Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Valerie doesn’t enjoy cooking. It takes too much time, too much planning, and too much cleaning. For this reason, she also doesn’t like grocery shopping. Microwave-ready box lunch, a box of cereal, and a packet of pre cooked sausages gets old after a while. And expensive. So today she decided to try something different. A fruit salad, which is easy to make, doesn’t involve any cooking, and the cleanup can be worried about later. Plus she needs more fruit. A healthy diet is a healthy body, and a healthy body kicks more ass.

The minimart is, well, mini. A man in a blue shirt and a nametag with a name that’s been apparently scratched off stands in front of her. “What do you mean you don’t have any grapes?” He shrugs, brown skin perspiring around his forehead. “We don’t have any.”

“This display was full this morning.”

“You should have bought them this morning, then. Ghost worms.” The attendant wiggled his fingers like creepy crawlies and walked off.

Valerie glared. A familiar buzz hummed in both ears and she sighed, forcing herself to calm down. She’s not activating her ghost gear in the middle of a mini-mart. Nope. Not here.

She bought twelve energy bars and a couple TV dinners then left the store. Evening waned, her beat up red sedan parked far in the back. Val gave it a sour look and stopped to scoop up the Amity News and Review from a case by the door. She scanned the headline (Mayor Donates to New Nonprofit) and flipped to the Ghost Alert. She threw her groceries on top of her car and read.

She expected the usual blurry photo of a ghost she’d already seen, or a stock image of Phantom, with a title about the latest attack. She liked to read about the damages, which usually said something about the fight itself. If she was fast enough, if Phantom was any help, if the ghost was too much… What she did not expect was a photo of Danny Fenton and his parents, frozen in a heated argument. Jack’s arms raised, Danny’s folded, a black glare shooting at his mother, who waggled a finger at him.

FENTON SON OPENS CRISIS CALL CENTER FOR GHOSTS. In a startling turn of events, the mayor announced Sunday morning that he would be funding a local non-profit for the youngest ghost hunter in the city -

Valerie snapped the paper shut and leapt off the wall. Youngest ghost hunter in the city, Danny Fenton , was probably the greatest insult and funniest thing she’d heard all year, but Valerie’s capacity for humor had shut off. Her ears were buzzing again. She fumbled at the door of the car, but the noise grew so loud that she knew it was over. Adrenaline up too high, her suit activated and wrapped her in a metal cocoon that catapulted into the sky, almost forgotten groceries flapping at her side.

She landed underneath the science-fiction daydream of a house within minutes, and almost forget to duck behind the house to deactivate her uniform before running up the steps to pound on the door. A bleary-eyed Jack Fenton answered, his usual cheerful demeanor replaced with a gruffness, “He’s not here.”

“Where is he?”

“Don’t know. Probably talking to ghosts .” Jack’s eyes grew even darker.

“Who is that?” A woman asked from within, and around Jack appeared his daughter, who maintained the air of her father’s cheerfulness even under great duress. “Valerie!” Jazz squeezed past her father, who gave her a hurt look before disappearing back into the house.

“Where is he?”

Jazz folded her arms. “You’re not going to yell at him too, are you?”

“Jazz.”

She sighed. “…He’s at his new office. It’s on the corner of Mason and Wells. He took a suitcase there…” She paled, “Wait, don’t leave!”

“Why?”

“Hold on.” Jazz disappeared. The door hung open, Valerie peeked inside. The usually tidy home wasn’t very tidy, a throw blanket hung over a lamp on the floor in the middle of the room. The TV lay on its side, the screen shattered. Jazz raced back down the stairs, a bundle overflowing in her arms. She shoved it at Val, “Blankets and pillows. He forgot.” She stressed, and set a toothbrush and toothpaste on top. “Can I give you some money? I don’t think he’s had food yet today. He needs to eat.”

“I have groceries.” An argument erupted deeper in the house, “Are you okay?”

“Oh everything is fine - ” A door slammed. Jazz flinched. “…I have a lot to do. You do too. See you later.” She closed the door.

I do too? Valerie thought. She was back in the sky in seconds, heading for her next destination. Evening had begun as a quiet affair; it was the ghosting hour, twilight. Not so much of a curfew as a self-imposed stay inside rule. People didn’t go out when the sun started to fall, they’d shut down, stay inside, and wait until ten pm. Ghosts preferred the inbetween-hours. She swept over the currently dead streets, knowing they would come back to life in hours.

She found a small unassuming warehouse with a brick exterior at the corner of Mason and Wells in a neighborhood full of the same. She walked up to the front door, but it was locked, so she went around back, which had a slightly ajar door. Valerie deactivated her huntress suit and stepped inside. The warehouse opened up into a huge room full of delivery boxes, beeping Fenton-esque equipment, and a simple desk with Tucker Foley typing away on it. She took another step and he spotted her. “Oh, hey! Man, it feels like I’ve seen the whole town today.”

She dropped everything on the desk, blankets unraveled, the toothpaste hit the floor. “Delivery.”

He frowned. “Did you…take these from Danny’s room?”

“Jazz sends her regards. Where’s Danny?”

Tucker squinted at her. “What for?”

“I need to seem him.”

He kept frowning. “Why?”

She glared, impatient. “Because I need to see him, that’s why.””

“If you’re here to tell him he’s ruining his family’s legacy, you’ll need to get in line. I recommend an appointment, because it’s really not a good idea to go back there right now.” He pulled out his phone and scrolled. “How about we set up an appointment for not-evervember, 3082?”

“Tucker.”

“I can do the summer of 1999. Or we might have an opening in Mayuary.”

“Ugh!” Valerie stomped past the desk and into the warehouse. It was a bustle of activity. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” Tucker called after her, unusually cheerful.

The warehouse was a disaster of boxes and packing foam. Sam Manson stood in the center of chaos, a bluetooth in one ear and a walkie in her hand. She spotted Valerie and a fury entered her eyes, “Turn around.”

“I - ”

“I said turn around.”

Valerie stood her ground. “No. I’m here to talk to Danny.”

“You and everyone else.” Sam casually replaced the walkie and rested her hand on an ectogun strapped to her hip. “You want to talk to him you’re going to have to get through me.”

Valerie lifted her eyebrows. “What, you’re threatening me with a gun that doesn’t work on people?”

Sam tilted her head. She whistled. The ground shook when a box snapped on the ground. A man with black skin and dark eyes marched over; Valerie’s ear beeped in warning. The man morphed as he moved, his skin fading away and shifting into a black flame, his eyes a glossy glowing green, he morphed into an ethereal beast that sat beside Manson and barred its glittering teeth.

This did not impress. “Estoni, niet.”(I’m here to negoitate)

The dog’s ears perked, “Estonu en cantu?”(Negotiate with who?)

“Vos tu.” (You know who.) Valerie smiled. The wolf morphed back into a man, winked at her, “A los vivos, huntera czarna.” (Live well, red hunter) and returned to his task of lifting boxes. Sam watched, pale, then deflated. “Some guard dog you are. Danny’s in the loft.”

“Thanks.” Valerie smirked and passed by, climbing a clanging metal staircase to an observation deck office of the warehouse. She opened the door and there he was, in a suede coat she didn’t recognize, a dial phone pressed to his ear. Their eyes met and he held up a finger to his mouth, briefly, then nodded to a chair against the wall. She stepped inside. The office was more or less barren, save for the chair, some boxes, the receiver, a suitcase, and a stack of cash about five inches high on the windowsill.

“I can send you one.” Danny said, pulling a notebook from his breast pocket and writing, “But I can’t connect you to the outside internet, we’ve talked about this. If you want internet in the zone, it'll require a hell of a lot more than a router.”

Valerie sank into the chair. She was suddenly parched.

“No, it’s not black magic. I think. How about I transfer you to Tucker?” Danny picked the receiver off the floor, punched in a number, and hung up. He grinned at her, cherry despite the bags uber his eyes, “Hey Val. You’re here for an interview.”

Pointedly not a question. She raised her eyebrows,”I am?”

Danny pointed at the newspaper clutched in her hand, the thing she had entirely forgotten she was still carrying. “Aren’t you responding to my ad?”

“I didn’t see an ad.”

“I didn’t technically submit one.”

“Don’t be funny.” She stood, uncomfortable, wary. “What are you trying to do, Danny?”

He plopped on the ground and began to open one of the boxes, “Did you know what the Box Ghost comes to Amity for?”

“Specifically to annoy me.”

Danny snorted, nodding in agreement, “Also, boxes. Did you know he’s not interested in coming here so long as he can get boxes?” Danny gave her a look, “Did you know that most ghosts come here in distress, or are seeking help?”

“ Distress ?” She released a short, high tone laugh, “Don’t you mean rage ?”

“Distress can be rage sometimes.” He shrugged, “It can be a lot of things. The point is, ghosts have unstable mental health issues, and if somebody were around to mediate, negotiate, send boxes, find lost things, or whatever else they need , the amount of ghosts invading Amity Park can drop to a trickle. We can start helping them, instead of catch-releasing the same problem over and over again.”

Incredulous, Valerie tried to think of all the ghosts that just wouldn’t work for, but the only ghost in her mind was that one, that little phantom girl… So she settled on the next best problem, “You know ghosts don’t have phones, right?”

“Not all of them. Yet.”

“So how is this even supposed to work?”

He grinned. “That’s what I need you for, Val.”

“Me?”

“You.”

She squinted at him suspiciously, “What makes you think I can do anything?”

“I know you know I know.” Danny replied calmly, leaning over the open box and plucking at its contents. He produced a couple of small, green mobile flip phones and gave them to her; they had skulls embossed on their cases. “You’re a ghost hunter, second best in the city -”

“ Second best!”

“I have a scoreboard to prove it.”

“And I have the guns to prove otherwise.”

He laughed, “You’re hired.”

“This isn’t a job interview!”

His eyes glinted, and for a second she saw a flash of something not there - because it couldn’t be - “Don’t you want to be paid for everything you’ve done for the city? Real money?”

She hesitated. “I don’t need money to do the right thing. And I don’t want Vlad Masters in my pockets.”

