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English class was a drag. The way Mr. Lancer droned on with great passion about the works of Shakespeare was about as fun as watching paint dry. Danny had no clue which Shakespearean play he was talking about now as he set his right elbow on top of his desk and rested his chin in the palm of his right hand. Boredom clouded his teenage mind to the point that he would rather listen to his dad’s ramblings about ghosts, fudge, the war, and ponies right about now. Danny’s eyelids fell into a half-lidded state as his eyes wandered around the room.
Then there were the occasional slimy spitwads that were hitting him in the back of his head. Danny’s left eyebrow twitched in response. Three guesses as to who blew the spitwads, and the first two do not count. Either way, it was just gross. The spitwads failed to help him focus on the lecture and take notes, despite his slowly drooping eyelids. He used his left hand to wipe the spitwads out of his hair before going back to staring off into space.
It was just a normal day at school.
Boring teachers who found their boring lectures fun.
Entitled bullies taking turns at tormenting those at the bottom of the food chain.
Completely normal.
No funny business here.
A thud reached Mr. Lancer’s ears, causing him to turn his head in the direction that it came from. His eyes narrowed as he walked over to the offending student.
“Mr. Fenton, will you stop taking a nap in my class?!” Mr. Lancer snapped.
Danny did not budge. He was too busy dreaming of flying past Mars in a NASA spaceship, heading towards a distant star system to catalog everything he finds there. That and just enjoying the vast, seemingly infinite vacuum of outer space. He even sent a probe to Uranus — which, in hindsight, was probably not the best idea. Yeah, that was an awful visual pun. A visual pun that was way too easy and way too tempting to make. Then again, it was a pun, so anything can go, right?
However, that did not stop his intelligence officer, Sam, from snarking, “Really, Commander Danny?”
Danny slyly smirked at Intelligence Officer Sam and hit the giant green “Launch Probe” button again. On screen, the avatar for the spaceship’s AI system appeared. The AI’s avatar looked exactly like Tucker, except he was wearing a cool, fluorescent yellow visor instead of his usual thick-framed glasses.
“Probing Ur-anus,” the Tucker AI snickered.
Mr. Lancer sighed and tried again, “Mr. Fenton, wake up!”
The nebulas glowed brightly through the spaceship’s window, making Danny flash a humongous smile as the stars reflected brightly in his eyes. He could see the Eagle Nebula. The Crab Nebula. The Ring Nebula. He could see all of the nebulas in their full, unadulterated glory.
Danny traversed to the airlock and slipped into a space suit. Once his space suit was fully on and his tether to the spaceship was properly secured, Danny pressed the red button for the airlock doors. The airlock opened, and Danny floated out and into the void of space.
The colors the nebulas and stars gave off were breathtaking. The stars sat in the nebulas, catering for their planets and sibling stars in a dance that was made possible by the mass and gravitational pull that they possessed.
Mr. Lancer hated using this tactic, but seeing as Danny was too far off into his dream for the more acceptable methods, he had no choice. He went over to his desk and pulled out an air horn he had confiscated from a student recently from the drawer. He shut the drawer once he had the air horn in hand and walked back over to where the sleeping Danny was. Mr. Lancer braced himself for what was to come.
While looking away with his eyes shut, Mr. Lancer held the air horn close to Danny’s right ear and gave a tight squeeze to the air horn’s trigger, unleashing a loud, irritatingly long, horrendous noise from the deceptively small can throughout the classroom. The students who had not taken a nap cringed and covered their ears.
The worst casualty was Danny, and it was not because he had super-hearing — a power that he was thankful that he lacked at this very moment. Oh no, it was much worse. His dream world crashed and burned in a fiery inferno as he returned to the waking world with a startled yelp. He shot up into the air so fast and high that he himself could have been a spaceship leaving orbit. Danny hit his head on the ceiling and then crashed onto the hard, tiled floor belly-first, knocking the wind out of his lungs for a brief moment.
“The Rocket Man!” Mr. Lancer exclaimed.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Lancer,” Danny immediately apologized from his position on the tiled floor. “I’ll try harder not to accidentally fall asleep again, I swear!”
Mr. Lancer dropped the can of air. It hit the ground button first, creating a small, pathetic version of the demonic noise that had awoken Danny. The overweight teacher’s jaw dropped as his eyes widened to the size of dinner plates.
"Wh-what?" Mr. Lancer stuttered, trying to comprehend what his eyes were showing him.
“I said I was sorry,” Danny replied nervously, shrinking back a bit on the inside. He really did not want any more trouble than he was already dealing with.
Danny watched as Mr. Lancer stared at him, growing more uncomfortable by the second. It was as if he saw something baffling and then got frozen by a giant ice machine. He then looked around the room, seeing the same look on everyone else’s faces. Blue eyes then meet the turquoise and purple eyes of his friends. They were horrified, and it was not because they did not know what happened to him this time, but rather because of the situation Danny had found himself in now.
He then took another look at Mr. Lancer and realized that he was not just staring at him, but right where he should be. Danny looked at himself. His eyes went wide and cold sweat dripped from his forehead as he screamed with absolute horror drenching his voice.
This was what had the alarms going off in Sam and Tucker’s heads. This is why Mr. Lancer and the other classmates were seemingly frozen in a perpetual state of shock.
Then something hit Danny in the head from up above. It was a piece of the ceiling. He looked up to see the indent where his head had made contact with the ceiling.
Danny had flown into the ceiling and turned invisible right in front of everyone. So much for thinking he was finally getting somewhere in getting his powers under control.
This was very, very bad.
