Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sam didn't believe in ghosts. The only ones in Amity Park who did were the Fentons, who had yet to prove anything except that some green liquid they claimed to be ectoplasm worked as a power source when frozen. That's nice and all, but fuel that freezes instead of burns isn't indicative of a ghost dimension. Her parents told her to stay away from them and she did, happily, Tucker joining her on the opposite end of any classroom Danny Fenton inhabited.

That said, she didn't think she'd meet a ghost, and she certainly didn't think she'd hit it with her car at night. Sam gritted her teeth, hearing the telltale thump of hitting an animal with no fleshy being in her line of sight. The glow of her headlights bounced weirdly, reflecting back at her with blinding intent, so she threw up her hands and slammed the brakes. Tucker looked over at her, wide-eyed in the passenger seat.

"What the hell did you do?"

"I don't know!"

"Is it, like, a kid?"

"I still don't know!" Sam fumbled with her seatbelt, opening her door to step into the snow. Amity Park loved to follow weird rules on the seasons, so as soon as Halloween leaves, they're frosted over in the mornings. It's only November first, and she's trying to keep the slush out of her boots. She rounded the car to see if this was something they can take to the vet, or a collar they'll have to send to some unfortunate family. "Holy fuck."

"What?" Tucker asked, leaning through his window and stopping with his eyes bugging out. He can probably see the tail snaking out of the body and down the edge of the street, although the bioluminescent tip looped toward her. "Is that a snake?"

"I think it's an alien." That was the best explanation she could come up with, anyway. She's not a nut who believes in ghosts, but Tucker's blabbered on about extraterrestrial life enough for her to accept it as a possibility. She couldn't tell if the frosty hairs covering the body in patches were feathers or fur, bleached on hackles and protecting the shoulders. She couldn't see the face with an arm slung over it defensively, green liquid coming from cracks in the flesh along one side. Each hand had white wisps stuck between fingers ending in sharp points, appearance too big with the fur abruptly ending around the elbow. The same occurred on the hind legs, where she couldn't see the actual shape of them other than that it stands on the balls of its feet and may not have any toes. A thin chest rattled in shallow breaths, green pulsing deep beneath the surface like distant stars in snowfall.

She leaned down enough to catch a closer look before the creature snapped its head up, eyes a blank green that glowed. It didn't have lips when it opened its mouth, more like a short, clamped beak that opened to show a mouth full of neon spines raising up into denticles. Sam isn't proud of screaming.

The eyes closed into dark slits in pearl skin, indistinguishable from identical marks like divots in the skull. She wasn't sure how the new eyes looked so human, the sclera behind emerald irises widening in fear as they leaned away from the sound. She clapped her hands over her mouth, falling back into a sitting position.

"Sam!" Tucker opened his door, the creature craning its neck to the side as if listening for something. It quickly twisted, a hind leg failing, so it had to crawl away from her. It leered at Tucker for blocking its escape before squeezing its enormous frame impossibly under their car.

"What—"

"Fentons." Tucker pointed behind them, where Fentonworks had a gaudy sign making the entire neighborhood an eyesore. Sam quickly stood and wiped the snow off the back of her pants, turning to the two jumpsuit clad adults running at full speed to them.

"Kids!" Maddie stopped, her hand hovering over a holster at her side. "Did you see a ghost?"

"Ghost?"

"We heard you screaming," Jack supplied quickly, "and we were chasing a ghost, so—"

"Ghosts aren't real," Sam cut him off with crossed arms, leaning back onto the hood of her car. The two options are that this is an alien they'll kill with their stupidity, or it's a ghost of something they killed in their crusade. Either way, she's not letting them leave with it. "And nothing happened."

"She got frustrated that she took the wrong turn on the same block three days in a row," Tucker added, resting his elbows on the cold car top. "Needed a good scream, and I didn't want to lose my hearing, so she got out."

"Yep. If the raccoon with rabies you're chasing went anywhere, it was nowhere near the car. No way it had that much of a death wish."

Maddie narrowed her eyes, but Jack only laughed and turned away. "Invisibility, it lets them go in any direction. Come on, it's a new one and there's no way it can hide for long. We'll catch it."

"Jack, we can't afford to go on a goose chase. We should check this area."

"They said no ghosts, didn't they? We'll have it strapped down and moved on in no time!" Jack slung Maddie over his shoulder, no further argument as he jogged off into the city night.

After they turned off the city block, Sam dropped to look under the car. "You'll be fine, dude. We're not sic'ing the Fentons on you." The air shuddered in response, the darkness opening two eyes with pale hair shining in the off glow. She could see the acidic green sticking to the snow where their wounds rubbed into it. "You need first aid?"

They crawled forward with a nod, staying with their belly to the ground as Sam tried to lead them to the car.

"Wait, we're taking them?" Tucker didn't say no to the plan, immediately opening the back seat for them to crawl up. "They're going to leak all over your upholstery."

"I'm driving Grandma Ida's hand-me-down that my mom has been trying to replace since I inherited it. She'll jump for joy if I tell her I spilled a slushie so I need the newest model. Preferably a hybrid." She slid into the driver's seat, twisting to make sure their new passenger didn't hurt themself climbing into the vehicle. "You know how to wear a seatbelt, right?"

"That is, like, the lowest priority of issue here. Let me list a few bigger ones." Tucker clicked both doors shut, then started counting on his fingers. "We don't know how to give an alien ghost thing first aid, we don't know how to sneak them into one of our houses, we probably shouldn't sneak them into one of our houses, they could be very dangerous and waiting to kill us—"

"They would've killed us as soon as they got in the car if that was the plan." Sam shrugged. "Also, our house is super fucking big. There's an entire floor my mom never touches. I hide all sorts of crap up there and she never finds it. They understand English, so they can probably help us figure out first aid. Right?" She leaned back for input. The creature looked up from wearing every seatbelt while lounging their skeletal frame across the back and nodded. "I'd tell you that's dangerous, but I don't know if you have a skull to break in a crash."

"Can we at least turn up the heat? They're freezing the car with their presence."

"They're not..." She drifted off as she looked to the windshield, then checked the windows. All of them had frost steadily climbing outwards from the backseat, making fern patterns in the glass. "Oh. That's not good."

"Yeah. Seat warmers, now."

"Alright." As she pulled away from the curb and gained more distance from Fentonworks, she could see the frost spirit relax deeper into the cushions. They rested their head on their elbow, slowly shutting their eyes. "We'll be there soon."

In a perfect life, Danny would've woken up to this all being a terrible dream. The morning sun would peek through the window, Mom would scold him for bailing on their portal test, still smiling somehow as she declared breakfast was ready. Her cooking was never that good, but Dad's was worse, so in his dream state he hopes that Jazz hasn't left for her weekend job with burnt-edge pancakes stacked on plates waiting for him. He and his dad want chocolate chips, while Jazz has strawberries, Mom has blueberries, and he's the only one who puts maple syrup on his pancakes because the rest are weirdos who insist on honey. He'll screw up his nose at the sight of that bear-shaped container, gag dramatically, and eventually laugh it off as he thanks his dad for pouring him some milk.

In a perfect world, it's a breakfast they're eating together. They haven't done that in a while, but maybe if he really wished...

Instead, he opened his eyes, and his reality was an attic with dust dancing in the moonlit air. He swallowed, looking down at his hands. They weren't human anymore, talons like a snow owl to rip into flesh until nothing remained. He reached up to where he once had a gas mask, pawing at the filter in disappointment when there was no latch. Just a maw that flared its nostrils when he breathed. He could smell so much more now, a new world opened to him just through tracking. For example, he knew a human who wore a lot of artificial smells was climbing the stairs with a dish smelling of smoke.

He hiked his shoulders up, ready to bolt, before remembering the twinge in his leg warning him to stay down. Well, ghosts can fly, can't they? It's not like he understands how to walk like this when his toes fused to his boots and he can't make his heel touch the ground.

"Tuck, I think they're awake!"

Tuck? Danny could remember the faces of the two he (literally) ran into, but he couldn't place if they were ever in his classes. Most kids just stay away en masse, so he never had to. Hearing someone call that name in the hall sounded vaguely familiar, along with...um...

"Sam, wait!" Tuck popped his head up from an open hatch in the floor, holding onto the top of a ladder. "Okay, uh, buddy. Before we try this, I need you to answer a question."

Danny blinked, staring blankly at him.

Tuck pointed at him with an accusatory finger. "Do you eat people?"

"Do I look like I eat people?"

"Holy—" Sam nearly shoved Tuck off the ladder in her excitement to get them both on the same floor, dropping her container filled with a food he's never seen in his life. "You can talk!"

Oh. If he pretended he couldn't talk, they wouldn't ask him questions, and then he could just coast through this interaction until he came up with a plan. That would've been smarter. Instead, he fucked it up for himself, as usual. Danny awkwardly raised the arm that cracked on impact with the asphalt. "Yeah, that's a thing I can do." He pointed to the bowl. "What's that?"

"Tzimmes. It's vegan and doesn't have a lot of allergy stuff in it if you can't, uh, digest human food." Sam moved it closer to him, producing a fork from her pocket. "It's good."

He took it, skewering one slice floating in a stew. When he bit into it, he tasted nothing, but he could still swallow. It's nice to pretend to eat, even when he doesn't know what it'll do to help him. "Thanks."

"No problem...you." Sam gave him finger guns with one edge of her lip quirked in an awkward smile. "Do you, um, have a name we can call you?"

He stared at the stew. After seeing his parents chase him down the street with guns, he's not sure how he's supposed to go back to being Danny Fenton. "No."

"Okay...and are you from another planet?"

"I'm a ghost." He stabbed a carrot with too much violence in the act, watching the juice leak from the holes. "I died today."

"Oh." Tuck's voice strained. "I see. So. Not an alien. And ghosts are real."

"I was really hoping you were right, not the Fentons."

"I was too." Danny sighed, surprised he can still do that. "Ghosts were always swamp gas and lead poisoning. Aliens had a chance of existing, and they were more fun to read about." He always argued that they were what his parents should try to find, not ghosts. Instead, he died and proved them right, being left behind as some creature that held the stars in its pelt. The irony would turn his stomach if he still had a stomach to turn.

"But you died today?" Tuck sat down at a safe distance, crossing his legs. "So you're new to the ghost thing?"

"Correct. In fact..." He chewed slowly, giving himself time to think through his next words. "The Fentons were correct about one thing. You can open a portal to a world of ghosts, and they accomplished that."

"Were you there?" Sam asked, settling in next to her friend. Danny felt even having them a few feet away was too close, shifting back and taking the bowl with him.

"No." Danny spoke too quickly, flicking his tail inward, then quickly slapping a claw over it so it'll stop moving. He does not want to make his panic obvious by knocking things over with an appendage he's not used to. "I-I sensed it. I woke up as a spirit, and I had this feeling that they were—eh—punching a wall between our worlds." He was quoting a sci-fi novel he read in seventh grade, but they nodded along, taking his words as gospel. "I didn't get there until after it was over, but there's a portal to the Ghost Zone now."

"So you woke up in the Ghost Zone? You've been there, through the portal?"

"I don't want to talk about it." If he wasn't discussing his own death, he was sure they'd see through that lie. Instead, Sam bit her lip sympathetically. He worked on his stew again before they could inch closer to something truthful.

"Well, my parents never bother with the attic, and I don't think dust can get in your lungs. You can hang around here until you feel better."

He nodded, avoiding speaking by chewing instead. His jaws don't move the same anymore, and he doesn't have lips to keep everything inside, so he keeps bowing his head so they don't see him getting crumbs on the outside of his mouth like a little kid. He should know better, sticking out his tongue to get the worst of it off. Sam noticeably froze at the flicker of green flesh leaving the muzzle, so he lifted his hand to keep it covered.

"So, we should probably come up with a name if you're not giving one." Tuck squeezed Sam's arm to keep her steady. "Would you want a guy's name? Girl's? A neutral one?"

"Guy. I'm a guy." Danny smiled a bit, hoping he had nothing in his retracting placoids. "I guess it's hard to tell now, isn't it?"

"Your voice is a bit...garbled," Tuck gave him a so-so gesture, then continued, "but we can pick something simple. Like, uh, Jackie, or Kenny, or Da—"

"I'm not planning on talking to other people, Tuck." Danny interrupted before he could hit too close to home. "You can call me Ghost for all I care."

"That's kind of. Sad." Sam tilted her head in a worried smile. "What about something cooler? Like Specter? Shadow?"

"Phantom?"

"That's a great idea!" Tuck grinned, standing with a pop to his back. "Look, Sam was supposed to get me home from that movie, like, three hours ago, so I really should be back before midnight. Can I see you tomorrow, Phantom?"

"Not like I have anywhere else to go." He offered the empty bowl to Sam. "Thank you for the food. I'll know if I can digest it after I find out if I can really sleep, I guess."

"I thought you were sleeping. We dragged you in here, and you're heavy!" Sam pointed to his long tail with a scowl.

"I think that was a rest, not a sleep. M—" He clamped his mouth shut. Now is not the time to spout off the Fenton theories he suffered through. "Ghosts have a half-awake thing to keep from destabilising called a rest. Sleep feels different."

"I see." Sam didn't sound like she understood at all, but she nodded all the same. "Night, Phantom."

Chapter Text

"Oh no." Danny woke with his gaze trained on a dusty mirror shielded by an abandoned bedsheet.

He's alive. He's pale-faced, eyes surrounded by deep circles, but he's human, and in his hazmat suit. He stumbled, legs stiff and achy, to press his hand into the cold glass. Goggles on his forehead, a filter over his mouth, a hood pulled down around his shoulders, gloves and boots and rubbery material. It was conditioned for any amount of radiation, but not temperature. That has to be where they went wrong.

He pulled off the gas mask, checking the inside of his mouth. His teeth look the tiniest bit sharper around the canines, but he has a human tongue. His eyes are still blue, although they changed from the usual ocean hue to something frostier. His hair's less soft, his skin's more pale, and all around he seemed human-ish.

Until he took off his gloves. His hands were black like he smothered them in charcoal, skin raised in one palm with the skin crackling and threatening to flake off. He slowly turned them, checking the rest of the hands for damage. His fingers shook, but it was impossible to notice anything over the deathly dark. At least the look of decay mainly centralized where the button was, the rest of that arm a concerning shade of grey rather than a hypothermic hue. It's like all blood stopped flowing on the way to the wrist, frozen in his veins to refuse his heart.

Frostbite. That's what it has to be. He read a book about someone trying to live alone on a snow planet and the author described the dead tissue in gory detail when the main character realized they couldn't feel their fingers. It's at its worst in the extremities, since it's so far from the central body's warm core. He needs to check his feet.

He flopped on the ground, quickly pulling at the glorified galoshes he wore for the portal test. The blood refused to warm him, making every move of his legs sluggish. The simplest action, only straightening his foot on the ground so he could better tug his toes free, felt like an uphill battle. His fingers have never trembled this much.

Maybe his hands were saved by the ectoplasm that forced its way into him through them, but his feet were not so lucky. That sickening shade almost reached his knees, toes barely responding to his commands to move. Danny clapped one hand over his mouth, hiccuping to avoid a sob. He wants the hazmat suit off. Now.

After a war against the zipper, he was in his normal t-shirt and pants, with all of his equipment spread out on the ground and his head in his hands. Now that he looks at it, it feels so obvious. Gloves into talons, boots into single-digit feet. That muzzle was his gas mask when he accidentally disconnected its hose, the long filter falling from his back air supply and twisting into a monstrous tail. Oily skin came from vinyl material stretched thin over his body. Even the goggles he refused to wear normally became a second pair of eyes instead of eyebrows. He looks like a monster.

An alien.

He bit his tongue at the thought, curling in on himself. Of course they thought it was an alien. Some awful creature with spindly limbs and extra eyes ran into their car, a glow to the darkness like a nebula of white stars and green gas. He always found the idea of aliens interesting, someone coming down from the stars with a body designed to thrive in a different world. This, however, was a cruel joke.

He heard a door close on the floor below him. Shit. He picked up the pieces of his hazmat suit, running to stuff them into a box of old family junk where no one will find it. Now he only has the issue that town outcast Danny Fenton is in the attic, not her friend Phantom, who owes her his life.

"Come on, come on, come on," he muttered, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He didn't know how he was supposed to change, but he's obviously able to, if he did it in his sleep. The hand frost burned by the button twitched, Danny holding it close with a gasp. He curled in on himself and closed his eyes.

He felt like he was plunging into ice water and freezing. The cold crawled over him, a comforting blanket. He had no choice but to close his eyes and allow it as he heard the ladder to the attic clatter to the floor.

As soon as Sam was in Phantom's line of sight, she froze. It was like being a deer who sees a wolf passing by, wondering if it has a pack in tow. If it sees her, if it'll stop to eat her, if those eyes turning to watch her are sizing her up as a snack. He's an apex predator freezing her windows and letting out small huffs of ethereal mist with every breath.

She's the one who injured him. Her eyes flicked to the wound in his leg, crusted with a green liquid that froze in patterns like snowflakes in a scab. "Does that hurt?"

Phantom looked down at his leg, seeming just as surprised by its appearance. He's hunched over with talons on the ground, and even like that, he seemed like a towering mass. When he stands, if he stands, he has to be taller than her, with impossibly long loops of a tail to boot. "A bit. Stings, mostly."

"Well, I brought a first aid kit." She held it up with an anxious smile, not sure if road rash is treated the same on the living and the dead. "Y'know, uh, bacitracin and stuff."

"I don't think a ghost can suffer an infection."

"It'll feel good."

He relented, sitting awkwardly with one leg splayed. She inched over and took out the tweezers. Sam said nothing last night because she didn't know how sapient he was, but there's gravel in there that needs to come out. She took out the first pebble with a swift pull. Phantom curled the broken edge of their maw, showing the light that can easily crack through the beak. Sam felt her limbs seize up again, imagining that razor edge biting the hand that helps it.

"I won't eat you."

She blinked, confused. "Huh?"

"It hurts, and it sucks that it hurts. But I'm not killing you for running into me when I was invisible. That was my fault." Phantom propped their head on the heel of their palm, wincing as the movement pulled at the skin. "So you don't have to worry."

Oh. She always had her neutral face at the ready, but apparently having her worldview upended made her inner thoughts plain on her expression. "Got it. I don't know what ghosts, uh, do, so I don't know what to expect."

"Well, from what I can tell, we can turn invisible, fly, and scare people." Phantom grinned, although it quickly died as she picked through the grit in his skin. "I don't see why you're digging those out. I can probably heal quickly."

"Yeah, and heal around the dirt. If this gets trapped in your skin after the wound closes up, you'd need a doctor to cut it open again and remove it-"

Phantom rumbled in his throat, a trill like a fox whining.

"Did that hurt more?"

"No." He shifted, looking uncomfortable. "Just that they wanted to dissect me yesterday, so..."

"Oh. That's why the Fentons were—oh."

"Probably. I wasn't sure, but what else would they do with a ghost?" Phantom swallowed, clicking his claws together. "Thank you. For—uh—covering for me. Letting me hide here and not just telling them where I was."

"You were scared, and for good reason." Sam pulled out what seemed like the busted stem of a long-decomposed leaf, setting it to the side. "What else would we have done?"

"I don't know. I freaked you out pretty bad right off the bat. I wouldn't blame you for turning the scary ghost over to the ghost hunters."

"You got me good with the eyes. They look different now, so do you have a lens, or..."

Phantom blinked, his eyes switching from the human-ish to the blank green, then did it again, slower. The human ones seemed to have black stripes above them, like eyebrows, while the milky film ones had crescent marks at the cheekbones. "Four eyes, like a true nerd."

"You need to work on your jokes."

"Apparently I also need to work on my bone structure, but I guess ghosts are gooey enough for me to slide parts of my skull wherever I feel like." He seemed unconcerned with the idea he could have extra eyeballs floating in reserve, rubbing the dark rings around his sockets without discomfort. "Those weird ones can't pick out color that well, but they actually let me see where I was going last night."

Tucker would freak out if he heard that. The only scary movies he lets her drag him to are the ones with aliens, since he at least gets to gawk over their crazy looking faces before he screams too loud for the theater. Auxiliary eyes are exactly what he'd try to prod Phantom over, begging to see if he can open them all at the same time. She paused in fixing the leg to check her phone. "Tuck'll be here this afternoon. His mom forced him to go on some errands this morning."

Phantom hummed in acknowledgement, turning so she can't see his face. Did she say something wrong?

"Phantom?"

"Sorry. Uh. Thinking about...parents."

"Right." Sam felt his muscles twitch under her fingers as she removed the last large piece of debris, reaching next for some general cleaning to get the flecks of dirt out. With her hand still on his hip in a general show of comfort, she faced the awkward reality that he didn't seem to have bones. Everything squished with too much give, like blubber, even though he seems spindly enough to feel every knucklebone. It's the world's softest exoskeleton. "So, do you think your parents know you're—"

"It doesn't matter." His tone gave away that it did matter, more than he could force out of his throat. She scrunched her face, trying to remember her mother's lessons on being ladylike. Those rules on showing sympathy have to have overlap with bedside manners when fixing someone up, right? She can grin through it.

"If you don't remember them, we can help you find them. They probably want closure."

"No, I remember them." He chuckled hollowly. "I remember everything about my life. Trust me, they don't need to be told." Phantom continued in a low mutter, "they'll be better off thinking I just disappeared."

Sam frowned, pressing a wet towel into the wound so the dirt will come out. The scab came off with it, along with a mess of ectoplasm she won't be able to scrub out, but the brown stain patches meant she's getting something done. "There's no one you want to tell you're a ghost? Nobody at all who cares?"

"Never had friends, so the only person is—" Phantom stopped, pressing his hand over his mouth. "Shit."

"What?"

"I have to tell—I'll be back." Phantom kicked out of her grip, his legs sliding into his frame like gelatin. The whip-like tail fattened out and looked more like a serpent twisting in the air. He barely needed to push once with his arms before he was in the air, opening her drafty window without a sound and escaping to the morning sky. The glass was already chilled and fogged by his mere presence, but now it frosted completely in dancing patterns at his mere touch.

Sam dropped her rag and stared at the empty room.

Hopefully he's not lying.

Danny was a pretty smart kid, but he didn't have Jazz's work ethic. She was getting a 4.0 GPA with AP classes, and she wanted to go to the most expensive college in the state, so she filled out forms at every business hiring high schoolers the moment she had a license. If Danny was right, she's at the soccer field between the community center and Casper High.

Oh crap, Casper High. He's going to have to go to school on Monday. He needs to look normal on Monday. Yeah, he usually wears long pants, but gloves are a temporary solution that he'll lose by spring. Will that even be a problem in spring? Can he keep this under wraps for that many months without his parents finding him and ripping him apart molecule by molecule?

One thing at a time. He has to find Jazz and tell her what had happened. She loudly declared the night of the portal test she didn't want to be around for this ridiculousness, and she's sleeping over with...well, he doesn't remember her friends' names, but it was a name she says a lot, so that has to mean something. Fingers crossed, their parents never called and told her what happened.

Flying rules, though. He always believed he'd need to concentrate more on staying in the air, but it feels as effortless as treading water. He tilts his head up because he needs more height, and there he goes, no movement from his arms needed. Yeah, his tail needed to do the work, but it's barely noticeable. He's still stinging from that stupid car wreck, but he feels nicer without all the crap stuck in his skin. Sam helped a lot.

He'll thank her for that, too.

Danny turned in a wide loop when he found the soccer field, turning back to make sure they didn't see him in his approach. No way he's starting this conversation in ghost form. He dipped lower, going around the side of the community center to land in the bushes. He had to pinwheel his arms around a moment as he figured out how to make his legs come back, bootish paws thumping way too hard on the ground and too close for comfort. Alright, landing's going to take longer to figure out.

He switched back, a thaw to his heart shedding every awful part of his appearance. He straightened his back with a pop, freezing as a frosty breath escaped his mouth. "What in the..." Since when were his exhales this visible? Yeah, it's cold out, but they had a pretty good spike in temperature since last night to melt the snow into dead and muddy grass.

Stop getting distracted, dummy. Danny needs to talk to Jazz and rip the bandage off. If she finds out about this through their parents, who saw a monster in their basement turn invisible and run down the street...

Yeah, he needs the benefit of explaining first. Danny peeked around the corner, seeing her auburn hair falling out of a beanie. She had her back to him, watching a herd of children chasing a ball that some other high schooler was kicking across the field in demonstration.

He can do this. He breathed deep, then marched forward with all the confidence he could muster. He looked down at his frozen hands, quickly shoving them into his pockets and hoping the pants legs were long and floppy enough to cover up his feet. Jazz turned right before he was next to her, giving him a shocked once over. "Danny?"

"Uh, hi, Jazz."

"Why aren't you wearing a jacket? Or gloves? Or—are you barefoot?"

"'m not cold." He isn't. He hasn't been since last night. "I need to talk to you about something."

"Yeah, we need to talk about why you're wandering with no coat on." She quickly shed hers, holding it out to him with only an old band tee for herself. "Did Dad drive you? Did he seriously let you leave the house without shoes and—"

"Jazz, I'm fine, I don't need a jacket, he didn't drive me—"

"So you walked like this?" Her voice raised an octave, cutting him off. "Danny, I know you're not this stupid! Come on, you can't just go outside in whatever you want, you'll get frostbite!"

"Says the person trying to do the exact same thing by giving their jacket to someone else. But-but I'm not here to get lectured by you." Again. He resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose and show off the injuries that tug too tight around his knuckles. "I have to tell you about last night. The portal—"

"I made my stance on that clear."

"Jazz—"

"No." She slung the jacket over his shoulders since he refused to show his hands long enough to get in it, crossing her arms to rub at the bare skin. For someone who wanted to be such an adult, she has a practiced pout. "You, Mom, and Dad are too obsessed with the supernatural. They won't stop talking about ghosts, and you can't get the hint that 'finding aliens' isn't a good career path."

"I said I wanted to be an astronaut."

"And why do you want to be an astronaut?" She looked smug at his lack of response before switching back to an irritated scowl. "I need you three to get back to reality. It's not healthy to devote so much of your life to-to fiction. I love how much you love space, baby brother, but you should focus on the parts of it we've proven, not the fantasy. Did you even read any of the astronomy books I've given you?"

"Of course." Some movies he liked kept trying to hint at real-world physics, and it was fun to know how it really worked compared to what the action hero claims lies beyond the stars. "And you were right, okay? I learned aliens are dumb thing to believe in."

"Hey, I'm not saying it's impossible for them to exist, just that they aren't the best choice of a lifelong devo—" She stopped, the gears turning in her head as she narrowed her eyes. "Wait. What caused the change of heart?"

"Last night, after you left. The portal. It-it-um-well—" Now that he actually has to say the words, they locked themselves deep in his chest and refused to leave no matter how much he pried. "Ghosts-ghosts are—I mean—er—"

Her eyes widened, mouth open with surprise-and then disappointment. "No way," she groaned, bringing her hands to her face to tug at her eyelids. "I left you alone with them for one night. One night, and now you're a ghost freak, too."

"Ghost freak?" His voice broke against his will.

"Danny, I don't know enough about psychology to deprogram three people. Please, do not abandon one rabbit hole for another."

"What?"

"I'm telling you the same thing I've been trying to get through to Mom and Dad for years." She leaned down enough to poke his chest with each word. "Ghosts. Aren't. Real."

Danny opened his mouth to retort, only for that sharp fog to fall from his lips again. He had to dig his nails into the inner lining of his pants pockets to not show his hands with a desperate grab over his lips.

"Danny, what was that?"

"Uh-cold—too cold—yeah, you were right, I'm too cold. I'm just going back home, we can talk about this later—"

"I'm not letting you walk, dummy. Give me my jacket back so I can call Dad and tell him to pick you up—"

"Don't tell Dad!" Danny shouted, immediately and painfully aware of the soccer team turning to look at them. Jazz looked taken aback, hesitating with one hand reaching for his arm.

"Danny?" She asked in a hushed tone. She looked at the kids and the other coach, waving them off before leaning in closer. "Danny, what happened?"

He clenched his teeth, stepping back and wincing as his foot hit a rock. "You won't believe me."

"You're right. I was too dismissive earlier. I wasn't listening. Can I listen now?"

Danny gulped. His throat's too dry. That was the weirdest part of instantly freezing to death, how he could feel everything ice up, and then he was dry. All the spit, the sweat, the water that keeps his eyes moist, just dried out and solid. It hurt, so he swallowed again, but that didn't fix it.

"Did Dad do something? Is that what you want to talk about? I'll believe whatever you say, Danny, I promise."