“Me neither. It’s city funding. Vlad lost a bet, but it’s still not his money.” Danny got up and took the enormous stack of cash off the windowsill, split it in half, and placed the taller stack ( holy shit, Benjamin Franklin ) into her hands. “Here. Back-pay.”

The money felt heavy, but it made her stomach growl. There were ten thousand reasons this wasn’t going to work. She shouldn’t take the job. “When do I start?”

“Ten minutes ago. Tucker clocked you in.”

Chapter Text

Jazz stepped into her office. It still had that new-carpet smell. Most of the boxes had been unpacked, but a stack of mementoes remained in the corner, awaiting the purchase of more shelving. She set a fresh cactus in the windowsill. The phone had a large reception network hooked up to the main computer, and she could click through calls one by one, which were forwarded to her office through Tucker at reception. She pulled a notebook from the desk drawer, sat down, and opened the call program. She already had three callers in line. The first was a regular, a ghost with no memories and a great deal of anxiety. After a half hour of conversation, she graciously thanked them for calling, and started her second appointment.

The voice on the other end made her stomach drop. “I see you’ve decided to continue on with therapy. What a permissible amount of disappointment you must have ahead of you.”

She set her teeth, “Spectra. Lovely to hear from you,” she lied, “I should warn you that the lines are set up with ectoenergy blocks. You won’t benefit from any emotions you might be trying to elicit from me.”

“Me? Elicit callous emotions from you? Darling, I couldn’t burst your bubble if I tried,” she could hear her wicked smile, “and I have tried.”

“You gave it a great effort.” Jazz pressed her lips together, pausing to scribe the general information from the call. “From my previous observations I found you to be a very focused ghost, with an exceptional intelligence. You’ve integrated with humans better than most of your species could ever dream of.”

“You’re flattering me.”

“I think it’s good to start with your strengths.”

“Did they teach you that in therapy school?”

Jazz remained silent, writing furiously. 

“Oh? You haven’t gone to therapy school, have you?”

“Working on it.” She replied, “I can assure you, everybody at the call center has been given basic response training, and we’re working on setting up a department for specialized therapists, but research on ghost psychology leaves a lot to be desired. It’s a largely unexplored field that I hope to bring light to in the future.”

“Aren’t you just a little burst of sunshine.”

Jazz smiled, “I do my best. Now what can I help you with today?”

The other line buzzed with the ice-creaking static of the ghost zone’s groaning atmosphere. “I was told to use this phone if I found myself in distress.”

“So are you in distress?”

“Oh dearest, bright young girl, of course I am,” Spectra laughed, “it’s my central basis for energy. Malcontent is how I survive. So I was thinking…about your ‘services’.” Oh no, Jazz tapped the desk, staring out the window at the warehouse across the street. “I think I would like to help.”

She stopped tapping, “uh, um. What?”

“Well, my certification may be fifty or sixty years out of date,” Spectra hummed, “but I am an actual therapist.”

“I remember your brand of therapy,” Jazz replied flatly, “I’m not sure that terrorizing our base is really the angle we’re going for.”

“Terrorize? Oh, you’ve got me all wrong. This is a service I would like to perform for my own kind. You said it yourself,” Spectra asserted, her voice full of the same sickly sweet honey she’d used to manipulate the minds of children, “there’s a great deal that you humans don’t know about ghost psychology. Well, I am a ghost, and a psychoanalyst. Do you think that I can’t bring some new insight to your little research project?”

“You won’t be able to feed from your customers.” Jazz warned.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Or the staff.”

“Never. At least, not on purpose.”

Jazz glared at the receiver for a long while. Then she sighed, set her pen down, and started to dial a transfer, “I’ll connect you to Danny for an interview.”

Chapter Text

The door burst open with a belated warning from his PA and a call for security. He did not even need to look up to know exactly who stomped into the room with an emotional aura of fire and fury. Vlad leaned over, pressed the com button, and canceled the security check.

“How could you let this happen?!”

Vlad continued to read the amendments from the state legislature, signing the corner of each page, “you’ll have to be more specific, Madeline.”

“You know what I’m talking about.” Viper’s venom in her voice.

Whispers called in the back of his mind. He closed his eyes, but he could still smell and hear the source of his obsession. A very, very chaotic part of himself wanted to cave to her every demand. His teeth ached to sharpen, but he remained in careful control, “am I to assume this is in regards to your son?”

Her hands slammed down on the desk. No avoiding it now. At least his eyes were blue, cool, calm, collected. Think empty thoughts. A finished glass. Wind across a park bench. He smiled, “the city council approved the initiative unanimously.”

“You were behind it.”

“I lost a bet.” Vlad set aside his pen, “say what you will about me but I am a man of my word.”

In an unusual turn, Maddie had dressed casually. She almost looked foreign without the hazmat suit and personal arsenal. There was of course still a baton strapped to her belt, and Vlad wondered how she managed to get it through the security checkpoint. “He’s still a child.” She said with her usual passionate flare, “you can’t just — ”

“He’s eighteen.”

“It’s dangerous!” A ripple in her aura, a cascade like an avalanche; Vlad picked up the pen and pretended to be very busy with paperwork, though he didn’t read a single word. “You know what those — those monsters will do to him? There’s no reasoning with those deranged, horrible, proto-conscious beasts .”

Ink spilled, splotching all over the paper. He’d accidentally melted the nib. Embarrassed, he trashed the pen and quickly moved the offending paper into appropriate folders. “You better than anyone know what they are, Vlad.” Maddie continued with quiet intensity, “you know that ghosts can’t change. Their nature is not like ours.”

He folded his hands on the desk. “I’m afraid I haven’t studied ghosts in a very long time.” About twelve hours, to be precise.

“They’re evil. What’s to know?”

His jaw set. He took a deep breath and made himself think of books, football, moon landing conspiracies. None of it distracted him from the fact that Maddie Fenton had every ounce of her attention on him .

And if he was being perfectly honest, the subject matter couldn’t be more annoying. “You know what I think, Madeline?”

She raised her eyebrows, waiting.

“I think that science is a study in objectivity, an observance of objective fact, and conclusions based on that observance. I think your son has come up with a hypothesis, one which if true could save not only a great deal of money, but lives as well. I also think that you have, for a very long time, based your conclusions on preconceived notions of reality. And at some point in your work, you ignored objective reasoning in favor of supporting your own unproven claims.” Vlad stood up and walked around his desk, facing her directly. In proximity, he had to fight a somewhat feral urge to hiss, “You call yourself a scientist, but in reality, you are a fanatic .”

Her mouth opened, shock and outrage written on her face, “I am a concerned mother worried about the safety of my son.”

“He’s far more capable than you give him credit.”

“You gave him a suicide pill!”

“Your son is out there trying to make the world a better place,” Vlad replied evenly, “and here you are trying to dismantle everything he’s worked for. Opinions aside, you should be proud of him for what he’s trying to accomplish.”

“I will not stand idly by and watch him perish over some misguided idea of saving the damned,” she glared, “you might have your little council of cronies behind this, but I will not be silent. I will do whatever it takes to end this project.”

“Fine. Start a petition, gather a protest,” Vlad opened the door, “but please, don’t come crying to me when you ruin your relationship with him.”

“I’m protecting him. It’s what mothers do.”

Vlad sighed, “have you tried listening to him? Or do you think he’s as unreasonable as your...monsters?”

She stormed out, which was all well and good, because Vlad had very definitely grown a set of obvious fangs. And what would she think of him then? He’d be just another deranged, horrible, proto-conscious beast. Mustn’t have that.

Chapter Text

There had been zero calm since the Call Center opened. It seemed that every member of the general public needed to stop in and give their opinion - most of which was, well, unflattering to say the least. Tucker considered himself the first line of defense against the onslaught, so needless to say, one week in and he was exhausted. The front desk was covered in paperwork stacked a mountain high. He fielded guests at the front desk from inquiries to insults. The phone rang off the hook, and very few of those calls happened to be actual clientele. 

So he held his coffee a little close when a knock rapped on the door Monday morning. Wulf, in a very stylish human shape, stopped organizing inventory and gave the door a wary look. Tucker answered it. 

He had encountered half the town already, so he wasn’t necessarily surprised at the posse gathered at the door, but he did find the foil-covered baking dish in Kwan’s hands to be a little suspicious. “Hey,” A-Lister Dash Baxter stepped up to the front, carrying a box, “got something for you.”

“Is it poison?”

Dash rolled his eyes, “what kind of a guy do you think I am? Wait, look don’t answer that, it’s just snacks, see?”

He tipped the box, and it was indeed full of all kinds of processed garbage food. Tucker removed a bag of chips, squinting at it, “poison snacks?”

“Why would they be poisoned?”

“You have no idea the amount of shit I have seen this week. Literally. Actual shit. On that porch.”

Dash stepped inside, eyeing the stained doormat with distaste. The others followed, cramming into the small cordoned off reception area. Paulina stepped across the line and Wulf growled, Tucker gestured furiously, “estas bone!” (it’s fine!)

“Where is your kitchen?” Paulina turned looked around the huge, mostly empty space, messes contained to particular corners, office cubicles built against the far end.

“Kitchen? This is a warehouse.”

“You don’t have a fridge?” She sighed, “I told you, Dash, we made too many tamales.”

“It’s impossible to make too many tamales.”

“They don’t have a fridge!”

“We’ll get them a fridge.”

“We spent all the money!”

“I can make more money.”

“It’s fine, guys,” Tucker said, gesturing for the others to come on in, “we’ve got a break table you can set this stuff on in the back, and Danny can put them on ice. It’s not a big deal.”

“See? They have a cooler.” Dash and company followed him to the back table to set down a huge assortment of boxes and bags, and one flower patterned ceramic dish. 

Tucker watched in relative amazement. Sam appeared at his elbow, her face as confused as he felt, “what are they doing here?” She whispered.

He shrugged. “What are you guys doing here?”

“It’s not obvious?” Kwan asked, “we’re supporting the cause.”

