"

"Seven?" Ember screeched. She got out of school at 3, but she was living again, she was spending as much time out in the world as she could before adults came in and ruined her fun.

Like this guy.

"I know it's a bit early," the bastard tried to appease, "but all the tenets have agreed to it." He held up his hands placatingly, "You can still play, just… keep it down."

Ember growled. She didn't want to turn it down, but she couldn't exactly throw up a huge fuss about it.

Well, she could but it wouldn't end well for her.

"Fine…" she finally ground out, before she slammed the door.

She sighed and walked back to the amp and turned down the volume. Sure she could still play, but it wasn't the same.

But, she was still going to play.

She supposed she could get headphones, but then she'd be trapped near the amp, and she liked to wander as she played.

She hadn't been allowed to do that her first time around in life…

Another knock at the door sounded and Ember groaned before taking off the guitar and walking back to the door.

This time though, it was a delivery boy.

And hey, one that was kind of cute.

He rubbed the back of his head, black hair peeking out from underneath a red company-branded baseball cap. "uh… Ms. McCann?"

"That's me." Ember said, making gimme motions towards the pizza, "Those my pizzas?"

"Yup!" The boy said, handing over a receipt for her to sign. She filled it out giving him a 100% tip. His eyes boggled when he saw the amount but he tried to keep a professional face, "Uhh… here's your pizzas!"

"Thanks!" Ember sang, before turning and closing the door. She smiled as she felt the warmth from the food in her hands. Not so hot that it hurt, but very warm regardless.

Unfortunately, so distracted by food and living things like feeling warmth, that she didn't realize her foot had been caught in that 50-foot cable she had purchased until she was falling.

Flat onto her dinner.

"Fuck!"

***

Vlad didn't look up as Skulker entered his lab, he had sensed the ghost enter, but he didn't bother greeting him. He was too busy scouring various tomes for sigils and markings that could help tear the veil open.

"What do you want, Plasmius?" Skulker asked as he approached, keeping a healthy distance between them.

Vlad didn't look up. "I need the boy distracted… for… a long period of time." He said, not giving him a straight answer. "I need you to hunt him. Like a true hunter, stalk him, make him nervous, but make it obvious. He needs to be focused on you, not my other plans."

Skulker let out a hum. Before folding his arms. "I'll do it. But I'm doubling my rates."

Now, Vlad looked at him. "What? Double? I already pay you more than-"

"Yeah," Skulker interrupted. "You did pay well. But that was before I got jumped by Aragon and his men!" Skulker pointed at Vlad "I don't know what you did to piss him off, but they were attacking me because of you. Straight from their mouths."

"I'll give you half again-" Vlad began.

"No, you'll give me double," Skulker interrupted again. He gave Vlad a cocky smirk. "If you don't like it, you can find another hunter. Oh… but wait, I'm the best damn hunter in the Ghost Zone, that's why you hired me to begin with."

That wasn't quite true, but Vlad let him keep his delusions.

Skulker shrugged. "Besides, good luck finding another ghost willing to work with you for… however long your project is going to last…" Skulker folded his arms and glowered at Vlad. "You're strong, Plasmius, and ghosts feared you, once. But how does that old saying go? “Be feared or loved, but never be hated.”"

“And what,” Vlad spat. “Exactly, does a misquote of Machiavelli have to do with me?”

Skulker rolled his eyes. “For a smart man, you’re quite dense at times. I mean, you’ve burned all your bridges. Whatever fear you may have sought to invoke, you’ve overridden by manipulating, tricking, and discarding people. Do you think we don’t remember these things? So. Double. Because you can’t get anyone else.”

Vlad clenched his jaw and kept himself from spitting out multiple obscenities at the ghost. He surely couldn’t have…

He stopped. He was no longer on speaking terms with Spectra. The woman still hated him after their failed scheme to extract misery as a power source failed. Vlad escaped, but despite her supposed cleverness she hadn't. He had told her assistant what had happened, and he managed to save her, however, she still blamed him for whatever his involvement was in that.

Meanwhile Technus was also finding a new calling in the afterlife in being a thorn in his side. The boisterous fool attacked him whenever they crossed paths, claiming vengeance over the fact that he wasn't happy with the prototype weapons Vlad had paid him in. If that wannabe genius thought Vlad was going to give him his best, then he truly was a bigger fool than Jack Fenton.

The list went on. Every one of Danny's supposed rogues were beginning to side more and more with their mortal enemy over him due to some foolish perceived slight. They simply didn't understand concepts like acceptable risk.

But this one… This one would work. He was sure of it. He’d do anything to ensure it.

This was fine. Not ideal, but it was fine. He'd just have to make some more raids in the Ghost Zone, and find some more books that he could part with. It was fine.

"Fine, double it is…" Vlad said, sticking his hand out for a shake.

Skulker eyed the hand warily. Before tentatively taking it and shaking once. "I'll be off then. I'll need to prepare."

"Good," Vlad said. Thankful that the ghost hadn't taken up more of his time. He huffed and turned back to the tome he was reading, before grabbing it and sitting at his computer. He could copy it into data, and then he could part with it.

This was fine. He just needed to finish this scheme and then he could be done with them all. He'd have everything he wanted. Everything he deserved.

He ignored the whisper in his skull, the insidious, cruel little ghost in his own head that asked him if he really thought he’d simply stop once Jack was dead and Maddie his? Like he thought he’d stop using his abilities to get ahead once he was well-established in his chosen industry? Like he thought he’d stop once he was merely comfortably rich? Stop at merely humiliating Jack and claiming the boy as a protege instead of a son? Stop looting the Infinite Realms once he’d had the specific artifacts he’d needed?

The truth echoed in the mind of Vlad Masters before he dismissed it. As he always did.

Chapter Text

Ember slammed her lunch box on the table. She had decided the first day that she wasn't going to continue eating the slop this school gave her.

Granted, all she really had right now was leftover squished pizza, but it was still leagues better than what the school thought was a passable meal.

Phantom was the first one to recover at her abrupt entrance. He looked up at her, his eyes wide with concern. "Everything okay?"

Ember huffed. Thinking about ignoring him, but then Vlad's orders to avoid him echoed in her ears and she decided to do what she wanted.

Which was to give a metaphorical finger to the creep.

"No," Ember admitted, "Dash once again tried to hit on me, and Lancer was teaching my math class. Isn't he the English teacher?"

Sam shrugged nonchalantly. Somehow managing to both dismiss her frustrations while also acknowledging them. Ember didn’t know whether to feel better or more frustrated. "He's spread a bit thin," Sam admitted. She huffed and glanced at Danny. "I hate authority as much as the next anarchist, but… I have to admit that I understand him."

Ember narrowed her eyes and glared at Sam. "What does that mean?" Morticia definitely knew who Phantom was, what the hell was she doing taking Lancer’s side?

Wait… Why was she angry about that?

The answer never came. Instead Phantom let out a gasp, and Ember was treated to a first-row seat of Phantom's ghost sense going off. She hadn't actually seen it herself before, but she had heard rumors. It really did look like breath escaping on a cold day, like Kitty said, except the mist was a little too thick for that. Colder. He’d eventually figured out he had an ice core, so that tracked. Briefly she wondered what it would look like if she had that with her fire core. Smoke? Little blast of fire breath? Or would it filter through something else she could do, like ring a particular note?

"Oh…" Phantom began, before glancing at Sam and Tucker. A flash of worry, or rather fear, graced Phantom's features before he breathed out slowly, visibly trying to calm himself down.

Almost immediately after, the geek reached down and pulled out his P.D.A and made a face, "Ugh… I forgot. I have a… uh… thing…" he said, jumping up and shoving almost an entire burger into his mouth.

That couldn't be healthy.

He somehow managed to swallow it without choking. Which, honestly, was an impressive and yet worrying feat.

"Yup," Tucker continued, "Definitely a thing!" He said before running off. Ember couldn't help but scoff as he ran off. How the hell did they not get caught before? Sure, nobody in school knew, but they were really, really banking on nobody figuring it out, either. Like, how hard would it be for one of the gossip mongers like Paulina or… wassername, the blonde one… whatever. Ember didn’t bother learning the names of this batch of mean girls. They’d mostly left her alone anyway, after making it clear they’d make sure no one else would be friends with her until she apologized to Dash, and she seriously doubted their company was desirable enough to bother dealing with that useless jock. Who the hell did they think they were anyway?

Ahem. Anyway. How hard would it be for one of them to overhear something and put it together?

She hummed as she bit into a rather deformed and smushed pizza. She supposed she had the missing price, that it was possible for ghosts to be living and dead. If you didn't know that, then it'd be nearly impossible to connect Phantom to his human form Hell, half the reason why Phantom probably hadn't connected the dots and realized "Rosie" was really Ember was because he didn't know that Ember could be alive.

Which was why Vlad had told her to stay away…

Ember's musings were cut off when she noticed something move in the corner of her eye, something shifted in the massive cafeteria windows. Ember wasn't the only one to notice. Phantom's attention snapped toward the window as well.

Ember frowned. This was Amity Park. Weird movements in the corner of your eye were normal for all the wrong reasons. It wasn't just Phantom or her who had noticed the movement too. A few others had noticed as well, Dash was glaring at the window too, and Valerie was looking around and discretely checking her watch every other moment or so.

Then there was a whir. It was quiet and distant, but Ember could hear the sound of engines being spun up.

Skulker.

Ember chewed on her lip for a moment, pondering if it’d be worth taking out her frustrations on the trash can, before deciding to ignore it. Skulker wasn't a her problem, and fighting him was a headache. The little blob with delusions of grandeur was a Phantom problem.

Which it definitely was. Phantom stared out the window a good minute longer than the rest of the observant ones, trying to spot any trace of the hunter ghost, before he closed his eyes and turned back to Ember. "So… rough half day?" Phantom asked, trying to get the conversation back on track.

Ember jumped on the chance to rant a little more. "Ugh, more like a rough 24hrs." She bit into her pizza with a little more force than was needed, but ancients did she need to tear something apart.

And… this was an anchovy slice. It was disgusting. She hated the taste of this. She normally would never order this again.

But she loved it.

It was gross, don’t get her wrong. The flavor and texture made her want to gag. And for some god forsaken reason, this place didn’t cut the heads off the fish. She could see their eyes looking up at her from their spot pressed into perfectly good cheese and dough that they ruined just by touching them and spreading their insane saltiness all over.

But these were so offensive because she was fucking alive.

As a ghost, food wasn’t really a thing she could enjoy or hate. Sure they always ate food at the Christmas Truce, but there was no difference between the Lunch Lady’s slop or Spectra’s perfectly roasted turkey. It was just something they did to pretend for a little bit. To act like they were still human.

She hated this, but she’d eat this every goddamn day over going back to being dead again.

It was still disgusting, but being able to even tell something was disgusting was a blessing by itself .

Ember grimaced before swallowing. She shook her head and tried to ignore the taste in her mouth. "I was already in a bad mood because I finally had some time to practice guitar last night, and then I found out my apartment has a noise ordinance. At 7! Even when I stopped playing, if I even touched the volume on my music, I’d get someone knocking on my door telling me to turn it down!"

