#I never do requests but Casper wearing glasses has been in my head for a while…

[vos0q]

You should draw Casper w/ glasses!!! he'd be so cute!

I AGREE, he IS cute with glasses. Two versions cuz i like both of them. 😄

Main Shop

[kinglazrus]

What You’ve Become

Phic phight 2020

Submitted by @kiinotasha​: Jazz and Danny swap ages, she is the younger sibling he is the older one. All the other kids have their ages changed accordingly. (Those in Danny’s year would still be in his year)

Summary: Two years after the first ghost appears in Amity Park, Jazz Fenton sees a face she never thought she'd see again.

Word count: 12726

Jazz keeps her head down as she checks out her book. She usually avoid the public library if she can, but there are only so many psychology papers you can read online before you hit a paywall. All the good ones are locked tight on websites made for scholars, not high schoolers. The one downside of devouring ever psych text she can get her hands on for two years running is that, at a certain point, she has to leave the house to do it.

When she started at Casper High just a few months ago, she went to their library. It offered her privacy from all the prying eyes and hushed whispers, since most students didn't like spending time under the librarian's eagle eyes. But the school's selection was rather... lacking, which forced Jazz to seek out other avenues. Namely, the public library. Which shouldn't be so daunting, because she loves books and this building used to be her home away from home.

But that was two years ago. Now, when she goes to the library, it's no longer a safe haven. Now, when she walks through its doors, people see her and stare. That's the problem with Amity Park. It isn't a small town, but it's not a big city either. Everyone knows someone who knows someone else who knows you.

Which means everyone knows poor Jasmine, the last Fenton in Amity Park.

As she passes her library card over to the clerk, she catches their grim, pitying smile and quickly looks away. She fixes her gaze on the counter for the rest of the transaction. The second it's over, she takes her library card and the textbook and flees. She can feel the librarian's stare burning into her back as she leaves the building. It's hard to ignore. Marching across the parking lot, she heads for an old green Volvo, yanking open the passenger door when she reaches it. She throws herself into the seat and slams the door shut.

"Didn't have the book you wanted?" her best friend, Spike, asks from the back of the car. He doesn't look at her, instead focusing on the soles of his platform boots, picking mud out of the grooves.

Jazz slams the book down on the console.

Spike's gaze jumps up at the noise. "Oh," he says, eyes falling on the book. His expression, a default disaffected scowl, doesn't change, but he starts toying with his eyebrow ring, spinning it around. It's a subtle Jazz has become well accustomed to over the past two years.

"Fuck 'em," Spike says. He slouches forward, dropping his hand into his lap, and raises his middle finger in the library's direction.

"That would be an unsanitary and highly inappropriate response," Tucker quips from the driver's seat, fingers tapping on the steering wheel.

Jazz wrinkles her nose. "Please never say anything like that again."

"No promises." He cackles at Jazz's expression. When he looks over his shoulder to start backing out, he catches Spike's deepening scowl, and grins even wider. "Sorry, kid, I got a goth best friend, too. That kind of look doesn't work on me."

"I told you to stop calling me that," Spike says.

Tucker hums, pretending to think deeply, and bares his teeth in a teasing smile. "Nah."

"You know, he had a goth phase," Jazz whispers.

"We don't talk about that!"

Jazz keeps talking about it. She eagerly regales Spike with the time she walked into the bathroom and found Danny painstakingly doing Tucker's eyeliner. She's halfway through Tucker's first disastrous attempt at wearing platform boots when a droning alarm goes off, cutting her off mid-sentence.

Turning away from the back seat, she leans her head against her window and tips her head back, peering up at a white and black siren hanging off a streetlight.

"Aw, man." Tucker sighs and turns his blinker on, pulling over to the side of the road. The car in front of them does the same, along with a truck passing on the other side of the road. None of them can pull all the way over, because of the vehicles parked parallel up and down the street, but there's a sizeable gap right down the middle of the road.

"Think we'll see some action?" Spike asks.

"I bet it's just that box dude or something," Tucker says as he rolls down his window.

Jazz slaps her hands over her ears as the siren gets louder and elbows Tucker's shoulder. "Close the window!" she shouts.

He doesn't have to. A second later, the siren cuts out. All three passengers strain their ears, listening for any sounds of fighting. It's completely silent.

"False alarm?" Jazz suggests.

"The Guys in White don't do false alarms. Could be the box guy," Tucker says. He hoists himself halfway out the window, slapping his arm down on top of the car to keep himself balanced, and waves at the truck across from them.

The driver rolls down the window.

"Hey! My radio's busted, is there any broadcast going out right now?" Tucker calls.

The driver looks down, fiddling with something, then looks back up and shakes his head.

"Thanks!"

"See? False alarm," Jazz says. "Get back in the car."

"Jazz, you are way too young to be sounding like my mother," Tucker says, ignoring her request. He looks up and down the street, head swiveling as he scans the skies. Completely empty. "Okay, maybe you're right."

No sooner have the words left his mouth than a green blur goes shooting past, flying so fast the car rocks. Tucker yelps, losing his grip on the car, and would have toppled out the window if Jazz and Spike hadn't lunged forward to catch him. Tucker chokes as Jazz grabs the back of his shirt, his collar cutting against his windpipe. Spike snags Tucker's belt. Together, they haul the older boy back into the car.

"Okay!" Tucker says, rubbing his throat and coughing a few times. "Not the box dude!"

Pushing his glasses up his nose, he glares out his window to the truck across from them. "'No broadcast' my ass."

"You should just get the Ghost Watch app," Jazz says, already pulling out her phone. She flicks through the apps until she finds one whose icon features a ghost holding binoculars.

"Like hell I'm gonna do that. The government can already spy on my through my phone, I'm gonna make it worse by downloading one of their apps," Tucker sneers.

"If they're already watching, then why does it matter?" Spike asks.

Tucker takes a breath, then pauses. "Huh," he says.

While he struggles to come up with an answer, Jazz opens the Ghost Watch app. Sure enough, as soon as it loads, she's met with a red exclamation point. Tapping the icon, she turns her volume up and holds her phone out.

"–class four entity. Agents have been dispatched to take care of the threat. Phantom protocol is in place. Please remain in your homes or vehicles or you will face criminal charges for interfering with a G.I.W. Operation. Thank you. Attention Amity Park. We are under threat by a class four entity. Agents have been dispatched–"

Jazz mutes the broadcast and raises and eyebrow in Tucker's direction.

"Shut up," he says. "You're the one who thought it was a false alarm."

"You're the one who can't afford to fix his radio," Spike points out.

"Well, maybe, I should start charging you since I'm apparently turning into your chauffeur. I'm sure your moms would be so happy to know your abusing my kind heart."

"Sounds fake."

"Boys, stop it," Jazz snaps. "Let's just wait for this to be over so we can go home, okay?"

Spike and Tucker share a look and nod in unison.

With an annoyed huff, Jazz pulls her new textbook into her lap and cracks it open. She might as well read to pass time, there's no telling how long this will take. Sometimes the G.I.W. have the situation under control in minutes, other times the city's on lockdown for hours. Hopefully, with the Phantom protocol in effect, it'll be a short wait.

Jazz closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Don't think about it, she tells herself. She doesn’t want to get her hopes up.

"Jazz, if this is about­–"

"Let me stop you right there, Tucker," Jazz says. She stares resolutely down at her book, refusing to lift her gaze. "It's not about anything. I just want to go home, okay?"

"Okay," Tucker says. She can tell he doesn't believe her. That's fine, as long as he lets it drop.

—

Danny was dead. Or he was dying. Jazz didn't know which and she didn't know how to help. She was frozen at the bottom of the stairs, every inch of her trembling, too shocked—too scared—to do anything.

Her big brother was slumped in his best friend's arms, skin blistered and bleeding. His right hand was smoking, the sleeve of his jumpsuit burnt away. A strange green substance oozed out of him, staining Tucker's sweater. He was dead. He had to be dead.

"Danny! Danny!" Tucker shouted desperately, slowly lowering Danny to the floor. He leaned over Danny's prone form, hands hovering just above his blistered body. "Shit, shit, Danny, no. Sam, what do we do?"

Jazz's gaze jumped from her brother—her burnt, broken, probably dead brother—to Sam. She had collapsed on her knees a few feet away, pressing a hand to her mouth, eyes wide and horrified. She looked like she was about to throw up, or pass out, or both.

"I­–I–" Sam stuttered. It was all she managed before she turned to the side and retched all over the lab floor.

Jazz finally regained control of her limbs then. Seeing Tucker and Sam, who were older and supposed to be smarter, lost and panicking spurred her to move. She rushed across the lab, her socks slipping on the smooth tiles, and almost slid right into Sam.

"Sam, Sam, where's your phone?" Jazz asked. She couldn't believe how steady her voice sounded. Inside, she panicked. Inside, she screamed that her brother was dead, and she was scared, and why weren't their parents home, why was the portal that wasn't supposed to work suddenly on, glowing so brightly it hurt her eyes? Why, why, why?

"Sam!" Jazz shrieked when the older girl didn't respond.

Sam flinched, spitting on the floor and wiping her mouth on her arm, and turned to Jazz. "Jazz," she said. Her dark eyes flickered over to Danny, then back at Jazz, and a fresh wave of horror filled them. "Go upstairs. You should go upstairs."

"Your phone!" Jazz pleaded. She didn't have the patience to wait, instead reaching into Sam's pocket herself and snatching her phone. Jazz backed away and dialled.