At that moment, the school bell rang, and the faceless mob of students raced out of the classroom. For whatever reason, that did not matter at the moment. What mattered was what he was going to do now. Danny looked down at the ground and cracked his knuckles.
Sam and Tucker approached the two. Tucker looked like someone had destroyed his brand new PDA as he covered his mouth. Sam looked like she saw the most depressing animal video on the internet, having a difficult time looking at Mr. Lancer and the location where Danny would be if he were visible.
Danny tried to get up from the floor quietly, hoping to take advantage of his slip-up and go hide somewhere else. However, this was not meant to be. His arm accidentally smacked into his chair, causing it to squeak a bit as it moved away a couple of centimeters. The sound snapped Mr. Lancer out of his shock-induced trance. At that moment, he once again noticed his currently invisible student.
“Wh…wh… What happened to you?” was all Mr. Lancer could seem to coherently say.
Danny slowly faded back into visibility. The trio looked at each other, non-verbally communicating that one of Danny’s worst fears had come to pass. There was no screaming “don’t tell anyone” at this point. The whole class had seen Danny's slip-up. They were probably going to tell everyone and their dog that Danny had done something that was physically impossible for any human being ever.
The only option that seemed viable at this point was coming clean. Danny avoided making eye contact with Mr. Lancer as he stood up. He rubbed his left bicep with his right hand, his lips curled downwards in an upside-down U-shape, and his eyebrows were center-upturned.
“W…we’re not entirely sure..,” Danny quietly stuttered.
“Can you please explain to the best of your ability?” Mr. Lancer asked. He picked up the air horn from off of the ground and set it down carefully on another student’s desk. He then slowly walked closer to Danny. His lips were pressed shut, and his eyebrows were drawn together.
The trio shared a look with each other. Sam looked up at Mr. Lancer and gulped hard, drawing the aforementioned teacher-slash-vice principal's attention towards herself.
“It’s my fault,” Sam confessed grimly, her shoulders slumping. “A week and a half ago, I dared him to check out his parents’ ghost portal for some pictures.” Sam clenched her fists as she looked down at the floor. Her upper teeth dug into her bottom lip for a moment before she continued. “I had no idea that it wasn’t really broken. If there’s anyone who should be in trouble, it’s me.”
The following silence was broken when Tucker let out a long whistle, “Wow… I never thought I’d see the day you’d admit to screwing up…”
Sam sent a glare at Tucker, making him shut up that second.
Mr. Lancer sighed as he placed his hands on Danny’s desk and hung his head for a moment. He had no idea how to deal with this. He was a teacher and a vice principal, not a doctor or a scientist. He did not know just how much his student had changed or what complications would ensue from this point on. He was already getting closer to banning Danny from handling fragile objects after what Danny’s science teacher had said yesterday. This was a highly unusual situation, to say the least. Danny was heading down a path that should not exist at all, in his opinion.
“Mr. Lancer?” Danny spoke up timidly, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Danny,” Mr. Lancer said with an airy sigh as he ran a hand over his balding head. “Please tell me that your parents know about… Well…” Mr. Lancer then gestured to Danny. “This.”
All three teenagers shrank back. Danny replied with a sad, “No.”
“Why haven’t you? This is something you should not hide from them, Danny,” Mr. Lancer pointed out.
“I know,” Danny replied as he gazed at the ground once more. “Every time I have tried to, so far, it hasn't gone to plan. Something always comes up and prevents me from telling them.”
Mr. Lancer frowned. This was a problem without any doubt.
“I am glad you are willing to tell them, but you need to be more upfront about your problems,” Mr. Lancer stated firmly. “Shrinking back will not make your problems go away. If it makes you feel better, I am willing to organize a meeting with your parents, and I want all three of you to be present. No excuses. You all catch my drift?”
Danny bit the inside of his cheek as he slowly shuffled his feet in place.
On one hand, there would be no interruptions — especially the ones courtesy of Jazz — to prevent him from confessing what had happened in the accident. It would relieve him of the immense weight that he had been carrying in his heart from all of the covering up he had managed to do so far over the past week and a half.
On the other hand, there was no telling what his parents would think. They were already scared to death by the fact he had gotten hurt; he didn’t need to put more baggage on them. They already worry about him enough as is.
After a moment, Danny finally nodded.
Mr. Lancer continued, “As for your peers, there’s nothing I can do about them, unfortunately. I just ask for you to be careful and continue to follow the school rules, understand?”
Danny looked at his friends, then back at Mr. Lancer. He responded to this with another nod.
“Good,” Mr. Lancer said. “Now you should get to your next class. I will alert your other teachers of this development. Hopefully there shouldn’t be anymore freak-outs akin to the one that we all had in here.”
With that, the trio left the room, carefully going out into the hallway as Mr. Lancer began making calls to all the other teachers that had Danny.
.
Later that day, after lunch...
The sounds of whispering and gossiping sounded throughout the hallways as Danny walked down the hallways of Casper High, heading to the classroom where his next class was being held, which was the health-related portion of physical education. Normally, he would be walking with Sam and Tucker to the aforementioned class, but right now, he just wanted to be by himself.
Danny rolled his eyes upon hearing some of the silly theories that left the lips of his peers.
“Do you think Fenton got hit by a radioactive meteor?”
“Nah! He so got abducted by lunar aliens after he stared at the moon for too long!”
“He had to have read one too many comics to be able to become invisible!”
“No! It was, like, because his parents were secretly bird people!”
“I bet that an alien gave him a radioactive chocolate milkshake!”
“I think his parents gave him an ectoplasm transfusion by accident after a ghost bit him!”
The ghost boy looked at the floor and sighed as he heard some of the more hurtful theories.
“Nuh uh! It was his unhinged parents who did it! They’d totally experiment on their own!”