Phantom slowly chewed his food before swallowing. He glanced over at Sam, who’s eyebrows were scrunched together in commiseration. A puff of air escaped Phantom’s lips, making both Ember and Sam snap in his direction expecting to see a wisp of cold air leaving his mouth again.

Neither of them expected what came out of his lips. “You know, we might be able to help with that second one.”

“We can?” Sam asked, the incredulity in her voice made even Ember leanback. She glared at Danny before snapping her eyes towards the exit where Tucker had just power walked out of.

Phantom’s eyebrows arched and his lips pursed, he looked back at Ember and then at Sam and shrugged, giving a smile that was just a little too forced to be a real one. “Yeah, I mean, you wanted to show us that new album right?”

Ember couldn’t help herself, she perked up just a little bit. Yeah, she had literally dozens of albums to go through, but she wanted new music. And as much as she hated to admit it, Phantom did have great taste in music based on everything he had talking to her about it. She didn’t quite get what Phantom’s plan was, but she was already on board.

Sam frowned. She looked at Ember in confusion as if Ember had an answer to anything before turning back. “I mean, yeah, I’ve been trying to get you and Tucker to listen to this guy for a while. He’s not actually, goth so that’s why I thought you and Tucker might like him.”

Danny shrugged. “Well, first time for everything?” He chuckled, and rubbed the back of his head. “But yeah, look, my parents are gonna be out for the evening, they’re going on a ghost hunting trip over in Wisconsin.” Sam frowned at that and Danny held up his hands. “I know they’re not gonna find much. I asked around about the place. It’s empty.”

A part of Ember couldn’t help but wonder how on Earth Phantom asked around about a place in Wisconsin. The rest of her, much greater, was wondering how in hell he’d try to explain this if she decided to start asking questions. She might’ve, it sounded funny, but Phantom continued before she could.

“So what if we all go over to my place after school, go up to the ops center, and we load up a bunch of music and put it on shuffle?”

This was such a bad idea. There had to be so many ways for the Fenton’s to detect a ghost. There was a good chance that her current body would trigger them. Vlad had harped on her so many times that she wasn’t truly alive.

But, Vlad also was a bitch who kept telling her what to do, and she wasn’t his dog that heeled when commanded.

And… If she were honest with herself, the idea set her anchovy filled stomach flipping with anticipation. If Vlad hadn’t said anything and tripped her contrarian instincts as hard as he had, she’d still be hanging out with these guys. She couldn’t exactly tell when that happened. Ember hung out with them purely for lack of better options at first, and a keen ironic sense of humor. Once she was done with this damn school, she’d leave them all in the dust, travel, get into the music industry, that’s what she told herself. But now…

Now, this sounded like the best time she could have right now, somehow. These guys were fun.

So Ember held her breath as Sam’s brow only furrowed further in confusion. She looked between the two of them. “Well… it doesn’t sound bad,” Sam said, as if sitting around with friends and listening to music wasn’t one of Ember’s long standing fantasies from when she was alive, not far behind being a rockstar. “But,” Sam continued, and Ember tried to ignore how her chest clenched at that, “Didn’t we have something we were supposed to do today? You know, that thing that Tucker was preparing for?”

It happened so quickly Ember nearly jumped.

The happy-go-lucky golden retriever Phantom disappeared, and Ember was drastically reminded that Phantom was a threat. It was subtle, but his shoulders squared and his back straightened. His eyes sharpened, and she could have sworn there was a not entirely natural light coming from them for an instant. It put Ember on edge, especially with that goddamn cocky smile he sported, and she shivered, involuntarily. Danny made it very easy to forget he was very powerful.

“Well,” He drew out, “I’ll admit, that is something we should probably look into, but I think for tonight? We can put it off.” He pulled out his phone and started typing away. “Besides, the whole reason why this is a problem to begin with is because I’ve been doing too much work right?” He put his phone down, and a second later, Ember heard a jingle nearby.

She looked over and saw Valerie looking at her phone. The girl’s eyes widened before narrowing. She looked over at the three of them, or rather at Danny and Sam, and nodded slowly. Ember could see her jaw clench a bit before she turned back to her lunch and started eating a lot quicker.

Though… the thoughts that were running through her head weren’t her wondering what the odds of Valerie winning against Skulker, or her wondering if she could get front row seats to that fight. No, what was running through Ember’s head was one thought. Phantom would rather hang out with “Rosie” over saving this stupid town?

For some reason, she felt a little dizzy at that thought and a wide smile crept onto her face.

“Well,” Sam drawled out, snapping Ember back into the present., “That’s one way to deal with that… You sure that’s a good idea?”

“Hey, I covered for her during her martial arts classes and when she was doing driver’s ed. She owes me one.”

Ember wasn’t sure if she should be horrified at them barely hiding their ghost conversations in front of her, or impressed with how ballsy they were being. Ember was very very tempted to try to pry at the conversation, but instead she held her breath. Not daring to interrupt the conversation so that-

Phantom turned toward Ember, and the smile spread across his face made her heart pound in her chest. “So, how about it? Wanna come over to my place and listen to some music after school?”

This was a terrible, terrible, awful idea.

“Yes!”

Not that that has ever stopped her.

After school, Tucker tracked down Danny, arriving at his locker around the same time Sam got to him. Tucker glanced around and made sure no one was around before leaning in. “Okay, not that I mind not having to chase a ghost all around the school, but why are we throwing Valerie after them? This feels like burning the house down to kill a spider.”

Danny closed his locker and faced Tucker. “You mean that’s not the standard operating procedure?”

“... Dude, you said that so seriously, I have no idea if you’re joking.”

“I don’t joke about spiders, Tuck.”

Sam walked up and slapped him upside the head. “Don't start. We’re already watching to see if you become a mad scientist like your parents.”

“They're not mad!”

Sam and Tucker just stared at him, faces blank barring one incredibly skeptical eyebrow each.

“... OK, they’re a little unconventional, I’ll give you that, but-”

“Danny, they punched a hole into the afterlife just to see if they could.” Sam interrupted dryly. “I’m pretty sure they're the definition of mad scientist. But…” she sighed, “I gotta agree with Tucker. Valerie is well… last time Johnny came around he still had a hole in him.”

“I think that was from Kitty, actually. They were on the outs again.”

“Point being,” Sam cut him off with a glare. “Why are you going out of your way to help this girl? Like, don't get me wrong, I'm glad you're helping people but… aren't you worried about her finding out your whole… living status?”

Danny leaned back and looked on either side of Tucker and Sam. He’d been caught far too often talking about someone only for them to turn up behind him for own liking, and despite what Mr. Lancer thought, he could learn. The coast was clear.

“Look, I think… I think she was bullied before coming here.”

“Uh, dude?” Tucker said, raising a finger, “She looks and acts like she could snap any of us in half. Your ghostly ass included. You really think she got bullied?”

“You guys don’t have any classes with her, but have you guys talked to her about music? Every time you mention a new album or anything about music that you like, she gets super excited for a second, then,” he snapped his fingers, “she hides it, trying to act like she doesn't care. I just can't help but think that wherever she was before, she got made fun of over what she liked. And I mean, yeah, being able to snap people in half is cool as hell, but what exactly makes someone that reflexively defensive? And you overheard her shutting Paulina down when she tried to intimidate her. Who commits social suicide like that without even thinking about it, except someone used to being an outcast already?”

Danny turned toward Sam expectantly, and she met his gaze. She slowly let out a breath of air through her nose. “Are you trying to weaponize my desire to stand up for non-conforming people to make me make friends?”

“Depends. Is it working?”

Sam rolled her eyes, but a ghost of a smile crossed her lips. “Well, if it finally means that I get you guys to actually give this guy a shot, then I guess I can make do…” she bumped Danny with her hip and started leading the three of them out of the school. “But we better get walking, if we’re hanging out with someone else, we don’t get fly the ghostly air rides so it’s gonna be a while-”

“Ugggh…” Tucker groaned. “Can I enact a veto?I don’t want to walk all the way to Fenton Works…”

Danny stopped at the exit to the school and stared out at the parking lot. “Uh… I think that might not be a problem.”

The two looked at Danny then followed his gaze over the parking lot. Eventually finding what he was looking at. Sam let out an appreciative hum. “Okay, I know almost nothing about cars, but I know that’s a nice one.”

Danny nodded and started moving toward Rosie. She was leaning against a black car. It was an older model, but one that had aged well. The headlights were somewhat recessed in the grill of the car and there was a spot on the hood for air intake that Danny assumed would help the engine run better.

“Well, I do know about that car,” Tucker said in surprise. “And how the hell did she get one?!”

Danny tuned out Tucker’s confused and angry shock - he too knew nothing about cars so couldn’t really follow along anyway - and focused instead on the girl who, apparently, owned the thing. Yeesh, her folks must be filthy rich to get her this. Or she fixed it up herself. He could absolutely believe that about her, she seemed really, really capable, and it’d definitely explain the more… interesting customization.

He couldn’t help but stare, though, and maybe awe, a little. Rosie was leaning against the hood of the car, but from the angle they were coming from, it kind of looked like the wings of the blue firebird painted on the hood were her own set of flaming angel wings.

Danny jumped down the last half a dozen steps, the impact making Rosie look up. She got up off the hood of her car and took a step toward Danny. He gave her a wave, which she didn’t return, instead shoving her hands into her pockets. “I don’t actually know where you live,” she stated.

“Ah, well, unfortunately you can’t miss it.” Danny said, grimacing. “It’s… it’s the eyesore in the middle of town. If you go out of the school lot towards Baron Road and take that north to Friar Lane and turn on Nick Street, you’ll literally see it. It’s the… it’s the one with the giant UFO thing on the roof.”

Rosie grimaced. “Look, I’m new in town, can’t I just follow you guys?”

Danny huffed. “Well, I’d love to say yes but I actually walked here. It’s only like a thirty minute walk to school for me and well, my parents wanted to build me a car, instead of buying me one. And of the last two they built, one exploded, and the other is a tank.”

Rosie rolled her eyes and shifted her hands inside her jacket. The lights of the car flashed as Danny heard the car doors unlock. “Fine, whatever, get in. I’m not gonna wait around for you guys.”

“Sweet!” Tucker shouted. He started shrugging off his backpack, “You have a remote key fob? So the car’s been updated?”

“Hm?” Rosie hummed. “Oh. Yeah. Guy I brought it to helped me fix it up, a little. Didn’t need much work I couldn’t do myself, and I mostly just wanted him to touch up the phoenix on the hood for irony points, but I won’t say no to extras.”

“Irony? Why?” Sam asked.

Rosie paused as she turned away from them, before shrugging. “Eh, my last car burned. Don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Yeah, Danny’s dad is like that with cars too,” Sam deadpanned in reply.

“Guess it makes sense it’s recent, too - otherwise we’d have slipped on the drool puddle Dash is leaving over there before now,,” Tucker said, jerking his thumb towards the side entrance where there was indeed a dumbfounded jock staring slack jawed at the car. He opened the passenger side door and waited. Sam and Danny raised an eyebrow as he stood there. “I’m taking shotgun.”