"911, what's your emergency?" a smooth voice answered.

"My­ brother was in an accident. He's hurt, really badly, and I– I don't know if he's breathing," Jazz said.

At her words, Tucker lowered his head to Danny's chest. Everyone held still, afraid to move or even breathe. Jazz could hear the operator saying something, but his words fell on deaf ears as she waited, anxious, for Tucker to say something.

"Fuck," Tucker said. He shot upright, hands hovering over Danny's chest, then pulled back. "Sam! I don't know CPR, do you know CPR?"

Sam scrambled toward Danny, her knees slipping in his blood—why was there so much blood? She shoved Tucker aside and straddled Danny's waist, kneeling over him, and started chest compressions.

Tears welled in Jazz's eyes. She sobbed and turned away.

"Are you alright? Please answer me. I need your location to send an ambulance."

"He, he's not breathing, and his, his heart's not beating," Jazz said. She hiccupped and squeezed her eyes shut, but that didn't help. She could still hear Sam panting heavily as she tried to keep Danny's heart beating. "His friend is doing CPR."

"Okay, that's good. What's your name? How old are you?"

"I'm Jazz Fenton, I'm twelve years old. My brother is Danny, he's sixteen. We're at Fenton Works at the corner of Cordia and Lennex," Jazz recited. It was oddly calming. Nothing more than simple rote memory, but it helped. It would help Danny.

"Fentons."

"Yes?"

The line was silent. Jazz bit her lip, wondering if the operator hung up, which would be incredibly unprofessional and also probably send her into a panic. She was certain the only reason she hadn't fallen to her knees in tears right then was that, as long as she was on the phone, she was helping. She had something to do. She was making sure Danny would be okay because he was going to be okay, he had to be.

A quiet huff caught Jazz's attention. She clung to the phone with both hands, pressing it against her ears, and barely heard the operator mutter, "Of course," on the other side of the line.

Jazz didn't want to be on the phone anymore.

"An ambulance is on the way," the operator said, louder. "Stay calm until then. Is there anyone else home with you? Your parents?"

"No. Thank you, goodbye."

—

"Please stay calm and remain in your vehicle. The threat will be dealt with shortly. Please stay calm and remain in your vehicle. The threat will be dealt with shortly. Please stay calm and–"

"I hate that voice. So. Much," Spike says, glaring at the siren.

Jazz can't blame him. The siren started spewing the city-wide warning almost five minutes ago and hasn't stopped since. There hasn't been another sign of the ghost, or any G.I.W. for that matter. It doesn't exactly mean much, because they could be anywhere in the city, but it makes the so-called safety protocols seem highly unnecessary. Besides, wouldn't they be safer in a building rather than as sitting ducks in the middle of the road?

The guy in the truck must have thought so, because he ditched his vehicle almost a full minute ago and disappeared inside a bar up the street. Jazz thinks he had the right idea, minus the bar part. It's always better to be somewhere you're comfortable during an emergency, even if it only provides slight relief.

"We could just, you know, drive home," Spike suggests.

"Great idea, until we get caught in the middle of a ghost fight," Tucker says. "Then your moms would kill me."

"No. The ghosts would kill you."

"Delightful."

"My moms would obliterate your ghost."

Tucker groans in distress, but Jazz can tell he's seriously considering Spike's suggestion. He keeps lifting his hand off his leg, toward the keys, before letting it fall back to his knee. "Who thought having a ghost infested city would be so damn boring?" he asks.

"You mean you don't enjoy sharing this plane of existence with pale shades of people long dead, forced to stay on this Earth by their own anguish and tumultuous emotions?" Spike asks.

"No. No, I don't."

"I do."

"Of course, you would."

Jazz ignores the boys, flipping to the next page in her textbook. It's a fairly new branch of psychology, focused on ghosts and their mental processes. Its surprisingly thorough. A stamp on the first page marks it as a G.I.W. endorsed text. It makes her wonder how many of the ghosts they catch become study subjects. With how comprehensive the textbook is, they must have been observing ghosts for a long time.

Unbidden thoughts of the Phantom leap to the front of Jazz's mind. Her grip on the textbook tightens, nails digging into the cover.

"Okay, I'm getting out," Spike says, breaking Jazz out of her thoughts.

"No, you aren't," Tucker says.

"Yeah, I am." Spike pulls on his door handle and starts pushing the door open.

"Your arrest record," Tucker says, rolling his eyes. Halfway through the motion, he freezes. "Actually, no, get back in the car."

"Asking nicely won't make me­."

"Spike! Get back in the damn car!" Tucker shouts. The alarm in his voice makes Jazz look up from her book. The next second, the street beside them explodes in a shower of concrete.

"Shit!" Spike ducks, narrowly missing being brained by a fist-sized rock. In his panic, he dives to the side rather than back inside the car.

"Seriously!" Tucker shouts. He throws his door open and leaps out, Jazz following suit on her side of the car. She squints, covering her mouth with her arm, trying to keep the dust out. As Tucker goes for Spike, Jazz watches the middle of the road. She sees something moving in the cloud of dust.

The sound of a roaring engine draws Jazz's attention to the corner of the block, just in time to see a bulky armoured truck rip around the corner. On top of the cab, a row of bright green lights flash as the truck tears down the street. It comes to a stop fifty metres from the crater. The cab doors are thrown open by two bald men in white suits. They jump out onto the road, raising sleek white and blue guns that look out of place outside a sci-fi filmset.

One of them, the taller of the two, sees Jazz and calls down the road, "Return to your vehicle or face the charges."

"But my friend!" Jazz calls back. She looks to where Spike had fallen and finds the road empty. Panic shoots through her, until she hears someone clearing their throat and drops her gaze to the sidewalk.

Tucker and Spike are huddled behind the next car down, out of sight of the G.I.W.

"Return to your vehicle, now!" the agent demands again.

Jazz obeys. As soon as she's inside with the door shut, she climbs over the console into the front seat. The cloud of dust in the middle of the street is almost gone now, the silhouette of whoever—or whatever—is inside more defined.

It looks like a regular person, but with sharper angles. A sharp chin, broad shoulders, wide chest. Before the dust can settle complete, the ghost shoots forward, too fast to see, and slams into the G.I.W. truck, the front of cab crumpling in It goes skidding across the road, tires squealing, leaving thick black lines in their wake.

It's still sliding when the ghost zooms back and slams into it again, this time from the side. The sidewall caves and the truck tips onto its side.

"Damn it, the asset!" the shorter agent shouts.

Both men open fire, but every shot misses, the ghost flying too fast for them to catch. The shorter agent curses again and grabs something from inside their suit, tossing it on the ground. The object, a small cube, hits the ground and an antenna pops out of the top. A ping, not unlike a sonar pulse, songs from the cube and a wave of blue energy cascades outwards.

When it hits the ghost's blurred form, the ghost goes flying. Jazz shouts in surprise and ducks as it soars toward her. There's a loud crash, but Tucker's car does little more than shake. Lifting her head, she sees the ghost has hit the car behind her. Her heart leaps into her throat as she searches for Tucker and Spike amongst the wreckage.

It takes her a few seconds to fine them, but they're safe and sounded, hiding in the shadows of a convenience store doorway. The sign on the door says closed, and it must be locked, so they can't slip inside out of danger, but they're hidden at least.

The crumpled car creaks. Jazz's gaze jumps back to it and she gets her first good look at the ghost. It doesn't look like any of the ghost's she's ever glimpsed. Rather than an animalistic, amorphous form, it looks like a large mechanical man. With green fire for a mullet and goatee, apparently.

"Surrender, ghost!" the taller agent yells.

"Release him!" the ghost demands in a deep, layered voice.

The G.I.W. share a look.

"Agent O," the short one says. "Release the asset."

The mechanical ghost grins. But, judging by Agent O's grim but eager expression, the ghost isn't going to like what happens. Agent O holds their wrist out and presses a button on their watch. A heavy clunk reaches Jazz's ears. Everyone's focus snaps to the overturned truck as the back door slides open. A thin blue shield wavers over the open door before snapping away.

Jazz peers into the shadows of the covered truck bed. Slowly, a figure emerges. They float through the open door, body twisting to they don't brush the sides of the van, and hovers in the air.

It's the first time Jazz has ever seen the G.I.W. secret weapon, and the key component of the Phantom protocol: Phantom themselves. They wear a baggy white jumpsuit, the G.I.W. logo emblazoned across their chest in a slightly darker off-white. Not an inch of skin is visible, a mask clamped tightly over their lower face, round goggles covering their eyes, and a loose hood pulled over their head. They hold themselves awkwardly, arms raised in front of their chest, fingers curling toward their face. Thick cuffs bind their forearms together, forcing this strange pose upon them. Similar cuffs bind their ankles.

Their head turns slowly as they scan the street, the lenses of their goggles flaring. One is blue, the other green. They stop when they face Tucker's car.

Jazz's breath hitches. She presses one against the window, her other falling to the door handle. The ghost mimics her, spreading their fingers, although their palms are turned the wrong way.

She's never seen Phantom before. She's never seen their face. But she knows exactly what she would find under that mask. She pops the door open, lowering one foot to the pavement, ignoring the danger of the ghost to her left.

"Phantom!" Agent O snaps. He presses another button his watch. The cuffs on Phantom's legs fall to the found with a thud, cracking the pavement when they hit it. His arms stay bound. Another press, another button, and a collar around Phantom's neck, hidden by their pose, sparks dangerously.