“Yeah! They probably injected him with ectoplasm to see if humans could have ghost powers!”
Danny meekly clutched his school binder close to his chest, trying to hide himself behind it. As much as he wanted to turn invisible, he did not want to prove to the rest of the school that he could. He wished for the semblance of normality that the ignorance that his peers once had to be returned to him, even if it meant being stuck with ghost powers for the rest of his life.
In the end, his emotions won the battle, and he promptly turned invisible against his own will, causing more gasps and shocked looks left and right. Some kids laughed while the rest remained silent, unable to find the words needed to convey their thoughts.
Giving up, Danny decided to remain invisible. At least nobody else would be able to see him until he could no longer keep it up. It was for the best at this point. The staring was getting to him.
‘So much for keeping this a secret..,’ Danny thought.
“Hey, where’s Fenturd?!” a familiar voice asked.
Danny perked up and saw Dash looking all over the hallway for him. Dash was searching lockers, trash cans, the janitor’s closet — just about anything with a bewildered look on his face.
“How am I supposed to whale on that freak if I can’t find him?!” Dash exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air.
Danny could not help but feel his lips tug upwards a bit. A small chuckle escaped from his lips, catching Dash’s attention. Dash growled as a response and began punching in random spots in the air, hoping to hit his target.
“Show yourself, Fenturd!” Dash demanded. “Un-disappear so I can punch ya!”
Danny lost it at that point and clutched his stomach as he began laughing out loud, causing Dash to scream with unbridled rage. This had to be one of the most amusing things Danny had seen all day. However, as much as he had wanted to stay and deliver a jab at his frequent tormentor, he had a class to get to, and he could get to it safely.
And that is exactly what happened. Not a single bruise was on his body by the time he entered Ms. Tetslaff’s class. His invisibility dropped as he stepped through the doorway — still laughing.
“Huh, would ya look at that?” Ms. Tetslaff said as she cocked an eyebrow and caught Danny’s attention. “Seems he was not kidding when he said that you could turn invisible. Just don’t think that will make me go easier on ya, got that?”
Danny nodded weakly and went to his seat. The bell rang as soon as the ticked off Dash Baxter entered the room, glowering at Danny. He could tell that the jerk jock was going to try to get him later.
‘I hope my powers don’t malfunction after class..,’ Danny thought with a bit of a cringe. ‘I so don’t want to be beaten up because of something I can’t control.’
.
A couple of class periods later, the final bell of the school day rang, notifying the students that it was okay to leave the school grounds. Students flooded out of the two-story building, ready to kick back and relax after a long day of school. Well, most students, for that matter…
In Mr. Lancer’s vice principal office, Danny, Sam, and Tucker each sat in one of the five chairs near Mr. Lancer’s desk, waiting for Danny’s parents to arrive for the meeting.
The air around the three was heavy and tense. Danny slid down in the chair he was sitting in, making himself look smaller in a sense. His eyes darted towards the door every now and then, waiting for the inevitable. Sam was hunched forward in the chair she sat in, bouncing her right leg at a rapid pace. Tucker was hunched over as well. The only difference was that he quivered like a shaking leaf in a brutal windstorm as he gripped the seat of his chair for dear life. There was no telling as to what Jack and Maddie’s reaction would be. Their reactions could be almost anything.
After what felt like an eternity, Jack and Maddie entered the classroom and greeted Mr. Lancer. Danny’s heart raced even faster as he looked away. He rubbed his right bicep with his left hand, feeling out of place and riddled with shame.
“So you wanted to speak with us?” Maddie asked as she took a seat in front of Mr. Lancer’s desk.
“What is it about?” Jack asked, his blue eyes narrowing as he took the other seat. “Did Danny goof off in the science lab, again? I’ve told him twice now that's a very stupid idea!”
“Well, it is about your son, but it is not what you are thinking at all.” Mr. Lancer said. He then cleared his throat and continued, “Today in my English class, your son fell asleep-”
“Danny!” Maddie scolded as she turned around. Danny quietly sank further into the chair he was sitting in.
“However, that is not the issue that I am wanting to discuss with you,” Mr. Lancer continued.
Jack and Maddie looked at each other. The former had the look of a lost puppy on his face. The latter blinked for a moment before returning her attention to Mr. Lancer with a raised eyebrow.
“Has your son touched any of your inventions lately?”
“Why would Danny touching our inventions be of concern?” Jack questioned as he scratched the side of his head. “They harm ghosts, not humans!”
“Apparently one of your inventions did something to him about a week and a half ago,” Mr. Lancer stated firmly. “I am not sure what it did to him; all I know is that he accidentally flew into the ceiling and turned invisible in my class because of it. This is all based on what Danny and his friends have told me so far.”
The eyes of the Fenton parents widened. Jack’s jaw looked like it could fall to the floor at any given moment. His huge hands clenched into tight fists. Maddie’s face became flushed and very pale. She gripped the seat of the chair that she was sitting in tightly.
“I take it you know about which accident I am referring to,” Mr. Lancer stated, seeing the looks on the Fenton parents’ faces.
“We do, but it just doesn’t make any sense,” Maddie said, putting an index finger up to her chin as she raised an eyebrow. “We have been studying ectoplasm for years. There’s no way it could have bound to Danny in a way that would give him access to the most basic ghost powers. We’ve exposed the carcass of a dead pig to ectoplasm as a part of one of our experiments, and all that we ended up with was a glowing zombified pig. It showed no signs of being able to use ghost powers.”
“After that, we sliced it up and cooked it. It was normal, crispy bacon! A bit green, but it was still bacon,” Jack added in.