“Yeah, the elderly might think that ghosts are nothing more than a plague, but,” Star took off her sunglasses, looking around, “we think they’re good. Or they can be good.”

“Phantom’s good.”

“And that - oh that cute little dog.”

“I met a ghost boy with a motorcycle once, he was very nice.” Paulina added, “they’re not all evil. And the ghost hunters do good, but, this,” she grinned, “this is better.”

Sam released a breath, shook her head, and walked away. Tucker opened a box and found it stuffed to the brim with cleaning supplies. “I guess we needed a bunch of this stuff. Um, thank you, I don’t really know how to repay you, we’ve kind of spent the entire month’s stipend…”

“No money, no payback.” Paulina said swiftly, “we want to volunteer.”

“Volunteer?”

“To man the phones,” Dash supplied, “I can do Tuesday Thursdays after three, Kwan’s got Friday’s off.”

“I can do weekends.” Star said.

Paulina beamed, “and I’m currently unemployed, so I’ve got all the time in the world.”

Sam returned holding a clipboard with a notepad on top, she gave it to Dash, “name, contact info, availability. We’ll get back to you within the week.”

“They’re volunteering,” Tucker said, flummoxed, “Sam.”

“I heard,” she offered a rare smile, “don’t be so surprised. They’ve always liked the ghosts.”

“Or at least one of them,” Paulina said, taking the clipboard, “do you need my email or just my phone number?”

“Both works.” Sam replied, “thanks for coming in, by the way. We’ve had enough hate at the door that some actual support is highly appreciated.”

“Yeah, well, just tell Fenton he’s got some real stones going against his parents like that,” Dash shook his head, “can’t even imagine having my mom organizing an entire mob against me.”

Sam and Tucker traded looks, “wait, what?”

“You didn’t hear?”

“Huge thing. All over the internet.”

“I haven’t been online,” Tucker said, pulling out his phone, “what are you talking about?”

“Protest. City Hall plus a march down to the call center. Five o’clock.”

“Today?”

“Today, then going on all week.”

“That’s why we brought all the food,” Paulina said, not unkind, “you guys probably aren’t going to be going back outside for a while…”

Tucker started texting furiously. Sam took the clipboard back, thanked their guests, and escorted them out. “You have my number,” Dash said in passing, “just call, whatever you need, I’ve got a truck, extra TP, a BB gun…” he tuned out the rest. Danny had already responded, a relief, since the Ghost Zone didn’t always have the best reception.

On my way back. Have a new team member. Using Fruit-O-Loom’s portal. ETA 30.

Chapter Text

“You can wait until later.”

“No,” Danny insisted, “I have to deal with this eventually. Might as well be now.”

The small, lithe sports car pulled around the corner, slowly working through a crowd of picket-signs and protest chanting. He jolted when a passerby banged on the window, and the driver let out a low growl.

“Is she out there?”

“Somewhere,” Vlad replied, stopping in front of a narrow alley. Protestors blocked their path, but none could see through the tinted windows to the passengers inside, “you know, I never understood protesting. What does it accomplish?”

“It’s how changes are made, dude.”

“Bricks through windows are how changes are made, Daniel,” Vlad sighed, “humanity speaks through violence.”

“Yeah, I don’t believe in that.”

“You’re young.”

He held his beat-up, third generation thermos to his chest, considering the consequences of what was inside. Only hours had passed since Spectra had offered her services, “do you think I’m doing the right thing, at least?”

“Why do you care what I think?”

“I don’t,” embarrassed, he grabbed the door handle, “dunno why I asked.”

“You’re going to keep facing negativity.” Vlad replied, “you need to learn to take that in stride.”

Danny frowned, “I’ve always faced that, though.”

“A ghost is a temporary persona. This is different. You may find humans are more troublesome than ghosts.” Vlad spotted a green-painted megaphone and a shock of red hair, “speaking of trouble.”

Danny sighed, stepping out, “Thanks for the ride, fruitcake.”

“Don’t make it a habit.”

He closed the door and watched the Rolls Royce Ghost fold back into the crowd. He managed to read a picket sign, Inviting Spirits is An Act of Terrorism! Then a hand came down on his shoulder, and a microphone blasted in his ear, and he didn’t really think. He grabbed the hand, twisted, and spun them on the ground. Startled eyes, a gasp of pain, betrayal in the face of a stranger. Voices clamored. Cameras flashed. Another called out assault and Danny went running for the door. 

The last thing he heard before ducking inside, slipping through the hands that tried to snag him, was his own mother’s voice, amplified through a speakerphone, “Monsters are Real! There’s no changing them!”

The warehouse door banged shut. Wulf moved a lock into place, and he looked around at the small collection of his allies. Tucker held up a couple cups of coffee, Sam offered her condolences in a nod, and Jazz remained unwavering with her positivity as she ducked over a phone. Outside, the public raged.

No changing them.

Danny walked over to a table and set the thermos on top, switching the release switch, and the temperature of the room shifted as yet another ghost arrived.

Yet.

Chapter Text

She spotted her query just shy of six am, on the cusp of a day that promised to turn the evening chill into stew. Valerie had been looking forward to a ghost-free midday nap; her work had been more exhausting than usual. She levered her gun at her opponent, nerves tangled up in her gut as he listed against the back of a billboard.

At least this particular ghost was known for his conversational fluency.

“You gonna shoot, or what?”

Valerie wavered, the gun lowered to her side with a sigh, “haven’t seen you in a while.”

Phantom cracked his usual smile, and he opened one eye, “been busy, Red.”

“You here to terrorize the town?”

“Am I ever?”

It’s one thing to hunt ghosts. Just point and shoot. Easy.

Talking to them?

Almost more trouble than it was worth.  Not everything she encountered was exactly sentient. And despite Fenton’s brightest intentions, many of them were as mean and violent as ever. But Phantom is, was, and always has been a little bit different. For one thing, he’s the only ghost who seems more interested in napping than facing the hunter directly in front of him. “Well, it’s your lucky day. I’m not going to shoot you.”

“Yippee.”

He sank onto the work platform, laying down completely and throwing his hands behind his head. He sighed, “are you just going to stare at me, or…?”

“Not used to seeing you…” tired? Vulnerable? “Like this. You lose a fight or something?”

He huffed, “you could say that.”

Her board retracted into the soles of her boots and she set foot on the platform, careful. Phantom was the kind of ghost that could move in a blink. Not quite as dangerous as the teleportation-types but still pretty virulent. She diverted additional power to her built-in ectoshields, “you wanna, um. Wanna talk about it?”

“Wow.” He opened his eyes, vibrant green things that still had dilated pupils, a hallmark of a young ghost, “you’re really changing your act. Wonder why?”

“Peace and goodwill?”

He sat up, then immediately sank to rest against the railing, “you gonna stick to that, or are you gonna go right back to hating and hunting? Now that’s the real question of the hour.”

“How I hunt isn’t really your business.” She set her hand on her hip, “and if this is just some complaint about your lack of popularity—”

He laughed. A short bark that left him hunched over himself and trembling. Valerie crouched to get a better look at him; he started to hold his stomach, his face decidedly green, “you okay?”

“No.” His body, usually solid and opaque, turned translucent and misted at the edges before snapping back, “feels like the whole world wants me dead. Dead -dead.” He grinned, “used to be I could handle that. I’d prove them all wrong. Do my best. Yadda, yadda. Now...fuck. I don't want to go to sleep, and then when I do, I don’t want to wake back up.”

“Ghosts don’t sleep.”

“Figure of speech, then.”

She slipped a canvas backpack off her shoulder, and removed a small flip-phone, embossed with a silver skull. “Um,” she held it out. He gave it a cursory glance, then went back to half-fading in the fresh sunlight, “there’s people you can call. People who want to help.”

“Already got one.” He fished a smartphone from his pocket, a new model. “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t want to talk to a Fenton right now.”

“You know about that?”

“You could say I’ve been recruited.” He pulled two more flip phones from the pouch on his belt, the same embossment etched over the top, “same as you.”

“But—you’re a—” she stopped herself before she said something she’d regret. “Guess the world is changing.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. This could all just blow up in my face.”

“Is it that big of a deal to you?”

“Do you think I want to be hunted down all the time?”

“Hmm,” She pressed her back to the billboard and surveyed the town. Traffic had begun to accumulate in droves down the main highways. The typical chatter of birds overwhelmed by the rumble of a city on the rise, “well, if there’s any ghost out there who could be an advocate for this whole...system, it’s you.”

He smiled, his skin brightened considerably. If she wasn’t wearing protective gear Valerie was certain that she would have felt a chill sweep through the air, “but what do you do when your own family thinks you shouldn’t exist?”

“You have a family?”

“What, you think I just appeared out of thin air one day?”

“Weird to think about.” She folded her arms, looking down at the city below and wondering who out there could possibly be related to the ghost boy, “they still alive?”

“Alive. Anti-ghost. Not interested in dialog about it. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

“Well,” she sighed, “there are a lot more people in your corner than you think.”

Phantom hung his arms over the railing, watching the traffic flow from east to west. His voice dropped to a low echo, “are you one of them?”

“I think you’re too powerful to take lightly.” She leaned on the railing, and her mask retracted. The fresh air felt marvelous in her hair, “but I also think you’re trying to be a force for good. It’s, um, you’re actually the reason I...took Fenton’s offer.”

“Me?” He blinked, “wait, but you hate me?”

“I don’t trust you.” She clarified, “but I don’t hate you. You’ve saved a lot of people. You don’t deserve to be treated like a criminal just because you’re undead.”

“Huh. Thanks,” his face flushed, “means a lot coming from you.”

She considered the pain in her side from her last fight, and the pain in her throat from trying to shout over the howling of a not-so-sane poltergeist. “Wish it was this easy to talk to the other ghosts.”

Phantom had a gleam in his eye, and his lips twitched upward, “we could work together, you know. Tag-team it.”

“And then the city’s two greatest ghost hunters turn to ghost-helpers?” she chuckled, “that’s some kind of crazy.”

“So crazy it just might work?”