Agent O points to the mechanical ghost. "Go hunt!"

—

Jazz waited out in the hallway, where her parents told her to be. She sat on a hard, plastic chair, tapping her feet on the tiled floor. It must have been freshly buffed, because when she leaned forward, she could see her reflection on the gleaming ceramic. The tiles were marbled white and pink, the colours blending together in milky swirls, and when she stared right at it, it looked like her face was covered in scars.

She lifted a hand and touched her cheek, almost expecting to feel puckered, raised skin where the marbled pink cuts across her pale face. She wondered if Danny would have scars.

"Jazzypants?"

Her head snapped up and she was surprised to see Jack, her father, standing before her. A burly man who took up nearly half the hallway, he didn't exactly have the lightest steps, but she didn't even notice him arrive. He crouched so they were eye to eye, hunching his shoulders to take up as little space as possible, and touched her hand.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

Jazz glanced to the side, toward the closed double doors with the words "STAFF ONLY" plastered across them in big, bold letters. "I'm fine. Is Danny okay?" she asked.

"He's okay," Jack said. He smiled and squeezed her hand. "The doctors are still working on him, but they said he's gonna be fine."

Jazz didn't match Jack's smile. She tried, but it felt weak and flimsy, and she let it fall away. "Okay," she said quietly.

Jack's smile tightened. "Listen, there's someone here who wants to talk to you."

"Why?"

"Because of what happened. Danny's gonna be okay, but he got really hurt, and that made some people worry. So, they want to talk to you, so they know they don't have to worry."

Jazz frowned. "You don't have to talk like that. I'm not eight. Who are they?"

Jack laughed, but it was soft and humorless. "Right, you've always been so grown up. Are you okay to talk to them?"

"Yeah." Jazz nodded and pushed off her chair, standing up. She barely reached Jack's elbow.

With his hand on her back, Jack guided her out of the waiting room. They turned down a quiet hallway, farther from the hospital's entrance, and headed toward a bench set into an. It was small and private. A woman in a blazer and slacks waited there, sitting with her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap.

The woman's hair was tied back in a ponytail, smooth against her head, but cascading into a waterfall of dark curls at the nape of her neck. Jazz touched her own hair, red and pin straight. She always wanted curly hair like that, especially after seeing pictures of her mother in college.

Jack cleared his throat as they approached. The woman looked up. She smiled warmly at Jazz, scooting down the bench as if to make room, even though it was a fairly large bench and there was lots of space. Jazz sat down on the very end, as far from the woman as she could get.

"Thank you, Mr. Fenton. I know you may want to stay, but this needs to be a private conversation, so I know you aren't influencing anything she says," the woman said.

"Right," Jack said. He gave Jazz one last pat, then turned and lumbered down the hallway.

"Hello, Jasmine," the woman said, drawing Jazz's attention back. "I'm Jamila Faizan. You can call my Jamila. I'm a social worker. Do you know what that is?"

Jazz nodded, eyeing the woman warily. She had nothing against social workers, but she heard people threaten her parents with them before. It made her uncomfortable.

"I just want to ask you a few questions about what life is like at home, okay?" Jamila asked.

"It's fine."

Jamila smiled. "Of course. It might seem that way, but your brother got really hurt in your parent's lab, and I need to make sure something like that doesn’t happen again. I just want to make sure you're safe at home."

Jazz bit her lip. She knew her home life wasn't exactly normal. How many twelve-year-olds had a lab in their basement? But they had good parents, and this was the first time anything like this had ever happened.

"How often do you go into your parents' lab?" Jamila asked.

"Not a lot. I don't like it down there that much, it's really cold."

"Do you parents ever bring you down there?"

"Sometimes, if they want to show us something interesting."

"Okay. Are you allowed down there any time?"

Jazz shifted in her seat, tucking her hands between her knees to keep from fidgeting. "Mom or dad has to be with us if we go down there," she said. She quickly added, "But I don't want to go down there, anyway, unless they want to show us something. So it's okay."

Jamila hummed. "How are you at school?"

"Good. I get all A's," Jazz said, a little thrown by the topic change.

"And your brother?"

"He doesn't really like school. I don't think it's a good learning environment for him, so he doesn't really get good grades."

"And you're happy?"

"Yes." Jazz narrowed her eyes at Jamila. "Are you trying to take us away?"

"I'm only trying to make sure you're safe, healthy, and happy," Jamila said.

"I will be once I know my brother's okay."

"I've been told he's going to pull through just fine," Jamila said, giving Jazz a placating smile.

"Then, then I don't see what the problem is. He's okay, I'm okay. It was just an accident. So, I'm going back to my parents, where I will be safe, healthy, and happy, okay? Okay." Jazz got up and walked away before Jamila could say anything else. It wasn't like the social worker could stop her.

—

The asphalt beneath Phantom cracks as they shoot through the air toward the ghost.

"Phantom, wait!" the ghost protests, holding up his hands. He jumps into the air, arcing over Phantom. A gun pops out of his shoulder and fires a green net. The net snaps out, heading right for Phantom.

Jazz doesn't even know how to begin describing what Phantom's body does to dodge the net. Only their arms and head stay solid, the rest of their body twisting, and morphing, and stretching so the next passes harmlessly through them. Their torso and legs snap back into existence as if they hadn't just melted into an amorphous cloud and Phantom continues unhindered. They slam into the mechanical ghost, wrapping one leg around the ghost's arm, the other around their neck.

Electricity crackles up Phantom's spine and shocks the ghost, making the whole suit go slack. Phantom drives the ghost into the ground, crouching over him. A low moan builds in their throat.

Jazz automatically covers her ears. She may have never seen Phantom in action before, but she's definitely heard their signature attack. And had to deal with the damage it leaves behind.

Just before the wail reaches its glass-shattering, tree-tearing, foundation-shaking crescendo, the mechanical ghost shouts, "Sorry!" and launches a mini-rocket out of his arm. It hits Phantom and explodes, blasting them straight across the street.

Jazz winces when they collide with the sidewalk, a sharp crack echoing down the street.

"Stop fighting!" The mechanical ghost holds up their hands as Phantom peels themselves off the crumbled sidewalk. "It's me, Skulker!"

Phantom answers by smacking something on the side of their mask. Green fumes start pouring out the front. Reaching up, their fingers curl around their collar, yanking it down as far as it'll go, and they thrust their head forward. Ectoplasm spews from the mast. It roars outward, a mesmerizing mix of gas and flames that seeps into the air.

As Phantom leaps forward, the ectoplasm pours over a nearby mailbox. The ectoplasm turns liquid the second it touches the mailbox, coating it in a thick slime, melting through the metal. Watching the metal bubble and ooze, Jazz swallows nervously.

She's reminded quite suddenly that Phantom is a tool for the G.I.W. The supreme weapon. The thing they throw at every passing threat. Thinking back to her textbook, she wonders how much of that information was garnered from Phantom. They would certainly make an impressive specimen, not that Jazz wants to think of them like that. But it's undeniable.

The way they move is otherworldly.

Every time Skulker dodges, Phantom's head snaps toward him, lightning fast, as ectoplasm spits from their mask. They mutate their body into grotesque shapes at a moment's notice, deforming and contorting as needed. It's hard to watch them. Not just because of the brutal display, with Skulker's protests falling on deaf ears, but because their body can't seem to settle. It's constantly moving, blurring, flickering. The only time they look completely solid is when their whole body crackles and electricity arcs off them.

Phantom's ectoplasm spews over Skulker's arm. Skulker yelps, forced to flee, and tries to shake off both the acidic sludge and his feral tail.

And Phantom really is feral. They follow, relentless, remorseless, moving like a wild animal prowling after its prey. Every attack is a pounce, a noxious cloud of ectoplasm following their every move. It's both mesmerizing and horrifying. The only word Jazz can use to properly describe them is monster.

—

Two hours after speaking with Jamila, Danny was out of surgery. Jazz was on her own when a nurse came over to deliver the news. Her parents were off with the social worker, had been for some time. The nurse was hesitant to give Jazz the news on her own, but she bullied the man with tear-filled eyes until he caved in.

Danny's surgery was a success. They fixed the rupture in his hear, stopped the bleeding, and now he was sleeping. He would be for a while because his body needed to heal, but once he woke up, he would be good as new.

The nurse waited with Jazz for her parents to return. When they came walking down the hallway, accompanied by Jamila, Jazz hopped out of her seat and ran forward to give them the good news. She faltered when she saw her parents' expressions.

Her mother's eyes were red from crying. Seeing that unsettled Jazz. She had never seen her mother cry before, and even if she didn't actually witness it now, knowing it happened threw her off balance. She knew parents cried too. They were regular people with all kinds of emotions; but, still, they weren't supposed to cry.

Jazz stopped at arm's length, watching them warily.

"Oh, sweetie." Maddie reached down and hugged Jazz.

"Mom, what's going on?"

"You're going to be staying with someone else for a little bit," she said.

Jazz pulled away. "Mom?"

"I'm sorry," Jamila interrupted, placing a hand on Jazz's shoulder. Jazz wanted to throw it off. "Maddie," Jamila continued.

"Please, call me Dr. Fenton," Jazz's mother said, a bitter smile cutting across her face.

"Dr. Fenton," Jamila amended coolly. "May I?"

Jazz felt helpless as Maddie stepped away, instantly missing her comforting presence. Jamila took her place, crouching down to Jazz's level.