His parents would probably find that fascinating, that something that's so obviously connecting to the cold can feel that dry. Dryness was supposed to be hot, a bone dry from bleaching in the sun. Not blood crystallizing as the ectoplasm they use as a simultaneous power source and coolant for the portal leaks onto his glove, sticking it to the button so he can't run when the light turns on—

"Danny, breathe. You're panicking."

Jazz had her hands on his forearms, trying to pull his hands from his pockets in a comforting way so she can hold them. He's thankful she has her gloves on, otherwise he'd find out if his skin's cold and corpse-like. Whenever he had a panic attack, she'd try to put a hand on his chest to help him count his breaths. If she did it now, they'd both know if his heart can beat.

It probably can't. He can't feel it when he's a ghost, when he's dead, a monster. There's no way it's working. How did he ever think he could explain this?

Her baby brother is dead, and it's their parents' fault he's alive and fears it.

Danny broke from her grip and fled. That mist dropped out of his mouth again, squeezing his lungs as a reminder he shouldn't be breathing. He shut his jaws with his own fingers, turning a corner around the community center. As soon as he was out of sight, he knocked his nose on someone and fell to the ground.

"S-sorry," he began, stumbling over his words and feet as he pushed himself into a crouch. "I wasn't watching...where...I..." Danny drifted off, looking up at the creature before him.

It looked like a sickly mouse, hairs bristled into bone with green saliva dripping from vampiric fangs. It twitched one sail-like ear, the other ripped off with a clear indentation in the body where its spine snapped. The tail split into shreds, ready to tear into the flesh of anyone who came near. Red eyes rolled in its skull before focusing on him and him alone. It turned, mangled feet the size of his legs, and snarled in warning.

"Crap."

Chapter Text

If you asked Jazz about the genius of the Fentons, she'd just shake her head and grumble about how a waste it is. Her parents insist on finding creatures that aren't real in a dimension that doesn't exist, spending all the money they got from their real accomplishment (seriously, who finds a power source of green goo that is clean energy for all and doesn't see that as a scientific marvel) to make gadgets they'll never use. She doesn't want to give up on them, per se, but it's hard to see them as people to help out of their delusions when they're so firmly held. That's why she started studying psychology, to find out why they would so firmly believe in something she can't find evidence of. In her research of cult survivors, she found that most of the time, the thing they put their faith in becomes such a key part of their identity that they can't imagine parting with it. It causes them to struggle to escape, especially when they have no support system outside of the thing that's causing these ideas to bubble forth. She wanted to be that support system, even if they didn't appreciate it.

Danny, though. Danny, she can help. Danny, she can save. He started taking after their parents in the science department, so she tried to dissuade him from the ghost thing early on. On long nights where their parents didn't care to leave the lab, she made popcorn and showed him movies that were more science fiction than paranormal. She wanted to encourage that part of his mind that obviously loved solving scientific problems, and his eyes lit up every time he saw a creature that could never exist on Earth. She listened to him explain how this one looks like an animal on Earth, while that one is probably a plant, and the other one's a robot but a robot built by a hive mind who wants them all to be identical...

And that's when the problem began, because he was readily discussing the possibility of aliens with their parents, who babble on about ghosts. He took part in their experiments, trying his best to help them follow basic lab safety so they'd stop eating contaminated food. He was the one who brought forth the possibility of no oxygen in another dimension, insisting on filtration systems that were top of the line. It's hard to keep electricity from overloading with that garish portal, so he started shaking around containers of ectoplasm and asking if that can be a battery instead. That portal, that's the last straw. Her family can get as excited about it as they wish. She's not encouraging it. She's not enabling them corrupting her baby brother in their inability to see their hopelessness. She walked out.

And now Danny's shown up at her soccer practice, pale as the frost that had only just melted off the grass under his bare feet. She watched him turn and run, his feet looking caked in rich dirt. Did he wade through mud just to tell her what their parents have done, and she ignored it? The thought turned her stomach.

"Star." Jazz pointed to the other coach, who stopped her ball with a glance in her direction. "You're on your own for the next few minutes. I'm checking on him."

Star nodded once, smiling as she turned to give the kids instructions they can follow without additional supervision. Jazz scooped up the jacket where it fell and sprinted after her brother, pulling her arms into the sleeves as the ground squished under her sneakers. The temperature seemed to nosedive as she reached the wall, running her glove along it as she peeked around the corner.

She choked on her own spit at the sight before her, stuck in place. Ghosts...are real. She doesn't know how else a green mouse the size of a motorbike could exist, darting in her direction. She squeaked, flattening herself to the wall and expecting it to crash into the building in its haste to devour her.

When it didn't give her a second glance in its brush past, she realized it wasn't running towards her, but away from something else. Jazz snapped her head to see what could scare something that bristly. A monster with spindly limbs crouched like a cat ready to pounce, four eyes open wide with pupils expanding to take in their prey. With a lash of a tail longer than she is tall, they leapt into the air.

Thump.

The mouse screamed, claws digging into a divot in its spine. The larger ghost looked confused as they picked it up by the scruff, tilting their head and leaning back on wide paws to keep it in the air. The talons squeezed harder, fur giving way with pops like putty getting air bubbles squashed flat. The specter hesitated with the sickly liquid staining the ground, the grass sizzling as they looked down at the streaks of ectoplasm dropping off their arm.

Jazz stepped back, the sleeve of her nylon jacket whimpering as it dragged across the brick. The monochrome ghost swivelled feathered ears around, looking directly at her and dropping the mouse. They looked like a glacier in the cosmos, stark fur against black matter. Their eyes widened again. If she was stupid, she'd think it's fear, but she's smart, and knows that's how they look at prey. She needs to at least make sure the kids are safe.

"Star! Emergency! Get the kids away!" She shouted as she turned, running in the opposite direction. Logically, she shouldn't do that, since that triggers the predator instinct in any animal regardless of if it has food already in its claws. She doesn't care about that right now. "Move!"

Star must've heard the noise earlier, since she was already herding the kids away. She looked up from the other side of the field at Jazz's voice, turning and pointing. Her lips moved, but Jazz didn't hear what she said.

Behind you.

She craned her head back just in time to see the ghost blocking out the sun, spidery fingers stretched toward her with claws ready to rend her flesh. Jazz screamed, covering her head as they collided with her. They rolled, the spirit big enough to envelop her without touching the ground. She immediately kicked at their stomach as their talons dug into the back of her jacket.

"Cut it out!" They snapped, voice as chilling as a death rattle. She got far enough away from the icy mouth to see their eyes scrunched in effort. Another wail, but this didn't come from either of them, instead originating from above the spirit. The mouse reared its head from over their shoulder, baring carnivorous fangs before sinking them into the shoulder.

The ghost cried out in pain, dropping Jazz to swipe desperately at their own spine. Jazz scrambled backward, transfixed on the struggle as the space phantom reared back and slammed into the ground as hard as they could. The mouse disappeared into the grass.

They froze.

Both of them stared at the patch of the earth where it disappeared. Jazz swallowed as the remaining spirit looked up at her.

"Sorry." They sounded choked, bone dry and hissing. Then, they phased into the ground like melting snow and disappeared.

Star can take care of the kids. Jazz needs to find Danny.

Tucker negotiated his way into just staying in the car instead of being dragged into grocery shopping, his knees up with the heat blasting and his phone playing videos waxing poetic about cryptids. Some famous ones are the same as Phantom, something in the dark when you're driving by, or a glowing aura in the forgotten crevice of a house. Maybe popular superstitions play a role in a ghost's appearance.

He had the radio on low, stuck on the news station his mother always listens to, and right when he muted an advertisement on his video, he heard the reporter blasting through the speaker.

"A giant mouse with a green pelt appeared in the middle of Clements Street and has continued a rampage into midtown."

Tucker turned his phone off, cranking the volume on the dial.

"Everyone, please stay clear and evacuate if you can. We don't know where it came from-holy moly, what is that? There's a second—uh—are these ghosts? Someone get the Fentons!"

"Shoot." He'll apologize to his mom for taking the keys and running later. Everyone in Amity Park's bored to death by the Fentons' lectures on ghosts, so of course they go to them first. Right instinct, wrong move for Phantom.

Why didn't the dumb dead guy just stay in Sam's attic?!

At least that road isn't far. He just had to jump over the grassy knoll along the edge of the parking lot, sneak around the corner of the auto shop, and hope no one hits him as he barrels across the road. After passing the pizza place, he could hear an ice-shattering howl.

And he could see a steel-plated RV taking a hairpin turn to race in the same direction. Tucker barely had to turn his head to see the garish green logo on the side, slush kicked up to ruin his shoes.

Fentons. They careened to a stop a hundred feet ahead of him, blocking the street and jumping out with guns cocked. A glowing tail snapped just above the van before disappearing again. Tucker could see more when he passed the vehicle, namely Phantom holding the mouse's tail in his mouth as it tried to run and stubbornly keeping them in place. Maddie Fenton shouldered her gun and shut one eye at the scope.

"Phantom!" He warned, voice hoarse. Phantom snapped his head up, dragging the mouse with him to look at the source. He shook out of his stupor just long enough to sidestep a blast aimed at his already-weeping shoulder.

Maddie growled something under her breath, glaring at the culprit of the misfire. "Kid, what are you doing?"

"U-uh-um..." Tucker took a step back, wobbling on jelly legs. "I-I saw a phantom, and I yelled—it was an accident—"

"Isn't that the one from last night?" Jack asked.

Tucker opened his mouth to speak, interrupted by something landing hard behind him. He twisted on one foot to see the mouse hurled over to them like an oversized chew toy. Its eyes opened in separate intervals, trying to prop itself up on one leg, before slumping over with ectoplasm darkening the pavement. The Fentons shoved him out of the way without a care and focused their guns on the ghost.

Now would be a good time to escape, especially with the spirit who has enough power to get him out of there fast. Tucker scanned the area for Phantom.

"Tuck."

He jumped at the nickname, expecting Sam, except he can't see anybody. Oh, right. Ghosts can be invisible. He moved far enough away from the Fentons that he can speak slightly above a whisper, staying by their van just in case. "Yo, Phantom. What's the deal?"

"A creature was stirring. A mouse." He made himself visible enough if he squinted, like the mist on glass that shimmers in the light. Phantom's mouth twitched with annoyance as he stayed on all fours, ready to strike the hunters with hackles bristling. "It was near humans, so I had to take care of it. Don't want the Fentons involved."

"So...you killed it?"

"And give the Fentons a fresh dissection subject?" He frowned deeply, eyes narrowing into slits. "Someone who died in a mousetrap doesn't deserve that. I need in the Ghost RV and I can't even touch it. Open the door."

"Got it." Tucker made sure the Fentons were still trying to collect ectoplasm samples before inching to the driver's side and clicking it open. "Oh. It's already unlocked."

"Of course." Phantom worked his jaw, picking his next words carefully. "Jack never locks anything. Now, there should be a thermos in there somewhere. It's probably in the cupholder."

"...Yeah." Tucker grabbed it, climbing back out and holding it for the ghost. "What do you do now?"

Phantom wrapped his hands around the thermos, wrinkling his face as his fingers made Tucker's seem like a child's. It felt...cold, so cold that it looped back around to buzzing and burning with energy. "Point it at the mouse and turn it on. Do not do that to me."

Tucker raised his eyebrows, then held it like a blaster in a game. The button on the side was too big and fought against him pressing down. A ray shot out of the mouth and landed on the mouse, turning it into an ectoplasm smoothie as it slurped into the thermos. Phantom reached behind him and capped it while he stood still like an idiot.

Now the Fentons are looking at him.

"Phantom. Help."

"On it."

Tucker felt claws grabbing him by the waist, dragging on his ribcage as he squeaked. The Fentons unfocused their eyes on him and started looking around, holding up their guns again.

"Where'd he go?" Jack muttered.

Tucker looked down, his hands and the thermos little more than an outline with the ground clearly in his sight. His feet lifted from the earth with ease, and Tucker had to hug the thermos to his stomach to keep from dropping it as the street fell away all too fast.

"Phantom—"

"Too fast?" He sounded apologetic, drifting slower and turning visible now that they're near the clouds. "I don't know how quickly humans are supposed to fly. I think I'm slower than a plane, so..."

"Yeah, can you not, um, dangle me? It's a bit much."

Phantom tilted his head, then gently turned them both so he's floating on his back and Tucker can cling to his arms. "Sorry for involving you. I can take the thermos."

"It's fine. I don't know why you needed that to kill them, though. Could've just done it with your claws."

Phantom grimaced. "The thermos doesn't kill them...hopefully. It's supposed to use the ghost's own ectoplasm to keep them stable, and the machine charged, but they didn't have a ghost to activate it for the first trap, so it doesn't function unless I'm a battery. We can store the mouse until it can be let out."

"Where?"

"Let me worry about that. Sam said you were running errands?"

"If you could drop me off at Gaskill's Grocery, that'd be great."

"Cool. I don't really have a phone anymore, so text her and say I'll be back tonight? I have to figure some stuff out."

Tucker nodded, grinning eagerly. "Any chance we could do a few flips before that, though? You're a free rollercoaster and I only have a ten percent chance of hurling."

"Aim for the Ghost RV if you do."

Danny felt exhaustion pummeling him almost to the ground as he drifted through Fentonworks, the walls no more of an obstacle than water in a pool. He feels like such an idiot for not realizing he can pass through objects. It would've made his initial escape easier, given him more time to run, less panic so he's not hit by a car-

But then he wouldn't meet Tucker and Sam, so it can't be all bad. He dipped into the lab easily and winced at the swirl of the portal. It made his hands itch. He stretched out his legs in front of the glow, looking up with his tail wrapped protectively around him. It's just so...

Pretty.

It's unfair how something built on his own death can look that beautiful when he's this horrifying. It's the stupid portal's fault he's like this, and it has the gall to be a stupid art piece, his movie magic come to life, while he's plasticine turned flesh. He glared at the thermos in his grip, mockingly tiny to him now.

He needs to let the mouse out, but he can't just press the eject button and shove the critter into the portal. It'd come right back out and bite Danny on the shoulder again. It still stings, making it a miracle he could hold his own when he's had about twelve hours to understand his new reality.

Of course Mom went for the newest injury, spotting the bite marks still bleeding and focusing on that before the head. For all they know, the vitals of spirits are entirely different, but wounds? They hurt when shot, no matter the species. She's smart like that.

He shook his head, trying to rattle those thoughts from his ears, and set the thermos on the nearest table. They have something to change ectoplasm out of the portal already installed, so now he simply switches a few things around and adds another port for the thermos.

He found the claws useful for ripping up that part of the wall, studying the wiring and jamming together old models for the ectoplasm ports until he could find something big enough for the device. The hum of the portal only a foot away made him want to vomit. He swallowed it back.

He plugged the thermos in and pressed the eject button, hovering nervously as he waited. Nothing exploded or tried to kill him again. He took the thermos out, aiming it at the ground as he pressed the button a second time. Empty.

And when he looked at the clock, he'd been at it for hours. He should've collapsed into a heap by now. Instead, he felt...lighter. More whole. He pressed a hand to his shoulder, noting that it came back with no goo sticking to his fur.

No ectoplasm. He glanced at the portal again, tiptoeing forward into its oppressive light. The hum grew stronger, felt deeper, vibrating into his core.

He brushed his hand over his collarbone, then toward his heart. Now he could hear it, the gentle thrum of power deep beneath the skin. It kept beating in time with the portal, like an extension of him.

One he did not want, but had, and it kept him energized. He should stay near the portal if he wants to feed on that.

A single memory of the barrel of his father's gun aimed at his head had him rethinking that. He can't stay under the same roof as them. Even in some perfect world where they don't know about ghosts, never saw that awful thing in their basement, he'd be stressed to the point of breaking every day. He can't do this to himself.

But he needs ectoplasm if he doesn't want to bleed out from his wounds, and he has a feeling most specters will be like the mouse and try to take a bite out of him. He may not even be able to make his own ectoplasm like they can.

Although, he can pass through walls and avoid prying eyes with relative ease. As long as he rations his power a bit, he'll be able to sneak in for an extra dose whenever he wishes, and they built the portal here since Amity Park is one of the few places to find ectoplasm outside of the Ghost Zone. He'll be able to swing it.

Danny walked over to a fridge they set up in the lab, opened it to containers full of the liquid, and started grabbing.

Chapter Text

"Danny?" Jazz knocked on his door, ear to the wood and waiting for a reply. Nothing. She stood there a beat longer before opening the door. "Danny, we need to talk about..."

Her words died in her throat, looking over his room. His blanket's gone, the stars that always brought comfort to see now left bare to blue sheets and a flat pillow. His closet's open with half the hangers bare and the huge backpack for stargazing that always went untouched is missing. She walked over in curiosity. None of the nice clothes disappeared, just a rain jacket and some changes for the weather. Jazz moved to his dresser and opened it. Shirts and pants gone, with what's left unfolded and strewn across the drawers like he pulled through in a hurry.

"No." Jazz went to his bathroom next. His medication's gone, along with the toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, deodorant, a towel...

She sprinted to the hallway bathroom, looking for their over-the-counter medicines. Painkillers, antinausea, antihistamines, and cough syrup were all gone. The kitchen, next, with some nonperishable food and their biggest water bottle, evaporated into thin air. She can't even find a can opener. She scrambled to the lab, snapping open every storage compartment. Jazz could see the gaps in her parents' stock where they made their own first aid kit: tourniquets, splints, wraps, pads, glue, swabs, disinfectant, every bandage size, cold and hot packs, thermometers and scissors and tweezers and a pocket knife and did he take precaution for giving himself stitches—

Danny didn't just take off in a fit over the portal, like how she insisted on not sleeping in the house last night. He's gone, carefully packed and probably with a list of everything he'd need to never come back. He planned this.

That's what he was going to tell her, wasn't it? He helped make the portal work, saw the horrors on the other side, and couldn't handle sleeping in the same building as a hole to another dimension. Jazz looked to her right to stare at the green pit in the wall. Last time she came down here, that was just an empty frame, waiting for someone to turn it on and accomplish the impossible.

She could lose herself in the slow swirl of ectoplasm and know, deep down, that this abomination took her brother from her.

Jazz heard the door to their house open, perking up before the voice of her father crushed her. "Jazzy! We're home!"

Right. She hasn't even spoken to them since her storm out. She spent all of today trying to find Danny after that ghost attacked, and they were...probably running in the opposite direction, after the ghosts.

Jazz had her shoulders hunched as she trailed her hand on the railing, climbing the stairs slowly. Dad grinned wide when he laid his eyes on her, Mom standing behind him and typing away on some device. "Jazzy was in the lab? Finally took an interest in our work, huh?"

"She should, after what happened today." Mom hummed as her lipstick curled upwards. "Our trackers for finding natural ectoplasm outcroppings also work on ghosts, and there are a lot of them. I can't tell them apart yet, but given we had twice the readings this morning, and it's now multiplied to three times, we may have weakened the barrier to where natural ectoplasm can make small portals, or maybe they all came through ours while we were sleeping..."

"Guys." Jazz swallowed. Danny was so desperate to keep their parents out of whatever's going on, but she can't let him just...leave. Can she? That horrified shriek when she offered to call their father stuck in her ears like a song on the radio, dancing through her thoughts whenever she had a spare moment. Danny never acted like that.

Even in all the nights that he insisted on watching a horror movie he was too young for, he never sounded that frightened. He didn't dare make such a sound.

She saw her parents looking at her expectantly. Jazz wrapped her hands around her waist slowly, backing up a bit. "Just wanted to say...that you're right. I saw the ghosts. So. Sorry. For not believing you."

Dad bobbed his head, grinning with a hint of unknowing smugness. "I'm glad you see things our way. We'll need all the help we can get to deal with Phantom."

"Phantom?"

"A black and white ghost we encountered as the portal opened. We...have our theories as to where it came from." Mom frowned as Dad put his hand on her shoulder, then laid her own fingers on it to return the gesture. "But it could be the most dangerous ghost we'll encounter. It had to use no power except its own physical strength to take down a ghost before we arrived. If it's strong enough fresh into the mortal world to win a spat like that, I shudder to think what it could become if it has ectoplasm to feed on."

"And while we have no proof they need to feed, we know they can be injured and they have a drive to action." Dad shrugged, not thinking too hard on the specifics. "Maybe to hunt, maybe to chase, maybe to defend a territory they mark out—we don't know yet. It's just to be assumed that if they're made of ectoplasm, they need more ectoplasm, and therefore need to kill each other for it."

"They may also need to feed on humans. I can't see why else they'd come into our world."

"Hunting. People." Jazz felt sick. Danny left to fend for himself when there were new creatures out there that could hunt him down. They may target the young, the lonely, the ones worn down by the world. She could easily imagine him trying to sleep on a bench until another neon animal with their spine spiking from their pelt came crawling forward, waggling their haunches in preparation to pounce. Her baby brother. "I think I need to be alone."

"It's a lot to take in, Jazzy, I know." Dad watched her walk up the stairs as calmly as possible, calling before she could close the door to her room, "Don't forget to do your homework! You have school tomorrow!"

She slid down, back to the wood, and sat with her knees to her chest. The door hurt her head to smack against, her face crumbling into watery coughs. Out of all of it, the stinging from the ghost's cold, the numbness of her world flipping inside out, the shock of losing her brother, and the nausea of crashing out of her near death experience...

The worst part was Danny not saying goodbye before he walked out of the family.

Danny didn't know why he could look human. He could expand his worldview a bit to accept that ghosts can change their forms, since he had to learn about ghosts in the first place and he knows firsthand just how gelatinous their bodies are. Ghosts can easily switch out limbs, morph their makeup when threatened, and bend what little bones they have. It felt odd to lose legs to fly or open new eyes to see in the dark, but it's not uncomfortable or painful. It's normal.

Except for seeming human. There was no benefit to him appearing exactly like he did when he died, with the bonus of hypothermic scars. Does it help him blend in better than invisibility? Is it a lure to catch prey? Danny gave himself time to flip through the possibilities as he walked away from Fentonworks, gnawing on the inside of his cheek.

Did he get body snatched? Is this a sign of dormancy? The transformation triggered when he slept last night, so it could've been a self defense mechanism to not be caught unawares in a beastly form. He didn't know why a normal rest had a different effect, though, since he fell into a droning lull as soon as he got in Sam's car without turning into Danny Fenton. That could be a way to conserve ectoplasm without committing to letting his guard down, like when dolphins keep half their brain awake to watch for threats. Or was it so they can swim up for oxygen? He should've paid more attention in biology.

Danny saw someone giving him a look for wandering down the street at dusk all alone, so he ducked into a side street to walk behind a record's store. He's far enough away to shift without Jazz seeing him and freaking out. More.

He remembered the horrified look on her face when she saw him as a ghost. The scream as he leapt to protect her from a beast that was chasing her down...

Because to her, he's the one who was going to kill her. He's the predator, catching his prey.

Danny shook his head to clear the dark thoughts and shivered, a chill twisting him into something larger. He opened his eyes and felt lighter, glancing down to check his appearance. His bag is gone. Hopefully, it'll come back when he acts alive again.

He used his claws to grasp the brick of the building and pull himself upward, his legs falling away as he pushed off and launched into the air. His white hair blew back in the wind, a small smile on his face. He doesn't know why he can see so well, looking down at Amity Park as it fell away, but it's a blessing to allow the cold of November to keep him aloft.

Danny rolled onto his back to watch his tail, a slice through the purple sky that showed the starlight soon to come. He can go faster than this, but he's feeling lazy, bouncing on gusts to see what shapes he can make. He zigzagged into the clouds, fur frosting in the thin air. When he gave Tuck a ride back to the grocery store, it was when they entered the clouds that Tuck called it for the day. Apparently, it was too high up, enough to make him nervous despite how many tight loops they went on before with just Danny's talons to keep him secure.

He reached out to a cloud, slicing through it with his claws like a stream of water. He looked down at his fingers, the drops crystallized on black nails. Danny buried his nose in the cloud, snorting as the mist stuck to his face. Another swipe at his fur pulled away more frost and snow. He's too cold for it to escape from, forcing the water to stick onto him.

Danny turned in a circle, waiting for dusk to become night. Amity Park's been starless since before he was born, lucky to see a yellowed moon through the smog. Maybe tonight, far above car exhaust and streetlights...

He didn't have to float long. Venus, the evening star, winked into existence first, followed by speckles like someone poking holes in velvet with a needle. The moon was ice white for once, a waning gibbous like an egg whose shell he could crack with a tap. He knew the sky wasn't just black when light pollution wasn't a factor, but the impressions of faint blues and purples were realer than any photo. It was a reminder that the sky wasn't a flat surface above him, but a new depth of the universe that expanded far beyond his eyesight.

Danny looked down at his own pelt, frowning because his starlight wasn't close to that beauty. He ran his finger along his tail, grabbing it to check the color against the surrounding cosmos. There are smudges of green, mainly in his chest, pressed behind the stars to make them dizzying to follow with his eyes. He didn't realize how squishy he felt, vulnerable to puncture and encasing the fluid that destroyed his life with a touch. His wiry hair seemed to offer the most protection, the starkness of his pelt his shoulders up pale as the moon.

He knew that animals have fur that's patterned to blend into their environment. It makes them feel like home. Danny pushed his way into a cloud the same shade as his hackles, having trouble keeping track of where his tail ended and the sky began. Maybe this is where he's supposed to be. Entering the afterlife looking like this, not feeling the bite of cold air and easily soaring above the city, made him never want to touch the ground.

He promised Sam he'd come back tonight.

"Yeah, then he dropped me off right at the edge of the parking lot and my mom didn't know what happened, so when she got in the car and heard what the news was talking about I had to pretend I didn't see a giant freaking mouse get its butt whooped by a dude who gave me a free rollercoaster ride two minutes before." Tucker leaned back on the beanbag seat Sam dragged up to the attic. She apparently spent today trying to clean up the room as a sort of home base, removing the dust and vermin traps that made it seem abandoned. They had the alcove where the window looked out into the city, and the wallpaper of vintage stripes that covered the rest of the house hung off in long rolls to show dark wood beneath. "Did you do that?"

"Yeah, apparently wallpaper's tougher than I thought. I was sure it was just like...a sticker." Sam shrugged, balanced on a chair to reach the rafters that she fastened a rope around. "He'd probably like a hammock, right?"

Tucker held up his arms in a how-am-I-supposed-to-know gesture. "He seemed to enjoy flying."

"Close enough, then." Sam rattled on her chair at the sound of the window rattling. "Uh, can you get that?"

Tucker raised his eyebrows, but complied, walking over to the moonlight leaking into the room. The light bent awkwardly with glowing eyes and piercing stars, a muzzle opening in a shimmering smile. White fur and black flesh covered up the sky, a head hanging upside down from where the rest of the body perched above the window. "Does dangling like that not make you sick?"

"No blood to rush to my head, so no." Phantom sounded proud of it, waiting until he moved back to phase through the glass. "Apparently, I can go through things. It's made traveling undetected much easier."

"And where'd you go, exactly?"

"Fixing the last loose end of my life." He set himself on the ground in a wide stance, briefly hesitating before standing on his hind legs like a human. It seemed natural, balanced on his toes with his tail laying on the ground like old drawings of dinosaurs. "Sorry for leaving so suddenly. I didn't expect it. I'm...committed to being a ghost forever, now."

"Movies always told me that doing your unfinished business would help you move on," Tucker replied, watching Phantom press one claw to his chin in thought.

"Doesn't seem to be the case. That mouse didn't have unfinished business. Maybe sometimes you just...become a ghost. Whether you had something to cling to in life has little to do with it."

"Like a violent death keeps you around?" Sam questioned, jumping down and dusting off her hands on her skirt.

"I guess so." Phantom looked uncomfortable for a beat before he turned swiftly to gesture at the canvas she had slung from the rafters. "What's this?"

"A hammock. I didn't want to leave you sleeping on the ground again." Sam's eyes drifted down. "Your wounds are gone."

"Oh. Um." He smiled, eyes shutting with the motion. "Your help fixed it. Once you got all the junk out, it healed on its own. Thanks."

"You're welcome." Sam looked on the verge of adding to it, but checked the time on her phone. "Well, I ate dinner while I was working, and Tuck went to fast food before he got here. Do you need anything, Phantom?"

"I'm not hungry."

"Then would you want to hang out for a while?" Tucker bounced on the balls of his feet. "Like, you like movies? Video games?"

Phantom laughed, his throat trilling like a big cat chuffing. "What kid our age doesn't like those?"

Tucker and Sam exchanged glances at that admission. Sam slowly backed up to the ladder. "I'll, uh, grab my laptop. We can pick a movie then."