“Would definitely send a message.” She thought about it, then holstered her gun, reactivated her mask, and her board appeared beneath her as she stepped off the platform, “well? You gonna patrol with me or what? Spooks still got a couple hours before it’s too hot to haunt.”

When he stood up it was like his exhaustion disappeared, and Phantom's usual bravado brought color to his cheeks, “let’s go change the world, Red.”

Chapter Text

Jazz stacked a set of textbooks on the table, a quickly-gathered collection of what she considered the basics of information, including but not limited to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, The Psych Handbook, and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. On the very top of the stack, she set a small tablet that Tucker had set limited internet access on, “alright, this should be a good start. I brought coffee. Do you drink coffee?”

Green, vibrant eyes glinted at her from behind a set of semi-transparent spectacles, and pointed teeth split open bright red lips, “I no longer have functioning taste buds, nor a stomach.”

“So, no.”

Spectra took the cup anyway, “I suppose it can’t hurt. Is this your...research?”

“Oh, I’ve already read all of these.” Jazz pulled a notebook, sticky pads, and a pen pouch from her bag, adding it to the desk, “this is all for you. Danny did tell you he expected you to get up-to-date with the latest and greatest, right?”

“I thought he was talking about phones.” Her lip twitched downward, “what is all of this?”

“Relevant information. Your license is old, out of date,” a freeze fluctuated through the room and Jazz drew her coat closer to herself, “if you want to be a counselor here, you’re going to need to update your knowledge.”

Spectra folded her hands in front of herself, “ah. I see. So you think my skills are...short-handed?” Her smile never wavered, “does this have to do with our previous engagement as therapist and student, dear? Because I made it very clear I am not to counsel any humans.”

“No.” Jazz pulled up a chair and broke out her eighteen-step learning-plan, a handmade graphic organizer for the ghost to follow, “this is because you practiced during the era that they were ‘treating’ people with lobotomies. It’s my job to make sure you don’t turn this into a Saturday night horror show. So, time to study.”

The ghost picked up the computer and inspected it, turning it over and over, “what is this?”

“For research. Looking up terms and definitions. I’m going to show you how to use it.” 

Jazz took the tablet, opened it to reveal the keyboard, then powered it up and gave it back. The battery died as soon as it entered Spectra’s cold fingers. She shook her head, giving it back, “sorry. Energy-draining is kind of my shtick.”

“Uh,” she got up and dug around a few boxes until she found an extension cord, then hooked up the tablet to wall power. After a few minutes, it came back to life, and she gave it back. Spectra took the computer. Ten seconds later, the power went out on the entire block. 

Her glowing visage was the only light remaining, smiling as always, “how about a dictionary?”

Chapter Text

There are some conversations that are like ripping off a band-aide, and then there are some that are more akin to ripping the duct-tape off your bare chest because you had the misfortune to fall asleep at a party where the attendees were more frienemies than allies. Danny held the phone to his ear and kept his eyes on the city down below, watching the evening traffic rush to fill restaurants and bowling-alleys, movie theaters and outlet-malls. 

He had better reception down below, but he didn’t really want to hear the other end of this call too clearly. “You’re keeping the ecto-filtrator cleaned, right?” He asked, one of the few casual questions he kept reserved for the awkward spaces between their silences.

His mother’s voice is charged with tension, “yes. Like I do every Thursday.”

“The portal’s closed at night? You know how dad likes to leave it open.”

“I check it multiple times a day.” The speed of her words, the tone of her voice. She wanted this conversation to end more badly than he did. She gave a drop of concern, a hint of remorse, “are they going to press charges?”

“The cops in this town are pretty legit,” he shrugged, “they get PTSD reactions and said my case would be tossed out by a judge. So, uh, no charges, no.” And just because he knew she wanted to hang up, he pressed on, “guess it helps I’m a Fenton, right? Wouldn’t want to think of how they’d treat Tucker...”

“Are you implying what I think you’re implying, again?”

Danny had no desire to relive an argument about biases and police brutality with his mother. Sometimes the horse was just dead. Beating it would never make it move. “The police are good people, hard workers,”

“I know mom.” He said, swift, “they see the real horrors. I get it, I’m not in the mood—can we just? Can we talk?”

Defensive, stiff, “about what?”

She said it in a way that also said it better not be ghosts. Which he accepted before he had got out his phone in the first place. “I dunno. Normal stuff?”

He sat on the edge of a tower. He could see Fentonworks from his perch, a distant beacon of neon hazards casting more ominous glow than most ghosts could ever produce; a constant glare that changed the tone of the city and cast it in the name of Fenton. He imagined his mother in there, hunched over a workbench and carefully welding her latest experiment while dinner burned on the stove. He imagined his father saving a roast from the oven before it turned to charcoal, and pictured the setting of two plates full of dry, seasonless chicken. He pictured the empty chairs at the table, already stacked with blueprints and coffee cans full of half-drawn ideas that Jack so relentlessly scattered on the available house surfaces. Did they keep a space open for him?

“I have a lot of work to do,” Maddie said, finally, “so whatever you have to say, say it.”

“I’m not trying to say anything. I just want to talk.”

“Well. You’ve got some mail at the house.You should come by and pick it up by the end of the week, or it’s gone.”

“Okay.” Danny shifted, sitting from a height like this in his human form, no matter how safe it really was, always gave him the heebie jeebies. He wished he had something nice to say, like, ‘have you tried that new Thai restaurant?’ or ‘I helped a god patch a hole in space-time last week’ but he didn’t know any new restaurants and conversations about Clockwork with his parents were off the table, all things considered. What he did have on his mind he knew she wouldn’t like, but he said it anyway, because it was all that he could come up with, “fixed a bug in the phones. Ghost-Zone calls have this real bad echo, and I managed to modify the audio output so that it catches on only one frequency and reduces white noise.”

He thought she might be proud. He did some ecto-engineering.

“That’s nice.” Insincere. “Your father and I completed a vivisection of a class four. We’ve been learning how to convert direct core samples into better charges for the ecto weapons. It’s a lot more focused energy than base-ectoplasm.”

He shivered. It’s not the falling he’s afraid of. It’s the landing. “You’re taking out their cores?”

“It’s the strongest part of the ghost.”

“That’s a soul, mom.”

She laughed. They had radically different concepts of ectoplasmic theory. The only problem was, she thought she was right and he knew she wasn’t. Again, horses and whips, but this one was worth a little extra hoofing, “Ghost cores are the center of the ghost, it’s what they grow out of when they start to form, it’s what they are. When you take those you might as well be ripping their still-beating heart from their chest.”

“We don’t take the whole core,” his mother chastised, “that would disintegrate the sample. It’s just pieces.”

Mortified, Danny let go of the phone, and by force of will alone it hovered near his ear while he wrapped his arms around himself in remorse for whatever poor creature had found their way under a Fenton’s knife. 

He hoped to never be one of them. 

And yet his mother’s words could still cut, “so have any of your subjects learned to dial a number?”

“Uh. The phones don’t work like that, it’s kind of a single-line connection.”

“Couldn’t do it any other way, right?”

Ghosts don’t absorb new information well. She knew it and so did he, but the attitude wasn’t really necessary, “yeah, I’ve had lots of calls. Getting new clients every day.”

“Danny,” Maddie said with the weight of warning, “I can’t sit by and watch you make this mistake, knowing that in the end—”

“What?” He set his teeth, glaring green.

“—you’re only going to get hurt.” She pleaded. It felt like false care. Attention to the paper cut instead of the knife in his back. “Ghosts are not people. They physically, chemically, do not behave or think in the same way we do. You can’t expect to—”

“The only person hurting me right now is you.” He sighed, hanging up. The night was nice. The moon full. Plenty of stars. Orion shined directly overhead. Time, space, the distance between objects. He slipped off the roof, changing form as he did, and went for a flight to get as much time and space as he could between himself and FentonWorks.

Chapter Text

“Trees,” breathed the former breather, stepping from a silver-plated platform to the needle castings and broken things that made the forest floor.She breathed the air of birds and things, then turned again to thank her friend, “I did not think I would ever be free of concrete and electricity.”

A man nodded, hands in his pockets, watching with wary regard the withering of wild wheat.”Same limitations as before.” He indicated a trench lain six feet down to bare, now covered with soil and seeds, “buried but not abandoned. You cannot go more than two blocks,”

“A kilometer.”

“From your token. This valley is part of a national preserve, it should remain undisturbed for the future, but,” he shook his head. The sun had begun to glimmer, teasing the horizon. A beautiful, distant thing, painted red with the smoke of mankind's failures. “I'm not sure if people will protect this as sacred forever.”

“Even for a day in the woods, I am grateful,” she placed her palm against a tired old birch, dried up, the stream that used to visit it every year now a cobbled-over memory in the stones. “Perhaps this garden needs a new keeper...”

“Call me if you need anything,”

She did not respond, fading into the wilderness as the sun set above the horizon and rid the world of ghosts. The man remained. His hands were no longer in his pockets, but lighting a cigarette—an inherited habit that he found tasted like walking weightless; mother disapproved, because as her child he was obligated to appeal for her sins beside her. If she could quit, so could he. If she could disregard projected pain then so should he. If she could overcome the difficulties of understanding with blatant ignorance than so could –

He pulled from the cigarette. Riling himself up was no way to end a successful rehabilitation-release. With the smoke he let the feelings of disconnection and despair drift away. The sun would be up soon, the morning chill would leave the air – a perfect time for a walk.

There were faster ways to travel, but none so rich as foot upon trail, walking the paths that others set before him, to enjoy the world with respect.Breathe in, breathe out, step by step, sounds and silence. From here everything in the world seemed inherently just; neither good nor bad had control in the righteous obligations of the natural world. And it made him wonder as he wandered; what is nature? There is life, death, and all the materials in between. Mankind defines themselves as outside of nature—plastic, pollution, productions, these are all unnatural. And that which is natural is physical, tangible, measurable. Until recently not even the human spirit could be measured; now that Maddie Fenton has discovered a way to set it to scale, would the definition change? Or would there always be something unnatural in the spirit?