“No you’re not.” Sam said, grabbing Tucker and pushing him into the back seat. “Danny is the tallest, so give him the leg room.”

“Only by like a quarter inch!” Tucker cried as Sam manhandled him into the back seat.

Rosie grimaced as she looked back at Dash, who had managed to snap his jaw back into place in time to shoot her what he no doubt thought was a flirtatious smile, before glancing back at the car.

“Maybe it’s not too late to give this back…” She muttered.

Danny laughed, which made Rosie jump. “What? Cause of Dash’s drooling? He does that anyways.”

Rosie gave a slight smile. “Yeah. he does, but now he’s gonna do it on my car. And I ain’t convinced baboon spit cleans a car particularly well.”

“Could always try to find out. I mean, he has to be useful for something besides football.”

“Who says?”

“My enduring and fruitless belief in a just and fair universe?”

Rosie barked another laugh, accompanied by a dazzling smirk. “Space Cadet, if you’ve actually managed to hold onto that one after having to deal with him and that pest in pink for three years, you’re a better man than I gave you credit for.”

“Though my faith be sorely tested by heathens…” Danny began, his voice taking on a saintly quality as he made vaguely religious gestures with his hands, Rosie cackling all the while.

“What the hell is this?” Tucker muttered to Sam as they finished bundling all their stuff into the back.

“I don’t know…” Sam replied, a look of worry and something else passing over her face.

Sam and Tucker got settled, although in Sam’s case that was mostly physically so, meaning Rosie and Danny were able to get into the front seats. Rosie stuck the keys in and the engine roared to life. Followed immediately by the speaker system.

“He’s the one they call Dr. Feelgood! He’s the one that makes ya feel all right!”

Danny smiled. “Hah! Good choice!”

Rosie chuckled as she backed out. “Well, despite all evidence to the contrary, Space Cadet, you do have pretty good taste in music.”

“Yeah, well…” Sam chimed in, eyes flickering uneasily between her and Danny “Any chance you got some music from a band that isn’t one big scandal after another?”

Rosie rolled her eyes. “They’re literal rock stars, it’s kind of in the job description that they’re getting up to stupid shit.”

Before Sam could fire back, Tucker leaned forward. “Oh, hey, that’s a newer sound system too!”

Danny turned toward Tucker. “I didn’t know you knew cars?” He then pointed forward. “Next light, turn right.”

Tucker shrugged. “I mean, not really? Just I know a few things. I know the trans am because of the talking car from Knight Rider. When I was little, my dad had me watch some of the show and convinced me KITT was a real thing, so I spent ages trying to find out how he was made.”

“Of course you did,” Danny said chuckling. The conversation died as the song switched over and the sounds of someone slamming on a whammy bar started playing. Danny glanced down at the car stereo system before looking up at Rosie.

Rosie looked over at Danny with a raised eyebrow, and he reached over and turned up the volume as Kickstart my Heart started playing in earnest. A smile broke out on Rosie’s face before she faced the road again.

She also floored it, but that was to be expected when the song came on in earnest.

Still better than riding with Jack Fenton driving.

When they got into the house, Rosie froze just as they entered through the door. It was subtle, but Danny noticed it just the same. Frankly because he did the same thing every time he walked into the house. Rosie stepped through the door, one foot in, with half her body turned to make her profile smaller. It made her (and Danny) a smaller target and gave them the option to dive out behind the door if the Fenton Ecto-Protection Security System accidentally (or not so accidentally in Danny’s case) locked onto whoever walked through the door.

Looks like someone heard the warnings about visiting Fenton Works.

“Don’t worry,” Danny started. Rosie practically jumped at the sound of his voice. “I turned off all the weapon systems. So no one is accidentally getting zapped.” As soon as the words left his mouth Danny winced. He knew that wasn’t exactly comforting, and by the way Rosie paled she didn’t find it very much comforting either.

Danny held up his arms and tried to make a calming gesture, but really just flailed about. “I mean, not like any of us would get zapped either. My parent’s inventions are super sensitive and all, but they’ve increased the threshold a lot over the past couple years. Like, I’m severely ecto-contaminated, and their inventions don’t even target me anymore. You’re completely safe in here, promise. Hell, probably safer here than anywhere else.”

Despite how well he could taste rubber from shoving his foot so far down his throat, that did seem to relax Rosie. Her shoulders fell just slightly, just barely, and she did step all the way through the entrance.

Sam chuckled as she walked past Rosie. “I guess even the newbies to Amity Park get to hear about the social terrors that are Jack and Maddie Fenton?”

“Probably got warned by the Festival coordinators,” Danny huffed, folding his arms, “Though uh… not like I blame them.”

“Yeah… uh… that’s it…” Rosie said quietly, slightly embarrassed.

Trying to get attention off Rosie, Danny turned toward Sam and jammed a thumb up towards the ops center. “You guys want to take her to the ops center and I’ll find where Jazz stashed the pizza coupons?”

Rosie jerked, and blinked a couple times before a smirk spread across her lips. “Oh don’t worry. I’ll pay.”

Thirty minutes later, after buying an ungodly number of pizzas (a couple with enough meat on them that even Ember was sporting a matching look with Sam at them) and a very generous tip to get them to deliver to Fenton Works, the four of them were sitting in what looked like could have been the bridge from Star Trek. (No, Ember never watched that show. What are you talking about?)

Phantom was sitting next to what Ember could only call the bridge computer. Sam was fiddling with another computer next to Danny, and Tucker was pulling out a beanbag from a cupboard that should have been too small to fit it.

Leaving Ember to sit and watch the pizza.

The fools.

By the time Sam got the music playing, Ember had already devoured half a pizza, which said less about how long it took Sam to get the music running and more that Ember’s new body went through food like it was coming out of a famine. She hoped there’d be a way around this eventually - either the thing just settles down or some modification she could make to the ritual Plasmius had. However that would work, but whatever, she’d need to get her food bill down eventually. She’d learn witchcraft to save money.

The first song that came on started with a heavy drum beat, but then the sounds of water dripping and the air blowing started going over it. It was starting off somewhat interesting, but Tucker rolled his eyes and then Sam stopped the music. “Don’t worry Tucker, that wasn’t what I was gonna show you guys.”

Ember huffed, making both Sam and Danny look up at her. Sam glanced at Danny and she gave him some look that probably signified something, but Ember had no bloody clue what that meant. Instead of getting an explanation, Sam started up a new song. The music started off softly, a soft thudding beat was first, followed by what Ember guessed was an electric piano that grew in intensity. Ember could see Tucker already checking out, though at least Phantom was giving it a fair shot.

Then a distorted voice came on saying, “I got the magic.”

Then it was like the song actually started, the beat coming through way harder and Tucker sat up. A whistle rang out and then a breathy voice started over the beat in hypnotic chant, “I feel like I'm screaming, but a moan is all I'm leavin’. Got a pain of the mind, need some change in my life…”

Tucker checked out again, sitting back in his chair and going back to his pizza. Though Phantom continued to listen. The song continued for a few more measures before Tucker finally decided to complain, “I thought for a moment you were gonna be giving us some like EDM type music.”

Sam rolled her eyes, but gave a so-so gesture. “Well, he’s got the electric part down, which I thought you’d appreciate, Tucker.”

Tucker took another bite of his pizza. “Nah, I mean, I do, but this is waaay too low energy for me.”

“I like it,” Phantom said immediately after. He glanced at Ember before turning toward Sam. “Where did you find this guy?”

“Honestly, good question,” Sam said, leaning on the computer. “I had music running while doing homework and then this started playing. I think it was suggesting music based off all three of us.”

“What, you three all share an account?” Ember asked, curious. She’d only recently found out about music streaming services, but from what she’d figured out, that was a recipe to get recommended a Frankenstein’s monster of a playlist.

She frowned. Damn it, she was paying too much attention at school if she was going for a Frankenstein’s monster metaphor. She was even adding ‘monster’ to the end of it now. Stupid Lancer and his stupid lessons on that stupid, really good book.

Ember finished off the last of her pizza, and noticed Phantom looking at her. He had a look of curiosity in his eyes, probably wondering if she liked the music too. “It’s pretty good,” Ember admitted. Phantom’s eyes lit up, a smile forming on his face. She looked away only to see Sam listening to her.

Both of them were paying attention to her, wanting to know what “Rosie” thought of the music they were sharing. Ember hadn’t really had anyone look at her like that before. Like they cared what she thought. If they ever paid attention to her, it was just to mock.

Ember bit her lip hard, trying to get her mind off the past and into the present. She should probably get as many music suggestions out of them as she could.. “What else you got?”

Long after the pizza had been eaten but much too early for Ember’s taste, Sam sighed and turned off the music. “This was fun,” Sam had said, “Buuuut… it’s almost 8, and I got ten minutes till the bus comes by.”

“Forget the bus, I can drive you,” the words came out of Ember’s mouth before she even thought about it. Sam looked up at her with her eyebrows raised, as Phantom’s face went through a complicated series of expressions before settling on pleased. “What time are you supposed to get home?”

Sam smiled and shook her head. “Thanks, but uh… I’m kinda out of everyone’s way.” She glanced at Danny, Ember didn’t need to know them well to be able to see the cry for help.

Ember didn’t have enough time to parse out why she looked so panicked before Danny sighed. “You said you’re an apartment complex right?” Ember blinked before nodding. “So that’s gotta mean you’re in either the Winchester Apartments, Herman’s properties, or the Venkman Apartments, right?”

Ember gave Phantom a once over and reevaluated him. Had he been stalking her or something? “How the fuck do you know that?”

“Amity Park is a small town, there’s only three apartment complexes. If you weren’t in one of them, you’d probably have transferred into Elmerton’s highschool instead.” Phantom explained with a shrug, and Ember relaxed. So it wasn’t that he was onto her, just basic deduction. “But, that also means that Sam is in the opposite direction. It’d add at least 30 minutes to your drive back.”

Ember honestly didn’t really care about that, she’d rather-

“So, you could drive her back, or stick around a bit longer and we can keep going through albums.”

“Yeah, okay, Mortitica can take the bus.” Ember agreed. There was another complicated expression on Sam’s face. She was frowning, but the corners of her lips were tilting up as if she were trying to smile.

“Mortitca?” Sam repeated, eventually breaking into an actual smile.

Ember raised an eyebrow. “There’s no fucking way you don’t know the Adam’s Family.”

Sam barked out a laugh, “Of course I know the Addams Family. I’m just surprised, that’s all. I’m more partial to Wednesday myself.”

Ember let out a hum of acknowledgement. She‘d admit, she wasn’t that familiar with the show. She knew who Morticia was, and Gomez, Wednesday sounded familiar, but she couldn’t put a face to the name. She guessed it was one of the kids.

Ember didn’t know the Addams Family, but she knew adults. Sam wasn’t as bad as most adults, but there had been comments here and there that made Ember’s hackles rise. Sam commenting on the artist’s themselves and applying their faults to the music particularly rankled Ember.

Fortunately she was saved from having to explain herself

Tucker slammed his hands down on his knees before standing up. “Actually, dude, it is getting pretty late,” he stretched and let out a burp that echoed in the room. “And I gotta study for Mr. Falluca’s test on Monday.”