Tucker nodded. "Totally." He pulled the beanbag over, flopping down in front of an abandoned table. It's probably the best place for them to watch the movie, anyway. "I hope you're okay with sharing, because we don't have a lot of seats."

"Oh." Phantom padded over, the beanbag barely shifting as he settled in where he had his tail in a crescent around the back. "Sam won't mind me getting this close?"

"What?" Tucker blinked, it taking a minute to click. "Oh, we're not dating. Just friends, y'know."

Phantom relaxed at that, inching closer with their shoulders flush. He felt like a freezer open on Tucker's skin: not uncomfortable, but definitively unnatural. "Sorry, I don't mean to assume, but I also don't want to—um—"

"Nah, it's fine. We get enough people at school thinking that, so we just got used to it." Tucker had a creeping thought, though, one he had to voice. "Can ghosts still get crushes?"

Phantom's eyes turned wide as saucers. "How should I know?"

"Good point." Trying to turn someone into roadkill hardly sounds like a way to meet your future husband. "It would've made for a funny story for school tomorrow, though. We hit a ghost with our car and had a date in an attic."

"I had to leave and kill a phantom mouse before that," Phantom added.

"I'm hurt you didn't bring it with you. My folks said to only go out with someone offering to wine and dine."

"Sorry, would you have tried to eat the ghost?"

"To be polite!"

Phantom snorted, covering his mouth with a guffaw. Sam reemerged with her laptop tucked under her arm, narrowing her eyes at them. "What dumbassery were you two talking about?"

"Nothing," they chirped in unison. She rolled her eyes and motioned for them to scoot and give her room. Tucker let her hook her arms around his shoulders to lean back, Phantom slinging his tail over their laps as a chilly blanket, and by the time everyone was seated, they were a tangled knot of teens arguing over what movie to watch.

For the losers of Casper High, they knew how to have a good time.

Chapter Text

"Phantom?"

Danny curled up under the blanket, letting the cold of his insides leak out and switch him to a form with a tail that spilled over the side of the hammock. He sat up, instinctively reaching to fix where his hair's sticking up on one side. The fine white fur on his face is the same, too, little more than fuzz that he had to smooth down. "Hey, Sam."

She stood on the ladder to the attic, grinning through bright purple lipstick. She had a spider-shaped backpack slung over her shoulder, her hair pulled up to show off how she buzzed the underside into a fade. "I'm heading off to school. Just wanted to make sure you'll be okay?"

Monday. It's Monday. He should go to school too. How can he bear that when he died on Saturday? Is he really supposed to walk around acting like nothing's wrong? "Have fun," he replied with a dry throat.

"You going to be doing anything? We have a screen room in my house where you could play some video games-oh, and the library's directly below us. Like, the ladder goes straight down. You don't have to worry about my mom finding you then."

"Sounds cool. I'll-I'll just be trying to find a routine, I guess." He curled the blanket in his hands, careful not to nick the embroidery with his claws. He's had this blanket for years, a birthday gift from Jazz that's weighted under star patterns. He couldn't bear to leave home without it, and she knows that too. Its disappearance is probably a dead giveaway that he ran off. He can't face her with that.

"Phantom?"

"Sorry, I was trying to think of something to do." Danny smiled, scrunching his face in whatever way looks grateful. "Thanks, Sam. If you have enough books for a library, I'd love to try them."

"Okay. I'll be back after school, I may take Tuck with me, too, we'll see."

"Have a nice day." He waved as she shut the hatch. What is he supposed to do now? He said the library, but the thought of lounging around when he's supposed to be at school felt abnormal. The Fentons always have perfect attendance, his mother would say in a chiding voice whenever he pretended to be sick for a day off. It's either an impressively good work ethic or a shockingly poor one, depending on who's asking. He felt antsy at the idea of missing classes, even if he had proper reason to, the prickling feeling crawling up from his toes so he had to free them from the blanket cocoon.

Danny slung his legs over the side, burying his face in his hands. What is he thinking? Of course he's not going to school, he's dead. No one really knows it, so they'll think he's just sick, or had to recover from ghosts becoming a reality. They'll call his parents, Dad won't answer the phone as usual, and nothing will come of it on that front.

Jazz, though. Jazz would know he's gone. He acted shady as hell on the soccer field, and then he packed up and left the house. She'll ask questions, probably to everyone in his grade in her push for his whereabouts. She could ask Tuck and Sam.

Wait. His brain chugged toward an awful possibility, dread clenching his stomach. Tuck and Sam saw him get chased by his parents from his house, and he admitted he died on Saturday. If Danny Fenton doesn't come to school, then his sister goes around freaking out that he's missing, they could figure it out. Even if that doesn't bring them to the right conclusion immediately, it's more pieces than he wants them to hold.

And no one wants to be friends with a Fenton. They're the nerds in the back of the classroom who get good grades and are only good to hang out with for group projects.

If he wants them to like him, he should keep that side of him under wraps. They like that he's some mysterious figure that dropped into their lives, not the freak they were told to ignore in kindergarten. Danny has to go to school.

He floated to where he hid his bags and started digging for a new change of clothes.

If it wasn't obvious before that the rest of Amity Park knew about ghosts, it sure as hell was obvious now. Tucker had Algebra I first period on Mondays, and he shared that with one Danny Fenton. Usually, he's in the back, a few chairs from the window, with everyone sitting around him pretending he doesn't exist and leaning to talk to whoever's in front of them. Today, every seat around him is vacated, pulled far from his desk in the student's attempts to escape before giving it up. Apparently, taking on the death sentence of the front row was better than sitting next to a Fenton. That also means they stole Tucker's seat, and he doesn't have any options left.

Tucker learned by this point not to pay the kid any mind. He never raised his hand in class, and always turned in his work, so who cares? Now, he's watching him carefully. Danny had his head down, staring blankly at the desk with his hands jammed in baggy pant pockets. Headphones wrapped around his ears that intentionally looked old school, like a prop from a show trying to see into the future with a lens many decades behind. His maroon anorak jacket had a high enough collar that when it strapped together, it masked the lower half of his face, Danny slouching until he was just a pair of eyes under a mop of black hair. His leg bounced impatiently under the table with a messenger bag covered in pins blocking the view of his feet.

Tucker took a deep breath, abandoned his lurking by the door, and dropped his backpack to Danny's right. The kid looked up immediately, his music at too low a volume for Tucker to pick it up. He looked over in bewilderment. Tucker held up one hand in a half-wave.

Danny moved one earpiece to rest in his hair with his shoulder, not taking his hands out of his pockets. "Hi?"

"Sup." Tucker used unpacking his supplies as a distraction, wrinkling his nose at the heavy-ass textbook he had to lug from his locker to this room in the mornings. In this day and age, it's a crime to not make it digital. "Did you study for the quiz today?"

"There's a quiz today?"

Tucker snorted. "Supposed to be. I was way too busy this weekend to think about it, though."

"Yeah." Danny didn't take the bait to say how his weekend was, glancing around them. He came to the same realization about the seating arrangement with down turned lips. They have a few extra desks in the room, but not enough to let people give him this wide a berth. "You can move the desk away, if you want."

He's already as far as he can be. Actually, he was too close to some of the popular kids, immediately grabbing the edges and scooting closer to Danny. It gave Tucker a better look at Danny's bag, and something new to say to make things less awkward. "Those pins from a movie you like?"

Danny started, blinking and reaching for his bag. "Um. Yeah."

"Which ones?"

He swallowed. "That's from a space western about bounty hunters trying to catch extraterrestrial criminals, that's one of the xenomorphs-"

"-from Alien, right?"

"Yeah. It's limited edition for the newest movie. I got to watch it in theaters."

"Never seen those movies."

"They're-they're good. Scary."

Tucker pointed to an acrylic button of a machine with three legs and a shiny carapace. "That's the tripod from War of the Worlds, right? That movie's crazy."

"Which movie?"

"Most recent."

"You should watch the one from 1953. The book's cool, too, I got a copy with this illustration of the tripods from 1906 that I think looks creepier, they're like huge lanterns of death-" Danny stopped speaking suddenly, blue eyes looking off into the distance. "I'm not obsessed with aliens."

"I...never said you were." Tucker didn't know where that came from. The Fentons are ghost freaks, not alien freaks. "Someone picking on you for being a sci fi geek?"

"No. Just. Uh." He pulled on the lip of his jacket, like he's making sure it's securely fastened. "Just want to be clear. I like sci fi stuff. It's not-it's not just aliens."

"I'm not talking to you to mock your outfit, dude. I've been in classes with you. I know that like ninety percent of your wardrobe has a space theme."

"Then why are you talking to me?" Danny blinked, looking confused. "No one who sits with me actually says anything."

"I like to talk. I'm annoying like that." Tucker held out his hand to shake. "Tucker Foley. Pretty sure we've been in the same school since kindergarten, but we never introduced ourselves."

Danny stared at the offer, slowly taking out his hands to squeeze his own fingers. He had long black gloves that sat snug to his skin, crawling up his sleeve even as the waterproof material wrinkled up his elbow. He kept wringing out his hands like he didn't want to infect Tucker with a touch.

"Not a touchy person?" Tucker asked, shrugging and resting his elbows on his textbook. "I mean, if you don't want to talk, we don't have to."

"No, it's fine!" Danny replied too quickly. "I just-my hands aren't very-very good."

"Like Raynaud's?"

"Hm?"

"I think that's what my cousin has. She kept having to wear gloves to do simple stuff, so eventually she wore them everywhere as, like, a fashion statement."

"Oh." Danny pursed his lips. Tucker never got close enough to see how pale the kid is, like he'd turn strawberry red the moment he walked into the sun. "Yes. It's a medical thing."

"That's cool." Tucker looked up as their teacher finally walked in and started writing on the board. "Nice talking to you, Fenton."

Danny smiled, pulling off his headphones, and it seemed like the only genuinely positive interaction a Fenton had.

Raynaud's Disease - a medical condition that is exemplified by a lack of bloodflow to the extremities. It causes numbness, coldness, a pin and needles sensation, change in color to the fingers and toes, or even pain to the limbs. It can suddenly appear after something like frostbite or nerve damage, and is mainly mitigated by keeping warm.

Danny could work with that. He closed out of the medical website on his laptop as the bell rang, closing the clamshell to pack up for his next class. Thankfully, his new friend didn't sit where he could see Danny looking up his own disease that he definitely had. Also, misspelling it three times in his attempts to find it.

He waved Tucker goodbye (his name is Tucker, not Tuck, Danny needs to remember that to keep Fenton and Phantom separate) and walked out to collide instantly with the one person he desperately avoided as he came to school.

Jazz gawked at him in the center of the hallway, books for her AP classes nestled to her chest. Her eyes had rims on them like she'd been crying recently, not sleeping, or a combination of both. Danny forced a smile like nothing was wrong. "Hey Jazz."

She fluttered her lashes, like she's checking if it's a dream. When he didn't disappear from her sight when she opened her eyes (he wished he could pull that trick in the middle of the swarm of school kids), she practically shoved him back into his classroom and shut the door. No kids had a class in there next period, and the teacher left to pick something up. They're alone.

"Danny, what the hell?" Jazz's voice pinched painfully, nasally with distress. "You appear at my soccer practice yesterday in the most concerning way possible, you vanish right before ghosts attack me, you don't come home, all of your stuff is gone with no note or phone call-"

"Sorry, Jazz, I wasn't thinking straight-"

"-that's absolutely right that you weren't!" She snapped. She seemed to regret it immediately, leaning in with her annoying height advantage to speak like she's soothing a wild animal. "It's because of the portal, right? And the ghosts?"

"I tried to tell you they're real," he mumbled, hiking his shoulders up. He kept getting worried that people who saw him before the accident would notice how his teeth scrape his tongue with certain syllables now. "But I would've stayed with you if I knew ghosts would show up. I was already gone by the time that happened. I'm sorry."

"That's not what I'm scared of, Danny. Well-" -she chewed the inside of her cheek, reordering her thoughts to say- "-I'm not the happiest about the ghosts, but I'm more worried about you. Where were you last night?"

"I needed some space." Danny scuffed his sneakers on the floor, making little kicks to occupy himself. Having toes again feels pretty good. "I'm staying with a friend for a few days. I wanted to pack some stuff up just in case of a ghost attack trapping me somewhere. That's all."

Jazz narrowed her eyes, studying him. There was one tidbit they both knew, that neither of them will say. Danny doesn't have any friends. Most of Jazz's came from her seeming logical despite their family, tutoring her peers and helping babysit younger siblings in the facade of the perfect girl next door. Danny was the weirdo who made every art project about stars and read comics in the cafeteria's corner instead of talking.

"I should go. I-I forgot to ask Tuck our dinner plans." Actually name dropping a friend would help, although he doesn't want her to hunt him down and ask questions. "Bye."

He pushed past before she could ask anything that would reveal the truth.

"Hello."

Sam looked up from her book, eyebrows raised at the kid standing in front of her desk. Usually, Fenton sits down in front of her immediately, not saying a word. He's not bold enough to try, when no one talks to him. Honor's English shouldn't be different, not at the end of an exhausting day.

He waved a little, hands clad in gloves that should be squeezing the blood out of his fingers. Weird. She went back to her book, propping it up like a physical barrier.

"You're reading Who Goes There?"

Why is he talking to her? She nodded, barely, hoping to get back to her page. The characters only just found the spaceship buried in ice and it's prime keep-your-nose-in-the-book time.

"That book ended up becoming The Thing, didn't it? The movie from the eighties?"

"Yes," she replied through gritted teeth.

"It's a pretty great movie."

"Mhm." She watched it only last night, and that's why she even picked the book to read for today. It's pretty short, all things considered. She could finish it today if someone. Would leave. Now.

"So you like horror stuff?"

She sighed, put her bookmark in place, and closed the book. "What are you doing, Fenton?"

"Being friendly?" He tried, pitching his voice up. "You...seem friendly."

"Maybe to other people." Sam let the venom slip into her tone. She thought that everyone giving him a wide berth like Moses parting the Red Sea would make it obvious that his family's efforts to punch a portal into the Ghost Zone was thoroughly unappreciated, but apparently she was wrong. Danny Fenton, the kid born to geniuses, should know how to read a room.

He gave up enough to sit down, obviously sulking as the teacher walked in. Lancer cleared his throat, standing next to the button on the wall to turn on the projector.

"Class, the principal is making us have this talk with everyone before the end of the day. I'm sure we're all aware of what happened this weekend." He pressed the button, the screen scrolling down as the light flickered on. The image popped up before the screen could reach the bottom, sliced in an awkward way. There's a photo of a green creature, blurry and out of focus with a black-and-white smear still climbing out of the ground to chase it down the street. Both would be in average quality if the picture didn't treat them like light sources, huge lens flares coming off of them and leaving crescents and splotches on the image. If Sam squinted, she could make out some people running to get clear in the background. "It seems that ghosts are real."

Everyone turned to look at Fenton. He shrank under their gazes. Sam thought he would be happy that his family accomplished their life mission, not cowering.

"As such, we have explicit instructions from the Fenton family." Lancer took a paper off his desk, clearing his throat. "Do not seek out any paranormal creatures. If you see a ghost, evacuate the area and stay clear until the Fentons arrive. This one here." He pointed to the mouse, frowned, then tapped his finger on the monochrome blur of fuzz. "Phantom has shown an interest in humans. He is highly dangerous. Do not listen to him, do not interact with him. If you see a black and white ghost covered in snow or stars, report it to the Fentons immediately. I'll be writing their phone number on the board for you to have. Please save it into your phones." He walked over to the precious little space left on the side of the screen for him to write, scribbling out the number in his awful cursive.

Fenton just kept sinking lower and lower in his chair as their classmates whispered. Sam could only assume it was due to having his family's failures so clearly displayed. After all, they had Phantom right in their lab, and then he got whisked away by two teens that didn't have to try that hard to send his parents searching in the opposite direction. Now, Phantom's the one making sure they're safe while the Fentons run around like chickens missing their heads. She couldn't help but snicker at the image.

Fenton turned sharply in his chair to glare at her. She covered her smile with her sleeve. "What?" He asked, voice small enough to slip by unnoticed.

"Nothing. Just thinking about how badly your parents fucked up." She leaned forward, lacing her fingers together to prop her chin on them like the doe-eyed girls who always flirted with the jocks. "I mean, they prepare for a ghost problem for-what-decades, and then a different one takes care of it for them in record time? Pretty weak."

"My parents could've handled it, if they got the chance."

"Yeah, could've killed it, maybe. It's really cool to find a new species and try to stick it with a knife immediately." Her voice dripped with sarcasm. "Bring ghosts into the human world, shoot them, then have nothing to show for it. Great idea. How many are they going to dissect before they figure out ghosts can talk?"

"You don't know anything, Manson."

"Really? Because I heard they had a ghost right in their house and it got away." Sam watched his eyes widen, her blood pumping with satisfaction. She couldn't help Phantom feel better about his circumstances, but she can make the Fentons feel worse. "Come on, Fenton, you had to be there for it. Is it they froze because they never thought they'd be right, or is your dad's aim just that famously terrible?"

Fenton stood up suddenly, his chair screeching against the tile. He turned away, grabbing his messenger bag and swinging it over his shoulder with enough force to almost smack her. She ducked and watched, a smug grin on her face, as he marched out the door.

Lancer gave her a tired look. "Miss Manson," he began, his cadence as chiding as ever, "haven't you been told enough times not to antagonize other students?"

"Will you accept as an answer that I was standing up for those with no voice?"

"Principal's office," he replied simply, pointing at the door. She tucked her book under her arm, her spider backpack low on her shoulders as she kept her chin high. All the popular kids who play sports get out of trouble because they supposedly have more important things to look forward to in their futures. She gets out of it because her mother would blow a gasket if she faced any real punishment. The principal will just make her sit in silence and "think about what she did".

In other words, she'll have time to finish her book.

Danny almost made it through an entire school day and has never felt worse. He thought that since Sam was so accommodating of the random ghost, she'd be nice and chummy to the wallflower, but no, that's asking too much. He had to forget that, to her, he's the spawn of the idiots who tried to kill her new friend. Of course she's being an asshole.

He turned on the sink in the bathroom, checking to make sure no one else is there as he took off his gloves. He tested the water for warmth, flinching as it stung his precious skin. He slid off his big coat and groaned at the short-sleeved shirt he had on underneath. Of course he forgot it was a picture of a classic grey alien. Could he be any more obvious? But he had to do something to feel better. He hasn't showered in days, now, and testosterone gel works best after hot water applied to the skin. He rolled up his sleeves until his shoulders were bare, digging through his messenger bag for the bottle. No way was he doing this at Sam's house. It raised too many questions on if ghosts needed to bathe, ones he didn't want to answer yet.

Although if he's a walking corpse, it's unlikely that hormonal changes will affect him anymore. Do dead men worry about voice cracks? He shook his head, rubbing the warm water up to his shoulder blades (and that hurt, like he was boiling himself when school bathrooms never get that hot) before patting himself dry and squeezing a pump of T into his palm.

His breath billowed in front of him in blue mist. Danny stiffened, looking up at the mirror. Another exhale, another puff like he's in subzero temperatures. That happened right before he met that stupid mouse.

"Hello?" He called. No response. He shifted on his feet uneasily as he clamped his hands to rub the testosterone, warming it up to spread across his upper arms. The frosty taste in his mouth clung desperately to his teeth, curling out of his lips to fog up the glass. Nobody goes in this bathroom, since it's got the worst toilets to flush by far and the soap's empty eighty percent of the time. No one should be disturbing him.

His breath won't clear. Danny pressed the gel into his skin, wanting to be done already. Lancer won't care if he leaves early. He already lied to Jazz, Tucker made contact with him first (shockingly), and he's wrecked his chances with Sam enough for one day. There's no reason to stay here.

Except for the ghost. Danny finished up with shaky hands, forcing them back under the burning water. The mirror's practically a white sheet now, covered in his stupid anxious frost and the steam from the sink.

A single line cleared up like an invisible finger dragging down the glass. Danny turned off the faucet quickly, leaning in to listen to the squeal of words taking shape in front of him.

I'll protect you.

He barked a laugh, unsure how else to respond. "Not the words I'm looking for." Danny leaned to get the soap, frowning as the dispenser crunched emptily. Awesome. When he looked back, he saw a single symbol dragged in a loop on the center of the mirror.

?

"I have nothing for you to protect me from." He went for the roll of paper towels (apparently, the janitor didn't see fit to put them in the dispenser, either), and started wiping himself down. When Danny looked back up, there was a word scrawled diagonally with immaculate writing.

BULLIES.

"I'm not being bullied. That's ridiculous-this is normal." Danny had to wait a few minutes before putting his jacket back on, but he still tugged together his gloves, flexing his fingers to keep the feeling in them. "Today was better than most days, actually, because someone other than my sister willingly talked to me. I mean, I think Tucker was interacting out of pity because he felt weird about sitting next to me silently, but that's still a conversation. It's better than being avoided all the time. And sure, I wish that Sam didn't say-say all that about-about-" He leaned forward, suddenly feeling like he was going to hurl. His fingers would dent the porcelain if they were talons, digging into the edges of the sink. He didn't want to think about it. "It wasn't nice, but she didn't know. I'm not blaming her for that. I-I get it, I would be a bit nasty about it too if I thought her idea of what happened happened, instead of what really happened." He didn't know what he was saying anymore, babbling to someone he can't even see. Maybe he should be talking about it, instead of giving everyone half truths. The whole incident felt too unreal to place, like any moment he'd wake up and the portal isn't active yet.

Danny's breath is clear. He didn't know when that started. He looked up, pushing his hair out of his face to stare at the mirror. "Ghost?"

No answer. The words kept dripping condensation like blood. He couldn't sense anything anymore. He sighed, trudging over to the wall to slide down it and curl into a ball. Maybe he can muster up the courage to go back to class and pretend nothing happened.

He remembered telling Sam how worried he was about his parents cutting him open if they caught him hiding under her car, then using that to taunt him in school, and he knew he wasn't moving willingly until the bell rang.

Chapter Text

"Mr. Fenton should've heard the intercom by now, so Miss Manson, until then, I want to talk—ahem."

Sam focused her eyes in again on Principal Ishiyama. If she wanted to be let off the hook, she had to pretend to pay attention. Ishiyama curved her mouth up to seem positive without smiling.

"We've discussed your behavior at length. Harassing other students in class is too far, and you know this. So, what is the source of this behavior?"

She shrugged. "Goths are jerks."

"Oh, come, now. Dressing a certain way doesn't have to dictate behavior."

"And yet, if I was wearing a varsity jacket, I wouldn't even be in this office, now would I?"

"This school has a zero tolerance policy for bullying. No one would be off the hook for being unkind to other students, regardless of status."

"Sure." Sam nodded along like she believed it, drumming her fingers impatiently on her book. "Should I sit in the hall now?"

"For now. We'll decide a proper punishment later."

Yeah, like a slap on the wrist. Sam waited until she was out of her chair and the door before relaxing the genuine-ish expression. Exactly as she predicted, zero repercussions for doing something of infinite satisfaction: showing the Fentons just how unappreciated they are.

Because who wants people who think the proper reaction to meeting a sentient species is to try killing it? Okay, yes, they can be dangerous (she's sure Phantom could pack a punch) but did they give him a chance to be kind? She can't imagine him killing anyone. She can't imagine anyone trying to kill him for good reason, either.

How did he die, anyway?

"Great." Fenton's voice echoed up the stairwell, a tired sigh with scuffling shoes. Sam snorted, looking up with a smug grin-only for it to falter when she saw just how out of shape he was. He's pale, yes, paler than she thought he was, with lips that lost their pallor. He huffed, blowing peppery hair out of his face. His eyes had weary divots underneath, half lidded and bloodshot, like he needed a nap and a good cry.

Wait, did she feel bad for him? Sam leaned against the locker with the cold metal trying to nip her neck. "Fenton."

"Would you stop calling me that? It's Danny."

"You called me Manson."

"Yeah, because you were being an asshole." He flicked his gaze from her to the door she stood in the way of. "Ishiyama called me in."

"She doesn't care, you know. None of the faculty ever care if something happens to us."

"Duh. Otherwise, Dash wouldn't get away with half of it." Fenton rolled his eyes, adjusting his messenger bag under big gloves. "That doesn't give you the right to mock someone for no reason, now does it?"

"Okay, Fenton." She emphasized the name with a growl, striding forward. He stood straight to keep her out of his personal space, narrowing his eyes at the finger pressed into his sternum. "You want to lay all the cards on the table?"

"What, that I'm not sitting next to you in English anymore?"

"I was outside your house Saturday night."

Fenton's face went slack before he quickly masked it with an indifferent scowl. "What are you talking about?"

"Your parents chased us down talking about a ghost. It's not a secret I was there. Plus, everyone at school knows that you spend every night helping your family in a creepy lab. So." Sam tilted her head to look down on him. She was sure he used to be his height, but maybe she imagined it. "You saw the portal open, you saw Phantom in the lab, and you—what, were the only one against dissecting him? You just let your prey escape that easily?"

"I—" Fenton fisted his jacket over his heart, his other hand quickly clapping over his lips. "Ghost."

"Did you not follow any part of this conversation?"

"No, I mean—" Fenton stepped back, his voice muffled by his effort to keep his mouth clamped shut. "I have to go."

"Hey!" Sam ground her teeth as he backed away and zipped to the stairwell, brisk stomps leading him down. She glanced behind her to check if there was a wiry-haired spirit waiting to scare Fenton off, but no one appeared. She can't see anyone.

But ghosts can turn invisible, and he's the son of ghost hunters. He may have a sensor on him telling him there's a specter nearby to chase.

Oh no you don't. No way she's just standing by while he takes a ray gun from his locker and chases down a creature that did nothing to deserve it. Sam needed to be smart, though, and directly chasing him wasn't smart. She left her book and backpack in the hallway, circling to the stairwell at the other end of the hall. If they're on the second floor, he can only go down to the first, and then she'll cut him off.

Sam's going to put her money where her mouth is and actually stop them this time.

Danny leaned into the wall as support as he reached the end of the stairs on the first floor, staring at the ground. His mouth tasted like acid and he couldn't unclench his fist around his heart. Well, it didn't feel like his heart, since it's doing something beyond beating, making his lungs prickle with each breath like they were pushing in on spikes in his chest. He removed the hand holding his jaw shut, saw the azure smoke float past his eyes, and quickly clammed up again.

"You alright, sport?"

He's never been more thankful he already had his mouth covered, a pathetic squeak escaping as the spirit appeared. They looked like little more than a student, faded as the old photos their school proudly displayed of their previous classes. He's in monochrome with a crew cut like he sliced it himself with dull scissors, big glasses taped together on the bridge of the nose with a crack in a lens. With a big bowtie, straight-legged pants, and saddle shoes, he looked like...well, he wasn't impressive. The main thing that gave him away as a ghost, not a kid who really liked the color grey, was his skin: translucent like a fogged-over mirror.

The ghost pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket, the fabric floating oddly as he hovered to be the same height as Danny. "Here. I don't blame you for splitting at all. That busybody was a real piece of work."

"Uh, thanks?" Danny took the handkerchief, rubbing it between his fingers. It felt like those weird papers that Jazz fed into her polaroid camera whenever she wanted to take family photos "old school". "Were you following me?"

"Would've given you privacy, but that wet rag sure looked mean." He fluttered up higher with his heels clicked together, holding out his hand to shake. "Sidney Poindexter. I've been here a few days."

"The school?"

"Mhm. My version was the same as ever, still full of the same cool cats I went to class with. This is different, though. Real blast." He nodded approvingly when Danny shook his hand, whistling in appreciation. "Hey, you're the first human to actually interact with me! That's swell, isn't it?"

"S-sure. So...ghosts were always around?"

"Nah, before we kept to the Zone. One sweet dolly came down to Old Casper, though, and she told us we could go back to Earth. Some goof on this side made the barrier break." Poindexter studied him closely, hovering to eyeball his skin. "So you've met ghosts before? How'd you figure out I'm here? Was it that crazy smoke?"

"Oh. Well." Danny felt too exposed in the stairwell, shuffling to be in the hallway. He can see if anyone's listening in then. Poindexter floated after him, hands behind his back. Danny couldn't see the harm in telling someone so friendly, since he can't report him to ghost hunters. His chest ached as he whispered, "I'm the goof. My parents were trying to make a ghost portal and-and that's why I can sense you. I'm..." He looked down at his shoes. He forgot to tie them, and that's begging to trip. "I'm a ghost. I look human right now, but I'm not."