Danny stuck out his tongue as he lightly grasped his own neck and let out a disgusted, dry retch. Tucker gasped before glaring daggers at Jack. He muttered "You meat defiler" under his breath. Horror flashed in Sam's eyes. The goth girl's cheeks became tinged with green as she covered her mouth.
Jack continued, blissfully ignorant of the trio's expressed disgust, “In fact, that’s what inspired us to begin seeing how ectoplasm could power household appliances. We are still working out all of the kinks when it comes to inventions like the ecto-cooker, though…”
Mr. Lancer was not surprised that ectoplasm got involved in the conversation quickly. These were the Fentons he was talking to. At the same time, he was a bit lost due to the fact that he had never studied ghosts. He had only ever studied what was required for his teaching career.
“It’s true, Mr. and Mrs. F,” Tucker spoke up. “We were there and saw everything.”
“We told — well I did — Danny to leave out the ghost powers part,” Sam followed up. “We weren’t sure how you would react and decided to play it safe.”
“I wanted to tell you guys from the start, but every time I tried to, I was interrupted or got scared,” Danny finished with a grim look on his face.
Maddie’s violet eyes began to pool with tears. She removed her goggles and wiped her eyes with a tissue. Jack was also not feeling any better. He felt his heart sink. Their one and only son had been suffering beyond just the electrocution and was unable to cry out for help. It was something that would pain any loving parent. It made them feel powerless and as if they had failed to be good parents.
Maddie got up and rushed to her boy with open arms. Without any warning, Danny found himself engulfed in a hug while his mother sobbed into his shoulder.
“My poor baby… I’m so sorry..,” Maddie said quietly between sobs, “We should have kept a better eye on you since the accident. Please forgive us.”
Jack came up and also joined in from behind. His huge arms wrapped around Danny and Maddie as he raised them both into the air. His hugging crushed Maddie and Danny a bit, but Danny did not bother to get out of it. Instead, Danny opted to hug both of his parents back. A small, serene smile graced his lips and his eyelids gently fluttered shut as a sense of peace and calm washed over him.
However, that did not stop his powers from acting up at all. This time, intangibility decided it was an appropriate time to rear in. The young boy fell through Jack and Maddie’s arms and was now sitting on the floor, groaning with his arms crossed across his chest, his eyebrows narrowed, and a pouty lower lip sticking out. Jack and Maddie untangled their arms and began to help their son up.
“Well, I guess this also explains all of the broken beakers,” Mr. Lancer observed, causing Maddie and Jack’s attention to be refocused on him. “After this morning, I had a feeling that was the case. Until you stop phasing through everything randomly, I don’t want you to be touching anything fragile, understand?”
Danny nodded, now no longer sitting on the floor. Once he was standing up, his parents went back to the chairs they had been sitting in.
“Don’t worry, son, we’ll help you figure this all out,” Jack said to Danny before turning around to face Mr. Lancer.
“Is there anything else we should know, Mr. Lancer?” Maddie asked.
Danny's whole body became intangible again. He tried to become solid again but failed to do so. He facepalmed as he began phasing through the floor. Sam and Tucker tried to get Danny out of the floor but were unable to since there were no tangible parts that they could grab. So Danny just crossed his arms as a scowl plastered itself on his face. He waited for his powers to be done with tormenting him for the moment.
“Yes, there is,” Mr. Lancer said. “I was not the only one who saw Danny disappear and fly. Numerous students who have the same English period as him also saw him disappear and fly. Everyone in the school now knows about it, and there is no telling what they will do.”
By this point, Danny was almost halfway through the floor. Thankfully, he had managed to get his arms solid. Sam and Tucker quickly seized them and pulled their friend out of the floor. Danny then finally regained full tangibility and sighed in relief. He was not spending time in the school’s basement again.
The words that Mr. Lancer had said rang through the minds of Jack and Maddie. They knew there was a good chance that the other students would take advantage of their baby boy and the obvious lack of control he had over his powers.
“There has to be something that the school can do,” Maddie said.
“I’m sorry, but other than giving him an IEP — which is usually given to our disabled students — until he can control his powers, there’s nothing much we can do,” Mr. Lancer said. “Unless there is some way to reverse this.”
Maddie pondered a bit and then said with sadness, “I don’t think that removing Danny's ghost powers is possible at this point. The pig carcass’s molecular structure was highly mutated. Trying to remove the ectoplasm from Danny’s system might do much more harm than good, especially with how long it has been bound to him now. I don’t want to risk losing my baby boy like that.”
“Very well then, I will get the IEP setup,” Mr. Lancer said with finality. “Here’s what it will entail. First of all, Danny will have learning control in his physical education class on gym days as a top priority. How that is tackled will depend on what activities are being done on those days.” Mr. Lancer then held up his right hand with the index and middle fingers sticking up. “Second, he will be prohibited from handling anything fragile until he is in complete control. He has already broken too many beakers during the past week and a half. Finally, he will have extra time to do his assignments.” Mr. Lancer lowered his right hand and shot a look towards Danny. “I am inclined to believe that being unable to hold a pencil for two seconds is exhausting.”
Danny — who was currently on the floor, partly phased through a student desk — looked up at Mr. Lancer, his intangible hand struggling to find purchase around his pencil. His homework was resting on the desk's surface above him. Tucker's cheeks became pink-tinged and slightly bulged as he tried not to laugh at his friend’s misfortune. Sam, however, frowned at Tucker as she very visibly cracked the joints in her right hand for the techno geek to see. That shut Tucker up right away.