Danny frowned. “We have a test on Monday?”

“I do, you don’t. You got stuck with Mr. Lancer in math class.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Lucky us…” he muttered, glancing at Ember, the other person in the room who had said teacher.

Ember sighed, before getting up herself. “I guess we should all call it…” When she said that, Sam visibly relaxed.

Sam grabbed her backpack. “I gotta go, I’ll see you guys Monday!”

There was a chorus of goodbyes, as Sam ducked out and started running out the door. Tucker was less energetic about it, but he grabbed his bag and started leaving himself.

“Oh, by the way…” Danny called out before Ember could leave. She turned toward him and he shrugged. “Are you… doing anything tomorrow?”

Ember shrugged. “Eh, nothing specific. Was thinking I might just have a jam day, you know? Just me and my guitar.”

“Oh,” Phantom said, rubbing the back of his head. “That does sound good. I was wondering, though, if you’d like to, I dunno… come round again? We’ve got that homework to do for English, and I’ve got a bunch of albums we can listen to while we do it?”

Ember nearly said no, until she looked at Danny’s eyes. There it was again. The weird stomach flipping that somehow didn’t feel unpleasant. The feeling that was maddeningly familiar but that she couldn’t place for the life of her.

Huh. Weird to think of that phrase without any irony for once.

“Sure, why not?” She said. “Been stuck on that Frankenstein essay anyway. Who the hell thinks about the religious symbolism of the damn book anyway?”

Phantom lit up and laughed. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was just Mr. Lancer chucking darts at a board to pick the subject. But, I’m pretty sure we can make up enough to get by. Say about 3? I dunno about you, but I’m not planning on waking up until noon at the earliest.”

“Yeah, that’s the right attitude,” Ember laughed. “It ain’t a proper rest until it’s the afternoon. But yeah, sure, I’d be down. You better pick something good though! Anything comes on that I don’t approve of and I’m only going out the door after kicking your ass!”

“Oh, be still my heart,” Danny deadpanned. “Such charm and refinement, the ideal work companion.”

“You want refinement, go to someone other than the new local punk,” she smiled. “Alright, see you tomorrow, then.”

“Counting the seconds,” Phantom grinned before she was out the door.

Eh, why not, she thought as she went to her car. Homework needed doing, and there were worse ways to get that damn chore done.

Besides, she lied to herself, it’s not like she was gonna make a habit out of hanging out with him and his friends, fun as they are.

Ember looked down at her phone, Phantom’s was texting her a music suggestion, confirming plans, and letting her know she could say no to Sam. Sam, in turn, had left a message on her phone saying that after school the two of them should team up and drag the boys to Poe’s Corner where they had a bunch of small goth band albums they could check out.

“Shit, I’ve made a habit out of it.”

Chapter Text

If Danny genuinely thought they’d get any work done, he was kidding himself.

Oh, sure, they’d pretended they would, to start with. Pulled out the book, run through what they’d already gotten, cursed the name of Lancer, yea, unto seven generations (Rosie’s curse sounding weirdly authentic to Danny, but that just made it funnier). Putting music on to relax was a further proof against getting any work done.

Now here they were, lying on the carpet in the living room, nodding their heads gently to some Guns N’ Roses, any attempt at Frankenstein entirely forgotten.

“Yeah, I think I gotta give it to Appetite for Destruction,” Rosie said, shrugging the shoulder she had pressed against his.

“You mainstream shill,” Danny replied, not bothering to open his eyes.

“Don’t start channeling Morticia, Space Cadet. I swear, that much contrarianism has to be bad for you.”

“Ah yes, I see the pot is once again calling the kettle black,” Danny grinned, only to feel a pillow from the nearby couch whack him in the stomach. His eyes were greeted by the frankly glorious sight of a faux-outraged Rosie, with pillow raised like an axe prepared to strike, the light behind her making her hair look…

Danny gulped. Yeah, taking it slow with her was going to get harder, wasn’t it? Baby steps, Fenton, baby steps. Find out if she’s going to start ghost hunting before you start dating her this time.

He held his hands up in surrender. “I give, I give!” he laughed. “Fine, it probably is their best, but I still prefer Chinese Democracy.”

“Now that’s just straight up blasphemy,” Rosie scoffed, shoving the pillow under her head instead.

“Call it what you want,” Danny said, then paused before saying more carefully, “I don’t think I really care what I’m supposed to like. I mean, everyone’s supposed to like Paulina, but I think I prefer someone… different.”

Rosie turned to him with a quizzical expression, before grinning at him. “That’s the stuff, Space Cadet. Like what you like and screw the rest!”

Yeah, he was not cut out for subtle, Danny decided. He hauled himself to his feet regardless and wandered over to the stack of physical albums he had laid out for Rosie’s arrival – yeah, digital was more convenient, but physical media was superior and he would die on this hill.

“Alright, what next… A Sound of Thunder, no, Alice Cooper, no… Oh! This’ll be good. You get some good stuff and an Amity Park history lesson all in one!”

“… How do you mean?” Rosie's quizzical voice from behind him.

“You’ll see,” Danny said, pulling a CD with a blue flame on the front, entirely ignorant to Rosie’s flabbergasted shock as she caught sight of it. “Don’t tell Sam I’ve still got this, please, she would kill me and then smash it. But, you know, separating the art from the artist, I think it’s really good!”

Rosie stared at him with gaping mouth before her jaw snapped shut and she gave him the most dazzling, breathtaking smile he’d ever seen from her before, complete, undisguised joy dominating her face.

“Tell me more!” She cried, dragging him back down to the floor, and pressing in closer than she had before.

Danny had the sense he’d done something right, but for the life of him he had no idea what it was, as he gave a quick history of Ember McLain and her music to Rosie.

“Ooooh, this one!” Rosie said, picking up a tome from one of the shelves. “Maintenance manual!”

Sam looked over at the book her new… friend? Yeah. Friend, she supposed. The book her new friend had picked up. “A Beginners Guide to Homunculi? Are you trying to tell me you’ve got a homunculus back home?”

“Pft. Nah, not at home,” Rosie dismissed, grinning. “I’mma give this one to Paulina. Clearly her baboon homunculus is malfunctioning.”

Sam couldn’t help herself. She laughed.

It probably shouldn’t have been a surprise to her that Rosie actually liked the occult bookstore. The girl was as off-beat as Sam herself was, not even slightly caring what anyone else thought of her. Except them, for some reason. She'd try to play it off, and act like she wasn't really all that interested. If it hadn't been for Danny asking Sam to push just a little, Sam wouldn't think she'd have even noticed. But, whenever Danny put out the offer to Rosie to try and include her, there was always a moment of shock at being included, then joy, before it immediately was squashed by a veil of indifference that was slowly growing thinner and thinner. She did care what Sam, Tucker and Danny thought of her, for all she tried to pretend otherwise. Sam was… unused to that.

Though she understood it.

“I’m pretty sure that one’s too far gone. Put it down, start again,” Sam replied, before something caught her eye. “Oh! The new edition of Medicinal Herbs! Dibs.”

“All yours, Morticia,” Rosie grinned. “Say, I was wondering…”

“Hm?” Sam hummed, but she knew where this was going. Everyone asked eventually.

“How accurate do you think most of this is?”

… Huh. Same ballpark as the usual question, ‘do you think this is real’, but with a crucial distinction. Interesting.

“Depends on what you mean by accurate, I suppose,” Sam shrugged. “Does it work? Most of the more serious stuff in here on witchcraft and spells claims you’ll know if it works, but it won’t be ‘chuck fireballs’ at people kinda stuff.”

“Why not?”

“… I guess that doesn’t work? I don’t know. Before the ghosts I’d have said most of the stuff here was more like… placebo effect, kinda? Like, I’d wish it were real, but it was mostly about discovering who you are and things about yourself that you didn’t know. Just with a lot of candles, elaborate diagrams and chanting.”

“So what changed?”

“Well, for a start, a genie ghost runs around periodically granting wishes,” Sam deadpanned and Rosie laughed. “Hard not to look at that as magic.”

“OK, yeah, but couldn’t that be… y’know, ghost mojo?”

Sam hesitated for a moment, wondering if this was giving too much away. She was aware, unlike Danny and seemingly Tucker, that the more Rosie hung out with them, the more likely she was to find out Danny’s problem of being occasionally and selectively dead. But, unlike a lot of other people who’d tried to insert themselves into their group, she actually liked Rosie.

That made watching Danny and Rosie… harder than it had been with Valerie. And harder to know what to do. At least she seemed as dense as he was, so far.

“There was a circus that came through, a while back,” Sam explained, slowly. “Circus Gothica, ever heard of it?”

“… Rings a bell,” Rosie replied darkly, giving her undivided attention to Sam now.

“Ah. Robbed you too, huh?”

“Something like that. Couple of guys I know got caught by them.”

“Well, the guy in charge, the ringmaster, called himself Freakshow, he had this… artifact. A staff. Real world metal, quartz crystal treated with something weird on top.”

“And?”

“… And it could control ghosts,” Sam said quietly, not wanting the other customers to hear her. “Freakshow was a human, nothing ghostly about him at all, but he had this thing that I can’t describe as anything other than magic. So now?”

Sam looked at the books she’d picked up and quashed the desperation talking or even thinking about this brought up.

“Now I’m trying to find something that’ll help,” she whispered, almost to herself.

Help the town, help the people, help stop the ghosts.

Help Danny, most of all. Even if he still hadn’t noticed her like she wanted him to.

A hand dropped on her shoulder and Sam looked up to see Rosie looking concerned. Sort of. The expression seemed really unusual on her, like she wasn’t used to being concerned about someone else and hadn’t had practice making the muscles for it work.

“You’ll figure something out,” Rosie said, uncertainly. “I mean, if vibes count for anything, you’re already halfway to a witch.”

Sam smiled at that, involuntarily. “Good. I worked hard at it, you know.”

She shook herself and started walking. “Come on, lets get these and then we can get to the obscure local talent albums at the goth coffee place.”

Rosie whooped, drawing the ire of the other patrons and rushed to the counter to deposit her bundle of books.

Sam’s smile faded as she watched her. Telling a joke to defuse a tense situation was the kind of thing Danny would do.

Sam didn’t think finding another similarity between the two was very reassuring, just then.

“All right, hand me the graphics card and I think we’re about done!” Tucker said, his voice muffled by his head being lost in a maze of wires and computer components.

“… Which one’s that one again?” Ember asked, looking toward a frankly ridiculous amount of technical doodads arrayed on one of her tables. There was a slight chance that she may have severely overordered when she asked Tucker to build her a PC. Apparently the other three played games together pretty regularly, and she wanted to see what was so cool about them.

“Should still be in the box!”

Ember located the right box by luck more than any kind of knowledge of what she was doing. Tucker tinkered for a brief moment, before crying out in triumph and emerging. He turned to the rockstar ghost in disguise with glee and a small amount of smug pride.

“Well, she’s your baby – turn her on!”

“You seem excited,” Ember said with dry humour, nevertheless sitting down at her new desk with a ridiculously priced monitor in front of her.