Poindexter directed his attention with a whirl around on his heel, holding his shoulders in a death grip. "You're the halfa?"

"What?"

"The halfa!" His eyes widened, pewter-colored irises surrounding pupils like shattered glass. "Half human, half ghost, half dead, half alive. The revenant who never left a body, who lost his mortality to free us! We thought you destabilized the moment you were created—it's almost unheard of to survive that much ectoplasm. Everyone in the Zone's thankful to you."

"Half—I'm alive?" Danny's throat caught. "I didn't die?"

"Er..." Poindexter made a so-so gesture, backing off with a pained look. "Halfas don't get our spiffy look, that's for sure. You're not even glowing. Didja not figure that out when you checked your heartbeat?"

"I can't really feel it. There's this—um—it's like a cold weight over it that keeps buzzing."

"You mean your core? You really are a rug rat fresh from the grave." Poindexter shook his head. "Let me help you settle in while you find your place. You have a haunt, yet? No one else from Old Casper wanted to be here, and I always shared mine. A whole school's a big place to get lonely in."

"Oh. I've been staying at Sam's house, since mine isn't, uh, ghost friendly."

"Sam?"

"The girl I was talking to earlier. I mean, she doesn't know I'm a halfa, but she's pretty nice to me when I'm..." Danny's voice drifted, waiting as Poindexter's expression turned grim. "Something up?"

"You're staying with the bully?" His voice had an edge to it, losing all the welcoming warmth of their previous conversation.

"I—like I said before, she didn't know she was talking about my accident. Really, if you met everyone who lives in Amity Park now, you'd see exactly why they say this stuff about ghosts coming back and my death—"

"She was mocking you for your DEATH?" The surrounding lockers snapped open, doors creaking precariously to stay on their hinges. Danny heard panicked footsteps squeaking on the vinyl tile, craning his neck to see Sam sliding into view at the opposite end of the hall. Great.

Poindexter's eyes rolled into a milky white as he raised his hand, papers spilling from the lockers to crawl toward Sam. Danny yanked his arm, surprised at how stiffly Poindexter held himself even with his clammy skin. "Dude, stop! I said it's fine! She's not a bully, or an enemy, or whatever!"

"I'LL PROTECT YOU." The voice didn't escape Poindexter's lips, instead rattling deep within him, pulsing outward with the strength of gravity. He twisted his hand like he pulled a puppet's strings, paper sticking to Danny's limbs and holding him to the wall.

Danny winced, his chest pulling as Sam got the fantastic idea of running. She's smart to get distance, but you should never run from something stronger than you if you don't want to be chased. Danny swallowed as Poindexter rose and disappeared like the flash of a camera. It took him a minute to calm that rocketing heartbeat he thought he had lost. Precious seconds ticked by with no way of knowing where they went.

Switching to a body with a beak sharp as an ice pick and limbs that needed no joints made short work of the paper, but that ache deep down was nearly suffocating. If Danny didn't follow, he may as well stop existing.

Sam didn't know where the ghost went or why they were talking to Danny. Initially, she thought she'd have to protect the ghost from him.

Now, it's seeming the other way around. She careened down the hallway, stumbling as she scanned for a spot to hide. Going in a classroom seemed safest, but she didn't want any other students to be in trouble. She dipped into the first one she could see was empty through the narrow window, shutting it quickly behind her. She flattened herself to the door, one eye out for her pursuer, while the rest of her body crouched out of view.

"She's not a bully!"

Sam's such an idiot. Of course there's a ghost haunting the school who gets protective over people. Every kid knows that Casper High's history of bad bullying policies meant that plenty of nerds have died over the years with no justice to be found. Fenton having plenty of people ignoring him (for good reason, since his family insists on experimenting on extraterrestrial beings who did nothing wrong) put him on the radar for someone like this.

Maybe her words in class set him off? But that was justified—wasn't it? Okay, so maybe Danny himself isn't the asshole in their family, but he had to be standing idly by for their shit, and that's just as bad. What's a bit of mockery for that in the grand scheme of things?

She broke from her thoughts when she saw a familiar shape walking past with spindly limbs. Phantom leaned into the wall with his talons grazing the window. Two long ears, alabaster like the fur on his head, twisted this way and that to pick up a sound. He inhaled through slotted nostrils, opening his glowing maw. He tasted the air in her direction, and she could see dozens of teeth like spines raising up to take in what they could deep down his throat. His jaws split too far to let a razor tongue snake into the breeze, fine hairs around the nose quivering like gleaming whiskers. Bioluminescent filaments pulled from the helix of each ear into antennae, trying to stretch farther forward and sense something she couldn't. In a flash, it all snapped back into one shape, extraneous hairs buried in blinding fur and a closed beak curling in concentration. He opened the door with his attention wholly on her.

"Sam!"

"Phantom, how did you get here? Wait, how did you know I was in here?"

"Sorry, there are a ton of people in the school. It took a while to figure out if that was you. Lots of smells, lots of heartbeats." He probably didn't hear her first question, pushing past to shut them both in the classroom. "The air's colder around you, though. He has to be close."

"So you hunt ghosts now?"

Phantom flinched. "Uh, no. And I think fighting him would make whatever's happening worse."

"Oh, come on, he attacked me. That's plenty of justification to wail on him. And he didn't have any reason to come after me?"

"Really? No reason? No reason at all?" Phantom crossed his arms, tilting down condescendingly. It's irritating how tall he is when he stays on his hind legs like a normal person. "You did absolutely nothing to have a protective spirit come after you?"

"How do you know protective spirits are a thing?"

"Because I suddenly felt like I was going to drop dead the moment you were in trouble and I wasn't saving you. If that's how he's feeling, no wonder he freaked out. So, fess up." Phantom slid down to the floor, patting the ground like he's inviting her for story time. "What did you do?"

Sam sighed melodramatically, crossing her legs under her skirt. "Fine, so I was rude to one kid. Whatever. It's not worth having someone try to make me into a paper mummy."

"And how rude do you have to be for him to go after you?"

"He's a Fenton, alright? He pisses me off. I mean—" Sam scratched the back of her neck, then pointed at Phantom. "He was going to dissect you, you said so yourself!"

"Who?"

"Danny Fenton!"

He blinked owlishly. "...Did Danny tell you he was there?"

"No, but—look, everyone knows he helps his parents with everything. He had to be there."

"But did he tell you he was there when the portal opened?"

Sam drew herself closer in, worrying her nails. He seemed pretty guilty about the whole thing, huddling at his desk when it came up, but she thought that was him realizing just how screwed up his folks were. Maybe he was worried because he was absent.

"I'm such a jerk."

"Yep." Phantom patted her arm in a mockery of comfort, floating up until he looked like a serpent. "But, uh, Sam? I don't think you should use what I told you to pick fights. Telling people you know me, or you were there that night, could cause...issues."

"So I'm supposed to say nothing while they insult your existence?"

"No, but maybe don't antagonize them, either?" He pitched his voice up in question, shrugging. "I'm a four-eyed flying monster with claws. I can take care of myself."

"Alright, I'll apologize to Fenton."

"And I'll try to find the ghost. Honestly, he's probably listening in and waiting, so he can't be far." Phantom didn't bother opening the door, slipping out the wall and leaving the room darker.

Sam had to get to work on the really tough part: saying sorry.

Danny still had that impatient pull to hunt down the ghost, but he quelled it with a return to human form. The old bathroom was a good enough spot to rest, squeezing his eyes shut to remember how to breathe.

"Danny, right?"

He opened his eyes again, Poindexter nearly nose-to-nose with him. "Hey." He swallowed thickly, rolling his wrist in his search for something to say. "Uh, I wasn't off the mark on the protective spirit stuff, right? That felt like a thing, but I don't actually know."

"No. You were right on the mark." Poindexter fidgeted with his handkerchief, looking embarrassed. "I needed her to be away from you in that moment, and I...flipped my lid. But if you're the same way, then—"

"No fighting necessary?"

"Agreed."

The tension leaked out of Danny, leaving him to unclench his hand from his heart. "So I'm just going to feel like I'm hurting when other people are hurting forever?"

"Not quite. There are reasons, you dig? Everyone's got their limits." Poindexter sounded hopeful as he added, "I could show you, if you stay here. I've been around for a while, so I can help you work through it."

"You're just saying that so I don't stay in her house, aren't you?"

Poindexter shifted uncomfortably. "My purpose is to keep students safe, and you're a student. I can't let you go back to that pad without offering."

"I get it." He does. Besides, that arrangement wouldn't work in the long term, anyway. Danny had to hide his bags to keep Sam from seeing them, but they're not that hidden, and he doesn't want her walking in when he's sleeping in his human form, not to mention getting ready for school. He just needs to fix up the logistics first. "Teachers are going to notice a student who stays here every night."

"Well, there was the building that closed down a few years before I started coming here. Is that place too bent out of shape?"

"Ha! Mr. Lancer said they've been trying to open and renovate that place since he was a freshman, and they never do. It's gotta have enough cleaned up for me to crash." Danny reconsidered with a flush. "Uh, as long as you don't mind me encroaching on your haunt."

"Haunts are made to be shared if we have a common goal. It's like a roommate."

"Alright. Just—don't terrorize the other kids anymore."

"Yessir!"

"Why are you so pale?"

Tucker nudged Sam, watching her stare listlessly into her locker. She's supposed to drive him home, not glare at her math book. She didn't respond.

Tucker shrugged, leaning into the wall and scanning the milling students trying to escape the building with maximum efficiency. One caught his eye and had him waving. "Danny, yo! Over here!"

He looked up, shocked to be acknowledged. Another sweep of Tucker's arm caught his attention, and he shuffled over. "Hey."

Sam stiffened at the sound of his voice, slamming her locker shut. Danny looked just as uncomfortable, pointedly avoiding her gaze when she turned around.

"Fen—Danny." Sam cleared her throat, putting her foot up as she rolled her neck. "Sorry for being so...aggressive earlier. It was uncalled for."

"Thanks. It's all good, okay? No-no worries." Danny smiled, then turned to talk to Tucker. "So, did you want something?"

"Just wanted to ask if you ever want to hang out. Go to get food after school?"

"Oh. I-uh-I have some stuff going on today, but tomorrow, yeah." Danny tilted his head, reaching behind Tucker where he couldn't see. "Sorry, there's something sticking out of your bag."

"What?" Tucker removed the one-strap pack and saw a paper folded up and caught in the zipper. "Huh."

"Anyway, see you tomorrow." Danny stepped back and he disappeared into the swath leaving. Sam took the paper and opened it.

"Dude, privacy—"

"It's from Phantom." Sam skimmed it with a deepening frown. "He found a more permanent place to stay, doesn't want to intrude...still see each other."

"That's it?"

"His handwriting's the worst, so I'm giving myself a pretty big margin of error." Sam pinched the bridge of her nose. "It's probably because of what I did."

"And what did you do?"

"Well..."

Chapter Text

"Danny? This is Jazz. I know you said you're with a friend for a few days, but I wanted to know which...friend? Just to make sure you're sleeping somewhere safe. Call me back."

"Danny, it's Jazz again. You didn't pick up yesterday, so I'm asking again. Nothing major, just-just wanted to check in and catch up. Call me back."

"Danny, I'm worried. Call me. Please."

Well, he was worried, too, and the echoing voicemails he keeps opening and not responding to didn't address his problem. Poindexter explained to him that the artificial portal weakened the barrier between their worlds enough for natural ones to pop up, and anyone can wander through. Thankfully, no humans have dared yet, only animals he had to track down all night, his eyelids drooping as he slunk down to the Fentonworks basement. He still can't believe how easy it is to slide through walls and the floor. He knows he's also been invisible before, but he can't crack how to do it on command, instead of an instinctual need to hide. For now, Danny has to be satisfied that on cameras, he's little more than a starburst, a smudge on the mechanical lens. Something about ectoplasm makes recordings not work right, as long as they don't catch his in-between state.

He uncapped the thermos and jammed it into the port, feeling his hairs split in trepidation. He wasn't sure why his form was so flexible, but he knew sensing the vibrations in the air is invaluable when he's not watching his own back. He couldn't control it as much as he would like, but it just seemed to know when he could use better eyes or a fresh pair of whiskers. Case in point: the white fur smothering hackles stood on end, ears twitching to pick up footsteps. He took out the thermos and kicked off before he could defy gravity. Danny got to the far corner of the lab's roof and paused.

The footsteps are too light to be the clopping boots of hazmat suits. He looked over his shoulder and winced. Jazz had her phone in her hand, her hair in a ponytail and still damp from a shower. She must've just finished her morning workout, although she still looked tense, her eyebrows stitched into a frustrated furrow.

"I don't know, alright? I've researched why kids run away from home, and a lot of the time they don't want to talk about their issues with someone they think will judge them, which—okay. I get that." She paused as someone babbled on the other side, cradling her phone with her shoulder as she opened the metal shelves. "Yeah, 'cept he's still going to school. People who run away don't keep attending classes, or-or even stay in the same town! The point of running is to escape."

Danny noticed that he pressed his spine into the corner of the ceiling, his tail curled up to not be seen. He wished now more than ever that he was pure black, if only so he could disappear into the shadows. His claws clinging to the wall several feet above her head didn't feel like enough, ears twisting to pick up every word from her mouth.

"I tried asking them last night. They didn't actually listen, just said 'Danny's prepared for this scenario, our boy will be safe and sound.'" Jazz snorted, like her awful impression of their dad is a funny joke, and turned. Danny could see her fixing a sleek, steel panelled device to her wrist, a circular screen like a watch coming to life when she tapped it. "I don't want to tell them he's at school since they'd drag him back here when he doesn't want to go, but...maybe I should?"

Danny narrowed his eyes. Prepared for this scenario? What part of dying in the portal could he prepare for? What did they think happened?

"You don't get it, Star. They're super strict about when we get home every night. They should've flipped when he was a no-show all weekend." Jazz frowned at the screen on her wrist, a tiny beep sounding off. "I'm sick of being out of the loop. Everyone in our family knows what's going on except for me."

Danny strangled a squeak as she walked closer to his edge of the lab, the wall behind him losing all resistance as he fell upwards and away. He gulped, scratching out of the ground to breathe fresh air. It took a moment to remember he doesn't need it.

He shuffled out and floated just far enough to be hiding behind the neighbor's house, checking for cameras before he dropped the thermos and shifted back. His school bag settled uncomfortably on his shoulder as he dug out his phone.

One new message from Jazz.

J: I get that you want to be alone right now, but the least you can do is answer my texts.

He slumped, defeated. She's kept her word on not telling their parents, and how does he repay her? This is his sister. Even if he doesn't want to explain everything, he can let her know he's okay.

D: im sorry jaz

D: ill texxt more i promisse

J: Oh? Now you respond?

D: srry

D: again

D: iwas seitting stuff up

J: What does that mean?

He sighed, setting the phone on the ground. As long as he's not physically attached to whatever object he wants to keep when he transforms, it won't disappear with his clothes. He shoved the thermos into his bag and changed, scooping up his phone again and floating up on his back like an otter. The autumn chill didn't sting his skin like mortal flesh. It's comforting, a friend's hand guiding him toward the school.

D: rq did u tlak to our parent sabout what happene d saturday inght

J: Can you try not typing with one hand or whatever it is you're doing? I can't read any of that.

Stupid claws. He thought they'd be better for texting compared to his gloves. He hunched his shoulders, flipping over so whiskers and antennae on his head could warn him of a collision before he crashes. Now he could have his full attention on the spellcheck he keeps ignoring.

D: did you ask mom and dad what happened when the portal orpened?

J: They won't tell me.

D: hm

D: idon twant to get into it

D: bc it sucked

D: but it just kinda made me realize soem stuff ykno

D: bout us and our parents and junk

He keeps starting a new message where he'll come out and say it, only for it to further dance around the topic by the time he hits send. Danny hated how long the phone claimed Jazz was typing while he watched.

J: Danny, I'm so, so sorry for ever making you feel like you couldn't tell me your doubts on them. I don't want you to go through whatever's happening alone. I wish you'd tell me what's going on so I can help you. Mom and Dad haven't explained it, but they implied something big went down. They won't bring up that you're gone, either. I didn't tell them you're at school or that I saw you, since it seemed to upset you when we were talking at practice, but they act like you're supposed to be missing, and that concerns me. Do you know why they aren't reacting to your absence?

Danny almost flew right past the school while he was reading, looping back to descend by the old schoolhouse. He kept trying new messages, anxiously aware of how Jazz could see him typing and deleting over and over again, before hitting send.

D: maybe

J: Can you please, please, please tell me why?

He's not explaining his death over text, so what's the best lie he can come up with? What can he say that would believably be an adult's reasoning? He rested his feet in the dead grass, feeling it prickle against his fur. Landing so expertly makes him feel like a superhero, if he wasn't staring at a screen trying to summon the right words.

D: the portal isnt safe

D: i cants stay in th ehouse that has it without thinking about thtat night

D: i dont think ill ever be able to

D: so im still going to school and i still want to see you but i cant stya in there

Danny swallowed, putting his phone to the side so he could switch. He waited until he could feel the blood in his veins before picking it up off the frosted ground.

J: And Mom and Dad are aware of this?

He squeezed the strap of his bag in aching knuckles.

D: if htey refuse to talk about me snd what happened when the portal acctivated?

D: they pobably have an idea

J: I get it. I wish I could say that I can't believe they'd pick the portal over their kids, but...

D: yeah

He started walking, turning on the sidewalk towards the school as more students start trailing behind him from their trip from the parking lot.

J: Okay. I'm going to do everything I can to help you, I promise. You're not going to be alone. Call me whenever you need anything, okay? And I mean anything.

D: actually i know i was low on meds when i left and now im probably goingtot run out if you know where theye aree

D: the adhd 1s

J: Already packed them in my bag, little brother. I knew you'd need a refill. I have your testosterone gel, too. What's your locker combo? I can leave it in there.

He smiled. He used both hands to type this time, not wanting to give her the wrong number.

D: 04-03-04

D: thnks so much jazz youre a lifesaver

J: Anytime.

J: I love you.

He stopped in the hallway a few feet from his locker, looking up at the swath of people filing in and out. Jazz was already there, with his locker open. She's changed into school clothes at lightning speed, looking so put together that anyone else would miss the red rims around her eyes. She put a package in the locker, then closed it. Danny looked down to his phone.

D: i love you too

He heard Jazz's phone go off with a soft chirp, keeping her hand on the door as she slipped it from her back pocket. She looked down at the screen with a smile. She must be exhausted to look that fond and soft at such a simple message.

Danny backed away to go to his first class.

Malls have become dead artifacts of a bygone age. Tucker's dad always called Amity Park a "slowly rotting corpse" ever since whatever market that kept their city in business took off, and he thought of the mall as an extension of that. It's a sign that at one point, they thrived, but now they've got worms in their bones the shape of forever-empty rented spaces. They're becoming a ghost town.

The ghosts actually showing up made that less fun of an idea, but he knew at least one of them wanted to help people, so he's not keen on writing the entire species off. It's a novel topic now, and since it's been exactly one day since they all got back to school, Tucker thought it'd be the perfect opportunity to get the resident ghost family's point of view on the whole situation.

Danny Fenton, however, seemed eager to talk about anything else. "I'm just saying I don't see the appeal." He sat in the food court with his face buried in the high collar of his anorak, twisting the straw of his smoothie between gloved fingers. "Alright, ghosts are real. Yay. Why is this cause for celebration?"

Sam had a similar posture, glancing behind them every so often like she expected a ghost to jump out and scold them for talking about it. After she explained her visit from a teen spirit on the second weirdest ride home Tucker ever had, he couldn't blame her. "It's definitely a point of contention," she said, more mild mannered than anything that's left her mouth before.

Danny noticed with a small frown. "You don't need to walk on eggshells around me, you know."

"Whaaat?" Sam's eyebrow twitched nervously. "I'm not—I'm just being friendly."

"I mean it. Sidney isn't going to mess with you."

"Who's Sidney?" Tucker asked.

Danny shifted in his seat, biting his lip. "Uh, the ghost from yesterday. He went after Sam for...bullying me." He spoke the last words in a tiny whisper, then stopped twisting his straw to tangle the hair at the back of his neck. "He came to see me today and apologized. It was kinda weird, but he said something about another ghost? I guess there are rules that phantoms follow and we don't know, but everything sounds sorted."

"Like he's going to leave you alone?"

"Kind of? I think he'll still show up if he thinks that someone's going too far on me, but it applies to everyone. Apparently he hates when students hurt each other in his school." Danny shrugged, like he's discussing a difference in movie opinions, not the existence of supernatural forces. "I'm just trying to stay away from all that stuff. It's too much of a hassle."

Sam leaned in, more comfortable to show her interest. "So you never saw Phantom?"

"Is that who he talked to?"

Tucker kicked Sam under the table. "I mean, we've never seen him, so we don't know for sure. It was just a guess."

Danny smiled wryly. "Don't worry about hiding it from me. She spilled while trying to drag me into an argument." He jutted his thumb glibly at Sam, who stared at her veggie shake instead. "She said that you saw Phantom leaving my folks' house and, if I had to guess, you're how he escaped."

"Oh."

"Yeah, I wouldn't go announcing that if I were you. You're lucky the rumors about how ghost eager I am are just rumors." He sucked on his straw for a long moment, giving them both pointed looks, before inelegantly changing the topic. "So, we got food after school. Well, smoothies. Is there anything else we're supposed to do?"

"Most people don't go to the mall for the food court and leave without buying anything." Sam reached into a purse with black lace decorations on it, pulling a credit card out of a zipper. "Come on, we have to get you a better coat than that."

"I like this jacket!" Danny replied defensively. "It's cool."

"You look like you're in a space western," Tucker noted.

"Exactly!"

"Hmmm." Sam considered that with a finger tapping her chin. "I guess you'd look good in a visual kei style."

"A what?"

Tucker patted his shoulder consolingly. "Sam knows a lot about fashion. You just have to go with it. Give her some makeover time and you'll be fine."

"Tuck always refuses the clothes I want to buy him even though he'd kill in them." Sam stood, holding her card between her fingers like she's going to flick it across the food court. "Come on, my parents expect me to burn through their money. Let me get you something good."

Danny considered that, even though Tucker would've been running away and screaming by now. "I could certainly expand my wardrobe," he mused eventually.

Sam grabbed them both and pulled them out of their chairs, dragging them away from their table with three cups left behind.

Chapter Text

Sam had an underhanded goal to taking them shopping. Danny looked unsure of himself as she shoved him into random coats and shirts, but she dragged the admission out of him he only had one jacket and three shirts, so she had little choice. At the bare minimum, he needs something that doesn't drag below his knees.

"I don't need you to provide clothes for me," Danny informed her, staring at the button up he obviously didn't like. "I'm fine."

"Come on, fashion's fun. We're not even in the expensive store." Since the mall started losing its footing as a social gathering place, more and more fronts shut down, to where the biggest area with two floors was a thrift shop. She loved digging through their stacks for anything black, although now she's trying to give him more color. He kept shrinking away from pure black and white whenever she offered it, anyway.

Tucker grunted, running his fingers across a row of sleeves. "You should just let it happen. Her love language is gift giving."

"Love languages were made up by a preacher trying to—"

"—enforce hetero-normative gender roles in romantic relationships, I know, it's just an expression." Tucker lifted a hoodie with the poster of a movie from the nineties plastered on the front. "What about this, Danny? This seems right up your alley."

Danny snorted, barely glancing at it before going back to refusing the sweater Sam held up next. "That series is terrible."

"Dude. It's like the movie franchise about bringing the dead back through science," Tucker emphasized.

"Yeah, but the books are better. Like, so much better it's stupid." Danny backed away from the starry pattern she offered. "I appreciate the thought of giving me things that I would like, but isn't the point that wearing sci-fi junk all the time makes me look weird?"

"Weird?" Sam pointed to her black dress with matching boots. "I only put something on if it has black in it."

Tucker nodded, pulling at his hat. "I wear a beret everywhere."

"You're going to have to tell your folks what happened at some point."

"They haven't noticed yet, and they won't notice until I'm dead in the ground."

"We can't just wait for it to fade."

Danny glanced between them in confusion. "What's going on?"

Sam gestured to Tucker like a dramatic showman, stepping back with an evil grin. He sighed, almost world weary, and began. "For Halloween, we thought it'd be fun to dress up as characters from—okay, now it sounds dumb, but it seemed like a good idea then. So we had the costumes and everything, we just had to change our hair, and since Sam would be in this long wig, I could just make mine white, and then we start on the whole dreads-mohawk thing. We...didn't get that far."

Danny nodded along, arms crossed seriously, then stopped at the last sentence. "No."

"I blame Sam. She said it's easy to dye it-"

"Dude, not my fault that the bleach was too harsh!" Sam sniped back. "It's bleach."

"You bleached it?" Danny asked in a strangled tone.

"How else do you make black hair white hair?"

Danny's face scrunched up, grabbing them both by the sleeves to pull out of the store. "Forget the clothes. I'm fixing your hair."

"I'm not letting Sam near—wait, you?"

"Yeah, you?" Sam echoed.

"I know how to dye hair without killing it. Your texture's probably different, but we can figure that out." Danny glanced over like he could scrutinise it under the hat. "How far did you get in bleaching it?"

"I still think we did the color right, but Tuck saw how pale it got and chickened out before we could do the cutting," Sam informed him.

"Sorry that I saw how irreversible it is and realized my parents will kill me," Tucker muttered.

"Well, just tell them you were hanging out with the freak kid and I made you do it." Danny didn't seem to understand how concerning of a sentence that is, dropping Sam's arm to tap something into his phone. "I can't fix it if you damaged your hair to hell and back, especially since you know more about your texture than me, but I can try to make it salvageable. If it's not obviously snow colored, you could pass it off as a trend, right?"

"You want to try another color?"

"I mean, you got a blank canvas. It'd be a good opportunity. See, there are colors you can choose that won't get weird on the curls." Danny held his phone out, Sam slotting her chin onto Tucker's shoulder to see the brands he was scrolling through. They did all have coiled hair on the boxes. "Of course, we could also just dye it back to black before your parents find out. As long as you aren't hiding bleach burns under that hat and let someone who has done this before handle it, you'll be golden."

"And you have done this before?" Tucker asked uncertainly.

"Yeah. My parents never gave a shit if we messed with our hair, as long as we didn't shave our heads. There're tons of cons that my sister took me to where it was better to dye my hair than to spend all that money on styling a wig. I did hers too, the few times we wanted to match."

Sam nudged Tucker in a teasing way. "You have a professional on your hands. You could fulfill your dream of rainbow braids."

"Don't do that!" Tucker squawked.

"I don't think I could," Danny replied, still going through his phone. "I really only know how to do one color. Maybe streaks? We tried that once, and it didn't look that good, but maybe it was just how the colors looked on her hair specifically."

"I'm not rocking a clownfro, dude. No way." Tucker grabbed his phone to swipe through the boxes. "Just-just take me to wherever you get this junk and fix it."

"Sam." Danny pointed towards the mall exit with a serious look. "Supermarket."

She retrieved her keys from her purse and flicked them at Tucker. "Nope. Danny's trying to get out of me buying him clothes, I can feel it. You two fix Snow White, but I'm still expanding your wardrobe. Tucker knows where my house is and how to get in without my mom knowing. Use my bathroom. It's already stained, so she won't notice a few more marks."

"How are you getting back?"

"I know ghosts made this place less walkable, but it's still Amity Park. I will not get accosted in the middle of the day if I take the twenty minutes by myself."

Danny glanced between them, suddenly hesitating. Tucker just whooped at being given permission to drive her car. "Come on, Danny, before she remembers what happened last time!"

She waved them off with a smile. This kid doesn't want her to give him clothes? Too bad. He just lost his chance to be the judge over them, and he already admitted to his sizes. Also, her mom only cares when she spends too much on her own closet. In her words, "buying nice things for others is a business investment for their trust". It's a bit of a negative way to look at gift giving, but it gives Sam a blank check. She backed into the store before the boys could realize how big of a mistake they made.

Jazz wasn't stalking her brother, and even if what she was doing would normally be considered "stalking", these are out of the ordinary circumstances, so she should be allowed to do as she wants. He was dodgy about where he's staying, except with friends, and he doesn't have friends, but he definitely didn't sneak back home. She slept in his room last night to be sure. No Danny.

