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Math homework was the worst. He hated math so much but he needed to be good at it if he ever wanted to go to Nasa. He looked the problem over again and none of it was making sense.
He’d go ask his mom but she and dad were out on some hunt and Jazz went out to meet up with a friend at the mall. Which meant he was alone. In a very quiet house. He sighed and tried working the problem. This was supposed to be simple calculus! But again, he got stuck and the numbers didn’t make the problem equalize and he crumpled up the paper and threw it over his shoulder.
There was a melodious cooeing from behind him and his breath came out cold.
“Not now.” He gritted between his teeth trying not to become too frustrated with the problem.
Spot came into view holding the wadded-up piece of paper.His tiny ecto arms were barley wrapping around it halfway.
“It’s trash.” He stated and spot cooed and floated over putting it back on his desk.
“Spot,” He asserted to the tiny ecto blob, “That’s not where trash goes.” And he picked it up and tossed it into the overflowing bin, it bounced off and back onto the floor. Dangit another thing to do…
Spot cooed again and went to the paper picking it up and handing it to Danny.
“Thanks.” He said and went over to the basket and shoved it in…since he was up he might as well changed out the bags. So he tied that one off, and grabbed the spare bag in the bottom and set up the new empty one.
He turned to try and get the back, but it wasn’t on the floor. “What the…?” Spot and a couple of the other ecto blobs cooes in musical dissonance and he looked up to see three holding up the bag.
“You want to help me take my trash out….?” They bobbed in affirmation and Danny did his best to not let his twitching lips turn into a smile. “Sorry little dudes, but I can’t let you guys out of my room. I’m going to have to take it down myself…”
They deflated in sadness, “but.” He stressed, “When I can get back we can do a little more cleanup. Trust me, I have plenty of garbage.”
Helping the ecto blobs ID garbage was pretty easy and they got some stuff done. Spot was scouting under the bed and came out holding one of his rubber balls you get from those gumball machines.
“Not trash.” He says and hold out his hands, “It’s a toy, wanna see?” Spot immediately handed it over his tail swishing in excitement and Danny let himself smile this time.
“Try to catch it.” And he gently bounces the ball over to spot, who ripples from head to tail in fear at first, distorting when the ball bounces up but it rolls against the wall with a small bump and Spot plumps back up and floats over to investigate. Sleepy and Taylor float over to the ball to investigate with Spot and soon they’re pushing the ball around and picking it up and giving it soft tosses to each other.
Danny smiled and watched them for a couple minutes, then he got back up sat at his desk. Maybe this time he’d get the right answer for his homework…
It also kinda helped that he had the mild distraction of happy ghosts playing catch behind him.
Some Time Later:
He should not have given the baby ghosts permission to play Jokes on Jazz. It started off a little funny, moving around her shampoo’s and soap. Nudging pencils off her desk when she was studying. Tiny inconvenient stuff. After he taught them how to turn invisible he allowed them to sometimes leave his room without supervision as long as it wasn’t for long and no one was in the house.
But Danny had some English Lit homework to work on and he didn’t have enough parental ability to work on his own stuff and watch the five baby ghosts that were staying in his room. This was a major mistake on his part, because rule number 1 of parenting: Never assume your children are going to behave when you’re not looking.
The little ghostlings, in their invisible form, flew over to Jazz’s room and take a peak inside. She was sitting back on her bed reading a ‘how to parent your siblings’ book again and she had her brow furrowed in concentration. Spot looked around and decided to see if there was anything to snoop.
They had already explored the closet before and underneath her bed… now it was the chest with the many handles! Spot bobbed over and phased through the wood and found…the coverings! Spot had seen the larger Safe Ghost wear different sorts of coverings…he couldn’t just make the shapes himself!
But these ones were small…meant to cover a small area? Spot continued on his search for something interesting and they reached the very back and…saw themselves? Little images of spot.. green like him but not moving bobbing or whistling!
Spot softly called for their siblings who came up and gathered found the item. It seemed to have domes..maybe this was a test to free their poor motionless siblings?
Taylor wiggled under one dome and whistled for them to help. Taylor, Crescent, and Callie came to help two per dome…but they couldn’t phase through the wood with the domes. They would simply have to shove themselves out!
The four of them heaved and hoed till there was enough room for them to wiggle out. However, Jazz was no longer absorbed in her book and…oops…were they no longer invisible?
Danny meanwhile, had been having a nice time analyzing Fahrenheit 451 with Sleepy nested in his mop of hair. Occasionally there was a little whistling snore that melted his heart almost every time.
He was just about to reach the precipice of the one question tripping him up when Jazz screamed. A loud, glass shattering scream and Danny sighed. He pinched the bridge of his nose and grabbed a comic book he didn’t really care about and rolled it up.
“How big is the spider and where is it?” He called and he opened the door to Jazz’s room. To see her on her bed holding her lamp like a weapon…and the baby ghosts were floating, frozen in mid air holding up Jazz’s ghost themed bra that Mom had gotten her forever ago. Why did she still have that?
“Danny- Danny what is-“
She couldn’t complete her sentence before the baby ghosts phased through the bra and zipped over to Danny shoving themselves into pockets and his hair to hide.
“Jazz’s eyes got wide and her arm relaxed bringing the lamp to her side, and then slipped out of her hand to thump on the bed.
“Danny.” Jazz said in that ‘I know I’m not Mom but I AM the older sibling’ kind of way, “Explain. Right now.”
But how much did he tell her?
“I…just found them in my room one day.” Which was not a lie, “They looked harmless enough, so I decided to keep them. They don’t need to eat, and they don’t need cleaning up after…so it’s all the best things of having a pet with none of the work!”
Jazz was not amused, she put her hands on her hips and pointed at her bra, “And how, exactly, did they come to the conclusion it was okay to rifle through. My. UNDERWEAR.”
Danny tried to give her an easy smile, “I uh…I mean they do tend to get bored from time to time.”
“Bored? Danny I am reasonably certain these little mischief makers are the reason I had to by new shampoo! Twice!”
Danny chuckled, Spot and Callie had burped bubbles for three days, “Come on, your shampoo isn’t that expensive-“
“Not the point Danny, and what are Mom and Dad going to say when they know that the reason their ghost-radar thing has been going off so much is BECAUSE of these blobs here! They’ll flip.”
Danny hadn’t thought of that…however, this was actually the perfect opportunity. Because if he could convince Mom and Dad that these little guys were the reason all along their radar had been going on the fritz…this could solve a problem he had been narrowly side stepping for months.
“I mean…now that you know…you can help me convince mom and dad to keep them.”
“What! After I just learned they-“
All little ghostlings came out with wide eyes and trembled for dramatic effect, “They’re defenseless and harmless.” Danny promised, “They sought refuge in my room cause a big ghost spider was trying to eat them. Spot? Can you demonstrate?”
Spot took his acting role with pride, transforming and morphing into a min-ghost-spider and act all big and scary.
“Imagine that but like way bigger.”
Jazz crossed her arms over her chest looking at all of them. Danny pitched in with his own wide eyes and crocodile tears- and that was enough to make her cave! She facepalmed and groaned and shook her head in defeat.
“Fine, I’ll talk to mom and dad about this if you promise not to keep anymore secrets like this anymore.”
“Absolutely!” He would not keep any secrets about ghost pets. She never said anything about his alter-ego!