"I really am sorry, but I can't let you return to Fenton Works until I know you'll really be safe there. I want you to go home with your parents, I really do, but I want to keep you out of danger more."

"I'm not in danger," Jazz insisted.

"Tonight's events prove otherwise. I was contacted by both the hospital and the dispatch operator you spoke to. It's only temporary. Until I'm sure your parents can take proper care of you. I've made arrangements with a foster home for now."

"Do you really have to do this?" Maddie asked.

"Mom," Jazz said. She reached out, searching for Maddie's hand, squeezing it until Maddie looked at her. "I'll be okay. It's just for now, right? You guys can set everything straight and then we can all go home together with Danny

"Oh, sweetie." Maddie pulled Jazz into another firm hug. "It's not right."

"But it's okay, isn't it? Ms. Faizan can do her work, and she'll see that, and everything will be fine by the time Danny wakes up." Jazz motioned for her father, who quickly joined the hug. It was tight, and warm, and Jazz never wanted to let go, but she had to after a few seconds.

Danny always went on and on about how grown up Jazz was, how she acted so much like an adult even though she was four years younger than him. If she was as mature as Danny always said, then she could do this. She could be grown up right now and be okay with all of this.

She could go with Jamila now, and later, she could go home with Danny.

—

The fight is taking too long. Despite dealing with ghosts for two years now, Jazz has never seen a real fight. If it's someone minor, a single agent is all it takes to swoop in and clean things up before anything bad happens. Mildly destructive ghosts require a few agents, who sometimes block off whole sections of the city, pushing citizens back until the problem is dealt with. Usually, this takes no more than half an hour, although the aftermath of the fight affects the city for days.

But when they send in Phantom, the fight ends before it really begins. Swift, effective, and destructive. Bringing in Phantom means bringing in the big guns.

But they're not so swift today. The minutes drag on, the ghosts caught in a stalemate. It takes Jazz far too long to notice the problem: Phantom is distracted. They keep pulling back at the last moment, holding off from delivering the finishing blow. She doesn't think it's to spare the ghost they're fighting. It's the result, but it's not the reason. Each attack aims to kill, up until the moment it doesn't.

Because Phantom's head keeps swivelling. Toward her. As soon as Jazz realizes this, she scrambles out of the car, ignoring the agents shouting at her to get back inside, and runs over to Tucker and Spike.

"What are you doing?" Tucker asks. His head jerks up and down as he looks between Jazz and the G.I.W. agents. He waves his arms emphatically at the short agent. "He's coming this way now!"

"I don't care. Tucker!" Jazz grabs Tucker by the front of his shirt and pulls him down. She shoves his head forward and points at Phantom. "Do you see it?"

Tucker's face twists in confusion, wrinkling his nose and furrowing his brow. "They're... looking at us.

"Yeah."

Phantom snarls, finally managing to get a hold on Skulker, and rips his arm out of the socket, tearing into the limb like a rabid animal. There's only wires inside, thank god.

Tucker pales. "I don't know about you, but... I don't think I want its attention."

"Tucker! He's not an it!" Jazz protests.

"Phantom is a ghost, Jazz. I'm sorry, I don't get what you're trying to say here," Tucker says.

"Don't you remember what I told you? What happened after you left?"

Tucker stares at her. A few seconds later, realization dawns on his face. "Yeah. Yeah! I do! Do you think–"

"Yeah."

"Shit."

"I know. "

"Jazz, if it is, I don't think..." Tucker trails off. He gives Jazz a pointed look as Phantom screeches and dissolves into a black cloud, reforming behind Skulker. They swing their arms down on Skulker's head, smashing him into the ground.

"What the hell are you guys talking about?" Spike asks. "All I see is a pissed off government goon heading our way."

"Phantom," Tucker and Jazz chorus. Jazz adds, "They keep looking over here."

She can't help the hope that swells in her chest. Two years. Two whole years since the ghosts came, since the G.I.W. took over, since it happened. Two years of stares and whispers behind her back.

Look at that girl, isn't it a shame what happened?

I heard they tried to shoot her too.

I bet he ran away because he couldn't stand to see her.

"So?"

"The hospital," Jazz stresses.

"Oh. Oh!" Spike glances at Jazz from the corner of his eye. "That's good, right? It means they're, you know?"

"He... if they are... if it is." Jazz fumbles over her words, but Tucker seems to understand. He gives her shoulder a reassuring pat.

He didn't run away, Jazz thinks. He didn't mean to leave her. She leans into Tucker, torn between crying out of grief or relief.

Spike taps Jazz's other shoulder. "Hey, this is super gross and touching and all, but we're fucked," he said with a jerk of his chin, motioning to the approaching agent.

—

The Miller family was nice enough. Max and Hannah treated her well. They had fostered their son, Spike, before adopting him when he was six. Jazz only saw him once her first day in the apartment, and he immediately reminded her of Sam, with his black clothes and dark makeup, but a little more punk thanks to his mohawk.

He left Jazz alone for the most part, which she was more thankful for than anything.

Max and Hannah told Jazz they would do their best for her, and that they hoped Danny would be okay, and they would give her whatever she needed to make it through this tough time. The way they talked annoyed Jazz a little. They weren't patronizing, but they acted like they knew exactly what she needed when they didn’t.

They thought she needed a soft bed, a good meal, and a comforting smile, but she really just needed her brother.

The first day at the Millers, Jazz occupied herself with her memoirs. She had been working on them the day of the accident, until the power cut out and Danny's scream filled the house, so loud it made her ears ache. She put in her headphones to drown out the residual scream in her head and got down to work.

Before... it happened, she had been writing down her significant childhood memories. The earliest ones weren't full memories, more like snatches of moments. Danny's soft hand in hers. A small hand rubbing her back after a nightmare. The glow of her star nightlight, which originally belonged to Danny, but he passed it on to her when he learned it made her sleep through the night better. She only learned this fact a few months ago, but it warmed her heart nonetheless.

The memories got stronger after that. Her first time seeing Santa, she was four, Danny was eight, and he took her across town on his own to the mall. Danny teaching her to ride a bike, because their parents were too busy in the lab. Danny making cupcakes for her birthday, because their parents were away at a convention. Danny helping her with her homework, even though he wasn't very good at it, but he still tried his best.

Jazz's pen paused. All her best memories had Danny in them. It wasn't that she had no good memories with her parents, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized they weren't really there as much as they thought they were.

"It's fine," she told herself. She pressed her pen into the page, intending to keep writing, but she couldn't stop thinking.

How many kids learned to cook at eight years old because their parents sometimes forgot to feed them? How many kids were more of a parent to their little sister than their actual parents? How many kids lived above a lab full of dangerous chemicals and volatile weaponry, and were told to clean said lab as part of their chores?

Jazz could think of at least one: Danny. Would things be the other way if she were older? Would she take Danny out on Christmas day so they didn't have to hear their parents fighting about a fat man in a red suit? Would she have been forced to grow up too fast?

She didn't want Danny to be her dad. She wanted her father to be her dad.

"Jazz?"

She jumped, hand shooting across the page, pen ripping the paper in half, tearing through her carefully penned memories and the photocopied photograph taped in the corner.

"Oh, shit, sorry. Was that important?" Spike asked. He held one of the house phones, pressing against his chest.

"Language," Jazz said softly, staring forlornly at the ruined page. The pages beneath were ruined, too, a heavy black line cutting across the first few.

"Weirdo," Spike said. "Anyway, Mom­­—that's Hannah—wanted me to tell you that social worker is coming on Friday so you can visit your brother."

Muffled noise comes from the phone, and Spike raises to his ear. He listened a moment, nodded, then lowered it again. "And she's sorry they can't take you sooner, but they work during visitor hours, and they don't want you walking through the city on your own," he recited.

"Why not?" Jazz asked.

Spike looked at her funny, cocking his head. "Because it isn't safe."

"Oh." Jazz would be perfectly fine with going on her own. She needed to see Danny with her own eyes, to make sure he was okay. The nurse said he was, but she had to see it for herself. She had to be certain.

Her second day with the Millers, she couldn't bring herself to work on her memoirs again, so she occupied herself with the collection of books in their office. A lot of it was literature, some classic, some poetry, some plays. Jazz gravitated toward the single shelf of textbooks, particularly the psychology. She didn't know much about the field, but something about understanding brains and how they worked fascinated her.

She stayed holed up in the office all day.

Her third day with the Millers was Friday. She waited for Jamila to pick her up and take her to the hospital. Jamila never showed up.

Her fourth day, she learned about the monster that attacked the mall, sending everyone into a panic. It glowed and couldn't be hurt by anything anyone threw at them, until Maddie and Jack showed up with the volatile weapons they made Danny clean and put the monster—ghost—down. All Jazz cared about was why no one was with Danny in case he woke up.

Her fifth day, Jazz thought, and thought, and didn't stop thinking until she couldn't stop thinking about why her parents didn't seem to care as much as they were supposed to.

On the sixth day, Jamila said she could finally see Danny tomorrow. For the first time in a week, it felt like everything would be alright.

—

Spike panics. Jazz knows he panics because he grabs her wrist and makes a break for it before the agent even reaches them.

"Spike!" Jazz stumbles, almost tripping, and tries to resist. Glancing over her shoulder, she sees the agent giving chase. Until Tucker surges after him and tackles his legs. They both go down.

Spike yanks on her arm, forcing Jazz to run faster, and drags her around the corner of the block.

"What was that?" Jazz asks. She grabs her hair. "Tucker's going to get arrested!"