She saw him leave with two kids in his class that afternoon, so maybe he picked up some buddies. The main issue is that Jazz knows these two, at least anecdotally. Sam Manson got held back a year for serious emotional problems in middle school, according to her old classmate Ashley Williams who Jazz plays soccer with. Jazz knew it probably had to do with her home life, as it does with plenty of kids, but her attitude problem's yet to improve. Tucker Foley has a better track record of being nice to people, but for a fourteen-year-old boy, that "kindness" consists of not sexually harassing the girls or getting caught cheating on a test. She knows all the other kids who volunteer for tutoring and Tucker makes a steady circuit through their tables like a D's a passing grade. Neither of them would be good influences on her brother if she takes the school gossip as gospel.

She needs to see for herself if they're actually nice people. Principal Ishiyama called her in when her parents never answered the phone, saying that someone's been picking on Danny, and if it's these two, and he's living with them—

What if he just went from one awful emotional situation to another, and can't ask for help? He's stubborn like that, refusing to say a word until he's about to have a panic attack. No way. She waited far enough away at the mall for them to not see her, watching them split with Danny and Tucker walking out while Sam goes back to the stores. That is the one she was more concerned about, so this works out for her. She can observe without her brother finding out. Jazz closed the distance once Sam turned the corner, entering the store and using the racks to cover up her trail.

Beep beep.

Jazz froze at the sound, ducking away before Sam could see her. At least she's behind a wall. She stayed flush with the cream bricks as she looked down at the device on her wrist. She hates Fentonworks technology, but ghosts are real now, and she needs to know where they are. They can track ectoplasm, but it's impossible to differentiate trace amounts, natural reservoirs, and actual ghosts from each other. Her parents explained ad nauseam how naturally generating ectoplasm comes from the decay of animals, so if she's in something like a forest, she can ignore it.

Why, though, is it going off in a shopping mall?

She tapped the screen. Okay, so she didn't pay attention to how her family tracks how much ectoplasm is "a lot". Is twenty rhines a lot, or a little? It's enough for the sensor to go off. So is there a ghost here? Maybe there was a ghost around recently? Wait, it jumped to twenty-five rhines, so whoever this is moved—

"Jazz, right?"

She startled, looking over at Sam, who was now awkwardly standing opposite of her behind a rack of coats. "Yeah. Hi." She looked down at the sensor, then slapped her hand over the screen before it became obvious what she's looking at. "I'm Jazz. You're Sam, I think?"

"Yep." She leaned back on her heels, then forward again, her hands hidden by a shirt folded over them still on the hanger. "What are you doing here?"

"Um." Jazz opened her mouth, closed it, and hoped her brain would switch back on soon. "Looking for clothes."

Sam nodded slowly with her lips pressed together. Jazz wouldn't believe what she said, either, but she wanted it to be convincing.

"Okay, fine. I was..." Jazz rubbed her hand on her wrist, feeling the dumb gadget that got her in trouble and holding out her arm to show it. "My-my parents made me take this out to random spots in town. They said I need to test if places are more-more haunted? I guess?" She shoved away the frown at Sam's immediate look of interest. If Danny's trying to get away from ghost stuff, he shouldn't be around people who want to know it, right? "Do you care about this? You know, ectobiology?"

"And parapsychology. I've been trying to learn more, since." Sam gestured vaguely at the air, like that would solve anything. "It's cool, in a way. Not that bad."

"Not that bad," Jazz echoed. She internally jumped to disagree, especially with the chilly-breathed maw that nearly swallowed her up. However, now's not the time to pass judgment. Talking to Sam directly would be a great way to see if she's as belligerent as other people say. "Well, I'm done doing the reading for the mall. Any chance I can help you out?"

Sam blinked, not expecting that pivot. "Well, I don't want to distract you-"

"Are you kidding? I've never been given a more boring task in my life, and I'm an AP student." Jazz laughed forcefully, trying to channel her father's way of clapping anyone on the back who isn't enthusiastic enough to agree with him. "That shirt looks like it came from the men's. Let me guess, you got sick of them slicing the bottom off of every women's shirt?"

"I'm shopping for someone else."

"In that case, it's even better to have two people helping, right?" Jazz pressed her hands together and batted her eyelashes prettily. Being a Fenton meant that for her to get friends, she had to study perfection like an art form. No one can resist the charm of an over eager over achiever, not when she needs it to work so badly.

Sam didn't have time to put walls up in defense, instead swept along while Jazz had her in her clutches. She's going to pick this girl apart, both on why she has trace amounts of ghost on her, and what she thinks she's doing around Danny.

In a nice way! She harbors no ill will, and she'd never do anything to hurt anyone. It's just to keep her little brother safe.

Tucker knew he was making friends with the "weird kid", and that meant they'd probably, as a direct consequence, do weird stuff. He didn't think hair dye would be under that umbrella, but it was Sam's fault. It was nice of Danny to offer to help, even if he see why he bothered. Most people would have kept laughing at his misfortune like Sam did, and tell him to man up and show his parents how badly he beefed it.

"It's not ruined, exactly," Danny said, black nitrile gloves already smothered in dye while he held a paintbrush-like-thing and smeared more color into his head. "You bleached it pretty well given you were doing it at home like idiots. I mean, doing that for your first dye job is—well, it's kinda crazy. Not like we can take it back, though."

Tucker stayed scrunched up in front of the mirror like a pill bug, staring at it with a towel around his torso and his hair—they went way too hard on the bleach, and it's obvious. When they first did it, Sam looked at a video that told them to put it all in twists first, and he kept it that way as long as possible. Now he's watching it get slicked down with darker tones that he felt sure would wash out immediately without changing him. "You're saying I could've dyed it without bleaching it?"

"I mean, I don't know exactly what would happen, but it's much better to dye it without bleach first to test it. Bleaching your hair, by definition, damages it, so anything you can do before that is better. It should be your last resort, not your first idea. My mom used to bleach her hair, and it was awful for it, so she always gave us a lecture before we did it, like we'd forget the twentieth time we bought dye that we shouldn't do that, too." Danny held up the color with an appraising look, the maroon still seeping into his scalp like blood. "I like the shade you picked. It won't fool anyone about being natural, though. You sure your parents won't be mad?"

"To be honest, I think they already know why I keep wearing a hat everywhere. I just want to look less dumb when I show them." He squinted, struggling to see without his glasses. The slickness of someone massaging glorified oil into his head made it hard to concentrate. "You're positive red will look good?"

"You're too warm to go blue, and blonde will make you look like a jock, so it's kind of your only option. It'll be fine." Danny flicked the brush to wave him off, instead spatting dye onto the grout in the floor. "Oops."

"Don't worry. Pretty sure Sam has actual blood stuck between these tiles."

"That sounds worrying."

"Well." Tucker felt the patient pull at the nape of his neck, obediently tipping his chin down to get the baby hairs shaded in. "You remember what Sam said about Phantom, right?"

Danny tugged a little too hard out of his view. "Uh, yeah. Something about, like, helping him escape?"

"We did a little more than that." Tucker stared at the tile, the bathroom mat moved away since it was obviously one Sam liked. He didn't know why he bothered saying anything, except that it felt like a violation to get this close to someone with only half a secret between them. "He was hurt. Bleeding."

"Didn't think a ghost could bleed."

"Yeah, it's green stuff, but it's basically blood. I know she cleaned it up." Tucker snorted, remembering her half-angry texts later that night. "She still can't figure out how to get it out of the towels she used."

"Egg whites."

"What?" Tucker raised his head, feeling Danny draw back before he could paint down his back. He could see Danny's hesitation in the mirror, twisting the brush between his fingers.

"Green stuff—it has to be ectoplasm, right? My parents are the pioneers in finding practical applications for it, so they—we—worked with it a lot. It stains practically everything, but egg whites can—well, not just egg whites. It depends on the material. It's the best solution for clothing."

"What about not clothing?"

"Like the floor? Potato starch would probably do it. I always left it for a few minutes, then scrubbed it off with soap and water."

"Huh." Tucker let Danny work for a minute, watching him slowly relax again. Ghost stuff set his friend on edge in the weirdest ways. He doesn't care about acknowledging their existence, but admitting he knows anything about them seems to make him dodgy. Maybe he can feel his way into that being a safer topic. "It's cool that you know that sorta stuff."

"I wanted to be useful." Danny shrugged, pressing down in the center of Tucker's head to part his hair for more color. It doesn't look like he grew a cloud on his head anymore, which is good, but he loathed the idea of doing this multiple times. "My parents were pretty smart about it at first. I was pretty much a lab assistant for a while, cleaning stuff and taking notes when their hands were busy. So I learned how to get stains out."

"How old were you?"

"Ten, I think?" He paused to count on his fingers, then gave up and went back to coloring. "Once I got into middle school, they trusted me to handle the equipment for real. I could help with ideas, I got to check their work after school, whenever something was too broken they'd let me mess around to try and fix it..." Danny looked up with bright eyes and said, "you know, my parents tried to build a portal to the Ghost Zone before, but it was my idea to—"

He stopped, clamping his mouth shut with sudden clarity.

"Your idea to what?" Tucker pressed.

"Nothing. It's-it's dumb." Danny leaned over to get the hair behind Tucker's ear. He could feel something just beyond his grasp, and Tucker took pride in his nosiness. He tilted his head away to make it harder for Danny to reach.

"I will not let you call yourself dumb, dude. You're not dumb." Tucker crossed his arms under the towel, trying to look tougher than he is. "You're stupid smart. I'm sure whatever you thought of was a great idea."

"Thanks." It sounded hollow, like when kids have to practice saying it to learn their manners. Danny swallowed, leaning back and pointing at Tucker's phone. "The hardest part of hair coloring is getting the timing right. You set a timer, you get in the shower to rinse and condition, then—"

"We went over this like ten times, I know." Tucker unlocked the screen and swiped to the clock. "What do you want to do while we wait?"

"Honestly? Try to get the hair dye off the floor. And the counter."

"Boring, we're watching trailers on my phone. They dropped a non-cinematic for the new Star Wars game while we were at the mall and it felt like torture to not ignore both of you and watch it."

"Wait, for real?" Danny pulled off his gloves behind his back, which was really weird, but he already had these cottony ones on in a blink when he slid next to Tucker to look at the screen. "I thought that was happening tomorrow."

"It's been a crazy week. Makes sense you forgot." Tucker felt the weight of a friend on his shoulder, colder than Sam, but she always ran hot, so that could be normal. This was shockingly normal. He needed it after all the ghost business.

Given what Danny told him about his home life, it sounds like he needs it, too.

Chapter Text

Sam's not a fool. She's had enough stilted conversations with her mom to know when someone's borderline interrogating her. When looking at how she treated Danny previously, she guessed she deserved it a bit.

However, Jazz has some questions that are nosey to the extreme. She asked about school, her extracurriculars, if she's trying out for track and field this spring since she's in cross country for the fall...Sam had her teeth grinding into nubs trying to keep quiet. It's no different from the parties her mom forces her into. She can handle this.

Until Jazz found a nice little wound to twist the knife into. It started innocently enough, her wide eyes ticking over the growing pile of clothes that Sam tugged together to avoid her. Seriously, does anyone have a more bug-eyed expression than Jazz Fenton? It's like staring at an owl. "Do you have any siblings?"

"No." Sam's reaching the end of her patience, one eyebrow twitching. Of course she doesn't have any siblings, and Jazz should know that, since they've all been trapped in the same few street corners since they were in diapers. It'd be weirder if she had more people in her family, hiding in her attic like a gothic novel.

"What about other relatives? A lot of cousins that visit often?"

"Why are you asking?"

"Every time I pass your house on the way to school, I notice how big it is. I thought maybe you had a bunch of guest rooms for family or something like that."

"Nope." Sam shook her head, extricating herself in favor of walking toward the registers. She couldn't find the thread of thought that lead to her house, of all things. "Just me and Mom in a big manor."

"Huh." Jazz looked down at her wrist gadget again as she followed. Clearly, she thought Sam didn't notice how often she did that. Sam stopped at the counters where they could check out, pretending to be busy untangling her haul of shirts while she studied the watch out of the corner of her eye. Its green face only displayed a number, one that kept changing every time Sam snuck a peek. There had to be a correlation.

Jazz leaned on the counter, sliding her arms closer to Sam. The number increased from thirty-five to thirty-six. Sam looked up from the screen at the same time as Jazz, who made eye contact for half a second before snapping her gaze straight ahead. She's not scanning the mall. She's scanning Sam.

"You're lucky the rumors about how ghost eager I am are just rumors." Danny's warning from earlier drifted in her head. She always thought Jazz was the one trying to be normal, move away from the Fentons' reputation by any means necessary, while Danny followed in his parents' footsteps as a mad scientist. What if it was the other way around? What if Jazz was great at hiding it, but she's got the nutcase gene clearly swimming around their pool?

But she only told Danny that she harbored Phantom at her house, and he would know if Jazz isn't trustworthy with that information. He wouldn't tell her, right?

Then again, she spoke to the Fentons directly and intentionally misled them on Phantom's location. It doesn't take a genius to figure out she's where their search went wrong. Deducing that she could hide a ghost in her giant house with no other witnesses was easy as pie.

She needs to excuse herself, fast. Sam swiped her card as steadily as she could before picking up her bags. "It was nice talking to you, Jazz, but I should be going."

"Here, let me help you." Jazz took two of them before she could say no.

"I'm fine—"

"I can at least take it to your car."

"I don't have my car."

"Then I can drive you home. I know your place and it's a bit far to walk with all of this, right?"

Sam pressed her lips in a thin line, trying to find an out. Jazz made everything sound so convenient and kind, but something here stinks. Sam doesn't know what yet. Maybe Jazz wants to scout possible hideouts for Phantom? Or could she be trying to get a reading of her house, too?

She hates when people pretend to be nice just to get something. It makes it impossible to tell them no without being suspicious. "Of course, you're so right," she managed, scraping together a smile. "Lead the way."

Jazz got nothing from Sam by speaking directly. However, she gained peripheral information by literally standing next to her. The stupid watch would lose numbers the farther she drifted from Sam, and then increase again when she got close. Rhines, whatever they were, were probably like becquerels or curies, where everyone has a small measurement of radiation as a baseline carbon being. Her parents must've accounted for that, since standing by herself set the counter at zero rhines.

But she shouldn't be too concerned. Radiation is caused by all kinds of things, ectoplasmic radiation included. Maybe Sam isn't around ghosts a lot, and she doesn't have to worry about that as a new danger to Danny. Maybe she lives somewhere that has a higher natural ectoplasm concentration than the surrounding area. It's not like Jazz has ever scanned Shelley Circle before, and it could give her some peace of mind.

So now she's got Sam in her passenger seat, pulling up to the Manson house and already out of the driver's side before she could be told to stay put. She opened up the back, grabbing her share of luggage and already walking up to the door. Sam had to run to keep up, which must be dangerous in boots that tall.

"I can unlock it."

Jazz nodded politely, stepping to the side and leaning on the marble railing at the top of the steps. Sam dug through her skirt pockets until she found a keyring with a rubber spider on it, shoving the house key in and quickly opening the door. Jazz narrowed her eyes at how she only opened it halfway, trying to slide in quickly. Jazz put her arm on the wooden door and opened it fully, stepping in behind her. "Thanks, Sam."

Sam startled, like she didn't know Jazz was still behind her. The house was the unsettling mixture of decadent and impersonal, eggshell walls covered in plant specimens in picture frames and rich oil paintings. The stained wood on the staircase immediately in front of her looked like it could be one smooth piece upward, the mimicry of Persian carpet flawless red in its slope to the left where it disappeared to the upper floor. She couldn't see a hint of living residents, family photos or personal belongings, not until she heard shoes skipping down the stairs and stop halfway. Danny's smile dropped as soon as he saw her, and Jazz felt her heart sink with it.

"Hey, Danny." Sam waved awkwardly. "Is he still up there?"

Danny nodded mutely.

"That's great. Uh, so I guess—Jazz, you should—"

"I need to take Danny home." Jazz saw his hands flex at his sides, trying not to flinch.

Danny moved one foot back up the stairs, beginning his sentence with, "I'm sure Mom and Dad won't mind if I hang out here for the night—"

"—did you do your homework?" Jazz interrupted.

"...No."

"You know the rules, Danny." She swayed a little, trying to look calm while her heart beat a mile a minute. "If you want a GPA as perfect as mine, you have to stay on top of both studying and homework. The university you were looking at doesn't take slackers. So, either you stay with me after school at the library to study and then hang out with your friends, or you come with me at night and study then."

Danny crossed his arms indignantly. "You have practice and a tutoring job. You can't keep me every day."

"It doesn't matter what's going on, I'll make time for my baby brother." Jazz dropped her bags, taking the few steps to tussle Danny's hair. She leaned in like she was teasing him, turning so Sam couldn't see her grave look. "We don't have to go home to do it, either."

He caught on with a small flicker in his eye. It was odd how they could be so bright, a paler blue than she thought they were, but the exhaustion tinting his skin grey made his demeanor so dark. "You're sure they won't miss you?"

You. Not us. She hated it. "Mom and Dad are out for the night, and I owe you Nasty Burger," she lied. "Come on. If I don't have a double-double in my hand in ten minutes, I think I'll die."

"I would be relatively upset if you died," he conceded, heading toward the door.

"Relatively?"

"Five out of ten on the pain scale." Danny upturned his lips slightly, patting Sam on the shoulder. "I'll come over again tomorrow and give you a little fashion show, promise."

"After you finish your homework," Jazz asserted.

"Wednesdays are soccer practice."

"Yeah, that gives you an hour to do it. Then I need to see it, then you can go."

"Fine." Danny rolled his eyes as Sam shoved them both out.

Wait. Shoot, Jazz forgot to scan the house. She looked down at her watch. Apparently, their front door is at a whopping fifty rhines, although she didn't see how. Is the inside even more contaminated?

"What's that?" Danny asked, gesturing without stepping any closer.

"Mom finished the thing that measures ectoplasmic radiation in areas." Jazz let him see, tapping the screen as the count crawled upward. "Is fifty-two rhines a little or a lot?"

"It's..." Danny drifted off, audibly swallowing before shaking his head. "It's broken, is what it is. There's no way Sam's house has that reading."

"Why?"

Danny turned on his heel, smoothly stretching his rail thin legs over the stairs in one bound. "Because fifty rhines would kill someone." The way he said it was too emotionless, stripped of meaning like a screw tightened too many times. He's never been this disinterested in the scientific side of the paranormal, and while it may be because of whatever happened with the portal...

Jazz had an aching feeling he was lying. She followed him to the car, watching him sling his backpack into the floorboard and rest his feet on top of it. She didn't even notice him grab it the first time around. When she sat down and turned on the ignition, he spoke again.

"You're really not taking me home?"

She looked at Danny. Every bit of him that would be average for anyone else she just saw as another sign something was wrong. His greasy hair could be him forgetting to bathe, but Danny showered every day before applying his testosterone. The acne sprouting on his cheeks looked picked at, like he couldn't keep his hands off when he worried about other things. He had gloves on when he was indoors all day, and he's looping a stray thread on one hand between his knuckles like a lifeline. She didn't know how he could lose so much tone to his skin in so few days, and every part of his face that should be flushed red if he's cold stayed the same waxy pale as the rest of him.

Jazz placed her palm against his cheek, her fingers brushing his hair while her thumb scraped the divot near his eye. He wasn't prepared, his shoulders drawing together and his eyes squeezing shut like he waited for something.

What did he think she was going to do? Was there a part of him expecting a blow across the face? Where did that come from? Who did that come from?

His skin was warm. Of course it was warm, since it's her brother, but it almost burned to touch. He's alive, and he's here, and he's not out of reach yet.

"Do you remember when you tried to run away in third grade?"

Danny opened his eyes, slowly threading his eyebrows together. "A little bit. I remember it raining."

"It wasn't raining. It was sleet. Our parents missed your starring role as the Big Bad Wolf in The Three Little Pigs—"

"I don't think it's a starring role when there were five wolves and four of us were basically backup singers for Valerie when she got to blow all the houses down."

"Well, you told them you were leaving forever, and I come home from soccer practice to you missing. I asked them where you went, and Mom insisted you were just hiding to prove a point, but I turned the whole house upside down trying to find you and I couldn't."

"In her defense, most of the time when I was upset with them, I solved it by hiding." Danny didn't sound sure of himself, breaking out of her hold to twist his hair in a knot.

"But when it got dark, and there was frozen rain coming down, and this town is hard enough to navigate when you can see, was it our parents who ran down every street with a flashlight and a Pikachu umbrella trying to find you?"

"What happened to that umbrella, anyway?"

"Danny." Jazz edged a warning into her tone, waiting until he made eye contact to keep speaking. "You can leave that house for as small a reason as no one watching your play, and I'm still going to go out and find you. I'm not here to bring you home." She pulled his hand up on the center console, squeezing it with both of hers. "I'm here to make sure you're not alone."

He swallowed thickly, blinking a few times. It took a minute for him to pull away, choosing to look out the window instead.

"Now." She cleared her throat, wiping at the edges of her eyes. "You must be cold if your skin's boiling like that. I'm going to assume you don't want a milkshake with your burger?"

"They have hot chocolate." He sounded choked up, sniffing a bit. "It's not very good, though."

"That's true." She should've pulled out of their space by now, but her vision's too watery to drive. "I could...we could stop somewhere else for good hot chocolate. I mean, MacReady's Cafe is open until midnight and if it's on the way to where you're staying, we could go there. You still like their drinks, right?"

"I do. You can leave me there after dinner."

"Oh." She didn't intend to sound hurt, but the syllable crumpled under the weight like wet paper.

"Not because I don't want you seeing where I go." Danny sniffed again, rubbing his face before he turned back. He seemed devoid of tears, if Jazz ignored the bloodshot eyes. "I just—I'm still fixing up my spot. If-if you give me a-a week, I could show you."

"Are you sure, Danny?"

"I trust you." He tried to smile, but it became crooked and toothy. "I don't want you to worry because I'm still working on it. I'm fine, really."

Someone who's fine doesn't run away from home.

Someone who's fine doesn't flinch when a hand comes near his face.

Someone who's fine doesn't cry because his sister said she'll choose him over their parents if she has to make that choice.

"I believe you."

Chapter Text

"A week wasn't enough." Danny drifted from the second floor to the first, his tail dragging down the stairs as he worried over the warped wallpaper. "You're sure that people won't notice us redirecting the power?"

"They wired this place up with electricity and water ages ago, they just shut it off. Any time we turn it on, they'll chalk it up to ghostly riffraff. Which ain't wrong." Sidney walked out of the maintenance closet, wiping his hands on a rag despite there being no residue on him. "I already switch it when you leave for school, so it's no big."

"No lead in the pipes? No exposed asbestos? No moldy floors?"

"I took care of that as soon as you moved in, squirt. Why're you askin' now?"

"Jazz'll be here any minute, and if I have so much as a rusty nail around here, she'll freak." Danny rested his paws on the floorboards, wincing as they creaked from age. "She's like you, Sidney. I don't want her worrying about me."

"I think it's swell you have someone else watching your back."

"Thanks, but if she thinks my back's going to get infected, we're busted." Danny was finally in a routine he didn't want to break up, after all. He goes to school, stays with Jazz after school for homework, and then either gets picked up by Sam for a hangout or slips off for some Phantom time. He'd prefer to go on a relaxing flight, but he keeps getting sidetracked by people running from new ghosts, the smell of their fear pulling him in so he can't ignore it. He has to take the thermos everywhere now, although he can't figure out where to put it.

He still hasn't seen them. He can slip away when he hears the tires screeching around the block to catch him, but that won't last forever. They'll cross paths again, especially if he and Sidney hanging around the old schoolhouse is setting off sensors. Danny hid his little alcove in the building in preparation for that, although he now had to make it human accessible so Jazz could see it.

"So since she thinks ghosts are dangerous, and I'm trying to tell her I'm perfectly safe here..." Danny pressed long claws together in a pleading motion. "Can you please stay out of sight?"

"Heard ya loud 'n clear." Sidney saluted with two fingers, dropping it to add, "though I do think you should tell her what happened. It'll be good for you."

"Yeah, we'll get to bond over how I got myself killed and now I'm not safe in my own house." Danny shook his head, switching to a body that won't scare his sister. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of a new jacket courtesy of Sam, red, orange, and white with 02 printed on it to mimic the uniform from an old anime. He pulled out gloves to cover the marks on his hands, then turned on mismatched canvas shoes in a circle for Sidney to check. "This good? Everything fine?"

"You need a belt."

"These don't really have belt loops."

Sidney wrinkled his nose, then waved his hands dismissively. "She's right outside the back door. Have fun." With that, he faded away.

Danny only had a few paces between the staircase and the back entrance of the old schoolhouse, opening it to Jazz standing there wide-eyed with a sealed cardboard box in her arms. "Hey."

"Uh, hi." She angled her body to look behind him, down the dark hallway. She must've come right from soccer practice, her uniform smudged with grass stains and braided hair stuck to one shoulder with sweat. "This is it?"

"This is it." He let her in and closed the door behind her, wiping off his hands on his pants when the paint left crumbles on his fingertips. "I know it's a weird spot, but it means I'm never late for class, right?"

"Yeah." Jazz shifted her stance, moving the box from one arm to another. "I packed up a bunch of stuff for you and left it in the car. We can go get it after the tour."

"You did? Thanks." He took the box, leading her to the staircase already glowing with buzzing fluorescent lights. "I picked the second floor so no one can find me. You can just leave the boxes in the main hallway and I'll move them up later, though."

"No way. I'm helping."

"You were just tackling goalies for an hour. You need a break."

"What position do you think I play?"

"...Goalie tackler?"

"I'm a center back. I don't tackle the goalie, no one tackles the goalie, they do the tackling. I keep people away from the goalie."

"Is that why you never score points?"

"That's not a defender's job."

"It'd be cool, though."

"Eh." Jazz tripped behind him, catching herself before he could drop the box and help her. The second they were off the stairs, she moved to be walking next to him down echoing halls, leaning forward to speak with interest. "So, how did you even get in here?"

"It was unlocked." After he phased through the wall and unlocked it, of course. "This building wasn't, like, condemned, or anything. I think they just closed it for the new school building after World War II? And when I was poking around, it really looked like they kept trying to open this place up again, but they'd abandon the project every couple of years and start over. It's kinda cool. They had a working fridge in the breakroom, and I think I can make the microwave work too if I spend some time on it this weekend."

"Please don't take apart a microwave."

"It's perfectly safe, Jazz. No different from what I used to do with..." Danny felt a lump in his throat, swallowing before it could change the inflection of his voice. "Uh, anyway, I'm sleeping in this room."

He turned into the library, kicking the door open with his foot. At one point, it was shelves of abandoned books, tables surrounded by chairs, and a small alcove for a fireplace, strong rafters dripping with stocky lanterns. He's since cleared all that out, twisted off lamp chains hanging his starry comforter like a hammock. He still had a few bookshelves stacked with folded clothes and supplies and curled defensively where they could cut the room in half, one desk with a chair holding his laptop. It's not plugged in right now, since he wants to conserve power.

"How did you even move..." Jazz trailed off, looking the shelves up and down.

"Uh." He really just picked them up and put them back down where he needed them. Danny was suddenly glad he didn't let her explore at will, where she'd see all the tables he phased one floor below so he didn't have to deal with them. "I think they stole a lot of the stuff on one of their failed renovations. I pushed them until they made one big wall instead of being all crooked, since I don't like going to the other side. I don't need all that room, anyway."

"But what's over there?"

"Books, I guess. I threw them over the top when I was cleaning." Danny put the box down, dropping into a crouch to open it. "Pillows and blankets?"

"I noticed you didn't take yours except the comforter. There's no way this place is insulated well, and it's cold enough out to snow, so..." Jazz poked around his clothes, wrinkling her nose. "When's the last time you washed these?"

"That's the only thing I haven't figured out yet. I have gym showers, a place to store food, and plenty of safety stuff, but they never put a laundry room in a high school. Kinda sucks."

"I can do your laundry."

"Jazz—"

"You'll be pulled into the counselor's office if you stink, Danny. If you want to do this, you need to attract zero attention. It's not a big deal for me to grab your stuff Friday after school, and then bring it back Sunday morning when I'm coaching the little league." She stepped to the side, fingers dragging along the edges of the bookshelf, checking for hazards. "I brought all the clothes you didn't grab in my car. It'd just sit in your room otherwise."

"I didn't take everything in case Mom and Dad see it."

"They don't go in your room. Remember the tape trick we used to do for spy games?"

"Put clear tape on the door and only you know to remove it when you walk in so it doesn't break."

"Tape hasn't broken, so they're not opening the door. I waited until today to grab your stuff to make sure it didn't break." She looked over her shoulder as he unrolled the blankets. "I'm surprised they haven't contacted the school or something yet."