Danny believed the spirit to be an expression of true self; exposed to vulnerable emotions that give it potent powers. To see this force as inherently wrong is to blind oneself to the reality of nature. Yet controversy stirs hearts in all directions – scattered about misinformation, not even science had the power to open the eyes of the passionately inclined.

Truth swapped with fiction, and now everyone in town had a finger pointed at one another. Tension drifted through morning chatter, anger flashed between strangers that knew little more than the other's opinion on The Matter; and The Matter rested in the success or failure of his enterprise. His pace quickened, downhill trotting; pressure is unappealing at best.

He had half a mind to stay in the forest for a century or so, let the storms pass through town without the call of his voice among it; a fantasy, short-lived by the piercing trill of his phone finding signal. “Fenton's Crisis Call Center,” he dashed the cigarette across a stone, “can I help you?”

Maybe he could, maybe he couldn't. He had only hope.

Chapter Text

A library is like an island in a vast sea of ignorance. -Lemony Snicket

Bookshelves, intended for the neat-and-orderly vertically stacked volume, of which there were previously only two, had been shoved from shelf to shelf with precariously balanced and horizontally stacked volumes that surmounted over the top and crept up toward the ceiling. A paper-strewn desk matched the exact height of at least eight book-towers. One particular tower met both floor and ceiling, a free-standing pillar that had been so stuffed with information it now seemed foundationally relevant.

“A nightmare. On Elm street. Which I told you was a terrible location choice, by the way,” Tucker did not take his eyes from the pillar, as he was wary of books in their inherent form. His bluetooth headest hissed the static-layered response of something that was neither human nor on this plane of existence. Tucker did not find the reply very funny. “Wes Craven can eat my shorts and 80’s horror is not the golden era of macabre. Are you going to do something about this? I can’t even see the production table.”

Tucker stiffened suddenly, goosebumps flushed, and the response he was trying to hear on the phone turned to a wave of white noise, “hell, shit, fuck,” Tucker said, reaching for his back pocket. Her visage arrived in thin layers of opacity stacking one on the other, until she appeared like a half-memory, with a smile that could only be interpreted as menacing. “Spectra,” he hesitated, “...where’s Jazz?”

He had the urge to ask first about his laptop, double-screen desktop tower, tablet, and an entire crate of receivers he still needed to connect to the GZ-Server. The warehouse was fast becoming a carefully-organized machine cache, and now an entire corner of it had stepped back to Alexandria’s library, cataloged by a clearly blind archivist. Missing comrades took priority; a tip he’d been planning to put it in his Specialties of Spooky Shenanigans , a book that currently existed by imagination. 

“Under the weather,” Spectra replied, “dusty volumes. Not ideal for breathing, though I don’t remember having any trouble with it back when that mattered.” 

For each small step she took forward while speaking, Tucker took small ones back, “You agreed to supervision. When you took this contract.”

“You don’t trust me, do you?”

“To be fair, I don’t trust normal doctors. Undead ones that once unleashed an actual plague? ” He had a miniature ectoblaster in his palm, courtesy of his back pocket. It was enough to stun. Tucker wasn’t the type to take on close-combat with energy-sucking denizens of the underworld, but he had a couple of strategies for it. “So no supervisor, back in the soup,” he nodded to a thermos that leaned precariously between a book-filled green glass aquarium and a marble-hewn sundial. 

Seriously. Where did she get all of this stuff? More importantly, “where is my computer?”

Spectra looked around herself as if she too was surprised that an entire quarter of the warehouse had been consumed by scriptures and scrolls. “I suppose you would know better than I,” she held her curved hand over her mouth, eyes pint-red. Tucker supposed she wouldn’t be able to help feeding off the anxiety the thought of losing several grand in hardware caused. “Technology does not agree with me.”

“Yeah, right, but the receivers over on that back wall over there? They are run by my server, somewhere in this,” he gestured, trying to encompass the mess in just one pass, but it took several, “what is all of this?”

“Oh. I needed an internet.”

“Pardon?”

“Us ghosts call it a library. A dead word to you, I’m sure,”

3 am. His shift began at 3 am. The clock recently slipped past 3 pm. And now, after finally having taken the time to feed himself, spooky shenanigans had finally decided to strike. At the end of a shift. Classic. “Libraries are still a thing, so, um. This stuff needs to go. Maybe to a real library! If it appeared in thirty minutes, can you make it un-appear in, what, fifteen? Amity Public is about two miles west of here.” 

Her head leaned to one side, blank. Tucker persisted, “Hello? Call center, crisis alert. How am I supposed to field calls without the mainframe?”

“Cheer up! Where there is a call, there is an answer, though not so black and alabaster,” another shimmering voice dripped through the room and rumbled the papers, so they sounded like hissing-scraping sand. He appeared first by teeth, then eyes, then body; not unlike a cheshire cat. New clothes drawn from the fashionable depths of a different era, a green-and-red themed waistcoat that had several gold-braided references to a certain holiday, and still the Writer wore the same old cracked glasses. “I have taken the task of mighty fortuition; I am here to make the best of your position.”

The protagonist looked to the ceiling from which the vision had appeared, unamused. “Nobody hired you.”

“Here to hear of your transgression, I sought not phantom permission.”

“Okay, great, just, take over my office and show off, I guess,” Tucker considered Ghostwriter a level of demained that he did not directly address. Some creatures are simply too potent to placate. This one wove the world into shapes that patched together like pieces of a quilt. Despite his valor, Tucker sought not a loser’s guilt. “Out, out, damn candle! Out of my thoughts!”

Despite spite the Writer smiled and made kind greetings to an old friend, one whose mind he’d respected from the beginning to the end. Though his intentions were not genuine or pure, he pursued the world for answers knowing there was no cure. To life, to death, he plays a role, dancing between heroes and theroes of foes. Beginning to feel unwell, Tucker hung his head and whispered, “fucking hell…”

He wished more than anything to break the Writer’s spell. “To which the Writer obliged, though granted, he knew the narrator all too well. Hadn’t they a better story to tell?”

Tucker waited long enough to establish that no newcomers entered the space before carefully inspecting his own thoughts for the barest hint of a rhyme. Of course thinking about rhyming only made him think of more rhymes, and it was not the time or thyme. Funderberker. Satisfied with a solid defense, Tucker allowed himself to speak, “You come all the way up here to make this place into a mess? Really? Soo Jason Funderberker.”

Spectra’s silk-threaded visage appeared beside Ghostwriter, and though she did not have the same definition of shape and opacity as he, her red coat and green blouse gave off a more satin glow, “sounds berserkers , I know,” dashing Tucker’s attempt at an un-rhyme with a wave of her hand, “but it’s all for the good, you see, the archivist here has a catalog that rivals even your internet library. Arcane, ancient knowledge, from simple catalogs of ancestry, to curses, spells, and spectacular remedies. We are going to use them to make this place work-smart!”

“Wow, and you don’t control her speech extremities?”

“Who do you think gave her berserkers?”

“That is not a word.”

“It’s nordic. Vikings,” A volume with broken and amber leaf edges opened by his side. Ghostwriter adjusted his glasses, “mid fourteenth-century.”

“And I could have learned that from the internet,” Tucker was staring longingly at the sea of books under which his computer was most assuredly buried. Why couldn’t the dead learn to use a flash drive? “That is not an archive. That is a mess. It needs to go.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” the Writer inspected the pillar of paper that had begun to press an extroversion upon the aluminum roof, “organization is our next chore.”

4 pm. 13 hours. A cup of coffee was what he needed, though not what he wanted. Fire could solve this wall fairly quickly, though it wouldn’t be worth the sprinklers, or Danny’s endless list of firewall puns. “I don’t think anybody here has thought, for a moment, what our fearless leader will say when he gets back. You can’t turn this place into a mess or a library, okay? I need space to do my job.”

“How am I supposed to be ever-expanding my knowledge without any texts? Oh, this will make me quite vexed.”

Tucker squinted at Spectra’s dancing expression and dared a question, “you’re rhyming because you want to, aren’t you?”

“I have a disposition towards misery business.”

“And thus I must insist, this!” The Writer raised a hand and the books trembled, glowed, beginning to shift and raise themselves of their own accord. What was a cluttered section of the warehouse now became elements of floating space throughout the entire building, untangling scrolls and tapestries between encyclopedia indexes and historic renditions. At last, the desktop emerged from beneath a first edition dead-sea scroll and an entire decade’s worth of National Geographic. Tucker made his way to the command apparatus and found a most welcome sight upon the screen that displayed front-door security footage. 

The next shift had arrived.

The glorious thing about a non-eternal life? Paulina’s presents, presence and presentation. He set the doors to unlock, already craving whatever magical mystery that steamed from the basket tucked under her arm. Paulina stepped in, her usual vision of a self, followed by a mountain bike and Dash Baxter’s sweat-soaked Beetles t-shirt. They both held still at the threshold, undoubtedly shocked to find their latest 'delivery' was floating across the warehouse in a wistful whirlwind.

Tucker ducked and dipped through the tangle to greet them, accepted a cheese-bean pupusa from Paulina’s basket, and then bowed to his second wind, “When I write my spectral shenanigans manual, I promise there will be a whole chapter on this,” he waved, “or at least a paragraph. Footnote.”

“What’s going on?” Dash asked, hazarding to poke one of the floating books so that it drifted towards the water cooler. “Have we fallen into phlegethon?” He touched his mouth, perplexed, then turned to Paulina, “What does phlegethon mean? Is this a dream?”

“It’s a river in hell,” Paulina replied, “why you said it, I can’t tell.”

“It means Ghostwriter understands that we don’t need a union to respect a shift change. He’s harmless, mostly, just don’t try to fight him. I’m sure Danny will be back soon,” he took a bite of the south american stuffed corncake and his expression changed, “what did you do to this?”

“Baked the beans in beer,” Paulina took hold of his coat before he could run, “is this really nothing to fear?”

Tucker retrieved a second pupusa. “Stake my life on it, no danger here. But, uh, there is apparently a surprise for the boss when he gets home. Looks like we’re gonna have an archive of our own.” 