"So were we! You heard what the emergency broadcast said. You know how many laws we're breaking being 'out of our vehicle?'" Spike shouts back. "All of them!"

"They aren't real laws!" And they aren't. They're a guideline of what to do in ghostly emergencies, and the G.I.W. treat every ghost like an emergency. Although, considering the destruction they had just run from, this was a real emergency.

"Funny, doesn't stop them from arresting people!"

Jazz rips her hand out of Spike's grip. "I can't leave them behind!"

Spike stops and turns. His scowl is softer, and he bites his lip, looking at Jazz with worry.

She glares back at him, refusing to move. "I can't."

"This isn't about Tucker, is it?" he asks. He doesn't need Jazz to answer. She doesn't need to give him one. He sighs, pressing a hand to his cheek, one finger spinning his eyebrow ring. After a long moment, he says, "Fine."

Jazz feels a wave of relief that has her grinning.

"Don't expect me to tackle a government agent for you, though. That's all Foley."

They turn back around, sprinting down the street. Overhead, Phantom and Skulker are still battling it out. Skulker's lagging, the plating of his suit warped and melted. The missing arm definitely doesn't help. But Phantom's not looking so good either. A few lucky shots from Skulker's plethora of hidden guns had left them burnt and bleeding.

Can it really be called bleeding? Ectoplasm, rather than blood, seeps out of Phantom's wounds, indistinguishable from the substance dripping from his mask. A wound on their torso slows them down the most, a large scorch mark stretching from the bottom of their ribcage, across their stomach, to their hip on the other side of their body.

Every time it looks like they're about to slow down, the collar on their neck sparks. Phantom hisses in pain each time and dives back into the hunt with renewed vigour.

Jazz forces herself to look away when Spike grabs her shoulder and pushes her behind the same crumpled car Skulker destroyed earlier. Pressing a finger to his lips, he motions her forward, and together they peer around the bumper and look down the street.

The agent has Tucker pinned on a nearby car. Straining her ears, Jazz can just barely hear what he's saying over the grunts and snarls of the fighting ghosts. "You're under arrest for assaulting a G.I.W. agent and interfering with a government operation."

"Come on, Mr. K, that's not cool," Tucker says.

"Agent K. And neither was assaulting me. G.I.W. operations are a matter of national security."

"It's a green blob in a metal suit, fucking chill!"

Agent K pulls out a pair of cuffs and slaps them on Tucker's wrists, keeping him pinned with a hand on his back. Agent K's focus drifts up toward the fight and scowls. Seeing his hesitance, Jazz realizes Agent K isn't going to move Tucker until the fight is done. Too much debris is flying everywhere and it's safer behind the cars than anywhere else. Agent O seems to have found cover, too, behind the overturned truck. He stands there with his gun lowered, hand poised over his watch.

Jazz looks back to Tucker. Neither he nor Agent K has noticed her and Spike yet. "Okay," she says. "I know what to do."

"No," Spike says.

"I haven't said anything yet."

"No. We're not tackling a G.I.W. agent."

Jazz gives him a pleading look, with wide eyes and a small pout.

"No, we're not tackling him!"

Jazz doesn't give him much of a choice. She charges, dashing out from behind the car.

"Son of a biiitch!" Spike shouts, sprinting past her. Agent K hears Spike and turns to face him, but none of his government training could prepare him for the pure shock value of a sickly looking punk goth kid charging at him at full speed. Spike barrels into the agent's chest, throwing him off Tucker and down to the sidewalk.

Jazz is about to throw herself on top of the pile when a loud crash and a panicked cry stops her.

"No, Phantom, no! It's me! Remember? Stop!"

She jerks back at the sound of Skulker's steadily rising voice and peeks over the car Tucker had been pinned against. Skulker lies on the ground in the middle of the road, Phantom hovering far above him. But something's off. Specifically, Skulker's head. It lies a foot away from his body, the eyes dull and expression completely blank.

"Please!"

Jazz's gaze snaps up to Phantom. In his hands, he holds something small and green, and Tucker's words come floating back to her: a blob in a metal suit. Phantom holds Skulker's real form inches from their face, clutched tightly in their hands.

"No!" Jazz cries, jumping out into the street. Everyone freezes, their heads swivelling toward her, and she falters.

"Jazz, what are you doing?" Tucker hisses.

She doesn't know. Phantom is a dangerous, powerful ghost. There's nothing she can actually do to make him stop. There's no real reason she should even try to stop him. In Amity Park, ghosts are like rabid wild animals. They come in, destroy stuff, and then they get put down. Jazz has never met someone who felt sorry for the ghosts.

But she had also never really met a ghost before. And she had never heard one scream and beg for its life as it tries to help the very thing that is going to kill it. She can't watch that. She can't just stand here and witness Phantom squeezing the life—the afterlife—out of this little ghost that says he wants to help.

Whoever this Skulker is, she can't let that happen.

Whoever Jazz suspects Phantom might be, she can't let them do it.

She can't tell if Phantom is looking at her, but she thinks they are. Even as Skulker wriggles and squirms, popping out of their grip, Phantom stays focused on her. A small smile touches Jazz's lips. In the corner of her eye, Skulker flies down to his suit, free to escape.

Jazz takes a step forward. A burly arm loops around her waist and hoists her off her feet, dragging her back.

"Hey! Stop!" Jazz squirms, feet kicking in the air, and throws her head back. She hits Agent K's chin, but he doesn't falter.

"Hey, calm down! It's not safe out here!" Agent K says, his arm tightening around her midsection.

Jazz gasps. "Let me go! You're hurting me!"

Agent K's hold immediately loosens. "Sorry. But what's with you kids, tackling people trying to help you?"

"Wait, what?" Jazz asks, confused.

Suddenly, white fills her vision. Jazz feels a burning, crackling heat, then she's falling, and Agent K her screams. She rolls on the ground, pushing herself up on her hands and knees, and looks over her shoulder.

Phantom has Agent K pinned against a convenience store window, arms pressed against his throat. Their body blurs as they move, leaning in closer. The glass cracks. With a great heave, the window shatters. Phantom sends Agent K flying through the store, flipping over rows of shelves. He crashes into a row of coolers at the back and falls to the floor.

Phantom spins around and faces Jazz. Up close, they look even more feral, ectoplasm dripping like saliva through a series of jagged slots in their mask. The lenses of their goggles are cracked, but the eyes behind them glow so brightly it hurts to look right at them.

Phantom's collar sizzles and they cry out as the shock courses through them. Turning away from Jazz, they lock onto Agent O and howls. Jazz blinks and Phantom is all the way cross the street, roaring in Agent O's face, immersing him in a haze of ectoplasm.

Agent O drops to the ground, clutching their throat.

"No," Jazz whispers, horrified.

Phantom turns back to her. They stumble forward. Jazz takes a step back. As if that's some signal, Phantom lunges toward her. Jazz screams and drops to the ground, crawling toward the sidewalk.

"Phantom, stand down!" Agent K shouts as he clambers out of the broken shop window His demand is met with a roar of ectoplasm that soars right over Jazz. She screams again, folding her arms over her head, but can't do anything against the blistering heat.

Jazz crawls faster, scrambling to her feet as soon as she's able. She heads for Tucker and Spike, both of them wearing cuffs now, but Phantom cuts in front of her. Backpedalling fast, her arms flail as she pivots and runs the other way.

A hazy mist surrounds Jazz and she shudders, a tingling chill passing through her. Phantom reforms in front of her, too close for her for her to stop in time. A green blast soaring over her shoulder saves her. It bursts against Phantom's chest and throws them back.

"Run!" Agent K shouts, training his gun oh Phantom.

Jazz doesn't question she order. She doesn't wait for Phantom to get back. She already knows they will. No matter what Agent K does, Phantom will come after her. She's their prey now.

—

Everything was not alright.

Monday night, Spike once again passed along the message that Jazz would be seeing her brother the next day, a full week after she'd seen him last. This time, Jamila actually showed up, apologizing for Wednesday, citing the chaos at the mall and the havoc it wreaked throughout the city in general. She brought with her the good news that Danny was awake, had been since Friday.

"I'm sorry no one informed you sooner. There were some complications at the hospital," Jamila had said.

Those foreboding words quelled Jazz's excitement but couldn't snuff it out completely. She would finally get to see for herself that Danny was fine. But when she got to the hospital, the nurse said she wasn't allowed to see him.

"Why not?" she asked.

"He's in for tests right now," the nurse said. She turned to Jamila and continued, as if Jazz wasn't there. "We contacted an expert. Apparently, this is something the government's dealt with before. I don't really understand it, but his parents will be seeing him soon, and Jasmine can see him after that."

That was how Jazz ended up in the waiting room, on her own, again. Jamila had gone off to find her parents and speak to them about Danny's situation, whatever that was. Everyone was treating her like she didn't need to know anything, but she was twelve! She was mature, and smart, and she could handle whatever they were keeping from her.

"It's not fair," she muttered.

"Damn right. Although I have no idea what you're actually talking about."

Jazz looked up and saw Tucker claiming the chair next to her. There was no blood on him, and for one wild moment, Jazz realized she expected to see some. It was the first time she'd seen him since the accident, and for some reason, she pictured him frozen in that moment back at the lab, clothes stained red and green.

"Uh, you good?" Tucker asked.

Jazz stared a moment longer, taking in his pale face. "Are you?"

"Ha, you caught me. I don't really like hospitals," Tucker said. He glanced around the room warily and slumped in his chair. "But I heard they were letting you see him today, so I thought. I don't know. Maybe I could sneak in."