"I'm not." Danny kept his tone neutral as he checked the pillows, massaging one of them until it returned to its original star shape. "Dad doesn't know the school's number, and I bet Mom is in the lab all day, so she's got no time to tell them I'm gone."

"I don't mean informing them you're absent, I mean asking where you are." Jazz went to his side to pick up the blanket he left on the floor, carrying it to his hammock. "None of the teachers have tried to question you?"

"Nope. I'm invisible in most of my classes after they take attendance."

"And your friends?"

"They think I'm normal."

"You are normal."

He didn't have the heart to correct her. Instead, he waited until she turned around to give her a hug. "Thanks for helping out. And for-you know, not taking this opportunity to drag me back there."

"I trust your judgment, Danny." She moved to not be hugging him anymore, looking him in the eye as she held his elbows. "And if it makes you feel better, I promise I won't say a word to them until you're ready. I'll do everything I can to keep this from them."

"Seriously?"

"It won't be good for you to be worried about getting discovered all the time. At least with me, your secret's safe." She dropped her smile for a more serious look, pointing accusingly at the shelves. "Now, you grab every single piece of clothing that you've been wearing and put it in the box. It smells awful in here and I will not let you sleep in your own body odor. I have standards."

"Whatever you say, Jazz."

Jazz has come home to silence lately, long enough to get used to it. She always walked in, turned off the alarm, toed her shoes off at the door, locked the door, and made a beeline for her room to do her homework in peace. After dinner, she may hang out downstairs with Danny, but now there's no point on congregating in the living room.

Except she can hear the TV now. Nobody's sitting in front of it, but the volume's high enough to hear clearly all throughout the first floor. She walked over with her arms crossed, focus trained on the reporter babbling while smaller headlines ticked by on a red ribbon below.

"-ight of November first, our town became the Garden of Eden for ghosts and the deceased, marking territories on every street and endangering its inhabitants. In the past ten days, only one spirit has challenged the others." A pencil drawing appeared in the corner of the screen, labelled "ARTIST INTERPRETATION". It stood on hind legs with its tail dragging like an out-of-date dinosaur, charcoal gouging through the paper in huge swaths for the thin frame and lightening up to outline white fur. The head, skull like with deep rings around blank eyes, faced directly forward to stare at the viewer, long ears like horns and mouth slightly open, with sharp edges poking through. "We have yet to clearly photograph any ghosts, but this 'Phantom of Amity Park', as experts have named it, has witnesses across town supposedly challenging the territory of other spirits and, once victorious, disappearing." The reporter tilted her head slightly, barely looking down at the paper on her desk as she delivered a line she must be proud of. "So, is the Phantom acting as our shepherd, protecting us from wild animals that wish to feed, or is it the serpent in the garden, trying to trick us? Tonight we have our resident ectobiologists Madeline and Jack Fenton to answer-"

The screen went black, reflecting back Jazz's sour face as she held up the remote.

"We prepared all day yesterday for that interview."

Jazz looked into the kitchen, her father standing in front of the stove with a frying pan. He shifted it, flipping a pancake onto a waiting stack to his side, picking it up and smiling at her.

"Come on, Jazzy. I made you breakfast before school, just like old times."

She waited a beat for the punchline, then realized that he was being serious. "Dad, it's dinnertime. I already went to school. And soccer practice."

His grin slowly faded, looking down to his plate like a kicked puppy. "Oh. S-sorry, Jazzy. I guess we just lost track of time."

"Mm." She could see the same marks of tiredness in him as in Danny, but she didn't feel as bad about it. Jazz has barely spoken to them the past week, although that's not hard to do, since they only leave the lab for the ghost alarm these days. No wonder Danny had such an easy time slipping out.

But she promised she wouldn't tip off their parents, so she has to act like nothing's wrong. She took the pancakes from him, sitting down at the kitchen table already prepared with honey. Her dad put chocolate chips and strawberries in the pancakes, which made her pause.

Danny has chocolate chips, not her. She thinks it's too sweet.

"So, why'd you leave your cave?" She asked casually, ignoring the sinking feeling to dump more honey on her meal than is socially acceptable.

"I thought you'd want to know we made an incredible discovery." Dad puffed out his chest proudly. "While we always knew ectoplasm has multiple states of matter, in its gas form we can breathe it with minimal effects compared to more volatile substances."

"I see." She twirled her knife, pressing her pointer finger into the handle so she could cut as harshly as possible. "And you were testing this in case your supply blows up in our sleep, I'd assume?"

"We believe everything in the Ghost Zone is made of ectoplasm, so this means you could theoretically breathe in there forever. Of course, we have no evidence that you can metabolise ectoplasm properly enough to live off of it, but if we keep..."

Jazz had her shoulders up to her ears, staring at the food that she sawed away at and filling her hearing with the sound of silverware scraping against porcelain. She can only listen to him for so long before she wants to jump up and shake him, yelling for answers. Not yet. It's for Danny. She put a bite in her mouth. Too sweet. She may puke.

Another bite. Keep eating. Get enough in her stomach that she can leave. Just keep chewing and swallowing.

A huge hand rested on her back, every muscle underneath tensing automatically. She looked up at her father's searching expression. At least he stopped talking.

"I know it's hard, Jazzy. We're doing everything we can."

No he isn't. He hasn't contacted the school, he hasn't gone on the stupid megaphone in the RV and called for Danny in the streets, he hasn't tried to apologize for whatever happened. He hasn't closed the portal that caused this, somehow. He has done nothing.

"You remember what we told you, right?"

She could remember her mother, sitting at the table and speaking very sincerely without directly stating what happened. Her father kept pacing back and forth behind them, tacking on positive spins without context. "Danny can take care of himself, and not to worry about him."

"And that we'll get him back." Jazz was just as numb in this conversation as the first one. It doesn't make more sense than the first time, so why should she put some emotional stake in his words now?

"Jack!" Mom shouted from downstairs, interrupting his odd moment and giving Jazz an out. She practically ran to her room, twisting the lock behind her and jumping onto her bed face-first. Screaming into her pillow didn't help her feel better.

If she wasn't sure she'd get caught, she'd run away too. Pack up her bags, ask her brother if she can take the classroom down the hall. But they need one of them to stay here and cover for him. Also, laundry.

Danny wasn't stalking his sister, and even if what he was doing would be normally considered "stalking", these were out of the ordinary circumstances, so he should be allowed to do what he wants. There are ghosts out there. He knew he couldn't follow Jazz home every time she left when it got dark, but since he was the reason she's leaving so late, he feels responsible. It'll help his anxiety to see her home.

And then he got watched her walk into the house and realized, wait, this is the home of ghost hunters. He has spent so much time avoiding them he didn't consider checking if they're okay.

He shouldn't check if they're okay, they don't care if he's okay, they're probably planning to kill him again!

But on the other hand, what if they captured a ghost? Shouldn't he make sure they don't have prisoners? He can get through their "Fenton patented guaranteed to work ghost shield" if he dips underground, since they didn't think a spirit's smart enough to try that. Danny slid directly through to the lab, stopping when he saw a blue jumpsuit standing in front of a swirl of green.

A human by the portal. Maddie was taking notes on a tablet, scribbling with a stylus as the back light cut her into a harsh silhouette. She turned to look at it again, and the reflection in her goggles made him flinch. She wrote another sentence, then walked to the steel table she set up to the side of the lab. She picked up a white chain, glowing in the light and unsteady in its makeup, like it wasn't fully there. Both ends held shackles, one of which she opened to clip to a cinched bag, and the other she anchored to a ring on the floor a foot from the portal. Maddie spun the end with the bag like a sling, waiting until it was fast enough to blur before throwing it into the portal. She narrowed her eyes and stood waiting as the chain pulled taut.

Danny couldn't take his eyes off it. Is this prickling feeling deep in his gut what his parents felt when they saw him against the glow, not knowing what was going on? Did they have the urge to retch, too? Or are they somehow used to this, to random things spontaneously occurring that destroy everything?

He couldn't imagine what made her so sure of something so asinine. There's nothing in the Ghost Zone that could entice them anymore now that phantoms live here.

There's no reason for him to want the portal now that it's ruined his life. He shouldn't be considering their feelings on the matter. Danny can't relate to someone who would try to kill their own son after he spent so much time looking at them like a hero. He turned invisible and slid on the floor, belly low to the ground like a serpent as he prowled closer. He stopped when he was at her feet, glaring at her face. She kept watching the portal, like it had the fucking answer.

It never has the answer.

He's right there, next to his mother, who either doesn't realize what she did, or doesn't care. She's doing something completely unrelated, some dumbass test she would probably try regardless of how the portal came to be, and she doesn't bother with him.

If they really cared, they would've told Jazz already. It shouldn't be his job to say that he's dead. He should've showed up on that soccer field a week ago, and when Jazz saw him, she should've been crying with relief because he's alive and he's here and he's not out of reach yet. It never should be his burden to say that he's a ghost.

It's not his fault that he died. It's theirs.

They hurt him, they hurt Jazz, and they have the nerve to pretend to be protectors—

Danny hooked his claws into the chain, durable enough not to break but flexible enough to bend in his grip. Maddie startled, turning to look where the chains bent. He could see in her goggles how he appeared, suddenly like a record skipping and he was there all along with featureless eyes swirling like the quantic abyss that created him.

He tried so hard to keep it subdued when around the living, but he can't push it aside when he's looking directly at her. The grudge is all consuming, dropping the temperature in the room and forcing his hairs to stand on end. Danny rippled his muzzle, the needles in his mouth standing upwards like crooked fangs as he spoke, a voice frozen by hate.

"Boo."

Maddie reached for her blaster, jaw clenching when she pawed empty air by her hip. Danny undid the shackle with a single click, still staring her down as he floated up with the chain drifting behind. She grabbed it before he could fly away with it all together, pulling back with a glare.

"Aw, don't want me ruining your science experiment again?" Danny mocked, flipping so he could ground his feet into the wall as his own center of gravity. "I was hoping for a bigger reaction than that, all thing's considered."

She huffed, yanking the chain back in her direction. Even though it took both arms and a step back to do it for her, he barely moved his hand to allow it. "You're going to explain how you ended up here."

"That's your only demand?" Danny rolled his wrist, making a comfortable loop of metal around it. "And I spent so long thinking you cared about me."

"I don't care for the dead."

"Care little for the living, too." He snapped the line close to his chest, Maddie falling forward while the bag popped back out of the portal. She lost her grip before he could pull it the rest of the way, making practiced loops on one hand like it's a cable. When he got to the bag, he stopped and unhooked it. "What even is this, anyway? You got bored chasing your son and went fishing?"

"Don't you dare bring him up," Maddie hissed, pushing herself up on her forearms. He snorted, unimpressed, and dropped the bag on the ground.

"Humans shouldn't touch the portal. Consider this your only warning." He blinked, considering his statement with one finger tapping his chin. "Although, you certainly don't care for the consequences of your actions, so you won't listen to me, anyway."

"Jack!" Maddie yelled, launching off the ground in a sprint. Danny wasn't going to stay and find out what weapon she had stashed away to use. He melted through the wall, the chain sliding with him like it's always been a part of his body. It's probably made from the same ectoplasmic alloy his parents kept making weapons out of, although he didn't see why they'd just want a chain. It doesn't hurt him at all, just listens to his powers. When he turned invisible in preparation for gliding into the front yard, it followed suit.

He found an alleyway to transform back, watching the metal disappear as his hands filled with blood and get replaced with the thermos he was holding when he set out. After thinking about it, he put the thermos down and transformed back. Picking the thermos up, he compared the hole for a keychain to the shackle. It fits. One more clip from the other shackle, and it's like a loose belt that he could dangle the thermos from.

A shackle and chain that he stole and makes him look like an escaped animal. "At least it's not a collar," he decided, trying to stay on the bright side. Everything about the past thirty minutes needed a positive to it. He left, alive, with something useful to boot. He knows his parents are doing something stupid with the portal. He found out that his mother doesn't feel any love for him as a ghost.

He inferred that based on context clues in their previous encounters, but it still made his eyes sting. Danny floated upwards in a morose spiral, the strangling frustration leaking out now that he's done with the situation. He's angry enough to scream and wail, but he's too tired now. For some paradoxical reason, he felt like he spent his energy not on using his powers, but on holding back from using them more.

He stayed high above the clouds until he was sure he won't explode unresolved feelings on the next person he talked to, then allowed himself to turn in.

Chapter Text

Even when someone dies tragically, even when someone loses their ability to rest in peace, and even when someone loses a loved one they thought they could rely on, time marches ever forward. The quick trip to phase through dollar store walls to snatch a breakfast before school is now a tussle one street over, even though Danny'd prefer to just lay down and whine until someone fixed it for him.

No lying down. He can't let this ghost get away. They're in the mall, so it's open bright and early, and there are people inside just trying to do their jobs. Danny had his paws full jumping from sunglass kiosk to photobooth to urge frozen employees to move, unable to get a word out when only his glowing maw sent them fleeing. He found it easiest to herd them into the stores that swiftly sent themselves into lockdown, silver bars cascading into place with locks.

He was still snapping at the heels of the last witness when he felt something grab him by the scruff, oily fingers holding him off the ground. Danny snapped his head completely around like an owl to hiss at the creature. Most of the ghosts he met before this were animals, with Sidney being the only exception on both species and temperament. He wasn't expecting a giant dark mass to be holding him in limbs like a bat. He didn't even know how such a creature could move like this, when it glowed around the edges to make its own light source and flickered out of his taloned reach.

Good thing he can fade from someone's grip, too.

Danny sprung out of the way, thumping onto a light fixture hanging off the high ceiling by a thin wire. He hooked his tail around it, dangling off like a possum as he twisted his body unnaturally to still look at his opponent.

"Hey, pretty sure I'm the only monstrous freak allowed in Amity Park. Have you tried Elmerton? Their street dogs are to die for."

The shadow howled, zipping forward like an arrow and trying to wrap him up in billowing arms. It was less of an attack and more of the weirdest maneuver he's seen yet. Danny didn't have a rebuttal for a second, unable to think of the logical next step. Every ghost just wanted to scare people, then when he showed up, spent enough time fighting to realize they won't win and fled. It was a tactic for survival, not capture.

Then he heard a whistle, long and reedy like the wind snapping through willow branches. Everything tipped, shoving him to the ground and rolling a distance before his head erupted out of the shadow again. Danny cracked his eyes, flattening his ears to his skull. In the middle of a trashed food court, a man around the same age as Jazz held his fingers to his lips to whistle. When he dropped them, he had yellow teeth, and yellower hair, as oily as the pockmarked mess he excused for skin. He'd be skin and bones if he didn't have such a large jacket to change his silhouette, leaning down and speaking in a rasp.

"Hey, lil myling, stop trying to bite the hand that feeds you for two seconds, 'kay? I'm not going to try anything."

Danny snorted. "You're kidding, right?"

"Had to draw you out somehow."

"By attacking people."

"No, Shadow attacked people. Shadow, drop it." The weight lifted as Shadow disappeared, flitting back to its owner and aligning itself with his spine before fading. "See? We cool?"

"How can we be cool?" Danny spat, hackles bristling. "What was even the point?"

"To get your attention. See, those of us in the Zone saw that sick stunt you pulled last night, and we just wanted to thank you personally. Not every day we see someone get angry they're using the portal as a dumping ground for their nasty human junk."

"That wasn't why I was angry. I don't even know what it was."

The ghost pulled one hand out of his coat, holding a bag identical to the one from the night before. He upended it for a bunch of prepackaged food to fall out, mostly the unappetizing garbage Danny sees athletes shoving in their mouths between games. "Junk. I asked the huntsman, and he said it had to be bait to catch us, so again, thanks. It's bad enough the mares are falling for this crap, but if one of the mylings sees it, we could have a serious problem."

"The fuck's a mare? Or a myling?"

"Animals. Mylings are new little spirits that don't know any better. Like you, thinking you can really keep all of Amity Park ghost free when the biggest portal in twenty years got punched in the center of it." He whistled again, Shadow twisting upwards and spreading as a backdrop for the ghost to lean into. "I gotta jet, Kitty's waiting for me to get the haunt together. If you need me, call for Johnny."

"What? You can't just stay here, wait—" Danny lunged forward, his claws closing around nothing as Shadow shut tight and flew away. He thumped with his fur bushed on the ground, looking up and glaring at the retreating shape he didn't have time to chase.

He hates how everything moves forward without him.

"—so we'll be meeting in the auditorium now as a school."

Sam heard the door to the classroom close and looked up from her doodles on the margins of her paper. Danny stood with one hand on the knob and the other hooked into his backpack strap, chest heaving like he ran there. She had a small rush of pride that he was wearing the holographic pants she bought for him, although it was quashed by how horribly it clashed with a t-shirt for Rush. He stood there for a moment, eyes fluttering, like he didn't expect so many people to stare at him after he loudly slammed the door.

"Thank you, Mr. Fenton, for showing up slightly late," Lancer narrowed his eyes impatiently. "You may drop your bag off at your seat before we depart."

Danny barely made it to his desk before everyone else could leave, pushing past two varsity jackets as Sam patiently waited for him. He leaned down to mutter something where only she could hear. "What's happening?"

"School wide assembly." Sam had her hand over her drawing so he couldn't see it. She didn't want to show off how many times she'd tried to puzzle out how Phantom could squeeze himself into tight spaces while also stretching the length of a bus. "I'm surprised you didn't hear about it."

"Why? You saw me come in late."

"Yeah, but your parents are the ones hosting it." Sam closed her notebook, shoving it in her bag with a frown. "Can you believe that? As usual, they're doing the bare minimum to help us out by having experts come in to explain what the hell ghosts are a week after we started dealing with them, and their experts are idiots." Wait, she shouldn't say that, not in front of him. She swallowed and looked up, face burning. "Uh, sorry. That was a bit—"

"No, you're right. They don't know shit. Probably couldn't catch a ghost if it showed up in their house and said 'boo'." Danny smiled with perfectly white teeth. "I think I'm just going to ditch it. Really don't feel like hearing more about ghosts after we have to live with them all the time, you know?"

"Wish I could do the same, but I'd feel bad leaving Tucker to suffer alone. If he's coming from Miss Ayase's class, odds are he's going to be stuck next to Valerie the whole time."

"Yikes."

"Yeah. I can sneak in next to him if I play my cards right." She zipped her bag, walking out the door next to Danny as the last ones to leave. There's a fringe benefit to hanging around a Fenton that they get a pretty wide berth now-a-days, which she appreciates immensely. Lancer isn't even checking if they're following him. "So, what are you going to do instead?"

"Talk to ghosts in the bathroom."

"No, really."

"Read comics on my phone. A buddy of mine told me about this one run from, like 1952 or whatever, that's supposed to be really bad, but it's fun bad. Entertaining bad." Danny gave her a quick wave before dipping off at the bathroom when nobody else was looking. She waved back.

She slid into the seat next to Tucker, seeing his face shift with relief before seeming confused again. "Don't you have a class with Danny?"

"Yeah, he's ditching this." Sam watched him drop the bag he used to save a seat for their friend on the ground, slumping a bit. "Everything okay?"

"Kind of? I just..." Tucker leaned away from Valerie and toward her, switching to a whisper. "Danny's been weird about this, right?"

"Ghosts?" Sam asked, just as quiet.

"Yes—well, no, yes and no. That's not what I mean." Tucker sighed, running his fingers through his dyed hair. Sam really liked it, even if his parents freaked out over it. "Like, how he talks about his parents is really weird. He gets all stilted and quiet, like he knows they were doing something not okay but is worried what'll happen if he says it. I kind of got him to talk about them when he was dying my hair, but now he's avoiding the subject like the plague."

"His sister's been strange, too, actually."

"I told you, there's no way she followed us to the mall. Fenton's weird, but not that weird."

"You didn't see Danny's face when we walked in. He was trying to hide it, but he looked like I was standing next to a cop. It was freaky."

Tucker seemed doubtful. "I just don't think whatever craziness is going on in their house, Jazz would allow it. I think if they were, like, hitting him, she would jump in and stop it."

"Wait, you think it's beating?"

"Dude, I have no clue, I just know it's not normal. I love the guy, but nobody comes over every day after doing their homework and sticks around for dinner unless they really don't want to go home."

"...So you're saying we should start hanging out at your house instead?"

"No, I'm saying his parents are hosting an assembly in the school and him ditching it is a red flag. One of us should go make sure he's okay."

Sam pressed her lips together, her face strained. "I don't know. If he wants to be left alone, we should let him, right? Getting all overprotective could make it worse—that's probably what Jazz is doing."

"I can play it off. Nobody wants to sit in an assembly, anyway. Where'd he go?"

"Men's bathroom right outside."

Tucker nodded and got up, shuffling out of the row and jogging to the doors before the teachers close them. Sam considered following him, but she didn't want Danny to feel cornered. Instead, she turned back to the front right as the principal walked on the auditorium stage.

"Sidney, can we talk real quick?" Danny waited until he had already checked all the stalls, leaning into the sink since it was probably the cleanest thing there. Sidney pulled out of the wall, tilting his head quizzically.

"What you need, squirt?"

"Came across a new ghost when I was out getting breakfast. You know, one that wasn't an animal—a mare. A person one."

"Oh. That's good, right?"

"I'm still deciding. He claimed he was just scaring people at the mall to get my attention, which felt..." Danny swallowed, closing his fist over the center of his ribcage. He knew from Jazz's little scanning experiment that he doesn't give off as much ectoplasm as a ghost, and logically, that should mean his core isn't there right now. However, he could still feel it flicker and twinge in discomfort, like a second phantom heart that beat erratically against bones that shouldn't be there. "Really bad. Someone could've gotten hurt because of me."

"Sometimes people try to draw a protective spirit out by threatening their wards. It's not fun, but it's not uncommon. If he didn't physically harm any of them, then he probably didn't mean harm." Sidney frowned, long teeth poking his lips unevenly. "The mall's far enough from your haunt to not be a good target, though. It's concerning that he tried it, and worse that it worked."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, by chasing off mares all over Amity Park, you've made it look like the entire town is your haunt. Even if you didn't mean to, you confirmed to him where the boundaries of your territory rest by immediately going to defend mortals streets away from the school. You have a huge claim that you're aggressively protecting."

"That sounds bad."

"It's certainly not good. You're declaring a huge territory, including the most stable portal to the mortal realm, while you're still green. This is the best land to grab, so it's only natural they'll want to fight you for it, or at least to make you loosen your grasp enough to divide it when you're weak." Sidney drifted over to pat his shoulder, although it did nothing to comfort him. "You have to understand, Dan my man. The Zone ain't cramped, but we've had some big boys lording over where we want to make haunts for centuries. Even by the time I got there, we were running out of places where you aren't being forced to listen to someone else's rules in your own home. For a lot of us, the mortal realm was a chance to escape, and you cut off the exit."

Danny buried his head in his hands, barely peeking between his fingers. "Then what am I supposed to do about it?"

"Easy, kid. Your line's all blurry, so clear it up. Tell them you venture outta your haunt sometimes, but it's just the school. Amity Park's a neutral zone, so let the mares roam—"

"—I can't do that, Sidney, people will get hurt. Huge animals that walk through walls are terrifying." He closed his eyes, seeing his sister's horrified face on the backs of his lids as he dove for her. Danny shook his head to shake off the memory. "I can't give up all of Amity Park. If this is the main spot ghosts are coming through, I can't turn a blind eye to the possibility they'll take some casualties on their way out."

Sidney didn't look happy with that, but he obliged by switching gears. "Well, it won't please everyone, but you could do an open door policy. If they don't bother anyone, they're welcome, but the second a mortal's in danger, you step in. Your ghost sense only tells you when a spirit's got malicious intentions in your territory, right?"

"I think so." Danny felt his core relax, smiling as he squeezed Sidney's arm in a very cold hug. "Thanks, Sidney. You've been a huge help."

"It won't fix everything, you know. Some greasers're gonna try to muscle in no matter what you do. Anybody and everybody wants to be in your position."

"I can handle it." Danny felt the stars spark up his skin, changing it to a crystalline beauty as he elongated and frosted over. "If I can find Johnny again and explain the terms, I'm sure we'll be square."

"Be careful. I'll be waiting when you get back."

Danny phased through the door, pausing in the hallway with his mouth open. He could feel the sting in the roof of his mouth of ectoplasm, although he couldn't figure out exactly where it was yet and it may very well just be Sidney. There's also the definite musk of living beings, one getting very close.

"Phantom?"

Shoot. He turned, spotting one of two people who don't blanch the moment they see him. "Hey, Tuck."

"What are you doing here? Where have you been?"

"Uh, you know. Ghost stuff. Settling in." He felt uncomfortable towering over him with posture like a wolf, shrinking enough to stand at his height with claws tapping his arm. "Apparently ghost politics are harder to grasp than I thought, so now I'm paying the consequences."

"Ouch. No wonder you haven't come to see us."

Danny nodded without lying directly. He didn't think they'd actually expect Phantom to visit, except maybe as a courtesy wave if he passed by. He'll have to slot in time with them as Phantom to not alienate them, but that also means more chances for them to figure him out...and he doesn't want to discuss that night with anyone yet, least of all the people most likely to put it together. Until then, a lie slipped out of his mouth easily. "I have a haunt established, I just need to make sure other spirits respect my boundaries, so I came here to talk to Poindexter about it."

"That's the ghost that went after Sam, right? Wish I could've helped."

"It's better if you didn't involve yourself. We can be pretty dangerous." He wrinkled his sharp beak, feeling his claws dig into ragged fur to demonstrate. "I should be going. A lot of ghouls to talk to."

"Cool. I'm just going to check on Danny."

Danny blinked. "What?"

"He's ditching the Fentons' assembly, and I didn't want him to be alone. Breaking the rules is more fun as a group, right?" Tucker looked like he wanted to say more, but he kept glancing to the door behind Danny. The door to the bathroom where he's supposed to be hiding out, but is incredibly empty.

Meanwhile, Phantom is mere feet away, and would absolutely have seen Danny leave. Tucker would just ask where he went, and no matter where Phantom directed, Danny wouldn't be there. Then again, he could just run before Tucker asks, but that's more suspicious.

Danny felt the spines in his mouth rise, an icy blue smoke escaping him. He grimaced, antennae splitting to test the air. It's much colder, a sudden drop in temperature that was too directional to be the heat failing. The stiff chill crossed right through the hallway like someone's taunting him, curling around the corner and away from them.

"Phantom?" Tucker sounded panicked. He looked down, his hand locked around Tucker's wrist without realizing it.

"Ghost." He needed to hide Tucker. His friend immediately turned to the bathroom, thinking the same thing. Danny grabbed his other arm, keeping him from leaving. "Wait. I need you to stay here."

"What? Why?"

"Uh." His mouth hung open, wordless, before he could scrape together a reason. "I meant stay here like stay with me. I'm setting conditions of a territory and I need...an example. Yeah, of what you can't do, like hurting mortals, and stuff."

"I don't think you need me for that."

"Don't worry, I'll keep you safe. Just, uh, stay with me." He led Tucker down the hall after the chill, his legs tottering awkwardly. Walking on his toes is fine when he's on all fours, but now he needs to use his hands, and he's too self conscious to let his tail do anything except curl awkwardly down his own leg. One hand immediately rested on the thermos hidden in the woolly pelt at his hip, the chain buried in long fur. It was nice to have something extra to protect where his tail meets his waist, growing farther down his back and thinning at his navel, but he didn't need it when he was a serpent in the cosmos. It mainly helped dislocate the claws of the mares who thought they could get the drop on him from behind.

The idea of getting in a real fight with Tucker around made his skin prickle. His injuries last because he doesn't make his own ectoplasm, and he can't just transform back to tide him over if he gets seriously hurt with a witness. Yes, he stole some ectoplasm, but he still doesn't understand how to use it. Drinking it was absolutely off the table since it burned so badly going down, but it's not like he can make his own portal in his room and absorb the ambience. Sneaking back into the lab every time he's hurt is a recipe for disaster, too.

But maybe they can just talk it out. Sidney was easy to pacify once they found that their goals aligned, and Johnny didn't mean any harm in the end. Danny may be fine. He's not putting Tucker in danger, just keeping his secret safe, and that has to be a good cause.

That lie can't soothe his core when he doesn't believe it.

Chapter Text

"Great."

Tucker glanced at Phantom, dark ears hiding the pale fluff inside as they turned downward. It struck him as strange how Phantom clearly saw himself as a monster. He's not human, absolutely, but after seeing so many creature features of varying quality, he doesn't see Phantom as bad. CGI mucus and animatronics that probably crunched up crew members? Yeah, that's pretty nasty. But Phantom's real, and cares a lot whether he's safe.