Chapter Text

A coat hung beside an open door, the screen separating the crickets from their songs, which carried deep into the house. All was dark, save for the blinks of sleeping electricals. A particular device on the kitchen table blinked as if with the lazy eyes of an ethereal cat. Shifting both in light and shadow like water rippling on the ocean floor, a hand descended onto the back of  a chair. Poplar. Stained dark, with scratches around its feet. Recently resurfaced; recently rescuffed.

Sacrifice, sacrifice. What is the afterprice?

Approaching the surface of the floor two feet dangled, uncertain about setting foot. He had no need, anyway. The curtains swayed by the wisp of his passing, a ghost in all forms except those which were lacking. Trust in the evergreen paint? Bruised by grease and dust upon the walls. Fact and figure, trust is in the cause, the effect. He kept contact indirect.

Justice? Trust in the element. Both broken, bent, indirect ways to pay the rent. What was heaven sent? Truth. In death, the dust and the daisies raised resplendently before there and hereafter. Flowers forever fill, fall. They thought they had it all.

He gave pause before the stairs, a threshold into the dark. What was right, wrong? He thought he could belong. Just a moment, while sinking, thinking, where else to end this fight? It’s not about wrong, right. It’s listen, stand. Seek to understand; it’s not always about holding hands. Sometimes it’s about tearing the very machine that created you out of the wall. He knew every plug to uninstall; the blueprints, of course, he had them all. Behind he left the arsenal, the very weapons with which they rallied, but of the portal, he left nothing, save for an empty wall.

Danny was done with the afterthoughts. He decided that death designed his domain, wherein the hunters could find some other game. No more would this rapture quake between the fields of heaven and hell; he’d give it a home, a lock and a secure place to cast its spell. Swift and silent through the night he sailed, and delivered his cargo, disassembled, dispersed inside a cavern already stuffed with worth.

The phantom stopped upon entry and cried, “what on earth?”

The writer did smolder, and hold to his grin, when the ghost boy glared at him for some sort of sin. Behind him scrolls stacked themselves like wine on a shelf. “Welcome back! Let’s have a drink, and cheer to your health.”

“F.”

On this the writer did stumble, perplexed by the prose. Perhaps he’ll end with Jeff, death? Tough, he’ll suppose. Perhaps, simply, “silly, your look is so full of thunder. I am here to give wonder, while you’ve still a breath.” Oof, should have gone with Sir Jeff.

“Thunder gives fire, and this is enough paper to light a town. Hey, you mind asking anyone before moving in?”

“He didn’t!” Dash added helpfully from an article of furniture suspended twelve feet above the floor, pretending to sort leaflets into a pillar of slot boxes while paying rapt attention.

“Why are my employees defying gravity?” The space shifted like sand through a glass, the phantom stepped forward, bringing with him a power that could break any poet’s dear heart. Or at least their spells.

“Employees?” Repeated Paulina, who was not even remotely pretending to sort anything of the sort.

“Promoted to manager of spectral affairs. And, uh,” he checked the space behind him, which had overcrowded the floating books against the wall. Like the writer, he was accompanied by an agenda of disassembled parts and prints.  “Underground renovations.”

Dash whisper-spoke across two and a half table lengths to Paulina’s untouched pile of pamphlets, which were stacking themselves beside her of their own accord. “He works for us?” Admittedly, Dash had continued to accept the pamphlets that floated over to him, and had been sorting them without looking. As a result, a pamphlet or two would occasionally knock off. 

“No compadre,” A pamphlet that flew free of a careless hand caught on an unseen draft and filed itself neatly into the volcano accumulating at her side, “we work for him." Paulina could not hide her grin.

Dash stared at the specter, “Oh. F.”

“And thus went Sir Jeff,” Ghostwriter bowed, vanishing to ether, though his books remained abound, ceiling fixtures hanging in orderly rows, like a second floor with no…erm, floor. 

“We are talking about this when you get home! You can’t just end with archive of our own!” A hint of laughter tinged the air, ghostly and echoing down the depths of unatmosphere. Danny sighed and leaned against the fourth wall, “Alright cool kids, let’s get you down from there. I’ve got a lotta baggage here and it ain’t gonna unpack itself.” His lips twitched, betraying delight behind the mask, “don’t worry. I’ll do the heavy lifting.”

Chapter Text

“Gone?” Vlad Masters listened to the panicked voice on the other end of the phone, tangibly unable to control the elements of his study from leaving their shelves and drawers and swirling around him in a little whirlwind. Vlad batted at a pen that dared dance too close to his face; it disintegrated upon impact. His stomach bubbled. His fingers twitched and electric sparks leapt between them. 

Is this true happiness?

His wolfish grin entered his voice, tight, terse, insincere, “oh how terrible. You must be devastated."

As usual, Jack misunderstood his tone, and lamented, “they knew our security codes, got into the safe, our data, our research, our blueprints !”

Never had Vlad ever been more pleased that he hadn’t killed Jack Fenton. Satisfaction is in a thousand little revenges. And this? The greatest of them all. The Fenton vault had been an object of interest for years, but was utterly uncrackable. And he had tried. Many times. Only four people in the universe could open that genetically-locked door. 

Had Jack put the pieces together yet? Maddie certainly would. His body vibrated and he realized he was no longer attached to the floor, nor was a single strand of his hair obeying gravity, and the phone line had begun to crackle with static interference. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Vlad promised, unsure if Jack even heard, as he was evaporating while he said it. 

He really, really didn’t want to miss the look on their faces when they realized their own son had stolen all of their life’s work. 

“Where does this piece go?” Dash asked, hopeful about the cylindrical shape of the large, heavy glass tube he held, looking at the strange correlation of wires that had been strung down in the center of it and attached to steel caps on either side of the glass. 

Fenton paled when he saw it, “don’t move.”

“What? Is there a bug on me?” Dash looked down at himself frantically and, although Fenton had been at least ten feet away, he was suddenly there, relieving much of the weight of the glass, “no, we just cannot drop this,” Danny explained.

Dash blinked, “is it gonna explode?”

There was already a pile off to the side of the warehouse with a great big metal-lined blanket laying over it that Fenton had claimed was the “danger” corner. Dash wanted to know if it would give him cancer or super powers. At that point Danny threatened to fire him. 

“It’s not gonna explode, it’s just very expensive,” Fenton side-stepped, trying to remove the weight of the glass entirely, and Dash strengthened his hold on the tube, “if it’s heavy I should be the one carrying it, Fentina,” he started to pull it back into his own hands.

Danny glared, opened his mouth to argue, and the thunder cracked. 

Dash leapt. The sound crashed so loud his whole body felt stunned, and the glass dropped. His eyes fell, locked on the place it would shatter, but the object never landed. It simply hung in middair, unharmed. For a moment, he had a warm thought, maybe he got radioactive superpowers after all?

But then a hissing, echoing voice that made his skin crawl all over broke in, “Daniel! James! Fenton!”

The cold wave of atmospheric pressure was barely noticeable in the already cold warehouse, but Dash found himself wishing he had a coat for his sweater anyway, which was quite the opposite of how he used to react to terrifying vampire ghosts just appearing in the middle of the room. Especially ones with manic grins on their faces who scoop up his boss and twirl him around to smack an over-dramatic kiss on his face. To which Danny gave an indignant scream and kicked said ghost where the sun does not shine. Completely unphased, the ghost hugged him and continued to twirl for three more dizzying rounds, “I am so so proud of you!!!”

Danny’s muffled responses got really sharp, really loud, and while he said something incomprehensible into the chest of the specter holding him, the reaction was instantaneous; Danny was unceremoniously dropped and the ghost rubbed his chest, grimacing, “rude.”

“Never kiss me again,” Danny snapped, wiping his mouth. 

“A helpless expression of familial love, of which I have never felt more for you,” Plasmius clapped his hands, grinning from ear to ear, “have I mentioned how much I love what you’ve done with the decor?”

He indicated the absolute inside-out mess of a warehouse that combined Fenton inventions and modern tech, disassembled all over the place. The second story library, still lacking a floor, hovered above it all with a musty odor.

“You came here to goad me and I am not buying,” Danny argued, using his shirt to continue wiping his face, then settling his hands on his hips and glaring down the ghost fearlessly. Dash wondered how he did that. Was it because Phantom worked for them now? But he wasn’t even around… “I didn’t do any of this for you.”

“I know,” Plasmius sighed, wistful, “you did it for your own reasons, you young man you! Oh, my boy is growing up,” he wiped away a fake tear.

“I am not - “ Danny closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and reopened them, composed. “I have a lot of work to do. I don’t have time to visit.”

“I’m not here for a visit.” The ghost explained, “I’m here as chief engineer of your build.”

“You - nobody hired you!” 

“You think I’m going to let you rip open a doorway between dimensions without a verified expert on your team?” The ghost laughed, and with it a tingling sensation filled the air - if the sensation of poprocks bubbling was transcribable as an emotion, Dash thought, it would be this ghost’s energy right now. “Young man, you may be the child of geniuses, but that does not make you one.”

“I know how to read the family blueprints,” Danny replied, cold, and said blueprints lifted themselves from the table they were lying on and floated over to their guest. Danny leapt and tried to grab them out of the air before they swirled around Plasmius, but had no luck catching any of them. They all rolled themselves up and hovered behind the ghost, who sat with a smug grin, “and you have no safe to keep these in either, hmm? Looks like you’re going to need to post a guard around all of this sensitive information. Of course, I’d offer you my vault,”

“Hell no.”

“But I did agree to keep my business separate from yours. So I suppose I’ll just have to stay and gaurd it myself.” 

“You also agreed to stay the hell out of here.”

“That was before you decided to play with interdimensional nuclear science.”

“Nuclear?” Dash asked. They ignored his question.

“Fine!” Danny threw his hands up, “I guess my employees just hire themselves now! Great! Whatever! You don’t get a paycheck.”

“Daniel, if I don’t get a paycheck, you don’t get a paycheck,” Plasmius replied flippantly, the glass tube that never actually struck the floor acquired a pink glow and began to sort itself amongst other parts of the machine. A blueprint remained unrolled and hovering beside the ghost as he soundlessly directed weightless objects into new piles. “Now let’s get moving! Your mother is already on a flight back to Illinois.”