“This is a big moment!” Tucker cried. “Your first proper computer, built by someone who knows what they’re doing! I’m hoping it earns me a nickname.”

Ember blinked. “What?”

“Come on, Danny’s got a nickname, so does Sam. I gotta get one too!” He threw his arms out as he was talking, making all sorts of the over the top exaggerated movements. You'd be forgiven for thinking he was joking. But... it didn't quite disguise the hurt.

“I... didn’t think it’d matter that much to you, to be honest,” Ember confessed.

Now that she thought about it, it was a little weird he didn’t have one yet. Sure, she and him didn’t have all that much in common, so they’d hung out individually less. Ember didn’t like to admit it, but she was useless with tech and not really interested in dating, or at least not dating someone like Tucker. But, the nerd was fun enough to spend time with too. Memes were new and frankly baffling, and she was kinda interested by this thing he called anime.

“Yeah, I… sometimes feel like I fall behind Danny and Sam for a lot of people, you know?” Tucker confessed. Ember didn't think the way he stared hard at the computer had anything to do with the way he loved tech at the moment. He rubbed the back of his head as his voice got quieter, “Tech geek in the background. So like... getting a nickname…”

“I can get that,” Ember muttered. Her whole damn life was forever being behind someone, in the background, unnoticed. Well, OK, she wasn’t gonna let him languish there if she could help it. “I’ll see what I can cook up, but ‘till then…”

She hit the button, and they both waited a tense moment before the monitor flashed to life and begin displaying logos. Tucker cheered and Ember indulged him in the high five he requested with a grin.

“The master at work! I promise you, this baby’ll run anything you want it to, and all of it on the highest settings!” He enthused, pointing at what looked to Ember like random icons as the PC demanded she finish setting up some stuff. “Gotta say, I’m impressed how much you were able to throw at this. Never had such beautiful, beautiful components to work with. How’d you talk your folks into paying for it all?”

Ember had long since braced herself for this kind of question, so had an easy enough answer ready. “Easy enough when you don’t ask ‘em. They aren’t exactly around anymore.”

Tucker winced in sympathy. “Oh. Oof. Sorry, didn’t know. So who are you…?”

Ember shrugged and faked some tension in her shoulders. “No one. Place is all mine, thanks to an emancipation order.”

“I… Whoa,” Tucker said, looking at her with a tinge of pity. Ember let the silence stretch out a bit, let it get awkward before Tucker coughed. “Uh. Anyway. You’re definitely gonna want to get this game…”

Ember grinned. Yup, backstory worked like she thought it would. Too loaded a topic to talk about on the spot, so she didn’t have to answer too many questions at once and probably contradict herself. Though if she just said she didn’t wanna talk about it, the whole group had respected that so far. She shouldn’t keep being surprised at respected boundaries, and yet.

Then she noticed the game Tucker was trying to get her to buy, and her eyes lit up.

“No way! We get to crew a pirate ship?!”

“Straight up!” Tucker grinned. “Me, Sam and Danny have been playing it for about a year now, but we’ve never gotten a fourth person so we could sail in the biggest ship! We need a new cannoneer, just saying.”

Ember turned to him, and nodded her appreciation. “You know what? Great idea, Q.”

“Nickname! I’ll take it!”

Vlad Masters breathed deeply, steadying himself. This was the most volatile stage of the mixture, and it would not do to start the whole thing over again. Not to mention the more immediate consequences should he make a mistake.

So he would simply have to stick with the habit of a lifetime, and make no mistakes.

He held up a hand that sizzled with pink ectoplasm and muttered under his breath. An outside, and more importantly knowledgeable, observer would note that what he was saying didn’t correspond to any known language on Earth, living or dead. And yet somehow it resembled all of them. It had taken Vlad quite some time to not get a headache every time he spoke what was only referred to in Infinite Realms grimoires as Ancient, and by various other names in the magical traditions of Earth.

As he chanted, runes inscribed on the otherwise normal metal lab table lit up in the same colour as Vlad’s hand, one by one, and began to glow and pulse in time with his utterances, a buzzing feeling of electricity filling the atmosphere.

Until, at last, he was done. He lowered his hand, the runes faded, and the container at the centre of the runic circle glowed briefly before also fading to nothing.

Now. Time for the scientific method.

Vlad carefully lifted the bottle, which had contained a neutral gel up until this point, and reached for a cotton swab. A quick dip, a swift application to a nearby chunk of meat (that Vlad had, in a moment that he admitted might be called petty, stuck a picture of Jack’s face to), and it was inserted into his special containment unit. An ecto-sealed chamber populated by the mindless entities of the Ghost Zone, almost formless, vaguely shaped like malevolent monsters, all claws and teeth. They were the greater proportion of that dimension, spirits who were unable to retain their identity, or perhaps never had one to begin with. Vlad was unclear, and truly didn’t much care.

What he was clear on, however, was that these would be the types of entities that would swarm around the kind of breech he would create with the aid of Ms. McLain. So, though the book he’d studied had assured him it would drive these creatures into a frenzy, he had to see for himself.

His smile as the creatures tore the piece of meat bearing his enemies face to shreds was wide, and showed more teeth than perhaps was necessary.

“Plasmius.”

Vlad did not allow his surprise to show. He hadn’t heard Skulker come in. Watching the ectoplasmic beasts rip Jack’s face apart had been… compelling, and he had lost himself in some fantasies. Not for the first time, he wished both he and Daniel had identical power sets – he didn’t have anything like the early warning system his potential protégé had, and on more than one occasion it would have been useful.

“Skulker,” Vlad replied, not turning from his tank. “The boy is… meddling again.”

“You shock me,” came the deadpan echo. “The whelp, pushing his nose where it doesn’t belong? How could this have happened?”

“Spare me the sarcasm, it’s unbecoming,” Vlad sneered. “I need you to push things up a little. A quick assault, something to remind him his life is in danger at all times. If you can endanger or hurt the new girl he’s taken to, all the better.”

He heard the slight mechanical scraping as Skulker raised an eyebrow. “The goth girl? She hasn’t done anything I’ve seen.”

“Not her, you oaf, the other one. Probably wearing some cliché punk adornments.”

“The fierce one? What does she have to do with this?”

“Do you need to know?”

“… I suppose I don’t.”

“Good. Payment is on the desk,” Vlad said, waving his hand at a crate further away. “Don’t let me detain you.”

Yes, perhaps this would be the thing to make the McLain girl fall in line. He hadn’t bothered since his last attempt to corral her, she was obviously not going to listen to straight-forward direction. A second brush with mortality tended to do wonders for ones motivation, Vlad had experienced.

During it all, Vlad's eyes never left the shredded picture.

“Alright, you made it!” Phantom cheered at Ember’s arrival, and she tried her best not to smile at that. Someone being pleased she was there was… new, and she liked it.

“Well, didn’t have anything else to do,” Ember shrugged, sticking her hands in her pockets, and looking up at the Amity Park multiplex. “And who’s gonna say no to some Japanese giant monster action?”

“That’s the spirit!” Tucker replied, adjusting his glasses. “Glad to see some people appreciate the genre from the originators.”

“Oh, shut up, Tucker,” Sam rolled her eyes before looking at Ember. “Sorry. Ongoing thing with us. Tucker here’s a weird nerd purist, ‘only the ones from Japan count’. Me, I want my giant monsters to mean something, and Godzilla being a nature titan in the American films works better for me.”

“I just like watching kaiju show up!” Phantom piped up, and Ember immediately pointed in his direction.

“That. Big monsters, please.”

“Well, I think this one should hit all our boxes…” Tucker said, flicking through the films information on his device. “Big monster, obviously, from Japan to celebrate the anniversary of the original Godzilla, and it says here big G himself is more a metaphor for… huh. The state of post-war Japan.”

“Is that why it’s called Minus One?” Phantom asked. Ember had been wondering that herself.

“Guess so,” Sam shrugged, her interest clearly piqued by the description. “And this is the black and white release, so you know. Artsier.”

“Film not your medium, huh, Morticia?” Ember snarked with a grin. Sam scowled that special scowl that seemed to be unique to her, the ‘you are right and I hate that’ scowl. It was very distinct.

“Tucker’s the cinephile among us,” Phantom chuckled. “Or so he says.”

“Oh, are we starting on the mafia movies again, Danny? Are we gonna start? Because I will if you wanna start.”

“He didn’t like The Godfather”, Danny said in a stage whisper to Ember. She hadn’t seen the thing either, yet (and no, she hadn’t added it to her list just this second because Phantom indirectly recommended it, shuddup), but nevertheless played along and glared at the geek.

“I just said it was fine!” Tucker threw his hands up. “Organised crime stuff is not my thing, alright? Now can we please go see the big monster?”

"Movies are weird..." Danny muttered.

Rosie turned toward him with a bit of a sneer already forming on her face. "You're gonna have to be a lot more fucking specific than that."

Danny rubbed the back of his head. "I just never thought I'd really resonate with the main character of a Godzilla movie... or at least, the main human character."

Rosie let out a huff through her nose. "Well, fair, but what on earth do you have in common with him?"

Danny could say something like that he knew how badly one mistake could fuck up your entire life. How it felt like you'd never move past it. That it would forever haunt you like your own personal curse as it ruins the relationships between you and the people you care about. How it felt to put on a brave face when you weren't even sure if you were alive or dead anymore.

He could.

Instead, he smiled. "Well, I know very well what it's like to pick up some random street punk who cleans up well."

Rosie barked out a laugh. "Oh? And how do you know I clean up well?"

Danny leaned against her car. "Who said I was talking about you?"

“You been stepping out on me with other punks? Space Cadet, I thought we had something special.”

Danny laughed, oblivious to the increasing distress on the face of Sam. “OK, fine, you caught me, you’re the only punk I have eyes for.”

“And don’t you forget it!” Rosie smiled, not entirely joking.

"Igottago!" Sam burst out, before turning on her heel and rushing off to the bus stop. Danny raised an eyebrow at Tucker, who apparently knew more than he did, though the slap against his own face didn't answer any of Danny's questions.

Rosie scoffed and the car unlocked. "Come on, no point standing around in the cold."

“Ummmm…” Tucker intoned, Danny and Rosie turned to look at him, and Tucker thumbed in the direction Sam ran off. “Actually, I’m gonna go with Sam.” He gave a half hearted shrug and gave them a wobbly smile. “Ya know?”

Danny did not, in fact, know. He wasn’t sure why Sam was so insistent on not letting anyone know how rich she actually was, or why she ran off so quickly. His place was between here and her house, so it’d shave off close to an entire half hour off her trip home. Was it because she was crying? They were all crying after the movie, a Godzilla movie of all things…

“Sure thing,” Danny said, despite his pure confusion. He gave Tucker a thumbs up, and Tucker turned and ran after Sam. Immediately after, Rosie started climbing in the car.

Danny opened the door and climbed in himself. Once he closed the door, he looked over at Rosie. Her painted lips were pulled into a playful smirk and her eyes were practically glittering in mirth. "So,” She began, “would you fight a nuclear bomb for your adopted street punk?"