Also, when he realized that the skull-like pattern was on a face as soft as rabbit fur, he thought it just made him look like a panda, and now he can't unsee it. Even with long nails curled around his hip protectively as they crept around the corner of a hallway in search of a mysterious ghost, Tucker rubbed his fingers into where the cloudy fuzz became rougher bristles on his neck. It's comforting, like petting a cat.

"You smell that, right?" Phantom asked, staring at their target, a classroom with a green light coming through the window. "It's the worst stink of ectoplasm."

"I never noticed ectoplasm has a smell."

"I think it changes. Ghosts can have all sorts of smells from theirs that mixes in, but it usually just stinks like ozone. Whenever we—er, I had to find natural ectoplasm that comes around without spirits, it's like petrichor. That room shouldn't smell like that if I felt a ghost."

"Huh." Tucker's never heard the word petrichor before, and he only knew he got the question about ozone wrong on his most recent test, but he wasn't pressed for those kinds of details. Instead, he leaned into Phantom with a buzz of excitement. "Okay then, what's the plan?"

"The plan is that you stay here while I investigate."

"Wait, what? Then why do you even need me?"

"Tuck, I'm not endangering you on purpose. What if there's something that can kill you?" After a fixed look, Phantom sighed. "Something here stinks, and it's not the spirit. I'll be back to get you when I find it."

Tucker felt a swell of indignation, but nodded anyway. Phantom stepped forward and out of his grip towards where the hallway became coldest. He had to admit, hesitantly, that Phantom was right. It sounded like the main spirit to come through this school was already buddies with Phantom, and that this was firmly in his territory. There shouldn't be anyone else slinking around.

And he still didn't understand this business about "natural ectoplasm", except that it apparently exists, and the Fentons are the only ones brave and/or stupid enough to harvest it. Actually, he was pretty sure his dad said there's a bigger company that wanted to move into Amity Park and capitalize on it...

"Ow!"

Tucker snapped out of his thoughts at the shout, one that was half like a human declaring alarm and half a dog yelping when they got shocked by a fence. He quickly turned the corner and slid to Phantom's aid. While he was still outside the classroom, Phantom had only taken a step inside, enough to trigger something that made bile creep up Tucker's throat. A long wire of fibre cords twisted in neon blue, cutting through the protective hide of Phantom around his neck. He crouched low to the ground with one ear squished to it, like he couldn't get up. One arm bent awkwardly under his cheek, his fingers flexing as his tail lashed.

"Dude, what happened?"

"A snare," Phantom growled, "they snared me. Like a fucking animal." He stretched his fingers again, four eyes wide and mouth dripping with ectoplasm. "I can't pass through it or shrink."

"Who?"

"Who do you think?"

Tucker's mouth dried as he looked up at the rest of the classroom. Sitting on a desk, out of view of the window but obviously seen through an open door, was a box of canisters of green goo. In mockery, it proudly displayed the Fenton logo on the cap of one overturned, rolling on the floor as the glass casing let the light out. "That's so messed up."

"I know." Phantom curled his lip. "Guess they noticed I stole from their stash."

"Wait, why were you stealing ectoplasm?"

"I'll tell you later. First, I need to find out how they knew to target the school, and how they made this—" Phantom strained against it with a hiss, pulling his wrist away from his neck. As he did it, the wire didn't let up, cutting into his pelt. Tucker could see the drip of green liquid as he dashed inside.

"Bro, stop—"

"Don't, there's a—"

Tucker felt a tug at his sneaker and tripped, face planting into Phantom's ridiculously long tail. At least the squishiness broke his fall. When he pushed off with his elbow, he could turn and see a square of sticky tar on the floor. "Did they put out a glue trap?"

"To be fair, I don't wear shoes. It could work." Phantom shifted, not looking happy as his tail sliding away from Tucker's ankle revealed how he was trying to stop from stepping in it. "They measured me to get either my feet or tail stuck in it. It would've worked if I was bigger or dragging myself on the ground."

Tucker made an annoyed sound through his teeth, untying his shoe and making sure his sock touches safe flooring. "They just think you're one big rat, huh?"

"Or a cockroach." Phantom muttered, looking uncomfortable with the pull against his windpipe. "Uh, I know I just said that I'm not endangering you, but..."

"I'm not letting you get caught by ghost hunters. Sam has a pocket knife, I'll go ask her for it." He hoped that would actually cut through it. He waited until he was out of the danger zone and safe before turning to look at Phantom again. Even though he was the one trapped, Phantom visibly relaxed at Tucker not being caught again. "I'll be back. Promise."

"Can I borrow your knife?"

Sam turned, eyebrows raised, to Tucker, who crawled on all fours to avoid being seen as he snuck into (and soon to be out of) the back row of the auditorium. "What do you need that for?"

"Phantom's in trouble—"

"—Phantom's here?"

"Yeah, long story, tell you later. I need your knife, though."

Sam passed it over her shoulder to where he crouched behind her seat, then started to stand.

"Woah hey no, stay here."

"Why?"

"Because Phantom's stuck and the Fentons are in the same building? We need someone to know if they leave this room and to sound the alarm. Besides, maybe they'll be unveiling their plan to super murder all ghosts in a way that will work."

"I hate when you have a point." She lowered herself back down, thankful that she had two seats separating her from Valerie so she couldn't hear their plans. She does not need to hear a lesson on ethics from the girl she knows for a fucking fact only drinks almond milk despite how much it destroys the environment. There is so much water that goes into one damn almond, and yeah, the greenhouse gases from the dairy industry isn't great either, but at least they don't contribute to as much deforestation...

Sam knew everyone else was clapping, so she should start clapping too, eyes half lidded as the Fentons walked onstage. If Tucker left by now, she didn't notice. She crossed her arms with a silent promise to only show some bias towards their "scientific discoveries".

"Thank you," Maddie began, holding the microphone in gloves that could hide any stain. She had her hood up, two blank lenses looking into the crowd. "I know that recent events in Amity Park have been quite frightening for everyone, so in our commitment toward damage control, I asked your teachers if they'd be willing to let us talk about ectology and ease any concerns you may have."

She turned on her heel and gestured to two people behind her, one in an orange jumpsuit making sure a projected presentation was working, while the only person dressed normally tried to bury her face behind her computer.

"This is my family, who you may have met before. Jack, my husband, has joined me in our life dedication to capture and study ghosts, and I don't know where I would be if I didn't have his engineering genius at my side. My darling Jasmine I'm sure you've seen in the halls or at our soccer games, and even though she doesn't join us in the labs, she keeps us from losing our heads just by being there. Our son Danny..." She paused, tapping one finger on the microphone while she pushed her lips. "He's always been unstoppable. His absence is hard on us, but I know the moment I see him again he'll be blowing up ectoplasm like nothing's happened."

Ouch. Sam grimaced, hearing her classmates mutter and shift in their seats. Calling out her kid for not participating in her family slash company's self centered presentation, in front of the whole school, is beyond harsh. She can only hope that Maddie thinks he's in the crowd somewhere and not skipping, so he doesn't get an earful at home. Then again, he acted like he had no idea about the assembly. Did he just lose track of what day it was?

"We've all devoted ourselves to keeping you safe from the monsters that now plague us. Even with insurmountable odds and the heaviness of loss, we go out every day to ensure those creatures are controlled. We work day and night to come up with new deterrents for these spirits."

Maddie nodded to Jazz, who clicked a button on the laptop. Instead of a blank screen behind her, she had a picture of some sort of metal with a complicated chemical compound written out.

"We recently discovered a way to make certain metals impossible to pass through intangibly by introducing a mixture of ectoplasm and various carbon-based materials that will stabilise it when we change it from pig iron to steel. This is one small victory in our defense against these invaders, and one that we want to implement in a large scale. At this moment we've contacted an old friend who agreed to purchase all equipment necessary to make more of this metal, close to home, so it can be used for your protection at a low cost."

The next slide showed Jack with a gas mask, the filter looping to eventually connect to a canister of some sort.

"We officially confirmed ectoplasm to be vastly safe for humans to touch, and in some cases, consume. You should not touch ectoplasm directly from any source, whether it be a ghost, a portal, or their cracks in the ground that started opening when I was in college, because it is cold enough to form ice crystals in your bloodstream and corrosive enough to chew through skin. However, a period after it leaves a ghost's body, is far enough from a portal, or has been safely contained, it warms up enough to not hurt. This means you don't have to worry about it hurting you, and if you ever experience damage from ectoplasm, it is treated in the same way as frostbite or burns. You shouldn't eat it, but if a certain amount becomes gaseous near you, you can breathe it long enough to secure a gas mask to your face with minimum lung damage." She smiled wide as she continued, "this gives us the incredible discovery that humans can survive in the Ghost Zone without an air supply."

Sam waited as Maddie paused meaningfully, like she was supposed to have some divine realization. Other than the new, terrifying implication that the Fentons could be doing this to colonise an entire dimension when the world chokes out due to climate change, she couldn't find any hidden meaning. Maddie dropped the smile and rocked in her boots, looking down at the stage's hardwood.

"I—we're starting with this so you know that we're working on long-term solutions. We don't just want to catch the ghosts, we want to make sure you're safe from them. We need a way to find security in the aftermath. We need something to hold on to. We need someone to rely on." Maddie placed her hand on her heart. "And the Fentons want to be that for you. We won't stop until you're safe."

She turned, Jack standing up and taking her place. She leaned into him heavily for a moment, accepting a deep hug, before passing off the microphone and standing to the side. Sam thought she could see her lifting the goggles enough to wipe off a tear. Come on, it wasn't a good enough speech to cry over it.

"On the topic of who to trust, we thought it important to issue a warning we've made many times before, with some...uh, some updates." Jack scratched his neck, looking uneasy as they turned to the next slide. It had the same picture of Phantom that Sam saw in class a week ago, chasing the mouse through the ground, although they traced over it to give him a more defined outline. "We've had plenty of animals come through, no humans yet, but our most powerful has been named the Phantom of Amity Park. We know so far that it comes to challenge animal spirits that are seen around humans, and that it appears to do less damage."

He breathed through his nose loud enough to get picked up in the mic.

"And while we know you kids on social media and the reporters on the news have started insisting that it's just trying to help, or that it wants to protect us, we have an announcement that will disappoint many of you. Last night, while I was upstairs with my daughter, and my wife was working in the lab to help our son, Phantom attacked her."

Sam snapped to attention, watching Jazz do the same with eyes bugging out on stage. She didn't look like she'd been informed, both hands over her mouth to hide her reaction too late. No way.

"Maddie is unharmed, thanks to her quick thinking, but we needed to inform you, as people who look in on this situation without the full picture. I know that you see Phantom as greater than the others because of its gift of speech, and how it doesn't hurt you directly. It used its voice to mock our efforts towards your protection, and to incite an emotional reaction in my wife so she won't defend herself. It only chose not to hurt her because it did not interest it as much as intentionally sabotaging our projects and stealing power sources so we cannot work." He sounded rehearsed, seeming to drop words right from a script, but Maddie's determined nods behind him made it sound more factual than it had to be. "Phantom is not your friend. It will never be your friend. It is simply using the tactic of making you lower your guard until it strikes. If you see Phantom, or any other ghost, steer clear and do not engage. We are still measuring its intelligence and capabilities, so you can't be too careful."

Another rumbling echoed through the auditorium, less confused and more panicked than the last one. Sam didn't know how else it was supposed to go. If she didn't know how bullshit this all was, she'd freak out too.

Principal Ishiyama rushed onto the stage, clearly realizing how bad of an idea it is to whip a school of teenagers into a frenzy. She knocked into Jazz, who was desperately trying to get off the stage, and while she said something into the microphone, Jazz kept walking. Then jogging. Then she was running past Sam and out of the auditorium.

Well, Sam did say she'd keep track of the Fentons. With one last look up at the projected image of Phantom, she got up and followed.

Danny kept his gnawing worry to himself as Tucker left, the electric charge of the snare around his neck stinging more than its razor edge. He knew his parents, and while they could invent things from thin air and spark a chemical reaction to change the world, they weren't the best planners. Their portal only worked because they put the on button on the inside and let their child press it, after all. They didn't think through how quickly a tear between universes would develop, so how did they decide that Phantom would be so easily lured by ectoplasm?

How did they know to trap the school?

That was the one that kept swirling in his head, making his jaw clench. This was supposed to be a safe spot away from them, and he just confirmed this as a location he frequents. He doesn't know how to un-spring this trap. How many times will he get caught before he has to move again? Will he find a safe place like this? Will Jazz accept whatever reason he cooks up? What if they snatch him up when he's human? What if they snatch up another human and he doesn't know until it's too late?

A growl rippled through his throat, although when he squeezed his eyes shut, it pitched up into a whimper. He hates this. He hates trying to do the right thing, over and over, only to realize after he's done it that he's screwed it up. He's inviting ghosts to attack, he's leaving himself vulnerable to his parents, he's stringing his friends along in a cowardly lie. He can't do any of it right.

And there's the ghost. He knew he sensed a presence, something that moved in a certain direction, not a stationary box of ectoplasm. Something is here, something he can't track. When he gulped down air to let it filter through his senses, he came up empty. The stench of the bait for this trap was too strong.

The room's too cold to be alone.

"Whoever you are, I know you're there, so hiding is stupid." The words were supposed to be threatening, but they had the opposite effect, dropping like weights to the ground. "Stop being invisible and show yourself."

A light laugh broke the air, dark and controlling. "I didn't know you could sense me. Can you blame me for not revealing myself?"

Danny rolled, trying to make eye contact with...someone. He opened his auxiliary eyes to pick up movement, but it was fruitless. Laying on his back only made him feel more vulnerable. "I guess not. Don't see why you'd just sit there when I'm stuck. Good time to strike."

"Destroy a new revenant? I can't imagine it." The voice came closer, practically whispering in his ear. "Now, you, you're rarer than a white rhinoceros. I'm sure someone would want to steal your horns, but that would never be me. I'm not a hunter. I just like to watch."

"Could you stop watching and start helping?"

"But the Fentons worked so hard on that trap." They sounded pouty. "I mean, their little daughter took all those readings on where has the most spirits, but when I interjected to say they should keep the school safe, too, they leapt at the idea, and now—"

"Wait, huh?!" Danny couldn't contain the screech, feeling his head spin. "Why the hell are you helping them? They hunt ghosts, and they would never listen to one!"

They didn't reply for a moment. "Oh, I shrugged. Strange, ghosts can usually see when other ghosts are invisible, but you're not even looking at me. I guess you didn't get every usual ability. Then again, you never even tried to manifest ectoplasm to get out..."

"What does that mean?"

"A ray of light? Energy balls? You have claws, but you don't put that beautiful spark into them? A waste of power, truly." They laughed again, drifting close with a smile to their tone. "Go on, then. Try to do it and fail. It'll be fun."

Danny narrowed his eyes, wriggling to lean his weight onto his free hand. He could see where his talons connected with a box on the ground out of the corner of his eye, one that had the loops of nylon dragged out that choked him. If he breaks that, he should be fine. He pressed as hard as he could with his claw, not leaving a scratch. Dad's lessons in the easy way to tell the difference between the metals they crafted with was going to get him out, as long as he was right that ectoplasm froze, not burned. "Why do you assume I'll fail?"

"Oh, that's what you do, child. Your life since you came back has all been one big failure. It took you almost two weeks to claim this town, and when I follow you here, I hear you saying that you're going to give it up?"

"Didn't realize I had a critic watching me." Danny felt his core hum, his usually gelatinous body hardening as he tried to put his whole being into his hand. Putting energy into his claws didn't sound like a bad idea, although he wasn't a fan of the chill. It froze him in place like when he hit the button, his chest stuttering and a stabbing pain needling into his brain. "Maybe not wanting to rule people with an iron fist isn't a failure. Maybe me deciding not to use my abilities to terrorize people is a success."

"Ah, the naivete of youth, baked into you by the drivel they show on television and call art in the theatre. Let me guess, if you kill a murderer, you're just as bad as them?"

"No." Danny watched green fractals slowly encase his paw, stiffening his fur. Like the spread of fern frost on a glass pane, it swept onto the metal, achingly slow. "Although it's a red flag that you're acting like real life totalitarianism is the same thing as being a cartoon villain."

"What a big word from someone so simple. 'Totalitarianism'. Did you learn that in history class?"

Danny rolled his eyes, making a concerted effort to force the chill into the Fenton gadget. He can't stop his escape now just because he has to deal with invisible arrogance. "You're a dick."

"And we lost all our verbosity. Shame, it was making this back and forth so interesting. I've waited so long to meet someone like you, and yet you insist on being so childish."

"Hey, what can I say?" Danny shrugged, and with that sharp movement of his arm, he dragged one claw through metal weakened by freezing temperatures. "I'm just fourteen."

He didn't get far into the box, but he punctured the spindle of steel bound inside, and that was enough to sever the end of a snare impossible to pass through. He didn't even know it was possible to make something immune to intangibility, but however it happened, it was gone now. He slipped out in the same movement that sent him hurtling into the direction of the voice. Danny didn't grab them like he wanted, but he could feel a horn slide by his waist, sharp and grating on his skin. He hissed in an echo of the target, him in pain, the other in surprise.

"How could you possibly get out?"

"Oh! I get to share something my folks taught me." Danny clapped his paws, smiling as he leaned into the door he slid shut. "So, metal can be weakened by temperature extremes, like when you melt it down or freeze it, but it really—" —Danny pounced again, hoping that they would be standing in the same place to allow him to catch them, but he met empty air and landed back on the ground— "—depends on what kind of metal. Some, like aluminum, are really resistant to cold, while others, like certain types of steel—" —he knew now that ectoplasm could be projected outward, but he couldn't figure out how, and swept frostbitten hands through nothing— "—fracture. The Fentons don't have unlimited funds, so everything they make's either aluminum, or carbon-heavy steel, and carbon-heavy steel is exactly the kind that hates—" —another roll to catch them, but nothing to show for it, and it left his final words in a frustrated snarl— "—ice!"

"Clever, but embarrassing to monologue about." The voice didn't care how many desks they knocked over, and by their tone of voice, didn't care about anything at all. "I don't see why you should be so proud of that information, unless you're the brat of a tradesman."

"Ectoplasm warms up fast, but not when it's straight from the core or some natural outcrop." Danny tapped his chest where the fur dissipated into the acidic green that waved in and out of his flesh like the Northern Lights in a night sky. "If you want it to not hurt you, you have to bottle it up, and if your bottle can't stand the chill, it'll shatter. I still have a scar on my collarbone from when they had to dig out the shards post-explosion. You learn how to tell the difference between cold-friendly and not pretty quick, and it's useful to know when you have the equivalent of liquid nitrogen in your fingertips, don't you think?"

"You were handling ectoplasm as a human?" The ghost sounded thoughtful. "That means...oh, that paints a beautiful picture."

"Of?"

"A few things I must look into now. Thank you for the insight, child. It was positively enlightening. I bid you farewell."

"Oh no, you are not leaving without me seeing you!" Danny floated up, swiping wherever he could with his tail lashing. Nothing to touch. Nothing to look at. Nothing to respond.

He huffed, setting back on the (trap-free) ground and looking down at his fingertips. It stung to manifest, but now it clung to him as a comfort, weaving into his fibrous being and extending his shine. It wasn't a lot, more of a thin coating, but he could probably make more ectoplasm crawl out if he tried.

He swallowed, digging his nails into his palms as he rooted around in his own psyche. He can summon more ectoplasm. He just has to remember the cold. The freezing. How it looped back around to burns, and heat, and wishing he could climb out of his skin to escape it, only to feel his skin slip away as he could and he did. The blinding pain, the flashing light. Death.

"Phantom?"

Danny looked up, mouth dry and aching. Tucker had one hand on the doorknob, a knife falling from his hand and clattering on the ground. He startled at the noise, hopping back. He could hear a crunch as he moved, checking the ground. There's frost over the floor and climbing up the desk legs, clear and pulsing in lively green. Where he stood crumbled, leaving distinct prints of his boot-like feet with paw pads that didn't make sense for any living creature. He rooted himself to the ground with his power without even trying.

He's lightheaded. He overextended. He desperately needs a rest, like the emergency hibernation he underwent when he was hit by a car. There just isn't enough ectoplasm to stay awake.

"Phantom, don't!"

He collapsed into the cold.

Chapter Text

Tucker saw Phantom's eyes roll back before he could buckle, lunging to keep him off the ground. He slightly underestimated how heavy Phantom was, his shoulders straining as he propped up Phantom's top half. His bottom half, however, included a ridiculously long tail, which slapped into the desk holding the Fenton's ectoplasmic lure. The box of canisters tipped as the desk overturned, and even though the glass was probably durable enough for Bunsen Burners, it was not good enough for collision.

CRASH!

Tucker grimaced, the sound ringing in his ears and making his head ache. "I never realized glass breaking will sound exactly like the stock noise in cartoons," he joked, looking down to Phantom. The guy said that he could 'rest', instead of 'sleep', which sounded like a semantic way to say unconscious. He should be able to hear Tucker. It didn't take too long for him to wake up the first time around, so as long as they don't do anything else, they'll be fine.

The ectoplasm on the floor slowly pooling was getting awfully close to his shoes, though. Well. His one shoe. He only felt alarm when his sock got wet, yelping and sliding backwards. Tucker's in over his head and could really use some help.

Danny would know what to do, right? He knew how to clean up ectoplasm, and he seemed pretty neutral to helping Phantom. Surely the spirit wouldn't mind him bringing someone new in if it's an emergency, and passing out in the middle of a school with ghost hunters in it is an emergency. Tucker could run and get Danny from the bathroom, then be right back.

Tucker slowly lowered Phantom to the ground, one hand smeared in green from the cut across his hide. Bleugh. Ectoplasm feels so gross, like slime that should be all chunky but instead strained with the texture of blood or snot. It's that weird cold where it's more of a general numbness than a distinct feeling, which probably isn't good for his nerves. Tucker considered if it was eating away his flesh, then realized he did not want to think about that at all, and filed it away. He wiped his hand on his cargo pants and stepped out into the hallway—

—only to immediately dive back into the classroom because holy shit Jazz Fenton is turning the corner and coming over there. Tucker scrambled to where he left Phantom in his puddle and grabbed at his cosmic flesh. He doesn't seem to have bones, so he can kind of squish him into fitting in his hands if he grabbed him around his middle and dragged him towards the teacher's desk. It's metal with a big panel that hides their feet (why do teachers have that? Do they want to be barefoot in class), so if he can just pack Phantom into it and shove himself down too...

"Jazz, hold on!"

Sam? Tucker tripped, hearing the glass crunch. At least it was under his shoe, although when he lifted it, he could see a clear print. He hopped on one foot the best he could to not slice open his sock, sliding to the ground and scooting on his butt with the ghost in tow. He does not want to find out what happens if ectoplasm gets in the bloodstream. After a painfully long minute of hearing voices in the hallway but not making them out, he had Phantom squished under the desk. He can't fit, and the tail's still being an issue, so Tucker crouched with his spine flush to Phantom and held the tail like a pillow.

"What happened?" Jazz sounded closer, and he could picture her standing, shocked, at the door.

Sam, short of breath, spoke up. "I don't know. Why was your family bringing ectoplasm in the school?"

"They didn't tell me they were going to do that!" Jazz snapped, kitten heels clicking and ending in another snap of glass. "Who knocked all of this over?"

"Probably someone who snuck out of the assembly."

"Why?"

"Aren't there, like, three pregnant girls in your grade?"

Jazz huffed. "Well, did any of them leave a shoe when they did it?"

Shit.

Jazz cleared her throat, tapping her toes and probably pointing. "Oh, and a pocket knife? I guess I missed that in sex ed."

Double shit.

"I guess they thought they needed it to defend themselves?" Sam tried, her voice high pitched and pleading. "There are ghosts around, now. I mean, we both know a knife wouldn't work, but we're not the top school in the district. They probably got caught in this sticky junk, panicked, and broke everything while they tried to get out. We shouldn't be touching it."

"I can't leave this place full of ghost material. Someone could get hurt, more hurt."

"Yeah, exactly, someone may be full of glass. So you should go find them and make sure they don't have green goo in their cuts or whatever."

"And what will you be doing?"

"Uh. Probably guarding the door. I mean, if you want to clean this stuff up, I'll gladly let you or help or whatever, but I don't think we should leave this room alone until then."

"I do have an emergency ecto-dejecto kit in my locker with cleaning stuff that I'll need to flush it out of someone's system..." Jazz sighed, footsteps leading away from the desk. "Don't let anyone in here. If the teachers ask, say you're working on Fenton's orders. They never bother to check which one. Oh, and my parents don't need to know about this."

"Can I ask why?"

"Don't want them investigating the school for ghost stuff, and even if these were students, they'll take it as an excuse to scour every building." Jazz changed her tone quickly, less authoritative and more whiney. "And I totally don't want them hanging around here all the time, you know? It's so embarrassing."

"I get it. Just go find the unlucky couple."

After a moment of silence, Tucker could hear more glass and violet eyes peeked around the edge of the desk. He waved, one hand still using the rubbery tail like a stress toy. "Sup."

"You are so lucky she was more focused on the broken glass than the fucking footprints leading over here."

"Is it that obvious?"

"I mean, I can kind of see a shoeprint if I squint, but it looks like you mopped it up? Or maybe Phantom's tail did."

"Yeah, Phantom's passed out. Resting. Whatever that means. Help me get him out."

Sam bit her lip. "I don't think we could really go in the hallways, since I just sent Jazz out there and I have no idea where she'll be, so we can't sneak past quickly."

Tucker groaned, getting up with a pop to his neck and surveying what they have to work with. Ectoplasm everywhere, his shoe that he wants back, the knife, some desks, a window—

Window. They're only on the first floor. It won't be that bad. He gestured for Sam to follow and went to the opening, sliding the lock and straining to open it more than an inch. The second Sam tried it, it raised easily. "It's so unfair you're good at classes and sports junk."

"Opening a window isn't 'sports junk', and you'd be good at school too if you did the homework."

"The words always run together on me," he muttered, going back to Phantom and picking him up under the shoulders while Sam supported the small of his back with the tail piled on his stomach to not drag.

"Can't your parents get you tested for dyslexia? I know the 'special study hall' is annoying, but Kwan gets extra time on tests and that sounds worth the hassle."

"Testing's expensive. I probably have ADHD, too, but there's no way we could get those pills every month." Tucker stopped to crane his neck out the window. "That's, what, a ten foot drop? I think he'll survive that."

"And where are you going after that?"

"Run him across the football field, I guess."

"By yourself?"

"You promised Jazz you'd watch the door."

"Ugh." Sam exhaled sharply through her nose like a bull, then nodded reluctantly. "Okay. I'll tell Jazz I got ectoplasm on me because I was trying to open the window to let out fumes or whatever. If anyone tries to stop you, start screaming like a baby and I'll hear it."

"I will not scream like a baby. I will scream like a valiant hero who needs backup." Tucker let go of Phantom and crawled out the window, his stomach flipping as he dropped. It wasn't that bad, although it helped to flop on the frosty grass instead of risking rolling his ankle. He scoffed at Sam's laugh and stood up to offer his arms. Phantom dropped without a sound.

Now, to figure out where to go.

Jazz thought that someone who made such a mess would leave a trail, mindlessly wandering the halls like an idiot with her small tin box of ecto-dejecto she kept in her locker. Her parents claimed it was good for weakening ghosts, but since they couldn't even meet a ghost until recently, they mainly used it to remove ectoplasm from a human system with minimal damage, like charcoal for poison. She stopped on the third floor with her fingernails leaving imprints in her palm as she stared at yet another hallway devoid of life. She's not going to find these kids. They probably aren't even hurt.

And she really wanted to clean that mess up as soon as possible. If her parents saw it, they'd start watching the school more closely, and Danny wouldn't be safe here anymore. He doesn't deserve to lose the little home he scrapped together just because some dumb teens wanted to neck in the classrooms. She sighed, hurrying back downstairs. The stairwell is right by the auditorium, so she can quickly check if they're done with their conference.

And they obviously are, because her mother was waiting by the doors. She had quite the frown, not wearing the lipstick she seemed to have from the moment breakfast is ready to when they all go to bed. She turned her head, lenses blank, before pulling down her hood. "Jazz. You left."

"I..." Jazz squeezed her tin tighter, silently praying she doesn't have glowing shoes from the disaster in the classroom. "I realized that you didn't have a slide for ecto-dejecto. I thought it would help them not panic if they knew there's a system if you accidentally get ectoplasm in you, and that if they knew to come to us for it—"

"Then we'd know if there was a ghost attack we missed. You're brilliant, honey."