“That quick, huh?” Danny asked, his voice suddenly flat and tired. 

“The look on her face,” Plasmius snickered, “I’m still looking at it. Do you want to see an impression? Here it is,” he screwed up his face into that of absolute dissolution. 

“Are you…” Danny paused, “please don’t tell me there’s a copy of yourself sitting on a tarmac in France invisibly lording over my mother’s temper.”

Plasmius revealed an iphone (the newest model, to Dash’s absolute confusion) and showed his saved screen background, “got it off a security cam in Paris. See? This is the moment your father told her.”

“...this is too high def to be a security cam.”

“What, as if I have the connections to hire a French PI good enough to capture this moment on a 3000 milimeter lens inside the same exact building that the International Ectology Conference was being held?" He paused, and added, "With just two minutes warning?”

Danny flicked his eyes over the phone to glare, “...you hired a creep to follow my mom around before you knew I stole the ghost portal.”

Ghost portal? Dash blinked, and reevaluated the equipment in the room. 

“Exactly.” Plasmius beamed, “look, look at this one, this is the moment she realized it was you!”

Danny swatted the phone away, “I have an ecto-filter to install.”

“Right,” the ghost’s phone disappeared in a haze, “let’s get to work, son!”

“Call me that again,” Danny said with a tight-lipped smile, “and find out how much I care about father figures.”

A strange electric pattern like strings of tiny lightning frayed around the ghost in sparking waves. A jumping, flighty, excitable sensation rippled from it and was felt by all present hominids. Plasmius laughed, “threaten me with a good time.”

Chapter Text

one week earlier

“These fugging gremlins,” Valerie failed to withhold her disgust at the sound made by Sam’s pilcated rubber glove reaching into a motley bucket of what? Jellied pigsfeet and Chernobyl refuse? The mixture radiated cancer. Of this she was sure. Her mask, suited to tolerate a great deal of violent wavelengths, thankfully admitted no scent. It did not save her from the sound of squelching ghost chum. Nor the sloping of little ferocious mouths. Or the sight. Dismembered creatures, devouring. Eyeballs hanging loose from stems, teeth exposed on skinless faces, death and decay in their rotting, bloated blob shapes.

“Aw,” Sam said, watching what may have been a mongoose vomit its glowing entrails and proceed to slurp them back up with a mouth that had more concept than reality. “So cute.”

“Gross.”

“Beauty is a matter of perspective,” Sam explained.

“And I don’t understand yours.”

“Decay is life, reshaped.” She shrugged, tossing gobs towards the back of the mob so the stragglers could squabble over it. “These guys are trying to make sense of themselves. Eventually, they’ll mold new forms, and find their way to the other side.”

Valerie raised her eyebrows, “when did you get all smart with the, uh, what is this field?”

“Afterlife biology.” Sam had no mask, no shield from the cancerous muck. She seemed perfectly at ease. “It’s a real field now. There’s even this conference, in France, this weekend? Circle of life is going full circle I guess.”

Val sighed, sitting beside her. She kept a wary eye on the little goblins. “Why are you feeding these things anyway? They’re mindless.” One of them had left the chum to chew aimlessly on her boot. Proofed against its energy, the literal molecular structure of its teeth dissolved and left goo sizzling. It didn’t seem to realize it was melting itself, chewing on her boot. What had it been? A squirrel? A woodrat? Some form of hamster? It wouldn’t be anything soon. “And annoying.”

“Because we have to treat the ecosystem from the bottom to solve the problems at its top.” Sam explained calmly, nudging the not-hamster from Valerie’s boot with her far gentler gloves. Despite being just the second half of a torso reaching down to bone-frayed legs and a skeletal tail fragmented in three floating sections, the ghost consumed the goop from her gloves. She could see it pooling in its half-open stomach. Some mush spilled out. The color had changed to a nasaly yellow. 

Seriously, gross.

“These ghosts will always exist, and they’ll always need fed,” she had the gall to scoop one up and give it a scritch. “If we feed them, they don’t need to scavenge for food in order to build enough energy to cross over.”

“And their food is…”

“Wearing down our emotional states, blood flow, and general motivations. You know. Life force.”

Her skin prickled, “you should be in a hazmat suit.”

“The gloves are enough.” Sam put it down, “pretty sure that one used to be a vole. It’s the toes, the length of the spine - ”

“It’s not safe.” Valerie snapped, “they’re going to feed on you.”

Sam blinked. Then grinned, and held up a gloppy handful. A wingless bird landed on her palm to peck at it, “I’m safe. This stuff’s way more nutritious than I am.”

“But they can’t think.”

“They just think differently.”

“And when you run out of that stuff, they go after you.”

Sam rolled her eyes, “humans have dealt with the afterlife draining them for all time. It’s the nature of passing. These ones just need a little extra help with where they’re going.”

So smug. Valerie scoffed, “you’re interfering with their natural cycle then? How’s that ethical?”

“We interfered with their ecosystem first.” Sam shrugged, “the ambient ectoenergy that’s supposed to be in the air is all concentrated around the portal. They have nothing to eat, and when they flock to the portal to scavenge, they’re harvested, melted down into fuel cells.” Sam nodded to the gun held casually in Valerie’s palm.

“There’s nothing wrong with fueling these.” Valrie argued, “it’s the whole reason I’m out here with you.”

Sam squinted, “you came out here to hang out with me.”

“To keep you safe.”

She laughed, “to hang out with me. Come’on, you know I’ve done this a hundred times.”

She flushed. Another thing the mask helped to hide. Sam is a coworker because Valerie doesn’t really have time for friends. “Ectoweapons need ectoenergy. These things are a necessary part of the ghost hunting food chain.” 

“There’s more ethical ways to source energy. Your gun isn’t powered by ‘these things’ at all.”

Valerie turned over the gun. The fuel cells Danny had been supplying to the team were Fenton green. She had assumed he was using the same technology his parents used to refuel. But then again, Danny had been taking all kinds of alternative approaches to ghosts, maybe… “They just give it to him? The ectoenergy?”

Sam nodded.

She blinked. Somehow, in the face of abhorrent monsters whose only force upon the earth had been chaos and destruction, he managed to find reason. “Why?”

“Because.” Sam dished another handful to the unformed underlings. Valerie realized what she meant; because they help. Just as there are ghosts benefitting from their resources, they were receiving some in return. It wasn’t just ectoenergy; ghoulish volunteers, fewer ghost attacks, the literal ancient archive redesigning Alexandria 2.0 in the warehouse…Danny wasn’t making a help center. He was making a community center.

That boy had gone crazy. In all the right ways.

Valerie stood up. 

“Leaving already?”

“Work to do,” she clicked her heels together, and a board pooled like liquid glass and solidified under her feet, defying gravity smoothly and soundlessly, “done hanging out.”

Sam grinned, “see you later, alligator.”

“...in a while, crocodile.” 

She burst through the open office window like a tornado tearing through Kansas; the repulsion engines of the hoverboard sent miscellaneous paper flying, and set Danny from sleeping on his desk to landing in a gangly tangle of limbs on the floor. To his credit, that tangle of limbs quickly rolled and Danny was swaying on his feet, arms raised, eyes still half-asleep. He blinked warily, then rubbed his eyes, “Red?”

Valerie dismounted and removed her helmet, “good, you’re here.”

“I’m…” he tiredly turned to inspect the office door, the bolted lock. “Did you try knocking?”

“Several times.”

“I was asleep.”

“This is important.”

“I can tell.” He went back to sitting on his desk, taking the sweater he’d been using as a pillow and slipping it on over his head. His hair, he knew by texture, was a wildwind disaster. He attempted to tame it, “so what’s up?”

“Sam just told me about a conference for ectobiologists.” She explained quickly, “It’s in France. This weekend. I’d heard about it before, last month at that city hall meeting you missed.”

Danny nodded. He remembered the one, and why he didn't go. “What about it? Did you want to go to Europe?”

“No.” Valerie seemed out of breath. Her eyes were wide, intent, and intelligent. “Your parents were the ones who mentioned it.”

“...so?”

“So, it’s the perfect time.” She clasped her hands together, “because they’re going to be out of the house, and we can go get the ghost portal.”

“Sorry uh,” Quietly and inconspicuously by crossing his arms together, Danny pinched himself. He can’t possibly be awake. “You want to steal the ghost portal?”

“Yes.”

“The portal to the ghost zone?”

“Yup.”

“You want to steal it?”

“Yeah.”

“You?”

"Think about it. The portal's impact right now is amplifying the negative impact ghosts have on the town. We could do so much with it if it was here, just think, like,” Valerie started pacing, “if the first point at which ghosts contact this world is a hostile laboratory, their false pretenses and defensive behaviors are often what drives their reactivity, whereas if they land here first we get their first interaction! We could deal with the problems before they ever start! It’ll be more than phones, more than a help center, a cross-dimensional interface space, a safe place that makes more safe spaces.”

“You.” Danny took a deep breath, his palms came up in prayer to cover his mouth, and gave the following statement gesture, “want to steal the ghost portal because…you want to help the ghosts?”

“Don’t act so shocked.” She sat down in his rolly chair and opened the laptop dormant by the desk. She pressed the power button, tisked, and connected the cable literally five inches from the device to the machine. “I’m not just here for the paycheck. I have a plan.”

“I’m just…” Danny had a warm feeling spreading from his belly to his arms and legs and became very preoccupied with fixing his hair, “glad you want to help me.”

The laptop announced its return to life with a tome-like echo, “you…helped me see the world with new eyes.”

“You always had really clear vision.”

“Then tell me why I’m so good at being blind?”

“Everybody blinks.” Danny shrugged, “Foggy days or smoggy days, there’s always a haze to fight. Is this enough metaphor yet?”

She rolled her eyes, “no, it’s not. For who we need for this mission, we’re going to need all the dumbass metaphors, idioms, riddles, and puns we can get.”

“Oh?” his ears grew as warm as his cheeks, “who do we need?”