"Who told you?"

"Spike."

Jazz blinked in surprise.

"His moms used to babysit me, and my mom watched Spike to return the favour sometimes. When I heard you were with the Millers, I kind of asked him to keep an eye on you for me," Tucker said, smiling sheepishly. "Got to make sure you're alright for Danny."

"Thanks, I guess," Jazz said. She peered closer at Tucker. More than pale, he looked tired, like he hadn't been sleeping, and it made her wonder. "What... what happened? In the lab."

Tucker shoved his hands in his pockets and looked away. "It doesn't really matter."

"I think it does."

"What difference will it make?"

"Because then I'll know."

"That won't—"

"Tucker, please." Jazz wasn't mad. She didn't cry. She didn't beg. She just looked at Tucker, feeling helpless and lost.

"Sam thought it'd be cool to go inside," Tucker muttered.

"Oh." Danny would do anything Sam asked, whether she meant him to or not. Everyone knew it.

"Yeah," Tucker said.

"She hasn't come to see him, has she?"

"She feels guilty."

Jazz didn't know how to respond to that. A small part of her was mad at Sam, but at the same time Jazz knew it wasn't completely her fault.

Silence fell between her and Tucker as she sank into her thoughts. Jazz didn't know how it was with other siblings, but Danny's best friend had always been such a staple in her life that she didn't mind being alone with him. He was almost like a second big brother, although Danny would be the undisputed best.

Tucker stayed with her until Jamila returned. She wore a wary smile and gave Tucker a questioning glance.

"I'm Danny's friend," Tucker said, answering her unasked question.

"I see. I'm sorry, but I've been told only family can see him at this time. His should be seeing him now," Jamila said.

"You're not family."

"Due to the nature of the situation, I am his medical proxy."

It was amazing how Jamila could sum everything up without actually explaining anything useful. Jazz wanted to snap at her, but she held back. After all the thinking she had done about her parents, she was no longer certain how she felt about Jamila. Maybe the woman really did want to help.

"It's fine, Tucker. You can just get Spike to tell you all about my visit," Jazz said.

"Oh, that's cold," Tucker said. He pushed himself up and stretched his arms above his head, then let them flop back down at his sides. "I guess I can leave Danny in your capable hands. Give him hell for scaring us like that."

"That's the plan."

Jazz waited until Tucker was gone before turning to Jamila and motioning for her to lead the way. Soon, all her fretting would be over. She could confirm with her own eyes that Danny wasn't still bleeding out on the floor, and maybe even get one of his comforting smiles. Maybe he would even come with her to stay at the Millers until everything got sorted out with their parents. If it got sorted out.

Before they rounded the corner into Danny's hallway, Jamila took Jazz aside and spoke to her softly.

"Something happened on Friday that the doctors can't really explain," she started. "Your brother appears healthy, but he's... different. And I just want to prepare you for that."

Determined, Jazz nodded.

Jamila looked relieved, her wide brown eyes softening, and she smiled. "Okay. Let's go see your brother."

They turned the corner. Nothing happened. Which made sense, because it was just a hallway, and the door to Danny's room was further down. But Jazz was so tense that the brightly lit hospital hallway felt out of place. A long, foreboding corridor would have been more appropriate.

Hospital staff bustled about. A couple patients were stretching their legs. Some visitors had claimed benches that were interspersed along the hall, none of them too interesting. A woman in a pretty blue dress, a man in a white suit, two teenagers with watery eyes and red noses. Jazz wondered who they were all here for.

They were halfway down the hall when a door burst open and a nurse stuck his head out.

"Security!" he shouted.

"That's not my son!"

Jamila's arm curled around Jazz's shoulders, stopping her in her tracks. The way Jamila's hold on her tightened when a security guard went rushing by told her exactly who's room that was. Her fears were confirmed when Maddie and Jack backed out of the open door, herded toward the security guard by the nurse. Danny's door closed behind them.

Jazz twisted, breaking free of Jamila's grip, and ran toward her parents.

"Mom, what's going on? What's wrong?" she asked.

Maddie turned to Jazz and her face fell, tears welling in her eyes. She was barely holding it together "Oh, honey. Danny's... Danny's gone, sweetie."

"No." That wasn't right. Jamila just said Danny was fine. What could have happened in that short time? She refused to believe it.

"No!" she repeated, louder.

Maddie reached out to her. Jazz ducked under her arm, skipping out of reach. She glanced at Jamila, the nurse, the guard, checking to see if any of them would stop her. None of them moved.

"Stop, Jazz!" Jack shouted, taking a step forward.

The security guard stopped him, getting in Jack's way and holding out his arms. "Sir, I will remove you form the building," the guard said.

"Jasmine, do not go in there," Maddie said in a scolding, motherly tone

Jazz went in. She whipped the door open, spinning around and slamming it shut. There was no lock. A quick peek through the window confirmed the guard was still holding her parents back. Satisfied they weren’t going to barge in and drag her out of there, Jazz turned.

She froze. The person sitting on the bed had a familiar head of messy hair, but it faded to white half-way through. His eyes swirled blue and green, the colours constantly shifting, pushing against each other, battling for dominance. When he raised his hand and waved, his arm blurred, trailed by an afterimage.

Bandages crawl up his right arm, wrapping stiffly around his fingers, and winding all the way up to his shoulder, stopping just before the sleeve of his blue gown. She's only seen it once, but Jazz knows there's a gauze patch on his shoulder under that sleeve. A matching patch is plastered against his neck. Thin, spidery blisters creep along his jaw, but don't go much further than that.

His face is sallow, cheeks sunken, eyes looking bruised. The blood is gone. The green goo is gone.

"Jazz!" There was a slight echo to his voice. He beamed. "About time you got here. I was starting to think you didn't care."

There was no mistaking that smile or that teasing voice. Jazz ran forward and threw her arms around his waist, burying her head against his chest.

"Danny!" Jazz cried out, already tearing up. Because it was Danny. He looked different, and he felt different—cold—but it was him.

"You are not gonna believe what's on the other side of that portal, took a lot of work to get back here–"

"Get back?"

"­–but here I am!" Danny threw up his arms, grinning even wider.

Jazz noticed his teeth looked a little sharper. "What happened?" she asked.

"Oh, man, you're not gonna believe it. So, the portal turns on, right? And then everything just goes all." Danny waved his hands around. "Hold on, wait, I had it before. Everything just goes all," he snapped his fingers and electricity crackled down his arm, "like that!"

Jazz jumped away from him, staring at his arm as the electricity fizzled out.

Danny's smile slipped. "Oh. You're scared too, aren't you? Mom and Dad... they didn't take it well either."

Jazz opened her mouth to respond, but before she could, the door banged open. Startled, she whipped around and backed up until her hip bumped the side of Danny's bed. Maddie stood in the doorway, holding a silver and green gun. An ectogun, Jazz recalled. Her parents made them to fight ghosts, if they ever saw one.

"Jazz, get away from it!" Maddie said. It didn't take a genius to connect the dots.

"Mom," Jazz said.

"That's not Danny!"

"That's kind of rude," Danny muttered.

"Mom, what are you doing!" Jazz slid in front of Danny, holding out her arms the same way the security guard had.

The barrel of Maddie's gun dipped as she watched Jazz, disbelief written across her face. It looked like she was going to stop. To Jazz, it looked like Maddie was about to reconsider. Until Jazz felt Danny's hand on her shoulder. Maddie's disbelief was drowned out by a furious snarl fueled by grief and rage.

Everything happened so fast.

Danny shoved Jazz out of the way just before the bang. She tripped into a chair by his bed, smacking her head on the armrest. The world went fuzzy for a moment. There wa a shout, and a thump, and her mother started wearing. A stampede of feet come running.

When Jazz's vision cleared, she saw Maddie on the ground, pinned by the same security guard from before, reaching for her gun. No less than three new guards had Jack pinned out in the hallway. The nurse was speaking frantically into a phone. The man in the white suit tapped the nurse's shoulder, holding out his hand for the phone, jerking his chin toward the room. The nurse relinquished the phone without protest.

Jazz crawled backward, away from the chaos, and almost fell when her hand slipped on something warm and wet. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Danny on the floor, bleeding.

—

Jazz has been afraid many times in her life. When she was little, walking through the house in the dark. When she sat in the backseat of the RV while her father had the wheel. When she sat in the hospital, alone waiting to hear if Danny was alive or dead. When she realized he was gone from her life forever.

None of that compares to how she feels now. Her heart beats against her ribs, moments from bursting out of her chest. Her lungs burn and her throat feels tight and she struggles to breathe. Her senses narrow until all she can see is what's in front of her, all she can hear is Phantom inches behind her, all she can feel is the icy heat they give off, so cold it burns.

Jazz makes the mistake of looking back to check how close Phantom is. Practically nose to nose, the green and blue lenses of his goggles are all she sees. She shrieks and stumbles. Phantom reaches out to catch her, latching on to her hair, yanking her head back. She cries out again, tears springing to her eyes.

Phantom jerks away from her, releasing her hair, and raises their hands to their face. They start moaning. Jazz takes off, the ominous wail building behind her. Clapping her hands over her ears, she tries to shut it out. The distraught cry grows louder and louder until the ground shakes, and windows rattle, and a wave of green energy blasts Jazz off her feet.