After a few more exchanges of words and the signing of some papers, the meeting was finished. Everyone — minus Mr. Lancer, who was grading papers now — left the office and then subsequently, the high school. By this point, Sam and Tucker had separated from Jack, Maddie, and Danny to head to their respective homes. This in turn gave the three Fentons some privacy.
Maddie scooped up her son into another hug and stroked his hair, despite the shout of “mom!” and protests against the latter action. Either way, she continued to hold her son close. Jack wasted no time in delivering one of his bear hugs, lovingly crushing Maddie and Danny in the process.
“Mom, dad! I’m okay!” Danny said, gasping for air.
“We’re just scared for you, Danny,” Maddie said. Jack let go of her and Danny, allowing Maddie to set her son down on the ground. Maddie continued, “That’s all. We caused this to happen...”
“Please forgive us, son,” Jack sniffled.
“I don’t blame you guys for anything,” Danny said. “I was being stupid and touched something I shouldn’t have touched.”
Instead of using words, Jack gave Danny another hug. If there was one difference he could see in this situation compared to the one that happened in college, it was the fact that his son openly told them it was not their fault. It took a huge chunk out of the weight that had been sitting on Jack’s shoulders off.
“Let’s go home, son,” Jack finally said with a few more sniffles. “I think we all could use a bit of rest to absorb what happened. That and some fudge.”
And that is what they did.
.
Jazz was reading her latest psychology book. The current page she was on was describing the condition that held the name Delusional Disorder. The page went into pin-point precision detail on the mental condition’s symptoms, causes, and statistics, giving Jazz plenty of information to eat up with her powerful mind.
As she was reading the requirements for obtaining the diagnosis of the rare disorder, she heard the roar of the RV come into range. She sighed, pretty sure that her parents probably fell into a unique category of Delusional Disorder thanks to their sick obsession with ghosts.
“It’s best to confront them now,” Jazz began, as she closed her book. “If I don’t, they will become even more detached from reality.”
Jazz got up from her chair and traveled out of her room, down the stairs, and into the living room as the front door opened. What she saw made her stare in disbelief. Normally, her parents, especially her dad, held a flare that made them lively and pushed them to pursue whatever new idea that popped up in their off-the-wall brains.
Before Jazz at this moment were rather somber looks of regret, something that just did not go well with her parents’ personalities, period.
“Mom, dad?” Jazz asked carefully. “Are you guys okay?”
“Jazz, honey, we need to discuss something with you,” Maddie stated, and then took a seat on the couch with Jack while Danny went into his room.
Jazz took a seat in between her parents and asked, “So what do you want to discuss? Please tell me it’s not related to ghosts. Again...”
Jack and Maddie shared a look between each other before looking back at their eldest child. Jazz’s eyes bore into Maddie’s. Maddie’s eyes did not hold the excitement that presented itself when the topic of ghosts was brought up. She then took a look at her father, and he too lacked the enthusiasm.
‘Did they finally realize there is no such thing as ghosts?’ Jazz wondered.
“Remember the accident that Danny was in?” Maddie asked.
“Yeah, how could I forget?” Jazz asked, her eyebrows narrowing. “He was severely hurt and is now probably traumatized for life thanks to that thing you made!”
Maddie hung her head while Jack looked off to the side, staring at nothing in particular. The emotions of sadness and regret radiated off of them in waves that Jazz could see clearly. Jazz could not help but get a sinking feeling in her gut in regards to where this conversation was going to go. Jazz knew her parents were incapable of being this regretful while talking about anything ghost-related. By all means, it was a contradiction of everything she knew about them. Something a lot more serious must have happened involving Danny’s accident that caused this display of out-of-character behavior.
“What happened?” Jazz asked as concern seeped into her voice as tears began to well up in her eyes. “Please don’t tell me that whatever that accident did is slowly killing him!”
“As far as we know, he isn’t dying,” Jack said, relieving some tension from Jazz’s mind. “But that does not mean he was unaffected by it.”
“What do you mean?” Jazz asked, clearly not getting what her father was saying. “Of course he wasn’t unaffected by it! It clearly traumatized him! He's not behaving like how he usually does!”
“What your father means, Jazz,” Maddie began, “is that the accident fused ectoplasm into his molecular structure. He now has ghost powers.”
The words that left Maddie’s mouth caused something to snap in Jazz’s mind. Her confused expression contorted into anger as she felt what was probably the last of her patience blow away like fine, loose sand. She gripped the couch cushion that was underneath her tightly.
“What is wrong with you two?!” Jazz loudly asked as she stood up, throwing her hands up in the air. “Danny is not infused with ectoplasm!”
“Jazz-” Jack began.
Jazz cut off her father and continued her rant, “And you want to know how I know? It’s because ghosts. Don’t. EXIST! All you two are doing is making everything more stressful for Danny than it has to be by thinking that!”
Jazz let out a series of ragged breaths. She was not going to let what she believed to be a toxic delusion further stunt her brother’s life. A minute or two passed, and then Jazz’s ragged breaths became calmer. By this point, her parents were no longer sitting on the couch, making the strawberry-blonde teenage girl groan with irritation.
“Well, if I can’t convince you two to stop this dangerous obsession,” Jazz muttered to herself, “I can at least try to mitigate the damages that you have done to Danny.”
Jazz traversed up the stairs and approached Danny’s room. She saw that his door was partly open, so being the curious genius she was, she cracked it further open.
Once she could see Danny, she stopped, not wanting to draw attention to herself. She saw him sitting on his bed, his knees curled up close and his chin resting on them. His eyes were half open, which made him appear as if he were lost in his own thoughts. Jazz felt her heart melt a bit. The body language. The instant retreat to his room. The near-death experience that happened about a week and a half ago. She was certain that Danny was suffering from some form of severe depression on top of post-traumatic stress disorder thanks to that accident. She could not blame him; anyone would feel that way if they were in Danny's position. Perhaps even herself if she had been the one caught in the accident instead of her younger brother.