Danny tore his eyes away from her lips to look Rosie square in the eye. He gave her a grin that he normally only felt like he had when he was Phantom and said with all the seriousness he could muster. "Absolutely, and in a heartbeat."

Rosie rolled her eyes then started the car, at first Danny thought he might have pushed it a little hard, but then a blush started forming on her face, and she kept sneaking glances at him.

Apparently she believed him.

Good, cause he didn't want to wake up Pariah again to prove he could actually do it.

Sam leaned against the bus stop, pressing her shoulder against the metal. The frame was cold enough that pressing her body against it like this was beginning to hurt. Still though, she didn’t move. Because the way she was standing hid her face from the rest of the world.

“Sam!” Tucker shouted running up to her. Figures the one time she doesn’t want to see anyone, Tucker remembers that his lungs were not just for screaming in the middle of gaming matches. Tucker slowed as he approached, “Sam…”

“You hate public transport…” Sam muttered.

Tucker shifted, he was probably shrugging, she didn’t care to look up to confirm. “Yeah, well, I wanted to check on you…”

“I’m peachy. Thanks.”

“Sam…” Tucker trailed off, obviously not sure how to comfort her. “Look, with Danny’s track record, Rosie’s gonna wind up working for the Guys in White or something. Then the two of you’ll fall back into the ‘will they or won’t they’ dynamic you’ve both been tiptoeing the last couple years. You know how clueless Danny can-”

"Tucker, it's been three years," Sam cut him off. She didn’t have the energy to raise her voice, but it silenced him all the same. She shifted to actually look at Tucker. "I can only say he's clueless so many times before..."

"... Before what?"

"Before it finally sinks in that he isn't," Sam said tonelessly. "At least not to himself. He knew he liked Paulina, he knew he liked Valerie, he knows he likes Rosie, and he acts on it. He never has with me. I think... I think I need to stop holding out hope for... us."

Tucker opened his mouth and closed it several times before all the energy in him just drained out and he slumped. “I’m sorry Sam…”

“Yeah… me too.”

Ember tightened her grip on the steering wheel. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her legs felt a little shaky. She was not expecting that from Phantom. Phantom had been serious about fighting for her. That was something that was so easy to say but so much harder to prove.

But Phantom did fight for people. Apparently she wasn’t supposed to know that, but…

Ember still wasn’t sure what his angle was. There had to be something he was getting out of playing the hero. But, that didn’t change the fact that unlike every other ghost, every other being, when Pariah showed up he didn’t run away.

He ran towards Pariah and while she didn’t know exactly what happened …

Fact was Phantom was still around and Pariah wasn’t.

Ember thought about saying something, asking, just addressing that in some way, even if only to make a joke out of it to get rid of this tension in her chest, when Phantom yelled, “Floor it!”

Ember jumped, but did what he said, more an accident than anything else. The car lurched and Phantom grabbed the handle of the door, but also grabbed her arm. That was all she was able to process before there was an explosion.

Her entire world went white as the back of her car flipped over. Her eyes snapped open as a chill that she’d never forget washed over her. She looked down to see if she was gonna die again, but there was nothing there.

In fact, there wasn’t even a seat belt.

Phantom pulled on her, dragging her along the roof of her car. “Come on, we gotta get out.” He said firmly, but calmly. As if he pulled people out of crashed cars all the time. Ember felt her heart hammering in her chest as Phantom pulled her out of the car and brought her to her feet.

Ember patted herself down, trying to figure out why she literally felt death wash over her. “Am I…?”

“You’re alright.” Phantom said, his eyes looking over her. “But come on, we gotta get out of-”

Phantom cut off suddenly and dove at Ember, tackling her to the ground. The wind was knocked out of her, but she got see and feel the heat this time as a rocket crashed into her brand-fucking-new car.

Ember jumped to her feet and turned toward the bastard who shot at them. “You mechanical fuck! Do you have any idea how much that car cost?”

Skulker stared at her floating above them in the air with his stupid mechanical wings because he was too good for floating like the rest of the ghosts. There was a moment of silence and Ember thought that maybe Skulker didn’t hear her.

“Woman,” Skulker began slowly, “I just shot at you with a missile. And you care more about the car?”

“That was custom!”

Phantom grabbed Ember and started pushing her toward the nearest ally. “Okay, we get it, that was awfully rude. Now run!”

“Why are we running?” Ember shouted.

“You’re running, he’s after me!” Phantom shouted.

While Ember really wanted to take a piece out of Skulker’s mechanical hide. She really didn’t want to risk her life in a fight. So she had been more than willing to let Phantom be the one to beat the crap out of him.

She had been, up until taking five steps away from Phantom caused Skulker to shoot. Not at Phantom, but at her.

Ember’s eyes widened as she looked at the smoking dirt in front of her. Phantom had pulled her back at the last minute. She whirled around to look at Skulker who was emoting a smirk in his stupid armor. “Now, now, can’t have the bait running away.”

Ember felt a fire well up in her chest. A fire she was very familiar with. When she started losing herself to the same old, same old in the Ghost Zone, this fire was what kept her from losing herself to mundanity and kept her sense of self intact.

Pure unadulterated rage at those who looked down at her.

Phantom pushed her behind him, her smaller body completely covered in the shadow cast by him. “Skulker…” Phantom uttered, and Ember shivered at the threat in that single word. It wasn’t just her though she saw Skulker float back a foot and refocus on him. Phantom wasn’t just upset.

He was pissed.

Phantom shifted slightly, making himself a smaller target while also still covering ‘Roise’ with his body. “Skulker,” Phantom repeated, with a little less threat in his voice this time. “You have beef with me, but I swear to every ancient in the Ghost Zone if you hurt her, you can forget about existence.”

Ember gulped, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. She wasn’t sure if that was Phantom just grasping for a threat or something he actually intended. That wasn’t something that was thrown about lightly, that was every sapient ghost’s fear. To be reduced down to nothing. Where even the things that kept them going weren’t important anymore.

Phantom skipped past all the typical threats and went right for the core.

Skulker, possibly instinctively, put some distance between him and Phantom. He raised his arms up and weapons popped out of his arms. “Well, that’s for you to decide isn’t it?” There was tremor in his voice that wasn’t there a moment ago. “Think you can protect her and fight me at the same time?”

Phantom immediately yanked Ember to the side, throwing the two of them to the ground. Ember scrambled to her feet as Phantom grabbed what had once been a door to her car and was now instead a chunk of half melted metal, and whipped it at Skulker.

“You gotta run,” Phantom said clearly, as if he weren’t winded like her from dodging weaponry and hurling car doors what the fuck. “I don’t know what his issue is, but he’s gonna be trying to pin us down together.” Ember opened her mouth to try and say something but Phantom continued. “I”m gonna jump out into the open. He'll love to take the shot at me. But once he does, you gotta put some distance between us. If you can get away, text Tucker, or Sam. They’ll know who else to message for help.” Phantom pulled the two of them down to the ground as Skulker shot more blasts into Ember’s smoking car. “We got a code for this, tell them ‘toast was jammed’. That’ll explain everything.”

Ember blinked. “How the fu-” Phantom jumped and covered her body with his. A flash of heat washed over them and Phantom grunted. A moment later, he had jumped off her. “Wha-?”

Ember was cut off as Phantom pulled a chunk of metal out from his side. “Run!” He shouted, before whipping the shrapnel at Skulker. His blood spun off it like the world's most metal sprinkler.

And he started running out into the open.

Like he said he would.

Ember turned and started running. Skulker turned to fire at her, she could hear his weapons powering up, but before the shot could actually connect there was a yell and the sound of crashing metal.

Ember turned to see Phantom had once again used the remains of her car as a thrown weapon against Skulker. She threw herself behind some poor schmuck’s car as Skulker decided to ignore Phantom and instead shoot at her, blasting holes into the side of the car.

Ember only had twenty feet between here and the alley. She should have been able to make it easily.

Unfortunately, Skulker seemed to be prioritizing her over Phantom. Even if it meant getting a chunk of concrete to the face, he’d still shoot to pen her in rather than fully focus on Phantom.

Ember dove behind someone else’s car as Skulker fired off another couple shots at her. The shots hit the car and rocked it. Ember covered her ears as the blasts triggered the car alarm. A follow up blast silenced it.

“Hope Ghost attacks are covered by their insurance…” Ember muttered as she peaked around the bumper of the car. She frowned as she watched Phantom duck under another beam of ectoplasm. For some reason, he wasn’t transforming. He was fighting like he was some defenseless human.

Crash!

“Ow! Stop throwing things!” Skulker shouted.

“Stop being a bitch!”

Well, almost a defenseless human. Among other things, he had to be using some sort of ghostly power in order to throw the remains of her car doors at Skulker. Still though, he was struggling trying to fight Skulker while staying on the ground. Ember opened her mouth to tell him to stop playing around, but then she stopped.

No one knew Phantom was Danny, and for some reason, he was keeping it that way.

He wasn’t transforming because she was there.

Well, that was easily solved, she just had to get the hell out of here, which she wanted to do anyways. Ember turned and looked at a nearby ally. It was quite some distance away, sure it was only a dozen feet or so, but she wasn’t able to move an inch without Skulker shooting at her.

But Ember had the ability to teleport.

She hadn’t tried to use anything ghostly since she’d been in this body. Hadn’t wanted to. The power felt great, but it felt… dead. There wasn’t really a better way to describe it. It was a rush of strength, of power, of energy, but it wasn’t alive.

Ember let out a breath and mentally reached deep down into herself to pull on her ghost powers. It was easy enough to do, while she was alive now (or was in a body that made her seem alive) the feeling of her soul was always present. Maybe it was before she died, she just didn’t recognize the feeling of it before. Regardless, she tugged on that power and-

Agony. Purple tinted agony.

Someone was screaming, but Ember couldn’t tell who it was because the white hot pain that had preceded the numbness of death flashed through her body. It felt like someone was taking fishhooks and tearing her apart with them. Her throat started to burn and she realized that the one screaming was her.

But that was good. Pain meant she was alive. When she had died, she no longer felt pain. Not really. Not like this.

This was her dying again.

Suddenly the pain vanished, if it weren’t for the fact that the asphalt was grinding into her face she would have thought she died again with how quick the pain vanished. She clenched her teeth and forced herself to sit up. She looked at her chest (which felt like it had a hole in it) but saw no blood or anything.

She then turned around, because the sound of fighting had stopped. Phantom was standing on the ground, his eyes wide in horror and his mouth agape. Ember checked over herself, but other than the ache in her chest (where she felt her soul) she seemed fine.

Could… Could she not use her powers in this body? At all?

Slowly Phantom’s face changed; his eyes went from comically wide and blue to narrowed and glowing green, and his open mouth closed and turned into a nasty snarl. He whirled on Skulker who immediately flew back several feet.

Skulker looked between the two of them, he was as confused as Ember was as to what had just happened. Unlike Ember, however, he was now being directly threatened by an absolutely pissed Phantom.

Phantom took one step in Skulker’s direction, and Skulker just turned tail and ran. Turning invisible just a few seconds later. Phantom straightened up and she could see his shoulders rise and fall as he sighed. He turned and walked over to Ember and held out his hand. “You alright?”