She soars through the air, screaming, arms wrapping around her head. She hits the ground hard and curls into a ball. Phantoms wail tears into her, a painfully familiar cry of pain amplified a hundred times over, fueled by the power of ectoplasm.

Her ears ring long after it ends, so loud that she doesn’t even realize Phantom's stopped until she notices the ground isn't shaking anymore. She rolls onto her back and lifts her head. Phantom stumbles toward her, clutching their still-bleeding wounds. Gas pours from their mask, ectoplasm erupting from the slits every time they breathe.

Fear keeps her pinned. The only thing Jazz can do is weep, her heart slowly cracking as Phantom edges closer, vicious and unrelenting, not a single shred of humanity with them.

"Please stop!" Jazz wails. "This isn't you! Just stop. See me! Stop being so stupid!"

Phantom's breath rattles as they loom over her.

Jazz screams, "Danny!"

—

Jazz waited until two a.m. before slipping out of her hospital room. A nurse had given her slippers before final rounds, so she wasn't walking barefoot, but they made a loud slapping noise if she didn't walk carefully enough. She stuck close to the wall, one hand on the plastic rail that stretched down the length of the hallway.

Danny was only one room over, but it would only take a second for a nurse to walk around the corner, see Jazz up and about, and usher her back into her room. She slipped through Danny's door, quiet as possible, and tiptoed over to his bed. There was a new swathe of bandages on his left forearm, to go with his growling collection.

Maddie had missed hitting anything vital, but whatever was in her gun sent Danny into a seizure. The police came and took Jack and Maddie away after that, and Danny's doctor admitted Jazz with a concussion. She was only meant to be there one night, and she didn't want to spend it alone.

Grabbing one of the chairs, she dragged it toward Danny's bed, one inch at a time. It made a high-pitched squeak every time she pulled it forward. Nobody came barging in, despite the loud noise, and soon enough she had the fhair right where she wanted it.

She was about to sit down when Danny opened his eyes.

"You could have just picked it up," he said.

"You were awake! Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because it was funny."

Jazz crossed her arms and turned her back to him.

"Aw, come on, I'm sorry. Turn around."

She did, albeit reluctantly, and found Danny had kicked the covers off and shuffled over to the edge of the bed.

"Come on," he said.

"I'm not eight."

"Congratulations. Come on."

Jazz rolled her eyes and climbed in. Using Danny's arm as a pillow, she settled next to him, just like when they were little and she used to come to him after having a bad dream. They would stare up at the stars on his ceiling while he pointed out constellations to her.

There were no stars to point out now but sitting next to him still brought comfort. Danny was all she ever had, and he was all she would ever need.

"Are we gonna be okay?" she asked.

"Totally." Jazz could hear Danny's smile in his weird, new, echoing voice. "I talked to Jamila earlier. She told me about the Millers."

"Are you coming there too?"

"Yeah. Jamila's already made the arrangements. You and me? We're gonna be okay as long as we're together." Danny wrapped his arm around her shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. "You should head back to your room before someone finds you missing. I'll be right here if you need me."

Jazz nodded, sliding out of the bed. Danny gives her one last smile before she left. On the way back to her room, she paused. The hallway wasn't empty anymore. Someone stood at the very end of it, watching her. It was the man in the white suit.

Jazz waited to see if he would do something. He only stared. Breaking their little stand-off first, she lowered her head and slipped through her door, rushing over to her bed. Pulling the covers up over her head, she curled on her side. It didn't take her long to relax, though, Danny's last comforting words echoing in her head. She drifted off with a smile on her face, thinking of how much better things would be from here on out.

When Jazz woke up in the morning, Danny was gone.

—

Phantom's stopped.

Afraid to move, Jazz holds herself perfectly still for a few long seconds, but no attack comes. She opens her eyes and looks up.

Phantom looms over her, seething. Ectoplasm drips from their mask like toxic drool. Their breathing is ragged, shoulders rising and falling with each pant. They don't even have the strength to holds his arms up so the cuffs don't strain his elbows. Their whole body shakes.

A glob ectoplasm drops to the ground by Jazz's foot, a few specks splashing against her ankle. It burns. She flinches, scrambling back, but Phantom doesn't move. Warily, she pushes herself up onto her knees. When Phantom doesn't react, she gets on her feet, slowly rising out of a crouch. Phantom just stands there.

She should be running. She should take advantage of this reprieve and whatever caused it and get the hell out of there. Over Phantom's shoulder, she spies Spike, Tucker, and Agent K running down the street. They're waving their arms and yelling, probably telling her to get away while she can.

She moves closer to Phantom. Reaching out, she grabs their hood and pulls it down. Their hair is mostly white, but at the roots, there's the thinnest line of black. Now that she's close, she sees how the mask digs into his cheeks and goes for that next. It probably hurts.

It takes her a moment to find the locking mechanism. It rests at the nape of their neck, a simple latch without a key. Cruelly simplistic. She has to get in close to reach up and around their head, and Phantom flinches when her arms circle them.

She freezes, expecting them to attack, or leap away, but they don't. She flicks the latch. The mask doesn't fall away as she though it would, but it's looser now. Carefully, she pries the mask open and pulls it off. It resists, for a moment, so stuck to Phantom's face, but eventually gives. She tosses it away as soon as it's off and can barely hold in her gasp.

A deep imprint cuts across Phantom's cheeks and nose. Ectoplasm smears the lower half of Phantom's face, blisters surrounding their lips. She didn't think a ghost's own ectoplasm could hurt them but looking at how thin the slots in the mask are, it probably takes a lot of pressure to push it all out.

Jazz touches Phantom's cheek, her thumb tracing their jaw, wiping away some of the ectoplasm to reveal a series of thin red lines branching across their skin.

Phantom's shaking has stopped, but Jazz's hands tremble as she reaches for their goggles. She pushes them up to their forehead. The eyes that stare back at her are wild, pupils stretched wide. They look right through her, uncomprehending, but she recognizes them instantly. One has a little more green, the other more blue, but both colours swirl in each iris.

Jazz squeezes her eyes shut. She can't hold back her tears any longer, pressing her head against Phantom's shoulder. She wraps her arms around her brother's neck and sobs.

[tricksterphilanthropists-blog]

The Mourning Rooms, pages 1 - 5! (Excerpt #1)

Taran.

 Mine and my brother’s pre-show routine was as precise and scientific in nature as that of the actual magic we performed onstage, at this point. We’d finally approached the status level in our careers that allowed for our specific requests, and we did our best to not abuse the privilege. Casper only ever wanted cold bottles of water and hot green tea with honey and lemon, while I usually asked for pretzels and dry towels waiting in our dressing room at the Thinkspace theater, having long since learned that our particular brand of magic often resulted in being splashed by water - the water we used onstage for tricks, or from one of Casper’s water bottles backstage, flung in my direction with impeccable accuracy for a blind person during one of his diva fits. Despite those rare occurrences, my brother was my best friend in all the world, and now when he called my name I was at his side more quickly than I wanted to admit.

 “Pull my arm,” he said, extending it toward me with no further explanation, and I shrugged and curled my fingers around his wrist, slowly pulling backward and leaning back on the balls of my feet until I heard a faintly audible pop and he relaxed visibly, sagging in his chair. He’d laughed when we’d first made headlining status at Thinkspace and the theater’s owner had furnished a small dressing room for us - she’d included mirrored vanities. For both of us. I remembered Casper’s fingertips skimming over the cool glass, a smile touching his lips as he’d asked Audrey, “...is this a mirror?”

 “Oh, god,” she’d blurted in abject horror, her mistake dawning upon her in exactly the last possible moment. “Casper, forgive me. I am so sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I’ll have it removed.”

 “Audrey!” my brother had said, with his standard brand of blunt, bullshit-free kindness. “Relax, okay? I appreciate you doing this for us, period. I just hope you didn’t waste any extra money on this, I’d honestly be happy with a chair and a closet to keep my stuff.”

 “I feel so foolish,” she’d mumbled, but she’d taken his hand into her own, giving it a squeeze. “You two know I’m not meant for this kind of thing, running a theater.” She’d inherited Thinkspace from her father, who had passed away roughly six months ago, intending to honor his final wish that it never be converted into anything else, that “the free republic of human expression be allowed to persist” there. She was a ballerina at heart, the two of us having met her during our days studying dance at the Eastern Ballet Company of Boston. She’d offered us a weekday spot at first, just before dinner time, unsure if a magic act would sell any tickets. My brother and I though, we knew our shit. It wasn’t long before our shows were selling out, and Audrey had promoted us to weekend nights.

 The gesture of faith in our talents had meant more to me than Audrey could have known - but neither was she aware of the torch I’d been carrying for her since the day we’d met. If she did, at least, she was mercifully silent on the subject. In my head at night, her naturally illuminated deeply autumn-brown skin and narrow, fox-gold eyes lit up my space with her soft glow, her long, elegant dancer’s neck exposed by the tiny rebellion she wore in the shape of close-shorn black curls. I could have written volumes of poetry about how she made me feel, and probably would have, if Casper would have ever let me forget about it later. He threatened at least once a day to tell Audrey how I felt for her, “because you never will,” but she was ten years my senior at thirty-one, and all of the grace and class that ballet and classical music and stage magic had instilled into my brother and I seemed to dissolve upon impact whenever she spoke to me in her smooth, low voice. It was a voice that one just did not question, musical and artful with her west African accent. It reduced me to a stammering mess about sixty-seven percent of the time.