Feeling now was the best time to make herself known, she slowly opened the door enough for her to slip into the room. She made sure to be careful as she stepped over the wads of balled-up homework, stray dirty clothes, crumbled-up soda cans, a small foam basketball, that skateboard that Danny sometimes fooled around with in his room, and other miscellaneous items that could be found in almost any healthy fourteen year old boy’s room. Danny looked up at Jazz and sighed before looking away from her — returning to whatever thought he was thinking of.
“Danny, I know you are hurting and that mom and dad aren’t making it any easier for you,” Jazz said softly, taking care to not sound like what Danny liked to call “being a fink.”
Danny said nothing. His eyes held a distant look, void of any hint as to whether or not he was paying attention.
“I just want to let you know,” Jazz continued. “You can always talk to me. I know we aren’t close like we used to be, but that doesn’t mean you can’t come to me for help. I really want to keep you safe from our parents’ sick obsession with ghosts. You’re just too fragile at this age, and I don’t want to lose my baby brother.”
Jazz’s hand slowly hovered towards Danny’s messy mop of smooth, raven black hair that was styled into a reverse mullet. Before she could weave her fingers into the thickness that grew from Danny’s scalp, Danny’s hand rose up and pushed her hand away. He looked up at her, his light blue eyes narrowed in annoyance.
“Can you leave me alone?” Danny asked, his voice as sharp as a knife's edge.
“That’s the last thing you need, Danny,” Jazz pointed out adamantly. “I am not going to let you bottle all of this up so that it can explode later. You need to talk about this with someone.”
“And you need to stop being so pushy,” Danny huffed.
“I'm only trying to help you.”
“You can help by giving me some space!”
Jazz blinked her eyes rapidly. As the two bore into each other’s eyes in the ongoing sibling quarrel, Jazz saw a green glow replace the blue irides of her baby brother’s eyes. The green glow intensified as his voice rose with frustration. She chalked it off as a trick of the light. However, after blinking her eyes, she saw the green glow had remained swirling within the pair of light sensory organs. It was not a trick of the light at all.
Danny's face contorted from frustration to somberness as Jazz continued to stare. Jazz watched this transformation of emotions as it further progressed to her own brother expressing shame. His irides faded back to their normal blue color. He looked at his bedsheets and shuffled his left foot a bit. His shoulders slumped, looking ready to fall off his torso and onto the bed. Jazz stepped closer, causing Danny to scoot away from her.
“Danny,” Jazz began, “please tell me what's going on. This isn't like you, and I'm very worried for you.”
Danny sighed, hanging his head over his knees again. “I am pretty sure mom and dad already told you.”
Jazz narrowed her eyes a bit. “Danny, what mom and dad said is not true. They are delusional, and believing their fantasies to be facts is not the way to cope with the trauma.”
"Well, it did happen,” Danny retorted. “And Sam and Tucker were there and saw everything. Heck, dad installed a security camera in the lab before the accident even happened. Sure, mom and dad never checked the CCTV footage before — and they will be later, but the proof is there if our words aren’t enough for ya." Danny got up from his bed, placed his hands on Jazz's back, and began trying to push her towards the door. "Now, leave me alone!”
Jazz sighed, dissatisfied with the outcome of her mitigation attempts. Seeing as she could not get through to Danny, she walked towards the door, causing Danny to stumble forward a bit. From there, Jazz left Danny's room and went straight to the Fenton OPs Center.
.
Once in the Fenton OPs Center, Jazz walked over to the console that had the CCTV recordings and took a seat. She began searching the CCTV database until she found the footage that she was looking for. Why her dad decided to have the CCTV in the OPs Center was beyond her, but that did not matter right now.
Feeling as if she found the proof needed to snap her family back to reality, she began to fast-forward the recording to around the time Sam and Tucker entered the lab. She winced as a garbled, distorted sound blared through the speakers, causing Jazz to hastily turn down the volume.
“Dad seriously needs to replace that camera’s microphone attachment,” Jazz muttered as her lower left eyelid twitched a few times. “At least the footage is pretty clear and in color.”
The genius teenager watched Danny make some less than enthusiastic gestures towards his friends. From what she could guess, he was likely not keen on his friends being in the lab, and she could not blame him for that. Their parents had told the both of them to not bring unauthorized personnel into the lab plenty of times.
Then Sam found the hazmat suit that their dad had made specifically for Danny. It was white with a pair of black gloves, black boots, a black belt, and a black collar. Plastered in the center of the torso region was the sticker that had Jack’s beaming face on it. Sam threw the hazmat suit at Danny and immediately followed that up by raising her Polaroid camera up as the hazmat suit unrolled to unveil the embarrassing decal. An obnoxious flash emitted from the camera, disorienting Danny. Jazz empathically winced for Danny.
After about a minute or two of Danny looking ready to bolt for the door, his demeanor changed. His body language no longer showed fright or annoyance. He gave a determined grin as he held onto the hazmat suit with confidence. Jazz raised an eyebrow, wondering what could have possibly been said to encourage her little brother — who had crippling phasmophobia thanks to endless nights of terrifying ghost stories instead of soothing bedtime stories — to gain such a determined look.
“I am going to have another session with him,” Jazz stated flatly.
Jazz cringed as she watched Danny put on the hazmat suit over his daytime clothes. Those hazmat suits were just ridiculous. They were something that she was going to dispose of first when she had the proof that she needed. At least, Sam had the common sense needed to remove the ridiculous decal from her brother’s hazmat suit. Sadly, Sam lacked the common sense needed to know that fooling around in the lab was a bad idea.