Ember took his hand and let him pull her up. She once again prodded the center of her chest. (And she swore she could feel her putting pressure on her soul). “I… think so?”

Phantom bit his lip and then uttered quietly. “I thought you were dying…” He straightened up again and Ember couldn’t help but mirror him. “Come on, let’s get outta here before my parents or the Guys in White show up.”

Ember blinked and looked around her. The area around her looked like a bomb had gone off, or more accurately, been hit by a dozen rockets. Her car was still flipped over in the middle of the road, there was a hole in the ground that was rapidly filling up from the water spraying out from a broken fire hydrant, and all this was lit up from the sparks flying off several broken street lights.

“That’s it? This is all over and we just go back home?”

Phantom shrugged. The smile on his face was weak, like he was forcing himself to do so, and Ember could see his shoulders slowly falling as the adrenaline left his system. “Welcome to Amity Park. First time?”

Phantom hesitated, before putting a hand on her shoulder. “What happened?” He asked softly.

“I… I don’t know,” Ember replied, just as soft and twice as confused.

She really, really didn’t.

She’d need to look into this.

Chapter Text

Pain.

That was all Ember got when she tried to do even the most basic things. Ectobeam? Her hand smoked purple before dissipating, leaving her with shooting pains and a resolutely undestroyed tin can. Phasing? Full body chill and aches, although admittedly the aches were at least partially from walking into a wall. Flight? Parts of her felt like they were trying to tear themselves off.

She couldn’t even make her damn eyes glow, the standard threat display for everything in the Zone. Whenever she tried, her eyes felt like she’d been staring at the sun for too long. Worse, she could swear there were… cracks, for want of a better word, in her irises. Little streaks and lines of black she was sure weren’t there before. She’d stopped experimenting after that, and instead was lying on her couch. Music blared, but she couldn’t focus on it.

She couldn’t do anything in this body. And worse, it looked like trying to was actually damaging it, even if only a little.

She’d poured over the homunculus book she’d gotten with Morticia in hopes of finding a fix, an explanation, anything. The best the book had, though, was some vague claptrap about homunculi being bad conductors of spiritual energy or some such…

No. Bullshit was her immediate reaction, before she stopped to think that she was the one sitting there in an explicitly magically constructed body that wouldn’t let her do ghost things.

It was probably accurate.

Shit.

This made everything a lot more dangerous than she’d anticipated. She hadn’t even really thought it through before, but she’d been a ghost for longer than she’d ever been alive. The things she could do were just… always there. They gave her a sense of security, a sense she’d carried over even as she reveled in the feeling of being alive again. She’d thought she could rely on her abilities if she ever got into danger.

And now she found she couldn’t.

Maybe… Maybe it’d be better to lie low from now on. Keep her head down a bit. Christ, if that trash can of a hunter kept coming after Danny, and kept being weirdly subtle about it, she’d probably get caught in the crossfire again, but maybe not as lucky. And she… she couldn’t stand to lose this. Not again. Not when things were finally going OK for her.

Ha. Not great, or good, or even well. Just OK. That was how bad her first run had been, that having three friends and living alone as a goddamn teenager was a tremendous step up.

But it was more than just that. She could enjoy things again, new sensations, new experiences, they wouldn’t just go over her head or sink into the abyss of rage and despair she hadn’t left in all this time. Just being alive, even in this “not quite” way… it wasn’t worth risking.

Her phone pinged, shaking her from her depressing reverie.

She really shouldn’t have been surprised it was Danny. She pulled open the messenger app that Tucker had created for them all. Outwardly there wasn’t a reason for that beyond that he could, but Ember had a suspicion it was really heavily encrypted, for reasons Rosie shouldn’t know.

Danny

Hey, just wanted to check in and make sure you’re doing OK.

Danny

First ghost attack can be… intense. I know a lot of people leave Amity when they get hit with one. Don’t think that’d be you, but still.

Rosie

Am I OK?! You hurled a car door at him, Space Cadet!

Danny

Eh, so my shoulders are going to burn for a few days. No problem. You should see my dad. I’m pretty sure I inherited super-strength from him.

Danny

But seriously. Are you alright?

Ember hesitated, her hand hovering over the phone’s keyboard. Her immediate instinct was to brush it off, type up something that made her look tough. But… One of the things she hadn’t realized she’d liked most about being here, being alive, being actual friends with someone was that she didn’t have to put up that kind of front all the time. So instead…

Rosie

Honestly? I’ve been better.

Rosie

Like I came this close to being paste on the road.

Rosie

It’s a lot to take in. And that’s not even getting into whatever the hell that flying tin can did to make THAT happen.

Rosie

I think it was worse that I couldn’t fight back, you know? I don’t have the inherited genetics of the fucking Hulk, unlike some people, apparently, so I couldn’t even hock rocks at him.

Rosie

Haven’t felt that powerless since…

Rosie

A while, anyway.

Danny

Yeah, I can… make a few guesses there.

Danny

Tell you what then. Come over to my place. Bring your guitar, too, you said you wanted to get some more practice in anyway.

Danny

I’ve got something you might wanna try out, we should probably do some festival planning now that’s coming up, and on top of that I got the one perk of being related to the towns local hunters.

Danny

Free ectoguns!

Rosie

… I’m sorry, for a second there it sounded like you were going to arm me.

Danny

Oh good, you can get hints. I was wondering.

Rosie

Shuddup.

Rosie

… Seriously?

Danny

Seriously. You said not being able to fight back made it worse? Then I’ll give you what you need to do that. At least enough to get away.

Ember stared down, a feeling of warmth blooming in her chest that had nothing to do with her malfunctioning powers. Maybe she wouldn’t have to give this up to keep herself safe, after all. Phantom coming through with the save, as always.

Rosie

Be right over.

Ember sat on the bus, her guitar in her lap and an amp under her feet. Phantom had mentioned wanting to hear her play anyway, so she justified both without having to acknowledge the sense of comfort having them brought her. She originally had to stand, as when the bus had picked her up it had been full. But, as she got closer and closer to Fenton works, the bus began to clear out.

And more and more people looked at her with what she could only describe as pity.

Or incredulity.

Ember definitely got why Morticia hated the damn bus if this is what it was like. Could nobody in this town keep their opinions to themselves?

For what would definitely not be the last time, Ember cursed Skulker. The bastard had to go after Phantom while she was driving him. Did the little blob ghost think that she was an easy target? Ember tried to ignore that she was, but the fact that her chest still hurt after trying to use her ghost powers made that very hard to do.

So she did what she did whenever she tried to drown something out.

She listened to music.

She flicked through her phone, a full terabyte of music downloaded to it, and access to Phantom’s shared music streaming services. She was tempted to try and mess with the recommended list on that, but after running into a song titled “Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!” she tended to stay away from the streaming programs. (When she asked Phantom what the fuck, he slowly turned and glared at Tucker who broke out cackling.)

She flew through albums on her phone before something caught her eye.

Black Rain, by Ozzy Ozbourne.

Phantom had mentioned that this had one of his favorite songs on it, right? Sounded like it was worth checking out. She opened the album and looked through the song titles. He had said his favorite was Never Gonna Stop but that wasn’t on the list, there was I Don’t Wanna Stop though. Ember laughed to herself, Oh, he got the name wrong… I’m gonna tease him mercilessly for that.

She kept laughing as she hit play, as she imagined poking fun at him and how embarrassed he’d get. It was always funny when Sam or Tucker got their licks in on him he’d always get so bashful and try to push them away but of course they wouldn’t let him. It’ll be nice to have her own little thing to tease him about, her own little way of making him blush and squirm in that cute way.

She wouldn’t admit it anywhere other than inside her own mind, but she felt a little bad whenever Sam or Tucker would reference one of their inside jokes with each other. She didn’t understand what the hell a “flour baby” was or why billboards were inherently funny, but the three of them did. She just took it as fuel to get her own inside jokes with them.

Her thoughts were interrupted when the bus shook. Ember tightened her grip around her guitar, keeping it from sliding off and being thrown to the floor. She looked around to try and see what on Earth happened, but it didn’t take her long to figure it out.

The buildings around her all had scorch marks and a few dents and cracks here and there. While Phantom might not have been fighting ghosts, correctly choosing Ember over the stupid town, that didn’t mean ghosts attacks were stopping. If anything, they were actually speeding up which didn’t surprise Ember in the least.

While the local superhero was away, the ghosts will come out to play.

Best she could tell, the only one able to cause any real damage had been Skulker, at least that she’d heard about. There had been a lot of reports about minor specters causing mischief, animals coming through (Ember didn’t even know there was a whole horde of ghost raccoons in the Zone, yet there they were on the evening news, stealing everything with their shameless spectral paws), but nothing that might make Phantom reconsider his choice so far.

Ember’s eyes scanned the walls as they went on by while the bus continued to rock its way through a set of potholes. It had to have been recent. Skulker had been keeping his head down ever since his attack on her and Phantom, so it probably wasn’t him. The scorch marks didn’t mean anything, since Valerie had been pulling double duty lately.

Oh wait, there was a mailbox sticking through the second floor of that building.

Man, even the Box Ghost could be annoying as hell. How the hell did they town put up with all these ghostly idiots?

… Or with her, she realized, uncomfortably.

Eventually, the damage started to disappear once they hit that “too close to the portal and therefore Phantom” threshold that all the ghosts knew to respect. No one wanted to wake Phantom up in the middle of the night, not just because that’d ruin their plans, but because he tended to get pissy if his beauty sleep was ruined.

At this point, it was just Ember and the bus driver, and only a minute later she was getting off as she bobbed her head as the music played. “All my life, I’ve been over the top. I don’t know what I’m doing, all I know is I don’t wanna stop.”

You know what, Ember mused as she walked up to the door, Maybe I won’t give him too much crap.

She rang the doorbell, and she could hear Phantom running down the stairs inside. The door unlocked and Phantom swung the door open.

“You sure you’re a fan of Never Gonna Stop? Cause I can’t find that on that album. I can find ‘I Don’t Wanna Stop’ though.”

Phantom went through a series of expressions, before landing on frustration and slapping himself in the face. “There’s no way I did that.”

“You did,” Ember laughed. “So much for your favorite song, huh?”

“Oh no, this is gonna become a thing isn’t…” he trailed off as he looked down at her amp. “Oh, shoot, you didn’t need to drag that all the way over here.”

Ember groaned and looked at the amp. “Seriously? I lugged this all the way over here for nothing?” She thought for a moment before looking up. “Wait, you have an amp? I haven’t seen one here?”

Phantom smiled at her with a cocky grin. “Oh, I think there’s a lot you don’t know about me.” He said, as if she didn’t know that he was; a dead kid who got to keep on living after the fact, the local superhero, and an absolute dork of a nerd. And her friend, she supposed.

“Uh huh, sure…” Ember said rolling her eyes and walking through the door, she put her hand on his chest and pushed him out of the way as he chuckled. She set her amp down by the door and carefully set down her guitar. “I’m guessing your ‘ops center’ has audio equipment or something?” Ember said, giving air quotes around the giant safety violation’s name before folding her arms.