 Now, Casper buttoned up his crisp white Oxford shirt under a narrow-cut, jet-black suit jacket and a slim black tie that matched the black jeans he preferred to wear - it suggests a certain unpretentiousness, he’d insisted. I’d responded with a brutally honest, “but we are pretentious. We are both pretentious as hell. I thought that was our thing.” He’d laughed, but still he wore those jeans. It wasn’t long before I was following suit, loathe to admit how much more comfortable they were.

 Our lovely assistant on that particular night had already been chosen, an air-aligned demon who resided in a particularly nasty part of the underworld but who would also be crucial to making tonight’s show a success. It had agreed to help us in exchange for three full days and nights in my body, possessing me, tasting the living world for just a bit. The ritual to summon each individual demon was always different and required significant research on our part, but they always began in the same way. Baby demons, minor ones, usually only asked for a lock of hair, fingernail clippings, an eyelash or two, but the deeper places demanded blood. Casper and I had long since designed a system to categorize the status levels and abilities of all of the demons we’d called forth over the years, and this one was a 3B - about midway between a very minor new demon and an ancient, godlike one. Casper called those “black diamond demons” despite neither of us ever having been skiing.

 I hesitated before dragging across my pale skin the wickedly sharp, carefully charged ritual knife we always used to do this, wincing a little when a beaded line of blood bubbled up from the shallow wound. Casper never hesitated or winced, and I handed him the knife to watch him slice a quick cut across his open palm. He’d gone deeper, and we could sense how this pleased our demon, who of course refused to give us its real name. Demons never did, and we never asked. The air around us went icy and dense like a thick fog filling our dressing room, swirling around us in gusts and damp bursts that tousled our hair and raised goosebumps on our skin. Finally, it stood before us, a vaguely humanoid shape made of dark smoke and the scent of raw tobacco and ozone.

 We held out our bleeding hands, and the smoke ghosted over them, wrapping itself in tendrils around our fingers and wrists, soaking up the life in our blood like a fine wine. There was an almost audible sigh of pleasure, and we let it enjoy itself for a moment before Casper asked, “Can you disguise yourself onstage if we need you to?”

 Wordlessly, the demon went transparent, a barely visible cloud of steam that definitely couldn’t have been seen from the audience.

 We’d already established that it could do everything else we needed for tonight’s show, and I said to Casper, “It can, it’s right in front of us and I can barely see it. We’re good.”

 “Outstanding.” Casper’s tone was dry, but I could sense how excited he was. Audrey knocked on our door.

 “In five, gentlemen,” she said, and I reached for my brother’s hand.

 “We’ve got this,” I assured him, giving it a squeeze.

 “I know,” Casper said, but he squeezed back.

 The crowd was already seated and waiting, the lights dimmed and smoky-violet. Casper knew the stage well enough by now to not really need his reflective cane, but he brought it anyway in the interest of alerting the audience to his blindness. It occasionally played a role in our tricks. The scent of rose incense lingered in the air, as Audrey was fond of burning it all over the theater while she worked. The stage was an old-fashioned raised one with a real velvet curtain pulled back, a deep eggplant color instead of classic red. The ceilings were impossibly high and lined with wooden rafters, which was golden architecture for magicians, and the audience seats were padded with the same plum velvet as the stage curtain, comfortable enough for people to relax for hours. Luckily, we only needed one.

 “Ladies, gentlemen, and others,” Casper opened with his standard easy confidence, and the crowd’s reaction was all but visible. They leaned forward slightly, eyes wide, some hoping to catch us pulling an obvious trick to validate their jaded natures and some hoping for proof tonight in this small Boston theater that magic was real. “I am Casper Lenox, this is my brother Taran.” We were dressed identically as always, and I could hear wheels in nearly a hundred brains turning as they struggled to find some difference between us so they could remember who was who later on. Our twin outfits that matched our twin faces was a deliberate effect, however. We were even roughly the same height and weight, down to less than an inch and five pounds, both us tall and lanky. Once Casper put his cane down, we were indistinguishable from each other. There had always been something about this that soothed me.

 Our warm-up was always something the audience expected, was ready for. This loosened their minds, made them smile, and that was when we went in for the kill. Casper was a far better opener than me, so he gestured to a young woman sitting in the third row, obviously completely at random. “Taran,” he said to me, his voice clear and strong. “Who is sitting in that seat?”

 I peered out for longer than was necessary, and smiled at the woman as well. “It’s a woman. Maybe twenty-five, thirty.” She was clearly middle-aged, and the flush that spread up her cheeks as she laughed was visible to me from the stage. The rest of the audience was charmed by our charming her, murmurs of approval floating up to us. “...lady killers, look at them.”

 “Such good-looking kids.”

 “Look at her, she’s blushing.”

 “So sweet, they made her night.”

 “She has brown hair, up in a bun. Beautiful eyes, cream-colored sweater,” I went on. “Natalie Portman’s lost sister.” The woman covered her cheeks with her hands, shaking her head. The fact that Casper had gone blind far too young to know what Natalie Portman looked like was irrelevant. The point was the effect.

 “She’s perfect, please bring her up here,” Casper said, the sleeves of both his shirt and his jacket rolled up to his elbows to avoid accusations of clumsy sleeve conceals. We were not amateurs, with or without demonic assistance in our shows. I stepped off the stage via a short staircase that extended down to the audience, waiting for her to cross through the seats in her row before taking her hand and bending to press a kiss to her knuckles. Her girlfriends squealed, one of them shouting, “look at you, you cougar!” I led her up to the stage with her arm in mine, aware that it had been a long time since any non-related male had shown her any kind of attention. It was evident in the way she looked away, shy, when Casper took her hand to kiss it as well. Her horn-rimmed glasses glinted off the stage lights, obscuring her eyes, but the nervous pleasure radiated from her, and I smiled. Flirting with people in the audience was my favorite part of the show, making them feel special.

 “You two are crazy,” she insisted. “Get some young girl up here, no one wants to look at me on the stage.” She was wearing sensible navy-blue slacks and brown loafers, a string of small pearls around her neck. She was at least forty,  maybe older, and I felt an inexplicable surge of protectiveness toward her, wondering what had created her low self-esteem.

 “I don’t need to see you to know that you’re beautiful,” Casper told her quietly. “My brother’s taste is impeccable.” The crowd sighed, men and women alike, and the woman looked like she might get emotional. Casper lifted a closed fist to hold it over the small wooden table that Audrey had left on the stage for us, devoid of any hidden compartments or secret drawers in which to hide things. Loosening his grip a bit, he let a handful of dark soil that had not been there before funnel down into a small pile onto the table’s surface, and the crowd tensed with surprise. “What’s your name?” he wanted to know.

 The woman cleared her throat. “Theresa. Theresa-Anne,” she said haltingly, and Casper smiled.

 “What’s your favorite flower, Theresa-Anne?”

 “Oh, I don’t know, I suppose…” she went soft around the eyes then, a sudden memory rushing back that quieted her voice and slumped her shoulders. “A calla lily. My husband used to bring them to me every Sunday before he died.”

 Casper only nodded, waving a hand over the small pile of soil on the table. We’d both been gifted with long, elegant hands, our fingers nimble and spidery and good for close-up magic, slender wrists full of bird-bones. The audience waited, breathless, some having heard of us doing this trick before. It took a moment, but then. A tiny, barely visible green bud popped up from the rootless soil, a pinky-sized bright green leaf unfurling along the base of a thickening flower stem that was somehow rising of its own volition from the soil. Another leaf, a third, and now people were hushed in total shock, leaning forward as the bud at the end of the stem widened and grew right before their eyes, opening after maybe three minutes into a fully-formed, fresh calla lily. Casper allowed it to finish before gently plucking it from the soil, using a silk handkerchief from his jacket pocket to pull off the stringy white roots and clean the dirt from it, and then he handed it to Theresa-Anne. She was crying a little now, her round dark eyes wet with memories.

 “Oh…” she said weakly, taking it from him. “Look at me, my god. I’m sorry, I’m just - I haven’t touched one of these since my John died.” She held it to her chest, inhaling its scent, some old ache in her eased in that moment, and Casper and I smiled faintly at each other.

 “He loved you,” I told her. “How could he not?” That was when she whimpered a little, dropping her head to my shoulder and struggling to contain herself. I gave her a moment, and then guided her back to her seat, where she rejoined her friends to dab at her eyes with my handkerchief, which I’d given to her. The applause erupted all at once, people touched and awed by what they’d just seen, which really was the whole point. The world seemed determined to erode humanity’s sense of beauty and magic and wonder, not with science - there was a reverent artistry in the truth and discovery of it - but with what seemed to me an increasingly jaded approach to life. Fuck that, I’d decided long ago. I wanted to spend my life bringing magic back to the world. If it left me vulnerable to ridicule, to hurt feelings, then whatever. I always had my brother.

 It was my turn now, and tonight I was adhering to a favorite standard of mine - a card trick. Casper and I had gone through endless decks over the years, learning and performing. I’d been working on this one for some time, and for my audience member I selected a beautiful man sitting near the end of the b-section’s fifth row. He too was roughly middle-aged, with warm brown skin and a mess of chocolate curls falling over his forehead, smiling liquid-dark eyes that crinkled at the corners no matter what his expression said. He jogged up the steps to the stage on his own, laughing and waving at the people. “Your name, Sir?” I began, and he grinned at me.

 “Joaquin. Joe.”

 “Joaquin,” I continued, deliberately ignoring the anglocized version of his name that he’d offered up like an apology. “Thanks so much for coming out tonight.”