“Scratch that, I’m going to have to have a session with Danny and his friends.”
On the screen, Danny walked into the portal, making Jazz’s eyes widen with horror and shock. This was the part that was going to prove her right. She needed full attention at this critical moment, down to every last frame of it. Her eyes ate up every detail of the footage as if they had been starving.
Then it happened. There were a series of white and green sparks within the tunnel. And then a very bright white and green light exploded from the portal as it proceeded to electrocute her little brother. The footage from the camera became fuzzy and a bit glitchy.
Tears spilled from Jazz’s eyes as she watched the horrifying footage. She could see the shapes that were Sam and Tucker jump backwards before they became frozen into place. They should not have had to witness something so traumatizing.
Eventually, the lights dimmed as the green swirl of the portal became fully formed. The CCTV footage became clear and sharp once more. In front of the swirl of the portal was a male, teenage figure that had smoke wafting off of him. It was undoubtedly Danny; however, something was very, very wrong.
Danny did not look like Danny. The coloration was all wrong. His hair was snow white rather than the raven black locks he was born with. When it came to the hazmat suit, what was once white was now black, and what was once black was now white. Danny’s entire body was now cast with eerie shadows as his body produced a soft, white, ethereal light.
Jazz watched as Danny slowly and unsteadily staggered as he tried to get away from the portal. He tumbled and clumsily reached out for the rim of the portal, grasping it tightly once his hands made contact with the metal. His arms then briefly became intangible, causing him to fall over onto the ground. His friends rushed over to him, kneeling down on either side of him. Danny was lying on the ground for several minutes before sitting up.
Eventually, Danny got onto his feet with some help from Sam. Well, almost. Sam's hands went through Danny as if he were not even physically there. Danny landed on his hands and knees as a result.
Danny then tried getting up on his own, only to begin floating. A moment later, he was flailing his limbs — and going upside-down in the process — about helplessly as Sam rushed over to him. Sam was able to get the poor boy upright. Then she tried to grab him again, but struggled to make physical contact with Danny's left hand. She eventually was able to firmly hold Danny's hand, and from there she tried to get him to stop floating to no avail. After several failed attempts to get Danny's feet back on the ground, the goth girl led him to the industrial sink. Danny stared at himself in the mirror that was above the sink for a while before turning around. He then said something and then promptly recoiled back, turning invisible in the process, as Sam and Tucker began to visibly argue.
Danny then eventually reappeared next to Tucker. Tucker fell over on his backside, clearly spooked.
Suddenly, a ring of white-blue light erupted from Danny’s waist. It split, with one ring traveling towards his head and the other towards his feet. As the rings passed over him, they reverted him back to his black-haired, blue-eyed self. The hazmat suit was replaced by Danny’s favorite t-shirt, baggy blue jeans, and Converse shoes. He promptly stumbled onto the ground as gravity took hold of him again.
This was way more than just being able to use the most basic ghost powers. This was having an otherworldly form on top of having the basic ghost powers.
Deciding she had seen enough, Jazz exited out of the CCTV recording. She ran her right hand through her hair as she tried to wrap her mind around two thoughts.
The first thought was the fact that she had been wrong. She had been wrong. Very wrong. It was something that she could barely fathom. She had never been so wrong in her entire life. Her parents, the ones she wrote off as delusional, had been right. Ghosts did exist, and her one and only little brother had been mutated into one in the accident. It made reality all the more frightening. She had no clue what could happen from this point onward. She could not prepare a year in advance this time. There was no plan B to fall back on. She felt like she was surrounded by a metaphorical fog of war.
The second thought was Jazz wondering just how much had changed beyond the physical aspects. Her heart wrenched at the thought of Danny becoming lost for the rest of his life, unable to find a place in society because of the accident. That thought burrowed deep into her mind. It was a thought that could only be born from a nightmare that crept into the waking world. It was frightening.
Jazz got up from the chair and traveled all the way back to her room. She shut her door, pulled out one of her journals, and began to write down everything that had occurred that evening. The sixteen year old girl had a feeling that she was going to need to write down more thoughts than she usually would. She did not complain about this piece of truth, for she did not mind it. She did not mind it because it was going to help her find a way to help her brother. She was going to do whatever it took.
.
The next day, all of Casper High knew of Danny’s powers. Danny held onto the school’s flagpole as if his life depended on it. Down below, Dash and his buddies were barking out laughs that could easily be mistaken for the chuckles of starving hyenas.
“What’s the matter, Fenturd?” Dash maliciously sneered. “Are you too much of a wimp to come down?”
Danny wished that was the only thing keeping him from the ground. He could feel the sweat droplets collecting between his fingers as his grip on the pole slowly began to fade. The poor boy desperately tried to suppress the power that decided it was time to act up.
Oh, how he wished it was invisibility instead. If it were invisibility, he would have the comfort that no one would be able to see him, period. What he had to deal with at the moment was flight, one he had thought he was getting the hang of. Much to his displeasure, that was another one he was going to be practicing to get control of more often along with intangibility.
Time began to crawl slowly as soon as the morning bell rang, signaling there were ten minutes left before class. Danny continued to struggle to get down as his tormentors left, flashing sadistic smirks that only seemed to grow with his suffering.
When only six minutes remained, Danny was finally able to get his body to once more obey the laws of physics. The only downside came in the form of him losing his grip on the flagpole and the ensuing near-instantaneous plummeting towards the ground. Danny screamed at the top of his lungs, closed his eyes, and crossed his arms in front of his face, bracing himself for the impact.