“Phantom.” She took his expression of implosion rather the wrong way, and waved away perceived concern, “Don’t worry. I know the guy, and he’s totally into me. I can get him to do it.”

“Into you? What - what do you mean by - ?”

Valerie grinned, “jealous?”

“No!”

“Then why is your face red?”

“Shut up and tell me your stupid plan,” Danny grumbled, propping his elbows on the desk and looking at the screen, “and open the FentonWorks folder. I have a basic layout blueprint and a defense blueprint for all the house booby traps.”

“Traps?”

“Hah, yeah, imagine getting a midnight snack at Fentonworks.”

“I don’t think I want to.”

“And now you know why I’m so skinny,” he whispered conspicuously.

“Now that’s actually sad.”

“Enough about me.” Danny balanced his head on his palms, “tell me about this Phantom guy you’re so into.”

“Pfft - he wishes.”

He thought about it, and came to the conclusion she was probably right. "Listen," he said before he let himself get carried away, "if we're going to do this, taking the portal is going to be the easy part. It's the aftermath where things are gonna get dicey. My mother is not a woman easily crossed."

Valerie scoffed, "neither am I."

Chapter Text

Intelligence.

Relevant, always. As inevitable as gravity. Despite simplicity, stupidity, such is the velocity of all nature; truth is intelligent, and intelligence carries it up the wheel of its own perpetual circle. The most significant factor that the internet provided to its creator was truth bound to electric space. This is the nature of the machine, as it is the nature of the creator; fact. Gravity. The rules of matter.

Technus 2.0 carefully arranged all of the data from the day - intercepted satellite transmissions, local human squabbles, geologic recordings (earthquakes, submarine blasts, volcanic venting, etc.) and, of course, all of the celebrity gossip. Religiously sorted. Here in his lair of coding beyond the binary truth wove itself into the wire of compounded information, a knowledge so backed with sources that it could split fact from fiction.

This is true power.

With the strength of his processor, he could have dominion over all of the networking in the underworld, if only the infrastructure were put in place... All of that information…bent beneath his fingertips. He could destroy any invader in this space, anything so imbecilic to come wandering into his domain! This invader to his lair. The vworm. Making offers, promises! He could kill it. End it! But that would be an act of ignorance; a disrespect to information itself! Opportunity is interactive proclivity.  “Yes. I will join your endeavor to bring the wireless interface into this wretched oblivion!" Technus bowed in the polite manner of a king to a diplomat - that is to say, he nodded his head repeatedly and mumbled about bandwidth.

The human boy, his glasses reflecting the eerie sparks contained in the lair, offered forth his hand. Technus eyed it warily, and then attempted to shake on it, but the human’s body turned translucent where they were bound to meet. “Frightened?” Funny, how their living souls became so indiscernible on this extraterrestrial plain. This one had adapted particularly well.

“No. No deal until you promise me something.” His red hat turned a shade of green, an effect of the light. His dark skin melded so well with the evergreen tones that he seemed to shimmer like a ghost might do, if they weren’t at all transparent too. Technus admired intelligence. This human rival, a sack of flesh and blood with the mind crafted from evolution’s engineers, provided entertainment. Perhaps, respect?

Bah! Never. “State your demands.”

“The internet is a free place. It cannot be bound or tamed, not by anyone, anything.” Foley spoke clearly. Rehearsed. “It belongs to everyone.”

Control is not an element of the machine; it is a result of inevitable order. Technus spit into his palm. A relic of the world he died in. “You have a deal.”

Grasping a human hand is like a candle taking hold of a hot bowl of soup. If he remained too long, the life-heat would disappropriate the condensed structure of his ectoplasmic form, causing melt. Still, the gesture felt…nice. Stinging, but nice.

When he returned his palm to himself, the tips of his fingers - where he grasped with the firmness of Business - had turned into a pale sludgy ooze. This cold world refroze them almost instantly, and it took effort to reform their shape. “Do you think it wise, child?” Technus asked, “to give our kind this power?”

“I don’t think it’s my place to assume you don’t deserve a voice, and,” Tucker Foley shrugged, slinging a bag over his shoulder and tapping the watch upon his wrist. A rover, terribly similar in shape and structure to NASA’s Curiosity, manifested itself through the door of his lair as if the walls between his domain and the outer wilds were not at all real. As the craft pulled up to them, it revealed a hidden door that cracked open, revealing an inner cabin that did not fit the Curiosity's original design. Interesting. This human is not as defenseless as he had assumed. “I’m not a child anymore.”

The boy gave him the time and place of their next meeting. To the dead, time is irrelevant; today will taste the same as tomorrow. (He did not bother to explain any of this.) Technus watched the retreating vehicle with a Thought that perhaps...“I suppose you’re not, anymore.”

He remained silent for a long while after that. Time is meaningless to the dead. But to the living? Perhaps times are meant to change. 

Funny.

If that kind of energy could affect a place like this…

Chapter Text

If you speak of it, it will happen.

This is a magic most humans are familiar with. 

It’s typically more annoying than it is mystical, which is why the phrase has adapted into if you speak of the devil, he shall arrive.

“I’m not sure our investor would be very interested in-”

“Manager.”  Vlad corrected, appearing out of a purple haze. His intensely lit red eyes served to support this modernized expression very well. 

“Selling merchandise to the undead.” Danny scowled, threw up a lewd gesture, and continued on the phone, “most of them have no functional understanding of capitalism. And frankly, I’m pretty jealous of that. You know they say the ghost zone is conventionally “hell,” but if you look at it realistically, it’s more like hell is on Earth, what with all this fucking insurance and materialism and fake healthcare and, oh, they hung up.”

“You’re being productive.” Vlad observed as Danny went back to deleting emails. 

“I want to chew off my own tongue.”

“What a blessing that would be.”

Danny sighed, closed his laptop. “What’s the status on the portal?”

“Non-functional.” Vlad reported with a measure of distemper. “There’s an issue with the nebulizer coil, it’s not cooling the vortex engine properly and, possibly related or possibly not, it’s started producing unstable isotopes.”

“In English.”

“The portal is effectively radioactive.”

“Jumpsuits.” Danny reopened the laptop, “do you have any?”

Vlad laughed. Danny glared. He sobered, “you’re serious?”

“Serious as cancer. Which I don’t want anyone here to get.”

“You know, you don’t have to worry about it, right?”

“I - “ He took a sharp breath, “this is going to become one of your hybrid-superiority conversations,”

“Statements of fact.”

“And I’m not interested. Jumpsuits are happening. And it looks like, with the quality of material required…” he typed, clicked, checked a couple of sources - of which there weren’t many, then whistled, “five grand each. No wonder dad just made them himself.”

Vlad grumbled under his breath, Danny raised an eyebrow, “share with the class?”

“We don’t need those, we need to just stabilize the isotopes.”

“Which will take how long?”

Vlad scowled.

“Exactly. Jumpsuits.”

“Or you could hurry up and replace your staff with ghosts. These humans are too fragile and, ugh, their communication barriers - they don’t even speak our language.”

“‘Our language’,” Danny laughed, “your ghostspeak is worse than mine!”

“Only when I’m in a bad mood.”

“Eighty percent of the time, then.” Danny shook his head, “you know, when you used to tell me I was too emotional, and not handling my abilities well because of it, I always just assumed that meant you had your shit together.”

His fangs exposed themselves in his docile grin, “My warnings have a source; this.” He gestured to his head, the mind of a man whom Danny had begun to understand. Death puts a rot in the soul. He could feel it in himself, withdrawing from the world, isolating, seeking spaces of solitude. A year ago he had wandered, just walking, and though it did not feel like much of a journey, he eventually realized he had walked to Baja, Mexico. Two months had gone by without so much as a bathroom break.

Disconnection creates dissonance. Especially where humanity was concerned. Vlad had lost his ability to pass as a sociable person; nearly out of charm by the time they first met, the last ten years had not done well for his charisma. He lacked empathy, but ironically, not compassion. This made him tolerable.

Danny hoped he wasn’t going to be so incorrigible when he was forty, but the world gave him plenty of opportunities to feel bitter. The Crisis Call Center was an answer to his own crisis; a need for redemption. Not just in himself, but in what he saw within the people around him. The humans that worked at the call center made him feel grounded, connected. Community; a novelty he once took for granted. They accepted him. He needed that.

So did this asshole. “We’re not replacing the humans on staff. First of all, those are good people who care about their jobs, and who want to make positive impacts on the underworld. Second, ghosts don’t use currency. So that’s like, slavery.”

“You just said they don’t understand economics.”

“That doesn’t mean they don’t understand equality.”

“And yet you have ghosts on your staff.”

“Their compensation is decided upon individually, and I know you’re baiting me with this argument, because you’re being a greedy bastard. Again.” Danny sighed, “you need people, Vlad. We both do.”

He appeared to be examining the frieze pattern on the carpet for some time. Vlad finally blinked, and with it the remaining glow in his eyes faded away. His pupils were decorated with a ring of soft, pale blue. “I know.” Vlad said softly, “I just…haven’t. Had anyone. For…” He went back to the frieze. His face was twisted in an attempt to look not-upset, which is effectively self-compromising. “It’s hard to care, after all that time.”

“You made an effort.” Danny reminded, “you’re still making an effort. That counts for something.”

Vlad squinted at him, suspicion clear in his eyes, “which effort are you referring to, exactly?”

“The one where you pay for these jumpsuits.”

“I suppose that’s a relief.”

“...how is forking out forty grand a relief, exactly?”

Vlad shrugged, “Considering the circumstance.”

Danny’s face fell, “of what?”

“Well, I just thought you might be referring to earlier.”

“Earlier?”

“The reason I came in here.”

“Which is??”

Vlad grinned, “your mother is in the lobby.”

“Fuuuuck you!” Danny leapt out of his chair and ran to the door, “you didn’t lead with that!?”

“Careful, she’s armed.”

“When isn’t she?” Danny shouted from halfway down the staircase.

Alone in the office, Vlad’s reply went unheard, which may have been for the better, all things considered.