Phantom didn’t answer her right away. Instead he looked over her carefully. Ember raised an eyebrow at the scrutiny. It didn’t seem like he was checking her out in the way Dash did, but he was definitely checking her over. When his gaze finally went to her face, he gave her a warm smile. “Well that too, but I was thinking of the ‘or something’ part…”

She was fine.

Objectively, Danny knew that she would be. The two of them hadn’t stopped talking even after the fight with Skulker. Who after that last fight, got Danny to break his streak of not going ghost for a night as he tried to hunt him down, but as far as he and Valerie could tell, the blob ghost with delusions of grandeur was hiding under a rock and waiting for Danny to calm down.

Jokes on him, Danny gave Valerie some new toys to play with, which was about the only reason she wasn’t also shooting him for leaving her to the ghost attacks for the last while.

But probable ghostly war crimes aside, that wasn’t what Danny was thinking when he saw her standing there in his doorway. Instead he only felt relief. Her mockery didn’t make him feel embarrassed (or less than he usually would be), instead it just brought relief. The sound of her teasing him drowned out the sound of her screaming during that attack.

He looked her over, her hair was still slightly damp, probably from a shower before coming over, but she still bothered to put on some light makeup, nothing that would cover any bruises from the other day. She was wearing her favorite battle vest again, and while there were no holes in it, some of the patches had several scuffs on them, but they weren’t damaged.

He’d admit, he couldn’t tell what damage on her jeans were from the attack last night, or from the fact that she liked her jeans ripped.

All in all? No different… If Danny wasn’t looking for the well-hidden wariness common to every citizen of Amity Park. That slight but ever-present alertness, always on the lookout for anything that might be ghostly. It was… Upsetting, a little, seeing Rosie acquire it too. He’d wanted to keep her safe.

Slight movement made his eyes jerk back up toward it, though it wasn’t a ghost creeping around his peripherals, it was Rosie raising an eyebrow as he looked her over. He remembered he had been asking if she wanted to come over and practice here and that she had carried her amp all the way over.

He cleared his throat. “Well, we actually have an amp here, though it’s uh… a bit special?” Rosie’s eyebrow lifted even higher in skepticism and he waved her into the house. “Come on, let’s get you set up…”

Rosie followed and he pointed at the couch (and no, he didn’t spend an hour last night cleaning it in case she said yes, shuddup).

“Have a seat,” Danny said, moving for the door. “I’ll have your amp set up here in a minute.”

“I mean… ” Danny paused as Rosie hummed to herself. “No. Go get this special amp. You got my curiosity.”

Danny chuckled and turned back to her with a grin and sarcastic salute. “Alright, one special amp, coming up!” Danny ran up to his room and used his intangibility to dig through his closet as fast as he could. He found it pretty quickly, to his surprise.

Rosie laughed the second she saw what he was carrying. “Oh God, is that a FentonAmp?”

True enough, it was indeed an amp, Fenton style - all unpainted polished metal and green glowing attachments that neither of his parents could adequately explain the purpose of, beyond his mom once muttering about “the ridiculous idea that form followed function” and ranting about the stupidity of marketing not long after. It was, to Danny’s admittedly untrained eye, a professional grade piece of gear, but it also came with the stigma of his parents.

A stigma that seemed to occur to Rosie, because suddenly the laughter stopped and she shot him a look that sent a tingle (and a fear of God) down his spine. “Is this gonna blow up my guitar?”

Danny shook his head as he put it down. “No, no, it definitely won’t. I’ve tested it pretty thoroughly-”

“Wait, did you make this?”

“No, I didn’t, my d-” Danny was cut off as the amp started jerking around and a snarling came from it.

Danny leapt into action and held it down as it jumped and wriggled about beneath him, but then the back panel exploded open, the hinges shrieking in protest as the back panel bounced and a glowing hole was revealed. A particularly annoying blob ghost that had taken to being an absolute pest to Danny in particular started trying to make its way out.

“Oh no you don’t!” Danny shouted, trying to shove it back in. It was both easier and harder than you’d have expected, easier because once Danny started trying to shove the thing back in it stopped trying to get out, harder because it instead bit Danny.

“Mother-” Danny started before slamming the containment unit shut. He shook his hand and inspected the bite, fortunately despite what the blob’s teeth looked like, it hadn’t broken skin. He looked up and Rosie’s face was a mixture of horror and shock. “Sorry about that, I’ve been using this as a ‘time out’ box for really annoying ghosts.” He checked the latch and saw that it had managed to get bent slightly and resolved to fix that later.

Before he got his hands on Skulker again.

“Skulker?”

Danny looked up and saw Rosie looking at him. The look on her face was a little less horrified and more intrigued now. Belatedly, Danny realized that he had been muttering to himself. “Uh, yeah, Skulker, that’s the guy who attacked us. I was gonna shove him in the time out amp for like a week after he destroyed your car…”

The grin that spread across her face made Danny’s mouth go dry. All the shock and horror was gone, replaced with maliciousness as she commanded. “Make it a month.”

Danny laughed. “As you command.” He reached into an open compartment in the back and pulled out a cable. He plugged it into the amp and flicked the switch that turned it on. The light on the front turned on and then he plugged in the cable. The amp let out bursts of random sound as the jack slid into place before going silent again.

Just to be sure, ‘cause while he didn't think this was a problem, it was made by his dad, after all. He grabbed the other end of the cable. When his fingers touched the metal Jack on that end, the amp came alive again. (And thankfully did not blow up.)

The amp buzzed as his fingers held onto the cable. The sound reverberated throughout the room, a low droning buzz that covered up any of the sounds from the outside world.

Satisfied that the amp wasn't malfunctioning in any way, Danny turned toward Rosie before stopping.

Rosie was looking at him.

At this moment in time, Danny knew he had 100% of Rosie’s attention. Her eyes kept dancing between him, the amp, and her guitar case. She was sitting straight up, like someone had shocked her, and she was gently biting her lip…

Danny took two steps forward, and her gaze snapped up to his face. He held out the cable and Rosie gently took it from his hand, her fingers brushing against his.

“Thanks…” she said in the quietest voice he had ever heard from her. She startled again, like she realized something was wrong and suddenly twisted around to start pulling out her guitar. In seconds, she was plugged in and ready to go.

All the while, Danny couldn't take his eyes off the blushing on her cheeks.

Rosie plucked at the strings, making sure everything was in tune. As far as Danny could tell, it was, but she gently touched each tuning peg to make it perfect. She didn't comment at all when Danny chose to sit next to her instead of any of the other available chairs. She stopped for a moment before taking the lowest string and tuning it down.

And then she started playing, slamming down on the whammy bar to start the opening of Kickstart my Heart.

Only a few moments later, Rosie jumped up and started walking about the room as she played. Danny hadn’t heard her play before, but he had known she was good. But this wasn't just good - this was amazing. Danny couldn't help himself as he leaned forward.

Rosie always had a bit of fire in her, from the way she joked with the group to how she cursed Mr. Lancer’s name. She was vibrant and alive in a way that made Danny jealous.

But seeing her play in front of him, it made everything else seem muted.

She wasn't just playing, she was dancing. A beautiful smile spread across her face, occasionally hidden by her hair as she twirled about.

All too soon, she finished the song. She let the final note ring out and she turned to face Danny. A small sweat had broken out over her face causing her to literally shine in the light and the rise and fall of her chest was more pronounced as she got her breath back.

“So…” she began, slowly as she brought her breathing back under control. “What do ya think about that?”

“That was-”

Danny didn't get to finish telling her how amazing she was, because the front door opened and slammed into the wall. “LUCY, I’M HOME!”

Danny groaned and threw his face into his hands. “Dad, no…” he grunted quietly.

Apparently he wasn't as quiet as he thought, since he heard his dad shout back, “Jack yes!”

Good God, Jack Fenton was enormous.

Ember had never really noticed before now. Whenever she’d seen him, it had been at a distance, or in the midst of a fight where her… Well, probably not adrenaline per se, but whatever the ghost equivalent of it was. Whenever her pseudo-adrenaline was up and she wasn’t paying attention.

But now here he was, opening the front door of FentonWorks with a grin almost as wide as himself. And the man was wide, almost as wide as he was tall. Ember usually took that for a figure of speech, but Pariah, the man looked like he could comfortably eat her. And judging by the sheer amount of groceries still in his hand, that wasn’t a figure of speech either.

“You must be Rosie!” Jack excitedly shouted. “Danno’s told us all about you! Glad to finally meet you!”

Rosie was swept up in his wake as he barrelled to the kitchen, mildly stunned, and barely noticed the slight tingle as she passed the kitchen archway.The same thing happened when she walked through the door. She wasn’t sure what that was, come to think of it. From previous experience, Fenton ghost catching stuff didn’t come with a forewarning like that, so what the hell was she feeling whenever she walked through these doors?

Whatever curiosity she may have had was violently thrown from her head screaming as Hurricane Jack descended and ushered her to the kitchen table, where a sheepish looking Danny was already sitting.

“Sorry,” Danny whispered, gesturing to his father as he put the groceries away at break neck speed. “I was kinda hoping he’d take too long over the groceries again so we could just hang out. But he knows about the festival stuff we’re supposed to be doing and he really wants to talk about it.”

“That’s right!” Jack bellowed as he put the last of the groceries away and took a chair. No, wait, a very specific chair, Ember suddenly realised, reinforced with metal. And… green gadgets? Who needed an ectoplasmic chair?

“Mr. Lancer called,” Jack continued, his excited voice modulated somewhat as he glanced at Danny. “He wants a written report about Danny’s activities to help the festival, and a bit of the significance of them!”

“Okaaaaaaaaay?” Ember said, raising her eyebrow. Danny sighed.

“And dad did his PhD in occult studies on equinoxes, and a lot of the surrounding material.”

“So figured I’d give you both a potted history of them! Should impress Mr. Lancer!” Jack smiled.

Ember, for her part, hesitated a moment. Her feelings of unease only grew the longer she spent around Jack Fenton. He didn’t seem… condescending. Or cruel. The kind of man who’d steal someone’s partner from them and ruin their life.

She really hadn’t wanted to meet him.

“I mean, I don’t have to write anything for Lancer, so why-”

“I can also tell you about the music that older cultures played to appease the veil.”

He waggled his eyebrows, an unsubtle man who thought he was being cunning. But still, Ember was tempted. If nothing else, it’d be good to know exactly what she could do before… well. Best to focus on the funny irony and not what she’d be putting the knowledge to use for.

Not like she wasn’t used to burying bad feelings to get on with something.

“OK. You’ve got my attention.”

“Great!” Exclaimed Jack, before he leapt from his chair and pulled out a whiteboard that Ember had somehow missed, hidden in the kitchen. “So! To properly understand the protection songs, we have to start with symbols. See that, above the door?”

Ember turned in her chair and looked above the kitchen arch. There was something there, something that looked like a very angular and overcomplicated knot.

“Shield knot!” Jack said proudly. “Used by the Celts to protect the home against evil spirits!”

Well, Ember thought with grim amusement as he began lecturing about the various means of supernatural protection used by older cultures, that explains why I tingle when I enter the house.