He breathed heavily as he felt the air cease rushing past his skin and hair. He cracked an eye open and saw he was floating one foot away from the coarse concrete. With a shaky breath, he slowly dropped to the ground on his hands and knees, saving himself from a painful impact.
Danny took a glance at his digital watch, and all color drained from his face. He had been stuck hanging onto the flagpole for almost thirty minutes, and most of that was before Dash and his fellow A-Listers showed up to mock him.
Not wanting to be late, the poor boy rushed inside the school, not even bothering to make sure he stayed solid. As much as he wanted to be solid and have control over his untamed abilities, there was absolutely no time. This led to several gasps and shudders throughout the hallways as Danny passed through the masses of his fellow high schoolers. It was one of the things that literally everyone was going to have to get used to.
.
Second period English class had finally ended for Danny, his friends, and various other students. Students quickly poured out into the hallway. They giggled and gossiped about the latest trends, their weekend plans, and the obvious recent events.
Right behind the crowd of students, Danny followed with his head hanging low. Sam and Tucker were right behind him. Sam leered at any and all students who were tempted to gawk at her best friend. Tucker, on the other hand, was trying to grab Danny’s attention.
“Dude, wanna-” Tucker spoke up as he reached for Danny’s shoulder.
Not feeling up to socialize even with his only friends, Danny began heading off on his own. All Sam and Tucker could do was helplessly watch as Danny melted into the crowd before their very eyes.
“Man, our peers are so cruel..,” Tucker sighed.
Sam clenched her fists at her sides as she leered at the faceless mob of students walking in the hallway.
“None of this is fair!” Sam exclaimed as she threw her hands up in the air. “Danny doesn’t deserve any of this!”
“You can say that again.”
A moment of quiet washed over Sam and Tucker.
Tucker then broke the silence, “Wanna go see if we can find something to help cheer Danny up after school?”
Sam nodded.
And with that, the two of them headed to their next class.
.
Each footstep Danny took was quiet and slow as the boy tried not to attract attention. However, that failed when one of the jocks began trying to barrel right into him. Danny squeaked out a frightened yelp as he turned intangible, causing the jock to run right through him. Uproars of laughter echoed throughout the hallway. The ghost boy's cheeks flushed with pink at the unwanted attention the non-descript jock brought to him.
Not wanting to stick around any longer, Danny sped walked away from the area. He looked around as if he were being pursued by an unseen predator, doing his utmost best to avoid all of the A-Listers.
Danny could not help but let the feelings of persecution fester inside. Thanks to his stupidity, gone were the chances of being accepted by his peers despite his parents’ eccentricity. Gone was the little bit of normality in his life he had desperately tried to hold onto. All that remained from his old school life was the bullying, but even that morphed with his DNA. Rather than A-Listers just picking on him for his parents’ profession and eccentric behavior, they now also picked on him for his lack of control over his powers. They teased the fact that he had powers to begin with.
As Danny rounded the corner, he spotted Dash and Kwan talking. Deciding to play it safe, Danny dove behind the corner of a row of lockers.
“Dash, don’t you think we are taking this a bit too far?” Kwan asked, looking concerned for some reason.
“What are you talking about?” Dash questioned, “We need to be at our best if we are going to cream the visiting losers next month.”
“I’m not talking about the game; I’m talking about Fenton.”
Danny's eyebrows rose with confusion. One part of him wanted to book it before anything happened, but he found himself frozen in place. Another part of him wanted to know what was going to happen next.
Dash let out a loud, brutish laugh and patted Kwan’s shoulder.
“Oh man, Kwan!” Dash said, wiping a false tear from his eye. “That's a good one!”
“I’m being serious,” Kwan said. “Fenton doesn't seem like himself. Like at all.”
‘You don't even know the half of it,’ Danny dryly thought, feeling the strange, ghostly energy that was present in every single one of his cells.
“Since when did you care for that loser?” Dash questioned. “He is at the bottom; we’re at the top. It is our job to teach our peers where they belong, and Fen-toenail is still in need of housebreaking. Why should we care if he doesn't feel like he usually does?”
‘Typical Dash,’ Danny mentally snorted as he rolled his eyes.
“What if we take it too far?” Kwan asked. “I mean, aren't supervillains made from the actions of people like us?”
‘Why would I want to have a comic book life? I just want to be left alone and have a normal life! I don’t want to be a supervillain!’
“Kwan, you worry too much about nothing. Fentoad doesn't have what it takes to become a supervillain. He's not even scary! Heck, even someone obsessed with boxes or toilets would make a better supervillain than him!”
‘Bravo, Dash. Bravo. Too bad I can't give you a Nobel Prize for saying something intelligent for once,’ Danny sarcastically thought.
At that moment, the school bell rang. Dash and Kwan hurried away to their respective next-period classes. Danny sighed to himself as he leaned against the locker he was hiding beside. His eyes traveled upwards as he looked towards the ceiling. His back slid against the metal surface until he was sitting on the floor, his arms resting on his knees. He rested the back of his head against the cool metal.
"Why? Why me?" Danny whispered to himself.
Danny picked at his fingers, his eyelids half-lidded as he withdrew into his own thoughts.
'Well, at least they don't know about my ghost form- who am I kidding? They're gonna find out about that too with my current luck,' Danny thought as his eyelids fluttered closed.
He took in a deep breath, filling his lungs with the musty and dusty school air. As he exhaled, a frosty chill escaped through his throat and out of his mouth. Danny's eyes snapped open in time to see the small burst of icy mist coming out of his mouth. He wrinkled an eyebrow as his mouth hung open slightly.
A few seconds later, he whispered to himself, "What the heck was that?"