That wasn't what she was going to say, but she stepped forward enough to let Mom run her fingers through her hair, anyway. "Yeah. Sorry I missed the assembly. It was at the bottom of my locker and I basically had to turn it inside out to find it."

"It's alright. It went fine...although your principal doesn't seem to understand the danger of it all. She started reassuring your classmates as soon as she took the microphone. As if you all need coddling when the afterlife is coming to take you away." Mom scoffed, then her eyes softened. "I'm happy you were there to back us up."

Jazz nodded, mouth dry. "So I guess you and Dad are heading out?"

"Well, we need to get to the airport—wait, no. We have to check the trap."

"Trap?"

"We put some ectoplasm in a classroom to see if that Phantom tries to take it. He keeps sneaking into our home—don't worry, I'm almost done with the heightened security to prevent that, I just need to test it." Mom tilted her head with one hand worriedly cupping her cheek. "Oh, but it'll take so long, and I don't want to just leave him at the baggage claim..."

"I can do it," Jazz jumped in, forcing a smile. "I have study hall next, and I'm already caught up on my homework. I'll fix up the trap so you're not late."

"Thank you." Mom squeezed her shoulder. "We'll be having family dinner tonight, so don't be late."

"Family dinner?"

"I'm picking up your uncle today. I know it's short notice, but he hasn't seen you in so long, and he chartered a private jet just to be here as soon as possible. You'll be there, right?"

"O-of course." Jazz nodded. Family dinner usually only meant them and her uncle, maybe her aunt around Christmas, but he mainly dropped in for the week around Thanksgiving. It was a bit too early for that, wasn't it? Why was he sticking around for two weeks?

Mom gave her a kiss on the cheek before leaving, thankfully back to the auditorium instead of down the hall. Jazz went into the bathroom, grabbing as many paper towels as possible. The bell rang right as she came back out, and nobody went into the classroom she targeted, so it's hopefully a free period for them. Good thing the ecto-dejecto kit comes with potato starch to dry out the slime. She doesn't want to keep Sam long.

Danny opened his eyes to Tucker holding him in his lap like a cat. He tensed, scanning their surroundings with a lump in his throat. He could tell with his enhanced senses that he was still a ghost, which was good, but they're sitting on concrete that made Tucker's skin lose its rich color. The sun slatting through metal bars overhead didn't help either, melting frost so it dripped in uneven patterns onto them.

"We're under the bleachers."

Danny shifted, making eye contact with the kid burying his hands in his fur. They're shaking, an unsteady grip holding on for dear life. "I'm making you cold."

"I mean, it's already pretty cold. I wouldn't blame you completely."

Danny pulled away from him, creating some distance. Tucker's hands were ashen, and he wanted to pull them into his and breath some life into them. It would only make it worse. "Sorry."

"It's fine, man. What happened?"

"Uh." Danny scratched the back of his head, feeling the thin line where the snare cut along his jaw and wincing. "So, ghosts make ectoplasm, right? Kind of like how humans make their own blood and hair and mucus. But I'm different, and I don't really make enough of it. It's like being ghost anemic or ghost diabetic or—I don't know, ectoplasm's weird. So I need to get ectoplasm, and if I don't and I lose a lot, I pass out."

"But you're awake now? How?"

"Sidney told me ghosts feed on emotion. Ectoplasm works because it has so much emotion in it, it's like—it's like emotion lotion, instead of emotion in the air that you filter out. So you gave me enough emotion that I was fine because you were freaking out."

"I wasn't freaking out."

"I can smell it. And sense it, if it's strong enough." Danny flicked out a pair of antennae and used one to poke Tucker's cheek as proof. "You were scared."

"Not scared, just—" Tucker hunched his shoulders defensively. "I would call it stressed. I was stressed because my undead friend passed out on me when there's ghost hunters in the building, and their daughter almost found you."

Jazz? Danny's core clenched, his claws curling in. "I'm sorry. You didn't have to rescue me if it'd get you in trouble."

"What are you talking about? Yes I did."

"No, really, I wouldn't have held it against you if you just ran—"

"That's not my issue with it, dude." Tucker looked baffled, shoving his hands in his hoodie with narrowed eyes. "You really think that I would let you get messed up by the Fentons because it's inconvenient for me to help you out?"

Danny sat on his haunches so he could hunch over without feeling animalistic, picking at one of his claws. He was checking for further injuries, not avoiding eye contact with Tucker. Nope. Not what's happening.

Tucker rubbed his eyes under his glasses in Danny's periphery, then leaned in with a frown. "Okay, let me ask this. If I was in danger, but rescuing me would be a huge hassle, would you still rescue me?"

"What?" Danny gawked, mouth opening and closing like a fish. "Of course I would—why would you doubt that I would?"

"Exactly. That's how me and Sam feel about you. You're our buddy, even if we haven't seen you in a bit. I mean, Sam's been moping about not even having a visit for days. You totally bailed on us."

"I've been figuring out ghost stuff. I was always going to come back." As Danny, not as Phantom, because he didn't know if he could keep that up, but it sure sounded nice. Every time they see him as Danny, it's the real him they're enjoying the company of, but Phantom's pull just seemed to be the intrigue, until now. It's a fine line he's deathly afraid of crossing.

"Yeah, speaking of ghost stuff, weren't you going to take me to meet someone before we got pulled away?"

"Shoot, you're right." Danny drifted up, then grumbled as he couldn't get too high off the ground. "Still weak. Doubt I can carry you."

"You need more emotions?"

"Or more ectoplasm. Be right back." Danny slithered across the football field like a serpent to come to the school's main building, circling to the parking lot. He's not going to try to suck ectoplasm out of the classroom floor, but he could probably get some extra from the Fenton RV. He hoped to let his form slide away long enough to grab it without being seen.

When he looked down, he could still see his own feet. Great. Low ectoplasm means no powers. How fun, and with his ears raised, he could hear the familiar footsteps of rubber boots. He peeked around the corner, checking how far away his parents were. He could still make it if he stayed low and quick, the scientists crammed together with a blueprint spread in front of them as they walked.

A small sprint on all fours and Danny was in the van's shadow, his glow dimmed to almost nothing in the darkness. He can't phase through the side, feeling like he had a bottomless pit sucking out his very being deep inside, so he had to open the side door very slowly.

Click.

He looked up at the flash. A silver camera sat on a shelf inside, positioned to aim right at the door. He didn't see the point, when you can't photograph a ghost anyway. Old as hell camera, too, one that probably printed the picture. He couldn't imagine why his parents were digging that out, unless they were really penny pinching.

But he needs ectoplasm. He's never been this hungry before. He shoved his torso into the car and went for the shelf, picking up the first container of it he saw right under the camera. Danny dipped back out and closed the door.

He could hear his parents talking. He ducked, fingers squeezing the can, with his eyes stinging. He can't move yet. He can't move at all. The nausea rooted him to his spot.

"I think Jazz already knows," Dad said, paper wrinkling as she folded up the blueprint. "It's not like we have to sit her down and tell her. It's obvious what happened, even if she wasn't there that night."

"I more mean the school, dear. It's odd they never called us about Danny, isn't it? Shouldn't we let them know?"

"We always knew Casper High wasn't the most attentive, and they have five hundred kids to worry about. They probably won't call us until he's back."

"I still think we should've sent them to a private school. They'd excel better that way."

"Maddie." Dad opened the door on the opposite side of the van, voice chiding. Danny felt his knees knock together as he slipped to the back of the car so Mom wouldn't see him when she tried to get in, too. "Jazz finally has friends, remember? If we transfer her in her senior year, she'll only hate us more."

"I wish I knew why." A door open, then shut. Danny should be happy he escaped, but he can't breathe.

"I think we know why now. Which is why we're—" The rest of the sentence was lost when Dad shut the door. Danny gulped. He had his arms wrapped around his knees, his tail twisting in coils that suffocated him. With his chin on his legs, he stared right at the ectoplasm in the glass he held.

Swirling.

Echoing.

Like the portal.

He should've been so happy when he saw it that night. All that hard work, finally paying off. But it just went wrong.

His parents told him that the power wasn't routing right, and to stay right there. Just don't move, stand next to the empty frame.

But he could see it. He looked into that gaping hole in the wall and he saw the glowing ectoplasm in its little container. It wasn't plugged in right, crooked in its home in the side of the inner piping. He could fix that, easily.

He was supposed to stay put. He walked over to the frame, looked into the ectoplasm. Swirling. Echoing. Fixed its place in the power system. His gloves were sticky. It was leaking. He didn't realize it was leaking. Then he just had to press the reset button next to it.

His gloves were sticky. He's stuck. He pressed the reset button to show that the power's on. His parents must've seen that, been excited it was just a blip in the system, and flipped the switch without thinking. After all, why would it hurt Danny? Danny was supposed to be standing outside the frame, patiently, doing as he was told.

His dad saw it first, turning and crying out in alarm all too late. Mom ran forward with her hand out. He reached out too.

And it was so cold, and it swirled and it echoed. He was stuck for a minute, every limb penetrated by the cold, his eyes drying and freezing over. It's too dry, and he wants to scream. His jaw cracked and creaked, trapped in the filter of a gas mask. At least he can move it. He can't feel his toes, but the sound of ice crackling and his ankle lifted. He's covered in frost, but he can move. He can escape. It's not too late.

Lights behind him brought Danny back to the present, the sobering reminder that yes, it is, because he fell out of the open portal expecting to be greeted with relief, and instead he could hear the windup of an ectoplasmic gun building power. The same would happen right now, if he popped into the van while they're still there. He was sure of it.

At least they didn't need to back out of the space. He stayed in a ball as they drove away, not even looking at what they abandoned. Danny waited until they turned the corner to move, uncapping the ectoplasm. He's still dim, nothing more than a shadow with bright eyes and dull fur. He needs to brighten up if he doesn't want Tucker to worry.

Drinking ectoplasm sucks, but it seems to respond well to absorption. He can smear it on just fine. Then, he'll get Tucker, and resolve this dispute over territory peacefully. It'll all be fine.

Chapter Text

"...and that's all I really wanted to say about the whole territory thing."

Tucker stuck close to Phantom, feeling like he needed the protection. The other ghost, "Johnny", had tried nothing yet, but the girl (Kitty, Johnny told them) behind him kept chewing cyan gum that glowed when she blew a bubble. Probably ectoplasm too, although the idea of tasting that made him shiver. Her neon hair made her status as undead more obvious, although the sickly green shade of her skin did her no favors.

"You came all the way here for that?" Johnny asked, leaning on the side of an abandoned store with his arms crossed.

"Well. I didn't want to cause any more confusion." Phantom lowered his head with his mass towering over the others, his enthusiasm curbed. He'd been pretty morose since he woke up, even needing Tucker to point out the two glowing people on the street so he didn't fly right past them. "I know we got off on the wrong foot, and I don't want every ghost who comes here to think I'm trying to control them. I'm not."

"Really? Because you sound like Walker."

"Who is Walker?"

"The one in charge of the Zone quadrant your portal made. He says the same thing you do. We can stay if we follow your rules. I'm not buying it."

"Well, I can't stop you if you leave, and I really only have the one rule, of not harming mortals—"

"Then how do we scare them into making nice snacks?" Kitty asked haughtily, her lips twisting as she popped another bubble under a blue tongue. "We can't starve because you won't let us eat. It's not like the Zone with enough ectoplasm to choke."

"Plenty of stuff scares people. We had Halloween not too far back so there's still a bunch of horror movies in the theater. You can sit in on those and feed. Or, you know, feed on another emotion, like maybe you go to a concert and eat their excitement, or a school where you bite off some stress."

"Dude, don't tell them to go to our school," Tucker cut in, alarmed. "I don't want to be food."

"It's just an idea, and if they're invisible anyway, or they can look human..." Danny looked to them questioningly.

"I can walk among the living without anyone knowing," Johnny confirmed. "It's not hard if you look human. I'm sure you do it."

"Since when did Phantom look human?" Tucker asked, looking to his friend for an answer. None came. Instead, Phantom shifted on his feet and rolled his shoulders.

"Okay, fine. I'm not policing people. I don't care if you don't try anything. But if I catch a whiff of your energy near the sound of human screams..."

"Got it, Deputy Dewey," Kitty rolled out sarcastically. "You can take your little morsel back to school now."

"I'm not planning on eating him!" Phantom snapped, grabbing Tucker under the arms before he could finish asking who the hell Deputy Dewey is. He looked up at the spirit who launched them into the air, streaking back to school. Phantom turning on his back to let him cling to his sides was considerate, resting his chin on a mound of fur.

"You're not eating me, right?"

Phantom flipped his head to him, four eyes widening in hurt. "Huh?" He croaked.

"It was a joke. I was joking. Sorry." Tucker rubbed his face in, lavishing in the texture. It tangled thickly like wool but was soft as feather down, sparkling like snow in the sun. He'd want a blanket out of it if he didn't have to skin a ghost for it. "Although it did make me wonder if you feed on my emotions. Sam's emotions. Maybe the people in school's emotions?"

"Um." Phantom tapped his claws on Tucker's spine, scratching down his hoodie. "If you don't want me to, I can stop."

"That means you do."

"Yeah, but I didn't know that's what I was doing, and I didn't know it was weird until—well—now. So I can stop. Promise."

"It's fine, man. Like they said, you shouldn't starve. I don't think you could control it either, if you're, like, a filter feeder who pulls it from the air or whatever."

"I could if I stopped seeing you."

"Yeah, but no one wants that. We like being around you. You're cool." He wouldn't trade his time with Phantom for anything. He wished he could introduce him to Danny, but that may be risky—

—oh, Danny.

"Shoot, I was going to check up on Danny and totally forgot." Tucker fisted his own hair, groaning. "I'm such a dumbass."

"I'm sure he's fine, Tuck."

"You don't get it. Okay, I know you probably don't like the Fentons, so maybe you get it, but you don't get all of it. They were at school today and he bounced to avoid them. Sam visited while you were snoozing and told me that they got up on stage and freaking called him out for not helping them with whatever they're up to. It's insane."

"Called him out? What do you mean called him out?"

"I don't know, you'd have to ask Sam, but something's going on with the Fentons. I really don't think Danny's okay."

"His parents being odd and irrational is not a well kept secret, Tuck." Phantom smirked, amused but in a rigid way where he felt too occupied with other thoughts. "It's not a Danny problem in that case."

Tucker frowned. How could Phantom not see where crazy parents leads to son in trouble? It was easy to talk about with Sam, since she saw it too, but this was quickly heading towards a dead conversation. "I'm only telling you this because I have an idea for you. Or I guess it would be a request."

Phantom's ears angled toward him. He sighed.

"I want you to keep an eye on Danny Fenton."

"...you don't trust him?"

"I don't trust the people around him. He acts so closed off, something has to be wrong. And since I'm sure you're watching the Fentons anyway, it's not that much more of a job, right? Just make sure he's not getting hurt and hiding it or whatever."

"Tuck," Phantom began slowly, "I don't think you should ask me to spy on your friends."

"It's not spying, it's checking up on him! He could be in danger. How am I supposed to help if he's in trouble? We're fourteen, and it's not like the adults are doing anything." Tucker folded his hands in a praying motion. "Pleaseee? It's not a lot. You don't have to watch him any more than you're comfortable with, just do it every once in a while and come get me if he winds up in the hospital or something."

"Why would he be in the hospital?"

"His folks have a weird lab in their basement no one's ever seen. I have no idea what'll hurt him, and that's exactly why I need you to check."

Phantom turned over again, stretching his legs into existence like an eagle striking for a fish in the river. Tucker let himself be swaddled in a bridal carry as Phantom clicked his beak in thought. "I guess? I just don't see why you'd care enough to ask a ghost to do weird stalking."

"Do you think he'll see it as stalking? Don't do it if it sounds like stalking."

"Eh. It's from a better place than stalking is."

"Really?"

"Yeah. You're a cool guy, Tuck." Phantom dropped him to his feet, rustling his hands through Tucker's hair. "Cool dye. Red's a great color for you."

"Thanks. Danny did it." Tucker waited a second longer, feeling fluffy paws rest on his scalp. "Okay, you can stop touching my hair now."

"Sorry. Thought you would like it since you keep shoving your face in my fur and sniffing it."

"I was not sniffing! I was hanging out."

"Uh huh."

"Because you were on your back and had me on your stomach. It was the natural position to be in."

"Mm." Phantom didn't sound convinced, sliding his hand through the door and unlocking it. "I think it's lunch right now, so go get some food. I'm sure Sam will want to hear all about your stalking requests."

"Don't say it like that! It's totally innocent and from a place of concern, not creepiness."

Phantom shrugged, sinking into the ground. Tucker sighed, trudging back inside. He's right, in that it's only ten minutes to lunch, and by the time he gets his school bag, he won't make it to class. Oh well. More time to come up with an excuse for why he missed two classes.

"Uncle Vlad?"

Jazz stood at the doorway, gawking at the man sitting on the couch with a cup of tea. He had his usual snow white hair tied back, eyes somewhere between blue and grey beneath his eyeshadow. He always had a lot of makeup on, ever since she was little, her hands coming away powdery when she tried to touch him. That was different today, his even skin tone...not so even, not so covered up. The rough texture to his face looked like someone covered him in grapeshot and he couldn't get it all out, paler patches of scarring barely visible by his beard. He probably grew it just to hide it. He turned to look at her with an easy smile, curling his lip to show long canines sharpened like daggers.

"Jasmine, how nice to see you," he said coolly, his voice hinting a rasp. "Why do you look so surprised? Your mother told me she let you know I was coming."

Right. She said that at school, although Jazz was distracted at the time. "I didn't think you'd look like..." She couldn't think of a way to dodge around it, instead resting her fingers on her cheeks in demonstration. He also usually showed up to family gatherings in a formal suit, not a red sweater with blue jeans and corny socks. "Sorry."

"It's fine, Jasmine. I know it's different for you, but we thought it would be better for tonight." Vlad stood up, pausing the television. Jazz glanced at the screen while he walked to the kitchen. More news, this time with a picture of her parents next to a reporter with her mouth open. The ticker at the bottom read, "—owstorm rapidly approaching that could take kids out of school." Great. She didn't want to think about how Danny's getting lunch if the cafeteria's closed. Wait, where is he eating on the weekends? She needs to stop before she streaks her hair as white as Vlad's.

Dad laughed at a joke she didn't hear, his hand on Vlad's shoulder as he sat down next to him. Mom set down a plate in the center of the circular table spotted with bread and salad, smiling nervously. "Sorry if it's not the best. We were in a rush today."

"Nonsense, Maddie," Vlad replied, lacing his fingers together with his elbows on the table. "I'm sure it'll be fantastic."

Jazz nodded along to keep the peace, serving herself some pasta and hoping to keep her head down while the old folks reminisce about college or talk business, then she can go to her room without a fuss.

Vlad torched her hopes into cinders with a single sentence. "Jasmine, your parents brought me here to help around the place while they look for Danny."

She heard a clatter, then realized that was the fork, once halfway to her mouth, hitting the table. Did they just say him by name? What, almost two weeks without a peep, and now they're talkative? Are they actually going to tell her what went down that night?

Or, worse, is Vlad here to soften the blow, while her parents hide behind whatever emotion justifies traumatizing their son?

"Oh?" She asked intelligently.

"Yes. I want you to know, the second your father called, I cancelled everything and made sure I'd be here, hell or high water. Your parents—every Fenton, really—has done so much to make me feel like a part of the family, and I want to pay it forward however possible."

"You are family, Vladdie," Dad butted in, Mom nodding sagely at his side. "You've been family to us for twenty years."

"Longer," Mom added. "Whenever we were in doubt, you were there for us. You have nothing to repay by being here."

"Oh, it's not a matter of debts, Maddie. I would never make your son's life a debt. I just would hate for something like this to break you all apart when you've been so loving to me. To him." Vlad smiled, and with those pale lips, it always looked cold. Mom told Jazz that was just how he looked, that he truly was kind regardless of if he looked it. His voice still made her skin crawl.

She's never liked her uncle much. Danny was friendlier with him, but he was more attached to their parents. She'd started growing distant from any adults considered family when their obsession with ghosts grew into a fever pitch. Nowadays, she only sees further proof she made the right call.

"I see." Jazz picked up her fork again, quickly grabbing her pasta. The sooner she finishes, the sooner she has an excuse to leave. "And how are you going to find him, exactly? I believe that most people who are lost after this length of time are lost forever, statistically."

"Jazz," Mom admonished, but Vlad quickly put up a hand to stop her. He crossed his legs, turning in his chair to face her.

"Jasmine. It's too soon to give up hope in these...unique circumstances." The way he played with the word on his tongue felt like a game, a tease, something foreign to the serious topic. "Anything can happen. Really, anything already happened. We're in a new territory of possibilities, so we have to approach it as such."

Of course he's talking about the ghosts. This barely has to do with Danny. She pressed her palm to her forehead, slouching even though she always got on other people's cases about their posture. "I'm not helping you find him," she decided, trying to steer them back to her brother.

"Of course! I would never ask you to do such a thing, my dear. You're young, you have schooling, a social life, and I'm sure you're batting all the single teens away with a stick just like your mother."

"Vlad."

"Sorry, Maddie, you know I only jest." Vlad reached over and took Jazz's free hand in a squeeze. "But Jasmine, I don't want you to think any less of your parents. They've been swimming in all these disasters after the portal opened...they simply needed the extra support I'll be providing. Danny will be back with us soon."

"And you're really going to take Danny being missing seriously instead of ghosts? Really?" Jazz snorted, rolling her eyes. "I'll see it when I believe it."

"Tracking the ghosts is the key to finding Danny, dear," Mom insisted, and isn't that just like her? It's never just about the family. It's never just about school, or holidays, or her brother. It's ghosts. Every time. Nothing's important if it's not ghost related. They only paid attention to Danny because he was so desperate for their affection that he started working in the lab, and look where that got him. Homeless. Alone. Not letting Jazz in. They'll only accept him leaving if it's a story seeped in ectoplasm, not something as simple as emotional neglect.

Her parents exchanged glances at her lack of response, although Vlad kept watching her with a calculating look. "Jasmine," he began slowly. He won't move his stupid hands. He's holding her like she's a fragile child, not almost an adult who has to be the adult around here. "Do you know what happened when the portal opened?"

"No!" She snapped, louder than she meant to. It made her parents jump in their seats, eyes wide. "No, no one had told me what happened with the damn portal! Nobody tells me anything!"

Vlad blinked mechanically, then slid his arms away with the grace of an eel and templed his fingers on the table. "I see." He blinked again, staring off at nothing. "Then I think we owe you an apology, Jazz. It was never meant to go this far. I know that my part in the tale, at least, was kept from you because they didn't want to scare you. Jack? Maddie?"

Dad nodded to his unspoken question. "It's your secret, not ours, Vladdie."

"You've always been so kind." Vlad lifted a wine glass to his lips, drinking the crimson liquid for a long moment. His face was gaunt enough, his throat boney enough, that she could track the swallow. After another moment of staring at the glass, he began. "We've told you that your father and I were roommates in college. We were lab partners in engineering, and after Maddie transferred to our university sophomore year for our superior biochemistry program, she became an integral part of our little troupe. We were linked by our fascination in creatures that were impossible. My father loved to scare me to sleep with tales of pricolici and vukodlak, dead and irredeemable people that turned into wolves or beasts feasting on blood. He also found pleasure in scaring me with other things too, which is why we were estranged before he..." Vlad drifted off, Dad bumping his shoulder with a toothy grin.

"I always told you, he'd get what's coming for him. You shouldn't feel bad for being happy he's in the dirt."

"Well, that happened after the accident. We had to get masters before we could pursue doctorates, and we had to prove our theories before even that. So, like any young person, we thought we could just...make a portal to the afterlife. Nothing too big, not like the piece of art in your basement. It was while your mother was checking the calculations that..."

"We made a mistake that I'll never be sorry enough for." Mom sighed, shaking her head. "It's why we tried to be so strict with Danny about the hazmat suit, although he didn't always listen. None of us knew ectoplasm could cause so much damage—"

"Nobody knew ectoplasm existed at all until that day, Maddie. It's no use to blame yourself." Vlad sighed. "But yes, I wasn't wearing my goggles yet and standing too close to the portal while your father tried to fix the voltage as per Maddie's instruction. It overcharged and sent a wave of that radioactive congealment of postmortem emotion directly into my face." He ran skeletal fingers down his cheeks, demonstrating every bump and divot in the flesh. "We called it ecto-acne, but it was more of a poisoning, an overdose. My flesh bubbled, my teeth wore down into points, and it completely stripped the melanin in my hair. It took weeks for me to regain consciousness."

"We didn't know about ecto-dejecto, or that it was even possible." Dad broke a piece of bread in half, squishing it into the pasta sauce with a defeated look. "I visited you every day expecting to see the doctors sending you to the morgue. Or worse, that you'd hate me so much you'd already be gone."

"And I'm sure that if I didn't wake up with you at my side, I would have. It was such a coin toss on if I would live or die, if I would blame you or myself." Vlad tilted his head with a somber expression. "But I knew when I opened my eyes to you and Maddie waiting for me, that I could never see you as the cause to my misfortune. Never in a million lifetimes."

"But that's when ectoplasm was discovered. It was popping up everywhere life decayed after our proto portal, and nobody wanted to test it since it nearly killed Vlad," Mom told her. "The fact that doing this experiment made this substance pop up all over the world, almost overnight, proved to us that there was another dimension we could weaken the barrier to. Somewhere to go."

"Somewhere with ghosts, if ectoplasm mainly surfacing in dead wood and cemeteries was any sign," Vlad stated. "Somewhere with those horrible monsters from folktales and horror movies. I missed too much work to get my masters in engineering with you, but after my father experienced an unfortunate accident, I had enough wealth to fund something new. We could make a new portal."

"One that you let a child near, you mean." Jazz gripped her elbows, leaning out of reach. "Danny, who had no business being near that awful thing, that you knew could hurt people, because a tiny model of one nearly killed your best friend. Uncle Vlad almost died because you weren't wearing the proper equipment and being plain idiots, and you didn't learn from that at all. Yeah, you made the hazmat suits, but Danny had to clean up any messes you made. You have enough cash from Vlad's inheritance and your patents to get a team of researchers, but only Danny could be trusted around your ideas. Let me guess, Vlad was supposed to be there to turn on the portal, but he had some billionaire meeting to get to, so out-of-the-loop Danny filled the spot of a grown man who knew the risks?"

Mom's eyes watered. "Jazz, this whole ordeal is hard on us too—"

"Not hard enough." Jazz stood sharp enough to knock her chair down, grabbing her plate and drink. "I'll bring down my dishes in the morning."

"Jasmine, I thought you wanted to know what happened." Vlad sounded disappointed, but he didn't look it, face like marble that got chiseled wrong.

"I think I can fill in the gaps." She tossed her hair over her shoulder and held her chin high as she walked up the stairs. She doesn't need anything downstairs anyway. She'll just sit in bed with her food, watch a movie on her television, and not think about this awful conversation.

As she marched up the stairs, she could hear Vlad say in a hushed voice, "just give her time to think."

She could be in isolation for centuries, and she wouldn't change her mind. She slammed the door to her room and locked it.

After a few hours, she heard footsteps walking down the hall. They stopped at her door, a shadow in the hallway light, and knocked. It was proper, practiced, in that stupid rhythm that floated like a song. She turned down the volume on her movie to listen for them leaving.

The shadow faded with walking, and she could hear the door to Danny's room open. Vlad usually slept on the pull out couch when he visited, but if an actual mattress is open, then he probably would take it.

After a moment of thought, she got up and slowly turned the knob on her door, looking down the hallway to Danny's room. Vlad still had the door open, back to her, with his eyes on the desk. He picked up a picture frame, one that she knew by heart. It's a photo of her and Danny on the beach from two summers ago, sitting in the sand while Danny displayed a tiny crab he caught to the camera. Their parents claimed they had the vacation planned for months, but she only heard about it after Danny got seriously hurt in the lab, so she thought they threw it together last minute to make him feel less bad. Personally, she wouldn't let the kid with new stitches under his rashguard near salt water, but nobody asked her, and he was just fine with making sandcastles. Even with most of his scratches and scabs on his trapezius and deltoid covered in bandages, the dark line across his sternum from a large piece of glass slicing him was clearly going to scar with how many sutures had to sew his skin together.

Vlad turned on his heel, showing a furrowed brow as he brought up his hand to trace a similar line on his collarbone. He pressed his lips together, seeming close to putting some invisible pieces together—

—and then he saw Jazz staring at him, and lifted his hand in a wave. His smile's never looked more fake. She scowled and shut the door.

Weirdo.